The Church of Another Chance

THE NEW YEAR OFFERS an opportunity to take stock of ourselves and our intentions for our own well-being. Radical attempts at self-reformation often end in frustration, including attempts to develop new spiritual habits. This month’s texts hold a up a series of mirrors in which we can assess ourselves and see perhaps that we do not need to be wholly reinvented. The Spirit who weaves through the early texts is present at creation and through the life of Jesus, and she remains to guide us.

Whatever the new year brings, we will not face it alone. In the second week, we have an opportunity to speak frankly about sexual misconduct or choose to preach different aspects of the lessons. The new year offers an opportunity to do the hard work of community, protect the vulnerable, and hold accountable those who violate sacred trust. We do so knowing the Spirit does not shrink from the subjects from which we shrink. She will be there with us through the difficult work. Likewise, the third week’s readings offer an opportunity to do the hard work of repenting and asking forgiveness before we try to be reconciled to those whom we have wronged. This is particularly important for people who hold power and in religious settings where pressure is often put on those who have been wronged to forgive before they have begun to heal from their injury—or while they are still being harmed. The final lections invite us to sit and stand in awe of God and treasure the knowledge that comes from those postures.

[ January 7 ]
God's Voice

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29: Acts 19:1-7: Mark 1:4-11

Praying in the new year is a staple of African-American Christianity. No matter how challenging or sorrowful the past year, the new one, bathed in prayer, is entered as a fresh, hopeful, beginning. This week’s lessons present beginnings that are full of hope, though they are also attended by sorrow. Genesis 1 marks the beginning of our world (if not the beginning of all things), the beginning of Israel’s story, and the beginning of our scriptures. Mark 1 is the beginning of the written gospel tradition and bears the beginning of the ministries of John and Jesus.

The Spirit of God unites Genesis and Mark. She flutters like a mother eagle over the world she has birthed in Genesis 1:2. And yes, she is a “she.” In Hebrew, the Spirit and her verbs are feminine. (They are neuter in Greek, and it was centuries before Latin introduced masculine pronouns for the Spirit.) In Mark, she bears witness to her beloved son and is promised to those who are baptized. In Acts 19, the promise of the Holy Spirit appears to have been hindered by an inadequate baptism, the baptism of John rather than the baptism of Jesus. When the group was properly instructed and baptized in the name of Jesus, the Spirit poured out on the little band with dramatic evidence. (A cynical or uncharitable reading might see Paul being presented similarly to Jesus and John—right down to the 12 disciples—to establish his credibility.) In these three texts, the Spirit is powerful beyond measure and at the same time tenderly loving and immanently present.

God’s voice unites Psalm 29 with Mark 1. In the psalm, God’s voice is the orchestra of creation: rumbling thunder, crashing waves, and the crackle of lightning and fire. The power of that voice can peel the bark off the trees and shatter them into splinters. That voice bathed the world in parental pride when Jesus received his baptism. God’s voice still speaks in wind and water and her Spirit still bathes the baptized.

[ January 14 ]
Blasphemy

1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18;1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

Blaspheming God. First Samuel 3:1-20 presents God’s judgment against Eli’s sons given to the young Samuel as though God could not bear to tell Eli what would become of his sons. Missing from the lectionary portion are the crimes for which they were condemned. First, they pilfered the offering: 1 Samuel 2:12-17 describes how they stole from the portions of the holy offerings meant for God alone, even though they were entitled to their own portion. Most churches deal swiftly with financial misconduct, which is rarely so bold as directly pocketing offerings.

The second transgression begs our attention. In 1 Samuel 2:22, Eli’s sons are accused of what we now call clergy sexual misconduct: “they lay the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.” The Hebrew is missing the preposition “with” (NRSV renders it “they lay with the women”), one indication that the sex was not consensual; further, the women are not condemned for violating Israel’s sexual norms. Clergy sexual misconduct—rape, coercion, misuse of trust and authority that comes with the office—is the contemporary analog for the behavior of Eli’s sons.

