August 17-- Two for One Fun

Passages: Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28

Last week, we looked at the early part of the Joseph story, in which the selfish and privileged boy, through a terrible reversal of his fortunes, begins his journey toward leadership. I told you that we would finish the story this week, and we will. But I also saw that this week is the Canaanite woman story in Matthew. You may not be familiar with it, but I think it is one of the most fascinating little stories in the gospels. So rather than chose between them, I’m going to do two shorter reflections on each. Sorry it is so long!

The Big Revelation

Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me." And they came closer. He said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. –Matthew 45: 4-9

If you’re familiar with the Joseph story, you’re aware that we’ve jumped over quite a bit of action since last week’s lectionary passage. After being sold into Egypt last week, the coat that symbolized all his power and privilege stripped from him, Joseph experiences a variety of ups and downs. He is put in charge of his master Potiphar’s house, only to be unjustly accused and sent to prison. Even after interpreting the dream of some officials in Pharaoh’s court, he remains forgotten. Yet his life changes again when Joseph is called upon to interpret a dream for Pharaoh. He becomes the de facto ruler of Egypt as a result, and through his grain rationing program the country has enough food to face seven years of famine… and profitably sell their excess to their less-prepared neighbors.

Now this is how Joseph’s brothers reenter the picture. After several dramatic scenes, today’s lectionary passage recounts the climactic moment in which Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. As one commentary I read points out, this is a story in which sorrow unexpectedly, impossibly turns to joy—even Joseph’s invitation for his father to “come down to me” and share in the bounty of Egypt (v. 9) echoes Jacob’s lament from last week that “I shall go down to Sheol [the underworld] to my son, mourning” (37:25). In the Joseph story, the impossible becomes possible.

Moreover, our characters have been transformed from selfish jerks into servant leaders. Judah, who sold Joseph for a tidy little profit in 37:26-27, offers himself in the place of Benjamin in 44:18-34. And Joseph, who openly bragged about his power over his brothers in the beginning of the story, now sees his power in a quite different light. Through his identification with the lowest rungs of society, he finally understands that God has given him power not for his own glorification, but “to preserve for you a remnant on earth” (v. 7). Much of Genesis, you may remember, has been about chosen people. Here, in Joseph’s final statement, it becomes clear why Joseph is chosen—so that God might feed the people of Egypt, and Canaan, and the whole world.

Could Joseph have been this kind of leader without the struggles of the past? I don’t think so. Joseph needed not only to see powerlessness, but to lose his own pretentious power in order to become the kind of leader who could give and forgive. For the experience of gaining and losing power freed him from its seductive grip—after being stripped of everything, after losing his life to his brothers and to his master, he could later act for justice without fear of loss.

As people of faith, we are a called people. That doesn’t always mean a life of prosperity and plentitude—if we listen to the biblical witness, being called by God usually means being stripped of all worldly pretensions and power. But as the Joseph story points out, it is this process of letting go that allows us to truly hear God’s call in the midst of our cluttered , self-important lives. If you take this seriously, it is kind of frightening. Yet in the kindom of God, only this path frees us to truly make a difference.

The Long-Lost, Never-Preached Story of the Canaanite Woman

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. –Matthew 15:21-28

A couple of years ago, our Massachusetts Bible Society Lenten Bible study class studied the Markan version of this passage (Mark 7:24-31). I remember Don Wells telling me that no one in class would be familiar with it. Much to my surprise, he was right. It’s one of the Bible’s troubling texts, and Jesus is the key player in it.

Why do we avoid this passage? Mainly because the Jesus we like to preach about, the Jesus that loves the child and the outcast, the Jesus of abundance, is not the Jesus we see here. Rather, we see a Jesus who calls a woman and her sick child “dogs,” a Jesus who comes off as narrowly ethnocentric. Those of us who have heard this story generally take it one of two ways—either Jesus is simply testing the woman’s faith (the preferred interpretation, in my experience), or Jesus is wrong and the woman changes his mind about the matter.

