Micah 6:8 on the Skids

Princeton Seminary recently sent me a continuing education opportunity from their Institute of Faith and Public Life. The chief discussion will be around what it means to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly" from within an integrated theological and ethical framework.

For that, they've made a lovely little banner. Have a look.

Notice anything? They've taken the Micah 6:8 trifecta and given us examples of people they believe embody those virtues. They even color code them for us. Let's have a look.

Do Justice = Rev'd Martin Luther King, Jr. Okay...fair enough. MLK is one of my all-time favorite Republicans. And social justice that seeks to alleviate suffering through addressing all the causes of poverty (rather than simply looking at the symptom - not much money) is a worthwhile effort on the part of Christians that doesn't always get its proper attention from conservative-minded persons.

Love Mercy = Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Um...this is a strange call. It's not as though he worked to help out the Jews. While he did seek to assassinate Adolf Hitler, I'd hardly equate that with mercy. (And if it is, then just war theory and ministries of compassion just got a whole lot more interesting.) And the Hebrew word hesed here translated has strong overtones of COMMITMENT and LOYALTY. Again, not a virtue that first comes to mind for someone plotting the overthrow of his government and the military defeat of his own nation. (Granted, I think he was unflinchingly loyal to the historic church and his Confessing Church movement embodied that.)

Not only is Bonhoeffer not a notorious do-gooder, but do-gooding isn't even the point. What God requires is not doing good for good’s sake. What God requires of his followers is that they be committed and love being committed to God. Which makes it all the more curious that, right next to him - but colored in a way that doesn't tie her to a specific virtue, is a very paragon of mercy to others and commitment to God in Blessed Theresa of Calcutta. This woman embodied mercy (humility, too...though the left would excoriate her as anti-justice because she rebuffed them for murdering our unborn). What is Princeton saying with this?

But this isn't the strangest appellation or slight, either.

Walk Humbly = Mohandas Gandhi, Esq. Okay...his simplicity of dress and lifestyle indicate an epitome of living for others. I'll grant that. Humility, though, is a hard virtue to peg on someone who overthrew British rule in his home country. Moses, who cast off Egypt's chains, was meek - but he wasn't particularly humble.

Moreover, sheer humility is not what is in view in the Scriptures. Read it again: walk humbly with your God. Your God is covenant language. And it's used in Micah's burden against the Israelite's idolatry. "You've fallen to idol worship, and it has produced a profound effect throughout your entire society!" he says.

Here's the problem. Gandhi was a committed Hindu. He'd read the Bible and knew a great deal about it, but kept to the faith of his forbears.

Let me ask you...have you ever been to a Hindu temple?


And that's just the outside.

Hinduism is full of idolatry. And Ghandi was an idolater. He was concerned about the poor...I'll grant it. But he hated the Creator, and proved it with every act of devotion rendered to the idols. (We know where that worship ends up going...to demons.)

Mohandas Ghandi is not humble in the biblical sense. He was an arrogant, prideful, self-glorifying idolator who shook his fist in the face of God every day of his rebellious demon-worshiping life.

Princeton has made some extremely bad decisions in how they've cast this seminar. (Which may or may not be helpful.)

If you're a regular supporter of theirs - either personally, or through giving within the PC(USA), I advise you to let them know what you think.

John Piper on Impreccatory Psalms

During seminary, I studied the Psalms with a professor whose dissertation was on them. She was great fun to work with because you could count on her to fly off the handle if you mentioned a NT appropriation of the Psalmic material. Yeah... studying Psalm 22 with her was a riot.

(To her credit, she wanted us to appreciate them as Jewish religious artifacts...but I'm a Daily Office pray-er, so I'm forced to take them as Christian Scripture!)

The impreccatory psalms were clearly the hardest for my classmates to deal with. Most of them retreated into either the old stock German critic reply (elucidated by Dr. Piper) or talked about how it was a cry for justice from [fill in the blank oppressed group]. I didn't win any friends by reminding folks that God has no problem getting his hate on.

But a worship professor gave me a new avenue on approaching tough stuff like this in the psalms: "If you're going to bitch and moan, you're better off doing it to God. At least He can actually do something about it."

The Psalms let us know that it's okay to be fully human toward God. He can take it - He might even transform it! The Incarnation lets us know that our humanity is no barrier to true union with the Godhead. So pray a psalm (or 2 or 3) today!

Homily for Advent4B

This homily was preached yesterday at St. Stephen Church on the 4th Sunday of Advent (Year B). It's a short homily instead of a sermon because we had our Christmas Play as part of the service.


Here's a link to the readings for the day. Be blessed!

Last week I asked what kind of Christmas you were hoping for.

The texts this week ask a different question of us: what kind of Christmas are you working for?

Sure – holiday flurry:

• 1 or 2 more people to shop for
• Several gifts to wrap
• Food to prepare and a house to clean

How will it all get done?!?

Only one sane answer: teamwork. Everyone pitches in. At our house we have a song: “clean up! Clean up! Everybody everywhere! Clean up! Clean up! Everybody do their share!”

The task before us is insurmountable, unless we have some help from our family. That’s the challenge we find – surprisingly enough – in our lectionary readings today!

Consider David’s plight: David has vowed to establish a house for the worship Lord. In turn, the Lord has vowed to establish David’s house – his royal line – forever!!!

David knows this task will be too much for him, so he rests in the knowledge that his son will be seated on the throne after him. David may not get the job done, but surely his son will carry on for him.

Thankfully for us, David’s greater son was in view – not Solomon, but Jesus. For Solomon would build a beautiful temple, but it would eventually be torn down.

