Part 2 can be found here.
Denial is powerful. Denial is the capacity to avoid what is real and to create in its place a sub-version of reality in which to dwell. Humans are very adept at self-deception and denial.
We live in a culture that is bent on avoiding its own death (Ernest Becker). We deny our finitude. We are a culture on maintaining the appearance of youth and vitality. We don't even like to use the word "death". We prefer "passed away" or some similar phrase. In avoiding our own death, whether personally or socially, there is an absolutism that is created. It is the absolutism of "Market Ideology", which suggests that we are "too big to fail". When we are not willing to confront the possibility of our own demise, destruction, or demolition, we inevitably create a pseudo-world that lets life continue on as usual. There's no need for course correction, we assume.
I've been studying Jeremiah's ministry lately. He is a prophet that confronts a society's denial of impending death. It is both political and theological denial that prop each other up. Judah assumes that their way of life is guaranteed by God. And, by all observable data, life does seem like God has blessed it. Judah is economically stable and politically important. They are at the crossroads of trade. Things may not be as good as they once were, but the politicians and the religious leaders and the people of the land want to make Judah great again. The problem is that their ideas of greatness do not line up with God's idea of greatness.
Judah's social, political, and religious life is marked by injustice. Chapter 7 brings the indictment against Judah. They have followed other gods (gods of economics and power) and have lived in ways that compromise the lives of the most vulnerable in society: Widows, orphans, the poor, and foreigners. Now, as a result, Judah's life is a runaway train on the tracks headed toward a drop-off cliff. Death is coming. Despite the warnings from God through Jeremiah, Judah refuses to see their deathly ways as problematic. In fact, because the rich and powerful continue to benefit, they are deeply invested in keeping the status quo. They do so by making the political and theological system beyond question, beyond critique.
Jesus continues in the tradition of Jeremiah when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. His first action is to go into the Temple and turn over tables and chase people out, saying, 'This house is to be a house of prayer for ALL NATIONS, but you have made it into a den of thieves". Jesus is quoting Jeremiah here. By calling upon the tradition of Jeremiah and marching into the Temple to cleanse it, Jesus is making both a political and theological statement. He is calling into question all the power arrangements of society. Or, to put it another way: All politics are theological and all theology is political. Worshiping God on Sunday doesn't matter much if our lives don't reflect God's character and nature the rest of the week in how we treat each other, particularly those who are most vulnerable in society. Worship lived out looks like justice.
Yesterday, I talked about God's voice being "unending". I suggested that the Creation's movement is the ripple effect of God's creative speech. The Creation hums and reverberates with life because of God's speech-act in of Creation that continues to sustain life. I also mentioned that we are fully God's Creation as God intended when we join in harmony with God's song. The problem is that we tend to sing out of tune, in discord with God's harmony. We want to sing our own song and deny that God is even singing ... or, if God is singing, God should be singing our tune. Even in the life of God's people throughout history, singing in tune with God has come in short-lived spurts that then quickly revert back to singing our own song. How do we learn to sing God's song? That is, if we're quite honest, a more important scriptural question than biblical scholarship tends to appreciate. From the Exodus to the Exile, the Old Testament is filled with songs. Mary's prayers in Luke have become a rich liturgical tradition for the church (for example, the Magnificat in Luke 1). And then there's the gospel of John.
John 1 provides insight. Jesus is unfolded as the Word (Logos is Greek for "word" but can also mean "logic" or "wisdom") through whom all Creation came to be. If Creation is God's "first sermon", the "logic" of that first sermon is the Word -- it's Jesus. In other words, Creation's point and purpose is found in Jesus. Jesus is the song God sings. And, from a Christian perspective, it's the song Creation must sing in order to be in tune with the heart of God. Of course, John 1 is also ominous in that the Creation didn't recognize the Word, who is also the Light of the World. Instead, they try to snuff out the Light through crucifixion. The "darkness" did't understand the Light. And, when the Light began to expose the unjust practices of the powers-that-be, the powers retaliated with their only weapon: Death. They sang a different song and it was the song of Death.