At the heart of these two interpretations is the larger issue of Jesus and perfection. Was Jesus perfect? For those who embrace the “testing theory” of this story, the answer to that question is really at stake in their reading. For if Jesus wasn’t testing this woman, that means he really did change his mind—he didn’t already know the full scope of his mission. It means, in the words of theologian Sabine Van Den Eynde, that Jesus “shows in his ensuing deeds a change in his own attitude.” And the notion of Jesus changing or evolving over his human life seems unpalatable to most of us. It means he is not perfect.

But what is perfection, anyway? Why would we have a problem with a Jesus who learns and grows through his ministry from the people to whom he ministers? What are the consequences if we believe that being perfect means never changing our minds when we receive new insight or information? Can we ever grow into servant leadership (see Joseph above) if we believe that perfection and change are mutually exclusive, that we can't learn from outcast, female foreigners like the Canaanite woman?

If we say that Jesus did learn from the Canaanite woman, the only person in Matthew’s gospel to whom he attributes great faith (v. 28), then we suggest that perfection is not a pre-packaged little instruction manual that we must follow precisely in order to be saved. That, as we know, is the kind of legalism Jesus critiqued in his ministry. Rather, perhaps Jesus’ ‘perfection’ is an openness to growth, to learning, and to honest encounter with the other. Perhaps by learning from the Canaanite woman, Jesus redefines what it means to be perfect. Rather than being supra-human, Jesus’ path of perfection leads us to fuller, richer humanity—the humanity which God truly intends for creation.

August 10-- True Leadership

Passages: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Of all the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures—some inspiring, some troubling, some just plain bizarre (Lot and his daughters, anyone?)— the Joseph story ranks up there as one of my all-time favorites. One reason for this stems from the fact that my little sister sang in our high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat… which means I saw the musical six times in two weeks. Although I am therefore forever cursed to read the story with a chorus line singing, “Go, go, go Jo!” in my head, it also means that I know the story pretty well.

More importantly, though, I’ve always liked the Joseph story because, as Madeleine L’Engle put it in Sold into Egypt, it “is the journey of a spoiled and selfish young man finally becoming, through betrayal, anger, abandonment, unfairness, and pain, a full and complex human being” (15). Joseph’s tale strikes me as a paradigmatic story of growing up and, through that process, growing into leadership. Many throughout history have been born into leadership, whether or not they actually made good leaders. Great leaders, on the other hand, are those shaped and molded by adversity, those who have experienced being the abandoned and dispossessed. Great leaders are the ones who, in spite of it all, ground their call in something wider and deeper than their circumstances. Ultimately, this is the story of Joseph.

The lectionary gives us two pieces of the Joseph narrative in the next two weeks, this section in chapter 37 and then the climax of the story in chapter 45. So I’m going to bear with the “Go, go, go Jo!” on auto-repeat in my head and stick with this story for a bit. For this week, we’ll look at Joseph in the beginning of his tale.

Chapter 37 signals a change in tone from much of the Abraham/Issac/Jacob sequence, which really focuses on Israel’s chosenness—God promises to make of the descendents of Abraham a great nation. With the beginning of the Joseph story, God’s overt presence recedes into the background. But the theme of being chosen is still there. This time the human parent, Jacob, chooses Joseph over his other eleven sons. Not, we find out, a good way to promote familial harmony.

The symbol of Joseph’s privilege is the infamous “coat of many colors” Jacob makes for Joseph, which is more accurately translated as a “a long robe with sleeves” (Gen. 37:3)—it doesn’t give nearly as much scope for the imagination, but in either case the point is that this robe wouldn’t make it easy for Joseph to get down and dirty tending flocks. It sends a clear message that Joseph, apparently through no merit of his own, has been born into power and privilege. He’s the ancient equivalent of a trust-fund baby, of a Paris Hilton.

