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Psalm 23

Psalm 23                    1st Peter 5:1-7                               Rev. 7:17                    John 10:1-18

I grew up in innermost inner-city Toronto.  And I grew up without a car. The result was that I walked everywhere or rode the streetcar (there was no subway back then). I’m at home in big cities. I’m not at home in the country, in rural areas. My grandchildren comment that I’m a deep-down sixer, not a fiver.

   Do you know the difference between a sixer and a fiver? A sixer is someone whose phone number has a 416-area code; a fiver is someone with a 905-area code. Fivers like to live in the suburbs or small towns or villages or the countryside. Because I’m a sixer I am exhilarated when I have asphalt under my feet and polluted air in my lungs.

   Then I turn to Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’  Do you know when I first saw a shepherd? I was born in 1944, and in 2011 (at age 67) I went to Israel. My tour group was bussing from Jerusalem to Jericho when we came upon a flock of sheep with a Bedouin shepherd. To be sure, I had seen sheep before, on farms in Canada.  But a shepherd? Never. Among their other tasks, shepherds protect sheep.  Sheep in Canada, however, are protected by electrified fences. In Canada a  predator isn’t driven off by a shepherd; the predator gets a shock it won’t forget.

   Despite my being a sixer, however; despite everything about me that is more citified than countryfied, Psalm 23, ‘The Shepherd Psalm,’ speaks profoundly to me. As often as I immerse myself in it I am instructed, moved, and taken deeper into the life and care and keeping of him who is the Good Shepherd, Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Today we are together going to probe Psalm 23. The sermon will be somewhat different from the customary three- or four-point sermons we hear on Sunday; the sermon today will take the form of a continuous exploration and application of the psalm, verse by verse.

Verse 1    ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ THE LORD—YAHWEH in Hebrew, is God’s proper name. A proper name specifies uniqueness. I am not humankind-in-general, nor maleness-in-general. I am Victor. uniquely me. I am irreplaceable; I am unsubstitutable. As much can be said for any one of you. A proper name always points to someone who is unique.

   Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, is not an instance of divinity, other instances of divinity being Allah or Gitchi-Manitou or Zeus or Thor or even the North American Way of Life. Yahweh, who alone delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt and alone pledged himself to Israel at Sinai and pleaded with the people to pledge themselves to him; this Lord is unique, incomparable, unsubtstitutable.

  And he (not it) is our shepherd. What if God weren’t a shepherd? A shepherd cares. What if God didn’t care? At best he would be indifferent; at worst, he would be tyrannical, even a tormentor. But God is neither indifferent nor tyrannical nor tormentor. The shepherd cares.

   To be sure, the bible speaks everywhere of God as king. This king, however, is king and shepherd at once, king and shepherd at all times. To say God is king is to say he rules effectively. His rule isn’t merely symbolic. (King Charles III is only a symbol, a figurehead, who has no political power. All power, all effectiveness, is vested in the British parliament.) To say that the Lord is king, on the other hand, is to say God isn’t a figurehead; he’s a genuine ruler. And to say that this king is also shepherd is to say that the one who rules the cosmos he has made; this one cares for everything and everyone he has made. This king cares so much for us that he will suffer to save us, and suffer for our sakes until his suffering entails nothing less than the sacrifice of himself.

   If the Lord weren’t also shepherd he would be a royal ruler who could never be trusted. (After all, he might turn out to be nasty. History has seen no shortage of rulers who were vicious.) Yet a shepherd who isn’t sovereign ruler is ultimately ineffective. (However benign he may be, he might turn out to be useless.) The shepherd who is king is always effective; and the king who is shepherd can always be trusted.

   Scripture insists that our shepherd-king will sacrifice himself for us, so very much does he love us. For this reason, our shepherd-king is also a lamb, the lamb of God. In Rev. 7:17 we are told, ‘The lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.’ Who rules over the vast cosmos? Who is simultaneously closer to us than our own breath? It is the king on the throne (only kings get to sit on thrones) who is shepherd and lamb all at once. How much does he care, and how effective is his caring? ‘The lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd…and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’

   Because the Lord is king, his comforting us is effective finally. Because the Lord is shepherd, his rule over our lives will always be blessing ultimately. And because the Lord is lamb, we know he will always love us even  more than he loves himself. This is the God whom David of old, the shepherd-king in Israel, knew and loved and forever holds up before us in Psalm 23.

Verse 2    ‘Green pastures and still waters.’ Since much of Palestine is desert, green pastures are hard to find. Left to themselves sheep will never find green pastures in a country where grassy meadows are scarce. Sheep have to be led to them or else the sheep will fail to thrive, even perish. To be sure, the shepherd safeguards the sheep against predators; but there is no point in fending off predators unless the sheep are also provisioned. The Lord who is our shepherd can be counted on to ensure our survival.

   Make no mistake: our survival needs to be ensured, since threats abound. ‘Still waters’ are God’s gift in the face of raging waters. Raging water, whether storm or torrent or flood, is the biblical symbol for chaos.

   Chaos, biblically, is creation de-creating. Chaos is the world on the way to being a wasteland. Chaos, as environmentalists rightly remind us, is planet earth on its way to uninhabitability. Green pastures are green and will remain green only if water is present and water is ‘still.’ Raging water, however, is the biblical symbol for threats of all kinds from all quarters.

   We watch the news, and we see horrific depictions of both floods and fires. The material destruction and the human devastation are heartbreaking. Don’t pictures of burnt-out Maui and earthquaked Turkey look like morning-after pictures of saturation-bombed cities in World War II? Alert now, we think of the chaos that laps at us at all times. Disease is biological chaos at the door. Social upheaval is communal chaos around the corner. That’s why all police departments have riot squads at-the-ready: we know that social upheaval, quickly swelling, will readily collapse the social order essential to our survival. We fear mental illness just because we are aware that psychosis is chaos overtaking us and overwhelming us. Every economist knows that financial chaos is closer to us than most people grasp.

   And then there is the chaos not without, this time, but within. Every day a thousand different voices tell us that we are this or that, or we should be this or that, or we are no more than this or that. Every day a thousand different voices tell us that already we are this or that but are too naïve to see it. Then who are we, finally?

   And then there is the chaos of sin. Sin is self-willed contradiction of who we are as children of God. Sin is self-willed contradiction of our being made in the image of God. Sin contradicts my identity before God.

   In the midst of myriad threats, the psalmist knows that God can be counted on to furnish us with green pastures and still waters. He who protects us will also provide for us. Who I am before God just because God has made me who I am before him; that ‘me’ God knows and preserves in the face of threats from without and threats from within; my identity, who I am before him and therefore who I am in myself—this is what God keeps inviolate, regardless of what howls down upon me from without or whirls up from within.

   God knows who I am; God preserves who I am. Green pastures (nourishment) and still waters (chaos subdued) are God’s guarantee for God’s people.

Verse 3   ‘He restores my soul.’    It means ‘He restores me.’ The Hebrew verb that the English text translates ‘restore’ is fathomlessly rich.

   One meaning of ‘restore’ is reconcile. When God restores us he reconciles us to himself. We need to be reconciled since we ornery sinners are bent on estranging ourselves from him. To say God reconciles us to is to say he’s always bringing us foolish people home. There is always a home to go home to, and there’s always a welcome warmer than we can imagine.

   Another meaning of ‘restore’ is return.  Everywhere in the older testament to repent is to return; that is to turn so as to turn around, make a U-turn, an about-face. Such a turning, therefore, is always a re-turning. The prophet Hosea cries out to his people, ‘Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.’ (Hos. 14:1) God restores us as we return to him.

   Another meaning of the Hebrew verb ‘restore’ is revive. Jeremiah insists that God restores his people as he revives their strength and courage. (Lam. 1:11, 16)

   Not least, Proverbs (25:13) reminds us that as God restores us he refreshes us. Proverbs paints the picture of perspiring, fatigued farmhands labouring under a Middle Eastern sun when cool winds from the Mediterranean refresh them.

   The psalmist tells us God’s restoring us, in all of the senses mentioned above, serves his leading us into paths of righteousness. Paths of righteousness are simply right paths. God’s people are to walk uprightly and do what is right and therefore righteous. Paths are meant for walking. Throughout scripture, walking is the commonest metaphor for obeying. We are restored for the sake of walking rightly, walking uprightly. ‘This is the way; walk in it’, Isaiah reminds us. (30:21)

   We are not to deviate from this road. We are not to depart from it. We are not to leave off following Jesus Christ even when discipleship is difficult or unpopular or dismissed as irrelevant or mocked as silly. At all times we are accompanied by Jesus who has pioneered the way ahead for us. Since we are accompanied at all times by the One who has already traversed this path victoriously to its end, we are without excuse if we quit. And why would we quit when, on either side of the path of discipleship is, there is nothing but swamp or quicksand or desert?

   The psalmist tells us that everything God does for us in restoring us, he does ‘for his name’s sake’. ‘Name,’ in scripture, means ‘person, presence, power, purpose, and deserved reputation.’ In other words, God restores us and appoints us to righteous living just because he is who he is in his person, presence, power, purpose, and reputation. Therefore we can trust him. Therefore we can be sure the path he has appointed us to walk isn’t a dead end. Therefore we can know that he won’t abandon us or give up on us. God is always and everywhere dependable.

Verse 4    We can depend on our Lord even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Here we have to spend a little time acquainting ourselves with what scripture means by ‘death’. In our everyday conversation we modern folk equate death with the cessation of biological life. Death is simply the disappearance of biological life. But in scripture death is much more than this. In scripture death is a cosmic power, a cosmic power that works evil, and works evil to the extent that such evil is finally lethal. Evil isn’t a little wrinkle that renders human history somewhat mysterious or renders human existence occasionally inconvenient. Evil attacks, sometimes frontally but more often insidiously; evil attacks, weakens, corrupts, perverts, and finally slays.

   We should note precisely what the psalmist says in this regard: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ Death and evil are synonyms. Evil is a power that deadens. Death is a power that works evil. As cosmic powers, death and evil are identical.

   The psalmist knows he can’t avoid walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Evil is a ‘force-field’ no Christian can avoid. At the same time, as we walk the path of righteousness we also walk through the force-field of evil; we walk through it without lingering in it or becoming infatuated with it or succumbing to it.

   As the psalmist reflects on all of this he exclaims, ‘You are with me; your rod and staff comfort me.’ Do we grasp what’s happened? Up until now the psalmist has been speaking in the third person: ‘The Lord—he is my shepherd.’ Now the psalmist is speaking in the second person: ‘You are with me. He has moved from talking about God to meeting God in person; he has moved from a discussion about God to an encounter with God: ‘You are with me.’

  The God who is engaged with him is equipped with rod and staff. The rod was the shepherd’s cudgel, the shepherd’s club.  With it the shepherd drove off predators who wanted to rip up the sheep. The staff, on the other hand, was the shepherd’s implement with which he rounded up sheep who otherwise went astray. The rod dealt with attack upon the sheep from without; the staff dealt with the sheep’s proclivities to wander from within. Aren’t God’s people both under attack from without and prone to wander from within?

   The text says the One who is shepherd comforts us. In contemporary English to comfort someone is to make her feel better. Originally, however, the English word ‘comfort’ was formed from two Latin words, ‘con’ and ‘fortis’: ‘with strength. The good shepherd comforts us profoundly; he strengthens us in the face of that evil there is no way around. We are comforted to the extent that we are strengthened and equipped to resist.

Verse 5    The result of it all is a table prepared for us in the presence of our enemies, a table prepared for us precisely in the midst of our worst harassments. ‘Table,’ of course, is a reference to the Messianic Banquet, the end-time feast when all God’s people—Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Moses and Zipporah, Joseph and Mary and Mary Magdalene, together with all God’s people from every era—are going to sit, in peace, without fear. All God’s people long for this day. But we aren’t there yet. And therefore we anticipate it. We anticipate the Messianic Banquet every time we celebrate Holy Communion. We anticipate it too every time we eat any meal. Isn’t this why we pray at every meal?

   The psalmist insists that to be comforted by God; to be strengthened and equipped—this in itself is an anticipation of the Messianic Banquet, at which Banquet evil, now defeated in the cross, will finally have been destroyed.

   In speaking of the table prepared for him the psalmist mentions oil and wine. Olive oil was used in preparing food for a feast. The same olive oil was used as a cosmetic, to make one’s face shine, a sign of radiantly good health. (Ps 114:15) Not to use oil was a sign of mourning—and there’s no place for mourning at the Messianic Banquet.

   As for wine; wine, says the psalmist, wine gladdens the human heart. (Ps 104) Wine renders a meal a celebration. To be taken up into God’s own life through faith in him can never be joyless or humdrum.

Verse 6     The psalmist concludes by reminding us of a wonderful certainty: for sure, surely, most certainly, goodness and mercy are going to follow us all the days of our life.

   Goodness is God’s character, God’s eternal nature. Mercy is the expression God’s goodness takes when God’s goodness meets our sin and our suffering. Mercy is God’s goodness overtaking us amidst all of life’s negativities and overcoming them.

    Goodness and mercy are going to follow us, follow along behind us, tag along behind us? No. ‘Shall follow’ is a Hebrew expression meaning ‘God’s mercy is behind us as the driving force of our life.’ God’s mercy is the engine behind us driving us ahead, always driving us ahead until we reach our appointed destination.

   There are days when we readily see as much and rejoice in it: ‘My life is wondrously propelled by God’s mercy!’ There are other days, however, when we soberly assess what assaults us, and we find it somewhat difficult to grasp the truth that our life is propelled by God’s mercy. And there are days, let’s be honest, when we can’t see any evidence for this at all.  What do we then? (i) We trust God for the truth and reality that right now we can’t see. (ii) We look to our Christian friends to support us, stunned as we are, as surely as the friends of a paralyzed man brought him to Jesus. (iii) We await that glorious day when we shall be able to look back on our entire life and see, finally, that indeed goodness and mercy have brought us to our goal. For then we shall be standing in the house of the Lord, which for our Hebrew friends of old meant God’s unspeakably intimate presence, and there we shall remain forever and ever.

Victor A. Shepherd                                                                                                                 September 2023

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Service on July 9,202

The Aaronic Blessing

Numbers 6:22-27   Psalm 73:25   2nd Corinthians 4:4-6    Revelation 1:6  

John 15:15   Mark 10:13-16

I: — Customarily we say it or sing it at a service of baptism.  Frequently the minister concludes worship by pronouncing it as a benediction:

The Lord bless you and keep you;

   the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

   the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

   What are we expecting?  Are we expecting anything?  Or do we repeat the words merely because they sound nice, merely because we are religious romantics at heart?

   “The Lord bless you.”  What’s the blessing?  We are uncomfortably aware that in some church-circles the blessing people look to God for is wealth, or popularity, or success, or social advantage, or public adulation, or any other such thing that the North American Prosperity Gospel (so-called) keeps on trumpeting.  Those who assume the blessing to be a magnified material emolument conveniently forget that Jesus, we are told, had nowhere to lay his head, and was so very unpopular as to incur rejection at the hands of government and church, friends and followers.

   To be sure, there have been people unquestionably blessed  by God who were indisputably wealthy.  Abraham, for instance; or Joseph of Arimathea, who was wealthy enough to own a family-sized tomb he generously made available for the crucified body of Jesus.

   While we are on this point we should admit that every person in this room is wealthy compared to the rest of the world.  After all, 99% of the world’s people would trade places, materially, with any of us in a heartbeat.  I live in a three-bedroom home, 1000 square feet, modest by Canadian standards; 99% of the world’s people would find my home a palace.

   I cringe when I hear the North American Prosperity Gospel put forward.  I recall the word from Proverbs 30:8: “Give me neither poverty nor riches…for if I am poor, I shall curse God, and if I am rich, I shall dismiss God as superfluous.”

    Then what is the blessing?  In the Hebrew Bible the blessing—ultimately—is God himself; our engagement with God, our immersion in God, our intimacy with God—ultimately, our transformation born of such intimacy.  When we say, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” we are invoking God-given intimacy with him for the sake of God-honouring transformation of them.

   As Jesus approached the cross he said to the disciples, “I no longer call you servants, because servants don’t know what their master is about.  But I have called you friends, for everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”(John 15:15)  In other words, Jesus Christ admits us, his followers, to the same intimacy with the Father that he has with his Father.

   When I ponder this truth, I think of Proverbs 18:24: “There are friends who pretend to be friends, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”  Just as Jesus Christ is that friend who sticks closer than a brother, to be blessed is to be, or at least to aspire to be, as much to him.  The blessing, then, is that transformative intimacy with him which is so very deep that no language can do justice to it; so very profound that while we may point to it and describe it we shall never be able to explain it; so utterly fathomless that we shall know it unshakeably as surely as it transcends all attempts to articulate it.

   When I was learning Greek (without which I’d be a much weaker preacher) my mother gave me, as a gift for my 23rd birthday, a book by Ronald Ward, Hidden Meaning in the New Testament.  The book discusses the theological significance of Greek syntax.  For instance, where and why do New Testament writers use a particular compound verb; why do they use this preposition instead of another; and when they use a past tense (called the aorist), what is the force of an ingressive aorist rather than a punctiliar aorist or a gnomic aorist?  Because of Ward’s book my Greek New Testament lit up for me (and has informed my preaching throughout my ministry).

   Ronald Ward taught New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, for eleven years.  Then he became a pastor in New Brunswick.  I used to visit him, Greek Testament in hand, and let him immerse me in it. In the words of the apostle Paul, Ronald Ward himself was ‘aglow with the Spirit’ (Rom. 12:8).  Unselfconsciously he exuded intimacy with our Lord; transparent, uncontrived, real.  One day as I struggled with the force of a subtle grammatical point he said, “Victor, think of it this way.  To the unbeliever Jesus Christ says, ‘Come’.  And to the  believer he says, ‘Come closer.’”

   What is the blessing?—it’s to find ourselves able to embrace and wanting to embrace ever more ardently the One whose crucified arms have embraced us from the day we were conceived.

   When I was a postgraduate student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, I was asked to preach at the mid-week meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen. The women supported the mission (a Christian outreach) to deep-sea fishermen, including North Sea fishermen from foreign countries who came ashore occasionally in Scotland.  Many women in the meeting had lost their husband in North Sea tragedies.  Several women had lost more than one relative in ocean mishaps.  Before I preached, the leader of the service asked if any worshipper had a hymn in mind she especially wanted the congregation to sing.  A radiant woman whose radiance was uncontrived and undisguised—she had lost both her husband and her son to the cold North Sea—she beamed, “Let’s all sing, ‘With Christ in the vessel I smile at the storm.’”  You know how the hymn reads:

                        Be gone, unbelief, my saviour is near,

                        And for my relief will surely appear.

                        By faith let me wrestle, and he will perform;

                        With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm.

  What’s the blessing?  As usual, Charles Wesley said it superbly for all of us when he wrote,

                        Thy name to me, thy nature, grant;

                        This, only this, be given:

                        Nothing beside my God I want,

                        Nothing in earth or heaven.

II: — How is the blessing bestowed?  “The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.”  We are blessed as God’s face shines upon us.

   What is God’s face?  And how is God’s face related to God’s heart?

   God’s heart is who God is in himself, his innermost truth and reality and character.  God’s face is who God appears to be to us.  Question: Are God’s heart and God’s face one?  Or might there be a discrepancy between God’s face and God’s heart?  The face God displays to us in Jesus Christ; is it one with God’s heart, and necessarily one with God’s heart, or might it be a false face?  Face and heart must be identical or else God can never be known or trusted.

   We all know that humans traffic in false faces.  We can despise someone in our heart even as we put on a face, a false face, that suggests we’re the best of friends.

   Are God’s face and God’s heart one, and necessarily one?  In other words, is it the case that God cannot—not merely does not, but cannot—put on a false face?  If so, then God can be trusted.  The face that shines upon us in Jesus Christ reflects God’s heart and only his heart.  The face that shines upon us is the face of him whose heart can always be trusted.

   God himself blesses us as he makes his face shine upon  us.  Shining entails light.  When God’s face shines upon us we are bathed in light.

   In the Hebrew Bible, what shines so very splendidly as to leave no one doubting that light is bathing us, our minds are illumined, our hearts are aflame, and our way through life is brightened?  In the Hebrew Bible what light shines incomparably like this?  It’s the glory of God.  Everywhere in Scripture the glory of God is glorious; the splendour of God is splendid.

   Then is the glory of God short-lived light, like a camera-flash or a lightning-bolt, here now and gone next instant?

   No.  The chief Hebrew word for ‘glory’ is kabod.  And the root meaning of kabod is weighty, heavy, dense, substantive, opaque, solid, thick.  The glory of God is at once brighter shining than the sun and denser than lead.

   The glory of God is the face of God shining substantively upon us so as to brighten our heart and illumine our mind and clarify our way—and all of this so very thick as to be undeniable.  God’s glory, everywhere in Scripture, is God in his inherent splendour shining his face upon us so as to render himself unmistakeable and undeniable.

   Now think upon Paul’s word to the congregation in Corinth: “It is the God who said, ‘Let shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  It is the apostle’s conviction that the face of God shines gloriously upon us in the face of Christ, even as the same glory shines correspondingly in our hearts—and all with the result that God thereby renders himself unmistakeable and undeniable.

   The glory of God is a huge category in Scripture.  One aspect of it is the beauty of God.  “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” cries the psalmist, meaning, “Worship God in the beauty of God’s inherently glorious Godness.”

   God’s glory is always and everywhere beautiful.  What is beautiful is inherently attractive, isn’t it?  No one ever beheld beauty and pronounced it ugly.  To apprehend beauty is to be drawn to it.  In other words, just as God’s glory (God’s splendour, God’s shining face) renders God unmistakeable and undeniable, God’s beauty renders God irresistible.  When we apprehend beauty can’t we only fall in love with it? 

   In John’s gospel Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.”  The Greek language has two words for ‘good.’  One word, agathos, means ‘proper, correct, possessed of rectitude.’  The other word, kalos, means ‘winsome, attractive, compelling, inviting, comely.’  Isn’t calligraphy beautiful handwriting?  When Jesus says, Ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos, “I am the good shepherd,” he means he is winsome, inviting, attractive: “I am the fine shepherd.”  That’s it: Jesus isn’t merely upright.  (Lots of upright people are repugnant.) Jesus is the good shepherd in that he’s inherently attractive: rightly to apprehend him is to love him.  As surely as God’s glory shines in the face of Christ so does God’s beauty, an aspect of glory.  As surely as God’s face shining upon us renders God undeniable the selfsame face shining upon us renders God irresistible.

   This is how the blessing is bestowed.

III: — What is the result?  As the Lord lifts up his countenance upon us he gives us peace.

   ‘Peace’ translates ‘shalom.’  Shalom is the creation of God healed.  Shalom is the creation of God rendered the kingdom of God.  God has appointed the entire creation to be restored to wholeness and holiness.  Shalom, peace, kingdom of God—it all means that what is now out of order, counter-productive, dysfunctional, even deadly—it’s all been appointed to be put right.

   The universe (including us) was created to be a cosmos. The Greek verb kosmeo means both to order and to adorn.  The universe was created to be orderly and to adorn the God who made it.  Right now, however, in the wake of the Fall, the universe is disordered.  The cosmos is threatened with chaos.  Chaos is creation de-creating.  Chaos is the world on its way to uninhabitability.

   If chaos is to be checked and cosmos restored, then shalom must be rendered operative; peace must prevail.  Shalom means what is disfigured, warped, bent, broken, dysfunctional, is going to be rendered whole.  Shalom also means what is unholy, sin-infected, an affront to God: this is going to be rendered holy.

   Make no mistake: chaos laps at the creation at all times.  We need think only of terrifying earthquakes and treacherous tsunamis.  We need think only of pestilential disease.  In 1349 bubonic plague overtook Europe, and in a few years one-half of Europe’s people had succumbed helplessly to it.  In 1665 a huge fire consumed the greater part of London; one year later, 1666, the plague claimed thousands who had managed to survive the previous year’s fire.

   World War I, ‘The Great War’, as it was called, was ‘great’ inasmuch as it was the most hideous spectacle, the most monstrous spectacle, the world had seen to date.  And it was hideous: 20 million dead.  It can be blamed squarely on human depravity, sin.  As soon as The Great War ended in 1918, Spanish flu appeared.  Spanish flu killed 50-to-100 million people.  It can be blamed squarely on evil.

  Whom did Spanish flu kill?  Epidemics customarily kill the most biologically vulnerable; that is, the very elderly and the very young, old people and infants.  Spanish flu was different: it killed the 30-to-35-year-olds, with the result that millions upon millions of children were orphaned.  Chaos compounded!

  It’s little wonder Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves (Rom. 8:22).”  The entire creation is twisted by evil; and we humans are disfigured by sin.

   But not forever.  The day has been appointed when the creation, together with God’s people, already reconciled to God at the cross, will be restored definitively.  And on that day the creation will no longer be molested by evil nor God’s people disfigured by sin.

   Let’s move from the larger picture of the cosmos to the smaller picture of you and me particularly.  All of us are wounded, and are wounded for reasons we could list for the rest of the day.  To say we are wounded is to say we are victims of victimizations great and small, inner and outer.  To say we are wounded is to say we lack wholeness.

    At the same time, all of us are sinners.  We are people of depraved hearts.  As loudly as we like to complain that we are wounded inasmuch as we are victims, the Hebrew prophets keep reminding us that we are sinners inasmuch as we are victimizers, characteristically victimizing God and neighbour through our spiritual treachery.  To say we are sinners is to say we lack holiness.

   We have been appointed, however, to a glorious end: we are going to stand before our Lord, our wounds healed and our depravity remedied.  Which is to say, we are going to know and enjoy shalom, peace, eternally.

   No book of the Bible says as much about the restoration of the cosmos and the healing of Christ’s people as the book of Revelation, the last book in Holy Writ.  The man who wrote it insists that he has been visited with a vision of our risen, victorious Lord, and therein given what he is to say. He speaks of his vision at considerable length, spelling out detail after detail, only to wrap it all up climactically, “And his face was like the sun shining in full strength (Rev. 1:16).”

   As the writer apprehends the victorious One whose face is like the sun shining in full strength he knows that the shalom of God, the kingdom of God, the creation healed, the cosmos restored—peace—can be counted on.

   You and I can count on it too.  For to know ourselves visited with God’s blessing; to know God’s face shining gloriously upon us thereby rendering Jesus Christ undeniable and irresistible; this is to know that he who began a good work in us will certainly bring it to completion on the day of our Lord’s appearing. (Phil. 1:6)

The Lord bless you and keep you;

  the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

  the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Victor Shepherd              Streetsville United Church             July 2019

‘Born of the Virgin Mary’: The Miracle of Christmas

 

‘BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY’: THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS

I: — ‘Born of the virgin Mary’: we repeat the words every time we recite the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed.  Both creeds are normative for the church universal; both maintain that the virginal conception of our Lord is as essential to the substance of the faith as is the bodily resurrection of our Lord.

Yet many people tell me either they don’t see the point of ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ or they can’t affirm its historicity, its facticity.

Many people tell me virginal conception is such a stupendous miracle claim that believing it is ludicrous.

 

II:  I happen to uphold ‘born of the virgin Mary’.  And I agree with the worldwide church over the centuries that it is a crucial ingredient, a necessary ingredient, in what Christians believe.

[a] Let’s start by addressing the misgivings of the skeptics: “To uphold the virgin birth is to make a claim for a miracle.”  This is correct.  But to reject it on the grounds that it is a miracle is to reject all miracle, including the creation of the universe, the creation of the universe ex nihilo, from nothing.

Let’s think for a minute about the universe. The universe is vast.  How vast?  The Hubble telescope has found galaxies that are 14.5 billion light years away.  (One light year, I should add for those of us who still think in terms of miles; one light year is approximately six trillion miles.)  14.5 billion times six trillion miles: that’s how vast the universe is in all directions.

On a cloudless night I like to look at the stars; I mean the stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.  It’s only 100,000 light years away.  If I look through my binoculars I can see the next galaxy behind ours, Andromeda.  Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away.  In other words, the light streaming into my binoculars from Andromeda has taken 2.5 million years to reach me.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a medium-sized galaxy.  It has only 300 billion stars.  Galaxies tend to occur in clusters.  Our galaxy, with its 300 billion stars, is one item in a cluster of 11,000 galaxies – and that’s one cluster only.  (There are two trillion galaxies, of approximately 300 billion stars each.)

Who made all this?  God did.  Out of what?  Out of – nothing. Why would anyone uphold the creation of the vast universe out of nothing and then stumble over of the historicity of the virgin birth?

[b] “Not so fast”, someone objects; “The virgin birth isn’t a core item in Christian doctrine, since it is mentioned by only two New Testament writers, Matthew and Luke.  It can’t be important.”

To be sure, Matthew and Luke speak of it explicitly.  Mark, John, and Paul, however, certainly speak of it implicitly.  When Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown, hearers are astounded, and they cry out, Mark tells us, “Where did he get his wisdom and power?  Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mk 6:3) In Jewish circles a man was named by his father, always by his father. Mark doesn’t mention Joseph at all.  Mark traces Jesus to his mother only: “Isn’t this man the son of Mary?”  Mark is telling us, in so many words, that he agrees with Matthew and Luke concerning the virginal conception of our Lord.

John: in 1st John 1:18 John writes, “We know that those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them.”   You and I: we are “those who are born of God.”  In another sense, Jesus Christ alone is “the one, the Son, who is born of God.”  In speaking of these two categories John uses two different verb tenses.  The verb tense he uses of Jesus highlights our Lord’s unique birth, a unique birth that is essential to our ‘new birth’.

What about Paul?  Paul implicitly upholds the virgin birth in several places, only one of which I shall mention.  In Galatians 4 Paul speaks three times of human generation, and every time he uses the normal Greek word ‘to be born’.  When he speaks of Christ’s birth, however, he uses an entirely different word.  The word he uses of Christ’s birth isn’t the word that speaks of normal human generation.  It’s a word that speaks of the arrival of Jesus, the event of Jesus, the coming of Jesus –tacitly denying that Jesus was generated in the way that all other humans are procreated.  Unquestionably Paul upholds the virginal conception of Jesus – as do Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

 

III: — Before we look into what ‘born of the virgin Mary’ is telling us, we should be sure to grasp what it isn’t telling us.

[a] It isn’t telling us that normal human procreation is tainted.  The Hebrew mind rejoices in children and rejoices in how children are brought forth.  The book of Proverbs insists that “the way of a man with a maid” is glorious.  Scripture nowhere casts aspersion on human procreation.

[b] It isn’t telling us that Mary is a biological freak.  Strictly speaking, the virgin birth isn’t about Mary at all: it’s about Jesus.

[c] It isn’t telling us that Jesus is half-human and half-divine.  Someone half-human is useless to you and me who are wholly human.  Someone half-divine can’t save you and me since it will take all God’s resources to save totally depraved sinners like us.

[d] It isn’t telling us that the virgin birth proves our Lord’s deity.  The virgin birth doesn’t prove anything.  But it does point to something; it’s a sign of something; it attests something.  Then what does it point to?  What’s it a sign of?  What does it attest?

 

IV:  It’s a sign that Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world, has to be given to us.  Humankind cannot produce its own saviour.  History cannot produce history’s redeemer.  We sinners all need a fresh start, what scripture calls, in various places, “new birth” or “new creature” or “heart of flesh” (rather than “heart of stone”) or “renewed mind”.  The point is, human history cannot generate its rescuer.  Its rescuer has to be given to it.

Make no mistake: people are slow, very slow, to admit this.  The world staggers from one ‘sure fix’ to another ‘sure fix’, the previous ‘sure fix’ having failed miserably.  In the preceding century there were two attempts at remaking humankind, one from the political left (communism), and one from the right (fascism).  Not only did they fail to inaugurate a ‘new day’ for humankind; they brought with them unparalleled savagery and suffering.

We should distinguish here between the human situation and the human condition.  The human situation can always be improved humanly.  We can always assist the needy neighbour, share our abundance with those who lack, address glaring inequities and reduce criminality.  We can always correct deficits and deficiencies in education and health care and social assistance.

The human condition, on the other hand, our condition before God, is different: this we can’t correct.  Only the direct intervention of God himself can affect it.  Because Christians are the beneficiaries of such intervention we now know, have long known, that the innermost twist to the human heart; the human perverseness beyond anyone’s understanding; the profoundest self-contradiction – all of this we know we cannot remedy ourselves; we know the remedy has to be given to us, since we cannot generate it ourselves.

In all of this I am not slighting at all those cultural riches that do ever so much concerning the human situation.  Pharmacology can reduce pain.  Surgery can relieve distress.  Psychotherapy can untie emotional knots.  Above all, literature can provide a diagnostic tool for understanding human complexity. Nevertheless, humankind’s ultimate problem isn’t complexity; it’s corruption, self-contradiction.  We have to admit that the root human condition is oceans deeper than the human situation, and the cure for the root human condition only God can provide.

As I mentioned a minute earlier, the world never lacks people who think they can provide it.  Marx said a new human being, the new birth, arises at the point of revolution.  And what did Marxism provide except wretchedness and cruelty for 70 years in the USSR?  Mao Tse Tung said he could remake humankind, and he took down 90 million of his own people.  Pot Pol claimed as much, and he slew 25% of his fellow-Cambodians.

Then is the human condition hopeless?  Not at all: we’ve been given the saviour we’ll never give ourselves.  We’ve been provided the rescuer we long for yet know we can’t generate.  We’ve been given the One who has guaranteed our reconciliation to God and our restoration with God and our new life in God.

‘Born of the virgin Mary’ is constant reminder that only the intervention of God himself can save us.

 

V: — It’s also constant reminder that faith in the saviour; faith has to be given to us as well.  We can’t generate faith out of our innermost resources.  Paul speaks of the condition of sinners before God as “dead in trespasses and sins”.  Dead.  And what can a corpse give itself? – nothing.  Then the faith that recognizes, rejoices in, and clings to the saviour; the faith that trusts him in fair weather and foul; the faith that loves him because he first loved us (when others tell us we are silly); the faith that obeys him (when politically correct people tell us we are utterly out-of-step with our society): such faith has to be given to us.

To be sure, when I say faith has to be given to us I had better say in the next breath that such a gift has to be exercised.  The gift we have received we have to affirm.  The One who is now embracing us, we have to embrace in return.  Of course.  But it all begins with the gift of faith in that saviour who has himself been given to us.

Sometimes we hear it said that it’s much more difficult for people to have faith today than it was years ago or centuries ago.  I disagree.  I think the spiritual condition of people is the same in any era, any century.  Was faith easier when our Reformation foreparents were being burnt at the stake?  Was faith easier when, in the 14th Century, bubonic plague killed 50% of Europe?  Martin Luther used to say, “Cover your eyes and open your ears.”  Luther meant this: when we look out upon the world, what we see contradicts the goodness of God and the love of God and the mercy of God.  For this reason, we have to “open our ears” and hear the gospel, hear it with the ‘ears’ of the heart, for only then will faith thrive in the midst of the world’s contradiction of it.

My children were raised in a clergyman’s home.  This means they overheard suppertime telephone conversations.  (People tend to phone their clergyman at suppertime since they think that’s when they are most likely to find him home.)  To be sure, my daughters could overhear only half the conversation, my half.  Nevertheless, when the conversation had ended and I sat down again to my chicken soup, my daughters were white: they had heard enough to know that devastation had overtaken someone whom they had seen the previous Sunday at worship.

Make no mistake: it is nothing less than a miracle that anyone believes. Faith has to be given to us for two reasons: one, you and I cannot generate faith out of our own resources; two, even if we could, the ceaseless negativities in world-occurrence would overwhelm it and suffocate it.

Every day I thank God for the gift of faith, to me, of course, but not to me only.  For every day as a pastor I look upon people with radiant faith whose lives have unfolded with such difficulty that there’s no earthly reason why they should believe, and every earthly reason why they shouldn’t.  And yet their faith sings: the miraculous intervention of God that has given us the saviour we need continues to give us faith in the saviour as only he can give.

 

VI: — The virgin birth, arising from the direct intervention of God, attests one more miracle: the final, full manifestation of the gift of shalom, a new heaven and earth in which righteousness dwells.  The author of Hebrews maintains that already, right now, we have been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  And so we have.  Because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and his resurrection can never be undone; because the king triumphant has to bring his kingdom with him or else he’s no king at all; because of this the kingdom of God is here, in our midst, operative, right now, as surely as Christ the King himself is in our midst.  We have been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

Christ’s kingdom, however, is not yet fully manifest.  It is here, but only by faith do we discern it and affirm it.  It is in our midst, but it remains disputable.  The day has been appointed, however, when the kingdom, real but disputable, will be rendered manifest so as to render it beyond dispute.  On this day, the day of Christ’s indisputable self-manifestation, we who suffer and groan now are going to appear resplendent, holy and whole alike.

To say we are going to be rendered holy, definitively, is to say that the arrears of sin in us, all of which we have repented and aspired to put behind us, will finally be dealt with.  To say we shall be rendered holy definitively is to say we shall be beyond the reach of sin and its capacity to distort us.

In addition, we are going to be rendered whole definitively.  Which is to say, we shall be beyond the reach of evil and its capacity to disfigure us.

Right now every last human being is distorted by sin and disfigured by wounds.  We victimize ourselves through our sin, and we are victimized by our wounds.  Now while everyone is sinner equally, not everyone is wounded equally.  Through sheer misfortune, some people have been wounded far more severely than others.  The criminal courts recognize this.  We read that someone has been deemed unfit to stand trial, for instance, on account of derangement.  While the deranged person is neither more nor less sinner than the rest of us, undoubtedly he is more wounded and warped than most.

Back in my seminary days I took a course from Dr James Wilkes, a psychiatrist at the old Clark Institute, now CAMH.  Each student was assigned a book to read for class presentation.  The book assigned me was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.  Capote had written up an incident where two young men decided to break into and plunder a farmhouse in Kansas.  When they broke in, to their surprise they found the house occupied.  They panicked.  Matters went from bad to worse to horrific. By night’s end the men had brutally murdered the three occupants of the house.  One miscreant was subsequently imprisoned; his accomplice was hanged.

Both these criminals had grown up with what Dr Wilkes, psychiatrist, called “poor provision.”  That is, these young men had had wretched upbringings.  They had been provided none of the parental guidance and emotional support we take for granted.  In addition, they had suffered horrific physical injuries, were in chronic pain, and for many reasons had remained abandoned.  When I had finished my class presentation Dr Wilkes paused for the longest moment, staring down at the desk in front of him; then he remarked soberly, “The behaviour of those young men: that’s what society, any society, can expect when children and adolescents live under terrible stress with poor provision.” Some people, unfortunately, are terribly wounded.

I learned something that day I’ve never forgotten.  Whenever I am clobbered in church life I ask myself one question: “The clobbering I’ve just taken from Mr. X – did it arise from his sin, his depravity?  Or did it arise from his woundedness, his pain?”  I don’t know, since I don’t have access to anyone’s heart.  “Did she clobber me because she’s wicked, or because she’s in pain herself?”  I have survived in church life by reminding myself, every day, that I am going to relate to people in terms of their suffering, and I shall leave it to God to relate to them in terms of their sin.

And then I’m going to look to that glorious day when Mr X – and you and I and all God’s people – are finally beyond the distortion of sin and the disfigurement of evil, that day when we shall be both holy and whole, our depravity remedied and our wounds healed.  I’m going to continue looking ahead to that day which has to be given to us, that day when the Kingdom of God appears in its final, full manifestation, and no one is left victimizing himself through his sin and victimizing others on account of his suffering.  On that day we shall be holy and whole definitively.

 

VII: — “Born of the virgin Mary”.  At the beginning of the sermon I said it was a pointer to the gift of Jesus Christ.  It’s a sign of the reality that he is.  But it is it sign only?  Or is the sign of the event so closely related to the logic of the event that the sign of the event is part of the event itself, so that to believe in Jesus Christ, the saviour given to us, is simultaneously to believe ‘born of the virgin Mary’?

Today I rejoice that the saviour human history cannot generate has been given us.  Faith in him, impossible for us to work up, is constantly given us.  And the final, full manifestation of Christ’s kingdom will be given us as surely as our Lord has been raised from the dead.

I believe without hesitation or qualification or reservation, “born of the virgin Mary”.

Victor Shepherd                             Advent 2017

Hosea: Heart-Broken Prophet of a Heart-Broken God

Hosea 2:1-20; 11:8-9     Luke 15:11-24

If we are deprived of food it won’t be long before the physical ravages of our malnutrition are evident to everyone. If we are deprived of mental stimulation or restorative sleep we’ll be manifestly deranged in no time. And if people forsake the living God, the Holy One of Israel beside whom there is none other, how long will it be before the consequent spiritual degeneration is evident to the spiritually discerning? And how long after that before there’s a deterioration and decay that even those who make little or no religious profession will nonetheless recognize, even if they describe it as a social problem (rather than as spiritual declension)?

The prophet Hosea watched it all happen among his people. Hosea, like all the Hebrew prophets (like Jesus too) used a vocabulary to speak of disobedient, God-defiant people that makes my speech appear genteel. Hosea knew that when the nerve of living faith is severed, spiritual paralysis occurs and putrefaction is underway. In other words, spiritual declension among God’s people, the spiritually discerning know, is unmistakable and undeniable if only because it is as grotesque as it is repugnant.

All the Hebrew prophets were of one mind on this matter. Hosea lived only a few decades after Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, only a few decades after Elisha, Elijah’s successor. Twenty years before Hosea cried out in heartbreak another Hebrew prophet, Amos, had cried out in rage.

Amos never minced words. He fulminated against the criminally rich who lolled about in self-congratulatory luxury while the victims they defrauded went barefoot. Religious observances, as familiar as an old slipper and no less sentimental, gave rise to warm ‘fuzzies’ within worshippers and simultaneously blunted their sensitivity to the presence and purpose and power of the God they pretended to worship. The clergy were professionals in the worst sense of ‘professional’: they were paid to keep the religious operation operating. Judges, on the other hand, weren’t paid so much as they were ‘paid off,’ bribed. Theft was cheered. Adultery was flaunted. Civic leaders exploited the people they were charged to protect.

Amos found it all unendurable. He raged in a voice that could crack rocks. “God won’t tolerate what’s underway in Israel,” he exploded; “God’s judgement is merited, just and inescapable. Israel will fall to the sword of the Assyrian. And when it happens,” Amos continued, “don’t whine or whimper that you’ve been victimized or visited with bad luck. If you wail, ‘What did we do to deserve this?’ you merely display your sin-blinded stupidity.” So said Amos.

Hosea agreed with every word. Amos’s raging denunciation is truly the word of God. And yet, said, Hosea, the word of denunciation and destruction isn’t God’s last word. God’s final word is a word of compassion; specifically it’s a promise of restoration born of God’s heartbreak.

In this regard Hosea maintained that Israel had forsaken God, and God would hide himself from Israel – but not forever. God would inflict horrific wounds upon Israel, painful beyond imagining, but these wounds would prove to be the incisions of the surgeon. The blazing judgement of God couldn’t be postponed or deflected, but the conflagration was the fire of God’s love, and because this fire was God’s love burning hot, love’s white-hot heat would cleanse and cauterize. So said Hosea.

Where Amos raged, Hosea raged too – and then wept. Where Amos denounced, Hosea denounced too – and then pleaded.

Who were these men? Amos was a shepherd-cowboy who lived in Tekoa, a wilderness area in the south of Israel much like the area that gave us John the Baptist 750 years later. Hosea, on the other hand, lived in a fertile, affluent area in the north of Israel. Both men were haunted by God’s address as God summoned them and commissioned them to announce God’s truth and God’s righteousness to God’s delinquent people.

While both men suffered as only a prophet can suffer when God in his immensity leans on the prophet, Hosea also suffered atrociously on account of his domestic situation. Hosea suffered the heartbreak and humiliation and seeming hopelessness of a husband whose wife has violated their marriage covenant and disgraced herself through her shameless promiscuity.

Hosea had a wife, Gomer. Gomer derailed. She traipsed off to the marketplace, Square One, and prostituted herself there day after day. Business was good. She became notorious. And the more notorious she became, the more her business expanded. Customers were many and precautions were few. She became pregnant, an occupational hazard of prostitutes. Hosea knew her child wasn’t his.

And then in the midst of his heartbreak it was given to Hosea to see his wife’s unfaithfulness as the mirror-reflection of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. And in his wife’s illegitimate offspring he saw as never before Israelites whose religiosity was born of the many spirits who aren’t holy.

When Gomer brought forth the first child of her unfaithfulness Hosea named the child ‘Lo-ruchamah’, Hebrew for ‘Not pitied’ or ‘Not visited with mercy.’ Gomer’s second illegitimate child Hosea named ‘Lo-ammi’, ‘Not my people’.

Hosea believed his people had to suffer through a period when God was silent; when God seemed remote; or if not remote then at least inaccessible. God’s people had to suffer through a period when they appeared orphaned because their parent wouldn’t own them, so reprehensible had they become. The people had to suffer through a period when they were devoid of God’s comfort and consolation, like lost, disgraced children whose parent now says of them, “They can’t be mine; I don’t recognize them; there’s no family resemblance at all.”

Matters had to get worse for people to come to their senses; only then could matters get better. In short, God’s judgement was step one on the road to the people’s repentance and reconciliation. It was given to Hosea to discern that judgement wasn’t the last word; God’s mercy was the final word, together with the mercy-quickened repentance and reconciliation of God’s people.

Amos’s severity Hosea endorsed, only to find severity morphing and swelling into an even greater tenderness, a tenderness that has endeared Hosea to readers for 2800 years just because Hosea’s heartbroken tenderness mirrors the heart of God.

Years later Hosea trudged with heavy step and heavier heart yet with undeflectable resolve; Hosea trudged down to Square One where crude men taunted him about the woman who had become the talk of the town and at whom men leered. The woman, of course, was Gomer, his wife. Gomer had disgraced herself, degraded herself, and, not least, made a fool of herself. And she knew it. Having reached rock-bottom, she wanted to come home.

Could she come home? Whatever made her think she could? How presumptuous of her to think there was a home to come home to. With what some people would incorrectly call sheer good luck she found in her husband a mercy that was as constant as it was incomprehensible. Then she could come home, right away – except for one matter yet to be settled. She had sold herself to a pimp. She was the pimp’s meal ticket. He wasn’t going to give her away. Hosea asked, “How much? What’s my wife worth to you?” “Fifteen shekels,” the pimp replied. Fifteen? Only fifteen? Thirty shekels was the price of a slave. Gomer had lowered herself lower than the lowest? Yes. Gomer was dirt-cheap. Dirt is always dirt-cheap, isn’t it? The day Hosea parted with fifteen shekels he was publicly identified with his worthless wife. The cachet surrounding her became the cachet surrounding him. Her reputation was his; her disgrace his. But only one thing mattered: she was home again, home with him.

And so it is with Israel, says the prophet; so it is with the church; so it is with God’s people of any era. We, the church, are the bride of Christ. Bride? Our unfaithfulness has made the church a laughing stock to those who make no profession of faith. Yet God has purchased us not for half the price of a slave but at a price he alone comprehends. “He spared not his own Son,” cries the apostle Paul in amazement. To say he didn’t spare his own Son is to say he didn’t spare himself, didn’t spare himself anything – and all of this so that he might cry to you and me as he cried to Israel, “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? I am God and not man, the holy One of Israel, and I will not come to destroy.”

In the time that remains this morning we should summarize Hosea’s message.

I: — First, Hosea is preoccupied with having his people know God. The heart of his message is found in chapter 6, verse 6: says God, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

God didn’t want sacrifices and burnt offerings? Of course he did. They were part of the temple liturgy; they were instituted by God and the people were appointed to observe them. Since sacrifices and burnt offering were instituted and appointed by God the people could never be faulted for worshipping in accord with the temple liturgy. But Hosea’s point was this: liturgy is an outward vehicle given us to express our innermost self-abandonment to God. Liturgy is an outward vehicle for expressing our innermost offering of ourselves, our sacrifice, to God. Liturgy, however, is never an outward substitute for anything inward. Israelites were never to offer lamb or ram in the temple as a substitute for offering themselves. If liturgy – anyone’s liturgy in any era – is viewed as a substitute for the worshipper’s faith and faithfulness then liturgy is useless; worse than useless in fact, for then it affronts God and deceives us. Hosea insisted that the people’s worship in the temple be the occasion of their ever-deepening knowledge of God.

Now in Hebrew idiom ‘knowledge’ doesn’t mean ‘acquisition of information.’ In Hebrew idiom knowledge pertains to personal encounter; more profoundly, to know is to be so very intimately acquainted with an actuality as to find oneself profoundly transformed by such acquaintance. To know pain isn’t to acquire information about neurophysiology; to know pain is to be so very intimately acquainted with pain that one is different forever. To know hunger – really know hunger – isn’t to acquire information about gastrointestinal functioning; to know hunger is to be so very intimately acquainted with hunger that one’s encounter with it has rendered one forever different.

To know one’s spouse, in Hebrew idiom, isn’t to accumulate information about the person to whom we are married. To know one’s spouse isn’t merely to have intercourse with her. Rather it’s to meet her, encounter her so very intimately that one’s own life is forever different. In Hebrew idiom I know my wife only to the extent that encountering her non-defensively (that is, encountering her without trying to master her or manipulate her) has rendered me a different person (which encounter, in Hebrew, intercourse abets and intensifies.) In short, my knowledge of my wife is precisely the difference meeting her has effected in me. (If I’ve lived with her for 42 years and remain the same person then I don’t know her at all, regardless of how much information I’ve accumulated about her.)

Our knowledge of God, Hosea insisted, Hebrew that he was; our knowledge of God is the difference our engagement with God has effected within us.

When Abraham knew Sarah, Isaac was brought forth; when Isaac knew Rebecca, Jacob was brought forth. When you and I know God, what is brought forth? Hosea insists it’s ‘chesed,’ steadfast love. Hosea’s chesed, steadfast love, was so very steadfast that not even his wife’s fornicating could dissolve it. God’s steadfast love for us is so very steadfast that not even our repeated infidelities to him can shrivel it. Steadfast love, said Hosea, is what is conceived and brought forth when God’s people know him.

It’s plain that knowing God is what the church is first and finally about. “For I desire steadfast love and not (mere) sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than (mere) burnt offerings,” says the Lord. Liturgy is important, since God has appointed it. But God-appointed liturgy is a vehicle of that encounter with God through which we come to know him ever more profoundly; a vehicle of that encounter, never a substitute for it. And such knowledge of God – personal transformation through intimate acquaintance with God – will give rise to ‘chesed,’ steadfast love that aspires to honour Christ’s twofold summary of the Torah, love of God and love of neighbour.

II: — The second feature of Hosea’s message is blunt: corruption and betrayal are found everywhere. When Hosea looks out over his society he doesn’t indict this person or that, targetting the highly visible. Hosea indicts everyone. The people at large don’t know God; the society as a whole doesn’t bring forth ‘chesed.’ Everyone is guilty.

While everyone is guilty, Hosea continues, there are two groups who have especial responsibility for the deplorable state of affairs. One group consists of civic leaders and authorities. Entrusted with the public good, they have betrayed the public. “The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmarks,” laments the prophet.

When highly placed civic leaders or business leaders or financial wizards or drug-abusing sports stars are finally ‘found out,’ they appear startled that they are going to be prosecuted and punished. They maintain that they were doing nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that scores of others in their echelon haven’t been doing and are doing yet. Therefore, they insist, they are being singled out unfairly and targeted unjustly. In this connection the name, I imagine, that is on the tip of everyone’s tongue right now is the name “Conrad Black” or “Jian Gomeshi” or “Rob Ford”.

Cynicism appears to be the response that arises most readily whenever political leaders or business leaders or charity icons or sports stars are mentioned. The cynicism isn’t groundless. It’s not that the cynical person has a sour outlook rooted in a sour disposition. It’s rather that people have been let down over and over, with the result that betrayal and corruption are what they expect they are going to hear eventually concerning the people they have trusted.

Still, Hosea’s criticism of civic leaders is slight compared to his excoriation of the second group, the clergy. The guilt that the people and their public representatives bear is slight compared to the guilt that the clergy bear. “Like people, like priest,” says Hosea. He means that self-indulgent clergy can be expected to occasion self-indulgent people. Water doesn’t rise above its source; ungodly clergy will never yield godly people. He anticipates what James is going to say 800 years later: those who teach God’s people are going to be judged with greater severity.

It sounds bleak, doesn’t it; hopeless.

III: — But it isn’t bleak; it isn’t hopeless. The third and final element in Hosea’s message is glorious: God will speak through the prophet yet again and restore his people once more. Over and over, just when Israel’s future seemed bleak to the point of hopelessness, Hosea heard God promising to breathe life into his people again. As surely as Hosea said of his wife Gomer, “She may have disgraced herself and humiliated me, but she’s still my wife; we have a life together and she has a future with me more glorious than anything she has ever imagined” – as surely as this word was announced to Israel the selfsame word is announced today to the church, the bride of Christ.

What word exactly did God address to Hosea concerning Israel? – “I will betroth you to me forever…in steadfast love and mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” God’s mercy and God’s faithfulness in turn will move the people to say to each other, in the words of Hosea, with hope surging through their hearts, “Come, let us return to the Lord….Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord….He will come to us as showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

And then Hosea heard God say in the anguish born of the heartbreak of unalloyed love, “How can I give you up, O my people? How can I hand you over?” Whereupon God pronounced Israel – and church – to be ‘Ruchamah,’ ‘visited with God’s mercy,’ and ‘ammi,’ ‘my people.’

Seven hundred and fifty years after Hosea spoke, Jesus Christ appeared. In the Nazarene the pardon of God and the patience of God and the faithfulness of God weren’t merely spoken afresh; in the Nazarene they were embodied. Our Lord, however, embodied more than God’s love and faithfulness. In his humanity Jesus embodied the human steadfast love and faithfulness that answers to God’s, the human steadfast love and faithfulness that you and I and all humankind are called to exemplify but don’t.

Then the one thing we must do this morning is seize our Lord in faith once more, and cling to him as we cling to none other. For in clinging to him we shall find his obedient humanness transmuting ours; we shall begin to exemplify the steadfast love and faithfulness that Hosea maintained to characterize God’s people. And we shall acknowledge afresh that Jesus Christ is husband to his bride, the church; he is the hope of humankind everywhere, the corrective for society’s leaders and, not least, the restoration of the church’s clergy.

For then our Lord will prove to be the one by whom God is glorified and his people are edified. And then too there will be vindicated a three-thousand year old prophet whose wayward wife came to her senses and came home; as did a prodigal son centuries later; as must every one of us today.

Victor Shepherd          September 2016

Reincarnation – Making sense of Christian faith

Victor Shepherd’s sermon on Reincarnation

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Why Is This Friday Different From All Others?

Isaiah 53:7-12 1st Peter 2:22-25 Luke 23:32-43

Today is Passover, and in Passover services throughout the Jewish community a young child asks his parents, “Why is this night different from all other nights? It’s assumed it’s important that the child know why this night is different from all others. It’s assumed as well that the child’s parents can tell her why.

At some point our children have asked us or will ask us, “Why is this Friday different from all other Fridays? Why do we call Good Friday ‘good’? It’s important that our children know why. And we, their parents, should be able to tell them.

The quickest answer is “Good Friday is the day on which Jesus died.” But our children will still have many questions: “Why do we make so much of the death of Jesus? We don’t make anything of the death of John the Baptist? And when aunt Susie died last year no one at the funeral said it was good.”

Children persist. “Is it because Jesus died a martyr?” But thousands of Christians have died martyrs. “Then is it because Jesus’ death was unusually painful or distressing?” But millions have died in greater physical pain and distress. Then why is this Friday different from all others?

‘Good Friday’ is a modern expression. In the mediaeval era Christians spoke of God’s Friday. For on this day God acted definitively on behalf of humankind. On this day God did something apart from which the human predicament would be hopeless. He did something apart from which we would have remained helpless. This Friday, God’s Friday, has eternal significance for the entire human creation.

I: — As we ponder what God did and why he did it the truth about us humans begins to settle upon us. We read the all-time favourite parable of the lost son, and we hear the father cry, “My son was lost. He was dead.” Lost? Dead? Do these words really describe the situation of sinful humankind before God? Surely Jesus didn’t mean that unbelief has consequences as serious as this. (‘Lost, dead.’)

And then our eyes alight on a few words with which Jesus introduces a teaching to his disciples: “If you fellows, evil as you are…” He’s talking to disciples, to his friends, not to atheists or moral degenerates or

ne’er do wells; to disciples. And to them he says, matter of factly, as if what he’s saying were so obvious no one could disagree, “If you fellows, evil as you are….”

We penetrate the sentimental haze that surrounds Christmas and recognize that the unrestrained effusiveness and uninhibited joy pertain to one item: we’ve been given a saviour. We catch the mood of the New Testament writers. Their mood is, “Whew. At last. Just when we thought it was all over with us and our predicament was irretrievable.” If these men and women are ecstatic over the gift of the saviour, do they know something about the human predicament that we, in our inflated self-assurance, have overlooked?

And then we hear Jesus announcing, as he looks detractors in the eye, “I didn’t come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance.” Repentance is a turn-around in life; it’s an about-face, a 180-degree redirection. Does Jesus Christ assume that my life is fundamentally misdirected now?

Yes. Our Lord’s diagnosis is that humankind is wrapped up in a deep-rooted revolt against God. Unbelief (he’s not talking now of the unbelief of the head, a relatively slight matter, but rather about the unbelief of the heart: hardness of heart); unbelief, he insists, isn’t an ‘allowable option’ that some pseudo-sophisticates prefer to hold. Unbelief of the heart is wilful rebellion and repudiation, protracted defiance and disdain concerning God himself. It’s persistent ingratitude concerning God and prideful contempt as well. Our revolt issues, in God’s economy, in a human condition that is accurately described, without exaggeration, by the words ‘lost’, ‘dead’.

A diagnosis as catastrophic as this has to be met with a treatment that’s anything but superficial, or else the treatment will prove wholly ineffective. Yet in our society shallow diagnoses of the human condition abound, and we are constantly proffered superficial treatments. Shallow diagnoses always call forth shallow treatments. One treatment is greater moral earnestness; another is hyped up religiosity; another is cultural refinement; another is more government control in order to ensure social order; another is less

government control in order to ensure individual responsibility. None of these treatments can remedy the human condition; they are all too shallow.

When I was eleven years old I was playing touch-football on the street when one of my friends upended me. My head struck the curb, and my skull was fractured. My friends managed to get me home. I was dazed, pain-wracked, and profoundly disoriented. My mother, distressed at seeing me and preferring not to think my condition critical, went to the bathroom medicine cabinet, took out a tube that was supposed to fix everything, and squirted Vaseline on my head. What was Vaseline going to do for a fractured skull? Nobody is faulting her. She didn’t perceive how badly I was injured; or unconsciously she couldn’t bring herself to admit I was badly injured; or she wanted to ‘buy time’, wait and see, by playing ‘Let’s pretend’.

In light of humankind’s predicament before God (universally denied by the purveyors of shallow diagnosis and treatment), all shallow recommendations are as ineffective as putting Vaseline on a fractured skull.

God sees our repudiation of him (the unbelief of the heart), our brazen attempts at disguising our revolt, and our shallow attempts at remedying a predicament whose profundity we won’t acknowledge. God reacts. Of course he reacts. If God didn’t react he’d be a psychopath, as character-deficient as those pathetic people who are conscienceless, shameless, and everywhere dangerous. His reaction is his condemnation. His reaction issues in our estrangement from him. His reaction fixes a gulf between him and us, which gulf our rebellion, rejection and repudiation of him aimed at anyway, didn’t it?

Our Lord is the supreme realist. His diagnosis is correct. We are, he tells us, estranged from God by our defiant disobedience, and fixed in that estrangement by God’s just judgement.

II: — Yet Good Friday is God’s Friday, remember; and God’s Friday is Good Friday. Good Friday must

be good news, it has to be good news, or nothing could be good about it. Good Friday is good news, the good news of the gospel. The gospel is God-in-his-mercy coming among us who are lost and dead just because he is more distressed at our estrangement from him than we are. In his mercy God will do anything in order to set us right with himself.

Then what has he done? At the cross he has sealed his judgement upon us and manifested that judgement incontrovertibly (bad news); and at the cross he has simultaneously taken his own judgement upon himself, thereby fashioning acquittal for us. Good news.

Think of the last time you had to discipline your child for a serious offence. You had to do two things. In the first place you had to impress on your child your displeasure at her; you had to ensure your child understood that her behaviour was unacceptable; you were not going to tolerate it, and her punishment she deserved entirely. In the second place, you had to assure your recalcitrant child that you still loved her; that her outrageous behaviour grieved you more than it grieved her; that your anger – legitimate, vivid, evident – was nonetheless nothing compared to your heartbreak. In a word, you had to assure your child that the punishment she had to undergo pained you more than it pained her, cost you more than it cost her. Every parent wrestles with this dilemma.

God wrestles with it too. And God resolves his dilemma through the cross. Through the cross he makes plain that our defiance of him and repudiation of him, so far from a slight matter, is an intolerable matter, a damnable matter. After all, our recalcitrance has cost him his Son – which is to say, has cost God himself everything, since Father and Son are one in their suffering on Good Friday.

At the same time, through the cross God declares that his mercy is without measure and without end, for he hasn’t spared his Son, hasn’t spared himself, all for the sake of sparing us. So it is that Paul exclaims, in limitless amazement, “God instantiates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

I have heard people say, “What does the death of Jesus have to do with God’s saving us? If we were drowning a hundred metres offshore, out in the middle of the lake, and someone standing on the dock took pity on us, and exclaimed, ‘I feel sorry for your predicament. I’ll jump into the water and drown too: we’ll both drown together” – I’ve heard people say that such a situation doesn’t prove that the second person loves the first or can save the first. All it proves is the stupidity and ineffectiveness of the silly person who jumped off the dock and threw his life away.

Then did Jesus merely throw his life away? In truth, our Lord’s cross is wholly different. The alienation from his Father that the Son undergoes on Good Friday – the dereliction we call it (“Why have you forsaken me?”) is nothing less and nothing other than humankind’s alienation from God (even though we are insensitive to it). And since, according to the Incarnation, Father and Son are one in their judgement upon us, one in their execution of that judgement, and one in the alienation that judgement entails, then the Son’s alienation from the Father is simultaneously the Father’s self-alienation. And the Father’s self-alienation is nothing less than God, the just judge, absorbing in himself his judgement upon us, leaving us acquittal, pardon, forgiveness, life.

Think of it from another angle. In Jesus Christ, God the judge enacts his sentence of condemnation upon humankind. And then God the judge does what no human judge ever does in a court of law. He steps down from his elevated bench, stands with the offender, and imposes on himself the sentence he has just imposed on the offender, thereby absorbing in himself the sentence the offender deserves and has received and yet is now spared.

Let’s return to the matter of parents disciplining children. A parent comes upon a child behaving outrageously and consigns that child to her bedroom, without supper. Some time later, the parent, so very upset at the child’s behaviour that the parent can’t eat his supper, goes to the child’s room, sits with the child, and tells the child why all of this had to occur. Then the parent, having absorbed the punishment he

assigned the child, puts his arm around the child, and the two of them walk out of the room together.

III: — Together. This word brings us to the last point of the sermon. As God has absorbed his judgement upon us at the cross, he and we can live henceforth together. He can’t do anything more for us than he has already done. Whether we live henceforth together now hangs on our response.

Our response will include several aspects. It will include our recognition that the diagnosis concerning us has been correct. It will include our acknowledgement that the remedy for our predicament God alone has fashioned. It will include our admission that we do not add to this cure nor do we subtract from it: either we receive it or we spurn it. Our response will include our discernment that the remedy, finally, isn’t an ‘it’ at all but rather the effectual presence of Jesus Christ himself, and therefore we are going to embrace him gratefully or rebuff him haughtily.

Two hundred years ago it was the custom of the leaders of a vanquished army to hand over their swords (ceremonial swords) to the victor. Handing over one’s sword was the conclusive, public acknowledgment of surrender.

After the last shot was fired in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, the victorious general, the Duke of Wellington summoned the defeated French generals to his tent. They appeared, greeted Wellington, and took the seats he offered them. Immediately they congratulated Wellington on his superior military prowess. Why, they were professional soldiers too, and certainly they had an eye for military genius. In fact, they continued, so fine a soldier was Wellington that it was no disgrace to lose to him. It was an honour simply to be found on the field of battle with him. Perhaps they could all have a glass of sherry and toast each other.

The flattery mounted. Wellington listened to it for twenty-odd minutes and then said quietly, yet

uncompromisingly, “Gentlemen, I want your swords.” He didn’t want to be flattered. He wanted to be surrendered to. And he wanted a conclusive, public acknowledgement of that surrender. To this end the men who surrendered to him were going to have to stand before him empty-handed.

It is for the same reason the hymn writer cries, “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling.”

If you are offended by the simplicity of the Good Friday message, I can only say that the gospel, finally, is simple.

If you are offended by its diagnosis of the human predicament before God, I must insist on its realism.

If you are offended by the crudeness of crucifixion and blood and bedraggled Jew, I can only say that no one has ever been saved by Gentile, genteel refinement.

Why is this Friday different from all others? Why is this Friday Good Friday? Because it’s God’s Friday. And by God’s grace and the faith his grace enlivens within us, may it ever be yoursand mine as well.

Victor Shepherd

Good Friday 2015       St Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga          

Our Doctrines

(preached at Church of St. Bride, Mississauga Ontario, May 25, 2008)

May 24th – Wesley Day

“Our Doctrines”

 

It would be difficult to imagine anyone more rigid, more defensive, more inflexible – in a word, more “uptight” – than Anglican clergyman John Wesley in Georgia , 1737. When day-old infants were brought to the church for baptism, Wesley insisted on immersing them completely three times over. As horrified mothers objected to this dangerous practice (wasn’t it enough that the infant-mortality rate was already 50%?) Wesley reacted by refusing to serve Holy Communion to the mothers themselves.

At this point in his life Wesley was a moralist. He thought the mission of the church to be that of improving the moral tone of the society. Like all moralists he was also a legalist; that is, he thought that people were admitted to God’s favour on the basis of rule-keeping.  Like moralists and legalists in general, he was a snob: superior, disdainful, autocratic, unbending – in a word, obnoxious.

Obnoxious he certainly was; stupid, however, he was not. A graduate of Oxford University , Wesley was proficient in the ancient languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew.   He knew philosophy, history, literature, logic, theology. French appears to have been the only modern language in which he was schooled formally. Still, on the three-month voyage to Georgia he taught himself German so thoroughly that years later he translated dozens of Paul Gerhardt’s hymns from German to English.  In the New World he came upon some Italian settlers who were without a clergyman.         Wesley conducted worship for them, reading the Anglican Prayer Book service to himself while translating it aloud into the Italian he had recently taught himself. In Frederica, a village a few miles from Savannah , Wesley came upon a Jewish community.   The Jewish people were from Portugal but spoke Spanish. Whereupon Wesley taught himself Spanish in order to converse with them.

Then disaster overtook him.  He was 34 years old and had become infatuated with an 18-year old woman, Sophy Hopkey. She rejected him in favour of another man whom she subsequently married, Mr. Williamson. Hurt, frustrated and angry all at once, Wesley found excuses to withhold Holy Communion from Sophy, thereby suggesting to the public that she was scandal-ridden. Her husband was outraged. He had the politically powerful summon a Grand Jury.  The Grand Jury indicted Wesley, and he took the next ship back to England in order to escape a lawsuit.

Why had he gone in the first place?   He had gone inasmuch as he was a spiritual groper.  He had thought that going to the wilderness in the New World would somehow translate into a fresh start for him in his spiritual quest. Candidly he said he’d gone in hope of saving his own soul.

Having returned to England a disillusioned man, haunted by his failure and tormented by his quest, he floundered for months until one Sunday evening he went to a service in London . He says he went “very unwillingly”, no doubt because he felt there was no point to going: his situation was hopeless and he himself helpless.  Listen to Wesley now in his own words:

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street , where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  About a quarter before nine , while he

was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.         I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

 

It was 24th May, 1738 , the occasion of the long-awaited turn-around in his life.  His moralism and legalism were behind him forever.  Immediately his preaching shifted from moral exhortation to gospel-offer. His attitude to people, especially those beneath his social position, shifted from contempt to compassion. His rigorous self-discipline shifted from an achievement by which he sought to gain favour with God to a simple life-style that freed up everything about him and made it available to others.   It happened on May 24, 1738 , a day that his followers thereafter knew as “Wesley Day.”

Years later he and his people (Methodism at this time was still a renewal movement within Anglicanism) began to speak of “Our Doctrines.” Their doctrines, however, weren’t unique to them.   “Our Doctrines” were the doctrines of the church-at-large.   There was nothing novel about them.  Wesley abhorred theological novelty, insisting that anything novel had to be heretical. “Our doctrines” were Anglican, and Wesley considered them the doctrines of Christians everywhere. At the same time, Wesley insisted that his people own them, and own them with mind and heart, understanding and zeal.

 

[1] First among “Our Doctrines” is justification by faith. Justification or righteousness means right-relatedness to God.   Justification, right-relatedness by faith is always to be contrasted with justification by something else; namely, justification by achievement.   The issue is this: is our righted-relationship with God, our standing with God, a gift from God, or is it something we earn and therefore merit?  With the help of friends who were spiritual descendants of Luther, Wesley came to see that scripture clearly affirms our right-relationship to God to be God’s gift, a gift that we possess by faith.

To say that sinners are justified is to say that those in the wrong before God are put in the right with God.  It’s to say that they are pardoned, or forgiven, or acquitted, or freely accepted. All these terms mean the same. To say that this happens through the faith of the believing person is to say that such a person welcomes God’s forgiveness, endorses God’s acquittal, accepts God’s acceptance of oneself.   Needless to say, faith must never be construed as a virtue that God recognizes and rewards. Faith must never be construed as an achievement that merits pardon with God.

Faith is simply the bond that binds us to Jesus Christ. Isn’t Jesus Christ the Son with whom the Father is well-pleased?   Then as we are bound to Christ in faith, and bound so closely to him as to be identified with him, we are now the son or daughter with whom the Father is pleased. Isn’t Jesus Christ the only covenant-partner of God who keeps the covenant with his Father? Then as we are bound to Jesus Christ in faith and thereby identified with him, we who are covenant-breakers in ourselves are now deemed covenant-keepers in Christ. Isn’t Jesus Christ the one whose cross bore the sin of humankind?   Then as we are bound to him in faith and identified with him our sin is borne away.

The apostle Paul gloried in the truth of justification by faith. Yet we mustn’t think that Paul invented the doctrine.         He had found it everywhere in the earthly ministry of Jesus.

Our Lord told a parable of two men who went to church to pray. One fellow, indisputably a moral giant, tried to use his moral attainment as a bargaining-chip with God. The other fellow could only plead, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  “I tell you”, said Jesus, “this man went home justified.”

Justification by faith is the beginning of the Christian life; it’s the beginning of the Christian life and the stable basis for all else in the Christian life. Justification by faith is first among “Our Doctrines.”

 

[2]         Second is the new birth. Whereas justification is a change in the believer’s standing before God (from condemnation to acquittal, from rejection to acceptance, from expulsion to welcome), regeneration or new birth is a change within the believer herself. Wesley spoke of justification as a relative change (relative because of a changed relationship) and of new birth as a real change.

Through the prophet Ezekiel God had promised to create a new heart, a new spirit, within his people.   Ezekiel contrasts the new “heart of flesh” with the old “heart of stone.” The heart of flesh beats, pulsates, throbs.         It invigorates someone who is alive.  The heart of stone, on the other hand, is the heart of a corpse, a heart taken over by rigor mortis. The difference between the heart of flesh and the heart of stone is the difference between someone who is alive unto God and someone who is inert before God. It’s the difference between someone who is responsive to God, engaged with God, and someone who is insensitive, unresponsive, indifferent.

As glorious as justification is (the freely-bestowed forgiveness of God), Wesley knew it wasn’t enough.  He asked himself a question as simple as it was profound: can people be changed, really changed, changed from the inside out?         Everyone knew that behavioural conformity could be fostered.   (Moralists and legalists major in this.)  But could a change so very profound occur that someone was given new aspiration, new motivation, new obedience, in short a new nature?    Wesley knew that either God can make a real change in us or the most the gospel offers is a pronouncement of pardon upon our bondage to sin even as that bondage is unrelieved.  As glorious as he knew forgiveness of sin to be, Wesley knew that God could do something with sin beyond forgiving it. He insisted that the gospel not only relieved people of sin’s guilt; it also released them from sin’s grip.  Life could begin again.

People can change; better, people can be changed.  God will grant them a new heart.  God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.  The person he forgives he also remakes.   Either this is true or the gospel isn’t good news.         It is true.  Deliverance can be experienced.   The relative change of the remission of sin is always accompanied by the real change of regeneration.  Believers have a genuine future.

 

[3]  Third in “Our Doctrines” is the witness of the Spirit (i.e., the witness of the Holy Spirit.)   The children of God can know themselves to be such. When people come to faith in Jesus Christ and are renewed at his hand they are no longer mere creatures of God but are now children of God.  God seals this truth upon them so as to leave them with every assurance that they are his.

Wesley was aware that the spiritually hungry look to our Lord in hope of being fed. Plainly a sense of need has impelled them to look to him.  Plainly the more urgent their sense of need, the more anxiously they look. If in looking to Jesus Christ they lack assurance that they have met him and are now fused to him, then their everyday bundle of anxieties remains unrelieved and is in fact swelled by a fearsome religious anxiety.  Then it’s crucial that those who have passed from death to life know it.

Wesley found the witness of the Spirit writ large in scripture, largest of all in Romans 8:15 where Paul exclaims, “The Spirit, God himself, constrains us to cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ As the Spirit pulls this cry out of us the Spirit himself bears witness to us that we are children of God.”

Wesley knew that one thing only relieved anxious people concerning their standing with God: the incursion of that Spirit who floods believing people so as to authenticate their adoption at God’s hand, and this indubitably.

The witness of God’s Spirit resembles happiness in one respect: if we pursue it, it forever escapes us.         Happiness, everyone knows, overtakes people when they aren’t looking for it but are getting on with what they have to do.  In the same way God’s Spirit assures us of our standing with him (“No condemnation now I dread” wrote Charles) as we are preoccupied with what God has given us to do.

 

[4]         Fourth among “Our Doctrines” is the declaration of the law to believers. Believers have to be guided on the road of discipleship.

Over and over throughout the history of the church, wherever the glorious truth of justification by faith has been declared, some people have drawn the wrong conclusion.  They say “If we are set right with God by our faith in the provision he has made for us in his Son, then it makes no difference what we do thereafter.” The apostle Paul had to contend with the same misunderstanding during his ministry. When he announced the good news of the gospel (we are justified by grace through faith, not on account of our conformity to law), some hearers assumed that the law of God had been overturned. “By no means”, the apostle expostulated.  “On the contrary, faith upholds the law.” The law of God is necessary if believers are to live out, live rightly, the new life they have received in Christ.

Once again, Wesley didn’t invent anything here. Apart from scripture’s insistence on the law of God as a guide to believers Wesley took it most immediately from the Puritans who had preceded him.   The Puritans took it from Calvin, who found it ultimately in Melanchthon, the fellow who “packaged” Luther’s theology.  Melanchthon called it “the third use of the law.”

The first use, Luther had said, was to order the society, to prevent social breakdown, even social chaos.  The second use was to convict people of their sinnership as they came to see that they violated the law of God and were therefore guilty before God. The third use of the law was to guide believers along the road of discipleship.

Think, for instance, of the prohibition concerning theft. The first use of the law forestalls a social chaos wherein nobody can survive.  The second use convicts people of their deep-down sinnership and points them to the gospel for relief.  After all, the prohibition against theft includes envy, greed, covetousness – sins of which everyone is guilty.         The third use guides believers along the road of discipleship as believers now know they must repudiate any envy, greed, covetousness that laps at them even as they must put everything they own at the disposal of their neighbour.

Did I say that the third use of the law is to help believers along the road of discipleship?  I did. But isn’t Jesus Christ our companion on the road?   He is. Then the law of God, for believers, is simply the claim of Jesus Christ upon our obedience. Our Lord himself insists that we obey him, obey him in person. Then the third use of the law is simply our Lord’s relentless insistence that we obey him and thereby walk in that newness of life which he has already bestowed on us.

“Our doctrines” included – and must ever include – the declaration of the law to believers.

 

[5]         Last, but no means least, is Christian Perfection.  Now don’t be put off because you’ve heard the word “perfection.” Wesley didn’t endorse a perfectionism that renders people neurotic. He didn’t endorse a religious superiority that leaves people snobbish and self-righteous. He did, however, encourage his people to look to God for deliverance from every vestige of selfism.

Wesley knew, as the church catholic has always known, that selfism is the essence of sin.  To be freed from sin profoundly is to be freed from a self-preoccupation that measures everything and everyone in terms of catering to the self and magnifying the self and promoting the self.  Since we all need to be freed from such self-preoccupation as we need nothing else, and since all of Christ’s people have been appointed to be delivered from it in heaven, why not look to God to be delivered from it now? Why set arbitrary limits to what God can do to free us in this life?

I know what you are going to tell me: you are going to say that any concern with deliverance from selfism is at bottom another form of self-preoccupation.  But not so for Wesley. For him Christian perfection was self-forgetfulness, self-forgetfulness that frees us for love of God and neighbour.  Self-forgetful love for God and neighbour entails a self-sacrifice that is so thoroughly selfless as not even to be aware of being a sacrifice. “Lost in wonder, love and praise”, wrote Charles Wesley.  Be sure to underline “lost”; self-abandoned to discerning and doing God’s will, self-abandoned to assisting the poor, the lonely, the outcast, the disadvantaged, the spiritually inert.

When Wesley saw the plight of the poor, sick people who first joined his Anglican renewal movement he gathered to himself a surgeon and an “apothecary”, and then scrounged the money to pay them. In the first five months of this program his apothecary distributed drugs to 500 people. The drugs cost 40 pounds. He raised the money himself. By 1746 he had established London ’s first free dispensary.

Wesley was distressed at the plight of aged widows. He purchased houses and refurbished them. Would the widows who had to live in them feel themselves demeaned as charity cases much beneath the social position of Wesley himself?  Every time he was in the neighbourhood he ate at their table and ate the same food.

When the banks refused to lend money to sobered-up, industrious converts who wanted to start up small businesses, Wesley scrabbled for 50 pounds and then handed out small loans. In the first year he helped 250 people make a fresh economic start.

When Anglican officialdom faulted Wesley for advocating Christian perfection he asked the bishops who faulted him, “When you were at Holy Communion this morning, did you pray the Collect, ‘…cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you…’? And when you prayed these words, did you mean them?  Then why are you faulting me now?”

 

May 24th. Most of us associate the date with the birth of Queen Victoria . It’s more profound to associate the day with the new birth of the Reverend John Wesley, Anglican clergyman, servant of God, leader of the Eighteenth Century Awakening. Because his heart was ‘strangely warmed’, the hearts of millions throughout the world have been set on fire to the glory of God, and to the edification of the neighbour, and, not least, to the relief of the sufferer.

Reverend Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                       May 2008

The Life and Art of Charles Wesley

The following is the text of a sermon preached on February 22, 1998.

CHARLES WESLEY
1707-1788

Part I: The Life of Charles Wesley

Nine thousand poems; 27,000 stanzas; 180,000 lines. The output of Charles Wesley is prodigious: three times the output of William Wordsworth, one of England’s most prolific poets. Needless to say, Charles didn’t write poetry every day. Still, his output means that on average he wrote ten lines of poetry every day for fifty years.

If Charles were alive today he’d strike us as eccentric. He wore his winter clothing all year ’round, even in the hottest summer weather. Whenever poetic inspiration fell on him he became preoccupied to the point of semi-derangement. Seemingly unaware of where he was or what was in front of him, he would walk into a table or chair or desk, stumbling, lurching, crashing, not helped at all by his extreme shortsightedness. He would stride into a room, oblivious of the fact that a conversation had been underway before he invaded, and begin firing questions at those present, these people now wondering what weird creature was interrogating them. Not waiting for their reply, he would pour out aloud the poetry that was taking shape in his head, turn on his heel and walk out. If he happened to be on horseback when lines fell into place in his head, he would ride to the home of an acquaintance, hammer on the door and cry, “Pen and ink! Pen and ink!” The poetry safely written down, he excused himself and went on his way.

Charles could write poetry for any occasion. When his wife was about to enter upon the rigours of childbirth, for instance (no little rigour in the 18th century), he wrote a poem for her which she could use as a prayer:

Who so near the birth hast brought,
(Since I on Thee rely)
Tell me, Saviour, wilt thou not
Thy farther help supply?
Whisper to my list’ning soul,
Wilt thou not my strength renew,
Nature’s fears and pangs control,
And bring thy handmaid through?

At the funeral of George Whitefield, the Anglican evangelist who was a much more dramatic preacher than either John or Charles Wesley, Charles praised his departed friend in a poem 536 lines long! While his poetry concerned chiefly the themes of the gospel message, he also tried, as imaginatively as he could, to empathize with all sorts of people in their manifold stresses and strains and griefs. For this reason he has left us poetry about wives and widows, coalminers and criminals, highschool students and highwaymen, saints and soldiers, particularly soldiers who were loyal to the crown of England during the American War of Independence.

Charles was born in 1707, the 18th of 19 children, eleven of whom survived the ravages of childhood disease. He gained his eccentricity from both his mother and his father. When his mother, Susannah Annesley, was only 13 years-old she defied her father, a learned Puritan minister, and informed the family that she was becoming an Anglican. Now the Anglican Church, the state-church, had persecuted Puritan Dissenters for decades, frequently making martyrs out of men who wanted only to preach the gospel according to their conscience. The 13 year-old voiced no reason for her decision; she was content to tell her hurt and horrified parents that she had her reasons and had written them in her diary. (Years later her diary disappeared in the house-fire that nearly carried her off with her husband and children; therefore no one knows to this day what her reasons were.) Susannah was unyielding; when she married, several years later, her father was not allowed to officiate as no non-Anglican minister could preside at a service of the state-church. (Her father was crushed at this.)

The father of Charles, Samuel Wesley, was eccentric too. Fancying himself a poet, he published a book of entirely forgettable verse. The title of his book of poems was simply Maggots. The single illustration adorning the book was a drawing of Samuel himself with a large maggot sitting on his forehead. The poems are unusual: “The Grunting of a Hog”; “A Box like an Egg”; and my favourite, of course, “The Tame Snake in a Box of Bran”.

Samuel and Susannah married, eventually having 19 children. They almost didn’t get past the 14th, however. Susannah and Samuel differed sharply as to who was the rightful ascendant to the throne of England. Susannah supported James II, the rightful heir according to birth, while Samuel supported William, Prince of Orange, who had been imported from Holland. “William is no king!”, fumed Susannah, “he is but a prince.” “If we are going to have two kings in this home”, riposted her husband, “then we shall have two beds!” Husband and wife slept apart for a year, during which Susannah complained to the bishop of Lincoln and the archbishop of York that she was maritally deprived. Neither bishop would have anything to do with the dispute. The night husband and wife were reconciled, John Wesley, their 15th child, was conceived. Charles was born four years later.

Both boys possessed awesome academic talent. When he was still a teenager Charles competed in what was known as a “Challenge”, a scholarly joust wherein one fellow tried to “stump” another on any of a hundred subtle questions concerning Greek grammar. The competition began early in the morning and continued until nine at night, three or four nights a week, for eight weeks. Much was at stake, since the winner would be named a “King’s Scholar” and guaranteed entrance to Oxford or Cambridge University. Charles triumphed and moved on to Oxford.

Following his ordination to the Anglican priesthood he ministered in Georgia for six months where he proved himself to be a most obnoxious clergyman: prickly, opinionated, self-righteous, condescending, prying. Upon his return to England he rejoined his sister Kezia, the youngest of the nineteen Wesley children. Kezia’s adolescent frivolity had infuriated Charles earlier, for Kezia used snuff, the 18th century equivalent of marijuana. Her frivolity behind her now in her new-found maturity, Kezia told Charles she believed that God could and did work a work of grace in the human heart. Believers, she said, were granted new standing before God, a new nature, new outlook, new motivation, new affections. Then on 21st May, 1738, Kezia’s conviction and experience the truth became his. Charles wrote in his journal, “…by degrees [the Spirit of God] chased away the darkness of my unbelief. I found myself convinced…. I saw that by faith I stood.” Whereupon he wrote a hymn that Christians still sing:

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died he for me, who caused his pain?
For me, who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That thou, my God, should’st die for me?

Three days later John came to the same awareness. Methodism was born. In the meantime their friend George Whitefield (unlike the Wesleys, George Whitefield had not been born to the privileged clergy class but rather was the illegitimate child of an English barmaid); Whitefield, an Anglican priest too, had been expelled from Anglican pulpits. Like John the Baptist, Whitefield never left any doubt as to where he stood. “I am persuaded”, he wrote, “that the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and an unfelt Christ. The reason why congregations have been so dead is because they have had dead men preaching to them. How can dead men beget living children?” Soon Whitefield was joined by the Wesleys in outdoor preaching, where thy addressed crowds of up to 25,000.

In 1740 Charles visited Wales for the first time. The Welsh people loved him; at least most of them did. In Cardiff, however, he had his first taste of violent (although by no means his last.) A bystander who heard him was incensed at being told that moral rectitude was no substitute for clinging in faith to the sin-bearing Christ. Angrily he demanded that Charles recant. Charles refused and replied to him,”You cannot endure sound doctrine…you are a rebel against God, and must bow your stiff neck to him before you can be forgiven.” Whereupon the angry man assaulted Charles with his cane. In the ensuing melee a Mrs. Phipps was struck as well, and is remembered to this day only because she was struck accidentally by the man who was beating Charles.

Not only was Charles a forceful evangelist, he was a diligent pastor. Like any good pastor, he spent much time at deathbeds. His journal entry of 4th March, 1741, reads, “I saw my dear friend again, in great bodily weakness but strong in the Lord…. I spoke with her physician who said, `She has no dread upon her spirits…I never met such people as yours.'” In the same year he buried a young woman, Rachel Peacock, and subsequently wrote, “At the sight of her coffin my soul was moved within me and struggled as a bird to break the cage. Some relief I found in tears, but still was so overpowered that unless God had abated the vehemence of my desires, I could have had no utterance. The whole congregation partook with me of the blessedness of mourning.”

When Charles was 39 years old he married Sarah Gwynne, daughter of Marmaduke Gwynne, a Welsh magistrate. Sarah, known to everyone as “Sally”, was 20. Before she married him she told him he had to take better care of himself physically. To this end she urged him to stop getting up every morning at four and to sleep in until six; to stop sleeping on boards and begin sleeping in a bed; and lastly, if she was going to marry him he would have to take off his clothes when he slept. Sarah’s hideously disfigured face, the result of smallpox, Charles always found beautiful. Theirs was a marriage of storybook romance. Eight children were born to them, five of whom died in infancy or early childhood.

Yet not everyone among the Wesley brothers and sisters had a marriage like theirs. Mehetabel or “Hetty”, the favourite sister of both John and Charles, was intelligent, vivacious, wonderfully gifted as a poet and sensitive to a degree that only her two dear brothers appeared to grasp. When Hetty was 25 years-old a suitor called on her several times. Her father, Samuel, disapproved of the suitor and told him not to come back. Samuel reinforced his decree by sending Hetty to a wealthy family where she worked as an unpaid drudge. She had been wounded by her father’s heavyhandedness, was desperately lonely, and lacked utterly the intellectual company she craved. She wrote John vowing that she would never return home, never. She was home in less than a year, five months pregnant. Her father, heavyhanded still and enraged now as well, forced her to marry Mr. William Wright, a coarse, insensitive fellow as unlike Hetty as any man could be, and habitually drunk in addition. Her baby died before it was a year old. A second infant died, and then a third. Hetty was crushed. Her grief found expression in her poem, “A Mother’s Address to Her Dying Infant”:

Tender softness, infant mild,
Perfect, purest, brightest child!
Transient lustre, beauteous clay,
Smiling wonder of a day!
Ere the last convulsive start
Rend thy unresisting heart,
Ere the long-enduring swoon
Weigh thy precious eyelids down,
Ah, regard a mother’s moan!
–Anguish deeper than thy own.

John was irate at his father’s callousness and preached a sermon, “Showing Charity to Repentant Sinners.” The sermon blasted father Samuel and was meant to shake him up. He remained unaffected, his heart hardened against his daughter forever.

When Hetty fell mortally ill at age 35, Charles attended her. “I prayed by my sister”, he wrote, “a gracious, trembling soul; a bruised reed which the Lord will not break.” The day she died John was absent in London. Charles conducted the funeral service for his favourite sister, preaching on the text, “The Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” That night he wrote in his journal, “I followed her to a quiet grave, and I wept with them that wept.”

Charles didn’t always agree with his older brother, John. In fact they disagreed very sharply over the matter of lay-preachers. As Methodism and gathered more and more people, it found itself without sufficient preachers. While John and Charles were Anglican priests and wished to be nothing else, relatively few Anglican clergy sided with the Methodists, knowing that to do so would ruin their careers in the church. As a result, the Methodist movement had to use more and more lay-preachers. These lay-preachers were zealous, sincere men who did their best but who, of course, lacked formal academic training. Their lack of theological rigour sometimes gave rise to preaching that Charles found to be full of sound and fury yet signifying little. Concerning one such lay-preacher, Michael Fenwick, Charles wrote,

“Such a preacher I have never heard, and hope I never shall again. It was beyond description. I cannot say he preached false doctrine, or true, or any doctrine at all, but pure, unmixed nonsense. Not one sentence did he utter that could do the least good to any one soul.”

John, however, insisted that Methodism couldn’t survive without lay-preachers and sharply rebuked Charles for his fussiness. Charles would simply have to put up with them.

By 1756 Charles no longer had the stamina for an itinerant ministry from the back of a horse. He was 49 years old, had spent years being rain-soaked, frozen, poorly-fed and assaulted by angry mobs. He gave up the itinerant ministry and established residence in Bristol, preaching there and in London regularly.

By 1780 Charles was 73 years old. Confusion had overtaken him. Poetry no longer leapt to his mind. When he preached now he paused at length between phrases, trying to recall what he wanted to say. In frustration he would thump his chest with both hands while mumbling incoherently. Then, tired, he would lean on the pulpit with both elbows. If he wanted more time he had the congregation sing a hymn; and if more time still, another hymn.

He lived another eight years. John was in Newcastle when he learned of the death of his brother. Next Sunday John was conducting worship, entirely composed, when the congregation happened to sing one of Charles’s earliest hymns. When the congregation came to the words

My company before is gone
And I am left alone with Thee

John unravelled. He staggered back into the pulpit chair, weeping profusely. The congregation waited for him, and he recovered enough to finish the service.

Sarah, Charles’s widow, moved to London and lived there with her daughter and son. She died in 1822 at the age of 96.

 

Part II: The Art of Charles Wesley

To be sure, Charles Wesley was a genius, yet “genius” wasn’t the only ingredient in his poetic mastery. He had been given a fine education in the classics, and he toiled unrelentingly.

Our friend went to high school when he was 11 years old. On Monday mornings the lower form boys wrote an English prose precis of the sermon they had heard the day before; the middle form boys wrote a Latin prose precis; the upper form boys, a Latin verse precis. (Is there any Grade 13 student today who could write a Latin verse precis of last Sunday’s sermon?)

After high school Charles moved on to Oxford University where he studied Latin and Greek for 9 years, with concentration in Latin poetry. By age 30 he had written hundreds of poems, even though he had yet penned any of the hymns that would issue from his spiritual awakening. When the awakening did occur, immersing him in a whole new world, it was so huge an event that Charles likened it to the creation of the cosmos. He compared the brooding of the Spirit over him to the brooding of the Spirit over the primeval chaos when the Spirit first brought the world into being. In this regard he wrote

Long o’er my formless soul
The dreary waves did roll;
Void I lay and sunk in night.
Thou, the overshadowing Dove,
Call’dst the chaos into light,
Badst me be, and live, and love.

All poets read other poets and are thereby informed by the poets they read. Charles was no exception. He read chiefly Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, Dryden, Pope, Prior and Young. (Prior’s poem, “Solomon” , is 100 pages long, and Charles expected his daughter, Sally, to memorize all of it.) Yet none of the poets he read had anything like the influence on him that scripture had. (See appended illustrations of scriptural themes in his hymns.)

While Charles’s themes came from scripture, his poetic vocabulary was entirely his own, a fine blend of English words from Latin roots and English words from Anglo-Saxon roots. His basic vocabulary was Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon words are largely monosyllabic; e.g., “hid”, “wind”, “swept”, “thrust”. They are more vigorous than Latin words and have greater impact. English words derived from Latin, on the other hand, tend to be polysyllabic. They suggest not action but contemplation. They are capable of greater precision of thought.

Those aramanthine bowers
Inalienably made ours.

(Aramanthine means “never-fading.”) Charles was especially fond of Latinisms ending in -able, -ible, -ably and -ibly. Look at his Christmas hymn on the Incarnation:

Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.

In this vein we should note his hymn, “O Thou who camest from above”:

There let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze.

(In 1904 some Methodist revisers altered “With inextinguishable blaze” to “With ever-bright, undying blaze.”) If today we find Wesley’s vocabulary difficult to understand in places because strange to us, we should know that his vocabulary is the most modern of all 18th century poets.

By dint of his 9-year immersion in classical poetry Charles absorbed thoroughly the poetic conventions used so very tellingly by the classical poets.

 

(i) Some of the rhetorical devices CW used.

Anaphora: repeating the same word at the beginning of consecutive phrases or sentences. E.g. (with respect to God’s grace),

“Enough for all, enough for each,
Enough for evermore.”

Anadiplosis: beginning a stanza with the theme (re-stated, but not reproduced word-for-word) of the last line of the preceding stanza. E.g., in “Jesus, lover of my soul”,

stanza 3, last line: “Thou art full of truth and grace.”
stanza 4, first line: “Plenteous grace with thee is found.”
And again, e.g., in “And can it be that I should gain”
stanza 1, last line: “That thou, my God, should’st die for me!”
stanza 2, first line: “‘Tis mystery all: th’immortal dies.”

Epanadiplosis: beginning and ending a line (“book-ending” the line) with the same word:

E.g., “Come, desire of nations, come.”

Epizeuxis: repeating a word or phrase within a line.

E.g., “Who for me, for me hast died.”

(The foregoing four devices are forms of repetition used to lend emphasis, continuity or cohesion.)

Aposiopesis: the speaker comes to a complete halt in mid-stanza.

E.g., “What shall I say?”

Oxymoron: inherent self-contradiction.

E.g., “I want a calmly-fervent zeal.”

Parison: an even balance in the expressions or words of a sentence.

E.g., “The good die young;
The bad live long.”

(Wesley used many more rhetorical devices as well.)

 

(ii) Some examples of CW’s vocabulary. (He liked to retain or recover literal meanings.)

expressed: shaped by a strong blow (as from a die)
illustrate: illuminate
secure: free from care
tremendous: terrifying
virtue: manliness or power
pompous: dignified (but not ostentatious)

 

(iii) Some of the figures of speech CW used.

Metaphor: an implied comparison between two things.

E.g., “He laid his glory by,
He wrapped him in our clay.”

Synecdoche: one aspect of a person represents the whole of the person.

E.g., “The mournful, broken harts rejoice.”

Antonomasia: a proper name is used as a general epithet.

E.g., “Come, all ye Magdalens in lust.”

Hypotyposis: lively description.

E.g., “See! He lifts his hands!
See! He shews the prints of love.”

Hyperbole: exaggerated language used to express in the inexpressible.

E.g., “I rode on the sky
(Freely justified I!)
Nor envied Elijah his seat;
My soul mounted higher
In a chariot of fire,
And the moon it was under my feet.”

(Here CW was speaking of his experience of that grace which had pardoned him. (“Freely justified I!”)

 

(iv) Metre

iambic ‘/

trochaic ‘/

anapestic ”/

dactylic /”

spondaic //

CW wrote chiefly in iambic metre. Isaac Watts did too.

E.g.,
“And then shall we for ever live
At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee,
And thine to us so great!” (Watts)

(Watts wrote 1000 poems, of which only 22 were in trochaic and 5 in anapestic.)

While CW preferred iambic, he also wrote significantly in trochaic and anapestic, sometime combining them: iambic-anapestic (e.g., “Nor envied Elijah his seat”) or iambic-trochaic (e.g., “Jesus! the name that charms our fears” — trochaic-iambic.) He rarely wrote in dactylic (unlike Longfellow’s Evangeline: “This is the forest primeval”, or even “Hickory dickory dock.”) While most poets can work well in one metre only, CW could write superbly in any.

(v) Stanza Form

CW wrote many fine hymns in 4-line stanzas, the 1st and 3rd lines having 8 feet (syllables), and the 2nd and 4th lines 6.

E.g.,
“Jesus, united by thy grace,
And each to each endeared,
With confidence we seek thy face
And know our prayer is heard.”

He preferred 6 lines with 8 feet (8.8.8.8.8.8.)

E.g.,
“Then let us sit beneath the cross,
And gladly catch the healing stream,
All things for him account but loss,
And give up all our hearts to him;
Of nothing think or speak beside,
`My Lord, my Love is crucified.'”

(Note the rhyme scheme here: ABABCC)

His next favourite stanza form was 8.8.6.8.8.6. (“romance metre”)

E.g.,
“If pure, essential love thou art,
Thy nature into every heart,
Thy loving self inspire;
Bid all our simple souls be one,
United in a bond unknown,
Baptized with heavenly fire.” (AABCCB)

(vi) Endings

Lines that end in an unaccented syllable are said to possess feminine rhyme: (“Love divine, all loves excelling”); lines ending in an accented syllable, masculine (“O what shall I do my Saviour to praise?”). Masculine rhymes were thought to be “stronger”, imparting greater emphasis. CW wrote 300 poems in feminine rhymes, 8700 in masculine.

 

Conclusion

While the native genius and the formal training of Charles Wesley were important ingredients in his hymnwriting, they weren’t the most important. What counted above all was his life in God, his experience of the one of whom he then wrote. One hundred years after his death, many Methodist congregations were reluctant to sing his hymns: they found his hymns exaggerated, extreme, florid even. The truth is, these congregations possessed an experience of God much less intense and intimate than that of Charles. They were shallow where he had been profound, anaemic where he had been rich, bland where he had been vivid.

What about us? Do we stand with him or with his embarrassed descendants? I can only plead for the recovery of his whole-souled commitment and his grace-infused passion. I can only exalt his plunge into the heart of God and his immersion there. Despite his 9000 published poems, the depth and wonder and force of his experience of God is finally inexpressible. His matchless words,

“Depth of mercy, can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?”

point us to the heart of One before whom all of us (Charles too) are ultimately wordless.

 

Victor Shepherd
February 1998

What Did John Wesley Mean by “Holiness of Heart and Life?”

What Did John Wesley Mean by “Holiness of Heart and Life?”

A Sermon Preached at the Annual Service Honouring
Hay Bay Church ,
The Cradle of Methodism in
Upper Canada

 

I: — We can be admitted to the concert hall, any concert hall, only if we have a ticket. The ticket of admission gives us the right to hear the symphony concert. Let us suppose we possess such a ticket. We sit down to listen to the glorious music of the masters — only to discover that we are bored out of our minds, since the music seems much ado about nothing; or worse than being bored, we are jarred, upset, since the concert strikes us as grating, pointless, seemingly endless, an utter waste of an evening we could have spent at something fruitful — and all of this just because we are tone-deaf. The ticket of admission gives us the right to be present; but as long as we are tone-deaf we aren’t fit to be present. Regardless of our right to be at the concert, it is only our musicality that fits us for the concert. Without that musicality which fits us for the concert, the concert is merely a huge frustration.

John Wesley insisted that forgiveness of sins gives believing people the right to heaven; but only holiness renders us fit for heaven. Justification (pardon, forgiveness) admits us; sanctification (holiness, new birth) fits us. Justification means that in Christ believers have a new standing with God; sanctification (holiness) means that in Christ believers have a new nature from God.

Just as Martin Luther emphasized massively the believer’s new standing with God, so John Wesley emphasized massively the believer’s new nature from God. In fact, said Wesley, it was for the sake of restoring sanctification or holiness to the church catholic that God had raised up Methodism.

Wesley was born an Anglican and died an Anglican. He never wanted to be anything other than an Anglican (and had difficulty understanding why anyone else would want to be). He looked upon his people, the Methodists, as having been raised up by God as a renewal movement to restore to Anglicanism specifically, and to the church catholic generally, what had lain dormant for too long. He believed himself commissioned to remind Christians everywhere of God’s insistence on holiness of heart and life.

 

II: — Let’s approach the matter from a different angle. Wesley, together with his early-day followers (we are speaking now of the 1740s) joyfully held out a grand truth to any and all: “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” He can? What can God do with sin beyond forgiving it? He can unlock its grip upon us; he can get its “hooks” out of us. Never shall I forget one of my greater blunders with respect to spiritual counsel. A man had come to see me for help with his besetting sin (note: besetting sin, not besetting temptation). I listened to him carefully, empathetically (I thought) and then attempted to impart reassurance concerning the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God, the patience of God, the kindness of God. As I spoke I could tell from the expression on the man’s face that he regarded my counsel as entirely off-target. Politely he waited until I was finished. Then he said to me plaintively, pleadingly, almost desperately, “Victor, I don’t want forgiveness; I want deliverance.”

Let us make no mistake. If the church has lost sight of the fact that God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it, then parachurch groups have not. Virtually all parachurch groups have one purpose: the deliverance of those who are in chains at present. Alcoholics Anonymous exists only to facilitate the deliverance of the alcohol-enslaved. So do the other organizations, whether they address wife-battering or drug-addiction or gambling.

Wesley had more to say on this matter. When he looked out over the church-scene of his day he saw a great many church-folk (and a great many more clergy, proportionately) who cavalierly reassured themselves that “of course” their sin was forgiven, even as they were held fast in its grip. Wesley’s comment was, “Did you say, ‘Of course’? Never say ‘Of course’. Don’t presume upon forgiveness. After all,” he continued, “deliverance from the power of sin is confirmation of our having been forgiven the guilt of sin. Where there is no deliverance, don’t be in any hurry to assume forgiveness.

“Then did he mean” (someone wants to object) “that unless we have been delivered from every last manifestation of sin, every last vestige of it, we haven’t been forgiven any of it?” We shouldn’t push Wesley to such an extreme. He wanted only to startle cavalier, complacent folk who were shallow and presumptuous. Deliverance from sin’s grip confirms forgiveness of sin’s guilt.

Myself, I am convinced we need to hear and heed Wesley on this matter, for otherwise we shall come to think, whether consciously or unconsciously, that God cannot do anything with sin beyond forgiving it. And what would this be except a licence to sin for the cavalier and despair over sin for the serious? Wesley wanted to move all believers past two pitfalls: cavalier indifference and hopeless despair.

III: — Wesley knew much that the contemporary church has largely forgotten. He knew that the command of God, beating like a big bass drum over and over in scripture — “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” — he knew this to be the root command in scripture. He also knew that what God commands his people God gives his people. Therefore “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” was not only the root command in scripture; it was also the crowning promise in scripture.

Because of his knowledge of Hebrew Wesley knew something more: he knew that the root meaning of the word “holy” is “different”. In Hebrew the word-group around KADOSH has to do with difference. God is holy, elementally, in that God is different. God is different from his creation in general, different from any one creature in particular. God is profoundly KADOSH, different.

The New Testament Greek word that translates KADOSH is HAGIOS. In the New Testament it is everywhere used of Christians. Christians are said to be HAGIOI (plural.) All the English translations here read “saints”. Paul writes letters to congregations in a dozen different cities, always beginning his letter, “To the saints in…( Corinth , Philippi , wherever.) To be holy, a saint, is simply to be different. Different from what? Different for what? Different from “this present evil age”; different from that “darkness” which is “passing away” (to quote the apostle John); different from “the form of this world” which is “passing away” (to quote the apostle Paul). If Christians are different from this, what are we different for? We are different for the kingdom of God ; different for that “new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells”; different for intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ and conformity to him.

Wesley always insisted that if Jesus Christ does not or cannot make the profoundest difference to us and within us, then the entire Christian enterprise is pointless. But it isn’t pointless! Our Lord can do within us all that he has promised to us.

Wesley’s conviction here was one with the conviction (and experience) of the earliest Christians. Paul wrote to the congregation in Corinth , “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God ? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God . And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” “Such were some of you.” The congregation in Corinth had among its members men and women who had spent years in notorious sin — undisguisable, undeniable, thoroughly degrading, habitual sin. And then they had known release. Now they continued to rejoice in a deliverance for which they would thank the deliverer eternally.

 

When Wesley spoke of holiness he characteristically spoke of “holiness of heart and life.” By “heart” Wesley meant our inner intent, attitude, disposition; by “life” he meant our behaviour, conduct, visibility. He insisted that an inner intent that wasn’t matched by outer manifestation was useless posturing, while an attempt at outer manifestation not rooted in inner transformation was crass self-righteousness. Supposed holiness of heart alone dishonoured God in that it was feeble. Supposed holiness of life alone dishonoured God in that it was arrogant. Holiness of heart and life are one as Spirit-quickened intention is fulfilled in Spirit-generated conduct.

We could illustrate this endlessly from the triumphs of grace that early-day Methodists spoke of when they commended their Lord for their deliverance. Yet I think it better to illustrate Wesley’s conviction from the little man’s own life. Early in his ministry Wesley wrote, “Resentment at an affront is sin, and I have been guilty of this a thousand times.” (In our spiritual benightedness today we should likely say, “Resentment at an affront is entirely natural and perfectly understandable.” Wesley would reply, “Entirely natural in fallen human nature; perfectly understandable according to fallen human reason — and no less sin for that.”)

The man who always knew resentment at an affront to be sin was slandered by Bishop Lavington, an Anglican Church dignitary from Exeter . Lavington poured contempt on the Methodist people many times over, falsely accusing them unconscionably. He maintained that Methodists were stupid, irrational, hysterical, treacherous and politically treasonous. Yet the vilification Lavington heaped on the Methodist people was moderate compared to the vilification he poured on Wesley himself. Years later Wesley found himself at worship in an Anglican church whose communion service that Sunday was administered by none other than Bishop Lavington. Later the same day Wesley wrote in his Journal, “I was well-pleased to partake of the Lord’s Supper with my old opponent, Bishop Lavington. O may we sit down together in the Kingdom of our Father .” When he wrote, “I was well-pleased” he was transparently sincere. “Resentment at an affront is sin” — and having been “guilty of this a thousand times”, Wesley found himself resentment-free; resentment-free before the man who had slandered him and his people repeatedly; resentment-free before the man who, two weeks later, would be found dead.

 

III: — How did Wesley think we were to get to the point of “holiness of heart and life”? He always maintained that when the Holy Spirit acquaints us initially with our sinnership we do see it, and rightly view it with horror. In fact we see our sinnership with such starkness as to know that the Saviour is our only hope and help. Having grasped this much of our depravity, and having abandoned ourselves to our Saviour, however, we still haven’t grasped the enormity of our depravity. We still haven’t comprehended either the scope or the depth of sin in us. Its scope is vast, for it leaves no area of life unaffected. Its depth is unfathomable, for it goes deeper than we can see at present. Then another work of grace is needed, a subsequent work of grace. At this point we can only cry out to God and plead with him to remedy what he has newly acquainted us with about ourselves. A second work of grace is needed? Also a third, a fourth, a fortieth. This ongoing exposure to the roots of our sin, this ongoing awareness of the twists in our twisted heart, this ongoing self-abandonment to God lest our newly-exposed depravity warp us and horrify us one minute longer — this ongoing development is our ever-increasing holiness of heart and life. The key to it all, said Wesley, is singlemindedness. Do we want this more than we want anything else? Is it our one focus, aspiration, craving, preoccupation?

Human depravity is ever so varied. Yet there are three instances that Wesley mentions so very often as to seem like a refrain: pride, anger and self-will. God wrestles down our pride by working humility in us (even if it takes more than a little pain for us to become humble); he dispels our anger (here Wesley meant ill-temper, petulance, irrational rage) by working patience in us; he denatures our self-will by having us hunger to do his will. Wesley gathers all of this up by saying that as God’s Spirit discloses new depths and layers and extensions of sin in us, God also works in us a new desire for and a new capacity for self-forgetful love of God and neighbour, for “holiness of heart and life” is finally going to be self-forgetful love of God and neighbour.

Love of God has to be self-forgetful, or else what we call “love for God” is nothing more than a tool for using God, exploiting him. Love of neighbour has to be self-forgetful, or else what we call “love of neighbour” is nothing more than a pretext for self-congratulation.

Needless to say, we cannot will ourselves to be self-forgetful, for the very attempt at willing this fixes us in our self-concern, this time a self-concern with a false religious-legitimisation (a kind of hypocrisy that Wesley abhorred). We become truly self-forgetful and profoundly self-forgetful only as we unselfconsciously “lose” ourselves in God.

Here we come to what I call the mystical aspect of Wesley’s “holiness of heart and life”. When Wesley speaks of holiness he isn’t thinking first of morality; he is thinking first of God’s Godness, and our inclusion in that. For this reason when Wesley speaks most deliberately of “holiness of heart and life” he quotes hymn-lines penned by brother Charles, hymn-lines that speak, as the mystics speak, of immersion in God, submersion in God, engulfment in God. Listen to him speaking of ordinary believers like you and me whom God has taken ever so deep into himself:

Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea,

And lost in Thine immensity.

 

The vocabulary here — “plunged”, “deepest”, “sea”, “lost”, “immensity” — it is oceanic imagery that Wesley has to use just because God himself is oceanic, vast, uncontainable — even as Wesley knows that not even oceanic imagery is oceanic enough. No vocabulary can finally do justice to having our petty self-concerns drowned in God’s drenching depths. No vocabulary can do justice to a vision of God that is so bright and an experience of God so compelling that words are forever inadequate. Listen to Wesley himself crying out,

Fulfil, fulfil my large desires,

Large as infinity,

Give, give me all my soul requires,

All, all that is in Thee.

 

And elsewhere,

Let all I am in Thee be lost;

Let all be lost in God.

 

We shall never understand Wesley until we understand his all-consuming preoccupation with GOD. God is the environment of his people as surely as water is the environment of fish. It wasn’t so much that Wesley was aware of living in God as that he couldn’t understand not living in God. With his last breath he held out to the simplest believer a heart-drenching, self-oblivious, horizon-filling love. He knew what it is to be drawn so close to the fire of God’s love that the flames simultaneously consumed sin, cauterized sin’s wounds and consummated love’s longing.

Was all of this nothing more than an idiosyncratic, psycho-spiritual quirk in Wesley? On the contrary, he insisted that scripture speaks over and over of the many who have heard and seen what cannot be uttered. Then whether ancient or modern, whether enjoyed by many or few, is it all nothing more than a privatised religious “trip” utterly devoid of sacrificial service to the neighbour? On the contrary, it will always bear fruit in love of the neighbour. See Wesley himself, eighty years old, trudging with numb feet through icy slush on four successive bitter winter mornings as he goes from house to house. He is soliciting money for his beloved poor. He keeps begging until a “violent flux” (as he spoke of it in Eighteenth Century English; today we’d say, “uncontrollable diarrhoea”) forces him to stop. By now he has garnered 200 pounds. Why does he freeze himself half to death, at age eighty, sick as well, on four successive winter mornings? Because his heart’s been broken at the predicament of people who are colder, hungrier, sicker than he is.

Wesley’s conviction that the deeper layers of our heart-condition must be dealt with as we are made aware of them; his familiarity with the scorching fire of God’s love that sears and saves in the same instant; his self-forgetful immersion in the miseries of others as he brought them a joy they were going to find nowhere else: it’s all gathered up in his oft-repeated expression, “holiness of heart and life”.

In 1784, at eighty-one years of age, he was still saying, ” Can you find… anything more desirable than this?”

 

And when William Losee came from upstate New York in 1790 to establish Methodist societies in Ontario he came because he knew — as his spiritual descendants came to know — that there wasn’t, there isn’t, and there never will be “anything more desirable than this.”

 

The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Hay Bay Church                         24th August 2003

 

Pentecost

PENTECOST

The tower of Babel was titanic, trivial and tragic all at once. Titanic, for its boastful “let us make a name for ourselves” attempted to erect a structure that elevated self-important braggarts to the heavens, letting them rival God. It was trivial, for their achievement turned out to be a pipsqueak; when God heard about it he couldn’t see it and had to “come down” (Gen. 11:5) just to have a look. It was tragic in that they succeeded in giving themselves a name, an identity: God-defiant, disobedient, contemptuous men and women whose ingratitude was as hard-hearted as their self-congratulation was silly. The tragedy was only compounded when God visited his judgement upon them, rendering them unable to understand each other, unable to communicate, unable to forge community. He scattered them abroad over the face of the earth (Gen. 11:8-9), enforcing their estrangement. Like magnets improperly aligned they could only repel each other. In one sense they triumphed, for they had rendered themselves “somebodies” irrespective of God’s will and way. In another sense they failed abysmally, their isolation giving rise to babbling no less hostile for being incoherent.

Yet since God’s judgement is the converse of his mercy (or as Luther liked to say, his judgement is his love burning hot), God immediately set about rescuing them from their folly and its consequences. Abram (“exalted father”) is summoned and obeys, the model of any and all who gladly allow themselves to be named by God. Now called Abraham (“father of multitudes”), he is blessed by God where the Babel/babblers were cursed. He is promised descendants in faith as numberless as the sand on the seashore and the stars in the firmament (Gen. 22:17).

Still, God’s rescue operation taxed him unspeakably. It took him centuries and cost him vastly more than it had cost even Abraham. (After all, at the moment of inexpressible anguish Abraham’s son had been spared while God’s had not.) Still, God couldn’t be discouraged or deflected. There finally appeared one who gloried in the name his Father had bestowed upon him, Yehoshuah, Jesus, “God saves.” God had designated him such “in power…by his resurrection from the dead.” (Rom. 1:4) Throughout the seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost the risen one had appeared to his followers, instructed them in the truth concerning himself and released them from the misunderstandings of him and his work that had dogged them ever since he had called them. He had directed them to remain in Jerusalem, hier shalem, “city of salvation”, until they were “clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) Then obedient disciples, honouring the risen one’s promise, found the promise fulfilled as the Day of Pentecost unfolded.

“Pentecost” was a word coined in Israel of old to commemorate the ingathering of the harvest. Later the Pentecost festival recalled as well the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Israel had been freed from bondage in Egypt, delivered through the Red Sea, and then fused into a people at Sinai as they were acquainted with God’s will for them. The events in Israel’s history all served the definitive rescue operation when Israel’s greater Son absorbed in himself humankind’s bondage to sin, made provision for its deliverance, and schooled disciples in the Way they were to walk (“walk” being the commonest Hebrew metaphor for obedience.) Regardless of what had been done already, however, something remained to be done in that Christ’s people were gathered in Jerusalem eager, expectant, but as yet unleashed.

As surely as the descent of the Spirit signalled the public ministry of him who was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15: 24), the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost signalled the world-wide ministry of those sent “to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Pentecost found the Spirit kindling them for a mission that included people from every tongue and tribe throughout the world. Pentecost conferred an identity no enemy could deny them. Pentecost commissioned them the hands and feet of the risen, victorious one whose victory now ruled the cosmos. Henceforth they would do in his name the work he had done prior to his ascension. (John 14:12)

While the disciples had obeyed their risen Lord and had waited in Jerusalem for the Spirit, they hadn’t been waiting around. They had praised God publicly in the temple and privately in their homes. On the day of Pentecost their conquering Saviour, himself the bearer and bestower of the Spirit, flooded them with the selfsame Spirit in whose power he had preached, taught, healed, and announced the coming “Day of the Lord.” Pentecost was the final act of God’s saving mission before the End. It equipped the disciples with all that they needed to fulfil their commission. It inaugurated the era of the Spirit, which era Hebrew prophets like Joel had foretold. (Joel 2:28) And not to be overlooked, it was the first instance of revival, revival occurring when the sovereign Spirit of God overtakes large numbers of people at once, convicts them of their sinnership, convinces them of the coming judgement, brings them to repentance and faith through vivifying God’s mercy, and admits them joyfully to the people of God.

Concerning this awe-full event Luke tells us that the disciples were aware of what sounded like hurricane-force winds. Hadn’t Jesus earlier likened the Spirit to wind? (John 3:8) Wind can’t be seen yet also can’t be denied. Uprooted trees, racing clouds, tumbling waves: the effects of wind attest its power.

And on the day of Pentecost there appeared to be fire licking at each of the 120 assembled in the upper room. Hadn’t Christ’s ancestors in faith found in the properties of fire a startling reminder of what God does when he draws near to his people and “torches” them? As fire illumines it dispels darkness and confusion. As fire refines it consumes corruption, even mere worthlessness, leaving what is pure, attractive and useful. As fire warms it dispels iciness and suspicion. Most characteristically, fire sets on fire whatever it touches.

At Pentecost the Spirit moved disciples to “speak in other tongues.” The significance of the proclamation in other languages of God’s mighty acts was epoch-making in view of the diverse people gathered at that time in Jerusalem. These God-fearing Jews happened to be in the city at this time but they weren’t native to Jerusalem, having been neither born nor raised there. They had come from the diaspora, “from every nation under heaven.” (Acts 2:5) Luke means, of course, the nations of his world, the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean area where Jewish people had thrived for centuries. In speaking of the “other tongues” Luke lists the languages of five groups: people west of the Caspian Sea, Asia Minor, North Africa, visitors from Rome (Jews and converts to Judaism), and finally “Cretans and Arabs.”

This linguistically diverse, international crowd was transfixed by the simple Galileans. Galileans were known to lack cultural sophistication. (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46) Permanent residents of Jerusalem looked upon the Galilean visitors as bumpkins. Miraculously, these unlettered people were now proclaiming Jesus in the visitors’ own languages at the centre of the city of salvation. A few sour-faced onlookers sneered, “They’ve had too much to drink.” Nervous about making a realistic assessment, they distanced themselves from the truth through self-excusing mockery.

Luke left no doubt as to his understanding of the Galileeans’ speech. In the power of the Spirit the gospel of Jesus Christ transcends and bridges every barrier that people bent on making a name for themselves erect and behind which they scoff in pretended superiority at those on the other side of the wall. Such barriers are legion: language, nationality, race, education, social class, wealth, gender, ethnicity. Luke knew that Babel had been reversed. At Babel God had descended in judgement and curse when he had had to descend in any case in order to see the tinker-toy trifle by which its builders had thought themselves giants who could rival him. Now at Pentecost God descended in blessing when he found obedient followers of Jesus who wanted only to exalt the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9) Glad to have their lives, reputations, identities “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) they rejoiced in the “name” whereby God knew them. Babel pride gave place to Pentecost humility, a humility that is never self-belittlement but rather self-forgetfulness born of preoccupation with the one whose servants they were glad to be.

Since Pentecost forges and inflames Christ’s people (mission being as essential to the church as burning is to fire), Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church. Then could a day that celebrates its birth be followed eventually by a day that laments its demise? Never! No power can prevail against the church, for since the “Spirit isn’t given by measure” (John 3:34), the Pentecost-suffusion will always be adequate.

Pentecost was nothing less than a miracle. How could it be anything else? Creation had certainly been a miracle, creation ex nihilo. Then re-creation had to be no less a miracle too in view of the calcified perversity of the human heart. For Pentecost meant that life could begin again, but not “again” in the sense of déjà vu, one more time; “again”, rather, in the sense of the reversal of all that had distorted the creation into a hideous parody of what God had intended originally. The tower of Babel, remember, had been thought to be huge when in fact it was tiny. Now the new-born church was thought to be tiny but would quickly become huge. While the world regards the church as either stillborn or impotent (“How many troops does the pope have?”, Stalin had jested), it is precisely the church which the rightful ruler of the universe appoints to be his hands and feet. Henceforth it does that work which he will crown one day as he brings to perfection his work of cosmic restoration. Admittedly, the church has prostituted itself repeatedly, yet the bestowal of the Spirit ensures that it will ever be the bride of Christ. Admittedly, the church has often compromised itself inexcusably, yet the Spirit’s wind and fire will ultimately render it worthy to “judge angels.” (1 Cor. 6:3) Deformed at times to the point of being grotesque, the church lives by the promise of one day standing forth resplendent, without spot or blemish. It has been attacked but never slain, for it is more ridiculous than ghastly to think of the Lord Jesus Christ living with head and body severed.

The builders of Babel/babble had made a name for themselves, only to find themselves scattered and their name forgotten. Pentecost generated the ever-burgeoning cloud of witnesses, the gathering together of those whose names were now written in the book of life and would be remembered eternally. The Babel/babblers had boasted, “We did it our way.” Pentecost created a world-wide fellowship of those who continue to prove that “his commandments are not burdensome” but in fact are “sweeter than honey.” (1 John 5:3; Psalm 19:10) Where Babel’s frustrated communication was tragic, Pentecost was a triumph as it proved there is no communication problem, whether between God and us or between us and others, that the Spirit cannot solve.

Apart from Pentecost the 120 in a second-storey room in Jerusalem would have waited with hope haemorrhaging, one more heart-breaking instance of many false messianisms. Apart from Pentecost evangelism would be little more than propaganda and the church’s mission mere self-promotion. Apart from Pentecost our efforts at binding the wounds of a broken world would be indistinguishable from do-goodism. And apart from Pentecost, evangelicals should note next winter and spring, no Gentile would ever have heard of Christmas or Easter.

As it is, Pentecost is the only reason the gospel gives rise to “a great multitude which no man can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne… crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9-10)

Victor Shepherd

 

Crucial Words in the Christian Vocabulary: [Wo]man

Genesis 1:24-31   Colossians 1:15-20     Luke 8:1-3

 

Are you an angel, a devil or an animal? As a matter of fact different writers have argued that humankind is at bottom an angel in disguise or a devil in disguise or an animal that thinks it’s more than an animal. Two decades ago Mr Desmond Morris’s book, Trousered Apes, told everyone what Morris thought: we humans are animals who dress up and think that dressing up elevates us.

What about you or me as individuals? Are we merely an insignificant cog in a powerful machine? Chinese and Korean communists would say yes. Or are we merely a twitch, as short-lived and unremarkable as any twitch? Jean Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher, would say yes. Or am I as a male a nuisance; worse than a nuisance, an oppressor whose presence ought always to be monitored? Feminists, at least many of them, would say yes.

Then what am I? What are you? Who is a human being? The question is crucial, for unless we answer it correctly our misunderstanding of what we are will impoverish our own humanness and threaten the world of the non-human as well.

In answering the question, “What is it to be human?,” let’s imagine an extra-terrestrial being, like “ET” of yesteryear, visiting us. What would an extra-terrestrial being discover about us? What should it discover?

 

I: — It would surely notice immediately that we human beings are rooted in the world of nature.   We belong to the realm of plants and animals. According to the old story in Genesis we were created on the same “day” as the animals. Animals need plants to survive. We need plants to survive. The Hebrew poet reminds us that we come from the dust of the earth. Humus is the Latin word for “earth.” We humans ought to remain humble (even though we don’t;) humans ought to remain humble because however high falutin’ we think ourselves to be, we come from humus, earth, and our remains shall return to it. We are never angelic; that is, we humans are never pure spirit, never unembodied spirit. We never escape our earth-ness. We are intimately bound up with nature. And of course the most modern ecologist agrees. Ecologists tell us that either we humans are going to rediscover and re-own our inescapable oneness with nature or we are going to perish at the hands of the nature we have poisoned.

If ever we think we have left the realm of nature behind all we have to do is wait until part of our body doesn’t work properly. And if the breakdown in body-part is accompanied by pain, we can think of little else. Pain alters personality; pain is a challenge to character. Protracted pain threatens sanity. And even if there’s no pain, a very small amount of extra tissue growing in one’s brain will unhinge personality and undo stability frighteningly.

In saying that we humans never escape our earth-ness we aren’t saying there’s nothing more to us than there is to the plant or the animal. We aren’t denying the unique features of our humanness: art, music, poetry, imagination, abstract thought. They are wonderful indeed, and they are part of what distinguishes us from the animal world. Yet they all occur in us humans whose fragility is linked to the fragility of nature. William Shakespeare could write matchless plays inasmuch as the plant and animal world sustained him, there was non-toxic air to breathe, and his body hadn’t broken down to the point where his mental functioning was impaired.

In the interest of helping human beings we do massive medical research on animals. We don’t use animals just because they are plentiful and cheap; we use animals because there are the most significant physical similarities between them and us. If there weren’t then medical research with animals wouldn’t profit humans at all.

We must be sure to note that our earth-ness doesn’t diminish our humanness; it doesn’t degrade us. Instead it exalts the realm of nature. It doesn’t rob us of our honour; instead it recognizes that honour which God intends nature to have. Our affinity with nature doesn’t demean nature; instead it dignifies everything God deems necessary for us who are apple of his eye and alone made in his image.

Most people look upon reptiles, for instance, as ugly. We might fondle our dog but we’d never kiss an alligator. Still, if alligators could talk they’d say, “Shepherd, you may not be fond of me. But you had better understand that you need me while I don’t need you. Remember that, Shepherd: you need me, but I don’t need you. So if you are wise at all you won’t trifle with us alligators and with the whole realm of nature that supports us and you.

The first thing ET has to notice about us is that we are inescapably rooted in nature.

 

II: — The second truth about us humans is equally obvious: every one of us is either a male or a female, a man or a woman. “And God said,” reads the ancient text in Genesis 1, “Let us make man (’adam, mankind) in our image; male and female created he them (plural).” Two matters leap out at us here. One, the distinction between male and female God has built into the creation; two, we are human only in the context of our gender opposite. Both of these matters require comment.

There are many matters that divide people today, such as differences in wealth, in education, in social opportunity. None of these distinctions, however, is God-ordained. None is built right into the creation. All such distinctions can be overcome in principle, and many of us would say that we should do all we can to overcome them. Differences in financial resources, for instance, are glaring and gruesome. At the same time, we have graduated income tax and social subsidies in order to redistribute wealth and re-equilibrate the divisions among us fostered by disparities in wealth. In the same way we have tax-supported public education to give those who would otherwise have no educational privilege the opportunity of adequate schooling. There remains, however, one distinction in the creation that we ought not to try to overcome: the distinction between man and woman. God has pronounced our gender polarity “good” and we are not to try to transcend it in a “unisex” mentality. For this reason, for instance, scripture forbids cross dressing. Now I notice that many of the women in this congregation, my wife included, wear slacks or trousers to church. Good. There’s nothing wrong with that, for the women who wear slacks are manifestly not trying to pass themselves off as men; there’s no attempt to hide one’s gender or misrepresent oneself sexually or deceive anyone in any way. There’s no attempt to deny that one is a woman and therein deny the gender specificity that God has pronounced “good;” no attempt to obliterate the one and only distinction in the creation that God has said should never be obliterated.

The second comment to be made here: each of us is gender-specific – a male or a female – in the context of the gender opposite. To say that I’m a male is to say that I’m a male with respect to a female. To be sure, the animals are male or female too. But with the animals the male/female distinction serves only the purpose of procreation. With humans, however, the male/female distinction first serves the truth that we are made in the image of God.

This is not to say that God is either male or female, or both male and female. God is not gender specific at all. Still, when we are told that we are made in God’s image two things have to be noted. One, the individual human being is made in God’s image. The individual man, the individual woman, is made in God’s image. Two, the individual man is man only in the context of woman, and the individual woman only in the context of man.   While a dog is dog, male or female, irrespective of gender-opposite (in other words, a male dog all by itself is 100% dog), a male human all by himself can’t be 100% human, can’t be human at all. Humans are individually made in the image of God even as no individual can be individual only. Each of us, man or woman, needs our gender-opposite to be properly human.

I have said we need our gender-opposite. I haven’t said we need to be married; I haven’t said we need to be sexually active. Jesus wasn’t married, wasn’t sexually active, but was human. Indeed, so far from being deficiently or defectively human he is the instance of God’s intention for our humanness. At the same time, we should be sure to note that while Jesus wasn’t married and wasn’t sexually active he moved among women every day, moved among them with no awkwardness, and moved among them in ways that horrified the people of his day. He called at the home of Mary and Martha, unmarried women. This wasn’t done in his day. He allowed a menhorragic woman to touch him. This wasn’t done. He spoke in public with a woman of the shadiest reputation (five times married) when men didn’t even speak to their wives in public. He had several women in his larger group of disciples (Luke tells us), when some of these women were single and some were already married. It was women who were last at the cross (at least they didn’t abandon him) and first at the grave on Easter morning. Obviously they loved him. They relished his company and he relished theirs. They enriched him and he enriched them. At bottom, apart from them he wouldn’t have been human and apart from him they wouldn’t have been either. (This, by the way, is a truth that the shriller feminists fail to grasp.)

There was nothing inappropriate in these encounters. At the same time there was everything necessary in these encounters. The truth is God ordains, requires even, a mutual, complementary engagement and delight for all men and women, including those who aren’t married and never will be.

To be human is to be gender-specific and gender-complemented.

 

III: — Our extra-terrestrial visitor notices a third thing about us. We are individuals who live in societies. Both the individual and the society must be protected. When you asked an ancient Israelite his name he always gave you his name together with the name of his tribe. (Jesus belongs to the tribe of Judah .) Why? Because he knew that he is who he is only in the context of his community.

But the converse is true as well. A community differs from a crowd in that a community cherishes and protects individuals while a crowd submerges individuals. Our world is burdened with societies that trample individuals. The USSR did so for 75 years and could revert to doing so at any time. Germany did so in a Reich that lasted only 12 years but intended to last 1000. Not to mention China (the single largest nation in the world), North Korea , Indonesia (now we are identifying right-wing disdain for the individual), many countries in Africa, and of course so very many countries in Latin America that we shan’t attempt to list them. After the “disappeared” people of Argentina had remained “disappeared” for several years, the government of Argentina shamelessly announced what everyone had surmised already: the disappeared were dead. They were dead, the government announced, inasmuch as the government had killed them.

Christians must always recognize the balance between individual and society, individual and community. We must always recognize the need for the balance and the exquisite delicacy to the balance. We must always recognize why individual and community are essential to each other. After all, without the preservation of the individual the community becomes a crowd (also known as a mob.) On the other hand without the preservation of the community the individual person becomes a thing. The balance is exquisitely fine and exquisitely challenging to maintain.

One place in our society where this necessary balance is visible, together with its attendant sensitivities, is the school. Parents expect the school (which is a mini-society) to educate their youngsters for personal edification and employment, promote character formation in them, and all of this to the end of producing solid citizens. But every educator knows that no school can uphold standards of intellectual rigour and decency and deportment and civility and ethical integrity; no school can uphold these if the individual parent doesn’t or the community doesn’t. On the other hand, no conscientious parent can uphold what a school consistently undermines.

Individual and society always interpenetrate each other and regulate each other. Jesus belongs to the tribe of Judah .

 

IV: — Our extra terrestrial visitor might notice one last feature of us human beings, even though it isn’t last in importance. Then again, our “ET”’ visitor might not notice it since it isn’t obvious as our gender specificity is obvious. This feature is that we are made for fellowship with God. While we are discussing it last this morning it’s actually first. It’s not the case that our engagement with God is an add-on, a decoration, a frill, an after-thought. Rather it is the profoundest truth about us. To be a human being is to be God’s cheerful, grateful obedient covenant partner.

Christians know that human existence is always relational. When we speak of a thing like a tree or a termite we know that where trees and termites are concerned to exist is simply to be. But where humans are concerned to exist is to be-in-relation. We have already seen this with respect to gender specificity: to exist at all is to exist either as male or female; and to exist as male or female is to be-in-relation to female or male.

It’s the same with respect to God. While God doesn’t need humankind in order to be God, God has willed himself not to be God apart from humankind. God has willed himself to be God only in intimate, undeflectible covenant solidarity with humankind. And as for us, we can be human at all only as we are human in relation to him. To say that this is truth, this is reality, is not to say that everyone is aware of the truth or welcomes the truth or one day will own the truth. But it is to say that truth remains truth, reality remains reality, just because God has willed himself to be God only in relation to us and has willed us to be human in relation to him. Doesn’t Jesus say that it is his meat and drink to do the will of his Father?

If we disdain our appointment as God’s glad, grateful covenant partners we shall ravage nature, foolishly thinking that our attitude to God’s creation and our sustenance doesn’t matter.

If we disdain our appointment as God’s glad, grateful covenant partners then we, as men and women, are stuck with a hostile standoff where all we can do is torment one another. We shall then have men exploiting and brutalizing women. (This aspect of the standoff is centuries old.) Or we shall have women sneering contemptuously at men. (This aspect of the standoff is centuries old too but has come to the surface only recently.)

If we disdain our appointment as God’s glad, grateful covenant partners we shall rant and rave about our individual rights, caring nothing for anyone else. Or we shall undiscerningly support those social collectivities that promise much, deliver little, and always manage to brutalize and bury individuals.

Our appointment as God’s glad, grateful covenant partners is our call to communion with him. This dimension of the human isn’t the least and the last of many; this is the foundation of all others and their preservative as well.

We must be sure notice something too readily overlooked: it is only our appointment as God’s covenant partners that confers and conserves our dignity and worth. Even when God’s invitation goes unheeded; that is, even when there is lacking the response of faith and obedience, nevertheless the fact of God’s invitation continues to confer a dignity and worth that can’t be eliminated and can’t be forfeited. There is no other source of human dignity and worth.

When Maureen’s mother was institutionalized in a nursing home Maureen visited her faithfully, never complaining about it, thankful that such provision was available. One afternoon, having been exposed to the nursing home scene yet again, Maureen stumbled home and said to me, “There is no such thing as innate human dignity or innate human worth. Apart from God’s having appointed us to covenant partnership with him there isn’t any dignity or worth at all.” She was right.   There is no evident, observable dignity in people who are mindless, toothless, toiletless.

Then what are we?   Angel? Devil? Animal? Twitch? Cog? Feminist fodder? We are none of these. We are those creatures with whom God wanted fellowship and whom he wanted never to be without before he created so much as one atom. In fact all that he’s created he has created for the sake of us who are made in his image, who are the apple of his eye, and whom he loves, Good Friday’s cross tells us, more than he loves himself. Why wouldn’t we love him now and want only to love him forever?

 

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                   

March 2004

 

Of Trees and The Tree

Genesis 2:8-9; 15-17 

Genesis 3:1-7   Deuteronomy 21:22-23   Galatians 3:13

1 Peter 2:24   John 19:16b-30

 

I: — What’s wrong with you?  What’s wrong with me?  What’s wrong with the world?  What’s wrong with the world is something the world would never guess: it slanders the goodness of God.

The old, old story (saga, legend) of Genesis 3 is a timeless story about the history of every man and every woman, for “Adam” is Hebrew for “everyman” and “Eve” for “mother of all the living”.  According to the old story God has placed us in a garden abounding in trees: “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”.  God has placed us in a setting that delights us and nourishes us abundantly.  In addition to the myriad trees in Eden (“Eden” being Hebrew for “delight”) there are two extraordinary trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The tree of life symbolizes the fact that the origin of life and the conditions of life and the blessings of life rest in God; the tree of life symbolizes this and reminds us of it.  As John Calvin says so finely, “God intended that as often as we tasted the fruit of the tree of life we should remember from whom we received our life, in order that we might acknowledge that we live not by our own power but by the kindness of God.”

In addition to the tree of life there stands the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  “Good and evil” does not mean “good plus evil”.  “Good-and-evil” (virtually one word) is a semitism, a Hebrew expression meaning “everything, the sum total of human possibilities, everything that we can imagine.”  To know, in Hebrew is to have intimate acquaintance with, to experience.  In forbidding us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God is warning us against intimate acquaintance with the sum total of everything that we can imagine.  He is warning us against thinking we must experience or even may experience whatever we can dream up.  In other words, God has set a limit to human self-extension; God has set a limit to our extending ourselves into anything at all that the mind and heart can invent.

Why has God set such a limit?  Why does he urge us to become intimately acquainted with everything that is both nourishing and delightful, both essential to life and culturally rich — and then in the same breath warn us not to become intimately acquainted with “good and evil”?  He sets such a limit just because he loves us; he sets this limit for our blessing.  This side of the limit is blessing; the other side is curse.  This side of the limit there is the blessing of curative medicines; the other side of the limit there is cocaine, curse.  This side of the limit there is the one-flesh union of marriage, blessing; the other side there is the curse of promiscuity and perversion with their degradation and disease.  God, who is good in himself, wants only what is good for us.

Good?  We don’t think that God is good when he tells us, “Every tree except the one tree”; we think he’s arbitrary.  After all, he didn’t consult us when he decided where the boundary line was to be; he simply told us; arbitrary.

The root human problem is that we disparage the goodness of God.  We disparage the goodness of God when we scorn the tree of life, dismissing the goodness of God and the truth of God, even as we tell ourselves that he has proscribed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not because he longs to bless us but just because he’s arbitrary; and not only arbitrary, but a spoilsport as well since he won’t allow us to extend ourselves into all those possibilities that would surely enrich us.

The tree of life represents discipleship; the tree of life represents what it is to be profoundly human: human beings are created to be glad and grateful covenant-partners with God.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil — prohibited! — is the alternative to discipleship, the alternative to glad and grateful covenant-partnership with God.  The root human problem, then, is that we don’t want life from God’s hand under the conditions God sets for our blessing.  We prefer an alternative; we want to be the author and judge and master of our own life.

According to our ancient story the garden of profuse creaturely delights continues to delight us as long as we hear and heed the creator who gave them to us.  As soon as we try to “improve” upon him, however; as soon as we disobey him, proposing an alternative to the covenant-partnership of discipleship, the creaturely delights no longer delight us.  They become the occasion of endless frustration, emptiness, futility, curse.

II: — The process by which we typically arrive at God-willed curse in place of God-willed blessing is subtle.  The serpent is the personification of this subtlety.  The serpent asks with seeming innocence, “Did God say?  Did God say you weren’t to eat of that one tree?”  The serpent hasn’t exactly lied: at no point does it say, “God never said….”  While the serpent never exactly lies, neither does it ever exactly tell the truth.  The serpent (subtlety personified) smuggles in the assumption — without ever saying so explicitly — that God’s word, God’s command is subject to our assessment.

The subtlety takes the form of a question that appears innocent but in fact is a doubt-producing question with a hidden agenda.  What’s more, the doubt-producing question is an exaggeration: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’”  Any tree?  There’s the exaggeration.  God has forbidden us to eat of one tree, one tree only.

Eve (mother of all the living) decides to correct the serpent.  Surely there’s no harm in correcting an exaggeration.  But for her there is, for as soon as she attempts to correct the serpent she’s been drawn into the serpent’s territory; now she’s dialoguing with a subtlety to which she isn’t equal.  When first she heard “Did God say?” the only thing for her to do was to ignore the proffered subtlety.  Correcting it looks harmless but is ultimately fatal, for now she’s been drawn into the tempter’s world.

Isn’t it the case that as soon as you and I begin to reason with sin we are undone?  As soon as we begin to reason with temptation we’re finished.  Temptation can only be repudiated, never reasoned with, for the longer we reason with it the longer we entertain it; and the longer we entertain it the faster our reasoning becomes rationalization — and rationalization, as everyone knows, is perfectly sound reasoning in the service of an unacceptable end.

As soon as Eve attempts to correct the serpent’s exaggeration she exaggerates.  “God has told us not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree; we aren’t even to touch the tree, lest we die.”  God had never said they weren’t to touch it.  They were certainly to be aware of the tree, always aware of it, and never to eat of it, never to experience it.  In trying to correct the serpent’s exaggeration, Eve now exaggerates.  In trying to undo the serpent’s distortion of the truth, she now distorts the truth.  Of course.  To dialogue with a subtlety pertaining to temptation is invariably to be seduced by it.

Eve doesn’t know it yet, but she’s undone.  She doesn’t know it, but the serpent does.  For this reason the serpent leaves subtlety behind and accosts her blatantly.  “You won’t die”, it tells her as plainly as it can, “You won’t die; you’ll be like God, the equal of God.”  It’s the tempter’s word against God’s; it’s temptation’s contradiction of God’s truth.

But God has said that we shall die if we defy him; we are going to be accursed if we extend ourselves into areas and orbits beyond blessing.  “You won’t die.”  Please note that the first doctrine to be denied is the judgement of God.  Doctrines are the truths of God, and the first truth of God to be disdained is the judgement of God.  We should note in passing that Jesus everywhere upholds the judgement of God.

Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the result that “their eyes were opened”.  They had thought that by defying God they were going to be enlightened.  By defying him, however, they have moved to a new level of experience; their eyes are opened — but they are anything but enlightened.  They now know “good and evil”.  They now have intimate acquaintance with, first-hand experience of, what God had pronounced off-limits.  Too late, they now know too why it was pronounced “off-limits”: it’s accursed.

To sum it all up, the primal temptation to which every human being succumbs is the temptation to be like God, to be God’s rival (actually, his superior).  The primal temptation is to regard God’s truth as inferior to our “wisdom”; to slander God’s loving “No” as spoilsport arbitrariness; to regard obedient service to God as demeaning servility; to pretend that a suicidal plunge is a leap into life.  Ultimately the primal temptation is to look upon God’s goodness as imaginary, his will as capricious, and his judgement as unsubstantial.

III: — The result is that Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden.  Expelled means driven out.  By God’s decree.  Does forced expulsion strike you as too heavy-handed for a God whose nature is love?  Then be sure to understand that the forced expulsion is also the logical outcome of disobedience.  After all, Jesus insists (John 17:3) that life, eternal life, is fellowship with God. And fellowship with God is precisely what humankind repudiates.  Then a forced expulsion from the garden — a forced expulsion that issues in estrangement instead of intimacy, creaturely goods that frustrate instead of delight, daily existence that is cursed instead of blessed, and a future bringing the judge instead of the father — all of this we have willed for ourselves.  We think the expulsion to be heavy-handed?  We wanted it.
In the ancient story the cherubim, spirit-beings who safeguard God’s holiness, together with a flaming sword that turns in every direction; these guarantee that God means what he says: humankind is out of the garden, can’t find its way back in, is now living under curse, and can’t do anything about it.

IV: — We can’t do anything about it.  Only the holy one whose holiness cannot abide our sinfulness can.  Only he can.  But will he?  Has he?  Peter cries, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree!” (1st  Peter 2:24)  He himself did?  Who is “he himself”?  It is our Lord Jesus Christ, he and none other.
We must never think, however, that after Peter had denied his Lord and run away he suddenly came to the happy conclusion that Jesus is the great sin-bearer for the whole wide world.  At the cross he had concluded only that Jesus was accursed.  After all, the Torah said it all clearly: “…a hanged man is accursed by God.  Therefore, if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and you hang him on a tree, don’t leave his body on the tree overnight; remember, anyone hanged on a tree is accursed by God.” (Deut. 21:22-23)  Since Jesus had been hanged on a tree (of sorts), Jesus had to be accursed by God.  Such people weren’t accursed because they were hanged; they were hanged because they were accursed; and they were accursed because they were unspeakably debased sinners.

It was only in the light of Easter morning that Peter understood what had really happened.  It was through his Easter morning encounter with the risen one himself; it was in the light of the Father’s Easter vindication of the Son that Peter saw several things simultaneously.
[1]  Jesus was accursed; he had died under God’s curse.
[2]  Yet Jesus wasn’t accursed on account of his sin; he was accursed on account of humankind’s sin.  That is, while he was not a transgressor himself, he was “numbered among the transgressors”.  While not a sinner himself, he identified himself so thoroughly with sinners as to receive in himself the Father’s just judgement on them.
“He bore our sins in his body on the tree.”  To “bear sin” is a Hebrew expression meaning to be answerable for sin and to endure its penalty.  The penalty for sin is estrangement from God.  In bearing this penalty — demonstrated in his forlorn cry of God-forsakenness — Jesus answered on our behalf.
[3]  Because Jesus Christ is the incarnate son of God he possesses the same nature as God.  Father and Son are one in nature, one in purpose, one in will.  It is never the case that the Son is willing to do something that the Father is not, that the Son is kind while the Father is severe, that the Son is eager to pardon while the Father is eager to condemn.  Incarnation means that Father and Son are of one nature and mind and heart.  To say, then, that Jesus bore the judge’s just judgement on our sin is to say that the judge himself took his own judgement upon himself.  But of course he who is judge is also father.  Which is to say, when Jesus bore our sins in his body the Father bore them in his heart.   The just judge executed the judgement that he must; then he bore it himself and therein neutralized it, and this so that his characteristic face as Father might be the face that shines upon you and me forever.  Father and Son are one in judgement, one in its execution, one in anguish, and one in pardon.  What the Son bore the Father bore, in order that justice uncompromised might issue in mercy unimpeded.

In the light of Christ’s resurrection the truth of the cross and the nature of its curse flooded Peter.

V: — When Peter cried, “He bore our sins in his body on the tree” (the Good News of Good Friday), he went on to say in the same breath, “in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”

Then the only thing left for us to decide this morning is whether or not we are going to die to sin and live to righteousness.  Here only do we have anything to say, to do, to become.  We can’t do anything about Eden. We have been expelled, and rightly expelled, having disparaged the goodness of God and disobeyed the wisdom of God and disdained the blessing of God.  Just as we can’t do anything about Eden we can’t do anything about our consequent condition: we can’t overturn it, can’t right it, can’t alter it however slightly.  In the same way we can’t do anything to effect atonement, can’t do anything to make ourselves “at one” with God once more.  We can’t do anything here for two reasons.  In the first place, offenders can’t finally achieve reconciliation in any personal relationship anywhere in life.  Reconciliation is always finally in the hands of the offended party anywhere in life.  Since we are offenders any possibility of reconciliation rests with the God we have offended.
We can’t do anything to effect atonement, in the second place, just because it’s already been done.

God wrought our reconciliation to him in the cross.  To think we can improve upon it is to disdain the blessing he has fashioned for us; and this is to commit the primal sin all over again.

Then there is only one matter for us to settle.  Are we going or are we not going to die to sin and live to righteousness?  If we intend to do this today or to go on doing it today we must cling in faith to the crucified one himself.  He is the son with whom the Father is ever pleased.  Then in clinging to him in faith we too shall become that child of God who delights the Father.  He is the wisdom of God.  Then in clinging to him we shall forswear our folly and know blessing instead of curse.  In clinging to him and following him throughout life we shall know that his service, so far from servility, is in fact our glory.  His tree, the cross, is now become the tree of life.  To become ever more intimately acquainted with it is to relish the rigours of discipleship, recognizing all alternatives as the spiritual suicide that they are.

VI: — As we cling to our Lord Jesus Christ in faith the psalmist will say of us what he said of others so long ago:

They are like trees planted by streams of water,
        which yield their fruit in its season,
               and their leaves do not wither.
    In all that they do they prosper.
       For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
        but the way of the wicked will perish.     (Psalm 1:3,6)

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd                                                                                                             

Revised  March 2013

You asked for a sermon on The Tower of Babel. You asked for a sermon on Pentecost

Genesis 3:1-9

Part One

Anyone who loves Jesus cherishes his parables. As a matter of fact many of us came to know Jesus by means of his parables. We began hearing these stories when we were four years old. At first they were intriguing stories. As we grew older they became moving stories. As we grew older still they became revelatory stories; they revealed the truth of God concerning God, concerning us, concerning our world.

No one dismisses the parables of Jesus just because the parables don’t describe historical events. “A certain man had two sons”, Jesus begins his best-seller about the prodigal. Jesus isn’t referring to an actual historical figure, Mr. X on 42nd Street, Mr. X being a man known to everyone in Nazareth who happens to have two sons. The parable, rather, is a story that Jesus makes up on the spot. Luke tells us (Luke 15) how the parable of the prodigal came to be. Our Lord’s opponents are mumbling and grumbling and grousing and not-so-quietly accusing him of dirtying himself by befriending irreligious people. Jesus, never as stupid as his opponents think him to be, is aware of what they are saying about him. They are faulting him. In order to exonerate himself and the people he’s befriending he spins out the parable on the spot. The parable is utterly fictitious. Jesus makes it up on the spot. It is utterly fictitious, and utterly true; true, that is, in that it tells us the truth about ourselves under God, true in that it tells us the truth about God over us. Wholly fictitious, wholly true. No one denies that the parables of Jesus are revelatory just because they are fictitious.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are parables too. Like the parables of Jesus, the parables in Genesis 1-11 tell us the truth about ourselves under God and the truth about God over us. Then why is it preachers have been expelled from pulpits for saying so, hearers have been crushed or enraged at hearing so, and congregations have been split over it all?

If someone says, “But if we admit that the first eleven chapters of Genesis aren’t historical, where will it all end? What will we deny to be historical next?” If someone advances this argument, the immediate reply is, “But if we ever admit that the parables of Jesus are parables, everything is lost!” This is not a very profound argument.

All of the parable-stories in Genesis 1-11 are profound. One such story is the Tower of Babel.

I: — Our story begins with humankind’s cry, “Let us make a name for ourselves! Let us build a city, and a tower, a tower so tall that everyone will be able to see our tower. As our city becomes famous on account of our tower, our name will be known everywhere. Let’s make a name for ourselves!”

“What’s wrong with building a tower?”, someone asks. “Is there something wrong with creativity?” Of course there is nothing wrong with creativity. God is creative. We are made in his image and likeness. We have an inborn urge to create. To stifle this urge is to impoverish ourselves and to disdain his good gift. There is nothing at all wrong with creativity.

“What’s wrong with building a tall tower, even the tallest tower?”, someone else adds. “Is there something wrong with the pursuit of excellence?” Of course there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence. There is everything right with it. We need to see more of it. After all, we live in an era that congratulates mediocrity. Mediocrity is sin. The pursuit of excellence can only be commended.

“What’s wrong with building a city, the venue of civilization?”, a third questioner asks. “Is civilization bad? Is culture bad? Should we be more holy or more virtuous or more human if we lived in caves and swung from trees and ate bugs and grunted in monosyllabically?” Of course there is nothing wrong with culture. Culture is riches without which we should be humanly poorer.

“Then what is the problem with fashioning city and tower? What is wrong with making a name for ourselves?”

According to the parable the problem with making a name for ourselves is that we reject the name that God has given us. He has named us his creatures. When he names us his creatures he emphasizes both words: “his”, “creature”. He is Lord and life-giver. We come from him, we belong to him, we can be blessed only in him. Because we come from him and belong to him and can be blessed only in him, to reject him is to reject blessing and therefore be stuck with curse.

“Name”, in Hebrew, means “nature”. The name God gives us is our nature. Our nature is to be God’s loving, obedient, grateful, faithful covenant-partner. Anything else is unnatural.

But we don’t like the name God has given us. We are irked by the nature God has given us. Be his obedient covenant-partner? Surely it is servile to have to obey anyone! We want to make our own name, make a name for ourselves. The name we give ourselves will be a better name; it will render us superior.

The problem is, of course, that there is no agreement among humankind as to what this name is going to be. The name we give ourselves will render us superior? Superior to whom? If I find it demeaning to be inferior to God, how much more demeaning do I find it to be subordinate to my fellows! Then I shall have to be superior to my fellows. I shall have to give myself a name that establishes my superiority over them!

And so we set about naming ourselves.

(i) One such name is race. The name of racial superiority isn’t mentioned in polite company, yet it is a name that no one renounces readily. Professional boxing is always looking for what it calls “the white hope”: a superior caucasian boxer who can end black domination of the “sport”. Several years ago when Sean O’Sullivan was in the newspaper every day it was hoped that this Canadian welterweight (147 pounds, the most competitive division in boxing, whose champion is nearly always the best boxer in the world) would become world-champion. The media “hyped” him. The fact of the matter is, O’Sullivan was never in the top 20 welterweights; I don’t think he was even in the top 30. Still, he was “hyped” as a future champion, only to lose in the second round to a black man who has never distinguished himself. Nevertheless, for a few months we had our “white hope”.

All races attempt to make a name for themselves through pretended racial superiority. Wherever black people have assumed power in African countries they have treated brown people savagely. And if you want to commit a huge social blunder and call down someone’s fury on you, simply mistake a Japanese person for a Korean.

(ii) Another such name is harder to describe. It isn’t racial, it isn’t even nationalistic. It is deep-down ethnic. When I was studying in Britain I noticed that war films appeared on TV every week; not Hollywood movies about war, but actual film-footage of World War II: the Battle of Britain, Rommel in North Africa, submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, and so on. When I returned to Britain in the mid-80s I saw the same films on TV. I thought this must be unhealthy, since it must surely inflame anti-German hatred. And yet I kept noticing that the British appeared much fonder of the Germans than of the French, when the French had been their allies twice in this century. I was puzzled and spoke of it to one of my relatives. Whereupon he smiled cheerfully as he said, “It’s not difficult to understand why we like the Germans but not the French. The British and the Germans are descended from the same Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic stock. We and they constitute the master-people. But the French are Latins, inferior.” There is no end to the ways we can make a name for ourselves.

(iii) Another name is social class. The jokes about social-climbing are legion. The jokes are legion, of course, just because social-climbing itself is never-ending.

A woman, no longer in our congregation, tore into me one day inasmuch as she felt I hadn’t made enough of her husband’s Ph.D and his work-place position. His Ph.D had elevated him in the work-place. His work-place ascendancy issued in social ascendancy, according to this woman. By not fussing about his Ph.D I was failing to acknowledge his social superiority. Her parting shot was, “You are a phoney. You won’t recognize a Ph.D, but you worship the ground that M.D.s walk on.” (And all along I had thought myself to be rather hard on M.D.s!)

(iv) Language is another “name” we give ourselves. In our saner moments we might think that language-diversity can only be enriching. At the very least another language exposes us to another literature. What is more enriching than this? Besides, thinking in another language is a good check that our thinking really is thinking and not merely the shuffling of cliches. Yet most of the time any suggestion of another language begets suspicion and hostility.

There is a delightful touch in the parable we are probing today. When we have finished building that tower so tall that it reaches to the heavens, God still can’t see it! Our tallest tower, as high as the heavens, we think to have penetrated even the abode of God himself. But in fact our tall tower is such a pipsqueak thing that God can’t see it. The text in Genesis tells us that he has to “go down”; he has to leave his abode, get down on his hands and knees with his magnifying glass in order to see this puny fabrication.

The racial superiority we deem simply obvious; the ethnic advantage that is surely self-evident; the social elevation that declares itself to the world; all of these are so paltry, so puny, such trifles that God has to get down on his hands and knees to see them.

In any case we have achieved what we set out to do: we have made a name for ourselves. But others have just as effectively made a name for themselves too. They are now boasting of their superiority in blind ignorance of our boasting of ours. The consequences are far-reaching. Our story-teller tells us of two consequences. We are “scattered over the face of the earth”; which is to say, there is no community. There are crowds everywhere, but no community. The second consequence is that we do not understand each other. We talk, we listen, we even claim to hear. But we don’t understand each other. We certainly know the meaning of the talk we utter; we know the meaning of the talk we hear. We say we understand others even as we insist they don’t understand us. Everyone claims to understand but not to be understood. In other regards, regardless of the words we understand, we don’t understand each other. Of course we don’t. People understand most profoundly not with their ears but with their hearts. Our hearts are clogged and calcified. We don’t understand each other. But we keep talking anyway. We talk past each other. Our attempt at communicating has become babble. The builders of the tower of Babel can only babble.

Part Two

What is the solution to the “Babel-babble” that is endemic to humankind? Many solutions are proposed, virtually all of them one form or another of social engineering.

One man, a schoolteacher, bent my ear several times about Esperanto, an artificial language whose devotees are attempting make the international language. A common language will undo everything that the parable of the Tower of Babel describes, says this man. Most of us needless to say, find this naive, albeit harmless.

Equally naive, but not harmless, are the attempts of totalitarian states to enforce conformity, including thought-conformity. Citizens don’t appear to understand each other? don’t appear to understand their rulers? don’t seem to know their place? won’t surrender their pretension to individual superiority even as they are told to support a national superiority which finds them dead on battlefields? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet alike insisted that people appear to understand much more quickly when threatened with torture; solutions seem to be forthcoming much more quickly when a gun is held to people’s heads. But of course what such tyrants describe as a solution is actually a brutal manifestation of the problem.

The Ba’hai religionists and the New Age ideologues are touting world-government. Why do they think that world-government is going to solve what governments on a smaller scale have never been able to solve?

