Three Children or Two Children and an Adult
Luke 2:41-52 Jeremiah 1:4-10 1 Samuel 3:1-10
I: — It’s been almost a year since any of us saw NHL hockey played. Does anyone miss it? I don’t. Frankly, I find little pleasure in watching hockey on TV. I can watch it for about one period (usually the first), and by then I’ve had enough.
Do I find hockey on TV boring because I don’t like hockey? On the contrary I’m fond of the game and played it for twelve seasons. I enjoy watching hockey – as long as I can see it “live”. It’s televised hockey that I don’t enjoy watching.
Why don’t I like watching hockey on TV? Because TV never shows us the game. TV merely shows us the puck. TV doesn’t show us the whole game being played; TV merely shows us the puck zipping here and there and back again.
There’s a difference between seeing the puck and watching the game. I know the difference just because I know hockey. I know, for instance, that the team which plays better when it doesn’t have the puck is the team that wins. (You see, the better a team plays when it doesn’t have the puck, the sooner the team gets it back; and obviously a team can’t score unless it has the puck.) And so whenever I’m watching a game “live” I pay closer attention to the team that doesn’t have the puck. I know too that in order to win, a team has to be able to get the puck out of its own end of the rink in two crisp passes. In the first five minutes of a game I note whether or not a team can do this. I know a great deal about the game of hockey because I’ve been watching hockey for years.
Yet there is a different kind of knowledge I have of hockey too. I know what it is to be bodychecked so hard you feel you have been hit by a train at a level crossing. I know the exhilaration of “wiring” a shot that leaves the opposing goaltender motionless and flashes the red light behind him. I know all this not because I watch hockey; I know all this because I played hockey.
The first kind of knowledge is “observer-knowledge”; observer-knowledge is gained through accumulating information. The second kind of knowledge is “player-knowledge”; player-knowledge is gained only through participating.
There are obvious differences between observer-knowledge and player-knowledge. The most important difference, however, is often overlooked. It’s this: the players determine the outcome of the game. Only the players determine the outcome of the game; no observer, no spectator, ever has.
God says to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I KNEW YOU; I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations”. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. God hasn’t known Jeremiah in the sense of observer-knowledge, always observing the man, always accumulating more and more information about Jeremiah. God has known Jeremiah as a player, a participant in Jeremiah’s life, shaping the outcome of the prophet’s life. God has known Jeremiah insofar as God himself has been involved in the unfolding of Jeremiah’s life — since when? since Jeremiah became a prophet? since he became an adult? since he was born? No. God has been intimately involved, passionately involved, persistently involved since the day Jeremiah was conceived.
Today is Christian Family Sunday. Today we are thinking particularly of children and parents together. We are thinking of the significance that children have for their parents, of the impact that parents make upon their children, of God’s incursion of parents and children together. One point we are going to stress in the service today is a point we have underlined several times already; namely, God has been a participant in the lives of our children from their conception and will continue to be this, for he has something for each to do.
As children grow up parents frequently scratch their heads and wonder (silently, I trust) what on earth is becoming of their child. The future is uncertain; the child behaves in ways which parents find odd, even un-understandable. Worse than un-understandable, however, is behaviour that parents find heartbreaking whenever a youngster derails himself, and find infuriating since the youngster, despite superior intelligence, displays inferior wisdom. The parents are disappointed, anxious, angry and powerless all at once. Now they have as little idea where their offspring is going to end up as they have of what precipitated the derailment. It’s easy now to give up on the one whose birth brought such joy and promise one and one-half decades ago.
When this happens we must go back to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and knew you not as a remote spectator high in the cheapest seats in the hockey arena, as far from the play as anyone can get. I knew you, rather, just because I was the single most intimate participant in your life — and still am”. That’s the point we have to take home: “and still am.”
We must never give up on our children. We must never cease praying for them. We must never think that because their future is unclear to them and to us they therefore have no future at all. We must never assume that because we seem unable to reach them in some respects no one else ever will and God himself cannot. Remember: Jeremiah wasn’t appointed to be a prophet the day he became a prophet. He was appointed to be a prophet the day he was conceived. Between these two momentous days countless developments unfolded whose significance no one could guess; not Jeremiah himself, and certainly not his parents. And yet the single weightiest factor in Jeremiah’s life was the unidentified participation of God himself as the holy one of Israel shaped the youngster in a way no one could see for an end no one could foresee.
None of this is to suggest that as children grow up they need not come to faith, profess it boldly and confess it consistently. Plainly they must. None of this is to suggest that their sinnership has been diluted one per cent. Plainly it hasn’t, as parents and schoolteachers attest. None of this is to suggest that as these infants grow up they are relieved of responsibility for who and what they are. They are relieved of no responsibility at all. But it is to say that the faith they are one day to profess and the obedience they are one day to render didn’t begin with them but began with the quiet work of the great infiltrator himself.
II: — Even as we admit that God is wonderfully at work in our children we must admit too that we adults are charged with discerning this; charged with discerning this and magnifying this. Eli discerned it, and so did Hannah. The story is one of my favourites. The boy Samuel is lying down, at bedtime, in the temple where he has gone to apprentice under Eli the priest. He hears his name being called, his very own name: “Samuel, Samuel”. He trots in to see old man Eli, who tells the boy that he, Eli, hasn’t called anyone. It happens again. Finally Eli discerns that God is calling Samuel, calling Samuel for a work that remains hidden to them both. We must note that it isn’t Samuel who is discerning; the text tells us that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord”. It’s the old man who grasps what’s going on.
Hannah, Samuel’s mother, had grasped it first. Hannah had wanted a child as she had wanted nothing else. Each day brought her closer to menopause and closer to desperation. Then it happened. She even named her child “Sam-u-el”: “His name is God”. She meant, of course, that the child’s nature, the child’s character would be God-like in some respect. Because Hannah had longed for this child so ardently, because he was the only child she was to have, did she clutch him to her, never let him out of her sight, treat him like an heirloom too precious to risk with the jarring and jostling which are the common lot? Did she mollycoddle him and smother him? No. She sent him away from home, sent him to Eli where his spiritual formation would unfold. What made the wrench in Hannah’s heart bearable was her discernment that this step was necessary if her son was ever to exemplify the name she had given him: Sam-u-el. Wrench? Terrible wrench. Every year she sent him a coat to replace the one he had outgrown. Then he hadn’t stopped growing; he was very young.
It takes nothing less than Spirit-quickened discernment to grasp what God is doing in those who are growing up around us. Eli had it. Hannah had it. My own father had it. My father often intuited what was going on in my young head and heart; he saw that the ten-year old question I had asked him betokened far more than a child’s curiosity. On one occasion I had just learned the story of John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”, slaveship captain whom the surge of God’s grace had finally rendered clergyman, hymnwriter, spiritual advisor without peer. I was perplexed about the justice of God’s mercy. My question wasn’t so much could God forgive someone who had trafficked in wanton cruelty as it was should God forgive such a person. My father saw the wheels turning in my ten-year old head. He attempted an answer — somewhat convoluted — which I didn’t find convincing, and I told him so. He left off trying to answer the question directly and instead said gently, “Victor, he who was Newton ‘s saviour is my saviour too”. I got the point immediately. The expression someone’s sinnership takes may be socially reprehensible while the expression someone else’s takes is socially acceptable, even rewarded; nevertheless, all of us alike are sunk in sinnership to the same degree. All alike are the recipients of God’s condemnation, even as all alike are the beneficiaries of God’s mercy. I was aware that my father was as virtuous as Newton had been vicious; I was aware too, in my father’s comment, that on the Day of Judgement virtue and vice would count for nothing. All that mattered then would be our response to a mercy as vast as it was undeserved. You will never hear anything else from this pulpit as long as I occupy it. Only Spirit-quickened discernment — like that of Eli and Hannah and my dad — sees, laser-like, into the heart of the child and facilitates the spiritual formation of that child.
Samuel was still a growing boy when his mother at home and his mentor in the temple discerned the way and work of God within the child. How important was the spiritual formation of young Samuel? How crucial were his mother Hannah and his mentor Eli? According to scripture Samuel is the last of the judges or elders in Israel ; Samuel is the first of the prophets. Scripture maintains that Samuel is the greatest figure since Moses. Towards the end of his life Samuel presciently anoints a boy, just a boy, in anticipation of this boy’s becoming Israel ’s greatest king: David.
You and I must understand that the spiritual formation of young people, in both home and church, is no small matter.
III: — The last episode we shall examine today has to do with Jesus. Luke tells us he is twelve years old. In ancient Israel a child became an adult at twelve. Jesus and his parents have gone to Jerusalem for Passover services. The services over, his parents set out for home, Nazareth , only to find that their son is missing. Anxious and angry now, they trudge back to Jerusalem , find him stumping the theologians there, and tell him they are irked. He replies, “Why do you have your shirts in a knot? Isn’t this what I’m supposed to be doing?”
The seeds which his parents have been sowing for twelve years have borne fruit. The preparation for his later work, preparation which his parents have forged in him even though they have no idea what that “later work” is going to be; this preparation is finding its fulfilment in the twelve-year old, and will find even more dramatic fulfilment in the thirty-year old. Our Lord’s parents, however, are slow to grasp it; slow to grasp the fact that their son’s vocational obedience is precisely what they have endeavoured to foster in him for years. In first century Judaism a boy became a man on his twelfth birthday. The event in the temple that worries and irks the parents coincides with the child’s leaving childhood behind and stepping ahead in his adult vocation.
Our Lord’s parents, let me say again, are upset that their son, as the boy turns into a man; their son perplexes them and frustrates them. Like all of us, from a psychological standpoint they have difficulty relinquishing control over their youngster. Like all of us, from a spiritual standpoint they have difficulty understanding that their son mustdo what he’s doing if he’s to fulfil his Heavenly Father’s plan and purpose for him.
You and I should rejoice to see that day when our children, now grown up, are summoned to that work — and enter upon it — for which we have prepared them, under God, as best we have been able. When it happens we mustn’t be at all surprised if the work to which God has appointed them isn’t what we had in mind; we mustn’t impede them in any way if the work to which God appoints them contradicts what we have always thought they should be about. The truth is, every day in ever so many ways we are, under God, preparing our children for a work to which God will appoint them when all the while, every day, in every way, both we and our children have no idea what that work is going to be. Yes, I was raised in a home replete with Christian influences both overt and subliminal. Still, at no point did anyone ever sit down with me and have a man-to-man talk about the ministry. I had dozens of conversations with my dad, however, about lawyering. I went to university to study law, fell in love with philosophy, and am now Presbyterian minister in Schomberg.
My daughter Mary is fluent in French, and my daughter Catherine in Cantonese. If at some point Mary (B. Sc.N. graduate) tells me she’s been called to work in French-speaking Africa and Catherine back to China , there’s one response I mustn’t make: I mustn’t say, “Why do you have to go so far away? Doesn’t Mississauga need to be Christianized or healed?” I mustn’t say, “What’s more, if you go overseas and stay there who will look after your mother in her old age? How about a little consideration for her?” I had better not say this. If we have been genuine in the spiritual formation of our children; if through our discernment we have tried to foster the work of God’s Spirit within them, then we should rejoice to see all of this bear fruit even if it is fruit we never expected and now can’t understand. I think we should even expect their discipleship to take them in directions which we haven’t anticipated and may not like. After all, the only thing that matters for any of us is that we recognize God’s will for us and do it.
Several years ago when Maureen and I visited the Christian community on the Hebridean island of Iona, western reaches of Scotland, we learned of a seventy-year old member of the Iona Community (Church of Scotland) who was leaving for Latin America. He had been a psychiatrist in Glasgow for years; soon he would be in El Salvador doing family-practice medicine. What response do you think the man’s announcement of this would bring forth? I can see different people looking at him sideways and saying something like this:
His friends: “You can do as much healing amidst Glaswegian wretchedness as you can amidst El Salvadoran wretchedness, so why go half-way around the world?”
His medical colleagues: “You haven’t done family-practice medicine in years; what makes you think you can? It’s easier for a family-practitioner to do psychiatry than it is for a psychiatrist to do family-practice.”
His own physician: “You’ll get malaria or tapeworms or some such thing in two months and have to come home anyway. Besides, you’re seventy years old. Isn’t it time to hang up the stethoscope?”
His forty-five year old child: “Your grandchildren will miss you terribly, especially since you are their sole, surviving grandparent.”
But all of this is without force. All that matters, for any of us, is that we recognize God’s will for us and do it. We must pray every day that our children are going to do just this. And when they do we hope our response will be better than that of Mary and Joseph.
Three children; or perhaps two children and an adult. In any case Jeremiah reminds us that God has been engaged with little children from the day they were conceived. Young Samuel reminds us not so much of Samuel as of his mother Hannah and his mentor Eli, for these two discerned early in Samuel’s life what God was doing within the youngster. The twelve-year old Jesus in the temple: he exemplifies emerging awareness of that vocation for which his parents have prepared him unknowingly even as they don’t understand it fully themselves.
God grant that the children in our midst will ever do as much for us as these three children have done for the world. After all, these three the world will never forget.
Victor Shepherd
May 2005
Ages and Stages in Our Spiritual Development
Luke 2:41-52
1] We must never undervalue or otherwise make light of the spiritual development of the very young. I can remember taking part in a Sunday School “night” before I had even started kindergarten; plainly the Sunday School “night” was important to me. I can remember weeping copiously, when only five years old, because I had forgotten my church offering; plainly not being able to worship God through my offering dismayed me.
When I became a parent I noticed a similar spiritual quickening in my own children. One day when she was only three our daughter Mary beamed at Maureen and me, “Daddy loves me; mommy loves me; Jesus loves me!” Because Mary was only three I didn’t ask her if she really grasped the hypostatic union of the two natures in the Incarnation; I didn’t even ask her if she grasped the consubstantiality of the persons of the Godhead. Nevertheless because she was only three I was thrilled to see signs of her spiritual awakening.
When children are as young as Mary was at that time they don’t digest huge slabs of theological meat; they don’t reflect upon conceptual complexities; they simply associate a word with an experience. Mary associated the word “Jesus” with the experience of being loved.
Simple as such an association is, it remains crucial. It’s crucial not only when we are very young but at any stage of life. Only a few days ago I was unusually upset; “distressed” wouldn’t begin to describe how I felt. Maureen came alongside me (metaphorically speaking) and said simply, quietly, “I’m your wife.” “Wife”. One word that was immediately associated with an experience spread over three decades; one word immediately associated with an experience of unparalleled intimacy and solace and help.
When three-year old Mary beamed, “Jesus loves me” she couldn’t have said anything about atonement or redemption or justification. But she had had an experience of her parents’ love; she had been told of Jesus’ love; and when she put the two together she indicated that the love of Jesus for her was more than a word.
Needless to say Mary’s “Jesus loves me” emerged from a context; it emerged from a consistent context. A repeated inconsistency in her parents’ love for her would have pre-empted the conclusion, “Jesus loves me.” Consistency generates the context, the atmosphere, in which the very young child’s spiritual development advances.
Plainly consistency is important. If the child is subjected to repeated inconsistencies between the words he hears and the experiences he undergoes, he will be confused; more than confused, wounded; more than wounded, spiritually arrested. If the child hears words about truthfulness, love, forgiveness, yet finds himself in an atmosphere that contradicts all of this, then he is a spiritually disadvantaged child.
Adults are disappointed when the person they trust acts in such a way as to contradict that person’s word and therein violates the trust. Children, however, aren’t disappointed; children are devastated. The truth is, adults are frequently devastated too. Where would I have been in my distress a week ago if Maureen had said, “I’m your wife” and I didn’t know whether that meant Jekyll or Hyde?
What counts in the spiritual formation of the very young child isn’t the handing over of reams of information; what counts is a consistent context, an atmosphere, where the child can associate a gospel-word with a vivid experience.
2] As children become older they move beyond merely associating word or name with experience; they move into a community of faith where they belong, where they have a part, where they see themselves to be essential.
The child’s “taste” of belonging can be very simple: the CGIT vesper service, the White Gift service, the junior choir, coming to the front of the church Sunday-by-Sunday for the children’s story. Simple as the act is, it anchors the child in the truth that she’s not alone in the Christian venture; she has companions on the Way. What’s more, since the desire to belong is deep in all of us (properly deep, rightly deep in all of us), and since it’s easy to fall into belonging to much that isn’t edifying and may even be degrading, it’s all the more important to belong to some feature of church life.
Several years ago when Gary and Cathy Clipperton returned from their year in Australia I asked Gary if he would provide leadership for the youth group. I shall never forget Gary’s reply: “I can organize them and supervise them, but I can’t `Christianize’ them.” I responded, “Just keep them together as a group and we’ll get them `Christianized’ some other way.” My daughter Catherine went to that youth group for five years. She would have walked on broken glass to get to the meetings. It didn’t bother me that she wasn’t being programmatically “Christianized” there. (Needless to say there was always an implicit “Christianizing” underway.) When Catherine began grade thirteen Mary began grade nine. I wondered if perhaps Catherine might prefer to be without Mary in the youth group. In fact Catherine always treated Mary generously and genuinely welcomed her to all the outings. I have always treasured that youth group (albeit “unchristianized”), for it invited my children to “belong” there. You see, as a pastor I deal every day with parents whose teenaged children belong elsewhere and can’t get pried away from the “elsewhere”. (If ever you doubt the fact and nature of the “elsewhere” where young people may belong, come with me to criminal court or family court.)
As children feel themselves to belong to the community of faith they begin to see that Christian existence isn’t merely an idea in the mind; it isn’t even chiefly an idea in the mind; it’s a way of life to be lived. Children begin to see that believing, belonging, and living are one.
Several years ago the confirmation class of our congregation had been admitted to church membership for only a week or two when the congregation had a congregational meeting to vote on the matter of making the church building wheelchair-accessible. The project would cost a great deal of money. Some people spoke in favour of the project, others against it. Just about the time the vote was being called the teenagers (church members for only a few weeks), trooped into the meeting en masse, sat down in a block in the first row, and voted as a block in favour of the project. Streetsville congregation stood tall that day, because not one older person remonstrated, “Why should they be voting when they aren’t going to be paying?” The younger people plainly belonged, and just as plainly reminded us older folk that believing, belonging and living are one.
3] As young people grow even older they enter yet another stage in their spiritual development: questioning. Everything has to be questioned, looked at from fifty different angles, disputed, probed, tested, contradicted, X-rayed, queried. And there’s nothing wrong with this.
In the confirmation class just concluded the liveliest discussions pertained not to doctrine (revelation, sin, repentance, etc.) but rather to disputed matters that are disputed just because the gospel collides with the world; just because gospel-understanding collides with the world’s self-understanding. For instance, the question was raised about Chinese Marxism (I had just visited China) and how a Marxist understanding of human nature differs from a Christian understanding of human nature. Soon a related question was voiced: how does a Marxist understanding of history differ from a Christian understanding of history? how does the Kingdom of God differ from a classless society? how does the lordship of Christ differ from the dictatorship of the proletariat? I readily understand why such topics intrigue younger people: these topics probe the most startling collisions in life. (Frankly, doctrine is not the most pressing matter for 16-year olds.)
I taught a grade 8 Sunday School class for two years. At that time I myself was in fourth year philosophy and then in my M.A. year. Our weekly Sunday School lessons had to do with the gospel of John. I had the teacher’s book; the youngsters had the student’s book. And they weren’t the slightest bit interested in the subtleties of John’s gospel. One day a bright boy in class pontificated all-knowingly that Sigmund Freud had pronounced all belief in God to be nothing more than the insecure person’s projection of wish-fulfilment. Immediately I pointed out to this fellow that all reductionist arguments cut both ways. If belief in God is nothing more than the wish-fulfilment of those who want God, then by the same argument atheism is nothing more than the wish-fulfilment of those who want to be rid of God. Freud dismisses all belief in God as the invention of the insecure? Why don’t we dismiss Freud’s atheism as the invention of the fearful who are afraid that God just might be and might even be God? All reductionist arguments cut both ways. Suddenly a light went on in the grade 8 class. We all agreed that such matters were far more fun than the intricacies of John’s gospel.
A week or two later a fellow whose parents had Marxist sympathies informed the class that all philosophy and all theology were nothing more than the self-serving rationalizations of the economically privileged, which rationalizations the economically privileged deployed to perpetuate their privilege. In other words, Marx had exposed the truth-claim for philosophy and theology as groundless. At this point I replied, “Has it ever occurred to you to subject Marx’s own philosophy to Marx’s critique of all philosophy? Has it ever occurred to you that according to Marx’s argument his understanding is nothing more than the self-serving rationalization of the economically disenfranchised — and therefore equally devoid of any truth-claim?”
For years I have known that Sunday School lessons aren’t nearly as exciting for teenagers as the collision between the Christian faith and the world’s contradiction of it.
Relentless questioning (including questions carefully designed to “stump” older adults); ceaseless disputes; outrageous disrespect for tradition; corrosive criticism of long-cherished assumptions: all of this is not only part-and-parcel of spiritual development, it’s necessarily part-and-parcel of spiritual development. For it is only as such queries are taken seriously that growing people mature.
4] When I speak of maturity I mean assured faith. I mean the settled conviction that the truth of Jesus Christ is just that: truth. I mean inward authentication that the Lord of the cosmos is mine because I am first his.
After people have emerged on the far side of protracted groping and guessing, anxious questioning and doubting disagreement; after people have moved beyond this they often tell us, “It all fell into place” or “Finally it clicked” or “At last I got the picture.” When people speak like this they are telling us that they are now convinced of the core of the gospel; and they are now possessed of assurance concerning their inclusion in it. They are convinced of the truth; they have been convicted of their spiritual need; and they can now confess with assurance the same faith that has captured the minds and hearts of Christians for centuries.
To be sure, more than a little has to be understood at this stage. We must understand who God is, why he incarnated himself in the Nazarene, how he can be known, why sin is sin and how faith differs from mere assent. Nevertheless, the emphasis at this stage isn’t on understanding; the emphasis is on settled conviction, assurance, care-free self-abandonment to the one we no longer doubt or dispute. At this stage we aren’t left hoping it might be true that God so loved the world as to give himself to the world in his son; at this stage we are exulting at the marvel that “he loved me; and gave himself for me!” (in the words of the apostle Paul.) At this stage we don’t have to be coaxed into worshipping or argued into praying or threatened into obeying. At this stage we simply unselfconsciously worship, pray, obey, do, love, rejoice, trust. At this stage it all comes naturally, for our new nature, true nature is that of the child of God.
This sort of maturity doesn’t mean that we are now a spiritual giant; it doesn’t mean that we’ve “arrived”; it doesn’t mean that we are superior. But it does mean that something huge and grand and glorious has been settled.
5] In everyday life we like to think that as we grow older we leave the younger boy or girl behind. When we are 30 we like to think the 13-year old is long gone. Psychologically, however, it isn’t true: our adolescence, even our childhood, is never far away.
Not only is it not true psychologically, it isn’t true spiritually either. Even when we are possessed of mature faith we still need to wrestle with perplexities and challenges and contradictions. Even when we are possessed of mature faith we still need to belong to the community of faith and learn afresh that believing, belonging and living are one.
And when we are very old and very mature in faith events will still howl down upon us and leave us needing the immediate comfort of the immediate association of word and experience: “Daddy loves me; mommy loves me; Jesus loves me.”
In our difficult days, on our tumultuous days, we need to be able to wander into the sanctuary on a Thursday afternoon, too upset to pray, and simply find ourselves comforted and edified and encouraged by whatever we associate with this building or its people or a word we’ve heard pronounced here or someone we’ve met here.
Jesus said that we must become like children if we are to enter the kingdom. The truth is, even as we mature in faith we must also remain children at the same time.
Spiritual development is a development that ultimately leaves nothing behind. Maturity, sophistication, reflection, settled assurance: these are certainly to be gained, even as our earlier ages and stages are never lost.
Victor Shepherd
May 1997
It’s The Jordan That Matters
Luke 3:3-18 2 Kings 5:1-18
I: — “Everyone should get done”, said the anxious mother to me. She meant, of course, that everyone should be baptized. Should everyone? And if perchance everyone should, why? Under what circumstances? To what end? The person whom we should consult concerning these questions is the man who had most to say about baptism, John the Dipper. “John” was his name, Yochan, “gift of God”. BAPTIZEIN was the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk, as in “dip your paintbrush” or “dunk your doughnut.” “The baptizer, the dipper, the dunker” was the term hung on him by those who thought that John was the most ridiculous spectacle they had ever seen. Dressed in animal skins like Tarzan, living in the waterless wilderness where he hadn’t sat in a bathtub in years, possessed of a voice that ruptured eardrums, unmindful of the bee-stings acquired through gathering wild honey, John looked like a nature-boy who could have been locked up. He thundered that people needed to get right with God. A sign (but only a sign), a declaration, of their getting right with God was their plunge into the river Jordan. It was a public acknowledgement that the truth of the living God had pierced them to the heart and they wanted to drown their corrupt nature and henceforth live under God’s royal rule.
When the people did respond John didn’t smile with relief and say, “That’s more like it, that’s what I like to see.” Instead John looked at the hordes who were tripping over each other in their haste to get to the Jordan and raged, “Look at the snakes coming out! You can always tell when the underbrush catches fire; the snakes slither out in self-preservation! You people aren’t serious about God and his kingdom and his truth and his service; you don’t want to abandon yourself to him; you merely want fire insurance for the life-to-come: snakes bent on self-preservation!”
None the less, along with the superficial multitudes who weren’t sincere there were also those who were in earnest. John’s message had seared them: they did long for God and his kingdom, his truth and his service. They knew that John was preparing men and women for radical, rigorous discipleship. They knew that just around the corner was Jesus, John’s cousin, and Jesus would draw into his company the disciples whom John had prepared.
We shouldn’t belittle John’s work. The Jordan represented something serious. To be baptized in the Jordan meant that John’s convictions were your convictions. You were stating publicly that you and John were of one mind about the kingdom of God and the urgency of entering it and serving it.
What were John’s convictions? (i) His first conviction: false securities are useless. When John preached many people scoffed. They took refuge in their parentage or their piety or their privilege.
First, their parentage: “We don’t need to repent. We have Abraham as our father”, they threw back in John’s face. “Why talk about Abraham’s blood-line?”, John replied, “What alone counts is Abraham’s faith.” Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was a missionary in China? So what! It won’t do anything for me and I shouldn’t put any stock in it.
Next they tried to hide behind their piety: “We are extra-careful about religious observances”. (This is piety talking.) But what is the virtue in outward conformity to a pious code if inwardly there is lacking that whole-souled, single-minded self-abandonment to the living God?
Lastly they sought refuge in privilege (parentage, piety and privilege): “We belong to Israel. We don’t belong to the pagan nations who wouldn’t know God from a gopher. We belong to a religious tradition over a thousand years old. And not only is our tradition old, it embodies the truth of God”. “Substituting a tradition for intimate acquaintance with God himself”, countered John, “is like reading a handbook on lovemaking and assuming you are therefore married.”
The false securities of parentage, piety and privilege are useless. We must own for ourselves the forgiveness that God has fashioned for us, or remain unpardoned. We must exercise the faith that God has given us and by which we are bound to him, or remain forever estranged from him. Moment by moment we must resolve to obey the One who insists that obedience is freedom, or else languish in bondage to our sin. John’s first conviction: false securities are useless.
(ii) John’s second conviction: the sincerity of our profession is indicated by the consistency of our discipleship. When tax-collectors told John that they wanted to be immersed in the Jordan as a public sign of their seriousness John said, “If you are as serious as you say you are then you will stop cheating the people from whom you are collecting taxes.” When soldiers asked for baptism — “If you really mean it then you will stop molesting civilians and stop extorting protection money from them”. When the multitudes streamed to the Jordan John explained, “Before you get wet you must understand that to take the plunge is to pledge yourself and everything you own to needy people.”
Then, only then, John welcomed all who responded to his preaching and baptized them, exuberantly, in the Jordan.
II: — Yet there is more to the Jordan. Jesus was baptized there too. Unlike the people who responded to John, however, Jesus wasn’t publicly declaring a change in life-style. He had no need to change anything. When Jesus stood in the Jordan he was endorsing everything that cousin John was about; but he was also doing more. He was inaugurating his own ministry. Thereafter all whom Christ called into his company and were baptized as he had been were owning their ministry. In other words, for Jesus and his followers too, baptism is ordination to ministry.
To be sure different Christians have different ministries. Your ministry and mine differ in several respects. Yet underlying the many differences there forever remains a commonality that we must own together. The commonality arises, of course, in that the ministry of every Christian is generated from the ministry of Jesus Christ. He is the “great high priest”, in the words of the book of Hebrews. You and I in turn are that “royal priesthood” of which Peter speaks. His ministry is intercession in behalf of a tormented world. In Israel the ministry of the priest is intercession. Since we are a royal priesthood generated by the great high priest himself, our ministry too can only be a ministry of intercession in behalf of a tormented world.
One Monday not so long ago the telephone rang once more. The caller was a minister-friend. His wife was having an affair with a colleague at work. As you’d expect, the more intense the affair became, the more icily she treated her husband and the more distant from him she rendered herself. When my minister-friend phoned he had just returned from tests at Princess Margaret Hospital. He had been treated for cancer some time ago, had undergone surgery, and then appeared to be “out of the woods.” The day he phoned me was the day that the most recent tests indicated there was a new growth on another organ. Naturally he concluded it was malignant. He stumbled home from the hospital and told his wife. She stared at him with unblinking iciness, said nothing, and walked away. I can’t imagine a silence any more cruel, just as I can’t imagine isolation more isolated.
The intercession of Jesus Christ is a major motif in the New Testament. The apostles know that our Lord has fused himself to all humankind in solidarity with us. One with us all, he lifts up before his Father every last sinning, suffering human being. The ministry of the Christian is intercession too. Which is to say, our ministry consists of fusing ourselves to those whose lives intersect ours, in order that they might know their sin can’t deprive them of our compassion, know they are never alone, know their pain isn’t unnoticed, know themselves cherished.
No sooner was I finished with my long telephone call when the phone rang again. This time it was a paranoid fellow, one of the many deranged who look to me and of whom I am fond. This fellow suffers terribly. After all, it’s dreadful to live in constant fear of assassination. In the course of our chit-chat he told me he had to get up to the toilet several times during the night. Now since he is a middle-aged male you don’t have to be a medical genius to know what his problem is. I told him I would make sure a urologist saw him. “Urologist!”, he raved at me, “What good’s a urologist when someone is poisoning my orange juice?”
This past July Maureen and I visited our friend Louise in Montreal. She is schizophrenic. She isn’t deranged like the fellow whose orange juice is forever being poisoned; she’s closer to normal mental functioning than that. Still, she’s ill, and she suffers. One fine summer day two months ago she piloted us to the eastern townships, 90 minutes’ drive from Montreal, to Lake Memphramagog. (I was delighted to visit the lake for many reasons, two of which were the beautiful scenery and the fact I’d read so often about the lake in the writing of Mordecai Richler.) Louise has been a dear friend for 17 years, ever since we met in 1982 in La Pocatiere.
To be sure, it’s often inconvenient and often wearing to keep company with mentally ill people. At the same time, it’s often instructive. Ill people tend to lack the social niceties, the insincerity that passes for diplomacy. They don’t have the social duplicity that sane people can no longer recognize as duplicity. They’ve forgotten the social conventions that keep you and me (I’m assuming now that you and I are sane) insisting publicly that the emperor is magnificently attired when everyone knows he has no clothes and only very young children and very ill adults blurt out the truth, and blurt out the truth just because they lack the social skill of how to be false. In this regard we must always remember G.K. Chesterton. Mentally ill people, said Chesterton, haven’t lost their reason; they’ve lost everything except their reason.
Then what does intercession mean for all such? That we pray for them? Of course we shall. Praying for them is also the easiest — and the cheapest — expression of intercession. Then what other expression does our intercession for them take? What do we do for people who can’t defend themselves? What do we do for people who suffer extraordinarily? If you can’t imagine what “intercession” might entail, think of “intervention.”
Baptism in the Jordan is a public declaration that we have been called into the service of our Lord whose intercession in behalf of all sufferers is relentless.
III: — Yet the Jordan means even more. It means not only that we are going to minister, but also that we shall allow ourselves to be ministered unto; and allow ourselves to be ministered unto even if this entails our being humbled — or perhaps humiliated. The Jordan is the river into which Naaman must plunge himself if he’s to be healed. Naaman is the five-star general of the Syrian army that has overrun Israel. He’s also afflicted with leprosy, and he finds his affliction humiliating. An Israelite girl, a prisoner of war, is his wife’s attendant. The Israelite girl tells Mrs. Naaman that Elisha, the Israelite prophet, can cure her husband. Naaman is humiliated again. He, the commander-in-chief of a victorious army, has to appear cap-in-hand and submit himself to a fellow from the conquered people? But leprosy is no trifling matter; Naaman swallows his pride and appears before Elisha. Soon he’s not merely humiliated, he’s disgusted: Elisha has told him that he must bathe seven times in the Jordan. The Jordan then was as filthy as Toronto’s Don river is today. Seven times in that fetid pollution? Surely seven times into the Jordan would leave a man with afflictions worse than leprosy! Vehemently Naaman objects, “Why can’t I bathe in the clear, clean waters of my native Damascus? Why can’t Elisha simply call on the name of his God and wave his hand?” But Elisha is adamant: “Seven times into the Jordan, General Naaman, or leprosy for life.” Naaman added it all up. If it had to be the Jordan, then the Jordan it would be.
My first summer placement as a student minister was a frontier town in northern British Columbia that had recently been inundated with construction workers. On my last Sunday in town before returning to Toronto for seminary I preached on faith. I thought it was a good sermon. After the service a man who had attended worship throughout the summer approached me. He was an alcoholic who had been contentedly sober for several years. He looked me in the eye with a look that was all-searching and all-knowing and said quietly, “Victor, faith is serenity.” From his look I knew that he thought he had detected non-serenity in me. He thought I was prone to agitation, prone to vehemence, prone to flare-ups, prone to roller-coaster mood-alterations, prone to knotting my shirt on short notice! I looked him back, trying to say through my look, “Mister, you’ve got me wrong.” It didn’t work. He smiled again and said, “Victor, faith is serenity.” And then I bristled. After all, I was a theology student and I had forgotten more doctrine than he would ever know; and besides, by vocation I was his spiritual superior, wasn’t I? What’s more, he was so weak (“weak” is how I thought of it in those days, to my shame) that he’d never be able to take a drink again without going haywire. And he was correcting me? And then I recalled the word of Elisha: “Either the Jordan, or your affliction for life.”
It has happened to me a dozen times since then, and will continue to happen, since I am not yet fully healed.
I want to come back to the question I left with you at the beginning of the sermon. Should everyone be “done”? Should everyone be baptized? Anyone be baptized if the water in which we are baptized is the Jordan. For the Jordan means
(i) we are abandoning ourselves to a discipleship so far-reaching as to be unmistakable and undeniable,
(ii) we are accepting ordination to a ministry of intercession in behalf of suffering people,
(iii) we are submitting to a correction and a restoration that entails humility, even humiliation, but without which we shall never be healed of our affliction.
Parents have brought their children for baptism today. This means the parents are promising to do everything they can to have their children one day own “the Jordan” for themselves.
You and I are witnesses to all of this; but not witnesses only. Even less are we idle bystanders. You and I are those who were baptized ourselves, whether as infants, adolescents or mature adults. Then the question we must ask ourselves is this: the water in which we were baptized, was it the Jordan? After all, it’s the Jordan, and only the Jordan, that matters.
Victor Shepherd
September 1999
From Elijah to John the Baptist, from David to Jesus
Luke 3:3-20
I: — My appetite does not improve when I see a crow pecking at a dead animal on the side of the highway. And if perchance a crow were to drop a bit of ragged roadkill in my lap I should be repulsed. Elijah the prophet was told (who told him?) to hunker down by the brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan and crows would feed him there. Feed him what? Everyone knows what crows eat.
Elijah looms out at us from the Hebrew bible as a man who is utterly God-saturated. Over and over we are told, “The word of the Lord came to Elijah…”, and off Elijah goes to do and say what has been laid on him. Today we should find many different ways of speaking of him. He was God-soaked — for the text explains him entirely in terms of the God who has inundated him. He was humble — for it takes more than a little humility to allow oneself to be fed carrion. He was courageous — for it takes enormous courage to speak truth to power, particularly when the political power (King Ahab and his cruel wife Jezebel) is murderous. He was unpolished — for subtlety and soft speech were foreign to him. Most notably he was impassioned. Wherever we find Elijah his passion is aflame: his preaching, his praying, his scorn, his rage, his dejection; it’s all a firestorm. Moderation? Elijah never heard of the word. Balance? The “golden mean”? He wouldn’t understand. We wonder why Elijah is always and everywhere afire; he wonders why we appear not to be lit.
The greatest of the Hebrew prophets, according to Jewish opinion both ancient and modern, Elijah was God’s spokesperson in the face of the Baalism which surrounded Israel and threatened to infiltrate it. Baalism had several aspects to it. It was nature-worship, and nature worship (both ancient and modern) conveniently lacks any grasp of evil or sin. Nature-worship will always attract the hordes who want religious sentimentality without ethics. Not surprisingly Baalism tolerated, even encouraged, lasciviousness of all sorts.
King Ahab, an Israelite who knew exactly what God meant when God insisted that he is a “jealous” God (God abides no rivals; worship of him cannot be mixed with worship of anything else); Ahab nevertheless thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the true and living God, together? Why not have the self-indulgence which Baal permits his people and the security which Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication which Baal laughs about and the forgiveness which Yahweh weeps to bestow? Why not? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that God wants us to “have it all”? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that we can have all the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?
Elijah rightly says, “No, a thousand times no!” And so we find Elijah, the prophet of God, standing amidst the 450 prophets of Baal. “The Holy One of Israel”, Elijah says to them, “will shortly expose your Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that it is. And as for you, Ahab, so far from being a real king you are a double-crosser; you have betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector you were commissioned to be.” Whereupon Ahab stabs his finger at Elijah, “You troubler of Israel ; why do you have to be such a disturber?”
Jewish people always knew that Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, would come back. He would come back at the end-time when the kingdom of God was breaking in on the world; he would come back when what all Israel called the “Age to Come” was dawning as it superimposed itself on what Israel called the “Present Evil Age”. Elijah would surely come back. And when he came back, ancient Jewish people insisted, he would do four things. He would restore the people inwardly through repentance; he would gather together the scattered people of God; he would proclaim salvation; and he would introduce the Messiah.
Centuries later John the Baptist appeared. John didn’t eat carrion brought to him by crows; he ate honey made for him by wild bees, with grasshoppers added for protein. John too spoke truth to power, even lethal political power — just as Elijah of old had. This time it wasn’t king Ahab; it was king Herod, a Jew in name only who had sold his soul to pagan Romans and now betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector he had been commissioned to be. And just as Elijah had ringingly denounced Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard, so John denounced Herod’s theft of his brother’s wife.
John had an elemental message which he declared tirelessly. “Repent. Right now. Don’t say, ‘Tomorrow’. You don’t have tomorrow. The axe is laid to the root of the tree now; it is the height of spiritual stupidity to think that the tree itself is going to last until tomorrow. Get right with God now. How will anyone know if your repentance is genuine? By the subsequent shape of your life. Will baptism in the Jordan (or anywhere else) save you? No it won’t. For unless your life is reordered before God, getting yourself baptized in desperation is no different from a snake slithering away in panic from a grass fire.”
And then John began gathering together the scattered people of God. After all, he urged repentance even upon soldiers, and they, despised gentiles as they were, were yet added to the “household and family of faith”. In the same breath John proclaimed the salvation brought by his cousin, Jesus, whose shoelaces John felt himself unworthy to untie. Did he introduce the Messiah? Repeatedly John urged the people, “Don’t look at me; look at him. He is the one to baptize you with the fiery Spirit of God!”
Months later the detractors of Jesus taunted him, “You can’t be the Messiah. Everyone knows that Elijah must come back before the Messiah can appear. And Elijah hasn’t returned for 800 years!” “Wrong again”, said Jesus to his detractors, “you are dead wrong. Elijah did come back. He came back recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: ‘the dunker, the dipper’. Elijah did come back. And you dismissed him. Didn’t John urge repentance, gather the scattered people of God, declare the salvation of God, and introduce the Messiah?”
