Resurrection as Vindication

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

Psalm 118:22

Psalm 118:22 is a favorite of the New Testament authors. It appears in each of the synoptic gospels, the Book of Acts, and the first letter of Peter. Paul alludes to it in his letter to the Ephesians. The psalm verse especially fits Luke’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus’ vindication. That’s the way that the first gospel sermons in Acts portray Jesus’ resurrection.

Peter’s speeches in Acts 2, 3, 4, and 5 all contain the same basic message. You killed Jesus, but God raised him from the dead.

Jesus’ death means more than one thing in Luke, but chief among them is that his death was an unjust judgment that God reversed. His opponents judged that Jesus was wrong. God declared that he was right. God vindicated Jesus.

The resurrection, then, looks back and puts God’s stamp of approval on Jesus’ teaching in word and deed. The gospels don’t look at Jesus’ words as timeless bits of self-validating wisdom, but as announcements about life in the kingdom that is coming into existence in Jesus himself. If Jesus had not been raised, his words would fallen under the same judgment that sent him to the cross.

Luke, with the other gospels, see the crucifixion as act of grave injustice. Jesus was innocent, but his accusers judged him guilty. The resurrection not only reverses the unjust verdict, it exposes the injustice of Jesus’ condemnation.

You might think that the vindicated one, now seated in the place of ultimate authority at God’s right hand, might finally bring the power of a fully armed and operational kingdom of God against those who crucified him.

How strange, then, that Peter’s speeches offer not condemnation, but an opportunity for repentance, forgiveness, and an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The resurrection of Jesus is vindication without vindictiveness.

The Breath of God at the Red Sea

At the blast of breath of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, ‘I will pursue; I will overtake; I will divide the spoil; my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’ You blew with your breath; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.

Exodus 15:8-10

When Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” (John 20:22), he brought to mind a couple of episodes in the Old Testament. First, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Second, the prophet Ezekiel envisioned the whole house of Israel as a valley of dry bones, brought back to life by the breath of God (Ezekiel 37:1-14). In Jesus, God is creating humanity anew and reconstituting a restored and renewed Israel.

This morning, I discovered another allusion to God’s breath in the pages of Exodus. Exodus 14:21 simply states that God drove the sea back by a strong east wind, dividing the waters and allowing the Israelites to pass through the sea on dry ground. In the poetry of Exodus 15:8-10, however, the wind is explicitly identified with the breath of God. Psalm 18 uses the same imagery in an allusion to Israel’s crossing the Red Sea.

Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

Psalm 18:15

That You May Believe

Easter 2B
John 20:19-31

Doubting Thomas

Welcome to Doubting Thomas Sunday. This message is not really about Thomas. Or about doubt. 

Our reading begins with the disciples hiding in a locked room on the day Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus appeared to them, showed them his wounded hands and side, and their fear turned to joy. Famously, Thomas was absent and found it difficult to believe what the other disciples told him. He wanted to see for himself. Eight days later, on the first day of the week, on what came to be known as the Lord’s Day, Jesus came and repeated the appearance, this time with Thomas present. That did the trick. Thomas believed.  

The Wesley Study Bible suggests that the story of “doubting Thomas” should really be known as the story of “absent Thomas.” Thomas didn’t doubt more than the other disciples. Matthew and Luke both report widespread doubts on Easter Sunday. Thomas just didn’t’ happen to be present in the assembly the first time that Jesus appeared. When Thomas had the same experience of Jesus’ risen presence as the other disciples, like them he believed. If Thomas had been present in the assembly on the previous Sunday, there’s no reason to think that he wouldn’t have been overjoyed with the rest of the disciples.

So don’t miss church. Jesus might show up. In fact I’m pretty sure he will. 

On The Ten Commandments

Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-22

Just south of Washington D.C you will find a church that George Washington built . Begun in 1767 and completed in 1774, Pohick Episcopal Church  is located between the estates of George Washington and George Mason, just outside the gates of Fort Belvoir in Virginia. One of the things that I found interesting when I first visited the church was the posting of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles Creed, and the Ten Commandments just above the communion table. Later, as I visited other Anglican churches, I found that that this was not at all unusual. 

Pohick Episcopal Church, Lorton Virginia, Author’s Photograph

The Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles Creed, and the Ten Commandments all played a prominent role in the life and worship of the churches of the Protestant Reformation, and of the Church of England in particular. The Church of England required parents to teach each of them to their baptized children. 

In the church’s Book of Common Prayer, the communion service always began with a reading of the Ten Commandments. The leader would read each commandment separately, after which the congregation would say, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” 

What did John Wesley, who remained an Anglican priest until the day he died, think of this? He thought it was terrific. When Wesley prepared a book of worship for the Methodists in America, he included this practice. Wesley expected the Ten Commandments to be read and – most importantly – prayed in Christian worship. 

Have you ever thought about praying the Ten Commandments?

Creed and Gospel

My take away from the first two chapters of N. T. Wright’s How God became King: the creeds should not be professed where the gospels are not also read, and the other way around as well.

Wright starts with the hole in the creed. There’s nothing of what he calls “the middle part” there, what Jesus did and said between his birth and crucifixion. I suggested something similar in a post on the Apostles Creed some years ago. There are historical reasons for the structure of the creeds, and their authors could assume that the larger story was still being told.

The canonical gospels were, after all, read aloud in church. Christians said the Lord’s Prayer day by day, asking God to establish his kingdom on earth as in heaven. One might say that the creeds and the canon were intended to stand side by side, each interpreting the other, with the Lord’s Prayer as their obvious liturgical link. There was every reason to suppose that the faithful would understand the creeds as a framework within which these stories and this prayer brought everything into focus and made the sense they did. So all that material — the parables, the healings, the controversies with opponents, the great moral teaching, and above all the announcement of God’s kingdom — simply wasn’t mentioned in the official formulas. The gospels and their detailed teaching were taken for granted; they didn’t need to be referred to in the creeds as well.

Wright, N. T.. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels