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PERICOPE STUDY
CENTER FOR THEOLOGY, LRC
The First Sunday in Lent– February 29, 2004
1.
A
land flowing with milk and honey? – One is obliged to wonder, with Augustine
(below), as to the description of the
land. Illinois, Iowa or Minnesota
it is not, as to farmland, flowing with milk or
honey. Or corn or wheat, for
that matter. Much of the “hill
country” is virtually barren, near desert in topography and
climate. The
“wilderness” appears more level in places, but equally
arid. Herds of sheep and goats
scramble up and down hills and wander through areas of scrub
bushes. Of the more fertile
and less arid places, much of the soil is laden with rocks the size of
basketballs and larger. The
description of North Carolina as “that goodlie land” by an observer
in the colonial period is closer to “milk and honey” than most
of that referenced by Moses. To
Abraham was promised “the land that I will show you” and thus
God’s promise was heard – and
launched. Tertullian casts the
“land of milk and honey” into spiritual interpretation ….
“eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter.”
2.
The
offering of the first fruit of the ground – The point is less the land,
however, or even the harvest. The
point is the offering, and to whom the thanks are directed: “you
shall set it down before the Lord ….and worship the Lord … and
rejoice in all the good which the Lord … has given to you and your house
… and the sojourner who is among
you.”
3.
An
understanding of the Lord’s providence – It is the Lord, after
all, who has given this to us, whether land “flowing with milk and
honey” or “goodlie land” or, to affirm Tertullian, eternal
life. Thanksgiving we celebrate
in November, as a nation. As
the people of God, we celebrate every week the thanksgiving of the Eucharist,
heavenly food that promises forgiveness of sins and life and
salvation. We “turn to
the Lord (our) God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding
in steadfast love.” Abounding
in steadfast love.
4.
From the Ancients:
On “Land Flowing
with Milk and Honey,” from Tertullian on Exodus 3:8 (“A land flowing
with milk and honey”) – Jesus Christ was to introduce the second
people (which is composed of us nations, lingering deserted in the world
previously) into the land of promise, “flowing with milk and honey”
(that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is
sweeter.). This had to come
about not through Moses (that is, not through the law’s discipline)
but through Joshua (that is, through the new law’s grace), after our
circumcision with “a knife of rock” (Joshua 5:2; that is, with
Christ’s precepts, for Christ is in many ways and figures predicted
as a rock. (I Corinthians10:4)
Therefore the man who was being prepared to act as an image of this
sacrament was inaugurated under the figure of the Lord’s name, even
so as to be named Jesus. (That is, Joshua) … from Answer to the Jews
9:22.
From Augustine,
re. land of milk and honey: A
Literal description? … I ask whether we should take the land flowing
with milk and honey spiritually, since, according to the proper sense, this
phrase does not describe the land that was being given to the people of
Israel. Or is it a figure of
speech that is used to praise the richness and sweetness of the land? …
from Questions on Exodus 4
Augustine, re. land
of milk and honey: Grace and the Kingdom … Indeed, unless that land
which was styled the land that flowed with milk and honey signified something
great, through which, as by a visible token he was leading those who understood
his wondrous works to invisible grace and the kingdom of heaven, they could
not be blamed for scorning that land, whose temporal kingdom we also ought
to esteem as nothing, that we may love that Jerusalem which is free, the
mother of us all, (Galatians 4:26) which is in heaven, and truly to be
desired. … from
Explanation of the Psalms 106
(107):20.
JLY – 02.24.04
The word is near you, on your
lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and
one confesses with the mouth and so is
saved. The Scripture says, “No
one who believes in him will be put to
shame.” For there is no
distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous
to all who call on him. For
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.”
* * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
1.
Paul’s passage reduces the personal dimension
of faith to its bare simplicity: “if you confess with your lips that
Jesus is Lord, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. . . .
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.”
2.
There are no distinctions; Jew, Greek (see
above); Ethiopian (see Acts 8); Parthian, Mede, Elamite, Mesopotamian, Judean,
Cappadocian, Pontian, Asian, Phrygian, Pamphylian, Egyptian, Libyan, Cyrenian,
Roman, Cretan, Arab (see Acts 2) – “Everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord shall be saved.”
3.
There are no distinctions: Jew nor Greek,
male nor female, slave nor free (Galatians
3). Even among those wrongdoers
who otherwise would not inherit the kingdom of God: fornicators, idolaters,
adulterers, prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers,
robbers . . . the ones of these who are washed, sanctified, justified in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God (I Cor. 6:9-11)
– “Everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
4.
The gospel is inclusive but it is specific:
“if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, if you believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . .
. Everyone who calls on the
name of the Lord shall be saved.”
5.
The people of God are of diverse national
and ethnic origins, of varying pedigree as to categories of sins, but in
their diversity, and in their present and former perversity, they
have one thing in common: “if you confess with your lips that Jesus
is Lord, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved. . . . Everyone
who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
6.
Is not the
if a
condition? Is there indeed something
we have to do, despite the fact
that while we were still weak, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us? Is it not so that while
we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his
Son (Romans 5)?
7.
The
if is surely a condition, but it
is not a condition that a person accomplishes or
fabricates. It is, rather, a
condition to which one is brought—on the lips and in the heart—by
the Holy Spirit, the One who calls
us in the gospel, enlightens and sanctifies us in
grace.
Repeat: it is not by
our own reason or strength that we believe in Jesus Christ, or come to Him,
but it is the Holy Spirit who puts in our hearts and on our lips both our
faith and our confession.
8.
Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century
Western pietism sought to eclipse the controversies of dogma by sincere interior
devotion. Partisan doctrinal
struggles, which became violent during much of the 17th century
in Europe, were set aside by the
pietist. So also were the sterile
assertions of the deists, whose intellectual austerity was their preferable
alternative to a partisan God.
