lenten blog | March 6, 2025

Transcendent not Transactional

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 6th:  Exodus 5:10-23; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; and Acts 7:30-34.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Dr. Martin Marty, a former Lutheran pastor and a longtime professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, died in late February.  He was a prolific author having more than 60 books published.  He wrote about religion and public life, and how the two interacted.  He studied and advocated for religious pluralism.  In this work, he avoided the word “tolerance” because it implied a superior religion abiding a lesser one.  Rather, Dr. Marty emphasized the principle of hospitality, of welcoming others to share cordially at the same table. 

In his obituary, he is quoted with a statement that sounds an awful lot like some of the first advice I received upon entering the seminary.  I was told that in the religious life I would meet some of the finest people I would ever know and some of the worst.  Dr. Marty put it like this:  “‘Religion makes good people good and bad people bad,’ he once told a group of journalists, warning them against ‘being too soft on religious leaders,’ according to a 1995 profile in the Dallas Morning News.  ‘If you’re a son of a bitch, you can be born again and you’re still a son of a bitch with a different angle of vision.  Lives can be transformed, but don’t take it for granted.’” (Boston Globe, 3/2/2025) 

Religion in and of itself does not make a person religious.  Religion, as a matter of fact, can be used to justify some of the least religious beliefs and behaviours imaginable.  Religion can sanction deplorable acts of inhumanity because religion is able to eliminate the humanity in the other.  It is able to cover cruelty and callousness with religion’s veneer.  We have entered a season where relationships are transactional rather than transcendent, that means we look for what we can take rather than following Jesus’ lived and preached gospel of what we can give. 

In today’s passage from Acts of the Apostles, Stephen is about halfway through his defense of ministering and preaching in the name of Jesus.  For his candour, Stephen will be the first Christian martyr, the first person to die because of their faith in Jesus.  Martyr is derived from the Greek word for witness.  Stephen’s ultimate witness to Jesus, his execution by stoning, is today’s example of the transcendent and the absolute rejection of the transactional when it comes to practicing our Christian faith.
The tradition that Stephen quotes draws upon today’s Exodus text.  Yahweh has sent Moses back into Egypt to free the Hebrew slaves.  Moses’ provocation of the Egyptians causes them to make the slaves’ tasks even more arduous.  The slaves understandably speak out against Moses and his seemingly foolhardy hope and trust in God’s liberation:  “As they left Pharaoh, they came upon Moses and Aaron who were waiting to meet them. They said to them, ‘The Lord look upon you and judge! You have brought us into bad odour with Pharaoh and his officials, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.’” 

While understandable, this account also serves to remind the faithful in all generations that the good works of God are not usually spontaneous miracles, but rather long-term commitments.  This, again, speaks against the transactional mentality of act for payment, and speaks for the transcendent that the work of God must be trusted by individuals and generations so that it may be accomplished in “kairos,” in God’s time.  We need to do our part to live up to Jesus’ standards of sacrifice and ministry by trusting in the long-term consequences and results to which we contribute, but of which we may not see fulfillment.

Lent is the time to look at Jesus and Him crucified as the model of our religious lives and not accept the cover of religion as a sufficient alternative.  Let our faith be ministry and let it be for the long-term.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.