From Bondage to Freedom

Introduction

It was a fine, bright summer’s day, and my business in town was finished, so I dipped into a bar to have a Guinness before returning home. It was dark, I strained to see. In the back corner, there was a little stage and under a dim light, a young woman clothed in yellow and lavender was softly singing and dancing. I drew closer. She glanced an abbreviated smile. She was not drunk. She was not a salacious dancer. Her face glowed, and she radiated joy. Her movements were wonderful and agile, incarnating her spirit. I muttered to myself, “Behold Freedom”. Indeed, she was free, free as the wind blows, free as the grass grows, free to follow her heart. Freedom leaves footprints. I saw them, and I know what I saw.

Having adjusted to the dimly lit bar, I looked around, but no one was there; it was empty. But my conclusion was premature. As I looked closer, I saw an outline of a man in the corner. I moved toward him and prepared to greet him, but once I drew close, my impulse vanished. His head was slightly bent, and he gazed into his mug, which he clasped with both hands. I saw the arches of his brow. They were deep, curling downward; his eyes were lifeless and sullen, the dearth in his face betrayed resignation. Instantly, I knew what I saw. Bondage had come for this man and locked him in despair. As I turned to leave, he spoke, “My name is Bondage and I will come for you too”.

Bedazzled and disturbed by these scenes of bondage and freedom, I forgot about my Guinness and made for the door. Once on the street, I attempted to re-adjust my eyes and refocus them. But my efforts were in vain. Everywhere I looked,d I saw freedom and bondage, joy and despair.

I have sculpted this little vignette to describe my enchantment with viewing Scripture and life through a lens of bondage and freedom.

During this two-week seminar (November 3 -15, 2025), we will look at Scripture and life through the lens of freedom understood over-against bondage. Freedom exists in a dialectic with bondage and bondage with freedom. They are not friends; they are like Jacob and Esau, whose conflict with each other, Scripture tells us, started in the womb. The Bondage-Freedom story in Exodus casts the Biblical understanding of salvation (both the Hebrew and the Christian) in a redemptive plot. Redemption occurs when something that has been lost is restored (redeemed). In Scripture, freedom is lost to bondage, but God breaks bondage and restores freedom; however, in this restoration, there is an anomaly. The new freedom, when it arrives, isn’t what it used to be. The new life of freedom is intentionally sculpted differently- i.e., different than the freedom (so-called) that existed before bondage came. This course is about this new shaping of freedom.

In order to unpack the insights I hope to open up in this freedom over-against bondage seminar, my pledge is to employ stories. Stories, I believe, are sort of like the engine at the head of the train. The engine generates the movement needed for conceptual thought and understanding to occur. My aim is to shake the trees of memory, Scripture, and history with sufficient vigor so that at least 20 stories will fall into my lap. In our lecture discussions, once we get a story or two into play, then we can go about our business of trying to better understand bondage and freedom in Scripture, life, and our calling.

It would be a mistake if, after reading this introduction, one concluded I was simply plucking random examples of bondage and freedom off the back of a slow-moving truck. This seminar is guided by a thesis which I will disclose in my introductory remarks on day one and then set about to expand upon via each lecture-discussion.

There is a methodological and theological pattern in play in these discussions, one that is not absent in the New Testament. While many, if not most, of the lecture-discussions will begin by recalling the Torah (the Pentateuch) with its story of deliverance from Egyptian slavery and the giving of the law, this occurs for two reasons. First, there is a desire to net Hebrew insights that surround their liberation story; insights unique to their salvation history and eschatology (i.e., unfolding hope). These, of course, are not found in the New Testament ‘in kind’ because the two salvation narratives are dramatically different. Nevertheless, this does not mean that many of the ‘very earthly’ mandates in the law/Torah do not in some way intersect the shape of the Gospel found in the New Testament (like a shadow reflects the shape of a reality, but imperfectly). After the Exodus liberation via the giving of the law, in many ways, certainly not all ways, life is more or less shaped toward a higher ideal, a post-Egypt-Pharaoh ideal. And this ideal is ‘this-worldly’, wholistic, earthy!

The earthiness of the law and the Prophets must not be lost but kept in conversation with the New Testament – especially the Post-Pentecost Apostolic witness of the Gospel. Why? Because this latter witness focuses our attention on the coming of a heavenly kingdom and calls us to spiritual readiness. The Apostolic witness’s emphasis on the spiritual/heavenly dimension can obscure the earthly dimension. Surely the O T earthiness and the N T spiritual depth are not to be seen in opposition. Luke, in his Book of Acts, states that much of what was spoken by the Prophets has not yet been fulfilled but awaits fulfillment. The vision of the ideal never realized by Israel still has a future (albeit transformed) when the Kingdom inaugurated by Christ is consummated. The coming kingdom of God is the ultimate reality given to us in Scripture, and it is to be remembered that Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come on earth“.

Second, despite the dramatic differences between the Old Testament’s saving narrative and the New Testament’s saving narrative ( both of which reference Bondage Breaking Justice), important parallels exist. This course bears my Christian bias. That Jesus is the Christ means he has not only become the head of the ecclesia, the people of God, but the promised one who inaugurates the Kingdom of God. The presence of this bias /confession, however, does not show up in the form of a Marcion dualism where Law consists of salvation by works versus an Apostolic Gospel that consists of salvation by grace, or some facsimile thereof.

I will argue off and on during the course of this seminar that, via the Apostle’s Gospel of Christ, the Law goes through a transformation. This transformation is sort of like Mother Robin at feeding time (Robins are a favored bird in North America). Msz Robin sits on her branch and looks for food for her baby. Upon detecting the movement of a worm, she dives down, secures it, and returns to her perch, where she masticates and digests the worm before regurgitating it and feeding it to her baby. This imperfectly describes the transformation that the law of righteousness goes through in its route to its universal destiny. From Pentecost onward, the law of righteousness is ‘evangelized’, i.e., transformed for its Gentile career. This transformation of law righteousness corresponds to the Apostles’ Gospel of Christ and the freedom it proclaims. Along the way in this course, we will grapple with this transformation. Both the law as it was given on Sinai and the law as it was transformed by the Gospel of Christ served freedom. The former was provisional and in its form contained the seeds of its temporality – a warning as such is explicitly stated in Deuteronomy. In more than one discussion, we will explore how the law that was given to protect post-Egyptian freedom was shaped in such a way that it could evolve to foster bondage. And this did occur, but it did not come about because the historic people of God were born in a covenant of works. Their birth commenced with an election of grace. There is more than one way to slip off the foundation of grace! But the concern of this course is freedom. God laid a love-grace foundation for his relationship with humanity, and this foundation alone supports a freedom between heaven and earth. Righteousness and justice on earth must be shaped in a way so that they will not subvert freedom but enjoy freedom’s power and delight. Could it be that God is on a passionate journey through time, where he sets about to get what he hopes for from his creation of humanity without resorting to coercion, that ugly dynamic that spoils all relations?

On our final class day, our focus will shift to contemporary contexts of freedom. In many places in the secular and non-Christian world today, there is passion for freedom and justice. In Scripture, there is also a manifest passion for freedom and justice. The Church and the world today, in many places, appear to share a common interest. For sure, the church does not have a monopoly on righteousness. One of the challenges facing the church, if it is to escape being sucked into a pessimistic and moralistic mission against modern freedom and justice, or escape becoming pulled into a naïve idealism regarding modern freedom and justice, is to better understand the distinctive character of the Biblical-Evangelical (Gospel) witness to these two saving dynamics. I hear this challenge in Jesus’ mini salt-sermon. “You are the salt of the earth”. But “if the salt loses its savor, it’s good for nothing”, he asserts. What is this salt that remains salty, that, although exposed to the corrosive acids of changing times, does not lose the potency of its truth? I believe this potency (i.e., the saltiness of the church’s witness) turns on the presence versus the absence of the church’s evangelical witness (i.e., good news witness) in such a way that it also exposes the lie enshrined in the world or the church as truth. (Inside God’s yes, there is a no.) Darkness and idolatry often possess a chameleon character. In this course, among other interests, it is the Biblical and Christian freedom birthed by God’s bondage-breaking justice viewed in relief or distinction from Modern justice and freedom that we are seeking to understand better so that our witness in word and act may be potent. “Now we see through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) and “If any man (or woman) thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing as he ought to know it” (1 Corinthians 8:2 KJV). In this sense, this seminar really is a venture of hope

From Bondage to Freedom
November 3 -15, 2025
Kawthoolei Hope Theological Seminary
Phop Phra, Thailand
Daniel Age, M Div, Ph D

Lecture-Discussion Subject Titles

Introduction

The Thesis Behind “From Bondage to Freedom”

Lecture-Discussion
One

Behold the Spider, Pity the Grasshopper

Inquiring Into the Nature of Bondage
_{Exodus 1:8-14, 2:23-25 (23*)}

Lecture-Discussion
Two

Breaking the Power of Bondage Before Bondage is
Broken:
From Despair to Hope
_{Exodus 3:15-17, 4:29-31,1 Peter 1:3 & Romans 15:13}

Lecture-Discussion
Three

Bondage Breaking Justice
The Source of the Church’s Doxology
_{Exodus 15:1-2,20 -21;2 Peter 9-10}
“Religion is grace, ethics is gratitude,” T W Manson

Lecture-Discussion
Four

The Teleology of Freedom
From Forced Servitude to Free Service
_{Exodus 8:1, Matthew 11:28-30, 1Corinthians 8:6 (NRSV), Galatians 5:1&13}

Lecture Discussion
Five

Bondage to Freedom
(Part A) From Outside to Inside the Lordship of God: Viewed From Both the Hebrew and Christian Salvation Narrative
_{Exodus 20:2-3; 2 Timothy 1:9-10, Acts 3 & 5, Ephesians 4:8,
Romans: 35-39, 1 Jn 5:4, Philippians 2:12b -13, Psalm 23:1}

Lecture-Discussion
Six

(Part B) From Bondage to Freedom & the Struggle With Power
From “Before Me” to After Me Viewed From Both a Hebrew and a Christian Narrative
_{Exodus 20:2-3, Matthew 22:35-40, Acts 5:27-29
Ephesians 6:12, Mk 8:35}

Lecture Discussion
Seven

Mind the Gap & Avoid the Gulch
Freedom Requires (A) Boundaries & (B)
Connectedness
_{Exodus 20:1-19, Deuteronomy 5:6-22}

Lecture Discussion
Eight

Part A: The Law
Torah Legal Structures to Prevent
Relapsing into Bondage
(Key Torah Passages on Land Ownership, Stewardship, and Accumulation and
Debt Forgiveness, the Other as Brother, Dependence, Tithing)

Part B: The Gospel
Releasing Evangelical Weapons to Subvert
Ideological Structures of Bondage
_{Luke 10:25-35, Luke 18:9-14, Galatians 2, 3 & 5, 2 Timothy 2:9,
Ephesians 6:12, Hebrews 4:12, Rev 1:16}
Excursus: The Relation of the Church to Politics
(Excursus on Walter Rauschenbusch -J Moltmann & the Dia-Stasis that Hope Creates)

Lecture-Discussion
Nine

(A)

Freeing Righteousness From Bondage to Heteronomy & Fear

(B)
Existential Freedom Depends on Understanding &
Doing the One Thing That God Will Not Do for Us
Existential Bondage to Freedom

_{Philippians 2:12-13}

(B-2)
From Spiritual Bondage to Freedom
Upsizing to Downsizing
Fear, Dread, Shame, Guilt, Pride, Hatred, Bitterness,
Grief, Hardness of Heart, Anger, Anxiety, Greed, Self
Pity Versus Love, Joy, Peace…

Lecture-Discussion
Ten
The Economic Sources of Bondage and Freedom
(Selections from the Torah, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul -R Y Ruler)

Lecture-Discussion
Eleven
Freedom: The Pearl of Great Price in all Relations “
“Thy Will Be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven”
_{Matthew 19:16-26, Matthew 11:28-30,}

_{Philemon 8-9, Hebrews 3:7-8,
Revelation 3:20,}

Lecture-Discussion
Twelve
Epilogue
Christian Freedom Faces Modern Freedom:
From Pessimism & Idealism to Differentiation
_{Matthew 5:13-16}

Saul on the Damascus Road: “Bent on checking a plague that threatened Israel (Saul) was constrained to turn right around and become a champion of the cause which, up to that moment, he had been endeavoring to exterminate… (henceforth) he was dedicated to building up that which he had (previously) set out to destroy…” F. F. Bruce Apostle of the Heart Set Free

Saul of Tarsus Does a One-Eighty

In 1973, I did a one-eighty. Driving my 1964 Chrysler four-door, returning to Cortland, New York, from Southern California. With five other people in the car, I went into a slide on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was not yet dawn when we commenced to climb a mountain pass where the roads turned icy and snow-packed.  Even at highway speeds, I was comfortable on such surfaces and normally nimble at the wheel, able to manage slides and ride them out. As a raw youth, car slides were part of my daredevil joys growing up in Oregon. I would find a curvy gravel back road and speed into a curve, inducing a slide, and then manage it as close to ninety degrees as possible before aligning to the straightaway. But on this occasion, no fun and games were in my veins. The reckless teens were behind me. Near the crest of the mountain pass, there was a slight curve and patches of hard-packed snow, but something else as well – patches of black ice. Usually, extra weight helps a vehicle grip the road in snow and icy weather, but if and when the car begins to go into a slide, the weight can work against you. It was going into this slight bend that I suddenly felt the black ice and the car helplessly drifting to the right.  All my instincts developed from my youth leaped into play. Braking is the first impulse, but braking accentuates the slide. Instinctively, I stayed away from the break, let up on the gas, and slightly curbed my front wheels so as to go with the slide, not away from it. Usually this works. I thought I was going to pull out of the slide, but the full load worked against me. Add to this the slight bend and the slight downward slant hampered my recovery. At the last second, realizing I wasn’t going to bring the car out of the slide, cinching down on the steering wheel, I pulled myself up out of the seat and jammed my right foot, shod with my trusty Red Wing Cowboy boots, down on the brake with all my might. Instantly, the car did a 180 and came to rest on the shoulder parallel with the road, pointing in the exact opposite direction. At that precise moment, an eighteen-wheeler crested the hill and wisped by us, traveling full speed. I was not just stirred, I was shaken!  

On the Damascus Road, Saul of Tarsus did an existential and missional one-eighty. He was headed one direction in life (evidently making admirable progress) and near the conclusion of his week-long journey, big trouble suddenly stole a march on him and overcame him, and one might state, threw him into a slide that lasted 72 hours (it’s not over till it’s over”). Paul lost control, not merely of his purpose for coming to Damascus, but of his life purpose and mission, in fact, all that he understood himself to be and be about. This happened near the conclusion of his journey to Damascus when Jesus, in all his glory, appeared to him a short distance from the city gate.  But while this direct encounter with the Lord caused him to immediately lose control, the out-of-control movement of his life did not cease for a full 72 hours, during which time he did not eat or sleep. Only at hour 72 did the vehicle called “Saul of Tarsus” come to rest, pointing in the exact opposite direction his entire life had been traveling up to that point in time. 

In this meditation, I argue that when this Damascus Road encounter occurred, he was left between heaven and the deep blue sea. This direct encounter took away Saul’s mission and subverted the beliefs it was founded on, but it did not immediately give him a new mission and a new ground of belief to rebuild on. One thing was for sure, for weal or for woe, on the Damascus Road, Saul fell into the grip of the divine power and glory of Jesus.  

Listening to the accounts of this happening on the Damascus Road, it reads like an arrest, inquest, and indictment all wrapped into a few terse words with an opaque, cryptic charge tacked on at the end. Saul, the zealous Pharisee commissioned by the high priests to use force to arrest, capture, whip, stone, beat, and imprison members of the Way, is himself arrested in his tracks, made to gaze into the face of the glorified one, forced to hear charges made against him before being struck blind. Yes, at that encounter on the Damascus Road, there is an opaque, terse reference to something more coming, but this is not unpacked or developed. Only at the end of the 72 hrs does it make its debut via Ananias, whom the Lord sends to Saul (note: it is true in one of Luke’s three renderings of this event in Acts, the one depicting Paul’s speech before Agrippa, Luke / Paul collapses the Street Called Straight climax into the Damascus Road encounter. Why? because these timing gaps were not germane to the point Paul was making before Agrippa. On the Damascus Road Saul and Jesus share a terse exchange on the Damascus Road about the future. It begins with Saul crying out, “What do you want me to do?” as if, for a long time, subconsciously, he was on the run from what he was really supposed to be doing. As I will note later, there is also the following phrase spoken to him at the time of this direct encounter: (Saul) “it’s hard for you to kick against the pricks (“my yoke is easy, my burden is light”). Saul of Tarsus is subconsciously battling with the Spirit and his destiny and calling!