Today is Advent Sunday. We are preparing ourselves to receive (or receive afresh) him who is the Messiah of Israel and the saviour of the world, him who is nothing less than Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yet we can properly receive him only as we first admit that the Messiah can’t be known without the reappearance of Elijah, only as we admit with our Lord himself that John the Baptist is Elijah given to us once more. Which is to say, we can receive the Christmas gift himself only as we first hear the forerunner’s word and take it to heart and do it. The single forerunner of the Christmas gift is Elijah and John compressed into one. Let us hear our Lord Jesus once more: we can receive him who is the Christmas gift (our Saviour) only as we first hear and honour the word of the forerunner, Elijah and John compressed into one.
II: — Elijah was Israel ’s greatest prophet; David its greatest king. Many generations later David’s descendants gave birth to the Son of David, Jesus our Lord. David and Jesus were even farther apart temporally than Elijah and John: one thousand years separated David and his Son. Yet they had much in common.
They both came from simple country-folk; David and Jesus, that is.
They both gained notoriety when they were still adolescents: David as a shepherd boy who accidentally “showed up” older men when they would not respond to Goliath’s challenge, Jesus as a 12 year old who stymied learned clergy in the temple.
They both possessed enormous backbone, neither one a pushover, neither one cowering before brute power. When David saw the terror which had paralyzed his countrymen in the face of the Philistine threat David scornfully said of the Philistine leader, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” When Jesus knew that Herod wanted to terminate him Jesus scornfully said to whoever would listen, “Go and tell that fox”, when “fox”, in first century Middle Eastern street-talk was shorthand for the most loathsome “creep” imaginable.
They both showed mercy to their enemies: David, when he knew Saul wanted to kill him and he had Saul helpless yet let him go, Jesus when he prayed at the last, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
They both were men of passion. When David exulted without restraint “before the Lord” his wife, Michal, despised him for it. When the passion of Jesus fired his public ministry and rendered him heedless of danger his mother thought him deranged and wanted to take him home and sedate him.
They both were fighters, and both declined the weapons which everyone else assumed they ought to use. David was offered Saul’s armour, but put it aside, trusting a simple slingshot and the use God would make of it as God honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father. Jesus, summoned before Pilate, told Pilate that he, Jesus had at his command legions of angels whose unearthly power could have vapourized Pilate on the spot, together with everything Pilate represented. Instead Jesus trusted a simple cross and the use his Father would make of it as his Father honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father.
Both David and Jesus were born to be king. David was born in Bethlehem , a village outside Jerusalem . ” Bethlehem ” means “house of bread”. One thousand years later Jesus was born in Bethlehem too. Both were born to be king.
What was an Israelite king supposed to do? I say “supposed to do” since most Israelite kings didn’t do what a king was supposed to do. Instead they lined their pockets and slew their opponents. David was different. David knew that an Israelite king had three responsibilities. The king was to protect the people, uphold justice, and serve as a priest.
David did protect the people. In fact David was a military genius, like the Duke of Wellington or Ulysses S. Grant.
David did uphold justice. Justice today means little more than seeing that criminals are convicted and sentenced. Not so with that justice which God decrees. As a matter of fact there is no Hebrew word for justice; the Hebrew word is “judgement.” The king was to uphold God’s judgements just because the king was the agent of God’s judgements. And God’s judgement is not primarily a matter of convicting criminals and sentencing them. God’s judgements, scripture attests over and over, are God himself setting right what is wrong; freeing those who are enslaved; relieving those who are oppressed; assisting those who are helpless; clearing the name of those who are slandered; vindicating those who are despised. David did this. Those who had been set upon were set upon no longer. Anyone who “fleeced” the defenceless or exploited the powerless learned quickly that king David had zero tolerance for this sort of thing. When David himself was fleeing Saul’s murderous hatred 400 men and their families gathered around David, “Everyone who was in straits and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was desperate.” To be desperate is literally to be without hope; to be in straits is to have no way out, no escape. All such people found in this king one who would never disdain or ignore or abandon them.
And priest? The role of the priest was to intercede with God on behalf of the people. Frequently David went into the tabernacle “and sat before the Lord”; that is, he had his people on his heart, and pleaded with God for them all.
One thousand years after David a blind beggar minutes away from receiving his sight called out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” “Son of David”. It meant “messiah.” The messiah was to be a great king, greater even than David. A blind man who could see what supposedly sighted people couldn’t see knew Jesus to be the long-awaited king greater even than David.
The protection which Christ the king gave his people — continues to give them — is more glorious than any protection David furnished, for Christ our king has promised that nothing will ever snatch you and me out of his hand; nothing will ever separate us from that love of God made concrete in the king himself.
That Son of David who is Christ the king upholds justice as he implements God’s judgements. Jesus himself has said that all judgement has been delivered over to him. And since the primary purpose of judgement is to restore the right, to say he is judge is to say that he is saviour. If the primary purpose of the judge is to set right anything that is wrong, anywhere, from the sin of a child to the disfigurement of the cosmos, then the judge has to be the saviour as well.
And priest? In his atoning sacrifice Christ the king uniquely pleads with the Father on behalf of the people. For this reason the book of Hebrews speaks of Christ the king as “our great high priest”.
All of which brings us to the last point concerning David and David’s greater son: the matter of sin. Here their paths diverge. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was “tempted at all points as we are, yet without sin”. David, it can safely be said, was also tempted at all points; but he sinned grievously. He lusted after Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. His lust warped his thinking. Adultery-on-the-way rendered murder perfectly reasonable. David didn’t merely stumble; he sprawled, sprawled shamefully. Everyone knew it.
A few days later, as David slunk out of Jerusalem (or tried to slink out), a man named Shimei walked on the other side of the street, cursing David and throwing stones at him. (No doubt the stones were a not-so-subtle reminder that the law of Moses prescribed stoning for adultery.) Abishai, David’s loyal friend, was outraged that the king should be insulted like this. “Why should this dead dog curse the king?”, cried Abishai, “Let me take his head off!” “No”, replied David sadly, “No. Shimei curses me only because God has told him to. The treatment Shimei accords me is no worse than I deserve.” David was publicly humiliated, yet refused to flee his humiliation inasmuch as his public humiliation was the God-ordained consequence of his sin.
King David’s greater son didn’t flee his public humiliation either. Jesus was “numbered among the transgressors”. He was assigned that death — crucifixion — which the Romans reserved for insurrectionists, deserters and rapists; that is, reserved for those whose disgrace could not be greater. Jesus refused to flee his public humiliation inasmuch as his humiliation was the God-ordained consequence not of his sin but of his sin-bearing righteousness. The apostle Paul, as so often, says it most compactly: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The Christmas announcement to the shepherds in the field was plain: “Don’t be afraid. Good news! Great joy! For to you is born in the city of David a saviour who is Christ the Lord.”
The city of David is Bethlehem , “house of bread”. And in the house of bread is born David’s greater son who is himself the bread of life. Then this one, given to us anew at this season, we must receive anew, for he is saviour inasmuch as his humiliation is his invitation to us to become that righteousness of God which we need as we need nothing else.
Elijah, David, John, Jesus. The Christmas story begins in a lowly cattle shed, once upon a time, in royal David’s city.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2003
Encouragement for Deepsea Fishers
Luke 5:1-11
I: — Sunday attendance at mainline churches in Canada peaked in 1965. Turn-outs have decreased every year since then. There is no suggestion the trend is about to change. Our society is vastly more secularized than our foreparents could ever have imagined. There is now an entire generation of young adults who have no “Christian memory”; that is, they weren’t taken to Sunday School, were never exposed to worship, have grown up without any instruction in elementary Christian truths, and are wholly ignorant of the Bible.
Today teachers of English literature must assume that their students are unable to recognize the biblical allusions that saturate English literature. Only a few years ago the hardest-bitten atheist still spoke of being “a good Samaritan”. The mother who was alienated from the church still longed for the return of her “prodigal”. Even the sportswriter bemoaned the team owner’s “crucifixion” of the coach.
The Roman Catholic Church still controls (largely) public education in the province of Quebec . And the result? Sociologists tell us that Quebec is the most thoroughly secularized region of North America; sociologists tell us too that Quebec children grow up hating the church that educated them.
Of course we shake our heads nostalgically when we read in the first verse of the gospel lesson that the crowds “pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God”. “Crowds”, “pressed upon” – it all recalls St.James United Church , Montreal , in the 1930s when the preacher was Lloyd C. Douglas. He was writing such bestselling novels as Magnificent Obsession and The Robe. The sanctuary at St.James seats 3,600. It was full twice a Sunday. Today 35 people gather for worship.
The process of secularization continues. It appears there’s nothing we can do in the face of it.
And yet there is something we can. Like Peter we can “put out into the deep”. (Peter is spokesperson for the group of disciples throughout the gospels. Peter represents them all.) In obedience to the command of Jesus he moves out to greater depths.
In a secular age the church must understand that shallowness attracts few; it even puts people off. We haven’t always been aware of this. For decades we borrowed the world’s agenda unthinkingly. We conformed to what we assumed was expected of us, and conformed inasmuch as we thought that making ourselves “relevant” would render us effective. When the human potential movement came along (Sensitivity Groups, Transcendental Meditation, Transactional Analysis, even the bizarre notion that preaching is group therapy) we co-opted it uncritically. We assumed that the world’s wisdom (which was often anything but wise) equalled the truth and reality of the Kingdom of God . We used a biblical vocabulary without really grasping the force of the words. We recited liturgies while unaware that liturgy is the theatricalization of that singular Word which is “sharper than any two-edged sword”. In it all we failed to grasp something crucial: the gospel is by nature a counter-cultural movement. The gospel contradicts the world’s self-understanding. The church isn’t needed for the public to know the public is thinking; the public knows this already. The church is needed, however, if the society is to be acquainted with the truth and wisdom, the purpose and persistence, of the God whose depths are fathomless. In a secular society the church will prove profoundly winsome only as the church embodies what the wider society can’t give itself.
We mustn’t think that our Lord’s command to “go deeper” means that credibility for the church and its message will be restored immediately. There won’t be an instant turn-around. It was for good reason that Jesus called the first leaders of his church from the ranks of fishermen. Fishermen, after all, are those whose everyday work acquaints them with failure, disappointment, scanty returns, hardship; the occasional bonanza, to be sure, but also much drudgery and more than a little danger. This is the fisherman’s lot.
I learned of the rigours of commercial fishing when I was posted to a seacoast village upon ordination. Lobster, cod and mackerel were fished in boats with three feet of freeboard on the sides when frigid North Atlantic waves were ten feet high. Those who fished smelt used a chain saw to cut a slot in the winter ice thirty feet long, two feet wide, and as deep as the ice was thick (five feet). These men dropped a weighted net into the slot and then pulled it up several hours later. Smelt have to be fished on the change of tide: 2:37 a.m. , 4:15 p.m. , 3:10 a.m. , and so on. For only pennies per pound these fellows endured constantly interrupted sleep and 75 kilometre per hour winds blowing off the North Atlantic at temperatures of minus 40 degrees. One night a salmon fisherman (a night’s fishing cost 200 litres of gasoline) hooked onto an 800 pound tuna. Excitedly he brought it ashore and spent hours removing head and entrails and skin — only to be told that mercury contamination might be unacceptably high in a fish that large. A Federal Fisheries officer confiscated it. The fisherman (a financially needy person with eight children to feed) was heartbroken. Do you know what he did next night? He put back to sea and fished again.
When Jesus called the twelve he could have called dreamers, visionaries, political sophisticates, academicians, or even religious experts. These people were all available. Instead he called those whom hardship, disappointment, fatigue and undeflectable persistence had already prepared for the greater work ahead of them.
In obedience to Jesus Christ Peter “goes deeper” and lets down the nets, despite the fact that at face-value Christ’s command was silly because futile. It was daytime, and everyone knew that fish in Gennesaret (or Galilee ) were caught at night – and caught as well as in shallower water. Yet Peter obeys even when his obedience invites failure.
But then Abraham had obeyed when the sacrifice of Isaac would have meant the failure of the very promise of God which sustained Abraham: “Your descendants shall be as numberless as the sands of the seashore.” Moses had obeyed the command to lead even as he knew that his appearance and manner engendered failure. (How much leadership could a public figure exercise today when afflicted with a disability like stuttering?) Naaman had obeyed — “Bathe in the filthy river” — when to do so meant he would fail to find the cleansing he craved.
In the midst of a secularized age which writes off the church and its message Christians must do three things. One, we must go deeper. The day of attracting people through superficiality, obsolete sentimentality, or ridiculous attempts to be “with it”; this day is gone. Two, we must recover and then hold up the irreducible, irreplaceable truth and substance of the gospel even when it’s the gospel that is ignored, even when it’s the church’s preoccupation with the gospel that appears to guarantee the church yet greater marginalization and embarrassing failure. Three, we must do all of this with the patience, resilience and persistence of fisher folk who don’t quit despite scanty returns, relentless hardship and ineradicable risk.
Only as we do this will we know ourselves to be precisely what our Lord has appointed us to be: fishers of men and women. Only as we hold all three together will the day come once again when the gospel is cherished for what it is: the power of God unto that salvation which everyone needs in any era.
II: — In the story we are probing the disciples obey Jesus and immediately are met with what appears to be startling success: they had fished in vain, now they are inundated with fish. Yet Peter responds in a manner that startles us: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man”. Peter knows that there’s nothing in him that merits what his Lord has just done. The miracle he has witnessed isn’t a reward for any secret virtue that he possesses. He knows that the magnificent fruitfulness which has attended his obedience is the sheer gift of God. It humbles him. The holiness of God highlights Peter’s depravity, and he can only confess himself to be sinner, deep-down sinner, through-and-through sinner.
Not so long ago a man informed me exuberantly that he would have given everything to have been with Moses on Sinai when God spoke to Moses and gave Moses the Ten Words. But of course the man wouldn’t have been thrilled at all; he would have been terrified. Everywhere in scripture fear engulfs the people before whom the all-holy God has loomed. (We need only read Luke’s Christmas stories to see that throat-drying fear accompanies every development even in the gift of him who is unqualified blessing.) This fear isn’t a sign of a craven spirit or a fragile ego, never mind a neurosis. It’s a sign of that uncommon spiritual depth which finally recognizes the horror of its own sinnership.
If one manifestation of the church’s “going deeper” is a recovery of the saving substance of the gospel, another manifestation will be the church’s reawakening to the human condition, even the church’s reawakening to its own sinnership. In other words, Christians will always be less quick to identify sin in others than to stand aghast at their own depravity. Peter doesn’t come to see, with a measure of sober insight, that there is this or that about him that is unworthy of the master; he blurts his awareness that sin is all he has to admit.
Of course it’s the one who is love-Incarnate who steeps Peter in horror at himself. In precisely the same way it will be love, and nothing but love, which exposes on the Day of Judgement what has been hidden in your heart and mine. To assume that judgement means that God is resentful or a grudge-holder is as false as it is shallow. Profounder people know that love searches, love convicts and love horrifies as nothing else can. When the love of Him who is Love (John 4:8) exposes my apparent altruism as subtle manipulation; when the kindness of God exposes my seeming sensitivity as fear of not being commended; when love’s intensity unmasks my generous smile as the cloak for the vindictive spirit I’d rather not display — what can this produce in me except that horror which cries, “Depart from me”? If my wife loved me only slightly, then excuses for my ill-treatment of her and others would be readier-to-hand and more believable. As it is, the very love which sustains me, shames me. Can God’s greater love do any less?
Yet a church which “goes deeper” will also know that its Lord doesn’t leave us here. No sooner does Peter cry out in anguish than Jesus comforts him, “Fear not.” Everywhere in scripture where God is met and fear consumes, the pronouncement “Fear not” is heard immediately. “Fear not” is a command of God, to be sure; yet it is command only because it is first and last God’s gift. In commanding us to “fear not” God is turning us to face him, recognize his love and acknowledge his mercy as he quells in us that fear we should otherwise never be rid of.
John Newton, slavetrader-turned-preacher, hymnwriter and spiritual advisor; for the remainder of his life moments of appalling self-disgust lapped at him concerning the suffering he had unleashed through the slavetrade and which he was now powerless to prevent. Newton ’s heart was one with Peter’s when Newton wrote,
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved.
Grace both quickens fear and relieves fear. The church that beckons winsomely to a secular society is the church that has ceased speaking of sin in terms of trivia and instead both recognizes profoundly the predicament of humankind and also glories gratefully in that love which unmasks us only to remake us.
III: — It’s the “relieved” disciples who come ashore and are told that henceforth they will “catch” others – whereupon they leave everything and follow Jesus. The crowds, meanwhile, have remained on the shore, and remained hungry as well for that Word which they want to hear inasmuch as they can’t generate it for themselves. It’s as Peter and his friends “leave” and “follow” that the crowds will be nourished with the bread of life.
We need to understand something crucial here. To “leave everything” and follow Jesus meant a change of livelihood for Peter and his colleagues. But it didn’t mean this for others. Others could follow as devotedly (and indeed were called to follow as devotedly) while remaining a tentmaker (Paul), a member of the city council (Erastus), a seamstress (Dorcas), a businesswoman (Lydia), a royal attendant (the unnamed Ethiopian). The many like them followed Jesus every bit as devotedly as the few who ceased their customary employment.
Then in the course of following had they in fact “left everything?” Yes. To “leave everything” is profoundly to leave behind an entire world (with its distorted outlook, its grasping self-preoccupation, and its narcissistic self-promotion); it is to embrace that new world which our Lord has brought with him in his resurrection from the dead.
Upon coming to faith in Jesus Christ and joining Christ’s people in Corinth Erastus remained the city-treasurer. Yet Erastus now lived in a new world. Accordingly, while he was considerably more affluent than most others in the Corinthian congregation, he wouldn’t think himself superior to them; neither would he exploit his social privilege and “lord” it over them or manipulate them. At the same time, the non-Christians in Corinth would know Erastus could be counted on to bring integrity to the job: public monies wouldn’t be siphoned off for personal gain or private ventures. That world had been left behind forever.
Lydia , a businesswoman who handled carriage-trade women’s clothing, was the first European convert on Paul’s mission. Lydia bore witness to the gospel with the result that her household (family and employees) cherished the Word and were baptized. Thereafter Lydia extended hospitality whenever she could. Now in first century Europe hotels were largely places of a reputation better left undescribed. To extend hospitality promptly and graciously, as Lydia did, declared one’s repudiation of what the hotel-trade represented; it proved that you now lived in a world renewed at God’s hand.
Prisca and Aquila were tentmakers (like Paul.) Paul was everlastingly grateful for these two people inasmuch as they had risked their necks for him. (Surely to risk one’s life is to “leave everything”.) What’s more, this Christian couple were Jewish. They had saved from untimely death the man who spoke of himself as “the apostle to the gentiles”. For this reason Paul declared, “All the churches of the gentiles give thanks for [this Jewish couple.”] (Romans 16:4) In addition, they opened up their home so that a house-church could gather there on Sundays. Their courage, as well as their open hand, open heart and open home, plus the boost they gave the gentile mission — all of this points to people who have “left everything” in order to follow.
Jesus insists that followers leave everything, for otherwise “following” will be more of the order of meandering, flipflopping, or lurching. The instability of it all is corrected by one matter, according to the apostle James: singlemindedness. As usual Soren Kierkegaard says it with unique pithiness: purity of heart is to will one thing. To leave all and follow is to resolve that henceforth the one good we pursue is the kingdom of God; the one word that orients us in the midst of confusion is the truth of the gospel; the one lord to whom we cling is Jesus Christ; and the one reward that exhilarates us as nothing else is the sight of others joining us in singleminded discipleship as they too are “caught” through the witness of those who have gone ever so deep themselves.
The day will come, in our secularized society, when in response to those who have “gone deeper” God honours their diligence and patience and suffering. In a word, the day will come when the crowds press forward once again to hear the Word of God.
Victor Shepherd
March 2007
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”
Luke 6: 46
I: — At one time I was a postgraduate student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Several of us offshore doctoral students were drinking coffee in a common room. We were comparing notes as to what we had had to do when we entered Great Britain . The students from the USA had had to check in with the police department. I hadn’t had to, I said, inasmuch as I was a British subject.
“British subject“, one of the American students exploded, “How can you admit to being a subject of any sort? Even if you are one you shouldn’t use the word. It’s demeaning.” But I have never felt demeaned through being a British subject. I have never felt oppressed or cramped or belittled in any way. On the contrary I have always felt extraordinarily rich in being a British subject. After all, I belong to the oldest democratic tradition in the world. Because it’s the oldest, it’s the most trustworthy. (To what extent would trust the democratic “tradition” of Germany or Russia ?) What’s more, it was Britain that first insisted that no one could be jailed without being charged and convicted. It was Britain whose treatment of peoples subdued in military conflict was the gentlest. (Can you imagine where Quebec would be today if New France had succumbed to the Spanish or the Dutch?) I have always thought it a privilege to be a British subject. The American student, on the other hand, thought it demeaning. Opinions were sharply divided.
II: — Opinions are divided in the same way when God’s claim upon our obedience is mentioned.
“Obedience”, someone snorts, “Obedience is demeaning. ‘Obedience’ is another word for slavery and misery. You’ve got to be your own person, subject to no one.”
The Christian disciple, on the other hand, knows that to hear the claim of God, to recognize the claim of God, to obey the claim of God — in short, to be subject to God — is a wonderful privilege that brings blessings. So who is right?
Whether God’s claim upon our obedience enslaves or liberates depends on the root human condition. As though it were yesterday I remember sitting on a park bench in downtown Toronto (it was outside St. James Cathedral) before Maureen and I were married. Maureen was an agnostic in those days (perhaps even an atheist.) She wasn’t gong to be stampeded in Christian “faith”, if she was going to move into it at all. “I don’t want to look at the world and life through spectacles (Christian faith) that only distort and falsify”, she said. As gently as I could (there was a great deal at stake for me here) I explained that her unconscious assumption plainly was that humankind, in its present condition, has perfect eyesight, a true view of life, and therefore spectacles of any sort, but especially religious spectacles, necessarily distort and falsify. Yet according to the gospel, humankind has a heart condition and a head condition that together produce defective eyesight, terribly defective eyesight. In fact it is only as we put on Jesus Christ in faith — i.e., only as we put on the corrective lens that he is — that we see truly, see profoundly, and therefore see adequately.
To put on Christ is always to put on all of him: to put him on as saviour or salvager, also as companion and judge, and certainly as Lord. In other words, to be a disciple is to obey. There is genuine faith only where there is eager obedience. Where there isn’t even aspiration to obedience then faith, so-called, is nothing more than romantic sentiment. For this reason Jesus poses the question starkly, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, yet you don’t do what I tell you.”
It has all come to our attention too many times over with the television preachers and others like them. Some people are terribly disillusioned by the disclosures; some are disgusted; some are angry. I am sad more than anything else; sad that anyone is so very self-deceived as to think that disciples can disregard their Lord’s claim upon them yet remain disciples.
III: — In all of this no one appears to understand a profound truth that riddles scripture: obedience means freedom. The obedient person — and only the obedient person — is the free person. To grasp this, however, we have to understand how scripture understands freedom.
Most people think that freedom is having several alternatives to choose from. A youngster goes to an ice cream parlour and finds that there are twenty-seven flavours available. Just imagine: twenty-seven, and she need choose only one. “What freedom”, she thinks. We all know what happens next. “I think I’ll have strawberry ripple; I mean Swiss chocolate; no, tiger tails. Do you have any liquorice and peanut butter?” What the child calls “freedom” — one choice among twenty-seven — is really indeterminism. No one is twisting the girl’s arm to pick a flavour. No one is determining which ice cream cone she is going to buy. Her situation isn’t characterized by freedom but rather by indeterminism: no power external to her is coercing her.
When the bible speaks of freedom, however, it means something entirely different; it means the absence of any impediment to acting in accord with our true nature. Our true nature is to be a child of God by faith, and to reflect the family-resemblance found in Jesus our elder brother. The free person is simply the person for whom there is no impediment (outer or inner), no obstacle to her living as that child of God which she is by faith.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ I am not “free” in the sense that I can choose among many alternatives; I’m not “free” because I can choose to be honest, or semi-honest, or completely dishonest. I’m not “free” in the sense that I can choose to be joyfully faithful to my wife, grudgingly faithful to her, or out-and-out promiscuous. I’m not “free” in the sense that I can choose to be kind or indifferent or outright cruel. To be sure, I can choose among all the alternatives I’ve just listed. But choosing from a list of alternatives has nothing to do with freedom. Freedom means that I have been liberated from any impediment to living as a disciple of Jesus Christ’ I have been freed from obstacles that would otherwise derail my discipleship. I may and do live as what I am: a child of God, recognizable from my likeness (however slight) to my elder brother.
Think for a minute of a railway train. Imagine that obstacles litter the track (say, a dump truck with granite slabs spilling out of it.) Since the obstacles are an impediment, the train isn’t free to run along the track. Once the obstacles are removed, however, the train is free. “But is the train free to fly like an airplane?” someone wants to say. The question, be it noted, entails a misuse of the word “free.” After all, trains were never meant to fly like airplanes; it isn’t a train’s nature to fly. It’s a train’s nature to run along tracks. Therefore a train has been freed when it is free to operate in accord with its own nature. All of which is to say that you and I are free when we cling to our Lord in faith and obey him in matters great and small and know ourselves children of our Father who reflect the family-resemblance of our elder brother. For then we are living in accord with our true nature. Obedience can only mean freedom.
IV: — All of which brings me to the last point. Our blessedness is found in obedience. So far from being a straitjacket that ties us up in frustration and self-contradiction and futility — curse, in short — obedience spells blessings. I am reminded of this every time I read my favourite psalm, Psalm 119. It’s the longest chapter in all of scripture; and in every line it exalts the blessedness that accompanies obedience. The expression in Ps. 119 that I like best is the psalmist’s cry that Torah, God’s claim upon our obedience, is sweeter than honey.
When Jewish youngsters first learn the Hebrew alphabet, they are helped to do so by playing with wooden blocks into one side of which there has been carved a Hebrew letter. The letter-surface is coated with honey, and as the children learn the letters they get to lick the honey. For the rest of their life they will know that the Hebrew language is sweet; and not only the language, but also Torah, God’s truth and God’s way that are described by the Hebrew language, the way that God has appointed Israel to walk. God’s way — i.e., obedience — is sweeter than honey.
In the Hebrew bible yoke is the commonest metaphor for obedience. Doesn’t Jesus say, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”? His yoke fits well just because it and we have been made for each other. Since Christ’s yoke doesn’t gall or chafe, it is truly said to be “easy.” And since his burden is so very light as to be no burden at all, his “burden” is actually blessing.
Yet how few people understand this. When most people think of the concrete, everyday obedience that God requires of us they think of the Ten Commandments. The mere sound of the word “commandment” puts them off, because the sound of the word suggests a parade-square sergeant barking at them. But is the atmosphere surrounding our obedience to our Father that of a barking parade-square sergeant? Or is it that of the delighted child who learns that Torah, life’s alphabet, God’s way, really is sweeter than honey?
Concerning the Ten Commandments Martin Luther wrote, “Whoever keeps the first (the commandment to have no other gods) keeps them all; whoever breaks the tenth (the commandment forbidding coveting) breaks them all. In not coveting at all — nothing of the neighbour’s possessions, money, spouse, children, reputation or good fortune — we are blessed. Does anyone doubt it? If we covet our neighbour’s goods, we thieve; if his reputation, we slander; if her spouse, we commit adultery; if her popularity or power, we murder. Then Luther was right: to break the commandment that forbids coveting is to break them all.
Needless to say, if obedience spells blessings then disobedience spells curse. Is this really the case? Let’s look again at coveting. Insofar as we covenant what someone else has we shall first be profoundly and pervasively discontented ourselves; next we shall resent her for having what we don’t have; next we shall exaggerate character defects in her character or even invent them; finally we shall want nothing to do with her for any number of supposedly good reasons, all of which are actually the crudest, albeit unconscious, rationalizations thrown up by our envious heart. Insofar as we covet we shall be consumed with envy of her, resentment at her, contempt for her and hostility toward her. At the end of it all we shall be left friendless, isolated, stuck with our own embittered spirit. Is there any freedom here? There is misery and frustration and nastiness. But is there any freedom, any blessing? Manifestly not; there is only curse. On the other hand, to obey the command of God from our heart is to know blessing. Then the apostle John is correct when he says, “God’s commandments are not burdensome.” (1st John 5:3)
“It’s all too slick”, someone objects. “Christ’s yoke isn’t always easy, and his burden isn’t always light. For Christ himself insisted that the Way is a hard way, and the gate through which we enter upon this Way is a narrow gate.” We cannot pretend anything else. Jesus certainly insisted that the gate is narrow and the way hard. In other words, sometimes obeying God is demanding and abrasive. To be sure, there are times and places and situations where obedience is difficult.
After World War II Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who was one of the few survivor of Ravensbrueck, was shopping at a department store one day when she knew, just knew, that the man three or four persons ahead of her in the line-up at the cash register was a guard who had abused her in that terrible camp where her sister Betsie had perished. Suddenly she was on the point of becoming unglued. Still, as a disciple of Jesus Christ she knew what she was supposed to do. Certainty about what she had to do and rage concerning this man warred within her until the certainty bested the rage. She staggered up to the man and identified herself to him. She told him that in the name of Jesus Christ she forgave him.
Whenever she related this story subsequently someone in the audience invariably remarked how wonderful it was that the whole thing was over and done with at that moment, that she walked away from it right there, knew it was all behind her and never thought of it again. “Are you kidding?” Corrie always said, “Every morning when I get up I see that man’s hideous face again, and I go to the floor all over until I can stumble back to forgiving him once more.”
Parishioners often visit their pastor inasmuch as they are temptation-prone in one area of life especially. It can be any area at all. It’s not that life in general is hard for them (or at least no harder for them than it is for everyone else.) It’s not even that walking the Christian way in general is insuperably hard for them. Nevertheless, in the one area of their besetting temptation the Way is exceedingly hard. We shouldn’t pretend anything else. Jesus never suggested anything else.
Yet I am convinced that to “tough out” the hard spots is still to know blessing and freedom. When I was on a rigorous canoe trip a year or two ago I came upon breathtaking scenery, the glorious scenery that Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have painted so very wonderfully. The scenery changed from quiet rivers to small lakes to Georgian Bay with its shoreside abandoned lumber town and the rich history one could imagine in such a place. But of course in order to lose oneself in this scenery and its beauty one had to get through the portages. Portaging, everyone knows, is never the fun that paddling is. Portaging in scorching summer heat while being buzzed by black flies you don’t have a hand free to swat — this is hard. Yet it is only as we sweat through the portages persistently, as cheerfully as we can, that we know and cherish the certain delight on the other side of them.
And therefore at the end of the day I remain convinced that obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ is the way to genuine freedom and profoundest blessings.
If we call Jesus “Lord” then we should obey him, especially since obeying him will alone prove that his yoke is easy, and prove as well that in shouldering this yoke we are living precisely as our Father intends his children to live lest they forfeit his reward.
Victor Shepherd
January 2003
How Good Are We At Kissing? At how many kinds of kissing?
Luke 7:36-50
I: — “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine.” “Your kisses [are] like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.” (Song of Solomon 1:2; 7:9) The bible is always earthy in its discussion of sex. The world, on the other hand, tends to be vulgar, and ever more vulgar, in its discussion. Rightly offended at the world’s vulgarity, the church reacts but too often reacts unhelpfully: offended because the world renders sex vulgar, the church then renders it ethereal, abstract, unearthly and unearthy.
Let’s approach the matter from a different angle. Have you ever pondered the difference between the erotic and the pornographic? The world often wallows in the pornographic, depicting sex as passion only without reference to persons. The church, on the other hand, often flees into a false spirituality by speaking of sex as a spiritual event without reference to passion.
The Hebrew mind is wiser than all of this. The Hebrew mind (and heart) knows that while the pornographic is humanly debasing, the erotic is humanly fulfilling. While the pornographic is perverse, the erotic is God-given. While the pornographic exploits, the erotic enhances. The Hebrew mind always remembers that it is God who has made us sexually differentiated. Therefore to denounce the erotic is to disdain the wisdom and goodness of God; it is to call “bad” what he has called “blessing.” This, of course, is sin. The writer of the book of Proverbs was acquainted with the mind and will and purpose of God when he wrote that “the way of a man with a maid” is so marvellous as to transcend human comprehension. To be sure, he knew that the pornographic is eroticism debased, eroticism perverted, eroticism exploited, something good bent to an evil purpose, a blessing rendered a curse. Still, the fact of distortion and perversion never obliterates the goodness of God’s intention and purpose. Where sexual matters are concerned, the Hebrew soul is neither vulgar nor ethereal but instead earthy, God-glorifyingly earthy. “Your kisses are like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.”
At the same time, because of its honesty and transparency scripture admits that this kiss can be perverted. The kiss of the seductress in Prov. 7:13 is such a perversion. This woman, “dressed as a harlot, wily of heart” (7:10) kisses a fellow saying, “Let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love. For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey.” (7:18-19) At the end of the day, however, the distortion of what is good cannot deny what is good. “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.”
II: — Another feature of the Hebrew mind: it never pretends that the romantic kiss, the erotic kiss, is the only kind of kiss, or even the most important kind of kiss. Far more frequently scripture speaks of the kiss of parent and child, brother and sister, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, even friend and friend.
Then we must examine other kisses, even hanker after other kinds of kisses, like the kiss with which Esau forgave his brother Jacob. Jacob was a scoundrel. His name, in Hebrew, means “deceiver”, and he was as bad as his name. He deceived his father Isaac and defrauded his brother Esau. Jacob didn’t pilfer nickels and dimes from Esau; Jacob plundered him and demeaned him. Jacob stole everything from Esau that there was to steal.
Jacob and Esau went their separate ways only to meet up years later. When Jacob was about to meet his brother he gathered up gifts without number hoping thereby to placate Esau and defuse Esau’s retaliation. In other words, having displayed the cruellest cunning Jacob now displayed the crassest manipulation. At the moment of their meeting, however, Esau didn’t slay Jacob. Esau didn’t even demand compensation from Jacob. Instead, we are told, “Esau ran to meet Jacob, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept.” Jacob, overwhelmed at Esau’s forgiveness, cried, “Truly, to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favour have you received me.” (Genesis 33:10)
Esau kisses Jacob in forgiveness; Jacob’s heart melts at the unexpected magnanimity; he cries, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favour have you received me.”
The bible as a whole insists that no one can see the face of God and survive. Moses is permitted to look upon God’s “backside”, as it were, but not even Moses can see God’s face – if he wants to survive. The closest any of us can come to seeing God’s face is to see what is like God’s face. And what is like God’s face, the old story tells us, is the face of Esau as he pardons his brother, and more than merely pardons him; as he pours out such affection on Jacob as Jacob has never known, as he’s so glad to see his brother that he’s not even thinking of all he’s lost, as he’s so thrilled with the reconciliation – never mind who did what to whom – that he’s oblivious to everything except the grand fact of having his brother back! Heedless of everything except his brother, Esau kisses Jacob – with the result that while Jacob, of course, has never seen the face of God, seeing Esau is like seeing the face of God.
Esau’s kind of kissing is a most important kind. It’s a kind of kissing we should come to be good at ourselves. After all, the people whom we meet in the spirit of Esau – the spirit of forgiveness – are people who will find that seeing our face is like seeing the face of God.
III: — While we are talking about the kissing we must do we should also talk about the kissing we mustn’t do. Judas betrayed his Lord with a kiss. (Mark 14:43-45) This is treachery. For years I thought there could be nothing worse than abandonment. Everyone is aware of the damage (frequently irreparable damage) visited upon children whose parents abandon them. Everyone has seen people abandoned by friends (or by those thought to be friends.) Everyone has seen someone courageously take a stand only to have that person’s colleagues, having promised support, slink away in self-interest. For years, therefore, I thought there could be nothing worse than abandonment. I was wrong. There is something worse than abandonment: betrayal. What could be worse than treachery at the hands of those we have trusted?
Judas wasn’t the first person in Israel’s history to betray someone with a kiss. Towards the end of David’s life David himself was in a sorry state; so were the people; so was the army. Amasa was the army’s leader. Joab wanted the position. Upon meeting Amasa, one day, Joab grasped Amasa’s beard and drew Amasa to himself so as to kiss him. Amasa never saw the knife in Joab’s other hand. At the moment that Joab kissed Amasa, he disembowelled him. (2 Samuel 20:9) Judas kissed Jesus and thereby identified him for our Lord’s killers. Like Joab, like Judas.
Like Joab, like John Smith. Like Joab, like Jane Doe. It happens all the time, doesn’t it. Treachery! As terrible as abandonment is, there’s something worse: betrayal.
Then there’s a kiss we must ever abhor: the phoney kiss, the hollow kiss, the hypocritical kiss, the kiss of betrayal. How terrible is this kiss? Jesus said of Judas, “It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.”
IV: — And then there’s the kiss that moves me as often as I read of it. There was once a woman who learned that Jesus was lunching in the neighbourhood. (Luke 7:36-52) She hadn’t been invited to lunch. The host giving the lunch was Simon the Pharisee, and Pharisees didn’t invite to lunch those whose reputation was as discoloured as this woman’s. Besides, Jesus and Simon were both men, and in first century Palestine men didn’t talk to women in public.
Plainly the woman was overwhelmed with gratitude to Jesus and love for him as well. Initially it was gratitude: he had done for her what no one else had or could. Then it was love born of gratitude, even as the gratitude remained. Now love, gratitude, affection, magnified hugely, together coursed through her as she forgot herself before the master.
Forgot herself? She never forgot herself. She knew exactly what she was doing at every minute. She wasn’t invited to lunch but intruded herself anyway. She knew that men didn’t talk to unknown women but threw herself upon Jesus in any case. She knew that letting down her hair in public was a disgrace for a woman (akin to denuding herself in public), but she didn’t know what else to do to tell him she now had nothing to hide from him. Then she kissed his feet.
What a glorious reversal of the foot-kissing that had always been the oriental equivalent of bootlicking! In the eastern world of old, conquered kings, representing their conquered peoples, had to kiss the feet of their conqueror. It was an enforced public humiliation; it betokened abject submission to that conqueror whom you hated but before whom you now had to grovel. To be defeated was bad enough; to have to acknowledge it publicly, worse; to have to acknowledge it by grovelling – bootlicking, foot-kissing – worst of all. (Isaiah 49:23)
How different it was with the woman who stole into the house of Simon the Pharisee. She wasn’t defeated; she was freed. She wasn’t forced into public humiliation; she was grateful. She wasn’t grovelling before someone she loathed; she was rendering a service to someone she loved.
The woman kissed our Lord’s feet. Plainly his feet didn’t repel her. Plainly she thought his feet beautiful. “How beautiful are the feet” (I’m quoting now from Isaiah 52); “how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace (shalom, salvation), who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”
“How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good tidings.” The prophet who penned these words had in mind Israel’s tortuous exile, Israel suffering miserably at the hands of the Babylonians. Thanks to the Word of the Lord vouchsafed to him the prophet announced unequivocally that Israel’s exile was ending: “We’re going home!” And the people had exulted with one voice, “We’re going home!”
When the woman kissed the beautiful feet of Jesus she had already come to know that he was more than the messenger of God; he was the message incarnate. She had already come to know that he wasn’t telling her she was going home or even how to get home; in his company she was at home, and knew it.
One day when I was visiting my older sister and her husband in Ottawa I asked my brother-in-law, just before the church-service began, what his favourite hymn was. Now John’s upbringing had included an indifferent attitude toward the church. Since meeting and marrying my sister he has become a believer, has attended church without missing a Sunday, even become congregational treasurer. Because his church background was as indifferent as mine was intense, I expected him to tell me that his favourite hymn was “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or some such “golden oldie” that any middle-aged Canadian would know of. In the course of replying to my question John stared ahead of him for the longest time and then said ever so softly, “My favourite hymn is ‘Jesus see me at thy feet; nothing but thy blood can save me.’” Unquestionably my brother-in-law understands the woman who unpinned her hair and kissed the feet of Jesus.
