Meeting the Principalities and Powers

Sermon; St. Matthew’s, Chandler

Ephesians 6:10-20

 “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

I have always been interested in why people do the things they do. I was blessed that I was able to focus on that passion in my academic work.  In my undergraduate program, I focused on history and sociology to prepare for teaching social studies. During that time, my studies took a dark turn.  I focused on 20^th century history with an emphasis in genocide and religious violence.  An intense class on holy war within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam set the trajectory that took me from teaching high school to further study of religion and conflict at ASU, where I studied violence, torture, religion, sexuality, and politics—all of which are topics one is supposed to avoid in polite conversation at dinner parties. 

As I was studying these grisly topics, and continuing today, I’m haunted by this question:  To what extent can we name the violence of the last century and this century as something beyond the depravity of humankind?  What do we make of the Holocaust? Rwanda? Armenia? This country’s genocide of (and later attempts to wipe out the cultures of) indigenous peoples? Is it enough to chalk up the body count of the last 120 years to mechanized warfare, arms races, totalitarian governments, and effective propaganda campaigns by regimes bent on eliminating others?  We can fairly accurately describe the mechanisms of war, of economic oppression, of the social systems that hold others as deserving of apathy or death, but is there something else?  Is there something beyond the materialistic phenomenon we can study that accounts for the depravity humankind visits upon others? 

Paul would say there is something else afoot, something more than the material world we see.  And he does so in language that sounds odd to modern ears.  Paul speaks in a number of his letters of the "principalities and powers."  By this Paul means the spiritual and worldly forces that exist in opposition to God.  We hear about these powers in Ephesians today.

Contrary to the modern division between the spiritual and political that holds that the political is no place for the spiritual, Paul is:[1]

concerned with spiritual realities precisely in their relationship to political realities. Ephesians 6:12 contrasts the “enemies of blood and flesh” with the true enemies, using a five-fold repetition of the word “against”:

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh

          but against the rulers
          against the authorities
          against the cosmic powers
          against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places

While the first use of “against” describes those whom the struggle is not against, the remaining four uses describe the actual enemies against whom Christians are called to struggle. These four references move from the earthly realm to the heavenly, connecting the political realm to the spiritual. The terms “rulers” (archas) and “authorities” (exousias) are common terms in the New Testament and usually refer to human rulers and the authority they wield.[2] The third term, “cosmic powers” (kosmokratoras), is understood by most scholars as referring to a supernatural power, moving us from the [material] political realm into the spiritual. Finally, “spiritual forces” (pneumatika) refer explicitly to nonhuman forces, which are said to be not on earth but “in the heavenly places” (en tois epouraviois).

Taken together, these four terms describe “enemies” that span both the earthly and heavenly realms—transcendent, spiritual realities with earthly, political manifestations. The verse recognizes that earthly power relations are animated by spiritual realities that transcend any specific “flesh and blood” person or ruler.

More can be said about the powers and principalities, which stand for a dominion opposed to God.  The powers and principalities traffic in practices and ideas that keep us from seeing each other as equally beloved and redeemable by God.  The powers would prefer to derail the ministry of reconciliation Christians are called to witness to.[3]  Remember that a few weeks ago we read in Ephesians that Christ created in himself one new humanity, reconciling all to God in one body.[4]  In contrast, the powers and principalities keep telling us our differences are final and irreconcilable; attempting to cut us off from God and others.  Further, for the principalities and powers, there is active hostility to the equal loving regard we are offered by God.[5]  Colonialism, sexism, racism, and other forms of social stigma all fall within the control of principalities and powers that devalue the beloved of God while simultaneously telling others that they have a divine right to maintain an oppressive social order "for the good of us all."  Control and power is sanctified in lieu of holiness, forbearance, love, justice, and grace.  The principalities and powers resort to threat, harm, shame, and death.   You can know who you are dealing with by the fruits they produce.  And it is important to call the demons by their names.

