Just Jesus

Galatians 2:15-21; 1 Kings 21:1-10, 14-21a; Luke 7:36-8:3

Paul and Peter had been haggling over details about who could believe in Jesus Christ and how they should go about it. Both Paul and Peter were Jews by birth, as were all the earliest believers. For the first years following Pentecost the followers of Christ were another Jewish sect. That broke down after persecutor Saul became evangelist Paul and after Paul got rebuffed by his Jewish brothers in some of the father flung cities of the empire where diaspora Jewish were living. 

Paul found growing acceptance of the gospel among non-Jews, traditionally called Gentiles. That’s when Paul, Peter, and the other apostles started disagreeing over the scope and methods of telling the good news. 

Jerusalem and Judea were Jewish. Why wouldn’t Christians be Jews? Yet, being Jews by birth was not enough for salvation. Paul was being both ironic and sarcastic when he refers to “Gentile sinners.” This was the scornful name Jews applied to Gentiles. Peter had learned that Gentiles could receive the gospel and the Spirit, but his actions had conveyed a “holier than thou” attitude in line with the teaching that Gentiles were still “sinners” unless they became Jewish. But both Peter and Paul knew better.

The Council of Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, began the theological wrestling which carried on for a number of years. The lingering issues had to do with how did non-Jews live out the gospel. Paul and his faith communities struggled with this for a long time, as evidenced by his writings to the Corinthians.

The more or less final pronouncement was “Just Jesus.” Each person could use their own conscience about their own observance of Jewish ritual practices, but they should also temper their words and practices to consider the strengths or weaknesses of sisters and brothers in the community. 

As Paul wrote the Galatian believers, he allowed his anger to show. He felt that Peter betrayed the agreement they had that allowed Jews and non-Jews to be equal partners in the early Christian community. If we think of a traditional practice as essential for faith, we then exclude from our community lovers of Christ who practice differently than we do. This would have been catastrophic for Paul—and for all of us non-Jewish Christians. 

As we look out on the organized religious landscape in our country and in other parts of the world, we find that this two-millennia-old controversy has never been resolved. American Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Merton once wrote, “the things on the surface are nothing. What is deep is the Real. We are creatures of Love.”(1) Unfortunately, those who think about these things don’t agree on what are surface things and what are deep things. The rest of us more often than not cling to what someone else told us to.

Given the tenor of today’s church world, Paul’s word to the Galatians could be rephrased with the same satire and scorn: “We are born Christians—we’re not unbelieving sinners.” The way Paul addressed some of the members of the churches he birthed suggests that he himself would author that revised statement. All of us who claim Christ need to hear again Paul’s words. Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrase is very explicit:

“We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.” (Gal. 2:16) [The Message]

In the few verses of today’s reading Paul sets out two very great themes of his understanding of the gospel. Paul declares several times a person is made righteous (set right, justified) not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. That is the heart of the gospel. 

Justification is what a computer’s word-processing program does to the margins. It straightens up the words so they are in a right relationship to the page.(2) This is what God does for sinners who are out of line. Messy human lives get straightened out and put in right relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The grace of Jesus Christ makes it happen for all. Jews are justified by grace. Gentiles are justified by grace. Christ alone has done what obedience to the law in general and circumcision in particular could never do: he has straightened out human beings with God and one another, resulting in a new community.

People are not justified by Jesus and the works of the law. Circumcision isn’t an issue today. What is the issue is that salvation is never a matter of Jesus and something else: not Jesus and certain cultural practices; not Jesus and a certain spiritual practice or theological perspective; not Jesus and a particular income level; not Jesus and a specific denominational brand; not Jesus and one political party; not Jesus and being good enough. Just Jesus. If anyone or anything else can be said to justify the sinner, the gospel is derailed, and, in the words of Paul’s devastatingly abrupt conclusion, “Christ died for no purpose.”(3)

Grace is always “just Jesus.” Grace is always outside ourselves and we can do nothing to earn it. Law on the other hand, is always within us. “Do I measure up?” “Am I behaving in the right way?” Psychologist Henry Cloud writes:

“It is interesting to compare a legalistic church with a good AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] group. In the church, it is culturally unacceptable to have problems; that is called being sinful. In the AA group, it is culturally unacceptable to be perfect; that is called denial. In one setting people look better but get worse, and in the other, they look worse but get better.”(4)

Denial. That’s were the Galatians were headed if they were to follow the distorted gospel that was “Jesus and.” “Jesus and” is bad news. “Just Jesus” is truly what the good news is based on.

