The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volume 3

Brueggemann

PART ONE

Sermons for Advent and Epiphany

1

Disciplines Shared in Gratitude

Second Sunday of Advent, Year C

MALACHI 3:1–4

PHILIPPIANS 1:3–11

LUKE 1:68–79; 3:1–6

I can imagine Tom Rice, twenty years from now, writing a letter of farewell as he retires from Worthington Presbyterian Church. That letter will be like the one that Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, the congregation that was dearest to him and that had supported him most fully in his risky ministry as an apostle. Paul’s letter might be a model for Tom’s letter to you some years from now.

I.

Paul writes: I thank God every time I remember you. He is grateful to God for that congregation

• because we shared the good news of the gospel,

• because God is doing a good work among you,

• because you hold me in your heart through all my tough times, and

• because I long for you with compassion and I pray for you.

Paul (or Tom) does not focus on the recognition that this congregation was good to me, but rather that you were a church in faithful mission. What Paul knows and what Tom knows, is that thankfulness is the primary mark of the Christian life. Thankfulness is an acknowledgment that every important benefit to us is a pure gift. So Paul does not report here on his achievements or his missionary accomplishments, but speaks of God’s good gifts. Tom will be able in time to come to thank God because God has been at work here doing wondrous things in your midst.

I can imagine that Tom need not wait a long, long time to write that letter. He could write it tomorrow. Because he knows very well that the good stuff in this church will not have started with his arrival. Rather God’s spirit has been at work here for a very long time, and God’s work has been done here for a very long time before now. Tom, and you with him, is situated in a long memory of faithfulness that evokes gratitude. The existence of the church in this place is nothing to take for granted. It has entailed much faithful work. But finally, it is a gift from God for which thanks to God may be given.

II.

Tom’s mandate in his new assignment is as minister of discipleship. He is to provide guidance, leadership, and imaginative programming that more and more the life of this congregation will be as followers of Jesus who do Jesus’ work. Paul can write to this congregation, that your love may overflow more and more. What a mouthful! Love of a self-giving kind is so countercultural in our society of fear and anxiety. It was countercultural in Paul’s first century as well, because love of a gospel kind means to get our minds off ourselves and to care about the neighbor who is in front of you that you would otherwise not notice, to get our minds off our own well-being and security and achievement, and be attentive to the structures and practices of justice that make it possible for neighbors far and near to prosper.

Tia and I went to a family wedding recently. The bride and groom are not church people, and the ceremony had a sense of spiritual but not religious about it. But like almost every wedding these days, part of 1 Corinthians 13 was read. That reading seems to be a necessity now at every wedding:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (vv. 4–7)

No doubt as we listened, some had in mind love between bride and groom, recognizing that a good durable marriage requires giving one’s self to the other.

But of course Paul is not thinking about love of a couple already in love. He is thinking of the life and work of the church to care for what he calls in 12:7 the common good. This love, he writes, is a . . . more excellent way (12:31), more excellent than the usual ways of greed, anxiety, pettiness, and all the stuff that turns up, even in the church. When he writes to his favorite congregation, that your love may overflow more and more, he means a way of being church that is more excellent. This love does not insist on its own way. The performance of God’s love as a more excellent way means more excellent than greed, more excellent than self-advancement, more excellent than fear or anxiety, more excellent than our several ideologies that propel us to stubbornness, selfishness, cynicism, despair, or anger.

It is this love to which Jesus calls his disciples. It turns out that the substance of discipleship is not some idea or some creed or some liturgy, or some piety, or some political conviction. Rather it is that the blind may see, that the lame may walk, that the deaf may hear, that lepers may be healed, that the poor may have their debts cancelled. That is what Jesus did with his life, and then he would have his disciples do that same transformative work by the power of the spirit. That work of love cannot be done, as Paul understood, when we are busy with self-advancement, and self-securing, and self-sufficiency, and having our own way. It is no wonder that in giving thanks Paul prays that your love may overflow more and more.

III.

