Christianity, the basic course
Commentary
Object:
A survey of Christian education resources reveals a trend toward an increasing number of
programs featuring a back-to-basics theme. No doubt this is the result of realizing that
despite all previous attempts many Christians have something less than a working
knowledge of the Christian faith. Perhaps it is because in many corners an academic
knowledge that reflects more the need to work through the big questions rather than how
to get through the day has derailed us. There is no doubt plenty of blame to go around. As
I write this, I do see the anti-intellectual red light flickering on my warning panel. Do we
ever get to the big talk without engaging what seems to be carrying on the small talk?
Perhaps our longing is for a way to go from one to the other effectively and faithfully. On
the other hand, the big questions do come at us fast and furiously with a rapacity that few
have experienced. The morning paper, the afternoon blog, and the evening news put
global warming, energy depletion, biological science, global terrorism, and economic and
business ethics on our plate in ways we have never seen before. I can even long for the
good old days of my youth when it all boiled down to beat the Communists. Scary, yes,
but it was a clear enemy who, however treacherous, was still known and had a
discernable history.
In the light of change of such global proportions we find ourselves searching for answers of clear biblical proportions that can reassure and guide us. Even the mantra that "it is the economy, stupid" has not reassured us. Despite high levels of prosperity and income, political leaders in Great Britain and the United States find their tenures threatened. Some of us see in other faith traditions the joy and vitality that comes from their answers to the difficult questions and wonder where the vigor in using many of our words lies: salvation, election, and praise. Like the letter writer of Timothy, we long to know that though we seem to be bound up in difficult days, the word of God is unchained.
Each of these texts brings us to a place where we must consider basic words and what we believe are the fundamental building blocks of our faith. What could be more basic than Jeremiah's call to, "Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease"? Yet, it seems in our day that we are bound up in deep controversy over the meaning of appropriate domestic relationships and what it means to seek the welfare of the city. We seem to be far away from the objective that the letter writer of Timothy envisioned, "Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening." If anything, we struggle with the meaning of the most basic words. Classroom, political, and business life often feel like minefields with the potential irruption of political incorrectness every step of the way. Jesus' story, recounted in the gospel lesson, ends on the proclamation that the faith of the Samaritan has made him well. In our day, many have found the faith community a source of abuse and a narrowing of human options. Getting back to basics may be a more difficult ride than many had imagined it would be.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah's prophecy is delivered to those who find themselves living out their life options in exile. This sense of dislocation and disorientation that comes with exile certainly characterizes the experience of many in today's Christian community. Many long for an apocalyptic resolution of the dilemma of living in a world where the power and authority that the faith community once thought it had has slipped away. Others seek the more mundane hopes of participating in the political process to usher in the kingdom. Others take to the hills rather than take action -- take on an indifference to the welfare of the city rather than a commitment to its welfare. These seem to be the basic options available to faith communities who have found that they are living in exile.
Jeremiah speaks of another path that God may be calling people of exile to follow. Jeremiah writes an open letter but mentions specifically the leaders of the faith community. "These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." He gives elders, priests, and prophets a call to embody their usual roles but by "being the change they seek in the world." Gilbert Rendle of the Alban Institute, in the Leading Change in the Congregation has written, "Yet as far back as 1960, Thomas Merton published a little book called Bread for the Wilderness. The title of the book came from the Gospel story in Mark 8 in which Jesus instructed the disciples to feed the great crowd of people who had gathered for three days to listen to him. The disciples asked, 'How can one feed these people with bread here in the wilderness?' Merton's response to that question was this book on the Psalms; which he offered as nourishment for the inner life of faith for those who deal with the mix and the mess of the journey. Merton observed that in truly creative times, which prompt new behaviors and new forms of ministry, what we often need from our God, and what our congregations often need from their leaders, is not a quick map to the final destination, the promised land, but 'bread for the wilderness' -- sustenance and strategies to help us find our ways."
