Matthew 2:1-12            1^st John 5:3             Psalm 103

Everyone seems to complain about Christmas shopping. What are we supposed to give the relative who already has more clothes than she’ll ever wear, more books than she’ll ever read, and three waffle irons as well? Why are the stores so dreadfully overheated when all the shoppers are wearing overcoats and winter boots anyway? Why do so many salespersons seem to resent being asked to help when selling is their job? Still, despite our complaining about having to buy gifts, we continue to purchase them.

The real reason we keep purchasing gifts and giving them to those dear to us is that we relish giving them; we enjoy giving gifts even more than we enjoy receiving them. We are more excited, more suspenseful, when we watch someone else open the gift we have given than we are when we open the gift given to us. And we know why. Giving a gift is recognition of the recipient’s worthiness. It’s also a declaration of that person’s significance to us. Most importantly, giving a gift is a vehicle for giving ourselves.

Two millennia ago three Gentile men brought gifts to a Jewish child. They brought them for the same three reasons that we give gifts: they were recognising the child’s worthiness; they were declaring the child’s significance to them, and they were giving themselves to the child in the act of giving their gifts. Their gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Today we are going to examine each gift. Let’s start with frankincense.

 

I: — Frankincense was incense used in worship. In bringing incense to Jesus the wise men were admitting that Jesus is worthy of worship. Gentiles though they were, they knew that God alone is to be worshipped. They knew too that nothing so horrified Jewish people as idolatry. Then in worshipping the Bethlehem babe were the wise men idolaters (in which case they weren’t wise and we should pity them)? Or were they indeed worshipping him who is God incarnate (in which case we should emulate them)? Matthew tells us that this child is Emmanu-el, “With us-God”. The foundation of the Christian faith is precisely what the wise men were acknowledging: in this child God himself has come to live the life of humankind. Charles Wesley captured it all in his Christmas carol, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail th’Incarnate Deity.” Jesus Christ is God’s total identification with the human predicament through his self-identification with the Bethlehem babe.

And it’s precisely this notion that so very many people find unpalatable. They say it turns simple truth (as it were) into impenetrable labyrinth. Why not look upon Jesus as a splendid example, they ask, even a fine teacher, even a prophet, even the greatest of the prophets? He is all these, to be sure; yet the three visitors knew him to be so much more as well.

Within the church precincts there are always to be found those who secretly (or not so secretly) would really prefer to be unitarians. Unitarians speak of Jesus in glowing terms. Their admiration for him is genuine. Yet however much of the New Testament’s depiction of Jesus they esteem they finally reject the substance of the New Testament. For the apostles insist that this one Jew who knew that God alone is to be worshipped accepted the worship people rendered him and even insisted on it. Knowing it was blasphemy to claim to be Son of God, he yet claimed it. When Thomas fell before him in the wake of Easter Jesus didn’t say, “Now, now Thomas, there’s no need to get carried away. You flatter me with your exaggeration.” Our Lord never said that Thomas was exaggerating or had been carried away. When our Lord’s detractors had hissed at him, “Why do you pronounce forgiveness? Only God can do that” Jesus had replied, “My point exactly.”

The secret or not-so-secret unitarians among us maintain that the notion of incarnation is too narrow. Alas, they forget one thing: the effectiveness of a knife depends on the narrowness of its cutting edge. No one can do life-saving surgery with a crowbar. Church history demonstrates again and again that God surges over people and over congregations rendering them forever different not when God-in-general is talked about but rather when Jesus-in-particular is exalted. When Paul announces that he’s not ashamed of the gospel just because he knows the gospel to be God’s power for salvation (Romans 1:16 ), he’s always aware that the gospel is ultimately the risen, ascended Son himself. This one person and no one else seized him and shook him. Apart from this one person the world would never have heard of the little man from Tarsus .

One of my favourite scriptural episodes is that of the man born blind in John 9. Jesus enables the man to see. (Seeing, of course, is a biblical metaphor for knowing.) Are people overjoyed to have the fellow now able to see? On the contrary they harass him. Finally the man himself, simply knowing, says, “Listen. I was blind, I can see, and I know who did it.” And still they harass him.

When today, in our midst, the Incarnate one himself renders forever different the man or woman who can only speak simply yet gratefully of herself as lost and now found, dead and now alive, immobilised and now freed, silent and now speaking on behalf of her Lord; when it happens today detractors and assailants are as insensitive and aggressive as they were then. The theologian, embarrassed by the new believer’s simple testimony and wishing to take refuge in religious complexity, comments, “But are you aware of epichoresis and enhypostasia?” (Epichoresis is the mutual coinherence of the persons of the Trinity. Enhypostasia we’ll leave for another day.) The philosopher asks, “Are you aware of the metaphysical presuppositions of your assertion?” “Metaphysics” is a new word for the sighted blind man and he thinks it has something to do with Eno’s fruit salts. The psychologist suggests, “Let’s talk about your relationship with your mother.” His parents say, “We sent you to Sunday School all those years; we even sent you to Rev. Snodgrass’s confirmation class. And now you are telling us that only recently, when you really grasped the truth of the Incarnation, Jesus Christ himself lit you up?” The clergy say. What do the clergy say? Not much. Being face-to-face with someone who glows with the assurance that she sees and knows where earlier she was blind and unaware; this bothers many clergy. Meanwhile, of course, the browbeaten person continues to say, “I was blind, I can see, and I know who did it. What’s the problem?”

The wise men brought frankincense. They worshipped the child. They weren’t idolaters. They simply bowed in glad, grateful adoration before him who is in fact the effectual presence of God.

 

II: — The wise men brought gold as well. Gold was the gift that befitted a king. In the child they recognized the royal ruler.

It’s most important that we not stop with frankincense but offer gold as well. Not only are we to worship our Lord; we must also obey him. It’s too easy to worship him (or think we do) and then forget him; too easy to think we can profit from the salvation he has won for us yet refuse the sacrifice he requires of us; too easy to call upon him when we need him for ourselves yet ignore him when he needs us for work in his world; too easy to speak of what he has done in us while shunning what he needs to do through us. In short, it’s too easy to cheapen grace by claiming forgiveness from him while disdaining obedience to him.

Authentic believers always know that obedience isn’t onerous. Obedience is life; obedience is blessing. “His commandments are not burdensome” John exclaims in his first epistle. (1 John 5:3) Why aren’t they burdensome? Because the obedience we render our Lord is the natural expression of what he has made us by his grace.

Gold? Of course. He is the royal ruler who claims our obedience. If he has touched our eyes and made us to see then we know our obedience to be not irksome but rather the following of that path where life grows richer, even as other paths invariably find life growing poorer.

I used to think it was children, even adolescents, who had difficulty getting the point that while we can do anything in life that we want, anythingwe do entails momentous consequences.  I have found that most adults are as slow to grasp this point as any child or adolescent. Any choice we make, any option we pursue, any decision we settle on; these have irretrievable consequences. To expect anything else is to expect magic. Even the most enlightened people in our enlightened age, I have found, actually expect an infantile world of magic, only to rage and curse and lament and whine when, at age 40 or 50 or 60, it comes home to them that there is no magic and the option they pursued back then now has consequences pursuing them. To be sure, in our non-magical world there are also consequences to obeying Jesus Christ; these consequences, however, are all blessing.

“His commandments are not burdensome.” The apostle John wrote these words inasmuch as he had proven them true over and over in his own experience. But what had moved him to try them, try them out, as it were, in the first place? He had seen the commandments of Christ fulfilled in Christ himself. He had seen his Lord live what his Lord asks of his followers. He had seen that what his Lord lived was incomparably better, more satisfying than any “life” (so-called) he had seen to date, including his own. Then why not “give it a try”? And when Jesus had said to his disciples, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”, John had seen the truth exemplified in the yoke-maker himself.

We must always remember that it’s impossible to be yokeless. Something is going to determine how we live and what we do and where we go and whom we obey. Our yoke can be an upbringing that we have put on unthinkingly; it can be New Age ideology (or something akin to it) that we put on deliberately; it can be the mindset that characterises our social class inasmuch as the last thing we want is to appear out-of-step with our social class; it can be capitulation to craving, whether our craving be for illicit sex or social climbing or financial superiority or intellectual snobbery. These are all yokes. They all appear easy and light but in fact prove themselves so very onerous that the yoke strangles and the burden crushes. Jesus says, “Since yokelessness is impossible; since something inside you or outside you determines what you do, how you live, ultimately who you are, why not try my yoke? For my yoke fits well and doesn’t strangle; my burden is light and doesn’t crush. In fact my yoke is like the well-fitted yoke that allows the ox to work all day without choking itself; my burden is no more burdensome than wings are to a bird or fins are to a fish or skates are to a hockey player; no burden at all.” It was because the apostle John had first seen his Lord do that truth which the master now urged upon all; it was because John had first found it so very attractive that he had come to try it for himself, then had found it easy and light, and finally had come to write, “His commandments are not burdensome.”

The wise men brought gold. They were acknowledging their rightful ruler. They wanted only to obey their Lord and therein “find” themselves.

 

III: — Lastly the wise men brought myrrh. Myrrh was a medicinal substance used for healing. The wise men admitted Jesus to be the healer; the healer, the healer of the world’s dis-ease, the world’s wounds, the world’s distress and disorder and dismay.

Today we associate healing almost exclusively with the reversal of physical illness and the discomfort associated with such illness. No one wishes to belittle this. Anyone who has found relief even in aspirin for headache or backache or toothache isn’t going to belittle healing in the sense of reversing physical illness. At the same time, the biggest ills in life aren’t physical. The most significant ill in life isn’t the broken bone or the arthritic joint or the gall stones or even that illness which will close out our earthly existence. The biggest wounds in life are the rent that has occurred between God and us, together with the rent that opens up between us and those dearest us, plus the seemingly chronic dis-ease that leaves us knowing something is profoundly out of order inside ourselves even as we are unable to name it or fix it. This is where healing is most sorely needed.

Unquestionably Corinth was a rough city. We shouldn’t think, however, that it was any worse than rough cities known to us. It was of the same order as the tough parts of Glasgow today or Amsterdam or the Bronx or even the Jane-Finch area of Toronto . Paul established a congregation in Corinth and subsequently corresponded with it. In his correspondence he lets us in on what he found when he first went to Corinth , what he found among the people who came to faith in Jesus Christ through his ministry and whose lives were different ever after. “Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, drunkards, revilers, robbers.” He adds, “And this what some of you used to be. 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.” (1Cor. 6:9-11) “This what some of you used to be.” Used to be, but are no longer.

Since I am a professor of historical theology I often return in mind and heart to the earliest days of the Eighteenth Century Awakening when John Wesley and George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards inadvertently touched a match to tinder and something burst into flame that surprised them as much as it surprised anyone else. I ask myself what was in the match that these men struck. There were many ingredients in the match, of course, one of which was their tireless insistence, “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” People hungered to hear this and thereafter proved it. “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” What can God do? “This is what some of you used to be. 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.”

That healer whom the wise men adored was the fulfilment of Psalm 103. The psalmist cries, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits. He forgives all your iniquity and heals all your diseases.” (Ps. 103:2-3) It’s glorious that God forgives all our iniquity; more glorious still that he does something with our iniquity beyond forgiving it: he heals all our diseases.

All of them? Yes. Because Jesus is resurrection and life he heals us of that disease which closes out our earthly existence; and in healing us of this he heals us of all those diseases that anticipate it. Then what about the remaining dis-eases, the ones I mentioned a minute ago: the deepest rent between us and him, between us and each other, between us and our truest self: does he heal these too? What the psalmist wrote he wrote out of his experience of the Christmas gift given to him a thousand years before the Bethlehem event as surely as the same gift is given to you and me two thousand years after the event. For this reason the psalmist was unerring when he wrote, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits. He forgives all your iniquity and heals all your diseases.”

 

Three Gentiles spared nothing to get themselves to a Jewish newborn. They wanted to bring the child gifts. They brought frankincense, for they were bowing in worship before one whom they ought to worship just because he was, and is, Emmanu-el, “God-with-us.” They brought gold, for they were obediently submitting themselves to their rightful ruler, only to learn subsequently that unlike all other yokes and burdens in life his yoke is easy and his burden light. They brought myrrh, for they knew that in Jesus of Nazareth there had appeared the kingdom of God , and the kingdom of God is simply the creation of God healed.

   In it all, of course, the wise men knew that their gift-giving was the vehicle of their uttermost giving of themselves. These men were wise, really wise.

 

Victor Shepherd

December 2000

Matthew 2:1-12

It happened in Auschwitz, one of the Nazis’ most notorious extermination camps, in 1945. Jewish inmates only days away from murder by gassing, their remains then to be burnt in huge crematoria, are praying. Needless to say they have no Torah scroll. What are they going to do at that part of Jewish worship when a Torah scroll is carried around the synagogue sanctuary and worshipers reach out to touch it as it is borne past them? Elie Wiesel, himself a prisoner in Auschwitz and only fifteen years old at the time, survived to tell us what happened next. Lacking a Torah scroll (these scrolls are about four feet long), someone picked up a little boy, about four feet long, and carried him around the prison-barracks so that devout people could reach out and touch him. After all, wasn’t Torah to be embodied in a child at any time? Wasn’t Torah to be written on human hearts in all circumstances? And so a little boy was carried around the room while older worshipers touched him, the living embodiment of Jewish faith, in hope too that the youngster would survive and bespeak the faith of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel.

When I first read Wiesel’s description of this haunting moment I thought immediately of the prophet Zechariah and his Spirit-inflamed cry, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'” The Jews in Auschwitz touched the prison rags of a boy. But we aren’t Jews, we aren’t in Auschwitz, and we don’t have a boy who embodies Torah. Zechariah knew as much when his prophecy flew from his mouth. He cried, “In those days.” “In those days” is a semitism, a Hebrew expression that means, “In the end-times; when God intervenes definitively on behalf of the entire world; at the end of history when God acts so as to leave discerning people saying to each other, ‘What more can he say than to us he has said…?'” Zechariah also spoke of “the nations.” “The nations” was a Hebrew expression meaning “all the Gentiles.” It’s plain that Zechariah foresaw a day, the day, to be exact, the last day, the end-time day, when the world’s Gentiles would make contact with a Jew inasmuch as God was with him — or else the world’s Gentiles would be forever without God.

Shortly after Jesus was born some wisemen, Gentiles, came to him and worshipped. They were wise. For as long as it took them to get from their homes in the east to the birthplace of Jesus they had been repeating to themselves, “In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'”

We Gentiles in Streetsville have taken hold of the robe of one particular Jew because we are convinced that God is with him uniquely: this one Jew is the Word made flesh, the incarnation of God’s word and way and wisdom and will. We have taken hold of him in that we know he is God’s end-time intervention on behalf of the entire world. God’s self-disclosure is complete in him.

Yet in taking hold of Jesus Christ we must be sure to understand that we can have him only as we have his Yiddishkeit (Jewishness); we can have him only as we have his people and the prophets and priests and sages of Israel who course through his veins. If today you and I are going to exalt the wisemen who were wise enough to bow before the one who is Torah incarnate, then like them we must understand that to make contact with him is to make contact with Abraham and Ruth, Jeremiah and Deborah, Amos and Rahab. Intimacy with Jesus Christ means intimacy with a heritage apart from which Jesus is incomprehensible and we are lost.

 

I: — One aspect of our heritage is God’s passionate involvement with the world and with individuals alike. God is passionately involved with you, with me, with the church, with the surge and savagery of world-occurrence. Think of the images of God that Hebrew saints have hung up in our minds:

– a husband whose wife’s repeated infidelities have left him humiliated;

– a mother whose bond with her offspring is so intense that she will give up anything before she gives up her child;

– a she-bear who will claw you if ever you think you can trifle with her or exploit her;

– a father whose disappointment in his children is so deep that he wants to disown the lot of them, only to find that he can’t but instead renames them one by one. God is passionately involved, and passionately involved relentlessly.

Do you remember a year or two ago when anyone who could sing was singing that wretched ditty, From a Distance? “God is watching from a distance”, the silly song said over and over again. Nothing could be farther from the truth! In the first place, God isn’t a spectator; he doesn’t watch. God acts. In the second place, he isn’t remote. God irrupts in human hearts and human affairs.

The Hebrew bible speaks everywhere of God as patient or angry or sad or delighted or eager or wistful or disgusted or even amazed. “Anthropomorphism”, someone says, “it’s nothing more than primitive anthropomorphism.” Anthropos, humankind; morphe, shape. Anthropomorphism is a human-shaped God. It’s suggested that God’s impassioned life (so-called) is nothing more than a projection of our passion. “Not so!”, cry the Hebrew prophets. It’s not that God is human-shaped, anthropomorphic. It’s just the opposite: we are to become theomorphic, God-shaped. We are to cease spewing passion fruitlessly on trivialities and instead become impassioned where God himself is. Right now our passions are all mixed up: we love what is detestable, crave what is harmful, hate what is beneficial, ignore what is helpful, admire what is useless. It isn’t a sign of sophistication to think that God is a projection of anthropomorphism; rather it’s a sign of folly to live a human existence that is less than theomorphic.

It’s easy to see how a Hebrew understanding of God differs from assorted Gentile understandings. For the ancient Greeks God set the universe in motion as its prime-mover, and then from a distance watched it unfold. Eighteenth century Deists compared God to a clockmaker. God fashioned the universe in all its intricacies the way a clockmaker fashions a clock, wound it up, and now sits back to hear it tick. Twentieth century writers don’t think of the universe as a clock ticking away with admirable regularity; they look upon the universe as a bobsled. God gave the sled the initial shove to get it going (or else the sled began to move spontaneously), and now the universe’s momentum has it careening faster and faster, amidst greater and greater danger, everyone in it hanging on for dear life. And there’s the more recent Gentile phenomenon of New Age and “spirituality.” People taken up into New Age spirituality confuse it with Christian faith; it never occurs to them that New Age spirituality has no place for sin or evil. (No wonder suburban “yuppies” are so taken with it!) The Hebrew prophets happen to have a large place for both, convinced as they are first of the holiness of God.

The Hebrew prophets in fact are qualitatively different. They don’t have a notion of God. (Notions are sheer speculation.) They have an impression of God, impression in the classical sense of “impression”: “pressed into.” God has stamped himself upon the prophet; the prophet is im-pressed in that he’s been indented and forever after bears in himself the stamp, the indentation, the impression of God’s descent upon him. Arising from his undeniable encounter with God, the prophet now possesses an irrefutable understanding of God. The prophet’s understanding of God arises from his encounter with the one who first grasped him and shook him. The name “Isra-el” means “one who contends with God, struggles with God, wrestles with God.”

Because Israelites are those who contend with God, the older testament unashamedly depicts people adoring God, questioning God, raging at God, even accusing God. But even to be furious at God is nevertheless faith! Indifference towards God, on the other hand, is inexcusable.

In other words, dialogue characterizes God and those who are serious about him. Very often the dialogue is riddled with anguish. People shout at God, “How long do we have to put up with the oppressor?” The psalmist feels abandoned and cries, “Where are you when I need you most?”

Dialogue, however, is never one-sided. Therefore God also puts questions to us. The first question God asks he addresses to Adam and Eve after their outrageous ingratitude and monumental defiance have incurred God’s displeasure. They try to hide from him, and stupidly think they have hidden from him. God questions them, “Where are you?” Of course God knows where they are; but he wants them to know that how ever hard they may run from but they can’t escape him. And God’s second question? After Cain has murdered his brother Abel, God says to Cain, “Where is your brother?” We must never think that savagery visited upon any man or woman anywhere is going to go unnoticed or unrequited. When Israelite people think they can divert God’s attention from their sin by heaping up sacrifices in the temple (as though God could be bamboozled by a liturgical extravaganza) God asks them all, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?”

Yet not every day is anguish day. Like a shepherd, God protects his people against marauders. Like a mother, God cannot part with what he has brought forth. Like a father who puts back on her feet the toddler who is just learning to walk, God bears with and supports us his people throughout our infantile totterings. Ultimately God points to his Son and exclaims, “He’s the apple of my eye! Now you be sure to hear and heed him!”

The wisemen adored the one in whom was found incarnate the impassioned God of Israel.

 

II: — In seizing the robe of a Jew we come upon yet another aspect of our inheritance: the world matters. Everyday life matters. The smallest detail of everyday life matters. Christians insist that the older testament is authoritative for Christian faith and conduct, as authoritative as the newer testament. Yet there are huge tracts of the older testament that Christians neglect. Think of the book of Leviticus. It’s the last book of the bible that Christians read, if they ever get around to reading it (even, of course, as they will continue to swear that it’s divinely inspired.) On the other hand, the book of Leviticus is the first book that Jewish children read as soon as they have learned Hebrew. Christians tend to regard Leviticus as nothing more than a compilation of legalistic trivia. But in fact Leviticus has everything to do with the sanctification of everyday life, God’s claim upon all of life and his involvement with all of life. The book of Leviticus has everything to do with holiness. Holiness, for many Christians, is a “trembly”, spooky feeling they have or hope to have. Holiness, according to the book of Leviticus, is simply what God’s people do in obedience to him.

Christians are impatient with the minutiae of Leviticus, like the prohibition forbidding anyone to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. There’s nothing wrong with eating boiled goat. The goat has to be boiled in something. In a land where water is scarce, why not boil young goat in goat’s milk? Mother-goat will never know. For Israelites, however, animals and humankind were created on the same “day”; therefore animals are humanoid in some respect; therefore to cook the offspring of an animal in the milk meant to sustain it is heartless and callous. No less a figure than Solzhenitsyn has said that a society which is indifferent to the plight of animals is a society soon indifferent to the plight of humans. There’s yet another reason for the prohibition. In ancient times, boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was a religious act practised by the devotees of the cult of Baal. Specifically, to boil a kid in its mother’s milk was to invoke the Baal deity, together with the disgraces and degradations that Baal-worship entailed. (If you want more details, re-read my year-old sermon on Voices United, The United Church’s new hymn book.) What are the seemingly-harmless practices in our society that in fact are invocations of something we ought to repudiate?

In the rabbinical Judaism that followed the biblical era, the rabbis speak of “Sabbath blessings.” “Sabbath blessings” is a polite circumlocution for the sexual intercourse that married couples have and are supposed to have on the Sabbath. Long before the rabbinical era, however, in the era of Leviticus, married couples are forbidden to have intercourse on the Sabbath. Why? Because the surrounding Canaanite nations had divinized sex, making an idol of it; the surrounding nations magnified religious prostitution as an act of worship; the surrounding nations trafficked in promiscuity and perversity. Israel abhorred such a development and wanted to distance itself as much as possible from such degradation. For this reason Israelite couples were forbidden to have intercourse prior to worship, lest the notion be disseminated that Israel too had fallen in with the pagan nations that bordered it. What is it in our society’s approach to sex that is tantamount to idolatry? What is it that divinizes sex, albeit informally? What is it in magazines like Cosmopolitan (to mention only one) that is no different from the paganism of the ancient Canaanite nations? Only a fool dismisses Leviticus’ sanctification of life as “legalistic trivia.”

According to the Torah if you lend someone money and he gives you his coat as collateral, you have to give him back his coat at nightfall even if he hasn’t repaid you your money. Why? Because the poorest people in Israel used their daytime coat as a nighttime blanket. Someone can’t be expected to spend nights sleepless on account of cold, even if he still owes money and has nothing else to put up as collateral. Don’t you think there’s a limit to financial jurisdiction over human affairs?

When a criminal had to be punished in Israel he couldn’t receive more than forty lashes. Why was there a limit to the punishment? A reason accompanies the command: “Lest your brother be degraded in your sight.” No society can allow criminal behaviour to go unpunished; at the same time, whatever society must do to punish offenders and restore order, it mustn’t punish offenders in such a way as to degrade them. This isn’t legalistic trivia.

We read that if we see our worst enemy’s ox going astray, it is sin to say to ourselves, “Let him look for his own ox.” We must rather inconvenience ourselves and take the animal back to its owner, our worst enemy or not. Why? Not because to do so makes us do-gooders who can then feel proud of ourselves. Rather, to do so is an act grounded in the character of God himself and exemplifying the character of God himself: he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike; he visits his kindness and mercy and patience alike on those who love him and those who don’t, on those who like Abraham can be called “God’s friend” and those who are just as surely God’s enemy. What modern Gentiles dismiss as legalistic trivia is really God’s claim upon all of life and his involvement with all of life, which claim and involvement are rooted in the character of God himself.

Not so long ago the Toronto Board of Education disseminated a pamphlet stating that all cultures are of equal value. I understand what the Board wanted to say and why: it wanted to head off subtle bigotry, racism, ethnic superiority, prejudice of any sort. At the same time, regardless of the board’s motive, I think that the statement, “All cultures are of equal value”, is patently false. I do not think that a culture which punishes theft by severing one’s hand at the wrist is one with a culture that doesn’t. I am convinced that a culture whose Christian majority permits the construction of any number of mosques and a culture whose Islamic majority permits the construction of no church-building at all; these are not of equal value. A culture that approves or tolerates the torturing of political dissenters; a culture that prefers tyranny to fair trials; a culture that subjugates one group of people as sub-human; are we to tell our schoolchildren that such distinctions are insignificant and are to be overlooked? In the final 80 years of Czarist rule in Russia there were 17 state executions. In the first month of Lenin’s rule there were over 1000. Does the Toronto Board of Education expect us to tell our children that at bottom “it’s all the same?”

The wisemen who went to Bethlehem to see and adore and obey: they knew, Gentiles though they were, that Israel’s God had everything to do with every detail of every day.

There are ever so many more aspects to our inheritance. I should like to speak of two more this morning, life and hope. In taking hold of the robe of a Jew, of one Jew in particular, how are to we understand life in the face of the deadly assaults rained on it relentlessly? And how are we to understand hope in the midst of cynicism and despair? But the sermon is already long enough, and therefore such a discussion will have to wait for another day.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'” (Zechariah 8:23) Christmas is God’s definitive incursion. According to God’s plan and purpose Christmas is the beginning of the end. There has been given to us one Jew whose robe we must grasp, for not to grasp it, Paul reminds the Gentiles in Ephesus, is to have no hope and to be without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12)

 

                                                                    Victor Shepherd
January 1998            

WHAT WERE THE WISE MEN ENDORSING OF YIDDISHKEIT?

 Matthew 2:1-12    Isaiah 60:1-3

 

Who ought to worship? Everyone ought to worship. (We all know this much. Everyone ought to worship.) Still, the Christmas carol, Angels, from the Realms of Glory, speaks of different sorts of people who ought to worship. It speaks of angels and shepherds, sages and saints.

 

I: — Today we are going to start with the shepherds. Shepherds were despised in 1^st century Palestine. The social sophisticates in Jerusalem and other city centres of urbanity looked upon shepherds as uncouth, since shepherds worked with animals. Shepherds were also regarded as dirty. Sheep, after all, have very oily fleece and the shepherd has to handle them; besides, sheep poop everywhere. Shepherds were also looked upon as less than devout. It was awkward for them to get to all the church services as expected, since their animals were forever getting lost or falling sick or breaking a leg or having obstetrical difficulties.

Like all people who are despised for any reason, however, the shepherds were also useful to the very people who despised them. At both morning and evening services in the temple, the cathedral of Jerusalem, an unblemished lamb had to be offered up to God. High quality lambs, therefore, were always in demand. Temple authorities had their own private flocks just outside Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem hills. The Bethlehem shepherds looked after both their own flocks and the flocks of the temple authorities, always looking out for the perfect lamb to be sacrificed in the temple. These shepherds, despised as they were, were ordained by God to be the first people to behold the Lamb of God, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. They were the first to hear the good news, gospel, of Christmas: “For to you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”

I understand why the shepherds were the first to hear and see, apprehend and know, believe and trust. The shepherds were first in that like other people in general who come from the south side of town they aren’t taken in by the smokescreens and false fronts that middle and upper class people love to hide behind. People from the south side of town see it the way it is and tell it the way it is.

My first day on the job in Streetsville (I came to the congregation in 1978 and remained for 21 years) I arrived early at my office and waited for the church secretary. Promptly at 8:30 a.m. the secretary, a large, imposing woman, loomed in the doorway to my office, looked me in the eye and said, “I’m married to a truck driver; you get it from me straight.” That was her first utterance. Her second was like unto it: “There’s a toilet between your office and mine, but it’s noisy, if you get what I mean.” Is there anyone who wouldn’t get what she meant? Right away I knew I was going to get along with this woman. Because she, married to a truck driver, was utterly transparent and non-duplicitous, frontal, she spared me untold grief over and over in congregational life.

She and I had much in common, not the least of which is the simple fact that we both live in the shadow of a dog food factory. And there’s nothing wrong with this. After all, Moses was minding sheep when the Lord God accosted him and the world was different ever after. Gideon was threshing wheat when he was summoned from heaven. Elisha was ploughing a field when he was named successor to Elijah. No congregation can afford to be without shepherds and all those like them.

 

This being the case, why do we see so few of these people at worship in virtually all the churches of historic Protestantism? Roman Catholicism has always been able to attract people from the whole of the socio-economic spectrum, from the most affluent to the most materially disadvantaged. To be sure, the Protestant churches do see some of the latter; Protestant congregations aren’t completely homogeneous. Still, we see far too few. Their absence dismays me, since I have found that these people have no difficulty with me, at least. Several years ago a man with a grade ten education chuckled, “Victor, we can always be sure of one thing on Sunday morning: you’ll never be over our heads!” Such people live in Toronto in large numbers. But they are proportionately underrepresented in virtually all Protestant congregations. Why? Can any of you enlighten me? Their absence haunts me. For shepherds have been summoned to worship Christ the new-born king. And if they do worship, they’ll be the first to see and seize the Lamb of God who takes away their sin too.

 

II: — Sages ought to worship as well. To be sure, the hymnwriter insists that where sages are concerned “brighter visions beam afar”; brighter, that is, than the sages’ contemplations. I agree. But to see Jesus Christ as brighter, even the brightest, is not to say that lesser contemplations aren’t bright at all and aren’t to be valued. They are bright, and they are to be valued. To say that God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ supplies what no sage will ever arrive at is correct; but to say that because God’s self-disclosure is this what the sages are about is worthless – this is wrong. To say that the event of Christmas gives us what no philosophical exploration will ever impart is not to say that philosophy (or another scholarly discipline) is therefore foolish and useless. The uniqueness of the Christmas event never means that intellectual rigour isn’t a creaturely good, a creaturely good that gives God pleasure.

Philosophy is an academic discipline that I cherish. Please don’t tell me that philosophy’s significance is measured by the old question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Philosophy, after all, taught me to think, and 90% of good preaching is just clear thinking. Moreover, insofar as philosophical enquiry is the exploration of what is there is an intellectual excellence to it that we ought not to slight, for God takes pleasure in any human excellence. (Let’s be sure of something else: God takes no pleasure in mediocrity of any sort.)

Jesus Christ is truth. I am glad to affirm this. He is that “brighter” luminosity that sages are summoned to worship. But to say this isn’t to say that the contemplations of the sages are inherently vacuous and invariably useless, let alone evil. Because the church has undervalued the sages’ contemplations the church has largely abandoned the arena of intellectual endeavour. At one time the thinkers inside the church could out-think the thinkers outside the church; at one time. In my second year philosophy course the professor, a man who made no religious profession, had the class read both Bertrand Russell and Thomas Aquinas. Russell is an atheist; Aquinas, a Christian and the greatest philosopher of the middle ages. It’s easy to see why an agnostic or atheist professor would have us read Russell. But why Aquinas? Just because that professor wanted us to appreciate the intellectual power of the “Angelic Doctor”, as Aquinas was known in the 1200s.

Years ago I overheard Emil Fackenheim, himself a marvellous philosopher, remark that Kierkegaard was the greatest thinker to arise in Christendom. I thought the statement was perhaps exaggerated Then I found others saying the same thing. Then I noticed that Ludwig Wittgenstsein, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20^th century (together with Martin Heidegger); I noticed that Wittgenstein had said that Kierkegaard was by far the profoundest thinker of the 19^th century. Will the profoundest thinker of the 20^th century turn out to have been a Christian? And of the 21^st? Not a chance. Why not? Because the church has abandoned the intellectual field. Fuzzy-headed feel-goodism is as profound as we get today.

At the time of the Reformation (16^th century), those who had first been schooled as “sages” (i.e., humanists) before they applied themselves to theology also wrote theology that we shall never be without and provided leadership for the church. Those, on the other hand, who studied theology only without first drinking from the wells of humanism wrote no worthwhile theology and provided no leadership for the church.

Yes, sages should worship Christ the new-born king, since he is king and brings with him what the sages can’t supply of themselves. But this is not to say that the sages’ sage-ism is worthless. There is creaturely wisdom that is genuinely wise, even as the pursuit of that wisdom gives pleasure to God.

 

III: — Saints too are summoned to the cradle. “Saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear.” The saints are those, like Simeon and Anna of old, who wait on God. The saints are always found “before the altar bending”; i.e., the saints worship, profoundly worship. They are always found “watching long in hope and fear”; i.e., the saints are both expectant and reverent. “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple shall appear.” Shall appear; shall continue to appear. In other words, the Lord who came once in Bethlehem of old comes again and yet again, continues to come. Insofar as any of us are found at worship, waiting on God expectantly and reverently, the selfsame Lord will unfailingly appear to us.

It was while Isaiah was at worship that the sanctuary filled up with the grandeur of God and the holiness of God and the glory of God. The glory of God is the earthly manifestation of God’s unearthly Godness. It all overwhelmed Isaiah so as to leave him prostrated under the crushing weight of God, only then to be set on his feet so that he might henceforth go and do what he had been appointed to.

It was while Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, was at worship that he was rendered speechless for as long as he needed to stop talking in order to hear and heed what God was saying to him.

It was while the apostle John was at worship, exiled for the rest of his life on the island of Patmos, that he was “visited” and wrote, when he had recovered, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength…and when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, ‘Fear not….’”

What do we expect when we come to worship? Three hymns and a harangue? What if “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple did appear”?

He who came once doesn’t come once only. He comes again and again. As often as he comes the saints before the altar bending – the saints at worship – are overtaken yet again, and like John of old can barely croak, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face like the sun shining in full strength….” The saints in any congregation today know as surely as the saints of old knew. And the saints at worship today declare, “Come with us and worship Christ the new-born king.”

 

IV: — What about the angels? Make no mistake: the angels are real. It is the height of arrogance to think that we are the only rational creatures in the universe. Who says that a creature has to possess flesh and bone in order to possess reason and spirit? The Christmas carol invites the angels to “proclaim Messiah’s birth.” Such proclamation, such witness, is precisely what scripture says angels are always and everywhere to be about. Such proclamation or witness is crucial. You see, because the angels are mandated to bear witness, specifically to bear witness to Jesus Christ, God will never lack witnesses who attest the truth and power of his Son and of that kingdom which the Son brings with him. To be sure, you and I are mandated to bear witness to all of this too. Flesh and blood witnesses like you and me, however, are sadly lacking in quality and quantity. Still, where we are deficient, the angels are not. Therefore I find much comfort in the angels. However much I may fail in serving and attesting and exalting Messiah Jesus and his truth, there are other creatures whose service and witness and exaltation never fail.

Listen to Karl Barth, the pre-eminent theologian of our century. A few years after World War II Barth wrote, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.” Just before the outbreak of the war Barth had been apprehended at his Saturday morning lecture in the University of Bonn, Germany. He had been deported immediately from Germany to his native Switzerland. As soon as hostilities with Germany had ceased the cold war with the Soviet Union had begun. While there was no war, hot or cold, in Switzerland, Barth never pretended the Swiss were uncommonly virtuous. He readily admitted his own country financed itself by harbouring the ill-gotten gains (the infamous unnamed accounts in the Swiss banks) of the most despicable criminals throughout the world. Nevertheless, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.”

 

V: — Lastly, the Christmas carol invites us all, everyone, to worship Christ the new-born king. It tells us that this infant has been appointed to fill his Father’s throne. Since Christ’s sovereignty over the whole of creation is unalterable, acknowledging his sovereignty is not only an invitation to be received and a command to be obeyed; it’s the soul of common sense.

Our Lord is the new-born king. To be sure, the only crown he will ever wear is a crown of thorns. Finding no room in the inn and having no home in which to lay his head throughout his earthly ministry, the one house he’ll eventually occupy is a tree house, ghastly though it is. And of course the only throne he will ever adorn is a cross. Still, he is king. We mustn’t allow the bizarreness of his royal trappings to deflect us from the fact that he is king. He rules, he will judge, and he can bless.

Then acknowledge him we must. The writer of our carol cries, “Every knee shall then bow down.” Since everyone is going to have to acknowledge him ultimately, like it or not; since every knee is going to have to bow before him either in willing adoration or in unwilling resignation, it only makes sense to adore him and love him and delight in him now, together with sages, saints, angels, and by no means least, shepherds.

 

Victor Shepherd      December 2000

Matthew 3:1-12

 We expect to find a family resemblance among relatives. John and Jesus were cousins. Not surprisingly, then, they were “look-alikes” in many respects.

Both were at home in the wilderness, the venue of extraordinary temptation and trial and testing, but also the venue of extraordinary intimacy with the Father.

Both preached out-of doors when they began their public ministry.

Both gave their disciples a characteristic prayer. John gave his followers a prayer that outwardly identified them as his disciples and inwardly welded them to each other. In no time the disciples of Jesus asked him for the same kind of characteristic prayer, with the result that we shall never be without the “Lord’s Prayer.”

Both John and Jesus lashed hearers whenever they spoke of God’s severity and the inescapability of God’s judgement.

Both summoned people to repent.

Both discounted the popular notion that God favoured Israel with political or national pre-eminence.

Both were born through an uncommon act of God.

And both died through having provoked uncommon rage among men and women.

John insisted that the sole purpose of his mission was to point away from himself to his younger cousin, Jesus. Jesus, for his part, never uttered one negative word about John. Jesus even endorsed John’s ministry by submitting to baptism at John’s hand. Indeed Jesus said, “Among those born of women (that is, of all the people in the world), there is none greater than John.”

 

I: Elizabeth and Zechariah named their long-awaited son “Yochan.” “Yochan” means “gift of God.” This gift, however, didn’t come with the pretty ribbons and bows and curlicues of fancy gift-wrapping. This gift came in a plain brown wrapper.

Think of John’s appearance. He wore a camel-hide wrap-around, and it stank as only camels can stink. (Jesus, by contrast, wore a robe fine enough that soldiers gambled for it.)

Then there was John’s diet: wild honey. How many bee stings did he have to endure to procure the honey? No doubt he had been stung so many times he was impervious, bees being now no more bothersome than fruit flies. And the locusts? There’s lots of protein in grasshoppers, since small creatures like grasshoppers are the most efficient in converting grain protein into animal protein. Grasshoppers are good to eat, as long as you don’t mind crunching their long legs and occasionally getting them stuck in your teeth. John was anything but effete, anything but dainty, anything but a reed shaken by the wind.

John’s habitat was noteworthy. The wilderness, everywhere in scripture, is the symbol for a radical break with the posturing and the pretence, the falsehoods and phoniness of the big city and its inherent corruption. Jerusalem , hier shalem, describes itself as the city of salvation. But is it? Jerusalem kills the prophets and crucifies the Messiah. By living in the wilderness John contradicted everything the city represented.

And of course there was John’s manner. He had relatively few tools in his toolbox. When he saw that the truth of God had to be upheld and the sin of the powerful rebuked, he reached into his toolbox and came up with its one and only tool: confrontation. It wasn’t long before he confronted Herodias, wife of Herod the ruler.John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you allowed your daughter, Salome, to dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Mrs. Herod, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.” Whereupon Mrs. Herod had said, “I’ll have your head for that. Watch me.”

We mustn’t forget John’s singlemindedness. Because his camel-hide loincloth lacked pockets, John’s one-and-only sermon he kept in his head and his heart. It was a simple sermon. The judgement of God is so close at hand that even now you can feel God’s fiery breath scorching you and withering everything about you that can’t stand the conflagration. And in the face of this judgement, thundered John, there are three things that cosy, comfortable people think they can take refuge in when there is no refuge; namely, parentage, piety and prestige.

Parentage. “Abraham is our parent. We are safe because we are descendants from the grand progenitor of our people, Abraham our father.” We are Abraham’s son or daughter only if we have Abraham’s faith, John knew. In light of the crisis that God’s judgement brings on everyone, we’re silly for putting stock in the fact that our grandmother was once a missionary in China and our father once shook hands with Billy Graham.

Piety. “We are Israelites. Only last week we had our son circumcised.” “We’ve been members of St.Matthew’s-by-the-Gas Station for forty years. We had all our children ‘done’ there; we also contributed to the repairs to the steeple.” Piety, said John, is a religious inoculation. Like any inoculation it keeps people from getting the real thing. For this reason piety is worse than useless: it guarantees that what can save us we shall never want.

Prestige. “We are the Jerusalem aristocrats.” In 18^th Century England an aristocrat was asked what she thought of John Wesley’s movement. “A perfectly horrid thing”, the Duchess of Buckingham had replied, turning up her nose as if someone had just taken the lid off an 18^th Century chamber pot; “Imagine being told you are as vile as the wretches that crawl about on the earth.”

It was little wonder that those who found John too much to take eased their discomfort by ridiculing him. Baptizein is the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk. John the dipper. “Well, Yochan, what’ll it be today? Dunk your doughnuts or dip your paintbrush? Here comes the dippy dunker.”

Might John have been deranged? His enemies said he was crazy. But the same people who said John was crazy said Jesus was an alcoholic. Certainly John was crude. Jesus admitted as much when he told those whom John had shocked, “What did you expect to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A feeble fellow smelling of perfume?” John lacked the polish of the cocktail crowd. But he was sane.

 

II: — Regardless of the family resemblance between John and Jesus they’re not identical.

John came to bear witness to the light. Jesus was (and is) that light.

John pointed to Jesus as the coming one. Jesus pointed to himself as the Incarnate one.

John reminded the people of God’s centuries-old promises. Jesus was, and is, the fulfilment of all God’s promises.

John administered a baptism of water as an outward sign of repentance. Jesus administered a baptism of fire as the Spirit inwardly torched his people.

With this lattermost point we have highlighted the crucial difference between John and Jesus. John could only point to the kingdom of God , the all-determining reality that was to heal a creation disfigured by the Fall. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t point to it: he brought it inasmuch as he was the new creation, fraught with cosmic significance, the one in whom all things are restored. John’s ministry prepared people for a coming kingdom that the king would bring with him. Jesus’ ministry gathered people into that kingdom which was operative wherever the king himself presided — which is to say, everywhere.

It’s not that Jesus contradicted John. Rather, Jesus effected within people what John could only hold out for them. Because the ministry of Jesus gathered up the ministry of John, nothing about John was lost. At the same time, the ministry of Jesus contained so much more than John’s — as John himself gladly admitted. In other words, the ministry of Jesus was the ministry of John plus all that was unique to our Lord.

 

Ponder, for instance, the note of repentance sounded by both men. John thundered. He threatened. There was a bad time coming, and John, entirely appropriately, had his hearers scared. Jesus agreed. There is a bad time coming. Throughout the written gospels we find on the lips of Jesus pronouncements every bit as severe as anything John said. Nonetheless, Jesus promised a good time coming too. To be sure, Jesus could flay the hide off phoneys as surely as John, yet flaying didn’t characterize him; mercy did. While Jesus could speak, like John, of a coming judgement that couldn’t be avoided, Jesus also spoke of an amnesty, a provision, a refuge that reflected the heart of his Father. Everything John said, the whole world needs to hear. Yet we need to hear even more urgently what Jesus alone said: “There’s a party underway, and at this party all who are weary and worn down, frenzied and fed up, overwhelmed and overrun — at this party all such people are going to find rest and restoration, help, healing and hope.”

Jesus, like John, spoke to the defiant self-righteous who not only disdained entering the kingdom themselves but also, whether deliberately or left-handedly, impeded others from entering it; Jesus spoke to these people in a vocabulary that would take the varnish off a door. Jesus, however, also had his heart broken over people who were like sheep without a shepherd, about to follow cluelessly the next religious hireling — the religious “huckster” of any era who exploits the most needy and the most defenceless.

Because John’s message was the penultimate word of judgement, the mood surrounding John was as stark, spare, ascetic as John’s word: he drank no wine and he ate survival rations. Because Jesus’ message was the ultimate word of the kingdom, the mood surrounding Jesus was the mood of a celebration, a party. He turned 150 gallons of water into wine – a huge amount for a huge party. He is the wine of life; heprofoundly gladdens the hearts of men and women. His joy floods his people.

With his laser vision Jesus stared into the hearts of those who faulted him and said, “You spoil- sports with shrivelled hearts and acidulated tongues, you wouldn’t heed John because his asceticism left you thinking he wasn’t sane; now you won’t heed me because my partying leaves you thinking I’m not moral. Still, those people you’ve despised and duped and defrauded: your victims are victors now; they’re going to be vindicated. And their exuberance in the celebrations they have with me not even your sullenness can diminish.” Whereupon our Lord turned from the scornful snobs that religion forever breeds and welcomed yet another wounded, worn down person who wouldn’t know a hymnbook from a homily yet knew as much as she needed to know: life in the company of Jesus is indescribably better than life in the company of his detractors.

I’m always moved at our Lord’s simple assertion, “I am the good shepherd.” What did he mean by “good”? Merely that he is a competent shepherd, as any competent shepherd can protect the flock against marauders, thieves and disease? There are two Greek words for “good”: agathos and kalos. Agathos means “good” in the sense of upright, proper, correct. Kalos, on the other hand (the word Jesus used of himself), includes everything that agathos connotes plus “winsome, attractive, endearing, appealing, compelling, comely, inviting.” I am the fine shepherd.

Malcolm Muggeridge accompanied a film crew to India in order to narrate a documentary on the late Mother Teresa. He already knew she was a good woman or he wouldn’t have bothered going. When he met her, however, he found a good woman who was also so very compelling, wooing, endearing that he titled his documentary, Something Beautiful for God.

John was good, agathos. Many people feared him and many admired him. Jesus was good, kalos. Many people feared him, many admired him, and many loved him. Paul speaks in Ephesians 6:24 of those who “love our Lord with love undying.” Did anyone love John with love undying? If we’ve grasped the difference between agathos and kalos, between what is good, correct, upright and what is so very inviting and attractive as to be beautiful, then we’ve grasped the relation of John to Jesus.

 

There’s another dimension to Jesus that carries him beyond John. It’s reflected in the word he used uniquely at prayer, abba, “Father.” Now the Newer Testament is written in Greek, even though Jesus customarily spoke Aramaic. In other words what our Lord said day-by-day has been translated into another language. Then why wasn’t the Aramaic word, abba, translated into Greek? The word was left untranslated in that Jesus had first used it in a special way, and to translate it would seem to sully its distinctiveness.

 Abba was the word used by a Palestinian youth to speak of his or her father respectfully, obediently, confidently, securely, and of course intimately. It wasn’t so “palsy walsy” as to be disrespectful. Neither was it so gushing as to be sentimental. It was intimate without being impertinent, confident without being smug. Abba was trusting one’s father without trading on the father’s trustworthiness, familiar without being forward, secure without being saccharine.

We must be sure to understand that when early-day Christians came to use the word abba in their prayers they weren’t repeating the word just because they knew Jesus had used it and they thought it cute to imitate him. Neither were they mumbling it mindlessly like a mantra thinking that if they kept on saying it, mantra-like, whatever it was within him that had given rise to it would eventually appear within them. On the contrary, they were impelled to use the word for one reason: as companions of Jesus they had been admitted to such an intimacy with the Father that the word Jesus had used uniquely of his Father they were now constrained to use too, so closely did their intimacy resemble his. When Paul writes in Romans 8:15 that Christians can’t help uttering the cry, “Abba, Father”, any more than a person in pain can help groaning or a person bereaved can help weeping or a person tickled by a good joke can help laughing; when Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that this is normal Christian experience, “normal” means being introduced by the Son to the Father in such a way and at such a depth that the Son’s intimacy with the Father induces the believer’s intimacy. Abba.

We should note that the written gospels show us that Jesus used this word in Gethsemane; Gethsemane , of all places, when he was utterly alone at the most tormented hour of his life. I understand this. William Stringfellow, Harvard-taught lawyer and self-taught theologian who went to Harlem in a store-front law practice on behalf of the impoverished people he loved; Stringfellow, ridiculed by his denomination, suspected by the Kennedys and arrested finally by the FBI for harbouring Daniel Berrigan (a Jesuit anti-Viet Nam War protester); Stringfellow wrote in a little confirmation class book he prepared for teenagers, “Prayer is being so alone that God is the only witness to your existence.”

The day comes for all of us when we are so thoroughly alone we couldn’t be more alone. And in the isolation and torment of such a day we are going tofind that God is the only witness to our existence. But he will be witness enough. And because it’s the Father who is the only witness to our existence, we shall find ourself crying spontaneously, “Abba.” Surely Jesus had this in mind when he said, “There has never appeared anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John.”

 

We all need to be shaken up by the wild man from the wilderness, the grasshopper-eating, hide-wearing prophet whom no one should have mistaken for a reed shaken by the wind. Yet as often as we need to look at John, we find fearsome John pointing away from himself to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the lamb of God and the Saviour of the world; someone no less rigorous than John to be sure, but also so much more than John – someone so very winsome, compelling, inviting as to be beautiful.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                      

Advent 2007

St.Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga

Matthew 4:1-11    Matthew 16:13-20    Deuteronomy 8:1-4

“Has the church a future?” “Of course it has a future”, the astute person says immediately.   “The church is the earthly manifestation of Christ’s body.  The body will live as surely as the head lives.  Christ is the head of the church.  He has been raised from the dead and will never die.  If the head lives, the body lives.  Therefore, the church will never die.  For this reason Christ has promised that the powers of death will never prevail against the church.”

I agree completely. The church is the earthly manifestation of Christ’s body.  The risen one is its head. As surely as the head lives, the body will live. And no destructive power will crumble it.

To say this, however, is to say that Jesus Christ guarantees that the community of his faithful people will never perish. The community (not a building or a congregation or a denomination); the community of Christ’s faithful people (faith-filled people: we’re not talking here of membership rolls or baptism registers or Christmas and Easter drop-ins); this is what our Lord has guaranteed.  But buildings? They are crumbling all the time. (Until the advent of fire alarms and sprinkler systems any one church building could be counted on to burn down every fifty years.)   Denominations? History is littered with the dry bones of long-dead denominations.         Congregations? Congregations come and go every day.

So — does the church have a future?   We need to put the question more precisely.  Does the community of Christ’s faithful people have a future?   Whether or not the fellowship of Christ’s people has a future is related to whether or not Jesus himself had a future when he began his public ministry. At the outset of his public ministry (and many times thereafter, we may be sure) our Lord was tempted; wrenchingly tempted.  Whether or not he had a future thereafter depended on his response at that moment. In similar manner whether or not the church has a future depends on our response to the same three temptations that assaulted our Lord.

 

I: — The first temptation Jesus faced was the temptation to be relevant.   What, after all, could be more relevant than turning stones into bread? Stones abound; bread is scarce. Jesus looked at hungry people every day. Surely a little more bread would have gone a long way.

At the same time, there were many ways that bread could be made in Palestine and should be made. But it wasn’t going to be made as it should until some men and women were moved to make it and share it; and they weren’t going to be moved until they had undergone heart-transplants at the hand of the master himself.

When our Lord was tempted to collapse his entire vocation and ministry into meeting instantly immediate physical need he fought down the temptation and shouted at the tempter, “One doesn’t live by bread alone but by the truth and reality of a living engagement with the living God!” When the three waves of temptation had abated (temptation, I find, usually comes in waves, like nausea) he emerged from his lonely spot, the wilderness, because the temptation to renounce vocation and ministry for immediate relevance had passed — for the time being.

Several years ago Robertson Davies, a novelist and playwright who never pretended to be a theologian, insisted that there is nothing more pitiable, nothing more pathetic, and nothing more irrelevant, than a church that tries to be relevant. A church that tries to be relevant, said Davies, holds up its finger to the wind, and then hoists its own sail to be blown in the same direction as everyone else. The church’s vocation, said Davies, is always to sail against the wind; to beckon others to its counter-culture, to sound the beat of a different drummer. The folly of a church bent on relevance, of course, is that it tries to out-world the world. It adopts the world’s agenda; it thinks with the world’s self-understanding; it parrots the world’s pronouncements.  It then succeeds in two things: it renders itself useless to God and neighbour, and it makes itself a laughing-stock.

Not for one minute am I suggesting that the church bury its head in the sand and ignore what’s going on all around it or remain unaware of the sorts of suffering people endure in our era.   But I must insist that underneath what’s going on in our era, for good and for ill, there remain in every era the deepest human need, the profoundest human heartache, the most frustrating self-contradiction. Regardless of the era the deepest human need is for God.         The profoundest heartache is for intimacy (genuine intimacy with our Lord and also with fellow-creatures).  The most frustrating self-contradiction is the ingrained futility born of our fallen nature, born of our systemic sinnership.         All of this is precisely what the world calls irrelevant.  And all of this is what the church knows to be supremely relevant.

Let me repeat. Our Lord never belittled material need.  He healed the sick and fed the hungry and assisted the storm-tossed. But he resisted the temptation to do this in any way that would inhibit even those he helped from coming to see their deeper need and their profounder predicament. He resisted the temptation to be immediately relevant in any way that would render them even less sensitive to the provision God has made for what ails them most. He resisted the temptation to conform to the world’s opinion of relevance in order to acquaint them with the ultimate relevance.  We don’t live by bread alone; we live by an encounter with the Holy One himself in which the human heart is transfigured eternally.

The church has a future, in the first place, as long as it too resists the temptation to be relevant.

