"You have picked me up and thrown me aside"

As I have described in this series, in most of the lament psalms the direct cause of pain is "the enemy." If there is an accusation being leveled at God it concerns passivity. God is implored to act and wake up, to do something. 

But some psalms take greater risks. In these psalms God is the source of the suffering and the origin of the torment. To be sure, enemies are present in Psalm 102: "My enemies taunt me all day long; they ridicule and use my name as a curse." But the poet of Psalm 102 is willing to point the finger directly at God: "You have picked me up and thrown me aside." 

Unlike Psalm 88, however, Psalm 102 mixes these direct accusations with praise. And what is so interesting to me about Jewish praise is how it focuses upon God's eternal nature. This quality alone--God's everlastingness--makes Him worthy of praise:

Long ago you established the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will endure;
all of them will wear out like clothing.
You will change them like a garment,
and they will pass away.
But you are the same,
and your years will never end.

It has often been noted how there is no strong vision of the afterlife in the Psalms. The rewards and blessings concern this life, here and now. As the Psalmist says, the dead cannot praise God from the grave. Only the living can sing. So life--this life--is the prize.

And yet, no matter what happens to us, live or die, God is worthy of praise simply for being the Eternal One. We will wear out like clothing. We will fade like flowers. We shall pass away like grass. But God remains. And for that, He is praised and exulted. God was praised simply for being God, for God's own intrinsic Self. To be sure, the Hebrews offered up their petitions for happiness, well-being, and blessing. But their praise was never dependent or contingent upon these outcomes.  

What strikes me in all this is how the ancient Hebrews appeared to have grasped the extremity of our transitoriness in ways we moderns have not. The Hebrews recognized the vast contrast between ourselves and the Eternal. Beholding that ontological chasm was all that was needed to bend the knee in doxological acknowledgement. 

But us? We've somehow convinced ourselves that we are made of sturdier stuff. We've come to feel entitled to the next breath and heartbeat. We believe that continued existence is our due, and that death can be put off indefinitely. But this, of course, is madness. 

We have lost ontological humility, and with the loss of that humility a primordial capacity for worship, especially when we don't get what we want. Our praise is conditional, our worship contingent. We don't praise God for being God, we praise God for getting what we want. And because of this, we struggle to get inside the experience of Psalm 102, the hot lament mixed with durable praise.

Today a follow up reflection on the Maurice Blondel quote I shared yesterday:

To reach man, God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to him under the most brute of material species. To reach God, man must go through all of nature and find Him under the veil where He hides Himself only to be accessible. Thus the whole natural order comes between God and man as a bond and as an obstacle, as a necessary means of union and as a necessary means of distinction.

As I pondered this quote in the reflections I shared in the last post, I imagined how our seeking God through the scrim of nature can get stuck on either side, and how that "getting stuck" leads to either atheism or paganism, unbelief or idolatry. 

Let me explain.

As Blondel describes, we must find God "under the veil" of nature. God is speaking to us through nature, the heavens declare the glory of God, but we can fail to hear or see Him. Coming from God's direction toward us, God's communication gets "hung up" in nature, diffused and refracted, and never penetrates all the way to us. We behold nature, but do not see God shining thorough it.  

When this happens we experience atheism, or more properly, materialism. We experience nature as mute and silent, as inert "stuff." Nature is experienced as disenchanted, evacuated of any sacred character. Our only relationship to nature is "scientific" and "factual." 

So, if atheism is God's communication getting "stuck," "blocked," or "dissipated" by nature in its movement toward us, there's a related problem with our movement toward God getting "stuck" or "hung up" in nature. This is the temptation in paganism.

In this situation, the sacred character of nature is readily perceived and recognized. Nature is enchanted, suffused with spiritual meaning and potency. But if our movement toward God gets stuck or hung up there, in nature, we come to worship nature rather than God. We don't "push through" nature to seek the Creator. This leads to idolatry, worshiping creation over the Creator, which tends to manifest in a neopagan, bespoke, spiritual-but-not-religious posture. 

