Word of God: Written, Spoken, Cosmic, Inner, Incarnate: Acts 4:31; John 5:39-40; Psalm 19:1-4; 1 Cor. 2:9-16; Hebrews 1:1-3

 

I grew up in a southern fundamentalist church tradition that believed that the Bible is the very Word of Gaawd, in capital letters. That was understood to mean that the Bible, preferably in the King James version, came to us unencumbered by human error, dictated by God into the minds of those who first penned its words. The “Word of God” was shorthand for the Bible. This idea was made visible when the preacher held up his large floppy, leather-bound Bible and said, “The Word of God says...” And those of us who listened knew he meant we must believe every word jot and tittle.

But, this notion of the Bible being the Word of God is not exclusive to fundamentalists. In liberal, mainline liturgical traditions you will hear the Bible read on a Sunday morning followed by the congregation antiphonally responding with this traditional litany: This is the Word of the Lord/Thanks be to God. Admittedly, the texts that are read are from a three year lectionary cycle, which does a bit of censoring, or should I say “editing,” of some of the more problematic biblical texts. That part of Psalm 137 about dashing babies’ heads against the rocks doesn’t seem to “cut the mustard.” Ironically, the lectionary also excludes these words from Revelation: “if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life”? Holy Shibboleth, Batman! And an old voice echoes in my head, “You cain’t take anything away from the Word o’ Gaaawd!” But, is the Bible all we mean by the “Word of God”?

Understanding the meaning of the “Word of God” is key to placing the Bible in its broader context of God’s diverse and delightful forms of communication with humanity.

One of the primary forms by which God communicates with us is through the written Word. When we refer to the Bible as “the Word of God,” we mean something other than its words come directly from the mouth of God. The old self-assured saying, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it,” reflects this understanding of the Bible as the literal words of God. Everything in the Book, God said it. In this view the Word of God and the words of the Bible are equated.

Truthfully, the Word of God is a metaphor that refers to something much broader and deeper than the Bible. Like every statement about God the phrase, “Word of God,” is metaphorical and not literal language. As a metaphor, the “Word of God” has within it a creative tension by being both like and unlike that which it seeks to describe. God’s Word is both like and unlike human words. The metaphor “God’s Word” attempts to depict God’s communication with us as being like the way in which we communicate with one another. At the same time it is unlike human communication. Words are part of human speech that is created through our physicality; brain, breath, mouth, tongue, lips, and body. Words are audible. They are human creations used to communicate our inner thoughts with one another. Speech, voice, words, language are terms that represent this unique form of communication between humans. Words represent human interaction.

Since God is Spirit, metaphors like Word of God, God’s voice, God speaking, cannot be taken literally. God has no mouth or tongue with which to speak. God’s voice is not audible, though it may be depicted as such in scripture. And yet, we believe God communicates with humanity. The “Word of God” is a rich metaphor that points to the diverse forms of communication by which the unseen God reveals or communicates God’s self to us.

Scripture is one of those mediums of communication. God speaks through the scriptures. Again, this is a metaphor. As NT Scholar Marcus Borg says, “The Bible is the Word of God, not the words of God.” By that I think he means that the Bible is a conduit of God’s self-revelation, not the literal words of God. To understand the Bible as the literal Word of God is to destroy the metaphor and its creative tension between “like and unlike.” It also tends to destroy sound theology! The real danger with religious metaphors is to literalize them by forgetting the “unlike” part of the metaphor. This happens with such a metaphor as “God, our Father.” The very shock when hearing the metaphor “God, our Mother” indicates we have thought of “God, our Father” much too literally. Remember, God is not a male with a human body and…and…all those “things” that make a male and a father. God is like and unlike a human male and father. As well, God is like and unlike a human female and mother. The Bible as the Word of God is like and unlike the human Word.

To say that God speaks through scriptures means that God, the sacred Mystery of Being, communicates to us through the broken and beautiful stories, parables, texts, images and words in that collection of books we call “the Bible.” The Word of God rides upon the frail human words of the biblical texts. The divine Word is within and yet distinct from the human words. It is a transcendent Word alongside, beneath, and emerging through our common words. A Word different from and yet like our words.

In one sense, we might understand the Bible as Roman Catholics understand the sacraments. A sacrament is a symbol or ritual which mediates the divine presence to us. As a sacrament the holy Eucharist mediates the grace of God. Sacraments are not in and of themselves that grace, but its channel. Understood sacramentally, the Bible mediates to us the Word of God. Through partaking of the scriptures we receive the grace-full Word of God. Or we might think of the Bible as the finger in the story of Buddha pointing to the moon. The Buddha wanted his disciples to see the moon, not his finger. In the same way, the Buddha’s teachings pointed to the truth, but were not to be equated with it. So, the Bible is the finger that points to God. As the Word of God the Bible becomes a channel of God’s voice.

An elderly woman sits in her rocking chair wearing her blue apron. As she knits she looks out the window as the morning sun shines off the hood of the old Chevy her late husband used to work on, then stares off in space. He’s been gone only four months. The pain of her loss is palpable. She misses him fiercely and wishes she could join him. Family and friends come by less often. Her days are spent alone, lost in memories. How she longs to hear his voice, to be reassured by his presence. Depression often sets in like a cold morning fog. She picks up her husband’s worn leather Bible. It falls open to a passage he had underlined. Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth. The human words become a divine Word, a finger pointing to a deeper truth. An inner sun breaks through the fog in her heart.

Another form through which God communicates to us is the spoken Word. Before the Word was written, it was spoken. The written word of the Bible was produced within oral cultures. The greater majority of the populations within these biblical cultures were illiterate. Writing and reading were the privilege of a few of the upper class. The primary means of communication of the general population was by word of mouth. Even the written words of the Old Testament and Gospels were first circulated as oral tradition.

So, the Word of God, that is God’s self-revelation, came first through the spoken word. God speaks through the human voice.  The Bible itself witnesses to us that God’s Word came though the voices and words of prophets, sages, teachers, preachers, evangelists, and believers moved by the Holy Spirit. A familiar formula pronounced by the prophets was, “Thus says the Lord.” They spoke as if a mouthpiece of God. Through the human words of these messengers God’s voice was heard, while remaining human words.

Did not the prophetic words of Martin Luther King, Jr. sound like the voice of God for our day and time? In the midst of Jim Crow segregation and rampant racism he spoke a word that cut like a two edged sword to the heart and soul of our society. In King’s I Have a Dream speech he quotes the very words of the prophet Isaiah:  one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. He intoned the hopes of an oppressed people longing for the day when the crooked road of racism would be straightened; the rough places of discrimination would be made smooth. A word from another time and context and from another human voice became the Word of God for us, here and now. Was it not God who was calling our nation to equality for all through Martin’s voice?

On a more common level, on a weekly basis preachers dare to take on the role of allowing their words to become the vehicle by which God communicates to the people. Their words may not have the power or tone of a Martin King, but they seek to speak the Word of God for our time and place. And preachers are not the only voices God uses to speak the Word. God can speak through  our own common voices as we each proclaim the good news of Christ, liberty to the captive, call for justice and equity, comfort the bereaved, teach the faithful, or share our faith. God’s voice rides upon our words.

Harold hadn’t been to church since he was a kid. After he left home for college, church was the last thing on his mind. He got married, settled into a small home in the suburbs with his new bride, and they had their first child, a son. When their son was about a year old they started thinking about his moral instruction.  Harold’s own childhood in the church came flooding back to him; weekly worship, Sunday School, church camps, Vacation Bible School. He remembered it as a good childhood experience. The orange and brown leaves were falling on the driveway as he pulled out to go to the local church that Sunday with his wife and son. After so many years away, Harold didn’t know what to expect.

They were warmly greeted by members as they were ushered to a pew. He fumbled with the bulletin and rubbed his son’s head as he lay on his lap. Some of the hymns were familiar from his youthful days. The robed preacher made his way to the pulpit for the sermon. He opened his Bible and stood there silent for a moment. For Harold it seemed an eternity. When the preacher spoke there was something about his voice, his tone, or was it his words that seemed to penetrate deep inside Harold? And when the preacher invited the listeners to renew their faith in God, Harold knew someone else was speaking through the preacher’s words. God speaks through the human voice.

God also communicates to us through the cosmic Word. No, I’m not talking about some hippie-dippie, New Age cosmic consciousness, man. Cosmic is that which pertains to the cosmos, the Greek word for world. We have all experienced the wonder and majesty of creation. The sunset paints the sky with a palette that pales Picasso. A lonely wolf cries on a moonlit desert night that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A waterfall sprays the rock mountain like a white bridal veil at spring’s wedding. Bluebonnets babble on the hills as if bragging of their beauty. The scent of pine in the air makes you drunk on nature. The glimmering stars spangle the heavens with the jewelry of angels.

But, nature has no voice, or does it? The written Word has no tongue or mouth, but its voice can be heard in reading. Can we read nature? Some would say creation can be read and that it even has its own voice. The psalmist (19:1-3) believed that creation has a voice and words which witness to the glory of God:

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes through all the earth, and their words to the end of the cosmos or world.

The psalmist goes on to talk about the law, or Torah, the central scriptures of the Hebrew people. Creation and scripture are voices through which God speaks.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed the language of creation as God’s revelation in his poem God’s Grandeur. Creation is like an electrical current that flashes forth the power of God.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out like shining from shook foil.

And in spite of human trampling and the stain of toil and trade, God, like a mother hen, incubates the world with the promise of rebirth.
 

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs---

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods
With warm breath and ah! Bright wings.

But, it doesn’t take a poet to recognize that God speaks through creation. In theology it is referred to as natural revelation. It is the common and natural revealing of God in all that surrounds us. In liturgy we sing it, as in one of our hymns: This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ear, All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.

Then again, God communicates to us an inner Word.  As one who grew out of a context where the Bible was understood to be the very Word of God, I was delighted when I came upon this quote from Anabaptist Hans Denck: 

I value the Scriptures above all human treasures, but not as highly as the Word of God which is alive, strong (Heb. 4:12), eternal, and free. The Word of God is free from the elements of the world. It is God himself. It is Spirit and not letter, written with pen and paper, so that it can never be erased.

Denck makes a clear distinction between the scriptures and the Word of God. Scripture is written with pen and paper. The Word of God is free of those material elements. For Denck, and other spiritualist Anabaptists, the Word of God was both an inner Word and an outer Word. But, the scriptures were considered secondary to the inner Word, the living and active Word, the Word of the Spirit, the voice of God within.

Another Anabaptist in Bavaria wrote:

The Scriptures are merely the witness of the inner Word of God. A man can well be saved without the preaching or the reading of the Scriptures. (Otherwise, what should happen with those who are deaf or cannot read?) We understand God our Redeemer, not through the lifeless letter, but through the indwelling of Christ.

The Word of scripture is inanimate until it is given life through the voice of the Spirit within. God must speak to the heart for the Word to be a living Word. God speaks to the heart.

In the end, the ultimate Word of God is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. The prologue of John’s gospel begins:

In the beginning was the Word (logos). And the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word became flesh (incarnate) and dwelled among us.

The language, speech, voice, word, God’s self-communication became human in the person of Yeshua ben Yoseph, Jesus of Nazareth. For the Christian the Word of God proclaimed in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is unparalleled. It is a Word that is clearer and more central to hearing God than the Bible, human speech, creation, and the inner voice. Christ is the measuring rod for the truthfulness and authenticity of the Word that comes through all of these channels. Jesus is the lens through which we read and understand the Bible. We do not preach our own wisdom, but proclaim with our voices the living and liberating Christ. Creation is subservient to the cosmic Christ, The Word through whom all things were made. The inner voice is judged by the Spirit of Christ. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ is the ultimate Word of God to humanity.

