Speakeasy Theology

Reflecting on this week’s texts, I consider the wisdom of the Teacher, which tells us to look not at the things that can be seen “under the sun” but at what cannot be seen because it happens “within the Son” in whom our life is hidden. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

Engaging this week’s readings, Christopher+ and I discuss what it means to be whole-heartedly devoted to Christ alone in the midst of the many gods of this world who are vying for our allegiance, trying to co-opt us into fighting their wars for them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

A month later, Christopher Brewer rejoins me for a conversation on the readings for this Sunday’s texts. This time, we re-consider the story of Martha and Mary, asking why we’ve misread it and how Jesus makes it possible for us to read it more carefully, more charitably, more gracefully. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

I’m still trying to find the best way to do these weekly reflections, the way that’s most helpful and beneficial to the most people (and not only those who have to preach on Sundays). So, this week, I asked Christopher Brewer to talk with me through the texts and to help me consider what it means for us to hinder and frustrate the work of God as Judas did—and what Jesus does about our hindering. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

Reflections on the Readings for Good Shepherd Sunday. We begin with the Gospel (John 10:22-30) in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I want to focus on the final lines of the reading:My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one."From these lines, I want to attend to the oddity of one detail: Jesus says that what his Father has given him is “greater than all else”—the realest of all realities. And he insists that no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. Consider that claim for a moment. What has been given to him is still kept for him. What is kept for him is what has been given to him. What is his is his. What is his is his because it is the Father’s. What he has received as his own remains in his Father’s care for him as Son. And because it remains in the Father’s care for him, what he receives is truly his, truly his own. What does this mean? It does not mean that the Father continues to clutch at what he has given, to hold it “over” the Son as leverage. The Father does not cling to the Son any more than the Son grasps at his equality with the Father. No, the gift the Father gives is given in such a way that it is securely the Son’s. Jesus is who he is because of how he is loved by the Father. And it is that love, which is greater than all else, that holds the Son in such a way that he is freed to be fully, excessively, abundantly himself. Precisely as the one so loved, Jesus loves us and shares with us his eternal life. Precisely as the one so held, he cannot be snatched out of the Father’s hand and we cannot be snatched out of his.In Revelation 7, John the Revelator sees a throng, all robed in white. He is asked who they are and where they’ve come from, but he is wise enough to admit he doesn’t know. He is told, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.For this reason they are before the throne of God,and worship him day and night within his temple,and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;the sun will not strike them,nor any scorching heat;for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."Notice, these white-robed overcomers are thronged before the throne. They are praised for worshipping within God’s temple. And for this reason, they are assured they will be sheltered by the One Seated on the Throne. But we know from John’s Gospel that Jesus’ body is the temple. So, we know that it is in him that these saints shall be sheltered.Again and again, including at the beginning of this reading, John has spoken of the Lamb as standing before or beside the throne, in the presence of the One Seated on the Throne. Now, however, John hears him named as the one standing at the center of the throne. What has happened? The Father, the One Seated on the Throne, has made room for the Lamb in his rule, his reign. Jesus has been sheltered and just in that way has become a shelter, the Father’s shelter. Earlier in the Apocalypse, he promised that those who overcome would be granted to sit with him on his throne. So, what we have described in Revelation 7 is the fulfillment of that promise. These overcomers are being moved to and into the center of the throne of God, made to share in God’s joy in being Christ’s and Christ’s joy in being God’s. The Lamb, the one who now stands with the Father at the center of the throne, is the one who shepherds us. The shepherd is himself a sheep. The messiah, the king, has been kind to us by become one of our kind, by making himself our kin. The creator has become a creature without in any way changing what it means for him to be creator. And in so doing he has changed forever everything about what it means for us to be creatures. He has become one of our kind, making us his kin, so we can share in his kingdom as co-heirs and co-regents, kinging with him.As the Father shepherded the Son, so the Son shepherds us. And we are as secure in him as he is in his Father. We cannot be snatched away from him any more than he can be sundered from the Father and the Spirit. John 1 makes clear that Jesus’ own human life, his creaturely liveliness, the liveliness which came alive in him in the beginning, is nothing but the Father’s gift. And that life, that liveliness, is what Jesus has shared with us. The Father has made room for the Son. And the Son has made room for us—and all of that is realized by the Spirit who is the roominess of God.Once we’ve gotten some sense of this logic, we can begin to hear Psalm 23 as promising not a good life, and anything but what we’ve been told is the good life, but a share in God’s life. The “right pathways” along which we are shepherded are the pathways