The Little Friar

As a pastor, one of my favorite parables of Jesus was the parable of the sower found in Matthew 13.  And Robert Capon's Kingdom, Grace, Judgment:  Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus is perhaps the best commentary on those parables.  My pastoral imagination was shaped by the way in which Capon interpreted the parable. Extravagance.  Without caution, the sower throws the seed wherever it may fall.  Extravagance is the only word that I can think of to describe the scene of the sower.  Slinging the seed without caution, without calculation. There is an extravagance in that act.  Regardless of the soil, the seed is sown.  The seed doesn't always take root.  Yet, the sower casts the seed in anticipation of the harvest.  Extravagance is a good word. Grace is a good word as well.   Unmerited gift.  Like that sower of the seed, God's "seed" is cast wherever it might fall, regardless of the soil it ...

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.  Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36.25-28). I was struck tonight by the phrase from all your idols I will cleanse you . To hear so many Christians talk, our hearts need cleansed from sin, not idolatry. But Ezekiel seems to say that idolatry, not sin, is the deeper issue for the human heart.  What we need to be cleansed of are false allegiances.  We need to purify our hearts from idolatry. Sin, in this view, is more a symptom than a disease.  When the heart is set on...

One of the texts I don't hear being bantered about in the refugee/immigration debate: Hebrews 2.14-15. This is a significant text for my own theological thinking, particularly about this issue. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death -- that is, the devil -- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. In the affluent West, where our culture is characterized by a "denial of death" -- a culture where we like to pretend, due to modern medicine and our technological wizardry that we are immune to death -- our slavery to the fear of death is mostly neurotic. We strive, in the words of Henri Nouwen, to be relevant, spectacular or powerful in our quest to live a meaningful and significant life in the face of death. If you looked in the mirror today to check your appearance or checked your Facebook, Twitter or blog accounts ...

Karl Barth's son, Christoph, prepared a theological introduction to the Old Testament, God with Us , this is perhaps one of the most neglected -- but one of the most fruitful -- introductory texts on the theology of the Old Testament. Next to Brueggemann's introduction , Barth's is my favorite. For Christoph Barth (as with his father), the incarnation forms the climactic turning point of sacred history. The high point in the grand biblical drama of redemption involved the self-emptying descent of God in Jesus. For many, the incarnation may seem like a 33-year anomaly in the life of God. The God who is otherwise transcendent or at least invisible became visible, imminent and incarnate for a short while. He completed the job and promptly re-ascended to the Father. Phew! Otherwise, it was an unusual -- though necessary -- phase. We all have phases, and so did God. Now he's over it. But this way of conceptualizing God is problematic for at least two reasons. First,...

Today is the First Sunday of Advent. The new day of the Church’s year.    When all the rest of the world is rushing to sing Christmas carols, the Church resists.    That's because Advent is the Church's exile. Advent isn't Christmas. Advent is exile. Waiting, hoping God will act in the future. We are slaves in Egypt. We are exiles in Babylon. We are sad friends mourning the the sufferings and deaths of a fallen world. Places like a synagoge in Pittsburgh or a shopping mall in Alabama, capture our attention and imagination. Where is God? We are waiting. That is Advent. Learning to be patient, learning to wait on God. Which is why I think the Church should do more with the Book of Job during Advent. Up until the Book of Job, the story has been governed by a theology of retribution, the "blessings and curses" of Moses (Deuteronomy 11). Do good and stay faithful to God and you will be blessed. Turn to wickedness and idolatry and you will get p...

In last night's news: Putting Romans 13 forward, as if it were a clear manifestation of all the ways in which Christians relate to the state government, clearly misunderstands Paul.  But, more importantly, it ignores the overwhelming way in which Christian discipleship shapes political life. If you're going to read Romans 13, you also have to read Revelation 13. Romans 13, specifically, sends chills down my spine when read in the way Jeff Sessions, and so many others in this current American administration, want me to read it.  This text has been used over the centuries to justify every conceivable kind of oppression and tyranny.  It has also been used to stifle criticism of the powers that be and to resist any effort at reform.  This passage has been quoted at Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King.  To people who hang around Jesus, to quote the Bible in the way Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible seems repressive. And it should. But it hasn't al...

This line from James 2.10 always seems to catch the eye of those American Christians who enjoy being legalists:  "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it".  They envision a god is a nit-picky moral bean counter when it came to evaluating our sins and slip ups. But in the larger context of James 2, I'm not so sure that’s quite right: My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.  Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.  If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet", have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dear brothers and sisters:  Has not God chosen those who are ...

CS Lewis once remarked : True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. When it comes to humility I think a lot of Christians tend to work with the wrong idea. The idea that many seem to have is that humility involves thinking less about yourself, to have a negative or even morbid self-concept. Justification for this sort of thing comes from texts like Philippians 2.3: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Humility, it seems, is considering others as "better" than yourself. And if others are better than you it stands to reason that you are "worse".  Humility, in this view, is having that sort of morbid self-concept:  Others are "better" than me. But is that what Paul is saying in Philippians 2.3? The word translated as “better” in this text is hyperechontas from the root hyperecho . The word (in various forms) occurs only four other times in t...

I was reading the Parable of the Sheep and Goats again (from Matthew 25).  It's a Parable that most of us who've heard about judgment and hell have heard quite a few times, I'm sure.  But something jumped out at me in the parable.   The King puts the sheep on his right hand and says this to them: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." The sheep are shocked.  Consulting their memory, they don’t ever recall seeing the King on earth: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and cloth...

