The Consuming Fire of God's Love

 Preached at  North Valley Friends Church

September 22, 2024

The Consuming Fire of God’s Love

When Leslie asked me to consider preaching at NVFC, I told her that I think I am always preaching one sermon in different guises, namely that God’s love must have an object and God’s creation is that object, that God loves you and me. Often this is a consoling message. As Jesus said, perhaps with a bit of wry humor, “are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and yet not one of them falls to the ground without my Father knowing. Fear not, for you are of more value than many sparrows.” Here is a bit of the flavor of Micah 3.  "Listen, pray, chieftains of Jacob and captains of the house of Israel. Is it not yours to know what is right? Haters of good and lovers of evil . . . who devour My people's flesh and strip their skin from them and crack open their bones.  And they cut it like flesh in the pot and like meat in the cauldron" (The Hebrew Bible, "Prophets," tr. Robert Alter, 2015).

It was a surprise to me to find that it took only a few hours to see that this message too is about the fact that God loves us, you and me.  This is a message about God’s grace.

But first, I want to respond to Micah. I notice that he addresses three classes of people with power in their culture: priests, judges, and prophets. These define morality for the rest of their society. They tell other people what is right and wrong. But Micah accuses them of cannibalism towards other people, skinning them, breaking their bones, sucking out the marrow. To bring this into non-figurative terms, they destroy the lives of those for whom they define the rules, those in their care, under their influence; they take away their lives in order to enrich their own. They are predatory. 

We can look at those in our own society’s leadership who also cannibalize others, who remove from them the means of life; who destroy others to add to their own abundance; who ruin others’ chances to live fully and freely. 

And while it is comforting to point the finger at corruption above us in the power structure,

it would be a mistake to hear Micah talking only to those at the top of his culture. For this to have relevance to us, we need to consider that power includes greater physical strength, greater prestige and social capital, greater ability to decide who gets in and who must stay out—gate keeping. We need to recognize our own power over others, whether it is coercive or manipulative or accidental. We need to admit when we have misused our power, our privilege, depriving others of the ability to thrive and become their whole selves.

We can hear echoes of Micah’s message in the words of Jesus, first to the religious leaders, but then to everyone who has ears. I won’t rehearse all of the condemnations of the actions of the scribes and Pharisees, but I’ll remind you of this one: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and uncleanness. You bind heavy loads on others’ shoulders but you are unwilling to lift a finger to help them carry those loads.”  I will remind us, remind me, that Jesus also said, shockingly, that anyone who makes it hard for a little one to trust God would be better off drowned, and that whatever is done to the “least of these” is done to Jesus Himself.  And also that not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what Jesus’s Father and our Father says to do. And further that those who look on their hungry, thirsty, ragged, imprisoned neighbors and do nothing to alleviate this distress are not part of God’s sheep, not among God’s people. How much worse to actively contribute to or even cause another’s misery.  Jesus is not less demanding than Micah, and perhaps, given that he is talking right to us, is even more so. No wonder the liturgical confession includes both what we have done and what we have left undone.  

When Jesus was asked the greatest commandment, he said, “Love God with everything you are and have, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus knew he had to add the second, which he said is like the first, because we can talk ourselves into believing we love God while we are doing harm to our neighbor. But also, this contains in it the truth that when we harm others we also harm ourselves, and conversely that love for others and love for oneself go arm in arm.

We have seen that Jesus shares Micah’s outrage about the misuse of power and influence. So how can we move from admitting our selfishness and apathy and self-indulgence at others’ expense to a better understanding about God’s love for us, God’s grace toward us? We need to recognize that God’s grace may look a lot like judgment, God’s grace is surgical, and our response to this intrusive grace of God makes all the difference.

I owe much of my understanding of God’s intrusive and uncomfortable grace to three writers: George MacDonald, Flannery O’Connor, and Julian of Norwich. George MacDonald was a novelist and preacher in the 1800s whose writing was hugely influential on C.S. Lewis.  He writes in one of his Unspoken Sermons, “The Consuming Fire”:

Nothing is inexorable but love….Love has ever in view the absolute [the potential] loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more…Therefore all that…comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire. (18-19)

Let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear; not with the fear that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before him who is the life of them all and will have them all pure. (20)

…the fear towards God will be one with the homeliest love. Yea, the fear of God will cause a person to flee, not from God, but from the self, in terror lest that person do [wrong to ] God or [to] a neighbor .… (21)

In sum, God will love us into our best selves, and whatever we carry around with us that prevents us being that best self will have to go. This is the work of grace for us.