Now if you, like me, find yourself filled with annoyance at the mention of Paris Hilton’s name, you might be able to tap into some of the animosity Joseph’s brothers felt toward him. For naïve Joseph used his power primarily to perpetuate his own privileged lifestyle. As verse 2 tells us, Joseph was a snitch. Worse, he was a snitch on the children of Bilhah and Zilpah—because their mothers were the slaves of Rachel and Leah respectively, they were Jacob’s least favored children (cf. Genesis 33:1-2, where Jacob places them on the front lines for an anticipated attack). Very easy targets, then, if you want to make yourself look good. Thus the first four verses of this chapter tell us some very important things about this young inheritor of privilege—he is chosen simply by birth, he has power over others, and he abuses that power to his own gain. It sounds like a template for any number of leaders throughout history, and for several in the corridors of power today.

But as the text later tells us, God has also chosen Joseph. In reading the lectionary passage again this time, I was struck by Joseph’s words to his father when told to go find his brothers: “Here I am” (v. 13). Joseph’s response echoes the words of the prophets when they were called by God, including Samuel (1 Samuel 3:2-10) and Isaiah (Isaiah 6:8). And indeed, this episode of being sent marks the beginning of Joseph’s call as a leader. Joseph accepts the task, without a clue of the difficulties that lie ahead.

Finally, we come to that climatic scene, in which Joseph’s world of privilege turns upside down. His brothers ambush him and throw him into a pit, eventually selling him to some slave-trading Ishmaelites. God seems to have intentionally called Joseph down a path on which he will be degraded and dehumanized, a path on which he will become the most vulnerable on the social ladder. Yet it is through this path of marginalization that Joseph ultimately blossoms into the leader of Egypt.

In our own world, privilege and power surround us. We were born into some of it—perhaps through the wealth of our parents, or the color of our skin, or the nationality stamped on our passport. But Joseph’s story seems to suggest that when God calls us, it often means the loss of some power we take for granted. When Joseph said, “Here I am,” the result was the loss of all the comfort, all the power, he had enjoyed throughout his life. We, too, by answering Christ’s call, risk losing the luxuries those around us claim that we need to be complete in life.

Yet as Christ says, in losing one life we find another (Matthew 16:25). And in losing everything, Joseph begins to follow his call as a leader for others.

August 3-- Feeding the Crowds (Instead of Turning and Running)

Passages: Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

Life in the Boston area, I have discovered, always involves crowds—you just never seem to be able to escape them. My husband and I drove all the way to Salem a few nights ago for a quiet, relaxing seaside dinner. We made it through road closures, traffic snarls, and blocks of parking spot-less curbs, only to finally dine in a restaurant so loud that we could hardly hear one another speak. When I recently went to experience the meditative, peaceful environs that inspired Walden, I was shocked to find Walden Pond swarmed by hundreds of people crammed onto its tiny beaches, their voices drifting up in a dull roar that echoed through Thoreau’s hallowed woods. In Massachusetts, especially during the summer tourist season, it seems that the only path to true solitude leads to somewhere in upstate Maine.

So we folks from Massachusetts can feel some of Jesus’ pain when, in today’s gospel lectionary passage, he gets in his boat and sails off for some R&R, only to find that he just can’t escape those pesky crowds. Jesus has good reason to seek solitude—he has just heard the news of John the Baptist’s death, and John’s killer thinks that Jesus is a resurrected John (14:1-2). It is smart for Jesus to lie low for a few days.

But someone in Jesus’ camp isn’t good about keeping his itinerary secret. For just like Walden Pond’s beaches on a sunny Saturday afternoon, upon coming ashore Jesus sees the beach jammed with people from the nearby towns. If Jesus had been like you or me, he probably would have cruised a little further up the coast for a more secluded beach. This being Jesus, though, “he had compassion for them and cured their sick” (v. 14).

