It's So Unfair
In Which I Read the Texts Appointed for Today
I fell asleep with my phone in my hand (I know, such a bad thing to do) mid-scroll about the destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites by American bombers. One of half of the internet was very happy this happened, and the other half was melting down. Mr. Trump, as my eyes were closing, was both the best of world leaders, and the worst of totalitarian dictators. What is true depends, at least in terms of the daily scroll, on who you are and who you believe. Are you Marjorie Taylor Green or Hillbilly Things on X? Trump is a liar whose character can only be described with a string of profanity. Are you some other people whose names I can’t remember at this early hour? Trump is so clever and playing 7D Chess. Are you AOC? He is a war criminal and should be done away with yesterday. This state of affairs appears still to be the case this morning.
Not having the emotional and spiritual wherewithal to form a personal opinion with so few facts at my disposal, I popped over to the lections appointed for today and discovered that my favorite ill-used Bible verse will be read out in church this morning. You know the one:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female for you are all one in Christ.
Somehow this verse, Amelia Bedelia style, has been twisted around to say that every individual in the church is free to do whatever she wants and nobody, least of all a man, can say anything about it. Also—I’ve heard this in the last year or so—what St. Paul was really trying to say is that God is trans and so we can be as well. What God most wants is for everyone to be who xer really are but without any hierarchy or patriarchy or sadness or war or anything uncomfortable and unpleasant. Indeed, over the past ten years, I have read whole articles and books in which the central argument rests on this verse being taken out of context.
And I often wonder to myself, as I travel through the Scriptures over and over again, is why God, in his providence and wisdom, knowing that we would get the wrong end of the stick, would still put verses like this, and “judge not lest you be judged,” in there at all. Wouldn’t it have been easier if he had just stopped at “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ?” That seems clear enough, but then he goes on with this peculiar declaration that, for so many, supports an ideological project of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The answer to my wondering question isn’t hard at all, and is offered Sunday by Sunday by the wisdom of the Lectionary arrangers, who set texts alongside each other that illumine and untangle seemingly incomprehensible mysteries. And this is very good for us, for part of being a human person is looking for patterns, is taking one thing and setting it alongside another thing to see if something new emerges. And so, when someone says to you, “There is neither male nor female,” carefully leaving out the whole rest of the passage, you can pop over to the Gospel reading and blandly reply, “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
For the latter is the solid rock of the Christian life that produces the former, that strange and mysterious communion that erases all the divisions that so hurt and alienate the soul. It isn’t that you get to arrange an identity for yourself that must be accepted, no questions asked, by other people. It is that you give up everything you have, indeed, who you are, into the hands of Jesus—daily—and accept him for who he is. The act of giving up is so total a thing that it touches every point of your life. Your expectations, your identity, you assumptions, your desires all get taken by Jesus and many of them are never restored to you, at least not in a form you have the power to arrange for yourself. You don’t get to sell off your field and then come in, with mincing steps, to lay some of the proceeds at the feet of the Lord and be congratulated for your open and generous spirit. No, all of it goes to him and all of it feels like death, sometimes quite literally.
For we must face facts. The metaphor of the cross, of which baptism is such a beautiful and haunting image—to go down under the water in death and be raised again to life—is necessarily a painful one. For no one wants to die. No one wants to give everything up. No one wants to look at oneself and then be willing to relinquish it all, in an agony of loss, and often for no discernable and just reason. When you are daily taking up your cross and following Jesus, you will often feel, in your depths, how very unfair it all is, and you won’t be wrong.
And that is according to the purposes and providence of God. We have to endure unfair loss because the whole world is building bunkers of fairness that must be exposed and destroyed because they always separate us from the love of God. The deepest assumption at the core of the person, post Fall, is of things being fair. I don’t want to be measured out as male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek not because I am not each of those things—I am—but because I am so anxious that I be acknowledged and congratulated at the core, that God would look at me and give me “fairness” which always includes those around me getting what they “deserve.” Somehow, what others ought to get is less, and what I ought to get is more. And this is the sin that ruins everything over and over.
Whereas the Gospel turns it upside down. You give up your rights, your fair shake, your personal goodness, and God gives you himself. He cuts away all the hubris that divides us from each other and establishes a new community, a household of faith, a blessed company of brothers and sisters who learn to get along with each other day by day. In counting it all as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus and being found in him, we also get to belong to each other.
Ok, so, hope you can make it to church because the other texts are even more beautiful, as if that were possible. Hope to see you there!
"And I often wonder to myself, as I travel through the Scriptures over and over again, is why God, in his providence and wisdom, knowing that we would get the wrong end of the stick, would still put verses like this, and “judge not lest you be judged,” in there at all. Wouldn’t it have been easier if he had just stopped at “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ?” That seems clear enough, but then he goes on with this peculiar declaration that, for so many, supports an ideological project of diversity, equity, and inclusion."
What comes to my mind while reading this passage is the following:
And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him— 16speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction. (2nd Peter 3: 15-16)
This gem:"We have to endure unfair loss because the whole world is building bunkers of fairness that must be exposed and destroyed because they always separate us from the love of God." I am thinking of the "autonomous movement", if I may call it such. What an anti-Christ follower thing to strive to be. And strive we all do, with "bunkers of fairness" around us. Of course the bitter irony is the need for everyone else to be good with our autonomy, collectively. The mortification of sin/self is the true measure of a sanctified life and the only one that will bring us to unity in Christ.