A Commonwealth of Care

We come into life not by self circumstance and act but by circumstance and act of others. We are not born to be dependent, yet we are born dependent. I was born dependent. The person next to me was born dependent, as was the person far from me. On whom do I depend? On whom do they depend? On each of us. On all of us. Hence, we are born to care, to care for each of us, for all of us. We come into life not facing self but facing another, needing another, to care for one another. From beginning to end, we are born to live in a commonwealth of care. And so we should.

Holiness and Love

I must not desire holiness; only that I may love truly.

American Exceptionalism?

I find the budget blueprint published today by this administration deeply disturbing. Were it to be enacted, it would result in spending vast amounts of money on means to punish and to kill people, while radically cutting funds for means to foster quality of life and life itself, especially for those on the margins and at risk. Whether at home or abroad, we seem unwilling to commit public programs and money to keep people alive and well, the environment safe, land fruitful, culture vibrant, and peace in process; yet we seem more than willing to spend any amount of public funds to distance, denigrate, and destroy people we consider different and threatening. This will not "make America great again." It will make America a fortress state, diminished in moral compass inwardly and outwardly. It will be a long fall from what was once conceived as "a city upon a hill", a shining example for the world, to a security garrison based on a false and fearful pursuit of strength, absent of compassion, truth, beauty, or goodness. If this is America first, in the end it will be last.

The Kingdom Chronicles

Apparently the Vice President-elect on January 20, 2017, purposely will take the oath of office with his hand on a Bible open to 2 Chronicles 7:14. Yet this text cannot, if read properly in its original meaning, be applicable to the context of Christians in the United States, much less to the general population in this country. The United States is not, has never been, and never will become the land of God's people as Israel was the land of God's people at the time these words were written. The United States as a nation-state is not, never has been, and never will become the locus or vehicle of God's redemption of the earth and its people. Following Jesus, the church throughout the world (without identification with and reduction to any one people group or nation) is the locus and vehicle of God's redemption, for all the earth, for all people, with no most-favored nation status. We ill-construe and ill-serve the kingdom of God, our true citizenship, when we misrepresent Jesus and his cruciform re-creation of our world through such poor exegesis and application of God's Word.

Well-Being: Communal Right, Communal Responsibility

If we are social beings living in social matrices, which I think we are (which, as a follower of Jesus and hence a citizen of the kingdom of God, I believe I must think), few things are purely individualistic. While certain health care choices may be largely or even purely elective and thus matters of individual choice and ability to pay, basic well-being and the care to maintain that seem to me basic to being human. We may call this a "right to life." That is, once one is born (at least, and arguably, once one is conceived), which is not a matter of choice for the individual being born, it seems to me that one has a "right to life." That is, I didn't choose to be born, but once born, "life" within me impels my continued existence (unless stopped by lack, illness, defect, or another's wrongdoing), and eventually I mature and choose to live. That entails, where possible, the basic conditions to live, even to thrive (taken in a general sense of life which is more than pitiful struggle and suffering). If we do not have such a right and such means by virtue of being born and being human, is not that the stuff of oppression, tyranny, injustice, callousness? This is not and cannot be a purely individualistic matter. We are social beings, and we live in social matrices. The basic well-being of each of us is of communal concern: my well-being; yours; the stranger's down the street and in the next state. I for you; you for me; we for all. I note that few people, if any, in this conversation and in the Republican Party and in society at large would argue that basic public safety (whether from criminals or from political enemies in other countries) is fundamentally a matter of individual choice, responsibility, and ability to pay. I doubt that many in this conversation and at large would argue that the protection provided by the police and the military should be fundamentally a matter not of shared concern and cost (through social structures such as government and public taxes) but purely or largely a matter of personal choice depending on ability to pay, as well as ability to take care of oneself through training in martial skills and a regimen of physical exercise. (Woe to those too young, too ill, too handicapped, too old to defend themselves from criminals and enemies! But then, why be concerned about them too much, if it's a matter of individual choice, physical fitness, and economic sufficiency? If they can't take care of themselves at the threat of crime or war, why should I care as long as I can take care of myself?) If basic public physical safety is considered a "right," why is basic physical well-being not also a "right"? Better yet, as we are social beings, and some of us are Christian social beings, not so much a "right" as a shared responsibility based on a mutuality of care and cost, even, dare I say it, of love? I don't have children in the public school system anymore. I remain glad to pay taxes to support the public schools and children not my own. Certainly, I wish for greater efficiencies and economies in operations and costs in public services (libraries, schools, roads, police, etc.); certainly I wish all people to be as responsible as they can and should be in contributing to the maintenance of those services, and to be as responsible as they can and should be in the use of those services. By all means let's seek reform and improvement in health care. The Republican Party has not had and still does not have a plan to make this happen; it only has a plan to dismantle what has benefitted people and to return to health-care conditions that were ill-serving so many people. That won't make America great again, because with basic health care in America there is no "before" to be "again." Yet we can make America greater than it has been if we take the ACA and not blindly destroy it but collaboratively make it better: more affordable for all; more health services for all; more well-being for all for all who are human beings in this country.