I learned a similar view of God’s grace from Flannery O’Connor, a mid 20th century writer of novels and short stories. Her self-satisfied characters are often jolted awake by God’s grace in a way they would never have chosen. Their casual American Christianity is not enough. I’ll mention one character and how God’s grace destroys in order to redeem.  In “Revelation,” a good solid Christian woman named Mrs. Turpin is attacked in the doctor’s office as she is making banal conversation about who is and who isn’t trash. A young woman throws a book at her, raising a bump on the forehead, and shouts, “Go back to hell where you came from, you fat warthog.”

What makes this traumatic moment redemptive is that Mrs. Turpin turns immediately to God and complains about being treated like this, while all the while wondering why God would send her this message. And because she turns toward God instead of away, and in recognition of her willingness to learn despite her anger and humiliation, God gives her a vision of the redemption of humanity, beginning with those she places at the bottom of the heap and ending with her kind of people. She sees the vast stream of human beings moving into glory, and her own kind of people are at the end of the line.

She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were [singing] on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.  She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead…In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah. (The Complete Stories, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 508) 

And finally, to Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchorite from the 1300s. She had a near-death experience in which she had a vision of Jesus. She meditated on that vision for the rest of her life and gained profound understanding about God’s love and God’s intention to redeem and make all things well.  Along the way, she hears Jesus say this:

“For I will wholly break you of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you and make you meek and mild, clean and holy by oneing (uniting) you to me.” ( The Revelation of Love, tr. John Skinner, 86)

So what can we take of comfort and consolation from Micah 3? We can rejoice that God’s love always intends what is best for us and always builds up what is best in us; we can trust that God will make us good, and we can welcome the intrusion of God’s grace when we are not good as we face the both the consequences of doing harm and the divine surgery that will save us.  We can understand that God’s grace is not about excusing but about remaking, about healing, about redeeming what is perverse, wounded, and lost.  We can take heart, even as we tremble, that God’s love is inexorable and will do us good.

Sacrifice and Salvation

 Preached at Silverton Friends Church

April 28, 2024

William Blake wrote a poem: “To God / If you have form’d a circle to go into / Go into it yourself and see how you would do.” This is exactly what God did in the Son, Jesus. Jesus came into the world, our circle, and we can see how God did and what God did in that circle.

Central to Christian belief is that God loved the world in this way: Jesus came as God’s only begotten Son to seek for and save the lost so that they might not perish. Jesus said that he came not to condemn the world, but so that the world through him could be saved. He was killed for his message of inclusive grace and and for teaching the need to align one’s heart and words and deeds and for his insistence that he would not play the game of power so dear to human beings.

Jesus’s choice to embrace sacrifice and the result that we now are at one with God have been preached around the world.  The way we explain to ourselves why Jesus died at the hands of human beings has enormous significance for how we view God and ourselves and our mutual relationship. I think that each explanation can cite passages from the Bible in support. The discussion, and even enmity, around these explanations underlines the centrality of sacrifice for Christians. Some Christians are uncomfortable and perhaps even queasy about the idea of such a sacrifice being necessary. So I want to think with you about the distinction between being a sacrifice and being a victim, and spoiler alert, the distinction centers on agency.

Probably most obvious is that a victim suffers without having chosen it.  I think about the near death of Isaac in the Old Testament.  The story goes like this: after decades of waiting for a son with his wife Sarah, God sent her a son.  Now, what often goes unsaid is that Abraham had an older son with Sarah’s slave, Hagar, which was apparently an acceptable version of surrogacy in those times.  Ishmael could have inherited, but he would have been known to be the son of the slave. But God showed up to Abraham and promised that Sarah, in her 90s, would have a baby, too.  And she did, recognizing the joke on her by calling him Isaac, which means laughter.  She forced Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael so Isaac would be the only son, and he did. In this case, both Hagar and Ishmael were victims of Sarah’s jealousy and Abraham’s spinelessness.  But God stepped in and met Hagar and led her and Ishmael to water and safety. You can read this whole story in Genesis 12-23.

