The Right Question--September 1, 2022

The Right Question--September 1, 2022

"Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are.  Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free.  Are you free from a wife?  Do not seek a wife.  But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away." [1 Corinthians 7:25-31]

Did you ever debate, two days before you are supposed to leave on vacation, whether to buy more milk or not?  You know that mental calculus you do, standing in the dairy section of your grocery store, trying to figure out whether you and your household will actually use or drink another full or half gallon in the days you have before you will be away, and whether it would be a waste to buy it now?  Or, on the other hand, have you ever come home from vacation after having left old milk in the fridge, and now it's gone bad, and your refrigerator smells sour because you hadn't planned in light of being away for a week or two and leaving old dairy products behind?

I know those are pretty low stakes--at most, you've wasted a few dollars on unconsumed milk, and maybe you've got a science experiment fermenting in your fridge.  But I want to use that experience as a bit of a thought experiment.  In a scenario like that, the question, "Is it morally wrong to buy milk two days before vacation?" isn't very helpful.  It's not a matter of whether it is "sinful" to buy milk, but rather we need different language.  We need to ask the question of whether it is a wise or good choice for you, the real actual you and not some hypothetical abstract "potential consumer", to put the plastic jug in your cart.

And that decision depends on a couple of factors: how many people are in your household, how many of them are milk drinkers, how many meals between now and your departure are going to involve milk as an ingredient, and how big a deal it would be to you if you have to clean out a sour smelling fridge when you get back if you accidentally forget to use it all before you leave on your trip.  Even the question of how long you'll be away is a part of the mental math.  Those variables are going to be different for different people.  So while you can certainly be "pro-milk" in your house and think milk is a good and nutritious source of calcium, protein, and other nutrients, you might still decide not to get some if you are about to leave town for two weeks.  On the other hand, you can certainly be firmly "anti-waste" and determined not to give in to our culture of disposability and endless consumption, but still think, "Yeah, the kids are going to want milk on their cereal for the next few mornings," and choose to buy some to use up before your trip.  Neither is sinful, and neither is the absolute "right" or "wrong" choice.  It's more about what is wise in your set of circumstances.

Okay, this is all clearly not just about milk, though.  Paul has been looking at how we inhabit our social situations as Christians in this section.  And that has included things like those who were enslaved, those who were married to non-Christians, and those whose spouses had died.  So now the question turns to single people--those who are not married and never have been, and whether it is a good idea or not for them to pursue marriage.  And again, much to the chagrin of the religious-bookstore-and-Christian-publishing industry, the apostle himself doesn't actually seem as interested in making sure everybody gets paired up in romantic relationships as a lot of "inspirational" writers would have us believe.  Paul doesn't say, "Yes, you had better get married, because that's God's intention for all people." Neither does he say, "It's Adam and Eve in the Bible, not Adam staying single and Eve staying single, so you all need to pair-up if you want to live biblically."  Rather, he says almost the opposite: you don't have to be partnered with somebody else in order to fully live the Christian way of life--and if you are married, you have taken on a lot more distress in life. 

But Paul's reasoning underneath that is maybe just now becoming clear.  As he says in today's passage, and as he'll go further in the next several verses, too, "the present form of this world is passing away."  In other words, Paul was convinced that Jesus' return was imminent, like any day.  And in light of the hope of Christ's coming again, Paul tells his readers that it's not worth building your whole life on assuming you'll get the storybook life--the kids and grandkids, the golden years of retirement, the white-picket fence, and all the rest of the cookie-cutter picture.  We aren't guaranteed that, and in fact, our hope as Christians in Christ's coming again means we dare to live our lives toward a better goal and a bigger hope than just a comfortable life in suburbia with matching his-and-hers towels.  On the other hand, when you take the step of marrying someone, you have taken on considerable obligation to look out for another person's welfare, livelihood, and needs.  And as he'll say in the next paragraph [which we'll look at tomorrow], when you are married, and especially if there are children in the picture, too, your life is pulled in more directions all at once, and sometimes it feels like being faithful to Jesus is runs in conflict with providing for a family.

For Paul, the hope of Christ's coming in glory reframes everything else in our lives.  The desire to meet the Third Quarter Sales Quota just seems empty when you realize that our little piles of money won't last when God makes all things new.  The social pressure to find someone to be your "Plus-One" at wedding receptions and parties doesn't seem so important in light of the promised gathering of all peoples to God's resurrection party that has no end.  And for that matter, maybe trying to achieve the storybook life where Prince Charming marries the Princess seems a little trite in a world where others are starving or in need of housing.  And if you are convinced that following Jesus means reaching out to help and care for those neighbors, near and far, yeah, in comparison, trying to manufacture the perfect, quaint domestic life from the magazine cover seems kind of shallow.  

And it's all kind of like the "Do I buy milk or not?" question.  Paul doesn't say that it's sinful or bad or wrong to get married or have a family.  But he does want to see our lives in light of God's in-breaking kingdom, and to see how the hope of Christ's coming might affect our choices.  For Paul, who literally thought Jesus would come again in his lifetime, it was a really hard case to say people should build their lives on marriages and children when Christ's coming would rearrange EVERYTHING.  He's like the voice saying, "We're going on vacation in two days--are you really going to drink all that milk?"  But he can also see that, yeah, maybe in some circumstances and for some people, it makes sense to be married and have that part of the human experience.  For us, now some two thousand years later, we have a lot of experience of people who have lived, married, had children, gotten old, and spent their lives before Christ's return, and so for us our perspective is going to be different from Paul's.  We need to live in that tension that Christ could come at any time--and yeah, our life plans might not go the way we expect if he comes tomorrow--and yet also live life right now as well and wisely as we can.  For some people, it is going to make perfect sense for them to be married and raise families and all that.  For others, it won't.  What is worth noting here is that Paul, even for all his personal preferences and informed opinions, is still open to the possibility that not everyone has to do the same thing with their lives.

Sometimes we church folk would do well to remember that not every option in our lives can be reduced to a question of, "Is this sinful or not?"  but rather that the right question is more like, "What is the wisest and best thing to do in my circumstances, even if that's not the same as what my neighbor does?"  Knowing that Paul, with opinions of his own, is still able to say, "Here's my advice, but you might come to a different conclusion for your situation," gives us some direction, too, for our impulses to tell other people the "ONE RIGHT WAY" to do things sometimes.

Sometimes, after all, you buy the extra milk just before vacation... and sometimes, you don't.

Lord God, make us wise in our decisions, and keep all of our lives oriented around the hope of your coming to make all things new in Christ.

Biblical... Or Christ-Like--August 31, 2022

Biblical... Or Christ-Like--August 31, 2022

"Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.  Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it.  But if you are able to gain your freedom, rather, make use of it.  For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.  You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.  In whatever condition each was called, brothers and sisters, let them abide there with God." [1 Corinthians 7:20-24]

Well, here's a new sort of minefield altogether--or maybe, it's more like a battlefield, where you can see the scars of war and the terrible bloody cost in lives from what has happened on this territory.  It's hard, I confess, to read these words from the New Testament as an American Christian, particularly as a White American Christian [and yes, one whose children are Black], knowing that independently of what Paul's meaning and historical context were, these words have been used in my country's history, and in my religion's history, to justify enslaving other human beings, and to do so on the basis of skin color.  I can't honestly or seriously engage with this text without also acknowledging the monster in the room of America's history of racially-based chattel slavery, and how passages like this one were used to underwrite it as all God's will.

