The Secret Jesus

The following is a talk presented to Grace Connection on June 2, 20024, by Heather Isaacs-Royce, a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

“Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, ‘Who do people say I am?’ They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ ‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ.’ Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Mk. 8:27-36

Secrets are everywhere. Good and bad secrets, personal secrets, family secrets, national secrets. I hate secrets. Keeping secrets used to be hard for me because it felt like I wasn’t being truthful. I wanted everything out on the table, nothing held back, right now. I felt that if I could have and supply access to all the relevant information needed when people are just getting to know each other that I could single-handedly prevent almost all the misunderstandings that cause broken relationships. Learning to live with secrets has been a process of accepting that some secrets are necessary to the health of our relationships, some secrets protect us, and some secrets are, paradoxically, the truth. Accepting secrets has been a process of giving up control–not only of information but of people. There is no amount of information I can have that can eliminate the risk of being in relationship with people. Period. So in learning which secrets are healthy, I have become even more averse to those secrets that threaten our well-being and seek to control our lives.

Someone close to me is recently emerging from one of those deadly secrets–an abusive marriage. Now, this person entered that relationship believing herself to be an independent thinker, a feminist who was smart, self-aware, confident. But within the first months of her marriage, she found that in her attempt to change him, she had been the one who had been changed. No longer able to defend herself or walk away, she told no one the truth about her marriage. For months she put on a good face to those who asked. In a short period of time, she was involved in what she would later recognize as a “textbook case” of domestic abuse. One of the essential components in the perpetuation of abuse? The power of secrets. Her husband isolated and controlled the family by making everything a secret–even the most mundane aspects of everyday life were kept a secret from those outside the family. In this way, private secrets became public lies. The trauma and danger at home were hidden behind tightly controlled public facades that learned what to say to placate the polite inquiries people made on a day to day basis.

From the title of my sermon, “The Secret Jesus, ” you may be thinking that I’m painting myself into a corner with this line of talk. And to be truthful, I can’t promise you that I’m not placing myself in a tight spot. I’ve been struggling to understand the function of secrets in the Gospel of Mark for a couple of weeks now and I’m not sure I’m even close to figuring it out. What do I mean juxtaposing a story of an abusive marriage to a discussion of the person of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark? What do I mean referring to the “secret Jesus” at all? Is this going to be a “Da Vinci Code” sermon, replete with its own lurid conspiracy theory? Well, in honoring the “secretness” of this discussion, I’m not going to reach for a way out of this just yet. Rather, I’m hoping to let the questions find their own way to an open clearing.

Besides, if there is a time to wrestle with mystery and secrets, we are immersed in it. The Lenten season, the forty days before Easter when many Christians spiritually journey to the cross, is a temporal embodiment of a Christian enigma. In this somber but hopeful time, we are asked to enter into deep reflection and repentance. This repentance is not simply keeping a list of the sins we have known to have committed and then reciting them in prayer to God. This repentance goes to the very hidden heart of our beliefs about who we are and how we are in the world. Alan Jones, in his book on Lent and Easter, Passion for Pilgrimage, writes about the discipline of repentance. There are three simple commitments, he says. “The first is to rigorous honesty–that is, to hope for nothing less than the truth. The second is to honor our passion for connection by celebrating the solidarity of all human beings. The third is to search for a common language, so that we can talk to each other,” (6) Commitment to rigorous honesty as the foundation of true repentance. The commitment itself may be simple to make and yet the practice of holding to that commitment is what makes honesty the hardest aspect of repentance. How can we be honest with God when we have such a hard time being honest with ourselves?

Learning true repentance, learning to be honest with ourselves, others, and God may be a lifelong endeavor. But reading the Gospel of Mark is a good place to return to on any point of that journey. Mark begins with a call for repentance. And a grown man named Jesus walks into the story out of nowhere–without a personal history, without a birth narrative–and accepts the call, being baptized for the forgiveness of sins by John the Baptist. From his baptism, Jesus is then sent by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days to be physically and spiritually tested.

Without imposing other gospel traditions onto our understanding of Jesus’ birth and ministry, we are better able to appreciate how strange and enigmatic Mark is. At times, Jesus appears frustratingly elusive. Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, and Levi all answer Jesus’ call without knowing a thing about him. They leave behind their jobs, their families, their social status to follow a man they don’t know. (1:16-20) Then, when Jesus does have the opportunity to explain himself or what he is doing, he often keeps his identity secret commanding demons to be silent or telling those he has healed to not disclose the source of their healing. He teaches in parables which are not always or easily understood by those closest to him. The disciples stay close to Jesus throughout his brief ministry but their persistent disbelief is a constant factor in Jesus’ interactions with them.

Sometimes frustrated, sometimes shocked, Jesus frequently chastises his disciples for not seeing the spiritual truth behind his healings, miracles, and teachings. But reading Mark, we as readers have similar moments of frustration and shock in trying to grasp the nature and purpose of Jesus. In contrast, the other Gospel writers used considerable ink in fleshing out who Jesus was–from constructing Davidic genealogies to emphasizing Jesus’ pre-existent divine role. And that kind of storytelling, to be honest, is much more appealing to most of us–we feel like we have more pieces of the Jesus puzzle. But Mark is much more ambiguous about the nature of Jesus’ divinity and ministry and seems resistant to helping the reader work on the puzzle at all. Perhaps this is why Mark hasn’t shared the same level of popularity as the other gospels throughout church history. Mark’s presentation paints a very different picture of Jesus than the one we often claim to know in worship and he keenly probes the depths of our own struggles to know who Jesus is and what the cross means for us.

