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Martin Niemoeller
1892-1984
“Is Hitler a great man?” Niemoeller’s frightened wife, Else, asked him. “He is a great coward,” her husband replied. Then Niemoeller warned her that Hitler would certainly hound and brutalize him, for Niemoeller had that day contradicted the Fuehrer at a public meeting. That evening the secret police raided and searched the Niemoeller home. A few days later a bomb exploded their home, setting it on fire. Friends offered to smuggle him and his family to Sweden, a neutral country. He declined.
Niemoeller’s dramatic confrontation with the most powerful and evil man in Europe had been foreshadowed years earlier in the claustrophobic confines of a submarine. He and his fellow officers of the World War I U-boat he captained were debating the horrors of warfare. Niemoeller said he saw at this moment – January 25, 1918 — that the world is not a morally tidy place; the world is not guided by moral principles; neutrality in the world’s struggle is not possible. At the same time, those who uphold the right are scarcely without fault themselves. The submarine commander jotted in his diary, “Whether we can survive all trials with a clear conscience depends wholly and solely on whether we believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
Soon this naval officer, who had wanted since childhood to be a seafarer, followed his father’s footsteps into the Lutheran ministry. His first parish, in the heart of an urban slum, could not pay him enough to support his family. Carefully his wife picked the gold lace off his uniform and sold it to a jeweler. His naval officer’s pension, devalued many times over on account of the collapsing German economy, purchased only half a loaf of bread. Years later he wrote, “I discovered and still know what it feels like to have no fixed employment and means of existence and sustenance.”
Hitler soon took the nation by storm. He promised to rebuild the economy, restore people’s pride, overturn their national humiliation, and eliminate the rampant immorality in the larger cities. It is little wonder that people supported him. It is greater wonder that Niemoeller did not.
Niemoeller soon discovered that Hitler was distorting the Christian faith in order to use it in the service of political power. Hitler ordered pastors to read a proclamation of thanksgiving to their congregations, a proclamation praising the government for assuming “the load and burden of reorganizing the church.” Niemoeller refused. He realized that Hitler merely wanted to use the church politically, thereafter leaving it to rot “like a gangrenous limb.”
Soon Hitler used a decree that targeted pastors of Jewish ancestry. They were to e removed from their pulpits. Of the 18,000 Protestant pastors in pre-war Germany, only twenty-three were of Jewish descent. Yet the anti-semitic hatred of the Nazi party was so intense that even this small number could not be tolerated. The machinery of the state was mobilized to eliminate them.
Because of the opposition to official policies the government informed Niemoeller in November, 1932, that he had been “permanently retired.” His congregation assumed a difficult but courageous position; they informed the government that their pastor would continue to shepherd them. Two days later at a rally in a sports stadium a featured speaker shouted, “If we are ashamed to buy a necktie from a Jew, we should be absolutely ashamed to take the deeper elements of our religion from a Jew.” “Positive Christianity,” as the state church called its propaganda, had clearly repudiated Jesus Christ.
Harassment of pastors continued. Niemoeller steamed, “It is dreadful and infuriating to see how a few unprincipled men who call themselves ‘church government’ are destroying the church and persecuting the fellowship of Jesus.”
In July 1937 the secret police arrested Niemoeller. Already he had been to prison five times, and on each of those occasions he had been released within a day or two. He expected the same quick release this time. He was wrong. The next eight years found him behind bars, the personal prisoner of Hitler himself.
On his admission to the Berlin prison he was approached by the prison chaplain, a man Niemoeller recognized form his naval days and now know as a Nazi stooge. “Pastor Niemoeller,” the chaplain said, “why are you in prison?” Niemoeller stared back at him and asked, “Why are you not?
From Berlin he was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp. He asked for, and had returned to him, two possessions dear to him – his Bible and his wedding ring. While he was in solitary confinement and not permitted to converse with anyone, the only sounds he heard were the outcries of men undergoing torture.
At home Else suffered a nervous breakdown. She and the seven children were expelled form the manse and were left with neither income nor accommodation.
Niemoeller was transferred in 1941 from Sachsenhausen to Dachau. Four years later, in April 1945, he was taken to northern Italy for execution. Three days later, American forces liberated the area and took Niemoeller in their care. They found him in poor condition – exhausted, scrawny and tubercular.
In June 1945 he was reunited with his wife. While struggling with his own personal trials he had supported thousands more with his letters, coming back again and again to the work given to God’s people through Joshua 1:9: “Be strong and of good courage: be not frightened, neither be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
After the war Niemoeller continued to work on behalf of the devastated people of Germany. International honours were accorded him. Yet whenever asked how he wished to be introduced, he invariable replied, “I am a pastor.”
A few days before his death he remarked, “When I was young I felt I had to carry the gospel. Now that I am old I know that the gospel carries me.”
Victor Shepherd
Maximilian Kolbe
1894 –1941
Raymund Kolbe was born in a village outside Lodz , part of Poland ruled by Czarist Russia. (Since the 18th century Poland had been divided among Austria , Russia and Prussia .) His father scrabbled to feed the family through weaving, his mother through midwifery. Formal education was beyond the reach of all but the most affluent. Not surprisingly 70% of the people in Kolbe’s part of Poland were illiterate.
Kolbe’s parents were doing their best to “home school” their precocious youngster when a priest noticed the boy’s intellectual gifts and began teaching him Latin. The priest unearthed resources that moved Kolbe into a Russian school in Poland where the curriculum and ethos permitted only Russian history, culture and language.
Soon the Franciscan Order, ever alert to young men who might be called to the priesthood, had him studying at its seminary in Lwow. Here the young student was re-named “Maximilian” after the 3rd century Christian, a Roman citizen from Carthage , who had been martyred for insisting that obedience to Jesus Christ superseded obedience to the state.
Krakow was the next stop. Here Kolbe studied philosophy, journeying afterwards to Rome where he immersed himself in advance theology and philosophy at both the Gregorian College and the Franciscan.
While he was in Rome the first symptoms of tuberculosis, a disease that would torment him the rest of his life, appeared. His bodily ailment, however, disturbed him far less than the vulgar anti-Catholicism whose virulence was actually an obscene vilification of the Christian faith, of the Church, and of him who is Lord of Church and faith. Heartbroken rather than angry, he dedicated himself to the recovery of “converts” to unbelief who were avowedly hostile to the gospel. Like Loyola (founder of the Jesuit Order in the 16th century) before him who had begun with six Spaniards in fulfilment of a mission they owned together, Kolbe gathered seven young Poles who remained undeflectable in their “yes” to a vocation they couldn’t deny.
At the end of World War I the Treaty of Versailles restored Poland to nationhood. Without hindrance now Kolbe could teach philosophy and Church History in Krakow — in the Polish language. Aware, from his wide exposure to people in Rome, Poland, and Russian-occupied territories that the Church had to relinquish its religious “code words”, and aware as well that military chaplains had found combatants to be unacquainted with the elemental Christian truths despite their having been raised in “Christian” Europe, Kolbe decided to publish a magazine that would communicate the gospel in popular idiom. He begged on the streets until he had raised the start-up money. In January 1922 there appeared 5000 copies of the first edition of “Knight of the Immaculate.” It aimed at re-quickening gospel conviction in people who had deliberately or witlessly embraced secularism. Tirelessly he reiterated the motif that had threaded Wesley’s work 150 years earlier: none but the holy will be ultimately happy. In four years the magazine was printing 60,000 copies. (Eventually it would expand to 230,000. Nine different publications would appear, from a journal in Latin concerning the spiritual formation of priests to an illustrated sporting magazine.)
Young men, knowing that humanism held no future for them in the wake of the unprecedented “cultured” slaughter just concluded, flocked to the Franciscan Order as its conviction of the gospel and its vision of a Kingdom-infused society ignited them. While the “publishing community” had initially numbered two priests and seventeen lay brothers, it soon included thirteen priests and 762 brothers. It had “sprouted and grown, no one knowing how” (Mark 4:22 ) into the largest Roman Catholic ordered community in the world. Every member was accomplished in a trade or a profession, and thereby able to lend support through gainful employment. The men made their own clothes, built a cottage, provided physicians for a 100-bed hospital, and operated a food processing plant.
In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland from the west. Russia attacked from the west. Kolbe’s community was overrun with refugees. In it all he remained iron fast in his convictions: Truth is unbreakable and therefore we need not fear for it; evil, while undeniable on the macro scale (Nazism and Communism left no doubt), always had to be identified and resisted on the micro scale, for the evil “out there” also courses through every last individual human heart. The most significant battles in the universe occur there — as Solzhenitsyn was later to remind millions.
The Gestapo (German secret police) arrested Kolbe in February 1941. By May he was in Auschwitz . The “Final Solution” concerning Jewish people was still a year away. Until then Auschwitz was officially not an extermination camp but “merely” a forced labour camp whose force killed thousands nonetheless. First the inmates were dehumanized. When they had been rendered sub-human, guards felt justified in treating them like vermin. The dehumanization included identifying prisoners not by name but by number. Kolbe’s number, 16670, was tattooed into his arm. Priests especially were targeted, deemed to be only “layabouts and parasites.”
When a weakened Franciscan collapsed under his load, the tubercular Kolbe attempted to help. He was kicked repeatedly in the face, lashed 50 times, and left for dead. Recovering sufficiently to be reassigned, he used his paltry bread ration for celebrating mass. He helped a younger priest carry to the camp crematorium the mutilated bodies of those who had been tortured hideously. By now men were breaking down, throwing themselves on electrified fences or drowning themselves in latrines.
Occasionally someone managed to escape. Nazi response was swift and sure: for every inmate who escaped, ten would die slowly, agonizingly in underground, airless, concrete bunkers. On one occasion eight men had been selected when the ninth cried out that his wife and children would never see him again. Kolbe offered himself as substitute. He joined the other nine in the bunker. After two weeks four men remained alive, albeit semi-suffocated. They were injected with carbolic acid. Kolbe’s friends tried to spare his remains incineration. They failed, and had to watch the ashes blow over the countryside.
Years later, when Kolbe’s name was advanced as a candidate for canonization, Bishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow (know today as Pope Paul II) was asked for a relic, a piece of a martyr’s body. He replied that all he could furnish was “a grain of Auschwitz soil.” In 1982 Kolbe was canonized a martyr-saint.
William Styron, author of Sophie’s Choice, has a character ask, “At Auschwitz , tell me, where was God?” Another character answers, “Where was man?” One man at least was at Auschwitz .
And after Auschwitz ? On the day of Kolbe’s canonization in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome , Germans and Poles worshipped together in a service of reconciliation. One of the Poles was Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man whom Kolbe’s sacrifice had spared.
C.S. Lewis
1898 – 1963
In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not see then what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the divine humility which will accept a convert on even such terms.
So wrote Clive Staples Lewis of his conversion in his autobiography, Surprised By Joy. “Dejected” and “reluctant” were true only in the sense that “Jack” (as all his friends called him) was now “defeated,” having held out against God for years. As persistently as Lewis had marshalled arguments of every kind to confirm him in his agnosticism, the Hound of Heaven had crept ever closer. Possessed of an unusual ability in philosophy, Lewis finally admitted reluctantly that the rational case for God had better philosophical support than the case against God His intellect took him to the very doorway of faith. Then he stepped ahead in the simple surrender and trust which also characterize the least sophisticated of God’s children. Lewis was “surprised” by joy. The nagging, nameless longing that had haunted him for years and that he had tried alternately to satisfy and to deny now gave way to contentment. He had been looking for his answer in the wrong place.
Ten million copies of Lewis’s books have now been sold. Universities offer courses in his vision. Reading societies devoted to his works flourish. He is esteemed as an author of children’s stories as well as adult fiction; a poet; an essayist whose mind probed the entire range of human experience; a critic of English literature; a radio broadcaster. Yet he is best known to Christians as a thinker who argued compellingly for the reality of God and the truth of the gospel. His all-time bestseller, Mere Christianity, now fifty years old, continues to excite readers with the sheer grandeur, truth, and practicality of the Good News.
Not surprisingly, his childhood was unusual. Books overflowed everywhere in his Belfast home. When little more than an infant he read constantly in history, philosophy, and literature. His mother schooled him in French and Latin. A teacher soon added Greek. At age sixteen he was sent to a school that prepared youths for university scholarships. Here he was tutored six hours every day by an agnostic who insisted that the young student think. In the providence of God, it was this agnostic’s integrity that bore fruit for the Kingdom, for it was this training in reasoning that subsequently helped untold Christians obey the command to love God with their mind.
Lewis interrupted his studies at Oxford to serve in World War I in France. There he began reading Christian thinkers whose influence never left him, men such as George Macdonald, a Scottish poet and essayist, and G.K. Chesterton, a Roman Catholic. Concerning his reading of such men Lewis later wrote, tongue-in-cheek, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere . . . God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”
While probing the world of literature he saw that the literary figures whose intellectual rigour he most esteemed – the great English poets Milton and Spenser, for instance — were believers. On the other hand, well-known literary figures whose work struck him as less substantial (Voltaire, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw) were unbelievers. These latter “seemed a little thin; what we boys called ‘tinny’ . . . they were too simple.”
Zealous articulation of Christian truth was a rarity at Oxford, and an oddity as well. Lewis quickly became the butt of taunts and jibes. Yet no fair-minded academic could deny his intellectual power. The result was that Lewis’s reputation as a scholar and teacher inside university circles and his readership outside swelled alike.
A layman himself, Lewis was always concerned chiefly with expounding the historic Christian faith, that “deposit” (1 Tim. 6:20) of the gospel that had endured the acids of contempt, the dilution of shallow clergy and the distortion of heresy. Only the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) would ever save.
A bachelor for most of his life, the fifty-eight years old Lewis surprised many when he married Joy Davidman. She had been raised by secularized Jewish parents, had entered university when only fourteen, and then had found her hard-bitten Marxist atheism yielding to the gospel. When a newspaper reporter asked her to describe her coming-to-faith she replied simply, “How does one gather the ocean into a teacup?” Her quick mind rendered her and Lewis soul-mates. “No corner of her mind or body remained unexplored,” he wrote in his anguish following her death. The death came as no surprise – he had known she was terminally ill when her married her. Nonetheless, he believed that God had given them to each other. His mourning found expression in A Grief Observed, a book that continues to bind up the brokenhearted.
A man whose humility was as genuine as his intellect was vast, Lewis knew that discipleship is a matter of faithfulness in the undramatic episodes of life: support for an alcoholic brother, patience with a querulous housekeeper, diligence in answering even silly-sounding correspondence – not to mention living off as little of his income as possible in order to give the remainder away.
C.S. Lewis died on the same day as did President John F. Kennedy and author Aldous Huxley. News of their deaths displaced his. Yet in the upside-down Kingdom of God, his significance remains inestimable.
Victor Shepherd
William Edwin Sangster
1900 — 1960
Never taken to a place of worship for the first eight years of his life, Sangster found his way into an inner-city London Methodist mission where he happily attended Sunday School for years. When he was twelve a sensitive teacher gently asked him if he wanted to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. “I spluttered out my little prayer”, he wrote years later. “It had one merit. I meant it.”
From that moment the gospel of Jesus Christ absorbed Sangster for life. Subordinate only to it was an obsession with recovering Methodist conviction and expression. Never possessed of a sectarian spirit, never a denominational chauvinist, he yet believed ardently that Methodism’s uniquenesses were essential to the spiritual health of Britain and to the well-being of the church catholic.
Military service followed, then studies in theology (with distinction in philosophy), and finally ordination. Short-term pastorates in Wales and northern England exposed him as a daring innovator and startling preacher. Never afraid of (apparent) failure, he was willing to try anything to reach the indifferent and the hostile. (Church-attendance in Britain had peaked in 1898, declining every year thereafter.) His first book, God Does Guide Us, paved the way for the second, Methodism Can Be Born Again. Now his alarm, even horror, at the careless squandering of the Wesleyan heritage was evident as he pleaded with his people and sought to draw them to the wellsprings of their denomination.
The outbreak of World War II found him senior minister at Westminster Central Hall, the “cathedral” of Methodism. The sanctuary, seating 3000, was full morning and evening for the next 16 years as Sangster customarily preached 30 to 45 minutes. As deep and sturdy below ground as Central Hall was capacious above, its basement became an air-raid shelter as soon as the German assault began. The first night was indescribable as thousands squeezed in, high-born and low, adult and infant, sober and drunk, clean and lousy. Equally adept at administration and preaching, Sangster quickly laid out the cavernous cellar in sandbagged “streets” so as to afford minimal privacy to those who particularly needed it. Sunday services continued upstairs in the sanctuary. A red light in the pulpit warned that an air-raid was imminent. Usually he chose to ignore it. If it were drawn to his attention he would pause and say quietly, “Those of a nervous disposition may leave now” — and resume the service. While his wife sought to feed the hordes who appeared nightly, he assisted and comforted them until midnight, then “retired” to work until 2:00 a.m. on his Ph.D thesis for London University. (The degree was awarded in 1943.) As space in the below-ground shelter was scarce, he and his family lived at great risk — a Times reporter interviewed him for his obituary! — for five years on the hazardous ground floor. They slept nightly in the men’s washroom amidst the sound of incessant drips and the malodorous smells. By war’s end 450,000 people had found refuge in the church-basement.
In 1949 Sangster was elected president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain. The denomination’s leader now, he announced the twofold agenda he would drive relentlessly: evangelism and spiritual deepening. He knew that while the Spirit alone ultimately brings people to faith in Jesus Christ, the witness of men and women is always the context of the Spirit’s activity. By means of addresses, workshops and books he strove to equip his people for the simple yet crucial task of inviting others to join them on the Way. The second item of his agenda was not new for him, but certainly new to Methodist church-members who had never been exposed to Wesleyan distinctives. He longed to see lukewarm pew-sitters aflame with that oceanic Love which bleaches sin’s allure and breaks sin’s grip and therefore scorches and saves in the same instant. He coveted for his people a whole-soulled, self-oblivious, horizon-filling immersion in the depths of God and in the suffering of their neighbours.
In all of this he continued to help both lay preachers and ordained as books poured from his pen: The Craft of the Sermon, The Approach to Preaching, Power in Preaching. Newspapers delighted in his quotableness: “a nation of pilferers”, “tinselled harlots”, “the pus-point of sin”. Yet his popularity was never won at the expense of intellectual profundity. The ablest student in philosophy his seminary had seen, he yet modestly lamented that Methodism lacked a world-class exponent of philosophical theology — even as he himself appeared on an American “phone-in” television program where questions on the philosophy of religion had to be answered without prior preparation. Ever the evangelist at heart, he rejoiced to learn that two million viewers had seen the show.
Numerous engagements on behalf of international Methodism took him around the world and several times to America. While lecturing in Texas he had difficulty swallowing and walking. The problem was diagnosed as progressive muscular atrophy, an incurable neurological disease. His wife took him to the famous neurological clinic in Freudenstadt, Germany — but to no avail.
His last public communication was an anguished note scribbled to the chief rabbi as a wave of antisemitism engulfed Britain in January 1960. Toward the end he could do no more than raise the index finger of his right hand. He died on May 24th, “Wesley Day”, cherished as the date of Wesley’s “heart strangely warmed” at Aldersgate with the subsequent spiritual surge on so many fronts.
Everything about him — his philosophical rigour, his fervour in preaching, his affinity with saints who had drawn unspeakably near to the heart of God, his homespun writings (Lord,Teach Us To Pray), his genuine affection for all sorts and classes — it all served one passion and it was all gathered up in one simple line of Charles Wesley, Methodism’s incomparable hymn-writer:
“O let me commend my saviour to you.”
Victor Shepherd
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906 – 1945
When his paternal grandmother was ninety-one years old she walked defiantly through the cordon that brutal stormtroopers had thrown up around Jewish shops. His maternal grandmother, a gifted pianist, had been a pupil of the incomparable Franz Liszt. His mother was the daughter of a world-renowned historian; his father, a physician, was chief of Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin’s major hospital. All of these currents – courage in the face of terrible danger, rare musical talents, and world-class scholarship – flowed together in Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Since his family was religiously indifferent, family members were startled and amused – then incredulous – when Bonhoeffer announced at the age of fourteen that he was going to be a pastor and theologian. His older brother (soon to be a distinguished physicist) tried to deflect him, arguing that the church was weak, silly, irrelevant and unworthy of any young man’s lifelong commitment. “If the church is really what you say it is,” replied the youngster soberly, “then I shall have to reform it.” Soon he began his university studies in theology at Tuebingen and completed them at Berlin. His doctoral dissertation exposed his brilliance on a wider front and introduced him to internationally-known scholars.
In 1930 Bonhoeffer went to the United States as a guest of its best-known seminary. He was dismayed at the frivolity with which American students approached theology. Unable to remain silent any longer, he informed the pastors-to-be, “At this liberal seminary the students sneer at the fundamentalists in America, when all the while the fundamentalists know far more of the truth and grace, mercy and judgement of God.”
A gifted scholar and professor, Bonhoeffer remained a pastor at heart. By 1933 he had left university teaching behind and was a pastor to two German-speaking congregations in London, England. By now the life-and-death struggle for the church in Germany was under way. Did the church live from the gospel only, or could the church lend itself to the state in order to reinforce the ideology of the state? Bonhoeffer argued that the latter would render the church no church at all. An older professor of theology who had conformed to Nazi ideology in order to keep his job commented, “It is a great pity that our best hope in the faculty is being wasted on the church struggle.” As the struggle intensified, it was noticed that Bonhoeffer’s sermons became more comforting, more confident of God’s victory, and more defiant. The struggle was between the national church (which supported Hitler) and the “confessing” church, called such because it confessed that there could be only one Fuehrer or leader for Christians, and it was not Hitler. Lutheran bishops remained silent in the hope of preserving institutional unity, while most pastors fearfully whispered that there was no need to play at being confessing heroes. In the face of such ministerial cowardice Bonhoeffer warned his colleagues that they ought not to pursue converting Hitler; what they had to ensure was that they were converted themselves. An Anglican bishop who know him well in England was later to write of him, “He was crystal-clear in his convictions; and young as he was, and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth and spoke it with complete absence of fear.” Bonhoeffer himself wrote to a friend about this time, “Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone who still confesses him.”
Leadership in the confessing church was desperately needed. Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in order to teach at an underground seminary at Finkenwald, near Berlin. Not one of the university faculties of theology had sided with the confessing church. Bonhoeffer commented tersely, “I have long ceased to believe in the universities.”
A pacifist early in the war, Bonhoeffer came to see that Hitler would have to be removed. He joined with several high-ranking military officers who were secretly opposed to Hitler and who planned to assassinate him. The plot was discovered in April, 1943. Bonhoeffer would spend the rest of his life – the next two years – in prison. Underground plans were in place to help him escape when it was learned that his brother Klaus, a lawyer, had been arrested. Bonhoeffer declined to escape lest his family be punished. (He was never to know that his brother was executed in any case, along with Hans von Dohnanyi, his brother-in-law.)
Bonhoeffer always knew that it is where we are, by God’s providence, that we are to exercise the ministry God has given us. His ministry henceforth was an articulation and embodiment of gospel-comfort to fellow-prisoners awaiting execution. Captain Payne Best, an Englishman, survived to bear tribute to the prison-camp pastor: “Bonhoeffer was different, just quite calm and normal, seemingly perfectly at his ease. . . . His soul really shone in the dark desperation of our prison. He was one of the very few men I have ever met to whom God was real and ever close to him.”
Bonhoeffer was removed from the prison and taken to Flossenburg, an extermination camp in the Bavarian forest. On April 9, three weeks before American forces liberated Flossenburg, he was executed. Today the tree from which he was hanged bears a plaque with only ten words inscribed on it: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.
Victor Shepherd
Ronald A. Ward
1908 – 1986
A Tribute to a Spiritual Mentor
Ronald Ward looked at me warmly as he said earnestly, “As you know, Victor, the worst consequence of sin is more sin.” Our conversation in his living room continued to unfold throughout the afternoon. Just before I headed home he remarked in the same gentle, natural manner, “As you know, Victor, the worst consequence of prayerlessness is the inability to pray.”
While Protestants are sceptical of the aura that is said to surround the saints, I knew that I was in the presence of someone luminous with the Spirit of God. In his gracious way this dear saint generously assumed my spiritual stature to be the equal of his. It wasn’t and I knew it. Yet before him I ached to be possessed of that Reality to which he was so wonderfully transparent. Smiling kindly upon me he remarked, on another occasion in the midst of a different conversation, “If we fear God we shall never have to be afraid of him.” His unselfconscious profundity was steeped in the deepest intimacy of his life: his immersion in the God who had incarnated himself for our salvation in Jesus Christ.
Ward was a British-born Anglican clergyman, a classics scholar-turned-New Testament scholar. (He was awarded his Ph.D degree for his thesis, “The Aristotelian Element in the Philosophical Vocabulary of the New Testament.”) Upon emigrating to Canada he was professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, from 1952 to 1963. He wrote a dozen books. Long before I knew him, long before I began my own studies in theology, I heard my father speak admiringly of him. In the late 1950s Ward had preached at a noon-hour Lenten service in St.James Anglican Cathedral, Toronto, for downtown business people. My father came home astonished at Ward’s scholarship and aglow over the authenticity with which Ward spoke of his life in his Lord. On my 24th birthday my mother (now a widow) gave me one of his books, Hidden Meaning in the New Testament. The book explored the theological significance of Greek grammar.
Dull? Does grammar have to be dull? I read his discussion of verb tenses, imperative and subjunctive moods, prepositions, compound verbs; his discussion illustrated the truth and power of the gospel on page after page. Greek grammar now glinted and gleamed with the radiance of God himself. Insights startling and electrifying illuminated different aspects of Christian discipleship and inflamed my zeal every time I thought about them.
One gem had to do with the two ways in which the Greek language expresses an imperative. (The two ways are the present tense and the aorist subjunctive.) If I utter the English imperative, “Don’t run!”, I can mean either, “You are running now and you must stop” or, “You aren’t running now and you mustn’t start.” When two different gospel-writers refer to the Ten Commandments, one uses one form of the Greek imperative to express “Thou shalt not” while the other gospel-writer uses the other form. One says, “You are constantly violating the command of God and you must stop.” The other says, “Right now you aren’t violating the command of God and you mustn’t begin.” Both truths are needed in the Christian life; both are highlighted by means of grammatical precision.
Ward left the University of Toronto and found his way to a small Anglican congregation in Saint John, N.B. By now (1970) I was in Tabusintac, N.B., a 400-mile roundtrip away. Several times I sat before him, Greek testament in hand, asking him about grammatical points that had me stymied. What did I gain from my visits? Vastly more than lessons in grammar; I gained an exposure to a godliness I had seen nowhere else, a godliness that was natural, unaffected, real.
Any point in grammar Ward illustrated from the Christian life. One day I asked him about two verses in Mark where Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.” The verb is skandalizein, to cause to stumble. But in the space of a few verses Mark uses two different tenses: one tense suggests completed action in the past, one occurrence only; the other tense suggests an ongoing phenomenon. When I asked Ward about it he said, “Victor, in a moment of carelessness or spiritual inattentiveness or outright folly the Christian can be overtaken by sin. Horrified he says, `Never again!’, and it’s done with. And then there’s the Christian’s besetting temptation with which he has to struggle every day.”
While Ward spent most of his adult life as either professor in a seminary or pastor of a small congregation, he was always an evangelist at heart. He conducted preaching missions to large crowds on every continent. Despite his exposure to large crowds he always knew of the need to sound the note of the gospel-summons to first-time faith within the local congregation. His conviction is reflected in the concluding paragraph of his book, Royal Theology. Here Ward speaks of the conscientious minister who prepares throughout the week that utterance which is given him to declare on Sunday. Such a minister, says Ward,
“should find that his congregation is not only literally sitting in front of him but is figuratively behind him. When he speaks of Christ there will be an answering note in the hearts of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious. When he mentions the wrath of God they will be with him in remembering that they too were once under wrath and by the mercy of God have been delivered…. When he speaks of the word of the cross they will welcome the open secret of the means of their salvation. And when he gives an invitation to sinners to come to Christ, they will create the warm and loving atmosphere which is the fitting welcome for one who is coming home.”
Ronald Ward’s thinking invariably converged on the cross and his life always radiated from it. Thanks to him this is all I want for myself. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
Victor Shepherd
March 1998
Mother Teresa
1910 –
She was born in Yugoslavia in the year 1910. Her name at birth was Agnes Gonxha Bejahiu. In early adult life she knew herself called of God to be a nun. Following her education at Loretto Abbey in Ireland she was posted to Calcutta. Her first assignment was to teach high school geography. She remained at this school as principal for several years.
At the age of thirty-six Mother Teresa became aware of what she speaks of as a “call within a call.” She now knew herself seized and summoned to work on behalf of “the poorest of the poor.” It was not the “ordinary poor” – those who could still beg, wheedle, or even thieve – whom she was called to serve. Rather, it was those whose situation was even more wretched: the dying destitute, the leper, the person whose sores are loathsome, and the most helpless and vulnerable of all, the abandoned baby.
She set about acquiring intensive nursing training. Two years later, the authorities in Rome released her from the Loretto order. At age thirty-eight she stepped out into her new life. She was all too aware that her activity would appear pathetically insignificant in the midst of the one million people who sleep, defecate and die on the pavement of Calcutta.
Many things sustain her. Her vocation – her calling – is one of them. Another is her conviction that the wretchedness all around her is the “distressing disguise” her Lord wears. (The festering wounds she and her sisters dress are to her the wounds of Jesus; every dirty infant is the Bethlehem baby who was born in conditions less than sanitary.) She is sustained too by her devotional discipline. Awake at 4:00a.m., she and her sisters pray until 6:30. Every morning there is a celebration of Holy Communion. Mother Teresa insists that if she did not first meet her Lord at worship and in the sacrament she could never see him in the most wretched of the earth.
The workday ends at 7:30 p.m. when sisters gather again for prayer. Midnight frequently finds the little woman still on her feet.
Several years ago she came across an emaciated man near death on the sidewalk. No hospital would admit him. She took him home. Soon she had gained access to an ancient Hindu temple which she turned into her ‘home for dying destitutes.” To this home the sisters bring the seventy- and eighty-pound adults who would otherwise die on the street. When Westerners scoff at the so-called band-aid treatment she gives to these people she replies, “No one, however sick, however repulsive, should have to die alone.” Then she tells whoever will listen how these people, with nothing to give and with a past which should, by all human reckoning, embitter them forever, will smile and say “Thank you” – and then die at peace. For her, enabling an abandoned person to die within sight of a loving face is something possessing eternal significance.
Of what worth, then, are the cast-off babies the sisters pick up out of garbage cans, railway stations and the gutter? Mother Teresa quietly asks, “Are there too many flowers, too many stars in the sky?”
When the stench from running ulcers embarrasses even a sick person himself as a Sister of Charity cares for him, the sister smiles as she reassures him, “of course it smells. But compared to your suffering, the smell is nothing.”
Mother Teresa reminds Christians of all persuasions of how readily we are infected with the narcissism (“me-only-ism”) of our age and with its preoccupation with ease. She forces us to face up to those New Testament passages that insist Jesus Christ is to be found in the sick and the poor, the vulnerable and the victimized (Matt. 25). Simply to think of her is to hear anew what Jesus maintains is the truth: We cannot turn our back on the wretched of the earth without turning our back on him.
Her diminutive body and her vast work (the Sister of Charity are now in 25 cities in India and in 26 countries throughout the world) illumine and magnify a glorious text of St. Paul: “For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:11,12). In her disease-ridden environment she is plainly courting death. Yet because it is for Jesus’ sake that she is being given up to death, the life of the Risen One himself is manifested in her. And in a stunning paradox, the life of the Risen One is also manifested in the weakened men and women who are only hours from death themselves.
Mother Teresa and her sisters have proven once more what our society has yet to learn: a preoccupation with comfort does not produce comfort! Rather, we are comforted ourselves, as Paul insists in another paradox, only as we compound our suffering with the suffering of others. For in doing this we share in Christ’s suffering and therefore know the comfort only the victorious one himself can impart (2 Cor. 2).
Now eighty years old, yet as resolute as she is wizened, Mother Teresa continues to live and work in the slums of Calcutta, certain that God will permit her to die with the people she has lived among and loved for over forty years. In their fragile humanity she has discerned and embraced the Fragile One himself by whose wretchedness the world was redeemed and through whose risen life fellow-suffers are made alive forever more.
Jacques Ellul
1912 – 1994
The Frenchman’s life has continued to exemplify the manner in which the gospel frees us from convention and conformity and liberates us for a radical engagement with God and the world. A member of the underground resistance in France during the Nazi occupation, Ellul startled fellow-citizens at war’s end by acting as lawyer on behalf of the very collaborators who would have tortured and killed him had they uncovered him during hostilities. The reason he gave was that collaborators were being treated as savagely in peacetime camps as the Nazis had treated wartime resisters. An appreciative, life-long student of Marx, he yet repudiated communism: “under a facade of justice, it is worse than everything which preceded it”. A diligent member of ecumenical committees and associations, he laments that national and international councils achieve pathetically little. “This is not at all the equivalent of Pentecost”. His father was a sceptic and his mother a non-churchgoer, yet as a ten year-old Ellul came upon the pronouncement of Jesus, “I will make you fishers of men”. He spoke of it as a “personal utterance” which “foretold an event”. Shunning exhibitionism and therefore loath to publicize the details of his conversion, he nonetheless states that it was “violent” as he fled the God who had revealed himself to him. “I realized that God had spoken, but I didn’t want him to have me. I wanted to remain master of my life”.
Ellul was born among the dockworker families of Bordeaux. He distinguished himself at school. When his family needed money the sixteen year-old tutored in Latin, French, Greek and German. (His students were only ten!) At eighteen he read Karl Marx’s major work, Das Kapital, and for the rest of his life regarded Marx’s analysis of the power of money as more accurate than any other. At the same time he saw that Marx had nothing to say about the human condition. Revelation is needed for this. As a result he has been found himself unable to eliminate either Marx or scripture, and has continued to live with this tension.
Ellul claims he has been helped enormously in his discipleship by two soul-fast friends, one an atheist and the other a believer. The militant atheist has kept him honest by showing that Christians have tended to betray precisely what Jesus Christ is and brings. His believer-friend, “a Christian of incredible authenticity”, has supported and encouraged him when dispirited. “Every time his apartment door opened upon his smile it was, in my worst moments of distress, like a door opening onto truth and affection”.
In the years following the war he continued to lecture in law even as he was appointed Professor of the History and Sociology of Institutions. Through his work in this latter field he has seen that technology afflicts twentieth-century life as nothing else does. By technology he doesn’t mean mechanization or automation. (He has never suggested that a horse is preferable to an automobile.) Rather he means the uncritical exaltation of efficiency. If something can be done efficiently then these efficient means will be deployed without regard for the truth of God or the human good. Illustrations abound. One need only think of the proliferation of abortions in the wake of more efficient abortion-techniques — at the same time, of course, that fertility-enhancement is the cutting edge of medical research!
Ellul has angered many who glibly believe in inevitable human progress, and frustrated the same people when they have found him unanswerable. Propaganda, he insists, seduces people into consenting unthinkingly to the exaltation of efficiency; the mass media are the tools of propaganda — and it all creates the illusion that people are free and creative when in fact they are mind-numbingly conformed and enslaved.
Two parallel columns of books have poured from his pen: one a thorough-going sociological analysis which speaks to secularists turned off by pietistic cliches, the other a biblical exploration for earnest Christians who want to discern the Word of God in its vigour amidst the world’s illusions and distresses. The Technological Society and The Meaning of the City represent the two aspects of his mature thought.
Ellul has always insisted that the self-utterance and “seizure” of the living God frees individuals from their conformity to a world which blinds and binds, even as it renders them to useful to God and world on behalf of that kingdom which cannot be shaken. Not surprisingly, Ellul has continued to magnify the place of prayer, contending that as we pray God fashions a genuine future for humankind; indeed, God’s future is the only future, all other “futures” being but a dressed-up repetition of the Fall.
When moved at the bleakness of destitute juvenile delinquents, the university professor befriended and assisted them for years, seeking to render them “positively maladjusted” to their society. He wanted them to be profoundly helpful to it without adopting it. He has urged as much in interviews, sermons and the forty books and several hundred articles he has written. In them all he has reflected his most elemental conviction: God’s judgement exposes the world’s bondage and illusion for what they are, even as God’s mercy fashions that new creation which is the ground of radical human hope.
An old man now, Ellul insists the most important thing about him is his witness to Jesus Christ. “Perhaps through my words or my writing, someone met this saviour, the only one, the unique one, beside whom all human projects are childishness; then, if this has happened, I will be fulfilled, and for that, glory to God alone”.
Victor A. Shepherd
August 1992
(Illustration by Marta Lynne Scythes)
Thomas Torrance
1913 —
Torrance is the weightiest living theologian in the English-speaking world. His written output is prodigious. Prior to his retirement in 1979 he had authored, edited or translated 360 items; 250 have swelled his curriculum vitae since.
Born to Scottish missionaries in China, Torrance received his early education from Canadians who schooled “mish-kids” in accordance with Province of Ontario standards (and found, when political upheaval sent the 14-year old’s family home, that he was woefully deficient in Latin and Greek.)
While still an undergraduate he developed the discerning, analytical assessment of major theologians that would mark him for life. He noticed, for instance, that Schleiermacher, the progenitor of modern liberal theology (“liberal” meaning that the world’s self-understanding is the starting point and controlling principle of the church’s understanding of the faith) forced Jesus of Nazareth into an ideational mould utterly foreign to that of prophet and apostle. The result was that Schleiermacher’s “theology” was little more than the world talking to itself.
Torrance’s mother gave him a copy of Credo, Karl Barth’s exposition of the Apostles’ Creed. The book confirmed Torrance in a conviction that was gaining strength within him and would find expression in everything he wrote; namely, the method of investigating any subject is mandated by the nature of the subject under investigation. Since the nature of microbes differs from the nature of stars, the methods of microbiology and astronomy differ accordingly. Theology too is “scientific” in this sense, as the nature of the subject, the living God who overtakes a wayward creation in Christ Jesus his Son, “takes over” our understanding and forges within us categories for understanding his salvific work and a vocabulary for speaking of it. To say the same thing differently, the nature of what we apprehend supplies us with the manner and means of apprehending it. Therefore we come to know God not by “educated guesswork” or by projecting the best in our culture or by speculating philosophically; we come to know God as God includes us in his knowing (and correcting) us in Christ Jesus.
An academic prize transported Torrance to Basel. There he studied under Barth, the only Protestant theologian of our century whom the Roman Catholic Church as recognized as doctor ecclesiae, a teacher of the church universal. Auburn Seminary in upstate New York conscripted him to teach theology, only to have him resign two years later when he saw that world war was inevitable. Upon returning to Scotland he served as a parish minister until enlisting in the British Army for service in Italy. On numerous battlefields he was horrified to find dying 20-year olds, raised in Christian homes and Sunday Schools, who knew much about Jesus but connected none of it with God. What they knew about Jesus was unrelated to a hidden “God” lurking behind the Nazarene and remaining forever unknowable. Now their last hours found them comfortless. Torrance realized that the truth of the Incarnation — Jesus Christ is God himself coming among us and living our frailty and the consequences of our sin — was a truth largely unknown in the church, however much the church spoke of the Master or reveled in Christmas. From this moment Torrance knew his life-work to be that of the theologian who rethinks rigorously the “faith once for all delivered to the saints”. (Jude 3) He would spend the rest of his life fortifying preachers and pastors, missionaries and evangelists who had been summoned to labour on behalf of God’s people.
Ten years of parish work prepared him for a professorship at the University of Edinburgh. Appointed at first to teach church history, Torrance soon occupied the chair of “Christian Dogmatics”, dogmatics being the major doctrines that constitute the essential building blocks of the Christian faith. His reputation in this field recommended him as successor to Barth upon the Swiss giant’s retirement — even as political chicanery in the Swiss church and civil government scotched the placement.
Torrance’s contribution to the church’s theological understanding is huge. He introduced Barth to the English-speaking world. He apprised the Western Church, both Roman and Reformed, of the importance of the early Eastern Church Fathers, especially Athanasius. He grasped the theological genius of Calvin in a way that few others have and Calvin’s 17th century successors did not. Yet perhaps it is in the field of science that Torrance has most profoundly made his mark. While thoroughly schooled in arts and theology, Torrance spent fifteen years working relentlessly to acquaint himself with the logic of science and with contemporary physics. Two scientific affiliations have admitted him in recognition of his sophistication in this discipline.
In discussing the Incarnation, “the Word made flesh”, Torrance points out that logos, the Greek word for “word”, also means rationality or intelligibility. It means the inner principle of a thing, how a thing works. To say that Jesus is the logos of God is to say that Jesus embodies the rationality of God himself. The apostle John (John 1:1-18) insists both that Jesus Christ is the logos Incarnate and that everything was made through the word. Therefore the realm of nature that science investigates was made through the logos. Then the inner principle of God’s mind and being, the rationality of God himself, has been imprinted indelibly on the creation. In short, thanks to creation through the word, there is engraved upon all of nature a rationality, an intelligibility, that reflects the rationality of the Creator’s own mind.
Science is possible at all, Torrance saw, only because there is a correlation between patterns intrinsic to the scientist’s mind and intelligible patterns embodied in the physical world. Just because scientists themselves and the realm of nature have been created alike through the logos or word, the intelligibility inherent in nature and the intelligibility inherent in the structures of human knowing “match up.”
It all means that however much we may come to know of science, our scientific knowledge will never contradict the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; our scientific knowledge will never take us farther from God.
This is not to say that physics and chemistry and biology yield a knowledge of God. God alone can acquaint us with himself. But it is to say, Torrance exulted, that once we have come to know God through intimate acquaintance with the Creator-Incarnate, and as we continue to probe the splendour of the creation, we shall shout with the psalmist, “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)
Victor Shepherd
August 2000
Oscar Romero
1917 – 1980
Never shall I forget the energy, zeal, knowledge and joy of the small, slender man with flashing eyes and winsome smile whom I heard speak on the University of Toronto campus in 1977. Neither could I know that I was face-to-face with someone who had been appointed, like Stephen before him, to see Jesus standing (Acts 7:56 ) as the risen Lord honours yet another martyr.
Oscar Romero was born in Ciudad Barrios, a small town in El Salvador . Longing to be a priest, he left home at fourteen as his horse picked its way to San Miguel, seven hours away, where he could begin preparing himself for his vocation.
Ordained in Rome in 1942, he was appointed in 1967 as Secretary General of the National Bishops’ Conference. His ecclesiastical career was on track. In the twenty-five years of his priesthood Vatican II (1962-65), with its plea for aggiornamento (renewal), had not impressed him. He supported the arrangement whereby the Church kept the masses credulous and docile while the aristocracy exploited them and the military enforced it all.
Coffee had been planted in El Salvador in 1828. International demand soon found private interests commandeering vast tracts of arable land while expelling subsistence farmers. By 1920 the landowning class comprised fourteen families. Dislocated peasants were now either rural serfs or urban wretched, in any case trying to live on black beans and tortillas. One-half of one per cent of the population owned 90% of the country’s wealth.
In 1932, 30,000 people died in the first uprising. Aboriginals were executed in clumps of sixty. The Te Deum was sung in the cathedral in gratitude for the suppression of “communism.” In no time El Salvador was known as yet another “security state”, a totalitarian arrangement that suspended human rights and slew internal “enemies” at will. Supporting a policy of “peace at any price”, Romero, now editor of the archdiocesan magazine Orientacion, contradicted the previous editor who had cried out against social injustice. Romero focussed on alcoholism, drug-addiction and pornography.
Then there occurred the event whose aftershocks are still reverberating through much of the world: the Council of Latin American Bishops in Medellin ( Columbia ), 1968. The Jesuits had declared their “option for the poor”, and had articulated a cogent theology that voiced their vision. They believed their theology to arise from confidence in the apostles’ witness that the Kingdom of God has come and needs to be leant visibility. A teaching order, the Jesuits schooled their students convincingly as Romero equivocated, apparently supporting “liberating education” while declaiming against “demagoguery and Marxism.”
In 1975 the National Guard raided Tres Calles, a village in Romero’s diocese. (By now he was bishop of Santiago de Maria.) The early-morning attack hacked people apart with machetes as it rampaged from house to house, ostensibly searching for concealed weapons. The event catalyzed Romero. At the funeral for the victims Romero’s sermon condemned the violation of human rights. Privately he wrote the president of El Salvador , naively thinking that a major clergyman’s objection would carry weight.
His “turn” (such an about-face scripture calls “repentance”) accelerated. Plainly the church was at a crucial point in the history of its relationship to the Salvadoran people. Would it help move them past an oppressive feudalism or retrench, thereby strengthening the hand of the oppressor?
When Romero was promoted as Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital city, the ruling alliance intensified its opposition. Six priests were arrested and deported to Guatemala . One of them remarked that the church finally was where it was supposed to be: with the people, surrounded by the wolves. Romero’s first task as archbishop was grim: he had to bury dozens whom soldiers had machine-gunned when 50,000 protesters demonstrated against rigged elections.
By now Romero had turned all the way “around the corner.” Summoning priests to his residence (he had moved out of the Episcopal palace and was bunking in a hospital for indigents) he told them he required no further evidence or argumentation: he knew what the gospel required of church leaders in the face of the people’s misery. All priests were to afford sanctuary to those threatened by government hounds.
Immediately the “hounds” sent a message to Romero as Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit friend who had struggled to implement Vatican II reforms, was gunned down in his jeep, together with an old man and sixteen year-old boy. Undeterred, Romero prayed publicly at length beside his friend’s remains, and then buried all three corpses without first securing government permission – a criminal offence. Next he did the unthinkable: he excommunicated the murderers. In a dramatic gesture he cancelled all services the following Sunday except for a single mass in front of the cathedral, conducted outdoors before 100,000 people. When he went to Rome to explain himself, the pope replied, “Coraggio – courage.” Courage? Rightwing groups were leafleting the nation, “Be a patriot: kill a priest.”
Reprisals intensified. In one village anyone found possessing a bible or hymnbook was arrested, later to be shot or dismembered. Four foreign Jesuits were tortured, their ravaged bodies dumped in neighbouring Guatemala . Thousands of people disappeared without trace. In all of this Romero never backed down: Christ is King just because he brings his Kingdom with him, and in their discernment of this reality Christians must be “fellow workers in the truth”(3rd John 3) in anticipation of “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”(2nd Peter 3:13)
Romero insisted that he had not warped the gospel into a program of social dismantling, let alone malicious social chaos. He criticized priests who wanted to reduce the gospel to political protest without remainder. He deplored protesters’ violence, even as he admitted they were victims of long-standing institutional violence.
International recognition mounted. 1978, 118 members of Britain’s House of Commons nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize (awarded that year to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.) The Louvain , a prestigious Roman Catholic university in Belgium , gave him an honorary doctorate.
Knowing himself to be on the government’s “hit list,” he went to the hills to prepare himself for his final confrontation with evil. He telephoned his farewell message to Exclesior , Mexico ’s premier newspaper, insisting that like the Good Shepherd, a pastor must give his life for those he loves.
Romero was shot while conducting mass at the funeral of a friend’s mother. His assassin escaped in the hubbub and has never been found. 250,000 thronged the Cathedral Square for his funeral. A bomb exploded. Panic-stricken people stampeded. Forty died. In the next two years 35,000 Salvadorans perished. Fifteen per cent of the population was driven into exile. Two thousand simply “disappeared.”
In 1983 Pope John Paul II prayed at Romero’s grave, and then appointed as national archbishop the only Salvadoran bishop to attend Romero’s funeral. The message was plain. The pope had given his imprimatur to all that Romero had exemplified.
He has been recommended for recognition as a “saint.” All Christendom awaits his canonization.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1918 —
The horror tests comprehension: citizens sentenced to internal exile, incarceration, systematic starvation, torture and death on account of casual comment; secret police calling on people who have lived for years in dread of a pre-dawn knock on the door; orphaned children roaming city streets in packs as conscienceless, desperate and dangerous as wild hyenas bent on survival; men sentenced to lethal labour in Siberia, never to be heard from or heard of again, because they had visited the west; prisoners of war who had survived Nazi death camps and thereafter had to be assigned to Soviet camps since their wartime P.O.W. experience had given them a taste of the “finer things” of bourgeois life. Stalin slew sixty million before the seventy-four year nightmare ended and the Soviet communism crumbled in 1991.
It all began in 1917. One year later Solzhenitsyn’s widowed mother gave birth to the man in whose homeland devastation careened everywhere. In 1922 four leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church were executed because they had collected funds meant to assist hunger-deranged people found eating the carcasses of children who had succumbed to malnutrition and disease. Eventually Solzhenitsyn would see first-hand the irrationality that arises whenever ideology is maintained in the face of everything that contradicts it, for he narrowly escaped arrest when others in his bread queue were imprisoned for “suggesting” that there was a bread-shortage in the Marxist land-of-plenty, and for sabotaging the state by “sowing panic.”