So, let's deal with the monster in the room first--we will have to face it before we can get any further back in history to what Paul had in mind in his first century context [where slavery, while still awful and exploitative, didn't have quite the same animus of racism as in our nation's historical legacy].  In our history, including the history of Christian churches, pastors, and teaching, passages like this have been used to say, "See?  Paul thinks that slaves should stay slaves and just think of themselves as free in a vaguely 'spiritual' sense.  No rocking the boat... no challenging the status quo... no cost to those who have owned slaves... and no clear confrontation of slavery as a moral evil.  For literally centuries, White Christian preachers in this country, across denominational lines, took this and a few other passages as a definitive answer to the question of slavery, claiming that God's verdict on the subject was basically to shrug with indifference, as if to say to enslaved people, "Tough luck that you are enslaved, but there's not much I can do about it for you--just try to have a positive religious attitude about it."

That whole approach, however, requires you to focus in on the "if you are enslaved now, don't be concerned about it" part and not the "Do not become slaves of any human masters" part of these verses [another example of what we talked about yesterday as "picking the worst cherries" in a text]. And besides the tension in this text itself, you also have to ignore that Jesus' inaugural address in Luke's Gospel takes as its central text the mission to "let the oppressed go free and proclaim liberty to the captives," along with the entire story of Israel as a nation of formerly enslaved families who were liberated by God over against the claims of Pharaoh.  In other words, while you can try to make an argument from this passage that Christianity permits [or even endorses] slavery, you have to do it with some pretty willful ignorance for the central figures of the whole story of Scripture [Jesus and Israel] and a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance.  It's a bad-faith argument, I'd say, even if I can still wish that Paul had been clearer or foreseen how his words could be twisted by greedy slavers and an economy built on that slavery centuries after he wrote them.

And again, this whole conversation pushes us once again to look at the difference between justifying something just because "It's in the Bible" versus what is in line with the character of Jesus.  As plenty of folks have noted before, there are an awful lot of things you can say are "Biblical" [in the sense of, "they happen or are mentioned in the Bible," or "figures in the Bible do these things and are not instantly zapped as punishment for doing them"], but which are not truly Christ-like.  And to be perfectly honest, we are disciples of Christ Jesus--we are called to be like Christ, which is not the same as "biblical." So yeah, slavery happens in the Bible; you can say slavery is biblically permitted in places in the stories of its pages--but so is freeing the enslaved [something that was supposed to happen in Israel's society every seven years at the sabbath and jubilee years, along with the outright cancelling of all debts].  But which is Christ-like:  enslaving people or freeing people from human bondage?  It seems pretty clear only the latter.  We could spend all day fleshing out the differences between what we can technically label as "biblical" and what we can see is authentically "Christ-like."  But suffice it to say that for an awful lot of this nation's history, a large number of people like me--preachers of White Christian Respectable Religion--were content only to ask, "Is there a loophole that lets me say enslaving other people is biblical?" rather than asking, "Can a follower of Jesus Christ ever dare to claim ownership of another human being?"

The difference between, "Can I use the Bible to justify it, even if it isn't Christ-like?" and "What does the way of Jesus look like here?" is the difference between death-dealing but socially-respectable religion and life-giving Good News for all.  So I am going to put all my chips and bet them on the position that Jesus does not endorse enslaving other people--that is the position, to borrow a line of the late Rachel Held Evans, I am will to risk being wrong about.  If you're not comfortable with reading someone who is willing to take that kind of approach to the Scriptures, then we may need to part company here.

But... if you're still here... this might have just opened up a window for a better understanding of what Paul is actually trying to do and say here in his letter to the Corinthians.  See, I think it's notable whom Paul doesn't address here in this passage--there is no direction given to slave-owners, only to those who are free, and those who were enslaved.  I don't think that's because he's giving a pass to slave masters--I think it's because there aren't any in the congregation, and quite likely because they knew that the Christian gospel was not compatible with owning human beings.  I think Paul doesn't address slave-masters in this passage for the same reason I don't address neo-Nazis, child-traffickers, or cross-burning members of the KKK as though they are sitting in the pews to hear my sermons on a weekly basis: I would hope it is clear that those kinds of affiliations are not compatible with the way of Jesus.  Rather, Paul writes to the people he knows ARE listening to his words:  the ones on the bottom of the social ladder, the enslaved, the oppressed, and the exploited.  The early Christian movement had a huge appeal among marginalized people, from tax collectors, sex workers, and lepers in Jesus' ministry, to Samaritans and Gentiles and eunuchs in the days of the book of Acts, to women and enslaved people in the wider spread of Christianity across the Empire.  And when you are writing knowing that your audience is largely made up of enslaved people, you write guidance for them, not necessarily for every possible reader who might ever happen across your letter.  So we don't hear Paul saying, "Hey you Christian slaveowners, you should let your slaves go," because quite probably there weren't any to be found [at this point in history].  He writes for the people he knows are there.

And Paul's direction seems to be, essentially, "You can follow Jesus from whatever social condition you find yourself in."  I would be of the opinion, from my reading of both English translations and from at least a rough look at the Greek underneath it, that Paul says, "If you can gain your freedom, use that opportunity [to become free]," although I'll note that not every English translation or commentator agrees. The inside baseball of that interpretive and translational question is probably a conversation for another time, but I do think Paul is open to the notion that someone who has the opportunity to become free would do so.  However, I think that beneath that, there is another point Paul is trying to make: namely, that whatever situation you find yourself in, you are already qualified and capable of living the Jesus way of life right now.  You don't have to wait, in other words, until you make it to a certain rung on the social ladder before you can be a Christian, and you cannot be excluded because you are currently in a position of low status.  

So while we have been using [and more often, misusing] this passage for centuries as a reference manual for the question, "Does the Bible permit slavery?" I think that's coming at it from the wrong angle--from "up high" in the position of privilege as would-be slaveowners, rather than "from below" for those who may find themselves already enslaved, oppressed, or marginalized, and are wondering if they can really be Christians in their current state.  There were and still are, for example, religious faiths, spiritual traditions, and philosophical schools that are exclusive in their membership.  Some religions grew out of particular ethnicities, for example, and you really couldn't practice the faith without being a part of that group--much like ancient Judaism has often been both a religious faith and a ethnicity.  Other faith traditions might only allow men, or only allow women, into full participation.  Other kinds of philosophies of life are only possible if you have enough wealth to be able to spend your day meditating, praying, or sacrificing rather than working for your living.  And of course, other religions divide the world into social classes and castes, where those in the lowest position could never hope to be regarded as on equal footing with those from higher ones.  So it's a big that for Paul to say to people who are currently enslaved, "You already are worthy of belonging. You are able to serve Jesus even while some foolish human calls himself your master.  You do not have to become something else to be beloved or a part of the Reign of God--you are already in it, as far as God is concerned."  In a sense, then, Paul is saying to enslaved people, "No matter what a so-called 'master' may think, they cannot own you, because you belong to Jesus, who came to liberate the captive and to let the oppressed go free.  And no matter what kinds of chains they put on you, they cannot shackle your spirit, try as they may." That is liberating, even while people are struggling in enslavement.