Then, when Isaac was old enough to help carry firewood, God told Abraham to take him up on a mountain and offer him up to God at that place. I have wondered whether this took place in a culture that practiced human sacrifice, but I don’t know. Abraham followed God’s instructions, even proceeding to the point of tying Isaac on top of the firewood, lifting his hand with the knife in it. God halted the proceedings at that point, saying, “Now I know that you are in awe of God—you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” And God provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of the boy.  

If Abraham had gone through with the offering, he would have sacrificed, but Isaac would have been the victim, having had no choice in the matter. However, like his banished brother Ishmael, Isaac got to witness God taking care of him when God provided the ram in his place. This is God’s repeated posture in the scripture—identifying with the victim, caring for the victim.

I’ve speculated about this story more than once, wondering why an omniscient God had to find out whether Abraham would be obedient, wondering if instead Abraham had to find out whether he would be obedient. God only knows what lessons God wanted Abraham to draw from that incident, but it’s likely Isaac did not draw the same ones. I’ve wondered how Isaac viewed his father after this event, and how Isaac viewed his father’s God. I’ve thought about how it connects up with Jesus saying that anyone who loves father and mother and wife and children more than they love Jesus is not worthy of him (Matthew 10:37-39). Or even more shockingly, Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.(Luke 14:26, NRSV). These passages, particularly the reference to hatred, make me so uncomfortable. I had to try to soften them, and the word itself does not actually permit softening.  So we have to look at how Jesus behaved as he followed the Spirit of God to help us understand. What does it look like to live putting everything second to God’s Spirit?

Jesus had no wife or children, though people like to speculate, and the possibility is that because his conception was irregular, he was in something of a marginalized position in Jewish society. He did have a mother, and we can look at how he treated her in order to understand what he said.  At the age of 12, which is the Jewish age of manhood, he let her know he would put God’s business first. He listened to her and granted her request at the marriage in Cana, turning the water into wine, but he pushed back, rebuking her a little.  When she came to see him, worried he was in danger of losing mind and life, he refused to go out to see her, saying, “My mother and family are those who hear the word of God and do it.” But when he was dying, he committed her welfare to the disciple he loved, John, who from that day took her into his family. He let her know that obedience to God was top priority, making Mom happy was second at most, but he cared for her.

Further, I want to point out that Jesus also called to account those religious people who let their parents suffer while they designated big sums for the temple, and he condemned those who made it hard for children to approach and trust him and his Father. He said that what people do to the little ones they do to him, so all that has to be carried in the mind while meditating on the absoluteness of the call of God on our lives. Following God first does not mean carelessness about those we love or cruelty to our neighbors.

Jesus made his all or nothing statements in reference to the decision to follow him, so we need to observe closely and intelligently what Jesus did with his life.  Crucially, he depended always on God to tell him what to do and how to do it.  “I do only what I see the Father doing,” he said.

One way Jesus resembled his Father is in looking beyond surfaces to see what another human being is prioritizing. He looked at the rich young ruler and saw that, despite his goodness, what he held as a priority was riches. So he said, “Give them away and come follow me.” He looked at Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and saw that they prioritized their family business and heritage as fishermen. So he said, “Come follow me and I’ll make you fishers for human beings.” He looked at Nicodemus and saw he prioritized his age and intelligence and knowledge of the law. So he said, “You must start over as a new baby in order to follow me.” He looked at Judas and saw he prioritized political expediency and personal advantage. So he said, “Make your choice about what to do and choose quickly.” He looked at the woman caught in the act of adultery and saw she prioritized being desired and desiring. So he said, “Go and sin no more.” He looked at Pharisees and saw them basking in superiority about their knowledge and observance of the law. So he said, “You exempt yourselves from the spirit of the law by following your interpretation of the letter, and you make it impossible for others to measure up. Unless you change direction, you are the children of the devil.” He looked at Zacchaeus and saw that he prioritized getting to see Jesus at the cost of personal dignity. So he said, “Come down and I’ll eat with you.” And Zacchaeus said, “I’ll repay everyone I’ve defrauded and pay damages as well.” 

Some of these people indeed set aside what they had made central to their lives and identities, choosing to follow Jesus. Occasionally they expressed the feeling that they hoped this would pay off tangibly somehow, and occasionally Jesus pointed out that how people treated him was a good indication of how they would treat those who follow him.