Such gratitude and such missional love do not happen in a vacuum. The church is always in a context. The Gospel reading for today situates John the Baptist, the carrier of Advent, in his immediate context. The report on his appearance begins this way:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas . . . (Luke 3:1–2)

Luke knows the big players. He names the emperor, Tiberius; he names the governor. He names the high priests who in a cynical deal had purchased the highest priestly office. He knows the entire power structure. He identifies those who had made it to the top of the power heap and the top of the money heap. In the narrative of Luke, this enumeration of powerful people is not innocent reportage. It is rather a recognition of the way in which the dominant values of society have been arranged according to money and power that depend on violence. This list bespeaks a coalition of money and power, a consolidation of greed and a predatory economy that is propelled by fear and anxiety and scarcity, a practice of greed and confiscation that eventuates in violence against the vulnerable. All of that, moreover, is legitimate according to the law. But it stacks the cards against the needy, the vulnerable, and the powerless.

It takes no imagination to transfer that list of power brokers to our own society, for the headliners of political power, economic leverage, the stars of entertainment and sport spectacle, as a systemic force, embody these same dimensions of predatory greed that are grounded in anxiety and that eventuate in violence against the poor and vulnerable. The power structure of that ancient Roman world that Luke lays out, with its predatory greed, counts on cheap labor and ends in fearful self-protection.

And right in the middle of that, says Luke, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. It is that way with God’s word. That word is a disruption. It is demanding. It is displacing. It is summoning. It is scary. It is a truthfulness that exposes the flow of conventional power and contradicts that flow of power with the counterflow of love.

So imagine that contest that Luke sets up: the power structure of fear versus the word of newness, the power structure of greed versus the word of generosity. The power structure of scarcity versus the word of abundance. And we, readers of Luke, are plunged into that contest, always asked to decide. In the short run, we would bet on the power structure of greed, fear, and scarcity, because it has all the visible resources. In the long run, however, in the providence of God, it turns out that Tiberius and Pilate and Herod and Annas and Caiaphas—those whom he names—are very temporary folk. They vanished and never left a track in the sand. But the word that came to John persisted. It is the word become flesh among us. It is the word of life that we know in Easter resurrection. It is the word of fidelity that empowers us beyond ourselves. It is the word of life entrusted to this congregation in the face of an economy of greed and a politics of violence.

IV.

So now you install Tom as Minister of Discipleship. It is a strange portfolio. It is not a familiar assignment in most congregations. I suspect it is a portfolio because this church and its session, in its wisdom, know that discipleship is not an obvious or easy thing. There was a time, I will bet even in Worthington, when becoming a Christian was automatic and we were carried along by habit. But not now! Now there are other attractions. There are Nones who when asked about religious preference say None. There are those who say spiritual but not religious, that often means, I do not want to be accountable to anyone for anything. In that context, being a disciple of Jesus, being a part of Christ’s church, is a deliberate intentional act that requires sustaining energy and discipline. To have a minister of discipleship means a readiness to undertake the deliberate work of following Jesus in missional obedience when there are other options on offer.

Have you connected Tom’s mandate to discipleship to the reality of discipline? Imagine a ministry of disciplines, to be schooled in habits that make overflowing love possible and reliable in a society that is organized so that love is severely limited to our own kind.

Tom’s mandate is to engage the congregation in the disciplines that make discipleship possible, that our love may overflow. I have already pointed to the disciplines of the dominant society of the empire. They are the habits of fear, anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence. All of these disciplines are rooted in a notion of scarcity. There is not enough to go around. You had better get yours while you can. So the mantra that I heard among frightened folk is, Let’s take our country back. Let’s have it the way it used to be when our privilege was beyond challenge. Or I hear, The country is going to hell, which means I do not like it that I must share with those who feel like a threat to me. These mantras of fear, anxiety, greed, and selfishness are easy and they come at us in many forms.

And now, in the face of such scarcity presided over by Tiberius and Pilate and Herod, comes this minister of discipleship to lead us into discipleship with different disciplines. Advent is a very good time to install a minister of discipleship, for Advent is the season of discipline so that we will be ready for God’s new arrival. God’s new arrival in Jesus is not a cute, sweet-smelling baby. Jesus arrives as Messiah, challenging the old power arrangements, and saying, Follow me into a more excellent way.