Likewise the pietist could avoid the Enlightenment critics of religion:
in pietism, reason counted only as an ally of common sense—one obeys
God in spirit and in truth, pure and simple.
9.
Pietist spirituality was a search for congeniality
between inner yearning, outer behavior, and the Holy Spirit of
God. It was a
Christian piety, a Christian
spirituality: given the content
of the faith, how can one live with a pure heart and not lift up his soul
unto vanity nor swear deceitfully?
However much it may have been an alternative to contentious doctrinal
struggles, this piety, this spirituality, understood itself as a
Christian piety, at one with ecumenical
creeds if not denominational strife.
10.
Contemporary spirituality, by contrast, is
a yearning from the depths of a self at once both at-large and
self-discerning. It is a search
for meaning beyond both nihilism and materialism—understood, both of
them, as life in a universe without God.
Contemporary spirituality begins, somewhat like Schleiermacher but
more in keeping with ancient gnosticism, with the believing self,
exploring—now even prowling—the smorgasbord of “spiritual”
possibilities, from New Age to Scientology, from old Catholic to pentecostal,
from Zen to Ayn Rand. Like the
untold number of catalogues that arrive in the mail, the spirituality contenders
display their wares: on the Internet, in the telephone directory, in libraries
of anthologies, in the last fashion of spiritual
pursuit. Sadly, only slightly
removed from trivial pursuit; perhaps, not at all
removed.
11.
How to interface the Gospel with the self-absorbed
spirituality seeker, the possible link to whom being immersed as it is in
the miasma of contending spiritualities? With a Gospel overlaid with centuries of familiarity,
including not a few mistakes and even more sins, on the part of the
church? To a culture of individuals
whose fascination with self defines
spirituality? To a neo-gnosticism
sophisticated beyond imagination (!) compared to first-century gnostic dabblers
in the then-new Way?
12.
By telling the old, old story of Jesus and
His love. In just the way St.
Paul tells it: “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, if
you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. . . . Everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
13.
It is simple, but not
simplistic. Behind it and beyond
it there is wonderful richness and complexity, a universe of both power and
love. The God who is really God.
The Savior who died for us.
But in the moment of clarity there is simple faith and
trust. Amid immeasurable yearning
and deep darkness of the soul, amid competing claims within the Christian
faith for the status of nova clearly outside the pale of acceptability, amid countless
cheap imitations (both without and within the church), there is St. Paul’s
simple and powerful formula: “if you confess with your lips that Jesus
is Lord, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved. . . . Everyone
who calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.” Preach
it. Do it.
JLY – 02.24.98, rev.
02.24.04
THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT
FEBRUARY 29, 2004
ROMANS
10:8B-13
8b)
”The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is,
the word of faith that we proclaim); 9) because if you confess with your
lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved. 10) For one believes with the heart and so is
justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. 11) The scripture
says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 12) For
there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all
and is generous to all who call on him. 13) For, “Everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
The subject of his letter has been righteousness. Paul has considered the possibility of righteousness as something gained by obedience to God, a subject he subdivided into the attempts of gentiles and the attempt of Jews to achieve it. He contends that both groups have failed to achieve righteousness before God by their own efforts. (Rom.1-2)
However, Paul is convinced that the Jews did have an advantage in the attempt because while gentiles had to depend upon their own imaginations and logic, Jews were given God’s description of righteousness in the law. Gentiles did not do too badly in picturing righteousness, though they left much to be desired in their pictures of God (big bird, big snake, big women, big men). But the Jews, even with their superior picture of God and His required righteousness, failed along with the gentiles when it came to letting God be God in their lives. (Rem.3)
The even greater advantage Jewish people enjoyed was the revelation to them that God not only demanded righteousness but He also gave righteousness as His gift to anyone who would not turn away and reject the Giver. Some of them, like Abraham, did let God do what He wanted and trusted Him. They received righteousness as God’s gift and did not try to manufacture their own. (Rom.4-5)
This revelation was not only to Abraham’s family but also through them to others and for others. All people struggle with the same inability to manufacture righteousness and the same difficulty in receiving it as God’s gift.
It is out of this background that Paul pleads with the people who will hear this letter to abandon all attempts to manufacture righteousness and to trust God, who promises to give it to them as His gift.
People who so far have failed to produce righteousness are called to give attention to three statements God made long ago. It is Paul’s contention that God said these things not only for the people of long ago but also for him and for the recipients of his letter. He cites these three.
“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” (Dt. 13:14) God is telling Israel at the point when their wandering is about to end and life in the land God has given to them is about to begin, that they should remember what has happened. He has always been there to lead them and guide their lives, never demanding that they must first accomplish something else. He has called them to follow Him. As their history shows, even when they have stopped or wandered away from God, He has returned to call them. He has never been far from them. Even while they wandered they took with them the words of the promise so familiar to all of them: “I am Yahweh, your God.” He is the only real God. If we are not hearing God’s word to us, it is not because He is far away and we have to find Him. We may even be speaking His words and not hearing them. (Is a word to preachers sufficient?)
“No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” Is.28:16 [“One who trusts will not panic” (LXX: kataischynthe>is put to shame; Rom.9:33, 10:11 kataischynthesetai-will be put to shame)] The stumbling block is not the call to action but the call to faith. We want to be able to call attention to something that we have done, but our only legitimate plea is that Jesus died for me, a sinner. It is sufficient.
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32) The promise is the same for each and no one is favored. The promise is the same for all and God wants all to be saved.
No cost? Only that which Jesus faced in His life (Lk.4:1-13) and in His death. The outcome is that “God raised him from the dead” and “you will be saved.” (Rom.10:9). The Lenten story begins with victory.
WEM
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