When Jesus chose to allow himself to be arrested and crucified, he sacrificed himself despite all his human fear of pain, his ordinary desire for life and happiness. In the garden he sweated drops of blood as he contemplated his near future of torture and death, and on the cross he cried out his sense of abandonment by God. He protested against pain and death and aloneness, but he held fast to his intention because it brought and brings good for us. His ultimate act of agency was choosing to forgive his torturers. Forgiveness reclaims agency and is so good for our souls when we come to a place where we find it possible.

Jesus said that there is no greater love than this, that a person will lay down their life for a friend.  Paul said that some might be brave enough to die for a good person. but we know God really loves us all, because Christ died for, as Paul puts it, the ungodly (Romans 5).  Jesus said that he himself is the good shepherd, and what makes him good is that he lays down his life for the sheep, unlike the hired hand, who runs for his life (John 10). We are the sheep of God’s pasture (Ps. 121). What we learn by observing and listening to Jesus is that God has acted and eternally acts sacrificially for our good. 

Jesus was clear that there is a cost to discipleship, and that top priority would always have to be listening to what God’s Spirit says and doing what God’s Spirit says to do. And Jesus warns us not to judge others for how well they’re doing this hard work, noting that the severity of our judgment will rebound onto us. 

God always knew that the only way to make clear how much God loves us is to show us God’s Son entering into our world to be a willing sacrifice, enduring the results of human choices. It’s as if God was willing to go through the experience Abraham was spared in order to cement our understanding of how much God is committed to loving us. This kind of sacrifice was and is chosen by the one who will be sacrificed. Because of what Jesus chose, we see that we can trust God with our whole selves and lives. 

Jesus and His Bible Part 4

 Jesus and Purity

The next time in Mark that Jesus quotes his Testament is in Chapter 7.  In the intervening story, Jesus has done the following:

• Told more parables about the Kingdom of God—the seed growing, the mustard seed growing;
• Stilled the storm on the sea;
• Freed the Gerasene (Gentile) madman from his demons;
• Brought Jairus’s daughter back from death;
• Healed (inadvertently) the woman who had bled for 12 years;
• Met unbelief in his home town; 
• Sent the 12 disciples out in pairs to preach;
• Fed the 5000 men plus women and children with 12 baskets left over
• Walked on the water to his disciples’ boat.

The level of activity is breath-taking to read. In these encounters and events, we see the growing awareness among his followers that he is not a run-of-the-mill itinerant preacher or prophet. They add to their undoubted affection and admiration a streak of fear when he stills the storm and walks on the water.  We also see that his home town is blind to his worth and that the Gentiles want him to go away. Mark’s Jesus inspires awe, and yet desperate people continue to beseech him for help.

 Jesus quoted his Testament in the context of a dispute with Pharisees over ritual purification.  In Mark 7, Pharisees noticed that the disciples ate with unwashed hands. Pharisees asked Jesus why the disciples did not keep the traditions. This  reflected on Jesus as a trustworthy teacher, so they were really asking about his relationship to the Law and ritual.

 Jesus said, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mark 7: 6-7).

This is a reference to Isaiah 29:13:-14: "Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts from me, and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote,  therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people…and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be concealed.’”

The context in Isaiah is a prophesy against Jerusalem, specifically that the city will undergo a military siege, defeat, and a return to dust, accompanied by thunder, earthquake, tempest, and the flame of a consuming fire. Strikingly, God tells Isaiah that this vision will be like a sealed scroll to his audience, a scroll the literate will reject because it is sealed, and the illiterate because they cannot read. It is followed by the pronounced woe to those who act secretively, who consider themselves wiser and more understanding than God, who are like pots thinking themselves equal to their potter.

This chapter in Isaiah ends with a prophecy concerning bringing hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, gladness to the afflicted, causing the needy to rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. But also ending the ruthless, finishing the scornful, cutting off those intending evil, those who pervert justice with lies and bribes. Christians will see Jesus in these words, which express the hopes of humankind for a better future. 

It is clear where Jesus included those who were preoccupied with ritual purity—they were among the ruthless, the scornful, those willing to bully, lie and cheat for their own ends. 

Jesus went further with his indictment of Pharisees. Jesus said they put traditions ahead of the commandment of God, quoting Moses: “‘Honor your father and your mother’ and ‘he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death’ but you say ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, anything of mine you might have been helped by is Corban—given to God’—thus invalidating the word of God by your traditions which you have handed down, and you do many such things like that” (Mark 7:9-11).

