Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 24
12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
It has been variously described as a protest, an uprising, or a fight for self-determination.
And like most mass-movements, it wasn’t without conflict. Provisioning was just one example, providing for those engaged in the struggle. Finding the basics—food and water—became a logistical challenge in such a remote location. Creative solutions were found, but not before a rift emerged between the leaders and those being led.
And this tension, between movement members and leadership, found expression in a variety of ways. Complaints, direct action, even protests within the protest were seen. Eventually a form of arbitration was settled on, taking conflict resolution out of the hands of leadership.
And then, of course, there was the question of the overall direction of the movement itself. Within days of the launch of this action, some were arguing for a return to the status quo. It quickly became obvious that the lack of a comprehensive manifesto might be at the heart of the conflict. A set of guidelines, perhaps some goals, or even just a set of group norms to guide the people were needed. And this is where we pick up the story:
12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”
The Exodus is imprinted on the DNA of every protest, uprising, or fight for self-determination. The Exodus takes the existing order and turns it on it’s head. The Exodus says that injustice and oppression and the denial of rights are not in the plan that the Most High has set out. The Exodus is the early light of God’s Kingdom, where the divine will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
I’ve mentioned to you before that when the preacher needs a preacher we frequently turn to Dr. King. And it’s not just for a quote or an idea, or the way he spoke to the struggle he led. It’s also for his ability to leave the constraints of time behind, and lead his people across the arc of history. I’m going to share an example, this one from his final sermon, from the evening of April 3, 1968. He begins by thanking his host, and thanking his audience who came out on a stormy evening, and then he says this:
Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.
I would happily set aside my time up here to read the whole sermon, but Carmen would tell you that I’d be a mess in a few short paragraphs. Mostly I want to illustrate my DNA claim, and the extent to which the passage from Egypt to Canaan defines the quest for liberation. And the passage Shauna read for us, the “mountain top experience” that belongs to Transfiguration Sunday, is a critical moment in the story.
After the wandering, the fighting, the disobedience, the peril, after the complaining that tried God to the very edge of God’s patience, the people need something. God invites Moses up the mountain, promises the law and the commandments, and underlines that this is what the people need. Our passage seems somewhat logistical, but hidden in the words, we find the real meaning: the glory of the Lord.
We read it twice in just four verses, a flag if ever there was one. Moses ascents into the clouds, and the glory of the Lord settles on Sinai. To the people at the base, “the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.” Like Transfiguration, the light of this consuming fire will alter Moses’ appearance—as we learn at the end of this episode that an encounter with Most High will cause his face to shine with reflected light. So bright is this light, that Moses must wear a veil rather than overcome the people with the intensity of this light.
It seems clear, however, that the glory of the Lord is more than just light. It is the light that illuminates the face of the liberator, it is also the light that produces the law and the commandments, providing them with a template for living as God intends us to live. And it is the light of clarity, allowing God’s own light to shine upon the arc of history: long, but always bending toward justice.
And that brings us to today. Justice, according to Walter Brueggemann, is deciding what rightfully belongs to whom, and giving it back to them. From fair wages to basic equality, to the right to self-determination, Dr. Brueggemann’s definition seems to fit them all. From the end of slavery to the struggle for civil rights to the creation of a social safety net, much of the last 150 years has been a struggle for justice. And more often than not, it began with protest. Not long ago, a reminder went viral online, a reminder that the framework of the Holocaust was legal, while hiding Jews was illegal; that slavery was legal, while helping slaves to escape was illegal; and segregation was legal, while protesting segregation was illegal.
Further, it’s helpful to note that when Americans were polled on Dr. King’s activities—the marching, the arrests, the gathering in Washington—60 percent of the population thought he went too far. It’s easy to look backwards at the progress made through protest and imagine that we would march with Dr. King, or at least voice support, but the data tells another story. It’s easy to say something was good and important and righteous when we’re not the ones making the sacrifices needed.
Clearly, the conflict between the government and the Wet’suwet’en people is complex and demands more time and a more appropriate venue than this pulpit. But I will say a couple of things. In a poll released on Wednesday, three-quarters of Canadians said something needs to be done about the plight of Indigenous people—a heartening result. At the same time, 60 percent surveyed disagreed with the protests as they have been carried out—there’s that old 60 percent number again. That’s the first thing. The second is that the commitment that we have made as a nation—the commitment to reconciliation—will always come with a cost. Otherwise our commitment is meaningless, amounting to just words.
The glory of the Lord is more than just light. It is the fire of transformation, it is the light of illumination and new understanding, it is the moral clarity that decides what rightfully belongs to whom, and gives it back to them. The glory of the Lord begins in the wilderness, a light to guide them by night. The glory of the Lord continues at Transfiguration, more light and a divine blessing for those gathered. And the glory of the Lord is our future hope, praying with the One who taught us saying “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.
Sixth Sunday of Epiphany
1 Corinthians 3
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
It feels like we’ve been on this academic adventure together for some time now.
You will recall the paper called “The Case of the Beautiful Captive Woman in the Temple Scroll.” It was going to be Indiana Jones meets Wonder Woman in an exotic location until I put my foot in it and said “I guess the audience for this paper is pretty small.” Some time later another paper, this time read aloud for the sake of timing—45 minutes—not a minute more or a minute less. I awoke to Carmen shouting “are you asleep?” which is the sort of thing you can’t deny when you’re out cold (and allegedly snoring).
Perhaps as part of my penance, I can share some excellent and thoroughly engaging research that Carmen has been doing in the area of wetnurses, part of her ongoing look at foreigners in the community at Qumran that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. It seems that wetnurses were very common in the Roman world, mostly slaves (but sometimes servants) who freed up mothers to run the household rather than trouble themselves with nursing their babies.
The community at Qumran was no exception, and one of the documents shares a rule that wetnurses must refrain from lifting the baby on the Sabbath. Aside from being awkward, the rule hints at the possibility that this slave woman was also a Jewish convert—why else would she follow Sabbath rules? On one hand this makes sense—the milk of a gentile slave would be impure—but it opens other questions like the nature of her conversion and her standing in the community.
And since I’m now at the outer limit of understanding these questions, I will move instead to Jochebed (Yok-a-bed). Who is Jochebed, aside from the answer to the most difficult Bible trivia question ever? Jochebed is the mother of Moses, herself a wetnurse, but in the most unlikely of circumstances.
You remember the story: evil Pharaoh has made an evil decree concerning male Hebrew babies, and Jochebed decides to hide her baby until she can hide him no longer. She creates a basket of reeds, adds a little pitch, and casts the baby adrift on the Nile. She casts the baby adrift, but she cleverly does so in the vicinity of Pharaoh's daughter, just then bathing in the river. When the princess finds the baby she immediately resolves to keep it—but she needs a wetnurse. Through a little clever subterfuge the baby is handed off to Jochebed, allowing her to (secretly) nurse her own son.
So far we see that our first wetnurse is likely a convert, upholding the need for purity. But in our second example—Jochebed—we see that there seems to be some transmission of identity, even wisdom, as the Hebrew slave passes on something that Moses will discover in time—that he is a member of God’s chosen people. I’ll have to stop there, since I’m busy giving way the gist of Carmen’s next book. But I think you can see why purity, wisdom and identity are wrapped up in mother’s milk. And this takes us full circle to our reading:
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly.
It seems self-evident that St. Paul would make a lousy wetnurse, but he does a fine job at employing the milk metaphor to describe the scope of his work. Mother’s milk is foundational, the place you begin, long before you can have the solid food of a mature believer.
So milk, in this case, seems to lead to conversion, and the matter that you transmit in the first stage of becoming a Christ-follower. It’s easy to digest, and it seems to have the most impact. Lives are transformed through this first step, even as we anticipate the maturity that will follow. Still, it was just the beginning.
Just the beginning because Paul goes on to the heart of the matter: you’re little more than babes because you’re now fighting. One belongs to Paul, you say, while another belongs to Apollo. And both, of course, are wrong. All belong to God, the author of growth, and the source of solid food that makes that growth possible. They have mistaken the messenger for the message. You can’t follow Paul or Apollo—when the Way belongs to God in Jesus.
