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Adult Forum Christ Lutheran, March 20 – April 11, 2011

Pastor Peter D. S. Krey, Ph.D.

Preface

In March 2011, Pastor Sharon Lubkeman of Christ Lutheran Church in El Cerrito, California, asked me to join her Adult Forum Bible Study working through Genesis, when they started with the Joseph story in chapter 37, so that I should share some of the insights from my Joseph Book. The title of my as yet unpublished book is The Word of God, the Theology of the Cross, and the Language of God: Luther’s Commentary on the Joseph Narrative. I wrote it in the Spring of 1993 right while I was beginning graduate school and trying to make sense of a very difficult sixteen year inner-city ministry in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.[1] I could list a catalog of suffering, much like Luther does for Jacob and Joseph, let it merely suffice, however, to say that we had been broken into 46 times, counting the times every piece of glass on our church bus was broken, thieves had broken the organ with a crow bar to open it, stolen my beloved trumpet from behind the altar, or broken a hole in the wall of the office, even making off with the church seal. Then there was the time two young girls were shot with a high velocity bullet, while Pr. Maria Lopez and I were having a bible study in their building in the Mermaid Housing. I wasn’t going to start the catalog, so I’ll just finish by saying the two girls, eight and fourteen years of age, recovered miraculously. Some crazy fellow was doing target practice on the roof of one of the buildings!  I knew the concept of Luther’s Theology of the Cross and this work was my attempt to find out more about it.

Introduction

We have often called Luther’s teaching a Word of God Theology. We know that the Word of God does not only mean Scripture, but the Word become flesh, that is, God becoming a human being in Jesus Christ our Lord. In the “Freedom of a Christian” of 1520, Luther writes that we all become Christs to one another.[2] When we are baptized and receive Jesus Christ into our hearts, we also become Words of God to one another, sent by God out ahead of God’s people to preserve them (Genesis 45: 5 and 7).

Luther calls this sending the language of God. (Bring to mind that in Latin “mission” means “sending” and Luther is writing these academic lectures in Latin.) As God’s words, therefore, we become the vocabulary of the Language of God. That language takes us out of our own selves, outside of our comfort zones into places replete with suffering. As strangers, like Joseph in a strange land (having to learn Egyptian), we try to understand God’s heavenly speech, which, according to Luther, is as necessary as it is impossible for us to understand.

Luther’s last lectures expounding the Joseph story in the last chapters of Genesis illustrate his Theology of the Cross in narrative form. Hopefully studying these chapters of the Joseph Novella, which Luther amplifies into an epic drama, will provide insights about our pilgrimage, our journey here in life through the Word of God, the Theology of the Cross, and the Language of God.

1. We already read chapter 37 where the story of Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, begins. There we watched Reuben attempt to save Joseph from the wrath of his brothers. In birth order, Reuben had the rights of the first born, but he had some serious boundary issues.  He slept with Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, his father’s concubine, perhaps to affirm his first born status. By default Simon and Levi may have wanted this status, because they were born next. Why? Look at the difference between Esau’s story and Jacob’s story. You can see who lives the abundant life. But Luther teaches that birth-order is only a human consideration. Faith makes us inherit the first born status in the eyes of God. Our faith envelopes us in the Gospel, in which God’s promises become true for us, like Joseph’s dreams became true for him. Dreams often deceive us, but God’s Word was in Joseph’s dreams. Another consideration is that blessings are performative: they bring about what they express.[3]

2. Judah derails his brothers’ desire to murder Joseph, by having them sell him into slavery to the caravan of traders heading for Egypt. (Luther maintained that physical death was preferable to the unmitigated social death of slavery.) Judah occupies the next chapter, 38, where he sleeps with Tamar, who acting like a prostitute and using a ruse, deceived Judah so that he fulfilled her rights according to Levirate marriage law.

Because we were basically dealing with the Joseph story, we skipped Chapter 38 about Judah and his sordid affair with Tamar, his daughter-in-law. Luther writes about this chapter in his first 50 pages of LW VII and it is worthwhile reading. He asks why the Holy Spirit would put such a story into the Scriptures. He responds that the Holy Spirit wants to console us by showing us that even great men like Judah were sinners. No one should despair because of sin, nor become presumptuous because of righteousness. When Luther describes the birth of Tamar’s twins, the empathy, compassion, and sheer humanity of Luther, especially for women enduring child-birth, is exceptional. To provide just one quote: “For we are all born into this light from a woman’s womb through birth, that is, through death, since mothers together with infants, are put in most certain danger of death” (LW VII: 46). Luther empathizes with Judah and Tamar struggling with feelings of condemnation or punishment or grace for their sinful affair as the difficult birth of their twins is proceeding (LW VII: 47).

3. The Hebrew word for Joseph’s coat, literally, the robe of many threads, pasim, in Hebrew, polumiton in Greek, comes up only one other time in the Bible, when it is used for the garment worn by Tamar, who was defiled by her brother Amnon, one of David’s sons (2 Sam 13:18, 19). When a word appears in the Scriptures only once it is called a hapax logomenon. The word for Joseph’s robe appears only twice. Tamar in David’s time should not be confused with Tamar, who deceived Judah in the next chapter. The musical about Joseph refers to the robe as his “techni-colored dream coat.” But Luther thinks it was actually a beautiful white smock made of fine linen, because white was the color that was used by royalty in the Orient, in much the same way as the color purple delights royalty in the West (LW 6: 323). If you wanted to continue to think of it as Joseph’s many colored coat, Luther said, he would not disagree.

4. The Joseph story foreshadows the Gospel story of Christ. Like Mary, Jacob kept Joseph’s words in mind (Gen 37:11). Christ is sold for 30 shekels, while Joseph was sold for 20. And the robe dipped in blood foreshadows the blood of Christ shed for us. Luther’s catalog of troubles represents Joseph’s passion story, Joseph’s cross. Thus Joseph is a Christ figure. When Joseph’s dream comes true and his brother bow before him, he prefigures Christ to whom all knees shall bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth (LW VII:224). Now Joseph came perhaps 1200 or more years before Christ. Why should he be called a Christ figure? Socrates died 400 years before Christ, why shouldn’t Christ be called a Socratic figure? It is because we do not think of Christ in human terms anymore. He came to us out of eternity and said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

5. The first eight volumes of Luther’s Works contain his Lectures on Genesis. Volumes 6, 7, and 8 are about Joseph. When we read the Joseph story from the perspective of the last lectures that Luther wrote in his life [He died about three months after completing them.] then we have to keep four times in mind:

a. That of Joseph

b. The time of Christ

c. That of Luther’s

d. And our time.

6. The name of my book is Word of God, Theology of the Cross, and the Language of God. I hope to introduce you to some of the insights of my book as we read along in the Joseph story. This Joseph Novella, as it is also called, never fails to move me. In the climax of the drama, when Joseph finally reveals himself and his brothers recognize him, I have often been reduced to tears. The author of this narrative skillfully draws readers into intense visceral feelings. The question to ask is how do words get into the heart and move the heart? That will require us to consider Luther’s Language of Address, which is really biblical, when we hear God speaking to us. (I wonder how language of address is related to performative language? I imagine it is performative in a more personal way. Language of Address brings assurance to the one spoken to. It speaks faith, comfort, and hope, so that they are pronounced in the soul, undoing the doubt, fear, and despair that was lurking there.)

7. Martin Brecht, who wrote Luther’s three volume definitive biography, described Luther as having rich sense of empathy.[4] He has the capacity to get inside the characters of the story in a vicarious way. That way Luther is able to enter this story, identifying for example, with Jacob, who was now deceived by a lie of the brothers and remained in the delusion of their lie for 22 years. Talk about Jacob, the deceiver, being deceived! Imagine the climate around this family, where the brothers were living a lie for 22 years! Now here is old Jacob, Luther says, who was deceived by his father in law, grieved by the early death of Rachel, his beloved; discovered that Reuben, his son had intercourse with his concubine, Bilhah; grieved over the rape of Dinah; and he does not realize that the most difficult trial of his life was yet to come (cf. LW VI:312). This is quite a catalog of suffering, like Joseph’s, like St. Paul’s. It’s the cross.

8. The first-born and the father filled with love, find that their blessing is preceded by the cross. The Word of God, Joseph, is sent out ahead to save God’s people. “The trouble with heaven is that you have to go through hell to get there.”[5] At the end of the dramatic life of promise, we learn the language of God, the redemption and salvation it pronounces, as God’s speaking, brings creation out of nothing, changes suffering into love, changes a crime into a blessing, and melts hearts of stone, so that waters gush out of human eyes in the form of tears.

9. Oswald Bayer now one of the most respected interpreters of Luther resolves many issues in Luther’s theology that we will have to discuss. For now, let me quote him, “To live life theologically, to live as a Christian in the church catholic, we enter into the word of Holy Scripture, driven by spiritual attack [Anfechtung], pray for illumination, and let scripture interpret us.[6] To expand somewhat, Oswald states, “A theologian is a person who is interpreted by Holy Scripture, who lets himself or herself be interpreted by it and who, having been interpreted by it, interprets it for other troubled and afflicted people.”[7]

10.  Thus we enter into the passion story of Joseph, the way Luther in his lectures enters the story, inviting us all to come with him in what Luther describes as an epic drama of the theology of the cross. Thus we too find ourselves in a drama and on a journey of faith. Completely enfolded in Christ, our biography becomes a theography.

11.  Chapter 39. What Potiphar’s wife says in order to frame Joseph, Luther calls a “diabolical dialectic.” A feminist scholar, Joy Schroeder, criticized Luther saying that his harsh representation of this woman made men use it ever after to blame women, whom they themselves had raped.[8] But I believe Luther would have declared such men guilty of the same diabolical dialectic, because they too were placing the guilt of their crime on the victim. Another scholar, Mickey Mattox, points out that slaves were used for sex in those days and Joseph would have been no different – The story itself points out that Joseph was good looking. Potiphar was a eunuch and Luther should have considered that a mitigating factor in Joseph’s plight with Potiphar’s wife.[9] That’s a sad state of affairs. Luther, however, argues that the eunuchs who served the king would not have been castrated. Only those who served in the harem were (LW VII: 51-53). Luther does not cover this problem up as Mattox claims. Such a thing points out even more how completely vulnerable Joseph was.[10] Thus Mattox’s argument plays into Luther’s purposes of magnifying Joseph’s nobility and the evil that he is up against.

12.  In the Theology of the Cross, Luther states that God fulfills God’s promises to a person of faith in the form of their opposites. In his dreams God promises Joseph he will become a king. (The robe, according to Brueggeman, is also a royal garment Jacob gave to Joseph.) But God chooses a funny way to make him a king: he is almost murdered by his brothers, thrown down into a pit, sold down the river into slavery, gets framed by a woman, gets thrown down into a dungeon, where for many years, he is really buried alive and under the death sentence.

We, of course, know how this story will turn out, but you have to realize that Joseph did not know, just like we are in the middle of our life-stories and we don’t know how ours will come out. God puts Joseph through the Schola Sheola, the school of hell, Luther says.[11] We would say, the school of hard knocks, to prepare him for the role he will play in the plan of God’s salvation: to save all the people from the famine, save the lives of his father and brothers, and melt the hard hearts of his brothers (Genesis 45: 5 and 7).

13.  Luther is said to have a Theology of the Word, a Theology of the Cross, which he compares with a Theology of Glory. I argue that Luther’s can also be viewed as an In-Depth Theology. Does Luther have many theologies? Oswald Bayer argues that Luther depicts God as doing theology when we passively receive the formation, we might say, the number God is doing on us to prepare us for the part we have in the divine plan of salvation. When we passively receive the works of God, the whole works, then we ourselves lead a theological life. Theology proper is what God is doing in this divine service and the worship service, and academic theologies have to be derived from what God is doing in the Church. The object of theology or subject matter is about sinful human beings and the God who justifies them.[12]Thus we can see that Jacob was a cheat and a liar, Joseph was a tattle-tale, an obnoxious kid, really, his brothers were murderous liars. [See footnote 5.] Just think of the murderous brothers between Reuben and Judah, Simeon and Levi, who killed all the men of Shechem after they were circumcised. But God has consigned us all under sin, so that God could have mercy on all of us. We are all sinners fallen short of the glory of God. But then, what saints God makes out of us!

