I’m thankful for a God whose love
has depths and dimensions
that defy comprehension,
whose mercy and compassion
have neither limit nor ration,
and exceed the confines
of my feeble mind.
I’m thankful for a God whose grace exceeds
my ability to squander it,
who pursues me in my wandering,
who never gives up,
who always lives up
to His name
and glory
and honor.
I’m thankful for the Christ, the Messiah,
who dwelt among the least,
the despised and diseased,
who was maligned and falsely accused,
whose body was battered and abused.
I’m thankful for a mount called Golgotha
where love personified
and incarnate died,
where mercy and justice united,
man and God no longer divided.
I’m thankful for a tomb,
empty,
gaping,
vacant,
evidence of a resurrection power,
proof that death has been devoured,
power that is now mine
thru the resurrection of the divine,
so I shall not die, but live,
forgiven so I can also forgive.
I’m thankful for the abiding and patient Spirit,
the living God in me
setting me free
from my captivity.
I’m thankful for the power of that same Spirit within me
using me to draw women and men
to the God who’s in love with them,
in spite of me,
not because of me.
I’m thankful for the blessed hope of the soon return
of the slain and risen Lamb,
Son of God and of man,
the King of kings,
the Lord of lords,
of whom saints and angels sing
in harmonious chords.
I’m thankful that His return will birth
and usher in the new heaven and earth.
Gone will be sorrow and sin.
Gone will be death and disease.
All the redeemed will be welcomed in
to joy and bliss that will not cease.
Gone will be all that keeps this feeble man
from pure communion
from perfect union
with my God and with my fellow man.
I’m thankful for a faithful God who has fulfilled His covenant
thru Jesus Christ our Lord.
So let us all in one accord,
each who now rejoices
lift our joyous voices
and proclaim, “We are thankful!”
Archive for the 'Theology' Category
Rich Mullins, in weekend retreats he & Beaker ran, many years ago, used to quote C.S. Lewis’ definition of love:
“Love is desiring the best for someone else, and being willing to do something about it.”
For the life of me, my Google-fu is weak, and I cannot find the original source (which I’m sure has been paraphrased). Even so, this is the best, most concise definition of love (agape) I have found.
Can anyone do better than this quote?
So, a recurring question has come up in my life over the past month or so – a question often asked by folks who are truly searching and interested in the faith. A lunch-time conversation, a good deal of reading, and a month filled with prayer and reflection (on multiple fronts) has made a number of things clear to me, but most of all:
We, as Christians, make it a whole lot harder than it should be.
[Now, while I've done the heavy lifting in the background - and I'll be willing to discuss this, and cite Scripture, in the comments - I'd like to keep this at a high, readable level, without all of the breaks, and caveats, and cut/paste efforts from BibleGateway. Yes, these are necessary for understanding what goes on "behind the curtain", but they make simple conversation pretty stilted.]
Depending on our traditions, we’ve got confirmation classes, the Roman Road, The Way of the Master, and all sorts of other systematic methodologies, which lay out the “steps required for Salvation”. But when I open the Gospels, and read the words of Jesus and his Apostles, it seems a whole lot simpler than this. In fact, it seems that we miss the fact that “becoming a Christian” is the first step in a lifelong journey, and that we lose faith in God and His grace by trying to hold off Step 1 until we’re satisfied that someone is on the right road.
And that’s not the Gospel.
Read the rest of this entry »
Daily Office
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’“ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
I know, before I make a single stroke on my laptop keyboard that this post will not be well received. I apologize in advance to those of you who will find my struggle with this passage offensive and immature. I do not intend to offend, but I think I will.
Fact is, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with this: the lawyer asks Jesus a theological question with eschatological implications. He asks Jesus this question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus does not tell the man this is the wrong question to ask. No. In fact, the very fact that Jesus answers this question is enough demonstration that this is a valid question to ask and, to be sure, that Jesus is the right person to ask it of. Ultimately, the answers that Jesus gives all work their way back to the man’s original question: What must I do to inherit eternal life?
The theological, eschatological and practical answer that Jesus gives is simple: Love God, love people. Easy, breezy. This is something Jesus had said another time (Matthew 7:11-12). Even later on in the letters, Paul will say that love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:9-11). I think, at this juncture, we are probably all in agreement. Love is the fulfillment of the law; love sums up the Law and Prophets; love is what we must do to inherit eternal life. Love God; love our neighbors. Love. Seems a simple task, and easy requirement.
My problem is that this parable is often taught as simply a matter of defining who is a neighbor and that the Samaritan is the neighbor we must strive to be: loving those who hate us, tending those who despise us, helping those who hurt us. But this parable is not primarily about who is and is not a neighbor. This parable is spoken in the context of a theological, eschatological, question of salvation: What must I do to inherit eternal life?
When the conversation and the parable are done, Jesus simply says: Go and do likewise.
The problem I have is that Matthew or whoever wrote this Gospel, this book, wrote this story, this encounter, and this parable down after the cross even though the story happened, the conversation took place, and the parable was spoken before the cross.
Go and do likewise. To my knowledge Jesus never rescinded this command: neither to the lawyer in the story nor, since it was written down after the cross, to us.
All the commentaries I read, and have ever read, narrow this story down to this basest point: who is my neighbor? But none seem to wrestle with the real question that this particular passage of Scripture is itself wrestling with: what must I do to inherit eternal life? When Jesus said “go and do likewise” he was “this is what you must do to inherit eternal life: love God, and love like your Samaritan neighbor.” (William Willimon interprets this from the point of view of the man in the ditch, but I’m still not sure that is correct either. It doesn’t wrestle enough with how this parable answers the man’s original and secondary question.)
Please don’t be angry because I want to understand this passage of Scripture, why Jesus said it, and why Matthew preserved it. I want to understand how to better interpret this story and how to better teach it. There doesn’t seem to be, despite the exegetical gymnastics that the commentators engage in, an emphasis so much on being neighborly as much as there is an emphasis on what someone must do in order to inherit eternal life.
It’s tricky. I wrestle and struggle here greatly. I’m not trying to be contrary or difficult, but with all the emphasis we put on issues of grace and mercy and forgiveness and the cross and the resurrection, nothing seemed to change after the cross: Paul said love your neighbor; Matthew records Jesus telling us to do the same thing. Whatever else I might say, or confound, or struggle with here, one thing is certainly true. You can love your neighbor quite apart from loving God, but you cannot love God without loving your neighbor. Jesus does not define how to love God, but spends a lot of time defining how to love your neighbor. Hmm…
I don’t think we, as Christians, have struggled enough with this passage of Scripture and how it relates to the inheritance of eternal life—regardless of who are neighbor is or is not. The so-called Good Samaritan is not just someone who happens to do good deeds while he or she is on the way to McDonald’s to get a burger—as if the fact that he was a Samaritan is the main point of emphasis here. The Good Samaritan is, in some mysterious way, an example of what we must do if we want to inherit eternal life—since the emphasis in this passage is on what the Samaritan did.
Jesus didn’t say: Go and be (a Samaritan) likewise. Jesus said: Go and do likewise. Too many people are content to be mere Samaritans without any regard for how what the Samaritan did relates to his/her eternal inheritance. We should talk about what it means to do what the Samaritan did more.
Daily Office
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:25-30)
If you look at the words and events surrounding these two short paragraphs you will notice that these words may seem rather out of place. Jesus has talked about sheep among wolves, the betrayal among family members, the sword that he brought, delight in a cup of cold water, and judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah and worse. We learn that John the Reformed Charismatic Presbyterian had serious doubts about Jesus and Jesus’ high praise of John. And we learn of the wit and wisdom of children. We learn of judgment on towns who had rejected Jesus. All of this is on one side.
On the other side we learn about Jesus who is accused of being a Sabbath scoundrel, in league with Beelzebul, more judgment, a ‘small’ miracle and the plot to destroy Jesus that followed, demon possession, the rejection of his family, and the simple nature of those who cannot even understand parables (!). Then John loses his head. It all makes for a great story—contains all the stuff we like: action, horror, drama, comedy, suspense. All this stuff we like, but there’s that point in the middle where Jesus inexplicably prays and talks about finding rest for the soul.
There’s a lot of sermon fodder in chapters 10-13, but this prayer in the middle bugs me. So does, for that matter, this business of Jesus’ easy yoke and light burden. You and I know how hard that yoke is and how heavy that burden is: could it be worse on the other side? And his intense statement about knowing the Father bugs me—it’s far too exclusive a club. And his thoughts about little children in the prayer bug me too—what do kids know? Jesus is saying something like, “What don’t kids know?”
Ultimately, however, I think that is the point: he is talking about recognizing something, someone in our midst, isn’t he? John may have been confused, but he was on the right track. Jesus says to him, “John, look what’s going on! The blind can see. The lame can walk. The unclean are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are alive. The good news is everywhere.” Then he says even children can figure this bit of nonsense out for themselves, “We play a flute, but you sit still. We sing a song, but you do not weep.” Jesus is shouting out: “Here I am! The One you have been waiting for and you are all missing it! You are so caught up in your own world that you cannot sing or dance or laugh or mourn. What sad people you are indeed.”
He says: “I did miracles in your cities and you missed it. Twice in these verses he gives props to Sodom and Gomorrah (10:15, 11:24)—ironically, the two places most Christians nowadays point to in order to prove God’s hatred of all things gay. Yet Jesus says those who lived in those places will get along better than most others. Strange. Strange that Jesus believed those who were most worthy of judgment and condemnation would most readily grasp what those who are right and good miss.
Then Jesus breaks out in praise and prayer: “Father I am glad for children. I am glad they have open eyes and see what adults do not. I am glad, happy, thrilled that you have revealed these things to those who can grasp them.” This stuff is so simple that even children can get it. Or, in the childlike heart and mind—the not too uppity—God reveals his good will and good pleasure. And the wise and learned ignore it.
I sense in these verses a joy that cannot be contained and yet is only marginally loosed. You sense it in Jesus: Go back and tell! Go back and dance! Go back and Praise and Pray! And when you get done reading about all the sickness and judgment in the world, come to me for rest. When you get sick and tired of trying to figure things out using all your wisdom, all your smarts, all your disbelief in the outrageous, come to me and I’ll help you figure it out; I’ll show you want you are looking for but will never find. I love Jesus’ short prayer here because it confirms what many of us know and believe but refuse to accept: wisdom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“In some objectifiably verifiable and convincing way, we want God to demonstrate his own existence. Deep in our hearts, I suspect that this is what all of us want, unbelievers no less than believers. And I have wondered sometimes what would happen if God were to do just that. What would happen if God did set about demonstrating his existence in some dramatic and irrefutable way?” (Frederick Buechner, “Message in the Stars”, in Secrets in the Dark, 16-17
Life, or whatever Jesus is talking about here, cannot be figured out by ignoring miracles or pretending they do not happen. It cannot be figured out by not dancing or not singing. It cannot be figured out by not eating or by not drinking. It, that is, ‘these things’, cannot be figured out by an appropriate ABAB single subject reversal study model. It cannot be figured out by hard work or by carrying around burdens we are not meant to carry. Jesus is saying here something to the effect of: If you want to figure out ‘these things’ they will only be made known as the Father reveals them in foolishness, and even then, to be sure, through me. Jesus says: I am revelation.
Something in here says to me: you cannot think your way to God. In a way, you have to embrace foolishness, wrap yourself in absurdity, traipse along with incredulity at this God who takes delight in revealing himself not to the wise and learned, but to the most foolish of the foolish: children (Gk. naypios; infants). This is God’s ‘good pleasure.’ This is the God who does things all backward like. God reveals himself to infants; God reveals himself in Jesus; God reveals himself through things we cannot believe or understand.
Thus Jesus concludes: God reveals himself in mercy, gentleness, humbleness. Can God do that? Why does God reveal himself to us in ways the world does not understand, in ways that we can scarcely appreciate, in ways we hardly approve?
If we can reach
Beyond the wisdom of this age
Into the foolishness of God
That foolishness will save
Those who believe
–Rich Mullins, Let Mercy Lead
Daily Office
“This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ”Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 29:4-9)
I don’t want to be accused of taking this out of context and making it mean something it does not. So, in order to dispel that myth ahead of time, I add this disclaimer that I have in fact and indeed read the entire chapter of Jeremiah 29 and, at one time in the past, read the entire book. There. Now, on to other things…
As I read this early today before worship I wrote in my Moleskine something to the effect of, “Yes, but what does this mean for us, the church, disciples of Jesus?” I kept on thinking about it until we arrived a little late for bible school. We arrived late enough to interrupt and but early enough to hear a few remaining prayer requests from the young folks in the class.