The only genuine solution to Genesis 11 is the one that begins in Genesis 12. Genesis 12 begins with the calling of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are promised that through them all the families of the earth will be blessed. Through Abraham/Sarah and their descendants the curse of Genesis 11 will be overturned. Through Abraham’s and Sarah’s lineage there will come someone, finally, who doesn’t have to make a name for himself in that he honours the name which his Father has given him; someone who knows not only that he is the Father’s creature but the Father’s son; someone who doesn’t have to twist himself grotesquely in the attempt at rendering himself superior just because he is willing to be humbled, humiliated even, for the sake of those whose preoccupation with “climbing” is killing them. The turnaround comes fully and finally in Abraham’s descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.

The turnaround which Jesus is is magnificent as God’s triumph over humankind’s self-victimization. As magnificent as it is “out there”, as an event in world-occurrence, it is nonetheless useless for us unless what occurs “out there” also occurs “in here”. That turnaround which our Lord is is useless for me unless it also turns me around. Can it do this? Can he do this? Is our risen Lord merely risen (i.e., risen but also ineffective), or is he risen and able, able to turn us away from our self-destroying and neighbour-destroying tower-building and name-making? The event of Pentecost answers this question with a huge “Yes!”. Pentecost, after all, is the incursion of that Spirit who is simply the power in which Jesus Christ acts upon us and within us; Pentecost is the celebration not merely of Christ risen (resurrection), not merely of Christ ruling (ascension) but of Christ reversing and reforming; reversing the curse of the tower and reforming the people who are otherwise fixed forever in the curse.

On the first Pentecost, Luke tells us, there are crowds of people in Jerusalem who have come from civilized lands. They hear the apostles declare the gospel. As the apostles speak and the gospel is declared hearers understand “the great things God has done”, says Luke. Hearers, scattered in places near and far, are alike grasped by what God has done. As they are grasped by what God has done for them, God does it afresh in them. Pentecost is God’s reversal of Babel. In Jesus Christ alone, and through the power of his Spirit alone, people find that they don’t have to make a name for themselves, glorying as they are now in the name that God has given them. They don’t have to invent something like Esperanto in order to understand each other, for now they understand with a heart refashioned by the heart-specialist himself. They don’t have to exhaust themselves in a quest for superiority which only disfigures them and afflicts others. They are content to identify themselves with him who ate and drank with anyone at all and was glad to do so.

Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves through nationality or nationalism? But Jesus Christ has made us members of his body, the church. And the church, St.Peter reminds us, is the holy nation. Are we still tempted to advertise ourselves as extraordinarily talented at tower-building? But we are now identified with the tower, “towering o’er the wrecks of time”, the cross. Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves, give ourselves whatever nature we want to have, through that city whose cultural achievements let us strut and boast and sneer? But we are citizens of another city, the New Jerusalem. Not only are we citizens, we are heralds of this new city; we point to it and point others to it, therein pointing them away from those other cities where they trample each other in pursuit of a name that isn’t worth having.

These other cities are many, old and varied. They are Rome, Babylon, Sodom, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Montreal, Mississauga. Jerusalem is the city that slays God’s prophets and crucifies his Messiah (i.e., Jerusalem is every city inasmuch as it spurns the gospel). Sodom is the city of those whose sensuality will prove destructive on all fronts. Rome (ancient Rome) is the city of admirable cultural accomplishment and also the site of every idolatry imaginable. Modern Beijing is the city of conscienceless cruelty. (Think of Tiannemen Square.)

Babylon is almost in a class by itself. Babylon is the city that gathers up all other cities. Babylon is the city whose paganism grows with its wealth and whose affluence swells only as a blind eye is turned everywhere. Everybody lives in Babylon; we can’t help living in Babylon. But as Christians we aren’t citizens of Babylon. We are citizens of the New Jerusalem. We belong to the holy nation; we are people of a new name and a new nature and new understanding and a new community.

There is a most important feature of the parable of the Tower of Babel which we must not fail to mention. The Hebrew bible puts forward the tower of Babel as the Hebrew equivalent of Babylon, Babel and Babylon alike being Jewish and Gentile monuments to humankind’s God-defiance. But paradoxically the literal meaning of the word “Babel” is “gate of God”. Bab-el is the gate of God. God meets us at our point of greatest defiance (the cross of him whom we crucify) and by his grace renders it the point of our access to him.

Pentecost is that miracle of grace, that miracle of the Holy Spirit, that wonder at the hands of Jesus Christ risen and ruling whereby our God-defiance collapses just because we are granted access to God. Babylon (“babble on”) is rendered the gate of God, where we hear each other as never before, understand each other, cherish each other, find community in each other — and all of this because we are no longer desperate to make a name for ourselves, but want only to be named citizens of that city which cannot be shaken, the city of God, the holy nation, the church of Jesus Christ.

Pentecost, everyone knows, has to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that power whereby the victory of Jesus Christ becomes his victory in us. Our Lord was never driven to make a name for himself in that he cherished the name his Father had given him. He never had to bend himself out of shape by trying to give himself a nature he was never meant to have. He was son by nature. You and I are to become sons and daughters by faith, thereby regaining that nature we have long since forfeited through our building and babbling.

Pentecost means this: the Holy Spirit is the power by which Jesus Christ does in us what he has already achieved for us. In other words, Pentecost celebrates that power by which the wreckage of Babel-babble is turned into the gate of God, as by faith we own our place in the holy nation and in faith cling to him whose name is above every name, above all the silly, false and dangerous names we should otherwise give ourselves.

                                                                              Victor A. Shepherd        

June 1995

 

Questions people ask: How are we to understand Noah’s Ark?

Genesis 6:9-22; 8:13 & 20; 9:8-17                   Hebrews 11:1-7           Matthew 24:36-44

 

It’s the child’s all-time favourite bible story.     And why not? The story has the adventure of an ocean voyage plus the warmth of a zoo.

All children assume that the animals enter the ark two-by-two.   Few people, whether children or adults, read far enough to know that only the animals notused for sacrifice in Israel ‘s worship enter two-by-two. Animals offered up in worship enter seven-by-seven.   (Had they entered only two-by-two and been offered up in worship the species would plainly have become extinct.)

How are we to understand this ancient story?   We have to understand that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are best understood not as history but as parable.   To say that the story of Noah’s Ark is a parable doesn’t mean that it’s “untrue” any more than the parables of Jesus (fiction) are untrue. Since our Lord’s parables are his parables, they are true; that is, they tell the truth about men and women under God at all times and in all places. C.S. Lewis has said that since the Jews are God’s chosen people, their parables are God’s chosen parables — and therefore stories such as Noah’s Ark are profoundly true, everywhere and always humanly true.

I(i): — The story begins starkly:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the

earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their

hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry

                        that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to

                        his heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)

 

God is heartbroken that the only creatures whom he has crowned with his own image and likeness persist in rendering themselves wicked.   He is sorry that he has created humankind at all.   Plainly, according to our simple, primitive story, God is distressed that those whom he fashioned the apple of his eye should turn out so badly.

The narrator of our story amplifies the matter of humankind’s wickedness: “The earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” Everyone knows what is meant by “violence.” But “corrupt”? The Hebrew word translated “corrupt” literally means “destroyed.”   In other words, what God decided to destroy was already so very corrupt as to be self-destroyed.   What rendered the earth self-destroyed?   Wickedness, one of whose principal manifestations is violence.   The story-teller tells us that the earth was filled with violence. There is violence everywhere.

 

A few years ago a man in Scotland entered an elementary school, shot sixteen children, shot the teacher, and then shot himself. A parishioner wrote me a letter describing the gunman, Thomas Hamilton, as singularly wicked.

I don’t wish to make light of the schoolhouse tragedy in any way. At the same time, I don’t think that Thomas Hamilton and his trigger-finger are what the story of Noah’s Ark is about. I am not a psychiatrist, but I strongly suspect that Hamilton was deranged. Violent, yes, but a violence born of derangement.

What Noah’s story is about isn’t derangement; it’s about the violence born of sanity; the violence born of people who are perfectly sane, the violence of sober citizens and pillars of whatever community. It’s about the violence that is premeditated, calculated, implemented, boasted about. The story-teller tells us that such violence comes forth from every person’s heart, not merely occasionally from the small percentage of people who are deranged.

I’m not making light of the sixteen children in Scotland . At the same time, I don’t wish to become sentimental. Every day in Argentina the police pick up homeless children who are living on downtown streets, take them away who knows where, and execute them. Every year Thailand sacrifices thousands of twelve-year old children to the sex trade, a tourist industry that the government of Thailand encourages. Seven thousand people are murdered in the United States every year.

Let’s not forget that during the worst days of the American Civil War, 25,000 men were succumbing every day. Let’s not forget that when the city of Dresden was bombed at the end of World War II ( Dresden was a city peopled with young children and seniors, a city of no military significance whatever), 100,000 civilians died in one night. How did they die? Instantly on account of blast? No. The air-raid started a firestorm, and the firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the air, with the result that children and old folks died wretchedly through asphyxiation.

Think of the more recent “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia . The full story there has yet to be told. Serbs, of course, are worried about reprisals. They should be worried, because the people they victimized are waiting to retaliate. All of which means that our story-writer is correct: the earth is “filled with violence.” Think of the thousands slain in Rwanda ; and then the same thing in Burundi . Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian who witnessed it, says he’ll never get over it. As horrible as the holocaust was in Europe, it happened again in Cambodia through Pot Pol and the Khmer Rouge. What about Saddam Hussein and the Kurds he gassed?

But we shouldn’t point the finger at anyone. When I was a member of the ministerial association of the City of Miramichi , New Brunswick , a fellow-clergyman proposed that we have a multi-denominational service on Dominion Day, July 1st. The theme of the service was to be “Gratitude for the gift of the land.” I looked at him as though he were from Mars. “The gift of the land?” I asked. “The gift? Our foreparents took it at the point of a gun and blew away anyone who disagreed with them.”

Then there’s the violence that is no less violent for having nothing to do with nations and armies. Think of the violence pertaining to the world of labour. At one time Henry Ford employed a strong-armed thug named Harry Bennett. Bennett had many jobs. One was acting as contact-person between the Ford Motor Company and the mafia. Another job was beating up, with the help of the Ford Company’s goon-squad, anyone whom Henry Ford and family wanted beaten up. Ford was especially eager to have beaten up anyone attempting to organize auto workers. Ford had Bennett and his men beat up Walter Reuther and his brother so badly (the Reuthers were the auto workers’ first leaders) that both brothers were hospitalized for six months. Is it any wonder that unions respond with their own kind of violence? Of course it’s no wonder — even as the proliferation of violence confirms the story-teller’s line, “…and the earth was filled with violence.”

In all of this we must not overlook domestic violence. Domestic violence is a huge problem everywhere. It is no less violent for being domestic. Our society must never wink at the man who told me that he slugged his wife several times “because it’s the only language she understands.” Do you know that the call to a home where domestic violence is occurring is the most dangerous call a police officer answers? That’s why older police officers wait twenty minutes before they show up at such a home.

We shouldn’t assume that violence has to be physical in order to be violence. Violence is committed when people are violated in any way. When I was in grade nine science the day came, in our introductory study of electricity, when the teacher taught us about hydro metres. We were taught what watts were, what kilowatt-hours were, how electricity-consumption was measured in terms of kilowatt-hours, and how metres were read. Then the teacher said, “Now you youngsters in this shabby part of the city (yes, my family was poor); none of your parents has a university-degree; your parents don’t know very much; your parents wouldn’t even know how to read a hydro metre.” I thought of my poor dad, poor to be sure, yet self-taught and giving me gems every day from the book-review section of the Sunday New York Times; I thought of his fertile mind, his ceaseless quest for knowledge; I thought of how much better educated he was than was this teacher, a vulgar ignoramus who insisted on slandering my family in absentia. I knew that day that I had been violated, and the entire class with me.

The story-teller is right: the human heart foams with violence.

(ii) How does our ceaseless violence affect God? What does it do to him? “It grieves him to his heart.” God’s first reaction isn’t rage or contempt; it’s grief, sadness too deep for words. God is heartbroken. He weeps over us whom he has made in his image, over us who have rendered ourselves monstrous.

(iii) At the same time, while God is grief-stricken he isn’t immobilized. While he is saddened, to be sure, he doesn’t wallow helplessly in the swamp of sentimentality. His grief issues in judgement. His grief has to issue in judgement. Did it not issue in judgement God would be devoid of integrity. He isn’t devoid of integrity; which is to say, judgement becomes operative.

 

II: — All of which brings us to the flood. It’s right here, frankly, that the child’s delight in the parable surprises me. After all, the story of Noah’s Ark resembles a horror movie. None of us would ever want our child to witness a drowning. And the spectacle of countless bloated corpses, animal and human, might give an adult nightmares. (To be sure, the story of Noah’s Ark is no more violent than many fairy tales. Children love fairy tales. Bruno Bettelheim, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and himself a death camp survivor, has written profoundly as to how it is that violent fairy tales help children past their childhood fears. We haven’t time to probe Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic profferomgs and must leave them for another day.)

We must take time, however, to note that the story of Noah’s Ark is not telling us that God is vindictive; it does not say that God is a cruel ogre who delights in mass drownings. It tells us instead that God’s judgement becomes operative as God gives us precisely what we want. At the beginning of the sermon I mentioned that the Hebrew word translated “corrupt” in our English bible literally means “destroyed.” I mentioned too that what God’s judgement consigns to destruction is already self-destroyed. People bent on violence plainly want destruction. With our lips we all say we don’t want destruction, if only because no one in his right mind wants destruction. But that’s just the point — we who are made in the image of God, are now bent on violence, and have saddened God to the point that he can’t grieve more — we aren’t in our right mind. And therefore regardless of what we say with our lips, as violent people we want destruction, since violence always ends in destruction. God’s judgement is simply God consigning to destruction what is already self-destroyed in any case.

 

III: — Yet there is Noah. Three things are said about Noah: he was righteous, he was blameless, and he walked with God. “Blameless” means “single-minded,” what Jesus will later call “pure in heart.” “Blameless” describes Noah’s relation to God; “righteous” describes Noah’s relation to his neighbours; “walked with God” means Noah knew God intimately and endeavoured to obey him consistently. Noah and his family, together with the animals, are brought through the flood. The waters recede; total destruction is averted. The rainbow is painted into the sky. And God himself speaks: “Never again shall there be a flood over all the earth; never again shall violence go all the way down to utter destruction; never again shall the human heart, foaming with violence, precipitate total destruction.” This is God’s promise. In the bible it is called a covenant. God makes this promise to Noah, yet makes it for the sake of the entire creation everywhere. The covenant is made with Noah alone, yet the whole creation is blessed on account of it. Which is to say, the covenant is made with Noah alone, and the whole creation is blessed on account of him.

Plainly Noah is one person who represents many. The principle of one representing the many is common throughout scripture. God makes a covenant with Abraham, and through this one man all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. God makes a covenant with David, and through David all Israel is to be blessed. God makes a covenant with Noah, and the covenant is this: God has promised never to allow his creation to collapse all the way down to that self-destruction it is bent on and deserves. To be sure, when our story speaks of the flood, it speaks of God’s consigning the creation to destruction, albeit the destruction it perversely wills for itself. Yet the story concludes with God’s promise that in fact he will preserve his perverse creation however violent it might be. This promise is the gospel of Noah’s Ark.

Because God keeps the promises he makes he tells Noah to raise up children. Does it make sense to bring children into a world whose violence devours them? William Sloane Coffin jr., 17 years the chaplain at Yale University and more recently the senior minister at Riverside Church, New York City; Coffin was a liaison officer between the United States Armed Forces and Russian forces during World War II. Assigned to the Russian front, he saw scenes there that I shall not attempt to describe. After the war he received several European pastors who had pastored-on throughout the worst years of the war. One pastor said quietly, slowly, movingly, “During the worst of the fighting the front moved back and forth through my town eight times. And after the front had passed through my town, each time I spent days doing little more than bury children.”

Is it reasonable to ask Noah to raise up children in a world where children are rendered helpless victims? The fact that God will not allow his creation to sink all the way down to irretrievable self-destruction doesn’t mean that the human heart is any less lethal. After the last war the Jewish people asked themselves a terrible question: “In view of the holocaust-horror (one and a half million children burnt alive), are the Jewish people morally obliged not to have children?” Nevertheless, world-wide Jewry decided it would continue to beget and bear children, and decided this for many reasons, not the least of which was that it trusted the promise. God will never consign his creation to the fullest, uttermost destructive consequences of its self-willed violence. For the Jewish people, God’s promise, and their faith in the promise, meant more than any calculation.

Have you ever asked yourself why the world doesn’t become utterly uninhabitable as each generation adds its evil to that of the preceding generation? Why doesn’t evil accumulate, like a snowball rolling downhill, until the accumulated evil is so vast that human existence becomes impossible? Our story tells us why. God has made a covenant: he has promised that he will never abandon his creation to that total self-destruction which violent-hearted people always tend to produce.

The implications for us are obvious. If God isn’t going to abandon the world, then neither should we. If no frustration can deflect God’s commitment to the world, then no frustration should deflect ours. If God can endure seemingly-endless setbacks, so must we. The bottom line is this: we shall never be in the situation where we are seeking an end to violence and God is not. We shall never find ourselves spending ourselves on behalf of a world that God gave up on a long time ago. Our struggle can never be hopeless. God has made a promise; he will ever keep his promise. This is good news, gospel, the gospel of Noah’s Ark.

 

IV: — There is one more point for us to consider. When Noah emerges from the ark he offers up an animal in sacrifice to God. Part of the sacrifice is eaten. Up to this point in the unfolding biblical story men and women have been vegetarians. Now they are permitted to become meat-eaters. Their eating meat at meals is God’s concession to their violence: human beings kill and eat their first cousins, the animals.

But their eating meat is more than this. In Israel of old every occasion of eating meat was more than a means of satisfying hunger; it was also an act of worship. Meat — a dead animal eaten at the dinner table — was as much an act of worship as was the animal sacrificed in the temple on the Sabbath. In fact, said our Israelite foreparents, every time a family ate meat at home it was pointing to the lamb slain in the temple.

 

You and I eat meat. According to our foreparents in faith whenever we eat meat we are pointing to a lamb slain. We are not pointing to any lamb, but to the lamb, the Lamb of God; we are pointing to him who bears in himself the sin and suffering and sorrow of our violent world. In a few minutes you and I are going to go home to our Sunday dinner and eat meat of some sort. When we do this we shall be pointing to our Lord Jesus Christ, the lamb of God slain, who has been offered up on our behalf and who ever invites us to feed on him.

As we feed on him a new heart and a new spirit will become ours. A new heart and a new spirit means that we have pleaded with God to do in us whatever it takes to remove from us humankind’s characteristic violence.

 

Noah’s Ark isn’t just a story for children. It is very much a story for adults. It’s a story, a parable like the parables of Jesus. It’s about our deep-seated violence, about God’s grief, about God’s judgement. It’s also about God’s promise — he will never abandon his world, and therefore neither must we. Finally, it’s about God’s provision — he has offered up his Son as surely as Noah offered up a sacrifice — wherein you and I may find ourselves with a new heart and a new spirit. For then, like Noah, we too shall be “blameless and righteous”, those who live to bear witness to the “shalom” of God, the peace of God, that kingdom which can never be shaken and whose fullest manifestation we pray for every day.

Victor Shepherd                    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                

January 2005

 

Do Seedtime and Harvest Never Cease or Five Myths That Slander God

 

Genesis 8:22

2 Kings 6:24-31

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

John 6:27-35

In the course of a food shortage in Hong Kong, decades ago, a British executive of the Bank of Hong found a British soldier staring at him.  The bank executive had come upon a half-rotten orange in the gutter and was about to eat it when the soldier hollered that the food was crawling with maggots and would certainly make him ill.  The man became hysterical, shrieking and crying.  Can’t you imagine the spectacle: a man in grey-striped formal trousers, black vest and suit jacket, bowler hat and umbrella — plainly someone from the highest echelon of Britain’s highest class – this man blubbering hysterically because he wasn’t allowed to eat his vermin-ridden garbage?

   Hunger doesn’t merely make the tummy ache.  Hunger doesn’t merely produce diseases and deformities born of protein or vitamin deficiencies.  Hunger also bewitches the mind.  Hungry people start thinking about doing, and actually do, what they would otherwise never imagine themselves doing.  Hunger exposes civilisation as no more than skin deep.  When an airliner crashed in the Andes Mountains in South America several years ago it was learned that the survivors had survived by eating the remains of fellow-passengers who had already died.  Immediately the tabloids featured headlines on cannibalism, while more thoughtful magazines probed ethical issues raised by this turn of affairs.  Hunger bewitches.

   Reflect for a minute on a story from the life of the prophet Elisha.  Syria’s army besieged the Israelite people, and these people were soon hungry.  And hungrier.  Desperate.  So desperately hungry that 80 shekels of silver (80 shekels would normally buy you 40 roasting rams or 90 bushels of grain); so desperately hungry that people were now paying 80 shekels for the head of a dead donkey.  A dead donkey’s head?  Hungry people will eat anything.  If you had only 5 shekels you could purchase half a pint of bird-droppings.  (There’s food in bird-droppings, you know; if you poke around in bird-droppings you’ll eventually find a few seeds.)   If you had no shekels what did you do?  Two Israelite women knew what to do.  “Let’s make a deal”, one said to the other; “today we’ll boil your infant son and eat him; tomorrow we’ll do the same with my son.”  One mother boiled her son and shared him with her friend.  Next day the second woman said she couldn’t.  The king was called in to settle the matter.  The king exploded and swore he would kill the prophet Elisha.

   Kill Elisha?  What did the prophet have to do with this horrible turn of events?  Nothing at all.  Then why go after him?  Hunger makes even rulers irrational, doesn’t it?  Hunger twists people’s minds until a pretzel looks like a straightedge.

   Hunger is terrible.  How terrible Jeremiah knew when he wrote, his mind reeling, “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children….” (Lamentations 4:10)

I: — Today is thanksgiving Sunday.  Today we customarily thank God for food.  The people in our world who don’t have food, millions upon millions of them; for what do they thank God?  After all, God has promised to supply food.  He who is our creator would be a mocker if he created us only to turn his back on us.  (Human beings who turn their back on their children are sent to jail, aren’t they?)  God maintains that he’s not only creator; he’s also provider and sustainer.  Now I believe that he is.  But then, I’m not hungry.

   Still, I am persuaded that God is as good as his word.  He does provide for us creatures whom he’s fashioned in his own image.  He does keep the promise he makes: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest…shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)  I’m persuaded it’s entirely correct to thank God for food, and thank him as often as we eat it.  In the words of a common Eucharist liturgy, God does care for all that he makes.

   And yet even with God caring as much as he can care, a great many people are hungry.  Scores of thousands starve to death every day.  Far more are permanently damaged in mind and body on account of their hunger.

   On the one hand, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about food since God feeds his people as surely as God feeds the birds of the air.  On the other hand, the apostle Paul tells believers that not even famine can separate them from God’s love vouchsafed to them in Christ Jesus their Lord.  Clearly Paul knows that God feeds (as promised) yet famine occurs, and famine kills.  Famine kills even as God continues to feed.  Famine kills even as God’s love remains uncontradicted.

   Yet every day someone tells me that the fact of widespread hunger throughout the world does contradict God’s love.  Then where are we with respect to God? Where is God with respect to us?

II: — It’s plain to me that God has been slandered; perhaps slandered unknowingly (in other words, the people who have faulted him in the face of the world’s hunger have done so thinking they were telling the truth about him), but slandered none the less.  “He doesn’t care”, they have said, or “He doesn’t care enough.”  Today I wish to vindicate God’s name.  I wish to show that the appalling hunger in the world at this moment can’t be blamed on a deficient supply of food.  In clearing God’s name of the calumny that attends it I’m going to explode several myths.

MYTH #1  People are hungry because food is scarce.  In truth, food isn’t scarce.  There’s enough food in the world at this moment to feed adequately every man, woman and child.  Think of grain-production alone.  There’s enough grain grown right now to provide everyone with sufficient protein and with 3000 calories per day.  (Most of us need only 2300 per day.)  The 3000 grain-calories per person per day produced right now doesn’t include many other foods that aren’t grains, foods like beans, root crops, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grass-fed meat.

  What’s more, sufficient food is produced right now even in those countries where millions are hungry.  Even in its worst years of famine, for instance, India has produced so much food as to be a net exporter of food.  (India has been a net exporter of food every year since 1870.)   In India, while millions go hungry, soldiers patrol the government’s six million tons of stockpiled food — which food, of course, now nourishes rats.  In Mexico, where at least 80% of the children in rural areas are undernourished, livestock destined for export are fed more grain than Mexico’s entire rural population.  There’s no shortage of food.

MYTH #2 — Hunger in any one country is the result of overpopulation in that country.  If this were the case, we should expect the worst hunger in those countries where there are the most people per food-producing acre.  But it’s not so.  India has only half the population density per cultivated acre that China has.  Yet the Chinese eat while millions in India do not.  China has eliminated visible hunger in the last 50 years.

  There’s dreadful hunger in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Yet these countries have scant population per cultivated acre.  In Africa, south of the Sahel, where some of the worst hunger continues, there are fewer people per cultivated acre than there are in the USA or in Russia; there are six to eight times fewer people in Africa south of the Sahel per cultivated acre than there are in China.

   Please note that I’ve spoken of “cultivated acre.”  We must be sure to understand that less than 50% of the world’s land that could grow food is now growing food.  (It’s plain to everyone, by even this point in the sermon, that the real barriers to alleviating hunger aren’t physical but rather political and economic.)

MYTH #3 — In order to eliminate hunger our top priority must be to grow more food.  Already you’re aware that the world is awash in food right now.  The real problems concerning feeding hungry people lie elsewhere.  For instance, land-ownership is concentrated in too few hands.  A recent United Nations survey of 83 countries disclosed that 3% of the world’s landlords control 80% of the land.  In most countries only 5% to 20% of all food-producers have access to institutionalised credit, such as banks.  The rest, the other 80% to 95%, have to get their credit from virtual loan sharks who charge up to 200% on farm loans.

   What’s more, new agricultural technology benefits only those who already possess land and credit.  It’s been documented irrefutably that strategies which simply aim at having more food produced have dreadful consequences.  Here’s what happens.  New agricultural technology (for instance, hybrid seeds that produce bigger crops from less fertiliser) attracts investors whose primary interest is investment, not food-production; i.e., new agricultural technology attracts investors who see agriculture simply as a good investment.  Moneylenders, city-based speculators and foreign corporations rush to get in on the good investment.  The new money swells the demand for land.  The price of land skyrockets.  Tenants and sharecroppers are then squeezed off the land.  These folk can’t feed themselves and now go hungry.  What about the crops that the new technology has made possible and that speculators now produce in record quantities?  These crops are luxury items (carnations, for instance, to adorn dining room tables); these luxury items are purchased by consumers in the western world and the northern hemisphere.  In other words, new agricultural technology reduces food production.

   We’ve all heard of the Green Revolution, a breakthrough in agricultural technology that promised to generate oceans of foodstuffs for the world’s hungry.  The Green Revolution was born in northwest Mexico.  Overnight the average farm size jumped from 200 acres to more than 2000.  And overnight three-quarters of the rural workforce was squeezed off the land — now with nothing to eat.  The Green Revolution found rural people hungrier than ever.

   Any attempt at remedying hunger simply through greater agricultural sophistication renders people hungrier than ever.

MYTH # 4 — The increase in population (and therefore the need for greater food production) requires the use of chemicals that are environmentally dangerous.  In fact very little pesticide or fungicide or insecticide is spread on farmland.  I know, when we hear of the tonnage of these assorted “‘cides” it sounds colossal.  For instance, the USA alone spreads 1.2 billion pounds of pesticide every year.  One-third of this, however, is used on golf courses, lawns and public parks.  Very little farmland is treated with these chemical substances.  In fact, in the USA only 5% of cropland and pastureland is treated with insecticides; only 15% with weedkillers; only one-half of 1% with fungicides.  Over half of all the insecticide used in the USA isn’t used on food crops at all.  (Most of it is used on cotton, and even then, most of the land that grows cotton isn’t treated.)

    Greater demand for food doesn’t issue in overwhelming chemical pollution.

MYTH #5 — In order to help the hungry we should improve our foreign aid programs.  The truth is, increased foreign aid will do very little to alleviate hunger.  The question we must always ask concerning foreign aid is this: when the government of a western nation sends financial aid to a hungry country, into whose hands does the money find its way?  The money falls into the hands of that tiny number of people who exercise social and political control.  This tiny number benefits; few others do.  In Guatemala, for instance, virtually all the money sent as foreign aid merely enriches still more the handful of largest landholders.

   

What happens overseas is much like what I’ve seen in Canada.  When I was a pastor in New Brunswick and lived closer to corruption than I do in Ontario, the federal government of Canada launched its “LIP” programme.  (“L.I.P.”: local initiative project.)  Ottawa was handing out millions to small communities in order to help the poorest people in them survive.  My village received an LIP grant.  The grant amounted to thousands of dollars ($200,000 in today’s money.)  In my village four men worked five days per week for twenty weeks, building a small vault in the local cemetery.  The vault was so small it would hold only two caskets.  These four men laid one concrete block per day each.  (Think of it: four men each laying one concrete block per day for twenty weeks.)  Who were the men who pocketed the money?  Were they the poorest in the village whom the programme was meant to help?  Of course not.  Poor people aren’t “connected”; poor people don’t have access to the levers of influence and favours.  But well-to-do people have such access.  In my village it was the sons of the richest, those with connections, who siphoned off the government “goodies.”

   Next year our village received another LIP grant, this time to put a washroom (worth $75,000 in today’s money) in a small building that was used four hours per week.  Same story.  Third year, third grant.  But not one needy person was ever hired for any of these projects.

   Increased foreign aid won’t feed hungry people.  But it will build highways and bridges, thereby making land a better investment.  Land that is now a better investment attracts investment speculators who then use the land for purposes unrelated to food production.

   Historically, it was different in England and America.  In England political changes ended the landholding arrangement of feudalism and gave people access to land, at the same time that additional political changes gave common people protection against the powerful, the wealthy and the state.  In the USA a constitution (it had to be secured by force of arms) guaranteed the people freedom from the oppressions that had ground down common people in Europe for centuries, which oppressions America would fend off at any cost.  The oppressions fended off in the English and American revolutions are the oppressions we see in developing countries today.  Political change, not foreign aid, is what feeds people in the long run.

With respect to the short run I want to say a word here about mission support from the local church.  It’s important.  When the late Dr. Allen Knight, an agricultural missionary who spent years in what was then Angola, spoke to my congregation in Mississauga about the “Seeds for Africa” programme, the congregation supported him without hesitation.  We knew we could trust him.  The money we gave for seeds purchased seeds; money given for well-drilling actually drilled wells.  People were fed.  When my friend Dr. Peter Webster was performing surgery in Africa and schooling villages in preventive medicine, any monies he received from friends and congregations were used for their designated purpose, used for that purpose only, and used immediately.  We must never diminish our support for trustworthy Christian workers who are doing front-line work among needy people.

Have you heard enough this morning to convince you that God doesn’t merit the slander that is customarily heaped on him?  God is defamed repeatedly on the grounds that he doesn’t keep the promises he makes; he doesn’t care for all that he has made; day and night and seedtime occur without interruption to be sure, but the harvest doesn’t — say those who tell us that God lies.

   I trust you are persuaded that the presence among us of hungry people, together with the bodily and mental distortions that hunger produces, can’t be blamed on God.  He is as good as his word; he does care for all that he has made.  And for this reason he is to be praised.

III: — God is to be praised even more, for not only has he provided bread, he’s provided the bread of life.  No one lives by bread alone.  Without bread we humans disappear; without the bread of life we humans remain fixed — fixed in what?  Fixed in our perverse rebellion against God, fixed in our deadly defiance of him, fixed in our frustration and futility, which frustration and futility we can either rage against or surrender to but in any case can’t remedy.  Still, the Creator of us all doesn’t give up on us.

   Because God won’t give up on us he’s forever pressing the bread of life into our hands.  The bread of life isn’t made anew each day, but it’s offered anew each day.  “I am the bread of life”, says Jesus, “whoever comes to me will never hunger again.” (John 6:35)  The bread of life became available to us when provision was made for us in the cross.  Now it’s offered afresh as often as our Lord steals upon anyone anywhere and says, “Why don’t you stop running past my outstretched arms?”

   No one lives without bread; no one lives most profoundly by bread alone.  Only the bread of life can restore men and women made in the image of God to the favour of God.  Only the bread of life can relieve us of the consequences of our rebellion against God by releasing us from the rebellion itself.  Only the bread of life can reconcile us where we are estranged, thaw us where we are frozen and sensitise us where we are unresponsive.

   In his 2nd letter to the congregation in Corinth Paul is glad to acknowledge that God provides seed and bread.  Unquestionably he’s grateful for seed and bread.  Yet his ecstatic exclamation, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” plainly pertains to him and only to him who is the bread of life, Christ Jesus our Lord.  Then the bread of life we must seize or seize afresh today.

   

The church has only one mission: to offer Jesus Christ to any and all, near and far.  For in offering him, the one through whom and for whom all things have been made (John 1:3,10), we shall remind detractors that God has kept his promise to provide seedtime and harvest; and in offering him, the bread of life, we shall recall rebels to their rightful ruler, to their Father, as it turns out, from whom they henceforth receive eternal life.Victor Shepherd   October 2014

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Our Father Abraham

 Genesis 17:1-8; 15-22

      Psalm 47        Hebrews 11:8-12        Luke 1:67-80

 

Whenever we bring out our family photo albums and look at our ancestors – great-grandfather, grandmother, father, and then finally ourselves – it’s easy to see a family resemblance. Our ancestor’s jaw or hairline or nose is evident generation after generation.

More important than the biological family that we were born into and whose traits we’ve inherited, however, is the family of God. The family and household of God, scripture reminds us, consists of those whom the truth and reality of God has startled and stimulated. The family and household of God consists of those whom God’s presence and persistence has roused from spiritual slumber and who have found themselves jabbed awake or won over or wooed into loving the One who comes upon different people in different ways but always to the end of rendering us his children.

To be sure the nature of the response varies from person to person. Some are taking their first, tentative steps in faith, fending off detractors who tell them that faith is no more than unconscious fantasy and love for their Lord no more than disguised love for themselves. Others have lived close to him for years and want only to move closer to him. No matter. All alike belong to the family of faith, and all share a family resemblance with their foreparent in faith.

Foreparent? Yes. Everywhere in scripture, newer testament and older testament alike, Abraham is deemed the ancestor of God’s people. Abraham is acknowledged the prototype of the believing person, the model for all believers in all eras and in all circumstances. Abraham is the ancestor whose spiritual “genes”, as it were, are found in all whom the gospel captivates.

 

I: — What is the first family resemblance that is traceable from Abraham to you and me? The first is that we live by God’s promise. Abraham’s story begins with his obedience to God’s command: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Abraham is invited and summoned to step out from his comfortable familiarities and step towards a new land, step into a new future. What land? We don’t know its name. It’s spoken of only as “the land of promise.” Abraham is invited and summoned to move out into a future that appears radically uncertain and therefore radically insecure.

Then is Abraham merely naïve? Is he simply foolish, even stupid? Not at all, for Abraham isn’t stepping into a vacuous future; he isn’t stepping into a cosmic hole or into cosmic treachery. He’s stepping into a future that appears uncertain and insecure from a human perspective, to be sure; yet this future is already filled with the God whose faithfulness and goodness Abraham knows he can trust. At this point Abraham begins to live by the promise. But of course living by promise makes sense only if the promise is going to be kept. Then to live by promise is to live trusting the promise-keeping God. Abraham steps out confident that God will unfailingly keep the promises he has made to Abraham. Only the promise-keeping God can we trust, and only the promise-keeping God should we trust.

It has always been the conviction of the Church that the promise God made to Abraham concerning land – “Go to the land that I will show you” – is fulfilled in the kingdom of God . The promise of land made to Abraham doesn’t entail real estate; the promise is fulfilled in the kingdom of God .

The kingdom-promises of God are manifold.

[i] Here’s one. “Whoever comes to me I never turn away.” This is the promise of ready welcome, of free forgiveness, of a Father’s eagerness to embrace any and all who are fed up with living in the “far country” and want only to go home where they belong. This promise guarantees that any penitent who looks homeward is going to find arms of mercy that seize her even as her sin is forgiven and forgotten forever.

[ii] Another promise. “Whoever gives to one of these little ones a cup of cold water…will not lose his reward.” This is God’s guarantee that the work we undertake in the name and Spirit of our Lord for the sake of his people; our work in this regard will unfailingly be fruitful even if we don’t see the fruit. The work we undertake for God’s people he will invariably use to enhance others and to increase our own faith and enlarge our opportunity for service.

[iii] Another promise. “The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” “Will keep”? The Greek word phulassein means “will garrison (it’s a military metaphor), will safeguard” our life in Christ and our identity in Christ regardless of what howls down upon us. As often as we are assaulted in life Christ’s grip on us will always be stronger than our grip on him, with the result that we are garrisoned within that “fort” which Jesus Christ unfailingly is for his people.

[iv] Another promise, as profound as it is simple: “I will never fail you or forsake you.” It is simple, isn’t it. At the same time, what could be more profound? After all, don’t other people fail us as surely as we fail them? Worse still, don’t we fail ourselves? And as for forsaking, don’t others forsake us as surely as we forsake ourselves? All of us have said and done what left others looking at us sideways, muttering to themselves, “And I thought I knew who he was.” All of us have said and done too what left us shocked at ourselves, saying to ourselves, “I always thought I knew who I was.” What else is this but to be self-failed and self-forsaken? In the midst of all such distress, whether inner or outer, there continues to sound forth that throbbing, bass note of our lives, “I will never fail you or forsake you.” This throbbing, bass note determines the rhythm of our lives; it’s the downbeat of our lives; it’s the first beat in the bar, the predominant beat, as we step ahead as people of promise: “I will never fail you or forsake you.” He who raised his son from the dead is never going to abandon you and me to that deadliness by which we are otherwise victimized, even self-victimized.

[v] Concerning the congregation here in Schomberg there are two promises taken together that move me over and over: Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” and “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing is impossible to you.” David Bloomer has told me several times of the days when the worshipping congregation here was down to four or five people. They sat at the front of the church and the minister, wanting to be less formal amidst so few people, pulled up a chair before them and simply related to them in a conversational tone what he had meant to preach that day. I am moved at the promise-clinging faith of people like David and Betty and a couple others who didn’t give up, didn’t turn angry or bitter, didn’t do anything except trust that with God a promise made is a promise kept. It is because of their Abrahamic confidence that there’s a congregation here today.

Living by promise is always an adventure. It’s as much an adventure in 2004 as it was for Abraham. For like him, you and I don’t know what life is going to bring before us. We don’t know which people, what events, what kind of challenges or assaults or griefs or opportunities are going to appear from nowhere, loom before us and linger with us. We can’t anticipate them.

Myself, I noticed years ago that virtually all of the disastrous downturns that I feared might happen to me didn’t happen. In other words, my anticipation of negativities was groundless. On the other hand, the assaults that clobbered me (one of which at least brought me as close to being admitted to hospital as I’ll ever come without being admitted) I couldn’t anticipate in any case. We tend to fear what turns out not to happen, and we can’t anticipate what does happen. Then we are left having to live by the promises of God.

   Promises, plural. Yes, the promises of God are manifold. Nonetheless, said John Wesley, all the promises of God recounted in scripture are gathered up in one, overarching, grand promise. There is one grand promise that comprehends them all: it’s the promise of shalom, salvation. The promise of shalom, salvation, is the promise that on the day of our Lord’s appearing we are going to be found fully restored, every last defacement of God’s image in us remedied, every last disfigurement addressed, every last sin-wrought flaw healed. We are going to be found restored. The book of Hebrews says it succinctly: “There is a Sabbath rest (restoration: in the wake of the Fall “rest” is restoration) promised the people of God.”

Knowing that this grand promise is going to be kept, like Abraham of old we step forward in life knowing that whatever else the adventure brings, it always brings with it the unfailing goodness of the promise-keeping God. He will not fail us or forsake us.

 

II: — While we are thinking of family resemblances on Christian Family Sunday we should realistically admit that there are some family resemblances we wish weren’t there. There is an unsightliness here or there, a blemish, even an ugliness, which appears from generation to generation. We wish it weren’t so, but it is.

As much can be said about Abraham’s life under God and about ours too. Abraham is journeying with his wife into foreign territory. The king of this foreign country, a fierce fellow, starts eyeing Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Abraham sees that this king has lecherous designs on Sarah.   Abraham, frightened now to the point of near-panic, thinks to himself, “This man is going to rape Sarah. If he thinks she’s my wife, he’ll kill me in order to have her. But if he thinks she’s only my sister, he’ll rape her in any case but spare me.” In that dreadful moment of screwed-up thinking that is as understandable as it is inexcusable Abraham blurts, “She’s my sister; she’s only my sister.” Truth to tell, Abraham did this twice. He lied to save his skin.

Are you and I any different? In a moment of intense pressure haven’t we falsified ourselves, falsified someone else, exaggerated, lied or simply fallen silent because in our cowardice we panicked before the consequences of telling the truth? When was the last time we were dead wrong before our children but wouldn’t admit it because the loss of face would have been too humiliating? Haven’t we given silent, tacit consent to malicious gossip, wickedly untrue, because we didn’t have courage enough to stand up for the person our silence victimized, and didn’t have courage enough to contradict the crowd we wanted to include us? Haven’t we all behaved in a manner that could never be squared with a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, and immediately pleaded any number of “reasons” that will never extenuate us?

Abraham lied to spare himself even as he exposed his wife to sexual molestation. This can only be a hideous, grotesque disfigurement in our spiritual forefather. Yet we must admit that it is part of the family resemblance, since the same cowardly abandonment is found in us.

God’s people are those whom scripture speaks of as his “peculiar treasure.” Unquestionably we are God’s peculiar treasure. And yet the treasure is tarnished. We shouldn’t be cavalier about this. At the same time, neither should we be paralysed by it. You see, because God has promised that there will always be more mercy in him than there is sin in us, we shouldn’t write ourselves or others out of the household and family of God just because the treasure is tarnished. Tarnished treasure is still treasure. What matters finally isn’t that our discipleship is perfect; what matters is that we aspire after consistency. John Calvin was fond of saying that what mattered finally was aspiration not achievement.

In a moment of panic Peter says, “Jesus? Never heard of the man.” Once? Three times. Still, eventually Peter is the acknowledged leader of the church in Jerusalem . Everyone knows what happened yet no one is writing him off.

Mark accompanied the apostle Paul on a missionary journey. Mark was only nineteen years old. He became homesick and returned home. Paul, of course, was disappointed. More than disappointed, he pronounced Mark unfit for apostolic work and refused to have Mark accompany him on his next missionary journey. Barnabas, on the other hand, Barnabas thought Paul to be wrong with his “one strike and you’re out” approach. Barnabas thought Mark should be given another opportunity. And so Barnabas took on Mark as missionary companion. Eventually Mark gave us the gospel that bears his name. Barnabas proved himself right in the episode with Mark, Paul wrong. Paul must have known he was wrong, for he subsequently wrote, “I’m not perfect…but I press on.”

In our Abrahamic venture what matters is that we press on.   What counts is our aspiration. We aspire to be worthy of our Lord Jesus Christ who has called us. And as God continued to use Abraham despite Abraham’s treachery, God’s promise is that he will continue to use us. Martin Luther said it so well: God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. God will ever use us despite the disfigurement we can’t hide.

 

III: — All of which brings us to the last family resemblance we are going to discuss today. Abraham is called out of the city of Haran . Haran is Toronto , Montreal , Newmarket , Aurora , King. Abraham and his family are called away from this. They are to distinguish themselves from that city which doesn’t know Abraham’s God and behaves as not knowing Abraham’s God. Abraham and his people are to have a different outlook, different convictions, different commitments. God’s people are always and everywhere different simply for being God’s people. We are therefore to think and do differently. We must distance ourselves from the outlook, convictions and commitments of those who aren’t Abraham’s descendants.

Yet Abraham doesn’t shun the city in principle. Instead, having distinguished himself from the city, having distanced himself from it as it were, he intercedes for the city; he pleads for Sodom and Gomorrah . This twofold movement, withdrawal from our city for the sake of commitment to our city with its people and problems and perverseness; this twofold movement is a pronounced family resemblance of the household of God. As the people of God we are called to an orientation different from that of our society so that we can exercise a ministry of intercession for the sake of our society.

Judicious balance is required here. Lack of balance results in two polarized positions. One segment of Christendom wants to repudiate utterly the society around it. These people speak of the need to keep oneself “unspotted from the world.” They uphold a religious isolationism that seeks to preserve the church by segregating the church from a society which they describe as godless. Such isolationism renders the people of God irrelevant.

The other pole in Christendom is determined to be “with it.” No isolationism for them. No self-distancing from the world at all. They identify with the world uncritically. While they are quick to tell us they love the world just because God loves the world, they fail to understand that they and God don’t love the world in exactly the same sense. God loves it to redeem it. They love it to ape it. Such uncritical aping renders the people of God useless.

The truth is, Abraham is neither irrelevant nor useless. Abraham stands back from his society precisely in order to be able stand with it. Abraham refuses to identify himself with the society in order to be free to intercede for the society. We who are possessed of Abraham’s faith must grasp what is to be done here and why: we who are citizens of the kingdom of God first are never citizens of that kingdom only; we remain citizens as well of a realm to which God has appointed us just because he has appointed himself to it, for indeed “The earth” – the whole earth – “is the Lord’s,” says the psalmist.

In order to exercise a ministry of intercession for our society we have to have a mind informed by the mind of Christ. As Paul puts it, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remake you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed.” (Rom. 12:1) Christians are mandated to be aware of what enhances human existence and what is degrading; what enhances community life and what destroys it. We have to be aware of what is important and what is indifferent. Some people will agree with us; many will not. No matter. When Abraham set out he was a minority; when he interceded for Sodom he was a minority. All that matters is that we discern the truth of God and do it.

At all times we must return to the balance of the twofold movement: God’s people can be helpful in a society only if they are first holy – distinct in some sense. (The root meaning of “holy” is “different.”) Conversely, we are genuinely holy only if we intend to be helpful (God’s holiness, remember, always aims at helping us.)

Some of the people who are most committed to a holy intervention in the world may be people whom we think initially to be world-denying. Thomas Merton, instance. Thomas Merton was a Roman Catholic Trappist monk in rural Kentucky . Yet when members of the churches in the USA were involved in voter registration drives for Afro-Americans; when Christians gave leadership in the civil rights movement and the anti-Viet Nam war demonstrations, it was Thomas Merton whose writings and conversations and wisdom informed these leaders and infused them, even as Merton wrote and spoke from within a monastery. Merton not only informed and infused; he reminded Christians relentlessly that unless they were immersed in Jesus Christ they would soon have nothing to say or do or be concerning the society around them.

Long before Merton, long before me, Abraham knew.

-Abraham knew about the society he would neither fawn or nor forsake.

-Abraham knew as well that the treachery of his own heart didn’t disqualify him as God’s servant.

-Above all, Abraham knew what it is to live in the land of promise, knowing that no uncertainty or insecurity outweighs the substance and truth of the God who unfailingly keeps the promises he makes.

Abraham’s is the family resemblance we want to recall and glory in on this day, Christian Family Sunday.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                

May 2004

 

With What Do We Struggle? With Whom?

Genesis 32:22-32

 

One of my friends, a pipe-smoker, found himself sitting in a meeting beside a fellow who was also a pipe-smoker. My friend told the other man where pipe tobacco could be purchased in Toronto for 75 cents a tin less than anywhere else. But this tobacco shop isn’t easy to find. And so my friend described in complicated detail how one gets to this shop, buried as it is among the back streets and alleys of innermost inner Toronto – all for the sake of 75 cents. When the meeting concluded my friend learned he’d been talking to Charles Bronfman, one time owner of Seagram’s Distilleries, owner of the Montreal Expos Baseball Club, owner of the Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club, owner of so very much more that he, Bronfman, has forgotten just how much more.

All of us have had an experience like this. We’ve all encountered someone whose identity we weren’t aware of, and came to be embarrassed by what we had said to the person we didn’t recognize. Or perhaps we weren’t embarrassed following such an encounter; perhaps we were amused or even delighted as we discovered that the woman who had sat at the lunch table with us was the Lieutenant Governor or the vice president of the Royal Bank.

 

I: — Today we are looking at a story, three thousand years old, that speaks of a man wrestling all night with someone whose identity he learned only in the morning. Jacob wrestles during the night. He is locked in a desperate struggle. In the night’s thickest darkness he thinks he’s contending with another man. In the bright light of the new day he learns who his “antagonist” was: it was God himself. It’s only at the end of the life-and-death encounter, only when Jacob has struggled, hung on, fought through, that he learns the identity of the one he’s contended with throughout a night he had thought was never going to end.

At some point in our lives all of us have dark nights. At some point all of us struggle with something that resists us, thwarts us, threatens to overwhelm us. From a human perspective it appears to be a struggle with a purely human situation or a merely human opponent. In the bright light of a new day, however, we learn that through it all we were contending with nothing less, no one other, than God himself.

You see, because God is present to all of life, every situation in life, every encounter in life, every struggle in life, every engagement, anywhere in life, is also an engagement with God ultimately. From a human perspective it appears to be no more than a purely human struggle, terrible as this often is. Yet since God abandons no one, since God forsakes nobody, any struggle anywhere in life is ultimately a struggle with God.

Let me say right now that because our Lord Jesus Christ was profoundly forsaken by his Father on Good Friday in Gethsemane and on Calvary for our sakes; because our Lord Jesus Christ was profoundly God-forsaken for our sakes, there is no human being, anywhere in the world, who is God-forsaken now or ever will be.

This is not to say that there’s no one who doesn’t feel God-forsaken. At some point we all feel God-forsaken, even as in truth we never are.

Neither is this to say everyone has come to faith, is going to come to faith, or wants to come to faith. I am not pretending that because God forsakes no one therefore everyone is now a secret believer. Still, the fact that some have not yet recognized God and acknowledged him; the fact that some have never heard of him; the fact that some have heard of him but choose to ignore him; none of this means that he is now ignoring them. God ever remains that “Other” with whom all men and women are involved at all times, whether they are aware of it or not. What appears to be only a human situation, however difficult, is also, always, an encounter with God.

What are some of these situations? Disappointment, depression, despair, bereavement; temptation to revenge, temptation to bitterness, temptation to that peculiar form of insanity wherein we know that sin is sin, know that a terrible price is attached to committing it, yet perversely want to commit it anyway. In all of these situations we can simply lie down and quit, overwhelmed; or we can wrestle and keep on wrestling until daybreak.

Jacob wrestled during the night. Darkness is a rich biblical symbol suggesting turbulence, threat, loneliness, and fear. As Jacob wrestles he cries to his opponent, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

In my work as pastor I see much human distress, and see many people attempting to cope with that distress. Some give up. Others say, “I’ll never quit. I have to see this situation through to some resolution. I can’t let it go until something in this struggle has been wrested to my good. I have to prevail until my prevailing finds me a different person.”
A few years ago I sat at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with a man who was struggling desperately to recover his sobriety. He had had a “slip” and had been on a terrible drunk. He was now coming off it, and he was frightened. He was afraid of going into the “DTs”, the delirium tremens, wherein the suffering alcoholic has nightmares that are beyond any nightmare that any of us can imagine. As many of you are aware, alcoholic persons are overtaken by the “DTs” not when they are drunk but when they are becoming sober. Therefore there is one, unfailing way to avoid the horror: get drunk again. But of course to do this is to give up; it’s to walk away from the struggle and forfeit the blessing awaiting us on the other side of the struggle. This man wasn’t going to give up. He was going to struggle. He sat beside me, shaking like a leaf, perspiration pouring down his face, frightened, sick, but determined to see it all through to the end, because he knew deep down that at the end there really was blessing: sobriety. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it was certainly an authentic sight: a man determined to wrestle through a night that might be longer than he thought and darker than he imagined, in the midst of which he cried out, in effect, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Recently I spoke with an ex-convict who had been “on the street,” as he put it (i.e., out of jail) for eighteen months. He had been a “paper hanger” – a writer of rubber cheques, worthless cheques. He had been “on the street” several times over in the past few years, but had been able to stay on the street only for a week or two before he succumbed to temptation yet again and wrote another bad cheque. Then it was back to jail. He had repeated this pattern for twenty years. Now he was on the street once more. Eighteen months of freedom was more than he had had in two decades.  He could never be described theologically sophisticated. Nevertheless every morning, he told me, he cried to someone, somewhere, to keep him on the street for one more day; just one more day. He was going to wrestle through each night until daybreak.

I’ve never been tempted to “hang paper.” But we’ve all been tempted by something else, in some other direction. And hasn’t the temptation been so awful, so visceral, that our stomach turned and our knees shook? And wasn’t the struggle so very intense just because the outcome was so crucial for us? At the time we thought it was only a human struggle, only a struggle we were having with ourselves. Unbeknown to us it was more than that; it was a struggle that involved the living God.

No one makes light of bereavement. I don’t doubt that it’s dreadful. The more we loved and were loved by the one we’ve lost the more deeply our bereavement bites. C.S. Lewis, professor of English Literature and Christian thinker, married in his fifties. He was wondrously happy. He felt his “ship had come in.” Within three years, however, he went from husband to widower. Upon the death of Joy Davidman, his wife, he spelled out his anguish in a little book, A Grief Observed. He begins the book, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness….I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.” He adds, “I was happy before I ever met my wife. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources;’ I shan’t do so badly….Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘common sense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.” (I speak carefully here, carefully and reticently, since my wife hasn’t died – yet.) We’ve all seen bereaved people give up. We’ve all seen bereaved people quit, go under, and wait for the undertaker to close the lid a second time. And we’ve also seen bereaved people wrestle agonisingly through a long, dark night of turbulence, loneliness and fear. They keep on wrestling. Come daybreak, they want – and are going to receive – that blessing they’ve refused to forfeit.

You may have noticed a distinction in the situations I’ve described: while our society doesn’t fault someone for being bereaved, it does fault someone for being fraudulent or alcoholic. But all such social distinctions have no bearing whatever on the struggle in which people find themselves. What difference does it make whether they landed in the turbulence through their fault, someone else’s fault, or no one’s fault? One of the features of Jacob’s struggle had to do with the fact that he had cheated his brother Esau. When he finds himself wracked Jacob fears that maybe Esau has caught up to him and is going to retaliate; Jacob fears he’s struggling for his life, and all of this on account of his own wrongdoing. But whether we struggle on account of our own wrongdoing or not is beside the point. All that matters is that we don’t give up just because at the end of it all there is going to be blessing for us.

Struggles are legion: the struggle against habitual negative thinking; the struggle against a besetting temptation which, from a rational standpoint, is silly and yet continues to mesmerize us until we are tempted to keep on staring at it like a rabbit staring at a snake, then to find that it’s got us; the struggle against mind-bending disappointment more painful than a punch in the mouth; the struggle against disillusionment that threatens to curdle our spirit and shrivel our heart for the rest of our life.

In all of this there is turbulence, loneliness and fear. In all of this it appears we’re engaged in a difficult human situation only, contending with a human reality only. Yet because God is the environment in which all of life unfolds, ultimately we wrestle with him.

 

II: — In the old, old story of Jacob the dawn comes at last. Light is a biblical symbol for order and wholeness. As light – order and wholeness – overtakes Jacob, he is asked his name.

Now to us modern folk someone’s name is merely a means of labelling that person. To say that my name is Victor doesn’t mean I’m victorious in any sense. My name is simply a label that keeps me from being confused with Bill or Tom or Jerry.

For Israelite people, however, “name” meant “nature.” Someone’s name was her chief characteristic. If an Israelite were named “Victor” it was because he was victorious, or he wouldn’t have that name.

The name “Jacob” means cheater. Jacob is asked his name (he had earlier cheated his brother Esau) and he replies, “Cheater; that’s my name; that’s who I am.” From a human perspective a person is what she does. She cheats? Then she’s a cheater. Name and nature are one.

This, of course, is how we regard other people but never how we regard ourselves. If someone lies to us once, just once, we say he’s a liar. But if we lie, and lie more than once, we never identify ourselves privately or announce ourselves publicly as a liar. Anyone else who boasts is a boaster; anyone else who commits adultery is an adulterer. The truth is, what we predicate of other people must be predicated of us as well. As surely as we insist other people name themselves by what they do, we name ourselves by what we do.

Then what’s your name, and what’s mine? It all depends on what we do. How would others speak of us? Cheater, liar, manipulator, exploiter, complainer, worrier, weeper, whiner, tantrum-thrower?

“Not fair,” you say; “there’s more to me than that.” But we never make this concession to other people. “Still not fair,” you say, “because we are being ‘named’ precisely where we are struggling most valiantly.” Correct. The sarcastic person who is struggling with all his might to rid himself of his deep-dyed sarcasm is still labelled, and labelled contemptuously, “acid-tongue.” The bereaved person who is struggling is still labelled, and labelled contemptuously, “blubberer.”

Despite the apparent unfairness of it all there remains something positive, health-promoting, about it. When Jacob admits his name, “cheater,” he then – and only then – receives the blessing. The blessing is a new name. He is no longer named “Jacob” but rather “ Israel .” New name means new nature, new principal characteristic. New name means new nature, new identity, new future. We know what “Jacob” [Ja-kob] means: cheater. And “ Israel ?” “ Israel ” [Yisra-el] means “he who contends with God.” The alcoholic who says, with painful honesty, “yes, I am an alcoholic: that’s who I am” – this person is on the threshold of the blessing: contented sobriety. Any person who honestly, painfully (honesty is always painful) admits her name: liar, luster, habitual negative thinker, fault-finder, adulterer – any such person is on the threshold of a new name, a new nature, a new identity, a new future.

It all happens for Jacob at dawn, after the struggle through the long, dark night. It happens at dawn, when light brings order to his life and wholeness as well.

 

III: — Naming and renaming are crucial throughout scripture. Jesus says to Simon, “‘Simon’? That’s no name for you. From now on I’m going to call you Petros, Peter, the rock. Rocky. That’s it. ‘Rocky’.” New name, new nature, new identity, new future.

We reply, “But Peter didn’t appear rock-like for quite a while. After Jesus had named him “Rocky” didn’t he deny the Master, three times over? Wasn’t he among the disciples who abandoned the Master at his most agonising hour?” Then why does Jesus call him “Peter, The Rock, Rocky”? Because our Lord knows that when someone is given a new name he conforms himself to that name. He becomes what, who, he’s been named.

We all know how this operates at the purely psychological level. If you keep telling a child he’s stupid he’ll believe himself to be stupid and act stupidly. If you keep telling a child she’s superior she’ll believe herself superior and act like the snob she is. People conform themselves to the name wherewith they are named.

If this is true at the merely psychological level, how much farther-reaching it is at the spiritual level. Because of what has occurred to believers through our Lord’s cross and resurrection; because of the Holy Spirit who cements Jesus Christ into us and us into Christ; because of all this we have been given a new name: we are son or daughter of God; we are brother or sister to Jesus Christ our elder brother; we are friend to the Friend who sticks closer than a brother. To be sure, in most of this the reality may be largely unapparent – as unapparent as it was in Peter the day Jesus called him “Rocky.” But let’s remember: the day came when stumbling Peter; the day came when fumbling, faltering, falling down Peter was acclaimed the leader of the church in Jerusalem . The day came when Peter’s influence was so widespread and so telling that people laid their sick friends in the street in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on them.

The truth is, the day has been appointed for all of us when what we have been named in Christ Jesus our Lord will cease to be only apparent and will be made fully manifest.

The apostle Paul tells us that the new nature which has been given us is “being renewed every day.” New right now, as new as it can ever be, yet always being renewed? He means that the new name/nature God has given us as a title is beginning to characterize us and will continue to characterize us until the gap between name and nature is overcome, and title and fact are one.
Like Jacob of old you and are I contending somewhere in life today. It could be in any of the areas I have mentioned; more likely it is in scores more that I have not. This makes no difference.

What matters is this: we never give up the struggle; we never quit. We are going to continue wrestling through the night, however dark or lonely or fearsome, because the day does dawn. And with the dawn, light, our lives are blessed with order and wholeness.

The reason for all this, of course, is that regardless of where we are struggling in life, with what, ultimately we are contending with the God who contends with us in the sense that he first contends for us, contends for us effectually in Christ Jesus, just because he wants only to bless us.

In Jesus Christ he has given us a new name. One day the name we’ve been given, the nature we’ve been promised, will be ours in reality. And on that day the blessing we’ve long craved because long needed will be ours, and ours for evermore.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                

 April 2004

Joseph

Genesis 39:1-23

Imagine it is Thanksgiving Sunday. The choir is singing thanksgiving music. The sopranos are singing, “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land.” A few bars later the basses come in singing, “Now thank we all our God.” At this point there are two themes or motifs running through the choir anthem at the same time. A few bars later still the altos and tenors begin singing something else. Now there are several themes or motifs wending their way through the one piece of music at the same time. In the hands of an able composer such music isn’t a giant discord that jars hearers; in the hands of an able composer such music is multi-textured and marvellously rich.

Life is like this. There are many different things going on in everybody’s life at the same time. This doesn’t mean that life is therefore distressingly complicated and hopelessly fragmented. On the contrary, it means that our lives are complex. The fact that they are complex means that they are multi-textured and can be marvellously rich.

Joseph, one of our ancestors in faith, lived a life, under God, that gathered up many different themes or motifs. Under God it all issued in a life that was not only rich for Joseph, but rich for everyone whose life touched his back then; and rich as well for every one of us whose life touches Joseph’s now. Today we are going to deepen our acquaintance with Joseph, for as we meet him afresh and find our lives and his coursing through each other, we shall become richer still.

I:: — Let’s look first at the theme of God’s steadfast love. It was Joseph’s conviction that God’s love is steadfast despite the seeming jumble of events that made up Joseph’s life and appeared to contradict it.

Events often seem to unfold around us the way “pick-up sticks” fall out and fall over each other as soon as the child opens her hand and releases the sticks. We’ve all played pick-up sticks. We’ve all watched the sticks fall out helter-skelter, with no apparent order, the sticks merely sticking out higgledy-piggledy everywhere. Life appears to unfold, “fall out”, just like this.

Think of the developments in Joseph’s life over which he has no control at all. His father favours him inasmuch as he is born when his father is old and his father thereafter dotes on him. His brothers resent him. His natural gifts (including his innate business smarts) cause others to envy him. Foreign traders come along when his treacherous brothers have thrown him into a pit and carry him off to Egypt. In Egypt he’s imprisoned. Famine scourges the people. All of this is beyond his control. He hasn’t asked for any of it, isn’t responsible for it, and can’t do anything about it. It just “falls out” the way pick-up sticks fall out.

How is Joseph to react? He could have reacted the way we’ve all seen people react (the way we may have reacted ourselves) as events jumble themselves around us.

– “I’ve been victimized!”, Joseph could have said, “by my family, no less!” Who hasn’t said it?

– “Life isn’t fair!” True! Life isn’t fair. Fairness happens to be an adjective we never get to use of life.

– “I’m powerless!” He is powerless when a nasty woman slanders him and has him jailed. A psychiatrist under whom I studied told the class that powerlessness is the greatest stress anyone can undergo in a stress-ridden life.

– “I’m forever having to `skate on thin ice.’ I’m forever caught in a welter of insecurities.” He could have reacted this way, since if he fails to please Pharaoh, Pharaoh will have his head. There are a thousand insecurities that keep all of us skating on thin ice all the time.

– “I’m not appreciated!” Joseph could have reacted in this manner too. After all, he does the butler an enormous favour which the butler then forgets. The truth is, none of us is appreciated the way we feel we should be, and likely none of us is appreciated the way we ought to be.

We can always react in any of these ways, as Joseph could have too. But shouting furiously while we pound our fist on the wall won’t help. Nevertheless, there is something that will help. We grasp what it is as we follow Joseph in his ups and down all the way down to prison where the text of scripture tells us, “The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.”

It is years after the most turbulent period of his life that the fact of God’s steadfast love is stamped on Joseph and he sees in retrospect that God’s love has been steadfast in all circumstances. The most turbulent period was the abuse Joseph suffered at the hands of his brothers; their mistreatment, after all, landed him in Egypt and precipitated everything that befell him thereafter. One day his brutal brothers find themselves (and their families) desperate during a famine. They go to Egypt in hope of acquiring food. Joseph identifies himself to his brothers. They think now they are never going to get food, since Joseph has a long memory; they think too that not only will they not get food, they’ll get vengeance. Joseph looks them in the eye and says, “When you fellows abused me and abandoned me years ago you were bent on evil, NOTHING BUT EVIL, weren’t you!” (Now the brothers think they won’t survive another ten minutes.) “Yet the evil you intended, God has turned to good — for I can give you food.”

It’s all true for us as well. Regardless of what befalls us accidentally; regardless of what evil others visit upon us deliberately; regardless of what happens whose nature — bane or blessing — we can’t assess in the moment of its happening; regardless of what it is, God takes it all up and does something with it, something good for us or others, something that can ultimately be only an expression of his steadfast love just because steadfast love is all he himself is ultimately.

Everyone knows that when the pick-up sticks fall out, they fall out in disarray. Everyone knows that there are periods in life bleak beyond telling and black beyond describing. Everyone knows there are developments in life that seem as pointless as they are pitiless. Nevertheless, what the brothers intended for evil — and was evil — God yet wrested for good. Just because Joseph knew what God’s steadfast love had done in the worst moments of his life, Joseph would know for the rest of his life what he could count on God’s steadfast love to do — even if Joseph didn’t see it at the moment.

We who know of that incarnation which postdated Joseph have even more startling evidence of God’s steadfast love: he whose Son was victimized uniquely vindicated that Son — and therein vindicated himself — as he raised his Son and displayed him as evidence of steadfast love.

II: — There is another theme or motif in Joseph’s pick-up stick life. The theme is the forgiveness we press upon those who mistreat us. When his brothers appeared cap-in-hand before him Joseph could have done two things: he could simply have let them starve, or he could have nodded to the Egyptian police and said, “You know what to do with them.” Joseph had his brothers in his gunsight — and he refused to pull the trigger.

Never think that Joseph is a wimp. Wimps don’t forgive; wimps can’t forgive; wimps are too weak to do anything except find themselves victimized again. To forgive requires immense strength, ego-strength. To forgive means the injury that has wounded us we neither continue to absorb in ourselves helplessly nor boomerang back onto our assailant vindictively. The manifestly weak person can only invite further victimization. The seemingly strong person can only boomerang his assailant’s weapon back onto the assailant himself. It is precisely the strong person who can forgive.

A cruel way of ridding oneself of nuisance animal is to put ground glass in the animal’s food. As the animal eats, it swallows tiny fragments of sharp glass. The needle-sharp fragments perforate the animal’s digestive tract and the animal haemorrhages to death in terrible pain. Most people look upon the matter of forgiving assailants as no more than eating ground glass. Why swallow an indigestible substance that leaves us bleeding to death in terrible pain? People who think like this, of course, have it all wrong. It isn’t forgiving that amounts to swallowing ground glass; it’s resentment, it’s nursing a grudge, it’s plotting revenge, it’s biding one’s time, it’s fuelling hatred, it’s settling scores. This is the ground glass diet of those who mistake forgiveness for wimpiness.

Five hundred years after Joseph a prophet appeared, Jeremiah by name, who was mistreated much as Joseph had been. (Among other things, men with murderous hearts threw Jeremiah into a dry well hoping that they had heard the last of him.) Jeremiah survived, not in order to see whom he could pay back next — and thereby stuff himself with ground glass unknowingly; Jeremiah survived to write, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion.” (Jer. 3:22-23) To have as our portion that Lord whose faithfulness to us is great is to be steeped in his ceaseless mercies. Blessed by ceaseless mercies, how can we fail in turn to bestow them?

Forgiveness of injuries little and great is not only a sign of faith in God, it is a sign of wisdom in us.

III: — The rich complexity that was Joseph’s life discloses yet another theme: integrity. The wife of Joseph’s boss tried to seduce him. She tried not once but many times. Joseph was appalled. “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”, he retorted as Potiphar’s wife redoubled her adulterous efforts. Joseph didn’t yield.

Integrity is easy when there’s no temptation. Obedience is easy when there’s no seductive whisper. Obedience comes is difficult, however — and means worlds more — when temptation is relentless. Obedience is cheap when there’s no price to be paid for obeying. But after Joseph had cried “No!” to Potiphar’s wife she slandered him; now obedience was costly. In costly situations obedience is rendered to God and integrity is maintained in us only by grace and by grit.

In Egypt Joseph is a long way from home, a long way from anyone who knows him, a long way from prying eyes and wagging tongues which (let’s be honest) help to keep us upright. Joseph can yield to Potiphar’s wife without fear of being detected. Yet he doesn’t think about this for so much as a second. His instantaneous reaction is, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

We must be careful to note what Joseph’s instantaneous response was not. He didn’t blurt, “But I might get AIDS! or “You might become pregnant!” or “Your husband might kill me!” or even “I don’t find you attractive.” Any of these responses has nothing to do with obedience to the Holy One of Israel and integrity before him; any one of these responses is mere self-interest, as much self-interest as the self-indulgence of the fornicator (albeit somewhat more prudential.) No doubt at some point Joseph said to the Egyptian aristocrat, “But I’m an Israelite!”; and no doubt she replied, “Yes, but you aren’t in Israel now!” Joseph could only have said then, “Nevertheless, Israel is in me, however much I am exiled through having to live in Egypt!”

The business person on a business trip; the schoolteacher at that convention in Montreal; the bank employee counting bills by herself in a back office (after all, the chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year because of employee theft); the preacher sitting alone in his study (nobody knows whether he’s hard at work quarrying in the granite of scripture and theology or collecting his salary for reading Sports Illustrated and McClean’s magazine) — these are the situations where we can “get away from it” (at least at some level). Therefore these are situations where we must be so schooled in the school of Christ that our instantaneous reaction is, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” And then having said this from our heart, know with our head too that the matter isn’t over: there remains a price to be paid, as Joseph learned when his rejection of the seductress landed him in greater difficulty still.

Today, of course, a secular world and a secularized church can’t understand Joseph. Instead we are told, “Of course Joseph will yield: the Victorian era is over. Of course Joseph will yield: the sexual revolution has been with us since the pill. Of course Joseph will yield: he’s a young man beset with hormones. Of course, of course, of course….”

Joseph was simpler, profounder, godlier all at once. “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Twelve hundred years after Joseph an apostle appeared, John by name, who wrote to Christian friends whom temptation was hammering. “Remember”, said John, “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

IV: — There is yet another theme, along with the other three, multiplying the richness of Joseph’s complex life: the theme of blessing. One of the most startling features of Joseph’s story is the fact that people whose lives intersect Joseph’s find themselves blessed, assisted, enhanced. To be around Joseph is to be graced and to find oneself enriched.

We all know that the opposite kind of person exists as well, the person whose mere presence is a dark cloud, a millstone, a wet blanket — and worse. Years ago I saw such a person depicted in the movie Becket. The wife of mediaeval England’s King Richard, a woman who has to be the world’s all-time nagger, is nagging him fiercely, relentlessly, as her custom is. In addition, her appearance is as off-putting as her tongue: her hair always looks to be combed by an egg-beater, her face resembles the compost pile, and her personality is as lively as a dialtone. Her ceaseless nagging finally pushes Richard over the edge; he turns on her and says, acid in every word, “You, woman, are a barren desert into which I was forced to wander.” Terrible but true. It was just the opposite with Joseph. He was an oasis in which others found themselves growing and their lives fruitful. People who gathered around Joseph found their spirits lifted and their faces brightened and their load lightened. Under God, Joseph himself prospered; through Joseph, others prospered.

God’s people are everywhere called to be salt and light and leaven. Salt forestalls putrefaction and brings out hidden flavour. Leaven (yeast) permeates dough and lightens it, obviating that indigestible lump which only gives people stomach ache. Light dispels mildew, the foul-smelling fungus that ruins anything kept in the dank. Salt, light and leaven aren’t dramatic items. As undramatic as they are, however, they are needed if others are to find their lives lightened and brightened and eased. Salt, light, leaven are scarcely noticed themselves; yet in even the smallest quantities their immediate influence is vast. Joseph was a good person to be around, for those who kept company with him found their lives bettered in every way.

V: — What was it about Joseph that gave rise to all of this? What was it about Joseph that rendered him a blessing? It was this: Joseph always knew who he was. Regardless of where he was, but especially when he was in Egypt, in all circumstances Joseph knew who he was. It’s crucial that we know who we are.

When I was admitted to The Writers’ Union a couple of years ago I was thrilled with this turn of events. I imagined myself meeting Margaret Atwood and Robertson Davies and Timothy Findley and the whole host of literary luminaries. About this time I happened to be visiting a very wise man in the congregation one afternoon, and of course I managed to tell him to what august company I had been admitted. No doubt I appeared elated with this frippery, intoxicated even, but he didn’t leap to share my elation. Instead he stared at me for the longest time, face expressionless, and then said quietly, soberly, somewhat uneasily, “Victor, before you run off to The Writers’ Union, just be sure you know who you are.”

Who am I? Who tells me who I am? Who are you? And who tells you who you are? By faith in Jesus Christ I am a child of God. He makes me who I am; and having made he who I am, he — and he alone — tells me what he has made: child of God, not child of darkness or child of night of child of perdition.

Since, as the apostle Paul reminds us, Jesus Christ was known in essence ‘though not by name to patriarchs and prophets, Joseph knew the same Lord as I, knew himself born of the same Saviour as I, and found himself a beacon, a lighthouse, amidst a “crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2:15), as his descendant from Tarsus was to say 1200 years later.

It is by faith that we become children of God, and are therein made to be those whose lives, as complex as anyone’s, are also as rich and helpful as Joseph’s.

                                                                      Victor Shepherd        

June 1997

 

Of Wilderness and Wonder

Exodus 3:1-6

All of us wish life were easier. Troubles afflict us at every turn. They are as abrasive as sandpaper and as relentless as a dripping tap. One day someone dear to us dies, and we are bereaved. Another day disappointment steamrollers us, and we are crushed. Another day the person we always trusted betrays us, and we are flattened. Another day the political climber decides to climb above us by climbing on us, and we feel we’ve been buried.

In addition to what befalls us from one day to another there is the chronic affliction whose pain is relentless every day. One of my friends has a son with cerebral palsy. The son is markedly affected and has never been able to join in children’s games and adolescents’ cavorting. One arm is of little use and one leg drags awkwardly. Recently my friend was waiting for his son, waiting and waiting until his patience curdled into annoyance. “Hurry up!”, he shouted in exasperation, not thinking that his son couldn’t hurry up, simply not thinking at all. To his surprise his son unravelled. “Dad, I am twenty years old; all my I life I have been slow; all my life I have been last; all my life other people have told me I keep them waiting; all my life I have felt I am an impediment, a nuisance, something others endure out of social politeness even as they secretly wish they didn’t have to.” My friend was crushed at what his impatience had unleashed in his son. The son’s affliction is his physical disability; the father’s affliction is his guilt over his thoughtless reaction to his son’s helplessness.

How much easier it would be to “believe in God”; how much easier it would be to “take time to be holy” or “sense God’s presence” if only we weren’t ceaselessly distracted by our troubles!

All of us are stressed in some measure, afflicted, set upon. And all of us tend to think we are more stressed, more afflicted, more set upon than most. Yes, we admit that the human condition extends over humankind. At the same time nobody quite “knows the trouble I’ve seen.”

All of us assume that our foreparents in faith had an easier time than we are having. Surely faith came more readily for our ancestors; surely they didn’t have to struggle for faith the way we seem to have to struggle. Just imagine how much less harried they were than we! They may have suffered more physically (painkillers being unknown), but their mental anguish could never have compared to the emotional torment we are stuck with today.

All of us assume one thing more (at least assume it for a while). We think that in the midst of our intensified suffering we do have one enormous advantage over our foreparents: we can leave the bleakness of our inner or outer wilderness. Or if not leave it, at least we can find relief from it in ways they could not. We have TA,TM, TV (transactional analysis, transcendental meditation, television). In addition we can “live better chemically”, thanks to pharmaceutical companies and their helpful researchers. Whether because of prescription drugs, self-help, psychotherapy or the latest in technological sophistication, we feel that a new era, with new human potential, is just around the corner. One quick turn and the wilderness (inner or outer) will be behind us for ever!

And then the truth dawns on us, as discernment is granted to us. The wilderness belongs to the human condition! The wilderness is inescapable! To attempt to flee it is to flee life. To try to escape it — and everything about it that chafes us — is to pursue unreality. Pursuing unreality leaves us falsifying our humanity, as we magically think we can transcend the human condition. To succeed in pursuing unreality tragically lands us in the world of unreality: mental illness, derangement, psychosis.

As if whatever wilderness we live in, cannot avoid living in, were not enough, the bleakness of the wilderness is intensified whenever we suspect, with chilled heart, that God has withdrawn himself from us, turned his back on us, rendered himself inaccessible to us. God, we feel, has become deaf or indifferent. At this point our isolation (part of what it means to live in the wilderness) has worsened into desolation.

The psalmist feels that this is what has happened to him. “I commune with my heart in the night”, he tells us in Psalm 77. (Everything seems worse at night!) “I meditate and search my spirit. Will the Lord spurn for ever, and never again be favourable? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? ” Here the psalmist is pouring out his doubts about God. Perhaps God’s heart has mysteriously calcified. Perhaps God is no longer favourably disposed toward us. Perhaps God’s steadfast love has ceased, God’s faithfulness to his people somehow having evaporated. Perhaps God’s promise — “I will never fail you or forsake you” — is never going to be fulfilled.

Yet there is something more. In addition to his doubts about God the psalmist is stricken by his doubts about himself. “Has God in his anger shut up his compassion?” Everywhere in scripture there is one thing, and one thing only, that arouses God’s anger: sin. There is one thing only that perpetuates God’s anger: impenitence in the face of sin. No wonder the psalmist moans, “I commune with my heart in the night;…I search my spirit.” Plainly he would repent instantly if he knew what he had to repent of. Just as plainly he doesn’t know. He can only speculate, in his wretchedness, whether, or where, or how, or how often he has sinned so grievously as to anger God and for how long he has unwittingly remained unrepentant so as to perpetuate God’s anger. So confused is he that he isn’t even sure if he has sinned at all. Hence the question, “Has God in anger shut up his compassion?” How can the psalmist be expected to defuse God’s anger when he doesn’t even know whether sin-awakened anger is behind God’s apparent disappearance?

