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Pentecost XVI, August 31, 2008

Jeremiah 15:15-21 Psalm 26 Romans 12:9-21 Mat 16:21-28

It’s Always a Good Time to Repent.

It’s always a good time to repent. Look at Jeremiah. The prophet is like a preacher or pastor, and God says, “You abandoned your office.” To be a pastor, preacher, or prophet, you have to stand before a king as a messenger and await the divine word to bring to the people or sometimes the messenger even has to carry out the king’s word him or herself. We need to repent because we often forget that we are living in the real presence of God, just like messengers in the presence of a king, and not our words and what we want is important, but that we share the words and actions of God with each other is what’s important.

So I as a pastor have to repent; you, who are the congregation, have to repent, so that we live lives that are worthy and say what is of value and precious, rather than a lot of clap-trap.

Jeremiah says that God is a deceitful brook, like waters that fail. He’s going through a wilderness, while God promised a garden, and he comes to a river bed, mad with thirst, only to find the river dry, while God promised to be a fountain of living water.

God tells Jeremiah, “That’s because you forgot about my presence. You forgot about your holy calling. So turn back, stop turning away from me.”

Yes, we love the habitation of God’s house. We love the church, the place where God’s glory dwells. In Psalm 26, it could be that someone is being falsely accused. He washes his hands to show that he (or it could be a she) wants to be free and clean of all of his or her sins. She or he asks God to check out her heart – to penetrate to the innermost recesses of her heart, to clean out the sin (hatred, vengeful, vindictive thoughts, and all that does not belong there), and give him or give her, a pure heart.

“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, “I will repay.” We are a royal priesthood of believers, who have no right to vengeance. God forbids it. The Psalmist may be falsely accused, but meanwhile he or she realizes they cannot be self-righteous. All of us depend upon God’s mercy and grace. God lovingly covers up our sins. That cover-up, however, cost Jesus Christ his life on the cross, so that we might walk in the newness of life, completely forgiven.

And right after we are right, we can be completely wrong. Jesus is carrying out his mission to Jerusalem, to become the suffering servant, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He’s the Son of Promise, whom Abraham did not sacrifice, but God the Father had to, so that we could be saved and the world could be redeemed – and there is Peter, who just made the good confession, a pure revelation from God, rebuking Jesus and saying, “far be it from you, Jesus, to go to Jerusalem and let them torture and kill you there.”

Like poor Peter, we can feel so proud of ourselves, and the next minute, Christ has to say, “Get behind me Satan, because you don’t have God’s agenda in mind, but the agenda of the one who is trying to steal all our lives away from God.

So in one moment we can be a rock, a solid foundation for the faith of others, and the next moment, we can be a rock that everyone trips over. In one moment we are part of the solution and in the next, we are part of the problem. So we constantly have to remind ourselves that it is always a good time to repent, because even if you happen to be standing, take heed lest you fall.

Of course, if you are really proud and on a high horse, the fall is rather disastrous. If you are humble, it’s not such a bad spill. My brother-in-law was a mechanic and while we drove my car together, I explained to him, that it was in bad shape, but I was just going to run it into the ground. He said, “You don’t know how close to the ground it is!”

It’s always a good time to repent, to stop your hearts from turning away from God and start them turning back. Jesus says, “If you want to be my followers, you have to deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me!”

“Those who want to save their lives will lose them and those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.”

Repenting is self-denial and it’s getting nearer to Christ than our comfort-zone allows. It’s like first going into the cold water of a mountain spring for a swim. First you think you will die, then you get the refreshing respite of a wonderfully stimulating experience.

Or you’re way out of shape and you start running- or maybe you can only handle walking – and you think the exercise will kill you, but then you end up getting stronger.

Maybe you’re just a talker and for once you decide to be a listener. While listening you become afraid that you will lose yourself by losing control, but then you find out that your self becomes stronger.

Maybe you have taken a stand, because you love the habitation of God’s house, that is, this church, the place where God’s glory dwells. And now you are afraid. Like Martin Luther of old, say: “Here I stand. So help me God. I can do no other!” God will stand with you. And like Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If you have nothing you’d die for, you have nothing you’re living for.”

In this sorry world, that is quite a way east of Eden, where there is plenty of wilderness and many a deceitful brook, a pastor and congregation will always find that it is a good time to repent. Look at Peter. Sometimes he’s feeding the sheep and sometimes the ninety-nine sheep have to search for Peter. And it is the same for Jeremiah. But God is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We have all fallen short of the glory of God and when we return, Christ is always right there. When considering following Christ, we say, “It will make me die!” But then we add, “What a way to go!” And the next thing you know, the cross is making you see things as they are, be the person who you are, carried by the Holy Spirit. Then death and the fear of death become a shadow that Christ drives away. There you are in the presence of Christ, with his cross and his death changing into an ever-flowing fountain of living water, abundant life, a garden full of delights, smack in the middle of Eden, because you are seeing the creation with the eyes of Christ and you suddenly exclaim, “I shall not die but live and declare the wonderful works of God!

It is always a good time to repent. Even while I give you my goodbye sermon, I pray that I was helpful and not a hindrance to the proclamation of the Gospel in this church. But I take comfort and you can also take comfort in the fact that even when Peter and Jeremiah became hindrances, Christ never stopped loving them, and his prayers and intercessions brought them around and will bring us around and turn our hearts back to God. Let me assure you that the chance Pastor Bauer and you yourselves gave me to preach the Gospel to you this summer has been a joy and a wonderful privilege for me that I appreciated a whole lot.

So it’s always a good time to repent. God’s Word makes us say, “I’m dying to repent.” When we see our good shepherd, with his arms stretched out on the cross, reaching out to those who are right and those who are wrong, in a greater Love than this world has ever known, then we can all say, “We’re dying to repent.” In the words of a song,

“The cross is the direction of Christ’s holy resurrection.” Amen.

(Mark and I sang this song, while Joshua played drums.)

“You Can’t Count the Stars.”

Genesis 15:5 Philippians 4:1 Judges 5:31

You can’t count the stars.

You can’t count the blessings.

God has in store for you,

and his promises are true.

You have not heard

God’s holy Word

if you don’t believe God loves you,

Longs for you his crown!

Love for you made him come down.

The cross is the direction

of Christ’s holy resurrection.

Don’t be its enemy.

Let Jesus set you free.

You can’t count the stars.

You can’t count the blessings.

God has in store for you,

and his promises are true.

God’s friends become

just like the Son,

rising in all its splendor.

Rise and shine,

It’s wake-up time

Trust God and surrender.

The love of God, so rich and pure.

It’s the only thing, of which we’re sure.

I long for you, my joy my crown,

to raise you up, is why Christ came down.

(For Ruth, Bob, and Alice O. March 8, 1998 peterkrey)

Several years ago, May through August, 2002, I served the dear people of Trinity Lutheran Church up in Fort Bragg, California, driving up there every other week for two services. Taking route 128 through the Anderson Valley took me through breath-taking scenery. You first hit incredibly winding curves through California’s golden hills, then you hit the luscious wineries, then the solemn redwood groves that have the grandeur of cathedrals, after which you drive along a river that opens up to the sea. There are still beautiful moors as you continue on route 1, where there is also whale watching on the ocean. Usually I was still preparing my sermon while driving that beautiful road. Suddenly it was like driving through the wonderful natural words of God, communing with God in that wine country in the middle of that liturgy of Route 128. I sang the song to the congregation that morning and yesterday Mark and I recorded it for the first time.

Driving Route 128 to Ft. Bragg, California

1. Come share with us / the beautiful life

received in Christ,

Come share with us / the beautiful life

received in Christ.

There are winding curves /  that take some nerve

to negotiate

There are winding curves / where you can swerve

on Route 128.

2. The golden hills / embrace the thrills / of amazing grace,

the heavens above / declare God’s love

with sweetest phrase.

3. Cascading vines / in Eucharist lines

commune the earth,

Clustering flood, / life-giving blood,

of Christ’s new birth.

1. The redwoods stand / on gospel land

green shouts of praise

Aged awesome halls / with hallowed walls

their Cathedrals raise.

2. The shade, the dream / the gurgling stream,

and refreshing scents.

A graceful deer / sees us near

and clears a fence.

2. Then the ocean breeze / sweeps through the trees

opening the sky

the river winds / and searching finds

the thirsty tide.

3. the lumbering moor / wild flower shore

of the turquoise sea.

Green rolling hills / and seagull shrills

of eternity

1. migrating whales / with powerful tails

spout exultantly

the pounding surf / wakes up the earth

sparkling and free

1. resounding sound / makes the word abound

so naturally. ( repeat)

1. Come share with us / the beautiful life

received in Christ,

Come share with us / the beautiful life

received in Christ.

1,2,and 3, stand for different parts of the melody. The slashes represent spacing of the poetry here.

For Trinity Lutheran Church, Ft. Bragg, California

Family Sayings, Mostly from my Father:

1. „Wenn es Heute regnet, wird das Leder billiger.“

(„Wenn es Häute regnet, wird das Leder billiger.“)

When you get it: „Nun ist der Groschen gefallen.“ (“Now the coin dropped.”)

2. „So lange diese Rose blüht, wird uns kein Geld verwelken.“ (“So long as this cherry blossoms, no money of ours will wilt.”)(My father said this when he lit up a cigar.) Maybe this is just poetic. I don’t yet understand it.

3. „Ein Kater haben wir gehabt; eine Katze wollten wir nicht mehr haben.“ (On discovering we had a female cat, while we thought it was a male.) I never got this one either.

4. „Wat der Buer nit kennt, dat fret er nit.“ (“What a farmer or peasant doesn’t know he won’t eat.”)(When we refused to eat some novel food.)

5. „Schieb ‘leine.” (“You can push it by youself!”)(This was said when one became angry at the other, while as refugees, we were pushing the wagon with all our belongings.)

6. Greek: Ής ήδώνης, Ής ήδώνης, Ής έστιν. (Long A and O: Has hadonas, has hadonas, has estin.) (“Hedonism” comes from the Greek word.)

(“What happiness, what happiness, this life is!”)

7. Your room is a TOHU WA BOHU! (complete chaos)

8. „Wenn nicht Heute, denn Morgen, Übermorgen ganz gewiss.“

(When we were caught procrastinating.) (“If not today, then tomorrow; the day after tomorrow I’ll do it for sure!”)

9. „Abends wird der Fauler fleissig.“ (Putting things off) (“In the evening lazy people get busy.”)

10. „Arbeit macht das Leben süss!“ (The only part we heard. When our relatives from Germany visited us we heard the second part of the saying: “Aber Faulheit stärkt die Glieder.”) (“Work sweets up your life. Laziness strengthens up your limbs.”)

11. Fritz Reuter: “Morgen, Herr Av’kourt. Mi is do wat passiert….“ (This is the beginning of a funny narrative poem that my father always began when we appeared in the morning.) (“G’mornin, Sir Advocate, something just happened to me!”)

„I know you had a blow-out!“ said my little brother, who didn’t realize that the poem was about being bitten by a dog. (I’ve translated this poem from the Mechlenburg Plattdeutsch and it’s in my poems now.)

12. „Wat recht ist, muss auch recht bestahn

Un sollt’ die Welt in Stücken gahn.“

(“What’s right is right so right increases

or else this world will go to pieces.”)

(From the same poem)

13. „Ach, er hat die Welt belogen,

dass die Erd-achs sich verbogen.”

(“Oh he lied to the world,

Till the earth’s axes bent and curled.”) (From another poem about having been to the North Pole [or the moon?] I believe.)

14. „Immer heiter, Gott hilft weiter.” (“Keep being cheerful, God will keep on being helpful.”)

15. „Da gehen die A,B,C, Schützen.” (On seeing the little folk going to school.) (“There go the little hunters chasing the A, B, C’s.”) (The little ones learning the alphabet.)

16. „Wenn es dem Esel zu gut geht, dann geht er auf das Eis und bricht ein Bein.” (”If things go too well for a donkey, it goes skating on ice and breaks a leg.“)

17. „De Kreih, de kreeg een vun de achtersten Been” (A refrain: “and the crow gets one of the hind legs.”)

To find this song see: http://www.plattmaster.de/matten.htm

18. „Sing man tau, sing man tau,

von Herrn Pastor sien Kauh, jau, jau.
Sing man tau, sing man tau,

von Herrn Pastor sien Kauh!”

To see this hilarious song in Plattdeutsch that my father used to sing, see: http://www.plattmaster.de/kauh.htm

19. Fritz Reuter: „Wat den einen sin Uhl is den andern sin Nachtigal.“ (“What for one is an owl, is for another a nightingale.”)

20. Sag mal: „Der Hahn, der Hahn und nicht die Henne!“ (“Say after me, the rooster the rooster and not the hen.”) (A way of confusing children. They think they have to repeat the whole phrase, but he wants them not to repeat “the hen.”)

21. „Vorsicht ist die Mutter der porzelan Kiste.“ (“Caution is the mother of a porcelain object.”)

22. „Nun ist der Groschen gefallen.” (When it finally clicked and someone understood something.) (“Now the coin dropped.”)

23. „Wenn zwei dasselbe tun, dann ist es doch nicht dasselbe.“ (“If two people do the same thing, then it is not the same thing.”)

