Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian

November 4, 2021

On Coming to Faith

Who am I?

Where do I belong?

What is the meaning of my life?

What is to become of me?

Identity.

Community.

Purpose.

Destiny.

These questions have for years been a guiding principle for my engagement with any and all divine relationship to my very human, that is to say mortal, life.

These questions are answered but always remain and are revisited daily, either spoken or unspoken.

These questions drive commerce and economy, power and politic, personal relationships, psychology and mental health. They drive individual as well as nation-state wellbeing.

It is a mistake to think that I as an individual have any autonomy or agency in forging the substance of the content that might be an answer to any of these questions.  The only hope of an answer, a resolution, is to find, to discover, that I have no choice in the matter of determining any answer. Instead, all are answered for me. In other words, there is a fundamental orientation to these questions that can (and must) be appreciated and then appropriated in order to find not only a personal peace but also a social justice.

This orientation, a way of positioning oneself, is to allow to be reversed what is our natural inclination. Naturally, we are the center. But this now is to be taken out of the center and have placed another there. I will cease to be the subject of the sentence and instead I will be the object. I am not the Subject and Another, and all, the Object. Instead, Another, and all, is (are) the subject and I am the object.

This is not to turn to Determinism, breeding then Stoicism. This is rather a turn to Predestination producing Hope.

By nature we are wont to control each of these four dimensions or areas of our life. We are driven to be the Subject. When we see we cannot be, we do not give in. When a word is given that is a Promise it is too good to be true and we push back because it is not self-produced. Until, what? Until it is too good not to be true. And so, then, we do not give in but rather we are done in. We are taken over. Rather like falling in love, we have no choice in the matter and now, then, finally, this inability to choose is the best state of affairs, the best human condition, possible [I’m reminded of West Side Story’s Maria singing to Anita that Maria’s love for Tony is impossible not to engage, impossible to relinquish no matter the circumstance. It is out of Maria’s control (“I have a love, and it’s all that I have, right or wrong…”). She has been done in]

Identity, Community, Purpose and Destiny are not mine to produce? Who can live with that state of affairs? Well, we see, we cannot! We will not! Something, Someone, must die in order for this Life to live! So when we hear, then, Jesus speak of dying to self we see what it is of which he speaks. Self is no longer Subject. Another is Subject. Call this God. 

And Jesus called God “Father,” which meant only, simply, profoundly that the controlling one, this Another, is unconditionally merciful and compassionate. And so, this death to self is not suicide, but rather homicide. And God, the merciful one, is the perpetrator, the killer. God kills, and makes alive (1 Samuel 2:6, Exodus 4:24 passim). And homicide is not God’s choice, an option out of many.  God cannot and will not do other than give life to creation, and when our life (oh, we are lively in our spiritual calisthenics!) gets in the way of God’s life for us, watch out. God will use death to give life. God cannot raise a live body. It is not dead.  Only dead bodies get raised. 

This Another, this Other, without regard and reservation, gives away identity, community, purpose and destiny. Receiving all this, having our Self-Project done in so only Another remains for us, is called faith.

 

Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian

December 1, 2021

“Even if You Do Buy that Lexus, There is Hope” (Idolatry and Christmas)

A friend of mine recently on a Facebook post stated that our Christmas TV commercials promoting giving upscale automobiles as a celebration of somebody’s birthday (could it be Santa’s birthday? The Ad does not say and we don’t know!), even though the occasion for the giving (that is, the birthday) is never stated, is a raw reminder of how we have lost the spirit and letter of Christmas. True enough. The prophet Amos would be proud of my buddy for echoing Amos’ acerbic words. What are we to do? How are we to live with this accusing judgement that withers us?

We become grim and cast stones at the idol of materialism while looking to buy our next car. Or even this, we don’t buy that car now but feel as though we have paid the right price and God’s righteousness will notice. We are absolutely caught in the web of sins and sin and find no rest even in the awareness and acknowledgement of it all. We hear the word of God that speaks directly to our practical and situational behaviors, “You shall have no other Gods,” and find there only accusation that oppresses. 

Where is any liberation?

Only when that same Subject, God, transforms those words of demand to promise. God will make the way, will do the deed, the justice for all, the making us have no other gods, including us in our entrapment. From the Exodus to the Resurrection, the biblical narrative breaks out in a freedom song: liberation comes only from God and in God. 

Do we need to sell the Lexus and give to the poor? Yes, still. But do we also live in the peace of God because God’s mercy simply will not be denied even if and when we instead sell or trade-in that Lexus in order to upgrade to a Mercedes? Well, yes still. There is just no stopping God’s work of righteousness upon us. 

“Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.” No wonder the angels sing “Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to God’s people on Earth!” 

Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian: 40 Years a Pastor

          December 18, 2021 

On 40 Years of Public Ministry

Pastors: Delivering Everything But Accomplishing Nothing

October 11, 2021

40 years ago today I was ordained into the Office of Public Ministry. 44 years ago, after graduating from college, I entered seminary, a 4 year graduate degree program, motivated to unpack and then use the weapon of God’s love to get at and destroy the core of human sin that is the cause of environmental and social injustice (my undergraduate degree in environmental education taught me well of our ecological calamity). I thought that justice (distributive justice that means peace comes by sharing, through non-violence, rather than retributive justice that means peace comes by victory, through violence) would come by knowing and practicing a better law, the law of love, the law that is Jesus, to change injustice. 