Jeremiah's letter, in calling to the faith community to enter into the process of building homes, planting gardens, and raising families is calling them to enter into a process where they may find bread for the journey. In the long haul that Jeremiah sees ahead for the exiles, the richest blessing that the faith community may offer to the city is the bread that they do find on the journey.
This poses the question, what bread do we find on the journey in the planting, building, and raising that Jeremiah sees as the task that God is calling the exiles to? The fundamental question is: Have we found bread for the journey? Have we found ways of candor of living with and learning from each other in faith communities that will bless the city? Can we show them a more excellent way as we live out our exile in faithfulness?
Perhaps, once people thought that we could bless the world with a sense of certainty, now in exile our task is to be a blessing by walking faithfully in the midst of uncertainty. The challenge of the faith community is to find bread for the journey in the basic task of life. It is interesting that Jeremiah does not call for more plans, more visions, more ideology, and more theology, but more living and learning and building wherever that may lead.
Wherever this may lead we will know when we get there. Basically, this is our situation.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
It is somewhat reassuring to realize that we are not to find ourselves the first to wrangle over words that do no good but only ruin those who are listening. All of us have had the experience of finding ourselves in the words we speak and the words that we hear serving the function more of hiding than revealing the truth that needs to be spoken. Churches get into all kinds of fights that serve the function of avoiding the truth that will move us closer to the kingdom of God. The color of the restroom curtains, length of the pastor's hair, or the volume of the sound system seem safer to talk about than our deepest hungers or greatest fears. The letter writer is saying, "Don't go there." The letter gets down to the basic question of what spoken words get us beyond wrangling to the basic words of our faith.
Verse 11 lays the foundation of the basics of getting beyond wrangling. The saying is sure: "If we have died with him, we will also live with him." The author echoes sentiments here found elsewhere in the Christian scripture, "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:5) "and I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10). In John's gospel, Thomas pledges his commitment to die with Jesus. Thomas, who was called the "Twin," said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Yet, it remains unclear in John's way of ironically telling the story whether Thomas has the full import of what he is saying. We also have Peter's incredulous response to Jesus' announcement that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer and die.
The basic reality we have do deal with is death, which in the end is not something we can wrangle about for very long. However, asserting this reality into congregational conversations can be difficult. Yet it is the congregation that knows how to go through the death process that is able to speak an authoritative word to me. It is the congregation that cannot let false images die or that lives in the past, or lives for an outside image that is most prone to wrangling in a way that does "no good but only ruins those who are listening."
What commands my attention is the church that does know how to die a death like his so that by doing so it might live as Jesus does. The expectation that confirmation programs or pedagogical styles of the past can be counted on to serve us well, forever, may have to die in order to journey to that place where our children can have faith and our faith have children. Old styles of missionary work where we are always the givers and articulators of faith while others are the passive recipients will have to die in order to make way for our journey to the place where God wants us to be. Old expectations about what a denomination is or membership means will have to be examined to see if they have any signs of life in a new age. My own denomination has shifted its central color scheme from a red, white, and blue denominational seal to a reliance on red and black as the central coloring of the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. It has been fifty years, not of smooth reincarnations, but deaths along the way of many cherished old loyalties that has made way for the emergence of new life under far different circumstances than anyone would have imagined fifty years ago. I imagine this is the basic reality of most churches and larger church organizations that have endured over time.
As I reflect on the past, the truth emerges that even despite times of unfaithfulness, God has been faithful to us in setting before us challenges that give us an opportunity to grow in wisdom and stature. I suspect when we get down to this basic truth there will be a lot less ruinous wrangling.
Luke 17:11-19
Why does it seem basic in the gospel narrative that the foreigners understand in a way that brings a fuller benefit than is available to those who are insiders? Of course, that is the way an insider might ask the question. However, to put it another way, it is the insider who is more at risk in their faith journey than the outsider. The insider is in the position of saying, "We have never done it that way before." The insider can find themselves shifting from what God can do for them to what they have done -- from how great God is to how good they are. The insider can find themselves with a history that they believe they have to live up to or live down. The ties that bind insiders can become bars to those on the outside.