Yet Jesus has something more in mind for this crowd than simply a few healings. To understand what’s going on, it helps to take a step back and think about the role this story plays in Matthew’s larger narrative. Many scholars have pointed out that for Matthew, Jesus is a latter-day Moses, the new lawgiver (Moses is threatened at birth but miraculously escapes; Matthew’s Jesus is threatened at birth but miraculously escapes. Moses gives the children of Israel the Law on Mount Sinai; Matthew’s Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7). So when Jesus feeds the crowds twice in Matthew’s gospel—here in 14:13-21 and again in 15:29-39—there are echoes of Moses providing manna and quail to the Israelites on God’s behalf in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11. Jesus is to these people as Moses was to their ancestors, God’s miraculous messenger sent to lead them to the Promised Land.

But is Jesus really Moses here? Or is Jesus actually playing out the divine role in this little Exodus/Numbers parody? For when the disciples come to Jesus and ask him to send the crowds away, he doesn’t respond by telling everyone how God has promised to feed them, as Moses did. Instead, he tells the disciples, “You give them something to eat” (v. 16). When they offer all that they have, Jesus himself does the miraculous, transformative work that before had been reserved only for God. Here Matthew clearly states that Jesus is not simply a new Moses, but greater than Moses. Jesus not only speaks for God, but is the Son of God.

What about those disciples, then? The disciples, like Moses, are God’s servants to the people. They participate in the miracle, not only bringing the five loaves and two fish, but also distributing the meal to the crowds. The whole passage has a ritualistic, liturgical undertone to it—with all this blessing and breaking, giving and receiving, it sounds a lot like our own Eucharist services today. Jesus is inaugurating a new community to follow his teachings, a community where God amplifies our limited human tools to effectively serve the world. Jesus’ disciples find that with his help, they can in fact meet the needs of the crowds. They may not be new lawgivers, as Moses was, but they find that what they have to give is enough to do the job.

In these dog days of summer, when the needs of those around us threaten to swallow us like voices swallowed up in a crowded restaurant, remember Jesus feeding the five thousand. It isn’t just about the abundant feast that Jesus has put before us to nourish and sustain us on our personal journeys. For we are not only the crowds, but we are the disciples—called to offer grace and mercy to others as Christ has offered us grace and mercy. Our tools can seem woefully inadequate to the task. But through Christ’s transformative power, our lack becomes God’s abundance in us. Through Christ’s grace, we find sustenance for ourselves and strength to serve the world.

July 27-- God For Us

Passages: Genesis 29:15-28, Psalm 105:1-11, 45b, Romans 8:26-39, Matthew 13:31-33, 42-52

Hello, those of you eagerly awaiting another segment of the Massachusetts Bible Society lectionary blog! As a newcomer to this blog, but not to MBS, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself before getting to the actual text for this week’s lectionary. I’m Kelsey Rice Bogdan, third year student at Harvard Divinity School and 2006-2007 MBS seminarian. I had the pleasure of working with MBS the year before Joe came on board, in the Society’s pre-blogging days. I was an avid blogger before the student life ate up all my time, though, so I’m excited to be back in the blogosphere. I also look forward to setting aside some time each week with you all to pause and reflect on a little snapshot of Scripture from the Revised Common Lectionary. I hope it will be a time for all of us to consider, be challenged, and grow together.

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ... Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” --Romans 8:31, 35-39

Have you ever wondered why John Calvin, the great Protestant Reformer of the 16^th century, ever made such a big deal about the idea that God chose some people for salvation and others for destruction? After all, it isn’t such a warm, fuzzy doctrine, and a good chunk of Christians (even Presbyterians like me, who claim their religious heritage from Calvin’s teachings) don’t really buy into it today. But Calvin was very emphatic on the point, and today’s lectionary passage is a perfect example of why.

