Interview: Gregory Walter "Being Promised"

I was presented with the opportunity to interview Professor Gregory Walter, author of the new book Being Promised: Theology, Gift, and Practice. It is a wonderful book, full of insight - I highly recommend it.

Gregory Walter is Associate Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Like many of my friends, we have never met in person, but I in our online friendship I have learned from his passion for his ministry (and the cultural passions he and I share).

Here is my interview:

1) Thank you for this book. It is fair to say that this is straight-forward academic theology. The question that I know I will be asked by my colleagues: Why does this book matter for a parish pastor?

Christians, especially pastors, think, talk about, try to be faithful and act out of God’s promise.   Promise promise promise.  The book tries to answer this question:  what is a promise?   This book provides a critical theological vocabulary for talking about and practicing promise.  The way I consider promise and its power or its critical potential can be useful for any community trying to discern how to act or what the relationship is between God’s graciousness and the immediate needs of those among and around the community. 

Similarly, we are all embedded in a wide circle of gifts, some of them welcome and needed, others that are dangerous and full of damage.  This economy of giving, the needs of the world, are all the demands, calls, and hopes that show up in our hearts and on our doorsteps.  Because I develop promise as a gift in this book, I provide a way to show how God’s promise is credible amidst this circulation of gifts but also how it is radical, reorienting, and liberative.  We need to be reminded, I think, of our creatureliness in terms of the web of relationships and gifts that those webs bear.  And promise as gift in Being Promised addresses that.

But I also think it matters because the gospel is a promise, at least as articulated throughout the Bible. Robert Jenson, the instructor of my first theology class, a class I took when I was a sophomore in college, started the first day to define theology as that activity that occurs and is entirely devoted to this weird thing we call a promise.  Since then I was hooked and deeply interested in answering the question:  what difference does it make if the Triune God is one who makes a promise?

I won’t pretend Being Promised doesn’t make demands of its readers.  It is, after all a book about promise and not a promise itself!  But because it spans the practical, the liturgical, the moral, and the theological, I think there is something in the book for most every reader who has an interest in gift or promise.

2)   It seems to me that promise is inherently risky. What does it look like to brave that risk?

Friedrich Nietzsche has a picture of the ultimate promisor.  This is a person who has such strength that he (probably) can resist any change, has power to preserve the present, to be true to his word.  This person is can forget the past in favor of the pledge made, can shake off any guilt and worry in order to keep the promise.

This is not a promise that is risky nor does it require bravery.

A true promise, as I argue, is weak.  It is an adventure.  Making a promise risky but so is trusting one.  This means a kind of waiting on what may come, that which comes-to, advent.  This life is a risk, an opening, and a willingness to see what happens. 

The bravery to accept this risk is a kind of courage to embrace the fragility of one’s self and each other.  Mary Oliver has a line:  “I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”  I think that is the risk of promise, which is to dwell in this life of Spirit that the Crucified One pledges.

3) Help me flesh out the eschatology of promise some more. How do we encounter the fullness of God’s promise? 

All eschatology is local.

I argue at the end of the book that since God’s promise is always other-directed, since the place of promise is always the place of the other, that any statements we make about eschatology or fulfillment are always bound to the neighbor. 

In other words, I think that a kind of cosmic or total eschatology is a bit over-hasty.  We might be able to articulate that from God’s promise but I think what we have biblically-speaking is the apocalyptic seer’s poetry, parabolic statements in the Gospels, and various wisdom sayings throughout Paul.  When taken from the perspective of promise, we have just a schema, a bare-bones skeleton that has flesh only when it is addressed to the neighbor’s needs, concerns, and injuries.

Eschatological claims need to be filled out in relationship to the way that God’s promise in Jesus addresses those local concerns.  Thus, it is not just enough to be a theologian of the cross, you need to be a local theologian of the cross.  And that isn’t enough either because the theology of the cross needs this promise in order to get the openness and spirit-breathed impossibility interwoven into the local scene.

We encounter the full gift of God’s promise in the Spirit, as I argue at the end of the third chapter on Pentecost.   This we have in bread and wine.  If the promise of Christ is Christ’s body and blood and we have that in the pledge, in doubled gift, we have it in the bread and wine.  Heaven is a place on earth.  And this place is a double place, as the last chapter shows, a place of paten and cup and of the neighbor.

4) You have invested some serious time and energy on this book. Having finished it, and putting it out into the world, what will you tackle next? What is your next project?

I wrote a fair amount on promise that I didn’t include.  I have been fashioning that material into a monograph on the sacraments and Christian practice.    A colleague at St. Olaf and I have been teaching comparative theology for five years now and we intend to write a short Christian-Hindu commentary on some of the Upanisads.  But lastly, I’d really like to write on Tolkien to advocate what my students alternately call Pipeweed or Faerie Theology.  A Elbereth Gilthoniel!