The wilderness intensifies, doesn’t it. First there is the human condition which can be described accurately as a wilderness. Then there is the chilling feeling that God has fallen silent, disappeared on us. Finally there is the erosion of self-confidence. As the psalmist’s self-confidence erodes (“Is God inaccessible because he has failed me or because I have failed him? How am I ever going to find out?”) he begins to spiral down; down into that mess of doubt, self-accusation, depression, short-lived protestation of innocence, longer-lived suspicion of guilt. Left alone he is going to go all the way down to despair.

Just before the psalmist crashes in despair a surge of faith short-circuits his doubt. He cries out, calling up God’s deeds of old. “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; yea, I will remember thy deeds of old….Thou art the God who workest wonders.” His simple recollection of God’s deeds of old halts the spiral as he particularly recalls the foundational item in his people’s consciousness: deliverance through the Red Sea. The Israelite people had always believed that they had been released from slavery in Egypt only because God had taken note of their suffering, their helplessness, their isolation, their desolation; in a word, God had taken note of their horrible wilderness in the midst of Egypt’s luxuriance. The angel of death had passed over them, sparing them annihilation on their way out of Egypt. Spared annihilation then, were they going to be slaughtered when they arrived at the seaside with no way through? But a way they could never have imagined opened before them. “Thy way was holy”, the psalmist exclaims with gratitude and wonder as he recalls the last-minute deliverance, “Thy way was through the sea, thy path through the great waters.”

“Great waters”, “seas”, “floods” — all these terms in Hebrew symbolize one thing: chaos. Chaos is impenetrable confusion; confusion which is formless, fathomless, exitless. While there was no way out, and no way around, under God there was a way through. “Thy way was through the sea, thy path through the great waters.” From that moment Israel exulted ceaselessly in its deliverance.

Then the psalmist adds a line that all we wilderness-wanderers must hang on to: “Yet God’s footprints were unseen.” Israel always knew its deliverance to be real, even though God’s hand in it remained invisible to others. There was nothing about Israel’s deliverance that would dispel unbelievers’ unbelief and impel them to cry out, “Truly God is!” The literature of the nations that surrounded Israel at this point in history (particularly the literature of Egypt) contains no reference to the Red Sea event. A rag-tag bunch of social misfits managed somehow to avoid slavery in Egypt? So what! This was nothing to the nations; but to Israel, everything. As far as the nations were concerned God’s footprints were invisible (which is to say, God himself is unreal). But as far as Israel was concerned, “Thou art the God who workest wonders.”

God’s footsteps have always been unseen to all except the Spirit-attuned. When the baby was born in the cowshed, who bothered to note one more baby, born out of wedlock, whose arrival could only worsen the poverty of parents who were already poor enough? A few shepherds (and fewer wisemen), however, were overtaken by the wonder of the Incarnate Son who had been appointed Sovereign and Judge of the entire cosmos.

Years later passers-by in Jerusalem saw three crosses on a road leading out of the city. There was nothing noteworthy about the crosses, since Rome had never boasted of either patience or clemency, always preferring to crucify first and ask questions later. Nevertheless, on one cross there hung a young man whose death has ever since found the Spirit-attuned startled at the wonder of their own forgiveness.

City-life continued without interruption in the days after the unexceptional execution. To be sure, members of a small, Jewish messianic sect behaved as if something momentous had occurred. But Palestine was riddled with small, messianic sects that behaved oddly; all one had to do was wait for the sect to sputter out. The story was that some women had taken perfume to the cemetery in order to deodorize a corpse. They were met by him who was the same one they had known for months even as he was now indescribably different.

God’s footprints are unseen. Yet those in whom the Spirit has surged know that the God “who workest wonders” has come upon them.

Wonder is not a sigh of relief as the wilderness is finally left behind. Wonder is our gasp of amazement at God’s drawing near to us in the midst of that wilderness that cannot be left behind. While it is true that God’s footprints are not visible to anyone at all, it is also true that those who do not harden their heart against God come to know that the wilderness is the venue of God’s visitation. In this wilderness we are surprised and startled, made to understand and moved to give thanks. Wonder seizes us in the midst of a wilderness we had thought to be as bitter as it is barren. Now we are found exclaiming with the psalmist, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel who alone does wondrous things.” (Psalm 72:18)

It is plain that as the psalmist reflected on the wondrous deliverance at the Red Sea he knew he could not merely survive in the wilderness, but even thrive in it. We shall be persuaded that we too can thrive in it as we look to the psalmist and other foreparents in faith. After all, the varied wildernesses which overtook our foreparents were no less bleak or unpromising than ours.

Think of the prophet Hosea. His wife became a prostitute and bore three children whose father could have been anyone except her husband. When she was thoroughly used up, as discardable now as she had long been degraded, she was deemed to have a market value of fifteen shekels: half the price of a slave! Absorbing blotter-like the obscene jokes which downtown loungers had long snickered over but which Hosea was only now hearing, he made his way to the marketplace and brought his wife home. Why? Just because his love for her was greater than his outrage, sorrow and agony on account of her. Thereafter Hosea spoke the warmest word of any Hebrew prophet, steeping his people in God’s tenderest love for them. It’s not that Hosea’s life-story had a Cinderella-ending: his threw herself remorsefully at her husband’s feet and lived ever after as his dutiful, affectionate and faithful wife. There is no evidence that anything like this happened. In other words, the wilderness was not escaped. Nevertheless, through his wilderness-experience, and only through this experience, Hosea was granted the profoundest insight into the wounded heart of God. More than granted an insight into the wounded heart of God, Hosea was entrusted with the tenderest word of God. Through this one man God was able to say to all the people of Israel, “It was I who knew you in the wilderness…”. (Hosea 13:5) Hosea speaks to all who cringe self-consciously in that wilderness of public humiliation and private shame. They must know that they are uniquely qualified to speak gently of a tender love ceaselessly issuing from the God whose people embarrass him but never deflect him.

Elijah spoke God’s truth to political power; spoke God’s truth to the evil tyranny of King Ahab and his cruel wife, Jezebel. Jezebel swore she would kill Elijah. Feeling that faithfulness to God was tantamount to suicide; feeling that his life had boiled dry and might just as well blow away in the desert aridity of it all, Elijah “went a day’s journey into the wilderness…and asked that he might die.” (I Kings 19:4) To his surprise he was fed by a messenger of God. Strengthened now, he made his way to a cave where neither the earthquake nor the fire nor the hurricane (all of which were publicly verifiable) bespoke God. On the other hand, the “still, small voice” (undoubtedly heard by Elijah alone) most certainly did. Told to return home by another wilderness (the wilderness of Damascus: there really is no escape!) Elijah anoints the kings of Syria and Israel, as well as the prophet Elisha, his successor. The wilderness of fear and self-pity is yet the place where we shall know ourselves met, cherished, moved beyond our complaining self-indulgence, and reclaimed for a glad obedience which furthers God’s work in the world.

Moses knew his vocation to be that of leader. He knew too that hardship in the wilderness was vastly preferable to the security of slavery in Egypt. Through this leader God thundered to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” Eventually Pharaoh did just that. Pharaoh would have laughed, however, if he could have overheard the people railing against Moses for forty years. Life in the wilderness was certainly hard; so hard, in fact, that they clamoured for the “meat, fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” they had had in Egypt (forgetting, of course, the wretchedness of the captivity that had reduced them to well-fed domestic animals.) Now they were left with nothing better than — nothing better than manna! Manna? The Hebrew word means “What is it?” It’s undefinable! The resources of God are unique! They do not fit any of our ready-to-hand categories. “What is it?” “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.” (Exodus 16:15)

Leadership anywhere in life entails loneliness. To be summoned to lead in business, industry, government, church, university, hospital, community organization; to be summoned to lead is to be thrust into a wilderness of loneliness where few others (if any) understand or care.

Yet while Moses alone of all the people of Israel knows the loneliness of leadership, it is to Moses alone that God speaks as God’s fiery presence sets the bush aflame and God’s scorching truth brands itself upon him indelibly: “Take off your shoes, for the ground on which you stand is holy!” Moses speaks to all who are called to lead, and who know the loneliness that leadership entails. Moses also tells them that faithfulness to their vocation will render their wilderness holy ground. As often as their spirits sag God’s fiery presence and word will remind them.

Whenever a leader appears courage appears as well. John the Baptist exemplified courage. His clothing of animal skins gave him an earthy appearance, reflecting the untameability of the wilderness and his aversion to soft compromises. His diet was as stark as his speech: grasshoppers (noted for their protein) and wild honey. (How many bee stings had he incurred in gathering the honey?) John’s courage could come only from someone who was unimpressed by the cute games and politically correct conventions of those who had long since jettisoned transparency. John’s fearless truthfulness had found him telling Herod, the puppet-ruler of Judaea, that not even the king had a right to his brother’s wife; kingly philandering, after all, was still low-life adultery. Herod’s sister-in-law (mistress too) seethed. Luke tells us that John was in the wilderness until his public ministry began. Where was John, then, after his public ministry began? Merely in a wilderness of a different sort. Thirty years (more or less) in the wilderness for a ministry of only a few months? But what a ministry! The world will never forget the man whom Jesus pointed to as the greatest prophet to arise in Israel. John speaks to courageous people, all of whom discover, sooner or later, that courage brings on isolation and as surely as courage calls forth hostility. Just because John didn’t flee the wilderness by surrendering courage he continues to embolden all who, like him, will not compromise.

We must not forget John’s namesake, the seer of the book of Revelation. This man had been sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in exile on the island of Patmos. His faithfulness to his Lord in the face of political pressure had landed him on a wind-swept rock-pile as desolate without as John himself was within. Except that he wasn’t desolate within! Just because John was stuck on Patmos “on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” the Spirit surged over him, leaving him exclaiming, “I was on the island called Patmos, and I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” So far from excluding the Spirit, the wilderness is the condition of the Spirit’s visitation. Faithfulness to Jesus Christ in the face of persecution is wilderness to be sure, but also a wilderness where the Spirit unfailing finds us.

The wilderness surrounds us. The wilderness of shameful humiliation, the wilderness of long-term hardship, the wilderness of isolation enforced because of one’s courage, the wilderness of punishment handed out by the politically powerful; it’s all wilderness. What are we to do when we realize that this is where we live and there is no escape? We must look to our foreparents in faith, and especially to him who was most at home in the wilderness, Jesus himself.

Never attempting to flee the wilderness, our Lord deliberately sought the wilderness time and again as a place of spiritual refreshment. On the one hand he knew that life there was lean, spare, hard, even harsh. On the other hand he knew that there there were fewer distractions, fewer illusions, less likelihood of that spiritual folly which always attends affluence and its life of ease. Never naive, Jesus knew the wilderness to be the place of temptation and trial and testing. (The Greek word, PEIRASMOS, has all three English meanings.) At the inception of his public ministry Jesus was even driven into the wilderness, say the gospel-writers in deploying the word which they also use of the violent driving out of demons. (Who says that God is always and everywhere gentle?) Yet it was in the wilderness, the gospel-writers tell us, that Jesus was refreshed. Paradoxically, the place of spiritual assault is also the place of spiritual invigoration. We are sustained most profoundly precisely where we are most threatened! The resources of God abound precisely where we assume they are wanting!

So unusual is this truth that even the most intimate followers of Jesus are slow to grasp it. Jesus draws a huge crowd around himself as he teaches for days on end. Matter-of-factly he tells the disciples that the crowds, on whom he has stomach-wrenching compassion, need to be fed. “How can we feed these people in the desert?”, the disciples ask, perplexed. They will see shortly that wherever Jesus Christ is present, anything that is offered to him, however slight, is multiplied so as to provide enough for everyone.

We fear the desert or wilderness largely because we assume that whatever we desert we are in, for whatever reason, will only become even more arid and barren as there is added to it the spectre of spiritual annihilation. In fact the opposite is the case. Because Jesus Christ is present the desert becomes the reservoir of riches as indescribable as they are inexhaustible. The prophet Isaiah knew whereof he spoke when he wrote, “For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.” (Isaiah 36:6)

                                                                                                    Victor A. Shepherd
April 1994

A Note on Reconsecration

Exodus 24:3-8

 

I: — What did people do before the invention of dry-cleaning? How did they ever remove stains? They didn’t. Stains worthy of the word “stain” were simply indelible.

Blood stains. Bloodstains are fixed fast in clothing. When Moses assembled the people before him, gathered blood in a basin and flung the blood out over the people, he knew what he was doing. He knew that every morning when the people put on their clothing the bloodstains would remind them.

Remind them of what? Of the promise they had made to God with their neighbours as witnesses. They had already received the Ten Commandments, the ten “words” that had forged their identity and would form their obedience ever after. On the day they received the ten “words” they had pledged themselves in gratitude to God for releasing them from slavery in Egypt, for rescuing them when they were on the point of annihilation at the Red Sea, and even for the freedom that the Commandments themselves provided them. On this occasion they had pledged their heartfelt, grateful service to God. But pledges and promises are easy to forget. Zeal evaporates. Commitment wanes. Dedication dribbles away. For this reason Moses assembled the people before him for a service of rededication, reconsecration.

The service was graphic. Since sin isn’t a trifle and can’t be pardoned cheaply; since God isn’t naïve and can’t be approached presumptuously; since the Holy One is just that – holy – and his creatures are defiled; since…; all of these considerations were gathered up in a sacrifice of oxen whose blood was reserved. Half of the blood was thrown against the altar, the altar being the symbol of God’s presence among his people. The other half of the blood was thrown over the people, the sign that they owned the sacrifice that admitted them to God’s presence and allowed them to survive in God’s presence. As the blood seeped into their clothing they renewed their pledge and promise to God, crying out together, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”(Exod. 24:7)

Those people never got the bloodstains out of their clothing. Every morning they clothed themselves with the sign and seal of their reconsecration to the Lord.

 

II: — Actually the sacrifice that Moses had offered was an anticipation, a foreshadowing, of that one, effectual sacrifice that the Son of God himself would make, a sacrifice of such a nature as never to have to be repeated. On the eve of this sacrifice Jesus called out, “Father, the hour has come.” It was that “hour” of which he had spoken again and again throughout his earthly ministry. Now he was consecrating himself to the Father with utmost intensity. “For their sake (i.e., for the disciples’ sake) I consecrate myself”, he cried, “that they also may be consecrated in truth.” (John 17:19) Jesus consecrates himself to the Father in order that his disciples may consecrate themselves too.

To consecrate, in scripture, is to dedicate or set apart a person to a sacred purpose related to the service of God. Jesus dedicates himself to the service of his Father so that his disciples will do the same as they discern the particular service to which God has appointed them. You and I are disciples too. Then our Lord has done as much for us in order that we might consecrate ourselves to God as well.

Today, in our annual service of Sunday School Teacher Dedication, we are recalling our Lord’s consecration to the Father’s appointment in expectation that these teachers will consecrate themselves (or reconsecrate themselves) to the service to which God has called them. And yet this service is more than a service of reconsecration for Sunday School Teachers, with the rest of the congregation looking on as spectators. Today’s service is a service of reconsecration for everyone of every age and every situation. To be sure, what the eighty year-old brings to the service is different from what the eight year-old brings. The eighty year-old brings her mature experience of the God who has confirmed himself in her life time without number. The eight year-old brings the curiosity and the mental pictures that flood her whenever she hears the word “God.” But under no circumstances must we ever say, “Eight? Only Eight?”

 

III: — To say “only” would be to sneer at the One whose hand has been on these children in Streetsville since they were born, even before they were born. It was as a mature man, gripped by a vocation he could neither doubt nor deny nor escape, that Jeremiah heard God say, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:5) Let’s be sure we note the precise details here: before Jeremiah was born God knew him, God formed him, God consecrated him, God appointed him. To be known by God is to be given an identity before God, an identity that no occurrence in life, good or bad, can alter or affect, never mind destroy. To be formed by God is to be given that bodily existence that is crowned with the ineradicable image of God himself. To be consecrated by God is to be set apart for a specific purpose. To be appointed by God is to have that specific purpose named. All of this transpired before Jeremiah was born.

Before Jeremiah alone was born? Of course not. Scripture says as much about Samuel, about Paul, about John the Baptist. In other words, this is the truth for every human being. I was fourteen years old when I became aware of my vocation to the ministry. But I have never assumed that the day I became aware of my vocation is the day God thought it up. The children whom our Sunday School teachers are to teach in the coming church-year: before these children were born God knew them, formed them, consecrated them and appointed them. The fact that these children aren’t yet aware of their vocation doesn’t mean that God hasn’t yet appointed them to it. He has.

Needless to say, one person’s vocation isn’t a carbon copy of another’s. Needful to say, any person’s vocation can assume different expressions in the course of life as God directs us here or there, uses us in this manner or that, summons us to attend to developments that no one could foresee. Plainly, then, what matters above all else is that we never trifle with or disregard that Spirit-sensitivity wherein we daily discern the tasks to which God summons us. Since it matters above all else that we never trifle with or disregard such Spirit-sensitivity ourselves, it matters above all else that we foster the environment, the atmosphere in which others will abhor trifling with or disregarding the selfsame Spirit-sensitivity needed for their obedience to God.

 

III: — In other words, we must always endeavour to provide the environment in which our Sunday School children come, little by little, to discern and own all that God fashioned for them before they were born. We adult believers are to provide such an environment. Our faith, our manifest possession at the hands of the gospel, our prioritizing of public worship and private prayer, our unselfconscious dinner-table conversations where as much is caught as taught; above all, our glorying in our own vocation – it’s all to provide the atmosphere in which a child’s faith may germinate and thrive.

Whenever I think of such an atmosphere I think of the development in Corinth which Paul addressed forthrightly. Different individuals had come to faith in Jesus Christ after they were married. They were now believers but their spouse was not. What were they to do? There were some “hardliners” in the congregation there who said, “Since light has nothing to do with darkness, and since those who lie down with dogs get up with fleas, the believing person should leave the unbelieving spouse.” Paul disagreed most emphatically. He maintained that the believing partner should continue to live with the unbelieving spouse, for in doing so the believing partner would provide the atmosphere, the environment, in which the unbelieving spouse might come to faith. Listen to the apostle’s exact wording: “For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband.” (1 Cor. 7:14) The apostle isn’t pretending that the faith of one spouse can be transferred to the other or credited to the other. At the same time, if the unbelieving partner is ever to be “infected” with faith, there has to be contact with someone who is currently contagious. Therefore the believing partner shouldn’t abandon the spouse who hasn’t been faith-infected – yet. It’s the same with our Sunday School children. The teachers who have consecrated themselves to the service of the Sunday School children are doing so for the sake of those children in order that the children eventually consecrate themselves to the service of God. To this end teachers provide the atmosphere wherein faith can be quickened in children, vocation discerned, God’s appointment owned – and all of this not once but many times over in the course of the child’s development. That to which God consecrated and appointed children before they were born they can come to know and own only after they’ve been born. And they will come to know it only as they are consecrated by that environment in which faith and discernment and obedience are the atmosphere inhaled and exhaled week after week.

Several years ago on Teacher Dedication Sunday I preached a sermon, Where Are They Now?, in which I spoke of the Sunday School teachers I had had as a youth. I can still recall every one. I can still recall the idiosyncrasies of each; I can still recall what I gained from each. How is it I can recall all of this? How is it I can do so with merriment and gratitude? It’s because they shaped me profoundly, and shaped me profoundly, I am sure, even when they were scratching their head and wondering if anything was “getting through.” We must never underestimate our influence with young people.

In 1931 Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught a confirmation class of rowdy boys in Wedding, a working-class district of Berlin. Bonhoeffer himself belonged to the old German aristocracy. One of his grandparents had been a piano-pupil of Franz Liszt, the piano virtuoso of his era. Bonhoeffer’s father was a neurologist, professor at Berlin University’s Faculty of Medicine and director of the Berlin Neurological Hospital. His older brother was chief lawyer for Lufthansa airlines. The pastor in Wedding had died unexpectedly. The confirmation class was without a teacher. Bonhoeffer was asked to fill in. In 1931 Germany was economically destitute. These boys came from families who had nothing. The first time Bonhoeffer walked up the stairs to the second-floor room where the class was to be held the boys threw lunch-box remains down the stairwell at him. At the end of each class-period the boys went home to an urban squalour that only inner-city slums of the depression era could produce. In order to be closer to the boys Bonhoeffer moved out of his own home and rented a room where the boys lived. When he saw the deprivation the boys lived with daily, Bonhoeffer put aside his holiday plans (overseas travel) and instead took the class on a two-week holiday to the Harz Mountains. It was the first time that most of the boys had seen anything but asphalt and grime. Listen to what Richard Rother, a member of that class, had to say about their teacher:

In the course of time we…confirmands from the slums of Berlin were scattered to the four winds. We were shocked and deeply moved to hear that our pastor had to die a cruel death as a martyr in the discipleship of Jesus Christ in April 1945. [Bonhoeffer was hanged three weeks before the Americans liberated his part of Germany.] The gratitude which I feel for having had such a pastor in our confirmation class makes me write down these recollections.

Richard Rother, conscripted in 1943 (twelve years after the class), survived the war. He wrote this tribute to his teacher 33 years after his exposure to Bonhoeffer.

 

V: — There is one more matter to be discussed this morning. What is the qualification for consecrating ourselves to the service of God? In his second letter to Timothy the older man, Paul, writes, “If anyone purifies himself from what is ignoble, then he will be a vessel for noble use, consecrated and useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work. So shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart.” (2 Tim. 2:21-22) The key to consecration is shunning youthful passions.

 

We must be sure to understand what the apostle means by “youthful passions” and why they are to be shunned if we are serious about consecrating ourselves to God’s service. “Youthful passions” are the vehement, intense preoccupations of young people. A facial pimple is sufficient ground for suicide. A phone call from the class beau brummel precipitates mania. Not being asked to the highschool prom is the end of the world. “Youthful passions” are the passionate, exaggerated, horizon-filling, life-consuming preoccupations of younger people who attach utmost passion to what is decidedly less than utmost important.

Young people do this? Adults do it too! Middle-aged people do it; elderly people do it. All of us tend to attach utmost passion to what is far from utmost important. All of us attach utmost passion to what is frivolous, froth, fleeting, shallow, unsubstantial, inconsequential. Our new car has a disc-player that can find musical tunes by key signature. Wow! The Dow-Jones average shifted a smidgen and the value of our RRST went up $9.43. Awesome! The apostle insists that the key to consecrating ourselves to the service of God is the shunning of “youthful passions” regardless of our age. Since nature abhors a vacuum, even as we shun youthful passions we are to aim at righteousness, faith, love and peace.

Then with single-minded heart we (not just Sunday School Teachers but all of us) are going to preoccupy ourselves with our Lord Jesus Christ, his consecration of himself for our sake, our consecration of ourselves for our children’s sake, and all of this in order that together we shall renew our promise to God; we shall resolve to discern afresh our vocation, knowing that God has appointed each of us to a particular service; we shall endeavour to provide that environment wherein the children entrusted to us are “infected” with that Spirit which brings them to recognize their Lord, love him, and obey him in that service to which they were appointed before they were born.

The moment of reconsecration is upon us. I don’t have basin of blood that I can fling over you. I do have a basin of water. But to fling it over you would be politically incorrect in a world whose deity is politically correctness. Therefore I shouldn’t fling it – should I.

“All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” “For their sake”, says Jesus of his people, “I consecrate myself.” For the sake of our children we are going to consecrate ourselves, afresh, right now.

 

                                                                        Victor Shepherd
September, 1998

God’s Holiness – and Ours

Leviticus 19:2

Isaiah 55:6-9                              2nd Timothy 1:8-14                      Mark 6:14 -24

 

A “holy Joe” is someone who oozes religious sentimentality, religious sentimentality devoid of worldly wisdom and earthly sense.   The holy Joe, with his head in the clouds, may be mildly amusing, even laughable, but there’s nothing about him that we want for ourselves.

The “holier-than-thou” isn’t merely unattractive; she’s downright offensive. She regards herself as spiritually superior.  Worse, she advertises herself as spiritually superior. Worst of all, she expects to be recognized as spiritually superior.  While the “holy Joe” may be somewhat amusing, the “holier-than-thou” is out-and-out repulsive.

A “holy roller” is something else again.  The “holy roller” is someone whose religion fizzes up into an emotional binge. This binge, like any binge, involves loss of self-control and a public display that most people find pitiable and repugnant in equal measure.

It would seem that the word “holy” keeps bad company.  Yet “holy” is a most important word in the Christian vocabulary. It is one of the most frequently used words in scripture.  While Presbyterians argued fiercely, 450 years ago, over predestination, in fact the “predestination” word group occurs approximately 15 times in scripture.         The “holy”, “holiness” word group, however, occurs approximately 830 times in scripture.  We use it constantly in hymns and prayers and lessons. We speak of “Holy Communion” and “Holy Scripture” and “Holy Matrimony”. Frequently the congregation sings the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy”, or one like it.  We refer to the Holy Spirit in every service.

Then what do we mean when we say “holy”?   What’s the holiness of God?   This matter is crucial to me, for I wince every time I hear God’s name used carelessly. “Oh my God, it’s begun to rain just when I was going to hang out the washing.” “For God’s sake swing the bat” someone shouts as another Blue Jay hitter is called out on a called third strike.  I wince whenever I hear God’s name used thoughtlessly.  I feel like a man whose wife has been belittled, her name sneered at and her reputation dragged through the mud.  Why do I feel like this?

I feel like this because nothing looms larger with me than the holiness of God. God’s holiness is bound up with who God is and therefore with what I’m trying to do as a minister and even with who I am as a person.  Having said this much, however, I still haven’t told you what’s holy about God or what’s supposed to be holy about us or even what the word means.

I don’t think that my telling you would be the most helpful way of approaching the topic. It would be better if we examined what’s associated with the word, for then an impression of God’s holiness would be stamped upon us forever.

 

I: (i) – Let’s start with worship.  One Sunday, John, exiled to the island of Patmos , sent there to rot by a hostile Roman government, began to worship when he – when he what? He couldn’t say at the time. A few hours later he was able to write something down.  When I saw him”, John penned in the last book of the bible, “I fell at his feet as one dead.”   Nine hundred years before John, Isaiah was at worship in the temple, the service no different from any other service, when he found himself God-engulfed. “The whole earth is full of God’s glory”, he cried out.  At this moment he didn’t chatter, wasn’t distracted by something extraneous going on in the service, didn’t comment on the preacher’s smoothness or lack of it.  He was overwhelmed.

Worship isn’t a matter of tossing off a hymn or two prayers and reading and address added. Worship is finding ourselves taken out of ourselves as we are overcome by the One whose worthiness startles us. Worship points to the holiness of God and gives us a clue to it.

(ii) – Something else associated with holiness is awe.  People are awestruck when they come upon a beauty more beautiful than they can imagine; when they are visited with a love more tender, patient, persistent than they can dream of; when they are pardoned with a forgiveness so free and full as to overflow the word.  The person who has been awestruck by any aspect of God has a clue to God’s holiness.

(iii) – Also associated with holiness is fear.  Not merely awe this time; rather, awe with something added.  All biblical faith begins in the fear of the Lord.  What is it? It’s adoration, reverence, obeisance, homage, humility; at least it’s 98% this. And the other 2%?   Pure fear, sheer fear. The 2%, sheer fear, keeps everything else honest.  It keeps our adoration and reverence from becoming presumptuous, or stale, or mindless. Let’s remember that the Jesus whom we call “gentle, meek and mild”; he said to his followers, “Don’t fear people who can merely beat you up; you fear HIM who can destroy you utterly.” Of course we are to love God. But don’t give me the line a woman gave me at the door of the church one Sunday early in my ministry: “Victor, I don’t fear God; I love him.”   John Calvin insisted that we don’t genuinely love God, profoundly love God, unless we fear him.

(iv) – Also associated with God’s holiness is God’s loftiness. He towers above us. He isn’t an extension of us or a projection of us.  He is uniquely God, exalted, transcendent.  Through the prophet Isaiah God insists, “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways.”  He isn’t our errand boy; doesn’t implement our agendas; won’t be co-opted to our self-important schemes.

A crusty atheist, veteran of the World War I, used to tell me that during the Great War Anglican bishops blessed aircraft as they rolled off assembly lines, while a few miles away Lutheran bishops blessed anti-aircraft guns designed to shoot them down.   “Now”, the crusty old fellow would say with a glint in his eye, “wasn’t that an awkward predicament for the Almighty to be in?” No, it wasn’t awkward for God at all. It was heartbreaking for him, but not awkward, since his thoughts aren’t our thoughts or our ways his ways. We don’t have him on the end of our string.         God’s loftiness is a clue to his holiness.

 

II: — If we add up the clues, we have more than a little insight concerning God’s holiness. God’s holiness is his unique Godness. God’s holiness is that which renders God entirely distinct from his creation, entirely independent of his creation, entirely independent of us.   God isn’t the noblest element in humankind.  God isn’t another word for our profoundest aspirations.   He is God, he alone is God, and he will remain God whether anyone knows him or not, acknowledges him or not, loves him or not.  Kierkegaard gathered it up pithily when he spoke of “the infinite qualitative difference” between God and us.

Earlier in the sermon I said that God’s unique Godness, his holiness, has ever so much to do with my vocation, the huge gravitational “pull” in my life.  It has ever so much to do with what moves me and motivates me, and therefore with what I am always trying to do in my ministry.  I have spoke frequently here of my summons to the ministry.  I never wanted to be a minister.  I went to university to become a lawyer, fell in love with philosophy, and decided to become a professor of philosophy.  And so I tried to suppress the vocation I knew I had had since I was 14 years old. By the time I was 23 years old I was at a crossroads in my life, the crisis upon me no little crisis. I knew that either I was going to obey the God who was hounding me or I was going to defy him disobediently and suffer for it.         I surrendered. I finished up my work in philosophy and moved over to theology.  A short while earlier my parents had given me a book as a graduation gift. In it they had written a verse from the book of Daniel: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever.”

What does God’s holiness, God’s Godness mean to me?   It means, among other things, that if I ever turn my back on the summons I have received, I’m finished.  Finished in Schomberg? Finished with the ordained ministry elsewhere?   More than that. FINISHED.

What does God’s Godness mean for you?  How is it all related to you?

 

III: (i) – First of all, the apostle Paul speaks of the holy calling with which all Christians are called to faith in Jesus Christ.  The call is holy just because its whence and wither are God.  The call is holy in that it’s a call from God uniquely and it’s a call to God uniquely.

Recently a Via Rail train conductor retired after 30-odd years of working on passenger trains. When asked what single statement gathered up his work for 30 years the conductor replied, “I have spent my entire working life helping people get home.”

To be sure, it’s the task of the church, the total ministry of the church, to “help people get home.” At the same time, we must always be aware that the church’s ministry is that of a megaphone: we are merely amplifying the voice of God who sounds that summons which comes from him and calls people to him.  If our calling is from God and to God; if it originates in God, sounds forth and gathers up men and women with it, and finally returns and returns them to God, then the call wherewith we are called to faith is holy.

The holy calling by which God brings us home to him is heard in the voice of Jesus his Son as the Master invites us to become and remain disciples. Discipleship, we should note, isn’t a static matter.  We don’t become disciples and then “remain” disciples in the sense of standing still: “I am now a disciple”.  Discipleship means following.  Our Lord’s invitation is always to follow: “Follow me.”   He uses a verb tense that means “Keep on following.”   Since our Lord is always out in front of us, when he says “Follow me” he plainly means “Come to me; keep on coming.”  In other words, the holy call by which you and I are summoned to him is a call sounded relentlessly, daily.  As we do follow, come, respond, we shall find ourselves living ever more intimately with him, learning ever more from him, and rooting ourselves ever more profoundly in him.  Our faith in him is confirmed day by day.

(ii) – Yet we are not merely confirmed in faith. We are also conformed in faith, conformed to his mind and heart and will.         In other words, our holy calling issues in holy conduct, as the apostle Paul reminds us.

Paul speaks of holy conduct in terms of clothing.  We are to “clothe” ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and meekness, that peculiar display of strength that is exercised through gentleness. Yet the apostle knows too that we can appear patient with people whom we secretly view with hostility. We can posture kindness (or apparent kindness) as a way of manipulating them. We can display meekness (strength exercised through gentleness) because strength exercised through force would get us attacked.  For this reason, when he speaks of the clothing with which Christians are to clothe themselves he adds, “And above all these, clothe yourselves with love, for love binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Col. 3:12-14) He knows that love prevents patience from degenerating into indifference; love prevents meekness from becoming manipulative.         Love is the preservative of every other item of clothing the Christian wears. Love, he says, is also what keeps our “outfit” from clashing; love keeps our clothing colour-coordinated, harmonized.

Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner we came to know two decades ago through the movie Chariots of Fire; Liddell was anything but a gifted speaker.  He admitted as much himself.  No one remembers anything he ever said.  But when the missionaries with whom he worked in China were captured by the Japanese and interned in the Japanese-run prison camp in China , his fellow-missionaries subsequently said they would never forget him.   His kindness, his patience (genuine patience); a man with the smallest ego and the largest heart; his self-forgetfulness – and above all (can you guess what’s he remembered for above all else?) his ceaseless cheerfulness under unspeakably trying conditions.   All this the people interned with him said they’d never forget.  Years later a fellow prisoner who survived wrote up the prison camp episode. He said that the most noteworthy aspect of Eric Liddell during this trying time was his unfailing good humour.

We mustn’t think that Eric Liddell had a chance to be dramatic while we have none. There was nothing dramatic about his situation.  He lived among people who were anxious, weary, nervous, frightened. Some were short-tempered, some hostile, and some treacherous.  In other words, he lived where we all live.  It was in the midst of the most undistinguished ordinariness that his holy calling issued in holy conduct.

(iii) – Holy calling, holy conduct; lastly, Holy Spirit.  If you are puzzled as to what to understand by “the Holy Spirit”, always think in terms of effectiveness.  The Spirit is the power or effectiveness of all that we apprehend in Jesus. Jesus acts in the power of the Spirit. He rolls back evil in the power of the Spirit.  He undoes paralysis and death in the power of the Spirit.  When he speaks, something always happens just because he speaks in the power of the Spirit. “Spirit” means effectiveness or power, and the Spirit is holy in that what this power effects is of God.

I wasn’t in Schomberg very long before I informed the session that I simply could not say the words “Holy Ghost.”   “Ghost” is an old English word derived from the German word “Geist”. Most of you have never heard of “Geist”. You haven’t missed a thing, and we shall say no more about the German word.   All of you have heard of “ghost”. In modern English “ghost” refers to something nobody believes to exist, something nobody has ever come upon; something devoid of all reality and therefore not a “something” at all but rather a “no-thing”, nothing.   The reason I can’t say “Holy Ghost” is that I see no point in saying “Holy nothing”. In fact, I believe God forbids me to say “Holy nothing”.

So far from being nothing, the Holy Spirit is everything where effectiveness is concerned. Without the Holy Spirit, the sermon is one person’s opinion on a religious topic. With the Spirit, the sermon is a human utterance that God adopts and renders the occasion of his speaking to us, and this in a way that is both unmistakable and undeniable.

Without the Holy Spirit the communion service is pointless tokenism, food and drink insufficient to nourish a chickadee.  With the Holy Spirit, the communion service becomes the ever-renewed embrace of the crucified himself.

Without the Holy Spirit our worship is of the same order as the cheering at a football game. With the Holy Spirit our worship is a public exclamation of God’s worthiness; and such worship, scripture reminds us, delights God.

Without the Holy Spirit the congregation is a social group of greater or less cohesion, doing more or less good work, providing a social outlet for people of like interest. With the Holy Spirit the congregation is rendered the body, hands and feet of Christ, whereby his work is done in the world.

Without the Holy Spirit the Christian life is a moral “grind” that soon becomes easy to give up. With the Holy Spirit the Christian life is a counter-cultural adventure rendered effective by God, and appointed to end in triumph and glory.

 

No one wants to be or be regarded as a holy Joe a holy roller or holier-than-thou. But we do want to be those who have been startled at the holiness of God.   As a result we want to be those who live in the company of Jesus Christ inasmuch as he has called us to him with a holy calling.  We want our intimacy with him to issue in holy conduct as we clothe ourselves in the clothing that befits Christ’s people at all times. We want to be steeped in the Holy Spirit, for we crave in all aspects of the Christian faith that invigoration and effectiveness which God alone can supply.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

September 2005

 

Concerning our Congregational Elders

Numbers 11:16-17     Judges 2:16-19     Acts 15:1-11

Concerning our Congregational Elders

 

I: — Why do all Presbyterian Churches have elders?   Why did our foreparents think we needed elders?   The simplest reason is also profound: to prevent tyranny.  Tyranny in any form is abhorrent.  All of us have an instinctive aversion to it.  While we may have been surprised at the speed with which tyranny was dismantled in the former USSR in 1989, we are not surprised at the fact that it was dismantled.  We readily understand why millions of people there couldn’t wait to get rid of political tyranny.

At the same time as we find tyranny repulsive, we have to admit that tyranny is highly efficient. Tyranny is much more efficient than any form of democracy.  Tyranny is quick, precise, conclusive.  Compared to tyranny democracy is awkward, slow, meandering, and sometimes downright silly. Clumsy and ponderous as democracy is, however, we readily agree with Winston Churchill when he stated that democracy was a terrible form of government – awkward, fumbling, bumbling, often laughable – yet we cherish democracy and will die to preserve it just because, said Churchill, all other forms of government are worse.  Tyranny is repugnant anywhere, anytime, and no less repugnant in church life.

In 16th century Switzerland (the setting of the non-Lutheran, Reformed or Presbyterian stream of the Protestant Reformation) people had long wearied of tyranny.  Religious tyranny over a congregation was exercised by a priest.         Political tyranny over the wider society was exercised by a bishop. The Presbyterian reformers got rid of both kinds of tyranny.  Congregational authority was transferred from priest to people; political authority was transferred from bishop to city council.

In our service this morning we are ordaining Barbara Bain as elder. Elders like her (that is, elders of the sort known in our church tradition) appeared in the Presbyterian stream of the Reformation in the 1500s.  Then it’s fitting for us to look more closely at our Presbyterian foreparents.

I stress Presbyterian foreparents. Methodists were another major stream of Protestants in Canada . The Methodist tradition is remarkably different. In the Methodist tradition the clergy were kings.  The Methodist clergyman simply ruled the congregation.   There was much leg work and spade work and grunt work for the people to do, but there was virtually no authority for the people to exercise. In the Methodist tradition the minister ran the church; he was boss of the congregation.  Presbyterians would never stand for this.  It was in the Presbyterian tradition that authority in the congregation was vested in lay people as a means of curtailing clergy tyranny.

Now you mustn’t think that because our Presbyterian foreparents took congregational authority away from the clergy and gave it to the people they must have thought ill of the clergy.  On the contrary it would be impossible to exaggerate the esteem in which the Presbyterian clergy were held.  Presbyterian ministers were expected to be learned, sound, godly, diligent; they were expected to possess expert knowledge in scripture, theology and history. They were recognized for their learning and their sanctity.  They were esteemed.

Ministers were acknowledged to have a crucial calling and task.  Ministers were deemed to function largely as “first cousins” to the apostles in the New Testament.  In the New Testament it is the task of the apostles to hold God’s people to the truth and reality of Jesus Christ.  The apostles make sure that the people of God are acquainted with the gospel of God, and not with a counterfeit imitation of the gospel or a distortion of the gospel. The task of the modern-day minister, said our 16th century foreparents, is to make sure that it’s the truth of Jesus Christ which a congregation hears, the life of Christ which a congregation cherishes, and the way of Christ which a congregation walks.

In other words the only authority which the minister has is the authority of suasion. More precisely (said Calvin), the minister’s authority consists in this: he claims no authority for himself but endeavours to keep unobscured the unique, non-delegated authority of Jesus Christ.  The minister can only hold up the gospel, plead for its reception, endeavour to render his own life transparent to it – and then trust that Christ’s people will hear the truth and believe the truth and do the truth themselves.

We must understand that in all of this the minister was not belittled at all. Our Reformed or Presbyterian foreparents esteemed the minister.  They also insisted that the minister know his place.  And the minister’s place was to acquaint the congregation with the truth and reality of Jesus Christ.  It is never the minister’s place to coerce or control the congregation, never to “lord” it over the congregation in any way, but rather to function in a manner akin to that of the apostles.  Any congregation, said our Presbyterian foreparents; any congregation, left to itself, will drift.   This week it has drifted slightly off course concerning the gospel; next week it has drifted a little more off course; after six or eight months the congregation’s course has turned 180 degrees, with the result that the congregation has drifted into a counter-gospel without knowing what’s happened. The task of the minister is to identify the congregation’s proclivity to drift; identify it, and help the congregation to orient itself afresh to the gospel For this reason the godliness and learning and diligence and faithfulness of the minister, said our foreparents, are necessary if the congregation is to be and remain a community of Christ’s people rather than existing merely as one more social group.  Ministers are necessary if the people of God are to be constantly re-acquainted with the truth of God.   In other words, it’s not correct to say, in the Reformed tradition, that ministers are important to a congregation of Christ’s people; ministers are essential to a congregation of Christ’s people. But ministers are never to rule the congregation – said our Reformed ancestors.

 

The Reformed or Presbyterian tradition is most closely identified with the Swiss reformer, John Calvin. In Calvin’s day (Calvin died in 1564) a layperson chaired presbytery.   (This fact alone tells you how suspicious the Presbyterians were of clergy tyranny.) Presbyterianism soon moved from Switzerland and France to Scotland . The first General Assembly of the newly-reformed Church of Scotland was held on 20th December, 1560 . Present were 42 church-representatives, only six of whom were clergy.

In the Church of Scotland at this time the word “elder” included the minister; the minister was the teaching elder, while all other elders (what we today call lay elders) were known as ruling elders. The teaching elder (the minister) and the ruling elders (lay people) were alike called “elder.” Nevertheless they were unlike in that their respective responsibilities were never blurred. The minister was commissioned to teach; he was never permitted to rule.

 

III: — Let’s jump ahead 100 years, from the 1500s to the 1600s.  In 1647 there was published in England a document which our Presbyterian foreparents consumed every day with their oatmeal, the Westminster Confession.         The Westminster Confession stated plainly that the elders of a congregation are one with the judges of ancient Israel .

Then who were the judges of ancient Israel ? What did they do?   Having jumped ahead to 1647 we must now jump back almost 3000 years, back to 1200 BCE, back to the period of the judges.  The judges in ancient Israel were not like the courtroom judges of our day.  Present-day judges are courtroom referees whose sole responsibility is to preside over trials without favouring either party in the trial. Ancient judges, by contrast, were chiefly leaders and rulers.  They were leaders in times of controversy and conflict; they were rulers in times of peace. In the book of Judges the men and women (yes, women too; one of Israel’s greatest judges was a woman, Deborah; Deborah was so highly esteemed that she was hailed as “a mother in Israel”) – in the book of Judges the men and women who were set aside as judges were also called deliverers or saviours. We must be sure to note this point: judges are deliverers or saviours.  Obviously a judge wasn’t saviour in the sense in which God is uniquely saviour, any more than a pastor (the Latin word for “shepherd”) displaces Jesus as the “Good Shepherd”.  Jesus alone is and ever shall be the Good Shepherd. Nevertheless, in the company of Jesus the shepherd, pastors are under-shepherds.  Under God the saviour, judges in ancient Israel were recognized as saviours or deliverers.

In the older testament elders were associated with Moses as well.  Moses had led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt , on towards the glory of the Promised Land.  But between slavery and Promised Land there was wilderness.  At first the Israelites didn’t mind the wilderness.  (What’s a little hardship after the insults of slavery?)         Little by little, however, the wilderness became insufferable.  The people began to weep and cry out, “O that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we had in Egypt , the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.”         Moses put up with their petulance, carping and short-sightedness for as long as he could. Then he cried out to God, “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me.” Moses was then instructed to gather together 70 elders and bring them to the “tent of meeting” (the church sanctuary).  Listen to what God says to Moses in this old, old story.   “I will come down and talk with you there.  And I will take some of the spirit that is upon you (Moses) and put it upon them (the elders). And they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it alone.”

In a word, elders are those who lead in times of conflict, govern in times of peace, support the congregation in its griefs and grievances, and ease the burden of the minister. Elders are deliverers who save the congregation from anything which impedes its work and witness as the people of God.

 

IV: — The elders of this congregation do every bit as much in 2007.  Congregational elders are often thought to be concerned with material issues; e.g., what kind of shingle we should use in re-shingling the roof. In fact, while elders may finally approve such decisions, all deliberations and decisions concerning property are made by the Board of Managers.  Elders do something else: elders ultimately set the spiritual tone of the congregation. Elders articulate the details of that “way” which they then lead the congregation into owning and walking.  Elders assess programmes in the church; assess them with a view to the truth of the gospel, the turbulence in the world, the trials and tribulations of parishioners, and the capacity of this particular congregation.

I have mentioned several times today that elders (like the judges of old) are leaders and deliverers in times of trouble.   There will always be needed here elders who can distinguish between gospel and pseudo-gospel, whose heart aches for the wellbeing of the congregation, and whose wisdom can move us beyond the starkest threats to a Christian community which anyone can recognize as well as move us beyond the subtlest threats for which extraordinary discernment is needed.

Elders have much to do with pastoral care.  The pastoral care of our congregation is crucial.  Let me say right now that our congregation is like few others that I have seen. Our congregation has affection. All congregations have civility, politeness, respect for social conventions; all congregations must have these or else the congregation would fragment. In our congregation, by contrast, I have found love; oceans of it.  As I move throughout the congregation in the course of my work I come upon warm spot after warm spot.  It’s as though I am swimming in a lake in the summertime and I find warm spot after warm spot in the lake.  Not surprisingly, then, I don’t find pastoral work difficult.   How could I find pastoral work onerous when I am customarily moving from warmth to warmth? At the same time, there’s no reason to think that pastoral contact is the exclusive purview of the minister. It’s important than all the folk who make up our congregation find themselves taken deep into the heart of someone in the congregation who cherishes them.  What I have found here I covet for all of you.  We need all the resources we can muster — imagination, industry, persistence, faithfulness — we need all there is in order to magnify affection as the atmosphere in which congregational life unfolds.  The possibilities for any elder here are limitless.

 

V: — All of you must have come to know, over the past several years, that most of the convictions of our Reformed foreparents are my convictions too.  I am convinced that there is much wisdom in the matters that our Presbyterian ancestors treasured. The place of the elder is one such matter.  For this reason I am glad of the opportunity to ordain Barbara Bain elder this morning. For she stands not only in the tradition of the elders of Israel, but specifically in the tradition of Deborah: mother in Israel, mother in Schomberg, mother to us all here as we gather week-by-week in the company of Jesus Christ our elder brother and our Father who is God over all.

 

                                                                                            Victor Shepherd            

January 2007

 

When Forty Doesn’t Equal Four Times Ten

Deuteronomy 2:1-7                        Acts 1:1-5                      Acts 4:13 -22                 Mark 1:9-13

 

From late Friday afternoon to early Sunday morning is only a day-and-a-half. Then why are we told that following his crucifixion Jesus was in the tomb three days? It’s not because first-century Christians couldn’t count. Rather it’s because “three” is the Hebrew expression for “a little while.”

In the same way “forty” is the Hebrew expression for “a long time.” You must have noticed how often the number forty occurs in the bible. What’s more, “forty” means not merely “a long time” but “a sufficiently long time;” sufficient time to learn something important or do something important or be marked by something significant. Don Cherry told me that when Bobby Orr arrived in the NHL, despite Orr’s immense talent it took Orr six months to learn how to skate an onrushing forward off towards the boards as the forward came down the ice. A Hebrew writer would say it took Orr forty days to learn this, forty days being time sufficiently long for a person to learn or do or be marked by something significant.

 

I: — Moses and the Israelites were said to be forty years in the wilderness. There they were schooled in much, trained for much, tested by much. You and I live in a wilderness of sorts too. The wilderness can be outer (we are visited with affliction of some sort) or inner (we are burdened intra-psychically.) What we learn in life’s wilderness is important. For there we are schooled, trained, tested again and again. In fact, all God’s people, ancient or modern, develop in the wilderness as we can develop nowhere else.

The wilderness is never without the element of the unpredictable. There’s always something untamed about it, something uncontrollable. In addition wilderness existence is always lean, sparse, spare. There aren’t a great many comforts in the wilderness.

Once they were in the wilderness the people of Israel forgot how terrible slavery had been. They forgot how demeaning it was to be a slave at all. They whined at their wilderness hardship and wanted to go back to Egypt . Moses wouldn’t let them. Moses knew, as every spiritual leader knows, that the wilderness (whether outer or inner) is where we have to live once God has called us out of slavery and has made us his people and has set our feet on the road to the promised land. Either we keep stepping ahead toward the promised land or we retreat into bondage. Moses kept the people stepping ahead.

Now don’t cringe when you hear the word “wilderness.” The wilderness isn’t all bad. Life in the wilderness is rigorous, to be sure, but it isn’t unrelieved misery. In fact some people prefer to live in the wilderness; they are profoundly contented there: Elijah, for instance, Israel ’s greatest prophet; and of course Elijah’s near-clone, John the Baptist; Jesus too. Sometimes our English bibles tell us Jesus went to pray “in a solitary place” or “a lonely place” or wherever. All these English expressions translate one Greek word that simply means “wilderness.”

If Jesus can live contentedly in the wilderness, then all God’s people can too. Once we are in the wilderness we find that life is less cluttered. There are fewer distractions. Life here is starker, to be sure, yet just for that reason more transparent, more authentic, less disguised, with fewer false faces. Life in the wilderness is certainly elemental, but not for that reason miserable.

John the Baptist wasn’t miserable in the wilderness. On the contrary he was at home there. He was a man of truth who exposed falsehood and phoniness at all times. He didn’t have a closetful of clothes, but he knew he could wear only one outfit at a time. His diet wasn’t rich or fancy, but no one ever thought John to be frail. He wasn’t surrounded by social-climbing flatterers, but there were simple people, devout, discerning people, who knew he was a prophet and loved him. Above all, John’s wilderness vocation was publicly endorsed by Jesus. What more could anyone want?

The words “wilderness” and “temptation” seem to go hand-in-hand. But the Greek word for “temptation,” peirasmos, means testing as well as temptation. It so happens that every temptation is also an occasion of testing, refining. In other words, the outcome of every episode of temptation is (or should be) refined character. Scripture states clearly that God tempts no one in the sense that God seduces no one into that sin which God abhors. (How could he?) But everywhere scripture maintains that God tests us, and tests us always with a view to refining us. As our character is refined under God, as we are ridded of useless accretions and disfiguring impediments, as we learn to let go all that merely distracts us from our discipleship, we are a step closer to the promised land. Simply put, where life is leaner, elemental, uncluttered, we can grow in godliness and wisdom as we can grow nowhere else.

Actually, living in the wilderness is simple. I didn’t say easy; I said simple. You see, once we know what our obedience to Jesus Christ requires of us, the only matter we have to settle is courage. Once we know what uncluttered discipleship asks of us, the only thing we need to ensure our refining is courage.

When The United Church of Canada convulsed in May 1988 I wrote a 4500 word article for a newspaper that was reprinted over and over from coast to coast, hundreds of thousands of copies. I have no regrets over what I did, even after I learned the price tag attached to it. When my article appeared several United Church ministers sidled up to me and said, “Victor, I agree with everything you’ve written. But I’m not going to say anything publicly lest I derail my career in the church.” I told them they were self-serving cowards. Is anyone surprised that psychological profiles of the clergy show them to be wimps?

Then I look away from clergy to the people I see all around me and I am speechless at their courage. Think of the courage of the person hobbled with arthritis who takes three times as long as anyone else to get to work but who goes nonetheless.

Think of the adolescent who excuses himself when the party starts to get out of hand and comes home by himself, knowing what he will have to face at school on Monday morning.

Think of the mother with little formal education who knows that her child is being treated unfairly by school authorities or hospital authorities and who intercedes for her child even though she’s no verbal match for these better-educated folk and has been put down by them before.

Think of the moderately schizophrenic person who is ill enough to be distressed and awkward yet sane enough to know she’s distressed and awkward and who knows as well that she’s stigmatized by it all. What kind of courage does she exhibit every day?

C.S. Lewis points out that some people boast of their vices. The cheater may boast of her dishonesty and the seducer of his lechery. But there’s one vice, says Lewis, that no one ever boasts of: cowardice. We view cowardice with disgust when we see it in others and view it with shame when we find it in ourselves.

Courage is what we need for leaving our thousand-and-one enslavements behind and stepping ahead in our pared-down, uncluttered life toward the promised land. For it’s courage that sees us through to the other side of our wilderness-testings, and sees us emerge with our character refined.

 

II: — We are told something more about “forty.” We are told that the risen Jesus appeared to his followers during the forty days after Easter and interpreted his earthly ministry to them. The risen one had to interpret his earlier ministry to them, since they had understood so little of it – in fact they had misunderstood virtually all of it – when he was with them before his crucifixion. If you read the gospel of Mark carefully you will notice that the disciples look bad everywhere. Parents bring their children to Jesus, and the disciples thrust them away. Samaritan villagers treat Jesus rudely, and the disciples want heaven-sent fire to consume the dull-witted wretches. The direction of Christ’s entire earthly ministry is towards self-forgetfulness, and the disciples squabble over which of them will be greatest in the kingdom of God . “Keen but clueless” is the only way we can speak of the disciples.

Therefore the risen one must school them in the force and thrust of his earthly ministry. But for how long? For forty days; i.e., for as long as it takes clueless disciples to learn what they need to know. Clearly they need time sufficient to move from pre-Easter error to post-Easter understanding.

For how long will our Lord have to school you and me? For as long as it takes to get us clued-in and have our understanding of him match our ardour for him.

Think of the story of the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John ascend the Mountain with Jesus. The three disciples find themselves face-to-face with Elijah and Moses. Moses is the giver of the Torah, the Way which God appoints his people to walk day-by-day. Elijah is Israel ’s greatest prophet, the forthright truth-teller who points out where God’s people have departed from the Way, and who calls them to return to it. The three disciples hear the voice from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him; obey him.” Then Moses and Elijah are seen no more, since their work is now gathered up in the Son who is the Way to be walked, the Truth to be cherished, and the Life or inspiration of it all. The three disciples are left alone with Jesus.

Peter says “Awesome! What a scene! Let’s see it again.” Peter wants to spend the rest of his life bathed in psycho-religious ecstasy. Moments of such ecstasy may come upon you and me. But life can’t be lived here. Instead the voice is heard, “This is the Son who reveals my nature and purpose: heed him.” Then Jesus and the three disciples go down the hill into the village where they find an epileptic boy who foams and thrashes and has fallen into cooking fires and horse troughs and nearly killed himself a dozen times over. The boy’s father is both heartbroken and terrified. Christian discipleship always binds us to the world’s anguish, to sickness, encripplement, danger, fear, frenzy. This is where we have to be if we want to mirror our Lord’s ministry.

John’s gospel concludes with the risen Jesus reminding Peter that no two followers are called to the same expression of discipleship. Peter has to be reminded of this for two reasons. He assumes, mistakenly again, that all disciples are to be carbon copies of each other. In the second place he resents the easier time he thinks another disciple has. Jesus tells Peter to mind his own business and simply see to it that he pursues his own calling gratefully and gladly.

You and I are called to differing expressions of discipleship. Therefore we mustn’t complain about that expression which our Lord has appointed for us. Neither are we to envy anyone else’s vocation. We are to be cheerful, eager followers of him whose company and encouragement are bread for us.

Peter has the comfort of a wife. Paul has no wife. Lydia , a believer in Thyatira, is a well-to-do businesswoman. The believers in Jerusalem are poor. Most of the Christians in Corinth have no social distinction at all. Erastus, however, a member of the congregation in Corinth , is the city treasurer, the most prominent and influential civil servant in Corinth .

Today some Christians are undoubtedly called to greater financial renunciation, others to less. Most are to marry; some, however, are summoned to celibacy. Some are called to greater visibility, others to less. I knew two men in the same denomination, one of whom renounced a career as a concert pianist in order to enter the ordained ministry, while the other became a lay preacher at the same time as he remained a symphony violinist.

How long does it take us to learn all this, even to learn what our vocation is? How long does it take us to move from pre-Easter misunderstanding to post-Easter discernment and contentment? It takes “forty days.” In other words, it takes as long as the Master deems sufficient. “Forty,” remember, doesn’t mean four times ten. In some contexts “forty” means lifelong, for surely you and I shall have to keep learning what discipleship means for us as long as life lasts.

 

III: — Lastly we are told that the lame man whom Peter and John restored was forty years old. In ancient Israel someone “forty years old” was someone sufficiently old to be a credible witness. We are told that Isaac and Esau were each forty years old when they married. Chronologically they would have been closer to twenty. “Forty years old” means sufficiently old to be a believable witness.

The lame man whom Peter and John come upon; they find him begging. He asks them for money. They have none. “Silver and gold we don’t have,” they say; “but what we do have we give you: in the name of Jesus Christ get up on your feet and start walking.” And for the first time in his life the man stands and walks, however shakily. The religious authorities resent it all, since they assume that they and their bureaucracy and their schemes control God. The authorities slander the apostles and try to discredit them, yet have to fall silent when the healed man stands beside Peter and John. What can detractors say when there is standing in front of them someone whose restoration is an undeniable sign of God’s work and God’s kingdom? They can’t say anything. After all, the healed man is “forty;” he’s old enough to testify credibly.

Testimony always does two things. (i) It reconfirms the faith of the believer himself. Wherever and however testimony is rendered, whether in word or deed, whether quietly or publicly, the faith of the believer roots itself more deeply and manifests itself more noticeably and bears fruit more tellingly. Testimony always reconfirms the faith of the believer, the testifier, himself. (ii) In the second place testimony or witness – of any kind – is a megaphone that magnifies the voice of our Lord as he summons yet another person to begin following him.

In a court of law, testimony is acceptable only if it comes from someone who has first-hand experience to relate and who is truthful in relating it. First-hand experience (not second-hand hearsay) and truthfulness (not fabrication or wishful thinking) are what matter.

What does a congregation expect in its pastor? Surely that the pastor is going to be forty years old. He or she has to be a credible witness, possessed of first-hand experience to be related truthfully. When someone dear to you is dying or sin has overwhelmed you or betrayal has devastated you, only the forty year old can help. While a congregation expects this in its pastor, the pastor in turn aims at this for every member of the congregation.

 

The truth is, so relentlessly complex is our daily life, and so wonderfully rich is our Lord’s grace, that we are stepping ahead in the wilderness where we are tested and refined. We are advancing in our understanding of our Lord’s ministry and our discipleship. And in all of this we are a credible witness to others, like the healed man who walked usefully, leapt delightfully, and praised God exuberantly. We are doing all these; we are all these, at one and the same time.

Then it really is true: life begins at forty.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                              

 November 2004

 

Of Trees and the Tree

Deuteronomy 21:22-23

Genesis 3:1-7; 22-24       1st Peter 2:21-25       Psalm 1

 

I: — What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with the world? What’s wrong with the world is something the world would never guess: it slanders the goodness of God.

The old, old story of Genesis is a timeless story not about one episode in history but about the history of every man and every woman, for “Adam” is Hebrew for “everyman” and “Eve” for “mother of all the living”. According to the old story God has placed us in a garden abounding in trees: “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”. God has placed us in a setting that delights us and nourishes us abundantly. In addition to the myriad trees in Eden (” Eden ” being Hebrew for “delight”) there are two extraordinary trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life symbolizes the fact that the origin of life and the conditions of life and the blessings of life rest in God; the tree of life symbolizes this and reminds us of it. As John Calvin says so finely, “God intended that as often as we tasted the fruit of the tree of life we should remember from whom we received our life, in order that we might acknowledge that we live not by our own power but by the kindness of God.”

In addition to the tree of life there stands the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Good and evil” does not mean “good plus evil”. “Good-and-evil” (virtually one word) is a semitism, a Hebrew expression meaning “everything, the sum total of human possibilities, everything that we can imagine.” To know, in Hebrew is to have intimate acquaintance with, to experience. In forbidding us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God is warning us against intimate acquaintance with the sum total of everything that we can imagine. He is warning us against thinking we must experience or even may experience whatever we can dream up. In other words, God has set a limit to human self-extension; God has set a limit to our extending ourselves into anything at all that the mind and heart can invent.

Why has God set such a limit? Why does he urge us to become intimately acquainted with everything that is both nourishing and delightful, both essential to life and culturally rich — and then in the same breath warn us against becoming intimately acquainted with “good and evil”? He sets such a limit just because he loves us; he sets this limit for our blessing. This side of the limit is blessing; the other side is curse. This side of the limit there is the blessing of curative medicines the other side of the limit there is cocaine, curse. This side of the limit there is the one-flesh union of marriage, blessing; the other side there is the curse of promiscuity and perversion with their degradation and disease. God, who is good in himself, wants only what is good for us.

Good? We don’t think that God is good when he tells us, “Every tree except the one tree”; we think he’s arbitrary. After all, he didn’t consult us when he decided where the boundary line was to be; he simply told us; arbitrary.

The root human problem is that we disparage the goodness of God. We disparage the goodness of God when we scorn the tree of life, dismissing the goodness of God and the truth of God, even as we tell ourselves that he has proscribed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not because he longs to bless us but just because he’s arbitrary; and not only arbitrary, but a spoilsport as well since he won’t allow us to extend ourselves into all those possibilities that would surely enrich us — wouldn’t they?

The tree of life represents discipleship; the tree of life represents what it is to be profoundly human: human beings are created to be glad and grateful covenant-partners with God. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil — prohibited! — is the alternative to discipleship, the alternative to glad and grateful covenant-partnership with God. The root human problem, then, is that we don’t want life from God’s hand under the conditions God sets for our blessing. We prefer an alternative; we want to be the author and judge and master of our own life.

According to our ancient story the garden of profuse creaturely delights continues to delight us as long as we hear and heed the creator who gave them to us. As soon as we try to “improve” upon him, however; as soon as we disobey him, proposing an alternative to the covenant-partnership of discipleship, the creaturely delights no longer delight us. They become the occasion of endless frustration, emptiness, futility, curse.

 

II: — The process by which we typically arrive at self-willed curse in place of God-willed blessing is subtle. The serpent is the personification of this subtlety. The serpent asks with seeming innocence, “Did God say? Did God really say you weren’t to eat of that one tree?” The serpent hasn’t exactly lied: at no point does it say, “God never said…”. While the serpent never exactly lies, neither does it ever exactly tell the truth. The serpent (subtlety personified) smuggles in the assumption — without ever saying so explicitly — that God’s word, God’s command is subject to our assessment.

The subtlety takes the form of a question that appears innocent but in fact is a doubt-producing question with a hidden agenda. What’s more, the doubt-producing question is an exaggeration: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'” Any tree? There’s the exaggeration! God has forbidden us to eat of one tree, one tree only!

Eve (mother of the living) decides to correct the serpent. Surely there’s no harm in correcting an exaggeration! But for her there is, for as soon as she attempts to correct the serpent she’s been drawn into the serpent’s territory; now she’s dialoguing with a subtlety to which she’s not equal. When first she heard, “Did God say?”, the only thing for her to do was to ignore the proffered subtlety. Correcting it looks harmless but is ultimately fatal, for now she’s been drawn into the tempter’s world.

Isn’t it the case that as soon as you and I begin to reason with sin we are undone? As soon as we begin to reason with temptation we’re finished! Temptation can only be repudiated, never reasoned with, for the longer we reason with it the longer we entertain it; and the longer we entertain it the faster our reasoning becomes rationalization — and rationalization, everyone knows, is perfectly sound reasoning in the service of an unacceptable end.

As soon as Eve attempts to correct the serpent’s exaggeration she exaggerates herself! “God has told us not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree; we aren’t even to touch the tree, lest we die.” God had never said they weren’t to touch it. They were certainly to be aware of the tree, always aware of it, and never to eat of it, never to experience it. In trying to correct the serpent’s exaggeration Eve exaggerates herself. In trying to undo the serpent’s distortion of the truth she distorts the truth herself. Of course. To dialogue with a subtlety pertaining to temptation is invariably to be seduced by it.

Eve doesn’t know it yet, but she’s undone. She doesn’t know it, but the serpent does. For this reason the serpent leaves subtlety behind and accosts her blatantly. “You won’t die”, it tells her as plainly as it can, “You won’t die; you’ll be like God, the equal of God.” It’s the tempter’s word against God’s; it’s temptation’s contradiction of God’s truth.

But God has said that we shall die if we defy him; we are going to be accursed if we extend ourselves into areas and orbits beyond blessing. “You won’t die.” Please note that the first doctrine to be denied is the judgement of God. Doctrines are the truths of God, and the first truth of God to be disdained is the judgement of God. We should note in passing that Jesus everywhere upholds it.

Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the result that “their eyes were opened”. They had thought that by defying God they were going to be enlightened. By defying him, however, they have moved to a new level of experience; their eyes are opened — but now they are anything but enlightened. They now know “good and evil”. They have intimate acquaintance with, first-hand experience of, what God had pronounced off-limits. Too late, they now know too why it was pronounced “off-limits”: it’s accursed.

To sum it all up, the primal temptation to which every human being succumbs is the temptation to be like God, to be God’s rival (actually, his superior). The primal temptation is to regard God’s truth as inferior to our “wisdom”; to slander God’s loving “No” as spoilsport arbitrariness; to regard obedient service to God as demeaning servility; to pretend that a suicidal plunge is a leap into life. Ultimately the primal temptation is to look upon God’s goodness as imaginary, his will as capricious, his judgement as unsubstantial.

 

III: — The result is that Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden. Expelled means driven out. By decree. Does forced expulsion strike you as rather heavy-handed for a God whose nature is love? Then be sure to understand that the forced expulsion is also the logical outcome of disobedience. After all, Jesus insists (John 17:3) that life, eternal life, is fellowship with God. And fellowship with God is precisely what humankind repudiates. Then a forced expulsion from the garden — a forced expulsion that issues in estrangement instead of intimacy, creaturely goods that frustrate instead of delight, daily existence that is cursed instead of blessed, and a future bringing the judge instead of the father — all of this we have willed for ourselves. We think the expulsion to be heavy-handed? We wanted it!

In the ancient story the cherubim, spirit-beings who safeguard God’s holiness, together with a flaming sword that turns in every direction; these guarantee that God means what he says: humankind is out of the garden, is prevented from going back in, is now living under curse, and can’t do anything about it.

 

IV: — We can’t do anything about it. Only the holy one whose holiness cannot abide our sinfulness can. Only he can. But will he? Has he? Peter cries, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree!” (1 Peter 2:24) He himself did? Who is “he himself”? It is our Lord Jesus Christ, he and none other.

We must never think, however, that after Peter had denied his Lord and had run away he suddenly came to the happy conclusion that Jesus is the great sin-bearer for the whole wide world. He had concluded only that Jesus was accursed. After all, the Torah said it all clearly: “…a hanged man is accursed by God. Therefore, if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and you hang him on a tree, don’t leave his body on the tree overnight; remember, anyone hanged on a tree is accursed by God.” (Deut. 21:22-23) Since Jesus had been hanged on a tree (of sorts), Jesus had to be accursed by God. Such people weren’t accursed because they were hanged; they were hanged because they were accursed; and they were accursed because they were unspeakably debased sinners.

It was only in the light of Easter morning that Peter understood what had really happened. It was through his Easter morning encounter with the risen one himself, it was in the light of the Father’s Easter vindication of the Son that Peter saw several things simultaneously.

[1] Jesus was accursed; he had died under God’s curse.

[2] Yet Jesus wasn’t accursed on account of his sin; he was accursed on account of humankind’s sin. That is, while he was not a transgressor himself, he was “numbered among the transgressors”. While not a sinner himself, he identified himself so thoroughly with sinners as to receive himself the Father’s just judgement on them.

“He bore our sins in his body on the tree.” To “bear sin” is a Hebrew expression meaning to be answerable for sin and to endure its penalty. The penalty for sin is estrangement from God. In enduring this penalty — demonstrated in his forlorn cry of God-forsakenness — Jesus answered on our behalf.

[3] Because Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God he possesses the same nature as God. Father and Son are one in nature, one in purpose, one in will. It is never the case that the Son is willing to do something that the Father is not, that the Son is kind while the Father is severe, that the Son is eager to pardon while the Father is eager to condemn. Incarnation means that Father and Son are of one nature and mind and heart. To say, then, that Jesus bore the judge’s just judgement on our sin is to say that the judge himself took his own judgement upon himself. But of course he who is judge is also father. Which is to say, when Jesus bore our sins in his body the Father bore them in his heart.   The just judge executed the judgement that he must, then bore it himself and therein neutralized it, and all in order that his characteristic face as Father might be the face that shines upon you and me forever. Father and Son are one in judgement, one in execution, one in anguish, and one in pardon. What the Son bore the Father bore, in order that justice uncompromised might issue in mercy unimpeded.

In the light of Christ’s resurrection the truth of the cross and the nature of its curse flooded Peter.

 

V: — When Peter cried, “He bore our sins in his body on the tree”, he went on to say in the same breath, “in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”

Then the only thing left for us to decide this morning is whether or not we are going to die to sin and live to righteousness. Here only do we have anything to say, to do, to become. We can’t do anything about Eden. We have been expelled, and rightly expelled, having disparaged the goodness of God and disobeyed the wisdom of God and disdained the blessing of God. Just as we can’t do anything about Eden we can’t do anything about our consequent condition: we can’t overturn it, can’t right it, can’t alter it however slightly. We can’t do anything to effect atonement, can’t do anything to make ourselves “at one” with God once more. We can’t do anything here for two reasons. In the first place, offenders can’t finally achieve reconciliation in any personal relationship anywhere in life. Reconciliation is always finally in the hands of the offended party anywhere in life. Since we are offenders any possibility of reconciliation rests with the God we have offended.

We can’t do anything to effect atonement, in the second place, just because it’s already been done. God wrought our reconciliation to him in the cross. To think we can improve upon it is to disdain the blessing he has fashioned for us; and this is to commit the primal sin all over again.

Then there is only one matter for us to settle. Are we going to or are we not going to die to sin and live to righteousness? If we intend to do this today or to go on doing it today we must cling in faith to the crucified one himself. He is the son with whom the Father is ever pleased. Then in clinging to him we too shall become that child of God who delights the Father. He is the wisdom of God. Then in clinging to him we shall forswear our folly and know blessing instead of curse. In clinging to him and following him throughout life we shall know that his service, so far from servility, is in fact our glory. His tree is now become the tree of life. To become ever more intimately acquainted with it is to relish the rigours of discipleship, recognizing all alternatives as the spiritual suicide that they are.

 

VI: — As we cling to our Lord in faith the psalmist will say of us what he said of others so long ago:

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do they prosper.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.     (Psalm 1:3,6)

 

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                                                                  

April 2003

Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei

Deuteronomy 7:6-11                               Ephesians 2:1-10                                       Luke 18:9-14

(The Church Reformed and Always Being Reformed
In Accordance With the Word of God)

I: — What comes to mind as soon as you hear the word “Protestant”?   Many people have told me that they think first of protest; we Protestants engendered a protest movement, and we’ve never moved beyond a protest mentality. We exist only as we criticise someone else.

If this were the case, then Protestantism would be inherently parasitic. Parasites are creatures that can’t live on their own; they have to latch onto another creature and draw their sustenance from it.  Protestants, if protesters by definition, would forever need something to protest against or else we couldn’t survive.  Protestants, if protesters by definition, would always know what they are against but likely wouldn’t know, if they even cared, what they are for.         Protestants, if protesters by definition, would be incurable contrarians; ornery curmudgeons, chronic nay-sayers and fault-finders.

The truth is, the Latin word (always be aware that Latin is the language of the Reformation) protestare is entirely positive. Protestare means to affirm, to assert, to declare, to testify, to proclaim.  The Reformation didn’t begin negatively as a protest movement.  It began positively as an announcement, a declaration, an affirmation, a witness. There was nothing parasitic about the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century and there is nothing parasitic about the Protestant ethos now.

If protestare means to affirm, declare, testify, what are we declaring?   To what do we bear witness?

 

II: — The Reformers upheld the priority of grace in all the ways and works of God; the priority of grace in God’s approach to us and God’s activity within us.  The Reformers maintained that over the centuries the priority of grace had become obscured as the silt of theological misunderstanding gradually covered up what ought always to be at the forefront of Christian faith, understanding and discipleship.

If people today are asked what they understand by “grace”, most of them will say “God’s unmerited favour.” They aren’t wrong. But what they’ve said is more a description than a definition.  Grace, according to scripture, is God’s faithfulness; specifically, God’s faithfulness to his covenant with us; God’s faithfulness to his promise never to fail us or forsake us, never to abandon us in frustration or quit on us in disgust.

God keeps the covenant-promise he makes to us. We, however, violate the covenant-promise – always and everywhere to be his people – we make to him. We are sinners.  When God’s faithfulness meets our sin, his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. In our reading of the apostle Paul’s letters we can’t fail to notice how often he begins the letter by stating “Grace, mercy and peace to you.” Grace, as we’ve noted already, is God’s covenant faithfulness.         Mercy is God’s covenant faithfulness meeting our sin and overcoming it as God forgives us our sin and delivers us from it.  Mercy, then, is God’s covenant faithfulness relieving us of sin’s guilt and releasing us from sin’s grip.         Peace – here’s where you have pay close attention – is not peace of mind or peace in our heart (at least not in the first instance). Peace here is shalom. Paul is Jewish, and when he speaks of peace he has in mind the Hebrew understanding of shalom.  Shalom is God’s restoration of his creation, and specifically restoration of his people.         Shalom, peace, then, is simply salvation.

Crucial to the Reformation was a biblical understanding of how all this occurs.  According to scripture, God expects us to honour our covenant with him. He looks everywhere in the human creation, only to discover that he can’t find one, single human being who fulfils his or her covenant with God.  Whereupon God says to himself, “If humankind’s covenant with me is going to be humanly fulfilled (only a human, after all, can fulfil humankind’s covenant with God), then I’ll have to do it myself.”    And so we have the Christmas story as God comes among us in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the Incarnation. And then we have the Good Friday story (“God’s Friday”, our mediaeval foreparents called it) where Jesus renders that uttermost human obedience which you and I don’t render; renders that uttermost human obedience which turns out to be obedience even unto death.   And this human obedience unto death, thanks to the Incarnation, is God himself taking upon himself his own just judgement on sinners.   This is the atonement.

In the Incarnation and the atonement the covenant is fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the covenant-keeper.  You and I, sinners, are covenant-breakers.  Then by faith we must cling to Jesus Christ our covenant-keeper.  As we cling to him in faith we are so tightly fused to him that when the Father looks upon the Son with whom he is ever pleased, the Father sees you and me included in the Son.  Covenant-breakers in ourselves, by faith we cling to the covenant-keeper with whom we are now identified before God.  And that is our salvation.

Salvation is by grace alone, since God has graciously given his Son to be the covenant-keeper on our behalf. Salvation is by faith alone, since all we need do, all we can do, is embrace the Son who has already embraced us. Salvation is on account of Christ alone, since Jesus Christ is both God’s mercy pressed upon us and human obedience offered to the Father on behalf of us all.

 

To affirm that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone is to deny all forms of merit.

(i) It is to deny all forms of moral merit.  Our salvation doesn’t arise because we are morally superior to others and therefore have a claim before God that they haven’t.  Here we should recall the parable of the two men who go to the temple to pray, one a despicable creature as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, without a moral bone in his body; the other a paragon of virtue.  The moral champion boasts before God of all his moral achievements, none of which is to be doubted.  The creep, on the other hand, can only cry “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus tells us that it’s the latter fellow, the one with nothing to plead except God’s mercy – this man goes home “justified” says Jesus, where “justified” means “rightly related to God.”

(ii) It is also to deny all forms of religious merit.  Our salvation doesn’t arise from – neither is it aided by – religious observances of greater or less rigour or notoriety, as if God’s purpose were to render us hyper-religious, what psychiatrists call homo religiosus.

(iii) It is also to deny all forms of institutional merit.  Our salvation doesn’t occur because we have conformed to churchly edicts or traditions or prescriptions.

To affirm with the Reformers that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone is to recover essential truth that had gradually become silted over as century followed century.  “Nothing in my hand I bring” cries the hymn writer; “nothing – simply to thy cross I cling.”

When this gospel truth was declared people gloried in their new-found freedom.  They were freed from any and all forms of trying to placate God or curry favour with him or impress him or bribe him.  They were freed from anxiously asking themselves “Have I done enough? How will I ever know if I’ve done enough? Is my ‘enough’ good enough?” They gloried in the fact that in Jesus Christ God had done what needed to be done. Not only had God kept his covenant with humankind; in his Incarnate Son he had also kept humankind’s covenant with God. Now men and women needed only to own it in faith, thank him for it, glory in the relief it brought them and the release they could enjoy forever.  Their guilt, their anxiety, their guessing games, their insecurity – it was gone. They gloried in the freedom that God’s grace had brought them.

Either we uphold the priority of God’s grace in his way and work upon us and within us or we uphold a meritocracy of some sort, whether moral or religious or institutional, wherein we think we have to earn God’s favour, only to be left assuming that we have earned it (and now are insufferably self-righteous); or we are left assuming that we haven’t earned it (and now are inconsolably despairing.)

Grace, mercy, peace (shalom).  The priority of grace means that God’s loving faithfulness will see his people through their disobedience, through their covenant-breaking. The priority of grace means that God has pledged himself to see his people saved by his free grace for the sake of their glorious freedom before him.

 

III: — The priority of grace, continued the Reformers, entails “the priesthood of all believers.” Protestants have always been quick to speak of “the priesthood of all believers.”

I’ve been asked more than once, “If everyone’s a priest, then what’s the meaning of ordination?   Is there any place in the Protestant understanding for an ordained ministry?” Plainly there is. Before we probe what’s meant by “the priesthood of all believers”, then, we should understand the place of ordained ministry.