The outsider knows that some boundary that they, themselves, could not cross has been crossed to bring about their healing. The insider has the opportunity to pull rank in a way that is unavailable to the outsider. The outsider knows that they must pool together on the face of what threatens. The Samaritan and the Jews, as outsiders when they have leprosy, pull together in their begging. However, once they are healed there seems to be a parting of the ways that divides the group. Now it is the Samaritan who remains the outsider by virtue of his ethnicity.
The insider is at risk in a way that the outsider is not. Often the things that we value on the inside of church become the things that can prove to be a barrier to the advancement of the kingdom of God. Seniority, unit cohesiveness, and success, can cause us to turn inward.
In some ways, this story ought to be titled "The Good Samaritan." What we have here is more than mere gratitude but a crossing of boundaries and recognition of what dangers might be incurred on crossing over from outsider to insider. The Samaritan goes from one who must beg to one who finds himself propelled to center stage. Imagine, in the years to come, how one who has known Jesus and been healed by Jesus would be revered by the community of Jesus. One who was on the margins now finds himself with power and authority of being at the center of attention. Moving from the margins to the center can be as every bit as dangerous as moving in the opposite direction. Perhaps it is even more dangerous. A survey of the gospels tends to confirm the treacherousness of this path. Jesus' story of the wicked slave whose own debt was forgiven but who pounces on the one who owed him money makes clear the danger of being one of the insiders who has experienced forgiveness. The parable of the talents suggests that the joy of the center is that those who have much get more leaving others shut out. The good, dutiful, elder son in the story of the prodigal son has done all the things that make him the center of attention, yet he finds that there is no party for him. The gospels portray Peter as one who is at the center of things but he finds himself thinking more like men than like God as he maintains his hold on his role.
The lepers in this story are well on their way to moving from the margins of their society to being the center of conversation and admiration because they were so favored. As they go they were made clean. Yet, Christian people are at risk in their cleanliness so that they may make others feel dirty who have not shared in the experience of being cleansed. Watching the lepers walk off down the road we know that they are at risk. One instinctively feels that the story is not over yet.
It is not until the Samaritan acts that the action is completed. "Then he said to him, 'Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.' " This wellness is described in the story of Zacchaeus as the reason that Jesus has come into the world. The measure of the Samaritan is not that he is at the center of things but that wherever he is, he has centered on the activity and work of Jesus.
Application
The texts, each in their own way, take up some basic features of the Christian faith. While in our time many see the need for a return to the basics of doctrine, no doubt a laudatory aim, these texts push us toward a different understanding of what the basics of Christian faith are. Jeremiah lived in a context not unlike our own, in which we live in exile in a culture that is often either indifferent or hostile to the faith community. Jeremiah measures our response not by doctrinal purity but by how well we can bless the society in which we live. Timothy reminds us of the basic fact of the journey is that we die. Of course, we understand this intellectually, but the practical reality of the deaths that we must die along the way as part of the journey often eludes us. Celebrating thirty years of ministry this year, I look back in amazement at the number of deaths along the way that have made me more alive. Good Friday before Easter is basic to the journey of faith. Luke's account of the ten lepers reminds us that it is a basic part of the faith to find ourselves at spiritual risk when we move from the margins to the center. It often makes it difficult to reverse gears and journey the other way.
I get the feeling that these basics are not always fully covered in our faith conversations. However, if we get them right they will help us cover the ground we need to traverse in our pilgrimage.
Alternative Application
Luke 17:11-19. Three cheers for the lepers who approached Jesus. They do the dance of approaching yet keeping their distance at the same time. When you are on the margins you have to learn such a dance. They call Jesus master, which might seem to be a part of the dance to get Jesus' attention without getting embroiled in too much theological controversy.