opened up within God’s life with God. To be led by Jesus, to be shepherded by him, is to be caught up in the flow of his Spirit-enlivened communion with the Father, to be borne along with him and in him by the giddy giving and receiving that the eternal Spirit eternally makes possible.The Psalm begins with a profession: “The Lord is my shepherd.” In these opening lines, the psalmist speaks of God in the third person. He speaks about God. Suddenly, however, at the heart of the Psalm, he begins to speak to God: “you are with me.” What has changed? He has been led away from the still waters and green pastures down into the dark valley. His suffering has turned his profession into prayer.Now, I want to be as clear as I can: God does not bring suffering on us. God does not want us to suffer. Suffering, in itself, does no good for us. But God does bring the suffering ones to us, and God leads us to them. God does not want us to go through suffering. But God does want the suffering to go through us. God is the God of the suffering. God is the God who suffers with and in the suffering. So, if we are to know God as God is, if we are to become one with God as God wants us to be, then we cannot not suffer with God alongside those who’re hurting. Jesus is a guest who stays only in the house of the wounded. So, we cannot be with him unless we are willing to be with them. There is no other way to know God. There is no other God to know.We need to remember this, too: the shadow in the valley of death is cast by the wounded body of Jesus, hanging on that tree. The darkness of his sorrows is the deepest darkness, a darkness so deep it’s luminous. So, if we can learn to be at peace in the shadow of his body, suspended on the cross, then we can be at peace in any shadow, even the shadow of other deaths. In fact, we can learn to be even more at peace there, in that darkness, than we ever were beside the still waters. But we can learn that only after our professions, our declarations, have been shattered into desperate prayer.Anyone can speak of God in the third person. Indeed, everyone does! Wolves do that, as well as sheep. Hirelings do that, as well as shepherds. But what we need, obviously, especially in times like these, is to allow the good shepherd to lead us into the vicinity of those who’re suffering—especially those whom we think deserve their suffering—so we become so sick of what we’ve being saying about God that we have no choice but to speak to him on their behalf—and to listen to what he’s saying not about us, even less about others, but to us about ourselves for their sake.Then, and only then, we will find we have been led through the darkness into a new light: “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.” Why? So we will make room for our enemies at his table, as he has made room for us on his throne. So we can serve them as God serves us. So we can enjoy them as God enjoys us.Each week, we’re called to the Lord’s Table with these words: “The gifts of God for the people of God.” But we hear that invitation rightly only if we hear it as a call to welcome others into the center of the throne with us. Christ, as temple, opens himself to us so we can open ourselves to others. He offers us the gifts of his body and blood so we can be enlivened with life, so we can live that life with him in a way that lights the world.Look at the Psalm’s final line: “Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” Now, at the very end, the psalmist is finally able to speak truly in the first person. Speaking not only to God but with and within God as God speaks. And this, and nothing less than this, is what the Psalm promises: we are all being borne along by God’s love for God—and God’s love for God’s love for us—learning to love ourselves not only because God loves us but with God’s love for us. This is the empowerment the Spirit gives, an empowerment which frees us from all shame and presumption, all anxiety and pretension because it grounds us in the incredible hospitality of the God who welcomes us to dwell in his house, not as sometime guests, but as kin, as family—and something more than family.Maximus the Confessor said it like this (QThal 60):For it was fitting that the Creator of the universe, who by the economy of His Incarnation became according to nature what He was not, should preserve without change both what He Himself was by nature and what He became in His Incarnation. For it is not natural to contemplate any change in God, in whom we cannot conceive of absolutely any movement whatsoever, and it is because of movement that things in motion are subject to change. This is why we must be shepherded, led out into green pastures, down into the valley of the shadow of death, and out into the open space where the table has been set. St Maximus continues: This is the great and hidden mystery. This is the blessed end for which all things were brought into existence. This is the divine purpose conceived before the beginning of beings, and in defining it we would say that this mystery is the preconceived goal for the sake of which everything exists, but which itself exists on account of nothing, and it was with a view to this end that God created the essences of beings. This is, properly speaking, the limit and goal of God’s providence, and of the things under His providential care, since the recapitulation of the things created by God is God Himself. This is the mystery which circumscribes all the ages, and which reveals the grand plan of God, a super-infinite plan infinitely pre-existing the ages an infinite number of times. The essential Word of God became a messenger of this plan when He became man, and, if I may rightly say so, revealed Himself as the innermost depth of the Father’s goodness while also displaying in Himself the very goal for which creatures manifestly received the beginning of their existence.No doubt you’ve been told that the world does not revolve around you. And that’s true. But God does. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