To summarize, Blondel's quote made me wonder if there's a single dynamic at work that connects atheism, paganism, and faith. That dynamic concerns how the movement between God and humanity through nature can lead to one of three outcomes. First, if we fail to perceive God in and through nature, we end up with atheism, scientism, materialism, and disenchantment. God is "blocked" by nature and nothing sacred is perceived in or through the material world. We end up with unbelief, a dry "factual" experience of the cosmos. Second, we might perceive the sacred aspect of nature but fail to reach the Creator behind and beyond nature. This leads to a neopagan, spiritual-but-not religious posture. Instead of unbelief, we have idolatry.  Lastly, we have faith, full and complete communication through nature from both sides. We experience the sacred through nature, we experience divine communication, we hear. And we, in response, penetrate through nature to express doxological recognition of the Creator. 

Simply:

Atheism is God hidden in nature.

Paganism is God mistaken as nature.

Faith is God communicating through nature.

I am unfamiliar with the thought of Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), the Catholic philosopher. However, in reading an article I was interrupted by a Blondel quote from his famous work Action:

To reach man, God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to him under the most brute of material species. To reach God, man must go through all of nature and find Him under the veil where He hides Himself only to be accessible. Thus the whole natural order comes between God and man as a bond and as an obstacle, as a necessary means of union and as a necessary means of distinction.

The quote describes material reality--nature--as both "bond" and "obstacle." Material reality can be a "means of union" between creature and Creator, but should also provide a "necessary means of distinction" between creator and Creator. 

Regarding the "bond" and "union" material reality provides, this captures the sacramentalism of Catholic theology. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, matter matters. God makes contact with material reality through materiality. As Blondel puts it, "God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to [us] under the most brute of material species." Think, here, of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But also of the sacramental ontology of the ancient imagination, where all of nature is charged with the grandeur of God. 

On our side of the relationship, we, as material creatures, must seek God through the material realm. There is no Gnostic option in seeking God. We cannot sidestep the material realm. As Blondel says, "Man must go through all of nature and find Him." And yet, that very path can become an "obstacle." In nature God is "under a veil." God "hides" in nature. And yet, God does so to become "accessible." 

In short, the natural world has a dual aspect. Pathway or obstacle. Window or occlusion. Portal or blockage. Nature communicates God or makes God go silent. We see this dual nature depicted in Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour out speech;
night after night they communicate knowledge.
There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.
Their message has gone out to the whole earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.

On the one hand, speech: "Day after day they pour out speech." On the other hand, muteness: "There is no speech; there are no words; Their voice is not heard." 

So which is it, speech or silence? Well, it's both. 

Nature can be both means of communication with God or the muting of God's voice.

In December 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer shared a Christmas reflection with his brother-in-law Hans Von Dohnanyi, his close friend Eberhard Bethge, and Major General Hans Oster, a German military officer involved in plots to overthrow the Nazis. The reflection was entitled “After Ten Years,” and in it Bonhoeffer looked back over the last decade, taking stock of what had happened to Germany. Four months after writing the essay, on April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. After two years of imprisonment they were executed.

"After Ten Years" contains seventeen sections. In each section Bonhoeffer tries to account for the moral collapse of Germany and attempts to trace the shape of moral action in the face of that collapse. Those who had spoken out, people Paul Schneider and the White Rose group, had been killed. Those who had put up milder resistance, like Bonhoeffer and others within the Confessing Church, were ineffectual and had, in various ways, become quiet and complicit in order to survive. In "After Ten Years" Bonhoeffer wrestles with the stark choices facing people of conscience in such dark times, martyrdom to one side and ineffectiveness to the other. As Bonhoeffer puts it in his reflections, "What remains for us is only the very narrow path, sometimes barely discernible, of taking each day as if it were the last and yet living it faithfully and responsibly as if there were yet to be a great future."

In yesterday's post, politicians were described as "black magicians." Hitler, obviously, is one of the best examples of how a political leader can come to wield dark, occult powers over the masses. And yet, this charismatic power doesn't absolve citizens of their moral responsibilities. As they say, it takes two to tango. What, then, characterizes a populace which causes them to succumb to the occult influences of the leader? We might point to some intrinsic moral corruption and wickedness in the people. Some evil or malice. But that's not Bonhoeffer's diagnosis. Instead of evil, Bonhoeffer points to something more depressing and mundane: Stupidity.

Here is the full passage on "Stupidity" from Bonhoeffer's essay "After Ten Years":

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind at least a sense of unease in human beings. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that in essence it is not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The biblical passage, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, states that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

I have been reading Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. I've been pondering doing a series on the book, but the book is so out of the box I think many readers won't have the cognitive flexibility to enjoy or be edified by such an exploration. So we'll see. 