 

II: — The church has a future, in the second place, if it resists the temptation to be spectacular. Jesus was tempted, in the second place, to throw himself off the highest pinnacle of the temple and alight upon the ground unharmed.         Think of the following he would have had if he had done that.

Yes, just think of the following he would have had.   There wouldn’t have been so much as a single disciple among them; there would have been only gawkers and rubber-neckers and sensationalists who wanted another look at the best sideshow trickster of them all. Sideshow trickery doesn’t induce people to repent and trust and love — and follow.

There’s a non-biblical legend about Jesus that speaks of our Lord fashioning clay pigeons out of clumps of wet clay.  When he has finished sculpturing these clay pigeons he animates them and they all fly away. If he had done such a thing people would certainly have flocked to him — for 30 minutes. They would have gathered around him and asked him to do it again.  A few instances of this, however, and they would have wearied of the magician’s show and gone home.  Who is induced to love and follow and adore — even give herself up for — someone who belongs in a C.N.E. sideshow?

For this reason I remain unimpressed by so much of which the church boasts. Cathedrals, for instance. The tour-guide tells us that this or that cathedral is the oldest or the largest or the best instance of this or that kind of architecture anywhere in the world. No doubt the tour-guide is right. He doesn’t tell us, however, that right now it costs fifteen million dollars per day to maintain all the cathedrals in Great Britain.   (Wouldn’t a dozen cathedrals be enough for museum interests?)   What does such spectacularity have to do with the vocation and mission of the church? Jesus repudiated spectacularity.

For years the cheerleaders at football games have bothered me.  I go to the game to see football.  If the game itself can’t draw enthusiasts then there’s something wrong with the game. There’s manifestly much wrong with the game if the event has to be augmented by a bevy of 22-year old females whose attire is provocatively “minimalist.” Things got worse with the Blue Jays — where there are no cheerleaders.  The spectacular electronic scoreboard is plainly the entertainment, the event, the game of baseball being less entertaining for most spectators, apparently, than the electronic displays, the beer concessions and the public washrooms.  Worse again with the Raptors, where the basketball game is merely a footnote to the extravaganzas unfolding everywhere in the building, not to mention the rock music that throbs throughout the game.

The church is always tempted to do the same thing.  We are always tempted to bring people onto the premises by something other than an exaltation of our Lord himself.  The problem is, what we deploy to get people onto the premises contradicts the nature and purpose and thrust of the gospel.

Recently the president of one of America’s largest seminaries “lit up” as he told me about a multi-million dollar bequest that would fund the newest technology in interactive T.V.  With this wonderful new technology there was no need to bring a visiting professor to the seminary; now a student could sit in front of a T.V. screen and listen to a lecture from a professor in England or Australia, even “talk” (as it were — but in fact is not and never will be) to the same professor. As the seminary president glowed to the point of spontaneous combustion I realized that what had “hooked” him was the spectacularity of the technology. A question occurred to me: “This technology and what it does; is it all of a piece with what we know of our Lord and how he acts and what he does for us in restoring us before God and reconstituting our humanness, or does it contradict this?”   You see, the incarnation means ever so much, but it means at least that God meets us most intimately where our humanity intersects the humanity of others. What does interactive T.V. have to do with the intersection of our common humanity?   I thought next of 2nd John 12 and 3rd John 13, two brief verses from the two tiniest books in the bible: “…I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an old-fashioned “Luddite,” someone opposed to technology in principle. I do think that surgery is a genuine advance on the application of leeches, and I’d rather fly to England than endure two months of seasickness in a sailing vessel.

Neither am I opposed to educational technology.  In fact I have instructed scores of distance-education students by means of audio-recordings. Of course it’s better that the student in New Guinea pursue the needed course by means of electronic sophistication than not pursue it at all.  But we must remember at all times that such methods are always a distant second best. We must remember that what is communicated in a ‘live’ classroom isn’t chiefly information; what’s communicated chiefly is a person (who happens to be informed.) What is mutually communicated is the person of the teacher and the person of the student in a profound reciprocity. Information can be garnered from a book; persons can be communicated to each other only through personal encounter.  It’s little wonder that John writes, “I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”         The personal must never be surrendered to the spectacular.

What’s the alternative to spectacularity?  It isn’t dullness. The alternative to spectacularity is simplicity; simplicity that is at the same time vulnerability. Like the incarnation, the cross of Jesus means eversomuch.  But it means at least that there is no limit to the vulnerability of God’s love for us. If the cross means that there’s no limit to God’s vulnerability in loving us, then what does resurrection mean?  It means at least that there is no limit to the effectiveness of love’s vulnerability. If the cross of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus together mean that there is no limit to the vulnerability of God’s love for us and no limit to its effectiveness, then it’s plain what the Christian community must be about. Forget spectacularity.

Let me point out that simplicity doesn’t mean simple-mindedness. Neither does simplicity mean naive ignorance of life’s complexity.  Life is complex.  Any simplicity on ‘this’ side of complexity is a false simplicity; the simplicity on the ‘other’ side of complexity, however, is profound. The simplicity that we find on the ‘far side’ of complexity; the simplicity that’s suffused by vulnerability – this is where the Christian life unfolds, repudiating any temptation towards spectacularity.

Speaking of vulnerability; Gerald May (M.D.), is a psychiatrist in Washington whose books and personal correspondence have helped me immensely. May’s psychiatric work has taken him to Viet Nam with the U.S. Air Force, to city streets on behalf of the drug-addicted, and to prison hospitals as well as state hospitals. May says, “Some wisdom deep inside us knows that we can’t love safely; either we enter it undefended or we don’t enter it at all.”  May is right. Some wisdom deep inside us knows that we can’t love safely; either we love recklessly, defencelessly, vulnerably or we don’t love.

Henri Nouwen, Dutch Roman Catholic priest (now dead), whose works are known to many people in every denomination; Nouwen had a glittering career as university professor, first at Yale then at Notre Dame and finally at Harvard. Twenty years ago Nouwen left Harvard and went to live and work at L’Arche (in Richmond Hill), Jean Vanier’s facility for men who are severely intellectually challenged. Nouwen said that during all the years he lived and worked at L’Arche the question he was asked most frequently was — what question do you think intellectually challenged men would put to Nouwen most often? It was, “Are you home tonight?” “Are you home tonight?” didn’t mean, “Are you going to be in the building at 6:00 p.m.?” It meant, “Are you going to be available to us?  Are you going to be ‘present’ beyond being physically present? Are you going to lay aside your armour, surrender your defences, and grant us access to genuine intimacy?” To be sure, intellectually challenged men couldn’t wrap such words around their question, but the question deep in their hearts was profound: “Are you home tonight?”

The opposite of spectacularity isn’t dullness; the opposite of spectacularity is simplicity, a simplicity that invites rather than protects, forges intimacy rather than armour, cherishes vulnerability rather than victory — and knows that when all of this is suffused by the Spirit of the risen one, love’s vulnerability will be vindicated as the efficacy in God’s economy.

 

III: — Does the church have a future? It does if it can resist, like its Lord, one more temptation, the temptation of domination. Jesus was taken to a vantage point from which he could apprehend at once all the powers and forces of this world.  They were his for the taking — even as this entailed, of course, his forsaking of his cruciform vocation.         He spurned the tempter and affirmed his vocation.  He would serve, not domineer; he would trust his Father, not tyrannize to see instant “success”; he would even go to the cross before he attempted to coerce.

The temptation to dominate is with us all the time.  Because we are fallen creatures we assume that we are the measure of everything and therefore there’s no reason why we shouldn’t impose our will on others. What’s more, because we are impatient we want to impose our will on others now.  The older I grow the more I realize how much human distress, how many tortured relationships, can be accounted for by one matter: control; the craving to control; an obsession with control.  The point or matter or item that’s at issue can be small.  (Usually it is.) Nevertheless, the smallest matter is the occasion of life-or-death struggle for control.

It appears to be life or death for the two parties in the struggle.  The truth is, where human relationships are tortured it isn’t life or death, with one party emerging triumphant. Control-issues are death and death; death for both parties.

The temptation to dominate is a temptation that laps at us relentlessly. After all, it’s always easier to dominate than it is to love, isn’t it?  Love ultimately means that we abandon the safety of our fort; domination, on the other hand, means that we thicken the walls of the fort: ‘Fort Self-Preservation.’   But it never works, finally.  All attempts at control, all attempts at self-preservation, finally issue in such widespread destruction that no “other” remains to control and no “self” remains to preserve.

The church should know better.  God’s way with his people has always been different.  God’s way with Israel was never the way of coercion.  God’s way with Israel has always been the way of a lover who gains his beloved only by wooing her.  God’s way with Israel, says Hosea, is the way of a husband who is always grieved and frequently angered by an unfaithful wife but can never bring himself to give her up.  In struggling to bring forth a people who mirror him in faith and cherish their neighbours in love God likens himself to a woman in obstetrical distress over the resistance of her dream-child in coming to birth, a child who now pains the one who conceived it in joy.  She longs only to have her joy completed in the safe arrival of the new-born. However distressed she might be at her protracted obstetrical difficulties, there is no thought of aborting the enterprise.

But it’s easier to dominate, isn’t it?   The church has enormous difficulty resisting the temptation to dominate. So many of the tragic ruptures in the history of the church — like the schism between the Eastern and Western churches in the 11th century, and the schism within the Western church in the 16th century Reformation – these have been issues of domination.

There was a time when the church controlled Quebec politics.   There was a time when membership in the Orange Lodge was the ticket of admission to Toronto politics.   There was a time, one of my Scottish professors told me, even during his lifetime, when you had to be a member of the Church of Scotland if you wanted to get work in schoolteaching (in Scotland), in banking, or in the civil service. Today the Church of Scotland, the national church of the land, is dying so fast it’s expected to disappear virtually by 2040. And in Quebec? Any sociologist will tell you that Quebec is the most thoroughly secularized region of North America. The church in Quebec, I have found, is the outfit that young Quebeckers loathe.   When are we going to learn that the lust for domination spells death?

Does the church have a future?   The church relishes the chance to flex its muscles and roar like a lion and coerce people in our society whether physically or socially or psychologically the way the church has coerced people so often in the past. Even the people of the bible are quick to speak of the lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the symbol of God’s power. The problem, if problem it is, is that whenever the people of God think they need the lion most urgently, the lion never shows up.  What shows up instead is a lamb — over and over in scripture, right to the end.

In the book of Revelation, the last book in Holy Scripture, John is with his fellow-Christians who have been flayed by yet another wave of persecution. Desperate for relief, they all look for the lion once more.  Opening their tear-blinded eyes they see the lamb, bearing the marks of slaughter, and together they sing a new song, says John. Why new?   Because they know that their Lord’s faithfulness in the face of temptation ensured him a future. Their faithfulness will ensure them a future. And they know that “future” and “genuinely new” are one and the same.         Then it’s no wonder they see the lamb mangled and yet break forth into a new song.

 

Has the church a future? To say the same thing differently, to whom does Christ’s promise of protection against the powers of death apply?   In the last book of the bible John speaks of “a great multitude which no man can number, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Lamb and the throne….”
Yes, the church has a future, a glorious future. And this future includes a great multitude which no one can number, for this multitude will be those who resisted temptations to be relevant, to be spectacular, to dominate; this multitude will be those who instead cherished intimacy with their Lord, exemplified his vulnerability, even lived and died for others so that these others too might be numbered among those gathered before the Lamb and the throne.

 

                                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                     

January 2010

 

Matthew 4:18-22

1] “How many disciples did Jesus have?” Don’t say “twelve”. He had dozens more than twelve. On one occasion he sent out seventy-two. On the day of Pentecost one hundred and twenty were gathered in one place. Luke speaks of “a great crowd of disciples”. Then is a disciple anyone who happens to be within earshot of Jesus and might be remotely interested in him? Not at all. For in the one verse where Luke speaks of a great crowd of disciples he also speaks of “a great multitude of people”. It is plain that Luke, like every gospel-writer, draws a distinct line between the disciples (who follow Jesus) and the multitudes (who don’t). Then who are disciples? Simply, disciples are those who respond to Christ’s call.

We should notice that different gospel-writers use a different word for “call” inasmuch as they wish to highlight a different aspect of our Lord’s call. Mark uses a Greek word which has the force of “invite”; Luke, a word which has the force of “summon”. Mark tells us there is a winsomeness, a courtesy, a gentleness to an invitation; Luke tells us there is an urgency, an imperative, even an ultimatum to a summons. Put together, that call by which our Lord still calls men and women into his company is a winsome invitation which is also urgent, as well as a summons which is yet gentle. On the one hand our Lord does not coerce us into joining him; on the other hand, he does not allow us to think that joining him or not joining him is a matter of whim or taste. His invitation is a summons, and his summons an invitation. He issues his call to every human being. Everyone, without exception, needs to become a disciple, and everyone, without qualification, is welcome.

2] Then what about the twelve? The number twelve is a symbolic number everywhere in scripture. There were twelve tribes in Israel, twelve tribes in the people of God. When Jesus appoints “the twelve” as part of his own mission, he is saying that his mission gathers up and carries forward what God aimed at in establishing the twelve tribes; his mission, in fact, is God’s renewal of Israel. The apostolic mission is a renewal movement within the people of God. Furthermore, just as the twelve tribes of Israel were formed, ultimately, for the sake of God’s blessing the world, so the mission of Jesus Christ (symbolized by the twelve) has to do with the world’s blessing.

We must be clear about something crucial today: while the twelve men symbolize Christ’s mission, that mission is much wider than the twelve. Our Lord’s mission includes and uses everyone who has heard his call and heeded it, everyone who has resolved to keep company with him and follow him.

3] We have used the word “disciple” several times today. What does it mean? It refers to the follower of any movement. Moses had disciples. So did the Pharisees. So did John the Baptist. All of these leaders attracted people who were serious about the teaching and outlook of the leader. The Greek word for disciple, MATHETES, simply means pupil or learner. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be his pupil or learner.

Now in learning anything there is something to be understood, something to be grasped mentally. And certainly we who are disciples of Jesus must always be learning in this sense. (Our master, after all, is a teacher who is always teaching.) Yet we must not think that discipleship is a head-trip, book-learning only, as it were. In the older testament the word “disciple” (learner) refers to the pupils in the music school of the Jerusalem temple. To be sure, all music pupils receive instruction in the theory of music; but no music pupil receives instruction in theory only. Music pupils have to sing or play; they have to make music, not merely scribble it. The music pupil has to do the very thing that embodies the instruction she has received.

To be a disciple or learner in the company of Jesus is not merely (not even chiefly) to receive religious instruction; it is to learn how to live a Christ-shaped life in the midst of a world which resists this. I am not minimizing the place of instruction. My point, however, is this: discipleship aims at equipping us to live.

There is another dimension to Christian discipleship. The distinctive mark of the disciples of Moses or the pharisees or John the Baptist was the appropriation of teaching. But the distinctive mark of Christ’s disciples is their personal allegiance to Christ himself. Not only did his disciples call Jesus “rabbi, teacher”; they also called him “Lord”. That is, they were utterly devoted to him himself, not merely to his teaching.

4] In order to grasp more clearly what discipleship means we should look at someone who didn’t become a disciple, that affluent fellow whom we used to call “the rich young ruler”. Mark speaks of him simply as “a man”; Matthew, “one”. “One came up to Jesus”, “A man came up to Jesus”. The gospel-writers deliberately say no more than this so that every gospel-reader can identify with the fellow. The man kneels before Jesus. People did not kneel before a rabbi: that would be blasphemous. Clearly the fellow recognizes Jesus as eversomuch more than a rabbi. He says he wants to inherit eternal life; that is, he wants to share in God’s own life. He tells Jesus he has kept all the commandments from his youth. Jesus doesn’t suggest that he hasn’t. Jesus simply says, “Sell what you own and give away the proceeds: you’ve got too much junk cluttering up your life. Then come and follow me.” The man’s face falls, for he owns much, and he walks away sad. And — be it noted — Jesus lets him walk away.

For years preachers have used this story to make hearers feel guilty. (“Have you given away all that you own?”) Or else preachers have used this story to relieve hearers. (“The fellow didn’t walk away from Jesus because he was rich; rather, because his possessions possessed him.”) Both approaches miss the point. The point isn’t where the line is drawn concerning wealth on one side of which I can be a Christian and on the other side of which I can’t. The point isn’t whether I can be a Christian with one car, two cars, or three cars. (While we are discussing this text we might as well admit that Jesus owned a cloak so fine that soldiers thought it worth gambling for. Clearly Jesus had never given it away.) The point is much more elemental: is the man willing to join himself to Jesus and become a follower? The man says he has kept the commandments. Jesus insists that following him is the meaning of keeping the commandments. If the fellow isn’t willing to become a disciple now, a follower of our Lord, then his commandment-keeping has nothing to do with eternal life; nothing at all. The man thinks he has obeyed God in scrupulously keeping the commandments. Jesus tells him that commandment-keeping is only the outer form of obeying God, the shell, as it were. The inner heart of it all, that which genuinely shares in the life of God himself, is joining oneself — right now — to the one before whom the fellow has knelt. The man walks away from Jesus holding on to his possessions. The point of the story isn’t that the man’s possessions have “hooked” him; the point is that he does not believe Jesus when Jesus says, “Get rid of the junk that is cluttering your life, follow me, AND YOU WILL HAVE TREASURE IN HEAVEN.” The man does not believe that following Jesus is rich; so rich, in fact, that alongside these riches his bank account looks like scrip from a game of Monopoly. You see, a major consequence of becoming a disciple is this: in the presence of Jesus Christ SECONDARY MATTERS ARE RECOGNIZED AS SECONDARY. To be a disciple is to be so “taken” with Jesus that everything else pales. To be a disciple is to find Jesus so winsome as to love him, and so compelling as to obey him. Years after the gospel encounter we are probing now St.Paul wrote the congregation in Philippi and spoke of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”. It is precisely the surpassing worth of knowing Chris that enables the apostle to relativize everything else. Whether fame or anonymity; whether affluence or material leanness — what does it matter alongside the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus? Disciples are those whose hearts melt when they see and hear the master; they know they shall have treasure in heaven; they follow; and they are admitted most intimately to God’s own life here and now.

5] What happens when men and women, of any era, become disciples? Most tellingly, our Lord renders us kingdom-oriented people; as we gradually become kingdom-oriented, we lose whatever ideological baggage we have brought with us. Let us be sure of one thing: our Lord is going to change us; he is going to make us different people. He is Lord. He has authority to create and to destroy; to mould and to fashion; he will certainly exercise his authority here with you and me. Jesus calls Simon. “Simon”, he says, “I have a better name for you: Peter, `Rocky'” He calls two brothers, James and John. “Boanerges”, he names them, “Sons of thunder”. Where there is thunder there is also lightning. “In the kingdom-work I have for you”, our Lord continues, “I expect you brothers to electrify others; I expect you to be seen and heard unmistakably.” For the Hebrew mind a change of name always means a change of nature. To be sure, it would be a long time before Peter became rock-like. It may have been longer still before the two brothers flashed and rumbled in service of the kingdom. The point is, Jesus is sovereign. He calls us as we are but never allows us to remain this. He renders us kingdom-oriented and useful for kingdom-work.

As he does this he relieves us of the ideological baggage we have brought with us. Within the smaller group of the twelve we find Simon the zealot and Matthew the tax-collector. Zealots and tax-collectors were at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. The zealots hated Rome and sought to rid Palestine of Roman occupation through terrorism and sabotage and cold-blooded throat-cutting. Tax-collectors, on the other hand, made a personal fortune through cozying up to Rome and collaborating with Rome. They were self-serving, opportunistic traitors. Jesus calls into his company both traitor and terrorist, both the arch-friend of Rome and the arch-foe of Rome. He is going to have them live together. He will also move both of them beyond their ideology. The kingdom of God is neither bloodcurdling terrorism nor opportunistic treachery. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God. It is neither laissez-faire capitalism nor socialism. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God.

Jesus continues to call. People continue to respond. As we do we bring our idiosyncratic ideologies with us. This person wants the church of Jesus Christ to be a setting for group therapy. That person wants it to be the bastion of law and order in the streets. Someone else wants it to be a voice for pacifism. Unquestionably Jesus calls all such people (that is, calls all of us) into his company. As we keep company with him, however, he moves us all beyond our hobby horses; he equips us to discern his kingdom and exalt it.

Several years ago a bestseller appeared in the USA, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. It was supposed to be a book about Jesus. It portrayed him as a successful businessman whose kingdom-pronouncements were actually sure-fire business techniques. Books appear now depicting Jesus as a Latin American revolutionary, or as a proponent of existential philosophy, or as the guru of mood-altering psychology. He is none of these. We are to become none of these. As disciples we are to be rendered kingdom-oriented and made kingdom-useful.

Our Lord does this to you and me; that is, he relieves us of our ideological baggage by directing us again and again to the written gospels. As we become steeped in the written gospels he steps forth to meet us, and steps forth startlingly different from the hobby horses that we project onto him. As he does this, he renames us, remakes us (however long it takes), and renders us children of the day, as St.Paul says, children of the light.

6] What are disciples to do? All disciples are to do three things: we are to announce that the kingdom of God has come; we are to cast out demons; and we are to heal the sick.

To say that we are to announce the kingdom is to say we are to announce that the sovereign rule of God is effectual in Jesus Christ. And because the sovereign rule of God is effectual in Jesus Christ, death has been defeated. Death is not the last word. Deadliness, however evident in our midst, is not the final truth and reality of our lives.

Sickness is a manifestation of death; sickness is death-on-the-way. Yet Jesus Christ has overcome death. Therefore we are to heal the sick as a sign of Christ’s effectual sovereignty over humankind.

Evil is the power of death running wild. Evil is the power of death chaotically disrupting and disfiguring everything that God has pronounced good. Therefore we are to cast out the demons (that is, resist evil) as a sign of Christ’s effectual sovereignty over the creation.

To say that all disciples are to announce the kingdom is not to say that all disciples are to become preachers, any more than the mandate to heal means we should all become physicians. Most disciples will announce the kingdom not by preaching but simply by embodying the truth and reality of the kingdom of God. Most disciples will heal not by performing surgery or prescribing medicine but by being beacons of hope and help in the midst of the life’s wounds and haemorrhages. Most disciples will cast out demons not by performing charismatic exorcisms but by identifying evil and resisting it as it confronts them. We shall do all of this just because we live in the company of him who is resurrection and life. He commissions us to live and speak and act in such a way as to exalt his life, point to his victory, and deny the illegitimate encroachments of that deadliness which has already been defeated and will one day be dispelled. All disciples are ordained to this ministry, without exception.

At the same time, as individual disciples we may be commissioned to individual tasks. The word “disciple” is rarely found in the singular in the NT. When it is found in the singular, however, it identifies one particular person and usually identifies one particular task for that person. John is one such disciple. He is spoken of in the singular, and his particular task is to take Mary, mother of our Lord, into his home following the death of her son. Mary was by this time a widow; her eldest son was soon to be dead; her three other sons were nowhere to be seen; she was homeless and penniless. Jesus appoints John to take her into his home for as long as she lives — a specific task for this one disciple.

So it is with you and me. As disciples we are all ordained to that ministry which is common to all disciples. As individuals we may be commissioned to a task uniquely. Then we must ever be alert to this; alert to discern it, and enthusiastic in doing it.

This is what disciples are to do.

7] Lastly, what can disciples expect? “Blessed are you when men slander you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect to be slandered and hounded. “If anyone wants to be my follower, let her deny herself, and let her shoulder her own cross” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect cross-bearing, and cross-bearing means torment. “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will certainly persecute you” — so says Jesus. “You will be delivered up to councils, flogged in synagogues, dragged before governors and kings for my sake” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect victimization at the hands of church-authorities and civil authorities alike.

What can disciples expect? Wrong question. What are disciples guaranteed? We are guaranteed all of the above: slander, persecution, cross-bearing, ecclesiastical abuse and political victimization. Then why bother becoming a disciple?

Why bother? In the written gospels bystanders (that is, those who haven’t made up their minds about becoming disciples) notice that the disciples of Jesus appear to have a rollicking good time. They party a great deal. They laugh. They don’t have a face as long as a horse’s. Other religious devotees fast, and end up with a face like a prune. The disciples of Jesus celebrate. Bystanders are startled, and ask Jesus why his followers are far happier than one should expect them to be. Jesus replies, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”

In ancient Palestine a rabbi’s biblical instruction was deemed so important that nothing could interrupt it — nothing, that is, except a wedding celebration. A wedding celebration was regarded so important that a rabbi would interrupt his exposition of the sacred text so that he and his students could join in the festivities.

“Life in my company”, says Jesus, “is rich, satisfying and exhilarating — like the deepest marriage you can imagine. If the rabbi’s students are allowed to party when the wedding-procession moves through town, then surely my disciples can do as much in my company. For the joy my disciples find in me outweighs the difficulty they have on account of me. They know that life with me is worth it; always!” So says Jesus.

Recall the parable of the pearl: a man comes upon a pearl so beautiful that he sells everything he owns to buy it and still feels it has cost him nothing.

Recall the woman who spent a year’s wages on a bottle of perfume and then poured it over our Lord’s feet. She gave up all she had — and felt she had given up nothing.

Recall Jean Vanier visiting hospital patients in a Cleveland slum. He came upon a poor black woman, sick unto death, who had been vomiting all day. Vanier was so taken aback at her poverty and her sickness and her thoroughgoing misery that he didn’t know what comfort to offer. He simply placed his hand on her head and said, “Jesus.” “I been walking with him forty years”, she croaked.

What, then, can disciples expect? We can expect the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, in light of which everything else in life is relativized. We can also expect the world’s hostility. Ultimately, however, we shall know a satisfaction in him that is but dimly mirrored in the satisfaction that the best-matched couple find in each other. “I been walking with him forty years.”

Victor A. Shepherd
March 1995 “How many disciples did Jesus have?” Don’t say “twelve”. He had dozens more than twelve. On one occasion he sent out seventy-two. On the day of Pentecost one hundred and twenty were gathered in one place. Luke speaks of “a great crowd of disciples”. Then is a disciple anyone who happens to be within earshot of Jesus and might be remotely interested in him? Not at all. For in the one verse where Luke speaks of a great crowd of disciples he also speaks of “a great multitude of people”. It is plain that Luke, like every gospel-writer, draws a distinct line between the disciples (who follow Jesus) and the multitudes (who don’t). Then who are disciples? Simply, disciples are those who respond to Christ’s call.

We should notice that different gospel-writers use a different word for “call” inasmuch as they wish to highlight a different aspect of our Lord’s call. Mark uses a Greek word which has the force of “invite”; Luke, a word which has the force of “summon”. Mark tells us there is a winsomeness, a courtesy, a gentleness to an invitation; Luke tells us there is an urgency, an imperative, even an ultimatum to a summons. Put together, that call by which our Lord still calls men and women into his company is a winsome invitation which is also urgent, as well as a summons which is yet gentle. On the one hand our Lord does not coerce us into joining him; on the other hand, he does not allow us to think that joining him or not joining him is a matter of whim or taste. His invitation is a summons, and his summons an invitation. He issues his call to every human being. Everyone, without exception, needs to become a disciple, and everyone, without qualification, is welcome.

2] Then what about the twelve? The number twelve is a symbolic number everywhere in scripture. There were twelve tribes in Israel, twelve tribes in the people of God. When Jesus appoints “the twelve” as part of his own mission, he is saying that his mission gathers up and carries forward what God aimed at in establishing the twelve tribes; his mission, in fact, is God’s renewal of Israel. The apostolic mission is a renewal movement within the people of God. Furthermore, just as the twelve tribes of Israel were formed, ultimately, for the sake of God’s blessing the world, so the mission of Jesus Christ (symbolized by the twelve) has to do with the world’s blessing.

We must be clear about something crucial today: while the twelve men symbolize Christ’s mission, that mission is much wider than the twelve. Our Lord’s mission includes and uses everyone who has heard his call and heeded it, everyone who has resolved to keep company with him and follow him.

3] We have used the word “disciple” several times today. What does it mean? It refers to the follower of any movement. Moses had disciples. So did the Pharisees. So did John the Baptist. All of these leaders attracted people who were serious about the teaching and outlook of the leader. The Greek word for disciple, MATHETES, simply means pupil or learner. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be his pupil or learner.

Now in learning anything there is something to be understood, something to be grasped mentally. And certainly we who are disciples of Jesus must always be learning in this sense. (Our master, after all, is a teacher who is always teaching.) Yet we must not think that discipleship is a head-trip, book-learning only, as it were. In the older testament the word “disciple” (learner) refers to the pupils in the music school of the Jerusalem temple. To be sure, all music pupils receive instruction in the theory of music; but no music pupil receives instruction in theory only. Music pupils have to sing or play; they have to make music, not merely scribble it. The music pupil has to do the very thing that embodies the instruction she has received.

To be a disciple or learner in the company of Jesus is not merely (not even chiefly) to receive religious instruction; it is to learn how to live a Christ-shaped life in the midst of a world which resists this. I am not minimizing the place of instruction. My point, however, is this: discipleship aims at equipping us to live.

There is another dimension to Christian discipleship. The distinctive mark of the disciples of Moses or the pharisees or John the Baptist was the appropriation of teaching. But the distinctive mark of Christ’s disciples is their personal allegiance to Christ himself. Not only did his disciples call Jesus “rabbi, teacher”; they also called him “Lord”. That is, they were utterly devoted to him himself, not merely to his teaching.

4] In order to grasp more clearly what discipleship means we should look at someone who didn’t become a disciple, that affluent fellow whom we used to call “the rich young ruler”. Mark speaks of him simply as “a man”; Matthew, “one”. “One came up to Jesus”, “A man came up to Jesus”. The gospel-writers deliberately say no more than this so that every gospel-reader can identify with the fellow. The man kneels before Jesus. People did not kneel before a rabbi: that would be blasphemous. Clearly the fellow recognizes Jesus as eversomuch more than a rabbi. He says he wants to inherit eternal life; that is, he wants to share in God’s own life. He tells Jesus he has kept all the commandments from his youth. Jesus doesn’t suggest that he hasn’t. Jesus simply says, “Sell what you own and give away the proceeds: you’ve got too much junk cluttering up your life. Then come and follow me.” The man’s face falls, for he owns much, and he walks away sad. And — be it noted — Jesus lets him walk away.

For years preachers have used this story to make hearers feel guilty. (“Have you given away all that you own?”) Or else preachers have used this story to relieve hearers. (“The fellow didn’t walk away from Jesus because he was rich; rather, because his possessions possessed him.”) Both approaches miss the point. The point isn’t where the line is drawn concerning wealth on one side of which I can be a Christian and on the other side of which I can’t. The point isn’t whether I can be a Christian with one car, two cars, or three cars. (While we are discussing this text we might as well admit that Jesus owned a cloak so fine that soldiers thought it worth gambling for. Clearly Jesus had never given it away.) The point is much more elemental: is the man willing to join himself to Jesus and become a follower? The man says he has kept the commandments. Jesus insists that following him is the meaning of keeping the commandments. If the fellow isn’t willing to become a disciple now, a follower of our Lord, then his commandment-keeping has nothing to do with eternal life; nothing at all. The man thinks he has obeyed God in scrupulously keeping the commandments. Jesus tells him that commandment-keeping is only the outer form of obeying God, the shell, as it were. The inner heart of it all, that which genuinely shares in the life of God himself, is joining oneself — right now — to the one before whom the fellow has knelt. The man walks away from Jesus holding on to his possessions. The point of the story isn’t that the man’s possessions have “hooked” him; the point is that he does not believe Jesus when Jesus says, “Get rid of the junk that is cluttering your life, follow me, AND YOU WILL HAVE TREASURE IN HEAVEN.” The man does not believe that following Jesus is rich; so rich, in fact, that alongside these riches his bank account looks like scrip from a game of Monopoly. You see, a major consequence of becoming a disciple is this: in the presence of Jesus Christ SECONDARY MATTERS ARE RECOGNIZED AS SECONDARY. To be a disciple is to be so “taken” with Jesus that everything else pales. To be a disciple is to find Jesus so winsome as to love him, and so compelling as to obey him. Years after the gospel encounter we are probing now St.Paul wrote the congregation in Philippi and spoke of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”. It is precisely the surpassing worth of knowing Chris that enables the apostle to relativize everything else. Whether fame or anonymity; whether affluence or material leanness — what does it matter alongside the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus? Disciples are those whose hearts melt when they see and hear the master; they know they shall have treasure in heaven; they follow; and they are admitted most intimately to God’s own life here and now.

5] What happens when men and women, of any era, become disciples? Most tellingly, our Lord renders us kingdom-oriented people; as we gradually become kingdom-oriented, we lose whatever ideological baggage we have brought with us. Let us be sure of one thing: our Lord is going to change us; he is going to make us different people. He is Lord. He has authority to create and to destroy; to mould and to fashion; he will certainly exercise his authority here with you and me. Jesus calls Simon. “Simon”, he says, “I have a better name for you: Peter, `Rocky'” He calls two brothers, James and John. “Boanerges”, he names them, “Sons of thunder”. Where there is thunder there is also lightning. “In the kingdom-work I have for you”, our Lord continues, “I expect you brothers to electrify others; I expect you to be seen and heard unmistakably.” For the Hebrew mind a change of name always means a change of nature. To be sure, it would be a long time before Peter became rock-like. It may have been longer still before the two brothers flashed and rumbled in service of the kingdom. The point is, Jesus is sovereign. He calls us as we are but never allows us to remain this. He renders us kingdom-oriented and useful for kingdom-work.

As he does this he relieves us of the ideological baggage we have brought with us. Within the smaller group of the twelve we find Simon the zealot and Matthew the tax-collector. Zealots and tax-collectors were at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. The zealots hated Rome and sought to rid Palestine of Roman occupation through terrorism and sabotage and cold-blooded throat-cutting. Tax-collectors, on the other hand, made a personal fortune through cozying up to Rome and collaborating with Rome. They were self-serving, opportunistic traitors. Jesus calls into his company both traitor and terrorist, both the arch-friend of Rome and the arch-foe of Rome. He is going to have them live together. He will also move both of them beyond their ideology. The kingdom of God is neither bloodcurdling terrorism nor opportunistic treachery. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God. It is neither laissez-faire capitalism nor socialism. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God.

Jesus continues to call. People continue to respond. As we do we bring our idiosyncratic ideologies with us. This person wants the church of Jesus Christ to be a setting for group therapy. That person wants it to be the bastion of law and order in the streets. Someone else wants it to be a voice for pacifism. Unquestionably Jesus calls all such people (that is, calls all of us) into his company. As we keep company with him, however, he moves us all beyond our hobby horses; he equips us to discern his kingdom and exalt it.

Several years ago a bestseller appeared in the USA, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. It was supposed to be a book about Jesus. It portrayed him as a successful businessman whose kingdom-pronouncements were actually sure-fire business techniques. Books appear now depicting Jesus as a Latin American revolutionary, or as a proponent of existential philosophy, or as the guru of mood-altering psychology. He is none of these. We are to become none of these. As disciples we are to be rendered kingdom-oriented and made kingdom-useful.

Our Lord does this to you and me; that is, he relieves us of our ideological baggage by directing us again and again to the written gospels. As we become steeped in the written gospels he steps forth to meet us, and steps forth startlingly different from the hobby horses that we project onto him. As he does this, he renames us, remakes us (however long it takes), and renders us children of the day, as St.Paul says, children of the light.

6] What are disciples to do? All disciples are to do three things: we are to announce that the kingdom of God has come; we are to cast out demons; and we are to heal the sick.

To say that we are to announce the kingdom is to say we are to announce that the sovereign rule of God is effectual in Jesus Christ. And because the sovereign rule of God is effectual in Jesus Christ, death has been defeated. Death is not the last word. Deadliness, however evident in our midst, is not the final truth and reality of our lives.

Sickness is a manifestation of death; sickness is death-on-the-way. Yet Jesus Christ has overcome death. Therefore we are to heal the sick as a sign of Christ’s effectual sovereignty over humankind.

Evil is the power of death running wild. Evil is the power of death chaotically disrupting and disfiguring everything that God has pronounced good. Therefore we are to cast out the demons (that is, resist evil) as a sign of Christ’s effectual sovereignty over the creation.

To say that all disciples are to announce the kingdom is not to say that all disciples are to become preachers, any more than the mandate to heal means we should all become physicians. Most disciples will announce the kingdom not by preaching but simply by embodying the truth and reality of the kingdom of God. Most disciples will heal not by performing surgery or prescribing medicine but by being beacons of hope and help in the midst of the life’s wounds and haemorrhages. Most disciples will cast out demons not by performing charismatic exorcisms but by identifying evil and resisting it as it confronts them. We shall do all of this just because we live in the company of him who is resurrection and life. He commissions us to live and speak and act in such a way as to exalt his life, point to his victory, and deny the illegitimate encroachments of that deadliness which has already been defeated and will one day be dispelled. All disciples are ordained to this ministry, without exception.

At the same time, as individual disciples we may be commissioned to individual tasks. The word “disciple” is rarely found in the singular in the NT. When it is found in the singular, however, it identifies one particular person and usually identifies one particular task for that person. John is one such disciple. He is spoken of in the singular, and his particular task is to take Mary, mother of our Lord, into his home following the death of her son. Mary was by this time a widow; her eldest son was soon to be dead; her three other sons were nowhere to be seen; she was homeless and penniless. Jesus appoints John to take her into his home for as long as she lives — a specific task for this one disciple.

So it is with you and me. As disciples we are all ordained to that ministry which is common to all disciples. As individuals we may be commissioned to a task uniquely. Then we must ever be alert to this; alert to discern it, and enthusiastic in doing it.

This is what disciples are to do.

7] Lastly, what can disciples expect? “Blessed are you when men slander you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect to be slandered and hounded. “If anyone wants to be my follower, let her deny herself, and let her shoulder her own cross” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect cross-bearing, and cross-bearing means torment. “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will certainly persecute you” — so says Jesus. “You will be delivered up to councils, flogged in synagogues, dragged before governors and kings for my sake” — so says Jesus. Disciples can expect victimization at the hands of church-authorities and civil authorities alike.

What can disciples expect? Wrong question. What are disciples guaranteed? We are guaranteed all of the above: slander, persecution, cross-bearing, ecclesiastical abuse and political victimization. Then why bother becoming a disciple?

Why bother? In the written gospels bystanders (that is, those who haven’t made up their minds about becoming disciples) notice that the disciples of Jesus appear to have a rollicking good time. They party a great deal. They laugh. They don’t have a face as long as a horse’s. Other religious devotees fast, and end up with a face like a prune. The disciples of Jesus celebrate. Bystanders are startled, and ask Jesus why his followers are far happier than one should expect them to be. Jesus replies, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”

In ancient Palestine a rabbi’s biblical instruction was deemed so important that nothing could interrupt it — nothing, that is, except a wedding celebration. A wedding celebration was regarded so important that a rabbi would interrupt his exposition of the sacred text so that he and his students could join in the festivities.

“Life in my company”, says Jesus, “is rich, satisfying and exhilarating — like the deepest marriage you can imagine. If the rabbi’s students are allowed to party when the wedding-procession moves through town, then surely my disciples can do as much in my company. For the joy my disciples find in me outweighs the difficulty they have on account of me. They know that life with me is worth it; always!” So says Jesus.

Recall the parable of the pearl: a man comes upon a pearl so beautiful that he sells everything he owns to buy it and still feels it has cost him nothing.

Recall the woman who spent a year’s wages on a bottle of perfume and then poured it over our Lord’s feet. She gave up all she had — and felt she had given up nothing.

Recall Jean Vanier visiting hospital patients in a Cleveland slum. He came upon a poor black woman, sick unto death, who had been vomiting all day. Vanier was so taken aback at her poverty and her sickness and her thoroughgoing misery that he didn’t know what comfort to offer. He simply placed his hand on her head and said, “Jesus.” “I been walking with him forty years”, she croaked.

What, then, can disciples expect? We can expect the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, in light of which everything else in life is relativized. We can also expect the world’s hostility. Ultimately, however, we shall know a satisfaction in him that is but dimly mirrored in the satisfaction that the best-matched couple find in each other. “I been walking with him forty years.”

                                                                      Victor A. Shepherd
March 1995

 

   Matthew 5:1-12          Numbers 12:1-9        2^nd Corinthians 10:1-8

   What comes to mind as soon as you hear the word “meek”? Most likely, “weak”. Meekness is weakness, in the minds of most people. Think of the associations that surround “meek” for most people. A meek fellow is “milquetoast”, someone who falls over as soon as huffed upon and puffed upon. Or a meek fellow is a “creep”, like Uriah Heep, a character in one of Charles Dickens’ novels. Uriah Heep likes to ooze alongside people, wringing his hands and whimpering, “I’m so humble, you know, so very humble.” He’s not humble at all; he’s merely “creepy.” A meek fellow may be the sort of person the clergy are depicted to be in movies and plays 50% of the time: harmless to be sure, but laughable in their naiveness and their gullibility and their trusting simple-mindedness. (I say 50% of the time, for the other 50% of the time movies and plays depict the clergy as cold and cruel.) Something’s wrong in our understanding, because Jesus speaks of himself as “meek and lowly in heart.” Something’s wrong in our understanding, because the book of Numbers reports, “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth.” (Num. 12:3) Moses is the meekest of all, and Moses, everyone knows, is the figure in Israel who looms larger than anyone else. Moses towers over prophets, kings, priests, seers. Moses is tougher than rawhide, more resilient than spring steel, more durable than Tie Domi. And Moses is meek, the meekest ever. Moses is meek. Jesus is meek. Christ’s people are to be meek, for the meek are destined to inherit the earth. Paul tells the Christians in the Colosse to clothe themselves in meekness. James insists that Christians are to exemplify the meekness born of true wisdom. Then what is meekness? Before we probe the apostles’ understanding of the work and the manner in which it characterises our discipleship, we must understand that the Greek word pra/utes, “meek”, had a long history in the philosophy of ancient Greece centuries before the apostles took the word over. The ancient philosopher Xenophenon described as meek that wild horse which has been tamed but whose spirit has never been broken. Because the wild horse has been tamed, it’s useful; yet because its spirit hasn’t been broken the horse is still lively, vigorous, energetic. The ancient philosopher Plato used it of the victorious general who spares a conquered people. The general has triumphed, to be sure; yet he allows to live and thrive even the people he could have annihilated. Plato also used the word pra/utes, “meek”, of a physician who does whatever he has to do in order to treat the patient effectively, and yet whose treatment causes the patient the least pain possible. The ancient philosopher Socrates described as meek the person who can argue tellingly a matter of utmost importance to him yet do so without losing his temper. The ancient philosopher Aristotle used the word of the person who is properly angry at shocking injustice yet whose anger never degenerates into ill-temper or vindictiveness or a spirit of retaliation. Now when we bring together all these illustrations from the world of ancient Greek philosophy, it’s plain that meekness is strength exercised through gentleness. The wild horse now tamed is a horse gentle enough to harness yet strong enough to work. The triumphant general is plainly strong or he wouldn’t have triumphed, yet every bit as gentle or he wouldn’t have spared the conquered people. The physician is so very gentle as not to hurt the patient unnecessarily, yet so very resolute as to effect a cure. So far from weakness, meekness is strength exercised through gentleness. One week before his death Jesus enters Jerusalem . It’s called “the triumphal entry”, and so it is. For our Lord is the conquering one; he asserts his rulership over the entire creation. But he doesn’t assert his rulership over the creation the way Stalin asserted his over Russia , callously slaying thirty million people in the worst reign of terror the world has ever seen. Jesus asserts his rulership by subjecting himself to his subjects. The throne from which he rules is a cross, even as the crown that attests his kingly office is a crown of thorns. Our Lord is sovereign; and the strength of his sovereignty is exercised through gentleness. The meekness that characterises our Lord’s life he expects to characterize ours too. “Learn of me”, he says, “for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Then we must learn of him, for discipleship is a matter of having his life reproduced in us. We must come to exercise strength through gentleness. We must be people who are impassioned yet gentle at the same time, effective without being coercive, vigorous without being wild. [1] Scripture speaks of several situations where we are called to be meek. One is the situation where someone has to be corrected. Paul writes to the church in Galatia , “Friends, if someone in your congregation is detected in some sin, you who are spiritually sensitive should set him right. But do it meekly, gently.” There are two mistakes we can make when someone in our fellowship is found to have been overtaken in sin. One mistake is to assume that nothing needs to be said or done. This appears to be an act of kindness but in fact is an act of cruelty, since it’s never a kindness to leave such a person with the ghastly illusion that “everything’s all right.” This isn’t to say that such a person is to be corrected by every last member of the congregation; it isn’t to say that the entire congregation even has to be informed. But how could Christians who are aware of a brother’s misstep or a sister’s folly allow that person to stumble farther and farther into what can only poison her, harm others, and finally help no one at all? To see a fellow-Christian meandering or galloping farther and farther into sin, mind blinded and heart hardened as rationalisations become ever more fanciful and ridiculous; to be aware of this and do nothing is to fail in love toward that person. The second mistake, of course, is to correct such a person but not correct her meekly, in a spirit of gentleness. There have been times when I was sure I was righteously redressing injustice, and may in fact have been doing just that – when at the same time someone else noticed that my sub-agenda was revenge. I should never want to be made aware of my vengefulness in such a way as to humiliate me publicly; at the same time, it would never be a kindness to leave me uncorrected, for then my sin-compromised heart-condition would only worsen. There have been occasions when someone took me aside and told me quietly that the “joke” that I thought funny enough to tell others in fact wounded many. To be sure, it wounded them precisely where I had no idea it would, or else I wouldn’t have told it. Still, the fact that I wounded others unknowingly doesn’t mean for a minute that I shouldn’t be corrected. As much as I need to be corrected, however, I want to be corrected gently. Everyone knows that offence can be taken where offence has been given. Offence can also be given, however, where no offence was intended. And offence can be taken where no offence has been given. These are three situations where correction is needed. If offence is given intentionally, the offender should be taken aside and corrected, albeit gently. If no offence was intended but was given nevertheless, then the offender should be informed that while he intended no offence (at least consciously) he’s still guilty of offence, and should therefore be corrected. But if no offence was given at all yet someone takes “offence”, then the fault lies with the “offended” person; this time it’s not the offender but rather the offended who should be taken aside and led to see that the offence is merely imagined, however much the “offended” person was pricked by the imagined offence. These three scenarios are played out before us every day. In each case a different approach is needed. In one case it’s the offended person (offended by imagined offence) who is to be corrected; in the other two cases, the offender. How effective correction is in any situation depends largely on how that correction is administered. Angry denunciation ends only in a flare-up. Caustic rebuke provokes retaliation. Mocking contempt produces smouldering rage that burns underground for ever so long but finally bursts into a flame that consumes everything it can lick. No one is genuinely humbled by public humiliation. No one is helped to own her own “baggage” by having it ridiculed. No one is brought to repentance by being taunted or lampooned or laughed at. And of course no one is moved to a fresh start in life by having to defend himself where he’s indefensible, to be sure, but where he has to defend himself in order to survive psychically. To be sure, you and I can be corrected profoundly only if we are addressed vigorously and persistently. At the same time, we will be corrected only if we are addressed gently. Our Lord was never gentler than he was the day he spared the life of a guilty woman about to be stoned, and then put her on her feet saying, “I’m not going to condemn you. You shouldn’t do it again.”   [2] Another situation where scripture urges meekness is our witness as Christians. The apostle Peter writes, “Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you. But do it meekly.” We Christians ought to be able to say something when we are asked about the faith that possesses us. If we know whereof we speak when we say, “I believe in Jesus Christ”, then we ought also to be able to say more than this by way of amplifying this or explicating it. It isn’t pretended for a moment that we ought all to be world-class apologists for the faith, able to counter the arguments of nay-sayers who may be merely clever but who also may have very searching arguments against the Christian faith. Still, when our child asks us who Jesus is, or our teenager asks us why she should have to go to church, or our newly-bereaved neighbour asks us about the future of the deceased; here, the apostle Peter tells us, we must both have something to say and say it gently. Would we ever be tempted to say it non-gently? Would we ever be tempted to commend our Lord nastily? I think we might be, depending on the context. To be sure, when the child asks us what’s good about Good Friday, or when the puzzled teenager questions us about the prevalence of evil in a world ruled by one who is both good and mighty, it would be difficult to imagine anyone replying in an ugly manner or displaying a nasty mood. There are other contexts, however, where the Christian is mandated to speak and where we can be tempted to reply non-meekly. Such contexts, I think, are those where Christian discipleship conflicts starkly with the life-style of so many non-Christians. Not so long ago I was in a high school in Toronto where the notice board informed students of an upcoming party and advised them, “Bring your own condom.” Now parents whose convictions impel them to say and do and protest what should be said and done and protested because they are properly incensed are likely to say and should say why they are incensed (what Peter calls explaining the faith that possesses us); at the same time, just because they are incensed they will be tempted to say the right thing in the wrong manner, tempted to speak the truth but assault the person to whom they are speaking, tempted to speak the truth but impugn the integrity of the hearer, tempted to speak the truth but do anything except “speak the truth in love.” (Eph. 4:15) Where our convictions concerning a Christian life-style starkly conflict with the life-style that is touted and exemplified all around us we are much more prone to uphold the truth and at the same time regard those who differ from us as stupid or malicious or apparently sub-human. Having to criticize the positions that others hold, we are always in danger of allowing criticism of a position to degenerate into contempt for those who hold it. And of course it will then be “obvious” that all such people are greater sinners than we are ourselves. It’s here that all such temptation has to be resisted. Yes, we are to be ready to speak on behalf of the truth that has seized us, and of course we shall do speak as strongly as we can. Just as surely we must temper our strength with gentleness. Meekness isn’t weakness; meekness is strength exercised through gentleness, and this adorns the Christian as surely as it exalts our Lord.   [3] Lastly, we must consider the matter of leadership. Moss is said to be the meekest man on earth. (Numbers 12:3) Then is Moses ineffective? a pushover? spineless? voiceless? On the contrary, Moses is the single most telling figure in Israel ’s history. Miriam and Aaron, the sister and brother of Moses, “speak against Moses”; that is, they denounce him, speak ill of him, try to turn the people against him – and do all of this because Moses has married a Cushite woman. Now the Cushites were Ethiopians. In other words, Moses had married a woman who was likely neither Jewish nor Caucasian. Moses’ wife is a gentile woman and black as well? His was a mixed marriage mixed twice over. Miriam and Aaron, already resenting Moses’ place in Israel , now resent him even more. “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?” they ask the people, “Hasn’t the Lord spoken through us too?” No one is saying the Lord hasn’t. Still, Moses occupies a position before God, on behalf of the people, that Miriam and Aaron will never occupy. We are told that whereas God inspires and equips and moves the prophets by means of vision and dream, God speaks with Moses “mouth to mouth.” At the end of his life it will be said of Moses that the Lord knew him face to face.” (Deut. 34:10) Before God, on behalf of the people, Moses occupies a place greater than that of any prophet, great than that even of Elijah , Israel ’s greatest prophet. Moses is a giant before God, the mediator of God’s covenant with Israel , and this man is pronounced meeker than anyone else on earth. Moses is a colossus but he doesn’t coerce. He stands taller than anyone else but he doesn’t tyrannise. He doesn’t stand above his people when they sin. He doesn’t stand apart from them when they meander in the wilderness. He remains intimately identified with them even as he bears the tension of leading them. Moses is possessed of immense authority (none greater in Israel ) even as he displays no authoritarianism. The difference is crucial. Authoritarianism is the manner in which tyrants and bullies threaten and throw their weight around. Authority is what genuine leaders display as their people recognise their gifts and graces. People know that the tyrant’s authoritarianism is a curse upon them. Just as surely they know that the leader’s authority is a blessing. Meekness, strength exercised through gentleness, is authority manifested and acknowledged. Which do we want: authority or authoritarianism? What kind of rulers do we need? What mood and mindset do we think should permeate our society? Some of us are parents, some schoolteachers, some employers, some leaders of church groups or community organisations. All of us are voters. Perhaps this is the most telling point: all of us are voters. Surely we want to live under neither ineffective “wimps” nor authoritarian arm-twisters. Moses was the both the meekest and the most effective. (After all, the whole of western society is unimaginable without the Ten Words he brought with him from Sinai.) Did I say Moses was the meekest? Surely our Lord was meeker still when he did his most effective work at the cross. Little wonder he has told his followers, “Take my yoke upon you (bind yourself to me) and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” (Matt. 11:29) Our Lord has promised that the meek are going to inherit the earth. He doesn’t mean that those who are meek now are going to get their chance later to tyrannise others and profit from it as well. He means something very different. In rabbinic teaching of first century Palestine “earth” referred to the messianic age. To say that the meek are going to inherit the earth is to say that Christ’s people, cruciform in their faith and understanding and doing, are going to share in the messianic age in the company of the messiah himself. They will be found in his company, rejoicing in him and in each other, on that day when wrong is righted, injustice redressed, and tears wiped from eyes so as to leave dried eyes never weeping again.                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                    2004  

Matthew 5:1-14   Matthew 5:8    Jeremiah 17:5-10   1^st Peter 1:3-9

 

I have been a minister of the gospel now for 37 years. In this time the gospel has never ceased to shine brightly for me. No doubt many of you could say as much for yourself concerning the gospel. We know that there is no substitute for it, just because we know that the gospel (which is to say, the living Lord Jesus Christ himself in his presence and power) penetrates to the innermost core of our humanness as nothing else can.  The gospel effects the profoundest alteration within us as nothing else will. To have been seized by the gospel ourselves; to know that the gospel is the outer expression of the inner being and character of God; to have witnessed again and again the life-long transmutation the gospel effects in those who become steeped in it — what is this but to have a confidence in the gospel that no secularism can dilute nor ecclesiastical betrayal diminish?