When Simon the Pharisee objected strenuously to the poor taste of this uninvited woman Jesus said, “Simon, you never kissed me; you don’t love much, do you.”
V: — And then of course there’s the “holy kiss” or the “kiss of love” (both expressions are used: Romans 16:16; 1 Peter 5:14) with which Christians are to greet each other. Over and over the epistles of the newer testament conclude with the reminder that Christians are to greet each other with a holy kiss or a kiss of love. We need not press it literally, any more than we are going to say that everyone should literally kiss the feet of Jesus. Still, the kiss with which Christians greet each other is important. In Israel friends kissed friends (David and Jonathan) as a sign of solidarity and affection, usually kissing each other on the forehead or the cheek or the shoulder. Today we shake hands or embrace.
In the Middle Ages men carried their weapon in their right hand. To shake hands with your right hand meant that you hadn’t concealed even the smallest weapon and therefore weren’t about to stab the person before you. In the ancient world, prior to the Middle Ages, soldiers carried their shield in their left hand. To shake hands with your left hand (like a Boy Scout) meant that you had discarded your shield and therefore weren’t preoccupied with defending yourself.
What about shaking hands with both hands? Do we ever do it? Surely when we embrace we are shaking hands with both hands! Then to embrace means both hands are empty. We aren’t concerned to attack or defend; we are simply going to be.
In the early church the holy kiss was exchanged immediately before Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper is an anticipation of the messianic banquet where savagery and treachery and betrayal, retaliation and vindictiveness and every kind of lethal one-upmanship will have no place and will not be found. Then they have no place here, and shouldn’t be found here.
I don’t care whether you kiss me, hug me, shake my hand, wink at me, or punch me on the shoulder, as long as I know that it’s a holy punch or a holy wink and therefore I need neither attack nor defend; I need only be.
VI: — Lastly, all of us not only long to kiss; we also long to be kissed. Especially on Valentine’s Day we long to be kissed. Let’s think for a minute what it is to be kissed by God. The rabbis who came to the fore at the close of the Hebrew bible used to say there are 103 ways of dying. Some deaths are relatively easy: we slip away peacefully in our sleep. Other deaths are more difficult. Some deaths are distressing. And some deaths, as every pastor and physician knows, are simply hideous. The easiest kind of death, slipping away in one’s sleep, the rabbis spoke of as being “kissed by God.
The book of Hebrews maintains that Jesus Christ has “tasted” death for us. He has drunk death down, all of it, even at its most hideous; he has drunk it down so thoroughly as to drink it all up. Most profoundly, he has drunk up all the dregs of death so as to leave nothing in the cup for us to drink. Therefore the only death that remains for Christ’s people is that death which in fact is to be kissed by God, regardless of the circumstances of our dying. To be sure, from a physical or psychological standpoint some deaths are easier than others. From a spiritual standpoint, however, all of Christ’s people have been appointed to a death that is simply to be kissed by God.
Valentine was a martyr in the early church. We don’t know exactly when he was born or when he died. We do know, however, that by the year 350 a church had been named after him in Rome. We know too that ever since the Middle Ages February 14 has been Valentine’s feast day.
Since Valentine died the death of a martyr his death couldn’t have been easy. In another respect, however, since he was one of Christ’s own, he died with the kiss of God upon him.
The rabbis of old maintained that Moses was the first to die by means of God’s kiss. Moses may have been the first, but he certainly wasn’t the last, for all Christ’s people have been appointed to such a transition.
So – how good are we at kissing? At how many kinds of kissing? Valentine’s Day has always had much to do with kissing and with being kissed. Then may you and I alike have the happiest Valentine’s Day now, even as we anticipate the day when our kissing is over just because we ourselves have been kissed with the kiss of God.
“Jesus, see me at thy feet; nothing but thy blood has saved me.” And you? You?
Victor Shepherd
February 2002
The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
Luke 7:36-52
As a youngster I hated washing or drying the dishes. Because the family kept eating, there was no lasting relief from dish-duty. The task was never done, and the task was onerous. More to the point, I hated dish-duty because of the mood around the kitchen sink: whenever my sisters and I did the dishes, we fought. As often as we fought, I lost, my sisters being then (as now) formidable man-eaters.
Several years later it all turned around for me. I couldn’t wait to do the dishes. You see, I had fallen in love. That first week Maureen and I spent at her parents’ cottage (don’t worry, her mother was there the whole time!); regardless of who prepared the means, Maureen and I did the dishes. It was one more time to be alone together. Mind you, it took a lot longer to do the dishes now, since dish-duty was frequently interrupted by kisses as protracted as they were intense. (We kissed so ardently that our teeth were out of alignment for hours afterwards!) As for fighting over the dishes — never! Now the kitchen sink was the venue of passion. The power of a new affection is amazing, isn’t it!
Last century a profound Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, used to speak of the Christian life as a life motivated and directed by what he called “the expulsive power of a new affection”. Chalmers had noticed one thing above all else in his years of ministry: berating people to do this or that (or stop doing this or that), cajoling people, browbeating them, embarrassing them — it was wholly sub-Christian and hopelessly unproductive. Chalmers had noticed that when people knew themselves cherished by Jesus Christ and flooded with his love, their hearts exploded in love for him. As love for their Lord became the characteristic of their lives, lesser loves, lesser affections, lesser attachments — whatever it was that characterized them previously — these were expelled coincidentally and forgotten forever as they dried up and withered away.
We 20th century people don’t use vocabulary like “the expulsive power of a new affection”. Yet we know that while vocabularies change, the human situation does not. For this reason I have not been surprised at the conclusions of Gerald May, M.D. Gerald May is an American psychiatrist (much-mentioned from this pulpit) who began his medical career with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam. When he returned to the U.S.A. he worked in Washington among men and women who were substance-abusers. By his own admission his work was an abysmal failure. He discovered that his psychiatric sophistication was ineffective, unable to do anything for people who were “hooked”. On the other hand he was startled to see that para-church organizations (like the Twelve-Step Recovery Programs) were far more effective despite their psychiatric crudeness. He came to see first-hand the expulsive power of a new affection.
Dr. May has become a major figure in the field of spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is not psychotherapy. Spiritual direction assists earnest Christians in discerning God’s way with them and God’s will for them and God’s work within them, at the same time as it identifies and removes impediments to their moving deeper into the fathomless depths of God’s life and love.
Gerald May is convinced that while not very of us are substance-abusers, all of us are addicts. He says we are addicted inasmuch as we are persistently deflected from our true love, our proper love, our love for God. Anything to which we cling or which clings to us, short-circuiting that love with which we are meant to love God, deflecting that love into lesser objects and attachments unworthy of it; to that thing we are addicted, says May. Only grace can break these scarcely-noticed yet spiritually-inhibitive addictions, says May, but grace certainly can.
Many things addict people. Food addicts some, we know, but food-avoidance addicts others. (An obsession with remaining slender is an addiction. An obsession with a beauty-contest body is an addiction.) Social climbing addicts some, acquiring a superior reputation addicts others, having our children mirror us as we wish we could have been addicts others. We are addicted to anything that deflects us from our true love, our real home, our profoundest happiness, God. We are addicted to anything that impedes our moving deeper into him whose depths would render us able to do no more than stammer about him.
We should be blind — and ridiculous — if we pretended that money isn’t a raging addiction. Money, together with the pursuits that money gathers around itself, is a raging addiction. The Hebrew mind has always known this. That’s why Jesus says more about money than about any other single thing. Jesus insists that money is a spiritual threat before which other spiritual threats pale. According to our Lord there is no spiritual threat like money. In the Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s, one verse out of ten discusses money; in Luke’s gospel, one verse out of eight; in James’s tiny epistle, one verse out of five. Since you and I regularly read right past these verses we should listen to Mark Twain. Mark Twain said he was unlike most people in that whereas they were bothered by the bible-passages they couldn’t understand, he was bothered by the passages he could understand — so bothered that he preferred not to read them! No single item is as discussed as often in scripture as money is simply because no single item is as spiritually threatening.
Not even sex. Only a fool would deny that sex can be a spiritual threat. But when is the last time we became upset over our children’s access to glossy pictures of a naked Ferrari provocatively posed, or of a dream-home calculated to render someone’s fantasies uncontrollable? We deplore addiction to pornography, pity the person “hooked” by it, and tell him he should leave no stone unturned in getting help before his inner life is messed-up, his outer life a disgrace, and he himself compromised, bent, broken. When faced with addiction to credit cards we — what do we do? Last week a Christian counselor known to me advised a young married man plainly addicted to credit cards to declare personal bankruptcy. That way he won’t have to pay his creditors and in only six months the bank will issue him another credit card!
A man and his ten year old son were out walking on Queen Street when the son walked past a penny on the sidewalk. Immediately the father backed him up (the father himself told me) in order to teach his son the value of money. “Do you know when you can afford to walk past a penny on the sidewalk?”, he lectured officiously, “when you can give a bank clerk 99 cents and the clerk will give you one dollar. Only then.” My heart sank. Is that the attitude to money that a church family learned here, under my leadership? Only grace can break an addiction. Only grace could have found that parent saying to his son, “Do you know when you can afford to walk past a penny on the sidewalk? When there is no one, anywhere, who is hungry; no one who is homeless; no one who is without the light and truth and life of that gospel by which he or she becomes and remains a child of God. That’s when you can afford to walk past a penny!”
Some people will want to say they can’t afford to walk past a penny for another reason. The mortgage is large. I am the last person to pretend that mortgages aren’t onerous. Still, two considerations always have to be kept in mind. One, the size of the mortgage is controlled by the size of the house. How much house do we need? (More about this in a moment.) Two, family incomes in this congregation are generally much higher than in Mississauga at large. Approximately 4% of Mississauga’s families have a total family income (where “total family income” includes any number of wage-earners) under $8500 per year; 9% of Mississauga’s families have a total family income under $16000 per year; 17% under $24000 per year; 27% under $35000. I am not denying for a minute that we certainly have in our congregation families (a family may be a single person) whose income bracket I have just mentioned. Nevertheless, on the whole our congregation is vastly more affluent than this.
And now a word about the size of houses. For the longest time I was puzzled as to why Mississaugans purchase houses of thousands of square feet when the house is occupied by only four or three or even two people, two people both of whom are out of the house all day. Why do people buy much more house than they need? One day an accountant gave me the answer: a big house is the best tax-shelter one can have. Immediately I saw how stupid I have been. I live in a one thousand square foot house that backs onto the world’s largest dog-food factory. As a tax-shelter it’s dismal. Still, when I am tempted to berate myself I allow myself to feel better by remembering that I had always thought a house to be a weather-shelter.
I shall continue to think of a house as weather-shelter. For if I think of it as anything else I know that my heart will shrivel. And there is no shelter against a shrivelled heart, even as there is no shelter before God against our unbelief, our debility and death, our appointment with the judge on the day he has set.
It was different with the Christians in Macedonia. They had heard of the plight of the Christians in Jerusalem. Paul tells us that the Macedonian Christians were poor, dreadfully poor. Yet when they heard of the distress in Jerusalem they didn’t say, “Don’t ask us to help. We are strapped ourselves.” Instead they begged Paul to allow them to contribute. Note: the apostle did not browbeat or cajole them into contributing, expecting no more than the loose change in pocket or purse. They begged him to let them give. With moving simplicity Paul says of the Macedonian Christians, “They gave beyond their means.”
Why did they? Why did they want to give beyond their means? Because they knew that anything they might do to be but the palest reflection of what Jesus Christ had already done for them. What could they ever give, regardless of sacrifice involved, compared to what he had given them? This is the nub of Christian stewardship, isn’t it! People who are overwhelmed at the salvation Jesus Christ has wrought for them and worked in them and witnesses to them; people for whom this is heart-penetrating and horizon-filling — the motivation of such people has nothing to do with tax-shelters and capital gains provisions. If someone had said to the Christians in Macedonia, “What commendable generosity you have displayed!”, the Macedonians would have replied, “Commendable? There is nothing virtuous in unselfconscious gratitude to him who brought us life in the Spirit; furthermore, there is nothing virtuous in getting rid of the most lethal threat to our life in the Spirit. Why do you regard as virtuous what we regard as common sense?”
We have to think again of Thomas Chalmers’s, “The expulsive power of a new affection.” We have to search our hearts and ask ourselves, “What new affection: do we have enough love for our Lord to expel anything?” We have to come to terms with what in fact we love above all else (everyone else already knows what we love above all else, regardless of what we say). We need to hear and heed our psychiatrist-friend, Dr. Gerald May: we are addicted to anything that persistently, relentlessly deflects us from our true love, God. And then we have to listen to Gerald May once more: addiction will not yield to psychotherapy or psychopharmacology — addiction yields only to grace.
All of which brings us to a crucial point in today’s sermon. When preachers crank up their annual stewardship sermon, preachers always identify need in terms of the church’s need: the number one need to be laid before the congregation is the church’s need to receive money. But all such preachers are wrong! The primary need is never the church’s need to receive; the primary need is our need to give. If a wealthy benefactor willed this congregation a million dollars you and I should still need to give money. Why? In order to demonstrate that the power of money is a broken power in my life. When Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon”, he plainly means that ultimately we serve either God or mammon. Then which do we serve? How do we know we serve the God we say we serve? How does anyone else know that we have forsworn the service of mammon? Only by demonstrating that the power of money (money is powerful that its power rivals the power of God, says Jesus) is a broken power in our lives.
Money is a power. Money bribes, money talks, money silences, money compromises, money crushes, money votes. Even where money is used for purposes that are entirely legitimate, money still has immense power to preoccupy our minds and pervert our hearts. We give money away as a gesture of defiance; we give money away as a means of thumbing our nose at a tyrant whose tyranny appears noble but is in fact shabby. The first need of the church concerning money is the need of the Christ’s people to give it.
Think of the woman in Luke’s gospel who poured the costly perfume over the feet of Jesus. Did she do it because Jesus needed to have to his feet deodorized? Even if our Lord’s feet smelled like baby powder she needed to give away a year’s wages. Luke tells us that the woman had received from Jesus a great forgiveness and a great deliverance; now her heart swelled with a great love. When onlookers complain about the “waste” of it all Jesus says, “You people of shrivelled hearts; you haven’t known a great forgiveness and a great deliverance. Little wonder that you are possessed of no love.”
When I said a minute ago that the primary need pertaining to money is our need to give it, I did not mean that our need to give it is the only need. Unquestionably the church also needs to receive it.
Much money is required to maintain our worship facility. Is the worship facility worth the money required to maintain it? Worship is the most important thing we do here! The public praise of God is an end in itself. Just because the praise of God is an end in itself needing no justification it is also the heart-beat and life-blood of our congregation. Therefore we who identify ourselves with this congregation shall never withhold whatever funds are needed to facilitate our worship.
What about those who are not identified with this congregation? Should we maintain a worship-facility for them? On Tuesday past we conducted the funeral service for Jim Beatty in the sanctuary. I went out to the sidewalk to accompany the casket to the hearse, then came back into the building, only to be “buttonholed” by several people who wished to talk with me. Fifteen minutes later I was back in the sanctuary. A man was waiting in front of the pulpit to speak with me. He had waited fifteen minutes, not knowing if I were ever coming back. “My name is Ron Asselstine.” I replied, “I recognized you, Mr. Asselstine. You are an NHL linesman.” He told me over and over, so moved was he, what my address at Jim Beatty’s funeral had meant to him and his fellow-officials who were at the service. I recognized them at the back of the church on the south side. Wally Harris, a retired referee, now Superintendent of Officials; Terry Gregson and Dave Newell, referees; Andy van Hellemond, the NHL’s seniormost referee. Whenever I saw NHL referees at the game or on TV they always looked like deities to me: authoritative, commanding, imperious, impervious to the players’ obscenities and the fans’ rage. When I saw them at Tuesday’s funeral, sitting at the back of the church on the south side, they struck me not as deities at all: they were simply finite, frail, fragile men, enormously sobered at the untimely death of their legal protector, aware of their own vulnerability and inevitable death. Asselstine and I talked with each other for a long time. When we had finished he knew that I knew how hockey is played.
I have written Ron Asselstine, with a copy of my book, Seasons of Grace, telling him that if NHL game-officials desire spiritual help at any time they are most welcome to contact me.
Are we willing to underwrite worship-facility (and ministerial services) to those who don’t contribute to the maintenance of either?
And there is the matter of support for kingdom-work entirely beyond the parameters of the congregation. I speak now of outreach. Our outreach budget has taken something of a beating in the last few years. I shouldn’t want to see the outreach budget reduced any more. I am afraid that if it is a congregational sickness will set in, a sickness that is very serious. Self-preoccupation is always a serious matter! The individual who becomes ever more self-preoccupied lives in a smaller and smaller world until he can think only about himself, unresponsive to anything outside himself. At this point he is said to have a personality disorder called narcissism. One of the horrifying aspects of personality disorders like narcissism is that they are incurable! Narcissism, the state of being wholly engrossed with oneself, is bad enough; worse still is a narcissism whose self-preoccupation takes the form of being wholly engrossed with one’s imaginary ailments. Now the narcissistic personality disorder takes the form of hypochondria. The hypochondriac, wholly taken up with her health, will imagine herself physically unwell until she finally is, only then to say, “See, I told you!” Outreach should never be shrunk. In the first place, needs elsewhere in the world are greater than ours. In the second place, I don’t want us to become incurable narcissistic hypochondriacs.
No doubt you are all wondering what I am going to say this morning about the costly building repairs we have undertaken. When I first heard of the sum required I winced. When I learned that the alternative to repairing the building was to have it condemned in only a few years I felt that there were only two issues here: do we repair the building, or do we walk away from it? We could walk away from it. We could rent a school auditorium. We should soon find that the rent for the auditorium was next-to-nothing compared to what we pay to maintain the plant-facility here.
I have spoken with several former United Church ministers who left the denomination in 1988 or 1990, and who took many people with them. At first they were chortling over how inexpensive it is to rent a school auditorium. Within a year they were telling me their congregation simply had to have its own building, and for this reason they had established a building fund.
And the expanded parking lot? Investigations in the United States have discovered that inadequate parking is the single largest disincentive to church-attendance.
Having said this much I must say one thing more. We must never allow our current expenditures to become the be-all and end-all of congregational life. Do you remember those anguished days in 1988 and 1990 when our congregation was upset at developments in the denomination? I said at the time that we could and should deal with the developments tangentially; we should deal with them marginally in the course of our kingdom-work. But the one thing we must never do is allow denominational developments to preoccupy us and deflect us from our kingdom-work.
Unquestionably we have a major financial concern in the wake of our building restoration, the parking lot, and similar matters. We shall deal with it. Yet we must always deal with tangentially, never allowing it to preoccupy us and deflect us from our kingdom-work.
When I was very young, nine or ten years old, a very intoxicated man stopped my father one Sunday evening as we were going into church. The man wanted money. My father carried very little with him. My mother managed the household finances. She paid the bills and gave my dad $5 per week. Out of his $5 he purchased ten streetcar tickets to get work, as well as the large issue of the Sunday New York Times newspaper (especially its book reviews) he feasted on for the rest of the week. When the man approached my dad, my dad reached into his pocket and gave the man the $5. “But he will only spend it on booze!”, my sister said. “Quite likely he will”, my father replied, yet gave the man the $5 anyway.
My father’s father had been in and out of jail many times, drunk and disorderly, in the United States and Canada, year after year, until he came to faith and sobriety through the ministry of the church. My father reminded me and my sister on the spot that someone, many people, in fact, had kept his father alive when his father was unemployable, sick, a nuisance, even a disgrace; had given his father money, most of it be misspent, for years until the day when the gospel quickened faith through the faithfulness of the church and deliverance was enjoyed. And so out came my dad’s only $5 bill on a Sunday night.
I don’t know how my father got to work that week. I don’t know what he read in place of the New York Times. I do know that when he died in 1967 and his secretary cleaned out his desk it was discovered that he had been putting aside one dollar per week to buy my mother a dishwasher.
Had he lived to see the dishwasher the kitchen sink would still have been the venue of passion, albeit passion of many different sorts.
You see, my father had long known the expulsive power of a new affection.
Victor A. Shepherd
November 1994
Mary Magdalene
Luke 8:1-3 John 20:1-18
For years my heart has kept time with Mary Magdalene’s. She and I “resonate,” as we say today; she and I are “on the same page.” Now when you hear this don’t go looking for psychosexual subtleties in me; don’t ask yourself, “Why is Victor so ‘taken’ with a woman who was a harlot?” The truth is, she wasn’t a harlot. For centuries the myth in the church at large has been that she was. Charles Wesley, the finest hymn writer in English and a man of uncommon biblical sophistication, nevertheless penned a hymn (unfortunately) with the line, “Ye Magdalens of lust,” as if Mary’s problem had been nymphomania. Charles Wesley was wrong. There is nothing in scripture to support this or anything like it. Therefore you can put aside all your speculations about me. I resonate with Mary for different reasons, many reasons. Before I tell you why, however, I want to acquaint you with Mary herself.
She came from Magdala. Magdala was a prosperous city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, halfway between Capernaum and Tiberias. The city flourished, thanks to the fishing, fish-curing, and shipbuilding industries, not to mention trading. The city was populated almost exclusively by Gentiles; almost, but not quite, for Mary was Jewish. Jesus, we know, rarely ventured into Gentile territory. Then how did he and Mary meet? We don’t know for certain just how or where or when. Most likely Mary, a prosperous businesswoman, met Jesus as she travelled about on business. We know she was prosperous, since she was one of the well-to-do women, Luke tells us, who financed the band of disciples and supported our Lord himself.
She has always spoken to my heart.
I: — In the first place I have always been intrigued by the fact that seven devils had been cast out of her. “Seven” is the biblical symbol for wholeness or completeness or entirety. To say that she had been possessed of seven devils is not to say that she was a harlot; it is to say, however, that the evil which riddled her was serious, persistent, and systemic. It infected her wholly, like blood poisoning.
Mary would have had no difficulty believing the Reformation doctrine of Total Depravity. I too have no difficulty believing that doctrine which my Reformation foreparents insisted the gospel of redemption presupposes as surely as surgical heart-transplant presupposes cardiac crisis. Many people, however, repudiate the doctrine because they think it humanly demeaning or grossly exaggerated or simply untrue. Then let’s recall what our foreparents meant by it and what they didn’t.
When our Reformation ancestors spoke of total depravity they didn’t mean that people are worthless, vile, scum to be cast off as quickly as possible. On the contrary they knew that all humankind has been created in the image and likeness of God and can never obliterate that image, never forfeit it, never efface it however much we manage to deface it. It isn’t in our power to forfeit a worth, a dignity that is inalienable just because God has stamped every last one of us with it.
And so far from believing that human beings, fallen human beings that we most certainly are, are capable of no good whatsoever, those who said most about Total Depravity (the Calvinists and all their theological cousins) did the most good everywhere in the world. Calvinists, more than any other group of Christians, were ceaselessly active in education, politics and culture.
When our theological foreparents insisted that all humankind suffers from “total depravity” they never meant that we are all as thoroughly rotten as it’s possible to be. (Myself, I’m convinced that if you and I put our minds to it and tried hard, we could behave worse, much worse, than we do already.) Our foreparents knew that if we all behaved as wretchedly as we could then social existence would be impossible and the world uninhabitable. They never meant that we are morally “rotten to the core;” that the good we do is merely seeming good, only apparent good, only a disguise.
When our foreparents spoke of total depravity they did mean that there is no single area or aspect of my life that remains unaffected by sin. My parenting my children isn’t sin-free; my marriage isn’t sin-free; neither is my daily work; neither is my interaction with other people.
Our foreparents meant too that there is no single dimension of the individual herself which remains unaffected by sin. My reasoning is warped. (We call it rationalization.) My affections are warped. (I persistently love what I ought to loathe, and loathe what I ought to love.) My will is corrupted. (Even when I know what I should do, I find that I can’t do it.) Since scripture speaks of the individual’s “control centre,” what gathers up thinking, feeling, willing, discerning, as the “heart,” our foreparents meant by total depravity that everyone suffers from the gravest heart-defect. The prophet Jeremiah cries, “The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it?” The psalmist laments, “Everyone has gone astray; everyone without exception.” Our Reformation foreparents simply meant that every last person needs now and will always need God’s pardon, God’s gift of new life, God’s restoration and recovery and reorientation.
In the aftermath of World War II Albert Speer, the economist who became chief economics architect of the Hitler regime; Speer remarked, “If you think that the tragedy which Germany now is means that the German people are different from everyone else in the world, then you haven’t learned anything.” Speer was right. Before we sanitize our reading of history we ought to understand that concentration camps weren’t a German invention. The British invented concentration camps during the Boer War, and in those camps more Dutch Afrikaaners died than perished under enemy fire during combat.
I believe the doctrine of Total Depravity. I have long been aware there’s no “corner” of me that can rescue the rest of me. I can’t think my way out of my sinnership, even though shallow rationalists tell me I can. I can’t will myself out of it, even though the power-trippers and control-“freaks” around me say it’s possible. I can’t feel my way out of it, even though the romantics in our midst think the corruption of the human heart can be romanticized away. I am aware that I am wholly, totally, constantly in need of God’s pardon and God’s renewal. When the prophet Ezekiel hears God promising a new heart and a new spirit, I know that God’s promise is my only hope and I had better look to him.
Mary Magdalene isn’t atypical with her “seven devils.” She is unusual, however, in her self-perception. She knows what she is before God. And of course she knows what he did for her in the person of his Son, the Nazarene whom she met and loved ever after.
II: — I resonate with Mary Magdalene for another reason. Her gratitude impelled her to love Jesus and follow him forever. We should always remember that the one, substantive item which the church has to offer the world isn’t a complex theory or complicated proposal or supposedly sure-fire “ism” of some sort; the church’s only substantive offer to the world is a person, the person of the living Lord Jesus Christ. And this person all men and women everywhere are both summoned and invited to meet, love, adore, follow and serve. At Christmas time we read a dozen times over the glorious text from the first chapter of John’s gospel: “The Word (God’s living self-utterance and self-bestowal) became flesh, and dwelt among us.” This is what we read; but what lurks within us is something very different: “The Word became words, and because the Word became words, we have all kinds of words to spew out, even though no one appears to find our words particularly interesting.” The Word became flesh, in one man only, Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate, resurrected to life by the Father, and now the Father’s gift to everyone everywhere.
Mary knew all of this ahead of us. Her heart always swelled at the name of Jesus. He, not a theory or a formula or a proposal; he alone had turned her life around. Her gratitude for that unspeakable gift which her Lord was for her; this constrained her to love him, adore him, obey him, exalt him, and support him and his work any way she could.
It wasn’t difficult for her heart to go out to him. After all she, together with those like her won to the master, had found him winsome. Jesus spoke of himself as “the good shepherd.” The Greek word he uses for “good” means “good” plus “attractive, winsome, compelling, comely, inviting.” “I am the fine shepherd.” The earliest Christians were attracted to Jesus as surely as they were repelled by the religious authorities. Why weren’t the authorities attractive? Jesus tells us why. “You load people down with backbreaking burdens, and then you don’t lift a finger to help them.”
Backbreaking burdens? Back then? What about now? Two generations ago religious backbreakers had to do chiefly with crushing moralistic burdens. People were told that they hadn’t managed to achieve whatever it was they were supposed to achieve in order to merit the designation “Christian.”
Today the perfectionistic burdens aren’t moralistic; they are psychological. People are told that if they are truly devout, real Christians, they will always have emotional tranquillity (did Jesus have tranquillity in the Garden of Gethsemane?); not so much as one minute (never mind forty days) of anxiety or confusion; never even a hint of perplexity or depression or grief. I’ve heard preachers tell people that “real” Christians are never afraid, never distressed, never stunned. Burdens are added when not a finger is lifted to help.
I understand why people found religious spokespersons repellent and Jesus attractive. Mary’s gratitude impelled her to cherish forever the One whose winsomeness left her unable to do anything else.
Once Mary became a disciple of Jesus, the light which he is shone ever more brightly amidst the murkiness surrounding her. Murkiness? What murkiness surrounded her? Mary was a close friend of Joanna; Joanna was the wife of Herod’s chief administrative officer. Herod was corrupt. Joanna would have known all about political intrigue and institutional corruption; trade-offs between Herod and Pilate; collusion between the religious institution and the state; under-the-table deals and favours and blackmailings; all of this carried on behind closed doors in the dead of the night. Joanna, Mary’s friend, wouldn’t have failed to “spill” all this to Mary. Mary knew how the world turned. Murky as it all was and still is, however, Jesus Christ, the light of the world, penetrated the murkiness and cheered her, subdued the despair that lapped at her, sustained her in her conviction that the light he is will ever be truth despite the corruption which cares nothing for righteousness and cares nothing for the victims it leaves behind.
We know how the world turns. We aren’t naïve. But neither are we overcome by the darkness and what happens in it. Jesus Christ is light. He is always light enough to enlighten us as to the fact and nature of the darkness (very important — after all, if it weren’t for the light we’d never know that the darkness is dark.) He is light enough to illumine our way so that we know how and where and why we are to walk (more important.) He is light enough to light us up like a lighthouse that helps fetch others “home” (most important.)
It’s our gratitude to Jesus Christ that constrains us to love him and follow him. As we do we are bathed in the light which he is even as we reflect his light upon others. This was Mary Magdalene’s experience before it was ours.
III: — Lastly, Mary was graced with a visitation and ignited with a vocation. The visitation occurred at the bleakest period of her life. Bereaved of her Lord and grief-soaked as well, she had planned only to deodorize a corpse — when it happened: a visitation from the One who called her by name and then commissioned her to a service from which she would never shrink and of which she would never be ashamed.
I can’t tell you how much this moves me. I’m always moved upon learning of the visitations and vocations of others, because it’s our common experience here that keeps us going when the way is rough and discouragements abound and bleakness settles upon us like pea-soup fog.
For years I have pondered the martyrdom of the first wave of Jesuits to die in Japan . Fired by the same Spirit as Ignatius Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order, the young men of the order (125 of them) who went to Japan in the 17th century in order to reflect the light into the east found themselves set upon. “Since you Christians are forever talking about the cross,” said their Japanese tormentors (the Japanese had never heard of crucifixion as a means of execution until missionaries acquainted them with the gospel story), “why don’t you try on the cross yourselves?” Whereupon the missionaries were impaled on crosses planted in shallow water at high tide. When they had died their bodies were knocked off the cross; the receding tide carried the bodies out to sea and spared their executioners the bother of having to bury them. What happened next? The Jesuit order sent another 125 men to Japan , men who like Mary were constrained to say, “I have seen the Lord.”
Our visitation and vocation may be less dramatic than that of those young men, and less dramatic again than Mary’s, yet ours is assuredly no less real. We persist in our Christian service despite the incomprehension of people outside the church and the frustration awaiting us inside it.
Mary came back to the waiting disciples and primed them with her five-word message: “I have seen the Lord.” She primed them inasmuch as her visitation readied them for theirs when the risen One appeared to them later.
Certainly I don’t expect everyone’s visitation and vocation to be carbon copies of mine. Nonetheless if I weren’t convinced that mine readied you for yours and helped you discern it and confirmed you in it; if I weren’t convinced of this then I wouldn’t be a minister of the gospel; I’d be only be a wordsmith.
It all came upon Mary Magdalene at the bleakest moment of her life. It moved her past that dark moment and freed her from the chilling paralysis that bleakness otherwise becomes.
Several years ago a young man who belonged to a Roman Catholic order spoke with the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta , hoping to get a sympathetic hearing from her. “My vocation is to work with lepers,” he complained to her, “but the superior of my order persists in obstructing my vocation; he has rules and discipline and preparatory work and study and training and exercises, together with a thousand silly tasks and no fewer humiliations, all of which interfere with my vocation to spend myself now for lepers.” Mother Teresa looked him in the eye for a few seconds and said, “Brother, your vocation isn’t to work with lepers; your vocation is to belong to Jesus.” She was correct. Our vocation, always, is first and last to belong to our Lord. Within this meta-vocation, but only within it, it will be made plain to us specifically what belonging to Jesus will have us do.
Mary Magdalene. Someone whose total existence the Master turned around. Someone whose gratitude moved her to follow forever the One whose winsomeness had melted her heart. Someone for whom visitation and vocation left her running with good news — “I have seen the Lord.” Someone whose good news has facilitated the calling to Christ of thousands like us who have heard her story.
I have loved her for years.
Victor Shepherd
July 2010
Lake Joseph Community Church
Questions Jesus Asked: “Who touched me?”
Luke 8:45
I: — “To see and be seen,” said my grade nine geography teacher, “This is why people go to tourist beaches, to ski resorts, and to church; to see and be seen.” Perhaps he was right decades ago. Perhaps there was a day when some people came to church for this reason. They wanted to see; i.e., catch up on gossip. They wanted to be seen; i.e., preserve their standing in the community, even be able to do business on Monday. But we live in a different era now. Today no one comes to church for this reason.
Then why do people come to church? Curiosity might bring a few, but if curiosity brought them here it would never keep them here, because there isn’t much in church for curiosity seekers. We don’t traffic in oddities or secrets or spookiness. What the church traffics in happens to be simple, transparent, and highly repetitive. We sing hymns that congregations have sung for centuries; we read from a book that a child can read; we listen to an address that uses illustrations everywhere lest people go home mystified. I’m convinced that people come to church today largely for the same reason that the woman in our text stood, with scores of others, in a crowd. The reason, Luke tells us, was that she had heard reports about Jesus.
Reports about Jesus abounded in those days. We are told that the common people heard him gladly and turned out in droves at the same time that church leaders suspected him and conspired behind closed doors. One report about Jesus was that he was compassionate: no wonder people kept bringing their sick and disturbed to him. And yet as compassionate as he was, people wouldn’t have kept bringing their sick and disturbed to him unless he was more than compassionate, helpful as well, effective. People came to him, lingered with him, and then bound themselves to him for one reason: in his company they became different, life became different, the world became different, everything became different.
People come to church today, for the same reason. They have heard reports about Jesus. They have heard that he receives and helps, effectively helps, those whom life has jarred and jolted, even wounded and warped.
People are “shaken up” when they are surprised to discover they weren’t able to anticipate how they reacted to blows and irruptions and disruptions. To be sure, all of us try to anticipate how we are going to react when this happens to us or that happens to us. When the “this” or the “that” does happen, however, we discover that what we were able to anticipate in our heads we weren’t able to anticipate in our hearts. How we reacted had virtually nothing to do with how we had thought we were going to react. And now we fear irruptions in life as we didn’t fear them before.
The younger person, even the younger adult, unconsciously thinks himself to be invulnerable. If you sat him down and queried him about life’s vulnerabilities, he’d say, “Of course I’m aware that accident, disease, disaster can overtake anyone at any time. Do you think I’m naïve or stupid?” Still, what he admits with his conscious, reflective mind he hasn’t yet admitted with his unconscious mind. And it’s the unconscious mind that governs so very much of everyone’s life. Then one day something befalls him that drives home at all levels of his mind something he’d always admitted with his head but never with his heart: life is fragile, life is precarious, life is brief, life is subject to vulnerabilities that can never be rendered invulnerable.
For years we manage to live in the illusion that we are in control. We are in control of ourselves (of course); not only of ourselves but also of our family, of our colleagues, of a significant corner of our world. Then one day events force us to admit — finally — that while the sphere of our influence may be great, the sphere of our control is slight, very slight. And now we aren’t even sure we are in control of ourselves.
For years we remain untouched by grief in that we have suffered no overwhelming loss, and untouched by guilt if only because we think ourselves superior to everyone else. Then loss fuels grief, and a realistic awareness that our own garbage smells spawns guilt.
For years we listen to other people complain that they find life meaningless, we quietly pride ourselves on the fact that we don’t find it meaningless. One day, however, we realize that our problem isn’t life’s meaninglessness; our problem is life’s meanings: so many of them, so many that are incompatible, and in any case no single, true meaning, trustworthy meaning, eternal meaning.
II: — At this point we are like the woman in our text: “If I but touch the fringe of his clothes, I shall be made well; just the fringe.” In first century Palestine men wore their talith, their prayer shawl, as an undershirt. The prayer shawl therefore remained hidden under their workday clothing, except for the tassels at the four corners of the prayer shawl: these hung down below their workday shirt. The needy woman felt that by grasping these she was making contact with him, and this would be sufficient. It would be enough just to make contact. There’d be no need to spout elaborate introductions or offer effusive explanations. Besides, she was a woman and he was a man; men and women didn’t converse in public. Besides, she was suffering from an ailment that made others in the community shrink from her; better to say nothing, act boldly, and see what happens next. All she wanted to do was make contact. What’s more, the four tassels symbolized the truth that the Word of God reaches to the four corners of the earth. If it really reaches to the four outermost corners of the earth, she thought, perhaps it reaches to my tiny corner of the earth, me.
Let’s not deceive ourselves. People at their profoundest don’t come to church because of something about us. They come because they have heard reports concerning Jesus Christ, and they’ve been told that this building and this institution have something to do with him and may even help them make contact with him. People at their profoundest come to church because they think that their chances of meeting him and finding help are better here.
I’m convinced it’s no different with us whom have been coming to church for a long time and will continue to come. To be sure, there is much here that appears to have little to do with reaching out to touch our Lord: shingling the roof, gassing the furnace, paying the light bill. The truth is, however, all of these matters have everything to do with making contact with him. It is for this purpose only that we shingle the roof and gas the furnace and pay the light bill.
The woman in our text again: what did she think that merely touching our Lord was going to do for her? Was there an element, or more than an element, of superstition in what she did? There may have been. If there was, I’m sure our Lord would have corrected it eventually; he wouldn’t have allowed her to go on touching him as if she were pressing a button that gave her a charge. He wouldn’t have allowed her to keep pawing him mechanically as though voodoo-like superstition could ever substitute for spiritual maturity. Over and over in the written gospels Jesus moves people beyond an understanding, misunderstanding, of him that is so woefully immature as to be spiritually threatening. When the mother of James and John wanted positions of privilege for her two sons Jesus told her she was asking the wrong question; she should have been asking if her two sons were resilient enough to endure the long-term rigours of discipleship without quitting. Of course he would expect an apprehension of him deeper than feeling the fringes of his prayer shawl. He would have corrected the woman eventually; but he didn’t correct her instantly.
For our Lord knows something we must never forget: before we can begin to mature we have to be born. Before we step ahead maturely in the Christian life, we have to take a first step. And the difference between no step and first step is a quantum leap. In short, there are two dangers we must avoid. One danger is expecting ourselves and others to exhibit exemplary spiritual maturity without first having touched our Lord. When this happens we expect people to swim confidently in the waters of Christian wisdom and devotional richness and spiritual discernment and self-renouncing service when in fact they can’t swim at all. They splash around for a while repeating formulas they don’t understand and pursuing a pathway they find pointless until one day they give up the whole thing and we never see them in church again. The other danger is making contact, all right, and then fixating ourselves at an infantile level of Christian understanding and venture, content to make contact, plainly enough, but never moving on to that maturity in Christ which Paul says is ultimately the goal of Christian ministry.
III: — The woman touches Jesus. “Who touched me?” he says. “Someone has touched me. Who is it?” The disciples remind him that the crowd resembles the subway train at rush hour: people are squeezed together so tightly that anyone who faints won’t even fall down. Who has touched him? Who hasn’t touched him? The question is silly.
Except that it isn’t. “Some one person has touched me,” Jesus insists. “Within this crowd there is some one person who has moved from observing me and assessing me to contacting me. Who is it?”
Today our society seems on the point of forgetting what richness the gospel has brought the society in terms of our understanding of the person, and how quickly that gospel-inspired leaven can depart the society.
Think of the hideousness that Marxism fostered. In the Marxist set-up the individual person counts for nothing. The collective counts for everything. The individual has no rights at all. The individual has merit only because of the individual’s place in the collective. Any exploitation of the individual, however cruel or even deadly, is legitimate if it serves the greater good (so-called) of the collective. You don’t need me to tell you of the forced labour camps in Siberia and the Gulag system and Stalin’s systematic starvation of twelve million people in the Ukraine and the 30 to 60 million people that the secret police took down.
