Blog Posts
AI for Ministry: A Purposeful Vision for A New Technology
AI may be shaping the cultural and technological environment, but we also have an opportunity to shape norms around its usage and in the process to raise important ethical and theological questions about how one can and should use these powerful tools. AI represents a seismic change in both technology and culture.
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AI is already shaping church life and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It will impact everything from how we work to how we learn. It will most certainly impact faith formation and our theological imaginations. Already, the most widely used AI tools have ingested the entirety of the Christian canon, along with innumerable commentaries, devotionals, and reflections. OpenAI’s tool ChatGPT, for example, can summarize the book of Ecclesiastes, explain what theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin thought of the book, and provide guidance on how to respond to the text within daily life. More than providing summaries of scripture, these tools can also generate answers to questions like “Is my work meaningful,” “How do I explain the death of a loved one to my young children,” and “What should I look for when selecting a faith community?” It will even respond to deeply personal prompts like, “I am burnt out” or “I am struggling with anxiety.”
But as leaders, we are not just passive objects in this story. AI may be shaping the cultural and technological environment, but we also have an opportunity to shape norms around its usage and in the process to raise important ethical and theological questions about how one can and should use these powerful tools. AI represents a seismic change in both technology and culture. Faith communities ought not stand by idly and watch the accelerating deployment of these tools. This is a moment that demands the church’s creativity, curiosity, and thoughtfulness.
In this essay, we set out to describe a philosophy of use that places human spiritual flourishing at its center. After describing this philosophy of use, we will offer concrete examples of how AI can be used in congregational contexts to promote our communities' well-being.
Utilizing AI in a human-centered way should not only be about increasing our capacity to do more work. Maximum productivity is not a virtue. Instead, we should deploy AI to help us connect with actual communities. By organizing information and creating coherence out of our experiences, AI can declutter some of the noise from our day-to-day lives. In doing so, it can help to initiate conversations of meaningful spiritual depth. As church leaders, we ought to learn to channel this process towards spiritually nourishing ends, using AI generated content for conversation, discernment, and spiritual formation. By doing this, we will learn to use AI to help our communities become more human.
From productivity to curiosity
Currently available AI tools are highly effective at making us more efficient at work that is related to communication, visual textual content development, data summary, and the entry level triage of human needs. We should make use of these capabilities in ways that enable us to tend more carefully and effectively to the human work of caring for souls, accompanying others in times of longing and loss, and promoting human flourishing.
It is well documented that AI can make us more efficient at procedural tasks. From summarizing data sets to organizing communications, systems like ChatGPT can create coherence out of clutter. Culture commentators have had much to say on these capacities. Predictions range from a future where we are all made more efficient and fulfilled to a future where we are all unemployed. It is no surprise that much of the attention to AI has been focused on what tasks we ought to outsource to these new technologies. It is also worth noting that a similarly wide range of concerns are often articulated at times of immense technological change.
But AI for ministry is about far more than productivity and efficiency. Inevitably, our communities will turn to these systems not just for task completion but with significant questions on what it means to live a good and meaningful life. One can ask ChatGPT if their work is impactful, or if their anxiety is treatable, or if their faith is meaningful because these questions can be asked without any associated stigma. In this sense, ChatGPT has created an alternative to the sacred spaces of Christian communities.
If we are to use AI in a human-centered way, we cannot cede these essential questions to large language models. Rather, we must learn to extend such conversations, which will initiate in cyberspace, to the analog spaces of Christian community. A philosophy of AI for ministry views these tools as sidekicks for initiating a dialogue. A church leader might encourage the use of these tools as a means for initial exploration. By cultivating a psychologically safe church community where one is free to ask big questions, the same leader also encourages the transfer of this inquiry from the screen to the small group. In this way, AI becomes a tool for encouraging our curiosity. The content it generates provides a sort of fodder for deeply human conversations taking place in analog communities.
