“wiping away”, “laying aside”

Luke 10:1-24 is a text which has come up repeatedly for me during our time in South Africa. Several weeks ago, for example, Wayne Hochstetler, with his wife Lois worker care staff for Mennonite Mission Network, led our Mennonite worker team on a study of the text. Deep reflection on a biblical text, first alone and then in the company of others, never fails to produce valuable insights—words for life.

On that day, then, Lois pointed out something from the story which I had not noticed before: a possible meaning for the dust which the messenger of Jesus “wipes” from his or her feet “in protest” against the towns that reject the messenger. It seems to me, on the one hand, that—as the text states—the wiping away of dust is indeed for the town that rejects those who come with the “authority” of the One who sent them “ahead of him” (10:19, 10:1). Indeed, the wiping away of dust is an act of “protest against” (10:11). Such a recognition, however, need not negate Lois’s point: that the wiping away of dust is also an act for the messenger.

For those who are sent by Jesus do have a job to do. Namely, that is to proclaim “peace” and the arrival of “the kingdom of God”, accept hospitality from those who welcome, and “heal the sick” (10:5-9). But failure to remove the “dust that clings to one’s feet”, the dust acquired in the town to which one has been sent—the dust of rejection—is to destroy the messenger, to take the messenger out of the service of God. For the messenger’s own well-being, for his capacity to remain the messenger of “peace”, an emissary of “the kingdom”, and a “healer” for others, he must “wipe away the dust that clings”. Rejection of the good things that the messenger brings must not derail her calling to bring “good news” to those who will welcome it. Rejection by some must not impede acceptance by others. We must “wipe away” the rejection that “clings”, “laying aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely” (Heb 12:1), in order to remain ourselves within the “love, joy, and peace” of God’s very presence.

Perhaps it was the seventy’s very obedience to Jesus’ command of “wiping away” that enabled them to return “with joy” to the Lord. Their joy was not a feeling wholly dependent upon the good will of others; their identity was not wholly in the success of their work. Or, if their identity did lay in human acceptance or worldly success, Jesus did not permit them to dwell there. It was not the work itself—the demons cast out—but the intimacy they experienced with God while going on their way—that their “names are written in heaven”—that was their “joy” (10:17, 20). Indeed, theirs was as Jesus’ own, who “for the sake of the joy set before him”—and for no other earthly reason or rationale (for there was none)—“endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Our God, as we concluded together on that day, is a God who “absorbs” our burden. God bears the rejection we sometimes take—in order that we might press on “ahead of him . . . to every town and place where he himself intend[s] to go” (10:1). We proclaim, we forgive, we heal, we go the extra mile, in Jesus’ name, but we do not effect the acceptance of our gifts: Reconciliation is “from God” (2 Cor 5:18).

-Joe

speaking simply

At the first meeting of the Steering Committee for the Anabaptist Network in South Africa last December, we had a lengthy conversation on the subject of “simplicity”. And though the bulk of our conversation had to do with economic considerations, one of our members suggested another manifestation of the life of simplicity to which Jesus calls his disciples: simplicity in speech.

Simplicity, or “simple living” as I most often heard it described, was indeed a central value in my Mennonite upbringing—and perhaps especially as it related to speech. Somehow, I picked up that boastfulness, that singing one’s own accomplishments, is about as distasteful a characteristic as one can have. I also learned that “taking the Lord’s name in vain” was an offense of the highest order; though my understanding of such “swearing falsely” has grown to include all injustice done in the name of Jesus, it also still includes an avoidance of the flippant use of any of God’s names in everyday speech. Yes indeed, my colleague’s suggestion that Jesus, simplicity, and speech somehow belong together strikes a chord with the Anabaptist faith I heard and welcomed.

It is probably for that reason then—because I carry a simple faith or a faith in the simple—that the most disturbing encounters I have had within the wide world of South African Christianity have in common the element of someone “saying too much or more than one should.”

For the sixteenth century Anabaptists, the issue that exemplified simplicity in speech was the medieval practice of the swearing of oaths, or, in the case of the Anabaptists, the non-swearing of oaths. Taking their lead from the simple commands of Jesus, the Anabaptists refused to “swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King” (Mt 5:34-35). Applied to Reformation-era Europe, obedience to Jesus’ prohibition against oaths was disobedience to the law of a society built upon injustice, for oaths were the seal of an uneven (and unholy) alliance between lords and subjects, masters and servants. By swearing an oath to human masters in the sight of God, peasants agreed to do their masters’ bidding—even to fight their wars. Oath-swearing was thus the ultimate affront to a righteous God, for it placed ultimate power, the power to take life, within the hands of violent men. It was a renunciation of faith for the faithful, for it denied the God in whom they put their trust in favor of human masters.

All this implies, of course, that the swearing of oaths is fundamentally about relationships—to whom does one owe his/her first allegiance? To whom is one ultimately loyal? Who is one’s primary relation?

Though I was unaware as events unfolded, I have had two separate relationships in which—as I see it now—a partner in ministry swore a kind of loyalty, an oath, to me. In one case, one of our brightest students at the Bible School, whom we had singled out for future leadership, declared to me that he would “come to Bethany Bible School until the rapture.” Looking back, I have wondered whether this was not a bit like “swearing by heaven.” In the second case, another pastor declared that our relationship was the one to “take us into the New Jerusalem”—was this “swearing by the city of the great King”? In each case, the wording too closely resembled the places prohibited for swearing on Jesus’ list to escape my notice as an “oath”—and therefore also implied the same limitations inherent to oaths according to Jesus’ words. For just as one who swears “by [his/her] head” has not the power to “make one hair white or black”, so these friends swore to me that which only God can see for their lives (Mt 5:36). In both cases, the one swearing the oath was not prepared to fulfill it.