I believe the spread of 72 hours is helpful and significant for grasping the transition Saul went through. On the Road to Damascus, Saul suddenly lost control and was thrust into a slide in which he would not and could not recover. This slide continued in slow motion for 72 hours in a room off the Street Called Straight inside Damascus city. Only after 72 hrs did the crisis Saul was thrust into come to a rest. In other words, for sure, Saul suddenly lost control of his life as he was living it on the Damascus Road, but it would be 72 hrs before he regained control of his life. And but this control would not be of a kind he practiced before. Saul (who Luke would commence to call Paul after his first telling of this story) henceforth proceeded to live suborned into and aligned with the higher will and Apostolic commissioning of Jesus. He was now enlisted in the very mission he had been enlisted in to destroy. This happened when a member of the Way named Ananias entered his room and, standing beside “Saul of Tarsus” audibly restored his sight, after which Ananias clarified why he had seen Jesus with his eyes (“the Just One”) and heard his voice from heaven on the Damascus Road when he cryptically referenced something he must do. Only at this Ananias intercession did that something he must do come out into the open – namely, he had been chosen to bear witness to Christ to the Gentiles.

“Something Is Happening Here, Mr. Jones, But I Don’t Know What It Is” (Bob Dillion)

Something of momentous significance for the career of the WAY was occurring in this Damascus Road apprehension and the Street Called Straight 72-hour reflection, and its climax with Ananias. The religious ground floor needed to mainstream the Gospel of the Jesus is Lord message to the wider Gentile world was lacking. In short, until Paul Gentiles converted to Christ still had to become Jews. It was Paul’s job to free the “Jesus is Lord and Savior” Gospel that commenced at Pentecost from its Torah -temple ties inside Judaism, where it existed as a sect. Paul created an “extra nomos (Torah) ecclesia“(church-people of God body). It would be naive to think that this would occur without the new movement creating a radical Christocentric theological ( i.e., religious) foundation.

The Existential and Missional Reasons For Saul’s Arrest. 

Lest we have missed anything necessary to unpack the significance of what went down, it is necessary to linger further. Ananias told Saul why he was arrested on the Road to Damascus. When Jesus physically presented himself to him in his glory, it was because he had been chosen by “the God of our fathers” to bear public witness to the Gentiles. After this, he was instructed to rise, eat so as to restore his strength, and be baptized and wash away his sins.  

At the end of these seventy-two hours, Saul’s entire life, all that it consisted of, including his passionate anti-Christ religious mission and the Torah foundation of his life, was lost for good, and his life became aligned in the exact opposite direction that he had been going. What happened?  

From Darkness to Light: Seventy-Two Hours of Saul’s Life 

Saul was immediately blinded when Jesus appeared and spoke to him on the Damascus Road. After seeing the risen Lord, the brilliance totally blinded him, and he remained blind in that darkness for 72 hours, during which time he did not sleep or eat but prayed, the wheels of thoughts no doubt furiously turning. Sometimes, literal darkness, cutting off the outward gaze, serves as a catalyst for inward reflection. But this darkness was like no other. Saul almost surely turned every stone of his life journey, starting many years back, feeling after the anomalies, the mistakes, and wrongs in his life when and where he blunted his conscience. No doubt he recalled the verses of Scripture that he had used over and over to defend and justify his mission to stamp out the Jesus is Lord and Christ movement.  In times like these, myriads of threaded memories neatly packaged and stored in the recesses of his mind suddenly break free and present themselves to one’s consciousness as if the time of their captivity had expired and the moment to speak the bare truth, that had long been neatly domesticated and cocooned, had arrived. Like a beast takes to the saltlick, Saul returned to every word and phrase uttered to him by the glorified Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road. One phrase in particular, however, stuck in his mind: “It is hard (Saul) for you to kick against the pricks”.   

The mind is all too often in subtle bondage to the perversity of the spirit that has taken shape within a person. This perversity often subdues reason, Scripture’s witness learned from youth and rehearsed, conscience too is dulled, even heaven’s footprints often fail to give one pause in life’s journey. Johnny Cash’s lyric comes to mind “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel”. Nothing is to be dreaded more than the day when. “Kicking against the prick” (i.e., resisting the Spirit’s attempt to awaken one to light and truth over darkness) will on our part succeed in quieting and silencing that which has drawn near to free us for God’s truth and purpose. When the self succeeds in squelching truth, light, and conviction, the soul is in danger.  It is the truth that sets one free. John writes in his Gospel, “you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free”. The seat of our problem is in the heart. Jeremiah states that “the heart is deceitful above all things…who can know it”. Even the self deceives itself. The Damascus Road was the end of Saul, “kicking against the pricks”. The subtle sophistries of the mind were once and for all exorcised. 

In this verse about Saul kicking against the pricks, we change seats. We cease to be onlookers, voyeurs of Saul’s unique experience, but fellow travelers on the Road to Damascus. Suddenly, we too understand and know Saul. Saul is perversely invested in something contrary to the will of God. Saul can give himself or a fellow inquirer a thousand reasons justifying his actions, and so can we. Often, God ups the ante as he did with Saul. If we succeed like Saul, we also will lose, but if we lose control of our justifying narrative like Saul did in his 180 slow-mo slide, we will “succeed”. 

 I submit that Saul, at this juncture, is tired. Why? Because the text states, “Its hard to kick against the pricks”. If it’s easy, one has a long way yet to go, or God has already left (“grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby you are sealed”). “Come unto me all you who are weak and heavy laden, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light”. 

The Unique and the Common 

The Common 

The Damascus Road was not the first divine encounter Saul had, but it was like none before. The earlier ones were subtle and not game changers. And these resistances to God’s moving on his mind and spirit, we understand. We, like Paul, are in this sense contemporaries. Moreover, many souls going down the road of life in the wrong direction have suffered a subtle or not-so-subtle challenge such that s/he could not persist onward but must turn around and go the opposite direction!  As a raw youth, Martin Luther headed off to study at the university to become a counselor of the law in obedience to his father, and also with the desire to please his father. Midway, a bolt of lightning hit the tree directly in front of him, and he instantly cried out to St Anne for God’s mercy and instantly changed course and went into the monastery, obeying the conviction he had suppressed.

The Unique

But there is another side of Paul’s story that was as subtle as a train smash. Saul did not merely come face to face with the risen glorified Christ; he did not merely have a close brush or an amazing spiritual experience. Christ, clothed in his glory and power, arrested him, charged him, and made a claim on him for weal or woe; at that moment, Saul did not immediately know for sure. One thing was clear – henceforth, it was Jesus with whom he had to deal. Saul’s life was, from that moment on, caught in the inexorable grip of Jesus and his power and authority. There was no altar call, no confession, no formal repentance, no call to faith and decision. Paul, in his own words, was “apprehended” (Philippians 3:12), then commanded, and at the conclusion of those 72 hours, commissioned to undertake a new mission. Paul’s Christian beginning was very muscular. How to get inside this muscularity? Directly after the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther, returning to Wittenberg, was kidnapped and spirited away in the dark to a castle. Soon enough, Luther learned it was Fredrick the Wise, his protector, who arranged this ‘kidnapping’ for his own safety. This piece of history reminds me of the word Paul uses in his words, scripted to the Philippians, translated as “apprehended”. Quite apart from Paul’s permission or will, God made a vertical non- non-negotiable claim on this man who was called Saul of Tarsus, soon to be known as Paul. In this, we see the power and freedom of God.

An Apostle is a unique foundational entity in God’s purpose. They see and then believe and proceed to witness to the rest of us who do not see but hear and believe and proceed to live by faith and hope. We are all standing on the shoulders of the Apostles. Yes, of course, all the Apostles had to proceed to live by faith, hope, and love, suffering the contradictions between faith and sight. When I was about 19 years old, I learned N T Greek and translated 1 John 1:1-3. These verses, in my estimation better than any other in the N T, poetically describe the exceptional, unique experience of the Apostles. Paul’s direct physical encounter with the risen Christ and his Apostolic charge to witness to Christ was a belated part of this Easter encounter and commissioning.

But Paul’s Apostleship possessed a unique purpose. As noted, the Gospel under the shepherding of the Apostles and especially the leadership of James, the half-brother of Jesus, was in danger of remaining inside the ecclesial piety and purity marked out by the Torah, a messianic sect somewhere on the outer boundaries of Judaism.  Moreover. As I hope to discuss in a later Part Two of this discussion, Saul of Tarsus may in fact have been Jerusalem’s top Priestly officials’ merciless answer to that part of the WAY Jesus sect infecting Judaism from the inside, especially those who increasingly relativized the temple and the Torah. Almost certainly, the apex leaders of Jerusalem saw in Saul of Tarsus a zealous, highly educated Pharisee who embodied in his person both the avant-garde Hellenistic (Greek) culture inherited from his Tarsus upbringing and also his extensive Hebrew Torah training in Jerusalem. It was this combination that rendered him a suited candidate to purge Judaism from the more radical fringe of this WAY movement. Almost certainly, Saul’s fitness for the mission he embraced for Judaism and its vanguard leaders included his distinguished Pharisee credentials. But the matter, as not a few scholars have noted, goes deeper than the above sketch.

It is to be remembered that the Jerusalem church possessed ethnic tensions from the get-go. There were the Hebrews and the Hellenists (the natives and the immigrants), and the latter (on account of their cultural depth within the Greco-Roman culture) were the immigrant liberals in the Apostolic Church. Stephen was a Hellenist; in fact, likely all the decons’ so-called waiters of tables were Hellenists. Stephen was stoned, and the charges were that he spoke against the law and the temple. And Saul was there at his stoning, almost certainly not as an observer, but overseeing the nasty deed, fully justified because the Torah foundation of Judaism, ostensibly being subverted by Stephen, must be defended.

Here then is the pinch of the point regarding the peculiarity of Paul’s apostleship. Following Scripture’s and F F Bruce’s assessment that Saul of Tarsus did a 180, I am not merely using fanciful dramatic language. Saul of Tarsus possessed the perfect background, upbringing, professional training, and Pharisaic alignment and bilingual bi-cultural make-up necessary to purge Judaism of this Jesus is Lord and Saviour WAY scourge. Ironically, this entire unique make-up, all of it A TO Zed, once transformed by his Damascus abduction and commissioning by Jesus Christ, provided him all the religious, Biblical and cultural insight and learning needed to carry the nascent Hellenist-Stephen Gospel vision of the Way’s destiny to transcend Judaism and embrace the world. The seeds were almost certainly in Stephen but Paul’s apostleship was needed to bring these seeds to reality. Almost certainly, Saul of Tarsus was motivated to purge Judaism of a Jesus Christ witness to truth that had begun to take shape in its more radical disciples. According to his enemies, Stephen spoke against the Torah and Temple. But Paul in his teaching and ministry, cogently argued that the covenantal people of God rested on a new foundation. In the space of 72 hours, this highly educated Pharisee (who studied under the famed scholar Gamaliel) embraced the position of these former WAY Hellenists, some of whom he had stoned. Moreover, he became the movement’s foremost advocate for a transition to a new foundation -Jesus Christ for the People of God. But he was not merely one of eventually many such advocates; single-handedly, he plumbed the elemental makeup of the existing Christian Gospel/Evangel preached and taught by the Apostles that preceeded him and relaid the foundation of the ecclesial people of God such that Gentiles and Jewish believers shared common fellowship in and through Jesus Christ alone outside the gate-keeping perogatives of Torah purity and piety. Without this unique work, “Christian could have never proceeded to realize its radical inclusivity and universality. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that ‘christian ecclesia’, whenever and wherever it draws its truth and witness from this Pauline transformation of the Apostolic Gospel, impregnated as it is with inclusivity and universality, again and again is set free to transcend all parochial, ethnic, national, political, cultural and religious attempts to domesticate and quarantine it.

Part One: Movements and Assignments
This past year I made two teaching excursions to S E Asia. The first trip began in February with what I hoped would be several weeks of intense prep time in Chiang Mai with the plan to proceed to Thailand’s Tak Province to teach in three different Karen schools. The second teaching trek commenced in October.

Departed Well but Landed Sick

On my first trip (“Spring” 2024 trip) I boarded my outbound flight departing from JFK – apparently hale and hearty but exited my plane in Bangkok very sick. I had the shakes, a fever, and other disturbing signs and wonders going on in my body. After one or two nights in Bangkok, I realized I had to go someplace where I could better manage my plight. I proceeded onto Chiang Mai unsure what had taken hold of me. The MD I was assigned to at Chiang Mai University Hospital became frustrated with me because I refused to be admitted. She wanted to run every test on me in the book. While I was outwardly deferential, I wasn’t convinced. I said to her “Please let’s wait a longer see if I come right after I complete the antibiotic routine you prescribed”. “Maybe the symptoms will change for the better”. After 7 days I returned and after examination, she concluded I was close to 65 to 70% improved. But despite these results in hand, she still wanted me admitted to the hospital. She said, “even though your body is responding well I still have questions”. I can’t yet prove for sure what it is you have. She wanted a name for my malady, I was less interested in a name I just wanted my body to do its immune job and come right.

To Be or Not to Be = To Teach or Not to Teach

On the Road Again

In short no matter the improvement she wanted me admitted. My stubbornness frustrated her so she flatly told me that I must return to New York and go to my own doctor. I agreed with reluctance. But in truth, I could not reconcile myself to returning. After several more days, I boarded a bus left Chiang Mai, and traveled 7 hours to Mae Sot in Tak Province. Upon arrival and taking a room at the DK Hotel I had three more days of rest before my first class. Nearly four weeks had passed by this point in time and all the symptoms had left but I was very weak.

The Christian Karen have their own clinic and M D’s outside of Mae Sot; in years past I had visited it and met the staff. Having served them on my own nickel every year starting 2011 to the present save two COVID years I reasoned “If this thing, whatever it is, comes back on me I would beat a path to their door confident that they would take me in”.

The decision to stay in Thailand and proceed with my teaching mission commitments was a big existential struggle because it involved disobeying a doctor – plus my body had alarmed me in a way I never expected or recognized. Still very weak I commenced teaching not alerting anyone to my plight. My first assignment was at KKBBSC (Kawthoolei Karen Bible School and College) located inside the huge 50K Mae-La Refugee camp.

I was given the senior class numbering about 80 students strong. As I worked and prayed my strength gradually improved. I am sharing this experience knowing nearly everybody my age has their body battles and this may sound like dis-ease naval watching 101. But the real reason I am sharing it has to do with the existential struggle I went through. Allow me to explain.

Faith in the Midst of Doubt

On the 4th day of classes, I was 51% sure which side of the line that divides presumption from courage (faith) that I was on. In many situations, we cannot boldly assert which side of the line we are standing. I had disobeyed a doctor and this bothered me. Sometimes it is with “fear and trembling” that we decide and act. These words “with fear and trembling” are taken directly from the Apostle Paul. He writes we must “work out”, act out, i.e., act on faith and conviction the will of God that we believe God is working in us to do, (work it out even though we cannot prove for sure it is God who is leading us). I was doing some serious praying about wanting to proceed and deliver the good things I had prepared for these students.

The theologian Paul Tillich I believe is spot on when he wrote that faith is exercised in the midst of doubt. Faith and doubt both live within us all throughout our lives. The presence of doubt does an important service – namely we ourselves must own the deciding and acting and in this, the self gains solidity. Conviction and faith await action, and this action gives form to faith. It is important to clarify that faith and doubt are not opposites, only faith and unbelief are opposites. Take courage, those of you who like me are often beset with little faith, partial faith, weak faith because as Scripture states, faith as small as a mustard seed is welcomed by God. Angels rejoice and God’s benediction falls on feeble minuscule faith!

A Surprise Doxology Leads to a Moment of Certainty

On the last day of my time with this senior KKBBSC class they held a thank you service where they asked me to be seated in a chair they provided in the center front, then they sang to me, said formal words thanking me, and prayed for me imploring God’s blessing on my ministry. Then before we dismissed, they asked me a special prayer for their future because their graduation was a mere five days away after which they were facing major changes in a very uncertain world many venturing outside the safety and predictability of the Mae La Refugee Camp. I have rarely been so blessed! This was the decisive moment I knew for sure which side of the line my decision to disobey the doctor was on.

A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

Not to be forgotten was the help a colleague Terry Clayton provided. On his own nickel after learning of my straights he flew from Udon Thani to Chiang Mai and helped me negotiate the massive Chiang Mai University Medical Complex. (If you read this Terry again thank you x 10- a friend in need is a friend indeed- may our friendship keep pace with the passage of our time!). “Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall All You Have to do is Call and I’ll Be There”

With the Wind at My Back: Steady On

After leaving KKBBSC I went to Hill Light Seminary about a half hr South of Mae La Camp. This undergraduate seminary is in an ancient Karen village near the Phop Phra District. Here, I held morning and afternoon classes on the same lecture series Bondage Making, Bondage Breaking Justice, and Freedom Building. This series was built out of the Book of Exodus. The entire student body, not large in number but indeed spirited and keen to learn, gathered morning and afternoon to take in and discuss my ‘new’ paradigm for Biblical redemption.