Think of a spectacle seen every day in India . I saw it myself. Someone collapses on the street, manifestly ill. People step around her or step over her but don’t stop to help her. After all, fate, the gods, have willed that she be stricken at this moment, fall in this position, and remain there. To lend assistance is to defy what the gods have willed and therein to court the gods’ displeasure. Therefore wise people leave the victim alone. On my first day in India I came upon a dog that had been dead for several days. Maggots were crawling in and out of the carcase. It stank unimaginably. But no one had buried the carcase. After all, the gods had appointed the dog to die in that position and be left there.
And then I think of a parishioner in my Mississauga congregation who suffered a major heart attack. He was sustained by the most up-to-date medical wizardry, was given a heart transplant, and underwent many more surgeries until his chest and abdomen resembled a quilt. The cost of all this, borne by the taxpayer, approached the national debt. While he was mending from the heart transplant he had to have his gall bladder removed. Only seven years later he died anyway. Yet no one ever said of him, “He isn’t worth it. People die of heart trouble every day. What’s so special about him? Besides, he’s costing too much. Let him go.” No one even whispered this.
How long do you think such situations will continue once our society has become thoroughly secularized and the indirect illumination of the gospel has disappeared entirely?
I have said several times over that in a Marxist collectivity the individual is worthless. True. The reason the individual is worthless here is that the individual isn’t a person; the individual is merely a cog in a giant machine, and any cog can replace any other cog. The individual isn’t a person.
Strictly speaking, ancient Greek philosophy knew of the individual; it did not, however, know of the person. The notion of the person is the church’s gift to the world. The difference is this: the individual is an individual in herself, but a person is always person-in-relation. So far as the individual is concerned, to be is to be; but so far as the person is concerned, to be is to be-in-relation. To exist as a person is never the same as existing as an individual. Ancient Greek philosophy spoke of the individual but never of the person. The church knew the difference and insisted that every last human being is a person.
Admittedly, there are some human beings whose lives are wretched. They appear to be friendless. They appear to be isolated. They appear to be abandoned, forsaken. But in fact there is no human being anywhere, at any time, who is ultimately abandoned and finally forsaken, just because there is no human being whom God doesn’t cherish.
We must be sure we see the woman in our story in proper context. She reached out to touch our Lord — intentionally, wilfully, deliberately seeking help. Others didn’t. Then did they lack all relation to Jesus Christ? Do such people still? The truth is, in his death our Lord embraced every last human being without exception, without qualification, without reservation, without hesitation. Because of his embrace every human being is a person with respect to him. Remember, to be is to be-in-relation. The arms of the crucified ensure not only that individuals are individuals rather than faceless cogs in a cosmic machine; the arms of the crucified ensure that no one is finally forsaken, no one ultimately abandoned, no one bereft of that “other” who guarantees that all individuals are, more profoundly still, persons.
The church’s gift to the world here is breathtaking, and nowadays most of the world doesn’t know by whom the gift was given. What will be the shape, the texture, of our society if, when, the indirect illumination of the gospel recedes and the society is left not even with the wisdom that ancient Greek philosophy could muster, but merely with the new barbarism that looms around us?
Myself, I’m convinced that the indirect illumination still lighting our society might remain if the church continues to hold up the direct lighting of the gospel. Only the gospel insists that this one person matters inestimably to God just because only the gospel (all human beings exist in relation to Jesus Christ) insists that all persons are persons.
You and I are at worship this morning for many different reasons. One reason, surely, is that we want to make contact with our Lord again. Centuries ago a needy woman, a courageous woman, reached out and grabbed the tassels of his prayer shawl, believing thereby she would find in him what she needed most.
“Who has touched me?” Jesus responded. She had. She mattered supremely to him; but ultimately no more than all of us matter to him, for he has first touched us all with outstretched arms, thereby rendering us persons whose worth, importance and gifts are beyond price.
We in the church know this. By coming here today we want to remind the wider society of this truth lest our society forget it and thereby imperil everyone.
Dr Victor Shepherd
March 2003
Three Approaches to Life — The Good Samaritan
Luke 10:25-37
I: “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it.”
The robbers who assaulted the traveller shamelessly told the world how life should be approached: “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it.” They were criminals; violent criminals as well. They didn’t hesitate to beat a man half to death in order take what they wanted. Clearly they operated outside the law.
We must not think, however, that everyone who shares their approach to life operates outside the law. Most operate within the law. They will never go to jail. They will never taste social rejection. In fact they will often be congratulated. After all, everyone who agrees with “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” compliments those who succeed.
The chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year. Bank employees pilfer it. Plainly they are stealing what belongs to customers. The department stores lose millions of dollars of merchandise every year. Employees thieve it. (Employees are responsible for 90% of shoplifting.)
And then there is the person who does work for us and asks to be paid in cash rather than by cheque. In other words, he plans to pay no income tax — which is to say, he plans to defraud every other taxpayer.
What is government-sanctioned gambling except another instance of “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it”? Our foreparents in Israel regarded gambling as theft. Were they correct, even if gambling is theft by mutual consent? Wherever governments have introduced casino gambling several things have ensued. One, the gambling operation is immediately taken over by the underworld. Two, the social and moral deterioration that follows is as undeniable as it is uncorrectable. (We should note that the day the government of Ontario introduced its gambling operation it cancelled its psychiatric assistance program for gambling addicts.) Three, casino gambling boosts related underworld activities: loansharking (someone has to lend overzealous gamblers large sums of money), narcotics-trafficking, prostitution, extortion.
At the same time “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” is an approach exemplified by many who are not financially corrupt. It is the approach of someone who won’t keep her hands off someone else’s husband, of someone else who thinks he can “swipe” another man’s reputation and turn it to his own advantage. It’s the approach of any jealous person who thinks that by crumbling someone else she can magnify herself.
“What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” is the approach of robbers, however polite and respectable they may be.
II: “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it”
The priest and the Levite (Levites were priests attached to a local congregation) had a different approach to life: “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it.” In some respects the two clergymen were nastier than the robbers. After all, the robbers did not pretend to be anything but nasty. They never pretended to be concerned with suffering people. They didn’t claim to know that God is wounded in the wounds of all who are made in his image.
The priest and the Levite were ordained. People called them “reverend”, perhaps also “doctor” if they were especially learned. They liked the sound of it all. The titles gave them special recognition and privileged status in the community.
As soon as they saw the beaten man their finely-trained minds hummed even faster as they brought forward reason after reason, each entirely defensible, as to why couldn’t help at that moment, why other matters were more pressing, why their vocation didn’t permit them to be distracted by mundane matters.
Nevertheless the reasons their subtle intellects brought forward were all rationalizations. The real reason (of which they were unaware, needless to say) was that they were stingy. “What’s mine I need”, they nodded knowingly to each other, “and therefore I had better keep it.”
This approach to life is more common than we think. A few years ago, when the Canadian government permitted each tax-payer to claim $100 tax exempt for charitable donations, it was found that only one per cent of Canadians donated at least $100 per year to causes which help and heal.
Do you know who are the most generous people in Canada? The poorest! People whose incomes are in the bottom 20% of the nation’s give away a much higher percentage of their disposable incomes than do those in the top 20%.
At the same time “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it” controls many besides those who are financially stingy. How many marriages have melted down just because one partner (or both) insisted ever more loudly, “What’s mine is mine”?
Or think about those who complain that they have no friends. Although they do not know it, the reason they have no friends is their refusal to acknowledge the claim of a friendship. Friendship involves giving as well as taking; it involves making a sacrifice as well as absorbing benevolence. At times our best friend will frustrate us or annoy us or even irk us. Our friends inconvenience us. They want us to help them paint their new house the day we had planned to go fishing. They insist on calling us late at night because they are upset even though we are so tired we want only to fall into bed. Nonetheless, unless we are willing to honour the claim of a friendship we shall never have friends.
“What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it” sounds smart and cagey and self-protective. In reality it is self-destructive, for it leaves us devoid of human intimacy; which is to say, it leaves us isolated, alienated, destitute.
III: “What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it”
The beaten, bleeding man lying in the road would never have expected help from a Samaritan. After all, Samaritans were half-breeds with weird religious ideas. They were as unlike the urbane citizens of Jerusalem as snake-handling hillbillies from the Ozarks are unlike us. Still, the half-breed “weirdo” shone where others did not. Our Lord tells us they exemplified a kingdom-truth: “What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it.”
Look at what the Samaritan did.
He risked himself. When he stopped to help the injured fellow he had to linger in an area frequented by cutthroats. (The men who had beaten the traveller might still be in the vicinity.) In dismounting from his horse he gave up the one means of speeding through the infested area.
He rendered a personal service. He didn’t merely make a referral or phone an institution, all the while ensuring that his hands were never soiled and his clothes bloodstain-free. Instead he rendered a personal service as soon as compassion electrified his heart. He knew the difference between social assistance and self-involvement.
He made a costly sacrifice. Certainly he was late for his appointment — may have missed it entirely — when he carted the victimized man to an inn and spend the night there too. Certainly he paid for the night’s accommodation (times two) out of his own pocket. Certainly his clothes had to be dry-cleaned if not replaced.
And all of this he did anonymously, not wishing to be recognized or congratulated or bemedalled or made a fuss of in any way. Neither did he exploit the opportunity of helping the helpless as an occasion for drawing attention to himself.
Perhaps the biggest sacrifice he made was simply fighting down deep-dyed prejudice and loathing when he, a Samaritan, came to the assistance of a despised Jew.
“What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it.”
Victor Shepherd
A Note on Intercession
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab The Parable of the “Rich Fool”
Luke 12:13-21
For the past ten years we’ve been hearing that the provincial government has to continue cutting the provincial budget on big-ticket items. Hospitals, schools, universities, municipalities: they may receive a little more from the present government than they received from the previous, but the cuts in provincial pay-outs can’t be reversed entirely, since the province is now paying out one million dollars per hour more than it takes in. The gravy-train has derailed, and the government is hoping that the residents of Ontario will understand that it has derailed.
Even as we admit that the gravy-train has derailed we should also admit that there never was as much gravy in the train as we wanted to think or were led to think. For decades we Canadians have spent vastly more money on ourselves than we ever earned. Collectively we have lived beyond our means for years.
In saying this I don’t mean that all of the material prosperity we soaked up came to us only because we were living beyond our means. A few years ago our “means” were genuinely greater. For instance, for years 20% of Canada ‘s Gross National Product came from the development of non-renewable resources, such as copper ore or nickel ore. I support such development. Copper ore is of no use to anyone as long as it remains in the ground. We were right to mine it and sell it. At the same time we must realize that once it’s been mined it’s gone for ever. Copper doesn’t reproduce itself in the ground the way wheat reproduces itself in a field or beef cattle reproduce themselves in a barn.
Then will our children find life financially leaner than we have known it? On average, yes. You see, ever since Confederation (1867) each generation of Canadians has been approximately twice as wealthy as the previous generation. I am twice as wealthy as my parents; they were twice as wealthy as their parents. Then our children should be twice as wealthy as we. But here the pattern is broken. Social scientists tell us that the next generation, on average, won’t be twice as wealthy as we are. In fact, for the first time in Canada ’s history, the next generation will be less wealthy than we are. This doesn’t mean that the next generation will suffer from inadequate nutrition, clothing or shelter. The next generation will find, however, that it has less money for trifles and trinkets and toys.
Is this bad? Is it bad to have fewer trinkets and toys? As a matter of fact the leaner finances for most Canadians will be a spiritual boon. Material superabundance, Jesus reminds us everywhere in the written gospels, is a spiritual threat; a grave spiritual threat, graver even than material scarcity. In fact our Lord maintains that material superabundance is the gravest spiritual threat of all.
How grave a threat? What kind of threat? Jesus answers our questions in his parable that generations after him have called “The Parable of the Rich Fool”.
I: — “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully, and it made the rich man richer still,” the parable begins. “And the rich man — now super-rich — thought to himself…” He thought to himself? The Greek verb is DIALOGIZOMAI, from which we derive the English word “dialogue”. The super-affluent man dialogued with himself; he debated with himself; he deliberated with himself; he weighed all the considerations; he approached the topic from ever so many angles. So intent is he on dialoguing, debating, deliberating with himself; so consumed is he with weighing, assessing, calculating, estimating, measuring; so preoccupied is he with his fortune that he’s — just that: preoccupied, consumed. He can’t think of anything else besides his new-found fortune. He doesn’t care to think of anything else. He doesn’t even think there might be something else to think about.
What exactly is preoccupying him? One matter: how he might hoard for himself what’s been dumped in his lap.
(i) The first thing we notice about the fellow is that his possessions absorb him. He can think only of what he owns: how to measure it, how to maximize it, how to multiply it — ultimately, how to preserve it and protect it and protract it. He’s a hoarder; he gives nothing away. There isn’t an ounce of generosity in him for the simple reason that he doesn’t care a whit about anyone else, so “thingified” is his heart.
(ii) The second thing we notice about him is that he’s an egotist. In the space of a few lines, according to the parable, he speaks of himself, “I,” repeatedly; “I,I,I” eight times over.
(iii) The third thing we notice about him is that he’s a secularist. The world he lives in is a world bounded by the material, the human, the finite. There’s no vertical dimension to his world, no room for anything other than the horizontal. Matter, mammon, man; human history understood no more profoundly than the never-ending scramble for social ascendancy. He doesn’t regard all of this as supremely important; he regards it as solely important, since for him this alone constitutes life.
As if it were going to last forever! As if his one-dimensional life were going to last forever! As if his secularist viewpoint were the only possible viewpoint for anyone with even a modicum of intelligence! As if? But secularists never say “as if”, just because it never occurs to them that their one-dimensional universe might be merely their invention; just because it never occurs to them that their perception might be arbitrary, shallow and false.
The man our Lord speaks of in the parable — thing-absorbed, egotistical and thorough-going secularist; this man has a problem. He himself is aware that he has a problem. His one problem, he thinks, is this. “Now that I, an affluent fellow, am eversomuch more affluent, how am I going to retain my increased, socio-economic advantage? Right now I am financially privileged. How can I perpetuate it?” The man has a problem, and the thinks that this is his only problem.
Very soon, of course, Jesus Christ will let us all know, all us hearers of the parable, what the man’s real problem is. And what is his real problem? What his real problem is he can’t even guess.
III: — “But God said to him.” BUT GOD SAID TO HIM. His real problem is that God has spoken to him. Suddenly the vertical dimension to all of life (he never dreamt there was a vertical dimension to all of life) thrusts itself upon him. It was there all along, of course. Now, however, it’s staring him in the face. Now it’s as undeniable as it is unmistakable. BUT GOD SAID TO HIM — and obviously God said it in a very loud voice. Suddenly the fellow’s world is exposed as too small, too narrow, too shallow, too anaemic, too flat. When God speaks, the universe expands in a hurry; when God speaks, the universe expands hugely; it expands immeasurably as surely as God himself is immeasurable. It isn’t merely that “a new dimension,” even a vertical dimension, has been added; it’s rather that when God speaks, all of life is revolutionized.
Think of the woman at the well in John 4. She meets Jesus and chitchats humorously with him, banters with him, even flirts with him. She’s enjoying it all, never expecting it to end on a jarring note, when suddenly Jesus breaks off the banter and says, “Go call your husband.” She stares at him, knowing that he has seen through her disguise. He has crumbled all the defenses she has spent years perfecting. And all he has done is speak to her. “Go call your husband.” “I don’t have a husband,” she barely croaks out; “Do we have to talk about this?” When the woman encountered Jesus at the well she thought she had a problem: she thought her problem was that she lacked a bucket of water for household tasks. That’s why she had gone to the well. Once the master has spoken to her, however, she’s aware that her real problem is something else, something eversomuch deeper.
The man in the parable we are listening to today: “BUT GOD SAID TO HIM.” Said what? What did God say?
“You fool.” In modern English a fool is someone who lacks sound judgement. Then is this man merely possessed of unsound judgement? No. There’s more to be said. In older English “foolish” means “mad, insane.” “Foolish” is derived from the French word “fol,” and “fol” means mad, insane, psychotic. The mad person, the psychotic person, is someone whose reality-testing is severely impaired.
“But God said to him, ‘You fool.’” The man didn’t merely lack sound judgement; rather, with respect to the reality of God his reality-testing was severely impaired. With respect to the reality of God his perception of reality was skewed, so badly skewed as to be non-existent. What he had always regarded as self-evident (a one-dimensional universe) was now exposed as untrue. What he had regarded as reality (a life whose only purpose was greater and greater ease born of greater and greater affluence) was now exposed as illusory. On the other hand, what he had always regarded as illusory (the truth of God and the penetration of God and heart-seizure at the hand of God); this was now exposed as real.
“You fool!” Wherein had he been a fool? He had certainly been ungrateful. When his bumper crop had come along it had never occurred to him to think of (let alone thank) the one who sustains the universe and sends seedtime and harvest.
Moreover, his head and his heart had become thoroughly “thingified.” He had planned to store up goods for his soul, for his innermost life, stupidly thinking that goods had anything to do with his innermost life.
Moreover, he had planned to take his ease, never to work again. Most importantly, he gave no consideration to kingdom-work, the sort of thing Jesus meant when he said, “We must work while it is day, for the night comes when no one can work.” He hadn’t had a clue about kingdom-work and hadn’t wanted to have.
God had said more to him than “You fool!”, however. God had also said, “Tonight you must die.” The fellow had never factored his mortality into what he was making of his life. If he ever thought about dying at all he dismissed the notion as soon as it intruded. He was too busy planning how to hoard to bother with having to die. Therefore he was a fool twice over.
God had said even more to him: “All that stuff that has cluttered your life and corroded your heart — who gets it now? If you have lived for it, then you have lived for nothing, because now you must surrender it.” And so he was a fool three times over.
IV: — Needless to say, the point in learning wherein the rich fool was a fool is to be sure that we don’t follow him foolishly ourselves. The point in learning wherein he thought he was rich only to find himself poor; the point is to become rich ourselves. Jesus concludes the parable by urging us to become “rich towards God,” rich in God. In other words, our one good, our eternal good, is to be rich in God.
I crave such richness myself. I continue to crave it for two reasons. One reason is that I have “tasted” (to use a vivid biblical expression); I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8) The taste I have had (and enjoy now) isn’t the taste of a tiny tidbit on the tip of the tongue. The taste I have had has satisfied me so thoroughly as to leave me wanting to look nowhere else and pursue no one else. And yet as often as I have tasted, the taste has left me hungering for more: always satisfied, never satiated; always supplied, never surfeited. In all of this I have never doubted that it is GOD with whom I have to do, not my overheated imagination, not a fantasy, not a projection from an unconscious “wish-list.” How do I know it is GOD with whom I have to do? Encounter with God is self-authenticating. Since God is who he is, there is nothing above him — and therefore nothing above him by means of which he is proved (or disproved). Because there is nothing above God, nothing greater than God, there is nothing apart from God that can authenticate him; and when he seizes any one of us, there is nothing apart from him that is needed to authenticate him. Were we to ask a Hebrew prophet of old how he knew that it was God who had seized him, the prophet of old would have said two things: one, our asking the question suggests we are not yet “seized” ourselves; two, seizure at the hand of God is as self-authenticating as seeing an object convinces us of the object’s size and colour and shape. When we see an object we are convinced without further argumentation as to its size and colour and shape.
It’s difficult for me to say more without exposing myself to the charge of spiritual exhibitionism. At the same time I cannot say less without failing to testify of him whom Jeremiah says is fire in his mouth, before whom Daniel could only fall on his face, and for whom David cried out as he cried out for nothing else.
Many times from this pulpit I have said that the characteristic of the Holy One of Israel is that he speaks. Not that he yammers, not that he jabbers or blabbers or chitchats, but that he speaks. Then has he spoken to me? Yes. Many different words. A word of judgement upon my sin, which word has left me weeping brokenheartedly, like Peter, except that no one else was around to see it, not even my wife. He has also spoken to me words of pardon, of encouragement, of direction, of exhilaration. The psalmist says, “At God’s right hand are pleasures for ever more,” and I have found the psalmist true a hundred times over. A relentless word from him, a summons that I have found inextinguishable and inescapable since I was 14, is my vocation to the ministry.
Because I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good” I cannot doubt him but can only want more of him. This is one reason I crave being richer in God, as Jesus urges us to be.
The second reason is that I have been drawn into the heart and head of several people who were immersed so deep in God they exuded it. Simply to have encountered these people was to know they weren’t misled themselves and wouldn’t mislead others. When they spoke to me of God they spoke naturally, unselfconsciously, without affectation or artificiality or phoniness.
One such person was the late Ronald Ward, professor of New Testament at the University of Toronto , an Anglican who used to help me with the finer points of Greek syntax. When I called on him, ready to be schooled in the seven uses of the infinitive or the fivefold significance of the subjunctive mood, he would help me in these matters, to be sure. Then he would sit back in his chair and casually, completely unintentionally, overwhelm me with his oh-so-believable intimacy with our Lord. “Do you know why most ministers want to preach no more than ten minutes these days?” he asked me once; “It’s because they can relate their entire experience of Christ in ten minutes.” If Ronald Ward had had one hundred years to acquaint me with his experience of our Lord, it wouldn’t have been long enough.
In this respect Ward resembled the apostle Paul. Paul’s vocabulary wasn’t stunted in the least, yet rich as it was it couldn’t do justice to the fathomless riches of Christ. For this reason when the apostle could say no more he used the word “unsearchable” or “immeasurable;” “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8) or “the immeasurable riches of his grace.” (Eph. 2:7) No wonder he could speak of himself and others as “having nothing, yet possessing everything.” (2 Cor. 6:10) To be exposed to men and women like this is to crave being rich (or richer) in God.
One thing I never want to do is suggest that all of this is reserved for the clergy. The fact that I speak about it from a pulpit doesn’t mean for a minute that you are excluded from it. On the contrary, I speak knowing that hearers in front of me will resonate as the same truth reverberates within them.
For this reason it is fitting that we conclude our discussion about what it is to be “rich towards God” with a few lines from one of the books of my friend, Ronald Ward, in which he speaks of preacher and congregation facing each other, together rejoicing alike in their common Lord:
“When he [the preacher] proclaims Christ there will be an answering note in the hearts of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious. When he mentions the wrath of God they will be with him in remembering that they too were once under the wrath and by the mercy of God have been delivered. When he speaks of the Holy Spirit they will rejoice in Him who brought Christ to their hearts with His fruit of joy. When he speaks of the church they will dwell on that vast company of the redeemed which has responded to God’s call and has received Christ, the multitude which no man can number of those who are His peculiar treasure. When he speaks of the word of the cross they will welcome the open secret of the means of their salvation. And when he gives an invitation to sinners to come to Christ, they will create the warm and loving atmosphere which is the fitting welcome for one who is coming home.”
Victor Shepherd
“Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth?”
Luke 12:51
I: — “War is hell”, said General Sherman, a USA Civil War commander. It is. The material losses are staggering. It was Sherman himself who set fire to the city of Atlanta , Georgia , and burnt it to the ground. Worse than the material losses, however, are the physical pain and dismemberment and disability — too horrible to dwell on. Beyond the physical distresses are the psychiatric horrors. We hear less about the psychiatric horrors of war, if only because they are less visible to the public. For all that, however, they are no less horrible. After all, in World War II psychiatric breakdown was the single largest reason for honourable discharge from the armed forces. Any combatant’s chances of psychiatric collapse (from the American Civil War right up to Israel ‘s invasion of Lebanon in 1982) are three times greater than his likelihood of being killed. When the U.S. army landed in Sicily in the 1940s there were platoons where the psychiatric breakdown was 100%. Military psychiatrists have found that the only combatant who doesn’t collapse however long he is under fire is the full-blown psychopath. War is dreadful.
Then what does Jesus have in mind when he says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword, division”? It’s all the more startling in view of the fact that the apostles speak of our Lord as the prince of peace. Indeed, the announcement made to the shepherds at his birth was “peace on earth.” And then a few years later he is telling us that he hasn’t come to bring peace on earth? Then what does he mean when he insists that he’s come to bring strife?
II: — We begin to understand our Lord as we remember that he stood in the line of Israel ‘s prophets. Certainly the prophets longed for shalom, God’s definitive peace, nothing less than the entire creation healed. Yet just as surely the prophets knew that there can never be peace without justice. Any attempt at promoting peace without first doing justice is fraudulent.
For years we engaged in polite conversations that discussed the situation in South Africa . “Why can’t black people and white people simply get along together? Why can’t they live at peace?” But there can be no real peace without justice. Peter Botha, the former prime minister, maintained that his people, white people, would never dismantle apartheid willingly. Apartheid began to crumble only when the economic gun was held to the head of white South Africa . Yet holding a gun of any sort to someone’s head is scarcely evidence of peace.
A common misunderstanding always lurking in the church is that Jesus is always and everywhere the great “smoother-over”. Whenever he found antagonistic people or tense situations he smoothed things over. The written gospels, however, paint a very different picture. According to the gospels wherever Jesus went there was a disruption.
Jesus comes upon some orthodox folk who care more for their religious reputations and their supposed religious superiority than they will ever care for personal integrity and transparency before God. To them Jesus says, “You people go halfway around the world to lasso one convert, and when you finally get him you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are yourselves.” Disruption. Next day Jesus comes upon some people who think they have preferential status before God just because they are Israelites. “There were many widows in Israel in the days when Jezebel, wicked woman, was seeking the prophet Elijah in order to kill him”, says Jesus. “But who took Elijah , Israel ‘s greatest prophet, into her home and provided sanctuary for him at terrible risk to herself? A widow from a nation you Israelites pronounce ‘godless.'” Another disruption.
III: — The truth is, wherever Jesus went there was conflict. Yet Jesus never caused trouble for the sake of causing trouble. He didn’t have a personality disorder that gloated over being a disturber. He caused a disruption only in order that his hearers might finally hear and heed and do the truth of God, therein finding the profoundest peace of God. Whenever our Lord caused pain he did so only in order that the people whom he plunged into greater pain might submit themselves to the great physician himself. Whenever God’s truth is held up in a world of falsehood there is going to be disruption. There has to be disruption if the shalom of God is going to appear.
Surely this isn’t difficult to understand. We know that the person whose medical condition is making her uncomfortable must undergo treatment that will make her even more uncomfortable — at least for a while — if she is ever going to get better. It’s the same with psychotherapy. If we are distressed by the emotional distortions that haunt us, we have to own the distortions with their attendant pain, and finding ourselves feeling worse — at least for a while — before we find relief.
IV: — Let us make no mistake. Jesus insists we own him our ultimate love and loyalty. He, his word, his kingdom, his way, and his truth: this must take first place in our lives. As we honour our Lord’s pre-eminent claim upon our life, love, and loyalty, other loves and loyalties will have to take second place. Some of them won’t like this. Jesus warns us of this and leaves us with a reminder so stark we can’t forget it: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me.” Our own family members may resent him and us when they see that they don’t have first claim on us and aren’t going to have.
When Father Damien announced that he was leaving his home in Belgium to work with lepers on the island of Molokai , dot in middle of the Pacific Ocean , do you think that his mother leapt for joy? I am sure she reminded him tartly that he should be a little more considerate of her widowhood. After all, if he wanted to be a priest he could be a priest just as readily in Belgium as he could in the Hawaiian Islands , couldn’t he? Sinners are sinners, after all, so why bother abandoning her and endangering himself to work with leper-sinners? Furthermore, if he wanted to work with despised people, outcasts, there was certainly no shortage of such people in Europe . What’s more, why not let a priest who was already leprosy-riddled minister to the men on Molokai ? Yet the voice of Jesus reverberated in Damien’s heart: “He who loves father or mother more than me isn’t worthy of me. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. Whoever doesn’t take up his cross and obey me can’t be my disciple.” Damien knew he had to go to Molokai . And if some members of his family couldn’t understand why and faulted him for going, that wasn’t his problem.
My own mother and father knew that parents can get in the way of that discipleship to which God has called their son or daughter; they can unwittingly deflect their child’s first love and loyalty away from Jesus Christ. Parents have plans for their children, haven’t they? Grand plans, more often than not. Parents can wish for their child a life of greater ease, greater comfort, greater remuneration, less renunciation than God ordains for their child in view of the service to which God is calling their child. Knowing this, my parents made a public declaration, concerning me, in a service of public worship when I was only six weeks old. They declared that as far as they were able they would never deflect me from any obedience and service to Jesus Christ and to his kingdom that my vocation might entail. Once in a while I read over the words that were read aloud to my parents and to which my parents replied, “We promise.” Here they are. “You must be willing that Victor Allan should spend all his life for God wherever God should choose to send him, and not withhold him at any time from such hardship, suffering, want or sacrifice as true devotion to the service of Christ may entail.” My parents knew that if they nurtured me to be a disciple of Jesus Christ; that is, if they nurtured me give him my ultimate love and loyalty yet subtly, even unknowingly, wanted my final allegiance to be to them and their plans for me, then they would find that Jesus hadn’t brought peace to the Shepherd household but rather a sword.
We shouldn’t assume that our Lord can cause a disruption only in families; he causes disruptions in any social grouping: friends, colleagues, club mates, workmates. One of my friends, a schoolteacher, was admitted to the principal-track. The board of education sent him on a principal’s summer course in Peterborough . Virtually everyone on the course was married; virtually no one behaved this way. There were pairings-off and six-week liaisons and experiments in group-this and group-that, as well as visits to a nightclub whose chief entertainment was tableside nude dancers. My friend excused himself from all of this as gently and quietly as he could. He tried extra-hard not to point the finger at anyone. Nastily he was queried as to why he wasn’t participating. He said simply that what he was asked to do he believed to contradict his Christian profession; which profession, he added, he wasn’t expecting anyone else to make. Immediately the other principal-trainees on the course fell on him. He was told he was a self-righteous prig, a do-gooder, a “brown-noser.” It was suggested he was trying to accumulate merit points that he could cash in for Board of Education promotion. He was resented inasmuch as others felt he now had information on them that was scarcely going to improve their reputations or enhance their marriages. He was threatened that he had better be wise enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. The mood on the summer course had become sheer hostility. Jesus Christ had brought a sword. And the discomfort my friend had to endure for the remainder of the course was the cross he had to take up.
V: — Yet I mustn’t leave you with the impression that discipleship is onerous or chafing. The opposite is the case. Jesus promised he would reward — hugely — anyone who cherished him and stood with him in all circumstances at whatever cost. He promised that such people are going to “find” their life. Even crossbearing, a necessary part of intimacy with Jesus, will become not a living death (as so many expect) but the infusion of life that makes life life. Our Lord keeps his promises. Whoever follows him and stands with him and endures whatever unpopularity or abuse all of this might entail, this person he will hold up and honour and bless; this person he will never abandon or let down or betray.
We hear a great deal today about people who decided it’s time they “found” themselves. The have never found themselves, they feel, and time is slipping away on them. Usually they assume that the root to finding themselves is to veer suddenly in a startlingly new direction. Too often they veer impulsively into a poorly thought-out career change or spouse change. They do something quixotic, bizarre. They may even do something that they think will prove unusually titillating. At the end of it all they are jaded, and are no closer to finding themselves.
Today in worship we read our Lord’s piercing question as recorded in Luke’s gospel. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus follows his question with his ringing declaration losing one’s life and finding it. There he insists that there’s only one way we are ever going to find ourselves: we have to forget ourselves. Yet we are to forget ourselves not in an attitude or self-belittlement or self-contempt; we are to “forget” ourselves only because we have become preoccupied with him and his kingdom and all we must be about now that his kingdom has been superimposed on the kingdoms of his world.
If we are sceptical of this, if it sounds too slick for us, then we should immerse ourselves in Christian biography. (Reading the biographies of Christ’s people remains my favourite form of leisure activity; and more than “leisure”, since I have found there to be no comparable spiritual tonic.) As we steep ourselves in Christian biography we find that it becomes a means of grace for us, a vehicle that carries us away from ourselves and into the service of God. There we find ourselves losing ourselves for the kingdom of God , and discovering that in “losing” ourselves we are never lost to God. Instead, we know indubitably now that we’ve been found of God and are cherished by him and will be satisfied in him for as long as breath remains in us. In short, we shall have verified our Lord’s promise: “Whoever keeps her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for my sake will find it.”
Jesus came not to bring peace, he tells us, but a sword, division, strife, trouble and turbulence. He means that the disruption he causes is surgery necessary to re-set what’s fractured, put right what’s dislocated, cleanse what’s infected. In short, the pain he causes is curative in that it’s the beginning of the shalom of God. Even though he brings a sword; even as he brings a sword and causes division, he is and remains first and finally the bringer of peace, for he is the prince of peace, and was given us to bring peace to the earth.
To be possessed of this conviction is to give ourselves up to him, and in doing this discover that we have found life.
Victor Shepherd
January 2003
A Word About Hatred On ‘Bible Sunday’, a Biblical Theme
Luke 14:25-33 Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 1st John 4:7-12
[1] Directing a youngster to the bible is always risky. Who knows what the young person will turn up? Several years ago, when our daughter Mary – now twenty-seven – was six or seven years old, she was restless prior to the CGIT Advent Vesper Service. She persisted in querying Maureen about the facts of life. Not prudish in the least Maureen nonetheless felt that five minutes before the vesper service in a hushed church wasn’t the time or place to launch into “the great explanation”. Since Mary had just learned to read Maureen thought that reading would be the surest way to distract Mary. “Read the bible”, said Maureen as she pulled it out of the pew rack, “Open it anywhere and read”. Mary did as she was told. With loud voice she read, “And the Lord opened Sarah’s womb”. (“wam-b”) Then, with louder voice, “Mommy, what’s a womb?” “Shhh! Just read the bible!” “But I am reading the bible. What’s a womb?”
Directing a youngster to scripture is always risky. When I was a child I was told repeatedly that God is love. Jesus, the Son of God, loves too. Christian people are to love. Hatred of any kind is bad, I concluded; hatred is always and everywhere wrong. I was directed to scripture as a confirmation of all of this.
Opening up the book of Ecclesiastes (3:8) I read that while there is a time to love there is also a time to hate. In no time I was telling my parents at the breakfast table that according to scripture God hates; God is a terrific hater. Furthermore, Jesus says that we are even to hate our parents, as well as spouse and children. But I had always been told that I was to honour my parents; now the master himself was telling me I was to hate them if I was to be his disciple. In any case I persisted with my reading and struggled on. Not only were disciples to hate; not only was I to hate; I was going to be hated as well! I read our Lord’s declaration that his people will be hated. What was I getting myself into? But perhaps the cloud had a silver lining since Jesus promised that to the extent his people were hated they would also find themselves blessed! At the same time I was more confused than enlightened by what I was reading. To my confusion there was soon added mystery, for in reading the book of Revelation (which has since become one of my favourites) I was told that the beast would come to hate the whore. (Rev. 17:16) Beast? Whore? I was only thirteen and I had never met either! But in any case the beast and the whore might as well hate each other since, according to scripture, everyone already hates everyone else.
[2] Yes. That’s just the point: everyone does. Hatred is endemic in a fallen creation. Hatred comes naturally to fallen people. After all a fallen world is fallen away from the God who is love. To fall away from love can only be to fall into hate, haters of God and haters of one another, as scripture reminds us on every page.
Worldlings with the shallowest understanding never grasp the nature and depth and scope of the fall. They think that love predominates in a world which they don’t believe fallen. Worldlings with a more sober, more realistic understanding assume that humankind is spiritually/morally neutral: humankind is suspended halfway between good and evil, love and hate, and is waiting only to be nudged in one direction or the other.
On the other hand, Christians with the profoundest gospel-understanding know that humankind is created good, is currently fallen, and as such has that heart-condition of which scripture speaks. We have a heart-condition so bad that our heart can’t be fixed; nothing less than a transplant will do, a new heart, new mind, new spirit.
Do I exaggerate? Think for a minute of what scripture says about the anguish of loving. Scripture doesn’t tell us to “love one another” as if it were as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, as though the exhortation were really quite superfluous. Instead scripture states that a massive work of grace is needed, so massive, so thoroughgoing that this work leaves its beneficiaries speaking not of improvement but of death of old man/woman and birth of new. Then scripture festoons itself with a thousand-and-one injunctions to love, plainly teaching that even those made new at Christ’s hand have to be prodded and reminded and urged and rebuked and coaxed and pleaded with over and over lest the “old” proclivity to hate reassert itself. All the resources of Father, Son, Holy Spirit and congregation are needed to keep so much as one soul loving ever so slightly.
I am amused whenever I hear newscasters say, “War has broken out…”. The newscaster assumes that peace is the natural condition of a fallen world and war irrupts uncharacteristically from time to time. Surely the opposite is the case: war is the natural condition of a fallen world and peace irrupts uncharacteristically from time to time. Let’s not forget that since World War II (which set a record for fatalities) there have been over fifty wars whose fatality-total is greater than that of World War II. Think of the hatred that has soaked into the soil around this community. First there was strife between native and white intruder, then between English-speaking and French-speaking, then between American and British, then between descendants of both British and French here and Germans overseas. Now we have returned everywhere in Canada to strife between native and everyone else. And of course hatred expressed through an unwieldy army has largely given way to hatred expressed through the terrorist whose ten ounces of plastic can rend flesh and steel in ways that Napoleon, Bismarck and Wellington never imagined.
Because open warfare hasn’t occurred in our vicinity for many years we lose sight of the fact that preparedness for war — essential, it would appear — merely confirms that smouldering hostility endemic in a fallen world. For decades the policy of Great Britain was to ensure that its navy was larger than the combined firepower of the next two largest navies who might decide to gang up on Britain. As late as 1932 the United States had on file strategies to be deployed in the event of war with Britain. Now that the cold war is over and the former USSR neither needs nor can afford its huge nuclear submarine fleets, its nuclear submarines will be sold to developing nations who have waited years to acquire crushing firepower. When Rene Levesque came to power in 1976 the CIA of the United States slipped hundreds of French-speaking agents into Quebec in case the PQ government turned nationalistically nasty and tampered with American access to the St. Lawrence Seaway, fresh water, or hydroelectricity. In 1985 the U.S. government began concentrating one entire division of light infantry (10,000 men) in New York State opposite Kingston. These 10,000 men, two hours from Ottawa and three hours from Montreal, are available for military intervention if political instability in Canada ever threatens U.S. interests.
What about the beast and the whore? In the book of Revelation the beast is the symbol of the political power of imperial Rome; the whore is the symbol of affluent decadence. People want greater and greater affluence, regardless of the decadence that comes with it. They expect political authority (the government) to facilitate this for them. As economic recession sets in, however, (it always does cyclically) government insists that it cannot continue to exercise its responsibility to preserve order as well as continue to provide countless “goodies”. At this point there is open conflict between those wanting law and order and those wanting access to unbridled luxury. The beast has come to hate the whore.
Hatred isn’t an occasional outcropping from humankind; it’s endemic within humankind.
[3] This truth is all the more startling when seen in the light of the God who is love. (1 John 4:8) God doesn’t love in the sense that love is what he does (as though he could do something else; namely, not love if he wanted to); God loves, ceaselessly, just because God’s nature is to love. To say that God’s nature is to love is to say that God cannot not love. God will not fail to love just because he cannot fail to love. Love and love only is all that he is.
I am aware that all creaturely pictures for God are somewhat dangerous since God isn’t creaturely. Still, we have to picture him somehow. Whenever I think of God and his ceaselessly fiery love I think of the sun. Now the sun consists of gas. Yet the gas which constitutes the sun isn’t wispy gas; it’s nothing vague or ethereal. The gas which constitutes the sun (hydrogen, largely) is startlingly dense, weighty. So dense is this gas that one litre of it weighs 100 pounds. Think of it: density denser than lead, vastness vaster than the oceans, always burning, burning, burning, giving forth warmth and light and life. Then think of God: concrete beyond our imagining, eternally burning with love, ceaselessly giving forth love, forever bringing forth warmth and light and life. God has suffused his creation with love. He continues to irradiate his creation with that alone with which he can irradiate it — love — just because love is all he is. God isn’t love plus something else. Neither is God something else plus love. God is flaming love and only flaming love concentrated more densely than the sun is concentrated fiery hydrogen gas.
[4] And yet — and this is what astonished me when I was a youngster — God hates! The God whose nature is unmixed love, pure love — how can pure love hate? If pure love is said to hate then such “hatred” can only be an expression of this love.