24. “Is it heavy? Take two trips!” (Whenever someone carried something heavy, my father would use this expression. Now if what you carried consisted of many items, it made sense. But he used it, when it was one heavy item, which merely spelled double the work.) Evidently they said it in the Ambridge, PA steel factory in which my father and others had to carry heavy pipes to the railroad cars. The blood would spurt from some of the worker’s shoulders, the pipes were so heavy.

25. “Warum leichter machen, wenn’s schwerer geht?” (“Why make things easy, when they can be more difficult?”) The idea for this expression might come from Kierkegaard.

We used it in a superficial way, while working together. Like we were putting heating pipes under the house and while one of my brothers was chiseling a hole into one of the rafters for a pipe, the other said, “Cut that out!” wanting him to stop. But the first said, “That’s what I’m trying to do!”

Kierkegaard had a much more subtle meaning. We always try to make life easier for ourselves, but the authentic life is full of difficulties and suffering. In addition, self-knowledge, so hard to attain, is avoided, for the most part, by us all.

26. Yehi Or, va yehi Or. (Hebrew) “Let there be light and there was light.” (While switching on the light in a room.)

27. „Mit Vielem kommt man aus. Mit Wenig hält man Haus.“

(“One barely makes it with a lot. With a little, you can run the household.”)

28. „Hättest Du geschwiegen, wärst Du Professor geblieben.”

(“If you had kept quiet, everyone would still think you were a professor.”)

29. „Der Mensch denkt, aber Gott lenkt.” (“A Human being reflects, but God directs.”)

30. „An Gottes Segen ist alles gelegen.” (“Everything depends on God’s blessings.”)

31. „Zu gut sein ist halb Leichtsinn.” (“To be overly good is half thoughtless.”)

32. „Was macht’s? Nachher die Sintflut!” (“What of it? The deluge will come after my life!”) The saying has classical roots, but mostly today gets ascribed to King Louis XV of France (1710-1774): “Après moi le déluge.”

See http://tradicionclasica.blogspot.com/2006/01/expression-aprs-moi-le-dluge-and-its.html

33. „,Guten Morgen’ segt der Buer wenn er in die Stadt kommt.” (“A peasant, a farmer, is supposed to say, ‘Good Morning’ when he enters the city.”) My father said this if we failed to say “Good Morning” when we came down and joined the family in the morning. In my imagination, I see a farmer in his wagon coming into the Holzentor in Lübec.

34. „Aller Anfang ist schwer.” (“All new beginnings are difficult.”)

35. „Mit Sorgen und mit Grämen und mit selbsteigner Pein

lässt Gott sich garnichts nehmen, es muss erbeten sein.“ („With groans and self castigation, we won’t get anywhere with God. We’ll only receive it by prayer.”)

This is a beautiful Paul Gerhardt verse from his song: „Befiehl du deine Wege.” Charles Wesley has a translation of some verses of this song in the old red Service Book and Hymnal, # 579, but not of this verse. What is so daunting in Gerhardt’s verses is the acrostic, where the first word of every verse reads: “Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, He’ll do it all.” Psalm 37:5. To work on it a bit:

“With groans and heavy grieving, self-torture and despair,

we will not be receiving, what God only grants by prayer.”

36. „Studiere nur und raste nie, du wirst es nicht begreifen. Ende alle Philosophie, ist dass wir galuben müssen.”

(Keep on studying and do not rest. But after all our Philosophy we end up having to believe.)

37. „Wer einen Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist einen Taler nicht wert.” (“Whoever doesn’t value a penny will also not be worthy of a dollar.”) I thank Priscilla for this one!

38. „Du hast kein Sitzefleisch!“ (How to translate that? “You have no flesh to sit on!”Father would say this when we squirmed on a chair and could not remain still and seated.

39. „Ich muss mal gehen wo der Kaiser selbst zu Fuss geht.“ (“I have to go, where the kaiser himself has to walk and do it himself,“) that is, go to the bathroom.

40. My father would stroke his mustache and say, „Nur eine Kleinigkeit!” (“Just a detail!”) I’m not sure what he meant by it.

41. „Noch einen Spatenstich!“ (“Dig one spade more!“) My father always said this when my youngest brother was digging the garden and he didn’t dig a full row.

42. „Acht Tage Schwanheim!“ (“Eight days of Schwanheim!“) Whenever we did not like our food and complained or did not eat it all, someone would say that. We starved so much in that UNRA camp in Schwanheim, that baby James died, and we would eat anything we could get our hands on. I remember eating apple peals thrown into a hole behind the guard house at the entrance of the camp.

43. „Nichts ist schwerer zu ertragen als eine Reihe von guten Tagen.“ (“Nothing is harder to endure than a series of good days.”) This saying my father said often. It’s a little like Lake Woebegone.

44. „Studenten Jahren sind keine Herre Jarhen.“ (“Student years are not the years of Lords.”) My father said this to emphasize that being a student was hard work, poverty, drudgery, slavery. In graduate school they said, “If you live like a lawyer when you are a student, then you’ll live like a student when you’re a lawyer.” That referred to taking out student loans. What happens if you take out such loans and you remain unemployed? Sigh!

45. „Ich bin ein geplagter Eheman!“ (“I am a tormented husband!“) When my father had to do housework or deal with criticism from my mother. I say this to myself when I do the dishes.

46. „Andrer Leuten Fehler sind angenehme Lehrer.” (I’m not sure of the wording on this one.) (“The mistakes of others are precious instructors.”)

The mistakes of others are pleasant teachers, because they suffer and we get instruction from them.

47. „Wie ist dein Wettkampf gegangen?“

„Sehr gut. Bald lag er oben, bald lag ich unten.“

“How did your wrestling match go?”

“It went very well. Sometimes he was on top

and sometimes I was on the bottom.”

(This was one my father’s jokes.)

48. (Another one:) A student comes into his dorm room, while the other is already in bed.

„Du, schloppst Du?“

„Nein, ich schlopp nicht.“

„Kannst Du mir ein Dollar Pumpen?“

„Nein, nein. Ich schlopp.“

“Hey, are you sleeping?“

“No, I’m not.“

“Can you lend me a dollar?“

“No, no, I’m sleeping!“

49. A beggar has a sign saying,

“Please help me. I’m deaf.”

A fellow, putting something into his cup, asks,

“How long is it you’ve been deaf?”

“Since my birth.” He answers. „Seid meiner Geburt.“

50. „Er /sie hält kein Blatt vor dem Mund!“ 
            (This means a person is very outspoken, blunt.)

51. „Bestellt aber nicht abgeholt.” (“Ordered but not picked up.”)

(When people or children just stand there somewhat forlorn and in disarray.

52. „Nun hat die liebe Seele Ruh!“

(“Now finally your soul will get some rest.”)

When you finally received something you really wanted, but my father resisted your getting it until he gave in.

53. „Bist Du nicht recht beim Trost?“ (“Are you crazy?“)

54. „Da bleibt einem die Spuche weg!“ (“That takes away a body’s spit!”)

i.e., it’s so outrageous, you can’t believe it.

55. „Von links nach rechts ist schlecht, von rechts nach links gelingst.“

(“From left to right is blight, from right to left is deft.”)

Evidently this is about superstition. When a cat crossed your roadfrom the right to the left,
what you set out to do would be successful. When the cat went from left to right, you would not,
so you might as well return home. 

56. „Bist du nicht ein Strampelman?" One of Mom's little sayingsto babies, when she exercised them
and they threw their arms and kicked their legs with delight. How would I translate “Strampelman?” 

57.   „Hop, hop Reiter,      
Wenn er fählt - ‚er’ schreit er.       
Fählt er in den Graben,
so fressen ihn die Raben,      
Fählt er in den Sumpf,
dann macht der Reiter plumps.“ 

      This was a poem my mother recited while bouncing one of her children up and down on her knees and then letting
them fall backward, holding their hands, of course,for the infant's thrill, which was pure delight.
It is of course problematic in content, like “Rock-a-bye baby”.“If he falls in the ditch, then the ravens will eat him!
”Maybe part of it is mindless rhyming („Reim dich oder fress dich!”)when one rhymed simply for the sake of rhyming,
 even if it made no sense. 

58. “Just think that everybody out there has cabbage heads.”Mom said this when we did public speaking and had stage-fright. 

59. „Das sind Geschichten des Lebens, die im Tode nicht mehrvorkommen.“ My father would say.
(These are stories in life that no longer take place in death.)

60. „Hunger treibst ‘rein.” (I only eat it because I’m so hungry. It was not a meal that my father liked, particularly.)

61. „Das ist mein Leibgericht.” (That is the meal I love the most. It’s food that keeps the body and soul together. That’s another saying.)

62. „Willst du eine Ohrfeige?” („Do you want your ears boxed?” or “Do you want a slap in the face?”)

63. „Knüppelst Dir hinter den Ohren?” („Are you trying to get your ears cuffed?“ or “Are you trying to get a slap in the face?” or „Der hat es knüppeldich hinter den Ohren!” (To my mother this meant the person could not be trusted.)

64. „Es braucht nicht so viel Philifanz.” (“It does not have to be so ornate.”)

65. „Bumalacka!” This meant „Goodbye!“

66. „Du verrücktes Huhn!” (When one of my sisters were being funny and mischievous, my other would say, “You crazy hen!”

67. „Der hat was am Schlawickel!” (That person was up to something.) „Schlamauck” „Schlamauckel” (This referred to chaos or noise.) A Schlamingel referred to a very mixed group of people. A Schlingel was a Bengel, both words meaning a brat or mischievous boy.

68. „Bist du meschuge?” (“Are you crazy?”)

69. „Weine nicht! Deine Mutter wird doch kein Soldat. ”

(“Don’t cry! They can’t draft your mother and make her a soldier.”)

70. „Witte West und nichts im Bauch!” (“Wearing a white vest, but with an empty stomach.”)

71. „Icke, ditte, Kiekemol, Ogen, Flehsch, und Behne.” A little Berlin street urchin would say.

„Nein, mein Kind, so heisst das nicht. Augen, Fleisch, und Beine!“ the teacher corrected him.

72. One of my sisters to be funny would say, “Hit me on the head with a frying pan and call me Dick Tracy!”

73. „Der hat Köpschen!” (“That person is really smart!”)

74. „Sie hat die Ruhe weg!” (That person is really laid back, mellow, or low key.)

75. „Na, so was!” or „So was lebt nicht!” or „Na, so was lebt und Schiller musste sterben!” (You don’t say! This is an exclamation. “That can’t be possible!” (“Now something like that exists, while Schiller had to die!”)

76. „Ach, Kwatsch!” This was my mother’s way of saying, (“That’s nonsense!)

77. „Die hat was auf dem Herzen.” My mother would say that about someone who talked in circles because she did not dare to bring up a request. (“She has something on her heart.”)

78. One of my sisters would say, “Ich muss auf die Klo.” My mother would correct her, „Es heist das Klo.” Sometimes they would call the toilette, die Klikla.

79. The Berlin dialect places j’s in for the g’s: „Eine jutte jebratene Janz ist eine jutte Jabe Jottes!“ “A well roasted goose is a good gift of God.”

80. „Allet Käse, ist mir wurscht!” It was a pun I would say in Berlin. “Everything is cheese but its sausage to me.” But “cheese” meant “rotten” and Wurscht came from “Es ist mir wurst-pip-egal! “It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest!” Thus, (“Everything is rotten, but it doesn’t matter to me!”)

81. That’s so sour, it’ll pull the holes in your socks together!

82. „Owa, owa, schreit der Bauer. Was sind die Äpfel sauer.” (“Ouch! These apples are sour!”)

83. „Willst du ein Apfel? Puff. Da fliegt er!” If you wanted to tease a child, you asked if he wanted an apple. You blew up your cheeks, poked them, and pointed upward, (“There it goes, flying up there!”)

84. „Spurlos verschwunden!” (“It disappeared without a trace!”) Looking For car keys, for example, that you can’t find in the house.

85. „Ein schöner Rücken kann auch entzücken!“ (When a man is transfixed by a woman’s beautiful back).

86. „Ich werde mich von innen bekiecken.” (When my father was about to take a nap, “I have to take a look at myself on the inside.”)

87. „Nun, husch die Lerche!” (“Now, hurry up!”)

88. „Ein Wetter wie in Schleswig-Holstein!” (On a very rainy day, “A weather like in Schleswig-Holstein!”)

89. “All roads lead to Georgetown!” (When we were driving to the beach in Massachusetts, usually to Salisbury or Crane’s Beach, we wanted my father to make a stop at a Wasmacco Ice cream stand in Georgetown where the scoops of ice cream were extra large and the ice cream truly delicious.)

90. “What a rigmarole!” This is actually not the private language of our family. It is in the dictionary meaning “an elaborate or complicated procedure.”

91. „Ist mir piep-wurscht egal!” (A vehement way of saying, “It doesn’t matter to me!”

92. „Ich kenne meine Pappenheimer!” (“I know rogues like that very well!”)

93. When you made a good sandwich for yourself, „Für den Meister gemacht!” In other words, you made it for yourself as Number one!

94. “Dear, dear, bread and beer, if I were married I wouldn’t be here!” Ruthie would say that before she was married.

95. „Im Munde hat sie Gold, in der Tasche hat sie Silber, und was sie redet ist Blech.” Blech is “tin” in German and it means nonsense as well as the metal. (“She has gold in her mouth, silver in her pocket, and she speaks tin.”) (It doesn’t work in English.)