One woman asked for prayer for herself and her husband. They want a child and, evidently, are having trouble conceiving. Another asked for prayer as they are trying to buy a house. Another asked for prayer concerning financing of a house already being purchased. I used to find this strange—all these prayers for simply mundane things that have nothing to do with the Jesus who told us to ‘take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow [him].’ What sort of self-centered people are we to pray that God provide us houses, children, money, crops or worse? Does God care about these things? “Dear God, please help my marriage,” is a lot different from, “Lord, your kingdom come.” But maybe it is not so much different after all.
I volunteered to pray for the class and as I did these words of the Lord written down by Jeremiah came flooding into my mind. I prayed for the people in bible school and reminded them of what the Lord said to the people through Jeremiah.
The importance of Jeremiah’s letter, his ‘word of the Lord’, is found in what the Lord told his people to do while they lived in exile among strange people: seek the well-being of the community in which you live, prosper, set-up shop, plant crops, have children, get married, do business and seek peace. This reminded me of what I read in Hosea chapter four last week, “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away” (Hosea 4:1-3).
So we walk a fine line. God tells us in nearly the same breath: seek the prosperity of the place you live and deny yourself. Hosea spoke to those who, because of one sin or another, allowed the place where they were to become a wasteland, uninhabitable by anyone or anything. Jeremiah spoke to another group of Hebrews and said: Don’t allow disaster to happen to the land of your exile as your fathers allowed disaster to happen to the Promise Land. Seek their prosperity. Pray for them; seek the Lord.
I find it strange that God commanded them to seek prosperity and yet I don’t. It’s like Jesus on the water in Mark four who calms a furious storm not just saving his disciples but also the ‘other boats with him’ (Mark 4:36). We live and move and have our being in the land of exile and while we do, we do not cease being people who curiously belong to God and who belong to a curious God—a god who cared not only about Ninevah but the ‘many cattle as well’, this strange God who ‘sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike.’
I fail to see the connection between prayers such as, “God help me be a rich person so I can bless those around me” and “God help the city where I live to be prosperous and productive so that you will bless me through them.” How does this strange God bless his people through the prosperity of a pagan city where we are being held captive? Strange are the vessels God uses to bless his people and make himself known. Strange that I should want Blockbuster video to do well.
God’s grace in our lives is a light in the darkness. WE, I say that with no quiver in my voice, WE are called to be God’s means of dispensing grace in the world. We are not to decrease, but to increase. We too, like Israel, live in exile. Peter calls us strangers, aliens, foreigners. This place is no more our home than our possessions are our own. We live in this place for a little while, but our home is someplace else—we ‘long for a better country’ (Hebrews 11:16). While we are here we are to make the best of it, to seek the Lord for the city, to help it prosper. We are not only to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but also for the peace of Madison, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids; Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, and California; the United States, Canada, Mexico and South Africa; the World.
Our prayers, and certainly God’s grace, extend far beyond the walls of the places we call sacred. We pray for the world that God might be known. We pray to God that the world might prosper in crops, people, and commerce. As such we should disregard the lying tongues of those who tell us otherwise. God seems to think such prayers are necessary, matter, and are vital to our own existence. Nor will I pray for the destruction of those who are opposed this godly message because that is not what God said to do. He said to pray for them and seek prosperity for their sake—for when they prosper, so also will I. So I’m not only going to pray for a young couple to have a child, for another couple to have a house, and for another’s crops to grow. I’m also going to pray that they will prosper wherever the Lord plants them—wherever their exile is manifest. And I will pray for the city where they are planted that it, too, will prosper.
Why? “For God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only Son.” For God so loved the world…for God so loved the world…
Daily Office
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked.
“Yes,” they replied.He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
So have you thought lately about what the kingdom is like? I haven’t. Honestly. I have put no thought into it at all. It comes and goes, ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes—these times of thinking and not thinking about the kingdom. Maybe part of being a part of the kingdom is learning to think about the kingdom without be cognizant that we actually are thinking about the kingdom. I don’t know if that even makes sense.