While the Hill Light students understand English, many do not understand it very well. Therefore, a new way of teaching developed. As I taught the students one of the teachers as well as the president, who were both taking in my lectures, themselves proficient in English, listened to and digested my subject material and then finding a natural transition point, they would call a timeout and take over the class and re-teach my material in their own words in Karen language.

Nature and Grace

When I finished at Hill Light I took a short break and then headed further South in the Phop Phra District to KHTS (Kawthoolei Hope Theological Seminary). Here all students are studying for an M Div or an M A. Hill Light is an undergraduate school as is KKBBSC. Once at KHTS my sister Elizabeth and her daughter Audrey flew in from the States and joined me (the first time I had ever had family present).

Immediately upon arrival, President Dr Wado announced a change. Since this would be the last course for the seniors before they graduated, he arranged a deal with a beautiful nearby mountain resort. My sister and my niece would stay in one cabin and I in another and the students would arrive and join us in a hall adjacent to the resort’s café for classes. The setting was magnificent, and the students had a lot of spirit, but time flew by too fast. I wanted to climax my Bondage-Justice-Freedom trilogy during our time together. I think I succeeded in getting halfway through my course outline when time expired.

The pictures below provide a peek into my classes and the students. Hopefully, there is one with my sister and niece included. (Pictures of the senior KKBBSC are missing because, with this teaching hitch, described above, I had waded into a deep water with little strength. I had one thing on my mind, and it wasn’t “Hey self wouldn’t it be cool to take a few pictures of this moment”).

After my KHTS lectures my final Karen class was over for spring 2024. Within a few days, graduation was held which I attended and said a few words. In April I made my exit but my mind was a little out of joint because I hadn’t completed the course. Therefore, I called Dean “Wapa” (who with his wife Ashe- both trained gifted teachers who came from Nagaland, India to KHTS for a three-year hitch) and accepted his invitation to finish my trilogy. later again in 2024 in October I returned to begin teaching in November. Pictures of that new class of seniors are also included below.

Part Two: Teaching Picture Album

Photo Captions – Starting from the Top Counting From Left to Right: (1)KHTS Senior Class (My Class I am in the Center and my sister Elizabeth on my right -Spring Trip (2)KHTS Sunday afternoon Preach -Titled “Why, Who” Luke 10:25 ff The Lawyer “Who is my Neighbor” (3)The sacred halls of the DK Hotel Hqtrs for missionaries and NGOs coming to the Thai Burma Border for decades (my 5am study spot) (4)Afternoon teaching hours KHTS Spring (5) HillLight Seminary South of Mae Sot, Thailand Bordering the Phop Phra District (6) KHTS Fall Senior Class ( Graduation occurs in March)

(7) KHTS Seniors Fall (8) March Graduating
KHTS Seniors (Get a Gift Note) (9) Hill Light
Spring (I am Seated Beside the President
Rev Dr Ye Ye)(10) Myself With KHTS Seniors
Enjoying an End of Class Party)

Part Three: A Piece from My Bondage, Justice, Freedom Lectures

Both of my 2024 teaching trips to S E Asia to Karen Schools along the Thai-Burma Border, the first commencing in February the second commencing in October, followed one course of study that was a trilogy built out of, but not limited to, the Egyptian enslavement of Israel and the subsequent Exodus. This trilogy was entitled Bondage Making, Bondage Breaking Justice, and Freedom Building. At the heart of my lessons was Hebrew justice. Bondage was the prologue and freedom was the epilogue of this justice. The story of the Exodus, the body of Laws – the Torah, that emerged after the Exodus at Sinai and laid the foundation of Israel’s common life, many of the Psalms and finally not a few of the prophetic oracles all contributed to giving birth to a distinctive Hebrew understanding of justice. As Psalms 103:6-7 (NRSV Updated Edition) states this unique debut of God’s Justice began when God showed his ways to Moses and his acts to Israel.

The Difference Between Religion and Ethics

This experience of justice formed the foundation or essence of Israel’s ‘religion’ where then it was transformed over and over again into ethics, worship, and eschatology (i.e., the coming kingdom). Religion, in the way I am using it here, has to do with what God did for Israel in delivering them from bondage. Ethics derives from this religious fountain and mirrors in some way what God has done for them, i.e., mirrors it in their (the Israelites) relations with each other, especially those among them who were vulnerable to, or entangled in, nascent or full-on bondage (cf -Isaiah 58 – note the key bondage like words repeated in this oracle). Many laws in the Torah were aimed at preventing the formation of social and economic conditions out of which material / economic forms of bondage emerged. (The assertion in the previous sentence, while not defended here, coalesced in my mind while studying for my course. In a forthcoming publication, I will defend it.)

The Beach and the Mountain Top: Two Horizons of the New Hope

Israel in Egypt was caught in the grip of binding forces stemming from Pharaoh’s imperial power mixed with his economic greed; forces that they could not extricate themselves. This bondage shines light on the historical meaning of justice. They (the Hebrews) needed help to get their life back, i.e. place themselves on a new footing whereby the promise inherent in created existence would be returned to them. The genius in the outcome of Exodus story is that this restoration of the physical, earthly (this-worldly) material conditions necessary to restart the life blessing given in creation must be mixed with something else.

Or one might state that this “something else”, this “new contingency” this “added feature” was there all along but only ‘on the other side of being extricated from Egyptian-Pharaoh bondage, at Sinai was it made open and explicit. On the other side of the Red Sea (‘Reed’ Sea) Israel was re-formed ; formed from a tribe into a unique people for the first time (cf Ex 19). And, but in this re-formation Israel was ‘legally and covenantally incorporated, first and foremost on a new religious (spiritual) foundation and then secondarily on a new ethical, economic, social framework (Exodus 20, Matthew 22:34-40).

The Pinch of the Point

Two main things occurred in this “new something” Here I have chosen to state B before A. What are these two things? (B) This re-organization of Israel ensured that the new beginning created by the Exodus would not revert into bondage. The Torah, I argued in my lessons, contains within it something(s) that intends to immunize Israel from bondage. To be sure Israel had a part to play. They must take this ‘antibiotic’ (take hold of it) and put it to work in their collective body relations so as to ward off bondage. Bondage is sort of like a wanton virus that lurks in the dark in search of environs where weakness or laxity exists. This example is imperfect because the bondage under discussion occurs most often at the nexus where power meets weakness or vice versa (Pharaoh the bondage maker has 1000 different suits he wears to pull the weak into service, many of which lead to bondage. This explanation does not by any means exhaust the Biblical insights of bondage. In my lectures, I went to chapter and verse in the Torah to defend the preceding assertion. In the N T bondage becomes more spiritually perceptive.

Now comes (A) because it is most important. It is, one might state – “elemental” and the ground of (B) By way of this re-formation at Sinai Israel is returned to the “true path”; the path whereby they could recover and freely build and enjoy their material, i.e., their this-worldly existence, and again partake of the blessing impregnated in it. The Hebrew vision of redemption has a residual earthiness. Take for instance this prophetic text “You will build houses and inhabit them, you shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them, you shall not build, and another inhabit you shall not plant, and another reap”. On the other side of the Reed Sea, the shackles of slavery left behind, surely, they turned their attention to this material physical blessing they had hoped through the long days of bondage. But there is a ‘hitch’, a caveat, the small print at the bottom of the page yet to come into the clear light of day.

Soon they will leave the safe shores of the Reed Sea and travel about Eight weeks to Mt. Sinai/Horeb where it all started between Yahweh and Moses at that juncture a spry 80. There at Sinai they will learn more details about their life in Canaan land flowing with milk and honey. Among these details, they will dis-cover, via Moses, the new arrangement upon which this prize existence ultimately rests.

The Torah ‘record’ states that there was a great mass of non-Israelites who were also part of the Exodus standing shoulder to shoulder with Israelites waiting to embrace this future. Almost surely all present on the other side of the Reed Sea were wonderfully focused on a one-dimensional future – the beginning of a free good life on the land. Life’s created promise was soon to be returned to them by this remarkable debut of bondage-breaking justice. Freedom plus land already prepared with wells, houses, orchards, and cultivated fields, was almost surely the horizon of their future.

Sinai is as subtle as a train smash. There the physical material this-worldly future is explicitly shown to rest on a religious ‘spiritual’ foundation (and here I am using ‘spiritual’ only to accentuate that this foundation is not solely material). Yahweh, via his words and power, did not simply show up (via his servant Moses) to face down Egypt’s bondage maker Pharaoh and perform a one-off saving emergency only to retreat; sort of like a prototypical Hollywood Western where Marshall Matt Dillon shows up with his side kick deputy Chester and delivers justice. The deed done, then, after the fact, tipping his hat on the way out he says, “Good luck, remember to contact me if you get in trouble again”.

This is a different kind of justice. Henceforth Yahweh, in his own unique way, becomes the living abiding spiritual foundation of their future. The religious emerges into the open and reveals the invisible ‘spiritual’ ground upon which the visible material/physical plane of human existence ultimately rests. (“Underneath are the everlasting arms” Deuteronomy 33:27 -”God is Spirit” – John 4:24). The Torah given at Sinai makes it clear that God will retain the title to the promised land they will rebuild their lives on and they can never successfully extricate themselves from tenet-steward status. There is no blank check of justice bequeathed in this salvation from Pharaoh’s enslavement. Canaan life and Canaan land is forever cast inside a relation that God has entered into with them to them as their God, a relation via covenant that they must and do enter.

The justice that broke Pharaoh’s bondage only at Sinai is made explicitly clear to have two pieces an out of – and a into piece. Freedom from Pharaoh’s bondage means their former life is now behind them but this past gives way to a new kind of future, a new kind of life unfolding directly before them. Justice births freedom but this freedom is like a coin with two sides -a from side that corresponds to their bondage past and to side that corresponds to a new kind of future. And this new future involves them in a new relation to God and a new relation to each other.

The First Commandment and its prologue capture this past and future. Past: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of bondage”. Future: “you shall have no other gods before me” Exodus 20:2-3) Or switching from the “thou shalt not to the thou shalt” Deuteronomy sums up this future “ “Hear O Israel you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (6:4-5). In time later in Scripture this Deuteronomy verse was combined with another in Leviticus summing up the “Ten Words” (“The Ten Words” is an abbreviation found in the Torah/ Pentateuch) with the above phrase and another in Leviticus – ‘Love your Neighbor as yourself”. Ultimately Justice is not satisfied until freedom finds the life that protects freedom from morphing back into bondage. This is what Sinai is about. And whilst these truths are born inside a story about one particular family on the earth the truths it carries belong to all people on the earth. The bondage breaking God that made his debut in the Exodus indeed is about a justice wedded to freedom but let us listen closely to the unique shaping of these words in their Biblical setting. “Something is happening here Mr Jones but I don’t know what it is” ( The Ballad of a Thin Man -Bob Dylan). But maybe we are starting to grasp it a little. The justice and freedom we seek for ourselves and our world is moving us to be in this world in a new way; namely from a location inside and under this God’s care live out our lives in devoted service and loyalty to him before all others and from thence turn out to others to lift them up as if she or he is our sister, our brother, our neighbor. It may be that no other kind of freedom immunizes against bondage.

In my discussions, I followed my triune bondage-justice-freedom paradigm of Hebrew salvation into the New Testament, both the Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the Apostles, after which we considered two contemporary contexts where the truths we clarified intersect. One context was the Karen plight vis a vis the Tatmadaw and the impending challenge of shaping a new society for a new future. The other was late Modernity in the West referencing U S of A as a case study. In the first draft of this End of 2024 Teaching Ministry Recap I included a summary sketch of these discussions but
eventually, I came to my senses. To overdo is to undo.

Addendum A – Arrival & Departure Movements

Habakkuk 3:17-19

“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” Psalm 23:1

If we follow thanksgiving to its source we discover that it is anchored deeper than our meager or liberal reckoning of God’s blessings that life has brought our way. Ultimately gratitude is not materially caused or sourced. It is rooted in something deeper and higher, namely the invisible God who comes near us via the Spirit and Word wearing a particular suit – our Lord and shepherd. This God who comes near wearing this suit is the one David wrote of in his famous poem -Psalm 23. Note the opening words “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want”. This “I shall not want” ultimately is not rooted in something tangible and material or even social that David could see or feel. Rather it is rooted in David’s and Habakkuk’s presupposition – namely God’s relation to them as their Lord and shepherd. In every leg of his journey through this world, David started with the conclusion, i.e., God was present to him as his shepherd and this presupposition was the ultimate source of his doxology and I believe it is ours as well. 

The sacred text tells us that the invisible God comes near to us as our Lord and comforts and cares for us in lean times as well as prosperous times, in sickness and in health, in the days of our lives when we are alone too much, as well as this times when we are warmly included and surrounded by loved ones and friends; in times of personal failure when we mess up, little or big mess ups, and when we more or less carry the tune and ethic that the Spirit calls us to. Under the conviction of the Spirit and the witness of the Prophetic and Apostolic word, more or less, sometimes more, sometimes less, we are empowered to transcend the temptations to take life straight up, i.e., take it without wearing the sacred lenses. Mistakenly humans often think that they can belly up to the bar and drink life’s most bitter libation or its or its finest champagne without the sacred lens that the Good Book provides. The truth is we like David and Habakkuk need this divine presupposition. Without it our dependence on God will come unraveled, our trust in God disappear, our gratitude to God whither and atrophy. Moreover in the face of life’s changes no one is immune to pride or despair, hardness of heart, or vapid sentimentality. But in using this theoretical, conceptual language like “presupposition” I risk a false headiness as if this is a thinking game; as if we walk around with a divine presupposition in our cerebral hip pocket. Be patient I am not done yet.

If our thanksgiving(s) correlate merely to our ephemeral material, social, family, and economic blessings and these dissipate what will happen to our gratitude? What will become of our thanksgivings when the downside of life comes knocking when inclement weather arrives? When the weather of life changes, just like it swiftly changes in the Highlands in Scotland with scarcely a moment’s notice, as any experienced Scottish hiker knows full well, – what then? Life often spoils our shalom and when this occurs change tempts cheap melancholy or even despair and other toxic ferments. Sooner or later, now and then, expectedly or unexpectedly the weather of our lives changes bringing unwelcome challenges that bait and tease our spirits to open up to those toxins of the soul like anxiety, fear, hardness of heart, bitterness, anger, self-pity, moronic stoicism, and a host of other toxic habits of the heart. But over against these ”there is a river the streams whereof make glad the city (people) of God” (Psalm 46:)  This river that the psalmist writes of, I suggest is more akin to an underground river whose source is the invisible God, who out of freedom and love, has chosen to dwell with us via the Spirit and be present with us as our shepherd.

Yes, it is also true that we are often stirred to gratitude when we see tangible incarnations of God’s gracious care for us along our pathways. But could we see these little incarnations of God’s grace without wearing faith lenses, without the good shepherd presupposition? Thomas, the Gospel of John records (20:29), saw and then believed but Jesus rebuked him saying blessed are those who do not (first) see and believe. John Calvin is reputed to have reminded those under his watch that faith comes through the ear gate (not the eye gate). And Paul tersely stated, “We walk by faith and not by sight”. We often hear the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ but Jesus and the Apostles teach the opposite – believing is the presupposition for ‘seeing’ (discerning) the little yet significant incarnations of God’s gracious care along our path.

Today as I reflect on this Habakkuk text I see a bridge between Thanksgiving and Advent. Matthew, in chapter one of his Gospel,  opens up the mystery of Jesus’ birth by giving us two different names that he was to be identified. The first is “Jesus” taken from the root Joshua, meaning savior. The second name is recorded later in Chapter 1 verse 23 “his name shall be called Emmanuel”.  The meaning of this name the text explicitly states – “God with us”. We need only fill in the blanks and remember that the God who is present as Lord and shepherd is the God who is with us in every hilltop and every valley, notwithstanding the plain (yes the ‘plain’ too -the work-a-day dirty dishes day in and day out routine). If so then the memory verse Peter quoted to those under his charge, “cast all your care upon him for he cares for you”, sheds a little light on the joy and gratitude that both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas call us to re–member.

And here we may ask why for, why “cast all your care on him”?  And here follows part of my response, part of the reason in light of the point at hand. Because when we are weighted down with care, anxiety, and their ‘cousins’ i.e., other toxic habits of the heart we are not free to be grateful or joyful. Connect the dots. Suffering however dumb, stupid, and at cross purposes with the intended shalom of life that it may seem to bring us (the great spoiler of life’s shalom) subtly carries in its pouch like a mother kangaroo carries its treasured baby something hidden – hidden meaning. “The whole do not need a physician,” Jesus said”. Can we find the wellspring of true happiness, joy, and gratitude without it, i.e. without hardships and lean times, without some foul weather? I would never assert that we can’t but via the Spirit, God puts to good use the ugly underbelly of life if and when it shows itself (Romans 8:24). For how do we learn to go past the ephemeral joys unless time to time these shrivel, fail and take leave if only for a season. Here necessity is not so much the mother of invention but via the Spirit suffering (our suffering) can be a tutor and guide leading us past ephemeral pleasures to the imperishable intangible things revealed in the Good Book watered by the Spirit. Their words awakened us to life via the Spirit, calling us to courage, peace, trust, gratitude, and even joy in the midst of prosperity and/or hardship. The God who was present to David as Lord and shepherd, never absent at any juncture or mile marker of his journey, is no less present to us as we journey into and through 2024.