96. Some one is „Ete potete!” which means very finickie.

97. If you could drink piping hot coffee, then you could keep a secret. (Ruthie usually made this comment.)

98. Putting a lot of pepper on your food, meant you wanted to have a strong will.

99. „Eee dropsche, dropsche, dralla: Violin auf Drat kaput!” (I think my father was imitating the broken German of a Gypsy singing about a broken string on his violin.)

100. „Deutsch ist eine harte Sprache. Ein Wort hat drei artikel: das, die, der Teufel hole!” (“German is a difficult language. One word has three articles: that the devil gets you!”) Really the first is the conjunction “dass,” the second, the personal pronoun “they”, and only the last is the real article for the word, “devil”.)

Pentecost XV- August 24^th 2008

Isaiah 55:1-6 Psalm 138 Romans 12:1-8 Mat 16:13-20

“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

Sing: 1. The Lord Christ Jesus reigns from Heaven,

To him all power and glory are given.

The whole world is his footstool.

The whole world is his footstool.

2. Let all tongues on earth confess him.

He comes to us with crowns of blessing.

His dominion he shall rule.

His dominion he shall rule.

In the words of St. Peter:

“Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God!”

Often in the Pastors’ Bible Study, we ask when we must take the Bible literally, when do we take it metaphorically, when is it historical, meaning that it actually happened, and when should we take it as true, even if it never really happened.

For example, talking about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we are talking about time before history. Abraham is the first historical person in the Bible. But every time that a man and a woman, a husband and wife, start out in a marriage, it is the story of the Garden of Eden or Paradise all over again. I received a humorous protest from the gay pastors in the group. “That’s not our experience.” they said. “Our marriages aren’t like that!” They have to tell the story with Adam and Steve, I guess, instead of Adam and Eve, but the story is non-the-less true, even if “Adam” means man in Hebrew and “Eve” means the mother of all living. One can peer back even before history and know it is true.

Now before our lesson in Matthew today, Jesus tells the disciples to beware of the leaven, the yeast, of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They think he is referring indirectly to the fact that they forgot to buy bread and they have only one loaf left in the boat.

Jesus can’t believe that they do not understand him. He did not want them to take him literally. He says, “When I had five loaves and I fed the 5,000, how many baskets of leftovers did you gather up afterward?”

They said, “Twelve.” (He’s speaking of the twelve tribes of Israel over which he rules.)

“And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves of bread, how many?”

They said, “Seven.” (Jesus is speaking about the seven nations from the four corners of the world, over which he reigns.)

“How come you can’t understand that I am not speaking about bread?” Jesus asks.

Then the disciples realized that by leaven or yeast, he was speaking about the teachings and the influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees, a little like the Democrats and Republicans of the day.

Like yeast makes dough rise and then fills the bread with bubbles of air, causing the bread to rise in the oven, so with the teachings of Jesus, the Holy Spirit makes us rise and multiplies us, by filling our every need and making us prosper in the Kingdom of Heaven, over which Jesus is the Christ, the one anointed to rule us, guide us, and direct us in all that we do.

So Jesus spoke to us in picture-language, that is, using metaphors, so that we could understand him better, to make the point that when we are taken in by the Word of God, the true Bread from Heaven, then we rise and multiply, with a Heaven of Grace above us and inside a world, created by God that we can dwell in, be loved in and love others in. These verses come right before our lesson: Matthew 16: 5-12.

Peter’s good confession that we heard in the lesson today was revealed to him by the Father in Heaven. He made it in Caesarea Philippi, a city twenty miles north of Galilee on the foothills of Mount Hermon. It was a Pagan center of worship for the Roman nature god, Pan, and it was rebuilt by Philip, Herod’s son, to honor himself and Caesar, the emperor in Rome; thus it was called Caesarea Philippi.

It is significant that Peter calls Jesus the Christ in that place. Jesus had asked, “Who do people say that I am?” They talk about various prophets-come-back-to-life.

“But who do you say that I am?”

You have to hear the “I am” in this question, the name of God revealed to Moses from the burning bush that did not consume its branches. “I am who I am.” The name can have various meanings: I am the one who will be with you (no matter what you have to go through), I am the one who will appear in any form in which I appear (I am who I am), I am the one who calls you into existence, I am the source and the ground of your being.

Here Jesus takes the question a step further: “Who do you say that I am?” Through Peter and the disciples, Jesus also, of course, presses us with that question. What would you answer?

There Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, that is, the anointed one, Son of the living God!” “Messiah” means the anointed one in Hebrew, while “Christ” means the anointed one in Greek. In those days and since ancient times, kings and emperors were called “sons of God.” So Peter was saying, “You are not like Caesar or Philip, the king’s son. You are the Son of the living God.”

That kings were called “sons of gods” can be explained by the name Moses. In Egyptian, “Moses” means “being the son of” or “born from.” An Egyptian hero Amoses liberated the Egyptians from the Hyksos (ca. 16^th century BCE), that is four or five hundred years before the Exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt. After Amoses liberated the Egyptians from the Hyksos, many of the Pharaohs put “Moses” into their throne names. There was Thutmosis, i.e., son of the god, Toth; Ramses or Ramoses, son of the god Ra; and many others, e.g., Kamoses and Amunmoses. The Hebrews said that “Moses” meant drawn from the water, but he was named by the Egyptian princess and it was the throne name of the Egyptian Pharaohs that she gave him. Because God’s name was too holy to pronounce, Moses did not attach God’s name to his, for example, “Jahmoses.”  In any case, Moses knew that God is the King over his people and thus Moses called himself “the servant of God,” Ebed Jahweh. Jesus is the suffering servant of God, the Lamb of God, foretold by the Prophet Isaiah, but also the Son of the living God, unmatched by any Pharaoh, Caesar, Emperor, king, not to mention a paltry president, even should he want to be an imperial one.

This confession of Peter means that we worship Christ and not Caesar, not an emperor, not any image of an earthly politician, no matter how great and shiny our image-makers polish and spin them. Like us they are all dust and to dust they shall return.

But here is the Gospel. When we make the good confession and declare Christ to be the Son of the living God, like Peter, then we will experience a marvelous change. When we are confessing Christ unashamedly, Christ in Heaven is confessing our names to the Father. In that way we rise and grow up into children of God, with our Father in Heaven to whom we can pray at any time.

To say “Jesus is our Lord” is not like saying he’s a lord as opposed to a lady. Lord stands for Adonai, which is the word the Jews used not to pronounce the name of God, Adonai. Every time they saw the four letter word for God, they said Adonai. Now we do not even know how to pronounce God’s name, but we know it was not pronounced Jehovah.

A king, a judge, and a high priest of Israel was always anointed with oil. Interestingly enough, I noticed that when a baby issues out of its mother’s womb at birth, it hair looks wet and oily just like an anointed one, if it has hair, of course. A nurse in the birthing room told me that there is a salve made naturally in the mother’s womb so fine and precious that the baby is in that amniotic fluid nine months and does not come out with its skin wrinkled, while we stay in a shower or bath a little too long and our skin and fingers are already wrinkled.

Ah, the children of God receive a divine anointing and as St. Paul says, we do not conform to the world, but are transformed by the renewal of our minds, when we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, confessing the name of Jesus Christ above any name, surrendering ourselves completely to his reign.

This change is shown in our lesson by the way Jesus changes Peter’s name from Simon, the son of Jonah, to Peter, the Rock, or Rocky. (Who can do the theme song from Rocky?) “Peter” means a rock or stone in Greek. Now what do make of that? Peter was the wavering and unstable disciple and he denied Christ three times. But the Rock of Ages said, “I’ll rename you a rock and you’ll see, with me inside you and remaining with you every day of your life and every step of your way, you too will be a rock, a living rock of my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. And the words of Christ are sure and true.

When you confess Jesus to be your Lord, then you too will become a living rock hewn from the wonderful quarry of the children of God, from which God creates us. We will be solid rocks for Christ, who is the true Rock of Ages, whether we sway this way or that, or still find that we are too ashamed to witness that we are his servants. Peter had the same problem, but Christ helped him to come through. When we fight the good fight and make the good confession that Jesus Christ is our Lord and the Son of the living God for us, then we too will change like Peter from wavering disciples, like reeds shaken by the wind, into solid rocks who take our stand on Christ, the Rock of Ages. (On Christ the solid rock we stand!)

That puts us into picture language again. It means that we are completely committed to following Christ and carrying out his loving mission in this church, which is the body of Christ – for all the people so lost and forlorn, crying our for help that only Christ and his church can provide. This church stands on our confessions of faith and as weak as we might be, the Rock of Ages is with us and the gates of Hell will not prevail against Immanuel Lutheran Church in Alameda. Amen.

We always sang this blessing song. My father would intone it and we in our family would all follow singing it together. Then I translated it and introduced singing it in Vacation Church School and Day Camp in Coney Island as a benediction.

I remember how our family held hands and sang it around the open grave of my little brother James, who had died in the UNRA camp in Schwanheim, Germany after World War II. If anyone ever complained about food, we would say, “All you need is eight days of Schwanheim (acht Tage Schwanheim), then you will never complain again.”

Die Gnade unsers Herrn Jesus Christus und die Liebe Gottes, und die Gemeinschaft des Heil’gen Geistes, sei mit uns alle, mit uns alle . Amen.

Translated:

The grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, the love of God, and the Holy Spirit’s fellowship, be with us all, be with us all. Amen. Amen.

It comes from St. Paul, of course, the closing benediction of his second Letter to the Corinthians 13:13.

Wenn ich zu Zeiten taurig bin

1/ Wenn ich zu Zeiten taurig bin

Und kommt mir dies und das in Sinn,

Dann denk ich, „Ach, was soll der Schmerz?

Komm schafe dir ein andres Herz.“

Denn Trauern ist in dieser Welt

Vom Bösen Feind bestellt.

Und sollt ich wieder traurig sein,

so holl’ ich Jesu singend ein.

Denn O wie glücklich is das Herz,

dass so vergisst den Schmerz.

Free Translation:

1/ Whenever I am sad and blue

And I don’t know what I can do,

I simply call on Jesus’ name

And love lifts up my heart again.

Because there’s no antidote to pain

as good as Jesus’ name.

And should I get depressed once more,

I’ll shout, “What’ve I been baptized for?”

Because gloom and doom can’t get a start,

with Jesus in your heart.

2/ Whenever I’m down in the dumps

And disappointments give me bumps.

I simply sing this glad refrain

And Jesus picks me up again.

Because saints are made of flesh and blood,

They’re sinners who need love.

And falling on my face once more,

He’s quick with first-aid grace galore.

Because Christ is not at all ashamed

to love the ones he’s named.

3/ Whenever I am down and out

And I don’t know what it’s all about.

I make the bad day come out wrong,

by singing Jesus’ happy song.

Because the darkest clouds will be disbursed,

When we get to Jesus first.

This is a song my father always sang in German for as long as I can remember. I first tried to translate it back in the early 1980’s and I continually revised it, e.g., in 7/31/95, 5/14/97,  8/18/2008, and 1/4/2009.

Pentecost XIV August 17^th 2008

Isaiah 56:1. 56-8 Psalm 67 Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Mat 15:10-28

“The Crumbs under the Table”

We are all imprisoned in our sin, St. Paul says, whether we consider ourselves in the household of faith or those outside the church, those we call secular people, so that all we can stand and insist on is the mercy of God. We need to be Kyrie Christians. “Lord, have mercy upon us!”

Paul says that about the Jews. God has called them and their relationship with God has not been revoked; nor has God’s relationship and loving concern for our church, our congregation. It has not been revoked.

But you see Jesus getting rather exasperated with his own people, who have come to feel entitled and had become offended by Jesus. Why? Because he says your kosher laws and your keeping them make you feel like you are moral and superior to others. Jesus says that what goes into your mouth goes down into your stomach, then after it is digested, you have a bowel movement. That has nothing to do with your morality. Your morality depends upon your heart, which is the center of your responsible self. The heart was considered the seat of your thoughts, your intentions, your ethics. When false witness, bad language, evil desires, sexual harassment, murder, adultery, slander, and gossip come from the heart, they then come out of the mouth. That is what makes a person immoral and not whether or not you eat pork or only beef, you’re a vegetarian, a vegan, or you’re still carnivorous.

So the heart is the seat of the responsible self and to feel that obeying the kosher laws made you moral was a confusion of hygiene and ethics, as much as when you felt that washing your hands made you innocent, when you were guilty.

Food and cleanliness have to do with health and hygiene, which is also important, but it does not have to do with our morality or ethics, except when they become an ethical matter. You had better wash your hands in the bathroom if you are working with food or you could make other people sick. Doctors used to work on cadavers and then like midwives, helped a mother give birth. The mothers died like flies because the doctors infected them. Now washing your hands is an ethical matter, a life and death matter, but ethics or morality is much more than just food laws and washing your hands. [In the news about the kosher factory, the slaughter house, in Iowa, the fact that they used child labor and exploited undocumented immigrants was immoral, their kosher laws not withstanding.]

When Jesus pointed this out, the Pharisees were offended, because they felt that their kosher laws made them morally superior over the unclean Gentiles, who ate pork and did not keep the food laws and many rituals, like those for washing hands.

Jesus said, you know with their lips they say that they belong to God, but their hearts are far away. They do lip-talk, but not soul-talk. They want to keep things as they are by tradition, they do not really want to obey God and realign their lifestyles to get onto the way of salvation.

If Israel was refusing to be God’s special planting, then it would be uprooted and God will find another flower pot, and plant another people, who will grow, blossom, and bring forth the fruits of righteousness.