From time to time I relish preaching a simple sermon from a simple text simply to remind us all once more of the truth and trenchancy of the gospel. One such text comes from our Lord’s short statement in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”.

 

[1]         When Jesus declares that the pure in heart are going to see God he doesn’t mean, of course, that we shall see God with our eyes; the blind person will not be at a disadvantage.   He means that the pure in heart will know an intimacy with God that has the ring of authenticity about it.  The pure in heart will be acquainted with the mind and will and purpose and way of God so as to know what good is to be pursued and what non-good is to be repudiated. The pure in heart will find a satisfaction in God that renders them unseduceable in the face of the religious and ideological smorgasbords that hold out so much yet deliver so little.  This is the blessing imparted as promised to the pure in heart.

 

[2]         And yet as surely as our Lord knows this and declares it plainly, he knows something else and states it starkly: the human heart isn’t pure. It has to become pure, be made pure, for right now it isn’t.  Many different words can describe our heart-condition: fragmented, corrupt, self-serving, blind, contradictory, insensitive, silly, uncontrollable, inconstant. The list is endless.

So many different words describe the heart of fallen humankind just because a heart-condition is the most serious condition we can have. You see, “heart” is the metaphor scripture uses most frequently to speak of what it is to be a human being under God. “Heart” is the single most important metaphor for understanding human complexity and the relation of complex elements within us.  The heart is the “control centre” of feeling, thinking, willing and discerning.

Let’s think first of affect, desire.  The heart is the seat of our feelings, our desires, our passions.  The heart of fallen humankind, however, is disordered: we desire what we were never meant to have and fail to desire what we need to have.  We passionately pursue what will only prove ruinous and just as passionately avoid what would be our salvation.

How messed-up is the human heart?   As the seat of feeling it feels dreadful when the favourite political party loses the election or the hometown sports team loses the game, yet feels nothing at all when God is dishonoured.  Recall how you felt the last time you were slighted.  Even if you were slighted ever so slightly, you were outraged.  What did you feel when last you heard Jesus Christ insulted?   Likely you felt nothing.

 

The heart is also the seat of thought and understanding.  In fallen humankind thinking, then, is distorted too.  It’s not the case that we can no longer think consistently, think logically; we can. Fallen humankind remains able to do algebra marvellously.  Rather it’s the case that our thinking serves the wrong end.  Our thinking, as logically rigorous as ever, now churns out “reasons” that rationalize temptation, make excuses for sin, render our selfishness perfectly reasonable and our depravity perfectly acceptable. Paul says our thinking has become “futile”.  He doesn’t mean that we can’t reason — the structure of reason survives the Fall (or else we shouldn’t be human);  he means that our reasoning leads us to futility, a dead end — because the integrity of reason has collapsed (reason’s integrity doesn’t survive the Fall.) Our thinking leads not to an intellectual dead end; it leads us, rather, to intellectual riches that are a human dead end. When he insists that our “senseless minds are darkened” he doesn’t mean that we can’t do biology; he means that our biology serves a dark end and we promote biological and germ warfare.  Not that we can’t perform electronic wizardry, but that we deploy electronic surveillance and super-sophisticated munitions and thereby dehumanize ourselves. The heart is the seat of thought and understanding; when the heart isn’t pure our thinking — as rigorous as ever — promotes a destructive, deadly end.

 

For our Hebrew foreparents the heart is also the seat of the will.  Our will is our doing. We have a bent will; it has a bent toward doing what it shouldn’t.  No child has to be taught to misbehave.  No adult has to be schooled in vindictiveness, grudge-holding, spite, envy.   I am forever amazed at intelligent people who endorse the liberal myth of history, the liberal myth being that history is the unfolding of human progress. They assume that humanly to do is inevitably to do better.  To be sure, humankind does advance technically (laser surgery is a technical advance on the application of leeches), yet humankind never advances humanly. How anyone can believe in human progress is beyond me, given overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In view of the countless generations of human beings who have come and gone upon the earth, the cumulative effect of even a smidgen of progress per generation should have rendered us all angelic by now. Yet the twentieth century, just concluded, saw unparalleled savagery, thanks to the unholy marriage of technology and darkened minds.  Actually, upon reflection I’m not amazed that intelligent people believe in the myth of progress.  After all, one aspect of the darkened mind is that even intelligent people prefer palatable falsehood to unpalatable truth.

 

The heart is also the seat of spiritual life.  We were created to recognize God, respond to him and rejoice in him. But our heart, afflicted with the profoundest kind of heart trouble we shall ever have, does not recognize God but instead prefers idols both crude and sophisticated. We do not respond to God but instead reject him.  We do not rejoice in God but instead seek satisfaction everywhere else.

 

Scripture uses one word predominantly to speak of our heart, one word that gathers up all other descriptions in itself: hard.  Hard in the sense of stony, unyielding, insensitive, obstinate, rigid; simply hard. It doesn’t beat, doesn’t throb, doesn’t pump life-sustaining blood.

 

[3]           On the other hand, whenever scripture speaks of the heart made new at God’s hand it uses a wonderful variety of expressions: heart of flesh (it beats, throbs, pulsates, pumps), holy heart, reverent heart, broken heart, contrite heart, new heart, pure heart, circumcised heart.

          Circumcised heart? What on earth is a circumcised heart? Circumcision was the indelible sign, the ineradicable sign, the undisguisable sign that this person in particular had been pledged from infancy to love God and thank him and obey him and delight in him. The prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul, both Jews to whom circumcision was non-negotiable, nonetheless insisted that if one’s heart wasn’t circumcised there was no point in circumcising anything else.  Circumcision not matched by a circumcision of the heart, said both Isaiah and Paul, is but a misleading sign, a deceptive sign, a fraudulent sign. Baptism not matched by faith; church membership not matched by service; Sunday attendance not matched by sacrifice — a misleading sign, a deceptive sign, a fraudulent sign. It’s the circumcision of the heart that identifies someone as pledged to the love and service and satisfaction of God.

 

[4]         Jesus insists that it is the pure in heart who see God.  A pure heart isn’t a state of faultlessness, sinlessness, or perfection. A pure heart, rather, is a singleminded heart, a heart dedicated to one, all-consuming pursuit: God. But if the heart is already in the mess we have described at length, if the heart is in so great a mess that it will never be able to purify itself, then how will anyone come to have that pure, singleminded heart which sees God? If the messed-up heart can’t even recognize the truth of God, then how can the messed-up heart even get to the point of knowing that it is messed-up?   How can the messed-up heart determine to be singleminded when the messed-up heart isn’t even aware of heart-trouble and would laugh off singlemindedness as soon as it heard of it?

In order to answer this question I must acquaint you with a most significant aspect of the thought of the universal church.  Throughout its history the church has spoken much of prevenient grace. Pre, “before”; venire, “to come”. Prevenient grace is grace that comesbefore; comes before we are aware of grace, comes before we are possessed of faith, comes before we know our need of grace, before we have even heard of grace. Prevenient grace is the hidden work of God in the heart of every human being quietly preparing that person for the moment when the morning dawns and the truth flashes and he who has always been the light of the world is finally recognized and acknowledged to be this.  Prevenient grace is that preparatory work of God, unknown to those in whom prevenient grace is at work, bringing someone to that point where our Lord’s saying, “Only the pure in heart are going to see God”, is recognized as true; to that point where purity of heart (singlemindedness concerning God) is all-important just because seeing God is desired now above all else.

When our forebears in Christian understanding spoke of prevenient grace they knew that the gospel-seed which they sowed they were always sowing in soil that God had already, beforehand, ploughed and fertilized and watered and prepared in every way to receive that gospel-seed which would otherwise never germinate and yield faith.         Prevenient grace is the anticipatory work of God in the heart-troubled heart quietly rendering us dissatisfied with our present satisfactions, quietly quickening in us a desire for “something more” even though we can’t specify what the “more” is, quietly moving us toward that day when the gospel rings in our hearing with such authenticity that we wonder where we could have been for twenty-five years. Prevenient grace is that preparatory work of God, of which we have never been conscious, bringing us to the point of conscious faith and quickened discipleship.  In other words, prevenient grace has been operating within us, quietly rendering us able to see and want and seize the new heart, the circumcised heart, which is nothing else than the self-giving of our Lord Jesus Christ forging himself within us.

 

[5]           What is the result of all this going to be?   Paul maintains that the result of Christ’s “dwelling inour hearts by faith” is that we have “power to comprehend the breadth and length and height anddepth of Christ’s love”.(Eph.3:17-18)   Breadth, length, height, depth: Paul is speaking here of the vastness of Christ’s love for us, the sheer enormity of it.  To speak of Christ’s love for us in terms of its breadth, length, height and depth is to know that Christ’s love is the environment, the atmosphere in which we live, regardless of what we are about.  Christ’s love reaches so high that it towers above even our highest cultural achievements; so deep that our bottommost depravity cannot sink us beneath it; so broad and long that everything about us unfolds within this dimension. When we were born we were born into this love, and when we die we shall die into this love in its greater transparency.  The apostle is careful to point out that as Christ dwells in our hearts by faith we have the “power to comprehend” Christ’s inexhaustible, immeasurable love for us.  To comprehend such love, needless to say, doesn’t mean that we merely grasp the idea of it; to comprehend it is to be seized by it, to be possessed by it. And to be possessed by it is to have a singleminded passion for him whose love it is. And to have this singleminded passion is what it is to be pure in heart.

The apostle James insists that the “doubleminded person is unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:7-8)   Of course. The doubleminded person is always trying to move in two contradictory directions at once, always trying to uphold two contradictory loyalties at once, always struggling with two contradictory impulses at once, with the result that he is constantly distracted, constantly frustrated, constantly heart-troubled. Kierkegaard knew better: “Purity of heart is to will one thing”, the Danish philosopher never tired of saying. Paul knew that to have the power to comprehend Christ’s passionate love for us is to be freed to love him with a similar passion.

As we do so love our Lord the miracle of the new heart occurs, the circumcised heart, the heart of flesh.  And as this takes hold of us everything of which the heart is the seat takes hold of us as well.

Since the heart is the seat of feeling and desire we come to desire above all else what is of God and therefore good and therefore good for us.  Since the heart is the seat of thought and understanding we come to cherish the truth of God and the truth about the world and the truth about ourselves, however out-of-step we appear to be with those whose unremedied heart-trouble finds them misunderstanding life and romanticising death and rationalizing what we now see to be blatantly false. Since the heart is the seat of the will our bent will comes to be straightened enough that at least we want to “do the truth”, in John’s splendid phrase, and begin to do it.  Since the heart is the seat of our life in God we taste what it is to recognize him, respond to him and rejoice in him. All of this arises from a singleminded love that Jesus names “purity of heart”.

There is one more thing we must be sure we understand about our Lord’s word. When he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”, he doesn’t mean merely that they are going to see God in some far-off future.  He means that singlemindedness issues now in an intimacy with him that we know and cherish, issues now in an acquaintance with God’s will and way that strikes us as the only way, issues now in a satisfaction that ends all groping and guessing.

 

At the beginning of the sermon I said that the gospel has never ceased to shine brightly for me. My confidence in the gospel is unshaken.  I trust yours is too. For together we want only to persist in that singlemindedness which finds us “seeing God” now through the eyes of faith, and will find us seeing him even more gloriously on that day when faith gives way to sight, and hope gives way to hope’s fulfilment, and love gives way to nothing — except more love to him who has loved us always and always will.

                                Victor Shepherd   
2008

Matthew 5:3     Mark 14:3-9    Luke 6:20     Jonah 4:11    Isaiah 55:1-2   Galatians 2:10

[1] Who are the poor, anyway? Those who lack money? In 1968 I was an impecunious student at the University of Toronto. But even though I lacked money, was I poor? That year I was hospitalized for forty-five consecutive days. I was seen daily by the physician who admitted me, as well as by the orthopaedic surgeon who had me placed in a body-cast. When I was discharged from hospital the orthopaedist continued to see me until he deemed me fit to play hockey again. I had received medical treatment incomparably better than the treatment 99% of the world will ever see; I was treated him a hospital whose services cost hundreds of dollars per bed per day. At the end of it all my expenses were zero.

In 1986 my mother, seventy years old, was hospitalized for seventy-five consecutive days. She too was billed nothing. She is kept alive by the excellent care she receives from a cardiologist. He is a chemical magician whose prescriptions leave my mother’s bedside table resembling a bowlful of “Smarties”. Since she is over sixty-five she pays nothing directly for her medication. Could she ever be poor?

A few days ago I took the several cases of applejuice which Maureen had purchased to Foodpath, our well-known foodbank. When I arrived I found many clients waiting to have a food-hamper filled. None of them appeared rich. But in view of the fact that they would never be allowed to go hungry, how poor were they when compared to the 35,000 people who starve to death every day?

So far I have not attempted a definition of poverty and will not attempt one now. But I will say this much: if to be poor is to be without food, clothing, elemental education and medical care, then it would appear difficult to be poor in Canada.

Yet even in Canada there are those whose material misery (to speak of only one kind of misery) is so very pronounced that we do not hesitate to call them poor, regardless of the definition of poverty. Think of the families who are “double-bunked” in Cooksville. (There are 25,000 “double-bunked” people in Toronto, but I mention Cooksville in that Cooksville is the area of Mississauga where the practice is most apparent.) One family, adults and children, rents a two-bedroom apartment-unit. The entire family sleeps in one bedroom. This family in turn sub-lets its second bedroom to another family. Now we have seven, eight, nine people living in a two-bedroom apartment, elbowing each other aside to get into kitchen and washroom. Can you imagine the frustration, the flare-ups, born of overcrowding? Is it any wonder that from time-to-time someone “boils over” and the police are called to yet another domestic irruption? What school-performance can be expected of children in such a setting? Two television sets blaring, no defensible space, no solitude, no incentive to study. A further dimension, a frightening dimension, to this state of affairs is this: since education is the single most effective means of escaping poverty, lack of educational opportunity and encouragement fixes yet another generation in the same sort of poverty.

When I was living undercover in Parkdale while researching my magazine article on chronically mentally ill people I learned that the more severe one’s illness (itself a form of poverty, intellectual and emotional poverty), the worse one’s living accommodation. I visited several of the infamous boarding houses in Parkdale. The worst one — indescribable, really — housed two dozen people who were utterly deranged. Never mind that social assistance pays their rent and thus forestalls death by exposure; never mind that when they have appendicitis they can get a free appendectomy; they are deranged, they live in degrading filth, and throwing eversomuch more money at them would still find them poor in any non-economic sense of the term.

Who are the poor? When I was newly-ordained Maureen and I found ourselves in a small village of northeastern New Brunswick. Most families there were sustained by fishing or lumberjacking or peat-bog excavating. The villages surrounding ours were sustained in the same way. Yet the villages surrounding ours were manifestly wretched! Shanty-houses with earth floors; two-by-four partitions but no walls, with the result that the entire house was illuminated (as it were) by a single unshaded lightbulb dangling from the ceiling-peak (if the house had electricity). All of us have seen icicles hanging from the outside of a home; have you ever seen them hanging from the inside? Why was it that our village and the neighbouring villages fished the same water and cut the same trees, yet our village appeared relatively resplendent?

When we moved east Maureen and I had just finished reading Catherine Marshall’s novel, Christie, with its heart-catching character, Fairlie. The first time Maureen met Opal Murray she rushed home and shouted, “I’ve just met Fairlie, right out of the book!” A few days later Opal, together with a friend, called on Maureen and announced, “We’s here to learn you about babies”. (The learning “took”, I might add.) Opal and her husband Jack lived in a home which had been a fish-processing plant. They had purchased it for a few dollars, the only few dollars they had. As a result their six children had slept on straw ticks. Come Sunday morning all eight of them appeared at church radiant, happy, confident. Opal said she couldn’t afford shampoo and so she washed her children’s heads (in rural New Brunswick you don’t wash your hair, you wash your head) with a bar of Sunlight soap. When Maureen had to be hospitalized for surgery Opal and Jack had me to their home for supper. As Opal served up thick slices of bologna Jack beamed at me and said, without a hint of embarrassment but with more than a hint of triumph, “Victor, it’s poor man’s steak!” And so we feasted.

Were Jack and Opal poor? The villagers in the villages surrounding ours were certainly poor, as everyone agreed. Compared to us Streetsvillians Jack and Opal were very hard-pressed financially. (Whose children here have slept on straw ticks?) But were Jack and Opal poor, poor in any extra-financial sense?

Who are the poor, anyway? Are the Arab masses poor? They appear wretchedly poor whenever we see photographs of them. Are we to conclude that they are citizens of wretchedly poor nations? We shouldn’t draw this conclusion. After all, the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is greater than the per capita income of the U.S.A. The nation of Saudia Arabia is exceedingly rich. Then how does their claim on our charity compare to that of people in countries where the per capita income is very low?

The per capita income of Israel is lower than the per capita income of the Arab states. Yet the average Israeli is much better off materially than the average Arab. Are we to conclude, therefore, that the Israelis are less poor? On the contrary in some respects they are far more poor than the poorest of the Arabs. Surely one aspect of poverty is vulnerability. Israel is far more vulnerable than any Arab state. Right now Israel receives one-third of the U.S.A.’s foreign financial allotment: ten billion dollars per year. Ten billion dollars per year are spent on a country whose entire population is scarcely larger than that of metropolitan Toronto. The twenty-two Arab nations (whose population outnumbers Israel’s 100 to 1) which surround Israel have vowed, in the Arab Covenant, the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of every living Jew. What will happen when either external pressure or internal pressure forces the U.S.A to alter its support? Israel is at risk in a way that no Arab state appears to be at risk. I can foresee the day when external or internal pressure (or both together) will force the U.S.A. to alter its support. On that day Israel will disappear in blood, while the Arab nations, with their unquestionably wretched masses, will survive. So who is poor?

Who are the poor, anyway? Consider this: anyone is poor who lacks recognition. When Elie Wiesel was a fifteen year-old in Auschwitz an S.S. guard taunted him, “I know why you want to survive, young man; you want to survive in order to tell the world how horrific Auschwitz and its perpetrators were. But the world will never believe you. So horrific is this camp that humankind will refuse to believe this of itself. No one will believe your testimony, and you will have survived for naught.” Not to be recognized is to be poor.

On the other hand to be recognized is always to be non-poor, whether one has much money or little. Ned Vladomansky was a Czechoslovakian hockey player whom Harold Ballard wanted for the Leafs. Because Vladomansky the hockey player was recognized his escape from Czechoslovakia was engineered and his flight to Canada paid for even as Canadian immigration officials lied through their teeth and falsified every document they laid their hands on, as ordered by their political superiors. Never mind that Vladomansky was a dud as an N.H.L. player and therefore didn’t draw a rich man’s salary. He was recognized. People in Ireland have waited twenty-five years to emigrate to Canada. But they aren’t recognized. They are poor.

Who are the poor, anyway? I am not going to answer the question. I shall allow you to answer the question for yourself. We must each answer the question for ourselves. Who are the poor? “Does Victor mean merely those who lack money? or also those who lack health, lack friends, lack opportunity, lack responsible parents, lack support?” I cannot reply. We must each answer the question, “Who are the poor?”, for ourselves.

 

[2] All of which brings me to the second point of the sermon. The apostle Paul tells the church in Galatia that he is “eager to remember the poor”. He insists that all Christians remember the poor. Now because the Streetsville congregation has been schooled in the Hebrew meaning of “remember” you will recall that to remember, in Hebrew, does not mean to recall an idea or a notion or a concept. To remember is to make something outside ourselves in space and time a living actuality within ourselves right now. At the last supper, when Jesus took bread and wine and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”, he didn’t mean that we are to recall the idea or notion of his sacrifice. He meant that his sacrifice, which bears our sin, bears our sin away, and forms the pattern or template of our discipleship; his sacrifice, outside us in space and time, is to become living actuality within us — now and always. As we “remember” his sacrifice we find our sin borne and borne away, live in the freedom which is now ours, and cheerfully walk the road of crossbearing discipleship ourselves. When the apostle tells us we are to remember the poor he means that that which is outside us is to become a living actuality within us so that our heartbeat and the heartbeat of the poor are one. We have identified ourselves so thoroughly with the poor that they now have the freedom and the desire to identify themselves with us.

And who are these poor whom we have identified as poor? That is known only to us. Of course it could be someone without money or dental plan who needs dental work done. It could just as easily be the richest person in town whose grief or loneliness or anxiety are off the chart. It could be the youngster whose appearance or manner or ethnicity find him picked on. It could be the deranged person who has been robbed again inasmuch as schizophrenics are easy to rob and hurt. Who are the poor? We must each decide for ourselves. But once we have decided, we must be sure to “remember” them.

The romantics among us like to romanticize poverty. How silly! There is nothing at all romantic about poverty, as the poor have always known. The romantics among us who like to romanticize poverty assume there is something righteous about poverty. But there isn’t. If poverty were righteous then it would be our responsibility to increase the world’s poverty, thereby increasing the world’s righteousness. On the contrary, scripture insists that poverty is evil; like any evil it must be resisted and repulsed, even eradicated.

“But wasn’t Jesus poor himself?” It all depends on what we mean by “poor”. He wasn’t financially poor. During the years of his public ministry he was never gainfully employed. Anyone who can thrive without being gainfully employed is not poor financially. Jesus (and the twelve) were funded by wealthy women. He never hesitated to accept their support. He never hesitated to eat and drink the sumptuous fare which the rich offered him — even to the extent that his enemies accused him of “pigging out” and overdoing the wine. When he died soldiers gambled for his cloak, so valuable did they deem it; they didn’t toss it aside as worthless. Then was our Lord poor? Who are the poor? Now I shall attempt an answer: the poor are those in extreme need, extreme need of any sort. Was our Lord ever in extreme need? I recall reading that he wept, he sweat blood, he cried out, he was so distracted that he stumbled repeatedly. The poor are those in extreme need, any sort of need.

We must say a few more things about the poor.

 

(i) While poverty is never pronounced righteous, it is pronounced blessed. In Luke’s gospel Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”; in Matthew’s gospel, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. “Kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” amount to the same thing. What about “poor” and “poor in spirit”? Do they amount to the same thing? “Blessed are the poor” means “blessed are those in extreme need”. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means “blessed are those who admit their spiritual emptiness, their spiritual hollowness, their spiritual inertness”. The two expressions don’t mean exactly the same thing. Nonetheless those who are in extreme need are more likely to admit spiritual need. Poverty is blessed, says Jesus, not because poverty is good (poverty is evil); it is blessed just because the poor are more likely to cry to God with the hymnwriter, “Nothing in my hand I bring; nothing!”

Jesus pronounces poverty blessed in that the poor are more likely to see that the consolations of the world are finally spurious. One of the world’s consolations is wealth. Has wealth ever improved the spiritual condition of anyone? It has spelled the spiritual ruin of countless. What does wealth bring finally but a shrunken heart? Another of the world’s consolations is adulation. What does adulation bring finally but a swollen head? Poverty isn’t blessed because poverty is good; poverty is blessed because those in extreme need have the fewest pretences about themselves and their profounder need, even their ultimate need — which need, of course, is their need of the saving God. The more extreme our need, the less likely we are to think we need nothing; the less likely we are to think that we don’t even need the One who claims us for himself by his generosity in creation and claims us for himself again by his mercy in redemption.

When we come upon extreme need of any sort what do we do? What step do we take to “remember” the poor? I do not think we can specify this in advance; there is no formula or recipe which tells us what to do about the specific evil of this or that specific need. There is only our Spirit-sensitized discernment of poverty of any sort; there is only the unshrunken heart which throbs with the suffering of a fellow-sufferer; there is only the unswollen head which apprehends specific cross which a specific disciple is to shoulder in view of someone else’s specific need.

The one thing we must never do, of course, is use the text, “The poor you have with you always” (Mark 14:9), as a pretext for doing nothing. A grateful woman lavishes the costliest perfume — twenty ounces of “Escape” — on our Lord. Some hard-hearted nit-pickers pick, “It could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor”. Yes, it could have. But life can’t be reduced to the functional. Unselfconscious gratitude can’t be measured. Love can’t be exchanged for currency. The kingdom of God, while certainly including the material, cannot be reduced to the material. The woman’s gratitude was incalculable just because her spiritual need had been incalculable and our Lord’s gift of himself to her incalculable. Those who object to what she has done are not yet poor in spirit themselves; would to God they were simply poor, for if they were poor they might also be poor in spirit and then would find themselves made rich by the only Saviour they can ever have.

 

(ii) The last point I am going to make today. While not everyone is poor in the sense of extreme financial need or extreme social need or extreme emotional need, every last person is poor in the sense of extreme spiritual need. Since this is the case, we shall always be safe in beginning here as we endeavour to remember the poor.

I am moved every time I read the book of Jonah. Jonah has failed to grasp the enormity of the spiritual need of the Ninevites. Finally God jerks Jonah awake and tells Jonah that he, God, has immense pity for a vast city whose people do not know their right hand from their left. Centuries later Jesus would look out on crowds and say to his disciples, “See? Sheep without a shepherd!” But our Lord did more than say that the crowd does not know right hand from left. The Greek text tells us that at the sight of the crowd his gut knotted and pain pierced him as though he had been stabbed.

If we begin with the assumption of spiritual poverty, we shall soon find ourselves drawn into the orbit of those whose need of the Good Shepherd is extreme. Once in their orbit we shall find their needs, like ours, to be many and manifold, and manifest. At this point we shall never have to ask, “But what are we to do? How are the poor to be ‘remembered’?” We shall know. And the poor will know as well.

F I N I S

 

                                                                                                   Victor A. Shepherd
March 1993

Matthew 5:9       Jeremiah 6:14         Romans 12:18        Hebrews 12:14

I: — I have seen the veterans weep as young people belittled, even despised, their service and sacrifice. I have seen veterans rage as people too young to have faced war taunted them with “war-monger,” “killer.” I understand why the veterans weep and rage. I remember what they have told me.

I sat with one such veteran the night his fifteen-year old son was decapitated in an automobile accident. The man was shaking uncontrollably, dry-mouthed, beside himself. “I haven’t felt like this since D-Day,” he told me. What does this tell us about D-Day? Anyone whose fifteen-year old son is killed is scarred for life. Plainly anyone who survived D-Day is scarred for life.

I have long known a clergyman who served on a warship in the Royal Navy throughout World War II. To this day he sits up in bed from time-to-time, terrified, screaming, “My life-jacket; I can’t find my life-jacket.” His wife awakens him and makes him a cup of tea. Together they sit and sip and wait for the sun to rise.

The man is shell-shocked. He’s also irked. He’s irked because when he returned to England after the war his former chums, all of whom had been conscientious objectors, told him he was a cold-blooded killer. They told him this from the pinnacle of their business careers. Since many young men were in the forces during the war, those who weren’t rose extraordinarily quickly in the business world. My friend’s business career, of course, had been stalled for six years. He told his chums that had Britain been invaded (certainly this was Hitler’s intention) they would have had no business career at all – or much of anything else. But they only scoffed at him.

At the conclusion of World War II there were hundreds of airmen who had been burnt horribly. For the most part they had been Spitfire pilots. The Spitfire aircraft, so crucial in the Battle of Britain, had its fuel tank behind the flier. The fuel line ran through the cockpit to the engine in front of the flier. When the aircraft was hit and caught fire, in three seconds the heat in the cockpit was so intense that the flesh melted off the flier’s face. Those men would never have their faces restored. What sacrifice would these men continue to make for the rest of their lives? After all, how many women are going to marry a face they can’t kiss?

Those who scorn the service and sacrifice of veterans even defame them, forget one thing. They forget that they have the freedom to publicize their opinion only because those they are defaming paid the dearest price to guarantee them that freedom.

 

II: — Don’t think I’m glorifying war. I’m not. I repudiate utterly the outlook of General George Patton who said, “War is humankind’s noblest endeavour. Our humanness is never so rich, our character never so pure, as when we are waging war.” General Sherman, a Union officer in the American Civil War, was far closer to the truth when he announced, “War is hell.”

The greatest military leader in scripture is Joshua. He won many battles. Yet the bible never boasts of them. Why not? Because Israelite conviction shuns war. The Hebrew prophets refuse to sanctify war. Hebrew poets refuse to romanticize war. In his farewell address to his people, Joshua , Israel ’s greatest soldier makes no mention of his military triumphs. Why not? Because the people don’t want to hear of them; because he doesn’t want to be remembered for them; because Israel ’s Messiah is Messiah in truth only if he brings with him peace wherein swords are beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, peace wherein war isn’t learned any more.

Whenever war is mentioned someone speaks of Gandhi. Gandhi was committed to non-violent resistance.   Let’s be sure to understand something crucial about Gandhi’s movement and method. A leader can rouse the world as Gandhi did only in a setting that upholds natural justice and the right of assembly. Without the right of assembly Gandhi and his followers wouldn’t have lasted a day. Who guaranteed him the right of assembly? Who protected him against mob violence while he orchestrated protests day after day? The British Army did. Gandhi survived day after day as he continued to recommend non-violence just because he was protected by soldiers who weren’t committed to non-violence. Gandhi knew that if he were mistreated he could rely on British justice to help him. In the USA the same was true of Martin Luther King jr.: he could advocate non-violence as a means of social protest just because the Unites States government guaranteed him (by means of heavily armed personnel) the right of assembly and access to the courts.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived under a different regime: no natural justice, no guaranteed right of assembly, no protection against molestation. Bonhoeffer, initially impressed by Gandhi’s example, soon saw that Gandhi-type non-violence would do nothing to stem the rising tide of death in Germany and elsewhere. Bonhoeffer was convinced that the fastest way to end the slaughter of combatants and civilians was to assassinate Hitler. He joined a plot (unsuccessful) to do just that. He knew that in some situations the choice isn’t between taking life and not taking it; in some situations the only choice is between taking much life and taking little. This is a terrible choice. It so happens that life often traffics in terrible choices.

George Orwell, then, may have been right. Orwell said, “War has never been right; war has never been sane; but sometimes war has been necessary.”

 

II: — At the same time Orwell never lived in the nuclear era. What could be said of yesteryear’s conventional warfare can never be said of nuclear warfare. When Orwell said “War has sometimes been necessary” he meant that war has sometimes been the lesser of two evils, sometimes the only way to safeguard the victimized neighbour.

Nuclear war is different. Nuclear war can never be the lesser of two evils. We must understand that it’s impossible to win a nuclear war; it’s impossible to limit or contain nuclear war. It’s impossible for nuclear war to protect the neighbour in any way. And, we should note, it’s impossible to defend against nuclear war. Richard Nixon admitted this thirty years ago. Nixon admitted that while there might be a slight defence against the piloted bomber, there is no defence against the intercontinental missile and none against the submarine-launched missile.

Neither can we protect ourselves against nuclear radiation, fallout. Fifty years ago a small nuclear warhead was detonated on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. One hundred miles away from the point of the explosion another island was saturated with eight times the lethal dose of radiation.

A twenty-megaton warhead isn’t large by today’s standards. Nevertheless, a twenty-megaton explosion in Toronto in one second would raise the surface temperature of the city to four times the heat at the centre of the sun: 150 million degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature people don’t burn; they don’t even boil; they are vaporized, without so much as ashes left over. Anyone in Toronto who survived the blast would suffocate as the ensuing firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Those outside the city would die slowly of radiation.

Why do I speak of nuclear warfare at all? Hasn’t the USSR crumbled? Let’s not be naïve: the countries of the former USSR are staggering economically. If their economic malaise worsens they could re-communize themselves tomorrow. In this case the arms race would heat up instantly. What’s more, many smaller nations now have nuclear arsenals. Who knows when these smaller nations are going to inflict nuclear war on each other? Once it began, where would it end?

 

IV: — The truth is, with present-day conventional weapons nations can wreak the kind of havoc they could only wreak with nuclear weapons thirty years ago. In other words, conventional weapons today have the killing capacity of last generation’s nuclear weapons. Conclusion: armies that don’t have nuclear weapons can kill as effectively as armies that have. Then who needs nuclear weapons? Since nuclear weapons aren’t needed, some nations will be tempted to wage conventional warfare with its new levels of killing power, but without the disadvantages of nuclear war; namely, that nuclear war is unwinnable and uncontainable. If nations think that conventional warfare (now as deadly as nuclear) is winnable and containable, then it becomes more likely that conventional warfare will break out. When it does break out it will annihilate as many people as only a nuclear war could have consumed three decades ago.

The truth is, many conventional weapons are now deadlier than nuclear weapons. The F-4 Phantom Fighter aircraft delivers greater destruction conventionally than does the nuclear cruise missile. Conventional chemical warfare can readily obliterate cities the size of Hiroshima . So who needs nuclear weapons?

The Starlight scope, a heat-sensor the size of a small telescope, can tell the difference between male and female bodies at a range of 1000 metres by means of the difference in heat given off by the pelvic areas of a man and a woman. The Starlight scope can therefore detect any heat-producing item: tank, soldier, missile-launcher, artillery piece.

Speaking of artillery, we should understand that the killing capacity of conventional artillery is 400% greater now than in World War II. In World War II TNT was the explosive in artillery shells. Today it’s plastic. Plastic explosives are far more powerful than old-fashioned TNT. It used to be that an artillery shell killed people by means of metal fragments that spewed out and struck people within a few feet of it. Today a small artillery shell only four inches in diameter but containing plastic explosive will kill anyone within 200 feet of it – but not by metal fragments; by concussion, sheer blast, without any metal fragments at all.

In World War II aiming was very inexact. It took an artillery crew six minutes to zero in on a target. Today all aiming is done by computer. The computer zeroes in on a target in fifteen seconds. In WW II it was very difficult to hit a moving target. Today laser illumination will direct an artillery projectile onto a target 30 km. away moving at 80 kmh.

So much for artillery. What about armour? In WW II a tank could penetrate 5 inches of steel plate at a range of one mile. Today a tank can penetrate 10 inches of steel plate at a range of three miles.

But of course tanks don’t merely fire at targets. Tanks are also targets to be fired at. Anti-tank guns can penetrate the most-heavily armoured tank. The truth is, however, the tank doesn’t have to be penetrated at all. One kind of anti-tank projectile doesn’t penetrate the tank; instead, when the projectile strikes the tank it spreads a “blob” of plastic explosive no bigger than a dinner plate on the tank’s surface. The dinner plate of plastic explodes so powerfully that the thick armour of the tank is dented, only dented. Still, the explosion outside the tank is so thunderous that chunks of metal are blasted off inside the tank and the crew dies instantly.

What about air power? One helicopter ( America ’s C-130H), discharging all its conventional weapons at once, can reduce all the buildings in a city block to rubble in less than one minute. So who needs nuclear weapons?

The Fuel Air Munition bomb carries an explosive liquid that is released in a dense cloud over a heavily populated city. When the cloud is properly formed a fuse in the same bomb ignites the cloud. The ensuing destruction is greater than that of many nuclear warheads. So who needs nuclear weapons?

And then there are chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are exceedingly destructive. They happen to kill exceedingly slowly. Plainly the worst feature of chemical weapons will be their psychological devastation.

While we are speaking of psychology we must be sure to understand that in any war psychiatric casualties outnumber deaths 3-1. This 3-1 ratio has remained constant since the American Civil War in the 1860s when it was found that a soldier was three times as likely to become deranged as he was to be killed. The same ratio obtained in both World Wars. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon , once again psychiatric casualties prevailed at a ratio of 3-1. (When a war ceases all sides have myriads of veterans who are psychiatrically ruined for life.)

This ratio will change when war next breaks out. It is expected, for several reasons, that the ratio of psychiatric casualties to deaths will change from 3-1 to as high as 100-1. In other words, any major conflict today will see unprecedented carnage and unprecedented craziness.

 

V: — What I have brought forward today: where does it all leave us? It should leave us hearing with unstopped ears our Lord Jesus Christ who cried, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” If our ears are really unstopped we shall note that Jesus speaks of peacemakers, not peace-wishers or peace-hopers or peace-preferrers. War, we know, “breaks out.” But peace never “breaks out.” Peace has to be made.   Jesus insists that peace, unlike war, has to be made. Then we must never begrudge money and effort given over to peacemaking. We must never begrudge money spent on international travels and visits and exchanges. For as long as we are meeting one another we recognise a common humanness in each other. As long as we are meeting each other we de-mystify our neighbour as ogre or monster or less-than-human.

Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” “Son of” is a Hebrew expression that means “reflecting the nature of.” To be a son of God is to reflect the nature of God. Therefore it must be God’s nature to make peace. And so it is. Then we have to examine how God makes peace with us, his rebellious creatures, so that we might learn to make peace among our neighbours. How does God make peace?

[1] We are told in scripture that God has made peace with a wayward world “through the blood of the cross.” In other words, God makes peace with a wayward world through a sacrifice that he makes at enormous cost to himself.   If God can make peace only through his self-offering and self-renunciation, we can be peacemakers only in the same way ourselves.

I stress this because we tend to venerate the sacrifices made for war but belittle the sacrifices made for peace. I am not denigrating in any way the sacrifices Canadians and others made in war. Still, I do want us to understand that sacrifices made for peace are to be honoured as much. Peacemaking entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.

Then we must never scorn the service peacemakers render and the sacrifice they make. Fifty years ago we applauded the person who made costly sacrifice, especially the supreme sacrifice, in time of war. Then we must do as much for those who strive to make peace. If a soldier crouched in freezing mud in a foxhole for hours on end we thanked him. I know people who, for the sake of peace and the demonstrations essential to peace, have done as much and suffered as much – yet they are rarely thanked. Surely they are entitled to something besides scorn and ridicule. They merit the same recognition as the bravest war hero.

The “Sojourners” organization in the USA is a group of Christians dedicated to pursuing peace and justice. Several years ago, during the “cold war” between the USA and the USSR , the Sojourners community learned of a railway train that was transporting nuclear warheads across the country to a military site. One of the “Sojourners,” protesting the traffic in nuclear weapons, lay down on the railway tracks. The train ran over him, severing both legs. He survived only because a nurse happened to be nearby and she prevented him from bleeding to death. The press ridiculed the man as silly. Had he thought the train was going to stop? (In truth, he had thought it would.) And now he was legless for the rest of his life? “He gave up his legs for nothing, stupid man,” public opinion opined.

No Christian who clings to the cross can say this.   Bystanders on Good Friday would have said that our Lord gave up his life for nothing. He announced himself, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” Then plainly he didn’t have to go to the cross. The two criminals on either side of him – their lives were taken; they had no choice in the matter. Jesus laid down his life. Uselessly? God made his peace with the world right there. You and I must never be found saying “pointless” dismissively when we hear or read of what someone, somewhere, is doing to make peace. Remember, peace has to be made; peace doesn’t break out.

[2] While we are pondering how God makes peace we must understand that God never short-circuits justice. The prophet Jeremiah insists that a false peace (soon to break down) occurs when “wounds are healed lightly;” that is, when injustices aren’t redressed. To want peace without justice is to want magic – and everywhere in scripture God’s face is set flint-hard against magic. Peace without justice is impossible. When Jeremiah denounces those who shout “Peace, Peace” where there is no peace, no shalom, Jeremiah means we mustn’t cry for peace where we won’t do anything for justice.

In all of this I want to return to the cross. Plainly God doesn’t make peace by “puppeteering” people and situations and events. God makes peace between himself and the world by that sacrifice whose price he himself pays gladly. In his self-giving, justice is served; legitimate grievance is addressed; violations are admitted to be violations; and there is no false peace. Genuine peace between God and his creation is made as God himself enters the fray and sacrifices himself for the sake of peace.

The peace that Christ summons us to make; our peacemaking (genuine peace that doesn’t attempt a false peace through healing wounds lightly) entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.

 

The unknown writer of Hebrews urges us, “Strive for peace with all men….” Paul pleads, “If possible, as far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.” Jesus insists that it is the makers of genuine peace who are going to be recognised on the Day of Judgement as having mirrored in especial manner the nature of God himself.

 

                                                                                             Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                               

November 2004

 

Matthew 5: 13

I:– Toronto used to be known as “Toronto the good”. In those days the buildings which towered over the city were all churches. St. James Cathedral, Anglican; St. Michael’s Cathedral, Roman Catholic; Metropolitan Church, Methodist. Huge structures, they rose up above everything else in the city and dominated it. Not only did church buildings dominate the city, so did church leaders. No city politician dared defy church leaders. No public servant or Board of Education official would say or do anything that simply flew in the face of the church’s convictions. Why, back in the days of Toronto the good even a clergyman was president of the University of Toronto.

Tell me: what buildings dominate Toronto’s skyline now? What buildings tower over the city now? BANKS! They are all banks! Toronto Dominion was the first superstructure, followed by Bank of Montreal, Commerce, Royal, Nova Scotia. Last year, Canada Trust. Clearly, it’s the pursuit of money which characterizes the city. Last year, in the recession, the auto manufacturers had their worst year in ten. But the banks made a profit, and the trust companies cleaned up! Compared to the banks the cathedral churches like tinker-toys, the playthings of children.

There is no doubt about it. The Christian church has lost the kind of power it used to have in our society. Can you imagine a clergyman occupying the president’s office at the University of Toronto today? A clergyman couldn’t be the caretaker!

The fact is, we are not going to bring back the days of Toronto the Good any more than we are going to bring back the British Empire. The Christian church is not going to have the kind of power it once had. Let’s admit this right now.

But this is no reason for weeping! Think of the situation in first century Rome. The city of Rome held one million people. There were only five house churches in it. 5×15 (approx) = 75. Seventy five Christians in a city of one million. Yet the Christians never looked at themselves as mere trace elements. The two New Testament books which have to do with the church in Rome are Mark’s gospel and Paul’s letter to the Romans. In neither book is there any suggestion of self-pity. There is no suggestion that those Christians felt themselves handcuffed or useless. They knew that were not socially ascendant. They could only be salt. They would have to be salt. We are going to have to be salt as well. What’s wrong with this? So confident is Paul in the Roman Christians’ saltiness he regards 75 parts per million as a strong concentration!) that he plans to visit them only briefly before moving on into Spain where he is really needed.

II: — Let’s be honest. Regardless of how the apostle might feel, we are not keen on being salt. We, the church, would much rather have the kind of power we used to have. After all, we suburbanite types are accustomed to power. We are achievers. We are goal-attainers. We are successful.

We achievers have obviously mastered techniques which ensure results. We have mastered the technique of passing exams, the technique of shaping metal or wood, the technique of rising steadily on the corporate ladder . We have always predicted what it takes to reach a goal. Then we have programmed ourselves to reach the goal. We’ve been able to engineer the result.

Now, as individual Christians and as a church, we find we have no clout. Our society doesn’t listen to our Christian convictions. Public officials don’t have to take seriously our advocacy of Christian truth. We’ve become a minority, a minority without clout.

There’s only one thing we can do. We have to become salt! There is no reason for discouragement. Remember, the Christians in Rome nowhere complained that they lacked clout. Instead, they had every confidence that Christian salt would penetrate and permeate as salt invariably does.

As we learn what it is to have salt instead of clout we must understand something crucial: salt becomes effective precisely when it seems to have come to nothing. Salt becomes effective precisely when it seems to have disappeared.

The effect of salt is twofold, we all know. Salt preserves food from spoiling, and salt brings out its richest flavour. We Christians are to be salt in both senses in our society. What we add is meant to inhibit social decomposition and to bring out, under God, human richness. But salt does this only as salt gets out of the saltshaker and into the stew. Paradoxically, once the salt is in the stew it has disappeared as salt, it would seem. But precisely when the salt has been swallowed up it becomes effective.

Yet to say that we Christians lack power is not to say we lack effectiveness. We do lack the kind of power yesterday’s church had in Canada. But we don’t lack effectiveness. We may be only a little pinch of salt; and we may feel we’ve been swallowed up. Certainly we can’t program results or engineer success. But this is only to say that real effectiveness can now begin.

III:– Once we have decided we can only be salt and therefore we are jolly well going to be salt, many things fall into place. We are now free — gloriously free from concern with results and success — gloriously free to stand by our Christian conviction. Free to do the truth (as John says) and keep on doing it. That capitulation you have been rationalizing for the past six weeks; a capitulation which would sabotage so much of your integrity, even leave you not knowing who you are– RESIST IT! That sacrifice you were going to make just because it is the right thing to do, but were hesitating over because it might not result in something big and splashy — make it anyway! The help you have been giving someone, help which is starting to look pointless — go on with it! The smallest amount of salt has some effect. Don’t listen to those who say, “It’s only a drop in the bucket, so why bother?” It’s not a drop in the bucket at all! It’s salt in the stew! There is a world of difference! A drop in the bucket is a quantitative change of negligible significance; salt in the stew is a qualitative change of incalculable significance.

My father taught Sunday School for dozens of years. I remember him shaking his head, one day, about Gordon Rumford, a fellow a bit older than I who misbehaved defiantly and wrote off my dad as an antiquated jerk and who eventually cavorted with a motorcycle crowd, most of which became guests of honour in one of Her Majesty’s homes. “If anything comes of that fellow it will be a miracle”, was my father’s comment time and time again. A year or two ago I was walking through a hotel lobby in Toronto when I bumped into Gordon Rumford. He told me he preached frequently at Erindale Bible Chapel on Dundas St, Mississauga. As soon as we “bumped” he said, “It was your father. All the time I was running with the crowd that eventually went to prison I kept thinking of your father’s kindness and patience. He was so kind and patient with me even when I laughed at him. What kept me out of jail was thinking to myself, ‘What would Jack Shepherd think if he could see me now?'” Salt. I asked Gordon to write my widowed mother and let her know about this. He did. More salt: his letter delighted her for weeks.

Recently I was exposed to a university professor from the U.S.A. whose professional standing is sound. He has taught well, researched thoroughly, published papers and books, and, of course, has tenure. In other words, he has “it” made. He is also a Christian of Mennonite persuasion. Mennonites, everyone knows, are especially concerned with peace. This fellow has resigned his professorship and has moved himself, with his family, to Managua, Nicaragua. In Managua he will join other Mennonites in deliberate, conscientious efforts at waging peace. Is he a nincompoop in view of what his own government has done for decades in El Salvador and Central America? He knows what bridges he has burnt behind him. He knows that his group of Mennonites can’t program any results or engineer any success. Nonetheless, the pressure of his Lord upon him constrains him to be salt; just a small pinch in a very big stew, yet a pinch whose effectiveness begins only when it seems to have come to nothing.

If today you know what stand you have to take or what step you have to take, THEN TAKE IT! When you are doing what you are convinced is right and other people are snickering at your supposed naiveness or your supposed simplemindedness IGNORE THEM BEFORE YOU DOUBT YOURSELF. We aren’t in the business of engineering results. We’re in the business of a resilient, confident faithfulness whose effectiveness we can safely leave in God’s hands.

The lottery setup stuns me. Lotteries have been outlawed again and again and again throughout the western world. (For three hundred years in France and Great Britain.) Outlawed for one reason: they have produced nothing but misery; social and moral and human wreckage. They have proven themselves, over several centuries, to be humanly ruinous. Lotteries deliberately foster an out-of-control appetite. Historically, lotteries have only degraded people. Nevertheless, when the Ontario government implemented the 6/49 set-up, the government cleared 90 million dollars in the last two weeks alone of the leadup to the first draw. $90 million in two weeks! Obviously the lottery is going to be around for a while. The goose which lays the golden egg isn’t about to be slain. Churches don’t dominate Toronto’s skyline anymore, just as churches don’t dominate the public’s mindset. Banks do. The pursuit of money does. No church group is able to pressure a politician. We can only be salt.

Our salty contribution to the stewpot is just this: by what we live for and what we can live without you and I will demonstrate that the pursuit of wealth ends in anxiety and unhappiness; we shall demonstrate that the pursuit of sensuality leaves people empty and hollow; that the pursuit of security only intensifies insecurity.

Nobody is going to listen to us! Nobody is going to notice us, it would seem. Yet precisely at this point an effectiveness will begin in the social stewpot which we may not live to see but which God has guaranteed.

If you doubt this then you should think about the Christian church in Russia and China and totalitarian countries generally. These countries have endeavoured to eradicate the Christian faith by any and all means, however vicious or cruel. The expression of church life changed dramatically. Christians in those countries had no choice but to become salt. What results could a church in Russia engineer when employers and schools and government and secret police were bent on eradicating any suggestion of faith? A church in this situation couldn’t engineer anything. And if you had had to state, 30 years ago or 60 years ago, which side in the struggle was more likely to emerge the winner, you would have picked the non-Christian side, in view of the enforcement it could wield. Yet right now there are more self-confessed Christians in the Soviet Union than there are members of the Communist party! Salt was quietly effective for decades when it appeared to have been swallowed up and to have come to nothing. People who have no choice at being successful still have every chance to be faithful. We are never an insignificant drop in the bucket! We are salt in the stew!

IV: — Before I stop this morning I must insist that saltiness matters. It matters so much that Jesus insists that to lose our saltiness is to render ourselves a kingdom-reject. It is important that we be salt whenever, wherever, however we can. We must never abandon our own saltiness because we don’t see around us leaders who support us. Instead, we must be salt, for then the appropriate leaders will appear in God’s own time.

We often hear it said that any society gets the kind of leaders it deserves, since the society generates its own leaders. “If this is the case”, someone says, “then our situation really is hopeless. If leaders, so-called, simply reflect the society which produces them, then we are never going to have leaders who are any better than the society which coughed them up. What we call `leaders’ are really nothing more than camp followers!” I certainly understand the questioner’s despair. I will make no comment on the work of Mr. John Ziegler, currently president of the National Hockey League. For a long time, however, I stood amazed at the decisions of his predecessor, Mr. Clarence Campbell. The NHL team owners seemed to own him as well. He appeared to be their flunky. He did exactly what they wanted. He never seemed to do the right thing, the good thing, what was best for the wider society. (After all, NHL hockey is played in a societal context.) He never seemed to grasp the fact that the NHL player is the most adulated model for countless Canadian youngsters. And he seemed to provide pathetically little support for NHL referees who were abused by players and coaches. One day the late Stafford Symthe said proudly, “We owners wanted a league president who was intelligent, socially prominent, educated — and who would do exactly what we told him to do. And this is what we have!”

It would appear that society as a whole is no different. It would appear that our leaders do exactly what their public tells them to do. Which is to say, they aren’t leaders at all. They are nervous nellies who quake in anticipation of the Gallup poll. Then there is no way of changing anything.

But there is! There really is! You see, as soon as salt, just a little salt, is added to the stewpot the salt begins to penetrate and permeate. To be sure, the stew is changed only slightly, even unnoticeably. Nevertheless, in truth there is a new agent, a new factor at work in this situation. And because there is a new agent at work the slightest change is yet a profound change. Which is to say, the social stew is going to give rise to profoundly new leadership. Barbara Tuchman, a prominent U.S. historian, maintains that the prevailing element in American life today is false dealing. Few would care to differ with her. What would it mean, ultimately, if a few grains of salt resolved to deal differently?

Of course we often feel we are a lone voice, a lone witness. Yet insofar as we are salt the one grain which we are encourages another grain here to come forth and another grain there. It takes several grains to make a pinch. But it takes only one pinch to be effective.

Centuries ago the prophet Elijah complained that he was the only salt-grain left in Israel. “I alone have not bowed the knee to Baal”, he lamented. “Don’t be so presumptuous”, relied God, “and stop pitying yourself. There are 7000 in Israel who haven’t bowed the knee to Baal”. It takes only one person doing what (s)he knows is right to encourage and call forth so many others. Many grains make one pinch. And one pinch is effective beyond our imaging.

When Jesus tells us, his disciples, that we are the salt of the earth he means exactly what he says. How effective he knows we can be is measured by his caution that our saltiness, yours and mine, we must ever retain, lest we cast away.

                                                                       Victor A. Shepherd
June 23, 1991

Matthew 5:13

I:– At one time Toronto was known as “ Toronto the good”. In those days (roughly from the 1880s until 1950) the buildings that towered over the city were churches. St. James Cathedral, Anglican; St. Michael’s Cathedral, Roman Catholic; Metropolitan Church , Methodist. Huge structures all, they rose up above everything else in the city and dominated it.  Not only did church buildings dominate the city, so did church leaders. No city politician dared defy church leaders. No public servant or board of education official would say or do anything that simply flew in the face of the church’s convictions.  Back in the days of “ Toronto the good” a clergyman (Rev. Maurice Cody) was even president of the University of Toronto, Canada’s most prestigious post-secondary educational institution.

What buildings dominate Toronto ‘s skyline now? What buildings tower over the city now? Banks.  They are all banks. Toronto Dominion was the first superstructure, followed by the Bank of Montreal,  the Commerce, Royal, Nova Scotia , and Canada Trust (now blended with TD).   Clearly, it’s the pursuit of money and the handling of money and the magnification of money that characterises the city now.   Everyone knows that even when the economy declines, the banks continue to make unprecedented profits.ined in the last few years.   Compared to the bank buildings the cathedral churches look like tinker-toys, the playthings of children.  And compared to the pursuit of money and the handling of money and the magnification of money (what the banks are about), what the churches are about looks like – does anyone know what the churches are about? Does the city care?

Unquestionably the church has lost the kind of power it used to have in our society. Can you imagine a clergyman occupying the president’s office at the University of Toronto today? Long before a clergyman was appointed, one hundred and one lobby groups would pressure the university administration arguing that (i) clergymen aren’t intelligent enough to preside over a university, (ii) clergymen aren’t even-handed, fair, prone as they are to prejudice, (iii) clergymen don’t uphold academic excellence (iv) clergymen, Christians by definition, don’t appreciate the pluralism that is said to characterise our society.

The fact is, we aren’t going to bring back the days of Toronto the Good any more than we are going to bring back the British Empire . The church isn’t going to have the kind of power it once had.  Let’s admit this right now.