Hearing the words of God’s judgment against the perpetrators here is instructive: “I [God] have told him [Eli] that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:13). What raises their conduct from transgression to blasphemy is knowledge of the abuse and the lack of intervention. This indictment convicts many contemporary churches, ministries, and religious institutions where clergy and other leaders are known to violate sacred trust and permitted to continue.

First Corinthians 6:13, 15-16 also addresses inappropriate sexual behavior: use of sex workers and porneia (which is unhelpfully translated “fornication”; both words are from the same root). Porneia is sexual immorality in broad terms; it includes prostitution, adultery, marriage to an inappropriate person, premarital sex—particularly by a woman—sexual excess, or transgressing sexual cultural norms in any way. The task remains for communities to determine, define, teach, and enforce appropriate sexual norms.

[ January 21 ]
Repent, then Reconcile

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12;1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

God changes her mind about punishing the Ninevites, in Jonah 3:10, contradicting other verses that declare that God does not, in fact change the divine mind: The Glory of Israel will not recant or change zir mind (zir is the genderless pronoun used for God in 1 Samuel 15:29, Jeremiah 4:28, and Psalm 110:4), for God is not a mortal that God should change God’s mind. According to Jonah, God can and will change her mind but not on behalf of the Israelites, who are often presented as God’s chosen or even God’s only people.

God is moved to rewrite her own rules on behalf of the Assyrians, who conquered her own people and whose brutality and viciousness were legendary. (The Assyrians preserved images of themselves peeling the skin off their captives and carving them to the bone while yet alive.) The Assyrians didn’t even worship Israel’s God!

Jonah presents a scenario in which the people of Nineveh are convicted by a prophetic proclamation, see the error of their ways, and repent. This text has been useful in the past to talk about engagement with people designated as enemies, especially since Nineveh was in what is now modern-day Iraq, with whom the U.S. has fought two wars. The text is also useful for exploring calls for reconciliation between peoples with a history of violence between them.

People who benefit from hierarchy—white, heterosexual, cissexual—often move from injurious conduct to pleas for reconciliation couched in religious language, exerting a nonsubtle pressure. Those calls neglect the real work that needs to happen before reconciliation can be considered. Jonah models that work.

There is an outcry; there are consequences for actions. Jonah, the minoritized (and we should read: subjugated) person, is listened to and heard by the dominant culture. The people of the dominant culture repent. They don’t offer carefully crafted nonapologies to protect themselves from legal action; they repent. Their change is visible and demonstrable. Then, and only then, God in her mercy reverses herself and spares them from reaping the consequences of their actions.

[ January 28 ]
It’s a Process

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111;1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

“God-fearing” seems like a description from a bygone era. Psalm 111:10 teaches that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (as does Proverbs 9:10, while Proverbs 1:7 says “the beginning of knowledge”). These texts are a reminder that one does not arrive at spiritual wisdom, knowledge, or understanding. It is a process. The psalm goes further and says we must work at being God-fearing, “all those who practice it have a good understanding” (verse 10). The fear of God isn’t about fright or a fear of God’s authority and power to punish or harm; it’s about reverence and awe. That reverence comes from knowing God.

The awe-inspiring knowledge of God in Psalm 111 stands in sharp contrast to the knowledge Paul critiques in 1 Corinthians 8. Paul is talking about those who have religious, perhaps theological, knowledge that others do not have or do not understand. He does not condemn that knowledge but critiques those whose display of their knowledge endangers the faith of those who do not share that knowledge. The specific context—whether Christians could eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol, then served in a variety of public and community events (think block party)—may not have a contemporary analog. But the issue of differing types or levels of understanding does have contemporary parallels.

The two groups in 1 Corinthians 8 can be understood as those with and without theological training, or with and without any kind of specialist knowledge. With that understanding the text can be heard as a caution to be thoughtful about how matters of faith are engaged in the public square. Alternately, the two camps in 1 Corinthians 8 can be read as those with (religiously) conservative and progressive understandings. A limitation of these readings is the ease with which this text can become biblically sanctioned anti-intellectualism, grounds for rejecting any new or theologically challenging ideas. What seems to be missing here is any engagement between the two groups, however they are understood. With all the “knowledge” in this passage, there is no sharing of it, no sign of relationship between the groups.