For some reason, I honestly have no idea why, I have been receiving episodes (I like that much better than the word ‘issues’) of the magazine Charisma. It is strange that I am no longer professional clergy, and I’m not really even close to Pentecostal, and yet I am receiving this, maybe there is more to it than I thought. Maybe God is sending me a message. Who can figure these things out with any certainty? I read some of the articles in the magazine, but what intrigues me more are the advertisements—mostly for books or conferences—because I’ll tell you what: Pentecostals have the kingdom down to a science, or at least they have thinking about the kingdom down to a science. The advertisements may as well read like this:
The kingdom of heaven is like defeating demonic strongholds.
The kingdom of heaven is like maximized manhood.
The kingdom of heaven is like a body of politics.
The kingdom of heaven is like understanding what happens after we die (and Perry Stone will lead us.)
The kingdom of heaven is like a good insurance company.
The kingdom of heaven is like a convenient and healthy step forward in the celebration of communion.
The kingdom of heaven is like the faith and values of Sarah Palin (because what she believes really does matter for America!).
And that’s only the first 26 pages or so. Look, I have nothing against Charisma magazine. I’m sure it inspires and helps and encourages a lot of people–even me at times. This isn’t a question of salvation or anything of that sort. I just happen to think it is rather funny that some people in the church have this kingdom of heaven thing all worked out into a neat tidy package. That’s exactly what makes me think that maybe they are on to something. For them, the kingdom isn’t just one thing; they see God in everything, doing something in all the minutia of every day existence whether painting a building, rescuing immigrants, or worshiping with Jews for Jesus.
These are people who are thinking about God, thinking about the kingdom. They are more than I am. They are necessary to counter the ignorance of people like me who think that the kingdom is like a nice brick building on main street where the old people gather to sing songs from the 1700’s.
It appears to me that even Jesus wasn’t really sure what the kingdom of heaven was like—even if he did happen to have some particularly wonderful ideas. What I mean is that Jesus was looking for the kingdom everywhere. He was not so confined his thoughts. For Jesus, anything and everything had potential kingdom value. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good see in his field. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven. The kingdom of heaven is a treasure hidden in a field. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant….a net…seriously? The kingdom of heaven is like a lot of things according to Jesus. Makes me wonder what Jesus would say if he were speaking to us in our culture. Maybe the kingdom of heaven is like the faith and values of Sarah Palin (although something tells me if a certain divinity student from Duke still visited us he would laugh loudly, disagree, and point out the necessarily satanic value of such a statement).
Maybe the kingdom of heaven is like a mini-van which, when properly functioning, carries a load of people from one destination to another. Maybe the kingdom of heaven is like a baseball game (!).
Or some such thing.
Whatever jesting I might make about Charisma one thing is certain: the authors, advertisers, and editors are at least thinking about what the kingdom of heaven is like in our context. Maybe nets and mustard seeds and merchants do not meant all that much to us, but I’ll bet they meant a lot of things to Jesus and his followers then. Thus, back to my point, maybe I simply do not spend enough time each day thinking about what the kingdom of heaven is like in my context. Maybe that is exactly my problem: maybe I’m just not creative enough to think about the ways that the kingdom manifests itself in this world every day. Maybe I’m simply not spending enough time thinking about the kingdom or looking for the kingdom or thinking like Jesus thinking about the kingdom.
Maybe if I would pay a little more attention, think a little more creatively, then perhaps I might start seeing the kingdom in more places, and in more ways, then I had previously imagined possible. Maybe nets and merchants and mustard seeds are only the beginning. Maybe there are a million ways more that the kingdom exists and manifests itself each day in the US of A and around the world. Perhaps I’m just too narrow-minded and myopic to see it. Perhaps more kingdom thinking is necessary.
For some reason or other I am on this Stanley Hauerwas kick. I’m not exactly certain why I am on this kick–he and I are not even in the same arena theologically and I have no political affinity for him whatsoever–or why I have been gulping down his books and whatever I can get my hands on at the time, but I am. Just now I am reading an older book he wrote called Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America.