No More Can We Merit Salvation

No more can we merit salvation than we can merit creation. Doing, on our part, cannot generate being, for ourselves, whether in creation or in salvation. For us, being ontologically precedes doing, in creation and in re-creation. Grace preceded, grounded, and stamped created being in once-pristine existence; afterward, in now-sullied existence, grace again precedes, grounds, and stamps re-created being. We receive both first being in creation and second being in re-creation. Hence, engendered in and by grace, which we accept and take up by faith, when first made and then re-made by God, in living well or doing good we act in and from thanks and praise. Living well or doing good was always, is now, and ever will be that which proceeds from and expresses our being and "re-being" in God, never that which has any virtue to achieve either existence. We live because God first "lived" us. Then, we love because God first loved us.

To What Community Do We Belong?

To what community do we fundamentally belong? For followers of Jesus, the Church is that community. Our identity and allegiance root in and stem from our being in the Church. Certainly other communities to which we belong – nation, race, clan, gender, language, party, occupation, affinity, and more – shape and even "claim" us to greater or lesser degrees. Yet we must understand and pursue our essential belonging, our paramount and therefore focal identity and allegiance, in and through the community of the Church. We must subordinate, and in some ways and instances even refuse, claims from those other communities on our identity and allegiance, on our very life. To the extent we seek and experience the true commonweal of this world and of our individual life in it – trust and hope and love, and truth and beauty and goodness – we must do so fundamentally within and from the community, the society, which is the Church, which is ultimately the kingdom of God.

Loving My Neighbor

God loves me individually. Yet God does not love me exclusively or primarily. God loves my neighbor as well. My neighbor is the person next to me, whether familiar or strange to me. My neighbor is also the person distant from me, for no one is distant from God. In God, everyone is actually or potentially my neighbor, whether near or far. As God does, does God want me to love my neighbor.

God is First the Answer to Our Being

"Revelation is not mere information. Revelation is God disclosing his intimate self to us as a lover to his beloved." Ruth Burrows, OCD, in Love Unknown. || God is not first the solution or answer to the truth. God is not first the solution to the good. God is not first the answer to the beautiful. God is first the solution or answer to being. And being is not abstract, not monistic, not quality-less. Being is irreducibly personal and intrinsically relational: the triune God. Hence, God is first the answer to our being, and that is why our rebellion against and repudiation of God, of our relationship with God, lead to untruth, sin, and chaos, and ultimately to death. God in and through Christ restores our being -- personal relationship with God -- and in and through the Holy Spirit nurtures that relationship such that truth, goodness, and beauty fruit in and from us.

A Measure for the Day

Considering the world around me -- near and far, today and tomorrow -- how can I live daily in greatest benefaction and least detriment, in even the smallest things?