Solzhenitsyn’s mother, fluent in French and English, was dismissed from her position as secretary at a flourmill since her family, prior to the Revolution, had had a little more money than most. Yet the effect of her mistreatment at the hands of coercive atheism merely found faith flooding her, never to recede. A godly aunt and uncle steeped the youngster in Orthodox liturgy and devotion. They also introduced him to Russia’s literary giants, especially Tolstoy. Soon he was reading Shakespeare and Dickens in English, Schiller in German. No less adept in the sciences than he was in the humanities, Solzhenitsyn recognized nonetheless that Marxist materialism would allow him to support himself through teaching mathematics and physics while literature remained his vocation.
In 1941 the Soviet Union entered World War II. Solzhenitsyn trained as an artillery officer and was decorated for bravery. Stalin, outraged at German brutalisation of Soviet citizens, announced than when Russian forces invaded Germany “everything” would be permitted. Solzhenitsyn was sickened as the elderly were robbed of their meagre rations and women were gang-raped to death.
A few months earlier he had penned a letter to a friend in which he had likened Stalin’s rule to feudalism. The letter had found its way to government snoops who forced his commanding officer to arrest him. Made to hand over his service revolver (the sign of dismissal,) he stood degraded when his officer’s insignia was ripped off his uniform and the red star torn from his hat.
Nights now found the disgraced man lying on a prison mattress of rotten straw adjacent to a latrine bucket. Men stepped over him to use it throughout the night. A few weeks later he was moved to the dreaded Lubyanka prison in Moscow, and locked up in a windowless cell so small he couldn’t stretch out his legs whether he sat or lay down. He had been charged with producing anti-Soviet propaganda. Eventually he was transferred to one of the forced labour camps that dotted the interior of the U.S.S.R. Lubyanka was to give rise to his world-acclaimed novel, The First Circle; his labour camp existence to his three-volume Gulag Archipelago. When he was diagnosed with cancer and expected to die (surgery with only local anaesthetic removed a large tumour and kept him alive) he pondered what would later appear as Cancer Ward. Yet his years of suffering in assorted prisons and prison camps worked a triumph in him: “…I was fully cleansed and came back to a deep awareness of God and a deep understanding of life.”
His “release” after eight years’ incarceration metamorphosed into internal exile. Now he was teaching high school in the easternmost reaches of the U.S.S.R, forbidden to travel. Through it all he wrote ceaselessly on scraps of paper, squirreling them away lest he commit the same blunder that had seen him sentenced. Then in 1956 President Nikita Khrushchev, publicly faulting Stalin’s harshness, deemed Solzhenitsyn’s wartime letter non-criminal. All charges were dropped. He went home.
Invited to read two chapters of One Day to eager Muscovites, Solzhenitsyn obliged them, and then excoriated the secret police. Only his international reputation spared him. The Soviet government dared not molest someone who had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature and whose books had been translated into 35 languages in one year. Still, it banished him. He moved to Switzerland, where Gulag could be published. The U.S.A. inhaled six million copies. The New York Review of Books pronounced it the single most devastating political indictment to appear in the modern era.
Eager to escape media hounding, he moved with his family to Vermont and became a near-recluse, always writing, emerging occasionally to speak, for instance, at Harvard’s commencement in 1978. Fifteen thousand people rain-soaked people reeled as he judged the west morally destitute. President Jimmy Carter’s wife sniffed, “There is no ‘unchecked materialism’ in the U.S.A.” Solzhenitsyn’s recitation was relentless: America’s pursuit of happiness has left it intellectually shallow, ethically incoherent and spiritually destitute.
Then in 1989 the Berlin wall crumbled, one of history’s unforeseeable convolutions. Two years later communism ended in Russia. Three years later still Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia, only to find that decades of communism had weakened the people to the point that they were vulnerable to contagion from the west. The infectious disease of material greed vomited up large-scale corruption, economic chaos, and clandestine financial compromises.
Despite the sickness of his still-weak nation Solzhenitsyn’s hope is undiminished. Russia can be healed, even as he is adamant that only Christian faith can heal it. Only the crucified can quicken in Russia’s people the self-renunciation any nation needs if only because self-renunciation is life’s open secret. Aware of systemic evil and of the “powers” of ideologies and “isms,” he likes to quote the old Russian proverb: “When evil appears, don’t search the village; search your heart.” Having seen his work achieve the unimaginable, he is convinced that even those with little visibility must pursue what has sustained him: “I live only once, and I want to act in accord with absolute truth.”
As long as truth is absolute it must be uttered amidst treachery, cruelty and falsehood. As it is uttered it will prove itself pregnant and powerful. When accepting his Nobel Prize he had cried, “One word of truth outweighs the world.”
William Stringfellow
1928 – 1985
“Can the pope speak infallibly?”, Stringfellow was asked at an ecumenical gathering. He reply was swift and sure. “Any Christian who speaks in conformity to the gospel speaks infallibly.” It was typical of the pithy pronouncements which would endear him to many. Yet he was ever as profound as he was precise. When Karl Barth visited the United States in 1962 he pointed past the seminary professors to the diminutive lawyer and remarked, “This is the man America should be listening to.”
William Stringfellow was born in Johnston, Rhode Island. His father was a knitter in a stocking factory. Needing money for a university education, he held three jobs in his last year of high school, yet managed to gain several scholarships and find himself at Bates College by age fifteen. Another scholarship took him to the London School of Economics. It was here, he was to write later, that he learned the difference between vocation and career. Military service followed with the Second Armored Division of the U.S. Army. When other soldiers complained that they were deprived of an identity in the armed forces and couldn’t “be themselves”, he disagreed. He knew that it is the living Word of God, Jesus Christ, which gives us our identity and frees us to “own” ourselves, cherish ourselves, profoundly be ourselves, anywhere.
Next was Harvard Law School. While a degree from this prestigious institution was a key which unlocked many doors, the door on which he knocked belonged to a slum tenement in Harlem, New York City. He had decided to work among poor blacks and Hispanics, the most marginalized of the metropolis. The move from Harvard to Harlem was jarring. His apartment measured twenty-five feet by twelve feet. Earlier five children and three adults had lived in it. The kitchen contained a tiny sink and an old refrigerator (neither of which worked), an old gas stove, a bathtub, and a seatless toilet bowl. Thousands of cockroaches were on hand to greet him. “Then I remembered that this is the sort of place in which most people live, in most of the world, for most of the time. Then I was home.”
Stringfellow’s chief legal interests pertained to constitutional law and due process. Both were dealt with every day as he represented victimized tenants, accused persons who would otherwise have inadequate counsel in the courts, and impoverished black people who were shut out of public services like hospitals and government offices. Knowing that his Lord had touched the untouchable — lepers — he represented those who belonged to the George Henry Foundation, sex-offenders whom no other lawyer would assist.
Throughout his student days Stringfellow had involved himself in the World Christian Student Federation. Now he was as deeply immersed in the World Council of Churches, not to mention the turbulence of his own denomination, The Episcopal (Anglican) Church of the U.S. Friends insist he was never more eloquent than the night he stood up, uninvited, in the Anglican Cathedral, Washington, and pleaded with his denomination to ordain women to the priesthood. He appeared not to be heard.
Frustration with the church was not new to him. Upon moving to Harlem he had joined the East Harlem Protestant Parish, enthused by its stated commitment to honouring the witness of scripture and the vocation of the laity. Within fifteen months he sadly concluded that once again the bible had been silenced and the laity submerged. The Parish, like most churches in North America, was a clergy-controlled preserve of shallow leftist ideology. Meanwhile, denominational authorities refused to use the confirmation class book he had been commissioned to write. (The realism of Instead of Death was too startling!)
His beloved poor in Harlem continued to mirror to him the engagement of the Word of God with human anguish. “What sophisticates the suffering of the poor”, he wrote, “is the lucidity, the straightforwardness with which it bespeaks the power and presence of death among men in the world.” All men and women. He had learned from scripture that apart from the resurrected One death is the ruling power of this world, corrupting and crumbling everything its icy breath corrodes. “And from this power of death no man may deliver his brother, nor may a man deliver himself.”
His frustration with seminaries was inconsolable. Liberal schools of theology, having disdained the bible, offered little more than “poetic recitations…social analysis, gimmicks, solicitations, sentimentalities, and corn.” Fundamentalist institutions, on the other hand, had yet to learn that “…if they actually took the bible seriously they would inevitably love the world more readily…because the Word of God is free and active in the world.” As often as seminarians shunned him, students at the law schools and business schools of major American universities heard him eagerly: they were aware that he knew just how the world turns, and who or what makes it turn. So it was that he travelled easily among practising law in behalf of those who could not afford to pay, delivering a guest lecture at Columbia University Law School, preaching the good news of deliverance and reconciliation among church people across America who had no grasp of the deadly, deep-dyed racism he lived with every day. Fourteen books poured from his pen, as well as dozens of articles in both theology and law.
Raging diabetes overtook him. When he died a distraught Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit anti-nuclear protester whom Stringfellow had afforded sanctuary, could only say, “He kept the Word of God so close…and in such wise that its keeping became his own word and its keeping.” Jim Wallis, leader of the Sojourners Community in Washington where Stringfellow had spoken frequently, summarized the lawyer’s life: “In his vocation and by his example he opened up to us the Word of God.”
Victor A. Shepherd
February 1992
(Illustration by Marta Lynne Scythes)
Martin Luther King Jr.
1929-1968
He was born Michael King, but when he was five years old his father (also Michael) decided that father and son should be renamed “Martin Luther” — senior and junior. Thereafter the putative leader of the Afro-American people was known as “ML.” His intellectual precocity appeared as early as the prejudice he would have to fight all his life. For as he exuberantly awaited the end of the bus ride home following his triumph at his school’s public speaking contest, the conductor exploded, “You black sonofabitch.” King hadn’t responded instantly when the conductor told him to surrender his seat to a white rider.
When only fifteen King was admitted to Morehouse College , an all-black institution in Atlanta . He focussed on a legal career since law seemed the vehicle for addressing the shocking social inequities that were rooted in racist iniquity. Soon, however, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Morehouse’s president and King’s personal mentor, acquainted him with an expression of the Christian faith that was intellectually rigorous, socially sensitive, and ethically compelling. Determined now to be a preacher, he began theological studies at Crozer Seminary, Pennsylvania , one of the few blacks among the white student body.
Searching for the roots of injustice, King alighted on capitalism, only to see that its inherent exploitation found no correction in communism’s cruelty. Illumination flooded him the day he attended a lecture on Gandhi and understood two crucial matters: one, that only as injustice is overturned without a legacy of bitterness and festering recrimination has anything been accomplished; two, that just as non-violent protest had been possible in India thanks to British protection, paradoxically, amidst British colonialist oppression, the same non-violent protest could be effective in the USA on account of the Constitution. And just as Gandhi had insisted that the British shouldn’t be slain for exemplifying the hardheartedness endemic in humankind (Indians included,) black Americans would have to help white people save themselves from themselves. Gandhi had taken seriously Jesus’ forgiveness of enemies when British colonialists had not. King knew that we are never closer to God than we are to our worst enemy. Oppressor and oppressed were already linked in Christ.
Acclaimed Crozer’s outstanding student, King relished the scholarship Boston University ‘s School of Theology accorded him for doctoral studies. While in the north he met and married Coretta Scott, a Methodist. Declining tantalising academic positions in the north, he returned to the south to equip the people for whom he’d been anointed. As pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery , he realized that it wasn’t enough to inform people; they had to be moved. Lecture and sermon were qualitatively distinct; the latter bore fruit only as informed minds and warmed hearts issued in wills that acted in the face of institutions and images and ideologies and “isms” still entrenched despite the Emancipation of 1863. King developed the thoughtful, persuasive rhetoric for which he became famous as alliteration and illustration and startling turn-of-phrase were found in speech patterns and word associations as unforgettable as his cadences were irresistible.
Montgomery embodied the ante-bellum myth that black people were sub-human chattels. Since few of them could afford cars, they had to ride city buses to and from work. They were never allowed to sit in the first four rows of seats. When they paid their fare at the fare box beside the driver they then had to get off the bus, walk outside to the rear, and re-enter there. Frequently the driver drove off before they’d had to time to re-board.
It all came to a head on Friday, December 2, 1955 when Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. The police arrested and charged her. King organized black leaders of the boycott. (He spoke of it as the “Montgomery Improvement Association.”) The following Monday not one black person boarded a bus. They rejoiced that they had finally exchanged “tired souls for tired feet.” The city lost vast revenues. The police began harassing black leaders. King’s home was destroyed. Fifty carloads of Ku Klux Klansmen prowled menacingly through black neighbourhoods, but now the people remained on the streets instead of huddling indoors. King called off the boycott only when the mayor announced he’d uphold the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregated schooling. Marches were organized to desegregate transit companies and stations in other southern towns.
Then a breakthrough appeared in the midst of overwhelming setback. Alabama had elected George Wallace governor on the strength of “Segregation Forever.” Bull Connor, Birmingham ‘s Commissioner of Public Safety, was its enforcer. His brutal, oafish vulgarity loomed on nation-wide TV as he turned fire hoses and Doberman Pinschers on defenceless children singing “We shall overcome.” Soon all of America was reading the imprisoned King’s landmark “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” A few days later Connor was again yelling at his men to train hoses on 3000 youngsters and knock them down. His men refused. King felt that Red Sea waters had parted. Apparently many others did too as the ensuing March on Washington gathered up 250,000, one-quarter of them white. From the seat of federal power King soared with his “I have a dream,” a speech as important in U.S. history as Lincoln ‘s Gettysburg Address.
Meanwhile King’s notorious sexual infidelities provided ready material for J.Edgar Hoover and the FBI in their attempts at discrediting his movement. Yet his credibility mounted as he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Public sympathy swelled as he spoke of black people denied voter registration inasmuch as they’d failed to cross a “t” in their application form. When marchers from Selma , braving setbacks and savagery, finally arrived in Montgomery, they stood at Confederate Square and sang
Deep in my heart, I do believe
That we have overcome today.
On April 4, 1968 , King was standing on a Memphis hotel balcony when a bullet severed his jugular vein and his spinal cord. Three days later President Johnson, who had decried America ‘s “crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice,” declared a National Day of Mourning. Next day Coretta led 19,000 through the streets of Memphis . No one was molested.
King’s sin can’t be excused as “weakness.” Still, it recalls the sin of another master, King David of Bethlehem . Both men proved yet again Martin Luther’s aphorism, “God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.” Above all M.L. King recalls a blind man who was granted sight, as all of us can be, only as he called out, “Son of David, have mercy on me” — and knew that the sin of Israel’s greatest defender and leader couldn’t stymie the sight-bestowing gift of Israel’s greater Son.
Eva Burrows
1929 —
The eighth of nine children, this Australian’s parents named her “Eva Evangeline” after Evangeline Booth, the fiery, red-haired daughter of Catherine and William, founders of The Salvation Army. Several years later, while she was at Brisbane University enlarging her appreciation of poetry, modern fiction and drama, a medical student invited her to a bible-study. To her surprise she found intelligent people who took the book seriously and didn’t find it boring. A Varsity Christian Fellowship summer camp exposed her to Bishop Marcus Loane, Anglican preacher and Reformation scholar. His exposition of the book of Romans forced her to take stock of her life. The “hound of heaven” was noticeably closing in upon her. Her conversion and her vocation to the ministry were simultaneous. From that moment she declared that she wanted only to discern and do God’s will for her, regardless of cost. The cost for her, she came to know, included the renunciation of marriage. (She is the only one of nine siblings not to marry. At the same time she has always acknowledged that the vocation of marriage is frequently more demanding.)
Upon her ordination Salvation Army authorities appointed Burrows first to Southern Rhodesia. The Howard Institute there included an education centre, a hospital, an outpatient clinic, primary and secondary schools, a teacher-training college, a seminary and, of course, a worship-facility with a thriving congregation. Different responsibilities as preacher, teacher and administrator would occupy her for the next seventeen years. “I didn’t see myself as bossing the Africans”, she insisted, “I never had that white supremacy idea…. I made a lot of mistakes, as any young person does, but I never made the mistake of thinking I knew it all as far as the Africans were concerned.”
On her first leave from the mission-field she completed a master’s degree in African education at Sidney University, Australia. Longmans, the well-known publisher of textbooks, regularly consulted her when it was about to bring out a new schoolbook for use in Africa. In addition she became advisor to the government with respect to the training of teachers.
Holidays were taken in South Africa, the nation notorious for its policy of apartheid. As often as Burrows stood in the “Blacks” lineup and was told to move over to the “Whites”, she simply walked away — the most telling protest she could make. While Rhodesia didn’t have an official policy of apartheid, in fact racial discrimination was practised everywhere. Deliberately she took black students into settings that had been tacitly set aside for whites only.
The next assignment was to The Salvation Army’s international seminary in London, England. Five years later Burrows was put in charge of Women’s Social Services around the world. Immediately she saw that flexibility and adaptability were crucial if Christians were to do anything about the ravages of evil: fewer homes were needed for unwed mothers, more homes for victims of domestic violence and substance-abuse.
Recognizing her resilience and the multiplicity of her gifts, her superiors sent her to superintend the denomination’s work in Sri Lanka. (Two-thirds of The Salvation Army’s members live in the third world.) In 1883 Salvationists had waded through snake-infested swamps in order to speak and embody the life-giving word of the crucified. Now there were five thousand on the island immediately east of India. The challenges which greeted her from the wider society were startling: two main cultural groups (Sinhalese and Tamils), as well as four main religious groups (Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians). Undaunted, she set about learning yet another language.
In 1979 Burrows was appointed to Scotland, and quickly learned that Glasgow is the roughest city in Europe. A major concern for her was the number of women with drinking problems who were frequently homeless as well. (Alcoholism among women is fourteen times more prevalent in Scotland than in England.)
Burrows’ native Australia welcomed her next. Appalled at the unemployment she found there, together with its social consequences, she envisioned and implemented “Employment 2000”, a factory-based program for young adults where job-skills could be acquired and self-confidence magnified. The nation honoured her for her work in this regard the day the prime minister made her an Officer of the Order of Australia.
Nineteen eighty-six found Burrows elected international General. (The college of commissioners elects the general just as the college of cardinals elects the pope in the Roman Catholic Church.) In an organization whose hierarchical chain-of-command is non-negotiable her authority is not to be overturned. Not surprisingly she lost no time making major changes wherever she felt such changes to be Kingdom-serving. For instance, she insisted that under-utilized leper colonies in the countries of central Africa be turned into AIDS hostels. (In Zambia one person in ten has AIDS.) Her greatest thrill the year she became international chief was her renewed contact with fellow-Salvationists in China.
Needing only five hours’ sleep per night, Burrows works a long day, yet manages to relax with literature, classical music and theatre. Her devotional life is nourished by contemplatives of the church catholic, such as Mother Julian of Norwich, de Caussade, and St. Theresa of Avila.
Despite her whirlwind social activism, Burrows’ top priority remains evangelism: “We must work all the time for redemption and reconciliation”. Her global perception on church and world lends enormous credibility to her sobering assessment: “I think that a lot of Christians in the affluent countries want a religion that costs them very little”.
Victor A. Shepherd
January 1993
(Photograph courtesy of The Salvation Army)
Thomas Clark Oden
1931–
The renewal movements of The United Church of Canada would be hard pressed to find a better friend and a more helpful ally. Unashamedly he has nailed his colours to the mast: “As a former sixties radical, I am now out of the closet as an orthodox evangelical.” A speaker at an early meeting of “Faithfulness Today” (jointly sponsored by The Community of Concern Within The United Church of Canada, Church Alive and The Alliance of Covenanting Congregations,) Oden has continued to hover our denomination’s theological ventures and pronouncements, living in hope for the day when it would recover its birthright and boldly declare itself “on the Lord’s side.” Raised in the United Methodist Church (USA), a denomination that has long appeared blissfully indifferent to “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3),” Oden himself sashayed into the “far country” in the early days of his career as academic theologian. At that time there was virtually no cause, however tangentially related to the church’s mission or however “far out”, that he didn’t endorse as he roamed the entire spectrum of bizarre theology and avant-garde ethics. Just as he was discovering that far-country fare was non-nourishing and even toxic, the One he had been decrying in the cause of “relevance” and “modernity” overtook him and redirected the course of his living and thinking. And just as Paul, temporarily stunned on the Damascus road, needed another’s help for a while, those whom God’s providence mysteriously appointed to assist Oden came to his rescue. It was a Jew, Ananias, who helped a shocked and staggering Paul; another Jew, Will Herberg, providence assigned to be the one who brought him to see that the path out of the theological morass ran past the homes of the classical exponents of Christian truth. John Henry Newman, for instance, although dead for 80 years, convinced him that the substance of the historic faith was a goldmine whose treasure could be quarried inexhaustibly. Oden’s only responsibility, Newman persuaded him, was to listen. Abandoning his preoccupation with theological invention, Oden now listened “as if my whole life depended on hearing.” As the arbitrariness and anaemia of his theological shallowness sobered him, his earlier support of the abortion platform horrified him. He abandoned the situation ethics he had touted as a cure-all and simultaneously renounced the entire liberal world-view. Courageously announcing his “about face” (also known as repentance) to the academic guild, he came to cherish the “ecumenical consensus”: what Christians of East and West, Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, have held in common, and still do. Whereas he had previously regarded such consensus no more than baggage that had to be shed if the church were to move ahead unencumbered, he now realized this consensus to be the ballast in the church-ship’s keel without which the church could never sail against the prevailing wind and would capsize in any storm.
An intellectual whose brilliance has been evident in his lectureships at such prestigious institutions as Edinburgh, Duke, Emory, Princeton, Claremont, and Moscow State universities, in all his work Oden has kept in mind the needs of the local congregation and the working pastor. His major work, the 1500-page tome on systematic theology, is explicitly addressed to the latter, while he has published several works on the pastoral disciplines. In all of this he has claimed to want only to equip those who are called and commissioned to “teach you the elementary truth of God’s word all over again. (Hebrew 5:12)” For this reason the global intention of his work is to develop afresh the “building blocks” of the faith. Only as this task is completed will he turn his attention to more detailed matters such as anthropology and liturgy. True to Scripture, to his native Wesleyanism, and to the Fathers, he regards God’s holiness as the linchpin of the entire theological enterprise.
Waggishly reminding others that “the apostles were testy with clever revisionists”, Oden cites Paul’s rebuke, angry and anguished in equal measure, of the congregation in Galatia: “But even if an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be anathema (Galatians 1:8.)” Yet he must never be thought to be a “nostalgia freak,” someone who hankers after “good old days” that in fact were as evil-ridden as all days. Instead he remains profoundly aware that Christians, theologians, congregations or denominations that jettison memory plunge themselves into amnesia. And the problem with amnesiacs isn’t that they can’t remember where they left umbrella or automobile; the problem, rather, is that lacking memory, they lack identity; and lacking identity, they frequently behave erratically.
Unfailingly possessed of gospel hope (hope, in Scripture, is never wishful thinking but is instead a future certainty grounded in a past reality; namely, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and his bestowal of the Spirit) Oden knows that revival is needed in the North American churches above everything else. And in view of the place that the mainline denominations occupy still in the psyche of the North American people, revival cannot occur without the “mainliners.” Then the prophet’s word to a people in exile — “Behold I [the Lord] am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:19)” — must entail a renewal of denominations that appear at present to be sidelined. To this end Oden has been a leader in the formation of the Association for Church Renewal. Single-handedly he has convened the Confessing Theologians Commission, a group consisting of mainline academics who extol Jesus Christ, love his people, and have remained at their post in their respective denominations. (The Confessing Theologians Commission has one member from Canada, Victor Shepherd, as a representative of the renewal movements within The United Church.)
Long a lover of Kierkegaard, Oden likes to refer to the Dane’s insistence that faith disrupts, and where disruption isn’t observable faith hasn’t occurred. If as “believers” we nevertheless protest that we have faith, we are theologians; if we know how to describe faith, we are poets; if we weep in describing faith, we are actors. But only as we witness for the truth and against untruth are we actually possessed of faith.
Victor Shepherd
The Spirituality of Luther
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
Product Number: RGCD3166S
A discussion of Luther’s ‘Theologia Crucis’ (Theology of the Cross). In the image of the cross, the world perceives shame, weakness, folly, condemnation, sin and death. Victor Shepherd contrasts the world’s perceptions of the cross with the truth revealed as the consumate event of God’s glory, strength, wisdom, acquittal, righteousness and life. He distinguishes ‘theologia crucis’ from a ‘theologia gloriae’, and elaborates the implications of a theologia crucis.
Luther’s ‘Theologia Crucis’
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio (2003)
Product Number: RGCD3335C
Always aware that Word and Spirit are conjoined, this man of the Word lived intensely in the Spirit. Few understood better than he that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.” Assailed from without and from within throughout his turbulent career as a Reformer, Luther was intimately with Anfechtung (assault, temptation, trial). While what he saw contradicted the gospel, his “theology of the cross” left him hearing his Lord’s “voice”. Therein he possessed the comfort of that “caretaker who lies in a cradle and rests on a virgin’s bosom, yet nevertheless sits at the right hand of God, the Father almighty.”
Calvin and Predestination
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio (2001)
Product Number: RGCD3054J
Pilloried and praised in equal measure for his doctrine of predestination, Calvin knew how the doctrine was supposed to function: it brings unspeakable comfort to those assailed by persecution from without and by sin from within. Tirelessly he insisted, “Predestination, rightly understood, brings no shaking of faith but rather its best confirmation.” (Institutes 3.24.9). Yet when he came to discuss the doctrine itself, Calvin appeared to contradict himself in such crucial areas as Trinity, Christology and Pneumatology. Did he understand the doctrine rightly? Are the doctrinal contradictions merely apparent? Shepherds lectures articulate both an appreciation of the ethos of the doctrine in Reformed churchmanship and a criticism of its problematic logic.
The Spirituality of Wesley
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio (2001)
Product Number: RGCD3171S
“God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it,” the earliest followers of John Wesley reminded each other; “God can deliver us from its power over us.” Forgiveness is relief of sin’s guilt; sanctification or holiness, release from sin’s grip. While not undervaluing justification by faith (this truth marked the “Aldersgate” turning point in his life), Wesley highlighted holiness of heart and life as characterizing the Methodist ethos. A pretended holiness of heart alone would be more sentimental indulgence; of life alone, mere legalistic exertion. Justification gives us the right to heaven, Wesley always insisted, while holiness renders us fit to “see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14), the destiny of God’s people that Wesley constantly kept before them.
Philosophy for Understanding Theology
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
ISBN: RG3041S
This series is an exploration of the vital and dynamic relationship between the study of philosophy and the study of theology. The course begins with a well-argued defense of the Christian study of philosophy. Yet, the balance of the material is devoted to a survey of the more significant interactions between philosophy and theology down through the centuries.
The Theology of Martin Luther
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio (2001)
Product Number: RG3174S
A colossus who bestrides the early-to-mid Sixteenth Century, Luther is the single most formative thinker of the Magisterial Protestant Reformation. His output is prodigious, his Works filling more than fifty large volumes. Best known for his 1520 tract, The Freedom of the Christian, Luther wrote on virtually every topic that touch his understanding of the Christian faith, from how to correct recalcitrant children to the manner of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Unquestionably a major expositor of Scripture and a master of doctrinal articulation, he yet knew that amidst all our theological diligence we must ever hear the “voice” of that babe whom no one should confuse with the manger in which he lies (Scripture) yet who can never be found apart from it.
The Theology of John Calvin
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
ISBN: RG3054S
John Calvin was first of all a preacher and pastor, then an exegete (the best of the Reformation), then a theologian, and finally a civic leader and city administrator. The Institutes, however, remains his single largest work and that by which he is commonly identified. He wrote it both as a primer for students of theology as well as reassurance for the French king that Protestants were not seditious. This series seeks to acquaint the listener with the major aspects of Calvin’s theology as organized in the final edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559).
The Theology of John Wesley
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
ISBN: RG3053S
Victor Shepherd challenges the misconception that the Wesleyan tradition is theologically indifferent or fuzzy. Beginning with a description of how the Wesleyan tradition thinks theologically, Shepherd then considers John Wesley’s own spiritual and theological development. The majority of the course explores various Wesleyan theological themes including: salvation by grace, money & the danger of riches, the arrears of sin in believers, and the final deliverance of believers.
Why Should A Christian Study Philosophy?
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
Product Number: RG3041A
Is Jesus the Only Way to God?
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
Product Number: RG3151
Is Jesus Both God & Man?
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
Product Number: RG3152
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “Prayer” A Theological Investigation
Victor Shepherd
Publisher: Regent Audio
Product Number: RG3154S
Balthasar’s “Prayer” is a theological investigation that approaches the topic from several angles: the doctrine of the Trinity, liturgy, the “encounter” understanding of Martin Buber, the place of mysticism and the role of reason. Protestants may be surprised at the Word-orientation of his discussion. All Christians are indebted to this thinker who exemplified expertise in liturgy, philosophy and theology, yet was most “at home” on his knees in adoration of his Lord.
Interpreting Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Thought
Victor Shepherd
Regent College Publishing (September 2008)
Format: Softcover (348 pages)
In this book Victor Shepherd provides a helpful and balanced introduction to the life of Martin Luther and his theological legacy. After setting the historical stage of the Reformation, Victor Shepherd traces Luther’s theological development and explores central concepts in his thought, including both the strengths and weaknesses of this theology.
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Our Evangelical Faith
Victor Shepherd
Published by Clements Publishing (2006)
Format: Softcover (79 pages)
ISBN: 1894667840
In recent years “Evangelical Christians” have come to occupy a more prominent role in North american society. But what is an Evangelical Christian? How does the movement define itself? what is the relationship between Evangelicalism and catholicism? In this book Professor Victor Shepherd offers a concise and helpful introduction to the core ideas and beliefs that have historically defined this movement. He then explains the seven doctrinal affirmation that unite evangelicals worldwide.
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Do You Love Me?
And Other Questions Jesus Asks
Victor Shepherd
Published by Clements Publishing (2007)
Format: Softcover (132 pgs)
ISBN: 1894667697
Many of us have questions about Jesus, but did you know that Jesus has questions for us? Indeed, as Victor Shepherd points out in this book, Jesus spent much of his ministry on earth asking his disciples questions rather than answering the questions on their agenda. Instead, he used questions as a way of reshaping and redirecting his disciples towards the Truth. This is not to say that Jesus dismisses our questions as trite. Yet because our hearts are corrupt, we are often asking the wrong questions. In this book, Victor Shepherd reflects on twelve important questions that Jesus asked, challenging us to reflect on the significance of these questions for us today and bringing these truths to bear upon our everyday lives.
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Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin
Victor Shepherd
published by Regent Publishing (2004)
Format: Softcover (260 pgs)
ISBN: 1573833282
John Calvin insisted that all that Jesus Christ has done for us ³benefits us² only as we ³put on² Christ in faith. Union with Christ (the heart of Calvin¹s theology) occurs only as the One who has embraced us in grace finds us embracing him in faith. This book explores the nature and significance of faith at every point in the Christian life: faith¹s inception, its development, its weakness, its forever needing to be strengthened through the ministry of the church and guided by the law of God. In so doing this book also relates Calvin¹s doctrine of faith to the major doctrines that constitute the ³building blocks² of the Christian faith: justification, sanctification, predestination, the ³third use of the law,² the church, the ordained ministry (especially preaching) and the sacraments.
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Ponder and Pray
Seven Weeks of Meditations and Prayers for Personal Enrichment
Victor A. Shepherd
Published by Clements Publishing (2002)
Format: Softcover (154 pgs)
ISBN: 1894667034
It’s not enough to tell aspiring Christians they should pray, says Victor Shepherd. They need help; in a sense their prayers need rails to run on. “That’s why,” he writes, “I spent as much time preparing the prayers in this volume as I did working up the meditations.” The meditations and the prayers contained in this volume are biblical, thought-provoking and relevant. Appropriate for any season during the year, Ponder and Pray is a helpful devotional resource for those looking to deepen their prayer lives and feed on God’s Word.
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Seasons of Grace
Thirty Sermons: Pathways from Wilderness to Wonder
Victor A. Shepherd
Clements Publishing 248 pgs
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 1894667018
Everyone faces spiritual wilderness at some point in life: Transitions in life, vocational confusion, physical illness or loss of a loved one — these and many other factors can drive us to a place where God seems distant or irrelevant. Those who wander through such difficult times without clear direction often find themselves spiraling down into a mess of doubt, self accusation, or depression. In Seasons of Grace Victor Shepherd shows us how to embrace the God of the Bible, who draws near to us in the midst of our inescapable wilderness and creates paths to life where none existed before.
REVIEW “Dr. Shepherd never pretends we can explain our lives by looking inward. Rather… we are directed to look outward — to the One who keeps us. This is not a trendy pop psychology ‘wanna be’ bestseller, but rather a book that speaks a much more profound, useful and timeless truth.” — David Clarkson, M.D.
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Bearing the Beams of Love
Christmas Sunday 2008
I: — I played hockey for twelve seasons. I never weighed more than one hundred and fifty-five pounds. I regularly played against two hundred and ten pound gorillas who were as mean as a junk-yard dog. I survived the twelve seasons inasmuch as I always knew how to protect myself on the ice. I took to heart the advice which Ted “Scarface” Lindsay gave to Stan Mikita when Mikita moved from junior hockey to the NHL. Mikita, a smaller fellow, had voiced his fear that he wasn’t tough enough to play in the NHL. “Stan”, Lindsay said, “as long as the stick is in your hand you are as tough as anyone on the ice. Never drop your stick.”
Because I could always protect myself on the ice I was all the more surprised to learn, years later, that I couldn’t protect myself politically, institutionally. Politically I was as defenceless as a first-time skater standing on wobbly legs at centre ice: he’s unable even to get out of the way, never mind run down anyone else.
Subsequently I learned that not only could I not protect myself politically, institutionally, I couldn’t protect myself psychologically. I seemed to get bushwacked emotionally — or felt I got bushwacked — in a way that most people seemed to avoid, or at least disguise. I seemed unable either to avoid it or disguise it.
I concluded that I had to learn to protect myself. Detachment was to be my first piece of armour. “Be laid back”, I told myself over and over. “Be detached (by now it was a mantra); stay cool; keep your gut unhooked.” It all went exceedingly well, and I thought I was really progressing at remaking myself psychologically; it all went well, that is, for three hours. Then the phone rang. A forty-three year old woman had called me from Mississauga ’s Credit Valley Hospital out-patient department. She needed a ride from the hospital to work. Take a cab? She wanted to talk to me. She was riddled with tumours, skinny as a broom handle, and had just had her pain-killer dosage increased. Her skin-colour was a ghastly yellow-green-brown and she was struggling to keep upright a marriage that was close to capsizing. End of detachment. End of being laid back. Gut hooked all over again.
Then I recalled the words of Gerald May, MD. Gerald May is an American physician, now living in Washington , who has written much in the field of spiritual direction. (A spiritual director, different from a pastoral counsellor or a psychotherapist, is someone who helps individuals discern and assist the movement of God’s grace within them and God’s way for them.) Professionally Gerald May is a psychiatrist who served, at one time, with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam . In one of his many books May has written, “Some wisdom deep inside us knows it’s impossible to love safely; we either enter it undefended or not at all”. We can’t love safely; either we love defencelessly or we don’t love. Instantly I admitted to myself what I had known in my heart all along, despite my short-lived efforts at detachment and coolness: I admitted that a disciple of Jesus Christ whose preoccupation is survival is no disciple at all. Dr. May is correct. We can’t love safely.
Next I pondered the two lines from the poet, William Blake, which May quoted in his book, The Awakened Heart.
And we are put on earth a little space
That we might learn to bear the beams of love.
Gerald May says only three things about this quotation. We are to bear love in the three dictionary senses of “bear”. (i) We are to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain. (ii) We are to carry love and spread it around — “as children carry and spread measles and laughter”, he adds. (iii) We are to bring love to birth. When I read this I was so startled that I didn’t move. Slowly my mind spun out what it is to bear love in this three-fold sense.
II(i): — We must grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain. Love’s beauty we understand. But love’s pain? Does love pain? Can it? Yes. And in my older age I have come to see that beauty brings with it its own pain.
When the Shepherd family was last in England we travelled into the Yorkshire moors. Everyone has some picture of the Yorkshire moors, thanks to the writings of the Yorkshire veterinarian, James Herriott. He hasn’t exaggerated. We Shepherds walked together upon the moors as the sun was setting. I shan’t attempt to describe it. Suffice it to say it was so beautiful as to leave us dumbfounded. The beauty was so exquisitely beautiful as to border on the surreal. In the next instant the beauty seemed so intense as to make us ache. The beauty surrounding us contrasted so very sharply with the unbeauty we find on so many fronts in life that this wordless beauty brought with it a peculiar kind of pain.
In the midst of the unlove which we find on so many fronts in life we are startled when we find ourselves loved with a love whose intensity is beautiful, to be sure, and whose beauty makes us ache. When we are loved not because we are useful to someone else, not because we are needed or convenient; when we are loved for our own sake, loved for love’s sake — this is when we learn what it is to endure the exquisite beauty and ache of love.
It’s easy to confuse love with other linkages. My adult daughters love me; they are also counting on an inheritance. My wife loves me; she is also legally bound to me. My mother loves me; she is also old and sick and has made me executor of her will and granted me power of attorney. What’s more, all of these people to whom I am related by blood or marriage would be considered nasty, deficient themselves, if they didn’t love me. At the same time, none of this means that they don’t love me for my sake, love me for love’s sake.
Still, there are circumstances where the love with which we are loved can only be love for our sake, love for love’s sake, because we aren’t linked in any way to those who love us. I marvel at the love with which I am loved when this or that person who loves me will never profit from my estate, never be the beneficiary of my life-insurance, never have any legal tie to me; when in fact there is no material advantage to loving me, no social advantage — no advantage of any kind in loving me. Yet they continue to pour upon me a love whose beauty is so beautiful as to make me ache. Not only is there no advantage accruing to them; there is every disadvantage. For I have embarrassed them in public on occasion. I have committed social gaffes in their presence that left them wishing (for a few minutes, anyway) that I was at someone else’s party. I have plunged them into emotional anguish just because they were so closely identified with me in my emotional anguish. And I have perplexed them as they stood speechless before my incomprehensible spasms of irrationality.
The longer I live the more amazed I am at all of this; which is to say, the longer I live the more I must grow in my capacity to endure love and not flee it, not find it so strange as to be foreign, not resist it inasmuch as I can’t control it, not allow its singularity to diminish its glory. The longer I live the more I must cherish it and grow in my capacity to endure it.
We must bear love in the sense of growing in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain.
(ii) — In the second place we are to bear love in the sense of carrying love and spreading it. Surely we are to carry it and spread it chiefly unselfconsciously. I know, there are situations where we have to clench our teeth and resolve that contempt won’t consume our love. There are days when we have to fight the temptation to despise or hate as surely as our Lord fought assorted temptations in the wilderness. But we can’t be fighting all the time. We can’t have our teeth clenched and our resolve clothesline-taut all the time — or else we’d be grim, grim as death. We carry or spread love chiefly unselfconsciously.
Ever since Louis Pasteur published his discoveries we have known about the transmission of communicable diseases. Such diseases move throughout the human population by means of germs; invisible to the naked eye, but no less real for that. In a fallen world disease is naturally contagious. And in a fallen world contempt is naturally contagious too. No one has to be taught to despise others; left alone, humankind does it naturally in this, the era of the Fall. Then love can be spread only by an infusion of God’s Spirit. Only the Spirit (everywhere in scripture the Spirit is the effectual presence of God) can cause the love we pour out on others to do something besides run off them like rain slicking off an umbrella. Only the Spirit of God can cause love to stick to others, to penetrate, to swell, and to declare that love has brought forth its increase in someone (all of us) who is, in some measure, love-deprived.
The body’s immune system is a good thing. It keeps us from falling sick with scores of different diseases in the same day. Yet there is one place where the body’s immune system is counter-productive: when we need a heart-transplant. Here our immune system has to be overridden or we shall reject the one thing we need most.
We human beings have an immune system, as it were, of a different sort as well. It keeps us from being “suckered” by every last fad, notion, idea, ideology, ploy, scheme, deviousness. And yet there is one place where our beneficial immune system (it renders us rightly suspicious) must be overridden by the Spirit of God if we aren’t to reject love. Only God himself can do this. And this is precisely what he has promised to do. We shall leave him to do it, even as he leaves us to what we must do: bear love in the sense of carrying it, spreading it.
(iii): — We are to bear love, finally, in the sense of bringing it forth. Once again it’s the case that of ourselves we can’t. Just as we, of ourselves, can’t make our love for others adhere to them, so we can’t, of ourselves, quicken love in them, bring forth in them that love which is soon to be love from them. Of ourselves we can’t render someone else a loving person. Once again only God can; and once again he has promised to do this as he takes up and honours our unselfconscious commitment to people who find in our commitment to them what they have found nowhere else.
Gerald May once more, the psychiatrist whose work has meant so much to me: May was with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam where he worked in the psychiatric ward of a military hospital, then returned home where he worked in an American prison before moving on to a state psychiatric hospital. Working in these three venues occupied twenty years of his life. He says these twenty years were bleak, indescribably bleak. Every day he drove to work wondering what on earth he was doing, even what on earth he thought he was doing. For instance, every day he spoke with a woman, a patient in a state hospital, who never said a word. This patient not only said nothing; she appeared so vacant as not even to notice him when he was speaking to her. Still he didn’t ignore her (even though it’s difficult not to ignore someone who is utterly unresponsive) but always did his medical duty by her, changing medications and writing up charts, speaking to her every day, mute though she remained. This situation continued for six months. One day, in the course of the same hospital routine, he was fishing in his jacket pockets for a “light” when this unspeaking woman walked out of the room into the corridor and wordlessly, silently beckoned a nurse to her. “Dr. May needs matches for his pipe”, the psychotic woman said. Only God can bring love to birth; and God does precisely this as he takes up and honours the commitments we make to others.
III: — It is Christmas Sunday. Today we praise God for incarnating in the babe of Bethlehem that love which God is himself, for the Incarnation is the outer expression of the innermost heart of God.
Unquestionably the Incarnate One bore love in the threefold sense of “bear.” Jesus most certainly received love from others; he endured that love which is so exquisitely beautiful as to ache. When the adoring woman poured the costliest perfume on his feet he remarked, “She has done a beautiful thing to me…. she has anointed my body beforehand for burying.” (Mark 14:6,8) (There we have both love’s beauty and love’s pain.)
Just as certainly Jesus carried love, spread it, spread it with his crucified, spread-out arms. As the gospel writer attests: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
And just as certainly Jesus brought love to birth. Matthew was a tax-collector who had “sold out” to Rome and now stood to gain financially by collaborating. Simon was a zealot, a terrorist who had vowed the assassination of every last collaborator he could safely stab. What kept these two men in the same apostolic band except the love which Jesus had brought to birth in both? What else kept Jews and Gentiles in the same congregation when Gentiles had always regarded Jews as anti-intellectual and inflexible, while Jews had always regarded Gentiles as bereft of God and shamelessly immoral? What else keeps any congregation in one fellowship?
You and I are to “bear the beams of love”, in the words of the poet, William Blake. We can bear love in the three-fold sense of enduring its beauty and its pain, carrying it and spreading it, and committing ourselves to those in whom God will bring it to birth; we can do this just because he whose birth we celebrate in this season has done it already and done it in us.
Then come, let us adore him, for he is Christ the Lord.
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent IV 21st December 2008
Church of St. Bride, Anglican Mississauga
Good News, Great Joy, A Saviour who is Christ the Lord
The world is always looking both for good news and for great joy. The world also knows that there won’t be great joy unless there’s first good news. Everyone wants good news. Everyone is aware that newscasts are 90% bad news. “All we ever hear on TV or radio is bad news” people complain. “Why can’t we hear good news for a change?”
The answer isn’t hard to find. We live in a fallen world. The “prince” of this world, says Jesus (not king, to be sure, but certainly prince) is characteristically a liar and a killer. Omnipresent evil means that lethal falsification riddles everything. Sophistic savagery is always ready-to-hand. It’s no wonder that newscasts announce troubles of every sort in every place. Nevertheless, we long to hear good news.
But we don’t want “good news” that’s make-believe. We want good news that’s good because true. There can be such good news only if in the midst of evil and evil-quickened conflict there is the profounder reality of God’s definitive incursion into human affairs. There can be good news only if he who is prince of this world is bested by the one who is king.
Christmas is this good news. Christmas isn’t wishful thinking or sentimental froth or saccharine make-believe. Christmas is that good news which is true, real, profound; good news good enough to engender great joy – and all of this just because there has been born to us a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.
“Christ” the Lord? What does “Christ” mean? The child whose coming among us we celebrate in Advent isn’t named Jesus Christ in the way that I am Victor Shepherd. “Christ” isn’t his family name. It’s a description. It means “anointed”. Our Lord is the anointed one, anointed by his Father for our blessing.
Throughout Israel ’s history three figures were anointed: priests, prophets, kings. When we are told that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, we know that he gathers up in himself what priests and prophets and kings embodied, as well as that to which they pointed as they too looked for the coming one.
Since we have good news and great joy only because of the anointed one, Christ, we must probe what it means to say that in him priests and prophets and kings find their fulfilment.
I: — Let’s begin with the priests. Priests ministered in the temple, where sacrifices were offered daily. The sacrifices were the core of worship inasmuch as sincere worshippers knew themselves to be sinners. They knew that defiled sinners had no right to approach the holy God. They knew that defiled sinners couldn’t survive approaching the holy God. The temple sacrifices were the God-appointed means whereby people who could claim nothing and merited nothing except God’s judgement could nonetheless find a Father who cherished them and a Forgiver who pardoned them – and all of this without in any way compromising his holiness or denying their unrighteousness. The sacrifices in the temple gave people access to God precisely where they knew their sin otherwise barred them from him.
Today, of course, we are fastidious people. We are careful to use deodorant, perfume, shaving lotion, cologne, air-wick. Today we should find the temple scene repulsive. Think of the sounds that animals make when they know their end is upon them; the smells they make. Think of the priest gathering a basinful of blood and throwing it over the steps surrounding the altar.
Alas, I fear we are too fastidious. We are shallow in our self-understanding: either we don’t think ourselves to be sinners at all or we think our sinnership to be trivial. We are cavalier in our approach to God: of course he’s going to forgive us, since that’s the business he’s in – said Voltaire on our behalf.
Ancient people knew better. They knew that sin is lethal. (Exactly what sin kills you and I could list for the next six months.) They knew that sin breaks God’s heart, provokes God’s anger, and arouses God’s disgust. And because it does all this, the forgiving of sin is never cheap. Forgiveness is always and everywhere costly.
Costly for whom? The animal brought to the temple was the best the worshipper owned. It cost a great deal to give up. And because it was a male animal, invaluable for purposes of breeding and therefore lucrative for the owner as well, when that animal was offered up to God the worshipper knew she had renounced her ticket to superiority of all kinds and was casting herself and her entire future on God.
What’s more, as the priest sacrificed the animal in the temple the worshipper placed her hand on it as a sign of her personal identification with the life offered up on her behalf. Sobered now at what her reconciliation to God cost, she surrendered herself anew to him in gratitude and adoration.
The day came when the woolly lamb in the temple was no longer the sacrifice. The day came when the curly-haired baby in the manger grew up and offered himself as the Lamb of God. Plainly he is the sacrifice by which a rebellious world is reconciled to God. Yet because he has offered himself, he is also the priest who offers up the sacrifice. As priest he’s the anointed one.
Because he’s the anointed one offering himself for our sakes, you and I all humankind have access to God. We have an access to God we don’t deserve yet which God has fashioned for us in his mercy, thanks to his Son. While our sin breaks God’s heart and provokes his anger and arouses his disgust, the sacrifice our “great high priest” offers up for us gathers up God’s heartbreak and anger and disgust and defuses it all, thereby allowing any and all who want to go home to go home.
“Oh, Shepherd”, someone objects; “Why do you get into something this heavy at Christmas? Why don’t you say something light at Christmas and save the ‘heavy’ for another day?” As a matter of fact there are several reasons why the Advent sermons should be substantial.
[1] There are usually people in church at this season who won’t hear the gospel announced for months, and they should hear something besides froth.
[2] We always administer Holy Communion in Advent. The service of Holy Communion graphically depicts our Lord’s sacrifice. Surely no one is going to tell me that the truth of the cross may be seen in the Lord’s Supper at Christmas but it mustn’t be heard in the sermon at Christmas.
[3] We sing carols at Christmas, and the best hymn on our Lord’s sacrifice happens to be a Christmas carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Listen to the words:
Hark! The herald angels sing ‘Glory to the newborn king’.
Peace on earth, and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled.
Or listen to another stanza:
Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more should die;
Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.
The baby in the manger was born precisely in order that he might become the offering on the cross. He is the lamb of God, given us by the Father for the reconciliation of any and all who place their hand on the anointed one himself. Jesus our Lord is sacrifice and priest together.
II: — Not only were priests presiding at sacrifices anointed; prophets were too. Prophets were those who spoke for God and thereby acquainted their hearers with God. Prophets teach; as they teach about God, God himself takes over their teaching, as it were; God himself surges over hearers so that hearers are overtaken, then overwhelmed, and finally constrained to confess that God-in-person has addressed them.
The prophets were aware of much that modernity has forgotten. For one, the prophets knew that no amount of gazing inside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God. They knew that every last human being is a bundle of contradictions. Looking inside ourselves, therefore, will only inform us of a bundle of contradictions. Two, the prophets were aware that no amount of gazing outside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God. Looking outside ourselves informs us of what’s “out there”: suffering, grief, propaganda, treachery, waste, and war.
To be sure, the prophets never denied that self-contradicted people living in a convoluted world could nevertheless do much that is marvellous; they would readily have admitted that we can do, and do superbly well, philosophy, engineering, science, music, poetry, mathematics. The prophets denied, however, that we can inform ourselves of the truth of God or acquaint ourselves with the person of God. For this to occur something else is needed; specifically, what’s needed is someone who has faced God, has heard him, and now turns to face us to speak for God.
One thing above all else makes the Hebrew prophets “tick”: they have heard God speak. Having heard God speak, they find themselves constrained to speak on his behalf. All the Hebrew prophets are aware that they have been admitted to the Besoth Yahweh, the council of God. They’ve been admitted to the throne-room of the heavenly court. They aren’t presumptuous, engaging God in casual chit-chat. In fact once admitted to the throne-room, they don’t speak to God at all. They describe it all as overhearing; they overhear God talking to himself, as it were. They listen in, reverently, attentively, while God thinks out loud. Suddenly God takes notice of the prophets and speaks to them directly. At this moment the truth of God is stamped upon the prophet; the judgement of God is seared upon the prophet; the mercy of God and faithfulness of God and patience of God are imprinted upon the prophet indelibly.
At this point the prophet turns around from facing God in the throne-room and faces the people in the community. “The Word of God is fire in my mouth”, Jeremiah cries to his people; “I have to let this word out or my mouth will ignite.” Amos says laconically, “God has spoken. Who can but prophesy?”
And so the prophet speaks. He has stood in the council of God. For this reason he can speak authentically of God. As the prophet speaks on God’s behalf, God himself empowers the prophet’s word and renders the prophet’s word a vehicle of God’s self-giving and self-communication. At this point hearers become aware that they aren’t hearing one man’s religious opinion; they aren’t even merely hearing someone speaking on behalf of God. At this point they are hearing God himself.
Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one. He stands in the tradition of the prophets. He speaks for God. Yet as the Incarnate one he speaks for God in a way that no Hebrew prophet could; he speaks conclusively for God just because he is God, Emman-u-el, God-with-us.
A prophet to be sure, yet more than a prophet, Jesus Christ speaks for God as God. Then he is the one we must hear and heed and cling to if we are to know the truth of God and remain fused to the person of God for ever and ever.
III: — Kings were anointed too. Kings were anointed to rule. People today don’t like the sound of “rule”. It sounds coercive, tyrannical, dictatorial, heavy-handed. It sounds as if the king has colossal clout while subjects can only cower. Nobody wants to live under such an arrangement.
In Israel things were different. In Israel the first responsibility of the king wasn’t to boss (let alone tyrannize); the first responsibility of the king was to protect the most vulnerable of the people of God. Vulnerable people might be vulnerable on account of monetary poverty or social oppression or raging disease or military attack from outside the community; they might also be vulnerable on account of treachery from inside the community. Regardless of the source or nature or occasion of the vulnerability, the king’s first responsibility was always to protect those most at risk.
Some kings in Israel met their major responsibility. Most didn’t. Little-by-little it appeared that the only king who would honour this mandate consistently would be the king who was also shepherd, a shepherd-king. David was the shepherd-king in Israel ’s history. David defended the marginalized and vindicated the exploited and protected those at risk for any reason; in addition, in the course of doing all of this David brought glory to his people. At least David did this more consistently than anyone else. But even David proved treacherous.
Little-by-little Israel came to see that God’s people were going to be protected, vindicated, and exalted conclusively only if a shepherd-king appeared who acted with the power of God himself. Then what was needed most was a shepherd-king – human, to be sure – who was also God Incarnate. And this is precisely what we were given at Christmas.
We are the people of God. We need to be safeguarded. Since the world is a battleground of all sorts of conflicts, all of which are at bottom manifestations of the primal conflict, spiritual conflict, we are always at risk of becoming a casualty.
In military engagements casualties include the wounded, the missing and the slain. In the assorted struggles in which we find ourselves and must find ourselves we are going to be wounded from time-to-time. But missing? How could any of God’s people be missing, unlocatable, when God-Incarnate is their shepherd-king? And slain? Wounded as we are from time-to-time, God’s own people can never be wounded fatally. He who is our king, anointed such from eternity, is also resurrection and life. Before God we can’t be slain and we can’t go missing.
We make far too little of this truth, for undeniably events overtake us where we feel we’ve gone missing, and gone missing just because no one seems to miss us. And events overtake us where we feel ourselves slain, unable to rise, unable to go on. But in fact we aren’t slain and we can go on. Our shepherd-king is resurrection and life.
When I was a young man and diligently reading the psalms because I’d been told I should read them, I used to grow weary of reading about the psalmist’s enemies. In every third psalm we heard again the trouble his enemies were causing him and how treacherously they had bushwhacked him and how close they had come to vanquishing him. I began to think the psalmist paranoid. But I see now that he wasn’t paranoid. He was simply aware that nobody has life domesticated; nobody has life tamed; nobody has life under control, despite the fact that we’re all control-freaks. We can find ourselves clobbered on any day, from any quarter, for any reason (or no reason.) Life remains fragile.
Not so long ago I was asked to deliver a guest-lecture at the University of Toronto on John Calvin, progenitor of all English-speaking evangelicals. When I had concluded, the questions came quickly. The ultra-feminists in the audience tried to paint Calvin as anti-woman. I fended that off. The Marxists tried to paint him as uncritical capitalist. I fended that off. On and on it went. Plainly the special interest groups were looking for some way to dismiss him. Finally someone asked, “What is the lens through which Calvin views life? Since all of us have a psycho-social determinant, what’s his?”
“Calvin was a refugee”, I replied; “and like all refugees Calvin knew that life is precarious, earthly rulers can’t be trusted, betrayal is always at hand; above all, Calvin knew that like refugees we are haunted by an outer and inner homelessness that will be overcome only in the eschaton.” The room fell silent. I understood why. Everyone in the room identified with what I had just said about Calvin the refugee.
Because we are finite and fragile, we are physically vulnerable. Because we are wounded, we are emotionally frayed. Because we are sinners, we are spiritually “in a far country” and need to get home.
Who will get us home? Who will safeguard us on our way home? Who will ensure that our innermost core, our identity, remains intact? Only he who is shepherd-king, and effectual shepherd-king just because he is God-with-us, Emmanu-el, shepherd-king-Incarnate.
“Be not afraid”, we are told; “there is good news of a great joy, for to you there is born a Saviour who is Christ, the anointed one, effectual priest and prophet and king.” This one is Lord now, and ever will be.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2005
Love Means “I Want You to Be”
1st John 4:8
John 3:16
Galatians 2:20
There are few thinkers more profound than Augustine. Born in the year 354 and living until 430, he was philosopher, theologian, political theorist, cultural commentator, and all of these at once; and not only all of these at once, but all of these superbly. His words are always weighty and need to be heard again and again. He wrote much about love, approaching the topic of love the way an appreciative jeweller approaches a gem, glowing over the different lustres it radiates as light shines on it first from one angle and then from another. One word from Augustine that we are going to linger over tonight is as brief as it is brilliant: “Love means ‘I want you to be.’”
I: — Let’s think first about the creation. On the one hand God doesn’t need the creation; i.e., doesn’t need the creation to be God. God is without deficit or defect. Therefore he doesn’t create in order to find in the creation what he somehow lacks in himself. On the other hand we know that God is life and God is love. God is the one and only “living” God in that God alone has life in himself. Because God is life God alone can impart life. Because God is love he appears to delight in creating and vivifying creatures who aren’t God themselves but who are made to live in love with the God who lives and loves by nature.
To say that God conceived us in love and fashioned us in love and constantly visits us with his love means, says Augustine, that God is forever saying to us, “I want you to be.” Be what? When God creates mountains and monkeys he says, “I want you to be that thing.” When he creates humankind, however, he wants us to be what monkeys and mountains can never be: creatures whose purpose, delight and fruitfulness are found in a living relationship with him, which relationship is love.
The apostle John has said most pithily, “God is love.” Less pithily but equally profoundly Augustine would say, “God is the one who longs to have us be; God longs to have us love him; God longs to have us reflect back to him the love with which he first loved us and continues to love us. This is what it is to be.”
The problem is, as everyone knows, that the creation didn’t remain “good” without qualification. Instead the creation was undone (in some respects) by the fall. We who were created to find our purpose, delight and fruitfulness in a living relationship of throbbing love for God now look everywhere else. We who are to reflect back to God the love with which he first loved us and continues to love us now do everything but that. For this reason God can no longer say, “I want you to be.” Now he must say in his judgement, “I want you not to be.” Insofar as God wants us not to be he plainly isn’t the creator; he’s now the destroyer. Anyone who reads scripture attentively knows that as soon as the creator is presumed upon or traded on; as soon as the attempt is made to exploit God or test him, as surely as God is disdained or merely disregarded, the creator becomes the destroyer. Scripture speaks like this on every page.
We’d like to think that if God were displeased with us, justly displeased with us, it’d be enough for him to ignore us. But destroy? Destruction sounds like “zero tolerance.” It’s odd, isn’t it, that we fault God for “zero tolerance” when we insist our legislators implement it everywhere in our society. We insist on legislation that guarantees zero tolerance for wife-beating, drug-trafficking, sexual exploitation of children; zero tolerance for income tax evasion and impaired driving. We insist on social policies of zero tolerance because we know in our hearts that tolerance isn’t a sign of generosity or magnanimity or large-hearted liberality. Tolerance is ultimately a sign of confusion, blindness, and spinelessness – none of which can be predicated of God. His tolerance, in the wake of our primal defiance and disobedience, would be only the shabbiest character defect in him.
Israel always knew this. To the prophet Amos God said, “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.” (Amos 9:7) A plumb line is used in house construction to expose deviations from the upright. The house of Israel was found deviant. And the result? When the plumb line is spoken of in 2 Kings 21 the conclusion is stark: “Says the Lord, ‘I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.” It’s over! “I want you not to be.”
II: — Yet to another prophet, Hosea this time, God spoke as anguish-riddled a word as we shall ever overhear in scripture: “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?…My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.” (Hosea 11:8-9) Not even the destroyer will come to destroy. Then what will he come to do, given his recoiling heart and tender compassion? He will come to save. “For God so loved the world”, is how the apostle John speaks of this truth. “World”, in John’s vocabulary, doesn’t mean what it means in the Oxford English Dictionary; “world” for John is the sum total of men and women who blindly yet culpably disdain their vocation of reflecting back to God the love in which he created us. The “world” is the sum total of men and women who slander God’s goodness and slight his patience and scorn his blessing and ridicule his truth and laugh at his judgements even as they lecture him, “Don’t tell us what to be; we’ll decide for ourselves what we’re going to be. We forge our own identity, and our identity has nothing to do with you.” And then with a love that will forever remain incomprehensible God so loves such ungrateful rebels that he will submit himself to the humiliation of a stable and the horror of a cross. Plainly he’s saying, once more, “I want you to be.”
But there’s a difference this time. On the day of our creation God loved into existence the glorious creature that he had conceived in his own image and likeness. So glorious were we as we emerged from God’s own hand that we mirrored his glory. It was grand, then, when he said to us, “I want you to be.” In the wake of our rebellion and subsequent disfigurement, however, when his image is defaced in us and shame attends us and we are as loathsome as we formerly were resplendent, his loving us now isn’t akin to Adam’s loving Eve on the day of their primal splendour; God’s loving us now is akin to Hosea’s loving his wife when Hosea found her, now a prostitute with three illegitimate children, shamed and disgraced and valued commercially at 15 shekels, half the price of a slave. It is for broken down creatures like this that God now breaks his own heart. “How can I give you up? How can I give you up when I want you to be?”
The love with which God created us appears to have cost him nothing; but the love with which God so loved the world manifestly cost him everything. Christmas clearly cost God everything, for the sole purpose of Christmas is the Christmas gift crucified. John Calvin was fond of saying that the shadow of the cross fell upon the entire earthly life of Jesus. And so it did. The shadow of the cross fell even upon his birth. His birth? Even upon his conception, for on the day that Mary learned she was pregnant she was told, “a sword will pierce through your heart too.” (Luke 2:35) It appears not to have cost God anything to have us come forth in primal splendour. But to have us be born anew, to have us made afresh, to have us be, at last, what we were always supposed to be; this entailed that child, born for us, who from the moment of conception gathered into himself the eventuality of the cross. Christmas, therefore, costs God everything.
III: — “God is love.”(1st John 4:8) It means, “I want you to be, be those made in my image whose love for me reflects my love for them.”
“God so loved the world.”(John 3:16) It means, “I still want you to be, even though you are a disgrace to me and disfigured in yourselves; I still want you to be those whose love for me reflects my love for them, regardless of what anguish I must suffer in the person of the cruciform child of Christmas.”
“He loved me, and gave himself – for me! (Gal. 2:20) Listen to the apostle Paul exult. “He loved me!” If love means “I want you to be”, then “He loved me!” can only mean, “I am. At last I truly am. I’m finally alive.” Is this the same as mere existence? If love means “I want you to be”, could we ever substitute, “I want you to exist”? Never! “He loved me!” will never mean, “I exist.” It will always mean, “I am! I truly am! I’m profoundly alive!”
“He loved me!” But didn’t God so love the world? Of course he did, and Paul knows he did. Then why the exclamation, “He loved me!”? It’s because the purpose of the Christmas gift has been fulfilled; fulfilled in this one man at least. The purpose of God’s so loving the world is to have this individual and that individual and yet another come to be: come to abandon herself to the one whose love incarnate for her has brought her to spend the rest of her days in love for him. Yes, God did so love the world; but only the individual can respond. “He loved me!” is precisely the cry of someone who has responded. And in such an individual the Christmas gift has proved fruitful.
We can’t help noticing that when the cry, “He loved me!”, was torn out of the apostle, it wasn’t merely that one matter was settled (he thereafter knew himself loved); ever so much more was settled. In fact, everything was settled. Thereafter he never groped and guessed as to what life means. He never hemmed and hawed, wondering what he was supposed to do with his life. He never drowned in doubt over the significance of his toil and his suffering. He knew what life means, knew what he was to do, knew the significance of his toil and suffering even if those for whom he toiled and suffered didn’t know. And his future? “Life means Christ”, Paul told the Christians in Philippi, “and my dying can only mean more of him.”
Let’s come back to one question Paul never asked. In the wake of “He loved me!” he never asked, “What’s the meaning of life?” He didn’t have to ask it. He wasn’t puzzled. The Christmas gift ends bewilderment here. The Christmas gift embraced restores us to that immediacy and intimacy we crave in our hearts. The Christmas gift cherished finds us no longer asking about the meaning of life, but not because we now have a 10,000 -word answer complete with footnotes. The Christmas gift, rather, has brought us to live in a love to God that reflects the love he has always had for us. Living in such love, in the immediacy and intimacy and contentment of such love, we need neither arguments nor explanations nor demonstrations. When the writer of Proverbs records, “He who finds me finds life!” (Prov. 18:35) we shout, “’Tis true!” When the prophet Amos records, “Seek me and live!” (Amos 5:4), we exult, “Yes!” When the prophet Ezekiel records, “Turn [repent] and live!” (Ez. 18:3), those who have turned to face God simply know it’s true. No longer are we expecting only the detachment of an abstract idea; now we glory in the immediacy of a concrete encounter. “What does life mean?” Those who have embraced the Christmas gift and henceforth resonate the Son’s love for the Father aren’t left asking the question. Those, on the other hand, who are impelled to ask the question are also unable to recognise the answer.
Forever unable? Of course not. Phillips Brooks, author of O Little Town of Bethlehem, writes, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.” The gift is wondrous; that is, it transcends human comprehension. It is given “silently”; that is, the manner of its impartation is a mystery. Because the gift transcends human comprehension, and because the manner of its impartation is a mystery, you and I are ultimately speechless before the secret work of the Holy Spirit that prepares anyone’s heart for the blessings of heaven. We can’t describe or explain the secret work of the Holy Spirit that moves the person who is incapable of recognising the answer to no longer needing to ask the question. But that there is such a work of God’s Spirit, and that such a work we can’t measure or control or describe or explain; this we never doubt. And therefore we give up on no one; we dismiss no one. Instead we pray, and continue to pray, then pray some more, knowing that in the mystery of God’s secret work “where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in.” And where Christ enters in someone has come to be. Where Christ enters in the purpose of the incarnation is fulfilled. And the love wherewith that person was created and redeemed is now reflected in her love for our great God and Saviour, who is rightly said himself to be, to be eternally, even as he guarantees as much for all who hold – and hold on to – the infant born in Bethlehem.
Victor Shepherd
Christmas Eve 2002
Son of God, Son of Mary, Son of David
Do you remember when you were a child and you couldn’t wait until Christmas? My sisters and I counted the days. By Christmas Eve we were beside ourselves. On Christmas morning when our parents finally gave us permission to get up, we children were down the stairs like the Kentucky Derby field leaving the starting gate.
There is a man, an old man now, whose anticipation of Christmas is as fresh as a child’s. What excites this old man isn’t the store-bought present wrapped in shiny paper; it’s the manger-born child wrapped in diapers. The old man’s name is Martin Luther. His Christmas exuberance is child-like. No one in the church catholic glories in Christmas in quite the way that Luther does.
There is good reason for this. Luther was no armchair spectator. He was immersed in life. Life had whirled him up into ceaseless turbulence and conflict. He was also immersed in Jesus Christ. And Christ was that luminosity which loomed before him and seized him and leant him righteousness and resilience; a righteousness and resilience that allowed him to resist the deadly forces which otherwise spewed destruction wherever one looked. When Luther spoke of temptation he didn’t mean titillating notions that lingered in one’s head like a catchy tune; he meant something so visceral, so gut-wrenching that even the strongest person shook. When Luther spoke of love, he didn’t mean benign sentiment; he meant the most passionate, self-forgetful self-giving. When Luther spoke of evil, he knew first-hand a horror as grotesque as it was terrible. Many people who are daintier than they should be are put off by Luther’s earthy language. They find it shocking. Do you know what he found shocking? – people who are so naive, so superficial, so clueless that they fail to understand that the world swarms and seethes and heaves. Luther knew that the world is the venue of a cosmic conflict which surges round and about, claiming victims here and there, while from time-to-time the front of this cosmic conflict passes right through your heart and mine. When it does, only the earthiest language is adequate.
Everyone knows what Luther said at the famous confrontation in the city of Worms , 1521. “Here I stand. I can do no other. I cannot and will not recant. God help me.” But few people are aware that he said this not in a spirit of petulant intransigence or puffed-up arrogance. He said this in anguish – anguish for many reasons, not the least of which was this: from that moment until the day he died, twenty-five years later, there was a price on his head. Even fewer people know what his opponent, Emperor Charles V, vowed in the face of Luther’s stand: “I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther: my kingdom, my dominions, my friends, my body, my blood, my soul.” In other words, the opposition Luther would face for the rest of his life was total, relentless, and lethal. And we find his vocabulary exaggerated and his delight in the Christmas gift childish? We should know what he knew: the world is a turbulent and treacherous place for any Christian in any era.
Creatures of modernity like you and me think we live in an ideational world. If we pass a motion at a meeting, we assume that a problem has been dealt with. If the House of Commons passes new legislation, we assume that injustice has been rectified. We assume that to discuss a social problem dispels the problem. We mull over different philosophies and compare them with “Christianity.” Luther didn’t speak of “Christianity;” he was possessed by the Christmas babe himself. He didn’t finesse theories of evil; he was confronted with powers of darkness so intense and so penetrating that either he looked to the One who is indeed victor or he unravelled.
I understand why Luther delighted in Christmas, why he looked forward to December 25th with a child’s tremulous longing. Then what is it about the manger-gift that sustained the Wittenberger then and sustains us now?
I: — First, he who adorns the manger is the Son of God. “Son of” in biblical parlance means “of the same nature as”. To behold the child who is Son of God is to behold the nature of God; or at least as much as can be beheld. Luther didn’t dispute the truth that God is magnificent, mighty, (almighty, in fact); God is resplendent, glorious, incomparably so. Luther never disputed this. He also said that we never see it. The God whose majesty is indescribable is hidden from us. But Christmas celebrates not God hidden but God revealed. And God revealed appears in the world as we are in the world: weak, vulnerable, suffering, bleeding.
The Nicene Creed says that “for us and our salvation the Son of God came down from heaven…” Came down? Yes. A condescension. Came down. Self-abasement. Humility? Certainly. Yet more than humility: humiliation. There’s a difference.
It is wonderful that God humbled himself for our sakes; wonderful that he didn’t confine himself to his splendour but accommodated himself to us his creatures. Yet immeasurably more wonderful is it that for our sakes he knew not merely humility, but even humiliation. We read in the gospels that the detractors of Jesus hissed that our Lord was illegitimate. “Why should we heed — or even hear — a bastard like you?” they taunted contemptuously. When he died, the same people quoted the book of Deuteronomy: “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree.” “That proves it!” the head-waggers chattered knowingly, “We were right to shun him. He was cursed by God all along. What insight we had from the start!” Humiliation? Crucifixion was a Roman penalty reserved for those deemed scum: military deserters, terrorists and rapists. Jesus is lumped in with that crowd.
Then there’s the cry of dereliction, “Why have you forsaken me?” It’s the most anguish-ridden cry that Jesus ever uttered. Yet since the Father and the Son are of the same nature, the cry of the Son’s dereliction is simultaneously the cry of the Father himself. It’s the cry of someone who has voluntarily undergone enormous wounding for the sake of those he holds dear. The cry of dereliction is really the cry of God himself over the pain of his torn heart, suffered for the sake of us whom he plainly loves more than he loves himself.
Not the hidden God (splendid, magnificent, majestic) but the revealed God (suffering, humbled, humiliated, slain;) only the revealed God can help us, said Luther. For only the revealed God has identified fully, identified himself wholly with the grief and guilt, turbulence and turpitude, conflict and slander and suffering that surround my life and yours. Only this God is of any help to us.
Luther used to say that the most comforting words in all of scripture are the six words – what do you think the six most comforting words are? – of the preface to the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God.” If we really understood these six words, he said, we should be invincible. And who is the Lord our God? The God of manger and cross who will go to any length to seize, save and secure those whom he has named his own.
II: — Yet there is more to the manger-gift. Not only is he Son of God, he is also son of Mary. Jesus isn’t apparently human or seemingly human but actually human, fully human. “Tempted at all points as we are”, is the way the NT speaks of him. The one Greek word, PEIRAZEIN, means tempted, tested and tried all at once. Tempted, tested and tried like us but with this difference: he was never deflected in his human obedience, trust and love for his Father. He didn’t capitulate in the face of either the tempter’s threats or the tempter’s seductions.
Let’s talk about temptation for a minute. We modern types always assume that temptation is primarily temptation to do something wrong, temptation to commit a misdemeanour, temptation to contradict a code. But in scripture temptation is primarily temptation to deny the goodness of God. First we deny the goodness of God; next we deny the goodness of God’s claim upon our obedience (his claim upon our obedience, is of course our blessing;) finally we spurn the claim and disobey him – as we violate him and thereby violate ourselves. It’s not that we have done something wrong; rather, we have cast aspersion on the goodness of God and the goodness of his claim; the bottom line is that we have violated our relationship with God even as we have violated our very own person. It’s no wonder the Anglican Prayer Book reminds us, “And there is no health in us.”
He who is the son of Mary has been given to us as the one human being who doesn’t succumb to temptation; the one human being whose obedience to his Father is uncompromised, whose trust in his Father is undeflected, whose love for his Father is unrivalled by any other attachment. Then by faith I must cling to the Son of Mary, because my obedience is compromised a dozen times per day; my trust is fitful, and my love for God is forever being distracted by lesser attachments. The human response to God that I should make and even want to make has been corrupted, since I am a creature of the Fall.
Then of myself I can never render God the obedience and trust and love which befit the child of God. Nevertheless, there is provision for me: I can identify myself with the one whose human relationship to his Father is everything that mine isn’t. In faith I can cling gratefully to the son of Mary.
In the last few years family-therapists have come to appreciate the damage sustained by adults who came from what are called “shame-bound families.” We’re speaking now of the adult whose childhood unfolded in a family where the all-consuming preoccupation was the deep, dark family-secret that had to be kept secret. If the secret were told, public shame would spill over the family. Therefore any number of lies, evasions, and smokescreens were invented to cover up whoever it was in the family, whatever it was in the family, that threatened the family’s artificial reputation. The adult child of the shame-bound family now finds herself guilt-ridden, fearful, inhibited.
To belong to the family of God is to be relieved of being shame-bound. In the Son of God God has identified himself with me completely; all that is or might be shameful about me God has taken on and absorbed himself. In the Son of Mary, on the other hand, I have identified myself with the man Jesus. Whatever is genuinely shameful about me is taken up into the righteous humanness of Jesus himself. In his humanness he is the one with whom the Father is well-pleased. In faith, then, I cling to him, and in him my shame is bleached and blotted out.
III: — Lastly, the manger-gift is also the son of David. When people hailed Jesus as the son of David they were recognizing him as the Messiah. David had been Israel ’s greatest king, despite his undeniable feet of clay. David had valiantly tried to redress the injustices that pock-marked the nation. David was a harbinger, a precursor of the day when the just judge of the earth would no longer be defied and a topsy-turvy world would finally be righted.
Make no mistake. The world is topsy-turvy. A man who fails to hit a baseball seven times out of ten is guaranteed ten million dollars per year for the next five years. Meanwhile homemakers are selling daffodils on street corners because cancer patients needing treatment have been told that there’s a six-month waiting list for the equipment. The public education budget increases every year – and so does the incidence of illiteracy. Please note: concerning illiteracy Canada has surpassed both the United States and Italy . Canada is now, per capita, the most illiterate nation of the west – and all of this despite unprecedented billions spent on public education.
Anyone who struggles, like King David of old, to redress the injustices of the world learns quickly how frustrating, absurd and heartbreaking the struggle can be. A friend of mine who administers a facility for battered women was invited to duplicate the facility in another municipality, simply because of that municipality’s need. (In other words, wife-beating shows no signs of going out of style.) The institution she represents was offered free land by a developer. She spoke to municipal civil servants as well as to elected representatives. They promised to support her. When a public discussion was called concerning the project, however, both municipal staff and elected representatives sniffed the political wind-direction and turned on her. They didn’t merely withdraw the support they had promised; they faked surprise, as though they were hearing her for the first time, and then they denounced her, as though what she proposed (a facility for battered women) were antisocial and irresponsible and even patently ridiculous. (You see, a facility for battered women attracts creepy males as surely as a garbage dump attracts rats – so she was told.) I saw my friend two days after the event. She was still punch-drunk. She was shocked at the betrayal, the savagery, the greasy opportunism of it all. Luther wasn’t shocked at this. He was shocked at ignorant, fastidious people found his language shocking when he tried to address it.
The whole world cries out for the son of David, however inarticulately or unknowingly, just because the world cannot correct itself. As a matter of fact, the world is not getting better and better, however slowly. Then is hopelessness the only sensible attitude to have? Not for a minute. The manger-gift is the son of David, the Messiah promised of old, the royal ruler who will right the capsized world on that Day when he fashions a world in which righteousness dwells.
Then you and I must never capitulate to hopelessness. Neither do we disillusion ourselves with naiveness. Instead we faithfully, patiently, do whatever we can in anticipation of that Day when justice is done. And if what we do in anticipating this Day plunges us into even greater conflict for now, then our friend Luther will smile at us and say, “I could have told you that; I always knew that the appearance of Jesus Christ provokes conflict.” And at such a time we shall have to find our comfort and cheer in that manger-gift, the child of Bethlehem , who made Luther’s eyes light up like a child’s on Christmas morning.
He who has been given to us is the Son of God, the son of Mary, and the son of David.
As the Son of God he is God humbling himself, even humiliating himself in seeking to save us.
As the son of Mary he renders the Father the proper human response that we should make but can’t, and therefore we must cling to him in faith.
As the son of David he is the long-promised Messiah who guarantees us a righted world in which righteousness will one day be seen to dwell.
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent II 7th December 2008
Church of St Bride, Anglican, Mississauga
Of Eden and Advent
Luke 1:46-55
Genesis 3
I: Why is there unrelenting tension between men and women? Women feel set upon by men, victimized, violated even. In the wake of the feminist protest men feel misunderstood, maligned, even conspired against.
Why is the struggle for survival just that, a struggle? We wouldn’t mind working hard if we knew that fruitfulness followed our work as surely as night follows day. But whether we are farmers or physicians, office-workers or educators, something is always going wrong; we are never clear of frustration; we are forever having to scramble and scrabble.
Why is it that mere difference between groups of people becomes the occasion of lethal hostility? As slight a difference as the difference between brown skin and white skin and black skin shouldn’t precipitate mayhem and murder. But it does!
Why are we profoundly discontented ourselves? We thought that the new house would make us happy — and it did, for three weeks or so. The new car lifted our spirits — until our neighbour drove up with a costlier car.
Why is it that humankind never advances? To be sure, we make progress in the realm of science; that is, we progress insofar as we harness nature. But humankind itself makes no progress at all. Our foreparents sinned and suffered and slew; we sin and suffer and slay. History, we have learned, is the history of warfare. Having learned this, however, we still are powerless to do anything about it.
Why is it that everyone blames everyone else for what’s wrong? The socialist blames the stony-hearted capitalist with his exploitative greed. The capitalist blames the masses with their pleasure-loving shortsightedness and their irresponsible undependability. Everyone points the finger and says, “It’s your fault!”
Our foreparents contended with bubonic plague; then with smallpox; then with tuberculosis. Now we contend with aids and its social aftermath. Is humankind on a treadmill?
Here is my last question, a different question. Why is the gospel “good news”? Wherein is it good news? If it’s genuinely good, it has to be more than news, because the last thing we need is more words. If it is genuinely good, then it has to be a new reality.
II: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Today we begin looking ahead to the birth of him whom St.John describes as “the remedy for the defilement of our sins.” In order to understand our defilement — its nature, its scope, its inescapability — we must go back to the old, old story of the Fall.
Adam and Eve — “humankind” and “mother of the living” is what their names mean respectively. This story is a parable of every man and every woman.
In this profound saga God has placed Adam and Eve in a garden; Eden, it is called, the Hebrew word for “delight”. Life is blessed here. Everything they need to nourish themselves is ready-to-hand. God’s provision attests his goodness, kindness, helpfulness. There is one thing, however, which they are to avoid. They must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now “good and evil” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “everything you can think of; the sum total of human possibilities.” Imagine yourself doing anything at all; I mean anything. The sum total of these “anythings at all” is what the Hebrew mind means by “good and evil”.n Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for one reason: God loves them, God blesses them, God protects them. Among these “anythings at all” which we imagine ourselves doing; among these are a great many which do not bless: they curse us. Among these are many which do not enrich us; they impoverish us. Many do not protect us; they expose us to influences and powers which are ultimately fatal.
A physician-friend of mine dropped over to see me one evening. He asked me if I knew what the single largest threat to public health was in the world today. I didn’t. He told me: promiscuity. Then we talked about “crack”. The first wave of crack-babies has entered school. Already it is incontrovertible that these children have attention spans so short that they are not going to learn anything; they bristle with the ugliest hostility, and they are unable to form any conscience at all. Does anyone still doubt that there are some “anythings at all” which really are ruinous? The two I have mentioned are dramatic and glaring. There are other “anythings at all” which are far more subtle; discernment is needed to recognize them. Yet discern we should, since in eden, Eden, God wants only to protect us and bless us.
In our ancient story (as relevant, of course as today’s newspaper which confirms it one hundred times over) temptation is personified by a talking snake. (Don’t laugh; even fairy tales are always profound.) Temptation personified says softly, “Now about this tree whose fruit you are not to eat; did God really say you were not to eat it? Did he really say that?” In other words, temptation casts doubt on the command of God. And since God loves us, to cast doubt on the command of God is to cast aspersion on the love of God and the goodness of God. At this point all of us are whispering to ourselves, “God didn’t say it; or if he did, he had no business saying it; he must be a spoilsport; he is certainly arbitrary.” First we doubt the goodness of God’s command; then we deny that violating it will turn blessing into curse.
In our old story the woman replies to the serpent, “God says that we aren’t to eat of this tree; furthermore, he said we aren’t even to touch it.” She is lying! She exaggerates. As soon as she exaggerates she lies! God never said they weren’t to touch it. She is making this up herself. First, doubt of the goodness of the command of God; second, denial that violating it (violating God himself) turns blessing into curse; third, inventing a law of life for ourselves. We make ourselves lawgivers; we decide by what code we should live. The living voice of the living God isn’t heard at all now, because we are telling ourselves what we think renders life blessed.
The serpent has all of us on the slippery slopes now. The serpent says, “I’m aware that God said you would die; that is, be estranged from God himself, with horrible consequences — I’m aware that God said you would die if you extended your lives into those “anythings at all” which he says are ruinous. But what does he know? You won’t die! Just the opposite! You will be exalted. Your consciousness will be altered. Your mood will be elevated. Life will be beautiful. You will be freed up as never before. Your self-awareness will be expanded until you feel you are the centre of the universe. Your self-confidence will be inflated until you feel there is nothing you can’t succeed at. You will have a perspective on life that you have never had before — the same perspective as that of God himself.”
Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Yada”, the Hebrew verb to know, doesn’t have the force of “to acquire information”. We modern folk assume that to know something is to have information about that thing. To know automobiles is to have information about horsepower and wheel bases. But for our Hebrew foreparents to know always has the force of personal acquaintance with a reality. To know sorrow is to be personally acquainted with grief. To know pain is to be in pain. To know God is to be personally acquainted with God himself. Not to know God is to thrust off God himself; to repudiate him and spurn his goodness and his protection and his blessing. Not to know God, therefore, is to know ‘good and evil’. It is to have personal acquaintance, intimate acquaintance with that reality which impoverishes life, curses it, and ultimately destroys it.
AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE! We are — every one of us — profoundly alienated from God, hauntingly alienated, fatally alienated.
III: — And then the question which God puts to Adam, to everyone: “Where are you?” Well, where are you? Where am I? Speaking for all of us Adam says to God, “I’m hiding from you.” How silly! As if anyone could hide from God! Adam is now as ridiculous as the four year old playing hide ‘n’ seek who thinks that because she regards herself hidden away no one else can see her or find her.
To be a fallen human being (which all of us are) is to flee God, flee into hiding, ridiculously thinking that we can hide from God. Our situation fails to be humorous simply because it is tragic. After all, life is not a game. We have said to God, “We don’t want you.” And God has said to us, “You don’t have to have me. But then neither do you have to have my goodness, my protection, my blessing. To do without me — your preference! — is to be stuck with the consequences of doing without me.”
There is something we must understand clearly. To thrust away the only righteous ruler of the earth is to be stuck with manifold unrighteousness and its spinoffs. To cast aspersion on the goodness of God is to wade around in wickedness. To disdain God’s protection is to be defenceless against exploitative evil. To assume that God’s wisdom can be improved upon is to be poisoned with the unwisdom of folly. In a word, to forfeit blessing is to be stuck with curse. AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE!
“But can’t we go back to Eden?”, someone asks with more than a hint of desperation. Many attempts are made. All utopias are an attempt at recovering Eden. All such attempts are going to fail. Marxism was such an attempt. Its failure is writ large. Every pronouncement that men and women are only the product of their environment reflects another attempt. Rousseau’s notion of the “noble savage” — that primitive peoples were somehow intrinsically virtuous and were corrupted only by civilization — another attempt. Anyone who disagrees with Jeremiah — “The heart of many is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt” — anyone who thinks that Jeremiah exaggerates assumes that Eden can be recovered. In our ancient story an angel with a flaming sword bars the way to the tree of life in the garden. We can’t go back and seize the tree of life ourselves and undo the deadly curse we have brought down on ourselves. We cannot resurrect ourselves. We cannot restore ourselves. The flaming sword which turns every which way in the hand of the angel fends off any and all who are so naive and foolish as to think that they or their scheme can undo the Fall and its consequences. Eden cannot be recovered. Looking back is pointless just because going back is impossible.
IV: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is the season of longing, of waiting, of expectancy. What are we longing for? We long for Eden. Not everyone uses this vocabulary. Most people long for they know not what. In truth, nonetheless, they long for Eden. What are they waiting for? They are waiting for someone who can undo Eden’s curse. Why the expectancy? Because deep down they want to be delivered from the dis-ease which keeps gnawing at them. They are mature enough to realize that the grab-bag of grown-up trinkets and toys does nothing to the halt the dis-ease which haunts them. But since there is no return to Eden the entire world must be doomed to unending frustration.
Not so! Advent reminds us that we are not to look back, but ahead. In Advent we stand on tiptoe anticipating the very blessing which we cannot give ourselves. In Advent we await Christmas as eagerly as the youngster awaits opening the first gift. THE gift of Christmas for us all, of course, is that new addition to the human family which is more than an addition; the gift is he himself who is both humanity renewed and lord of the renewed humanity.
Advent recalls another woman speaking. Not Eve rationalizing her capitulation to temptation; this time it’s Mary exulting in her service to the world. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour… henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Generations to come will call her blessed, for in her child what we have lost and cannot recover ourselves God has given us just because in his mercy he will suffer anything himself to save us from our self-inflicted misery.
Adam and Eve succumbed to the blandishments of the tempter. But the Christmas child, grown up, will resist the tempter in the wilderness, resist throughout his ministry, resist again in another garden (Gethsemane, this time), resist finally on the cross when mockers tell him he might as well unhook himself since he is not doing any good in any case.
In the garden of Eden we were barred from storming the tree of life in an effort to save ourselves. We are not allowed to arrogate to ourselves what rightly belongs to God alone. Yet by God’s mercy there is another tree. Concerning this tree no angel with flaming sword bars us access. Instead access is guaranteed us and the invitation is sounded continuously: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” What hangs from this tree we are urged to taste and so to see for ourselves that God is good indeed.
The apostles discerned that in Jesus Christ we were given not only that saviour whom we need individually. With him we are introduced to a new world. In other words, our Lord brings a renewed creation with him. All who cling to him in faith find their renewed life unfolding in a new world, a new environment.
For this reason Paul says that in Christ there is neither male nor female. He doesn’t mean that gender-distinction is eliminated in a unisex muddle. He means that gender-distinction is preserved and enriched just because gender-hostility is overcome. In Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile. He doesn’t mean that the distinction is eliminated. (Paul was always aware that the gentile world never lets Jews forget that they are Jews; he was also aware that God requires Jews not to forget that they are Jews. He insists that in Christ (and in Christ alone is what he means) the deepest-grained hostility anywhere in the world — the hostility between Jew and non-Jew — is overcome. And if this hostility is overcome in Christ, any hostility is as well. What other instances of renewed life in a renewed world can you share with the rest of us?
A few minutes ago we saw that to do without God, to want to do without God, is to do without God’s blessing and therefore live under curse. But in the One who is God incarnate there is blessing only. How could there be anything else? And therefore in his company that disease which can neither be named nor denied is eclipsed by gratitude for him whose name we now know, whose name, Yehoshuah, means “God saves”, and whom we have no wish to deny.
In Christ our dust-to dust exile is overarched by the promise of resurrection: our destiny is not death, decomposition of body and dissolution of personhood. Our destiny is eternal life at God’s own hand.
The last question I left with you in introduction of the sermon was, “Why is the gospel good news?” It’s good news not in the sense that it is up-to-the-minute information (like Barbara Frum’s broadcast.) It is good news just because it announces a new reality so winsome as to breathe its own invitation.
In Advent we don’t look back in nostalgia and regret; we look ahead in eagerness and confidence. For there is given to us the one whom all humankind craves, whom Christians know to be Jesus the Christ, and who caused Mary’s heart to sing, even as he will make our hearts sing for ever and ever.
F I N I S
Victor Shepherd
Of Mothers and Sons
1 Samuel 1: 12-20
Galatians 4:4-7
Matthew 1:18-25
There are some expressions of human suffering so terrible that the pulpit can mention them only with fear and trembling, in view of the fact that sitting in the pew are those who are suffering the anguish under discussion. One such anguish is childlessness. I have been a pastor now for 32 years, and I have concluded that there is no anguish like the anguish of childlessness.
If it is less than wise for me to discuss this publicly, what I am going to say next is even more foolish, since it may be pilloried as sexist. I think that while it is husband and wife together who are childless, women suffer more, and suffer in a way that is difficult for men to understand. When Hannah was tormented by her childlessness her husband, Elkanah, no doubt heartbroken himself over their infertility, no doubt near-frantic at his wife’s inconsolability, and no doubt clueless as to what to say next; Elkanah finally blurted out, “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam. 1:8) No, he wasn’t more to Hannah than ten children. He was her husband; she was his wife. But she wasn’t anyone’s mother. Wife is categorically different from mother! Elkanah was her husband; he couldn’t be more to her than ten children; he couldn’t even be more to her than one child.
Today, in this Advent season, we are going to look at four childless women — and at four children (sons) whom the world will never forget, as it will never forget their mothers.
I: — The first we shall look at is Sarah. She was to be the foremother of all God’s people. God had promised her and her husband, Abraham, descendants as numberless as the sands on the seashore. Before there can be numberless descendants, however, there has to be one; yet Sarah was childless. It’s difficult to believe in God’s promises, isn’t it, to keep on believing year after year!
Then Sarah was told she would conceive. She laughed. Being told, at her age, that she would conceive was as ludicrous as my being told that I am going to be the next middleweight boxing champion of the world. Laughter befits the ludicrous.
But Sarah did conceive, and gave birth to Isaac, the Hebrew word for “laughter”. Now it was easy to believe in the promises of God.
Or was it? For the day came all too soon when her faith in the promise-keeping God was tested. Her husband was told to offer up their son Isaac as a sacrifice to God; Isaac, their son, their only son.
Their dilemma was this. God had promised numberless descendants within the household of faith, generation after generation. Two things were needed for the fulfilment of the promise concerning the household of faith: people who were descended from Abraham and Sarah, and people of faith who were descended from Abraham and Sarah. If Ab. and S. obeyed God and offered up Isaac, then their faith was intact but their descendants were snuffed out. On the other hand, if they second-guessed God and preserved Isaac, then descendants were guaranteed (biological descendants), but in their second-guessing and disobeying God faith was snuffed out — with the result, of course, that there would be no descendants of faith.
In other words, if they obeyed God in faith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant. If, on the other hand, they disobeyed God in unfaith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant of faith. Regardless of what they did, the promise was null and void — when all the while they had been called to faith in the promise-keeping God. So what were they to do?
With unspeakable anguish of heart they elected to obey God and trust him to keep his promise to them even though they couldn’t see how God was ever going to keep his promise! Rather than second-guess God and try to sort out for him what he couldn’t seem to sort out for himself, they elected to trust God and trust him to sort out for them what they couldn’t sort out for themselves. And so with breaking hearts they trudged up Mount Moriah, knife in hand, determined to trust God to fulfil his own promise in ways beyond their imagining — only to find that a ram had been provided for the sacrifice.
God has made many promises to us. One is that the powers of death will not prevail against the church. But right now the powers of death seem to be prevailing against the church. So what are we going to do? We can trust God to keep his promise, in ways that we can’t see at this moment; or we can second-guess him. We can continue to hold up the gospel, even though it is steadfast allegiance to the gospel-message that seems to keep contemporary secularites out of the church, or we can develop a new message, a new attraction, new entertainment, new gimmicks — all of which we hope will keep people here even as the gospel has long since gone. So what are we going to do?
Ten times per year I am asked why I won’t approve of raffles or other games of chance for church fundraising. Wouldn’t a raffle bring in truckloads of money? (And everyone knows it takes truckloads of money to maintain any congregation.) Wouldn’t a raffle get us past our chronic financial squeeze and let us concentrate on other matters? Concentrate on what other matters? Certainly not on the gospel, because by the time we got around to the raffle the gospel would have been long given up. What answer would Sarah give to us, even as she wept over Isaac?
A friend of mine, a pastor in Montreal, “locked horns” with his congregation (the conflict ended in his dismissal) over the Sunday morning prayer of confession; confession of sin. They told him they didn’t believe they were sinners; at least they weren’t sinners in the real sense of the term. Furthermore, in an era of declining turn-outs on Sunday morning they needed to attract upwardly mobile young couples. How were they ever going to do this as long as the pastor told “wannabe” social climbers every Sunday that they were sinners? What would Sarah say to all this? We know. She was willing to give up the son she had awaited for decades.
Sarah trusted God to keep the promises he had made, even though she couldn’t see, at this minute, how it was all going to work out. Sarah trusted.
II: — Hannah longed for a child so ardently and prayed so intently and wailed so incoherently before God that her clergyman, Eli, thought she was drunk. “Put away the bottle!”, Eli rebuked her. “I’m not drunk”, Hannah had said, “I’m troubled; I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord.”
And then it happened. A child. Samuel. “Samuel” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “His name is God.” What an unusual name to call a child! But before Samuel was born Hannah had consecrated him to God. She didn’t give him up to death as Sarah had done before her; nevertheless in the profoundest sense Hannah gave up her son unconditionally to the service of God. “As long as my son lives”, Hannah had cried, “he is lent to the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:28)
Samuel became a prophet, one of those uncompromising truth-tellers who made politicians and rulers wince when the truth was made public. Samuel anointed Saul the first king of Israel. Upon witnessing Saul’s disobedience, however, Samuel deposed Saul and anointed David king. Plainly Samuel wasn’t one to waste time.
Samuel grew up in the town of Ramah and lived in Ramah for the rest of his life. “Rama” has a familiar ring these days. Rama is a town near Orillia; Rama is one more site of the provincial government’s protracted disgrace: casino gambling. What do you think Samuel would say if he were to visit the Rama casino? What do you think he would have said (or done) if he had gone to Casino Rama on opening day several summers ago when the parking lot was crammed with milling children, neglected, while their parents (chiefly single moms), were inside squandering the money they keep telling us they don’t have? What would Samuel have done when the public address speakers kept pleading with mothers to go to the parking lot and take charge of their children — all to no avail?
The province of Ontario will sell anyone a return GO-rail ticket (Toronto-Rama return) for only $29.95. Plainly the ticket is heavily subsidized. The government (the tax-payer) subsidizes the poorest people in our society to squander their money on a set-up rigged in favour of returning six billion dollars per year to the provincial governments of Canada. The day the Ontario government introduced state-sponsored casino gambling (Windsor) it eliminated all funding to psychiatric programs for gambling addicts.
What do you think Samuel would have done? King Saul had cozied up to a foreign king who was tormenting God’s people in Israel of old. King Saul had kept the best of this foreign king’s livestock in order to enrich himself even though he had been told he must not profit from the foreign ruler who had brutalized God’s people. Samuel had come upon Saul at that time and had said, “For personal gain you have cozied up to the fellow who tormented your people? You aren’t fit to be king, Saul, and as of today you are deposed.” And then Samuel had slain the foreign king, Agag.
So what would Samuel do in Rama today? We can only guess. But we needn’t guess in one respect. We know for sure that Samuel, distraught at the spiritual declension in his people, would have pleaded with God until the sweat poured off him as it was to pour off Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Samuel would have pleaded with God concerning a government so conscienceless and a people so stupid and a greed so shameless. A heartbroken Samuel would have pleaded until he was hoarse. To be sure, Samuel had deposed Saul and slain Agag; but this wasn’t the sort of thing Samuel did every day. Then what did Samuel do every day? He had a reputation for being a tireless intercessor. He would have interceded with God for his people every day. When he looked out over the broken-down, soft-headed, hard-hearted people of Israel, meandering like sheep without a shepherd and following whoever was making the biggest noise, Samuel cried to the people, “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” (1 Sam. 12:23) A fierce prophet in public, in private Samuel was the intercessor whose tear-runnelled cheeks told everyone what he was doing when no one was around to see him doing it.
III: — Elizabeth and Zechariah had been childless for years. Then they learned they were to have a child: “Yo-chan”, “gift of God”. Their child would be a prophet; not any prophet, but a prophet “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, Luke records.