But I think there is still more here, and for this we need Tom Long. In the time before these Corinthians became Christ-followers, there were very likely followers of Plato. And not just Plato, but the entire western philosophical tradition that said we are souls trapped in bodies. Bodies were nice for a time, even idealized, but eventually became less than ideal until they were no more. At this stage, according to Plato and others, the soul was free from its bodily prison and free to return to light or truth or whatever you described as the best Greek future.
But when these same Corinthians found Christ, they entered a new worldview without pure souls and corrupt bodies, but dust instead. And into that dust, God breathed life. As Tom Long says, God didn’t “snatch some immortal soul out of the air, sticking it into a body, and force it to work in the garden.”* Rather, God takes the substance of earth and breathes into it the breath of life. We’re not just bodies and souls, we’re embodied, a body with breath that Long says forms “an inseparable unity,” made in the image of God.
And this unity is without end. It begins in the silence of the womb, knit together, being both fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139.13-14). And it extends to the end, as our mortal bodies must put on immortality” (1 Cor 15.53), that is the resurrection of the body. Tom Long: “This is not about deathless souls shedding bodies—this is about embodied mortals being given new and glorified bodies by the grace and power of God.” (p. 26)
And all of this begins with milk, not solid food, but milk. We tend to read Paul and agree that we solid food eaters are better than the scrappy Corinthians who were busy fighting over apostolic baseball cards. We hear the message of planting and watering and growing and we give thanks that we’re at the end of this spiritual spectrum, without stopping to consider the implied message in Paul: we all begin with milk.
We all begin with milk when someone cared enough to introduce us to Jesus Christ. We all begin with milk with someone describes his ethical system, where the last are first and the least of all are the greatest of all. We all begin with milk when someone tells us that we never walk alone—we walk together with Christ as followers of his way. We all begin with milk when someone reminds us that our sins are forgiven. And we all begin with milk when we learn that Jesus died to make us whole, reconciled to God at the same moment that death was no more.
After breath, it is milk that continues the unity of embodiment. Like Jochebed, transmitting the essence of God’s covenant while nursing, Paul and Apollo have shared the heart of the faith—the essential first step—before the solid food of faith can be digested. Yet even as mere infants in Christ, we remember that Jesus said that unless you change and become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom. And he took them in his arms, and blessed them, and gave them the milk of human and heavenly kindness.
May God bless you whatever your spiritual diet, wherever you find yourself on the way, and however you express thanks, Amen.
*Long, Accompany Them With Singing, p. 24.
Fifth Sunday of Epiphany
Matthew 5
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Just in time for Oscar night, a quiz. And following our custom, I’m going to move from the absurdly obscure to the painfully obvious. Just shout out your answers.
[Dave, for the sake of fairness, if you know the answer, simply say “got it” rather than revealing it. Sheesh.]
This 1987 film was nominated for four Oscars, taking home the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Brian de Palma directed the film, and David Mamet wrote the screenplay.
The film concerns the United States Treasury Department.
The film is set in Chicago.
It stars Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery (the Oscar winner in this case).
The name of the film is also the name of a group of legendary crime fighters led by Elliot Ness.
The film, of course, is The Untouchables, and it recounts the true story of Al Capone, or rather the true (and unlikely) way the Untouchables brought down Al Capone. And without completely spoiling the film, I will say it underlines the importance of paying your taxes. Oscar night and tax time makes this the most topical sermon ever.
But there is more. There is a connection between The Untouchables and Matthew 5, and it’s partly found in a bit of dialogue near the beginning of the film. This is Elliot Ness defining the “spirit” (no pun intended) of the Untouchables:
l have one more thing to say. l know that many of you take a drink. What you've done before today is not my concern. But now we must be pure, and I want you to stop. It's not a question of whether it's “a harmless drink.” lt may well be. But it's against the law. And as we are going to enforce the law, we must do first by example.