So Jesus and his disciples go into the territory of the Gentiles, to the coastal cities, Tyre and Sidon, north of Galilee. And this pesterous Canaanite woman starts after them, scratching out the Kyrie, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” She wants Jesus’ Holy Spirit to fill her daughter and she is calling Jesus her Lord!

Jesus and his disciples are way outside of their comfort zone. Yes, that is slightly more than Jesus and his disciples bargained for. But when we open ourselves up, needs are so great, that challenges right off, become more than we can handle.

As a Canaanite woman, it is like a Jew having to help a Palestinian enemy. She is not only a Gentile, but an enemy Gentile. And she is an unclean woman trying to get help from Jesus and the little group learning to be rabbis.

Thus in going up there, they were on new divine turf. They were walking on water and like Peter crying with the same scratchy voice: “Save me Lord. The water is already up to my neck and I’m going down!”

It’s like everything is going on in this community called Alameda and the pastor is out there working among them, but it feels like our congregation is going down! Jesus reproaches us the way he reproached Peter and the disciples with, “O ye of little faith!” And here is this isha, which means woman in Hebrew, this unclean woman is now calling Jesus her Lord, naming him Son of David, with a Kyrie. “Lord, have mercy on me!”

Her voice is really annoying, because it is like the scratchy voice of a raven or a crow. She doesn’t spare her voice, but keeps on crying. The word used in Greek is krazo, like the scratchy caw of a crow. And she is relentless, despite her being an enemy of the Jews, being of a completely different culture and religion, and she lets nothing stand in the way.

She is like our cat Figaro, who is also relentless when he wants to be fed. Starting at six o’clock in the morning he scratches on our bedroom door and meows, “Nora. Nora.” And he’ll keep on for hours if you don’t get up. And when I am in the kitchen, he’ll walk between my feet until I take care of him. And he’ll keep scratching the bedroom door until we get up and feed him.

The Canaanite woman annoyed the disciples the same way and to such an extent, that Jesus turns around, and while he’s saying, “I’ve only been sent to the members of this congregation” and the disciples are saying, “Lord, let us send her away, she keeps shouting that scratchy Kyrie after us!” – she is already on her knees in front of Jesus, crying, “Lord, help me!” They could not get away from her.

When I first realized that Jesus was calling the Gentiles dogs, I was shocked. “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus really says, “little dogs,” kunaria in Greek. Not kunes, the word for dogs, per se. Maybe it was like calling her a little dog, like a Chihuahua.

But the Jews called the Gentiles she represented “dogs.” We of course have dogs as pets, but that is not how it used to be. In those days and in many countries, dogs are still considered pests, like rats and roaches. In India you see the most miserable, mangy, and pestiferous dogs, missing huge blotches of fur, covered with infected sores, their bellies dragging on the ground. They round up these miserable creatures and kill them, but they never seem to kill them all.

When I was in Bali, Indonesia, another Hindu country, a dear missionary, Ebu Gedong, tried to introduce the concept of a dog as a pet; but everyone who came on to her porch kicked her poor dog!

One time I saw a film about Gypsies and one Gypsy woman was standing on a hill at sunset and screaming at the village which lay below: “You treat your dogs better than you treated me!” She couldn’t even get the crumbs, evidently.

“It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs!” The Canaanite woman went right along with Jesus: “Sure we are little dogs. But even dogs eat the crumbs that fall under the master’s table.” She had Jesus there. She showed Jesus and his disciples the bridge over the chasm between men and women, between enemies, between people of different cultures and religions, where hostilities have gone on for untold centuries.

“Woman, great is your faith. Your daughter will be filled with the Holy Spirit and that demon that torments her will have to get out.” I believe she is the first of us Gentiles to come to Christ.

In the pastors’ bible study this week, I heard another interpretation. Jesus was being funny and we miss the humor. He says what you put into your stomach you poop out. And next, he is gently leading his disciples into an encounter where they have to overcome their prejudice and bigotry, their hostility, and enmity, and also share his bread, the bread of the living Gospel with the Gentiles, with the nations. Matthew, of course, cannot take it further, because his Gospel is aimed at the Jews. But Peter takes the next step with Cornelius, and Paul, the missionary to the Gentiles, crashes through the door to proclaim Christ as the Lord of the Nations and his Church, a House of Prayer for all people, and not merely for the Jews.

Just one more thought. We still have to walk side by side with this relentless woman, the first of us non-Jews to respond to Jesus, praying the Kyrie in the same relentless way. We have to be as humble as she was and hope only for the crumbs that fall under the table. We have no entitlements and righteousness to stand on, whether because we are Christian or Lutheran or what have you. All of us can only stand on the mercy of God. We all have only this scratchy Kyrie of hers to cry in our services through the ages: “Lord, have mercy upon us!” We are Kyrie Christians. We can only expect crumbs from under the table and remember that when we feed the birds crumbs in the winter time and stop, then they usually die. That thought can make a person cry. Humble folk usually get elbowed out of the way by selfish people in this world. But, then, you have to be acquainted with our wonderful God. He sent Christ to change our crumbs into a feast, the Feast of victory for our God. God will multiply our crumbs the way he multiplied the loaves and the fish. We believe in plenteous redemption, in God’s abundant grace for us. Amen.

Pentecost XIII 10^th August, 2008

I Kings 19:9-18 Psalm 85:8-13 Romans 10: 5-15 Mat 14:22-33

Jesus Walking on Water

The story about Jesus walking on water took place between three o’clock and six in the morning. At that time in the morning, I think the story has to be interpreted somewhat like a dream-state. Jesus had dismissed the crowds and sent the disciples on ahead of him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He went up to a mountain to pray by himself. When evening came, Jesus was all alone and the boat with the disciples was far out to sea, battered by waves, and the wind was against them, driving them even farther away.

I guess you have to have seen “The Deadliest Catch” on TV and see in your mind’s eye, the way the crab fishers have to fight the gigantic waves washing overboard, the rushing wind, and the incredible kind of weather you see them working in.

When the waves are huge, you don’t see very far, just the mountain of water and then the boat sinking into the valley left by the wave after the water has crashed over the boat. Right there the disciples see Jesus walking on the sea and they are frightened out of their wits. They think they are seeing a ghost. The Greek word is a “phantasm.” They cry out in fear. Jesus speaks to them to assure them and calm them: “Take heart; it is I.” In the Greek, it says something that means more than that, however. He says, “It is I am.” And everyone knew that only God could walk on water.

Now there they are, seeing the almighty love of God walking out to them on the water. Peter shouts to Jesus, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come out to you on the water.”

Jesus says, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, he had nothing, if he didn’t have courage, started walking on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw a strong wind, he became frightened and began to sink and cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him saying, “You of little faith! Why did you doubt?” When Jesus got into the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God!”

I called Jesus the almighty Love of God, because he was going to the small wave-battered boat filled with his disciples and helped them because the wind was against them, driving them ever further into danger and away from their destination.

Of course, as in a dream, this message also comes to us and includes us. The little embattled and wave-battered boat is also Immanuel Lutheran Church of Alameda, which also has the wind against it and Jesus, the almighty Love of God in his almighty Word, is approaching this little church in order to save it. How does Jesus walk on water today to rescue us in this congregation? It is through the preaching of God’s almighty Word. How beautiful are the feet of the one walking on water to save us!

Now when you hear the preaching of the one, sent to you by God, to call upon you to believe, and not sink in the waves of doubt and fear, then take heart and have faith, because you and I are saved by faith, because faith is the power of God in us. Faith is Jesus walking on water and coming to save us.

Do you think the wind against this congregation is strong against us? Do you fear the mountains of water crashing over us? Then just keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Cling to him with all your heart. Keep your mind stayed on Jesus. Then like Peter we too need to answer the great “I am.” Like Peter we too receive God’s almighty love stirring in us. We can then do what is impossible to do, embark on something that has never been done, and have God accomplish it through us.

Did you see the last fellow lighting the Olympic torch and how he ran through the air around the whole Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing? Well of course, when you looked closely, then you saw the wires which were holding him.

When we set out in faith, when we follow the command of Jesus to come to him, then we start walking on water. Faith means there are no wires holding us. It is pure faith that holds us. We walk on water to start the reconciliation and forgiveness of Christ, who steps into the congregation, is really present, and calms the waves and makes the wind to cease.

Now the proclamation of God’s almighty Word entails that our whole self to be in it. Thus like Peter, we get out of the boat and start walking to Jesus. Blessed are the feet of those who step out to proclaim the Good News, who help the congregation learn to walk to Jesus.

Sometimes we can step out and take a stand and others were all around us. But taking such a stand can be costly. It sometimes requires placing our bodies on the line. When Martin Luther of old got out of the boat in faith and made his stand, he was placed into the imperial ban by Charles V, excommunicated by the pope, and declared as free as a bird for anyone to kill, people of that time suddenly all stopped calling themselves Martinists and Lutherans. (I believe they started referring to themselves as New Believers versus Old Believers.) Ah, it is going to cost us, maybe even more than money, maybe our job, or maybe even our life. As Luther said, “Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child or spouse. Though life be wrenched away.” Talking the talk, while walking the walk, puts us way out on the edge of where people are willing to go.

Thus when you stand out like Peter, or Luther, or Elijah of old, you look around and you’re suddenly all alone. But Jesus, the I am, is suddenly there reaching you a hand, helping you and saving you, out there where no one else dares to be.

And we can start a venture of faith like that because we know what kind of a Lord we have. Jesus, we begin to realize, is the almighty Love of God incarnate.

He went up to the mountain alone to pray, but that sent him out to save the little tossing boat filled with his disciples and nothing could stop him. He even walked on water to save them and rescue them from the adverse wind.

That is the Good News. That is the proclamation for today. Nothing will stop Jesus from coming to this little boat called Immanuel Lutheran Church in Alameda in order to rescue and save his disciples, who fill the nave, that is, the ship, of this church.

Now you need to respond to the call of the almighty Love of I am. Moses asked for his name. God said, “I am has sent you!” He said it out of the burning thorn bush.

“What is your name?” Moses insisted.

God said, “I am who I am.” And Jesus is the sevenfold I am: he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the bread, the vine, the door, and the water of life. God came to be with us in Christ and “God with us” is our name, Immanuel! So you and I need to step out of the boat and walk on some water by faith. Step out and walk to the edge of human forgiveness, till you can’t go any further, when misgivings flood you and you begin to sink, then cry out to Jesus, and he’ll reach you a hand. His hand full of faith will rescue you out of your little faith, that is so prone to doubt, so clammed up with fear.

You need to step out of your boat, walk out on the water of your faith to the edge of our needed reconciliation. And when you see the strong wind and giant waves of anger and bitterness and hostility like walls of water coming at you, and you begin to doubt the possibility of any reconciliation, then cry out to Jesus, and he’ll reach you a hand, because his hand full of faith will rescue you out of your little faith, so prone to doubt and so paralyzed by fear.

It takes stepping out in faith like that. Peter represents you and me. Peter had the courage to lead, talking the talk and walking the walk. And Jesus will reach you that strong hand of faith, just like he did to Peter.

Of course, everyone deserted Jesus at the end. He even cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the words of the Psalm on his lips. But God reached over and raised him up from the dead, to rule at the right hand of God the Father as the almighty Love of God.

So often you and I might feel like those fishers that fish for crab up in the seas of Alaska. Have you watched the TV show called the “Deadliest Catch?” Mountainous waves also batter this little church as we fish the waters for more children of God. Like sometimes you are afraid our little church will go under. But blessed are the beautiful feet of Jesus, walking on water, coming to save us. Amen.

March, 2005 Dr. Peter Krey, Berkeley, California SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Reading the wonderful Isaiah chapters something impressed upon me that began in the 40’s. I noticed a reversal of our secular assumptions. In prose of chapter 44, Isaiah describes the absurdity of idolatry – the same wood that is burnt to warm the people, is used as fuel to bake bread, and then is also shaped into an idol to worship.

That is a complete “fabrication” – to use the word in two senses. A self-deception made with one’s own hand and made with a confused mind.

Isaiah continues in poetry with verse 21:

Remember these things, O Jacob and Israel,

for you are my servant, I formed you.

You are my servant… I have redeemed you.

That means that we are the work of God’s hands, we are wonders, we are miracles, we are marvelously made, because we are formed by God, because we are God’s servants.

Idolatry places the focus on the work of our hands, an artifact, a fabrication, an invention, upon which we focus, rather than the envelope or radiance created by the divine: we ourselves the work of God’s hands.

The latter reversal can also be considered on other levels. This God is not a concept of human conceiving, but we are creations of God’s conceiving and formation. Being the passive living sculptures made in heaven, makes us the purveyors of divine grace here on earth, because the divine active and passive do not make human beings passive and active – let me say it again: just because God is active and the human being passive coram deo (before God), the human being is not passive coram hominibus (before others), but active on a whole new qualitative level coram hominibus. The person in that state of grace is mindful of the motion of happening in which being, doing, having, all play a role and the creativity involved is not given a reductionism to mere doing.

Thus if we consider taking the idolatry from the woodcarver or sculptor of Isaiah into religious conceptuality, then we did not conceive God as a fabrication for our self-deceptive comfort. God conceived us, and called us into existence. We are God’s concepts and God concepts, and not vice versa. The evidence lies in the wonder of this universe, its galaxies, black holes, nova, shining stars, our sun, this planet earth, and its silver moon and the wonder of life and love and redemption, that is not of our making, but presents itself as a given, a gift from the divine hand that made it.