The powers and principalities are not as transcendent nor as powerful as God, and yet they are more powerful than we humans on our own.  The promise of order and control that the powers and principalities offer is seductive.  This seductive quality of the powers and principalities explains their continued presence in our world.  We find ourselves caught by the powers and principalities in fallen institutions greater than the sum of our personal failings.[6]  And these powers are strong enough to corrupt even the holy things of God to their own use.  For instance, the very passage we are talking about this morning has the blood-stained dishonor of being one of the passages used to justify the slaughter of millions over the centuries through holy war In which Christians traded the spiritual armor and sword of God for that of leather and steel.[7]

This is the reality that Paul is speaking to:  that behind the forces of evil and degradation we see on earth, there are active spiritual forces at work seeking to destroy and corrupt the creatures of God.  To make such a case for spiritual evil in our modern setting is difficult.  And yet, it is worth noting that regardless of the degree to which we claim human or demonic agency in the problems of the world, it is evident that there are forces and institutions and persons that profit from death, degradation, alienation, and division.  These are powers that Christians have a duty to unmask, name, and engage.[8]

And there is good news.  Earlier in Ephesians, Paul writes that the greatness and goodness of God is at work through and in Christ, who is placed above the principalities and powers.[9]  The Church's role is one of proclaiming God's power—testifying to God's coming reign to these spiritual forces.[10]  And the promise we inherit is the coming complete destruction of these forces at the consummation of history.[11] 

How do we live into this good news?  How do we face this in-between time?

One way in which we practically live out our commitment to unmasking and engaging the powers is by heeding the reminder that they exist and that we are called to resist them.  At our baptism, and at our reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant, we promise and pray that we will “renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God" and ”renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God."[12]  These renunciations speak of throwing off the world's claims about the proper place of others and seeking instead to discern the wild and radical things God is choosing to do. It means de-centering the will to power we find within ourselves in favor of God's will and mission for humanity.  It may mean taking chances since resisting the powers and principalities is not a popular option; hence Paul’s warning to stand firm in truth and faith and righteousness. 

But there is also a promise we share; a conviction Paul held that we are also offered in sure and certain hope.  Paul was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[13]  This persistent love, stronger than the worst that the world and its powers can attack us with, is a love worth clinging to.  It is also the basis for a gospel worth proclaiming with boldness.

_________________

[1] The following block of text is taken verbatim from Robert Williamson’s “The Politics of White Supremacy—Ephesians 6:10-20.” http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-white-supremacy/.

[2] See, for example, 1 Corinthians 15:24; Ephesians 1:21.

[3] 2 Cor 5:14-21

[4] See Eph 2:11-22.

[5] See Gal 3:28.

[6] This current course of the world is what is meant by the terms institutional sin, or structural sin. 

[7] As I was meditating on these verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, I couldn’t help but consider how these verses have been used in Christian moral reasoning in relation to violence.  In Christianity, there are three frameworks for understanding the use of violence:  pacifism, the just war tradition, and holy war (which is more of a notion than a clear framework). Both pacifism and the just war tradition name who is or is not a legitimate target of violence.  Pacifism holds that no one is a legitimate target of violence, and this was the prevailing opinion until the 300s AD.  Following Christianity’s conversion to the state religion of the Roman Empire, the just war tradition began its development.  A component of that moral reasoning was the attempt to delineate between combatants and non-combatants.  What makes holy war more of a notion than a framework is also what makes it instructive across religious lines—and holy war is different from pacifism or a concept of a just and limited war in that it divides the world into good and evil, eliminates neutrality, raises the stakes to a matter of ultimacy and immediacy, and prescribes no limits to the violence that can be visited upon the enemy. What makes holy war so dangerous and bloody is that the enemies made of flesh and blood are considered to be the earthly warriors in the ultimate cosmic battle of Good vs. Evil.  What happens on Earth is interpreted as a mirror or an outworking of the battle in the heavens, and so the targets of violence are to be given no quarter. In this thinking, there is no proper etiquette fit for those deemed to be direct agents of Satan. 

[8] These actions echo Walter Wink’s trilogy of books about Engaging, naming, and unmasking the powers and principalities.

[9] Eph 1:20-23

[10] Eph 3:7-12

[11] 1 Cor 15:24-28

[12] BCP, 302.

[13] Romans 8:38

Where did you find bread?

Proper 14 Year B RCL

John 6:35, 41-51

There are truths and experiences that could become less true when they are put into words, because words cannot capture the fullness of the experience.   I’m going to risk that this morning.

