Longing for Sabbath-A Poem

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When the city never sleeps and more is never enough
In a world where busyness is substituted for happiness
When the days become weeks and weeks become months
And the joy is drained from vocation making it merely labor
We are longing for Sabbath

When the cruel gods of capitalism
Cast images of a life that cannot be attained
When possessions become objects of our bondage
And we find ourselves bondservants of mammon
We are longing for Sabbath

When we construct prisons of grey concrete and glass
And permanently chain ourselves to our offices
Connected by wireless umbilical cords to the necessity of availability
And there is nowhere we can go to break away
We are longing for Sabbath

Where we can accept the gift of rest
Where we can learn to give rather than to grasp
When labor becomes recaptured as vocation
We are once again stewards of the mysteries of faith
As the world rests with its creator
Accepting the gift of Sabbath

A Love Song for My Muse- A Poem

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Gustav Moreau, Hesiod and the Muse (1891)

She dances at the edges of my dreams
Singing her songs, delighting in the bright corners of imagination
Celebrating the springtime of the mind and shining brightly
She laughs as I reach out for her, knowing once again
I’ll hear her diaphanous voice haunting me
But she’ll not be held or confined
She’ll not come when beckoned
She heeds no time but her own
But she can be enticed
For she loves beauty and laughter
And sometimes in the midst of loss and despair
Her compassionate hand is felt upon my shoulder
Making sense of the sadness and miracle from madness
And sometimes she’ll abide for a time
While pen and paper record the embrace
Of her creativity and my words
Ah, she is an evanescent sprite, but I adore her
She is the playful counterpart to my own diligence
And so to the muse, that spirit of my inspiration
I send out a love song, I read her poetry
I search for beauty and I dwell in the darkness
Waiting again to celebrate her dance, her laugh, her voice
The angel in my mind holding the keys to creativity
And lighting up the corners of my mind’s eye with her smile

Composed Neil White, 2013

At the Century Mark-Post 100 looking back and looking forward

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Fire and Rose by Kondratj on deviantart.com

Back on June 19, 2012 I began Sign of the Rose as a creative space for me to think through many of the changes I was seeing in the church and the world. As I look back I’m pretty proud of the previous 99 posts, there is some pretty cool stuff in the midst of the last 9 months of work. I’ve certainly learned from the process of writing.

Sign of the Rose began with the question of authority and how to approach it, and so last summer I spent a lot of time working with history, what would end up being a much longer series than I anticipated and which I plan to return to. As it stands if you look at the Place of Authority series (under Historical Reflections) it runs from the time of the Judges in Ancient Israel (prior to 1000 BCE) through the time of the early Catholic and Byzantine churches, a span of approximately 3000 years. I still plan to pick up with the time of the emergence of Islam (some of the reading coming up soon on my reading list deals with this) but at the end of July my posts slowed to a crawl, since I had both of my kids for the end of the summer and then the school year started and I needed to refocus some of my energies back into the congregation I served. I also had a lot of other interests that I was neglecting.

In September and October my sporadic posts moved to Philosophy and Psychology. I had been reading a number of things influenced by Postmodern Philosophy, but I wanted to take a little bit of time and try to understand some of the basics of the philosophy itself. Then in one of the most helpful books I have read, Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly I spent a little time on the issues of shame and living courageously. I hit a dry patch as I continued to try to press ahead with the Place of Authority, knowing that I needed to take a break and rethink the direction I was going but like most writers encounter at some point I had a bit of writers block.

In February I rethought and recommitted to the process of writing, and part of that was expanding the horizons of creativity. I began to include my own personal study in going through the bible as a part of my own learning. So beginning with Haggai and Esther (which were chosen because I was going to preach on each of them) and currently Jeremiah I tried to share with you in my discovery process. In this time I also shared some of my poetry I had been writing. I have written poetry for years, but most of it ended up in trashcans somewhere, and I decided to put it out there. I also was at a time, during lent, where I was preaching more frequently and I began including my sermons as well for people to see.

What I am left with after 99 posts is a hodgepodge of interesting work, some more parable like trying to re-imagine what church could be, some historical, some biblical, some sermons, philosophy, culture, music, people who were important to me, but all in all some interesting pieces. There is more to come because I enjoy the process but sometimes it is just nice to look back before moving forward. I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of things that I want to go back to and spend some time with and we shall see together what ends up finding its way on here in the next 100 posts.