14.  That the theological life is a passive and receptive one should not make us think that we have to be passive, do-nothing people. Luther’s theology is dialectical depending upon the forum of our life in which we happen to be. We are passive and receptive before God, coram deo, in Latin, but that does not make us passive or quietist in the human forum, coram hominibus. Not at all, God works through us doing all kinds of things for neighbors. Luther describes four “fora” in which we live: in the eyes of God, coram deo, before others, coram hominibus, in our own eyes, before ourselves, coram meipso, and the image we present to the world, coram mundi. The image a person presents to the world can be very different from the real person. Luther’s theology is relational and what holds true in one forum does not have to hold true in another. Gerhard Ebeling writes a whole chapter explaining the interrelationship of these “fora.”[13]

15.  So much of the Joseph story involves dreams. But Luther prefers the Word of God over dreams, prophesies, visions, and angels. When he says that the scriptures also condemn dreams, he may have Deuteronomy 13: 1-5 in mind, where false prophets, who “divine by dreams,” lead people astray to serve other gods. Here dreams are placed in a very negative light and these dreamers are condemned. Jeremiah also condemns false prophets, who identify God’s Word with their dreams and merely communicate the deceit of their hearts that way.

“Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? (23: 28)”

Luther finds that the Holy Scriptures are enough for him. He wants to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, like Moses, to whom God spoke “mouth to mouth,” we would say, “face to face.” For Luther the Scriptures were sufficient and he made a pact with God not to send him dreams and visions. Luther delights in the Word of God rather than dreams, prophecies, visions and angels: The Word of God is at once the work of God creating, redeeming and sanctifying the hearers. The Word of God is the Scriptures tested and proven by faith and found trustworthy. Finally the Word is Jesus Christ, the shield of protection impenetrable by evil and temptation.

Luther quotes Isaiah: a hungry man dreams he is eating and a thirsty man dreams he is drinking and wakes up faint, his hunger unsatisfied and his thirst unquenched, [deceived by a dream] so, Isaiah continues, it will be with the nations that fight against Mt. Zion (Isaiah 29:8). Luther adds that a dreamer seems to himself to find a sack full of gold or to be playing with a beautiful girl, but on waking he discovers that he is deceived. In this same way, this whole life is night and sleep (LW 6:335). This metaphor is about awakening in God’s new reality. Night and sleep leave us in the grasp of wanting our own thing, while getting up in God’s new day we receive the wonderful gifts of God.

The devil has exact grasp of all the deliberations of kings, wise men, jurists, and theologians, with this exception, namely, what my faith and hope in God is and how I stand with God; for faith and God’s Word is a dark cloud to the devil into which he cannot penetrate with his light (LW 6:336). The devil mocks people and at the same time acknowledges that he cannot look into their hearts. Here he burns his mouth and his nose (Ibid.)! The beam of diabolical light does not penetrate into the Word and the believing heart, [thus Luther is] more delighted in the Word and faith than with a dream, which can be deceptive (Ibid.). “But the Word is a sure shade and darkness, which evil spirits, however lofty they may be, cannot look into. Before all things we [need] to have the pure Word and its true understanding. From that we will be able to interpret all visions, dreams, and prophesies, and indeed, also to judge the good and evil angels alike” (Ibid.).

Luther’s idea is that the devil cannot get into the Word of God, because Christ overcomes him in a person’s heart. But he can get into our dreams to deceive us.

According to Luther, only, as in the case of Joseph, when God gives the dreams, the Son interprets them, and the Holy Spirit carries them out, only when they are analogous to the Word of God, are dreams prophetic and not deceptive.[14]

16.  The complexity of the Old Testament characters is truly remarkable. Robert Alter, a Hebrew scholar, who has translated many books of the Hebrew Bible describes their nuanced personalities like this:

“What is it like, the biblical writers seek to know through their art, to be a human being with a divided consciousness – intermittently loving your brother but hating him even more; resentful or perhaps contemptuous of your father but also capable of the deepest filial regard; stumbling between disastrous ignorance and imperfect knowledge; fiercely asserting your own independence, but caught in a tissue of events divinely contrived; outwardly a definite character and inwardly an unstable vortex of greed, ambition, jealousy, lust, piety, courage, compassion, and much more?”[15]

Erich Auerbach puts it this way, “Jewish writers are able to express the simultaneous existence of various layers of consciousness and the conflict between them.”[16]

Luther therefore could speak of us as sinner and saints at one and the same time, because he had a more profound understanding of the complexity of human nature.

In an early letter, Luther wrote that he wanted a theology that went to the meat of the nut, the kernel of the grain and into the marrow of the bone.[17] Jeremiah may have thought about what the Hebrew narrators had in mind when he wrote:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt. Who can understand it?”[18]

When considering this character complexity, consider the relationship of Jacob with Leah and Rachel. Finally it is in his grave, in his tomb, that he takes his place with Leah. He seems to have recognized the troubled heart of Rachel only at Benjamin’s birth. Or compare Reuben and Judah, especially in relation to their father Jacob and their brother Joseph. Their characters receive marvelous development by the Biblical narrator.

17.  Joseph, the believer, suffering the theology of the cross does not yet understand that this “schola sheolah” is designed to make him a king.  That he must be put into the place, from which he can save the Egyptian population, and more importantly the Hebrew people of the promise from starvation.[19] That he will be given an ascension from the depths, the pit, the abyss and be given the name above all other Egyptian names: Zaphenath paneah! (Savior of the World! Nourisher of the Land, Diviner of secret mysteries, [Decipherer of what is concealed,] God spoke and he lives!)[20] All will have to bow their knees when he comes in his royal chariot and shout “Abrek! Abrek!” And he will also be able to reverse the tables on his cruel brothers, and whittle them down inch by inch, until they are broken by remorse, by which Joseph saves them from their sins. Bringing his brothers to repentance was perhaps a greater feat than saving the teaming populations from starvation. Out of a heart full of love, he changed into a devil before them and harassed them from behind his Egyptian mask.

Until he said: “I am Joseph!”

Just after Judah said: “I am responsible for I have sinned.”

Joseph, doing the Theology of the Cross on his brothers, is playing cat and mouse with them, playing the same game God is playing with us. God uses precisely the same Theology of the Cross upon us. What Joseph does to his brothers, God does to his saints, to shape them for their mission.

18.    We first depicted the consternation of the Theology of the Cross with, “God first fulfills God’s promises to us in the form of their opposites.” Using other words, we could say, “steadfast faith in the providence of God is nothing but the human struggle for an enduring faith continually confronted by contraries, disappointments, and set-backs which we experience while anticipating the fulfillment of the promises of God.”[21]

19.   “In his Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, Luther described his Theology of the Cross discursively, while in his commentary on the Joseph Novella he presents a master narrative of it. To review Luther’s earliest description of the Theology of the Cross it is necessary to read the relevant theses of this disputation:

Thesis 18 It is certain that [one] must utterly despair of one’s own ability before [one] is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.[22]

When we read the story of Joseph at the end of Genesis, we see how Joseph needed to despair at his own ability (or strength) before he was prepared to receive the grace of God.[23] When Joseph was reduced to nothing by God, he could be recreated ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing. When he reached his end, God made a new beginning – Luther believed in God’s continuous creation – and Joseph’s evening and morning became another day. Behold the person!

Paradoxically when there is still human hope, it is against divine hope: hope against hope. During Joseph’s suffering and despair, he learned to hope in God.

Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation continues:

Thesis 19 And that person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks on the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened (Romans 1:20).

God’s ways are hidden from us. Let me quote extensively from my book (page 11).[24] Traditionally, Luther’s theology has been characterized as a Theology of the Word. It is the Word of God declared, i.e., in the justification by faith; the Word of God’s effect, in its forms of Law and Gospel; and finally of the scandal of the hiddenness of the Word in the flesh, which characterizes the Theology of the Cross.[25]  God is hidden and revealed as the crucified God; therefore in suffering, dying, in darkness, and there it is where God meets us! Alister McGrath maintains that all thinking comes to an abrupt halt at the foot of the cross. Crux probat omnia (the cross tests everything). The cross becomes the foundation and criterion of thought about Christ. If God is present on the cross, then God is a hidden God to be sought in disgrace, poverty, death, and everything else shown us in the suffering Christ – nevertheless, God is there hidden and revealed for those who wish to search for him.[26]

Thesis 20 [One] deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

Thesis 21 A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.[27]

The theologian of glory is fooled by surface appearances. S/he does not see the hope that is against hope, for example. The theologian of the cross knows that the experience of suffering and the cross make visible and manifest the things of God. The human reversal of good and evil, the human distortion of God’s creation, is itself reversed by suffering and the cross of Christ. Not only does the theologian of the cross tell it like it is, but also catches a glimpse of God’s miraculous creation. Because the Joseph narrative is all about suffering and the cross, things of the heart become articulated, and the language of God as I will argue comes to speech, Luther says, ‘if only we could understand it.’”

20.  Chapter 42-44. Walter Brueggemann emphasizes the Egyptian empire and the ruthless ruler Joseph has become when he receives power and the dream moves forward.[28] Perhaps Brueggemann has too much distance from the heart of the story and how the Gospel, God’s promise to Joseph, a son of promise, goes forward. Brueggemann keeps a political distance; Luther’s heart is fused with Joseph’s.

21.  Here forgiveness is described as a process. Joseph does not just gather his hard hearted and deceitful brothers around himself and quickly forgive them. He practices tough love in order to bring them around, change their hearts, redeem them, because they are locked in guilt and they are living lies.

22.  Luther’s interpretation is very much more personally theological than politically so. He speaks of a divine diabolical dialectic, where previously with Potiphar’s wife he spoke only of a human one. The diabolical dialectic means that God can appear in the form of the very worst devil to those opposed to his will, while the devil can appear in the disguise of Christ as the best way to deceive those believing in and following the promises of God. Joseph changes into a devil to drive the devil out of his brothers, negating the negation.

23.  Joseph may want to see his brother Benjamin, but he is not into a power struggle with his father for him, the way Brueggemann presents it. According to Luther, in the theology of the cross God plays a number of different games. In this one, Luther speaks of the game of cat and mouse, a pleasure for the cat but the death of the mouse. In that way, Joseph is playing this game with his brothers, a role play, which recapitulates what the brothers did to him and it all becomes very real very quickly, because Joseph touches precisely the place that will hurt them the most and bring out the issue once again. They will have to take Benjamin, Jacob’s beloved son from their father once again.

24.   Foolishly, first the brothers think he wants to steal their donkeys. But Joseph soon makes them mindful of their sin. “Shouldn’t we have listened to the heart rending and anguished cries of our brother, when we sold him into slavery?” Reuben comes in with an incredible, “I told you so!” Joseph has, Simeon, one of the murderous brothers bound up and taken away right in front of them. (Later Jacob’s blessing on him and Levi is really a curse on their anger and they will not have a share of the Promised Land like their brothers, but will become scattered among them.) And then the money in their bags on their return home really scares them. It is a gift, but their guilt frightens them, just like a rustling leaf in the Garden of Eden frightened Adam and Eve out of their wits, after they had sinned. (See Leviticus 26:36.)