And to calm any alarmed readers triggered by the word “tarot,” Tomberg’s book isn’t about divination. It is, rather, a Jungian-style meditation on the symbolism of the Major Arcana, treating them as archetypes. Tomberg was an orthodox Catholic, and the book comes with an appreciative theological appraisal by the Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

Anyway, I was struck by this passage yesterday in Meditations on the Tarot. Tomberg is discussing black magic, which a lot of Christians would consider to be the major threat of occultism, dabbling in the dark arts. Tomberg, however, who had a lot of experience with occultism, expresses a very deflationary take on black magic. According to Tomberg, a lot of what passes for "black magic" is sad, pathetic, and deluded. I'd suggest a lot of "black magic" is cosplay. But even if the black magician does make contact with dark powers, the one who is affected is the magician. Which is sad for them, but doesn't much hurt anyone else. According Tomberg, the real black magicians, the people we really need to worry about, are politicians. Politicians are the ones who are dabbling in black magic. 

Here's Tomberg making this point:

I am not able to cite by name any black magician amongst the occultists that I know, whereas it would not be too difficult to name some politicians who, for example, have nothing to do with occultism--and would even be hostile to it--but whose influence and impact agree very well with the classical concept of that of the "black magician." Indeed, is it difficult to name politicians who have exercised a deadly, suggestive influence on the popular masses, blinding them and inciting them to acts of cruelty, injustice and violence, of which each individual, taken separately, would be incapable...and who, through their semi-magical influence, have deprived individuals of their freedom and rendered them possessed?  And is not this action to deprive men of their moral freedom and to render them possessed the aim and very essence of black magic?

This remains a timely observation. We behold politicians who exercise a suggestive influence over their followers. The politician-magician casts a spell, a type of mass possession, in order to achieve their will to power. The Bible foretells and predicts these collective delusions. This is the heart of black magic. 

"I will not let anything worthless guide me."

We've made it to the final 50 psalms! 

I've regularly done very long series on Fridays. Writing as much as I do, these Friday series lighten my load as I can let the content of the series guide my thoughts.

So, just to catch new readers up with the idea this series, the conceit is to focus the meditation upon a single line or phrase from each Psalm. Something that, in its conciseness, grabs my attention. 

That line from Psalm 101 is: "I will not let anything worthless guide me." CSB translation. 

The Hebrew would be more literally rendered, "I will not put a worthless thing in front of my eyes."

Overall, Psalm 101 is a pledge of loyalty and fidelity to God. And what strikes me about the vow is this commitment about not setting a worthless thing in front of your eyes.

How we deploy our attention has a huge impact in shaping us. What we set before our eyes will, in large part, determine the people we become. And as we know, this situation has become even more grave given how social media has been algorithmically created to capture, hold, and funnel our attention. To the point where our perception of reality can become massively distorted. We're increasingly living among people in the grip of algorithmically-generated delusions. We've become a hallucinatory society. 

I've been pretty intentional in protecting my attention. Here are some of the things I've done in relation to my digital devices.

Aurally, my default ringtone is silent. (You actually have to buy a silent ringtone for the iPhone as silent is not an option in your sound settings. But it's not a bad investment of 99 cents.) Only Jana, Brenden, and Aidan have their ringtones set to a sound. Same with my text messages. Only texts from Jana, Brenden, and Aidan make a sound, all others are set to silent. So, unless my family contacts me, my phone is silent all day long.

Visually, my phone is set to greyscale. Nothing is in color. Text messages are set to no banner or homescreen notifications. So, in addition to the silence of my phone (and computer), I don't have anything popping up into my visual field. 

From an interactive perspective, I don't have any games on my phone. And most crucially, as I expect you've noticed if you looked for me, I have no social media presence. Substack has a social media-adjacent function, where people post notes, comments, and updates, but I don't participate in that. 

Basically, I've worked hard to have 100% command of my attention throughout the day, removing anything that would grab it without my consent. 

I do, though, want to avoid techno self-righteousness in sharing this. I find technology useful. Plus, I expect if Jesus were alive today he'd preach a parable about the Luddite and the kid on TikTok going up to the temple to pray: "I thank you, Lord," the Luddite prays aloud in his online (!) essay, "for not making me like this kid on TikTok." 

Still, you must protect your attention. You become what you behold. Beware setting worthless things before your eyes.