I want to stop there to highlight the tension that is present in each preaching moment (see James Childs' Preaching Justice: The Ethical Vocation of Word and Sacrament Ministry). We live in communities that are often steeped in darkness, in practices of injustice, and deeply invested in societies and nations of injustice. It's the air we breath. Because we often benefit from this system of injustice, we are content to ignore and deny the present way of death -- even when Life and Light shows up in our midst to call us to a new way. We have learned the song of Death for so long that singing a different tune seems absurd, or like a flight of fancy, or like an ivory tower, or like naivete. God's song just seems absurd in the face of death. Even when we proclaim the hope of resurrection, we're still so deeply shaped by the song of Death that resurrection feels like a magic tricks -- a sleight of hand. But, as for life now, we don't even bother to question if we’re singing the right song. And yet, God continues to send prophets into our midst to break down our walls of denial of death: Moses, Samuel, Anna, Esther, Jeremiah, Jesus. But, make no mistake, that kind of preaching and proclamation is liable to get you killed. Even if it is not physical death, it may entail the death of relationships. We love our denial.
To speak out against the denial, to bring to surface the pain and the disillusionment is to confront society's greatest power over the masses. Karl Marx said that "religion is the opiate of the masses". He was partially right. When Christianity merely becomes a cultural extension that guards our numbness to the injustices around us, the faith has become an opiate. And, like any opiate addiction, religion then becomes an addiction that facilitates other addictions: Addictions to power, privilege, possessions, etc. Addictions isolate us more and more from community, therein lies its power. It takes an outside intervention to break those cycles of addiction. Jesus is God's outside intervention that breaks the cycle of addiction to denial.
There's been a looming question readers will ask to what I've been saying: "What is the content of good, faithful preaching?" Simply put, Jesus. I don't mean this in a simplistic way, but as a genuine foundation. Jesus not only is the Word by which everything is created. Jesus is also the Word by which everything is recreated. Jesus is the "logic" and "wisdom" of God by which everything was ordered in Creation and will be reordered in the New Creation. Between these two poles, Jesus is the Word that can disrupt our denial and unveil the ways of Death which we currently imbibe and inhabit. As such, I think all faithful preaching is rooted in understanding Jesus as both the promise and fulfillment of Creation.
Jesus is the "logic" that holds Christian preaching and Christian worship together with Christian life. Remove Jesus from the center of Christian preaching, and there's no point. The same is true for Christian worship and life -- including politics.
If that is the case, then, the "logic" or "wisdom" of good and faithful preaching is Jesus. I'm not saying that we have to explicitly force Jesus into every sermon or passage. Rather, Jesus is the hermeneutic (interpretive lens) by which we discern God's song throughout scripture. Now, this may be a bit idealistic because, like Judah did with Yahweh, we tend to reinterpret Jesus in light of our culture and nation. We are so deeply ingrained in our culture, that sometimes Jesus just becomes an extension of our way of life. In the end, we end up worshiping our way of life while plastering Jesus' name on it. Witness American life these days.
It must be said that God is the only one capable of breaking through the denial of our culture. This is prayerful work. It's painful work. It begins by listening and remembering. That is Jeremiah's (and Deuteronomy's) indictment against Israel -- they have not listened and they have not remembered what God has done in Israel and Judah's past. It begins by recognizing that we are contingent beings and that systems and institutions have a shelf life -- yes, even churches. To move beyond this denial gives opportunity to receive the new thing God as doing as a gift from God's future moving into our present, painful though it may be. God continues to call prophets, truth tellers that are willing to confront the seemingly impenetrable wall of denial.
Walter Brueggemann's Israel's Praise is a helpful book to read on the Psalms. He offers three things that the Psalms do for communities: Orient, disorient, and reorient. I would like to suggest that these three things are part of the prophetic task of churches and minister in this day. Our preaching is to orient people to that which is good, namely Jesus. It requires us to name those things in our world that reflect God's song. But this allows for us to join in those things which God has already unleashed. To disorient means that we call into question those policies, practices, platitudes, and paradigms which continue to propagate injustice and maintain the silent numbness of denial. But, we cannot end there without falling into some type of cynical despair. Rather, through poetic, prayerful imagination, preaching reorients people toward a new, shared future. That doesn't mean that we have to outline every detail, but to paint broadly with the brush stroke of hope. If the confronting of denial is concrete, so must the word of hope, even if it is only a glimpse of a future world yet-to-come. I think that is precisely what Jesus does for us and what prophetic preaching will aim toward.
This is what preachers mean when we speak of "redemption" (to which I'll turn tomorrow).
