We’re talking some really strange stuff this morning, so let me put it in place, so will you know what comes before and after.

This demon among the Gerasenes is the second of three scenes described by St. Luke in the latter half of chapter eight.

These are scenes of chaos, confusion, fear, grief, and hopeless despair swirling around Jesus. In each case the conditions yield to his word and each time people are left stunned, wondering what has happened and who has done it and what it means finally.

The first scene depicts Jesus and his company traveling across the Lake of Galilee toward the Jordan side, toward Gerasene. A storm rises abruptly, unexpectedly and threatens to capsize the little boat. Jesus sleeps as the disciples bale water in panic and despair of their lives. They roust him awake. He quiets the storm, both inside and outside the boat. His disciples are left dumbfounded. With “awe and amazement” they question among themselves: “Who is this?”

But they are not prepared to venture an answer.

The third scene, the final one in this series, they have re-crossed the lake from Jordan back toward the small port that serves the area near Capernaum. Jesus is met by the president of the synagogue, Jairus, whose daughter is gravely ill, near death. Jesus agrees to see her.

There is a sidebar to this scene. Along the way to Jairus’ house, a woman with a twelve-year menstrual hemorrhage clutches at his cloak, secretly. Now there is more chaos as Jesus searches around among crowd for the person who touched him. She confesses, kneeling before him, it was she. She expects a reprimand — she has made him ritually unclean, touching him while she is menstruating. Her touch would make anyone “unclean”; the religious law said so, and she twelve years under its curse. Yet there is no reprimand, only a calm word from Jesus. She is greeted, healed, and leaves in peace.

Now, that done, with Jesus in tow, Jairus arrives at his home only to find his daughter is dead. “People were wailing and mourning for her.” We are treated to another confrontation with death and yet more stupefying chaos, the sort that dulls senses and cuts fissures in a human soul.

Nonetheless, again, Jesus takes authority. The little girl rises at his word; she stands up and eats food. And, again, the reaction is “astonishment” but no one asks “Who are you?” because he has already told them to keep quiet.

It is the second scene that occupies us this morning. Bracketed between episodes of “awe” and “amazement,” “wailing” and “mourning,” and questions of Jesus’ identity, here for only the second time, Jesus is named, clearly named with no ambiguity. Named, declared, identified.

For only the second time so far in his ministry as described by St. Luke is he addressed as “Son of the Most High God.” It was the voice of a demon speaking the first time, in a synagogue of all places (Luke 4:31ff). It is the voice of a demon speaking now.

This time, here on the far side of Galilee among the Gerasenes, it is another demon-possessed man who declares the identity of Jesus.

This man lives naked, lurking among the tombs of Gerasene, and no one is able to restrain him. He has become the terror of the village, threatening all with his dangerous antics, fearsome in his nudity and clinging filth, haunting the “solitary places.”

The man is a host to parasitic demons —there is never any other sort — so many he calls himself Legion. When Jesus and his disciples cross the Galilean sea and land among the Gerasenes, the demoniac accosts Jesus, falling at Jesus’ feet, screeching at the top of his lungs, “What do you want with me?” He is shrieking in submissive fear before the “Son of the Most High God.”

Chaos, confusion, the unknown, all these swirl about and around Jesus like eddies in a dust devil, all those tiny tornadoes whipping mind and soul, scourging us with the grit of life — a summary of the human upheaval and turmoil into which the Most High God of Israel has tumbled.

We know these scenes too well in contemporary life, in our lives. Even if our Enlightenment post-modern minds seek to strip these stories of all the so-called supernatural, superstitious, ooky-spooky elements we can do nothing better to explain the craziness that intrudes upon our own lives.

We think that if we can explain this wild crazy stuff we can tame it, make sense of it, make it yield before us and explain itself. But that isn’t so. The unknown is no calmer, no safer when rationalized, examined, and explained. The chaos that sometimes erupts, exploding over and within own communities and neighborhoods, within your life and mine can be no more comprehensible when demons are dismissed in favor of “scientific” and “rational” explanations.

You don’t believe in demons? Nobody can raise the dead? The waters will never still by command? So what?

The chaos, though, the fearsome threats we sometimes see in life, you can believe that, can’t you? That’s real; too real, too immediate, too close to us each, to those we love.

We must recognize what Jesus does in every case. Understand my use of this word — Jesus takes possession of the situation. He, this Son of the Most High God, commands it. To the storm: “Be still!” To the demons: “Come out!” To the dead child: “Rise!” He takes possession and commands resolution.

These stories are ultimately about Jesus, and about us. Like addled shrieking demons we want to know what he has to do with us? Who is he? And in possessing us, we come to know an answer.

I don’t know what possessed me . . . ever say that? I don’t know what possessed me…

…When my words soothed or brought laughter, and did not sting or mock?
…When my hand caressed and did not strike?
…When my greedy soul wrote a generous check and when my stingy heart was moved to pity?
…When I turned in love and not away in anger.

When I enthrone within my palm the host that has become the Son of the Most High God, and my life finds a moment of peace amid the tumbling chaos of life, in whose possession am I then?

Russell E. Saltzman is the assistant pastor of St. Matthew’s Evangelical Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and dean of the Great Plains Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church. A featured author at First Things magazine web site, his third book, Speaking of the Dead, is nearing completion.

H.O. Tanner, Annunciation, 1898

In the fall of 1983, I didn’t know that there would be over 1.2 million legal abortions performed in North America that year, nor did I know that in 1984 another 1.3 million would also take place.[1] I was newly married, just beginning my senior year at seminary, and nauseated around the clock. My husband and I had just traveled to New York and back on a Greyhound bus (we lived in St. Paul, MN), and I had attributed my sensitive stomach to the grease-laden food at the truck stops along the way. But now we were settled into our little apartment and ready to do some home cooking and I could barely stand the smell of food. Could it be, would it be, we hoped and prayed and bought a drug-store pregnancy test, whose results were ultimately unclear. Lacking a home physician, we made an appointment at the local Planned Parenthood clinic where I could have a pregnancy test.

Sitting together in the waiting room anxious for the results, a healthcare worker called me in and said that my husband would have to stay in the waiting room. I didn’t understand; couldn’t he come in with me? No, she said, they wanted to talk to me alone first. I didn’t understand. Even more anxious and worried that something was terribly wrong with me, I was finally given the news that I was pregnant. Overjoyed, I wanted my husband to hear, and that’s when I found out from Planned Parenthood that they always tell the mother alone first in case she does not want to continue the pregnancy. In fact, she was surprised that I did, for I had been the first woman in many weeks for whom the news was heard as good news.

Word spread like wildfire among the doctors, nurses, and technicians, who then treated us like royalty. Even those who dealt in death could yet be surprised by life, and in that moment our joy was contagious. I can only hope that in some small way it had a lasting effect to help turn their hearts to life.

In the Annunciation, the Good News given to Mary, Most Holy Theotokos, we come to know the gift of every life in a new way, and we come to know the holiness and sacredness of the womb as a sanctuary of mercy for all humankind. She who is our mother in the faith shelters the One who is the Saviour of the world with her very body, with her very womanhood. She gives her life for another, a model of trust beyond all fear, a model of obedience beyond all personal security, a model of faith in the One who is yet unseen, until the glorious day of His birth, when at her breast she revels in His radiant face.

In the kenotic movement of God in the incarnation, He was never more vulnerable, more helpless then when He was in utero, swaddled in amniotic fluid, yet He was also never more intimately protected, swaddled in the myriad layers of a mother’s love. And it is the vision of this love that is ever so needed, a death-defying love, an eternal love, a fierce love, a sacrificing love, that we are called to bear for the sake of generations to come. For in the disordered loving of a fallen world that removes sexual intercourse from the fidelity and delight of the marriage bed, there will continue to be the littlest among us, made in the image and likeness of God, who without such love, will be unprotected from the lies that say they are neither human or of any value.

If, as St. Paul teaches us, faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17), then we need to sing to all the world as the angel did for Mary, so that the anti-Gospel of self-determination, self-liberation, and self-exaltation (an un-holy trinity…) will not be the last word that any man or woman hears in the landscape of a time when abortion is legal and considered moral by many. From the moment of conception our Lord is fully human and fully divine,[2] veiled in Mary’s flesh, His protector, His sanctuary. From the moment of conception, we are indeed who we are as well.[3] It is only our relationship to others that will take on new dimensions as we grow into the world, for our humanity is fully present (i.e., all that is needed for faith has been given us as we have no choice but to depend upon another for life). And if the glory of God is man fully alive,[4] then the rapid multiplication of your cells is as glorious as a Bach Cantata!