This commandment to care for parents deals directly with human relationships, calling the young to care for the old. The familiar context is the 10 commandments given to Moses by God on the stone tablets: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Ex. 20:12, see also Deut. 5:15). It is worth noticing that Jesus quoted only the command. When God says to do something positive, do it regardless of outcome, may be the message.  [Robert Alter notes that “it is hard to square the causal link between honoring parents and longevity with empirical observation, and one probably has to regard this as part of the traditional wisdom of the ancient Near East, the sort of hopeful moral calculus reflected in the book of Proverbs” (Moses, 297, n.).]

Jesus also invoked the flip side of caring for parents. In a list of capital offenses is included the following: “And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death”) (Ex. 21:17, see also Lev. 20:9). Robert Alter translates “curses” as “vilifies,” and notes that it connects with treating parents with contempt. (Moses, 303, n.). Jesus condemns the tradition that makes it a good deed to give away “to God” money or goods  that one’s parents need. He makes clear that human need is more important than looking good.

Jesus followed this by an address to the multitude: “Listen to me and understand: there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). Jesus directly confronted Jewish dietary laws about what could and could not be eaten. He explained to the disciples that, literally, what a person eats goes into the stomach and is eliminated, causing no impurity.  Mark asserts that this means “he declared all foods clean,” an interpretation confirmed by Peter’s vision on the rooftop detailed in Acts 10. This vision expanded the acceptability of all foods to include the acceptability of all persons, whether Jewish or not. Those of us who yearn for rules and guidelines that will make us acceptable to God are out of luck.

What is defiling before God are the ways we harm each other that derive from evil thoughts, pride, and foolishness. Again Jesus sets to the side the interpretations of the Law and the religious traditions that hinder us from caring for the human needs we encounter.

Jesus our Mother

 Many years ago in the 1970s, I wrote the following poem, which is a Good Friday poem. So I titled it, “Nativity” and included this epigram: “John 19:34.” I may have overestimated my readers’ desire to dig out the Gospel of John, so I’ll include that verse here.  

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear,

And at once there came out blood and water.

Here’s the poem.

Nativity

John 19:34

and there poured forth water

the breaking of the amniotic sac

--approaching birth

and there poured forth blood

the placental afterbirth

--completing birth

and there sounded a shout

the pain of labor and the victory of delivery

and the kingdom of God lifted up its infant voice

and wept.

It meant a lot to me to consider that in the crucifixion of Jesus was a moment that was essentially maternal. I thought at the time that my insight was original, and it was to me, but it was not in the life of the Church Universal.

First of all, Jesus described himself as a mother in this passage, Matthew 26:37:  “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you kill the prophets and stone them which are sent to you: how often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not.”  This maternal imagery is in line with imagery from the Old Testament which refers to taking refuge under God’s wings, a maternal metaphor. 

Second, I discovered the following prayer from the 11^th century, which set my heart ablaze.

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children;

Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
  tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
  in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life:
  by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
 through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead:
  your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us:
  in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
  for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

1033-1109 Anselm of Canterbury (Benedictine) (Common Worship: Daily Prayer © The Archbishops' Council 2005 and published by Church House Publishing.)

And I came to Anselm’s lovely prayer from preparing to teach about Julian of Norwich, who wrote the following in her Revelation of Love (translated by John Skinner). 

Our own true Mother Jesus, he who is all love, bears us to joy and endless living. . . . He is compelled to feed us, for the precious love of his motherhood makes him a debtor to us.  The mother may suckle her children with her own milk, but our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself.  . . . The mother may lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus, he may lead us homely into his blessed breast by his sweet open side and show within in part the Godhead and the joys of heaven, with spiritual certainty of endless bliss. . . . The property of true motherhood is kind [natural] love, wisdom, and knowing, and it is good. . . . And even though some earthly mother might allow a child of hers to perish, our heavenly Mother, Jesus, may never suffer us to be lost, for we are his children. . . . 

 . . . 