It was a cold December night as I sat in my little office at home in New Haven, Connecticut.  My wife, Laura, was out, practicing with the chamber orchestra.  I was coming to the end of my first semester in seminary, and that evening I felt like I needed to take inventory of “how I was doing.”  Had I prayed enough?  In just the weekdays of life in the seminary, one could attend at least 12 worship services, not including worship at whatever church you find yourself attached to.  No one expects you to go to every opportunity to pray.  Still, I thought, could I have gone to more?  How was I doing in my classes?  Could that have been better?  Have I been the type of person I could be proud of during that time?  Was I living up to my own expectations? I was finding problems all over the place, which is not a surprise for me.

I am my own worst critic.  I am incredibly hard on myself.  It is one thing to have your own inner critic, like a backseat driver for your life sometimes pointing out inconvenient truths.  It is another thing to say that you are your own judge, jury, and prosecutor, and the defense never showed up. At its worst, with critique run rampant, one feels like an imposter going through life hiding from others.  Others may talk about how well-put-together you may seem, but on the inside you feel a nagging sense of smallness, and hypocrisy, and phoniness. Failures can become all-consuming.  Imperfections are exaggerated.  Does this sound familiar to anyone else?  Perhaps not as severe?

I had set aside time and readied a space to do this introspective work because I remembered the work of Howard Thurman, an African American pastor who inspired much of MLK’s theology.  He was also a mystic, and his devotional material is praiseworthy 70 years after the fact.  In regards to the necessities of introspective work, he once wrote that:

If we were to try silence in prayer, we may discover that the discomfort we feel are the dark parts of our soul rising to consciousness. Our failings, our senses of inadequacy, our regrets come to the fore because we have deliberately chosen to no longer drown them out. It is difficult to sit with these thoughts for long, almost unhealthy to do so. But in a context of prayer, we hold ourselves up for our own introspection and we also hold ourselves up to God. These are aspects of our human condition that we would rather hide from God, from others, and from ourselves. Yet it is better to acknowledge realities, and in the presence of a God and Spirit who is willing to follow us into the depths of our being, the very core of our soul. We will find God forgiving and understanding. Once we get past our discomfort with ourselves and learn to rest in the love and presence of God, the conversation can begin.

It is a place where one attempts to drop all walls, all self-deceptions, all excuses, and lay bare one's self before God.  It would be despairing, if there were not something to break the fall.  All doubts, all false certainties, all attempts at self-justification, all hatreds of oneself; they fall away.  One is left with God.  

And so there I was--sitting in my office, dark except for a single candle illuminating a cross and a hand labyrinth before me.  After a period of time in silence, and cataloguing my faults, something happened, something that became my barometer for knowing how close I am to God in particular instances.  In those moments the direct experience of God—the description of which varies for many people--most resembled a dark buoyancy.  It felt safe and calm. I called it, and continue to call it, "the womb of God."

What became so clear in those moments when I had finished listing all of my faults—what God gave to me with the most intimate knowledge possible is that I am broken, yet beloved.  The distance between God and me became clear—and yet it was also clear that God was and is joined to me, and I am in God. One finds parts of one's very being transfigured.  Changed.  God gives a simultaneous yes and no that both affirms belovedness while calling one to the fullness and likeness to Christ we are called to be.

In those moments, bread from Heaven tasted like love, unconditional love, filling me with a sense of my belovedness even as I was being moved to consider more deeply the full humanity God was calling me to live into. I could intellectually assent to that belovedness before; but after that experience, I knew it. 

That is what the bread of Life looked like to me: an experience of God that cut through my anxiety about how well I was doing at life, as though my performance was the sole source of earning God’s love.  I thank God for such a sweet morsel of the bread of life, for the memory of it has sustained me through dark and difficult days.  And occasionally, I find crumbs that manage to fill left for me along the path my life takes me—little reminders of the awesomeness of God’s love and care and presence. 

There were a couple of reasons I am reticent to tell you this story this morning.  I’ve already mentioned one:  putting the experience into words can sometimes betray the fullness of the experience.  There are two other reasons that are pet peeves.