What if every woman with a child in her womb were to hear the angel’s words, “The Lord is with you”? The Lord is with you in this pregnancy whether you loved your husband or not, whether you had a husband or not. The Lord is with you, whether this child was conceived in love or whether you suffered through a horrific rape. The Lord is with you whether you were trolling for anonymous sex in a seedy bar or whether you were looking for comfort in all the wrong places. The Lord is with you whether your father sold you to this brute or whether your own father was the brute. Whatever unspeakable shame was done is not the last word because the Lord is with you and with your little one. The Lord is suffering with you and the Lord will lead you to that day when He will be rejoicing with you. In this pregnancy, however un-timed or un-planned, the Lord is with you, because no life is made without Him. As Luther’s Small Catechism attests, “I believe that God has created me and all that exists.”[5]

With few exceptions, until the mid-twentieth century the church’s witness through the ages has clearly proclaimed to all who would hear that every child created has his/her origins in the love of God for the world He has created. While in our rebellion against His sovereignty we have not lived out His intentions for us, He has not given up on us, creating new life generation after generation. The testimony of the early church was clear: The Epistle of Barnabas speaks of those who seek to end the life of one in utero as “killers of the child, who abort the mold of God.”[6] The Didache says, “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born.”[7] St. Basil the Great clearly proclaims that ones passage through the birth canal does not mark the beginning of life, calling men who arrange for the abortions of their illegitimate children “worse than murderers,” because not only have they murdered the child, they have made the prostitute mother into a murderer as well.[8]

I find St. Basil’s word especially revealing when speaking to women who talk about legalized abortion giving them the freedom of choice, for “abortion on demand” gives women the freedom to have sex with men who think of them as no better than receptacles—truly de-humanized objects. It gives women the freedom to have sex with men who care more about their own gratification than the needs, concerns, or desires of anyone else. It gives women the freedom to have sex with men who won’t remember their name tomorrow, and for whom sex is not only disassociated with pro-creation, it is disassociated with any understanding that sexual intercourse is the union of two human beings. Not only is the child thought of as less than human, so is the mother. And as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, it is union, even more than pro-creation, that serves as a foundation of marriage.[9] Men and women who engage in sexual intercourse to simply gratify a bodily urge without regard to the life of their momentary partner treat their partner as an object devoid of the human spirit and can thus easily project that same split to a child in utero. Augustine and Aquinas, following the rationale of Aristotle, would propose that there is a certain point in fetal development where a soul enters. While they never excuse early abortion on that basis, such argumentation is clearly in disagreement with the consensus of witnesses throughout the first millennium of Christendom and beyond.[10] As St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-394) writes, “There is no question about that which is bred in the uterus, both growing, and moving from place to place. It remains, therefore, that we must think that the point of commencement of existence is one and the same for body and soul.”[11]

When legalized abortion is used as a retroactive means of birth control, or as the antidote for “recreational sex,” everyone is diminished.[12] The man, because he is not open to receiving what the woman, as a full human being, has to give him as a full human being: what he could learn from her in a relationship in which spirituality and sexuality are not divorced, what he could learn about being a man as he cares for his children, and what he could learn about the goodness of God who has given him someone to love him enough that would invite him into her own body. The woman who even in this femininely sexually aggressive culture would have to live in a perpetual state of denial that God made her in such a way that love and sexual expression cannot be rent asunder without doing damage to her primary identity and who would never know the joy of giving thanks to God for being gifted with the exquisite beauty and mighty strength of a womb, and who could never look at another child without regret. The sign of man and woman together, whose mutual fulfillment and complementarity are an eschatological sign of God’s intentions for Christ and His church, will have vanished. And also the child, the blessed and innocent child, no mere lump of tissue, but a living human presence, who even hidden in secret is the apple of God’s eye, the work of His hands, the delight of His heart, who is denied the fullness of body that was intended for him in this life and in the age to come, for it is bodies that will be resurrected. Everyone is diminished. Everyone loses.

It is then no surprise that in a day and an age when the revisionist church’s hermeneutic of suspicion trumps the Apostolic witness and it fails to preach bodily resurrection, that it also fails to proclaim the sanctity of all human life, for the two are intricately intertwined. When a church acts as if no longer believes that the resurrected Christ’s body is truly present at the altar, it would have no reason to believe that He is fully present as Lord in the tabernacle of his mother’s body.[13] And if a church does not believe that He who is the Saviour of the world is fully human and fully divine from the moment of His conception, it would have no way to understand that there is a sacramentality to our bodies, to our lives as the enfleshment of His divine love. God did not create us apart from our bodies, nor will He resurrect us apart from them. God creates us in these bodies that we may live.[14] For it is in a body that life is experienced. It is in a body that we see the world around us. It is in a body that we hear our names. It is in a body that we feel pain when we are cut or bruised. It is in a body that terror smells as foul as sweat. It is in a body that delight glimmers as a smile. It is in a body that the pressure of a hand’s touch tells more about a person’s heart then their words might ever reveal. It is in a body, as St. Paul preaches, that we will groan for redemption (Romans 8:22). Real presence does not evaporate because the world looks the other way.

The abortion industry has worked hard to convince us that life is not a good gift from a good God.[15] For them, the earth is not the Lords’ and its fullness thereof. The flowering of this industry and its ideology in the twenty-first century is the fruit of an anti-theology void of sacramentality. And as with many social issues, it has gained purchase because it has cast itself as part of a justice issue, and like many such arguments it begins with the simple and moves to the complex. People nod their assent to a series of truisms or generalities, until, before they know it, they are caught in an ever-tightening web. This is how it goes: Men have had a power that woman have not had. All one has to do is read a classic history book or check the statistics on pay scales for men and women who work at the same jobs. You can look at the pay differentials for careers that have traditionally belonged to women and see of how much less monetary value they are as compared to those which have traditionally been associated with men. Upper body strength aside, pregnancy and the potential need for maternity leave and care of children are where crucial differences lie.[16] If the playing field was equitable and just, and women could continue in their self-determined and commercial worth, well then, the society might value them as much as it values men. And then indeed women would be able to live as “freely” as men in all aspects of their lives from the economic to the sexual. Who can argue against that? Aren’t men and women equal? Access to legal abortion is critical for such equality.[17]

Here is an example of such an argument in classic form from the Pro-choice Action Network of Canada[18] presented in an essay entitled, “Legal Abortion: the Sign of a Civilized Society”:

The process of becoming civilized is a long and painful one. 10,000 years ago, we lived short, brutish lives in caves. Although we soon advanced to huts and houses – and palaces for the privileged few – our lives largely remained short and brutish. Here and there over the past 2000 years, ordinary people were deemed to have some rights, too, not just kings, popes, and emperors. At first, these rights extended only to men, or to landowners, or to those of the right colour or heritage… Only 73 years ago, the world officially condemned slavery. The enlightened recognition that enslaving people was evil made it possible to actually try and stop it… Mandatory motherhood is a unique kind of slavery that specifically victimizes women and children. About one-third of the world’s women live in countries where enforced motherhood rules the day. Not too long ago, perhaps women’s biology was their destiny. But no more. With the advent of modern contraception and quality reproductive care, there’s no excuse for forcing women to bear children against their will, or failing to provide basic maternal care, or compelling women to seek out illegal, unsafe abortions…

Then after recounting the numerous health risks of childbirth and the relative safety and ease of abortion the essay shows its true colours:

When women can control their reproduction, it leaves them free to pursue higher education and careers, and to plan their lives and families. Women should not be expected to sacrifice their personal and economic freedom to have babies they don’t want.

The pro-abortionist argument has changed through the years, and the legalization and social acceptability of abortion is at the crux of the presentation of the ever-developing argument. When Margaret Sanger and her cohorts formed the American Birth Control Federation of America, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood in the early twentieth century, this “justice” issue was framed in terms of care for the poor and the lessening of the burden of the underclass on the general society. Then the rationale that existed fifty years ago, just before Roe v. Wade, when young unmarried pregnant women were still banished, was about removing the shroud of shame that colored a woman’s life or about how illegal abortions brought about death for poor women, but that rich (white) women could always find a clean surgeon’s knife. As the issue of societal and cultural shame diminished for unwed mothers, newer arguments were framed, arguments that would not be necessary if abortion were not a widespread legal practice and an especially an expectation in the North American context for women who do not want to bear the child with whom they are pregnant. Threads of the earlier argument remain but when abortion is a legal entity a different “justice” argument must be made in the face of those who seek to expose the fallacy of these presuppositions. The justice issue now is about the rights of the mother over the rights of the fetus, or even of the father. Again, it is precisely the opposite of what St. Paul has to say: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1). As the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) teaches, “focusing on the fetus always has dire legal and social consequences for women, and devalues women,” and “true justice demands that women not be compelled to bear children they don’t want.”

