If you need a little encouragement today, here is a 6 min sermon.
It plays off of Rumsfeld and Zizek
Then Zizek reminds us that the 4th quadrant would be “unknown knowns”
If you like this you can also check out an early rendition based on Phronesis
Romans 5
This has been the most interesting Advent I have ever participated in.
Between the High Gravity class following the lectionary texts and the Loft LA delving deep into the season, I have learned and experienced a lot of things that are heavy on my mind as we head into the final week of Advent.
Far As The Curse Is Found
The hymn ‘Joy To The World‘ has some amazing lines in it:
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
Far as the curse is found is one of the most poignant lines in any hymn ever. Think about it … Romans 5 is about the same theme:
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
Unfortunately, many have been taught to read the Bible in a way that makes Adam way more powerful than Jesus. Ouch.
Far as the curse is found means that God is interested in redeeming the whole damned thing.
There is no other way to say it.
In fact, this past weekend we tackled the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel and I was struck again with how shocking and scandalous Jesus’ family tree is. It’s not just the unorthodox inclusion of those with dubious reputations and questionable qualifications – and that’s not even including that women! It is the fact that God is involved in the whole damned thing.
It all belongs. God is active in redeeming the whole thing.
It’s not just that Jesus leaves behind his family tree or simply overcomes his heritage to become an exalted figure … he is both the outcome of God’s activity IN his family and the result OF his heritage.
Speaking of which: here is an amazing rendition of Jesus’ genealogy sung to the tune of R.E.M.’s ‘its the end of the world as we know it’ by Brad Hooks
Genealogy of Jesus (and I feel fine) from Bo Sanders on Vimeo.
Lyrics:
That’s great it starts with the birthday
Of the very first man, yeah his name was Adam
Skip a couple thousand years, there was a dude
Who was looking for the Promise Land,call him Father Abraham, Abraham had a kid, Isaac had a kid
Judah had a kid, Perez he did too
No I’m not talking Perez Hilton
But the one who had a son named HezronRam, Amminadab, Nashon, Salmon,
Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, right, right
Don’t forget Solomon, He was a wise man,
Who had a son named RehoboamAbijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, more then
That brings us to Hezekiah, Hezekiah
Manasseh, Amon, Josiah
Here is the good news and the bad:
Good – God is interested in redeeming your family tree, heritage, history and the entire road that has led up to this point in your story!
Bad – God loves them too … the things you regret, the people you would distant yourself from, the choices you would change …. the whole damn thing.
There is no ‘us/them’. It is a facade – an illusion. We are all us. We are all in this together. The slave is our brother – we are all God’s family.
The hard truth is that our apparent divisions are but an illusion. God is in the process of redeeming the whole damned thing.
The word Justification in English has the same convenient memory device as atonement did. Many use the Just-as-if to remember ‘it is just as if I never sinned’. 
Here is how our pocket dictionary defines it:
Justification, justification by faith: A forensic (legal) term related to the idea of acquittal, justification refers to the divine act whereby God makes humans, who are sinful and therefore worthy of condemnation, acceptable before a God who is holy and righteous. More appropriately described as “justification by grace through faith,” this key doctrine of the *Reformation asserts that a sinner is justified (pardoned from the punishment and condemnation of sin) and brought into relationship with God by faith in God’s grace alone.
Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Kindle Locations 764-767). Kindle Edition.
Our other resource for this series, Essential Theological Terms by Justo L. González, provides a helpful distinction about the heated debates between Protestant and Catholic thinkers during the Protestant Reformation.
The difference lay in that for Luther and the main Protestant theologians justification was God’s gracious act of declaring a sinner just, even in spite of the continued presence of sin, while Roman Catholics saw justification as God’s act of infusing *grace into the sinner, who can then perform acts of justice-good works-and thus become just.
(Kindle Locations 2246-2248). Kindle Edition.
Justification provides a telling snapshot about the task of contemporary theology.
This is why I selected justification – as an illustration of the grand, elaborate, nuanced and speculative nature of much theology.
You might be surprised at how excited I get about the topic of justification and how committed I am to both proclaiming and explaining it to congregations that I pastor.
One of my favorite sermons is a high energy presentation of Romans 5 which begins:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
I then take v. 12-21 and convert the words into math formulas in order illustrate the fantastic work of God in Christ!
Keep that in mind when I say that justification is illustrative of the theological endeavor.
This is a great snapshot of our task in contemporary theology: to take the tradition seriously, to account for the variety of perspectives and frameworks, and to adjust/adapt the ‘answers’ to the questions being posed by our present situation.
This is why simply parroting the answers of the past is often not sufficient. There are new considerations provided by sociology, biblical scholarship, history and science.
This is also what makes the theological endeavor A) exciting B) important C) difficult and D) complex.
Thanks to Jesse Turri for the artwork for this series.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 