It seems to me, therefore, that there are only two kinds of “oaths” blessed by God for humans to take. One, the vow of marriage, repeats the basic structure of creation, blessed by God: “God created the human being in God’s image, male and female God created them” (Gen 1:27), the same “man and wife” who share such intimacy so as to be “one flesh” before their God (Gen 2:24). A second, baptism, binds the believer to Christ and his Body, the Church, the “first fruits” of a “new creation” (2 Th 2:13). Yet because the Church is “one body made up of many members” (1 Cor 12:12), the believer’s baptismal vow is to its totality rather than its partiality, to the whole not the part, to the universal rather than the particular. For, while the commitment to the universal can only be lived within the particular, vows must not be made to any one alone; they are made to God—and even then, in the case of baptism, in order to be blown by God’s Spirit to wherever, to whomever, whenever, God chooses (Jn 3:8-9). This is the “vow to the Lord” which we might “swear”—not to say more than we should but “yes, yes” or “no, no” to the Christ who bids us follow him (Mt 5:33, 37).

-Joe

on sacrifice

When, at our gathering of Bethany Bible School last month, I asked for insights from the students on the meaning of “sacrifice” as it appears in 1 John 4:10, one old man referred me to the story of Abraham offering Isaac (Gen 22:1-19). And so it happened that I began to ponder that story once again.

The old man’s point, I think, was that “sacrifice” is an act of “love”—the main theme of the 1 John text we were studying. That, of course, is also how the author put it there: “Not that we loved God but that God loved us, and sent his only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).

Many theologians in the West, both professional and lay, would dispute the assumption that sacrifice is an expression of love, that God’s sending of the Son to his slaughter proves not God’s love but God’s cruel detachment. However one interprets the Aqedah, “the binding of Isaac” from Genesis 22, on its own merits, the New Testament’s interpretation of that story—of which the 1 John text may be one example—is a classic example of employing a human story to speak of the mysteries of God. In other words, the story of Abraham offering up his “only son, Isaac, whom [he] loves” became for the New Testament authors a window on the Heavenly Father who offered up his “only begotten Son” for a sinful world. For the New Testament authors, the story of Abraham and Isaac illuminated the story of Jesus, the one whom they “declared to be the Son of God” (Rom 1:4).

The key, of course, is that the New Testament’s declaration of “the Son” does not imply his distance but his closeness to the Father—a closeness so close so as to reveal that they were really One Person. Yet, when that One should appear in flesh—a new realm for the One who is not a human being—he cannot but acquire another human title which differentiates him from the experience of him in the realm of pure Spirit. That title, of flesh married to Spirit within God, is “the Son”.

Once, therefore, the Son is understood, not from the perspective of pure flesh (“from a human point-of-view”) (2 Cor 5:16) but from flesh-in-Spirit, the Son ceases to be a pure object of slaughter, something acted upon by someone else. The Son becomes, rather, both Subject and Object, One who gives himself to the world of flesh. The Son is not simply the human Jesus, sent to his death by Another; the Son is Jesus the “Christ”, the one “in” whom “God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The “Father” is not detached; the “Father” is in the “Son.”

From the perspective of closeness, therefore, one also begins to appreciate the metaphor of Abraham and Isaac, a father and his son, for the Father and the Son. For, when we read that Abraham heard the word to “take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him there as a burnt offering . . .” (Gen 22:2), we remember, from knowing the whole story, that this Isaac was the same son of his old age, the one promised him with his wife Sarah before they as yet had any heir. It was this Isaac for whom they waited and scarcely dared to hope, this Isaac who, when announced by angels, was greeted with the laughter of incredulity (Gen 17:17; 18:12). It was this Isaac who, when born, actualized the promise of God that Abraham might become the father of many nations, his descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky (Gen 15:5). This is the Isaac whom God now says to sacrifice, he the long-awaited promise now given up.

It is from this perspective--the story of a human father Abraham giving up his human son Isaac--that 1 John 4 has drawn its interpretation of God in human flesh in Jesus the Christ. In other words, it is not from the characterization of God at the outset of Genesis 22--the God who simply "tests" and commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a "burnt offering"--that the author of 1 John has found inspiration; it is from Abraham's, the father's, "sacrifice" of his "only son, whom he loved." 1 John's inspiration, moreover, comes not specifically from the father Abraham, that is, in isolation, nor from the son Isaac, but from the "sacrifice"--with all its intense relational implications. Abraham the father with Isaac the son approaches, becomes the best available analogy for God in Christ, because the story so vividly "counts the cost" of "offering up", of "sacrifice" (Lk 14:28). Whatever Abraham's reasons for heeding the call to offer Isaac, or however obvious it may seem that Abraham's will to kill Isaac was to deny his love for him, the background to the text--the personal history of father and son and all the implications of their relationship--and the text itself illustrates the complexities, the hardships, the suffering inherent to love. Precisely because Abraham "loved" Isaac is their story a story of sacrifice. Only that which is loved is truly "offered up".

Because the story of Abraham and Isaac is, therefore, a true offering, it invites, for those who know it, comparison with another story of authentic love. Considering the giving up of the son of promise, the one through whom the world was promised to Abraham, we glimpse the depth of the love of the God who "sent his only Son into the world . . . to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 Jn 4:9-10). We see, that is, that God gave up God's own Self-identification. Like Abraham who gave up his God-promised dreams for posterity in offering his son, so God gave Godself in the person of the Son. The Spirit takes on flesh. The Source of life enters death. The Light confronts the darkness. The blessed becomes the cursed (Gal 3:13). The Righteous One is made to be sin (2 Cor 5:21). In the Son, God denies Godself--everything, that is, but his love. "So that we might live through him" (1 Jn 4:9).

-Joe