Month: January 2025

Gospel

In Luke, Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming some stuff that doesn’t seem to be true.

He stands up in the synagogue and proclaims good news for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed. Unfortunately, nothing is different than yesterday. The oppressed are free? How does Rome feel about that? The captives released? Did anyone tell Herod that his prisons are empty? Good news for the poor? Put your money where your mouth is. Sight for the blind? Jesus didn’t even do any healings in Nazareth.

Everything is still horrible. What are you going to believe? Joseph’s kid, or the evidence that you can see your own eyes.

A common solution here is to push this proclamation into the space of metaphor and spiritual ideas about souls or into some heavenly future.  I don’t find that very satisfying. I’m not really interested in whether metaphorical captives are released or spiritual oppression is lifted and only future reward for the poor is worse than useless.

A gospel that is not good news for the poor, that does not offer freedom to the oppressed is no gospel at all.

In the face of a world where there’s increasingly bad news for the poor, increasingly oppression, it’s an act of faith to say that this declaration by Jesus is true, that it must be true. Not as end times prophesy, but here and now. Not as metaphor, but as simple reality. There’s certainly not that much evidence of it.

I don’t really know how to understand this disconnect between proclamation and reality here. What I do know is that any Christianity that does not offer good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed, the release of captives has missed the point. Good news for the rich, freedom for the powerful, thats everywhere, you don’t need the gospel for that.

Watercolor painting of a runner on a track

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:20-21 Full Text Luke 4:14-21

Wine

In the other Gospels, after Jesus is baptized, he goes out into the wilderness alone to fast and get his head straight, but the chronology in John is different. In John he very quickly collects some disciples and goes to a party and miraculously creates something like 500 liters of wine.

Jesus starts his ministry here not with a sermon, or even with a healing, but with a party and a frivolous, hugely ridiculous, abundance of the best wine.

But who is watching? As far as the story goes, no one even tells the bridegroom or the banquet master what’s going on. They never even know that the wine ran out. It’s just the servants who see the whole thing. All the symbolism about the water jars for washing is lost on almost everyone there. All that the guests see is the generosity of good wine at a party and they’re giving the credit to the hosts and the banquet master, maybe some upper servants involved in the planning will get a pat in the back once everything is cleaned up.

This is a little weird, right? Unless…

What if Jesus and his mother and his disciples weren’t invited to this party as guests? What if they are the servants. Temporary serving staff hired for the big event. They would turn this whole thing around. Now it’s not Jesus providing a party for some hard drinking wedding guests who don’t even know who to thank. Now it’s Jesus protecting his fellow servants from the consequences of whatever screw up has caused the wine to run out early.

The ending is interesting here.

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

John 2:11 Full Text John 2:1-11

This sign is said to reveal Jesus glory, and it’s his disciples who see it and believe. Normally when we read this passage, understanding Jesus as a guest acting for the benefit of the guests, we’d say that glory has something to do with pouring out an abundance of goodness, blessing all the guests, making sure the party continues even in the face of everything that’s wrong in the world. Those are good readings, we need those readings. There’s still a lot of things wrong in the world, and we still need space in the midst of all that wrongness to celebrate the things worth celebrating.

If we read this passage differently, we see Jesus on the side of the servants. His glory becomes one of correcting whatever failure has occurred, and preventing the consequences of someone’s error in not getting enough wine. That’s the glory of the cross, isn’t it? Just on a different scale.

A watercolor painting of a girl with long brown hair eating a snack alone under a tree

Son of God

Luke includes Joseph’s genealogy immediately after the big scene with Jesus’ baptism. The sky opens up, the voice of God is heard above the river, and Jesus is claimed as God’s own beloved child.

And then… Genealogy!

Luke has spent a lot of the last three chapters making sure we are clear on this, Jesus is not Joseph’s son. He’s the son of God. After all of that, what do we need with Joseph’s genealogy? I suppose there’s some prophetic writings about the Messiah to salvage, but we already did that with the whole Bethlehem birth in chapter 2. When Matthew does his genealogy, he begins with Abraham, working forward to place Jesus within the family of Israel, but Luke works backward from Joseph all the way to Adam and then identifies Adam too as a son of God.

The effect for me is to tone down the exceptional nature of Jesus’ parentage. Or perhaps raise the rest of us up. Yes, there’s a voice from heaven claiming him as the son of God, but even through Joseph he can claim that ancestry.

All those ideas about adoption as children of God through Christ are not yet a part of this image. Instead, this genealogy identifies everyone as a child of God, miraculous conception not required.

A watercolor painting of a child doing a cannonball jump into a swimming pool

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Luke 3:21-22 Full Text Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Belong

The first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism is intended as an introduction, setting the tone and the context for all that is to follow. So it talks about comfort and belonging.

The rest of the catechism is going to be broken up into three sections, those are outlined in the second question and answer, and it’s going to be heavy going. The first section is all about sin. But before that there’s this first question and answer saying “Take comfort! You belong!”

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?


A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

In the church of my childhood, this question and this answer is the part of the catechism that everyone knows best. It’s read responsively pretty regularly, most notably at funerals, but also New Year’s Day, and just whenever. It’s become a piece of liturgy in addition to its original role as a teaching aid.

There’s a lot of theology packed into this handful of sentences. Some of it is a little strange and much of it probably wouldn’t be phrased quite like this for other Christians. I suspect there are a lot of Christians thinking “Really? These are the big important things you want to put here in this first introduction?”

But at it’s heart this is, to me, a statement of belonging without condition or limitation.

Perhaps ironically, recent conflicts in that denomination have been (to vastly over simplify) about belonging. Who belongs? Under what conditions?

The answers in the catechism are written in the first person and we were all encouraged to recite this one regularly saying “I belong”.  Lots of us believed that, still believe it, only to find that denominational leadership and the people sitting beside us in the pews only believed it for themselves, not for everyone there reciting these words.

I’ve been a little surprised to find that this question and answer, which I always heard as being first and most centrally about belonging, doesn’t sound like that to everyone. For some this is about sin and atonement and predestination. Those readings aren’t wrong, that stuff is definitely in here, but as I always read it, those things are here to expand on that primary central message.

I’m leaning a lot on belonging here and I will not be surprised if one of my readers is muttering to themselves that this isn’t about belonging at all but about ownership. And sure, you can read it that way if you like. The footnotes contain verses with both senses of belonging.

Anyway, maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I still like this one, I think this belonging stuff is a good and important place to start. If there’s anything that bothers me here it’s a subtlety in the tone something feels almost arrogant here. This can feel the statement of someone who has it all figured out. No space for questions or uncertainty or doubt. That tone can be a kind of reassurance when you don’t have the answers, or it can be grating.

A watercolour painting of the moon and stars Psalm 8:3

Question 2 though…I dislike that one immediately.

Q. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?


A. Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.

The three things are just an outline of the rest of the catechism. Whatever. The answer doesn’t bother me as much as the question. The answer (and perhaps the whole catechism) is probably not what I would have chosen to focus on, but this document was written in 1563. It was part of a different conversation than you’d have in 2025. In 2025 we’d need to come at these questions from a different direction.

The question itself is where I object. This tries to turn faith into a matter of knowledge and it just isn’t. I’m sympathetic to the idea of a catechism as a manner of writing down and teaching about the theological understandings of a particular community. That’s great, and that’s the sense in which I intend to approach the rest of the catechism.

I’m essentially ignoring Q&A 2 because none of us are saved by knowledge of doctrine. There is very little additional comfort or joy to be gained by knowing theological details.