The first is this:  I distrust leaders and spiritual virtuosos who claim their abilities and exclusive access to constant revelation as reasons for others to listen to them.  Jonestown shows one end of that road to such an appeal to the power of the divine.

The second is this:  there is always a danger that following the truth of the Gospel can lead to a claim of Christian superiority to which everyone must defer.  Such an attitude of superiority is opposed to the truth that God’s self-revelation in Christ should ultimately lead to service, not to an entitlement to be acclaimed.

These two pet peeves point to some problems Christians have.  We run the spiritual risk of thinking we can decide who is worthy of God.  We can claim that we have exclusive access to the mind of God, and so we have no need to listen to our neighbors.

Our spiritual disposition matters greatly when we try to live out our faith or share it others— and Christians are finding that those to whom we speak are becoming more adept at comparing our own rhetoric to some understanding of the faith we follow. 

I believe the antidotes to such problems are found in the sentiments of Daniel Thambyrajah Niles, a Methodist pastor who once noted that, “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”^[1]

Let’s come back to that in a moment.

I want to talk a little bit about the gospel text. 

We are in the middle of a five week run of Jesus talking about bread.  This conversation Jesus is having started when he turned the few loaves and fishes into a feast as a sign of the kingdom to come.  The crowds start following Jesus around, and Jesus begins interpreting the sign of the loaves and fishes to the crowd.  Jesus fed them for a day, but Jesus is offering them something more substantial.  Bread—an essential element of the diet of so many cultures—becomes the metaphor of a relationship to God the Father through Jesus Christ.  The sustenance we gain by our daily bread is a pale comparison to the participation in the divine life we are offered through relationship to Jesus Christ. 

Jesus is talking about eternal life, but a heavenly destination is not all we are called to.  We later learn in this gospel that we are called to participate in the divine life of the triune God.  We know this through other metaphors Jesus gives us: he is the vine and we the branches in John 17, and the unique mystical dance we participate with each person of our triune God:  Of which Jesus prayed to the father saying “"The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me (John 17:22).”  When Jesus tells us that eternal life is available through believing in him, this is not simply a matter of belief in a set of propositions about God.  It is about our trust in a relationship that brings us into the divine life, through which we see the world as God sees it.  We know shape of this life when we respond to the call to love God and our neighbors.[2]

What Christ offers to us—this possibility of a deep relationship with the divine—is a gift.  It is not an achievement on our part.  It is not something we can earn, it is freely given by God in God’s grace; and as Jesus said, it is grace offered to all, for the prophets tell us that ‘all shall be taught by God.'  It is both an unsettling and comforting thought: 

“Salvation, Enlightenment, Eternal Life, Wisdom, are not the products of human endeavour as our bread is…[and this is] foreshadowed by the manna of the wilderness and now fully revealed in [Christ]; the bread of life is offered to all who are hungry enough to trust that five barley loaves and two fish can feed a multitude… There is nothing to achieve or to do. Which means you cannot decide or designate who gets some and who doesn’t.”[3]

This brings us back to our quote from D.T. Niles.  At its truest understanding, “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”  We are not the bakers of the living bread.  Nor are we the distributors of the living bread, and as such we are not at liberty to decide who is worthy to receive the bread.  A Christian’s joy in having risked a relationship with the divine is not license to set the conditions for another person’s access to that relationship.  No, our joy is in telling all we meet that there is something better to be found, that there is living bread that satisfies hungers our world creates and leaves unfulfilled.

The bread of life we are offered is the life of Christ given for this world so that all may know the love of God and the life eternal—That is what is offered to all. But the hunger that bread satisfies may look different for you. For me, the bread of heaven is knowing that perfection is admirable but impossible under my own striving, and that I cannot exist or act apart from the love of God.  What might the bread of heaven taste like for you?  How might you share with someone where you found such bread?     

---

[1] D.T. NILES, New York Times, May 11, 1986

[2] Martin Luther, “On Faith and Coming to Christ”, #20, http://web.archive.org/web/20030210182718/www.markers.com/ink/mlonfaith.htm.

[3] Peter Woods, http://thelisteninghermit.com/2012/08/07/what-beggars-know-about-bread-john-635-51-ordinary-19b/ .