The Disordering and Healing of Love

God is love. Hence, love is good. Yet, in our sin, we often turn love from a good to a wrong. How does love become disordered in us? We love that which we ought not love. And where we love what we ought, we love in ways we ought not. At the very core of our being then, where what ought to be most good goes most wrong, we need the cruciform grace of salvation, of healing, to order love rightly, as God is love.

Brief Note on the Nature of Reality

The first question is not what do we think the world ought to be like, but how has God fashioned the world to be.

Jesus and Loss

There is no evidence in the gospels that Jesus fought to avoid the cross until he was finally overwhelmed and overcome by superior power, thereby ending up being crucified. Rather, Jesus submitted to the coercive exercise of power, to loss and to the cross, thereby setting us a hard but sublime example.

Overcoming Evil

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Anniversary of September 11

Ineluctably, this week we come to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against targets in the United States. The hatred and evil of the attacks were stunning and heartrending, particularly for those intimately affected by injury and loss. The storm of effects carved, and continues to carve, the landscape of life for individuals, families, and communities. And now, this anniversary of the attacks raises afresh the complex challenges of remembrance and response. How do we remember and respond to such hatred and evil?
Romans 12:9-21

I contend that Romans 12:9-21 should frame and form how the community of Christ remembers and responds to the events of September 11. This passage from this letter of Saint Paul to the followers of Jesus in Rome begins with these words: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good….” It concludes with these: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” In this week when the remembrance of those acts of hatred and evil is prominent in the hearts and minds of most in the United States, this passage is God’s grace to guide and shape the remembrance and response of the community of Christ.
Remembrance and response

How then do we – the community of Christ – remember and respond to such hatred and evil? How does this passage – Romans 12:9-21 – guide and shape the community of Christ as it remembers, prays, and acts in response to those events? In the truth and power of God’s Word in this passage, the community of Christ remembers and responds through genuine love and steadfast adherence to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good.

What does it mean to love genuinely and to hold fast to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good? The community of Christ loves genuinely and holds fast to what is good in the following ways, enumerated in the passage.

Rejoicing in hope, being patient in suffering, and persevering in prayer. Contributing to those in need, whether fellow saint in Christ or stranger (for in Christ the stranger is always a neighbor). Blessing those who persecute the members of the community – blessing, not cursing. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep – acting in solidarity, compassion, and empathy to bear other’s burdens. Not repaying evil with evil, but doing what is noble in the sight of all. Doing all we can to live in peace with all people. Not seeking to avenge ourselves or others, but leaving the sorting of actions, consequences, guilt, and blame to God. Acting in great charity even to our enemies. In short: overcoming evil, and doing so with loving and good actions, not evil ones.
Transformation and renewal

How is it possible to remember and respond to such hatred and evil through genuine love and steadfast adherence to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good? It is possible through the transformation and renewal of our lives in the powerful grace of God.

This passage, from the last part of Romans 12, follows as the necessary or inevitable ethical outworking of the first part of Romans 12. A key statement from the first verses of chapter 12 provides the foundation for the ethical injunctions in verses 9 through 21, as summarized in verse 21 with the injunction to overcome evil with good. In verse 2 of chapter 12, Saint Paul exhorts the community of Christ, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Hence, we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed and renewed in our hearts and minds by the powerful grace of God. Because of the transformation and renewal of our lives in God’s grace, the community of Christ is framed and formed, enabled and empowered, to live in what God determines to be good and acceptable and perfect – as against what any particular nation, culture, or government determines to be good and acceptable and perfect.
Citizenship in heaven

This passage highlights the truth that our citizenship and allegiance are fundamentally and ultimately in heaven, not in the United States or in any other country. We do of course live in the United States. Our earthly citizenship in this country is profoundly significant for our lives – for the general shaping of our perspectives, emotions, and identity, and for our remembrance of and response to the particular events of September 11, 2001.

Yet our earthly citizenship and allegiance are not unmixed goods. Our earthly citizenship and allegiance – with their influence on our perspectives, emotions, and identity – are ambiguous and penultimate. They are always to be measured and qualified by our fundamental and ultimate citizenship and allegiance. They are always secondary and subordinate to our fundamental and ultimate citizenship and allegiance.