In Romans 8:26-39, being God’s “predestined” (v. 29) suggests that God is with you, God will take care of you, nothing can come between you and God. In Calvin’s day, it was a comforting thought to reflect that, though the French authorities might threaten to kill you for your faith, God would vindicate you in the end because you were a beloved, chosen child. In Paul’s own first century context, it must have been likewise reassuring to think that despite all the vulnerabilities that come from being poor (as the majority of those living under the Roman Empire were at the time) and a follower of a strange new Jewish sect, God was on your side. It is no coincidence that, whether they agree with Calvin’s take on who or what is “predestined” in this passage, Christians through time and space have clung to it to claim God’s stake in their cause.

And therein lies the danger, the key element that can make Paul’s words both a clarion call for justice and the all-too-easy weapon of the oppressor: God is for us. Too many times we gloss over this phrase in verse 31 and just assume that if God is “for us,” that means someone—the devil, that particularly nasty co-worker, corporate America, Iran—is against us. We then go on to scan the rest of the passage with a smile on our face, knowing that we can be assured that God will make us “more than conquerors” over all those people we’ve brought into our reading of the text.

When I look again at Romans 8:31 and 35-39, though, an important character is missing from our little scenario: all the people who are against us, all the people we are supposedly going to conquer. The Holy One who created all of us, who embraces all of us as a mother embraces the sometimes squirmy child, is ultimately for all of us. Jesus, who reached out to Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus, Matthew the tax collector and Martha the busy housewife, doesn’t have to pick and choose who to love. When we think of God as a God of abundance, rather than through our own frame of scarce, coveted resources, who indeed is excluded from God’s overflowing love to stand against us?

Perhaps this is why, through Christ, we can be more than conquerors. Through Christ, the text suggests, we can transcend the lens of limit and lack through which we see others. We can go beyond winners and losers, beyond the notion that my gain is your loss. That’s not to deny the brokenness that exists in the world—in verses 35 and 36, Paul acknowledges the realities of persecution, hunger, and war, some of which humans and human systems cause. But none of those things can alter the fact that the God who appeared among us did so because that God is for each and every one of us.

In the gospel Paul presents here, no one—no individual, group, or society—can lay claim to God’s special favor over another. For just as Jesus embraces all of creation in this troubled world, we are called to embrace all those who we might view as standing against us. What would it mean to look at the enemy, even one that perpetuates injustices we rightfully oppose, as someone whom God is ultimately for? Maybe that means revising our belief that an enemy is someone to be vanquished, conquered, bent to our will. Maybe that means seeing our opponents as God sees them—broken, flawed creatures like us, desperately in need of transformative love.

June 8 -- The Tax Man

Passages: Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Many believe St. Matthew, the tax collector in today's passage, is also the author of the Gospel of Matthew, but many scholars hold this improbable and date the Gospel forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus.

In Matthew 9.9 we have the calling of Matthew; Jesus takes the tax collector as a disciple and eats dinner at his house with other tax collectors and "sinners." When he is questioned by the Pharisees about the company he keeps, Jesus says, "For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners" (Mt. 9.13). Jesus is always siding with the underdogs, those who are marginalized and the oppressed, and even shows them blatant favoritism at time to other social groups. Although Jesus' teachings and sacrifice is for all people, his ministry certainly focuses on and favors the poor, needy and outcast. But this is what makes the tax collector such an interesting figure in Jesus' ministry -- they aren't "the little guy." Not only are they materially comfortable, but they also work hand-in-hand with the Roman occupation.

Nobody likes the IRS, especially when taxes are taking food off your table. But in the first century Judea, the disdain for tax collectors went far beyond economics. Tax collectors were traitors, Jews who not only accepted Roman occupation but enabled and supported it. Furthermore, the way tax collectors made money was by collecting additional money than what was required. This was not necessarily corruption -- Rome expected this from its collectors. So when John the Baptist instructs tax collectors to "collect no more than you are required to" (Lk. 3.13) he is asking them to essentially work without wages. To most Jews living under Roman rule, tax collectors were traitors and extortionists, one of the worst kinds of people.