Articulating faith narratives with AI assistance
Sharing one’s faith story is a deeply formative event, yet one that is often peripheral to many mainline Christian communities. The practice of offering testimony is far more common in evangelical, charismatic, and pentecostal churches. This is an unfortunate reality, given that the recollection of God’s work in the world is as ancient as the Old Testament itself, and is particularly prominent in the psalms and other collections of Hebrew poetry. Perhaps the most significant reason that we don’t take up this narrative exercise more often in the church is the confidence one must have to create and share one’s story. To share a testimony, faith footprint, or faith reflection is to make one’s faith come alive. Unfortunately, this is a spiritual practice that has long been accessible only to the privileged few who have the requisite educational background and skills to translate lived experience into cohesive story through a theological lens.
Still, to create a coherent story of how one’s life is part of God’s story is to solidify one’s faith, and even commitment to one’s church. AI can be an equalizer in this formative spiritual practice. Lacking in its theological imagination, AI cannot take on this task independently. But tools like ChatGPT can help us to create a coherent, compelling and persuasive narrative of our lived experience – our relationships, our struggles, our moments of triumph, our experiences with the mundane and the sublime. From simple lines of description of everyday life, these systems can give us the raw material for communal spiritual discernment. Currently available AI tools are remarkably effective at creating such simple narratives. These systems can use a stream of consciousness list of day-to-day encounters or a detailed export of calendar entries to create a coherent story of how we spend our time.
When AI provides us with coherence and the confidence to share our stories, ministers can reinterpret these narratives through a theological lens. A chatbot cannot explain how lived experience relates to the cross, nor how death and resurrection are at work in one’s personal stories. So after hearing an individual's story, a minister can contextualize it within the broader narrative of how God is active in a particular time and place. They can also create communal spaces where everyone's stories are acknowledged. In doing so, church leaders weave a vibrant tapestry from the individual narratives in a community, illustrating the myriad ways in which God manifests in lived experiences.
Michael Chan
Dr. Chan is the Executive Director of the Center for Faith and Work at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Prior to this position, he was associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and is a graduate of Luther Seminary (M.A. in biblical theology) and Pacific Lutheran University (B.A. in elementary education).
Ryan Panzer
Ryan Panzer is the author of “Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture” (Fortress Press, 2020) and "The Holy and the Hybrid: Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation" (Fortress Press, 2022). Ryan has spent his career in the worlds of church leadership and technology. He received his M.A. from Luther Seminary while simultaneously working for Google. Ryan serves as a learning and leadership development professional in the technology industry and as a speaker and writer on digital technology in the church. Ryan also serves as the Resident Theologian at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison, WI. For more writings and resources, visit www.ryanpanzer.com.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Preaching and Teaching with Love and Respect for the Jewish People—Introducing a New Resource
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This article will introduce readers to a newly-published resource titled, “Preaching and Teaching with Love and Respect for the Jewish People.” This publication is a product of the ELCA’s Consultative Panel on Lutheran-Jewish Relations and was written under the leadership of Dr. Peter Pettit. The title of this new resource echoes the ELCA’s 1994 “A Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community,” which names an “urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people.” I was but one contributor to this important work. What follows is my own sense of this document’s significance, goals, and contents. I’ll begin with some reflections on why it is needed in 2022.
Significance in 2022
In measurable ways, Christian-Jewish relations have improved—whether one thinks in terms of public denominational statements, interfaith collaboration, or deeper attention to Jewish sources in Christian circles. And yet corrosive (and often subtle) currents continue to flow through Christian communities of all theological and ideological stripes. Anti-Jewish attitudes and practices are not unique to the political left or right. They are Christian problems with deep historical roots in some of our most cherished understandings of God.