As we can once again clearly see, human justice is never quite God’s justice. The lack of focus on the fetus and the absence of any language that speaks of either the embryo or fetus as a life in relationship to his or her mother is standard in Planned Parenthood’s propaganda. Depending upon how advanced a woman’s pregnancy is, she can have either a medical (i.e. drug-induced) abortion or a surgical one. The instruction video explaining a medication abortion speaks about the abortion feeling more natural, as if the woman were experiencing a miscarriage, which she may now experience in the privacy of her own home, and if she wants no one else to know, is left to feel the pain alone.[21]

Currently, in the United States, approximately one out of three women between the ages of 22 and 45 has had a legal abortion.[22] Included in this group are not only young single poor women or women for whom the aborting of their child was considered the only means available to save their life, but married women, educated women, working women.[23] Forty percent of women between the ages of 40 and 55 in the U.S. have had abortions.[24] Following Roe v. Wade in the U.S. and the Morganthaler Law in Canada, the rationales for having an abortion multiply. This is yet another example of how we make the law (or seek justice) in our in our image and likeness when there is no external (i.e. divine) standard. Again, the ARCC now teaches, “women have the right to abortion even if the fetus is a legal person with rights, because a pregnant woman has the right to defend life and health with an abortion,” and most damning of all, “the pregnant woman’s opinion is the only one that counts. A fetus becomes a person when the woman carrying it decides it does.”[25] The creation of life is no longer considered as God’s domain, but only the human’s.

An extreme form of the pro-abortionist’s argument posits that abortion is a form of self-defense against the invading fetus. With legalized abortion, they state that there is a higher risk of death for mothers during childbirth than there is during a legal abortion, and since no mother is under obligation to donate an organ or even blood to save a child’s life, neither is she under any obligation to risk her life for an unwanted child. ARCC states, “A fetus is not ‘innocent’…[for] it is co-opting the woman’s body and endangering her health against her will…The woman has a right to defend herself with an abortion.”[26] Because modern medicine has given us a glorious view into the expectant womb, it becomes harder and harder to deny that there is life in there, so they try to move their rationale away from the discussion of the rights or life of the growing fetus.[27] Part of their goal is to move the question of when does life begin to realm of opinion, to something which cannot be known in fact, but which is purely subjective.  Because recent medical advances have given us the ability to view life in the womb as well as given us the ability to sustain early pre-term babies, abortionists have had to change the basis of their argument. For while a secular society may never agree on when life ‘becomes’ sacred, or even when life becomes viable, there is simply scientific evidence of life, real life, of a human person, in the tiniest form, so beautiful that all we can do is grab a sharp intake of air, now speechless with awe. Instead of denying that this little one is a person with rights they move the arguments to speak of how the presence of a fetus, even if it has rights, does not supersede the rights of the mother. If there ever was an anti-Marian theology, this is it. “Let it be to me according to your will” is not part of the pro-choice vocabulary, a vocabulary in which the self believes it is God. In “The Fetus Focus Fallacy,” Joyce Arthur of ARCC writes about her own abortion experience:

The thing that enraged me then, and still does today, is this single overriding thought: How dare they. How dare anyone tell me what I can do with my body, my life…Ultimately, I am the final arbiter when it comes to my life. And my decision-making ability includes deciding the fate of my embryo or fetus. Since it lives inside my body and is completely dependent on me and no-one else for its survival, it literally belongs to me and no-one else.[28]

Among the many things she misses, including the sovereignty of God and the faith that every child belongs first to God, is that now the fetus is a slave to her whims, since she clearly states that the woman has de-humanized the child to an it. It is property that belongs to her, and she has the right to grant life or terminate it.

With the expansion of such an ideology, what was done in dire circumstances is now a fact for one-third of the female population and by extension to the males who impregnated them. We see the fall from Eden with a glaring clarity, as one sin compounds into another. Denial becomes a collective expression of anesthesia, for if, as psychologists have long reported, that the death of a child is the deepest grief that anyone can experience, then the minimization that this little one in the womb is truly a child of great value must be repeated at every opportunity. As one of the cornerstones of the abortion industry’s propaganda, it must be maintained at all costs. What happens to a woman who has undergone an abortion and a few years later “happily” finds herself pregnant? Now, once the pregnancy is confirmed, she receives pre-natal vitamins and specialized care. She sees pictures of the embryo and then fetus in development, she hears a heartbeat at her doctor’s office, she eats for two, she feels that first kick. Will her denial break down, that the one whom she aborted was more than mere inconvenience or just some unformed tissue? Will she try to come up with a rationale depending upon in what week of her pregnancy the abortion took place? Or will the new life in her speak with such clarity through his or her presence, that she can no longer deny that this indeed is life?

A fetus (which means “young one” or “offspring”), in the third month of his or her development in utero, in addition to having use of her arms or suck his thumb, has fully developed vocal cords—the ability to cry out. It is only the absence of air in that sea of amniotic fluid that keeps such sound from coming to fruition in our ears. A percentage of abortions that are performed in the U.S. and Canada are in women who have already born a child but who don’t want one more at that particular time. How great must their denial become in order to suppress the sound of their aborted child’s cry? How much greater will their shame be if anyone were to find out? Greater than that of the pregnant teenager? Abortion has not made life better for them in terms of their relationship with God and neighbor, for while it may have given them an opportunity for temporary economic stability or advancement, or it may have helped them exit an abusive relationship, it has not given them the means to live their lives in the peace that comes from trusting that God is the author and giver of life. If this now aborted life wasn’t God’s child, then any faith that their own life was, has disappeared. And living life apart from such faith is a living death, for living as if everything depended on them rather than on God is a heavier burden, a tighter yoke than they could have imagined. If they don’t buy into the pro-abortion culture of denial, they will be faced with the magnitude of their sin, which can only come to an end when it is laid at the foot of the cross. They, in particular, need a vision of Mary: thirteen, poor, on the edge of being dismissed from her betrothed, sheltering in her rounded womb One who would have made her un-marriageable to anyone else, One by whom no earthy gain could be had, One whom she would know from the start was more than her creation, One whom she would adore, One whose suffering and death would piece her soul. With love, there is always the possibility of grief and death, sorrow and loss. With love, there is always the possibility of healing. With love that trusts God so as to place the life of another above ones own life, there is always hope, (i.e., suffering, endurance, character, and hope) hope that causes us to move within His will (Romans 5:3-5).

There is no doubt that men, hell-bent in their own way, have raped women in and out of marriage. They have pillaged and destroyed lives in a physical expression of earthly conquest. There is no doubt that they have defied God when they visited prostitutes, seduced young girls, or taken their sisters and daughters to their beds. There is no doubt that somewhere in every family history on earth there is a life that was the product of rape. Having women act like men when they are behaving at their worst is not the answer, in fact it will only perpetuate the problem. There will be no need for the man to change his rough and violent ways if abortion is an acceptable “final solution” to an inconvenient or inopportune conception. (This has been recently documented by the undercover work of Live Action, which shows how easy it is for a pimp to arrange an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic for an underage girl so that she can go back to work as a prostitute.[29])

The woman who aborts is no greater sinner than the man who impregnates a woman who is not his wife (Matt 5:21-22; 27-28). She has simply become like the man whom she despises, the man who has treated her as less than human. Ironically, it is she, not he, who will be undergoing the surgeon’s knife in an abortion. But in addition to losing the child and losing a piece of her humanity, she is losing what it means to have been chosen by God to have a womb, for of all the gifts with which He endows us is there anything greater than His entrusting to her the sacred place in which to care for another in her very body? How He must love her to have created her with such capacities. How He must love her to have created her to bear His most sacred possession, His children. How He must love her, for it is by a woman that He will choose to enter the world in a way that we could at last know Him. When the angel tells Mary she will conceive and bear a son we learn that He who will grow in her womb will share all of what it means to be human with us, even nine months in utero.

Those nine months, those holy months in which Mary sings of what God has done for her are remembered for our sake in the church’s witness through the liturgical year. Those months are remembered, because those are the number of our months, too, and because the one who comes to life in Mary’s womb spends those nine months there for each of us. Nine months between March 25 and December 25, nine months between conception and breath, nine months between an angel’s whisper and the heavens so full of glory that not one angel could keep silent. On March 25 our hope begins, for on March 25 the world turns on its axis, for just when day and night are divided at the vernal equinox, just as the lambs are being prepared for the Passover (Nisan 14 on the lunar calendar), just when the Jews are recounting the mighty acts of God, the name of our Saviour is sung into a Virgin’s ear. It is an annunciation for all the world to hear. All men and women who seek to use their bodies faithfully need to lean towards the sound of Gabriel’s voice until they, too, arrive at Mary’s heart. She will lead them to Jesus, for her body is the sanctuary in which He dwells, her womb is the place of mercy incarnate, and in the witness of her trust, she will help them to see the greatness of God’s love for them and for their children.