25.    God does not act in one way with us, but in four different ways, according to Oswald Bayer’s understanding of Luther.[29] First let’s consider the ways by the law and gospel. 1/ The proper way God works with us is by the Gospel, by the promise of our salvation through our faith in Jesus Christ. The law functions in two ways. 2/  First it brings order to creation, our society, and our personal lives. (The sea used to be a symbol for chaos. The recent Tsunami in Japan is a fine illustration of how apt the sea is for this symbol.) 3/ Secondly, it is the way God disciplines us and drives us to the freedom of the Gospel. The law is no longer a way of salvation. Sent to us from God, Jesus Christ has become the way, the truth, and life, which means, the way of the world’s salvation. 4/ But there is also the strange work of God, according to Luther. We avoid that side of God by approaching God through his Son, our savior Jesus Christ, the Word become a human being for us. In this way we come to know the heart of God which is filled with love. To approach God on our terms outside of the way God wants to be approached is to be confronted by the hidden God of frightening majesty. Perhaps outside of the Gospel, where we confront the majesty of God pride-fully and disrespectfully, is where Luther’s divine diabolical dialectic also comes into play. In his commentary on Psalm 117 Luther writes, because the world is covered by two layers of darkness, “Ultimately God cannot be God unless God becomes the devil beforehand and we cannot come to heaven unless we’ve first gone to hell and we cannot become the children of God unless we have first become the children of the devil….The devil is not and does not become the devil without first being God….and does not become an angel of darkness without first having been an angel of light. What the devil says and does, must have been said and done by God, that is what the world believes and on the whole it motivates us as well.”[30]

26.     Partly, these incredible statements come from Luther’s own experience. When he proclaimed the Gospel it was called heresy and his truth was called a pack of lies. Jesus Christ himself was called Beelzebub, the prince of all the demons by the authorities of his day (Matthew 10:25). Martyrs are demonized by those who do them in and later they build monuments in their honor. But perhaps the hidden God is also a monster in our sky until we stop our rampage of hate and destruction and become converted to the way of life found in the Word become flesh. In the same way, Joseph became the very worst devil, not because he had become ruthless after tasting power, but in order to save his brothers and his dear father from the prison house of the sin and guilt they were locked in.

27.     The negative relationship they had with each other is obvious: Jacob says, “Why do you stand around looking at each other?” That is not a very kind thing to say. He also does not trust them with Benjamin, so he probably suspects his sons of having done something wrong with Joseph.

28.     Judah demonstrates real responsibility in chapter 43: “Send the boy with me,” he says to Father Jacob, “I myself will be surety for him and you can hold me accountable for him” (43:9). He continues that if he does not bring Benjamin back, he will bear the blame forever. Compare that response to Reuben’s: “You may kill my two sons if I don’t bring him back to you” (Gen 42: 37). The Father could not take him seriously. Simeon and Levi aren’t saying anything. The first is of course imprisoned in Egypt; but Levi, Judah’s older brother, is as quiet as a mouse. Jacob cannot accept letting Benjamin go, but starving of hunger is the only alternative and he relents and laments, “As for me, I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved!” (43:14) Jacob did not seem to accept the other brothers as his sons.

29.    When the brothers stand before Joseph and are taken to his house, it will be for a banquet, but they do not know that. Joseph keeps them in suspense. They say to each other, “They want to make us slaves and take our donkeys!” (43:18) The Egyptian official is presented as very God-fearing: “Your God and the God of your father must have put the treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money” (23). When Joseph reenters the house at noon to join them there is the most heart-wrenching and touching of scenes. What follows is just a good story. Joseph completely overcome with emotion has to go into his room not to let them see him weeping. Luther says that the new life in Christ does not cut off natural human feelings, but completely accepts them. He works extensively with the Greek word φιλοστοργής (philostorges) for these feelings.

30.    Joseph continues his cat and mouse game with them, however, and plants his silver cup into Benjamin’s sack. Joseph himself identifies with this cup, which is an apt symbol for representing him. He himself divines what is hidden in secret and it is the cup that he divines by. In the whole of chapter 44, Joseph makes the brothers have to face and own up to what they had done to him and it is only in the next chapter that he says, “I am Joseph!” and that shocks them even more.

Luther has a great deal to say about Judah’s speech, describing it as his “prayer before Joseph – [saying that he] himself [is] willing to enter perpetual slavery that Benjamin not be held in Egypt. ‘His father’s life is bound up with that of the lad’s, and if he sees that the lad is not with us [when we return] he will die.’ Judah is speaking. Saying all this with weeping, sobs, and outstretched hands in the manner of suppliants:”[31]

Luther’s empathy allows him to witness the scene and he takes us with him into the story.

“For this is the last part of speech, in which there was the greatest agitation in the heart and in the hearts of his brothers. They are very serious and weighty words, full of feeling. No one not even one whose heart is calm, could read it without tears.

“Cicero says somewhere: ‘I am embarrassed by tears.’  But those are not true tears – tears shed for the most serious reasons and feelings – as when words and weeping are mingled and speech is broken off.”[32]

At this point the Joseph story is very moving, and Luther draws us into it, so that we accept our emotionality, our bodies,[33]  and the powerful natural bonds [and attachments] that God created us to live in.

31.    Judah’s integrity and mature responsibility come through, making it impossible for Joseph to continue concealing who he is. “He weeps so loudly that the Egyptians outside his house heard it and even the household of Pharaoh heard it.” When he said, “I am Joseph” his brothers were so dismayed that they could not answer him. Then Joseph tells them about the hidden and surprising ways of God. “God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:5). And again Joseph has to repeat for them the marvelous ways of God: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God, who has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt” (45:7-8).

32.      Luther calls this sending the language of God. To repeat, he writes in Latin so that the mission of Joseph and our mission is the incomprehensible language of God. He compares our dreadful experience of suffering with God’s moving the divine plan of salvation forward: as it says in Psalm 105:

“When God summoned a famine against the land, and broke every staff of bread; he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. His feet were hurt with fetters, his neck was put in a collar of iron; until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord kept testing him.” (16-19)

Luther asks, “Where are those magnificent promises of God?…He sent a man ahead of them to save Jacob (cf. Psalm 107:17).  But of what kind is this mission? What is this idiom, to send a savior into Egypt to save Jacob and his whole house? How is he sent? He is thrown into a pit; he is sold; his father is killed. Is this sending a savior? It is indeed, but in accordance with God’s idiom. For he is appointed king, but God alone sees it. Jacob and Joseph do not see it inasmuch as they are involved in the greatest trouble and grief. This then is a special heavenly language, to send a savior and to appoint a king by hurling him into a pit and hell. We should therefore accustom our hearts to this language.”[34]

Luther continues that God already sees our being lifted up, but we don’t. God already laughs at those persecuting the ones he sends. But we can’t see it. “We are afflicted, are chosen, loved, cared for, and regarded, but in a hidden manner, as Isaiah says, “Truly, Thou art a God who hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (45:15).

33.   What does Luther mean by calling mission, God’s sending, the language of God? We have to consider that God creates by speaking. God’s speech accomplishes what God says. As far as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher is the language of God over ours. We can speak of speech acts, language acts, and language events that make language stream through history, shape it, and chart its course. But mission, the sending of God’s Words, the Christs ahead of those whom God is saving, is the language of God. Thus, the Words of God, those, whom God chooses are vocabulary in the language of God. The people of promise are the vocabulary of the language of salvation.

34.    A glimpse of what happens via the language of God can be understood when we learn about performative language. J.L Austin discovered the performative in his lectures: How to Do Things with Words but Luther discovered efficacious language long before. For example, Luther discovered that the Word of God was filled with everything in creation and with all our hopes and dreams and God’s speaking shapes and moves our very lives. “Behold the Word of God!” he exclaimed. And the Word of God had to be understood most importantly of all in the sense of God’s promise to us. God gave us his Word in Jesus Christ, and we can believe God, because Jesus was a man of God’s Word. The promises of God ignite our faith. God’s promises were the Gospel and the commands of God were the law. Thus Luther had his finger on the main reality-changing, performative speech acts that Austin discovered. A performative does not try to reflect a reality, but brings the reality about that it is pronouncing. Thus the blessings of Isaac and Jacob were coveted because they brought about the wonderful things pronounced in the blessing.[35]

We are the poems of God, the songs of God, the words spoken out of the mouth of God and sent off by God in mission to be the vocabulary in the language of God’s salvation.

And like for Joseph of old, those who are sent, God’s words, will not return empty, but save God’s people from the disasters to come and change hearts with the spirit of repentance and forgiveness.

35.    “Why have you stolen the cup, my silver cup that I divine by?” Joseph has a special cup that he identifies with. His Egyptian name, Zaphenath paneah means “diviner of secret mysteries,” and “decipherer of what is concealed.” Interestingly enough, David Whitford in his new book about the life and thought of Luther, explains the theology of the cross this way: “According to Luther, God works in ways that human wisdom cannot comprehend or understand: [Luther] calls these the ‘invisible things of God.’ Only faith can perceive the invisible things of God.”[36] Thus Joseph’s Egyptian name spells out the meaning of the theology of the cross itself. Almost killed by his brothers, sold into slavery, languishing down in a dungeon, he attained knowledge of human beings as well as self-knowledge in all that suffering. But when he interprets a dream, he gives all the honor to God and God allows him to discern the secret things hidden from us. Joseph also discerns that God used all his sorrows to send him out ahead to save and preserve the lives of people from the famine as well as the family of Israel, which had responded to God’s promise.

36.   Interestingly, chapter 45: 21, the brothers are called the sons of Israel, almost for the first time, because their crime has come out into the light and they are forgiven. Now they are on their way and will have to tell the truth to their father. The great skeleton in the closet is now completely out in the open, no longer hidable. Forgiven by Joseph, they will be able to live in the truth again. Laden with wagons full of gifts and grain, they set off to their father. Joseph reminds them not to quarrel on the way. He still sees through human nature. Old Jacob is stunned and cannot believe that his son is alive, until he sees the wagons, and then Israel says, mind you not Jacob, “Enough! My son Joseph is still alive. I must go see him before I die” (45:28).

Robert Alter speaks of the narrative skill of the biblical writers that, in this story, is so very great indeed:

“The entire dialogue between Joseph and his brothers is remarkable for the way that words, creating the fragile surface of speech, repeatedly plumb the depth of moral relation of which the brothers are almost completely unaware and which even Joseph grasps only in part.”[37]

What do these statements about searching for the depth mean? Alter speaks of “obtruding the substratum.”[38] Heschel uses the same word in proposing his depth-theology to explore the depth of faith, the substratum out which belief arises.[39] The depth refers to going out where the waters are no longer shallow, refusing to remain superficial, plunging below the surface, penetrating to the in-most depth of the heart below.

Going into the depth is involved with pain, suffering, and adversity. Luther compares it to the painful, life-threatening throes experienced by a woman in labor. Luther is searching for the “force” of the word (yetzev)עצב .[40] Luther observes how Joseph forgives his brothers from the heart:

“No desire for vengeance is apparent in his words, no ill will or desire to harm them, but pure mercy and goodness, which came from the bottom of his heart.”[41]

But confronted with the unexpected existence of Joseph, they enter the dis-ease and suffering of their burdened conscience, bothering them because of the crime against him they committed so long ago. It is possible to be an “actor,” in order to avoid the harrowing and painful experience of facing up to one’s past, of facing up to ourselves, our own worst enemy.  But acting from our heart, acting from the chore of our being, receiving “char-actor,” requires dealing with our evil conscience. Embarking on that course of action first multiplies our sorrows. Without confession of our sin, and the resolution of our guilty conscience, however, our joys cannot go to the heart. They remain superficial and shallow. They remain sensual without the underlying refreshment of the spiritual.[42] Feelings remain titillation, rather than richly human, flowing from the depth. For that a cheerful conscience is necessary, which is a continual feast:

“The other joys are not full; they only tickle. But they do not penetrate to the inmost part of the heart.”[43]

Evil consciences make actors out of one and all. (For 22 years the Israel brothers were a bunch of “actors.”) Joseph put them through the kind of hell that made their act soon come to an end. Otherwise their hearts would still ride on the shallow surface of life: empty sensuality, false materialism, titillating joys that are only skin deep and merely “tickle.” The evil conscience blocks access to the heart.[44] Our hidden sin obstructs the fullness of our lives. A cheerful conscience of a forgiven person, drenched with tears, receives the joyful feast of human emotions, because the blockage to the inmost heart has been penetrated. A person enters the spiritual heights and depth of his/her whole being, in its whole trust and commitment before God, beyond all roles, fronts, facades, and masks.[45]

37.    Luther thinking about what God put Joseph through, said that Christ was like a carpenter planing and shaving the rough hewn wood smooth (evening the sinful natures of old Adam and Eve). “Be still and be formed by Him.” This also calls to mind the metaphor of God as a sculptor. But God needs to work on us, because we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, even our past, refuse to let God be God, and accept the “terms” of God’s language.

