Living the Word: Lead Us into the Light

IF YOU ASSOCIATE PENTECOST only with charismatic preachers, ecstatic worship, and tongue-talking, then you had better return to scripture. The lectionary passages for this Pentecost season are dark and sad, with a central focus on theodicy, which asks the question: How can there be a good and loving God when there is so much injustice, pain, and suffering in the world? The question has taken many forms: Is God a white racist? Is God a cosmic child abuser? Who can bear these questions, let alone seek to answer them?

Scripture gives no easy or trite answers. In fact, there are no clear attempts to resolve the issue. In the words of one writer reflecting on theodicy through her own battle with cancer: “I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.” The lectionary reminds us over and over again that pain and suffering are part of life. You’ll have to weed through the popular theologies of the day, and even examine your own implicit theology, if you want to stand a chance at leading God’s people in how to respond to and live within the problem of pain and suffering in our world. Liberation is not always the conclusion. Neither is bondage. And blaming God is futile. At the core of these lectionary passages, you find a God who stands in the midst of suffering and pain, offering a variety of ways to cope, to heal, to resist.

[June 5]

Evangelism and Justice

1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

“Preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary,” a phrase often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, reminds us that genuine revelation leads to mission. That’s a key message we find in the lectionary passages for this week.

The widow calls into question the authenticity of Elijah’s office: “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” (1 Kings 17:18). We long for the response to our gospel message to be that of the hymn: “O what must I do to be saved?” And yet this is not the Christendom of the past. In our post-Christian society, we must all be prepared to respond to the widow’s question to the “word from God” that arrives on our doorstep. How will you respond? If it is just with words or paternalistic feelings, then you’d better brush up on your Bible. Faith without works is still dead. Any bifurcation between evangelism and justice isn’t biblical.

These passages make clear that God’s revelation is connected to widows and to an outsider, an enemy of the church. Could the mission be any clearer? God interacts with the world’s pain, suffering, and contradiction for its own restoration and for God’s glory. Restoring widows to community. Restoring enemies with new vision. Not only are evangelism and justice interconnected, one leads to the other: “‘God has looked favorably on God’s people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country” (Luke 7:16b-17).

[ June 12 ]

Prayer or Entitlement?

1 Kings 21:1-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “Can we, then, pray the imprecatory psalms? In so far as we are sinners and express evil thoughts in a prayer of vengeance, we dare not do so. But in so far as Christ is in us, the Christ who took all the vengeance of God upon himself, who met God’s vengeance in our stead, who thus—stricken by the wrath of God—and in no other way, could forgive his enemies, who himself suffered the wrath that his enemies might go free—we, too, as members of this Jesus Christ, can pray these psalms, through Jesus Christ, from the heart of Jesus Christ.”

Ever been in trouble and tried to sweet-talk your way out of it? Any parent can see right through this with their kids! In a prayer, the psalmist compares himself to his enemies. There is a sense in which the psalmist is doing his own cajoling, of God: “But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house” (Psalm 5:7). Who of us has not pleaded with God to favor us over our enemy, whether a person or a situation? There’s always a line that can be crossed, when an innocent prayer of petition turns into a prayer of control. Is this not what we find in the story of Ahab? The imprecatory psalms are an easy go-to when we have a beef with someone or a conflict of some sort, interior or relational. The politics of entitlement lurk closely behind our genuine attempts to seek God’s favor and understanding. Our pursuit of what is good can turn into death for another (see 1 Kings 21:15-16). But what do we make of a prayer that desires holiness because of our enemies? Suffering, conflict, and trouble are real. In so far as Christ is in us—in the words of Bonhoeffer—we may pray and preach these words of the psalmist for God’s solidarity with us in the midst of trouble, for our healing, and for our enemies’ transformation.

[ June 19 ]

Where Is Your God?

1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalm 42, 43; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

At the heart of the problem of evil and suffering is this question: “Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:3). Philosophers and theologians have debated it over the centuries. This is no academic question, though. It’s a question about blood, sweat, and tears; about actual embodied suffering in our world. Intellectual answers won’t hurt, but they don’t solve the problem. It’s a question that mocks, that unnerves, that disorients.

In the midst of this existential contradiction, the “comparative gaze” emerges as a mirage of the truth. The comparative gaze is any standard by which we judge ourselves and the world that is not according to Christ. Elijah tries to cope with his suffering by comparing himself to his ancestors (1 Kings 19:4). The church in Galatia gets caught up in this divisive practice as well, along the lines of race, class, and gender. No surprise that in our contemporary setting we struggle with these and more. In our own time this struggle takes on an elasticity, a triumphant tone: “Let’s make America great again.” U.S. Christianity vacillates between the prosperity gospel and racialized faith. The comparative gaze destroys the oppressed and the oppressor, crushes the humanity of the downtrodden. Fear is at its core; fear of the other, fear of the unknown.

The author of Galatians reminds us that the comparative gaze is made possible by the law, which seeks to distinguish between those that are and are not true children of God and therefore deserving of God’s promises. The psalmist teaches us another way: lament and surrender. Lament names the truth about suffering, and invites all to a place of raw need before God. This is what it means to be “in Christ Jesus” (3:26), to be free, to be justified by the One who conquered sin and death in order that love would be triumphant. Since love wins, we can all belong and trust the promise of old: No matter the circumstances, God is with us.

[ June 26 ]

Lift Ev’ry Voice

2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14; Psalm 77:1-2,11-20; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

When does mourning turn to joy, fear turn to hope? The psalmist’s transformation seems to happen in one chapter! Lest we make the common mistake of turning scripture into an instruction manual, we must see this chapter within the depth and complexity of the psalmist’s fuller story. The psalmist begins with a clear indication of lament and sorrow because of God’s seeming absence: “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted” (Psalm 77:2). The lectionary jumps from the pain of verse 2 to the psalmist’s joy in the remaining verses of the chapter. What about the verses in between? There is lingering pain, an internal anguish that speaks through the psalmist’s questions born of dereliction: “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has God in anger shut up God’s compassion?” (Psalm 77:9).

The selected verses for the lectionary silence struggle. Ours is a culture that silences too; silences pain, complaint, and anger, especially among those in our world whose backs are against the wall. Perhaps what is exposed in this silencing is the inch-deep nature of contemporary Christian faith. But the psalmist offers wisdom in this story of grief turned to joy.

We need to recover the courage that emerges from the deep wells of those witnesses of faith that refused to cover-over pain, struggle, and doubt. The psalmist reminds us that such faith is often best spoken through the idiom of song. And yet we don’t have to look back thousands of years to discover such a witness. The words of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the “black national anthem” written by James Weldon Johnson in 1899, reverberate through the generations, born of the faith of the black church. “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far on the way; thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.” May we listen, be touched, and sing its dark faith!