When I left my first call in Canada and moved back to the States I learned an odd form, a terrible form of what could only be called situation ethics. (Abortion was not yet legal in Canada, but was in the U.S.) The scenario went something like this: I would never have an abortion, but since I can’t walk in your shoes (or sleep in your bed or live in your family relationships), I can’t tell you what to do. There are many options, and the church documents which speak of abortion as a “tragic option/last resort” were ever before me. Even if I were to say that abortion were wrong for me in any circumstance, since it is a legal option I had learned that I had no right to make the determination for you about what path you should pursue. I could ask the woman (and it was always a woman who came to talk to me, never a man and woman together) what she thought her options were, and they would always fall roughly into four categories: (1) Have the baby and live as a single-parent. (2) Marry the father if she who knew who the father was and he wasn’t a dangerous or abusive man, or wasn’t already married. (3) Adoption, giving the baby a chance to grow in love in a stable and secure family. (4) Abortion, the end of the pregnancy. I could have a conversation about the outcomes of all four categories, but I had learned from my pastoral colleagues and from my wider denominational community to stop short at leading the woman to a decision.

After making the case in a generic way for one of the first three options, I would simply let her know that with whatever option she choose, she would have pain, and I would continue to walk with her in her pain and help her find the immediate resources she needed if she were to keep the baby. I also let her know that were she to bear this child, she would have joy, albeit in the midst of pain, but she would have joy. My concern in that moment was to keep her relationship with the church open and active, because almost every woman who came to see me came with her head bowed and heart filled with disgrace.

But somewhere along the way, I lost that post-modern spirit of pastoral “neutrality” for I realized that if the woman choose Option 4 she would be choosing death, a literal death for her child, a spiritual and existential death for herself and maybe also for her baby’s father. Were she to seek an abortion she would be guilty of a great sin, but so would the constellation of people who had part in shaping her path—a father or uncle or teacher or friend of the family who first sexually abused her, a mother who sided with a step-father after he had abused her, a boy who date-raped her. When I trained as a chaplain in a juvenile chemical dependency unit, I met thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls who would go drinking with groups of boys, naively wanting some male attention, and then when the girl was incapacitated and inebriated each boy would have his sexual turn with her. Some of these fourteen-year-old girls had had sexual intercourse with more than a hundred boys, and not once did any of them describe receiving any sexual pleasure from those encounters, just pain and shame, which they would try to hide in alcoholic obliteration.

It took me along time to know how to speak to a young woman in such a way that she could see her own complicity in the sin – remember St. Basil and the prostitute who has now become a murderer – without placing the weight of everyone else’s sin on her shoulders. That didn’t happen until I started hearing the experiences and finally the confessions of women who had had abortions ten or twenty or even thirty years earlier, who were still in pain until they left it in confession at the cross, still in pain until they were embraced by the love of the Resurrected One. And from the testimony of those women I finally returned to the Apostolic witness and truly learned to speak of the love that is greater than sin.

For with my eyes now opened I could see that Option 4 (abortion) was no option at all as it was the only one that would lead to more pain because it involved the death of another. Regardless of whether or not the woman had been a willing participant in the conception, this pain would simply go on, either actively or in the form of denial.

When I look at the evolution of the social statements from the ELCA and ELCIC and their predecessor bodies I can now see where the persuasion began. The church bodies were being reflective of the prevailing society which approved of “therapeutic abortion” and which gradually moved found more and more reasons that could be included under therapeutic.[30] There is a point where the statements move from the declaration that abortion is an option only to save the life of the mother to stating that there is no consensus,[31] which leaves the individual with the ultimate decision.[32] What happens then is precisely what I mistakenly did, for in announcing that there is no consensus, we are collectively saying that all sorts of behaviors are acceptable. The decision about abortion becomes not only personal but privatized. No one else can validly comment when human experience is privileged over Apostolic witness. What is missing from the church’s social statements is any sense that the full humanity of Jesus, the sacramentality of His life even in utero, and the witness of Mary is where the discussion should start. And when a discussion starts at the wrong place it is more often than not likely to end in the wrong place. At the root of the social statements is an ethics based on the current cultural and legal situation, masked in a generic concept of love and a myopically human concept of justice, not one that is divine.

What happens to a woman who has had an abortion and then seeks to talk to a pastor when she is overcome with sorrow, guilt, or despair? If the pastor understands abortion to be a morally acceptable option, the woman’s confession and repentance will not be answered with absolution.[33] She will be denied the forgiveness of sin that she so desperately needs in order to begin anew, and her misery will lead to some inwardly or outwardly destructive expression. The pastor, unwittingly, and the even the denomination are then extensions of an abortion industry in which during the era between 1980 and 2000, 99.3% of legal abortions performed were for non-therapeutic reasons.[34]

Our silence becomes consent to continued fracturing of the family through the misuse of the good gift of sexuality. The woman did not become pregnant alone, so there is at least a community of two whom God intends to use to care for every child conceived. Men and women are called to guard the life of every child in the womb, just as Joseph did in sheltering a pregnant Mary. Joseph becomes a participant in the life of Jesus as the guardian, a true model of manhood, so that Mary can be the mother she was intended to be. As the Liturgy of St. Basil sings, “From you, God took flesh and became a little child, He, who is from eternity our God. Your womb, He took as throne. Your body, He made wider than the heavens.”[35] Your body, He made wider than the heavens—The Lord is with her, so that He may be with all of us, from our conception unto eternal life. Sanctum, Sanctum Sanctorum: In the mystery of God’s will, her womb surrounds the only Son of the Father from eternity. Sanctum: In the mystery of God’s will our wombs are His sanctuary of mercy for all the world.

The Rev. Dr. Amy C. Schifrin serves as pastor of Mission in Christ and Faith Lutheran Churches in the Iowa Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church. This piece was originally published in The Lake Louise Commission: The Sacred Family (Delhi, New York: American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, 2011), and is reprinted with permission.

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is a Lutheran minister and currently assistant research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France

In 2010 you walked from Erfurt to Rome on an “ecumenical pilgrimage.” Why? What were you hoping to accomplish?

The idea was born a number of years ago with a simple, “Gee, wouldn’t it be cool to walk through Europe following in Luther’s footsteps?” The old country still has that kind of pull on young Americans. But we (my husband Andrew and I) didn’t really have any way to make it happen until we moved to Strasbourg. Then, through my work in ecumenism, we both started thinking about the figure of Luther differently and realized that we had an intriguing chance to connect a seminal figure from the past with the ecumenical and theological concerns of the present. We imagined that the line of connection Luther had made in walking from Erfurt to Rome as a friar, long before he became a reformer, had been snapped by the 1521 bull of excommunication against him, and we wanted to reconnect the dots, so to speak, with our own feet. The social media component followed naturally (and our blog is still up: www.hereiwalk.org).

What do you think you accomplished? How have people on both the Protestant and Catholic sides reacted?

The response to our pilgrimage was overwhelmingly positive. We were most moved by the comments or messages from “mixed marriages” (such a horrible expression), i.e. people who live ecumenism within their own families. They are the real pioneers. Interestingly, addressing such concerns was the very first step in ecumenism. I think we also gave people, both Protestant and Catholic, a way of looking at Luther that was less ideological. I don’t think ecumenism can make any progress at all until all parties are willing to give up their convenient half-truths about both the past and the present. It’s ultimately an exercise in relentless honesty, carried on in a spirit of deep love.

You are currently assistant research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. Tell us about the Institute, and your work there.

The Institute was founded in 1965 in response to the Second Vatican Council. The Lutheran World Federation thought it necessary to have a house of studies devoted entirely to the question of the Lutheran churches’ relationship to other churches of the world. Our scholars pioneered the concept of “differentiated consensus” and were key drafters of the Leuenberg Agreement (1973) and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999). I serve as a consultant to the International Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission—a role I was given after writing a dissertation on Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, an Orthodox theologian who argued in favor of the ordination of women to the priesthood—and have been involved in preparatory conversations between Lutherans and Pentecostals.

What do you see when you survey the ecumenical landscape? Is it dead, or living differently than it did in the heady postwar days?

It’s not dead; it’s changing. Everyone I’ve met working in ecumenism realizes this and is striving to grasp what the new form will be. Ecumenism was chiefly about multilateral friendship-building and joint service during its first fifty years, and that was only among Protestants and Orthodox. The next fifty years, following Vatican II, focused on bilateral dialogue on theological topics. At this point, we all know that we’re in doctrinal spitting distance of each other, but that hasn’t translated into greater structural unity, and we still have a great deal of uninformed bigotry against other Christians within our ranks. The best guess right now is that the next phase of ecumenism will be a result of the entry into it of Evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals, who have been fairly suspicious of ecumenism up until now. The Global Christian Forum is facilitating some really exciting conversations between them and “experienced” ecumenists. That’s where I’d stake my money for the future.

What would Christian unity look like today? Is Christian unity possible this side of the Eschaton?

I imagine Christian unity as something like this: picture a Venn diagram, except 3D (so spheres instead of circles), bobbing along through space and time. Each church family is one of those spheres, and there is always overlap of some kind or another—doctrinal, spiritual, diaconal—though never a complete identity of the two. Which means some parts of each church family are in some kind of communion with another church family, while members of that same church family are not, or are perhaps in some kind of communion with another church family altogether. But even this is not quite right, because the more I learn of the various churches, the clearer it becomes the members of each are not fully in communion with each other, either. On what grounds can we defend non-communion with members of other church families when we tolerate all kinds of non-communion within our church families? How do we account for a fuller degree of unity and communion between members of separated churches that between those within one church? I don’t know the secret of Christian unity, but I’ve at least figured out that “unity” is a far more complex prospect than I’d ever imagined.