However, the lepers are on to something here. The description of Jesus as master is a favorite of Luke's, meaning superintendent or overseer. The word is used in Luke when the disciples' fishing produces no results and when it seems that they are going under in the midst of the wind and the waves. We have many names for Jesus -- prophet, priest, king, friend, savior, but overseer?
Perhaps we avoid this name because it takes us in a different direction than we are accustomed. If Jesus is master and overseer then we are workers and laborers. The gospel, then, is about our work orders as well as our salvation. It is about Jesus overseeing our lives. Can there be any part social, political, or economic that does not come under his purview?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:1-12
I use this psalm often when inviting people to join the church choir. The invitation comes and is frequently rebuffed with the comment that the person can't sing or can't even hold a tune. To this I respond readily, saying, "Scripture doesn't say we have to sing in perfect pitch. It says we have to make a 'joyful noise!' "
Indeed, joy seldom reflects the careful professional sounds of a large concert choir or orchestra. Joy is actually a little rowdy. It prances around like David dancing before God. It jumps, yells, and squeals in delight. Joy releases wonderful energy in unpredictable and chaotic ways. Joy defies our attempts to control and organize. Joy simply erupts.
This, of course, can cause problems in some church communities that prize order, discipline, and method. When God gets hold of someone's heart, such veneer is quickly peeled away in the wake of God's uncontainable love. Then our committees and strategy groups are left holding the organizational bag with nothing but copies of last month's minutes to contemplate.
Yet, balance is required. In my own church setting, my creativity and ability to try new ministries is made possible by the incredible organizational skills of the treasurer, who sees to it that the resources and tools necessary for ministry are available. This pastor's tendency to want to dance for joy is made possible by the discipline, focus, and hard work of another coworker in the Christian community. We are a team, mutually supporting one another, and mutually committed to God's kingdom.
Yes, it is about balance. Alongside David's joyful dance before God comes the dance of balance. This dance is the dance of James, who writes powerfully about the balance between faith and works. You simply cannot have one without the other. An important part of our faith journey certainly calls us to joyful abandon in the warm folds of God's love. We are, however, also called to discipline, rigor, and excellence. Without these, our joy can quickly disintegrate into frenzied running around, which quickly tires us and those around us.
Let's make that joyful noise to the Lord! Let's sing and prance and whirl about as we drink in the incredible and wonderful Spirit of the almighty God! While we dance, let's remember the balance that makes this dance possible. Let's live together into that balance, into that wonder that is born in Christian community.
In the light of change of such global proportions we find ourselves searching for answers of clear biblical proportions that can reassure and guide us. Even the mantra that "it is the economy, stupid" has not reassured us. Despite high levels of prosperity and income, political leaders in Great Britain and the United States find their tenures threatened. Some of us see in other faith traditions the joy and vitality that comes from their answers to the difficult questions and wonder where the vigor in using many of our words lies: salvation, election, and praise. Like the letter writer of Timothy, we long to know that though we seem to be bound up in difficult days, the word of God is unchained.
Each of these texts brings us to a place where we must consider basic words and what we believe are the fundamental building blocks of our faith. What could be more basic than Jeremiah's call to, "Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease"? Yet, it seems in our day that we are bound up in deep controversy over the meaning of appropriate domestic relationships and what it means to seek the welfare of the city. We seem to be far away from the objective that the letter writer of Timothy envisioned, "Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening." If anything, we struggle with the meaning of the most basic words. Classroom, political, and business life often feel like minefields with the potential irruption of political incorrectness every step of the way. Jesus' story, recounted in the gospel lesson, ends on the proclamation that the faith of the Samaritan has made him well. In our day, many have found the faith community a source of abuse and a narrowing of human options. Getting back to basics may be a more difficult ride than many had imagined it would be.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah's prophecy is delivered to those who find themselves living out their life options in exile. This sense of dislocation and disorientation that comes with exile certainly characterizes the experience of many in today's Christian community. Many long for an apocalyptic resolution of the dilemma of living in a world where the power and authority that the faith community once thought it had has slipped away. Others seek the more mundane hopes of participating in the political process to usher in the kingdom. Others take to the hills rather than take action -- take on an indifference to the welfare of the city rather than a commitment to its welfare. These seem to be the basic options available to faith communities who have found that they are living in exile.