As citizens of heaven fundamentally and ultimately, in the power of God we are to be transformed and renewed in our whole lives, and thus conformed to the patterns of heaven, not to the patterns of this world. And in conformity with the patterns of heaven, we are to love genuinely, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, and overcome evil not with evil but with good.
The way of Jesus

This passage from Romans 12 does not indicate that it is easy to overcome evil with good. It does not specify when good will overcome evil, or how much effort it will take to overcome evil with good. The effort to overcome evil through genuine love and doing good may take much time and effort. It has already taken 2000 years. It may involve much suffering, even death. It cost God his only son. Yet, as we remember and respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11 as the community of Christ fundamentally and ultimately, this passage from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans clearly describes none other than the way of true discipleship for the community of Christ, because the way of hating and overcoming evil through love and doing good is the way of Jesus, and the way of Jesus in this world of hate and evil is the way of the cross.

Labor Day

Today, Labor Day, we recognize and honor workers and their achievements through organized labor. Many of the benefits of modern work we take for granted today resulted at least in part from the efforts and sacrifices of women and men acting in solidarity against injustice, against inhumane living and working conditions: fair labor standards, child labor laws, living wages, reasonable hours for work per day and per week, and more. The following links provide brief surveys of some of those efforts, sacrifices, and achievements.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/37.asp
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep05.html
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

Additionally, these four movies vividly depict aspects of workers' struggles to make a better life for themselves, their children, and others: "Salt of the Earth" (1954), "Northern Lights" (1978), "Norma Rae" (1979), and "Matewan" (1987).

May we enjoy and acknowledge this Labor Day for what it is -- a holiday and a recognition of ordinary people banding together to seek fairness for themselves and others!

Some Thoughts on 2 Corinthians 10:1-18

Paul’s personal witness led to the first followers of Jesus in Corinth, a city in southern Greece. After some time there, Paul left to witness to Jesus elsewhere. But the church in Corinth developed problems. In thought, spirit, and behavior, some were grievously deviating from the teaching of Jesus. Paul responded by writing to the Corinthians, including this letter around 55 A.D.

Paul’s basic point threading through the passage is captured by a contrast early in it. This sets up the rest of his remarks. Paul refers to “some people [in Corinth] who think we live by the standards of this world.” In contrast, Paul writes, “…though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” Thus he draws a sharp distinction between the standards of the world, or human standards, and the standards of the kingdom of God. Paul applies the distinction to how he and the Corinthians should conduct themselves in these problems. Yet he does so because the distinction is fundamental to life for followers of Jesus. We – followers of Jesus – are not to live by worldly standards. Even while our lives are embedded in a particular human society, we are to live by kingdom standards.

With this contrast, Paul characterizes how followers of Jesus are to live. All ideas, attitudes, and behaviors are to be made captive or obedient to Jesus. They are to be shaped by the life and teaching of Jesus, not the spirit and teaching of the world, of human society. When problems arise, we are to resist and overcome wrong ideas, attitudes, and behaviors by kingdom means, by prayer, exhortation, and discipline exercised in love – not by worldly means, not by arrogance, contempt, or hate exercised in anger and violence.

In all we think, feel, and do, with respect to self and others, we are to measure ourselves by Jesus, not by any other measure, whether from our self, our little group, or our society. In the end, we are to live in such a way that Jesus commends us, because his standards, his measure and approval, are infinitely superior to any other standards.

Some Thoughts on 1 John 3:18-4:6

Writing in broad but profound strokes in this section of his letter – in keeping with his style and emphases throughout – John highlighted three issues which face followers of Jesus. He pointed to the challenge of consistency in belief and practice. He warned of false teachings and beliefs about God, Jesus, and spirituality. He distinguished two fundamental points of view about truth and goodness.

In terms of belief and practice, John urged followers of Jesus, as individuals and as communities, to live their love for others in specific, concrete ways, not just in the emptiness of words. The world is full of easy promises and assertions of love, many of which go unfulfilled. True love for others arises from Jesus’ sacrificial love and bodies forth in small and large acts.