As a Catholic, I doubt very much we Catholics would surrender the papacy as we see the Petrine Office as an instrument of Christian unity, not an obstacle. As a Protestant, what would you like to see Rome do? As a Lutheran, what do you think Lutherans should do?

Your choice of words is interesting: “surrender.” The unfortunately widespread notion of ecumenism is that it’s some kind of barter—if you’ll give up this, I’ll give up that. Such an approach could only be mutually impoverishing, assuming it would even work, which it wouldn’t. I have no clearer idea than anyone else how to shape the papacy in a way that would truly be uniting and not dividing for the Orthodox and Protestant families, but one of the most exciting things I’ve heard about lately is the recent opening of an office in Rome that unites concerns of mission and ecumenism, so that the task of evangelization will not be undertaken under the shadow of competition between Christians. Since ecumenism originated in the mission field, I think its future lies in mission too, and if ecumenism is suffering or slowing down right now, it’s because it got severed from its missional roots—both “externally” to the nations and “internally” to the baptized (who are often further advanced in their paganism than non-Christians!).

Many people assume Christian faith is dead in Europe, what with advancing secularization and low levels of church attendance. How does the situation of Christian faith in Europe look to you from your vantage point in France?

It’s certainly pretty dreary to visit the gorgeous old church buildings of Europe on a Sunday morning and find them virtually empty. The disdain for the church was one of the most shocking things we found while on the Italy portion of our pilgrimage. But I think this is all a bit misleading. The “oldline” churches are indeed empty and withering. But every city of any size has multiple thriving churches built around immigrants, or new communities forming around Pentecostal/charismatic renewal. They are not public the way the oldline churches are, so they are somewhat invisible. But sooner or later the homogenous oldliners are going to realize that their future lies in extending the right hand of fellowship to the new arrivals, and perhaps in that partnership their own people will be revitalized in faith.

It seems those forms of Christianity that are thriving around the world are pentecostal and charismatic. Pope Benedict had some words of concern regarding that when he visited Germany last year. Should these forms of Christianity be a concern, or should we simply rejoice that the gospel is being spread?

That’s very true—and it’s also true of the oldline churches themselves. 11% of the world’s Catholics are charismatic (that’s a staggering 110 million!). The Lutheran church of Ethiopia had 200,000 members in 1980 and has nearly 5 million today—and the astronomical growth is due to its explicit decision to incorporate charismatic practice into its Lutheran commitments. Still, far more of the Pentecostals and charismatics are found outside the oldline churches, and they seem to grow faster the more they divide, which is a bit alarming if you are committed to the unity of the church! My hunch at this point is that Pentecostal success derives from two principal factors. First, instead of giving lip service to the idea that all power and holiness comes from God—but in reality trying to flog ourselves into it by our own efforts—Pentecostals really believe it and act on it, and God responds generously. Second, Pentecostals have shed the old Christendom mentality far more effectively than older churches, perhaps because they were never accepted by the Christendom establishment in the first place. Thus their missions are not exercises in cultural imperialism, however gently managed, but allow an unprecedented freedom for indigenization. At some point, though, they are going to have to reconcile with the Christian past. If real ecumenical friendships could develop between them and the oldliners, we’d see an extraordinary renewal and deepening of faith and witness on all sides. So, in short, I’m not worried—I’m delighted.

Any final words?

The best on-the-ground idea I’ve heard for ecumenism comes from Steve Harmon’s little book, Ecumenism Means You, Too. He suggests that, in addition to your commitment to your own church family, you get to know another one, too—sort of like having a major and a minor. You can’t fix all the divisions all at once, but you can become a real bridge between two families of faith, mutually translating between the two and curing your own parochialism in the process. Ephesians 2:14 says that Christ “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility,” so as Christ-bearers ourselves, I think we are called to make the unity happen in our own bodies, too. That happens when we put our bodies in two different churches, give our voices to praise in them both, consume the holy supper with our mouths in them both, serve the needy with our hands in them both.

Editor’s Note: The Christian Leadership Center is pleased to publish the online version of the “Edwards Epistle,” a longstanding quarterly letter providing the reflections of Dr. James R. Edwards, Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Readers are invited also to subscribe to the print edition by contacting Phil Olson.

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Faith, Works, and Salvation
Edwards Epistle
Summer-Fall 2012

What is the relationship of faith and works in Christianity?  The relationship of faith and works also involves the relationship of law and grace, and of the Old Testament and New Testament.  Many people—Christians included—do not have a very clear idea how faith and works relate to one another. Some actually think the two do not relate to one another, but are in fundamental conflict. I have taught Old and New Testament to collegians for several decades, during which time I have also taught adult classes in churches.  I frequently hear faith and works placed in opposition, such as the following: “The Old Testament required people to keep the law, such as the Ten Commandments, in order to be saved. This proved impossible, however, and everyone failed.  God then lowered the bar, so to speak, and sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world.  The New Testament teaches that salvation is no longer by works but simply by faith in Jesus Christ.”  This common resolution to the issue of faith and works does not do justice to the Biblical testimony on this matter. I’d like to devote this double-version of the Epistle to explain why.

There are a number of problems with the above resolution.  Most obviously, it has disastrous consequences for the nature of God.  What kind of God would ordain one means of salvation, which are not only wholly untenable, but abandoned in favor of a completely different means of salvation?  Such a being could scarcely be considered God.

Another problem, more practical, is that the Old Testament law is not impossible to keep.  If it were, God would not have commanded it.  The law is within everyone’s reach—yours, mine, everyone’s.  Take the Ten Commandments: Keep the Sabbath holy, honor your father and mother, do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery.  Sabbath is kept holy by not working—and both the Old Testament and later Jewish tradition specify what is work and what is not.  Parents are honored by treating them with respect.  The commandment not to kill is kept by refraining from taking the life of another without just cause; not to steal by not depriving someone unjustly of property; and not to commit adultery by refraining from sex with a person to whom you are not married.  With the exception of the final commandment not to covet, each of the Ten Commandments is defined in terms of behavior.  The Commandments—and this is true of virtually the whole of the Old Testament law—make no reference to feelings or desires. You may be angry with your parents, but if you treat them respectfully, you have kept the commandment.  You may wish to steal something, you may be angry enough to kill someone, you may lust after another person, but if you throttle these urges and refrain from the forbidden behaviors, you have kept the commandments.  Most of us, most of the time, employ the same forms of behavioral modification to all manner of morality and etiquette in order to get along in this world.  And, if we believed—as the ancient Israelite believed—that our salvation depended on keeping the Ten Commandments and other laws like them, we would keep them much better than we do.  Incidentally, if the law could not be kept, then Jews would have converted to Christianity in droves.  But that did not happen in Jesus’ day, nor since.  This is largely because Jews regard the behavioral requirements of Torah as reasonable and achievable.  Because they are so regarded, Christian faith normally does not hold much appeal for Jews.

Finally, and this is the biggest problem with the above resolution, the Apostle Paul points out that the Old Testament itself teaches salvation by faith rather than by works (Rom 4).  Proof of this surprising assertion is found in the story of Abraham (Gen 12-22).  Abraham and Sarah are called from cosmopolitan Ur of the Chaldees (modern Kuwait) to become resident aliens in the outback of Canaan.  There God promises to make them a great nation, to bless them and make their name great, and to bless all the world through them (Gen 12).  But God delays in fulfilling the promise.  Abraham and Sarah remain childless, and apart from an heir, the promise cannot be realized.  They want to do something to aid in the fulfillment of the promise.  Abraham puts forth Eliezar, his majordomo, as a substitute heir.  God declines the offer.  Sarah offers her maidservant, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine.  Hagar conceives through Abraham, and Ishmael is born.  Ishmael is Abraham’s son, and should qualify as heir and fulfillment of the promise.  God rejects this solution, too.  God shows Abraham the night sky and tells him to count the stars, if he is able.  Abraham is assured that a descendent from his and Sarah’s body will be as numerous as stars in the sky and sand on the seashore.  And so it goes for thirty years.  There is nothing—no work, that is—that Abraham and Sarah can do.  Nothing, except trust God; nothing except wait in faith.  Genesis 15:6 offers the saving resolution of the problem.  Paul notes its importance for the issue of faith and works, and quotes it appropriately in Romans (4:3, 9) and Galatians (3:6).  “Abraham believed—he trusted, had faith—in God, and God counted him righteous.”  Why is this passage so important?  Because it shows that Abraham was made right with God solely by trusting God.  He was made right by faith alone before he was circumcised (Genesis 17); that is, Abraham was not a Jew but still a Gentile when God declared him righteous.  Moreover, he was made right with God before the giving of the law (which occurred some four hundred and thirty years later on Mt. Sinai), he could not have been made right with God on the basis of law.  Paul understood the significance of Abraham and Sarah for the crucial matter of faith and works: salvation by grace through faith is not a late compensation for a failed program of salvation by works.  Salvation by grace through faith is the way God always intended salvation.  It is the first, oldest, primary, and only way of salvation.  Everything that might conceivably be considered a rival means of salvation—circumcision, works, ethnicity, whatever—is later, derivative, and subordinate to faith.  When the rich man approached Jesus and claimed to have fulfilled all the commandments (a claim Jesus did not dispute!), and Jesus responded, “You still lack one thing” (Mark 10:17-22), Jesus was referring to the critical element in the salvation equation—faith.