Among the very tangible beautiful this-worldly blessings scattered along the path of our family’s journey through 2023, the most potent gift we received was the arrival of Roxanne, second daughter of Elizabeth Lindsay and Clement and my 5th grandchild.

I am invited back in March of this new year to teach a new class of seniors at KHTS, along with 3 other schools within 60 to 70 miles away. One of these is an undergraduate college KKBBSC inside Mae-La Refuge Encampment, a school I have served many times. Another is Hill Light Seminary which I taught at several times in bygone years. Finally, there is SPHERE which was founded for the sole purpose of studying and rethinking the building blocks of a healthy society. All of these schools are part of a sisterhood of Karen Baptists that grew out of their diaspora 30 years ago when the Myanmar Military, the infamous Tatmadaw, ravaged the towns and villages of their ancient homeland slaughtering tens of thousands, precipitating a massive exodus across the Moei River into Thailand. Once they crossed the border many took refuge in the notorious rugged remote regions of Tak Province near the border.

Seeking a restart to my existenceandfaith.com blog, I have found it right here in this Exodus story and my handwritten notes prepared for the seminal discussions that occurred with the senior KHTS students the last half of July 2023. 

On the evening of July 16, 2023, I arrived in Phop Phra, Thailand, along the western border with Myanmar. The following day, I commenced two weeks of lectures entitled “Let My People Go.” 

Each class was devoted to a lesson developed from a seminal piece of the story of the Israelites’ deliverance from bondage, as recorded in Exodus chapters 1 to 20. Kathoolei Hope Theological Seminary’s (KHTS) President, Dr. Saw Wado, along with the Academic Dean, Wapangrenba Imchen, had invited me to deliver the Exodus lectures, which also included a Sunday preaching service and two evening lectures to the SPHERE Institute. (The SPHERE is an entirely separate corollary educational endeavor put into play by Dr. Wado solely devoted to preparing students for the challenge of building healthy social, economic, and political communities). 

I accumulated a relatively thick stack of hand-written notes from these two weeks. Rather than attempting to word process and post entire lectures or my preaching work, my aim is to share some disparate fragments from this stack of notes, all of which share an interrelated theme. In this maiden posting (posting retart) I open up what this interelated theme. I’ve chosen to circle and explore peradventure so that I might stumble on greater clarity. In the following, the reader will almost certainly conclude I have drifted away or lost the point I set out to make, but the truth be known, I have chosen the scenic route to get where I am going rather than the expressway.

It was my 12th teaching excursion to the schools (my first visit was in 2011), including colleges and seminaries created in the wake of the Karen diaspora from their “Karen State” inside Burma/Myanmar. This diaspora began in earnest about 35 years ago when the Burmese Military, who had gained a stranglehold on political power, turned viral toward the Karen people burning their villages, raping their women, massacring tens of thousands, and laying land minds the wretched consequences I saw with my own eyes. In response, the Karen fought back but also largely vacated their land and fled across the border into Thailand, where they gathered in refugee camps such as the Mae La Camp (Mae La to this day numbers approximately 50K people) situated in the cliffs and mountains of the northern part of Tak Province. Almost immediately upon settling these camps, the Karen formed churches and schools. There have been many camps and many schools over the years. KHTS, however, is brand spanking new. 

KHTS opened its doors during the COVID-19 plague and is now sporting several fine buildings perched on a hillside in the village/district of Phop Phra that faces west toward their homeland a mere four miles away. While grounded in the Christian Baptist tradition and beliefs, KHTS has come into existence at this time and place with a new passion for Justice born out of the long Karen struggle with military rule. Sewn into their historic faith, there is now a self-conscious affirmation of their God-given proper dignity, which has been violated and must cease being violated. Henceforth, the Karen refuse to wear the subjugation and inferiority of their people, not that they were ever cowed by their enemies’ animus and estimate of them. They have always been known as fierce warriors and a strong people. But now, a new taste for Justice has emerged with greater self-conscious awareness. 

The Karen see a new future for themselves that exceeds the days before the diaspora. In this future, the Karen people must be reverenced, their ancient land restored to them. The freedom to rebuild and govern themselves must cease to be usurped by the Tatmadaw, and no Karen voice must be denied their natural God-given right to have a say in shaping this new future. These are merely the basic things of Justice, freedom, dignity, equality, and fraternity needed to protect and nurture the life-giving blessing given to all. But when they are taken away, for those for whom they are taken away, the project of regaining them restarts in earnest with new thought, attention, and more self-conscious passion. 

Indeed, this plight belongs not only to the Karen but to this world in travail, especially the peoples violated and trampled on. This vision of liberation for oppressed and enslaved peoples was born in antiquity by the story of Exodus, carried forward by the Hebrew Prophets and Jesus’ earthly ministry to many in Judea and Galilee captive to guilt, disease, and hopelessness. If any are waiting for the real historical Jesus to please stand up waith no further. Luke has provided the critical piece needed to decifer this riddle. Before commencing his ministry Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted when he came out of this 40 days desert fast he went home to Nazereth and on the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue. This is where his ministry received its job description and was inaugerated. Consider the following text from the Gospel of Luke chapter 4.

Jesus’ deeds of mercy were accompanied by his preaching of the coming Kingdom of God where justice would triumph once and for all. But the history of Jesus and justice in Scripture does not end with his words and deeds. It was not long before Jesus’ ministry stirred up the animus of religious and political leaders of the day who collaborated to shame this messianic charlatan by orchestrating a public humiliation – the final solution to put down this maverick charismatic rabbi who had begun to worry the religious authorities in earnest. Reputedly, Jesus was brewing up a violent revolt against the Romans; this was the religious leaders’ spin sold to the Roman governor Pontius Pilot as well as Herod. 

God has a bias toward those under the heel of malignant powers. The Jews of the day who walked among the people as teachers of the Law and Prophets should have known this. This witness is everywhere in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Fastening Jesus to a wooden crossbar and then lifting it and resting it on an upright stake on a hillside so he could be visible far and wide was a punishment perfectly architected by the Romans to shame messianic mavericks and political revolutionaries by publicly incarnating their impotence before the people. 

This charismatic kingdom preacher and doer of Justice to the oppressed trekking around Judea and Galilee indeed answered to the Hebrew Prophets’ vision of the future. Within the space of three and half years, he had drawn many people into his orbit, especially those excluded, disenfranchised, oppressed, and once hopeless. The antidote used to break his influence over the people and return them to reverential submission to those leaders whose divine calling was to keep things the way they were was nothing less than the cross. Helplessly hanging on the crossbar fixed to an upright stake, Jesus’ influence with the people would surely be broken. 

If this were where the story ended, indeed, the future would have been guaranteed. But God’s plot is deeper than men and women’s devices. The Apostles’ Gospel of God’s resurrection of the crucified Jesus follows on the heels of this lynching a mere 50 days. The Apostolic Gospel declared that the Passover crucifixion gave way to Easter Sunday and that it must not only be understood in light of God’s past of lifting up the oppressed, starting with the enslaved people in Egypt, the first decisive act of God’s Justice, but God’s promised future. Easter Sunday, the Apostles declared, was the debut of God’s promised future in microcosm, the first act in the final drama whereby Justice is restored for the oppressed and all things made new. Their witness was that Easter was and is the breaking in of the new promised future in the midst of this old crooked world.  

I did not start my teaching endeavors in the Karen diaspora by first reading the room and adapting to it. I did not find out what was going on there and then conform to it so that I could fit in as best I could. I did not come to listen to Wado, and the colleagues gathered with him to sing a new song and then, as best I could learn their tune. For a long time, going back to my Ph.D. Thesis, I had been shaping a similar tune. (My Ph.D. Thesis – Beyond Fixity and Freedom: The Relation of Protestantism to the Development of Modernity in North America, was successfully defended at The University St Andrews, St. Mary’s College in Scotland. This work laid the groundwork for me to begin thinking about the importance of the church remaining connected to the modern world whilst remaining substantively differentiated from it -especially in their mutual converse, where central words and meanings like justice, freedom, equality, fraternity, dignity and love seem to, and in fact to a limited degree do overlap).

For a long time, I had been thinking about the promise that the modern world more or less proffered to the world and the challenge that this idealism posed to the church. Modernity born out of the Enlightenment believed in individual rights and liberty (theoretically for all), in the rationality of human beings fitting them to sit in the front seat behind the steering wheel of their lives and make decisions and take actions. This movement of thought and action that coalesced in the 1700’s Europe and then North America, birthed a new radical idea of individual freedom and dignity and reconceived political power on a bottom self-government model. Add to this list their vision of fraternity and equality and the embrace of pluralism in society that these underwrite. These were part and parcel of modernity’s original bequest, albeit they had to be claimed and struggled to incarnate within the new republic that was always for and against this incarnation. 

Not to be overlooked in Modernity’s idealistic debut is justice for all. Eventually, when the downside of the Industrial Revolution began to show itself, Justice was added to Modernity’s original charter of freedom and governance via bottom-up power. Justice was given little attention or development in Modernity’s beginning because the artisans and statesmen heralding its virtues were in the grip of a blind idealism that believed that wherever freedom was restricted, social and economic life remained repressed. But wherever freedom was enfranchised, in the end, all things worked together for the common good. But Laissez-faire economics, while stimulating economic growth x 10, also released a tooth-and-claw instinct for profit and a free-for-all fight to get as much as possible. My point is this: Modernity spawned widespread idealism regarding the fruit it would bear and also, at the same (or in time) considerable pessimism regarding this fruit. Each of these two responses is not in and of itself cleanly separated, one from the other. Cultural pessimism and economic optimism can coexist in one cultural movement.

I am wary of following the ramifications in this discussion further for fear of losing the reason that I have addressed them in the first place. It is this: the Karen simply want what Modernity for 200 years has been preaching and establishing more or less. But here, my interest is the church, especially in the church in the West but also wherever Modernity’s ideas and mission have spread. And they have indeed spread to Burma and to the Karen, especially in the wake of its diaspora and the transgression and violence of the Burmese Military – the Tatmadaw. 

Here follows the pinch of the point. In finding and choosing slices and fragments to post and share from my Phop Phra notes, I am looking for those pieces that more or less intersect the particular challenge that the above analysis points to. Justice lies at the heart of the Biblical witness, and like it or not, Modernity is largely credited with the church’s rediscovery of that fact, or to be precise, Modernity in crisis made a fledgling attempt to add justice to its original charter and succeeded to a degree. Some roots of this 19th and 20th Century movement to combine justice to freedom developed within the outer margins of the church (for instance, in North America, Walter Rauschenbusch, a German Baptist Pastor serving in “Hells Kitchen” NYC). This rediscovery is long overdue. In embracing this rediscovery, there is the potential that the church’s witness will be given a powerful, long overdue impetus to its mission and witness and a corresponding risk of losing the essential uniqueness or God-given saltiness of its witness.

Because the church seems to share, and to some degree does share, common ground with Modernity’s vision for human beings’ individual and social lives to be built on freedom, justice, equality, fraternity, and the dignity of all; and also because the church often exists in places where the people they serve and share their witness are deprived of these principles and yearn for them to be established they (the church) are in danger of uncritically sewing the two together -Modernity’s vision and mission and the church’s mission and witness. The risk is that the Biblical meanings and precedents that inform these words and meanings will be sewn together with the secular Enlightenment meanings broadly carried by the designation “Modernity.”  

My passion, more or less present in my teaching wherever I have gone, is twofold. First, the church will broaden its platform and discover the deep underlying narrative of justice that is woven into its essence from its birth in the Exodus. Indeed, this passion is shared by many, and it is well underway. Prof Wado and the circle of sisters and brothers he’s working with have embraced this shift, and their witness has an advantage because they and their people have been made to drink deeply from the bitter cup of injustice. Second, my passion is that the church that embraces this shift will not confuse Modernity’s justice mission with its own. Indeed, there is an intersection, but ultimately, the two confessions rest on a different theoretical information (i.e., in-formation), different presuppositions about human nature, and for that matter, different theologies obtain, and these bear different fruit. It is the differences that I believe are important to clarify and deepen. But do not misunderstand me; my passion for the church to remember ( re-member again and again in time and place) its difference is not so that it will foment a division with Modernity or “pick a fight with Modernity but ensure that its distinctive light will continue to shine and its salt difference remains potent in its witness and mission. Why? Because when you throw a new white T-Shirt into the wash with a new navy blue sweatshirt, your T-Shirt going to come out blue! And in this illustration, the blue sweatshirt is the modern world.

Martin Marty, the renowned Lutheran church historian who taught at the University of Chicago, wrote, “Everybody wants a seat at the republican banquet”. Republican here obviously refers to that modern shaping of society and politics that came to be informed by Enlightenment presuppositions and the revolutions that appealed to them. My response is “yes and no, Professor Marty”. Many do want a seat at this republican banquet, especially those who have been beaten up time and again by abusive top-down power like the Karen. But no, Professor Marty Modernity’s shaping of society has many discontents not so envious for a seat at this banquet (right or wrong, in my opinion, sometimes right, sometimes wrong).

In my Karen diaspora teaching (however meager), from the get-go, I have wanted to say aloud what the half-healed blind man said to Jesus after his first attempt to heal him: “What do you see?”. The half-healed man replied, “I see men as trees walking.” Therefore, Jesus healed him again and repeated the question. This time, the man replied, “I see trees in their true dimension.” The church’s task, all the more important as it shapes its witness and mission around justice, freedom, equality, and dignity for all, must refuse to see modernity’s mission and message as trees walking. Modernity must be kept in our minds and spirits true to its proper size and import. Modernity is a human project and, as such, always an experiment. An optimistic anthropocentric rationale is presupposed and explicitly stated in modernity’s foundation. Modernity does not possess the foundation stones for the Kingdom of God. Its building blocks have fissures and flaws, and in time, these will see to the fates of all nations that naively, idealistically, and optimistically (blind optimism) put their full weight and hopes on them. The good moral insights in this foundation, and there certainly is much good morality and principle in it, can never make up for the want of character, wisdom, and integrity that persist in the people, especially its leaders who live within it and administer it. And here, an irony pokes its head out of the sand. Most often, character forms when suffering is borne with humility, faith, and hope. But the more the individual prospers materially, enlarges her freedom, and underwrites her ease, the more significant the threat that the Modernity experiment will falter and eventually fail.

I believe that the church rolling up its sleeves and getting about the business of enfranchising freedom, justice, and equality to the oppressed is always important and necessary. And it must be done as it is being done in the name of Christ and the mission he began. The risk I am pointing to here is the danger of the church succumbing to distortions that start seeing modernity through religious eyes. Modernity’s project works best when its signature virtues are kept cool, real, practical, and inside mature experience and wisdom, in short, inside their true human mortal dimension. They are not, in the form that the Enlightenment bequeathed them to us, the foundation stones of the Kingdom of Heaven.

I believe the church, alert to the climate that Modernity has created, must exploit the opportunity by taking the conversation and mission of justice, freedom, and fraternity to a new level where deeper unique meanings, and deeper healing individually and collectively are dis covered and put into play. The church whose eyes have been touched by Christ will not see Modernity’s mission as trees walking. The church that remains the church to the world has undergone a second healing (perhaps repeatedly).

This healing is only possible when it finds and re-finds the distinctive Biblical meaning, beauty, and depth of these things that we, with the world, call justice, liberty, dignity, equality, and fraternity. The church is not in conflict with Modernity’s social, political, and individual mission. The world, not the church, started this conversation when Modernity made its debut. It is good and proper that the church attend to this conversation and the meanings in these words, but not without drawing from its treasure chest of truth. Jesus said, “The faithful steward brings out his treasure things new and old.” “There is a river that makes glad the people of God .”The church has its own treasure chest to explore to inform and strengthen its faith and its own river to drink from to refresh itself lest it tire in its mission. But the blessing gained from these is to be given to the world ( Genesis 12:1-3 “I will bless you so that you may bless the world.”)

Without vigilance to return to Scripture and find and re-find the distinctive meanings inseminated in these common words, meanings, and missions that the church shares with the secular modern world, the church will devolve into a handmaiden to Modernity’s mission only to wake up one morning and realize no substantive difference obtains and that all the while Jesus and Jefferson were singing in the same choir and playing in the same band. If they were indeed really and actually compatriots, that’s fine, but the truth is they were not. Jesus’ revolution and Jefferson’s were and are different, and I believe understanding this and keeping this difference in play is important. Our job is not to reform, displace, or correct Modernity’s mission but to be true and faithful to Christ’s mission – keep his salt difference alive and his light on the lamp stand, not under the table. 