Jesus reaches out to the tax collectors precisely because they are ostracized by their communities, especially by the religious order that saw close cooperation with Gentiles as straying from their religious identities. They are unique from lepers, prostitutes, the disabled, and other marginalized groups Jesus ministers to because tax collectors occupy a certain level of privilege and have power that these other groups do not. However, as a disciple Jesus expects Matthew to open his homes to all kinds of "sinners" and to sacrifice what privilege he has for the sake of others.

There are lots of people in the modern world who occupy comfortable positions of privilege and are active and willing participants in a system that oppresses and hurts others. The tax man serves as an archetype for the middle class who "sell out" to this system and cooperate with imperialism. It's comforting to know that there is a special place in Jesus' teachings and ministry that serve people like the tax collectors: people struggling with their conscience and own identity, and that Jesus even invites them into his closest circle.

June 8 -- Playing Favorites

June 1st -- Judgment and authenticity

Passages: Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19, Psalm 46, Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28, Matthew 7:21-29

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers!’”—Matthew 7.21-23

In this passage, Jesus predicts that in the future, many people will profess faith in him but fail in doing the will of God. Although they may self-identify as followers of Jesus, Jesus explicitly states that this is not enough. This prophesy extends to today, and I believe Jesus would maintain that it’s not enough to simply attend church, be baptized and even pray on a daily basis. Doing things in the name of the Lord, and calling yourself a “Christian” is not a guarantee of doing things in accordance with God’s will.

In this passage, Jesus is talking about judgment and authenticity of faith. Although some Christian sects debate doctrine and renounce other sects’ validity, I think this passage makes clear that authenticity is not found along denominational lines. Today’s lection is fairly unambiguous that the labels we put on things – saying “Lord, Lord!” and doing deeds of power “in your name” – are not valid indicators of an authentic Christian heart. Fundamentalist, orthodox, progressive, liberationist; the differences in these theological movements are not trivial, but authenticity isn’t to be found in the labels.

So where then is authenticity found? I see two specific things that Jesus is valuing in this passage above acts of piety and confessions of faith: doing the Lord’s will and being in relationship with him. The first is obvious and explicit: “only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Interestingly, Jesus does not equate the work of zealous followers – casting out demons and delivering prophesies – with doing the will of God. In fact, this quote immediately follows a warning against false prophets, who are “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” In this context, Jesus this passage can be seen as passing judgment on only those who insincerely claim to be religious leaders.

But I think this passage has implications for all followers of Christ, not just those who claim to be prophets and leaders. Jesus is making it clear that people can claim – and even believe – that they are doing things in his name when in fact those actions are in vain. Jesus emphasizes the importance of actually doing the Lord’s will as opposed to lip service, but discerning God’s will isn’t always easy, and there are many conflicting ideas about what exactly constitutes “God’s will.” In the passage, Jesus says he will declare to those who profess faith in the Lord but fail to do God’s will, “I never knew you.” While it is possible to interpret this differently, I think this statement implies a correlation between a relationship with Jesus and doing God’s will.

As a religious pluralist, I think it is possible to do God’s will and work in the world without being a Christian and professing faith in Christ. However, personally it is my understanding of the resurrected Christ who dwells in the heart of believers that I use to discern God’s will. My relationship with the living Christ is my compass for how I live out my faith, so the words “I never knew you; go away from me,” speak loudly to me. It is when I ignore this relationship with Christ that I stray most from God’s will.

However, in general I think the spirit of this passage is emphasizing sincerity and genuineness over actions and confessions. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount (which this passage comes from) Jesus encourages the crowd to be discreet in their fasting and prayers, and avoid the public piety displayed by hypocrites who seek social approval over God’s (Mt. 6.5-18). Although a prophesy of judgment, at its heart I think this passage is a similar warning about the vice of religious posturing, which is almost always at the expense of genuinely seeking God.