Corrupted Justice: Jeremiah 5:18-31

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Icon of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5: 18-31

¹⁸ But even in those days, says the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. ¹⁹ And when your people say, “Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?” you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”
²⁰ Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah:
²¹ Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes, but do not see,
who have ears, but do not hear.
²² Do you not fear me? says the LORD;
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
²³ But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.
²⁴ They do not say in their hearts,
“Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives the rain in its season,
the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.”
²⁵ Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have deprived you of good.
²⁶ For scoundrels are found among my people; they take over the goods of others.
Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
²⁷ Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich, ²⁸ they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
²⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD,
and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
³⁰ An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land:
³¹ the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct;
my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?

In a brief interlude in the poetry (v. 18-19) we see some hope in the future, it is a dim hope, but it is a hope nonetheless when people after all the destruction ask ‘why has this happened’ and the answer is simply you chose to serve strange gods, so you have gone to serve strangers in another land. In a broken home sometimes someone has to leave, but God has not closed the door to a return, in fact it seems to be God’s continual hope through all the pain, yet God will not be tame or mocked. The relationship will not be one where God will bend to whatever the people think is right. God has not given up on God’s vision of justice and shalom. Yet the people are not in a place where their eyes can see or their ears can hear yet because their heart is in the wrong place and one the wrong things. Literally they are heart-less or empty hearted (NRSV senseless) and their heart is no longer in the relationship with God.

Justice has been so corrupted towards the wealthy that the cause of the orphan and the needy are neglected. The way things are remain irreconcilable with God’s vision of justice, and yet the very mouthpieces that should be calling for faithfulness and correction are behind the corruption. Prophets and priests rule and direct falsely and the people love the falseness. Patrick Miller speaks truth about this passage when he states:

This is a strong indictment of a community in which the politically powerful and the well-to-do amass possessions and wealth at the expense of the marginal and those in society who do not have the protection and power, in which flagrant manipulation of the socioeconomic system to the advantage of the advantaged is simply ignored. The picture is as familiar at the beginning of the third millennium CE as it was in the first millennium BCE. (NIB 6:621)

The Bible often has harsh words for those who are wealthy and in power, especially among the prophets. Most people assume wealth in the Bible is primarily viewed as a source of blessing, and that is one theology present within the Bible, but more commonly in the prophets and throughout most of the New Testament power and wealth are temptations and things that may distort one’s relationship with God. This is difficult for most people to accept, and I struggle with it myself but God does have a vision of a society that all can live in justice and peace and everyone has enough. Perhaps it is a utopian dream, perhaps it is naïve, and perhaps looking at the world through a dream like this opens a person to see the dystopia within the reality they live in, but at the same point just because the way that the people love and the prophets and priests in Jeremiah’s time proclaim may be easier, it doesn’t mean it is the right way.

The End Of The World As They Know It: Jeremiah 5 : 7-17

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Jeremiah 5: 7-17

⁷ How can I pardon you?
Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.
⁸ They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.
⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD;
and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
¹⁰ Go up through her vine-rows and destroy, but do not make a full end;
strip away her branches, for they are not the LORD’s.
¹¹ For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly faithless to me, says the LORD.
¹² They have spoken falsely of the LORD, and have said,
“He will do nothing. No evil will come upon us, and we shall not see sword or famine.”
¹³ The prophets are nothing but wind, for the word is not in them. Thus shall it be done to them!
¹⁴ Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts:
Because they have spoken this word, I am now making my words in your mouth a fire,
and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.
¹⁵ I am going to bring upon you a nation from far away,
O house of Israel, says the LORD.
It is an enduring nation,
it is an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know,
nor can you understand what they say.
¹⁶ Their quiver is like an open tomb;
all of them are mighty warriors.
¹⁷ They shall eat up your harvest and your food;
they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;
they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;
they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;
they shall destroy with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust.