"Truthing" in Love

Proper 13 Year B RCL

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a

Psalm 51:1-13

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35

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…Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

If you are like me, you might cringe every time you read or hear the phrase "speak the truth in love." I think this is because the main way I run across the phrase is in blog posts and open letters on social media that take one’s opponents to task over an issue. And if you are like me, you might have found that what follows the author’s promise that they “speak the truth in love” is neither truthful, nor loving.  Typically, it signals one person publically telling another, “if you do not have the same opinion as I do, it is my task to correct you, and if you do not heed the correction, you are no longer in community, communion, or have been judged to have left the faith.”  In other words, when someone decides to write an open letter, and it contains the phrase “speaking the truth in love,” it is typically said in the context of an ultimatum to change or be cast away.  As a result, there are many who hear this phrase and wonder if it can be salvaged from its use as a blunt brutalizing tool that masks disdain at the least and malice at the extreme, all the while hidden behind solemn tones and counterfeit piety.

There is a longer conversation to be had regarding the overuse, abuse, and trivialization of some passages of scripture.  The way out of such situations that seems too easy, however, is to pretend the passages are not there and consign them to simply being read in worship without comment.  That unfortunately leaves the passages to those who would continue to weaponize scripture against their opponents, and that will not do.  It would also impoverish our own understanding of what it is we are reading.  Every generation is called to the proclamation of the Gospel in their own time and place, and to find the words to do so in conversation with sacred scripture. Finding those fresh expressions of the truth and looking for the world God is bringing forth will necessarily involve stripping away from our tradition and interpretation of scriptures the rot that has left by time, by abuse, and by carelessness bred by familiarity.

So, how does one get beyond the phrase’s abuse? Given that even within Christianity there are different claims to truth, and that Christians of all stripes at least agree that the truth should be spoken (and lived!), I'm curious about what sort of salvaging needs to happen with this phrase, this “speaking truth in love.” 

I think the first thing that needs to happen is to look at our passage from Ephesians in context.  What might the author, who may have been Paul or a disciple of Paul, have wanted it to mean? Throughout Ephesians Paul is making a case for a mystical unity in Christ that should characterize the relationship of the church.  It is the type of relationship that breaks down barriers.  The recipients of this letter were most likely Gentile Christians instead of Jewish believers.  Paul is reminding them that these two distinct people, Jews and Gentiles, two groups who hated each other in most other contexts would not even deign to eat together, have become one new humanity, writing that “Christ might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”[1]  Christ brought down the dividing wall.  This is the reality of God’s ministry of reconciliation, and it would have been a shocking image.  No one is thrown out.  No one is cast aside.  Everyone is invited. 

Many of the letters we find in the Bible contain a moral exhortation that stems from proclamation. This letter is no different and our passage today is the hinge between the theology and the ethical expectations that flow from the theology.  “Through the Cross, Christ has unified ethnic groups so that peace should ensue and hostilities cease, creating what Ephesians calls “one new humanity,” which has singular access to God through one Spirit.”[2]  This unity is further emphasized by what it is that we share:  one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is parent of everyone.

And through Christ we are given gifts, for the purpose of building the body of Christ. But the gifts are different.  Our varied gifts that we have by the Spirit speak to a unity with diversity.  This is unity without uniformity, and it is a marvelous thing that is difficult to maintain.  It requires every effort on the part of the baptized to create spaces of grace where diversity in life and practice are honored.  Diversity here is not just a slogan that one would slap on church sign, or the kind of diversity that find its expression in a shallow tokenism that pays homage to difference while shying away from the opportunity to be changed by an encounter with the Holy one could not imagine before.  We are instead talking about the recognition, acceptance, practice, and celebration of gifts and people given to the community for the building up of the body of Christ.[3]

This radical vision of unity is a reality difficult to live into.  With that Paul’s letter points to necessary elements, one of which is humility.  The necessity for humility comes from the fact that we all have different gifts that bring us into contact with varied truths about God’s work in the world. We are finite beings, and no one has the total picture of God’s work and purpose at any given time. Our diversity, our gifts and experiences, shows us all aspects of God’s good purposes; and the call to unity in one body and community is to give us the ability to listen and discern a truth greater than we can know on our own.