So Paul names some of the disciplines so that our love may overflow:

• knowledge: to be critically informed about how it goes in the world. Faith is no excuse for lazy ignorance.

• Insight, a deep reflective awareness of how things work in the world of God, that they do not work the way the dominant ideology of the market wants us to think.

• Pure and blameless. The phrase means to many folk a focus on sexuality, pure and blameless sex. But in fact it means not to be entrapped in the habits of fear, anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence that render us unqualified for gospel mission in the world.

• And finally Paul speaks of "a harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God" (emphasis added). So imagine a harvest of righteousness concerning discipleship, a harvest of poor people with adequate housing, a harvest of disabled people with full access and participation, a harvest of peace by way of disarmament . . . all the practices that make for well-being.

So now Tom is installed. By this act, this pastor and this congregation agree together to be upstream and against the grain of dominant disciplines, because we are called to a different set of habits in order to follow a different Lord and Savior.

So I imagine that in twenty years or so, Tom will write you a letter saying, I thank God every time I think of you. And you will write him a letter saying, Every time we think of you, we give thanks. Such an exchange is not the outcome of a romantic soft friendship. It is rather a recognition that all of us, pastor and congregation, have together been caught up in the big transformative work of the gospel. We have gotten our minds off ourselves, our fears, and our pet projects, to move every day more in the direction of overflowing love. Such love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I have no doubt that as the Jesus movement practices these disciplines, the entire power structure of Tiberius, Pilate, and Herod tremble, because they know down deep that this is the good wave of the future.

December 6, 2015

Worthington Presbyterian Church, Worthington, Ohio

2

Wind over Water

First Sunday after Epiphany, Year B

GENESIS 1:1–5

PSALM 29

ACTS 19:1–7

MARK 1:4–11

We all know about water. We know about Hurricane Sandy. We have seen pictures of a tsunami that devastated an entire population. We remember Katrina vividly. We know about the rising sea water due to global warming, even if, as the politicians like to say, we are not scientists. We know about the wild, irresistible, destructive force of water.

I.

Well, so did the ancient people who occupied the Bible. They knew about the ferocious power of water. They knew the old liturgy that said the earth was formless and void at the beginning before creation, a surging, wild, destructive, chaotic force. They knew about the dangerous waters of the Exodus through which they had to go to leave slavery behind and come to freedom. They regularly sang the Psalm all about chaotic flood waters:

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders,

the LORD, over mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is powerful;

the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.

The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;

the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,

and Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire;

The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness;

the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh;

The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl

and strips the forest bare.

(Ps. 29:3–9a)

It all sounds like Hurricane Hugo, swirling, twisting, devastating, all connected to the power of God.

As a result of such an awareness, they had come to take water as a metaphor for chaos and disorder, devastating deathliness. Thus in our text, Paul meets some new Christians at Corinth and he asks them about their baptisms. They had been baptized by John the baptizer. It was all about repentance for sins, being forgiven, and being reconciled to God. It was a demanding baptism into the water that focused on sin. They had gone into the chaos of the waters, and had come out forgiven. Sounds pretty traditional!

II.

But then Paul asks them about their baptism. When you were baptized, did you receive the Holy Spirit? There was a long, awkward pause. They avoided eye contact with Paul, the way a student does when she does not know an answer she should have known. Finally, these new Christians say, We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit (v. 2). No one told us. They just told about water, and we went into it.

Now what you have to know for this text is that in the Hebrew, behind the Greek of the New Testament, the word wind, is the same word as spirit. When he used the word it means spirit; it means wind; it means spirit-wind.

They knew about the waters of chaos.

They knew about the mighty waters of the Psalm that threatened them;

They knew about the ugly waters of the Exodus.

They knew about the water of John’s baptism.

But not the wind. Not the spirit.

The wind-spirit blows the waters back.

The wind-spirit limits the power of chaos.

So in Genesis 1, the wind-spirit blows back the chaotic waters and makes dry land possible. So in the Exodus the wind-spirit blows the ugly waters back and they walk out of Pharaoh’s land with the gift of freedom. The wind of God masters the chaotic waters. Wind beats water!

III.