None of this is surprising. Christianity has many dark and disturbing chapters in its history. In far too many cases, those chapters have involved the Christian mistreatment of Jewish neighbors. Lutherans have a particular stake in this conversation, since our namesake (Martin Luther) represented Jews in profoundly disturbing ways, even calling for rulers to adopt explicitly violent policies. (1)
Concern for the impact of Christian theology on Jewish lives remains of critical importance in contemporary America. The FBI gathers data on hate crimes, which are defined as “a committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a: race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, gender identity.” The data are unambiguous: Jews remain at risk in America today. In fact, of all the religious groups the FBI tracks, Jews are the most at-risk religious group in America. According to the 2020 report, there were 683 anti-Jewish incidents (a 28% drop since 2019), 110 anti-Muslim incidents (a 38% drop since 2019), 15 anti-Buddhist incidents (increase of 200%), and 89 anti-Sikh incidents (82% increase). The Anti-Defamation League also does a yearly audit of anti-Jewish incidents. In 2020, they reported 2,024. The numbers tell a shocking story: The Jewish community bears the brunt of anti-religious hatred in America.
Given these contemporary realities, I was eager to accept an invitation from Dr. Pettit to contribute to “Preaching and Teaching with Love and Respect for Our Jewish Neighbors.” His vision for this project and his resolve to see it to its conclusion animated the writing team’s work at every juncture.
Audience and Usage
As the title indicates, this guide is for anyone in the church who has a teaching or preaching role. At first glance, that might seem too narrowly construed. But it all depends on how one defines preaching and teaching. As I see it, this guide was written for anyone involved in the church’s public witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
With this definition in mind, the audience for this guide includes everyone from pastors to digital content creators, from youth leaders to musicians, and from confirmation teachers to adult education facilitators. Regarding content creators, it is especially important to note the significant role played by visual media in the perpetuation of anti-Jewish concepts and sentiments. This observation was true in the period of the Reformation and remains true today. Anyone charged with the task of teaching children (camp counselors, youth workers, teachers) would benefit from this guide, since many of the most problematic anti-Jewish ideas creep in (often unintentionally) when we are very young.
The guide itself can be used in a variety of ways and contexts. As a starting point, it is divided into ten major sections (more on this below), making the document easy to adapt into a curriculum, whether in the context of individual or group-based study. Given the abundance of bibliographic references, the guide can also serve as an entry point into the larger world of Jewish-Christian dialogue. With the slow rise of Jewish-Christian dialogue, an abundance of resources now exist that can help a person navigate both the joys and complexities of this important conversation. And finally, the guide could easily provide scaffolding for a sermon or teaching series. Many other options exist, but these can at least serve as a starting point.
Content and Organization
The guide is structured around 10 topic areas. The first six emerge out of Scripture itself and include the following:
Prophetic language
Pharisees, scribes, priests and Jewish elders
Jesus and the Jewish law in the Gospels
The historical settings of the Gospels
Paul among Jews and Gentiles — and later readings of Paul
Judaisms of the first century and 21st century.
The final four pay attention to key theological categories that have a special place within Christian (and especially Lutheran) theology and liturgy:
Law and gospel; promise and fulfillment
Where sin divides (Luther’s notion of sinner/saint)
The old/new rhetoric of the Letter to the Hebrews
Misleading lectionary dynamics.
Each of these topics is covered in a mini-essay (typically just a few pages long), which begins with a section we title, “Problematic” and “Better.” Here we describe problematic ways the topic of choice has been engaged in the church, followed by a proposal for a better way forward.
Regular call-out boxes draw attention to key biblical texts, practical insights, and other notable facts. Each essay is intended to be theologically rich and eminently practical.
A Handful of Hopes
As a scholar and teacher of the Old Testament, I take great delight in introducing Christians to the fascinating world of early Judaism. This is, quite literally, the matrix of Jesus’ own religious and cultural identity. But more is at stake than mere historical curiosity. Christian love and respect for Jewish people is not simply grounded in the fact that Jews are human beings who bear the image of God—they certainly are, as are all humans. The Jewish people bear an additional mark of dignity: they are a covenant people whose members are the recipients of unbroken divine promises. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection do nothing to alter this. When Christians deny the covenant status of the Jewish people, they undermine the very foundations of Christian hope. Anti-Jewish theology is anti-Christian theology. My first hope is that this guide will encourage a similar conviction among its readers.