Much of today’s talk was generated by a question a professor of mine asked: What would Christian theology have been like if Mark had been the only book in the New Testament? I’ve struggled with this question because the idea itself was a new one. In general we tend to read the Gospels as one coherent, harmonized whole rather than listen to what individual Gospel writers may have been trying to say to their particular communities and how God may still be communicating different aspects of the Gospel through their distinct theologies. For example, the writer of Mark is known for his sparse inclusion of details and uncomfortable dialogues. Nick Cave, the punk-rock singer, describes Mark in these terms: “Mark’s Gospel is a clatter of bones, so raw, nervy, and lean on information that the narrative aches with the melancholy of absence,” (Taylor, 91). If you look at Matthew and Luke and compare them to Mark, it seems fairly possible that Matthew and Luke were written after Mark with the intention to “clean up” or “smooth over” some of Mark’s “raw, nervy, and lean” edges as each writer saw fit. An example is found in comparing today’s text with its parallel in Matthew. In Mark, Jesus doesn’t respond to Peter’s proclamation that he is the Christ. Instead, he lets Peter’s answer just hang there before he gives the command to tell no one about him.

Perhaps the reader can infer that Jesus is silently admitting that he is the Christ. But why not just say it then? Why the big secret? Matthew opted for a strikingly different response–in chapter 16, verses 17 and following, Jesus practically coronates Peter with the leadership of the church. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona!” he says, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it...” and he continues. But even then, after this rather lengthy, congratulatory monologue, Matthew’s Jesus still demands silence on the issue.

Whether or not Jesus affirmed Peter’s answer that he was the Christ, it is obvious that Peter, along with the other disciples, did not know what that meant. In the verses immediately following this conversation about his identity, Jesus begins teaching the disciples about the suffering the Son of Man must endure. In a moment of “speaking plainly,” Jesus predicts both his own execution and his resurrection. However, Peter seems to get caught up on the suffering part and not hear anything else Jesus says. At this point, Peter takes hold of Jesus and rebukes him. Though we can only imagine what Peter’s protests were, it most likely had to do with Peter’s inability to imagine a suffering messiah when he, along with the other disciples, had been expecting some kind of apocalyptic warrior who would lead Israel to freedom. What kind of savior suffers? Peter may have asked Jesus. If you really are the Christ, can’t you just blink away the Romans who occupy our land and oppress our people? If God is on your side, OUR side, how can we lose the battle against Rome? Let’s fight–don’t roll over and play dead, Jesus–not now, not when we need you most.

Jesus’ response cannot be categorized as particularly loving–at least, not in the warm, feel-good Jesus love that we like to bask in. Rather, Jesus turns on Peter and rebukes him, saying “Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” What must that feel like–to have Jesus turn on you? To bluntly expose and reject your true motivations for following him. How much of our discipleship is open to that kind of examination? How many of us could still be disciples after that kind of rebuke? Peter is often caricatured in sermons–after all, he’s the theological equivalent to a bull in a china shop. He’s preached as the comic relief of the Gospels. He’s described as brash and clumsy, full of good intentions but little faith.

Preachers love to use Peter, who was eventually martyred for the faith he once denied, to illustrate how God can use even the most unlikely, stubborn people in God’s service. Personally, I don’t think Peter’s story is that cute or clean. I think in this passage and others, Peter is on the brink of losing it all. The only other Markan narrative that can surpass the intensity of this one is Peter’s denial of Jesus at his trial when he does lose it all and, as Mark writes, “he broke down and wept,” (14:72). Peter is not simply acting out of an immature faith life or a badly formed character–Jesus has confronted and exposed the very world view that gave Peter’s discipleship shape and meaning.

As Herman Waetjen writes in A Reordering of Power, “This is not the discipleship to which Peter has been called. The Messiah Christology that he confesses and that simultaneously informs his self-understanding cannot be correlated with God’s will. It is of human origin, and Jesus considers it to be equivalent to a temptation of Satan. As long as Peter insists on this definition of the Christ, he is representing the evil lord; and there is no place in Jesus’ following for him, (146).” Peter is caught between a reversal of kingdoms–the visible, earthly, imperial realm that rules by the sword and the secret, spiritual realm that is inbreaking through the self-giving ministry of Jesus. If he stays where he’s at, Jesus will not only rebuke him but Peter will be forced to go look for a new Messiah as he secretly hopes for a militant uprising against imperial Rome. He can still hold onto the world as he’s always known it. He can try to defeat the “powers that be” at their own game. Which is no victory at all–just a perpetuation of the “powers that be.” But if Peter follows where Jesus leads, it will most surely invite suffering not only on Jesus but on himself. And yet, even in Peter’s attachment to his old way of being in the world, he is compelled to stay close to this man who dares expose the hollowness of his most valued beliefs and show him a new way of being in the world.