So much, then, for the theory of the wavering God, the Hegelian God, who swings like pendulum from law to faith in order to keep us all happy.  Let’s press the reset button on the whole issue of faith and works.

We’re now ready to think rightly about the real and glorious mystery of salvation.  God always, everywhere, at all times ordained that salvation would come via a relationship of trust and faith in him.  Trust and faith allow God to be God, to do for us and the church and the world what he ordains.  The fundamental question is not what we can do for God, but what we allow God to make of us.  Since a relationship of trust in God involves “walking uprightly before the Lord” (Gen 17:1), the law was given as a moral guide.  The Ten Commandments are such a guide.  They are not a moral ideal, nor do they address desires.  They specify deeds, deeds that are doable.  These deeds are largely, though not entirely, about behaviors that make communal life good, just, and edifying.

When God entered the world fully and finally, he entered it in his Son Jesus, a Jew.  As a Jew, it was natural that Jesus would speak of Torah.  He does this at various places in the New Testament, but nowhere more directly than in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7).  “You have heard it said of old, you shall not kill . . . but I say to you, whoever hates his brother is guilty of murder.”  “You shall not commit adultery . . . but I say to you, whoever lusts has committed adultery in his heart.”  “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy . . . but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Each declaration follows the same pattern: Jesus quotes the Mosaic law (“You have heard it said of old, you shall not . . . .”), and then he redefines the law by his own authority.  The redefinition, of course, is the problem.  Jesus takes something achievable and makes it unachievable.  It is possible not to do a bad thing; it is impossible not to desire the bad thing at all.  We all can do the first, no one can do the second.  When Jesus finishes with the law, we feel like the student who thinks he aced the exam, only to find out he flunked it.

Jesus does something similar with the Golden Rule, “Do to others what you would want them to do to you” (Luke 6:31).  Virtually every religion and moral code has the negative form of the Golden Rule, sometimes called the “Silver Rule,” “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.”  The Golden and Silver Rules may seem to be the same, but they are not.  If you think about it, you’ll choose the negative form of the rule every time.  The negative not only makes a lesser demand, but you know when you’ve kept it and when you haven’t.  A traffic sign says, “Don’t Speed.”  That’s easy to obey, and you know without any doubt when you’ve obeyed it.  Make sure your speedometer is at or below the posted speed limit, and you’re in compliance with the law.  This does not mean you’re driving safely.  You may be drinking coffee, texting, and trying to break up a fight between the kids in the back seat, but if you’re under the speed limit, you are a law-abiding driver.  Another traffic sign says, “Drive Carefully.”  That’s more difficult to obey, and you cannot say with absolute certainty that you’ve obeyed it.  You could be driving below the speed limit, yet driving dangerously; and you might exceed the speed limit and still be driving carefully.  When, in fact, are you ever driving safely enough?

With regard to Scripture, the Old Testament says (as it were), “Don’t Speed,” and the New Testament, “Drive Safely.”  Moses says, “Don’t kill,”  “Don’t commit adultery,”  “Don’t steal.”  If you refrain from the prohibition, you have fulfilled the commandment—and you know for certain you have fulfilled it.  Jesus says, “Love one another.”  That commandment seems impossible to fulfill.  After all, when have we ever loved another person rightly or sufficiently?  And when Jesus commands us to love our enemies, well, the difficult has become utterly impossible.

Why does Jesus take Torah, whose literal wording left us some peace of mind, even moral satisfaction, and interpret it so as to make it impossible?  The answer is that Jesus does not wish us simply to comply with a moral good, but to become good.  The divine plan is not simply the transformation of behavior, it is the transformation of character, of personhood.  Moses defines the moral standard, and in complying with the standard we discover how immoral our character is, regardless how moral our action may be.   The Mosaic articulation of Torah is not the goal of the journey, but only the start of it.  The good that Moses commands is not an end in itself, but rather like “training wheels,” the ultimate objective of which is the redemptive goal of Christ likeness.  That’s a long and difficult process.

The Apostle Paul gives an apt illustration of this in Galatians 3:24, “The law is our paidago̅gos to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”  English translations render the Greek word paidago̅gos as tutor, guardian, guide, leader, and so forth.  These various translations are attempts to find modern analogies to an ancient and extinct custom.  A paidago̅gos was a Greek slave hired to pick up school boys and escort them safely to school, where they were delivered to the teacher or schoolmaster.  The job of a paidago̅gos no longer exists today, but a school bus performs virtually the same function.  In modern parlance, the law is like a school bus that takes us to Christ.

In what way is the law an escort to Christ?  When law is properly understood, as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount and as Paul teaches in Galatians and Romans, it exposes not merely the sinful deed, but the deeper and more difficult problem, the love of sinning, to quote John Wesley.  I can do a good deed by governing my hand, foot, tongue, or eye.  But I cannot become a good person without a change of heart.  Law is powerless to deal with this latter and ultimate problem—the hardened heart, the bent will.  The latter drive us to Christ, who is the only doctor capable of dealing with the problem.  The law ever reminds us of our shortcomings, our “not yet-ness” as believers.  It drives us to Christ who is both merciful and powerful to continue, and eventually complete, the process of redemption in our lives.  It forces us to look to Christ in faith, and to walk with him in dependence, rather than taking false confidence in our works, imagining that our good works, whatever they may be, signify that we good persons.

Now, here is the end of the matter.  Once the Great Physician is at work in the forgiving, healing, and “truing” of our wills, then for the first time we are in a position actually to fulfill the law.  By “fulfill” I mean not just doing the right thing, but allowing the will, transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, to bear fruit in true goodness.  This is precisely what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:4, “The righteous commandment of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to natural abilities but according to the Spirit.”  Only the person who receives Christ in faith and allows the Holy Spirit to renovate his heart and will can fulfill the law.

What is the proper understanding of faith and works, law and grace, Old and New Testament?  We are brought into a right relationship with God through faith and trust in his saving word to us.  The law is added as a guide for deeds and behaviors pleasing to God and productive for life as God intended it.  In meeting the requirements of the law we discover that even good behaviors do not signify good hearts and wills.  Both Jesus and Paul address the deeper problem of the unredeemed heart.  This residual problem drives us to Christ for mercy and for total healing.  When we surrender to Christ in faith, we begin to experience the inner transformation of our wills, and that inner transformation allows us for the first time not simply to fulfill the requirement of the law, but also the intent of the law.

JRE

Yet, Catholics are not alone in searching for a more sacramental understanding of preaching. In fact, it is on this subject that Catholics and Protestants may find the most common ground. How these two ecclesial streams define the sacramental character of preaching, however, is dramatically different. But is either entirely correct?

When Roman Catholics speak of preaching as sacramental, they are usually proposing that preaching should properly find its place in the liturgy by pushing hearers toward the Sacrifice of the Mass. In other words, preaching is sacramental if it prepares the parishioner to receive the sacred mysteries. It is important to note, however, that the mysteries are not understood as being contained within the preaching task itself.

Protestants likewise understand preaching to be sacramental insofar as some propose that, within preaching, Christ is mediated to the present context. Calvin, of course, would speak of Christ being “near us” in preaching, “as though we were face-to-face.” For some Protestants, preaching is sacramental precisely because Christ is present in the preaching act. Yet, the Christ who is present in preaching is the same Christ, present in the same way, who comes to the Protestant in Holy Communion. He is a spiritual Christ. Therefore, while he may undoubtedly come to the hearer in preaching, he comes lacking corporeality.

I would propose, however, that preaching, when understood as sacramental in the most historic sense of the word, cannot be relegated to a word that pushes one toward the Mass or a word that delivers an intangible Christ. Instead, preaching today needs to be conceived of in a manner analogous to the Annunciation to Mary. Remember what occurred therein:

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

St. Jerome called the angel’s words a sermon (Luke 1:29). In other words, the angel preached a homily to her. And within the particularity of the angel’s sermon, Mary was not simply pushed toward the sacrifice of the temple, nor was she simply given a spiritual presence of the second person of the Trinity. On the other hand, when the angel preached this sermon to her, the very words he spoke were made flesh. The word, says Luther, crawled in through Mary’s ear and down to her womb. Or, to say it in Augustinian terms, the word came to an element and a sacrament was there. The Annunciation was a sacramental event and a sacramental word because of the sacramental preaching of the angel. In short, it was sacramental because it delivered the person of Jesus Christ. But was that cosmic event simply a one-off?