Thank you, Gregory Walter, for your time! Check out the book, and read Gregory's comments on the other stops on his blog tour! 

• Gregory Walter booktour on Clint Schnekloth's blog
• Gregory Walter booktour on Geoff Sinibaldo's blog
• Gregory Walter booktour on Joe McGarry's blog

Ministry Where the Wild Things Are

Today, Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of the classic Where the Wild Things Are, died. I didn't call it a "children's classic," because Sendak never would have. He was very clear: he didn't write children's books. He wrote books. Children happened to like them. In fact - Sendak didn't even believe in "children" as such.

I said anything I wanted because I don't believe in children. I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe that there's a demarcation. 'Oh you mustn't tell them that. You mustn't tell them that.' You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true. If it's true you tell them. ~Maurice Sendak

We divide our ministries in church. This is an adult Bible study, that is a children's curriculum. This is a Bible, that is a children's Bible. We are very clear. And in our clear divisions, we speak down to our young people. We hide the hard things of life from them. We hold back information about life, about faith, and about God.

[I am proud of what I got from my parents], a kind of fierce honesty, to not let the kid down, to not let the kid get punished, to not suffer the child to be dealt with in a boring, simpering, crushing-of-the-spirit kind of way. ~Maurice Sendak

Here is what we need: We need a ministry that takes place where the wild things are. As I have watched interviews with Maurice Sendak - this man whose stories helped to shape my childhood - I have been struck with his caustic honesty. He did not hold back, he did not pull any punches, he simply spoke the truth. And not just in his interviews; also in his books, which children happened to like.

Often in our clearly defined and divided children's and youth ministries we avoid the "hard topics." We talk about happiness and joy and celebration. But what about sadness, what about loneliness, what about death and dying and illness? Too often, they are avoided. We tell ourselves that we have to protect our children. We have to keep them safe. And somehow, we have gotten into our heads that talking about such things will somehow break them - that they can't handle it.

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. 

We need a ministry that talks about the reality of life with all of God's children - some of whom are larger and some of whom are smaller. We need to stop speaking down to our young people, stop trying to protect them from the hard things of life. We simply need a ministry, which children happen to like.

We need a ministry that takes place where the wild things are.

Of Wedding Invitations and Obituaries

This sermon is from October 9, 2010; Proper 23A, Matthew 22:1-14. It is a fairly direct transcript of the sermon preached, probably still typo-ridden. I hope that beyond the carelessness of my typing skills, you will find something that speaks to you.





As we gathered last week, I shared with you that I was not crazy about preaching on Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenants. This week offers more of the same. Such a wonderful, uplifting parable: entire towns being burned to the ground, people being bound hand and foot, weeping and gnashing of teeth. It gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, doesn’t it?

I’ve often thought that if Jesus was a preacher, he wouldn’t have a job for very long.

Then I remember. Jesus was a preacher, and he didn’t have a job for very long. In fact, as we look at this parable, Jesus is preaching in Jerusalem – and this is not very long before his job as a preacher comes to an abrupt end. It is not very long – after sermons like this one this morning, and parables like this – that Jesus winds up turned over to the authorities.

So what are we to do with this parable of the wedding banquet, this sermon of Jesus?

This parable fits, in many ways, with what we have heard for the last month as we have been walking through the parables of Jesus.

One of my mentors used to say: if you’re a good preacher and you’re lucky – you’ve got three good sermons in you. The rest are variations just on those.
And this is a variation of the same sermon that Jesus has been preaching.

Jesus tells how the invitations to the wedding banquet went out, and the people would not come. And so the servants went out and they gathered all of these people off of the streets: the homeless folks, the ones with no party to go to on a Saturday night, the people that no one else wanted to spend time with. Went out and gathered them and brought them into the party.

And this was this one guy, who wasn’t wearing what he wasn’t supposed to be wearing. This one guy, who wasn’t wearing the traditional wedding clothes. And so he gets thrown out.

You have to ask, as Jesus is preaching this parable: What’s the problem here? What is the problem with this one guy?

I think we can find the answer looking at how this fits with those other parables we have heard. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard, the parable of the two sons – one who works and one who does not, the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard. Jesus is talking, if you recall, to and about the Pharisees and the religious leaders.

Jesus is talking to the Pharisees: these people who went to great lengths to express their faith publicly – who said all of the right words and all of the right prayers – who could go down the checklist, and assure you that they believed all of the right things – who every knew spent plenty of time in the Temple, in church. These people who made sure that they dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, and did all those nice things, the right things, that good religious people are supposed to do.

So once again, Jesus is preaching with these Pharisees in mind. And I have a feeling that the issue is the same as it has been as we have listened to the rest of the parables this month.