It really does depend on how we approach the Scriptures, whether we'll discover them to be liberating or supporting oppression.  If we come looking for reasons to justify exploiting people, we'll find them in the Bible.  But if we come remembering that Jesus himself says he has come to set people free, we'll discover a subversive witness in the Scriptures that is downright revolutionary.

May we read, always, through the lens of Jesus.  And then may we live in his light, too.

Lord Jesus, teach us how to ask the right questions of these ancient witnesses in the Scriptures, so that we will be both free ourselves and able to help others be set free.

Picking the Right Cherries--August 30, 2022

Picking the Right Cherries--August 30, 2022

"Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised?  Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised?  Let him not seek circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything." [1 Corinthians 7:18-19]

I read a line the other day from pastor and writer Brian Zahnd recently, who says, "Look, we all cherry-pick the Bible--including Jesus and the apostles! It's just that some people are terrible at it--they pick all the worst cherries!"  

I haven't been able to forget that since.  And now here is Paul the apostle showing us exactly a clear example what it means.

It's fashionable in some circles to criticize people who emphasize or center their theology on some particular strand of the Bible. "You don't just get to cherry-pick out the parts you like!" goes the standard finger-wagging speech.  "If it's in the Bible you have to like it, and if you don't like something that's in the Bible, you're wrong!"  My guess is you've heard the rest of that spiel and all the standard boilerplate, like, "The Bible said it. I believe it.  That settles it!" and all the rest.  And I get it--it comes from the well-intentioned desire to take God's Word seriously, and not to let ourselves off the hook when the Scriptures challenge, stretch, confront, or pull the rug out from under us... which they do, if we really do take them on their own terms.

But the Bible itself doesn't present itself as a reference manual or a cookbook where every sentence carries the same heft, or even the same importance.  Jesus himself, when asked, "What is the greatest commandment [presumably from the Bible of ancient Israel--the Torah]?" doesn't respond with, "It's all equally important because it's all the Bible, and if you question that you are going to burn in hell!"  But rather, Jesus selects--he focuses on a particular center point.  Jesus' answer is, "Love God--oh, and even though you didn't ask, the other side of that coin is to love your neighbor... which is everybody."  Jesus says there are some things of greater importance in the Scriptures, and some of lesser importance.  And like a lens bending light to bring greater clarity, Jesus uses the "greater importance" stuff [loving God and loving neighbor] to bring the rest into focus, making some things to sharper and clearer in light of that love... and also allowing some things to recede out of focus.  We might not have been taught to recognize this, but Jesus is cherry-picking.  It's just that, to borrow Brian Zahnd's turn of phrase, Jesus picks the good cherries, not the worst ones.

Christians, too, by the way, have been doing the same intentionally for the last two thousand years every time we read the Scriptures in light of Jesus--he shows us what is central and what is peripheral.  Jesus himself is our lens--and Jesus insists that love is his own lens. So let's dispense once and for all with the fake seriousness of Respectable Religious People who say, "Every word of the Bible is equally, homogenously authoritative, and you cannot preference one part over another part--it must all carry the same weight!"  If we're paying attention at all, Jesus himself has been preferencing certain strands of the Scriptures, and he is certainly in line with the prophets who came before him who did the same.  

Don't believe me?  Go read Micah 6:6-8, where the prophet, speaking for God, preferences justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God over sacrifices--even though there are an awful lot of very specific commandments in the Old Testament about how and when to offer sacrifices.  And then, if you're up for it, go read Isaiah 56, where the prophet there says, "I know the old commandments said that foreigners and eunuchs are not allowed to belong to the people of God, but now I say that they do belong, even though they are still foreigners and eunuchs."  Voices from within the Bible itself have been picking cherries out of the rest of the Bible for centuries before Jesus.  The question isn't whether we should or not, but rather how to follow Jesus' and the prophets' lead for the ways to do it rightly.

So when Paul the apostle here says, "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything," we need to be clear that he is doing the same, too.  On the face of it, the sentence is staggering in its audacity--because pretty clearly there were precisely "commandments" in the Scriptures about being circumcised to belong to the people of God.  Going back to the story of Abraham and his descendants, and then reiterated again in the commandments from Sinai, no less than God commands males to be circumcised on the eighth day of life.  And by the time of Jesus and Paul, circumcision was one of the chief defining hallmarks that made you a visible member of the Jewish people, if you were male.  It is one of the commandments of God, straight out of the Bible, and sometimes God could be painfully clear about the importance of circumcision in some of the stories of ancient Israel [I will leave it to you to do the searching there if you want to find those tales].  And yet here is Paul saying that the condition of being circumcised doesn't matter, but rather that really matters are "obeying the commandments of God."  Wait--what?

Paul is clearly making a judgment call about which commandments are the center of God's direction for the followers of Jesus, and which are peripheral. He is unapologetically, unabashedly cherry-picking.  Just like he does in Romans, where he writes, "Owe no one anything except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law," and then goes on to say all of the commandments "are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law" [Romans 13:8-10].  But Paul isn't just making things up or editing things out willy-nilly--he is following the lead of Jesus, who has already shown us the beating heart of the Scriptures is love: first God's love for us, then our love for God and neighbor.

But look at what a radical move Paul is making here.  Even though it is very clear that "the rules" insist on a permanent physical procedure like circumcision, Paul is convinced that the real heart of the commandments is love, and people who are uncircumcised are able to fulfill that commandment as well and as truly as those who are circumcised.  And so Paul can write to the Corinthians that the "box" they fit into doesn't matter--what matters is to embody the call to love.  By doing that, Paul also reveals that the old binary either/or of "circumcised or not-circumcised" was never adequate for all the people of God anyway--it only ever applied to the half of the population with the prerequisite anatomy, so it was never a rule for the women of ancient Israel.  And for that matter, it never had a way of including people, like the case study about eunuchs in Isaiah 56, whose bodies didn't fit into any neat and tidy categories.  By saying that the binary choice of circumcised or non-circumcised doesn't count for anything, in favor of actually following God's direction to love, Paul is making a clear choice about what in the Bible itself carries the most weight, and what is of lesser substance.  And like Jesus before him, Paul points us to love at the center.  It's always been about love... for God... for neighbor... and yes, we find ourselves loved by God and neighbor, too.