I am regularly troubled by how effortlessly we, as Christians, slip into anti-Jewish ways of interpreting the Bible and especially the person and work of Jesus. My second hope is that readers of this guide will develop a deeper awareness of how anti-Jewish currents are still very much at work in Christian churches today—and probably also in their teaching, preaching, and theology.
Finally, I hope this guide will inspire interfaith cooperation. Jewish people are often members of our communities. Jewish children play on soccer teams, participate in 4-H, and make music in the school band. Jewish adults run for local office, manage local businesses, and donate to important causes. It’s one thing to speak more accurately and generatively about Jesus’ Jewish heritage and quite another thing to see Jewish people as important partners in the making of a more fruitful and trustworthy world. Working toward the latter will require Christians first to examine how their own theological tradition works against just such a future.
Footnotes:
(1) Gritsch, Eric, Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitism: Against His Better Judgment (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2012).
Dr. Michael J. Chan
Dr. Chan is the Executive Director of the Center for Faith and Work at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Prior to this position, he was associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and is a graduate of Luther Seminary (M.A. in biblical theology) and Pacific Lutheran University (B.A. in elementary education).
Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Disembarking the Heroic Path
Instead of asking us to descend into the caverns of our innermost selves and excavate our authentic identities, [Ecclesiates] offers alternative questions that point us back to the perceptible world: “What is my responsibility to the world around me?” “What does my hand find to do?”
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There is an ancient and widespread genre of story whose plot goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was a hero. She was an ordinary person from an ordinary place. She discovers, however, that she is in possession of a special gift, a remarkable object, or an extraordinary burden that makes her stand out among her peers. Our hero goes on a quest that involves danger, self-discovery, and sacrifice--often alongside important companions or mentors. At the end of the story, she returns home a changed person.
You might recognize this narrative echoed in some of the most beloved characters filling our screens today. Think about the vibrant and brilliant story of Kamala--not the VP but Ms. Marvel—who discovers an ancient family heirloom that activates a nascent power within her and mystically connects her to her grandmother. Through Obi Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker learns about an ancient power that gives him a special connection to the Force. Tolkien’s Frodo, from Lord of the Rings, happens upon an ancient ring of power that he must bear, suffer under, and ultimately destroy. Even the vibrant and charming Disney film, Encanto, both inverts and perpetuates this genre in the character of Mirabel—an unremarkable girl in a family of exceptionally gifted members. Her ordinary life is ultimately what allows her to help her family in a crisis. The story of the hero’s tale is an ancient one, and it shows no signs of waning—especially if Disney has anything to say about it.
Many of these stories are beautiful and moving. They resonate in a particular way at this moment in American history that Charles Taylor has rightly called the “age of authenticity.” (1) In the age of authenticity, the Zeitgeist summons us to undertake our own hero’s journey in search of our true and authentic selves, and in the process discover that special gift we can share with the world. The age of authenticity ultimately asks adherents to look within and excavate—beneath layers of psychological trauma, oppression, false consciousness, and scar tissue—in order to uncover one’s identity, definition, and purpose. The age of authenticity still summons us to an epic hero’s journey. They only difference is that the geography we travel is ultimately internal.
Andrew Root has recently addressed these topics from the perspective of youth ministry in his insightful and creative volume, The End of Youth Ministry. (2) There he argues that the redemptive and heroic story adopted by so many in our contemporary culture involves a number of necessary steps. As a starting point, you must discover your “thing” in this world (identity) and gain external recognition and acceptance for that identity—even if only from others who share that identity. The promise at the end of this journey is the all-American reward of “happiness.” It’s the new white picket fence.