And so Paul says to them: If you have been baptized with water by John but not with the wind-spirit, you do not have an adequate baptism. John’s baptism was about forgiveness of sin. And so Paul baptized them in the name of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of God came upon them. The wind moved in, with, and under the water. And then they spoke in tongues.

IV.

This is a quite remarkable exchange. Paul says if your faith as a Christian is focused simply on forgiveness of sins, it is not adequate. Forgiveness is important, but it is not the point of baptism. The point of baptism is the coming of the holy wind of God. And they did not know about it. They did not know that the wind of God would master the water. They did not know that the force of God would override the power of chaos. They did not know that God’s great wind would order the world for life. They did not know that the wind would make a way out of no way in the Exodus.

Now, because of Paul they know about the wind. They not only know; they receive it. They are wind propelled, wind created, wind emancipated, and the force of chaos does not prevail and does not scare them any longer. So here are four take-aways for us about knowing and receiving the wind-spirit of God.

1. We know that the wind of God will blow back the force of chaos. That is what happened in the story about Jesus when he was asleep in the boat in the middle of the storm. His disciples awakened him, he addressed the chaotic waters: Be still; get back. And the waters obeyed him because he is the Lord of the chaotic waters.

This is a good word among us. Because the waters of chaos seem everywhere loosed around us. We are in a free fall of fear and anxiety. You know the list that exhibits the force of chaos, terrorist plots, economic instability, moral confusion, political stalemate, all of which together mean a life under threat. That is what the water texts in the Bible are about. The Bible does not flinch from acknowledgment that it looks like the world is out of control. We become fearful and do crazy, careless things to each other. But the church clings to the conviction that God’s wind-spirit will move against the waters and create a safe place for a good life for all the neighbors.

2. When we do not know about the wind-spirit, we can imagine that our life is under severe limitation, scarce resources, limited possibility, and so we live in a defensive posture to be sure we keep what we have because there will be no more. But the wind-spirit of God opens the way for many possibilities we did not imagine. That is signified in the text by the report that the newly baptized spoke in tongues and prophesied. Speaking in tongues may not be your thing or mine. But it signifies a daring freedom to go beyond the patterns of business as usual, a refusal of the slots and categories in which we grow comfortable with ourselves. The book of Acts begins in Pentecost when the wind breaks out in many languages and many tongues, a breaking of old tribal patterns of convenience.

What we can see in the narrative is that the old barriers of fear and defensiveness are being broken by daring people who reach across old hostilities, who disregard old barriers. So the new religious conversations draw Christians, Jews, and Muslims to find common ground in love of God and love of neighbor. We find that what used to divide us now may bring us together. So the church slowly comes to terms with first-class status for gays and lesbians. So we reach for all those who seem strange to us, who threaten us. We find that for the most part they are like us, when we seek commonalities beyond the range of our fears. That is what happens when the church is no longer penned in by habitual boundaries.

3. When we do not know the Holy Spirit, we imagine that everything will stay the way it has always been. But the wind-spirit turns loose new transformative energy. The book of Acts is the story of the church propelled by the gospel spirit. It is the story of healing transformation by John and Peter on their way to worship. They come upon a lame man, and by the end of the story we are told that his feet and ankles were made strong, and he was walking and leaping and praising God. Early on, when they asked Jesus if he were the true Messiah, the only answer he gave was to point to the transformations all around him:

The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news.

The work of Jesus under the impetus of the wind is the transformative power to impact the lives of vulnerable people. It is the same for the church. This is the work of Jesus; it is the work of Jesus’ people. If you think about it, you will discover that the church as Jesus’ people always has more transformative energy than it is willing to use. Because the wind-spirit is at work!

4. When the church knows the wind-spirit, what happens is that it has the courage and the freedom and the energy to take on the exploitative forms of empire that keep people disadvantaged. So in the book of Acts the early Christians were regularly hauled into court to appear before officials of the Roman Empire, because the status quo Roman Empire feared the inbreaking of the transformative power of gospel people. In the book of Acts the fearful crowd accused the early church that it was turning the world upside down. Everything felt topsy-turvy where Jesus had come; the old patterns of control and certitude no longer worked.