Let’s be sure we grasp a crucial distinction: the hatred which seethes in a fallen world is not an expression of love. The hatred which infests a fallen world is murderous, as Jesus makes clear when he insists that such hatred is murder looking for a place to happen. God’s “hatred”, however, is entirely different. The “hatred” with which God hates is but God’s love bent on correcting us. Since God loves without interruption, since God can’t do anything but love, his “hatred” can only be his love scorching us, for the moment, in order to correct us.
We should look more closely at what God is said to hate. God hates pagan worship, says the author of Deuteronomy.(12:31) One feature of pagan worship which God hated in the nations surrounding Israel was the practice of burning one’s children as a sacrifice to the pagan deity. Pagan worshippers believed that their pagan deity was pleased, placated even, by the infants they threw into the fire.
“Ancient stuff”, someone snorts, “primitive stuff; it has no bearing on us today”. I disagree. What deity is worshipped when parents by the thousand in Thailand send out twelve and thirteen year-olds, boys and girls, as prostitutes? What deity is worshipped when the Thai government refuses to enact legislation to curb this trade, so highly valued is the almighty tourist dollar it brings in? Children aren’t sacrificed to pagan deities today? Surely a child is sacrificed to a pagan god when the little boy is told from infancy that he must become an NHL player, and everything in the family is given over to this all-consuming preoccupation.
Let’s move from Deuteronomy to the prophet Hosea. Hosea (9:10) insists that people invariably become conformed to what they worship. Whatever we worship puts its stamp upon us. To worship the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be stamped afresh with that image which was stamped upon us at creation. To worship something else is to be stamped with this “something”, only to find that this stamp and the original stamp of God’s image are now frightfully mixed up and confused, betokening confusion within the person herself.
But God hates more than pagan worship. God hates the worship of Israel (church) when the outer exercises of worship aren’t met with inner sincerity of heart. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”. If our heart is cold toward God’s love and truth and way then our “worship” is an exercise in phoniness, a smokescreen meant to deceive. Concerning this cold and stonyhearted worship, as phoney as it is reprehensible, God says through the prophet Amos, “I hate, I despise your solemn assemblies”. (Amos 5:21)
God hates even more. God is said to hate evil, hate wickedness, in any form.
And yet the God whose heart is flaming love can only love. Then his manifold hatred can only be his scorching love correcting and refining his creatures. God hates alien worship just because he wants something more glorious for men and women than they can imagine for themselves, and they never will imagine it and know it until they fall on their face before him. God hates the worship of Israel and church when it is devoid of spirit and truth just because he longs to see sincerity and integrity in his people. God hates evil, wickedness, just because he longs to see righteousness flood his creation.
[5] By now I was a young teenager. I understood the sense in which we must never hate, for the kind of hatred with which we must never hate is a sign of that era which God has condemned, and our hating with this kind of hatred could only mean that we are still in bondage to the old era. We are never to hate our enemies, for to hate our enemies would declare publicly that we were in bondage to a fallen world. I understood too the sense in which the Christian must always hate, for we are always to hate precisely what God hates. Not only are we to hate only what God hates, we are to hate only as God hates; we are to agonize with God for a world and its people whom he never fails to love.
Suddenly I understood the sense in which God’s people are to hate the company of evildoers (Psalm 26:5), hate the doubleminded (Psalm 119:113), hate perverted speech (Proverbs 8:13).
[6] It was a few years later (by now I was almost out of my teens) that I came to understand another sense in which the Hebrew mind uses the word “hate”. (What follows in this last section of the sermon is very different from the discussion of hatred which has preceded. It’s almost as if we’re beginning a new sermon.) Hebrew grammar doesn’t have a comparative form or superlative form of adjectives and adverbs. In English we say, “Apple pie is good; apple pie with ice-cream is better”. Lacking a comparative Hebrew says, “Apple pie with ice-cream is good; apple pie without ice-cream is terrible”. Now when we come to express the idea that we ought to love God more than we love anything or anyone else, that our love for God ought to be greater than our love given elsewhere, Hebrew says we ought to love the one and hate the other. Because Jesus is Hebrew, thoroughly Hebrew, he says that to become his disciple we must hate parents, spouse and children. (Luke 14:26) He means that compared to him all earthly ties come second. However important our bond with other people, none is as important as our bond with him. To be sure, the command to honour one’s parents is never relaxed. At the same time we must not give to our parents — nor to our spouse or children or anyone else — what is owed God alone. Our first love is to be the God who is nothing but love. As long as our first love is the God who is love then we shall love all others — spouse, parents, children — with a love which is appropriate to the relationship. But if we give them that love which is owed God, then we shall corrupt even that love with which we are attempting to love them. Therefore we must “hate” them in the sense which Hebrew grammar confers on “hate” in this context. We must hate them — that is, love them with a love which is strictly subordinated to our love for God — especially if they demand that we love them with that love which is owed him.
It’s always risky to send a youngster to the bible. It’s also the best thing we can do. Before I was out of my teens I had learned much about hatred. One, that hatred in the bad sense of the word is endemic in a fallen world; two, that the God who is eternal love hates in the sense that his hatred is his love scorching us right; three, that God’s people are never to hate in the sense of possessing murderous intent, but always to hate in the sense of repudiating what God repudiates; lastly, and quite different from the foregoing, we are to “hate” (in the Hebrew sense) even what is good for the sake of what is best; namely, our great God and Saviour.
Victor Shepherd
December 2002
Parables of the Kingdom: The Cost of Discipleship, The Riches of Discipleship, The Servant-Nature of Discipleship
Luke 14:25-33 Luke 17:7-10 Mathew 13:44-46
I: — (Luke 14:25 -33) When The Great War broke out in 1914 the Canadian government began appealing for young men. They were needed as soldiers. Hundreds of thousands responded. Motivation for joining up varied. Some young men volunteered because they wanted to beat back the conflagration engulfing Europe . Others volunteered inasmuch as soldiering appealed to their sense of adventure. Some signed up in that they would have been ashamed to remain at home when friends and neighbours and colleagues were enlisting.
When Jesus sounded his call to discipleship women and men responded for all the reasons we’ve just mentioned. Some wanted to be part of God’s campaign to beat back, ultimately defeat, that evil one who was destroying human bodies and minds and spirits. Others, less profound, wanted adventure. And some were shamed into offering themselves when they saw friends and relatives signing on with the Master.
There was, however, one crucial difference between the Canadian government’s recruiting of soldiers and our Lord’s recruiting of disciples: the Canadian government never attempted to impress upon its recruits what the cost of soldiering might be. Nowhere on the recruit poster could one find the sentence, even as a footnote, “Warning: soldiering may be dangerous to your health.” Nowhere could one find a magazine or newspaper advertisement depicting a legless soldier or a decapitated airman with the caption: “This may be your end too.” No government has ever announced the hardship, pain, mud and blood that’s inevitably part of war-time service.
Jesus, on the other hand, always warned his recruits. “If all you want is adventure”, he cautioned, “there’s less painful adventure to be had elsewhere, elsehow. If you take up following me unthinkingly, you won’t last two weeks.” As a matter of fact, Jesus everywhere insisted that discipleship entailed crossbearing, and crossbearing, metaphorically speaking, could turn into crossbearing literally at any moment. Jesus never covered up the cost involved in identifying oneself with him.
Luke reports that a fellow runs up to the Master and gushes sentimentally “Lord, I’ll follow you wherever you go.” Jesus eyes him without blinking and responds, “Foxes and birds have the comfort and security of den and nest; but I don’t have even that. And neither will you. You go home and think it over.”
To drive his point home Jesus tells two parables about the cost of discipleship. A man begins a building project, gets halfway through it, runs out of money, and has to leave it – to his embarrassment. A king commits his army to battle, finds he’s bitten off more than he can chew, and has to slink home shamefully. The point of both parables is this: before we jump and shout “Of course we’re going to be disciples”, we should sit down and soberly count the cost of the endeavour.
I’d never say that the cost of discipleship is the defining characteristic of discipleship. It isn’t the defining aspect; still, it is one aspect. And it’s an aspect concerning which the North American church is silent.
If you listen to religious TV broadcasting you hear one success story after another. Someone became straightened out with God Almighty and thereafter his income tripled; his daughter became the beauty queen; his son was made CEO of the multi-national corporation. According to the religious media, being a disciple is synonymous with being a winner.
I find this notion odd, since Jesus is 100% loser. He’s a Jew; that is, he belongs to that people the world execrates. His closest followers desert him. His mother doesn’t understand him. His brothers don’t believe in him. The crowds who fawn over him one day forget him the next. He’s despised by religious authorities and condemned by political authorities. He’s slandered, then put to death between two criminals at the city garbage dump. And of course he dies forsaken by his Father. When he’s raised from the dead, he’s raised wounded (as the apostle John reminds us.) Ascended, seated at the right hand of the Father (i.e., declared the ruler of the entire creation), he suffers still (as the Newer Testament reminds us repeatedly.)
How costly discipleship is for you and me depends, of course, on how closely we follow our Lord (or endeavour to follow him.) The greater our love for him and our loyalty to him; the less of a gap there is between him and us; the more clearly we are identified with him – it all means the greater the cost of discipleship.
When I was a youngster my parents didn’t own an automobile. We went to church every Sunday (morning and evening), and to Sunday School in the afternoon. (Both my parents taught Sunday School.) We had to take three streetcars, had to make two transfers in each direction, always waiting, waiting, waiting on account of the less frequent Sunday transit service. When I think of it now I’m staggered at the inconvenience my parents endured and the money they spent on streetcar fares. Why did they do it? Because Jesus Christ meant so very much to them that no cost borne for his sake could ever be too much.
Discipleship exacts a price. Occasionally the price is paid dramatically, including the ultimate drama of martyrdom. Far more often the price is paid quietly. Consider:
-we are going to uphold truthfulness when most of the people around us will lie for any reason at all and couldn’t care less in any case when their phoniness is exposed.
-we aren’t going to permit our fourteen year-old daughter to go camping with her boyfriend.
-we are going to continue speaking up on behalf of all whom our society deems expendable – the intellectually challenged, the mentally ill, the poor, even the voiceless, defenceless unborn – and continue to speak up on behalf of these people just because the image of God that they bear; this is the measure of their significance, not their economic uselessness.
Anyone who is unthinkingly quick to respond to our Lord’s invitation he cautions with two parables whose message is, “Add it up carefully. The cost is real. Don’t begin with a huge fanfare and then have to quit shamefully. Add it up.”
II: — (Matthew 13:44 -46) At the same time, I should never care to give the impression that life in the company of Jesus Christ is unrelenting weariness and ceaseless sacrifice. On the contrary, life in the company of the king is rich. How rich? How precious? In two little parables Jesus tells us of a man who comes upon a pearl, a pearl so beautiful he can’t imagine anything more beautiful. He simply has to have it and will give up anything for it. And our Lord tells us of a man who knows that in an ordinary field there’s been buried the most extraordinary treasure, and he has to have it. He’ll give up anything for it.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus the apostle speaks of “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The Greek word he uses for “unsearchable” means bottomless, unfathomable, immeasurable. As often as we attempt to speak of what living in the company of Jesus Christ means to us – its richness, its delight, its attractiveness, its incomparable worth – we can’t speak adequately of this at all. We can’t define it; we can’t properly describe it; we speak of it only haltingly just because no language does justice to it. When Joy Davidman, wife of C.S., Lewis moved from Marxist atheism into the splendour of the king’s court and kingdom, a newspaperman, pen and pad poised, asked her to describe it. She stared at the journalist for the longest time and then whispered, “How do you gather the ocean into a teacup?”
The commonest biblical metaphor for faith (also the profoundest) is marriage. Marriage is used to speak of the reality of faith, the reality of keeping company with Jesus, just because marriage is an everyday, common occurrence (and therefore suitable for use as a metaphor) that is at the same time the most mysterious and most delightful human occurrence. When the book of Proverbs speaks of “the way of a man with a maid” as a wonder too wonderful to describe, the book of Proverbs is correct. Isn’t the attempt at speaking about the spouse who is dearer to us than all else; isn’t such an attempt one more instance of trying to gather the ocean into a teacup?
For reasons we shan’t go into this morning all the denominational groupings in the Christian “family” began – and still begin – with a handful of men and women possessed of throbbing intimacy with the living Lord Jesus Christ. As this lit-up movement broadens, as it draws more and more people into itself, head and heart become separated. After two generations the movement has become a denomination. Denominations are identified by the head; that is, by how they think. Lost by now is the initial rapture of the heart. Lost by now is that first love that first filled the first people in the movement. Lost is the wonder, the winsomeness, the attractiveness, the beauty of living day-by-day in an intimacy with our Lord that seemed only to be able to become more intimate.
Seemed only to be able to become more intimate, because in fact it didn’t become more intimate; it became one-sidedly cerebral, one-sidedly “headish”, cold, sterile, inert. Imagine someone coming upon a pearl like the pearl of which our Lord speaks. She looks at it for several minutes and then says “Do you know that pearls are formed when smelly oysters, ugly to look at too, secrete a chemical that hardens and hardens until a grey-ish precipitate is formed?” Everything she’s said is correct. And she says it only because she is pathetically blind to the beauty of pearls, never mind blind to that pearl which our Lord says is worth everything.
You must have noticed that when the biblical writers come to speak of the attractivness of the king and his realm; when they speak of its appeal, its winsomeness, its comeliness, its irresistibility, they speak in the most vivid images. “There was the river of life, bright as crystal”, says the seer in the book of Revelation. “We have beheld his glory” cries the apostle John concerning his fellow-Christians. (Glory is God’s innermost splendour turned outwards and visited upon us.) “No one has ever seen; no one has ever heard; no one can even imagine all that God has prepared for those who love him” announces Paul to the congregation in Corinth.
Paul speaks of “the unfathomable riches of Christ.” Jesus speaks of a pearl, of treasure, precious beyond telling, shining more attractively than the sun in its inimitable splendour. This is what it’s like to live with me, says Jesus. And it’s pure gift.
III: — (Luke 17:7-10) Needless to say, every gift has its task; every privilege has its responsibility; every boon has its obligation. Intimacy with Christ the king, glorious to be sure, entails service rendered to the king. In what spirit is such service to be rendered? With what attitude do we obey our Lord?
In answering this question Jesus utters the parable of the diligent servant. The parable is addressed to those among us (all of us, actually) who are tempted to have a “merit” mentality, tempted to think that our service to the king should call forth his recognition, his congratulation, even modest remuneration. There’s always a corner of the sinful human heart wherein it’s thought that discipleship resembles a business contract: for service rendered our Lord, especially service rendered in difficult circumstances, you and I are entitled to our fee. In his parable of the diligent servant Jesus insists that at the end of all we’ve done in service to our Master, we can say only “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” (NRSV)
“Worthless slaves”: perhaps we bristle when we hear this, and object for two reasons. The first objection: it makes our Lord sound thoughtless, uncaring, dictatorial to the point of cruelty. The second objection: it appears to contradict everything he says elsewhere about the rewards of the kingdom.
We can dismiss any suggestion that Jesus Christ is uncaring. He loves you and me more than he loves himself. The cross demonstrates this. Is he dictatorial at all, never mind dictatorial to the point of cruelty? So far from being dictatorial, he allows himself to be abused by anyone at all, finally absorbing the abuse of the cross where he prays for his assassins. There’s nothing of the tyrant about him.
“When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.’” The second objection: does this contradict what Jesus says elsewhere about the rewards of the kingdom – for instance, “When you are helping others financially, do it secretly, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Everyone knows that whoever gives a cup of cold water is rewarded, according to Jesus.
The point is, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done” doesn’t overturn the rewards of the kingdom, but it does overturn a reward-mentality; it does overturn the self-serving calculation of a meritocracy; it does overturn a tit-for-tat arrangement wherein we say to God, “I’ve done thus and so for you; now what are going to do for me?”
We must always understand that God owes us nothing, yet God has promised us everything: the king and his kingdom. The reward that attends our obedience is simply kingdom-blessing intensified; kingdom-joy deepened; kingdom-contentment rendered ever more satisfying. The reward that God doesn’t promise us is promotion at work, a bigger bank account, a faster social climb up the social Everest.
When Jesus speaks of reward, the reward is always logically connected to the obedience it rewards. It’s never the case that the reward is logically unrelated to the obedience it rewards. Think of it this way. I’ve been married for 36 years. Let’s suppose that tomorrow I say to my wife, “I’ve been faithful to you for 36 years, having fended off opportunities for adultery without number as pastor and professor. Now what do I get for my faithfulness? What’s my prize for good behaviour? Do I get a new bicycle? A trip to the Grey Cup game?” Plainly bicycle and Grey Cup game are logically unrelated to marital fidelity. What’s more, my childish speech to my wife, “I’ve been a good boy for 36 years…” is as silly as it is puerile.
On the other hand marital faithfulness is rewarded: the reward is a richer marriage. The reward is greater blessings, greater joy, greater contentment. This reward is related to the obedience it rewards, and this reward has nothing to do with a reward-mentality.
As a pastor I have found many people who think that they do have a claim on God; unconsciously they have lived in a meritocracy for decades. Why, they have spent 40 years “doing the right thing”, as they put it. And now difficulty has overtaken them; reversal, perhaps tragedy; perhaps even premature death. They feel God has “welched” on his promise of reward.
But his reward has never been success or affluence or long life. His reward is the profoundest satisfaction in Christ, with the assurance of greater satisfaction eternally. Anyone who says “But what more do I get” hasn’t yet understood that intimacy with Jesus Christ is already everything.
In the two previous sermons on the parables of the kingdom I have indicated the logical connection among the parables discussed in the sermon. Today, however, there’s no logical connection among the three groups of parables. Instead we are given three descriptions of the person who lives in the kingdom, three aspects of kingdom-existence, three dimensions of discipleship.
The three?
There is a cost to be considered.
There is a richness that outweighs, incomparably outweighs, any cost whatever.
There is a service to be rendered uncomplainingly.
Victor Shepherd
May 2006
Three Aspects of the Kingdom
Luke 14:28-32
Whenever war breaks out governments appeal for volunteers; sovereigns urge recruits to offer themselves for the conflict that is already lapping the lives of everyone. Thousands of people do volunteer. They offer themselves for a variety of reasons. Some perceive the nature of the threat that the conflict poses and want to lend themselves in beating it back. Others, much less perceptive, volunteer themselves inasmuch as soldiering appeals to their sense of adventure; civilian life seems drab compared to the excitement of combat. Others still, lacking both perception and an adventurous spirit, are shamed into offering themselves: to stay at home and shirk the conflict would be shameful.
When Jesus summoned men and women to discipleship they responded for all the reasons we have just mentioned. Some perceived the nature of the spiritual conflict, knowing with St.Paul that the conflict isn’t with flesh and blood but with principalities, powers and “rulers of this present darkness.” Others merely wanted adventure, and Jesus was the most recent fellow to summon adventurers. Others still were shamed into volunteering.
There is, however, one crucial difference between the recruiting for soldiers that governments do in time of war and the summoning of disciples that Jesus did in the face of cosmic conflict: governments never impress upon recruits what the cost of soldiering might be. There is never a footnote on the recruitment-poster, “Soldiering may be dangerous to your health.” When General Eisenhower was coordinating the allied forces for their assault on D-Day American senior officers complained persistently that American soldiers were underprepared; American soldiers had undergone training exercises that had nothing like the rigour and hardship and fright and miserable weather of combat conditions. Eisenhower, a fine soldier himself, nodded sympathetically with his senior officers even as he reminded them that families and politicians back in the United States would not stand for having their young men undergo training that was rigorous enough to be realistic. The result was, of course, that the soft training mandated by politicians and stateside families issued in combat casualties that were far higher than they should have been.
Our Lord was different. “If all you want is adventure”, he warned would-be followers, “you might as well keep on fishing. Fishing will give you as much adventure as you need.” “If you are joining up because you are ashamed not to, don’t bother to join up, because in two weeks the hardship of discipleship will vastly outweigh any shame still clinging to you. Stay home!”
Luke tells us that a fellow runs up to the Master and gushes sentimentally, “I’ll follow you wherever you go.” Jesus stares him back and retorts, “Foxes and birds have the comfort of hole and nest; but I don’t have even that, and neither will you. Go home and think some more about discipleship.”
To drive his point home Jesus tells two parables about the cost of discipleship. A man begins a building project, gets halfway through it, runs out of money, and has to abandon it. A king commits his army to battle, finds he has bitten off more than he can chew, and has to give up. The point of the parables is this: before we jump up and shout with premature enthusiasm, “I want to be a disciple too!”, we should sit down soberly and assess the cost of this endeavour.
Few notions are more false, even more blasphemous, than the so-called “prosperity gospel” now rampant in North America. Believing in Jesus, we are told, will double our income, or have us elected the beauty queen, or find us president of the club or the company. Jesus makes his people winners!
Odd, isn’t it, since Jesus himself, from a human perspective, is pure loser. He’s a Jew — someone the world loves to hate. His family misunderstands him and is even embarrassed by his supposed insanity. His closest friends desert him. He is executed alongside criminals, and the site of the execution is the city garbage dump. He tells his followers that they can expect as much themselves.
Discipleship is costly in any era. Recently I learned of a young man who was selected for a management training program in a major Canadian corporation. Very quickly he learned that the other management trainees expected him to accompany them in their after-hours drinking escapades. He told them he didn’t want to do this every evening. They invited him to their favourite strip-tease show. He told them he preferred to go home to his wife. Next thing he knew, a nasty rumour had been circulated about him: perhaps his sexual orientation was unusual. Next thing he knew after that, he was no longer in the management training program.
It’s always been necessary to count the cost of discipleship. In 16th century France those Protestants who escaped the sword were subjected thereafter to the severest social penalties. In the 17th century the suffering forced on the Puritans beggars description. In the 18th century the Christians who opposed slavery were vilified as saboteurs of the economy. And the plight of Christians anywhere in communist-controlled lands throughout the 20th century? Ask my daughter Catherine in Hong Kong who reviews book after book about what really happened in China from 1948 through the Cultural Revolution.
There is another sense too in which the cost of discipleship has to be assessed. I speak now of the painful frankness with which we must search our hearts in the light of the gospel. There is a sense (albeit superficial) in which ignorance is bliss. For the longer I remain in the company of Jesus Christ the more horrified I am as he acquaints me with the treachery of my own heart. Many people, I am told, look upon me as quite transparent; I seem to have acquired the reputation of wearing very few disguises. I don’t know how I acquired such a reputation, since there is no truth to it. However infrequently I may deceive you I am coming to learn how frequently I have deceived myself. My capacity for self-deception; my capacity for rationalizing my sin before it is committed and excusing it after it is committed; my capacity for subtle personal dishonesty; this, I have come to see so very painfully, is limitless! My capacity to legitimate (to myself, at least) resentments and ill-temper and impatience and contempt and a vehemence amounting to violence; there’s no bottom to it! Had I never become a disciple I could have remained blissfully unaware of it and therefore as happy as a pig in mud — couldn’t I have? Now that my proximity to Jesus has made aware of my treacherous heart I can’t pretend I don’t know, and I’m going to have to do something about it.
Jesus urges us to become disciples. Yet when he sees our naive eagerness he cautions us, in the two parables we read a minute ago, “Add it all up carefully. The cost is real.”
Matthew 13:44-46
If our Lord had left the impression that life in the kingdom of God, life in the company of Christ the king himself, were unrelieved gloom or endless sacrifice or ceaseless weariness or anything else relentlessly negative, then no one would ever become a disciple. Our Lord in fact left no such impression. The parables we have just read tell us the opposite: to acknowledge the king’s rightful rule, to hear and heed his summons, to join him in his venture through that world which is his by right and his again by his self-giving for it — this is rich.
How rich? How valuable? How precious? In his two little stories Jesus tells us of a man who comes upon a pearl so beautiful that he just has to have it; he tells us of a man who learns there is invaluable treasure buried in a most ordinary-looking field — and he just has to have it. In other words, the worth, the delight, the joy, the satisfaction of kingdom-venture in the company of the king himself cannot be fathomed.
In his letter to the congregation in Ephesus Paul speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” The word he uses for “unsearchable” (ANEXICHNIASTON) literally means “bottomless, unfathomable, unprobable, inexhaustible”. Probe them, test them, appropriate them as much as we will, their value and attractiveness and significance we cannot measure, exhaust, or even adequately describe. Before these riches we can only stammer. Yet even the most tongue-tied among us can still know them and relish them and delight in them.
The commonest biblical metaphor for faith, for living in an ongoing encounter with our Lord himself; the commonest biblical metaphor is marriage. One reason that the metaphor of marriage is used so very often for discipleship is that words fall abysmally short in all attempts at describing both. How can we describe the foundational fusion and concomitant thrill and wonder of marriage? Only in the most halting, sill-sounding, self-conscious manner. How can we speak of the profundity and mystery and splendour of making love (where it is love that is genuinely made)? We can’t. We can only fumble and falter and trust that that to which we point and which we recommend others will come to know through living it — otherwise, we are certain, they will never come to know it at all.
Joy Davidman, wife of C.S. Lewis; Joy Davidman was raised in New York City in the home of thoroughgoing secularists. More than mere secularists, her parents were also militant Marxist-atheists. When Joy Davidman came to faith in Jesus Christ she grasped instantly what Jesus had meant in the parables of the beautiful pearl and the treasure hid in a field. Years later a journalist asked her to describe what the total Christian enterprise was really like. She looked at him for a minute and replied slowly, “How do you gather the ocean into a teacup?”
We must be sure to notice that Jesus doesn’t attempt to speak factually, literally, when he speaks of the kingdom; he speaks metaphorically, imagistically, pictorially. He does so just because the ocean can’t be gathered into a teacup; just because a factual description can’t come close to something before which even the most vivid imagination is inadequate. We 20th century types tend to lose sight of how much of the bible isn’t written in factual prose but rather in imagistic poetry. When the visionary writer of the book of Revelation is overwhelmed yet again at the vividness and intensity and density of his life in God he cries, “…and there was the river of life, bright as crystal!” Ezekiel shouts, “I saw a valley of dead dry bones, and when the Word of God was declared they lived and danced and exulted.” John says “we severed, sapless branches; we have been grafted onto the tree; and now the root-deep sap that brings life and leaf and fruit to the tree courses through us as well.” Jesus says, “To know me is to be like a woman who has just given birth; her joy at her newborn is so intense, so wonderful, that it squeezes out everything else; she forgets what is behind her, doesn’t worry about what is in front of her, and simply glows at the marvel and mystery of all that has made her radiant.”
The point of poetry isn’t to inform us (the way assembly-instructions or operating-instructions inform us concerning the household appliance we have newly purchased); the point of poetry, rather, is to bring us to stand where the poet herself stands and perceive what she perceives and experience what she experiences. In other words, poetry is written just because no prose is adequate for the intensity and vividness and marvel and mystery and ecstasy of what the poet herself has lived.
Paul speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ”. Jesus himself speaks of a pearl beautiful beyond words and a treasure valuable beyond calculation.
Luke 17:7-10
Every gift brings with it its peculiar task; every privilege entails a responsibility; every favour confers its obligation. To know ourselves beneficiaries of the king’s favour is to know ourselves claimed for the king’s service. Since this is not in doubt, there remains but one matter to be settled: in what spirit or mood or attitude is service to the king to be rendered? By way of answering this question Jesus utters his parable of the farm-owner and the worker. The parable is addressed to those who are tempted to have a “merit mentality”, to those who think their service to the king should call forth his recognition, his congratulation, even a measure of remuneration. There is always the temptation (and therefore the tendency) to regard our life in Christ’s kingdom as a business contract: for service rendered to him you and are I entitled to — we are entitled to something, aren’t we? We aren’t. Our Lord insists that at the end of each of those days that we spend in service to him we can only say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”
We may bristle when we hear this, for it makes our Lord sound as if he were a slave-owner; it makes him sound as if he were entitled to assign us or even dispose of us in a manner made infamous by the cruellest tyrants our century has seen. Furthermore, it appears to contradict all that he says elsewhere about rewards. After all, he does say repeatedly that there is reward for those who faithfully obey him and diligently serve him.
In view of the fact that our Lord has gone to hell and back for us in the cross, we can set aside any notion of arbitrary, heartless tyranny.
Then what about reward? When Jesus speaks of reward he is not promising payment for services rendered. When payment is granted for services rendered the payment has no intrinsic connexion with the services. Joe Carter hits home runs for the Blue Jays and receives a million dollars per year. The money paid has no intrinsic connexion with the home runs hit. The beauty queen is given a new car. The car has no intrinsic connexion with the woman’s physical appearance. When our Lord speaks of “reward” he doesn’t have anything like this in mind. When Jesus speaks of “reward”, rather, he means an outcome that is intrinsically related to what has been pursued.
The reward we receive from God for faithful service in his kingdom is never wealth, reputation, prestige, or power. The reward we receive for kingdom-service is greater opportunity for kingdom-service. The reward we receive for being faithful in little is find ourselves entrusted with much.
Surely this is easy to understand in everyday matters. The reward for faithfulness in marriage isn’t a new house (there being no intrinsic connexion between marital faithfulness and new house); the reward for faithfulness in marriage is greater marital intimacy. The real reward for diligence in studying French isn’t a new wardrobe for getting a mark of 93; the real reward for diligence in studying French is the ability to read French literature and thence to gain access to those worlds that any literature opens up to us.
The reward of service rendered to the king is greater conformity to the nature of the king himself, and greater opportunity for yet greater service. Such reward is real. Our Lord will bestow the reward that he has promised.
Yet even as he has promised it and we shall surely receive it, we do not merit it. At the end of the day, when we review the service we rendered to our Lord that day, we must admit that however faithful it may have been, in fact it wasn’t very faithful at all. Therefore we can but say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.” Yet even as we say this we know, so gracious is God, that even our semi-faithful service is going to be rewarded gloriously.
It is a sign of spiritual immaturity — or even a sign of out-and-out unbelief — to shout, “But I’ve worked so hard for him. Don’t I get something more?” What more can there be than increased intimacy with the king himself? What more can there be than being entrusted with greater matters? What more can there be than access to him whose riches are unsearchable?
And therefore those possessed of spiritual authenticity and maturity recognize the truth of the parable: we who have been favoured with the king and all the royal resources that the king shares with us, not to mention the rewards that the king’s loyal subjects are guaranteed — we must say of our service to him, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”
Three aspects of the kingdom:
(i) there is a cost to be considered
(ii) outweighing any cost there is a richness,a delight, a joy, a treasure to be owned and cherished
(iii) in the wake of our rich blessings at the hand of the king himself there is a service to be rendered uncomplainingly, gladly, freely, for ever and ever.
Victor A. Shepherd
August 1996
You asked for a sermon on The Elder Brother
Luke 15:11-32
[1] “You can always tell a man by the company he keeps.” Can you? Always? “Yes”, said the people with venomous hearts who watched Jesus, “You can always tell a man by the company he keeps.”
Jesus kept company with people whom many didn’t care for, such as lepers. Now in first-century Palestine lepers were viewed with horror and loathing. They had to announce themselves as they moved about, crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!”. In this way everyone could scamper out of their way and avoid contamination. When we read that Jesus consorted with lepers we must understand that he deliberately befriended those who were most vehemently despised and rejected. What he did here, of course, prefigured what he was to do for all of us on the cross.
There were others, also despised and rejected, whom our Lord befriended, such as the irreligious. The people who were indifferent to religious observance, even contemptuous of it, he went out of his way to find.
Also among the despised and rejected were the Gentiles. Jewish people customarily looked upon Gentiles as spiritually bereft and ethically benighted, utterly beyond the pale. Jesus welcomed them, commended them, irked Jewish listeners when he insisted that the Roman Centurion, for instance, a Gentile, exemplified greater faith than any Israelite he had met. Jesus welcomed all such people. He dignified them: the rejected, the poor, the irreligious, those who were regarded as inferior for any reason, those relegated to the fringes of the society.
Yet there was one thing Jesus didn’t do to them; he didn’t romanticize them. Because sentimentality outweighs mental acuity in so many of us, we romanticize these people; like the poor, for instance, especially at Christmas time, when Christmas sentiment speaks of them as “the humble poor.” Jesus never romanticized poverty. He knew that poverty is degrading and dehumanizing, evil. He never pretended that poverty invariably renders people humble; he knew it more often renders people bitter and apathetic.
We romanticize sickness. Last century Victorian novelists romanticized those with tuberculosis. Today we romanticize those with AIDS. Think of the spate of books holding up the AIDS sufferer as someone extraordinarily victimized and therefore the extraordinary incarnation of courage and fortitude and resilience. The mythology surrounding AIDS even suggests that AIDS sufferers are somehow a collective force for redeeming the world. So far from romanticizing sickness of any kind, Jesus looked upon sickness as something to be eradicated.
We romanticize criminality. Bonnie and Clyde. Al Capone. Billy the Kid. The Great Train Robbery. What was great about it? Surely the perpetrators are as detestable as the stocking-masked coward who shoves a pistol in the face of the Korean clerk in the corner store.
Jesus romanticized nothing: not poverty, not sickness, not criminality, certainly not sin or sinners. Nevertheless, he always welcomed sinners. He neither congratulated sin romantically nor condoned sin as inconsequential. At the same time, however, he always received sinners as the people for whom he had been sent.
Jesus approached all kinds of people. He pardoned them when their mess was their own fault; when their mess wasn’t their fault (the sick, the poor, the outcast) he gave them hope and energy even as he delivered them from bitterness. They loved him for it. Apart from him the attention they had customarily received was contempt followed by rejection. In his presence they thought better of themselves and could do better themselves just because their intimacy with him mysteriously lent them a transformation they couldn’t deny and others couldn’t duplicate.
Most profoundly, in meeting Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, they had met the one in whose company they had encountered the holy one of Israel himself. They now stepped forth on a joyful life in God, freed from the clutches and conventions of a society that had condemned them. They rejoiced in it and loved him for it.
They rejoiced; that is, the immediate beneficiaries of Christ’s embrace rejoiced. But not everyone rejoiced. Superior, disdainful people became nervous when they saw the freedom and high spirits and happiness of Jesus and his friends. They envied what they saw; they resented seeing in others what they lacked themselves; they objected that anyone else should have it at all. In no time they were accusing Jesus of befriending those whom respectable people know enough to ignore. The accusation stung. Jesus smarted under it. He responded to the accusation, “Do you object to what I’m doing? Do you resent my friends? Then let me tell you a story.” The parable of the two sons is our Lord’s defense of himself in the face of accusation.
[2] We often call the story “the parable of the prodigal son.”
(i) Home is dull beyond telling. Father is thought to have the personality of a dial-tone. Excitement is needed. “So give me now what’s going to be mine in any case when you die”, the younger son says to his father; “I need money for a good time. You might as well give it to me now as make me wait until you keel over and the coroner signs the certificate.” What the son thinks to be the soul of common sense in fact is a not-so-secret desire to have his dad dead; the young man is a murderer at heart while thinking himself to be virtuous. (We should note in passing that Martin Luther, with more than a little insight, insisted that unregenerate, impenitent men and women chafe under the claim and authority of God, and wish God dead. In other words, deicide lurks in every impenitent heart.)
(ii) The son sets out for the “far country”, so far out, compared to home, that it couldn’t be farther. There was a different woman every night (as the elder brother was soon to remind everyone); there was no lack of opportunity to fritter away a fortune. In the far country there were no restraints at all.
(iii) Money is soon used up, someone is now hungry and getting hungrier every day. He goes to the employment office and is assigned to work for — a Gentile! There was nothing more humiliating for a Jew than to have to work for a Gentile. There were many reasons for this, not the least of which was the conviction that Gentiles were ignorant pagans with the morals of an alley cat. An exaggeration? The apostle Paul didn’t think so. When he writes to the church in Ephesus he speaks of the Gentile world he knows, and speaks of it in a way that Jewish people would find no exaggeration at all. Says the apostle concerning the Gentiles of his era,
“Their wits are beclouded; they are strangers to the life that is in God, because ignorance prevails among them and their minds have grown hard as stone. Dead to all feeling, they have abandoned themselves to vice, and stop at nothing to satisfy their foul desires.” (Eph.4:17-19)
There wasn’t a Jew who wouldn’t agree with this description of the Gentile world.
How would any of us feel if were reduced to penury (itself humiliation enough), then had to work for starvation wages (another humiliation), as well as work for an employer whom everyone knew to be a person of beclouded wits, Godless, a numbskull, insensitive, vicious, and a dirty old man? And to have to fawn over and flatter this “creep” every day?
Not only did the young man have to work for a Gentile; he had to work with pigs, the symbol of uncleanness for Jews. And not only did he have to work with pigs; he became so hungry that even pig food smelled good — yet his Gentile boss would rather see him starve than share a little pig food with him.
The fellow has sunk so low that he knows things can’t get worse. He has made a dreadful mess of himself. He doesn’t pretend he’s possessed of a new-found love for his father; he doesn’t pretend he has suddenly recognized the truth about himself and his father. He’s simply desperate. Since he can’t be any more degraded than he is right now, he might as well go home. Matters there can’t be worse, may even be better, and who knows: perhaps his dad will let him earn his keep by cleaning out the septic tank.
It’s no wonder he’s flabbergasted at the reception his father accords him. Not a word is said about where he’s been and what he’s been doing. No attempt is made to rub his face in his mess and humiliate him publicly. Instead he’s welcomed without qualification or hesitation or reservation. His father cuts short the young man’s breastbeating and gives him robe, shoes and ring.
Robe: For the Hebrew mind, clothing is the sign of belonging. Everyone knows now that the son is fully integrated into the family. He belongs, and belongs as son.
Shoes: Slaves went barefoot. But those who are in bondage to no one and nothing; those who relish their freedom and glory in it: they wear shoes.
Ring: It was a signet ring, used to make an impression on sealing wax. Today the signet ring has been replaced by signing authority, signing authority on someone else’s bank account. The son can henceforth draw on all his father’s resources.
And then the partying began.
[3] Jesus told this parable to defend himself against the accusation that it was inappropriate for him to welcome so-called inferiors. “Inappropriate!”, Jesus gasps, dumbfounded, “What could be more appropriate? Look at the transformation my welcome has accorded these people! They have come to belong to the family of God; they know it, are grateful for it, and glory in it. They have been freed from the tyranny of their own sin and from bitterness over the sin of others. They now call upon God daily, their daily experience confirming their conviction that God wants only to share his riches with them. Why do you fault me for this?“
Silence. Dead silence. Our Lord’s opponents have nothing to say. Jesus lets them squirm in the silence they undoubtedly find difficult, and then finally he speaks. “Since you mean-spirited vipers can’t tell me or won’t tell me why you fault me, I’m going to tell you why you carp at me and fault me and sneer at me whenever you see me coming down the road with my ragged rejects. I shall tell you.”
[4] And so begins the second half of the parable, the story of the elder brother. The elder brother is the person of any era who hangs around the house of God but has never become part of the family of God; the person who works diligently for the church but has never become acquainted with Jesus Christ; contributes a little money for church-upkeep (after all, every village should have a church) but has never discovered what Paul speaks of as “the riches of God’s grace” or “the unsearchable riches of Christ” or “the riches of his glory.” The elder brother has confused proximity to the church-premises with personal acquaintance with him whose church it is.
We can’t fail to notice how frequently such a confusion occurs in the realm of the Spirit compared to how infrequently it occurs anywhere else in life. People who sit among the spectators at Maple Leaf Gardens never think that sitting there makes them an NHL hockey player. Those who study the pitching technique of Roger Clemens never assume that they are then major league pitchers. Where knowing Jesus Christ is concerned, however, knowing him, loving him, obeying him, following him, the situation changes. This is why we frequently see the person who was baptized at fifteen months, was confirmed at fifteen years, drifts away for the next fifteen years but comes back when he has children of his own and worries about getting them past adolescence undrugged and unpregnant (but doesn’t worry about their unbelief); some time after this he disappears for good, telling us, if we make any enquiries, that he “no longer sees any point to religion.” He’s right about one thing: there is no point to religion. Every believer is aware of this. Every believer knows too that religion has nothing whatever to do with “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
The elder brother rails against his father, “All these years I have laboured for you, and what do I get?” Clearly he thinks that his situation with his father is meant to be that of servant to master, or slave to owner, or employee to boss. He expects compensation for his toil. All the while his father has wanted a son, not an employee; a relationship, not a labour contract. When the elder brother, now embittered, speaks of the younger brother he hisses to his father, “This son of yours”; not, “my brother”, but “this son of yours.” The contempt is undeniable. His contempt discloses his acidulated heart.