The context is prohibition, and the extent to which people ignored a law that they didn’t agree with. Speakeasies, bathtub gin, rumrunners—all of these reactions to prohibition demonstrated the extent to which people were willing to go against the law of the land. Eventually the law would be repealed, but until then Elliot Ness and this gang of Untouchables would uphold the law.
So here is Jesus’ Elliot Ness moment, from the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to everyone who seeks to follow him:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Perhaps the first thing that likely pops into your head is all the ways in which Jesus seems to break the law: healing on the sabbath, eating on the sabbath, openly cavorting with the wrong sort of people. I want to come back to this question, but first I want to highlight where Jesus is headed as he creates his own version of the Untouchables.
What follows the passage Linda read is a seeming attack on the law he has just defended—defended in the most unambiguous way. Jesus says this:
The law says 'you shall not commit adultery,' but if you have lust in your heart, you already have.
The law says follow the proper procedure in obtaining a divorce, but by divorcing your spouse you cause them to commit adultery.
The law says do not swear falsely, but you shouldn't swear anything, just say yes or no and nothing more.
The law says ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but you should turn the other cheek instead.
In other words, he didn’t come to abolish the law, he came to embellish the law. When he said ‘your righteousness should surpass that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law,’ he meant don’t stop at the letter of the law. Don’t stop at the letter of the law but look instead to the spirit of the law—what more could you do?
Jesus doesn’t abolish the laws concerning divorce, oaths, or retribution—he says they don’t go far enough. Or rather, Jesus takes what is permitted under the law and says “yeah, but Moses didn’t say you had to divorce, or swear an oath, or seek revenge.” You’re not breaking the law of Moses if you choose another way.* I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
And fulfilling the law means continually seeking a better way. It means doing more than is required, not just the minimum to get by. To misquote a familiar quote, "not only must righteousness be done; it must also be seen to be done." If righteousness means living in a way that pleases God, we need to make it a mission, not a passive effort to avoid God’s ire. If righteousness means living in a way that pleases God, we should find joy in being righteous. What could be more joyful than pleasing God?
I promised I could come back to this question of Jesus breaking the law, so I guess I better keep my word. It’s one of those debates that always seems freighted—it takes us into doctrine, tradition, and the often picayune. Think of that other Sean Connery film, The Name of the Rose. Monks dying left and right and it turns out the whole sorry episode turns on the question “did Jesus own a cloak?” It’s on the list of great films that were completely shunned by Oscar.
The question of Jesus breaking the law comes down to a dispute, and a false accusation, but not in the way you might think. You see, the Pharisees are recorded as complaining about Jesus healing and eating and cavorting, framed as breaking the law. But we know that the Pharisees were reformers just like Jesus, but with very different ideas about the nature of holiness. We read what seems like a life and death struggle (especially in light of Good Friday) but what we should read instead is a debate between reformers. The fact that the four gospels are written at a time when church and synagogue are in direct competition, should tell us all we need to know about the way the Pharisees are unfairly portrayed.
So imagine with me that Jesus and the Pharisees are rivals and not enemies, and further imagine that they were creatively debating for the sake of reform, then listen to this:
23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
Three things. I love the spices, and I cook with all of them, especially cumin in refried beans—see me later for a recipe. Next, this was omitted from the lectionary, our three-year cycle of readings, obviously from someone who prefers coriander or chili powder. And finally, it gives us the best frame for this question of fulfilling the law: with justice, mercy and faithfulness.
But hold on. In the same way that the disciples of Jesus become the church and eventually become you and me, the Pharisees, the religious ones, also become you and me when we’re failing to see what Jesus sees. They become a stand-in, a metaphor, for everyone who is more interested in who is tithing than who who just, merciful, and faithful. Jesus said “you should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” give and be generous, tithe if you can—but don’t neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness—the heart of the law.
And if you have to win an Oscar, make it in the best supporting category: best supporting others, best supporting your church, and best supporting the heart of the law. Amen.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/passages/main-articles/sermon-on-the-mount
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
1 Corinthians 1
26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Some people collect baseball cards, I collect vocational quotes.