Remember what occurred at the creation of the world. The Lord said, in his own ineffable way, “Let there be […].” Yet, he said “Let there be” eight times. And eight is the eschatological number; it is the number that will have no end. So the Lord’s “Let there be” of creation came to meet Mary at the Annunciation. For this reason, it seems, she said so hopefully, joyfully, and optatively, “Let it be unto me […].” Mary received the “Let there be” of creation when she received the sacramental sermon of the angel. And she made the totality of what was delivered therein her own with the words of her fiat. Her “Let it be unto me” received the Lord’s “Let there be.” But an eschatological eight does not stop with Mary. What went for her goes for us, or so it seems from the image of the Church in Revelation 11-12.

What this means, of course, is that both pastors and lay people, speakers and hearers or, as Luther labeled us, givers and receivers, have a certain amount of responsibility at every service.

Pastors, who indeed stand in the stead of Jesus and speak by his command, must say what Jesus says (homologeo) in a way that people today can hear Jesus speaking to them. After all, if Jesus was aware of his cultural context, should not we be equally as aware of ours? Therefore, we need to find new and fresh ways to deliver – repeatedly – the message of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

As for hearers, they should expect nothing short of a transformation when listening to a sermon. In other words, preaching is not intended, primarily, to educate us or give us a new piece of information. Rather, as with all communication between a lover and beloved, when the pastor speaks on Jesus’ behalf, what he delivers to us is the life and being of the One of whom he speaks.

To that end, if the Lord continues to speak a creative word, which his eight-sided “Let there be” would seem to imply, then we also can receive what he says today with a faithful fiat. And when we receive the word that is spoken to us by men who stand in persona Christi (2 Cor 2:10), we can have a share in the same divine life which once gave contour to creation and which, in deep humility, took on our contour in the Incarnation. And when Jesus is mediated to us in that way – tangibly, corporeally, sacramentally – he changes us, so that we might be sacraments to the entire world. Why? Precisely because when a sacramental word “words” us, we are, in turn, given a sacramental word to speak. And this dying world, as we know it, is in desperate need of a viva vox.

Rev. Joshua Genig is Pastor at The Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Atlanta, Georgia, and is finishing his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“Following Jesus to Jerusalem” • The Edwards Epistle • Winter 2013

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In Lent we focus on the life of Christ in order to prepare for his death and resurrection.  This focus is a discipline of “learning Christ,” as Paul reminded the Ephesians (4:20), and learning Christ is an important aspect of following Christ.  In this Epistle I wish to consider how the particular form and structure of the Gospels serve this Lenten purpose.

The Passion Narratives describe the suffering that Jesus endured in the final week of his life, particularly in his prayer in Gethsemane, trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, whipping, rejection, mockery, crucifixion, and death.  “Passion” derives from the Latin word patior, which means “suffering.”  All four Gospels devote more attention to this week than to any other aspect of Jesus’ ministry.

A brief review of the four Gospels reveals the disproportionate focus on the Passion Narratives in each.  The Gospel of John has twenty-one chapters, and already in chapter 13 the Passion Narrative begins.  You may recall that John’s Gospel depicts the longest ministry of Jesus, yet everything from chapters 13 onward deals with Jesus’ discourses at the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and resurrection.  The first two-thirds of John are devoted to three years of Jesus’ life, and the final one-third to the last seventy-two hours of his life.

A similar pattern is evident in the Passion Narratives of the first three Gospels.  The Passion Narrative of Matthew begins at chapter 21, at precisely the three-quarter mark of the First Gospel.  In the Gospel of Mark the Passion Narrative commences at chapter 11, which, like John, is at roughly the two-thirds mark of the Second Gospel.  Nevertheless, Matthew and Mark, and also John, relate that the plot on Jesus’ life begins long before he arrives in Jerusalem for Passover.  In the story of the Sabbath healing of the man with the deformed hand in the synagogue of Capernaum, both Matthew and Mark end with the note that the “Pharisees took counsel among themselves how they might kill Jesus” (Matt 12:14; Mark 3:6).  In John, as early as 5:18 we hear that Jews are seeking to kill Jesus, and even earlier, from the mouth of John the Baptist, Jesus is called “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29).  Notes like these prepare readers for Jesus’ necessary mission in Jerusalem.

Luke begins the Passion Narrative at chapter 19, at roughly the four-fifths mark of the Third Gospel.  In comparison with the other three Gospels, Luke’s Passion Narrative appears to be both later and shorter.  But this too is misleading.  Already in the transfiguration scene, Jesus is instructed by Moses and Elijah that he must accomplish his “exodus” in Jerusalem (9:31), and from that point onward Jesus “sets his face like flint” toward Jerusalem (9:51) in fulfillment of the divine plan.  The long central section of Luke in chapters 10-18 consists of much teaching of Jesus and many of his most famous parables (the Good Samaritan, Great Banquet, Prodigal Son, Rich Man and Lazarus), but there are no travel markers at all—except for a score of reminders that Jesus is “going to Jerusalem” where “the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised on the third day” (Luke 9:22).  The narrative emphasis of Luke is thus similar to that of Matthew, Mark, and John.  All four Gospels achieve the same effect by projecting the shadow of the cross back onto Jesus’ Galilean ministry.

Why am I interested in these statistics?  I wish to show that the very structure of the four Gospels is an important clue to their meaning and purpose.  The four Evangelists all convey that the Passion and resurrection, the cross and empty tomb, are not just the final portion of Jesus’ life, but the fulfillment of Jesus’ life, the essence and purpose for which he was sent by the Father.  This was clearly understood by the Apostle Paul who makes virtually no mention of the life of Jesus.  Paul, of course, believes the whole life of Jesus was the incarnation of God (Gal 4:4-6), but the purpose and fulfillment of that life was Jesus’ atoning death on the cross and triumphant resurrection from the dead.  This is why Paul rarely refers to Jesus by his historical name alone, but by titles, either in conjunction with his name, such as “Christ Jesus” or “Jesus Christ,” or as a substitute for his historical name, such as “Lord,” “Son of God,” “Last Adam,” etc.  These titles highlight the saving work of “Christ Jesus, who became God’s wisdom for us, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

All of this may seem well known and in no need of rehearsing.  It is helpful to recall that nearly two centuries ago theology witnessed a subtle shift away from Jesus’ passion to his earthly life.  In the nineteenth century, the most celebrated example was Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (1860), a romantic portrayal of gentle Jesus, beautiful Mary, humble and amiable fishermen, all set in Galilean simplicity.  John Greenleaf Whittier’s hymn, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” (1872), instills Renan’s Jesus with lyrical sentimentality.  In the twentieth century Paul Tillich’s existential Jesus, “the New Being,” succeeded Renan’s romantic Jesus.  Tillich offered Jesus’ love and justice as the crucial answer to the modern world’s urgent needs and questions. For Renan and Tillich, and the many theologians like them in the last two centuries, the significance—-and above all “relevance”—-of Jesus is to be found in his life rather than in his death and resurrection.  The influence of this shift in emphasis is evident in countless ways today.  Ask the average person, indeed churchgoer, what they think of Jesus and you’ll hear him extolled as a great teacher, miracle worker, moral example, model of authentic life, social revolutionary, a man who embraced the outcast and bridged social, gender, ethnic, and economic divides.  Some modern praise music sings of “falling in love with Jesus,” thus adding erotic imagery to Jesus as well.

My purpose in the above paragraph is not drive a wedge between the life and death of Jesus.  The Jesus who died on Golgotha was the Jesus who taught beside the Sea of Galilee; the same Jesus who ate with sinners and tax collectors died for them. In both his teachings and travels, however, Jesus continually reminds hearers that he “must” go to Jerusalem, and there he “must” complete the Father’s will. The very structures of the Gospels remind us of the same, and they contribute to the clarity of Jesus’ mission, that the Son was sent by the Father to be the sin-bearer of the world. The Apostle Paul can summarize the entire gospel in four words: “Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).  The Apostle John can do it in three: “It is finished” (John 19:30).

The Christian Leadership Center is pleased to publish the online version of the “Edwards Epistle,” a longstanding quarterly letter providing the reflections of Dr. James R. Edwards, Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Readers are invited also to subscribe to the print edition by contacting Phil Olson.

Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee is Pastor of Boone United Methodist Church in Boone, N.C., and was recently Director of the Faith and Leadership Center at Duke Divinity School where he remains a Fellow in Theology and Leadership.

Jason, what is leadership? What is Christian leadership?

John Maxwell describes is as “influence: nothing more, nothing less.” That’s appealing in one way – we’ve all known people in positions of authority who weren’t really leaders, and people who are genuine leaders without a position of authority. But Ron Heifetz argues one needs something less amoral, so leadership has to be influence for good, otherwise monsters who are influential count as “leaders.”