“All these years I have laboured for you, and what do I get?” What does the elder brother expect to get? Something? Some thing? He doesn’t understand that where personal intimacy is concerned there is no “thing” to be offered or had as the reward or outcome of the intimacy; the intimacy itself is the reality, and the only outcome or “reward” there can ever be is the same reality, the singular intimacy, intensified. There is nothing beyond the relationship; there can’t be reward or outcome to a relationship when a relationship of utmost intimacy is the profoundest reality. As I know my wife, as I love her and trust her and find her love for me coursing back along all the beams of my love for her, the relationship is the reality. What could there ever be beyond this? How could there ever be reward for it? If after 29 years of marriage I said to my wife, “I have been your devoted, non-philandering, money-making, ever-respectable husband for lo these many years. Now what do I get for it?”; if I were to say this she’d know immediately that I had never loved her. The younger brother came to know gloriously what it is to be cherished as a son of the father; the elder brother knew only what it is to be a frustrated employee.
There are many varieties of “elder brotherism.” When I have preached on the dying terrorist on Good Friday who had five minutes to live and who cried to Jesus, “Lord, remember me!”, I have heard “elder brothers” complain, “But it’s not fair! Why should any `thug’, however, repentant, be granted exactly what is granted the saint who has served sacrificially for fifty years?” “Elder brothers” are often heard whining, “I’ve kept on the straight and narrow all my life. I had plenty of chances to have my `fling’; I had plenty of chances to make financial short-cuts, but I kept on the straight and narrow. And what did it get me? Other people now have more money and more glamorous company.”
Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order; Loyola could promise young recruits to the order only lifelong hardship in the service of Jesus Christ; Loyola prayed, “Teach us, O Lord, to serve and not to count the cost, to suffer and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to ask for any reward, save the reward of knowing that we do your will.” Loyola always knew that the most glorious “reward” of any profound relationship is simply the intensification of the relationship itself. The younger brother came to see this; the elder brother never did. Insisting on a tit-for-tat transaction, he passed up everything that his younger brother came to know and relish.
[4] The sermon today has been about two brothers. Today is also Palm Sunday. Five days later, on Friday, Jesus found himself in the company of two criminals. In two respects at least the two criminals resembled the two brothers of the parable. Both criminals were like both brothers: their inheritance was the inheritance Paul describes in his Roman letter: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs,… the Christ.” The inheritance is the same for all. One criminal, like one brother, remained unrepentant, sunk in resentment and bitterness and hostility. The other criminal, like the other brother, came to his senses, knew he was in the far country, knew how bleak and degrading it was there, and wanted only to go home. To this fellow Jesus said, “Today you will find yourself in my Father’s house, your home now too, and this for ever and ever.”
And that, my friends, is what our Lord longs to say to every one of you.
Victor Shepherd
Parables of Our Lord: The Crisis of the Kingdom
Luke 14:15-24 Luke 16:1-9 Matthew 25:14-30
Arnold Toynbee, the premier historian of the past 100 years, insisted that the rise and fall of civilizations could be understood in terms of their response to challenge. A startlingly new historical development challenges a civilization in a manner that is nothing less than a crisis. In this crisis a civilization that responds positively survives and thrives. A civilization that responds negatively withers. History, Toynbee maintained, is the littered with the remains of civilizations whose response to a crisis was inadequate.
When Jesus, thirty years old, emerged from the Galilean backwoods and announced that in him God’s royal rule had visited the earth, a startlingly new historical development was underway. It challenged people, and challenged them so very profoundly as to constitute a crisis. They could respond in any way at all, but the option they didn’t have was not to respond. Not to “respond”, we all know, is to have responded; not to choose is to have made a choice. When our Lord announced the coming of the kingdom, and then amplified the nature and scope and logic of the kingdom through his teaching, he thereby challenged hearers to respond.
In our examination of three kingdom-parables today we are going to find ourselves challenged concerning our response, our responsibility, and our resourcefulness.
I: — (Luke 14:15-24) In the parable of the Great Supper, Jesus tells us that life in the kingdom; that is, life lived intimately with the king himself and for the king’s purposes – this is like a feast where the fare is appealing, nourishing, and satisfying. Life in the kingdom isn’t like a meal of tidbits that tantalize but don’t satisfy. Neither is it a meal of junk food whose gobs of salt and fat keep people gorging what ought to be left alone. Neither is it a diet of wholesome food that is nourishing yet unappealling, with the result that what we need we can only choke down. Life in our Lord’s company is at once appealing, nourishing, satisfying: a feast
Eager people say to Jesus, “Just thinking about it makes us want it.” “Really?” replies the Master; “Then you make sure you respond to the invitation. When the printed card arrives with RSVP printed at the bottom, you make sure to reply. My presence and truth; my incursion into human affairs; my refusal to be deflected or to depart – this is the biggest challenge God can put to anyone. Your response is critical, for on your response there hangs everything.” Immediately, according to the parable, the people who have just told Jesus how glad they are to be invited begin making excuses as to why they can’t come to the banquet.
Be sure to notice this: the excuses are not silly rationalizations, thinly-disguised lies or groundless evasions. They are not laughably ridiculous. Those who decline the king’s invitation do so for reasons that strike them as perfectly sound. After all, they are properly engaged in important tasks; they are preoccupied with pressing matters. Their reasons for passing up the banquet are perfectly understandable. And so are ours today.
[i] One man has just bought a field, real estate. Real estate is the single largest investment most people make. Investments are important. Don’t we all depend for our livelihood on the sound investments some people have to make? The families supported by the North American auto manufacturing industry; I think they will shortly wish that auto industry executives had made better investments. And of course anyone who is counting on drawing a pension in retirement should know that there won’t be any pensions of any sort unless pension funds have been invested soundly.
It’s easy for non-business folk (like me) to take pot-shots at the business community’s preoccupation with investment matters. But those of us who are paid for non-business activities (clergy, schoolteachers, social workers, homemakers) forget that we shall have an income only as long as business enterprises are solvent. We shouldn’t take cheap shots at those preoccupied with investments.
[ii] Another fellow who declines the king’s invitation has just bought five yoke of oxen. He has to try them out. His livelihood depends on them. Livelihoods are important. Poverty is dreadful. Unemployment is dreadful. The human warping that arises from financial deprivation is ghastly. If your livelihood or mine were at risk, wouldn’t we be preoccupied with it?
[iii] Another fellow who declines has just married. He wants to get his marriage started off on the right foot. Surely he’s to be commended. What’s more, since marriage, when good, is the most fruitful of all human relationships, and when bad, the most destructive, shouldn’t we congratulate anyone who is concerned to begin his marriage well?
The people who decline the king’s invitation aren’t stupid or shallow. Nevertheless, Jesus insists that their reasons for declining the king’s invitation, his invitation, are finally insupportable. Why? Because the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; the looming luminosity of king and kingdom; all of this radically relativizes everything else in life. When Jesus Christ calls us, whatever else is however important, it’s now relatively less important. When Jesus Christ calls us, all other claims to ultimacy are less-than-ultimate. They can only be penultimate.
John’s gospel says much about eternal life. Eternal life isn’t this life stretched out endlessly. Eternal life is the life of the eternal One – God – breaking into this life and transforming it. Our reconciliation to God and the righteousness arising from it; this isn’t something merely added on to our current concerns. Our reconciliation to God and the righteousness arising from it is the revaluing, transmogrifying, of our current concerns.
Unless we grasp the truth here, our concern for a sound economy will eventually put us on a financial treadmill whose goal is simply money for money’s sake. Unless we are seized by the uncompromisable ultimacy of Christ and kingdom, our concerns concerning our livelihood will become a survival tactic wherein we have reduced ourselves to survival mechanisms. Unless the king’s call calls us to him effectually,our concern with getting our marriage off to a good start will find us engrossed in a tiny world of two people to the exclusion of all other persons and all other claims upon us.
In short, to decline the king’s invitation, however sensible seemingly, in fact is both foolish and tragic. It’s foolish in that joyful self-abandonment to Christ the king would purify and preserve all other relationships and undertakings in life. It’s tragic in that to pass up the king’s invitation is to forfeit his blessing and hand oneself over to the dark forces that are always at work in a fallen world.
Every day you and I are invited to the king’s banquet, there to be sustained by – the king himself. Therefore every day we are challenged to respond positively to his invitation.
II: (Matthew 25:14-30) — Not only are we challenged to a response; we are challenged to a responsibility. In the parable of the talents we are told of a man who entrusts his wealth to three fellows, and then goes on a journey. When he returns he asks each fellow in turn, “What have you done with what I entrusted to you?” Two fellows have multiplied their trust, and are congratulated for doing so. The third fellow, knowing that his master is demanding, has decided to play safe: he has put the money in the ground, and then dug it up upon the master’s return. To his surprise his master is angry and accuses him of irresponsibility. The parable concludes with the haunting words “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
What’s the treasure that the master has entrusted to you and me? I’m convinced we are often unaware of what talent or treasure we have. If someone can sing like a canary we say she’s “gifted” or “talented.” Alongside the canary-singer we conclude we have no gift, no talent. To be sure, we don’t have that talent. So what?
We tend to look for eye-catching, dramatic talents. I’m convinced we’re looking in the wrong direction. What about the talent of welcoming visitors to worship, and greeting them warmly, genuinely, in such a way as to defuse their nervousness and dispel their feeling of strangeness?
We lack the gift of public speaking, or eloquent rhetoric? What about the gift of making our little Sunday School a place that delights children and where the warmth they soak up from one of us becomes, under God, a foretaste of the warmth of the Saviour’s embrace that they will own in faith when they mature? What’s any eye-catching, dramatic talent compared to the gentle reassurance the most ordinary homemaker can impart to the woman who has just been discharged from the psychiatric ward and who feels more fragile than a cobweb?
The point of the parable, we must remember, is that regardless of what our talent is, we mustn’t bury it; we mustn’t submerge it because it appears slight alongside the talents of others. Whatever gift we have we must use, and use yet again, only to find that as we do, the Master is pleased and his people are helped.
What’s the treasure that the master has entrusted to you and me? On a different note, I’m convinced there’s a sacred trust we must treasure and develop corporately. I’m speaking now of the “deposit” (Paul’s word) of the faith. You and I are not the first Christians. Are we going to be the last? Only if we “bury” the deposit of the faith and it disappears with us. But of course we’re not going to do this.
I like to speak of the deposit of the faith as the totality of Christian memory. Think for a minute of the person who has lost his memory. We say he’s amnesiac. We say he’s to be pitied in that he can’t remember where he parked his car or how he’s to get to work or where he left his briefcase.
To be sure, the amnesiac is to be pitied – but for reasons far more profound than this. You see, the person with no memory at all doesn’t know who he is. The person with no memory at all has no identity. And therefore the person with no memory can’t be trusted. The reason the amnesiac can’t be trusted isn’t that he’s more wicked than those who possess a memory. He’s no more wicked than the rest of us. He can’t be trusted simply because he doesn’t have an identity.
Let’s apply all this to a congregation, then to a denomination, then to the church catholic. Here in Schomberg we read from the older testament, for instance, every Sunday. It’s important to read from the older testament. People who don’t soon deny the ancestry of Jesus. Then they turn Jesus into a wax figure (a Gentile wax figure) that they can remould as they wish, with the result that the supposed saviour of the world ends up indistinguishable from the world he’s supposed to save. Worst of all, people who don’t read the older testament become anti-judaistic; that is, they regard the faith of the synagogue as obsolete or antiquated. Next they become something horrific: anti-semitic. Anti-judaism (contempt for the faith of the synagogue) always generates anti-semitism (contempt for Jewish people themselves.)
Again, at every Communion service in Schomberg we recite the Apostles’ Creed. We could as readily recite the Nicene Creed. It’s important that we recite one of the historic creeds of the church catholic, for otherwise we’d be advertising ourselves as sectarian. Yes, we are Presbyterians. Are Presbyterians screwball snake-handlers who twist Jesus into a fourteen karat jerk? Or are Presbyterians Christians with an angle of vision concerning the holy catholic faith that contributes to the holy catholic church? Every time we recite one of the historic creeds we are endorsing the faith of the holy catholic church.
But of course we do more in Schomberg than look back to the faith of the church catholic. We also interpret the faith concerning the present and the future. In other words, the treasure that’s been entrusted to us we are preserving, to be sure, but more than preserving: we are having that treasure “bear interest” as the deposit of the faith entrusted to us becomes ever richer for the sake of those who come after us.
III: (Luke 16:1-8) –The last parable we are looking at today challenges us to resourcefulness. Jesus has uttered a parable that appears to commend a dishonest person. In the parable of the unjust steward a man learns that his steward is cheating on him. The steward, found out now, says to himself, “I’m in hot water for sure. I’m going to be fired. I’m not strong enough to be a labourer. I’m not smart enough to be a teacher. I’m not humble enough to draw welfare. What will I do? I know what I’ll do. I’ll tell each of the persons in debt to my boss that that person’s debt has been cut 50%. These people in turn will be so happy to have their indebtedness reduced that they’ll all give me a kickback. I’ll be set for life.” The fellow, needless to say, is a scoundrel. Jesus does not commend the fellow for his dishonesty. Jesus does, however, draw our attention to the scoundrel’s resourcefulness as he says to us, “If a scoundrel can be that resourceful in ‘feathering his own nest’, can’t you be equally resourceful in the service of the kingdom? Can’t you be that imaginative, that daring, that ingenious?”
If you and I sat down together for thirty minutes we could think of many imaginative, resourceful things to do in either congregational life or our individual lives. This morning, however, I want to speak of something foundational to our Christian faith and life: the relation between adapting and adopting.
As each generation of Christ’s people arises, that generation has to adapt “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) to modernity. Note that the faith, the substance, the deposit of what we believe, has been delivered “once for all.” It doesn’t change. But circumstances are always changing. Therefore we have to adapt unchanging truth to changing circumstances. If we fail to adapt to modernity, we can’t speak to our contemporaries. While we may learn much from John Calvin and John Wesley, we don’t live in the 16th Century, and we don’t live in the 18th Century. We can learn from these men but we can never copy them. We should never attempt to duplicate them. We don’t even speak Wesley’s English. In the 18th Century if someone were profoundly stirred by a sermon, it was said that that person’s bowels had moved. This isn’t what we mean by “bowel-movement” in 21st Century English. We always have to adapt the unchanging substance of the faith to changing circumstances.
On the other hand, as each generation of Christ’s people arises, that generation must never adopt the mindset of modernity. If we adopt the mindset of modernity, we have forfeited the gospel. We have performed the grand counter miracle: we’ve turned wine into water. Now we are experts at communicating, to be sure, but we’ve nothing to communicate. At this point the substance of the faith has been thrown away in the interests of a “with-it” preoccupation with communicating.
Let me say it again. If we fail to adapt, we’ve retained the gospel to be sure, but it’s wrapped up in a parcel, a language, an imagery that’s foreign to modernity, and therefore modernity can never hear the gospel. If, however, we adopt, then we’ve developed wonderfully attractive packaging but with nothing inside the package. The line we must all walk along, the line between adapting and adopting; this line is finer than a hair and harder than diamond.
It’s right here that our resourcefulness, critical resourcefulness, has to be deployed relentlessly.
And in fact we are challenged to deploy such critical resourcefulness all the time.
Think of the sermon. The sermon attempts to communicate the unchanging gospel in terms of the constantly changing thought-forms and language of modernity.
So does a Sunday School lesson. So does our mid-week adult discussion group. So does the answer a parent gives to her child’s question: “Mom, why do I have to go to church? What’s ‘good’ about Good Friday?”
So does the social outreach work of the church. We support the ministry of Evangel Hall. Its ministry has a social outreach component to it, but the ministry of Evangel Hall (or any such endeavour of the church) is never reducible to social work. Plainly social outreach in the name of Christ has to “adapt” or it won’t come within range of helping anyone; on the other hand, if it “adopts”, then the social witness of the gospel has been reduced to secular social work.
Don’t ask me to spell out exactly how we walk along the line between “adapt” and “adopt”. Don’t ask me because I don’t think it can be spelled out in advance. We learn to do it as we have to do it. And in truth we are doing it all the time.
The parable of the unjust steward is our Lord’s command that his people remain imaginatively, daringly resourceful.
When Jesus Christ emerged from the anonymity of his hometown he announced the kingdom. It was a challenge, a challenge so far-reaching as to constitute a crisis. His parables challenge you and me relentlessly concerning our response, our responsibility, and our resourcefulness.
Victor Shepherd
May 2006
Crucial Words in the Christian Vocabulary: Faith
Luke 17:5-6 Daniel 3:13-18 Romans 1:8-17
I: — “Faith,” a schoolboy once said, “is believing what you know isn’t true.” The boy couldn’t have been right. Everywhere in his public ministry Jesus endeavours to create faith, nourish faith, strengthen faith. Disciples ask him to increase their faith. The book of Hebrews reminds us that without faith we can’t please God. Faith is a matter of believing what we know isn’t true? Ridiculous. Yet it’s no more ridiculous than other misunderstandings and perversions that abound.
[1] Think of the perversion that virtually equates faith with gullibility, with suggestibility. Some industrial sales manuals maintain that potential customers differ in their “faith capacity.” What’s meant is that some people are more readily “taken in” than others. P.T. Barnum, the inventor of the circus sideshow, maintained that there’s a sucker born every minute. No one disagrees. Still, when we see people “fished in” by religious hucksters we know that such gullibility has nothing at all to do with that faith which Jesus longs to see flourish in us all.
[2] Another perversion is the notion that faith is a blind believing, a blind following, once the intellect is wilfully suspended. “Put your brain on the shelf, and then the way will be open for faith.” Older adults sometimes recommend this approach – foolishly – when thinking young people are first confronted with geology (the age of the earth) or biology (evolution) or psychology (the fact and influence of the unconscious mind.) Thinking young people shouldn’t be told, “All that stuff is hypothetical. Put it aside. You’ve simply got to believe.”
Wilfully suspending one’s intellect in the interests of a blind believing and blind following is never God-honouring. God requires us to love him with our mind. We should never encourage mindlessness in anyone. All we need do is ponder the cults and assorted “isms” that ensnare and distort younger people and some who aren’t so young. And if the word “cult” suggests a bizarreness so remote from us that it would never seduce us, then think of ideology or advertising or social pressure. And while we are at it we should think of something more formal than subtle advertising or social pressure; namely, intellectual life. Twenty-five years ago I was asked to conduct a congregational event exploring the question, “Where have all the young people gone?” Those present blamed the university; they blamed the philosophy department in particular. The philosophy professor was denounced as the devil in disguise. I told the meeting that I studied philosophy ardently for five glorious years. Am I the devil in disguise? Right now I teach philosophy. Do I foster unbelief? If faith can’t survive rigorous intellectual examination then faith is no more than superstition.
[3] Another misunderstanding is that faith is a matter of working up religious feelings and affections. We tend to associate such effusiveness with the charismatic movement. Let me say right now that the charismatic movement has been a blessing to the church. At the same time, it has unfortunately tended to make experience(s) of a peculiar sort the touchstone of “true faith.” As a result some people are left trying to work up psycho-religious vividness. If they do manage to work it up they are tempted to think themselves religiously superior; if they don’t work it up they are tempted to think themselves spiritual failures. But in fact the concentration on emotional self-stimulation produces an artificiality that indicates neither the presence of faith nor its absence. Faith is never a matter of working up some kind of intrapsychic heat and fireworks.
II(1): — Then what is faith? Faith is entrusting as much of ourselves as we know of ourselves to as much of God as we know of him. This is how it begins. Regardless of how much we think we know of ourselves, we know very little. And if we are taking our first steps in faith, then of course we know very little of God. Still, we begin by exposing as much of ourselves as we know of ourselves to as much of God as we know of him – which is to say, faith begins as simple encounter with God. It is an elemental meeting with God; dialogue with God. It isn’t dialogue, of course, in the sense of presumptuous chattiness. It isn’t off-putting overfamiliarity. But unquestionably it’s a deliberate meeting with him and self-exposure to him. Specifically, faith is an encounter with God that God initiates; after all, he has pursued us since the day we were conceived. Through the encounter God initiates with us he awakens us to him, turns us to face him, and wants only that we look upon him as longingly and lovingly as he has long looked upon us.
To say it all differently: in Jesus Christ, and specifically in the arms of the crucified, God embraces us. In the strength and desire that his embrace lends us, we now want to embrace him in return. Faith, then, is an encounter with God as he awakens us to his initiative and awakens our response.
For years now I have quietly smiled to myself as I have observed human behaviour that reflects animal behaviour. When human beings are pressured (hunger, for instance, even the hunger of having missed only one meal) I have noticed that what we have in common with the animal world rises to the fore. This shouldn’t surprise us; after all, the Genesis sagas tell us that we and the animals were created on the same “day.” We and they are cousins. When I was very young I was told that the apes and we differ in that (among other characteristics) apes don’t have an opposable thumb. And then one day at the Metro Zoo I saw a gorilla pick up a straw between its thumb and forefinger. Then perhaps we differ instead inasmuch as God loves us humans? Scripture informs us, however, that God loves the animals and provides for them and protects them. God loves all of his creation and is grieved to see it abused. Scripture insists just as pointedly, however, that God speaks to human beings alone. God addresses humankind alone. Faith therefore always has the character of a dialogue with him who is always trying to get our attention.
By “dialogue” we mustn’t understand “after dinner conversation.” It isn’t an armchair matter. Engagement with God can be riddled with turbulence. Our engagement with God can take the form of anger as well as elation, accusation as well as adoration. Following his all-night encounter with God Jacob’s name is changed from “Jacob” (“deceiver”) to “ Israel ” (“he who contends with God”). In all genuine faith there’s an element of wrestling with God. When someone dear to us dies horribly; when disappointment falls on us like a collapsing wall; when betrayal savages us and shocks us, it’s appropriate that we react as Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Jeremiah react: “What are you up to? Why did you let me down? Where were you when I needed you most?” Everywhere in scripture one of the surest signs of faith in God is his people’s anger at him. For these people at least are serious about God.
We must never think that genuine faith in God means that someone is henceforth perfect, understands perfectly, behaves perfectly. God’s people are his people just because they have encountered him and are serious about him. Still, their engagement with him can and will contain elements of confusion, imperfection, moral deficiency and spiritual defectiveness. Everywhere in scripture Abraham is foreparent of all believers, the prototype of faith. Under terrible pressure Abraham lied twice, passing off his wife as his sister, aware that if men wanted to rape his wife they would kill him first; if they wanted to rape his sister they wouldn’t bother to kill him. “She’s my sister,” Abraham shouted. Cowardly? Yes. Self-serving? Yes. False? Yes. Deplorable? Yes. It all disqualifies him as person of faith and even model of faith? No. Perfection is never a condition for the reality and solidity of faith.
James and John selfishly seek places of honour in the kingdom – but they are still disciples. Peter lies and betrays his Lord three times over. Martha fiddles with trivia even as the master visits her home. Martin Luther King jr., civil rights leader and martyr, behaves with women in a manner that no one can extenuate. John Wesley, leader of the Eighteenth Century Awakening, lacks self-perception to the point of appearing ludicrous. But none of this disqualifies people as disciples. Our engagement with God is real, true, substantial, all-determining even as it remains riddled with assorted deficits, deficiencies and imperfections.
II(2): — Faith is more than encounter, however; it is also understanding. Imagine that we have newly been exposed to Mozart’s music. Gradually we are drawn into the world of Mozart’s music. We know beyond doubt that this world is real. It’s so very real, in fact, that it brings before us riches and wonders and human possibilities that we had never before had reason to imagine. Now at this point we understand next to nothing of music theory or music history or music technique. Still, once we’ve been exposed to Mozart’s music and it has captivated us we surely want to learn something of Mozart’s music, its structure and its glory. We surely want to learn something of his relation to other composers, his place in the musical tradition, his musical “signatures” by which we can identify characteristics that tell us, “This is Mozart.” As our understanding grows we find that our new perception in turn magnifies our delight in his music. The result is that we appropriate ever-greater Mozartian depths and riches.
Understanding does as much for us in our encounter with God. Once he’s got our attention, however he managed to do that; once he’s turned us to face him, moved us to embrace him in light of his embracing us; once we are captivated by that sphere which he is himself, we are constrained to gain understanding. We do gain it. Gaining it doesn’t mean merely that our minds are richer than before (even though this is not to be slighted); it doesn’t mean that we now have more words in our vocabulary; it means, rather, that our richer understanding in turn admits us to richer depths in God himself.
We must always remember that God is as upset at spiritual immaturity as we are at physical or psychological immaturity. Greater understanding is one aspect of spiritual maturity. We can taste the frustration and annoyance of New Testament writers who belong to Christian communities where there’s little or no advance in Christian understanding. Typical in this regard is the frustration of the unnamed author of the epistle to the Hebrews: “Milk is for babies; solid food is for grownups. Therefore let’s leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying the foundations all over again.” The author, exasperated, is saying, “Can’t we move past Grade One? Are we always going to be at the level of ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’?” We all know that stunted development anywhere in life is tragic. The stunted development of faith is no less grotesque and no less tragic. I disagree wholly with the suggestion, usually uttered with the air of superior wisdom, that sermons have to be scaled down to a twelve year old level because that’s the understanding level most adults have (supposedly.) To capitulate here is to guarantee a congregation of twelve year olds.
Faith is going to be strengthened; faith will come to possess greater certainty; faith will avoid being blown away by devastation or fished in by hucksters only as the understanding aspect of faith is enlarged and deepened and enriched. Parents will be equipped to provide Christian nurture for their children only as parents themselves move past Grade One. A congregation gains resilience and wisdom and stability and depth only as maturity is gained. Understanding of the way and word and work of God is essential.
At the same time we should be aware that greater understanding of God issues in greater understanding of life under God. It yields an understanding of history; not of the details of history, but of history as the theatre (or at least one theatre) of God’s activity. It yields an understanding of the human; not the sort that a medical education provides, but awareness that human existence is inextricably related to God and can be apprehended only as God himself is apprehended. It yields an understanding of marriage; for marriage is a covenant modelled after God’s covenant with his people. God keeps his covenant with us when we don’t keep our covenant with him. This is to say, marriage ought always to aim at reflecting the faithfulness, patience and persistence of the God who loves us more than he loves himself. Faith understands both the necessity and the limitations of human reason; i.e., faith understands that irrationality is inexcusable even as rationalization threatens at all times.
Faith includes understanding, an understanding that newly understands the truth of God and the truth of God’s creation.
II(3): — Faith is something more: a venture, a life-venture. Life is more than understanding. Life is a venture that has to be lived. Faith is life ventured under God.
Right here some people recoil. They have been wounded so very badly in the past, or fear being so badly wounded in the future, that venture is the last thing they want. They want to establish a corner of life that they feel to be safe and secure, and then freeze it; preserve it; hang on to it; protect it. Understandable as this is, however, to do this is simply to put in time until the undertaker closes the lid and the pastor drops the handful of earth. The book of Hebrews recognizes the temptation and its consequent peril: “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed; we are of those who have faith….” Throughout the book of Hebrews life is depicted as a journey, a pilgrimage, a venture. Plainly the author appears to think there are only two possibilities: either we shrink back and shrivel up, or we keep moving ahead even if at times the venture is a little more adventuresome than we thought it was going to be.
When I was seven years old my family rented a summer cottage for one week. I longed to row the rowboat. But I was also afraid of the lake. I tied the boat to shore with a ten-foot rope and began to row. After two strokes of the oars the boat jerked awkwardly, drifted back to the dock, and I rowed again. I had done this several times when my father said, “If you want to row the boat and go somewhere, untie it.” Then he saw my divided mind: I wanted with all my heart to venture forth on the lake but I was afraid to. What could he do to quell my fear and free me to row the boat into deeper water? He climbed into the boat with me. I untied it and we set off together.
In the person of his Son, Christ Jesus our Lord, God has embarked on the life-venture with us. The Easter narrative of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus reminds us that the same risen Lord who kept company with the two men then keeps company with all his disciples now. Because he does, our fear is checked, checked enough to let us get started on the venture and to keep us in it.
When I say “venture” I don’t mean “outing.” An outing is a recreational activity, like a picnic or a hike. I don’t wish to suggest either that “venture” always entails what’s grim. Still, on the whole life is more serious than an outing, with more at stake.
And when I say “venture” I don’t meant that we are to pursue the extraordinary and the heroic. To do this is first to render life artificial and then to discover that our “heroism” isn’t heroic enough.
Life is ventured when we face, face up to, face ahead despite, whatever life casts up. Life is ventured when by God’s grace we endeavour to do something with it beyond utter passivity or sheer complaining. From time to time life is going to give us lemons. We can suck them, only to sour ourselves and others, or we can make lemonade. Our Lord Jesus Christ, always on the road with us, the pioneer of our faith; he happens to be rather good at making lemonade.
At one point the people of Israel found themselves in the wilderness on their journey to the promised land. Slavery was behind them. The promised land was ahead of them, yet so far ahead of them as to be out of sight. Wilderness existence was wearing them down, so much so that they were tempted to renounce the venture. A word was given Moses to give to them: “Tell the people of Israel to go forward.”
At the beginning of the day and at its ending faith isn’t wilful stupidity or superstition. Faith is an encounter with God in which our understanding of him and us and our world continues to grow. Faith is a venture in which we are going to meet setbacks but in the face of which we are not going to shrink back and shrivel up. And when we are stuck with lemons, we shall cling more tightly to our faithful companion on the venture who turned cross into triumph and in whose company lemonade-making is never impossible.
Then may God increase your faith, even as he increases mine as well.
Victor Shepherd
February 2004
The Grace of the Kingdom
Luke 15:11-24 Luke 18:9-14 Matthew 18:21-35
People are as religious today as ever they were. To be sure, the media keep telling us that our era has become thoroughly secularized. They even remind us Canadians that the most secularized area in all of North America is the province of Quebec , formerly the most religious (apparently).
When the media insist that our era has become secularized, however, what they are saying is that the church is in decline. They are right about one thing: per capita church attendance is lower now in Canada than it’s been for several years. But to say this is not to say that people are any less religious. Think about The DaVinci Code. I’ve read it. The book has now sold scores of millions of copies. The fact that people buy it, devour it, talk about it, and give it a credibility it doesn’t deserve, ought to tell us how religious people are. Is this good? Is it better to be religious than irreligious (assuming it’s possible to be irreligious)?
When I was a student minister in Northern Ontario (1969) I was instructed to ask a Provincial Park Officer if the United Church could conduct a service for campers throughout the summer. Cheerfully he replied, “I don’t see why not; a little religion never hurt anyone.”
But the Park Officer was wrong. We must always remember that the less religious people were, the better Jesus got along with them. The more religious people were, the more they hated him. Why? Because our Lord maintained that religion is a barrier between people and God. Faith, on the other hand, binds us to God; faith is our bond with our Lord. Religion is our attempt at justifying ourselves before a deity we’re not too sure about; religion is our attempt at getting on the right side of, or getting something from, a deity whose nature we regard as rather “iffy”. Faith, on the other hand, is our admission that we have nothing to plead before the just judge; faith is our admission that we can’t bribe God or placate him or manipulate him or impress him in any way. Faith is….
Let’s not try to define it any more precisely for now. Let’s go instead to one of our Lord’s parables where he tells us the difference between religion and faith.
I: — It’s the parable of the “Pharisee and the tax-collector”, as we like to call it. It’s a parable, says Jesus, directed at “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.” A Pharisee and a tax-collector go to church together. The Pharisee is morally circumspect. He’s squeaky clean, consistent in it all as well. He’s a genuinely good man. There’s nothing deficient or defective in his religious observance or his moral integrity. There isn’t a whiff of hypocrisy about him. As soon as he gets to church he reminds God how circumspect and how consistent he is.
Tax-collectors, we should note, were the most despised group in Israel . They made a living collecting taxes for the Roman occupation. This branded them publicly as turn-coats. Moreover, for every dollar they collected for the Roman occupation they collected two dollars for themselves. This branded them publicly as exploitative, ready to “fleece” their own people, greedy, and heartless concerning the kinfolk they kept impoverished. The Pharisee looked at this one tax-collector in church, looked away and then looked up, nose in air as he said “God, I thank you I am not like other men. They are extortioners, unjust, adulterous. I’m none of this. I am not like them. I’m not at all like this creep standing beside me.” (Jews stand to pray, remember.) The tax-collector, we’re told, made no religious claim at all. He simply cried, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
“It’s this latter fellow”, said Jesus; “it’s the tax-collector who went home justified.” To be justified is to be declared rightly related to God. To be justified is to have the sinner’s capsized relationship with God righted.
The Pharisee was out to impress God, curry favour with God, gain God’s recognition for his religious superiority. This is religion at its worst. Faith, on the other hand; faith is our humble acknowledgement that we stand before God as sinners who merit only condemnation and therefore can only throw ourselves on God’s mercy. Faith is our gratitude for God’s free acceptance as we confess that we deserve nothing of the kind. Faith is our trust in the provision God has made for everyone in the cross, which provision God alone has paid for since only he can, which provision we need as we need nothing else. But the Pharisee in the parable wants none of this. He wants recognition; he wants congratulation.
We are told that both men, Pharisee and tax-collector, go to church to worship. Worship, we should all know by now, is self-forgetful adoration of God. Self-forgetful? When the Pharisee arrives at church all he can talk about is himself. “I fast twice a week.” (Most people fasted once per year. This fellow really thinks he can accumulate credit with God.) “I tithe all that I get.” (Most people tithed only their agricultural produce.) “I thank you, God, that I’m not like other men.” (He thinks he’s everybody’s superior, at the same time that he’s self-engrossed.)
Haven’t you found that people who are caught up in ceaseless religious busyness, endless religious self-preoccupation, are secretly or overtly expecting recognition from God? – even congratulation from God – even compensation from God? – not to mention adulation from their neighbours? What is this except ever-swelling pride?
Faith, on the other hand, is always soaked in humility. Faith is the empty-handed response (“Nothing in my hand I bring” says the hymn writer) of the person who knows that God is the All-Seeing One whom she trusts to be the All-Saving One. Faith is surrender to that Judge whom she is trusting to be the Pardoner. Sin breaks God’s heart; sin provokes God’s anger; sin arouses God’s disgust. And faith? Faith clings to Jesus Christ, for in him we know that God’s mercy transcends and outweighs even his heartbreak and anger and disgust. Faith clings to Jesus Christ just because faith knows that he who is both Father and Judge is Father finally, Father ultimately, Father forever. Faith boasts of nothing; faith trusts God for one thing, everything, except that it isn’t a “thing” at all but rather is – is what, exactly?
II: — It’s the warmest welcome anyone can ever receive; it’s an ocean of joy spilling out of an ecstatic parent and cascading upon returning son or daughter. The second parable in our discussion of the grace of the kingdom concerns a young man who wishes his father were dead. (Isn’t this what is meant when he says he wants his inheritance even though his father is still alive?) This young man is given his inheritance, and he squanders it all in juvenile rebelliousness and shallow revelry and matters better left unmentioned that nonetheless cost as much cash as he has. Lonely, hungry, disgraced, he smartens up. He knows that any treatment he might get at home, however severe or cold or caustic, is going to be better than his present misery. He decides to go home.
When he arrives home, is he put on probation? That is, is he told he’s “on trial” for six months and his “case” will be reviewed then and if he’s “proved” himself by then there just might be a place for him in the basement or the room over the garage? He says he’s willing to be downgraded from son to servant, since even servants have a dry roof and adequate food. He knows that if he’s humiliated upon returning home he’ll just have to suck it up as part of the price one pays for roof and food.
When he’s still a quarter of a mile down the road his father sees him, rushes out to meet him, hugs him and babbles deliriously, “Home; my son is home; can’t you all see he’s home?”, not caring if neighbours think him silly or tasteless or senile or hysterical. There’s no attempt at humiliating the youngster, no “we’ll have to wait and see”, no downgrading of any sort. The fellow comes home prepared to grovel, only to find that shamefully though he’s behaved, he’s welcomed home with honour.
Abraham Lincoln refused to call the American Civil War “The Civil War.” Many people called it “The War Between the States”. Southerners called it “The War of Northern Aggression.” (Scarcely, is all I can say.) Lincoln always referred to it by its official name, and its official name was then and is now, “The War of the Great Rebellion.” Southerners who had taken up arms in “The War of the Great Rebellion” were rebels, Lincoln insisted, rebels only: treacherous, treasonous. Everyone knew how Lincoln spoke and why. As the war was about to end Lincoln was asked how he would treat the rebel Southerners once they had been defeated. “I shall treat them,” replied the president, “as though they had never been away.”
Shortly after I was posted to my first congregation an agitated man came to see me. He and his wife had separated several years earlier. He was still bitter and angry. In his bitterness and anger he missed no opportunity to flay his ex-wife’s family, anyone who was related to his ex-wife in any way. One day he was lashing out yet again when he added something I hadn’t heard before: “I’ll tell you one thing more. Several years ago, when my wife and I were having difficulties, my wife’s sister-in-law, whom you see every Sunday in church; she told me she was available any night I didn’t have anything to do. What do you think of that? What do you think of her?” I replied, “Once upon a time a fellow came home and his father exulted, ‘You’re home. I don’t want to hear what you did in the far country. Too much information. All that matters is you’re home.’”
When the tax-collector cried to God “Won’t you be merciful to me a sinner?” while the Pharisee beside him kept on blowing and boasting, the tax-collector was accorded the same welcome in that moment that Jesus spoke of in his best-loved parable.
III: — In light of the reception God accords us, what is our response to be? What’s our responsibility, our task? What attitude and act on our part reflect God’s attitude and act concerning us? It’s this: we who have been drenched in God’s mercy – the cross – are now to extend a similar mercy, pardon, forgiveness to all who offend us.
And there’s nothing more difficult. There’s nothing in the world more difficult than forgiving someone who has hurt us; not irked us, not annoyed us, not pricked us, but stabbed us. We are fallen creatures, and to fallen creatures there is nothing sweeter than revenge. We can spend hours fantasizing as to how we are going to even the score; how we can humiliate someone with the clever putdown. We can spend days cultivating the turn of phrase whose patent brilliance is exceeded only by its viciousness. We can give no end of time and ardour to this, all the while telling ourselves that we have a right to it, even an obligation to defend our honour and save face. Let me say it again. There’s nothing more difficult than forgiving someone who has wounded us. It can be likened only to crossbearing. Still, we who are the beneficiaries of Christ’s cross mustn’t now try to shirk our own.
For such a time as this Jesus utters the parable of the unforgiving debtor. He tells us of a man who owed a colossal sum, a sum so vast there was no possibility of his ever retiring the debt. The amount mentioned in the parable is 10,000 talents – which is to say, 15 years’ wages for a labourer. In an act of unprecedented and unforeseen generosity the creditor wiped the debt off the man’s account. On his way home this man, still exulting in the astounding favour pressed upon him, came upon a neighbour who owed him a hundred denarii, one day’s wages. He grabbed his neighbour by the throat and shouted “Pay up; all of it.”
When the two debts are compared the unforgiving debtor appears both hard-hearted and stupid. He’s hard-hearted in that a man who has just been spared unpayable debt and therefore spared imprisonment ought to have an overflowing heart. He’s stupid in that a man whose net worth has just improved by a million dollars shouldn’t be courting stomach ulcers over a piddling sum.
In the face of God’s undeserved, oceanic mercy inundating us, we appear equally hard-hearted and equally stupid if we then insist on our pound of flesh.
No doubt some of you are itching to tell me that the injury done to us isn’t piddling. It isn’t a trifle we can brush off after a good night’s sleep. The injury done to us, in truth, has been severe enough to leave us limping, even limping for life.
I deny none of this. Nonetheless, it’s only genuine injury that needs to be forgiven. Trifles don’t need to be forgiven; trifles can always be brushed off. But the injury that can’t be brushed off can only be forgiven.
Let’s be clear as to what forgiveness doesn’t mean.
(i) As I’ve already indicated, forgiveness doesn’t mean that only an imaginary offence has occurred and only feathers have been ruffled. Forgiveness presupposes genuine wound, grievous wound, bleeding wound. Still, forgiving the person who has wounded us will keep us from bleeding to death.