Looking back over this series, are there any lessons and applications for us today? What might it mean for us to emulate Jesus' practice of welcoming sinners? Especially if, as I argued in the last post, Paul himself gives us a model of imitation?

It seems to me there a two major takeaways, one for conservatives and one for progressives. 

For the conservatives, we are to show up in any place and with anyone without a word of judgment or condemnation. This is exactly what attracts progressives to Jesus, and they are exactly right in calling out conservatives for their failures on this point. Simply put, culture warring Christians are not Christians. As we've seen in this series, Jesus was hardest on those who, through a religious/moral caste system, marginalized others. Jesus' calls for reconciliation were not directed at the sinners, but toward the righteous. 

For the progressives, Jesus' friendship with sinners had an evangelistic purpose. Jesus was seeking the lost. He was healing the sick. True, Jesus did not hector, lecture, or wag a finger, but he desired transformation and change. And if I'm right about the apostle Paul, this transformation had to do with an encounter with Jesus himself. If conservatives fail due to culture-warring, progressives fail because they are poor evangelists. 

One attempt to say all this in a simple way, which I think gets at what I'm trying to describe here, is the refrain that belonging precedes believing and becoming. When I look at Jesus' practice of table fellowship that is what I see. Jesus' embrace shared the good news that the lost sheep of Israel belonged. They, too, were children of Abraham. They were family. And that belonging enabled transformation. This, I think, gets us close to the gospel stories. Belonging first, but with an eye toward becoming. As I've described it in this series, the grace Jesus embodied was both prevenient and transformative. Following Paul, Christ died for us while we were sinners. We're already saved. We're already in. And that prior belonging changes our lives.  

To be sure, this is a delicate business that often goes awry in both conservative and progressive spaces. But in my opinion, this path gets us closest to what Jesus was doing in the gospels when he welcomed sinners.

A point I've made in this series about the stories of Jesus welcoming sinners is that there are aspects of these stories that cut across how conservative and progressive Christians read them. These stories go against the grain of each group.

Specifically, conservatives like how in these stories Jesus is seeking and saving the lost. Jesus' actions are evangelistic in nature. He was healing the sick. Repentance and return are goals. These aspects of the stories trouble progressive readings of the stories which view Jesus' actions as expressions of "welcome" and "tolerance" for the socially marginalized.

Progressives, for their part, like how Jesus goes to the margins in an expression of prevenient grace, an embrace that precedes any repentance or change. Jesus also attacks the moral caste system that created the social marginalization. These aspects of the stories trouble conservative readers of the stories who tend to adopt judgmental and hypocritical postures toward moral out-groups. See: the culture wars. 

But beyond these cross-currents, I've also pointed out other aspects of these stories that don't have ready applications for us. Specifically, Jesus' mission in these stories was regathering the lost sheep of Israel in anticipation of a coming judgment. This introduces communal and apocalyptic elements. By communal I mean that Jesus' focus was upon scattered Israel. Israel, as a people, was Jesus' object. And it was this identity that Jesus prioritized over moral behavior. Again, recall the story of Zacchaeus. Jesus seeks him out "because this man, too, is a son of Abraham." That identity, being a lost son of Abraham, is was drove Jesus' actions. 

To be sure, Jesus' kindness extended to Gentiles. But his priority was the lost sheep of Israel. And it was this communal identity that caused Jesus to crash through the caste system of Torah piety to seek the lost and to reconcile the older brothers to them, especially in light of the unfairness and lateness of the prodigals' nick-of-time return in the face of the coming judgment (see, again, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard). To my eye, this aspect of Jesus' mission has no straightforward application to our time and place. Consequently, the Israel-centric and apocalyptic aspects of these stories tends to get dropped and stripped away reducing them to moral fables.

And yet, let me suggest, I do think we find in the New Testament a vision of how these stories about Jesus become universalized and shifted into an eschatological, rather than apocalyptic, register. 

Consider the ministry of Paul. Very much like Jesus, Paul would go anywhere and fellowship with anyone in his efforts share the Good News. Following the actions of Peter in Acts 10, Paul set out to gather the Gentiles, the other "lost sheep" Jesus spoke of. In in doing so, Paul broke with how Jewish persons typically treated the goyim. As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 9: 

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

Like Jesus, Paul would go anywhere and sit down with anyone. No moral, religious, social, or ethnic barrier would interfere with his practices of table fellowship. This, to my eye, seems very similar to Jesus' practice in the gospels.  