The blessed wound of our Saviour is open and rejoices to heal us; the sweet gracious hands of our Mother reach out ready and diligent about us.  For in all this working he uses the skills of a kind nurse who cares for nothing but the salvation of her child.  His task is to save us, a duty he delights to fulfill.  And he would have us know it; for he wants us to love him sweetly and trust in him meekly and mightily. . . . 
. . .
Thus our life is grounded in our true Mother Jesus in the foreseeing wisdom that he has from without beginning, with the might of the Father and the high sovereign goodness of the Holy Spirit.  For in taking our humankind he brings us life, in his blessed dying upon the cross he bore us to endless life.  And from that time until now, and even until Doomsday, he feeds us and helps us, according to the high sovereign kindness of his Motherhood that answers our kindly needs of childhood. (New York: Doubleday, 1997.)

It is so meaningful to me to have the Motherhood of God affirmed from the Old Testament on through the Gospels, and to have Jesus specifically named in the prayers and revelations of saints of the Church as our Mother in his work of redemption and restoration. If you, like me, have a need for a compassionate Mother in the heart of God, the Church has room for you.

Shalom and Division

Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church
January 5, 2020

Picture it: England 1650. King Charles 1 has recently been beheaded by the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, bringing the divine right of kings to govern to an abrupt end. A war is raging between Protestants and  Catholics over who will rule England. Bear-baiting is a sport, and hangings are a family outing. The Church seemed to be splintering a hundred ways as Ranters say God permits them to do whatever they want in their wild parties, Adamites say God wants them to return to Eden and walk around naked, and Quakers…Quakers stand up and argue with Anglican priests during church, keep their hats on in the presence of the upper class, and refuse to swear loyalty oaths—to pledge allegiance—to the government. The mid-1600s, when young George Fox began preaching and the Quaker movement began, were a wild, violent, chaotic time. And out of that context came the  Quaker “peace testimony.” Several who had served the Parliamentary Army under Oliver Cromwell, fighting for English Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, followed their experience of personal revelation of God out of the army and into preaching. Their testimony was not so much against the military as for their experience of being restored to the innocence of the garden of Eden by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ, and that innocence took away all cause for war.

This testimony also derived from the Quaker commitment to equality of all persons and the determination to swear not at all. This refusal to take the oath of loyalty was frequently used by hostile persons to put Quakers in jail because they refused to swear allegiance to the government and its head. They committed their bodies and souls to be loyal to no political regime, but only to Jesus Christ, despite their natural preference for the Protestant side of the English Civil War. Thus, when the nation returned to King Charles II, they attempted to use their refusal to swear allegiance to Oliver Cromwell to prove to King Charles II that they were called to a different kind of kingdom and were no more or less loyal to King Charles than they had been to Oliver Cromwell. They still went to jail, because political systems demand body and soul loyalty.

The actual lives of Quakers in the beginnings were fraught with persecution from the established Church of England, hostilities from other sects like the early Baptists, and conflicts among the faithful themselves. And those latter conflicts, while they may make us skeptical of their entire restoration to innocence, often came directly from what made their contribution to the whole of Christianity important and worthwhile, namely, their insistence on personal experience of the Spirit of God and personal accountability to obey what the Spirit of God told them to do. This practical mysticism derived from their belief that within every person is a seed of Truth that God’s Spirit speaks to and causes to grow. And though they went on to be separatist and self-preserving, the truth that inspired the first generation ran like an undercurrent into the mainstreams of Christianity and changed how we understand God and our relationship to God through Christ. A soul at peace, in shalom, with God is a soul nothing can ultimately trouble.

At the time just before Jesus was born, the nation of Israel was occupied by a foreign power, Rome, and ruled locally by hereditary enemies represented in the various Herods. The Jews were split internally among collaborators with Rome and religious purists and purifiers, and zealots dedicated to overthrowing Rome. The temple system exploited worshipers for money, particularly the poor or foreign-born. But there were still faithful Jews hoping for the coming of Messiah who would bring Shalom.

Luke 1 tells about the birth of John who became known as the Baptizer. His birth was foretold to his father Zechariah, who just mentioned to God’s messenger that he and his wife were old and she was past child-bearing age and could he please have a sign so that his wife would believe him, and the sign was that he could not talk for the duration of the pregnancy. When John was born, Zechariah’s speech came back, and he prophesied:

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, because God has looked on God’s people and ransomed them, and raised a mighty helper for us in the house of David…God will deliver us safely out of the hands of our enemies and of all who hate us, will perform the mercy shown to our fathers and will remember God’s holy covenant, the oath God swore to Abraham our father, to grant that we, having been rescued from our enemies, might worship and serve God without fear, in holiness and right living before God’s presence for all our days. And now you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you go forth before the face of the Master to prepare his ways, to give to his people a knowledge of salvation in release from the bondage of their sins, through our God’s inmost mercy, whereby a dawn from above will visit us, to shine upon those sitting in darkness and death’s shadow, in order to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:67-79)

So let’s see what Zechariah thought would lead to peace, to shalom.

Liberation from oppression

Salvation from enemies

Restoration of the covenant with God through God’s mercy

Freedom to worship without fear, in holiness and justice before his presence, which was understood to be in the Temple

John was to be the prophetic voice that taught Israel to understand their sinfulness, their need for forgiveness, so that their lives would not be characterized by darkness and the fear of death but by light and peace.

And that is what John set out to do. He lived a life of abstinence and purity, spent time in the desert with only God, and then returned to preach. His message was about being washed in living water in the Jordan River to show repentance, the commitment to changing mind and behavior, and to confer release and forgiveness from sins. He told the crowds to share their clothing and food with the impoverished; he told tax-collectors to collect no more than was due; he told men in the army not to extort or falsely accuse anyone and to be content with their wages. His message was right in line with all the prophets before him: be generous, have integrity, tell the truth, be content.

But most importantly, he told them that his baptism was water, but that one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who carried a threshing flail to beat the chaff away from the grain, saving the grain into a storehouse and burning away the chaff “with inextinguishable fire.”

So there’s that to look forward to in an encounter with the Chosen and Sent One of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

I was asked to talk about Shalom. Because Shalom is a Hebrew word, it is found only in the Old Testament in that form. However, it is very likely that when the New Testament portrays Jesus speaking the Greek word for peace that what he actually said was some version of Shalom. For example, when Jesus said, “Peace be unto you,” he was using a familiar greeting that included the word Shalom. When Jesus talks about peace, the Old Testament Shalom inhabits and fills up the meaning of the word in the New Testament.

The history of how the word is used in the Old Testament is more complex than a notion of peace as tranquility or even the absence of conflict. The root of the word is a verb and these are some of the ways to translate it:

restore, recompense, reward, repay, requite, make restitution, make amends, complete, finish

be at peace, make peace with, make safe, make whole, make good

You can see that inherent in these words is an idea of justice. It is unsurprising that the word Shalom in various forms permeates the books of the Law—Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Shalom is about making things right, about fairness, about justice, about adjudicating who owes whom what and defining how to pay it. The word is used to describe the offering of an animal to God to acknowledge sin and make peace with God. The prophets weigh in against deceptive weights and measures because Shalom relates to providing full value, and they assert that God hates it when people cheat each other in business transactions, noting that they most often cheat the poor.

In other words, the concept of Shalom presupposes that things have gone wrong, and acknowledges our deep desire that things go right, that our lives be characterized by completeness, soundness, safety, health, prosperity, quiet, contentment, friendship.

Even the Greek word for peace, eirene, has a probable root that means “to join”, suggesting the prerequisite of something divided prior to the coming of peace.

So Zechariah’s prophecy is a prayer for Shalom.

I want to suggest to you two things. Zechariah’s prophecy as he understood it was too small. When he referred to God’s people, he understood it entirely as referring to the nation of Israel. But we know from the rest of the story of Jesus that the circle widened to include those outside almost immediately, both while Jesus ministered and after the Holy Spirit took over the disciples’ lives and moved them outside Jerusalem, Judea, and to the farthest reaches of the world they knew.

And the process of understanding that all peoples are God’s people has been fraught with division and pain, from the actual Messiah, Jesus, on down to today. In other words, Shalom is not simple, and the enemies of peace are within ourselves and the systems like families, religions, and politics that shape our fears, our shames, and our areas of ignorance. Further, being moved by God’s Spirit from a life of fear and shame and unknowing to a life of faith and acceptance and increasing understanding is painful and requires quite often a kind of divine surgery.

That is why John warns his hearers that the Messiah will come as a reaper, not grim, but determined. The one God sends to save God’s people will not necessarily be experienced as a gentle restorer of balance. In point of fact, Jesus himself makes this point by word and deed.