As the author of Hebrews puts it:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways…but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…

Conclusion- So, the Word of God is not to be equated with the Bible. It is much broader than that. God communicates to us through the Bible, but also through the human voice, creation, the inner Word, and most essentially and definitively through Jesus Christ. That is not to say some of these channels of God’s self-communication are totally flawless and unobstructed. The Bible has its errors in transmission and ethically problematic texts. The human tongue is tangled and tainted and cannot be equated with God. Creation brings death and destruction as well as beauty and wonder. The inner voice can be self-centered or silent. Jesus Christ was a 1st century Mediterranean Jew separated from us by time, culture, religion, and worldview. Through the racket of human ego and error, class and culture, time and distance, it’s any wonder that we can hear God’s voice at all. And yet….

The trademark image of RCA Victor Records is of a dog sitting near a gramophone record player with his ear cocked to the side as if listening carefully. It was taken from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud. The fox terrier in the painting, named Nipper, was originally owned by the artist’s brother Mark. Mark died and his brother Frank inherited the dog, along with a belled phonograph and some recordings of Mark’s voice. When Frank would play the recordings of his brother’s voice, Nipper would come close, listen carefully, and recognize his master’s voice. Frank put the image to canvas, which eventually became RCA’s logo with the title His Master’s Voice.

God speaks to us across the pops and hisses, the warp and wobble, the distance and distractions that might distort or drown out the divine voice. And yet…. through written Bible, spoken language, wondrous creation, inner voice, and  most definitively through the earthly life of Jesus the Christ, the Master’s voice can still be heard.

There is more light and truth yet to break forth from God’s Holy Word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Our God Still Too Small?

The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a God big enough for modern needs. While their experience of life has grown in a score of directions, and their mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and by scientific discoveries, their ideas of God have remained largely static. It is obviously impossible for an adult to worship the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age, unless he is prepared to deny his own experience of life.    J.B. Phillips, Your God is Too Small.

 

I first read J.B. Phillips book Your God is too Small back in the 70s. As a young Christian and student of the Bible Phillip’s book resonated with my experience of what I saw in many Christians’ narrow understanding of God. Phillips debunked a number of popular, but erroneous, images of God as ‘Resident Policeman,” “Parental Hangover,” and “God-in-a-Box.”  Even after more than 40 years since I read that book, I continue to be amazed at some rather narrow, but popular views floating around not only about God, but about the Spirit, Jesus, Scripture, and the church. If “our God is too small,” it is probably because our theology is too small.

It seems like many of us Christians need a bite size theology, a narrower and constricted theology that we can swallow; a happy pill to make us feel good. The immensity of our God and the earthshaking implications of our gospel have been shrunken down to a size where they can be placed in our front pockets for safe keeping.

God has become an old, white haired European man that looks and sounds like he grew up next door to us. The Spirit is not so much an uncontrollable, blazing fire as a small spark from the match we strike to warm our hearts every now and then. The Jewish Jesus, a revolutionary prophet that turned the world upside down has been turned into a middle class white American that jumps onto our particular political bandwagon. The Bible has become an infallible, devotional idol that reinforces our current worldviews and practices. The gospel has become a packaged formula that guarantees our ticket to heaven. And the church has become a comfy social club where “birds of a feather flock together.”

The tribalization of God turns God into a god of our people, our nation, our denomination, our religion. It is a “downsizing” of God that fits the divine into the box of the familiar and within the boundaries of our group identities.  This is the god of civil religion, the god “in whom we trust” on our dollar bills, who we invoke in nationalistic fervor, in war, and at baseball games with national anthems, and who we swear oaths to in secular courts. The god of our tribe is worshipped in churches that see themselves alone as the gatekeepers of the gospel, the right interpreters of Scripture, the true and holy church of God, or should we say “god.”

This is the god who was praised in segregated churches, who justified apartheid, and buttressed white supremacy.  This is the tribal god who excludes women from sharing their gifts in the pulpit and church and is called upon by those who curse small children crossing our borders fleeing violence and poverty. This shrunken god is trapped within our conservative or liberal perspectives and is willing to be used as a hammer against those who disagree with us. This tribal god is too small to transcend nation, culture, race, gender, and ideology. 

The bottling of the Spirit is an effort to keep the dynamic presence of God under our control. Pulitzer Prize winning writer Annie Dillard once described in Teaching a Stone to Talk our worship services as “children playing on the floor with chemistry sets mixing up a batch of TNT.” We have forgotten the power of the Spirit that we nonchalantly invoke on a Sunday morning. Dillard suggests we should all be wearing crash helmets!

Too often we enter the realm of the Spirit, particularly in worship, with the casualness of shopping at Walmart. Instead of taking our shoes off before the flaming presence of God’s Spirit, we, as it were, roast weenies on the dying embers of the spirit.  Our lack of expectancy, dependence on scripted worship, and general patterns of being unmoved from where we presently stand is evidence that we have bottled up the wind of the Spirit.

The domestication of Jesus has practically become a characteristic of American Christianity. The church has created a Jesus in its own image. Dr. Albert Schweitzer recognized the “strangeness of Jesus.” But, we have filtered out the oddness of someone from an ancient religion and culture with a different worldview in favor of either a divine figure floating above the earth or a “buddy Jesus” who thinks, believes, and acts just like our people. God forbid that we should portray Jesus as a black man, or take him at his word when he says things that run against our societal norms, like “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle….” Jesus is supposed to be one of us. He us supposed to support our political party, our ethical viewpoints, our lifestyles, and sit in our pews and go along with the consensus without disturbing our “peace.”

The taming of Scripture is an accepted practice in many of our churches. It starts with the instruction of our children in Sunday School. We take a story of the destruction of all humanity in an all-out apocalypse and turn it into a timid tale about a little thunderstorm, rainbows, and a floating zoo with the bobbing heads of giraffes sticking out the boat windows! As adults we still try to avoid those “texts of terror” that denigrate women, sidestep the implications of texts which justify slavery, whistle in the dark at apparent contradictions, and soften into pabulum the “hard sayings” of Jesus.

The rough places of the Bible are smoothed out and the valleys that depress us are lifted up, to borrow images from Isaiah. The strangeness of the Bible, like the strangeness of Jesus, is domesticated and tamed for consumption by white, middle class Americans. We have forgotten how to struggle with muscular texts of the Bible that seek to throw our faith into a headlock.  Our Bibles have become tame and limp. There is a need relearn how to wrestle, like Jacob, with the angels of these difficult texts until we receive a blessing.