Also, Paul saw his task as bringing the Gentiles into Israel, grafting these wild olive branches to the native tree of Israel (Romans 11). Paul continues Jesus' Israel-centric focus.

Paul also shows up in spaces, like Jesus, with a message of prevenient transforming grace. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners and enemies of God. This grace precedes any change or repentance.

Finally, Paul also experienced eschatological pressure in his task of gathering the lost sheep of the Gentiles. Paul, it appears, expected the immanent return of Jesus. This expectation mirrors Jesus' own apocalyptic urgency. 

Stepping back, I'm suggesting that what we see Jesus doing with the lost sheep of Israel in the gospels is continued by Paul with his Gentile mission. As Jesus said in John 10, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." We see Paul carrying forward many of Jesus' peculiar practices. Both displayed a radical indifference to social, moral, religious, and ethnic barriers. Jesus and Paul would break bread with anyone. In shocking and unprecedented fashion, they flowed over, through, and around social borders and hierarchies like water. Both also displayed an Israel-centric focus. They proclaimed a message of a prevenient transforming grace. Lastly, each expressed eschatological urgency. 

This mapping of Jesus onto Paul seems, to me, to have some face validity. If so, why hasn't this connection been made more often? I think it's because we frame Jesus' practices of table fellowship as "welcome" and "embrace" and Paul's missionary actions as "evangelistic." That is, we don't think of Jesus as an evangelist. This, despite Jesus opening his career with the call "Repent!" (Mark 1.15) and describing his mission as "seeking and saving" the lost sheep of Israel. By failing to attend to Jesus' self-described mission of regathering the lost sheep of Israel, along with his call to repentance, we miss the missional aspects of his "welcoming sinners." 

Why have we failed to see Jesus as an "evangelist," as one proclaiming "good news" (see, again, Mark 1.15)? I think for the reasons we've surveyed in this series. First, Jesus ignored the caste system created by Torah piety. Jesus became a "friend of sinners." Next, Jesus proclaimed a provocative message of a prevenient grace. He didn't make sinners jump through moral hoops. They were already embraced by a prior grace. And finally, Jesus castigated the "older brothers" for their judgmentalism and hypocrisy. All this tips us toward viewing Jesus' actions as "tolerance" and "acceptance" in a modern, liberal, and humanistic sense. But this modern take on Jesus misses his apocalyptic gathering of Israel.

Simply put, Jesus looks to us like he's just going around being nice to everyone when he's actually on a mission.

There is another detail that needs to be mentioned when discussing Jesus' mission of regathering the lost sheep of Israel. This concerns the apocalyptic themes we find in the gospels. 

Let me state this clearly. There are some scholars who deploy this material in a very deflationary manner. That isn't my intention here. But there is no denying that these apocalyptic notes run through the gospels, and they do concern Jesus' mission. Consequently, if we want the fullest picture of what Jesus was up to when he welcomed sinners we need to take this apocalyptic context into account.

Scholars have long described Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who was anticipating an immanent judgment, the long-prophesied "Day of the Lord." Why was Jesus regathering the lost sheep of Israel? To prepare Israel for this cataclysmic moment. 

If you're not familiar with this theme that threads through the gospels, here are some of the main beats.

John the Baptist appears in the wilderness and describes his mission as one of divine judgment: "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire" (Matthew 3:10). The One who will follow John will continue this work: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12). This sets the stage for Jesus as an apocalyptic figure who will separate the righteous from the wicked and usher in God’s imminent judgment.

Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15). Through his teachings and parables, Jesus emphasizes the urgency of repentance and calls for watchfulness for God’s coming judgment. For example, in the Parable of the Ten Virgins Jesus warns, "Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour" (Matthew 25:13). As Jesus says to the crowds, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1). Jesus also describes the apocalyptic figure from Daniel, the Son of Man, who is "coming in clouds with great power and glory" (Mark 13:26). The time, Jesus adds, is immanent: "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place" (Mark 13:30). At the Last Supper, Jesus speaks of the kingdom’s nearness: "Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). And at his trail before the High Priest, Jesus again speaks of the immanent arrival of the kingdom: "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). 

