What Are We Baptized For?

THE WEEKS AFTER EASTER have always been especially important. Think of the first Easter—the bewildered disciples spent seven weeks being taught by a crucified and resurrected person. It must have been amazing, slightly unbelievable, then gone too soon. In the ancient church, Easter was a time for the newly baptized to immerse in the church’s odd and distinctive teachings. We dunked you—and then told you what that means. First Peter was originally a baptismal manual, a guidebook on the way to being the sort of peculiar people God wants (1 Peter 2:9). We do well during this month to look for extra opportunities for teaching. What does it mean to be baptized into a dead-and-alive-again person?

One thing it means in our own strange days is to craft creative ways to care for God’s beloved poor. We are experiencing a shredding of our country’s social safety net. Say whatever you like about it politically—the reality is there are more poor in more need. Someone is going to have to help. Why not us? It’s commanded in our Bible and our church’s heritage. There will be more of them, trust me. Our neighbors will notice and get curious about this Jesus about whom we teach. God desires a people of mercy who adore the poor, who treasure creation, who notice the dignity in every single human face. Not because it’s nice. But because God has a human face.

[ May 7 ]

Sacred Sheep?

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

IMAGINE THE SORT of fervor necessary to make the church behave like in Acts 2. Many things there we still do—we gather, we break open bread and scripture, we teach and pray. But today, we have limits. Standards. So we don’t sell our possessions and distribute the proceeds to the needy (2:45). I mean, you have to be responsible, right?

Notice some other things we don’t do. We’re not in awe, drunk with wonder (2:43). We don’t amaze our neighbors (2:47). And, I’d wager, we don’t see the Lord “day by day” adding to our number those being saved.

Nadia Bolz-Weber calls this the early church’s “10-minute hippie phase.” But like a commune grown middle aged, the church has now moved out to the suburbs, started a pension, and begun to worry about the wrong people moving in.

It’s also “sheep Sunday,” apparently. These texts are ground zero for those who feel Christianity’s agrarian metaphors are outdated. Those people have not seen what I have: Any heart will thrill to recite Psalm 23 in the face of death, however religious they think they aren’t. Think of the degree of fear rife in our culture. It’s the sort of fear that drives Britons to Brexit, Koreans to elect the daughter of a dictator, Americans to ... well. Over against that ocean of fear, the biblical God gives the revolutionary word, “Fear not.” Because we have a powerful shepherd. Sure, we pass through the presence of enemies (Psalm 23:4). But the shepherd is so calm that he does more than hurry past danger. He lingers, prepares a fine table in its midst, invites us to dine (23:5).

Jesus has a way of mixing his metaphors—he’s the shepherd. No, he’s the gatekeeper. Actually, he’s the gate. He’s just so full of life, the metaphors come cascading out all cross-wise. However, this description is clear: He is abundant life (10:10), overflowing, running off to others. Not fear, not blame, just nothing but life life life.

Maybe, if we believe that, Acts 2 would not be so unattainable after all.

[ May 14 ]

Dwell in the Word

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

BIBLICAL SCHOLAR Ellen Davis speaks of the Bible as a friend. Losing a substantial portion of the Bible—like, say, the jettisoning of the Old Testament by many Christians—lessens us, like the death of a friend. But the Bible is a difficult friend. Read all of Acts 7: Stephen spews vitriol on his interlocutors until you’re ready to pick up a rock yourself. And many Christians abhor John 14 as narrow and demeaning of others.

What would it mean to befriend texts as difficult as these?

Friendship goes two ways. These texts work on us, even as we lodge complaints with them. Stephen is the first martyr. All those whose testimonies are written in their own blood look to him for inspiration. He is also a deacon, a servant, one set aside to care for God’s beloved poor. To work for the marginalized is not noblesse oblige. It is a sort of death to one’s self. Stephen dies forgiving his murderers and gives us a model for when we see anyone else’s sin: Pray that God would overlook it (7:60). And Luke just can’t help himself—he sets readers up for Saul’s transformation from murderer to missionary and scripture-writer and martyr (7:58).