Here’s the thing about stories. Well-crafted ones in particular have a way of seeping into our souls, where they shape our sense of possibility, inform our compassion, and nourish our imaginations. But all stories—even the best and most virtuous ones--also cultivate our sense of threat, anxiety, and peril.
What if I don’t discover “my thing?” What if I turn left down the path when I should have turned right? What if I miss my one, true calling? What if I ultimately cannot find my authentic self? What if no one wants to join me on the journey? What if I never find my one, wild hope for this life? What if tragedy stands in the way of vision?
The very real impact of these anxieties is all the more apparent to me now as I spend time among college students who are often fully engaged with these questions.
The book of Ecclesiastes also has something to say about the purpose of a human life and what we should be about in this world. But in stark contrast to the genre of the hero’s journey, Ecclesiastes is decidedly anti-heroic. This is ironic given that the book associates the authorial voice with none other than Solomon, the last great king of a united Israel. Ecclesiastes is written in the voice of a sagely and royal teacher who is at the end of a storied life, reflecting on what it all means.
In the 9th chapter of Ecclesiastes, Koheleth offers this advice about how one should go about living in the world:
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom (Eccl 9:7-10).
For Ecclesiastes, the true nature of this world—including God’s will—are largely hidden from the powers of human perception and reason (see, e.g., 8:16-17; 9:12). We may be able to perceive something of reality, but it will always be out of focus and opaque. Given the limitations of human reason, Koheleth calls upon his readers to bask in the approval of God and to throw themselves into what they can confidently see, touch, and taste. He instructs them to enjoy the fruits of their labor, delight in the love of a partner, and do whatever their hands find to do.
In a critical article on Ecclesiastes, William Brown rightly notes that Koheleth’s advice removes human toil from the realm of achievement and places it instead into a discourse of enjoyment. Enjoyment in Ecclesiastes “has the power to redeem the notion of toil amid (rather than over and against) the vicissitudes of life, the elusiveness of gain, and the ravaging power of death.” (3)
And with this clever insight, the ancient Koheleth calls us to walk a path that is quite different from the one we find on the hero’s journey into authenticity. Instead of asking us to descend into the caverns of our innermost selves and excavate our authentic identities, Koheleth offers alternative questions that point us back to the perceptible world: “What is my responsibility to the world around me?” “What does my hand find to do?” Work belongs to the realm of daily life, where we encounter the needs of those around us, and where we bump up against a myriad of things for our hands to do.
In an interview with Krista Tippett, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen makes this important statement concerning the Hebrew phrase, Tikkun Olam (repair/healing of the world): "It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you." (4) All of us inhabit particular, intersectional contexts where suffering, joy, hope, and trauma are tangled up in complex ways. It is in that messy matrix—that vocational womb—where we are summoned into service of the world, and where our hands find good work to undertake.
Sometimes we will do this out of fiery passion and sometimes out of cold obligation, sometimes out of visionary desire and sometimes out of a sense of responsibility. In all cases, we are called into this world—not as a savior or a hero—but as a co-creator of hope, as a particular in repair, and as a partner in the building of a more trustworthy world?
When we disembark the path of the hero’s journey and begin to walk, instead, the path of vocation, we inherit a different—and I dare say better—set of questions. On the journey of vocation, the path before us goes from narrow to broad, from restrictive to free.
Footnotes:
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 473.
Andrew Root, The End of Youth Ministry? : Why Parents Don't Really Care About Youth Groups and What Youth Workers Should Do About It (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2020).
William P. Brown, “’Whatever Your Hand Finds to Do’: Qoheleth's Work Ethic,” Interpretation 55:3 (2001): 271-284.
https://onbeing.org/programs/rachel-naomi-remen-how-we-live-with-loss/ Many thanks to my colleague, Dr. Matt Skinner, who introduced me to this interview as part of our co-taught MDiv class, Scripture and Its Witnesses, at Luther Seminary.