The Gospel of Mark is full of these kinds of encounters with Jesus–where people go to Jesus expecting one thing and leaving with another, where disciples go to reveal and pin down the mystery of Jesus but leave having let Jesus reveal their true selves to them. A commitment to rigorous honesty as the foundation of true repentance. We can never fully know Jesus Christ but that is not the point. In encountering Jesus, we know ourselves and are better able to live honestly and with repentance. Andrew Greeley, a Catholic priest, writes: “Jesus was elusive. He still is. When we finally think we understand him, when we have at last arrived at an adequate explanation of him, when we have eventually defined him precisely, when we have, after great effort, identified him with our cause, then we discover that he’s not there anymore. We can take it as axiomatic: when we have captured Jesus for our own side, then... whoever we have won to our cause and persuaded to bash our enemies, it isn’t Jesus.

The early Christians piled up titles as they tried to articulate what the man was like that they had encountered. None of the titles quite did it. He was “like” Adam, “like” Moses, “like” David, “like” the Son of Man in Daniel the Prophet, “like” a messiah. But in each case he was also something more, something different, something more mysterious, something more disconcerting. A Jesus who does not disconcert is not Jesus. A Jesus who disconcerts our adversaries but not us is most certainly not Jesus,” I can’t spend too much time on the other stories of Mark that demonstrate this phenomenon but lest I fall into the same trap of singling out Peter, I want to briefly uplift two more examples of confrontations with the “secret Jesus” that continue to expose and challenge our unwillingness to embrace the kingdom Jesus lived, preached, and died for.

James and John, along with Peter, had accompanied Jesus up the mountain and witnessed his transfiguration among Moses and Elijah. Such an experience obviously convinced James and John that they were disciples of the one, true Christ who would soon reign in victory in heaven. Hoping to get in on that, they approach Jesus in chapter 10, verse 35 and childishly ask, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask..” Like Peter, James and John sought to control Jesus. One could argue that unlike Peter, who acted out of a place of cognitive dissonance, James and John were completely self-interested parties who were hoping to ride Jesus’ tailcoats to glory. Rather than rebuke them outright, Jesus humors them, leading them along into a valuable teaching moment. When he asks what they want from him, they reply to sit on his left and right hand side when he rules in the new kingdom. Again, the disciples demonstrate they have no understanding of the true nature of the Kingdom of God that Jesus represents. They think he’s going to rule on a literal throne and that all the same social and political hierarchies that have defined their world view will still apply.

When the other ten disciples hear about what James and John have asked, they become indignant and begin bickering among themselves. Not out of a sense of wanting to set straight James and John’s picture of the Kingdom of God but because they got left out! What about them? Where would they sit? Once again, Jesus must attempt to penetrate this enemy world view among his own disciples. Already having challenged James and John’s request by linking it to the baptism of death that he will undergo, he relinquishes control over the matter all together. It’s not for him to decide. Rather, he overturns their expectations all together and proclaims that true discipleship exists in serving others at all cost–not in sitting high above everyone else with smug self-satisfaction, not in lording one’s self over another, not in controlling those around us. Mark doesn’t record the disciples’ response to Jesus here–but there’s no suggestion any of them had an “A-ha” moment. James and John’s spiritual blindness is immediately contrasted against the physical blindness of Bartimaeus in the same chapter. Except unlike the disciples, Bartimaeus KNOWS he’s blind and knows that he wants to see and that Jesus is the one that can and will heal him.

Recognizing our need for spiritual healing is the first step of living out the rigorous honesty that brings repentance. But we are not all in need of the same kind of healing. This point is clearly made in chapter 5, verses 25 and following. Having lived with her chronic ailment for over a decade, the woman with an issue of blood had spent all the money she had on medical treatments but she only continued to get worse. Having bled for twelve years, she had lived as a perpetually “unclean” person, a designation applied to menstruating women in the purity code of the Torah, and thus, most likely, she was treated as a social pariah within the Jewish community. Economically and socially destitute, she makes her way through the crowd that has gathered around Jesus. Mark writes that “she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’” She reaches out and touches his robe and instantly she is healed. Mystically, Jesus feels his power go out from him. He looks around for who touched him and his disciples respond–Jesus, everybody’s touching you! You’re in a crowd! And yet, Jesus keeps looking until the woman identifies herself. Jesus does not let her go away in secret. He turns toward her, inviting her to claim in her what he already sees. Her physical healing was only part of the encounter with Jesus. He will not let her go until she has seen herself in his eyes as a free and beloved human.

In the same way, Jesus does not let us go away in secret. Whether we approach Jesus as petty, self-serving, impatient disciples or desperate souls who are invisible to the world, Jesus will not let us hide from ourselves or from God. When we confront the secret of Jesus, our deepest secrets are exposed. Like James and John, our true motives for faith and discipleship are revealed. Like Peter, our hidden expectations of what Jesus should and will do are laid bare. Like the woman who bled for 12 years, we reach out, hoping to be healed in secret–to just touch the robe of Jesus and go away unnoticed. Instead of being anonymously and simply healed, we are seen by the one who has healed us. And in being seen and valued and loved by the human face of God, we are freed from a life of invisibility and shame.