The issue is not what you say … but what you do.
The issue for Jesus is the number of people who talk about how important God is and how important faith is and how important religion is … and then treat others as if none of that matters.
The issue over and over again in Matthew’s Gospel is the greatest commandment. There are plenty of us who are willing to say that we love the Lord God with all their heart and soul and mind. But then we ignore the second half: love your neighbor as yourself.

The issue, to paraphrase Martin Luther, is that you cannot love God without also loving your neighbor. Jesus’ issue this morning is with those of us who profess loudly and strongly that we love God – and then ignore our neighbor.


If you were paying attention to the news last week, there was a rather prominent death last week. Did you catch the obituary? No, not Steve Jobs. Another, more important loss.

Last week, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth died, and I want to share some of Pastor Shuttlesworth’s story with you.

Fred Shuttlesworth was the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. During the civil rights struggles of the fifties and sixties, Pastor Shuttlesworth was near death many times: when he was beat up by the clan, and by the police, and when his congregation – his church – was bombed.

Shuttlesworth mug shot from the night
of the Freedom Rider protests.

Seven years before Martin Luther King, Jr visited Birmingham, before Rosa Parks sat in the front of a bus, before most of the nation had awoken to the great inequality between black and white in the South, before it all, Pastor Shuttlesworth was working against hate; teaching us what Jesus meant when he said, “love your neighbor.” Shuttlesworth led the way, teaching the church – both black and white – how non-violent resistance could be used to defeat segregation.

I once had the opportunity to meet and hear Pastor Shuttlesworth, and since hearing of his death one of the things he said just sticks with me – one of the things he said just haunts me. He said that
there is so much theology – so many words spoken about God – there is so much theology in our world that is really and truly a theology without morality, a theology without commitment, and ultimately, a theology without a god.
Because if your theology – if your words about God – if your theology is about the God that the Gospels proclaim, it changes your life.

If your theology, your words about God, are about the God that Jesus proclaims, about the God o Exodus and resurrection, the God of the cross, then it will change how you interact with every person you meet. It will change how you look at this world that God has made, and how you look at the people who God loves so dearly. And if it doesn’t – then you are talking about a different god!

I think Jesus is talking this morning in the parable of the wedding banquet – in all of these parables that we have been hearing – about how faith is so often a lot of nice words, and good feelings, and nice sentiment … and nothing else.

And Jesus is challenging us to say about our faith: forget about what’s coming out of your mouth – how are you treating the people in your life? How are you treating the people around you in the world? How are you praying for and loving your enemy?

How is what you believe about God making a difference in the world?

And those who don’t believe. If they looked at your life – not your words – if they looked at how you live, what sort of god would they say you believe in?

Look at the news last week – is yours the god who praises those who make the most money? The god who remembers a man like Steve Jobs with praise and adulation, but forgets a man like Fred Shuttlesworth?

Is yours the god who looks out for number one? The god who makes sure that only those who earn the most deserve love and health and happiness?

Or is the god that our lives proclaim – as we heard from St. Paul – the God of whatever is pure and just and good? Or is the god that our lives proclaim the God who is love, and calls us to lives that shaped by love above all things?


I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been troubled this week.
There’s a great phrase: “A holy discomfort.” That sense of being uncomfortable, of things not being quite right, but know it’s a good thing and you know it’s God. Fred Shuttlesworth has left me this week with a holy discomfort.

Another thing Pastor Shuttlesworth once said is, “I say very little about anything, until I am ready to act – and I think more people should be like that.”

Are you and I ready to act on our faith? Are you and I ready to clothe ourselves for God’s wedding banquet in love for our neighbor? Are we ready to show up at God’s table, not with good words and nice feelings, but with lives transformed by God’s love? Are we ready to risk everything – everything – to show the world God’s love?


I want to share with you one more story from the life of Pastor Shuttlesworth.

Shortly before I heard Pastor Shuttlesworth, the last of the Klansmen responsible for the bombings in Birmingham had finally been convicted, some 50 years later. This man who had been responsible for countless deaths and acts of hate – including the bombing of Shuttlesworth’s own church.

Someone asked Pastor Shuttlesworth, “Do you hate white people?”
Shuttlesworth responded, “Man, you’re asking the wrong question.”
But the inquirer persisted, referring to the man just convicted. “With everything you have been through, it would be understandable – justifiable – if you hated white people.”

“Friend,” said Shuttlesworth, “I can not say that I love Jesus, and then hate white people. I cannot say that I love Jesus and hate. Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for a man named Bull Connor, I wouldn’t know Jesus as well as I know him today. So how can I hate Bull Connor – I give thanks for him.”

That … That is living into the faith that Jesus proclaimed. That is what it looks like to take seriously the words of Jesus – the words that we profess in this place – about the love of our neighbor.

