An Unknown God Call Mercy

Acts 17:30-31 came up in my readings this week. The NRSV translation puts it this way:

While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’

Here Paul is making the case that the Greeks have an altar to an unknown god. Paul proclaims that the God they do not know is in fact known in Jesus Christ. This is among the great sermons in the Bible since is pulls the logic of the audience to a place where they are more inclined to hear the message. In fact verse 32 says, “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’

What stood out was not the cleverness of Paul’s sermon, but the Good News he shares: the one who will judge the world is the one raised from the dead - Jesus.

If you were to choose what sort of judge you might desire would you desire the one who is harsh and demanding or the one who has been on the relieving end of mercy herself? Paul is saying, that the judge of all people at the end of everything is one who had been raised by God. Meaning, the judge of all life is one who would have remained dead had it not been for the work of God.

Can you imagine how delighted Jesus Christ the judge must be? How thankful? How much he would want to “pay it forward” to the rest of humanity? Can you imagine the mercy that must come from this judge?

While the Greeks knew of gods who judged out of wrath and condemnation; gods who were willing to throw bolts of lightning and tidal waves around because they did not like the offering given by mortals. Paul says that perhaps the reason they do not know of the “unknowing god” is because mercy was unknown to them in the realm of the gods. It may not just be that there is an “unknown god” but that mercy is a god they do not know.

Paul says that mercy is what God uses to judge.

No wonder some scoffed and others desired to hear more. Chances are if you are reading the idea that mercy is the standard Christ uses to judge might make you feel one of those two things as well.

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

The following prayer was shared with my by a professor a couple of weeks ago, Prophets of a Future Not Our Own, in memory of Oscar Romero (1917–1980).

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. 
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.

Yes, Productivity is not Working

There is a fantastic article called “Productivity is not Working” by Laurie Penny. Take time to read it here.

Penny suggests that so many of us are addicted to the treadmill of our work lives, not because it takes us anywhere but only because it is comfortable and known:

This is how most of my peers have experienced the modern economy. We were told that if we worked hard, we would be safe, and well, and looked after, and the less this was true, the harder we worked.

The idea that hustling can save you from calamity is an article of faith, not fact—and the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to shake the collective faith in individual striving. The doctrine of “workism” places the blame for global catastrophe squarely on the individual: If you can’t get a job because jobs aren’t there, you must be lazy, or not hustling hard enough. That’s the story that young and young-ish people tell themselves, even as we’ve spent the whole of our brief, broke working lives paying for the mistakes of the old, rich, and stupid. We internalized the collective failures of the ruling class as personal failings that could be fixed by working smarter, or harder, or both—because that, at least, meant that we might be able to fix them ourselves.

Penny comes to the obvious conclusion that “the cult of productivity doesn’t have an answer for this crisis. Self-optimizing will not save us this time…”

Really, you should read the article.

While Penny’s article ends with a word of hope, I would like to offer what might be the Good News hidden in the title.

There are several ways to read this title (“Productivity is not Working"). One way is to say that being productive in the traditional economic sense is not helping right now. There may be a day in the future when we can all be “productive” again, but today is not that day. To put it another way, it is saying that “productivity isn’t working”. Like the refrigerator that isn’t working, in time we can fix it and it will work again.

Another way to read the title is that is productivity equals (is) not working. But how can this be? How can productivity BE not working? This is the mystery of grace in the world. If we want to gain our life, we have to loose it. The only way that God can produce fruit (be productive) in our lives is when we are not working. When we step aside and realize that we cannot save the world. When we submit to the reality that all our works can never fill the deep desires of our hearts and souls. That we will be “restless until we rest in thee.”

You may be tempted to think that what this suggests that the Good News is to live a lazy life of not doing anything. This is the false choice given to us by the soul-sucking economy - we either are working or we are lazy. We are either striving or we are abdicating. We are either growing or we are dying. These are all false choices because there is another way to life - not by working and not by being lazy but by receiving.

We have such a cult of productivity that even today some of the “best” leaders of our time are encouraging us to use this time to think through how we can be better and more productive in the future. These liturgical sermons from the priests of productivity are not new. We have heard them before. And for many of us, we build our lives around their gospel. As Penny says, “There is nothing counterrevolutionary about keeping busy.” There is something that is counterrevolutionary and that is by receiving the Gospel that productivity is not working.

Which can only mean that God is.