The shrinking of the gospel can only lead to stunted Christians. Salvation has been shrink wrapped into a simple formula that can be encapsulated into four easy steps, printed on a tract and can be easily handed out to strangers like sugary candy. Forget about the ecological dimensions of the liberation of the cosmos. Never mind those people captive to capitalism, consumed by consumerism, and think only materialism matters. Sorry, but the gospel has nothing to say to racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and xenophobia. It’s all about getting me and mine through the pearly gates when we die. And that’s the gospel truth?

The parochialization of the church happens when we lose sight of the universal body of believers. We are not the totality of the church. Our race and culture does not define the nature of the church. Our way of worshipping is not sacred and written in stone tablets. Our images of God and Christ and the church are not universal. The church in all its delightful diversity is the universal church. There is a reason Sunday morning has been called the most segregated hour of the week. We are still hung up on that idea that “birds of a feather flock together.” It has been baptized into an evangelism strategy! Seek those who are like you! Here’s the church and here’s the steeple and open the doors and see how much they are alike!

A theology as big as the gospel is not an easy one to swallow, even for myself. I would rather worship a manageable God that fits into my neat categories and conceptions. I would prefer a Spirit contained within comfortable expressions of a dignified religion. A Jesus who fits my social, religious, ethical, and political agenda is, in the words of the Doobie Brothers, “just alright with me.” My preference is for a Bible free of those problematic texts, embarrassing stories, and hard sayings. Give me a gospel that is simple and ready to plug into the wall socket of any context. And I’m just fine being around those who look and think like me, thank you very much.

Except, our God is bigger than that! Our gospel is cosmic! Our Spirit is a burning flame! Our Christ is universal! Our church is worldwide! If that doesn’t expand your mind, your heart, your theology, and your actions, then your God is still too small.

 

 

 

Yesterday I did a recorded interview with Evan Pollack for his Experience Drums website. It will included in his section called "Community Saints" about drummers bring wholeness to their communities through rhythm. I talk about my life in drumming and my work with Drumming for Peace.

I will make a post when the interview is on the website.

My 10 most Influential Theology Books

I limited my list of influential books to "theology" books (including biblical studies and homiletics) since a list that would include my interests in peace studies, literature, art, and music/drumming would be much too long. These books span four decades of reading and study and mark different degrees of shifts in my theological formation.

1. Worthy is the Lamb, Ray Summers

 

I read this book around 1974 not long after discerning a call to ministry and entering California Baptist University. It opened up an alternative eschatology (historical/amillenial) from my fundamentalist, premillennial indoctrination.

2. The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, Gerd Thiessen

 

I spotted this book in a seminary friend's library around 1977 and had to read it. It opened up the world of the social-science approach to reading of biblical texts.

 

3. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

 

 

I came across this book after seminary and my eyes were opened to the enormous problem of hunger and the disparity of poverty and wealth. I led me to get involved in Project Understanding, a community-based social justice project in Ventura County, CA, and to do hunger education.

 

4. Thy Will Be Done: Praying the Our Father as a Subversive Activity, Michael Crosby

 

 

I was introduced to liberation theology in the early 80s by an atheist that worked with my wife, Iris. For some strange reason, he had an interest in the movement of liberation among Catholics in Latin America. This book, along with Gustavo Guttierez' classic Theology of Liberation, were a doorway into liberation theology and emancipatory readings of the Bible.

 

5. Black Theology of Liberation, James Cone

 

 

Being a pastor near Berkeley, CA I had access to the Graduate Theological Union bookstore, where I encountered more radical readings in the early 80s (I visited there recently and it had been closed for 5 years!). Cone's book was another dimension of liberation theology that connected me to issues of race and its impact on theological construction. I have to mention Delores Williams Sisters in the Wilderness as my later intro to womanist theology.

 

6. Sexism and God-Talk, Rosemary Radford Reuther

 

 

With a path opened into liberation theology in the early 80s, I stepped into feminist theology. This book was not my introduction to feminist theology. That was from a reading of Mary Daly's radical Beyond God the Father. What struck me about this book was its comprehensive look at traditional Christian theology through a new lens. A similar book for biblical study was Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her.

 

6. Christianity and Revolution, Lowell Zuck

 

 

I was introduced to Anabaptism through the influence of James Wm. McClendon, Jr., an (ana)baptist theologian who was a member of a congregation in Alameda, CA where I was pastor (1983-87). He taught a class on Anabaptist history at the Episcopal Divinity School at GTU Berkeley. He used this book in his GTU class. The social justice elements of Anabaptists involved in the Peasant's War and their pacifism drew my attention. 

 

7. The Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck

 

 

Another book from one of Jim's classes at GTU that gave me a handle on understanding various approaches to theology was this seminal book by Lindbeck. It was my introduction to a cultural-linguistic approach and post-liberal theology, which I saw as having connections to Anabaptism.

 

8. Homiletic: Moves and Structures, David Buttrick

 

 

With my experience, study, and writing focused on homiletics, I had to include something on homiletics. I plowed through this massive book in the 90s. Although highly theoretical it also gave me a practical and structural way to approach constructing my sermons at that time.

 

9. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, Richard Horsley

 

 

Horsley is one of my favorite socio-political readers of the Bible (along with my friend, Ched Myers). This book introduced me to his work by connecting the themes of peace, politics, and empire in biblical studies (an area I continue to delve into). Can't get enough of Horsley.

 

10. Asian Biblical Hermeneutics and Postcolonialism, R.S. Sugirthirajah

 

 

This book from 1998 was one of my first introductions to postcolonial theology and biblical studies. It was a move beyond liberation theology, a well I was deeply drinking from, and in some ways a critique of that project.

 

This list takes me up to near 2000. It is but a small slice of my readings, but reflects major influences on my present theology and hermeneutical interests.  

Getting ready for my first art show as a RAW artist for Spectrum on April 17, 7 pm at the Bassanova Ballroom, Portland, Oregon. I welcome sponsors to purchase a ticket at the site below.

Just finished this pencil drawing of a 1920s Australian criminal. For more of my art see my website: leosart.wordpress.com or my facebook page, Leosart

The Politics of Communion: 1 Corinthians 11:17-34

*This sermon was presented on World Communion Sunday, October 6, 2013, at Zion Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Oregon 

 World Communion Sunday began in 1933 as a celebration of a local Presbyterian church and then spread throughout the Presbyterian Church. It was observed on the first Sunday of October. It began in the context of a world of political strife and strong nationalism. In 1940 it was adopted by the Federal Council of Churches and was promoted as a celebration to churches worldwide. It is a day to celebrate, through sharing in communion, Christian unity and ecumenical cooperation.

Do we really need a special Sunday set aside to celebrate communion? Is it really important to have a special day to recognize within our isolated congregations our connection to the Christian church throughout the world by celebrating communion? Is this just another innocuous day that means very little in practice, but allows the church to symbolically join hands around the globe, sway and sing “We are the world”? So, why bother with celebrating World Communion Sunday? A pinch of bread, a thimble of juice. Remember Christ’s death. Remember the church is in other countries. Ho-hum. Is that all this is about? What’s the big deal with celebrating World Communion?

The church in Corinth didn’t quite understand the significance of celebrating communion for the unity of the church. The Apostle Paul’s primary text on communion is set within the context of an extremely divided church. The church at Corinth was divided over leadership, economics, spiritual gifts, and theology. If there were Democrats and Republicans back then, they probably would have been as divided as our Congress.

Paul used communion theology to address the issue of church politics. I’m speaking of “politics” not in the sense of partisan politics, or a secular government, but rather how we govern our lives together as a people. In other words, the politics of the church is how we seek, in all our diversity, to live together and share at a common table as citizens of God’s kingdom governed by our primary allegiance to Christ. The problem Paul addressed in his letter had to do with bringing the old separations of the divided table of the world into the celebration of Christ’s unifying table of communion.

When you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among you. For Paul, coming to the Lord’s Table as a divided congregation was not only a spiritual and moral problem; it was a theological problem. To be the church and to be divided is a contradiction. To share at Christ’s table and to be divided is inconsistent with who we are and whose we are. Communion is not only a ritual of remembrance; it is an identity-marking ceremony that proclaims our allegiance to the one crucified Lord Jesus Christ. As those who share in communion with Christ, we are no longer divided by those things that mark off individuals and groups within the world. Using another identity-marking ritual, Paul said to the divided Galatians: As many of you as were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Being in Christ, symbolized in both baptism and Eucharist, means human divisions and boundaries are no longer a priority in identifying who we are as a people.

The church is one in communion as it partakes in the one body and blood of Christ. Christ’s body is not divided. So, to partake of the bread and cup as one body, while still being divided, is to nullify the very meaning of the Lord’s Supper.  When you come together it is really not to eat the Lord’s Supper. To eat bread and drink wine as a divided people is simply a supper. It is not the Lord’s Supper. I wonder if the church today has ever come to share the bread and the cup and it was simply a meager meal.
 Paul points particularly to the economic division within the church that was manifest when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. In the early church communion was not a separate liturgical practice within a worship service. It was a natural part of a shared meal, known as an agape or love feast, during which special prayers and blessings were offered over the bread and wine as part of the meal. It appears that at the church of Corinth the wealthier members would bring lots of food and wine to this common meal, which was not “common” in the true sense of the word. They would eat, drink, and be merry, while the poorer members went hungry and thirsty. They considered their food a private possession and not something to be offered up as a common possession of the one body of Christ, the church. It’s kind of like when a church member withholds their regular offerings to the church because they disagree with the pastor or a leader believing that what they have brought as an offering to Christ’s church is really their own private possession. Withholding money that is meant to benefit a body of people because of disagreements is not something we see happening today (House), is it?

The rich at Corinth considered what they brought to be a private meal and not a common meal and therefore, it was not the Lord’s Supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Do you show contempt for the church of God? Leave your divisions at the church door; the divisions of economics, class, race, gender, ideology, nationality, and partisan politics. In its essence, the church is undivided. Communion re-presents the church as one. It is a ritual of remembrance of our one Lord, who gave his body and blood to be our peace, as Ephesians says, “breaking down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14).  To celebrate the body and blood of Christ, our peace, with our divisions still on display and active is to turn the Eucharist into an empty and meaningless ritual.

It is for this reason that Paul admonishes the church not to eat the bread or drink the cup in an “unworthy manner,” that is, without first “examining yourselves” and “discerning the body.” Traditionally we have thought this means examining our personal lives for unconfessed sins before eating the elements. And “discerning the body” means understanding that the bread and cup represent Christ’s body and blood, which takes away our personal sins. In the context of Paul’s argument “the body” is primarily referring to the church as the body of Christ. To eat the supper in an “unworthy manner” is to eat and drink without discerning the one body of Christ, the church. For the rich members of the church to eat from their abundance, while the poor members went hungry, was to violate the essential unity of the body of Christ; to not “discern the body.” We do not partake of the Lord’s table when we come with our divisions still intact and intractable; clinging to my own possessions, holding to my own grudges, marking my own borders, affirming my group’s ethnic or racial privilege, excluding the gifts and calling of a certain gender, and asserting our own national boundaries. That’s what it means to partake of the Lord’s Supper in an “unworthy manner” and to not “discern the body,” the one body of Christ. This bread represents Christ’s one body, broken on the cross, but also signifies Christ’s one body, the church, spread like seed scattered across the hills and valleys, borders and boundaries, across nations and races, languages and political persuasions. Through this common meal we get a taste of the politics of communion.

Discerning the body is our difficult and delightful task in the midst of a diverse, global church and a divided, warring world. Communion has some rather radical implications, if we are to partake of it in a meaning-full manner. The church needs to explore the imaginative and practical consequences of a politics of communion. If communion celebrates one church united by its allegiance to one Lord, what does that mean for me and for the church today in the communities, nation, and world in which we live? What would a politics of communion look like for us today?