Thus interpreting God as human projections of a father into the sky like Ludwig Feuerbach; or religion as an opiate of the people, because of its being a human fabrication or self-deception – misses the whole wonder of what we are, the marvels of what God’s hand has formed and fashioned for us.

Isaiah is saying we cannot form God; God forms us, the God besides whom there is no other (43:11, 44:8b, 45:5, 14b, 21b, and 22b).

It would be interesting to study Luther’s faith creating God – the way Gerhard Ebeling presents it – and in what sense it does not violate these Isaiah’s passages as well as Karl Barth’s sensibilities.

Perhaps the line of reasoning would have to go this way: Faith is the power of God in us – faith is Christ in us giving us the conception of God, from having come to us from God in heaven. I would have to check this out by returning to my notes:

Ebeling argues in his Lutherstudium Band III. (p 190 ff.) that the scholastics divided faith into a pluralism of faiths: formata, actus, habitus, acquisita, infusa, above all, fides informis vs. fides formata. If faith justifies, Luther argued, St. Paul could never have spoken or understood faith in such a pluralism of forms.[1]

It had to be faith in a holistic form justified and not faith dissipated away in many different compartments.

Now here is why the Isaiah passage calls this Luther via Ebeling passage to mind. Luther writes that fides est creatrix divinitas, “faith is the creatrix of divinity, not God,” Ebeling argues. Faith creates divinity, because faith gives God the glory and it is impossible to do anything for God, except to make God our God. God shares God-self with us through faith. So in the power of God, divinity is created in us.

Not in person,

Not in substance, (194).

But in nobis, in us. The justified has new life not in his/her person, not in se, but in Christ. The substance is in Christ. So by faith, God is making Christ become a reality in us. Jesus Christ is God becoming incarnate and human reality (197).

Thus reason, which cannot allow God to be God and cannot give God the glory, is overcome by faith – is killed (spiritually) by faith, dies by faith, and Christ is formed within us – and the incarnation is continued.

I can see from reading Ebeling again why I had such a high understanding of human activity subsumed into God, or really human beings, participating in divine action because of the reversal of faith and grace – that Duane Larson at the Wartburg Seminary thought I was close to Finnish Theosis.[2]

For example, from page 26 of my Ebeling notes, I wrote: “There seems to be an overlap here, almost a reserve against Pelagianism. Human action and agency do not encroach on what is the divine prerogative; but faith reaches down and lifts the person, without subject, agent, free will, etc. into the divine action of God – that is, however, the furtherance of incarnation or continuous creation.”

Thus in my “Grounding Missiology in Lutheran Confessions” lecture at the Wartburg – I can see that this study became a part of me and I was not even conscious that I was drawing on it.

Now this is not idolatry at all, to say that our faith makes Christ be within us, and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

18. March 2005

Reading Isaiah, it became clear to me that “he has received the tongue of a disciple and is capable of sustaining with a word the weary.” Read Chapter 50:4 and then read the following chapters – I read through 57 – and there is powerful comfort there. He really binds up the wounds of the people with his words. There is very strong comfort there and it flooded me with emotion to read the words. The suffering servant is in 53, and then the verses in 54 come in. Verse 8 and 10:

8. For a brief moment I

have abandoned you,

But with great compassion

I will gather you.

In overflowing wrath for a moment

I hid my face from you,

But with everlasting love

I will have compassion on you,

says the Lord, your Redeemer.”

10. For the mountains may depart

and the hills may be removed

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

and my covenant of peace

shall not be removed,

says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

I also noticed that the verse Jesus uses to cleanse the temple, (56:7b) “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” is in a chapter where the covenant is extended to foreigners and eunuchs, if they refrain from evil and keep the Sabbath. Here we could interpret the Sabbath in the mode of justification by faith, i.e., because we can have peace in our hearts and rest from all our worry and labors, we have to do nothing, because God works through us, doing that which is humanly impossible to do. Like Kahil Gibran, the Arabic poet would say: “When you work you are like a flute through whom the whispering of the hours changes to music” – in the same way, when Christ works through us the whispering of the Word of God continues the creation, God’s own handiwork. We can do nothing in this Sabbath, God does it all, but we pray that God might do it through us.

23. March 2005

Just finished Isaiah again – the many prophecies without historical underpinnings or details to fix them in distinct times and places make them somewhat confusing. They alternate between judgment and comfort. They do contain an expanded vision that transcends the borders of Israel, that’s for sure. Perhaps being taken to Babylonia and Persia makes the story of Israel appear in a larger imperial context, and the universal vision that provides.

To get to the problem of many prophets writing under one name – if this is indeed true…I thought that it meant that those without authority attribute their writing to those who have authority in a corporate or collective personhood.

Erich Auerback in Mimesis has an interesting thing to say about slaves depicted by Homer. They spend their life in service of the family “closely connected with its fate, love them and share their interests and feelings. [The slaves] have no life of their own, no feelings of their own, [they] have only the feelings and life of their master.”[3] Perhaps we can plug in the word “school” for “family” – and refer to the school of Isaiah, for example.

Those who could have been in a school of Isaiah would have been more closely tied than such slaves to a family even. They may have shared First Isaiah’s thoughts and feelings and life. Their life may not have been their own, so absorbed may they have been in the life under the name of their prophet. “They could have had no life apart from the school, no [thoughts] and feelings of their own.” This hypothesis may be worth exploring.

In my guest lecture as a candidate for a position at the Wartburg Seminary, I wrote the lecture they required: “Grounding Missiology in Lutheran Confessions.” In many ways, especially in the conception of historical movement, my ideas on these pages build on the insights I attained in this lecture.

28. March, 2005

I’m reading Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis.[4] He certainly adds depth to my understanding of movement in Luther’s terms, because the word “Gospel” itself spells movement – “a deep subversive movement” in which ordinary people in their ordinary lives are caught up and brought into a world-revolutionary event, (I am using Auerbach’s language).

When Auerbach is comparing Tacitus or other literature of Antiquity with the New Testament, here doing so with Peter’s denial of Jesus – we are witnessing, he says,

the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurrences of contemporary life, which thus assumes an importance it could never have assumed in antique literatures. What we witness is the awakening of “a new heart and a new spirit” (p. 37).

Thus the Gospel itself represents this movement – and Luther realized it had been set afoot again around him. When I commented to my brother, Philip, that Luther had rediscovered the Gospel, he asked, “When had it been lost?” But when the Gospel is rediscovered its powerful historical forces are unleashed again and Luther sees that in the martyrium of many; that people are again being picked up at random and being involved in world changing events, common everyday ordinary people who, even in their worst weakness, see how what is divinely crucial moves forward.

Thus Peter Blickle’s criticism of Luther and the Reformation is unwarranted. He said that Luther was completely inexperienced in politics and government, how could he really be taken seriously on this account. In light of Auerbach’s insights, this critique is misguided. Auerbach argues that the discovery of the Gospel is the birth of a new spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurrences of contemporary life. St. Peter is a fisherman, an everyday random person, the way the rest of Jesus’ disciples were.

it is essential that great numbers of random persons should make their appearance; for it is not possible to bring to life such historical forces in their surging action except by reference to numerous random persons – the term random being here employed to designate people from all classes, occupations, walks of life, people, that is, who owe their place in the account exclusively to the fact that the historical movement engulfs them as it were accidentally, so that they are obliged to react to it in one way or another (Auerbach, p. 38).

So the proclamation of the Gospel is the tip of the iceberg, where the centripetal and centrifugal forces unleashed bring about the change and renewal of the world. Luther: “For the Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the World” (from his Bondage of the Will).[5]

I’m a little confused by Auerbach’s argument comparing the individual and society of antiquity with that of ours today.

I thought perhaps that the identity of people in antiquity was social and not individual – take for example the slave and master, where the slave was subsumed into the master, as I wrote about a few days’ entry before – but here Auerbach speaks of antiquity seeing an individual and not in any sway of social forces. It merely sees vices or virtues in that individual (p. 33). But it is not an individualism seen by Antiquity versus a social dimension seen today – it is a matter of their inability to see social forces at work that can be in motion. They see only the vices and virtues, successes and failures of a person. I believe the difference is the historical development of these forces which the New Testament is aware of and which our modern historiography is conscious of – but which failed the ancients – and they may well have been stultified in their “aprioristic model concepts” of society, to use Auerbach’s words (p. 34) – unaware of social forces at work picking up individuals in the waves of a new history changing force.

12:20 pm.

It just occurred to me that those caught up in the nobility of the Spirit, those caught up in the movement of the Gospel, are caught up in the coming Kingdom of Heaven. Thus the real dignitaries are a David, a Peter, Paul, Mary and Martha. The world changing events are in their hands, for they are consciously caught up in them. They are the stars, the real leaders in the sight of God. What does it matter, who those personalities might be in the eyes of the world?! Jesus, Peter, Paul, Mary and Martha felt the pendulum sway from Caesar to the Christ, from the Roman Empire to the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of Heaven is not at all co-terminus with the empires, kingdoms, and states of this world. The latter are drawn with “human effort and human ordaining, the former are drawn by God’s ordaining and God’s majesty” to use Luther’s words.

The trouble is that the great people in God’s eyes are not the great people in the eyes of the world. And thus there is a great deal of suffering, invisibility, unmet needs, except that the deep sub-surface forces will make the last first and the first come out last.

When Auerbach describes the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurrences of their contemporary life, I like to add ordinary life – then I think how Hinduism is diametrically opposed to Christianity – or rather the latter’s basic vision. If the caste system is the social institutionalization of Hinduism, then the movement would begin among the untouchables, the Dalats, and lift them up higher than the Brahmans, because the Kingdom turns what is important in the eyes of the world into invisibility and what is in the low regard in the eyes of the world, to world changing and salvation bringing, and from the Christian point of view, by the untouchables caught up in the Holy Spirit and bringing about what is humanly untouchable – because it is the work of God’s hand, God’s word.

Let’s face it – perhaps the nations are false churches – the Kingdom of God is not co-terminus in its divisions with the nations of the earth, especially if Christ is the King of the Jews and of all the nations. I do not think the nations were ratified in that way by the kingdom and given any spiritual standing. The boundaries should be drawn with love and compassion and not for privilege and oppression. And patriotism is a riot against religious reverence for the Holy One who has compassion on the people, the Lamb of God who bought us all with the price of his blood, very different from those who gain their power at the price of the lives of soldiers and many who stand in their way. Like St. Patrick explained to the warriors who took prisoners to sacrifice to the blood-thirsty gods of paganism – Christ gives us his blood to drink and does not want to drink the blood of sacrificial victims. That to the Irish, that word of St. Patrick was “Good News,” that stopped human sacrifice in those days.[6]

29. March, 2005

The Gospel is “good news” breaking – because the good things are happening and they have to be witnessed because new history of salvation is being made by them.

The in-breaking good news is also the continuous creation of God, because Christ is in the people and the next verse of the gospel song will be heard again, lived again, coming down in grace again, and the Gospel will be afoot and stirring people’s hearts again.

March 31, 2005.

In rereading the Psalter once again, Psalm 46 moves me again.

The City of God is what Augustine wrote about, and the river whose streams make it glad is the river of grace bringing abundant life.

Faith is a force, it’s a historical, a social, a personal, a divine force that people need to be caught up in and it will make a City of God possible here on Earth, which is naturally not humanly possible, but for God its no big deal. God could do it anytime. So that is a Gospel movement that it is part of and not in a political way, so that you would have to be orthodox. For example, if teeth are crooked, you need an orthodontist – but if they are allowed to grow in grace, there is no need of braces. The thoughts will be full of trust and the trust in God will fill every thought. Our thoughts do not have to be straightened by orthodoxy.

What to do about secular people, atheists, or those of other faiths? They are to be loved just like those in the faith, because the wonderful envelope of the City of God will bear witness to them of this heaven of grace and forgiveness, coming into being from the Lord God.

You say, “That could never happen. It would be prevented.” Very true. But those outside of Christianity are not preventing it, but those who are in the faith themselves, but not at all caught up in the vision and peace and truth of it, are those who are preventing it.

Recently I became very discouraged because I thought the Gospel is a movement – but in how so far are our Lutheran Churches themselves and other Christians completely in contradiction to the movement of the Gospel? Our conservatives should know enough to bank the Kingdom of God on this United States of America! We are a wicked and unrepentant country and the church of God has to be from a humble and very repentant forgiven sense of a country that does not yet exist but in the power of faith God can establish it and make it flourish with the Lamb as its light and gentleness and tenderness at its heart.

We would merely have to declare it to be so in a movement of prayer throughout our churches so that a very important critical mass of people help change the whole city in the twinkling of an eye. And it has to be done in a conscious way, yet we can only anticipate, we cannot inaugurate the City of God, as David Bosch would say.[7]

We would not do this through the Republican Party, not through the Democratic Party, but by a non-party festival of people agreeing to grow in faith.

9^th of April, 2005

Reading Mark: Isaiah’s passage – Prepare the way of the Lord – refers to a road from captivity back to Israel. (Note the complete unity of the people of God’s possession and their Lord.) Now it is not a matter of the change of geography but the transformation of the conditions and the Roman possession they are living in. Of course if the Roman possession is not an oppressive, unjust, and godless one, it is not problematic – so Christianity does go right for the jugular and tries to convert the Roman Empire…it does so without converting Israel, however.