But in our new freedom, we also carry a new burden. Living out repentance, this radical honesty that invites God’s ongoing confrontation, leads us to radical discipleship. It turns out that being a disciple of Jesus is not contingent on knowledge or certainty or doctrine. Being a disciple of Jesus means following him into the difficult and frightening places of ourselves and the world. The second commitment of repentance, Alan Jones writes, “is to honor our passion for connection by celebrating the solidarity of all human beings.” In Jesus’ rebuke to Peter, he reveals the true nature of discipleship in the name of Christ as not only a celebration of our solidarity to all human beings but a fierce defense of that solidarity. He says, “if anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

At the time Mark was written, at the height of the Roman reign of terror, hundreds, even thousands of people were being crucified on a day to day basis. When Mark’s Jesus sees the cross in his future, he does so knowing that his execution will be but one among the many. Thus, picking up his cross becomes an act of solidarity with the brutalized, tortured, and abused among us. Encountering the secret Jesus always reorders our vision of who we are in relation to God and the world. Encountering Jesus on the cross shocks, angers, frightens, consoles–but more than anything, it exposes the secret and deadly truths that make such suffering possible–then as well as now. Living out repentant faith, we are called to a discipleship of solidarity, of picking up our cross and following after Jesus. Encountering Jesus on the cross all of our expectations and hopes and beliefs are exposed. We suddenly see how connected we have always been to the well-being of this world and its inhabitants. We suddenly see our worth as no greater and no less than anyone else’s. We can no longer stomach being silent in the face of the political, social, and interpersonal forces that crucify people physically and spiritually. We can no longer keep the deadly secrets.

Recently, I heard a story that I feel models, in a very accessible way, what I believe “taking up our cross” and following Jesus means. Last week, an irate father walked onto campus to pick up his sixth grade son. As the two left, the principal heard the father begin yelling at and insulting his son. Moments later, she and the school counselor witnessed the father physically push the son once they got onto the road. At that point both women got into the principal’s car and began to follow the father and son as they walked away from the school. Before they reached them, they witnessed the man push the boy twice. This 53-year-old grandma of six pulled her car in front of the father, blocking their access to the road. She got out of the car and attempted to persuade the father to let her help, to let her take his son back to the school. She placed her physical presence between the abuser and the abused–not knowing what the man might do to her in retaliation. Effectively, she picked up her cross and became Jesus to that child AND to the abusive father. She let that child know that someone was willing to stand up for him and to become a barrier between him and his abuser–even at the risk of her personal safety. Driving her car, following them to their home, watching them closely, calling CPS and the police, she let that father know that someone saw–that someone knew–that someone cared–and that someone would not keep his deadly secret.

Mark’s picture of Jesus rejects any claim of Christian faith and discipleship that does not model an ongoing commitment to true repentance and solidarity with all humanity. As such, I believe Mark offers a much needed corrective in popular Christian theology that claims a piety based on the one true or real Jesus without speaking truthfully about the abuses inflicted in our own communities or confessing complicity in the systems of suffering whose victims Jesus died in solidarity with. Mark teaches us that wherever we meet the mystery of Jesus–in the Word, by the Spirit, through other people–our secret selves will emerge and be transformed in the encounter.

Parting Words for a Divided World

The following is a talk presented to Grace Connection on June 22, 2002, by Heather Isaacs, then a graduate student at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

I sometimes wonder why God doesn’t be the God of the Old Testament and DO something. I mean, we have biblical stories of how God stepped into human history time after time and DID something. God LOVED a good miracle. Especially in the Hebrew Bible. Fire from heaven, talking donkeys, floating axheads. These were dramatic, creative expressions of God’s will. God seemed to like to step in and do something. So my question may seem too obvious but I ask it anyway--where is God now? In a world desperately in need of intervention, has God begged out? Has God thrown up her hands, departed and left the rest of history to us?

Of course, the easy way out is to say that the miracles of the Bible aren’t historical. That God NEVER acted that way. Therefore, God is no less engaged with the world now than God was in the Bible. But that presents an equally difficult problem. What kind of God do we worship if God isn’t capable of doing a small thing—like floating an axhead? If God can’t do the small things, can we really believe that he can do the big things? Process theology suggests “no” and confesses a God who is, in many ways, powerless to help or to DO. Process theology solves some problems of theodicy but not all. If we don’t believe God can work miracles, can we really believe in resurrection. And if resurrection is not possible, where would our hope be? This world would suffer into infinity unless it destroyed itself first, which it probably would. God would just watch on and grieve. Redemption would not be possible, neither at a personal or cosmological level. As you can gather, I believe there are just as many problems when we reject miracles as when we believe in them.

To be honest, I don’t think it really matters if we can discern any miracle’s historicity. We can’t PROVE anything about God to each other. People die trying to prove their point about God. Maybe if we could call down fire from heaven like Elijah we could convert the non-believers, but as it stands I don’t believe God will answer that prayer. But that doesn’t give us a whole lot of comfort when we ask the question—Where is God now? I think it’s ironic that even the people of the Bible to whom miracles were directed often did not know the answer to this question. The Bible is full of stories that describe a miraculous revelation of God only to have the next scene be full of doubts, fears, and expressions of God’s abandonment. Paul Yancey, in his book Disappointment with God, writes that “some Christians long for a world well-stocked with miracles and spectacular signs of God’s presence. I hear wistful sermons on the parting of the Red Sea and the ten plagues and the daily manna in the wilderness, as if the speakers yearn for God to unleash his power like that today. But the follow-the-dots journey of the Israelites should give us pause. Would a burst of miracles nourish faith?” (44).

Today, in my own “wistful sermon,” I want to look at what may be the biggest miracle of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Parting of the Red Sea, and look through it, toss it out if it gets in our way, to the nature of God in relationship to God’s people. I want to approach the Red Sea with those who are in the story and ask What is it that we can take from this experience that can nourish and sustain our faith rather than let us get by on the short-lived thrill of a Charleton Heston movie moment? What will let us see God at all in a world where God no longer parts the sea or rains fire from heaven just to make a point? What will allow us to begin to answer the question—Where is God now?