A politics of communion cultivates the unity of the local church. Conflict and divisions within a congregation are painful and disorienting, as we all know well. They are often based upon our differences, preferences, and personal convictions. And those differences are part of what it means to be human. But, sometimes those differences can rub up against each other until they cause divisions. What we must remember is that the differences in our family backgrounds, life experiences, ethnicity, race, class, age, gender, doctrinal perspectives, personal musical styles, or who leads our congregation are not the essence of what it means to be the church that celebrates communion. Those things are not what unite us. We are essentially and fundamentally united in Christ Jesus. In communion we remember the one body of Christ and celebrate the unity of the church.

At the same time, to be one in Christ, to cultivate unity, is not the same as enforcing uniformity. We don’t necessarily always have to agree with one another. And that’s okay. To expect the church to be a place where everybody thinks and acts like me is to be a church of one! We are not looking to make cookie cutter Christians, but diverse disciples of the one Lord Jesus Christ. The one bread of our communion can be “multigrain.” Our unity is not grounded in all our diverse and delightful differences, but rather in our one common Lord. Like a hundred different pianos tuned by one pitch fork are in tune with one another, so the church tuned to the one Christ is united. A politics of communion would cultivate the unity of the local church A politics of communion celebrates ecumenicity. Our unity as Christ’s church extends beyond our local congregation to other Christian congregations. The history of Christianity and the emergence of denominations seem to witness to the disunity of the church. Our differences have divided us into Catholics, Protestants, Reformed, Charismatic, Pentecostal, Baptist, non-denominational, Nazarene, and on and on we could go, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

With a history of denominational divisions the work of the church in our day is to continue the tough work of unity of the church across denominations. By that I do not mean organizational unity, as if Christ calls us to be one huge denomination. Rather, the church can be in unity even with our differences. Church unity through ecumenical cooperation does not mean we all become the same and lose our differences. We have to learn the difficult dance of affirming our unity amid our diversity. Why not think of the different Christian churches as the diverse hands, feet, eyes and ears of the body of Christ, each bringing its uniquely different gifts into one people?
 Several hundred years ago, Augustine spoke of church unity when he said; "In faith unity. In doubtful things, liberty. In all things love". At the inception of the General Conference Mennonite Church it adapted and adopted this slogan to address their differences and diversity as they came together: “In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things love.”  Herein lays a potential for unity not only among our own churches, but an ecumenical unity across denominations.

One place where ecumenical cooperation seems to happen naturally is on the mission field. It appears that when the church finds itself in an environment where it is in the minority and not at the center of society, it tends to focus less on its differences and to cooperate more.

As the church is decentered and becomes more marginal in a post-modern, post-Christian society, denominationalism will wane and be off less importance. There was a time when staunch denominational identity ran through generations of families. A real change regarding denominationalism started with the baby boom generation and has become even more the case with Generation X and the millennials. They have little concern for differences in denominations and denominational identity. Maybe this is an opportunity, like on the mission field, for the church to de-emphasize its non-essential differences and work at ecumenical cooperation. I wonder, is this move toward a more postmodern, post-Christian society God in cognito working through the world to force the church to reconsider its essential unity and its vocation of mission?
 Jesus’ prayer to God in John 17 was that his followers “may be one, as we are one.” The politics of communion celebrates ecumenicity.


A politics of communion upholds the global church. The word “ecumenical” literally means “the whole world.” So, true ecumenicity transcends both our local and national boundaries to include the global church. We celebrate World Communion Sunday as a reminder that the church in its unity transcends the human boundaries of gender, race, economic class, language, and nationality. Those are nice words, but when the rubber hits the road in practice, the church may find itself having a hard time “discerning the body,” that is, the global body of Christ.
 One ideology that blinds us to “discerning the body” is nationalism. Nationalism has become a religion that rivals Christianity, or should I say, takes over Christianity, its narrative, and symbols. American nationalism, sometimes hiding under the guise of “patriotism,” is a particularly pernicious religion. It pledges allegiance to “one nation under god,” a tribal god of a particular people. This parochial god has a divine mission for his favored child, America. That mission first emerged during the American Revolution from the Puritan John Winthrop in a 1630 sermon that imaged New England as a “City upon a Hill,” a shining example for everyone to see. This same image was used by President Reagan to speak of our nation. Unfortunately, this image from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount refers to his disciples. It has been misappropriated by politicians and applied to America. The mission of America was couched in sacred language and envisioned as a Manifest Destiny, a term coined by political writer John Sullivan in 1845. It was our divine destiny to conquer and settle this new land. Although, it was manifestly clear to the Native Americans, who lived in this land, that it was not their divine destiny to be victims of genocidal slaughter, displacement, and cultural robbery.

Our nation came to see itself as the “New Israel,” an image used of the church, whom God has chosen to be the emissary of freedom and democracy to the world. Our mission is to remake the world in our own image. Although the idea goes back to the early 1800’s, in modern politics and the sentiments of most Americans we see our role in the world defined by the idea of “American exceptionalism.” This doctrine holds that our nation, our “democracy,” has a special, and one might say “saving,” role to play in the world. We are not bound by international law or the interests of the global community. We are bound only by American interests.

Most recently President Obama intoned this doctrine of “American exceptionalism” to justify bombing Syria, which is a sovereign nation, and where, I might add, 10% of the population is part of the body of Christ. If we are “a city set on a hill” how could we bomb Syria for using chemical weapons, when we decimated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons we supplied on his own people, just to name two brief examples? That’s because those situations involved “America’s interests.” America is excluded from hypocrisy and moral judgment, because we are “exceptional” within world history. The problem with “American exceptionalism” is that many nations have held to some form of “exceptionalism” and have justified all kinds of evil using it. Besides, everyone wants to think that their people, their culture, their form of government, are somehow special. The real difference is that America is an empire with the power to enforce its supposed “exceptionalism” onto others.