As for teachings and beliefs, John counseled followers of Jesus to assess the swirl of “spiritualities” around them against the life and teaching of the historical Jesus (recorded in narratives and sayings we now have as the four gospels of our New Testament). The world is full of spiritualities which make light of, ignore, or deny God’s Word incarnate. True spirituality affirms and expresses the life and teaching of Jesus, who lived in the flesh and who continues to live in risen glory.

With respect to world views, John contrasted two sharply different perspectives for understanding and living life. One stems from the Spirit of God; it leads to truth, goodness, and life. The other comes from the spirit of the world; it yields falsehood, evil, and death. The world is full of easy compromises and appearances of compatibility among world views. Yet the Spirit of God and the spirit of the world are not compatible, not in origin and not in end. True faith and discipleship live in, from, and for the Spirit of God.

For all his clear and even stark contrasts and challenges, John wrote not to discourage and tear down, but to encourage and foster maturity and integrity of faith. His tender addresses – dear children, dear friends – attest to his motives and to God’s loving, nurturing purposes for us. Even more, John’s affirmations that God is greater – greater than our inconsistencies and failures, greater than false spiritualities, greater than the spirit of the world – provide deep and durable encouragement in our hearts and lives. We can, in God’s Spirit, grow more loving, more true, and more whole – in sum, grow more like Jesus.

Church: The Community of the Righteous

The church, in relation to the world, stands as the community of the righteous. Not the self-righteous but the righteous. Righteousness does not describe our relationship to our own goodness or moral standing. Righteousness describes our relationship to or standing before God. It signifies right relationship with God. Right relationship subsists in God’s holy grace and our broken repentance or humility. So the church, in relation to the world, stands as the community of those who know and proclaim God’s holiness and grace – the community of those who know and proclaim that righteousness, including their own, subsists not in moral achievement but in brokenness and humility in the face of God’s holiness and grace.

Actions and Ethics

Whatever our action of last resort is, there lies our true ethical position.

God's Holiness and Forgiveness

Radical Condemnation and Radical Affirmation


If you, Lord, should keep account of sins,
who could hold his ground?
But with you is forgiveness,
so that you may be revered.

[Reading in Psalm 130, Revised English Bible]


These verses point toward two fundamentals of God’s dealings with us in this existence: radical condemnation; and radical affirmation.

In the first two lines of these verses we see radical condemnation. Because of our sinfulness, we cannot possibly stand before the holy Lord. We stand utterly guilty before God in his holiness, and we have no hope. At root we are condemned.

In the second two lines of these verses we see radical affirmation. With God is forgiveness. Amid our sinfulness, we experience God’s inestimable grace, embracing and enlivening us. At root we are affirmed.

There is a great mystery in the conjunction of these verses. It is the compound mystery at the core of the Gospel—the mystery of the divine amalgam of holy judgment and loving forgiveness. In the heart of the Gospel, neither holiness nor love is minimized or lost. They are met and held together not abstractly, not theoretically, but concretely, personally, in the being and acting of God. For, at once and in completeness, God encompasses and employs both holiness and love.

Thus, in the heart of the Gospel, we come to the cross. For in our sinful world, the divine amalgam of holiness and love leads to the cross. The cross unveils the God who exists and acts in holiness and love conjoined. This is the God who, in Jesus, exacts the cross in judgment and suffers the cross in love. The cross roots in and stems from the divine amalgamation of holiness and love, for it transacts the judgment of God’s holiness through the suffering of God’s son, thereby tendering forgiveness.

Were holiness and love not amalgamated in the divine being and acting, there would be no cross. Without holiness, there is no condemnation of sin. Hence, there is no cross. Without love, there is only condemnation, and hence, no cross.

Were there no cross, with its conjunction of holiness and love, we would have no good news. If God should act solely in holiness, it would necessitate absolute and terrible rejection of us, leaving us only utter despair and annihilation. If God should act only in love, it would require his self-denying self-deception, glossing over the ruptured and rupturing realities of our lives and our world with a cruelly unrealistic sentimentalism.