People who try to live by “Jesus and” are grasping at life. Paul declares: “I have been crucified with Christ” (v. 19). This crucifixion is not simply a historic event that happened two thousand years ago on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Paul means to say that it happens every day in the lives of followers of Jesus. The verb form in Greek indicates that this crucifixion is an ongoing activity rather than a once-and-done event. 

In our culture we are fixated on self. Paul says no to that. We must look beyond ourselves to Christ. We are to die to ourselves (“I no longer live”), that Christ may live in us (“Christ lives in me" [v. 20]). Crucifixion is not the end; it leads to new life in Christ. Christ is alive today in believers and in the body of Christ which is the church.

That is a very different model for an organization in today’s world where the ruling paradigms come from the Wharton Business and Yale Law Schools. The Gospel cannot be codified in those ways. So what may need to be crucified in us is the notion that we need Jesus and a certain kind of structure, or Jesus and a certain number of people, or Jesus and the right color wallpaper, or Jesus and a certain kind of music or prayers or bulletin type face. The very ministries and methods we hold so dear may need to be crucified—because Christ is alive! The ongoing challenge is to pay attention to what the living Christ is up to. 

There is hope. All we need is just Christ. If Christ is alive, then out of death comes new life and renewed purpose. Every week we pour the water into the font, reminding us that grace has already been given, reminding us of our death and new life in Christ. In baptism we are drowned, buried, and dead, and rise again to new life. This is Christ’s work by the presence of the Spirit and the will of God. 

Just Jesus. That’s all.

(1) Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992), 237.
(2) Heidi Husted Armstrong, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press), Year C, vol. 3, 134.
(3) Ibid., 136.
(4) R. J. Grunewald, “Distortions of the Gospel,” http://www.rjgrune.com/blog/distortions-of-the-gospel, retrieved June 9, 2016.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

The Widow, the Orphan, the Stranger

1 Kings 17:8-24; Luke 7:11-17

We often forget that Elijah has a history before his encounter with Ahab, with the prophets of Baal,  with Jezebel, and with the sound of silence in the wilderness.

Elijah the Tishbite shows up in chapter 17 of the first Book of Kings. He dives right into the thick of the religious and political mess which the Northern Kingdom, known as Israel, quickly devolved into in the years following the death of Solomon and the subsequent struggle between Rehoboam and Jeroboam for his throne. Rehoboam kept Judah and Benjamin and the rest of the tribes followed Jeroboam. Jeroboam sinned greatly and was followed by Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, and then Abab (see 1 Kings 12-16). They all followed in the sinning ways established by Jeroboam, each outdoing his predecessor in deviating from the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and David.

So when Elijah first came on the scene he announced to Ahab that God would restrict the dew and rain, releasing it only on God’s command. And that was the case. After his pronouncement Elijah went into the wilderness where he drank from a brook and was fed by ravens as directed by God.

When the brook dried up because of the lack of rain, God instructed Elijah to go to Zarephath where a widow will take care of him. As is so often the case when God orchestrates a particular set of circumstances, Elijah came immediately upon the widow collecting firewood as he arrived at the city gate.

The drought had been hard of Zarephath. And harder still on the widow who evidently had no one to protect her and her young son and provide for their basic needs. Two basic staples of life were at an end: oil and flour. Even her description of getting two sticks of firewood suggests that fuel was at a premium and she wasn’t even going to have a big fire for her last two flatbreads.

Elijah prevailed on her to make him some bread before she baked bread for her and her son. He told her, “This is what Israel’s God, the Lord, says: The jar of flour won’t decrease and the bottle of oil won’t run out until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.” And she did as the prophet asked her.

Zarephath was not an Israelite city. It was a prosperous Phoenician Mediterranean port near Sidon. Yahweh, Israel’s God was not the focus of the local worship.  The region of Sidon was the home turf of the god Baal and the home of Elijah’s soon-to-be archenemy Queen Jezebel, the pagan wife of Israel’s King Ahab. God had sent Elijah into enemy territory without any rations or equipment. 

