Fallen Into Knowledge

Someday I would like to preach on the book of Jude, partly because I have never even heard reference to Jude in church before. The sermon would be about the ways in which speech can fracture communities (slander, bombastic speech, flattering, grumbling) or, alternatively, bring healing.

So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you accordingto the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand …

This always makes me chuckle. Even Peter thought that Paul was tough going.

One of first times I preached I was assigned a passage out of 1 Peter - specifically 1 Peter 3:8-22. I was all of 19 years old (if that), and I knew then that I didn’t really have much to say about suffering. I hadn’t experienced any, and I really didn’t know why we might seek it out. Suffice it to say, the sermon wasn’t any good.
I still haven’t experienced any real suffering, at least not the kind that we read about in the news (or hear about on the radio). But I am beginning to understand why we might seek it out. Today is good Friday, and I just got back from the Pearl Church’s service. We walked through the crucifixion narrative - as it were, with Christ.

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for evil.

If the world were not filled with evil, no one would suffer because of the good they had done. But, in this world, evil is the norm, not the exception. Therefore we enter into it, with Christ, for the purposes of bringing healing and redemption. When we enter into the world as Christ did, we must expect to share also in his suffering.

But rejoice insofar as you are sharing in God’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.

Our suffering with Christ always also brings with it the expectation of Resurrection. Tonight we remember the crucifixion, and we look forward to Easter.

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened you hearts in a day of slaughter. You have murdered and condemned the righteous one, who does not resist you.

The above passage first struck me hard in high school: it was then that I first thought that perhaps we Americans should be identified as the rich person, as our riches are largely provided at the expense of the rest of the world. Time and education has only served to solidify that idea. At this point, this passage scares me. I am no longer concerned for the nation, but I think that God’s anger must be kindled against the american church because we too have participated (and encouraged, in many cases) in this plundering.

A couple thoughts that surfaced on this reading:

1: “and their rust will be evidence against you” We have an abundance, more than we need and use. Metals tend (at least in these parts) to rust with neglect - for the lack of use.
2: “you have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you” The Righteous One (singular) refers to God’s messiah in the Old Testament, and pervasively. Because of this, I think this must be an (relatively) oblique reference to Christ. If that’s so, then we must draw some interesting conclusions;
A. the oppressed in this passage is identified with Jesus - in a way that the wealthy are not.
B. The wealthy are placed in the role of the Priests and Pharisees who had Jesus Crucified; as in, “you wealthy whose wealth is acquired at the expense of others, you are just like those who had the Christ killed.” Ouch.

Observations:

1. The book of Hebrews depends heavily on the Old Testament to make its argument. It is arguing from the Old Testament.
1a. We cannot assume that our audience is similarly familiar with the Old Testament.
2a. We must respect the authors movement in arguing. We cannot preach through Hebrews while ignoring the indebtedness on the Old Testament.

2. The author frequently offers “applications” in the midst of the argument

3. Hebrews describes, in a sense, the mechanics of Christ’s work as embedded in Israel’s story. In that sense we can use Hebrews to (re-) build theology for the church from the ground up, as it were.

4. Everything in Hebrews relates back to Jesus either as the high Priest who accomplished the task, or to His death on a cross.

Key ideas: Made Perfect, Rest, High Priest, Mediator, Faith

{If you downloaded the schedule for this lenten reading, be aware that I forgot to include Philemon and the Peters in the schedule (as well as Esther, but we’re well past that now) and so in order to include them I am fiddling with the schedule from now until Saturday}

In light of the previous post, the rhetorical moves that Paul makes in the book of Philemon are very interesting. Some of them are obvious (I say nothing about your owing me even your own self), and some less so. A less obvious move:

Paul lays the characters in the Philemon - Onesimus saga over the roles in the story of the Cross, so that Philemon - rhetorically speaking - occupies Christ’s role. As such, Philemon has the opportunity to redeem Onesimus as he himself had been redeemed.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

by means of several allusions to Deuteronomy in this passage - on is highlighted, but there are more - Paul draws parallels between the Exodus and our experience of leaving the “world” to join together with Christ. Paul does this - that is, draws parallels between the exodus and the church by means of allusions to the Pentateuch - consistently in Titus.

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness

That scripture is authoritative for the church is tautological, and has been commented on many a time. The second half of this verse, it seems, receives less comment: Scripture has an appropriate function in the church. That is, when we use scripture in the church toward these ends, it is appropriate. It may be inappropriate (bad) to use scripture toward other ends. These two things: Scripture’s authority and appropriate use sets limits on the place of the Bible within the church. We cannot deem it less than authoritative on the one hand, and on the other we cannot deem it to be more than a tool by which we are shaped into Christ’s likeness.

Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words. From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling …

While reading through Paul’s letters I have been struck again at how holiness - or righteous living - has mostly to do with treating people well. More specifically, I have noticed two trends: 1) The lists of virtues and vices that are scattered through the Pauline corpus are nearly always social in nature, and 2) language use is a key battleground in the struggle toward righteousness.
For Paul, the harmony and the unity of the Church is of utmost importance, and we threaten those things primarily though the ways we speak (or fail to).

The “man of lawlessness” is a strange figure, in many ways. I don’t have any grand theories about this figure, in fact the idea is a bit daunting to me because to think about this figure I have to enter into that most confusing of Biblical genres, Apocalyptic. Which I won’t now. But, I find ” the man of lawlessness” interesting because he seems to show up late in the New Testament. When the prophets described the desolation of Israel, it was by the Hand of God because of their sins. The Day of the Lord, as a future event, had two parts; His judgement and the restoration of Israel. A figure that embodies evil never shows up in the prophets (unless you count Moab and/or Babylon - but those were specific, known entities).
Is Paul using the term “man of lawlessness” in a metaphoric sense: a person that represents and idea? Or is this a specific person? The tradition that I grew up in would have shouted, “a specific person” here, and perhaps for that reason alone I hesitate; I have been trained to read this as a person (whom I should attempt to identify - its Karl Marx!), and that training alone makes reading it any differently more difficult.
I’ll hold off on a conclusion for now: there is still plenty of Apocalyptic ahead of me.