As I mentioned, this material can be read in a very deflationary way. That story goes like this. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who proclaimed the immanent judgment of Israel. Given that the time was short, Jesus hurried to gather the lost sheep of Israel. Not everyone would heed his call--"But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:26-27)--but the ones who did would be spared the judgment. In this reading, however, Jesus' vision and mission ended in disappointment. Instead of triggering the judgment with his dramatic entry into Jerusalem and climatic clearing of the temple, Jesus is arrested and killed. 

Again, that's the deflationary way of telling the story, Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet of an immanent judgment that failed to materialize. Traditional and orthodox Christians, though, don't read the gospels that way. And yet, the apocalyptic material is there in the gospels and it contextualizes how Jesus saw his mission in seeking the lost sheep of Israel. Because we have to ask and answer the questions: Yes, Jesus was "seeking and saving the lost," but why was he doing it? What was his motivation? And why all the parables, like the Ten Virgins, about vigilance and watchfulness about the Bridegroom who arrives in the middle of the night? Why all the references to judgment, hell, and predictions about the destruction of the temple? Why does Jesus open his kingdom proclamation with the cry, "Repent!"?

Simply stated, Jesus' regathering of Israel was eschatologically pressured. And while I don't think we need to read this material in a deflationary way, we do need to take that eschatological pressure into account when we look at the stories of Jesus "welcoming sinners." There is an apocalyptic urgency in these stories that, once again, cuts across our simplistic readings. Jesus was up to something that we tend to miss. 

Now, having made this point I'll conclude with some posts reflecting about modern day applications. This task, however, has been made less obvious and straightforward as I've worked in this series to make the stories of Jesus welcoming sinners strange again, strange in ways that thwart conservative and progressive readings. Today's post contributes to that work by noting the apocalyptic context of Jesus' actions, a context that we don't generally pay attention to or know how to apply to our context. And if all that is so, what lessons can we learn from these stories if not the standard ones we've told ourselves?

As I mentioned in the last post, Torah piety had created a caste system during Second Temple Judaism. This caste system was creating an obstacle for Jesus' mission to regather scattered Israel. Consequently, one of Jesus' goals was reconciling the righteous to the lost sheep when they returned home.

You see this most clearly in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As many a preacher has pointed out, the story isn't really about the younger son. The story is about the older son. The murmuring that kicks off the parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep, and Lost Son was:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

The parable isn't about the prodigal but this attitude Jesus is facing, the attitude embodied by the older son when the younger son returns home:

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

We see Jesus addressing this hostility throughout the gospels, this accusation that the grace Jesus was extending was premature and unfair. It's this perception of unfairness that Jesus directly attacks in his Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. You'll recall the set up, how the owner sends people out into the vineyard to work at staggered hours throughout the day. Some have been working all day, others have just arrived. But at the end of the day everyone is paid a full day's wage. This provokes the predictable outrage from those who've worked the whole day:

So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

This is the older brother's compliant in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, a resentment that Jesus' practices of welcome were effectively cancelling all the effort they had devoted to Torah observance. The compliant of the workers in the parable--"you have made them equal to us"--was the complaint being leveled at Jesus as he "welcomed sinners and ate with them."

The Pharisees are often portrayed as legalists who embody a "works-based righteousness." People who were trying to "earn" their salvation. But this is mistaken. Jesus' problem with the Pharisees, in light of his mission to gather the lost sheep, was how they had come to use Torah piety to fracture and scatter Israel. Jesus didn't rebuke Torah observance directly, but he did chastise how it was creating sociomoral divisions within Israel. 

Torah piety created these divisions in two related ways. On the one hand there was preening pride and a thirst for public recognition. On the other hand was a revulsion and refusal to associate with the unrighteous. (I might have written a book about that.) That the Pharisees often failed to meet their own standards raised another charge: hypocrisy. Throughout the gospels Jesus attacked all three of these--pride, judgmentalism, hypocrisy. And the point to underline here is how these weren't tied up with a "works-based" or "merit-based" vision of salvation. The point was primarily social and corporate, how these dynamics were causing the "older brother" (the Torah observant) to refuse to participate in the celebration of the recovered "younger brother" (the sinners Jesus was welcoming).

Simply put, in regathering the lost sheep of Israel Jesus' mission wasn't simply "welcoming sinners." Jesus was also attempting to reconcile the righteous to the unrighteous, the older brothers who were refusing to celebrate the return of the prodigals.   