Like this one that my son picked up in art school: “If you can’t make a good painting, make a big painting, and if you can’t make a big painting, make a red painting.” Just now you’re trying to picture all the artwork on your walls.
Or this quote that has popped up more than a few times over the last couple of weeks: “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table…” I guess I would say ‘if you can’t pound the table, argue that something clearly inappropriate doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.’
I’ve been struggling to come up with a parallel quote for preachers, and best I can find is the old St. Francis quote “Preach the Gospel at all times—use words if necessary.” There is considerable debate about whether he actually said it, but he certainly came close when he wrote in his Rule “friars...should preach by their deeds.”
See me later if you have a pithy vocational quote to share.
In the meantime, St. Paul seems to be engaged in pithy quote-making when he sits down to write to the church at Corinth:
God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are.
All of the quotes I’ve shared so far seem to rest on the same approach: using reversals and a touch of the unexpected to help people ponder something they might not otherwise see. So, in a world that seeks power and admires power and obeys power, God makes another choice. In a world that seeks wisdom and strength as a way of being, God chooses foolishness and weakness, and questions the very idea of “being” itself.
I feel like we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe better if we go back to the beginning of the chapter to see how Paul’s homily on foolishness and weakness fits into the overall letter. What led him to make this argument? What was happening in the congregation to prompt these words?
First, we know there was conflict. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians fought about food offered to idols. The majority of poorer believers fought with the small group of wealthier believers. And there was obviously some conflict over the role of women: between some strong female leaders and the men foolish enough to try to take them on.
So Paul has his hands full. He needs to fight down the impulse to knock heads and make a case for harmony, and he’s going to use every tool in his toolkit to do it. Political nerds like me who remember the 1984 election—and specifically Ed Broadbent’s appeal to “ordinary people”—will immediately see what St. Paul is doing here:
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.
But God chose the ordinary people of the world—the foolish, the weak, the lowly, even the despised—to shame the rest. Do you think you are the author of your own power? That’s not how it works. Do you think you have some internal source of wisdom? Aren’t you cute. Do you think some worldly position you have makes you better than everyone else? Think again, Mr. President.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
All this points to the real message that Paul hopes to send: writing to the church, Paul “urges them to foster a sense of being at odds with the world.”* It’s really that simple. In the world, but not of the world. Deeply in love with the world God made, but always aware that there’s more. Or enacting God’s seemingly foolish desire to save us from ourselves.
In many ways, it’s at the heart of our DNA as a church. From the beginning we were evangelists with a social conscience. The religion that became stale and philosophical was rejected in favour of a religion for the masses, preached in the open air, deeply concerned about the state of our souls, and equally committed to the betterment of the human condition. Slavery, child labour, poverty, working conditions: all of these became problems for the church to help solve.
And for a time we were extremely successful. Nineteenth century reforms ended the most egregious forms of oppression, and twentieth century cooperation helped create the modern welfare state. Everything the “social gospel” movement promoted came to pass: pensions, labour reform, medicine—even temperance for a time. And in one of the great ironies of the past, the more problems we helped solve, the more our influence—and our role—declined. We were at odds with the world once more, and once more we were aligned with the original vision.
God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
Paul the master letter-writer inspires with daring reversals and clever insights, and sometimes he does it to the extent that we miss the program he sets out. Hiding in plain sight is a three-fold movement toward being in the world but not of the world. He gives us three words to describe how we can remain at odds with the world while drawing the world closer to Christ: righteousness, holiness, and redemption.
Righteousness means living in a manner that pleases God. It means demonstrating another way to live, a way that might surprise or delight people who are weary of the way the world lives. Holiness builds in this. Holiness means living within the sacred, honouring God with humility, gentleness, and a sense that everything belongs to God. And redemption, that means that all things can return to God. No one is beyond redemption, everything can be forgiven, and all can be saved, even from themselves.
Three words to describe how we can remain at odds with the world while drawing the world closer to Christ: righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Three words to cut through meaninglessness and despair. Three words to lead people home.
May God make us agents of righteousness, holiness, and redemption, and may we always dwell in the wisdom of God. Amen.
*https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/church-at-corinth