We get ourselves into a ridiculous amount of trouble, often in the name of showing how pious and devout we are, when we treat the Bible like a set of instructions for assembling furniture from IKEA rather than a story centered in Jesus.  Paul here has given us a really helpful case study in knowing how to keep Jesus in focus and to read the rest of the Scriptures in light of him--that is, how to pick the best cherries, rather than the worst ones.  Following Jesus' own lead to see love as the center of the Scriptures allows us to see which of "The Rules" do not have to trouble us, so that we are freed to keep the great commandments at the beating heart of it all--the call to love.  It will keep us from making an idol out of the Bible so we are freed to love and serve the true God to whom the Scriptures point.

May we read the Scriptures with such discernment and clarity, and may we then live what we have read and understood.

Lord God, keep pointing us to the center of things in you and in Christ Jesus, who shows us your own heart of love for us and for the world.

The Life You've Got--August 29, 2022

The Life You've Got--August 29, 2022

"However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has distributed, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches." [1 Corinthians 7:17]

You've probably heard the old saw that goes, "If the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, you should probably do a better job taking care of your own lawn."

And while that line is something of a cliche by now, there's a reason things become cliche--they are often truths so helpful to remember that we keep coming back to them over and over again.  And this a particularly useful truth: you have been given your life, not somebody else's.  You are free to work on, develop, and improve your own life, but it's no good pining for someone else's life--or getting bitter about the good things happening for others.  The motto of envious siblings throughout Scripture, from Cain glowering over at Abel to the Prodigal's old brother, has always been: "But what about him?  It's not fair that I don't have what he's getting!"  And that kind of covetousness is never a good look--it always smacks of small-minded ingratitude for what one has.

By contrast, I've always been in awe of this beautiful and poignant insight from Wendell Berry's novel, Hannah Coulter, in which the narrator says this:

“The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”

Those are the right instructions, indeed.  And it's no surprise that Berry's character quotes another passage of Saint Paul at the end there [that piece about rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks is all from First Thessalonians], because here the same Saint Paul gives similar direction:  live the live you have, and receive it as a gift.  That doesn't mean we have to pretend the bad parts--the heartaches and wounds, the raw deals and unjust circumstances, the rotten luck, or the tragic turns of our lives--aren't there.  Neither does it mean we get to blame God for the bad stuff or tell other people that the suffering in their lives has been divinely sent to teach them some lesson. But it does mean that even once we have named the pains of life, we still each have the actual life we've been given to live to do something with.  And while perhaps every life has a certain amount of bitter to go with the sweet, life itself is a gift we did not earn.

In a culture like ours that seems built to run on an engine of dissatisfaction, it is a revolutionary thing to practice contentment with what we have and where we are. It is radical to receive this day, in this life, with all its beautiful things and terrible things, and to use as much of it as possible, as well as possible. When so many voices try and sell us on the Next Big Thing we are supposed to want [you know, so that THEN, at long last, we'll be happy... right?], and when so much of social media seems designed to make us feel like we are in competition with each other to "win" at life, what a refreshing--and downright countercultural--thing to continue on the path we are each on and, as the poet says, "to fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run" while we are on it.

Today, then, over against all the voices that seem bent on growing our discontent [and then peddling products they swear will fix it], what if today we listened for the quieter voice, the certainly more peaceable and wise voice, that says, like Hannah Coulter, "This is the life I've got--with this life and this day, I will rejoice... and pray... and give thanks, even in the midst of all the rottenness around, too"?  What if we framed the day with the question, "How can I use this day and the opportunities and challenges it brings, rather than wasting another moment in envy over what somebody else has, or in self-righteous condemnation over what somebody else is doing?"  

And yeah, like Wendell Berry's character says, I'm not always capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

Lord God, give us the gift of open-eyed contentment to use this day well, and to receive this life as a gift.

A North Star In New Places--August 26, 2022

A North Star In New Places--August 26, 2022

"To the rest I say--I and not the Lord--that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbelieve, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you. Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife." [1 Corinthians 7:12-16]

Look, here's the truth:  sometimes we don't have a direct answer from Jesus [or from the Bible] for the specific questions we bring.  When that happens, we don't have to panic, and we certainly shouldn't pretend we have the certainty of a clear command from Jesus to guide us.  Rather, we trust that even without a bible verse to give "THE ANSWER" [in red letters, no less], we are not alone to figure out how to navigate complicated situations.  Even when we don't have a roadmap from Jesus, we do have him as our North Star, and his way of loving people where they are at gives us our bearings.  Jesus' own peaceable presence becomes a compass for us to be peaceable people in our own relationships.

This passage from First Corinthians is a case in point.  The folks in Corinth have asked Paul how to handle situations where one spouse in a married couple has come to faith in Jesus but the other hasn't.  What should they do--get a divorce?  Force a conversion? Ignore the elephant in the room and just pretend the difference of faith doesn't matter?

Well, when we have questions about how we live the Jesus way of life, a good place to start is to ask, "What does Jesus say about this?"  And sometimes, we've got a really clear answer, to be honest.  

Should I love my enemy?  Yes. [That isn't always easy or fun, but at least we are clear what Jesus says.]  

Are people more important than possessions for Jesus?  Again, another clear yes.   

Should I forgive the debts others owe me?  Again, it's pretty hard to claim Jesus doesn't have a clear answer on this one, too--yes, we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven by God.  [I'm pretty sure those words from the Lord's Prayer are on our lips at least every week, even if we struggle to get them to take root in our minds and hearts.]

But sometimes, the questions we bring arise out of situations that the historical Jesus was never asked to weigh in on, and we just don't have a definitive "word from the Lord" to give us a rule or regulation.  And when we are dealing with questions like that, it's worth recognizing that we are doing our best to try and figure out what it looks like to walk the way of Jesus through those new settings.  Here in the question about marriages where one spouse is a believer and the other is not, Paul makes it clear that he doesn't have a clear teaching from Jesus on this, so he's giving his best to think in a Jesus-like way for those circumstances.  Paul doesn't, by the way, say, "Well, this letter that I'm writing is going to end up as part of the Bible, so therefore whatever I say here is as authoritative as a teaching from Jesus."  But rather, he acknowledges that Jesus himself is the center of our faith, and that it's Jesus who embodies for us the fullness of God's Reign and God's love.

Okay, so instead of pretending he has a quote from Jesus to give a definitive answer, Paul does some practical theology on the fly here.  If Jesus is our North Star for how we relate to other people, what might the way of Jesus look like in a situation where one spouse is not a Christian but the other is?  Since we don't even have a real-life example from Jesus' own relationships [to the best of our awareness, Jesus was never married] for dealing with a spouse, Paul has to do some deeper thinking.  And the bottom line here seems to be that Jesus can live with difference, and even maybe that Jesus would intentionally go out of his way to reach out to those who were different or "other" from him.  

The Jesus we meet in the Gospels has a way of crossing social lines, political borders, and religious boundaries to meet people, engage with people, and love people right where they are at.  You see it every time Jesus invites himself over to a party at a "sinner's" house, crosses into Gentile territory for deep and holy conversation with outsiders, or engages with people who do not share his own Jewish faith.  Paul can see that pattern in Jesus and trace out the trajectory for what that might look like in marriages or families where one person is a Christian and the other is not.  So rather than forbidding marriages where one spouse is a follower of Jesus and the other is not [or insisting that these marriages must dissolve], Paul says, "Don't bail out on someone just because they do not believe in Jesus right now."  Paul seems convinced that Jesus himself wouldn't abandon a spouse on account of that difference, and so we don't need to, either.  