(ii) Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we shall always be able to pick up where we left off with the person who has harmed us. There are some relationships where injury visited upon one party shifts the relationship from the right foot to the left foot, and the relationship never gets back on the right foot. But at least forgiveness keeps resentment from gnawing us to death.
(iii) Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the attitude and act of forgiving henceforth spares either the person forgiving or the person forgiven all the consequences of the offence. Once the offence has occurred, once the stone has been dropped into the water, nothing can be done about the ripples. But at least forgiveness means that neither party is going to be drowned.
The parable of the unforgiving debtor ends on a severe note. Jesus insists that the fellow who had received the stupendous pardon and yet had refused to pardon his neighbour; this fellow finally forfeited his own pardon. How could this happen?
There are two ways of preventing water from running through a garden hose. One way is to turn off the tap; the other is to turn off the nozzle. God will never turn off the tap; he will never revoke his pardon of us. But whether his pardon continues to flow through us, or whether we forfeit that pardon, depends on what we do at the nozzle end. Mercy received is meant to be mercy shared.
Today we have examined three parables pertaining to the grace of the kingdom. They are logically connected. We cease trying to impress God, out-achieve our neighbour religiously, and instead we simply cast ourselves upon God’s mercy. He then receives us joyfully without humiliating us or putting us on probation or “downing” us in any way. Finally, the mercy he has poured upon us we don’t stifle or stop up but rather let flow through us upon others.
Life in the kingdom of God is grace; grace first, grace last, grace always.
Rev. Victor Shepherd
May 2006
The Church Reformed and Always Being Reformed In Accordance With the Word of God
Luke 18:9-14 Isaiah 55:1-9 1st Timothy 1:1-2
I: — What comes to mind as soon as you hear the word “Protestant”? Many people have told me that they think first of protest; we Protestants engendered a protest movement, and we’ve never moved beyond a protest mentality. We exist only as we criticise someone else.
If this were the case, then Protestantism would be inherently parasitic. Parasites are creatures that can’t live on their own; they have to latch onto another creature and draw their sustenance from it. Protestants, if protesters by definition, would forever need something to protest against or else we couldn’t survive. Protestants, if protesters by definition, would always know what they are against but likely wouldn’t know, if they even cared, what they are for. Protestants, if protesters by definition, would be incurable contrarians, chronic nay-sayers and fault-finders.
The truth is, the Latin word (you’ve heard me say before that Latin is the language of the Reformation) protestare is entirely positive. Protestare means to affirm, to assert, to declare, to testify, to proclaim. The Reformation didn’t begin negatively as a protest movement. It began positively as an announcement, a declaration, an affirmation, a witness. There was nothing parasitic about the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century and there is nothing parasitic about the Protestant ethos now.
If protestare means to affirm, declare, testify, what are we declaring? To what do we bear witness?
II: — The Reformers upheld the priority of grace in all the ways and works of God; the priority of grace in God’s approach to us and God’s activity within us. The Reformers maintained that over the centuries the priority of grace had become obscured, silted over, as there was gradually covered up what ought always to be at the forefront of Christian faith, understanding and discipleship.
If people today are asked what they understand by “grace”, most of them will say “God’s unmerited favour.” They aren’t wrong. But what they’ve said is more a description than a definition. Grace, according to scripture, is God’s faithfulness; specifically, God’s faithfulness to his covenant with us; God’s faithfulness to his promise eve to be our God, always to be with us and for us, never to fail us or forsake us, never to abandon us in frustration or quit on us in disgust.
God keeps the covenant-promise he makes to us. We, however, violate the covenant-promise – always and everywhere to be his people – we make to him. We are sinners. When God’s faithfulness meets our sin, his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. In our reading of the Apostle Paul’s letters we can’t fail to notice how often he begins the letter by stating “Grace, mercy and peace to you.” Grace, as we’ve noted already, is God’s covenant faithfulness. Mercy is God’s covenant faithfulness meeting our sin and overcoming it as God forgives us our sin and delivers us from it. Mercy, then, is God’s covenant faithfulness relieving us of sin’s guilt and releasing us from sin’s grip. Peace – here’s where you have pay extra-close attention – is not peace of mind or peace in our heart (at least not in the first instance). Peace here is shalom. Paul is a Jew, and when he speaks of peace he has in mind the Hebrew understanding of shalom. Shalom is God’s restoration of his people. Shalom, peace, then, is the same as salvation.
Crucial to the Reformation was a biblical understanding of how all this occurs. According to scripture, God expects us to honour our covenant with him. He looks everywhere in the human creation, only to discover that he can’t find one, single human being who fulfils his or her covenant with God. Whereupon God says to himself, “If humankind’s covenant with me is going to be humanly fulfilled (only a human, after all, can fulfil humankind’s covenant with God), then I’ll have to do it myself.” And so we have the Christmas story as God comes among us in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the Incarnation. And then we have the Good Friday story (“God’s Friday”, our mediaeval foreparents called it) where Jesus renders that uttermost human obedience which you and I don’t render; renders that uttermost human obedience which turns out to be obedience even unto death. And this human obedience unto death, thanks to the Incarnation, is God himself taking upon himself his own just judgement on sinners. This is the atonement.
In the Incarnation and the atonement the covenant is fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the covenant-keeper. You and I, sinners, are covenant-breakers. Then by faith we must cling to Jesus Christ our covenant-keeper. As we cling to him in faith we are so tightly fused to him that when the Father looks upon the Son with whom he is ever pleased, the Father sees you and me included in the Son. Covenant-breakers in ourselves, we are deemed covenant-keepers in Christ as by faith we cling to the covenant-keeper with whom we are now identified before God. And this is our salvation.
Salvation is by grace alone, since God has graciously given his Son to be the covenant-keeper on our behalf. Salvation is by faith alone, since by faith we embrace the Son who has already embraced us. Salvation is on account of Christ alone, since Jesus Christ is both God’s mercy pressed upon us and representative human obedience offered to the Father.
To affirm that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone is to deny all forms of merit.
(i) It is to deny all forms of moral merit. Our salvation doesn’t arise because we are morally superior to others and therefore have a claim before God which they haven’t. Here we should recall the parable of the two men who go to the temple to pray (Luke 18), one a despicable creature as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, without a moral bone in his body; the other a paragon of virtue. The moral champion boasts before God of all his moral achievements, none of which is to be doubted. The creep, on the other hand, can only cry “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus tells us that it’s the latter fellow, the one with nothing to plead except God’s mercy – this man goes home “justified” says Jesus, where “justified” means “rightly related to God.
(ii) It is also to deny all forms of religious merit. Our salvation doesn’t arise – neither is it aided – by religious observances of greater or less rigour or notoriety, as if God’s purpose were to render us hyper-religious. (Hyper-religiosity ends in an illness that psychiatrists call homo religiosus.)
(iii) It is also to deny all forms of institutional merit. Our salvation doesn’t occur because we have conformed to churchly edicts or traditions or prescriptions.
To affirm with the Reformers that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone is to recover essential truth that had gradually become silted over as century followed century. “Nothing in my hand I bring” cries the hymn writer; “nothing – simply to thy cross I cling.”
When this gospel truth was declared and received people gloried in their new-found freedom. They were freed from any and all forms of trying to placate God or curry favour with him or impress him or bribe him. They were freed from anxiously asking themselves “Have I done enough? How will I ever know if I’ve done enough? Is my ‘enough’ good enough?” They gloried in the truth that in Jesus Christ God had done what needed to be done. Not only had God kept his covenant with humankind, in his Incarnate Son he had also kept humankind’s covenant with God. Now men and women needed only to own it in faith, thank him for it, glory in the relief it brought them and the release they could enjoy forever. Their guilt, their anxiety, their guessing games, their insecurity – it was gone. They gloried in the freedom that God’s grace had brought them.
Either we uphold the priority of God’s grace in all his ways and works upon us and within us or we uphold a meritocracy of some sort, whether moral or religious or institutional. In all meritocracies we think we have to earn God’s favour, only to be left assuming that we have earned it (and now are insufferably self-righteous); or we are left assuming that we haven’t earned it (and now are inconsolably despairing.)
Grace, mercy, peace (shalom). The priority of grace means that God’s loving faithfulness will see his people through their disobedience, through their covenant-breaking. The priority of grace means that God has pledged himself to see his people saved by his free grace for the sake of their glorious freedom before him.
III: — The priority of grace, continued the Reformers, entails “the priesthood of all believers.” Protestants have always been quick to speak of “the priesthood of all believers.”
I’ve been asked more than once, “If all believers constitute a priesthood, then what’s the meaning of ordination? Is there any place in the Protestant understanding for an ordained ministry?” Plainly there is. Before we probe what’s meant by “the priesthood of all believers”, then, we should understand the place of ordained ministry.
The ordained minister doesn’t have powers, spiritual powers, that unordained Christians lack. To be sure, I am the only person in this congregation who presides at Holy Communion. We must understand, however, that this is simply to maintain order. It isn’t the case that I am the only person to preside because the sacrament will “work” if I administer it but it won’t work if a non-ordained person administered it. Ultimately it is effective (i.e., it is a vehicle of Christ’s cementing himself ever more deeply into our lives) just because Christ has pledged to give himself afresh to us, unfailingly, every time Holy Communion is administered, regardless of who administers it. The ordained minister doesn’t have powers that others lack.
The ordained minister does have, however, a responsibility that others don’t have. Specifically, the ordained minister is essential to the church in that someone, by vocation, aptitude and study – someone has to ensure that the congregation’s understanding of Jesus Christ doesn’t drift away from that of the apostles.
The apostles are the normative witnesses to Jesus Christ. While Christ is different from James and John and Peter – that is, Christ is person in his own right and can never be reduced to the apostles – hearing and obeying Christ himself always takes the form of hearing and obeying the witness of James and John and Peter. In other words, we honour Jesus Christ only by honouring the normative witnesses to him. We receive him only insofar as we receive them. It is the responsibility of the ordained minister to see to it that the congregation doesn’t drift from the apostolic understanding of our Lord, but rather in all aspects of individual faith and congregational life the congregation conforms to the apostolic pattern of believing upon Jesus and obeying him.
Make no mistake. Left to itself – that is, in the absence of the ordained minister – a congregation will always drift. First of all it drifts by retaining biblical words but filling them with non-biblical meanings. Drift is already underway, for instance, when the word “sin” is equated with immorality. (No one in this congregation is flagrantly immoral or criminal, yet everyone in this congregation is sinner through-and-through.) Drift has occurred when the word “faith” is thought to mean “feeling optimistic in general.” Drift has occurred when the word “God” comes to mean “there is a cosmic power in the universe that’s greater than any one of us or all of us put together.”
The next stage of drift is substituting the Reader’s Digest for scripture at worship; or the singing of such nonsense as “God is watching from a distance” instead of hymns that speak of the Holy One of Israel; or as it has been suggested to me, using juice and cookies at Holy Communion instead of bread and the cup. Left to itself a congregation always drifts and will continue to drift until it has turned 180 degrees away from the gospel without knowing it.
Ordained ministry is essential to the church just because someone by vocation, aptitude, and study has to ensure that the congregation doesn’t drift away from what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”
Then what is meant by the “the priesthood of all believers”? In the Older Testament, priests are those engaged in the service of God, specifically in an intercessory service. “Priesthood of all believers” means that any Christian may engage in an intercessory service on behalf of his or her fellow-Christian.
Think of the matter of confession of sin. In one of his treatises Luther maintained that there are several forms of confession. One is what we do here Sunday by Sunday: as part of public worship the minister gathers up the people’s confession of sin and voices it before God, even as in the name of Jesus Christ the minister pronounces absolution (pardon, forgiveness) for the people. This is a public, liturgical form of confession. Then, said Luther, there’s a private form. Someone visits the clergyman, unburdens herself concerning the sin she can no longer deny, and awaits the pastor’s pronouncement of absolution or pardon. There’s one more form, says Luther: any Christian at all may hear a fellow-Christian’s confession of sin and pronounce absolution in the name of Christ.
We must be clear about this matter. We are not dealing with psychotherapy, or at least not dealing with psychotherapy in the first instance. We are dealing with something profounder than that, a spiritual matter of ultimate significance. The Reformers were convinced that since the Church is defined in terms of the people of God rather than in terms of clergy function or clergy hierarchy; since the Church is the people of God then the people of God can hear each other’s confession and pronounce God’s pardon in the name of Christ.
This is not a devaluation of ordained ministry. It is rather the elevation of God’s people.
The mother who overhears her child’s prayers at night and who listens to her child’s tearful apology during the day is engaged in a priestly activity. The board member who offers counsel to the fellow-board member too embarrassed to speak with the minister is engaged in a priestly service. Jean Vanier, the Canadian born to the aristocracy who has given himself to disadvantaged folk, especially men who are severely intellectually challenged; Vanier also spends much time visiting the impoverished, the sick, the confused, the forgotten geriatric patient in the back ward of a substandard facility. Vanier says that frequently he comes upon someone whose mental or bodily distress is overwhelming. All he can do, he tells us, is put his hand on the sufferer’s head (a scriptural sign of intercession) and say “Jesus.” This too is priestly service.
Another dimension to “priesthood of all believers”: any Christian’s daily work, done in accordance with the command claim of God, done with integrity, done conscientiously, done so as to give full value for compensation received; any Christian’s daily work, done so as to please God, has the same spiritual significance as the work of clergyman, monk, or nun.
I wince whenever I hear it said of someone offering herself for ordained ministry, “She has decided to enter fulltime Christian service.” Full time? What about the homemaker? Is she engaged in part time service? Which part of the homemaker’s day is “Christian”? God is honoured by the labourer who renders a day’s work for a day’s pay. God isn’t honoured by the clergyman who waits until the Saturday night hockey game is over before starting to think about what he’s going to say to his congregation next morning.
“Priesthood of all believers” means there are no higher callings and no lower callings. There is no double standard of discipleship for ordained and non-ordained. There is only the integrity in the workplace that is to characterize whatever we do for a living. There is only the service we can render on behalf of a needy neighbour whose suffering is undeniable. There is only the word and truth, pardon and patience of Jesus Christ that all Christians are privileged to mirror to each other, since all of us are to be icons of our Lord to our fellow-believers.
The title of today’s sermon is Ecclesia Reformata ET Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei – the Church reformed and always being reformed in accordance with the Word of God, the gospel. The truth is, no church, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, can coast. All churches, all denominations, all congregations become silted over with accretion after accretion that may look like the gospel but in fact has nothing to do with the gospel; silted over until the gospel is obscured – unless – unless such congregation or such denomination is constantly being reformed in accordance with the gospel.
Victor Shepherd
Reformation Sunday 2006
Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei
The Crucial Encounter: Zacchaeus
Luke 19:1-10
Everyone knows that fire attracts animals. The fire can be small, a family bonfire in a provincial park on a summer evening. The fire can be huge, like the fire at Woodbine Race Track that killed 28 horses two years ago. But whether large or small, fire attracts animals – even as the same fire keeps the animals at bay. There’s something about fire that irresistibly draws an animal, but only to a point; for fire simultaneously renders an animal apprehensive, even fearful.
I: — Many people react to Jesus Christ as an animal reacts to fire. Our Lord attracts people; they are drawn to him, and they do approach him. They want to move closer, but not too close for comfort. They are attracted to him at the same time that they are wary of him.
Zacchaeus was like this. He had heard much about Jesus, was intrigued by what he had heard and decided he had to check Jesus out for himself. He found a curious crowd in Jericho that was waiting for Jesus, and joined it. Now Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was a short man. Then why didn’t he stand at the front of the crowd if he wanted to see Jesus? Children stand at the front of a crowd. Zacchaeus was an adult, and no adult wants to be identified with children. Moreover, if he stood at the front of the crowd then all the adults taller than he, standing behind him, would be looking at him. He would feel their eyes boring holes in the back of his head. After all, no one liked Zacchaeus, and he knew it. He was a tax collector, commissioned by the hated Roman occupation. This alone was enough to make him resented. Worse, however, he defrauded people even as he collected money from them on behalf of the government. The last thing Zacchaeus wanted was to put himself on display in a crowd. Yes, he wanted to see Jesus, but he didn’t want to be seen seeing Jesus. And so he climbed a tree. The tree-perch was perfect. The tree-perch would let him see Jesus even as it protected him from the crowd. Even more important, the tree-perch would allow him to see Jesus without being seen by Jesus. He’d be close enough to “get a line” on the man from Nazareth , yet far enough away to be out of reach; close enough to see for himself, yet distant enough to be safe. Certainly he was curious; just as certainly he wasn’t committed. He wanted to assess Jesus for himself, but he didn’t want to be noticed – not by the crowd, not by Jesus. The tree-perch was perfect.
I’m convinced there are many people like Zacchaeus in that they surmise that Jesus just might have ever so much to do with life, but they aren’t sure. They want to assess the Nazarene but they don’t want to appear over-zealous. They want to know if he has anything to say to them or do for them, but at the same time they want to remain “cool.” And so they too “climb a tree,” as it were. They may slip into the back row of church minutes after the service has started and leave before they are pressed into the coffee hour. They may seek out a church large enough to guarantee them anonymity. They may even avoid coming to a church building at all, preferring to read about Jesus in half a dozen books in the hope that they can take note of him without being noticed by anyone, including him.
What do these people want? What are they looking for?
[1] I’m convinced they want a centre for life. They want a perspective from which they can see life whole. They want a standpoint from which they can see life integrated. They fear seeing life like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces jumbled; worse, they fear having to piece life together themselves when some of the pieces to the puzzle might be missing.
At the same time as they seek a centre to life, however, they are nervous about religious eccentricity. They are suspicious of religious extremism. They’ve seen “religious” people “go overboard;” they’ve seen people “fished in” by religious “hype.” Even as there’s much they want to apprehend there’s also much that keeps them apprehensive. And so they find a tree of some sort that will get them close enough to Jesus to satisfy their curiosity but far enough away to keep them safe.
[2] I’m convinced too that such people are looking for resources. While they’d never be able to quote or find the verse which speaks of those who “have the form of religion but deny the power of it,” they perceive the distinction. “The power of it” is what they think they’re looking for; “the form of it” they shun like the plague. Simply put, they want help; they want help for getting through life.
As eager as they are to find help, however, they don’t want to appear desperate. They don’t even want to appear needy. They might not use the teenager’s expression, “no sweat,” yet they don’t want to appear driven. They want to save face, want to appear to be in control, want to appear intellectually inquisitive but never credulous.
[3] I’m convinced too that such people are looking for foundational certainties. They want to know that God is, God cares, God blesses. They want to prove for themselves not that God makes a difference to life (good digestion makes a difference.) They want to prove for themselves God makes the difference.
They want certainty. But they don’t want the artificial “certainty” of propaganda; they don’t want the certainty enjoyed by those who won’t think critically; they don’t want the certainty of those who try to quell their doubt by talking to themselves in a loud voice. (You must have heard the story of the minister who left his sermon notes in the pulpit. On Monday morning the church custodian found them and began to read. He noticed, pencilled into the margin, the minister’s instruction to himself: “Pound pulpit here: argument weak.”) People want the certainty of inner persuasion, not the so-called certainty of outer authoritarianism. They know that if they can recognize truth when they come upon truth, they will have all the certainty they will ever need. And when it comes to truth, they suspect that Jesus is somehow linked to it. They want to come close enough to find out, yet remain distant enough to avoid being hassled.
Zacchaeus isn’t unusual at all. There are hordes like him. They find a tree and climb it. The tree lets them find out a few things for themselves at the same time that it spares them embarrassment at appearing needy.
II: — What happens to them next? What happened to Zacchaeus? Jesus stands at the foot of the tree, looks up at the little fellow and says, “What on earth are you doing up there? Come on down. I’m going to your house. We’re going to eat together.” If Jesus had said, “Get off that silly perch, you twit,” Zacchaeus would still be in the tree. Who doesn’t stiffen when told in such a manner as to be “told off?” Who doesn’t dig in his heels when he’s publicly humiliated? Only one thing brings Zacchaeus out of the tree: our Lord’s insistence that he’s going to the little man’s home; our Lord’s insistence that they’re going to share a meal.
In first-century Palestine eating with someone was the sign of intimacy, the sign of agenda-free friendship. To eat with someone meant that embraced that person without reservation; you cherished him without hesitation; you received him without qualification. To eat with someone meant that no ulterior motive was going to surface half way through the meal. To eat with someone meant that you were declaring amnesty, regardless of what hostility might have arisen previously. It was a declaration of pardon, of peace, of solidarity. The shared meal was the sign of exile ended, of rehabilitation begun, of elevation to honour, of dignity restored.
Only Christ’s limitless mercy, forgiveness, kindness; only his freely-bestowed pardon frees people from their defensiveness and induces them to give up their tree perch. Magnifying their shortcomings won’t do it. (This merely humiliates them.) Sending them on unnecessary guilt trips won’t do it. (This drives them either into self-righteous priggishness or into neurotic despair.)
We should notice that Zacchaeus’s reputation – so very bad it couldn’t be worse, and all of it deserved – Jesus doesn’t even mention. He knows that Zacchaeus has “fleeced” people for years, yet chooses to say nothing about it for now. Tree-perchers are never persuaded to abandon their roost through being harangued or threatened or browbeaten. They are never persuaded to give up the safety of their perch through being reminded, subtly or not so subtly, of the defects about them which they and others can see only too plainly. They abandon their perch only as they find in the approach of Jesus Christ something they never expected; namely, a pardon and a joy that melts their suspicion and lifts their head.
At the end of our Lord’s encounter with Zacchaeus Jesus exclaims, “Salvation has come to this house.” And so it has. Most people are rather vague about the meaning of “salvation.” It’s really quite simple. Salvation is simply a creaturely good, damaged and devastated by sin, restored at God’s hand. Ultimately salvation is the entire creation restored. As far as Zacchaeus is concerned, salvation is one particular creature restored: Zacchaeus.
Restored to what? Restored to whom? Through his encounter with Jesus Christ, Zacchaeus, created to be a child of God but now hissed at as a child of the devil, is restored to being a child of God. He’s restored to a place within a community that had detested him, and not without reason. He’s restored to himself, for prior to his encounter with Jesus Zacchaeus knew he was on the wrong side of everyone, including himself. Reconciled now to God, he’s reconciled as well to his community and also to himself. A multi-dimensional reconciliation like this adds up to restoration. “Salvation has come to this house.”
III: — How does Zacchaeus respond? He doesn’t say “Isn’t this grand!” and go on living with nothing changed. Instead, the grace that now surrounds him quickens gratitude in him. Zacchaeus exclaims to Jesus, “From now on I’m going to share everything I own with any needy person I find; and if I’ve cheated anyone, I’m ready to repay him four times over.” It was the big giveaway. All his life he’d been a greedy grabber; now he wants only to give. His turned-around outlook was the spontaneous outflowing of his delight in his new friend. He didn’t have to have his arm twisted. Jesus didn’t have to lean on him or coax him or pester him. With grace-quickened gratitude Zacchaeus gladly did what he knew a disciple should do.
When I was a youngster my mother would ask to me rake the leaves or shovel the snow or wash the windows. I would do it all right, but do it grudgingly. She would recognize my sullen resentment at being asked to do anything. Exasperated now she’d gasp, “I’m asking you to do only one little thing. Why do you have to look so hard done by?” Under my breath (always under my breath: my mother was formidable and still is) I’d mutter, “You wanted the leaves raked. You’re getting the leaves raked. What’s your objection?”
I didn’t understand her objection and her upset when I was thirteen. I do understand it now that I’m sixty. A claim upon us that we don’t meet cheerfully, gladly, is a claim upon us that we haven’t met at all. Haven’t all of us, at some point, asked someone to give us a hand with some small task only to find that he did it so very grudgingly that we wished we’d never asked him? Martin Luther never wearied of reminding us that an obedience which isn’t glad and joyful and eager is simply no obedience at all. When next we teach a Sunday School class, drive a patient on behalf of the Cancer Society, sit with someone whose problem seems slight to us but distressing to her, assist someone who, for now at least, can only receive while we can only give, or attend church meetings that are less than thrilling but without which there’d be no Christian presence in the community at all – on all such occasions we must re-own this truth.
When people hear the expression “the claim of Christ” (make no mistake: as long as we are going to call him “Lord” we have to acknowledge his claim) immediately they think “‘claim’: that means restraint, restriction, something that inhibits freedom and suppresses joy.” Not so. In gladly obeying our Lord who has given himself readily for us, we shall find, as Zacchaeus knew, not that our lives have shrivelled but rather that they’ve expanded; not that our Lord’s claim deprives us of our freedom, but rather that it guarantees us our freedom; not that we are being squeezed into a cramping mould that threatens to suffocate us, but that we are delivered from all the cramping moulds of social expectation and social conformity and social climbing. In a word, it’s the claim of Christ that frees us to recognize and reject all fraudulent claims. For all other claims are cramping and suffocating, not to say arbitrary and ridiculous. Just because the claim of Christ frees us from all other claims, and just because the claim of Christ is the obverse side of his mercy wherein he wants only to bless us, only the claim of Christ liberates.
When I say, with my Reformation foreparents, that unless the command of God or the claim of Christ is obeyed cheerfully and eagerly it isn’t obeyed at all; when I say this I’m not pretending for a minute that the Christian life is uninterrupted ecstasy. I’m not pretending that Christians are, or are supposed to be, jumping up and down at all times like a two year bouncing up and down in his jolly jumper. At the same time, I must insist that if we haven’t apprehended the privilege, the sheer privilege, of serving Jesus Christ in a world whose suffering never relents, then we are far from the kingdom. We remain far from the outlook and attitude of a little man who scampered out of a tree, went home to eat with Jesus, and gladly turned himself around. A reluctant or joyless obedience is no obedience at all.
So, who is up a tree this morning? Who not? How and why do we come down? What mood or attitude characterizes our obedience, eating with him who is both our companion in life and indeed the bread of life?
These questions are the questions we’ve endeavoured to answer today. Then may our re-hearing the old, old story of our Lord’s encounter with Zacchaeus, in the oldest city of the world ( Jericho ,) write indelibly these truths upon our minds and hearts.
Victor Shepherd
June 2004
On Honouring A Foreparent In Faith: John Wesley and ‘The Duty Of Constant Communion’
Luke 22: 19 1 Corinthians 11:27 -29
The fifth of the Ten Commandments tells us that we are to honour our father and mother in order that our days may be long in the land that the Lord our God gives us. Most immediately we are to honour our biological father and mother, those who begat us and bore us and gave us life, and whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement helped us past pitfalls when we were less than mature.
Lutheran Christians ever since Martin himself have believed that God intends a wider application of the fifth commandment. Lutherans have always believed that “Honour your father and mother” also means “Honour all — however long dead — whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement now assist you, inspire you, make you wise; in short, honour all whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement continue to help you past pitfalls in your discipleship since your faith isn’t yet mature.” If our Lutheran friends are correct, then we obey the fifth commandment as we honour our foreparents in faith.
One such foreparent of all Christians is John Wesley. He can help us past many pitfalls that surround us and concerning which we need help, since our faith is less than mature. Today we are going to honour him by taking to heart his convictions concerning Holy Communion.
In 1787, when Wesley was 84 years old, he wrote a tract called, “The Duty of Constant Communion”. His 1787 tract was a re-write of the tract he had penned 55 years earlier in 1732. “Five and fifty years ago”, he tells us in that English style which is archaic in the 21st Century, “Five and fifty years ago the following discourse was written for the use of my pupils at Oxford … I then used more words than I do now. But I thank God I have not yet seen cause to alter my sentiments in any point which is therein delivered.” (He means that what he believed in 1732 he still believed in 1787.)
Immediately Wesley says that while he isn’t surprised at people who don’t fear God being indifferent to Holy Communion, he finds it incomprehensible that many who do fear God are infrequently found at the Lord’s table. When he asked these people why they shied away from Holy Communion they quoted Paul’s word in 1st Corinthians 11:27: “Whoever…eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” In Wesley’s era God-fearing people were absenting themselves from Holy Communion inasmuch as they regarded themselves unworthy and didn’t want to bring the judgement of God upon them.
It still happens. On the first communion Sunday of my first pastoral charge I stepped into the sanctuary to begin worship only to find that the congregation had segregated itself, some worshippers sitting on one side of the sanctuary, other worshippers on the other side. I asked what this meant and was told that on communion Sundays the congregation divided itself into those deeming themselves worthy and those unworthy. I was appalled, and immediately had everyone sit together. Whatever Paul meant by “eating and drinking unworthily” he didn’t mean that.
Let us be sure we understand something crucial. God is free; God is sovereign; therefore God can meet us anywhere at any time in any manner through any means. Nevertheless, he has promised that he will invariably meet – unfailingly meet us – through scripture, sermon and sacrament. In other words, while we may be overtaken by God at any time by any means (surprised by God, that is) we know that we shall find God for sure, every time, at scripture, sermon and sacrament. Therefore we must never absent ourselves from these. When well-intentioned yet misguided people told Wesley they absented themselves from Holy Communion lest they endanger themselves through partaking “unworthily”, he told them they were endangering themselves far more by not partaking at all. And then he told them why they were at spiritual risk for not partaking at all.
I: — In the first place, Wesley reminded them, it is the Lord’s command that we come to his table. “Do this in remembrance of me. Do it.” It’s an imperative, not a suggestion. Jesus Christ commands us to come to his table. It is therefore the obligation of everyone who believes in him to obey him and come. Not to come is simply to defy and disdain the one we call “Lord”. But to call Christ “Lord” is to obey him, at least to want to obey him, to be eager to obey him. How can we call upon him as Lord, admit that he who is Lord is also our Justifier, yet continue to regard ourselves as unworthy? More to the point, he hasn’t commanded us to come if first we deem ourselves worthy; he has simply commanded us to come.
Then Wesley adds a footnote. On the eve of his death Jesus told his followers that he wouldn’t call them servants, since a servant merely obeys without being admitted intimately to the mind and heart of the servant’s master. Rather because he himself, continued Jesus, because he has drawn his followers most intimately into his mind and heart he calls them servants no longer but friends. (John 15:15) “Now”, says Wesley, “if our Lord draws us so intimately into his mind and heart as to call us friends, surely we can’t turn down his final request. What friend turns down his dying friend’s final request?”
There is another point, not made by Wesley, yet too important for us not to mention. In the ancient world the word “friend” was rich with several meanings. In Israel “friend” had a special meaning; it meant “best man” at a wedding. In Rome “friend” had a special meaning too; it meant “someone intensely loyal to Caesar”. No one can imagine the best man at a wedding failing to do what the bridegroom has asked him to do. No one can imagine a Roman soldier publicly declaring his utmost loyalty to Caesar and then publicly refusing to do what Caesar asks of him.
“Absent ourselves from Holy Communion, for any reason?” Wesley asks; “Don’t we know what the word ‘friend’ means?”
II: — In the second place, says Wesley, Holy Communion is more than just God’s command; it is also God’s provision for our spiritual need. To be sure, Christians are sinners who have come to faith and repentance through the incursion of God’s Spirit. Yes, we have passed from death to life, from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from guilt to acquittal, from shame to glory. Nevertheless, sin still dogs us. Our glory isn’t without some tarnish; our freedom isn’t without niggling habituation. Yes, we live in the light of him who is light; still, that darkness which our Lord has overcome hasn’t yet been wholly overcome in us. Or as Martin Luther used to say, “In putting on Christ in faith we have also put on the new man (woman); the old man is therefore put to death; but the stinker doesn’t die quietly.” In other words, however strong our faith, in fact it is weak. However mature our discipleship, we have not yet graduated. However resilient we think we are in the company of our Lord, we are yet frail and fragile and faltering. Therefore we can’t afford to pass up any provision God has made for us in our need of greater deliverance. For this reason Wesley speaks of Holy Communion as “a mercy of God to man.” Quoting Psalm 145:9 (“God’s mercy is over all his works”) Wesley reminds us that however God deals with us — whether gently or roughly, whether starkly or subtly, whether suddenly or slowly — whatever God does to us and with us he does ultimately just because he is for us. Therefore everything God does to us and with us is finally an expression of God’s mercy. In light of this, who is so foolish as to absent herself from the most dramatic representation of that mercy, Holy Communion?
Wesley never hesitated to be blunt. Because partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a command of God, he said, to spurn it is to announce that we have no piety; and because partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a mercy of God, to spurn it is to announce that we have no wisdom. Piety, Wesley had learned from John Calvin, is the love of God and the fear of God. To be without piety is therefore ultimately to be insensitive to God. To be without wisdom is simply to be fools.
Fools? Yes, says Wesley as he develops a theme that runs like a thread through all his writings. The theme is this: none but the holy are finally happy. He insists tirelessly that God has fashioned us for happiness. Not for superficial jollity or frivolity or sentimentality, but certainly for deep-down contentment, joy, happiness. Let’s not forget that the Greek word MAKARIOS, rendered “blessed” in most English translations of the beatitudes (“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”, etc.); the Greek word MAKARIOS also means “happy” (in both ancient Greek and modern Greek). Of course. How could we ever be blessed — by God himself — and finally be miserable?
To be sure, there is no end to the pleasure we can find in nature; no end to the pleasure we can find in culture; no end to the pleasure we can find in our own bodiliness and our intellectual life. Nonetheless, there is one delight that all of this can’t give us: our “enjoyment” of God, in Wesley’s words. Wesley insists there is one throbbing pleasure that God’s children know and unbelievers can’t know: “delight in God”.
Now, says the indefatigable man himself, only as we are holy are we profoundly happy. Yet we can’t render ourselves holy. Holy Communion is one of God’s provisions to render us holy. To absent ourselves from it is to cut ourselves off from that blessedness which is our greatest happiness.
III: — In Wesley’s day (the 1700s) as in our day people put forward a variety of reasons as to why they don’t or even shouldn’t come to the Lord’s Supper. We need not suspect these people of insincerity; the reasons they put forward aren’t excuses offered lamely. Those who absent themselves from the Lord’s Supper are sincere, says Wesley — and they are sincerely wrong.
One reason put forward. “I have sinned, and therefore I am not fit to communicate.” Wesley said this was nothing short of ridiculous, however well intentioned. While sin is a violation of the command of God, we don’t atone for violating the command of God by violating another command (to communicate). Nobody atones for the sin of theft by committing the sin of murder. If we have sinned (better, since we sin) there is all the more reason for betaking ourselves to Holy Communion where we shall find — for sure — in the words of Wesley, “the forgiveness of our past sins” and “the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls.”
Another reason put forward for not attending Holy Communion. “I can’t live up to the promise made in the communion service to remain Christ’s true follower.” Wesley agrees: none of us can live up to the promise. At the same time, he tells us, none of us lives up to any of the promises we make anywhere in life. But this is no excuse for not making a promise. Do we refuse to get married (with the promise marriage entails) on the grounds that we are never going to be the perfect spouse?
Another reason put forward. “Frequent partaking of the Lord’s Supper will diminish our reverence for the sacrament.” “What if it did?” says Wesley; “Would this render null and void the command of God?” Needless to say, it is Wesley’s conviction that frequent communion, so far from diminishing our reverence for the sacrament, will only increase it.
Another reason advanced for not coming to the Lord’s Table. “I have come so very many times already, and I don’t feel I have benefited in any way.” Here Wesley replies in two instalments. In the first place, the issue that can’t be dodged, he repeats yet again, is the command of God. God insists that we honour him and his will for us by bringing ourselves and whatever faith we have to that table where we can meet him for sure. In the second place, we have benefited from regular attendance at the Lord’s Supper regardless of how much or how little we may feel. Even when we feel nothing, says Wesley, we are being “strengthened, made more fit for the service of God, and more constant in it.” What’s more, he continues, not only have we benefited where we feel we haven’t, but also the day comes when feeling catches up to fact; what has been real in our hearts, albeit hidden in our hearts, is now manifested within our hearts so as to leave us without complaint concerning feeling.
The most telling objection to frequent communion came from those who trembled before Paul’s word in 1st Corinthians 11. “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” What is the unworthiness that Paul has in mind? It isn’t an extraordinary, inner, personal unworthiness. Then what is it? The clue to it is given two verses later. “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body – i.e., the body of Christ, the congregation – eats and drinks judgement upon himself.” We must recall the situation in Corinth . The congregation there was a mess. Party-factions were fragmenting the congregation. One man was involved in open incest and no one seemed to care. Parishioners preferred religious “glitz” to spiritual profundity. Boasting had supplanted cross-bearing. Within the congregation there flourished bitterness, lovelessness, self-exaltation, superficiality and sleaze. Paul said it had to end. The Corinthians had lost sight of the fact that the congregation is Christ’s body. Currently the body in Corinth appeared hideous. Anyone who came to the Lord’s Supper without discerning this, said Paul, was in a sorry state herself.
In other words, when we come to Holy Communion we must understand that because the congregation is Christ’s body, we must be determined to ensure that it exhibits itself as Christ’s body, lest the watching world pour contempt upon him who is the head of the body, Christ Jesus himself. To eat and drink worthily is simply to come to the Lord’s Supper determined to live together as a congregation so as to bring honour to the congregation’s Lord. Therefore let all who have resolved to do this never absent themselves from the service.
It is only fitting that we let John Wesley himself have the last word. When he has finished telling us why we must come to Holy Communion, and come constantly; when he has finished replying to the well-intentioned but groundless reasons that people advance for not coming, he then concludes his tract, “If any who have hitherto neglected [Holy Communion] on any of these pretences will lay these things to heart, they will, by the grace of God, come to a better mind, and never more forsake their own mercies.”
Victor Shepherd
May 2007
This paper first appeared in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington) in January of 1995.
What It is to Remember (and to Forget)
Luke 22:14-23 Chronicles 16:8-13 Galatians 2:1-10
At least once a week I tell my seminary students that of all the subjects in the theological curriculum the most important, unquestionably, is Old Testament. For it’s through studying the Old(er) Testament that we come to know the specific Hebrew meanings of common English words.
Today we are going to probe the Hebrew meaning of “remember”. We shall be helped to understand “remember” if we first learn the meaning of “forget”. To forget, in modern discourse, is simply to have an idea or notion slip out of the mind. To forget a person is simply no longer to have the idea of that person in one’s consciousness. But in the Hebrew bible to forget someone is much more serious: to forget someone is to annihilate that person, obliterate him, destroy him. When the Israelites cried to God not to forget them they didn’t mean, “Be sure to think of us once in a while.” They meant, “Don’t annihilate us, don’t blot us out.” It’s obvious that to forget, in Hebrew, has to do not with ideas but with living realities. In the same manner to remember has to do not with recollecting notions but with living realities. In a word, to remember, Hebraically, is to bring a past event up into the present so that what happened back then continues to happen right now — and is therefore the operative reality of our existence. What unfolded back then, altering forever those whom it touched then, continues to be operative now, altering forever those who “remember” it now. When the Israelites are urged to remember the deliverance from slavery of their foreparents centuries earlier they aren’t being urged merely to recollect a historical fact; rather they are being urged to live the same reality themselves, the reality of deliverance, seven hundred years later. Just as their foreparents knew most intimately a great deliverance at God’s hand, together with the gratitude and the obedience which that deliverance quickened, so they are now to know most intimately a similar deliverance at God’s hand, together with a similar gratitude and a similar obedience.
This is very different from the way we speak of remembering today. When we remember we merely bring to mind the idea or notion of a long-gone event. But when our Hebrew foreparents spoke of remembering they meant something far stronger; they meant that what had happened in the past continued to be a present, operative, life-altering reality.
I: — Over and over the Hebrew bible insists that God remembers. God remembers his covenant; God remembers his holy promise; God remembers his steadfast love; God remembers his mercy. All of these at bottom are the same. God’s covenant is his bond with us. Of his own grace and truth God has bound himself to his people. He will never quit on us out of weariness or give up on us out of frustration or desert us out of disgust. He has pledged himself to us. To be sure, his gracious pledge to us aims at forging in us our grateful pledge to him; as he binds himself to us we are to bind ourselves to him. Nevertheless, even though we break our covenant with him he never breaks his with us. Our gratitude to him may be — is — as fitful as our moods; nonetheless, his graciousness towards us is unvarying.
The psalmist tells us that God remembers his holy promise. His covenant is his promise, and because he “remembers” it his promise remains operative no matter what.