He freely admits early in the book that he does not ‘know the ‘text’ of the Bible well–all my theological formation took place in curricula shaped by Protestant liberalism. Yet such formation was more ‘biblical’ than I suspected because I know think it an advantage to learn Scripture through the work of Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and Yoder’ (9). And I think this is probably where Hauerwas misses the mark most assuredly–he’d do better to spend more time with Scripture than not. But what do I know?
Every now and again, however, he does say something that doesn’t cause my blood pressure to rise and instead causes my eyes to light up and my mind to start churning. One of those things I’d like to share with you and invite you to respond to. Someone asked a similar question in a Facebook thread the other day and I confess that I wish there was an answer. I don’t think there is, but here goes:
If the Bible is at once so clear and full as a source of Christian doctrine, how does it come to pass that people are divided from one another over how to interpret it? (29) [And consequently, why are there so many 'sects', i.e. denominations, each with their own version?]
I confess agreement with his assessment. How indeed? Why is there so much division in the church strictly do to the Bible and how to interpret it? Why is the Bible such a source of divisiveness when it is meant to be an instrument that binds us together? Hauerwas’ plan, in the book I’m quoting, is to simply remove the Bible from the hands of the laity and return it solely to the hands of ‘the church.’ I do not know if I am willing to go that far just yet (that’s too Catholic for my taste), but his proposition is intriguing.
So what do you think? This is a ‘nature of the bible’ sort of question. What is this book meant to be and why have we fallen so short when it comes to the essential unity, the oneness of the church?
Daily Office
“Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins….” Then he said to the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” And the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.”– Matthew 9:1-8
Let me ask you a question: Do you think this man’s paralysis had something to do with the sin that Jesus forgave?
Whatever else we might say about this passage of Scripture, this much is true: the man who was brought to Jesus on a stretcher got more that day than he bargained for. I don’t think Jesus forgave this man’s sins simply to irritate the scribes who happened to be hanging around that day. Nevertheless, they accuse him of blasphemy and Jesus rejects that charge out of hand: No! This is not blasphemy at all and I will prove it so.
And he does. Then he sends the man home, and there, in that simple phrase is what blows my mind about this story. It’s good that Jesus healed the man. It’s good that Jesus forgave his sins. It’s good that Jesus disproved the charge of blasphemy. The whole story is good, but that part where Jesus sends him ‘home’ is great. It is fantastic.
I am aware there is a lot going on in this ‘panel’ of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is healing. He is demonstrating his power. He is demonstrating his divinity (whatever that might entail). All of this, coming after the Sermon on the Mount—actions empowering his words—is a mighty testimony to the faithfulness of Jesus to his calling as the Son of God. As you may have guessed, however, something troubles me about the way preachers typically (and, not incidentally, traditionally) have preached this passage—as if it were disconnected from the Sermon on the Mount (5-7) and the great teaching that follows (10-13).
Typically this is a passage preached simply to demonstrate that Jesus was divine, God, that he was able and empowered and authorized to forgive sins. Yes. Yes. Yes. All of this is true, but that’s not the complete picture. Let’s not forget that something else happened that day too: “Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” “Go home!” he says. “Go home.” It could be that he was like that fellow who laid by the pool all day (John 5) or that lame fellow in Acts 3 whom Peter healed and hardly ever went home or perhaps he had been rejected by his family. My point is: maybe he hadn’t been home for a while. As a paralyzed man, a sinner obviously cursed because of his sin, maybe he was unwelcome at home. I cannot think of a more liberating thing to happen to that man than for Jesus to look at him and say, “Go home!”
Thus the crowds respond the way they did, in a way, I might add, quite unlike the response of those who lived near the tombs in the region of the Gadarenes. It’s one thing to command the demon-possessed and quite another to heal a man from paralysis, right? But put yourself in the man’s place and hear Jesus say: “Your sins are forgiven; rise up; go home!” I suppose he could have said a lot of things; he chose to tell him to go home. Maybe that was Jesus’ way of saying that he was completely healed: he gave him back his home, his family, his dignity. Carried in on a mat, by ‘men’; carried out by the grace of God, on his own two feet.