Elijah wasn’t merely Israel’s greatest prophet; Elijah was the end-time prophet. Elijah was to come back when the Messiah was at the door. Elijah was to prepare the people to meet the Messiah.
Jesus himself insisted that John the Baptist was Elijah all over again. John had been sent to prepare the people for Jesus.
What was the preparation? What is it, since John still prepares people to receive the gift of Christmas?
(i) “You’ve got to make a U-turn in your life”, thundered John, and so we must. And we had better be sincere. If our “repentance”, so-called, is nothing more than a calculation designed to get us “fire insurance”; in other words, if our “repentance” is just one more expression of our endless self-interest; if it is anything other than horror at our sin and anything less than a repudiation of it, John will say to us what he said to the fire-insurance phonies of his day: “You nest of snakes, you slithering creeps; you are revolting. Get serious while there’s time to get serious.”
(ii) The second item in John’s agenda of preparation: “Put your life in order. If you are truly repentant inwardly, your life must display integrity outwardly”. Those whose occupations give them social clout (like police officers and military personnel) must stop brutalizing people; those whose occupations give them access to large sums of money (like accountants and bankers) must stop lining their pockets; those who hoard money and ignore the human suffering around them had better open heart and hand and home. Inward repentance must issue in outward integrity.
(iii) The last aspect of the preparation John urges: “Don’t linger over me; look away from me to my cousin. Don’t stop at listening to me; hear instead my younger relative. He is the one appointed to be your Saviour and Lord in life and in death!”
When John announced he was preparing the way of the Lord many responded. Many more did not. Among the latter was Herodias, Herod’s wife. John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you had your daughter dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Herodias, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.”
What happened next? Everybody knows what befell John next. Elizabeth had to make that sacrifice required of all the mothers we are probing this morning; she too gave up her son for the sake of the kingdom.
IV: — And then there is Mary. While Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth had become pregnant through an extraordinary intervention of God, there was no suggestion of anything other than ordinary intercourse and ordinary conception. But it was different with Mary, and different with her just because her Son was to be different; Mary’s conception was unique just because her Son was unique. Isaac was a patriarch; Samuel and John were prophets; but Jesus was — and is — the Son of God incarnate. Isaac and Samuel and John pointed away from themselves to God; Jesus pointed to himself as God-with-us.
Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus indicated over and over that to worship him was not idolatry. He persisted in using the formula, “I am” (“I am the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, etc.) when he knew all the while that “I am” is the self-designation of God. He agreed with his enemies that only God could forgive sin — and then proceeded to forgive sin himself. He admitted that the law of Moses was divinely authoritative — and then went ahead and announced its definitive meaning. Everyone knew that God alone is judge; whereupon Jesus announced himself to be the judge and insisted that the final criterion for all of us would be our attitude to him.
Mary was unique just because her Son is unique. He — he alone — is the world’s redeemer. He has to be the world’s redeemer just because the world cannot generate its own cure. Every time the world has attempted to generate its own cure (there have been two notable instances of this in the 20th century alone, one in Russia and the other in Germany), it has left the world worse. The cure for a world gone wrong has to be given to the world. History cannot produce the saviour of history; history’s saviour has to be given to it. And if the current talks about “world government” give rise to some kind of international mega-sovereignty, then we shall have to learn all over that humankind’s attempt at self-sovereignty issues in self-annihilation. For precisely this reason Jesus Christ has been given to us — not produced by us — as the world’s sole sovereign and saviour. And if we are ever so foolish as to try to program any form of the superhuman we shall have to see — again — that all such attempts issue in the subhuman. Humankind cannot generate humankind’s redemption. Our redeemer has to be given to us. This is what Mary’s virginal conception is all about.
Mary learned what it was all about the day she was told she would bear Jesus, “Yehoshua”, “God saves”. On the same day she learned that a sword would pierce her heart; a sword would pierce her heart as surely as a spear and nails would pierce her son.
Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth. Each offered up her son. Mary offered up hers too. Mary gathers up in herself all that her sisters knew before her.
Isaac, Samuel, John. The Lord Jesus whose birth we celebrate in this season gathers up in himself all that his brothers knew before him. Yet even as he gathers up them all in himself he is so much more than they. He himself is God’s incursion into human history, and for this reason he himself is the action of God saving us.
Because our Lord Jesus is himself the action of God saving us, he is unique. His mother’s uniqueness testifies to his uniqueness. Rightly, then, did Mary cry, “Henceforth all generations will call me blessed.”
We too are eager to call her blessed, for we too have been blessed in her Son. We have been blessed pre-eminently in the Son’s resurrection from the dead. In that kingdom which his resurrection established the wounded hearts of Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary have already been healed. In that selfsame kingdom your heart and mine — wounded and broken, savage and self-contradictory, devious and disconsolate — whatever our heart-condition it is to find its cure in him who has been given to us to do for us and in us and with us all that will redound to the praise of his glory and the splendour of his kingdom.
Victor Shepherd
December 2002
392 Hark, a Herald Voice stanzas 3&4
390 O Come, O Come stanzas 3&4
391 On Jordan’s bank stanza 2
415 O Come, Let Us Adore Him stanzas 2&5
His Name Will Be Called PRINCE OF PEACE
Isaiah 9:2-6
Luke 2:21-32
Everyone (everyone, that is, except the manifestly unbalanced) craves peace. We long for peace among nations, peace within our own nation, peace within our family, and, of course, peace within ourselves. In our psychology-driven age it’s the lattermost, peace within ourselves, that’s the pre-eminent felt need. The pharmaceutical companies have profited immensely from our preoccupation with inner peace. Prominent preachers like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller have made a career and attracted a following through preaching the same sermon over and over for forty years; namely, how to acquire inner peace.
And yet a moment’s reflection reminds us there’s a peace we ought not to have. There’s a peace born not of inner contentment but rather of inertia. Several years ago an Anglican bishop penned a greeting to all the parish clergy in the diocese wishing them peace. One clergyman wrote back, “My parish doesn’t need peace; it needs an earthquake.”
There’s another kind of “peace” (so-called) that God doesn’t want for us and which he’s determined to take from us: that peace which is the bliss of ignorance, the bliss of indifference, the bliss of the deafened ear and the hardened heart in the face of suffering and deprivation, abuse and injustice. Our Lord himself cried to detractors, “You think I came to bring peace? I have news for you. I came to bring a sword.” We mustn’t forget that the metaphor of soldiering, of military conflict, is one of the commonest apostolic metaphors for discipleship: to follow Jesus is to follow him in his strife.
Nonetheless, he whose coming we celebrate at this season is called Prince of Peace. He himself says, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” Then what is the nature of the peace he longs for us to have?
I: — The first aspect of such peace is “peace with God.” The apostle Paul writes to his fellow-Christians in Rome , “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To be justified by faith is to be rightly related to God in a relationship of trust, love and obedience. To be rightly related to God is to have and enjoy peace with God. Plainly, not to be rightly related to God is have enmity with God. Is it also to be aware of enmity with God? Not necessarily. Most people who lack peace with God and therefore live in enmity towards God remain unaware of it. When they are told of it they smile patronisingly and remark, “Enmity towards God? I have nothing against him. I’ve never had anything against him.” Such people need to be corrected; they need to be told that even if they think they have nothing against God, he has much against them. He reacts to their indifference; he resists their disdain; he opposes their disobedience; he is angered by their recalcitrance.
Yet even as God rightly resists the indifference of ungodly people (indifference that is actually contempt of him), and even as God reacts as he must, it distresses him to do so. He longs only to have the stand-off give way to intimacy, the frigidity to warmth, the defiance to obedience, the disdain to trust. For this reason his broken heart was incarnated in the broken body of his Son at Calvary ; for this reason his Spirit has never ceased pleading. Sometimes in the earthquake, wind and fire like that of his incursion at Sinai, at other times in the “still small voice” that Elijah heard, God has pleaded and prodded, whispered and shouted, shocked and soothed: anything to effect the surrender of those who think they have nothing against him but whose indifference in fact is enmity.
What God seeks in all of this, of course, is faith. Not faith in the popular sense of “belief”; faith, rather, in the Hebrew sense of “faith-fulness”, faith’s fulness: faith’s full reliance upon his mercy, faith’s full welcome accorded his truth, faith’s full appropriation of his pardon, faith’s full love now quickened by his ceaseless love for us. It all adds up to being rightly related to him. With our hostility dispelled, ignorance gives way to intimacy and cavalierness to commitment. We simply abandon ourselves to him. “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He who is the Prince of Peace effects our peace with God.
II: — Knowing and enjoying peace with God, Christ’s people are now blessed with the peace of God. The peace of God is that peace which every last individual desires. The peace of God is that “eye” of rest at the centre of the hurricane, the oasis in the midst of the desert storm, the calm in the midst of convulsion, the tranquillity that no turbulence can overturn ultimately. The peace of God is that peace which God grants to his people as they face life’s assaults. No one is surprised to hear that peace with God issues in the peace of God; a peace with God that didn’t issue in a peace deep inside us would be an exceedingly hollow peace.
The peace of God needs to be renewed moment-by-moment throughout life. The peace of God isn’t static, isn’t a state; the peace of God is dynamic, a constantly renewed gift blessing those constantly waiting upon God. Why the emphasis on “moment-by-moment” and “dynamic”, on “constantly renewed” and “constantly waiting upon”? Because disruption without us and disturbance within us; these unfold moment-by-moment too. The doctrine of creation reminds us that creation occurs as God suppresses chaos so as to allow life to arise. In a fallen world, however, chaos always threatens to reassert itself; in a fallen world, chaos always laps at creation, always nudges it, sometimes jars it. A fallen world unfailingly reminds us that the political chaos of disorder, the biological chaos of disease, the mental chaos of unforeseen breakdown: these are ever-present door-knocks of a chaos that ceaselessly knocks at the door of everyone’s life.
Many of the assaults that leave us craving the peace of God are not merely unforeseen but even unforeseeable. They resemble the “blind side hit” that leaves the football player momentarily stunned. The football player is running full-tilt down the field, looking back over his shoulder for the quarterback’s pass. Just as the ball touches his outstretched fingertips an opponent, running full-tilt up the field towards him, levels him. The collision is devastating physically because of the full-speed, head-on impact; it’s devastating psychologically because it wasn’t expected. The worst feature of the blind side hit isn’t the pain of the impact, or even the helplessness of temporary prostration; worse is the disorientation that accompanies it; worst of all is the fear that may arise from it, for if the player becomes fearful of the blind side hit he’ll never want to look back for the quarterback’s pass. In other words, the fear of subsequent blind side hits has taken the player off the field; he no longer plays the game.
As life unfolds for you and me we are blind-sided again and again. We are clobbered by circumstances we couldn’t foresee and therefore didn’t expect. Because we didn’t expect them we weren’t particularly armed and equipped to deal with them. Pain of some sort is inevitable; momentary disorientation is likely. And fear? It would be unrealistic never to fear life’s blind side hits. The ultimate issue here isn’t whether or not we fear; it’s whether or not our fear is allowed to take us off the field, induce us to quit. Plainly, the peace of God has everything to do with our ardour for life and our commitment to kingdom-work in the face of the clobbering we can’t avoid.
To his fellow-Christians in the city of Philippi Paul writes, “The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” The Greek word for “keep” (phulassein) is an expression drawn from the realm of military engagements. “Keep”, in ancient military parlance, has two major thrusts. In the first place it refers to the action of an army whereby the army repels attackers, holding attackers at bay so that while attackers may assault, even assault repeatedly, they never gain entry, never overrun, never triumph and therefore never annihilate. In the second place phulassein, “keep”, refers to the protection an army renders inhabitants of a besieged city so as to prevent the city’s inhabitants from fleeing in panic. The apostle draws on both aspects of the military metaphor: the peace of God prevents life’s outer assaults from undoing us ultimately and thereby prevents us from fleeing life in inner panic.
The apostle says one thing more about this peace of God: it “passes understanding”. In fact, it passes “all understanding.” It passes understanding inasmuch as it isn’t natural; it isn’t generated by anything the sociologist or psychologist or neurologist can account for; it isn’t circumstantial. In a word, there’s no earthly explanation for it. Peace of mind that arose in the midst of peaceful circumstances would be entirely understandable and therefore entirely explicable. On the other hand, innermost peace in the midst of turbulence and treachery and topsy-turvyness; this is peace that occurs for no apparent reason.
There are parallels, of course, everywhere in the Christian life. Jesus says to his disciples, “In the world you are going to have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Our good cheer arises in the midst of tribulation just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for good cheer, even as he gathers his people into his triumph. In exactly the same way peace arises in the midst of turbulence and treachery just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for peace, even as he includes his people in his triumph.
It is the prince of peace who gives us that peace of God which passes all understanding.
III: — The one dimension of peace that remains for us to discuss this morning is peace among men and women. Once more there is a logical connexion with the dimensions of peace that we have probed so far: those who know and enjoy peace with God and who are beneficiaries of the peace of God are commissioned to work indefatigably for peace on earth. Jesus maintains that his people are ever to be peacemakers; peacemakers, we should note, not peacewishers or peacehopers or pseudo-peace manipulators.
There are several pretenders to peace among men and women that are just that: pretenders. Pretend-peace, make-believe peace, is simply a matter of pretending that injustice and exploitation, savagery and enforced wretchedness don’t exist. Pretend-peace, make-believe peace; Jesus says he has come to expose this; expose it and eradicate it.
And of course there’s another form of pretend-peace; it arises not from pretending that injustice and abuse don’t exist; it arises from the deliberate lie, the cleverly-couched deception, intentional duplicity, even out-and-out propaganda.
I am told that those used car dealers who are unscrupulous are adept at a technique known as “paperhanging.” A used car has a rust-hole in the fender. The hole isn’t fixed properly. Instead, paper is glued over the hole and the paper is painted the same colour as the rest of the car. Anyone could poke her finger through the paper, of course, but it’s hoped that the paper deception will hold up long enough to get the car off the lot.
Paper-hanging abounds everywhere in life. Much peacemaking, so called, is little more than a smooth tongue smoothing over a jagged wound. Paperhanging peacemaking never works in the long run, of course, but it’s used all the time in the short run to get us quickly past conflicts that will otherwise be publicly visible (and therefore embarrassing) in a family or a group or a meeting. In six weeks paperhanging peacemaking gives way to worse conflict than ever, conflict now marinated in bitterness and frustration; it then gives way to worse conflict still six weeks after that.
When Paul writes, “Let us pursue what makes for peace”; when the author of Hebrews counsels, “Strive for peace with everyone”; when Jesus urges his people to make peace; in all of this we can’t fail to hear the note of urgent doing even as in all of this there’s no suggestion at all of paperhanging.
Then how are we to make peace among our fellows? In the first place we must always be concerned to see that justice is done. The Hebrew prophets denounce anything else not only as ineffective but as an attempt at magic. God himself castigates the religious leaders of Israel as he accuses them, according to Jeremiah, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” It’s often assumed that naming something thus and so makes it thus and so. It’s assumed that pronouncing “peace” over glaring injustice will yield peace. But it never does. Peace cannot be made unless injustice is dealt with first.
Please don’t think I am suggesting something impossible for most people, such as ensuring justice in the Middle East or in Latin America or in war-torn countries of Africa . I’m speaking of situations much closer to home. And in this regard I’m convinced that we fail to name injustice for what it is out of fear: we’re afraid that to identify injustice or abuse or exploitation is to worsen conflict. Likely it will worsen conflict, in the short run. But often conflict has to worsen if any genuine peace is to be made eventually. To expect anything else is to want magic. There’s no shortcut here. The psalmist cries, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne.” There’s more to God’s throne than righteousness and justice, to be sure, but without them, the foundation, there would be no throne at all.
In our efforts at peacemaking it’s important for us to examine carefully the earthly ministry of our Lord. Whenever he himself is made to suffer, he simply absorbs it. On the other hand, wherever he sees other people made to suffer unjustly, he acts without hesitation. He will go to any lengths to redress the suffering of those who are victimised. He will stop at nothing to defend the defenceless and protect the vulnerable and vindicate the vilified. Yet whenever he is made to suffer himself he simply absorbs it.
You and I will be the peacemakers he ordains us to be if we can forget ourselves and our minor miseries long enough to be moved at someone else’s victimisation. But if we are going to remain preoccupied with every petty jab and petty insult and petty putdown, most of which are half-imagined in any case, then so far from promoting peace we are going to be forever rationalising our own vindictiveness.
Remember: when our Lord sees other people abused he’s mobilised, acting instantly on their behalf; when he’s abused himself, however, he pleads for his benighted tormentors. We are always a better judge of that injustice which afflicts others than we are of that injustice which we think we are suffering ourselves. We retain an objectivity in the former that we abysmally lack in the latter. Peacemaking requires more than a little wisdom.
We are told that he whose coming we celebrate at this season has a unique name: “Prince of Peace.” As we are bound to him in faith we are rightly related to God and therein know peace with God. Secure in our peace with God, we are the beneficiaries of the peace of God. Possessed of the peace of God, we are freed from our self-preoccupations to work for peace among men and women.
The prophet Isaiah anticipated Jesus of Nazareth as the “Prince of peace.” Centuries after Isaiah our Lord’s birth constrained angels to cry, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent II 14th December 2008
Church of St. Bride, Anglican, Mississauga
Manifesto of the Real Revolution
Luke 1: 39-56
It’s easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements, since revolutions are spawned by shocking injustices and unendurable oppression. It’s easy to see a new day dawning in revolutionary movements, a new day for those who have endured the long night of exploitation and frustration.
Because it’s so easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements we are all the more jarred — if not left feeling hopeless — when at last we admit that the movement which promised human liberation has delivered no such thing. No one knew this better than Robespierre, an architect of the French Revolution with its threefold promise of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. Robespierre was executed at the hands of the social transmutation he had engineered. Little wonder he commented, minutes before his death, “Revolutions consume their daughters”.
As we watch Latin American countries lurch from fascism to communism, from the political far-right to the political far-left, we see it happening all over again. The African nations that threw off colonialism because it was cruel have installed a political monster whose human rights violations make colonialism appear almost benign. In pre-Revolutionary Russia Czarist rule was deemed insupportable; yet in the early period of Leninist rule the state executed one thousand people per month. A revolution that had promised to feed people still couldn’t supply each citizen with a loaf of bread 70 years later. Promising people freedom it demoralized them with a secret police; promising human fulfilment it couldn’t even grant mere recognition of human beings.
Revolutions founder over one thing: human nature. And in a fallen world, “human nature” means “human depravity”. The problem with revolutionary movements is this: they are incapable of being genuinely revolutionary! They merely “revolve”; that is, turn up, recycle, the same fallen human nature. Revolutionary movements cannot get to the heart of the matter simply because they are powerless to deal with the human heart. Political leaders may speak of a “New World Order”; Christians, however, know that the only new world order is the kingdom of God. “New” orders (so-called) are merely a case of deja vu. The only real revolution is the kingdom of God, fashioned and ruled by the king himself. It alone supplies the new heart, new mind, new spirit of which the prophets spoke, for which everyone longs, and which Jesus Christ alone bestows.
I: — According to Mary, mother of our Lord and spokesperson of his revolution, real revolution begins with the scattering of the proud in the imagination of their hearts. “Heart” is biblical shorthand for the innermost core of a person, the “nerve centre”, the “control panel”. “Heart” has to do with thinking, willing, feeling and discerning. In addition, “heart” means identity, who we really are underneath all cloaks, disguises and social conventions. The “imagination of our heart” is our fashioning a deity of our own making, a god after our own image and likeness, which deity we follow zealously. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations.” Isaiah knows that first we disdain the Holy One of Israel and his claim upon us; then we fabricate whatever deity will legitimate and satisfy our craving, whether we crave wealth or recognition or ascendancy or anything else.
While Mary is customarily depicted as demure and dainty, naive to the nth degree, the picture she paints of human nature is anything but naive: it is stark. She tells us of proud people who are victimized by the imagination of their heart — all of us; we are at this moment stumbling down paths “which are not good”, certainly not godly. All of us are like the fool of whom the psalmist speaks, the fool who “said in his heart, ‘There is no God'”. He’s a fool not because he doesn’t believe God exists; he’s a fool just because he believes God exists and yet maintains that there are no consequences to dismissing the Holy One of Israel while preferring and pursuing the imagination of the heart, no consequences to exchanging the deity we fancy for the God who claims our faithfulness. Blinded by and in love with the gods of our own making we are all alike fools whose folly is going to prove fatal.
Yet Mary remains spokesperson for a revolution which is to be announced as good news, the uniquely good news of Christmas: God has scattered the proud! Our first response to learning that God scatters us vigorously may not be that we have just heard good news! To be told that we have been scattered, at God’s hand, suggests that God has hammered us so hard as to fragment us, and then dismissively swept away the fragmented remains. To be sure, we have been judged; we have been found wanting. Yet this is not to say that God sweeps us away in his judgement. The Greek verb “to scatter” (DIASKORPIZO) also means “to winnow”. To winnow grain is to toss a shovelful so that the wind carries away chaff but leaves behind the kernel, prized and soon to be put to use. In other words, God scatters us, the proud, inasmuch as he longs to save us and intends to use us. In getting rid of chaff he lays bare that heart which he can then renew in accord with his nature and kingdom, and then use ever after.
“Scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts” is essential if a revolution is to be real and not merely a recycling of human depravity. Mary insists that in the invasion of his Son God has scattered us all and will continue to do so, yet not out of petulance or irritability or frustration or disgust. God scatters us — winnows us — inasmuch as he plans to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and use us in ways we cannot anticipate.
II: — Mary maintains that God has done something more; God has “put down the mighty from their thrones”. But has he? Has God levelled those who strut? Has he crumbled those who tyrannize? In one sense it appears that God has done no such thing. Caesar Augustus was not deposed the day Jesus was born. No mighty ruler has been unseated just because the gospel was upheld. We need think only of Stalin’s cynical comment when told that the pope opposed Stalin’s mass murders. “The pope?”, snickered Stalin, “How many troops does the pope have?” Stalin strutted just because he knew that he, and no one else, ruled the former USSR.
And yet at a much deeper level the advent of Jesus Christ does mean that God has put down the mighty from their thrones. Herod wasn’t paranoid when he raged that the Bethlehem child was a threat to his throne. After all, in the coming of Jesus Christ into our midst the world’s only rightful ruler has appeared. Herod intuited correctly that the Christmas Gift would win to himself the loyalty of men and women who would never transfer that loyalty back to Herod. All political manipulators and ideologues and social engineers and “educational” programmers; in short, all who want to reshape society, even remake humankind, must know sooner or later that just because the world’s rightful ruler has appeared and is now enthroned their authority has been exposed as mere posturing and their promises as mere wind. Discerning Christians testify that those who think they can coerce or control have in fact been dethroned. They have been dethroned in that no ruler or tyrant can tell Christians who they are (Christ alone does this); no ruler or tyrant can make Christians who they are (Christ alone does this) — which is to say, no ruler or tyrant can ever make Christians what they don’t want to be. Corrie Ten Boom was as simple a Christian as one could find. (She was a fifty-year old unmarried daughter of a Dutch watchmaker who kept house for her father and sister). Yet Corrie Ten Boom defied Hitler by harbouring Jewish refugees in German-occupied Holland. She knew the terrible risk involved; she knew what the penalty would be. Whereupon she persisted all the more resolutely in her defiance. The moment she refused to admit any legitimacy to Hitler’s rule; the moment she refused to conform to it — in that moment Hitler was dethroned. Plainly the most coercive man in Europe was powerless in the face of a fifty-year old, unarmed woman. Yes, he could imprison her (and he did); but he could never tell her who she was; he could never make her who she was; and he could never make her what she didn’t want to be. Any Christian who refuses to conform anywhere to the blustering and bullying of “the mighty” just because that Christian acknowledges the rulership of Christ alone; any such Christian testifies that God continues to dethrone.
The revolution of which Mary speaks is unquestionably real. Still, the question can always be asked, “Real as it is, how far does it go? Whom does it finally affect?” It’s easy to say that it manifestly affects all the bullies we don’t like in any case and whom we are glad enough to see dethroned. But Mary’s revolution is unique, qualitatively different from all social dislodgings and historical upheavals, only if that innermost tyrant, that self-important egotist who manipulates me, is dethroned as well. I know how easy it is to look disdainfully at the person who is so obviously ruled by chemical substance or psychological habituation or shameless self-promotion when all the while I secretly scramble to hide the things that control me and brazenly try to excuse them when I can no longer hide them. I know how easy it is to speak of a new heart and mind when my reactions, in unguarded moments, suggest a heart still ruled by passions and instincts which serve my lingering sin, my self-indulgence, self-advantage, and self-promotion.
Then I can only cry out to God that I do want the revolution of which Mary speaks to reach me and revolutionize me. And so far from gloating over the fact that God has put down the swaggerers whom I am glad to see put down, I must plead with him to dethrone in me whatever has usurped the rule of Jesus Christ. For only then will the genuine “new world order” be under way.
III: — It is a singular mark of God’s kindness that the work of God’s left hand assists the work of his right; to say the same thing differently, a mark of God’s kindness that his right hand is stronger than his left, that mercy triumphs over judgement, that whatever wound he inflicts is only surgical repair for the sake of restoration to health. Having “put down”, God now “exalts”; he exalts “those of low degree”, the humble.
The humble, it must be noted, are not those who belittle themselves miserably and otherwise display abysmally weak self-image. (Crippling self-image isn’t humility; it’s illness.) Neither is “humility”, so-called, a religious technique whereby we can get ourselves “exalted”. And of course humility could never be the end-result of struggling to make ourselves humble, since the effort of making ourselves humble merely reinforces pride. Humility is self-forgetfulness, the self-forgetfulness that steals over us when we lose ourselves in something or someone who is bigger, richer, deeper.
In the revolution of which Mary speaks it is these humble people, self-forgetful people, whom God exalts. To be exalted, ultimately, is to be lifted up a child of God. When John speaks of the incarnation, its purpose and its result, he writes, “To all who received him [Jesus Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” In other words, to “forget” ourselves into Christ is to become sons and daughters of God. To the believers in Thessalonica Paul writes, “You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We don’t belong to the night or to the darkness.” What it is to be exalted — lifted up, held up — as a child of God who no longer belongs to the night or to the darkness Paul makes clear in his letter to the congregation in Philippi; those people are “children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life.”
There is nothing more revolutionary than the person who shines in the midst of a perverse world. No one, believer or unbeliever, has ever doubted that the world can repopulate itself (that is, no one has ever doubted that a crooked and perverse generation can produce crooked and perverse offspring). Humanists insist that the world doesn’t have to repopulate itself (that is, left to itself the world can produce better and better citizens — this belief is clung to even though the wars of last century alone have slew one hundred million.) Christians, however, know that the world has to repopulate itself, can do nothing except repopulate itself, for the only person who is profoundly different, before God, is the person whom God’s grace has rendered self-forgetful and then rendered God’s own child. This person shines like a Westinghouse light bulb in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. This person is a beacon of hope, because this person is living testimony that at God’s hand there is something genuinely different.
IV: — Mary gathers up everything about her revolutionary manifesto in her pithy summation: “God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”
Who are the rich whom God has sent away empty? Bashing the rich is fashionable nowadays. And of course those who like to bash the rich are quick to tell us who the rich are. The rich are those who have fifty dollars more than the bashers have; the rich are those who have a slightly better pension or a slightly larger home than the bashers have. Such an attitude bespeaks only envy and resentment. The truth is, those whose “riches” are a spiritual threat aren’t those who have money but rather those who are preoccupied with money — whether they have it or not.
The mediaeval Christians who spoke of the “Seven Deadly Sins” were correct in naming gluttony one of them. They were also correct in insisting that gluttony is not a matter of eating too much; gluttony is being preoccupied with food, even if one’s preoccupation with food is a preoccupation with avoiding food! (In other words the person obsessed with slenderness is as much food-preoccupied — and therefore gluttonous — as the person who can think only of what he is going to eat next.) It is no different with respect to money. Those who don’t have it can be as absorbed by it as those who are awash in it.
In those revolutions which remain forever ineffective those who have money disdain and dismiss those who lack it, while those who lack it hate and envy those who have it. While appearing to be poles apart, those who have it and those who lack it in fact are identical, since both alike are engrossed with it. Only the real revolution gets us beyond this, for only the real revolution makes our preoccupations shrivel as the holy God looms before us in his awesome, all-consuming immensity. As this One looms before us the chaff we have been gorging is simply forgotten, and we become aware of a hunger we never knew.
Our Lord Jesus has promised that all who hunger for God and his righteousness are going to be filled. All who crave the ultimate satisfaction of a relationship with God which can’t be snatched away by a paperback putdown or evaporated by the fires of harassment; all who finally hunger for this as they hunger for nothing else will be given that bread of life which profoundly satisfies yet never satiates. For this bread leaves us seeking none other yet always seeking more of him who is himself way and truth and life.
The rich who are sent empty away; they need not remain away. For as soon as they recognize their preoccupations as unworthy of someone who is created to be a child of God they too will hunger, will look to him who alone satisfies, and will be yet another fulfilment of Mary’s Christmas cry.
Victor Shepherd
December 2001
Of Itzakh, Isaac, and “The Wonders Of His (Christ’s) Love”
Luke 2:1-14
Col. 1:15-20
Many people who are musically sophisticated regard Itzakh Perlman as the world’s finest violinist. Yet his violin-playing isn’t the most noticeable feature about him. Anyone who has seen him winces when he walks, if it can be called “walking.” Perlman had polio as a child and ever since has barely been able to shuffle along, ever so slowly, each step laboured and clumsy, swinging his caliper crutches in a monumental struggle just to get onto the concert-hall platform, while an assistant carries his precious violin for him. Perlman is the only violin virtuoso who has to sit to play.
Not so long ago in Lincoln Centre, New York City, Perlman was only a few bars into a violin concerto with the N.Y. Philharmonic Orchestra when a string broke on his violin. He waved his bow to the conductor to stop. Perlman removed the broken string from his instrument and signalled the conductor to begin again. Then Perlman played the entire concerto on the three remaining strings of his violin. Thunderous applause greeted him at concerto’s end. When it had finally died away Perlman said to the hushed audience, “Sometimes in life we have to do our best with what’s left.” Then he handed his defective violin to his assistant, retrieved his caliper crutches, and shuffled haltingly off the platform, once more doing his best with what was left.
Many people who appear — and are — extraordinarily gifted nevertheless have had to do their best with what was left. One such person was Isaac Watts, known throughout Christendom as “the father of the English hymn.” He wrote hundreds of hymns, many of which will never be forgotten. What few people know is that Watts was deranged frequently, and deranged for extended periods of his life. There were protracted periods when he wrote nothing, did nothing (apart from survive in the care of a kind family that protected him) as he waited until sanity returned. There were periods in his life when it would have been just as accurate to speak of episodic sanity as of episodic derangement. What did Watts write when sanity caught up to him and his suffering abated? “Come, let us join our cheerful songs with angels ’round the throne; ten thousand thousand are their tongues but all their joys are one.” Or again, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run.” As ill as he was for so much of his troubled life, Watts could still write from his heart, “My God, how endless is thy love!” Perhaps he is best known for “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” Certainly we’ve all sung his splendid Christmas carol, “Joy to the World!” It’s plain that Watts’s literary output was a matter of doing his best with what was left, what was left of his sanity. He always did his best.
God does his best, too, with what’s left. Yet there’s a difference here. When God does his best with what’s left of a fallen world, does his best with a disfigured creation, does his best with an evil-riddled cosmos; when God does his best with this he doesn’t merely extract bravely whatever good remains in it. Rather, he restores it. When God does his best with what’s left of a warped world, he recreates that world.
Isaac Watts knew this so very well. He articulated it for us in his Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.”
I: — “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground”, cries Watts. Plainly it’s a reference to Genesis 3, the old, old story of the world’s fall. What has happened? God has never been indifferent to humankind’s root defiance of him and root disobedience to him and root ingratitude; he’s never been indifferent to the primordial posture we assume before him, a posture wherein our “know-it-all” smirk casts aspersions on his goodness, on the goodness of his promise to us and his claim upon us. His claim upon us is rooted in his promise to us; his promise to us is rooted in his own heart. Heart and promise and claim are one in wanting only to bless us. We, however, assume he’s an arbitrary spoilsport out to make us miserable. We doubt him, defy him, disdain him, disobey him.
Contrary to what the person-in-the-street thinks, God always gives us what we want. No longer pressing himself upon us, he takes a step back from us. (This is what we want: a little more distance between him and us.) As he takes a step back from us, the crown of creation, he thereby takes a step back from every aspect of the creation beneath its crown. A vacuum opens up between him and the creation. Into the vacuum there pours all manner of evil. Now the creation is marred and disfigured and warped. “Thorns and thistles” infest the ground, as the old, old story in Genesis tells us. In a primitive agricultural society, thorns and thistles infesting the ground bespeak frustration; so much frustration, in fact, that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off utter futility. (Everyone with even a backyard vegetable garden knows that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off the frustration of having the vegetable-enterprise end in utter futility.)
As for “sins and sorrows”, they are as endemic in a fallen world as thorns and thistles. Jesus says, without argument or proof, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Foregoing argument or proof, he assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is incorrigibly stupid. “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Since we all sin, we are all in bondage. Sorrows? “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows”, says the psalmist. The Hebrew verb can as readily mean “run after” as “choose.” “Those who run after another deity multiply their sorrows.” The fall of humankind means that we do run after other gods; and just as surely do we multiply our sorrows.
Yet Watts can write his carol, “Joy to the World!”, because he knows that the coming of Jesus Christ means that the curse upon the world is overturned; it’s reversed. The coming of Jesus Christ means that the blessings of Christ are as far-reaching (and known to be as far-reaching) as the curse has been. While our Lord’s pronouncement is unarguable, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin”, equally unarguable is his declaration, “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” While those who run after other gods unquestionably multiply their sorrows, those who join our Lord on that Way which he is, join him in running the race of life, always looking unto him who has pioneered the way for us — these people unquestionably multiply their joys. As for frustration, frustration so intense as to border on futility; in so far as we do the work that he has given us to do, kingdom-work, our work will never prove futile and we ourselves shall never go unrewarded.
“No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
II: — Watts has even more to say about the joy that has come to the world in the coming of Jesus Christ. “He rules the earth with truth and grace.” The same Lord who restores the world now rules it, and rules it with truth and grace.
Christ’s rulership is remarkable. After all, the rulers we are acquainted with do rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth. They rule with something other than truth. They rule with disinformation. (Think of the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the American warship. The U.S. government arranged this bit of disinformation in order to bring the U.S.A. into the Viet Nam war.) Or they rule with duplicity. (Think of Toronto Councillor Howard Moscoe. When asked, two weeks ago, why charity casinos would be installed in North York after the citizens of North York had voted in a referendum against charity casinos, Moscoe unashamedly replied, “The referendum meant nothing.”) Or they rule with propaganda. (Think of the federal government’s promise a few years ago never to implement wage and price controls. Within ninety days of being re-elected it introduced the controls!) Or they rule with sheer, simple, self-interest and self-enrichment. (Illustrations here are superfluous.) Rulers rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth.
Neither do they rule with grace. Our Lord, however, does. He rules with grace. Grace, throughout scripture, is God’s faithfulness to his own promise ever to be our God. Grace is his undeflectible resolve never to quit on us in anger or abandon us in disgust or dismiss us in impatience. Grace is God’s unalterable determination to remain true to himself in his promise to us regardless of our unfaithfulness in our promise to him. Since grace collides with our sin, then when grace meets our sin grace takes the form of mercy. And since mercy, so far from being mere benign sentiment, is effectual in the face of our sin, mercy issues in salvation, shalom, peace. For this reason the threefold “grace, mercy and peace” is found over and over in scripture. (Once again, in its collision with sin grace takes the form of mercy, and mercy triumphs so as to effect our peace with God, our salvation.)
Unlike the rulers we read about every day, our Lord “rules with truth and grace.”
III: — Several minutes ago I spoke of our need to “do our best with what’s left.” Perlman and Watts have done so. But in doing their best with what was left, were they merely doing what they could to prevent a disaster from sinking all the way down to total disaster, unrelieved disaster? At the end of the day are you and I realistically doing no more than this? In doing our best with what’s left, are we merely doing what we can to prevent a calamity from sinking all the way down to complete calamity?
No! In view of the fact that when God does his best with what’s left (a wounded, warped creation) he restores that creation wholly; in view of this our doing our best with what’s left is much more than merely salvaging a catastrophe: it’s an anticipation of the day when God’s perfect restoration is going to revealed; it’s a preview of the day when God’s restoration is going to be rendered as undeniable as it is unmistakable. Watts did what he did not because there was nothing else to do besides fall into total despair; Watts did what he did, rather, because he foresaw the day when he, like the deranged man in the gospel-stories, will be found seated, clothed and in his right mind. Perlman did what he did in anticipation of the day when he, like so many whom Jesus touched, will be found no longer lame but now leaping and cavorting, unhindered and uninhibited in every aspect of life. When you and I “do our best with what’s left” we aren’t merely trying to put a happy face on a monumental misfortune; we are anticipating the day, says Watts himself, when our Lord “makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”
IV: — All of this being the case, what are we to do at this moment? Watts knew what we are to do: “Let every heart prepare him room.” We are to receive, or receive afresh, him whose blessings flow far as the curse is found. We are to receive, or receive afresh, the one who rules with truth and grace now and who is going to make the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.
We are to receive our Lord. We are going to do so as in faith we receive bread and wine, the vehicle of his self-giving to us now, as surely as body and blood were the vehicle of his self-giving for us then.
“Let every heart prepare him room.”
Victor Shepherd
December 1997
How Big Is The Baby?
John 1:1-18
Most people feel that words are easy to use; words can never be used up (there are so many of them); therefore words are largely useless. No wonder words are flung about frivolously. The microphone is stuck in front of the celebrity and she is asked to say something. She uses many words to say nothing, and no one expected her to do anything else. The politician is questioned in the legislature. He starts talking. Fifteen minutes later he hasn’t answered the question; in fact, his words are a smokescreen behind which the question is lost in “bafflegab.” And preachers? No doubt you have listened to preachers, many of them, who were no different. Words are easy to use; words can never be used up; words are largely useless — so why not fling them about?
But it was different for our Hebrew foreparents. For those people a word was an event. In fact the Hebrew word for “word” (DABAR) means both word and event. For our Israelite ancestors a word was a concentrated, compressed unit of energy. As the word was spoken, this concentrated, compressed unit of energy was released. Thereafter it could never be brought back, never re-compressed just as an event can never be undone. Once the word had been uttered this unit of energy surged throughout the world, changing this, altering that, creating here and destroying there.
The closest we modern types come to the understanding of our Hebrew foreparents is in our grasp of how language functions psychologically. We recognize that inflammatory speech can excite people emotionally; we recognize that sad stories can depress people. We’ll admit that words may alter how people feel, but we still maintain that words don’t alter anything in reality.
The Hebrew conviction is different. The psalmist writes, “By the Word of God the heavens were made.” God speaks and the galaxies occur. So weighty were Hebrew words that they were always to be used sparingly, carefully, thoughtfully. It won’t surprise you, then, to learn that at the time of the first Christmas the Hebrew language contained only 10,000 words (very few, in fact) while the Greek language contained 200,000. A word is an event, said our Hebrew foreparents. A word has vastly more than mere psychological force. Once spoken, a word is an event which sets off another event which in turn sets off another, the reality of it all extending farther than the mind can imagine.
When the apostle John sat down to write his gospel he was living in the city of Ephesus. John was Jewish; his readers, however, were chiefly Gentile, like you and me. In speaking about Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Word of God, John looked for a word which Gentiles would understand, yet a word to which he could also marry the full force of the Hebrew understanding of “word”. The word John chose was LOGOS. LOGOS is the Greek word which means “word”. But it also means reason or rationality or intelligibility. It means the inner principle of a thing, how a thing works. The logos of an automobile engine is how a cupful of liquid gasoline can be exploded to propel a two-ton car, how the engine works. The logos of a refrigerator is how electricity (hot enough to burn you) can keep food cold; how it works, its inner principle, the rationality of it all.
John brought the Hebrew and Greek concepts together when he stated that Jesus Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, is the word or logos of God. When the Hebrew mind hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the power of God, the event of God, the effectiveness of God; an effectiveness, moreover, which can never be overturned or undone, a reality permeating the world forever. When the Greek mind, on the other hand, the Gentile mind, hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the outer expression of the inner principle of God himself; Jesus embodies the rationality of God; Jesus discloses how God “works.” John brings together both Hebrew and Greek senses of “word”. John’s Christmas message is as patently simple as it is fathomlessly profound: the word of God has become flesh, our flesh, and now dwells among us. This is the great good news of Christmas.
Great as the good news is, however, we must still ask how far-reaching it might be. Is it good news, but only for a few people? Is it good news, but only for the religious dimension of human existence? Or is it good news of cosmic scope so vast as finally to be imponderable? In short, how big is the baby?
I: — Think first of science. Two or three generations ago it was feared that new scientific discoveries were taking people farther and farther from God. The advances of science added up to atheism for intelligent people. Some people reacted by speaking ill of science: “It doesn’t have all the answers, you know.” (No scientist ever said it did.) “There’s lots more to be discovered”. (Of course there is; this is what keeps science humble.) Nonetheless, the bottom line was clearly stated: “If your sons and daughters are going to study science, don’t expect them to be Christians.”
The apostle John disagrees entirely. John insists that the realm of nature which science investigates has been made through the word, made through the logos. This means that the inner principle of God’s own mind and being, the rationality in God himself, has been imprinted on the creation, imprinted on nature, and imprinted indelibly. There is imprinted indelibly upon the creation a rationality, an intelligibility, which reflects the rationality of the Creator’s own mind. What’s more, the inner principle of God himself which has been imprinted on that creation which science investigates; this inner principle is the word which has been made flesh in Jesus Christ. All of which means that however much we may come to know of science our scientific knowledge will never contradict the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; our scientific knowledge can never take us farther from God.
Science is possible at all only because there is a correlation between patterns intrinsic to the scientist’s mind and intelligible patterns embodied in the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then there would be no match-up between the scientist’s mind and the realm of nature that the scientist investigates. To say the same thing differently: science is possible only because there is a correlation between the structure of human thought and the structure of the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then no one could think truthfully about the physical world. Then what is the origin of this correlation, this match-up? The origin is the word, the logos, through which the realm of nature and scientists themselves have alike been created. John Polkinghorne, a mathematical physicist and a Christian writes, “The Word is God’s agent in creation, impressing his rationality upon the world. That same Word is also the light of men, giving us thereby access to the rationality that is in the world.”
Speaking of mathematics and physics; mathematicians don’t make scientific investigations. Mathematicians arrange symbols, the symbols representing relations within human thinking. Physicists, on the other hand, physicists do investigate the world of nature. Recently it was found that when mathematicians and physicists have compared notes they have seen that the relations purely within human thinking reflect the patterns and structures in nature which scientists uncover. In short, there is a correlation between the rationality of human thinking and the rationality imprinted indelibly in nature. How? Why? Because all things have been made through the word of God: all things in the creation, including the mind of the scientist herself.
Everyone knows that science is based on observation. But to observe nature scientifically is not to stare at it. If I were merely to stare at the stars for the next twenty years I still shouldn’t learn anything about stars. The kind of observing that science does is an observing that is guided by theoretical insights. These insights uncover the deep regularities undergirding what can be observed. Where do these theoretical insights come from, ultimately? They are produced by the word, the logos, the rationality of God, the word that became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth; for through this word both nature itself and the human mind were fashioned.
How big is the baby? Very big. He who was born in Bethlehem is the Word of God incarnate. All things were made through him. He is the outer expression of God’s “innerness”. And by him God’s “innerness” has been imprinted on the “outerness” of nature. Scientific discovery never distances us from God, never contradicts the truth of God, never points people toward atheism. On the contrary, to uncover scientifically the rationality imprinted indelibly on the creation is ultimately to ask for the ground of nature’s intelligibility. The one, sufficient ground of nature’s intelligibility can only be the intelligibility or word or logos of God himself.
II: — How big is the baby? Big enough to embrace not just someone here and someone over there; big enough, rather, to embrace all men and women everywhere. All humankind, without exception, is summoned and invited to become sons and daughters of God. To receive the Word made flesh; to receive Jesus Christ in faith, says John, to embrace the one who has already embraced us is to find ourselves rendered children of God.
A minute ago we spoke of the rationality or order in creation. Without such rationality scientific investigation would be impossible; more to the point, without such rationality or order life would be impossible. No one could survive in a world where bread nourished us one day but poisoned us the next; where water doused fire one day but fuelled fire the next. Without elemental order to the universe human existence would be impossible. And yet while this elemental order perdures in a fallen world, the fact that the world is fallen means that the dimension of disorder is always with us. Disease, for instance, is a manifestation of disorder.
Yet the disorder in the natural realm is slight compared to the disorder in the human mind and heart. We men and women are fallen creatures. We are alienated from God in mind and heart. Because we are alienated from God in mind and heart we are disordered in ourselves; in addition, we are an infectious source of disorder in nature. The environmentalists never weary of reminding us of this fact: we human beings are an infectious source of a huge disorder in nature. The environmentalists don’t understand, however, that we are such inasmuch as we are disordered in ourselves and unable to restore order in ourselves.
It is as we embrace the word incarnate who has already made us and embraced us; it is as we become children of God through faith in the Son of God that alienation from God gives way to reconciliation. Mind and heart, disordered to this point, begin to be re-ordered. We are on the road to recovery, and we are guaranteed utmost restoration.
How big is the baby? The word made flesh is big enough to embrace every last man and woman. The word made flesh, our Hebrew foreparents would remind us, is also strong enough, effective enough, to render us all children of God and keep us such until that day when nothing will even threaten to separate us from him.
III: — Lastly, John tells us that out of the fullness of the Word-become-flesh you and I have received, and will always receive, grace upon grace. To say that the Word has become flesh is to say that Jesus Christ has taken on our humanity in its totality; he has taken on our humanity in its exhilaration, its weakness, its frustration, its sin and its mortality. And this humanity, yours and mine, is so surrounded by the goodness and kindness and mercy and wisdom and undeflectable purpose of God, so steeped in the grace of God, says John, that we are always receiving “grace upon grace”. To say that we are set behind and before by the grace of God isn’t to say that God is indulgent or tolerant or blind in one eye. But it is to say that there is a gracious persistence in God as he pardons us, assists us, and takes up whatever is done to us and whatever we do to ourselves and uses it all as only he can as he moves us toward a restoration so complete as to bring glory to him and adoration out of us.
How big is the baby? So very big that out of the fullness of Jesus Christ we shall always receive grace upon grace and nothing but grace. The Lord who knows my profoundest needs better than I know them myself will always supply what I need most. It would be a very small Lord who gave me what I wanted, or gave me what I thought I needed. If I were given what I wanted or thought I needed I should only be confirmed in my superficiality and cemented into my immaturity. Yet so big is the incarnate one that he gives me not what confirms me in my disorder, but precisely what moves me a step closer to my recovery and restoration in him.
When I was ordained and appointed to a seacoast village I spent hours at the beach watching the Atlantic. Hundreds of metres out to sea a wave emerged from the ocean’s immensity. It broke on the beach, flooding the sand. Before the wave wholly receded, however, another wave broke on the beach and flooded the sand. Now the sand was flooded both by the incoming wave and the outgoing wave; that is, the sand was always flooded. And then a third waved surged onto the beach before the second one (even the first) had had time to recede. Wave upon wave. One day as I stood on the beach before the Atlantic and watched wave upon wave I understood what John meant when he wrote, “Out of God’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”
It all adds up to this. God’s immensity is always flooding us with grace. However much we blunder, our blunder cannot ungrace us. When our faith flickers and we feel like a half-believer at best, our flickering faith won’t expel us from the sphere and realm of grace. When we are proud and need humbling; when we are dispirited and need encouraging; when we are bruised and need comforting; when our resilience is shaken and we need reassurance; whatever our profoundest need the immensity of grace will always prove sufficient. The Word made flesh is this big.
At the beginning of the sermon I said that for our Hebrew foreparents a word is charged with power. It is an event that, unleashed, alters reality in a way that can never be undone. For our Gentile foreparents a word is the inner principle of a thing, its rationality, how it works. John brought these two senses together when he spoke of Jesus Christ as the Word of God made flesh.
The rationality of the incarnate word is mirrored in the structure of creation and in the structure of human thinking, thus facilitating scientific investigation. The recreative power of the incarnate word is able to render us children of God, thus remedying our disorder. The grace of the incarnate word is fathomless, thus proving daily that Jesus Christ is deeper than our deepest need.