R.E.M.’s song It’s the End of the World as We Know it fits well here:

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and
snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, the Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, and a government
for hire at a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furys breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing. Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do to Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Lock it in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The prophetic poetry of death continues, as does the language of God’s woundedness. This will continue through much of Jeremiah, for the prophet points to the end of a world. These are words designed to rend the world apart, to point to an end that is coming. This has nothing to do with the frenzy some people get wrapped around thoughts of the end of the world people would talk about in Revelation (and most people fundamentally misunderstand most of Revelation—especially as it has been twisted around in the interpretations in the movies or literature like the Left Behind series). No this is about the end of the world as the people know it. Temple and priest, prophet and king, Jerusalem and Judah, wealth and prosperity, home and heart are all approaching a time when they will all be consumed by war. God seems to still be looking for a way to pardon, but sees no way and so the end of the relationship is coming so that perhaps out of the death of the relationship something new might evolve. The root is to be left, so that perhaps something new might grow. The prophets words burn and consume, these are words that point to destruction and they are indeed painful for the prophet and their eventual result will consume the people. They point poetically to the future that is on the horizon and the on the horizon is the smoke of an approaching army.

The nation that will eventually come is Babylon, although the prophet may not know who they are at this point. As an American, we are very blessed to not have had a war take place on our soil since the Civil War (1861-1865) and except for those who have served in conflict overseas the utter destruction of warfare has been lost. In an invasion the invading army takes the harvest to feed their soldiers, sons and daughters would be killed, raped or enslaved, flocks become feasts for the invading army, herd become spoils, the fruit of vines and fig trees may be taken, then as in the earlier image in this part of the poem the branches may be stripped away-used in fires or simply burned to deny the food to the residents of the land under siege. Walled cities were the places where people would flee to, but a siege is a horrific experience once food or water becomes short. We will have ample time to deal with the horrors of a siege later in Jeremiah. The future is dark, the words are painful, and the prophet tries to point to a reality that the world as they know it is ending, but apparently the people feel fine.

Searching for the Righteous One: Jeremiah 5: 1-6

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Jeremiah 5: 1-6

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note!
Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth—
so that I may pardon Jerusalem.
² Although they say, “As the LORD lives,” yet they swear falsely.
³ O LORD, do your eyes not look for truth?
You have struck them, but they felt no anguish;
you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.
⁴ Then I said, “These are only the poor, they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the LORD, the law of their God.
⁵ Let me go to the rich and speak to them; surely they know the way of the LORD, the law of their God.
” But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds.
⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest shall kill them,
a wolf from the desert shall destroy them.
A leopard is watching against their cities;
everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces—
because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.

Where is the righteous person, show me the person who I can look at and say all this pain it really is worth it. Yet the vision, the hope seems dashed. God is so deeply wounded that God that God’s pain seems to be overwhelming God’s love. Such is the risk of caring deeply. You can say many things about the picture of God we see in Jeremiah, but you can never make the claim that this God does not care and is uninvolved. In an intentional echo of Genesis 18 when Abraham intercedes before God for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and bargains with God down to ten righteous people, now God tells Jeremiah ‘just find one.’ Things have become so bad that the people are living in a lie and the lie has become their reality. It is as if they have told themselves over and over again a falsehood until they believe it is true. Beyond that they have begun to believe that the lie has divine sanction. Something is so horribly wrong in the relationship of the people with God that it appears irreconcilable.

Jeremiah seems to say back to God, do you not want to see the truth. You have sought and believed the best possible in these people. God seems to have, in Jeremiah’s mind, done everything to interpret the peoples actions in the best possible light and the divine trust has been met with increased recalcitrance. Yet, Jeremiah too seems reluctant to give up hope. These are his people, his family as well and so he goes first among the poor, and then assuming it is ignorance (remember this is a pre-literate society where the poor would have been unable to read and this is a time where most people would have made it to the temple primarily for festivals if they were able) Jeremiah goes to the elite. Those who have no excuse, who can read and would have been taught the law of God which contains the vision of peace and justice God desired for them to live in, and they too have refused to live within it.

In a relationship we see a God who doesn’t want to believe that things have reached this point, but has seen the hopes and dreams of the relationship dashed by the people and we hear the wounded words go forth. The very animals of nature begin to represent the destruction that is coming, the people have become like sheep without a shepherd and their fence has been taken away. It is almost as if the shepherd walks away with tears in his eyes, exhausted from trying to lead and protect them surrendering them to the natural consequences of the world they live in.