And if you think about it, that's a pretty decent way of sketching out what the way of Jesus looks like in new situations even when we don't have a proof text, stack of Bible verses, or commandment from Jesus to dictate our policy.  Paul has shown us that we don't have to make things up or feel totally lost and adrift in those circumstances, but we can still think and pray through the question, "What does the way of Jesus look like in this situation?"  That doesn't mean we get to try a shortcut of saying, "Well, this is what I was always told by religious people that Christians should do," because we don't always get it right--and sometimes we have gotten it terribly, terribly wrong [maybe slavery, the Crusades, or Christian nationalism would be a few obvious examples].  And neither does it mean we get to say, "Whatever I already want to be true, I can claim as the 'Christian' response, because I am a Christian."  We have to do the work of getting to know Jesus more fully and deeply, and together we discern together how to walk in new territory in a way that has the distinctive cadence of the resurrected rabbi with wounded feet.  But we are not left alone to our own devices to do that.  The One whom we follow also walks with us.

So while maybe you're not doing a lot of wrestling on this particular day with whether you are, or are not, allowed to be married to someone who doesn't share your faith in Jesus, these verses do make for a good case study of how we address new questions, new situations, and new territory while we embody the love of Jesus and walk in his way.  And whatever the particular challenges of this day, that is ultimately our calling: to be people striving as well as we are able [even when we get it wrong... and we will] to embody the way of Jesus for the world to see.

That's a calling that will take a lifetime.

Lord Jesus, shape our lives in the form of your love, and guide our feet in the way you walk.

Doing the Hard Work--August 25, 2022

Doing the Hard Work--August 25, 2022

"To the married I give this command--not I but the Lord--that the wife should not separate from her husband [but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband], and that the husband should not divorce his wife." [1 Corinthians 7:10-11]

Anybody else feel like we're right back in the minefield we first wandered into back in Chapter Five? Whew, this is tough slogging here in these chapters, isn't it?

Look, I'm just not interested in weaponizing Bible verses against folks who have struggled, suffered, and survived through marriages that then came to an end.  Paul, drawing on the remembered teaching of Jesus himself [which is why Paul says, "not I but the Lord" here], does pretty clearly teach against divorce as a rule here, and we don't need to pretend that's not the case here.  However, it does seem important to note that Paul himself doesn't take that rule to beat up people who have already gotten divorced and lived through the pain of it, and he doesn't spend the rest of the chapter guilt-tripping people who have been through the death of a marriage.  Even when he is at his most hard-line, Paul doesn't punch down.

It also seems worth noting that Paul doesn't make threats here, even when he holds up the ideal of working through difficulties in marriage with the goal of reconciliation.  There's not a whiff of sulfur or brimstone, and there's not a mention of hellfire for those whose marriages end in divorce [to be honest, a number of the folks I have known and cared for over the years who were in bad marriages would have told me they were already living in hell and threats of damnation after death didn't have any persuasive power over them anyway].  But I do think there may be something helpful in Paul's way of framing things. By simply saying, "Neither spouse should divorce the other," [and, indeed, notice that he is saying the same to both partners in this marriage], it would have had at least some power to prevent divorce from being used as an empty threat.  And in a culture where at least some of the prevailing thinking was that a man could divorce his wife for burning dinner by simply saying, "I divorce you," three times, there were surely plenty of bad marriages where women were held hostage with the threat of being abandoned by their husbands.  "Put up with my cruelty, or else I'll divorce you... accept my coldness and do what I say, or else I'll throw you out..." that kind of thing.  By simply giving the directive, "In this community, we don't treat other people like they are disposable," Paul would have at least given some comfort to women who were being intimidated into just accepting their husbands' meanness because it came with a threat that they'd be abandoned if they spoke up.  Paul does not give an easy out to those who would use divorce as a threat to manipulate spouses.  And the fact that he doesn't go on to list divine punishments for actually going through with divorce suggests to me that he knows he is holding up an ideal--what "should" be the case--and not addressing every possible set of circumstances that could arise and which might end in divorce.

Maybe the question we need to ask when we come across texts like this is to consider how we intend to use these words from Scripture.  If my agenda is to beat up on someone else who has gone through a divorce, or to manipulate my spouse into staying rather than working on whatever issues we have between us, it doesn't seem very Christ-like to go hunting for verses to make people stay in marriages that are perhaps already dead.  But if I hear Paul's words as a calling toward the ongoing [and often difficult] work of refusing to throw other people away or treat them as disposable, then those words hit me and call on me to deal with my own relationships.  So maybe instead of loading up these verses so we can berate someone we know who has been through divorce, we can read this passage and ask, "Where might I be treating other people or relationships like they can be thrown away, and what would it take to work on those relationships rather than dismissing them?" If not in our marriages, what friendships have we strained or ignored?  What people at work have I treated like they were disposable?  How might I even be interacting with strangers at the store or in my daily routines like they don't matter, rather than seeing them as neighbors with whom I am in some level of relationship?  

Wrestling with those questions is not easy, but it does seem like the more Jesus-aligned way to deal with what Paul says here.  I think that makes it worth the effort.

Lord Jesus, keep us from attacking others and keep us honest with ourselves as we look at how we manage our own relationships in this life.

An Absence of Fear--August 24, 2022

An Absence of Fear--August 24, 2022

"To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry.  For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion." [1 Corinthians 7:8-9]

You know what I notice is completely absent from this whole conversation about whether or not to marry?  There's no mention of fear at all.  Not a whiff of anxiety about what will happen if a certain percentage Christians do not marry, procreate, and raise another generation of church-folk.  Not a trace of insecurity about being alone or left to fend for oneself.  And absolutely no distress or worry about Christians being "replaced" by other growing demographic groups.

That's really something, if you think about it, because in all honesty, a lot of the time, folks bring a lot of fearful baggage to their thinking about marriage.  And for Paul, doing something out of fear is a terrible reason to do it.  Here's what I mean.  Sometimes, you'll hear folks treat the question of getting married as a matter of calculating odds of being alone, being unfulfilled, or being unable to provide for oneself later in life.  As much as we may think we've moved away from that kind of social pressure, it's still definitely out there.  The questions put to the single folks might go like this:  "When are you finally going to settle down?  After all... [ominous pause] you're not getting any younger!"  Or maybe it's, "So-and-so isn't ideal a spouse, but I'd rather have somebody than nobody, so I'd better settle for this one!"  And sometimes it's just this unspeakable insecurity that if you're not paired up with someone else, you'll be left alone to face the difficult stuff of life as you age, like sickness, loss, and death.  A lot of those things go unsaid, but they are still out there, like a force-field, pushing on people to be afraid of what bad thing might happen if they don't get romantically paired up.