As the pillars of Modernity falter and, in some places, fail, the church will succumb to two temptations alive in the world: the first is to try and help save Modernity’s experiment, and the second is to damn it like Putin and his compatriots foreign and domestic. Our job is neither. Modernity’s idealism is a great place to build a bridge that points to the coming Kingdom of God, a hope that is no paralytic narcotic but one that provokes real change here and now. Indeed, as Wado knows better than I, the church’s hope, when and where it is rightly preached and taught, offends the powers that be because they are invested in keeping things the way they are. The fruit of the Prophetic and Apostolic Gospel witness to hope is change here and now, a peculiar kind of change, namely preparatory change to meet that day when “the meek will inherit the earth” and”They will build houses and inhabit them; they will plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They will not build, and another inhabit, and they will not plant, and another eat.” – Isaiah 65:21-22

In the postings in the weeks to come, my aim is to sort through my Phop Phra, KHTS July 17 to 28, 2023 notes and fragments that intersect some aspect of the discussion I have opened here. The themes embedded in the Exodus story provide material for thinking carefully about justice, freedom, community, the limits of political power, and many corresponding and tangential issues and truths surrounding these. Where we start matters. The setting and meaning these truths have in the Exodus story, I believe, possess a difference, even a strangeness, that could potentially help and guide the church here and now. But if we amputate or domesticate this strangeness for sure, they will do us no good. But if we follow after this strangeness by the mercy of God, we might “find grace and help in time of need.”

Seeking a restart to my existenceandfaith.com blog, I have found it right here in this Exodus story and my hand written notes prepared for the seminal discussions that occurred with the senior KHTS students the last half of July 2023. 

 “

“Something is happening here Mr Jones but I don’t know what it is”.

(In reading this posting please do not get your exercise jumping to conclusions – this article has not been written to align Left or Right. Christian truth can and must be freed from Right – Left captivity . When Jesus spoke in his day he often offended the Zealots, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees but called the humble of heart to open to the light truth and way of faith).

One of the pastors connected to St John’s Episcopal Church (nicknamed The Presidents’ Church ) a woman, nailed it. Bob Dylan whined blending his harmonica and voice “something is happening here Mr Jones but I don’t know what it is”. But she did. When our president staged a photo op in front of the church holding the Bible, unwittingly, he incurred the condemnation of the third commandment of Ten Commandments.

Most comments about what was going down in front of St. John’s fell wide of the mark but this pastor (a Bishop) cut through the haze and named it. She said something to the effect that he had wrapped himself in the religious symbols of the church and the Bible for political purposes. I agree with her. I think one way to clarify what was going down in that photo op can be summarized by the third commandment ( of the Ten Commandments) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”. While she did not reference the third commandment, (I have lost the reference of her statement), without mentioning it, I believe she caught wind of the meaning of the profanity it addresses and applied it to what went down in front of St John Episcopal.

What is the Meaning of the Third Commandment?

What does it mean to “take my name in vain”? I once bought a piece of business property in upstate New York. I remember the first time I swung open the garage door I was greeted with a printed 8×10 inch sign posted on the inside that read “Jesus Christ is the Lord of humanity not a word of profanity :thou shalt not take the Lord your God in vain“. For the most part I think this understanding of the 3rd commandment dominated American culture in the 19th Century well into the 20th Century. And I do not actually fault that application, although in a post Christian America of today few who carelessly use God’s name in vain, making judgments, calling down curses, do so without any thought that that the language they employ is holy, or that this language actually adds any divine weight to their curse on another or on a thing (if that were even possible). I think such curses are largely spoken for their emotive effect. Regardless, either way, I believe the 3rd commandment is weighing in on a more serious issue.

The Seedbed Out of Which the Transgression of the Third Commandment Grows: The Blindness of Power and the Desperation that Derives from Weakness

The essence of the meaning of this commandment is captured in one simple idea. God is saying in this commandment “do not appropriate or use my name for any personal or collective purpose. My name has ultimate power and integrity and these belong to me and me alone. There are times when you will wish that you could connect my name and its power to your cause or need or threat. Don’t do it. If you do it I will punish you.”

The Third commandment is about minding the gap!’. God is in heaven we are on earth. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways my ways says the Lord, as far as heaven is above the earth so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts and my ways your ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

The profanity addressed in this commandment lies in human beings propensity and presumption to align God with their cause, plan, purpose or mission rather than the other way around. God’s word to us requires that we organize ourselves around God’s will to the best of our understanding and ability. The posture of a person’s alignment with God’s will is one of humble obedience. Or to quote the Bible verse that the great Christian thinker and writer Soren Kierkegaard quoted more than any other, not mere simple obedience but an obedience marked by inner weakness and dread is called forth. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and do according to his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12&13). Any act of bold showmanship of one’s alliance with God’s truth and will embodied in the book is antithetical to a real alliance with God’s truth and will embodied in the book, communicated through the Spirit creating uncomfortable conviction within us. Such showmanship smacks of the profanity that the third commandment addresses.

“Do not take my name…” but I believe our President in this instance did. This is not a political attack . It is meant to shine light on the propensity almost every leader, at one time or another, is overcome by when his or her integrity or power with the people comes up short. There is a proverb that states “one must swing hard with a dull ax”. The Third Commandment addresses the phenomena betrayed in this proverb, only the aggression or transgression crosses a line because it is a desperate attempts to align oneself with a power and integrity that belongs only to God. The president may have done what he did in front of St John’s Episcopal church in order to strengthen his standing with Christians and buttress his authority and actions in a politically turbulent and polarized climate. He may have been feeling a strong social head wind blowing against himself. But by positioning himself for a photo op in front of St John’s Episcopal church our president brazenly and publicly imported the symbols of Christian truth  (the Bible as the word of God) and the church (as his agent of God’s truth) to his leadership. Was this an attempt to buttress his leadership in general and his law and order response to shut down the Black Lives Matter protest movement in particular?

But my motive here is not political but ethical and religious. No matter whether leaders in the church lean Right or Left they are called on to speak not only truth to power, as is often heard in political discourse today, but God’s truth to power.

This photo op at Lafayette Square very well may have been a ‘Hail Mary’ pass. Here we might learn something about the temptation that propels us humans to transgress this 3rd commandment and to ignore the push back that is embedded within it, for the commandment contains a blunt push back aimed at warding off the temptation to profane God’s name. And this prohibition is backed up with a unwelcome promise – “I will not hold anyone guiltless who takes my name in vain”. These days in America this commandment is most often forgotten and ignored. But its relevance is timeless and this push back is there for a reason. It predicts a peculiar kind of transgression that keeps coming back around from antiquity, when the Ten Commandments were codified, to the present. The threat attached to the prohibition excites the imagination – God’s name, just like your name or my name is not something anyone has the right to latch hold of and identify one’s speaking and acting with, it belongs to oneself. This is a boundary issue and if and when one crosses over this boundary or trespasses it she or he will be punished.

Most often it is a particular situation or climate which tempts one to trespass this commandment. There are moments when the integrity of one’s life is under a threat of one kind or another, and this threat or challenge, whether explicit or subtle, is always a public threat even if the ‘public’ here is 2 people or 350 million people. Most importantly it is the means to supply what is wanting in one’s integrity, wanting vis a vis one’s name, i.e. one’s ability to meet the particular challenge that that is under the magnifying glass. It is at such intersections in life men and women are tempted to reach beyond themselves; reach all the way from earth to heaven and presume to identify God, God’s good and holy name and God’s truth and authority with their name and their way that can no more stand on its own. (‘Holy” signifying its a name we cannot domesticate but must revere).

What is in this taking of the Lord’s name in vain (profanity) that requires it be attached to a stern warning? Why does the commandment warn us that if we trespass this commandment God will not hold us guiltless, that there will be consequences? I believe it is because transgressing this commandment involves us in a serious offense. It addresses a bold presumption that often stems from the intoxicating influence inordinate power has on one’s minds and spirit . Or just the opposite, an action driven by the desperation created by extremities that impinge upon a person, extremities that a person cannot of his own resources extricate himself. The strength of God’s name must be understood vis a vis the weakness of a person’s name under duress in a particular situation.

This is the kind of sin that king David recognized was especially serious and therefore prayed that he would never fall into (Psalm 19:13). It is essentially a form of robbery, and the theft is not a mere Mars Bar taken from the corner grocery but a quick grab to steal the integrity of God’s name and identify it with one’s own public accounting before others. It involves us in direct violence against God because it attempts to violate God’s ‘holy’ name and use it by taking it and publicly identifying it with our name, our life, our actions, our projects and missions. It is an attempt to involve God in, and align him with, our folly. If God allowed this his name would soon be worth nothing. It would not be holy it would be common.

The climate that this temptation grows out of derives from both a false strength, i.e. presumption, and also real weakness. Presumption blinds one to the existence of a gap. Those who possess power are easily blinded to the gaps, the deep differences between themselves and others and also God. People in power often think and act as if they are above the law that the ‘commoners’ are under and here in this context it is not only human laws but God’s laws (Where are the John Knoxs’ of the church today? Knox stood eye ball to eye to Mary Queen of Scots, called ‘Bloody Mary’ and called her to repentance risking her wrath and his life).

On the other hand it is not only power, and the blindness that is endemic to it, that makes women and men of power vulnerable to the temptation to breach this commandment, but also public weakness of one’s good name. This is the heart of my argument and lesson at hand. I repeat when the integrity of one’s name falls short to carry the moment one faces, when one’s bank account that stores and measures one’s moral authority is in the red, when one’s public power to effect one’s will and passion is wanting, it is then that one is vulnerable to the temptation to reach beyond oneself for a better higher name that could buttress and enhance one’s name and actions.

The third commandment addresses the oldest trick in the book. In times of extremity when one’s power comes up short and a person is not able to win those he or she leads then it is that religion’s holy symbols embodying a higher authority are imported by the leader.  The leader need simply identify himself with God’s good and righteous name, his will and authority. What harm could there be in making a little transfer from God’s moral bank account and put it into one’s own account ? after all the end justifies the means.

What happened on Lafayette Square?

In my reading herein lies the pinch of the point regarding the public events that took place in Lafayette Park in Washington D C this week (June 5, 2020) between our nation’s president and the peaceful protest occurring there. Again and again over the course of history God’s name and God’s will have been imported by Ecclesial and political leaders’ to maintain civil and social control so as to resist needed change. Add the leverage of heaven to one’s earthly endeavors and people are more likely to heel. Some things are easier if divine leverage is introduced into the mix. This is the intersection that this commandment addresses. Jurgen Moltmann’s work on hope shows that religion has all too often farmed out God’s name, and the sanctity of the church’s religions influence, and authority that derives from it, to political leaders’, princes and prelates, kings and queens’ to help them silence the cries of people seeking redress and change on the side of justice.

Was this another attempt by the state to join itself to religion to legitimize its resistance to a movement by the people calling for needed change and redress to a systemic abuse of power that has persisted for a long long time? At Lafayette Square did the state again do as it has done off and on for not merely 2000 years but from antiquity –  attempt to wed itself to a higher transcendent power – God’s name and God’s truth, in order to legitimize its resistance to change and justice?

Time will tell. In God’s economy as long as life remains hope endures. It is never too late for repentance to take hold of the people of this country far and wide and also take hold of its leaders Right as well as Left, and also that portion of the police force needing reform (re formation or new formation), to effect a just an equitable transformation of police power. 

It should be noted that trespassing this 3rd commandment entangles not only individual persons, but the church and its leaders, and the state and its leaders, in one of God’s unwanted promises. “I will not hold him guiltless who takes my name in vain” ”(Exodus 20). God, the good book assures us, is “no respecter of persons”(Acts 10:34) therefore wisdom is called for and “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

The imprisoned Apostle Paul said to King Agrippa “ do you believe the Prophets ?…I know that you do” And so it should be asked of both our church and political leaders, Right and Left, today “do you believe the Prophets and if so then open that good book so dandily show cased on Lafayette Square and begin reading the Prophets passionate call to give justice to oppressed peoples, read the very verses about delivering justice Jesus quoted from the Prophets when he inaugurated his earthly ministry (Luke 4:16-19). There is a foundation here to transcend the Right – Left divide, and, as Micah asserts,  “this is what God requires of you – do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God”.

Herein lies the pinch of the point regarding the public events that took place in Lafayette Park in Washington D C this week ( June 5/20) between our nation’s president and the peaceful protest occurring there. Again and again over the course of history God’s name and will have been used by Ecclesial and political leaders’ to maintain civil and social control so as to resist needed change. Add the leverage of heaven to one’s earthly endeavors and people are more likely to heel. Some things are easier if divine leverage is introduced into the mix. This is the intersection that this commandment addresses. Jurgen Moltmann’s work on hope shows that religion has all too often farmed out God’s name, and the sanctity of their religions influence, and authority that derives from it, to political leaders’, princes and prelates, kings and queens’ to help them push back in the name of law and order and silence forces seeking redress and change on the side of justice.

Was this another attempt by the state to join itself to religion to legitimize its resistance to a movement by the people calling for needed change and redress to a systemic abuse of power that has persisted for a long long time. At Lafayette Square did the state again do as it has done off and on for nearly 2000 years –  attempt to wed itself to a higher transcendent power – God’s name and God’s truth, in order to legitimize its resistance to change and justice?

Time will tell. In God’s economy as long as life remains hope endures. It is never too late for repentance to take hold of the people of this country far and wide and also take hold of its leaders Right as well as Left, and also that portion of the police force needing reform (re formation or new formation), to effect a just an equitable transformation of police power. 

It should be noted that trespassing this 3rd commandment entangles not only individual persons, but the church and its leaders, and the state and its leaders, in one of God’s unwanted promises. “I will not hold him guiltless who takes my name in vain” ”(Exodus 20). God, the good book assures us is “no respecter of persons”(Acts 10:34) therefore wisdom is called for and “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

The imprisoned Apostle Paul said to King Agrippa “ do you believe the Prophets ?…I know that you do” And so it should be asked of both our church and political leaders, Right and Left, today “do you believe the Prophets and if so then open that good book you so dandily show case and begin reading the Prophets passionate call to give justice to oppressed peoples, read the very verses about delivering justice Jesus quoted from the Prophets when he inaugurated his earthly ministry (Luke 4:16-19). There is a foundation here to transcend the Right – Left divide and as Micah asserts –  “this is what God requires of you – do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God”.

The 3rd Commandment and the Gospel

There are always two choices, two roads. The one is captured by the Pharisee who went to the temple to pray and said “God I thank you that I am not like other men“. In these words, almost explicitly, and surely spoken with confidence, the Pharisee presumed to identify himself as existing inside a special fraternity with God because he basically spoke for God.. The Pharisee failed to mind the gap. In a word he assumed that he could safely identify himself with God. His morality and God’s were the same A to Zed. Thinking about his words we picture the two (the Pharisee and God) wrapped in happy comradery in the Pharisee’s mind .

Or there is a second way, one captured by an old Protestant hymn, “Naked I come to thee for dress”. This latter refrain expresses why we go to church and open the book, namely that by some grace God will speak to us and show us our distance from him and his way per adventure we can find the way again and soldier on best we can. And this is also what Jesus Christ is about. The Jesus Christ that is presented and preached to us in the Gospel prevents the unfounded identification of any person’s life, way and mission with God, whether high or low, a king or a popper.  All one can say is “I believe x y z actions and words are according to God’s will, I hope and pray that they are, God help me so that my short fall will cause no harm, may God’s forgiveness and grace rest upon my words and actions”.

Before we “sing nearer my God to thee” we best learn to find our distance and how and where we can bridge this distance without destroying it and then draw near. The Tax Collector felt the distance and went to the temple to pray  “God be merciful to me a sinner”. This distance is in everyone more or less. The Pharisee presumed there was no fundamental moral difference between himself and God. There was and there is in all of us, whether pope or friar, pastor of thousands or  the Sunday School teach of a mere six in the class a profound gap between her or him and God.

Jesus Christ for Christians is the name of this God – human meeting place and rightly understood the antidote to ill-founded identification between oneself and God – i.e. profanity. There can be no fusion, no identification between God’s name and our way and our name. There can only be a provision of costly grace that God provides thereby making it possible for saints (so called) and sinners to be able to draw near to God and find comfort and correction.  

In ourselves we enjoy no direct identification with God no matter how good or great or moral, or necessary or God blessed we believe our purpose to be. God has chosen to come near to us in a way that preserves God’s unbridgeable otherness and difference and this is the meaning of Jesus Christ. The fraternity with God that grace empowers does not mean our way and God’s way are perfectly aligned, it means that despite the fact they never are perfectly aligned through Christ we live inside God’s kindness and love and suffer the correcting abrasion of his holy difference without it destroying  or hardening us.