Have We Made The Church Into A Gated Community?

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The church has sometimes been compared to a country club when it becomes primarily a social activity, but as I have become aware of some of the broader trends in the church over the past generation I began to realize that this derogatory reference missed the point. You see a country club is a social and entertainment function, and while it may connect with work and family it often remains one isolated segment, but one of the major movements in Christianity has tried to become something much more. When I first started thinking about this my first thought was to use the term ghetto, which Wikipedia defines as “a part of the city where a minority group lives, especially due to social, legal or economic pressures.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the inadequacy of this provocative term because the church is not a minority group, and unlike minority groups in a ghetto which may not have a choice to reside within the area they are confined to, the church has over the past 30 years increasingly walled itself off from the outside world. Many processes of developing a culture of the programmatic church have become more and more church-centric, where we train people to participate in church activities which are separated from the rest of their life in the world, where people can listen to exclusively Christian music, watch authorized Christian television and videos, read Christian approved books, shop in Christian bookstores, date on exclusively Christian matching sites and become more and more isolated from the rest of the culture that has little or no interest in the predominantly conservative Christian sub-culture. It is a mindset where the rest of the world is filled with evil influences and it is a church against culture mindset that has been manipulated and played by both media and political forces for their own gain. As Reggie McNeal insightfully states:

The idea of what it meant to be Christian became synonymous with what it meant to be a committed church person. Further, the measure of personal devotion to God was the degree of one’s separation from the world outside the church. This meant centering one’s life on the church and its activities, usually pulling away from people who weren’t willing to do the same. The primary focus of evangelism was converting people to the church culture. (McNeal 2009, 42f)

We have created our own gated community, a place where we can stay and not have to venture out into the world very much. More and more portions of the Christian church have pulled away from the rest of the world in a reaction of fear. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way, nor was it ever meant to be this way but this is not new, it has been a process that has taken place over the long history of the Christian church. Until recently mission work entailed converting the people you were doing mission work among to not only Christianity but also the broader culture that the missionaries were coming from and the work became linked with colonialism to the point where the “three C’s of colonialism” were Christianity, commerce and civilization. (Bosch 1991, 305)

Perhaps there have been moments in time where a predominantly Christian in title civilization existed, although I have yet to see a civilization truly based on love of God and neighbor, and perhaps many long deeply to a return to some mythic Christian age, but the reality is that we live in a thoroughly secular age in a pluralistic and post-modern world. There is an increasing sense that at least some churches have moved to a footing of church against culture, rather than openly going out and engaging the culture the is out there in the world. Success in this view of church meant creating ‘full-service’ churches with exercise gyms, day cares, schools and coffee bars. Now there is nothing wrong with any of these things and in a purely attractional model of church where people see what is going on and they naturally want to be a part of this it sounds great. But what happens when people don’t want to live in gated communities with homeowners associations? What happens when the people within the gated communities view the outside world as a danger? What happens is isolation.

The other problem is that the gated community model of church looks very unchristian, at least as far as it relates to Christ. When Christ was constantly moving beyond the boundaries of what the religious people of his own day considered acceptable, and the early church found itself being pushed farther and farther out into the world, much of contemporary Christianity has been content to shelter behind its own wall creating bigger and better programs. Unfortunately Reggie McNeal hits on the head some of the things I have heard from people outside the church:

The program driven church has produced a culture that is despised, not just ignored, by people outside the church. Their antipathy for what we call Christianity exists for all the wrong reasons. Basically it comes down to our failure to demonstrate the love of Jesus, passing by people not like us on the other side of the road on our way to building great churches. (McNeal 2009, 93)

Many of the things that we do as church are very good things, and I am fortunate to serve a congregation that is increasingly active in the midst of the world—but as a programmatic church we do struggle with this. How do we begin to shift the measurement from how much time people spend doing church activities within the walls of our church to the manner in which their time within the walls of our congregation equips them to be a blessing to the world around them. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. (Matthew 5: 13)

Salt is not just for seasoning, in Jesus’ time salt was for the preservation of foods-but it only preserves if it is rubbed or somehow absorbed into the item that is being preserved. We may forget that it was predominantly the Pharisees as they were portrayed in the gospels who were worried about being contaminated by the outside world, that the contamination of the outside world would dilute their own righteousness. In Jesus we see just the opposite, a movement outward where holiness and righteousness become a blessing and transform those primarily kept on the outside of the walled cities of his time or excluded from the synagogues. Think on how many times a person who is unclean (like lepers or the woman with the flow of blood) or sinners and tax collectors are mentioned within the gospels. Perhaps we too need to learn how to take down the barriers we have set up to isolate ourselves and be willing to see where Christ is already at work in the midst of the rest of the world.