But back to the word, which is also back to the City of God and back to the Israel of God. Then Jesus chooses his twelve disciples and starts preaching with authority. Now persons possessed with unclean spirits try to block him.

My idea of coming up out of the City of God and doing wonderful things is a little different from transferring the whole country into a new one and having the ones possessed by the old one become obstructionist.

Thus it says in 1:34b: That he would not let them speak. Interestingly enough in 2:2b, it says “he was speaking the word to them: and the Greek is “ton logon.” The Jewish culture must have been aware of the logos and the rationality it represented. The logos was certainly becoming influenced by the spirit of Judaism but if we just take Origen whom I have been studying for philosophy, he places love inside reason.

So Jesus is trying to preach a dynamic rationality to them – making them rational, but imbued with the steadfast love of God as well so they could become fully mature and fully rational for the City of God. Naturally out of Judaism this rationality and maturity is predicated on faith.

In chapter 3:24-27, Jesus has a much more dynamic understanding of the Kingdom. It is not divided against itself. It has a unity without contradiction and thus it is full of love and power and life. And the adversary, who introduces the contradictions, has to be the strong man who is bound up so that all his goods can be plundered and taken into this kingdom.

I do not know how to integrate that with my concept of the City of God bringing one experience after another of heaven into reality, except in anticipation and the people rising up into this reality like guerilla attacks but of suffering love, and keeping on until a critical mass might be reached and a more massive change becomes possible. Yet all such experiences are always in hors d’ourves, in foretastes, or like “previews of coming attractions” because God alone can inaugurate the Kingdom (Bosch)[8].

When Jesus speaks of the new patch of cloth and the old fabric of society, he is saying that a new kingdom needs to be in the works, for the new Gospel to work, because otherwise going through the turmoil and struggles of the wash, the new cloth would shrink and tear up the old fabric of the society, so if both were renewed, that tension would not be destructive: you need fresh new wine skins, for the new wine.

In chapter 4:13, it is surprising how the seed is the logos. To just translate it as faith, I think is too abstract. The Word of God is right if it has the mystery, dynamic, and creative power that reason filled with love and trust implies. And this faith is really exchanged for grace, which implies divine power, love, and understanding intellect knowing God’s way back to the Holy Israel, the land, the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.

Note: in these eight verses 4:13-20 the word “logos” comes up eight times – once for each verse. Their conception of the Word of God must also have known the significance of the logos, or reason, for philosophers of the Hellenistic world with the common Greek: Koiné.

Perhaps 4:21 ff. could also be like the unshrunk cloth and the new wine metaphor. The new person is featured by the society the way a lamp is placed on a lampstand – and the society should not try to encapsulate the new light, like a bushel covering him or her – or instead of the new person on the bed, cover the person with the bed / all the oldsters sleeping on top of it above him/her – perhaps the metaphor allows itself to be extended in that way.

The bushel or the bed cover will not be able to keep it a secret anyway, because the new lamp, the new person, will come to light.

It is strange – the wicked person, the sinful person – even we might say the criminal, tries to keep the darkness of his/her ways from coming to the light of society, while here the deviousness, the wickedness of the society is trying to cover the light of the new person.

Again chapter 4:26 ff., the growing of the seed is the logos – and if the different disciplines that grew out of philosophy are considered, that would illustrate this parable well: natural philosophy to science; moral philosophy to sociology, psychology, anthropology – you name the fields – fruit, stalk, the head, the grain, full-grain in the head.

Now the Word of God is more than abstract logos, static logos. It is rationality that is dynamic with justice and love. It is faith replaced by grace; perhaps a grace that is filled rationally – and grace implying that the power of God is operating through it – creating new communities and new persons. Lights and lamps and new fabrics and new wineskins and lamp stands.

The parable of the mustard seed again is a culmination, the climax, the entelechy, to use Aristotle’s concept of the fully actualized form – to perhaps refer metaphorically to an empire where countries like large branches allow the birds to come out and nest in its shade.

Verse 4:33 may be part of Jesus’ strategy to have a more dynamic light under the cover of the people who hear the parable but don’t understand it. Again the darkness above it will not prevent the light from breaking through. The darker that darkness the greater will the hidden light shine. This theme could also shed light on his Messianic secret – that he does not want his identity known – and the demons try to derail his purposes by bringing his light to the surface before it can transform, or so that it cannot enlighten the deepest darkness.

In the stilling of the storm, the fully rational, dynamic, and mature, entelechy of human being and Word, Jesus, can control a storm – and that prospect is still outstanding, beyond our time in the future – but the boat and the passengers and the sleeping Jesus are also metaphors replete with meaning for the kingdom: social upheavals and the persons and institutions in danger of going down in the pounding of the waves.

It’s still about trust in the Word. Plato also believed that the society or republic, as in his case, was the person writ large – and he sought the same internal dynamics inside persons as inside kingdoms. That is a very quaint theory today where we know that psychological principles and sociological ones are very different. That kind of a discrepancy may also have torn the Christ out of his kingdom, or emphasized the kingdom without the Christ. What do we make of the difference between how a kingdom acts and how an individual person does?[9] The many metaphors Jesus presents certainly intend to throw light on the tension – and the unity within unities is baffling as we see Christ crucified by the old fabric of society, by the old wineskins, and by a lamp stand[10] that intended to snuff the light out, the light of the world.

But all to no avail, because now the fishers had drawn many more Christ’s into their nets and the earth first produces the stalk, then a head, then full grains in the head (4:26) and all know about the new fabric of society and the new wineskins, and the lamp stand of the shining lamb.

The Gerasene demoniac (5:1-20) is a very interesting story and (I agree with Paul Hollenbach) that it is an oblique reference to the Roman pigs in their legions.[11] Theoretically a legion should have 10,000, but ordinarily they could have had as few as 2,000 soldiers, the number of pigs in the herd. If their possession of the country, in the thought of Antiquity, is viewed as the same principle as the possession of the man, the oblique reference is cogent. Thus the pigs are all tricked, in the desperate demons, to jump off a cliff and die in the sea, and all the people are afraid of the one now possessed by the Lord of life and the country full of the healing Word (logos)[12] although their real fear might be for the Romans.

And it is interesting in the story of the hemorrhaging woman (5:30 ff.) that so many of the crowd touched him, but the individual person involved was not missed. Here he brought the healing art to light. Perhaps, she didn’t want to come into the light, but only wanted to use the light and that had to be corrected – because manipulation and domination was not part of the kingdom. Jesus ruled by loving and gracious service.

In Chapter 6, the people of Nazareth, perhaps influenced by his family negatively, ask where he received his wisdom, his Sophia from. I imagine the word “logos” in Mark is filled with far more content from the Greek philosophers than we think; Hellenism having permeated the whole empire and the Koiné being the Greek that the New Testament is even written in. I doubt that this Gospel in Greek is a translation that came from an original Aramaic. Rome had conquered the empire militarily and legally, but Greek culture had conquered, perhaps philosophically, especially perhaps in the Galilee of the Nations and around the Decapolis, the ten Hellenist cities.

Again, the dynamic must be viewed in a collective as well as personal way. That the people of Nazareth his Patria, would not believe, took away from his power. The unity of the person in the unity of the kingdom is important. The contradiction brought a division in which Jesus was not able “to do a deed of power there” (6:5). The power of grace (trust and God’s action) has to be concentrated in a person and then spread through the people, or the house is divided against itself – the contradictions spread havoc over the rationality of the logos.

Jesus, sending the twelve on a mission, again does not back down neither in the face of his Patria in Nazareth, nor his own blood that considers him to have lost his mind, nor the authorities watching to see if he will break the Sabbath (6:1 ff., 3:21, 31-35, 3:1ff.). Now he does a stronger campaign with the twelve emissaries. I shall call them emissaries, because although they are disciples, they are being sent – technically making them the apostolate – but they had not experienced the resurrection yet. Thus, as emissaries they chase out demons (doubly possessed by unclean Rome as well as their unclean affirmation of the old kingdom, the old fabric of society, the old wineskin, their secret sins in the cover of darkness) and then anoint them with oil (6:13) i.e., make them into christ’s, new logoi, words of God, full of grace and truth.

In the death of John the Baptist (6:14 ff.) the contradictions come so fast and thick it is easy to see how the logos does not have a chance. Breaking the law is also a case of contradiction: John tells Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” The whole party is the antithesis of the abundant life Jesus and John had come to bring.

The feeding of the 5,000 (6:30), can be seen to refer to the abundance of nurture and nourishment coming from the new kingdom because the twelve baskets full refer to the twelve tribes and the new realty in their being fed the bread of heaven, and they themselves, like food, being gathered in the baskets, the new nests, in the strong branches of the mustard bush. I wonder why some groups were of 100 and some of 50? That, too, might have the significance of Jesus’ continuity with Moses’ dividing the people into thousands, hundreds, and fifties (Exodus 18:25), where their number was slightly small for their division into thousands.

It is interesting to compare Jesus’ walking on water (4:5 ff.) with Jesus stilling the storm. Here the disciples are trying to reach Jesus, but strong currents or adverse winds keep them from shore. So he walks out to them, seems to intend to walk past them – and it seems to be because they are so frightened of him that he calms them, which also makes the winds to cease. Perhaps there is another expansion here. Not only is the society or form of country, government, what have you, the person writ large, but the logos also expands into nature and controls nature as well. So there is a unity in a unity, the person in the kingdom, we’ll say, but then nested in a third unity, that of nature, or of the earth. Thus we are speaking about a personal logos centered in the triple realm of person, kingdom, and nature, concentrated in the unity of each.

When eating with defiled hands and the pollution code comes up,[13] Jesus points to the internal person and the immorality and injustice that makes unclean, while external washing cannot be identified with internal morality. So there may be many a contradiction between the internal heart and the external lips.

He points out the internal source of evil and the misunderstanding or confusion of external cleanliness with morality and justice. So it is through the pure heart that the unities of person, community, and nature can be achieved: of course, in the light of the divine Christ, the power of the logos in the person, community, and nature.

The Syrophoenician woman (7:24) shows that the lowest of the low – the low-life – could be referred to as “dogs.” Perhaps that’s why the Cynics identified with dogs a few hundred years earlier and Diogenes of Sinope also championed the natural state of a dog. The Cynics were also itinerant preachers, known by their trademark of a tattered poncho and leather pouch (which Jesus did not allow his disciples to have) (6:8). And Cynics were against organized religion, temples, priests and rituals.

It is obviously a symbolic campaign when Jesus travels to the far North, to Tyre and Sidon (where he cured the deaf man with medicine). It becomes important with the feeding of the 4,000 because Christ is also a light to the nations. The 4,000 could refer to the four corners of the earth and there is a Hebrew tradition of seven nations around Israel, because there are seven breads and seven baskets of the remaining broken pieces gathered up, who are also receiving the bread from heaven to eat and are changing into the logoi, the words of God, become persons, countries, new natures, in terms of the renewal of the natural world as well.

After these miracles of the multiplication of the loaves it is strange then that the disciples had forgotten to take bread along with them in the boat. They had only one loaf.

April 10, 2005

It is hard getting started again with 5 minutes. But the questioning of the disciples (8:17 ff.) seems to make the feedings of the masses into living parables like object lessons of the Kingdom, as it were. Now the opposition comes from the yeast – in a way it is the central ingredient in bread that the Pharisees and Herod’s party represent. The yeast makes the old Kingdom, the old fabric of society grow. They represent those who, cling to the old wineskin, and (verse 21) if they have eyes to see and ears to hear, they will understand that Christ is the King of Israel and the Lord of the Nations. That is what the two feedings with the bread from heaven represent. After these incredible signs, the Pharisees came asking him for a sign. The point, I believe, is their blindness – they could see nothing about what he is about.

And then the story continues with Jesus curing a blind man in Bethsaida (8:22), seemingly still dealing with the same issue. And Jesus continues keeping the messianic secret, perhaps, not to be arrested as a “pretender to the throne” – but Peter then identifies him first from the disciples’ side, rather than from that of the demons – yet Peter flip-flops between taking the Father’s side and that of Satan.

Now the Messiah will be very different from an earthly king – he will be the suffering servant – he will give his life rather than taking lives and the greatest will be the servant of all. And we are not to be ashamed of the ugly suffering up to and upon the cross, because that will be ushering in the Kingdom.

The story is moving into the message about the new wine and new cloth, into the fact that they themselves are becoming engulfed in the ripping up of the old fabric of society; and that Jesus has to be torn up is the process of tearing up the old cloth, bursting the old wineskin of Herod and the Pharisees.

Jesus brings our history to the edge of eternity and it is really easy now-a-days still to save our lives and not risk them for the Christ and the Gospel, yet we move away from the edge of eternity in so doing, and the new cloth of society, the new wine diminishes – usually the wineskin tears and it pours out on the ground.

From Peter confessing Jesus as the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi, the predictions of suffering and death, there follows the divine answer to the question “Who do you say I am?” from the voice of the Father: “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.”

Thus the new Lord of heaven and earth is declared and after more teaching, Jesus takes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which of course ultimately will not recognize him making him the cornerstone of rejection (Psalm 118:22).

3:45 pm

Now the relationship of the blindness of the Pharisees and Herodians and the healing of a blind man in Bethsaida is easy to see. Not so much the story of the boy with what sounds like an epileptic spirit (9:14 ff.). Faith, prayer, perhaps even fasting, plays a role in this healing and the implication may be for this faithless generation as well (9:19) also (8:12). Why does this generation want a sign? The term probably refers to the old fabric of society and those who cling to it and do not know about the healing power of the new fabric, the new wine. This generation needs faith and trust, so the grace of God can do wonders – but peculiarly it all depends on faith.