Now--The passage about speaking truth in love is a part of warning; namely that the Christians ought to be in the process of “growing up” in faith and truth, and the community must be wary of attempts pull them to a truth lesser than the vision God has for them and the world.   

What is interesting about the phrase of “speaking truth in love,” however, is this:

‘Speaking the truth in love’ is not the best rendering of his expression, for the Greek verb makes no reference to our speech. Literally, it means, ‘truthing in love’, and includes the notions of ‘maintaining’, ‘living’ and ‘doing’ the truth.[4]

Following the truth includes speech and conduct. How else to avoid hypocrisy Christians are so famous for when we deceive ourselves and do the very things we hate?

No; “Truthing in love” isn’t simply a matter of talking, it’s also about doing. [5]  And truth cannot be separated from love. 

On the one hand, one cannot simply speak the truth, as though one were a cosmic referee looking to cut folks down, more concerned with purity than growth in Goodness. Indeed some find it easy to speak truth, to set others straight on how it is, to verbally assault others and then feel deserving of a spiritual reward for braving such enemy territory to deliver truth.  Some people speak truth as a way to show-off or one-up one another.[6]  This is speaking truth out of egotism, not humility. And love is lost in the process. 

“On the other hand, others excel in a type of “love” that produces only warm feelings and smiles, and, therefore, can neither broach nor tolerate truth.  In that case, truth and love are opposing forces are opposing forces, and truth must lose.”[7]  This is not good enough, for a multitude of concrete harms to others can occur because of the confusion of nicety and politeness for love and kindness.

Both truth and love are necessary and symbiotic to create a community that is unified and grounded in goodness while seeking to be a vision of God’s reign among us.  Both truth and love are necessary for our life together among each other, and they are gifts we offer to a world.

So how do we translate this into life today? How do we speak truth in love, or rather, grow into being truth in love?  How do we avoid the pitfalls of speaking truth without love, or refusing to speak when something should be said in both our personal relationships and our life in this world?

I think one interpretive key is to look at the description of love 1 Cor. 13(4-7), and refresh ourselves on what love looks like: 

Love is patient and kind; is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

It turns out the passage isn’t just for weddings! 

To remember what love would look like, it may be worth taking a look at this passage whenever we feel that it is time to speak a truth to someone.  Love will listen, love will hope that truth comes out, love will seek the substance behind our perception of the surface level in humility and care. 

Relationship matters. Remember, the theme of author’s thought in this letter is unity.  Speaking truth in love is not found in making an ultimatum that holds the relationship hostage to the other’s recognizing the truth, or failure to do so.  It may mean that when we speak the truth we discover, or the truth is not recognized, we maintain relationship as much as possible, short of being complicit in the harm we see occurring in personal relationships or our life together in this world.  In other words, there is a duty to hope for redemption, for we follow of God of second chances, even infinite chances as we make our walk toward a truth more perfectly known.

So far, I’ve talked about this phrase in its more punitive uses.  But,  look, there is something else that needs to be said about speaking truth in love.  Paul frequently wrote about the need for encouragement.  Sometimes, speaking the truth in love may include helping someone remember the love God has for them when they forget it.  Or a word of thanks for a particular gift they bring about in the world. 

So, where might you see an opportunity to be truthful in love, in action and in word?

When you are confronted by the need to say something both true and painful, how might you do so to heal, and not to hurt the other?

May our discernment of truth and love lead us closer to the purpose of God.

[1] Eph 2:15-16.

[2] Jaime Clark Soles, “Ephesians 4:1-16, Homiletical perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  307.

[3] This paragraph largely follows and borrows phrasing from Richard F. Ward, “Ephesians 4:1-16, Homiletical perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  307.

[4] John Stott, quoted by Dan Wilkenson (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2015/07/speak-the-truth-in-love/) and confirmed in The Interpreters Bible, Vol. 10, pg.  694.

[5] Dan WIlkenson (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2015/07/speak-the-truth-in-love/).

[6] This paragraph largely follows and borrows phrasing from Jaime Clark Soles, “Ephesians 4:1-16, Homiletical perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  307.

[7] Jaime Clark Soles, “Ephesians 4:1-16, Homiletical perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  307.