Heeding this commandment means to mind the gap. It means to reverence the gap between God and God’s way and ours. It means we should resist all attempts to suggest that God endorses our ways and identifies with our actions and words, that the stamp of his authority rests on our actions and words. The third commandment is smack dab in the opening phrases of the Lord’s prayer – “Our father who are in heaven hallowed be your name. The holiness of God’s name marks a boundary. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.”

“For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. 8 But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath”, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 1:3-4 ; Thessalonians 5:7-9 New American Standard Bible)

“Put on the Helmet of Hope”

A Lesson From Peter’s Experience and Paul’s Pedagogy

Pandemic Easter, April 12, 2020

Preface

The events the entire world is now going through are unique to everyone living at this time.  There may be a slight exception to the totality of this statement.  Very few people are alive who, as very young children, experienced the Spanish Flu pandemic that began in 1918 and raged for very close to two years.   But now a new unwieldy plague has broken out, and thus far, we have no read antidote.  Spreading with little hindrance from one to another in leaps and bounds, it is infecting millions (to date at the posting of this missive 2.2 million) and killing over 146,000 young, middle age, and older people.  Daily we are updated on the havoc and ruin it brings to families and cities, robbing the hopes and dreams of many.  Beyond all the small steps we can take to shelter ourselves from this plague, there is another spiritual lesson that needs to be brought into sharper focus.  We need not only hopes and dreams for fulfilling our lives here and now and tomorrow, as fragile and fleeting as these often are, but greater enduring hopes that go beyond this worldly horizon.  Easter speaks to this latter hope and our response to it.

In this Easter lesson, I link two passages from the New Testament, one from Peter and the other from Paul. In the first passage, we listen to Peter’s words taking care to notice that they infer the disciples’ loss of their hopes and dreams before a new birth of hope. The Easter hope emerged. The second passage by Paul uses a vivid metaphor to convey to us how vulnerable we are to spiritual harm if we had not attended to and taken up the Easter hope that the Apostles experienced before they made it the centerpiece of their gospel. Peter states this pivotal piece of the unique apostolic experience when he writes, “he caused us to be born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” This meditation looks behind ‘again’ and asks why ‘again’? ‘Again’ implies a second go at hope. Paul tells us hope is a helmet that protects us. To help us grasp how it does this, we look at Peter’s experience and then our own.* (Note as regards hope as it is used in this article think not of hoping a verb, but of hope a noun, in the framework under consideration the noun empowers the verb.)

Coming into Passover weekend, Peter and the others had a hope, but their hope smashed up on Friday evening when Jesus was literally strung up on a cross*. Evidently, obviously their pre -Passover hope was not well aligned with the future that Jesus had been trying to teach them and form in their minds. In actuality, stupidity is not due to a lack of intelligence. When people do not get something they are taught, it is not because it’s too complicated but because it doesn’t fit their pre-existing ideas. The disciples had hope about how the future would work out, but they were a work in progress. Pre-existing ideas of the messianic kingdom alive in their world colored and influenced their thinking. In fact, studies have shown a linkage between many of Jesus’ disciples and the Zealot movement’s brand of hope alive and well in the 1st Century. The Jewish people were in bondage to Roman rule. They were not a happy free people. 1st Century Judaism is a seedbed for hope, and the Prophetic message canonized in the Hebrew Bible around the time of the Babylonian Captivity 5th BC was rich with messianic images and prophesies.

There were several brands of Kingdom hope on the market in the time of Christ. It may be at least partly true, if not entirely true, that Jesus’ rabbinical – disciple undertaking was carried out by calling his core followers from that lot of men who were Zealot sympathizers and then transform their ideas of ‘kingdom’, the organizing concept and word for his teaching bar none, and a word the Zealots publicly embraced and refused to shy away from even though it waved a red flag in the face of the Romans.* There were profound differences between the Zealots vision of the kingdom and Jesus but none more important than how this kingdom would be formed – by violent action led by a messianic figure versus a messianic figure who embodied nonviolent passion and vicarious suffering for all, including the People of God’s enemies. Jesus embodied and taught the latter vision, but the disciples could not really grasp a kingdom constructed in this way and this is why their hope would not survive Passover weekend.

“Born again to a living hope” Implies that the disciples had a pre-existing hope that had obviously not survived. Passover and Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius* was for them, at that time, the end of hope and the end of Jesus’ imminent ‘kingdom’ proclamation – period! The signal that the Jesus Kingdom Movement was dead in the water – finished, was the sign that Pilate had nailed over the cross while Jesus was dying, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”. Their kingdom hope was dead but also along with this something else died. Intertwined with this kingdom hope the disciples had formed personal hopes else why do we read about so much quarreling and strife among them over who is going to sit on the right hand and the left hand of power when Jesus comes into his kingdom! No matter what Jesus was telling and teaching them they imagined that they had tickets on the glory train and were busy, almost to the last minute, jockeying for the best seat for the ride. Suffice it to state this hope, which I have taken the freedom here to dub ‘hope one’, never made it into the present tense. In fact, it was cruelly and abruptly dashed to smithereens. Not one shred of it remained by the time the sunset on Friday.

But my reason for focusing the text in this way, albeit legitimately so, is to address the spiritual danger the disciples were immediately thrust into when hope one smashed up and before hope two was born and commenced to grow sufficient to gain form. To be caught holding the ashes of one’s hopes with no new hope in reach is a dangerous place to be. And for a while that is where the disciples found themselves. In this place there is no question in my mind that they were visited with the spiritual demons called ‘Disillusionment’,’ Fear’, ‘Despair’, ‘Regret’, ‘Shame’, ‘Anger’, ‘Bitterness’ which is hardness of heart, ‘Nihilism’ and even ‘Suicide’ (cf Judas). Before the events turned dark, at the edge of darkness, gathered at the Last Supper, Jesus turned to Peter and told him what was about to happen to him that the devil “desired to sift him like wheat but that he prayed that his faith would not (ultimately) fail” (Luke 22:32). Before them lay the shattering of their hope.

This is where my second text comes into play. In what scholars conclude is his very first epistle, I Thessalonians, Paul writes about the importance of putting on the helmet of hope. The hope of which he writes is without question hope 2, the Easter hope of which Peter writes in our first passage under consideration. Helmets protect one’s body, namely one’s head from harm. Whether it is a bicycle helmet, a motorcycle helmet, a construction helmet, or as in the context Paul is using it, part of a soldier’s amour to protect him in battle. The protection of one’s head from harm’s way is a helmet’s purpose. Once Peter and the disciples’ hope was destroyed, they were in harm’s way. They had been with Jesus three and a half years, saw his power and charisma, opened wide to his message of the kingdom that he would bring in, sacrificed the comforts of family, the security of their jobs and thrown in with him. Their expectations were high, their confidence in the future unshaken and no more than in the week leading up to Passover when the Gospel record states he spoke with such boldness and power he seemed invincible and unstoppable and Jesus’ Kingdom movement seemed to be gaining irreversible momentum. What goes up must come down and be sure by sunset Friday after the awesome power of Rome was deployed to end the Jesus’ Messianic’ movement (altogether misunderstood by everyone inside and outside the movement) the disciples were thrust into a deep, dark valley of confusion and despair. What they needed was something to protect them from the great spiritual harm that always results when women and men suffer the dissolution of great hopes. They needed what they soon received “hope 2”, the Easter hope that Peter writes would not perish, become defiled or fade away under the pressures, adversity and hostility of the forces in this world that often seem to be and really are arraigned against even the best of human hopes.

The Easter hope recommends itself for what it is and how it was formed. It was forged and extruded under the pressure of unjust suffering and death by what Luke identifies as “the ‘Lord’s Christ (i.e. messiah)’ anointed by God to “make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). In doing this, the Gospel asserts, “he (Christ) destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light” (2 Timothy 1:10). The big obstacle hindering the realization of the Jews kingdom hopes, at the time of Christ, in their reckoning, was the Imperial power of Rome who had subjugated them under their rule. Add to this physical obstacle the ‘gospel’ of the Pharisees who ultimately blamed the Jews bondage to Roman rule to another reason. To receive God’s promised blessing, the prophetic promise of the kingdom, the people of God needed to be truly holy. This holiness came by way conforming to the dictates of the Torah and practicing a clean social- physical separation from the encroachment of Gentiles among them. Mixing with the pagan ways of the Gentiles had, according to their read of the Prophets and the Law, lost them God’s blessing and protection and trammeled the fulfillment of the prophetic promises. Therefore, in order to overturn the curse and release the promised blessing they must set themselves apart, i.e. sanctify themselves literally from the Gentiles and their ways. This they did with a vengeance.

The main obstacles that hinders the realization, fulfillment and firm establishment of Gentile hopes (i.e. non religious -non Biblical hopes) then and now, from the standpoint of human logic and experience, are the fickle forces of history, nature, and the power that are lodged in these. The forces of history simply get in the way and stymy hop). But the obstacle that thwarts God’s hope for humanity, Jew and Gentile, and his will to restore the full blessing and harmony of life, lies not in history or nature or religio-moral achievement or sanctification but in Godself. The Judeo-Christian vision of God that comes to view in Scripture is one wherein God is fundamentally estranged from humanity on account of humanity’s location, namely, their separation and autonomy from God as Lord. This autonomy is always and continually incarnated in the spirit and action of more or less everyone. This separation is present in the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The Kingdom’s coming is predicated on something coming together that is now in tension or schism – the will of God presently perfected in heaven established on earth. And this is suggested in the New Covenant which states the prophetic promise as follows. (‘Then’, when that time comes)” I will be their God and they will be my People” “I will write my laws in their hearts and I will forgive their sins”.

Herein lies the pinch of the point. The Easter hope emerges because via One, alone, by himself, the one standing for the many, in their place, bears their curse and restores the conditions of life and blessing.  In him the curse is reversed, the breach healed and the blessing of life for evermore brought near. The Prophetic promise of life made its debut Easter morning because on the cross that separation was overcome. The Apostolic Gospel is a herald of hope’s arrival in and through the messiah the Christ and a call for faith and repentance before what is now a reality in Christ is fully bestowed. This is in a nutshell the Christian Gospel of hope.

Easter emerged on the other side of passover with an enduring kingdom hope secure within its firm grip. This hope the Apostolic Gospel extends to all of humanity precisely because the Messiah healed this breach between God and humanity, the one for the many. The new birth of hope of which Peter writes in his Epistle cannot now be overturned. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is not a voyeuristic miracle to be gazed upon. Rather it signifies the arrival of God’s hope for us, literally God’s promised future, even as we wait for its full bestowal (Easter is the presence of the future in and through the Christ – messiah).

Meantime, that is to state, in light of the arrival of the future in the Messiah and the imminence of its full bestowal, our task is relatively simple all things considered. First and foremost Scripture calls us to put on the helmet of this hope and wait for the Kingdom’s full and complete bestowal thereby refusing to fall into the spiritual grip of the problems and pleasures that come our way in the journey of life. Add to this one logical deduction – repent of any and all ways in our life and in our world that are contrary to this kingdom, thereby integrating our lives best we can into what the Gospel asserts is a present but hidden reality in Christ soon to be manifested and established.

These prose in the last two paragraphs inquire into the Biblical reasons behind the emergence of the Easter hope and as such slightly stray from the main point of the vesper lesson. The mainstay of the devotion argued that without hope, an enduring hope, one that does not fade away (as Peter states in the very next verse -1 Peter 1:4), sooner or later in one’s journey it will become almost, if not impossible, to keep from falling into the grip of the present whether ‘good’, bad or ugly. Once the present becomes the be all and end all the good in it spoils us whereas the bad in it embitters us. The Easter hope makes relative both the evil that afflicts us and also the good that brings us happiness and pleasure. As such hope ensures that the good things of life do not become the best things and spoil us or the bad things gain too much magnitude and fill is up with toxic negative spirits. 

End Notes

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”. Martin Luther King.

*  The cross piece with the victim attached to it, was literally hoisted up and fastened to the preexisting stake. Thus the phrase strung up or as Scripture states ‘hung’ is correct. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” Galatians 3:13 Paul quoting the Torah

* Galilee, next door to Judea, housed a hotbed of Zealots. Most of Jesus’ disciples were from Galilee

Taken From the Live Easter Zoom Missive Notes Partially Shared April 12, 2020

Preface

During the four weeks of February (2020) Dr Dan traveled from Mae Sot, Thailand by way of a pickup line bus approximately one hour and 40 minutes north into to mountains to Mae La Refugee Camp where KKBBSC is located in Section C. The Camp is not small. Over 50,000 Refugees from the Karen State live in this encampment. Mae La has been sanctuary for Karen people driven from their homeland over 25 years ago. KKBBSC’s enrollment remains over 400 students. If the threat of violence from the Burmese army was truly past and new agreements were to be signed ensuring peace and security the Karen would gladly return and reclaim their homeland and rebuild their lives.  I was asked to preach for three chapel services during February. Each of my preaching lessons were devoted to a particular aspect of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. The following article is crafted from my pulpit notes of my first devotion preached on February 10^th

“ By faith he (Moses) forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” (Hebrews 11:27 ASV) “We walk by faith and not by sight”  (2 Corinthians 5:7)

The Spiritual Roots of Fear and Courage: Lessons from Moses Encounter With Pharaoh (Part One)

There are junctures and intersections in our journey through this world when life ‘heats up’. Consider Moses. Seemingly by the luck of the draw he not only was miraculously saved from Pharaoh’s sword as a baby boy, simultaneously he was destined to become swaddled and trained inside the luxury of kings court and enjoy the king’s comforts and favor. He would know nothing of the want and ruin of Goshen ghetto existence with its brutal slavery. But as a young man with the wind at his back and great promise before him his fortunes  suddenly changed. It all started with a flash of anger, a momentary eruption of misguided zeal to right a wrong that he had no right to settle. Judge, jury and executioner, trespassing beyond his rightful place, he privately and secretly administered justice to an abusive Egyptian soldier who was mercilessly beating up on a Hebrew slave. Afterward Moses buried the soldier in the sand. Confident that neither the deed nor evidence would come to light he assuaged his conscience. But like most secrets his transgression refused to remain hidden. And once the news reached the king Moses’ coveted favor with him abruptly disappeared and in its place wrath and vengeance.  

At that precise moment life for Moses heated up and anxiety, dread and fear came knocking. Life is like the happenstance depicted in this story. There are junctures and intersections that one arrives at that, for fault of one’s own doings, or absolutely no fault of one’s own doings, the shalom of life tethers and breaks under one’s feet and then one is exposed to forces that threaten to undo him. And in this scenario the forces that threatened Moses were far greater than any push back he could muster.

Moses was in over his head. His internal and external resources to meet this thing that faced him were far too puny to make a difference. No doubt anxiety, dread and fear came knocking and struggled for the mastery. What prevented these toxic ferments from taking residence within him and overcoming him? This question is subtly lodged in our text  (Hebrews 11:27). Where did Moses get the solidity of mind and spirit to endure the wrath of the king, forsake the comforts of Egypt and abandon himself to an uncertain and precarious trek into the desert?

This is where Hollywood and the Bible part ways on this story (cf Charlton Heston). No doubt Moses was groomed and trained physically and mentally in the royal courts. Certainly this should not be discounted, however, to focus on this fitness is to miss the real antidote to fear that the writer of Hebrews points to. Ultimately faced with the wrath of the king Moses did not succumb to fear, nor was he overcome with despair in his wilderness flight. The text simply states  “By faith Moses forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured seeing him who is invisible”.

“He endured seeing him who is invisible”, in this terse phrase is the seed of a great truth. There is a dialectic between the seen and the unseen, which, while important and vital at all times, is especially important when life heats up. Pharaoh’s wrath suddenly erupted. It became the elephant in the room. It was immediate, up close and personal bearing down on Moses like a freight train. If he was not to be overcome by fear Moses must not only see the threatening situation that was immediately and directly and visible in front of him, he must also, as it were, see something that was invisible.What if Moses only had ‘singular’ vision? According to the thesis presented here he would have lost his courage. But the text states that “he endured seeing him who is invisible”.

By faith Moses saw the invisible, while facing the visible. Seeing the visible, i.e. that which is directly and immediately at hand must be joined together with faith sight that enables one at the same time and place to see the invisible.  Herein is my thesis, what God joined together let no one put asunder. If Moses would not have had glasses of faith that enabled him to see the invisible God who was for him and with him sooner or later he would have succumbed to fear and despair.

All through life’s journey, but especially when life heats, we need eyes of faith. With eyes of faith we see our lives inside the circumference of God who is with us and for us. When this vision comes into focus the magnitude of the things that we see directly and immediately do not cease to exist rather they are dramatically downsized. Pharaoh with all his power to do Moses harm was downsized! With these faith glasses on Moses had the inner freedom and courage to do what he had to do. It is the power of the Spirit of God and the good word that support and empower eyes of faith.