Chapter 9:13 “Elijah has come” as a mark, a sign, that the Messiah has come, may not mean John the Baptist. It could just refer to the transfiguration where Elijah appeared with Moses (9:4).

What if 9:1 – “Some of you will not taste death until you see the Kingdom of God come with power” – might refer to the Holy Spirit at Pentecost? If the Kingdom is not eating and drinking, if it is not another Kingdom besides the Kingdoms of the world, but one that comes in Spirit and in truth – then why could Pentecost not have been the experience Jesus was alluding to?

The parables are like metaphors, and Jesus asks even the disciples why they can’t understand the gospel of God’s new reign on earth (8:17 ff.) and now in 9:32, when Jesus speaks of his betrayal, death, and resurrection. Chapter 8:38 also shows how Jesus’ consciousness is at the edge of history and not completely inside of history. “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation” (attached to the old fabric of society, those of the old wineskin) “the Son of Man will also be ashamed of them before the father and all the angels” or “when Christ comes in the glory of his Father with the Holy angels.”

Now Christ does seen to say that will happen in the lifetime of those around him – but it also can be anticipated and interpreted, if many of Christ’s anointed live at the edge of history where it meets eternity, then it is from that place where the new person in the new fabric of society will come (riding from out of the future on the clouds of heaven). That Son of Man will also bring the redemption of nature as the reign of God reaches into our time, our history, our reality.

With the report of another exorcist (9:30 ff.), Jesus uses the strategic campaign formula, i.e, Caesar’s as opposed to the one Pompey used in the Roman civil wars (40). “Whoever is not against us is for us.” This places all the neutral people in the coming kingdom. I think when the crisis and the danger intensifies a whole lot, it gets changed, “Whoever is not for us is against us.” That puts anyone neutral in the camp opposed to the kingdom of God.

The stumbling blocks mentioned in (9:42 ff.) seem to allude to the radical measures needed to get into the good graces of the Kingdom. “All sacrifice will be salted with fire.” Numbers will be lost on the way in. And the salt dare not lose its seasoning capacity.

It all seems to allude to where the person works and resides: in the old fabric of society or in the new fabric – and needing to become the anointed of the logos, for the Kingdom.

Perhaps chapter 9:4 – the stumbling blocks to getting into the kingdom do not refer to earlier material, but to the material that comes after it. Divorce and hardness of heart, are cut. The little children: unless a person is like a child, the person can’t get into the Kingdom of heaven. Then there is the rich young man who fails. It is hard for the wealthy to get in. Then it goes to the camel going through the eye of the needle (10:25). Peter poses the opposite response, where they have left everything to follow Jesus. They thus also get the promise.

James and John (10:35) have an earthly kingdom in mind. Jesus strikes the chord of a child, a slave, a servant of all – the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (45).

The healing of the blind Bartimaeus, may again refer to the blindness of James and John and all the disciples vying to rule over the rest. Jesus here describes the peculiar kingdom of the Messiah as opposed to how a Roman or Herodian might envision a kingdom:

You know among the Gentiles (nations) those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it shall not be so among you; whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all (42-44).

It occurred to me that Bar-Timaeus may be named after a Platonic dialogue, one of Plato’s latest. Even though it begins about a Platonic conception of the state and speaks of a “feast of reason” like the “multiplication of loaves and the bread of heaven” it then goes into a creation story that is not related with the Gospel of Mark. But it is a very worthwhile question – because the logos is so very pronounced in Mark, the way I thought it only to be in the Gospel of John.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the colt, the foal of a donkey all reminds of Zechariah (9:9) and the real claim of the kingdom as the reign of God. Jesus is making the gospel a living reality in the claim of the kingdom of God, the new fabric of society, yet unshrunken by any wash, the new wineskin ready for the new wine, with zest and predicát (as they said in Germany about an expensive quality wine).

Chapter 11:12 – Jesus uses the fig tree and it is as if on the edge of eternity, a real tree become a metaphor for Israel not bearing fruit for the Son of Man. And the curse of the fig tree becomes the cleansing of the temple – and it is as if the curse goes onto the center of the old wineskin, the old fabric of society. And thus after cleansing the temple and finding that the chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to kill him, he sees the fig tree withered. Have faith and you can move mountains; believe and you’ll receive; and very, very importantly, the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: forgive others when you pray, so that the Father in heaven forgives you your sins.

Jesus’ authority is then questioned – and he parries their question by his own about the authority of John the Baptist and they respond in a political way, one that does not seek the truth but only safeguards their own vulnerable interests; they are playing it safe.

Then comes the parable of the wicked tenants – as much as the metaphor of the cave with Plato, where the one who has been out in the reality – with eyes that see and ears that hear and a heart that understands, comes back to the slaves tied to their posts, tells them about the other world and is killed by them for it. The tenants kill the Son of God as well.

Here in Chapter 12:1-12, Jesus’ prophesy does come true, as well as that of the destruction of the temple 13:2. The Herodians want him to speak against paying taxes, but they cannot trap him.

Jesus comes out strongly for the afterlife, but says married people will be like angels and not be given in marriage.

While waiting for the shoe to drop, after the cleansing of the temple, he teaches the people and then he gives the famous love commandments 12:29 ff. And by 12:35 he says that the Son of David is really also David’s Lord.

Chapter 13, the little apocalypse, seems like he is spreading history out before them and does not predict the end of time. Then in 13:30, he notes that this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place – and then v. 32 – only the Father, not even the angels, know the real day and hour these things will happen. So the end of Israel at the hand of the Romans in 70 C.E. could answer one part, and the complete end would be known only unto God.

It’s obvious that Jesus was invoking the reign of God: Psalm, 114, where “Israel is God’s sanctuary and Jacob God’s dominion” – and no earthly king was permissible because God was to rule. Jesus would not be King of Kings per se, but the suffering servant of God. In riding into Jerusalem as such, he was challenging Israel to be who they really were – going all the way back to the election of the first king, Saul, that seemed a betrayal of God to Samuel (1 Sam. 8:4ff.).

But the High Priest and the authorities handed him over to Roman officials, betraying the essence of the faith. Jesus was anointed the Christ in Bethany in such a human way. Why would he want to be David’s Son, and be the King, if David had called him Lord? The Gospel is that God reigns and all the people should become anointed and the miracles multiply the way Jesus started them.

Jesus was really the new chance that God gave Israel (not to speak of covenant) and the cornerstone was met with unbelief and direct hostility, and then Israel gets rubbed into the ground, and the little apocalypse for them is quite real, and the Christians know it will happen, I believe, and they flee for refuge to Pella.[14]

But the life of Christ is lived so dramatically in opposition to the power and principalities of that day, that all the resistance, and the many contradictions of the old world just struck him with a flowing force, making the light to the Gentiles start to shine and continue until this day to throw a great light on our lives and the way the Gospel can come alive among us.

April 11, 2005

In the fourteenth Chapter of Mark, the old fabric of society is tearing up the new cloth.[15] If the Kingdom is merely the person writ large (Plato), then it is certainly more difficult to “exorcise” the chief priest and governors of the occupying forces possessing the kingdom than the evil demons possessing Legion, the Gerasene demoniac, for example. But Jesus certainly turns the tables on them, and it is they who are being judged by him, and not vice versa.

I wonder if in 14:51-52 it is really the young evangelist Mark himself, who “When they caught hold of him,…left his linen cloth and ran off naked”? It’s a possibility.

Interesting enough, in verses 61 and 62, when the high priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed one?” Jesus answers: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

The “I am” here is different from Pilate’s asking 15:2 “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answers: “You say so” and the distinction, I believe, is involved with the Roman and ordinary understanding of monarchy and the messianic, religious understanding which has to do with the anointing of the common people and the suffering service that the leaders gave the least of these – where the first are last and the last are first. The messianic vision is so different that the nomenclature of kings and kingdoms really turns out to be a misnomer.

Jesus then seems to descend to becoming the lowest on earth – so he can forgive and include everyone, no matter how low, in the power of his gracious forgiveness. So he is the ransom for Barabbas, a rebel who had committed murder. And when the soldiers mock him and revile him, Isaiah 52:7-53:12, i.e., especially the whole of Isaiah chapter 53, really seems fulfilled. What we have described is the ultimate scapegoat, the victim of presumption on earth, of the old fabric of society guided by its false principle, crushing the life out of its future fabric, or tearing the fabric out of its future life – on the human side, while on the divine side, the lamb, the Passover lamb, is going to its sacrifice on the cross.

When the short ending of Mark is considered, it is obvious that the disciples do not yet understand what happened and what Jesus the Christ was about. But through them Jesus himself sent out the holy and undying message (kerygma) of eternal salvation.

So we try to understand it still today and have not gotten the reversal of faith and grace, which gives us the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5) and the logos has to be there – but certainly the way Origen says, filled with love.

This logos really has to be profoundly different from the Greek logos of philosophy. The latter is so this-worldly, while Jesus plows right through this world making an opening for the appearance and the realization of the next.

The resurrection experiences were the appearances that Jesus was making to his disciples and they see him ride away in the clouds in the ascension, but the Son of Man has not been seen coming back with the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

This vision, however, of the way of life has really been spread out before us in a marvelous way by Jesus. And the way our witness is supposed to usher the changes in that Jesus inaugurated are quite clear. It is the kergyma, the message of eternal salvation, which we have hardly begun to set into motion.

April 12, 2005

In the Timaeus, Socrates speaks about a splendid feast of reason. Why can’t the feeding of the masses also be such a metaphor? Even though and however, if we telescope the time, Jesus’ teachings would feed the masses, and provide an economy of abundance. In Mark 6:30, the story seems very natural, like an event that is described and not like a parable being written – like an allegory almost. Strange the way the numbers all seem to have symbolic significance, however. In the feeding of the 4,000 in 8:1 ff., there are seven breads to start, while in the 5,000, there are five breads and two fish, which again add up to seven. For the new Israel of the Messiah, you have 12 baskets gathered in as remaining, while in the Messiah, Lord of the nations, you have seven baskets of leftovers. If they gathered twelve baskets of leftover bread, or rather after the feeding of the 4,000 and they gathered seven baskets full of broken pieces together, why do they have only one loaf, having forgot to buy bread in verse 16 – only a few verses later (v. 8)?

Perhaps the crucial words again are involved with logos – just eulogesin – “He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the bread.” The word “bless” has logos in it – but eulogesin and the translation “blessed” is good – but perhaps we do have the logos with goodness in it – if we don’t have the logos with love in it. So that does not identify the sharing of the logos as the bread – but the look to heaven and the eulogesin in the breaking and distributing became the multiplication of loaves. Of course breaking brings about fractions, and fractions multiply their elements. So 1/3 times 1=3. In other words, the division of the bread is their multiplication – if somehow the fragments kept growing. I don’t’ know where this is taking me. I wanted to see if a feast of reason with the logos was involved, and I did find the word eulogesin.[16]

April 13, 2005

It is something the way the conception of the Messiah runs all the way through Mark. There is a tension between Kingship in the eyes of the Romans and what it means for them, and accordingly, what it means for the Jews that think like them, and kingship in terms of a religious figure – now not the servant of God, Moses, Ebed Jahwey, but the suffering servant of God, Jesus, now a peculiarly Jewish conception of a King as the Messiah. This one really inaugurates the rule, the sovereignty of God over Israel and the Nations, even the empire – with the opposition between the titles of Caesar and Christ.

All the way back in Chapter 3:22 ff., Jesus is charged with doing his exorcisms by the power of Beelzebul and he speaks of the contradictions or divisions in a house. If it is divided in itself, it cannot stand. The opposite, the Kingdom, the Beloved Community with the economy of abundance, would be completely united. Unities would have to be nesting within unities – whether personal, social, natural, or divine. But interestingly enough, the exorcism of the strong man (verse 27) is really what the kingdom is about. The strong man has to be bound to plunder his territory. This earthly conception of a king as the Messiah has to be overcome in order to understand the religious conception of the Messiah, in whose reign God returns and the very great conversion Jesus was about, takes place in Israel and in the nations of the world, which should have included the Roman Empire.

I believe that the apocalyptic nature of the faith did convert the religion of the empire to Christianity with Constantine (313 C.E.), but its power of actually binding the strongman, Constantine, failed. Naturally, the “strong man” in this verse does not refer to the person, Constantine, per se. To be more precise, we must speak of the earthly conceptions of lordship, violence, domination, and coercion constituting the imperial conceptions and character of earthly rule that often control subjects by their ability to inflict punishments and death. The messianic conversion and its revolutionary historical change that Christ’s Lordship over Israel and the Nations was supposed to spell, did not take place.

Instead, the intransigence of Rome, its entrenchment in an earthly empire, brought the apocalyptic historical changes of the faith to a halt, and Greek philosophy championed knowledge of a historically static sort which allowed the earthly empire to remain intransigent and even allowed the church to restructure itself into the form of the Roman Empire, to save itself during the later general and systematic persecutions.[17] It may be a little like me trying to overcome the will of the strongman controlling my life by learning and learning knowledge – and then discovering that a sheer power of the will always trumped and overruled my knowledge. Thus a sturdiness had to be gained within as opposed to a philosophically respectable level of knowledge, to counter the force of will and the real confidence behind it, with an equal or stronger one.