I was reading Matthew’s parable of the sower this morning. Let’s make some connections first. At the beginning of Matthew 5, there is Jesus and there is a crowd; so too here at the beginning of Matthew 13, there is Jesus and there is a crowd. It’s time to teach. The crowds are big, so in Matthew 5 Jesus sits on a hill to teach, while here in Matthew 13 he gets into a boat. In Matthew 5 he gives instructions, while in Matthew 13 he deploys a different didactic strategy: Parables, stories. Stories? Well, yes, parables are stories, very short stories. But don’t think you can relax and take it easy-peasy. It’s not as if the Sermon on the Mount is a lecture, while Matthew 13 is a children’s talk. Not a bit of it. Kids can listen in on these stories, but parables are seriously adult. They’re artful and arch, they tease and twist, they mess with your mind. The materials on which Jesus draws are commonplace — nature, agriculture, village life — but the punch lines to which they lea...

A friend and I have been tossing around the old theological hot potato of "fearing" God. He grew up with fear being the primary means by which God motivates human behavior.  Fear hell.  Fear the world.  Even fear God. It is, after all, one of the primary ways preachers tend to preach -- fire and brimstone results in so much fear. There was so much fear that first Easter, too.  Right there, in the text, in the "shorter" ending of Mark.  Fear: When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.  Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.  As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on t...

Make no doubt about it: The kindness to which we Christians are called is difficult. It’s never easy to go about the work of reconciliation in the world. We Christian talk about love, but I oftentimes think that’s just a warm fuzzy word to make us sound good. It’s simply too amorphous and too abstract. We’ve pretty much lost the biblical sense of love a long time ago. So I don’t focus there. Because, while we’re being honest, I know too many brothers and sisters in the Faith who use the word love to justify being harsh and exclusive. Love becomes doing what is “best” for you and, by the way, you don’t get to decide what is best for you. (In full disclosure, I’ve done this all-too-often in the past. But I try to catch myself from doing it.) This is why I think the Bible so much stress on God’s loving-kindness. We’re supposed to start small. Work on kindness first, then worry about love. If we’re thoroughgoing kind people, love will follow. But if we get kind wrong, it’s re...

In praying the Daily Office recently I noticed the Psalm was printed like this:  "Psalm 68: 1-20(21-23)24-36". Those of us familiar with the Book of Common Prayer  know what those parentheses mean.  In essence, feel free to read from verses 1-20, skip that bit between 21-23, pick back up at verse 24, and finish reading at verse 36. Verses 21-23 are optional.  But why? Generally, when you see those parentheses in the lectionary you're being warned that you are about to encounter one of those dark and difficult texts in the Bible and that you might, depending upon the situation (kids, you know, might be listening in), want to read around those passages.   I hate it when they skip over bits like that.   Make no doubt about it:  Psalm 68 has some rough bits in it.  Right where the BCP said it would, in fact.  But in the midst of the darkest spots, there's Light. That is, when I read this psalm Christologically , it...

From Matthew 13.24-30: He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'” As Jesus goes on to say, the wheat represent the children of the kingdom. The weeds represent the children of the evil one. The field i...

To properly understand an action, you need to interpret it in the light of the social context in which it takes place. For example, if we were to hear about a white male offering his seat at the front of a bus to an African American woman, we would probably interpret this as a nice gesture, but nothing more. If we were to learn that this took place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955, however, we would interpret this same gesture as having much more significance. For in the pre-civil rights South, this act would have defied racist laws and social norms. Similarly, many today miss — or misread — the revolutionary dimension of Jesus’ life because they interpret his actions by twentieth century western standards. They thus think the way Jesus treated oppressed and marginalized people was merely nice. These folks conclude that being a Christian is about being nice. In reality, when we understand Jesus in his original first century Jewish context, the way Jesus treated people went way be...

Earlier today I made a few comments about the Woman at the Well from John 4. Tonight I want to expand that line of thinking out just a bit. And I start with a simple enough theological notion: God gives the grace-gift, Jesus, to the unworthy. In the ancient context that was a revolutionary idea. According to the ancients, gifts were only to be given to worthy recipients to ensure the web of social reciprocity at the heart of the ancient gift economies. We tend to miss the radical social implications of Paul’s message of grace. We moderns tend to make grace a personal and psychological experience: I feel grateful because God loves me, an unworthy sinner. But in Paul’s context the message of incongruous grace — God gives gifts to the unworthy — blew up the entire ancient way of thinking about social relationships. In short, rather than creating an internal, private experience, grace creates a new social imagination and reality. According to Paul, in the light of grace a...

I was reading this morning in John 4: A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The phrase that jumped out at me was Jesus’ response to the woman: “If you knew the gift of God … you would have asked”. If you knew the gift of God you would have asked. For centuries we’ve commented on the transgressive nature of Jesus’ actions at the well. A Jew speaking to a woman, and a Samaritan to boot, let alone a women deemed to be a sinner due to her domestic situation, was highly transgressive and shocking. So much so the text takes the time to comment on the disci...

I’m a Christian. Occasionally, I’m asked if I’m a “born-again” Christian. I’m really ambivalent about answering “yes” to this question. Instead of being a term with which all Christians can and should identify, “born-again” has become a phrase that some Christians like me are hesitant to claim for themselves, while others claim it for themselves with a sense of exclusive ownership, both fervently and vehemently, in a weaponized, “Gottcha!” sort of way. Above all — yes — the way the term is used by some Christians to make themselves feel more Christian and others feel less Christian. Apparently it’s not sufficient to say (as Jesus himself rephrases being “born again”) that you have been “born of water and Spirit” (John 3.5), that is, that by baptism and faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit, you have been incorporated into the church. No, to be a “real” Christian, you’ve got to have a special conversion experience, usually dramatic, often dateable, and frequently expressed in public “te...