Dr. Michael J. Chan
Dr. Chan is the Executive Director of the Center for Faith and Work at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Prior to this position, he was associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and is a graduate of Luther Seminary (M.A. in biblical theology) and Pacific Lutheran University (B.A. in elementary education).
Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Dr. Terence E. Fretheim, A Remembrance
Dr. Terence E. Fretheim died late in the morning on November 16, 2020. With his passing, the world lost one of the most productive, creative, and insightful interpreters of biblical literature. As someone honored to call Professor Fretheim a teacher, colleague, and friend, I would like to offer a few reflections on his life and work as a biblical interpreter.
Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son (ca. 1669 CE) is a fitting visual entrée to the work of Terence Fretheim.[1] This is not only true because he used Rembrandt in the classroom, but also because they share a common insight: that the God of the Bible is a truly relational God who is genuinely touched by the world. In Return of the Prodigal Son, currently housed in the Hermitage Museum, the pathos of the father comes through in the artist’s skillful use of light, shadow, and color. With both hands, the father leans in to embrace his ragged son. The clothing of his old life literally falling off his body, the son sinks deeply into the embrace of his father, as the sting of remorse gives way to the joy of reconciliation. It is a genuine exchange for both parties.
Professor Fretheim has contributed many things to the guild of biblical studies, but chief among them is the insight that the God of Israel — like the father in Rembrandt’s painting — is in a genuine relationship with creation. God moves the world, and the world moves God. Neither party leaves the encounter unchanged. Borrowing words from his final publication, “interrelatedness is a basic characteristic not only of the relationship between God and people (and between God and the world) but also of the very nature of the created order.”[2]
The “God questions” were always a priority for Professor Fretheim. In The Suffering of God — arguably his most significant and impactful book — Fretheim poses a question that would mark all of his subsequent scholarship: “It is not enough to say that one believes in God. What is important finally is the kind of God in whom one believes.”[3] As a scholar, pastor, and teacher, Fretheim engaged some of the Bible’s most nettlesome theological questions: What kind of God does the Bible depict? What does it mean to have a God who regrets a decision, looking upon a water-wrecked world and saying, “I will never do that again” (Genesis 8:21)? Is God involved in natural disasters? Can God change God’s mind? Is God somehow responsible for creating a world in which evil exists and even thrives? What does it mean that God chooses to share genuine power and responsibility with imperfect creatures? How is God at work in creation, and what are humanity’s responsibilities toward the non-human elements of creation? Professor Fretheim’s courage was manifest in his willingness to ask theology’s most difficult of questions.
Fretheim would insist that his interest in God emerges from the contents of the Bible itself and especially the divine-human relationship.[4] For those who have experienced Fretheim’s teaching in person, however, it is also clear that his academic interests were grounded in compassion for the world and an attentiveness to its deep wounds. It was not uncommon for Professor Fretheim to lecture with misty eyes, especially when working with Jeremiah or Genesis, or while explicating passages from Heschel or von Rad. Students recognized from his insights and stories that Fretheim’s reflections on suffering were rooted in actual experiences of loss and grief. Terence Fretheim was a biblical scholar with a pastor’s heart.
As friends and family of Terence Fretheim, we now find ourselves bearing the heavy burden of loss and pain. If Professor Fretheim has taught us anything, however, it is that we do not bear this burden alone. He was fond of quoting from Exodus 3:7: “I know their sufferings.” The God of the Exodus knows our sufferings too as we mourn Terry’s death and celebrate his life.
[1] The painting currently housed at the Hermitage is in fact one of many of Rembrandt’s depictions of the prodigal son.
[2] Terence E. Fretheim, God So Enters into Relationship That…: A Biblical View (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2020), 4.
[3] Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God, 1.
[4] See Terence E. Fretheim, The Pentateuch (Interpreting Biblical Texts; Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 37.
Dr. Michael Chan
Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary
Christ | Christmas | Covid
Providing space to grieve and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Return to Normalcy and Other Fleshpots
Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34, CEB).
In the current political environment, many Americans are hoping for a “return to normalcy.” Such a pitch plucks at the heartstrings of many who are ready to vomit after too many sharp turns on the 2020 roller coaster.
Many of us just want to get back to the way things were—when masks were just a curious feature of foreign travelers, when visiting family didn’t require risk assessment, when self-scandalizing tweets didn’t hijack our news cycle, when church participation didn’t require a Zoom account, when outlets weren’t so clearly fueled and funded by rage, and when we didn’t have to squirm under the constant accusation of racism.
The return to normalcy argument derives its power from the common (and often beneficial!) human impulses to avoid conflict, stabilize life when it gets knocked off balance, resolve contradiction, organize chaos, and believe that we are good and decent people with upright intentions.
On its long trip from Egypt to Canaan, Ancient Israel experienced a similar urge to return to a more familiar and comfortable past (see Exodus 16:3).
The only problem was that their memory of the past was distorted. They remembered the fleshpots but not the chains.
Ironically, the promised “return to normalcy” means that 2020—like 2016—will be an election about nostalgia. But one thing sets 2020 apart from 2016: clarity. 2020 has seen the sins of generations washing up on the shores of our nation in ways that are profoundly public and profoundly painful. 2020 has been a year of judgment, when sinful seeds planted long ago are coming into maturity in ways that have compounding effects.
If divine judgment does one thing well, it brings into focus what was previously obscured or even ignored, separating wheat from husk and sheep from goats (Matthew 3:11-12; 25:31-46).
The fire of God’s judgment allows us to see ourselves as we truly are before God’s law of love. We are in a painful process in which our national eyes are slowly and reluctantly opening to truths that some in our population have suffered under for ages.
2020 has brought clarity about many particular things: clarity about racial disparities, clarity about the dangers of poor leadership, clarity about the weaknesses in our social fabric, clarity about the importance of robust free speech and assembly rights, clarity about the deficiencies in our health care system, clarity about the disrepair of the international order, and clarity about how lines of discrimination can exist in reality, even if they don’t exist legally.
But clarity is painful and costly.
It stings the way Nathan’s words to David must have stung: “you are that man” (2 Samuel 12:7). It crashes down on us like the waters crashed down on Pharaoh’s armies at the Red Sea. And it brings us face-to-face with one of the most disturbing aspects of Jesus’ ministry: confrontation.
Jesus’ ministry was inherently confrontational, as Matthew 10:34 indicates: “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword.”
Matthew’s Jesus is an apocalyptic figure, whose conflict with the powers of sin, death, and the devil are borne out through the Gospels. He recognized that true peace, shalom, requires confrontation.
Like the late John Lewis, Jesus was a troublemaker. When Jesus came to town, the powers of sin, death, and the devil surfaced. The demons showed their faces—not because they were powerful, but because they were vulnerable.
As the apocalyptic sword of divine judgment sweeps through our own land, ancient demons are emerging from their lairs with the kind of ferocity that comes only from desperation. In the apocalypse, the last thing we need is a return to normalcy.
Americans face an important question: Are we willing to exchange the moral clarity of this moment for a distorted memory of the past?
Is a “return to normalcy” really what is called for?
We ought to be concerned when and if “return to normalcy” is heard as a summons to a time when we saw less clearly, when we more easily overlooked our neighbor’s weathered face and scarred hands. The precious gift of moral clarity at this time of judgment is utterly invaluable.
And we ought not substitute that clarity for a morally dull sense of comfort.
Dr. Michael J. Chan
Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary
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Being Church Today
Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT
Church Anew has gathered a diverse group of Christian thought leaders to ignite innovation and imagination for leading congregations in a time like this. These keynote speakers will amplify the voices of local leaders from the Minneapolis area, who will share stories of how the church is leading in our own context, particularly in response to systemic racism in our communities.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.