The Zarephathian widow respected the request of the stranger, Elijah, and made a leap of faith to do as he requested based on the spoken promise of Israel’s God which the prophet delivered to her. The oil and flour lasted for nearly three years while the drought continued.

I don’t know about you, but I would love an endless supply of things like oil and flour. I don’t know how many times I have had to go to the store in the middle of making something when I found out that I was missing or didn’t have enough of an ingredient. As the internet of things develops, our refrigerators and pantries will automatically take inventory and order up items that are running low. They will be readied for pickup or delivered. Stores already do that. They know how many of an item have gone out the front door through the scanning process and when the inventory reaches a certain level, more is ordered.

Elijah was living on the edge. He was in enemy territory, in the midst of a horrific drought with food was scarce. Of all the people in Zarephath whom God could command to feed him, a widow would be the least likely to have any food to offer him because widows were among the most vulnerable and destitute people in ancient society. Plus, this widow had another mouth to feed – her son. 

Let’s face it, Elijah’s life at that point in time stank. The king of Israel was his enemy, the wicked queen hates his guts, he was on the run from the law, was behind the lines in enemy territory, and was at the mercy of the poorest of the poor for food and shelter.

And yet, Elijah has already learned that God will come through for him because of his experience with the ravens. He was sustained, much like the repetitive meals of manna and quail sustained the Israelites in the Sinai desert on the way to the promised land. Now God was giving Elijah another opportunity to test God’s provision while teaching another to do the same.

Then, when a person thinks that things can’t get worse, they do. In the midst of the ongoing fulfilled promise of bottomless oil and flour, the widow’s young son, her security for the future once he is old enough, developed a fatal illness. Just when there is a glimmer of hope that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, that glimmer is extinguished and the unseeing darkness becomes impenetrable blindness. 

This is a story about God’s intimate involvement in all parts of our lives. The problems come when things fall apart in our lives—when our children die, when our spouses or partners are lost to us, when a tragic occurrence brings us unimaginable misery. Where is God then? Does God cause these bad things?

Things go along just dandy. Then it only takes a few minutes of tragedy to issue us a horrible reminder that we are creatures and that we are not in control of our lives. Fear and anxiety rear their ugly heads to dominate us as individuals and as communities. That’s why the people of Israel ran to embrace idols like Baal in Elijah's time; they longed to find security in the face of fear and death.

Elijah was called to speak God’s voice in these kinds of times, speaking to political powers like King Ahab and speaking to the people who had turned their hearts and hopes over to Baal. In order to do that, he had to prepare his mind and his spirit heart through the encounter with the death of the widow’s son. He prayed a passionate protest to God, an acknowledgment in its most primitive form that God is separate from us, that God is not us. It was also a deep prayer of belief that God is intimately involved in our lives. Elijah didn’t offer a passive prayer of acceptance: “O God, your will be done.” He prayed an anguished, hurting, passionate, protest: “O God, are you doing this?” He cries out on behalf of all those who know the power of chaos and death.

Elijah believes that God is involved intimately in life, and he believes that God is on the side of life. He is outraged at the power of death, and he protests to God, who seems in this instance to be on the side of death. Elijah will need all that passion and fire when he faces King Ahab and the power of Baal in the hearts of his people.

The scriptures repeatedly list together the most vulnerable within the society: the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Here are all three in one dramatic, gut-wrenching scene. Death is overcome, community is built, and intimate divine-human interaction is not put off by tragic circumstances. What we take as commonplace is not what God intends. God wills life. God wills wholeness. God wills trusting intimacy, even in the face of hard questioning “whys.” Like Jacob in the wilderness, we may have to wrestle God. Not to overcome God, but to experience what God goes through for us and with us.

This table is Christ’s table. It is the table for widows, orphans, and strangers. For all our success and sureness, we often are also at or beyond the edge of life, looking in, wondering why, wishing for the truth and the life that only our host, Christ, can offer. He gives us grace which like the widow’s oil jar and flour bin never run out. This is not the table of fear and death. It is the table of faith and life, of hope and assurance, of promise and fulfillment. Jesus, the word made flesh, is the bread of life.

Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.