And I’m troubled. I am troubled by that.
I am troubled by the life and words and witness of Pastor Shuttlesworth, because I know that I’m not there.

I know that I’m not there. I know that I don’t live my life with the love that I should. I’m troubled.
But it is a holy discomfort, because I know that God is calling me – God is calling us – to more. God is calling us to lives of more love.
God is calling us to lives that make a difference.
God is calling us to change this world.

And so I pray.
I pray that God will give me the grace to live that sort of life, because that’s the only way we can do it: with God’s help. I’m sure not going to do it on my own – I need God to show me the way.
I pray that God will give me the courage – that God will give me the strength – to risk everything for Jesus’ love, and for the people whom God loves.

I pray that God will continue to give me – to give all of us – a holy discomfort, so that I am not satisfied with indifference and inaction, so that when I show up at that great wedding banquet, that when God welcomes me to the table, I will be properly clothed in all of God’s love.

Bach's Coffee Cantada

To honor the Fifth Evangelist - and in honor of a groggy morning, here is J.S. Bach's Coffee Cantata (Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211).

Written for and performed by Bach's Collegium Musicum, at Zimmerman's Coffee House in Leipzig. The libretto (text) was penned by Bach's frequent collaborator, Christian Friedrich Henrici.

Narrator (Recitative)

Be quiet, stop chattering, and pay attention to what's taking place: here comes Herr Schlendrian with his daughter Lieschen; he's growling like a honey bear. Hear for yourselves, what she has done to him!

Schlendrian (Aria)

Don't one's children cause one endless trials & tribulations! What I say each day to my daughter Lieschen falls on stony ground.

Schlendrian (Aria)

You wicked child, you disobedient girl, oh!

When will I get my way? Give up coffee!

Lieschen (Aria)

Father, don't be so severe!

If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.

Lieschen

Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes,

more delicious than a thousand kisses, mellower than muscatel wine.

Coffee, coffee I must have, and if someone wishes to give me a treat, ah, then pour me out some coffee!

Schlendrian (Recitative)

If you don't give up drinking coffee then you shan't go to any wedding feast, nor go out walking.

Oh! when will I get my way? Give up coffee!

Lieschen

Oh well! Just leave me my coffee!

Schlendrian

Now I've got the little minx! I won't get you a whalebone skirt in the latest fashion.

Lieschen

I can easily live with that.

Schlendrian

You're not to stand at the window and watch people pass by!

Lieschen

That as well, only I beg of you, leave me my coffee!

Schlendrian

Furthermore, you shan't be getting any silver or gold ribbon for your bonnet from me!

Lieschen

Yes, yes! only leave me to my pleasure!

Schlendrian

You disobedient Lieschen you, so you go along with it all!

Schlendrian (Aria)

Hard-hearted girls are not so easily won over.

Yet if one finds their weak spot, ah! then one comes away successful.

Schlendrian (Recitative)

Now take heed what your father says!

Lieschen

In everything but the coffee.

Schlendrian

Well then, you'll have to resign yourself to never taking a husband.

Lieschen

Oh yes! Father, a husband!

Schlendrian

I swear it won't happen.

Lieschen

Until I can forgo coffee?

From now on, coffee, remain forever untouched! Father, listen, I won't drink any.

Schlendrian

Then you shall have a husband at last!

Lieschen (Aria)

Today even dear father, see to it! Oh, a husband!

Really, that suits me splendidly!

If it could only happen soon that at last, before I go to bed, instead of coffee I were to get a proper lover!

Narrator (Aria)

Old Schlendrian goes off to see if he can find a husband forthwith for his daughter Lieschen;

but Lieschen secretly lets it be known:

no suitor is to come to my house unless he promises me, and it is also written into the marriage contract,

that I will be permitted to make myself coffee whenever I want.

Trio

A cat won't stop from catching mice, and maidens remain faithful to their coffee.

The mother holds her coffee dear.

The grandmother drank it also.

Who can thus rebuke the daughters?

(Translation found on Wikisource, and assumed to be public domain)

The Paschal Homily

What follows is the Easter sermon of John Chrysostom. It has been called the best sermon ever preached by Christianity's greatest preacher (ca. 400 ad).  For centuries it has been read as the the meditation for the Easter vigil, and indeed it continues to be preached in many Orthodox churches to this day.

Are there any who are devout lovers of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Are there any who are grateful servants?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!
Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry.
Partake, all, of the cup of faith.  Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?
Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

Lent: Repentance

"The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window into which some mischievous person has got overnight, and shifted all the price-labels so that the cheap things have the the high price-labels on them and the really precious things are priced low. We let ourselves be taken in. Repentance means getting those price labels back in the right place."

-- William Temple