Denial is powerful. Denial is the capacity to avoid what is real and to create in its place a sub-version of reality in which to dwell. Humans are very adept at self-deception and denial.
We live in a culture that is bent on avoiding its own death (Ernest Becker). We deny our finitude. We are a culture on maintaining the appearance of youth and vitality. We don't even like to use the word "death". We prefer "passed away" or some similar phrase. In avoiding our own death, whether personally or socially, there is an absolutism that is created. It is the absolutism of "Market Ideology", which suggests that we are "too big to fail". When we are not willing to confront the possibility of our own demise, destruction, or demolition, we inevitably create a pseudo-world that lets life continue on as usual. There's no need for course correction, we assume.
I've been studying Jeremiah's ministry lately. He is a prophet that confronts a society's denial of impending death. It is both political and theological denial that prop each other up. Judah assumes that their way of life is guaranteed by God. And, by all observable data, life does seem like God has blessed it. Judah is economically stable and politically important. They are at the crossroads of trade. Things may not be as good as they once were, but the politicians and the religious leaders and the people of the land want to make Judah great again. The problem is that their ideas of greatness do not line up with God's idea of greatness.
Judah's social, political, and religious life is marked by injustice. Chapter 7 brings the indictment against Judah. They have followed other gods (gods of economics and power) and have lived in ways that compromise the lives of the most vulnerable in society: Widows, orphans, the poor, and foreigners. Now, as a result, Judah's life is a runaway train on the tracks headed toward a drop-off cliff. Death is coming. Despite the warnings from God through Jeremiah, Judah refuses to see their deathly ways as problematic. In fact, because the rich and powerful continue to benefit, they are deeply invested in keeping the status quo. They do so by making the political and theological system beyond question, beyond critique.
Jesus continues in the tradition of Jeremiah when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. His first action is to go into the Temple and turn over tables and chase people out, saying, 'This house is to be a house of prayer for ALL NATIONS, but you have made it into a den of thieves". Jesus is quoting Jeremiah here. By calling upon the tradition of Jeremiah and marching into the Temple to cleanse it, Jesus is making both a political and theological statement. He is calling into question all the power arrangements of society. Or, to put it another way: All politics are theological and all theology is political. Worshiping God on Sunday doesn't matter much if our lives don't reflect God's character and nature the rest of the week in how we treat each other, particularly those who are most vulnerable in society. Worship lived out looks like justice.
Yesterday, I talked about God's voice being "unending". I suggested that the Creation's movement is the ripple effect of God's creative speech. The Creation hums and reverberates with life because of God's speech-act in of Creation that continues to sustain life. I also mentioned that we are fully God's Creation as God intended when we join in harmony with God's song. The problem is that we tend to sing out of tune, in discord with God's harmony. We want to sing our own song and deny that God is even singing ... or, if God is singing, God should be singing our tune. Even in the life of God's people throughout history, singing in tune with God has come in short-lived spurts that then quickly revert back to singing our own song. How do we learn to sing God's song? That is, if we're quite honest, a more important scriptural question than biblical scholarship tends to appreciate. From the Exodus to the Exile, the Old Testament is filled with songs. Mary's prayers in Luke have become a rich liturgical tradition for the church (for example, the Magnificat in Luke 1). And then there's the gospel of John.
John 1 provides insight. Jesus is unfolded as the Word (Logos is Greek for "word" but can also mean "logic" or "wisdom") through whom all Creation came to be. If Creation is God's "first sermon", the "logic" of that first sermon is the Word -- it's Jesus. In other words, Creation's point and purpose is found in Jesus. Jesus is the song God sings. And, from a Christian perspective, it's the song Creation must sing in order to be in tune with the heart of God. Of course, John 1 is also ominous in that the Creation didn't recognize the Word, who is also the Light of the World. Instead, they try to snuff out the Light through crucifixion. The "darkness" did't understand the Light. And, when the Light began to expose the unjust practices of the powers-that-be, the powers retaliated with their only weapon: Death. They sang a different song and it was the song of Death.