I want to try and answer this question by starting small. So this means that we have to put aside our movie images and begin with the smaller realities of this story.

Two men. Moses and Pharaoh. Both from privileged backgrounds. Pharaoh, privileged by birth. Moses, privileged by adoption. I think we have enough images from history to understand implicitly the power that accompanies royalty and therefore can project much of that understanding onto a sketch of Pharaoh. But it might be of interest to contrast the leadership of Pharaoh with that of Moses. We might remember Moses’ reluctance to return to Egypt after building a life and family in Midian, after living in the comfort of the household of his father-in-law Jethro, a priest. Moses’ reluctance at the Burning Bush has been interpreted as a sign of fear of retribution for the Egyptian he had killed as a young man. Or as an indication that Moses’ faith is weak in heeding the call of God. But I think we can equally suggest that few people, including Moses, would be willing to give up their warm beds for a long, hard trek in the wilderness. Moses would have to leave his privileged life in order to do God’s bidding. One would think that if God appeared to you in a burning bush that there would be little doubt about the authority given you to answer God’s call. And yet Moses sits there in chapters 3 and 4 of Exodus and keeps trying to find an excuse NOT to go to Egypt. In fact, Exodus doesn’t record Moses ever saying “Yes” to the plan. The last words Moses shares with God at the burning bush, are “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

And yet, where we pick up the story today is at the shoreline of the Red Sea. Somehow Moses got from the Burning Bush to the Red Sea. This reluctant leader had become the vocal cords of God. God was employing a man who’d rather be somewhere else and yet because Moses ultimately answered the Call, he was being converted into the leader God saw possible within him.

I want to turn now to the two groups of people in this narrative, one comprised of refugees and the other of soldiers. The refugees had little with them. Their escape had come quickly and without any preparation. Chapter 12:29 says that the people had taken unleavened dough “without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.” At this moment that we enter the story they are in total, imperiled flight. They have suffered too much and for too long and cannot yet believe they will even make it through the night. Moses had been promising deliverance from the moment he had arrived in Egypt but as Chapter 6:9 so aptly describes the plight of those who have internalized their oppression, the Israelites “did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.” The fear of the Israelites as they see the Egyptian army approaching is palpable in the text—they cry out in the belief they will die that night in the desert.

Their fear is justified. The Egyptian army is quickly closing the gap. Pharaoh has called up hundreds, perhaps thousands, of chariots and their officers to lead his army into the desert after the Israelites. When I think about these soldiers, I have a gut feeling that some of them, like Moses, would rather be somewhere else. They don’t really have the heart for this kind of work, this night pursuit that may mean the deaths of helpless men, women, and children. They may have families of their own with whom they would rather be sharing the comfort of home this night. Instead, they are out here tracking down powerless refugees. If you could ask them why they are there they would probably answer that it is their duty to follow their leader and so they do.

Therefore, on this night all the lives of both groups depend on the decisions of two, very human, men. Two leaders in opposition to each other, to each other’s gods and both about to lead their respective peoples into the Red Sea. One will bring his people out of the sea and into new life. The other will lead his into the sea and to certain death.

If I were to leave the story here and you didn’t know about a pillar of cloud or a parting sea, you’d maybe fill in the rest with images of newspaper clippings of the past year, of past years, pictures where the helpless were not helped, where God didn’t DO anything. In our world this is what we expect. And yet, in this story our concept of what God doesn’t do NOW is confronted with what God is capable of doing. Because just at the moment the Hebrews have reached their limit and can go no further, God steps in and turns this situation around.

In verse 19, the pillar of cloud, the hidden glory of God, falls back and takes up the rear thus becoming the line that Pharaoh and his army will not be able to cross alive. Moses stretches his hand over the sea and for the rest of the night the Lord pushes back the waters so that the Hebrews can walk on dry land to the other side.

But in an act that can only be described as supreme arrogance and/or stupidity, Pharaoh leads his army into the depths of the parted sea. What was he thinking? That the parted waters were for him? Pharaoh never got it, did he? Exodus contains twenty references to the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart. Half of those, including those appearing in the first five plagues, are self-willed (he hardens his own heart). The rest are attributed to God. But this is the Bible’s way of saying that Pharaoh had made such a habit of defying the Lord that he could not break it. Pharaoh damns himself but it is God who takes ultimate responsibility. This explains why Pharaoh orders his people into the parted sea. And in the last watch of night, maybe three or four in the morning, God finally passes judgment on the Egyptians. The Lord “looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion,” (14:24). God looked down into the Egyptians, the Egyptians looked up and they were confused because they were now confronted with the very truth they had rejected. What do the Egyptians say in reply? They confess the power of God even as they try and escape it. They say, “The Lord is fighting for them (the Israelites) against Egypt.” And with that, God removes God’s hand from holding back the parted waters and the army of Pharaoh and its leader are swept away. Sometimes the gruesome nature of this part of the story is left out in our retelling of the Exodus. But as a professor of mine is fond of reminding his Hebrew Bible students when discussing Salvation Oracles in the Hebrew Prophets, “There is no salvation without judgment.” Therefore, I consider this event not simply as a miracle story but as the retelling of a day of judgment. Not THE day of judgment but A day of judgment. A day when God stepped in. A day when God separated the forces of death from the forces of life. A day when those who would have thwarted the life-force of other human beings dared to step on the holy ground of God at work and were overpowered by the wake God’s deliverance left behind. A day when the enemies of the God of Life did not take their last breath before confessing that the God of the Refugees was undeniably real and present. Viewing this day as a day of judgment points us beyond the obvious miracle to a hoped for reality--THE day of judgment when God steps in for the last time, when God’s footprints split the seams of the earth open, when “every knee will bow” and “every tongue will confess to God,” and the demonic forces of death will be cast out forever. On that day God will leave the work of deliverance behind and get about the work of restoration, of renewing the lives and spirits of each of God’s creatures.