But this is no reason for self-pity.  Think of the situation in first century Rome . The city of Rome held one million people. There were only five house churches in it.  A home, in that era, would have held no more than fifteen people.  Five times fifteen is seventy-five.  Seventy-five Christians in a city of one million. Yet the Christians never looked upon themselves as mere trace elements.  The two New Testament books which have to do with the church in Rome are Mark’s gospel and Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In neither book is there any suggestion of self-pity.  There is no suggestion that those Christians felt themselves handcuffed or useless. To be sure, they knew they weren’t socially ascendant.  They could only be salt. We are going to have to be salt as well.  What’s wrong with this?   So confident is Paul in the Roman Christians’ saltiness (he regards 75 parts per million as a strong concentration) that he never doubts the 75 parts per million will be effective, noticeably effective.   So very effective will it be that the apostle doesn’t feel he’s really needed in Rome . Therefore he plans to visit the Roman Christians only briefly before moving on to Spain where he is needed, since the gospel hasn’t been declared there yet.

 

II: — Regardless of how the apostle might have felt, we aren’t keen on being salt. We, the church, would much rather have the kind of power we used to have.  After all, we middle-class types are accustomed to power.  We are achievers. We are goal-attainers. We are successful.

We achievers have obviously mastered techniques that ensure results. We have mastered the technique of passing exams, the technique of shaping metal or wood, the technique of rising steadily on the corporate ladder.         We’ve always been able to predict what it takes to reach a goal; then we’ve always been able to program ourselves to reach that goal. We’ve been able to engineer the result. Now, as individual Christians and as a church, we find we have no clout.  Our society doesn’t listen to our Christian convictions.  We’ve become a minority, a minority without clout.

Things are so bad we’ve been reduced to salt.  But surely this is no reason for discouragement. Remember, the Christians in Rome nowhere complained that they lacked clout.  Instead, they had every confidence that Christian salt would penetrate and permeate as salt invariably does.

As we learn what it is to have salt instead of clout we must understand something crucial: salt becomes effective precisely when it seems to have come to nothing. Salt becomes effective precisely when it seems to have disappeared.

The effect of salt is twofold, we know.  Salt preserves food from spoiling, and salt brings out its richest flavour. Christians are to be salt in both senses in our society. What we add is meant to inhibit social decay and to bring out, under God, that human richness which is nothing less than his covenant-purpose for us.  But salt does this only as salt gets out of the saltshaker and into the stew. Paradoxically, once the salt is in the stew it has disappeared as salt, it would seem.  But precisely when the salt has been swallowed up it becomes effective.

To say that we Christians lack power is not to say we lack effectiveness. We do lack the kind of power yesterday’s church had in Canada . We may be only a pinch of salt now, and we may feel we’ve been swallowed up.  Certainly we can’t program results or engineer success.  But this is only to say that a profounder effectiveness can begin.

 

III:– Once we have decided we can only be salt and therefore we are going to be salt, many things fall into place. We are now free: gloriously free from concern with results and success, gloriously free to stand by our Christian conviction.  Free to do the truth (as John says) and keep on doing it.  That capitulation you have been rationalizing for the past six weeks; a capitulation which would sabotage so much of your integrity, even leave you not knowing who you are – resist it.  That sacrifice you were going to make just because it is the right thing to do, but were hesitating over because it might not result in something big and splashy — make it anyway.  The help you have been giving someone, help which is starting to look pointless — go on with it. The smallest amount of salt has measureless effect.  Don’t listen to those who say, “It’s only a drop in the bucket, so why bother?” It’s not a drop in the bucket at all. It’s salt in the stew. There’s a world of difference. A drop in the bucket is a quantitative change of negligible significance; salt in the stew is a qualitative change of incalculable significance.  My father taught Sunday School for dozens of years.  I remember him shaking his head, one day, about Gordon Rumford, a fellow a bit older than I who misbehaved defiantly and regarded my dad as a “fuddy-duddy.” Rumford eventually cavorted with a motorcycle crowd, most of which became guests in one or another of Her Majesty’s homes.  “If anything comes of that fellow it will be a miracle”, my father commented time and again as he shook his head.  A few years ago I was walking through a hotel lobby in Toronto when I bumped into Gordon Rumford. He told me at that time that he preached frequently at Erindale Bible Chapel on Dundas St. , Mississauga . (He now preaches and teaches throughout Ontario and occasionally in Scotland as well.) As soon as we “bumped” he said, “It was your father.  All the time I was running with the crowd that eventually went to prison I kept thinking of your father’s kindness and patience.   He was so kind and patient with me even when I laughed at him.  One day I was only minutes from ‘sticking up’ a corner store with my friends when I began to say to myself, ‘How am I going to face Jack Shepherd?’”   Salt. I asked Gordon to write my widowed mother and let her know about this.  He did. More salt: his letter delighted her for weeks.

If today you know what stand you have to take or what step you have to take, THEN TAKE IT. When you are doing what you are convinced is right and other people are snickering at your supposed naiveness or your supposed simplemindedness IGNORE THEM BEFORE YOU DOUBT YOURSELF.  We aren’t in the business of engineering results.         We’re in the business of a resilient, confident faithfulness whose effectiveness we can safely leave in God’s hands.

The lottery set-up stuns me.  Lotteries have been outlawed again and again and again throughout the western world. (Outlawed on and off for three hundred years in France and Great Britain .) Outlawed for one reason: they have produced misery; social and moral and human wreckage.  They have proven themselves, over several centuries, to be humanly ruinous. Historically, lotteries have only degraded people.  The government of Ontario knew this would be the human outcome (as distinct from the financial outcome for government coffers.)  The first lottery was established in Windsor . Americans would come to Canada and spend. Ontario would import money and export colossal social problems (human distress) back to the USA . The second lottery was set up in Niagara Falls , another city bordering the USA . Plainly the arrangement was to be identical: import money, export social problems.  The third lottery was set up on the Rama First Nation Reserve, Orillia . Once again Ontario would garner the monies; this time, however, social problems were exported to the federal government of Canada , since First Nation Affairs is a portfolio of the federal government.  Knowing all this (indeed, having contrived all this) the Ontario government implemented the 6/49 set-up over a decade ago, and in the last two weeks leading up to the first draw the government cleared 90 million dollars.  Ninety million dollars in two weeks.  Obviously the goose which lays the golden egg isn’t about to be slain. Churches don’t dominate Toronto ‘s skyline anymore, just as churches don’t dominate the public’s mindset. Banks do. The pursuit of money does. We can only be salt.

Our salty contribution to the stewpot takes many forms, one of which is just this: by what we live for and what we can live without you and I will demonstrate that the pursuit of wealth ends in anxiety and unhappiness; we shall demonstrate that the pursuit of sensuality leaves people empty and hollow; that the pursuit of security only intensifies insecurity.

Nobody is going to listen to us.  Nobody is going to notice us, it would seem. Yet precisely at this point an effectiveness will begin in the social stewpot which we may not live to see but which God has guaranteed.

If we doubt this then we should think about the church in the USSR a few years ago and in China today and in totalitarian countries generally.  Thanks to their totalitarian regimes these countries endeavoured to eradicate the Christian faith by any and all means, however brutal.  The expression of church life necessarily changed dramatically.  Christians in those countries had no choice but to become salt.  What results could a church in the USSR engineer when employers and schools and government and secret police were bent on eradicating any suggestion of faith?   A church in this situation couldn’t engineer anything.  And if we had had to state, 30 years ago or 60 years ago, which side in the struggle was more likely to emerge the winner, we would have picked the non-Christian side, in view of the big stick it wielded.  Yet right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union there were more self-confessed Christians in the nation than there had ever been members of the Communist party.  Salt was quietly effective for decades when it appeared to have been swallowed up and to have come to nothing.  People who have no chance at being successful still have every opportunity to be faithful. We are never an insignificant drop in the bucket.  We are salt in the stew.

 

IV: — Saltiness matters. It matters so much that Jesus insists that to lose our saltiness is to render ourselves kingdom-rejects. It is important that we be salt whenever, wherever, however we can.  We must never abandon our own saltiness because we don’t see around us leaders who support us. Instead, we must be salt, for then the appropriate leaders will appear in God’s own time.

We often hear it said that any society gets the kind of leaders it deserves, since the society generates its own leaders.   “If this is the case”, someone says, “then our situation really is hopeless. If leaders, so-called, simply reflect the society which produces them, then we are never going to have leaders who are any better than the society which ‘coughed them up’. What we call ‘leaders’ are really nothing more than camp followers.”  I certainly understand the questioner’s despair.

I shall make no comment on the work of the current president of the National Hockey League. For a long time, however, I stood amazed at the decisions of his predecessor several times removed, Mr. Clarence Campbell.  The NHL team owners seemed to own him as well.  He appeared to be their ‘flunkie’.  He never seemed (to me) to do the right thing, the good thing, what was best for the wider society.  (After all, NHL hockey is a social event; the game is played in a societal context.)  Campbell never seemed to grasp the fact that the NHL player is the most adulated model, the most telling image, amounting to an icon, for countless Canadian youngsters. And he seemed to provide pathetically little support for NHL referees who were abused by players and coaches. I was always frustrated at the seeming  incomprehension and inertia of a man who had had a distinguished legal career as a prosecutor at the War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg . One day the late Stafford Symthe said proudly, “We owners wanted a league president who was intelligent, socially prominent, educated, and who would do exactly what we told him to do. This is what we have.”

It would appear that our political leaders often aren’t leaders at all. They are nervous nellies who quake in anticipation of the Gallup poll. Think of how our elected political representatives have repeatedly refused to honour the task to which they were elected. I speak now of their assigning controversial social issues to the courts instead of passing legislation concerning these issues as they have been elected to do. When something like the human status of the about-to-be-born or manifold matters pertaining to same gender “marriage”, it’s the responsibility of our elected legislators to legislate on the issue.  In nothing less than a cowardly cop-out, however, they abdicate and say, “Let the courts decide.” The courts were never meant to do this. The mandate of the courts is to assess violations of the law. The mandate of the courts is never to enact law. Parliament governs the Canadian people, not the courts. Furthermore, the legislators whom we elect are ultimately accountable to the electorate.  But the judges who preside in the courts haven’t been elected by anyone and aren’t accountable to the people. If legislators refuse to legislate then they should be removed from office and not paid. Right now, however, we are seeing one abdication after another.

Then have I implied that the situation is hopeless? that nothing can be done to change this? I trust I’ve implied no such thing.  I have found over and over in many different contexts that it takes surprisingly little salt to change more than we commonly think.  I have found over and over that many things that we assume are carved in stone are carved in no more than soap.  A surprisingly small injection of salt in the stewpot would give rise to more change than we allow ourselves to think.

Of course we often feel we are a lone voice, a lone witness.  Yet insofar as we are salt the one grain which we are encourages another grain to come forth here and another grain there.  It takes several grains to make a pinch.  But it takes only one pinch to be effective.

Centuries ago the prophet Elijah complained that he was the only salt-grain left in Israel . “I alone have not bowed the knee to Baal”, he lamented. He wasn’t boasting of his faithfulness; he was bemoaning his isolation.         “Don’t be so presumptuous”, replied God, “and stop pitying yourself. There are 7000 in Israel who haven’t bowed the knee to Baal”.  It takes only one person doing what (s)he knows is right to encourage and call forth so many others.         Many grains make one pinch. And one pinch is effective beyond our imaging.

When Jesus tells us, his disciples, that we are the salt of the earth he means exactly what he says.   How effective he knows we can be is measured by his caution that our saltiness, yours and mine, we must ever retain, lest we be cast away.

                                    

Victor Shepherd

                                                                                            September 2006

 

Matthew 5:28

2^nd Samuel 11:2-5; 12:1-7         Ephesians 5:3-5        John 8:2-12

 

I: — The child loves her pet rabbit. In fact she never speaks of it as a rabbit.  She insists it’s a bunny, not a rabbit.         (There’s a big difference, you know, between a bunny and a rabbit.) Along comes a thoughtless adult who prides himself on his superiority and sophistication. He looks at the bunny and says, “Where did you get that thing?         It’s only a rodent, you know, nothing more than a rodent.”   The child is heartbroken, angry and frustrated at once.         Even as she knows she’ll never be able to convince this oafish adult that her bunny isn’t “nothing more than a rodent”, deep down in her heart she knows that her beloved bunny can never be reduced to his front teeth. She knows that if she ever regarded her bunny as nothing more than his front teeth, her dearest treasure would be worthless.

Love recognizes worth.  Love cherishes worth. Love magnifies worth. Love never says “nothing more than”. Love never cheapens worth until something precious is a throwaway item to be discarded without a second thought.

Lust, however, is just the opposite.  Lust degrades and keeps on degrading until something is disposable.

 

II: — Before we proceed with the distinction between love and lust we have to say something about human libido. We have to acknowledge that when God creates item after item, each time pronouncing it “good”; when God creates man and woman and then pronounces them “very good”, the “very good” includes human libido.   When the book of Proverbs speaks approvingly, glowingly, of the mystery of “the way of a man with a maid”, Proverbs is underscoring the declaration in Genesis: human libido is God-ordained and therefore good.

At the same time, we must understand that human libido serves human intimacy in the first place.         It’s different with the animals: in the animal world libido serves reproduction, and reproduction only.  In the human world libido serves reproduction, obviously, but not reproduction only and not reproduction primarily.  In the human sphere libido serves the fusing of a man and a woman. The nature of this fusion is a union that aims at, intends, lifelong fidelity in a relationship so very intimate, intertwined, interpenetrating that it can be terminated only by death. Libido serves this end. Libido serving any other end is what we call lust.

Love exalts humans; lust diminishes humans.  On the one hand lust reduces the person who is lusted after to a tool, a toy, a play thing that we can exploit and exploit and then discard. On the other hand lust also reduces the person who lusts to one appetite, one craving.  Love is always concerned to see the whole person thrive.  Lust reduces the whole person lusted after to one aspect of her even as lust reduces the person lusting to one itch.

Not so long ago an Argonaut football player was interviewed following a Toronto victory. He was exhilarated with the victory and his part in it.  He concluded his interview as he said to the reporter “Now I want a woman.” But he didn’t want a woman. A woman, after all, is a person, a human being of intelligence and profundity and mystery; a human being made in the image of God whom we can’t violate without violating him and without violating ourselves.         The Argonaut player didn’t want this; he wanted his itch scratched.

 

II: — Really, it’s not as difficult to distinguish love and lust as some people think. In fact there are several telltale features that identify love unmistakably.

[a] In the first place love has inherent durability.  Love lasts beyond ten minutes not because love ought to last but because it’s love’s nature to last.  Love doesn’t flit, like a bee flitting from one flower to another, extracting whatever it can before alighting on the next flower for the next extraction. Love doesn’t alight and leave, alight and leave.         Love has inherent durability.

Lust, on the other hand, dies at dawn.  It may quicken the next night, to be sure, but just as surely it dies the following dawn. Jean Paul Sartre, French philosopher and novelist, used to speak of lust as a “mere twitch.” Love, however, doesn’t twitch; love lasts.

A major ingredient in love’s perdurability is romance. Romance is hard to find these days. There’s no time or place for romance when the casual relationship moves to the bedroom by the second date. Several years ago when the Shepherd family was camping in a provincial park on the shore of Lake Ontario I noticed that there were no young couples strolling up and down the beach hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm.  Romance had disappeared. Courting had disappeared. Enchantment, stardust, charm – all of it was gone.  Of course it’s gone. Romance and courting and enchantment are long gone when 18-year olds are seen emerging from the tent the morning after.

Tragically, if there’s no romance when we are 18, there will be none when we are 28 or 38 or 48.  Romance lends love resilience and rigour.

[b] A second feature of love, identifying it as love for those in love and for those who see others in love; a second feature is interwoven, intertwined involvement.  Rebecca West, a British novelist with much to say, maintains that love is a journey into another land.  Two people who have pledged themselves to each other and become fused in a relationship that aims at being terminated only by death; two such people know that their life together is a land that awaits them, a land to be explored and shared and enjoyed together.  Lust, however, isn’t the slightest bit interested in exploring a new land over the next several decades.  Lust laughs off any talk of a new land.  Lust has no concern past tonight, and even then no more than a concern with tonight’s tool or trinket or toy.

Everyone appears jarred when the 30-year olds who have been married only three years decide to end their marriage. Three years ago they assumed that the huge attraction they had for each other on one front in life, the sexual, was so huge that there was neither time nor inclination nor perceived need to explore other life-fronts.         Relatively quickly (within three years) they concluded that their lives overlapped virtually nowhere apart from the sexual.  Lacking large areas of overlap in their lives, they concluded (correctly) that they had little in common; too little, in fact, to sustain a union. Lacking significant areas of overlap in their lives, they quickly got to the point where they couldn’t see anything in each other, or what they saw they didn’t like. A new land to be entered upon and explored and enjoyed together?  “Mythic lunacy” they now sneer cynically.  Romance always entails adventure.  They had never considered adventure.  All they had ever wanted was libidinal relief, only to learn that this alone won’t sustain a union.

The opposite of interwoven, intertwined involvement isn’t uninvolvement. The opposite of such involvement is emptiness.  Those who fail to grasp that love entails profound involvement don’t find themselves “free” in any sense; they find themselves in a desert.

[c] A third telltale of love is loyalty.  Loyalty, like romance, is increasingly hard to find.  Are people less loyal than they used to be?   Plainly yes. The real tragedy, however, is that they are less able to be loyal.

There is a truth here we do well to note everywhere in life.  The student who abandons the discipline of study; or the student who never develops the discipline, the healthy, helpful routine of study soon finds herself unable to study. First she doesn’t, then she can’t. If the athlete decides to give up training for six months on the assumption that he can recover competition-level conditioning three days before the event, he finds that he can’t recover it in three days.

The worst consequence of disloyalty isn’t that we have been disloyal (serious as this is); the worst consequence is that we’ve diminished our ability to be loyal. This is much more serious. Unfaithfulness doesn’t mean that all our love has been withdrawn on one occasion.  Unfaithfulness does mean, however, that our capacity to love has eroded significantly. The next instance of unfaithfulness or disloyalty, anywhere in life, will erode it more and then more again (unless of course someone perceives what’s happening inside him and is frightened enough to do something about it).

I find contemporary Christians naïve right here. We ought to look back to another feature of mediaeval understanding, what our 13^th Century foreparents called “habit”.  They had in mind the Latin word “habitus”.         “Habitus” doesn’t mean what the English word “habit” means. The English word “habit” means “unthinking repetition.”  At best it means “unthinking repetition”.   At worst “habit” has to do with “habituation”: addiction.         The habituated person is the addicted person.  In mediaeval theology, however, “habit” (“habitus”) meant “cumulative character”. Temptation resisted in this moment is important to be sure, if only because sin has been averted in this moment. But temptation resisted in this moment is vital for another reason: temptation resisted now forms and forges character wherein the same temptation, encountered again, will be more readily identified and more easily resisted. Resisted again, it will then be even more readily identified and even more easily resisted. There is a cumulative gain here as character is deepened and strengthened and made ever more resilient. This is what our mediaeval foreparents meant by habit/habitus.

It all means this: the singular act of loyalty today is the first brick in the edifice of loyalty.  The singular act of loyalty, in other words, is never merely singular: it’s one more building block in that fortress which will soon be found repelling assailants and repelling them for life.

In other words, just as it’s tragically possible to erode one’s capacity for loyalty or truthfulness or withstanding frustration of any sort, it’s also gloriously possible to enlarge one’s capacity for loyalty or truthfulness or withstanding frustration of any sort.

Loyalty, truthfulness, the capacity to withstand disappointment and pain and hope-not-yet-fulfilled; these will ever be one of the marks of love.

 

III: — What is a Christian response to all of this? How are we to situate ourselves in the midst of a society that appears largely indifferent to the deadly sin of lust, and therein advertises itself as mindlessly superficial compared to our mediaeval foreparents who at least could recognize it for what it is?

[a] In the first place we are going to do what Christians should do in any case, in all times and places, concerning anything: in the words of the apostle Paul, we are going to speak the truth in love.

There are two deficits that mustn’t be found in us here. One deficit is speaking the truth but not speaking it in love.         Here the truth is used as a hammer whereby we can bludgeon those who don’t agree with us. Or the truth is used as a sword whereby we can defend ourselves when we feel ourselves under attack – the sword being the weapon of choice to those who are somewhat insecure in themselves and perhaps not quite convinced that the truth of the gospel is true.  To say that we should speak the truth in love is to say that we shouldn’t be shrill. We shouldn’t carp.

But if we shouldn’t carp, neither should we cower. In other words, the second deficit shouldn’t be found in us either; namely, failing to speak the truth. Of course we ought not to brutalize others with the truth; but neither do we apologize for the truth. And for this reason we shall not be cowed concerning the distinction the gospel makes between lust and love, why the former is deadly sin and why the latter is the fulfilment of all that God requires of us.

According to the gospel, marriage remains the context for sexual intimacy. I do not apologize for saying this. According to the swelling army of sociologists, pre-marital co-habitation does not increase one’s likelihood of remaining married; it decreases it. According to self-evident logic, there is no more “trial marriage” than there is “trial parachute jump”. Once the parachutist has jumped, it’s not a trial of any sort; it’s the real thing. Until the parachutist has jumped; as long as the parachutist remains in the airplane, he hasn’t jumped in any sense.  In the same way trial marriage is an oxymoron, an inherent self-contradiction. Until we have committed ourselves irrevocably in marriage, we aren’t “married” in any sense; once we have committed ourselves irrevocably, there’s no “trial” aspect to it; it’s the real thing.

I shall not fall silent on the fact that the single largest reason for infertility in women is pelvic inflammatory disease (disease whose incidence is sky-rocketing), and the single largest reason for pelvic inflammatory disease is promiscuity.  I don’t intend to beat anyone over the head with this, but I also don’t see why I should pretend anything else.

To be sure, we must speak the truth in love; and in order to speak the truth in love we have to be ready to speak the truth.

[b] What is a Christian response?  In the second place we should remember that everything we’ve talked about today is so very riddled with anxiety and guilt for so many people that we must hear again the gospel incident where some men bring to Jesus a woman they have found committing adultery, “in the very act”, they tell our Lord. They remind our Lord that the Law of Moses requires the death penalty, and then ask him, “Now what do you have to say?”         It’s a trap question. The men don’t really care about the law of God or about the woman who has violated it. They care only about their own venomous hearts and the hostility they cherish concerning Jesus. They want to trap him.

If Jesus says “Stone the woman”, the Roman police will arrest him since only Roman courts can impose the death sentence in Roman-occupied Palestine . If, on the other hand, Jesus says “Let her go”, these men will accuse him of blasphemy, since he has denied the law of God to be God’s law.  It’s a trap.

Jesus, as always, doesn’t reply to their question. Instead he bends over and writes with his finger on the ground.         With his finger.  Every Israelite would have known what he was doing.  God was said to have written the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets with his finger.  As Jesus writes on the ground with his finger, he is doing two things: he is reinforcing the commandment forbidding adultery, and he is claiming for himself that authority which belongs to God alone.  Then Jesus straightens up, looks at the men who are out to “get” both woman and him, and says, “If any one of you men thinks yourself to be without sin, you pick up a stone and throw it at her.”   The men slink away.

What’s happened here?  In writing with his finger on the ground and in thereby claiming to speak and act with the authority of God, Jesus has upheld the commandment forbidding adultery in the context of a woman who has committed adultery. Therefore she stands condemned. Nothing else can be pretended. She stands condemned by God, since only God can condemn.  Then Jesus announces, “I don’t condemn you.”   The condemnation the woman deserves has been rescinded, rescinded by the only one who can rescind God’s condemnation, the one who is God-with-us. Finally Jesus warns her, “Never, ever do it again.”

All of scripture either anticipates the cross or looks back to the cross. In the incident we are probing the cross is anticipated.  Jesus rescinds the woman’s condemnation knowing that he will shortly bear in himself the condemnation that all of us deserve.

Today’s sermon concludes the series on the mediaeval catena of The Seven Deadly Sins. After one and one-half of months of investigating sin we should depart the series with several points in mind:

-sin is lethal at any time and therefore deadly at all times;
-sin merits condemnation just because the claim and commandment of God cannot be relaxed;
-yet sin’s condemnation is borne by the crucified who sets us free to sin no more just because the pardon he, the Son of God, pronounces upon us is ratified by his Father in heaven.

In short, you and are I summoned henceforth to die to sin just because someone who loves us more than he loves himself has already died for it.

 

Victor Shepherd
March 2006

Matthew 5:38-42           Romans 12:19-21

 

Everyone has heard it. Everyone knows that Jesus said it. We’d like to think we take Jesus seriously. After all, if we Christians aren’t serious about Jesus, then who is? The more serious we are, however, the more we are haunted by our Lord’s word. Turning the other cheek is neither natural nor easy.

Frank Robinson was an outstanding baseball player with the Baltimore Orioles. When he retired as a player he became team manager. One day the opposing pitcher threw the ball at a Baltimore batter and knocked him down. The inning ended without incident. Now it was Baltimore ’s turn in the field. The Baltimore pitcher threw his first pitch over the plate for a strike. Good. If a pitcher’s first pitch to each batter isn’t a strike 70% of the time, his time can’t win. Therefore managers are pleased when a pitcher throws a first-pitch strike. But not Robinson on this occasion. Immediately Robinson charged out to the mound like a man possessed and berated his own pitcher in front of 40,000 hometown fans. “How many times have I told you?” he shouted at his pitcher. “When they knock down one of our men you are to knock down their first batter next inning with your very first pitch. Never mind throwing a strike. I want to see their batter in the dirt. We don’t let opponents get away with anything.”

Robinson speaks for the whole world: “Don’t let them get away with anything. Give them a taste of their own medicine.” This is where the world lives.

 

I: — Before we explore what Jesus meant and why Christians must obey him, we should be clear as to what turning the other cheek is not.

[a] To turn the other cheek is not to make a virtue of psychological deficiency. It is not to make a virtue of low self-esteem, of pathetic lack of self-confidence. We are all aware of people who have no self-confidence. They regard themselves as insignificant and useless. They look upon themselves as doormats, and to no one’s surprise they invite victimisation as doormats. Their psychological deficiency is pitiable. We mustn’t think that to turn the other cheek is to glorify “doormatism” and glorify as well the invitation to victimisation that goes with it. We must never confuse our Lord’s going to the cross with “doormatism.” “No one takes my life from me” he insisted; “I lay it down of my own accord.” Others may think he has “victim” written on his forehead. In fact he hasn’t: he lays down his own life. No one else takes it from him. They may think they take it from him, but he knows the difference.

[b] Again, to turn the other cheek is not to turn a blind eye to public justice. Christians must uphold justice. A society without justice quickly collapses into unruliness, and unruliness is eventually subdued by brute force without concern for law or fairness or human decency. Either we uphold justice or we foster the irruption of brute force, arbitrary and amoral in equal measure.

[c] Again, to turn the other cheek is not to overlook the ill-treatment currently visited on other people. Jesus certainly “turned the other cheek” on the cross. Yet whenever he came upon heartless people abusing defenceless folk; whenever he saw vulnerable people exploited, he acted forthrightly and formidably. Here’s the difference. Jesus never looks the other way, never turns his head, when he sees defenceless people abused; but he turns his cheek when he’s abused himself. He never turns a blind eye to the abuse of others; but he will turn a blind eye when he’s abused himself.

We must be sure to understand that to turn the other cheek isn’t to overlook abuse of others. Neither is it to submerge justice. Neither is it to glorify “doormatism.”

 

II: — Then what is it? Quite simply, it is to renounce retaliation. It’s just that: to renounce retaliation. Jesus says, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.” When a right-handed person punches someone else, the blow normally lands on the assaulted person’s left cheek. A backhand blow, however, lands on the right cheek. For an Israelite a backhand blow is more than an assault. It’s the rudest insult as well. In fact a backhand blow (unlike a closed fist punch) does very little physical damage. It’s little more than a slap. Yet because it’s backhanded it’s outrageously insulting. It does vastly more damage to our pride than a punch does to our body. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek…” says Jesus; “if anyone not only assaults you but insults you outrageously as well, don’t retaliate. My followers have renounced retaliation. Non-retaliation is one of the distinguishing marks of my followers.”

In the same paragraph Jesus insists, “Don’t resist one who is evil.” Immediately we protest: “But surely Christians are called to resist evil” – and indeed we are, even as our Lord resisted and rolled back evil whenever he came upon it. Still, the context of our Lord’s pronouncement is crucial. In the context of cheek-turning our Lord means this: “When someone does evil against you, don’t you launch yourself on a vendetta against him personally. When someone assaults you slightly but insults you greatly (insult is much more difficult to withstand than assault, isn’t it?) don’t fly back at her in a spasm of revenge. Don’t think it’s up to you to even your own score.”

“What about ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth’?” someone asks. “Eye for eye” is indeed a quotation from the Hebrew bible. We modern gentiles, however, fail to understand something crucial: “eye for eye” means only an eye for an eye, no more than an eye for an eye. Because human depravity is what it is, whenever our “eye” is taken (as it were) we want to retaliate by taking eye and arm and leg. In other words, “eye for eye” was a limiting device: the Israelite was to limit the severity of the retaliation to the severity of the offence. Jesus , Israel ’s greater Son, goes one step farther: “So far from limiting your retaliation,” he insists, “don’t retaliate at all. My followers have renounced it.”

Only a work of grace, only a colossal work of grace within us, can move you and me to renounce retaliation. Retaliation, after all; retaliation for us depraved creatures is sweet. Harold Ballard used to own the Maple Leaf Hockey Club. Carl Brewer used to play for the Maple Leaf Hockey Club. Brewer thought Ballard had exploited him in some manner, and therefore Brewer sued Ballard. The sum Brewer asked for wasn’t huge; it was only eight or ten thousand dollars. The courts decided against Brewer, however, and he came away with no money. Shortly thereafter, as Brewer sniffed and snooped around, he discovered that while Ballard owned the hockey club, he had never registered the name of the club with proper authorities. Whereupon Brewer registered the name and thereby came to own, and have exclusive rights to, the name of the club. Now a most unusual situation had developed: Ballard owned the hockey club, while Brewer owned the name of the club. Needless to say Ballard, publicly embarrassed, was desperate to own the “Toronto Maple Leafs” name. How desperate? How much did Ballard have to pay? Vastly more than ten thousand dollars. Brewer bided his time and then pounced: the retaliation was hugely greater than the offence (even as the courts insisted there had been no offence.) Revenge is sweet to us fallen creatures. It’s sweet enough when we’ve been wounded and can even the score. It’s sweeter still when we’ve been insulted and are “loading up” a retaliatory insult. It’s sweetest of all when our retaliation plunges someone else into public humiliation and pays us a fortune as well.

Still, the sweetness only disguises the poison, the deadliness. Jesus knew this. For this reason Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to limit retaliation; he tells them to renounce it. As long as we are limiting retaliation, even limiting it so as to reduce it to a minimum, we are still operating within the framework of retaliation. Jesus maintains that we are to move beyond all such frameworks altogether.

In Romans 12 Paul outlines the shape or pattern of the Christian life. He insists that we are never to avenge ourselves, since to avenge ourselves (or even try to) is simply to augment the world’s evil; it’s to be overcome by evil. Paul knows, as Jesus knew before him, that to continue the deadly game of retaliation is already to have been overcome with evil. Of course we can justify our retaliation as “teaching that fellow a lesson he needs to learn;” we can always tell ourselves “we’re doing that woman a favour she’ll thank us for one day.” Even as all such froth dribbles out of us the truth is we’ve been overcome with evil ourselves, and we don’t even know it. But we aren’t to be overcome with evil. We are to overcome evil with good. We must turn the other cheek.

 

III: — Then why don’t we? Because unconsciously we want to be Rambo. Rambo is the movie tough guy who may have to eat dirt now and then but who eventually sees his foes face down in the dirt. Anyone who steps over the line with Rambo he hammers into the ground. We all want to say to others (and to ourselves) “No one puts anything over on me. No one takes me for a fool. I may appear docile, but this cat has claws.” Our identity is tied up with all of this. Our identity is tied up with being the tough guy outwardly while inwardly our identity is so very fragile that we fear it will disappear if we don’t retaliate. If we don’t pass ourselves off as “tough” then our identity will crumble as our puffed up public image is rendered laughable. Therefore pretence and image and identity must be shored up. And if it all means that I, in my fragility, can survive only as someone else is slain, then it appears he will have to be slain. The truth is, fragile people fear that unless they retaliate, others won’t know who they are.

I see all of this in so very many marriages. Hubby comes home from work. He’s had a bad day. He’s not in good “space.” He walks into the house and trips over a tricycle. “Does this place always have to look like a scrap metal yard?” he explodes at his wife. “What do you do all day, anyway?” Now she’s hurt, and insulted. She feels she’s been both punched and backhanded. It would be a sign of weakness, she thinks, not to retaliate. It would only invite further victimisation, she thinks, not to retaliate. It would only advertise herself as an underling, she thinks, not to retaliate, and she’s too proud to appear an underling. And therefore she retaliates. “What do I do all day” she comes back, “What do you think I do all day? I simply stand around all day doing nothing since there’s nothing to do with three children underfoot. I merely wait for little Lord Fauntleroy to come home. Who do you think prepares your supper five times per week?” Now she’s sarcastic. In her pain she goes one step farther. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I can’t hold a candle to your secretary, Miss Twitchy-Bottom or whatever her name is.” Now she’s gone on the attack, just to make sure her husband is pushed back far enough to allow her to survive.

At this moment her husband is wounded, insulted, and crushed. But he can’t appear crushed; no male can. As for being insulted, no red-blooded male is going to put up with an insult like this. Whereupon he comes back with his own retaliatory “zinger.” Up and up it escalates. As it escalates its potential for irreversible deadliness increases. The entire situation can be defused, and can only be defused, when one person, either one, simply turns the other cheek. But both have an image and an identity to maintain. Both are fragile; both fear that appearing weak before the other would mean ceasing to exist themselves.

There’s only one way out. We have to recall that our identity isn’t something we forge for ourselves and then spend the rest of our lives shoring up. Jesus Christ forges our identity for us and maintains us in it. Our Lord tells us who we are. He can tell us who we are just because he, and he alone, has made us who we are. Because our identity is rooted in his action upon us and not in anything we do to ourselves, our identity in him can never be at risk. Were our identity self-fashioned it would also be the feeblest, frailest identity imaginable. Since, on the other hand, we are who we are on account of his having made us who we are, we can always know who we are and be who we are regardless of what others think we are. They may think of us as King Kong or as Caspar Milquetoast. Let them think. We don’t have an image to maintain. We don’t have an identity to preserve. Jesus Christ does this for us. And if three or four fellow-Christians keep on reflecting this truth to us we shall find ourselves cemented into this truth and it into us so as to render us impervious to those who would otherwise find us doubting ourselves and annihilating ourselves only to swing over into a nasty self-assertion that we fancy will get us through the day when in fact others are secretly laughing at our bombast and buffoonery.

If we cherish the identity our Lord gives us then we don’t have to establish a “tough guy” identity for ourselves. And if we don’t have to do this then we are free to appear weak or silly or naïve or foolish. In a word, if our identity is in Christ, we are free not to retaliate. We are as free as our Lord himself was free when he turned the other cheek.

 

IV: — All of which brings me to the last point. Turning the other cheek is the only way reconciliation is won. Reconciliation is never won through retaliation. If it’s true (and it is true) that to fight fire with fire is to ignite a blaze in which everyone is burned, then non-retaliation is the only fire-extinguisher we have.

Earlier in the sermon I said a work of grace, a colossal work of grace, must occur within us if we are ever going to renounce retaliation cheerfully. Even as such a work of God’s grace does occur and we do renounce retaliation, we should be sure to understand that in the eyes of the world we are going to appear weak. We are going to appear stupid. We are going to be laughed at as “losers.” We must be prepared for this. But of course we can be prepared for this just because we know that “losing” has always been the way God wins. It’s when God himself appears to be the biggest loser of all (a Jew, the person the world relishes hating, executed by the state, rejected by his followers, dangling from a scaffold at the edge of the city garbage dump;) it’s when God appears most to be a “loser” that he achieves his greatest work of reconciliation. It’s precisely when he appears most helpless that he’s most effective. It’s precisely when it appears he can’t do anything that he achieves the purpose for which he sent his Son.

Then today there’s only one question for you and me to settle: are we secure enough in Christ, big enough in Christ, mature enough in Christ to withstand looking like losers the next time we are insulted, and renounce retaliation? We are. Because of our Lord’s grip on us we are free from having to prove ourselves. Free from having to prove ourselves we are free from having to succumb to that evil we say we are resisting. Free from having to succumb to the evil we say we are resisting, we are free to do the truth as our Lord himself ever did the truth.

Jesus says, “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.”

 

                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                          

January 2005

 

 Matthew 5:43-6:4

I: — What is postmodernism or postmodernity? Plainly we have to know what is meant by “modernity” before we can grasp “postmodernity.” Some people maintain that modernity begins with the French Revolution with its avowedly secularist, anti-religious outlook. Others date modernity from the Enlightenment with its development of science. Others still (here I include myself) date modernity from the Renaissance with, among other things, the rise of market-capitalism, the development of transnational banking, the nation-state. Modernity, then, runs from mid 15^th century to mid 20^th century, or from 1450 to 1945.

Let’s think first of modernity. There are several features of modernity that we all recognise as soon as they are mentioned: technoscience, for instance. Think of how the telegraph was followed by the wireless, followed in turn by sophisticated telephone systems, followed yet again by satellite communication, and so on. The same path, of course, is found from the printing press to the word processor.

Mass production is another feature of modernity. At one time goods were produced in what were known as “cottage industries.” Someone with a few sheep spun wool in her living room and then wove it, eventually having a garment of some kind she could sell. With mass production a newly-invented mechanical loom hummed night and day in a factory, producing wool far more quickly, and thus permitting a vastly more efficient means of manufacturing and distributing huge quantities of woollen goods. Horse-drawn carriages used to be made by one or two men who spent weeks building one carriage completely before beginning another. With the advent of the horseless carriage, the automobile, Henry Ford developed the assembly line. The number of units manufactured per week skyrocketed. Not only did the factory-housed loom and the automobile assembly line speed up the manufacturing process, they also lowered the price per unit so that large segments of the population were able to afford cheaper manufactured goods.

Developments in industrial efficiency, we should note, created what economists call “real wealth” and distributed it in such a way that a middle class arose and mushroomed. Prior to modernity there were two classes: the noble or aristocratic class (very small in number) and the rural peasant class (very large.) In other words, there were a few rich landowners and hordes of poor land-workers. The few possessed immense wealth and power; the many possessed neither wealth nor power. Industrialisation, a major feature of modernity, gave rise to a middle class that was larger than either the rich or the poor. And of course together with the expansion of the middle class there occurred the representative democracy we all cherish.

The nation-state was a feature of modernity. The purpose of the state is to subdue lawlessness, punish evildoers, promote the public good. At the close of the Middle Ages it was noted that a people that had much in common could band together and thereby promote the public good much more efficiently. At the close of the Middle Ages there were 300 fiefdoms or principalities in Germany, with a prince presiding over each. It was obvious that if many German-speaking peoples forged themselves into a single German-speaking people, a nation-state would arise possessed of a domestic and international power that 300 fiefdoms could never hope to have.

By far the most readily recognised feature of modernity, I think, is what I mentioned first: technoscience. “Labour-saving devices” are only a small part of it. The devices that we now take for granted weren’t merely labour-saving (a tractor that ploughs in an hour what a horse ploughed in a day.) The technoscience we admire had to do with vaccinations, inoculations, surgeries (chest surgery was virtually impossible prior to the invention of the heart-lung machine). As well as the technoscience that provided safety: radar, electronic navigation, weather predicting. As well as the technoscience that “greened” large parts of the world with wheat that was impervious to rust, corn impervious to blight, fertilisers that multiplied crop yields a hundred fold, and methods of transportation that were quicker, safer, cheaper, more comfortable than anything our foreparents could have imagined.

Modernity was characterised by a belief in progress, a manifest mastery over nature, and the magnification of efficiency everywhere.

 

II: — Then what about postmodernity? What are its features? Let’s begin here where we left off: technoscience. There is now widespread loss of confidence in technoscience as a blessing. While nuclear science generates electricity more efficiently than steam turbines, nuclear science has spawned nightmare after nightmare. (Not to mention propaganda to cloak the nightmare: there are on average 500 major nuclear accidents per year, most of which are never reported to the public.) As for nuclear weaponry, we entered the cold war in 1945, seemed to pass out of it in 1989, and now appear to be on the edge of re-entering it. At the height of the cold war the USA and the USSR were aiming at each other nuclear weaponry that guaranteed what the military-industrial complex called “Mutually Assured Destruction”: MAD. Conventional weaponry had been used to win wars; nuclear weaponry guaranteed lost wars for everybody. Yet nuclear weaponry proliferated.

Developments in electronics were hailed as glorious. Electronic surveillance has eroded privacy already and brought depersonalisation and dehumanisation in its wake. And we haven’t seen anything in this regard compared to the Orwellianism we are going to see.

In the postmodern era pharmacology has become suspect. Drugs to relieve pain are one thing. What about drugs that don’t merely relieve pain, don’t merely elevate moods (from depression to contentment), don’t merely subdue agitation or compulsiveness, but alter personality? If drugs can alter personality, then what do we mean by “personality?” Since personality is intimately connected to personal identity, has personal identity evaporated? Then what has happened to the person herself? What do we mean by “self?” Is there a self? Furthermore, if self and personality are related to character, what has become of character?

While we are speaking of character we should be aware that the United States Armed Forces have developed drugs that eliminate fear. Courage, of course, is courage only in the context of fear. Drugs that eliminate fear also eliminate bravery. No American combatant need ever be awarded a purple heart! More to the point, drug-induced fearlessness renders someone a robot; robots are never afraid, and robots are never brave, just because robots are never human. That’s the point: the drugged soldier is no longer human.

What modernity called progress postmodernity deems anything but progress. Where is the progress in ecological damage so far-reaching that air isn’t fit to breathe or water to drink, while ozone-depletion renders us uncommonly vulnerable to skin cancer? Where is the progress in schooling that finds university-bound students unable to write or comprehend a five-sentence paragraph?

To no one’s surprise, postmodernity has suffered widespread loss of confidence in reason. We may call postmodernites cynics or we may call them realists; in any case postmodernites see human reasoning as a huge factor in the postmodern mess. They see reason (so-called) as simply a means to an end that isn’t reasonable itself.

One feature of the collapse of confidence in reason is the disappearance of truth. Truth is now reduced to taste. Postmodernity denies that there is such a thing as truth, or denies that we can access truth. Instead of knowing truth we express opinions, or we indicate preferences, or we “go with our gut.” Truth? What is truth, anyway? And if it existed, what makes us think we could know it? And even if we could know it, how would we know when we had found it? Truth? You have your opinion and I have mine.

Needless to say the disappearance of truth entails the disappearance of ethics. Postmodernites don’t speak of ethics; they speak of values. Everyone knows that different people hold different values. But this isn’t to say one value is superior to another. What any one person values is up to him or her. No one is to be told his values are defective or inferior. After all, there’s no disputing taste. Taste, preference, opinion, whatever – it all adds up to the out-and-out subjective.

If someone, nervous about all of this, speaks up, “But shouldn’t opinions or preferences be grounded in something, grounded in reality?”, such a person will be reminded, “Asking whether they should be grounded in reality is pointless when no one knows what reality is or how it might be recognised.” “But can’t the smorgasbord of opinions be considered and weighed rationally?” The question is pointless when reason is already suspect. Besides, to challenge someone else’s values or opinions is to excite emotion, and everyone knows that when emotion and reason meet, reason always takes second place.

Another feature of postmodernity is the weakening of the nation-state in the face of tribalism. All over the world tribalism is reasserting itself. It is especially strong in Africa. Quebec’s growing self-consciousness, however, is a form of tribalism too, as is the United Church’s all-aboriginal presbytery. The most vicious form of tribalism (“vicious”, of course, is a value-laden term, my value) is ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is on the increase. Internally the nation-state is fragmenting; externally the nation-state is increasingly the pawn of international finances and multinational corporations.

Another feature of postmodernity is the mushrooming of consumerism, consumer-driven everything. In the modern era economics were producer-driven; in the postmodern era, consumer-driven. Consumerism determines what church-congregations offer, what pulpits declare, what school boards program. Reginald Bibby, sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, maintains that there’s a huge demand throughout the society for religious consumer-products. “If the church wants to survive”, says Bibby, “it should meet consumer demands.” In other words, the church should forget what it believes to be the truth and substance of the gospel. The church should merely prepare the religious buffet that allows consumers to pick and choose according to taste, whim, preference. It must never be forgotten, of course, that it’s consumers who fund the church. Consumerism? My daughter Mary has just finished her B.Sc.N. program at McMaster University. When she began the course she was told that patients are no longer patients; what used to be known as patients are now clients. Patients are sick; clients are consumers who are purchasing a service.

My wife, Maureen, came upon three grade one students writing obscene graffiti. She deemed this to be an “actionable” offence and immediately took action. Next day the parent of one of these three children came to see Maureen. The parent remarked, “How unfortunate it was that my daughter signed her name to the graffiti she wrote.” “It wasn’t unfortunate that your daughter signed her name, thereby giving herself away”, Maureen replied; “It wasn’t even unfortunate that she wrote the obscene graffiti in the first place. It was simply wrong; wrong.” The category “wrong” has no meaning for that parent. The parent has already disavowed everything that might be logically related to the word “wrong.” Her attitude encapsulates postmodernity. Besides, as a taxpayer she’s a consumer who is purchasing a service for her child. And since consumers are paying the piper, they are now calling the tune.

 

III: — Is postmodernity all bad? Has the sky fallen on Chicken Little? No. Think of something familiar to all of us: the writing of history. We all studied history in school. We all studied it thinking it to be the soul of objectivity. Postmodernites tell us something different. A few years ago I addressed a group of curriculum planners at the central office of the Toronto Board of Education. I was speaking about prejudice in general, racism in particular. I told the group that while racial segregation had always occurred spontaneously in Ontario, it had been mandated by law in one institution only: the school system. Yes, Ontario schools were segregated along black/white lines beginning in 1850. Most of the curriculum planners were completely unaware of this. Then I asked them, “In what year was the last racially segregated school in Ontario closed?” Two planners shouted, “In 1965.” They were correct. They were also black. The black educators knew about racially segregated schools in Ontario; the white planners had never heard of it and were aghast to learn of it. When I studied Canadian history in high school I was never informed of this matter. Were you? The postmodernites are going to keep asking us, “Who writes history? Whose viewpoint is reflected? Whose interests are advanced? And what despised group is silenced?” Here postmodernism is doing us a favour.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. Before we deplore the fast-approaching demise of the Church of Scotland (to name only one denomination on its way to death), the Church of Scotland being the national church in the land of the thistle; before we lament the morbidity of the kirk, we should remember that many people won’t be sorry to see it go down. My earliest Old Testament professor, Scottish himself but belonging to a church other than the Church of Scotland, told me that when he was young man in Scotland you couldn’t get work in the post office, a bank, or schoolteaching unless you were a member of the kirk. You didn’t have to attend; you didn’t have to worship; you didn’t have to believe anything; but your name had to be on the roll. This is disgusting.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. Admittedly confidence has collapsed in technoscience as something that can promote the human good. (Technoscience, of course, can always promote the technically efficient. But the technically efficient is a long way from the human good.) While technoscience has done much to ease physical toil and bodily discomfort, done much to promote longer life and reduce the likelihood of sudden death, Christians are aware that technoscience was never going to promote the human good. Then the public loss of confidence in technoscience is loss of confidence where Christians had none in any case.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. To be sure, postmodernites insist that reason (reasoning) is suspect, reasoning being little more than rationalisation serving any number of subtle or not-so-subtle ends. At the same time Christians have always known that sin blinds so thoroughly as to blind humankind to the speciousness of its reasoning. Christians have always known that only grace, God’s grace, frees reason and restores reason to reason’s integrity. In the era of the Fall, where reason itself is compromised, grace alone restores reason to reason’s integrity. Then postmodernity reminds us all of a human predicament that Christians know the gospel alone to cure.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. While tribalism is to be deplored, the radical relativising of the nation-state isn’t to be deplored. Surely the development of hydrogen warheads rendered the nation-state obsolete. Surely the nation-state has been a reservoir of old wounds and resentments and recriminations and national aggressions that we’re all better off without. Surely we don’t need a cess-pool whose toxic wastes seep into neighbouring aquifers.

 

IV: — Then what are Christians to do about postmodernism?

First of all we are to remember at all times and in all circumstances that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24:1) “The Lord of hosts is the king of glory.” He is; he alone is. Christians aren’t dualists. We don’t believe that the cosmos is stuck fast in an interminable struggle between two equal but hostile powers, God and the evil one, neither able to defeat the other. We don’t believe that the Fall (Genesis 3) has obliterated the goodness of God’s creation. Yes, Jesus says that the creation lies in the grip of the “prince of this world”. But the prince is only that: prince, never king. The earth is the Lord’s, no one else’s.

The gospel of John, the anonymous epistle to the Hebrews, and Paul’s letter to the church in Colosse; all these documents declare that the whole world was made through Christ for Christ. He was the agent in creation, and the creation was fashioned for his sake. He is its origin and end. He is its ground and goal. And no development in world-occurrence can overturn this truth.

We are told in Colossians 1:17, “In Jesus Christ all things hold together.” However fast, however violently, the world spins (metaphorically speaking), it can never fly apart. “In him all things hold together.” Why doesn’t the creation fly apart (metaphorically speaking)? Why doesn’t human existence become impossible? Why don’t the countless competing special-interest groups, each with its “selfist” savagery, dismember the world hopelessly? Just because in him, in our Lord, all things hold together. What he creates he maintains; what he upholds he causes to cohere. “Hold together” (sunesteken) is a term taken from the Stoic philosophy of the ancient Greeks. But whereas the ancient Greek philosophers said that a philosophical principle upheld the cosmos, first-century Christians knew it to be a person, the living person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He grips the creation with a hand large enough to comprehend the totality of the world. In other words, the real significance of postmodernism can’t be grasped by postmodernites; the real significance of postmodernism can be grasped only by him whose world it is and in whom it is held together. The real significance of postmodernism, its bane but also its blessing, can be understood only by those who are attuned to the mind of Christ. The sky hasn’t fallen down.

What are Christians to do? If we are first to remember that the earth is the Lord’s, in the second place we are to meet everyday challenges and opportunities each and every day. Many Christians think that the first thing to be accomplished is a philosophical rebuttal of postmodernism’s tenets. I’m a philosopher myself, and I agree that a philosophical critique, a philosophical rebuttal, is appropriate and important. At the same time, there are relatively few people with the training and the equipment for this sort of thing. All Christians, however, can meet everyday challenges and opportunities each and every day.

You must have noticed that Jesus doesn’t merely illustrate his ministry with everyday matters (a homemaker sweeping the house clean in order to find her grocery money); he directs us to everyday matters as the occasion of our faith and obedience, trust and love. Discipleship isn’t suspended until philosophers can dissect postmodernism; discipleship is always to be exercised now, in the context of the ready-to-hand. We trust our Lord and his truth right now (or we don’t). We grant hospitality right now and discover we’ve entertained angels unawares (or we don’t). We uphold our Lord’s claim on our obedience in the face of postmodernism’s ethical indifference (or we don’t). We recognise the approach of temptation and resist it in the instant of its approach, or we stare at it like a rabbit staring at a snake until, rabbit-like, we’re seized. We forgive the offender from our heart and find ourselves newly aware of God’s forgiveness of us, or we merely pretend to forgive the offender and find our own heart shrivelling. The apostle John insists that we do the truth. We have countless opportunities every day challenging us to forthright faith and obedience and trust regardless of whether or not we can philosophically answer postmodernism’s philosophical presuppositions.

What can Christians do in the face of postmodernism? In the third place we can recover the Christian truth that human existence is relational. A few minutes ago I mentioned, for instance, that one feature of modernity’s modulation into postmodernity was the shift from production economics to consumer economics. We should note, however, that neither form of economics impinges upon a Christian understanding of human profundity. God intends us to be creatures whose ultimate profundity is rooted not in economic matters of any sort (contra Marx) but in relations.

Think of the old story concerning the creation of humankind. “God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he them.” (Gen. 1:27) Adam is properly Adam; Adam is properly himself only in relation to Eve. To be sure, Adam isn’t a function of Eve, nor Eve a function of him. Neither one can be reduced to the other; neither one is an aspect of the other. None the less, each is who he or she is only in relation to the other.

I am not reducible to any one of my relationships or to all of them together. I am not an extension of my wife or an aspect of my parents or a function of my daughters. I am me, uniquely, irreplaceably, unsubstituably me. Still, I am not who I am apart from my relationships.

Every last human being is a dialogical partner with God. This isn’t to say that everyone is aware of this or welcomes this or agrees with this. It isn’t to say that everyone is a believer or a crypto-believer or even a “wannabe” believer. But it is to say that the God who has made us can’t be escaped. He can be denied, he can be disdained, he can be ignored, he can be unknown; he can certainly be fled but he can never be escaped. Not to be aware of this truth is not thereby to be spared it. The living God is always and everywhere the dialogical “Other”, the relational “Other” of everyone’s life, even as there are countless creaturely “others” in everyone’s life.

Decades ago Martin Buber wrote, “All real living is meeting.” He was right: what isn’t profoundly a “meeting” isn’t living; it’s death. What isn’t a “meeting” isn’t real; it’s illusory. Postmodernity is suspicious and cynical and bitter all at once, and often for good reason. It denies the category of the real. Right here there is challenge and opportunity a-plenty for Christians: the real is the relational.