In Luke 12 and Matthew 10 Jesus describes his mission:

 “I came to set a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled….Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there will be five in one house divided three against two…; father against son, son against father, mother and daughter divided against each other…Why do you not judge what is right even for yourselves? For as you are going out with your adversary to a judge, make an effort to settle your debt with your adversary on the spot, so that he does not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you most surely will not come out from there until you pay the very last cent.” (Luke 12:49 ff)

I have to say that I was startled to find my thoughts directed (I hope by the Spirit of Truth) toward these passages when I signed on to speak about Shalom. Yet I think we can see our understanding of Shalom informs this passage. If Shalom is about making things right, about making things whole that have been broken, the first great brokenness of humanity is the willingness to be parted from God. This willingness shows up in every action that goes against what God’s Spirit has told us is right and good to do, in every evasion in our own spirits against absolutely trusting in the goodness and love and faithfulness of God and the claims that God has on us because of them. We owe God everything, starting with the breath of life itself, and we will be imprisoned within ourselves by law and justice until we admit what we owe to God, and admit our own inability to pay, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court where Jesus is our advocate as well as our judge. And then we have to stand naked and unashamed in God’s presence, hiding nothing, allowing God to bring what has been hidden out of the corners where we buried it, running toward God rather than away when we realize we’re not ready to meet God’s eyes. The Old Testament writers called this open stance toward God “a perfect heart”—“perfect” being derived from Shalom, meaning at peace with God, in friendship with God, rather than a heart without flaws. See the relationship between David and God if you want to understand the term.

And this version: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I came to bring not peace but a sword. For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. Whoever cherishes father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever cherishes son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever gains their soul will lose it, and whoever loses their soul for my sake will gain it. Whoever accepts you accepts me, and whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me.” (Matthew 10:34 ff)

This speech occurs in a context of sending disciples out to preach in Judea to Jews. In commissioning them, Jesus warns them of resistance, rejection, and violence in response to the message to repent because God’s kingdom is here. This message of God’s kingdom exposes inmost allegiances, which remain to family, race, religion, not to God.  As long as this is true, God is their adversary, who is contending with them for what they, what we, owe to God—our undivided loyalty, our faith, our faithfulness.

We are so often prone to put loyalty to God in storage while we sign on to our family heritage, our religious tradition, our political party, our national identity. We need, like early Quakers saw, to be restored to the innocence of personal relationship with God Almighty, to walk daily with God, to hide nothing from God. We need to make all other loyalties secondary to this primary one. If we are participating in any system that splits the world into us vs. them, we have been drawn away from our loyalty to God, who has no favorites in the world, who even told the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Jesus, “are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). In other words, all the peoples are God’s. God’s care is for all the peoples of the world. And don’t forget the story of Jonah, whom God sent to preach to the political and national enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, and Jonah’s complaint to God when God forgives and does not rain judgment on the Assyrians: “Isn’t this just what I predicted?   I knew that You are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that You will choose not to inflict misery.” To which God (eventually) responds: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than 120,000 persons that cannot tell their right hand from their left hand; and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:2,11). Jesus tweaks the religious leaders of his day by referencing this specific story and saying it will be easier for Nineveh in the day of judgment than for Israel because the Assyrians repented when the prophet preached (Matthew 12:41).

Both of these challenging passages are preceded by the following encouragement given by Jesus himself, and I can think of no better way for us to prepare within ourselves the way of the Lord as best we can:

“Guard yourselves from the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending to be good. There is nothing thoroughly veiled that will not be unveiled, or hidden that will not be known. Thus the things you said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you whisper in private rooms will be proclaimed on the rooftops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those killing the body and thereafter having nothing more that they can do…Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. Rather, even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:1-7). “What I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…Are not two sparrows sold for the smallest pittance? And not one of them will fall to earth without your Father. But even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. So do not be afraid; you are of greater worth than a great many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:27-31)

Jesus says that when we say by word and deed, “I’m with God. I have pledged my loyalty to God” that he, Jesus, will say in front of God’s angels, “I’m with that person; I have pledged loyalty to her, to him, to them.” And nothing can separate us from God’s faithful love. God’s love is committed to our Shalom, to our well-being, to our wholeness, which we cannot have without relationship, friendship—Shalom—with God.  And God will work to burn away the chaff or the nonsense in how we understand ourselves and our relationships in order to leave behind the true grain of our personhood which God will never let go to waste.

 The following helped me write this sermon:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/

The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Mark Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)

The New Testament, trans. David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale UP, 2017)

George MacDonald's writings in general