I want to stop there to highlight the tension that is present in each preaching moment (see James Childs' Preaching Justice: The Ethical Vocation of Word and Sacrament Ministry). We live in communities that are often steeped in darkness, in practices of injustice, and deeply invested in societies and nations of injustice. It's the air we breath. Because we often benefit from this system of injustice, we are content to ignore and deny the present way of death -- even when Life and Light shows up in our midst to call us to a new way. We have learned the song of Death for so long that singing a different tune seems absurd, or like a flight of fancy, or like an ivory tower, or like naivete. God's song just seems absurd in the face of death. Even when we proclaim the hope of resurrection, we're still so deeply shaped by the song of Death that resurrection feels like a magic tricks -- a sleight of hand. But, as for life now, we don't even bother to question if we’re singing the right song. And yet, God continues to send prophets into our midst to break down our walls of denial of death: Moses, Samuel, Anna, Esther, Jeremiah, Jesus. But, make no mistake, that kind of preaching and proclamation is liable to get you killed. Even if it is not physical death, it may entail the death of relationships. We love our denial.
To speak out against the denial, to bring to surface the pain and the disillusionment is to confront society's greatest power over the masses. Karl Marx said that "religion is the opiate of the masses". He was partially right. When Christianity merely becomes a cultural extension that guards our numbness to the injustices around us, the faith has become an opiate. And, like any opiate addiction, religion then becomes an addiction that facilitates other addictions: Addictions to power, privilege, possessions, etc. Addictions isolate us more and more from community, therein lies its power. It takes an outside intervention to break those cycles of addiction. Jesus is God's outside intervention that breaks the cycle of addiction to denial.
There's been a looming question readers will ask to what I've been saying: "What is the content of good, faithful preaching?" Simply put, Jesus. I don't mean this in a simplistic way, but as a genuine foundation. Jesus not only is the Word by which everything is created. Jesus is also the Word by which everything is recreated. Jesus is the "logic" and "wisdom" of God by which everything was ordered in Creation and will be reordered in the New Creation. Between these two poles, Jesus is the Word that can disrupt our denial and unveil the ways of Death which we currently imbibe and inhabit. As such, I think all faithful preaching is rooted in understanding Jesus as both the promise and fulfillment of Creation.
Jesus is the "logic" that holds Christian preaching and Christian worship together with Christian life. Remove Jesus from the center of Christian preaching, and there's no point. The same is true for Christian worship and life -- including politics.
If that is the case, then, the "logic" or "wisdom" of good and faithful preaching is Jesus. I'm not saying that we have to explicitly force Jesus into every sermon or passage. Rather, Jesus is the hermeneutic (interpretive lens) by which we discern God's song throughout scripture. Now, this may be a bit idealistic because, like Judah did with Yahweh, we tend to reinterpret Jesus in light of our culture and nation. We are so deeply ingrained in our culture, that sometimes Jesus just becomes an extension of our way of life. In the end, we end up worshiping our way of life while plastering Jesus' name on it. Witness American life these days.
It must be said that God is the only one capable of breaking through the denial of our culture. This is prayerful work. It's painful work. It begins by listening and remembering. That is Jeremiah's (and Deuteronomy's) indictment against Israel -- they have not listened and they have not remembered what God has done in Israel and Judah's past. It begins by recognizing that we are contingent beings and that systems and institutions have a shelf life -- yes, even churches. To move beyond this denial gives opportunity to receive the new thing God as doing as a gift from God's future moving into our present, painful though it may be. God continues to call prophets, truth tellers that are willing to confront the seemingly impenetrable wall of denial.
Walter Brueggemann's Israel's Praise is a helpful book to read on the Psalms. He offers three things that the Psalms do for communities: Orient, disorient, and reorient. I would like to suggest that these three things are part of the prophetic task of churches and minister in this day. Our preaching is to orient people to that which is good, namely Jesus. It requires us to name those things in our world that reflect God's song. But this allows for us to join in those things which God has already unleashed. To disorient means that we call into question those policies, practices, platitudes, and paradigms which continue to propagate injustice and maintain the silent numbness of denial. But, we cannot end there without falling into some type of cynical despair. Rather, through poetic, prayerful imagination, preaching reorients people toward a new, shared future. That doesn't mean that we have to outline every detail, but to paint broadly with the brush stroke of hope. If the confronting of denial is concrete, so must the word of hope, even if it is only a glimpse of a future world yet-to-come. I think that is precisely what Jesus does for us and what prophetic preaching will aim toward.
This is what preachers mean when we speak of "redemption" (to which I'll turn tomorrow).