The Biblical Critique of Rulers

Robert Berra

Sermon at St. Augustine’s, Tempe

Proper 12 Year B

2 Samuel 11:1-15

Psalm 14

Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

You may have noticed that since Trinity Sunday we have been reading the stories of the first kings of Israel. 

To briefly recap the last eight weeks: The people of Israel are tired of never having a king like other nations, so they ask the prophet Samuel to anoint a king for them.  Saul is chosen as the first king.  But Saul didn’t obey God, so God sent Samuel to secretly anoint a new king:  David.  Well, David and Saul get close after David slays Goliath; David is invited to live with Saul.  But Saul became jealous of David and repeatedly tried to kill him.  David escapes and lives as a wandering bandit for a while, pursued by Saul.  Eventually Saul dies. David comes back from the cold to be made king officially; and he brings the ark to Israel.  Last week, God promised to David that David’s kingdom and line would continue in perpetuity.

What I love about this particular track of Bible readings is that it begins with a bit of satirical foreshadowing.  Let’s return for a moment to that moment that Israel asks for a king eight weeks ago:[1]

All the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel [the prophet]…and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." [Samuel wasn’t too happy about this, so] Samuel prayed to the LORD, and the LORD said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only-- you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them."

So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots... He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers [not to mention concubines]… He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers… He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."

God told Samuel to paint a dismal picture of kings, and that speaks to the cynic in me.  So that is what Samuel did, basically saying that if Israel wants a human king instead of a protecting God, that is what Israel will get.  And it will not be fun for anyone.  This is an example of some of the earliest political critique in the Bible, and will form the basis from which all of the kings of Israel will be critiqued and judged, all because Israel wanted to be like every other nation.

And this week… we have a story in of Hebrew Bible reading that, while it is brief, has all the drama of an episode of Game of Thrones.    

The reading begins by saying that in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent his soldiers to war.  How kingly.  You can kind of hear the writer saying “See?  He’s like every other king, sending his people to war, in the spring, as kings do.”

Well, In the midst of this, David (who we are told is not leading from the front) has an indiscreet moment with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife.  

[Note:  It's worth saying that what happened between David and Bathsheba would be most accurately categorized as rape or sexual assault.  There was probably no meaningful way for her to say 'no' in such a situation...as such there was no meaningful consent.]

She conceives,so David tries to find a way to cover up the whole matter.  He calls Uriah back from the front, presumably to ask him how things are with the army, but then basically sends him to be intimate with Bathsheba so the child will be thought to be Uriah’s, saying "Go down to your house, and wash your feet [wink, wink]."

But Uriah, being the pious and patriotic eager beaver that he is, says "The ark and Israel and Judah are in tents; and my commander and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives [he says to David] I will not do such a thing."  Soldiers in Israel at this time had to maintain purity by avoiding intercourse while at war. David knew this too; in his earlier days, he enforced this purity on the warriors who rode with him.[2]  But, these were desperate times, and his secret needed to be kept.  David even tried getting Uriah really drunk, hoping he’d forget himself and go home.  That didn’t work. 

So, David does something quite drastic.  David sends a letter to the commander of his forces, saying “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."”  And that’s not even the worse part.  David has Uriah unknowingly deliver his death sentence in that letter to the commander.  That’s cold.  That’s exactly how Uriah died, too.  Bathsheba probably didn’t know the full story of how her husband died, but after her mourning, David brings her to his palace and marries her.  Insult upon injury.  The story will be continued next week.

David’s epic continues, but one can see in this story the beginning of Samuel’s warnings coming to fruition.  Eventually the monarchy fails Israel as kings disobey God and abuse their own people.

Let’s fast forward nearly 1,000 years.  One of David’s descendants is roaming the Galilean countryside and getting quite a bit of attention.  In our reading today, Jesus miraculously feeds thousands out of the limited resources he was given.  He had been performing signs and wonders as a way of pointing to his identity.  But what draws my attention today is that:

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”[3]

The crowd reacted in a way that is completely understandable.  At the time, it was that that a prophet and messianic king would come with signs and wonders, and these signs were marks of the promise of the messiah’s arrival.  The messiah would then bring about the liberation of Israel from Roman control.  I’m sure the crowd would have been confused by Jesus’s refusal to take the power they were handing him. 