We are in a like situation. We live now in a society of greed, indifference, and violence. It is a time in which the people of Jesus are called to stand in the spirit against the order of the day. The church stands against the exploitation of cheap labor and insists upon a decent wage for all workers. It stands against endless violence of guns and endless policies of war. It stands against exclusion of those who are unlike us in society. This is a time when the people of Jesus are coming to terms with our odd identity because the gospel, mandated right there in the book of Acts, is to turn the world right side up. The wind unleashes a mighty force into the world that the old powers of status quo never welcome. This is for me a happy time to be with you and to give thanks for you to God because this church has a long wondrous history of knowing the call of the gospel to make a transformative difference.

So imagine, dear baptized sisters and brothers, we do know about the wind that beats the water. We know that the wind prevails over the water.

We know about the fear not of the gospel that beats our anxiety.

We know about the freedom of newness that beats old tribal limits.

We know about transformations that we had thought impossible.

We know about courage against the force of death.

We know we have the wind at our back!

In Psalm 29, there is this huge description of the power of the waters. And after that there is a great calm. And God will ascend to his throne. God’s throne is set right on top of the chaotic waters, because the waters of chaos obey the creator God and order is restored. And all of the angels say, Glory. They all say, Wow, well done! The psalm ends by God giving a great blessing to the world:

God will bless God’s people with shalom.

The wind blows shalom toward us. We may receive the peace of God and enact peace for the world. As we do so, the world is turned right side up. It is an impossible assignment. But the wind makes that impossible assignment fully possible for people unafraid.

January 11, 2014

Independence Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama

3

Plunging into a New World

First Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

PSALM 29

ISAIAH 42:1–9

ACTS 10:34–43

MATTHEW 3:13–17

Jesus took the plunge into the Jordan and was baptized. His baptism was pivotal for his ministry and for our Epiphany season. Because at baptism he was summoned into a new world. He was marked in a way that all the world could know: God’s beloved Son sent on his vocation to love the world in a way that would lead to his suffering and death.

I.

We have no unambiguous story of the baptism of Peter. But we know that he took the plunge into the new world of the gospel. His plunge—baptism or not—led him to a new identity and a new ministry that jarred and contradicted his old world. It is like that when baptism is taken seriously, sealed as Christ’s own and belonging to none other. Peter’s plunge takes the form of a trance or a dream in which he was shown a sheet full of snakes and commanded to eat them. He protests because he had been taught as a kosher-keeping Jew not to eat snakes, but God said to him, I have called them clean . . . don’t you stick your nose up at them.

From that trance (or dream) Peter figured out that the old purity laws of his people no longer pertained, purity laws that were designed to exclude everybody who was not just like us. That led Peter beyond his tribal boundaries to include Gentiles in the church, those who did not keep the Jewish purity codes. He was plunged into a world that jarred and shocked his old tribal horizon.

II.

The reading we have today in the Book of Acts is a sermon preached by Peter after his plunge into gospel newness. Like all classic sermons, his has three accent points:

First, says Peter who had taken the plunge:

I truly understand that God shows no partiality. (v. 34)

Peter saw that, even though he has been taught that his Jewish people were special and chosen and privileged with God. In that moment Peter grasped how incredibly radical the God of the gospel is, for this God sweeps away all old entitlements and privileges that have been taken as normative, even the notion of a tribal chosenness.

That baptismal insight is of immense importance among us now because we have for a long time assumed God’s partiality:

• partiality toward Westerners (I mean the entire Western world, not just California!);

• partiality toward Americans, for we continue to imagine we are chosen of God and that gives us a pass in the world;

• partiality toward whites, for white privilege among us is simply normative and unexamined;

• partiality toward males . . . ditto;

• partiality toward straights with the dreadful inconvenience of gays.

We have fashioned our habits to enjoy such divine partiality. We have written our laws, our immigration quotas, and our tax bills to protect and maintain advantage. And just now we are having a hard debate in our political economy about privilege and entitlement and advantage. The truth of baptism is that all the old privileged arrangements are swept away. The ones excluded are invited in. Those discounted are valued. And Peter was opened to a new world that he had feared and avoided for a long time.