The ordained minister doesn’t have powers, spiritual powers, that unordained Christians lack.  To be sure, denominations customarily prescribe that it is the clergy alone who preside when Holy Communion is administered in congregational worship. We must understand, however, that this is simply to maintain order.  It isn’t the case that the clergy alone preside because the sacrament will “work” if they administer it but it won’t work if a lay person administers it. It “works” ultimately (i.e., it is a vehicle of Christ’s cementing himself ever more firmly into the believer’s life) just because Christ has pledged to give himself afresh to us, unfailingly, every time Holy Communion is administered (i.e., Christ invariably keeps the promises he makes), regardless of who administers it.   The ordained minister doesn’t have powers that others lack.

The ordained minister does have, however, a responsibility that others don’t have. Specifically, the ordained minister is essential to the church in that someone, by vocation, aptitude and study – someone has to ensure that the congregation’s understanding of Jesus Christ doesn’t drift away from that of the apostles.

The apostles are the normative witnesses to Jesus Christ. While Christ is different from James and John and Peter – that is, Christ is person in his own right and can never be reduced to the apostles – hearing and obeying Christ himself, Christ in person always takes the form of hearing and obeying the witness of James and John and Peter. In other words, we honour Jesus Christ only by honouring the normative witnesses to him.  We receive him only insofar as we receive them.  It is the responsibility of the ordained minister to see to it that the congregation doesn’t drift from the apostolic understanding of our Lord, but rather in all aspects of individual faith and congregational life the congregation conforms to the apostolic pattern of believing upon Jesus and obeying him.

Make no mistake.  Left to itself – that is, in the absence of the ordained minister – a congregation will always drift.         First of all it drifts by retaining biblical words but filling them with non-biblical meanings. Drift is underway when the word “sin” is equated with immorality.  (No one in this room is flagrantly immoral or criminal, yet everyone in this room is sinner through-and-through.)  Drift has occurred when the word “faith” is thought to mean “feeling optimistic in general.”   Drift has occurred when the word “God” comes to mean “a cosmic power in the universe that’s greater than any one of us or all of us put together.”

The next stage of drift is substituting the reading of poetry or Reader’s Digest for scripture at worship; the singing of such nonsense as “God is watching from a distance” (how could anyone endorse this drivel in light of the witness of both Testaments and the Incarnation in particular?) instead of hymns that speak of the Holy One of Israel; or as my own minister suggested one day, using juice and cookies at Holy Communion instead of bread and the cup.         Left to itself a congregation always drifts and will continue to drift until it has turned 180 degrees away from the gospel without knowing it.

Ordained ministry is essential to the church just because someone by vocation, aptitude, and study has to ensure that the congregation doesn’t drift away from what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

 

Then what is meant by the “the priesthood of all believers”?   In the Older Testament, priests are those engaged in the service of God, specifically in an intercessory service. “Priesthood of all believers” means that the congregation as a whole (first) and any Christian (thereafter) may and must engage in an intercessory service on behalf of his or her fellow-Christian.

Think of the matter of confession of sin.  In his tract The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) Martin Luther maintained that there are several forms of confession. One is what is done here Sunday by Sunday: as part of public worship the minister gathers up the people’s confession of sin and voices it before God, even as in the name of Jesus Christ the minister pronounces absolution (pardon, forgiveness) for the people.  This is a public, liturgical form of confession.

Then, said Luther, there’s a private form.  Someone visits the clergyman, unburdens herself concerning the sin she can no longer deny, and awaits the pastor’s pronouncement of absolution or pardon.

There’s one more form, says Luther: any Christian at all may hear a fellow-Christian’s confession of sin and pronounce absolution in the name of Christ.

We must be clear about this matter.  We are not dealing with psychotherapy, or at least not dealing with psychotherapy in the first instance.  We are dealing with something profounder than that, a spiritual matter of ultimate significance. The Reformers were convinced that since the Church is defined as the people of God rather than defined in terms of clergy function or clergy hierarchy; since the Church is the people of God then the people of God can hear each other’s confession and pronounce God’s pardon in the name of Christ.

This is not a devaluation of the ordained ministry. It is rather the elevation of God’s people.

The mother who overhears her child’s prayers at night and who listens to her child’s tearful repentance during the day is engaged in a priestly activity.  The board member who offers counsel to the fellow-board member who is too embarrassed to speak with the minister is engaged in a priestly service. Jean Vanier, the Canadian born to the aristocracy who has given himself to disadvantaged folk, especially men who are severely intellectually challenged; Vanier also spends much time visiting the impoverished, the sick, the confused, the forgotten geriatric patient in the back ward of a substandard facility. Vanier says that frequently he comes upon someone whose mental or bodily distress is overwhelming. All he can do in such a situation, he tells us, is put his hand on the sufferer’s head (a scriptural sign of intercession) and say “Jesus.” This too is priestly service.

Another dimension to “priesthood of all believers”: any Christian’s daily work, done as under the scrutiny of God, done with integrity, done conscientiously, done so as to give full value for compensation received; any Christian’s daily work, done so as to please God, has the same spiritual significance as the work of clergyman, monk, or nun.

I wince whenever I hear it said of someone offering herself for ordained ministry, “She has decided to enter full time Christian service.” Full time? What about the homemaker? Is her Christian service part time? Which part of the homemaker’s day is “Christian”?  God is honoured by the labourer who renders a day’s work for a day’s pay. God is never honoured by the clergyman who waits until the Saturday night hockey game is over before starting to think about what he’s going to say Sunday morning.

“Priesthood of all believers” means there are no higher callings and no lower callings.  There is no double standard of discipleship for ordained and non-ordained. There is only the integrity in the workplace that is to characterize whatever we do for a living. There is only the service we can render on behalf of a needy neighbour whose suffering is undeniable. There is only the word and truth, pardon and patience of Jesus Christ that all Christians are privileged to mirror to each other, since all of us are to be icons of our Lord to our fellow-believers.

 

The title of today’s sermon is Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei – the Church reformed and always being reformed in accordance with the Word of God, the gospel. The truth is, no church, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, can coast.  All churches, all denominations, all congregations become silted over with accretion after accretion that may look like the gospel but in fact has nothing to do with the gospel; silted over, that is, until the gospel is obscured – unless – unless such congregation or such denomination is constantly being reformed in accordance with the gospel.

 

                                                                                                  Victor Shepherd      

 February 2011                                             

Central Presbyterian Church

 

Materialism

Joshua 7:19-26                           Ephesians 5:1-5;15-20                                 Mark 12:28-37

 

I: — Materialism is blamed for everything that’s wrong with our society. Are children greedy and ill-behaved? It’s because of materialism. Are domestic tensions unravelling marriages? It’s because of materialism. Can you think of anything else that’s out of order? Blame materialism.

You must have noticed that all of us are quick to say that other people are infected with the spirit of materialism. As soon as our neighbour drives a new car or wears a new suit we announce that he’s plainly been bitten with the “bug” of materialism. It’s assumed, of course, that we are impervious to the ailment ourselves. It’s the rich woman from the Rosedale mansion, we note angrily, who denounces female factory employees asking for just a few more cents in their scanty pay-packet. It’s the television preacher with his carefully coiffed hair, we relish pointing out, railing against “Godless materialism” – even as his diamond tie pin sparkles and the income tax investigator sniffs and snoops. Everyone has the disease except us, we insist. After all, we have a perspective on materialism lacking in those who’ve already been seduced.

What is materialism, anyway? Is it as bad as it’s made out to be? Does it underlie all that’s wrong with us individually and collectively?

 

II: — William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury and a profound thinker, used to say over and over, “Christianity is the most materialistic religion in the world.” He was right. Christians believe more about matter, believe more positively about matter, and do more with matter than do the devotees of any other religious system.

[1] First of all, Christians acknowledge that God made the world of matter, the world of things. “All things bright and beautiful…The Lord God made them all” the children’s hymn declares. Since God made them, and since God is good, then all that God has made is good as well. We are to receive all that God has made with thanksgiving. We are to enjoy it all for as long as we have breath. It’s never God-honouring to disparage or disdain or declare to be evil what God has brought forth and declares to be good.

Not only are material things good; they are essential. While it’s true that we don’t live by bread alone, it’s equally true that without bread we don’t live at all. What’s more, material goods are essential not only to physical survival; material goods are essential to human survival. While it’s true we don’t live by our possessions, the person who is without possessions, the person who has nothing she can call her own; this person has been stripped of human dignity. To have nothing material, nothing whatever, isn’t merely to be materially destitute; it’s also to be psychologically deprived, psychologically warped. Quite frankly, when I get up in the morning I want to wear my own clothes. I don’t want to have to ask permission to wear someone else’s clothes. You want to sleep in your own bed. You don’t want to have to ask if there’s room in my bed for you. A modicum of material possessions is essential to human dignity. God has ordained this. However grand and lofty and mentally superior humans are compared to other life-forms, we humans remain inescapably bodily. Because of our inescapable bodiliness and its materiality, materiality is essential to our mental well-being. Depriving people of all material possessions neither enhances them humanly nor finds them mentally healthy.

[2] Christianity is unusually materialistic in another sense as well. Think of Christ Jesus our Lord. He is the eternal Word of God made flesh. By incarnating himself in Jesus of Nazareth God has conferred unspeakable worth on human flesh and therefore on everything that sustains it. If human flesh is important to God, then so is food for the body; so is clothing for it; so is shelter for it. Because the eternal Word has become flesh, matter matters. Matter matters enormously.

Think of what the Incarnate one does. He reconciles the world to the Father by means of the cross. Note: by means of the cross, not by means of a speech; not by means of an idea; not by means of a philosophy; by means, rather, of a cross. We are reconciled to God by means of coarse wood and coursing blood.

[3] Christianity is materialistic in yet another sense. Think of Christian worship. We use material items in worship all the time: water, wine, bread, money. We mustn’t forget money. The Sunday offering isn’t a convenient way of collecting funds to keep the furnace functioning. The Sunday offering of money is as “spiritual” a part of worship as reading scripture or singing hymns or praying. Money and prayer are equally spiritual, Christians insist. (If we doubt this we need only recall that Jesus spent more time in his public ministry talking about money than he did talking about any other single item.)

[4] Christian esteem for matter reaches far, far back into our Hebrew roots. When a sheaf of wheat fell out of a farmer’s arms in the autumn harvest, he didn’t go back to pick it up. He had to leave it in the field for anyone who lacked wheat. The farmer had to leave a border of grain all the way around his field. The border left behind was for anyone at all who lacked grain.

In Israel an indentured servant had to be released in the seventh year. Yet the person just released would obviously have no goods with which to begin his new economic life. Therefore when the master released the indentured servant after seven years, the master had to pile the fellow high with goods in order to give the fellow’s new beginning in life an economic foundation that would permit him to thrive.

[5] Our Lord clinches the materiality of the Christian faith in his parable of the sheep and the goats. Sheep and goats, genuine disciples and phoney disciples, are distinguished by one issue: whether they have used their material privilege to support the hungry, the homeless, the sick.

William Temple was correct: Christianity is thoroughly materialistic – by God’s appointment.

 

III: — Then why is materialism blamed for all that’s bad? If matter is blessing, how does materialism come to be curse? Curse arises the moment we covet.   We modern folk regard coveting as a trifle, nothing at all at best, a mere social impoliteness at worst. Our Israelite foreparents, on the other hand, regarded it with horror. When the apostle Paul writes to the congregations in Ephesus and Colosse he mentions coveting in the same sentence where he mentions the most lurid, vulgar sexual degeneration. He’s not suggesting that coveters are crypto fornicators. (This would be ridiculous.) He’s saying something else. He’s aware that everyone in the Ephesian and Colossian churches admits sexual degeneration to be accursed. What sexual degeneration and coveting have in common is this: both are accursed, because both are deadly.

Coveting, he knows, induces chronic discontent in people. Chronic discontent is pain of a peculiar sort, pain that gnaws and torments. Frequently I speak with couples who want a bigger house. A bigger house will have a larger dining room or living room. To be sure, the bigger house is going to plunge them another $150,000 in debt at x% per year. “How many times per year do you entertain so many people that you need this bigger room?” I ask as gently as I can. “Oh, once or twice per year.” And it’s going to cost $150,000 at x%, not to mention additional headaches? Then I learn that a close friend already has a bigger house. Wife complains about the smaller house. Husband is now shamed for not making more money, even though wife tells him (unconvincingly) she’s not blaming him. Husband mutters that he’s doing his best and suggests that if wife wants bigger house perhaps she should consider doing something about it herself. Chronic discontent has now mushroomed; it’s spread from discontent with their accommodation to discontent with each other – and this is far, far worse; deadly, in fact.

In the book of Joshua we are told that Achan covets the silver and gold belonging to the conquered enemy. Israelites are forbidden to plunder, since war is hideous at any time and Israel is not to profit from such hideousness. Achan ignores all this and takes the silver and gold he covets. Joshua , Israel ’s leader, learns what’s happened and confronts Achan: “What have you done?” “When I saw the silver and gold”, Achan replies laconically, “I coveted them.” Whereupon Achan is put to death. Just for coveting? Even after he has confessed it? Israel of old is aware that covetousness is contagious. As the contagion spreads the entire community is infected. As the infection rampages, everyone becomes hostile to everyone else because everyone envies everyone else. The entire community is endangered. Achan’s offence is vastly more serious than it appears.

Before we write off the incident as barbaric and the explanation for it as unconvincing, we should ask ourselves whether this isn’t how we regard pornography. We all admit that pornography induces what’s better not induced at all. We agree that pornography debases people made in God’s image; pornography denies the dignity of those he deems the apple of his eye; pornography dehumanizes humans whose humanness is always at risk in our world. In a word, pornography disrupts a community and endangers it. And, as we have recently come to know, pornography is more addictive than cocaine. Maybe, then, just maybe, Paul was smarter than we think when he mentions porneia and pleonexia, luridness and coveting, in the same sentence; and mentions them in the same sentence on more than one occasion. When Paul comes to state his qualifications as Christian leader he lists all the things we’d expect him to list: he’s received a commission from the hand of the crucified, etc., etc. Finally he gathers up his qualifications as Christian leader in one statement: “And I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel.” (Acts 20:33 )

Not only does covetousness induce chronic discontent; it induces chronic anxiety. I’ve noticed that people who lack life’s necessities are anxious. Of course they are. Who wouldn’t be anxious if she couldn’t feed her children? As people come to possess life’s necessities their anxiety decreases. As they possess life’s necessities plus a margin, a safety margin that can cover unforeseen setback and lend a little comfort, they are least anxious. As people begin to possess more, however, and more again, their anxiety starts climbing again. As they gain much more they are much more anxious. The poor are anxious on account of what they lack. The affluent are anxious on account of what they might lose. As people become still more affluent they are soon worried sick: worried about inflation, about taxes, about crises in international banking, about bad investments, about “creeping socialism”, whatever that is and however it’s thought to threaten.

Not only does chronic covetousness induce chronic discontent and chronic anxiety; it also induces chronic nastiness. The apostle James minces no words. “You desire and do not have”, he thunders, “and so you kill. You covet and cannot obtain, and so you wage war.” It’s no exaggeration. “Kill”? How many friendships have we seen disappear only to be replaced by contempt and ridicule just because someone’s material fortunes rose and someone else’s covetousness spilled over into nastiness?

The blessing wherewith God blesses us in his material provision becomes a curse the moment we begin to covet. You see, the gospel announces that matter matters. Coveters announce (regardless of what they say) that matter alone matters. The difference is huge. Since matter matters, the God who gave it is to be thanked. If matter alone matters, however, the God who gave it is to be dismissed. To dismiss the one who is our maker, our saviour, our guide, our sustainer; what is this but to live accursed?

 

IV: — If we have perverted blessing into curse, how is blessing recovered?

[1] First we have to remember who we are. Who we are is governed by whose we are. We belong to Jesus Christ. He is the one, scripture tells us repeatedly, through whom and for whom everything has been made. We belong to him. We live in his company. In his company we come to know why matter is good, how it is good, and how readily it’s perverted.

In the company of Jesus Christ we have also found a contentment that only his intimates know yet which they certainly know. Cherishing our contentment in him, we don’t have a nameless emptiness that we foolishly think to be assuaged by costlier things. We know that things will no more satisfy spiritual hunger than sawdust will satisfy bodily hunger. Knowing whose we are, we know who we are: we are those whose resistance the master’s invitation has melted as he renews every day his invitation to us – “Come to me…and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:28-29)

[2] In the second place we are convinced that since matter matters, things can be an effective vehicle of God’s truth and God’s compassion and God’s persistent caring for all whom he has made. G.K. Chesterton, a Roman Catholic, was asked if he disagreed with The Salvation Army’s methods. “Disagree?” Chesterton replied, “A brass band is a purely spiritual thing.” So is drinkable water. So is farm fertilizer. So are school textbooks.

I spoke with a missionary surgeon who left what was then Zaire and returned home after three years’ service. He couldn’t abide the crude, make-shift medical practices he was forced to adopt on account of the lack of supplies. (For instance, there was no blood bank. When he was performing surgery that entailed no little loss of blood, he had to control bleeding by inducing shock. Shock is hard to control. Sometimes too much shock was accidentally induced and the patient died. Any North American MD who induced shock to control bleeding would lose his licence immediately.) In addition he was given a few thousand dollars to purchase medicine for many thousands of people. It averaged out to 35 cents per person. What was he supposed to do with that? Penicillin is a purely spiritual thing.

The little boy who gave his sardines and crackers to Jesus did something seemingly useless. For one, once he’d given his minuscule lunch away he wasn’t going to eat himself. As for the 5,000 around him, they were never going to eat in any case. And yet – at the end of the day, thanks to the boy’s gift, he had enough to eat, and so did everyone else.

One of my friends is a physician, an internist at Sunnybrook Hospital . He sees many people in intense pain. He also sees many drug-addicted people. He tells me that people who are suffering terribly can be given morphine, heroin even, as a pain-killer. They won’t be addicted. But a comfortable person, in no pain, who is given morphine or heroin, is addicted instantly.

Matter matters. God has given it to us as blessing. Matter satisfies material need: water, food, air. Matter is the occasion whereby Jesus Christ satisfies spiritual need: wooden cross, baked bread, pressed grape wine, fleshly handshake. Materialism, on the other hand, “matter alone matters” – materialism is a form of addiction. The sign that we’re free from such addiction is that we’re free to share our material goods: house, meals, money – only then to find that the little we share is hugely multiplied in the bizarre arithmetic unique to Christ’s kingdom.

 

Addiction? In the course of thirty-five years’ ministry I’ve encountered many drug addicts. They scare me half to death.

                                                                                                  Victor Shepherd   

  April 2005

 

Ruth: The Woman and the Book

   Ruth 1:1

 

I: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Today we begin thinking of the build-up to Christmas, the story whose crescendo gathers force throughout Advent and is crowned on Christmas Day with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, who is Messiah of Israel, Ruler of the Gentiles, Son of God, Saviour of humankind, Lord of the entire universe.

As we revisit the Christmas narratives in Matthew’s gospel we start with the genealogies. The older translations of the bible said “Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob begat…” on and on for dozens of generations.         The newer translations of the bible say “Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob…” and so on.

“Begat.” “Father of.” It sounds one-sidedly male, doesn’t it. Where are the females in the genealogy? Most women (and all feminists) would shout “Nowhere.   That’s just the problem.”   Actually among the dozens of males who “beget” in the genealogies there are a few women mentioned.  But only four. Even so, if there are only four mentioned, the four are surely going to be the four most-celebrated women in Israel ’s history: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

No. These four aren’t mentioned in the “breeding record” of Jesus.  The four mentioned in our Lord’s ancestry are Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheba and Ruth.

Things aren’t looking good at this point, because each of these women is tainted.

Rahab was a Canaanite woman – which is to say, she belonged to Israel ’s arch-enemy. Still, when Joshua sent two spies into Canaan to assess its military strength, especially that of Jericho , Canaan ’s principal city, Rahab hid the two spies and saved their lives.  Months later, when Israel conquered Jericho , Rahab was spared. Israelite soldiers didn’t pulverize her house.  How did they know which house was hers?   She had hung a red ribbon in the window.  With today’s electrical power she would have put a red light in the window. The red light would be appropriate too, because Rahab was a harlot, we are told, a prostitute. Of the four women mentioned in our Lord’s ancestry, one is “iffy” already.

Next is Tamar. At least she’s an Israelite, not a Canaanite.  Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah . Her husband died.  She was childless. No one would marry her. So she disguised herself – disguised herself so thoroughly as to be unrecognisable – and then seduced Judah, her father-in- law, and bore his children.

Bathsheba.  David was already married when one day he saw a woman (a married woman) who was so gorgeous she was almost an apparition.  Bathsheba and David “carried on”, as we say today.  She became pregnant. Whereupon David arranged to have her husband murdered, subsequently marrying Bathsheba himself.

Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite. By the time Ruth was on the scene the Moabites were considered Gentiles, since the Moabites were descended from Lot ’s incest with his daughters.

Our Lord’s background is questionable several times over.   He isn’t a pure-bred. Of course his background includes Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.  But they aren’t mentioned in his genealogy.  Mentioned instead are Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheba, and Ruth.

Today we are talking about Ruth.

 

II: — The story of Ruth has always been regarded as a tale of romance. How many times have we become sentimental as we heard Ruth’s moving speech to Naomi, her mother-in-law, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.  May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”   It is moving. Nonetheless the story of Ruth isn’t finally about romance.  It’s about a crushing episode in Israel ’s history and two different responses to the disaster.

In 587 BCE the Babylonian armies overran Israel and carried off into exile many of the people and most of the leaders.  Eventually the exiles were permitted to return.  The repatriated leaders found the people who had never been taken into exile but who had been left behind; the leaders found these people demoralized. The people were dispirited, disillusioned, confused, floundering.   The leaders knew the people had to have their morale restored.         The people had to be infused with new heart, fresh confidence, hope. Essential to all this, the leaders insisted, was ethnic purity.  Israelites were to stop marrying foreigners.  And since Moabites were hated more than other foreigners, no Moabite was to set foot in an Israelite place of worship for ten generations (two hundred years.) Two men especially, Nehemiah and Ezra, were vehement on this matter.  In fact Nehemiah’s vehemence boiled over into violence.  He was heartbroken when he came upon Jewish men who had married Moabite women and whose children couldn’t speak Hebrew.  His heartbreak heated up into white-hot anger and he fumed at these irresponsible men. “I contended with them,” Nehemiah tells us himself, “and I cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair….”  Certainly Nehemiah thought he was doing the right thing.  After all, he was maintaining the honour of God’s cause and preserving the ethnic purity of God’s people.

We mustn’t be too severe with Nehemiah.  He had a point. It was Israel ’s God-ordained vocation to be a light to the nations. But how could they ever be a light to the nations if their own light sputtered out? Nehemiah told the people the light they were supposed to be was on the point of sputtering out; they weren’t of much use to anyone.         Their children couldn’t speak Hebrew?   Then how would their children ever learn Torah, Torah being both the vehicle of God’s revelation to them and the “Way” that God appoints his people to walk? If they couldn’t learn Torah they couldn’t obey God.  If they couldn’t obey God what could they do besides meander and stumble, the blind leading the blind, as Israel ’s greater Son was to say centuries later, with everyone eventually falling into the ditch? Nehemiah had a point. He and Ezra and many other leaders proposed handling the problem this way.  One, mixed marriages were no longer permitted.  Two, foreigners were to be treated with hostility, relentless harassment driving them out of the land.  Three, the people of Israel were to ghettoize themselves and shun contact with the wider world as much as possible.

But not everyone in Israel agreed with this. In fact the book of Ruth, along with the book of Jonah, was written to protest against these policies. And now to the story itself.

 

III: — Famine arises in Bethlehem . Naomi, her husband, and her two adult sons go to the country of Moab in order to feed themselves. Naomi’s husband dies. Her two sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.  Naomi, her two sons and her two daughters-in-law live ten years in Moab . Then Naomi’s two sons die. (This is scarcely surprising, since the sons’ names are Mahlon and Chilion, Hebrew words meaning “sickness” and “consumption.”)   Naomi learns that the famine is over at home, and she starts back. Ruth and Orpah want to go back with her. Naomi cautions them. “Don’t feel obliged to accompany me,” she says; “I’m an elderly widow, too old to remarry. You women are young; you need husbands. Stay in Moab , for you are Moabites yourselves and you won’t be welcome in Israel .” Orpah heeds Naomi.  Ruth refuses to. She clings to Naomi and cries, “Entreat me not to leave you….Where you go I will go; your people will be my people, your God my God.”   And Ruth, knowing that she’ll meet hostility in Israel , still goes back with Naomi, so dearly does she love her mother-in-law.

Ruth eventually marries an Israelite, Boaz.  They have a son. The son grows up and has a grandson whose name is David.  David becomes Israel ’s greatest king. David is poet, musician, warrior, ruler. David is the man after God’s heart. In Israel David is feted as someone whose glory approaches that of Moses.  David: the man who gathers up in himself so very much of all that the Jewish people have cherished for 200 years.  David is the paradigm of Jewishness.  Except that he isn’t purebred Jew.   His great-grandmother was a Moabite, a Gentile.

David had a son, who had a son, who had a son, for 1000 years; this time the son’s name was Jesus.  After Israel ’s greatest king came a still greater king.  On the one hand, Matthew upholds the virginal conception of Jesus. On the other hand, Matthew lists these “iffy” people as our Lord’s ancestors.  It is this one, already “numbered among the transgressors”, who is the Son of God and Saviour of the world.

 

IV: — What are you and I to learn from all of this? How is the story of Ruth “word of God” for us today?

[1] First we have to note that Nehemiah and others were right when they perceived the threat to Israel , but wrong in their response to the threat.  Here’s the dilemma. If God’s people try to preserve themselves by huddling together with their backs to the world; that is, if God’s people try to preserve their identity by refusing to identify with the rest of humankind in its suffering and perplexity and frustration and sin, then they are useless to God and others. They merely ghettoize themselves as they breathe a sigh of relief that at least they still know who they are just because they have kept themselves unspotted from the big, bad world.  At the same time, however, they are of no help to anyone.  This is what Jesus calls hiding one’s light under a bushel basket. The light is still light all right, but because it’s hidden under the basket lest a nasty wind blow it out or someone ridicule it or someone else deny it to be light at all, it doesn’t illumine anyone, most notably those who stand in greatest need of illumination.

On the other hand, if God’s people are so eager to identify with those to whom God sends them that they lose their identity as God’s people, then they too are useless just because they lack distinctiveness. This is what Jesus calls having the salt lose its saltiness.  When the salt loses its saltiness we have the sermon that is no different from the newspaper, the congregation that is no different from the community group, the minister who is no different from Lions Club tail twister, a gospel that aims only at making us feel good, a denomination that is manipulated by the noisiest lobby.

In the first case God’s people retain their identity but forfeit their identification with a needy world.  In the second case identification with human distress is upheld while identity as God’s people is lost.  This is the dilemma. And this dilemma faces every Christian, every congregation, every denomination.

Plainly we need to be able to discern and exemplify Christ’s own righteousness and truth in a world of sin and falsehood.  We can do this only if we avoid embracing the world uncritically; i.e., only if we remember and cherish Christ’s righteousness and truth. At the same time we can exemplify Jesus Christ in our world only if we insist on remaining one with a world of sin and falsehood.

Ezra and Nehemiah had said, “Let’s play it safe. Let’s come down on the side of preserving our identity while ignoring everyone else.” On the other hand the people who had sneered at Moses and had fooled around with the golden calf like the rest of the world; the people who had told Samuel that they wanted a king precisely in order to be like everyone else — they came down on the other side of the issue: they boasted of their identification with the world even as they had long since lost their identity as God’s children.

Jesus Christ is given to the world just because God so loves the world; and the selfsame Jesus tells Pontius Pilate that God’s kingdom doesn’t belong to this world.

The story of Ruth reminds us that the love which Naomi had for an alien who didn’t belong to God’s covenant people moved that alien to join herself to Naomi and say, “Your God, the holy One of Israel, has become the only one I can worship.”  It was Naomi’s persistent kindness to a foreigner when all the while Naomi knew her home to be in Bethlehem (“ Bethlehem ” means “house of bread”); this is what moved Ruth to journey to Bethlehem with Naomi where Ruth could learn for herself why the God of Israel is bread for the hungry when nothing else is.

It’s no different concerning us.  It is as you and I know who we are in Christ; it’s as we cling to our identity in him even as we identify with others that these people will come to embrace Israel ’s greater Son.

 

[2]         The second feature of the book of Ruth that seizes me is this: God’s work moves ahead despite the sin of God’s servants. Ruth, we should note, wasn’t “Miss Goody-Goody Two Shoes.”   She was calculating, manipulative, devious.         We mustn’t sentimentalize her.  She knew she needed a husband. A widow, in those days, was marginalized on all fronts at once.  To be sure, Ruth had been allowed to glean in the field belonging to Boaz as a way of fending off dire poverty.  To glean was to pick up stalks of grain that had fallen out of harvesters’ arms, as well as to cut the grain left standing at the fringe of the field. It was hard work for little food. It would avert starvation, but no more than this.         Ruth wanted more. She wanted a husband. And she snared one, really “snared” him, since she used the shabbiest entrapment to get him.

Now this is where the story of Ruth gets earthy.  Here’s what happened. At the conclusion of the day’s harvesting Boaz was thirsty.  He drank some wine. He drank more wine, and more still. Now he was deep into the “twilight zone.”         In fact he was beyond the twilight zone.  Whereupon, we read in Holy Scripture, “Ruth came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down.”  Now to “uncover one’s feet” in Hebrew idiom means to expose one’s genitals. Ruth exposed Boaz. Next verse in our story: “At midnight Boaz was startled, turned over, and behold a woman lay at his feet.” “Who are you?” Boaz asked, and she replied, “I am Ruth, your maidservant. Spread your skirt over your maidservant.”         Whereupon Boaz flipped his cloak over Ruth and covered himself up as well.

What had happened was this. Ruth had “uncovered the feet of Boaz,” exposed him.  He had drunk too much wine to be aware of this.  When finally he did wake up, he saw that he was exposed, and Ruth as well. Plainly she had exposed herself too; that’s why she had said, “Cover up your maidservant.” But because Boaz had drunk so much wine, he couldn’t remember what had happened; specifically he couldn’t remember whether you-know-what had happened.  He only knew that he had awakened, naked, with a naked woman beside him. It would certainly appear that something had happened.  Little wonder that Boaz insisted, “Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”   He thought that the only proper thing left him to do was to marry Ruth. He did.

In other words, Ruth blackmailed Boaz.  She falsified herself and trapped him.

We cannot excuse it. We cannot approve it. And we had better not imitate it. Yet we may and must glory in the fact that God’s work surges ahead despite the most appalling clay feet of his servants.

All God’s servants have feet of clay. Abraham is the prototype of the person of faith in both older and newer testaments.  Yet Abraham lies to save his own skin even as he jeopardizes his wife. Abraham sees men ogling his wife, Sarah. He says to himself, “If I say she’s my wife, they will kill me in order to rape her. But if I say she’s my sister, they will rape her anyway but spare me.”    “She’s my sister,” Abraham shouts, “my sister.”  Abraham did this twice.

David is “a man after God’s heart,” scripture tells us, and he commits adultery with Bathsheba after he has arranged for the murder of her husband.

Paul is sarcastic. Elijah taunts his opponents. All God’s people have feet of clay. We ought to deplore this and repent of it.   But at the same time we ought never to despair on account of it.  So very miraculous is God’s grace that we are going to be used of God anyway. God’s work moves ahead despite the sin of God’s servants, including your sin and mine.

 

[3] I cherish the book of Ruth, finally, in that Ruth calls Boaz her kinsman. The Hebrew word for kinsman is “go’el.”         “Go’el” doesn’t mean kinsman in the modern sense of “next of kin,” the person to be notified when the dump truck runs over my bicycle and me. In Hebrew “go’el” means redeemer.  A kinsman-redeemer-go’el is someone who rescues another person, rescues someone dear to the go’el from real danger.

In the older testament a go’el or redeemer could do many things. He avenged a family member who had been molested. He vindicated a loved one who had been slandered.  He paid off debt and thereby secured the release of someone who had been enslaved because she couldn’t pay her debts.  Redemption, in Israel , always entailed some kind of rescue, release, deliverance.

The description of kinsman-redeemer-go’el came to be applied to God; in fact it came to be one of the most characteristic descriptions of God. Over and over God is spoken of as the One whose love for us moves him ultimately to sacrifice himself for us in order to rescue us, release us and deliver us.

What do we need to be rescued from?   Enticement at the hands of the evil one, our own sin arising from such enticement, and God’s just judgement judging us on account of our sin.

What do we need to be delivered to? We need to be delivered to, handed over to, the freedom and gratitude and obedience of God’s children.

It’s all won for us in Christ, given to us in Christ, the go’el or redeemer, guaranteed for us in Christ — who is himself king eternal above King David, even as Jesus Christ and King David are alike descendants of a Gentile, a Moabite, a devious woman, Ruth.  Even as our blessed Saviour, whose Advent we celebrate today, is descended also from Bathsheba, Tamar and Rahab – wicked sinners like us, and like us grateful beneficiaries of God’s mercy, wrought for us all in God’s only Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.

                                                                                            Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                

November 2005  

 

 

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

 

What Do I Want For Our Children?

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

Sunday School Teachers’ Dedication, 1996

 

Once in Royal David’s City

1st Samuel 16:6-13               Luke 2:8-11

 

“Once in Royal David’s City”: it’s one of my favourite Christmas carols.  Every time I sing it I recall the heart-warming and heartbreaking complexity of David’s life. David: born to be king. Jesus, David’s Son: born to be the king.

I: — Some people might say that the title “king” was all that David and Jesus had in common.
David, after all, was a military hero; Jesus never once threw a spear.

David had a lethal streak in him.  When he suspected that people were plotting against him, he assassinated them first. No one, however, found such a streak in Jesus.

David played power politics, and played power politics with consummate skill.  Jesus never had the chance, and wouldn’t have played political games in any case since his kingdom, he told Pilate, didn’t originate in this world.

Then what did David and Jesus have in common? They both had simple, uncomplicated rural backgrounds.         They were both country fellows, brought up far from the intrigues of the big city. David was a shepherd-boy. Jesus grew up in the home of a self-employed handyman, in Nazareth , a one-horse town light years from the sophistication of Jerusalem , the big apple.

In addition, both David and Jesus were what I call “earth creatures.” They put on their trousers one leg at a time, and didn’t pretend anything else. Their humanness, down-to-earth and earthy at the same time, was always up front.         They lived life exuberantly, affirmed life ardently, celebrated life boisterously, and everywhere relished a good time.

Jesus, we know, spent more than a little time partying. In fact he was accused of overdoing it. “A glutton and a drunkard” his enemies hissed at him.  Not only that; Jesus partied with the “wrong” people, the folk who sat loose to religious convention and moral custom.  When uncomprehending people asked Jesus why his disciples didn’t fast in principle, why his disciples didn’t mope around with sour faces and sunken cheeks, Jesus replied, “The bridegroom’s here.         My followers are at a wedding reception, not a wake.  Furthermore, Mr. or Ms. Questioner, why aren’t you in here partying with us instead of holding yourself aloof and forfeiting our good time?”

David was like this.  When the Philistines, who had captured the Ark of the Covenant, had finally been routed and the Ark of the Covenant returned to Jerusalem , David rejoiced. The Ark of the Covenant symbolized God’s never-failing presence with his people, Israel . So exuberant was David that he began to dance. He danced with such ardour, such utter self-forgetfulness, that his kilt flew up and he accidentally exposed himself.  The servant girls tittered at the preposterous spectacle of their king cavorting like a university student in a victory parade following the football team’s triumph.

Michal, David’s wife, was angry and embarrassed and disgusted – especially disgusted – all at once.  Michal, it must be remembered, was the daughter of King Saul.  She was a blue-blood, born to the aristocracy.  She always knew her husband to be low-born, but had married him anyway on account of his talent. Now he was behaving like a fourteen-karat oaf. She felt he had behaved un-aristocratically.

David had, and he couldn’t have cared less. “I was dancing before the Lord”, he tried to explain to his acid-tongued wife; “It was before the Lord that I danced.”   Years later Jesus would turn on his detractors, “When the king and his kingdom are here, are my friends and followers supposed to be sad sacks?”

David and Jesus had ever so much in common.  Both were winsome. Both attracted followers. Both drew to them those who would follow them anywhere.

 

II: — Blind Bartimaeus knew this. Bartimaeus had learned that Jesus was in the crowd.  “Jesus, Son of David”, Bartimaeus had called out.  A few days later, in the last week of his earthly life, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a flea-bitten donkey, and the crowds had called out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.

Son of David.  In what respect was Jesus the son of David?  Spelled with a lower-case “s”, “son of” is a Hebrew expression that means “of the same nature as”.  When people hailed Jesus as “son of David” they were saying that he mirrored David in several respects.  “Son of David” spelled with an upper-case “S” means “messiah”. Jesus is David’s son in both respects, both little “s” and capital “S”.  Jesus is David’s clone in many respects; and as David’s clone in the profoundest respects he is the long-promised messiah.

Bartimaeus knew this.  So did the crowds who hailed our Lord on Palm Sunday.  What did all such people expect from Jesus?  What are we expecting from him now?

 

[1] People then and now expect deliverance. The name “Jesus” is the English translation of the Greek “Iesous”, which Greek word translates the Hebrew “Yehoshua.”   “Yehoshua” means deliverer, saviour.  We all want deliverance. We all need it.

David had been no armchair dreamer.  David had done something. After his death there had intensified in Israel a longing deeper than the child’s longing for Christmas Day, a longing for the day when a clone of David would appear, and more than merely a clone. For David’s greater Son would deliver Israel from any and all who afflicted it. In the course of delivering Israel , David’s Son would bring righteousness and prosperity and contentment, everything the Hebrew word “shalom” gathers up, everything the bible means by “peace”.  All of us want, more than we want anything else, righteousness in the sense of right-relatedness everywhere in life; we all want prosperity not in the sense of riches but in the sense of richness; we all want the contentment born of God’s blessing.

In my own life I can find grounds to praise God for deliverance. If no one else is aware of what those grounds are, that’s all right, since there are aspects of the personal history of all of us that we do well not to advertise. At the same time, I’m aware that the Deliverer or Saviour hasn’t finished his work within me, and therefore like Bartimaeus of old I continue to cry out for the Son of David.

My heart aches for people who are habituated to anything distressing, whether chemical substance or character defect or psychological preoccupation or injury-fuelled resentment – anything. My heart is one with those who shout, “Don’t hand us a pamphlet or tell us to read a book or ask us to take a course; just tell us where there’s deliverance.” However much some of us relish intellectual subtleties, deep-seated habituations don’t yield to them. Where thinking is concerned we relish subtlety; where habituation is concerned we crave plain, simple release.

The Son of David has been appointed the deliverer of everyone. There is no addiction to which he isn’t equal.         If the community that he forms around him (i.e., the church) loses sight of this truth or simply loses confidence in him, parachurch groups quickly proliferate around the church.  These parachurch groups always feature a program as simple as it is effective. And the members of these groups can always point to people who have been delivered. These groups are a frequently-needed reminder that deliverance is the principal reason the church is in business.

We mustn’t think that only the substance abuser is habituated, like the booze-crazed or the cocaine sniffer or heroin injector.   Scripture speaks of subtle habituations, subtler to be sure yet every bit as deadly, from which many more of us need to be delivered: envy (what has a firmer grip on us than envy, and what is deadlier for us and others?), enmity, backbiting, gossip, slander, mean-spiritedness, stinginess, chronically negative thinking.  Just to contemplate the list (albeit partial) that scripture brings forward makes us realize that we don’t need religious fine-tuning or psychological finessing.  We need nothing less than deliverance.  In coming to church today we’ve come to the right place, for the Son of David has been given to us for just this purpose.

 

[2]         When Bartimaeus and the crowd around him; when you and I and so many more hail Jesus as Son of David we are expecting something in addition: we long to see justice done. Despite the brief but disastrous episode concerning Bathsheba and David’s shocking treatment of her husband Uriah (David, you will recall, when infatuated with a woman who happened to be another man’s wife, and when tempted to take her displayed the culpable stupidity that we all display when temptation turns reason into rationalization; David arranged to have Uriah murdered so that he could have Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife); despite his indefensible collapse David implemented and enforced justice in Israel in a way that Israel hadn’t known before and wasn’t to know after. The poor were protected (always the first responsibility of an Israelite king). The widow, the orphan, the resident alien – in other words, the most vulnerable people, the marginalized, any who were at risk because utterly defenceless – all these people had a resolute defender in King David.

On the other hand, those who fleeced the widow or exploited the poor or grew rich by grinding someone else into the ground – these people learned that this king couldn’t be bribed, wouldn’t be compromised, and remained formidable at all times.

We all long to see justice done.  The cry for justice that goes up from the dispossessed of the world is still a cry inspired largely by David and the Son of David.  Who has been at the forefront of the protests against injustice in Africa, in Latin America, in South Korea ? Christians.  What is the one institution that that all tyrants attempt to suppress? The church.  Who were the people who startled us Canadians several years ago with the near-hopeless struggle of so many fellow-Canadians?   The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Who established Mississauga ’s food bank? (It’s the model of food banks throughout Canada , and it distributes food every year whose market value is $12 million.)  Children of David, children of the Son of David.

Everyone is aware that while segments of the church led the campaign for the abolition of slavery, other segments of the church campaigned to retain slavery.  In other words, the church didn’t speak with one voice on this matter. Still, the gospel that the church cherishes transcends the church and therefore can always correct the church. And the church’s gospel has certainly inspired the cry for justice.  To speak of the gospel is always to speak of him whose gospel it is, Jesus Christ. Christians can’t consistently embrace Jesus Christ and deny justice to their fellows.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred in Nazi Germany for his opposition to Hitler, pleaded for justice and stood with those deprived of it.  For this reason there is now a plaque attached to the tree in Flossenburg from which he was hanged.  The plaque doesn’t read, “In memory of one who dedicated himself to social justice.” It reads more simply yet more accurately, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.”

King David was renowned for the justice he enacted. We who cling to his greater Son are ever looking to Jesus Christ for that justice which we must now do ourselves.

3]         There’s one more reason why we, like the ordinary people in Jerusalem before us, have hailed Jesus as Son of David.  We know that David was an ordinary person from an ordinary family in an ordinary town – and was wonderfully used of God.  We are ordinary too. We aren’t ashamed of our ordinariness, because we have learned by now, I trust, that people who don’t own their ordinariness are highly dangerous. (More on this in another sermon.) Ordinary as we are, and unashamed of it as well, we too want to be used of God.  We don’t pretend we’re outstanding and don’t even aspire to be outstanding. But neither do we want to live and die without being used of God.  We know we can be, and are going to be, just because God has always used the most ordinary humans – like David of old, like the Son of David.

Moses – he was the child of a despised minority.  Moses had a speech impediment as well: he stuttered.  He remains the most formative figure in Israel to this day.

   Rahab – was a Canaanite woman who hid Joshua’s spies in her home and afforded them hospitality. Rahab was a prostitute. Rahab is written up in the heroes of faith in the book of Hebrews.

          Amos – “I don’t belong to that clique of religious professionals who forge careers for themselves by saying what people and the politicos want to hear”, Amos thundered.  “I’m just a cowboy.” Amos was a prophet whose searing word can still penetrate the hardest heart.

   David – a shepherd boy who found Saul’s armour cumbersome and went out to face Goliath with his slingshot. His own people had said to David, “Don’t be foolhardy: Goliath is too big for you to hit.” “If he’s that big”, David had replied, “then he’s too big for me to miss. Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

   Jesus – so very ordinary that people smirked, “He can’t be much; nothing significant ever comes out of Nazareth .” Yet used of God as no one else can be just because he alone is Emmanuel, God-with-us.

I’m aware of two features of us that we often think will preclude us from being used of God.  One is our psychological quirkiness; the other is our sin.  David had both. So have all Christian leaders, not least of whom was the leader of the 18th Century Awakening and whose stamp is found everywhere on the English-speaking church and society since him: John Wesley.  Wesley could communicate with the lowest-born even as elsewhere he often appeared peacock-proud. Sin?  Quirkiness? Wesley, hugely deficient in self-perception, was often laughably unwise and sometimes dangerously unwise, especially in his relations with women.  Yet who has been more tellingly used of God?  The truth is, all God’s servants are quirky and clay-footed.

We long to be used of God ourselves.  As spiritual descendants of David and his Son we know we’re going to be.

 

To speak of David and the Son of David, as we have this morning, is to suggest that only one generation separated the two men.  In fact David and Jesus are separated in time by 1000 years.

David and Bathsheba had a child, their first. A son.   They had great hopes for the child.  But the child died in infancy, breaking their hearts.

One thousand years later a child was born who fulfilled their hopes in ways beyond their wildest dreams.         This child wasn’t merely a great king, not even the best king.  This king is King of kings just because he is the Son of God.  Having been raised from the dead, the can never die.  Alive, he greets us this morning, and therefore we hail him with undiluted, unreserved joy.

And it’s all because of what happened once in Bethlehem , once in Royal David’s City.

 

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Advent 05

Another Look At A Child’s Favourite: The Story of David and Goliath

1 Samuel 17:1-58 

Many adults tell me they don’t like the story of David and Goliath. They say that the story is too violent, too bloody, too indelicate for sensitive children. (I have noticed, however, that those who object continue to read fairy tales to children, which tales are never delicate.) The story of David and Goliath is violent; so very violent, in fact, that one feature of the story never appeared in the flannelgraph lesson when I was a little fellow in Sunday School. While the flannelgraph lesson always depicted David slinging his stone at Goliath as the giant fell on his face, it never depicted what happened next: David ran up to Goliath, pulled out the giant’s sword, and cut off his head. It was only when the Philistines saw David brandishing Goliath’s head that they fled. It wasn’t merely that Goliath was defeated definitively; the Philistines were made to behold their leader defeated.

Yet for every adult put off by the story there are a hundred children who relish it. Children delight in the thrill of an exciting adventure; they are enthraled by the story of a slender teenager trouncing an enemy giant; they “light up” when they learn of the courage and strength and skill of the shepherd boy who deals with marauding bear, then marauding lion, then marauding giant as the story crescendos to a climax.

Myself, I’m fifty-three years old, fifty-three going on thirteen. I love the story, however indelicate the fastidious may find it.

 

I: — The story begins, “Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle.” The simple beginning tells us that Israel, the people of God, are immersed in conflict yet again. In fact they’re always immersed in conflict. Of course they are: conflict riddles life. The only way to avoid conflict is to retire from life; or at least retire from facing the injustices that riddle life, the falsehoods, the betrayals, the duplicity, the victimizations. If, however, there is any truth in us, any integrity; if there is any courage in our heart, any fire in our belly, then we can’t retire from the injustices and falsehoods and victimizations that riddle life, and therefore we can’t avoid conflict.

When John Wesley was a sleepy clergyman concerned only with churchly niceties he knew no conflict at all. When, however, at age thirty-five, he felt his “heart strangely warmed”, knew that God’s mercy possessed a sinner like him, knew that the gospel was now etched so very deeply into him; from this point on he was immersed in conflict every day: conflict with church-authorities, conflict with civic authorities, conflict with magistrates and mobs and even fellow-ministers. What had he done to provoke this? He had upheld the biblical insistence on holiness, “holiness of heart and life” as he put it. Wesley knew that by God’s grace all who cling to Jesus Christ are transformed within and thereafter spend themselves to transform the society without. This fosters conflict? Yes. There are many who don’t want individuals transformed within, since such transformation rebukes their own spiritual inertia and innermost corruption; there are many who don’t want society transformed without, since they profit from the society the way it is. Despite the conflict that dogged Wesley for the next fifty years, he never backed away from it.

To insist that such conflict is inevitable is not to say that we are pugnacious and forever looking for a fight. Nor is it to say that we have a chip on our shoulder; nor to say that we are paranoid. It is, however, to step ahead soberly, circumspectly, wisely — yet boldly too — aware at all times that conflict is inescapable.

I have long been interested in the plight of the chronically mentally ill. Therefore I was appalled only two months ago to learn of a development concerning a Parkdale boarding house that accommodated schizophrenic people. Everyone was told that the home was being closed temporarily for alterations. The residents, now dislocated, were sent to assorted small towns in southern Ontario, where immediately they were disoriented themselves, noticed by others, made to know they were unwelcome, and told they had better “check out” even though they had no means of getting out and nowhere to go. They were immediately deemed to be a public nuisance and a drain on the resources of the small towns. Hostility greeted them at every turn. Needless to say, the ill people themselves were frightened and anxious. The boarding house owner had lied unscrupulously in order to get rid of the schizophrenic tenants instantly. (Making alterations gives an owner the right to evict tenants instantly.) As the story unfolded, there were no alterations undertaken, the residents were never coming back, the small towns would be months (if ever) developing resources to look after such people — and all of this because the boarding house owner had learned quietly of a real estate “scheme”, a “flip” of some sort, that would enable her to make windfall gains immediately. No illegality had been committed. But neither had the right ever been done.

Now imagine someone who is outraged at all of this deciding to do something about it, or at least to try to do something about it. Can you imagine the conflict? With city authorities, with Queen’s Park politicians and civil servants, with angry residents in the now-burdened small towns, with hospitals that would see the same sick people again and again but without room to admit them. Can you imagine the size of the conflict generated around only a handful of people who represent only 1% of the population? (Yes, only 1% of the population is schizophrenic.) As soon as we attempt to do the right, conflict is inescapable.

Goliath didn’t represent only himself; he represented the entire Philistine forces when he shouted, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day!” Those who array themselves against the gospel, against the truth the gospel embodies, against the justice the gospel enjoins; all such people “defy the ranks” of the people of God. Of course there’s an extraordinarily noisy spokesperson here or there, but the noisy spokesperson is merely the mouthpiece for hordes just like him.

 

II: — What did David do in the face of the Philistine raving? How did he respond? David turned to his fellow-Israelites, all of whom were shaking in terror, and said matter-of-factly, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Who is this jerk, anyway?” Goliath was massive; everyone knew that. Goliath was as mighty as he was massive. Before him the Israelites quaked just because he was so huge. “He’s too big to hit!”, they despaired before David. “If Goliath is that big”, replied the shepherd boy, “then he’s too big to miss!” Everything about Goliath that immobilized the ranks of Israel merely motivated David.

David tried on Saul’s armour. It was too cumbersome, and David laid it aside. “It’s not `me'”, said David, “I’m not Saul. I have to be myself.” Whereupon David went forth ridiculously underequipped, others thought, even as David knew he was sufficiently equipped just because his equipment befitted him. He had to be himself.

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Why do you Israelites cower like whipped dogs in front of this overgrown oaf?” David’s boldness wasn’t born of arrogance; it was born of confidence in the presence and power and providence of God. David knew that God’s people have nothing to fear really, nothing to fear realistically before the forces of those who oppose Truth.

Thirty-five years ago this month I went off to university. I was going to study philosophy. My minister shook his head sadly; not only did he fear for my spiritual life, he assumed that I had as good as succumbed already to the atheism of the philosophy department. He asked me why I was going out of my way to have my faith strangled at the unholy hands of philosophers. My older cousin had gone to university ahead of me and had studied medicine. Medicine was deemed a “safe” discipline for Christian students; after all, in the study of medicine there wasn’t the head-on assault on faith that there was deemed to be in philosophy. It was suggested that I should study medicine too. I spent five glorious years in intense study of philosophy. Do I strike you as someone whose faith philosophy has strangled?

My friend Fr. Edward Jackman studied philosophy too (albeit several years ahead of me since he is older than I.) Jackman is the brother of the former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, Hal Jackman. The Jackman family are old Ontario Methodists, and therefore United Church people since 1925 (with one exception, Edward, who is a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican Order.) Jackman took several philosophy courses from my friend and former teacher, Emil Fackenheim. Jackman tells me that Fackenheim brought him to see that the profoundest philosophical questions point to God. Please note: we do not survive and thrive among threatening giants by fleeing the giants; we survive and thrive among giants by facing them.

Where David and his people spoke of “giants” the apostles and their hearers were to speak of “principalities and powers.” The principalities and powers are the “isms” and ideologies and institutions and images that distort the truth and twist individuals, groups and nations. The principalities and powers are whatever cosmic forces there might be, whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. The principalities and powers are anything and everything that misshapes hearts and minds so that individuals and groups become the contradiction of what they were created to be. The apostles attest everywhere that Jesus Christ has conquered the principalities and powers. In his death and resurrection he has defused them, deprived them of their capacity to define us ultimately and misshape us eternally. In his letter to the church in Colosse, Paul says not only that Christ defeated the powers; he says that having defeated them Christ displayed them as defeated. Not only was our Lord victorious over them; in his resurrection he flaunted his victory.(Col. 2:15) Now you understand why David not only defeated Goliath but displayed the head of the giant. While God’s people are most certainly freed and vindicated in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, God’s people must also be seen to be freed and vindicated.

By anticipation David lived in the realism of Christ’s victory and of that victory flourished; by recollection you and I live in the realism of the selfsame victory. But live there we do, as surely as did the shepherd boy of old.

 

III: — A minute ago we saw that David couldn’t fight with Saul’s armour; nevertheless, David had to fight. Of course David would have preferred peace over conflict; he knew, however, that peace is won eventually not as giants are denied but as giants are dealt with. Therefore David had to fight.

Yet even as David fights he declares, “The Lord saves not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord’s.”(1 Sam. 17:47) Since the battle is the Lord’s, the Lord alone supplies victory. Knowing this, declaring this, David nonetheless goes forward himself to face Goliath. Human weapons do not win the Lord’s battles; still, human weapons are the only weapons humans can wield. Then wield them we must even as we know that the battle is the Lord’s.

Fourteen hundred years after David had defeated Goliath, Augustine wrote, “Without God, we cannot; without us, he will not.” Both men were expressing in their own way the truth that Jesus Christ had impressed upon his disciples on the eve of his victorious death: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”(John 15:5) When Jesus insisted to his followers, “Apart from me you can do nothing” he never meant that you and I should therefore do nothing! On the contrary, in one and the same pronouncement he tells us both that apart from him we can do nothing and that our “doing” should always be bearing fruit and glorifying God. He tells us both that apart from him we can do nothing and that we must never be idle or useless. The battle is the Lord’s, even as David himself must contend.

God’s people have always known this. William Wilberforce gave fourteen years of his life in tireless efforts to end the slave trade. He suffered dreadful abuse for his efforts, but he never quit. He spent fourteen relentless years before he saw slave-trading abolished. But what about those slaves whose lot wasn’t improved by the abolition of slave-trading just because they were slaves already? Already they were the degraded possession of slave-owners. They weren’t going to traded, but neither were they going to be freed. Whereupon Wilberforce spent the next twenty-five years of his life in order to see slave-owning abolished. Thirty-nine years of his life? His entire adult life! But he never quit. Just because Wilberforce knew the battle to be the Lord’s he knew too that he himself couldn’t shirk the battle.

Wilberforce saw the outcome of the battle. Others do not see it, yet are certain that those who follow them will see it. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were faithful ministers of the gospel and leaders of the English Reformation during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor (also known as “Bloody Mary”.) To no one’s surprise Queen Mary had them executed. At the site of the execution, as the wood that was to burn them at the stake was ignited, Latimer, the older man, said to young Ridley, “Master Ridley, …we shall light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” The gospel-light that Latimer and Ridley radiated has never been put out in England. The two men contended valiantly in that battle which is always the Lord’s.

 

IV: — The last point in the sermon today takes us from 1 Samuel 17 (this entire chapter has to do with David and Goliath) to the first verse of 1 Samuel 18. We are told that “the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved David as his own soul.” In the wake of David’s courageous contention with the Philistine giant David was graced with a soul-friend, Jonathan. David was given a friend so intimate, so caring, so helpful, so exquisitely vibrant that the intimacy and intensity of the friendship were beyond words. Because the God who added such a soul-mate to David’s forthrightness is the same God who watches over his people now, any of us will be accorded no less.

I should like to say a great deal about this, but the sermon-hour is spent. An exploration of soul-mate sensitiveness will have await another sermon on another day. For now it is enough to remember that Jesus Christ has defeated the principalities and powers; not only defeated them, but displayed them as defeated.

One thousand years before the advent of Jesus, David foresaw it all, did what he knew he must in the fiercest conflicts, and was content to know that the battle, and therefore the victory, is everywhere and always the Lord’s.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd
September 1997

Of the King with Clay Feet and Huge Heart

     2nd Samuel 6:12-23   

1st Samuel 24:1-12                Mark 10:46 -52

 

I: — He was a poet, a musician, a lover, a military genius.   He was also a shrewd administrator and a formidable dispenser of justice. He was generous, kind, merciful, a loyal friend. Above all he was a man of God.

DAVID was his name. Men envied him. Women swooned over him. Enemies dreaded him. All of these responses befitted him, for there were gifts in him worth envying, a virility that could make any woman gasp, and a determination that only fools trifled with.

David had a faith in God that could move mountains.   He also possessed immense human affection.  And he had feet of clay. He sinned as ardently as he worshipped, and as a result of his sin his life fell apart; domestic disaster overtook him, and his son even sought to kill him.

A hero in Israel , David was adulated at a civic reception, one day, and an aristocratic princess, Michal, daughter of King Saul, fell for him.  Later she despised him. Of course she despised him. She came from the royal family, while he came from rural people devoid of social sophistication and cocktail party smoothness.  Later still — in fact last of all — he died a broken man, everything around him in ruins.

Nevertheless David’s people remembered the glory that had been his, and because his, theirs as well.  So it was one thousand years later that shepherds were told they would find the saviour of the world in the city of David . So it was that a blind beggar cried repeatedly to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me.”

Not only can his people, Israel , not forget David to this day. I can never forget him either.

II: — Who was David? He was a red-haired shepherd boy, born in Bethlehem , the youngest of eight brothers. When only an adolescent he found favour in the eyes of King Saul.   As David gained fame, however, Saul became jealous; soon his jealousy curdled to hatred. Saul was plainly manic-depressive, paranoid as well.  Paranoid? Certainly.         “All of you have conspired against me”, Saul thundered one day, “All of you.” Saul was deranged. In his derangement he tried to spear David.  David fled from the royal court and hid himself in a cave, twenty kilometres from Bethlehem . An outlaw now, he was joined by four hundred other men who had had to flee the psychotic king and who were as desperate as David himself.   “Everyone who was in distress …   in debt … or bitter of soul” is how the bible describes the band that gathered around David.

The four hundred men had wives and children with them.  They had to eat. Money and food were gathered from the sheepfarmers whom David’s men protected against the Philistines. In addition, the men plundered any raider foolhardy enough to take them on.

Then Saul died. David was no longer an outlaw. Much happened overnight. His fame increased dramatically. He was royal ruler, military general, civil service administrator, chief justice — all at the same time. He seemed invincible. Nonetheless, his life unravelled. Amnon, David’s son, raped and then discarded Tamar, a half-sister.         Whereupon Absalom, another son, killed his brother Amnon for the foul deed. After this Absalom came to think himself quite important, a vigilante hero (at least in his own eyes). Following much scheming and manipulating Absalom proclaimed himself king to the cheers of his own crowd of sycophants.

David had to flee for his life, flee from his own son.  In what I regard as the saddest picture in all of scripture, David fled across the river Jordan and staggered up the Mount of Olives , weeping, a broken-hearted, broken-down king.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the Jordan , David’s friends pursued Absalom.  Absalom tried to escape only to hang himself accidentally.  Distraught, David lamented his murderous son’s death in a lament we shall never forget: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom. Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom my son, my son.” And there David died.

III: — David moves me as often as I think of him.

(i) He moves me, in the first place, on account of his immense affection and his intense loyalty. He moves me inasmuch as today we live, by contrast, in an era of cavalier human encounters and superficial relationships and dessicated affection.   Whole-soulled affection poured upon people dear to us whom we love as our own soul and to whom we shall remain loyal though the earth shake? Not likely.  No generation has used the expression “meaningful relationship” as frequently as our generation, and no generation has meant so little by it.

I watch people change relationships (so-called) the way I change socks. I have people come to me who complain that they lack friends.  I recall the quiet word of my long-dead dad, “If you want to have friends, you have to be a friend.” When I probe the friendless person’s understanding of friendship, invariably I find that the friendless person has no appreciation that the claim of a friendship is as strong as the friendship itself.  Put the other way, a friendship is only as strong as the sacrifice we are willing to make for it, the humiliation we are willing to undergo for it, the sheer inconvenience of it.

Inconvenience? Sure.  The Saturday morning we begin to paint the garage our friend phones us, upset. He wants us to go over to his home immediately, so upset is he.  But we’ve waited five months to paint the garage; it’s rained every Saturday since the weather was warm enough to paint, and we have to leave town tomorrow night on a business trip.   Then do we drop everything (this means having to clean the brush with paint on it even though we’ve only dipped it in the paint-can and haven’t yet painted so much as one stroke) and call on him? Or do we “explain” why we can’t see him, however upset he is, because we simply must paint today? If the latter, we are refusing the claim of the friendship and forfeiting a friend — if ever friend we were.

My friends have embarrassed me in public; and I know I’ve done as much to them. My friends have unloaded their emotional burden on me precisely when I’ve been so emotionally burdened myself I didn’t feel I could withstand it; but I know too I’ve done as much to them.   My friends have pestered me and pestered me again; but no more than I’ve pestered them. A friendship is only as strong as our friend’s claim on us.  The “selfist” people of our narcissistic age assume that a friendship consists of someone else gratifying them endlessly; selfist narcissists never understand that having a friend means we’re willing to be drained, and in fact are drained more than once.

Those who can’t forge so much as a friendship are never going to establish a long-term, stable union.  No wonder they dabble in human superficiality and flit from one shallow encounter to another.

And then I think of young David and his friendship with Jonathan.  “David loved Jonathan as his own soul”, we are told.  And Jonathan felt the same way about David.  Ardent affection; unshakable loyalty; inexhaustible self-giving.  Risking disgrace and expulsion at the hands of his father, King Saul, Jonathan saved David’s life by tipping off David when Saul was in a murderous mood. When Jonathan died prematurely David cried, “I am distressed for you, my brother, Jonathan…your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

David’s magnanimity he poured out not only on his best friend but even on his worst enemy, Saul. During his outlaw days David was resting in the far end of a cave when Saul came in to relieve himself. Saul removed his coat and laid it aside.   While Saul was preoccupied with his toilet details David cut off part of the hem. As Saul left the cave David called after him, “Why do you listen to people who say I’m bent on harming you? See what I have here; your coat-tail. I could have sliced you up as readily.” With tear-choked voice Saul called back, “Is that you, David? You are more righteous than I; for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil.”

In our era of frippery and frivolity David’s fathomless affection and undeflectable faithfulness loom huge.         To be such a friend, to have such a friend means that we are bound to at least one other person in a bond marked by tenderness and toughness, sensitivity and frankness, comfort and honesty, gentleness and truthfulness. Such a friendship perdures, even thrives, in those times when our friend is moody, interferes with long-made plans, even irks us because he seems to be trading on the friendship. What is such a friendship worth when we are fragile and must be handled delicately, when we are wrong and must be corrected, when we are offensive and must be confronted, when we are insensitive and must be rebuked, when we are bleeding and must be bound up?

I have such friends. I know how David and Jonathan felt about each other.  My heart beats with David’s.

(ii) David moves me, in the second place — sobers me, in fact, even startles me — every time I recall his treachery.         He frightens me as often as I recall his self-delusion as he stumbled into his shame.

Can the man whose huge-hearted magnanimity spared Saul be the same man whose reptilian lust slew Uriah, a loyal supporter who wanted only to help David? “Ur-i-ah” is a compressed Hebrew word meaning “The Lord is my light”.  And the light that Uriah was David extinguished for the shabbiest reason imaginable: he wanted Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.  What shocks me most about this incident isn’t that David behaved badly on this occasion (although his behaviour was reprehensible) but rather the self-delusion, the rationalization, the unconscious but nonetheless self-willed blindness that left him unable to see what anyone else could see in an instant.  I am dismayed when I contemplate the incremental insensitivity to sin that inured him against the God whose voice he heard undeniably on other occasions and relished hearing.

David frightens me. Like him, I believe in original sin. Like him, I believe that there’s an innermost, down-deepest warp – utterly perverse warp – to my heart and my mind and my will.  I can’t pretend that where David was vulnerable I’m impervious. I’m aware that David’s erudition concerning theology didn’t inoculate him against that disaster which ruined his earthly future and tore his family apart.

For this reason I have no difficulty understanding the Supreme Court judge who is found taking bribes, or the supermarket cashier with the sweetest smile who is caught pilfering money from the till, or the sincerest Sunday School teacher whom the newspaper describes as incestuous, or the physician whose fatigue and isolation are met by a caring patient and whose disgrace becomes notorious thereafter.  I have no difficulty understanding this.  What scares me is that it can happen nevertheless to anyone whose understanding of it all is adequate. Plainly, more than understanding is needed.

David was brought to his senses when the prophet Nathan confronted him, confronted him by means of a parable that exposed David as sleazy. Who holds the mirror up to you? To me? My wife does, my friends do, my colleagues do, even my enemies do.  (I have thanked God for my enemies a thousand times over, since my enemies have often told me the truth about myself — albeit from the worst of motives — when others have left me self-deluded from the best of motives.)

 

Now please don’t think that this part of the sermon has spiralled down into gloom and doom, unrelieved negativity. You see, the glory of David’s story is this.  So great is God’s mercy, so marvellous his patience, so inscrutable his providence (to quote John Calvin), so persistent is God’s purpose, that not even David’s sin disqualifies him from being used of God most wonderfully. Not even David’s treachery, his blindness, his betrayal; none of it disqualifies him as a servant of God.  Glorious as David’s pardon is, more glorious still is that incomprehensible surge of God’s grace whereby God’s work moves ahead even through the most clay-footed.

And therefore I find myself encouraged for myself and encouraged for you and encouraged for the church of Christ throughout the world. Without thinking for one minute that I can trade on God’s pardon and patience and persistence, I yet know that our sin disqualifies none of us as useful servants of God. God’s work will triumph; triumph in spite of us, to be sure, yet triumph through us nonetheless.

(iii) Lastly, David moves me with his sheer, simple delight in God.  On the one hand David trembled — as he should have — before the awesome lordliness of God; on the other hand, David loved God and delighted in God with the childlikeness of the youngster for whom freshness and  simplicity and exuberance and merriment are natural.

When the Ark of the Covenant (the ark signified God’s presence) was wrested from the Philistines who had dishonoured it and was brought back to Jerusalem , David “danced before the Lord with all his might” (says the text).         David never did anything by halves.  Then of course he danced with unselfconscious abandon.  (As a matter of fact his kilt flew up and he inadvertently exposed himself.) The day the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem may well have been the most important day in David’s life.  What else, then, but ecstasy and exuberance and enthusiasm?

But not so with Michal, the wife who had blue blood in her veins and vinegar everywhere else. Not so with Michal, who was ashamed of her husband’s boisterous boyishness. She regarded David as an exhibitionistic oaf whom she had had the misfortune to marry. She saw her husband behaving in conformity with the breeding he had inherited; namely, a socially inferior lout who would never know how to behave like a king.  After all, David’s celebratory cavorting had caused the servant girls to snicker at the spectacle of the king (no less) behaving like a football fan feeling no pain in the victory parade following a Superbowl win. Michal despised him for it. Of course she did. Those who are deaf always despise those who dance, don’t they? “It was before the Lord I was dancing”, David insisted, dumbfounded, thinking somehow that if he told his sourpuss-wife often enough she’d get the point.         Michal would never get the point: those who are deaf despise those who dance. “It was before the Lord.” Before the Lord? Michal had never known David’s God; she knew nothing of the heights and depths of David’s immersion in God.         Her heart was as frigid as David’s was inflamed.

When I was only a child I came upon a line that I didn’t comprehend fully, yet understood enough at the time so that the line has never left me. The line came from an old Scottish clergyman of the last century: “You show me someone who has never purchased a gift he can’t afford for someone he loves and I’ll show you someone who isn’t fit for the kingdom of God .” But I understand it now. David had always understood.

David was the poet and the musician of Israel . He knew that poetry and music are the heart’s outpouring of an immersion in God so deep that prose is insipid compared to that poetry which itself is finally inadequate. If David’s outpouring strikes us as exaggerated — or worse, much ado about nothing — then we can only wait for and wait on the God who moved David to exclaim, “Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fullness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.” We shall have to wait for and wait on him who came among us one thousand years after David and said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.” We shall have to wait for and wait on him until we cry with Paul, “He loved me and gave himself — for me.”

David knew. And because he did, I find him to be a reflection of what goes on in my own heart, even if my experience of God is slender compared to his and my articulation of it feeble.

IV: — David was Israel ’s greatest king: colourful, gifted, passionate, an outrageous sinner and yet the tenderest child of God.

Someone greater than David came among us, came one millennium later. To this one a blind beggar called out, “Son of David, have mercy on me”.  And in his mercy Jesus Christ our Lord freed Bartimaeus to see and believe and follow.

Then may you and I ever cry out, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” For in crying out to the Son of David who is also the Son of God we shall find ourselves seeing, believing, hearing our Lord, and together with all who hear, dancing too, as we joyfully await that day when the old king and you and I alike fall on our faces in adoration of him who was born in a stable in the city of David, and who is our blessed Saviour for ever and ever.

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd      

July 2009

 

How Are We to Understand Lingering Illness and Premature Death In A Child?

2nd Samuel 12:16-23                 Mark 5:1-43

 

[1]           I’ve always found conducting the funerals of children extraordinarily difficult. I manage to get through the service, albeit shakily, and then I stagger home and fall on my wife.

What is worse than the death of a child?  For years I said that the greatest burden I’ve seen in people is the burden of childlessness. People will do anything to have a child. Yet if they can’t have a child, can’t adopt a child, I’ve noticed that husband and wife don’t thereafter divorce. But when a child dies the parents divorce 70% of the time.         In other words, the death of a child strains marriages beyond the breaking point more often than not.  Then perhaps there is something worse than childlessness; namely, the death of a child. When David’s child died (the child he had had with Bathsheba), his servants were afraid to tell him lest the heartbroken king kill himself.

 

[2]         Everyone is upset at the death of a child.  Everyone feels the death of a child to be especially tragic.   We feel that the child has been cheated.  We don’t feel this way about the elderly.  When Maureen and I lived in rural New Brunswick we called one evening on Mr. and Mrs. Henry Palmer.  Henry Palmer was dying. He was 98 years old.         As he lay dying in the bedroom Mrs. Palmer sat in her rocking chair, that winter evening, close to the fire in the wood stove, rocking pensively, saying little. Maureen, assuming Mrs. Palmer to be upset, began to commiserate with her.         Mrs. Palmer listened to Maureen for a while and then interjected, without interrupting her rocking, “Henry’s had a good life.”   By our standards he’d had a difficult life: he’d had to spend a month at backbreaking labour every year just to cut enough firewood for the winter, among other things.   Still, by Mrs. Palmer’s standards, Henry had had a good life.  Where children are concerned, however, our standards or anybody else’s standards mean nothing: we feel the child has scarcely had any life.

 

[3]         Lingering illness in a child; untimely death in a child; these are manifestations of evil. Evil is evil, and must never thought to be anything else.   We must never pretend that evil is “good in disguise.”   “Good in disguise” is still good; evil can never be good.   We must never say that evil is good on the way, or at least the potential for good. Of itself evil is never the potential for anything except more evil.

My aunt’s grandson (my cousin’s son) died at age seven.  The little boy was born a normal child and developed normally until age two when he was diagnosed with a neurological disease.   His condition deteriorated thereafter.         His facial appearance changed — became grotesque, in fact; his mobility decreased; and his intellectual capacity decreased.  When I spoke with my aunt at the funeral parlour I said to her, “There’s no explanation for this.”   (I didn’t mean there was no neurological explanation; of course there was a neurological explanation.)   I meant, rather, “Given what you and I know of God, there’s no explanation for this.”  My aunt told me later it was the most comforting thing anyone had said to her at the funeral parlour, for virtually everyone who spoke with her put forth an “explanation”; such as, “Maybe God wanted to teach the parents something.” What were the parents supposed to be taught by watching their son suffer and stiffen and stupefy for five years? “Maybe God was sparing the little boy something worse later in his life.”   It would be difficult to imagine anything worse.  These aren’t explanations; these are insults.   As long as God is love, unimpeded love, there isn’t going to be an explanation for this.

We must always be careful and think 25 times before we conclude we’ve found the meaning (or even a meaning) to such a development. Think of the one and one-half million children who perished during the holocaust. Their parents (four and one-half million of them) were first gassed to death, whereupon their remains were burnt.  The children, on the other hand, were never gassed; they were thrown live into the incinerators. If anyone claims to be aware of the meaning of this event I shall say, among other things, “Meaning for whom? for the barbequed children? for their parents? for their survivors? for their executioners? for the shallow pseudo-philosophers who think their question is worth the breath they spend to utter it?” What meaning could there ever be to such an event?

We can bring the same question to bear on any one child who is dying at this moment in the Hospital for Sick Children.

 

[4]         In light of what I’ve just said I have to tell you how unhappy I’ve been with Harold Kushner’s bestselling book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People.  I’m disappointed in the book for several reasons.  In the first place there’s virtually no discussion of God’s love in Kushner’s discussion of God.  In view of the fact that God is love, that God’s nature is to love, the book is woefully deficient right here. In the second place, because God’s love isn’t discussed, the rest of the book is skewed. Kushner writes, “Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us.   [I’ve no problem with this.]   They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. [No problem here either.] We can redeem these tragedies from senselessness by imposing meaning on them.” I object to this statement. We redeem them by imposing meaning on them? Any meaning that is imposed can only be arbitrary. An arbitrary meaning, something imposed, is just another form of “make-believe”, and no less “make-believe” for being adult “make-believe.”  My cousin and his wife whose seven-year old son died of neurological disease; what meaning were they supposed to impose on the event? And why impose that meaning rather than another?  And how would the imposition of such arbitrary meaning redeem the tragedy?

Harold Kushner’s book is yet another attempt at theodicy.  Theodicy is the justification of God’s ways with humankind, the justification of God’s ways in the face of human suffering.  All attempts at theodicy lefthandedly put God on trial, so to speak, and then develop arguments that acquit God, allowing us to believe in him after all, allowing us to believe that he really is kind and good despite so much that appears to contradict this.  All theodicies assume that we know what should happen in the world; as long as there continues to happen what shouldn’t, God (we think) is on trial; we have to develop arguments and marshall evidence that will acquit him if we are to go on believing in him.

 

[5]         All of which brings me to my next point; namely, our assumption that the questions we think to be obvious and obviously correct are the right questions.  The question, for instance, “If God is all-good, he must want to rectify the dreadful state of affairs so often found in people’s lives; if God is all-powerful, he must be able to rectify such a state of affairs. Since such a state seems not to be rectified, then either God isn’t all-good or he isn’t all-powerful, is he?” Next we set about trying to remove the suspicion that surrounds either God’s goodness or his might. We think our question to be the right question, even the only question.  But in fact the question we’ve just posed didn’t loom large until the 18th century, specifically the 18th century Enlightenment.   The question we’ve just posed was raised by Enlightenment thinkers who weren’t even Christians.  Eighteenth century Enlightenment atheists raised the question, and Christians took it over in that they thought it to be a profound question. But this question didn’t loom large in the Middle Ages where physical suffering, at least, was worse than it is today. This question wasn’t pre-eminent in the ancient world; neither was it front-and-centre in the biblical era.   The pre-eminent question in the biblical era wasn’t “Why?”, because those people already knew why: the entire creation is molested by the evil one. The pre-eminent question in the biblical era was “How long?   How long before God terminates this state of affairs?         What’s taking him so long?”

Think for a minute of the biblical era; think of John the Baptist. John and Jesus were cousins. Not only were they related by blood, they were related by vocation.   John began his public ministry ahead of Jesus.  John’s ministry ended abruptly when a wicked woman, angry at his denunciation of her sexual irregularities, had him slain.  What did Jesus do when he learned of John’s death and the circumstances of John’s death? Did Jesus say, “We need a theodicy. We need a justification of the ways of God.  We need an explanation of how John’s terrible death could occur in a world ruled by a God whose love is mighty.  And if no explanation is forthcoming, then perhaps we can’t believe in God.” — did Jesus say this?   Jesus said no such thing. When John’s head was severed Jesus didn’t cry to heaven, “You expect me to trust you as my Father; but how can I believe you’re my Father, for what Father allows his child to be beheaded?   In view of what happened to cousin John, I can’t be expected to think that I’m dear to you.” Jesus said no such thing. When he was informed of the grisly death of John, Jesus said, “It’s time I got to work.” Whereupon he began his public ministry, and began it knowing that what had befallen John would befall him too, and did it all with his trust in his Father unimpaired.

My point is this: that question which we suppose to be a perennial question, “How can we continue to believe in a mighty, loving God when terrible things keep happening in our world?” — wasn’t the most pressing question in the biblical era or the ancient church or the mediaeval church. It was shouted only in the 18th century Enlightenment, and was shouted by atheists. Having heard the atheists’ question, the church took it over thinking it to be the soul of profundity.

Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, had 19 children. Ten of them survived. As the other nine died (eight of them in infancy), Susannah’s heart broke.   Never think that she didn’t care; never think that her heart wasn’t as torn as anyone’s heart would be torn today.  Read her diary the day after a domestic helper accidentally smothered Susannah’s three-week old baby.  Infant death was as grievous to parents then as it is now.  What was different, however, is this: even as Susannah pleaded with God for her babes while they died in her arms she never concluded that God wasn’t to be trusted or loved or obeyed or simply clung to; she never concluded that as a result of her heartbreak God could only be denounced and abandoned.

Until the 18th century Enlightenment there was no expectation of living in a world other than a world riddled with accident, misfortune, sickness, disease, unrelievable suffering, untimely death.  There was no expectation of anything else.  It was recognized that the world, in its fallen state, is shot through with unfairness, injustice, inevitable inequities, unforeseeable tragedies. When John the Baptist was executed Jesus didn’t say, “If honouring God’s will entails that then I need a different Father.”   Instead Jesus said, “I’ve got work to do and I’d better get started.” Susannah Wesley didn’t say, “If I bear children only to have half of them succumb to pneumonia and diphtheria, I should stop having them.”  Instead she had twice as many.   If today our expectation is so very different on account of the Enlightenment, then what did the Enlightenment cause us to expect?