But for us that is a real battle. To close our eyes and shut out the world so it can be nothing that can hinder our faith, takes being able to detach ourselves from the world and attach ourselves by faith to God. Luther writes:

“For the Word, which created all things, must be compared with the creature, which, in comparison with it, is nothing at all.

“He commanded and they were created,” says Ps. 148:5. It is always God’s wonderful practice to make all things out of nothing and again to reduce all things to nothing. And one should always accustom oneself to cling to the Word, in order that those things which disturb and hinder faith, no matter how great and splendid they are, may be removed from our eyes.”[46]

Luther continues with the ex nihilo theme:

“[God] is the kind of God who not only makes everything out of nothing, but makes nothing out of everything, just as He first reduced Joseph to nothing.”[47] And when it seemed that Joseph was ruined and lost, he makes everything out of him….[48]

Luther uses the Word of God like striking the anvil of the pope, cardinals, bishops, and usurers. But he felt he did so in vain. But those whose hearts are touched and bound by God’s Word, finally experience the truth of Jer. 23:29 “Is not my Word…like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces?” And Paul, Luther continues, was a very hard rock, but when the light of heaven shines around him, and the divine voice resounds:

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” (Acts 9:5) he suddenly falls to the ground like one who is dying.[49]

Luther makes a parallel here with Joseph’s brothers, who are hit by the lightning bolt: “I am Joseph, whom you sold into slavery!” with the message that Paul hears from heaven on the road to Damascus that has the same form: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Then Paul also has to endure the catalog of troubles, all of which he suffers participating in the passion of Christ, his Lord. (2 Cor. 11:23-33 – the list runs ten verses long!) When my mother read what St. Paul went through in our family’s evening devotions, I saw her cry.

38.    Chapter 45: 26-28. Jacob was stunned and could not believe his sons when they told him that Joseph was alive. Only when he saw the wagons from Egypt, that Pharaoh had sent to carry him, (46:5) did the spirit of old Jacob revive. Imagine his hearing that his son Joseph was alive after 22 years – after believing all that time that he was dead! The brothers had made him draw the dreadful conclusion from Joseph’s bloody tattered coat that his son had been eaten by a wild animal. He had vowed he would die for grief. For years he had refused to be comforted. Slowly he resigned himself to the lie that Joseph was no more and now after 22 years, the brothers inform him that he is not only alive, but he was even the ruler over all of Egypt! It was only the array of wagons outside his tent, finally convinced poor Jacob. Luther mentions the significance of these wagons and I found an old German poem, probably from medieval times, which I translated. It refers to the Promised Land or heaven as the Land of Laughter. In short:

Christ is our blessed wagon,

the one God sent us, to persuade us, to convince us,

the wagon, in which we hide and safely ride, hereafter

into the Land of Laughter.

The Poem follows:

The Wagons of Egypt by Peter Krey, June 23, 2008

Christ is the wagon God sent us hereafter

to carry us

into the land of laughter.

I’ll work the poem above twice to capture its two meanings, because the old German words have a double meaning:

1

O God, of you it’s said,

“You weigh us on a blessed balance.”

Your grace is baffling,

because Christ takes us,

to the place, we’re forever laughing.

2

O God, of you it’s said,

“You send us Christ,”

the sacred wagon,

in whom we hide

and safely ride,

hereafter

into the Land of Laughter.

Got, von dir sagen

kan rihten ûf der saelden wagen

der uns sol tragen

da man sol iemer lachen.  

(Lobgesang 77 in Middle High German)

39.   The wagons carry old Jacob and the little company of people, who had been chosen to continue God’s plan of salvation, to the most fertile part of the Land of Egypt. This is the celebrated entrance into Egypt as opposed to the Exodus.

Joseph tells his brothers: “When you are before Pharaoh, say that you are keepers of livestock” – Because shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians (46:33).  They promptly tell Pharaoh, “We are shepherds” (47:3).

Jacob blesses Pharaoh and Pharaoh asks him how old he is. “The years of my earthly sojourn are 130 years; few and hard have been the years of my life. They do not compare with the years of the life of my ancestors during their long sojourn.” (47:9)

40.   The Land of Ramses is an anachronism, because Ramses was probably the Pharaoh of the Exodus (47:11). Jacob became 147 years old and he does not want to be buried in Egypt, but in the cave of Machpelah, where his ancestors were buried (47:30). They had a different way of swearing an oath in those days, i.e., not raising their right hand.

41.    Joseph’s intermarriage with his Egyptian wife, Asenath, is accepted. Later there will also be the celebrated marriage between Ruth, the Moabitess, and Boaz. Luther lists many more cases. Jacob censures Reuben and Simon and their places are given to Ephraim and Manasseh, giving Joseph a double portion. Rachel was buried in Bethlehem. It was called Ephrath, in those days. Jacob crosses his hands while blessing Joseph’s two sons, to the consternation of Joseph, giving the firstborn status to Ephraim, the younger. For a good while in their history all the tribes go by the name, Ephraim. In an old tradition, Jacob says that he will give Joseph one more portion, the one that he took from the hand of the Amorites with sword and bow! Things happened that are not recorded.

42.    An important prophecy is Judah’s blessing (49:10). I wonder if the embalmed bodies of Jacob and Joseph could be found? I wonder what it meant that Joseph’s grandchildren were also “born on his knees”? Joseph became 110 years old!

Conclusion

In this Adult Forum, I was grateful for the opportunity to introduce some of the insights from my book entitled, The Word of God, Theology of the Cross, and the Language of God. Even though it is unpublished, it has already had four or five editions. Each time I rewrite the book, I try to grasp the meaning of this little trinity of concepts in the title somewhat better. Perhaps it should read “Words of God,” because by the grace of God we become Christs to one another, we thus also Words of God.

The way it turned out that Joseph’s Egyptian name, Zaphenath Paneah spelled out the meaning of the Theology of the Cross.  By another theory about its meaning, it also pronounces us Words of God. Dave Whitford wrote that for the Theology of the Cross only faith can perceive the invisible things of God, while the name means: the one who deciphers what is concealed. (See section 35.) Robert Alter chooses the meaning of Zaphenath Paneah to be, “God speaks, he lives!”[50] Thus Joseph is a living Word of God, a promise, because he, like all of us believers, in our theography, undergo our passion stories following Christ. Perhaps another theoretical meaning of the Egyptian name, “Savior of the World,” the one chosen by St. Jerome for the Vulgate translation, could even be associated with the Language of God, because the continuous creation of God via speaking all things into existence, also includes the new heavens and earth of salvation. God speaks and behold: the children of God are sent to preserve life, to be the saviors of the world.

The Word of God can also be understood as the promise of God. In Jesus Christ, God gives us his word. but in the Theology of the Cross, the promises of God are fulfilled in the form of their opposites, because before God we are often oxymorons. Thus it takes the suffering experienced in the Theology of the Cross to justify our crooked hearts and right our devious ways. St. Peter was a confessor who denied Christ, as well as a courageous coward. St. Paul was later a persecuted persecutor. Luther was certainly a sinful saint, almost like one of the Old Testament patriarchs, whom he describes. Jacob and his mother, Rebekah’s ruse on old Isaac and Esau, may have given Jacob the coveted blessing, but Jacob’s justification by grace was certainly by the Theology of the Cross. That morning in his marriage bed he discovered Leah, the sister he did not love. He loved Rachel who stole her father’s household idols; and talk about a deceived deceiver! The brothers, whom he refuses to name his sons, show him the bloodied and tattered many colored coat. “This we found. Recognize, pray, is it your son’s tunic or not?” They let Jacob lie to himself. “A vicious beast has devoured him, Joseph is torn to shreds!” (Gen 37:32-33)[51]

So God’s promises are filled in the form of their opposites, because God has a great deal of work to do justifying his saints so that they become ready to be sent for the mission that is the language of God. Their self-contradiction has to be resolved, the tension between their opposites integrated, because they are God’s words, who do not live the Gospel, even while bearing the promise of it.  With that the number God does on Jacob is perhaps as excruciating as the one he did on Abraham and Sarah. Struggling with infertility, they finally receive the son of promise when they are as good as dead and then God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, his son of promise, whom he loves. Luther asks poignantly, what kind of a cruel game is that? It’s the game of the cat and the mouse; a great deal of pleasure for the cat, but the death of the mouse. In order to fashion and cut out the words sent for God’s mission, God uses a plane on some rough-hewn wood, shaving it smooth. The sculptor sets the hammer and chisel to the marble, to free the sculptured servant of God from inside it. And the suffering hurts, dreadfully.

Thus the Theology of the Cross also means that God continues creation from nothing, making somebodies from nobodies. God bring the chosen ones down to nothing in order to create the children of God, the words of God.

Then as the vocabulary in the Language of God, they speak God’s words, the ones that come out of the mouth of God, by which we live and not by bread alone. Changed from oxymorons, the saints are given pure hearts with which to see God, given single-mindedness doing the will of God; they are completely under the influence of the Holy Spirit, like leaves blown in the wind.

Joseph was nothing, if not arrogant with his brothers, riding on his high horse. God used his brothers to throw him down into a pit, let him experience slavery, let a woman throw him way down into a dungeon. But the whole time, in his falling descent, even before his ascent, he could have affirmed what his father Jacob said, “The God in whose presence my fathers walked, Abraham and Isaac, the God who looked after me all my life until this day, the messenger rescuing me from evil”[52] was with me. Like Joseph, whether descending or ascending, that faith sustains us, because we know we are never outside of the love of God.

In the Language of God, sometimes the cadence of the sentence drops and sometimes it rises, but God is always there, getting us ready for his sending, for God’s mission. God has to send us out ahead of the people that need to be saved. It was the same for his Son. “For God so loved the world that that He sent his only Son, so that all who believed in him should not perish but receive everlasting life” (John 3:16). Christ had to leave heaven and after showing us all God’s love, had to endure the torture of the Roman cross. We said that the only trouble with heaven is that you have to go through hell to go there. But Christ came from heaven and freely endured hell to show us the way of life.

Perhaps being sent out ahead, means being sent into God’s future to sustain and provide for those who need trail-blazers to go before them to show them the way. “Hate traps us in the past, while love opens the future.” (N. Berdyaev) So the suffering that Jacob and Joseph had to go through, is of course, that of all the saints, who shoulder their cross and follow Jesus. By reading about Jacob and Joseph we hear and begin to understand the heavenly language, discerning the things hidden from us in the Theology of the Cross. Had Jacob understood that God was making Joseph a great ruler, he would have been enraptured rather than so very desperately downcast. But they did not know the end of the story, nor do we know how our stories will end. We are still in medias res, the middle of it all.