Second, says Peter who had taken the plunge:

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear. (vv. 39–40)

Baptismal faith cannot get away from the Easter truth of Jesus, that the one executed by the state is alive and back in action. The state, that is, the old power arrangement, executed him. They thought they could stop God’s new world that jeopardized old power arrangements of privilege and entitlement. But, says Peter and the whole church after him, God raised him up. God opened the world to new possibility. God in Jesus made possible,

hunger turned to ample food,

violence turned toward peace,

poverty turned to well-being,

sadness turned to dancing.

Easter is the truth that God’s world is loaded with new healing prospects because death by execution could not stop him.

And says Peter, we—that is, the baptized church—are witnesses to that Easter truth. It is the ministry of the church to show forth the new world opened in Easter, thus the theme of Epiphany . . . to show forth!

Third, says Peter who had taken the plunge at the end of his sermon:

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (v. 43)

The ultimate offer of baptism is forgiveness. The old world of privilege and entitlement keeps score, keeps track of debts and affronts, hurts and alienations. But in Easter, these vicious cycles of indebtedness are broken by the power of God’s self-giving love. As a consequence, the baptized church is an engine for forgiveness in the world. The pre-baptized world is a world that is held together by a network of debts concerning who owes what to whom. With forgiveness all those old points of leverage are swept away.

So imagine how families are a network of unforgiven alienation, which is why so many families at Christmas have such a hard way negotiating time together that we unpack in the car afterward. All you have to do is read any Ann Landers column and you can see the complexity of families that keep score.

Or notice how political power is leveraged by who owes what to whom, who has contributed and lobbied and supported (or not), and how we face the ominous influence of secret money that sustains a network of indebtedness. Consider how our economy is arranged with a bookkeeping quid pro quo, with no slack for those who cannot pay up.

And then comes Jesus alive and back in action!

• And with Jesus the welcome of tax collectors and sinners and lepers and all sorts of disqualified people;

• And with Jesus the ancient practice of Jubilee and the cancellation of debts on poor people, so no more bookkeeping;

• And with Jesus reconciled communities of rich and poor, Christians and Muslims, black and white.

That is the Easter news!

III.

Peter, who had taken the plunge, uttered these remarkable new truths:

• God shows no partiality;

• Jesus is raised to new life . . . and we are his witnesses;

• There is forgiveness!

What a mouthful! His sermon caused the coming of the Holy Spirit of God among those who heard him. Folks were deeply moved by these baptismal truths. The outcome is that those who heard the news, the Epiphany news, were baptized. Most remarkably, the Holy Spirit of God fell not only on Jews who heard. The text says that the Jews who heard were simply astonished that the Holy Spirit of God had been poured out on the Gentiles. We are always surprised when the gift of God’s newness is given to those who are unlike us. His listeners took the plunge of baptism. They entered a new world where there was no partiality, no finality to Friday execution, and abundant forgiveness. They took the plunge and defied all the old power arrangements.

IV.

Do I need to tell you that we presently have in our society a war on baptism? It is an insistence that the truths exhibited in the baptism of Jesus (God’s well-beloved Son) and articulated to Peter in his trance, are not true.

• As a result there is a deep insistence among us that the old partialities, old privileges and entitlements are to be protected and maintained. Just now the surge of White nationalism is simply another expression of old entitlements amid the frantic awareness that the old power arrangements cannot be maintained in the new world God is giving us.

• As a result there is an insistence that Easter has not happened, and that Jesus is not alive in the world. Oh, of course we prattle about the resurrection, but we keep it from being a threat or danger in the real world. When we are alienated from the new Lord of Easter we prefer to think that there are no new futures, no new gifts to be received, no new commands to be obeyed, no new lives to be lived. When the future is kept closed, we can keep to the old business plans as though Sunday never happened.

• As a result there will be no serious forgiveness. We prefer to cling to old alienations and old hates and old angers and old fears, because we know how to manage that world. We prefer not to recognize that all old calculus no longer pertains.

But here is the news of baptism:

• There is no partiality because God has broken those patterns;

• There is new life and new possibility because Christ is risen;

• There is forgiveness, and we can begin again.

The news is given to those who take the plunge of baptism. As we come to the table take note of this: almost all