You may wonder, well—what about the historicity of the act? Did God really do what this story says God did? If God doesn’t act like this now, then what does it matter? In reply, I say that in the encounter with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, we have our answer. The God we worship is a God who delivers, who liberates, who loves us back into whole, fulfilled life. And we need this God. In thousands of years of human history, we haven’t righted the world on our own--at times we become trapped by the snares of our own devices. The same people who entered the Red Sea that fateful day are alive now. Those who lead the charge against the helpless, those who complicitly follow behind, those who have no safe corner in the world to call their home, and those who are POINTING with their own lives to LIFE, the life that is only possible in the love, mercy, and justice of God. We are living in such a time when people have gathered at the edge of what seems the Impossible. We need this God who can part the Impossible and make a pathway through.

But what does God need of us in return? I would suggest that as Christians if we have not yet begun our own journey towards the Red Sea, we are still standing at the Burning Bush, making excuses. What does it mean to be journeying towards the Red Sea, towards deliverance? Again, I think we can turn to this example of Christ for our answer. As I read a very familiar passage to you, Matt. 25:31-46, I want you to imagine that you are standing on the shore of the sea where the Hebrew refugees have gathered, fearful for their lives as the Egyptian army bears down on them. I want you to stand on this shore in the moments when deliverance seems impossible. And I want you to hear these words:

Matthew 25:31-46 (New International Version)

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Can you identify the people gathered before God here? The similarities between this passage and this reading of the Exodus are striking except that it is not water that is parted here but peoples from all nations. And each has their parallel in the story of the Parting of the Red Sea. The only people who are not judged are the oppressed. Christ identifies himself with the oppressed. Christ IS the hungry, Christ IS the homeless, Christ IS the refugee, Christ IS the political prisoner, Christ IS every child, Iraqi or American, who lives in fear and violence. But in this passage these are not the people who are judged as righteous or wicked. Because Christ is in them, they are welcomed into the Kingdom. It is those who had the PRIVILEGE to help the helpless, the oppressed who are ultimately separated, the righteous from the wicked, by the way they cared for Christ present in the least of humanity.

Before you think that the privilege I speak of now is the privilege of Pharaoh, the privilege of wealth, power, education, race, gender, or any other classification used to stratify society into the HAVES and the HAVE-NOTS, I want to revisit the example of Moses one more time. Yes, he left a secure life to return to Egypt. But the Moses of the bulrushes, the Moses of the Hebrews had been born into slavery, into poverty, into an oppressive world. As a young man he had become a wanted criminal, a murderer. He was only living a comfortable life in Midian as much as anyone hiding from the authorities can be comfortable. The privilege of Moses then was not located in any of the comforts that our culture teaches are valuable. He gave those up to answer God’s call. Rather, the enduring privilege of Moses was to be used by God to share in the deliverance of his people as well as be delivered himself, to be redeemed back into full humanity and to point with his all of his life back to God.

If I make this too personal as I conclude, I don’t really apologize. But I do concede that my own application of this text is informed by the realization that I can no longer belong to the Egyptian army and be complicit in the oppression of God’s children. I repent of apathy, I repent of fatalism, I repent of narrow world visions. And I now confess a Christian hope that is rooted in this reality: that who we are in God is only who we are to each other in the world. When Christians are complicit with the privilege of our own cultural and political Pharaohs, we are as lost as the Egyptian soldiers who may have rather been somewhere else but found themselves at the bottom of the sea, unknown by God.

Perhaps we should not ask so often where God is. God is in the need of the world. Christ emptied himself into our human experience in order to point back to the life that is in him, that is in God. Rather, the question we should ask more often is Where am I? Am I in Pharaoh’s throne? Have I made a habit of denying the God that is in the hurting, the starving, the imprisoned? Am I a footsoldier of Pharaoh? Am I complicit in the suffering of the world? Do I allow my leaders to go unchecked, my culture uncritiqued? Or am I Moses on a mission? Out of my own deliverance do I now allow myself to be God’s hands in delivering others out of physical, spiritual, political slavery?

We have no more excuses. Be a representative for life. Put down the privilege of Pharaoh and pick up the privilege of Moses, of any child of God, the privilege to answer God’s call to reach deep into this divided world’s need and to find deliverance there.