What can Christians do? In the fourth place we have to work out much more thoroughly what we understand to be the human, the quintessentially human. Our society is beset on all sides with depersonalisation and dehumanisation. We are now facing the technological novelty known as “virtual reality” or “synthetic reality.” Soon we’ll be sitting in front of our TV screens with a contraption on our head that allows us to “experience” the sensations of touch, smell, taste. When so much of the human can be counterfeited electronically, what does it mean to be authentically human? Surely Christians have something to say and do here.

In the fifth place postmodernity forces us to come to terms with something the church has considered too slightly if at all: the polar opposite of evil isn’t good, not even the good. The polar opposite of wrong isn’t right, not even the right. The polar opposite of evil, rather, is the holy. The polar opposite of wrong is the holy. Plainly the holy and the good are not exactly the same. The holy and the right are not exactly the same. Wherein do they differ? The answer to this question comprehends everything that postmodernism brings before us. But since today’s sermon is already unusually long, the answer to this question will have to await another sermon on another day. What is postmodernism or postmodernity? Plainly we have to know what is meant by “modernity” before we can grasp “postmodernity.” Some people maintain that modernity begins with the French Revolution with its avowedly secularist, anti-religious outlook. Others date modernity from the Enlightenment with its development of science. Others still (here I include myself) date modernity from the Renaissance with, among other things, the rise of market-capitalism, the development of transnational banking, the nation-state. Modernity, then, runs from mid 15^th century to mid 20^th century, or from 1450 to 1945.

Let’s think first of modernity. There are several features of modernity that we all recognise as soon as they are mentioned: technoscience, for instance. Think of how the telegraph was followed by the wireless, followed in turn by sophisticated telephone systems, followed yet again by satellite communication, and so on. The same path, of course, is found from the printing press to the word processor.

Mass production is another feature of modernity. At one time goods were produced in what were known as “cottage industries.” Someone with a few sheep spun wool in her living room and then wove it, eventually having a garment of some kind she could sell. With mass production a newly-invented mechanical loom hummed night and day in a factory, producing wool far more quickly, and thus permitting a vastly more efficient means of manufacturing and distributing huge quantities of woollen goods. Horse-drawn carriages used to be made by one or two men who spent weeks building one carriage completely before beginning another. With the advent of the horseless carriage, the automobile, Henry Ford developed the assembly line. The number of units manufactured per week skyrocketed. Not only did the factory-housed loom and the automobile assembly line speed up the manufacturing process, they also lowered the price per unit so that large segments of the population were able to afford cheaper manufactured goods.

Developments in industrial efficiency, we should note, created what economists call “real wealth” and distributed it in such a way that a middle class arose and mushroomed. Prior to modernity there were two classes: the noble or aristocratic class (very small in number) and the rural peasant class (very large.) In other words, there were a few rich landowners and hordes of poor land-workers. The few possessed immense wealth and power; the many possessed neither wealth nor power. Industrialisation, a major feature of modernity, gave rise to a middle class that was larger than either the rich or the poor. And of course together with the expansion of the middle class there occurred the representative democracy we all cherish.

The nation-state was a feature of modernity. The purpose of the state is to subdue lawlessness, punish evildoers, promote the public good. At the close of the Middle Ages it was noted that a people that had much in common could band together and thereby promote the public good much more efficiently. At the close of the Middle Ages there were 300 fiefdoms or principalities in Germany, with a prince presiding over each. It was obvious that if many German-speaking peoples forged themselves into a single German-speaking people, a nation-state would arise possessed of a domestic and international power that 300 fiefdoms could never hope to have.

By far the most readily recognised feature of modernity, I think, is what I mentioned first: technoscience. “Labour-saving devices” are only a small part of it. The devices that we now take for granted weren’t merely labour-saving (a tractor that ploughs in an hour what a horse ploughed in a day.) The technoscience we admire had to do with vaccinations, inoculations, surgeries (chest surgery was virtually impossible prior to the invention of the heart-lung machine). As well as the technoscience that provided safety: radar, electronic navigation, weather predicting. As well as the technoscience that “greened” large parts of the world with wheat that was impervious to rust, corn impervious to blight, fertilisers that multiplied crop yields a hundred fold, and methods of transportation that were quicker, safer, cheaper, more comfortable than anything our foreparents could have imagined.

Modernity was characterised by a belief in progress, a manifest mastery over nature, and the magnification of efficiency everywhere.

 

II: — Then what about postmodernity? What are its features? Let’s begin here where we left off: technoscience. There is now widespread loss of confidence in technoscience as a blessing. While nuclear science generates electricity more efficiently than steam turbines, nuclear science has spawned nightmare after nightmare. (Not to mention propaganda to cloak the nightmare: there are on average 500 major nuclear accidents per year, most of which are never reported to the public.) As for nuclear weaponry, we entered the cold war in 1945, seemed to pass out of it in 1989, and now appear to be on the edge of re-entering it. At the height of the cold war the USA and the USSR were aiming at each other nuclear weaponry that guaranteed what the military-industrial complex called “Mutually Assured Destruction”: MAD. Conventional weaponry had been used to win wars; nuclear weaponry guaranteed lost wars for everybody. Yet nuclear weaponry proliferated.

Developments in electronics were hailed as glorious. Electronic surveillance has eroded privacy already and brought depersonalisation and dehumanisation in its wake. And we haven’t seen anything in this regard compared to the Orwellianism we are going to see.

In the postmodern era pharmacology has become suspect. Drugs to relieve pain are one thing. What about drugs that don’t merely relieve pain, don’t merely elevate moods (from depression to contentment), don’t merely subdue agitation or compulsiveness, but alter personality? If drugs can alter personality, then what do we mean by “personality?” Since personality is intimately connected to personal identity, has personal identity evaporated? Then what has happened to the person herself? What do we mean by “self?” Is there a self? Furthermore, if self and personality are related to character, what has become of character?

While we are speaking of character we should be aware that the United States Armed Forces have developed drugs that eliminate fear. Courage, of course, is courage only in the context of fear. Drugs that eliminate fear also eliminate bravery. No American combatant need ever be awarded a purple heart! More to the point, drug-induced fearlessness renders someone a robot; robots are never afraid, and robots are never brave, just because robots are never human. That’s the point: the drugged soldier is no longer human.

What modernity called progress postmodernity deems anything but progress. Where is the progress in ecological damage so far-reaching that air isn’t fit to breathe or water to drink, while ozone-depletion renders us uncommonly vulnerable to skin cancer? Where is the progress in schooling that finds university-bound students unable to write or comprehend a five-sentence paragraph?

To no one’s surprise, postmodernity has suffered widespread loss of confidence in reason. We may call postmodernites cynics or we may call them realists; in any case postmodernites see human reasoning as a huge factor in the postmodern mess. They see reason (so-called) as simply a means to an end that isn’t reasonable itself.

One feature of the collapse of confidence in reason is the disappearance of truth. Truth is now reduced to taste. Postmodernity denies that there is such a thing as truth, or denies that we can access truth. Instead of knowing truth we express opinions, or we indicate preferences, or we “go with our gut.” Truth? What is truth, anyway? And if it existed, what makes us think we could know it? And even if we could know it, how would we know when we had found it? Truth? You have your opinion and I have mine.

Needless to say the disappearance of truth entails the disappearance of ethics. Postmodernites don’t speak of ethics; they speak of values. Everyone knows that different people hold different values. But this isn’t to say one value is superior to another. What any one person values is up to him or her. No one is to be told his values are defective or inferior. After all, there’s no disputing taste. Taste, preference, opinion, whatever – it all adds up to the out-and-out subjective.

If someone, nervous about all of this, speaks up, “But shouldn’t opinions or preferences be grounded in something, grounded in reality?”, such a person will be reminded, “Asking whether they should be grounded in reality is pointless when no one knows what reality is or how it might be recognised.” “But can’t the smorgasbord of opinions be considered and weighed rationally?” The question is pointless when reason is already suspect. Besides, to challenge someone else’s values or opinions is to excite emotion, and everyone knows that when emotion and reason meet, reason always takes second place.

Another feature of postmodernity is the weakening of the nation-state in the face of tribalism. All over the world tribalism is reasserting itself. It is especially strong in Africa. Quebec’s growing self-consciousness, however, is a form of tribalism too, as is the United Church’s all-aboriginal presbytery. The most vicious form of tribalism (“vicious”, of course, is a value-laden term, my value) is ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is on the increase. Internally the nation-state is fragmenting; externally the nation-state is increasingly the pawn of international finances and multinational corporations.

Another feature of postmodernity is the mushrooming of consumerism, consumer-driven everything. In the modern era economics were producer-driven; in the postmodern era, consumer-driven. Consumerism determines what church-congregations offer, what pulpits declare, what school boards program. Reginald Bibby, sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, maintains that there’s a huge demand throughout the society for religious consumer-products. “If the church wants to survive”, says Bibby, “it should meet consumer demands.” In other words, the church should forget what it believes to be the truth and substance of the gospel. The church should merely prepare the religious buffet that allows consumers to pick and choose according to taste, whim, preference. It must never be forgotten, of course, that it’s consumers who fund the church. Consumerism? My daughter Mary has just finished her B.Sc.N. program at McMaster University. When she began the course she was told that patients are no longer patients; what used to be known as patients are now clients. Patients are sick; clients are consumers who are purchasing a service.

My wife, Maureen, came upon three grade one students writing obscene graffiti. She deemed this to be an “actionable” offence and immediately took action. Next day the parent of one of these three children came to see Maureen. The parent remarked, “How unfortunate it was that my daughter signed her name to the graffiti she wrote.” “It wasn’t unfortunate that your daughter signed her name, thereby giving herself away”, Maureen replied; “It wasn’t even unfortunate that she wrote the obscene graffiti in the first place. It was simply wrong; wrong.” The category “wrong” has no meaning for that parent. The parent has already disavowed everything that might be logically related to the word “wrong.” Her attitude encapsulates postmodernity. Besides, as a taxpayer she’s a consumer who is purchasing a service for her child. And since consumers are paying the piper, they are now calling the tune.

 

III: — Is postmodernity all bad? Has the sky fallen on Chicken Little? No. Think of something familiar to all of us: the writing of history. We all studied history in school. We all studied it thinking it to be the soul of objectivity. Postmodernites tell us something different. A few years ago I addressed a group of curriculum planners at the central office of the Toronto Board of Education. I was speaking about prejudice in general, racism in particular. I told the group that while racial segregation had always occurred spontaneously in Ontario, it had been mandated by law in one institution only: the school system. Yes, Ontario schools were segregated along black/white lines beginning in 1850. Most of the curriculum planners were completely unaware of this. Then I asked them, “In what year was the last racially segregated school in Ontario closed?” Two planners shouted, “In 1965.” They were correct. They were also black. The black educators knew about racially segregated schools in Ontario; the white planners had never heard of it and were aghast to learn of it. When I studied Canadian history in high school I was never informed of this matter. Were you? The postmodernites are going to keep asking us, “Who writes history? Whose viewpoint is reflected? Whose interests are advanced? And what despised group is silenced?” Here postmodernism is doing us a favour.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. Before we deplore the fast-approaching demise of the Church of Scotland (to name only one denomination on its way to death), the Church of Scotland being the national church in the land of the thistle; before we lament the morbidity of the kirk, we should remember that many people won’t be sorry to see it go down. My earliest Old Testament professor, Scottish himself but belonging to a church other than the Church of Scotland, told me that when he was young man in Scotland you couldn’t get work in the post office, a bank, or schoolteaching unless you were a member of the kirk. You didn’t have to attend; you didn’t have to worship; you didn’t have to believe anything; but your name had to be on the roll. This is disgusting.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. Admittedly confidence has collapsed in technoscience as something that can promote the human good. (Technoscience, of course, can always promote the technically efficient. But the technically efficient is a long way from the human good.) While technoscience has done much to ease physical toil and bodily discomfort, done much to promote longer life and reduce the likelihood of sudden death, Christians are aware that technoscience was never going to promote the human good. Then the public loss of confidence in technoscience is loss of confidence where Christians had none in any case.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. To be sure, postmodernites insist that reason (reasoning) is suspect, reasoning being little more than rationalisation serving any number of subtle or not-so-subtle ends. At the same time Christians have always known that sin blinds so thoroughly as to blind humankind to the speciousness of its reasoning. Christians have always known that only grace, God’s grace, frees reason and restores reason to reason’s integrity. In the era of the Fall, where reason itself is compromised, grace alone restores reason to reason’s integrity. Then postmodernity reminds us all of a human predicament that Christians know the gospel alone to cure.

Is postmodernity all bad? No. While tribalism is to be deplored, the radical relativising of the nation-state isn’t to be deplored. Surely the development of hydrogen warheads rendered the nation-state obsolete. Surely the nation-state has been a reservoir of old wounds and resentments and recriminations and national aggressions that we’re all better off without. Surely we don’t need a cess-pool whose toxic wastes seep into neighbouring aquifers.

 

IV: — Then what are Christians to do about postmodernism?

First of all we are to remember at all times and in all circumstances that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24:1) “The Lord of hosts is the king of glory.” He is; he alone is. Christians aren’t dualists. We don’t believe that the cosmos is stuck fast in an interminable struggle between two equal but hostile powers, God and the evil one, neither able to defeat the other. We don’t believe that the Fall (Genesis 3) has obliterated the goodness of God’s creation. Yes, Jesus says that the creation lies in the grip of the “prince of this world”. But the prince is only that: prince, never king. The earth is the Lord’s, no one else’s.

The gospel of John, the anonymous epistle to the Hebrews, and Paul’s letter to the church in Colosse; all these documents declare that the whole world was made through Christ for Christ. He was the agent in creation, and the creation was fashioned for his sake. He is its origin and end. He is its ground and goal. And no development in world-occurrence can overturn this truth.

We are told in Colossians 1:17, “In Jesus Christ all things hold together.” However fast, however violently, the world spins (metaphorically speaking), it can never fly apart. “In him all things hold together.” Why doesn’t the creation fly apart (metaphorically speaking)? Why doesn’t human existence become impossible? Why don’t the countless competing special-interest groups, each with its “selfist” savagery, dismember the world hopelessly? Just because in him, in our Lord, all things hold together. What he creates he maintains; what he upholds he causes to cohere. “Hold together” (sunesteken) is a term taken from the Stoic philosophy of the ancient Greeks. But whereas the ancient Greek philosophers said that a philosophical principle upheld the cosmos, first-century Christians knew it to be a person, the living person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He grips the creation with a hand large enough to comprehend the totality of the world. In other words, the real significance of postmodernism can’t be grasped by postmodernites; the real significance of postmodernism can be grasped only by him whose world it is and in whom it is held together. The real significance of postmodernism, its bane but also its blessing, can be understood only by those who are attuned to the mind of Christ. The sky hasn’t fallen down.

What are Christians to do? If we are first to remember that the earth is the Lord’s, in the second place we are to meet everyday challenges and opportunities each and every day. Many Christians think that the first thing to be accomplished is a philosophical rebuttal of postmodernism’s tenets. I’m a philosopher myself, and I agree that a philosophical critique, a philosophical rebuttal, is appropriate and important. At the same time, there are relatively few people with the training and the equipment for this sort of thing. All Christians, however, can meet everyday challenges and opportunities each and every day.

You must have noticed that Jesus doesn’t merely illustrate his ministry with everyday matters (a homemaker sweeping the house clean in order to find her grocery money); he directs us to everyday matters as the occasion of our faith and obedience, trust and love. Discipleship isn’t suspended until philosophers can dissect postmodernism; discipleship is always to be exercised now, in the context of the ready-to-hand. We trust our Lord and his truth right now (or we don’t). We grant hospitality right now and discover we’ve entertained angels unawares (or we don’t). We uphold our Lord’s claim on our obedience in the face of postmodernism’s ethical indifference (or we don’t). We recognise the approach of temptation and resist it in the instant of its approach, or we stare at it like a rabbit staring at a snake until, rabbit-like, we’re seized. We forgive the offender from our heart and find ourselves newly aware of God’s forgiveness of us, or we merely pretend to forgive the offender and find our own heart shrivelling. The apostle John insists that we do the truth. We have countless opportunities every day challenging us to forthright faith and obedience and trust regardless of whether or not we can philosophically answer postmodernism’s philosophical presuppositions.

What can Christians do in the face of postmodernism? In the third place we can recover the Christian truth that human existence is relational. A few minutes ago I mentioned, for instance, that one feature of modernity’s modulation into postmodernity was the shift from production economics to consumer economics. We should note, however, that neither form of economics impinges upon a Christian understanding of human profundity. God intends us to be creatures whose ultimate profundity is rooted not in economic matters of any sort (contra Marx) but in relations.

Think of the old story concerning the creation of humankind. “God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he them.” (Gen. 1:27) Adam is properly Adam; Adam is properly himself only in relation to Eve. To be sure, Adam isn’t a function of Eve, nor Eve a function of him. Neither one can be reduced to the other; neither one is an aspect of the other. None the less, each is who he or she is only in relation to the other.

I am not reducible to any one of my relationships or to all of them together. I am not an extension of my wife or an aspect of my parents or a function of my daughters. I am me, uniquely, irreplaceably, unsubstituably me. Still, I am not who I am apart from my relationships.

Every last human being is a dialogical partner with God. This isn’t to say that everyone is aware of this or welcomes this or agrees with this. It isn’t to say that everyone is a believer or a crypto-believer or even a “wannabe” believer. But it is to say that the God who has made us can’t be escaped. He can be denied, he can be disdained, he can be ignored, he can be unknown; he can certainly be fled but he can never be escaped. Not to be aware of this truth is not thereby to be spared it. The living God is always and everywhere the dialogical “Other”, the relational “Other” of everyone’s life, even as there are countless creaturely “others” in everyone’s life.

Decades ago Martin Buber wrote, “All real living is meeting.” He was right: what isn’t profoundly a “meeting” isn’t living; it’s death. What isn’t a “meeting” isn’t real; it’s illusory. Postmodernity is suspicious and cynical and bitter all at once, and often for good reason. It denies the category of the real. Right here there is challenge and opportunity a-plenty for Christians: the real is the relational.

What can Christians do? In the fourth place we have to work out much more thoroughly what we understand to be the human, the quintessentially human. Our society is beset on all sides with depersonalisation and dehumanisation. We are now facing the technological novelty known as “virtual reality” or “synthetic reality.” Soon we’ll be sitting in front of our TV screens with a contraption on our head that allows us to “experience” the sensations of touch, smell, taste. When so much of the human can be counterfeited electronically, what does it mean to be authentically human? Surely Christians have something to say and do here.

In the fifth place postmodernity forces us to come to terms with something the church has considered too slightly if at all: the polar opposite of evil isn’t good, not even the good. The polar opposite of wrong isn’t right, not even the right. The polar opposite of evil, rather, is the holy. The polar opposite of wrong is the holy. Plainly the holy and the good are not exactly the same. The holy and the right are not exactly the same. Wherein do they differ? The answer to this question comprehends everything that postmodernism brings before us. But since today’s sermon is already unusually long, the answer to this question will have to await another sermon on another day.

 

 

Victor Shepherd             

November 2000

  Matthew 6:1-6

Isaiah 25:6-10         Hebrews 11:32-39          Luke 14:1-14

 

I: — “How would you like to make $700,000 per year?” The question was put to me that starkly. I had been asked to make a house call. No reason for the call was given, but I assumed that there was difficulty or perplexity or pain of some sort. When I was seated in the living room it turned out the couple was involved in pyramid sales. They wanted me to become part of the pyramid. I was to work for them, in a sense; that is, they would profit from whatever I sold. But at the same time I was going to pick up $700,000 annually for myself. Their appeal was directed straight at my self-interest.

Everywhere we look we find self-interest ascendant, strident and shameless. Labour negotiations, admittedly sometimes undertaken to remedy injustice, are more likely to be a contest between two parties, each of which has only one consideration in mind: how can I gobble up as much as possible to feed my ease and satiate my acquisitiveness? – as if it could ever be satiated.

Politics is much the same. Any political party asks itself one question: “How can we give the people what they want so that we can get what we want? The bottom line for everyone is “what we want.”

The titles in the bookstores speak volumes. How to Pull Your Own Strings. How to Make Relationships Work to Your Advantage. How To Get Your Own Way Without Seeming To.

   Obviously scripture is correct when it says the root human problem is an innermost perversity wherein we make ourselves the measure of the whole universe; wherein we make ourselves lord of ourselves, as well as lord of everyone else. To say the same thing differently, the root human problem is plainly an ego so swollen that it corrupts and suffocates everything, an ego so very inflated that the only perspective we have on others is how they can render us even more inflated (and more ugly, we should add.) The last thing any of us needs is a bigger carrot dangled in front of us. A bigger carrot would only render us more grasping than we are already. Since super-swollen self-ism is the root human problem, then surely our Lord is concerned to do something about it, to reduce the swelling, to free us from the choke-hold we have on ourselves and deliver us from our schemes for feeding our self-interest. Surely our Lord intends to operate on us right here.

Then it’s right here that there seems to be a contradiction, for Jesus speaks so very frequently about rewards. “Count yourselves blessed when you are persecuted for my sake,” he says, “for your reward is going to be great.” “When you are giving a dinner party,” he continues, “don’t invite the socially prominent who will boost your social standing; and don’t invite the people just like yourselves who are going to invite you back next month. You won’t get any reward from God for doing that. Instead invite those whom the world overlooks, even despises, and at the last you will surely receive your reward.”

Again and again Jesus speaks of the rewards that are coming to his followers as dependably as night follows day. Then is he no different from the couple who suggested I join the pyramid and make a bundle of money for myself (not to mention a bundle for them?) Is he no better than this? If so, then in the guise of liberating me from my acquisitiveness he’s everywhere strengthening it. If so, then the TV preacher is right when he urges hearers to “invest” in God since God is no one’s debtor.

We must put all such misunderstanding behind us: our Lord does want to free us from the choke-hold we have on ourselves. He wants to repair the ugliness our self-importance has wrought in us.

We must hear him again when he repudiates utterly any suggestion of tit-for-tat. “When you are doing someone a kindness,” he insists, “don’t advertise it. Keep it secret. Don’t let anyone know. Don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Elsewhere he commands, “Lend whatever you can – and expect nothing in return.” He knows better than we that if we expect something in return, then soon we’ll be doing whatever it is we do in order to get something in return. Our self-ism will have been inflated yet again.

When my sisters and I were ten or eleven years old my younger sister, one winter’s day, shovelled the snow off the very short sidewalk of the elderly man next door. She said she was doing it simply to be helpful (although I have my doubts.) He gave her 75 cents. This was a substantial sum for a ten-year old in 1955. (Do you know what 75 cents in 1955 is worth in 2005? It’s $18.75. My sister had shovelled off the short sidewalk in three minutes.) She was so very taken with her newly discovered source of fabulous wealth that for the rest of the winter she was shovelling his sidewalk as soon as three flakes had alighted on it. “When you render help,” says Jesus, “don’t expect anything in return. Your left hand shouldn’t know what your right hand is doing.”

In our Lord’s parable of the sheep and the goats the element too often overlooked is the element of surprise. The sheep are those who have assisted the needy and comforted the suffering and renounced themselves for the disadvantaged and made whatever sacrifice they felt they had to make when faced with someone else’s hunger or loneliness or pain or perplexity or guilt. Their only motive has been the undeniable need of someone they couldn’t ignore. Reward for this? It has never entered their head. Because they have acted without thought of reward they are surprised, stunned in fact, at the munificent reward they now receive. They had been kind not because they were thinking to be kind; they had simply acted spontaneously, without calculation, when faced with human distress. Now they are speechless when God blesses them.

The goats, on the other hand, had calculated. Quickly. Experts in mental arithmetic, in an instant they had added up that by helping those whose privation and pain were gaping, they were going to gain nothing. The “goats” wouldn’t act unless a huge carrot was dangled in front of them.

Plainly the reward or blessing that Jesus promises his people is reward of an unusual sort: his reward is promised only to those who act without thought of reward. His reward is promised to those who can only be surprised at their reward. In other words, so far from reinforcing a reward-mentality, our Lord’s promise of reward contradicts reward-mentality.

You and I have taken a giant step toward Christian maturity (not to say spiritual profundity) when we can spend ourselves for someone else and keep on spending ourselves without expecting anything in return. Of course we’d never expect our kindness, even our sacrifice, to bring us money. But how about a little recognition? Just an acknowledgement. Wouldn’t a word of appreciation be in order? A nod of thanks? How much we are ‘expecting’ – even simply expecting appreciation – is evident in our reaction when we receive no appreciation. “That’s the last time I go out of my way for her,” we fume; “I’ve never seen anyone as ungrateful.” Jesus reminds us that his Father sends and keeps on sending rain on the just and the unjust alike, the appreciative and the unappreciative, the grateful and the ungrateful. Surely the test of authenticity in all we do is our continuing to do it when we aren’t recognized or thanked. Goodwill towards others is genuine goodwill, and patience with others is genuine patience, only when we aren’t recognized or thanked yet continue in goodwill and patience. Patience isn’t patience if we’re expecting something in return. If we’re expecting something then what looks like patience is merely an investment whose dividends haven’t yet paid. For how long has God poured out his mercy, on how many people, only to have them reciprocate with protracted hostility? Our Lord promises his people reward even as he forbids them to ponder reward.

 

II: — Then what does Jesus mean when he says that God, who sees in secret, will never fail to bestow reward? There are two aspects to note here. One, God rewards his people in the life to come. “Blessed are you when you are hammered for my sake,” says Jesus, “for great is your reward in heaven.” It will be ours in the life to come. The other aspect: God rewards his people now, in this life.

In the first instance Jesus means that whatever kindness we do, whatever integrity we refuse to surrender in the face of opposition, whatever truth we uphold in the face of self-interested “fudging” God will honour inasmuch as God treasures all of this in a world that is indifferent to kindness, contemptuous concerning integrity, and hostile to truth. The smallest cup of water given to relieve someone else God sees. Yet he does more than observe it. What God sees God adopts; God owns; and in his own way and in his own time he will bless the selfless giver of that cup in a manner we can’t apprehend at this moment.

We all understand how it is virtually impossible for historians to evaluate accurately the historical significance of events that are occurring right now. Something that appears crucial today may turn out, fifty years from now, to have been only a tempest in a teapot. On the other hand, something that seems a trifle today may turn out to have had momentous historical impact.

In the same way there are people who manage to get themselves noticed and congratulated, even feted by the prominent and the powerful. Do you ever look at the society page in Saturday’s National Post? The centre-fold spread features the socially privileged who were at last night’s ball to raise money for this or that project (no doubt worthwhile) and who are fawned over inasmuch as Mr. Snodgrass owns the fitness club that professional athletes frequent while Mrs. Snodgrass is Canada’s largest importer of rare gems.

And then there are other folk. Their lives unfold anonymously. Their faithfulness and goodness will never be heard of. Invited to last night’s ball? They wouldn’t know a daiquiri from a door knob. But the God who sees in secret sees. And what he sees he owns. In the life to come he will bless the person who thought she was behaving so very ordinarily that her ordinariness didn’t attract the recognition it didn’t deserve.

Shortly after Maureen and I arrived on our first pastoral charge in northeast New Brunswick (one of the most economically deprived areas of Canada ) a girl invited us into her home after morning worship. She and her mother lived in a shack. It couldn’t have been more than 300 square feet – about the size of a suburbanite’s bathroom. (Needless to say, the facilities belonging to this home were twenty-five yards away at the back of the backyard.) The girl had a learning disability: she was fifteen years old yet only in grade seven. Her mother was impoverished. The two of them were thrilled that we had come into their home, for no minister ever had. They insisted on feeding us. I demurred since food is money and money was manifestly scarce. They wouldn’t be deflected. And so they set before us bread, margarine, tea and tinned peaches. Maureen and I shall never forget their generosity and their joy at granting us hospitality.

Some people who were more privileged financially or culturally might have laughed at their deed had it been known. After all, what were people as poor as they thinking about to ask educated, big-city people into their shanty? And then to serve them bread and peaches for lunch? The worth the world assigns to this meagre. But the God who sees in secret sees, and he will honour their kindness he with his own reward. What is it? We can’t say; we await it. Still, we can be sure that he who keeps the promises he makes will bless them in a way we can’t anticipate and they never expected.

Jesus always urges transparency, truthfulness, honesty, integrity, compassion. I have seen men and women exemplify these only to be passed over for promotion; only to be exploited and rendered a stepping stone for the devious and the dissimulator; only to be expelled from the office clique. They have paid dearly to uphold what the world scorns. What they paid: has it simply been thrown away, like money rolling down a sewer? On the contrary, the God who sees and notes and remembers also keeps his promises.

The other aspect of the reward our Lord promises pertains to this life.   One form such blessing takes is a richer experience of God himself. To uphold truth is to be rewarded at least with stronger conviction of the truth and clearer perception of the truth. To have resisted the temptation to dissemble is to find oneself with stiffer spine and reduced vulnerability to the lure of dishonesty. To have remained faithful in any commitment is to find oneself that much more intimate with our Lord whose faithfulness to us has never flickered.

Our Methodist foreparents used to sing,

Thy nature, Lord, thy name impart,

This, only this, be given:

Nothing beside my God I want,

Nothing in earth or heaven.

 

Those people discovered that as they obeyed God regardless of cost or convenience, expecting nothing in return, they were given everything: the name of God was branded upon them (they were marked his) and the nature of God (his love) suffused them and they knew then if they hadn’t known before what Paul meant when he cried, “What God has prepared for those who love him God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” For the Spirit is God in his utmost intimacy and intensity rendering himself impossible for us to doubt and impossible for us to deny.

The truth is, scripture says far more about the believer’s experience of God than today’s church does. Peter exclaims, “Not having seen him, you yet love him…. And you rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy.” Reward? Greater capacity to love God and greater delight in being loved. Paul reminds the believers in Thessalonica that the gospel didn’t come to them in words only, but “in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction …. You received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit.” One aspect of God’s reward is intensified joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, intensified so as to outweigh any affliction that would otherwise leave us thinking we were God-forsaken.

Most people find our Lord’s teaching on rewards difficult to understand in that they assume that reward is the same as payment. But reward and payment are categorically different. Payment is always something, a thing that has no logical connection with the deed it compensates. If I cut the grass and I’m told I may now go fishing, then fishing is payment for grass-cutting. There’s no logical connection between grass-cutting and fishing. Reward, on the other hand, is always related logically to what it rewards. What’s the reward for decades of marital faithfulness?   It’s not a new set of Tiger Woods golf clubs. The reward of marital faithfulness isn’t something logically unrelated to marriage. The reward for marital faithfulness is simply a richer, stronger, more resilient marriage. Payment for the student’s diligence at her homework is a ticket to the next rock concert. The reward for diligence at her homework is her capacity for more profound intellectual work, greater enjoyment in it, and satisfaction with it for as long as she lives.

What’s the reward that Jesus says our Father will never fail to give us?

Thy nature, Lord, thy name impart,

This, only this, be given:

Nothing beside my God I want,

Nothing in earth or heaven.

 

The reward for standing with Jesus Christ when his truth is mocked and his way derided and his invitation ridiculed and his people despised; the reward for standing with him there is that he, his truth, his way, his invitation and his people: these are made sweeter than honey to us. These are made transparently real and self-evidently right, even as our intimacy with him is made ever more wonderful.

Isn’t this reward enough?

                                                                                                     Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                             

February 2005

Matthew 6:1-6;16-18            James 1:19-27

“Hypocrite!” It’s the charge levelled fastest at someone who makes a religious profession and whose practice then appears not to measure up to the profession. The charge is levelled only at people who make a religious profession. It’s never levelled at people who make some other profession yet don’t measure up. It’s not levelled at politicians, for instance. In fact a discrepancy, even a huge discrepancy, between the politician’s promise and her practice is accepted because expected. But the same discrepancy between profession and practice is neither expected nor accepted in Christians. “Hypocrite!” We can’t imagine being called anything worse.

 

I: [a] What is a hypocrite anyway? The English word is derived from the Greek hupokrites. In Greek hupokrites is an actor, playing any role at all, in a Greek play. In the ancient Greek theatre each actor played four or five different parts in the course of one play. The actor wore a mask. When it was time to assume a different role, he stepped behind a screen and changed his mask. In addition, each false face the actor assumed had a device in it that magnified the actor’s voice. A hypocrite, in modern parlance, is someone who wears a false face, all the while talking in a loud voice. A hypocrite is considered a play-actor, a religious play-actor, who loudly advertises his phoniness. It’s no wonder we cringe when he hear the word used of anyone else and crumble when it’s used of us.

[b] Does hypocrisy have to be deliberate? Can there be an unknowing, unconscious hypocrisy? Is it right to use the label when someone isn’t even aware of glaring discrepancy between profession and practice? Let’s approach these questions one at a time.

We all agree that conscious, contrived hypocrisy is disgusting. A calculated two-facedness that parades itself, cynically exploiting others, callously furthering self-interest – this is simply reprehensible. One name that comes to mind from the world of American fiction is the name of Elmer Gantry. Gantry is a travelling preacher who professes allegiance to the gospel but who behaves deliberately in a manner that contradicts the gospel, regards people as suckers, and furthers his promiscuous agenda. Any such person who does this in real life properly arouses our disgust.

[c] Yet there’s also a discrepancy between profession and practice where the discrepancy isn’t intentional, isn’t cynically exploitative, and isn’t knowingly self-serving. In this situation we aren’t calculatingly hypocritical and we don’t want the charge levelled at us. At the same time, other people see only the discrepancy. They don’t bother asking us if we are aware of our inconsistency. They don’t bother finding out what gave rise to the inconsistency. They simply hang the label on us disdainfully and then dismiss us.

If we don’t want the label hung on us where we think it’s inappropriate, then we shouldn’t hang it on others where it is – or might be – inappropriate. We should make for others the same allowance we want made for ourselves.

Think about situations of fear. Fear can drive a wedge between anyone’s profession and practice where there’s no intentional two-facedness at all. Fear disorders people and impels them to do what they’d never do if they weren’t terrified.

One afternoon I was driving through a snowstorm in rural New Brunswick when I became stuck in a snowdrift. I was in a narrow rock-cut with twenty-foot high vertical walls. In no time more cars were stuck behind me. The wind was blowing a gale. The snow was blinding. Obviously nobody behind could move past me, and so the man behind me put his tire-chains on my car and I inched my way out of the snowdrift, out through the rock-cut. Once I past the rock-cut I was in a white-out, and could see only a few feet beyond the hood of my car. Yet I was determined to continue driving, however slowly. Obviously the motorists behind couldn’t get out of the rock-cut since I alone had tire-chains. I drove a little further. I wondered how I was ever going to return the tire chains to their owner. Stupidly I thought I would leave them dangling from a stranger’s fence when – if — I got to the next town. (When the storm cleared perhaps the owner would see them dangling there and recognize them as his.) Meanwhile I had deserted the other motorists. By now I wasn’t thinking cogently at all. I was rationalizing behaviour that was senseless and inexcusable. Suddenly a glimmer of reason returned. I stopped, removed the tire chains, and began walking them back to the owner. In seven seconds I was lost in the blizzard, utterly lost. I couldn’t see five feet. I knew I was going to freeze to death, and wondered how long it would take. In a few minutes two men appeared on a snowmobile. They took me to their home (which they could somehow find in the blizzard.) That evening I thought much about my abandonment of the stranded motorists, my apparent theft of the tire chains, my rationalized self-interest.

Abandonment; theft; self-interest: doesn’t it add up to the label “hypocrite”? I understood at that moment, as I have understood ever since, what fear does to people. Fear distorts thinking and bends people into a shape no one would recognize.

As a pastor I see people who appear to have acted hypocritically. Certainly they have behaved in a manner that contradicts their profession. Others are quick to point the finger and lay the charge. More often than not, however, the person accused of hypocrisy hasn’t been cunning or careless or self-serving. She’s simply been afraid, terribly afraid.

A friend and parishioner, highly placed in New Brunswick Hydro, told me how employee theft is detected. In one case a few dollars — $18, $35, $27 – was missing each day from an office where townspeople paid their hydro bills. There were four cashiers in the office. Which cashier was absconding with the money? Myself, I wouldn’t know whom to question first. My friend called in the head of NB Hydro Security, a former RCMP officer. This man said it was really very simple: you look first for someone who is afraid and who needs money to quell her fear. He sniffed around and learned that one cashier, a young woman, had recently been deserted by her husband. She was receiving no assistance from her dead-beat “ex.” She had several children to support. Fearing for herself and her children, she was desperate. She had pilfered money from the cash drawer. No one is excusing her. Still, how badly do we want to beat her up?

Fear. Wasn’t this Peter’s situation in the courtyard when his master was about to be lynched and someone said to him, “Heh! You and the Nazarene have the same accent!”?

Fear isn’t the only event that opens up a gap between profession and practice. Ignorance does this too. When we act out of ignorance we’ll be accused of hypocrisy, even though we aren’t deliberately two-faced. If we were raised in a vehemently anti-Roman Catholic or anti-Asian or anti-Black household then we’ve absorbed unconsciously the prejudice that Roman Catholics are subversive, Asians are sneaky (they never stop smiling, do they?) and Black people are violent. All of us have blind spots. The tricky thing about blind spots is that we don’t know where they are, until one day someone calls us a hypocrite and we don’t know why. To be sure, the truth that Jesus Christ is certainly remedies our ignorance and drives out prejudice. Still, this doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen until we’re confronted.

Not only ignorance and not only fear foster discrepancies between profession and practice: sin-vitiated vulnerability does it too. We may think we are possessed of resolute, resilient character. We may even feel strong. No doubt we are strong – in some areas of life; but not in all. Each of us has an Achilles heel. Temptation doesn’t “hook” us all in exactly the same place, but temptation hooks us unusually easily in some place. We aren’t all spiritually vulnerable in the same place; but we’re all spiritually vulnerable some place. When we point the finger at someone, we forget that his vulnerability is now displayed publicly while ours is known only privately. If ours becomes public knowledge (it becomes public knowledge only in a situation where we are publicly humiliated) we’ll maintain we shouldn’t be called hypocritical since we didn’t intend any duplicity. Then we should be less trigger-happy when faced with our neighbour’s inconsistency. The apostle Paul says, “If any one of you is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual should set him right gently. Look to yourself, every one of you. You may be tempted too.”

At the same time, I’d never pretend that all hypocrisy is born of fear or ignorance or vulnerability. The people whom Jesus pronounced hypocrites in our gospel lesson this morning; they set out every day to misrepresent themselves and thereby deceive others. They were deliberate phonies and they aimed at profiting from their phoniness. In their case the disparity between profession and practice couldn’t be excused at all. It was despicable.

What about you and me? Is there any one among us who wants to say he hasn’t been despicable?     We aren’t going to deny the darkness that still lurks in us. We should simply admit that sometimes our residual perversity surfaces and we are hypocrites plain and simple.

 

II: — The truth is, just because you and I profess faith in Jesus Christ the charge of hypocrisy will never be far from us. In light of this, what should we do?

[a] In the first place we must ask ourselves if we are serious about our discipleship. Are we serious, sincere, or are we playing games? Do we view soberly the discrepancies between profession and practice? Or do we dismiss them cavalierly, excusing ourselves with lame extenuations: “Nobody’s perfect”; “I’m doing the best I can”; “What do people expect, anyway?”; “What makes them think they’re any better?” These are the stock evasions of the insincere. At all times and in all circumstances we have to ask ourselves, “Am I serious and sincere in my aspiration to be Christ’s follower?”

[b] In the second place we mustn’t flee into denial or denunciation or counter-accusation when we are confronted with the truth about ourselves. Don’t we thank the person who takes us aside and tells us our slip is showing or we have egg on our face or lipstick on our teeth or our zipper needs zipping? We thank people who spare us public embarrassment in matters as slight as this. How much more we ought to thank godly people who want only to spare us self-humiliation and advance us in godliness. What such people perceive in us is nearly always something we haven’t yet perceived in ourselves. For this reason the gentlest correction we hear we always find startling.

A very kind woman one day took me aside and gently, soberly said to me, “Victor, sarcasm riddles virtually everything you say. Regardless of what you intend, your sarcasm leaves you appearing bitter, contemptuous and snobbish. This doesn’t befit a clergyman.” Only a fool thinks she’s anything but an ally.

King David was married. One day he fancied Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. Uriah wasn’t in the royal orbit. Uriah didn’t have David’s social standing or David’s political power or David’s admiring flatterers. Uriah had nothing to distinguish himself from countless others who had nothing – except, of course, his beautiful wife. David saw Bathsheba taking a bath. David was already married to Michal, daughter of late King Saul; to Michal, a blue-blood. Bathsheba was merely a commoner – but not common: she was gorgeous. David instructed his military commander to place Uriah in the front line of the next battle. Uriah perished. David had Bathsheba to himself, even as he never mentioned any of this to his wife. The shocking thing about the whole incident wasn’t merely that David had done it, but that he appeared not to be the slightest bit upset about it.

Then the prophet Nathan took David aside. “Tell me, your royal highness, how would you feel about a rich rancher who had a 10,000 acre spread, countless livestock, not to mention a freezer full of meat, and who then stole and barbecued the one and only lamb belonging to a poor subsistence farmer? How would you feel about that?” “I’d hang that mean-spirited creep from the tallest tree I could find,” David roared back. “When next you are walking past a mirror,” replied Nathan, “have a look.” What did David do next? When he had recovered enough to say anything he croaked, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Not when we are unfairly attacked but rather when we are confronted with the truth about ourselves; at such a time we shouldn’t fly off into vehement denial. We shouldn’t launch a counter-attack. We should own the truth about ourselves and say with David, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

[c] In the third place we must remember that the truth about ourselves we’ve just heard is the penultimate truth; it’s one stage removed from the final truth. The ultimate truth about Christ’s people is that our identity is rooted not in ourselves but in Jesus Christ. Ultimately we are those whom he names his younger brothers and sisters. As we are bound to him in faith he holds us so closely to himself that when the Father sees the Son with whom the Father is ever pleased, the Father sees you and me included in the Son.

John Calvin maintained that rightly to see Christ, properly to see Christ is always to see ourselves included in him. If in our mind’s eye we can see ourselves “here” and see our Lord “over there,” then what we’re looking at isn’t Christ, said Calvin. Reading scripture with remarkable perception Calvin said tirelessly, “Christ comes only to make us his.” Who then is Jesus Christ? He is the one who will never be without his people.

Towards the end of his earthly ministry Jesus told his disciples, “I have called you friends.” Just that. In other words, regardless of what others call us or we call ourselves, we are Christ’s friends. This doesn’t mean we’ve been given no more than a new name tag. Rather, what he calls us we are in truth. We are his friends; he “tells his people by the company they keep.” We belong to Christ; we live in his company; his arm around us binds us so tightly to him that he insists we are included in him.

Whenever Luther was attacked by others or found himself attacking himself – in other words, whenever Luther was feeling worst about himself – he recalled his favourite scripture verse. “Your life; your real life, is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3) Who you and I are, in the midst of all the inconsistencies about us that some people take malicious delight in pointing out; who you and I are ultimately – our identity, in other words – is rooted in Christ. Since it’s rooted in the Son of God it’s known to God alone. Yet because it’s known to God alone it’s secure there, guaranteed there, inviolable there, preserved there eternally.

When we are face-to-face with someone who is physically disabled and physically disfigured (for instance, someone with severe cerebral palsy) we admit that that person isn’t what she seems. Her body may be misshapen, grotesque even. Yet we know that no human being, no person can be reduced to her physical appearance. We should be as ready to admit that no one can be reduced to appearance of any sort. We aren’t ultimately as we appear. Ultimately we are our Lord’s friends, cherished, held onto, held up, secured. Since we are found in Christ we are known in Christ, know who we are in Christ; namely his friend, that friend whom he never abandons to our enemies and his, that friend whom he never fails or forsakes.

[d] Finally we must go to sleep at night with the word from the apostle James ringing in our ears: “Mercy triumphs over judgement.” We are judged, most certainly, for the hypocrisy we see in ourselves and the hypocrisy we’ve yet to see in ourselves. God’s judgement is indeed true. Yet it’s penultimate; his mercy is ultimate. The final word we hear God pronounce upon us is a word of mercy.

Then this is the final word we should pronounce over others. It’s even the final word we should pronounce over ourselves. “Mercy triumphs over judgement.”

                                                                                                  Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                  

March 2005

Matthew 6:27   

I: — “Why do you worry?” asks Jesus, “Why are you anxious? Do you really think that worrying will let you live better or live longer? Then why worry?” Upon hearing our Lord’s question most of us find our anxiety — bad enough in itself — worsened now by guilt. After all, our Lord forbids us to worry and yet we continue to worry; in fact it seems we can’t help worrying. Plainly we aren’t measuring up to his word. We can only conclude that we are spiritually defective.

Then it’s all the more important to understand from the outset that our Lord’s word is meant to bring us relief and encouragement and hope. His word is never meant to bring us distress or despair. We should understand too that the anxiety of which he speaks in our scripture text isn’t anxiety of every sort; specifically it’s anxiety connected to acquisitiveness. This kind of anxiety is a spiritual problem. But not all anxiety is a spiritual problem. Some anxiety is a psychological problem.

Panic attacks, for instance. Panic attacks are a psychological disorder having nothing to do with one’s spiritual condition. A panic attack is a sudden onset of overwhelming anxiety for no apparent reason. One minute you feel fine; the next minute dread has iced your heart. Severe panic attacks are immobilizing. A clergyman standing in the pulpit on Sunday morning, suddenly unable to utter a word; a social worker looking into a department store window, suddenly unable to take a step; a man about to take his wife to a restaurant, suddenly unable to leave the house. As a pastor I have had all three cases brought to me. In all of these it must never be suggested that someone’s faith is weak or that someone is a shabby Christian.

If you ask me why some people are afflicted with panic attacks, I can only say, “Why do some people develop arthritis in their right knee? Why do some people develop astigmatism in their left eye? Why is it that when the Norwalk virus was going around two people out of ten came down with it, but only two?” Myself, years ago I discovered, quite by accident, that I am slightly claustrophobic and somewhat colour blind. But none of this has anything to do with my spiritual condition.

We must never suggest that if only those who suffer from sudden onsets of panic had greater faith, stronger faith, they would suffer no longer. We ought never to add guilt to their anxiety.

In the second place we should understand that another kind of anxiety is related to emotional injury. An able pastor whom I have known for years served in the Royal Navy during World War II. He was under fire dozens of times. Decades later he still wakes up in the night shouting, “My life jacket! Where’s my life jacket? I can’t find my life jacket!” His wife gets him up and they make tea. Then he goes to his study and commences work, since he knows he isn’t going to sleep again that night.

There are civilian equivalents of this. People who have survived house fires, survived train wrecks, survived automobile manglings, survived childhood traumas of every sort (abuse included); these people are wounded emotionally. Anxiety surrounds their wound. This kind of anxiety is not a sign of spiritual deficiency.

Moreover, the people who are afflicted with such anxiety display remarkable courage. It takes courage, immense courage, to keep stepping ahead in life when you know that the emotional landmine will blow up in your face from time to time. It takes courage to resist the temptation to self-pity. It takes courage to hobble or limp or stagger when everyone else seems to be galloping. These people can only be commended for their courage.

 

II: — If the kind of anxiety Jesus has in mind in our text isn’t the kind we have mentioned so far, then what does Jesus mean when he says, “Don’t be anxious; worrying won’t help you live longer or live better”? He means this.

There is a kind of anxiety we suffer because we persist in pursuing what isn’t of God’s kingdom. We persist in pursuing it and fear that we might not be able to get it, or fear that we might not be able to keep it, or fear that someone else might get the same thing thereby depriving us of our claim to distinction, even uniqueness, even superiority.

Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In other words, what we really cherish (as opposed to what we say we cherish); this is that to which we are going to give ourselves; and this is that from which we are going to expect the greatest returns. Then what do we cherish?

The adolescent reads the bodybuilding advertisements. He starts ‘pumping iron’, not because exercise is good and everyone should have an exercise program of some sort; he ‘pumps iron’ in that he thinks he will look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in six months. Once he’s looking like “Hulk”, all kinds of wonderful things are going to come his way. After six months he doesn’t look much different. He thinks there’s something wrong with him. He goes to his physician, who tells him there’s nothing wrong with him, and tells him too that he’s never going to look like a gorilla. The fellow disregards the advice and goes to a speciality store to buy pills and diet supplements guaranteed to maximize muscle.

Why does he want to look like “Mr. Big” in the first place? He has absorbed the cult of the physique from his society. He’s preoccupied with being pumped up just because the world at large is preoccupied with being puffed up. (Everything we’ve said about males and muscle we could say as readily about females and silicon.)

Our concern with self-magnification and inflated ego fosters anxiety. Envy fosters anxiety. Lack of contentment fosters anxiety. For the same reason I’m always moved at the paintings of the Jewish artist, Hibel. Hibel paints the wisdom that has permeated the shtetln for centuries, the shtetln being the east European Jewish villages now consumed forever. My favourite painting is a group of old-world east European Jewish men in their fur-rimmed hats and long earlocks, together with wives in their kerchiefs, dancing and cavorting in irrepressible joy. Underneath are the words, “Who are rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.”

Other things breed in us that anxiety which is a sign of spiritual ill health.   One such is a lack of singlemindedness concerning the kingdom of God or the truth of God or the righteousness of God. Any pastor regularly sees people whose anxiety has arisen over moral compromise. Now they are riding two horses at once. They could ride one or the other, but this would mean giving up something. Then they might as well keep on riding both for a while — except that the two horses, the two paths, the two commitments, are beginning to diverge and it appears that someone is going to be pulled apart.   The apostle Paul reminds young Timothy, “No soldier on active service gets sidetracked in civilian pursuits.” Exactly. Lack of singlemindedness concerning the kingdom of God , the truth of God, the righteousness of God; doublemindedness will always mire us in anxiety.

There’s something else spiritually important that causes anxiety to surge over us and settle within us: our refusal to admit that life is fragile. Because we won’t admit that life is fragile and therefore won’t come to terms with its uncertainty, we preoccupy ourselves with rendering life 100% certain and secure, only to find that we can never domesticate life like this. The attempt at rendering life foolproof, accident proof, disaster proof, disease proof, suffering proof, surprise proof; this attempt always fails in the end, but not before we have rendered ourselves anxious beyond telling and also warped ourselves profoundly. It’s always better to admit that life is fragile; nothing is permanent; bodily security is impossible, and our true security, profound security, lies in God’s care for us and our trust in his care. Many expressions in scripture point to life’s fragility and impermanence: “All flesh is grass;” “The form of this world is passing away”; “We are dust”; “Our years are soon gone; they fly away.” All these expressions mean the same: life is precarious. Yet the myth persists that life can be made perfectly secure. The preoccupation with making life secure merely makes us inwardly more insecure as anxiety multiplies.

 

III: — The gospel insists, in the midst of our fragility and anxiety, that there is a security which can’t be dislodged: “Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness,” our Lord insists. Whenever I lose sight of what I’m to be about first; whenever I lose sight of what is first, I’m corrected by “beaming up” one or two men with whom I appear to have little in common yet by whom I’ve been helped profoundly over and over: alcoholics who have been rendered contently sober by the grace of God. The AA man or woman who knows and cherishes contented sobriety knows, and knows from terrible experience, that the roof can be falling in here or there or everywhere in life; still, no disruption can be allowed to threaten his sobriety. Yes, he may have lost his job; but the difficulties arising over losing his job won’t be helped if he loses his job and his sanity. He may find the boss insufferable; but chemically induced oblivion won’t rid the office of the boss. Of all the slogans that adorn the walls of the room where the AA meeting is held the three that speak so very tellingly to me are, “How important is it?” “First things first”, and “It’s not your drinking, it’s your stinking thinking.”

“How important is it?” However important “it” might be, it isn’t so important as to be worth the surrender of one’s sobriety and contentment.

“First things first.” The man or woman’s deliverance is plainly first and must be kept first just because it can’t be relegated to second. The sober alcoholic knows that if his contented sobriety is ever moved down to second, it won’t even be second for the simple reason that it won’t exist at all.

“It’s not your drinking; it’s your stinking thinking.” “Stinking thinking” is thinking that its perpetrator believes to be the soul of rationality and common sense, when any observer knows it to be the most blatant rationalisation and glaring stupidity.

And therefore every day when this concern or that concern threatens to multiply anxiety in me I have to recall the fact of God’s kingdom and righteousness and my commitment to that kingdom and righteousness. And as often as I recall God’s kingdom and righteousness, now threatened with being eclipsed by whatever has upset me, I have to say to myself as well, “How important is it? First things first. What you think to be pure rationality, Professor Shepherd, is the shabbiest rationalisation.”

I have learned something more from my friends who have been substance abusers. They live for one thing: helping another suffering person to the same experience, the same truth. The AA member can be a farmer, a physician, a truck driver, a homemaker. At least this is how a livelihood is earned. Living, however, is something else. Living is now a matter of helping a suffering person with messed up head and heart towards a new day, a bright day; a day in whose light the old day, dark day, evil day is repudiated even as God is enjoyed and praised forever. In other words, my friends live to introduce someone else to that deliverance for which they are eternally grateful themselves.

I find myself challenged by all of this, and often rebuked by it. I’m impelled to ask myself again and again, “What do I live for? Do I live to help a fellow-sufferer and fellow-sinner with messed up head and heart towards a new day, a bright day in which God is known and God’s reign becomes the atmosphere that sustains and satisfies even as God himself is praised forever? In other words, do I live to introduce someone else to that deliverance for which I am eternally grateful myself?

I can’t avoid asking this question. After all, the fact that that I’m called “reverend” doesn’t mean I’ve entered that gate which Jesus pronounces narrow or embarked upon that way which Jesus calls rigorous. I have no doubt that the clergyman’s daily trafficking in religion can render any clergyman impervious to the gospel. And then perchance I meet the AA member whose eyes shine just because he’s had, only yesterday, the opportunity of introducing someone to that blessing which only those who are acquainted with it can understand. I recall the word of our Lord: “Do you really want to be rid of your envious anxiety and your niggling moodiness and your childish resentment? Then seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. The other matters will then sort themselves out.”