"He made us"

I've been reading Edward Feser's book Five Proofs for the Existence of God. 

I think impressions would vary widely about the book. While it's an introductory treatment, much of the book is pretty technical and analytical. Perhaps oddly, I've enjoyed the book as devotional reading. 

Here's why.

I don't know how persuasive "proofs" are for the existence of God. But when you look at these proofs, especially those in Feser's volume, many of them engage in a characteristic train of reflection. We start with what we observe in the world around us and begin to ask questions, following those questions deeper and deeper into first and primary realities. Reason digs down into the ground of being. Our minds move toward the Source. We seek the Origin. 

Of course, like I said, reasoning toward an "Unmoved Mover," an "Uncaused Cause," or an "Actualizing Actualizer" might be convincing for some and less so for others. Regardless, what is obvious is that our minds are driving toward something fundamental. And that's what I'm finding devotional about Feser's book. I don't know if any of his proofs really work as proofs. But I have allowed Feser's arguments to lead my mind toward the mystery of existence. And that experience makes you appreciate the sheer miracle of why anything exists at all. You just look around in astonishment at the of simplest things. 

This radical contingency is what Psalm 100 confesses. We are not the source of our own being. Nor can we hold ourselves in being. Contemplating that contingency draws your mind toward God. Our existence comes from beyond ourselves.

He made us.

That conversion was on the agenda in Jesus' welcoming of sinners is obvious in how he described his practices of table fellowship. In each of the synoptic gospels (Matthew 9:12, Mark 2:17, and Luke 5:31), Jesus says in defending his practice: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Again, "calling sinners" cuts across how progressives tend to read the stories of Jesus' table fellowship. Progressives generally read these stories as tales of tolerance and acceptance. But Jesus describes his actions a medicinal, tending to the sick. He is calling sinners back home as he regathers the lost sheep of Israel.

And yet, there was something provocative and shocking about Jesus' practices that offended the righteous and pious of his day. Jesus had a different diagnosis of the sickness which caused him to apply different medicine. 

Simply stated, rather than erecting a moral barrier between the righteous and sinners, Jesus crossed over into the territory of the sinners to proclaim a prevenient grace, inclusion, and welcome. "Prevenient" is an adjective that means preceding in time or order, something which comes before something else. As he regathered Israel, Jesus announced the inclusion of sinners prior to their repentance. As children of Abraham, they belonged. And in Jesus' practices of table fellowship he announced and enacted that belonging. Again, the story of Zacchaeus is illustrative:

• Prior to any repentance or conversion, Jesus goes to Zacchaeus' house. Jesus enacts prevenient grace, inclusion, and welcome. 


• This act triggers moralistic murmuring among the people, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” 


• But Jesus' medicine works. Zacchaeus' experience of grace prompts conversion. “Look, Lord!" he says, "Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”


• Witnessing the change, Jesus announces, “Today salvation has come to this house." The medicine of prevenient grace, inclusion, and welcome has effected a cure. As Jesus goes on to say, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” 


• Finally, Jesus connects his actions with his goal of regathering the lost sheep of Israel. He came to Zacchaeus' house "because this man, too, is a son of Abraham." Though wayward, Zacchaeus was a part of the family and had to treated as such.

Again, notice the cross-currents that cut across simplistic progressive and conservative readings of Jesus. Progressives don't like how Jesus' actions had a soteriological agenda, healing the sick and seeking and saving the lost. For their part, conservatives don't like Jesus' enactments of prevenient grace, inclusion, and welcome, how sinners, as sinners, were already a part of the family.

Stepping back, it seems that Jesus' strategy was to enact a prevenient, transforming grace. Zacchaeus changes because he was welcomed and included. A prior embrace prompted a moral change. And it was this reordering--embrace before repentance--that made Jesus' table fellowship so provocative. Consider the older brother's reaction in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Or the pride of the Pharisee in the Parable of the Tax Collector and Pharisee. Torah piety was being used to create a caste system, with righteous insiders (the older brother, the Pharisee) shunning sinful outsiders (the prodigal brother, the tax collector). With his mission to regather Israel, Jesus broke down this caste system to seek out and embrace all the lost sheep of Israel. For Jesus, it seems, being a "child of Abraham" was more important than Torah observance. Identity trumped moral performance. Any moral change of these lost sheep, Jesus appeared to assume, would happen upon their experience of grace and inclusion. 