Faith is not a leap in the dark.  Faith embraces the light that discloses the goodness of God that is behind the veil. Faith does not merely close with the mere existence of a God like a buyer and seller close a perfunctory deal. Faith sees what the Prophets and the Apostles ( the seers of old) tells us is there – namely a God who is for and with us. Faith, seeing the invisible, makes courage possible and necessary.

When life heats up the thing that is seen, felt and experienced swells to toxic proportion and  becomes the be all and end all. At this moment in time one must see, by virtue of the good word and the help of the Spirit, her plight as ultimately existing inside the One who is invisible.  If all one has is the linear, immediate, direct encounter, if this is all she sees, sooner or later her spirit will succumb to the wreck and ruin of dark spirits both forceful and anemic, both inordinately strong and pathetically weak.

Under duress human beings oscillate between pathetic weakness and aggressive forcefulness.   At one moment self-pity, resignation and desperate loneliness come knocking in the next moment anger and aggressiveness. Life is replete with circumstances that create ‘heat’. Moses’ sense of justice and anger suddenly flared  and he did things he should not have done. In the direct wake of this malfeasance toxic emotions came knocking. In the text we are only given a small window into Moses’ existential struggle. When an animal dies myriads of maggots almost immediately appear on the scene, from whence they come is a mystery. When life heats up circumstance arrive at one’s doorstep which become the seed bed for toxic guilt and shame, for self reproach and even thoughts of self destruction. These and other morbid and destructive ferments almost involuntarily spring up within us when the climates of our life change.  Hardness of heart and bitterness, once regarded as alien and strange, under the emotional impact of new circumstance easily become permanent residents in our souls.

Standing alone before forces like the magnitude of Pharaoh’s wrath, lacking faith in the presence of the unseen, Moses would almost surely have succumbed to run away anxiety and fear.  “Seeing him who is invisible”, Moses “endured” and escaped fear. One must not only see what is physically and sensibly in front of her, putting on the glasses of faith that is literally handed to us by and through the sacred text, she must see the invisible. Following the unction of the Spirit and the good word given to us that pulls back the veil, if only a little, by faith we see better things, enduring things, things that enable us to see a greater reality and it is these that downsize the spiritual magnitude of the things that impinge upon us. Seeing these greater invisible things breaks the toxic charm that the visible reality gains on our minds.

At this point in my devotion I have reached the didactical crunch of my argument and it is this. Pharaoh’s power possesses idolatrous power unless he is seen in light of something greater that is invisible. The seen must be viewed in light of something that is greater that is unseen. Unless one sees by faith that which alone is ultimate then the penultimate will loosen from its proper moorings and become ultimate in our minds and experience. When this occurs the victory of darkness in the soul is secure.

Herein lies the spiritual roots of captivity and freedom. In the journey of life Pharaoh has a 1000 suits and masks and seduces us to take him too seriously and as soon as we do poisonous habits of the heart indwell us. The antidote is simple even though it involves a struggle for the mastery of the unseen over the preeminence of the seen, felt and directly experienced. Like Moses it is imperative that we see our lives inside the care of the invisible God who is far greater than Pharaoh. Believing in the existence of this care would be spiritually heroic if it were not for the fact that the hidden reality of this care has been made known to us through the good and faithful words of the Gospel of Christ.

We see here in this lesson that faith arises from an existential point of contact to truth. That is to state we do not comprehend God rationally and conclude that he exists. Rather God comprehends us by addressing himself directly to our existence. And when this occurs our existence, unless we turn away, becomes, like Moses, re grounded in the invisible grace and love of God who is never absent. And when this occurs we begin to comprehend that no matter our temporal and earthly lot, our being is secure forevermore through Christ in God.

If there is a real hero in the story of Moses’ courage in the face of Pharaoh’s wrath and his will to embrace and endure the wilderness it most likely goes back in time to the surrogate nurse maid who his sister Miriam fetched for the queen. The queen whilst bathing in the Nile, came upon baby Moses floating it a basket and saved and adopted him. This nursemaid, fetched to care for and suckle the baby for the queen, over time no doubt subtly planted the seeds of truth about the invisible God in the tender mind of the young boy. Moses’ true mother, wise as a serpent harmless as a dove, is the real hero because she shouldered the physical and spiritual calling of her motherhood never enjoying her rightful public honor. 

This concludes Part One of my February 10 Chapel Devotion. Part Two will focus on the implications of this truth for the Emancipation of the Hebrew slaves from bondage to Pharaoh.

How to Get the Victory Over Hard Work

Rethinking the Hardness in Hard Work Requires Rediscovering Faith’s Romance with the Invisible

“I [Paul] planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase [fruit].”

1 Corinthians 3:6

“The horse may be prepared for battle but the victory is the Lord’s.”

Proverbs 21: 31

” …receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

James 1:21

“Faith is the source of good works. The greater the power we employ, the greater disaster we suffer, unless we act humbly and in the fear of God.”

Martin Luther.[i]

When it came time to me to go to high school, my parents sent me to a Christian boarding school. Part of the deal was each student had to work. Everyone had a job. My job was to keep the music building clean and maintain order.  Looking back at those days in the music building, there were just too many temptations. Boys and girls needed to practice their instruments in the little sound proof rooms and this lead to small twists. One day, the principal called me in and said I could go work on the farm or leave school. I went to the farm and it was good for me. I liked it. It felt like real work – “man’s work”. I still got into trouble, but the farm boss, Floyd Shear, liked me and stood up for me and kept me out of reach of the principal. In time I was offered the top job – milking the cows. Every other morning, I woke up at 12:30 AM and milked one hundred Holstein cows finishing around 6:30 AM.

Floyd Shear was a tried and true dairyman. He knew every cow by name and where she came from. On his wall, he had hundreds of pictures of prize bulls and their semen right there in tubes submerged in a dry ice refrigerator. One day, he invited me to witness an artificial insemination.  First he took me into his office and showed me the picture of the father bull, next he extracted the correct vile containing the semen from the dry ice refrigerator. Next he opened a box and pulled out a long plastic sleeve to cover his hand and arm and raising the temperature of the precious bull juice, he went to work on the cow and using the full length of his arm, inseminated her.  It was all very amazing for a 16 year old, a sort of sex education show and tell long before society and schools came around to such things. For a while, we were not sure whether the semen had took. But Shear had a keen eye, and one day he came through the milking parlor with a slight grin and nodding his head he said, “We’re good to go”. He knew because there were changes in the cow’s face and mood.

The question I want to address in this lesson is whether our work, the work in life’s journey we undertake for whatever cause and purpose, is or is not implanted with a hidden spiritual seed called faith and hope in God.  As intangible and spiritual as this question may appear, in the paragraphs that follow I argue that the presence or absence of this spiritual, but very real element in the heart and mind, has profound tangible, ethical, moral and practical consequences, and these consequences in many cases are discernable not only by the wise and experienced, but vividly apparent to all.

Doing our work with faith and hope in God means we are doing it in a way that from beginning to end, ultimately trusts its potency and fruitfulness to an invisible power of blessing and purpose lodged in God. When it comes to the success of our work, instead of putting our confidence in all that we can see, touch and feel, we place our hope and confidence in something unseen. We work by faith and prayer. In the following, I attempt to spin this little work thesis into six contrasts, asking the simple question, “Is a work implanted (literally impregnated) with faith and hope in God, i.e. impregnated with dependence, not human strength and ability to fulfill its purpose and bear fruit, but on the invisible God’s hidden blessing and grace ( for it is hidden grace that gives life) or is this magic spiritual seed absent?

1. THE INTANGIBLES VERSUS THE TANGIBLES

When a person’s work is implanted with faith and hope in God, he trusts the success of the work to intangibles instead of the sum power of the tangibles.

Asked to preach to the Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS) while writing this script, I opened my thoughts with the statement, “dare to do little, apparently insignificant small things for God”. Pass by big ideas and schemes to save the world and take note of the little thing sitting in your lap that might be used by God to make a spot of difference.  In the Gospels we have the story of the little boy with the packed lunch who shifted his focus from the inadequacy of his five loaves and two fish to meet the need of the moment and onto the blessing power of Christ. He measured his little contribution’s potential to help, not by its size but the size of the hidden power in God to bless things big and small. In short, his action was pregnant with faith and hope in God, not in himself or the innate worth of the little lunch he surrendered to Christ.

If and when a person’s work is not implanted with faith and hope in God, she focuses all her attention on the size and strength of a work to meet the need that it is in service of.  Without faith and hope in the unseen, one has no choice other than to focus on all she can see, touch and feel regarding a work’s ability to meet the need at hand and bear the fruit that the situation requires. This includes not only the size and greatness of a work, whether it is commensurate with what is needed, but the giftedness and talent of the worker.  All of these and many other tangible factors must become the focus.  Thus conceived, how can one help from pressing a work to a higher and higher level of efficiency in an effort to ensure a work’s success? And once we start down this road there is no resting place until the pinnacle of human acumen is reached. But the history of God is the record of God using little things, little people, weak things, small endeavors and efforts and common people to do His work.

Work driven by the faith dynamic attends to intangibles that mysteriously empower it toward fruitfulness, while work driven by the sight dynamic are totally fixated on the tangible factors that predict successful fruitful labor. There is a mystery at work. It is like a sandwich. Between the labor and the successful fruitful outcome of the work, there is wedged an intangible hidden ingredient. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul points to this intangible element. “I planted, Apollos watered, (maybe Peter weeded because he is also in the picture in this Corinthian situation that Paul is addressing) but God gave the increase ” (i.e. “the fruit) [ii]. Something called invisible God, God’s blessing, grace; something intangible only discerned by faith is in the mix if the work truly succeeds and bears good fruit. Work in and of itself does not guarantee good fruit! Without faith in the unseen, the worker, and more so the employer, become focused and fixated on how much time, energy, intensity, and proficiency are poured into a work. The success or fruitfulness of a work is viewed in direct proportion to all the tangibles. “Sight work” fails to discern the divine sandwich that is alluded to everywhere in Scripture. If a work climaxes in a good blessing, hidden grace precedes, inheres, carries it forward, and surpasses the human work invested in the project.

• The Process versus the Product

Work that is seeded with faith and hope attends to the process rather than the product.

 A proverb from the good book reads, “Cast your bread upon the water and after many days you will find it”. [iii]Work done from inside the faith dynamic must be cast or released from one’s control, released to time, to God, to fates beyond one’s sight and reach; all the while believing that this work will in the mystery and marvel of an invisible hand return and bestow a blessing. But work not done from the faith-unseen dynamic must of necessity by driven by the sight dynamic and therefore the laborer must follow after it and carefully watch over it as if she must see it through to fulfillment and guarantee the delivery of a good return. Without faith, one can never sleep; never indulge any confidence or expectation. She must constantly watch, worry, and babysit her work, lean hard on it, and push it toward a good return. Luther, a hearty German never accused of intemperance, once said something to the effect that while Melanchthon and him were relaxing in the pub having an ale all over Europe, the antichrist was getting a thrashing and the kingdom of darkness was collapsing[iv]. Luther had attended to the task of clarifying and writing out the Gospel. With writings, like Christian Liberty (1520), he cast bread upon the water not knowing what fruit they would bear. Blind to their reach and good end, relaxing in a pub with Melanchthon, he remained confident that his labors would not be in vain. Worry, fret, excessive control, and over functioning grow out of the absence of the faith. Work that is conceived and given birth by hearts and hands of faith is focused on the process, not the product’s success, upon the quality and integrity of the work and also about being a faithful steward of the gifts and tasks one is given. Indeed, we are called to work and then rest. And this rest is rest indeed and includes rest of the mind, spirit and body because the invisible God assures “He that keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper[v].”

• FORCEFUL VERSUS PLAYFUL

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God is playful and passionate rather than overly serious, anxious and forceful.

Integrally related to attending to the process versus the product of a work is another element. When there is no faith silently mixed into one’s work, the worker worries about his work’s future and sets out to insure it will produce fruit. In this worry are the seeds of forcefulness. America, and now the whole capitalistic world, is filled with aggressive work which sets out to force a work to bear much fruit, no matter of its quality or innate value. To no avail we pray, “Forgive us our transgressions” because we have indeed baptized aggression as a simple good. There is no freedom in such work. It suffers from too much control, too much regimentation, standardization, manipulation; too much “math,” that is, too much need and greed for profit from the end product. Forceful work does not believe that a work, like water, will find its true level. It does not believe that the true value and quality lodged in the work will be realized and rewarded commensurate to its presence or absence. America has set the example, not only for Yankee ingenuity and can-do pluck, but also going about their work with a grotesque, enlarged will for success at any price—political, social, and ecological.

Work that is silently impregnated with faith is passionate and playful. As passionate, it waits for the work to bear its fruit, prays for it, and if need be, suffers delay and reversal. Passion is the opposite of force. In passion there is restraint—self-restraint. There is an invisible boundary of encouragement for a work to bear fruit beyond which one must not go. Passionate work is known not by apathy but by its patience and resistance to push a work forward at any cost. It is known for its restraint, a virtue requiring a thousand times more inner strength than the more valorized so-called “virtues” attached to forceful aggression. All forceful labor leaves a trail of casualties and exploitation in its wake, while in passion there may be blood, it will not be that of another.

Passion and playfulness are cousins. By playfulness we find the true value, blessing, and energy in a work. Humans often cloak work with a seriousness that is not necessary or helpful. Humans often want from their investments of time, energy, money and work, not only more than is due, but something different than the investment is suited to bring forth. All true work possesses a mystery. In fruitful work there is a dialectic going on between two different entities, one visible and human, the other hidden and ‘divine’. The playful worker attends to this hidden mystery no matter what the endeavor. Even things and tasks, like the uniqueness that inhabits people, are imbued with a will of their own and possess a mystery. Playful work discerns the presence of this hidden difference, romances it and goes toward a “goal” not fully understood. Like the axiom “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” so the end of a work is often moving to fulfill a greater design and purpose than what is stated or fully known by all the entities or parties involved.

• Success Verses Failure:

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God does not view success and failure as opposites.

Where there is no faith perception, work that does not produce “success” (success measured by the limited standards and horizons of those behind the work) is regarded as a failure. But where the eyes of faith exist, works that “fail” are often caught up into greater purposes. By faith it is possible to say that neither failure nor success is all that it is made out to be. Scripture reads, “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” [vi]Included in ‘all things’ is failure—especially failure! By human expectations and standards, Judas concluded that Jesus’ mission failed. And in some ways it did, else why do we find Jesus weeping for His people at the brow of the hill overlooking Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In Chapter 19:41-42 Luke writes, “When He drew near and saw the city He wept over it, saying, would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” Despite the assurance of the Church and Apostles that the conclusion of Jesus’   earthly mission, ending on the cross, was the game plan all along – “the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world”[vii] – it cannot be gainsaid that in some way, a failure unraveled in these concluding events. Jesus wanted Jerusalem and its leaders and people on board, but they wouldn’t have it. I am not here trying to tackle this mystery, only point to it. Faith believes that success, within a new frame of reference and deeper purpose, is often hidden in failure, and the opposite is also true. Failure often bedevils success, no matter how loud it is trumpeted. It is not possible to see these things unless one is connected to unseen realities, i.e faith, and also time, i.e hope.

If “we walk by faith and not by sight,” at the very least, we will escape falling into despair and becoming nihilistic when things don’t work out and produce the fruit we hope. Or, if they do work out and we are connected to the unseen, we will not fail to believe that invisible grace is at work and deeper, wider purposes involved.

• Working With Versus Working Out Grace Glasses: Caution On the Job Sight Wear Grace Glasses

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God Looks for and finds grace already present at the job sight.

Grace in this little discussion points to where God and Life have already begun a good work, already rearranged and biased a situation for fruitful labor, already provided a wedge, an entry point for one to commence a good fruitful work, already lodged a blessing in the ground where one’s work is to commence, already come to the work site before any worker shows up. While grace in Christian circles mainly refers to God’s free, unearned saving gift in Christ, grace by definition means gift and can refer to anywhere and any way where an unearned advantage is handed to a person. Peter writes of the “manifold grace” of God”[viii]. But it takes eyes of faith to look for and recognize the presence of this unearned advantage that prepares the seedbed from which fruitful work can be realized. In light of the fertility of this grace, in any situation where work is called for, there are two kinds of work and workers. There are those who come to a town, to a project or task, and roll up their sleeves, deploy their resources, and proceed to conquer the challenges and obstacles at hand. These have no depth perception, no antenna or discernment of the subtle presence or absence of a preexisting advantage. They neither look for, follow after, nor integrate their efforts into a preexisting advantage that would lighten their burden and give their efforts wings. They look at the task directly and calibrate their resources to the challenge. This is the direct encounter that lacks faith and Spirit.