A few verses before Jesus tells us to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and therein shed our anxiety he says, “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where inflation erodes it and governments tax it. You lay up treasure in heaven, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” We’ve already seen what this means; namely, what we cherish is what we pursue. Immediately Jesus adds, “The eye is the lamp of the body; if your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light. But if your eye is unsound, your whole body is full of darkness.”

The Greek word that our English bible translates “sound” has two dictionary meanings: “single” and “generous.” The Greek word that our English bible translates “unsound” literally means “evil.” “Evil eye” is a Hebrew expression that means grudging, miserly, stingy, ungenerous. According to Jesus to be miserly, stingy, ungenerous is to have our entire self darkened, while to be singleminded concerning God’s kingdom and generous as well is to have our entire self full of light.

God has given himself to us without condition, without measure, without reservation. His “eye” has been sound in that he has been singleminded in his search for us and generous in lavishing himself upon us. His “eye” has never been an “evil eye”; that is, he has never been grudging, miserly, stingy. He calls us to be “sound-eyed” ourselves, giving ourselves to him and to those whom he brings before us. If our eye is sound, says Jesus, then we ourselves shall be full of light. If our eye is evil (i.e., if we are stingy and miserly) then we shall be dark ourselves and incapable of bringing light to bear on anyone else.

“Do you think that by worrying you can live ten minutes longer?” asks Jesus. “Then seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. Where your treasure is, your heart will be. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.” This is our Lord’s antidote to anxiety.

 

                                                                                                      Dr Victor Shepherd     

Feb. 16 2003

(NRSV)

 

Matthew 6:30    14:31 ; 16:8

Several years ago there was made yet another bad film about the life of Jesus. The film was bad because it falsified our Lord. For instance, where Jesus says six times in Matthew 23, “Woe to you”,  the movie director depicted Jesus screaming in a rage; vindictive, venomous hostility. The impression created by the movie was that Jesus was bent on retaliation: “Just wait, fellows, you are going to get yours.” What the movie director obviously didn’t know was this: the word Jesus uses for “woe” isn’t a threat; it’s a lament. The word “woe” doesn’t express ill-temper or vindictiveness or denunciation; it expresses sadness. Our Lord’s heart is breaking for people who are confused themselves and can only confuse others. “Woe to you”, on the lips of Jesus, means, “Fellows, if you only knew how mistaken you are; if you only knew how wide of the mark you are; your situation is pitiable.” Jesus isn’t flaying them; he’s lamenting their blindness and its consequences for them and others.

The same sort of misunderstanding occurs in those situations where Jesus speaks of the disciples as “men of little faith”. Actually in the Greek text the word “men” doesn’t appear: “You midget-faiths”. Since boyhood I’ve listened to people read the gospel passages in a tone of sour contempt: “You jerks, you near-sighted nincompoops, you never get it right, do you. You can’t be counted on for anything.” The context, however, doesn’t suggest for a minute that Jesus is disgusted or angry or contemptuous. The context suggests surprise, amazement even: “Gosh, fellows, have you forgotten who I am and what I’ve promised? Have I ever let you down before? Haven’t you always found me true to my word? Why is your faith so tiny?” Our Lord speaks in a spirit of surprise, yes, but also compassion and gentleness and encouragement, not in a spirit of contempt or disgust.

Today Jesus Christ addresses you and me as “little-faiths”. He isn’t chiding us. He’s encouraging us. He wants our pipsqueak faith to swell until we know ourselves seized by his kindness and constancy. He wants our faith to expand as he both informs us and invigorates us.

Then what are the situations in which Jesus finds his followers, 1^st Century and 21^st Century disciples alike, to be people of little faith?

I: — The first is anxiety, anxiety concerning matters of everyday living: food, clothing, children, sickness, domestic relationships; responding to the demands of workplace, community, congregation; contending with incipient arthritis, failing eyesight and fading memory. In the Sermon on the Mount the Master says, “Don’t be anxious about life – what you will eat or drink or wear. Life, real life, consists in more than food or clothing. Therefore seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness; then the other matters will sort themselves out. Your Father knows what you need.”

“Nonsense”, someone reacts, “It’s pious nonsense. Whether our Father cares or not, the occasion of our anxiety remains. It could be that he cares; we’ll even assume that he does. Still, the difficulties in our lives remain difficult.”

I appreciate the objection.   There are people whose lives are riddled with such difficulty that telling them not be anxious would appear to be as effective as telling the wind to stop blowing. In fact most people are contending with much more difficulty than others perceive. Then most people are understandably anxious. We are anxiety-prone people just because we have reason to be.

One of the worst features of our anxiety is that it fragments us. We worry about this, worry about that. Mentally our imagination travels down this road, then down an alternative, then down another road again. Every time our mind moves down a road, heart and stomach follow. Before long it seems there’s part of us strewn along all of the roads we’ve been on in our mind’s eye. A hundred times a day we say “What if? What if this? What if that?” And every time we utter it another piece of us is broken off as we feel ourselves ever more fragmented.

We should note that our Lord doesn’t chide us, “Now, now; don’t be anxious; you know that you shouldn’t be anxious.” If this is all he said he’d be irritating and useless in equal measure.   Instead he reminds us that we are to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. We are ever to be oriented to his kingdom and his righteousness. Fragmentation isn’t overcome because we strain ourselves to suppress anxiety. Fragmentation is overcome as a new preoccupation captures us, even though our difficulties remain difficult. The new preoccupation is the King’s kingdom and the King’s righteousness.

The kingdom of God is that healed creation which Jesus Christ brings with him. It is discerned only in faith, to be sure, but it’s no less real for being seen only by the eyes of faith. Righteousness is what we do in light of the truth and reality we’ve recognized. Captured by the truth of the kingdom, and committed to doing the truth that we’ve recognized, our preoccupation here relativises the bundle of insolubles that always promotes anxiety.

In the year 1520 Martin Luther wrote a brief tract on Christian freedom where he discusses, tangentially, anxiety and its antidote.   Luther points out that trying to wrestle our anxiety to the ground simply renders our anxiety our preoccupation, with the result that our anxiety is worse than ever. Struggling to find within ourselves the antidote to our anxiety merely intensifies it. Therefore, says Luther, we shouldn’t try to live “in ourselves”; instead we must live “in another”. Specifically we live in two others: we live in Christ by faith and we live in the neighbour by love. To say the same thing differently, we live in the kingdom by faith and we live in the neighbour by acting self-forgetfully on her behalf. We seek first the kingdom and its righteousness – only then to find that our anxiety is displaced, relativised, shrivelled. We cease to be preoccupied with our persistent difficulties as we are taken out of ourselves and into these two others: Jesus Christ and the neighbour to whom he assigns us.

Please don’t think I’m advertising myself as someone whose faith has moved beyond “little”. My faith is little. I know it. And therefore if I strike you as someone whose fragmentation isn’t entirely overcome, so be it. I don’t claim to have made great progress on the road I’ve just described. I do know, however, beyond any doubt, that it’s the right road. It’s as we seek first Christ’s kingdom and his righteousness that faith grows and anxiety recedes.

 

II: — Another situation where our Lord recognizes our faith to be little and addresses us as “little-faiths” only to encourage us is the situation of fear. Paralysing fear. Fear of what? Fear of anything. For years now I’ve thought that there are fears peculiar to childhood, fears peculiar to adolescence, fears peculiar to maturity, fears peculiar to old age. What do people my age fear? Here’s one: we fear that the work we have undertaken on our Lord’s behalf and pursued doggedly for years; we fear it might dribble away leaving nothing. Here I have in mind anything we do in his name whether explicitly or implicitly; anything our commitment to him impels us to attempt; anything we do in church life or in community life on account of the profession we make. What if it all proves fruitless?

In a gospel incident that has long been one of my favourites Peter, caught up with the other disciples in a fierce storm, recognizes Jesus coming to him across the water. He cries, “Master, bid me come to you on the water”. He gets out of the boat and starts walking. Then he looks down at the waves around him and starts to sink. He starts to sink inasmuch as the waves now loom larger than does his Lord. Jesus catches him before he goes under and remarks, “O you little-faith, whey did you doubt?”

It’s easy to doubt. When I was newly ordained and began and appointed to my first congregation, I thought that unbelief would shrivel up noticeably, even dramatically, before the force of my ministry. Why, I was a gold medallist in theology; I could put words together; I’d be able to articulate gospel-truth so very compellingly that no sensible person would be left doubting or disobedient. But this didn’t happen. After a few weeks I found myself, one Sunday morning, thinking I must surely be stuck with a congregation of tuberculosis patients, because as soon as I started to preach they started to cough. I didn’t suspect a conspiracy; they hadn’t “packed” on me the way school children will “pack” on a supply teacher. They were simply unaccustomed to paying attention to the sermon, since they expected nothing to happen during the sermon: twenty minutes of vacant time to be filled up with coughing, nose-blowing, looking out the window, chatting with each other. I saw one man staring at the thermostat on the wall, minutes on end. When the service had ended I asked him why he was intrigued with the thermostat. “I saw a sunbeam moving toward the thermostat as the hour moved along”, he told me, “and I was waiting until the sunbeam hit it, for then the thermostat would turn off the furnace and the church would become cold.” The climax came one Sunday when I saw two adults in the back row passing a note like school children who think they’ve fooled the teacher. I stopped halfway through the sermon. I was on the point of saying what I’m everlastingly grateful I didn’t say. The moment was nothing less than a crisis for me, because I knew that if I terminated the sermon under those circumstances I was finished. I was a minister only because I had recognized the Master years earlier and said to him, eagerly, expectantly, “Bid me come to you.” He had bade me come to him. Now, however, I was looking not at him but at all the “stuff” around me that I was about to drown in. I knew that if I interrupted the sermon, I – not the sermon – I was finished.

Everybody knows that church life unfolds according to its own logic (or illogic). Church life is much more frustrating than the workplace or the service club or the professional organization. It’s easy for our frustration to mutate into anger, our anger to mutate into contempt, and our contempt to mutate into – our absence.

While the church is a more frustrating venue for our service and witness than is the world, very often the world is more vicious. It takes enormous persistence to honour integrity and insist on elemental decency and distance oneself from unjust favouritism and cruel exploitation and conscienceless cover-ups. It takes enormous persistence to remain resilient just because the price of it all is so high and the fruit of it all appears so meagre. Since we are people of little faith, we are tempted to capitulate.

While there’s every reason for us to capitulate, we must nevertheless ask ourselves if we are no more than children, no more than children who have to have instant results and instant gratification or they complain and quit. Are we going to allow not only the tidal wave but even the smallest ripple to have us sink? The One who calls us “little-faith” does so not to ridicule us and not to denounce us; he calls us “little-faith” only to remind us of the present truth about ourselves and to promise us a greater truth about ourselves: our little faith he will augment. And as he augments it we shall cease looking down at the turbulence around us and look more consistently ahead to him who is always coming towards us. At this point we can put our frustration behind us, and with it behind us, find that we can go on, cheerfully go on, unsoured and unembittered.

 

III: — The final situation exposing our little faith that we are examining today concerns discernment. The disciples have witnessed the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. A day or two later they complain that they lack bread. Jesus says two things: “Beware of the leaven of Sadducees and Pharisees;  you little-faiths, why do you say that you lack bread?” Through this pronouncement – “Why do you say that you lack bread?” – Jesus is reminding them, “I am the bread of life. You don’t lack bread. At the same time, be careful lest you absorb from the Sadducees and Pharisees what isn’t bread, what corrupts that bread of life which I am.”

We must be very, very careful here. For centuries too many Christians have read such verses in Matthew’s gospel and then concluded that everything about the Pharisees was bad; Judaism and Pharisaism are the same; therefore Judaism is bad and Jewish people can be ignored or despised or even mistreated. This is dreadful.

When Jesus appeared among the Jewish people in the year 4 BCE there were several different groups within Israel . The Sadducees recognized only the first five books of the Older Testament as scripture, and believed nothing about the resurrection of the dead. Plainly Jesus wasn’t a Sadducee. The Scribes recognized all of the Older Testament as scripture and ransacked it day and night, but weren’t particularly oriented to the Kingdom of God . Since Jesus was preoccupied with the Kingdom of God , plainly he wasn’t a scribe. The zealots hated the Roman Army’s occupation of Palestine . They were obsessed with assassinating Roman soldiers, fomenting revolution, and restoring self-government to the Jewish people. Plainly Jesus wasn’t a zealot. The Pharisees were teachers. They taught the Torah, that Torah which Jesus said he came to fulfil but never to deny. As a matter of fact there are may parallels between the teaching of the Pharisees and the teaching of Jesus. Jesus belonged to the Pharisaic movement. Therefore we must never see Jesus and Pharisees as having nothing in common. And we must never regard our Lord’s criticisms of his fellow-Pharisees as a pretext or excuse for disdaining Jewish people then or now.

Then what does the text mean? One day earlier Jesus had fed the multitudes. Now he is saying that his feeding of the multitudes is a sign of something more than himself as bread-maker. His feeding of the multitudes is a sign that he is the bread of life. His followers are to know it. As they come to know him in greater and greater intimacy they will find that their intimacy with him is self-confirming. Their intimacy with him will bring with it such conviction concerning its truth that they will need no other corroboration. Their intimacy with him will bring with it such confirmation and conviction that the kind of “sign” that some Pharisees sometimes asked for won’t be necessary for them, and in any case wouldn’t persuade people who aren’t intimate followers. “Signs”, so-called, are superfluous for those who know Jesus intimately and unconvincing for those who don’t. “Therefore”, says Jesus, “when the Scribes and Pharisees maintain that I can’t be who I am unless I provide a sign, understand that they’ve got it wrong. Your ever-deepening intimacy with me will provide you with all the confirmation and conviction and assurance you will ever need concerning me.”

Countless Christians have proved our Lord correct. That’s why they don’t look elsewhere. When people say to me (as many people have said to me), “But how do you know that ‘Christianity’ is true when you’ve never tried Buddhism or Shintoism? How do you know ‘Jesus is the Way’ when you’ve never probed the way of Hinduism?” I say to them, “When I came upon Maureen McGuigan and found in her even more than what I was looking for in a woman (since until I met her I scarcely knew what to look for); when I came upon her and knew that she was the one for me, I stopped looking.” Tell me, do you think I’d be more “broad minded” if I lived with a dozen different women and then concluded that while they all had their strong points, on balance I preferred Maureen?

Intimate followers of Jesus learn every day that who he is for them, who they can expect him to be in the future in view of who he’s been for them in past; such followers aren’t even tempted to look elsewhere. The profoundest relationship any human can have confirms itself with fresh force every day.

“Beware of the leaven of Sadducees and Pharisees”? Jesus means “Beware of those who tell you I can’t be who you’ve found me to be, on the grounds that I’ve never given proofs, signs, of the truth that I am.” Of course our Lord provides no such signs or proofs. In life, the profoundest truth authenticates itself. Nothing outside it can authenticate it.

 

And so it is with a smile on his face and an encouraging arm around his people Christ says to us, “Come on, you little-faiths:

Seek first the Kingdom and the Kingdom’s righteousness, and your faith will swell as anxiety recedes.

You are frightened of ever so much, frightened that the work you undertake in my name might turn out to be fruitless in view of the turbulence that threatens it? Keep looking at me, not at the turbulence and your faith will expand as fear evaporates.

You hear people telling you I can’t be Way and Truth and Life because no proof of this has                                    been given? Just go on living ever more intimately with me. Your faith will mushroom as you find your relationship with me mushrooming so as to leave you never doubting that you and have been grafted to each other.”

 

We are people of little faith. Our Lord doesn’t denounce us for it. He holds out greater faith for us, and will continue to hold it out until that Day when faith gives way to sight and we behold him face to face.

 

                                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                

June 2005

 

Matthew 7:1-5         Deuteronomy 30:15-20        Ephesians 4:25-30

 

If there’s to be a national holiday for Queen Victoria ‘s birthday and Canada Day and “civic” whatever, how much more important is it that there be a national holiday that honours labour.  On Labour Day Canadians wisely acknowledge the place of work in our nation as a whole and in our individual lives.  We work not merely because we have to in order to survive; we work inasmuch as God has ordained us to work.  His command enjoining work is prior to the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. In other words, regardless of what frustration or pain or seeming futility might arise with respect to work in the wake of the Fall, work itself is good.  God’s command is always and everywhere good, always and everywhere attended with blessing. In recognizing work on Labour Day we are gladly owning the dignity of labour; we are saying that humankind is meant to work, is honoured through work, is to find work fulfilling.  We are also saying, by contrast, that there’s nothing demeaning about work, hard work.

We should know this in any case, for Jesus himself worked.  Prior to the work of his public ministry he worked with his father in their “rough carpentry” business, “Joseph and Son”, in Nazareth . From what we glean here and there in the gospels the two men made large, functional items like ox-yokes and ploughs. When Jesus begins his work of preaching and teaching, those who hear him are astonished and say, “Where did this fellow get his wisdom?         He’s only a carpenter, isn’t he?”   Yes, he is a carpenter from a sleepy town in Galilee , yet he’s more than a carpenter. He has more to say to us than up-to-the-minute woodworking advice.  At the same time, the “more” that he has to say to us is all the more credible just because we know he isn’t an armchair wordsmith.  His workshop days have given him down-to-earth, workshop wisdom.

 

I: — Think about his pithy comment concerning plank and sawdust.  Sawdust is always blowing around in a workshop.         Sooner or later a speck finds its way into someone’s eye.  It’s bothersome, and work can’t continue until the speck is removed. A fellow-worker who means well (of course), whose intentions are the best (of course) immediately offers help: “Here, let me take the speck of sawdust out of your eye, and then you’ll be able to see better” — all the while forgetting that he himself has a two-by-four, ten feet long, sticking out of his own eye. “First take the plank out of your own eye”, our Lord insists, “then you might be able to do something to help your neighbour with his sawdust-speck.”

Jesus insists that we, his disciples, mustn’t fall into the habit of fault-finding, carping, nit-picking, ceaseless criticism of matters small and smaller still, as we whittle our neighbour down until she has the stature of a toothpick (we think) when, by contrast, we appear larger than life ourselves, gigantic even, in our inflated self-estimation. The habit, the deep rut of constant, niggling criticism, is a habit that is as self-intensifying as any addiction.  It’s a habit easy to fall into just because we all want to think highly of ourselves, and the surest way of building ourselves up is to grind someone else down.

I have learned that many people perceive the wisdom and force of our Lord’s teaching yet are confused about its application.  At the same time as they hear Jesus speaking of plank and sawdust they also hear him saying, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”   Confusion arises when such people mistake judging (in the sense of hyper-critical faultfinding) with making sound judgements.  The two shouldn’t be confused: disdainful judgementalism has nothing to do with the formation of  sound judgements.

Everywhere in scripture God’s people are commanded to form sound judgements. God isn’t honoured when his people remain naïve, readily victimized or fooled or “fished in.” We have to discriminate between what enriches us profoundly and what appears to enrich but actually impoverishes. We have to discern what can be welcomed and what must be shunned.  We do everything in our power to foster such discrimination in our youngsters just because we know what disasters await those who lack sound judgement. To lack sound judgement anywhere in life renders people tragic concerning themselves and dangerous concerning others.  Jesus tells us we have to be as wise as serpents.         His apostles tell us we have to test the spirits, since not all spirits are holy. Once we understand the distinction between our Lord’s command to form sound judgements concerning ourselves and his prohibition of a contemptuous attitude concerning others; once we understand this distinction, confusion evaporates.

Jesus Christ speaks so very vehemently on this matter because he knows our hearts. He knows, for instance, our capacity for unconscious rationalization.  You and I can insist with genuine sincerity, genuine, conscious sincerity, that is, that the sawdust speck in someone else is real while the plank in our own eye is only imaginary.

A few years ago I was asked to conduct an afternoon communion service and to preach at Emmanuel College , U of T, the seminary where I was prepared for the ministry of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. I took unusual pains with the sermon because I knew that theology students come to chapel with their sermon-dissecting knives super-sharp.  And besides, I wanted to impress the students with an uncommonly fine sermon. The week had been exceptionally busy. The morning had brought several pastoral upheavals before me.  The traffic on the way to Toronto was heavier than usual. And then of course I had to scramble for a parking spot.  Still, as I walked into the building I felt I was ready to meet the students and show them a thing or two.  Out of a student body of 150, six came to the service.  I preached and administered Holy Communion as scheduled. After the service a student who had attended said to me, gently, “You were hostile this afternoon.”  “I was not!”, I told her, “I’m not the slightest….”         “Victor, you were hostile today.”   “I may have been upset, but I wasn’t hostile.”  There’s the rationalization, as sincere as the day is long: when other people are hostile, they are hostile for sure and hostile without excuse; when I appear hostile, however, I am in truth merely upset. Our unconscious capacity to rationalize is so vast that we can magnify our neighbour’s sawdust-speck into an oak tree, even as we shrink our plank to a twig.  In it all we seem not to know how ridiculous we appear; more than ridiculous, how cruel.

Again our Lord speaks so vehemently on this matter because he knows that berating someone for her sawdust-speck often discourages her, then depresses her, and even immobilizes her.  In the face of relentless criticism she feels she can’t acquit herself. She gives up trying. She is simply crushed into immobility.

Our Lord knows too that our habit of faultfinding drives the person faulted farther and farther into self-righteousness (how else can he protect himself?), whereupon, of course, we fault him for being self-righteous. When our constant criticism drills him like a woodpecker’s beak drilling into tree bark until it finds the insect it’s looking for, he insists that he’s a better person than he’s made out to be.  What else can he do to ward off our painful pecking?  As he defends himself we find our approach to him confirmed, for now it’s plain that he can’t stand the truth about himself.  We forget that his self-righteousness swelled only in response to our savagery.

The worst consequence of our carping, however, is that it forces the victim to retaliate in kind. Carping begets carping, pecking pecking, savagery savagery.  Psychologically fragile people may crumble when ceaselessly faulted; the psychologically resilient, however, fight back.

When Jesus speaks to us about faultfinding he uses strong language: “hypocrite.” Hupokrites is the Greek word for the actor who wore a false face.  When we see the speck in our neighbour’s eye but not the plank in our own we are phonies. We have forgotten that we too are fallen creatures, as warped in mind and heart as the person in front of us whose depravity we find glaring.

Jesus ends his workshop teaching bluntly: “First take the plank out of your own eye; then you will see clearly to take the sawdust-speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” It is only as we admit frankly, even fearfully, our own inner depravity and corruption, and it is only as we do something about it that we will ever be able to help, correct and encourage our brother or sister.  To pretend anything else is to be a phoney, hupokrites.

 

II: — Another workshop saying, this time less severe and more comforting: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus made yokes every day. He knew that if the yoke were made well and were well fitted to the animal’s neck, the ox could pull the heaviest load efficiently and with minimal discomfort. If, on the other hand, the yoke were poorly made, it would rub the animal’s neck raw. Pulling the load would be a torment. Trying to pull the load might even strangle the animal.

Our Lord knew that some loads in life we simply cannot avoid.  We must pull them. “Since there are some loads in life you must pull”, he says, “why not pull them with a yoke that fits well? A yoke made by anyone other than me will only torment you, perhaps choke you. My yoke is easy.” When he says, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden”, the word he uses for “labour” isn’t the normal word for “work.”  The word he uses for “labour” has about it the air of frustration, grief, weariness, the matter of being worn-down and worn-out, tired to the point of being utterly fatigued and fed up.

Earlier in the sermon I said that work as such is not a sign of the Fall but rather an instance of God’s blessing.         Frustration at work, however, grief over work, futility and self-alienation and frenzy: these are a sign of the Fall.         And all of us are fallen creatures living in a fallen world.  Therefore there is an element of frustration and futility and self-contradiction in the matters we “labour over” throughout life.

The ten year-old wants to be a firefighter or a police officer or physician or ballerina. The ten year-old can’t see anything negative about these jobs.  Why, working at any one of these jobs is tantamount to endless glamour and play. The same person, now 40 years old, has found more frustration in the job than he thinks he can endure. Now he wants to get away from it all and raise beef cattle or write novels — as if beef farming were without frustration and the literary world were without treachery! The truth is, frustration and fatigue won’t disappear with the next job.         They have to be pulled along throughout life.  Then with whose yoke do we pull them?  Jesus insists that his yoke fits best, for only his yoke lets us pull life’s burdens without torment or strangulation.

Think about grief. The only way we can avoid grief at the loss of someone dear to us is not to have anyone dear to us. The only way to avoid grief is to avoid love.  But to protect ourselves in this manner against losing someone dear to us is to have lost everything already.  In other words, to love is to ensure grief.  Then grief is another of life’s burdens that can’t be dropped.

As for burdens, one of the cruellest myths floated in our society is the myth that life can be burden-free.  The myth survives for one reason: everyone wants to believe it.  In our silliness we often think that our life is burden-riddled, but so many others’ is burden-free.  The truth is, no one’s life is burden-free.  There is no magic formula which, recited frequently and believed ardently, will evaporate burdens overnight.

Our carpenter-friend doesn’t specialize in magic formulas or mantras. He specializes in yokes. His yoke allows the burden that must be pulled to be pulled without tormenting us or ruining us. But there’s something more. Not only were oxen yoked to the burden they had to pull, oxen were always yoked to each other. Ox-yokes are always made in pairs. At the same that we are yoked to the load we have to pull, we are always yoked to someone who pulls alongside us.

Who? To whom are we yoked as our companion throughout life’s burden-pulling?  Christ’s people are forever yoked to him.  The yoke he fits to us he fits to himself as well.  In other words, there is no burden known to you and me that isn’t his burden as well. His yoke is easy, then, in two senses: one, the yoke he makes for us fits well; two, the yoke he makes for us he makes for himself in addition.  He has bound himself to us in all of life’s struggles.

 

III: — The last workshop teaching we shall examine today, a stark one this time: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God .” There’s urgency about entering the kingdom through faith in the king himself.  There’s urgency about moving ahead in the kingdom, undeflected by distractions great or little. There has to be resolve, determination, to enter the company of the king and remain in it. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back ploughs a furrow that meanders in all directions, a hit-and-miss matter that would shame any farmer. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back resembles Lot ‘s wife: she looked back to the city she was leaving in that she thought there was greater security in what she was leaving behind than there was in what she was journeying towards.  Under God, however, in God, there is always greater security in what we are journeying towards than in what we are leaving behind.  The automobile driver who persisted in looking in the rear-view mirror alone would crack up in no time and go nowhere.

Jesus comes upon a man who gushes that he’d like nothing more than to be a disciple. “Then follow me”, says Jesus, “Follow me now.”

“I’ll follow as soon as I’ve buried my father”, the man replies, “I have domestic matters to attend to before I can begin following.”

“That’s an evasion”, says our Lord, “it’s a delaying tactic. Let the dead bury their dead. You come with me. If you put your hand to the plough and start looking around at this and that, the “this and that” will take you over and the kingdom will pass you by.  You’ll disqualify yourself.”

It’s difficult for us modern folk to appreciate our Lord’s urgency. We don’t grasp why his invitation to join him always has “RSVP” on it and why we mustn’t dawdle or delay. We overlook something that Jesus found transparently obvious and undeniable; namely, we can always delay making up our mind, but we can never delay making up our life. The man who says he hasn’t made up his mind about getting married is a bachelor. The woman who says she hasn’t made up her mind as to whether or not she should have children doesn’t have any. The student who says he hasn’t decided whether he should study tonight or take the night off isn’t studying. And those who have not yet made up their mind about following Jesus have not begun to follow. We can always delay making up our mind; we can never delay making up our life. Jesus won’t allow anyone he meets to deny this truth or forget it.  Again and again he stresses the urgency of entering the kingdom as we abandon ourselves to the king himself.

This third carpenter teaching, the starkest of the three we have probed today, has much to do with the first two, the ones about sawdust and yokes. It is only as we put our hand to the plough and do not look back; it is only as we resolve to live in the company of Jesus Christ and never reconsider; it is only as we continue to love him rather than fritter our affection on trifles and toys; it is only as we are instant and constant where he is concerned that we find ourselves free to hear and heed his word about sawdust and planks and the phoniness that laps at all of us; free to hear his word, we should note, and no less eager to do something about it.

In the same way it is only as we are serious about the yoke-maker, serious enough to move from detached mulling to ardent embracing of the one who has already embraced us; it is only when we are this serious that we find ourselves proving in our experience that his yoke is easier than any other, that what life compels us to pull is pulled better when his yoke both connects us to our burden and connects us to him.

We can always avoid making up our mind; we can never avoid making up our life. Either our hand is on the plough and we are looking ahead or we are looking around elsewhere, distracted, preoccupied with everything but him, perhaps majoring on minors, perhaps concerned with much that is good but with nothing that is godly.

 

Yes, our Lord was a carpenter. He knew about work, about salty sweat and sore muscles and slivers.  But he is also more than a carpenter.  He is the incarnate Son of God.  With the ring of authority, therefore, he urges us to come to him and never forsake him. In this we shall find ourselves both corrected and comforted.  Corrected when his sawdust-reminder challenges us to drop our carping born of pseudo-superiority; comforted when he yokes himself to us and pulls with us the burden that would otherwise torment us or strangle us.

Knowing all of this, today we should bind ourselves to him anew, and never, ever look back.

 

                                                                                             Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                  

Matthew 8:18

 

Everyone is aware that words change meaning as they are used everyday and bandied about. According to the Oxford English Dictionary to be stoned is to have rocks hurled at oneself. According to street-talk, however, to be “stoned” is to be intoxicated by marijuana. Only a few years ago the word “gay” meant merry or lighthearted; “gay” now has a meaning entirely unrelated to its previous meaning. What’s more, the recent meaning of “gay” is so deep in the North American psyche that the word will be a long time recovering its original meaning.

A similar change has befallen the word “conversion”. In scripture the word means “turning”, specifically a turning to God. Today, however, the word refers to a psychological development, an emotional experience. Biblically the word is associated with the human will. Today it’s associated primarily with feeling. Biblically “conversion” is entirely a response that God has equipped us to make and moved us to make. Today the word refers to something we initiate out of our own resources.

It’s important that we recover the biblical meaning of the word “conversion”. It’s even more important that we act upon our new understanding. This morning, then, I want us to probe together the significance of a threefold conversion.

I: — In the first place conversion is a turning toward Jesus Christ. Before I say another word about our turning toward him, let me state as strongly as I can a truth that we must always keep before us: we can turn toward him only because in him God has first turned toward us. The simple fact of the Incarnation, of God’s coming among us in Jesus Christ, demonstrates his turning toward us. Supremely in the cross God has turned toward us. Having turned toward us God will never turn away from us, never turn back from us, never turn his back on us, never abandon us, betray us or quit on us. Facing us now in Christ Jesus, God quickens in us the desire to turn and face him. More than quicken in us the desire to turn toward him, God fosters in us the capacity to turn toward him. Having given us both the desire and the capacity to turn toward him, God then invites us to do just that. There is no moment more crucial in any person’s life than that moment when the invitation is heard and the summons is unmistakable and the fork in the road is undeniable. Everything hangs on this moment. Let us make no mistake. God hasn’t turned toward us in Christ Jesus inasmuch as he has nothing better to do. He has turned toward us precisely in order to have us turn toward him. There is no more critical juncture than this.

Our Lord himself says, without hesitation, qualification, “I am Way, Truth, and Life. I alone am this.”

“Way” bespeaks road, pilgrimage, venture; it also bespeaks destination gained, arrival enjoyed, fulfillment guaranteed. Plainly our Lord insists that his invitation rejected means meandering, staggering, stumbling, groping, everything we associate with losing one’s way.

“Truth” (capital “T”) in scripture means reality. To face Jesus Christ is to know reality. To keep company with him, to be soaked in the Spirit that he pours forth, to live in that relationship with his Father to which he admits us: this is reality. It’s obvious that his invitation rejected means to forfeit reality and be left with illusion.

“Life” bespeaks responsiveness, responsiveness not only to him but also (as we shall see in a minute) responsiveness to others who have turned to face him, as well as responsiveness to those haven’t yet turned. It’s obvious that his invitation rejected leaves us with life spurned, life renounced, death.

In view of the fact that everything that issues from our turning toward Jesus Christ in response to God’s having turned toward us in Christ; in view of the fact that everything that issues from this is blessing, pure blessing, then how did “conversion” come to have such a bad press? How did people come to associate it only with endless negativity?

The word comes to have a negative connotation when the church loses confidence in Christ’s ability to turn people to himself, when the church feels that it has to do Christ’s work for him and create a point of contact for him in others. The traditional point of contact has been guilt. Undeniably there is a guilt that is proper before God; that is, there is that for which people should feel guilty because they are guilty. And to be sure our Lord knows what to do here and never fails to do it. Far removed from this situation, however, is artificial guilt that is worked up by assorted means of manipulation. Nothing has done more to discredit Christian proclamation than the psychological manipulation of people through inducing artificial guilt. Such manipulation doesn’t render the gospel credible. It may render a psychiatrist necessary, but it doesn’t render the gospel credible. We should cheerfully acknowledge right here that Jesus Christ alone can render his truth credible. And if he couldn’t our slick machinations wouldn’t help. Let’s admit for once and for all that to believe in Jesus Christ is to trust him to render compelling the truth that he himself is. Our emotional antics may amuse or distress other people; in no way do they render our Lord credible.

The second reason “conversion” has a negative connotation is that it has been hijacked by those who want to capture it exclusively for a coming-to-faith that is as sudden as it is dramatic. People who “saw the light in an instant”; people for whom it “all fell into place at once”; these people have tended to say that unless discipleship begins as theirs began it hasn’t begun at all.

This is not true. There are as many ways of coming to faith as there are ways of coming to be in love. To be sure, a few people, very few, fall in love “at first sight.” Far more people – most, in fact – take much longer to conclude that they are in love. Most people come to be in love through a protracted process replete with hesitation, doubts, misgivings, as well as enthusiasms, ardour and anguish. Nevertheless, one day they are overtaken by the awareness that they are indeed in love. Anyone who told them that they couldn’t be in love since they didn’t fall into love instantly would be dismissed with the wave-off he deserves.

I have never doubted that some people – a few – come to faith suddenly and dramatically. I have only one request to make of these people: that they stop casting aspersion on those whose coming to faith has stolen over them as quietly, yet as surely, as the dawn steals over a still-dark world. How long it takes to come to be in love isn’t important. How we come to be disciples isn’t important. Only one thing matters: that we begin to turn toward him who has already turned wholly toward us, that we set out (however tentatively at first) on the road of discipleship.

II: — In the second place conversion is a turning toward the church. Many people have difficulty grasping this point. They don’t see any connexion at all between Jesus Christ and the church. But of course they see no connexion in that they misunderstand the nature of the church. The church isn’t a club, albeit a club that is “a force for good.” The church – and the church alone – is the body of Christ. To turn toward Jesus Christ is always to turn toward all of him, head and body together. When we turn toward our Lord we aren’t turning toward a severed head; neither are we turning toward a headless torso. In other words, to be related to Jesus Christ is to be related to all of him, body as well as head. To abide in Christ, then, is to abide in his community. To cherish him is to cherish his people. To love him is to love his people, however disfigured they are.

Yet how reluctant people are to endorse this! Think of the attitude aided and abetted by television programming. TV religious broadcasting was intended originally for sick and shut-in people who couldn’t attend public worship. Now, however, it is shamelessly put forward as a substitute for public worship. You sit at home and click the channel-changer. You don’t worship; rather, you allow yourself to be entertained. After all, the channel-changer allows you to move from basketball to a talk-show to a soap opera (whose principal theme is always adultery) to a newscast (whose principal theme is usually house-fires) – to religion! You don’t assume responsibility in the local congregation; instead, you look on your hero with coifed hair from afar. It’s much easier to admire the TV star than it is to endure the local minister! If scandal beclouds the TV presentation, such scandal is incomparably easier to withstand than the anti-gospel currents and the shameful divagations of the local congregation.

Yet in the midst of all this there remains a truth we dare not forget: Jesus Christ isn’t divided. His head isn’t severed from his body. If we are going to face him and embrace him, then we are going to embrace all of him, head and body. Why is embracing all of him so very difficult? It’s difficult because of the jarring discrepancy between head and body. The head is fair to behold while the body is often ugly. The head is handsome while the body is frequently disfigured. The head is resplendent while the body is blemished. What we often forget, however, is this: every last person who is possessed of any faith at all in Jesus Christ came to such faith only through the body, the church. You and I are not the first Christians. Who preserved the truth of Christ for us? Church fathers in Egypt did, even as the church of that era was riddled with political intrigues that make politics anywhere today appear virtuous. Who preserved the truth of Christ for us? Mediaeval thinkers did, including those thinkers whose thinking often obscured the gospel as much as it honoured the gospel. Who preserved the truth of Christ for us? The Protestant Reformers did, even though they remained inexcusably blind to those overseas mission-fields for the sake of which Roman Catholic Jesuits bled to death or were burned at the stake. Who preserved the truth of Christ for us? John Wesley did, even though he was laughably eccentric and lacking in self-perception, as his failed marriage attests, Wesley being as upset at his wife’s departure as I am upset when a Jehovah’s Witness finally departs my house. More recently, who handed on the truth of Christ to me? Ministers did who couldn’t discuss philosophy with me; Sunday School teachers did whose sincerity didn’t quite hide their prejudices; my parents did even though they frustrated me with their failure to understand where I hurt and why. Yes, the body is frequently disfigured, always dishevelled, sometimes disgraced. Still, it is only by means of the body of Christ that anyone ever comes to know the master himself.

While we are dwelling on the fact that Jesus Christ isn’t a severed head but rather can be loved only as his body is cherished, we should review some scriptural truths that we are prone to forget. We should recall that God wills a people for himself, a people. To come to faith in Jesus Christ and to be added to the people of God, to the body of Christ, are two inseparable aspects of a single event. We should recall that innermost private faith in Jesus Christ and outermost public confession of him are always fused in scripture. Where there is no public confession (one dimension of which is public worship) there simply is no faith. We should recall that however weighty an individual’s gift or talent is, it’s useless unless it’s added to the talents of others in the congregation. A solitary piccolo player sitting by himself on a darkened stage in an unheated Roy Thomson Hall is useless.

That conversion which is a genuine turning toward Jesus Christ is always also a turning toward the church. To endorse our Lord in faith is always to endorse his people in love.

III: — In the third place conversion is a turning toward the world. Pollsters tell us that North America’s all-time favourite bible-text is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only¼” (you can fill it in yourself.) What so many seem to over look is that it’s the world that God loves, the big, bad world.

I’m aware that someone is going to remind me immediately of what the apostle James has to say: friendship with the world means enmity with God. I’m aware of what James says, and I agree with him without hesitation: there is an attitude to the world that is an uncritical admiration of the world, an unwitting appropriation of a fallen world, a naïve fascination with the world’s folly and a senseless seduction through the world’s corruption. James is correct. Uncritical friendship with the world is spiritually fatal.

The point is, however, that the Christian is no more to be uncritical of the world than his Lord is uncritical of the world, even as the Christian loves the world as much as his Lord loves it. God never allows his people to turn their back on the world for one unarguable reason: God himself never turns his back on it. It’s plain, then, that two attitudes to the world are forbidden the Christian. One attitude is that Pollyanna view that pretends everything is rosy or near-rosy or soon-to-be-rosy, newspaper-writers being no more than doomsayers who take perverse delight in exaggerating human foibles. The other attitude forbidden the Christian is despair of the world. God doesn’t permit his people to despair of the world, for God himself has appointed the world to a destiny more glorious than anything the world can imagine about itself: namely, a creation healed, the kingdom of God.

Few books in scripture grip me as much as the book of Revelation. I’m startled every time I peer into the book and come upon the two sharpest contrasts anyone could imagine. On the one hand, the people for whom John writes are suffering atrociously at the hands of the world, and John speaks of the world in the strongest terms: “dragon”, “whore”, “beast”, “blood-drinker”, “saint-slayer”. On the other hand, the very people who have suffered so much at the hands of conscienceless cruelty are forbidden to abandon the world. In the first chapter of Revelation John insists that Christians have been made “priests”. The function of priests, biblically, is to intercede. Christians are to intercede tirelessly on behalf of the world. Their priestly service, their intercession, certainly includes prayer but isn’t restricted to it. They are to intercede on behalf of the world in any way they can, intervene in the world in any way they can, however much that world disdains them and abuses them. In the Hebrew bible priests have another function: they offer up sacrifices. What’s the sacrifice John’s readers are to offer up? Themselves! Christians are priests who offer up themselves for the sake of the world. John can make this point, however, only because of a truth he has acknowledged in the preceding verse: Jesus Christ is “the ruler of kings on earth.” (Rev. 1:5-6) Our Lord rules the world, ultimately. No one else does. The Roman Emperor Domitian didn’t rule it when John was writing the book of Revelation, even though Domitian thought he did. Jesus Christ is “the ruler of kings on earth.” Then of course Christians have a priestly ministry, an intercessory ministry, to exercise on behalf of the world: because Christ rules the earth’s rulers ultimately, our priestly service to the world can never be fruitless ultimately.

You asked for a sermon on conversion. Conversion is a turning toward the one who has already turned toward us. To turn toward him, however, is also to turn toward and never forsake all that he has pledged himself to; namely, the church and the world. The church, of course, is God’s demonstration project, the first installment, of what he intends to do for the world; namely, recover a rebellious creation and render it that kingdom wherein the king’s will is done without exception even as the king himself is loved without end.

 

 Victor Shepherd

Matthew 9:35-38

 

In the course of every-day conversation all of us refer to body-parts metaphorically. Without hesitating for a second we say of someone who has changed his mind about doing something bold, “He’s got cold feet”. If someone is born to the upper classes we say, “She’s a blue-blood”. If we object to something strenuously we say, “I can’t stomach that!” And if someone is utterly devoid of courage we say, “He’s gutless”.

In all of this we are speaking metaphorically. We are not commenting literally on the medical condition of anyone’s stomach or feet.

Our ancient foreparents spoke like this too. The ancient Greeks spoke of the SPLAGCHNA. The SPLAGCHNA were known as the “nobler viscera”. The nobler viscera consisted of the heart, the lungs and the bowels. Together these were regarded as the seat of our profoundest feeling, our deepest emotion, our most significant reaction and response to human need.

The Greek verb corresponding to SPLAGCHNA is SPLAGCHNIZESTHAI. The verb was used to speak of bowels that had knotted, a heart that had broken, lungs that had gasped for air. This verb was the strongest in the Greek language for compassion. When this verb was used its force wasn’t that someone was concerned or someone was sympathetic or even that someone was moved. Its force was that someone was so very compassionate that he was beside himself. He wasn’t moved; his heart was broken. He didn’t “feel for” someone else; his bowels convulsed. He didn’t inhale calmly before making a comment that would cost him nothing in any case; he gasped for air as though he were drowning.

This word is used over and over in the written gospels to speak of our Lord’s compassion. A word this extreme speaks of a compassion equally extreme; a compassion this extreme points to a human need no less extreme. What was the need before which Christ’s compassion shook him?

 

I: — The gospel-writers tell us that Jesus was shaken when he came upon crowds who were “like sheep without a shepherd”. Everywhere in the Hebrew bible “sheep without a shepherd” are sheep who are lost. When Jesus looked out over the crowds — ultimately the whole world — his heart broke at their spiritually lostness.

What is the spiritual condition of humankind, anyway? Back in the Victorian era our foreparents were concerned chiefly with moral matters. To no one’s surprise, the gospel was skewed in the direction of moralism. Pulpit pronouncements were skewed in the direction of moral instruction, moral advice, even moral threat. Plainly, the ultimate human need was thought to be moral need. The church aimed at supplying virtue. Faith was subtly skewed to be confidence in a moral order, and faithfulness meant loyalty to the Judeo-Christian moral code. The minister was to be a moral pillar of the community. To be “lost”, in the Victorian era, meant to be morally adrift.

Then the Victorian moral era gave way to the modern psychological era. Today we aren’t concerned chiefly with moral matters; we are concerned chiefly with psychological matters. Today the gospel is skewed in the direction of psychological assistance. The ultimate human need is deemed to be a psychological need. The human predicament is lack of psychological integration. Faith is subtly skewed to be confidence in psychological processes, while faithfulness is loyalty to one’s school of psychology or even to one’s therapist. The minister is expected to be a model of “togetherness”. To be “lost”, in our era, is not to “have it all together”.

Let us be sure we understand and acknowledge something crucial: both the Victorian era and the modern era have skewed the gospel, and with it the mission of the church and the meaning of Christian truths. Let us be sure we understand and acknowledge that when our Lord’s bowels knotted and his heart broke and he gasped for breath it was not over moral or psychological matters: it was because he saw the crowds to be spiritually lost. Yes, there are undeniable moral and psychological consequences to spiritual disorientation. Nevertheless, our Lord was clear as to which was disease and which was symptom, which was problem and which was manifestation of problem. He insisted that “lost” meant lost, and “spiritually lost” meant lost with respect to humankind’s situation before God.

Everyone has been lost geographically at some point. Likely we have all been lost geographically as children. Most of us have been lost geographically in the roads-network, unable to find ourselves on the roadmap and perchance too proud to ask for help.

To be lost is not to be able to find our way ahead to our destination, not to be able to find our way back to our origin. And yet the person, while lost, who knows he is lost is only a step away from help. The person most thoroughly lost, most helplessly lost, most unhelpably lost (for the time being, at least) is the person who doesn’t know he’s lost and therefore is incapable of admitting it.

One of the most haunting aspects of being lost is that we can be so very lost when we are so very close to where we should be, just around the corner, virtually next door — yet all the while as lost as if we were a thousand miles away.

I was five years old and living in Winnipeg when I became lost in the course of garnering candy on Hallowe’en. My two sisters and I had set out together. We had been traipsing up to one front door after another for 15 or 20 minutes when suddenly I realized that my fellow-traipsers were not my sisters. I didn’t know where my sisters were; and by now I didn’t know where I was. As it turned out, they hadn’t even missed me. When they had accumulated as much candy as they could carry they went home. “Where’s Victor?”, my mother asked. “Who cares?”, my older sister had replied. Whereupon my mother set out after me (my father was working late in the Canada Trust office), anxious; she tripped on the sidewalk and took the knees out of both nylons. No matter; she was going to find me.

It turned out I was only one block away from home. I was lost on the street that paralleled the street on which my family lived. In fact at that moment I was staring at the school that I attended every day. But I was looking at the back side of the school, the side I never entered or left; besides, it was dark and I had never seen the school in the dark. I couldn’t recognize the school at all and therefore couldn’t orient myself. I was as close to home as I could be without being home, yet I was thoroughly lost as well.

The apostle Paul, mind and heart forged by his experience of Jesus Christ and flooded with the gospel of Christ as well; the apostle himself, following his Lord, never hesitated to speak of humankind as spiritually lost. Yet he also told his not-yet-Christian hearers that all of humankind, at every moment, is sustained by the God it doesn’t know. Concerning all of humankind Paul said, “He [God] is not far from each of us, for in him we ‘live and move and have our being’.”

Back in Winnipeg I was as close to being home as I could be, yet I wasn’t home; I was lost. “In God we live and move and have our being” — how much closer can we get? “He is not far from each of us”. True. And who knows it better than Jesus? Yet as soon as he sees the crowd his stomach turns over: lost.

 

We have spent enough time on the matter of being lost. What is it to be found? It is to meet, love, trust and obey Jesus Christ himself. Centuries ago Phillip said to Jesus, “Just show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied”. “To see me is to see the Father”, our Lord had replied. In other words, Jesus Christ isn’t merely the way to getting home; he is our home; he is both the way and the destination. For in being found of him we are found of the Father. To behold the Lord as he is attested by the apostles; to see him only to find that we can’t help seeing him without seizing him; to embrace him and cling to him – this is to be satisfied. It is to be satisfied so very profoundly as not to be lost or feel lost again.

On the eve of his death Jesus prayed aloud, “Give eternal life to all those whom you have given to me. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and the One whom you have sent.”

 

The SPLAGCHNA word-group, always pointing to a compassion so gut-wrenching as finally to be inexpressible, is used in the New Testament of Jesus to describe him, or used by Jesus himself in his ministry. It is used of or by no one else. We have spoken at length of the word as it is used of Jesus to describe his reaction when he saw the crowds. The same word is used by Jesus in his parable of the prodigal son; it is used of the father’s compassion when he looked out the window and saw coming home his dear son who had long been lost in the “far country”. As soon as his son is on the front steps his father cries, “Dead, and now alive; lost, and now found!” — even as he runs to his son, hugs him and kisses him.

What is it to be found? It is to know the Father’s delight at our being home; it’s to have felt his hug; it’s to have overheard him shout to no one in particular but to shout anyway just because he can’t keep quiet, “Alive! Found!”

 

We must never skew the gospel so that “spiritually lost” comes to mean no more than “morally deficient” or “psychologically unintegrated”. We must always insist on the gospel’s self-consistent affirmation of truth: to be found is to be possessed of the assurance that the God in whom we live and move and have our being in any case is now the God whose address we have heard, whose pardon we have tasted, whose joy at our home-coming is greater even than ours.

We must never say that the primary role of the church is to provide a moral bulwark or to be the venue for psychological help. We must always insist that the church’s primary role is to sustain and nurture those sheep who are no longer shepherdless and to exalt the shepherd before those sheep who still are shepherdless. The minister isn’t a moralist or a psychologist; the minister is a prophet who voices the truth of the sheep-finding shepherd and who can voice it authentically just because he himself is manifestly found rather than lost. Faith isn’t confidence in a moral code or confidence in a psychological technique; faith is the bond binding us to the shepherd himself, while faithfulness is loyalty to him and his word and his truth in the face of distractions, would-be seductions, assaults and ridicule.

II: — In case we think all of this to be exclusively inward-looking; in case we think all of this to be one-sidedly individualistic, we should understand that Jesus was equally moved, with the same bowel-churning compassion, when he came upon people afflicted with material needs.

His heart broke and he gasped, we are told, when he saw people who lacked food. We aren’t talking now about the bread of life; we’re talking about bread.

He felt exactly the same when he came upon someone with leprosy. The greater horror of leprosy wasn’t the physical ravages of the disease, dreadful though these were; the greater horror was the social rejection, the ostracism; it was being shunned as the most revolting creature imaginable, the only sick person who had to shout a warning to villagers so that they could get out of the way. The result was that lepers banded together to support each other and care for each other and protect each other as much as they could. They formed a community of disease. “Ordinary” people were glad to have them bunched together, for then it was easier to keep an eye on them; to avoid one was to avoid them all.

Our Lord’s compassion drove him to touch lepers. In that one act he crumbled the walls of contempt and rejection and isolation. Who are the lepers (or near-lepers or somewhat-lepers) in our midst? What do we do? What should we do? Who are those, known to us, whom our society has shunned?

Our Lord’s stomach turned over again when he came upon two blind men. Two blind men, be it noted. In Israel of old it was said, “Wherever two Jews are found together, the whole of Israel is present.” In other words, when Jesus comes upon two blind men he is telling us that there exists a societal blindness, a communal blindness, a corporate blindness. Where is there such a corporate blindness in our society, in our community, in our congregation? And as disciples of Jesus Christ, what are we to do about it?

Our Lord’s heart broke with compassion when he came upon the widow of Nain. Her son had just died. To be sure, bereavement at any time is distressing; but in first century Palestine a widow (her husband was already dead) whose only son has just died is a person who is financially destitute; she has no means of supporting herself. That is what distressed our Lord. He had to do something about it. What are we to do, whether individually or by means of our political system?

A man whose child suffered from epileptic seizures brought the child to Jesus. According to the text of Mark’s gospel the boy’s father cried out, “Have compassion and help us!” Have compassion “on us”; not “on my son”, but “on us”. Who are the “we”? The boy and his dad? the boy and his dad and his mom? the entire family? Surely the entire family. Everyone knows that a child who suffers from a major disability is an enormous disruption to the entire family. How enormous? Several years ago I was visiting an elderly man who was dying. He spoke of his disabled son, long an adult, and how the entire family had been disrupted endlessly on account of the disabled son. At the height of his frustration the dying man shouted, “That boy has ruined our life”. “Don’t say that!” his wife shrieked, “Don’t say it!” But it was true. The man with the epileptic son who cried to Jesus for help already knew it. Who are such families in our midst? What do we do for them?

Earlier I mentioned that the SPLAGCHNA word-group was used only of Jesus himself or by Jesus in his ministry. Just as this word for the strongest compassion was found in our Lord’s parable of the prodigal son where it illustrated compassion for the spiritually lost, so it is used in the parable of the Good Samaritan where it illustrates his compassion for people who are materially deprived.

 

III: — There is one last point to be made in all of this. The ancient Greeks believed that the deity could not be moved. If the deity could be moved, then the deity could be bribed, manipulated, exploited.

We who have been taught in the school of Israel know that the Holy One of Israel can’t be bribed or manipulated or exploited. Yet we know something more. Just because the Holy One of Israel has incarnated himself in Jesus of Nazareth, just because Jesus is the outer expression of the innermost heart of God, everything we have noted about the compassion of Jesus must therefore be said of the Father himself. He whose judgement is undeflectable and whose intolerance of evil is unyielding and whose wrath is no more an exaggeration than his love is an exaggeration; this one is finally the God whose heart is broken at the sight of men and women in a fallen world who are spiritually “at sea” and/or materially deprived. He who has made provision for us in his son summons us to know for ourselves and to witness before the world that his provision is sufficient. For he who feeds us now is going to feed us until that day when we want no more just because we need no more.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd                                  

 July 2005

 

Matthew 10:1-9

As soon as something in our society is seen to be out of order a Royal Commission is set up to deal with it. One day it is suspected that tax-revenues are being misspent or that medicare claims are being falsified or that organized crime is taking over legitimate businesses. At this point a commission is convened. Political appointees are given authority to investigate the area of concern. They are given a mandate; i.e., they are told how far their authority extends, what they are to investigate, and to whom they are to report.