The Opposite of Faith is Certainty

The following is a talk presented to Grace Connection on June 22, 2002, by Heather Isaacs, then a graduate student at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

“The opposite of faith is certainty.” Dean Alan Jones of Grace Cathedral on NPR last September. When I first heard these words last fall, I was midway through a very difficult semester in my first year at seminary. I was in a spiritual and intellectual freefall. All of my fundamental beliefs about God, the world, and myself had been wrecked. A friend of mine likened the first year of seminary as “spiritual bootcamp” where we were systematically broken down to our basic components only to be rebuilt. It did feel like that. Every day another ideological rug pulled out from underneath you. The funny thing was that I had come to seminary believing I had already had MY faith tested. But I had no idea what the year would bring. I had no idea that I was going to lose faith completely. So when I heard this statement: “The opposite of faith is certainty,” I felt this was the key to the start of my return to faith. I didn’t have to KNOW anything to believe. Coming from a tradition that likes to proof-text every doctrine I felt liberated from KNOWING.

But that hasn’t meant I wouldn’t like to know sometimes. Especially when I don’t have answers to questions that people I love are struggling with. Just recently, two friends on two separate occasions shared with me how alienated they feel within Adventism. Both of these friends were, like I was, raised in the church. We all attended PUC together. We each have aspirations of working for the denomination in our respective fields. But we each have had the common experience of feeling unwanted, unwelcome.

One friend commented on how lost she felt in the denomination. She described Adventism as an “entity” that was responsible for making her. And like Frankenstein, she has become a monster to her own creator. My other friend says that an Adventist education taught her to think for herself. But now that she can think for herself, she feels punished for stepping outside traditional Adventist boundaries.

As for myself, I have been searching for a community within Adventism where I would not have to explain my presence or defend my beliefs. One the best experiences of the past year was being in the midst of non-Adventists who did not agree with me theologically and yet never once feeling like a heretic or a freak. My teachers encouraged me to think critically for myself. And most often, I was prompted to share more of my own theology as I am currently the only Seventh-day Adventist at San Francisco Theological Seminary. In one year, I witnessed more women ministering from behind the pulpit than I had in my entire life.

I’ve learned what I love most about Adventism and what I have to let go in order to live out the faith that God sustains in me. And this puts me in the borderland. Where I don’t quite fit inside Adventism but I’m also not going anywhere else just yet.

I am frustrated by the number of people my age who are either no longer active in the church or so discontented that their activity brings them grief. But I am comforted by the knowledge that our experiences of religion are not entirely unique. The unresolved tension between personal and institutional identity is at the root of many faith crises. What makes the individual? What makes the institution? Who is the individual apart from the institution and vice versa? These questions were just as relevant to the writers of the biblical text as they are now for us.

I would like to spend some time today with a Bible story that doesn’t often get attention. Until this year, I hadn’t known the story was even IN the Bible. But reading it closely, I have found myself asking a number of questions that lead me to believe this passage, like many others, needs to be pulled back into the working canon.

Before we read the text, a little background.

In the world of ancient Israel before the Fall of Jerusalem in 587/86 B.C.E. the Temple built by Solomon was the center of the cosmos. There was no separation of church and state. Politics, economics, and religion were inseparable realities. We have little sense about what this would mean. The institution of our religion touches us tangentially in comparison to the religion of ancient Israel. The Medieval Church, the Puritan experiment, and certain Muslim countries today offer only partial comparisons but help modern Christians have a better sense of religious life in ancient Israel. I can imagine few scenarios where it would be harder for the individual to exist and to act independently in the midst of institutional life than the one presented by ancient Israel. For example, religious observance was characterized by a highly ritualized sacrificial system that required a constant flow of resources. If you weren’t part of the priestly class responsible for burning the sacrifices, you were most likely part of the peasantry working to provide animals for the sacrifices. Everyone was involved in the work of the Temple.

Although the Temple signified the heart of Israel, contact with surrounding nations like Assyria and Egypt often included the adoption of other gods and rituals and the setting up of rival shrines. But the biblical writers were very clear about the nature of religious faith and national success. If Israel observed the covenant with Yahweh, Yahweh would defend and strengthen Israel for all history. If Israel broke the covenant, Yahweh would punish and destroy Israel. As we know, Israel was continually making and breaking covenantal agreements with Yahweh. By the time Josiah came to reign in the latter third of the 7th century, Israel had seen a string of monarchs who had abandoned the covenant with Yahweh. With the exception of a few kings like Joash and Hezekiah, the Bible records that Israel and Judah were habitually turning away from the law of God.

Josiah was enthroned as king of Judah when he was eight years old. 2 Chronicles 34 records that Josiah was 16 years old when he began “to seek the God of his father David” and 20 years old when he began his religious reforms, tearing down the Baal altars and Asherah poles that had permeated Judah. Even as a young man, Josiah was responsive to the covenant made by his foreparents to Yahweh. Several years later, Josiah initiated the restoration of the Temple, which appears to have fallen into disrepair after generations of negligence.

We’ll pick up the story of Josiah where he has ordered Shaphan, the scribe, to the Temple to settle some building accounts with Hilkiah, the high priest. When Shaphan arrives at the Temple, Hilkiah has found something very valuable...

Read 2 Kgs. 22:8-20 and 23:1-3 (also found in 2 Chron. 34).

The first question that comes to my mind when reading this passage is: What was the Book of Law that was found in the Temple and how did it get lost? Modern commentators who view this event as historical tend to agree that what was found in the Temple was actually an early form of the Book of Deuteronomy, the Mosaic Book of Law. How was such an important document lost then? Losing the Book of Law demonstrated how far removed Israel was from the religious heritage of their Israel’s foreparents.