But this master narrative of the Theology of the Cross shows us God’s ways, which are hidden and we cannot yet understand, but we can know and understand that with an increased faith in the loving God behind the dark cloud, we will ultimately penetrate and breakthrough. “The only way through it is through it,” we used to say when ministry was really tough in the streets of Cincinnati, during the race riots of the sixties. “Your suffering becomes translated into a deeper quality of love,” we said, “and it all adds to the music of your witness.” It is through increasing our faith, which is God’s power working through us, that we can also receive the mind of Christ, who with the Theology of the Cross, better than Joseph, can discern the secret things, known but to God. Living the Theology of the Cross will help us have the faith to learn the Language of God, as God pronounces each one of us, lovingly, liltingly, into the divine word order of the sentences of the Language of God, sending us to our places in the history of God’s salvation.

In his last lectures Luther composed an epic drama of the Theology of the Cross for his students. He ends by saying: “This is now the dear Genesis. God grant that after me others will do better. I can do no more. I am weak. Pray God for me that He may grant me a good and blessed last hour.” (LW VIII: 333) He died three short months thereafter, while reconciling a conflict between two princes in his hometown.

Make Friends with Unrighteous Mammon: Resolved

Luther’s Sermon of August 17, 1522

Luke 16: 1-13

This version comes from copies of notes taken from Luther’s sermon that made it to publication. Thus it is rather repetitive and unpolished. Luther, disturbed because of it, published his own version later.

Sermon on the Next Sunday after the Ascension of Mary

This is a veritable priest and monk’s Gospel that will make them some money, if we don’t guard against it. Now, before we get into it, we have to learn some language usage, especially concerning the word “mammon.” The Jews used this word in the Hebrew language and we have to learn how they used it, just like the word “Alleluia.” Amen. Kyrie eleison. So “mammon” is a Hebrew word that means “riches” or “wealth” and not simply “wealth,” but left-over wealth, that is, one of an overflowing measure. What is called “mammon” can be understood as two things. Knowing it before our Lord God and according to the truth, then many of you would have mammon. If we want to measure it before the world and people, however, then you would be few, because our masters have taught us that everyone should look to his or her place and what they need for it and measure their goods accordingly. If someone is a man and has a wife and child, then he has to have proportionally more, because where there are many, there has to be much. And when you measure it all that way, then no one has anything left over, but everyone would rather still have more. Even one who has two thousand gulden, says, “I have to have them for my household so that I can support myself, my wife and my child.”

And so, one is not held responsible for helping, even in the most desperate need, and this Gospel was thereby completely annulled, so that no one needed be helpful to another. In the meanwhile they built churches and even there they did not attend the greatest need until the vaults cracked and the church stood there roofless. They gave here simply beyond measure and smeared their gold on the walls.

Now “mammon” means that some one has left over provisions, with which one should help the other, and not spoil him or herself. [In the latter case,] the Lord calls it “unrighteous mammon.” One should then call the goods that one has left over, the mammon of iniquity (mammon iniquitatis), because after all, the unrighteous are using it daily, even if they say, “Goods bring courage.” The Heathen also called it a “provocation to evil” (irritamentum malorum). Likewise, St. Paul says, “Greed is the root out of which all evil grows,” for example, take war and bloodshed. That is why here it is also called “unrighteous mammon,” as it has such an evil use and is such a great cause of evil among people. Now [wealth] is also God’s creation, like wine and corn, and God’s creation is good; so why is it here called evil? This is the reason: because it provokes much evil, just like St. Paul says to the Ephesians, “Make the most of the time, for the days are evil” (5:16). Not that the days in and of themselves are evil, but that much evil takes place in them. Likewise, they are called “days of wrath and lamentation,” even though a day is good. But because wrath and lamentation go on in them, so days have to let themselves take that name. In the same way, the Gospel calls mammon that is used in evil ways, “unrighteous mammon.” That is, wealth and riches that one has left-over, and with which one does not help the neighbor, one possesses unjustly and it is stolen in the eyes of God; because before God one has the responsibility to give, to lend, and let take. Therefore the wealthiest big shots are the greatest thieves, according to the common saying, because they have the most left over and they give the least.

Now that that has been said about the usage of the [Hebrew] language, let us return to the Gospel. We can take the parable at face value; we do not have to look for subtleties as St. Jerome did, because it is not necessary to search for such sharp distinctions. One can stay with the milk [rather than going for the meat and potatoes]. The parable stands for itself: the householder, the steward, the manager has cost his Lord his possessions and has been found wanting in management and has been found deceptive and false, because it has never been right, for one who has earlier betrayed his Lord, to then negotiate deceptively with his goods, so that he has provisions for his future life. So we can leave it there, because the Lord also draws that conclusion. [Although] the action of this rascal is smart; it is not praised as if it were good. On the contrary, [the text] criticizes him that he had earlier [wasted and] destroyed the Lord’s goods and afterwards had deceptively dealt with them. What the Lord praises is [not] that he did not forget himself; he praises only his shrewdness, as when one sees a whore, who attracts the whole world to herself; then I could say, “That is a smart whore; she knows her art.” And we should also be like the manager, who is so shrewd in his action, in our winning eternal life. So [to help] you understand this, take the verse from St. Paul in Romans: “Adam is an early figure of Christ” (5:11). How can the Apostle compare Adam with Christ, when [Adam] made us inherit sin and death, while Christ makes us heirs of righteousness and life? He compares the Lord with Adam [from the viewpoint of] source and family, not of fruit and work. For Adam is a source and head of all sinners, as Christ is the source and head of all saints; for from Adam we did not inherit more than sin and condemnation and eternal curses; from Christ, however, [we inherit] righteousness and salvation. Now you cannot confuse the two, because sin is punishable; righteousness in praiseworthy. But he compares them in their source: just like how sin and death broke and entered all people through Adam, so through Christ came the in-breaking of righteousness and life. In the same way here, he compares the roguery to the righteous; that the one is smart with doing wrong and mischief; and in the same way, we should be smart in dealing uprightly with justice (mit recht im frümkait). The parable needs to be understood in that way. So he says, “The children of darkness are more shrewd than the children of light” and that the children of the light should learn shrewdness from the children of the darkness. The same way that they are shrewd in what they do, so the children of the light should be shrewd in what they do.

Now there are truly three big questions that our adversaries spring up against us and the Gospel, namely: “Make friends with unrighteous mammon, so they take you into eternal shelters.” There they argue that we have to work first in order to become upright, because here it says, “Make friends with mammon” and that, of course, is work. At the same time, God is here praising works and not only praising them, but also rewarding them, because here it is all about work and reward and nothing is said about believing, [about faith]. Thirdly, as if it wanted to establish the comfort and help of the saints, as it says “Make friends, etc. so that they receive you in the eternal shelters.” In this way the Gospel stands opposing us completely, because it says, “Make yourself friends,” which is as much as saying, “Do good works so that they take you into the eternal homes.” That seems to say, “Earn it beforehand, so that they take you into the eternal homes.” These three parts have driven the pope and priests [to the point where] his indulgence can be called the Mammon of iniquity.

We have to answer when they attack us in this way. So above all things, notice without doubt that faith and love are right, as we always learned, that inwardly we become upright through faith and outwardly we prove it through works. Now, I have often said that the Scriptures speak of people in a twofold way. One way is from an internal perspective. The other way is external, because the Scriptures have to speak by making distinctions. For example, the way I speak of my foot, I cannot, of course, speak about my nose. Therefore the Scriptures speak to us of the spirit and how it must stand before God through faith. There God lets the Word go forth, the Word that we hold onto, and according to it God lets his spirit follow. So the tree has to be good beforehand, as you now heard. No one can become upright unless one already has grace in his or her heart. If I am to make a friend of mammon, then I have to be upright beforehand, and then both [perspectives] are held together.

No evil tree can bear good fruit and again, no good tree can bear evil fruit. Now judge for yourself. Should I do good and give away mammon, [my riches] as gifts, then I have to already be upright in my heart beforehand, because God looks at the heart, and judges the work according to it. I only say that so that you do not let works tear into your heart, because the heart has to be upright beforehand through faith, so that [good works] flow out of it. Otherwise you will not do anybody any good and you will also give it when it is not in your heart. Thus reason concludes that I have to be upright beforehand, before I do good works. It does not build itself in from the outside.

One cannot start building [a house] with the roof, but you start with the floor. Thus faith must already be there. After that, [the Scriptures] speak of us according to our outward persons, as in our flesh and blood, we live our lives among people. Now, whether or not I am upright, you do not know, nor do I know. There I have to make my faith certain for myself and [for other] people and I have to do good [things] for my neighbors, so that my faith gives proof of itself. Therefore outward works are only signs of internal faith. The works do not make me upright, but they are a sign that I am upright and witness that it is a right faith.

This is the way you also have to understand the Scripture, “Give mammon, [give away riches,] so that you make friends,” that is, “Do good, so that your faith becomes certain. So be sure to notice what pertains to the spirit and what pertains to the fruit of the spirit. So here St. Luke has given a description of the fruit of the spirit: “Give to the poor and make yourself friends;” as if he were to say, “I do not now speak of faith, but how you give evidence for your faith:” [and that is,] by being giving and wherever you can give, you give from the heart: then you will be sure that you have faith.

So once [the Scripture] speaks of fruit and another time it speaks of faith. Likewise, in another place, it also speaks of fruits: “I was hungry and did not give” (Esurivi et non dedistis)(Mat 25:42).  That is, you have not believed and I will prove it to you by your own works. The Scriptures speak in places partly about outward behavior and partly about the internal [side]. Now would you take what is said about the external, take it into the heart and mingle it with things there? Then you don’t take it right; so you have to keep it differentiated. The verse, “I was hungry, etc.,” however, is directed toward external behavior and means the following: “You did not lead an external kind of life that gave evidence for your faith, and I will take poor people as witnesses of it.

Therefore faith alone has to be present first, which makes us upright, and that is the tree. Afterward come the works that provide the evidence for our faith, and those are the fruit, which is now one of the works.

Now the other [question] is much more difficult: “Make yourself friends of mammon, so they take you into eternal life.” You say that you should not do good works to attain eternal life; and look, there it is written otherwise! Now what will we ever do? There are verses that go this way and that. “Insofar as we have earned it;” with that they want to overthrow [our reliance] on the mercy and compassion of God and that will lead to doing good works that are sufficient [to attain] God’s righteousness. Guard against that with your life! But just stay and leave pure grace and mercy alone and say, “I am a poor sinner; O God, forgive me my sin; I would be glad not to speak about what I earn. Only do not to speak about your judgment.” As David says, “Do not enter into judgment with your servant” (Psalm 143:2). That is why Christ was given to us as a mediator. If we now wish enter God’s court of judgment with our good works, then we bump Christ out of the middle, and then we cannot stand. So let him be your mediator and hold you under his wings. “Under his wings you will find refuge” (Psalm 91:4). So say, “O God, with my works I do not wish to earn anything before you, but I direct them alone to serve my neighbor and rely completely on your mercy.”

Therefore take notice that eternal life consists two kinds of things, faith and following: when you go and believe and you do good to your neighbor, there eternal life must follow, even if you never think about it again. It is just like when you have a good drink; the taste has to follow as soon as you drink it, even if you do not look for it. And it is just the same with hell, one does not look for it, but it follows unlooked for and unwanted, and one must enter, whether one wants to or not. The Apostle says the same thing: “They have been filling up the measure of their sins. [Sins] alone follow us, until our sin is completed” (1 Thess 2:16) and they press on always more and more with sins, until their hearts have become completely hardened. Thus here the Scriptures also say, we want to do good so that we are saved; but that is not to say, that we are to earn it beforehand with good works, but believe, so it will follow of itself. So notice this well, so you do not take what follows [the result] for what is sought [the effect] and guard yourself from works.

Do you think God will give us heaven for a work? No, no. God has already given it to us for nothing, out of mercy and compassion. Therefore, because it follows, give. So notice that the verses have to be understood twice. Once, that one look for it with works: that is false. Second, for what follows and that is right. So you should not look [for heaven] with any or even one work, but do your works directed freely and then it will follow that eternal life will come of itself without your looking. Then if I should see the heavens standing open and I could earn it by lifting a straw, I still would not do it, so that I could not say, “See, I have earned it.” No, no, not with my deserving. For God has the honor, (who has given to me his Son), and [who] let my sin and hell be eradicated.