In the first post I suggested that we might not be grasping what Jesus was up to in the gospels, especially concerning his welcoming of sinners. 

So, what was Jesus doing?

Crucial to understanding Jesus' mission are Old Testament prophecies that the Lord would act to regather his scattered people. For example:

Deuteronomy 30.1-3
And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

The prophets described how God would come as a shepherd to seek out his lost sheep:

Ezekiel 34.11-16
For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.

This text from Ezekiel reads as Jesus' mission statement in the gospels. Jesus describes himself as "the good shepherd," whose voice the sheep hear and follow (John 10). Jesus has compassion on the crowds because they were "like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9.36, Mark 6.34), and he describes his ministry as like that of a shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost sheep (Matthew 18, Luke 15). 

Even more, in Ezekiel 34, before God is described as a shepherd, the prophet levels an indictment at the leaders of Israel for being poor and ineffectual shepherds:  

Ezekiel 34.7-10
“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

Much of Jesus' conflict with the religious leaders in the gospels flows right out of this text. If you gathered up all these texts in the gospels--from Jesus' conflicts with leaders deemed to be poor shepherds to Jesus seeking the lost sheep and caring for the weak and injured sheep--you'll have almost the entirety of the gospels before you.

Tightening this connection are Jesus' overt statements about his mission. In his encounter with the Canaanite women in Matthew 15, Jesus flatly says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” We also see the priority of Israel in Jesus' sending of the Twelve in Matthew 10. Jesus sends them out with these marching orders: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 

Though Israel has priority, we do see Jesus include the Gentiles in his mission. He heals in the woman's daughter in Matthew 15. And in the gospel of John the gathering of the lost sheep is expanded to include the Gentiles: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

Summarizing, Jesus saw his mission as the (re)gathering of Israel. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus describes his mission plainly: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” This mission--seeking and saving the lost sheep--needs to be the framework through which we approach Jesus' welcoming of sinners. The notes of "lostness," "seeking," and "saving" alter how both conservatives and progressives tend to read these stories. Progressives like the seeking part of Jesus' mission, his movement toward the margins. Conservatives like the saving the lost aspects of Jesus' mission, which highlight themes of evangelism and conversion. 

These cross-currents will continue when we turn to look at the provocative way Jesus went about seeking and gathering the lost sheep of Israel.

I think one of the hardest things to understand about Jesus was his practice of table-fellowship with tax collectors, sinners, and sex workers. That might come as a surprise, as Jesus' actions seem straightforward enough. Jesus was extending love and mercy to stigmatized outcasts and marginalized persons. What's confusing about that? Jesus, in this view, is exemplifying a universalizing vision of welcome, inclusion, and tolerance. And we should follow his example by welcoming all those "on the margins."

But if we look a little closer, this view has some cracks in it. 

One of those cracks concerns the moral aspect of Jesus' welcome. A classic example is the woman caught in the act of adultery. Progressives love it when Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you." But conservatives love it when he says, "Go and sin no more." Something in the story is cutting across each of these simplistic readings. 

Consider also the story of Zacchaeus:

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

On the surface, it's a story of "welcome" and "inclusion." Jesus has "gone to be the guest of a sinner." But the story goes on to recount an act of conversion and repentance. And it's at that point, after Zacchaeus repents, that Jesus declares: "Today salvation has come to this house." Jesus hasn't merely "welcomed" Zacchaeus. Jesus has saved him. In fact, that's how Jesus describes his mission: To seek and save the lost. "Saving the lost" pulls in a moral dimension that is typically ignored in progressive readings of Jesus. 

A similar dynamic is seen in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We tend to focus upon the unconditional love of the father, as we should. But the story is also one of conversion and repentance. After a season in the "far country" the son returns home and says to his father: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Upon that return a celebration breaks out. As the father says: "This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." Notice the themes of deadness and lostness in contrast to being alive and found. The joy is triggered by a transformation.

My goal in raising these points isn't to suggest that there wasn't something unprecedented and shocking about Jesus welcoming of sinners. As we know and will discuss, Jesus' actions gave great offense. Today I just want to unsettle some settled opinions by highlighting details in the gospels that don't easily fit into progressive or conservative readings of Jesus. There are details in these stories, details we tend to ignore or skip over, that suggest Jesus was doing something different from what we typically assume. Do we really know what Jesus was up to? Exploring that question is the goal of this series.