But why would he do that?  Why would he turn that power down?

I think the key to understanding Jesus in this passage, and indeed his whole project on earth, is to keep in mind both the biblical and prophetic estimation of earthly rulers (such as Samuel’s low opinion of kings) and Jesus’s confrontation with the representative of Roman authority:  his interrogation by Pilate before his execution. 

When Jesus goes before Pilate in the Gospel of John, the interrogation never really gets beyond Pilate asking Jesus who he is.[4]  “Are you a king?  Where are you from?” Jesus only answers cryptically before eventually falling silent. 

As Jesus falls silent before Pilate’s questions about his identity, Pilate asks “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?”  That is a terrible power—the power given him by the state.  But Jesus knows something else, and it becomes evident as the drama unfolds.  The threat to use this power is a sign of fear.  It is a grasp for control of the situation.  It is the way earthly power works, then and now.  Earthly power is borne out of the desire to control our own fear.  The torture and crucifixion Jesus would endure—and so many other uses of force both great and small— are examples of this worldly power.  The desire to control others.  To control circumstances. To bend the will of a person to our own use. Its use is borne out of fear.  This power is used when the lie of control we continually tell ourselves fails. 

It is this same fear and grasping for control that led Israel to demand a king in the first place.  The people did not trust God, and for good reason they did not trust Samuel’s sons.  The people desired to take their chances with the same rules every other nation lived by.  And it was this lie of control and domination borne of fear that Christ came to expose as a poor substitute for the fuller truth of God’s gracious reign. 

These justifications and rationalizations of worldly power are the lies of control that Jesus exposes by not bending to Pilate’s threat.  It is the worldly power Jesus exposed as a fraud through his resurrection—his resurrection which shows that the worst that worldly power can do will not have the final say.  It is the power Jesus was tempted with when Satan offered him control of all the kingdoms of the world.[5]  It is the worldly power Jesus refused to take up when the crowds surrounded him to make him a king by force.  It was the power that David relied on, thinking he could hide his misdoings.

What does this mean for us today?  Well, you might not have heard about this—we’ve been keeping it kind of hush-hush and there’s barely a word about it in the media—but I hear there is an election coming up.    

We are still more than a year away from the elections, and still candidates of every stripe are already making promises and presenting us with worldviews that may or may not come to actual policy.  And as some candidates—of every stripe—begin to point to their religious affiliations to appease voters who claim a faith—or surround their policies in a patina of holiness as though their position papers fell like manna from heaven—or claim their presence in the race as the humble following of God’s will—it is worth noting that the Bible is deeply skeptical of worldly power and its exercise.

Instead of recommending that an outgrowth of the skepticism is to shy away from the political process in an effort to remain untainted, I think it is more likely the case that we are asked to consider how our political decisions are an outgrowth of Christ’s command to love God and our neighbors in concrete ways.  I believe, just as we see in David the possibility of great failings, and as Christ called out the death-dealing limits of worldly power, we are called to sober discernment of what we are promised in our life together as a nation.

But beware.  The cheers of crowds and the blaring campaign songs are sometimes loud enough to drown the still, small voice calling us to forgo the calculations that keep us estranged from everyone around us and grasping for control.  Yet there are candidates who rely on worldly calculations of power and appeal to fear to make their case of a world in which we exert more control.  And there are politicians who produce counterfeit visions of God’s kingdom come in the hope of attracting those of us who believe in the better world.  With both of these positions comes the all too common occurrence of declaring one’s opponents wrong in the best case, and demonic at the extreme.

May we all, following Christ’s example, escape the pull of worldly power and see through its abuses.  May we all be wary of trusting too much the devices and desires of our own hearts when we are promised their fulfillment at the expense of our neighbors.  And may we hold accountable to God those who aspire to power, whatever its exercise.

Let us pray,

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers

and privileges: Guide the people of the United States

in the election of officials and representatives;

that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of

all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your

purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[6]

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^{[1] 1} Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)

[2] See 1 Sam 21:5 and Deut 23:9-14.

[3] Jn 6:15.

[4] Jn 18:28-19:16.

[5] Luke 4:5-8.

[6] BCP, 822.