NOTE: Trying something new this week, including text as well as audio for the reflections and a piece of original artwork. Let’s begin with the first lesson — Acts 5:27-32:When the temple police had brought the apostles, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”We should not assume that everything done in this scene is to be praised as necessary or right. In spite of what’s sometimes suggested, not everything described in Acts is prescribed by the Spirit. The apostles, including Peter, routinely get it wrong. Luke knows Israel’s Scriptures well. He knows the stories of the patriarchs, including Abraham, and the stories of the kings, including David. He knows the stories of the prophets, including Moses, and the stories of the priests, including Aaron. And he knows that these stories are far more often than not stories of vanity, corruption, faithlessness, ineptitude, apathy, overreach.Notice: Luke does not say, as he had done earlier (in Acts 2 and in Acts 4), that Peter and the apostles are “filled with the Spirit” in their speaking. He says only that they answered their accusers. Perhaps, then, the high priest is at least half-right? Of course, the temple authorities did work with other powers to get Jesus killed. But the apostles’ words seem blunt, not incisive. What they say only enrages the council. It does not “cut to the heart” as Peter’s Pentecost sermon did.   Tellingly, the apostles do not say a word about Herod or Pilate. Even more to the point, they do not say a word about their own responsibility for what happened to Jesus. Bearing those silences in mind, it is worth pointing out, then, that they claim the Holy Spirit has been given by God to those who “obey him.” In the Gospel, however, as you may remember, Jesus says the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who “ask him” (Lk 11:13). It is also worth pointing out that they say God desires to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Israel . But in his last words before his ascension, Jesus told them they would be his witnesses not only in Jerusalem and Judea but to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).In today’s Gospel, John 20, Jesus breathes on the disciples, as he had breathed on Adam in the beginning, sharing the Spirit of life with them—even though they have been anything but obedient and even though they ask for nothing. This is how John tells that story:When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”“The doors of the house were locked…” The disciples, including Peter and John and the other apostles, are burrowed away in hiding “for fear of the Jews.” Their fear is all the more remarkable given what they know: they know the tomb is empty; they know the cloth that had been on Jesus’ face was left behind, neatly folded; they know Mary Magdalene has seen the Lord; they know the word of promise he shared with her for them. And yet they remain in hiding.We’re told they fear “the Jews”—those prominent extremists and hardliners in Jerusalem and Judea who had successfully plotted and schemed to kill Jesus. That is almost certainly what they told themselves. But in truth they are not so much afraid as in dread. Not of the Jews but of the Lord. The Gospels are clear: the disciples, including the apostles, simply do not have the words for what they feel has happened. But their bodies know, because their hearts know, that whatever has happened has brought everything they have known into doubt. “Doubting Thomas,” in this regard, is anything but alone.   So, on the evening of the first day of the new creation, the doors are locked, the Gospel says, and Jesus comes and stands among his terrified disciples. He does not stand at the door and knock. He simply appears among them. We sometimes tell the story of the resurrection as if Jesus startled awake early on Sunday morning, suddenly realizing he had been dead and now is alive again. Listen to Maire Howe’s marvelous lines:   Two of the fingers on his right hand had been broken So when he poured back into that hand it surprised him—it hurt him at first. And his whole body was too small. Imagine the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill. He came into it two ways: From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants. And from the center—suddenly all at once. Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.The Gospels tell a different story. They say nothing about Jesus’ inner thoughts and feelings. They tell us that the stone is rolled away only after Jesus is risen. They tell us the stone is rolled away for show, so the guards and the disciples can know for a fact that something impossible has happened—something impossible indeed. They tell us that Jesus left the tomb where he had been buried the same way he arrives in this room where the disciples have barricaded themselves. Then, he disappeared. Now, he appears.Well, that’s not quite right. We can’t speak of the “then” of the resurrection—as if it happened at a particular moment in time, a moment that could be timed. The resurrection happened not in time but to it. The risen Christ, they’re told, is no longer in the tomb: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here.” But what they soon discover is that he is in the tomb because the tomb is in him.As Robert Jenson says in his Large Catechism, “there is no spatial separation to overcome between the embodied Jesus ‘in heaven’ and the loaf and cup on the altar” of Communion. Why not? Because “the question of Christ’s bodily presence at the Supper is… not a question of getting from one place to another but of availability to us in the places where he chooses to be found and directs us to seek him. All places are one in their accessibility to him.” And so are all times.As I’ve just said, the events of Christ’s life—his birth, his baptism, his death, his resurrection—happen not only in time but to it. The Christ who appears in the locked room to those frightened disciples is the same Christ who appears in the sealed fountain of the virgin’s womb. It his resurrection, his disappearing from the sealed tomb, that fuses the events of his life into the transfiguring presence at work at the deepest depths of history. Rahner gets this exactly right, I think:The purpose of [Jesus’] life is perfectly accomplished in his resurrection… The whole Christ with his whole destiny and with everything he experienced and suffered on earth with his human nature, has now entered into the glory of the Father. The glorification of his body is not something accidental—a second thought, but it is given to him because he has attained the great end and purpose of his history. That is so true that everything that he was in course of his history has entered into the glory of the Father. Jesus has not lost a thing… He possesses his life completely… He took his whole life and everything in it with him into glory… The resurrected, ascended Lord is the end of the ages! He is the heart of the world!This, and nothing less than this, is what we proclaim when we proclaim the resurrection. Jesus, the one who lived that life that began in Mary’s belly and died that death outside Jerusalem’s walls, is the infinite, eternal source, guide, and goal of created existence. His life is the life of all that is good and true and beautiful. His death is the death of all that’s opposed to creation’s flourishing. Nothing but what he does and wants done will matter at all in the end. As St Maximus said in his Centuries on Theology and Economy: “He who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the Resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything.”The New Testament reading for Sunday is Revelation 1:4-8. It opens with John’s identification of Jesus as “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” It closes with Jesus’ own words: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” The order of these identifications not insignificant. Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth only as the firstborn of the dead. And he is the firstborn of the dead only as the faithful witness, the one who did not cling to life even in the face of death. His dominion, in other words, is the outworking of resurrection life in the whole of the cosmos, so that every creature not only exists but breathes with the breath of God—fulfilling the promise of the last line in the last Psalm. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Ps. 150:6). And everything, truly everything, does have breath, God’s breath.In Revelation, Jesus’ dominion is the dominion of peace and thanksgiving, a peace he brought about not by spilling the blood of God’s enemies but by drinking for them the cup of the unmixed wine of God’s wrath. He is the LORD, John reminds us, the Almighty. But it is because he is the Almighty, the one from whom, and through whom, and for whom all things exist, that the report of his resurrection is “gospel”—a goodness that spells the world into the fulness of peace and joy. Jenson is right: the good news is good news not because a resurrection has happened but because Jesus is risen.In the Gospel reading, when Christ appears, he speaks peace over the disciples (as before he had spoken peace over the waters). He needs to speak peace because they are in dread—of him! And of what he has wrought. He has stripped the world of its orderliness, its predictability, its purpose. They are left undone. It is only after he shows them his hands and his side that they rejoice. In fact, read closely: they do not even see him until he shows them his hands and his side. And then he breathes the Spirit on them, after having passed the peace a second time. So, despite what Peter and the apostles suggest to the high priest in the temple courts, they received the Spirit not because they obeyed, not because they even knew enough to ask for the Spirit, but simply because Jesus loved them and kept showing up for them until that love caught hold of them.Obviously, your story is different from mine and our stories are different from the apostles’. But not so different that we can’t learn anything from them. I suspect that at least some of us are locked away right now, grieving what we’ve lost or terrified by what may come. Others of us are spoiling for a fight, seething with righteous (or not-so-righteous) indignation, eager to bring Jesus’ blood down on those we know are in the wrong. Most of us, I suspect, veer back-and-forth between that sealed-off room and the temple court. One moment, engaging this person, we are nervous and self-protective. The next moment, engaging that person, we are brutal and vindictive.But here’s the good news: if you’re in hiding, Jesus will appear to you and make himself known to you so that you’re filled with God’s own joy. He does not even need you to open the door. And if you’re on the warpath, if you’re out crusading, Jesus will afford you all the time and space you need to discover not only that your violence can never accomplish his peace but also that his peace will always triumph over your violence—first for those you’ve wronged and then, when you’re ready, also for you. He can do that because he is risen as the heart of the world. Time is his. History is his. You are his.Last week, after I shared my latest health update, a dear friend of mine, Bill Oliverio, sent me a text. He ended with these words, which were for me straight out of the mouth of Jesus: “Peace, strength, rest to you. Everything will be here waiting.” That is the word the Spirit of God makes mine and yours. That is the word we can speak to ourselves and to others—including those powers that are opposed to God. This is what it means to trust that Christ is risen as the heart of the world. Jesus has all the time in the world for us. We have all the time we need to get this right. So, we never need to press ourselves or anyone else for an outcome. Everything will be here waiting. Everything will be here waiting. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

Reflections on the texts for Sunday, seeking (and not necessarily finding) healthier ways of talking about what it means to say Christ is “risen”—and why it matters that he is. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

A couple of clarifying remarks on yesterday’s reflections—plus a prayer request. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe

Unscripted reflections on the texts for Sunday + a quick health update. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cewgreen.substack.com/subscribe