Then John’s cry must elicit an identical exclamation from us; namely, that to behold the Word made flesh is to behold glory, glory without rival and without end.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2009
Christmas: An Event in Four Words
John 1:14
TRUTH For years I have been intrigued by the psychology of perception. What do people see? What do they think they see? Or hear? Or not hear? Everyone knows that people tend to see what they want to see and tend not to hear what they don’t want to hear. In situations of stress or fatigue or social pressure people can “see” or “hear” what isn’t there to be seen or heard at all.
Recently I found myself listening to a psychologist who has worked much in the area of perception. He told his audience the following.
An adult is placed in a pitch-black room. A pinpoint light is turned on, 10 or 15 feet away. (The light is only a pinpoint; it illumines nothing else.) Once the light is turned on it remains fixed in the same place for the duration of the exercise. Without exception, the psychologist reported, the person in the pitch-black room will say that the light moves. How much it is said to move varies from person to person: from 1 inch to 8 feet, the average being 4 inches.
There is another aspect to this experiment, an aspect that makes my blood run cold. When all the people who participated in the experiment are brought together to chat among themselves, they eventually agree (no one has overtly pressured them into agreeing) that the light moved 4 inches. Even those who, when asked alone, reported that it moved anywhere from 1 inch to 8 feet; even these people now swear that the light moved exactly 4 inches.
Note, in the first place, that people “see” what isn’t there to be seen at all: they are inventing something (a light that moves), and then are genuinely unable to distinguish what is from what they imagine. Note, in the second place, that they come to agree unconsciously lest they appear odd person out, lest they appear to be a social misfit. Note, in the third place, that all of this occurs with something (the pinpoint of light) that hasn’t been rendered deceptive or seductive in any way.
By extension, what does this experiment say about our society’s perception of political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues, issues that concern us all?
Now suppose that the pinpoint of light, instead of being left in place, were manipulated so as to deceive people. Then think about the political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues where there are attempts and schemes aimed at misleading us. In an election campaign Brian Mulroney swore that Canada’s social benefits were untouchable (“a sacred trust”). Upon being elected, the first thing he did was try to tamper with old age security. What did Canadians do about it? They re-elected him. Lest you think me politically biased I must remind you that Pierre Trudeau defeated Robert Stanfield by means of a promise never to implement wage and price controls. Trudeau implemented them within 90 days of being elected. Whereupon Canadians elected him again.
The two instances of turpitude I have just mentioned aren’t very subtle. (For all their obviousness, however, most Canadians still didn’t recognize them). Every day there are instances of deception far more subtle, far more devious, far more convoluted. Every day we are lied to, and lied to again, as falsehood is piled upon falsehood, fabrication upon fabrication.
How much worse it would all be if we (and our society) were victimized not only by the cunning of men and women, not only by the propaganda of the politicians, not only by the ideologues in the offices of social planning and the military and the church, but also by malignant spiritual forces that underlie and compound and disguise the distortions that we know to be deliberately engineered! Scripture insists that this very thing is happening all the time. St.Paul reminds us in II Corinthians 4 that “the god of this world” obstructs and obscures and perverts the spiritual perception of us all.
Then where is there truth? More profoundly, what is truth? Unless we know what truth is, we shan’t know where to look for it. If we don’t know what truth is and therefore don’t know where to look for it, how shall we ever find it? As a matter of fact, we aren’t going to find it. We are never going to find it. Truth must find us!
Our foreparents in faith were ecstatic over Christmas just because they knew that truth had appeared; truth had found them. Truth had overtaken them and stamped itself upon them when they hadn’t known where to look or what to look for. Truth had come upon them when their perception was distorted (and they were unaware of it), when they had been deceived by human cunning (and were unaware of it), when “the god of this world” had deceived them (and they were unaware of it).
Truth, in John’s gospel, always has the force of reality. Truth is reality as opposed to illusion (illusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally healthy people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to delusion (delusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally ill people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to falsehood, as opposed to mythology, as opposed to fantasy. Truth is reality, John insists.
John, we all know, was a Jew by birth and upbringing. He knew Hebrew. Truth, in Hebrew, has the force of firmness, stability, solidity. When truth (firmness, stability, solidity) describes a person, that person is said to be steadfast; and because steadfast, trustworthy.
“The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” Christmas upholds the incursion of truth into our world. The incursion of truth means the incursion of reality, firmness, solidity, steadfastness, trustworthiness. Jesus Christ comes to us with a unique power to penetrate our world of misperception, deliberate falsification, and spiritual deception. Jesus Christ is truth.
GRACE All of us make promises. When we make promises we intend to keep them. Despite our utmost resolve to keep promises, however, we break them. We are promise-breakers.
God, on the other hand, is the promise-keeper. He invariably keeps the promises he makes. There is no treachery in him that could lead him to “welch” on his promises to us; on the other hand there is much treachery in us that could excuse him for abandoning his promises to us. Still, nothing deflects him. However exasperated he is with us, he never gives up on us. However frozen our hearts may be to him, his heart throbs for us. However fitful we may be in our devotion to him, he is constant in his to us. Fitfulness in us is met with only more resolute faithfulness from him.
Now to say that God is faithful is not to say that he is inflexible, rigid. Because he is flexible his faithfulness to us takes a special form when his faithfulness meets our fickleness and folly: when his faithfulness meets our sin his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. (If God were inflexible, then as his faithfulness met our sin his faithfulness — his promise ever to be our God — could only condemn us, without provision for our rescue and without opportunity for our repentance.)
You must have noticed that St. Paul begins his letters to assorted congregations with the greeting, “Grace, mercy and peace to you”. Grace is God’s faithfulness to us, promised from of old, kept unto eternity. Mercy is God’s faithfulness “flexing” so as to deal with our sin. Peace (the Hebrew word is shalom); peace, in Hebrew, is a synonym for salvation. Whenever Paul speaks first of grace he speaks finally of peace; the peace, shalom, salvation that grace finally forges. In other words, grace is faithful love so resilient, so resolute, so undeflectable that not even our icy ingratitude, not even our defiant disobedience, can discourage such love. Grace is faithful love so flexible that it “bends” itself around our sin. Grace is faithful love so constant and consistent that not even our resistance can impede it or interrupt it. For this reason whenever Paul begins by speaking of grace he ends by speaking of peace, shalom: he has imprinted on his heart the logic of grace.
Let’s gather it up in a nutshell: GRACE is God-in-his-faithfulness keeping the promises he has made to us, all for the sake of a mercy-wrought salvation that renders us his children, members of his household and family forever.
To speak of grace and truth is to say that God’s promise-keeping faithfulness (grace) is the reality, the solidity, firmness, stability, that we can trust in a world of distortion and deception and depravity
WORD Perhaps there is a sceptic (even a cynic!) among us who has a most important question to ask. “If God keeps the promises he makes to us, does he do this merely because he wills to do it (the implication being that he could break his promises if he willed to break them), or does he keep his promises because it’s his nature to keep them?” When God keeps his promises, are we merely looking at something God does (for reasons known only to him), or are we looking into the innermost, unalterable heart of God?
We have already determined that grace means God is consistent in his attitude and act. But is God consistent in the sense of being a consistent actor? When the movie Awakenings was about to be filmed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote the book (Awakenings), spent much time with two superb actors, Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Sacks was startled and more than a little frightened at the ability of these two actors, since he noticed that they could take on any role, any identity, and act it with perfect consistency for as long as they wanted. But of course none of the roles, identities, they took on were they themselves; none of their roles reflected their innermost heart.
What about God? The “face” that he “puts on” for us in Jesus Christ; is this “face” only skin-deep, or does it reflect depths in God that are so deep they couldn’t be deeper? Does it reflect the innermost heart of God?
As we answer this question you will have to bear with me as we make a short detour into the Greek dictionary. There are two Greek words for word. One word for word is hrema, while the other is logos. Hrema means “that which we utter”. Logos, on the other hand, means “outermost expression of innermost essence”. When John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh, he uses logos. John is plainly telling us that what looms before us in Jesus Christ isn’t merely an act or action of God (as though God could act differently if he felt like it); what looms before us in Jesus Christ is the outermost expression of the innermost essence of God himself.
God doesn’t keep his promises to us just because he feels like keeping them, his promise-keeping telling us nothing about his heart or nature. God doesn’t keep his promises today, the implication being that he might not tomorrow. The consistency God displays isn’t the consistency of actors like Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are beholding the heart of God himself. God will never do anything other than what he has done in Christ and is doing now simply because he cannot do anything other.
To say the same thing differently, grace and truth are not roles that God acts superbly; grace and truth are the Word, the outermost expression of the innermost essence. God will always be — can only be — what he is for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Put the other way around, what God is for us in Christ he is in himself eternally. It is the innermost heart of God that has invaded our world of distortion and deception and depravity.
FLESH “The Word became flesh.” Typically, in scripture, “flesh” refers to our creaturely weakness. “Flesh” is the bible’s one-word abbreviation for our frailty, our fragility, our vulnerability to betrayal, to disappointment, to disease and to death. “Flesh” refers to our ultimate defencelessness in the face of everything we struggle to protect ourselves against but finally can’t.
To say that the Word became flesh is to say that God has stepped forth from his eternal stronghold and has stepped into our frailty, fragility, vulnerability and mortality. But he hasn’t done this just to prove that it can be done; and he hasn’t done this just to keep us company. He has done it in order that his grace and truth might become operative in you and me this instant. He has done it in order that grace and truth might seize us and soak us and shake us as often as we think that our vulnerability or our fragility or our mortality is the last word about us. He has done it in order that on any day of confusion or collapse truth will find us yet again; on any day of disgrace grace will bend the love of God around us and wrap us in his love as God’s faithfulness to us flexes yet again in the face of our sin. He has done it in order that on every day we shall know that we aren’t orphans lost in the vastness of the universe; rather we are children of him who has promised never to abandon us, always to cherish us, thoroughly to save us.
Christmas: an event in four words.
TRUTH: a firm, stable reality we can trust.
GRACE: God’s promise-keeping faithfulness as his love becomes mercy whenever it meets us in our sin, bringing us peace, shalom, salvation.
WORD: All of the this reflecting not merely something God does occasionally but reflecting who God is eternally.
FLESH: God himself going so far to keep his promises to us as to step forth from his stronghold and give himself up for us in the midst of our suffering and death.
“The Word became flesh…full of grace and truth.”
Victor A. Shepherd
Christmas 1995
What Christmas Means to Me
John 1:14
I: — It means a rescue operation, a salvage operation. Salvation (the unique work of the saviour) is a salvage operation.
One week after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph took their infant son to the temple to have him circumcised. There they met Simeon, an aged man who had waited years to see God’s Messiah. With a cry that relieved decades of aching longing Simeon took the baby in his arms and exclaimed, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Peace? Did Simeon mean that at last he had peace in his heart, peace of mind? No doubt he meant that too, but that wasn’t what he meant primarily when he cried, “Peace! At last!”
You see, Simeon was an Israelite. In the Hebrew language “peace” is a synonym for “salvation”. “Peace” means God’s definitive reversal of the distortion, disfigurement and distress which curse the world on account of sin and evil.
Years later, in the course of his earthly ministry, Jesus healed a menorrhagic woman. When he had identified her in the crowd he said, “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Through your faith in me God’s salvation has become effective in you; now you step ahead in the reality of your salvation; you walk in it; you live out of it for the rest of your life.”
When Simeon lifted up the week-old Jesus and cried, “Lettest now thy servant depart in peace” he added, “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation…light for revelation to Gentiles.”
Why does he speak of the Gentiles? Plainly Simeon thought that prior to the advent of Jesus Christ Gentiles were “in the dark” with respect to God. The light that Jesus Christ is, said Simeon, alone could save us Gentiles who know nothing of the Holy One of Israel. Was Simeon correct? Years later Paul would describe Gentiles as “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Apart from him who is the Christmas gift are we Gentiles Godless and our predicament hopeless? Paul assumed this to be unarguably obvious!
Two weeks ago the University of Toronto conferred an honourary doctorate on Isaiah Berlin, professor at Oxford University. Isaiah Berlin is regarded as one of the finest scholars of humanist conviction anywhere in the world. Multilingual, philosophically erudite, possessed of a remarkable grasp of history, he is intellectually awesome. In his address to the university he detailed the undeniable dark side of human history. While humankind had always been prone to warfare (with the huge loss of life unavoidable in war), it was Napoleon who first developed large-scale slaughter, large-scale in that the slaughter spread vastly farther than battlefield combatants. Then Isaiah Berlin pointed out that the 20th century was unparalleled for slaughter on an even greater scale: the Stalinist purges (not to mention the people Marxism has slain wherever Marxism has been ascendant), the Holocaust, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, and so on. It is the 20th century that has provided conclusive proof of what the previous centuries suggested to be the state of the human heart. As Berlin spoke, making his case stronger by the moment, the weight of his cumulative argument seemed on the point of convincing everyone that humankind of itself could never reverse its history of rapacity and cruelty. At precisely this moment (according to the Globe and Mail write-up) Berlin turned 180 degrees and announced, without any justification at all, that a glorious new day was just around the corner. History, to this point bleak beyond imagining, would suddenly reverse its course in the 21st century. Humankind was on the cusp of generating a genuinely new future for itself, said Berlin, and his only regret was that he, an old man now, would not live long enough to see us do finally what we had never been able to do to this point!
I was stunned. Berlin’s intellect is far greater than mine. Nevertheless, he exemplifies the point scripture makes over and over: a major consequence of our sinnership is blindness — blindness to truth, blindness to reality, blindness to the nature of sin and the necessity of the saviour. The worst aspect of blindness, of course, is blindness to our blindness; ignorance of our ignorance; insensitivity to our spiritual insensitivity. In a word, the worst consequence of our condition is utter unawareness of our condition and its consequences.
Then Paul was correct, wasn’t he! Humankind is Godless and its predicament is hopeless!
Except that the saviour of humankind that human history cannot generate; this saviour has been given to us. It is the fact of the gift that made Simeon’s heart sing. The fact of the gift means that humankind doesn’t have to remain Godless; its predicament doesn’t have to remain hopeless! What we must crave to do is receive the gift, never spurning it, never trifling with it, never pretending, along with Professor Berlin, that no such gift is needed even though the cumulative evidence is that such a gift — God’s own rescue — is our only hope.
I rejoice that this gift does not come to us with the impersonal label “humankind” written on it, as though it were for everyone in general but no one in particular. Rather I rejoice that it comes with my name on it. As often as I rejoice in this I recall the verse from the Hebrew bible — “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, says the Lord”. And then I think of the four-line ditty I learned as a child:
My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase.
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.
I rejoice that the gift with my name on it has come to me in such a manner as to impel me to own the gift, cherish the gift, glory in the gift. For I too can say with Simeon, “Peace! From the prince of Peace himself! Immanuel: ‘God-with-us'”. And because of “God-with-us”, I with God eternally.
II: — Christmas means something more to me. It means that the saved life I have been given in Christ I must henceforth live and can live. A minute ago I referred to Christ’s saying to the healed menorrhagic woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Your faith has immersed you in the salvation of God; now you live out of that salvation, live from it, for the rest of your life.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and — most importantly — could live.
When the woman caught in the very act of adultery was brought to Jesus he said to her, “I don’t condemn you; now you see to it that you never do this again.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and could live.
When the paralyzed man was brought to Jesus he said to him, “Your sins are forgiven; take up your bed and walk.” Our Lord didn’t mean, “Walk around, go for a stroll, meander, try a little sightseeing.” “Walk”, rather, is the commonest metaphor in the Hebrew bible for the obedience God requires of his people. In light of what God’s salvation, God’s people can walk as he requires them to walk.
When Jesus says to three different people on three different occasions, “Go in peace”, “See to it that you never do this again”, “Start walking and never stop”; when our Lord says these he is saying exactly the same thing to all three. What the salvaged are supposed to do the salvaged can do.
Christmas celebrates the Incarnation. The Incarnation is God himself living among us under the conditions of our existence. The Incarnation is therefore God himself living our difficulties, our disappointments, our distresses. The book of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”; he has forged a way through life’s thickets ahead of us. We don’t have to forge a way through the thicket; we need only follow him on the path he has forged for us. But this we must do, and by his grace this we can do.
Many years after Christmas, when our Lord was full-grown and had embarked on his public ministry, he told his followers that they were light and salt. Obviously we are not light in exactly the same sense that Jesus Christ is. He is the light of the world; our vocation is to shine with his light so as to reflect it into nooks and crannies where life unfolds for us.
Jesus also insisted that his followers are salt. Salt, in the Hebrew bible, is the symbol of God’s covenant with his creation. His covenant is his promise that he will never fail us or forsake us, never quit on us, never give up in disgust or despair, however angry with us he might be for a season. Christians are to be the living sign that God has not abandoned his creation and will not abandon it.
We are to be such a sign. Impossible? Except that our Lord has pioneered this for us already. We need only follow him on the proof-path. Because the salvager has been there ahead of us, we the salvaged must follow him and we can.
III: — Christmas means one thing more to me. It means that the ordinary is fraught with eternal significance. The apostle John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh. He means more than the fact that the self-utterance of God clothed itself in a human body: bones, blood, skin, hair, teeth. He means that the Word immersed itself in every aspect of our existence, from employment problems to temptation to fun-time partying to betrayal to exhilaration to grief to laughter to pain. None of it is foreign to God.
We must never forget that our Lord was born to ordinary parents, grew up in an ordinary town (Nazareth being a generic town like North Bay or Moose Jaw); he worked at an ordinary trade and ate ordinary food. He was so ordinary as not to be noteworthy; there is virtually no mention of him in the literature outside the New Testament. He was one more itinerant preacher of one more Messianic sect handled one more time in the manner Roman security guards were so good at. Yet he was also the sole, sovereign Son of God whose coming among us is the occasion of God’s most intimate presence, God’s most effective mercy, God’s unique opportunity.
Since life is 98% ordinary, it is in the ordinary moments of life that we are going to have serve God. Instead of looking for the extraordinary, the dramatic, we should understand that we are salt and light not particularly when we try to be or are challenged to be; if we are salt and light at all then we are salt and light all the time.
Jesus went to a wedding, and there was given opportunity to attest the mission of his Father. After the wedding he went to a funeral, and opportunity was given him for a different ministry. On his way to the next village a distraught parent told him of a daughter’s sickness; while he was sorting out this development someone who didn’t like him accosted him. It was all so very ordinary — and therefore it was all the opportunity of a particular word and deed and blessing and comfort.
The child in front of us in the variety store is crying because her mother has sent her to the store for a loaf of bread the child has lost her money. Two teenagers in front of us are maliciously teasing an elderly man in Erin Mills Town Centre. The stranger in the bed beside the person we have gone to see in the hospital calls out to us. Our spouse arrives home with horrendous headache and hair-trigger nerves on account of a sneak attack at work when she never expected it and therefore could not protect herself against it.
This is where we live. Christmas, the celebration of the Incarnation, reminds us that this is where God lives too. Then there is opportunity for discernment and service and intercession and courage right here. Depending on the situation there is opportunity (and need) for ironfast inflexibility or for the gentlest accommodation.
I am moved every time I recall a story of St. Francis of Assisi. An eager, enthusiastic novice among the friars told Francis that day-to-day existence with brothers in the order was suffocatingly ordinary. The two of them should move out into the wider world and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Francis agreed that this was a good idea. “But first let’s first walk through the city of Assisi from end to end”, insisted the older man. The two fellows did nothing more than walk through the city. When they had traversed it the impatient novice, puzzled now, turned to Francis and remarked quizzically, “But I thought we were going to testify to our Lord!” “We just did”, replied Francis quietly, “we just did.”
Life consists of the ordinary punctuated by the extraordinary. Punctuation marks are found relatively infrequently, aren’t they? I have yet to see a sentence that had more punctuation marks than words! Punctuation marks may help us read a sentence but they don’t make up the sentence. And strictly speaking, punctuation marks are not even necessary. (Something as important as a telegram, after all, has no punctuation marks.)
It is a sign of spiritual maturity when we understand that the ordinary is the vehicle of the eternal; it is a sign of spiritual alertness when, from time-to-time, we see how this has occurred. It is a sign of faithfulness when we live day-by-day in the certainty that there is no ordinary moment that God doesn’t grace, and therefore there is no ordinary moment that is finally insignificant.
Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation. Incarnation — the living word and will and way of God becoming flesh of our flesh in our midst; Incarnation is the foundation of everything pertaining to the Christian faith.
Incarnation means a salvage operation that is nothing less than the salvation of God.
Incarnation means that the salvaged life God grants us through our faith in Jesus Christ is a life we must live and can live, since our Lord has pioneered it for us.
Incarnation means that the ordinary is the vehicle of God’s summons to us, as well as the occasion of our obedience to him through service to others.
This is what Christmas means to me.
Victor A. Shepherd
December 1994
From Elijah to John the Baptist, from David to Jesus
I: — My appetite does not improve when I see a crow pecking at a dead animal on the side of the highway. And if perchance a crow were to drop a bit of ragged roadkill in my lap I should be repulsed. Elijah the prophet was told (who told him?) to hunker down by the brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan and crows would feed him there. Feed him what? Everyone knows what crows eat.
Elijah looms out at us from the Hebrew bible as a man who is utterly God-saturated. Over and over we are told, “The word of the Lord came to Elijah…”, and off Elijah goes to do and say what has been laid on him. Today we should find many different ways of speaking of him. He was God-soaked — for the text explains him entirely in terms of the God who has inundated him. He was humble — for it takes more than a little humility to allow oneself to be fed carrion. He was courageous — for it takes enormous courage to speak truth to power, particularly when the political power (King Ahab and his cruel wife Jezebel) is murderous. He was unpolished — for subtlety and soft speech were foreign to him. Most notably he was impassioned. Wherever we find Elijah his passion is aflame: his preaching, his praying, his scorn, his rage, his dejection; it’s all a firestorm. Moderation? Elijah never heard of the word. Balance? The “golden mean”? He wouldn’t understand. We wonder why Elijah is always and everywhere afire; he wonders why we appear not to be lit.
The greatest of the Hebrew prophets, according to Jewish opinion both ancient and modern, Elijah was God’s spokesperson in the face of the Baalism which surrounded Israel and threatened to infiltrate it. Baalism had several aspects to it. It was nature-worship, and nature worship (both ancient and modern) conveniently lacks any grasp of evil or sin. Nature-worship will always attract the hordes who want religious sentimentality without ethics. Not surprisingly Baalism tolerated, even encouraged, lasciviousness of all sorts.
King Ahab, an Israelite who knew exactly what God meant when God insisted that he is a “jealous” God (God abides no rivals; worship of him cannot be mixed with worship of anything else); Ahab nevertheless thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the true and living God, together? Why not have the self-indulgence which Baal permits his people and the security which Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication which Baal laughs about and the forgiveness which Yahweh weeps to bestow? Why not? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that God wants us to “have it all”? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that we can have all the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?
Elijah rightly says, “No, a thousand times no!” And so we find Elijah, the prophet of God, standing amidst the 450 prophets of Baal. “The Holy One of Israel”, Elijah says to them, “will shortly expose your Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that it is. And as for you, Ahab, so far from being a real king you are a double-crosser; you have betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector you were commissioned to be.” Whereupon Ahab stabs his finger at Elijah, “You troubler of Israel ; why do you have to be such a disturber?”
Jewish people always knew that Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, would come back. He would come back at the end-time when the kingdom of God was breaking in on the world; he would come back when what all Israel called the “Age to Come” was dawning as it superimposed itself on what Israel called the “Present Evil Age”. Elijah would surely come back. And when he came back, ancient Jewish people insisted, he would do four things. He would restore the people inwardly through repentance; he would gather together the scattered people of God; he would proclaim salvation; and he would introduce the Messiah.
Centuries later John the Baptist appeared. John didn’t eat carrion brought to him by crows; he ate honey made for him by wild bees, with grasshoppers added for protein. John too spoke truth to power, even lethal political power — just as Elijah of old had. This time it wasn’t king Ahab; it was king Herod, a Jew in name only who had sold his soul to pagan Romans and now betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector he had been commissioned to be. And just as Elijah had ringingly denounced Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard, so John denounced Herod’s theft of his brother’s wife.
John had an elemental message which he declared tirelessly. “Repent. Right now. Don’t say, ‘Tomorrow’. You don’t have tomorrow. The axe is laid to the root of the tree now; it is the height of spiritual stupidity to think that the tree itself is going to last until tomorrow. Get right with God now. How will anyone know if your repentance is genuine? By the subsequent shape of your life. Will baptism in the Jordan (or anywhere else) save you? No it won’t. For unless your life is reordered before God, getting yourself baptized in desperation is no different from a snake slithering away in panic from a grass fire.”
And then John began gathering together the scattered people of God. After all, he urged repentance even upon soldiers, and they, despised gentiles as they were, were yet added to the “household and family of faith”. In the same breath John proclaimed the salvation brought by his cousin, Jesus, whose shoelaces John felt himself unworthy to untie. Did he introduce the Messiah? Repeatedly John urged the people, “Don’t look at me; look at him. He is the one to baptize you with the fiery Spirit of God!”
Months later the detractors of Jesus taunted him, “You can’t be the Messiah. Everyone knows that Elijah must come back before the Messiah can appear. And Elijah hasn’t returned for 800 years!” “Wrong again”, said Jesus to his detractors, “you are dead wrong. Elijah did come back. He came back recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: ‘the dunker, the dipper’. Elijah did come back. And you dismissed him. Didn’t John urge repentance, gather the scattered people of God, declare the salvation of God, and introduce the Messiah?”
Today is Advent Sunday. We are preparing ourselves to receive (or receive afresh) him who is the Messiah of Israel and the saviour of the world, him who is nothing less than Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yet we can properly receive him only as we first admit that the Messiah can’t be known without the reappearance of Elijah, only as we admit with our Lord himself that John the Baptist is Elijah given to us once more. Which is to say, we can receive the Christmas gift himself only as we first hear the forerunner’s word and take it to heart and do it. The single forerunner of the Christmas gift is Elijah and John compressed into one. Let us hear our Lord Jesus once more: we can receive him who is the Christmas gift (our Saviour) only as we first hear and honour the word of the forerunner, Elijah and John compressed into one.
II: — Elijah was Israel ’s greatest prophet; David its greatest king. Many generations later David’s descendants gave birth to the Son of David, Jesus our Lord. David and Jesus were even farther apart temporally than Elijah and John: one thousand years separated David and his Son. Yet they had much in common.
They both came from simple country-folk; David and Jesus, that is.
They both gained notoriety when they were still adolescents: David as a shepherd boy who accidentally “showed up” older men when they would not respond to Goliath’s challenge, Jesus as a 12 year old who stymied learned clergy in the temple.
They both possessed enormous backbone, neither one a pushover, neither one cowering before brute power. When David saw the terror which had paralyzed his countrymen in the face of the Philistine threat David scornfully said of the Philistine leader, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” When Jesus knew that Herod wanted to terminate him Jesus scornfully said to whoever would listen, “Go and tell that fox”, when “fox”, in first century Middle Eastern street-talk was shorthand for the most loathsome “creep” imaginable.
They both showed mercy to their enemies: David, when he knew Saul wanted to kill him and he had Saul helpless yet let him go, Jesus when he prayed at the last, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
They both were men of passion. When David exulted without restraint “before the Lord” his wife, Michal, despised him for it. When the passion of Jesus fired his public ministry and rendered him heedless of danger his mother thought him deranged and wanted to take him home and sedate him.
They both were fighters, and both declined the weapons which everyone else assumed they ought to use. David was offered Saul’s armour, but put it aside, trusting a simple slingshot and the use God would make of it as God honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father. Jesus, summoned before Pilate, told Pilate that he, Jesus had at his command legions of angels whose unearthly power could have vapourized Pilate on the spot, together with everything Pilate represented. Instead Jesus trusted a simple cross and the use his Father would make of it as his Father honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father.
Both David and Jesus were born to be king. David was born in Bethlehem , a village outside Jerusalem . ” Bethlehem ” means “house of bread”. One thousand years later Jesus was born in Bethlehem too. Both were born to be king.
What was an Israelite king supposed to do? I say “supposed to do” since most Israelite kings didn’t do what a king was supposed to do. Instead they lined their pockets and slew their opponents. David was different. David knew that an Israelite king had three responsibilities. The king was to protect the people, uphold justice, and serve as a priest.
David did protect the people. In fact David was a military genius, like the Duke of Wellington or Ulysses S. Grant.
David did uphold justice. Justice today means little more than seeing that criminals are convicted and sentenced. Not so with that justice which God decrees. As a matter of fact there is no Hebrew word for justice; the Hebrew word is “judgement.” The king was to uphold God’s judgements just because the king was the agent of God’s judgements. And God’s judgement is not primarily a matter of convicting criminals and sentencing them. God’s judgements, scripture attests over and over, are God himself setting right what is wrong; freeing those who are enslaved; relieving those who are oppressed; assisting those who are helpless; clearing the name of those who are slandered; vindicating those who are despised. David did this. Those who had been set upon were set upon no longer. Anyone who “fleeced” the defenceless or exploited the powerless learned quickly that king David had zero tolerance for this sort of thing. When David himself was fleeing Saul’s murderous hatred 400 men and their families gathered around David, “Everyone who was in straits and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was desperate.” To be desperate is literally to be without hope; to be in straits is to have no way out, no escape. All such people found in this king one who would never disdain or ignore or abandon them.
And priest? The role of the priest was to intercede with God on behalf of the people. Frequently David went into the tabernacle “and sat before the Lord”; that is, he had his people on his heart, and pleaded with God for them all.
One thousand years after David a blind beggar minutes away from receiving his sight called out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” “Son of David”. It meant “messiah.” The messiah was to be a great king, greater even than David. A blind man who could see what supposedly sighted people couldn’t see knew Jesus to be the long-awaited king greater even than David.
The protection which Christ the king gave his people — continues to give them — is more glorious than any protection David furnished, for Christ our king has promised that nothing will ever snatch you and me out of his hand; nothing will ever separate us from that love of God made concrete in the king himself.
That Son of David who is Christ the king upholds justice as he implements God’s judgements. Jesus himself has said that all judgement has been delivered over to him. And since the primary purpose of judgement is to restore the right, to say he is judge is to say that he is saviour. If the primary purpose of the judge is to set right anything that is wrong, anywhere, from the sin of a child to the disfigurement of the cosmos, then the judge has to be the saviour as well.
And priest? In his atoning sacrifice Christ the king uniquely pleads with the Father on behalf of the people. For this reason the book of Hebrews speaks of Christ the king as “our great high priest”.
All of which brings us to the last point concerning David and David’s greater son: the matter of sin. Here their paths diverge. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was “tempted at all points as we are, yet without sin”. David, it can safely be said, was also tempted at all points; but he sinned grievously. He lusted after Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. His lust warped his thinking. Adultery-on-the-way rendered murder perfectly reasonable. David didn’t merely stumble; he sprawled, sprawled shamefully. Everyone knew it.
A few days later, as David slunk out of Jerusalem (or tried to slink out), a man named Shimei walked on the other side of the street, cursing David and throwing stones at him. (No doubt the stones were a not-so-subtle reminder that the law of Moses prescribed stoning for adultery.) Abishai, David’s loyal friend, was outraged that the king should be insulted like this. “Why should this dead dog curse the king?”, cried Abishai, “Let me take his head off!” “No”, replied David sadly, “No. Shimei curses me only because God has told him to. The treatment Shimei accords me is no worse than I deserve.” David was publicly humiliated, yet refused to flee his humiliation inasmuch as his public humiliation was the God-ordained consequence of his sin.
King David’s greater son didn’t flee his public humiliation either. Jesus was “numbered among the transgressors”. He was assigned that death — crucifixion — which the Romans reserved for insurrectionists, deserters and rapists; that is, reserved for those whose disgrace could not be greater. Jesus refused to flee his public humiliation inasmuch as his humiliation was the God-ordained consequence not of his sin but of his sin-bearing righteousness. The apostle Paul, as so often, says it most compactly: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The Christmas announcement to the shepherds in the field was plain: “Don’t be afraid. Good news! Great joy! For to you is born in the city of David a saviour who is Christ the Lord.”
The city of David is Bethlehem , “house of bread”. And in the house of bread is born David’s greater son who is himself the bread of life. Then this one, given to us anew at this season, we must receive anew, for he is saviour inasmuch as his humiliation is his invitation to us to become that righteousness of God which we need as we need nothing else.
Elijah, David, John, Jesus. The Christmas story begins in a lowly cattle shed, once upon a time, in royal David’s city.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2003
Who Ought to “Come and Worship Christ the New-Born King”?
Isaiah 60:1-3
Matthew 2:1-12
Who ought to worship? Everyone ought to worship. (We all know this much. Everyone ought to worship.) Still, the Christmas carol, Angels, from the Realms of Glory, speaks of different sorts of people who ought to worship. It speaks of angels and shepherds, sages and saints.
I: — Today we are going to start with the shepherds. Shepherds were despised in 1st century Palestine. The social sophisticates in Jerusalem and other city centres of urbanity looked upon shepherds as uncouth, since shepherds worked with animals. Shepherds were also regarded as dirty. Sheep, after all, have very oily fleece and the shepherd has to handle them; besides, sheep poop everywhere. Shepherds were also looked upon as less than devout. It was awkward for them to get to all the church services as expected, since their animals were forever getting lost or falling sick or breaking a leg or having obstetrical difficulties.
Like all people who are despised for any reason, however, the shepherds were also useful to the very people who despised them. At both morning and evening services in the temple, the cathedral of Jerusalem, an unblemished lamb had to be offered up to God. High quality lambs, therefore, were always in demand. Temple authorities had their own private flocks just outside Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem hills. The Bethlehem shepherds looked after both their own flocks and the flocks of the temple authorities, always looking out for the perfect lamb to be sacrificed in the temple. These shepherds, despised as they were, were ordained by God to be the first people to behold the Lamb of God, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. They were the first to hear the good news, gospel, of Christmas: “For to you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”
I understand why the shepherds were the first to hear and see, apprehend and know, believe and trust. The shepherds were first in that like other people in general who come from the south side of town they aren’t taken in by the smokescreens and false fronts that middle and upper class people love to hide behind. People from the south side of town see it the way it is and tell it the way it is.
My first day on the job in Streetsville (I came to the congregation in 1978 and remained for 21 years) I arrived early at my office and waited for the church secretary. Promptly at 8:30 a.m. the secretary, a large, imposing woman, loomed in the doorway to my office, looked me in the eye and said, “I’m married to a truck driver; you get it from me straight.” That was her first utterance. Her second was like unto it: “There’s a toilet between your office and mine, but it’s noisy, if you get what I mean.” Is there anyone who wouldn’t get what she meant? Right away I knew I was going to get along with this woman. Because she, married to a truck driver, was utterly transparent and non-duplicitous, frontal, she spared me untold grief over and over in congregational life.
She and I had much in common, not the least of which is the simple fact that we both live in the shadow of a dog food factory. And there’s nothing wrong with this. After all, Moses was minding sheep when the Lord God accosted him and the world was different ever after. Gideon was threshing wheat when he was summoned from heaven. Elisha was ploughing a field when he was named successor to Elijah. No congregation can afford to be without shepherds and all those like them.
This being the case, why do we see so few of these people at worship in virtually all the churches of historic Protestantism? Roman Catholicism has always been able to attract people from the whole of the socio-economic spectrum, from the most affluent to the most materially disadvantaged. To be sure, the Protestant churches do see some of the latter; Protestant congregations aren’t completely homogeneous. Still, we see far too few. Their absence dismays me, since I have found that these people have no difficulty with me, at least. Several years ago a man with a grade ten education chuckled, “Victor, we can always be sure of one thing on Sunday morning: you’ll never be over our heads!” Such people live in Toronto in large numbers. But they are proportionately underrepresented in virtually all Protestant congregations. Why? Can any of you enlighten me? Their absence haunts me. For shepherds have been summoned to worship Christ the new-born king. And if they do worship, they’ll be the first to see and seize the Lamb of God who takes away their sin too.
II: — Sages ought to worship as well. To be sure, the hymnwriter insists that where sages are concerned “brighter visions beam afar”; brighter, that is, than the sages’ contemplations. I agree. But to see Jesus Christ as brighter, even the brightest, is not to say that lesser contemplations aren’t bright at all and aren’t to be valued. They are bright, and they are to be valued. To say that God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ supplies what no sage will ever arrive at is correct; but to say that because God’s self-disclosure is this what the sages are about is worthless – this is wrong. To say that the event of Christmas gives us what no philosophical exploration will ever impart is not to say that philosophy (or another scholarly discipline) is therefore foolish and useless. The uniqueness of the Christmas event never means that intellectual rigour isn’t a creaturely good, a creaturely good that gives God pleasure.
Philosophy is an academic discipline that I cherish. Please don’t tell me that philosophy’s significance is measured by the old question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Philosophy, after all, taught me to think, and 90% of good preaching is just clear thinking. Moreover, insofar as philosophical enquiry is the exploration of what is there is an intellectual excellence to it that we ought not to slight, for God takes pleasure in any human excellence. (Let’s be sure of something else: God takes no pleasure in mediocrity of any sort.)
Jesus Christ is truth. I am glad to affirm this. He is that “brighter” luminosity that sages are summoned to worship. But to say this isn’t to say that the contemplations of the sages are inherently vacuous and invariably useless, let alone evil. Because the church has undervalued the sages’ contemplations the church has largely abandoned the arena of intellectual endeavour. At one time the thinkers inside the church could out-think the thinkers outside the church; at one time. In my second year philosophy course the professor, a man who made no religious profession, had the class read both Bertrand Russell and Thomas Aquinas. Russell is an atheist; Aquinas, a Christian and the greatest philosopher of the middle ages. It’s easy to see why an agnostic or atheist professor would have us read Russell. But why Aquinas? Just because that professor wanted us to appreciate the intellectual power of the “Angelic Doctor”, as Aquinas was known in the 1200s.
Years ago I overheard Emil Fackenheim, himself a marvellous philosopher, remark that Kierkegaard was the greatest thinker to arise in Christendom. I thought the statement was perhaps exaggerated Then I found others saying the same thing. Then I noticed that Ludwig Wittgenstsein, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century (together with Martin Heidegger); I noticed that Wittgenstein had said that Kierkegaard was by far the profoundest thinker of the 19th century. Will the profoundest thinker of the 20th century turn out to have been a Christian? And of the 21st? Not a chance. Why not? Because the church has abandoned the intellectual field. Fuzzy-headed feel-goodism is as profound as we get today.
At the time of the Reformation (16th century), those who had first been schooled as “sages” (i.e., humanists) before they applied themselves to theology also wrote theology that we shall never be without and provided leadership for the church. Those, on the other hand, who studied theology only without first drinking from the wells of humanism wrote no worthwhile theology and provided no leadership for the church.
Yes, sages should worship Christ the new-born king, since he is king and brings with him what the sages can’t supply of themselves. But this is not to say that the sages’ sage-ism is worthless. There is creaturely wisdom that is genuinely wise, even as the pursuit of that wisdom gives pleasure to God.
III: — Saints too are summoned to the cradle. “Saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear.” The saints are those, like Simeon and Anna of old, who wait on God. The saints are always found “before the altar bending”; i.e., the saints worship, profoundly worship. They are always found “watching long in hope and fear”; i.e., the saints are both expectant and reverent. “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple shall appear.” Shall appear; shall continue to appear. In other words, the Lord who came once in Bethlehem of old comes again and yet again, continues to come. Insofar as any of us are found at worship, waiting on God expectantly and reverently, the selfsame Lord will unfailingly appear to us.
It was while Isaiah was at worship that the sanctuary filled up with the grandeur of God and the holiness of God and the glory of God. The glory of God is the earthly manifestation of God’s unearthly Godness. It all overwhelmed Isaiah so as to leave him prostrated under the crushing weight of God, only then to be set on his feet so that he might henceforth go and do what he had been appointed to.
It was while Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, was at worship that he was rendered speechless for as long as he needed to stop talking in order to hear and heed what God was saying to him.
It was while the apostle John was at worship, exiled for the rest of his life on the island of Patmos, that he was “visited” and wrote, when he had recovered, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength…and when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, ‘Fear not….’”
What do we expect when we come to worship? Three hymns and a harangue? What if “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple did appear”?
He who came once doesn’t come once only. He comes again and again. As often as he comes the saints before the altar bending – the saints at worship – are overtaken yet again, and like John of old can barely croak, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face like the sun shining in full strength….” The saints in any congregation today know as surely as the saints of old knew. And the saints at worship today declare, “Come with us and worship Christ the new-born king.”
IV: — What about the angels? Make no mistake: the angels are real. It is the height of arrogance to think that we are the only rational creatures in the universe. Who says that a creature has to possess flesh and bone in order to possess reason and spirit? The Christmas carol invites the angels to “proclaim Messiah’s birth.” Such proclamation, such witness, is precisely what scripture says angels are always and everywhere to be about. Such proclamation or witness is crucial. You see, because the angels are mandated to bear witness, specifically to bear witness to Jesus Christ, God will never lack witnesses who attest the truth and power of his Son and of that kingdom which the Son brings with him. To be sure, you and I are mandated to bear witness to all of this too. Flesh and blood witnesses like you and me, however, are sadly lacking in quality and quantity. Still, where we are deficient, the angels are not. Therefore I find much comfort in the angels. However much I may fail in serving and attesting and exalting Messiah Jesus and his truth, there are other creatures whose service and witness and exaltation never fail.
Listen to Karl Barth, the pre-eminent theologian of our century. A few years after World War II Barth wrote, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.” Just before the outbreak of the war Barth had been apprehended at his Saturday morning lecture in the University of Bonn, Germany. He had been deported immediately from Germany to his native Switzerland. As soon as hostilities with Germany had ceased the cold war with the Soviet Union had begun. While there was no war, hot or cold, in Switzerland, Barth never pretended the Swiss were uncommonly virtuous. He readily admitted his own country financed itself by harbouring the ill-gotten gains (the infamous unnamed accounts in the Swiss banks) of the most despicable criminals throughout the world. Nevertheless, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.”
V: — Lastly, the Christmas carol invites us all, everyone, to worship Christ the new-born king. It tells us that this infant has been appointed to fill his Father’s throne. Since Christ’s sovereignty over the whole of creation is unalterable, acknowledging his sovereignty is not only an invitation to be received and a command to be obeyed; it’s the soul of common sense.
Our Lord is the new-born king. To be sure, the only crown he will ever wear is a crown of thorns. Finding no room in the inn and having no home in which to lay his head throughout his earthly ministry, the one house he’ll eventually occupy is a tree house, ghastly though it is. And of course the only throne he will ever adorn is a cross. Still, he is king. We mustn’t allow the bizarreness of his royal trappings to deflect us from the fact that he is king. He rules, he will judge, and he can bless.
Then acknowledge him we must. The writer of our carol cries, “Every knee shall then bow down.” Since everyone is going to have to acknowledge him ultimately, like it or not; since every knee is going to have to bow before him either in willing adoration or in unwilling resignation, it only makes sense to adore him and love him and delight in him now, together with sages, saints, angels, and by no means least, shepherds.
Victor Shepherd
December 2000
What the Incarnation Means for Me
Colossians 1:19
Canada is religiously diverse. Muslims outnumber Presbyterians in Toronto and outnumber us again in Canada as a whole. We used to read about Hindu people in India and elsewhere. But when a trustee from the Toronto Board of Education spoke of Mahatma Gandhi in a manner that offended the Hindu community, we learned quickly that our Hindu fellow-Canadians are more numerous and less visible than we had thought.
Unquestionably we live amidst religious pluralism. In the sea of religious pluralism the Christian conviction concerning the Incarnation sticks out like a sore thumb. If we remain silent about the Incarnation we can always pass ourselves off as vague theists; i.e., people who believe in a deity of some sort, people who believe enough about God to appear religious yet who don’t believe so much as to appear offensive.
Then should Christians downplay the Incarnation, as one professor suggested to me? We can never do this, for the truth; the undeniable, uncompromisable truth of the Incarnation has seized us. At any time, but especially at Christmas, we exult in the truth that the Word was made flesh, that God has come among us by identifying himself with all humanity in the humanness of one man in particular, Jesus of Nazareth. We who have cherished the gospel of the Incarnation for years are like those men and women of old whose elation concerning Jesus caused them to shout in exultation. Detractors didn’t like this. They told Jesus to silence his followers. “Silence them?” said Jesus; “If my followers fell silent the very stones would cry out [in acclaiming the truth.]”
We who cling to our Lord today must cry out too in gratitude for all that God has given us in him and done for us in him. We are never going to be found denying our Lord by denying the Incarnation. We are never going to surrender the particularity of the Incarnation in order to blend into the blandest religion-in-general. Without hesitation we are going to thank God for his coming to us as Incarnate Son in Jesus of Nazareth. Without embarrassment we are going to announce this truth in season and out of season.
Why are we going to do this? What does the Incarnation mean? Why is it crucial to all men and women everywhere even if they disdain it?
I: — In the first place the Incarnation means that God loves us in our misery so very much that he is willing to share our misery with us. He loves us enough in our alienation from him as to stop at nothing to fetch us home to him.
But do we need to be fetched home? In his best-loved parable, “the parable of the prodigal son,” as we call it, Jesus uses two pithy, single-syllable words to describe our condition before God. The first word is “lost;” the second, “dead.” Please note that Jesus doesn’t attempt to explain what he’s said in order to defend himself for saying it. Neither does he argue for it in order to persuade us to believe it. He merely states it: “Lost, dead.” He expects us to agree with him.
On another occasion people are gathered around Jesus, listening. They hear him using the strongest language concerning the spiritual condition of humankind. They assume he’s referring to “others,” “others” being inferior sorts whom they don’t like in any case and whom they could readily agree to be spiritually defective. “But what about us?” these hearers ask Jesus, expecting to be exempted. “What about us?” Whereupon our Lord utters two more words: “blind, deaf.” Suddenly enraged, these people fly at him: “Don’t talk to us like that. We are better than that. We have Abraham for our father.” “Abraham?” says Jesus; “You wouldn’t know Abraham if you fell over him. Your father is the devil.”
You and I ought never to deceive ourselves about our sinnership. We ought never to forget it. We should recall it daily, and daily feel better immediately, since to recall our sinnership is to recall the Christmas truth that God loves us enough to condescend to us sinners and number himself among us.
We speak of God’s love presumptuously and therefore shallowly. “Of course God loves. What else can he do? Of course God loves me. Who wouldn’t love me? Of course….” It’s all so very shallow.
We need to ask a profounder question. “How much does God love? How far will he go in loving me? What price will he pay to love me? How much will he suffer to love me?” The truth is, God loves us sinners so much that his love will stop at nothing to reclaim us and rescue us. His love doesn’t go “only so far” and stop there; his love goes as far as it has to go in order to have us home with him again. Plainly it wasn’t sufficient that he love us “from a distance;” plainly he could love us savingly (anything less is useless) only if he condescended and came among us as one of us humans, and humiliated himself by identifying with us sinners.
In my first congregation I came to know an old man, Jim MacCullum, who had served in World War I. One day he and his best friend were moving forward in “No Man’s Land,” the open space between allied and enemy trenches. Enemy fire became so intense that the Canadian troops had to fall back. When Jim got back to his trench he couldn’t find his friend. Whereupon Jim went back out to “No Man’s Land,” into the teeth of murderous fire, searching and calling out until he found his friend. His friend was badly wounded and unless rescued would shortly perish. The wounded man looked at him and said, “Jim, I knew you’d come.”
There’s a moving similarity between the situation of Jim’s friend and our situation before God. In Romans 5 Paul speaks of us as helpless. That’s the similarity. There’s also the profoundest dissimilarity between Jim’s friend and our situation before God. In Romans 5 Paul also speaks of us as enemies of God. Jim’s friend wanted to see Jim as he wanted nothing else. We sinners – blind, deaf, spiritually inert – don’t expect a saviour and don’t want one.
And it is for all such perverse people that God’s love swells and swells until his love has to find embodiment in the Nazarene. At this point God has loved us so very much that his love has humbled him in a manger, humiliated him with a reputation he doesn’t deserve (“sinner”) and tortured him in Gethsemane and cross.
Tell me: people who speak so very glibly about God’s love – how do they know that God loves them at all? We know that God loves us at all only as we see him loving us to the uttermost, only as we see him loving us until his love stops short of nothing in order to reconcile us to himself.
Let’s be sure we understand something crucial: while the Incarnation is essential to our salvation we aren’t saved by it. We are saved by the Incarnate One’s sin-bearing death. Then beyond God’s condescension and humility there’s humiliation as he, the holy one, identifies himself with unholy rebels. And his humiliation takes him even into a torment wherein he absorbs in himself his just judgement upon us in order that we might be spared it. This is how much God loves us. And only as we see him loving us this much do we have any reason to believe that he loves us at all.
For years now I have pondered the fact that the best Christmas carols sing about the Incarnation for the sake of singing about the atonement, the cross. Think of one of my favourites, “Hark! The Herald Angels sing!” But first let’s listen again to our text: “For in Jesus Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Incarnation) and through him to reconcile all things…making peace by the blood of his cross (atonement.)” Now listen to the carol: “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.”
