"the blood of the goat" and "the blood of the Lamb: on preaching for a transcultural occasion

On the occasion of our North American church visitors meeting some of our South African church partners at a rural homestead in the Transkei earlier this month, I found myself in the position of having to preach a message that both honored the transcultural dimension of the encounter and spoke to the spiritual realities of communities that still live on the boundary between Christianity and traditional religion.

I chose for the occasion a message that came to me much earlier but which heretofore I had not had the opportunity to preach.  While studying Revelation 7 last year, I began to ponder the significance of the white robes adorning the great throng from "every people, language, tribe, and nation" (Rev 7:9).  In an utterly paradoxical description, the robes of the faithful in John's vision were washed white "in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 7:14).  Indeed, if it is blood that usually stains red, then the blood that cleanses white must point to a salvation for God's people beyond the physical, to a cleansing that transcends the flesh.  Along these lines, I began to ponder another biblical story of a robe--the robe of Joseph not cleansed but stained with the blood of a goat (Gen 37:31).  

The contrast between the robes washed white and the robe stained red was of far more than color; indeed their respective colors were just outward appearances of inward realities.  In the case of Joseph, the robe itself and the blood of the goat by which it was stained stood for division between the children of Israel, God's own people.  Since Israel had given Joseph a robe as a show of favoritism above his brothers, the robe aroused the brothers' jealousy toward Joseph.  At an opportune time, they stripped him of his robe, threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery, and covered up their crimes before their father through the blood of a goat: "They had the long robe with sleeves taken to their father, and they said, 'This we found; see now whether it is your son's robe or not" (Gen 37:32).  The blood of the goat, therefore, was as a seal to the robe of jealousy, marking a bitter separation between God's people which was to last many years until the time of forgiveness should come.

The robes of Revelation's faithful, by contrast, stood for the hard-won unity of God's people.  The robes of Revelation adorn not the one exalted by his father above his brothers but the many freed from their sins by the blood of God's own Lamb, Jesus Christ (Rev 1:5).  "These are they" who together--not one above another--have been made "to be a kingdom and priests serving [their] God and Father" (Rev 5:10; 1:6).  The robes of white stand for the peace of Christ, the genuine reconciliation of one human family which has come through the bitter discord of "the great ordeal" (Rev 7:14).  The robe of Joseph brought hostility, but the robe of Jesus Christ brings peace.  The blood of the goat brought separation, but the blood of the Lamb "speaks a better word" (Heb 12:24).

Thus it was that I tried to address, in one way subtle, in another way less so, what I perceived as the twofold demand of the occasion.  In terms of black and white meeting together for worship, the sermon pointed rather explicitly to the reconciliation between the races still laboring to be born years after the "great ordeal" of apartheid (literally, separate-ness) in South Africa.  And for a few hours on that day, black and white together praising our God and Father, the kingdom of God drew near.  In terms of the particular temptations of the traditionally-minded Africans with whom we worshiped, my intention was to point, in far less direct ways than to the issue of racial reconciliation, to the sacrifices which please God.  As a white person, for the cause of racial reconciliation, I am compelled to guard against being seen to be denigrating anything deemed by anyone to be a part of the cultures of black people.  And as one who preaches Christ crucified, I am also compelled, via the scriptures, to contrast the way of Christ to the ways of the world--black or white.  Thus, with what I believe was sufficient subtlety, I simply contrasted "the blood of the goat"--the most commonly sacrificed animal in Xhosa ancestral religion--with the "the blood of Jesus Christ" in the particular terms of the Genesis and Revelation texts.  By locating the contrast in terms of the texts, I believe that my chances of delivering a redemptive word are greatly increased.  Through Genesis 37's "blood of the goat" and Revelation 7's "blood of the Lamb" I can speak to issues of division and reconciliation between two groups of people even as the contrast between the sacrifices of "goats and bulls" (Heb 9:14) and the sacrifice of Christ need not be lost on anyone who has an ear to hear.  

-Joe

praying forgiveness

Within the span of a week I've had two opportunities to share some insights on the Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9-13). Here's what I've found:

The prayer defines its addressee in the first line, "Our Father, the one who is in the heavens".  While it may seem obvious to some Christians that we would address God in prayer, the fact that Jesus specifies only God as the recipient of our prayers cuts against the grain of some traditions in which other spiritual authorities are also invoked.  Within the Lord's Prayer there is no mention of the saints or ancestors of human religion/culture.

The prayer features seven verbs.  The first three verbs are pleas for the Father to do something for the Father's own sake.  These accompany nouns with possessive pronouns in the second person singular.  I call this "a pattern of possession or belonging to the second person" who is, in this case, God.    The three verb-noun combinations then are:

May it be kept holy/sanctified--your name
May it come--your kingdom
May it be done--your will

All are pleas pertaining to God.  Disciples pray, as Jesus taught us, for God to guard/protect/keep God's own prerogatives as the creator of the world.  While human beings can participate in the glorifying of God's name, the coming of God's kingdom, and the doing of God's will, all are ultimately the work of the Father himself.  Only the Father can protect his name, kingdom, and will from the humans who inevitably fail to honor God.  Our shortcomings simply expose the need to pray to the Creator, and reveal why we should begin in prayer with pleas that pertain to God for God's sake.  It is upon God's heavenly name, kingdom, and will that the same might be established on earth, and so we address the only One who can bring about these realities.  We plea to God not to give up on the establishment of God's name, kingdom, and will upon the earth in the face of our sin.

After we have put first things first, the things upon which everything else is founded, then we begin to pray to God about the things that belong uniquely to us as frail human beings.  Here come the next four verb-noun combinations.

Give us today--our daily bread
Forgive us--our debts
Do not bring--us into temptation
Deliver--us from the evil one

If in the "pattern of possession or belonging to the second person", that is, "to God", the pronoun was "your", the final four verbs pertain to "our" or "us".  In other words, the second set of verb-noun combinations forms a "pattern of possession or belonging to the first person plural", "to us".  After we have asked God to do some things for God's own sake, upon which our own survival also depends, now we begin to plea for God to do some things for us.  Give us daily bread.  Forgive us our debts.  Do not bring us into temptation.  Deliver us from the evil one.  All four pleas refer to situations unique to the human condition.  We are the ones in need of bread--not God.  We are the ones who have debts (or sins or trespasses)--God has none.  We are tempted--God is not.  We must be delivered--Satan poses no threat to God.  All of these predicaments are truly ours.  And thus, as before, we speak to the only One who can help us.

Now, regardless of whether the pattern is "your" (to God) or "our" (to us), each verb is a plea for God to do something.  God is the subject of doing, whether it be for God's own sake or for ours.  That is the case--with one exception.  Only one verb of the seven appears twice--to "forgive."  If we have prayed for God to forgive us our sins, we must also pray that "we forgive those who sin against us".  If we have prayed for God to forgive our debts, we also pray that "we forgive our debtors".  The two, in fact, are dependent one upon the other.  It is in the act of forgiveness alone that our agency and God's overlap.  God forgives us as we forgive one another.  We express our "godliness", our "god-likeness", through forgiveness.  We "are perfect as our heavenly father is perfect" (Mt 5:48) in no other way but as we extend love without condition to our fellow human beings.  We "complete" the love of an already "complete" God as "we love one another" (1 Jn 4:12).

If therefore we do, as Jesus commanded, "pray then in this way", forgiveness will be the spirituality of our lives; reconciliation its fruit; and peace the kingdom come--"on earth as it is in heaven".

-Joe

“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