The second question that I ask after reading the text is: How do we decide what something means? And once we know its meaning, what do we believe about it? In our church how do we decide what to believe or not believe? Is it a communal process dependent on members of the community or is it more selective and exclusive than that? During Josiah’s reign, The Book of Law was passed from high priest to royal scribe to king without full understanding of its meaning. So Josiah commanded a group of high ranking officials to “Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found.” The five men went to speak to Huldah, a prophetess. Walter Brueggeman notes that it is important that a female prophet is recorded here and that the text makes no special fuss about it. As a rule, Israelite society was strongly patriarchal and excluded women from most positions of power and leadership. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of misogynistic images of violence towards women. The feminist theologian Mary Daly believes the Bible is not salvageable for any self-respecting woman because of its blatant patriarchal bias. And yet, in this instance, there appears to have been exceptions to the rule as Huldah demonstrates. When the Book of Law was rediscovered, men of God sincerely sought out the will of God and were subsequently able to recognize the gift of prophecy in a woman of God. Huldah was not only included in the community’s search for meaning, she clarified and directed the search as God led her. The search for God’s will in the life of the individual and the institution led the political and religious leaders of Judah onto a path that ran counter to the social norm. When I consider that I cannot remember a single sermon ever preached on this text, I have to wonder if it might be the problem that Huldah presents to our current social norm. Because when exceptions to the rule are possible, the rule is somehow undermined. Huldah challenges the argument that women do not belong in positions of leadership in the church. More importantly and broadly, the text asks us to open our minds and hearts to who God may utilize as our teachers and leaders.

And if we take a closer look at Huldah’s oracles, we see that the first concerns the fate of Jerusalem, foretelling the destruction of the Temple in a short time. The individuals who have aligned themselves with the corrupt institution will suffer as well, Huldah says. But in her oracle concerning Josiah, she speaks for the LORD telling Josiah through his representatives that, “because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you.” Josiah would be spared the destruction of Jerusalem and die in a world where the Temple still stood at its center. A dubious blessing, admittedly. But what catches my attention here is the distinction between institution and individual. BOTH are accountable to God in the end. But the individual has the freedom to SHEMA, to hear, to obey, to repent, to grieve, to change. The hope then is that through the conversion of the individual heart the community will be changed, the institution will be reformed.

When Josiah heard the Word of God, he was ready to obey the Word of God. In Adventism, we have often interpreted the Word of God as the laws of God, the do’s and don’ts of God, the literal Word of God that cannot be challenged or reflected upon for cultural relevancy. But what do I think Josiah heard more than anything when Shaphan read Deuteronomy to him for the first time? What do I think made him tear his garments in an act of repentance and mourning? I believe its hidden in the text, in Ch. 23:3 where the words that have formed the cornerstone of Jewish faith for millennia, the SHEMA found in Deut. 6:4-9, are alluded to: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” In the Hebrew, the text more closely says, “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with All YOUR ALL.” This is the very text that Jesus quotes when the expert of the Law, a Pharisee, asks him which is the greatest commandment (Read Matt. 22:34-40).

Now, this passage out of 2 Kings is not perfectly parallel to our own situation. Primarily, I don’t believe God operates as a loanshark who is friendly to you as long as you keep up with the interest but is ready to break bones the moment you fall behind. I do think, however, this is an effective way of explaining why bad things happen in the world and perhaps the most easily accessible to the human experience of cause and effect.

The passage also falls short of an acceptable modern application because even though Huldah represents an exception to patriarchy, Josiah’s reforms never included an expansion of the exception. But then, maybe this does parallel Adventist experience—as a church we were willing to listen to one woman, one exception, because her visions were too loud and wonderful to ignore. As Josiah’s time had Huldah, ours had Ellen. Nevertheless, we found ways of containing their influence, of not speaking about the first and legitimizing the second in the church while keeping other women in the margins of church life. Rather, these women should be lifted as leaders of the Church and as examples to all women about the potential for their participation in their religious communities.

I don’t really have an answer for my friends or for myself about our participation in the Adventist community. This is the part of NOT knowing that I have grown most comfortable with. I think this is because I know that I am only accountable to God and that my church family is the entire body of Christ. Whether or not I belong to Adventism, I will always belong to God. And if the two paths of belonging were to diverge at some point, I know the path I would take.

A couple of days ago I looked up the rest of the interview on NPR that Alan Jones had participated in with other clerics from different faith traditions and I read the rest of what he said about faith which seems like an appropriate quote to approach the end with. He said, “I learned from my teacher that the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty, and that the kind of religion that proclaims certainty is in fact not religion at all, but pathology." Pathology may seem like a harsh word but it fits. Because the last thing we can afford as believers is stagnation or entropy. And being CERTAIN is the quickest way to atrophy the practice of faith. Indeed, I have learned for myself that the opposite of faith IS certainty. Therefore, a condition of faith is uncertainty. But a working uncertainty that is constantly searching out the face of God. Faith is open to change and through change NEW faith. Our hope for the denomination is the same hope we have for the world. That the Spirit of God can transform individual hearts to heal institutional wounds. If you do not know where you belong, begin here: Be faithful, not certain. Be open and vulnerable to the surprising work of the Spirit of God in your life as an individual and in the life of the institution. And LOVE the Lord your God with ALL your heart, and with all your soul, and with ALL your ALL.