Think of the carol, “As With Gladness.” It says, “So may we with willing feet, ever seek thy mercy-seat.” In ancient Israel the mercy-seat was the gold lid on the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the place where God met with his people; and the mercy-seat, the gold lid, was the place where costliest sacrifice was offered. Jesus Christ is where God meets with his people; his cross is the mercy-seat. Costliest sacrifice is offered here, which sacrifice bathes us in effectual mercy. And we learn it all from a Christmas carol.
I glory in the Incarnation. I know that God loves me at all just because I first know that his love stops short of nothing in his searching for me and his rescuing me.
II: — In the second place I glory in the Incarnation in that Jesus of Nazareth, human with my humanness, has fulfilled on my behalf the covenant obedience that God’s love wants from us humans. God covenants himself to us in that he promises ever to be our God. We in turn covenant ourselves to him in that we promise ever to be his people.
God unfailingly keeps us covenant with us. What he promises he performs. What he pledges he delivers. And we? We promise unfailing obedience to God. We promise exclusive loyalty to God. We promise uninterrupted love to God. We promise truthfulness before him. Whereupon we break all the promises we make. Even the promises we make with the best intentions we break nonetheless. We are covenant violators.
God looks out over his entire human creation, hoping to find promise-keepers. Among six billion people he can’t find one human being who gladly, gratefully, consistently, fulfils humankind’s covenant with God. At this point God is faced with an alternative: write off his human creation on account of its disobedience and rebellion, or fulfil humankind’s covenant himself. He has already fulfilled his covenant in loving us undeflectably. Now he also has to fulfil our covenant with him if our covenant is ever going to be kept. In the Incarnate One of Nazareth God not only fulfils his covenant with us; he also fulfils our covenant with him. In other words, in view of humankind’s disobedience God has to come among us as human and in this way fulfil our covenant himself.
I glory in the Incarnation in that the Incarnate One is the human covenant-keeper to whom I must cling, covenant-breaker that I am. To be sure, I have heard the gospel invitation and responded to it. I am a new creation in Christ and grateful for it. Yet the old man, the old being, still clings to me. When we became new creatures in Christ the old man, old woman, was put to death. But as Luther liked to remind us, the old man or woman won’t die quietly; the corpse keeps twitching. This being the case, it’s plain that in Christ I am a new creature; in myself I remain the old covenant-breaker. Then I must cling to Jesus Christ so that his covenant-keeping comprehends my covenant-breaking.
To be sure, I do love God. But I never love him as much as I’m supposed to. Then I must cling to that Son whose human love for his Father is defective in nothing. To be sure I do trust God. But somehow my trust in God is always being punctured by episodes of distrust when I dispute that he can or will do for me all that he’s promised. To be sure, I do obey God. At least I aspire to obey him; I want to obey him. But actually obey him? In all matters? Without exception? Then I can only cling to that Son whose human obedience to his Father is faultless. To be sure, I am possessed of faith. Yet how faithful is my faith? Faith of the head comes easy to me: I believe all major Christian doctrines and have never doubted any of them. So much for my faith of the head. But what what about the faith, faithfulness, of my heart? My heart is treacherous. Then I must cling to that Son whose human faith in his Father was never compromised.
Let me say it again. God unfailingly keeps his covenant, his promises, to us. Just as surely we violate ours to him. Then we must cling to the Inarnate One in whom God as man has come to keep that human covenant with him which we can’t keep.
In other words, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate One, mediates God to us and at the same time mediates us to God. He is the one and only Mediator – both manward and Godward – whom God has provided us in our great need.
III: — Lastly, I glory in the Incarnation since it is the greatest affirmation of life. After all, if human life is so precious to God that he chooses to live our human existence as human himself, then human existence must be rich, wonderful, a treasure. If God so prizes human existence then we must prize it no less. If in living every dimension of our humanness God endorses every dimension, then we must endorse every dimension too.
Life is good. I didn’t say easy. I didn’t say life is trouble-free or confusion-free or pain-free. I said life is good. The Incarnation is the story of God’s coming among us to rescue us inasmuch as he deems our existence worth rescuing. Then human existence, however problem-riddled, remains good.
I feel sorry for the people who have slipped or skidded or otherwise fallen into the rut of not being life-affirming. Frequently they tell me they don’t feel very good because they have had the ’flu six times this year. But no one gets the ’flu six times per year. ’Flu-like symptoms – dragginess, weariness (“psychomotor retardation” is the fancy medical term) – these are the symptoms of low-grade depression. Low-grade depression is usually so very low-grade that it’s not recognized as depression. It’s what people slide into unawares when they don’t have reason enough to be life-affirming.
The Incarnation is reason enough. I love that verse from the book of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in all his toil.” (2:28) We are to enjoy eating and drinking and working not simply because they keep life going; we are to enjoy these because they are pleasurable, good in themselves.
I’m always impressed with the child’s exuberance. A child is on the tear every waking moment. He doesn’t want to go to bed – even when’s so tired he’s staggering – in case he misses something. Yes, I know; we adults don’t have the child’s physical stamina, and we are aware of the world’s grief in a way the child isn’t. Nonetheless, the child’s exuberance should inflame ours.
One day after church the Shepherds’ lunch-hour table-talk roamed hither and yon from that morning’s sermon to Canada ’s newest submarines to Alice Munro’s most recent collection of short stories to the Argos ’ Grey Cup victory. Maureen looked at me said, “You have a thousand enthusiasms.” Indeed I have. Isn’t this better than a thousand wet blankets? In the Incarnation God affirms everything he pronounces good.
The Word became flesh. The Word was embodied. Then to say “life-affirming” is also to say “body-affirming.” The taste of green apples and blue cheese. The crunch of buried ice fragments in the middle of our ice cream cone. Flannelette sheets on a winter night. Renee Fleming’s soprano voice. Yitzhak Perlman’s violin. Riding a bicycle for hours longer than we thought we could. One day I was walking through the ward of a nursing home where the residents were in the worst condition imaginable. One malodorous, old man was hunched over in his wheel chair, head on his folded arms, seemingly more dead than alive or virtually comatose. I assumed he was asleep or depressed or deranged or all three at once. As I tiptoed past him he sat up, grinned at me and shouted, “Did you bring the sweets?” I could have kissed him.
It’s Christmastide. Together we are pondering the foundation of our faith, the Incarnation, God’s coming among us as human in Jesus of Nazareth.
– Because God has visited us in this manner we know how much he loves us: he will do anything, suffer anything, absorb anything, to have us home with him again, reconciled to him forever.
– Because God has visited us in this manner we know that he as human has fulfilled our covenant with him when we couldn’t fulfil it ourselves.
-Because God has visited us in this manner he has affirmed the goodness of our existence, and insists that we affirm it too.
Yes, we do live amidst religious pluralism. So did Jesus himself. Yet he remained who he was amidst it and never apologized for being who he was and is. We are unapologetic. For that truth which has seized us we could never deny – and in any case would never want to.
Victor Shepherd
Christmas 2004
John the Baptist and Jesus
Matthew 3:1-12
We expect to find a family resemblance among relatives. John and Jesus were cousins. Not surprisingly, then, they were “look-alikes” in many respects.
Both were at home in the wilderness, the venue of extraordinary temptation and trial and testing, but also the venue of extraordinary intimacy with the Father.
Both preached out-of doors when they began their public ministry.
Both gave their disciples a characteristic prayer. John gave his followers a prayer that outwardly identified them as his disciples and inwardly welded them to each other. In no time the disciples of Jesus asked him for the same kind of characteristic prayer, with the result that we shall never be without the “Lord’s Prayer.”
Both John and Jesus lashed hearers whenever they spoke of God’s severity and the inescapability of God’s judgement.
Both summoned people to repent.
Both discounted the popular notion that God favoured Israel with political or national pre-eminence.
Both were born through an uncommon act of God.
And both died through having provoked uncommon rage among men and women.
John insisted that the sole purpose of his mission was to point away from himself to his younger cousin, Jesus. Jesus, for his part, never uttered one negative word about John. Jesus even endorsed John’s ministry by submitting to baptism at John’s hand. Indeed Jesus said, “Among those born of women (that is, of all the people in the world), there is none greater than John.”
I: Elizabeth and Zechariah named their long-awaited son “Yochan.” “Yochan” means “gift of God.” This gift, however, didn’t come with the pretty ribbons and bows and curlicues of fancy gift-wrapping. This gift came in a plain brown wrapper.
Think of John’s appearance. He wore a camel-hide wrap-around, and it stank as only camels can stink. (Jesus, by contrast, wore a robe fine enough that soldiers gambled for it.)
Then there was John’s diet: wild honey. How many bee stings did he have to endure to procure the honey? No doubt he had been stung so many times he was impervious, bees being now no more bothersome than fruit flies. And the locusts? There’s lots of protein in grasshoppers, since small creatures like grasshoppers are the most efficient in converting grain protein into animal protein. Grasshoppers are good to eat, as long as you don’t mind crunching their long legs and occasionally getting them stuck in your teeth. John was anything but effete, anything but dainty, anything but a reed shaken by the wind.
John’s habitat was noteworthy. The wilderness, everywhere in scripture, is the symbol for a radical break with the posturing and the pretence, the falsehoods and phoniness of the big city and its inherent corruption. Jerusalem , hier shalem, describes itself as the city of salvation. But is it? Jerusalem kills the prophets and crucifies the Messiah. By living in the wilderness John contradicted everything the city represented.
And of course there was John’s manner. He had relatively few tools in his toolbox. When he saw that the truth of God had to be upheld and the sin of the powerful rebuked, he reached into his toolbox and came up with its one and only tool: confrontation. It wasn’t long before he confronted Herodias, wife of Herod the ruler. John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you allowed your daughter, Salome, to dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Mrs. Herod, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.” Whereupon Mrs. Herod had said, “I’ll have your head for that. Watch me.”
We mustn’t forget John’s singlemindedness. Because his camel-hide loincloth lacked pockets, John’s one-and-only sermon he kept in his head and his heart. It was a simple sermon. The judgement of God is so close at hand that even now you can feel God’s fiery breath scorching you and withering everything about you that can’t stand the conflagration. And in the face of this judgement, thundered John, there are three things that cosy, comfortable people think they can take refuge in when there is no refuge; namely, parentage, piety and prestige.
Parentage. “Abraham is our parent. We are safe because we are descendants from the grand progenitor of our people, Abraham our father.” We are Abraham’s son or daughter only if we have Abraham’s faith, John knew. In light of the crisis that God’s judgement brings on everyone, we’re silly for putting stock in the fact that our grandmother was once a missionary in China and our father once shook hands with Billy Graham.
Piety. “We are Israelites. Only last week we had our son circumcised.” “We’ve been members of St.Matthew’s-by-the-Gas Station for forty years. We had all our children ‘done’ there; we also contributed to the repairs to the steeple.” Piety, said John, is a religious inoculation. Like any inoculation it keeps people from getting the real thing. For this reason piety is worse than useless: it guarantees that what can save us we shall never want.
Prestige. “We are the Jerusalem aristocrats.” In 18th Century England an aristocrat was asked what she thought of John Wesley’s movement. “A perfectly horrid thing”, the Duchess of Buckingham had replied, turning up her nose as if someone had just taken the lid off an 18th Century chamber pot; “Imagine being told you are as vile as the wretches that crawl about on the earth.”
It was little wonder that those who found John too much to take eased their discomfort by ridiculing him. Baptizein is the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk. John the dipper. “Well, Yochan, what’ll it be today? Dunk your doughnuts or dip your paintbrush? Here comes the dippy dunker.”
Might John have been deranged? His enemies said he was crazy. But the same people who said John was crazy said Jesus was an alcoholic. Certainly John was crude. Jesus admitted as much when he told those whom John had shocked, “What did you expect to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A feeble fellow smelling of perfume?” John lacked the polish of the cocktail crowd. But he was sane.
II: — Regardless of the family resemblance between John and Jesus they’re not identical.
John came to bear witness to the light. Jesus was (and is) that light.
John pointed to Jesus as the coming one. Jesus pointed to himself as the Incarnate one.
John reminded the people of God’s centuries-old promises. Jesus was, and is, the fulfilment of all God’s promises.
John administered a baptism of water as an outward sign of repentance. Jesus administered a baptism of fire as the Spirit inwardly torched his people.
With this lattermost point we have highlighted the crucial difference between John and Jesus. John could only point to the kingdom of God , the all-determining reality that was to heal a creation disfigured by the Fall. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t point to it: he brought it inasmuch as he was the new creation, fraught with cosmic significance, the one in whom all things are restored. John’s ministry prepared people for a coming kingdom that the king would bring with him. Jesus’ ministry gathered people into that kingdom which was operative wherever the king himself presided — which is to say, everywhere.
It’s not that Jesus contradicted John. Rather, Jesus effected within people what John could only hold out for them. Because the ministry of Jesus gathered up the ministry of John, nothing about John was lost. At the same time, the ministry of Jesus contained so much more than John’s — as John himself gladly admitted. In other words, the ministry of Jesus was the ministry of John plus all that was unique to our Lord.
Ponder, for instance, the note of repentance sounded by both men. John thundered. He threatened. There was a bad time coming, and John, entirely appropriately, had his hearers scared. Jesus agreed. There is a bad time coming. Throughout the written gospels we find on the lips of Jesus pronouncements every bit as severe as anything John said. Nonetheless, Jesus promised a good time coming too. To be sure, Jesus could flay the hide off phoneys as surely as John, yet flaying didn’t characterize him; mercy did. While Jesus could speak, like John, of a coming judgement that couldn’t be avoided, Jesus also spoke of an amnesty, a provision, a refuge that reflected the heart of his Father. Everything John said, the whole world needs to hear. Yet we need to hear even more urgently what Jesus alone said: “There’s a party underway, and at this party all who are weary and worn down, frenzied and fed up, overwhelmed and overrun — at this party all such people are going to find rest and restoration, help, healing and hope.”
Jesus, like John, spoke to the defiant self-righteous who not only disdained entering the kingdom themselves but also, whether deliberately or left-handedly, impeded others from entering it; Jesus spoke to these people in a vocabulary that would take the varnish off a door. Jesus, however, also had his heart broken over people who were like sheep without a shepherd, about to follow cluelessly the next religious hireling — the religious “huckster” of any era who exploits the most needy and the most defenceless.
Because John’s message was the penultimate word of judgement, the mood surrounding John was as stark, spare, ascetic as John’s word: he drank no wine and he ate survival rations. Because Jesus’ message was the ultimate word of the kingdom, the mood surrounding Jesus was the mood of a celebration, a party. He turned 150 gallons of water into wine – a huge amount for a huge party. He is the wine of life; he profoundly gladdens the hearts of men and women. His joy floods his people.
With his laser vision Jesus stared into the hearts of those who faulted him and said, “You spoil- sports with shrivelled hearts and acidulated tongues, you wouldn’t heed John because his asceticism left you thinking he wasn’t sane; now you won’t heed me because my partying leaves you thinking I’m not moral. Still, those people you’ve despised and duped and defrauded: your victims are victors now; they’re going to be vindicated. And their exuberance in the celebrations they have with me not even your sullenness can diminish.” Whereupon our Lord turned from the scornful snobs that religion forever breeds and welcomed yet another wounded, worn down person who wouldn’t know a hymnbook from a homily yet knew as much as she needed to know: life in the company of Jesus is indescribably better than life in the company of his detractors.
I’m always moved at our Lord’s simple assertion, “I am the good shepherd.” What did he mean by “good”? Merely that he is a competent shepherd, as any competent shepherd can protect the flock against marauders, thieves and disease? There are two Greek words for “good”: agathos and kalos. Agathos means “good” in the sense of upright, proper, correct. Kalos, on the other hand (the word Jesus used of himself), includes everything that agathos connotes plus “winsome, attractive, endearing, appealing, compelling, comely, inviting.” I am the fine shepherd.
Malcolm Muggeridge accompanied a film crew to India in order to narrate a documentary on the late Mother Teresa. He already knew she was a good woman or he wouldn’t have bothered going. When he met her, however, he found a good woman who was also so very compelling, wooing, endearing that he titled his documentary, Something Beautiful for God.
John was good, agathos. Many people feared him and many admired him. Jesus was good, kalos. Many people feared him, many admired him, and many loved him. Paul speaks in Ephesians 6:24 of those who “love our Lord with love undying.” Did anyone love John with love undying? If we’ve grasped the difference between agathos and kalos, between what is good, correct, upright and what is so very inviting and attractive as to be beautiful, then we’ve grasped the relation of John to Jesus.
There’s another dimension to Jesus that carries him beyond John. It’s reflected in the word he used uniquely at prayer, abba, “Father.” Now the Newer Testament is written in Greek, even though Jesus customarily spoke Aramaic. In other words what our Lord said day-by-day has been translated into another language. Then why wasn’t the Aramaic word, abba, translated into Greek? The word was left untranslated in that Jesus had first used it in a special way, and to translate it would seem to sully its distinctiveness.
Abba was the word used by a Palestinian youth to speak of his or her father respectfully, obediently, confidently, securely, and of course intimately. It wasn’t so “palsy walsy” as to be disrespectful. Neither was it so gushing as to be sentimental. It was intimate without being impertinent, confident without being smug. Abba was trusting one’s father without trading on the father’s trustworthiness, familiar without being forward, secure without being saccharine.
We must be sure to understand that when early-day Christians came to use the word abba in their prayers they weren’t repeating the word just because they knew Jesus had used it and they thought it cute to imitate him. Neither were they mumbling it mindlessly like a mantra thinking that if they kept on saying it, mantra-like, whatever it was within him that had given rise to it would eventually appear within them. On the contrary, they were impelled to use the word for one reason: as companions of Jesus they had been admitted to such an intimacy with the Father that the word Jesus had used uniquely of his Father they were now constrained to use too, so closely did their intimacy resemble his. When Paul writes in Romans 8:15 that Christians can’t help uttering the cry, “Abba, Father”, any more than a person in pain can help groaning or a person bereaved can help weeping or a person tickled by a good joke can help laughing; when Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that this is normal Christian experience, “normal” means being introduced by the Son to the Father in such a way and at such a depth that the Son’s intimacy with the Father induces the believer’s intimacy. Abba.
We should note that the written gospels show us that Jesus used this word in Gethsemane; Gethsemane , of all places, when he was utterly alone at the most tormented hour of his life. I understand this. William Stringfellow, Harvard-taught lawyer and self-taught theologian who went to Harlem in a store-front law practice on behalf of the impoverished people he loved; Stringfellow, ridiculed by his denomination, suspected by the Kennedys and arrested finally by the FBI for harbouring Daniel Berrigan (a Jesuit anti-Viet Nam War protester); Stringfellow wrote in a little confirmation class book he prepared for teenagers, “Prayer is being so alone that God is the only witness to your existence.”
The day comes for all of us when we are so thoroughly alone we couldn’t be more alone. And in the isolation and torment of such a day we are going tofind that God is the only witness to our existence. But he will be witness enough. And because it’s the Father who is the only witness to our existence, we shall find ourself crying spontaneously, “Abba.” Surely Jesus had this in mind when he said, “There has never appeared anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John.”
We all need to be shaken up by the wild man from the wilderness, the grasshopper-eating, hide-wearing prophet whom no one should have mistaken for a reed shaken by the wind. Yet as often as we need to look at John, we find fearsome John pointing away from himself to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the lamb of God and the Saviour of the world; someone no less rigorous than John to be sure, but also so much more than John – someone so very winsome, compelling, inviting as to be beautiful.
Victor Shepherd
St.Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga
Advent 2007
Waiting, but not Loitering
Isaiah 25:6-10
Psalm 40:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-18
Luke 2:22-38
Loitering is illegal. Loiterers can be jailed. Why? What harm can there be in standing around? Police departments are quick to tell us how much harm there is in standing around. Police departments know that the person who stands around for no reason, with nothing in mind, is someone who won’t be merely “standing around” for long. Someone merely standing around is someone who is readily drawn into whatever disturbance might boil up around him. Idleness is readily co-opted by evil. The empty-handed, empty-headed loiterer who claims he’s only standing around readily becomes an accomplice of whatever evil is lurking.
Advent is a time of waiting, but not a time of waiting around, not a time of loitering. To wait, in scripture, is always to wait for, to anticipate, to expect. To wait, in scripture, is always to be on the edge of your seat in anticipation of something that God has promised.
The Hebrew verb “to wait (for)” is derived from two Hebrew words meaning tension and endurance. If we are waiting for something momentous, waiting eagerly, longingly, expectantly, then we live in a tension as great as our endurance is long.
I am always moved at the people in the Christmas story who wait in such tension with endurance.
Elizabeth , for instance; she had been childless for two decades. In Israel childlessness was the worst misfortune that could befall husband and wife. Each year’s barrenness found Elizabeth waiting, her endurance tested.
Zechariah, Elizabeth ’s husband; he was unable to speak from the time he learned of his wife’s pregnancy until their son, Yochan, “gift of God”, was born. Nine months may not strike us as a long time to wait for speech to return, but it’s unimaginably long when you don’t know if your speech is ever going to return.
Simeon had spent years looking for, longing for, the Messiah of Israel.
Anna had been married only seven years when she was widowed. Now, at 84 years of age, she lived on the temple precincts, “worshiping with prayer and fasting, night and day,” Luke tells us. When she finally beheld the infant Jesus she knew that what she had waited for for 60 years had appeared at last.
These were godly men and women. And like all godly folk they knew how difficult it is to wait; how difficult it is to wait for God. It is difficult. No wonder the psalmist exhorts us, “Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.”
At the same time we must remember that to wait, in scripture, is never to “wait around.” To wait is never to loiter, doing nothing, available for whatever evil looms up. To wait, in scripture, is to wait knowing that we don’t wait alone; God waits too. God waits for us, his people. The prophet Isaiah tells us that God waits for Israel to bear fruit. When God waits, and waits specifically for his people, it’s never the case that God is “waiting around,” doing nothing. God always waits for Israel by working in Israel . God waits by doing.
Think of the diverse pictures scripture paints of God’s involvement with Israel , God’s working among his people.
- a mother nursing her infant. The mother nursing her infant is waiting in one sense; she isn’t doing anything else, can’t be washing the kitchen floor. Yet in nursing her infant she isn’t “doing nothing.” What could be more important than the wellbeing of her babe?
- a father helping a young child to walk. The father is waiting for the child to grow up even as he does something about it.
- a heartbroken husband (we’re still talking about how the bible portrays the waiting God) resolving not to leave the wife who has disgraced herself and humiliated him. Such waiting, replete with resolution, is a long way from doing nothing.
In none of this could God be said to be waiting around, loitering, up to no good at all. As a matter of fact, the one word that characterizes God’s involvement with Israel is passion. And since God waits for Israel to bear fruit by doing whatever he can with Israel , it’s plain that God’s waiting for us is his impassioned involvement with us. God waits by hastening.
Then our Advent-waiting must never be waiting around, loitering. Our Advent-waiting must be marked by impassioned involvement.
But impassioned involvement with what? What exactly are we waiting for?
I: — The apostle Paul says that the entire creation is “waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” In other words, the entire creation is waiting for, longing for God’s deliverance from anything and everything that stands in the way of its fulfilment. Right now the entire creation is frustrated; it doesn’t unambiguously serve the purpose for which God fashioned it.
[a] For instance, the earth was created to sustain all of humankind. To be sure, bodily good isn’t the only good. There are also an intellectual good and a cultural good and an emotional good and a spiritual good. At the same time, unless the bodily good is maintained; that is, unless physical need is met, the remaining goods never arise. No intellectual good or cultural good or spiritual good is going to appear in the person who is starving to death or merely malnourished. For centuries the earth yielded enough food to feed the world’s population many times over, even as malnutrition and starvation consumed millions of people. So far as feeding people is concerned, the earth has been frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.
And then in the twinkling of an eye a corner was turned. In the twinkling of an eye a new situation has arisen: as of today, for the first time in human history, more people will die prematurely from overeating than will die prematurely from undereating. Once again so far as sustaining people is concerned, the earth is frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.
[b] Physicians tell me that the most sophisticated aspect of all the growing edges in medicine (and medical science has many growing edges) pertains to fertility. For decades infertility was deemed a female problem. The new growing edge pertains to male fertility. Huge advances are underway here. Good. Millions of couples will conceive otherwise never could have. And right next door to the fertility clinic, in any hospital, we can find the abortuary. The contradiction here leaves me speechless.
[c] Billions of tax-payer dollars are spent each year on public education. The end result is that the level of adult illiteracy in Canada has slowly risen from 35% to 47%. Yes, as much as is spent on public education, it can always be argued that not enough is spent, since other jurisdictions spend more than we do. At the same time, social problems are never remedied simply by throwing more money at them. Trillions of dollars have been poured into slum areas of American cities, and the slums are no closer to disappearing.
[d] And then there are the people who continue to approach me; the chronically mentally ill. Twenty-five years ago the development of neuroleptic drugs was heralded as a breakthrough inasmuch as the new drugs would permit ill people to live outside of institutions. Undoubtedly some ill people have benefited. A great many, however, have not. Many defenceless people were put on the street with a bottle of pills. In two days they had lost their pills, or traded them for something else, or had forgotten how frequently to take them. They couldn’t return to the institutions from which they had been discharged, because these institutions had been replaced by carriage-trade condominiums. Many of these people are in worse condition than ever they were when they were institutionalized. When Maureen and I were in Washington four weeks ago we were startled at the number of psychotic people found in downtown Washington . It’s the same in every major North American city.
The entire creation is frustrated, says the apostle. It waits – and we who are part of it wait too – for its restoration.
But waiting never means waiting around. Waiting for God’s deliverance of the creation entails our impassioned involvement with it, entails our zealous doing on behalf of it, wherever it is frustrated and for whatever reason. Unless we are doing something about the world’s frustration we aren’t waiting for God at all; we’re merely waiting around, loitering, soon to be part of the problem instead of its alleviation.
Remember: God waits for Israel to bear fruit by spending himself unreservedly for Israel .
II: In the second place, says the apostle, we ourselves wait for adoption as daughters and sons of God, “the redemption of our bodies”, as he puts it. But aren’t we sons and daughters of God by faith now? To be sure, scripture insists on the distinction between creature of God and child of God. Every human being is a creature of God, made in God’s image, loved and cherished by him. Children of God, however, are those who have heard and heeded the gospel invitation, and who now cling in faith to the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, their elder brother. Believing people are God’s children now. We are born of God and have been granted a new nature from God.
Then why is it said that we are waiting for adoption as God’s sons and daughters? The apostle’s point is this: while we have been made new at God’s hand, we don’t appear very new. To be sure, sin no longer rules us; Jesus Christ does. But while sin no longer rules us, sin continues to reside in us. Martin Luther used to say, “Yes, we are new people in Christ; but the old man, the old woman, won’t die quietly. The corpse twitches.”
The apostle is puzzled about the gap, the undeniable gap, between his new life in Christ and his contradiction of it every day. On the one hand he knows that all whom Jesus Christ draws to himself are made new in him; on the other hand he’s surprised at how much of the “old” man seems to hang on in him. Listen to Paul as he speaks of himself in Romans 7. “I don’t understand my own actions. For I don’t do what I want, but rather I do the very thing I hate. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” Still, he knows that his ultimate deliverance is guaranteed: “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When Paul speaks of himself as ‘wretched’ he doesn’t mean primarily that he feels wretched. He’s not telling us how he feels; he’s telling us what he is. No doubt he didn’t feel good about it; still, he’s telling us primarily of his condition, not of his feeling. His condition is this: there’s a dreadful contradiction within him. He recognizes that his practice falls abysmally short of his profession. Until he was apprehended by Christ he wasn’t aware of any contradiction within him; now he knows that Christ has rendered him new even as everyone around him finds him entirely too ‘old’. It’s his condition that’s wretched. “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”
The ancient Romans devised a terrible punishment for criminals; namely, strapping a corpse onto a criminal’s back. Imagine the sheer weight of it. Imagine the odour, the leaks, the overall hideousness. It must have been ghastly beyond description.
Did I say “ghastly beyond description”? But such ghastliness is my spiritual condition; such ghastliness is my outward life compared to my inward truth and my Christian profession. Who will deliver me from this hideous contradiction, this body of death?
In our sober discussion of this topic we must be sure to notice something profound. The apostle dares to admit his own innermost contradiction, dares to raise the question, only because he already has the answer. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s going to be delivered from the walking contradiction he is. The burden of the ‘old’ man that seems strapped to him is going to be lifted. He knows it. He’s waiting for it. We wait for it too.
But we don’t wait around. We don’t loiter. We genuinely wait for our deliverance only if we are doing something about our self-contradicted discipleship, only if we are doing something about the inconsistencies in us that are so glaring that many people wonder if there aren’t two of us.
We must remember, in this season of Advent-waiting, that God waits for Israel to bear fruit by sparing nothing of himself to have Israel bear fruit. We wait for the final, full manifestation of our adoption as God’s sons and daughters by sparing nothing of ourselves to shed that corpse, repudiate it, which renders us grotesque at this moment. And “thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, we shall one day be rid of the burden on our back and perfectly reflect that image of God in which we were created, which image our Lord is now, and which image we cannot fail to display.
III: — Lastly, we wait with our Lord as he waits himself. We stand by him in his waiting. The book of Hebrews tells us that after Jesus Christ had offered up himself for us, “he sat down at the right hand of God, and since then has been waiting until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.”
The reference to footstool in Hebrews 10 is borrowed from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 – about footstool and enemies – is the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament. This fact alone tells us that the apostles, and all Christians after them, know that enemies abound. Enemies are enemies; that is, enemies can do enormous harm.
When I was a youngster I couldn’t grasp why the psalmist spoke so very often of enemies. Was he unusually nervous, even paranoid? Now I understand. Enemies are anything that hammers us, anything that threatens to undo us, anything that assails us from without or wells up from within.
Enemies from without are easy to identify. Jesus had enemies in the religious hierarchy of Jerusalem ; he had enemies in the civil government of Rome ; enemies in the dark depths of the spirit-world; enemies among his followers (Judas, traitor), even enemies among his closest friends (Peter, whom Jesus described as satanic, on at least one occasion.) As I have read church history, I have learned that every forthright Christian spokesperson has been flayed at some point by all the enemies just mentioned.
In addition there is one enemy which you and I must contend with that our Lord never had to contend with; namely, himself. Of all the enemies who might assault us, there seems to be one who always assaults us: our very own self. More often than not we are our own worst enemy. For this reason a principal enemy, always lurking, is the enemy within.
Whether our enemy exists inside us or outside us, however, enemies are enemies. We need to identify them and resist them.
But we never have to resist them alone. Even now our Lord is at work, resisting those enemies who molest his people. To be sure, even our Lord is waiting for that day when all the enemies of his people are made his footstool. But until that day, he isn’t waiting around, loitering. On our behalf he resists those enemies he has already defeated, waiting for that day when defeated enemies are dispersed forever. We genuinely wait for our Lord only as we wait with him as he continues to resist everything that molests his people, and all of this in anticipation of that day when his enemies (ours too) have been dispersed.
Elizabeth waited during that first Advent, as well as Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. They all waited for the one who was to be the Messiah of Israel and the ruler of the cosmos. But they didn’t wait around, loiter. They were as impassionedly engaged as the God of Israel whom they knew. Therefore the only form our waiting can take is an impassioned doing of the truth.
In Advent we wait for him who came once for the world’s redemption. We wait for him who continues to come to us unfailingly day after day. We wait for him who will come again to vindicate all who are about his business now.
Victor Shepherd Advent 2006
A Christian Understanding of Work
Proverbs 6: 6-11
2nd Thessalonians 3:6-15
John 9:1-5
Several decades ago we began hearing of the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Some people thought they had come upon the notion among early-day Protestants that material prosperity was a sign, even the sign, of God’s favour. Christians were to work hard and prosper in order to secure God’s favour, or to give evidence that they had already secured it. In addition the so-called Protestant Work Ethic was supposed to have boosted the modern addiction known as “workaholism.” Workaholics don’t merely work hard; they work compulsively. (Plainly a psychiatric judgement has been rendered here, since compulsiveness is a manifestation of neuroticism.) Workaholics are obsessed with work; they work fifteen hours per day, day-in and day-out, sacrificing spouse, children and health. If they work any less they feel guilty and unworthy. Their holidays are the most stressful time of the year for them, which holidays they customarily abbreviate in order to flee back to work. They need work the way a “junkie” needs cocaine. (I want to say in passing that the so-called Protestant Work Ethic, the notion that work justifies us before God can’t be found anywhere in the thought of the Protestant Reformers.)
Some people maintain that the bad publicity surrounding the “P.W.E.” has precipitated a pendulum swing all the way over into the opposite extreme: people are reacting to work-addiction by escaping into non-work-addiction. Work is now done less well, less responsibly, less conscientiously. Work now appears often to be regarded like diphtheria: to be avoided if at all possible. The ultimate paradox and perversity, of course, is the person who works ever so hard at avoiding work.
Where do we stand as Christians?
I: — In the first place we must acknowledge that work is a divine ordinance. According to scripture God ordains that we work, men and women. (Homemaking is work; in fact it’s hugely important work, and remains work whether done by housewives or househusbands.) Work is as much a part of the God-instituted order as is the earth’s revolving around the sun. God commands us to work. His command is a blessing. Work is therefore good, and good for us in that it enhances our humanness. God has made us working creatures.
Yet not everyone has thought this to be the case. The ancient Greeks regarded work as demeaning, beneath highborn men and women. Aristotle insisted that no one be allowed citizenship unless he had forsaken trades work for at least ten years. Philosophers like Aristotle should have to do no more than reflect. In the Middle Ages in Europe work was considered beneath an aristocrat. Jesus, on the other hand, was a labourer. Paul was a tentmaker. And since King Saul, royal ruler of all Israel , was found ploughing behind oxen, it’s plain that the Greek and Hebrew minds are polar opposites with respect to work. The Hebrew mind insists that work is good; God, after all, works himself, and has constituted us working creatures whose humanness is threatened by non-work. Without work we lack something essential to human wholeness.
It’s for this reason that unemployment is so very serious. The worst consequence of unemployment isn’t poverty (dreadful as poverty is); rather it’s loss of self-esteem. As self-esteem evaporates, self-deprecation sets in. Demoralization follows. Soon the unemployed feel themselves dehumanized, even disgraced. (I noted years ago that when church members lose their job they often cease attending worship, and reconnect with church life only when they are employed once more.) Not to work, not to be able to work, not be allowed to work is to be on the road to inner fragmentation.
Admittedly, however, there are some people who don’t want to work. Work is too much bother. They’d rather be kept. They won’t work as long as they can sponge off their parents, off their children, off their disability or employment insurance, off government “goodies.” (Let me make a parenthetical comment here. In my experience the poor are rarely those who sponge off the social welfare system. The poor — who are as intelligent as anyone else — lack the social sophistication and the social contacts need to exploit the social welfare system. The poor customarily lack access to the levers that have to be “pulled” in order to make the social welfare coffers ring; lacking such access, they lack the opportunity to exploit. Those who are adept at finessing the system, I have found, are those who have the “tools” needed to pry money loose where they know it is kept. The middle class, I have discovered, is more adept at exploiting social provision than the poor.)
The apostle Paul came upon some people in Thessalonica who had decided not to work. “We hear that some of you are living in idleness,” he remarked, “mere busybodies, not doing any work.” His approach to them was blunt: “If you don’t want to work, don’t expect to eat.” God ordains work. It’s good to work.
II: — But is work good without qualification? Is work always and everywhere good? We frequently hear work spoken of as a curse. People who speak like this have seized half a truth: work itself isn’t a curse, but in a fallen world (according to Genesis 3) work lies under a curse.
When we speak of a fallen world we mean a world that rebels against God; a world that defies him, disdains his way and word and truth; a world that flaunts its disobedience of him. Such a world can’t fail to be characterized by greed and deceit, hostility and strife. In such a world work becomes an occasion of frustration, and the workplace a battleground. God intends work to be the sphere wherein humankind exercises its stewardship of the creation and cooperates under him for humankind’s well-being. In a fallen world, however, God’s purpose is contradicted, with the result that work becomes the scene of self-seeking and quarrelling, exploitation and rancour. In a fallen world the blessing of work is riddled with the curse of frustration and hostility.
We moderns have short memories. We tend to forget that only 150 years ago children worked fourteen hours per day in factories and mines under conditions so very dangerous and damaging as almost to defy description. Only 150 years ago? That long ago in Britain and continental Europe , but today in so many countries of the world children are granted no relief.
My grandfather began working for a major automaker almost from the beginning of car manufacturing — in other words, in the days before the autoworkers’ union. A car engine, weighing several hundred pounds, travelling on an overhead conveyor, would fall from time to time and crush a worker on the assembly line underneath it. When workmates bent over the bleeding pulp ( i.e., what was left of the man) a company official would hasten to the scene and snarl, “Get that thing (the mangled worker) off the line and get back to work.” My grandfather used to tell me of loading freshly painted car axles onto railway boxcars throughout the morning. By noon he had wet paint up to his elbows. At lunchtime he wasn’t allowed to wash his hands: there was no provision for washing. A company official would walk throughout the factory, and then point out to the foreman a worker whom the foreman was to suspend without pay for three weeks. The worker had done nothing wrong. The company policy, however, was to promote a “reign of terror” designed to keep workers cowering before sheer arbitrariness. (Needless to say, the suspended worker had a family to support.) When workers attempted to organize in order to protect themselves, company officials had Walter Reuther and his brother (the first leaders of the autoworkers’ union) beaten so badly they were both hospitalized for six months.
“That’s old stuff,” someone objects; “we live in a different era.” It isn’t so different that the workplace has ceased to be a scene of frustration and hostility. Ralph Nader, the American lawyer and advocate who represents consumers (he was also a presidential candidate in the last USA election), exposed dangerous defects in consumer goods only to have private detectives “tail” him night and day hoping to catch him in “compromise”; i.e., a situation with a woman which could then be used to ruin him and destroy his credibility. This operation continued for months, companies always denying it. It was only in the light of public exposure and a threatened lawsuit that Nader’s harassment ceased.
But of course extreme is always matched to extreme. If employers behave indefensibly, so do employees. We read of situations in Britain where for the slightest matter involving an employee, British workers will shut down an industrial operation completely. One of my relatives, a white-collar union steward in a Canadian business office, found employees approaching her frequently inasmuch as these employees resented being disciplined for habitual tardiness. They couldn’t seem to understand why the company was opposed to chronic lateness. (My relative, by the way, maintained that any adult who couldn’t get to work on time didn’t deserve a job. Shortly she was relieved of her steward’s position.) Few things are more frustrating, not to say costly, than hiring people to do a job only to find that their “protection” allows them to do as little as possible, as slowly as possibly, and as shabbily as possible.
Obviously it’s silly to suggest that employers as a class are demons while employees as a class are angels. In a fallen world employer and employee alike are going to be exploiters, given the opportunity. Both will tend to push their exploitation all the way to criminality. That’s why we find corruption, bribery and beatings within worker organizations supposedly pledged to the well-being of the worker.
III: — Where does all this find us as Christians? We know that God ordains work to be a human good, an essential ingredient in our humanness, even as we are aware of hostility and conflict in the workplace. Then what expression does our witness assume?
i] The first aspect of our Christian witness is both plain and simple: we are to do as good a job as we can. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock. A day’s work is to be rendered for a day’s pay, or else our “witness” is no witness at all and we are merely part of the problem. Paul tells Timothy, a much younger man, that work done should be work of which a worker need never be ashamed. This kind of work, the apostle continues, “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” It’s a most unusual notion, isn’t it: what we do conscientiously, consistently, competently in the workplace “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” The quality of our work lends attractiveness and credibility to the truth of God by which we are known. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock.
Are you aware that the chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year? Bank employees pilfer it. (Please note that the banks lose vastly more money to employee theft than they lose to “hold ups.”) The manager of a department store in suburban Toronto tells me that every year $600,000 in cash and merchandise disappears from the store. Little of it is shoplifted by customers; nearly all of it finds its way into the pockets of employees. A foreman working on the Trans Canada Pipeline tells me that at the beginning of the year he purchases twelve dozen pipe wrenches, and by year’s end his crew has stolen all 144 of them.
We mustn’t think that integrity pertains only to money and goods. Integrity pertains to time and attitude and diligence as well. Today employers wince when they think of the outlook of so many who make up the work pool. They wince when they think of the carelessness, slovenliness and indifference that pretends to be doing a job. The Christian’s work is to be conscientious, consistent, competent — and therein “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.”
ii] There is yet another Christian responsibility: we must try to understand the situation of those whose work is especially stress-riddled, or whose work is especially unfulfilling, boring, even mind-bending. Some of us work at jobs we find stimulating and rewarding. We are very fortunate; we are also very few. Most people work at jobs that don’t use anywhere near their resources and abilities. For this reason they crave more holidays and earlier retirement. We must endeavour to understand the plea of these people when they speak of the dehumanization and danger peculiar to their job.
Red Storey, an outstanding hockey referee of yesteryear, says he refereed when every NHL game was “survival night.” Recently I have found more and more schoolteachers, for instance, describing their situation in terms of survival. The public has become largely impatient with teachers, perhaps with some justification. At the same time, test after test has indicated that inner-city elementary schoolteaching is the most stressful job in North America . In addition, the public doesn’t know, among other things, that boards of education have asked newspapers not to write up incidences of classroom assault on teachers for one reason: it was found that whenever classroom assaults on teachers were printed in the news media, such assaults increased.
Think of the people who work at jobs that are mind numbing. When I was a university student I had a summer job I shall never forget. I sat at a table where I picked up one sheet from each of three piles (i.e., I was collating them), pushed the packet under an electric stapler (“kerchunk”), and set the stapled item aside. One day I stapled 10,000 units. I didn’t count them. By the end of the day I was in no condition to count. I happened to have used an entire box of staples, and there were 10,000 staples per box. My mother tells me that when I arrived home after work, anyone who so much as looked at me risked annihilation. Some people are consigned to jobs like this throughout their entire working life, with individual and domestic and social consequences that are not to be dismissed.
I readily admit that I know little of industrial relations; I know little of the research done concerning the social and psychological and domestic effects of different kinds of work. But if the church is ever going to attract someone besides the upwardly socially mobile, then we shall have to learn to listen to people whose work experience is very different from that of the professional types who tend to assume that everyone’s on-the-job rewards parallel theirs.
iii] A third responsibility is that our congregation must reflect the gospel truth that work is what people do; work is not who people are. We must never be seduced into the mentality that sees people as more valuable or less valuable just because the job they do is paid more money or less. Paul insists that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. For “neither slave nor free” read “neither minimum wage-earner nor company executive.” In his Corinthian correspondence (2nd Cor. 5:16 ) he states that Christians are to “regard no one from a human point of view.” The “human point of view” is the attitude that ignores someone who earns $20,000 per year but flatters someone who receives $200,000 (the sort of person we are extraordinarily pleased to see affiliate with our congregation.) This attitude has no place in the Christian fellowship.
Several years ago I attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where a newcomer, a university professor, newly rendered sober through the AA movement, needed a sponsor. A sponsor is an AA friend of greater maturity and wisdom who can steer a newcomer around the pitfalls that might trip up his newfound sobriety. The sponsor assigned to this professor happened to be a truck driver. And the professor wasn’t ashamed to admit that the truck driver possessed a maturity, wisdom, discernment and experience in this area of life that he lacked. Surely the Christian fellowship can’t be found wanting here, when to us is entrusted the truth, “In Christ there is neither slave nor free.”
Perhaps you are thinking that the three points I have made concerning our Christian responsibility don’t go very far in overturning the turbulence in the work world. Still, they give us a starting point for understanding God’s mandate concerning work and the world in which we have to work. In any case, as our seventeenth Century Quaker foreparents liked to say, it’s always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Victor Shepherd
September 2006
Workshop Teachings
Workshop Teachings
or
More than a Carpenter
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Ephesians 4:25-30
Matthew 7:1-5
If there’s to be a national holiday for Queen Victoria ‘s birthday and Canada Day and “civic” whatever, how much more important is it that there be a national holiday that honours labour. On Labour Day Canadians wisely acknowledge the place of work in our nation as a whole and in our individual lives. We work not merely because we have to in order to survive; we work inasmuch as God has ordained us to work. His command enjoining work is prior to the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. In other words, regardless of what frustration or pain or seeming futility might arise with respect to work in the wake of the Fall, work itself is good. God’s command is always and everywhere good, always and everywhere attended with blessing. In recognizing work on Labour Day we are gladly owning the dignity of labour; we are saying that humankind is meant to work, is honoured through work, is to find work fulfilling. We are also saying, by contrast, that there’s nothing demeaning about work, hard work.
We should know this in any case, for Jesus himself worked. Prior to the work of his public ministry he worked with his father in their “rough carpentry” business, “Joseph and Son”, in Nazareth . From what we glean here and there in the gospels the two men made large, functional items like ox-yokes and ploughs. When Jesus begins his work of preaching and teaching, those who hear him are astonished and say, “Where did this fellow get his wisdom? He’s only a carpenter, isn’t he?” Yes, he is a carpenter from a sleepy town in Galilee , yet he’s more than a carpenter. He has more to say to us than up-to-the-minute woodworking advice. At the same time, the “more” that he has to say to us is all the more credible just because we know he isn’t an armchair wordsmith. His workshop days have given him down-to-earth, workshop wisdom.
I: — Think about his pithy comment concerning plank and sawdust. Sawdust is always blowing around in a workshop. Sooner or later a speck finds its way into someone’s eye. It’s bothersome, and work can’t continue until the speck is removed. A fellow-worker who means well (of course), whose intentions are the best (of course) immediately offers help: “Here, let me take the speck of sawdust out of your eye, and then you’ll be able to see better” — all the while forgetting that he himself has a two-by-four, ten feet long, sticking out of his own eye. “First take the plank out of your own eye”, our Lord insists, “then you might be able to do something to help your neighbour with his sawdust-speck.”
Jesus insists that we, his disciples, mustn’t fall into the habit of fault-finding, carping, nit-picking, ceaseless criticism of matters small and smaller still, as we whittle our neighbour down until she has the stature of a toothpick (we think) when, by contrast, we appear larger than life ourselves, gigantic even, in our inflated self-estimation. The habit, the deep rut of constant, niggling criticism, is a habit that is as self-intensifying as any addiction. It’s a habit easy to fall into just because we all want to think highly of ourselves, and the surest way of building ourselves up is to grind someone else down.
I have learned that many people perceive the wisdom and force of our Lord’s teaching yet are confused about its application. At the same time as they hear Jesus speaking of plank and sawdust they also hear him saying, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Confusion arises when such people mistake judging (in the sense of hyper-critical faultfinding) with making sound judgements. The two shouldn’t be confused: disdainful judgementalism has nothing to do with the formation of sound judgements.
Everywhere in scripture God’s people are commanded to form sound judgements. God isn’t honoured when his people remain naïve, readily victimized or fooled or “fished in.” We have to discriminate between what enriches us profoundly and what appears to enrich but actually impoverishes. We have to discern what can be welcomed and what must be shunned. We do everything in our power to foster such discrimination in our youngsters just because we know what disasters await those who lack sound judgement. To lack sound judgement anywhere in life renders people tragic concerning themselves and dangerous concerning others. Jesus tells us we have to be as wise as serpents. His apostles tell us we have to test the spirits, since not all spirits are holy. Once we understand the distinction between our Lord’s command to form sound judgements concerning ourselves and his prohibition of a contemptuous attitude concerning others; once we understand this distinction, confusion evaporates.
Jesus Christ speaks so very vehemently on this matter because he knows our hearts. He knows, for instance, our capacity for unconscious rationalization. You and I can insist with genuine sincerity, genuine, conscious sincerity, that is, that the sawdust speck in someone else is real while the plank in our own eye is only imaginary.
A few years ago I was asked to conduct an afternoon communion service and to preach at Emmanuel College , U of T, the seminary where I was prepared for the ministry of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. I took unusual pains with the sermon because I knew that theology students come to chapel with their sermon-dissecting knives super-sharp. And besides, I wanted to impress the students with an uncommonly fine sermon. The week had been exceptionally busy. The morning had brought several pastoral upheavals before me. The traffic on the way to Toronto was heavier than usual. And then of course I had to scramble for a parking spot. Still, as I walked into the building I felt I was ready to meet the students and show them a thing or two. Out of a student body of 150, six came to the service. I preached and administered Holy Communion as scheduled. After the service a student who had attended said to me, gently, “You were hostile this afternoon.” “I was not!”, I told her, “I’m not the slightest….” “Victor, you were hostile today.” “I may have been upset, but I wasn’t hostile.” There’s the rationalization, as sincere as the day is long: when other people are hostile, they are hostile for sure and hostile without excuse; when I appear hostile, however, I am in truth merely upset. Our unconscious capacity to rationalize is so vast that we can magnify our neighbour’s sawdust-speck into an oak tree, even as we shrink our plank to a twig. In it all we seem not to know how ridiculous we appear; more than ridiculous, how cruel.