Thirdly, “that they take us into the eternal tabernacles”: Look, there it is written that they lead us into heaven. So how can you say that we should not make the saints our mediators before God, because they could not help us in heaven? So let it be understood that we have but one mediator before God and that is Christ. For as St. Paul also says, “There is one God and there is also one mediator between God and humankind, and that is Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2: 5). Likewise, “I am the way” (John 14: 6). “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That is why we should not place our faith in any saint, but alone in Christ, through whose merit alone we and all the saints are saved. Therefore I would not give a cent for the merit of Saint Peter and that he should help me; he cannot help himself. For what he has, he has from God through faith in Christ. Now if he cannot help himself, what can he do for me? Therefore I have to have [only] one and that is Christ.

Now why does it say here, “Make yourself friends that they take you into the eternal tabernacles?” Now when Christ [one day] will say, “I was hungry and you did not give me anything to eat, etc.” (Mat 25:35f.) they will [answer], “When did we see you?” Then he will say, “Truly, truly, what you have done for the least of these who belong to me, you have done unto me.” With that Christ shows you who the friends are: they are the poor. As if he were to say, “If you made them your friends then you made me your friend, because these are my members.” Now how will they take us into the eternal tabernacles as our text says? Will they take us by the hand and lead us? No, but when we come and stand before God’s court of judgment, then a poor person, for whom I had done some good, will be standing there in heaven and say, “He washed my feet, etc.” and he will be the friend; he will be a witness to my faith. Therefore a beggar will be more useful to me than St. Peter, who will do nothing. But when a beggar comes and says, “O God, he did that for me as your member.” That will help me. For God will say, “What you did for him, you did for me.” So they will not be helpers, but witnesses, so that God will take us in, those who help witness faith.

With that I do not want to knock your honoring St. Peter, because he is a member of God. But one does more when one gives one’s neighbor a penny than when one builds St. Peter a golden church. Because the one is commanded; the other for St. Peter is not commanded. So now go and run to the Compostelle of St. James and look for the saints, and let the poor people, who are the really holy ones, sit here and lie in the alleys. End.

Translated on the 21^st of September, 2010 (from the Weimar Edition of Luther’s Works, vol. 10.3: 273-282), by peterkrey

Bible Study: 1 Peter 3:13-20a for Sally

This epistle was probably written between 70 and 90 A.D. St. Peter or an elder writing in his name, is sending this letter from a sister church in Babylon, (the code word for Rome after it destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D.), to the churches in the five Roman provinces of Asia Minor, because the Christians had already disbursed into those regions and were converting the people there. St. Paul had preached and established churches in these provinces about 60 A.D.

Christianity was a despised foreign religion to the Romans and families became furious when their members converted to it. Because Romans were patriarchal, they feared that the new religion would disrupt their strict hierarchy and women would misbehave. Romans felt that Christians would introduce immorality, especially adultery, insubordination in the household, and sedition against the state.

In 64 A.D. a huge fire burned in Rome and the people suspected that Nero had started it. We still say, “He fiddled while Rome burned.” To undo the suspicions they had against him, he blamed it on the Christians, hung them on crosses, covered them with skins of animals, and let dogs tear them up. He acted the part of a charioteer driving among them.[1] At night they lit up the crosses so that the Christians became human torches to light up the slaughter. It backfired on Nero, because the Romans thought that it was less a punishment, than the satisfaction of the ferocity of one man, Nero.

Christians have a deep love for one another, which disturbed the hard and fast hierarchy of the Roman household. The Roman father could kill or raise his children, could execute a disobedient son, and break his children’s marriages if he willed.[2] If he had this kind of power over his family, imagine the power he had over his slaves! But the slaves were becoming Christians as well as many of the women.

In these early Christian persecutions, which were not yet official and systematic as later under Emperor Decius in 250 A.D. and under Diocletian and Galerius (302 A.D., ending with the edict of Milan in 313), Christians could have been tempted to fight back, or in the freedom of the Gospel, really disrupt the Roman sense of morality.

So they can’t be of help if they suffer because of wrong-doing, but only if they suffer for righteousness or Christ’s sake. They should rejoice if they have been chosen to suffer, to carry the cross of Christ (verse 13). They should not fear what the Romans feared, but they should fear God (14). Here Peter is referring to Isaiah 8:12: “Do not call conspiracy” – I believe the word “sedition” is here implied, “what they call sedition.” Because Christians honored and obeyed the emperor, they just wouldn’t worship him. But the Romans required that they worship him, too, so they called them seditious.

Christians were to fear God and in their hearts sanctify Christ as Lord (15). They could not do that as required by the Romans for Caesar, but only give him outward honor and obedience. Deeper still, we pray: “Hallowed be Thy name.” That requires us to live a holy life, because what we do either blemishes or lifts up and makes holy the name of our Father in Heaven. Our sins take away from the good name of Jesus Christ.

That so-called preacher in Florida, packing a gun, and threatening to burn Qur’ans on 9/11 dishallows Christ’s name, as do all those who identify Islam with extremism, as if all Christians were like the K.K.K.

What sense does an apology or defense of our faith make, if we persecute others? And when people notice the good faith that is within us and the deep love we have for one another, our readiness to forgive, our willingness to suffer for the unrighteous, then we tell people about who has changed our lives: we too are sinners and even though we don’t deserve it, we are saved by grace. We don’t boast. We are all sinners and fallen short of the glory of God. But Christ died for us on the cross even though we were still sinners. Body guards take a bullet for dignitaries, but Christ took a bullet, so to speak, for someone worthless, a completely sinful nobody, like me. Somehow we have now died with him and entered a new life with him. Our testimony, our witness must be told with gentleness and reverence.

We need to stay on the moral high ground to keep our consciences clear (16). People won’t be redeemed if we are punished because of a scandal we’ve committed. A kid stole a bike and was punished by his father. “How the righteous must suffer!” he complained. Of course, “no good deed goes unpunished,” – but then the bottom drops out for that sort, because like Nero, they discover that their ferocity against the innocent backfires. Disfavor like burning coals, gathers over their own heads.

Christ suffered and died on the cross for us – the sinners that we are, so we, too, have to carry the cross for others, rejoicing in our suffering. In this way Christ turned our hearts to God and we need to do the same by becoming a Christ to the sinners of today, our neighbors.

Verses 18 and 22, commentaries think may have come from an old hymn. “Christ was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (18). Our old Adam and Eve die in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross (and also in our baptisms), and we are raised up with Christ into the spiritual life. We are already getting a preview of the coming attractions on the other side.

Luther writes: “Christ is spiritual flesh and blood, not according to the external senses. He does not sleep and does not wake. Yet he knows everything and is everywhere. This is how we too shall be. He is the First Fruits, the beginning, the First Born of the spiritual life….He is the first who arose and entered into the spiritual life. Thus Christ now lives according to the spirit, that is, He is true man, but he has a spiritual body” (Luther’s Works, vol. 30, page 112).

Our baptisms are like Noah’s ark that saved us from the death we lived and awakens us to live in the life given us by the resurrection of Christ. We too have become truly human and we await our spiritual bodies, having become children of God, with God as our very own dear Father.

Getting into verse 19, Luther writes: “This is a strange text and certainly a more obscure passage than any other passage in the New Testament” (page 113). He claims that he cannot understand it. “But if someone chooses to maintain that after Christ had died on the cross, He descended to the souls and preached to them there, I will not stand in the way” (LW: 30, page 113). This, of course, aligns with the Apostles’ Creed: “Christ descended into hell. On the third day he arose again, etc.” But Luther is not certain that the apostle wants to say this.

The risen Christ no longer preaches in a physical voice, but spiritually, Luther explains. Christ speaks to our hearts, preaches inwardly, in our hearts and souls. Luther notes that the text does not use the word “descended.” It says, “in the spirit, in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the times of Noah” (verses 18-20). It says Christ just went and preached to the spirits in prison. Luther: We are commanded to preach in our bodies physically and orally. When we do, Christ himself comes, is spiritually present, and speaks and preaches to the hearts of the people, right while pastors and preachers proclaim the word physically and orally into the ears of the people. Luther: “Then Christ preaches to the spirits who are in captivity in the prison of the devil” (LW: 30, page 114). So Luther still understands this in a spiritual sense.

Now we see time in the sense of the past, present, and future. Spiritually from eternity, all times are present to God. “To the Lord, one thousand years are like one day and one day like a thousand years” (2 Peter 2:8). (I’m still following Luther here.) So Christ could also preach to the unbelievers in the time of Noah.

Now from another commentary: these unbelievers in Noah’s time were singled out because they were examples of the most evil sort. They were “sons of God,” who “saw that the daughters of human beings were beautiful and took wives for themselves, all that they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2). My thought: I think this could refer to divine kingship of old. Kings and emperors called themselves “sons of God,” for example, Thutmose, son of the god Toth; Amunmose, son of the god Amun; Ramses or Ramose, son of the God Ra. Caesar too want to be called divine. Moses never said he was a son of God, but the servant of God, Ebed Yahweh and stood up against the Pharaohs, (in Egyptian “Pharaoh” means “house of the king.” In ancient times, the “divine kings” gathered up all the women for their harems and then made the men their soldiers, so they would be killed and be without them. Solomon, for example, had a thousand wives. But Christ would preach spiritually even to such greedy, murderous, evil, and fallen sinners.

---

[1] See Documents of the Persecution of the Church: http://www.bible-researcher.com/persecution.html and Lost Gospel of Judas http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline_09.html

[2] See Family Values in Ancient Rome: http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777121908/

My son Mark was gracious and gave me permission to put our correspondence into my website. My book, which will hopefully be published, is about Luther’s Commentary on Joseph found in Luther’s Works, volumes six through eight.

February 3^rd 2010

Hey Pop!
I just finished reading your book! I enjoyed it very much. While I’ll admit on a whole it was a little too intellectual for me to understand, I could understand and was moved by a good deal of it. Some of the ideas and comments that came to my head that I wrote down that I want to share with you, may not really pertain to what you were concerned with and writing about, but these were just neat things I thought of as I was reading it.
Page 25
Walter Brueggemann’s Quote about songs   (I’ll put it in.)