 

[6]         The Enlightenment brought us to expect that humankind can control, control entirely, the world and everything about it.   The Enlightenment brought us to expect that we are or can be in control of every last aspect of our existence.   Specifically, the Enlightenment brought us to expect that the practice of medicine would smooth out our lives.   And with the new expectation of physicians there arose as well a new agenda for physicians. Whereas physicians had always been expected to care for patients, now physicians were expected to cure patients. Until the Enlightenment physicians were expected to care: they were to alleviate pain wherever they could, they were expected to ease the patient in every way possible, and above all they were expected to ease the patient through death, which death everyone knew to be unavoidable in any case. But cure? No one expected physicians to cure, at least to cure very much.   Nowadays physicians are expected to cure everything.  I’m convinced that people unconsciously expect physicians to cure them of their mortality. When physicians can’t cure people of their vulnerability to death, blame for such failure is unconsciously transferred from medicine to God.

A minute ago I said that we creatures of modernity assume (arrogantly) that the questions we ask are the questions that people have asked in every era; our questions are perennial questions, and our answers are the only answers.  It’s not so. If people today are asked how they’d prefer to die, they nearly always say, “Quickly. I want to die quickly. I’d like to slip away quietly in my sleep.” During the Middle Ages, however, no one wanted to die quickly; people dreaded sudden death. Why?   Sudden death gave them insufficient time to make adequate spiritual preparation for death. What we regard as human expectations as old as humankind are actually very recent. What’s more, these recent expectations weren’t fostered as we reflected on the nature and purpose and way of God; they were fostered by atheists who, at the time of the Enlightenment, came to think that there was nothing humankind couldn’t control.

 

[7]         Let’s come back to the situation of the young person afflicted with a lingering illness and about to die all too young.  Why are we so very upset at this?   I think we’re upset in that we feel the young person to have been cheated. The 85-year old who dies has had a life, a complete life (or at least what we regard as complete.) The eight-year old, we feel, hasn’t; she’s been cheated.   The elderly person’s life can be told by means of a story; the young person, on the other hand, has virtually no story to be told.   I am 63 years old, and if I die tonight others will gather up my life in a story and tell the story.  Hearers will identify me, the real “me”, with my story.  But let’s be honest: they will regard “me” and my story as identical in that my story is fit to be told; my story is positive; my story is rich (supposedly.) No one would hesitate to tell my story.   But if my story were one that couldn’t be told; if my story were bleak or disgraceful or incomprehensible, others would like to think that the real “me” was somehow better, somehow grander, than my shabby story.

It isn’t only the eight-year old child with leukaemia whose story seems to be sad and sorry and miserable.         There are many, many adults whose stories are longer, to be sure, but no better. One Sunday, several years ago, a man wearing a clerical collar sat in the gallery of my church in Mississauga , accompanied by a lawyer-friend of mine.         The man with the collar was an Anglican clergyman.  He was also a plastic surgeon with a practice in one of the wealthiest areas of Toronto . He was at worship, that Sunday, as he awaited trial. He and his estranged wife had had an altercation, in the course of which his wife was struck, the result of which was that her skull was fractured. Several weeks after the service the attended in Mississauga the fellow was convicted and sent to jail.  Upon his release from jail the College of Physicians and Surgeons restored his licence, thus permitting him to do plastic surgery again. The Anglican Church, however, didn’t reinstate him as a clergyman.   A year later the man committed suicide.  What’s his story? Is it a grand story? Is it a story anyone would envy? Or is it a story better left untold?

Maureen and I were asleep on a Friday evening when the phone rang at midnight . The caller was a man I’ve looked out for for 20 years.  He’s paranoid schizophrenic.  I’ve followed him around to restaurants, hospitals, jails, and numerous shabby “digs.” Last autumn he was in Vancouver and got into a “discussion” (as he tells his story) with a motel clerk.  The clerk phoned the police, and Eric spent the next three months in a provincial hospital. A week or two before Christmas I took him to Swiss Chalet for lunch.  We had been seated for only a few seconds when he leapt out of his seat and shouted, “It’s bugged.  It’s bugged. There’s a tape-recorder under my seat.” I took the shaken waitress aside, told her my friend was deranged, promised her I’d see that no harm befell her, and asked her to find us seats in an area that was free of tape-recorders.   A few months after this incident Eric phoned me again.  In the afternoon he’d gone to a barber shop, only to have the barber “butcher” his hair. And why had the barber “butchered” his hair? Because the barber too is part of the conspiracy that is putting foreign substances in Eric’s drinking water and causing his urine to stink.  Eric had come home; his sister had burnt the supper-meal toast; Eric had decompensated and smashed the toaster.  His sister had fled the house; the police had been called; Eric had refused to open the door to them – and was now in a great deal more trouble. Eric was phoning me at midnight. He wasn’t angry and he wasn’t violent: he was frightened, terribly frightened. He feared he was going to be sent back to a provincial hospital.  Eric is 65 years old. He was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic when he was a 20-year old university student. Eric has suffered atrociously since then. He hasn’t had one torment-free day in 45years.         What’s Eric’s story? Do you want to hear all the details? Would anyone want his story (all of it) told at his funeral?         Tell me: are Eric and Eric’s story identical?

The truth is, none of us is identical with our story.  Our story isn’t big enough, comprehensive enough, grand enough.  None of us has a story (whether tellable or untellable) that does justice to who we are truly in ourselves because of who we are truly before God. Our story is small and feeble and miserable and frustrated.  Often our story, so far from reflecting who we truly are, contradicts who we truly are. Our story has to be taken up into a much bigger story.

Then what’s the bigger story, grander story, for Eric?   It’s the story of a man who once lived in a cemetery. (Mark 5:1-20) He was violent, anti-social, and an inveterate “streaker.”   One day Jesus came upon him and asked, “What’s your name?”  “My name?”, the fellow replied, “I’ve got lots of names.   I’m your local nut-case; so why not call me ‘Peanut, Pistachio and Pecan’, ‘P-cubed’ for short.”   Some time later the townspeople saw the same man seated, clothed and in his right mind. By God’s grace that gospel-story has been appointed to be Eric’s story, Eric’s true story.  That story is the final story into which Eric’s story is taken up and in which Eric’s story is transfigured.

And the eight-year old who has just died of leukaemia?   Her story too is bigger, grander than most people know.         A distraught man cried to Jesus, “My daughter is sick unto death. Won’t you come with me?” Our Lord is delayed by a needy woman who is distressed herself.   While he’s delayed, the daughter dies.  Now all the relatives are beside themselves.  Jesus declares, “The little girl isn’t dead; she’s asleep.” The relatives scorn him. Plainly she’s dead; anyone can see she’s dead.   But you see, in the presence of Jesus Christ (only in the presence of him who is himself resurrection and life, only in his presence but assuredly in his presence) death is but sleep.  The girl is awakened shortly — as the eight-year old has been appointed to be awakened. This is the story into which the leukaemia patient’s story is taken up and in which it is transfigured.

 

[8]         If you ask me why such things as leukaemia and mental illness happen I shall not attempt an answer.   When tragedy befell John the Baptist Jesus didn’t say, “I can’t figure out why these things happen; therefore I can’t trust my Father.” Jesus knew that in a fallen world such things happen and will continue to happen until God’s patience, finally exhausted, ends the era of the fall and with it forecloses the day of grace. Jesus didn’t explain John’s wretched death; Jesus responded to the news of his cousin’s death by launching his public ministry.

Let me conclude by recalling Aaron, my cousin’s little boy who was diagnosed with a neurological disease at age two and who declined hideously for the next five years. Our Lord offers no explanation. (What help would an explanation provide?)   Our Lord, rather, whose risen life is grander even than his life from Bethlehem to Golgotha ; his risen life is that larger, grander story in which Aaron’s story is transfigured.  Furthermore, our Lord is the occasion of a response: the response of Aaron’s friends and relatives and neighbours and congregation.  The response we make to all such developments is an expression of our caring. (Not an expression of our curing; ultimately I can’t cure you, you can’t cure me, and medical practice can’t cure any of us, ultimately.)   Such a response will be caring enough until that day when we see our Lord face-to-face, the sight of whose face will transfigure our face, for the sight of his face will be enough to wipe away every tear from every eye.

 

                                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                            

 May 2007

Of Enemies, Violence, Sacrifice and Life’s Crosses

2nd Samuel 23:13-17               James 4:1-10               John 2:13-22

 

I: —  For years I have arrived at church on Remembrance Day Sunday with my heart in my mouth. For years I have wondered what this service says to people of recent German ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? To be sure, we at Tyndale University College & Seminary; we know better; we are orthodox, or at least orthodox enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone — without exception — “is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding.” (Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation, one people in particular are extraordinarily deceitful, uniquely corrupt and thoroughly un-understandable?

 

The century just concluded, the twentieth century, has found Germany our enemy and France our ally in two major wars.  But it hasn’t always been like this.  The century before last found the situation reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.”   Wellington would have lost for sure had British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.

Think of the United States . We Canadians have been allies of the U.S.A. for decades, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies; there were slaughters in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive stone fortress in Quebec City , was constructed in the late 1800s to protect you and me from the Americans. As soon as the American civil war ended Canadians were nervous lest the victorious Union army, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, decide it might as well turn north and make a clean sweep. From 1900 on the British and American navies vied with each other for superiority just in case the two countries went to war.  In the year 1900 there was a celebration for Queen Victoria , and 2,500 British warships were on display for it in British waters.   (Not included, of course, were British warships patrolling the high seas. And all of this in a country the size of a postage stamp.)         The U.S.A. was determined to develop a navy that could conquer the Royal Navy.  And in fact the U.S.A. had on file in Washington as late as 1932 plans for war against Great Britain .

Speaking of the Americans, when Rene Levesque became premier of Quebec in 1976 he began talking about claiming sovereignty over the St. Lawrence Seaway; he talked about reducing exports of hydroelectric power to the United States ; he talked about cozying up to Castro in Cuba . The Americans didn’t say anything about this; they did something. They immediately stationed one entire division (10,000 men) of light infantry opposite Kingston in upstate New York , so that these 10,000 soldiers could move quickly to Ottawa and Montreal in case Quebec refused to respect American interests.  At the same time the CIA, America ’s intelligence force, quietly slipped hundreds of French-speaking operatives into the province of Quebec . America wasn’t our ally in the 19th century; it was in the 20th century; I hope it will remain our ally in the 21st.

The expression “concentration camp” has been especially ugly in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? The British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa . The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps, we should note (principally through disease), than they suffered through enemy fire.

Jeremiah is correct. The corruption of the human heart is universal.

Nonetheless, while all hearts are corrupt, there do occur in history extraordinary concentrations of evil that are to be resisted at any cost. We cannot use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular concentration of evil. Naziism was such a concentration.

 

II: — It goes without saying that to approve armed resistance to an evil like Naziism is to approve violence. Those people who say they are opposed to violence in principle, opposed to violence of any kind, for any reason, must therefore approve non-resistance (at least non-armed resistance) to Naziism. Those people are therefore pacifists.

The tradition of Christian pacifism is long and noble.   Many pacifists have suffered terribly for their conviction.      There is much about them that appeals to me.  I too want to be a pacifist.  I am a pacifist by conviction (almost) – i.e., until I see once again a photograph or film footage of little children, four to twelve years old, tightly huddled on a railway station platform in eastern Europe or Holland or France. Their parents are frantic. The children are waiting for a freight train — waterless, toiletless, near-airless — that will take them to an extermination site.  In a few days these children will not be gassed and their remains incinerated (the fate of their parents); in a few days these children will be burnt alive. At this point my pacifism evaporates.

Please don’t think that because I can’t approve of pacifism in principle I therefore approve of violence in principle.  I don’t approve of wanton violence, gratuitous violence, violence for the sake of violence. To approve of violence in principle is to approve the sort of Nazi depredation we rightly deem reprehensible.

At the same time, we should be honest and admit that violence is another word for coercive power, and everyone exercises coercive power in some form every day. If everyone exercises coercive power, then everyone is violent.

When I speak of coercive power I mean that we impose our will on someone else who is unwilling. To impose our will on the unwilling is to coerce them; to coerce them is to violate them.

When the police officer arrests the criminal suspect at gunpoint the police officer is imposing her will on someone who is unwilling. She is coercing the suspect. The police officer with a revolver in her hand exercises the same coercive power as the bank robber with a revolver in his hand.  The bank robber is coercing the bank teller; the police officer is coercing the suspect. But both are coercing. Both are imposing their will upon the unwilling.

When the judge sends the convicted person to prison he is imposing society’s will upon the unwilling.         Violence has been done. Imprisonment remains a horrible form of violence, however necessary.

On this Remembrance Day we are glad to recall Canada ’s fine reputation for international peacekeeping.  Too few people notice, however, that all peacekeeping forces are armed. In other words, peace is maintained only through threatened violence.

When the parent says to her child, “No, you aren’t going to the overnight party. I don’t want to hear any more about it.  One more word from you and you won’t go anywhere this weekend”; when the parent says this she is coercing the child.  It’s impossible to pretend anything else.

When the dangerously deranged person is sedated and whisked off to the provincial hospital he isn’t asked if he’d like to go.         He is strong-armed off to the hospital.  The school principal about to suspend the pupil for striking a teacher doesn’t first ask the pupil and her parents if they agree with the suspension. What if the pupil and her parents are unwilling with respect to the suspension?   Too bad. Their will is going to be violated (as it should be).

Someone like Gandhi is often held up as a model of non-violence.  I don’t think for a minute that Gandhi believed in non-violence in principle. Gandhi used non-violence as a technique whenever he thought it would be effective; he disregarded non-violence whenever he thought it wouldn’t.  If Gandhi had frontally opposed British military forces in India , he and his followers would have been decimated.  Therefore he didn’t oppose British military force with whatever military force he could muster. Instead he deployed non-violence as a technique (always assuming, of course, the British tradition of justice, and always assuming that British military might — i.e., violence — would protect him and his followers in their protest against the British.) Gandhi used non-violence against the British in order to establish (with the help of the British) the oppressive power (violence) of the Indian state.

 

We can’t pretend that our Lord was less than violent the day he cleaned out the big church in Jerusalem . John tells us that Jesus made a whip out of leather cords. How long did it take him to gather up the cords?   How long did it then take him to braid the whip?   Plainly, our Lord’s violence was premeditated.  He didn’t lose his temper in a flash; he didn’t lose his temper at all. He planned what he was going to do; his violence was premeditated, deliberate.

This story is rooted firmly in the gospel tradition.  Every written gospel mentions it.  John puts it at the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, thereby having it set the tone for his public ministry.  Matthew, Mark and Luke put it at the end of his public ministry (just prior to the cross), thereby making it the climax of his public ministry.

In any case every gospel-writer understands the incident to be crucial. Jesus was not a devotee of non-violence. This shouldn’t surprise us. There is no one who is utterly non-violent.  Even the pacifist punishes her misbehaving child; and punishment of any kind is coercion, the imposition of someone’s will upon the unwilling, and therefore a form of violence.

 

III: — Then wisdom is needed, much wisdom, if we are to forego the illusion that all violence is avoidable and forego as well the wickedness that any violence is acceptable.

Think of our Lord once again.  He doesn’t hesitate to act violently when he is exposed to injustice and exploitation. He arrives at the temple (which he loves) only to find devout worshippers being “fleeced”. They are defenceless people. The animal they have brought to the service (or purchased locally for the service) must be blemish-free. The temple authorities, in league with the sellers, pronounce the animals unsuitable. The authorities tell the worshippers the only blemish-free animals are those that the sellers inside the temple are selling.  It so happens that these animals cost fifteen times the market price.

The worshippers were financially poor – and were swindled unconscionably. They were devout — and their devotion was exploited shamelessly.  When Jesus saw defenceless people being duped and exploited; when he saw poor people rendered poorer still, he became violent on their behalf.

Yet when Jesus is victimized himself, he doesn’t become violent on his own behalf.   Concerning himself he exercises not violence but self-renunciation. When his victimizers are nailing him to the wood he will only intercede for them, “Father, forgive them; they don’t even know what they are doing.”

Self-renunciation is sacrifice.  To renounce oneself is to give oneself up, to sacrifice oneself.   To renounce oneself is to absorb violence, and in absorbing it, to learn that there is a cross at the heart of life.  Christians believe that the crosses everywhere in life are to be picked up and shouldered willingly, gladly, even cheerfully.

Several years ago a well-known leader in the British Methodist Church , Rev. Scott Lidgett, objected to the attention and adulation accorded a very popular preacher and able psychologist, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead.   On one occasion when his heart was twisted pretzel-like Scott Lidgett said publicly of Weatherhead, “We are not interested in stars that scintillate but do not illumine.”  It was a vicious remark. What did Weatherhead do? He absorbed it. When I say he absorbed it I don’t mean that he gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to retaliate. I mean he never let the remark impair his relationship with Lidgett; he never let the remark curdle his spirit. The remark was simply absorbed and therein neutralized.   But we should never underestimate the sacrifice involved in such renunciation.

A year or two ago my mother was reading the newspaper obituary column when she came upon the name of one of her former office-colleagues. My mother told me (again) about her late colleague.  The woman and her husband had had a child born with spina bifida.  The child had to be turned every hour throughout the night.  The woman and her husband took turns getting up in the night, hour-on, hour-off, to turn their son.  They did this for thirty years.         Having had her sleep interrupted several times during the night, every night, the woman would come to work in the morning and cheerfully set about the day’s tasks, never once complaining about her lot or suggesting that she and her husband were hard done-by.  What kind of self-renunciation is involved here?   There is a cross at the heart of life.

A man in one of my former congregations was at worship every Sunday, diligent in his responsibilities on the official board, and enthusiastic at the weekly bible study my wife and I held in the manse.   He and his wife had married in their mid-twenties.   Shortly after they married, his wife began behaving oddly, and soon was diagnosed schizophrenic. After that she had good days, bad days, and terrible days.  On her worst days she abused her husband in every way.  When this fellow was having an especially difficult time he would visit me and talk with me. At the end of every conversation he would tell me he was feeling better and could go on caring for his wife (in every sense of “care for”).   “I made a promise on our wedding day”, he told me often; “I made a promise to her and I’m going to keep it.”   It costs nothing to make a promise, but it costs everything to keep a promise. Some promises kept entail enormous sacrifice, nothing less than a cross.

Our Lord made a promise too.   (The bible calls it a covenant.)  Our Lord made a promise to all humankind.         His promise kept meant self-renunciation for him, self-renunciation so extreme as to end in a dereliction at the hands of his Father, a forsakenness, an abandonment, whose horror is incomprehensible to you and me.

The truth is, self-renunciation worthy of the name, anywhere in life, is never less than a cross. We should never pretend anything else.

 

IV: — Today is Remembrance Day. It is not a day in which we gloat over the superiority of some nations while despising the inferiority of others.  Neither is it a day when we boast of violence in principle.

But it is a day when we understand soberly that violence and non-violence are not the simple alternatives that we may have been taught. Violence is the exercise of coercion, and coercion is a household commodity: everybody exercises some form of coercion every day, even must exercise some form of it. The question we must ponder today is, “What kind of coercion (violence) are we to exercise? When?   Where? Why?   How?”

On Remembrance Day we remember the sacrifices made on our behalf in a violence, perpetrated and suffered, that is simply indescribable.  We also recall the example of our Lord in the violence he chose to exercise and the violence he chose to absorb.  We who are his people must come to the same understanding and make the same self-renunciation. For there is a cross at the heart of life, and therefore a cross everywhere in life. And such a cross God has promised to honour in such a manner that it will redound to his praise even as it eases the distress of us his creatures.

 

                                                                                                Victor Shepherd       

Remembrance Day 2008                     
Tyndale University College & Seminary

Felix Mendelssohn

1 Kings 18:20 -39

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
1809-1847

Unlike so many composers, superbly gifted people who are unhappy, miserable, depressed, neurotic, sometimes out-and-out psychotic, Mendelssohn was happy. He was cheerful and contented and enthusiastic throughout his entire life, brief as it was. His name — “Felix”, Latin for “happy” — couldn’t have suited him more.

His father’s given name was “Abraham”, and his grandfather’s, “Moses”. Mendelssohn was Jewish. His grandfather, Moses, was an able philosopher much esteemed in academic circles in Germany in spite of the virulent anti-semitism of Frederick the Great. His father, Abraham, used to say, “Formerly I was known as the son of my father; now, as the father of my son.”

Felix himself was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1809. Three years later his mother, Leah Salomon, and his father became members of the Lutheran Church and had their son baptized Christian, adding the name “Bartholdy” in hope of lessening the social penalties of being Jewish.

Felix showed musical promise very early in his life. His mother, a cultured woman (she read English, French, Latin and Greek) was his first piano teacher. She recognized his prodigious talent and next year sent him to Paris for training. He emerged as a “boy-wonder” pianist when he was nine and as a composer at ten. At age eleven he was taken to visit Goethe, Germany’s greatest poet, then seventy-two years old. Immediately the older man recognized the child as his intellectual and creative equal.

At seventeen Mendelssohn composed the overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which composition was deemed thereafter to be as fine a piece of music as he would ever write. Also at seventeen he conducted Bach’s St.Matthew’s Passion. The performance was hailed as one of the glories of German music-making. In the midst of the adulation heaped on him around this event Mendelssohn commented, “And to think that it should be…a Jew who gave back to the people the greatest Christian work.”

By this time Mendelssohn was dazzling music-lovers as a composer, pianist, violinist, violist, and conductor. (Less widely known were his gifts as painter and poet.) When only twenty he stunned English audiences on the first of his ten trips to England. He loved to travel, and since he regarded the sea as the finest of nature’s beauties, a trip to Scotland’s Hebrides inspired the masterpiece, Fingal’s Cave.

Mendelssohn knew he was extraordinarily talented, yet he never flaunted it, always preferring in genuine humility to elevate and encourage those around him. On one occasion, when he was to be the pianist in a piano-cello-violin trio, his music, the music for the piano-part, was missing. Now he didn’t need his music, being able to play his part out of his head. But not wishing to embarrass the cellist and the violinist who needed their music, he placed any music he could find upside down on the piano (so as not to distract him) and then had a friend turn the pages throughout the performance.

A prodigy as a conductor too, Mendelssohn found himself music-master of Dusseldorf and leader of the city’s symphony orchestra. Here he began his first oratorio, St.Paul. Plainly a genius, he was promoted to the world-famous music-position in Leipzig, where he was introduced to Chopin, Schumann, and Schumann’s future wife, Clara (herself a superb pianist).

In 1837 (by now he was twenty-eight) he married Cecile Jeanrenaud, a painter and the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman in Frankfurt. Together Felix and Cecile had five children.

Mendelssohn penned two hundred musical compositions, his violin concerto being acknowledged one of the best. He is regarded as the consummate nineteenth century writer of oratorios. Notwithstanding his German identity, his music is performed more in England to this day than in any other nation.

In 1847, at the age of thirty-eight, he fell ill and died. One year earlier he had written an oratorio specifically for an English audience: Elijah. The inspiration for the oratorio was the Hebrew figure of old, Israel’s greatest prophet.

 

Elijah

Unlike Mendelssohn, Elijah looms up at us out of nowhere. We know nothing about his parents, his upbringing, his inner or outer life apart from his vocation as prophet.

But what a prophet! The God of fire ignited him again and again. Wherever we come upon Elijah he is aflame. Polish? Subtlety? Social niceties? Soft speech? He was as far from all this as anyone could be. If we can’t understand why he is always and everywhere afire, he can’t understand why we appear not to be lit.

King Ahab, the wickedest king in Israel’s troubled history, decided it would be politically correct and personally advantageous to have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix together Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the holy one of Israel? Why not have the self-indulgence that Baal permits his people and the security that Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication that Baal laughs about and the forgiveness that Yahweh weeps to bestow? Haven’t popular preachers always retained their popularity by telling hearers that we can all have the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?

In a blazing rage Elijah thundered, “No! The holy one of Israel will shortly expose Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that he is. And as for you, Ahab, you are finished. Dogfood, in fact; the scavenger canines that forage in the city streets will lick your blood.” And so they did.

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.”

When our Lord Jesus Christ began his public ministry his detractors taunted him saying, “You can’t be the Messiah; everyone knows that before the Messiah comes, Elijah must return. And Elijah hasn’t been seen for eight hundred years!” “Yes, he has!”, Jesus retorted. “Elijah did come back, recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: John the `dunker’, `dipper’, `ducker’, `soaker’. But make no mistake: Elijah is here. And therefore his word is still operative.”

 

Paul

Yet another Israelite pointed to our Lord. Whereas Elijah pointed ahead to him, the apostle Paul pointed at him. Paul was unshakably convinced that Jesus Christ is alive, present to our world, present in it, the contemporary who can never become antiquated or obsolete.

Paul came from a sophisticated, well-to-do Jewish family on the north Mediterranean. Unlike Jesus, who grew up in a one-chariot town, Paul grew up in a centre of learning and commerce and culture. He knew Hebrew and Aramaic and Latin and Greek.

Paul’s vocation owes everything to that never-to-be-forgotten encounter on the Damascus road, where the risen Lord knocked him down with the kind of violence that was so foreign to Paul (but so natural to Elijah). Thereafter Paul could no more have denied the intimacy and immediacy and intensity of his life with his Lord than he could have denied that he was alive and breathing. It’s no wonder that he said simply and unselfconsciously to the congregation in Philippi, “Christ means `life’ for me.” The Christ who was indeed `life’ for him was always the crucified Messiah. Unlike so many modern church people who look upon the cross as something that Jesus endured for a few hours on Friday and left behind forever on Sunday, Paul knew that his Lord was raised, to be sure, yet raised as crucified. He knew that the risen one was raised with the marks of his suffering still upon him. He knew that Christ’s resurrection doesn’t mean that Jesus of Nazareth has been elevated beyond suffering and vulnerability and misunderstanding and treachery; he knew instead that Christ’s resurrection means that Jesus of Nazareth has been rendered victorious, triumphant, effective, in the midst of suffering and vulnerability and misunderstanding and treachery. The modern hymnwriter who penned the line, “Rich wounds yet visible above“, captured it perfectly.

Paul knew that only a crucified Messiah could get close enough to fragile people like you and me to help us; and he knew that only a crucified Messiah whose raised and therefore rendered triumphant would be able to help us.

For years the apostle had wanted to get to Rome, the nerve-centre of the empire. Then he had wanted to push beyond Rome into Spain, announcing the gospel where it had never been heard before. He got to Rome but not to Spain. While he was in Rome, under house-arrest, emperor Nero decided to make scapegoats of Christians and blame them for a fire that had devastated a sizeable part of the city. Along with Peter, his fellow-apostle, he died in the savagery Nero unleashed. All his death did was permit him to know what he had anticipated for years: the Christ who was his everything to him in life was richer still in death.

                                                                       Victor Shepherd

March 1996

The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth

1st Kings 19:9-18                     Acts 14:8-23                           John9:1-5

 

I: — Sloth: the word has a dreadful sound to it.   Sloth suggests laziness, stupefied laziness, time-wasting, talent-wasting laziness.  No wonder our Christian foreparents labelled sloth a deadly sin.

“Just a minute”, someone objects; “if sloth is a deadly sin, are you telling us that workaholism is a lively grace? Are you telling us that while obsessive-compulsive illnesses are just that – illnesses, obsessive-compulsive work is a singular instance of health?”   I am saying no such thing. There’s nothing in any obsessive-compulsive mental disorder that any of us needs or wants. In other words, we are no more eager to commend workaholism than we are to commend any instance of illness.

The workaholic doesn’t merely work hard; doesn’t merely work every waking minute; he’s driven to work all the time. As soon as he stops working, however briefly, he feels guilty, anxious, useless, distressed. Weekends, holidays, evenings; all are given over to compulsive work.   Never mind that his children are crying for him.  Never mind that his wife has given up expecting to kiss him.   Never mind that his health is breaking down.  He has a neurotic obsession.  There’s nothing in any manifestation of illness that healthy people want to emulate.

As a matter of fact, all of us need what I call “vacant time”. Vacant time isn’t the same as wasted time.  Vacant time is necessary. Vacant time is something like vacant space, such as a vacant lot.  A vacant lot isn’t a useless lot.         There are few things more useful, more needed, than a vacant lot.  A vacant lot gives youngsters a place to play.         It prevents a residential area from becoming too congested.  It provides visual relief in the midst of brown-brick sameness.

In the same way, vacant time gives us time to play. It decongests our lives. It provides relief from frenzy. Several years ago I learned that I simply had to have vacant time.  Previously I had felt guilty about vacant time. To be sure, I knew I couldn’t read Sixteenth Century Latin all the time.  I knew I couldn’t hammer out sermons all the time.         And so I decided to afford myself relief; that is, when I wasn’t working diligently I was determined to use my non-working time fruitfully. And so in my “down” time I decided I’d become thoroughly acquainted with Canadian literature, perhaps even acquiring expertise in it.  Soon, I discovered, reading Canadian literature wasn’t a leisure activity that refreshed me; instead it was one more effort where I was driven to excel amidst anxiety and weariness.         Soon I was forced to admit that vacant time had to be vacant.  I needed time where I wasn’t doing anything important or useful – unless you count my health and the freshness I need for work important and useful. As I re-read the gospels I was startled at how necessary Jesus deemed his vacant time to be; how unwilling he was to surrender it; how frequently he went away “to a solitary place”, we are told, away from the press of crowds and frustration at disciples and the misunderstanding his family foisted on him. We are never going to call our Lord’s vacant time sloth.

 

II: — Then what is sloth, and why did our Christian foreparents regard it as spiritually lethal? Sloth is the persistent state of being “tuned out”; of being unengaged; of relishing indifference. Sloth is the state of remaining uninvolved, uncommitted, uncaring.  Sloth is the state of being a spectator in life, even wilfully absent from life. There are many reasons for such sloth.

[a] One is the selfish desire to keep ourselves for ourselves, the “selfist” desire to keep our own life uncomplicated and unperturbed by ignoring people whose lives appear more difficult than ours, even endangered.

Several years ago I was purchasing candy in a variety store in Mississauga when an 18-year old “tough” began harassing the Egyptian storekeeper. The 18-year old had obviously been in the store before since the storekeeper recognized him instantly and became increasingly upset, almost hysterical: “You getta outta my store right now”, over and over.  The fellow refused to leave the store.  The storekeeper became near-frantic.

There was a customer in the store besides me, a big man who could have assisted the storekeeper in a moment.         But as soon as this big man saw trouble brewing he slipped out the door and disappeared, leaving the distraught, middle-aged storekeeper to handle this teenaged tough, with only a skinny preacher to help him. I had a word with the hooligan, and he left. Whereupon the storekeeper fell all over me in gratitude.

The man who sneaked out of the store exemplified sloth. He didn’t care if the storekeeper were robbed or beaten up or terrorized.  He wanted only to “avoid trouble”, as he would have put it.  In truth, he wanted to keep himself for himself.   He was willing to jeopardize a defenceless man whose predicament was obviously difficult and danger-ridden.

Think of the vocabulary we hear every day.   “Don’t get involved. Go with the flow. See where the wind’s blowing. Add up the room.” All of which means, “Stand for nothing. Stand up for nothing. Stand up with no one. Protect yourself by abandoning everyone except yourself.”   This is sloth.

[b] Another reason for this deadly sin is self-pampering. Self-pampering is evident in many areas of life today, and typically evident (to me, at least) in education. Certainly we don’t want education to be unrelieved misery for children.  Nevertheless, we harm children by giving them the impression that school is supposed to be fun all the time.  If they are faced with something that isn’t fun, they don’t have to do it. They fail an assignment? In some school-jurisdictions, the teacher is faulted if a student fails.  One of my friends, a supply-teacher in the high schools, emailed me this week, telling me that where he was supplying, students could pay two dollars and be marked “present” while they absented themselves from the school premises and cavorted downtown.  For two dollars they wouldn’t be marked truant, didn’t have to do any work, and could indulge themselves however they wished.  Isn’t education supposed to be preparation for life?   Don’t people flounder and founder in life if they lack discipline and diligence and persistence?

My psychiatrist-friend tells me that people complain to him that life has cheated them, because they aren’t having a good time 24 hours per day without interruption.   He tells me that advertising has fostered utterly unrealistic expectations in people. Advertising has led people to believe that life is, or can be, or at least is meant to be, something like an endless beach holiday in the Bahamas : uninterrupted pleasure, no demands, no setbacks, no grief, everyone dancing and skipping in the company of “winners” with gorgeous bodies and fashionable clothes, no frustration or anxiety or pain.  The problem, my psychiatrist-friend tells me, is that no one’s life is like this, and no one’s is ever going to be, even though too many people have been led to believe that what’s advertised is normal.         To expect all this is to want sloth.

The banality of many TV shows intensifies self-pampering. Husband and wife (or husband and someone else’s wife) jointly answer a trite question. Their answer qualifies them for the wheel of fortune.  The wheel spins, clicking dramatically as it slows down.  The last click is heard as the wheel stops at the first letter of their name. They have just won a motorized golf cart and a self-propelled leaf-rake.  People who have been saturated in such shallowness aren’t going to immerse themselves in life, especially in someone else’s life, with its tides and turbulence, its summons to stand up, stand for, and stand with. Self-pampering fosters sloth.
[c] There’s a third reason for sloth, a profoundly different reason.  This time the reason isn’t shallow self-indulgence.         This time the reason is despair; heartbreaking, mind-numbing, immobilizing despair. Sometimes we sweat blood for something we hold to be true, right, good.  For this we have made greater sacrifices than anyone will ever guess. We have given our utmost. And then we have watched it all dribble away to nothing, apparently.  We have seen it all evaporate, it would seem. Our attitude never was “I couldn’t care less”.  On the contrary our attitude was “I cared so much – and what difference did it make? I don’t have it in me to care any longer.”

Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, contended bravely with Jezebel , Israel ’s wicked and venomous queen. He got nowhere with her, he felt. He knew that she was going to skewer him first chance.  Elijah sat down and spluttered “Lord, take away my life”.   Then he stumbled into a cave where he could detach himself from the turbulence and treachery around him.  He wanted to “tune out”, detach himself, isolate himself – for ever.

Sloth born of despair isn’t like sloth born of pampered self-indulgence.  Sloth born of despair has a history: someone has been wounded; the spear-wound is either haemorrhaging still or it has become infected or both. Wounded and weakened now, she’s become too jaded to endure any more grief or frustration or pain. She has decided to “opt out”.

Sloth born of despair isn’t contemptible.  Its victims don’t merit scorn.  They do merit concern, however, because sloth is sloth regardless of its genesis; sloth is deadly however much we think we can excuse the sloth born of despair. Sloth is lethal in that detachment from life is lethal regardless of the reason for the detachment.

 

III: — Having probed several reasons for sloth, we must yet grasp precisely why our foreparents called it sin, deadly sin.

[a] It’s deadly, obviously, because it’s a breeding ground for trivia.  People who detach themselves from life with all of life’s tides and turbulence; people who want no part of challenge and struggle; these people invariably have large tracts of time on their hands.  What do they do with vast stretches of unfilled time?   They fill them up with trivia.         They watch TV by the hour. They sleep. They become self-absorbed. Their self-absorption can appear harmless (they have huge stamp collections); it can appear eccentric (they become experts in the history of dental floss); it can be silly; it can be dangerous (since ever-greater thrills are needed to stave off the boredom of the under-occupied).         In any case the self-absorption is selfist, even when it appears virtuous. (What else can be said of the 50-year old woman who spends three hours per day shaping her body? We won’t say “She has a remarkable body.” We won’t say it because the truth is, her remarkable body has been gained at the price of shrivelled heart and mind and spirit.)         Where sloth abounds, time fills up with trivia as surely as motionless water fills up with algae.

But is this deadly sin? Yes.  Time, after all, is the theatre of God’s incursion into human history and human affairs. Time is the theatre of God’s incursion into any one person’s heart.   Time, therefore, is also the theatre of our spiritual discernment and the theatre of our obedience to God.

[b] Sloth is deadly, in the second place, in that it withers human relationships.  To step aside from life is necessarily to step aside from people.  It’s to step aside from people to whom our help can mean the world; it’s to step aside from people who can mean the world to us.  How many times in scripture are we told that the person we help renders us “Christ” to that person, as it were, while the person whom we allow to help us renders her the mirror-image of Christ to         us?

Of course other people are inconvenient.  Then was Jean Paul Sartre correct when he wrote “Hell is other people”? Other people can be hellish; they can as readily be heavenly.  Their arms embracing us, our arms embracing them, can as readily be those “everlasting arms” that are always and everywhere “underneath” us, even as the everlasting arms of God are most readily recognized in the arms of his human servants.

If we detach ourselves from life we attempt to be entirely self-sufficient. No one can be, of course; but the desire for self-sufficiency and the attempt at it means that are trying to live in an ever-shrinking universe. Sloth is deadly just because it deadens.

[c] Sloth is deadly, in the third place, in that it’s so very subtle. It’s like a hot cedar tub. Hot tubs can be enjoyable, even helpful — if we need a hassle-free “time-out”. But there’s something wrong with the person who wants a “time-out” that goes on and on and on. Everyone knows what can happen in a hot tub.  We luxuriate in the water. After a while it starts to feel cool (even though the water temperature hasn’t changed.) We make the water a little warmer. The process is repeated, several times over.  Next morning the newspaper carries our obituary, and readers are told that our heart stopped beating.  Sloth is just like this.

 

IV: — Enough about the deadliness of sloth. Let’s look now at life and liveliness. The key to life and liveliness in this context, as in any context, is faith.  Greater faith; resolute faith; resilient faith.  Elijah went to the cave to “get away from it all”, overwhelmed as he was at the spiritual declension of his people and the isolation it had brought to him. The cave provided him needed respite, the hassle-free “time-out”.   Had he stayed in the cave, however, he would have succumbed to sloth; had he stayed in the cave he would have gone under in the hot cedar tub. But God wouldn’t leave him in the cave. However overwhelmed Elijah might be at the clamour of his people, bent as they were on their shallow self-absorption; however deafened he might be at their superficial noisiness, he could yet hear the much quieter sound of “the still, small voice” of God.  And this voice asked him, “Elijah, what are doing there?   What are you doing in the cave?”  Rather lamely Elijah replied, “I’m here because I’m licked.   I’m here because I’m tired of standing up for You all by myself.”

“What do you mean, all by yourself?” retorted God; “there are 7000 who haven’t bowed the knee to Baal or kissed him.” Elijah, heartened once more, left the cave.  To be sure, he was thankful for the rest he’d had.  Yet in view of the fact that he had 7000 allies, it would have been be silly, fruitless and inexcusable to remain in the cave.

Jesus calls men and women to be disciples.  They respond with an initial surge of enthusiasm.  Then the onerous aspect of discipleship’s collision with a hostile world, added to the normal wear-and-tear of life, gets them down. Easter morning finds Peter speaking for the rest: “What’s the point of it all?   We did our best and it all boiled dry.         Let’s go back to fishing.”   Peter and his friends have plainly gone to the cave.  Whereupon the risen Lord appears before them and pulls them out of the cave as he enlarges their faith and lends them resilience.  Once more they step ahead in the task he has given them.

As enlarged faith and greater faithfulness overturn our sloth we are going to find ourselves viewed as odd.  A society bent on ease and drowsiness and self-gratification can’t understand why anyone would ever step out in a commitment that doesn’t promote ease and drowsiness and self-gratification.  Still, we who are Christ’s people march to the beat of a different drummer.

In the city of Lystra Paul was treated roughly. He didn’t take refuge in sloth, however, mumbling that he’d never return, never put himself out again for ungrateful people.  Instead he said quietly to the Christians at Lystra, “It is through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God .”

 

There are two aspects to the resolute faith and resilient faith that overcome sloth. One is vision.   With the eye of faith we have to see the importance of the work to which God has summoned us.  If few others can see it, too bad; we have to see it. We have to see what is right and righteous and why.

The second aspect to our resilience is courage. Courage is distinguished from foolhardiness by one thing: the importance of what we are doing. The person who walks through fire as a stunt in order to impress onlookers is a fool, while the person who enters a burning house to rescued trapped children we reward for his courage. Any person who came to the assistance of the beleaguered Egyptian storekeeper – would that person have been foolhardy or courageous?   Is assisting a defenceless storekeeper something that God deems important?

When we are called to take the stand that will always be unpopular; when we are summoned to make the sacrifice for the person who will never thank us; when we are called to do what’s right in an environment that rewards two-faced palm-greasers – in all these situations others are going to tell us we’re foolhardy.  We, however, are going to be sustained by our vision of what’s right, as well as by a courage that rises in proportion to our vision.  Vision and courage will reinforce each other.  The temptation of sloth will recede.

There are always people we must care for, even as there is evil we must resist, truth we must uphold, and a Lord whom we must obey. He, after all, has promised never to fail us or forsake us.

 

                                                                                            Rev. Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      March 2006

 

Do Seed Time and Harvest Never Cease ? or Five Myths That Slander God

2 Kings 6:25-3        1 Genesis 8:22   2 Corinthians 9:6-15   John 6:27-35

In the course of a food shortage in Hong Kong, decades ago, a British executive of the Bank of Hong found a British soldier staring at him.  The bank executive had come upon a half-rotten orange in the gutter and was about to eat it when the soldier hollered that the food was crawling with maggots and would certainly make him ill.  The man became hysterical, shrieking and crying.  Can’t you imagine the spectacle: a man in grey-striped formal trousers, black vest and suit jacket, bowler hat and umbrella — plainly someone from the highest echelon of Britain’s highest class – this man blubbering hysterically because he wasn’t allowed to eat his vermin-ridden garbage?

   Hunger doesn’t merely make the tummy ache.  Hunger doesn’t merely produce diseases and deformities born of protein or vitamin deficiencies.  Hunger also bewitches the mind.  Hungry people start thinking about doing, and actually do, what they would otherwise never imagine themselves doing.  Hunger exposes civilisation as no more than skin deep.  When an airliner crashed in the Andes Mountains in South America several years ago it was learned that the survivors had survived by eating the remains of fellow-passengers who had already died.  Immediately the tabloids featured headlines on cannibalism, while more thoughtful magazines probed ethical issues raised by this turn of affairs.  Hunger bewitches.

   Reflect for a minute on a story from the life of the prophet Elisha.  Syria’s army besieged the Israelite people, and these people were soon hungry.  And hungrier.  Desperate.  So desperately hungry that 80 shekels of silver (80 shekels would normally buy you 40 roasting rams or 90 bushels of grain); so desperately hungry that people were now paying 80 shekels for the head of a dead donkey.  A dead donkey’s head?  Hungry people will eat anything.  If you had only 5 shekels you could purchase half a pint of bird-droppings.  (There’s food in bird-droppings, you know; if you poke around in bird-droppings you’ll eventually find a few seeds.)   If you had no shekels what did you do?  Two Israelite women knew what to do.  “Let’s make a deal”, one said to the other; “today we’ll boil your infant son and eat him; tomorrow we’ll do the same with my son.”  One mother boiled her son and shared him with her friend.  Next day the second woman said she couldn’t.  The king was called in to settle the matter.  The king exploded and swore he would kill the prophet Elisha.

   Kill Elisha?  What did the prophet have to do with this horrible turn of events?  Nothing at all.  Then why go after him?  Hunger makes even rulers irrational, doesn’t it?  Hunger twists people’s minds until a pretzel looks like a straightedge.

   Hunger is terrible.  How terrible Jeremiah knew when he wrote, his mind reeling, “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children….” (Lamentations 4:10)

I: — Today is thanksgiving Sunday.  Today we customarily thank God for food.  The people in our world who don’t have food, millions upon millions of them; for what do they thank God?  After all, God has promised to supply food.  He who is our creator would be a mocker if he created us only to turn his back on us.  (Human beings who turn their back on their children are sent to jail, aren’t they?)  God maintains that he’s not only creator; he’s also provider and sustainer.  Now I believe that he is.  But then, I’m not hungry.

   Still, I am persuaded that God is as good as his word.  He does provide for us creatures whom he’s fashioned in his own image.  He does keep the promise he makes: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest…shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)  I’m persuaded it’s entirely correct to thank God for food, and thank him as often as we eat it.  In the words of a common Eucharist liturgy, God does care for all that he makes.

   And yet even with God caring as much as he can care, a great many people are hungry.  Scores of thousands starve to death every day.  Far more are permanently damaged in mind and body on account of their hunger.

   On the one hand, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about food since God feeds his people as surely as God feeds the birds of the air.  On the other hand, the apostle Paul tells believers that not even famine can separate them from God’s love vouchsafed to them in Christ Jesus their Lord.  Clearly Paul knows that God feeds (as promised) yet famine occurs, and famine kills.  Famine kills even as God continues to feed.  Famine kills even as God’s love remains uncontradicted.

   Yet every day someone tells me that the fact of widespread hunger throughout the world does contradict God’s love.  Then where are we with respect to God? Where is God with respect to us?

II: — It’s plain to me that God has been slandered; perhaps slandered unknowingly (in other words, the people who have faulted him in the face of the world’s hunger have done so thinking they were telling the truth about him), but slandered none the less.  “He doesn’t care”, they have said, or “He doesn’t care enough.”  Today I wish to vindicate God’s name.  I wish to show that the appalling hunger in the world at this moment can’t be blamed on a deficient supply of food.  In clearing God’s name of the calumny that attends it I’m going to explode several myths.

MYTH #1  People are hungry because food is scarce.  In truth, food isn’t scarce.  There’s enough food in the world at this moment to feed adequately every man, woman and child.  Think of grain-production alone.  There’s enough grain grown right now to provide everyone with sufficient protein and with 3000 calories per day.  (Most of us need only 2300 per day.)  The 3000 grain-calories per person per day produced right now doesn’t include many other foods that aren’t grains, foods like beans, root crops, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grass-fed meat.

  What’s more, sufficient food is produced right now even in those countries where millions are hungry.  Even in its worst years of famine, for instance, India has produced so much food as to be a net exporter of food.  (India has been a net exporter of food every year since 1870.)   In India, while millions go hungry, soldiers patrol the government’s six million tons of stockpiled food — which food, of course, now nourishes rats.  In Mexico, where at least 80% of the children in rural areas are undernourished, livestock destined for export are fed more grain than Mexico’s entire rural population.  There’s no shortage of food.

MYTH #2 — Hunger in any one country is the result of overpopulation in that country.  If this were the case, we should expect the worst hunger in those countries where there are the most people per food-producing acre.  But it’s not so.  India has only half the population density per cultivated acre that China has.  Yet the Chinese eat while millions in India do not.  China has eliminated visible hunger in the last 50 years.

  There’s dreadful hunger in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Yet these countries have scant population per cultivated acre.  In Africa, south of the Sahel, where some of the worst hunger continues, there are fewer people per cultivated acre than there are in the USA or in Russia; there are six to eight times fewer people in Africa south of the Sahel per cultivated acre than there are in China.

   Please note that I’ve spoken of “cultivated acre.”  We must be sure to understand that less than 50% of the world’s land that could grow food is now growing food.  (It’s plain to everyone, by even this point in the sermon, that the real barriers to alleviating hunger aren’t physical but rather political and economic.)

MYTH #3 — In order to eliminate hunger our top priority must be to grow more food.  Already you’re aware that the world is awash in food right now.  The real problems concerning feeding hungry people lie elsewhere.  For instance, land-ownership is concentrated in too few hands.  A recent United Nations survey of 83 countries disclosed that 3% of the world’s landlords control 80% of the land.  In most countries only 5% to 20% of all food-producers have access to institutionalised credit, such as banks.  The rest, the other 80% to 95%, have to get their credit from virtual loan sharks who charge up to 200% on farm loans.

   What’s more, new agricultural technology benefits only those who already possess land and credit.  It’s been documented irrefutably that strategies which simply aim at having more food produced have dreadful consequences.  Here’s what happens.  New agricultural technology (for instance, hybrid seeds that produce bigger crops from less fertiliser) attracts investors whose primary interest is investment, not food-production; i.e., new agricultural technology attracts investors who see agriculture simply as a good investment.  Moneylenders, city-based speculators and foreign corporations rush to get in on the good investment.  The new money swells the demand for land.  The price of land skyrockets.  Tenants and sharecroppers are then squeezed off the land.  These folk can’t feed themselves and now go hungry.  What about the crops that the new technology has made possible and that speculators now produce in record quantities?  These crops are luxury items (carnations, for instance, to adorn dining room tables); these luxury items are purchased by consumers in the western world and the northern hemisphere.  In other words, new agricultural technology reduces food production.

   We’ve all heard of the Green Revolution, a breakthrough in agricultural technology that promised to generate oceans of foodstuffs for the world’s hungry.  The Green Revolution was born in northwest Mexico.  Overnight the average farm size jumped from 200 acres to more than 2000.  And overnight three-quarters of the rural workforce was squeezed off the land — now with nothing to eat.  The Green Revolution found rural people hungrier than ever.

   Any attempt at remedying hunger simply through greater agricultural sophistication renders people hungrier than ever.

MYTH # 4 — The increase in population (and therefore the need for greater food production) requires the use of chemicals that are environmentally dangerous.  In fact very little pesticide or fungicide or insecticide is spread on farmland.  I know, when we hear of the tonnage of these assorted “‘cides” it sounds colossal.  For instance, the USA alone spreads 1.2 billion pounds of pesticide every year.  One-third of this, however, is used on golf courses, lawns and public parks.  Very little farmland is treated with these chemical substances.  In fact, in the USA only 5% of cropland and pastureland is treated with insecticides; only 15% with weedkillers; only one-half of 1% with fungicides.  Over half of all the insecticide used in the USA isn’t used on food crops at all.  (Most of it is used on cotton, and even then, most of the land that grows cotton isn’t treated.)

    Greater demand for food doesn’t issue in overwhelming chemical pollution.

MYTH #5 — In order to help the hungry we should improve our foreign aid programs.  The truth is, increased foreign aid will do very little to alleviate hunger.  The question we must always ask concerning foreign aid is this: when the government of a western nation sends financial aid to a hungry country, into whose hands does the money find its way?  The money falls into the hands of that tiny number of people who exercise social and political control.  This tiny number benefits; few others do.  In Guatemala, for instance, virtually all the money sent as foreign aid merely enriches still more the handful of largest landholders.

   

What happens overseas is much like what I’ve seen in Canada.  When I was a pastor in New Brunswick and lived closer to corruption than I do in Ontario, the federal government of Canada launched its “LIP” programme.  (“L.I.P.”: local initiative project.)  Ottawa was handing out millions to small communities in order to help the poorest people in them survive.  My village received an LIP grant.  The grant amounted to thousands of dollars ($200,000 in today’s money.)  In my village four men worked five days per week for twenty weeks, building a small vault in the local cemetery.  The vault was so small it would hold only two caskets.  These four men laid one concrete block per day each.  (Think of it: four men each laying one concrete block per day for twenty weeks.)  Who were the men who pocketed the money?  Were they the poorest in the village whom the programme was meant to help?  Of course not.  Poor people aren’t “connected”; poor people don’t have access to the levers of influence and favours.  But well-to-do people have such access.  In my village it was the sons of the richest, those with connections, who siphoned off the government “goodies.”

   Next year our village received another LIP grant, this time to put a washroom (worth $75,000 in today’s money) in a small building that was used four hours per week.  Same story.  Third year, third grant.  But not one needy person was ever hired for any of these projects.

   Increased foreign aid won’t feed hungry people.  But it will build highways and bridges, thereby making land a better investment.  Land that is now a better investment attracts investment speculators who then use the land for purposes unrelated to food production.

   Historically, it was different in England and America.  In England political changes ended the landholding arrangement of feudalism and gave people access to land, at the same time that additional political changes gave common people protection against the powerful, the wealthy and the state.  In the USA a constitution (it had to be secured by force of arms) guaranteed the people freedom from the oppressions that had ground down common people in Europe for centuries, which oppressions America would fend off at any cost.  The oppressions fended off in the English and American revolutions are the oppressions we see in developing countries today.  Political change, not foreign aid, is what feeds people in the long run.

With respect to the short run I want to say a word here about mission support from the local church.  It’s important.  When the late Dr. Allen Knight, an agricultural missionary who spent years in what was then Angola, spoke to my congregation in Mississauga about the “Seeds for Africa” programme, the congregation supported him without hesitation.  We knew we could trust him.  The money we gave for seeds purchased seeds; money given for well-drilling actually drilled wells.  People were fed.  When my friend Dr. Peter Webster was performing surgery in Africa and schooling villages in preventive medicine, any monies he received from friends and congregations were used for their designated purpose, used for that purpose only, and used immediately.  We must never diminish our support for trustworthy Christian workers who are doing front-line work among needy people.

Have you heard enough this morning to convince you that God doesn’t merit the slander that is customarily heaped on him?  God is defamed repeatedly on the grounds that he doesn’t keep the promises he makes; he doesn’t care for all that he has made; day and night and seedtime occur without interruption to be sure, but the harvest doesn’t — say those who tell us that God lies.

   I trust you are persuaded that the presence among us of hungry people, together with the bodily and mental distortions that hunger produces, can’t be blamed on God.  He is as good as his word; he does care for all that he has made.  And for this reason he is to be praised.

III: — God is to be praised even more, for not only has he provided bread, he’s provided the bread of life.  No one lives by bread alone.  Without bread we humans disappear; without the bread of life we humans remain fixed — fixed in what?  Fixed in our perverse rebellion against God, fixed in our deadly defiance of him, fixed in our frustration and futility, which frustration and futility we can either rage against or surrender to but in any case can’t remedy.  Still, the Creator of us all doesn’t give up on us.

   Because God won’t give up on us he’s forever pressing the bread of life into our hands.  The bread of life isn’t made anew each day, but it’s offered anew each day.  “I am the bread of life”, says Jesus, “whoever comes to me will never hunger again.” (John 6:35)  The bread of life became available to us when provision was made for us in the cross.  Now it’s offered afresh as often as our Lord steals upon anyone anywhere and says, “Why don’t you stop running past my outstretched arms?”

   No one lives without bread; no one lives most profoundly by bread alone.  Only the bread of life can restore men and women made in the image of God to the favour of God.  Only the bread of life can relieve us of the consequences of our rebellion against God by releasing us from the rebellion itself.  Only the bread of life can reconcile us where we are estranged, thaw us where we are frozen and sensitise us where we are unresponsive.

   In his 2nd letter to the congregation in Corinth Paul is glad to acknowledge that God provides seed and bread.  Unquestionably he’s grateful for seed and bread.  Yet his ecstatic exclamation, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” plainly pertains to him and only to him who is the bread of life, Christ Jesus our Lord.  Then the bread of life we must seize or seize afresh today.

   

The church has only one mission: to offer Jesus Christ to any and all, near and far.  For in offering him, the one through whom and for whom all things have been made (John 1:3,10), we shall remind detractors that God has kept his promise to provide seedtime and harvest; and in offering him, the bread of life, we shall recall rebels to their rightful ruler, to their Father, as it turns out, from whom they henceforth receive eternal life

.Victor Shepherd   October 2014

 

 

How are we to Understand the Book of Job?

Job1:13-19; 2:7-9; 3:1; 19:23 -27         Hebrews 2:6-9

 

I: — Suffering is unavoidable. We are fragile creatures with fragile bodies and fragile minds. Assaults hammer us from without; disease undermines us from within. As we fragile creatures move through life we start to feel like lookouts on a ship that is feeling its way through water that’s been mined: our eyes are skinned for anything lurking just beneath the surface that might damage us. Careful as we lookouts are, however, sooner or later our ship strikes a mine. The explosion rocks us; the devastation pains us. In life suffering, some suffering at least, is unavoidable for all of us.

Not only is suffering unavoidable; it’s also unacceptable. We don’t regard it as a polite visitor, or even as a nuisance visitor. We regard suffering as a brutal intruder. It’s simply unacceptable.

Not only is suffering unavoidable and unacceptable; it’s also un-understandable. To be sure, some suffering is understandable. If we play with fire anywhere in life we are going to get burned. (There’s no problem understanding this.) At another dimension in life, if we race motorcycles or climb mountains we know we are courting unusual suffering and sooner or later will have it. The person who is pained in pursuing these activities isn’t perplexed. She knows why she’s in pain. She doesn’t fall into depression or despair; doesn’t feel that life has suddenly become capricious or chaotic or malicious.

Once we’re plunged into incomprehensible suffering, protracted suffering, however; once our pain has moved far beyond the warning that’s needed to have us seek medical assistance; once our pain has ballooned into something huge and inexplicable; when our pain fills the horizon of our life and we can think of little else; at this point it becomes un-understandable.

And when we are stuck with suffering that is at one and the same time unavoidable, unacceptable and un-understandable our pain threatens to eclipse our faith in God and his goodness

 

II [1]: Whenever we ponder protracted pain and its seeming capacity to eclipse our faith in our Father, Job comes to mind: both the man and the book about the man. The book is cast in the form of a historical novel, a novel with many features of a “once upon a time” story. “Once upon a time there lived a perfectly charming fellow named Job.” Job is said to be blameless, upright, God-fearing. He avoids evil of any sort. He has seven sons and three daughters, thousands of sheep and oxen, camels and asses, as well as many servants. Plainly he’s richer than the Reichmann brothers. His family-life is perfectly harmonious. His seven sons, each as wealthy as an Arab oil-producer, take turns hosting magnificent banquets to which they always remember to invite their sisters. In addition Job is pious: he offers sacrifices in the temple frequently. Not surprisingly our anonymous author tells us that Job is “the greatest of all the people of the earth.”

One day Satan has an office appointment with God. Satan suggests that anyone can be pious and upright in the midst of affluence like Job’s; anyone can trust God when the sun is shining. “But I’ll wager,” Satan says to God; “I’ll wager that if Job were stripped of his good fortune he would turn on you and curse you to your face.” “It’s a bet,” replies God; you have my permission to test Job.”

The testing begins. In no time Job’s servants are killed. His animals are slain. A hurricane collapses his house, crushing his sons and daughters. Job tears his clothing. (This is a Hebrew sign of distress.) He shaves his head. (This is a Hebrew sign of mourning.) He summons up his courage and resigns himself to what has befallen him. “Why should I have expected anything else? Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked I shall return. The Lord gives and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He’s resigned to his situation and says so. Alas, he has spoken too soon, for now his entire body breaks out in repugnant sores. At his point Job says nothing.

[2] Job has three friends. They hear of his misfortune and come to comfort him. When they see him; when they see first-hand the disasters that have overtaken him and the misery visited upon him, they tear their clothing and weep like children. For seven days and seven nights they sit with Job, saying nothing, our text tells us, since they see that his suffering is very great.

When Job’s three friends visited him and wept with him and said nothing: it was the best comfort they could have brought him. There are few stresses harder to endure than the stress of someone who means well (who, after all, doesn’t mean well?) yet who clearly doesn’t apprehend our pain. Because he means well we can’t write him off or dismiss him; we even feel bad about asking him to leave, since he cares enough to inconvenience himself and visit us. Still, his presence only frustrates us all the more just because he doesn’t apprehend our pain. If he says “I know exactly how you are feeling” our frustration boils. But then, how can we stay angry at someone who means well? At the same time, how are we ever going to be comforted by someone who doesn’t perceive our pain? We are isolated in it, and our isolation only magnifies our suffering.

Job’s friends are better than this. They don’t run off at the mouth, spouting well-meaning but alienating non-assurances that they know how much he is suffering. Instead they’re distressed themselves. Their silent apprehension of Job’s pain is the only comfort they can render for now. At the same time, their silent apprehension is the only comfort Job can receive for now. This point shouldn’t be lost on you and me this morning.

[3] Job’s pain intensifies even more. As his suffering mounts not even the comfort of his friends can stay his outburst: Job curses the day he was born. He wonders why he’s being kept alive when death would bring him release. Finally Job simply wishes that he were dead.

In Hebrew thought a wish for death isn’t merely a sign of weariness or hopelessness or intolerable pain or even raging bitterness. In Hebrew thought a wish for death is the sign of raging bitterness against God. As soon as Job’s three friends hear him long for death they give up their human wisdom (silence) for an inhumane foolishness (talk.) “Don’t say that,” they tell him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just said? Bitterness against God is blasphemous. Do you want God to punish you for uttering such a thing?” By this time Job is in such torment he can’t imagine any punishment that could increase his pain in any way. When Job’s friends appear horrified at his blasphemy, they assume (if they’re thinking at all) that their horror will startle him and bring him to his senses; they assume that their reaction is helpful. In fact they aren’t helping him at all. If they’d possessed a modicum of sensitivity and wisdom they would have ignored his outburst, generated as it was by his torment.

Haven’t God’s greatest servants cried out, at some point, as Job did, “I wish I were dead”? Moses did. So did Jeremiah and Elijah too. At some point all these men felt that God had let them down so very badly that they couldn’t help railing at him. The psalms are full of this. “Why do you let me down when most I need you? Why do you hide your face when most I need to be held up?” (Ps. 10)

Is there anything wrong with this? Isn’t there admirable honesty and transparency here? I have heard this cry myself in situations of terrible heartbreak. I heard it for the first time when I was ten years old. A house caught fire on our street in Toronto , and the family of six perished in it. No one got out. One little fellow who burned to death (or at least suffocated) was a boy my age who had been born with hydrocephalus. Today a shunt would be place in his head and the fluid drained out of his brain. But fifty years ago anyone with “water on the brain” found his head swelling and swelling and his mental ability deteriorating. He was incapacitated and his family’s life was thereafter oriented around a child whose ailment was chronic: no relief for the parents. Let’s not say that the fatal fire was relief for them and for him. On this occasion I heard bitterness against God boil over, and I heard others warn, “Don’t say that; don’t add blasphemy to tragedy. We have to believe that God is good and just.”

Do we? Who has to? The person whose anguish (even if it’s anguish born of witnessing a tragedy) has torn this bitter railing against God out of him; he doesn’t have to for the simple reason that he can’t. Let all who are driven to say what they are driven to say; let them say it, for they stand in good company: Moses, Jeremiah, Elijah.

As long as Job’s friends are silent (except for their weeping) they comfort him. But as soon as they open their mouths and begin to yammer they inflate his torment. One garrulous friend decides to dabble amateurishly in theology. He claims it’s common knowledge that people get what they deserve in life. If Job is in great pain now then he must have deserved it. If Job would only look back over his life he would soon see why God has laid this torment on him.

This is a terrible thing to say to a sufferer. To hint it, even breathe it, is to compound suffering with guilt. And suffering compounded with guilt is suffering intensified. Even to hint that someone’s pain is God-sent is sheer cruelty. Then the cruelty is magnified in that to suffering and guilt there’s been added confusion as well. After all, what kind of God would visit torture on anyone, and particularly visit torture on his most faithful servants? In the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry a tower fell on a construction crew and killed eighteen men. Jesus insisted that these men had not been singled out as deserving something dreadful. It was an accident. On another occasion the disciples came upon a man who had been blind since birth. They put the question to Jesus, “Who sinned: this man or his parents? One or the other must have done something heinous for someone to be born in this condition.” Jesus insisted that neither the man nor his parents was being punished. It was a congenital misfortune. Let’s not compound pain with guilt and then compound it yet more with confusion by suggesting that calamity is God-sent punishment. We mustn’t even breathe it.

Job reaches the climax of his suffering as he comes to feel utterly God-forsaken. Deserted. Abandoned. Given up. Haven’t we all been there ourselves? Hasn’t there been an occasion in our life, an occasion of overwhelming need or pain or desperation, when we hammered on the door of heaven and were left feeling no one was at home? When this experience comes to us, what it adds to human suffering is indescribable. Yet when such experience overtakes us we stand in good company, for our Lord himself, tormented to the point of distraction, was driven to cry, “Why have you forsaken me?”

[5] Yet our Lord was brought through his experience of God-forsakenness into the light and joy of his resurrection. Anticipating Christ’s victory by a thousand years, Job is allowed to see a glimmer of light in the midst of his black and bleak experience of God-forsakenness. The glimmer he sees constrains him to cry, “I know that my redeemer lives. One day he will stand upon the earth…in my flesh I shall see God.” What Job is allowed to glimpse is nothing less than that day when THE REDEEMER of the whole world of suffering will stand upon the earth. And because this redeemer, Jesus Christ, has stood upon the earth, those whose suffering drives them to exclaim they are God-forsaken shall one day see God.

I believe this with all my heart: one day we shall see God. But until the day comes when we see God face-to-face we need help now. While the promise of our future restoration is glorious, it remains future, and we need help now. And we have such help. The author of Hebrews insists that just because Jesus Christ has passed through his test of suffering, he is able to help those who are meeting their test now. His test, of course, was Gethsemane and Calvary . He passed through it in that his Father’s faithfulness brought him through it. Because our Lord has been through what we are now going through, Hebrews speaks of his as “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” He is the trail-blazer who pioneers our faith-venture ahead of us. He is also the goal or destination of our faith, the bright light that beckons us and whose illumination lights up our pathway through the suffering we can’t avoid.

Remember, because Jesus Christ our Redeemer has stood on our earth we shall indubitably see God. But until that day comes we must count on the help of him who can effectively help us in our test of suffering just because he has passed through that test himself. He didn’t immerse himself in our pain only to get bogged down in its quicksand halfway through. He wasn’t left to founder in it, thereby becoming useless to himself and to us. He was brought through, and is now our effective companion, just because his victory guarantees our emergence from the dark night of pain.

 

III: — The book of Job concludes in a way that many people find unsatisfactory. After Job has lost everything – wealth, livestock, children and health – it’s all made up to him 200%. Now he’s wealthier than ever. It’s a fairy tale ending, isn’t it: first the prince is unjustly impoverished, then the prince is made richer than ever.

If we find the conclusion unsatisfactory we aren’t alone. Our Jewish friends, in the wake of the Holocaust, find it utterly unsatisfying, and for one reason: our Jewish friends who lost everything in the Holocaust – their goods, their children, their lives – nothing was made up to them.

I have long felt that for the proper conclusion to Job’s story we need to look to two other biblical writers. First, the psalmist: he tells us that humankind is the highest point of God’s creation, and that God has subjected everything in the universe to us, to our control. To be sure, much of the universe is in subjection to us. Advances in science, for instance, illustrate the fact nature is increasingly subject to us, to our control. But do we see everything subjected to us? Everything? Incurable disease? Hideous birth-defects? Protracted derangement? Disfiguring death? Surely there’s much that isn’t subject to us and therefore much that we don’t see subject to us.

Our second writer, the writer of Hebrews, agrees. We do not yet see everything subject to us. However, we do see Jesus. And seeing him victorious, we are guaranteed that everything now afflicting us will one day be subjected to us for ever.

William Sangster was an outstanding English Methodist clergyman who died horribly of a rare neurological disease. Years before his own death, however, when he was but a boy, he had a sister, the youngest child in a family of boys. She had been born deformed.   She lived only until age nine. In the last seven years of her life she underwent surgery fourteen times. Five gaping wounds yawned in her head, and at the last she was hidden away. Explanations? Anyone who proffers an explanation we should ignore. There is no explanation. Years later Sangster did say that the sheer inexplicability of his sister’s ailment in a world created and sustained by God found a parallel in a summer camp experience he had about the same time. As a boy Sangster ran out of canteen money at camp. He sent a postcard to his father asking for some more. No answer came back. His camp mates chided him, “Perhaps your father has forgotten you’re here.” (Ridiculous suggestion.) “Perhaps he’s too busy to bother with you.” (Equally ridiculous.)   “Perhaps your father simply doesn’t care.” (The youngster knew better than this.) “Then what’s the explanation?” his chums insisted. “I don’t know,” replied Sangster; “I simply don’t know. I’ll have to wait until I get home, and my father will tell me himself.”

We do not yet see everything subject to us. But we do see Jesus. In his company we are going to arrive home. And concerning that suffering which is now but a bleak, black mystery for which we have no explanation; concerning this we shall ask our Father and he will tell us himself.

Until that day dawns, however, we, like Job, continue to rejoice that our redeemer lives. And because our redeemer has stood upon the earth, we shall indeed see God.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                       

February 2005

 

God the Builder

Job 38:1-18

 

I: — “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?   Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4)         It sounds harsh, dreadfully harsh.  Job has suffered extraordinarily: loss of goods, loss of livestock, loss of health. His loss of sons and daughters, however, can’t be mentioned in the same breath; the loss of Job’s children is qualitatively different. It’s little wonder that Job’s wife shouts at him “Curse God and die.”   Their predicament has become so wretched that to curse God, thereby antagonizing God (one would expect), can’t make it any worse.   Why not curse God, even if it reduces their frustration ever so slightly?

But Job won’t curse God, even though he appears to be about to die anyway. Job’s friends sit with him day after day. They comfort him. They comfort him, that is, until they open their mouths.  “Maybe you haven’t been as upright a fellow as you seem to be” they suggest. “Maybe you’ve harboured secret sin; secret, that is, to us but not to God, and now you’re only getting what you deserve.”   No doubt Job’s friends mean well.  They think they’re helpful.         But in fact they don’t help.   Job replies to his friends, one after the other, several times over. Finally he and they have nothing more to say to each other.

Then God speaks. “Job, you and your friends have proffered many explanations as to why your life has unfolded as it has. But do you and they know what you’re talking about?   Were you around when I, the Lord God, fashioned the universe?  Are you aware of the expanse of the universe? (38:24) Do you know how to get “to the place whence light is distributed?”  Job has to admit that he wasn’t on hand when the world was created. He has to admit that he doesn’t know the whence and whither of light.   (But of course you and I know how important the physics of light is, even if Job knows nothing about the properties of light.)   “Do you have any understanding (continues God) of how the universe is put together, and why or how it unfolds? You don’t even understand why or how it’s a universe and not a jumbled, chaotic mass in which no person could live, let alone ask questions.”

God’s questions to Job sound harsh.  After all, when anyone has been assaulted as Job has and is now staggering like a beaten boxer, asking such a person anything sounds cruel. “You, Job; you weren’t even conceived when the universe was fashioned.”

It sounds harsh, and if God’s questions in Job 38 were all God had to say to any sufferer, we could never say with Paul that God is the “the father of all mercies, who comforts us in all our afflictions.” (2nd Cor.1:3-4) A fuller answer to Job will have to await the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

To be sure, Job eventually says in the light of God’s protracted interrogation, “I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted….Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Under the pressure of God’s questioning Job has been driven to admit that the creation is vaster, more complex, less penetrable than he had thought heretofore.  God alone is the builder, and only the builder understands definitively what the builder has built.

Where humans are concerned, however, what we can’t understand we can nonetheless marvel at.

 

II: — The creation is marvellous, and we honour God by marvelling at it.

Think of the navigational instinct of birds.  Myself, I have the poorest sense of direction.  Following a road map is almost an insuperable challenge to me when road maps are supposed to render a sense of direction unnecessary.         So poor is my sense of direction that I have difficulty recognizing streetscape or landscape that I saw only five hours earlier.  Yet the homing pigeon can always get home.

The best navigators are sea birds.  Best of all is the shearwater.   One of them, taken from its nest and transported 3,200 miles away, returned to its nest 12.5 days later.  In other words, the bird had flown, on average, 10.5 miles per hour, 24 hours per day, 12.5 days, and had found its way to the nest from which it had been taken.

Bees aren’t birds, but bees are top-notch navigators as well.  In order to orient themselves bees need to see only the tiniest bit of blue sky. You see, light from blue sky is polarized. (Polarized light has different properties in different directions, whereas the light that shines through cloud cover isn’t polarized.)   As long as bees have access to polarized light from the smallest patch of blue sky they will never lose their way.

Speaking of losing our way: for centuries sailors navigated by means of the North Star, or Polaris, to give it its proper name.  Polaris, visible any clear night, is seen if we look out past the leading edge of the Big Dipper. Polaris, or the North Star, twinkles cutely for us.  Cutely? Polaris is 2,400 times bigger and hotter than our sun.  Our sun is a star too, and as stars go, it isn’t much of a star. It looms large before us just because it’s very close to us.  Light from “our” star, the sun, reaches the earth in eight minutes and nineteen seconds. Light from the North Star, Polaris, reaches the earth in 420 years.  When next we look at the North Star we should understand that the twinkling we see is light that left Polaris 420 years ago.

The North Star, of course, like our sun, is part of what we call “our” galaxy. How many stars are there in our galaxy? – 200 billion.  How far away is our galaxy? – 100,000 light years away.  But of course our galaxy isn’t the only galaxy.  Galaxies tend to occur in clusters, and our galaxy, with its 200 billion stars, is part of a cluster of 11,000 galaxies.  How vast is the universe? The Hubble telescope has turned up galaxies that are 11 billion light years away.

And then there’s the light we can’t see, what astronomers call a “black hole.” At one point I thought a black hole in interstellar space was a giant nothing, a giant vacuum, and was called a black hole just because there was nothing there to be seen. Not so. A black hole is invisible in that the light that a star gives out is bent, bent by gravity. (Albert Einstein proved that gravity bends light.) The force of gravity is so very immense, and the light is bent so very thoroughly, that the light is bent back on itself and never escapes the gravitational pull of – of what? The light never escapes the gravitational pull of an interstellar mass equal to one billion suns.

Speaking of dense matter; the densest matter is that of a neutron star. One thimbleful of this matter weighs as much as the earth’s total human population.

Nuclear explosions are dreadful – in both senses of ‘dreadful.’ We dread a nuclear explosion akin to that of Hiroshima or Nagasaki where hundreds of thousands of people were vaporised in an instant.  Any nuclear explosion is dreadful as well in the classical sense of the word; namely, awesome. We’re awed before it. As powerful as the nuclear explosions were that devastated Japanese cities, they were firecrackers compared to the nuclear explosions that occur naturally. A minute ago I spoke of stars that are vastly bigger than our sun.   Then I spoke of galaxies where even one galaxy consists of hundreds of billions of stars. Now imagine a nuclear explosion, a ‘supernova’ it’s called, a nuclear explosion in a star; imagine a nuclear explosion that not only wipes out that one star (vastly bigger than the earth), but wipes out as well an entire galaxy. It happens in nature all the time.

“Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,” says Job concerning the creation.

 

III: — We should spend a few minutes probing the doctrine of creation.  God has fashioned the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. This is important. If God had fashioned the universe out of something, out of raw material of some kind, then this raw material would have pre-existed our universe.  Where would this ‘stuff’ have originated? – from a rival deity, obviously. Just as obviously, the ‘stuff’ out of which God created the universe would be a limitation on God; what he could do in fashioning the universe would be limited by the characteristics of the raw material.

To say that God has created ex nihilo is to say that there is no pre-existing matter that limits God in any way. It’s also to say that there’s no rival deity to thwart God.  And to say this, be it noted, is to say that the God who is sole creator is also the sole Lord of his creation.  The creator has a claim, an incontestable claim, on his creation and on every aspect of it. Do we doubt this? Then we should read more carefully those scripture passages that the church too often seems to read past; namely, the passages that speak of God as Destroyer. He who creates from nothing has the right and the capacity to reduce to nothing.  To say anything else is to deny that God is exclusive lord of his own creation.

It’s here that unbelievers become resentful, I’ve found.  For years I was puzzled as to why unbelievers became hostile over the doctrine of creation. After all, the universe is the same universe whether it came forth from the creator’s will or appeared we-know-not-how.  Even when a doctrine of creation fully compatible with scientific research was advanced, the hostility didn’t decrease.  Then it occurred to me: the reason the doctrine of creation provokes hostility has to do with the creator’s lordship of the creation. If the universe actually was created (ex nihilo), then the creator has a legitimate claim on the obedience of the creature. If the creator has a claim on humankind’s obedience, the creator also has the right to punish human disobedience. And of course the creator has the right to become the destroyer – as scripture reminds us several times over.  This is what unbelievers object to, I have found, in the doctrine of creation. They resent any encroachment upon their supposed autonomy.  They resent any denial of their independence.  They object to being told that they are not their own lord, are accountable to another, and one day will have to appear before the creator who as sole lord is therefore sole judge as well.  All of this underlies their hostility to any notion of creation.

IV: — How is such hostility dispelled? It’s dispelled only as they come to know God.  And they come to know God not in the first instance as creator; they come to know God in the first instance as redeemer.  To be sure, the creation has to exist before it can be redeemed; therefore creation precedes redemption.  But the knowledge of God the redeemer precedes the knowledge of God the creator.

Let me say it again: temporally, creation precedes redemption; cognitively, knowledge of the redeemer precedes knowledge of the creator. In other words, our awareness that God is creator is a consequence of our having become by faith the beneficiary of God’s saving mercy.  Israel knew God as creator only as a result of its having been redeemed by God at Red Sea and Sinai. Israel knew God as the maker of sun, the moon and the heavens only because Israel had first become intimately acquainted with God through its merciful deliverance at Red Sea and Sinai. You and I know God to be creator only because we’ve been admitted to intimacy with Jesus Christ our Redeemer, through whose Sonship we’ve become, by grace, sons and daughters of the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Let me repeat. As sinners we have no saving knowledge of God.  But when the Holy Spirit brings Christ to us and us to Christ; when the Holy Spirit moves us to embrace that Saviour who has already embraced us in the cross, we are bound to Jesus Christ in faith.  Knowing the Redeemer, we know the Triune God who has sent the Son for our sakes. For this reason it’s only as we become beneficiaries of God’s redemption that we know that God’s creation isn’t God.

Does anyone think the creation to be God?  Yes. Apart from our knowledge of God we’re sunk in idolatry.         Idolatry is nothing more and nothing less than confusing creator and creation. Only by the grace of God (our salvation) do we know that the creation isn’t God.

The apostle Paul makes this point, albeit left-handedly, when he reminds the Christians in Corinth , “The foundation is laid already; no one can lay another, for it is Jesus Christ himself.” (1st Cor. 3:11 JB Phillips) Jesus Christ the redeemer is the foundation; the foundation of our discipleship and our churchmanship and our understanding of the world, to be sure.  But this is because Jesus Christ is no less the foundation of our knowledge of God.  To put it in terms of tonight’s sermon, the builder can be known to be builder only as the builder is first known to be the building’s fixer.

For this reason where Jesus Christ the fixer isn’t known in faith, pantheism and panentheism are rampant.

Pantheism maintains that God is the essence of all that is.  Pantheism insists that the world and everything in it is divine at bottom.

Panentheism maintains that God is of the essence or in the essence of all that is. Panentheism insists that God is an aspect of the world and everything in it.

According to both pantheism and panentheism, we should note, idolatry is impossible, since to worship the world is to worship the deity whose essence is found in the world.