What amazes me is that Paul doesn't seem concerned by any of those worries--not for himself, and not for the folks in Corinth.  And that's because Paul really does believe that the rest of the Christian community, including Christ's own presence among us, mean we are never left to fend for ourselves alone.  Paul really does count on the church as a whole to step up to support those who need support, to offer the gifts of friendship and of "found-family," and to share the difficult things that come in life, like aging, sickness, and loss.  Paul doesn't see the need to pin everything on settling for a sub-par spouse out of social expectations when the Christian community as a whole can be there for us, genuinely and truly.  So for anybody feeling pushed into a relationship because of some unspoken pressure not to end up alone, Paul seems to say here, "You don't have to be afraid--we are here with you. You are never alone."  

The other thing that seems important here is that Paul doesn't seem concerned at all about birth-rates or keeping up with other demographic groups to avoid being "replaced." He doesn't talk about marriage at all as a way of making sure there will be enough "Christian" babies born to keep the church going--because the Christian community works differently.  We don't grow by simply "birthing" new members--the church grows by baptism, by the pull of the Holy Spirit, and by the compelling love and witness of Christians living in the way of Jesus.  While other kinds of societies or ethnic groups constantly worry about having to keep their numbers strong so that they don't die out, the church doesn't have live by that fear.  We don't have to worry about being "replaced," because the Christian community isn't defined by our biology, ethnicity, culture, language, or DNA passed from one generation to another.  

There are so many [pitiable] voices in our wider culture these days who are petrified by fear that their ethnic majority or social status will be lost as other groups grow, and they feed into a bigoted fear that their group will be "replaced." [And the consequences of that kind of fear are serious and deadly, as the families of the victims of the shootings in Buffalo last spring, or in El Paso a few years ago, or in Charleston at Mother Emanuel before that, will attest--those acts of violent and cowardly domestic terrorism were inspired by people who said they were afraid of their white demographic majority being "replaced" by other groups.]  But the followers of Jesus are meant to be different--we do not have to live with such insecurity, because the community of Jesus doesn't operate by mere biological reproduction.  And therefore, there is no added pressure that everybody needs to be birthing as many "in-group" babies to keep the numbers up.  Marriage doesn't have to be co-opted, as it has in other groups and eras in history, into being just a way of making sure there are "more of us" than there are of "them."  Paul doesn't have any fear that if we don't have enough marriages producing enough babies, that the gospel will die out or Christianity will be "replaced." He is convinced that the Good News of Jesus is powerful enough on its own to continue to draw people from every language, nation, culture, and ethnicity.  In a time like ours where some awfully loud voices keep shouting that fearful message, it's important for us to hear Paul's assurance, offered here between the lines, that we don't have to pressure folks into the mold or expectation of marriage as a way of birthing more disciples or keeping our demographics in a good place.  That's now how it works for the followers of Jesus, and it never has been.

So even though at first these verses might seem disconnected from our real-life situations, or Paul's perspective might sound out of touch, there really is good news for us to hear in his words.  And that good news is truly needed in a time where so much fear is stirred up among demagogues and talking heads.  We don't have to be afraid, and that means we don't have to be pushed into relationships that aren't right for us because others have manipulated us with fear.  We just don't have to afraid that way... and so we are free to enter into healthy and loving relationships for good reasons, not simply out from social pressure.  And it also means that nobody "has" to get married at all in order to be a good Christian.  The things we might have been taught to be afraid of do not have to hold power over us.  That really is deeply good news, even if today it's primarily the good news of what isn't said.

Lord God, free us from fear that clouds our choices, so that we can make good and wise decisions in our relationships for their own sakes, not out of insecurity.

Letting Grace Stretch Us--August 23, 2022

Letting Grace Stretch Us--August 23, 2022

"Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am.  But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind." [1 Corinthians 7:5-7]

To hear the Bible itself tell it, we don't all have to be the same. 

To hear the voice of God's Word in the Scriptures tell it, it is not only okay, not merely permissible, but it is actively and positively good, to be as God has gifted you to be.

Just let it sink in for a moment that this isn't a message cooked up by some new trend in psychology, or a feel-good self-esteem curriculum for your local elementary school to prevent bullying, or a campaign you can dismiss as "a bunch of politically correct activists."  This is the apostle Paul, the occasional apostolic curmudgeon of the New Testament, saying that the way you are made to be is a gift of God, and even if your gifts are different from his--or different from what he would do if he were in charge of things--it is a good and right thing to live according to the gifting God has given you, rather than to force yourself impossibly into the mold somebody else has made for you.

Yep.  He really says that.  Yep, this is the Bible--the two-thousand-year-old witness of the early Christian community.  Yes, none other than Saint Paul himself tells Christians whose romantic lives and relationship status are different from his, that is good for them to live according to the gifting they have, including finding permanent relationships as in marriage, rather than to get sucked into the dangerous whirlpool that comes with turning sex into a cheap commodity, and turns people into objects.

Now, if that's the headline--WE DON'T ALL HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME ROMANTIC ARRANGEMENTS TO BE CHRISTIAN--let's go back and show the work for how we get there.  Paul has been talking about relationships, sex, and marriage in response to the questions the Corinthians had written to him about.  And part of his response was to upend their expectations about who got to boss around whom in a marriage--spoiler alert: NOBODY.  Despite the assumed and ingrained patriarchy in a lot of Greco-Roman culture, Paul said that each partner in a marriage is to give themselves away to and for the other.  Wives place their lives, hearts, and bodies in the care and love of their husbands... and husbands do the exact same for their wives.  That by itself was a radical thing for Paul to say.  But now Paul takes an even bigger step when he says that he doesn't think everybody needs to be married or in a romantic relationship at all.  In fact, Paul says he thinks it would avoid a lot of headaches, and presumably a lot of heartaches, too, if more people were just single like him. But for those who are married, sure, he says, sex is a part of that relationship.  

Now, none of that might seem very radical on the face of it, but let's think about what this really means.  For a lot of folks, both inside and outside of the church, the messaging they've heard from Respectable Religious People for a very long time goes something like this:  "You are only successful in your Christian life if you are married with kids--if that's not you, you're doing it wrong."  Along with that, an awful lot of folks have heard messages like, "In your Christian marriage, the only way to do it right is for the husband to have the ultimate authority over his wife, and what he says goes."  Paul has now shot down both of those.  He just got finished in the previous verses insisting that husbands submit themselves to the care and stewardship of their wives just as much their wives are to do for them.  And now he says, "It's fine if you want to be married, but personally, I think it's actually more complicated to follow Jesus wholeheartedly if you also have the challenges of negotiating a marriage--I kinda wish everybody was free and single like I am."  Paul himself is the one saying, "It's not better to be married rather than single, at least not necessarily."  

But the truly radical thing Paul says is at the ends of these verses for today: Paul sees human relationships, including sexuality, as a gift that comes in different forms.  And even though Paul clearly has his own thoughts about what he thinks works best for him, he doesn't insist that everybody else's arrangements have to look like his or be the same as his.  Being married, he says, is a gift of God--and the right thing to do with a gift is to appreciate, enjoy, and receive it.  But also, Paul says, some people are given different gifts--and they don't have to look like the cookie cutter husband-and-wife-and-2.5-kids picture. And it's not only OK, but holy and good, for you to live in light of the gift you have been given, even if it's different from the person next to you.  You receive your gift, and you don't have to worry when everybody's gifts are not the same.

This is the big deal.  For folks who are used to hearing that Christianity requires us all to fit the same pattern of husband-and-wife [where the husband bosses the wife around, in a lot of folks' assumptions], Paul not only says that particular arrangement isn't the only one permissible, he also says it's not even the best for everyone.  Paul the apostle sees the diversity of our kinds of relationships as an expression of God's diverse gifts, not as a flaw to be merely tolerated begrudgingly, but as grace to be received joyfully with thanks, and indeed, celebrated. 

And furthermore, Paul seems to acknowledge that there are limits even to his insight on the subject of romantic relationships and that he himself is having to adjust to God's choice to create people with different "gifts" for how and whom they love.  If Paul had his way, everybody would stay single so they were free from obligations of providing for their families and were more able to go and spread the gospel unencumbered.  Paul is having to make room for what our culture has tended to assume is the only acceptable arrangement--the husband-wife-two-point-five-kids-and-a-dog nuclear family.  He would rather, he says, not have to accommodate that, but he's willing to allow that God's wisdom on this is more reliable than his own limited perspective.  That's amazing.  Here in these verses, we get Paul saying, "Despite what I had thought, apparently, God is open to a wider diversity of options when it comes to love than I would be if I were in charge.  And I guess I'm going to have to be the one to grow in my understanding."  This is not Paul the rigid gatekeeper we have probably been taught to expect.  Rather, this is someone seeing that God's gifts are given more widely, generously, and diversely than he had bargained for... and learning to let the grace of that God stretch him.

Maybe that's where we need to let these verses hit us, too--to let grace stretch us, and to allow the diversity of God's kind of gifts, in who and how we love, lead us to grow where God would have us grow.  

Yes, even if that means it takes some getting used to on our part.

Lord God, let your good gifts go where they may, and let us be stretched by the wideness of your giving.

Everything Is Inside-Out--August 19, 2022

Everything Is Inside-Out--August 19, 2022

"The husband should give to his wife the good due to her, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the husband does." [1 Corinthians 7:3-4]

I can't get over how truly radical the New Testament really is sometimes.  We who are so used to the mindset that says, "Everybody's gotta look out for Number One in this world" should be brought up short by the startling move that Paul makes here.  He takes the conventional wisdom [both of his day and of ours] that proudly boasts, "I am the captain of my soul; I am the master of my fate," and he turns it on its head.  Among the followers of Jesus, the exact opposite is true:  each of us is meant to seek the interests of others, and they are in turn to look out for our interests.  In a culture that so often tries to make a virtue out of selfishness, that new arrangement sounds absolutely bonkers.

And who knows?  Maybe it is--maybe the way of Jesus is absolutely, wonderfully, blessedly bonkers to a culture that is drowning in the logic of self-interest.  To be sure, Paul is taking what everybody would have assumed was "the usual order of things" and turning it all inside out.

Let's just really allow the ideas in these verses to sink in, because they are so counter-cultural that we might not get the point at first.  To a culture where patriarchy was assumed and taken for granted, Paul has blown apart the idea that men get to dominate their wives [or, for that matter, that men get to rule over women in wider social situations, too].  And he gets his readers on board cleverly, by starting out with half of an idea that sounds like what they are used to.  "The wife does not have authority over her own body," he starts, and you can tell that the male readers in a first-century Greco-Roman audience would have all nodded their heads in agreement. [The trap is set.] They were so used to assuming that men should be in charge of everything, and they had built a whole way of life where men dominated everywhere--in government, in the marketplace, and in the house, that they didn't even realize they were getting lured into Paul's snare.  "Yeah, you preach it, Paul," you can hear them saying.  "You tell our wives that their bodies are under our manly authority!"  [The bait is taken.]  But then Paul finishes his thought, the spring is triggered, and the patriarchy is pinned in place.  Because in the very same breath that he talks about wives, Paul says with exactly the same wording that husbands do not have authority/dominance over their own bodies, but rather their wives do.  In other words, there is utter and complete mutuality--nobody gets to dominate anybody else, in truth.  Everybody offers up their whole selves to their beloved, and their beloved in turn offers their fullest self back.  For folks in Paul's audience expecting him to give a religious support to the notion of men ruling over their wives, the apostle has just sprung a sucker punch on them all.  There is no hierarchy of one over the other--there is instead, the constantly turning, bowing, bending, serving, and being served of mutual self-giving, in both directions.  Both spouses place their lives in the hands of their beloved, and both know that it is safe to do so.  

Paul's thinking also turns our old selfishness upside-down and inside out as well.  Instead of accepting the dominant mindset that everybody has to look out for their own interests, Paul calls us to offer all of who we are to our beloveds, and to be careful and caring stewards of their lives as they place their own gifts of self in our hands.  It is so completely foreign to the self-centered thinking that so much of our society is built on, and it completely undermines the old assumed patriarchy where men are "supposed" to be in charge... of their marriages, of their families, and of their governments.  Paul just shuts it all down with a sentence: "Whatever wives are to do as they offer up their lives, bodies, and well-being to their husbands, their husbands are to do as well--complete mutuality."  I'll bet it took a while for the men in Corinth to pick their jaws up off the floor.

The apostle is saying what Wendell Berry says in his customarily beautiful poetry:

"Loving you has taught me the infinite

longing of the self to be given away

and the great difficulty of that entire

giving, for in love to give is to receive

and then there is yet more to give..."

It is so beautiful, and yet also so completely inside-out from our usual ways of doing things as human beings.  We tend to either look for schemes to dominate each other [and often have tried to gin up some nonsensical theological reason for men to be the ones bossing women around] or excuses to retreat to our own little fiefdoms of self-interest with the battle cry, "Every man for himself!"  And yet here, Paul takes human marriage and re-imagines it in light of Christ's own kind of self-giving love.  We are called to love one another in utter self-giving [rather than domination or self-interest] because that is Jesus' way of loving--without seeking his own interests, and without dominating anybody else, certainly not women.