When Jesus called the twelve disciples he appointed the first Christian congregation. That first congregation was thereafter the standard or norm for all Christian congregations in every era. The mandate our Lord gave to the twelve he therefore gives to any congregation in any era. Needless to say, it’s the mandate without which we wouldn’t be a congregation at all. We might be a religious group, or a middle class club, or a social circle; but we wouldn’t be a congregation called and commissioned by Jesus Christ himself and appointed to the same task and responsibility as our twelve foreparents in faith. In other words, it’s the mandate that makes the congregation.

There’s a crucial difference, however, between the mandate the government gives a royal commission and the mandate Jesus Christ gives us. The mandate given the royal commission authorizes its members to ask questions and produce reports. They do that. They produce innumerable reports. They make dozens of recommendations. But how much gets done? A great deal is said; very little is ever done. The mandate that Jesus gives a congregation, on the other hand, authorizes us to say relatively little, even as it insists we do a great deal. What’s more, what we say and do in obedience to our Lord he then adopts himself, takes it up in his name and uses it to so as to render it his speaking and his doing.

What’s the mandate? First the twelve are to announce, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is what they are to preach. Thereafter they are to do; specifically they are to do what reflects the fact that the kingdom is at hand. They are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

 

I: — Every congregation is commissioned to heal the sick. The sick are the unwell; the unwell are those incapable of doing well, those incapable of doing well anywhere in life for any reason. They can be sick in body, sick in mind, sick in spirit. Years ago in my seminary course with Dr. James Wilkes, a Toronto psychiatrist, one student lamented that in this age of agnosticism and secularism we were no longer sure of the church’s vocation. Wilkes stared at the student for the longest time as if the student were half-deranged and then remarked, “Are you telling me that you can have a suffering human being in front of you and you don’t know what the church’s vocation is?”

There is a low-grade suffering that is simply part of the human condition; it never goes away. There is also high-grade suffering, intense pain, that can come upon us at any time for any reason and remain with us for any length of time. To be sure, professional expertise is often needed for people unwell in both respects; but even as professional expertise is called for, we should never think our ministry isn’t. Last Monday afternoon I met at Streetsville “Go” station a 30-year old woman who has been diagnosed (correctly) as manic-depressive. As Maureen and I spoke with her we noticed as well several symptoms of schizophrenia. Plainly she is schizo-affective, to use psychiatric terminology. Maureen and I can’t cure her; we can’t even medicate her; but this isn’t to say we can’t do anything. We had been asked to meet her, feed her, accommodate her, and take her to the airport (and to the correct airport terminal) next morning. She lives 1700 miles away. If she lived closer to us there would be more — much more — we could do, should do, and would do.

Everyone knows that when intense pain comes upon us our suffering becomes a preoccupation: we can think of nothing else. Have you ever tried to do algebra or write an essay with so much as — so little as — toothache? If you had wanted for years to hear Pinchas Zukerman play his violin and you were told that a ticket was available for tonight’s performance and tonight you happened to have raging headache or unquellable nausea, you wouldn’t care less if Mozart himself were playing at Roy Thomson Hall. Intense suffering is a preoccupation that precludes us from attending to anything else. Then anything we do to alleviate someone’s Jobian suffering has gigantic significance.

For years now I have noticed how suffering alters people. A long time ago I learned that underneath the alcoholic’s bravado and self-aggrandizement and self-absorption there is a suffering human being who has suffered terribly for a very long time. Yes, I’m aware that he causes many others to suffer, and his doing so renders others impatient with him and angry at him. Nonetheless, his own suffering is monumental, and all the more terrible for being unrecognized. In the same way I have found that underneath the convict’s larger-than-life self-advertisement there is terrible suffering. Yes, I have met a few convicts with out-and-out criminal minds; but only a few. Most of the convicts I’ve met aren’t criminals at heart; they’re criminals as a consequence. Their criminal behaviour isn’t their besetting problem, it’s the presenting symptom of their besetting problem. Yes, they have behaved criminally; yes, there has to be a social response to their behaviour. At the same time, for instance, we all know that divorce destroys children; we know too that only 35% of marriages in Canada end in divorce; and we know that virtually 100% of young men afoul of the law have come from homes where marital grief has afflicted them with a suffering they couldn’t articulate and likely couldn’t even identify. After 28 years as a pastor I have concluded that nearly all self-injurious behaviour is rooted in suffering.

What about the suffering of those whose suffering we don’t see? We’d see it if we looked a little more closely. Not so long ago I used to watch a 70-year old man walk haltingly up and down Queen St. using a cane with four feet on it for stability, one arm folded across his chest and one leg dragging awkwardly. Plainly he’d had a stroke. On other days I’d see the young adult who is intellectually challenged, or the woman whose son is “doing drugs”, as she says (I know who these people are in Streetsville) or the mentally ill fellow whose wife has left him, or the ex-convict who can’t find employment, or the homemaker who would give anything for the smallest parttime job but isn’t hired inasmuch as she can’t read. I saw them all on different days. One afternoon I had reason to go to the Winchester Arms — and there I saw them all at once. They were all gathered together in one room! The stroke victim with the four-footed cane was trying to communicate in garbled speech with the retarded fellow, while the woman who couldn’t read was asking the forlorn mother to help her with the instructions on her pharmacy prescriptions. They were all together in one room in the Winchester Arms. It was as if a summit conference of Streetsville sufferers had been convened and individuals representing each different affliction were on hand to meet each other. And then I saw something more: the kingdom. The kingdom of God is the creation healed. Doesn’t Jesus mandate the congregation to announce that the kingdom is at hand, and then set about healing the sick?

All of which brings me to a matter that has haunted me for a long time. For years the outreach committee of this congregation has sighed in frustration. Who needs a committee to write a cheque once or twice a year to a humanitarian project oceans distant? I’m not denigrating the humanitarian project in any sense. Unquestionably it is a means of healing the sick. At the same time, if outreach work in this congregation is going to catch fire, we need to see human faces much closer to home; we need to open our eyes to what is in fact staring us in the face; we need to do something that is much less remote; we need to do something that is much more labour- (our labour) intensive. But first of all we need to identify the suffering in our midst.

“Are you telling me you can have a suffering human being in front of you and you don’t know what the church’s vocation is?” — so spoke a psychiatrist with surprise, anger and sorrow in response to a seminary student’s question.

 

II: — Next in the mandate we are commissioned to raise the dead. The written gospels inform us that Jesus raised several people from the dead, as did others in the early church, according to the book of Acts. Everyone who was raised in this manner, of course, had to die again. Then what was the point of being raised at all? These raisings from the dead were enacted illustrations, as it were, of the unique event in the New Testament: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now the resurrection of Jesus Christ is very different from resuscitation, and different in several respects. For one, resuscitation is merely the reanimation of a corpse (someone has to die again), whereas the resurrection of Jesus exalts him beyond having to die; death can never reach out and reclaim him, ever. For another, the resurrection of Jesus includes our Lord’s capacity to share the truth and reality of his risen life with his people: we, his people, are made alive before God, and made alive in such away that death will never undo (won’t even affect in the slightest) our vivification before God. Paul exults as he reminds the Christians in Ephesus, “You he made alive when you were dead.” They had been dead before God, dead unto God, spiritually inert, when the risen Christ had seized them and rendered them alive in the Spirit.

Not surprisingly, then, death and resurrection, spiritual inertness and spiritual vivification, are the ultimate categories in scripture. To be sure, Jesus is healer; but his ultimate significance isn’t given by his ability to heal. To be sure, Jesus is teacher; but his ultimate significance isn’t given by his ability to teach. His ultimate significance is indicated in his triumphant cry, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” He who has been made alive now makes others alive; and those whom he makes alive he now commissions and uses as he continues to make still others alive. In other words, the core of the church’s mandate is the commission to raise the dead; we who have been rendered alive unto God ourselves are now to render others alive as well. How are we to do this? Of ourselves we have no power to raise the dead! In the book of Acts the apostles never pretend they have any power to do anything of themselves. Just as surely, however, they know that unless they act, albeit in the power of the risen one; unless they act, nothing gets done!

Many people are either puzzled by the word “evangelism” or put off by it. Either they aren’t sure what it means, or they think they are sure and are repelled by it. Evangelism in fact is a simple matter. Evangelism is simply attesting our Lord himself, in any way we can, with the result that he adopts our witness as he makes others alive unto him. Evangelism, then, is the congregation’s fulfilment of the mandate to raise the dead. People who are now spiritually inert are going to be rendered able and eager to respond to our Lord’s invitation, “Come unto me!” Evangelism is the congregation’s raising the dead as the congregation exudes the vitality Christ has lent it and exhales this vitality as surely as God’s breath is said to enliven inanimate clay and render that person God’s covenant partner ever after.

This congregation has been commissioned to raise the dead.

 

III: — Next in the mandate we are commissioned to cleanse lepers. Since leprosy is a disease, why aren’t the lepers simply included among the sick who are to be healed? The lepers are singled out to be cleansed just because the intolerable feature of leprosy, in the biblical era, wasn’t disease; the intolerable feature was defilement. Lepers were defiled, socially ostracized, outcast. Lepers have to be readmitted to the community as their defilement is dispelled and their repugnance is removed. Lepers are afflicted with a dreadful stigma. Their stigma is truly no disgrace. But society invariably equates affliction with stigma and stigma with disgrace.

During the middle ages there were aristocratic women, high-born, noble in every sense of the word, wealthy who, in the spirit of Jesus Christ and out of love for him, used to kiss the most horribly repellent lepers just to let them know that someone loved what everyone else regarded as defiled and found repugnant and wanted only to flee. Someone loved that person and would admit him at least to her and cherish him when others found him only hideous.

Shortly after I reported to my first pastoral assignment in rural New Brunswick, 1970, a villager suggested I visit the “Old People’s Home”, as it was called, in the neighbouring village of Neguac. (Neguac was only 7 miles from Tabusintac, but because it was French-speaking it was deemed to be light-years away. Leprosy wears many faces, doesn’t it!) I found not an “Old People’s Home” but a large residence that housed 23 people who were seriously mentally ill. They had been in assorted provincial institutions anywhere from 5 to 20 years. One woman, 25 years old, told me she took “dix-huit pilules par jour” (18 pills per day.) Her family lived in Moncton — two hours’ drive away — and never visited her. She was a leper.

A few years ago MDs were going to cure such people with brand-new neuroleptic drugs, and MSWs were going to ease them back into our society.

The neuroleptic drugs are certainly helpful but cannot cure; our society is already turing its back on these people; and the MSWs are being laid off as governments at every level indicate money is scarce and getting scarcer all the time. Meanwhile, the church stands around, complaining that it has no credibility in our secular age, wondering what is left for it to do, when all the while there has been delivered into the church’s hands a glorious opportunity to recover its historic diaconal ministry, its historic ministry of concrete caring. Will the church ever understand what opportunity has been handed it on a silver platter? Will it?

It didn’t understand what had been given it in Chatham, N.B., when I lived 40 miles from Chatham. One afternoon I was about to drive home to Tabusintac after visiting a parishioner in the Chatham hospital, when I noticed a large residential building whose many occupants were severely intellectually challenged. I went in, identified myself as a clergyman, and spoke with the staff. They told me the program had taken over a disused residence of a small Roman Catholic college. The building accommodated two dozen people aged 18 to 45, with I.Qs. of 50 or 60. An I.Q. of 100 is normal; an I.Q. of 20 is needed if someone is to be toilet-trained. An I.Q. of 50 or 60 permits people to do such things as thread beads on a string or cut up pantyhose and hook a rug with the pieces; but of course people with an I.Q. of 50 or 60 will never be gainfully employed. When I spoke with the staff I found many of them cold, even hostile. Finally one woman hissed at me, “We have been in business here for six months, and you are the first clergyperson we have seen.” I made a point of visiting these people every time I was in Chatham. One day I lamely suggested that perhaps Chatham’s ten or twelve clergy hadn’t come by inasmuch as they didn’t know about it. “Don’t know about it!”, one woman fumed at me, “they knew about it before it was developed; they learned what was coming and they fanned out in teams throughout the town urging citizens to resist this facility like the plague; they spread stories to the effect that intellectually challenged people were slobbering neanderthals with perverted propensities; that women and children would no longer be safe. They did everything they could to smear afflicted people and incite prejudice against them.” Weakly I asked the woman what a church group could do for the men and women so afflicted. Immediately she listed a dozen ways in which help could be rendered. Needless to say, any contact on the part of a church group, in an atmosphere so thoroughly poisoned, would have been nothing less than lepers cleansed. (Remember: the church is supposed to cleanse lepers, not condemn them.)

Before we can cleanse lepers we have to see them. Whether or not we can see lepers is a very good test, I’m convinced, of whether or not we can see at all.

IV: — Last in the mandate we are commissioned to cast out demons. When disciples are faced with evil, they are to identify it and deal with it. First they have to discern it; then they have to name it; then they have to fend it off. Most certainly they aren’t to wink at it or trifle with it or compromise with it or exploit it.

One day I found myself speaking with several university students who belonged to a zealous group of Christian students whose zeal for the gospel burned white-hot. As I listened to their fervour concerning the spiritual peril of fellow university students who remained unconverted I noticed how lightheartedly they talked about passing essays around. One person would write the essay; several others would then submit it and receive credit for it. I was appalled at their fraudulence and asked them how they squared their cheating with their burning Christian profession. One fellow cavalierly replied, “We Christians on the campus are so busy doing the Lord’s work we have no time to do school work!” Jesus commands the twelve to cast out demons, not profit from them.

At the same time our Lord cautions the twelve that he is sending them out as sheep among wolves, and so they are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Because evil is so very evil, uncommon wisdom is needed to deal with it. It’s easy to hear our Lord’s command to cast out demons and forget that he also insisted we be wise as serpents. Many a strong person has hurled himself against evil frontally, assuming he could best it, only to find himself consumed by it. Many a subtle person has assumed she could disperse evil subtly, only to find months later she had been subtly seduced by it. Many an unwary person has concentrated so singlemindedly on one evil as to be overtaken by another evil from another quarter. In casting out demons, in resisting evil, we have to be wise as serpents.

We also have to be innocent as doves. Our opposition to evil can’t become the excuse for attacking people we don’t like. Our opposition to evil mustn’t be the disguise that cloaks our vindictiveness or our ill-temper. Our opposition to evil mustn’t become the occasion of our boasting that we are spiritually superior inasmuch as we are dragon-slayers. We are to be innocent as doves.

Yet even as we are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, our wisdom and innocence mustn’t become an excuse for fear-induced immobility. We are to cast out demons; we are to resist evil; and we are without excuse if we don’t.

Our congregation has a mandate more important than that given any Royal Commission. We are to announce that the kingdom is at hand. And then our preaching of the kingdom must be confirmed as the kingdom is rendered visible in our midst. To this end we are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

I know that my Lord constrains me to fulfil this mandate. Does he constrain you too?

 

                                                                           Victor Shepherd
January 1998  

                                      

Matthew 10:24-33      1^st Kings 17:8-16      Romans 9:3-8     

 

What would it be like to read the New Testament fresh, without any of the preconceptions and prejudices that we bring to it unknowingly? What would leap out at us if we came to it without our minds already half made-up or misinformed? When C.S. Lewis moved from unbelief to faith he found out for himself. “The New Testament,” said Lewis, “is a peculiar blend of unimaginable comfort and unspeakable terror.”

Unimaginable comfort and unspeakable terror? Our foreparents spoke much of the fear of God. When someone was described as God-fearing, everyone knew what was meant. The truth is we are to fear God; we are meant to fear God; we are even commanded to fear God. There is enormous blessing in fearing God, for as long as we fear God we shall never have to be afraid of anything or anyone else. To be sure, the command to praise God is the most frequently stated command in scripture, while the command to be holy is the most elemental command. The command to fear God, however, is related to both of these, and in fact we are told that to fear God is to be wise, while not to fear him is to be foolish. John Calvin insisted that anyone who loved God genuinely also feared God appropriately. Calvin was much sounder than the parishioner who smiled at me at the door of the church and attempted to correct the sermon I had just preached. “I don’t fear God,” she said in her groundless superiority, “I love him.” Calvin knew that unless we fear God our love for God, so-called, will be nothing more than sentimental twaddle.

Now to say that we are to fear God isn’t to say that God is a tyrant, comparable to a Latin American or African dictator with malice in his heart and blood on his hands. It isn’t to say that God is monstrous, devouring any and all who irk him. It certainly isn’t to say he resembles the Siberian tigers in the Metro Zoo. A newspaper photograph depicted a Siberian tiger eleven feet long from nose-tip to tail, with its jaws wide open and its four-inch fangs bared. I thought that the animal looked magnificent. I went on to read the caption accompanying the photograph. It informed readers that tigers in the Metro Zoo are fed cattle heads every day. Immediately I was appalled just thinking about the spectacle. Reading about it put me off.

Albert Camus, the French existentialist philosopher and novelist, maintained that the God of whom Jews and Christians speak, the God who towers over the world infinitely can only dwarf and diminish human beings until they are obliterated before him as thoroughly and as thoughtlessly as tigers devour cattle heads unthinkingly.

Camus was a better novelist than he was a theologian, for he didn’t understand why scripture insists that we fear God and what is meant by fearing God. Camus thought that to fear God is to cower before God like a whipped dog, to cower before God in nightmarish horror, to crumble before God in terror. Camus thought that this was all “fear of the Lord” could mean, and for this reason, he said, he was an atheist and rejected every last aspect of biblical faith.

Camus never understood something that biblically informed people know profoundly; namely, there is no possibility of not fearing. Either we fear God and fear nothing else, or we don’t fear God and fear everything else. But in any case there is no possibility of being fear-free. John Wesley found the awakening in 18^th Century England surging around him as, in his words, “I offered them Christ,” and despised, degraded men and women enjoyed both a Lord who loved them and a community that cherished them. Wesley found too, and found quickly, that not everyone cherished the awakening. Frequently mobs disrupted his preaching and assaulted his supporters. Wesley knew that only resilient, undiscouragable Christians would continue to hold out Jesus Christ to the needy and continue to hold up those who responded to him. In other words, the awakening would collapse if the mobs cowed Wesley’s people. His plea was both simple and profound: “Give me a dozen people who hate nothing but sin and fear no one but God and we can turn England upside down.” Wesley himself, beaten up more than once, feared no human being; neither magistrate nor bishop nor thug. “Hate only sin,” he said, “fear only God, and you will then fear nothing else.”

Jesus said, “don’t fear those who can kill only the body; fear him (i.e., God) who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” Then is God cruel? tyrannical? On the contrary, Jesus adds immediately, “Two sparrows are sold for a penny. Yet God sees them and cares for them. How much more does God care for you. Why, God cares so much for you that even the hairs of your head are numbered.” In Palestine of old sparrows were eaten just as we eat chicken. But since there’s little meat on a sparrow, it takes many sparrows to make a meal. If you bought ten sparrows for a dollar, the bird-seller might just throw in an extra bird, so small and nearly insignificant was it. The point of our Lord’s pronouncement is this: if God cares hugely about the smallest, throwaway sparrow, how much more does he care about us who are made in his image and whom he has named his covenant-partner?

I want to say something more about “the fear of the Lord.” Ninety-eight per cent of the time when the bible speaks of our fearing God it doesn’t mean servile, cowering terror. It means awe, reverence, respect, veneration, obeisance, adoration. Scripture makes it plain that God loves us and wants us to love him. Servile, cowering terror alone would only mean that God was monstrous and couldn’t be loved. Scripture, however, is also aware that you and I are prone to trade on God’s goodness, prone to become presumptuous, prone to regard his mercy as indulgence and his patience as tolerance. For this reason 2% of the time when scripture speaks of fearing God it doesn’t mean awe or reverence or respect; it means plain, simple, ordinary fear.

Let’s think for a moment of the people who know us best yet love us most. Here of course I have to mention my wife. Do I fear her? I don’t fear that she’s going to beat me up. (After all, she weighs only 100 pounds and is anything but confrontational.) Therefore I don’t cower before her. But I do fear her. I fear offending her. I fear wounding her. Above all I fear breaking her heart. That’s it. I fear breaking her heart. And this is what scripture has in mind when it insists we are to fear God: we are so to reverence and adore him as to fear breaking his heart. At least this is what scripture means 98% of the time. The other 2% it means we are to fear him in the ordinary sense of fear lest we become palsy-walsy presumptuous, just as 2% of the time I fear my wife in that I fear behaving in such a way as to cause her to forsake me. And if my fear in this “2% sense” keeps me on the “straight and narrow,” so much the better. I want to be afraid of her if this means I shall avoid alienating her and losing her.

We are to fear God. Inasmuch as we rightly fear him we shan’t have to be afraid of him in the sense of undifferentiated terror. Inasmuch as we fear him we shan’t have to fear anything else or anyone else.

In the time that remains this morning I should like us to look at several instances in scripture where God’s people did indeed fear him, and therefore could hear and obey his command, “Fear not!”, in the midst of life’s turbulence and trial.

I: — The first is from the story of Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet. A drought has dried up the land. People are starving. Elijah asks a widow to make him the smallest piece of baked bread, a bun. She tells him she has only a small jar of cornmeal and a cruse (a small flask) of oil. With the cornmeal and the oil she’s going to prepare a smidgen of food for herself and her son (their last meal), and then mother and son will die together. “Include me in your meal,” says Elijah; “you will have enough. Fear not! The cornmeal and the oil won’t run out until it rains and the drought ends.” Not run out? The resources they need will be supplied?

I used to snicker at this story, since the story seemed to traffic in magic. Then one day an old minister (he also happened to be my first professor of Old Testament, and of course he esteemed the Old Testament prophets); this old minister told me what happened to him years ago. He was a pastor in Scotland. For years he was convinced that pacifism was an implicate of the gospel. One Sunday per year (but one only) he preached on what he deemed to be the Christian duty of pacifism. There was no trouble over this, even though many church folk disagreed with him. Then World War II broke out. Now there was lots of trouble. An elder flayed him because he hadn’t had the congregation sing the national anthem in worship the Sunday war was declared. He went ahead with his customary annual sermon. Trouble in the congregation worsened. Soon the congregation’s treasurer informed him that there was no money with which to pay him, and told him as well that the congregation would fire him post haste. He had seventeen pounds on hand, no other savings. He also had on hand one wife and two children. Henceforth there would be no salary. Almost immediately, however, small contributions found their way to him, frequently accompanied by an encouraging letter. Occasionally near-by congregations used him as pulpit supply. He and his family lived like this, hand-to-mouth, for eight months, at the end of which they possessed exactly seventeen pounds. Then a neighbouring congregation lost its pastor to the Royal Air Force. It called my friend as interim minister. Let him tell you about the entire incident in his own words:

It was literally true that throughout this time we had been anxious for nothing. I do not remember that we ever wondered whence our next meal would come. Our needs were amply met. The flow of mercies never ceased; the cruse of oil never failed.

My friend never maintained that the providence which blessed him and his family “proved” that God endorsed pacifism. In fact he was careful to say that we mustn’t draw such a conclusion. He simply knew that whether he was right or wrong about his pacifism, the widow’s cruse of oil didn’t run out.

After my friend had related this incident to me I found the vocabulary of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus leaping out at me. I noticed that Paul spoke of “the unsearchable riches of Christ”, “the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness,” “the immeasurable love of Christ,” “the greatness of God’s power in believers,” “the many-splendoured wisdom of God” — and all of this from the apostle who spoke of himself as “having nothing, yet possessing everything.” Plainly the apostle is speaking of his own experience. My experience, limited as it is, doesn’t contradict either the work of Elijah or the testimony of Paul or the experience of my friend. To fear God is to fear nothing else, to know that the widow’s cruse won’t fail.

II: — Let’s look at Joseph now. His brothers were jealous of him, abused him and sold him to some travelling merchants. He ended up in Egypt where he became the highest-ranking civil servant. When famine overtook his family and his family was desperate, his brothers travelled to Egypt in hope that Joseph could help them. Joseph could have said, “Sorry fellows, you abused me years ago and I’m not inclined to do anything for you now. In fact this is the moment I’ve waited for for years. You can stew in your own juice.” He could have said this, but instead he cried, “Fear not! What you did to me you certainly meant for evil, but God meant it for good. You will eat.”

Insofar as you and I are determined to fear God, we can then fear not, since whatever evil befalls us God turns to some good, somehow. Hundreds of years ago people were concerned with alchemy. Alchemy attempted to turn base metals (like lead) into gold, a precious metal. No one was ever able to do this. Yet how people tried! They dreamt of how rich they’d be if only they could turn lead into gold. Little did they understand that if they had been able to turn lead into gold, they wouldn’t have been one cent richer. After all, gold is precious precisely because it’s rare. If they had succeeded in turning lead into gold then gold would have been as plentiful as lead, and therefore devalued. Had alchemy “worked” it could only have produced what is worthless anyway.

God is in the business of transmuting what’s base into what’s precious. But what God works in our lives is never cheap, never devalued. God’s work with the raw material available to him, including the evil that befalls us, is work whose worth never decreases.

I’m sure that you can tell me of developments in your life that have confirmed this truth over and over. And because it’s been confirmed in your life and mine so very frequently, we are never going to doubt the force of the command, “Fear not!”

At one point I was junior minister in a congregation where I felt the senior minister victimized me repeatedly. There was no one to whom I could turn for vindication and help. When I was in slight-to-moderate trouble, the senior minister took me to Swiss Chalet for lunch. When I was in big trouble, he took me to the Board of Trade Country Club.

One day the senior lay officer of the congregation, president of a large Canadian corporation, told me where to head in and reminded me that in his corporation the office boy always knew his place. “I am not the office boy here or the equivalent of the office boy,” I fumed, I am the associate minister. He smirked, “You will learn just what you are here regardless of the title on your office door.” I was at the Board of Trade Country Club many times that year.

I wish I could tell you that in all of this I “feared not”, but I have to admit that I did fear. Still, in the years since I have had a fruitful pastoral ministry to people in the very congregation where I had felt like a squashed grape. People there have reached out to me again and again. They have come to me, and still do, in moments of tragedy or anguish or perplexity. Back then I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t fear and couldn’t stop fearing in any case. Now I can see why, and therefore have something to carry forward with me in new situations.

We must fear not, for the evil that befalls us, whether great or little, never handcuffs God. And the “alchemy” that God works in all of this never yields something of diminished value but rather something of genuine worth.

III: — Our final word today comes from Moses: “Fear not! The Egyptians you are seeing today you shall never see again.” The children of Israel are struggling to get away from their Egyptian tormentors. Assaulted time after time, they are being worn down. Discouragement is seeping into them, discouragement that will soon result in paralysis. “Fear not!” cries Moses, “the Egyptians you see today you shall never see again.”

Was this promise made good? Did God keep the promise Moses spoke on God’s behalf? To be sure, those particular Egyptians with all their nastiness were never seen again: they drowned. But what about Israel’s other enemies? What about the Assyrians centuries later, followed by the Persians, and then the Babylonians, and then the Romans, wave upon wave. Was there ever to be deliverance from their enemies, final deliverance?

Will there ever be final deliverance from all that assaults us and threatens us with paralysing discouragement? Yes, there will be. There will be final deliverance from all that afflicts God’s people, for on the Day of our Lord’s appearing all that contradicts our Lord Jesus Christ and his rule will be dispelled.

The minister with the pacifist convictions I mentioned earlier in the sermon; he is Robert Dobbie, and several of his hymns are found in the second last United Church hymnbook. Dobbie himself always spoke so very convincingly, authentically, just because he had proven over and over in his own life that the widow’s cruse of oil didn’t run dry. Dobbie died three years ago, at age ninety-nine. When last I saw him he was ninety-plus, and he behaved like a nine year-old, so very senile was he. He wandered; he babbled; he couldn’t remember where he was or who he was. His wife was worn down running after him. When I last saw him I asked myself, “What is their future?” and asked it only because I already knew the answer: they could fear not and they should fear not just because the harassments dogging them that day they were never going to see again.

The book of Hebrews promises a Sabbath rest for all the people of God. “Sabbath rest” doesn’t mean inactivity, “vegging” as we like to say. Rest, for the Hebrew mind, always has the force of restoration, the restoration of God’s creation. There is a restoration promised; there is a restoration coming; there is a restoration that guarantees the deliverance of all God’s people from everything that afflicts, assaults, threatens, disfigures or warps them. None of God’s people will be left distressed, deranged, or damaged in any way. The “Egyptians” that we see today we shall never see again. Then we may and we must fear not.

John Wesley was right. Either we don’t fear God and find fears without number filling us, or we do fear God and find we have nothing else, no one else, to fear.

King Solomon was right: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It’s also the mid-point of wisdom and the end of wisdom. In fact the fear of the Lord is wisdom itself.

Victor Shepherd   

September 2002

 

Matthew 12:22-32      Isaiah 5:20       Romans 14:17

[1] The words are frightening, aren’t they. “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man [i.e., Jesus himself] will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” Any sin, however lurid, however heinous, however horrible, however cruel — any sin can be forgiven, except the sin against the Holy Spirit. It will never be forgiven, never. There’s no doubt that Jesus said it. Matthew, Mark and Luke record it. There can be no doubt that Jesus meant it. Still, precisely what did he mean?

 

[2] My heart sinks every time I think of the people who have been tormented by this text. As a pastor I have found many people tormented whom I wanted only to relieve, haunted as I have been by those for whom the text was never intended.

People tormented by scrupulosity, for instance. Scrupulosity is a psychological condition (a neurosis, to be exact) wherein someone is afflicted with a hair-trigger conscience; moreover, a hair-trigger conscience that screams over matters that are spiritually insignificant. The person suffering from scrupulosity has a conscience like a fire-alarm system so super-sensitive as to be set off by anything at all, and constantly set off by what isn’t even a fire. In other words, such a person’s scrupulous conscience, his built-in alarm system, is always sending in false alarms. As false as these false alarms are, however, they are distressing; distressing to him, and upsetting to everyone who has to live with him. False alarms anywhere in life are always disturbing and dangerous.

Our Lord’s pronouncement also haunts people whose theological grasp is inadequate. These people draw up a list of sins and rate them in order of seriousness. Their theological grasp is inadequate in that they think that sins can be listed, enumerated, like a shopping list of things we shouldn’t buy. But of course sin as the systemic human condition can never be comprehended in terms of lists and lists of lists. The second aspect of their inadequate theological grasp is that they evaluate the sins they have listed. The third aspect of their inadequate theological grasp is that the one sin in them they have evaluated as most serious they then label unforgivable, and unforgivable just because they deem it the most serious. Now they conclude that they are beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Beyond the reach of God’s mercy, they conclude that their situation before God is hopeless. Soon they are spiralling down in ever-worsening self-loathing and self-rejection. My heart aches for them.

And then there are the folk who suffer from endogenous depression. Endogenous depression is depression rooted in biochemical imbalance. Endogenous depression must always be distinguished from reactive depression. Reactive depression is the sadness we experience whenever we undergo major loss. If we are bereaved we become depressed. We may be bereaved of someone we love, of our job, of our reputation, of an opportunity that seemed within grasp only to be snatched away; when we are bereaved — i.e., suffer loss — we are depressed. This is normal. Such depression abates as situations change and life goes on.

Endogenous depression, however, biochemically induced depression, is something else. People suffering from it must seek medical help and must be treated pharmaceutically. Until they are treated they sink lower and lower, all the while regarding themselves as worthless. I have had much to do with endogenously depressed people whose depression convinces them that they have committed the unpardonable sin. Soon they are saying ominous things, such as, “I might as well end it all since I’m wretched now and the future can only be worse.” If these people were to receive adequate medical care they would cease speaking like this and laugh at the emotional space they occupied six months ago.

 

[3] As we circle around the text this morning in order to look at it from all angles the first thing I want to point out is this: our Lord never spoke of “the sin against the Holy Spirit”; he never said, “…whoever sins against the Holy Spirit…”. He said, “…whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit…”. We must keep this distinction in mind for the duration of the sermon — and after the sermon as well.

The second thing I want to emphasize as forcefully as I can is this: whenever, in the course of his earthly ministry, Jesus speaks of sin, he always speaks of mercy and pardon in the next breath and he always magnifies the forgiveness of God.

Peter asks Jesus how many times a disciple should forgive the person who offends. Seven times would surely be more than enough. “Seventy times seven is more like it”, says Jesus, “there’s no limit to the forgiveness we must press upon those who offend us.” If Jesus insists there’s to be no limit to our forgiveness, it’s absurd to think there would be any limit to God’s. Jesus reinforces this point through the parable of the unforgiving servant. The bottom line of the parable is lucid: the servant ought to have forgiven his neighbour simply because God had already poured limitless forgiveness, inexhaustible forgiveness, upon the servant himself. So vast is God’s mercy in forgiving the servant that alongside God’s oceanic forgiveness of the servant, the neighbour’s violation of the same servant is a trifle. In other words, God’s pardon is immeasurable and inexhaustible. Wherever Jesus speaks severely, he speaks tenderly in the very next breath.

Wherever Jesus goes in his earthly ministry he lavishes pardon on anyone at all who looks penitently to him. In fact, it’s his joyful welcome of notorious sinners, his large-hearted, open-handed acceptance of them, that lands him in so much trouble. Mean-spirited people don’t want to see notorious sinners forgiven; mean-spirited people want to see sinners suffer. (Mean-spirited people, of course, never understand that their proud, superior, shrivelled hearts advertise them as the greatest sinners of all.) Mean-spirited people are outraged at Jesus: “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” It was his eating with sinners that brought murderous rage down on the head of Jesus. To eat with someone meant, in first century Palestine, that you and he were knit together in undeflectable intimacy; there was no open or hidden impediment to your cherishing each other.

Notorious sinners always know what it means to share a meal with Jesus; they know it and relish it and glory in it. That’s why they respond so openly and generously themselves. Think of the woman who pours her perfume (really, it was high-priced body-deodorant much valued by “hookers” in a land that had few bathtubs) out over the feet of Jesus. She doesn’t care that tongues are wagging. She knows only that she’s received a pardon of incomparable worth. She knows that Christ’s embrace embraces everything about her, sin and all, before his embrace begins to squeeze her sin out of her.

The truth is, you and I are sinners to the core. Our Reformation foreparents spoke of us all as totus peccator, sinner throughout. There is no one part of my being or personality that is sin-free and by means of which the rest of me can be saved. Because my thinking is sin-disordered my thinking can’t save my will and my affections. Because my will is disordered I can’t will myself into correcting my thinking or my affections. Because my affections are disordered (I love what I should repudiate and repudiate what I should love) my misaligned affections can’t correct my distorted thinking or my perverted willing. I am simply totus peccator, sinner throughout.

What’s more, the older I become the more aware I am of my thorough-going depravity. I used to think of myself as a modest sinner, at worst. Now, when I reflect on myself with as much honesty as I can muster (not a great deal of honesty), I’m sobered when I realize what overtakes me when I’m careless or foolish, how big a “hook” certain temptations still have in me, how great the savagery that can flash out of me when I’m irked or pricked or frustrated. Modest sinner? I’m totus peccator, sinner throughout!

At the same time, I rejoice with my Reformation foreparents who knew that all Christ’s people are also totus iustus, forgiven throughout. There is no part of our being or personality that God’s pardon doesn’t reach. God’s mercy is like penetrating oil: it gets into cracks and crevices and recesses of all kinds, most of which, in fact, can’t be seen by even the sharpest-sighted. Yet his mercy unfailingly penetrates to the core, the same core that our sinnership taints. God’s pardon always outstrips our perversity.

I have been a pastor for 27 hears. In that time I have had scores of people huddle in my study and confess what they could barely bring themselves to mention: falteringly they have croaked out what they regard as heinous, so heinous as to have been mentioned to no one else. They have poured out vile mixtures of vice, immorality, folly, even criminality. And I have told them with conviction that as wide and deep as their depravity is, God’s forgiveness is wider and deeper still. And I have assured them that however inexcusable, horrific, and even despicable the sin they have committed, they have not committed the “sin against the Holy Spirit.” And I have told them that Jesus Christ himself authorizes me to press all of this upon them.

 

[4] Then what does our Lord mean when he speaks of that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which will not be forgiven? We must examine the context of his pronouncement. Throughout his public ministry Jesus has been freeing people from the grip of evil. He has done so in the power of the Holy Spirit (which is to say the power of God in our midst). And then he comes upon some hostile people who maintain that he isn’t freeing people in the power of the Spirit. They maintain that so far from freeing people from the grip of evil in the power of the Spirit, Jesus is in league with evil and is victimizing gullible people in the power of evil. In other words, our Lord’s enemies are slandering his work. What Jesus insists is a work of God (the Spirit being the power of God in our midst), his enemies pronounce evil.

They are slandering Christ’s work. Blasphemeo is a Greek verb meaning “to slander”. Our Lord’s enemies are slandering his work; and since his work is done in the power of the Spirit, they are blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. What is in truth of God, they label devilish; what is truly good, they perversely call evil; what is genuinely restorative, they denounce as deceptive and destructive. They are doing exactly what Isaiah had spoken of 700 years earlier: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Please note: it’s not that our Lord’s enemies are slow to see the light. All of us are slow to see the light. Rather, having glimpsed the light they call it darkness; having glimpsed the truth they call it falsehood. They are not spiritually retarded people (all of us are spiritually retarded) who are slow to grasp the truth and slower still to do it, all the while deploring the spiritual impediments they find everywhere in themselves even as they cry to God for help every day. Not at all: they hate so much the truth Jesus brings and the truth he is that they harden themselves against the truth. They slander God himself (the Spirit, remember, is the power of God in our midst); they slander God himself, denying that God himself is the power by which the Son of God does the work of God. The unforgivable sin is the utter rebellion against God that denies God to be the doer of his own deeds. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is a deliberate, wilful smearing of the power of God as the force of evil. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a deliberate, wilful, ever-hardening denial of what is undeniably the work of God. And such hardening, says Jesus, eventually is irreversible.

To treat as false what one knows deep-down to be true; to treat as true what one knows deep-down to be false; what is this but to steep oneself in falsehood? To treat as glorious what one knows to be shameful is to steep oneself in shame. To treat as blessing what one knows to be accursed is to cement oneself into curse. Eventually cement hardens. Not the semi-faith and the semi-groping of the man who cried to Jesus, “I believe — as much as I’m able; make me more able!”; not the godly sorrow of the person who never doubts that sin is sin even as for now she seems to be forever defeated by it; not the person whom life’s tragedies have rendered incapable for now, it would seem, of faith in the God whose mercies endure forever; not the person who has been surrounded since birth by atheists who despised the faith openly or by church-folk who contradicted it hypocritically; not any of these but rather the person who has most certainly glimpsed the work of God in the works of Jesus and who, hating the master for who knows what reason, slanders his work as a manifestation of evil; that person, says our Lord, will find himself left with the Christlessness he has said repeatedly that he wants. But Christlessness, of course, entails forgivenessless. That person, says our Lord most certainly, but that person only, says our Lord most compassionately.

Compassionately? Yes. Not only does Matthew tell us of our Lord’s pronouncement concerning the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; in the very same chapter Matthew tells us of something else about Jesus. Quoting the prophet Isaiah Matthew says of Jesus, “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smouldering wick…”. The weakest faith; the most faltering discipleship; the most hesitant, doubt-filled following; honest doubt and genuine perplexity; all of this our Lord sees and notes and helps. None of it will he scorn or dismiss. And none of it must we ever, ever suggest to be anything approaching the blasphemy against the Spirit. Weak faith he strengthens; faltering faith he makes resolute; genuine perplexity he addresses. He doesn’t break bruised reeds or quench smouldering wicks. He has nothing but compassion and help for all who cry that their struggle for faith is just that: a struggle. At the same time, he has nothing but condemnation for those who persist unrelentingly in maintaining that light is darkness and darkness light, that evil is good and good evil.

 

[5] I trust I have said enough this morning to help any who might be haunted on account of misunderstanding our Lord’s pronouncement. I trust I have said enough to comfort any who might be afflicted with scrupulosity or bad theology or severe depression. Anyone who is the slightest bit apprehensive about her having committed the “unpardonable sin”, as it is so often put, must know by now that her apprehension is proof positive that the Holy Spirit hasn’t been blasphemed and the power of God maligned. Merely to be sobered upon hearing our Lord’s solemn word is proof positive that one is spiritually sensitive.

 

[6] We must always remember that Jesus speaks a severe word always and only for the sake of a kind word. In other words, his undeniable warning is spoken for the sake of his undeflectable purpose in coming among us; namely, the kingdom of God. He warns us only for the sake of keeping us fixed upon the kingdom of God. He wants only to have us find that kingdom to be like a pearl so attractive as to make everything else appear tawdry.

The kingdom of God, Paul reminds us, is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Since we have already been talking about the Holy Spirit today, let’s talk now about the Holy Spirit in terms of righteousness, peace and joy. The Spirit, remember, is the power of God in our midst; as Jesus bestows upon us that power which he bears himself, we are set free for righteousness, peace and joy.

Righteousness, in Romans 14, is our life of discipleship; righteousness is our daily life in all its ordinariness and occasional extraordinariness lived out of our righted relationship with God and lived so as to adorn his name.

Peace is contentment, for now we are relieved of guilt, anxiety and frenzy. Our past doesn’t drag us under; neither does our future paralyze us; for our past God has forgiven and our future is in his hands.

Joy is the deep-down throb that pulsates in us just because we know we are citizens of that kingdom which cannot be shaken. It all overtakes us as Jesus Christ draws us into the orbit of God’s Spirit; no longer spiritual orphans, we are the cherished children of God. The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It’s for the sake of this; it’s to ensure that we don’t miss this that our Lord has cautioned us about blaspheming the Holy Spirit. For above all he wants us to respond eagerly to the subtlest nudge as the Spirit of God acquaints us with our need of a righted relationship, moves us to live from this relationship, brings us the profoundest contentment, and crowns it all with a joy that unbelievers can neither explain nor deny. The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

You asked for a sermon on “the sin against the Holy Spirit.” Let’s use the vocabulary our Lord uses: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, persistent slander of that power of God by which Jesus Christ acted and still acts. Such blasphemy or slander is to call a good work evil, evil good, light darkness and darkness light. People are tempted to do this for any number of reasons, none of which is excusable. Such slander or blasphemy, such perverse defiance, persisted in can be persisted in until correction becomes impossible.

But we are here today inasmuch as we crave even greater sensitivity to God’s Spirit. We are here today inasmuch as we welcome any work of God within us that untangles our sin-twisted heart, any work of God without us that advertises his presence and power. We are here today inasmuch as we welcome the approach of that God whose power intends only our blessing. Repudiating any temptation to call light darkness and darkness light, we want only to acknowledge yet again and exemplify yet more consistently that kingdom which is now and always will be righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

 

                                                                           Victor Shepherd
April 1997

 

Matthew 16:13-20        2^nd Samuel 22:1-4        Psalm 19:7-14       Acts 5:12-16      Mark 14:66-72

First it was Rocky I; then came Rocky II; then III and IV. There appeared to be a limitless market for the Sylvester Stallone movies about the seedy, brutal world of boxing. The boxing scenes in the movies were entirely unrealistic, as phoney as a three-dollar bill. Yet people flocked to the movies, and continue to watch them by means of videos. Plainly people think they can identify with the come-from-behind fighter, almost out on his feet yet managing to stagger through to the end when he wins it all in the last few seconds of the contest. I’m surprised that people identify with a story so very unrealistic. Rocky’s story, frankly, will never be their story.

We ought to identify instead with another story about another “Rocky,” for this story, by God’s grace, is our story. For we, like this “Rocky,” are disciples of Jesus Christ. Peter is his name, or rather his nickname. Petros is Greek for “Peter;” Petra for “rock.” His real name was Symeon. The Gentile children with whom he played in Galilee had trouble with a Hebrew name like Symeon, and so it was shortened to Simon, a name that Greek-speaking Gentiles could readily pronounce.

Next it was Jesus who named him Peter. Was he really a rock, or was Jesus merely joking, the way we joke when we nickname a fat person “Slim?”

Peter’s story is our story. He was neither unusually wealthy nor unusually poor, but rather a middling middle class type like us. He owned a small fishing business in partnership with his brother. He was married; in fact his mother-in-law lived in his home. He wasn’t a clergyman; there’s no evidence he had rabbinical training of any sort. Neither did he belong to any religious special interest group, like the Zealots or the Sadducees or the Scribes. He was ordinary with the ordinariness with which all of us are ordinary.

One day Jesus called him to be a disciple. Thereafter Peter was always depicted as the spokesperson for the group of disciples. He represented them and spoke for them. But to say that he spoke for all disciples then is to say that he speaks for all disciples now. In other words, he speaks for you and me. We are those whom Jesus has called into his company. We can find ourselves mirrored in Peter. Then what is it of ourselves that we see reflected in him?

 

I: — First of all it’s our confession concerning Jesus Christ; it’s our acknowledgement of our Lord’s uniqueness – the very thing that non-disciples find narrow and intolerant and extreme. Having been seized by our Lord, and having confessed to this seizure in public, we cry aloud with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. In you the presence and power and purpose of God are concentrated. You are the beacon to whom we look, the anchor we may move around but away from whom we don’t drift. You are light in the midst of darkness, truth in the midst of falsehood, reality in the midst of illusion.”

Many people tell us that they believe that God is, in some sense. The problem, of course, lies in the “in some sense.” Precisely in what sense? The God they tell us they believe in is vague, fuzzy, unfocussed – and useless. What, after all, does a fuzzy deity do? No answer. What does “it” effect in people? No answer. What does he require of those who call on him? Who says he requires anything?

Such a deity is like a blurred picture on a movie screen. No one doubts that there actually is something on the screen; at the same time what’s there is so very unfocussed that no one can say what it is, and no one can state what is being conveyed. When, however, the lens of the movie projector is turned, the picture suddenly stands out in sharpest detail.

When a youngster wants to burn his initials into a bench the power source readiest-to-hand is the sun even though the sun is 93 million miles away. Still, the sun’s power is too diffuse to be effective. A magnifying glass focuses the sun’s rays at one point. Thereafter someone’s initials will be found on the bench as long as the bench lasts.

In Jesus Christ God has concentrated himself to pinpoint intensity. Now we can perceive what he is doing and how we are to respond. And it is precisely this point that a pluralistic society finds obnoxious. Christians are then accused of a narrowness that ill suits the diversity we are supposed to extol everywhere in life. Surely it’s insufferable arrogance, we are told, to claim that God has concentrated himself precisely in the one Nazarene.

But doesn’t the effectiveness of a knife depend on the narrowness of its cutting edge? Can’t the movie be seen and enjoyed only if the focus is as precise as possible?

Christians are faulted because the confession they make concerning Jesus Christ is deemed to render them exclusive. But when we say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” we are not saying that God acts only here; we are saying, rather, that God is known to act here for sure. We aren’t saying that we alone are the beneficiaries of God’s care; we are saying, rather, that we know here precisely how God cares for us and to what end. We aren’t saying we have all the answers; we are saying, rather, that here we can distinguish life’s genuine questions from pseudo-questions. We aren’t saying that God hasn’t communicated himself anywhere else; we are saying, rather, that in Jesus of Nazareth God has given us himself and illumined us concerning the truth and meaning and force of his self-giving.

Knowing Jesus to be the cosmic creator’s pinpoint self-concentration won’t tell us whether we should be accountant or teacher or nurse; i.e., it won’t settle the matter of career. But it will settle the matter of vocation. Career is how we happen to earn a living; vocation is our summons to reflect the discernment, compassion, and triumph of our risen Lord wherever we happen to earn a living.

Evil is relentless. It surges everywhere, molesting God’s creation in all its dimensions at once. How can evil be recognized? Don’t say, “People recognize it as soon as they see it.” My experience is that most people have a very anaemic understanding of evil and a very poor apparatus for discerning it and very little desire to do anything about it. To know Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is to find deficits in our approach to evil on the way to being remedied. Those whose recognition of Jesus mirrors Peter’s recognition – “You are the Christ” – know that their ignorance concerning evil is overcome and their paralysis before it is undone even as they know they are summoned to render visible their Lord’s victory over evil in the midst of its refusal to give up.

To cry with Peter, “You are the Christ, and you alone,” isn’t to parade ourselves as having “arrived.” It is, however, to rejoice that we are no longer groping for the road.

 

II: — We find ourselves mirrored in Peter, in the second place, as we look at Peter’s treachery. Peter, spokesperson for all disciples in all eras, is depicted in the written gospels as weak, faltering, fumbling, stumbling, falling down. And we’ve all been there. Peter, impulsive, impetuous, mouth moving lightning-fast; Peter says to Jesus on the eve of the betrayal, “Everyone else may let you down. But me? Never. You can always count on me. I don’t lack the fortitude of these weak-kneed followers who fail again and again.”

“Peter,” Jesus cautions, “before that old rooster crows twice tomorrow morning you will be falling all over yourself to convince those who frighten you that you have never so much as laid eyes on me.” Next morning it takes only a fifteen-year old servant girl to crumble a mature, successful businessman. “Your accent,” she says; “for someone who says he’s never met the man from Galilee – your accent has a Galilean flavour to it. You must be from Galilee yourself. Then you must know the fellow who’s about to be executed.” Peter begins to swear. All my life I’ve wondered what swear words he used. What kind of swear words do fishermen use? In any case swearing comes easy to explosive, impulsive people. The oaths and obscenities spew out of him as he tells the fifteen year old twerp where to go. Then the rooster is heard to crow again, and the tears stream down Peter’s face like – like what? – like water pouring down the side of a rock.

I have heard the rooster crow. So have you. We have made public profession of our loyalty to Jesus Christ (as we should.) And then we have contradicted it all in thirty minutes. “I’ll never deny you,” exclaimed Peter. The gospel writer adds, “And all the other disciples said the same.” The picture is almost laughable: little boys in their cardboard carton clubhouse promising great promises and boasting great boasts when little boys don’t know what lies around the corner.

We remember the time we erupted with a put-down so savage that we shocked ourselves even as we whipped the skin off someone else. It came out of us so fast it seemed natural. Yet it isn’t supposed to be natural to disciples.

We recall the time someone found us out concerning something we didn’t want publicized. Desperate, we lied, only to have to lie again.

And then there’s that business trip where something besides business was carried on, and only two days later a church meeting had to be addressed. You felt as if someone had taken a pneumatic drill to your stomach.

Or we fell down badly in front of our children. Stupidly thinking it virtuous to save face, and still more stupidly thinking we could save face, we tried to excuse the inexcusable and succeeded only in making dishonest fools of ourselves before our children.

Stunned at any of this we said to ourselves, “But I’m supposed to be a disciple.” And like Peter we wept bitterly. (If we didn’t, then we have turned a deaf ear to the rooster’s cry.

It is surely a sign of our Lord’s patience and mercy that he continues to count us disciples. As we find our compromised discipleship mirrored in Peter’s we know that it is by grace, only by grace, that we are Christ’s forever.

 

III: — Finally we see reflected in Peter the use that our Lord makes of us and will always make of us. Following the crucifixion the risen one appears to Peter and asks him three times, once for each denial, “Do you love me – more than these other disciples love me?” Now Peter isn’t impetuous or impulsive. He doesn’t blurt out, “Of course I do; I love you more than all of these put together.” He can’t say this in the wake of his denial. What disciple with even a smidgen of self-perception would claim to be a better disciple than someone else? Peter can barely say anything, but he does manage to croak out, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And then for the third time Jesus replies, “Feed my sheep.”

Our Lord is entrusting Peter with the task of nurturing others in the Christian community. Peter’s stumble hasn’t disqualified him. To be sure it has sobered him, and rightly so. Never again will he shoot his mouth off as he did in the courtyard. But neither is he going to wallow in what he did, for he has been set on his feet. “Feed my sheep.” He has been commissioned to nurture and guide and edify other disciples and soon-to-be-disciples.

In order to be used of God we don’t have to be faultless. Because we don’t have to be perfect we can stop thinking that we have to be perfect. We don’t have to impress anyone, especially ourselves, with extraordinary anything. Our Lord commissions us to a task on behalf of his people and promises to honour and use any effort we make in his name. Please note: he promises to honour and use the effort we make, not the success we achieve.

He never asks us what qualifications we have for the work we undertake. He asks us one question only: “Do you love me?” Our earnest reply, even if we can barely whisper it, “You know that I love you;” our reply is the qualification. His commission, “Feed my sheep,” is the guarantee of usefulness, for what our Lord commissions us to do he unfailingly blesses himself.

To be sure, all Christians have heightened hearing. Because we have heightened hearing we hear several sounds at once. Yes, we do hear the raucous crow of the rooster; but we hear even more loudly, more distinctly, his gentle question to us: “Do you love me?” And then we hear ourselves answer, “You know that I love you.” Ultimately we hear most loudly of all, and most compellingly, “Feed my sheep.” Our Lord’s definitive word to all of us is his commission and promise that he deems us fit to feed his sheep and promises to render it effective.

Luke tells us that in the early days of the church people in Jerusalem laid their sick friends in the street so that Peter’s shadow might fall on them. What did they expect from a shadow, even if it was Peter’s shadow? Mightn’t there have been an element of superstition here? There might have been. The point is this: everyone in Jerusalem knew Peter’s history, yet so very esteemed is Peter in the wake of Christ’s commission, so highly trusted is he as someone through whom the bread of life has been brought to others, that Peter is now deemed exemplary. And if those who love him throng him so that the sick can’t touch him as he passes by, then the next best thing, they insist, is having his shadow fall on them. All the Christians in Jerusalem know that Peter’s unrestrained love for his Lord eclipses everything in his past.