According to both pantheism and panentheism, sin and evil are impossible. Since there’s nothing whose essence isn’t God, sin and evil have been eliminated by definition. Anything humans choose to do is right and good by definition.  Anything humans choose to think is sound by definition.  Anything humans choose to believe is true by definition.  Is it any wonder that the New Age Movement, with its pantheism or panentheism, is the darling of the suburbanite ‘yuppie’?  Whatever you feel is right. Whatever you believe is right. Whatever you do is divine. There is not and there never can be any criticism or contradiction of what we want for ourselves. Our self-indulgence can’t be faulted.  Our entitlement can’t be checked.  Our pleasure-principle can’t be qualified.  You may differ from me concerning what brings you pleasure, but your self-pleasuring isn’t superior to mine and mine isn’t superior to yours. To put it in terms of tonight’s sermon, according to pan(en)theism, the builder has been collapsed into the building – except that, strictly speaking, there never was a builder and the world never was built.

This monstrously self-inflated delusion is deflated only as the sword of the Word of God pierces it.  The foundation is laid already; no one can lay another.  The foundation of our knowledge of God, knowledge of the world, knowledge of ourselves – the foundation of our apprehension of truth anywhere in life is the one and only redeemer, Jesus Christ.  As we seize him in faith our thinking is corrected and we understand – now – that the world isn’t God; knowledge of the world isn’t knowledge of the divine. And apart from him ‘knowledge of ourselves’ (so-called) is so abysmally short of the truth that we don’t know ourselves profoundly or what constitutes the human good.

 

V: — Since apart from Jesus Christ everything the world deems substantial in fact is shaky, what is firm and solid in light of Jesus Christ?   The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews states forthrightly “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” (Heb. 12:28) This is crucial. The Psalmist (82:5) maintains that the wicked are perpetrating wickedness unchecked.   “They have neither knowledge nor understanding”, the Psalmist tells us. The wicked lack knowledge; specifically, knowledge of God, knowledge of God’s righteousness, knowledge of God’s justice and God’s judgement.  They also lack understanding; that is, they grope like a disoriented person trying to feel her way through a dark cellar she’s never been in before cluttered with items she’s never seen before, without one scintilla of light to help her.

The psalmist tells us this, however, not to quicken our pity for the poor, benighted person groping in the dark; he tells us this in order to inform us of what the perpetrators of wickedness, whose ignorance of God and blind groping only worsens wickedness, give rise to; namely, the shaking of the foundations.  “All the foundations of the earth are shaken,” the psalmist cries out. We must note the use of the plural: foundations. What’s more, all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

Didn’t we say two minutes ago that the foundation (singular) had already been laid, Christ Jesus, risen from the dead? And didn’t we rejoice that just because the foundation has been laid and cannot be removed, we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken? Then why does the psalmist speak of the foundations of the earth being shaken?

The foundations of the earth are those ‘pillars’ on which we suppose the earth to be resting, by which we suppose it to be supported, and because of which we can assume the order of human existence to be inviolable. When the foundations of the earth are shaken, however, what we always regarded as inviolable is seen not to be such, while order appears to give way to disarray.

As a matter of fact the foundations of the world are being shaken. The shift from modernity to post-modernity is one instance of the shake-up.  The shift from publicly owned decency (even on the part of those who make no profession of faith) to something resembling society-wide character disorder is another. In an environment where any and all shame is said to be psychologically deleterious (psychology now being the measure of everything), any instance of shame is deemed to be an exemplification of “shame-bound.” To be shame-bound is deemed deplorable, and therefore all shame should be denied – which denial, of course, gives birth to shamelessness.  Is shamelessness an improvement?   Isn’t thoroughgoing shamelessness the mark of the psychopath?  It used to be the mark of the psychopath.  Now it’s advanced as a mark of the sophisticate.  The foundations of the earth are being shaken all the time.

A horrific instance of this has to be the experience of Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor and spokesperson for post-holocaust Jewry.  Wiesel was only a teenager when he was stacked in a fetid, waterless, toiletless box car and conveyed to Auschwitz . I’m not going to describe the nightmarish occurrences in Auschwitz , but I will urge you to read Wiesel’s book Night, the book in which he testifies to apocalyptic horrors.   A terrible shaking of the foundations of the earth occurred the day an S.S. guard noticed the young Wiesel observing carefully the monstrosities unfolding around him, taking it all in, having it stamp itself upon his mind and heart. The S.S. guard shouted contemptuously at him, “I know what you’re doing, young man. You’re mentally making note of all this, committing it to memory.         And you want to remember it so that you will be a witness to what occurred here. Let me tell you two things: one, you aren’t going to survive this camp; two, even if you were to survive, what you have seen here is so surreally horrible that no one would believe your testimony.  No one would believe you just because no one would ever want to admit that human beings could act as we S.S. men have acted.  No one would believe the horrors you attested just because no one would ever want to admit that what was actual here is possible anywhere, that is, that everyone is capable of bottomless cruelty.” The psalmist is correct: all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

While all the foundations ofthe earth can be shaken, there is a kingdom that cannot be shaken. In this regard I tell my students repeatedly that just because Christ’s Easter victory can never be overturned, the kingdom he brings with him in his resurrection from the dead is never at risk.

For many reasons my students have difficulty grasping this truth, one reason being the word of the master himself – when he teaches his followers to pray “Thy kingdom come.”   If the kingdom hasn’t come yet it would seem that we haven’t received a kingdom that can never be shaken.  Of course we’re mandated to pray for the coming of the kingdom, my students tell me, not least because there’s pathetically little evidence of any kingdom that has come.

By way of reply I remind my students that Jesus Christ is king, right now. He who is the messiah of Israel can’t fail to be king. Any ambiguity surrounding him and his rule has been dispelled in his resurrection from the dead. Christ’s resurrection declares him king. Since there can’t be a king without a kingdom, Christ’s resurrection also announces the presence of the kingdom.  The kingdom of God is the creation of God healed.  The kingdom of God is the presence of shalom.  Since our Lord has effected this in his resurrection and ascension, when we pray “Thy kingdom come” we are actually praying for the coming manifestation of that kingdom which is already here.  Let’s be sure to understand that if the unshakeable kingdom isn’t here then Jesus Christ isn’t now king; if the kingdom isn’t here then Jesus Christ is no different from John the Baptist, no different from Moses and the prophets.  But he is different. He, and he alone is messiah-king. His resurrection has effected a kingdom that his ascension guarantees.

Much in our Lord’s earthly ministry was a prolepsis of the kingdom that our Lord’s resurrection has effected.         Think of the temptation story.  Jesus resists the blandishments of the tempter in the course of protracted testing. When Mark writes up the episode he draws our attention to a feature that we frequently read past. Mark says at the conclusion of the temptation narrative, “And he (Jesus) was with the wild beasts.” (Mark 1:13 ) The point is that the wild beasts didn’t devour him. Ever since the Fall (Genesis 3) lethal enmity between humans and beasts has characterized this present evil age.  When Jesus resists Satan consistently, the Fall is overturned.  Confirmation that it’s been overturned is provided in the fact that lethal enmity has been dispelled: the kingdom is here.

Later in his earthly ministry our Lord stills the storm on the sea of Galilee. The raging storm, lethal in its own way, is also sign of a creation warped by evil to the point of de-creating towards chaos.  Not to be overlooked, of course, is the fact that Mark’s gospel was written when Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome was lethally driving them towards apostasy, out-and-out denial of their Lord. The same Lord who stilled the storm in his earthly ministry is now, in his risen, ascended existence, stilling the panic that will otherwise overtake his people and warp their adoring confession of him into cringing denial.

We have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  We have received it; we never built it. God the builder has built it. This being the case, there are several truths we must be sure to own.

One, the kingdom is here, present, in our midst.

Two, this kingdom can never be overturned, dissolved, dispelled or destroyed.

Three, this kingdom is at present discernible through the eyes of faith. Faith sees what unbelief fails to see.

Four, because this kingdom cannot be shaken, to pray for its coming is to pray for the coming of its manifestation, to pray for the day when not only faith will perceive it but every eye will have to behold it and every knee will have to bow before it.  Not everyone will love the day of the kingdom’s manifestation and not everyone will love the king; but everyone will have to acknowledge king and kingdom alike.

There’s one more feature, fifth feature, we must note: while Christ’s kingdom is real, operative now, the         present evil age is never denied.  Christ’s kingdom and its contradiction overlap for the time being. While Christ’s kingdom is in our midst, the virulence of this present evil age renders Christ’s kingdom disputable. What then, do we see? What do we see as determinative? Do we see chiefly the present evil age, or do we see chiefly a kingdom that cannot be shaken?

Think of the story of the Gadarene demoniac.  The man says his name is ‘legion’; he’s afflicted by so many principalities and powers that he doesn’t know who he is.  At the conclusion of the master’s ministry he is found “seated, clothed, and in his right mind.”  To be seated, in biblical symbolism, is to be in a position of authority; for the first time in his life the man is in control of himself, properly the subject of his own existence.  To be clothed, in biblical symbolism, is to belong.  The man belongs to his community, his family, the household of God. To be right-minded, biblically, means to be sane – yes, but more than this; it means that this man’s thinking is now conformed to that kingdom whose citizen he’s most recently become.

At this point I ask my students, “When next you observe the psychotic person on a downtown street corner; when next you find a schizophrenic person in your church, what do you see?  Do you see one more deranged man shouting curses at the RCMP for not protecting him against the cosmic rays that Asian agents are loosing everywhere? Or do you see someone whom the kingdom will one day find manifestly seated, clothed and in his right mind?

When I hold the hymnbook in front of me at eye-level I can focus on the hymnbook, seeing the printed page clearly, able to read every word. Doing this keeps the book in focus and the people beyond the book slightly fuzzy, imprecise.  Or I can focus on the people in the congregation, seeing them clearly, able even to pick out my friends who have come along tonight in hope of being edified. Doing this keeps the people in focus and the printed page slightly fuzzy, imprecise. With respect to the kingdom of God, we can focus on the kingdom in our midst, with this present evil age accorded the fuzziness it deserves, or we can focus (idolatrously, I should add) on this present evil age and render the kingdom of God fuzzy, imprecise. What do we see? Which looms before us with greater clarity? Which grips us more compellingly? A more pointed way of putting the question is this: at bottom, have we abandoned ourselves to the truth and reality of the kingdom that cannot be shaken, or do we merely say we believe in it while our heart has secretly (or not so secretly) been captured by this present evil age?

The kingdom of God is in our midst. In light of the overall tenor of scripture concerning the victory of Jesus and his vindication through resurrection and ascension we should recall his dispute with detractors in Luke 17.   These latter folk ask Jesus when the kingdom is coming.  He replies, “The kingdom of God isn’t coming with signs to be observed.  Look! The kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” In their midst to be sure, and yet they didn’t recognize it, couldn’t rejoice in it. This should sober us at the same time that it forces several considerations upon us.

First: since the kingdom is in our midst, we don’t build the kingdom. God alone is builder. We don’t advance the kingdom. We don’t extend the kingdom. (When the offering is received at worship, let it not be said that the offering is to be used for building, advancing or extending the kingdom.  You and I can no more do this than we can create the universe ex nihilo.)

Secondly: since the kingdom is here, we can either allow it to be overlooked and remain overlooked (our Lord’s detractors, after all, never saw it), or we can lend it visibility.  We can’t build it. (And isn’t it grand that we can’t? If we could build the kingdom, we’d also be able to wreck it.)   We are charged with rendering the kingdom visible, a city set on a hill.

Thirdly, this kingdom or city (the kingdom of God and the New Jerusalem are one and the same), is splendid.         It’s splendid just because it’s bathed in the splendour of God himself. When John the seer speaks of the New Jerusalem “let down from heaven” – let down just because you and I can’t build it – he says that its wall is “built of Jasper.” (Rev. 21:18) Jasper was the most radiant, dazzling substance known to the ancient world.  The kingdom of God, the creation healed, the New Jerusalem that replaces the old Jerusalem which kills the prophets and crucifies the Messiah, which in turn was supposed to reverse a prior city, the Tower of Babel, but in fact did not because it could not; the kingdom of God, the creation healed, the New Jerusalem is splendid, radiant with God’s splendour. On the day that the manifestation of this kingdom comes upon us the whole world will see it luminous with the luminosity of him who always was the light of the world.

 

VI: — In light of all that’s been said tonight about God the builder and what he has built, there remains only one serious, sobering matter to consider: the urgency of entering this kingdom, the urgency of living in it, living from it, living for it. We must enter the kingdom of God , Jesus tells us repeatedly. We don’t ooze into it; we don’t wake up one day and find ourselves in it willy-nilly. There must be a conscious, deliberate decision, re-affirmed every day of our lives, that we are henceforth going to cling to the king and identify ourselves with his kingdom.

For this reason God the builder urges us, according to the apostle Peter, to “come to him, to that living stone…and like living stones be built ourselves into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1st Peter 2:4-5)

The kingdom can’t be shaken.  Humans can be shaken, however, and should be.  We need to be shaken, shaken up lest we miss the kingdom, lest we forfeit it, lest we live and die in the ghastly illusion that neither king nor kingdom was ever in our midst.   “Come to him (Christ the king), to that living stone, and like living stones be built yourselves into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood.” The presence of the unshakeable kingdom never renders evangelism superfluous; it always renders evangelism necessary.

“Come to him, that living stone, and like living stones be built yourselves into a spiritual house.”    The opposite of a living stone is a dead stone.   Dead? In Ephesians 2 Paul speaks of humankind as “dead in trespasses and sins.”   He insists that only God can make us alive.  Peter insists that only God the builder can turn dead stones into living stones, and God the builder does this as we abandon ourselves to him who is and ever will be the living stone.

 

Conclusion: — “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  I said at the beginning of the sermon that God’s question to Job sounds harsh. Actually it isn’t. Ultimately its force is this:

“Don’t make yourself the measure of how the universe ought to unfold.

Don’t make yourself the measure of me, God.

I am the builder.

I have built the creation ex nihilo, therein establishing my claim over all creatures great and small, since neither the creation nor any part of it is God.

I have laid the foundation, Christ Jesus: Son, Saviour. Messiah, Lord.

This foundation remains impregnable even when all the foundations of the earth are shaken through the wickedness of those who lack both knowledge and understanding.

This foundation is the king whose kingdom cannot be shaken.

And now you must come to him, Christ the king, the living stone, and as living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house.

For I who am the builder am also the destroyer.”

Come to him, the living stone, the world’s sole saviour, and your only hope.

 

Victor Shepherd
August 2007

(preached at Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, July 2007)

What Is Man? or Does Theology Matter?

Psalm 8; 144:3-4      Job 25:4-6

 

Many people are impatient with theology. They regard theology as utterly abstract and uselessly otherworldly. Theology, they assume, has to do with dotting i’s and crossing t’s. But help people? give hope to people? even save people? Since when did i’s and t’s save anyone?

But in fact theology isn’t utterly abstract and uselessly otherworldly. Theology is the discipline of reflecting upon the truth of the living God. And God is neither abstract nor otherworldly. God is concrete. God is the reality with which all of us collide and wrestle and which we sometimes deny; and God remains that reality which none of us can ever escape.

Make no mistake. When a theology of nature, for instance, is dismissed nature becomes a giant garbage pail slowly gathering up lethal chemicals.

When a theology of history is ignored we give up the struggle to lend visibility to the kingdom of God and instead make our peace with the kingdom of evil even as it savages us.

What about a theology of humankind? What are man and woman? Who are we, anyway? Are we merely two-legged featherless creatures whose toys and tools are a bit more sophisticated than those of a monkey? Are we simply the cold-blooded killers the man from eastern Europe told me we are after he himself had been victimized by both nazis and communists? Or are we simply angelic creatures of superior rationality? C.S. Lewis has pointed out that when people believe they are only animals they behave like animals. And yet paradoxically when they believe they are near-angelic their behaviour becomes near demonic. Theology — our reflection upon the truth of God — matters. Whether explicit or implicit it governs how we view ourselves, what we do to other people, and whether there is hope for any of us.

The important theological question, “What is man?”, is asked several times in the Hebrew bible. Today we are going to probe several of the answers given this question.

 

I: — “What is man that you, God, are mindful of him and care for him?” Answer: “I have made him little less than God, and have crowned him with glory and honour.” All men and women are the pinnacle of God’s creation, higher than anything else God has made, only slightly lower than God himself and crowned (the fact that we are crowned means that everyone is meant for the royal family; before God there are no commoners) crowned with a glory and an honour which no one else can snatch from us and which we cannot even forfeit ourselves. This is what we are.

It’s important that we understand we are created with a dignity we can neither lose accidentally nor fritter away foolishly nor give up disgustingly nor be robbed of helplessly. To be sure, we can always behave in such a way as to contradict this dignity, and other people can treat us so as to deny it, but by God’s ordination it is ours, and is ours forever.

Think of the situations where our society implicitly recognizes humankind’s ineradicable glory/honour/dignity and explicitly pays dearly to uphold it: the convict, for instance. One person in a penitentiary costs us (i.e., taxpayers) $55,000 per year. When a new jail is built the cost is $285,000 per cell.

From time-to-time my wife has a child in her class who is severely challenged, whether physically or emotionally. A teacher’s aide is provided (taxpayer’s expense) who assists the child with getting around, getting to the toilet, getting winter clothes on and off; or else the teacher’s aide attempts to defuse explosions hidden away in the child’s psyche, and then attempts to console the child and others whenever defusing doesn’t work and there is emotional shrapnel spewing in all directions.

What does our society spend on the aged, the infirm (who may be young), the deranged, the new-born with the birth-defect? What do we spend on people who are socially unproductive and will never come close to paying their own way? And why do we spend it? Because despite the explicit secularism of our society there is an implicit theology at work: any human being is created only less than God, and is crowned with glory and honour.

We must not think that everyone knows innately what the psalmist tells us. Conviction of the glory and honour of humankind is not innate; conviction of this truth is fostered by the gospel. Where a society isn’t illumined by the indirect lighting of the gospel, or is no longer illumined by the indirect lighting of the gospel, people are regarded as tools to be used while useful and discarded when not. Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist and historian, asks, “Do you have difficulty imagining what becomes of people in a society which is no longer controlled, even unconsciously, by the indirect illumination of the gospel? Ask me”, says Solzhenitsyn, “ask me. I have lived in such a society myself!”

In the war between China and Japan just prior to World War II it was learned that the Japanese estimated how long it would take a wounded soldier to recover and return to combat, and then decided whether or not the wounded soldier would be given medical treatment. If his injuries were such that he would be unavailable for several months — as was the case with a broken femur — he was shot in the head by his own people.

How different it was in a society illumined by the gospel for centuries. When I was a young teenager I was fascinated with accounts of the Battle of Britain. One aspect of it, however, didn’t fascinate me as much as it amazed me. Injured enemy fliers who had been shot down in the course of bombing defenceless civilians were themselves given the very best medical treatment available in Britain. If the flier had glass fragments in his eye and he needed the world’s best ophthalmologist, he got the world’s best ophthalmologist, even if there was a lineup of British citizens who needed medical treatment but whose condition was less urgent. This, I thought as a 14-year old, was the height of irrationality. It is the height of irrationality — unless even our worst enemy is someone who cannot forfeit the glory and honour and dignity in which he or she was created.

Theology matters. Imagine a society where such truth and reflection upon such truth disappear completely.

 

II: — What is man? woman? “Man is like a breath”, says the psalmist in his second answer, “man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.” In other words, we are short-lived creatures for whom life passes speedily; in addition, we are vulnerable creatures for whom life unfolds perilously.

Our days are like a passing shadow. Once we see this we can react in two quite different ways. One way is the way of fatalism and indifference. “Since life passes so very quickly, what is the point of doing anything? of exerting ourselves anywhere? Why not sit back and let the passing shadow pass?”

The other way is the way of biblical faith. Just because life is but a breath and our days a passing shadow, every moment has eternal significance. Every moment is an opportunity for mirroring the truth of God. Every moment is unique, pregnant, unrepeatable. Every moment can be a window opening on the God who sends rain on just and unjust alike. What occurs in any moment can have consequences beyond anything we might imagine.

Several times I have said from this pulpit that the day came for me when I realized that I could control almost nothing; could influence a great deal, to be sure, but control almost nothing. I used to think this was so because of my social situation. But someone like the Chief Executive Officer of a major corporation, the grand boss, someone whose social situation wasn’t mine; he could control eversomuch! Then one day I learned that a CEO in Canada lasts 3.5 years (on average), whereupon he is fired. What does he control then? What did he control earlier? Not even enough to keep himself from being fired! And the hightest political authorities? How much can the prime minister control? If the American government raises interest rates tomorrow there will be huge consequences for every dimension of Canadian life. And the prime minister will have no control whatever over the move made by our American friends or over the consequences of it for Canadians.

Because my life is a breath and my days a passing shadow I have to realize that I have only a few breaths in which to be. I don’t have to do something dramatic or eye-catching. I have to be. It’s my “be-ing” that will prove to be my greatest influence.

In the midst of “passing shadows” I often feel I am endlessly jostled by semi-anonymous people. The woman from the Ontario Housing Development who needs a few dollars because her child is sick and what the sick child needs is just enough to put the family finances below the line this month.

The schizophrenic fellow who wants to talk to me not because he has urgent information to convey but because he’s lonely and can’t understand why people weary of and walk away from his pillar-to-post ramblings.

I start to feel that all of this is crowding out the really important work I am supposed to be about.

Then I recall the master himself on his way to the house of Jairus who was the president of the synagogue. Jesus is going to the man’s house because the man’s daughter is sick unto death. As Jesus walks resolutely through the crowds an unnamed woman reaches out and touches him. Doesn’t she know he’s hurrying to make a housecall before a young girl dies? She doesn’t know this. How could she? But surely she can see how busy he is. “Hold it!”, says Jesus to impatient disciples accompanying him, “someone has touched me. Some one person has reached out to me. Let’s stop here and deal with this.”

Then I remember the people who have delayed in order to be kind to me. I’m not talking now about the people who have assisted me dramatically on the two occasions I was injured on the street and needed an ambulance to get to the hospital. I’m talking about the unnamed people who have gladly inconvenienced themselves in order to help me, therein mirroring our Lord himself.

The clerk at the Lufthansa counter in Frankfurt, Germany when my pick-up didn’t show up and the Frankfurt telephone directory had defeated me and I couldn’t find the village of Arnoldshain in the Frankfurt directory inasmuch as I had been given the wrong spelling of “Arnoldshain”.

The “bag lady” who welcomed me to her table in the doughnut shop when I was an undercover journalist in Parkdale. Sure she was deranged. But who ever said you had to be sane in order to be helpful? This 25-year old woman was unafraid, and assumed that I, grubby as I was, was another needy person as needy as she.

Wherever I have been in life I have found no shortage of people who were kind to me. (I didn’t say “everyone”: I have met my share of curdled spirits. I said “no shortage”, a sufficient number of kind people.) They have intuited, even if they never thought about it consciously, that because life is but a breath and our days a passing shadow, the only time we have to exemplify God’s truth and mercy and faithfulness is now. This moment is unique and is fraught with eternal significance.

 

III: — “What is man?” The book of Job gives a third answer: “A maggot, a worm.” Wait a minute! I thought we were little less than God, crowned with glory and honour! And now a maggot, a worm? Actually, it is no putdown, no belittlement of us. To understand what is said we must first hear the question it answers. “How can anyone be innocent? (NEB) or clean? (RSV). Can anyone be righteous or pure in God’s sight? (NIV) Maggot! Worm!” It’s the writer’s way of reminding us that we sinners are defiled before God.

I am the last person to belittle what the psychologists tell us about the importance of positive self-image and and self-confidence and ego-strength. The person whose self-confidence has eroded utterly or who has never had any is a truly pathetic creature. Then what are we to make of “Maggot, Worm!”, especially when we all know that maggots frequent rottenness and worms frequent excrement? Is scripture simply fostering a negative self-image, destroying what little self-confidence we have, and ruining the ego-strength we’ve struggled for years to build up?

Not at all. When scripture pronounces us “Maggot, worm!”, it is reminding us that sin defiles; we are defiled before a holy God. Defilement is always loathsome. We are loathsome to God. Our sin revulses him. Specifically sin’s defilement deprives us of our access to God; sin’s defilement disqualifies our acceptance with God.

Yet the marvel of God’s grace is that as loathsome as our sin renders us to him, he has made provision for us in the cross of that Son who identifies himself with the loathsome. The paradox of grace is that the more loathsome we are to God the more he longs for us. The glory of the gospel is that while we can (and do) sin our way into God’s mercy, we can’t sin our way out of his mercy.

“Maggot, worm!” So far from being a putdown, an ego-crusher, it’s the most positive thing that can be said of humankind. It’s positive in the first place because it’s the truth about us, and no falsehood, however sweet-sounding, is ultimately helpful or positive. It’s positive in the second place in that such a pronouncement is riddled with hope: sinners can be salvaged and restored.

Years ago I came to see that the most positive thing to be said about human beings is that we are sinners. The alternatives are unrelievably negative. If instead we say that humankind’s root problem is that we are uninformed, we make ourselves the ready victims of the propagandists. If instead we say that we are socially maladjusted, we welcome the cruelty of social engineering. If instead we think our root problem to be our material deprivation, we embrace a statist economy, and statist economies, we have seen repeatedly in our century, are humanly horrific. It’s supremely positive to say we are sinners: there’s hope for us.

To be sure, it’s the creature crowned with glory and honour that is also the sinner whom the Hebrew writer pronounces “Maggot, worm!” Yet it’s we maggots who are destined to have our inalienable glory and honour displayed in full splendour.

 

IV: — Then what are we finally? Are we a combination of the three descriptions we have heard today? If so, are we all three equally? Does one predominate? Which one?

Our questions are answered as we leave off guessing about ourselves and look to Jesus Christ. In him we are created for fellowship with the One who has crowned us with glory and honour. In him we are created for fellowship with the One in whom our dignity and worth are guaranteed forever. In him we are created for fellowship with the One before whom any Christ-like deed is rendered eternally significant. In him we are created for fellowship with the One in whom our sin is pardoned even as a new heart begins to throb within us. We are created for a fellowship in which our glorious humanity is restored, even made resplendent.

Some people have affirmed this and are stepping forward in it. Others have not yet affirmed it, but rather scorn it and thrust it away. Yet the invitation and summons remain. And therefore you and I are to look upon every human creature as invited to this fellowship and appointed to be a beneficiary of it. What the future of humankind is, at least in the western world, according to Solzhenitsyn, depends on whether the Christian Church can reassert convincingly the truth of God concerning his creation.

Theology matters.

 

                                                                    Victor Shepherd
March 1998            

                       

Of Conflicts, Contending, And A Crown

Psalm 13

 

When I was a youngster I began reading the psalms simply because I had been told it would do me good to read them. I had been told that the psalms were the prayerbook of the bible, it was important that I learn to pray rightly, praying rightly would do much to render me godly, and therefore any one who aspired to godliness would steep himself in the psalms. I believed then that what I had been told was true. I believe it now. I read the psalms every day.

When I first read the psalms, however, I was disturbed: the psalmist spoke of his enemies so very often that I wondered if the fellow weren’t paranoid. What’s more, he called down God’s wrath on his enemies so often that I wondered if he weren’t vindictive. I didn’t think I was going to be rendered godly by taking to heart someone who seemed both paranoid and vindictive, and so I left off reading the psalms. I returned to them only when I was acquainted with two facts which I must impress upon you this morning. One, everywhere in the Hebrew bible where God’s judgement is invoked upon our enemies it is recognized that our enemies are ours only because they are first God’s enemies. In other words, our true enemies are not those who irk us or dislike us; the true enemies of God’s people are the enemies of God himself. They are first of all enemies of God’s truth, God’s purpose, God’s way, God’s faithfulness, patience and steadfast love. Two, everywhere in the Hebrew bible where God’s judgement is invoked upon enemies, what underlies the invocation isn’t mean-spirited vindictiveness, but rather a plea for God to vindicate his own name; a plea for God to act so as to clear his own name of the slander which God’s enemies have heaped upon it.

As soon as I had these two facts straight the psalms (and indeed the older testament as a whole) came alive for me as never before. I read it with renewed enthusiasm and relish and profit. I continue to aspire to godliness. If you are authentic in your Christian profession then you aspire to it too. Then it behooves all of us to return to the psalms again and again that they might be imprinted upon us indelibly. Today we are going to look at psalm 13.

I: — “How long, O Lord?”, the psalmist asks four times over in two verses. “How long do I have to wait? How long before you act? How long must pain and sorrow torment me?” What is the psalmist’s problem, anyway? Why is he so upset? “How long shall my enemies be exalted over me?” His problem is that his enemies, arrogant, puffed-up swaggerers, are gloating over him. They are snickering at him, bragging of the humiliation they have forced upon him, smirking at the anguish they have thrust upon him. Not only have they made him suffer, they have enjoyed making him suffer, and they are proud of it.

Remember, however, that the psalmist’s enemies are his enemies only because they are first God’s enemies. The psalmist is most upset not because he has been visited with contempt, but because God has. The psalmist’s upset merely reflects the distress which afflicts the heart of God.

Nonetheless, the psalmist himself is in pain; his enemies, while certainly God’s first, are still the psalmist’s. In fact, so upset is he that he cries, “How long?”, three more times. “How long am I to be stuck with this ache in my gut? How long will you, O Lord, hide your face from me? How long are you going to forget me?”

One reason I love the psalms is that I know the predicament of every Christian to be reflected in them. To be a Christian is to be surrounded with the enemies of our Lord himself. To be a Christian is to be immersed in conflict.

One of the saccharine myths which the church, ignorant of scripture, has foisted on Jesus, is the myth that wherever he went people became agreeable. I regularly receive denominational literature which tells me (incorrectly) that because Jesus is the reconciler, his word and deed invariably reconcile people. No! Jesus is the reconciler, and therefore his word and deed reconcile repentant sinners to God. Our Lord does not reconcile the unrepentant; his word and deed harden the unrepentant, harden them in their enmity to God. Our Lord does not, he cannot, reconcile sin and righteousness, depravity and godliness, the evil one and the Holy One of Israel. These are not reconciled; they can’t be.

Before our Lord reconciles anyone to God he is the agitator who overturns everything. He is born in Bethlehem, a nondescript suburb of Jerusalem, and King Herod slays every male infant he can find. He begins his public ministry by submitting to baptism at the hands of his cousin John, and John is executed. (This fact alone should make Joan Adams and me nervous about baptizing anyone!) He preaches in Capernaum and the people want to throw him over a cliff. He travels to Jerusalem and the ecclesiastical bureaucracy plots his demise. Finally he is betrayed by someone belonging to the most intimate circle of his followers. All of this I read in scripture. Yet the most recent document our denomination has published on scripture maintains that everywhere Jesus goes everyone becomes agreeable. In John’s gospel, several times over, after Jesus has spoken or acted, we are told, “The people were divided”. Before Jesus reconciles he fosters division, for he must first expose the enemies of God. Someone with no previous scriptural familiarity would see this upon first reading. The why can’t the church? Because a saccharine myth has obscured the truth of God.

The psalmist knows that to come to a knowledge of the truth and to be added to the people of God is to find God’s enemies our enemies. In short, to love God is to be immersed in conflict.

Several weeks ago I was asked to speak to a grade 7/8 class in an elementary school of the Toronto Board of Education. In the classroom there was a large poster (3 feet by 2 feet) immediately beside the blackboard. When students looked at the blackboard they couldn’t help seeing the poster. The poster had to do with health matters. In huge letters it urged students, “B.Y.O.C.” — and underneath the translation, “Bring Your Own Condom”. Let us make no mistake. In any communication there is, of course, the explicit message; in addition there are scores of implicit messages. Explicitly the poster merely said, “Bring Your Own Condom”. Implicitly, however, the poster poured out scores of messages concerning sexual activity, and its relation (non-relation) to human intimacy. (It is quite plain that those who approved the poster for the grade 7 classroom see no connection at all between sexual activity and human intimacy.) Another of the many implicit messages is that promiscuity is just fine; it’s only disease that’s bad. The scores of implicit messages which the poster sends out; every last one of them contradicts what Christians believe about human intimacy and the manner in which sexual activity subserves it. The gospel informs us that marriage, the fusion of husband and wife, is like a tree graft: each component of the graft grows into the other so as to form a union which is finally indescribable. Moreover, as this union develops and matures and bears fruit, the intensified union itself is the fruit which results from the tree-graft. All of this is denied by the implicit messages emanating from the poster.

I asked the teacher if the classroom where I was to speak were the regular classroom of the grade 7s and 8s or merely a classroom where my address was to be heard. She told me it was the regular classroom of the 7s and 8s. In the same instant I realized how bizarre my question was, for if it weren’t the regular classroom of the 7s and 8s it would have to be the regular classroom of a lower grade!

Now the teacher or parent who objects to the poster is going to be plunged into conflict instantly. Not to object, however, is to submerge one’s convictions. To object, on the other hand, will bring down the accusation of prudery, narrowness, naiveness, even the accusation of being quarrelsome and prickly. Nonsense. To object does not mean that we are argumentative or quarrelsome; it doesn’t mean that we are ornery and obnoxious and hard-to-get-along-with. To object, from a Christian perspective, means that we will not deny our Lord; we will not say of our only Saviour and hope, “I don’t know him now and never have”. To object, from a social perspective, means that we will not allow or encourage a tail to wag the dog. To object, from an educational perspective, means that we have identified some aspects of the offerings of the Toronto Board of Education to be delusive and dangerous. But let me say something important once more: to object would not mean that we were petty, petulant, or prickly. It would not mean that we were going out of our way stir up trouble. But it would most certainly plunge us into conflict.

Think of PATHWAY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTS, our affordable housing organization. (Marion Hartley, Gordon Hird and I are officers of it.) Last year, when we applied for a building permit (having already complied with all municipal regulations), we were besieged by neighbours who went on the warpath in an attempt at having us denied a building permit. Several of us went to an ugly meeting at Mississauga City Hall which lasted six hours. At that meeting the people whom we were trying to house, people who have the misfortune of not earning as much money as the neighbours on the warpath; these people were visited with slander and contempt. The median household income in our building (and of course a household can have — frequently does have — more than one wage-earner); the median household income is $21654 per year. As if it weren’t struggle enough to raise a family on $21600 per year, the strugglers have to be visited with slander and contempt. And so we met for six hours of nasty conflict. Should we have avoided the conflict? Ask the 35-year old blind student from Erindale College who, together with his seeing-eye dog, lives in Forest Ridge now, no longer having to sit on the bus for fours per day as he had to before. Should we have avoided the conflict? Ask the women who were originally among the nasty neighbours decrying the project and who found themselves desperate for housing eight months later when their husbands left them (and their children) for Miss Twitchy-Bottom at the office. While you are at it you should ask God himself, for in the person of his Son he has known what it is to be without accommodation. Not to have objected would not have meant that we are possessed of the virtue of agreeableness; it would have meant that we are polluted with the sin of cowardice.

I am president of The Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition and chairman of its board of directors. This organization attempts to procure housing for people who are chronically mentally ill. The Peel District Health Council has commissioned the Mental Health Housing Coalition to oversee the delivery of adequate housing for all mentally ill persons in the region of Peel. One aspect of the Housing Coalition’s mandate is dealing with community resistance. In view of the resistance which appeared last year concerning housing for the disadvantaged, can you imagine the resistance which will boil up concerning housing for the deranged? It is inconceivable that I “duck” it, for to avoid the conflict would only be to betray defenceless people, defenceless people whom God does not betray.

Most United Church people have been told from age three that Jesus is nice, and therefore all good Christian people should be nice too. When the theological betrayals first came upon our denomination a few years ago (theological betrayals, we should note, with consequences far beyond theology) our people quickly saw that to stand up for what they knew in their head and heart to be right would entail conflict. But Christians, they thought mistakenly, are conciliators, not contenders. And so across the country they largely capitulated, and one more tail — an unrighteous tail — was allowed to wag the dog. The terrible mistake by which they were victimized, the critical hinge on which everything turns in this pseudo-Christian view, is just this: Jesus isn’t nice. Our Lord is many things, but he is not nice!

The psalmist is not surrounded by enemies because he himself has gone out of his way to antagonize people, nor because he has a prickly, belligerent personality. He is surrounded by enemies inasmuch as God has drawn him into God’s own way and wisdom and truth, and once drawn into God’s life, he finds that God has enemies without number who are now his enemies too. The psalmist has learned that to remain faithful to the Holy One who cannot be deflected from his own righteousness is to be plunged into ceaseless conflict.

It’s easy to understand this with our head. But understanding it with our head makes it no easier for our heart to endure. For God’s enemies, now become ours, gloat; they taunt, they strut, they ridicule, they misrepresent, they disdain, they lie. Before long we are crying with the psalmist, “How long is this going to last? How long am I going to be in pain? How long are you going to hide your face from me? It seems that you have forgotten me!” What happens next?

II: — We do what the psalmist did. He prayed. I don’t mean that he folded his hands and said prettily, “Dear saccharine One, help me to be saccharine too!”. When I say he prayed I mean he shouted at God, “Consider me! Answer me! Aid me! But don’t leave me stumbling around punch-drunk! Don’t leave me in the dark so that my enemies taunt me all the more, ‘Not only is he a fool, he is a God-forsaken fool!'”

“Consider me! Answer me! Do something!” These are not dainty requests; these are imperatives. But isn’t it more than a little inappropriate, even more than a little dangerous, to be addressing God this way? No! Everywhere in scripture to pray is to wrestle with God, strive with God. Jacob wrestling through the night; so intense is his struggle, so concrete, so real, that he thinks he is wrestling with another human being. In the morning, exhausted, he learns he has been struggling with God. So intense was his struggle that he will hobble the rest of his life; as a sign of this, his name will be changed for the rest of his life, from Jacob (“deceiver”) to Israel (“he who struggles with God”). Hannah pleading with God so ardently, so intently, so unselfconsciously, that she is unaware of anything else, anyone else. She appears to be intoxicated. Eli, a priest, says to her, “Woman, you are drunk. Put the cork back in the bottle”. Hannah replies, “I am not drunk. I am a woman sorely troubled. I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord”.

Our Israelite foreparents no more thought prayer should be pretty than they thought Jesus to be nice. Think of our Lord in Gethsemane. The English text tells us that Jesus “knelt” in the garden. Ever after we have seen pictures of Jesus kneeling beside a flat-topped rock, hands folded serenely. The Greek text, however, uses a verb-tense that tells us Jesus fell to his knees, got up, fell down again, over and over, like someone beside himself. Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus that when he prays for them he says, “I bow my knees”. He doesn’t mean that he kneels down to pray (Jews always stand up to pray); he means that his knees give out, so intense is his intercession.

One of the words the New Testament uses to describe prayer is AGONIZESTHAI. (Obviously the English word, “agonize”, is a derivative.) AGONIZESTHAI means to contend with the utmost exertion, to strive without letup, to wrestle without reserve. This is what it is to pray.

And this is what we do when conflict abounds and enemies gloat. We cry to God, “Consider me! Answer me! Aid me! But don’t fall asleep on me or I will sleep the sleep of death while my enemies rejoice over me. For then they will think they have triumphed over you!”

III: — There remains one matter to be probed: how do people find it in them to cry to God like this? How do people find it in them to contend with enemies and keep on contending? The psalmist tells us: “I have trusted in God’s steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in God’s salvation. I will sing to him, for he has dealt bountifully with me”.

All of this the psalmist puts at the end of psalm 13 by way of explaining how he can contend with enemies and cry to God day after day. While he puts it at the end of psalm 13, logically it comes at the beginning. It comes first inasmuch as it is the ground of everything the psalmist does.

I want to tell you today that God has dealt bountifully with me. After all, I am a sinner who merits nothing from God, nothing, that is, apart from condemnation. Yet in his Son God has made provision for me and by his Spirit he has made that provision mine. If this afternoon the most hideous thing befalls me it will still be the case that God has dealt bountifully with me. Of his incomprehensible mercy he has quickened in me that faith by which I am bound to him eternally. Then how could I ever say, regardless of what befalls me, that he has dealt miserably with me? How could I ever say that I have been shortchanged? People are shortchanged — anywhere in life — when they don’t get what they feel they are entitled to. But such is God’s steadfast love for me that he has poured out on me everything I don’t deserve (that salvation in which I rejoice) while sparing me everything that I do. Then how could I ever capitulate in those conflicts which are his first? Since he has dealt so bountifully with me as to save me, I owe him everything. Owing him everything, I owe him that faithfulness which but dimly reflects his faithfulness to me.

As surely as God has dealt bountifully with us he will continue to deal bountifully with us. Therefore we shall continue to trust in his steadfast love and rejoice in his salvation. Which is to say, we know that as often as our enemies harass us and we are driven to cry to God, he will hear us when we shout, “How long?” More than this, God will hasten the day when, in the words of psalm 110, God makes his enemies his footstool. On that day his enemies will vanish for ever, and therefore ours as well. Having trusted in his steadfast love, and rejoicing in his salvation, we shall glorify him for ever and ever.

The apostle James tells us that to remain faithful in the midst of conflict is to be honoured with that crown which God has promised to all who love him.

 

                                                                        Victor A. Shepherd

June, 1992

 

 

A People After God’s Heart

PSALM 15

An Exposition

 

The psalms were recited in private devotion in Israelite homes, in public worship in the sanctuary, and on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In any of these contexts they were part of a liturgy where the worshipper(s) asked a question and the priest (or head of the household), speaking for God, declared the answer.

E.g., Worshipper: “O Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent?”

Priest: “He who walks blamelessly.”

 

Verse 1 — TENT: — brings two matters to mind

formal worship (emphasised by “thy holy hill”)

The tent was the goatskin “tabernacle” that housed such items of worship as the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments while Israel travelled through the wilderness. The Ten Commandments (or Ten Words) structured the obedience of the Israelite people especially in adverse or awkward circumstances like the wilderness or, centuries later, the exile. (Finding ourselves in any of the many “wildernesses” that settle upon us is never an excuse for our disobedience, even though we like to tell ourselves that it is.)

According to Exodus 29:42 worshippers gathered in the “tent of meeting” where a year-old lamb was offered up morning and evening.

The psalm begins by asking who of the motley crowd of former slaves will be allowed in the tent of worship, the tent being the visible symbol of God’s presence.

simple family life (emphasised by “dwell”)

The psalms frequently mingle these two ideas, as here the psalmist speaks of the believer as an eager family member “coming home”. (e.g., Ps. 23:6 — “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”)

At the same time, since God is holy and we are defiled, we may not presume upon “coming home.” Since “evil may not dwell with Thee” (Ps. 5:4), the question, “Who shall sojourn?”, is entirely appropriate. Not anyone at all may dwell with God, but rather those whom the psalmist describes in the balances of psalm 15.

Once more the psalmist asks the same question: Who will be “at home” on God’s “holy hill”?

“Holy hill” = “Mount Zion” = “City of David”: — an area of old Jerusalem that David proclaimed as the site of worship. (Note how already, in two lines only, the psalm gathers up motifs from Israel’s wilderness wanderings prior to David’s reign and from the fixity of that reign: the “holy hill” was as fixed as the “tent” was mobile. God’s people are both forever “on the move” and forever “at home” with him. Life under him is always a venture; we can’t “hunker down” and “turtle” ourselves. At the same time we need seek no other home. God accompanies us in and even leads us into assorted wildernesses in life even as he “establishes” us so that we “dwell” with him. In this context we should recall our Lord’s use of “dwell”, as in John 15:4, where we “abide” in him and he in us. Menein, the common Greek word for “dwell” or “abide”, literally means to stay in one place. We are “fixed” in Christ even as he forever sends out and accompanies us on the “way.”

 

 

A DESCRIPTION OF GOD’S PEOPLE

Verse 2 — OUR CHARACTER: SOUND

We are to “walk blamelessly.”

“Walk” is the commonest biblical metaphor for discipleship, obedience.

We are to walk “blamelessly (Hebrew: tamin) not faultlessly or flawlessly. There is no injunction here to become perfectionistic neurotics. In this regard we should recall Christ’s command in Matthew 5:48, where his people are enjoined to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect. The context is the following: Just as God sends rain on the just and unjust alike, without discrimination and regardless of merit, in the same way Christ’s people are to be generous with others, without discrimination and regardless of merit. In other words to walk “blamelessly” is to aspire after consistency. (The shape of the believer’s life is what “sanctification” denotes, and John Calvin (who engendered the Protestant Reformation outside German-speaking lands) reminds us that “Sanctification consists more in aspiration than in achievement.”)

There are three meanings to tamin:

sound: i.e., not hollow or merely apparent or phoney or unreliable. God’s claim upon us, together with our response, renders us people of substance.

whole: we grasp God’s claim in its totality, its comprehensiveness, as it pertains to every aspect of our existence.

wholehearted: we are enthused about our discipleship. In the words of Jesus, having put our hand to the plough we don’t look back, don’t even want to look back. Paul tells the Christians in Corinth that they are not merely to be givers, but cheerful givers.

We are to do what is “right”.

“Right” pertains to “righteous(ness)”, a two-fold meaning in scripture:

right(ed) relationship to God, born of faith

right conduct arising from this righted relationship, born of obedience.

Scripture nowhere suggests we are to pursue or have the right to pursue happiness or self-fulfilment. These are by-products of the one right and duty we have: to glorify God. “None but the holy are finally happy.” (the tireless reiteration of John Wesley — who found it in the Puritans)

 

Verse 2b-3 — OUR SPEECH: RESTRAINED

The Hebrew word for “slander” has the force of deliberately sniffing and snooping to ferret out what will then be spread around.

See Leviticus 19:16: — “You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people”

1 Timothy 5:13: — younger widows should remarry and forestall “coffee-klatsch” gossiping.

While modernity undervalues sins of the tongue, it should be remembered that the Decalogue views slander as seriously as it views murder and adultery. James 3 reminds us that the tongue is set on fire from hell and in turn sets on fire “the whole cycle of nature.” Jesus insists that on the day of judgement we shall be judged for every careless word that we’ve spoken. Matt. 12:37)

See Ephesians 4:29: speech is to “fit the occasion” and “impart grace to those who hear.”

Colossians 4:6: speech is to be “gracious” and “seasoned with salt.” (Everywhere in scripture salt is a sign of the covenant. In other words, our speech is to attest the promises whereby God has pledged himself to us and we have pledged ourselves to him.

We are to “speak truth from the heart”; i.e., speak so as to be transparent, edifying and appropriate. To “take up a reproach” is (i) to muckrake, (ii) to make casual slurs that aren’t slanderous, strictly speaking, since they aren’t untrue, but are unnecessary and deleterious.

 

Verse 4 — OUR ALLEGIANCE: UNMISTAKABLE

“in whose eyes a reprobate (=sinner) is despised.” God’s people must loathe sin. Then why doesn’t the psalmist say, “in whose eyes sin is despised”? — because sin as such doesn’t exist: sin has no existence apart from sinners. Only sinners can be “despised”. While we commonly say that Christians are to hate sin but love sinners, our saying this is illogical: we can’t “hate sin”; we can only hate sinners. God hates sinners and loves them at the same time. However, his love transcends his hate; “mercy triumphs over judgement.” (James 2:13) His love outstrips his hate.

When the psalmist writes “in whose eyes a reprobate is despised” he’s not suggesting that we fancy ourselves self-righteously superior, but rather that our loyalty is evident: we don’t secretly admire or covet what is despicable.

“who honours those who fear the Lord.” One sign of our faith is that we esteem others who fear God. “Fear of God” includes trust, love, obedience, awe, and plain, simple fear. “Fear of God” sums up the whole of biblical faith. (Martin Buber) When the women beheld the empty tomb on Easter morning, they were possessed of “fear and great joy.” When the disciples found themselves amidst the storm now stilled, they were “filled with awe”, says the RSV English text; the Greek text says more simply, “They feared a great fear.” In scripture we either fear God and nothing else, or we don’t fear God and therefore fear everything else. See Isaiah 8:12-13: “Do not fear what they fear [i.e., others]; But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy, and him you shall fear.” The believer’s fear of God grounds the command, “You shall not be afraid of the face of man.” (Deut. 1:7)

 

 

Verse 4C-5 — OUR DEALINGS: HONOURABLE

[1] we “swear to our own hurt”; i.e., we keep our word even if it costs us to keep it. (Paul — “Am I like a worldly man, ready to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at once?” 2Cor. 1:17) We swear to our own hurt, rather than to another’s, unlike Herod concerning John the Baptist, when Herod swore to give his daughter anything she asked for and she, prompted by her mother (angry at John’s denunciation of her sin) urged the daughter to ask for John’s head.

[2] We don’t “put out our money at interest.” Scripture doesn’t forbid “renting out” one’s money. (See Christ’s parable of the talents, Matt. 25, where he faults the man who stuck his money in the ground instead of “putting it out at interest.”) Scripture recognises that the lender has a right to share in the profit that the borrower makes with the lender’s money. At the time of the Reformation it was recognised that interest is rent paid on money, and everyone admits the legitimacy of renting others’ goods.

 

However, scripture forbids charging interest on money borrowed for life’s necessities. We are never to exploit financially someone else’s destitution.

[3] We don’t “take a bribe against the innocent.” We can’t be paid off to subvert justice.

 

 Verse 5c — OUR PLACE: ASSURED

We shall “never be moved.” In the psalms the profoundest threat of insecurity is often expressed by “moved.” To be “moveable” is to be vulnerable, defenceless, finally insecure. We counter the threat of insecurity not by siding with the strong but by steadfastly trusting God. (“Because the Lord is at my right hand I shall not be moved.” Ps. 16:8)

The force of the last line of Psalm 15 is, “such a person shall not be ‘moved’, ever.” Instead we shall be preserved eternally by God, for God, with God.

 

Victor Shepherd
October, 1999

Fullness of Joy . . . Pleasures for Evermore

Psalm 16

 

The English poet Charles Swinburne insisted that the icy breath of Jesus has put a chill on the world. He insisted that Christ “puts a damper” on life; that our Lord is like a soggy, foul-smelling blanket that deprives people of brightness, joy, laughter; deprives people not only of effervescent mood but even of the pleasures of the senses. Wherever Jesus Christ is spoken of, mildew is about to blight the human spirit.

Swinburne isn’t the only person to have thought this. We’ve all heard our Lord’s name hissed derisively as someone, thinking herself sophisticated, sneered at “that creeping Jesus.” Apparently there is thought to be something creepy about him: oily, cold, grey, a killjoy both uninvited and uninviting, better left alone. And of course anyone who deems Jesus to be this deems us, his followers, to be no better.

Think about the similar associations surrounding the word “Puritan.” “Puritan” is a great word in the English vocabulary, as far as I’m concerned, just because the Puritans made a great contribution to the public good everywhere in the English-speaking world. The Puritans, more than any other group, were responsible for expanding if not providing virtually all the democratic institutions we enjoy, as well as for preserving the intellectual riches we cherish. Always remember that when the Royal Academy of Science was formed in the 17th century, nearly all its charter members — leading scientists of the day — were Puritan clergy. And always remember that when the Puritans were ascendant in Britain and in North America their rate of literacy was vastly higher than that of their detractors (especially among Puritan women). And never forget that when the Jewish people had been expelled from Britain in the 13th century it was the Puritans who welcomed then back and allowed them synagogue, school and cemetery. The Puritans were sober and serious, of course, yet also life-embracing, sport-loving, and sex-affirming. Still, for reasons I can’t fathom, the word “Puritan” is said to call to mind someone who fears that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun.

It appears that many people are held off the Christian life by their suspicion that intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ entails joylessness. For years C.S. Lewis thought this. A brilliant scholar trained in philosophy and English literature, Lewis feared that immersion in God would corrode the intellectual and cultural glories he had come to relish.

I’m convinced that many people fear the same fear. While their life might not be exactly rollicking at this moment, in fact while it may be much less joyful than they’d like, they fear that to become serious about the gospel and him whose gospel it is would evaporate whatever joy, however little, they have right now.

How different is the psalmist’s conviction born of his experience: “In God’s presence there is fullness of joy; in God’s right hand are pleasures for evermore.” Before we go any farther we must be sure to understand the Hebrew idiom. God’s presence, for the Hebrew mind, is God’s face. “In God’s presence” means “as we behold God’s face inasmuch as we’ve turned to face him and glow ourselves as his smile bathes us. “Fullness of joy” is a Hebrew way of saying “wholly satisfying.” God’s presence, God’s face, leaves us so thoroughly satisfied as to find us looking nowhere else for a supplement. “In God’s right hand” (note “in”, not “at”; “in” God’s right hand); God’s right hand is very different from his left hand. God’s left hand is the hand of judgement; his right hand, the hand with which he dispenses blessing, riches, delights, priceless treasure, even incomprehensible ecstasy. And who is the person who finds God’s face wholly satisfying and his right hand quick to release blessing of endless variety upon us? The psalmist tells us it’s the person who cries to God, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you”, the person who exults, “I keep the Lord always before me.” (Ps. 16:2,8) In God’s presence there are pleasures that can’t be counted, can’t be duplicated, can’t be found anywhere else in anyone else.

Does it strike you as exaggerated and therefore unrealistic? I think it’s entirely realistic just because it deals with the ultimately real, God.

I: — Let’s begin with the simple joy of life in God. In his most famous parable, that of the lost son, Jesus describes a fellow who sashays into an unsatisfying, unfruitful existence, humiliating even and degrading, because in his ingratitude and folly he can’t stand his father and can’t stand living with him. Thinking life will be more joyful without his father, he leaves him, only to discover that there was vastly more joy in his father’s home and his father’s presence. He “comes to his senses”, goes home, and is welcomed without hesitation, reservation or qualification. The last line in the story is, “And they began to make merry.”

Jesus speaks of a shepherd who finds one lost sheep (never mind that he already had ninety-nine), and goes home rejoicing. Concerning anyone who makes life’s biggest “U-turn” (the bible calls it repentance) and tastes the delights of living in the father’s house, Jesus says, “There is joy in heaven.” Yes, there is joy in heaven. And in the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry there was also joy on earth. Over and over throughout the written gospels we find Jesus partying. He’s forever eating and drinking in celebration of the lost found, the alienated reconciled, the guilty pardoned, the least elevated to honour, the lonely cherished and embraced. So what if he’s faulted for it. The only people who fault him for it are those who are blind to the Kingdom and therefore can’t see the point of the party. Those who can, however, party with the Master as often as they have opportunity.

Augustine wrote, “We are made for God. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him.” Since we are made for him then of course it’s only in him that we shall be profoundly contented and shall know a joy, a delight, available nowhere else. In his presence we are going to be satisfied, and in his right hand we are going to find blessings without number.

Our society, however, can’t see it. Our society has no difficulty recognizing the distress of a fish out of water. The fish gasps, twitches, convulses. As soon as it’s put back into the water it swims away without hint of distress. Our society gets the point where fish are concerned, but doesn’t get the point where humans are concerned; namely, God’s presence, his “face”, is the sphere, the environment for which we were made and apart from which we are always going to be distressed.

Ever since Canadian Confederation (1867) each generation of Canadians has been twice as wealthy (on average) as the preceding generation. I am twice as wealthy as my parents, four times as wealthy as my grandparents, and so on. In other words, people today have unprecedented disposable income. What do they spend it on? They spend it on pleasures, all manner of pleasures, hoping that one of the assorted pleasures they try will issue in that joy too deep to be described that everyone craves, or hoping that all their assorted pleasures together will yield this. But they fail to understand something crucial: to pursue pleasure is always to be deprived of it. To look for it is always to overlook it. To set out to get it is to think that joy is “gettable”, something, some thing that can be acquired, when all the while joy is to be found in God alone and isn’t detachable from him. Joy characterizes God’s own inner life: he profoundly delights in himself. As we are admitted, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, to the inner life of God we are admitted to the joy wherewith he rejoices internally, eternally. Joy, then, is found in intimacy with a person; it is never “gotten” as if it were a thing detachable from a person.

Since it is only as we hunger for the person of God that we find his joy overtaking us, the profoundest joy that we crave always comes upon us as surprise. C.S. Lewis, mentioned earlier in the sermon, was an able philosophical thinker. In fact it was his rigorous philosophical thought that moved him from strident atheism to the threshold of intellectually robust faith. Yet when Lewis came to write his autobiography its title wasn’t “How Philosophy Helped Men Believe” but rather “Surprised by Joy.”

II: — Once we come to know that God himself is the wellspring of joy we find ourselves free to rejoice in the joys of God’s creation. Once again, however, we must understand that God wants us to enjoy his creation without confusing it with him, its Creator. We are to rejoice in creaturely joys without making them a substitute for God himself and his joy. The psalmist, in Psalm 16, understands this when he writes, “Those who choose another god, another deity, multiply their sorrows.” It is only as we “choose” him who truly is God that we are then free to enjoy most profoundly the blessings of his good creation.

[1] Think about marriage. God intends marriage to be a union so intimate that the hearts of two people interpenetrate each other in such a way that one person’s life henceforth includes the other person. Marriage, in other words, God intends to be the most intimate and the most profound of human relationships. (And it’s for this reason, by the way, that marriage everywhere in scripture is the commonest metaphor for our life in God.)

But of course God’s intention for marriage is to be realized in God; his intention is honoured most profoundly when we understand that marriage is a triangle: not the illicit triangle of the soap opera, but a triangle whose apex is God and whose base is husband and wife. Husband and wife move toward each other as both of them are oriented to the apex. Husband and wife see each other most truly not by staring at each other but rather by looking to their Lord and seeing their mate in him.

Where this doesn’t occur husband and wife see each other by staring at each other. Now they live in a universe of two people, and they quickly learn it’s a small universe. They have effectively made an idol of each other (they have “chosen another deity”, in the words of Psalm 16), and they will shortly learn that all idols have clay feet. They expect now that their marriage-partner is going to provide what no human being should be asked to provide. No one human being can provide that satisfaction which God alone intends us to find in him. To expect one’s partner to do this is to burden the marriage intolerably.

A young husband says of his wife, “She is simply divine.” Two years later he sighs, “Well, I suppose she’s only human.” Later still, “I feel I can’t live without her yet I can’t seem to live with her.” Finally, “We have discovered that we are incompatible.”

His wife isn’t divine, never was, never will be. Certainly she is meant to satisfy him humanly in the most intimate human relationship ordained by God; but she was never meant to satisfy him with that joy which can only be a surprise just because it’s a by-product of our immersion in God himself.

To expect our marriage partner to do what only God can do is to choose another deity and therein multiply our sorrows. Yet in the right hand of God there are pleasures beyond telling just because in his presence, beneath his smile, there is a satisfaction that is finally both undeniable and indescribable.

[2] Think about recreation. God has created us with bodies. There is no human being who doesn’t have a body. Our body isn’t something we drag around grudgingly but rather something we should positively delight in. People who rediscover their bodily nature delight in it. Look at the proliferation of health clubs, squash courts, swimming pools and gymnasia.

I relish bodily existence as much as anyone. Because I was a boxer please don’t regard me as a troglodyte who enjoyed pain, either inflicting pain or having it inflicted. What I relished about boxing was the training: I never had to be cajoled into the gymnasium. Today no one has to browbeat me to get on my bicycle. I think I am as body-affirming as anyone.

At the same time, there is in our society a cult of the body, a deification of the body and particularly of body image. To make an idol of body image is to choose another deity and therein to multiply sorrow, if only the ever-increasing sorrow and frustration of watching one’s body shape change irretrievably with age.

And then there are those who attribute vast metaphysical significance to bodily activity. Yoga ceases to be exercise only and instead becomes the key that unlocks the universe or at least allows someone to intuit the innermost realities of the universe. Six months later she sadly concludes that while yoga fosters flexibility and reduces tension, it doesn’t satisfy humankind’s nameless longing, nameless discontent, nameless weariness.

A few months ago a Vancouver magazine asked me if it could reproduce my article on Martin Niemoeller, the Lutheran pastor who defied Hitler and was imprisoned from 1937 to 1945, and was released by American forces only three days before his scheduled execution at the hands of the S.S. I permitted the magazine to reproduce my article, with the result that I now receive the magazine. There is much in it that I support. There is much, however, that wants to coddle this aspect of our embodiedness and that aspect of it, all with a view to spiritual transformation. One source of such transformation is balneotherapy, balneotherapy being the human transformation that arises from bathing in salts, steam, seaweed, or infrared saunas. Another source of transformation arising from attention to the body is sound therapy, touch therapy, vitamin therapy, herbal consultation, electromagnetism, enemas. I am not saying that all of these ways of attending to the body are pointless. I am saying, however, that they reflect an obsession with the body that aims at furnishing the joy God intends us to find in our embodiedness but will never furnish just because they seek it from the wrong source.

Why don’t we look instead to our Maker, admit he has seen fit to create us embodied, thank him for the manner of our existence, and delight in it? This will find us enjoying many of the pleasures in his right hand whereas making an idol of the body (choosing another deity) will find us pursuing what always escapes us.

[3] Lastly let’s consider the delight we find in culture: art, music, poetry, drama, fiction. You are as fond of all this as I. The level of cultural appreciation is very high in this congregation, and for this I am glad, since God ordains us to receive everything from his hand with thanksgiving. There is nothing in his creation that we are to scorn.

Let me say unambiguously that I have profited immensely and continue to profit from my exposure to fiction, poetry, biography, music, fine art, the theatre, dance, history. I scorn none of it, as I’m sure you scorn none of it. But of course along with the riches of God’s creation that we’d never think of scorning, God insists that we not scorn him. And he ordains that we not scorn him just because he is God and is to be acknowledged for who he is; in addition he knows that while cultural riches are rich indeed, they will never give us what he alone can. If ever we think they can, then we lose twice over: we “lose” inasmuch as we have disregarded the One who is our life, our good, our ultimate blessing. We “lose” a second time in that our unrealistic expectations leave us expecting from culture what it can’t deliver, with the result that we forego what it can.

The fact that culture can’t substitute for him who is our Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer is brought home most forcefully to us when we feel that a wall has collapsed on us, when we inquire of the physician concerning a loved one and he merely shakes his head, when any of life’s endless abysses opens up at our feet and we can scarcely believe — but also cannot not believe — that it’s happening to us. At this moment we don’t play our favourite soprano trilling La Boheme or read our favourite novel. John Henry Cardinal Newman, himself a master of English prose, remarked, “There has been a great deal of nonsense talked about the consolation of literature.”

Heinrich Heine, the great German poet, had a sophisticated appreciation of sculpture. Following a tragedy in his family he took a trip, hoping to distract himself, and found himself before the beautiful form of the Venus de Milo. Gazing at it he cried, “It’s beautiful, but it has no arms.” At such times we must rather cling to the truth that has sustained God’s people for three millennia: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deut. 33:27)

Because God is good he has given us all things richly to enjoy. “Everything created by God is good,” says the apostle Paul, “and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” (1st Tim. 4:4) Yet our great God and Saviour forever remains the good, and it is to him that we must cling at all times and in all circumstances.

Charles Swinburne, the English poet was wrong. Jesus Christ isn’t a wet blanket who stifles life’s joys. On the contrary, to encounter our Lord is to know the God in whose presence there is fullness of joy and in whose right are pleasures for evermore. It’s no wonder Paul exults, “Because you are Christ’s, everything is yours as well.” (1st Cor. 3:23)

 

                                                                                           Victor Shepherd   

June 2002

 

 

Glory, Grace, Gratitude

Psalm 29:9

 

“…and in God’s temple all cry ‘Glory!'” (Ps. 29:9)

I was only eight years old when Elizabeth II was crowned. My family didn’t own a television set, and so I was sent to a neighbour’s to watch the coronation. Some parts of the service (such as the archbishop’s droning) didn’t excite me. But there was one part that did: the appearance and stately movement of Elizabeth herself. While I didn’t have, as an eight year old, the vocabulary I have now to describe the event, I can none the less recall so very clearly the impression that Elizabeth made on me. She exuded substance; there was a gravity about her, a weightiness, a force, an authority — substance. Her appearance reflected all of this, for her appearance radiated splendour, magnificence, stateliness, honour. The authority and substance that she was herself; the splendour and honour that she radiated: these together elicited from her subjects obeisance, homage, respect, even awe. The event of Elizabeth’s coming forth as sovereign was simply glorious.

The sovereign God is eversomuch more glorious. The Hebrew word for glory is kabod. Kabod means literally “weightiness” or “substance.” There is in God a weightiness, a density, a solidity, an opacity — substance — as there is nowhere else. Because God is all this, his appearance, his splendour, is weighty too. His splendour is awesome; his appearance is startling. He surges over men and women and weighs on them until they are breathless even as his splendour startles them speechless. As speech begins to return to them they can only stammer at first, then blurt as they grope for words, then speak normally as they recover from their visitation of glory.

God’s glory is God’s presence apprehended. But God’s presence is the presence of him who is more solid than anything we can imagine. God’s presence is the presence of an ever-so-dense substance whose authority is unarguable. Such a presence apprehended has to leave us awed. We can only fall on our face and render him obeisance, homage, honour, the only response the glory-visited will ever render.

 

I: — Moses cries to God, “Show me your glory!”(Ex. 33:7-23) God replies, “I will make all my goodness pass before you; I will proclaim my name before you.” Actually the two assertions are but one, for God’s name is his nature, and God’s nature is his goodness. “I will make all my goodness pass before you”; “I will proclaim my name before you”: these are one and the same, spoken twice as promise and guarantee of the one glory of God soon to be apprehended. Moses has to go to a cleft in the rock and have the rock prop him up on both sides. For in the moment that God’s glory passes by, Moses’s knees will flop like a rag doll’s; he’ll stagger like a man terribly drunk; he’ll fold up like a boxer who has taken a terrific punch to the solar plexus. Moses goes to the cleft of the rock, supported on either side as the glory of God surges over him. Is it an experience just for the sake of an experience? Is it pointless sensationalism? Is it merely the equivalent of a hallucinogenic trip? Never. In the wake of God’s glory, his presence apprehended, God renews his promise to an ungrateful and wayward Israel; God renders Moses his spokesperson; through Moses God insists that Israel is to make no compromise with paganism; any suggestion of idolatry should find the people horrified; every vestige of adoration given anywhere but to him is to be shunned. For God’s glory, unmistakable, is also undeniable.

Five hundred years later the people of Israel, having ignored Moses as much as they heeded him, are in exile. Jerusalem, their prized city, is in ruins. Having failed to repudiate idolatry in any form at any time, they are now stuck in Babylon, living among people who are nothing but idolatrous all the time. (Let me assure you, parenthetically, of a truth that courses through scripture: God unfailingly punishes sin by means of more sin. The worst consequence of sin is always more sin — by God’s ordination.) The people are crushed on account of their undeniable guilt, and despairing on account of their unrelieved bleakness. Then God’s glory overtakes Ezekiel. Ezekiel falls on his face. God says to him, “Stand up, and I will speak with you.”(Ez. 1:28) Says God, “I am sending you to an impudent and stubborn people. Still, you must speak to them the word that I give you. And whether they hear or refuse to hear, they will know that there has been a prophet among them.”(Ez. 2:4) Ezekiel speaks the word he’s been given. It cuts like a knife. Like a knife? Like a scalpel, for this word performs surgery, a heart transplant, to be exact. Those who hear and heed the prophet’s word will have their old heart of stone — hard, lifeless, inert — removed; they’ll be given a new heart of flesh, a heart that pulsates with the rhythm of God’s own heart.

Seven hundred years later still (1200 years after Moses) some shepherds are guarding sheep on a hillside when the glory of God prostrates them. Once again the unspeakable weight of God, apprehended in his splendour, has overwhelmed men who couldn’t find a rock-cleft to prop them up. They think themselves undone when they are told, “To you, sinners, a Saviour is born this day; a great joy for all people everywhere.” And in that moment it seemed that the heavens shouted, “Glory to God in the highest, and shalom among men on earth.”(Luke 2:11)

No doubt someone here today wants to complain that I’ve spoken only of episodic incursions of God’s glory visited among a handful of individuals in unusual circumstances. But where are we twentieth century types? After all, we are ordinary people in ordinary circumstances. So where are we in all this? We are precisely where the apostle John was when he exclaimed, “The Word of God became flesh and camped among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, the glory of Father and Son alike.”(John 1:14) We — you and I — have beheld his glory, or at least we should have!

 

II: — We who have beheld God’s glory in the lingering of Jesus Christ among us; who are we? We are creatures of God, to be sure; we are beloved of God, unquestionably. Still, as God’s glory engulfs us we are exposed as inglorious ourselves. God’s glory is substance; this substance exposes our unsubstantiality, our froth and frivolity, triflers and trivializers that we are. God’s glory is splendour; his splendour shows up our sordidness. God’s glory is weightiness; his denseness highlights our hollowness. God’s glory is his presence; his presence renders conspicuous our absence. Absence? Of course. Compared to the concreteness of God’s person, we are non-persons, nonentities who spout nonsense and stupidly think it to be profound.

Since God is holy and we are defiled; since God’s holiness cannot withstand even a hint of defilement, our reaction can only be that of Isaiah in the temple the day he “saw the Lord high and lifted up”, the day God’s splendour filled the temple. Isaiah could only cry, “Woe is me, for I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”(Is. 6:1-8)

Peter and his friends have fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus steals upon them and tells them to go deeper; they must forget about splashing about in the shallows and go deeper. Peter tells Jesus he thinks the whole exercise is pointless, but out of sheer obedience, rote obedience, he’ll do what he’s told. Upon seeing the huge catch of fish Peter falls to his knees and begs Jesus to leave, crying, “Go away, for I am a sinful man.”(Luke 5:8)

John is at worship, one Sunday morning, when the Lord he longs to apprehend (isn’t this why all of us are at worship this morning?) gloriously appears before him. When John has recovered and is able to write, albeit shakily, he scribbles, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead.”(Rev. 1:17)

We must notice that Isaiah, in his aweful moment, didn’t try to excuse himself or excuse his people or negotiate with God. Instead of “Don’t be touchy now, we can work something out together”, Isaiah croaked, “I’m finished.” And the result? He wasn’t finished; he was purified with the living coal from the altar; his sin was forgiven, and he was commissioned God’s messenger to his people.

We must notice that Peter, in his aweful moment, didn’t say to Jesus, “So I was wrong about how deep to fish; I’ve been wrong before; let’s not sweat it.” Instead he pleaded with Jesus to leave, lest Christ’s presence intensify his shame. And the result? Peter is told that he will henceforth “catch” men and women for the kingdom; he will become the spokesperson for the twelve; and he will be recognized as the leader of all Christ’s people in Jerusalem.

We must notice that John, in his aweful moment, didn’t say, “At last the church service started to liven up!” Instead he could only wait until his strength returned. And the result? He penned that book — Revelation — which rings with the victory of Jesus Christ on every page.

The point I am making in all this is surely obvious: when God’s glory surges over us, when his glory meets our sin, his glory always takes the form of grace. Grace is God’s love and mercy declaring guilty people pardoned. Grace is God’s love and mercy setting crumbled people back on their feet. Grace is God’s love and mercy restoring humiliated people to dignity. Grace is God’s love and mercy granting dead people life.

None of this should surprise us. After all, Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that it was God’s glory that raised Jesus from the dead and restored him to life.(Rom. 6:4) Then why not us? And in fact Paul reminds the Christians in Corinth that God’s glory is changing them day-by-day into the likeness of Christ himself.(2 Cor. 3:18) God’s grace is God’s glory meeting our sin. And God’s glory, having brought our Lord to life, is enlivening us day-by-day as we are vivified according to our Lord’s likeness.

 

III: — Since this is indubitably the case, there is only one response that graced people like us, glorified people like us, can make. Our one response is gratitude. Our gratitude will take many forms: public worship, private devotion, secret resolve in the face of secret temptation, open support for the openly exploited, anonymous assistance on behalf of the defenceless, angry denunciation of the indefensible. Whatever form our gratitude takes, it will always be the gratitude of our heart poured out upon our Lord for grace that saved us as God’s glory met our sin.

Other people don’t understand any of this? So what! Their incomprehension is their problem. They misunderstand everything we do and misjudge our motive for doing it? ‘Twas ever thus, as we see from the story of the woman who poured her perfume on the feet of Jesus, blubbered on them and wiped feet and tears with her hair.(Luke 7:36-52) The man in whose house Jesus was a guest assumed that because this woman had a reputation as negative as it was notorious, she was up to no good. Why, anyone could see the eroticism in her seductive act! Let that man with shriveled heart and constipated affection; let him assume whatever he wants. Jesus knew that the woman couldn’t find words for a gratitude so great that greater alone was the grace that had quickened it.

For years now I have been moved as often as I have read the Heidelberg Catechism, written in 1563. The Heidelberg Catechism is the “crown jewel” of the shorter Reformation writings. I have referred to it in sermons so often that many of you can recite question and answer #1. Q#1: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” A#1: “My only comfort, in life and in death, is that I belong, body and soul, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.” (There’s more to A#1, but we’ve said enough for now.) What about Q&A#2? Q#2: “How many things do you need to know in order that you may live and die in this comfort and blessing?” A#2: “Three things I need to know. First, how great my sin and misery is. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sin and misery. Third, how I am to be grateful to God for such redemption.” Our apprehension of God’s glory acquainted us with our sin and misery. Our apprehension of God’s glory, now dwelling among us in Jesus Christ his Son, acquainted us with our redemption. Our apprehension of God’s glory, that which raised our Lord from the dead, is similarly at work in us changing us into his likeness; this has acquainted us with the fittingness of gratitude. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude; it’s all gratitude; the whole of the Christian life is gratitude. And in fact the Heidelberg Catechism gathers up the whole of the Christian life (Questions and Answers 86 through 129) under the heading, Gratitude. Question #86 begins the section on discipleship, and Answer #86 tells us that “with our whole life…we are to show ourselves thankful to God for his goodness.”

The people who inhaled the Heidelberg Catechism and exhaled it with every breath; they exhaled it as well with their last breath. It was written in 1563. A few years earlier the emperor, Charles V, had trampled on the Reformation and its people in eastern Germany. Those who lived in western Germany, Heidelberg, knew what was coming. Nine years later, in 1572, the St.Bartholomew’s Day massacre would explode, as 30,000 French citizens of gospel conviction were put to the sword (among them Admiral de Coligny, the highest-ranking officer in the French navy.) They died repeating to themselves, “My only comfort in life and in death…. And what do I need to know to die in this comfort and blessing? I need to know, finally, how I am to be grateful to God for my redemption. Gratitude means I shall die before I ever deny my Lord.”

What does gratitude mean for you and me today? It means eversomuch everywhere in life. In view of the special service today (Stewardship Sunday) we have to understand that it means something specific in one area of life; it means something specific with respect to our money. Our stewardship of our money has to express the truth that “with our whole life we…show ourselves thankful to God for his goodness to us.”

Can money express our whole life? How does money express something crucial about our whole life? We have to understand what God does characteristically. Characteristically God frees. From the day of Red Sea and Sinai to the day of cross and resurrection to the coming day of the kingdom’s public manifestation, God has been about one thing: freeing us. He frees us from every bondage that bespeaks our bondage to sin. Then how free are we? Our freedom with respect to money illustrates more than we think about how free we are (or aren’t) anywhere in life.

Think for a minute about the immense power money has. We all know that money talks, and we don’t hesitate to say that it talks. Money also makes people fall silent. If money both talks and silences then money is exceedingly powerful. And so it is, for we know that money bribes, money coerces, money renders the most loyal people treacherous, money renders the strongest-willed suggestible, money punishes, money perverts, money seduces. So powerful is money that there’s nothing money can’t do. Then does it have us in its might grasp? Are we Christians tyrannized by it too? We like to say we are free with respect to money, but nobody believes us. Nobody believes us for one reason: the only freedom there is with respect to money is the freedom to give it away. All other talk about freedom with respect to money is the rationalizing of the self-deluded, for the only freedom with respect to money is the freedom to give it away.

God’s glory is God’s presence apprehended. To be acquainted with his glory is to have had his glory slay us and resurrect us, condemn us and pardon us, discard us and conscript us, kill us and comfort us. To be acquainted with his glory is to know that we are being changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ as we are freed day-by-day from bondages known and unknown. Freed? Are we really being freed? Everywhere in life? Even with respect to our money? How do we know? Who would ever believe us? The answer to the last six questions is declared by one truth: the only freedom we have with respect to money is the freedom to give it away.

For a long time now I have known that we aren’t going to give it away until we are genuinely freed, and we aren’t going to be freed until we are constrained to cry with the psalmist, “And in God’s temple — in church, Sunday-by-Sunday in church — all cry, ‘Glory!

 

                                                                         Victor Shepherd    

October 1997

 

My Times are in Your Hands

Psalm 31:15        1st Timothy 1:16         John 11:25

 

I enjoy few spectacles more than I enjoy a circus.    The last item in any circus happens to be my favourite; namely, the trapeze. Even if some of the items in the circus program are slightly “corny”, I can endure them because I know that the trapeze display will make everything worthwhile.

There are two kinds of trapeze performers, catchers and flyers.   The catcher hangs by his legs from a trapeze bar, and he swings back and forth on a trapeze swing that has a short arc.   The flyer (flyers are always smaller than catchers, and for this reason flyers are frequently women); she swings back and forth on trapeze swing with a huge arc. The moment in the trapeze display I look for is that breathless instant when the flyer has left her swing and hangs motionless in mid-air for a split second as the catcher meets her outstretched hands and swings her to the platform with him.

If the trapeze display is even more dramatic, the flyer leaves her swing and somersaults several times up into the air.   As she descends, still tumbling over and over, she reaches out her hands at the last instant and finds the hands of the catcher.  It thrills me.

I’m thrilled even if the catcher misses the flyer and the flyer falls. I’m thrilled but not horrified, since I know the flyer will fall into the net, bounce up onto her feet unharmed and wave to the crowd while the crowd applauds.

Much of life is like a trapeze event.  There are moments when we appear to be suspended in the middle of nowhere, hoping somehow to be caught.   There are situations too where we are tumbling, tumbling over and over, and can only hope that arms of some sort are going to be waiting for us.

But of course there’s also much about life that isn’t like a trapeze event. For one, life isn’t entertainment. For another, there’s no net underneath us.