Yet there was a cross, and it shows us that God is absolutely holy and mercifully forgiving at once and in completeness. God is a sheer holiness that brooks no evil and terrifies us to oblivion. At the same time, with God is a tender, merciful forgiveness that rends the divine heart even as it touches and heals our own hearts. Jointed in the heart of God then are absolute judgment and inestimable forgiveness, for God is utterly holy, utterly realistic, and utterly merciful—at one and the same time, each in fullness. Hence, the crux of God’s presence in our sinful world consists in and reveals itself in this conjunction of holiness and love.

We must therefore let the cross inform—in the strongest and deepest sense of that verb—the core of our lives and our theology. Apart from the cross, we might think that sometimes God acts in holiness and sometimes in love. We might even conclude that holiness and love are disjunct. Thus we are tempted to think and act in the cross-denying distortions of either self-righteous jeremiads or soft-headed sentimentalism. The cross however, truly understood and submitted to, frames and holds us in the conjunction of God’s holiness and love in our sinful world. We must not sunder this conjunction in our religious experience or in our theological construction.

We must, in other words, truly and deeply live in and proclaim the mystery of the cross, the amalgam of God’s holiness and love. We must not live in or proclaim only holiness and judgment, or only mercy and forgiveness. We must know that, in God’s presence, we live under radical condemnation and radical affirmation at one and the same time. For this is the God who both condemns and forgives us, at each and every moment of our lives, in the mysterious, re-creating intersection of condemnation and acquittal, which was Jesus on the cross.

One critical implication of these verses and the mystery of the cross for our lives and for our proclamation is this. Namely, we must realize that moral achievement and integrity do not constitute the chief foundation, mode, standard, or goal of our relationship with God, or of God’s relationship with us.

This point is not meant to subvert our utmost striving to act rightly. Nor is it meant to ease our conscience and excuse us when we do not act rightly. Clearly God calls us to an absolute standard, to perfection. We should seek it wholeheartedly. Still, we fail and sin; and clearly God laments, abhors, and condemns our moral failure, our sinful transgression.

Yet, just as clearly, God forgives. We must note this truth well. What God does with us in our failure and transgression is forgive us. He does not instantly refashion us in this existence so that we do not, indeed cannot, sin from that moment on. Painfully, sorrowfully, we find that we who know new life and follow the way of Jesus continue to sin.

Precisely here—in the call to perfection, in the striving for perfection, and in the inevitable failure to live it consistently—we must find and live in the mystery of the cross, where God both judges and forgives. In and through the cross, God acts to re-create us, to make us new people, no longer bound to sin. Yet, as we will certainly sin again before we physically die, we also find in and through the cross that God’s re-creating movement toward us and our life in God subsist in and through, not our moral attainment and integrity, but his forgiveness, always and everywhere.

Again, let it be clear that this forgiveness of the cross is no ignoring or forgetting of sin, by God or by us. It is no excuse for sin. This cruciform forgiveness confronts and judges sin directly and realistically for exactly what sin is. God’s severe forgiveness fully accounts for, reckons with, and overcomes sin, because God forges forgiveness in the crucible of Jesus’ condemnation and death.

Thus, by his forgiveness and not by our moral achievement, does God always and everywhere re-create and sustain us in new existence. In other words, it is God’s forgiveness that re-creates and holds us in life, life that begins and ends in cross-stamped grace, or we have no life at all. God’s forgiveness baptizes us into death and resurrection; and that forgiveness alone is life for us, from the point we receive it through all moments and conditions of this life, until we wake in the age to come.

Hence, in God’s forgiveness we find it utterly true that our life begins, continues, and ends—not in ourselves nor in any pretense of our holiness or our moral achievement and integrity—but completely and finally in the gracious power of God—in God’s holiness, in God’s love, in God’s crucible of condemnation and affirmation, which is Jesus, our savior and lord.