Jesus talks about a “burden that is light, a yoke that is easy”[ix] and one of the reasons for this “ease and lightness” has to do with tapping into and aligning oneself with the preexisting grace that one’s situation is pregnant with. What makes hard work hard? And why are we in America so infatuated with “hard work” as is evident by our bragging about the American work ethic? What we need is to find the grace that is already in the work and task that we take up. And when and where we cannot find this grace we best take a step back. Aggression in work exhibits a lack of wisdom and discernment of a subtle preexisting grace present in a given situation. This does not mean there is no intensity and determination or tiredness in and from our working. It means rather that these accrue from and are inspired by an energy and possibility that have come into our horizons from elements that have surprisingly met us and inspired us and lifted our endeavours and empowered them.

The spirituality of the language employed here to open this truth can be misunderstood. It can price the whole venture beyond the means and reach of most of us mired as we are in the mud and dirt of this world’s realism. Sometimes the grace advantage in a given situation is discovered on the other side of losses, reversals, and failures experienced in the journey of life. Not a few persons have found a field of fruitful work on the other side of a reversal that has been, or would be endgame, for others going through a similar plight. For instance, through loss one experiences grief but this grief is also a spiritual teacher because when mixed with the grace of God’s Spirit and help it provides a distinctive experience and understanding not available to us any other way. Experience places insight within one’s reach something that can be comprehended almost through no other means. For instances in loss all too often we have to go on without something or someone we relied on before when we were more or less whole. The going on requires not mere time and healing but the formation of a new kind of spiritual strength given to us and taught to us via the Spirit often through another. Henceforth one sees and knows something she didn’t know before she experienced a particular loss. Henceforth, when she looks around and sees others passing through events and struggles of a similar kind that she has passed through she is able to respond. And this response is, in truth, at an elemental level, ministry -‘service’ ( cf The Wounded Healer – Henri Nouwen). Here freedom to serve another is not merely dictated by a divine imperative to serve and the presence of need but a new possibility and motive to help. This is new possibility to do good work, i.e. serve God and another derives from the underbelly of grace and ‘accidentally’ bears good fruit.. And the grace described here for the sake of finding a concrete example if it has one face, has a thousand. It is, as the good book states manifold (1 Peter 4:10) .

Faith looks for and finds grace, then works; while work driven by naked sight, presses on to conquer all obstacles like Goliath.

• Time: The Short versus The Long View

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God looks beyond the short run of things to the big picture.

Modern proverbs remind us where we have gone amiss. Take for instance the saying “do not get your exercise jumping to conclusions.” And then there is the reverend Yogi Berra who divined “it’s not over till it’s over.” One view of work is fixated on immediate results that reveal themselves in the short term. Another invests its labor of love for the long haul and is pregnant with faith and hope that good fruit will come along. The work and working of the first group is not implanted with faith and hope. Time tests what we are made of and the spirit and form put into our work—the spirit we infuse into it. “Cast,” the good book tells us, “your bread upon the water and after many days you will find it”.[x] But the modern spirit in its relation to work has lost all such faith and hope. And this shadow of nihilism infects work in the modern world in many fields of endeavor. Take for instance agriculture and animal husbandry. These fields of endeavor and many others in the modern world serve to magnify what has gone wrong with work. Chickens must lay more eggs faster, cows yield more milk more often, and calves readying for the veal slaughter must mature quicker, and the diseases that result from these practices cured faster. The spirit that infects modernity cannot wait for the harvest from their high-tech, artless labors; they must have more fruit with less labor, all with less time and money expended.  Work seeded with faith and hope in life (a faith and hope, while perhaps not exactly the pure strain written of in Scripture, at least reflecting something of its spirit), believes in and waits for the fruit without quickly seeing the fruit. And in this patience of hope, if need be it suffers defeat, believing and waiting even if the sun sets,  it knows that life is not ultimately fickle nor is God unfaithful.

In one story in the Gospels, a Gentile centurion came to Jesus imploring him to come home with him to his house and heal his child. Rather than follow the centurion as asked, He simply announced to him that the child was going to be okay because by his word he had already accomplished the matter despite his physical absence. The man took Jesus at His word and departed even though he had seen nothing, having only heard this announcement[xi]. This is a fitting parallel for the way we should do our work. Without seeing a work’s fruit we should anchor ourselves in confident, expectant hope and trust and commit the endeavor to the unseen hand of blessing. And even if the sun sets on our lives before our work’s fruit is seen, we should not abandon good faith and hope. God and life are not fickle, and a lifetime of waiting is not long enough to prove otherwise. While writing this book, my good friend Doug Ort sent me the following terse litany of quotes that reflect the spirit of what is written here and is a fitting conclusion to this chapter.

Reinhold Niebuhr said nothing that is worth doing can be done in our lifetime. And I. F. Stone said that if you can see the results of your work, you really have not asked a big enough question. If we’re going to get at root causes, we really can’t expect to see the new society ourselves. Given that time perspective, it frees us to avoid expediency and desperation—two things that are ultimately counterproductive.”[xii]

[i] Gerhard Ebeling. Luther: An Introduction to his thought. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press), 1970, pp. 62-63.

[ii] 1 Corinthians 3:6-7

[iii] Ecclesiastes 11:1(KJV)

[iv] Philip Schaff.Volume VII: Modern Christianity – The German Reformation, History of the Christian Church. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems), 1997, p. 494.

[v] Psalm 121:5-6

[vi] Romans 8:28

[vii] Revelation 13:8

[viii] 1 Peter 4:10

[ix] Matthew 11:30

[x] Ecclesiastes 11:1

[xi] John 5:43-53

[xii] Frances Moore Lapp. Interview from the Other Side, 1977.

(The above Post for some reason failed to post when I created in a bygone teaching – preaching visit to MBTS in Penang, Malaysia. This visit took place in an earlier period in my Asia teaching work and corresponded with MBTS’ publishing of my book Existence and Faith: Breaking the Tension Between the Seen and the Unseen. In the interest of documenting and chronicling as many of my teaching assignments in Asia as possible and also for the relevance of the content of this article I have published it here.) The title of this piece and the content correspond both to my MBTS chapel preach before the student body and to a chapter in the above book I wrote at that time.)

In anticipation to a late fall 2019 teaching invitation along the Thai Burma border I commenced to think more carefully about justice. This posting is a window into my preparations. But there is also another motivation behind this piece. Upon returning to the USA from Asia this summer (2019) I observed that many Protestant churches have come to identify with ‘Progressive Justice’ and incorporated it into their mission statement. I am not confident however that the churches who have embraced this banner have fully grasped the distinctive meaning of justice as it is given to the church in the Judeo-Christian tradition. ‘Justice’ as it is understood in the modern world and justice in the sacred tradition at one level share similar meanings but at another level their understandings diverge.  This divergence is significant. If the church’s understanding and mission are to escape being absorbed into the world’s in late Modernity, it is imperative that it clarify the distinctive strands of meaning it brings to the table regarding justice. Properly understood the church’s relation to its world in time and place is always dialectical rather than unitary.

The Biblical word justice emerged into the lexicon of words and meanings out of Israel’s formative experience of deliverance from Egyptian slavery (Psalms 103:6-7). Unlike Greek thought that gave birth to abstract ideas Hebrew thought expressed and interpreted signature events.  Liberating events preceded meaning, acts and words were joined. Formative acts in the history of Israel generated meanings and ethics. In the Bible, the formative history that sourced the meaning embedded in justice was Israel’s bondage to the Pharaoh followed by their liberation. In Egypt the Hebrews belonged to the pharaoh and existed to do his bidding. To live was to serve him. In short, they were under him, not merely as a political authority and governor, but as a god. Pharaoh overreached, or to state the matter precisely, he trespassed his rightful stature and dignity. Looking back at the situation from this side of the Exodus and the one God as Lord revolution he went beyond his civil political office and assumed god-like power over them. The totality of their existence was under his will, body and soul. This divine identity of Pharaoh was normative until it wasn’t. By this cryptic phrase, I am arguing that there was no basis to critique Pharaoh’s claim to possess absolute power over his Hebrew slaves until Yahweh showed up. Only after the revelation of God as the invisible one God as Lord over all, were human and political claims to divinity exposed for what they were. Pharaoh trespassed a boundary.

Pharaoh’s trespass was vividly demonstrated by his refusal to allow his slaves the freedom to worship. Israel had requested a mere weekend in the desert to worship their God. Pharaoh’s refusal was no doubt externally motivated by economics, a factor present in the Torah record of the story. But it was deeper than economics.  Almost certainly Pharaoh feared that a revival of their religion via a “camp meeting in the desert”, something Moses and Aaron set about to effect, would clarify to the peoples that they belonged to One’ higher and greater than Pharaoh. Even if Pharaoh considered this belonging to Yahweh imaginary rather than real, the danger to his spiritual hold over them remained the same.

Almost certainly the Hebrews’ faith in their invisible God had suffered after 400+ years in Egypt, and Moses and Aaron’s role in the Exodus were not only leadership, they were first and foremost ‘evangelist’! In order to downsize the magnitude of Pharaoh and his power in the minds of the Hebrews slaves living in Goshen One greater and more powerful than Pharaoh, albeit invisible, had to be re-formed in their imagination and faith. Whether this took place in a desert holiday (holy day) weekend or in the cottages and back streets in Goshen is insignificant. That it did occur was crucial. The power of Pharaoh had to be broken in their minds and hearts spiritually before it was broken literally. But it is worthy of noting that Pharaoh’s refusal to accommodate their holiday revival request back fired. In forbidding them to worship their God inadvertently Pharaoh publicly magnified and clarified to them that he had out sized himself. To over do is to undo. Furthermore to deny this thirst to revive their faith almost surely guaranteed that it would become viral and take place underground in Goshen. Pharaoh is a study in how not to administer the state if you want to prevent a revolution. Permission to go to the desert and worship might have been all that was needed, or at least a first step, to prevent a wholesale revolt. But as the Good Book states, “God works all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”

Careful reflection on this archetypal paradigm of Judeo – Christian justice clarifies its distinctive character.  First it should be remembered this justice had nothing to do with a legalistic conception of justice, namely getting what one deserved measured either by Israel’s goodness or Egypt’s ‘badness’. Rather, as the text plainly states, God had compassion and pity on Israel and delivered them out from under a power over them that they could not of themselves break free of. Egypt and Pharaoh suffered, not because God set out to punish them for their wrongs, but because, when through Moses and Aaron light shinned on their path, they refused to repent of their over reach. Because Pharaoh refused to peacefully comply with Yahweh’s will to restore his people to the dignity and purpose he created them for via Abraham, he came to ruin.   Justice occurred when Israel had restored to them what they had lost to Pharaoh and could not of their own strength and ingenuity regain – namely their God given dignity, their freedom to be and become what God had called and chosen them to be. Ultimately included in this was the freedom and means to rebuild their lives, their families and their ethno-religious faith.  Justice as such was about being delivered out from under something that de humanized them, and prevented them from being and becoming what God intended them and called them to be.

At this juncture I am approaching the heart of the matter stated in my title. The out from under dimension of justice was a forward to something greater.  Justice was not only the destruction of oppression by way of liberation from its shackles so that Israel could then realize their innate God given human potential and dignity. Liberation, i.e. deliverance from oppression, was merely one half of the equation. The teleology of Hebrew justice climaxed with Israel becoming reincorporated into and under one greater than the pharaoh, the power and prerogative of their God who claimed to be their Lord.

The Invisible One replaced the ultimacy of the visible one. Once the overreach of Pharaoh was dealt with and the Exodus occurred, almost immediately, we discover from the record that the freed slaves were gathered at the foot of Mt Sinai to hear the words “I am (now) the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of bondage you shall have no other gods before me”. (Exodus 20). Note the word “before” , “no gods before me”. Here “before” is used because this is precisely what Pharaoh did – he placed himself before Yahweh, and when this was made evident to him, he refused to repent of this “trespass” . Trespass is the precise word because pharaoh had trespassed ( crossed over) a sacred boundary . He would have remained relatively safe if he would have taken up residence on the one side of the boundary. In this stead he would have understood himself more along the lines of a governor where there were limits to his power vis a vis his job description. But he stepped over that boundary when he made himself a god according to himself absolute power. Of course to talk about these limits historically is anachronistic. Nevertheless the seeds of new political theory are in the Exodus. Nevertheless words, signs and wonders were given inorder to alert Pharaoh and awaken him to the realization that his power had limitations. “Let my people go” spoken by Yahweh through Moses spoken to Pharaoh did not merely call Pharaoh to make an allowance rather it required Pharaoh to downsize himself in the presence of one greater. Power and pride are blinding and blunt conviction.

Pharaoh’s trespass was codified in the First of the Ten Commandments so that his trespass as prelate over the people would enlighten and warn all prelates, kings and lords in the stream of history. No less the First Commandment speaks to the people warning them not to be seduced into giving to visible powers and authorities a loyalty and obediences that belong only to the invisible God . This epic history of the Jews’ struggle with Pharaoh and their deliverance is prototypical of the human predicament. Continually humans set about to pull themselves over others assuming a relation to them that God alone has the right to enjoy. And are continually humans slipping under others giving to them a loyalty, trust, dependance, worship and obedience that belong to God alone.

With this clarification the pinch of the point emerges into the open. All liberation that only involves the first half of justice sooner than later devolves into new forms of bondage. The seeds of bondage are endemic to the human predicament and to human nature. This bondage is concomitant to the human experience. It occurs unwittingly through accidental circumstances. It was famine that originally drove Israel to go down to Egypt for charity/help, i.e. grain . But charity has an upside and a potential down side. It occurs through folly because of carelessness, naïveté and stupidity ( “lead us not into temptation” lest we foolishly wander into it”). And it occurs willingly because the human will possesses a propensity to perversity, self-assertion and hardened independence and autonomy ( “all we like sheep have gone astray we have turned everyone to his own way” Isaiah 53).  “Transgression” carries this meaning and is a cousin to the word aggression and forcefulness. From all these sources bondage comes to meet us and over take us. Bondage always possesses a god like power and grip on us and engenders captivity. Again the First of the 10 Commandments implies this when it reads “no other gods before me”.  The implicit under belly of the First Commandment is the vulnerability and propensity of the human person to lose her God given dignity and calling by coming under a god like power, and these powers are not merely external but also existential. “We have met the enemy and we are it”.

Here then is my thesis on the distinctive meaning of Biblical justice. Freedom from bondage, all forms of bondage involves not merely coming out from under something oppressive but coming into and under the supremacy of a gracious and loving God as Lord whose first word to us is one of belonging. And here “Lord” does not denote a vertical severity but terror to all principalities and powers who would dare to take themselves too seriously and trespass their rightful province and claim upon us ( or we upon another). By and through costly grace (i.e. the Christ -Messiah) we belong to One higher than ourselves and higher than any other being however terrible, significant, awesome or near and dear. And we not only belong to this One we exist for him. Furthermore as the Torah so vividly states this God is a jealous God. He suffers no loyalty or love that precedes or compromises his preeminence. All loyalties must not only hasten to second place, this second place is known and understood as always and continually conditioned by the sanctity and reach of God’s preeminent will.

There are many subtle distinctions woven into this essay reviewing the distinctive character of Biblical and Christian justice but the pinch of the point has been made. There is a substantive difference which marks off the Christian understanding of justice from that justice celebrated by late Modernity. For Christians justice leads one out from under the over reach of penultimate powers within and without that in one way or another fetter and bind one’s God given humanity and proper freedom. This is the first half of justice modernity and the church share in common more or less. But the church takes justice another step. The out from under gives way to a higher ultimate unconditioned belonging to God as Lord that involves one in a higher loyalty and service. Real freedom always involves a person in a belonging, loyalty and service that exceeds the autonomy of the self and the exertion of the power and will of another upon us . All true freedom has within it the warp and weave of a deeper and higher devotion, loyalty and service to the One higher than the self. There is no naive idealistic concept of justice found in Scripture.  The freed self contains within itself the seeds of new enslavements unless and until the self is reincorporated into a higher gracious belonging and loyalty that conditions and transforms freedom into trust, worship and service to a higher Being. When Christians read Jesus’ words “take my yoke upon you and learn of me… my yoke is easy and my burden is light” they recognise the teleology of Judeo-Christian freedom and justice.

It is imperative to stand up for any and all persons or peoples who are deprived of their dignity, trampled on, rejected, ostracised and oppressed in the world because this is what the Bible clearly states, “This what the Lord requires of you ” the Prophet Micah asserts- “Do Justice” (Micah 6:8) . The New Testament adds that Christ’s followers do this justice in his name, however  it is not wise for the church to become identified with causes of justice in the world simply by affixing the name of Christ to a given cause. Affixing Christ’s name is not enough. Whenever and wherever the church and the Christian embrace causes of justice in the world it is important that they meet and carry these as much as possible in a way that that the two dimensions of Biblical justice disclosed in the Exodus deliverance come into play.

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