This whole new way of ordering things is rather like that old fable they tell about the difference between the spoons in heaven and in hell.  The story goes that a man has a dream that an angel takes him on a tour of hell, and it is subtly cruel. In hell, all the damned are seated at a great banquet table, laid out with the finest linens, gleaming silver candelabras, and elegant place settings. And fastened permanently at each person’s place is a bowl of delicious, steaming hot soup, whose rich, intense aroma makes their mouths water. And beside each soup bowl is a metal spoon… that is six feet long—far too long for anyone to grip properly and be able to hold in hand at the end and still get the soup into their mouths. They cannot lift the bowls from the table, and they cannot get a spoon full of the soup (I like to imagine it is a lobster and tomato bisque) into their own mouths. So all the people in hell are famished, dying of hunger with the most delicious food right in front of them, while the spoons are longer than their arms. It seems the design of a terrible genius.  Well, then the angel leads the man to another dining hall and says, “Welcome to heaven!” But as they peer into the room from a distance, this second banquet table appears almost identical at first. There are the same elegant place settings, the same bowls of delicious soup, and they are still bolted to the table in front of each guest’s place. And to top it all off, there are the same outlandish spoons—the man can see that even from a distance. But there is no wailing and moaning from hunger. There are no anguished looks on the faces of the guests. In fact, the man hears… can it be, laughter? And he sees expressions of delight and satisfaction on their faces. The people are eating the soup somehow—but their bowls are just as fixed to the table and their spoons are just as long. And yet, these people are satisfied and enjoying the gourmet food in ecstasy.  “How can this be?” asks the man of his angelic tour-guide? “What is the difference between this wonderful feast and the torments at the table in hell?”  The angel replies, “Can’t you see? The guests here at the heavenly banquet have learned to feed each other.”

Paul dares to imagine that, not simply as a fable or a morality play, but as the architecture of our deepest, most essential relationships.  What if spouses were devoted to making sure their beloved was fed, and trusted that they would in turn be fed as well?  What if those who were called to marriage could utterly give themselves away to their beloved, and care for their spouses as good and faithful stewards, too?  What if there were no made-up hierarchies where men gave themselves permission to boss women around, and certainly not in the name of "god"?  What if there were no attempt to baptize selfishness where everyone only seeks their own interests?  What if, in other words, we actually dared to let the way of Jesus shape the way we love one another?

I dare say that would turn our whole world completely inside out.  But maybe we would discover that was precisely how it was supposed to be all along.

Lord God, remake all of our relationships in light of the love of Jesus and the ways he gave himself away for all.

Beyond the Cookie Cutter--August 18, 2022

Beyond the Cookie Cutter--August 18, 2022

"Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: 'It is well for a man not to touch a woman.' But because of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband." [1 Corinthians 7:1-2]

Let's get this much clear at the outset, before we get lost in the weeds: if your reason for supporting Christianity is just to help you live the cookie-cutter life you've been told you're supposed to want, you're in for some disappointment.  

You know that cookie-cutter picture of the "ideal" family that gets held up as part of the American Dream, right? It's got the husband and wife, the 2.5 kids, the white picket fence, and the dog, all living in suburban bliss with a perfectly manicured lawn in the background.  And there's nothing inherently wrong with that picture per se... it's just that sometimes Respectable Religious folks make it sound like Christianity is primarily a way to get that kind of family, or that church, religion, and the gospel are "good" things only insofar as they help to promote "family values."  It's sort of assumed sometimes that the goal of every follower of Jesus should be to get married, settled down, have a manageable number of children, and then teach those kids to do the same.

To be really honest, sometimes to listen to what passes for "Christian teaching and preaching" on the internet, on TV, and on the radio, you'd think that Jesus mostly taught helpful hints for finding a romantic partner, keeping a marriage strong, and lessons he'd learned from his own experience on how to raise your kids to be respectable and upstanding citizens.  Given how many books line the shelves of "Christian" bookstores on how to raise teenagers in a "Christian" way, how to handle schooling and adolescence to bring up "godly" young adults, or how to keep the flame of your marriage burning, you'd think that Christianity was mostly a religion centered on how to get married, find the perfect dog, set up that picket fence, and, well, get the rest of that cookie-cutter picture to happen.  Those same shelves upon shelves of "inspirational" voices have very little to say about how you can follow Jesus if your life doesn't fit in that cookie cutter--only at most how to try and get your life to fit back inside it if you've "gone off course" somehow.  And to be frank, that's about as much as the watching world sees of "Christianity," and it sounds to their ears like we have very little to offer other than dating advice, parenting rules, and crushing social pressure to find and keep a spouse.

What a surprise, then, to realize that not only does Jesus have very little to say about "family values" as usually described [other than that his coming will cause "division" in families between spouses, parents, children, and in-laws!--see Luke 12:49-53 on that], but also that both Jesus and Paul seem pretty ambivalent about how important being married is to having a full and thriving life!  Neither Jesus nor Paul were married, to the best of our knowledge; neither had children, again to the best of our historical evidence.  And neither of them making getting married and having kids the center of their message--again, much to the surprise of anybody who's listened to "Christian" talk radio.  Now, don't get me wrong, Paul here isn't really "anti-marriage." He doesn't say people can't or shouldn't get married or have romance in their lives, not exactly.  But he certainly doesn't think that romance is the be-all, end-all that Respectable Religion often makes it out to be, either.

As we'll see over the course of the next section here in First Corinthians, Paul doesn't seem to be really "pro-marriage" or "anti-marriage," so much as he is fiercely concerned that ALL of our relationships, whatever they are, don't dehumanize each other or treat people like commodities we can use and throw away.  Now even in just my own experience, I've seen people who are married treat their spouses like they were merely objects or hired servants, rather than partners with mutual love and respect... and I've seen people who were single all their lives whose lives were as rich and full with friends, family, community, and others that nobody ever thought, "They must be missing out because they are unmarried."  In other words, from Paul's perspective, there is no one cookie-cutter way you have to arrange your relationships in order to be a Christian, but rather it's a question of how we embody Christ-like love, respect, compassion, and honor with everybody.  His advice to the Corinthians is noticeably NOT, "You can only really be happy in life if you've found a romantic partner and picked out the exact shade of white you want for your picket fence," but rather he asks, "How do we love rightly [like Jesus] in every relationship in our lives?"  We can find ways to love like Jesus in marriages, and we'll also need to figure out how to love like Jesus in our friendships, parenting, with strangers, and even with our enemies.

So here when Paul says, "let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband," it's not a commandment as if to say, "You can only be a good Christian if you are married or working toward being married."  It's rather to say, "There are additional challenges to life when you are married, so there's a good case to be made for staying single--but compared to all the other ways we can go wrong in our impulses to objectify people and commodify love into sex, I'd rather people be married than just to use others like they are disposable."  But notice here--for Paul, Christianity isn't just a means toward the goal of getting everybody paired up and posing for family photos in front of their suburban dream-houses.  The Christian faith can be lived by married people, unmarried people, folks in nuclear families, folks in extended families, folks who are single all their lives, and folks who have remarried in life--there's not just "one way" to do it "right."  And if you've been bombarded by the barrage of voices telling you that "real" fulfillment only comes by fitting into the cookie cutter model foisted on you by Respectable Religious people, Paul himself begs to differ.

Bottom line--we're missing the point if we add our voices to the chorus of folks selling parenting advice or tips for finding a spouse and packaging it as the Gospel.  Jesus has not come to give us "five ways to add fire to your romance" or pressure you into a couple so you'll look "successful." Whatever relationships we have over the course of our lifetimes, though, we are called to let them all be transformed in light of the love of Christ, which breaks out beyond the strictures of a cookie-cutter mold.

Lord Jesus, allow us to love and to be loved in ways that reflect your own care for us all--whether or not that meets with anybody else's expectations.