In the April 2000 issue of Interpretation, L Gregory Jones, then dean of Duke University Divinity School (he may still be, I have no idea), captures well what I am getting at in his essay Crafting Communities of Forgiveness:
“At heart, Christian forgiveness is the means by which God’s love moves toward reconciliation in the wake of the sin and evil that mar God’s creation. Forgiveness aims to restore us to communion with God, with one another, and with the whole creation. We are not created to be isolated or self-enclosed individuals, and God’s forgiveness aims at reshaping us for faithful fellowship” (123).
So Jesus sends him home. He reconciles him to God (“Your sins are forgiven”) and he reconciles him to humanity (“Take your bed, go home”) and to the whole creation since the man is now whole, he can take his rightful place among the living and contribute to the everyday comings and goings of humanity. Jesus is about making us whole, perfect, complete and we are not entirely complete until we are reconciled to God and man. His forgiveness of the man not only restored his hope with God, but also enabled the man to do something, I suspect, he hadn’t been able to do for a while: go home.
Like the men in the Gadarenes, Jesus brought this man back to life. He raised him up, brought him back to life. Now he lives to God, to his family, and to the community. The reconciliation, healing and resurrection that Jesus gives to us is about so much more than our mere selves. The healing and resurrection of one person changes everything and everyone.
Daily Office
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21)
Something that has bothered me for a long time is the manner in which sinners are typically reckoned as members of the church. We ask them to ‘repeat the confession’: I believe, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God AND my personal Lord and Savior. So, we make sure we get in all those great Christological terms: Christ, Son, Lord, Savior, Jesus, God. And then, to much applause and fanfare, the right hand of fellowship is extended and the person is welcomed into the church. (Or they are baptized or catechized or turned into twice the sons of hell than they were before the confession.)
The problem is that nowhere in the Scripture are we told that this is even remotely close to the way in which sinners are reckoned as saints, orphans are reckoned as family, or wanderers are reckoned as disciples. In fact Jesus seems to be saying here that the confession of him as ‘Lord, Lord’ is one of the least reliable ways of determining anything. Jesus says that ‘not everyone’ who says this will ‘enter the kingdom’ (which I do not take to mean that it will be sufficient for some). There are wolves among the sheep. A lot of people are simply full of words, empty words as it turns out in the long run.
Bonhoeffer noted well,
“Even if we make the confession of faith, it gives us no title or special claim upon Jesus. We can never appeal to our confession or be saved simply on the ground that we have made it. Neither is the fact that we are members of a Church which has a right confession a claim to God’s favour…God will not ask us that day whether we were good Protestants, but whether we have done his will” (The Cost of Discipleship, 193; Bonhoeffer’s arguments here are a bit confusing but the short and long of it, he argues, is that this is not an ‘ordinary contrast of word and deed, but two different relations between man and God.’ One has to do with works, the other with grace.)
The gracious call of God, in other words, transforms us. There is a sense in which, in agreement with Bonhoeffer, our confessions are self-righteous and calls for people to notice us while our ‘doing’ is a drawing of attention to God, however quietly it may happen. Here N.T. Wright is also in agreement,
“This revolutionary vision of virtue thus enables us to shift attention quite drastically away from the idea that Christian behavior in the world is basically about ‘good works’ in the sense of good moral living, keeping the rules, and so on, and toward the idea that Christian behavior is basically about ‘good works’ in the sense of doing things which bring God’s wisdom and glory to birth in the world” (After You Believe, 71; his emphasis).
So Jesus is saying that, while a confession is not entirely out of place, if you truly want to demonstrate the grace of God in your life, or answer his gracious call, then respond to Him…make a confession not with words, but with actions. “The grace of Jesus is a demand upon the doer, and so his doing becomes the true humility, the right faith, and the right confession of the grace of the God who calls” He calls, we answer. “They know that confession does not justify, and so they have gone and made the name of Jesus great among the people by their deeds” (The Cost of Discipleship, 194).
Confession with words draws attention to the self: Lord, Lord, Look at me!
Actions, doing the will of God, calls attention to the God who calls: Behold, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So go, make his Name great today. Jesus seems to be more impressed with doing than with saying. And this, I suspect, will be the true test of whether or not a person has been received into fellowship in the church.
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