Jeremiah speaks of another path that God may be calling people of exile to follow. Jeremiah writes an open letter but mentions specifically the leaders of the faith community. "These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." He gives elders, priests, and prophets a call to embody their usual roles but by "being the change they seek in the world." Gilbert Rendle of the Alban Institute, in the Leading Change in the Congregation has written, "Yet as far back as 1960, Thomas Merton published a little book called Bread for the Wilderness. The title of the book came from the Gospel story in Mark 8 in which Jesus instructed the disciples to feed the great crowd of people who had gathered for three days to listen to him. The disciples asked, 'How can one feed these people with bread here in the wilderness?' Merton's response to that question was this book on the Psalms; which he offered as nourishment for the inner life of faith for those who deal with the mix and the mess of the journey. Merton observed that in truly creative times, which prompt new behaviors and new forms of ministry, what we often need from our God, and what our congregations often need from their leaders, is not a quick map to the final destination, the promised land, but 'bread for the wilderness' -- sustenance and strategies to help us find our ways."
Jeremiah's letter, in calling to the faith community to enter into the process of building homes, planting gardens, and raising families is calling them to enter into a process where they may find bread for the journey. In the long haul that Jeremiah sees ahead for the exiles, the richest blessing that the faith community may offer to the city is the bread that they do find on the journey.
This poses the question, what bread do we find on the journey in the planting, building, and raising that Jeremiah sees as the task that God is calling the exiles to? The fundamental question is: Have we found bread for the journey? Have we found ways of candor of living with and learning from each other in faith communities that will bless the city? Can we show them a more excellent way as we live out our exile in faithfulness?
Perhaps, once people thought that we could bless the world with a sense of certainty, now in exile our task is to be a blessing by walking faithfully in the midst of uncertainty. The challenge of the faith community is to find bread for the journey in the basic task of life. It is interesting that Jeremiah does not call for more plans, more visions, more ideology, and more theology, but more living and learning and building wherever that may lead.
Wherever this may lead we will know when we get there. Basically, this is our situation.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
It is somewhat reassuring to realize that we are not to find ourselves the first to wrangle over words that do no good but only ruin those who are listening. All of us have had the experience of finding ourselves in the words we speak and the words that we hear serving the function more of hiding than revealing the truth that needs to be spoken. Churches get into all kinds of fights that serve the function of avoiding the truth that will move us closer to the kingdom of God. The color of the restroom curtains, length of the pastor's hair, or the volume of the sound system seem safer to talk about than our deepest hungers or greatest fears. The letter writer is saying, "Don't go there." The letter gets down to the basic question of what spoken words get us beyond wrangling to the basic words of our faith.
Verse 11 lays the foundation of the basics of getting beyond wrangling. The saying is sure: "If we have died with him, we will also live with him." The author echoes sentiments here found elsewhere in the Christian scripture, "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:5) "and I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10). In John's gospel, Thomas pledges his commitment to die with Jesus. Thomas, who was called the "Twin," said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Yet, it remains unclear in John's way of ironically telling the story whether Thomas has the full import of what he is saying. We also have Peter's incredulous response to Jesus' announcement that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer and die.
The basic reality we have do deal with is death, which in the end is not something we can wrangle about for very long. However, asserting this reality into congregational conversations can be difficult. Yet it is the congregation that knows how to go through the death process that is able to speak an authoritative word to me. It is the congregation that cannot let false images die or that lives in the past, or lives for an outside image that is most prone to wrangling in a way that does "no good but only ruins those who are listening."