Like many religions, the nationalistic religion of “Americanism” calls for blood sacrifice; the bodies and blood of our young men and women sacrificed on the nation’s altar of freedom, or should we rather say, “America’s global interests.” It is this sacrifice that binds our nation together as one. The death of those offered for our nation abolishes our differences and brings us unity. The flag becomes a symbol of our blood sacrifices, as the cross is a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. We unite around the flag like Christians gather around the communion table. And yet, for Christians it is the final and ultimate sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ remembered in communion, which binds the global church together as one.

At the conclusion of his book Between Babel and Beast, theologian Peter Leithart suggests:
 American churches need to commemorate the final sacrifice of Jesus in regular eucharistic celebrations, and they need to work out the practicalities of a eucharistic politics—the end of sacred warfare, the formation of an international ecclesial imperium that includes all Christians, the cultivation of the virtues of martyrs, the forging of bonds of brotherhood (and sisterhood) that would inhibit Christians from shedding Christian blood (152).


Communion presents us with an alternative politics. Our politics of communion is shaped by a cosmic God and an international community of believers, over against a parochial god of a solitary nation state. As citizens of God’s realm we bear allegiance to Christ alone, which does not mean that we have no responsibility toward the state or that the state has no positive role to play or that we must hate everything about America. Nor does it mean that every expression of church in the world is faultless. It does mean that our allegiance to Christ and love for God’s global church takes precedence over allegiance to the state. So, when the state seeks our support to bomb places where our Christian brothers and sisters live, how can we in good conscience violate the body of Christ?

How ironic that it an Air Force chaplain shared communion with the crew of the Enola Gay before they bombed Hiroshima. How blind to the body were those Christians who used the Bible and just war theory to justify dropping the atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction? How tragic it was that an “all Christian” bomb crew dropped the bomb that decimated Nagasaki, which was not only targeted on innocent civilians, but ground zero was the largest Christian cathedral (Urakami) in Asia! Nagasaki had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan! With those two bombs alone we sacrificed over 220,000 innocent civilians in the name of our nation, while still today we claim it was necessary to end the war. Allegiance to a nation took precedence over allegiance to Christ and his global church. Where was the “discernment of the body?”

Communion is a place for us to begin to rethink our politics. My old friend John Stoner said it well. His proposal became a popular Mennonite Central Committee poster, which reads: A modest proposal for peace; Let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other. This is only a first step. But, that simple proposal has radical and political implications. It’s as radical as the simple truth that our communion with Christ, remembered and celebrated in the bread and cup, makes the church one.

Simply put, our communion in Christ binds us together with Christians worldwide. The one church of Christ takes priority over our particular nations. That is what we celebrate on World Communion Sunday. The love of God has no boundaries.  The gift of Christ’s body and blood is transnational. It cannot be contained within one nation. The Spirit of the church is universal. And so, with the second century Christians, we pray to God: As this broken bread was scattered over the mountains, and when brought together becomes one, so let your Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom (Didache, 2^nd century).

 Like the church at Corinth, the community of Waxahachie, Texas of 1935, as depicted in the movie Places in the Heart, was divided. The story begins with death and desperation. Sheriff Royce Spalding is accidentally killed by a young black boy, Wylie, who has been drinking at the railway yards. White vigilantes drag Wylie through the streets with their truck and display his broken body in the view of Edna, the sheriff’s wife, and her children as the community’s blood sacrifice. Edna does not project her pain onto every black person she meets. She even covers for Moze, a black drifter and handyman, when he is caught by the law for stealing her silverware after asking her for work. She ends up hiring Moze to help her grow and market cotton in order to save her home from being repossessed. The banker, who holds the deed to her place, negotiates with Edna to also take in his blind brother-in-law, Will. Eventually after Moze is beaten by the Klan and defended by Will, he leaves this new makeshift family he has grown to love. A woman, her small children, a black man, and a man who was blind, see clearly what caring across their differences can mean. It created a diverse, loving community, sharing in the bread of peace and the wine of hope.    

The final scene of the movie is a rather strange scene of communion. It is a service of communion taking place inside a small country church. The pastor reads 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. Love is patient and kind…Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The elements of communion are passed down the pews from one member to the next. It looks like a regular communion service until….after Edna’s sister and brother-in-law take the cup, you see the men who dragged Wylie with the truck, then Klan members, the banker, then there is Will, Moze, Edna, her children, and oddly enough her dead husband, Royce, sharing in communion. Royce finally turns to the young Wylie, who shot him, and passes to him the cup of Christ’s blood. The final words of the movie are Wylie’s words to Royce….”Peace of God.” It is one of the most striking and thought-provoking depictions of communion I have ever seen. 

Some interpret this final communion scene as an image of heaven, with everyone forgiven symbolized in Christ’s shed blood. That may be part of this final scene. But, it may also be a vision of what the church can be here and now: reconciled, at one, undivided by race, class, age, disability, gender, politics, ideology, nationality, and living in the peace of God. 

Lydia: Formed by Communities- Acts 16:13-15, 40

 

* This dialogue sermon was presented this morning at Albany Mennonite Church, Albany, Oregon, where Meghan Good is pastor. The congregation sat around table and discussed the questions during the sermon. See my book "Interpretation and Preaching as Communal and Dialogical Practices: An Anabaptist Perspective" (Edwin Mellen Press, 2006) for my theory on communal and dialogical preaching.

Introduction

Most often we think of heroes or heroines as persons who singularly stand out and apart from others in their community through their courage or moral example. And there is a place for recognizing the singularity of exemplary lives. Hebrews 11 is such a list of biblical “heroes of the faith.” This summer your faith community has been looking at such heroes of faith. But, the truth is, we can only understand heroes or heroines in connection with their communities. No hero or heroine stands alone and apart from their community. We cannot fully understand Dorothy Day apart from her Roman Catholic community and particularly the Catholic Worker movement. We cannot fully understand Martin Luther King Jr. without also understanding the black community of which he was a part; its traditions, practices, music, style, struggles, hopes, dreams, and religious expression. The story of a hero or heroine is also the story of a particular community or communities.