In dramatic and dynamic ways, songs may also function to evoke and form new realities that did not exist until or apart from the actual singing of the song. (From “Psalms and the Life of Faith”)

The idea that songs can evoke a new reality that did not exist before and can in fact evoke them in the actual process of the singing of the song

This is the reason I write music, and one of things I’ve always felt Marc Bolan’s Music does to me (especially his song “The Broken Hearted Blues”).
It also reminds me of Ovid’s adaptation of the Orpheus myth in which he talks about the poet’s ability to create a beautiful environment and world for others and for themselves with the poems they write. Ovid describes Orpheus sitting down on a lonely hillside that’s devoid of life and playing a song on his lyre and all the trees of the land gathering around him and giving him shade; creating a beautiful oasis around him.
Page 29
Your idea about Luther’s Joseph commentary drawing us into its “world” and changing us in that world like a parable draws us in and affects us.
This is another reason I make art. In my Junior year of college with a friend I went to see a live symphony at the Walt Disney concert hall in Downtown LA. On our way there, my friend asked me why I was into Theater. I told her it was because I wanted to create art that could transport viewers to a place where they could obtain a knowledge and a hope that, upon their returning to their world, would allow them to change their world in a positive way. I still strive to do this with the songs I write. This quote of yours really stresses, to me, the power of story and the way it can change lives. Just like the way a dream can change the life of someone all in one night.
Page 41
Luther’s quote about the darkness the demons cannot even penetrate
“The word is a sure shade and darkness, which the evil spirits however lofty they may be cannot look into.”
I like this quote a lot. I like that God can be darker than the demons, also the whole Idea that nothing is what it seems. I really get from Luther, now that your book has allowed me to look more closely at him, that he seems always up in arms amidst a battle of good and evil and constantly on the look out for deception. This also reminded me of one time when you were taking me to work (when I was working for the Berkeley Rep. Theater summer camp) and you and I were talking about Jesus and God and the Devil because I was feeling strong in the spirit after doing Godspell. Right before you dropped me off you said “Remember, though, if the devil ever visits you, he’ll come to you disguised as the Christ.”
Page 62
God can be the worst devil!
This quote rang true with the previous quote I was talking about. Also it really helped the whole “being put through the School of Hell” idea sink into me. Our immense suffering is God playing a cosmic game of some kind that to us is a game for keeps. Our very lives depend on the game. And Death, the ultimate farewell that has been the terror of humankind since the dawn of time, is somehow an illusion we must surrender to in order to truly have Life. My mind was running wild by this point. I was asking myself the question: “What then is life?” and have I even experienced it yet? I’m no philosopher and my thoughts may sound existential. But I enjoy having thoughts like that because they fascinate me. So that quote and the quote about being put through the school of hell really drew me in. In fact I made a note in my note book to eventually write a song called “the school of hell”.
Page 63
“You cannot understand God through Speculation but by experience”
I can tie this into a quote I recall from the end of your book. It spoke about how this “School of Hell”
Luther’s Theology of the Cross is a dramatic life story; One that could be predicted through different scenarios or scripture but can only be experienced. Also that in its occurrence there are dangers that pose threats to its completion like a despairing heart. If it goes beyond the despair Jesus felt in Gethsemane and the individual loses their faith that [then] God’s will cannot be completed. Or in the way that people need to ventilate and be a beast under their conditions rather then remaining stoic. And how the beast is what will help them get through the school of hell. I know I’m mixing passages, but I was relating these ideas to one another.
Page 66
“He is the silver cup”
This quote helped me understand the Joseph story better then I’ve ever understood it. Especially the idea that when he asked his brothers “What deed is this that you have done?!” he was not asking them about the silver cup, but about what they had done to him so many years ago. His planting the silver cup in their bag and that being symbolism for him, and the irony of demanding repentance of his brothers (not for stealing a silver cup he had planted, but for stealing his youth, happiness, the happiness of his father and injuring his father’s faith) is something so Timeless. For some reason I could feel exactly how Joseph was feeling when I read these passages and I could almost see the mystery of God unfolding in his own eyes. I found myself asking the question. When will I be put through the school of hell? How is it that one finds favor with God and is called to carry out the holy mandate? In Joseph’s case he must be killed and lose all recognition then be raised to power as a new form (like the highest power in Egypt). It sure is fascinating. But something about how Joseph is the silver cup line really got me. It’s like he puts the silver cup in the bag (to frame his brothers) this is because he wants his brothers to repent, but it’s ultimately because he loves his brothers and he wants to give them his riches (the silver cup). It’s like objects to God can mean one thing (what they are) mean another thing (their opposite) and yet another thing (what they are once more but in a hidden form). For some reason, however, I couldn’t get over the sadness in Joseph’s eyes. Like this deed his brothers did to him really left a kind of scar that would forever remain on him. Maybe this is the mark of an anointed one and a Christ. They bare special stripes. The stripes of a sacrifice they made to be a chosen one of God. Though the end of Joseph’s story is a happy one, he’ll forever have a look I’ll always see. Tim Rice the writer for Jesus Christ superstar calls it having the look of a haunted hunted man. Now I’m ranting but you can see how much this passage of yours affected me.
Page 111
Jacob’s relentless Faith
I loved the passage about how someone involved in the wrestling match at the river Jabbok could call the angel a demon and walk away with a life full of curses. But Jacob insisted on wrestling the Angel until it blessed him and thus his life was full of God’s blessings. I can see this being a metaphor for someone’s struggle with faith.

I really enjoyed reading your book, Pop. You should really publish it. I know lots of people would get a lot of joy from reading it. You could inspire many people. Hope you and Mom are well. All my love

Mark

February 10^th 2010

Dear Mark,

I just had the time to read your notes and reactions to my book on Joseph. I really appreciate your reading it and struggling with some of its most difficult parts. I can also see that you are a writer. You already have natural style. I only got there after filling fifteen books with diaries! Let me react to just a few of your thoughts.

Performatives

I think a song or story or dream that changes our lives, that creates a new reality for us can be called performative in a general sense. The idea being that God makes promises in our lives and then keeps them, even when they first begin with the opposite of what we wished, for example, four people coming to a concert! We can also use the word “performative” in a technical sense, where a speech act has to fulfill many requirements to be performative. I promise, command, forgive, etc. are examples. But I’m just clearing it up in my own mind and that is not really your concern.

You mentioned the “illusion of death.” You know the joke about Christian Scientists. The guy tells one that his mother is sick. “She thinks she’s sick.” the Christian Scientist corrects him. The fellow’s mother dies and he meets the Christian Scientist, who asks about the health of his mother and he says, “Oh, she thinks she’s dead.”

There is the illusion of death and there is spiritual death in Christ, after which we are raised up into the newness of life. But there is also biological death, where we still have the promise of eternal life. Even though death is very real, we can call it an illusion if we cling to Jesus’ word: “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26-26). We are merely translated into some marvelous existence that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor a heart ever been able to imagine.”

The School of Hell

I thought that going to Philadelphia would work. I said, “The only trouble with heaven is that you have to go through hell to get there.” I thought I could get through it. I found out that I was not able to take very much. If you accept abuse, then you become an accomplice to those committing their crime against you. So God does put us through the school of hard knocks or the school of hell, but it cannot be of our own choosing. Self-chosen suffering is a cop-out. It has to be the suffering that God decides for us, because it is God fashioning us for God’s purposes and we should not be choosing our own suffering for our own purposes. When God calls us, let God be God, and create us in the way God needs us for the purposes of salvation.

Making Friends with the Beast

I did Jungian therapy for many years and the point was to befriend the beast and that took place in my dreams. All sorts of monsters used to give me nightmares. They were all different encounters with the beast. The beast is our own incredible power externalized and attacking us. When we make friends with the beast, then it internalizes and becomes our creative energy and the powerful force of human love and compassion in our hearts.

Those are just a few reactions to your beautiful words.

Lovejoypeace,

Pop  (-ping-this-over-2-U)

Notes from Artur Weiser, The Psalms: A Commentary, Old Testament Library, (Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1962).

Psalm 37

Verse 5: Commit your ways to the Lord, trust and hope in God, who will do everything well.

German: Befiehl dem Herrn deine Wege, und hoffe auf ihn; er wird’s wohl machen.

Note the famous hymn by Paul Gerhardt:

“Befiehl du deine Wege“

was translated by John Wesley and can be found in the old red Service Book and Hymnal, #579

“Put thou thy trust in God.”

Psalm 37 strings proverbs together and is written as an acrostic using the consecutive letters of the Hebrew alphabet to begin every other verse. Citations from Weiser’s commentary follow:

We must not lose our temper [and become furious] with the wicked, but keep trusting in God (page 315).

True confidence consists in leaving the things which are not under [our] control, confidently and patiently to God, who has all things in hand; [we] on the other hand, have only to take care that we faithfully fulfill the task which is allotted to us and do so in the place that is assigned to us (page 317).

The godly, who let everything be irradiated by [their] delight in God, can, as their hearts are filled with that joy, look forward to the fulfillment of the deepest desires of their hearts (page 317).

The Old Testament is aware of the fact (cf. Isaiah 7:4; 30:15) that to be still and wait for God is not something that falls into [our] lap, but is the reward for the victory which we have gained in the struggle of our soul against our own assertive human self; it is aware that this keeping of silence and waiting for God consists in the bearing and enduring of that tension into which [one] is continually thrown whenever [one] would like to see what, in fact, cannot be seen and yet must be believed (page 318).

The blessing of God inspires the godly to acts of generosity and helpfulness, expressed in joyful giving (page 320).

A life lived with God is full of hope and strength; without God it is doomed to destruction (page 323).

(Note that the language has been updated: “we” for “man,” “one” for “he,” and “their” for “his”.)

Reading the final chapters of Deuteronomy was very rewarding. It is one thing to read the scriptures when one is young and quite another when one has some self-knowledge and experience. In the latter case, a much deeper understanding can be won.

In chapter 27, the use of only unhewn stones for the altar of God can be related to justification by faith, in which we can do nothing for our own salvation: it has to proceed by God’s hand alone. We are the living stones, which God alone must shape and fashion to God’s purpose. We don’t reinvent ourselves the way politicians do who want to use their artificial public images for power purposes. We surrender in Luther’s completely passive way to God, who justifies our margins and creates us by God’s Word. Using computer and word-processing metaphors, makes me want to say, we are “word-perfect” divine expressions, but Luther has it right: we are sinners and saints at one and the same time.

In the Tao te Ching, in chapter 57 and elsewhere, the uncarved block is like this unhewn stone. The state and intelligence of God’s created nature is still far superior to ours, by which we disrupt nature from its harmonious course. In Taoism, wu wei or no action is much like the passive righteousness in Luther’s justification by faith. Doing no action in the force of tao, the way, is accessing God’s divine action amongst us. In chapter 48, the Tao Te Ching has the lines:

In the pursuit of the way one does less every day.

One does less and less until one does nothing at all,

And when one does nothing at all, there is nothing

left undone (108).[1]

And chapter 47:

Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,

Identifies without having to see,

accomplishes without having to act (107).[2]

The paradox involved is that faith, according to Luther, is “a mighty, active, restless, and busy thing, which immediately renews the person, gives a second birth, and leads the person into new ways and into new being. It is impossible for this same self not to do good works, continuously, [spontaneously] without interruption.”[3] Thus this human inaction is really God’s continuous creation doing the humanly impossible through those who have completely surrendered to God, like a leaf, blowing in the wind (the Wind of the Holy Spirit).

Our deacon in St. John’s used to always pray that her sons be made the head and not the tail and I was surprised that the expression was biblical. It comes up in Deuteronomy 28:13 and 44. It refers to the class of creditors, who are the head and the debtors, who are the tails: those who make money with their money as the heads and those who buy their money with debt, as the poor tails of our capitalist society.

Luther usually uses the word “the true corpse,” instead of “the true body” of Jesus Christ our Lord, when he deals with communion. In the curses over Israel, should they be disobedient, it says, “your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away” (Deut. 28:26). Jesus continually uses the expression, “For where the corpse is, the vultures will gather,” (see for example in Matthew 24:28). I believe that Jesus turns the corpses as food for the birds and animals around and goes spiritual with it. The idea is that Jesus carries the cross on which he will die, and he and his followers, in a sense, are already dead, and they are the food for all who are hungry, thirsty, or needy in any way. When someone dies, the family can claim the corpse, but the dead has no claim upon it anymore. It and everything the person possessed, are free for the concern and taking of others. Thus his body is food indeed and his blood is drink indeed. (I like the way Moses’ song has the words, “you drink fine wine from the blood of grapes” (Deut. 32:14).)

For those who refuse to obey the One true God, Moses describes their bottoming out in the curses of chapter 28 very graphically. I kept asking myself, “How low can you go?” while reading the passages of Deuteronomy 28:54-57. If you don’t diligently observe all the words of the law that are written in this book, you will be reduced to cannibalism and even worse, no matter how refined and gentle you may have become! I believe Jesus was totally immersed in Deuteronomy and he could have had these passages in mind when many of the disciples took offense at him. The Savior wanted to answer and overturn the scenarios of the cursed at even their worst, (if you’ll excuse the rhyme).

In chapter 29, verse 18, turning away to the gods of the nations means turning away from the reign of the Kingdom of God and the Messiah, God’s Christ, to be somewhat redundant from the Hebrew to the Greek: “the anointed one” is the meaning of “Messiah” and “Christ.” There is a real place and need for the nations, but in them our hearts have to belong to God and they have to submit to God. (See Psalm 2.)