Have another glance at John 14. There’s a reason we read this text for comfort at gravesides. King James unfortunately translated 14:2 as “mansions,” promising believers the sort of real estate Jesus quite eschewed. But as ever there is more going on in John than we think. Jesus promises here a “dwelling place” (much more modest). And elsewhere he says he dwells with the One who sent him. He promises to dwell with us. The life of the Trinity is a mutual indwelling, the church has said, and so the life of the church, at a vast remove, imitates this intertangling of life, of love that God is. John 14:6 quoted with venom is us at our worst. But cited in this context it promises life indistinguishable from homeless, inclusive, logic-twisting Jesus, whose life is life itself.

Difficult as these texts may be, they are good friends: They make us more than we could be on our own.

[ May 21 ]

Scrambled Heads

Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

HOW OFTEN DO we stop and reflect on the sheer oddity of what we believe? That the king of Israel, not recognized by his own people, died, rose from the grave, reigns over all, and wants to transform the world through as unlikely a people as us?

Take these passages for today: Paul has a chance to address the whole world from a hill in Athens. He flatters them first. Uses some of their own religious and philosophical heritage to build commonality. Tells them that God is no physical object, but since God made us all, God is like us. They’re nodding along. And then he drops this: Repent. God will judge. Ignorance is no longer acceptable. Because God raised Jesus from the dead.

It didn’t work. Few listened or responded. Maybe that resurrection bit was a bridge too far.

Try 1 Peter: It has wise words on suffering for doing good. Most religions would nod in appreciation. But then Peter goes on to detail Jesus’ postmortem preaching career. Apparently, he preached up a revival in Hades (3:19-20). The church speaks of him “harrowing” hell. He plowed the place up. Now whoever is there is there by choice. The gate is permanently open, the lock broken. There are no depths God will not go to save.

Run that by me one more time?!

And then, oddest of all, Jesus: He’s leaving. But he’s staying. And he’s coming back. He’s sending another. Who’s also himself. And sent by God. Because I live, you live. You are in me and I am in you and we are in God. Does this guy understand basic grammar, chronology, personhood? Or is he scrambling these and all things around?

Maybe if our hearers don’t emerge dumbfounded, stupefied, then we’re not doing it right. I know how much we gather up each “Good sermon today!” like fine jewels, the withholding of which is a sort of deprivation of a basic human right for us preachers. But the next time they come out blinkered like their eyes have never seen light like this, give thanks. Maybe God has had God’s way with them finally.

[ May 28 ]

To All the World

Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

ASCENSION DAY was Thursday, May 25. I bet you didn’t notice. It used to be one of the great festivals of the church. Now it’s a point of trivia. It’s the day when Jesus returns to the right hand of God. He is exalted in victory. “Let God rise up,” the psalmist announces. “Let God’s enemies be scattered” (Psalm 68:1). It’s a little hard to render artistically—feet up above us, disciples perplexed, a body floating on the clouds. But the Ascension solves a problem. Where is the body of this man bodily raised from the grave? And it makes a promise. Jesus will come like that—as weirdly and as physically as he left (Acts 1:11).

In the meantime, there is work to do, detailed in one of the most pulse-racing passages of scripture we have (1:8). The gospel has to go to all the world: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. That is, as endless sermons have explored, your home (Jerusalem), your nearest relations and friends (Judea), your enemies (Samaria), and everybody else.

Wow. Outstanding. Amazing. And so the disciples ... pray. That’s it. They don’t gear up, study other languages, prepare to take over the world in God’s name. They gather in a dining room and pray. They might as well have played Tetris and Pokemon Go. Here they’ve been charged to remake the world God’s way and they rush out and ... do nothing. Which is what prayer is—an inactivity in God’s presence.

Stranger still, Jesus prays. Jesus who is God’s own self over again spends countless hours not healing, not teaching, not making the world a better place, but talking to God (to himself?!). God thinks prayer so important that God gives us a whole biblical book—the longest book—that is nothing but prayers (the Psalms).

Lord knows our world needs activists who will not rest until it is repaired. We live in a time of the new barbarians, punishing the poor and scapegoating the stranger. God weeps. Let’s get busy. But first, let’s pray. And not just at first.

"Preaching the Word," Sojourners' online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.