What commands my attention is the church that does know how to die a death like his so that by doing so it might live as Jesus does. The expectation that confirmation programs or pedagogical styles of the past can be counted on to serve us well, forever, may have to die in order to journey to that place where our children can have faith and our faith have children. Old styles of missionary work where we are always the givers and articulators of faith while others are the passive recipients will have to die in order to make way for our journey to the place where God wants us to be. Old expectations about what a denomination is or membership means will have to be examined to see if they have any signs of life in a new age. My own denomination has shifted its central color scheme from a red, white, and blue denominational seal to a reliance on red and black as the central coloring of the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. It has been fifty years, not of smooth reincarnations, but deaths along the way of many cherished old loyalties that has made way for the emergence of new life under far different circumstances than anyone would have imagined fifty years ago. I imagine this is the basic reality of most churches and larger church organizations that have endured over time.
As I reflect on the past, the truth emerges that even despite times of unfaithfulness, God has been faithful to us in setting before us challenges that give us an opportunity to grow in wisdom and stature. I suspect when we get down to this basic truth there will be a lot less ruinous wrangling.
Luke 17:11-19
Why does it seem basic in the gospel narrative that the foreigners understand in a way that brings a fuller benefit than is available to those who are insiders? Of course, that is the way an insider might ask the question. However, to put it another way, it is the insider who is more at risk in their faith journey than the outsider. The insider is in the position of saying, "We have never done it that way before." The insider can find themselves shifting from what God can do for them to what they have done -- from how great God is to how good they are. The insider can find themselves with a history that they believe they have to live up to or live down. The ties that bind insiders can become bars to those on the outside.
The outsider knows that some boundary that they, themselves, could not cross has been crossed to bring about their healing. The insider has the opportunity to pull rank in a way that is unavailable to the outsider. The outsider knows that they must pool together on the face of what threatens. The Samaritan and the Jews, as outsiders when they have leprosy, pull together in their begging. However, once they are healed there seems to be a parting of the ways that divides the group. Now it is the Samaritan who remains the outsider by virtue of his ethnicity.
The insider is at risk in a way that the outsider is not. Often the things that we value on the inside of church become the things that can prove to be a barrier to the advancement of the kingdom of God. Seniority, unit cohesiveness, and success, can cause us to turn inward.
In some ways, this story ought to be titled "The Good Samaritan." What we have here is more than mere gratitude but a crossing of boundaries and recognition of what dangers might be incurred on crossing over from outsider to insider. The Samaritan goes from one who must beg to one who finds himself propelled to center stage. Imagine, in the years to come, how one who has known Jesus and been healed by Jesus would be revered by the community of Jesus. One who was on the margins now finds himself with power and authority of being at the center of attention. Moving from the margins to the center can be as every bit as dangerous as moving in the opposite direction. Perhaps it is even more dangerous. A survey of the gospels tends to confirm the treacherousness of this path. Jesus' story of the wicked slave whose own debt was forgiven but who pounces on the one who owed him money makes clear the danger of being one of the insiders who has experienced forgiveness. The parable of the talents suggests that the joy of the center is that those who have much get more leaving others shut out. The good, dutiful, elder son in the story of the prodigal son has done all the things that make him the center of attention, yet he finds that there is no party for him. The gospels portray Peter as one who is at the center of things but he finds himself thinking more like men than like God as he maintains his hold on his role.
The lepers in this story are well on their way to moving from the margins of their society to being the center of conversation and admiration because they were so favored. As they go they were made clean. Yet, Christian people are at risk in their cleanliness so that they may make others feel dirty who have not shared in the experience of being cleansed. Watching the lepers walk off down the road we know that they are at risk. One instinctively feels that the story is not over yet.
It is not until the Samaritan acts that the action is completed. "Then he said to him, 'Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.' " This wellness is described in the story of Zacchaeus as the reason that Jesus has come into the world. The measure of the Samaritan is not that he is at the center of things but that wherever he is, he has centered on the activity and work of Jesus.