Again our Lord speaks so vehemently on this matter because he knows that berating someone for her sawdust-speck often discourages her, then depresses her, and even immobilizes her. In the face of relentless criticism she feels she can’t acquit herself. She gives up trying. She is simply crushed into immobility.
Our Lord knows too that our habit of faultfinding drives the person faulted farther and farther into self-righteousness (how else can he protect himself?), whereupon, of course, we fault him for being self-righteous. When our constant criticism drills him like a woodpecker’s beak drilling into tree bark until it finds the insect it’s looking for, he insists that he’s a better person than he’s made out to be. What else can he do to ward off our painful pecking? As he defends himself we find our approach to him confirmed, for now it’s plain that he can’t stand the truth about himself. We forget that his self-righteousness swelled only in response to our savagery.
The worst consequence of our carping, however, is that it forces the victim to retaliate in kind. Carping begets carping, pecking pecking, savagery savagery. Psychologically fragile people may crumble when ceaselessly faulted; the psychologically resilient, however, fight back.
When Jesus speaks to us about faultfinding he uses strong language: “hypocrite.” Hupokrites is the Greek word for the actor who wore a false face. When we see the speck in our neighbour’s eye but not the plank in our own we are phonies. We have forgotten that we too are fallen creatures, as warped in mind and heart as the person in front of us whose depravity we find glaring.
Jesus ends his workshop teaching bluntly: “First take the plank out of your own eye; then you will see clearly to take the sawdust-speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” It is only as we admit frankly, even fearfully, our own inner depravity and corruption, and it is only as we do something about it that we will ever be able to help, correct and encourage our brother or sister. To pretend anything else is to be a phoney, hupokrites.
II: — Another workshop saying, this time less severe and more comforting: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus made yokes every day. He knew that if the yoke were made well and were well fitted to the animal’s neck, the ox could pull the heaviest load efficiently and with minimal discomfort. If, on the other hand, the yoke were poorly made, it would rub the animal’s neck raw. Pulling the load would be a torment. Trying to pull the load might even strangle the animal.
Our Lord knew that some loads in life we simply cannot avoid. We must pull them. “Since there are some loads in life you must pull”, he says, “why not pull them with a yoke that fits well? A yoke made by anyone other than me will only torment you, perhaps choke you. My yoke is easy.” When he says, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden”, the word he uses for “labour” isn’t the normal word for “work.” The word he uses for “labour” has about it the air of frustration, grief, weariness, the matter of being worn-down and worn-out, tired to the point of being utterly fatigued and fed up.
Earlier in the sermon I said that work as such is not a sign of the Fall but rather an instance of God’s blessing. Frustration at work, however, grief over work, futility and self-alienation and frenzy: these are a sign of the Fall. And all of us are fallen creatures living in a fallen world. Therefore there is an element of frustration and futility and self-contradiction in the matters we “labour over” throughout life.
The ten year-old wants to be a firefighter or a police officer or physician or ballerina. The ten year-old can’t see anything negative about these jobs. Why, working at any one of these jobs is tantamount to endless glamour and play. The same person, now 40 years old, has found more frustration in the job than he thinks he can endure. Now he wants to get away from it all and raise beef cattle or write novels — as if beef farming were without frustration and the literary world were without treachery! The truth is, frustration and fatigue won’t disappear with the next job. They have to be pulled along throughout life. Then with whose yoke do we pull them? Jesus insists that his yoke fits best, for only his yoke lets us pull life’s burdens without torment or strangulation.
Think about grief. The only way we can avoid grief at the loss of someone dear to us is not to have anyone dear to us. The only way to avoid grief is to avoid love. But to protect ourselves in this manner against losing someone dear to us is to have lost everything already. In other words, to love is to ensure grief. Then grief is another of life’s burdens that can’t be dropped.
As for burdens, one of the cruellest myths floated in our society is the myth that life can be burden-free. The myth survives for one reason: everyone wants to believe it. In our silliness we often think that our life is burden-riddled, but so many others’ is burden-free. The truth is, no one’s life is burden-free. There is no magic formula which, recited frequently and believed ardently, will evaporate burdens overnight.
Our carpenter-friend doesn’t specialize in magic formulas or mantras. He specializes in yokes. His yoke allows the burden that must be pulled to be pulled without tormenting us or ruining us. But there’s something more. Not only were oxen yoked to the burden they had to pull, oxen were always yoked to each other. Ox-yokes are always made in pairs. At the same that we are yoked to the load we have to pull, we are always yoked to someone who pulls alongside us.
Who? To whom are we yoked as our companion throughout life’s burden-pulling? Christ’s people are forever yoked to him. The yoke he fits to us he fits to himself as well. In other words, there is no burden known to you and me that isn’t his burden as well. His yoke is easy, then, in two senses: one, the yoke he makes for us fits well; two, the yoke he makes for us he makes for himself in addition. He has bound himself to us in all of life’s struggles.
III: — The last workshop teaching we shall examine today, a stark one this time: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God .” There’s urgency about entering the kingdom through faith in the king himself. There’s urgency about moving ahead in the kingdom, undeflected by distractions great or little. There has to be resolve, determination, to enter the company of the king and remain in it. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back ploughs a furrow that meanders in all directions, a hit-and-miss matter that would shame any farmer. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back resembles Lot ‘s wife: she looked back to the city she was leaving in that she thought there was greater security in what she was leaving behind than there was in what she was journeying towards. Under God, however, in God, there is always greater security in what we are journeying towards than in what we are leaving behind. The automobile driver who persisted in looking in the rear-view mirror alone would crack up in no time and go nowhere.
Jesus comes upon a man who gushes that he’d like nothing more than to be a disciple. “Then follow me”, says Jesus, “Follow me now.”
“I’ll follow as soon as I’ve buried my father”, the man replies, “I have domestic matters to attend to before I can begin following.”
“That’s an evasion”, says our Lord, “it’s a delaying tactic. Let the dead bury their dead. You come with me. If you put your hand to the plough and start looking around at this and that, the “this and that” will take you over and the kingdom will pass you by. You’ll disqualify yourself.”
It’s difficult for us modern folk to appreciate our Lord’s urgency. We don’t grasp why his invitation to join him always has “RSVP” on it and why we mustn’t dawdle or delay. We overlook something that Jesus found transparently obvious and undeniable; namely, we can always delay making up our mind, but we can never delay making up our life. The man who says he hasn’t made up his mind about getting married is a bachelor. The woman who says she hasn’t made up her mind as to whether or not she should have children doesn’t have any. The student who says he hasn’t decided whether he should study tonight or take the night off isn’t studying. And those who have not yet made up their mind about following Jesus have not begun to follow. We can always delay making up our mind; we can never delay making up our life. Jesus won’t allow anyone he meets to deny this truth or forget it. Again and again he stresses the urgency of entering the kingdom as we abandon ourselves to the king himself.
This third carpenter teaching, the starkest of the three we have probed today, has much to do with the first two, the ones about sawdust and yokes. It is only as we put our hand to the plough and do not look back; it is only as we resolve to live in the company of Jesus Christ and never reconsider; it is only as we continue to love him rather than fritter our affection on trifles and toys; it is only as we are instant and constant where he is concerned that we find ourselves free to hear and heed his word about sawdust and planks and the phoniness that laps at all of us; free to hear his word, we should note, and no less eager to do something about it.
In the same way it is only as we are serious about the yoke-maker, serious enough to move from detached mulling to ardent embracing of the one who has already embraced us; it is only when we are this serious that we find ourselves proving in our experience that his yoke is easier than any other, that what life compels us to pull is pulled better when his yoke both connects us to our burden and connects us to him.
We can always avoid making up our mind; we can never avoid making up our life. Either our hand is on the plough and we are looking ahead or we are looking around elsewhere, distracted, preoccupied with everything but him, perhaps majoring on minors, perhaps concerned with much that is good but with nothing that is godly.
Yes, our Lord was a carpenter. He knew about work, about salty sweat and sore muscles and slivers. But he is also more than a carpenter. He is the incarnate Son of God. With the ring of authority, therefore, he urges us to come to him and never forsake him. In this we shall find ourselves both corrected and comforted. Corrected when his sawdust-reminder challenges us to drop our carping born of pseudo-superiority; comforted when he yokes himself to us and pulls with us the burden that would otherwise torment us or strangle us.
Knowing all of this, today we should bind ourselves to him anew, and never, ever look back.
Victor Shepherd
September 2005
The Saints on All Saints Day
Joshua 24:19-24
Acts 5: 12-16
Matthew 4: 18-22
[1] “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi…”; “to the saints who are at Ephesus”; “to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colosse”; the apostle Paul begins virtually every letter with the same greeting: “to the saints in Schomberg.” Plainly he insists that every Christian is a saint, a holy person. But what about the Christians in Corinth, with their bickering and their party-strife and their cavalier toleration of sexual irregularities? Were they saints too? Yes. The word “saint”, as used in the newer testament, doesn’t have to do with lofty spiritual achievement; the word “saint”, rather, is used there to translate the Latin word sacer, the Greek word hagios, the Hebrew word kadosh – all of which mean the same: “different”, “set apart.” Saints are holy people; holy people are those who are different because set apart.
In the older testament the tithe, or one-tenth of the harvest, is said to be holy in that it is “the Lord’s”; it’s different in that it’s been set apart. Throughout the older testament the Israelite people are said to be holy in that they are different from all other peoples, different because set apart. Different because set apart for unique privilege? No. Different because set apart for a unique purpose.
All Christians are saints or holy in that we’ve been set apart for a special purpose; we’ve been set apart to live as light amidst darkness, as salt amidst what will otherwise rot, as yeast amidst an environment that needs to be leavened. All Christians without exception have been appointed to this and are therefore different, holy, saints.
This is not to say, however, that all Christians are spiritually mature. Peter said that some Christians could digest spiritual meat while others were still at the breast-milk stage of spiritual development. (1 Peter 2:2) It isn’t to say that all Christians are profound. Some are exceedingly shallow, as the legalists in Galatia demonstrated. It isn’t to say that all Christians are a glorious advertisement for their Lord. Some Christians are a disgrace, as the perverse in Corinth demonstrated. Nevertheless, they are Christians, and are rightly addressed “saints.”
[2] At the same time, everyone is aware that throughout the history of the church there have been men and women who stood out and imprinted themselves on others, stamped themselves on others without trying to or even wanting to. To be sure, all Christians are found “in Christ”, to use the little expression that Paul deploys 132 times; still, we all know that some Christians have struck us as particularly transparent to the master himself. All Christians are possessed of the Holy Spirit, the life-bringing presence and power of God; still, we’ve met those who exemplify this fact most tellingly. All Christians are undergoing transformation from fallen creature to someone in whom God’s image shines, a “work in progress”; still, some Christians manifest such transformation right now as to leave us glorifying God. I have met several such people myself, and they have encouraged me unspeakably in my own discipleship, for to know them is to know afresh that God can effect the profoundest alteration, the most concrete alteration, in those who call upon him and love him and live in him. These people have been a lighthouse for me when I’ve been buffeted in the storms of church controversy, or when I’ve been dismayed at the perfidy of denominational leaders, or when I’ve been frustrated as large numbers of the lukewarm lazed about indifferently. The people who have been lighthouse and inspiration and encouragement to me have certainly been saints in the sense that all Christians are saints by definition; in addition, however, they’ve been saints in the way that the church has traditionally understood the term. While I used to groan every time a preacher, desperate for an illustration, used the hackneyed story of the child who looked at the stained glass window and concluded that “saints are those who let the light shine through”, I groan no longer. I have profited immeasurably from many people who let the light shine through, albeit unknowingly, and were used of God to bathe me in a light that I have gloried in knowingly.
[3] About these people who are saints in the latter sense; there are several things we should note concerning them.
They understand themselves to be called of God, awakened by him and awakened to him by grace alone. They never think of themselves as spiritual achievers of any sort. They never boast of spiritual attainment. Like John the Baptist, they are always found pointing away from themselves to their Lord, wanting only to find him exalted.
So far from thinking themselves less sin-riddled than most, they are uncommonly aware of the residual sin that has not yet been burned out of them. Unlike the spiritually immature, they know that the closer anyone is to the light, the darker the shadow that the light casts. It was the man, glowing ever after at the truth and vividness of his Damascus Road encounter, even knowing what it was to be “caught up to the third heaven”; it was this man who could only speak of himself, at life’s end, as “the foremost of sinners.” (1 Tim. 1:15)
If the saints are possessed of anything in uncommon measure, they are possessed of uncommon humility; and because their humility is genuine and not affected, they are humble without knowing it. They would agree with Thomas Watson, my favourite Puritan thinker, who commented, “All Christian growth is finally growth in humility.” They would agree with Watson even as they would never think that they had grown at all. This is not to say they wallow in self-belittlement. Self-belittlement has nothing to do with humility. Self-belittlement is another form (albeit perverse) of self-preoccupation, and self-preoccupation is pride pure-and-simple. Humility is self-forgetfulness. The genuinely humble never think they are. They would blush to be told they are found to be unusually transparent to God’s will and way and work.
Ever since my teenage days I’ve been helped through the many books by and about William Sangster, a Methodist minister in Britain who was born in 1900 and died 59 years later of progressive muscular atrophy. Sangster used to say, “The saints aren’t resigned to the will of God; they aren’t even conformed to the will of God; they are abandoned to it.” There’s nothing more important for any of us than to discern the will of God for us and abandon ourselves to it! There’s nothing that so renders such a person “a city set on a hill that cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14), in the words of Jesus.
I am moved every time I read Luke’s account of Peter in Jerusalem following the resurrection of our Lord and the incursion of Pentecost. People carried their sick relatives outside and laid them in the street in hope that even the shadow of Peter might fall on them as Peter himself passed by. (Acts 5:15) Jerusalem had been the site of Peter’s disgrace; Jerusalem was now the site of Peter’s acclamation in the early church. Was there an element of superstition in those who laid their sick friends in the street, hoping that Peter’s shadow would fall on them? I think there likely was. Still, they did what they did out of recognition of the Spirit-wrought turn-around that left Peter demonstrably a man of God and a flame that no longer flickered and faltered. The English text reads, “…that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them.” The Greek text reads, “…that as Peter came by his shadow might overshadow them.” “Overshadow”: episkiazein. Luke had already used the verb twice in his written gospel to speak of God’s presence and power. Luke is telling us that people recognized God’s presence and power in Peter as unmistakably as they recognized Peter’s hair-colour and his facial features.
Some Protestants are uncomfortable with all such talk. They point out that the sanctity of any Christian isn’t something that can be measured or transferred or borrowed or leant. But to speak of holiness or godliness or saintliness as the church has used these expressions throughout its history isn’t to speak of a thing in any case. Some Protestants object, “Isn’t everyone a fallen creature, and fallen in equal degree?” Of course. No one is going to dispute this point. “Don’t we all merit condemnation?” Certainly. “Aren’t we all able to survive the present fire of God’s judgement (never mind the future fire) only by clinging to the cross?” Yes. “Then there’s no place for speaking of a greater godliness manifested among those who have abandoned themselves to God’s will and work and way.” Wrong. To be sure, Paul never suggested that the woebegone Christians in Corinth weren’t Christians; but he did insist they were immature, shallow, unwise and a disgrace. Many of us have met Christians who are mature, profound, wise and, so far from a disgrace, bring honour to their Lord. The influence of such people, on me at least, has been incalculable.
I’m always saddened at those who dismiss godly people from other branches of the Christian family on the grounds that the theology of these other people is deficient here or there. I’m the last person to dismiss theology. Yet important as it is, it’s only penultimate. Then what’s ultimate? Godliness is. I shall never forget one of the oral examinations I sat with Professor Jakob Jocz on the way to my doctorate. Jocz, a Lithuanian Hebrew-Christian, knew the difference between the penultimate and the ultimate and insisted on the difference relentlessly. After he and I had jousted intellectually for an hour in the examination he told me I had done well and would report my grade to the registrar. He dismissed me and I began walking away. I was almost out of the building when he hailed me and called me back. Speaking to me now not as examiner but as spiritual advisor he said, “Shepherd, what we’ve done here today is important but not ultimately important; what finally counts is the shape of a person’s life. You be sure to remember this.”
When I was teaching at a seminary in India a few years ago I noticed that the remains of Francis Xavier are buried there. Xavier was one of the six young men who, with their leader, Ignatius Loyola, formed the Jesuit order in the 16th century. They were missionaries who cheerfully embraced the severest hardships for the sake of Christ’s kingdom. Francis Xavier ministered for several years in India, having walked there from Spain. How long a walk is the walk from Spain? What did he encounter? What was the heat like, the danger from animals and snakes, the greater danger from hostile natives, the danger from tropical disease? To be sure, I wouldn’t agree with Xavier’s theology in all respects. But what finally counts is the shape of a person’s life! The saints continue to do more for me than I am able to tell you.
[4] Another man who has done ever so much for me I think of almost every day: Ronald Ward. Ward was a British-trained classics scholar-turned-New Testament scholar who came to Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. An Anglican clergyman, a gentle spirit, a fine preacher with a vivid imagination, a walking lexicon of Greek vocabulary and a master of Greek grammar, Ward could open up a Greek dictionary, comment on any word there, and in commenting on a point in morphology or syntax bring me, at least, before the throne of grace where I could only adore in amazement. Needless to say, I’ve met many New Testament scholars with fine Greek backgrounds who never did this for me. Then how is it Ward could? He was simply the godliest person I have ever met.
I first heard of Ward from my father. For years my father worked in downtown Toronto at the Canada Trust office at Yonge and Temperance streets. The downtown Anglican cathedral hosted Lenten noon-hour services lasting 40 minutes: hymn, prayer, scripture reading, sermon. My father attended every noon-hour in Lent and in time came to hear Ward. My father came home that night astonished at Ward’s scholarship and glowing at the authenticity with which Ward spoke of his life in his Lord. On my 24th birthday my mother (now a widow) gave me a book of Ward’s that expounded the theological significance of the subtlest points in Greek grammar. By now I was afire myself over the Greek grammatical subtleties that were more effective than Elijah’s chariot in bringing one before the face of God reflected in the face of that Lord whom Ward knew and loved. When I was ordained and settled in New Brunswick, the 400-mile round-trip drive to Ward, now a clergyman in Saint John, was nothing. For when I was in his home he would speak to me naturally, unselfconsciously, of matters of the Spirit, and speak so as to leave me craving his immersion in the heart of God.
Ward glowed with the Spirit. Genuinely humble like all the saints of God, he simply spoke from his heart of that gospel whose truth had validated itself in him over and over. Never intending to impress me, he none the less impressed me so thoroughly as to leave me unable to forget him. On one occasion he smiled warmly as he remarked to me, “Victor, if we fear God, genuinely fear God, we shall never have to be afraid of him.” I have pondered this simple statement a thousand times. “Victor, the worst consequence of sin is more sin.” I have proved the truth of this too many times, I’m ashamed to tell you. “Victor, the worst consequence of prayerlessness is the inability to pray.”
That book of his that my mother gave me on my 24th birthday: it discussed imperative and subjunctive moods, peculiar verb tenses like the gnomic aorist and the periphrastic perfect, as well as compound verbs and unusual prepositions. The book electrified me with gospel insights that I use repeatedly to tell my students they can’t afford to bypass Greek. One day, Greek testament in hand, I told Ward I was puzzled by two verses close to each other where Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off…if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.” The verb is skandalizein, to cause to stumble. In these two verses two different tenses are used. One tense suggests completed action in the past, a single instance only; the other tense suggests an ongoing phenomenon. When I asked Ward about it he replied without hesitation. “Victor, in a moment of carelessness or inattentiveness or outright folly the Christian can be overtaken by sin. Horrified, she says, ‘Never again!’, and it’s done with, one instance only. And then there’s the Christian’s besetting sin with which she has to struggle every day.”
Ward died in 1986 at the age of 78. He’s so deep in my head and heart that he’ll never be out. I glow every time I think of him, and want only that the same Spirit which made him luminous for me might render me luminous for someone else.
[5] Everyone is aware that the saints whom the church catholic recognizes are frequently martyrs as well. Why are so many saints martyrs too? It’s simple: when the gospel meets the world, the gospel collides with lethal hostility. We must never, never think that the gospel is heard and beheld in a world that is spiritually neutral; the gospel is heard and beheld in a world that hates it.
When I was in Korea in 1998 I spoke with an American scholar who had been a missionary in Japan for 20 years from 1955 to 1975 (more or less.) He lit up as he told me he’d shortly be preaching in Japan and would see there a Christian woman, the daughter of a man who had come to faith in Jesus Christ when my friend had been a missionary. He was so very excited about this because a Christian who perseveres is so very rare, given the social stigma the Japanese visit upon anyone who makes a Christian profession. Not only is there social stigma, my friend said, there is right now a social harassment so intense that very few Japanese can withstand it. In years past, of course, there was out-and-out murder.
We shall never comprehend the suffering of Christians in China since the communist takeover of 1948; we shall never know the extent of those murdered in the cultural revolution of the last 30 years. As for Christians in Islamic countries; at this moment Christians in Islamic countries are being slaughtered in unprecedented numbers.
Remembrance Day is soon upon us, and with it all that Remembrance Day recalls. For me it always recalls Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, and his execution at the hands of the Nazis following a two-year imprisonment. When I was in Korea I spoke with some European theologians about Bonhoeffer. What did they think of him? How is he viewed in the academic circles of German theology? “We find him too pietistic”, they said with a supposed superiority that disgusts me, “especially his book The Cost of Discipleship. Too pietistic.” Bonhoeffer wrote the book knowing that the cost of genuine discipleship is no little cost; he wrote it knowing that he himself would pay the price. Bonhoeffer said simply, “It costs everything to follow Jesus.” And university professors of theology, whose predecessors were cowards during the Nazi era and who now enjoy fat-cat salaries and immense social prestige and whose discipleship costs them nothing; they dismiss the man who followed our Lord so closely as never to flee the cross he ordains for his people as surely as our Lord himself has never fled the one ordained for him. Leonhard Goppelt, a Hamburg New Testament scholar who saved his hide during the war by pretending he had never heard of Jesus Christ and whose work I refuse to read, remarked to a friend of mine (Goppelt’s doctoral student), “Bonhoeffer puzzles me; to survive all he had to was keep his mouth shut!” How can a witness to Jesus Christ keep his mouth shut?
To be a witness (martus) is frequently to be a martyr.
[6] Frequently, but not always. Many exemplary witnesses have been spared martyrdom. One such Christian, another fellow to whom I return often, is William Stringfellow, New York lawyer, Anglican layman, extraordinarily perceptive with respect to the principalities and powers. (The principalities and powers are the institutions, ideologies, images and “isms” that enslave people and break them.) Stringfellow acquainted me with the scope and depth of the world’s hostility and its bondage to death. Stringfellow also acquainted me with the scope and depth of God’s love for the world, which love means that God will never abandon it and therefore never should we. Lest we foolishly think that the saints are otherworldly and therefore of no earthly use, we should be aware that the saints love the world just because God loves it and love it with the same sort of love with which God loves it. Stringfellow died in January, 1985, three months before I was to visit him in New York. It was said at his funeral, “In his vocation and by his example he opened up to us the Word of God.” This is the vocation of all the saints, of all God’s people.
In this Presbyterian congregation John Calvin is going to be given the last word today. Calvin said, “The only foundation for that holy living which constitutes genuine righteousness is to cast everything else behind us and embrace the cross…of Christ with both hands.” The saints of every branch of the Christian family know this. They cast everything else behind them just because they want always and everywhere to embrace the cross of Christ with both hands.
Victor Shepherd
October 2001
Let Us Run The Race With Perseverance
Hebrews 11 and 12:1,2
Christian discipleship is a race, says the unknown author of the book of Hebrews. It’s a race of a peculiar sort, a relay race. Some runners have run before us; others will run after us. Those who have run before us haven’t disappeared from the course. Having finished their “leg” of the race they have gathered at the finish line where they can cheer on those who are still running. Those who have already finished the race are “the great cloud of witnesses” of whom Hebrews speaks. We who are running now are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses. They are encouraging us moment by moment, telling us constantly that any difficulty, all difficulties can be surmounted and must be surmounted if we are to join them at the finish-line.
Think of the great cloud. Abel, for instance: he kept running despite lethal harassment from a hostile brother. Joseph: he kept running despite wicked slander against him and repeated attempts to seduce him. Moses: he kept running despite the opposition of neighbours who wouldn’t have known God from a gopher. And of course the person in the “great cloud of witnesses” is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Hebrews speaks of him as the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” We who are running now are to keep our eye on him above all. He didn’t merely run one leg of the relay race; he forged the whole race ahead of us and now summons us to keep on running with our eyes on him.
We are told not simply to run, but to run with perseverance. Plainly, nothing must be allowed to inhibit or obstruct our perseverance.
Then what is it to run with perseverance?
I: — In the first place we must keep on running regardless of detractors.
My family left Winnipeg in January, 1950. Three months later the Red River flooded. Soon the streets of downtown Winnipeg were five feet under water. (Note: we are not talking here about five feet of water in the basement, but rather five feet of water above the sidewalk.) Southern Manitoba has flooded episodically ever since the passing of the ice age.
When Mr. Duff Roblin was premier of Manitoba thirty years ago he legislated the construction of a huge floodway along one side of Winnipeg that carries off the overflow from the two rivers — the Red and the Assiniboine — that rise dangerously every spring. The floodway cost $58 million. For this public expenditure Duff Roblin was pilloried in the legislative assembly. His political opponents “ate him alive”, all the while ridiculing his project as “Duff’s Ditch”.
It so happens that Duff’s Ditch is going to spare Winnipeg from the flood when the flood inundates everything else around Winnipeg. It so happens that Duff’s Ditch has spared the city of Winnipeg colossal damage on at least ten occasions. It so happens that Duff’s Ditch has saved the city billions of dollars.
Roblin paid a very high price for his perseverance. No matter! He stands vindicated now!
In the race of discipleship to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running regardless of detractors.
II: — In the second place to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running regardless of distractions. We must run singlemindedly; run with a focus, a concentration, a determination that is aware only of the matter at hand. We must run with an intensity that unfailingly announces our steadfastness.
I am gripped whenever I see a singleminded intensity that sheds distractions. Recently I saw Itzhak Perlman (reputed to be the world’s finest violinist) playing a “pop” concert. He was playing the music from the movie, Schindler’s List. He had already played the music when the sound track was made for the film. Now he was playing it again before a live audience.
The audience was relaxed, comfortable, cool. Perlman, however; perspiration streamed off him. Playing music associated with the Holocaust plainly strained the Jewish violinist. Still, he matched the strain with his own strenuousness and kept on playing as only he can play, sweat-soaked while spectators coolly enjoyed the music.
Regardless of what it was costing him Perlman wasn’t going to spare himself; neither was he going to let anything distract him. In his singleminded concentration he wasn’t even aware of would-be distractions.
How different it was with the woman in the relay race during a recent Olympic Games. She was running her “leg” of the race, baton in hand, when a mean-spirited opponent elbowed her in the ribs. Jabbed, in pain now, and momentarily breathless, she “lost it”. Angrily, petulantly — understandably, to be sure, yet foolishly nonetheless — she threw her baton at the woman who had fouled her. When she threw her baton she threw away the race. She disqualified herself; she disqualified her entire team. Instantly she grasped what she had done and stopped running.
In the course of life we do get fouled. We get jabbed. We get “clobbered”. We get victimized in a thousand different ways. The one thing we must never do is allow our manifold victimizations to distract us. We must never allow them to distract us so that we lose our focus, our singlemindedness, our intensity, our horizon-filling dedication to the task at hand. We must never allow our manifold victimizations to move us into that space where we “throw it all away” with the result that the only thing left is to stop running.
To run with perseverance is to keep on running regardless of distractions.
III: — In the third place to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running patiently. The race of Christian discipleship isn’t a sprint that ends in 9.35 seconds. It’s a long race, a lifelong race. We must run patiently.
Before the dismantling of the Berlin wall in 1989; before the dissolution of the Soviet Union; when the USSR was a totalitarian tormenter; in those days one of the USSR’s military heroes was denounced publicly. Col. Lev Ofsischer had been a flier in the Soviet Air Force in World War II. He had distinguished himself in the Battle of Stalingrad, that great turning point in the war. He was an Air Force hero, and his name and photograph were featured in a book depicting the Battle of Stalingrad and his place in it.
In a subsequent edition of the book his name and photograph had been removed. His rank — colonel — had been reduced to private. And his pension had been cancelled. What had he done to bring this on himself? In 1967 he had asked the soviet government to permit him to emigrate to Israel. Permission was denied. Meanwhile a Baptist Christian had given him a bible. (Ofsischer had grown up in communist Russia where bibles were illegal, and had grown up thoroughly secularized.) In 1977, ten years later, he was still denied permission to emigrate. For ten years he had read the bible that the Christian missionary had given him, and in those ten years had learned the history of his people’s frustrations in the biblical era alone.
The KGB (soviet secret police) told him that if he withdrew his application to emigrate his Air Force pension would be restored. Ofsischer told the KGB that if he had to choose between pension and honour there was no choice: he would never besmirch his honour for the sake of a pension.
The KGB told him he might as well give up. “You’ve already waited ten years !”, they said. “Wrong!”, replied Ofsischer, “I haven’t waited ten years. I have waited 2000 years; and I can wait a few more.”
To run with perseverance is always to run patiently.
IV: — Important as it is to run regardless of detractors, run regardless of distractions, run patiently, it isn’t enough: we must also run so as to finish.
Another Olympic Games, this time in Mexico City, 1968. It was the marathon race: 26 miles, 385 yards. The first-place runner crossed the finish line, then the second, the third, and so on. As the last runner, it would seem, straggled in, the spectators and camera crews noticed an ambulance with lights flashing several hundred yards up the course. The flashing lights warned the crowds not to surge onto the track as the race wasn’t yet over. One runner remained on the track.
This fellow had come from a developing country in the two-thirds world. His nation had no funds for state-sponsored training programs. The people had simply sent him off with whatever encouragement they could press upon him. Now he was running with men whose economic privilege gave them enormous advantage.
This fellow, ambulance alongside him, would stagger a few feet and fall on his face, get up and stagger a few more feet and go down again, over and over until he had traversed the last few hundred yards. When asked why he had persevered at such a price he replied, “My people didn’t send me here to compete (they knew I couldn’t compete); they didn’t even send me here to run; they sent me here to finish.”
My final word to those whose race-running we are recognizing this morning is this: be sure to run so as to finish. It is only as we finish — who cares if we get to our goal with scraped knees and bleeding face? — it is only as we finish that we find ourselves admitted to the great cloud of witnesses in the company of our elder brother, Jesus. And it is only as we finish that God himself is glorified.
Victor Shepherd
May 1997
Not a Spirit of Fear, but a Spirit of Power and Love and Self-Control
2 Timothy 1:7
It began as a youth movement. To be sure, older people possess greater wisdom, sounder judgement, broader perspective. Our Lord knew this. Nevertheless he began with younger people. When he stepped forth on his public ministry he was in his late 20s. The twelve whom he called to him were likely no older. Paul took Mark on Paul’s first missionary journey when Mark was estimated to be 19. You know what happened: Mark behaved like a 19 year old. He couldn’t withstand the hardship of the venture, left Paul and returned home. When Paul and Barnabas were about to set off on another missionary journey Paul said, “We can’t take Mark with us; we simply can’t afford to have him let us down again”. Barnabas disagreed. “He was only 19; give him another chance”. Paul and Barnabas parted over Mark; they parted amicably, without grudge or resentment, but they parted. Barnabas, however, was vindicated, since Mark proved himself on the second venture.
Why the emphasis on youth? Is it not because along with the broader perspective and greater stability of middle age there is also boredom, apathy, and more than a little cynicism? Several older clergymen have said to me with that bone-deep weariness born of disillusionment, “Shepherd, wait until you have been in this game as long as I have”.
There is another reason for our Lord’s beginning with younger people: what we have to contend with in our youth we are going to have contend with for the remainder of our lives. I am always amused when an older adult pretends that his adolescence has been put behind him forever. Years ago (1970), in my final year of theology, I studied under Dr. James Wilkes, a psychiatrist from whom I learned an immense amount. He mentioned one day that emotionally our adolescence lurks just below the surface of our adult psyche. The coping mechanisms, for instance, that we developed as adolescents are the coping mechanisms we shall have for a long time. Similarly, what we had to contend with “back” when we were adolescents we shall have to contend with throughout life. Jesus began with younger people inasmuch as what they learned from him at that time they would need and would have for the rest of their lives. A sermon, then, that has to do with younger people cannot fail to speak to older people as well.
[1] Paul writes to Timothy, who is only 19 or 20 himself, and says, “Remember! God did not give us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and self-control”. Plainly the older apostle knows that young Timothy is afraid.
Are we afraid? (Does the sun rise in the east?) There are days when our fears are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, and other days when they muscle everything else out of our minds. Some of our fears we readily understand. The company we work for has merged with a larger company and not all management and executive personnel are going to be retained. Our child seems unwell and we have just enough medical knowledge as not to be put off by our friends’ reassurances that there is nothing wrong. We are afraid that the psychological booby-trap which we have known of for years and which we have disguised, stepped around or hidden; that situation where we do not cope and where we appear so helpless, weak and silly – we fear it’s going to become publicly evident and we shall be humiliated. We are afraid that since we are not married yet we are never going to be married. (I also meet people who are afraid that since they are married now they are never going to get unmarried.) And then there is a different kind of fear, unattached to any specific object or occurrence. “Existential anxiety” is the term mental health experts use. Existential anxiety is that niggling, lapping, semi-conscious awareness of our fragility, our frailty, our ultimate powerlessness in the face of life’s accidentality and our own mortality.
The preacher keeps reminding us that “Fear not” is the most frequent command on the lips of Jesus. His telling us to fear not, we feel nonetheless, has as much effect on us as our going down to Lake Ontario and telling the waves to stop rolling in.
I shall never make light of that fear which is part of the human condition. It is as undeniable as toothache. Then what do I do with respect to my own fears? On those days when my fears seem nearly overwhelming I look to two treasure-stores: the promises of God and my Christian friends. The promises of God are glorious. The simplest promise comes from the book of Joshua: “I will not fail you or forsake you”. The psalms are a goldmine: “This I know, that God is for me… what can man do to me?” John tells us that even if our hearts condemn us, the God of unfathomable mercy is greater than our hearts. And then there are those promises from the heart and pen of Paul: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s”; “If God is for us, who is against us?”; “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose”. And of course there is the climax of all of scripture, as far as I am concerned, Romans 8:38: “Neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
When Paul tells Timothy that we have not been given a spirit of fear he doesn’t mean that we are never afraid. Paul himself was often afraid; he speaks unashamedly of his own fear. Our Lord was fearful on occasion. To tell people they should never fear is to send them in pursuit of the unrealistic and the ridiculous; it’s also to plunge them into false guilt.
To have a “spirit of fear” is something different; it’s to be so fear-saturated as to be deflected from our obedience to God. But a spirit of fear is precisely what we haven’t been given; therefore we mustn’t yield to it. We must fling ourselves upon the promises of God.
Yet I must admit that there have been occasions in my life when even the promises of God seemed to evaporate on me; occasions when fear fell on me like a building collapsing or seeped into me like poison gas. On these occasions the promises seemed ineffective, however true, unable to stem the dread whose waves came upon me like nausea. On these occasions I have leaned my full weight on Christian friends, for they embody for us, incarnate for us, the truth of the promises in those moments when we are floundering and the promises seem to support us only as embodied in our friends.
[2] If God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, then what has he given us? Paul reminds Timothy once again: a spirit of power and love and self-control.
(a) The one question which younger people always have concerning the gospel is also the simplest question. Their one question isn’t, “Is it true?”, because younger people suspect it might be true but also be trite; true but also pointless; true but too abstract, too remote to be of any earthly use. Their one question concerning the gospel is, “Does it work?” “Does it work?” means “Is it effective?” Whether it is effective depends entirely on what end it is supposed to effect. The question, “Is a hammer effective?” depends on the end you have in mind. If your purpose is to drive nails the answer is plainly “yes”. If you wish to crochet lace doilies the answer is plainly “no”. If you want to repair the nozzle of your garden hose the answer is “maybe”. “Does the gospel work?” — the answer here depends on what it is we are looking to see happen. The textbook-correct answer is that the gospel works, is effective, inasmuch as it is the purpose of the gospel to reconcile us to God and render us transparent before him; since the gospel does this (alone does this) therefore the gospel works and should be embraced by every last person, older and younger alike. But the answer is too slick and too abstract by half. What reconciliation to God and transparency to him means is something we older people must exemplify ourselves if what we say about it is to have any weight. For a long time I have felt that Maureen and I should are an advertisement of the gospel for our grandchildren. In other words, younger people (who are much less readily deceived than older people) are going to conclude that the gospel works only if they have seen something of its work in us.
One feature of younger people that always appeals to me is their forthrightness. If you ask them about last night’s rock concert they will reply without hesitation, “It was a drag” or “It was out of sight”. Older people are adept at verbal smokescreens; younger people don’t bother with word-camouflages, for they are suspicious that much talk is a cover-up covering up an embarrassing lack of substance. There was an embarrassing lack of substance in the Christian community of Corinth . The church-members there yammered a lot, lined up behind different hero-figures in the congregation, fancied themselves worldly-wise and talked up their pseudo-wisdom; they rationalized the inexcusable even as they told each other how truthful they were. Finally Paul had had enough. He let them know that their pretension to wisdom was nothing more than arrogance. He let them know that he would visit the congregation soon and deal with these motor-mouths himself. His conviction about the nature of the gospel and his resolve to hold the congregation to the gospel are evident in his concluding line: “I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power”.
Not a spirit of fear has God given us but a spirit of power.
(b) And also a spirit of love. Everyone has her own understanding of love; but it’s the gospel’s understanding that matters for us. And the gospel makes plain that God’s love is a self-giving which pours itself self-forgetfully upon anyone at all without concern for consequence or cost.
Young people have no difficulty understanding this: self-forgetful self-giving without concern for consequence or cost. It’s all so very lofty, even adventurous, that it appears as attractive as it seems true.
But younger people do not remain younger. As older age settles upon them little by little the cost seems prohibitively high. At the same time the consequence (the result) seems woefully meagre, given the high cost. (The entire scheme plainly isn’t “cost-effective”, as the economists say.) What happens next? Self-giving is shrivelled to thing-giving; self-forgetfulness is shrivelled to calculation; the cost of love is simply deemed too high and the consequences too scanty. Next step, the last step: we settle down into that token-generosity whose tokenism the world accepts because tokenism is all the world expects of anyone with respect to anything. How is such world-weary disillusionment to be avoided?
There are two ways of avoiding such disillusionment. One is by returning constantly to our text: God has given us a spirit of love; not a notion of love, but a spirit of love. Plainly there is an allusion to the Holy Spirit, that power in which God himself acts upon his people. Then God himself must — and will — keep our hearts from shrivelling up into that tokenism that is widely regarded as good enough.
The second way of avoiding the world-weary disillusionment that reduces love to a mere artificiality which is socially acceptable; the second way is to keep people dear to us. Writing to the people in Thessalonica Paul says, “We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our very selves (this is what love is finally, sharing our very selves) so dear had you become to us.” The longer I live the dearer people become to me. When I was a younger minister I was so taken up with getting the job-functions done — writing the sermon, chairing the meeting, conducting the funeral — that my focus was on the function, with people more or less on the periphery. In my older age the function seems to perform itself, and people have become the focus. One reason that I have relished being a pastor is that people — all kinds and qualities — have become dearer to me with every passing year. As they do I find today’s text confirming itself to me with greater force: God has given us a spirit of love, and this gift will keep our love from shrivelling up to a pasted-on smile plus a “townie.”
(c) We have also been given a spirit of self-control. Self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control. Either we control ourselves or others control us; other people, other ideologies, other things. When this happens – i.e., when we are other-controlled – we are little more than an empty tin can kicked around endlessly: empty to start with and soon shapeless as well. This is not good. What is the alternative? A minute ago I said that self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control; “appears” because there is one glorious instance where self-control and other-control are one and the same. When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 he is listing the qualities of life which Jesus Christ effects in his people by his Spirit. Included in the list is self-control. Christ-control is self-control. You see, to be Christ-controlled is to know whose we are: we are his and his only! And to know whose we are (when we are Christ’s) is to know who we are: we are our “self”. Since Jesus Christ renders me who I am, to be Christ-controlled will always be to be self-controlled.
For whether we are younger or older, whether we are newcomers to the faith or oldtimers in the household and family of God, we were never given a spirit of fear; we have all been given a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control.
Victor Shepherd
May 2007
The Meaning and Timing of Confirmation
I: — Many of you have voiced to me your misgivings concerning confirmation, the service itself as well as the understanding behind the ritual. No one has suggested that we cancel the service outright. Nonetheless, even those who have never suggested that the event be cancelled continue to express serious reservations about it. A few people are plainly cynical. I imagine that virtually everyone feels that something isn’t quite right with confirmation; something important is somehow not happening, a mythology if not a superstition has taken hold, a game of “let’s pretend” is being played even though most of us can’t really pretend any longer. While almost no one is content with the current practice of confirmation, no one appears to have an alternative.
Everyone knows what happens on Confirmation Sunday. Some of the confirmands we know well. We have seen them and their parents at worship for years. Other confirmands we don’t know at all. We don’t recognize the surname, aren’t acquainted with the parents, assume that the youngster is being confirmed simply because his parents have made him come to the six or seven mandatory classes and get himself “done”, the parents plainly attaching much superstition to getting “done.”
When adults wish to join our congregation through transfer of membership the secretary asks for the transfer, only to learn, quite frequently, that the person in question was not a member of the previous congregation; may have attended, but was never formally a member. I then ask the person in question if she was ever confirmed. Very often she replies that she doesn’t know; she can’t remember whether she was ever confirmed. Were I to ask her, “Did you ever get married?”, she would be able to reply instantly. Apparently confirmation is not particularly memorable.
And then there are the photographs, in the hallway outside the choir room, of the confirmation classes of years past. Where are all those young people today? As painful as it is to say it, would it be truer to say that confirmation is less the congregation’s welcome to the young people than it is their good-bye wave to us?
Many people understand confirmation as a kind of graduation. Once we have graduated from high school, for instance, we don’t go back. Once we have graduated from “church” (Sunday School being a form of church) we don’t go back.
And then there is an aspect to the confirmation service which should jar us all, that part of the service where hands are laid upon the candidate. There is only one other service in the church where hands are laid upon a candidate: ordination to the ministry. Obviously there is close connection between the meaning of confirmation in the faith and the meaning of ordination to the ministry. What is the connection? What would we think of candidates for the ministry who were ordained at a public service and then promptly disappeared from church life?
Then of course there are the promises made during the service itself. One such promise is that the confirmand will be diligent in attendance at public worship. The promise is made by the confirmand and heard by the congregation when everyone knows that diligent attendance at public worship is the last thing many confirmands (and their parents) have in mind.
The promises are followed by the commissioning: “Go out into the world to fulfil your high calling as a servant and soldier of Jesus Christ.” “Go out into the world”: it appears that the theatre, the venue of the Christian’s discipleship is vast. “Servant of Christ”: it appears that extreme self-denial is involved. “Soldier of Christ”: it appears that hardship is cheerfully to be endured. What do we expect a 15 year old to make of all this?
Lastly, at a recent meeting of the Christian Education Committee grave misgivings were voiced concerning the adequacy of six or seven 45-minute sessions as preparation for an event as momentous as confirmation. Frankly, I don’t think that six or seven sessions times 45 minutes is adequate preparation. But surely these sessions aren’t the preparation! Surely the profounder preparation is 15 years of Christian formation through exposure to Christian truth and the Christian way embodied in congregational life and witness.
II: — Many people have asked me about the timing of confirmation, the age at which young people make public promises and are said to be “confirmed”. Why age 15? I simply don’t know. I suspect that it has much to do with the fact that around this age people graduate from elementary school and move on to high school. At the same time, Sunday School customarily concludes for people 14 or 15 years old. When I was new in Streetsville I commented, at a C.E. meeting, that I was concerned about the immediate disappearance of so many confirmees. I suggested that we try something different: postpone the event for a few years to see if the losses were as great then. My suggestion was shot down instantly. “If we postpone the class we might lose those people”, I was told right away. Might lose them? But the present practice has scarcely kept them! I cannot believe that we have genuinely, profoundly “kept” people within the fellowship of the congregation just because their names have been added to record-books.
(I’ll say more about timing later. Let’s move on to the meaning of confirmation.)
III: — The meaning of the service is stated plainly in the service itself. “When those who have been baptized as children have grown up and have been taught the essentials of Christian faith and duty, they come before the church to own for themselves the covenant (i.e., the promises) of their baptism. In this act they confess Jesus Christ openly as Saviour and Lord that they may be confirmed by the Holy Spirit and welcomed to the Lord’s table.” (Let me say in passing that I should welcome any person of any age to the Lord’s table at any time, confirmed or not.) The major point in all this is that those being confirmed now own for themselves and publicly endorse the promises which their parents made on their behalf as infants on the day their parents had them baptized.
Everywhere in the New Testament baptism is a sign of several things. (i) It is a sign of repentance. To repent is to change direction. Christians take their marching orders from a different leader. We walk resolutely that road which leads to the kingdom of God. Other roads — self-inflating ambition, wealth for the sake of wealth, social superiority, self-indulgence — these roads we shun as we move in the direction of the kingdom. (ii) Baptism is a sign of faith. Faith is keeping company with Jesus Christ. Living unashamedly in his company, we share his identity. We are publicly known as those who know him and love him and obey him. (iii) Baptism is commissioning for service. While we certainly love our Lord, we do more than merely love him; we work in his name, work on behalf of others whom he loves as surely as he loves us. (iv) Baptism means one thing more. It means that the repentance and faith and service we exercise, we exercise inasmuch as God’s own Spirit, God himself, has touched us and moved us and constrained us. We haven’t “decided”, of ourselves, to follow Jesus the way we decide to buy a Ford instead of a Chevrolet or a bungalow instead of a townhouse. We are disciples inasmuch as our Lord called us; our resistance melted and we couldn’t do anything else.
Baptism means this. Parents make promises concerning all of this for their children when their children are baptized. Then the day comes when the child, now much older, recognizes what his parents have sought for him for years. He recognizes too that he wants this now for himself. Therefore he owns it all for himself and publicly declares that this is what he will pursue until life ends.
When I was pondering the meaning of “confirm” I went to the Oxford English Dictionary. The O.E.D. gives four meanings for “confirm”. (i) to establish more firmly. Certainly when people are confirmed we want their discipleship to be established more firmly. (ii) to corroborate. Certainly we want their zeal for discipleship to be corroborated, supported, by the Holy Spirit and by others. (iii) to encourage a person in a habit or an opinion. Certainly we want confirmands to persist in the habit of discipleship and persist in their conviction of truth. (iv) the fourth meaning the O.E.D. discusses only in the past tense. It uses the illustration, “confirmed drunkard”, and mentions synonyms like “inveterate”, meaning “life-long”. And certainly we want confirmands to aspire after life-long loyalty to their Lord.
The United Church service speaks of being “confirmed by the Holy Spirit”. We should all want to add, “and by the congregation as well.”
IV: — This is what the service means. How do you feel now about our confirmation practice? Having asked the question, I am in no position to receive 300 replies at this time. But I shall gladly hear from any of you at any other time.
Having asked you a question, I can only go on talking myself. What I say next is only my opinion. Feel free to disagree with it, modify it, endorse it or bury it.
I think we need many “rites of spiritual passage” in our church life. There is nothing wrong with a public service for people 14 or 15 years old, a service which acknowledges the Christian formation they have undergone so far in their lives, a service which points them ahead to deeper understanding and faith and service, a service which encourages them to persist more profoundly in it. Therefore I am not suggesting for a minute that we eliminate the “rite of spiritual passage” for people of this age.
At the same time I have long felt that the kind of promise we ask young people to make at this age we should defer to a later age. We all agree that no 14 or 15 year old should be asked to make a promise concerning marriage. (For that matter no 17 year old should be asked, either.) We don’t ask 15 year olds to make promises concerning marriage because we know that they cannot understand the force of what they are pledging. Might it not be the same with respect to the promises made at confirmation? Teenage years are often characterized by religious enthusiasms, but also characterized by religious denunciations; doubts, perplexities, denials of all that their parents have cherished, questions, uncertainties, contradictions. A Roman Catholic woman remarked to me that when her daughter was 16 her daughter was vowing every day to become a nun; when her daughter was 17 she couldn’t get her daughter out of bed and to church on Sunday morning.
