🐮 Lent 1
Readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13.
Further Reading:
Reflection
good morning and welcome to the first Sunday in Lent. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This year is year C, so it's the year of Luke who was represented by oxen. And our readings come to us today from Deuteronomy chapter 26, Psalm 91, Romans 10, and Luke four, and I had a story that I wanted to share to situate the importance of, especially the importance of the Lent in readings and Lent has always been a really impactful season, liturgical season for me. I always experience things in the moment. I can't really plan or prepare for I'm not gonna make a Christmas album unless I make it at Christmas and.
Send it out or release it next year, like I can't do that. And so Lent, I'm trying to be honest about, the readings and Luke in particular is gonna be very interesting for me. And I start with Luke and I've, I started with Luke way back in 20 17, 18. I'm not sure how long I've been doing this, but it's.
It's been a, at least a full cycle of the dailies. So that's three years of every weekday or so recording. And then I took some, a little bit of break, and now I'm doing all the Sundays. I. And Lent in this particular reading is really a favorite of mine. And you cannot really grasp what's going on in the Bible if you cannot grasp or wrestle with the violence in the Hebrew scriptures.
And. We, I don't even like violence, but like military service and violence are not the same. There's a lot of military service and there's a little bit of violence, and a lot of it is really crappy. But if you can't wrap your head around the military as a function of a human society then I'm sorry, you're not gonna be able to read the Bible, I, or not.
You'll never get as much out of it as you could. For example, in Psalm 91. The last verse we read was Long Life. I'll satisfy them and show them my salvation. And in Greek, that's ya. I'm sorry. The root word in Hebrews Yasa and this specific word in the metic text where they give you the vowels.
Where is Yeshua? Yeshua being the Hebraic name of. Mary's son and her name is Miriam, but whatever. I'll have to pick one fight at a time. And so the last verse, when you're being told, if you are situating yourself within the Habra imagination with a long life, I'll satisfy them and show them my Yeshua, my Jesus, or Joshua.
And it's important that we name him what his name is, what the angel commanded his mother to name him, which in American English, and I would even say Anglican English is Joshua. And you can look in Romans 10, one of the other readings. It says specifically no one who believes in him, or I'm sorry who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Joshua. And the name is Joshua in Romans. It didn't change until. Jerome brought the Greek scriptures into Latin and changed the Messiah's name from Jesus in Greek to something like Yeshu closer to the Hebrew. But like the Orthodox churches never stopped. They would say Joshua, son of none, Joshua's son of Jeza, Joshua's son of Mary as a qualifier, or like Joshua the Messiah, Joshua Christ.
And so you have to. Do something with those alliterations and those allusions that are created by the Theon Nim Joshua, the military commander, is the name of the same exact name that is said of Mary's son. If you don't want to do read Joshua or judges like I, that's fine. I'm not gonna condemn you.
Marcion had a right to his own opinions and Heresies. But you can't get it if the name isn't right. And in your language, do all the work of interpreting, don't let Jerome interpret it for you. If you don't realize that Jerome has done something, you'll just accept that as God's honest truth.
And it's not, it's Jerome's truth for a specific church and a specific time and a specific place that spoke a specific language and it's not ours. His name in American modern English is Joshua. The reason the story I mentioned that I'd tell is I. I don't think any of my readers know, so I'm just gonna mention the name and assume everybody knows how big of a deal this person is within their own circles.
But my first theological education was under Stanley Hauerwas, it didn't last because I came to study virtue ethics and he needed someone to prop him up and help take care of. Veterans that he didn't know what to do with and who weren't, self-flagellating enough, self-deprecating enough to feel ashamed for all of their military service, even the good.
Anyway, he had this thing that he was really popular or he is really known to say, and Jesus, and he would say, Jesus Christ is Lord. And that every, all the rest is bullshit. And that it's funny, it's pithy. It's until you hear what I have to say in a moment, you'll think that it's true. But there was a moment when I was taking the most advanced class I took at Duke Divinity, a 900 level course, basically a PhD seminar, and it was on politics and Christianity with Stanley and Sean Larson, and I did not.
Think that I was at their same level like the other students, like I was just an MTS student, but Stanley had basically invited me to Duke and so he let me join whatever classes I asked about, and I don't know if any, it wasn't like a full class, so I don't know if he was doing me any favor, but he also knew that he was a celebrity and he knew that some people would see the celebrity and not see the work that he was doing.
Anyway in this class where I can't remember what the text was that we were reading at that on that day, but it was also effectively a reading group for Stanley's upcoming book, which was, I don't remember what it was, but it was like learning how to lie and learning how to laugh and like something about language.
I don't know, have I thought about it long enough? I remember. But in this one, the chapter of his that we read along with Sean Larson's, prescribed readings, it came up oh, what's the, if I had to reduce Christianity to one thing, what would it be? And Stanley has written an essay about this and it's in some book, but it was also part of an interview and somebody asked him like, what would the one thing be that you would tell people and Stanley in this interview, and then later in this essay that would be included in the book that we were discussing in this class said, if there's a kernel, it's don't lie.
If you wanna be a Christian, don't lie. And I raised my hand and I pointed out you have I don't know if that's descriptive enough because you can go up the street to the Fuqua School of Business at Duke and you could say, Jesus says, or I say, if you wanna follow Jesus, don't lie. All the business stu, all the business MBA students would be like, phew, we can still cheat and steal.
And everybody had a a laugh and I was like. Actually like I'm serious. Do you mean speech acts? 'cause we use this kind of weird language like speech acts in this class. And you've gotta say more because what do you mean by lie? Because not everybody agrees on the definition of lying.
And that's actually where I learned about dis simulation. And honestly, and this is probably the closest I got to actually studying virtue or at least the Greeks with Stanley, but I pointed that out and everybody, and he agreed, you're right. I'd have to say more. I don't know if he changed that in the essay that made in the book.
I have no idea. But it taught me something. Lying isn't always what we think it is. For example, you could lie by remaining silent to avoid telling the truth. If your wife asks if something makes her look fat, you might dissimulate. That's what remaining silent to avoid lying is called, and it's equally bad or evil or retting as lying in order to be honest, right?
If we're Christians and we wanna be honest, not only do you have to not lie, refrain from lying, you also have to refrain from diss. Simulating honesty is a positive attribute that you have to build. You don't get to just shut up and think that you can avoid saying things like, hopefully I've made my point.
But the underlying part that it took me years to realize is that for all the esteem that people held Stanley in, he didn't know how to speak. He didn't know. How to craft language in a way that was positively honest. And this came to light because he treated me dishonestly and he was fine with that.
And he knew I spoke with him that later in this day that he dealt with me dishonestly and he said he agreed I wouldn't be the man I say I am. If I let that moment have the end of have the day. And we met again and we thought we reconciled, but we really didn't. So what happens if the people we look to learning to speak, which is to say how to be, what if those guides are not credible?
What if we should not believe them? Not because they're assholes, but because they don't realize when our language is at odds. Stanley is also famously. Admitted that he's an asshole and he thinks this is funny because he says that everybody in Texas calls each other asshole. I'm from California and I call assholes.
There's other we could call each other dude or bro, or I don't know, whatever. But I. Looking back on that, I realized that the people teaching me to speak didn't know how to speak themselves. And I did not know that until I had to learn the hard way. And so learning not only the Lord's name so that we can avoid taking it in vain, I.
For example. But also the content of our language, of our words, which in John's gospel is very, it is the theological thing. It is the thing that God did at creation and did again, in the person and place of Mary's son, the logos, the word. If we do not get our words right, or we don't even realize the way in which our logic has become incoherent.
Internally incoherent, then we will not be able to speak of our own experiences credibly and we will not be credible narrators of our own experience, of the experience of others. And that I think, describes kind of the na, the state in which our society is right now as Americans, we accept and we are not.
Our society does not screech to a halt to correct the president of the United States when he speaks in the way that this administration is speaking. And that's because there have been a years and administrations and generations of administrations that have been doing that already. And so now the pot is boiling, but the frog's been in it the whole time.
I recently wrote an essay, and I'll conclude with this, but I want to unify the different pieces of me, especially in Lent. It's not the new liturgical year, but it is gonna set off a long stretch of ordinary time in which I want, and I want my listeners and followers and readers to also be able to identify where our language has gone wrong.
And how that erupts into a society like ours. I recently wrote a piece on my substack. You can visit it@pewpew.substack.com, and I called it Epilogue to a Nation using legal precedent and constitutional language. I point out some things that have happened to me in my life that I can verify occurred and the language I use to address.
That infringement, that evil, that isolation to those people who have done it, and they won't. They, I've given them a deadline, but they have not apologized. They have not confessed, they have not been faithful to their words, to their actions, to the constitution, to their office, and the very fact that they can just ignore and hope that things go away is a symptom of the.
Already decaying nature of our nation and the kind of tl, TLDR version of it. I pulled from a ver a number of constitutional and other legal things. But if you go to pew pew.substack.com, the very latest or one of the latest. Essays I've written is Epilogue to a Nation and the TLDR version, which I'll close with.
And I think this is a theological statement by an American assembly, an American church. If you are American, if you're theologically inclined and you are aware of our situation, our context as American Christians, I think the next sentence I'm about to state might be the scariest shit I've ever thought up.
But it also represents a scary truth that we must face where our society really has already begun to crumble and we're only now. Seeing it and that statement is again, you can go to epilogue to a nation at my substack pew pew.substack.com. You can also find it on gijustice.com/blog. The TLDR version.
If certain rights endowed by nature's God have become alienable from those persons who defend the sovereignty of our state. Then the truths upon which America declared its solemn independence have ceased to be self-evident. The political bans intended to unite us having already been dissolved.
I'll say that one more time and I hope you'll read that essay either gijustice.com/blog or pewpew.substack.com.
If certain rights, endowed by nature's God, Have become alienable from those persons who defend the sovereignty of our state. Then the truths upon which America declared its solemn independence have ceased to be self-evident. The political bans intended to unite us having already been dissolved.