Jesus – David’s greater son – spoke of his own body as a temple; if it be torn down, he would rebuild it in three days! Moreover, Jesus builds his body – the church – as a temple of the Holy Spirit. And he made a promise that the gates of hell could not withstand it.

It’s an amazing promise to David – so great that he doesn’t fully understand what is being given to him in having the messiah come from his family lineage. But this grace will be celebrated by future generations. It will be reiterated by the prophets, until the time is ripe.

As Paul puts it: “the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of eternal god, to bring about the obedience of faith.”

God hid these things until his work of establishing David’s line should be complete. The entire nation desired to hear the good news of the coming king. Then, the Lord revealed it. But notice to whom he reveals it!

Our rehearsal of the Christmas story shows that he chose strange people to be witnesses to the miracle: shepherds – the social outcasts of his time; and gentiles – astrologers far removed from the covenant!

God had tried to reveal his plan to a pious priest in David’s lineage named Zechariah, but he didn’t respond – and so his mouth was shut for 9 months until the birth of his son, John who was to become the baptizer.

Contrast that with the annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary. She receives the news of god’s amazing – even far-fetched – plan in humble submission – what Paul would call “the obedience of faith.” She plainly but sincerely responds: “behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Let me ask again: what kind of Christmas have you been working towards?

Advent exists to prepare our hearts to receive Christ just as he is – not as we would want him to be.

So what was it about Mary that made her able to receive the message with such immediate credulity and submission – to perceive the mystery with an eye to obedience?

Some churches have said all sorts of things about her that have little, if any, basis in scripture. Ideas like Mary being conceived without sin – whether true or not (and I doubt they are) keep us from seeing the source of her real power, and thus emulating it.

We can’t afford to miss this, so look with me briefly at your gospel lesson.

1. Notice that she relied on god’s grace. “Hail favored one” it caught her off guard, because she knew she didn’t merit god’s goodness. So she – in her humility – let god define his relationship with her on his own terms.

2. Notice that she relied on god’s presence: “the Lord is with you!” One certainly gets the sense that Mary was a woman of prayer – one who knew how to enter the presence of god. Her prayer in the Magnificat (later in this chapter) shows a personal appropriation of god’s presence for her personal and community life. That sort of intimacy can only come in prayer.

3. Notice lastly that she relied on god’s word. The Magnificat shows a grasp of god’s covenant words and works in the history of Israel, as recorded in holy writ.

4. Moreover, when the word of god comes to her on the lips of an angel, she believes it fully. She knows that virgins don’t have babies – but she knows even more that whatever god purposes, he accomplishes. And whatever his word says must come to pass.

It’s her reliance on god’s grace, mediated through scripture, confirmed in a vibrant prayer life, that ultimately enables her to submit to god’s plan when he presents it and render that obedience of faith.

I’ll ask it again: what kind of Christmas are you working toward?

Christmas is one of those few times, where the space between the world and the church gets thin. People who ordinarily wouldn’t give a second thought to Jesus and the things of god find themselves strangely drawn into the promise of the Christ child.

Sadly enough, it’s a time when those of us who should have Christ at the center of our everyday lives – can somehow manage to edge him out in our rush to make it a perfect holiday season.

I’ll ask it one last time: what kind of Christmas are you working toward?

It’s not too late to take up Mary’s way.

It’s not too late to stop and re-center ourselves in what Christ has done for us:

To trust him completely for your future,

To ardently seek him as he is revealed in his word,

And to adore him in prayer.

But you’d better hurry up… just four more stopping days till Christmas.

Archaeological Affirmations

Since turnabout is fair play, here's an interesting archaeological tidbit.

It seems the seal of one of the enemies of Jeremiah has been unearthed. The Paleo-Hebrew script reads Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

Gedaliah (as we know him in the English transliteration) petitioned King Zedekiah to shut Jeremiah up. They won their case and threw the prophet into a cistern.

What's the takeaway?

1) Just because you occupy a place of influence with people who have power does not mean you are with people who have authority. Zedekiah and his advisors had all kinds of power...but because they refused to listen to the one man who had God's authority to speak, we hold them in no esteem. Indeed, we'd scarcely know or care about them except that they have a part to play in the life of the man who spoke with authority - the man who spoke God's words.

2) If you want to be part of a faith tradition that makes a real difference in the world, make sure your faith tradition has actually interacted with the world. All kinds of New Agers and non-realists in religion insist that faith is an entirely subjective experience. The only "objective" element is what happens when you act like a better person or some such.

Well, while I can't disagree that changing us changes the world, I would say that it's difficult to see the difference between that sort of religion and a philosophy of life.

There is a God...someone out there, who also chooses to make a dwelling place with humankind. If you know that you can't make it on your own, then you just might need something more than your own inner reserves. And if you're going to trust in that something, you'd better make sure that something can act.

Christianity affirms that God acts in history, pointing to the incarnation of Jesus Christ as proof that God does indeed choose to be with us and for us, rather than against us or apathetic towards us. And we have the Scriptures which detail how God has stepped into historical events and changed their course or guided the people.

If your faith can't make that claim and have it backed up by rational evidence, may I have the privilege of pointing you from the shifting sands of life to a faith built on bedrock? A faith that consists of loving relationship with the Rock himself?

Neither Harm nor Destroy on all My Holy Mountain

The Palestinian Muslim authorities are advancing their claim that the Jewish Temple was never on the Temple Mount by digging it up. Too bad they have to overlook all those carved marble porticoes they keep tossing aside!