The Prophet’s Agony: Jeremiah 4: 19-31

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Job by Leon Bonnat (1880)

Jeremiah 4: 19-31
¹⁹ My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!
Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
²⁰ Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste.
Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtains in a moment.
²¹ How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?
²² “For my people are foolish, they do not know me;
they are stupid children, they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.”
²³ I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.
²⁴ I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.
²⁵ I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.
²⁶ I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger.
²⁷ For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation;
yet I will not make a full end.
²⁸ Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black;
for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.
²⁹ At the noise of horseman and archer every town takes to flight;
they enter thickets; they climb among rocks;
all the towns are forsaken, and no one lives in them.
³⁰ And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in crimson,
that you deck yourself with ornaments of gold,
that you enlarge your eyes with paint?
In vain you beautify yourself.
Your lovers despise you; they seek your life.
³¹ For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,
anguish as of one bringing forth her first child,
the cry of daughter Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands,
“Woe is me! I am fainting before killers!”

In entering the prophet’s poetry we come to experience some small part of the agony of his profession. His whole life, even his very health becomes consumed by the foreboding fear of what is to come. He sees the disaster which he feels he has no power to stop, and yet he takes the fear and names it, places it into words. Perhaps he hopes that by painting reality through the dystopic lenses that perhaps someone might hear and turn, that perhaps the uttering of this potential reality might alter the reality that comes, otherwise he is looking at the end of the world as he has known it.

The Bible has an audacious belief that the human conduct matters for the well being of creation, in fact the whole notion of shalom and justice are not merely human concepts in Hebrew thought, they effect everything and Israel and Judah’s failure to live this vision is poisoning the earth. From the beginning of the Genesis story Adam and adamah (the Hebrew word for soil/earth) are tied together and in Genesis 3 the earth bears the price of the man’s disobedience:

And to the man he said,”Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘you shall not eat of it,’cursed is the ground because of you; Genesis 3: 17

This is a poetic and theological description of reality that Jeremiah is living out of. It is also behind Paul’s imagery in Romans 8:18-25 where creation will be set free by the children of God being revealed and beginning to live out of their identity and into God’s shalom.

The final image of the poem at this point shows the distance between the poets reality and the peoples with the offensive imagery of a foolish prostitute. When invading armies come and the capture a city the soldiers do not pay, they take what they want-and yet here is Judah represented as a prostitute who is decking herself out in her finest jewels expecting payment, but what Judah will find is rape. As I have said in earlier posts it is an offensive image, and yet it is the image of the poetry which is trying to rouse the people from their slumber.

An Extremist for Love-A Sermon on Paul

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St. Paul Writing His Epistles probably by Valentin de Boulogne (1618-1620)

We live in a world where so many things seem to be dominated by fear, and it makes having any real conversation about difficult issues challenging. Even if you look at the national debates we cannot talk about gun control, immigration, budgets, treatment of detainees, or any other serious issue without the specter of fear being introduced to the conversation. Now don’t get me wrong, humanity has an undeniable dark side, we cannot go through a week where the lead story plastered over the news in the bombs that exploded at the Boston Marathon, and the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas without acknowledging that there is a dark side in people, in systems and even in the best of institutions. It could become so easy to give in to the darkness around us and yet we have the witness of so many of those throughout history who have continued to point to the light in the midst of the darkness. As I talk about Paul the apostle I am going to begin by going to another letter writer in the church’s history, you see quietly in the midst of all the other news this week there was a significant anniversary this month. 50 years ago, on April 16, 1963 from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote the Letter from the Birmingham jail in response to eight white clergymen who had written “A Call to Unity” asking him to tone done his rhetoric and his actions and allow time to change things. I’m going to read a brief excerpt from this letter, because it points to what I want us to hear about Paul today.
…Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love you enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice:”Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln, “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Paul was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, even though previously he had been an extremist for hate. His encounter with the risen Christ had changed him to the core of his being. From one who had sought to wipe out the early Christian church to its most vociferous advocate he was ready to go to the ends of the earth as a creative extremist, sharing the gospel of God’s light, love, forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. He endured rejection by his own people. In Paul’s own words:

2 Corinthians 11: 23-27
23 Are they servants of Christ? I know I sound like a madman, but I have served him far more! I have worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. 24 Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. 26 I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. 27 I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Yet Paul was so captured by what God had done in Jesus Christ, he never backed away from his convictions even when he knew what it would cost him, like his Lord Jesus never did. He saw God’s story and his story intertwined. We encounter Paul in Acts today preparing to go to Jerusalem, now many of his comrades have either through visions or through being able to see what was ahead have tried to talk him out of going, but Paul responds to them:

Acts 20: 18b-24
“You know that from the day I set foot in the province of Asia until now 19 I have done the Lord’s work humbly and with many tears. I have endured the trials that came to me from the plots of the Jews. 20 I never shrank back from telling you what you needed to hear, either publicly or in your homes. 21 I have had one message for Jews and Greeks alike– the necessity of repenting from sin and turning to God, and of having faith in our Lord Jesus. 22 “And now I am bound by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. I don’t know what awaits me, 23 except that the Holy Spirit tells me in city after city that jail and suffering lie ahead. 24 But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus– the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.

He had tasted God’s dream for the world, he was literally held captive by God’s Spirit, his life was so consumed with God’s love and grace, God’s dream for the reconciliation of all the earth and his vision of the light that he willing endured the times when the darkness seemed so strong. He loved his people, even when they seemed unable to see or hear the message of peace and reconciliation that God had opened up to them in the gospel. He loved the world that God had sent him out into, he loved these early churches he had founded with all their struggles, with all their issues, with their own ways in which they embodied the best and worst of the world around them. He viewed him story as caught up with God’s upper story so that :

Romans 8: 17-19
17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. 18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.

That somehow who we are matters to the rest of the world, that God so loved the world that God set aside a people for the reconciliation and renewal of the world. That God doesn’t want to be separate from the world, but rather God wants to dwell with us. We who are wrapped up in God’s love will often find ourselves coming face to face with the suffering in the world. You see Paul was as an extremist of love was swept away in God’s vision of the way the world was going to be, the kingdom of God was such a palpable reality to him that he saw his and our stories intertwined in bringing about God’s vision and so in hope he was able to take up the hard word Jesus had for those who would follow him:

Matthew 16: 24-26
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. 26 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?

Unfortunately the NLT change the translation midstream, for the same word is they use for life they translate soul in vs. 26, and Jesus isn’t talking about merely what happens after we die, Jesus wants us to pour ourselves into being people who can be extremists for love in a world that God loves. We are to be like Paul and like Jesus, agents of the light. When the world encounters fear, we are to bring peace and hope. When darkness seems powerful we point to the light. We are called into a journey with God and God’s story comes down to be a part of our story. We are called to be a part of what God is doing the world, to be agents of peace and love and reconciliation in the midst of the world. Yes, Paul was an extremist, but he was an extremist for love. Even when harm was caused to him he did not respond in kind. And we are those who are the recipients of this message of peace and love and reconciliation passed on from generation to generation to where we too now have the calling to be the creative extremists the world so desperately needs.

On the cutting room floor

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Words and ideas that never reached the light of day
Lay scattered and cast aside on the cutting room floor
The potential of a thousand worlds that never found their creation
Their inspiration expired prior to their birth
Or their potential and light was stolen by some sister or brother
Who came to the world fully formed while they lay in their wake

Would that they could all be saved and treasured
But alas only a few find their way to rest upon the page for the world to hear
To live a short but brilliant life in the eye of the mind
And lay down to rest content in the subconscious memory
Bearing the seeds of more thoughts and ideas yet to be born

Perhaps those on the cutting room floor came to early or too late
Perhaps someday they will be reincarnated into something new and greater
But for now they rest on the cutting room floor
And no one hears their falling and no one marks their resting place

Neil White, 2013