I do not yet understand verse 29 of chapter 29. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law.” I think that kind of a conception is part of Luther’s Theology of the Cross, but I cannot yet explain it.

The beautiful passages about “the word being very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, for you to observe” (Deut 30:14, see 11-14) made me write this blog today. I studied early modern European history and the way the word (the writings and literature) contained the classic civilizations of Greece and Rome and could challenge the life of society in the Barbarian “Dark Ages” – until the European civilization could overtake them; in the same way, the Kingdom of God and the Christ are contained in the Word, until God’s will is done on earth as it already is in heaven. Every sermon should spell it out and bring some aspect of it to life. The Word will not return empty.

Finally, the way Moses and Aaron angered God by “breaking faith with him” (Deut. 32:51) could have something to do with the sacred lots, which may have contradicted the command of God. If Deuteronomy 33:8 has such high praise for the Levites, why does it mention the Thummim and Urim with their testing God at Massah and their contending with God at the waters of Meribah? Did the method of divining interfere with their living trust in God? Was it that they took credit for the water gushing out of the rock or that they said, “Let’s see if God can make water gush out of this rock” mistrusting God?

Going back to Exodus 17:1-7, it seems that all of Israel was putting God to the test and even Moses and Aaron became caught up in their disloyal and selfish doubt. Was God really in their midst and could God produce water out of the rock for them to drink with that old rod of Moses? This is the way, it seems to me, that Moses and Aaron broke faith with God in what transpired at Massah (meaning “test”) and the waters of Meribah (meaning “the quarrel”).

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[1] Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated and with an introduction by D.C. Lau, (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1963), page 118.

[2] Ibid., page 108.

[3] Luthers Werke, Weimar Ausgabe, vol 10, part 3, page 285, lines 24-30. For Luther’s full quote see my website: Increasing our faith and Luther’s developing notion of faith. Or see Peter Krey’s, Sword of the Spirit, Sword of Iron, (Berkeley: GTU Dissertation, 2001), page 167, footnote 177.

Rereading the Pentateuch, that is, the first five books of the Bible, has been incredibly rewarding, because now I can understand and grasp it with a mature reading, while in my earlier days it was merely bewildering, confusing, and unfamiliar. The Bible is the book of books because it introduces us to the God, who remained faithful and dwelt with and protected God’s chosen people. That same God so compassionately involved with them became incarnate for us in Jesus Christ.

Reading Deuteronomy chapters 1-11 has been a wonderful experience. They are like a gospel hidden away in the Pentateuch. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (6.5) and “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (8.3). Interestingly enough, in Hebrew the book is called Devarim or “Words.” Ah, the gospel is filled by living words and the Book of Nature is filled with the Word of God.[1] Ah, “the Word became flesh and dwelt with us.” In Hebrew, “flesh” in this sense refers to the word becoming a human being.

In chapter 12 however, Deuteronomy takes a spin into the law by means of its Holiness Code, and then problems emerge thick and fast. I woman discovered not to be a virgin by her bridegroom shall be stoned to death (22:22). No question is asked whether or not she was raped or locating the man who took away her virginity. In championing justice by means of the law, which is the real contribution of the law, here the law violates the law, since it is the men who judge her and may have been the ones who violated her.

An incorrigible son shall be stoned to death (21:18-21). No question about the bad government of the parents or about rehabilitation for a young person. This punishment could in itself well be a crime. The parents take the child to the elders: “Here is our son. Fix our problem.” The son could be the loud speaker for the problems the family is having.

“Cursed is anyone hanged from a tree” (21.23). In the case of Jesus, his capital punishment was itself the crime, it was a curse not on the innocent man, but on those who condemned him, and thank God, that he forgave us.

In the previous chapter, it gets even worse: prisoners of war might be taken in some cases, “But as for the towns of these people that the Lord your God has given you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them:” the Hittites, Amonites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, because they might lead you astray to worship other gods. What is sometimes called “holy war” is neither holy nor really a war so much as sanctioned genocide. Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon, where the Gentiles worshiped other gods, and converted them. Jesus had mercy on the Syro-Phoenician woman and showed Peter the revelation of unclean animals and bade him eat. This picture language instructed Peter to preach and baptize even the household of the Roman centurion.

That the law in the scriptures is thus relative to time, place, and historical contingencies is illustrated by this change in the instructions given to those chosen by God to further the reign of God.[2]

But sandwiched right in these instructions are those that forbid the Israelites from cutting down all the trees in a siege. A tree-hugging question follows: “Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?” (20.19) This question is really relevant even for those companies that clear cut the forests and lay waste our land today. Christ came to bring life and life abundantly. That places capital punishment into question as well as the clear-cutting of forests and the subsequent devastation of nature.

Capital punishment is dealt out freely for too many “crimes,” even for prophets who divine by dreams. They shall be put to death if they use them to speak treason against the Lord (13.5). By your own hand you shall kill anyone who tries to entice you to worship other gods, even your wife, brother, children; and in a town that serves other gods, all the people shall be killed, even their livestock (13.6-11). We will not judge the people of that day, but for today, such an instruction would be an abomination. By means of the Holy Spirit and through healing campaigns of love and compassion, our Lord Jesus sends us to proclaim the Gospel of grace and forgiveness and would only shake the dust off his feet to recalcitrant towns.

In the old days, religion used to be the chain that held a society together and the worship of other gods was a threat to the society and held to be like treason. But Emil Durkheim has argued that now the division of labor has made humans in society need each other and religion is in a forum of freedom, in which everyone can be convinced from his or her heart about what is a true way of life and what is a false way. Jesus introduces this freedom with the reign of God and Martin Luther in the Reformation introduced the diversity of Christian expressions, in which different faiths could remain faithful. In his prohibition of crusades, he was trying to exorcise violence from religion.[3] The freedom of a Christian spells the religious freedom to become convinced of the truth from the heart without coercion.

In our Sierra Pacific Synod assembly a man stood up in the spirit of these old laws, when the equal medical and pension rights for same gender marriages was being debated and read Leviticus 20:13: “if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” He failed to read verse 10 which dictates that in cases of adultery both parties should be put to death, as well as those who curse their parents (20.9), for all manner of abnormal relations, a son sleeping with a father’s wife (and of course many wives are permitted to a man), an uncle’s wife, a daughter-in-law, that prostitutes should be burnt to death (Lev. 21.9).

Now Jesus said about a woman taken in adultery (and notice, not the man, who must have been part of it!) “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!” Why did that member of our church take account of Jesus’ approach to faith and life?

Did he never read the Sermon on the Mount? You have read of old, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also” (Matthew 5.38-39) and “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so shall you be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mat 43-45).

Admittedly, the first three alterations of the law by Jesus intensify the murder, adultery, and divorce commandments, but Jesus obviously stands for an absolute Gospel and a law relative to a time, place, and the historical conditions of the day. Don’t forget how Jesus places himself and his healing mission over the Sabbath law.

Then look at Leviticus chapter 21 beyond verse 9, in which prostitutes are commanded to be burned, while Jesus claims that the righteous have no need of a physician, but the sick do. He came to save sinners and not condemn them. In the further verses of this chapter all the blemished people are listed that a priest is not allowed to draw near: the blind, the lame, someone with a mutilated face or a limb that is too long, someone with a broken foot or hand, a hunchback, a dwarf, a man with a blemish in his eye or itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. A descendant of Aaron with any of these blemishes is not to bring the Lord’s offerings to the God’s holy altar.

Now Jesus transgressed these commandments by not only drawing near to the blemished such as these, but by touching, and healing them. Certainly the scriptures cannot be broken, but the living Word, Jesus broke them, and then he was broken on the tree for us. In this Heaven of grace that Jesus spreads out over us, we realize that we are all sinners fallen short of the glory of God, and the people that we designate as sinners, have a special place, a pride of place, in the gracious forgiveness of God. Therefore we follow our gracious Lord, by being un-self-righteous, trampling the monster of presumptuousness under our feet, all the way to the cross with our savior, Jesus.

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[1] See Psalm 19 in its good translation that I have in my Moltmann piece.

[2] See Luther’s, “How Christians should Regard Moses,” in Timothy Lull’s, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pages 135-148: “If I accept Moses’ [law] in one respect (Paul tell the Galatians in chapter 5 [:3], then I am obligated to keep the entire law” (page 140).

[3] See my dissertation, The Sword of the Spirit, the Sword of Iron.

Studying Matthew for my Bethlehem Bible study (3/18/2009), Dennis Duling noted that a scribe probably composed this gospel and he alluded to Mat 13:52: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (NRSV: Harper-Collins Study Bible, page 1858) D. Duling noted that the Gospel was attributed to Matthew in the second century, probably to lend it authority.

The problem of ancient reverse plagiarism has always intrigued me. We commit the academic crime by copying someone else’s work and attaching our name to it. Someone wrote material back in ancient times and then attached someone else’s, that is, a famous person’s name to it.

Perhaps, however, because famous people did not know how to write, their scribes wrote for them in their behalf. If traditions were first oral and only later committed to writing, then the household of this scribe may well have been overseen by Matthew and then been recorded by this “Greek-speaking, Jewish Christian, probably a scribe,” as Duling puts it.

I used to think that the scribe belonged to a school or corporate personality and identified completely with the authority he wrote under, but that a scribe wrote for a famous person or their household may be a better explanation.

I just reread an essay by Robert J. Goeser called “From Exegesis to Proclamation.”[1]

It is a very good demonstration of what themes were discussed in his classes, what experiences we encountered with him there, and his theological rationale for his Luther interpretation. He presents Luther’s commentary on the book of the Prophet Jonah and explains how Luther isolates trust in the goodness of our gracious God within this world of history. He finds Luther in the drama and moral rebirth of the moment making his words become an event with encounter, because we usually read the text knowing how it will come out. The actors, however, did not know how their story would end. The words of Luther become what is the opposite of words. They catapult the readers into the experience of the shattering of their pretentious ideal selves, where they feel like “a breed apart” and have to join the human race, own their past, and live out of God’s grace. At the end of his essay, Goeser cites some of John Calvin’s same commentary on Jonah and the difference between Luther and Calvin cannot be better underscored. Calvin writes about what Luther and Jonah, if you will, really experienced.

In my theological lectures, I have a post about my dislike about speaking of “our God concept.” I take off from a chapter of Isaiah and I use Luther and Gerhard Ebeling in my argument. Goeser picks up on the inadequacy of reason alone to understand the biblical God who resides in our trust in his promises. Let me quote Luther as Goeser does:

“Thus reason also plays blindman’s buff with God; it consistently gropes in the dark and misses the mark. It calls that God which is not God and fails to call Him God who really is God. Reason would neither do one or the other  if it were not conscious of the existence of God or it it really knew who and what God is. Therefore it rushes in clumsily and assigns the name of God and describes divine honor to its own idea of God.” (Page 212 of Goeser’s essay and in Luther’s Works, Vol 19, p. 55 and in Luthers Werke Weimar, 1883: vol. 19,207.3).

Goeser responded: “This ‘despair with the self‘ is what I consider the quintessence of existentialism. Later in Lutheran orthodoxy, what Luther had was lost to a kind of generalized experience, and Pietism went over into affect which Luther, however, never disconnected from intellect.“

“We Lutherans often do not understand Luther, because our familiarity with his words, somehow obscures the radical nature of what he says, and we remain in our ‘dogmatic slumbers.‘ Those who criticize him from outside our tradition, have usually never read him – that, of course, goes for many Lutherans as well. They have never read him.“ I offered.

“What we are reading and experiencing here is not just a question of Lutheranism, nor of a question of Luther‘s being German. It is a question of a great thinker dealing with the human condition.“ Prof. Goeser concluded. “Let’s read 50 pages more for next week.”

Dr. Peter D. S. Krey