Teenagers 14, 15, 16 years old feel they have to question everything. There is nothing wrong with this. After all, none of us wants our children to grow up uncritical, mindless dupes. At this age too teenagers become aware that the world as it is is not quite the neat, cosy, justly-ordered world of their early childhood. They learn that there is nothing in the real world which unfolds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They learn now of the evil which excoriates the world, of the shocking unfairness which riddles life, of the misery in which most of the world’s people will have to live. And then they put all of this against the supposed goodness and mercy of God.
At this age too teenagers learn of the arguments brought against faith by Freud and Marx and Darwin. Dealing with these arguments may be “old hat” to a middle-aged person like me, but to a 15 year old it is all so new, so startling, so powerful as to hang a huge question mark above all that he has understood to date of the Christian faith. I often feel that the confirmation process stifles the teenagers’ searching, their inquisitiveness, their wrestling issues to the ground, when we should be encouraging all of this; we smother precisely what we should stimulate. Of course we should support them while they search. But what is to be gained by exerting pressure from parents, peers and congregation upon a teenager to conform to the confirmation practice when all the while some of them, at least, want to cry out, “But I’m not convinced yet; and I have many more questions; and why do I have to submit to this?”
I have long felt that we need to support youngsters throughout this searching, questioning, doubting, probing phase; support them and encourage them in it, and wait for them to emerge on the other side of it with a faith they have hammered out for themselves and can own without reservation. At this point, I feel, we should have another public “rite of spiritual passage” for those who are now 22 or 25 or 28 — or 55.
V:– While the congregation owns and supports teenagers throughout this process and then publicly celebrates the culmination of their search, its flowering into fruit-bearing faith, the congregation should also, I feel, recognize, own, support all kinds of people who act in the congregation’s name. Yes, we do recognize the UCW leadership each year when we install the executive. “Install”? We install heavy appliances, like stoves, fridges, washers and dryers. We shouldn’t “install” these women; we should commission them. We should commission them on behalf of the UCW for the ultimate blessing of the whole congregation. We shouldn’t “install” Sunday School teachers as we call it at present. We should commission them to bring to children, in the way that children can understand, the faith which this congregation as a whole owns. We commission the teachers to render this service for us.
What about the prime neighbours? We need a service which sets forth the way in which the neighbouring program extends Christian hospitality, and what we are trusting to result from this ministry.
The thrust of the visiting program is different. Whereas the prime neighbours have others into their own homes, the visitors go out to other people’s homes, with a different purpose in view. We need a service which recognizes this and commissions them for it.
Youth work in the congregation: youth group, girls’ work, Boy Scout/Girl Guide work. It all happens here in the congregation. We need a public service of recognition, gratitude and commissioning.
VI: –And then I think there may be one thing more needed. Perhaps we need to allow an individual to speak on Sunday morning from time to time. Not to make an announcement in the announcement period, but rather to share her testimony of God’s victory somewhere in her life, or to request special intercession of us in special circumstances, or to lay an extraordinary concern before us which is searing her heart. Do we need a place for this as well?
VII: — Let me say again what I said a minute ago. You asked for a sermon on the meaning and timing of confirmation. I have put before you my best thinking on the subject. But it is only mine. I need to hear yours. Speak to me, to anyone on the Official Board, to anyone on the Christian Education Committee, to anyone in the Sunday School. But be sure to let us know what is on your mind.
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
January 1994
Sunday School: How Important Is It?
Proverbs 1:7
Joshua 4:19-24
Deuteronomy 4:1
Exodus 4:10-12
Isaiah 28:10
I: — How important is our Sunday School? I know, it’s important that adult worship not be disrupted, and therefore younger people leave the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. But more profoundly, how important is the Sunday School itself? Surely one measure of how important it is is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.
One hot Sunday in July when I was 7 or 8 years old there were so few of us youngsters that in place of our age-divided classes there was an open session conducted by one teacher. The lesson was simply a protracted children’s story. It had to do with mailing a letter through Canada Post (at that time, Royal Mail). We were told that the moment we dropped a letter into a letter-box vast resources were mobilized. The simple act of sending the simplest communication activated unseen myriads in ever so many places. Why, things hummed at the local post office, at a regional postal station, even at the airport where an airplane would soon be speeding to Zambia or Zimbabwe, only then to render operative ever so much there! The simple act of communicating shifted so much in the world as to leave the world altered ever after. I was only 7 or 8, but I was old enough to remember the point which the teacher made from the story: every time we prayed we called on resources vaster than anything we could imagine. Not only did we call on them, they were rendered operative, mobilized, so as to leave the world forever different. As often as we pray our praying is honoured and its fruitfulness guaranteed. As often as I pray now I think of the story — and find myself encouraged to pray again.
Some time later, at another open session, a woman introduced us to the ‘tater family. The ‘tater family consisted of potatoes which had had faces carved in them and had been dressed up. There were several members of the ‘tater family: spectator, dictator, prestidigitator, plus so many others. Spectator said much, did nothing, offered useless advice, helped no one. Dictator, nasty, was everywhere disruptive and destructive. Prestidigitator was a trickster, a phoney, deceiving people day after day. It took 30 minutes for us to meet all of the members of the ‘tater family. The teacher has been dead for several years now, but I have never forgotten her or what she brought to us.
During the season of Lent, when I was 9 or 10, the teacher told us of Good Friday, told us about the cross and what it meant. After the class I stayed behind to tell her that I now understood the provision that Jesus had made for me in the atonement. As a 9 year old I certainly didn’t use the words “provision” and “atonement”; of course I used the vocabulary of a 9 year old. Nevertheless, that particular Sunday has been seared into my mind and stamped on my heart forever.
A few years later I was walking down a Toronto street with two fellows who weren’t in my Sunday School class inasmuch as they were older than I. (I was 12, they 14.) Still, we were friends, and soon we had the idea of a contest among ourselves as to who could think of the most repulsive thing. What was the most revolting thing imaginable? I did my best but I lost. When Gordon Rumford brought forth the fruit of his fertile imagination we all agreed that Gordon was the winner. (I won’t tell you what his ultra-revolting idea was, since I want you to hear the rest of the sermon.) Gordon Rumford is currently the preacher at Erindale Bible Chapel, just south of us at Dundas and Mississauga Road. We get together frequently at Pastry Villa for coffee. Recently he told me that as a 14 year old he ran with a rough, rough crowd, several members of which went to prison. Gordon was tempted to fall in with them too in their assorted escapades, but couldn’t quite let himself do it, for as often as he was about to he asked himself, “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd”? (my father, and Gordon’s Sunday School teacher). Gordon tells me that the fellows in the Sunday School class (not to be confused with the crowd he ran with) ridiculed my father behind his back, played the occasional practical joke on him, were regularly rude, smart-alecky, obstreperous. My father’s response, Gordon tells me he will always remember, was endless kindness and affection and patience. “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd?” Gordon tells me that my dad’s unwearying kindness and affection and patience stayed him when nothing else would have. (I have asked Gordon to write my long-widowed mother, and he has.)
II: — I am aware that many people are fearful of teaching Sunday School. We say we are not born-teachers. We say we don’t know enough; the children are too smart; our biblical and theological resources are too slender; we can’t make the lessons sufficiently interesting for the children, and therefore won’t have their attention. All of this is little compared to the natural curiosity of children. The natural curiosity of children is the entry-point, the beachhead, from which we can move ahead in exposing children to the riches of our faith. Put differently, the natural curiosity of children is their invitation to us, an invitation to impart information, to be sure, but more profoundly an invitation to include them with us in our ventures in life and faith. The question the child asks us is the occasion of our inviting the child into that venture under God which discipleship is.
Before the Blue Jays came to Toronto the city had a professional team in the topmost level of the minor leagues. In those days players were not introduced one-by-one through the public address system. Instead, when the clock struck game-time the dugout exploded as nine men ran onto the field at the same instant. It was a moment of magic for me. The magic, however, was complicated by one perplexity. As soon as the Toronto catcher ran behind the plate he dragged his cleated shoe through the lime which marked out the catcher’s box and scuffed it until he had obliterated it — when the groundskeeper had painstakingly limed the perimeter of the catcher’s box only minutes earlier. I asked why and my father told me why. If an opposing baserunner attempted to steal a base and the catcher had to rifle the ball to the proper base; and if at that moment the pitcher inadvertently threw the ball into the dirt, the catcher didn’t want it coming up with lime on it, for then his grip on the ball would slip and he would throw it wildly.
Because children are naturally curious they are always inviting us into their lives and inviting themselves into ours. As they invite themselves into our lives they invite themselves into our apprehension of truth and life and way. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of himself as way, truth and life — in this order. Our Hebrew foreparents scarcely undervalued schooling children in the truth, scarcely undervalued schooling them in truth for the sake of life. At the same time they knew that such schooling unfolds most naturally and penetrates most thoroughly as youngsters are exposed to that way which the parents themselves are walking. As children see the way their parents endeavour to walk the children will ask questions concerning the truth and come to know the life.
Joshua is the leader of the Israelites as they move toward the promised land. Their deliverance at the Red Sea and their crossing of the Jordan are behind them. Joshua has brought with him 12 stones from the Jordan riverbed. He has the people set up the stones in a pattern that will intrigue children. Then Joshua tells the adults, “When your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’, tell them! Tell them about slavery in Egypt and deliverance at the Red Sea! Tell them about their parents’ resolve to cross the Jordan and never go back! Tell them of your resolve always to be moving ahead to the promised land!”
In the same way it is assumed that the peculiarities of the Passover celebration will be the occasion of a child’s natural curiosity as the child asks, “Why is this night different from all others?” And then the parents will have an entry-point for telling their children of the mighty acts of God.
I was riding in a car when a boy spotted a bird in the sky and asked, out of the blue, “How high does an eagle fly?” In the same way when children see what we use in worship and do in church life they will ask, “Why do we worship on Sundays? Why is the cross everywhere we turn? Why is there a candle on the communion table? Why does the minister wear a gown? Why do we always read the bible in church? Why is money received at worship?” The questions arise as children see us older people in our venture on the Way. The children’s curiosity invites the children themselves onto the Way with us. As they move onto the Way with us our schooling them in the Truth of the Way unfolds naturally and penetrates profoundly. The result is Life at the hands of him who is himself Way and Truth and Life.
I mentioned a minute ago that adults are often reluctant to teach Sunday School because they fear they are going to be “stumped”; lacking vast erudition, they feel they can do little beyond retelling bible stories.
But this is the most important thing we can do! Northrop Frye, the peerless scholar of English literature in Canada, insists that children should be told and retold the stories until the stories have sunk into the child indelibly and have become the interpretive key which they must have to unlock the riches of English literature, replete as it is with biblical allusions.
English literature? In Sunday School we have to do with something far more important than English literature; we have to do with life under God, in the world, at a particular point in history, for the sake of a creation which God loves ceaselessly. Our children have to be equipped for this. The old, old stories must sink into the child indelibly so as to become the interpretive key for life. You see, the old, old stories are never merely old. Stories which have to do with the human condition are rendered forever new as they are used of God to illumine our situation before him and his people and his creation. It doesn’t matter if the child doesn’t understand the story thoroughly right now. Nobody, whether child or adult, even octogenarian, understands the story “thoroughly” in the sense of understanding it exhaustively, since the story is inexhaustible. What matters is that the story become permanently part of the child’s mind and heart, for then the story will forever yield riches as it is pondered years later in different life-settings and perplexities.
This past summer I re-read the old story of Lot’s wife. She and her husband and others were fleeing Sodom, now in flames, when she looked back, according to the ancient legend, and became a pillar of salt. I had heard the story a hundred times ever since I was 3 years old. At one point I was satisfied with the most arbitrary understanding of God’s judgement: she had been told not to look back, she looked back anyway defiantly, she became frozen salt right there. As I grew older and understood what Sodom was all about I thought she had been attracted pruriently by the luridness which Sodom represented. And then during the summer as I read the story again I saw that there is nothing in the text to suggest that she was attracted by the luridness of Sodom. I thought about the thrust of biblical narrative as whole, thought of the surge forward of it all, realized that the God of history is always directing us ahead. Ahead, forward, onwards! We look ahead to that city whose maker and builder is God; we look ahead to that kingdom which cannot be shaken; we look ahead to the visible manifestation of him whose triumph is known now by faith. Lot’s wife looked back inasmuch as what was behind her possessed greater significance for her than what was in front of her; and such a mindset is fatal! We don’t look back! Never look back!
In my older age I have been nurtured endlessly by stories on which I was raised: Abraham and Isaac, the deranged fellow who ran around in the Gadarene hills and whom our Lord restored to his right mind (even as the townspeople objected!), the woman who unselfconsciously poured out on the feet of Jesus everything she had and was, the dying criminal whose eleventh hour desperation wrung from him a one-sentence prayer of repentance which rendered him a citizen of the kingdom.
When we feel we can do little more than tell the stories we should understand that this is the most important thing any of us will ever do.
If we are still fearful of becoming Sunday School teachers we should remember that we are not the only teacher in the classroom. Not only are we not the only teacher, we are not even the primary teacher. According to the book of Deuteronomy God sends Moses to be the teacher of Israel. At the same time that Moses is to be the teacher of Israel (without peer to this day), God says to the people, “Give heed…[to what]…I teach you”. When Moses complains, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and of tongue”, God replies, “I will be with your mouth…”.
If we feel that the Sunday School enterprise appears to move ahead so very slowly, with little seeming to be taught and even less appearing to be learned, then the prophet Isaiah reassures us that the process is cumulative, and the accumulation is always underway even if we cannot measure it. Says Isaiah, “For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” It takes a long while to build up a coral reef in the ocean, but no one doubts the fact of coral reefs!
If we still feel under-equipped to teach Sunday School we must remember that everywhere in scripture the effectiveness of the teacher has much less to do with what the teacher knows than with who the teacher is. The apostle James makes this point most tellingly; so does Peter; so does Jude; so does Jesus himself. It is the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, not a postgraduate degree in theology. It is that respect and reverence for God and his living truth which the teacher quietly exudes, however little might be said; this is the beginning of wisdom for our children.
III: — I began the sermon with the question, “Does anything of lasting significance happen in Sunday School?”, and I said then that the answer is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.
A confirmation class is a Sunday School class for adolescents. In 1932 Dietrich Bonhoeffer conducted a confirmation class for youngsters from the slums of north Berlin. Bonhoeffer himself had been born to the aristocracy. His family was well-to-do, socially prominent, cultured. His father was professor of neurology at Berlin University and chief of the hospital’s department of neurology. Germany of 1932 was in dreadful economic condition. Inflation galloped at 1000% per day. The economic collapse was matched by near-social chaos. Bonhoeffer himself was brilliant, having completed his doctorate by age 21. Now he was with a class of rowdy boys who were poor, ill-educated, and whose future was materially bleak. The first day Bonhoeffer appeared on the scene and walked up several flights of stairs to the classroom the boys pelted him with balled-up paper as they threw it down the stairwell at him. Later in class one boy took out his lunch and began eating his sandwich. Bonhoeffer said nothing, merely looked at him until he put his lunch away. Gradually, however, the boys came to cherish their teacher. In his spare time Bonhoeffer taught them English; weekends he took them to a cottage in the Harz mountains. One boy fell ill and was told that his leg would have to be amputated. When the youngster was hospitalized Bonhoeffer travelled across Berlin by streetcar three times per week in order to be with the boy during the latter’s difficult days.
1932 was 60 years ago. I like to think that somewhere in Germany today there is a 75 year old man whose life was rendered forever different because of his Sunday School teacher. More likely there was a 25 year old serviceman who died in North Africa or the North Atlantic and who died in the holy comfort of a gospel pressed upon him by his Sunday School teacher.
The boys in Bonhoeffer’s class were poorly educated and expressed themselves haltingly. The story I have just told you comes to us from one of the boys in the class, Richard Rother, who has written himself, “The gratitude I feel for having had such a [teacher] in our confirmation class makes me write down these recollections”.
Is it really important — Sunday School, that is? How important was it for Richard Rother?
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
1993 September 12
In Honour Of Our Sunday School Teachers
1 John 1:6-13
Romans 8:14-16
I: — I remember so very many of them, the Sunday School teachers who are memorable just because they were of unspeakable help to me during my most formative years.
June Hocking was my teacher when I was 8 years old. As we approached Good Friday and Easter she explained to us 8-year olds what the cross was about. She told us it was God’s provision for us needy, needy people who were so very needy on account of our deep-dyed depravity and God’s just judgement. (Of course she didn’t use big words like “provision” and “depravity”; she knew the vocabulary of 8-year olds; because I don’t, I shall have to tell the story in my own words.) Then she asked those who grasped this, anything of this, to stand up if they wanted to own it for themselves. I stood up. She asked me specifically if I understood what any of this meant. I convinced her I did. Again in words suitable for little people she told me that my public declaration on that day was ratified in heaven eternally.
Soon afterward my family moved to another congregation. Now Catherine Heasman was my teacher. She was quiet, gentle, understanding. She knew I felt strange in my new church-home. She went out of her way, in her sensitivity, to defuse my apprehension.
When I was 10 or 11 my teacher was Dorothy Greenshields, an unmarried woman about 50 years old. One Sunday I became embroiled in a vehement argument with a classmate as to the correct spelling of an obscene word. Can you imagine it? Your beloved pastor arguing heatedly over the spelling of an obscenity! Miss Greenshields let the argument rage for a while, then told us we should talk about something else.
By the time I was 12 Gordon Fairbank was my teacher. Gordon was a graduate of the University of Toronto in Greek and Roman history. Gordon spent much of class time telling us that Greek and Roman history was the finest university program anyone could pursue. The weekly lesson always had much to do with the Roman background to the gospel-stories, and it was in Gordon’s class that I learned the word “Mesopotamia”, together with many other unusual words. One Sunday Gordon had to be in New Orleans (he worked for a travel agency) and so he sent along his fiancee, Jean, in his place. I thought she was the prettiest woman I had ever seen.
Grace Eby was another teacher: middleaged, reserved, anything but outgoing or hail-fellow-well-met. While she was much older than I, and often appeared to a live in a world that seemed older still, there was something about her that hooked my heart — for when I was 14 I discussed with her my new-born call to the ministry. Earnestly, haltingly, fearfully I discussed my unsuppressible vocation with her, and discussed it with her when I didn’t say anything to my parents. (In fact I was 22 years old before I breathed a word of it to anyone else.)
My last Sunday School teacher was Carlton Carter. He was a superintendent with the Scarborough Board of Education. He taught a class of 15-year olds. Every Sunday he brought so many books and reference materials to class you’d have thought he was doing Ph.D research.
II: — What was the point of all that my Sunday School teachers did on my behalf? What was the point of the diligence and faithfulness and affection that they exemplified? What is the point of Sunday School teaching now?
The point of it all was highlighted for me through a recent newspaper article. The article accompanied a photograph of Mafia gangsters in Hamilton carrying the casket of one of their fellow-thugs out of a church. Mr. Dominic Musitano had died. “Tears flow at funeral of mobster”, the headline read. Dominic Musitano had engineered the beating and killing of many people in the course of his underworld career (fellow-gangsters, I assume, who had been less than cooperative). He had the conscience of a cobra. At his funeral the clergyman said, “As a young child Dominic Musitano was brought to this church for baptism with holy water. It was then that he became an adopted son of God.”
No! He didn’t become an adopted child of God because he was baptized with holy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been baptized with unholy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference of he hadn’t been baptized at all. According to scripture we become adopted sons and daughters of God through faith; only faith, always and everywhere faith. John writes in the fourth gospel, “To all who received him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” To all who received him, who believed in his name (nature, presence, effectiveness).
Paul says more about adoption than any other New Testament writer. The apostle insists that while Jesus Christ is Son of God (uniquely) by nature, you and I become children of God by adoption into God’s family through faith. The point of Sunday School is the quickening of faith in youngsters. The point of Sunday School is the fostering of that faith by which they will come to first-hand experience of what Paul speaks of when he writes to the believers in Rome, “You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery that plunges you back into fear; you have received the spirit of sonship, of adoption. When we cry, `Abba! Father!’, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
We sometimes hear it said that faith is caught, not taught. It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught. The gospel has a precise content; youngsters must become acquainted with it. The gospel is truth; youngsters must learn to distinguish it from error, falsehood and illusion. The gospel is inseparable from him whose gospel it is; youngsters must grasp, therefore, how truths are related to Truth (i.e., how correct articulation of the gospel is related to the reality of living person, Jesus Christ.) “Faith is caught, not taught”? It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught!
At the same time, something also has to be caught. If Sunday School concerns only what is taught, never what is caught, then Sunday School is simply an exercise in shuffling one’s mental furniture. To say that something has to be caught is to say that youngsters have to be infected. And the teacher, from a human standpoint, is the “infecter”.
Jesus speaks at length with a Samaritan woman, speaks with her alone. The woman in turn goes back to her village and tells the villagers all that Jesus Christ has come to be and to mean to her. A short while later several of the villagers come to faith in the master on the strength of the woman’s testimony. Then as faith grows in them and with it the assurance of faith, they tell her, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this indeed the Saviour of the world.”
What’s the point of Sunday School? — the fostering of faith, such faith as will find the youngster-turned-adult saying, “It is no longer because of your words, Sunday School teacher, that we believe; we now know, for ourselves, him whom we have trusted.”
III: — Yet more than faith is needed, and therefore more than faith is the purpose of Christian Education. A Christian mind is needed too. A Christian mind can’t be acquired overnight. It takes years to develop spiritual antennae that can discern critically what is going on in the world and whether the Christian should support or oppose, welcome or denounce, wait for further light or warn others loudly. It takes years to develop that critical sophistication without which victimization is inevitable.
During the daily update on the Bernardo trial this summer a newspaper columnist, commenting on the sexual adventures of Mr. Bernardo, poured scorn on a lawyer connected with the prosecution. The columnist spoke of this lawyer as slightly older than middleaged, gray-haired, someone who had no doubt married only once and who had had, no doubt, one sex-partner only. What would such a man understand of Mr. Bernardo and his proclivities? So that’s it! Someone who has been married only once and has had only one sex-partner (spouse) is a 14-carat “nerd”? There are several issues here that have to be assessed on the basis of a Christian understanding.
Daniel Johnson, the Quebec politician, was annoyed (again, during the summer) at the outrageous and fatuous pronouncements of Jacques Parizeau, premier of Quebec. “Who does Parizeau think he is?”, said Johnson, “an archbishop or something?” Are church leaders inherently outrageous and fatuous? Church leadership is to be patterned after the leadership/servanthood of Jesus Christ himself. He gives himself up to death even for those whose hearts are ice-cold and treacherous towards him. It takes diligence and patience to acquire a mind that thinks in Christian categories.
When our daughter Catherine returned from Hong Kong during July she told us she had had a terrific argument with her Chinese boyfriend. The argument concerned China’s practice of packaging human fetuses (10 to a package) and selling them for food. The Chinese people add ginger to the fetuses, mix them with pork, and eat them. Catherine’s boyfriend defended the practice, explaining that in a nation of 1.2 billion people anything that can be eaten must be eaten — or else people aren’t going to eat. The Chinese, he insisted, don’t have the luxury of fastidiousness.
Catherine told us she replied to her boyfriend, “The line has to be drawn somewhere, and your people don’t know where to draw it.” (I was surprised at Catherine’s vehemence, since I didn’t think she was particularly eager to draw lines.)
Once again there are several issues here: abortion, cannibalism, and the matter of what (who) is going to be eaten next. Will a corpse be eaten next, provided it didn’t die from disease but was rather a traffic accident victim?
The story Catherine related to us had already been sent to North America by means of UPI, the international wire service that sends news items around the world. Not one North American newspaper picked up the story from the UPI wire; not one! A Christian Publication, First Things, did pick it up and print it. And therefore I was able to read more about this abhorrent development. Dr. Qin, a physician in Shenzhen, said she herself had eaten 100 fetuses in the last six months. Said Dr. Qin, “We don’t carry out abortions just to eat fetuses, [but they would be] wasted if not eaten.”
Not one North American newspaper wrote up the story handed to it by the UPI wire service. At both the Ottawa Summer School of Theology and McMaster University Divinity College I have lectured students — and illustrated my lectures profusely — that the manner in which the media handle news has more than a taint of propaganda. In both institutions students have looked upon me as an extremist. Discernment is needed if we are going to identify the distortions and assess the nature of the distortions that the media foist on us every day.
If the purpose of Sunday School is to foster faith, it must be understood that the faith so fostered includes the foundations of that Christian mind which adults must acquire.
IV: — Tell me: do you think I am possessed of faith in Jesus Christ? However slight or weak or sin-riddled my faith might be, do you think it is nonetheless genuine? And the faith that possesses me: has it issued in a Christian understanding beyond the kindergarten level? If so, then my Sunday School teachers are to be honoured and thanked.
Where are my teachers now?
Misses Dorothy Greenshields and Grace Eby are enjoying that reward which Jesus has promised to faithful servants.
June Hocking is the assistant minister at Knox United Church, Calgary. I didn’t know she was there until I spoke at Knox Church one weekend last October. During the question and answer period after my first address she stood up and asked, “Do you know who it is?” Did she think I was ever going to forget the person who first acquainted me with what St.Paul calls “the word of the cross”?
Catherine Heasman is the secretary in the chaplain’s office at Scarborough Grace Hospital. As often as I have reason to phone the chaplain’s office there I speak with her and thank her again.
Carlton Carter has long since retired from the Scarborough Board of Education. With his remarkable administrative abilities he has volunteered himself to his congregation as unsalaried church-administrator. It’s important that I tell him what he meant to me when I was 14. His three adult offspring worship nowhere themselves and make no profession of faith whatsoever. I have heard him ask, “Where did I fail?” He needs to hear from me that he hasn’t failed.
This leaves Gordon and Jean Fairbank. My little book, Making Sense of Christian Faith, is dedicated to them. The inscription reads, “To Jean and Gordon Fairbank, because they were there.” When I was 19 several developments precipitated me into a dark valley that was near-hideous and that lasted longer than I ever thought it would. Jean and Gordon kept me going, one fumbling foot in front of the other, until I emerged on the other side. They stood with me at the edge of the abyss, and what I owe them I shall never repay.
Still, I do what I can. Two or three years ago Jean was waiting alone, at night, for a train in the Rosedale subway station, when she was “swarmed” and assaulted by a band of hooligans. She was badly “unhinged” by the incident. I visited her several times afterwards, lending her whatever comfort I could. Last April her husband asked me if I would serve on the board of trustees of an institution related to the University of Manitoba. I said “yes”. (Don’t worry, it involves only one, two-day trip to Winnipeg each year.) Of course I agreed to help Gordon. Street-wise people are fond of saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
When I am on my deathbed and there is little breath in me, I shall nonetheless summon what little breath I have and pronounce “Blessed!” those men and women who were my Sunday School teachers and without whom I should today be who knows where, and be who knows what.
Victor A. Shepherd
September 1995
What Do I Want For Our Children?
Sunday School Teachers’ Dedication, 1996
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Romans 5:1-5
I have never looked upon the Sunday School as babysitting. I have never regarded Sunday School as a means of keeping adult worship free from distracting sights and sounds. On the contrary I know that Jesus Christ can surge over and forge himself within the youngest hearts and minds. For this reason I pray for our Sunday School teachers every day. After all, what can be more important than having a youngster awakened to God by God himself as the boy Samuel was three millennia ago? (I Samuel 3:1-10) I long to see our Sunday School children “arrive at real maturity — that measure of development which is meant by`the fullness of Christ’.” (Eph. 4:13 JBP) One aspect of such “real maturity” is to know the love of God. I want our children to have first-hand acquaintance with the God whose nature is love. (I John 4:8) I want our children to find themselves startled and awed and overwhelmed at the love God has for them, for others, for the entire world. I want them to come to know, together with the maturest saint, that the tidal waves of love that wash over them repeatedly are but a ripple in the seas of love that will remain inexhaustible eternally. Through our Sunday School I want our children to know — and keep on knowing — the love for them that streams from the heart of him whose love is undiminishing and undeflectible.
I: — First of all I want our children to know that God so loved the world; so loved the world that he gave himself for it in his Son; gave himself without hesitation, without calculation, without qualification — just gave himself — gave himself up, for us all. (John 3:16)
To know that God loves the world is to know that God loves those who don’t love him; don’t love him at all; hate him, in fact. Everywhere in the writings of the apostle John “the world” consists of the sum total of men and women who are hostile to God; and not merely hostile to God individually, but united in a semi-conscious conspiracy to resist him and mock him and repel him. And this is what God loves with unrelenting constancy and consistency. In other words, God loves to death what you and I would long since have given up loving out of frustration and anger, given up loving for reasons that make perfect sense.
The history of humankind is the history of our repudiating that which is our sole good: God. The history of humankind is the history of our preferring our fatal sickness of selfism to him and his healing love for us. Adam and Eve — whose names mean “humankind” and “mother of the living” (respectively) are awash in blessing upon blessing; unalloyed blessing, unconditional blessing, with nothing to mar their blessedness or even put it at risk. What do they do? (What do we all do?) They cast aspersion on the goodness of God and endeavour to prove themselves God’s equal. Yet despite this outrageous effrontery God refuses to quit on humankind, so incomprehensible is his love.
Noah, together with his family, is delivered from the flood, in the old, old story, in order that God might begin anew the fulfilment of his heart’s desire: a holy people who are the faithful covenant- partners of the holy God. And what does Noah do upon his deliverance at the hand of God’s measureless mercy? He gets drunk! The irreverence, the ingratitude, the culpable stupidity of his response is mind-boggling.
Undiscouraged in his quest of a holy people for himself, God liberates his people from degrading slavery, brings them through the Red Sea, and acquaints them with his will (their blessing!) at Sinai. Or at least he tries to acquaint them with his will, tries to press his blessing upon them. But they will have none of it, preferring to caper around a hunk of metal oblivious to their self-induced spiritual infantilism.
The prophet Hosea swears he hears God say of these people of perverse heart, “Lo-ammi, lo-ruchamah!”: “Not my people, not pitied.” Then Hosea knows he has heard God say in even clearer, louder voice, “Ruchamah, ammi!”: “Pitied — loved — and therefore my people still.”
I trust no one here this morning misunderstands the unrelenting intransigence of the human heart, its wilful blindness and deafness, its irrational folly. Remember, when the apostle John speaks of “the world” he means the sum total of unbelieving men and women hardened in their defiance of God and their disobedience to his will for them and their disdain for his gospel. So unimaginably senseless is the depraved heart of humankind that it will even despise the gospel, its one and only cure!
In our age of ascendant secularism we nod knowingly and say that secularized people are indifferent to the gospel. They are indifferent, to be sure, but such indifference is never mere indifference. In the face of a love that pleads and entreats, such indifference is nothing less than defiance. We must never agree with those who cavalierly suggest that secularized people are ignorant of the truth and righteousness of God. They are ignorant, to be sure, but such ignorance is never mere ignorance. Their ignorance of the truth arises from a suppression of the truth; their ignorance of God’s righteousness arises from a repudiation of righteousness. Truth is suppressed until it can no longer be discerned; righteousness is repudiated until it can no longer be recognized. Indifference to and ignorance of a gospel that is wrung out of the Father’s heart and displayed in the Son’s anguish; this is not mere indifference and ignorance. This is nothing less than contempt.
And in the face of it all God stands loving. Nothing can get him to stop. His love cascades ceaselessly; his love also infiltrates undetectably. Both are needed — both the torrent and the infiltration — if the calcified human heart is to be softened and wooed and won. Hearts are softened and wooed and won. The most stunning miracle of all is that people do come to faith and obedience and love of him.
The most stunning miracle that a child in our Sunday School will ever witness is the miracle of her own coming to faith; the most astounding development to amaze any of us, young or old, is the beginning of one’s own heart to beat in time with the heart of God. Nothing less than the love of God — both its “Niagaroid” torrent and its undetectable infiltration — is needed to remove us from the category of “the world”. It is as God loves “the world” that we are released from “the world” as we are made children of God by faith.
I want our Sunday School children to know that love of God which brings them and others to faith.
II: — Even as God’s love for us does this it continues to do something more: it continues to pulsate within us, with the result that we are little by little transformed in the midst of life’s unavoidable pain. Paul begins his first paragraph in Romans 5 (Rom.5:1-5) with the ringing reminder that we are justified by faith; that is, we are set right with God by clinging to the crucified one. Paul ends the paragraph by affirming emphatically that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit; has been poured into us and now fills us up. What happens in the middle of the paragraph between the ringing reminder and the emphatic affirmation? Suffering; suffering is what happens in between.
Because of our righted relationship with God, because God’s love fills us to the brim, our sufferings are never bare sufferings. Our sufferings, undeniably difficult, don’t render us desolate. Our sufferings are now the occasion of our endurance, and endurance of character, and character of hope (hope being our confidence that it all ends in our being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory).
When Paul speaks of endurance he doesn’t mean that we hang on grimly by the skin of our teeth. “Endurance” is a military term borrowed from the Roman army. Soldiers exemplified endurance when (i) they remained steadfast, (ii) they remained steadfast just because their commanding officer had acquainted them with the purpose of the battle and its unavoidable suffering. The soldier could remain steadfast — could endure — just because he knew how crucial the struggle was.
When God’s love floods the heart of those who have been set right with God through faith, suffering produces endurance; i.e., suffering produces steadfastness in those who know why it is necessary to keep up the struggle. Such endurance produces character, maintains the apostle. The Greek word Paul uses for “character” is DOKIME; literally it means refinement. He has in mind the kind of refining that a smelter does. A smelter subjects metallic ore to intense heat and pressure. In this process of intense heat and pressure base elements, worthless elements, are purged away; what’s left is a precious metal that is both valuable and attractive. Refining is a proving process that results in what is proved being approved. We who are set right with God through faith and flooded now with God’s love; we know the ultimate outcome of our suffering, endurance and refining; the ultimate outcome is “hope” — being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory.
Before I leave this point I want to make sure we understand something crucial. When Paul speaks of God’s love flooding us he is speaking of experience: immediate, visceral, palpable experience. He is not speaking of an idea, the idea of God’s love. We always tend to reduce concrete spiritual realities to mere ideas: we unconsciously reduce God’s love to the idea of God’s love. Odd, isn’t it, but we never do this with our suffering; we never reduce pain to the idea of pain. We can’t reduce pain to the idea of pain just because our pain is too real! After all, what is more immediate, less deniable, than pain? Paul’s point is this: in Christians what is more immediate, less deniable, than God’s love? God’s love flooding us is as immediate, visceral, palpable as our pain is piercing us. As God’s love surges over our pain, suffering yields endurance, endurance character, and character the confidence that one day it will all be taken up in the splendour of God’s glory.
I want our Sunday School children to know this when they are 30 years old or 45 or 60 years old.
III: — Lastly, Paul prays that the hearts of the Christians in Thessalonica will be directed into God’s love (2 Thess. 3:5 NIV); farther into God’s love, deeper into God’s love. Is this possible? Are we not at this moment either “in” God’s love or not “in” his love? To be sure, either the love of God is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold, says the apostle John, or else “the world” is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold. Of course! Either we are united to Christ or we are not; either we are “in the right” with God through faith in his Son or we are “in the wrong”. Nevertheless, even as believers are “in” the love of God, we can always move farther into God’s love, go deeper into it. We can, we should, and Paul prays that we shall.
In 1964 I came to know that Maureen loved me. She loved me then. She loves me now. To say that she loved me in 1964 and loves me in 1996 is not to say that nothing has happened in 32 years. Each year has found me moving deeper — and deeper still — into her love. Just when I think she loves me so much she couldn’t love me more, I discover that there are reservoirs of love in her that I never guessed and before which I can only marvel — and love her yet more myself.
Several months ago I did something that did not cover me in glory. In fact I was ashamed. It haunted me. I said nothing. Maureen knew something was wrong but didn’t guess what. Finally I told her. Now I know Maureen well. (Remember, we have loved each other since 1964.) Because I know her well, and because of my shameful misadventure, I expected her to react in any combination of the following: she would be hurt, she would be angry, she would think ill of me. Contrary to everything I expected from the woman I already knew so well she said only, “It took a lot of courage for you to tell me what you have.” It was obvious to me that as well as I knew her, knew her love for me, I didn’t know her and her love as thoroughly as I thought I did. More to the point, as deeply as I had lived in her love for years, that moment found me moving into her love yet again, deeper into a love that was plainly greater than anything I had known to date.
So it is with our life in God. As much of his love as we have known to date; as deeply in his love as we are at this moment, it is still the apostle’s prayer that our hearts be directed into, farther into, God’s love for us. So vast is God’s love for us that we can only plunge deeper into it, and deeper still, until we are astounded at it, then lost in it, thence to find ourselves, with Charles Wesley, “lost in wonder, love and praise.”
I don’t expect our Sunday School children to grasp now all that I have said in this sermon. I merely want the door to be opened for them, the seeds to be sown, the truth declared, the child’s first steps encouraged. Then when they are older and they are acquainted with the intransigence of “the world” plus the anguish of their own suffering and above all the fathomless depths of God; when they are older they will newly apprehend every day the love wherewith God loves them, loves an unbelieving world, and loves his own people yet deeper — always deeper — into himself.
Victor A. Shepherd
September 1996
It’s The Jordan That Matters
2 Kings 5:1-18;
Luke 3:3-18
I: — “Everyone should get done”, said the anxious mother to me. She meant, of course, that everyone should be baptized. Should everyone? And if perchance everyone should, why? Under what circumstances? To what end? The person whom we should consult concerning these questions is the man who had most to say about baptism, John the Dipper. “John” was his name, Yochan, “gift of God”. BAPTIZEIN was the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk, as in “dip your paintbrush” or “dunk your doughnut.” “The baptizer, the dipper, the dunker” was the term hung on him by those who thought that John was the most ridiculous spectacle they had ever seen. Dressed in animal skins like Tarzan, living in the waterless wilderness where he hadn’t sat in a bathtub in years, possessed of a voice that ruptured eardrums, unmindful of the bee-stings acquired through gathering wild honey, John looked like a nature-boy who could have been locked up. He thundered that people needed to get right with God. A sign (but only a sign), a declaration, of their getting right with God was their plunge into the river Jordan. It was a public acknowledgement that the truth of the living God had pierced them to the heart and they wanted to drown their corrupt nature and henceforth live under God’s royal rule.
When the people did respond John didn’t smile with relief and say, “That’s more like it, that’s what I like to see.” Instead John looked at the hordes who were tripping over each other in their haste to get to the Jordan and raged, “Look at the snakes coming out! You can always tell when the underbrush catches fire; the snakes slither out in self-preservation! You people aren’t serious about God and his kingdom and his truth and his service; you don’t want to abandon yourself to him; you merely want fire insurance for the life-to-come: snakes bent on self-preservation!”
None the less, along with the superficial multitudes who weren’t sincere there were also those who were in earnest. John’s message had seared them: they did long for God and his kingdom, his truth and his service. They knew that John was preparing men and women for radical, rigorous discipleship. They knew that just around the corner was Jesus, John’s cousin, and Jesus would draw into his company the disciples whom John had prepared.
We shouldn’t belittle John’s work. The Jordan represented something serious. To be baptized in the Jordan meant that John’s convictions were your convictions. You were stating publicly that you and John were of one mind about the kingdom of God and the urgency of entering it and serving it.
What were John’s convictions? (i) His first conviction: false securities are useless. When John preached many people scoffed. They took refuge in their parentage or their piety or their privilege.
First, their parentage: “We don’t need to repent. We have Abraham as our father”, they threw back in John’s face. “Why talk about Abraham’s blood-line?”, John replied, “What alone counts is Abraham’s faith.” Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was a missionary in China? So what! It won’t do anything for me and I shouldn’t put any stock in it.
Next they tried to hide behind their piety: “We are extra-careful about religious observances”. (This is piety talking.) But what is the virtue in outward conformity to a pious code if inwardly there is lacking that whole-souled, single-minded self-abandonment to the living God?
Lastly they sought refuge in privilege (parentage, piety and privilege): “We belong to Israel. We don’t belong to the pagan nations who wouldn’t know God from a gopher. We belong to a religious tradition over a thousand years old. And not only is our tradition old, it embodies the truth of God”. “Substituting a tradition for intimate acquaintance with God himself”, countered John, “is like reading a handbook on lovemaking and assuming you are therefore married.”
The false securities of parentage, piety and privilege are useless. We must own for ourselves the forgiveness that God has fashioned for us, or remain unpardoned. We must exercise the faith that God has given us and by which we are bound to him, or remain forever estranged from him. Moment by moment we must resolve to obey the One who insists that obedience is freedom, or else languish in bondage to our sin. John’s first conviction: false securities are useless.
(ii) John’s second conviction: the sincerity of our profession is indicated by the consistency of our discipleship. When tax-collectors told John that they wanted to be immersed in the Jordan as a public sign of their seriousness John said, “If you are as serious as you say you are then you will stop cheating the people from whom you are collecting taxes.” When soldiers asked for baptism — “If you really mean it then you will stop molesting civilians and stop extorting protection money from them”. When the multitudes streamed to the Jordan John explained, “Before you get wet you must understand that to take the plunge is to pledge yourself and everything you own to needy people.”
Then, only then, John welcomed all who responded to his preaching and baptized them, exuberantly, in the Jordan.
II: — Yet there is more to the Jordan. Jesus was baptized there too. Unlike the people who responded to John, however, Jesus wasn’t publicly declaring a change in life-style. He had no need to change anything. When Jesus stood in the Jordan he was endorsing everything that cousin John was about; but he was also doing more. He was inaugurating his own ministry. Thereafter all whom Christ called into his company and were baptized as he had been were owning their ministry. In other words, for Jesus and his followers too, baptism is ordination to ministry.
To be sure different Christians have different ministries. Your ministry and mine differ in several respects. Yet underlying the many differences there forever remains a commonality that we must own together. The commonality arises, of course, in that the ministry of every Christian is generated from the ministry of Jesus Christ. He is the “great high priest”, in the words of the book of Hebrews. You and I in turn are that “royal priesthood” of which Peter speaks. His ministry is intercession in behalf of a tormented world. In Israel the ministry of the priest is intercession. Since we are a royal priesthood generated by the great high priest himself, our ministry too can only be a ministry of intercession in behalf of a tormented world.
One Monday not so long ago the telephone rang once more. The caller was a minister-friend. His wife was having an affair with a colleague at work. As you’d expect, the more intense the affair became, the more icily she treated her husband and the more distant from him she rendered herself. When my minister-friend phoned he had just returned from tests at Princess Margaret Hospital. He had been treated for cancer some time ago, had undergone surgery, and then appeared to be “out of the woods.” The day he phoned me was the day that the most recent tests indicated there was a new growth on another organ. Naturally he concluded it was malignant. He stumbled home from the hospital and told his wife. She stared at him with unblinking iciness, said nothing, and walked away. I can’t imagine a silence any more cruel, just as I can’t imagine isolation more isolated.
The intercession of Jesus Christ is a major motif in the New Testament. The apostles know that our Lord has fused himself to all humankind in solidarity with us. One with us all, he lifts up before his Father every last sinning, suffering human being. The ministry of the Christian is intercession too. Which is to say, our ministry consists of fusing ourselves to those whose lives intersect ours, in order that they might know their sin can’t deprive them of our compassion, know they are never alone, know their pain isn’t unnoticed, know themselves cherished.
No sooner was I finished with my long telephone call when the phone rang again. This time it was a paranoid fellow, one of the many deranged who look to me and of whom I am fond. This fellow suffers terribly. After all, it’s dreadful to live in constant fear of assassination. In the course of our chit-chat he told me he had to get up to the toilet several times during the night. Now since he is a middle-aged male you don’t have to be a medical genius to know what his problem is. I told him I would make sure a urologist saw him. “Urologist!”, he raved at me, “What good’s a urologist when someone is poisoning my orange juice?”
This past July Maureen and I visited our friend Louise in Montreal. She is schizophrenic. She isn’t deranged like the fellow whose orange juice is forever being poisoned; she’s closer to normal mental functioning than that. Still, she’s ill, and she suffers. One fine summer day two months ago she piloted us to the eastern townships, 90 minutes’ drive from Montreal, to Lake Memphramagog. (I was delighted to visit the lake for many reasons, two of which were the beautiful scenery and the fact I’d read so often about the lake in the writing of Mordecai Richler.) Louise has been a dear friend for 17 years, ever since we met in 1982 in La Pocatiere.
To be sure, it’s often inconvenient and often wearing to keep company with mentally ill people. At the same time, it’s often instructive. Ill people tend to lack the social niceties, the insincerity that passes for diplomacy. They don’t have the social duplicity that sane people can no longer recognize as duplicity. They’ve forgotten the social conventions that keep you and me (I’m assuming now that you and I are sane) insisting publicly that the emperor is magnificently attired when everyone knows he has no clothes and only very young children and very ill adults blurt out the truth, and blurt out the truth just because they lack the social skill of how to be false. In this regard we must always remember G.K. Chesterton. Mentally ill people, said Chesterton, haven’t lost their reason; they’ve lost everything except their reason.
Then what does intercession mean for all such? That we pray for them? Of course we shall. Praying for them is also the easiest — and the cheapest — expression of intercession. Then what other expression does our intercession for them take? What do we do for people who can’t defend themselves? What do we do for people who suffer extraordinarily? If you can’t imagine what “intercession” might entail, think of “intervention.”
Baptism in the Jordan is a public declaration that we have been called into the service of our Lord whose intercession in behalf of all sufferers is relentless.
III: — Yet the Jordan means even more. It means not only that we are going to minister, but also that we shall allow ourselves to be ministered unto; and allow ourselves to be ministered unto even if this entails our being humbled — or perhaps humiliated. The Jordan is the river into which Naaman must plunge himself if he’s to be healed. Naaman is the five-star general of the Syrian army that has overrun Israel. He’s also afflicted with leprosy, and he finds his affliction humiliating. An Israelite girl, a prisoner of war, is his wife’s attendant. The Israelite girl tells Mrs. Naaman that Elisha, the Israelite prophet, can cure her husband. Naaman is humiliated again. He, the commander-in-chief of a victorious army, has to appear cap-in-hand and submit himself to a fellow from the conquered people? But leprosy is no trifling matter; Naaman swallows his pride and appears before Elisha. Soon he’s not merely humiliated, he’s disgusted: Elisha has told him that he must bathe seven times in the Jordan. The Jordan then was as filthy as Toronto’s Don river is today. Seven times in that fetid pollution? Surely seven times into the Jordan would leave a man with afflictions worse than leprosy! Vehemently Naaman objects, “Why can’t I bathe in the clear, clean waters of my native Damascus? Why can’t Elisha simply call on the name of his God and wave his hand?” But Elisha is adamant: “Seven times into the Jordan, General Naaman, or leprosy for life.” Naaman added it all up. If it had to be the Jordan, then the Jordan it would be.
My first summer placement as a student minister was a frontier town in northern British Columbia that had recently been inundated with construction workers. On my last Sunday in town before returning to Toronto for seminary I preached on faith. I thought it was a good sermon. After the service a man who had attended worship throughout the summer approached me. He was an alcoholic who had been contentedly sober for several years. He looked me in the eye with a look that was all-searching and all-knowing and said quietly, “Victor, faith is serenity.” From his look I knew that he thought he had detected non-serenity in me. He thought I was prone to agitation, prone to vehemence, prone to flare-ups, prone to roller-coaster mood-alterations, prone to knotting my shirt on short notice! I looked him back, trying to say through my look, “Mister, you’ve got me wrong.” It didn’t work. He smiled again and said, “Victor, faith is serenity.” And then I bristled. After all, I was a theology student and I had forgotten more doctrine than he would ever know; and besides, by vocation I was his spiritual superior, wasn’t I? What’s more, he was so weak (“weak” is how I thought of it in those days, to my shame) that he’d never be able to take a drink again without going haywire. And he was correcting me? And then I recalled the word of Elisha: “Either the Jordan, or your affliction for life.”
It has happened to me a dozen times since then, and will continue to happen, since I am not yet fully healed.
I want to come back to the question I left with you at the beginning of the sermon. Should everyone be “done”? Should everyone be baptized? Anyone be baptized if the water in which we are baptized is the Jordan. For the Jordan means
(i) we are abandoning ourselves to a discipleship so far-reaching as to be unmistakable and undeniable,
(ii) we are accepting ordination to a ministry of intercession in behalf of suffering people,
(iii) we are submitting to a correction and a restoration that entails humility, even humiliation, but without which we shall never be healed of our affliction.
Parents have brought their children for baptism today. This means the parents are promising to do everything they can to have their children one day own “the Jordan” for themselves.
You and I are witnesses to all of this; but not witnesses only. Even less are we idle bystanders. You and I are those who were baptized ourselves, whether as infants, adolescents or mature adults. Then the question we must ask ourselves is this: the water in which we were baptized, was it the Jordan? After all, it’s the Jordan, and only the Jordan, that matters.
Victor Shepherd
September 1999