 

Many people feel that life, day in and day out, is like that moment when the trapeze performer is suspended between what she’s left behind and what she’s hoping to find in front of her.  We often feel that life is a matter of being suspended between past and future. And since life isn’t entertainment but rather is for real, being suspended between past and future isn’t always pleasant, let alone exhilarating.  Sometimes it’s threatening.  We feel that the past is riddled with painful regrets, resentments, injuries, sins; and we fear that the future might hold more of the same. And the present? We feel that the present could precipitate us at any moment into a plunge we’d prefer not to think about.

The psalmist knows how we feel.  Yet as often as apprehension rises in him he moves beyond his apprehension to a knowledge yet more profound: he knows that his times – whether past, future, or present – his times are in God’s hand.   “My times are in your hand”, he writes.  For him, past and future and present are in God’s hand just because he, the psalmist, is in God’s hand.  Because God’s grip on him is stronger than his grip on God, he knows that his times are in God’s hand.

What about our times?

 

I: — Let’s look first at the past. We should understand that the past isn’t past; that is, the past isn’t merely past. The past, even the distant past, continues to reach forward into the present.  In other words, so far from dead, the past is alive.

[a] Think, for instance, of how past sins still haunt us.  (I know what you want to tell me right now: the text of our sermon reads “My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.” While we have many enemies and persecutors, I remain convinced that we are frequently our own worst enemy and frequently our own worst persecutor.)  Perhaps we carved someone up with our tongue or betrayed someone for personal advantage or allowed someone we could have defended to be humiliated. A relationship was destroyed or at least damaged.

Perhaps we committed what others might call an indiscretion but which we more honestly name for what it was, sin, and its consequences have lingered from that day to this.  What we sowed we are still reaping; the aftermath reaches forward to us now, and it haunts us.

Some people advise us, “Just forget about it all.”   But we don’t simply forget what every day finds us thinking about in undistracted moments. To the end of his life the apostle Paul never forgot, couldn’t forget, that he had been a persecutor. His persecution had been extreme enough to engineer the deaths of several Christians. Yet when he writes to Timothy, a much younger man beginning his ministry, Paul says tersely yet profoundly, “I received mercy.”   “I can’t pretend I didn’t do what I did, and I can’t pretend the consequences weren’t and aren’t what everyone knows them to be, but I received mercy.”

Paul knows that the facts of the past can’t be changed.  Yet he knows with equal certainty that much about the past can be changed. The effectual mercy that Jesus Christ wraps around his people prevents the past from crippling us. Mercy means that the self-accusation with which we torture ourselves concerning the past; this self-accusation has been rendered inoperative.   Mercy means that the toxicity of what can’t be changed; its toxicity has been changed as we soak ourselves in the mercy that God writes upon our hearts thanks to the sacrifice of his Son.

There’s much about my past that I don’t want to forget.  I fear that if I forget what I do well to remember, then the sin that overtook me in the past will overtake me again, and I don’t want to offend my Lord and disgrace myself once more.  Then I do well not to forget.  But I want with all my heart not to be tormented by what I dare not forget; I want not to collapse and crumble in self-accusation and self-condemnation. To be sure, I want soberly and sincerely always to be aware of how treacherous my heart is now inasmuch as I’ve never forgotten how treacherous my heart was then; at the same time, however, I don’t want to be poisoned by all of this or immobilized by it.  What I really want is this: I want to keep my past in view lest I cavalierly think I’m beyond stumbling, even as I want to move beyond my past lest I become its prisoner.

I’m persuaded that this is precisely how Paul regarded himself when he wrote Timothy simply yet profoundly, “I received mercy.”

We aren’t pretending for a minute that mercy is indulgence.  Mercy isn’t permission to re-offend.  Mercy rather is life-bringing force of Christ’s resurrection reaching back into our past to assure us that our sin has been pardoned.         Mercy is the life-bringing force of Christ’s resurrection doing something with our past so as to defuse the deadliness it will otherwise push into our present.

One aspect of the life-bringing force of Christ’s resurrection is what we have learned. If through our sin and its aftermath we learned something crucial, then a miracle has occurred. If we learned as little, seemingly, as how powerfully yet unconsciously temptation imports its own rationalization, we’ve learned a huge lesson, one that will never find us saying again, “How could she have done it?” Aware now of how powerfully yet unconsciously temptation imports its own rationalization, we know exactly how she could have done it: we did it ourselves.

If through our blunder we finally lost our self-righteousness and our cocksure superiority, then a miracle has occurred – which is to say, nothing less than resurrection has occurred.

 

[b] Not our sin this time but our regrets, specifically our regrets arising from decisions and choices for which we can’t be blamed (sin has nothing to do with them) but which have turned out to be the wrong decisions or choices – what about such regrets?   The truth is, every day we have to make decisions, and occasionally we have to make huge decisions when we don’t have nearly as much information as we need, or we’re not acquainted with all the factors involved, or we can’t anticipate all the implications of choosing this or that – even as we know we have to make a decision.

It was when I studied under Dr. James Wilkes, a psychiatrist (now retired), in my last year of seminary that I learned how pervasive this matter is in life. Wilkes mentioned over and over in class that we are finite, frail fragile people with limited information and limited resources and limited perspective; and in the midst of this we find ourselves forced to make decisions that are going to be hugely significant – we know this – even as in all our limitations we can’t predict the outcomes.

Let me repeat: this time we’re not talking about sin for which we’re responsible; we’re talking about human limitation for which we aren’t responsible. Still, while we can’t be faulted for the decision we made, in some respects we’re stuck with the decision we made.

We had opportunity to sign on with a different employer.  Either we did or we didn’t, and the implications have been huge. We had opportunity to spend an inheritance in this way or in that, and we see made a choice we now wish we hadn’t.

What does it mean here to say that our times are in God’s hand?   We are not speaking now of God’s mercy (that is, forgiveness); we are speaking now of God’s providence.  To speak of God’s providence is to acknowledge, gladly and gratefully, that no “wrong” decision is ultimately wrong. To speak of God’s providence is to own the comfort he intends us to have in that his hands are never tied. Regardless of what the outcome has been of decisions we’ve made; regardless of the fact that twenty years later we see that we should have chosen option “B” instead of option “C”; regardless of what it has all spelled for us, it never finds God handcuffed.  There is no situation in our lives where he is handcuffed.  To speak of God’s providence, then, is to comfort ourselves in a glorious truth: there is nothing in the way our lives have unfolded which God can’t use for our blessing or the blessing of others.  There is no development that strikes us as a “lemon” from which God can’t make lemonade of some sort, for someone’s edification.

While we can never undo the decisions we made, and while we can never alter the outcome of those decisions, there remains much that can be changed. Self-cursing regret can be changed. Bitter self-denunciation can be changed. Futile remorse can be changed. It’s all changed as the God who is never handcuffed makes something glorious for us or others out of what strikes us as merely negative.  The power of Christ’s resurrection means that there’s no occurrence, however deadly, before which God is helpless.  He who raised his Son from the dead isn’t going to be handcuffed by a decision that I see twenty years later I shouldn’t have made even though at the time I was doing my best with the information I had.

As surely as God’s mercy is adequate for our sin, his providence is adequate for our finitude.

 

[c] What about resentments arising from the past, resentment that arises inasmuch as we’ve been victimized?         Injuries done to us often grate on us more than our own sins or mistakes just because we feel so very powerless about them.  We can’t even lessen the hurt by saying, “At least I have no one to blame but myself.” All we can do is fume as we recall how powerless we were when someone clobbered us. The wound smarts to this day.

It’s easy to find ourselves thinking about this accidentally, and soon find ourselves thinking about it deliberately.  As we continue to think about it we’re flooded with such resentment that we feel ourselves about to explode.  Soon we’re looking for a chance to even the score, and if the chance never comes, the resentment intensifies.

Yet to be stuck here is to be left dying a thousand painful deaths. One such death is too many; a thousand are pointless.  Therefore when this deadly, deadening situation has occurred once, we must start thinking about resurrection; specifically we must think about the resurrection of the crucified.

When we think of the crucified we must think first of what Jesus told us himself: “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” He means that the sacrifice he makes is a sacrifice he makes. He’s not a doormat. He’s not a sucker. He’s not a laughable punching bag. He lays his life down. No one takes it from him – even though his slayers think they are taking it from him.

Then there’s only one thing to do. When we find ourselves clobbered, we aren’t going to fume about the powerlessness amidst which we were victimized. When we find ourselves clobbered, we are going to make our wound a sacrifice we offer to God.  We are going to deny that someone has taken something from us; instead we are going to offer it up to God.

There’s another way we can approach this matter.  Our Lord’s assassins torment and spear him.  They think they are masters of the situation.  But as soon as Jesus says “I lay down my life”, he absorbs it all. Since the last event in this scenario is his absorbing it all in himself, who is finally master of it all? He is. Indisputably he is.

Then this is how you and I must deal with wounds from our past that will otherwise fester within us until the pus of resentment renders us ugly to others and tormented in ourselves.  We are going to offer up as sacrifice to God the injury that someone else did us and in which she thought we were powerless and for which she preens himself as our master.  We are going to absorb it, defuse our resentment, and therein ensure that our assailant has mastered no one.

 

II: — Enough about the past; let’s move on to the future. How often have you heard it said, “We don’t know the future, and it’s good that we don’t, for if we knew what the future held we couldn’t stand it”? People say this because they fear that the future will be similar to the past, perhaps worse. They say this because they fear that having survived the past (however bad it was), the future might be so much worse that they won’t survive it.

They are right in one respect: the future is going to resemble the past. At least the future will resemble the past in that the future will bring accident, folly, misfortune, injury.

But this is no reason to dread the future.  We must remember that the future will also contain Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, ever working light and life and love in us, ever pressing his mercy upon us in the face of our sin, ever enfolding us in his providence amidst our limitation, ever defusing our resentment as he helps us turn wound into sacrifice and thereby victimization into victory. This is what the future holds for us.

Some people speak of the future as the “great unknown”.   To be sure, we don’t know the specific details of the future.   (Ten years from now will I be living in Mississauga , Midland or among the “great cloud of witnesses” who were granted their release ahead of me?) We don’t know the specific details, but neither are they ultimately important. Jesus Christ is ultimately important, and he is our future. One way of understanding the future (the most helpful way, I’m convinced) is to see the future as the time in which Christ comes to us in the midst of what we aren’t able to foresee.  The future isn’t what hasn’t happened yet.   The future is Christ coming to us in the midst of what we can’t anticipate.

A week ago (Christmas) we praised God for the gift of his Son, Christ Jesus our Lord. We thanked God that at last the long-promised One came among us.  But even as he lives among us he’s not bound by us.  He is Lord of time. For this reason he who is among us is simultaneously out in front of us, ahead of us. Because he’s always out in front of us he’s always coming toward us with his promise to bring life and light and love amidst all that we can’t foresee. While there’s much we can’t foresee, we can foresee him.  And to foresee him is to anticipate the future not with misgiving or even dread, but rather to move toward the future confidently just because we know that as we move toward the future, he is already moving toward us.

 

III: — All of which brings us to the present.  I’m not going to say much about the present, because I don’t think there’s much to be said. I don’t think there’s much to be said about the present in that I don’t think there’s much to the present.  The present is simply the borderline between the past and the future. The present is simply that line, finer than a hair, in our travelling from past to future.

It’s odd, isn’t it, that I think there’s little to the present when we are told that shallow people, superficial people, live only for the present. We all understand what’s meant. Shallow people do live exclusively for the present inasmuch as they are determined to deny their past and determined to ignore the future.  Christ’s people, however, have no interest in either denying the past or ignoring the future. We belong to him who is Lord of time, Lord of past and future.

Still, something can be said about the present.  Paul announces, “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.” In other words, right now is the hour to receive God’s favour.   Today is the day to look for and thank God for his mercy that bleaches our sin, his providence that cancels our regret, and his truth that shrivels our resentment. Today is the day to own afresh that what we call the future is the risen One coming to us and holding us in a grip that will never abandon us, abandon us to what we haven’t been able to foresee.   “Now is the acceptable time.”

 

Now is the acceptable time just because all our times – past, future, present – are in God’s hand.

 

                                                                                                Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           January 2006

 

Of Jerusalem, The City of God, The Church

Psalm 48

 

[1] “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. If you, Jerusalem, are not more precious to me than my highest joy, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth.” Does anyone feel as strongly about the city of Mississauga as the psalmist felt about Jerusalem?

Actually, the psalmist doesn’t feel so very strongly about Jerusalem just because he happens to like this one city as other people tell us they love London or Paris or New York. The psalmist loves Jerusalem inasmuch as he believes it to be the city of God. “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God“, he exclaims in Psalm 48.

So — Jerusalem is the city of God for the psalmist, gathering together as it does the people of God. For two thousand years Christians have treasured the book of Psalms; for two thousand years Christians have interpreted references to Jerusalem or Zion as references to the church. Then here is a question we cannot avoid putting to ourselves today: do we feel as strongly about the church as the psalmist felt about Jerusalem, Zion? The unnamed author of the book of Hebrews cries, “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” (Heb. 12:28) To be sure, the kingdom of God cannot be shaken. But what about the church? Can it be shaken? Has it been shaken? Is it so “all shook up” that we can say of it what is said of a boxer who is out on his feet, “He doesn’t have a leg underneath him”?

 [2] Before we answer the question too quickly we must be sure to understand something crucial. The word “Jerusalem” is the anglicized version of HYER SHALOM — city of peace, city of salvation. In English the word “peace” means little more than “the absence of conflict”; but in Hebrew “shalom” means the harmony and wholeness of the creation as it came forth from God’s hand, unmarred by wickedness, sin, evil. But right now the creation is dreadfully marred; grotesquely disfigured, in fact. Salvation, then, is the whole creation (including human beings) wholly healed. Shalom is therefore the kingdom of God. HYER SHALOM, Jerusalem, is the city where the salvation of God, the kingdom of God, is to appear, appear unmistakably, appear uniquely.

At the same time there is another side to Jerusalem. Jesus tells us that Jerusalem is the city which slays the prophets. And so it does. The city that is supposed to be the one spot on a ravaged earth where the salvation of God appears turns out to be the one spot where the messengers of God are most thoroughly abused. (Tell me: are God’s messengers ever abused in the church , even though the church is where God’s salvation is known, celebrated, and commended — supposedly?) More than merely abuse the prophets, Jerusalem is the city that crucifies Israel’s Messiah, crucifies the Son of God — and is glad to do so!

My question again: do you feel as positive about the church as the psalmist felt in Psalm 137 when he said, “If I forget Jerusalem I deserve to lose my right arm”? Do you feel as positive about the church as the psalmist felt in Psalm 48, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God”?

We must not think that the psalmist is naive. He is not looking at Jerusalem through rose-coloured glasses. No sooner does he exult in Jerusalem (verse 1) than he adds (verse 2) “Mount Zion, in the far north”. “Far north”, in Hebrew, means “in the future, in the eschaton; the Jerusalem that is to come, the new Jerusalem, let down from heaven” (as the book of Revelation speaks of it). The psalmist knows that the earthly Jerusalem is both a testimony to God’s salvation and a disgraceful stinkhole: both. There is enough truth in the earthly Jerusalem to make the new Jerusalem possible; there is enough falsehood in the earthly Jerusalem to make the new Jerusalem necessary.

 

 [3] You and I do not view the church through rose-coloured glasses. We know about the Renaissance popes: wealthy, promiscuous, corrupt, cunning to an extent that would have delighted Machiavelli. We know about the church in early 16th century Scotland: it owned half the nation’s property. We know about the New England zealots who hanged women as witches. We know about the 19th century American Methodist bishops who not only dismissed Methodist forefather John Wesley’s outrage at slavery but even became slaveowners themselves. We know about the churches that refused to welcome black people at worship — even barred them from worship — long after professional sports had integrated both players and the paying public.

 [4] We do not view the church through rose-coloured spectacles. Neither does the psalmist. The psalmist has only the most realistic appraisal of Jerusalem. There is enough truth to the earthly Jerusalem to make the new Jerusalem possible, and enough falsehood to the earthly Jerusalem to make the new Jerusalem necessary. But make no mistake: there is truth, salvation, shalom in the earthly Jerusalem! The word of God and the truth of God and the might of God are here! For this reason, the psalmist tells us, the kings of the nations flee Jerusalem in panic whenever they approach it. The kings of the nations begin by assuming that Jerusalem is nothing; a puff, mere froth, entirely dismissable. Once they have meddled with Jerusalem, however, they flee in panic.

I am always sobered when I ponder how the nations’ rulers react to the church. The church appears to be a pushover; yet when the rulers of the nations begin to push, they find it unyielding. More than unyielding, they find it a threat to them.

When Hitler came to power there were 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany. The call was sounded to form the Confessing Church. The Confessing Church insisted that Hitler was not be heard or heeded. It declared, “Jesus Christ is the one word of God that we must obey in life and in death. We deny that the church can have a fuehrer apart from Jesus Christ…”. When the call was sounded 6,000 pastors joined up. What did the other 12,000 have for a backbone? Jello? Karl Barth, whom the Gestapo quickly removed from his university position in the course of a Saturday morning lecture; Barth had a different perspective on it. “Six thousand?”, said Barth, that’s far too many! One-third of the clergy can’t have perception enough to know what’s going on and courage enough to be of any help. There are plainly far too many whom we can’t count on. We’ve got to get the numbers down!” He didn’t have long to wait. After one month the 6,000 had shrunk to 4,000; another month, to 2,000 — and so on, until that critical core was reached, that earthly Jerusalem that would make the new Jerusalem believable.

Why was Hitler unrelenting in his persecution of so small a number? Because Hitler knew that testimony to Jesus Christ is like yeast. It appears insignificant itself, yet it spreads everywhere and affects everything, leaving nothing untouched. Its influence is so pervasive as to be uncontrollable and undeniable. The psalmist, grateful for Jerusalem and confident of the new Jerusalem; the psalmist declares, “As we have heard, so we have seen in the city…which God establishes for ever.” “As we have heard, so we have seen”; it’s the language of testimony! Testimony is like yeast: uncontrollable and undeniable. Hitler knew this much.

When John Wesley found himself afire with the gospel in the midst of a church where neither clergy nor people appeared “lit” he did not bemoan the spiritual inertia on all sides and conclude that the situation was hopeless. Instead he announced, “Give me a dozen people who fear no one but God and hate nothing but sin…; just give me a dozen.” What he didn’t know — but soon learned — was that the dozen (and more) already existed. (Of course. When Elijah thought that he stood alone, God reminded him that there were 7,000 in Israel who had not bowed their knee to Baal.) (I Kings 19:18)

 [5] My confidence in God’s promise-keeping faithfulness is undiminished. What he has promised he will do. There isn’t so much as a dust-speck of doubt in me. And when our Lord tells us that he will build his church on his people’s public acknowledgement of him as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God (Matt. 16:18); when he tells us that not even the powers of death, not even attacks from the spiritual underworld, will crumble it; when our Lord promises this I believe him. As long as Jesus Christ himself is held up in the truth of his gospel his community will thrive; ultimately his community will triumph gloriously, however silly or sinful the antics of pseudo-disciples who claim to be avant-garde but in fact are dangerous and laughable in equal measure.

Wesley again. In the early days of Methodism Wesley’s people were accused of two things: fanaticism and immorality. “We aren’t fanatics”, Wesley replied, “for however exuberant we might appear, we do not elevate ourselves above scripture, the mark of fanaticism. In the second place”, he continued, “we are not immoral people, even though there are some ‘bad apples’ among us whose ill-repute has been ascribed to us.” In a development which was nothing less than heartbreaking, one of the worst of the ‘bad apple’ situations concerned Wesley’s sister and brother-in-law. The sister was Martha; the brother-in-law, an Anglican clergyman of apparent Methodist fervour, Westley Hall. Martha and her husband had ten children, nine of whom died in infancy. As child succeeded child Martha became worn out. She needed help in the home; a live-in housekeeper, Betty Greenaway, was hired to assist her. Meanwhile, Westley Hall had become a notorious philanderer. Needless to say, in no time he had impregnated the family’s housekeeper. By the time word of this reached John Wesley, Westley Hall had absented himself from wife Martha for an extended period. Wesley could hardly believe that his brother-in-law had behaved so scandalously and humiliated his sister so shamefully. Wesley went to visit his sister; once with her, he had no trouble believing any of it. It was all as bad as reported, and worse.

Subsequently Westley Hall deserted his wife Martha, leaving her in the village where she had buried nine children, leaving her with inadequate finances. All of this was public knowledge. The anti-Methodist newspapers gleefully publicized the deplorable details. One newspaper article intoned, “On Friday morning [The Reverend Westley Hall] set out for London, having first stripped his wife…of all her childbed linen (he even stole his wife’s sheets!), and whatever he could convert into money, leaving her in the deepest distress.” What did Martha do in her distress? She forgave her husband; when he sashayed home three months later she took him back. One day Martha slipped out of the house to meet brother John in a downtown rendezvous, John having travelled once more to visit her in order to support her in her anguish. While she was downtown her husband, incorrigible yet, locked her out of the house. Then he left her again, and once again she took him back. He left again. By now the housekeeper, Betty Greenaway, was ready to deliver. A physician was not called, since in class-stratified England a physician was not to be brought into such outrageous scandal. Instead a midwife was procured. By now Martha’s bank balance was only six pounds. She paid five pounds for the midwife, and then spent her remaining pound on a coach ticket for her villainous husband who had informed her he wanted to leave London and return to her. In no time he had deserted her again, this time with a woman whom he took to Barbados. For the rest of her life Martha had to be supported by her two brothers, John and Charles.

The point to the lengthy story is this. For decades Westley Hall was a disgrace to Methodism. For decades mockers and detractors snickered and pointed to him every time Wesley’s catholic evangelicalism was mentioned. Those who opposed the Methodist work had a field-day writing up pamphlets and tracts and newspaper articles which gloated over the disgrace of one of Methodism’s best-known figures, The Reverend Westley Hall, philanderer “extraordinaire”. Nevertheless; NEVERTHELESS — God honoured and owned and used and magnified and crowned the Methodist work in a way and to an extent that we can scarcely comprehend today!

Jesus Christ has promised that where he is lifted up in the truth of his gospel nothing will crumble his community; nothing — not the powers of death, not notorious scandal protracted for decades, not the theological treachery and the spiritual inertia of those who style themselves church leaders and spokespersons. We forget that the word “Methodist” was originally a term of contempt; the word became even more contemptible after Wesley himself was ignited and thousands with him. But what is human abasement compared to the exaltation of God? What is momentary humiliation compared to God’s eternal vindication? Every time I read of the brothers-in-law, John Wesley and Westley Hall, I take heart afresh, knowing that the gospel will always authenticate itself and vindicate the faithful, especially in the face of every kind of fakery, forgery and phoniness.

The psalmist writes, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God”. God is greatly to be praised in HYER SHALOM, the city of salvation. Jerusalem is the city of salvation, even as the phonies within it render it the city of destruction. Nevertheless, the psalmist knows that the ‘bad apples’, however bad, cannot overturn the promise of God! For this reason I am undiscouraged concerning the church. The promise of God concerning his people perdures; the promise of God concerning Christ’s community is operative now; and soon the promise of God is going to be verified publicly.

 [6] The psalmist is not at all naive about Jerusalem. Jerusalem is Jerusalem, the city of salvation and the city of destruction; both. Yet because God keeps the promises he makes these two truths are not weighted equally. The city of salvation always outweighs the city of destruction; always. For this reason the psalmist tells his readers, “Walk around Zion; circle it; count its towers; take note of its ramparts; go through its citadels.” In other words, before you despair over the corruption of Jerusalem stroll through the city and take note of just how glorious the city is with its splendid towers and ramparts and citadels; take note of its grandeur and its splendour.

This is exactly how I feel about the church: its assorted riches are glorious. I am everlastingly grateful for mediaeval monks in their candle-flickering cells who kept learning alive during the darkness of the dark ages. I should never want to be without Roman Catholics who will at least recognize the humanness of the almost-born in the face of the world’s heartless dismissal. Who would want to be without the Anglican Prayerbook in view of the fact that Thomas Cranmer’s genius is now the common property of every denomination’s liturgy? The Calvinists remind us that God is irreducibly GOD, uncompromisingly holy, unfadingly majestic. Whenever I think of the Lutherans my heart is flooded with the treasures of dear old Martin himself. One of his nuggets: “Do you want to know the cure for anxiety? Stop looking at yourself and living in yourself. Instead live out of yourself by living in someone else. Live in Christ by faith; live in your neighbour through love. Then you will never find yourself fretting over your fribbles.” The Eastern Orthodox Church is an anvil that has outworn every hammer pounding upon it for centuries. Stencilled on every eucharistic wafer that its people use in their communion service are the words, “Jesus Christ conquers”. (Ask Alexander Solzhenitsyn what a communion service means according to the Eastern Orthodox rite.) And then there are the Baptists. What distinguishes the Baptists is not their doctrine of baptism (as so many people incorrectly think). What distinguishes the Baptists is their understanding of the church (to which their view of baptism merely points). The Baptists insist on the separation of church and state. They know there can be no compromise between Christ and Caesar. They know that a state church, an established church, is a contradiction in terms. The church is not, must not think itself to be, should never be perceived to be the religious arm of the nation or the government or a political party; neither must the church ever be the religious booster of an ideology or an “ism” or a lobby — for the church’s Lord, so far from supporting the principalities and powers, has defeated them and exposed them for the wretched pretenders that they are.

What about the renewal groups within The United Church of Canada? Together we do not constitute a denomination. But certainly we constitute what our foreparents called an ecclesiola in ecclesia; we constitute a concentrated yeast tablet in a church which appears to be unleavened.

Even so, we cannot accurately say we are a yeast tablet in a church which is unleavened. After all, the renewal movements represent a majority within the denomination. In other words, The UCC is plainly far more leavened than we commonly think. Then perhaps the most accurate thing to say is that we are a concentrated yeast table whose vocation it is to leaven even more a denomination that is already leavened to a greater extent than denominational spokespersons and bureaucrats will admit!

We should walk around Jerusalem frequently. The architecture of the city of God is magnificent. It is endlessly varied, limitlessly grand, boundlessly inspiring.

It is Jerusalem, the city of God, the church, that God so loves that he will perfect it; by his grace he will render it “Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.” What is this but the picturesque anticipation of the apostle Paul’s picturesque conviction that God, by his grace, will render the church that bride of Christ that is “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish”? (Eph. 5:27)

Believing this without reservation, I refuse to be discouraged. I cannot count the number of people who have sidled up to me and remarked patronizingly, “Why don’t you give up, Shepherd. You and your renewal ‘types’ might as well quit. You have no chance of changing anything.” My cheerful reply is always twofold. “Friend, in the first place I stand where I stand not in order to change the denomination, but in order to make sure that it doesn’t change me. In the second place when I see the Berlin wall crumbled and the once-mighty USSR fragmented, I know that before the inscrutable providence of God any self-confident monolith may be only hours from crumbling and fragmenting.” But of course God’s work of disassembly is only for the sake of bringing forth that bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.”

 [7] Isn’t this where the sermon should end? The psalmist began Psalm 48 by speaking of the city of the great King, the church. Throughout the psalm he said much about the church. Finally he urged us to contemplate the church’s catholicity and the church’s magnificence. Since the psalm appears to be concluded, the sermon should be concluded.

Except that the psalm isn’t concluded. For even as he exults in the splendours of the church the psalmist finds himself overwhelmed by the holy one of Israel himself, by the living God who cannot be reduced to or confused with anything, however glorious, not even that church which he has promised to bring to himself without spot or wrinkle or blemish. “Walk around Jerusalem; note her glories”, says the psalmist, “that you may tell the next generation that THIS IS GOD, our God for ever and ever.”

Just as John the Dipper pointed away from himself to him whose shoes he wasn’t worthy to untie, so the church ever points away from itself to him who is the church’s — and the world’s — unique Lord, Judge and Saviour. As you and I and all God’s people point to him, in company with brother John before us, we shall resoundingly tell the next generation that this is God, our God, and he will be their guide as he has been ours, for ever and ever.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do
far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,
to him be glory IN THE CHURCH AND IN CHRIST JESUS
to all generations, for ever and ever. (Eph.3:20)

Amen

                                                         Victor A. Shepherd         

May, 1994

You asked for a Sermon Concerning Our Guilt

Psalm 51:1-14          Romans 5:1-5          Mark 3:1-6

 

Why doesn’t the church accentuate the positive?   Why do we persist in the “miserable” prayer of confession every Sunday morning? Since guilt is burdensome, why don’t we stop using the word and rid ourselves as well of everything associated with it?   We don’t do this for many reasons, not the least of which is this: a person with no sense of guilt is to be pitied.  More to the point, a person with no sense of guilt is to be dreaded. A person with no sense of guilt is a psychopath, utterly conscienceless.  Psychopaths are aware that certain behaviours are followed by the severest social sanctions: if you rob a bank, you go to jail.  Psychopaths, however, have no sense of wrong.         They think a jail sentence for bank robbery to be social arbitrariness, nothing more. Psychopaths can never be trusted. They are housed in a maximum-security institution in Penetanguishene.  The person with no capacity for guilt is the person who has to be locked up and never let out. At the same time, all of us are aware that the burden of guilt can be so very burdensome as to be crushing.

 

I: — The sermon is only a minute old, and already I’ve used the word “guilt” several times. When I use the word am I referring to a state or a feeling? Most people have a feeling in mind whenever they hear the word “guilt”.   The judge in criminal court, however, has only a state in mind.  When a judge declares the accused to be guilty before the law, the judge is describing the offender’s state, the offender’s condition. The judge doesn’t know how the offender feels, and may not care.  Undoubtedly a judge pronounces to be guilty many offenders who don’t feel guilty at all. Still, we all agree it’s appropriate for someone who has done wrong to feel guilty. It’s appropriate for state and feeling to match up. When people who are guilty also feel guilty, their guilt (feeling) is called “real guilt.”  When people who haven’t done wrong feel guilty none the less, their guilt (feeling) is called “imaginary.”

Suppose I feel guilty when (according to most people) there’s no guilty state. I eat a piece of chocolate cake (one piece) when I’m convinced I need to lose ten pounds. Most people would see my guilt-feeling as purely imaginary, trivial even.  Calling it trivial, however, does nothing to reduce the feeling.  The feeling of imaginary guilt can be so very intense as to be immobilising.

Imaginary guilt is said to arise largely from taboos we absorbed during our childhood, or from taboos acquired from our social environment, our colleagues, our friends, our parents (chiefly our parents.) We move into adult life with our childhood taboo-system firmly in place (and no less firmly in place for having been acquired semiconsciously, even unconsciously.)   We move further into adult life with our society’s taboo-system in place, always aware that there are social penalties for violating social taboos. Many people are embarrassed to admit what they feel guilty about, I’ve found, because the taboo appears, from a rational standpoint, to be trivial.         As trivial and arbitrary as they tell themselves it is, their guilt-feeling remains. Not only does it remain, it frequently goes ever so deep and is ever so destructive.

“I’ve got the solution”, someone insists, “the guilt associated with parental upbringing and social convention is always and everywhere imaginary. Since it’s all imaginary, let’s do our best to forget it and focus on the guilt that’s real.” Such a “solution”, however, is no solution at all.
Anthropologists tell us, for instance, that all societies have a taboo concerning incest.  Does the fact of the taboo mean that all guilt concerning incest is imaginary, imaginary only? As for my parental upbringing, my parents taught me that murder is wrong; dishonesty of any sort, theft, slander, lying – all are wrong.  Does the fact that my parents taught me these are wrong trivialise the guilt associated with murder and theft?

At the same time, as we mature we all recognise that there’s imaginary guilt around many parental edicts that we have come to disregard. Concerning these parental edicts we now merely smile and wonder why we were so long shedding the guilt associated with them, so pointless is it.  The question still has to be asked and answered, however, as to how we come to sort out real and imaginary guilt.  On what basis do we distinguish them?

Distinguishing them isn’t as easy as we might first think, since both kinds are pervasively intertwined in us.         Because untangling the two kinds is more difficult than expected, we are prone to pursue the “quick fix” of labelling our guilt as all imaginary or all real.  I begin by telling myself that my guilt is all imaginary.   The amateurish “pop” psychology ready-to-hand in our society aids and abets this. Besides, labelling my guilt as all imaginary makes it easier to live with until I can dump it. But before long I am driven to admit to myself, “It’s not working.”  After a while I know, deep down, that I’m making excuses for myself where there are no excuses; I’m letting myself off much too easily; and I’m letting myself off where I let no one else off.

Then perhaps my guilt is all real.  I deserve to feel as bad as I feel. I know I’m a defective person, defective on many fronts; and if ever I appear in danger of forgetting this, there’s no shortage of people to remind me.  Plainly I am as bad as I feel.”  After a while, however, I find I can’t live here.  My responsibility for my guilt is more than I can endure.  The burden is so very burdensome as to be overwhelming.  In order to ease my burden I tell myself I’m being much too hard on myself. Back goes the pendulum toward imaginary guilt.  Back and forth I swing. First I think I’m tormenting myself unrealistically; then I think I’m excusing myself irresponsibly. Finally I shout that regardless of how often I change the labels on my guilt-feelings I don’t feel any less guilty and I’m still confused as to whether I should feel guilty.

The pattern I’ve just described repeats itself again and again in life. Someone isn’t the business success that his cousin is.  He feels guilty about this, since he can’t provide the standard of living for his family that his cousin can, and feels worse when his wife keeps reminding him of this. A week later he tells himself that he needn’t feel guilty; after all, he never had the opportunities and “breaks” that his cousin had.  Soon, however, he tells himself that he’s making excuses for himself and should “own up” to his failure.  Now he tells himself he’s never been a business success because he’s simply not as smart as his cousin, nor as creative, nor as adventuresome. Two weeks later, however, he can’t live with such severity concerning himself; he tells himself his cousin “got ahead” just because his cousin isn’t always honest. Back and forth he swings. He’s no further ahead in his self-understanding; and his guilt-feelings, whether real or imaginary, are no less intense.

I have found that most unmarried people feel guilty for being unmarried. First the single woman tells herself that her guilt is entirely imaginary.  It’s not her fault that no one’s ever asked her to marry, is it?   Then she begins to wonder, moves on to doubting herself, and finally accuses herself: why wouldn’t it be her fault that no one has ever asked her to marry?  A variant of this theme is the person guilt-ridden at being single again. After all, marital failures don’t happen spontaneously; they have to be someone’s fault. In all such cases people oscillate when they try to sort out the extent to which they are blameworthy for developments in their lives.  When they are easy on themselves, they come to suspect themselves of being too easy, unrealistically easy.  When they are hard on themselves, they soon can’t live with their own severity. Back and forth they go, their guilt-feelings fixed fast, even becoming more intense.

The real guilt/imaginary guilt teeter-totter is complicated by the fact that imaginary guilt is often a smokescreen behind which real guilt hides. As long as I can preoccupy myself with imaginary guilt I won’t have to come to terms with what is giving rise to my real guilt, all of which means I won’t have to set my house in order.

Think of this situation. My wife and I are asked to a neighbour’s for coffee and dessert.  I sashay over in my house-painting trousers and my leaf-raking shoes. When we arrive at the neighbour’s home I find everyone better dressed.  I feel terrible about my social faux pas, guilty as can be. Then I tell myself that my guilt is imaginary.         After all, how was I to know how others would be dressed?   And wasn’t it the host’s responsibility to tell me?   The host is the guilty one here.  Any guilt-feeling I might have is purely imaginary.

But is it? Actually, my imaginary guilt disguises real guilt.  You see, I don’t like this particular neighbour.  He never cleans up after his dog.  I went to his home in my shabby clothes because I couldn’t care less about him and his silly coffee party.  Consciously I couldn’t care less; unconsciously I’d even like to embarrass him. As far as I’m concerned that man is a 14-karat jerk.  What’s more, just before my wife and I left our house we had a “tiff”, a “spat”, and as usual I lost.  I lose nearly all such tiffs and I’m tired of losing.  I know, she told me not to wear my house-painting trousers, but defying my wife was the only way I could re-assert myself in the face of my most recent domestic defeat. I thought I was inwardly saving face (my face) by letting her know I can’t be suppressed. (Hence the shabby clothes.) It turns out I was losing face (again), losing face publicly, angering her still more and causing my neighbour to think that I am a 14-karat jerk.

Much imaginary guilt is a smokescreen that hides real guilt.

 

II: — Perhaps you are thinking that our guilt-situation is so very complex, complicated even, that we shall never find our way out of the maze.  Yet we shall. We find our way out as the gospel brings us out.  Jesus Christ brings us out as he comes upon us and seizes us and soaks us in his unique truth and mercy and wisdom.

In the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry his opponents hounded him, waiting to catch him infringing this custom or that code or yet another taboo. When they finally caught him – healing a man on the Sabbath or allowing his disciples to eat without ritually dipping their hands or befriending those the society loves to hate – they jumped on him saying, “You’ve broken the rules. You’ve infringed the code.” Our Lord’s opponents think that real guilt arises when the code is violated or the custom infringed. His followers, on the other hand, know that real guilt arises inasmuch as we are guilty persons before God. While sin is something I do, it isn’t primordially something I do; it isn’t fundamentally, originally, something I do. At bottom sin is something I am. (Psalm 51) The sin that I do is but the excrescence of the sin that I am.  In the presence of Jesus Christ Peter doesn’t exclaim, “Oh, my gosh. I’ve done the wrong thing.” Rather he cries, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”

Opponents of Jesus compare themselves against a list of rules and note that they break 50% of them. If ever they begin to feel guilty about this they console themselves with the fact that they break only 50%; this means they keep 50%, and the man down the street manages only 40%. Disciples of Jesus, on the other hand, recognize with Peter that the code-mentality is entirely beside the point.  Followers of Jesus know that their proximity to him discloses not something they’ve done wrong here or there; their proximity to him discloses them, discloses themselves in their person, to be in the wrong before God. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” The apostle Paul adds, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”   The characteristic human deficit, which deficit is as deep in us as blood poisoning, is that we don’t mirror God’s glory.  We were created for this, and it is meant to characterize us.  It doesn’t now.   All of us? All of us equally?   All of us lack such glory equally despite the unequal attainments we undeniably display? All of us lack God’s glory, which glory is the human good, despite the different degrees of virtue which more moral and less moral people exemplify?   Yes. We all fall short of God’s glory equally.

The spiritual predicament of humankind (in other words, the predicament plain and simple) isn’t that we do this or that wrong; our predicament is that we are in the wrong before God. The first impact the gospel makes upon us is to disclose our spiritual condition.

 

The second impact of the gospel, the second consequence of our Lord’s presence and power, is that he puts in the right before God all who welcome him.  To cling to him is find ourselves put in the right before God, to be given new status, new standing. “Justification” is a word that many Protestants throw around but few understand.         To be justified, biblically, isn’t to be excused.   (Sinners can never be excused.)  To be justified is to be put in the right before God, to be given new standing with him. To be justified is to be given the same standing before God as the standing of that Son with whom the Father is ever pleased.  Faith clings to the Son with whom the Father is pleased.

At the time of the Sixteenth Century Reformation John Calvin spoke of justification as “the chief hinge on which religion turns.”   He was right. Justification is indeed the chief hinge on which faith turns.  Justification opens the door to peace with God and peace within ourselves. Justification opens the door to release from anxiety and freedom to venture.  Justification is the chief hinge on which everything turns. It swings open the door of prisons that have held people fast for years and lets them step out into the sunlight of life.

Martin Luther lit up every time he thought about justification.  Reading scripture with exquisitely fine attention to the logic of the text Luther spoke of justification as a breathtaking exchange.  Jesus Christ exchanges all that is his for all that is mine.  As sinner I am sunk in guilt, shame, curse, death; as the righteous one Jesus Christ throbs with glory, blessing, light and life.  Justification means that he, of his incomprehensible mercy takes on my guilt, shame, curse and death even as he clothes me in his glory, blessing, light and life. Clothed now in all that he is, I exult in that new identity which is mine for life and will be mine as well on the day of judgement.

Two hundred years after Luther, Valentius Loescher, a Lutheran theologian, wrote, Iustificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (1718).   “Justification is the article by which the church stands and falls.” Articulus: “article”? Actually the Latin word articulus means not only “article” or “hinge”; it also means “moment” or “point”, as well as “crisis.”   Justification by faith, the glorious exchange that occurs as Jesus Christ relieves me of all that’s mine and bestows upon me all that’s his: this is the moment, the point, the critical issue where the church stands or falls. It’s the moment, the point, the critical issue that separates church from fake church.

Scripture makes plain that justification is pardon or forgiveness: all these words mean the same.  To be justified is to be pardoned is to be forgiven.  When we speak of forgiveness, however, we must be careful that we aren’t misled by a line in the Apostles’ Creed.  The creed states, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”   Strictly speaking, sin is never forgiven simply because sin doesn’t exist apart from sinners.   Sinners are forgiven. I myself am forgiven. For this reason Paul exults, “Being justified by faith we ourselves have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:1) “There is now no condemnation for those persons who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1)

The second impact of the gospel is that we who are in the wrong before God are put in the right with him as we cling to the One who has promised to hold us so as never to let us go.

 

The third impact of the gospel is that forgiveness provides sanctuary, provides protection against inner and outer assault, provides safe living space in which we can come, in our own way and in our own time, to understand what guilt is real and what imaginary.  Justification provides the security within which we can come to terms, however long it takes, with where we should feel guilty and where we shouldn’t. It provides an anxiety-free zone that allows us the time and space and freedom to come to terms with our upbringing, social convention, our growing awareness of God’s truth, our new-found self-perception.  It provides an anxiety-free zone in which we can reflect on what we’ve been taught, what we’ve learned ourselves, where our parents meant well but hindered us none the less, where we absorbed opinions that we thought to be the soul of truth but which we now see to be anything but. Forgiveness or justification gives us breathing space, and this breathing space allows us to revisit ever so much about us, reassess it, and revise whatever has to be revised. Forgiveness or justification allows us to do this, even requires us to do this, without putting us back on that teeter-totter that always oscillates between irresponsible self-excusing and unendurable self-accusing.

 

“Why doesn’t the church accentuate the positive?”   What we have heard about guilt this morning in church is more positive than anything we are ever going to hear about guilt anywhere else.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                               

November 2006

 

Of Our Aloneness and God’s Love

Psalm 62

 

I: — How “alone” are you? How “alone” do you feel? As alone as the psalmist? “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”         “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He only is my rock, my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly moved.”

William Stringfellow, the American Anglican lawyer whose grasp of theology (he was self-taught) was as precise as grasp of the law (he was taught at Harvard Law School); Stringfellow, like any Harvard Law graduate, was offered elegance and luxury yet preferred to open a store-front law practice in Harlem among the dispossessed of that slum.         Why did he do this? Why not leave that kind of law practice to less talented lawyers who couldn’t maintain a practice among “choosier” and more affluent clients in any case? Stringfellow said it was on account of his vocation; while he was a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics he had learned the difference between career and vocation.

Stringfellow’s isolation in his vocation, however intense, was considerably less than his isolation in church and society.  For instance, he campaigned ardently in the 1960s to have women ordained in the Anglican church of the USA , the campaign coming to a climax in Washington Cathedral where a disdainful bishop treated him like a non-entity.  A year or two later the FBI arrested him for harbouring Father Daniel Berrigan, a high-profile protester against the Viet Nam war. Stringfellow’s former law partner told me, when Maureen and I were last in New York City, that Stringfellow was devastated at the prospect of going to prison, in view of what happens to small, slightly-built men in prison.  In one of his fourteen books Stringfellow spoke of what it is to be alone, so very alone, that (as he put it) “God is the only witness to your existence”.

Have you ever felt yourself so alone that God is the only witness to your existence? The psalmist had. “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”   He doesn’t say it once in Psalm 62; he says it (or something like it) five times in the first eight verses!   He couldn’t imagine himself more alone.

Why do we feel alone?   Chiefly, I think, because we are not understood.   However firmly we may know who we are, none of us can articulate it adequately. However resilient our self-identity, we cannot communicate this truth to others.  The result is that people are left having to “read” us and then guess who we are.

To be sure, other people can read something about us.  They can read virtually everything that is only skin-deep in us, everything that is on the surface. They can also read much that is below the surface, those quirks and character-traits about us that we think no one else sees but that in fact we are displaying all the time.  Yet even as we smile at how much more about us people can read than we used to think, we still feel they can’t read us at all in our innermost, deepest core. Our innermost core they don’t penetrate to, don’t see, don’t know.  And therefore there is a part of us, the most significant part, the unique part, that they don’t meet and therefore cannot affirm.

Not only do we feel alone inasmuch as our profoundest “self” isn’t recognized, we feel alone in addition inasmuch as we know there is something about us that arouses antipathy in others.  I don’t mean that there is a nastiness in us or similar character-flaw that arouses antipathy in others.  I mean that whatever there is about us that stands out, however much we may try not to stand out; this attracts hostility.  The psalmist cries to himself yet has his detractors in mind, “How long will you set upon a man to shatter him…?   [You] plan to thrust him down from his eminence.”

Any person possessed of unusual ability, however slightly unusual; any person possessed of even a smidgen of excellence by that fact becomes eminent. The peculiar combination of excellence and eminence irks, really irks, those who are less excellent and less eminent.  The less eminent turn mean.

You don’t have to be possessed of excellence in terms of achievement. You merely have to be slightly prominent. You earn more money than most people? In no time you are hearing that you are stuck-up or self-important.  You are better educated than most?   In no time you are hearing of character-flaws you never knew yourself to have. Your job or your income or your ancestry or anything at all renders you socially more prominent than most? In no time you are hearing that you may be invited to all the major social functions, but you still speak with an accent; and besides, your daughter had to get married, didn’t she?   When such a word reaches you — as it always does — you feel terribly alone once more.

What it was that made the psalmist eminent I do not know.  Perhaps it was simply that he appeared to be the spiritual giant that he was in fact, and appeared such amidst the spiritual pygmies all around him. Or perhaps it was that he could write poetry the world will never be without, while they didn’t have a line of poetry in them.  In any case the psalmist knew that to be eminent in any respect for any reason arouses envy in others.  The envious turn nasty instantly.  The psalmist knows the icy isolation that envy visits on those who are even slightly distinguished.         He felt himself to be a leaning wall, a tottering fence, whom the less-distinguished envious would simply love to push over.   He cries out in his aloneness, “They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.”   Then he cries to himself, for the umpteenth time, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”

 

II: — Where do we turn when we are engulfed by our aloneness?   We naturally look to other men and women.  But which others? The others to whom we look are either “those of low estate”, in the words of the psalmist, or “those of high estate.”

The most pointed attempt at finding recognition and affirmation and alleviation of aloneness through “those of low estate” has to have been the role of the proletariat in the communist revolution.  Once capitalism had been abolished, the Marxists said, extraordinary virtue would appear in the “lumpen proletariat”, the huge mass of those of low estate.  The surge of virtue newly appearing in the these “lower classes” (so-called) would overcome every last distress in the human situation, including the aloneness that is more-or-less everyone’s predicament as well as the aloneness that nasty capitalists force on working class people.

What happened? The “triumph” of the proletariat gave rise to a savagery, misery, bleakness the 20th century had not yet seen.  Who are more alone, more isolated, more lonely than those in Marxist lands who cannot trust their neighbours at all?  When I have been driven to say with the psalmist, “For God alone my soul waits in silence”, I have never thought that what I needed most profoundly was part or all of the Saturday night crowd at Maple Leaf Gardens .

Then what about those of high estate?  The psalmist says they are a delusion.  He means that it is unrealistic to expect the rich and the socially prominent to overcome our aloneness.  Hobnobbing with those of high estate may make us feel less isolated for a minute. (Isn’t it pleasant to be able to say we had lunch with the mayor and supper with the president of General Motors?)   But it’s only for a moment. When sober reflection comes upon us again we know that having spent an afternoon with Jean Chretien or Wayne Gretzky or Margaret Atwood — however “heady” at the time — doesn’t profoundly remedy the aloneness we find so piercing. Name-dropping is surely one of the more pathetic attempts at gaining recognition, overcoming aloneness, through hanging around with the famous, the illustrious, the prestigious, the stars of athletics or academia or politics or entertainment. We don’t have access to the most glittering stars?   But at least we were at a New Year’s Eve party with the director of the board of education and he said to us….

The psalmist says there is another way we may try to overcome our aloneness: money. “If only I had my cousin’s income, my cousin would have to stop treating me like a non-event.” (Would she?) “If I only my net worth were large I should then be recognized by those whose net worth is comparable.” (Don’t bet on it. And besides, what would this accomplish, since those who have greater net worth are every bit as lonely themselves?)   The psalmist tells us we shouldn’t even bother with this. “If riches increase, set not your heart on them.”   We shouldn’t waste a minute thinking that money — whether gained legally or illegally — will do it for us.

Then how is our bone-chilling, heart-icing aloneness overcome?   Those of low estate can’t do it for us; neither can those of high estate; neither can an increase in riches, since something as impersonal as money will never remedy an ache that is profoundly personal.  Then what can?

 

IV: — More profoundly, who can? The psalmist tells us himself.

Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that

power belongs to God; and that to thee, O Lord,

belongs steadfast love.

“Once God has spoken; twice have I heard….”    It’s a semitism, a Hebrew way of speaking: “Once…twice.” The psalmist means, “Every time I hear God speaking, it echoes in my heart as well. I hear God speak, and I also hear the echo. God’s utterance is so telling, so penetrating, that I seem to hear it twice as often as he utters it — and he never stops uttering it!   Since God speaks his truth all the time, his truth is constantly dinned into me.” To hear God speak, and then to hear the echo as well, is to be inundated.  The psalmist began his sober psalm by crying, “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.”   Now he knows that he is saved by saturation, for he is saturated with God’s steadfast love for him.

Steadfast love. The two English words regularly translate one Hebrew word, HESED.  HESED is the word the Hebrew bible uses constantly in connection with God’s covenant. God’s covenant is his promise, his pledge that he who is mercy will ever show mercy. Our sin can certainly activate his mercy, but our sin can never terminate his mercy.  He will never forsake us because disgusted at us; he will never fail us because handcuffed before us.  God’s covenant is his pledge, his promise, that our fitful obedience to him will never diminish his faithfulness to us.  To say that steadfast love is the substance of God’s covenant is to say that our disgrace will not curdle his grace.  Angry as he may become at us, and anguished as well, he will not abandon us.

We must note how the psalmist reminds us that steadfast love and power alike belong to God. Power devoid of love would be destructive tyranny; steadfast love devoid of power would be weak and ineffective.  But God’s power is always and only the power of steadfast love, while his steadfast love is always and everywhere effective.

One year ago, a few days after Christmas, I went through a very difficult period of three or four weeks.  My difficulty, I think, had to do with the accumulation of several things: delayed reaction to the stresses that had fallen on me the previous spring, the fatigue that every minister knows around Christmas, exhaustion from teaching my semester-long course in historical theology, publisher’s deadlines for the book, So Great A Cloud of Witnesses, as well as the worst ‘flu I had had in a long time overtaking me on New Year’s Eve. In addition there were one or two other matters whose details you will have to leave with me.  I became depressed and anxious in a way that mystified me in that my depression and anxiety seemed vastly greater than any of the factors that supposedly gave rise to them, even if all these factors came together at once. I was spiralling down, knew I was spiralling down, and couldn’t do anything to halt the plunge.  Maureen loved me as ardently as she had since I was 19.  But there was nothing she could do.  Helpless and perplexed in equal measure, she couldn’t do anything except wait. I was still going down. Because I had upset her now, I was guilt-ridden as well as depressed and anxious. Just when I felt the pit of despair opening up before me and felt myself unable to avoid falling into it; just when I felt so bad I couldn’t imagine feeling worse; just then, one Thursday evening at 7:30 while I was standing in the dining room, staring at the floor, I was engulfed in a tidal wave of God’s love. It wasn’t that I “realized” that God loved me; it wasn’t even that I “realized” this afresh.  “Realized” is much too cerebral, much too ideational, much too abstract. I didn’t realize anything. I was flooded. I knew felt myself immersed in a love so pure and substantial that it was almost ask if my distress had been swallowed up in a giant batch of pure white dough (except that the dough, so far from threatening me with suffocation, promised me life.) I was bathed in the love of him who is love as tangibly as I was bathed in a tub of warm water later that night.  Don’t reduce it to, “Oh, Victor finally had his thinking clarified about the nature of God.”         Victor’s thinking about God’s nature had been clear for decades.  It was simply the very thing that the psalmist speaks of in Psalm 62: power and steadfast love alike belong to God.  For this reason God’s steadfast love was, for me at that moment, nothing less than a power-surge. As I stood in the dining room of my home, startled at “the presence”, a presence that was power and love in equal measure, the despair began to evaporate and the pit close up and the guilt, depression and anxiety recede. I didn’t recover instantly, but I knew that I was going to recover; I knew that recovery was underway. It took several weeks for me to come back.  One thing brought me back: an oceanic love, as steadfast as it was effective.

I trust you haven’t regarded my story as spiritual exhibitionism.  I share it with you for two reasons.  One, perhaps my story will help a fellow-sufferer.  Two, I agree with the psalmist when he tells us that to be visited with God’s visitation is to be charged with bearing witness.  The psalmist addresses the congregation and cries, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart [all of you] before him; God is a refuge for us.”   When he began his psalm the psalmist felt isolated: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”   Now he is eager to speak to fellow-worshippers at church!   “Trust in him, O people.”    And he supplies the word of personal testimony; “God is a refuge for us.” He can tell the congregation, “God is a refuge for us, you and me both”, inasmuch as he has first found God to be a refuge for him.

 

V: — I want to conclude with a word about what I call the miracle of providence. As we are so alone that our soul waits for God in silence; as we not only wait for him but also wait upon him; as we do this he rewards our waiting upon him by bringing to us another human being who has also been waiting for God in silence. The result is that neither we nor that other silent waiter-upon-God ever waits alone in silence in quite the same way again.  Someone has been brought into our orbit; we have been brought into his or her orbit; not any person at all, not a chatty well-wisher, but a fellow-sufferer who has also been a fellow-waiter-upon-God-in-silence; this person is brought to us, then another, and perhaps yet another.  There is forged a fellowship of those who have found steadfast love to be powerful, found power to be the strength of steadfast love — and who have found each other through the miracle of providence.         They will never be alone in quite the same way again.

 

Just because our Lord Jesus Christ was God-forsaken in Gethsemane for our sake, no human being is ever God-forsaken now.  For this reason we can lend our voice to the psalmist’s, “Trust in him at all times, O people, pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

God is a refuge, even as he introduces us to others who, by his providence, embody that selfsame refuge for us.

 

                                                                                               Victor A. Shepherd                                                                                                               

January 1995

 

A Study in the Pathology of Envy

PSALM 73

 

I: — Every winter people injure themselves — some seriously and a few fatally — through slipping on ice. They are most likely to slip when they don’t see the ice and are unable to safeguard themselves in any way. The ice has been covered over by the thinnest layer of snow or by a discarded newspaper. Before they know it their feet are gone from underneath them, and they lie immobile, wondering if the pain in the elbow or shoulder or wrist betokens a broken bone. If they have struck the back of their head they may be beyond wondering anything, at least for a while. Having one’s feet slip unexpectedly is no small matter.

What happens with our feet around ice happens to our self, our total person, around life. We slip and fall; fall dangerously, fall painfully, even fall catastrophically. Having slipped we have to ascertain how much damage has been done to us and how long recovery will take.

The psalmist tells us he came within an eyelash of having his feet slip catastrophically — when? when envy invaded his heart.   “My steps had well nigh slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

Envy is a sin which threatens us all and of which we are all ashamed. Nobody boasts of being envious. People do boast of their sin, to be sure, but not the sin of envy.  Some people (chiefly males) boast of their lust.  They think that advertising their lasciviousness exalts them as a red-blooded “stud”. Some people boast of their hair-trigger temper.         They think that advertising their rage exalts them as a no-nonsense type that doesn’t take any “guff” from anyone, someone to be feared. But no one boasts of her envy. Envy is always sly. Envy is always disguised. Envy is always denied outwardly, however much it consumes us inwardly.

Envy is subtle, isn’t it.  Have you ever noticed the extent to which envy is disguised as social justice? For years I have noticed that what is put forward as concern for the poor is frequently envy of the rich. What is put forward as the attempt at lifting up many is secretly the attempt at pulling down a few.

Needless to say, not even pulling down a few satisfies our envy, simply because envy can never be satisfied; the more envy is fed the more its satisfaction recedes.

Why are people envious? We envy inasmuch as we assume that anything anyone else has we too must have. Likely we never even wanted the thing that someone else has until we noticed that he has it.  Suddenly the fact that he has it and we don’t have it is intolerable.

We are envious for another reason.  We refuse to admit that there are people who genuinely have greater talent or intelligence or skill than we have.  We think that to acknowledge someone else as more talented or intelligent or able is to declare ourselves failures (when of course it is to declare no such thing).

While none of us needs any encouragement to envy we are incited nonetheless on all sides. Think of the advertising that is beamed into us every day.  So much advertising aims at fostering in us a desire for what someone else has. Did she not have it, or did we not know that she has it, we shouldn’t want it for ourselves. (I am not speaking here of genuine human need but rather of artificially induced want.) We are pressured from all directions to want what we don’t need, and pressured to want it simply because someone else has it.   The pressure is effective in that the pressure presses upon us the message that unless we have it too we shall remain sunk in inferiority. What we want we soon expect. When expectation is not fulfilled want is riddled with anger and resentment; want, anger and resentment blended together appear as envy.

For this reason the most tragic aspect of envy is the poison it injects into friendships. Envy swells in us concerning those people whom we consider equals.  No one of our social class envies Queen Elizabeth, even though she is the richest woman in the world.  Instead we envy our friend, our dear, dear friend, whose job pays him $15,000 per year more than we earn.  Suddenly he appears less dear. In fact he now displays character-defects which either he didn’t display before or we didn’t see before. Actually, of course, it is not the case that he has recently come to display them or we have come to see them.  It is the case that we have recently come to imagine them; imagine them and even project them. All the while we remain unaware of what is going on in our own head and heart.         For what is going on is this: as soon as we imagine character-defects in our friend it is plain that his good fortune has left us feeling belittled.  He never intended to belittle us; and in fact his $15,000 per year hasn’t belittled us. Nonetheless we are certain now that he is belittling us, as certain as we are that the sun rises in the east. Feeling ourselves belittled we stupidly think — yet nonetheless wickedly think — that we can restore ourselves to our proper size, our proper largeness, only by diminishing him.  Envy is always bent on leveling.  End of friendship.

Yet as surely as our envy poisons our friendship envy poisons us ourselves.   Since envy renders us forever uncontented it renders us unable to rejoice.  Envy renders us dejected. More to the point, since our envy of someone else who has what we lack causes us to think ourselves losers, envy finds us languishing in self-rejection. Worse yet, since envy renders us sour, the more other people try to love us out of our envy the more we curdle their every effort.

“My feet had almost stumbled”, cries the psalmist, “I nearly fractured both legs, plus spine and skull; I nearly rendered myself immobile and insane when I became envious of the prosperous, for I looked upon the prosperous as arrogant and wicked.” It may be that the prosperous are arrogant — at least some of them.  It may be that the prosperous are wicked — at least some of them. It may also be that the prosperous are no more arrogant or wicked than anyone else.  At this point the psalmist’s envy has rendered him ridiculous.  For the prosperous people, the psalmist says, “have no pangs”. The prosperous have no pangs? They don’t suffer? They aren’t as finite, frail and fragile as the non-prosperous?  Ridiculous. To be sure we like to think that the prosperous “have it made”.  We like to think that because they “have it made” nothing about them can ever be unmade.  They can never suffer misfortune of any kind.  Because they are protected against financial loss we assume they are impervious to human loss. Their lives are devoid of difficulty, every bit as trouble-free as we foolishly imagine them to be. “Always at ease”, the psalmist says of them, “they increase in riches.” They may be increasing in riches. But are they “always at ease”?  Think of the Kennedy family of U.S.A. fame. Corrupt?   The old man, Joseph Kennedy, made millions handling liquor during the era of prohibition. Was the family wicked? The extramarital affairs which sons John and Robert had, not to mention their simultaneous affair with Marilyn Monroe, scarcely describe them as virtuous. Then has the family had no pangs? Has the family been always at ease? Two sons assassinated, Ted Kennedy’s wife an alcoholic, a grandson who is a drug-abuser, another family-member charged with rape.

And even if, in another case, there is no moral failure attached to someone who is prosperous, it still isn’t true that the prosperous are pang-free. John Robarts, lawyer, former premier of Ontario, suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed, and in his despair he shot himself.

Envy blinds us. Insofar as we envy someone else we blind ourselves to that person’s suffering.  We assume that whatever it is about him that is enviable has rendered him invulnerable, pain-free, impervious to suffering, 100% affliction-proof. But of course the prosperity of the prosperous cannot protect them against the human condition.

Envy poisons; envy embitters; envy blinds.  It does even more; it renders us self-pitying, self-righteous snivellers. “All in vain have I kept my heart clean”, the psalmist whines in his envy, “I have kept my heart clean and I received nothing for it!”   The truth is, he hasn’t kept his heart clean.  He may have kept his hands clean; i.e., he hasn’t done anything wrong. But his heart? How can he pretend to have kept it clean when he envies those whose prosperity (he says) has filled them with despicable character-defects?  Insofar as he envies them he is plainly willing to become a despicable character himself as long as he gets rich at the same time.  He hasn’t kept his heart clean!         But he has rendered himself a self-pitying, self-righteous whiner.

It is little wonder that no one boasts of envy.  Who would brag that he has turned himself into a poisonous, embittered, blind, self-righteous whiner?  Not even the psalmist is going to boast.

 

II: — What happens to him next? In a rare moment of rationality and self-perception he realizes how grotesquely he has disfigured himself.  In the same rare moment of rationality and self-perception he realizes too how shabby he appears to his fellow-believers, his congregation. “I should be untrue to the generation of thy children”, he cries to God.  The New English Bible puts it most succinctly: “Had I let myself talk on in this fashion I should have betrayed the family of God”. Plainly, the light is dawning; finally the light is dawning.

But still he needs more than the dawn; he needs broad daylight in order to get himself straightened around.         Broad daylight floods him when he goes to church.  “I went into the sanctuary of God”, he tells us.  He worshipped. To worship is to adore someone infinitely greater than we.  To worship, therefore, is to have our sights raised above ourselves. To worship is to be oriented away from ourselves.  Just because we are as envy-prone as we are, as self-preoccupied as we are, we need to be re-oriented again and again, at least every seven days (the bare minimum).

Few spectacles delight me more than air-shows.  Aerobatics entrance me. The formation-flying of the Snow Birds or the Blue Angels is good, but I prefer the solo performances of the smaller, propeller-powered aircraft.  These small planes perform far tighter manoeuvres, and perform them much closer to the ground. Recently I saw an aerobatics display on television which included much film-footage of the pilot. The pilot had been photographed by a camera positioned at the front of the cockpit. As the plane rolled and twisted and flipped upside down (many of these manoeuvres were quite violent) I noticed that the pilot was looking for the ground every two seconds. The pilot was constantly re-orienting himself. Because his manoeuvres were so extreme and so sudden, he could easily lose his bearings; and because he was so close to the ground, he had no margin of error. He re-oriented himself — “Where’s the ground?” — at least every two seconds; otherwise he would crash.

In the course of everything that comes upon us, including that insane envy which all of us know but will not admit, we too roll and twist and flip upside down. The only way we can keep from crashing — “My feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well nigh slipped” — is to re-orient ourselves constantly. And we re-orient ourselves constantly by looking for that groundedness which is God.  To re-acquaint ourselves with that groundedness which is God is to avoid the crash. Worship is essential for this; if not every two seconds then at least once every week.

As the psalmist goes to church, as he worships, he gets his bearings once more. As he gets his bearings once more that rare moment of rationality and self-perception which got him to church and got him his bearings asserts itself and extends itself and gradually dispels the envy and the spinoffs of envy which had so recently laid hold of him.         As all of this is dispelled, as he returns to his right mind, he can scarcely believe how absurd he had become and how seriously he had warped himself. “I was stupid and ignorant”, he cries to God, “I was like a beast toward thee.” “Not only was I asinine”, he tells us frankly, “I was even outrageously insensitive to God; and for the longest time I couldn’t even see it!” As his envy evaporates his self-perception returns.  He knows he has been on the edge of catastrophe himself; he has come within an eyelash of betraying his fellow-believers, and he has affronted God.

 

How thorough the psalmist’s re-orientation is is given by his exclamation, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?         And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.”  Martin Luther’s translation is priceless: “As long as I have thee, I wish for nothing else in heaven or on earth.”  As the psalmist’s life sinks more deeply into God’s life; as God’s life sinks more deeply into the psalmist’s, the vastness of God floods the psalmist again and dilutes his envy until it vanishes without trace. “As long as I have thee, I wish for nothing else in heaven or on earth.”

Someone might wish to say that the cure for envy is to want less.  Of course to want less is to do away with envy.         But to say this is as unhelpful as to say that the cure for sickness is to be without disease. The critical question, however, is, “How do we come to be without disease?” How do we come to want less? By repeating one hundred times per day, “I resolve to want less!”? Repeating this one hundred times per day will only remind us of all that we don’t have and leave us wanting more! We cease wanting more by forgetting the “more” that we don’t have. And we forget it as we become preoccupied with him who himself is “more”; so much more, in fact, that to be possessed of him is to see the world’s trifles as just that: trifles which feed our acquisitiveness and vanity but never satisfy them.

“God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever”, says the psalmist at the end of his 73rd tract.  One thousand years later another son of Israel, born in the city of Tarsus and soon to die in the city of Rome, wrote, “For me to live is Christ; and to die can only mean more of him, for ever”.

Psalm 73 is a study in the pathology of envy, as well as a declaration of deliverance from the fatal condition.         While we have allowed the psalmist to tell us much today, however, we are going to let someone else have the last word.         The writer of the book of Proverbs says, “Contentment is a feast without end.” (Prov. 15:15 Jewish Publication Society)

 

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                     

November 2002

 

On Numbering Our Days and Getting a Heart of Wisdom

Psalm 90*,  Genesis 33:27,  Romans 2:4,  Hebrews 6:5,  2 Corinthians 6:10,  1 Corinthians 15:58

 

I: — “I’ll take you upriver for salmon fishing in the new year”, said the church elder to me in my first congregation, “if we are spared to see the spring.” Whenever this man spoke of his plans he always added something like this. He had been a lumberjack, had seen mishaps and accidents and tragedies without number, and knew perfectly well that life is always uncertain; life can never be domesticated; life is always riddled with the unforeseen and the unforeseeable; life can take a right-angled veer at any moment, even as it can end without warning.

My generation of affluent suburbanites, however, has virtually no appreciation of this. We do not admit that life is riddled with risks and accidents and surprise. There are many reasons why my generation does not. In the first place my generation has grown up with the least physical danger and the best health-care the world has seen. The lumberjack may have been crushed by a log, but the white collar office worker is merely going to sustain a paper-cut. If the paper-cut infects, one visit to the family physician will fix it. In addition, no younger or middleaged person is going to die of pneumonia today; and whereas our foreparents died of something as treatable as appendicitis, today the inflamed appendix is removed.

In the second place our society removes (out of sight, out of mind) everyone who is not a paragon of health. As a result we don’t have so much as to look at anyone who is infirm in body or mind. The paralyzed go to Lambert Lodge, the deranged to the provincial hospital, the senile go to the nursing home. What’s left in our midst are all those whom accident and misfortune, even old age have left unmolested. Whereas our foreparents greeted friends of the deceased in the family living room, we leave it all to the undertaker who manages never to pronounce the words “dead” or “death”. No wonder my generation of affluent suburbanites regards life as endlessly rosy: as rosy as it is endless.

In the third place as affluent people we unconsciously assume that we can purchase anything we need. If I need (or merely want) a two-week holiday in Hawaii, I can have it. I may have to forego leather seats on my new car in order to get to Hawaii; but still, what I need or want I can get somehow.

Because there is so much that we can control today (unlike our foreparents) we assume there is nothing that we cannot control.

At least this is what we assume until — until “it” happens. Then we react as if something utterly alien, utterly ununderstandable has descended upon us and upon us alone.

I regularly go along to the funeral home to meet with a family whose 93 year old granny has died. More often than you think someone fumes, “Why did granny have to die? She was in good health!” Yes she was. The assumption here is that if granny had been in poor health then her death would have been all right. But granny was in good health, and had been downtown shopping only yesterday. It’s not fair, I am told next, not fair at all that granny died when she was in good health — even though she was 93. Is life ever ours?

We assume today that the ease we enjoy, fostered by our affluence, is an ease we have a right to. If it ever appears that our ease might evaporate, then we scramble and scheme to make sure that our “right” stays right. When it finally must be admitted that our scrambling and scheming cannot guarantee the ease which we think is ours by right, we wail that we have been victimized. Life isn’t what it is supposed to be: obstacle-free, accident-free, risk-free, anticipatable to the last detail, and of course endless.

Before the rise of modern medicine waves of disease plucked off people of all ages in a kind of chilling lottery: smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria — and further back, plague. Then we came to feel that all of this was behind humankind forever, the lottery having been put out of commission. It seemed, according to some people, that advances in public health had even advanced the human condition: we modern folk were advanced specimens of humanity. Then came AIDS. Suddenly no sensible person could believe that the human condition had advanced at all. In fact humankind can’t even complain of being victimized blindly by a bacterium (as was the case with tuberculosis); instead we must admit that the new affliction is self-inflicted. When I overhear people talking about AIDS their agitation and anger border on panic: they know that the disease is humanly self-bestowed, and they are afraid that their fellow human beings are going to bestow it on them.

And yet there is something deeper still in us. Deeper than our apprehension that danger lurks in life is the feeling of rootlessness that we cannot get rid of. In our innermost depths we are afraid not that this misfortune or that calamity might overtake us; in our innermost depths we feel that we are transients in life. We feel that however vast the cosmos there is no corner of it we can honestly call “home”. Deep down we know that we have no fixed address. It’s not that we fear something; rather there is nothing we can seize or do or make which will let us feel that our home is here. Myself, I am convinced that our society’s preoccupation with TV, mindless amusement, sport (any distraction will do) is one more way of trying not to come to terms with the human condition.

 

II: — The psalmist is wiser than this. In stead of trying to deny the human condition (fragility, vulnerability, transitoriness), only to have the denial break down anyway, he recognizes it and owns it. Life is fleeting; our plans do fragment; we can’t fashion something permanent and impregnable in which we can then take refuge. The psalmist owns all of this, and is able to own it, just because he looks to God eternal. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations; from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” “Before the mountains were brought forth, or even you had formed the earth and world, you are God.” The human condition doesn’t find its resolution in any creaturely entity (the earth and the world); it doesn’t find its resolution even in something which appears as old and stable and immoveable as the mountains. The human condition finds its resolution in God and only in God. We cannot alter the human condition, despite our efforts to do so and our self-deception at having done so. We can only look to him who has made us for himself and therefore is himself our only dwelling place.

I am moved every time I ponder the last public address of Moses. He has endured unspeakable frustration for decades in the wilderness. His people bickered, complained, fought, fell into superstition, and railed against him as they unravelled throughout the nerve-wracking sojourn in the wilderness. Now the promised land is in sight. To be sure, the promised land is God’s gift; it is meant for their blessing. But of course, like modern affluent suburbanites, they confuse the gift with the giver himself; they think that enjoyment of the gift is a substitute for intimacy with the giver. Moses tells them on the eve of his death that not only is their ultimate dwelling place not the wilderness (they were never tempted to think this); it isn’t even the promised land (they are tempted to think this). “The eternal God is your dwelling place”, says Moses, “and underneath are the everlasting arms”.

To say that God is eternal is to say that God is qualitatively different from his creation and any aspect of it. If God were merely quantitatively different then he would merely live longer than we do. We might think that if we want to live a long time ourselves we should get on board with him. But of course it is not the case that God lives longer. God is not subject to time at all. God is eternal. Herein is our blessing, for merely adding years to the life of any of us or all of us will not alter the human condition. To be sure, over the span of 180 million years carbon and sulphur, nitrogen and hydrogen will form oil. But 180 million years will do nothing for the human condition. In God, however, we have what no time-extension will ever give us. In him we have that dwelling place which we need and crave, in view of the human condition, but which we can articulate only feebly and give to ourselves not at all.

 

III: — Because what we need most urgently and crave most profoundly is found only in God, God urge us to “turn back”. “Turn back, you mortals”. It’s a summons to repent. The summons to repent is reinforced by the psalmist’s awareness that God himself “turns us back to dust”. God does not let us forget, ultimately, that we are finite, fragile creatures. We came from dust, and to dust we shall return. We are not superhuman; we are not gods; we are not immortal; we are “frail creatures of dust”, as the hymnwriter reminds us.

How fragile are we? How transitory are we? How quickly do we pass off the scene? Three times over the psalmist tell us. We are like a leaf floating on a stream; in thirty seconds the leaf has passed downstream out of sight. We are like a dream; as soon as the sleeper awakes and gets on with the day, the dream is forgotten. We are like grass; lush and green in the morning, but after one day’s heat brown and withered by nightfall. The psalmist doesn’t keep on reminding us of our short span on earth to depress us. He wants only to render us realistic about ourselves. We aren’t here for very long, and in whatever time we are here life is uncertain.

Then the psalmist reinforces God’s summons to us to turn back, repent, by reminding us that not only is life short and uncertain, judgement awaits us inasmuch as we are sinners who have provoked God’s anger. “We are consumed by your anger”, he cries to God on behalf of all of us, “we are overwhelmed by your wrath.” To say that we are consumed by God’s anger is to say that nothing about us is exempt. And “overwhelmed”? “Overwhelmed” translates a Hebrew expression with a rich background. The Hebrew word is used of an army which is facing disaster and knows it. Suddenly its strategies, its tactics, its proud record, its confidence: they all mean nothing now. An army facing annihilation has nothing to say and nothing to do.

The same Hebrew word, “overwhelmed”, is used of Joseph’s brothers in Egypt when Joseph discloses himself to them. They had envied him, mistreated him, sold him into slavery in Egypt, lied about him to their father. Then famine came upon them. They staggered off to Egypt knowing they had to wheedle grain out of Pharaoh’s highest-ranking civil servant or they were going to starve to death. They go to Egypt confident that they can smooth-talk their way into food. They are granted a meeting with Pharaoh’s highest-ranking civil servant. Just when they think they have won the day the civil servant quietly says to them, “Do you know who I am? I’m Joseph, your brother, the one you treated shabbily and contemptuously thought you had disposed of forever. You are looking at Joseph, the one you wrote off as dead. What do you say now, fellows?” They don’t say anything. Speechless. The game is over and they know it. “Overwhelmed”.

I trust that you are overwhelmed, as I am. If you and I are overwhelmed today then we are admitting that the time of glib superficiality is over. The time of trifling with the gospel is over. The time (whatever time God’s patience and mercy permit us); the time of hearing and heeding the gospel is upon us. Jesus begins his public ministry with the declaration that in him God’s effective rule has come upon the world. Following this declaration Jesus utters the first imperative of his public ministry: repent. He is only repeating the cry of his Father 1000 years earlier, “Turn back, you mortals”. Turn back in the sense of return to the one who can be your dwelling place just because he alone is this.

Our Lord’s word is reflected faithfully in the witnesses he has gathered around him. Peter says that God delays executing judgement upon us the overwhelmed precisely to make time for us to repent, to return to him from whom all humankind has departed. Paul speaks of the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience. Then he adds, “But don’t trade on God’s kindness and forbearance and patience; don’t presume upon it. Don’t you know it is meant to lead you to repentance?”

No wonder the psalmist asks God to “teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom”. “Teach us to number our days.” It means, “Startle us with the importance of our days, since we have so few and so many of them are already behind us. Grant us to see our days in the light of your eternal truth and purpose and mercy; and grant us henceforth to walk in your light.”

I am aware of how important it is for me to number my days; especially aware every time I bury someone younger than I. I have buried dozens of people who were no older than I. And therefore I am always aware that the sermon you are hearing from me now may be the last one you will ever hear from me. Then I must not waste so much as one of the twenty minutes you allow me to magnify God’s truth and purpose and mercy in order that you may turn, return, to him.

 

IV: — As the psalmist himself turns to God he finds that his heart soars and his heart sings. He exults three times over.

In the first place he finds himself satisfied morning by morning with God’s steadfast love, with the result that he will rejoice and be glad all his days. There is no substitute for one’s own experience of God, is there. Those who have “tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come”, in the words of the author of Hebrews, know with a conviction and an assurance that will never desert them. There is no substitute for our own experience of grace. The psalmist doesn’t say that believers like him are going to be rendered healthy and wealthy. He insists, rather, that every day God’s steadfast love soaks into them so thoroughly that they can taste it. Taste it even in the midst of the rigours of the human condition. Despite the rigours and rejections and dangers of their existence as apostles, Paul speaks of himself and his fellow-apostles as “having nothing, yet possessing everything; poor, yet making many rich; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

In the second place the psalmist, dwelling as he does in that dwelling place which is God, discerns manifestations of God’s own work and glory and power. The early church was aware of two especial manifestations of God’s work and glory and power. One is the raising of Jesus Christ from the dead. The other is the triumph of the gospel as Jesus Christ (whose gospel it is) quickens faith in men and women and enlarges their faith and fosters life-long love and obedience and adoration.

To have numbered our days and to have got a heart of wisdom is to have come to know that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is therefore set forth for all the world to hear and heed; it is also to find joy in the triumph of the gospel as the life-giving Word of God penetrates even the most affluence-insulated suburbanite and leaves his neighbours perplexed.

In the third place the psalmist knows that God is going to prosper the work of the psalmist’s hands. To number our days is certainly to be aware that we don’t have many days; yet it is also to know that the few we do have will bear kingdom-fruit insofar as we are about the king’s business. While our days are few, the eternal God will render the kingdom-work of our hands eternally fruitful. Paul tells us that we are to abound in the work of the Lord, since in the Lord our work will never be in vain.

Our confidence in it all is rooted in the truth that the eternal God is our dwelling place. The human condition, after all, is unchangeable. Life is short, death is sure, the unforeseeable abounds. To wail about this is futile; to think, titanically, that we can get ourselves beyond this is foolish. We are creatures of dust whom God keeps turning back to dust precisely in order that we might get a heart of wisdom and return to him. For then his steadfast love will find us rejoicing ourselves and praising him all our days.

F I N I S

 

                                                                                            Rev. Dr. Victor A. Shepherd

2 June, 1991