Perhaps that could resemble the reason the church then took up the structure of the Roman Empire, after it had plumbed the depth of knowledge in the Trinitarian and Christological debates.

The first words of Mark are so clear: the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. The new events, the history changing events, the inauguration of God’s sovereign rule over Israel and the nations, now not in a geographical road between Babylonia back to the restoration of Israel, or previously from Egypt into the Promised Land, but in a transformational mode of overcoming the unjust, inhuman, and false demons possessing the mostly occupied land in Roman possession.[18]

John begins the transformation with water, while Jesus continues it with the fire of the Spirit. Thus the people from the whole Judean countryside repent, confess their sins and get baptized. It is like a this-worldly Pentecost – just I don’t know if 3,000 were added to the number of those repenting.

Jesus is called the Son of God, by the Father’s voice from heaven. Kings and emperors also were considered “Sons of God.” Just consider the Pharaohs: Son of the God “Re,” i.e., “Rameses;” or Son of the God “Toth,” i.e., “Tutmoses”. Moses called himself the servant of God, and God’s name was too holy to place into his throne-name, thus his name was not “Jah-moses.”

But Jesus is the peculiar “Son of God” like a king David who plays a harp, writes Psalms, dances naked before the procession with the arc, etc… and thus Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, struggling with the wild beasts to emerge the Lamb of God, waited upon by angels.

I believe right from the start, saying the Kingdom of God was at hand, meant they had their eyes on the wineskins or the new fabric of society, and the people had to become anointed to be christs, and only then could the Messianic secret be exposed, when it would be too late for the authorities of the human kingdom to prevent it. The reign of God, all the good events that would crop up in the unities nested within unities, could already be at hand.

The miracles are thus the previews of “coming attractions”, because Jesus immediately calls his twelve disciples for the new Israel of God. He sends them out two by two, very much like the Cynics of Greece. The latter do not really know why they are breaking every convention, but the Jews know what God’s sovereignty is and the royal priesthood, chosen race, holy nation, God’s own people (any alien possession exorcized) (In the Greek it really says, “people of God’s possession”) to be called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9).

Certainly changing the wineskin and filling it with old wine is nothing to write home about. Putting new wine into an old wineskin, will burst the wineskin, tear up the fabric of the society. But really the converse took place. The old wineskin tore up the new person, crucified that one, and then kept persecuting and hunting down all who tried to change the old wineskin of the empire, switching their allegiance from the Caesar to Christ.[19]

The power of death can be taken in a universal sense, but taken in a limited political sense, it can refer to the earthly control wielded by earthly power, inflicting torture and death to control people in its jurisdiction. Thus overcoming the power of death, also overcomes earthly power, and sets the children of God free in the reign of God under the sovereignty of God. But God’s sovereignty cannot be understood from the earthly conception of kingship; but has to receive the peculiar, religious conception. First will be last; the greatest will be the servant of all; persons will be healed; hope will become a trust that will not be betrayed. The acts of God will enter a qualitatively higher level of occurrence and intensity. Thus Jesus cries, “My God, why have you abandoned me?”

One of my students wrote that Judaism was this-worldly and insisted on the promise of the land, while Christianity was other-worldly, completely spiritual, and seemingly did not concern itself with the matters of this world. What a mistaken interpretation of Jesus! It really means that there is an Exodus and a promised land flowing with milk and honey for every country. “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob” (Jesus’ choosing of the twelve disciples and the crucial one, St. Paul) “and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

Mark remains with sending out the twelve, two by two, while Luke, the gospel to the Gentile Christians, sees the light needing to go out to all the nations. Thus in Luke 10:1, the Lord appoints 70 others and sent them ahead of him. (two manuscripts even say 72).[20] Note how Moses also chose 70 elders for Israel according to the word of the Lord (Numbers 11:16). Ever and again they are to tell the people that the kingdom of God has come near to you (Luke 10:9). How can anyone spiritualize and take this campaign out of the kind of events that convert people and their whole conception of society into those anticipating the actualization of the reign of God?

It is very much like Prof. Lønning told me at the Luther Jubilee in 1983. The Gospel transforms a society like the church and state like the two wings of a new butterfly. Yet the intransigence of the state and the church’s relation with the state remains problematic. I believe the logos of reason has to be the basis of the state, but it should know about the changing events of history – not that events change during the course of history, but that history is being changed and people are becoming anointed in their anticipation, and the Lamb of God goes before us leading us all as the light of the nations.

The way the arms race has threatened the existence of the human race, and it has been reversed to an extent, so the threat of death and the fear of death used to control people, has to slowly become the power of forgiveness in the reign of the Lamb. Right now rationality has to bring checks and balances to the governments – the executive, legislative, and judicial is quite rational, and democracy gives far more leeway to anointing by the spirit and bringing about the good things amongst us from the city of God. But the Gospel has to have a far more comprehensive vision, which is quite evident in the Gospel of Mark, which our intransigent churches seem to have lost sight of, and how a movement of the Gospel once again has to be set in motion, and not at all as a threat, also not as a threat to Moslems or Eastern faiths.

The envelope of love is universal – except combat, spiritual combat is needed with evil to avoid any violence. The revolution is one of hearts and minds, and taken by surprise, even the strongman of an old nation can be bound, – yet, we have to be patient and watch and be ready, because on this side we can only proclaim this Beloved Community and hope to be used for the miracles of Christ accomplished by the Holy Spirit, yes, hopefully through us and not in spite of us. We cannot inaugurate the kingdom.[21]

April 15, 2005

In looking at the first Isaiah citation of Mark, I want to say “Prepare the way of the Lord” is at once to prepare the highway from captivity in Babylon back to restore Israel. It goes along with the insight that the kingdom is merely the person writ large (Plato). To corroborate the Lord and the people for whom the way is made, I went back to the passage in Isaiah 40:3. There is the famous variance of the interpretation:

A voice crying out (Isaiah) “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

And that is the road in the wilderness, through the desert back for the restoration of Israel. So the road is for the people.

In Mark 1:3, a voice crying out in the wilderness (John the Baptist) “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

If the idea is the togetherness or unity of the Lord with the kingdom, then John crying in the wilderness is preparing the way for the Christ, the Son of God. The Caesars also called themselves Sons of God,[22] Christ is also preparing the people for the non-geographical journey back to the new Israel of God and the new Jerusalem by washing them in the baptism of the forgiveness of sins.

If I double back into Psalm 46, then I could of course identify the river of grace that makes glad the city of God as the river Jordan, in which John baptized all the people of Jerusalem and from around the Judean countryside.

So as the voice from heaven declares the newly baptized Jesus, the Son of God, with whom God is pleased, the people of God’s own possession and their Messiah are already coming toward one another. Jesus chooses the twelve disciples right away and the twelve baskets of broken pieces of bread will be their dominions as the peculiar princes of the twelve new tribes.

The natural Hebrew metaphors have to be read plainly: baskets for provinces of principalities; a boat for a ship of state; cloth for the fabric of society; a wineskin for a system, field, or institution; these are the common pictures that the coming new kingdom of God was being spoken about with. Not to forget the mulberry bush, perhaps with its branches, even standing for the empire. The fig tree framing the cleaning of the temple is definitely standing for the old Israel, the possession of Rome.

Now Jesus embarks on a great new fishing expedition to bring all the people of the old Israel into the new Messianic Israel with its Immanuel Messiah in their midst. James and John the sons of Zebedee are mending their nets in the boat. They will fling the Gospel nets mended in the kingdom, to catch all the people being added to the number of those being saved.

John, the Baptist, having been arrested, Jesus has to go up to Galilee and he preaches with authority, which means as God’s suffering servant. Yet as if the Roman occupation of the country could be ignored, Jesus ministers from the vantage point that all people are to be claimed as God’s possession.

Those who enter have to receive a metanoia, a change of heart and mind by the proclamation. It is an encounter with a revelation of themselves, the proclamation as an experience with the new realities that the Messiah brings. And these realities are profoundly different from those operant in earthly Kingdoms. Jesus’ authority presupposes and enjoys the freedom of the children of God.

Thus immediately after Jesus’ teaching with authority, and the encounter of the people with God’s possession, which is human freedom, the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue cries out. I should say “acts out.” “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” (Jesus’ rebuke to his mother as well; Ah, in John 2:4, to his mother it may be somewhat softer.) But the unclean spirit may well have been the fear of the Romans, of the Herodians, or the other parties that accommodate the persecution of Israel by the unclean Gentiles. Later, however, Jesus pronounces all foods clean (Mark 7: 19b), in the same way that those who eat them, the Gentiles, will be pronounced clean in Acts 10:15. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Thus when the man with the unclean spirit cries out, he is offering resistance to the spiritual conquest of the kingdom that Christ is declaring at hand. That is the thrust of his asking, “Have you come to destroy us?”

If the man gives the Romans and Herod and the Herodians the final say-so, then all will become destroyed when the freedom of abundant life takes hold of the people of God’s possession. But if the minds and hearts of all are captured in the nets of the Gospel’s unities, then the death and destruction are a baptism of the grand spiritual transition and it does not have to come to a bloody execution, retribution, or other Roman punitive reprisal. No bloodshed for a rebellion and no military put down are necessary. No harm is intended even for the oppressors, but they are encountered with the Holy Spirit with an invite to conversion.

Now the crier says “I know you are the Holy One of God” and that certainly contradicts what he had just said “Have you come to destroy us?” That is because the Holy one of God comes to bring life and life abundant. But the unclean spirit does not believe that the kingdom of God as declared can do anything but bring harm. And really, Jesus’ message of love for the enemy, and the idea that Gentiles could be as clean as Jews really introduced a new idea that provided a way, a new opening into the possession of the people by God.

The man of the unclean spirit could only apprehend the old realities of oppression, brutal occupation, resigning oneself to a completely compromised life cut off from fresh springs of the waters of life.

The unclean spirit is on the side of the powers of death. The Holy Spirit is the power of love that carries life through death into the victory. The man who cried out did not at all share those hopes and aspirations. His spirit was filled with fear and was determined to ward off any risks by possibly drawing the attention of the controlling forces of the day. He believed there was no alternative to the old fabric of society, to the old wineskin, and that the old authorities were not about to let it break.

When Jesus rebukes the man it is strange the way he becomes convulsed and then the evil spirit comes out of him. Perhaps the authority of Jews counteracts the authority and all the accumulated fear of it encumbering this man, and the rebuke transfers him from the old dominion into the new one, albeit he may still need the Holy Spirit, as seven devils worse that the first might enter him and leave his plight worse afterward than it ever was before. (Mat 12:43-45).

This section in Matthew, the return of the evil spirit, or unclean spirit more precisely, uses the concept of a house and an evil generation. Again in the light of Plato, a house or dominion is also the person writ large. The possession of Israel by the unclean Roman empire is personally analogous to the possession of this one man in the synagogue, in whom the military occupation of the Romans with its brutally oppressive measures makes psychological layers of fear and anxieties into the whole demeanor of this person, who is bent on survival and wanting only to be a survivor.

Of course, when it comes to the so called strongman, the High Priest, Caiphas, Herod, Pilate, Caesar, and all the others, Jesus does not exorcise them as much as turn the tables on them and judge them in the trials they call for him.

The question arises, what is the distinction between exorcism of an unclean spirit, and baptism, and conversion, and if done in a personal level, can they be done on a societal or collective level? How could Israel occupied by Rome have been converted?

There is a real conversion of a person from a free Lord of Lady to a slave – a servant. I think it is best to go along with Luther: a free sovereign over all, subject to none (in faith) – a dutiful servant of all, subject to everyone (in love). There can be no lording it over others, and such an indication is both personal and social. That the greatest shall be like a child is as well.

But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the conversion of the formation of a society, its political, economic and social structure and arrangement is not so easily converted, nor are there adequate indications given even in how to convert it. What constitutes the Kingdom of God? Immediately the “Kingdom” is problematic, because it is not a kingdom like all others. It has to operate with different principles, especially considering its head is the suffering servant of God. The Lamb of God is its representative power – and among the nations, very much a lamb among the wolves, the lions, bears, dragons, and eagles, just to name a few symbols of the nations.

How do they become converted into lambs? Is their political structure a matter of indifference, or does it have to be a democracy, if all the people are also anointed as christs in the priesthood of all believers in this messianic dominion.

In class I’m teaching Jürgen Habermas’ Life-world and the Two Systems and discussing John Rawls’ “Justice as Fairness” and many of these insights would be appropriate for the task of restructuring or conversion, using the religious term.

To continue with Mark: Jesus first did not have to send his disciples out with their fishing nets. All the people flocked to his door at Capernaum in Simon Peter’s house. He healed people and drove out their demons. When such physical healing is hoped for, the masses really respond. It is not appropriate to be cynical about their hope for healing, however. It is the hope, which sustains life.

On National Public Radio Saturday evening, I heard the reading of a story called, “The Way Love Works,” by Mary Ucari Waters. She wrote: “it is important to be first in someone’s life, to be constantly loved by someone. Such love will change you even physically and sustain you for the rest of your life.”

The kind of love that Jesus shared physically changed people and also drove out all the fears and abject hatreds

that possessed these oppressed and desperate people.

Dr. Peter Krey April 20, 2005

I have 85 more handwritten pages continuing the reading of the gospels in the light of the prophets, dated June 14^th 2005 through March 20^th 2006.