 

IV: — We must conclude by answering the question we didn’t answer twenty minutes ago. Was Jesus joking when he called Peter “rocky?” Was Jesus speaking ironically? The truth is, naming was such an important matter to Jewish people that they never joked about it. Jesus meant exactly what he said: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”

The rock is Peter himself together with his confession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The rock is Peter himself together with his penitent reply to the Master’s question, “You know that I love you.”

At the beginning of the sermon I said that the Sylvester Stallone movies, “Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky on-and-on,” told a story that was never going to be our story. The story of Peter, however, is a story that Jesus intends to be our story. We, together with our confession of our Lord and our love for him; we are that rock on which the church is built as it continues to gather people to it, even as the powers of death shall never be able to undo it.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd                                                                                                    

June 2004

Matthew 16:15

 

I: — I wince whenever I hear jokes about the mainline churches that appear to have become “sideline.” I wince for several reasons: one, it’s painful to have to watch one’s denomination decline day after day; two, the mainline denominations began centuries ago with great promise as they exalted the gospel and magnified Jesus Christ and met human need; three, I still hold out hope for the mainline denominations. Dr. Ian Rennie, a Presbyterian minister (now retired) who used to be academic dean of my seminary; Ian Rennie told me he prayed every day for the restoration of The United Church of Canada. “I pray every day for the revival of faith within the Canadian nation,” he said, “and in light of the place the United Church occupies in our nation, revival can’t appear in Canada unless the United Church is restored.”

As a United Church minister I have been embarrassed as moderator after moderator made pronouncements that were theologically indefensible, pronouncements that denied what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” It’s no surprise that for 30 years the United Church has been the fastest declining denomination in Canada , its book membership today being what its book membership was in 1927. Right now it leads the nation in ecclesiastical haemorrhaging. Other mainline denominations, however, aren’t far behind.

Of course there are church spokespersons who want to make the haemorrhage appear less frightening. Figures can be juggled to ease the shock; altering year book totals, for instance, to include all the families on any military base where a denomination has one chaplain. It all reminds me of Admiral Nelson’s order to have the decks of his warships painted blood red; that way, in the heat of battle sailors would be slower to recognize and be shocked at the blood of shipmates running on the decks.

From time to time I hear nervous church leaders quoting Christ’s promise to Peter: “On this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death will never triumph over it.” They quote the promise to relieve their anxiety. They assume that the promise guarantees the preservation of an institution.

And they are wrong. Our Lord has promised no such thing. His promise — always to be counted on — was never made to an organization. His promise, rather, guarantees that he will ever cherish, protect and preserve his people, his followers, his community, his fellowship. He will protect and preserve the fellowship that looks to him and clings to him in the midst of an unbelieving world. We shouldn’t think, however, that this means he’s going to preserve any denomination. History is littered with the dry bones of long-dead denominations.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that we can’t coast on the faith and faithfulness of our foreparents. “Everyone must do his own believing,” Luther liked to say, “just as everyone must do his own dying.” In fact I have long felt that as the Spirit of God brings to birth a new manifestation of the church — eager, ardent, compassionate, self-renouncing — this new manifestation has about one and a half generations before it slides into “Let’s coast on our grandparents”, only to find that it can’t.

Francis of Assisi melted hearts as he and his band of men revitalized the church through their cheerful evangelism (forget Assisi ‘s nature-mysticism; he was chiefly an evangelist) and through their self-forgetful service. One hundred and fifty years later Franciscan friars were notorious for their greed, their corruption, their lechery. When Franciscans appeared in a village parents kept their daughters indoors. John Wesley and his followers flared into a fire that Anglicanism could neither welcome nor douse. Yet within seventy years of Wesley’s death Methodism had grown so cold, so callous, so spiritually inert that Methodism couldn’t accommodate William Booth.

Christians of every generation are slow to hear that God has no grandchildren. God certainly has children: we become God’s children as we seize Jesus Christ in faith and vow never to let go. Grandchildren, however, are those who try to ride on the coattails of their parents’ faith, sooner or later to find that what they assumed to be possible — faith at arm’s length, on the cheap — isn’t possible.

Jesus Christ puts the same questions to every generation. His community lives, thrives, only as it answers these questions for itself in every generation.

 

II: — One of many questions which our Lord puts to each of us is, “Who do you say that I am? Never mind what anyone else is saying; who do you say that I am?” When the first disciples were addressed they gave the answers that they were hearing all around them, answers that they overheard others proffer. “Some people say you are Elijah all over again.” Elijah was to herald God’s new age. “Some people say you are John the Baptist.” John had fearlessly urged repentance on his hearers. “Some people say you are a prophet.” A prophet announces God’s judgement as well as God’s mercy and the future only he can give his people. “Never mind what ‘they’ are saying,” replies Jesus, “it’s time for you to speak for yourselves. Who do you say that I am?” Speaking for the twelve Peter cries, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

To be the Son of God is to possess the very nature of God. And to possess the very nature of God is to incarnate God’s purpose, God’s will. When Jesus pronounces the paralysed man forgiven, critics accuse him, “But only God can forgive sin.” “You’re right”, says Jesus, “only God can forgive sin, and I have just forgiven it. Either I am the crudest blasphemer or I speak and act uniquely with the authority of God himself. Now which is it?” Months later Thomas will cry out in the midst of confusion and frustration, “Just show us the Father and it will be enough.” Jesus will reply, “To see me is to see the Father.”

We who are disciples of Jesus Christ are not Unitarians. We do not believe that the truth, the decisive truth, the whole truth is told about Jesus when he said to be a helpful teacher and a moral guide. The Church has never been built on the suggestion that Jesus is the high point of humankind’s aspiration after the good, the true and the beautiful. We do not believe that Jesus is the lucky winner in that treasure hunt that is sometimes called “The Human Search for God.” The community of disciples does not arise from a public admission that Jesus is a spiritual genius, the random development in the religious world that Mozart was in the musical world.

Without denying the humanness of Jesus in any way; without denying the fact that from a human perspective Jesus was a child of his times, in some respects, disciples of Jesus yet are constrained to cry with Thomas when Thomas looked upon the crucified one raised and exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.”

Frankly I am offended and dismayed at the doctrinal slovenliness of so many denominational statements. Recently I was given a pamphlet on worship stating that worship is chiefly a matter of feeling good about ourselves. No, it isn’t. Worship is giving public expression to the unsurpassable worthiness of God. I am weary of receiving Christian Education literature at Christmas time telling me that the purpose of Christ’s coming was “to tell us that God loves us”, as though lack of information were the root human problem. The root human problem isn’t lack of information; it’s a corrupted heart. The good news of great joy that thrilled early-day Christians was that they’d been given a Saviour; a Saviour, not an encyclopaedia.

Doctrinal slovenliness always breeds ethical confusion. It’s no wonder I’m told that the life of a murderer is so precious before God that it mustn’t be taken, while the life of the unborn child is so insignificant that it needn’t be protected. This kind of confusion is what I’ve come to expert from those who dismiss Peter’s confession, “You are the Son of the living God.”

“Peter said more than this,” someone wants to remind me. Indeed, Peter said, “You are the Christ; i.e., the anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Ever since Isaiah 53 — “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter… — ever since Isaiah 53, discerning Israelites who knew God’s way and will knew that to be an obedient servant of God would always entail harassment and suffering. Peter knew this.

Yet Jesus seemed so alive, so fresh, so full of life that he appeared indestructible. Jesus had to be an exception. Other servants of God may be set upon, but not the servant. Surely the Messiah is here to end human distress, not become another victim of it. Peter argues in this way with Jesus until Jesus finally shouts at him, “Satan! You, Peter, are satanic.” Satan is the one who frustrates God’s work. Satan is the deceiver. Plainly Jesus is telling Peter that not to acknowledge him, Jesus, as suffering Messiah is to deceive oneself and to frustrate the work of God. Jesus speaks to Peter as harshly as he does because he can’t allow his disciples to persist in a misunderstanding that misleads people and impedes the work of God.

Jesus isn’t finished with the twelve. After he has jarred them by insisting that he is no exception to Isaiah 53, he jars them again by telling them that they are no exception. “If you want to be my disciple,” he insists without qualification, “you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” Followers of Jesus simply cannot avoid self-renunciation. For being a disciple means that we both cling to him as Son of God and identify ourselves with that Messianic community whose self-renunciation is quickened by that of the Messiah himself. These two aspects are welded together inseparably.

Yesterday the Globe & Mail published an article on the new, six million dollar fence that will soon appear on the Bloor Viaduct. It will prevent any more people from leaping to their death. Four hundred and fifty have done so already. My sister is a volunteer in a program that provides assistance for people who are distressed on account of sudden, untoward disruption: car accident, house fire, drowning, suicide, etc. On one occasion my sister had spent the night bringing what comfort she could to a twenty-eight year old fellow who was tormented by what he had seen that afternoon. He had been driving across the Bloor Viaduct when he noticed a man standing on the railing with a rope around his neck. Immediately the young fellow wheeled his car around in a “U-turn,” leapt out and ran towards the man on the railing — who jumped off the Viaduct at that moment.

Until my mother was felled by a major heart attack she belong to the same assistance program. At age 70 my mother often headed out into the night to sit with someone she had never seen before, someone whose house had caught fire or whose husband had died at work or whose child was missing. Last Wednesday in our mid-week discussion group I mentioned that my parents had lived in Edmonton for eleven years (1938-1949), and during that eleven-year period my father visited convicts in Fort Saskatchewan Penitentiary every Sunday afternoon. I grew up in a family, which knew that discipleship always entails self-denial.

For this reason I was all the more stunned on my first pastoral charge when I stumbled upon a government facility in Chatham , NB (now the city of Miramichi .) My charge was forty miles from Chatham ; I went in and out of the town principally to visit parishioners who were hospitalized there. One day I walked around town instead of getting into my car and heading home, only to come upon a large residence that housed intellectually challenged adults whose I.Q. was 55 (more or less.) With an I.Q. of 55 they could be toilet trained (you need 20 for that); they could be taught to thread beads on a string or cut up panty-hose and hook a rug. But of course they were never going to be gainfully employed. It should be noted as well that they were harmless.

I entered the residence and workshop. Icily a staff worker stared at me and hissed, “We have been operating five moths now and you are the first clergyman to appear in this facility.” When she had recovered her composure she told me that upon hearing that the government planned to accommodate these handicapped adults in Chatham , townspeople (church people included) had circulated petitions throughout the town asking the government to locate these disadvantaged persons somewhere else, anywhere else. She also told me what joy and what help church groups could have brought to these people: musical entertainment, dancing, men to kick around a soccer ball with residents, and so forth. I visited the facility once a week thereafter and discovered that I had as large a ministry to the staff as I had to the residents.

At the next meeting of the Ministerial Association I said gently, “Folks, there’s a facility in this town full of people whom the world disdains, together with a staff whose work no one appreciates — and it seems the local clergy doesn’t care.” Gently I commented on the town’s attempts at disbarring wounded people who, unlike most of us, can’t speak for themselves. How did the chairman of the ministerial association respond? He called for the next item on the agenda.

To be a disciple is to cling to the One who is uniquely the Son of the living God, the suffering, self-renouncing Messiah. To cling to him, therefore, will always be to deny ourselves in a self-renunciation born of his as we are found in that Messianic community which knows and loves and obeys the Messiah himself.

 

III: — What finally comes of it all? Jesus promises that the keys of kingdom are entrusted to that community which is unashamed of its Lord and unhesitating in its self-renunciation.

What are the “keys of the kingdom”? Do we have magical power? Does it mean that we (or at least some of us, perhaps the clergy) have commandant-like power whereby we can decide who is admitted to the kingdom and who not? Of course not. It means that the ongoing event of the congregation’s faith and faithfulness and self-renunciation are precisely what Jesus Christ uses as the vehicle of his bringing others to know and cherish what he has already brought us to know and cherish. Our lived awareness of his forgiveness, for instance, will be the event whereby he brings others to the same reality. Our self-renunciation will be the means of his bringing others, now fellow-disciples like us, to know the “open secret”: service is freedom, self-forgetfulness is self-fulfilment, crossbearing binds us to the crucified One himself whom we have come to know to be life. As we have stepped through the doorway into the household of faith, other people will find through our faith and obedience and service the same doorway unlocked, and shall then run to join us on the way.

The symbolism of scripture is endlessly rich, so very rich that many different symbols are used to speak of the same reality. Instead if thinking about doorways and keys, let’s think about boats. In Mark’s gospel there’s a great deal of water, and Jesus is always getting into and out of a boat. (The boat is an early Christian symbol for the Church, and was widely used as a symbol by the time Mark’s gospel was written — 65 C.E., approximately.) In Mark’s gospel, only Jesus and the disciples are ever found together in the boat. The crowds, the “multitudes,” are never found in the boat. In other words, there is a special relationship, a unique relationship between Jesus and his followers. At the same time the boat, rowed by the disciples, “conveys” Jesus to the crowds who aren’t disciples at present but have been appointed to become disciples. The boat (the Church) conveys Jesus to the deranged man whom Jesus restores. The boat conveys Jesus to the hungry listeners whom he feeds. The boat conveys Jesus toe the agitated and perplexed whom he describes as “sheep without a shepherd” even as he becomes their good shepherd.

To be given the keys of the kingdom is the same as being used by our Lord to row the boat that carries that him into the midst of those who are on the way to becoming disciples.

 

I have never doubted Christ’s promise, “I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall never submerge it.”

I have never doubted the confession to which the promise is made, “You — alone — are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

I have never doubted the commitment that must accompany the confession, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, let her deny herself, renounce herself, take up her cross, follow me, and never look back.”

 

                                                                                               Dr Victor Shepherd      

January 03

Matthew 18:1-14       Ezekiel 36:22-26      1Peter           1:23 -2:3   1 Timothy 6:6-12

 

I: — First of all, the congregation is a nursery for the newborn. Peter writes, “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” (1 Peter 2:2-3) When Peter addresses certain Christians as “newborn babes” he isn’t finding fault at all. He isn’t saying that newborn babes shouldn’t be newborn or shouldn’t be drinking pure spiritual milk.  In everyday life nobody faults a baby for being a baby; nobody faults the 3-month old because he isn’t 30 years old.  It’s normal for a baby to be a baby and be treated like a baby; it’s wonderful to see a baby eager to drink pure milk.

Several times in Matthew’s gospel Jesus angrily denounces those who make things difficult for the “little ones”.           “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin; it would be better for him if concrete blocks were tied to his feet and he were pitched into Lake Ontario .” Ten seconds later Jesus, still upset, lets fly again.           “See that you do not despise one of these little ones…it is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” The “little ones” Jesus speaks of over and over and concerning whom he’s so very protective; these “little ones” aren’t 5-year olds; the “little ones” are adult men and women who happen to be new in the faith; the “little ones” are adults — 30, 45, 60-years old — who have only recently “bonded” with Jesus Christ.  As old as they might be chronologically, they are yet spiritual neonates. They need milk, milk only for now, so that they may develop spiritually.  Jesus never faults them for being mere “little ones”.  On the contrary, he deems them so very precious that he guarantees the severest retribution to anyone who inhibits in any way the spiritual growth of the newest disciple.

The babes-in-Christ have to be nursed.  And the church is the nursery for newborns.

 

What do we expect from a nursery, any nursery?   What would we expect if we were taking our own child to a nursery?

[1]           Safety; safety first of all; safety above everything else. Safety is so very crucial within the congregation if only because danger abounds without it. Think of the most elemental confession found on the lips of the earliest Christians; “Jesus is Lord.” But early-day “little ones” (and not-so-little ones) clung to this truth when “Caesar is lord” was being screamed at them every day.  When political authorities sneered, “We’ll show you who’s lord. We’ll show you in the coliseum where wild animals haven’t yet learned that Jesus is Lord; we’ll show you in the mines in whose damp darkness you are going to spend the rest of your lives; we’ll show you on unpopulated islands where you are going to be exiled until you rot” — when this happened our Christian foreparents could only gasp out three simple words. And centuries later, when it was announced throughout Germany that “Hitler ist Fuehrer”, the same faithful cry went up from the same faithful few. What those who dislike saying “Jesus is Lord” seem not to understand is that to say “Jesus is Lord” is to say something about him, to be sure, but not only about him; it’s also to say something about us who utter it (by the grace of God we have been admitted to truth); it’s also to say something about the world (the world is not the kingdom of God but is riddled with falsehood, treachery and turbulence at all times).

In the midst of all the talk today about spirituality (how I wish we’d return to talking about faith, because “faith” always implies “Jesus Christ”) we must always remember that not all the spirits are holy. Unholy spirits are always ready to infest and infect.  In many hymnals the words of the old hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so” have been changed to “Jesus loves me, this I know, and the bible tells me so”. The change of wording indicated that scripture is no longer acknowledged as the source and norm of our knowledge of God; at best scripture can only reflect what we think we can learn of God elsewhere.  This is paganism.

Therefore the members of a congregation must ensure that there is safety in the congregation. It’s crucial that the congregation be a nursery where “little ones” are safe; crucial that this congregation be a nursery where “pure spiritual milk” is kept unsoured; crucial that this congregation nourish — and never cause to stumble — those “little ones” who have “tasted the kindness of the Lord” and who want only to become spiritual adults.

 

[2]         Speaking of nourishment, nourishment is plainly the second thing we look for in a nursery. After all, babes remain in a nursery for quite a while; they have to be fed while they are there or else they won’t thrive.

Babes don’t get fed once; babes get fed small amounts frequently; babes get fed small amounts so very frequently that “frequently” amounts to “constantly”.  They absorb nourishment cumulatively; the more they are fed, the greater their capacity to absorb; the greater their capacity to absorb, the more they are fed. Plainly there’s an incrementalism at work in the nourishing of babes.

Let’s remember that however sophisticated most people are (and nearly everyone is sophisticated in at least one area of life), more often than not they are babes in Christ, “little ones”.  The nursery has to ensure nourishment.         Pure spiritual milk must always be ready-to-hand.

[3]         As much as safety and nourishment must be found in a nursery, so must affection. Everyone knows of the experiments — and the conclusions of the experiments — concerning babies who were picked up and those who were left crying; babies who were cuddled and those who were isolated; babies who were caressed and kissed and cooed to and those whose physical needs were attended to unfeelingly. Everyone knows the difference it made to the babies at the time, and more tellingly, what difference it came to make to the same person, now an adult, years later. Everyone knows that affection warming an infant makes the profoundest difference to the adult’s self, the adult’s self-esteem, self-confidence, resilience and adventuresomeness.

It’s no less the case in the nursery of faith.  The babes among us have to be safeguarded, yes; nourished, yes; but always and everywhere cherished.  Affection is as essential as food.

 

II: — The congregation isn’t nursery only; it’s also a school where we are to be taught. Schools exist for teaching. Which is to say, someone has to be taught, and something has to be taught. Frequently we hear it said, “Faith is caught, not taught.”   It’s said as though it were self-evidently the soul of wisdom.  But it isn’t self-evident; neither is it the soul of wisdom.  At best it’s a half-truth.  The half-truth — “faith is caught” — is true in that faith is a living relationship with a living person, not an intellectual abstraction. “Faith is caught, not taught” is a half-truth true in that no relationship of person-with-person can ever be reduced to a teaching. But it’s only a half-truth in that unless something is taught — in fact, unless much is taught — the person whom the truths describe can never be known.  Those who insist that faith is caught, not taught; why do they never ask themselves why Jesus taught day-in and day-out throughout his earthly ministry? Jesus spent more time teaching than doing any other single thing.         Shouldn’t this tell us something?

At the very least it should tell us that events are not self-interpreting. No event in world-occurrence is ever self-interpreting.  Jesus could never merely do something and then assume that everyone who observed him took home the correct meaning of what he had done.  Quite the contrary: he always assumed that they weren’t going to take home the correct meaning of what he had done unless he told them. Prior to his death and after it Jesus taught any who would listen the meaning of his death.  If he hadn’t taught them the significance of his death they would assume that his death meant no more than the deaths of the two criminals crucified alongside him; no more than the deaths of miscreants whom the state executes. Not only would people not take home the correct meaning of Christ’s activity; they would certainly take home the wrong meaning.

There’s a story about Francis of Assisi that warms everyone’s heart; it may or may not be a true story about St.Francis, but in any case it’s a story that I don’t like.  A fellow-friar asked Francis to join him in preaching outdoors throughout the city. Francis consented, and then added, “But before we preach we are going to walk through the city.” When they had finished walking through the city the fellow-friar asked him, “But when do we preach?” “We just did”, replied Francis, “we just did.”   Oh, it’s a honey-sweet story dripping with sentimentality, but it’s only half-true. The half-truth, of course, is that the preacher’s utterance and the preacher’s life ought to be consistent.  Fine. But no person’s life, not even a saint’s (Francis), not even Jesus Christ’s unambiguously declares the gospel!  If Christ’s life had bespoken the truth unambiguously, why would he have bothered to teach?

The mistake Francis is said to have made in Italy Mother Teresa never made in India . When Mother Teresa was awarded a Nobel Prize a Yugoslavian journalist (Mother Teresa was Yugoslavian herself) asked her why she rescued throwaway babies every night from garbage cans and took them to the Sisters of Charity orphanage. Mother Teresa didn’t say, “Need you ask why?” She didn’t say, “Isn’t why I do it obvious?   The meaning and motive of what I do; isn’t it all self-evident?” Instead she replied in her trademark, measured manner, “I rescue throwaway babies for one reason: Jesus loves me.”   To be sure, it was only a one-sentence reply.  None the less, she knew she had to say something to interpret her action to the journalist.

We always have to be taught.  We have to be taught answers to life-questions inasmuch as the answers are important; crucial, in fact.  And if the answers are crucial, so are the questions.  Think of the questions, of some of them:

*Who is God? He’s the creator.  However, scripture also insists God is the destroyer.  What does this mean?

            *Why is it that Jesus describes his most intimate followers as possessed of the tiniest  faith?

*Why do Christians regard as normative for faith and life an “older” testament that is five times longer than the “newer”?   Why do we need the older at all?   What would happen if we set it aside?

*Why is it that the only physical description of Jesus that the apostles furnish is the fact that he was circumcised?

*Why did our Hebrew foreparents regard idolatry, murder and adultery as the three most heinous sins? Why do we modern degenerates regard murder as criminal, adultery as trivial, idolatry as nothing at all, and none of them as sin?

Jesus assumed that truth isn’t self-evident. Jesus assumed, in other words, that the meaning of the most obvious event isn’t obvious at all.  Jesus assumed that we always have to be taught.  The congregation is a school in which Christ’s people are taught.

 

III: — The congregation is also an army that fights. Christians today aren’t ready to hear this. We don’t mind being a nursery or a school; but an army! an army that fights! Aren’t we followers of the Prince of Peace? Aren’t we called to be peacemakers?

I have noticed that those who are repelled by any suggestion that the congregation is an army are repelled by the notion of fighting.  I have noticed too, however, that the same people who abhor any Christian reference to fighting will fight instantly if Canada Revenue Agency gets their income-tax assessment wrong (or is suspected of getting it wrong). They will fight instantly if their child is awarded a low grade on a school-project. They will fight instantly as soon as they hear that their employer has plans to alter working conditions or compensation or holidays.         After all, their cause is right and therefore righteous.

How much more is at stake when the truth of Jesus Christ collides with the falsehoods of the evil one.  How much more is at stake when someone is victimised and rendered a casualty in the midst of that spiritual warfare she was never even aware of — or may have been aware of.  No wonder Paul picks up the metaphor of soldiering and urges the congregation in Ephesus to put on the whole armour of God: shield, shoes, helmet, breastplate, sword. (Eph. 6:10-17)   There’s nothing God-honouring about being an unnecessary victim.

No wonder too that Paul reminds young Timothy that soldiering entails hardship, sacrifice, singlemindedness, “training in godliness”. No wonder he gathers it all up by urging the young man always to “fight the good fight of the faith.” (2 Tim. 2:3-4; 1 Tim. 6:12; 4:7) We can’t fight unless we have first trained!

Training? Many church-folk today see no point to training just because they see no virtue in fighting. They think that conflict is always and everywhere sub-Christian because non-loving. And they are wrong.

(i)         In the first place our Lord leaves us no choice: if we are going to be disciples then we are going to be soldiers in that conflict which erupts the moment his flag of truth is planted in the citadel of a hostile world.  Since the master was immersed in conflict every day, what makes his followers think they won’t be or shouldn’t be?

(ii)         In the second place those who regard all conflict as sub-Christian because unloving fail to see that spiritual conflict arises on account of love’s energy.  God is love; Jesus is the Incarnation of God’s nature; Jesus is immersed in conflict every day just because love is resisted every day, love is contradicted every day, love is savaged every day. What kind of love is it that won’t persist in the face of opposition? won’t contend to vindicate the slandered and relieve the oppressed? won’t fend off every effort of lovelessness to victimise and abandon?   Love that won’t persist and contend; love that refuses to fight is simply no love at all.

(iii)         In the third place the most love-filled heart knows that there is a place for godly resistance.  There is a time and a place to dig in our heels and stiffen our spine in the name of Jesus Christ. When Martin Luther, grief-stricken at the horrible abuses in the church of his day, finally stopped weeping and decided to do something, he discussed what he planned to do with Professor Jerome Schurff of Wittenberg University. Schurff was professor in the faculty of law.         He was one of the brightest stars in the Wittenberg U. firmament. Professor Jerome Schurff agreed with Luther that the abuses were dreadful.  Schurff, however, was aghast at what Luther planned to do.  “Don’t do that!” he cried, “You’ll renders us all targets here; we’ll all be in trouble in Wittenberg . The authorities will never put up with it!” “And if they have to put up with it?” Luther replied, “if they have to?”

To live in the company of Jesus Christ is never to relish conflict for the sake of conflict; but it is to share his conflict.  To live in the company of Jesus Christ is to share love’s struggle in the face of un-love’s aggression.

 

IV: — The congregation is also a hospital for the wounded. When the apostle Paul discusses the different ministries to be exercised in any one congregation he mentions healing. (1 Cor. 12)  If healing is to be exercised within the congregation, then the congregation is a hospital.

We must be sure to understand that there is no shame in being hospitalised just because there is no shame in being wounded. The fact that we are wounded simply confirms the truth that we are soldiers in Christ’s army and have recently been on the front lines. Spiritual conflict is no less debilitating than any other kind of conflict.

One military facility for the battle-worn is the Rest and Recreation Centre. “R&R” centres are not merely for military personnel who have broken a leg or fractured a skull; “R&R” centres principally accommodate those who have been under immense stress, are frazzled, and need to move behind the front for a while in order to recuperate.         During the last great war all submarine crews were given as much time off to recuperate as they spent on patrol.         A month-long patrol at sea was always followed by a month’s rest ashore. No one ever suggested there was something shameful in the men’s need for rest.

Rest. Jesus invites us, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:30) “Rest”, however, has a special force in scripture; “rest” in scripture doesn’t have the modern sense of “vegging”, utter inactivity.  Rest, rather, has to do with restoration.  “Come to me, all who are bone-weary and worn down and frazzled and fractured and frantic; come to me, for with me there is restoration.”

We should note that our Lord’s winsome invitation, “Come unto me…”, isn’t really an invitation at all; it’s a command.  “Come”, “you come”, “you come now” — it’s plainly an imperative; he commands us to come to him for restoration. To say that it’s a command is to say there’s no option here.  We must go to him for restoration, just because he knows that his soldiers are beaten up, and once beaten up aren’t much use until restored.

In other words, providing hospital care for Christ’s wounded is as much the congregation’s ministry to the congregation as is being a nursery where newborns are nurtured, and a school where learners are taught, and an army where soldiers are trained and in which they fight the good fight of the faith until that day when we say with the apostle,

                        I have fought the good fight,

                                    I have finished the race,

                                                I have kept the faith.          

                   

                                                                                                  Victor Shepherd  

July 2006                                                                                                                                              

 

Matthew 18:21-35                      Micah 7:18-20                         Psalm 32                  Colossians 3:12-17

 

1]         We begin with the cross. There is nowhere else to begin. The cross looms everywhere in scripture.  All theological understanding is rooted in it.  All discipleship flows from it.  It’s what we trust for our salvation.         It transforms our thinking, ridding us of the mindset that characterizes the world. The cross is the only place to begin.

To begin anywhere else means that we have begun with calculating: “Should I forgive?  How much should I forgive? Under what circumstances should I forgive?”   Now we are calculating.

Calculation in matters that concern us fosters self-interest.  We go to the bank to purchase our RSP for 2010.         The interest rates are 2% for one year, 2.25% for two, and 3% for three. We estimate how the interest rate is going to fluctuate in the next few years, and we calculate which combination of locked-in RSP rate and time period is best — best for the bank? Of course not. Best for us.  Calculation in matters that concern us fosters self-interest.

In the second place calculation is frequently a conscious cover-up for unconscious rationalization.  At a conscious level I calculate whether I should forgive, how much I should forgive, whom I should forgive.  But all of this is a smokescreen behind which there is, in my unconscious, a heart set on vindictiveness, a desire to even a score which has remained uneven (I think) for umpteen years, a wish to see someone who has pained me suffer himself.         Unconscious rationalization, like any unconscious proceeding, is a process which spares us having to admit nastiness about ourselves that we don’t want to admit, spares us having to acknowledge what we prefer to hide. Calculation is a conscious matter which cloaks an unconscious development, even as we are left thinking we are virtuous.

In the third place calculation traffics in the unrealistic.  What I am prepared to forgive in others (feeling virtuous about it too) will in fact be slight, while what I expect others to forgive in me will in fact be enormous.  This is unrealistic.

In the fourth place calculation both presupposes shallowness and promotes shallowness. It presupposes shallowness in that I plainly think that sin is something I can calculate or measure like sugar or flour or milk.         Calculation promotes shallowness in that it confirms over and over the shallowness I began with.

We ought never to begin our understanding of forgiveness with calculation. We must begin with the cross; and more than begin with the cross, we must stay with the cross.

 

2]           Nobody uses a twenty-member surgical team to clip a hangnail.  No government sends out a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to sink a canoe. The air-raid warning isn’t sounded because a child’s paper glider has violated air-space.

When the twenty-member surgical team is deployed the patient’s condition is critical. When the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier puts to sea the threat it’s dealing with couldn’t be greater.  When the air-raid warning is sounded destruction is imminent.   And when God gives up his own Son humankind’s condition is critical, the threat facing us couldn’t be greater, and our destruction is imminent.

As often as I read scripture I am sobered to read that God’s forgiveness of you and me necessitated the death of God’s own Son.  I try to fathom what this means.  In trying to fathom it from the Father’s perspective I ponder the anguish of our foreparent in faith, Abraham.  Abraham and Isaac. Abraham collecting the firewood, sharpening the knife, trudging with leaden foot and leaden heart up the side of Mount Moriah . He and Sarah had waited years for a child, had had none, had given up expecting any.  Then when everyone “just knew” that the situation was hopeless Sarah conceived. Was any child longed for more intensely or cherished more fervently?  Now they have to give up this child, give him up to death.

I have been spared losing a child.  I do know, however, that when a child dies the parents of that child separate 70% of the time. Wouldn’t the death of their child bring the parents closer together?   The truth is, so devastating is the death of a child that calculation concerning it is useless; we can’t begin to comprehend what it’s like.

Abraham again. At the last minute the ram is provided. Abraham’s relief is inexpressible: his son doesn’t have to die. But when the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ walks his Son to Calvary there is no relief: his Son has to die.         Here the Father bears in his heart the full weight of a devastation that couldn’t be greater.

Next I try to fathom what the cross means from the perspective of the Son. On the one hand I don’t minimize the physical suffering he endured for our sakes.  On the other hand, countless people have endured much greater physical pain. (It took Jesus only six hours to die, remember.)   It’s the dereliction that ices my bowels.  What is it to be forsaken when the sum and substance of your life is unbroken intimacy with your Father?  As a child I was lost only two or three times.  It wasn’t a pleasant experience; in fact it was terrifying.  Nonetheless, even when I was lost (and terrified) I knew that my problem was simply that I couldn’t find my parents; I never suspected for one minute that they had abandoned me.  A man who is dear to me told me that when his wife left him and he knew himself bereft, forsaken by the one human being who meant more to him than all others, he turned on all the taps in the house so that he wouldn’t have to hear her driving out of the garage, driving out. Before our Lord’s Good Friday dereliction I can only fall silent in incomprehension.

 

3]         As often as I begin with the cross I am stunned at the price God has paid — Father and Son together — for my forgiveness.  In the same instant I am sobered at the depravity in me that necessitated so great a price. It’s plain that my depravity is oceans deeper than I thought, my heart-condition vastly more serious than I guessed.  It’s incontrovertible that when I have trotted out all my bookish, theological definitions of sin I still haven’t grasped — will never grasp — what sin means to God.

When I was a teenager I thought our Lord to be wrong when he prayed for his murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” I thought him to be wrong inasmuch as it seemed to me (at age 17) that they did know what they were doing: they were eliminating someone they didn’t like. They had to know what they were doing simply because they had plotted and schemed and conspired for months to do it. Furthermore, our Lord’s plea, “Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they are doing”, had to be self-contradictory — I thought. After all, if they didn’t know what they were doing then they didn’t need to be forgiven; they could simply be overlooked.  Now that I’m old I perceive that our Lord was right.  His assassins didn’t know what they were doing, ultimately; didn’t know they were crucifying the Son of God.  They didn’t know that their sinnership had impelled them to do it, didn’t know that while they thought they were acting freely they were in bondage to sin more surely than the heroin sniffer is in bondage to dope. In my older age I see that our Lord was right. They can’t be excused; they can only be forgiven, since what they are doing comes out of their own disordered heart. To be sure, they don’t fully grasp what they are doing, can’t fully grasp it. But the reason they can’t grasp it is that they are blind to their own depravity. Of course they are; the worst consequence of our spiritual condition is that we are blinded to our spiritual condition.  But being blinded to it doesn’t lessen our accountability for it, as the day of judgement will make plain.  But why wait until then? Why not own the truth of the cross now; namely, that a cure this drastic presupposes an ailment no less drastic?   A cure whose blessing is richer than we can comprehend presupposes a condition whose curse is deadlier than we can imagine.

 

4]         Is everyone convinced that we should begin with the cross?   Then everyone must agree that our understanding of forgiving ourselves and others unfolds from the cross; the light that the cross sheds will ever be the illumination by which we see everything else concerning forgiveness.

For instance, it’s the consistent testimony of the apostles that our forgiving our enemies is the measure of our closeness to God.  When this truth first sank home with me I sank to the floor.  Surely I could enjoy intimacy with God while enjoying the fantasy of my worst enemy going from misery to misery, misfortune to misfortune.  Then in that light which the cross sheds I saw that I couldn’t.  How could I claim intimacy with the One who forgives his assassins and at the same time relish ever-worsening misery for those who have not yet assassinated me? How can I say I crave being recreated in the image of the God for whom forgiving costs him everything while I make sure that my non-forgiving costs me nothing?

Two hundred and fifty years ago John Wesley wrote in his diary, “Resentment at an affront is sin, and I have been guilty of this a thousand times.” We want to say, “Resentment at an imagined affront would be sin, since it would be wrong to harbour resentment towards someone when that person had committed no real offence at all; but of course it would be entirely in order to harbour resentment at a real affront. After all, who wouldn’t?” To argue like this, however, is only to prove that we have not yet come within a country mile of the gospel. Resentment at an imagined affront wouldn’t be sin so much as it would be stupidity.  Because resentment at a real affront, at a real offence, comes naturally to fallen people we think it isn’t sin.  How can we ever be held accountable for something that fits us like a glove? But remember the point we lingered over a minute ago: not merely one consequence of our sinnership but the most serious consequence of it is our blindness to the fact and nature and scope of our sinnership.         Then what are we to do with our resentment?  Do we hold it to us ever so closely because its smouldering heat will fuel our self-pity and our self-justification?   Or do we deplore it and drop it at the foot of the cross, knowing that only the purblind do anything else?

Our Lord’s parable of the unforgiving servant leaves us in no doubt or ambiguity or perplexity at all.  In this parable the king forgives his servant a huge debt; the servant, newly forgiven a huge debt, turns around and refuses to forgive a fellow whatever this fellow owes him.  The king is livid that the pardon the servant has received he doesn’t extend in turn. The king orders the servant shaken up until some sense is shaken into him.  If the servant had refused to forgive his fellow a paltry sum, the servant would merely have looked silly.  But the amount the servant is owed isn’t paltry; 100 denarii is six months’ pay. Then the servant is readily understood, isn’t he: the forgiveness required of him is huge. But the point of the parable is this: while the 100 denarii which the servant is owed is no trifling sum, it is nothing compared to the 10,000 talents ($50 million) that the king has already forgiven the servant.

That injury, that offence, that wound which you and I are to forgive is not a trifle. Were it a trifle we wouldn’t be wounded.  The wound is gaping; if it were anything else we wouldn’t be sweating over forgiving it. We shall be able to forgive it only as we place it alongside what God has already forgiven in us. Please note that we are never asked to generate forgiveness of others out of our own resources; we are simply asked not to impede God’s forgiveness from flowing through us and spilling over onto others. We don’t have to generate water in order for it to irrigate what is parched and render it fruitful; all we have to do is not put a crimp in the hose. Either we don’t impede the free flow of God’s forgiveness from him through us to others, or, like the servant in the parable, we shall have to be shaken up until some sense has been shaken into us.   (We must never make the mistake of thinking our Lord to be a “gentle” Jesus “meek and mild”.  Gentle and mild he is not.)

 

5]         Before we fall asleep tonight we must be sure we understand what forgiveness does not mean.

(i)         It does not mean that the offence we are called to forgive is slight.  As we’ve already seen, it’s grievous.         Were it anything but grievous we’d be talking about overlooking it instead of forgiving it — if we were even talking about it at all.

(ii)         Forgiveness does not mean that the offence is excused.  To forgive is not to excuse.  We excuse what is excusable.  What is not excusable, will never be excusable, is also never excused. It can only be forgiven. The day you tell me you have forgiven me is the day I know that I am without excuse.  To forgive is never a shorthand version of, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” To forgive is to say it matters unspeakably.

(iii)         Forgiveness does not mean that we are suckers asking the world to victimize us again.  To forgive is not to invite another assault.  To forgive is not to advertise ourselves as a doormat.  To be sure, there are people who are doormats, people whose self-image is so poor and whose ego-strength so diminished that they seem to invite victimization.  Forgiveness, however, isn’t the last resort of the wimp who can’t do anything else in any case.         Forgiveness, rather, is a display of ego-strength that couldn’t be stronger. Jesus can forgive those who slay him just because he has already said, “No one takes my life from me; I may lay it down of my own accord, but I lay it down; no one takes it from me.”

(iv)         Forgiveness does not mean that the person we forgive we regard as a diamond in the rough, good-at-heart. Forgiveness means that the person we forgive we regard as depraved in heart.  After all, this is what God’s forgiveness means about you and me.

(v)         Forgiveness does not mean that the person we forgive we must thereafter trust.  Many people whom we forgive we shall never be able to trust.  The only people we should trust are those who show themselves trustworthy. Forgiveness does mean, however, that the person we can’t trust we shall nonetheless not hate, not abuse, not exploit; we shall not plot revenge against him or bear him ill-will of any sort.

Remember, all that matters is that we not impede the forgiveness which God has poured upon us and which he intends to course through us and overflow us onto others.

 

6]         Any discussion of forgiveness includes forgiving ourselves. Often the person we most urgently need to forgive is ourselves.  And since all forgiveness is difficult to the point of anguish, then to forgive ourselves may be the most difficult of all.

Suppose we don’t forgive ourselves; suppose we say, “I can forgive anyone at all except myself”.  Then what’s going on in our own head and heart?

(i)         Surely we have puffed up ourselves most arrogantly.  There is terrible arrogance in saying to ourselves, “I’m the greatest sinner in the world; the champion.  I can forgive others because they are only minor-league sinners compared to me. When it comes to depravity I’m the star of the major leagues.”

Not only is there a perverse arrogance underlying such an attitude, there is no little blasphemy as well.  “The blood-bought pardon of God, wrought at what cost to him we can’t fathom — it isn’t effective enough for me.         Where I’m concerned, God’s mercy is deficient, defective, and finally worthless.” This is blasphemy. Our forgiveness, which cost God we know not what, you and I shouldn’t be labelling a garage-sale piece of junk.

(ii)           If we say we can’t forgive ourselves then we want to flagellate ourselves in order to atone for our sin.  But don’t we believe the gospel?   The heart of the gospel is this: atonement has already been made for us. We neither dismiss it nor add to it. We simply trust it.

Perhaps this is where we should stop today; at the cross, where we began. For it is here that we see that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven us.  And here we see that we therefore must forgive others, and forgive ourselves as well.

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                      

March 2010

preached March 14, 2010, Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto

 

Matthew 26:20-29      Luke 15:1-2          Exodus 24:1-11      1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Following a Sunday morning service of Holy Communion in the congregation I served for 21 years in Mississauga an 85-year old woman greeted me at the door of the church.  She smiled sweetly (and kept on smiling) as she said, “Today was communion Sunday.  I didn’t understand anything of what it was supposed to be about.  I never have.  I’ve been in church all my life, and the service means as little to me now as it did when I was a child.  I thought you’d want to know.”
Having chatted pastorally with church folk for 43 years I’ve discovered this woman isn’t alone.  Many church folk attend services of Holy Communion frequently but will admit, in appropriate contexts, that they are largely uncomprehending as to what the service means or what it is supposed to do.
For the edification of all of us this morning let’s think of the service of Holy Communion, or Lord’s Supper as it is more frequently called in Protestant orbits, in terms of Last Supper, Family Supper, and Future/Final Supper.

I (i) —   At the Last Supper Jesus poured out wine and said (no doubt solemnly), “…this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins….”  Our Hebrew ancestors knew that “blood” was shorthand for “life given up sacrificially”.  Now unlike our Hebrew ancestors we are creatures of modernity; we are fastidious; we like things clean and neat, always in good taste.  Our foreparents, on the other hand, weren’t concerned with good taste at all; they were concerned with godliness; not concerned to see something aesthetically polished, but preoccupied with knowing that their sin had been pardoned.  Therefore they didn’t shrink from those vehicles of worship which they knew God had appointed, such as the sacrifice of a lamb in the temple.  In the temple mystery of atonement (“atonement” means the making “at one” of sinful people and holy God) worshippers brought their best lamb to church; the priest cut the animal’s throat, collected the blood in a basin, and threw the blood against the altar.
A well-known, popular New Testament commentator, more fastidious than he should be and with more than a streak of anti-Judaism in him (William Barclay), speaks of the repugnance of it all: odour, flies, unsightliness; the slimy, slippery, gooey, filthy mess.  He praises Jesus for having got us beyond this bloody primitivism.  Alas, he overlooks one thing: Jesus endorsed the bloody primitivism.  Whenever Jesus was in Jerusalem at Passover he worshipped at the temple too — which is to say whenever our Lord went to church in Jerusalem he showed up with his lamb under his arm.  Of course he knew something no one else knew: he knew that what the temple liturgy pointed to would soon be gathered up in his own poured-out blood, since he knew himself the lamb of God.
Repugnant?  Our Hebrew foreparents weren’t repelled by gore; they were repelled by their own depravity.  They weren’t jarred by a spectacle that lacked refinement; they were jarred by a spectacle that lacked righteousness — the spectacle of themselves in their systemic sinnership facing a Holy God who couldn’t be fooled and whose truth couldn’t be “fudged”.  Fastidiousness is the farthest thing from the mind of corrupt people whom the just judge has condemned.
I admit that the category of sin (that is, the predicament of rebellion against God and the spiritual perversity arising therefrom) isn’t a category in which people today think.  People today think instead in the categories of vice and immorality and criminality.  If a deed violates what a particular society deems good, the deed is called vice.  If the same deed violates what is regarded as the universal human good, it is called immorality.  If the same deed violates a stated law, it is called crime.  What it is called is determined entirely by the context which interprets it.  From a gospel-perspective the context which interprets us (not merely our deed) and interprets us ultimately; this context is the holy God himself.  Not only is the holy God the ultimate interpretative context; this context is also unique in its profundity. So profound is it that when we understand ourselves in it we also understand that what is interpreted now is not deed but being.  In other words the ultimate issue isn’t what we do but what we are.  Our ancient foreparents knew this.
According to apostolic testimony our Lord, at the Last Supper, poured wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”; that is, it is the one covenant of God renewed by the blood of Christ.   Why is blood attached to God’s covenant or promise never to abandon us, never to fail us, never to forsake us, never to quit on us in anger or give up on us in disgust?  Why is blood attached to God’s covenant or promise not to let anything, not even humankind’s outrageous insolence and ingratitude, loose him from his bond with us?  In short, if God wants to promise himself to us, why doesn’t he simply declare it and spare himself the expense of his Son?  Because everywhere in life where promises are made to people of perverse hearts (which is to say, everywhere in life where promises are made), the same promises can be kept only at enormous cost.  It costs nothing to make a promise, nothing to declare a promise (talk is cheap); it costs everything to keep a promise.
We promise not to forsake spouse or friend.  The promise made costs nothing; but as soon as that person provides incontrovertible grounds for giving up on him, the same promise kept costs everything.  God has promised forever to be God-for-us.  In the Garden of Eden his promise cost him nothing; but when humankind found itself in the “far country”; i.e., when God’s promise meets our rebellious hearts, his promise kept — still to be God-for-us — wraps him in anguish.
Then what mood pertains to the Last Supper aspect of our communion service?  Surely a mood of solemnity; a mood of sober reflection, of realistic self-assessment; which is to say, a mood of penitence.

(ii): — But the Last Supper isn’t the only aspect of our communion service; there is also what I have called the family supper aspect, the ordinary, everyday meals Jesus shared with people in the course of his public ministry.  The written gospels tell us on page after page that Jesus spent a great deal of time in kitchens and restaurants.  Why did he spend so much time there when he knew he had so little time for his public ministry?  Because he wanted his meal-companions to know peace with God.  In first century Palestine to eat with someone was a public declaration of amnesty; to eat with someone meant you harboured no enmity toward that person; you were plotting nothing malicious; you intended, rather, only that person’s well-being and blessing.
A sign of amnesty (supposedly) in our culture is the handshake.  When we shake with our right hand the person attached to the handshake knows that our hand holds no weapon and therefore we aren’t going to attack.  Boy Scouts and Girl Guides shake with their left hand.  In the pre-firearm days of sword and spear the left hand held one’s shield.  To shake with our left hand means we have discarded our shield; we have renounced self-protection.  What would it mean to shake hands with both hands?  It could only mean that we had foresworn both attacking someone else and defending ourselves; it could only mean, in other words, that we were giving ourselves totally to another person without condition or hesitation. Surely shaking hands with both hands is what we do, in effect, whenever we hug or embrace another human being. To hug someone, embrace someone is simply to shake hands with both hands.  Our affection, our intention, our concern, our heart’s unarticulated welcome; it’s all poured out on this other person at the same time that there is nothing held back to plot either manipulation of him or armour-plating of ourselves.  When Jesus ate with people, in first century Palestine, he embraced them — both hands.  He cherished those people and visited upon them that amnesty with God which was nothing less than their salvation.  They sponged it up with that heart-hunger which every last one of us has.
It sounds so wonderful that we can’t imagine a downside to it.  But there was.  Our Lord’s eating habits ‘did him in.’  Those he ate with loved him, while those who refused to eat with him savaged him.  We must never forget that Jesus uttered many of his parables in reply to those who faulted him for his table manners.  We must never forget that the best-loved parables — lost sheep, lost coin, lost son — Jesus spoke when those who were to savage him hissed, “This man receives sinners and eats with them!”
Nonetheless our Lord never backed down.  He knew that the provision in the cross, while sufficient to grant people access to God, wouldn’t of itself induce them to suspend their suspicion and abandon their assorted safe ‘tree perches’, like Zacchaeus.   He knew that because of the cross sinners could approach the holy One.  But would they?  Would they want to?  Only if through the holy One Incarnate they knew a welcome beyond anything they had found anywhere else.  They found such a welcome in Jesus and loved him for it.
Then why did others attack him on account of his dinner-companions?  Because he broke down all the conventions by which they, his enemies, had always ordered their lives, all the conventions by which they assigned themselves a superior place in the ‘pecking order’ and credited themselves with a superior righteousness.  It is a social convention to classify people as moral or immoral (and no one this morning is arguing the difference between moral and immoral).  It is a social convention to classify people as successful or dismissible, religious or irreligious. Social conventions have their place.  Nevertheless, when Jesus Christ appears, social conventions are exposed as less than ultimate; decidedly less than ultimate.
Jesus eats with the immoral and they know themselves cherished; he would be every bit as happy to eat with the moral too, but moral people won’t eat with him as long as he insists on eating with those who are regularly regarded as ill-behaved.  Jesus eats with the dismissible, those deemed unimportant.  He would gladly eat with the successful, the powerful, too, but they don’t want to rub shoulders with the dismissible.  He eats as well with the irreligious.  He would gladly eat with the religious too, but they can’t stomach the thought that their reward is no greater than the reward of those who have made no religious effort at all.
Social conventions are a way of ordering society.  They have their place. But when Christ the King appears they are exposed as pre-ultimate; they have now been superseded by a new order, the Kingdom of God.
Social convention and the Kingdom of God are simply not the same.  Then it’s quite plain that either we cling to the social conventions, assuming that the social order they point to is ultimate, or in the presence of Jesus Christ we look beyond social convention to “seize with both hands” (Calvin’s expression) the One who has already seized us.  Either we regard social convention as ultimate or we abandon ourselves to the rule of God exemplified in a welcome we are never going to find anywhere else.  It is not the case that Jesus exalts immorality above morality or failure above success or irreligion above religion (as some left-wing preachers try to tell us.)  It is rather the case that all such distinctions and categories and evaluations and pigeonholes are left behind as we forget them in favour of a kingdom which transcends them.
Yet we must always remember that men and women are persuaded to forget them and leave them behind, are free to forget them and leave them behind, only as they find both hands shaken, only as they know themselves embraced and want above all to hug forever the one who has first hugged them.
Jesus welcomed his dinner-companions to a new family, what Paul calls “the household and family of God.”  His family meals landed our Lord in much trouble, but he refused to give them up.  Those who joined the family and ate at its table rejoiced and exulted in their new-found exhilaration.  Not even the pouting and the sulking and the petulance of those who wouldn’t sit down with them could diminish their joy.
The mood of exultation, then, the mood of joy, is another mood we should bring to the communion service.

(iii): — There is yet another supper aspect to the Lord’s Supper, the anticipation of the Messianic Banquet.  There is a supper to come, a future supper which will also be the final supper which never ends.  The Messianic Banquet will celebrate one glorious truth: the destruction of all that opposes God’s kingdom and violates his rule and disputes his sovereignty.  Christians are convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s agent in restoring a creation warped, a creation disfigured, a creation significantly disabled and frequently grotesque; a creation rendered all this through the multi-tentacled grip of evil.  At the same time, as our Jewish friends remind us, when Messiah appears he has to bring the Messianic Age with him.  Without the arrival of the Messianic Age it’s absurd to speak of the arrival of the Messiah.  In the Messianic Age swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks; war will no longer preoccupy us even as poverty, disease and exploitation no longer afflict us.
Have swords been beaten into ploughshares?  (Think of Syria and Egypt.)  Not only does war (terrorism is war by another name) rage throughout the world; at this moment there are approximately fifty civil wars raging throughout the world: fellow-citizens are slaying each other.  Have poverty, disease and injustice ceased to afflict us?
Let’s be sure to admit this much: those who dispute the sovereignty of Jesus Christ have a case.  Unquestionably they have a case.  Nevertheless Christians may and must say this much: in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead the risen Messiah has brought the Kingdom with him and superimposed his Kingdom on a fallen creation.  To be sure, his Kingdom is not yet fully manifest (if it were it wouldn’t be disputable); but it arrived as the risen one himself triumphed over every principality and power, over every human sin and cosmic evil which are bent on denying their defeat and molesting whom they can with their last gasp.  In his resurrection from the dead our Lord has guaranteed the healing of the creation’s gaping wounds.
Thinking pictorially as they were trained to do, the earliest Christians depicted this God-ordained event as a feast that never ends.  The bedraggled of the world, a bedraggled world itself, will shine forth resplendently as the creation restored redounds to the glory of the God who made it, who sustained it through its afflictions, who wrested it out of the hands of the molester who warped it, and who has freed it for the blessing of his people; which people in turn will praise him everlastingly for it.  Then the mood we must bring to this aspect of Holy Communion is the mood of eager anticipation and steadfast confidence.

II: — The service of Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper gathers up three distinct but related meals:
– the Last Supper, where Jesus signed in his own blood the promise of God that there will always be more mercy in God than there is sin in us;
– the everyday meals our Lord ate with those whom he gathered into his household and family as he embraced and welcomed all who craved him and his rule more than they clung to social convention;
– the messianic banquet, the final supper of the future where all that contradicts the kingdom of God will be dispersed.
The mood of the communion service should reflect all three aspects: sober penitence, unrestrained joy, confident anticipation.

Today, in our worship service, we have already tasted the Word of God in scripture and sermon.  Now we are to taste the selfsame Word in sacrament.
Our Lord Jesus invites us to his table. Soberly let us renew our repentance in the wake of his astounding mercy.  Joyfully let us embrace again him who rejoices to embrace us.  Confidently let us anticipate that glorious Day when together we behold the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the creation healed; for on that Day the former things will have passed away and there will be neither mourning nor crying nor pain any more.

Victor Shepherd

August 2013

Church of St Bride