Application
The texts, each in their own way, take up some basic features of the Christian faith. While in our time many see the need for a return to the basics of doctrine, no doubt a laudatory aim, these texts push us toward a different understanding of what the basics of Christian faith are. Jeremiah lived in a context not unlike our own, in which we live in exile in a culture that is often either indifferent or hostile to the faith community. Jeremiah measures our response not by doctrinal purity but by how well we can bless the society in which we live. Timothy reminds us of the basic fact of the journey is that we die. Of course, we understand this intellectually, but the practical reality of the deaths that we must die along the way as part of the journey often eludes us. Celebrating thirty years of ministry this year, I look back in amazement at the number of deaths along the way that have made me more alive. Good Friday before Easter is basic to the journey of faith. Luke's account of the ten lepers reminds us that it is a basic part of the faith to find ourselves at spiritual risk when we move from the margins to the center. It often makes it difficult to reverse gears and journey the other way.
I get the feeling that these basics are not always fully covered in our faith conversations. However, if we get them right they will help us cover the ground we need to traverse in our pilgrimage.
Alternative Application
Luke 17:11-19. Three cheers for the lepers who approached Jesus. They do the dance of approaching yet keeping their distance at the same time. When you are on the margins you have to learn such a dance. They call Jesus master, which might seem to be a part of the dance to get Jesus' attention without getting embroiled in too much theological controversy.
However, the lepers are on to something here. The description of Jesus as master is a favorite of Luke's, meaning superintendent or overseer. The word is used in Luke when the disciples' fishing produces no results and when it seems that they are going under in the midst of the wind and the waves. We have many names for Jesus -- prophet, priest, king, friend, savior, but overseer?
Perhaps we avoid this name because it takes us in a different direction than we are accustomed. If Jesus is master and overseer then we are workers and laborers. The gospel, then, is about our work orders as well as our salvation. It is about Jesus overseeing our lives. Can there be any part social, political, or economic that does not come under his purview?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:1-12
I use this psalm often when inviting people to join the church choir. The invitation comes and is frequently rebuffed with the comment that the person can't sing or can't even hold a tune. To this I respond readily, saying, "Scripture doesn't say we have to sing in perfect pitch. It says we have to make a 'joyful noise!' "
Indeed, joy seldom reflects the careful professional sounds of a large concert choir or orchestra. Joy is actually a little rowdy. It prances around like David dancing before God. It jumps, yells, and squeals in delight. Joy releases wonderful energy in unpredictable and chaotic ways. Joy defies our attempts to control and organize. Joy simply erupts.
This, of course, can cause problems in some church communities that prize order, discipline, and method. When God gets hold of someone's heart, such veneer is quickly peeled away in the wake of God's uncontainable love. Then our committees and strategy groups are left holding the organizational bag with nothing but copies of last month's minutes to contemplate.
Yet, balance is required. In my own church setting, my creativity and ability to try new ministries is made possible by the incredible organizational skills of the treasurer, who sees to it that the resources and tools necessary for ministry are available. This pastor's tendency to want to dance for joy is made possible by the discipline, focus, and hard work of another coworker in the Christian community. We are a team, mutually supporting one another, and mutually committed to God's kingdom.
Yes, it is about balance. Alongside David's joyful dance before God comes the dance of balance. This dance is the dance of James, who writes powerfully about the balance between faith and works. You simply cannot have one without the other. An important part of our faith journey certainly calls us to joyful abandon in the warm folds of God's love. We are, however, also called to discipline, rigor, and excellence. Without these, our joy can quickly disintegrate into frenzied running around, which quickly tires us and those around us.
Let's make that joyful noise to the Lord! Let's sing and prance and whirl about as we drink in the incredible and wonderful Spirit of the almighty God! While we dance, let's remember the balance that makes this dance possible. Let's live together into that balance, into that wonder that is born in Christian community.