What I came to learn and then live over these years of public ministry of Word and Sacrament (aka being a pastor) is that, of course, we don’t and can’t use Jesus for anything or do anything of agency in our relationship with God. We can do lots to fight injustice, and well we should, and please, let’s get on with it. But we can’t do anything to impact what God has decided to do with the likes of us and our world. We’d like to think we have agency there, and sin is the thinking and acting as though we do. But we don’t. We have nothing when it comes to God. But we see that the life and message of Jesus is that this is actually just well and good. In fact, it is good news because God has decided our destiny willy-nilly without our cooperation, and that destiny is unmerited, unconditional mercy, no holds barred. 

Yes, in fact, the world would be a better place if we practiced the love that Jesus lived: peace comes from distributive justice (sharing), through non-violence. But that way of life in our hands only becomes a new violence if we force it on others – which is what religion of any stripe, the Jesus type or any type, is wont to do. Jesus lived it, but we forget what happened. We killed him for it. He forced nothing and in many ways changed nothing (the poor still wake up today, even after his resurrection). 

But if the way of Jesus is righteous and benevolent but changed nothing then, and the poor are still with us now,  but, “Jesus saves,” what gives?

This saving must be of a different sort. 

And so we have discovered and so the office of public ministry is here to declare and accomplish (not just talk about, but deliver): the saving is from our own self-righteousness, the place we go to do spiritual calisthenics to get a leg up on the divine, for the world’s righteousness (where we can actually do some good and actually accomplish something – namely the restoration of humanity and the entire world order!)

The world needs pastors to shut up our spiritualities and close up our religious enterprise and simply change us, free us, by delivering the promise of God that is unmerited mercy given at all costs. Pastors mostly get popular today because they deliver a message of human potentialities (by God’s mercy, of course!), and manage a community (church, congregation) where the push to making a difference in the world (for God, of course) is central. Jesus is not central. Our potential and our difference making is central. Pastors that don’t deliver the message, the message that says Jesus saves by giving us all we need to maximize our life if we but participate by assent and action (it’s usually called “faith,” a misnomer if there ever was one) don’t get much attention these days. But they are life giving.

But, does distributive justice not matter? And our ability to make justice happen, does it not matter? 

Of course it does. It makes all the difference in the world, but no difference to God. This is to say not that God does not care. It’s pretty clear that by looking at Jesus and what he did with the poor and marginalized that God cares about justice. But this: no difference in how God see us or treats us or will treat us by how well we perform, be that action (behaviors) or speech (beliefs). 

We need pastors to deliver (in Word and Sacrament) the goods. Not tell us to be better or how to be better, but tell us we are now and forever better because of Jesus Christ. And do all this not so that we wonder if we will ever know or experience this liberation, as if we stand now gazing at a beautiful artifact but not experiencing it. But do this so that we actually know it and own it now. That, my friends, doing that, being that pastor, is truly an art and a science and is a work not to be taken up lightly, which is why, of course, the church doesn’t confer the office simply because somebody feels moved by God, but rather takes pains to evaluate and graduate to such an office. 

So, I went to seminary to use Jesus to save the world and I found that Jesus uses me to declare that the world is already saved by him and since we are taken out of the salvation business we can turn to the only business we have: taking care of neighbor and creation. 

So, maybe I can use Jesus to save the world after all. He takes care of our relationship to God (“saves” us) so that we can take care of the world (“save” the world). Let’s get busy

Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian

November 28, 2021

Luther’s Breakthrough on Grace

Martin Luther’s breakthrough Scripture passage, “the righteous shall live by faith,” (Romans 1:16-17) is not liberating, is no breakthrough, until or unless we see that the schemata and structure of law – the necessity of “reciprocity, preparation, contribution or mutuality, however small,” is defeated, nay destroyed, by God. Righteousness is given, not attained. Created by God, not found by God when God encounters us. Thus, the “forgiveness of sin” is the absolution on our way of living that sees our contributions as not only important, but literally vital. 

The whole enterprise of religion is built upon the foundation that we have ability and desire to love God if we would just get the proper, correct, accurate thinking and actions formulated and enacted. When God in Scripture, from the First Commandment (You shall have no other Gods before me) on, calls upon us to find singular and particular allegiance in Godself, we assume (and do so because it allows us agency and self-sufficiency) we can and should do this. But what if we cannot and we will not? Then what becomes of the demand? It is a pressing us to the point of seeing the only way out: Promise from and in God Godself. “You shall have no other Gods before me” becomes “I will have my way with you come hell or high water.” “You shall have no other Gods before me” is transformed from a Demand to a Promise. 

The Scholastic Tradition that Luther grew up in, and later rebuffed, had the spiritual practices sequenced to overcome our inability to love and serve God: Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, Comtemplatio. The promise is that we are in darkness but can climb to the Light, given God’s aid. Grace was an Assist. A necessary assist, but nevertheless an assist to our own capabilities. Luther saw, or perhaps better described, felt the trap that this places on us. We are always striving and never secure. His breakthrough was, however, exegetical first, and then experiential. Romans 1:16-17 gave him opportunity to see how righteousness is not defined by our making a grade, but rather by God conferring a judgement. And that judgement is mercy, at all costs. Given, not merited. Luther, then, redefined the spiritual practices: Lectio, Meditatio, Tentatio. We are brought to judgment and it leads us to a suffering of God, the suffering of allowing God to be all in all, to be alongside no other God but to be only God, and at precisely that point and not in some sequence of enlightenment, to discover faith. The moment you are damned is the moment you are saved. But be clear, the one who damns is the one who saves. One and the same. “You shall have no other Gods before me” then becomes the promise. Not a demand that we must meet, but a promise to be received.