The story of “Lydia” in the book of Acts is not only a story about a unique individual, although “Lydia” is not a personal name. In reality her name is a province of Thyatira, possibly indicating she was a former slave without a given Roman name.  Her story is also a story about her own communities. In only a few verses of chapter 16 in the Acts of the Apostles, we learn something about Lydia and the communities of which she was a part. First, we will examine three of her communities to better understand Lydia as a distinctive person. With each identified community we will dialogue around one reflective question to connect her story with our own story and that of our own communities.

The Synagogue

The first community we encounter in the story of Lydia is the synagogue. According to Acts, the missionary practice of Paul was to find a synagogue in the cities to which he travelled as the first place to preach and teach the message of Jesus as Messiah. I don’t think his travels to Philippi were any exception, though it has been disputed. On the Sabbath Paul and his missionary companions went outside the city gate to a river, where they supposed there was a “place of prayer.” If their custom was to look for a synagogue on the Sabbath, then it would seem that what they were expecting to find alongside the river was a synagogue. The word translated “place of prayer” (προσευχη) is a synonym for “synagogue.” The reason it has not been translated as “synagogue”? First and foremost, because it was an assembly of women! How can you have formal worship when it’s just a bunch of women? Also, there must not have been any Jewish males in Philippi, goes the reasoning, to form a synagogue. It must simply have been a cozy women’s prayer group meeting in a bucolic setting down by the riverside.

 All evidence points to this being a synagogue community located by the river; 1) the fact that this whole scene was parallel to Paul’s other city encounters; 2) the language of “gathering,” “sitting” and “speaking” indicating teaching and preaching; 3) that 10 men were not required to form a synagogue, and 3) the preponderance of evidence that the word for “place of prayer” refers to a synagogue. That being the case, Lydia was involved in a Jewish synagogue in Philippi composed primarily of women!

What do we learn about Lydia from this community?  Lydia is described as a “worshipper of God” or “god-fearer,” a term for a Gentile proselyte to Jewish faith. Gentile women were particularly attracted to the Jewish faith. There must have been something in the faith that affirmed their identity as women. There were in the ancient world women who were even heads of synagogues. In Philippi, we have what was probably an exceptional case of a synagogue primarily made up of women. Imagine how this unique community shaped and formed Lydia as a person of faith and as a woman! 

Reflective Question:

What might someone learn about you as a person and a Christian from understanding your community of faith?

The Household

The second community we encounter in Lydia’s story is the household. Lydia listened eagerly and her heart was open to hear the good news of Jesus proclaimed to the women of the synagogue. This led to the baptism of her whole household. This ancient Mediterranean household was not the same as a modern household, understood as a nuclear family, although ancient and modern households have both been typically understood as ruled and owned by the paterfamilias, or father of the family, until most recently. This ancient household was the basic economic unit of society, economia (literally “household management”) being derived from the word for household (οικοσ). As well, the household was a place of worship. The household was not based solely on blood kinship, but also included slaves and freed persons, who assisted in the family work.

No “partriarchal family” structure is mentioned in the text, no male head of the household. It appears that Lydia was the head of her own household, which does not necessarily mean she was a widow. It does mean she was the leader of her household; its work, economics, and worship life. Although untypical, there were households ruled by mater familias, or mother of the family. It is possible that Lydia’s household was composed primarily of women. The production of cloth was the work of women. She must have transferred her business to Phillipi from Thyatira, which was known for the manufacture of dyed cloth. Some of the women gathered at the synagogue may have been part of Lydia’s household and business.  

It is not necessary to conceive of Lydia as an “independently wealthy business woman” or “rich cloth merchant,” as has been the traditional interpretation. Production and sale of purple dyed cloth was not necessarily a lucrative business for all persons in the industry. It’s production was a rather disgusting, smelly process. It’s possible that Lydia and those who worked with her together made a subsistence living. In this picture Lydia must have relied upon the communal work of her household to maintain economic sustainability. Only through shared work was the household community economically sustainable in a peasant society with very small elite upper class and no middle class.   

Reflective Questions:

How might households in the church work together collectively to address the economic sustainability of persons within the household of faith (the church) and in the larger household (economy) of our communities?

The Church

The third and final community we encounter in the story of Lydia is the church. Upon the baptism of her household Lydia urged Paul and his companions to come and stay at her home. Her invitation is a sign of hospitality. Not only was hospitality a customary and expected practice in the ancient world, it was the means by which the early church was established and grew. Churches were not buildings, but the people who assembled together (ekklesia=called out, a political term). And their first meeting places were in the household of converts, such as Lydia, the first European convert to Christianity. By the time we get to verse 40 of Acts 16, Lydia’s home appears to have become a house church, the center of Christian life in Philippi. Directly out of prison Paul and Silas come to Lydia’s household and encouraged the brothers and sisters, familial titles given to members of the Christian community. Lydia is the patron, and even possibly the leader, of the Philippian house church.

Lydia’s initial invitation to Paul was prefaced with these words:  “if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my home. And she prevailed upon us.” The indication is that she has indeed been accounted faithful in her baptism. Her baptism and fidelity to “the Lord Jesus Christ” places her and the other converts in a new community, in an alternative society that stands over against the society and those faithful to Lord Caesar and the Roman imperial order. There is a hint of danger in Lydia’s compelling appeal “prevailing” upon Paul to come to her home. The possible danger is narrated in the story of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. Lydia practices risky hospitality. A person entered this new community at Philippi at some risk and danger.

Reflective Question:

Describe what the church today would look like as an "alternative community" or "contrast society" (e.g., living in faithfulness to Jesus as Lord) to our surrounding communities and society.

Conclusion

Lydia’s three communities---synagogue, household, and church---help us understand what made her a distinctive person. Here was a unique woman who was shaped by these three different communities. A Gentile worshipper of the Jewish God among a community of strong women forming a synagogue, the head of her own household, leader of a business which was sustained economically by a solidarity in work, the first European convert to Christianity, a patron and possibly leader of the Christian house church in Philippi, a community that shaped a new people together resisting the empire of another Lord. Here was a woman formed by her distinctive communities. As we have listened eagerly to Lydia’s story may these words be the call of her life to radical faithfulness for each of us and our communities …and she prevailed upon us.