The second question is more interesting. Christian leadership would have to mean building Christ’s church. Dostoevsky speaks of loving another person as an act of seeing them as God intends them to be. Leading them would be then encouraging them toward that divine intention.

What did you learn leading the leadership center at Duke Divinity School?

What a gift it is for institutional leaders to get to lift their heads out of the weeds of their work to be inspired again, and see anew why they got in in the first place. I remember being in a meeting of Methodist bishops in which their conversation crackled. I asked a colleague why they were so animated. “They never actually talk to each other,” she said. “They just push papers around.” A simple gift to leaders is to talk to them about the big-ticket stuff: God, the world, Christ, the church, and give them space and resources to talk to one another and interesting outsiders about things that matter.

The other is how much more interesting it is to speak of institutional leadership than individual. This is the single most important intellectual move we’re making at Leadership Education, and we hope to change the language in the ecology of the church out there. No one needs more individual geniuses; we desperately need more people practicing the arts of leadership for the sake of the church.

What does the future hold for divinity/seminary education? Many people are talking about alternative models.

The good money bet would be on smaller schools closing and some of the middle sized schools merging. We just have too many schools. It’s very hard to kill an institution – alumni rally to their defense – but with less money coming from denominations and everybody pinched financially it’s hard to see a viable future for, say, two Methodist seminaries in Ohio (to pick on my own people). The interesting new experiments are large congregations starting their own schools and online educational efforts which may soon dwarf residential schools in terms of number of graduates. Whether the latter can produce people practiced in the arts of Christian community is a genuinely open question (of course, whether residential seminaries can do this is open as well, with lots more data to the contrary…).

What do you say to people whose eyes glaze over at the concept of ‘leadership,’ who may feel it’s a mere buzzword from corporate culture?

They’re right of course, it is a buzzword, and it does come from business. But theology rarely, if ever, works with “pure” concepts unsullied by the world. The trick with any concept we may find useful is to fill it with specifically Christological content and then see if it’s helpful. If it’s just a fad and it fades, fine. But our tradition is rich with images of leadership, from Moses mediating with God at Sinai to the prophets speaking a hard word to Jesus choosing and training and forgiving the twelve to Paul trusting others to do ministry in communication but not in company with himself. Of course the primary image for specifically Christian leadership has to be the pastor, speaking to the people on behalf of God and speaking to God on behalf of the people; bringing the people’s gifts to the altar and blessing them to give back to the people.

How would you encourage someone who’s a leader but doesn’t really think in terms of leadership to start thinking about leadership and consciously developing leadership skills?

Some people do something with intuitive brilliance. Not all such people have to become experts in talking about what they do or in training others to do it. But someone has to.

What are the best and worst things leaders can do when first stepping into a position?

The best thing is to listen well, especially to the “weaker members,” as the Rule of St. Benedict puts it. Also to pray, ask for advice from peers in similar situations, build a network of friends that one can keep on speed-dial. The worst things involve panicking, keeping your own press clippings, having a long memory of wrongs, and thinking the institution is there to serve you rather than the reverse.

You and your wife have been in pastoral ministry. What are the most pressing leadership challenges facing clergy, and how does one exercise leadership regarding them?

Remarkably the same through time and place: love the people and preach the gospel. Other stuff comes and goes. Pastors I’ve known vary enormously on how good a friend they are. If they’re good at friendship they tend to thrive in ministry, and if not . . .

Thinking of certain social issues roiling churches and parishes in these days regarding, say, poverty, capital punishment, other life issues, sexuality, and so forth, how should Christian leaders – lay or ordained – handle such controversial issues, especially when there is so little Christian agreement on them and when one’s own views might differ from one’s congregation or constituency?

Not to be afraid to address them, communally, scripturally, through the tradition, with grace for those who disagree. The worst thing is to shrink from speaking a clear word. And to remember we’re pastors, not experts on hot-button stuff, not commentators on cable, not pontificators. The one thing we can’t fail to do is preach Christ and him crucified; whether our people have correct opinions on this or that issue of the day is relatively far less important.

How does leadership relate to consensus? When a leader is driving a major initiative or taking an institution or group in a new direction, is it OK to lose people?

Sure. The leader, above all, is there to make decisions others can’t make. But she or he would be a fool not to discern the Spirit’s intention in the church at the moment (a very hard task!). Having so discerned, I don’t think we have to wait for unanimity, although some churches do – it’s a sign of the Spirit’s movement, for example, among some Mennonites. Then it is indeed OK to lose people, but it is like severing a limb.

Must a leader always have some big project, some major initiative going, or is it OK simply to make the trains run on time?

One leadership consultant said to me that parishioners are like children, if they don’t have anywhere to go, if they’re just standing there on the corner, they’ll start fighting. I’m not sure that’s true – it’s certainly patronizing! And I worry about starting initiatives just because one thinks it’s obligatory. Eugene Peterson speaks wisely of the first work of the pastor being to pray and preside and preach Scripture and attend to the place.

Language is always rhetorical, of course, but so many people nowadays use language to obfuscate, to hide, to dissemble, to spin. How should leaders speak when speaking publicly?

Stanley Hauerwas’s one request of any leader: “Don’t lie to me. You may not know the answer, but say so. Don’t lie.” It’s not a bad place to start on any moral question. Nicholas Lash says truthful speech is the first casualty of original sin. Adam eats, and pretty soon we have words like “collateral damage.” Leaders should not be asked to say everything they know – they’re charged also to guard what people have told them in confidence, as any good priest knows. But that doesn’t justify the way leaders both churchly and civic feel they can twist the truth.

The Church is a mixed body, and people are mixed persons. How should leaders handle scandal in their organizations, their churches, their families, their own lives?

PR people are often better at this than church people, scandalously enough. They say to say everything you know when you know it, don’t try to spin or hide, be as cooperative with internal and external authorities as you can, and you not only will be perceived as turning the corner back toward truth – you actually will be doing so.

What do Christian leaders need to do to prepare for and meet the challenges of the relatively new, post-Constantinian, secular age in which we now find ourselves? How might one exercise countercultural leadership in a post-Christian culture?

Well, one key source of learning is conversation and friendship with Christian leaders in the majority world. In Africa or Asia or Latin America it’s often illuminating to learn that Christians are called to be “servant-leaders,” to lead in a way that doesn’t enrich themselves or their families but that rather makes us less for the sake of our people or organization, in imitation of Christ’s kenosis [see Philippians 2:5-11 – ed.]. Here in the US the “servant-leader” language sounds sort of dusty and dated, there it’s a revelation. Of course our speaking into their reality will require their speaking into ours, and they often say we’re not nearly biblical enough, morally serious enough, generous enough.

Back on our turf, we still have these undead zombie-like stories from the 60s that say Christians need to be more “open to the world,” leave our specific religious language, be hip like the culture, and so on. But part of the shift in the world is that people don’t know the gospel, the stories of Scripture, even the basic teachings of the church. So far from needing to tone down our specificity, leaders in the future will have to teach these things from scratch to basically pagan people. This will be made harder by the long legacy of the religious right in this country using religious language to pummel opponents and gain votes. But we’re back where Lesslie Newbigin said we were already in the 80s: in a mission field, not a fresh one, but one that thinks it’s heard the gospel and rejected it. The truth is, as G.K. Chesterton noted, it’s never actually tried the gospel at all.

Preachers are leaders. How do you evaluate the state of preaching today? What can be done at various levels to improve it? What would you recommend to a preacher who feels he or she is struggling, or doing relatively will but who would like to improve?

Hard to generalize. Will Willimon, in his introduction to a series of sermons preached over almost a century at Duke Chapel, was surprised to find the more recent sermons the more biblically attentive, Christologically focused, and rhetorically successful entries. I take from Greg Jones that leaders of all kinds need to read very, very widely: theology, fiction, homiletics, social science, the newspaper, tons of history. A voracious appetite for words, for stories truly told, is surely part of the battle.

What books on leadership would you recommend? Any you would avoid?

Hugh Heclo’s book on institutions, On Thinking Institutionally, is quite good and accessible. In his books Better and Complications Atul Gawande writes in convincing ways about the skills required for being a good physician – lots of them include things like communicating well, reacting on one’s feet when one doesn’t have full knowledge, admitting wrong after the fact (all easy parallels). Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule is probably still unsurpassed in pastoral leadership literature. In general we Americans tend to speak of leadership as though it were a solo art. It never is. Reading good biographies of leaders (both failed and successful) is a way of seeing that no one births themselves. We always come from vibrant institutions and in turn give ourselves back to other vibrant institutions.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share with our leaders?

Thanks for the chance to talk about things that are desperately important!

Nicolosi has also served as executive director of the new Galileo Studio at Azusa Pacific University and founder and chair emeritus of Act One. Inc., a nonprofit program to train and mentor Christians for careers as Hollywood writers and executives.

The video of her talk is here: