Repentance: New Life in The Reign of God Proper 16C

 

Repentance: New Life in the Reign of God

As chapter 13 of Luke opens, Jesus is asked about Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices – murdered in an act of sacrifice and worship, quite possibly seeking God’s forgiveness (Luke 13:1-9). Jesus knows what is on their mind, and replies, “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than any others? No, and unless you repent you will perish as they did!” Then he references others living in Jerusalem who died when a tower crashed down on them? Were they too greater sinners than anyone else in Jerusalem? No, and unless you repent something like that may happen to you as well. 

Then like any good rabbi, he tells them a story: A man had planted a fig tree in his vineyard. After three years it still had produced no figs. He orders the gardener to cut it down. “Why should it be wasting the soil?” The gardener intercedes on behalf of the fig tree. “Let me dig around it, place some manure in the ground, and let’s give it one more year. If it bears fruit, well and good. If not, you can cut it down.” It’s a story of forgiveness, grace and repentance, as those terms are understood throughout the Old and New Testaments of our Bible. 

To be in covenant with God our Creator, the story says, is to be in a relationship with the One God who wants to remain in relationship with us, even when we stray from God’s ways. God repeatedly calls Israel and individuals to repent. Repentance in the Bible means we have turned away from the Way of God, and therefore need to turn and turn until, as the Shaker hymn tell us, “we come down right,” walking in God’s Way again, not ours. The man who owns the vineyard and the fig tree is only concerned with profit and seems to have forgotten: as it is with God, so it is with us, and so it also shall be for the fig tree, a stand-in for all of creation. That is what is called arguing from the greater down to the lesser. 

Jesus then reverses the argument as he is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17), when suddenly a woman who has been bent over for 18 years comes in to worship with the community. I tried walking around the house bent over for just a few minutes. All one sees is one’s own feet, and just how dirty the floor is. If you are in a garden, you might see flowers that are low to the ground, but miss the large bushes of blue and white fluffy Hydrangeas, or majestic Oak and Sycamore trees. It is a limited view of the world and of life itself. With no prompting, Jesus immediately calls her over and proclaims, “Woman, you are set free from that which binds you.” And she stands up and praises God. The leader of the synagogue repeatedly tells anyone who will listen, “There are six days upon which you may work, come on those days to be healed, not the Sabbath.” Jesus then argues from the lesser to the greater, saying, “But on the Sabbath you untie your animals and lead them to get a drink of water. And ought not this woman, a Daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for 18 long years, be unbound and set free on the Sabbath?” Everyone in the synagogue rejoiced at all the wonderful things he was doing. For the woman and everyone had re-turned to living life in the reign of God! 

“The wonderful things he was doing.” When one hears the good news, “Repent, for the Reign of God is at hand,” it is just the beginning. After hearing the good news, it is not what we think or believe that is of any importance – it is what we do that counts. Jesus demonstrates this by taking the initiative to remind everyone that Sabbath is a kind of repentance, a re-turning to the realm of God’s reign and God’s will. And that every day, especially on the Sabbath, God’s main concern is the well-being of all people, because God loves all people having created us in God’s own image. To liberate someone who has been bound by Satan for a long time trumps all other practices and rituals associated with keeping the Sabbath day holy.  It is not whether we keep the Sabbath day holy, but how we keep the Sabbath day holy that matters. Do we limit ourselves to “how we have always done it before”? Or, as Jesus and God his Father, through all of holy Scripture show us, we are to take the risk to perform surprising and daring deeds to free others from whatever binds them, whether it be exile, occupation, or random dangerous events. God forgives us and God loves us. Jesus was sent to remind us of this simple truth. So that repentance is not an act of contrition or confession, it is a turning away from business as usual and re-turning to the way of God – which Way is to love God and love our neighbor – all neighbors. 

In his book, The Good News of Jesus, William Countryman sums it up like this:

“Hearing the good news is a beginning. The rest of our life forms our response. To trust that God has loved us in this surprising way, to hope that God will go on loving us in this way, to love the one who has sought our love and to love ourselves for our own newly discovered or rediscovered loveliness, to love our world and our neighbor for the same reason – these acts of love form the bones, the skeleton, of life in the good news. We flesh them out in our daily experience of living in faith, hope, and love. As the good news shapes our lives, we and our world will begin to grow rich with the delight that God has intends for us…

“We learn to stay in conversation with one another and with our forebearers in faith. We learn to value the fixed points of sacraments and Scripture as well as to prize the surprises of life in the Spirit. We discover with delight that, however old we may be, we go right on growing and changing and maturing by the power of the good news. This is what the good news makes possible! You don’t have to earn your way by being perfect. You don’t even have to pretend to be perfect. God has chosen you in love, just as you are. All is forgiven.

“A new country lies before you. A new citizenship is yours. The frontier is open. The border guards have been reassigned. No one needs a visa anymore.

“Now take risks. Accept your new citizenship. Make a new beginning with God, with yourself, with your world, and with your neighbor. “ [i] 

The new life of the good news is like this: As we all were preparing for Holy Communion one morning at Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street, NYC, the Celebrant and two chalice bearers standing on the pavement before the communion rail, suddenly a visitor came in the door and all the way down the aisle – skipping the whole way. He stops and asks the priest, in a loud voice, “Is that the Body of Christ?” Yes, it is, said the priest. And pointing at a chalice the man who had skipped down the aisle asked, “And is that the Blood of Christ?” Yes, it is, replied the chalice bearer. “Then, I’ll have me some of that!” he said. With that, the priest gave him the bread, and a chalice bearer offered him the wine. The man then turned around, and skipped all the way back up the aisle and out the door with a satisfied grin on his face, ready to see the world in an entirely new light. The light of Christ. No one asked if he was baptized. No one questioned how he approached Holy Communion, or his behavior, or challenged any aspect of his appearance that morning. As citizens of the good news and the reign of God, we all seemed to remember that Jesus had given his life for the life of the world – the whole world. And that the man who skipped down the aisle was our neighbor. And that we had just made a stranger, a strange one at that, very happy, judging by the look on his face and his exuberant departure. And that’s how we make a new beginning with God, with ourselves, with the world, and with our neighbors!

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[i] Countryman, L,William, The Good News of Jesus (Cowley Press, Cambridge, MA:1993) p. 108-109

Are We Acting in Faith? Proper 15C

 Are We Acting in Faith?

The Bible is unflinching in challenging us to interpret the world we live in. Thus, we find Jesus, in an already difficult and disturbing outburst, asking this most pivotal question of faith: Why do we not know how to interpret the present time? For those of us living in the United States today, this is undoubtedly the most challenging task facing our public life. It divides not just the country whose name begins with the word “United,” but as Jesus declares in Luke 12:49-56, the divisions are upending families and households: “Father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” As it is with the present time in a dangerously ununited United States, so it was a mere three generations into the life of what came to be called the Christian Church when Luke was writing a Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles. 

In fact, in a few weeks we will hear the tone sharpened when Jesus announces, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” [Luke 14:26-27] All his speech about kindling a fire, a stressful baptism, carrying a cross, becoming a disciple, is framed as a response to “the present time.” Jesus has read, marked, and inwardly digested the warnings of the prophets of Israel: God is not impressed by worship, sacrifices, and prayers that are not backed up with action. Which action is meant to counter the unjust, and therefore ungodly, actions of a society that ceases protections for its most vulnerable citizens, often described in the coded biblical phrase, “widows, orphans, and resident aliens.” 

When the Poet-Prophet Isaiah describes Israel as God’s personal vineyard [Isaiah 5:1-7], we hear the interpretation of the present time is that of everything falling apart: instead of producing fruits worthy of becoming fine wine, the vineyard yields only wild grapes. Why? Because where the Lord asked for there to be a just society, one sees only bloodshed; where the Lord asked for righteousness – mercy, forgiveness of debts, love of neighbor – one “hears only a cry.” It is a judgement issued more out of sorrow and disappointment than anger. Instead of a community that cares for the well-being of all of society, to include even those nomadic resident aliens seeking safe refuge, one sees the people driven into debt, ancestral farms foreclosed and usurped by predatory urban “despots,” and the cry of a people who have lost their homes, and many snatched off the land and carried off to foreign lands to be slaves and servants of other nations. 

As he interprets the present time, Jesus sees these historic injustices and lack of support for God’s people compounded by the occupation of the vineyard by a brutal and resource devouring Empire centered in Rome, overseen by the emperor-god, Caesar. Jesus warns those who respond to his call to “follow him” in all his attempts to restore justice for the debt-ridden and poor, to dismantle the rapacious systems of governance and taxation, and somehow drive out the foreign legions to restore the vineyard, to restore Israel as God’s own people and land, and to reestablish a just and free society for all. He warns that the path toward a restored and productive vineyard will be met with conflict and resistance before justice, mercy and peace has any chance of being restored. To put it bluntly, to be a disciple of Jesus, one must be willing to be kindled into a fire capable of dismantling and burning to the ground all systems of injustice that seek only to consolidate the wealth and resources of the land in the hands of the few, the affluent, and a politically-repressive leadership. 

As one searches for the good news one needs to hear Jesus’s assurance to those who choose to leave the comfort of social and family ties and trust in the assured outcome: “Truly, I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age and in the age to come eternal life.” [Luke 18:29-30] His is a bold claim, but a claim rooted in Jesus’s people’s history. 

Enter the treatise called Hebrews, which is believed to have been addressed to a struggling Christian community rooted in the very heart of the prevailing darkness, Rome. And it is this treatise called Hebrews that reviews the history of biblical faith. “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration, but nevertheless are real. 

Hebrews examines the lives of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as those who face difficult times, and yet acted out of faith and changed the life of human civilization. Hebrews goes on to say, “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” [Hebrews 11:29-12:2] 

All of which is to say, what we do now, as we interpret the needs of the present time, has eternal consequences, whether or not we see the fruits of our labor. Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor and American theologian observed, “The man who wrote this little treatise…saw the history of humanity summed up in the life spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is a quality of the heart which sees things before that are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Hebrews 11 calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with men and women running a race in an amphitheater packed with all generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet men and women for all time” [i] 

This great cloud of witnesses watches us now, in this present time. What do they see? Are we interpreting the present time and acting accordingly? Are we ready to pick up our crosses to follow Jesus and all those who came before him into the reality of God’s reign? 

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[i] Rauschenbusch, Walter, The Social Principles of Jesus (The International Committee of the YMCA, London:1916) p.189

Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life Proper 14C

 Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life

Faith. It’s a word that gets thrown around. And it is, writes the author of the treatise known as Hebrews, central to a God centered life. As I write that, it seems quaint. Almost unheard of, that a person would live a God centered life rather than the more modern and more popular self-centered life as advocated by Ayn Rand and her disciples among Libertarian and Conservative political movements. 

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 tells us: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Not to get into the weeds of translation and the Greek text, but the argument has been made, persuasively, that it ought to read more like, “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” [i] By striking a contrast with the customary understanding of this verse, in which it asserts the obvious truth that faith involves confidence about things that cannot presently be verified, what Hebrews actually asserts is that in faith the believer already anticipates the final outcome (the reality) of what is believed. That is not to say that believing makes something true or that whatever one actually believes will happen, but that faith itself has a kind of eschatological power. Similarly, “conviction” speaks to a personal belief that something may happen, whereas the Greek means “proof” that it will happen. Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration.[ii] 

The originating example of this movement of Faith, the originating story of the Bible, concerns Abraham and Sarah – who are moved by faith to leave everything behind them – home, family, friends – and journey toward two promises of a new home and nearly infinite progeny! As we all know, they never see either one.Bbut faith moves their unlikely progeny, (astonishingly so given their advanced ages – “and he as good as dead!”), become twelve tribes who multiply for generations in Egypt, and another two generations in the wilderness before the proof of those two promises is a reality. Jesus does not see the fullness of the kingdom of God he proclaims, yet, as it was for Abraham and Sarah, so will be the future fulfillment of the kingdom of God. 

In all the examples marshalled in Hebrews, God is the object of Faith. And as the First Letter of John (4:7-21) reminds us, God is Love: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. … Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” 

Faith is God’s love moving in us, through us, and all around us. Just as important as it is to know God and God’s love as the object of Faith, we need to know what the opposite of Faith is. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, and teacher asserts that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather indifference. It was the indifference of neighbors who saw the evil that was happening throughout Europe that allowed the Nazi driven Holocaust to happen. There was no significant uprising until it was too late. In his memoir, Night, Wiesel writes that those in the camps believed that even God could not know what was happening. Yet, when they were released from the camps, they learned that the whole world had known. And in particular, the US State Department had hard evidence of what was going on, and chose to do nothing until Japan eventually drew us into the war. 

The subject of Faith is God/Love. The Opposite of Faith, therefore, is indifference. Love is a verb, not a noun, not a feeling or belief, but what one does! It is in faith that we act in the direction that God and Christ call us to prove what will be the ultimate reality for all people – a world of mercy, love and justice. 

Worship. The poet-prophet Isaiah explores the connection of faith with worship. Specifically, the Temple worship in Jerusalem. Isaiah announces that God is not happy with the sacrifices at the Temple: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.”( Isaiah 1:1, 10-20) There is also a harsh word for the people’s prayers, “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” Thus, the expression, there is blood on our hands – not only for what the people do, and what is done on our behalf by our leadership, but for what the people of God and our leadership are not doing. 

Why this condemnation of worship and prayer? Because both tend to be self-centered. We often  use worship, sacrifices, and prayers to manipulate God to do what we want. Which is backwards. We are there in the Temple, the synagogue, the church, to learn just what it is God wants from us. What God wants us to do. And for Isaiah, it is all quite simple: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” We are to love our neighbors – to love those who are vulnerable, and in need of a helping hand. 

In Luke 12:32-40, just after the story about the self-centered man whose sole concern is to build more, bigger, fuller barns, Jesus puts a fine point on it: “Sell your possessions, and give alms.” And later in Luke Volume 2, The Acts of the Apostles, we see a community living in Jerusalem doing just that: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47) 

That is, worship and prayer are not a means by which we manipulate God to do our bidding. Worship and Prayer are the means by which God seeks to change us – to lead us in the Way of Love. The Way of Faith. And Worship and Prayer are the means by which we give thanks – Eucharistia – that God invites us to be those people who proclaim and live out of God’s Love for all persons, all creatures, and all of creation. The invitation to “sell…and give” in Luke, together with the call “to be dressed and ready,” suggests that our use of financial resources is inextricably related to our conviction that the future and our destiny lies ultimately with God. Then living our of our Faith about the future affects how we live in the present. 

When we allow worship and prayer to help us become those who trust in God’s reign, makes possible that our lives will be God centered with love for all our neighbors. Amen.

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[i] Newsom, James D., Texts For Preaching: Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.465-66

[ii] Ibid, Newsome

Experiences of God Proper 13C

 Experiences of God

“The wrath of God is his relentless compassion, pursuing us even when we are at our worst. Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy” – Maggie Ross

Luke more than any of the four evangelists seems concerned with the problem of “Affluenza.” Although we tend to think that most of Jesus’s most ardent followers as those who were land poor, homeless, collaborators with the Empire like tax collectors, the lame, the sick, and the demon possessed. Yet, Luke, writing to a church a generation or two after the Crucifixion, and perhaps a decade after the destruction of the Temple and all of Jerusalem, which now has attracted people of wealth, land holders, the oiko despotos, and there are inheritances at stake. 

Luke tells the story of a Prodigal Son which revolves around the inheritance of two sons. And this story which begins with a question about an inheritance: someone in the crowd asks, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."  [Luke 12:13-21] Jesus is a shrewdie. He knows what we all know. There are family members who no longer speak to one another because one of them got the tea cup, and the other got the saucer. 

I’m no probate judge, he says. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." What I am is a rabbi, a teacher, and I tell funny stories. There was a man whose farm produced abundantly. What shall I do, he says to himself? I will build more and bigger barns to store all “my grain and goods.” Then I will say to my Self, “Self, we have accumulated all this grain and all this stuff. Let’s eat, drink and be merry. I am set for years to come! Relax!” When suddenly from offstage comes the Voice of God: “Self, you are no self. You are no soul. What you are is a fool. Look at you celebrating all by yourself. You’ve got no friends, no neighbors. All you have is barns full of stuff, and tonight your life will be taken from you. Whose will it all be now? That’s the question for all of us. Whose is it now? Psalm 24, which follows right after the 23^rd Psalm, reminds us, “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything therein.” We are just temporary stewards of what is the Lord God’s to begin with and for evermore. 

In case we have all forgotten this comes the punch line: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." Grain is no good stored in barns. Everyone listening to Jesus knows that much. There are rats. And mold. It rots. It’s no good unless it is sold or given away for those who can use it for the daily bread we are meant to pray for. He just taught them how to pray. And he didn’t say to pray for a freezer full of bread, and meats, and veggies for the future. Pray for bread that is given daily. The man in the story could be feeding all those who have no daily bread. That’s what it means to be “rich toward God.” For those called to love God and love neighbor, it’s all pretty simple. We don’t need more and bigger barns, larger investment portfolios, and offshore bank accounts. We need to keep the grain, the goods, and the wealth in circulation for it all to do any good. 

As to helping our neighbors, as the hymns says, as the Letter to the Colossians says, “all are neighbors to us and you.” To those of us “made new” in Christ, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” [Colossians 3:1-11] Or as it might be written today: There is neither black, brown, yellow, red, or white, nor male or female, gay or trans! We are all humans created in the image of God! All deserving daily bread, forgiveness of debts, and to be spared the times of trial. The danger is not in having great wealth, it’s having what the text says in Greek, pleonexia – literally “the desire of gaining more and more.” It was a problem then, and surely is a problem today. It is placing one’s life, one’s security, in the abundance of possessions.

 

As Father Brendan Byrne, SJ, writes in his commentary on Luke, The Hospitality of God, the theme is prominent in Luke’s gospel is that “nothing is more destructive of life and humanity than preoccupation with acquiring, holding onto, and increasing wealth. The problem is not so much the possession of riches as such. It is that the desire to acquire and enhance them, fed by insecurity, prevents people from attending to the relationship with God that brings the only security that counts. Such desire also erodes the concern for the other that is the basis of true community. Attachment to wealth is incompatible with living, sharing, and celebrating the hospitality of God.” [i] Like the man in the story, you end up celebrating all by yourself. 

And now, the rest of the story. Jesus turns to his disciples, which of course means us – we the baptized ministers of his Community of Love we call “church.” The underlying message is to seek the kingdom, for “life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” [Luke 12:22-34] Consider the birds who have neither storehouses nor barns – but God our father feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? And consider the lilies of the field, how they grow – “they neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these!” Solomon, of course, represents the culture of conspicuous consumption. We are told in 1 Kings 4:22 that “One day's food supply for Solomon's household was: 185 bushels of fine flour 375 bushels of meal 10 grain-fed cattle 20 range cattle 100 sheep and miscellaneous deer, gazelles, roebucks, choice fowl,” and a partridge in a pear tree. While others in the kingdom starved, Solomon’s household ate really really well. 

Finally, Jesus urges us, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

How are we to know this? Some eight hundred years before Jesus and Luke, Hosea reminds people that the more they stray from God’s Way, the more God loves them – like a mother with her only child: “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks… I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”[ii] The God of the Old Testament is a God of Love.

When we suffer from “all kinds of greed,” when we worship idols of money and possessions, our God suffers with us and wants to hold us with “bands of love, with cords of human kindness.” God calls us to a life in his kingdom, and wants to know, where is our heart? Where is our treasure. Jesus issues a call to a fundamental reallocation of material and social goods according to our knowledge of God’s justice, for this is what can make us “rich toward God.” [iii] This will make us a people who love God and love neighbor. It is this love that characterizes God’s reign, God’s kingdom. And it will be this love that shapes us as a Community of Love.

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[i] Byrne, Brendan, SJ, The Hospitality of God (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN:2000) p.114-115

[ii] Hosea 11:1-11.

[iii] Ringe, Sharon, Luke (John Knox Westminster Press, Louisville: 1995) p.179