And since the God whose promise is forever operative is the God whose nature is a fountain of effervescing love, the psalmist maintains that God remembers his steadfast love.
And when this love meets our sin, this love takes the form of mercy; God remembers his mercy. In a word, the operative reality permeating the entire universe at this moment is God’s remembered covenant, promise, steadfast love and mercy.
Since God is God his memory must be exceedingly good; in fact, is there anything God doesn’t remember? Does God have a photographic memory, remembering everything forever? The truth is, God is supremely good at forgetting; he loves to forget, literally “loves” to forget. A minute ago I said that to forget, in Hebrew, doesn’t mean to let slip out of one’s mind accidentally; to forget is to annihilate deliberately, blot out, obliterate. To God’s people who humble themselves penitently before him, says the prophet Isaiah, God declares, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.” The prophet doesn’t mean that God has absentmindedly lost track of human sin. He means that God has blotted out the sins of repentant people; their sin is no longer operative, it no longer determines their standing before God or impedes their access to God. God is marvellously adept at forgetting whenever he beholds penitent people.
But of course there is always that throbbing mercy of God which we want God to remember, for we want such mercy to remain the operative truth, the final truth, the ultimate reality of our lives. For this reason the dying criminal, crucified alongside our Lord, gasped with his last gasp, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The dying criminal, profoundly repentant, had just rebuked the unrepentant criminal strung up on the other side of Jesus, “Don’t you fear God? You and I are under the same sentence of condemnation, and we deserve it.” It is a wise person who knows that her sentence of condemnation is precisely what she deserves, wiser still when her plea which pushes aside all frivolous requests is simply, “Jesus, remember me”. This plea is a plea that the mercy wrought at the cross become now and remain eternally the operative truth and reality of our womb-to-tomb existence. “Jesus, remember me.” “I, I am the God who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
II: — Those men and women whom our Lord remembers in this way; a peculiar remembering is required of them as well. In the sermon on the mount Jesus says to his disciples, “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus insists that as we gather with others for worship our own spiritual affairs must be put in order. To think we can worship the holy God and cavalierly overlook the unholy corruption of our hearts and the spiritual disorder of our lives is to dishonour God. Jesus speaks, in the Sermon on the Mount, of the futility of attempting to worship God while our heart and our brother’s heart are estranged. By extension, Jesus speaks of the futility of attempting to worship God while any spiritual disorder about us is unaddressed. This is not to counsel scrupulosity, a perfectionism which leaves people nervous, self-rejecting, and despairing. But it is to get serious about putting right what we know not to be right in our lives.
You see, to overlook or regard as trivial what we know to be out of order within us is only to find it getting worse. What is spiritually corrupt will never get better by itself. Hatred will never re-nature itself as love; it will only become more hateful until it consumes and controls us. Lust will never alchemize itself into non-exploitative affection; lust will only disguise itself as affection, worsening until it fills the horizon of our life. When are we going to learn that the person found lying can be forgiven (and should be forgiven) but cannot be trusted? I am dismayed when I come upon people who are indifferent to truth-telling and transparency. Don’t they know they will not be trusted (at least by me)? They have advertised themselves as devious and bent on deceiving others. Plainly they are untrustworthy.
Whatever our spiritual disorder is, says Jesus, we should first “remember” it; then we should be sure to “forget” it. He means we should acknowledge our spiritual disorder as operative right now in order that it might be obliterated and we ourselves healed.
The Christians who characteristically have had the best perspective on such matters are my old friends, the 17th century Puritans. The Puritans (who have been maligned with a reputation they don’t deserve) are the master diagnosticians of the human heart. On the one hand the Puritans knew that people who are always taking their temperature are neurotic fusspots. On the other hand, the Puritans knew that people who never take themselves to a physician, even when the symptoms of illness are glaring, are simply fools. The Puritans had read our Lord’s word, “If you are bringing your gift to the altar and you remember whatever spiritual corruption lurks within you, do something about it immediately — otherwise your worship is phoney, and your declared love for God pretence.”
Thomas Watson, my favourite Puritan thinker, states pithily, “Christ is never loved till sin be loathed.” At the same time Watson is careful to leave with us that word which will spare us self-rejection and will comfort us as it redirects us to our Lord himself: “Do not rest upon this, that your heart has been wounded for sin, but rather that your Saviour has been wounded for sin.” His final pronouncement takes us back to the God who remembers his own steadfast love and promised mercy: “Are they not fools who will believe a temptation before they believe a promise?” God remembers his promise of mercy, and we must remember the selfsame promise as often as we remember the disorder within us.
III: — We are not yet finished with our Hebrew lesson in remembering. Paul tells the Christians in Galatia that they must remember the poor. To remember the poor, everyone knows by now, isn’t to recall them to mind, or even to think charitably about them. To remember the poor is to make the reality of their poverty an operative ingredient in our discipleship.
Next question: who are the poor? I do not dispute that there are economically disadvantaged people in our midst. At the same time, virtually no one in Canada is economically destitute. The social welfare system in Canada virtually guarantees that no one is destitute; no one is economically resourceless. In Canada there are two ways of contributing to the financial needs of the needy: voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary way is to make a donation. The involuntary way is income tax. The income tax we pay supports those who cannot maintain themselves elsehow. When my wife’s father was accommodated in a nursing home, Maureen became aware of the large government subsidy required to keep her father there. Maureen also figured out that what it cost the taxpayer to accommodate her dad in the nursing home was precisely what she herself paid in income tax. When other schoolteachers complained in the staffroom about having to pay income tax, Maureen gently told them she was glad to “remember” her father.
In ancient Israel the poor were commonly gathered up in the expression, “widows and orphans and sojourners”. The sojourner was a resident alien. As an alien the sojourner was uncommonly vulnerable. Widows were bereft of income (in a society where wage-earners were exclusively male). Orphans were bereft of everything. They were vulnerable too. In other words, the meaning of “poor” in Israel was “unusually vulnerable”; the poor were those especially defenceless.
When Paul urges us to “remember the poor” he means that we are to be fused to those who are extraordinarily vulnerable. These people may not be financially poor at all. Nonetheless, we are surrounded on all sides with people who are extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless, even though they may be wealthier than we. It’s not difficult to find people who are financially adequate yet who are emotionally vulnerable, psychiatrically vulnerable, racially vulnerable, ethnically vulnerable, physically vulnerable, intellectually vulnerable. And of course those who are spiritually vulnerable are legion — everyone, in fact. Then what exactly are we to do as we “remember” such people? There is no pre-packaged formula; there is no sure-fire, step-by-step program of remembering the poor. One thing we must do, surely, is scatter ourselves among those who are vulnerable, defenceless, in any respect.
One Saturday evening I was to go to a brass band concert in which one of my friends was playing. I was about to leave for the concert when a car drove up furiously into the driveway of the house next door. A young woman emerged, ran up onto the front steps, and began pounding the door, kicking the door, and banging on the kitchen window, all the while shouting for the occupant to come out. (Plainly she was bent on harming the occupant.) It so happened that the occupants were a very elderly, infirm couple of Polish extraction with limited English facility. They refused to open the door, and were cursed all the more loudly, as the furious attacker kept pounding on the kitchen window until it broke. (It turned out the furious woman was looking for the woman who was a tenant in the house’s basement apartment.) I can’t describe the terror that overtook the elderly couple upstairs. They were beside themselves. I telephoned the police, then sat with the shaken couple until the police arrived; I gave the police the licence number of the car and a description of the miscreant, and did what I could to comfort the distraught old folks. My point is this: at the moment of the assault, the aged couple were poor in the biblical sense of “poor”; that is, they were extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless. They were not financially underprivileged; obviously they could afford to live on my street. Still, they were “poor” at that moment. To remember the poor in this context is to do what the moment requires.
Who are the poor for us? The single mother whose husband has gone to jail? The child who is intellectually challenged and is tormented by other children? The elderly man who gets flustered and confused every time he goes to the bank and cannot pay a bill without unravelling? The unmarried person who finds living in a couple-oriented society a form of solitary confinement? The spiritual groper who doesn’t know whether to try the New Age Movement or Old Age Atheism or Jesus Christ or Kung Fu — and who wonders if there is even any difference? Whom do you and I know to be especially vulnerable, defenceless? These are the people whom our lives must intersect, for only as their vulnerability becomes an aspect of our lives are the poor remembered.
IV: — And then there is another aspect of “remembering” that we must mention in view of the season that is upon us. On Remembrance Day we shall remember. Many who remember on this occasion will remember in the popular sense of recalling to consciousness the idea of war, plus the idea of service rendered by relatively few on behalf of many. Even such remembering is certainly better than no remembering. But because you and I have gone to school in Israel, we are going to remember in a much profounder sense. We know that to remember is to make a past event the operative reality, the determining truth, of our lives now.
What was the past event? It was sacrifice, enormous sacrifice, the costliest sacrifice imaginable, for the sake of justice and peace. The circumstances in world-occurrence at the time of our foreparents required that they bear arms to secure justice and peace. The circumstances in world-occurrence at this moment do not require that Canadians as a whole bear arms. But this is not to say that the sacrifice required of us is any less. Justice and peace have never been obtained without sacrifice, and never will be. After all, that justice which is our justification before God, and that peace (shalom) which is our salvation before God; these were obtained only by the sacrifice of the cross. Then we must understand that to redress the slightest injustice anywhere in life; to supplant hostility with peace anywhere in life; this requires sacrifice of some sort, however undramatic — and always will.
Today is Remembrance Day Sunday. We remember the sacrifice our foreparents made years ago. To remember such sacrifice is to have all that they gave and gave up become the operative reality of our lives now. Then it remains only for you and me to decide what this gospel-vocation for justice and peace requires of us now. To be sure, such a vocation will require something different from each of us. In “remembering” in the sense in which we must remember, we must ever keep in mind the Remembrance Day statement, “Lest we forget.” “Lest we forget” doesn’t mean, “Lest a recollection of something decades old fade from consciousness”; “Lest we forget” means “Lest the sacrifice our foreparents made be blotted out, annihilated, rendered of no account.” In a fallen world where injustice and savagery are the order of the day, justice and peace arise only as sacrifice is made; which is to say, only as the sacrifice made on our behalf is remembered, and thereby made the operative reality of our lives now. To remember a sacrifice made for us is simply to make our own sacrifice on behalf of others.
When we remember on Remembrance Day, we remember (in the biblical sense) those who were poor (vulnerable) in a special sense. But this is surely to remember those who are poor in the widest biblical sense. And we remember these people just because God first remembers us. God remembers his covenant with us, his promise to us, his steadfast love and mercy for us. He doesn’t forget. Which is to say, so far from being blotted out, believing and repentant people are held dear in the heart of God, and will be for ever and ever.
Victor Shepherd November 2014
The Night of Betrayal
Luke 22:39-62
I: — “It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” Simply to hear the words is to shudder. “He would have been better off if he had never seen the light of day.” Who said it? Jesus did. As a matter of fact, scripture says the most chilling things about Judas, things that ought to make our blood run cold. “Judas went out,” John says, “and it was night.” Judas stumbled out into a darkness whose irretrievable bleakness and impenetrable blackness had nothing to do with a moonless evening. Following the death of Judas, Luke says with commendable brevity and restraint, “Judas went to his own place.”
No doubt Judas felt somewhat awkward in the apostolic band. The other eleven fellows, plus Jesus, came from Galilee, in north Palestine . Galileans spoke with their own accent (as a servant girl was later to remind Peter.) In addition, Galileans were known as “people of the land.” They were earthy, unsophisticated (even crude, by some standards). Judas, on the other hand, came from Judea, in south Palestine . Judeans weren’t “people of the land.” Judeans were more urbane, more polished, more accustomed to finding their way among the cultivated and the power-brokers and the financially aware.
At the same time, Jesus called Judas to be a disciple in exactly the same way, and for exactly the same purpose, that he called others to be disciples. Since the Kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate would include people of every sort, his band anticipated the Kingdom as it gathered together Matthew, a tax-collector (and therefore a collaborator with the Roman occupation) as well as a “zealot” who had sworn to knife any unwary Roman occupier. If the apostolic band was to anticipate the Kingdom then it was only fitting that both Galilean and Judean be found in it. We shouldn’t think that Jesus called the eleven for a positive purpose (to school them for the coming Kingdom-ministry) but called Judas merely for a negative purpose (to get himself betrayed.) To think this is to cast aspersion on our Lord. Jesus was sincere when he called Judas along with the rest.
II: — Then why does Judas appear so very different from the rest? Judas is said to have betrayed Jesus while Peter is said to have denied him. At the end of the day, is there a difference? There is. Peter denied our Lord in a moment of panic. Peter would have been aware that a shadow (Calvin later called it, in hindsight, ‘the shadow of the cross’) fell across the life and ministry of Jesus from the first. Peter knew of the slaughter of the innocents at the news of the birth of Jesus. Peter was aware of the imprisonment and beheading of Jesus’ cousin, John the Dipper. Peter was aware numerous times in the earthly ministry of Jesus when authorities bristled at the audacity of someone who said, “Moses has said; now I say….” Peter was present when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, provoking the rage of those whose Sabbath-keeping was exercised differently. And of course Peter would have heard Jesus say to his detractors, “You are 100% correct: only God can forgive sin – and I’m forgiving this sinner whose alienation from God has already lasted too long.” And when Jesus was subsequently denounced as blasphemer, Peter knew that the vitriol spat upon his Lord spattered onto him, Peter, as well. Peter knew that wherever Jesus went in his earthly ministry there was trouble.
Then did Peter expect to live in the company of the trouble-maker yet remain trouble-free himself? Of course not. But there’s a difference between trouble and death. Until Jesus was killed he hadn’t been killed. The trouble Jesus landed in he could land in only because he was alive to occasion it.
Then one day in a courtyard Peter saw that the trouble Jesus was about to land in again would be the end of all trouble just because it was going to be the end. At this point Peter knew that if he were publicly identified with Jesus, the same end-of-trouble end would come to him. While he was trying to warm himself at a charcoal fire a fifteen-year old girl said to him, “Your accent; you don’t come from Jerusalem. You’re from Galilee – like the Galilean in there who is on trial for his life.” In a panic-fuelled instant Peter swore loudly that he was no friend of the Galilean even as his love for his Lord contradicted his utterance. Shamed by his cowardice, Peter broke wept bitterly.
To be sure, panic contradicted his love for his Lord; contradicted it and eclipsed it. To say that panic eclipsed his love for his Lord is to say that his panic rendered it invisible, nowhere evident. But his love for Jesus wasn’t destroyed, any more than a solar eclipse de-creates the sun.
Judas, on the other hand, didn’t panic. Judas calculated. Judas had always calculated. If he could get thirty pieces of silver for Jesus, at least it was better than nothing. To be sure, it wasn’t much better than nothing, since thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave, and slaves have always been cheap. Then did Judas regard Jesus as no better than a slave? If so, why had he acceded to Christ’s invitation in the first place? Surely Judas had joined himself to Jesus and the others because he believed himself to be joining a promising Messianic movement.
Messianic movements have come and gone throughout Israel ’s history. They are most likely to proliferate when the people are oppressed. In first century Palestine the people had been oppressed for hundreds of years. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Syrians, Greeks, and finally Romans had overrun Israel in turn. The oppression perdured agonizingly, and would end only at the appearance of the long-awaited Messiah.
There finally appeared one Messianic movement that seemed better than most. Judas was invited to join the group that gathered around the Nazarene. He did so. We shouldn’t assume any insincerity on his part at all. Then why did Judas derail? Where did it all go wrong?
The gospel of John tells us that during the Last Supper the devil, Satan, “had already put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus.” Satan had already put it into the heart of Judas. In other words, the Last Supper wasn’t the first time it occurred to Judas to betray; neither was the Last Supper the moment Judas decided to betray.
Then is Satan the difference between Judas and Peter? Was Judas Satanically inspired while Peter was not? Scarcely. Months earlier Jesus had told the twelve that he, the Son of Man no less, must suffer many things and finally be crucified. The twelve were aghast. Speaking for the entire band Peter had remonstrated with Jesus, rebuked him even, told him off. “Shut up, Satan” Jesus had shot back; “You, Peter, are Satanic, nothing less than Satanic.”
Jesus pronounces Peter Satanic because Satan has inspired Peter’s utterance. Satan would later put it into Judas’ heart to betray Jesus. It would appear, therefore, that Peter and Judas are Satanic in equal measure.
III: — But appearances deceive. When Jesus rebuked Peter (and with him the entire band of disciples) he did so because Peter and the band repudiated how God was going to inaugurate the Kingdom of his Son. They regarded as preposterous God’s plan to inaugurate the Messianic Age through the death of the Messiah. They scorned the notion that the Kingdom commences when the King himself becomes a servant, and not just any servant but the servant-slave who does the most menial work of washing feet. The Kingdom of Righteousness arrives when the Righteous One is numbered with unrighteous sinners and is executed alongside unrighteous brigands at the city garbage dump. The Messiah’s people are exalted when the Messiah is humiliated.
David had been Israel ’s greatest king, yet David would pale alongside David’s Son, the Messiah of Israel. And now the One who made implicit Messianic claims for himself (“Moses said; I say….”); the one who didn’t silence the Messianic adulation of the crowd (What else would the triumphal entry be?); now David’s greater Son insisted that the Shepherd of Israel could truly shepherd his people only as the shepherd was sacrificial lamb. This King could be victorious (a victory-less king is no king at all) only as a victim.
Kings expect to be glorified. Anyone who fails to recognize the king’s glory is obtuse; anyone who fails to acknowledge the king’s glory is perverse. Yet this King’s glory would be recognized in a cross of degradation and humiliation. And this King’s glory would be acknowledged by subjects who lived in the shadow of his cross and who shouldered their cross in the wake of his.
To deny any of this is to call forth our Lord’s vehement “Satanic.” When Peter is rebuked, and the other eleven along with him, Judas is part of the group. Then where does Judas differ from Peter?
IV: — Scripture says little about Judas’ inner life, his motivations. Whenever scripture does speak an aside here or there about Judas it mentions money. For instance, when Mary of Bethany poured her perfume over the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair Judas protested, “The perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” John tells us, however, that Judas didn’t care at all for the poor. He was a thief, and if the perfume had been sold, the money it brought Judas would have been able to pilfer before the money passed through the apostolic purse to the poor. The Greek text uses an iterative imperfect tense: Judas “kept on taking, customarily stole, the money from the apostolic purse.” Never make light of the grip that money had on Judas.
Never make light of the grip that money can have on anyone. Jesus said “You cannot worship God and mammon.” According to our Lord the “either-or” is stark.
I know what you are going to say. Surely the two powers are God and Satan. To be sure, John says in his first epistle, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” The author of Hebrews insists that the Son of God appeared in order to “destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” But there’s no contradiction: Satan, says Jesus, is a liar and a murderer. Satan falsifies and Satan slays. Money is the principal weapon that Satan yields as he falsifies and slays. Do you think my reading of scripture one-sided, even out-and-out incorrect? Then you should recall that Jesus said more about money than about any other single thing. Jesus maintained that money is the gravest spiritual threat, alongside which “crystal meth” appears almost child’s play. In the synoptic gospels Jesus discusses money in one verse out of ten; in Luke’s gospel, Jesus brings it up in one verse out of eight. The apostle James, rightly apprehending our Lord in this matter, discusses it in one verse out of five. Money is the power that turns the universe. Money talks, we are told. Money also silences. Money lubricates; money bribes; money perverts; money addicts. People are deemed cynical if they say “Do you want to know what’s happening here, there or anywhere, on either larger scale or smaller scale? Follow the money; if you want to know what’s going on, just follow the money.” Why do we label “cynical” people who speak like this? They are speaking truth.
Jacques Ellul, French Protestant lawyer, historian, sociologist; Ellul maintained that Karl Marx couldn’t grasp the human condition, since the human condition is that we are rebel sinners before God, alienated from God on account of his judgement upon our disobedience, and alienated from our fellows and ourselves as well. This is the human condition. Marx can’t discuss it. On the other hand Ellul said that Marx’s explanation of the human situation remains more accurate than any other. The human situation is where we live politically, socially, economically, psychologically, communally. And Marx’s explanation of how money insinuates itself into our private and public lives, our individual minds and our public institutions, our assessment of what’s wrong and how it’s to be put right; Marx’s explanation of the role of money in the human situation is more accurate and more useful than any other. The more I ponder Ellul’s assessment in light of world occurrence the more profound I think him to be.
V: — During the eighteenth century awakening John Wesley’s frustration mounted as he watched Methodist converts gain sobriety and industry and thrift thanks to their gospel-quickened faith, only to have their spiritual ardour diminish as their new-found sobriety and industry and thrift elevated them socially. In his frustration Wesley wrote nine tracts on money. In one such tract he confronts readers with his settled judgement, based on years of observing his people, as to what happens when people acquire more and more and still more. He notes that as one’s bank account goes up one’s zeal for holiness goes down. What I call the ‘root’ command of scripture – “You shall be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy” – isn’t so much set aside as simply lost to sight. The root commandment of scripture, of course, is also the overarching, all-comprehending promise of scripture. This grand promise of scripture gathers up all the ways and works and words of God as it declares that the God who is holy will not fail to render his people holy. And as his people are rendered holy they will be made fit to serve God and fit to see God. Wesley maintains that increasing money finds scripture’s grand promise no longer cherished and its fulfilment no longer hungered for. It’s all forgotten as money ices one’s desire for holiness, hardens one’s heart concerning the command of God and distracts one’s mind concerning the promise of God.
Wesley says more. He says that as our influence increases and our social position rises our heart is warped. The warped heart isn’t merely bent; it’s disfigured, ugly. And it isn’t merely ugly; it’s lethal. Do we think Wesley exaggerates? Then we should listen to him as he writes his people in 1781.
As we become more affluent, says Wesley, we acquire greater self-importance. As we become more self-important we are more easily affronted. Surely no one is going to disagree with Wesley. Who, after all, are more ‘touchy’ than the self-important? To be sure, the self-important never speak of themselves as ‘touchy.’ They prefer ‘sensitive.’ They’ve forgotten that genuinely sensitive people are distressed at the suffering of others. Touchiness, on the other hand; touchiness is narcissistic blindness to anyone else’s pain thanks to one’s self-absorption.
The ‘touchier’ we are, continues Wesley, the more prone we are to revenge. Now the slightest affront will trigger our vindictiveness as we search out and destroy the person whose violation of us (as it were) is actually no more than a cat’s whisker alighting on us but which we now regard as excoriation.
In the course of his nine tracts on the dangers of money Wesley makes the following five points.
ONE: Money is the talent that gathers up all other talents. For instance, we acquire an education. What do we do with our education? Unless we are spiritually alert, before we know it our education simply follows the money. We do with our education whatever maximizes our financial gain. Why does God always call us clergy (as it were) to congregations whose stipend is larger, never to a congregation whose stipend is smaller?
TWO: Money, said Wesley, is the temptation that fosters and foments all other temptations. As a pastor I have heard the sad stories, scores of them, of people whose vow of marital fidelity seemed no burden at all when they had little left over of their pay cheque at the end of the month, yet whose vow of marital fidelity seemed harder to keep as surplus income mounted, and whose vow of marital fidelity appeared not so much hard to keep but simply pointless when they found themselves in the in the rarefied air of material privilege.
THREE: Wesley maintains that money is the snare, “a steel trap (he says) that crushes the bones.” He has in mind the largest animal trap found in eighteenth century England , a bear trap. Once in a while a human being blundered onto a bear trap, only to find that its jaws not only held him fast but broke the bones in his lower leg.
FOUR: Money is the poison that kills discipleship. Frustrated at seeing his people’s cavalier indifference to sacrifice as their material fortunes rose, Wesley ‘boiled over’ and shouted caustically, “What? Are you afraid of spoiling your silken coat?” He reminded them that when they were newly born of the Spirit they would head out any time of the day or night, brave any kind of weather however inclement, in order to lend spiritual or material assistance to the suffering person who was suffering for any reason at all. Thanks to the gospel and the faith in penitent people that the gospel quickens, Wesley’s people had been newly rendered sober, industrious and thrifty. People who are sober, industrious and thrifty will invariably accumulate mammon unless they are giving it away. While Wesley declaimed ceaselessly, “Earn all you can; save all you can; give all you can”, his people, he noted, quickly became wonderfully adept at the first two and shamefully inert concerning the third. The result was that their social position rose. As their social position rose it made less and less ‘sense’ to inconvenience themselves for sufferers whom they now couldn’t so much as see. Whereas they had earlier headed out, heedless of wind and weather and cost to themselves, now they looked out the window first to see if it might rain.
“What? Are you afraid of spoiling your silken coat?” Prior to their conversion, when his people were gutter-gripped thanks to their habituations and impecuniousness, they had no coat of any kind. Now, thanks to their conversion, the attendant prosperity, and their social elevation, they had not only a coat but a silken coat – and their silken coat was much too valuable to get rained on or muddied or clung to by someone whose hand was grimy or greasy or bloody.
FIVE: The fifth point Wesley makes we’ve already heard. Money is the magnifier of a self-importance that renders us vindictive.
Then what’s to be done? Give it all away as if we could save ourselves by impoverishing ourselves? No. In the Middle Ages our mediaeval foreparents spoke much of the Seven Deadly Sins. One such sin was lust. Lust wasn’t a deadly sin merely when it issued in profligate, unprincipled sex without concern for God’s command or human good. Lust was a deadly sin when sex became a preoccupation regardless of sexual expression or non-expression. In other words, the person preoccupied with sexual avoidance was as much sex-preoccupied as the person constantly on the sexual prowl. Gluttony too was one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Middle Ages. Gluttony, said our Mediaeval foreparents, wasn’t a matter of eating too much (the misunderstanding that shallow modernity clings to). Gluttony was a matter of being preoccupied with food. In other words, the person preoccupied with food avoidance is as much preoccupied with food as the person, already well fed, who can think only of what she’s going to eat next.
It’s no different with money. Money, scripture insists, is as much a threat – the same threat, in fact – when we have too much and when we have too little. For this reason the writer of Proverbs pleads with God, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; not riches, lest my abundance render me spiritually indifferent, and not poverty, lest my scarcity render me spiritually insensitive.” No doubt prior to the Protestant Reformation, but certainly in light of it, it was plain that self-willed poverty did nothing for people spiritually. Self-willed poverty would only render someone a charity recipient of some kind; but self-willed poverty was never going to save anyone, if only because self-willed poverty was only one more gospel-denying attempt at self-salvation. What will save us – and would have saved Judas – isn’t self-willed poverty but release from a spiritually suffocating preoccupation. And release from any preoccupation never occurs as we concentrate on finding release from it, since such a concentration merely intensifies the preoccupation. What’s needed, as the nineteenth century Scottish minister, Thomas Chalmers used to say; what’s needed is “the expulsive power of a new affection.” It’s only as we have a new love, a fitting love, that the power of the preoccupation is broken tangentially but broken profoundly just because it’s broken tangentially. The fitting love of which Thomas Chalmers spoke was love for our Lord. At the end of the day, reducing our bank account to nothing is as spiritually useless (and therefore spiritually deleterious) as counting our ‘loonie’ stash every day is spiritually deleterious. Both preoccupations (at bottom they are the same preoccupation) are an ‘affection’ that has a grip on us that reason can’t break. The grip all such affections have on us can be broken only as the affection is expelled. And any affection is expelled only as it is unselfconsciously forgotten for the sake of a greater affection, grander affection, an affection worthy of someone made in the image of God. And of course the only affection worthy of someone made in the image of God is love, self-forgetful, self-abandoning love for him who is the image of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.
Tonight we received an offering. Because Knox Church needs money? Perhaps it does. But let’s imagine that the endowment funds of Knox Church were so very large as to require no supplementation from the offering plate. Would we still receive an offering? Should we? Yes. The church doesn’t receive an offering in a service of worship primarily to pay for the church’s expenses. The church receives an offering primarily to let you and me reconfirm a truth about ourselves that needs to be reinforced lest the light that is in us become dark. The truth about Christians that always needs reinforcing is this: money is a broken power in our lives. The issue isn’t how much we have or don’t have. The issue is that it’s a broken power, and is broken not because we gritted our teeth and snapped it. (Attempting to do this only strengthens the power.) It’s a broken power just because we fell in love with someone whose attractiveness gave us a perspective on money we couldn’t have had until we had fallen in love with our Lord.
VI: — Wesley again. In his tract, “The Almost Christian”, written in 1741, Wesley discusses the difference between the nominal Christian and the genuine Christian. (When he speaks of the “almost” Christian he means “nominal” or “merely seeming”.) He states that the nominal Christian is characterized by lack of faith. What, then, characterizes the genuine Christian? We’d expect him to say “faith”. But instead he says “love”.[1] The unbeliever is marked by lack of faith, the believer by love. Then does Wesley believe in justification by love? Of course not. His point is this. There is no faith in Jesus Christ without love for him, and equally there is no love for our Lord without faith in him.
If we say we have faith in Jesus Christ we are saying that we trust the provision he has made for us in the cross. But it’s always possible for me to trust the remedy he has fashioned for my sin while my heart remains cold. (Every day trust the helpfulness of many people whom I find obnoxious.)
If, on the other hand, we say we love our Lord it’s always possible for us to love him and assume that our love for him is the basis of our acceptance with him. It’s always possible to say we love him while denying we are condemned sinners who cannot remedy our own predicament and who must trust the provision he has made for us since we cannot make any provision for ourselves.
There is no genuine love for Jesus Christ without faith in him, said Wesley. And just surely, he insisted, there is no genuine faith in Jesus Christ without love for him.
When the apostle Paul (among others) championed “justification by grace through faith”, did he contradict himself when he exclaimed in the last verse of his Ephesian letter, “Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love undying”? Not at all. The apostle knew that there is no genuine faith in Jesus Christ without love for him.
Lacking love for our Lord, Judas was devoid of faith in our Lord, and for this reason remained in his sins.
All of which brings us to the question that Jesus put to Peter in the wake of Peter’s denial: “Do you love me…?” The Greek word for love that Jesus uses here is strong: it’s love in the sense of total self-giving, total self-outpouring, thorough self-forgetfulness, utter self-abandonment. It’s the word used of God himself, for God so loved the world that he gave – himself, utterly, without reservation – in his Son.
“Do you love me like that,” the master says to Peter. Peter’s stomach convulses. He has already denied his Lord and everyone knows it. So shaken is Peter that he can’t answer the master’s question. He can only blurt, head down, “You know that I love you.”
The English translations of our bible hide something crucial: Peter doesn’t use the same word for love that Jesus has used. Peter uses a weaker word. Jesus has said, “Are you willing to sign yourself over to me, abandon yourself to me, never looking back?” Peter is nervous now about vowing anything this large, since the last time he vowed something large he disgraced himself. Now Peter can only reply cautiously, “You know that I’m fond of you; you know that I care for you.”
Jesus asks a second time, “Do you love me?”, using again the strongest word for love that there is. Now Peter is in pain. As if his pain weren’t enough, he’s asked a third time, “Do you love me?” – only this time Jesus uses the word of Peter’s earlier reply, Peter’s weaker word. “Simon, are you truly fond of me? Do you really care for me? If this is as much as you can say honestly, will you say this much?” Peter replies, “You know everything; you know that I care for you.” After each question and answer Jesus says to Peter, “Feed my sheep.”
“Feed my sheep”: it’s our Lord’s command and simultaneously his promise. He will always use us on behalf of his people regardless of how compromised our discipleship has been. What counts is our aspiration, not our achievement. What counts is our love for our Lord, not supposed super-spirituality. “Feed my sheep.” It’s a command whose fulfilment his promise guarantees. We can count on being used of him on behalf of his people.
Our Lord’s last word to Peter is “Follow me”. The Greek text uses an iterative imperative: “Keep on following me. Continue to follow me. Dog my footsteps.” He means, “Come closer; keep on coming closer.” As you and I do just that we shall find our love for our Lord swelling, for as we move closer to him we shall love him more, only to move closer to him, only to love him more, all of this spiralling up, and all of this in anticipation of that day when we shall love him without defect or deficit.
The time of betrayal is also the time of denial. Both Judas and Peter are Satanically inspired. The difference between Judas and Peter isn’t the proximity of Satan. The difference between Judas and Peter is love for our Lord. Such love may be permeated with fear. It may be disguised by cowardice. It may be beclouded by misunderstanding. But it’s love nonetheless.
In any era treachery is remedied by the expulsive power of a new affection as those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love undying are taken ever more deeply into God’s oceanic immensity, there to find themselves lost, says Charles Wesley; lost in wonder, love and praise.
Victor Shepherd
August 2008
[1]That is, he first says ‘love’. Needless to say he goes on to maintain, as expected, that lack of faith characterizes unbelievers.
Three Men, Three Deaths
Luke 23:32-43
“Good Friday.” What’s good about it? In mediaeval England it was called “God’s Friday.” Said quickly (and perhaps thoughtlessly) “God’s Friday” became “‘Gd’ Friday.” Really, was it ever God’s Friday? What did he ever do that day besides stand around uselessly? Surely it’s more accurate to speak of Pilate’s Friday. Because of this one Friday Pilate’s name will never be forgotten. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to speak of the crowd’s Friday. After all, the crowd triumphed, howling for Christ’s head until its bloodlust was satisfied.
In many respects there was nothing unique about this Friday. Pilate had executed many people before it and would execute many after it. The crowd was neither better nor worse than any crowd in any era. The city, Jerusalem , Hier Shalem, city of shalom, city of salvation (supposedly) was the city that had always slain the prophets. This Friday was no different.
None the less, Christians have always known that Good Friday genuinely is God’s Friday. Christians have always found God’s Friday anticipated repeatedly in God’s dealing with a rebellious creation. As far back as Genesis 3:15 early-day Christians saw this day anticipated in the declaration that the offspring of woman would crush the serpent’s head, the serpent symbolising sin’s seduction. The sacrificial system of the older testament came to be seen not as efficacious in itself but efficacious inasmuch as the secret substance of its slain animals was the sacrifice of the Lamb of God slain on behalf of everyone everywhere. The culmination of the sacrificial system was the Day of Atonement, when Israel ’s sin was “confessed” upon the scapegoat that was then driven off. (The goat, rather than a sheep, as our Lord’s parable would make plain centuries later; the goat typified rejection at God’s hand.) Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, was serving as priest in the temple’s sacrifice-service when he was told that the son to be born to him would herald the one whose rejection at the hand of the Father would make possible your acceptance and mine.
I: — Israel ’s centuries-long preoccupation with sacrifice adds up to something the early church knew unshakeably: on Good Friday one died for sin. Jesus of Nazareth , Son of God and Messiah of Israel; this one died for sin. The apostles are united in their conviction of this truth. Mark insists that Jesus came to give himself a “ransom” for us. Peter insists that Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree.” John speaks repeatedly of our Lord’s “hour”, and by it means only our Lord’s atoning death that reconciles God to us. Paul writes, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.”
It’s no wonder that so much of the church is feeble today when so much of the church denies the centrality and cruciality and efficacy of the cross. How central is the cross to the apostolic mind and heart? Fifty per cent of the written gospels discusses one week only of Christ’s life, the last week. How crucial is it? When Jesus speaks of the purpose of his coming and when his followers speak of the purpose of his coming they all point to the singular event of the cross. How efficacious is it? Paul says that the only sermon he has in his briefcase (which sermon, we should note, he will therefore have to repeat again and again) is a sermon about the cross. He calls it “the word of the cross.” He tells any and all that he intends to speak only of “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” With what result? The apostle has seen the hardened unbeliever moved to repentance and the contemptuous scoffer moved to surrender and the uncomprehending dabbler brought to apprehend the wisdom and work and way of God.
A minute ago I spoke of the goat on which the sin of Israel was laid (as it were) on the Day of Atonement. I said that a goat, unlike a sheep, betokened rejection. The Son of God was rejected on Good Friday. His cry of dereliction can mean nothing else. Yet we mustn’t think that the Father cruelly rejected the Son while the Son lovingly identified himself with sinners. “Son of” is a Hebrew expression meaning “of the same nature as.” To speak of Jesus as “Son of God” is to say that Father and Son are one in their nature, one in their purpose, one in its implementation. We must never think that the Father severely judges sin while the Son mercifully bears that judgement. Father and Son are one in their judgement upon sin and one in their absorbing the penalty of sin. Then to say that the Son tasted the most anguished rejection at the Father’s hand is to say that the Father’s heart was seared with the self-same anguish. To say that Jesus died for sin and therein tasted the bitterest death (utter alienation from his Father) is to say that the Father himself tasted the bitterest self-alienation.
All of this adds up to the centrality, cruciality and efficacy of the cross; namely, provision was made for us through the sacrifice of that crucified One who died for sin. To be sure, our Lord wasn’t the only person crucified on Good Friday. Still, his crucifixion was unique: identified as he was with all humankind, he, God-incarnate, made provision for all. He, he alone, died for sin.
II: — The provision our Lord made for you and me he plainly made for the two men who died alongside him. One of them, it should pain us to note, died in sin. This man spurned the provision made for him.
To say he spurned the provision made for him is to speak of loss; ultimate loss, indescribable loss. Still, we can no more deny our Lord’s teaching here than we can deny his teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. The “Jesus” whose teachings – some of them – Pollyanna people deem “gentle, meek and mild” happens to be the Jesus who warned of ultimate loss every day of his public ministry.
Luke tells us a construction accident occurred in first century Palestine when a tower fell on the men building it. It killed them. Some feisty Galileeans decided to test Pilate’s patience when they fomented an insurrection. Pilate executed them. Jesus insisted that the crushed workmen and the executed insurrectionists were no greater sinners than anyone else. “Nevertheless”, says Jesus in making a point out of these events for the benefit of his hearers, “unless you repent you will all similarly perish.” (Luke 13:1-5)
“Do you know whom you should fear?”, Jesus asked on another occasion, “Don’t fear humans. What can they do to you, ultimately? You should fear him who can destroy you: God.” (Matthew 10:28) “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) “You’re lying”, his enemies jeered at him. “Am I?”, said Jesus, “Where I’m going, you can’t come. You will die in your sin.” (John 8:21) Then it shouldn’t surprise us, however much it should horrify us, that one fellow in particular did just that.
Scripture speaks of the “riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience.” (Rom. 2:4) We are told that we mustn’t presume upon God’s kindness and forbearance and patience. We mustn’t presume upon them just because they are meant to lead us to repentance. God’s kindness and forbearance and patience are never meant to let us indulge our sin but always and only to lead us to repentance. In the Hebrew bible repentance is a turning towards God, a turning towards God that is really a returning to him who has made us, has suffered for us and now claims us. When the Hebrew mind hears of returning to God it thinks in terms of three vivid pictures of returning in everyday life. The first is of an unfaithful wife returning to her husband; the second is of idol-worshippers (in Hebrew ‘the idols’ are ‘the nothings’) returning to the true and living God; the third is of rebel subjects returning to their rightful ruler. The unfaithful wife returns to longstanding, patient love. The idol-worshippers return to truth, to substance, to solidity. The rebel subjects return to legitimate authority.
The riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience are meant to induce repentance in us as we return to him to whom we’ve been unfaithful, return to him whose truth we’ve trifled with, return to him whose authority we’ve disregarded and even disdained.
The unrepentant fellow who was crucified alongside Jesus; unrepentant, he frittered away the day of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience. Unrepentant, he refused to turn towards God, refused to return to faithful love and shining truth and rightful authority.
Our Lord had said, “I am the light of the world; anyone who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” “Don’t give us that,” the disdainful had said then as they say now. “You should know then”, our Lord had continued, “that where I’m going you can’t come. You’ll die in your sin.”
III: — The third fellow, however, died to sin. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And our Lord’s reply we all know: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-3)
What did the fellow mean when he said, “Jesus, remember me”? What’s the force of “remember?” Did the dying felon mean, “Think of me once in a while? Recall me nostalgically now and then?” In fact the fellow meant something very different. Jewish as he was and therefore possessed of a Hebrew mind, he knew that when God remembers someone, that person is granted the innermost longing of his heart, his profoundest aspiration. Hannah of old was publicly distraught and privately frantic on account of her childlessness. Then God “remembered” her, we are told, and she became pregnant with Samuel; with Sam-u-el, whose name means, “I have asked him of God.”
The man dying alongside Jesus, penitent where his partner-in-crime had remained impenitent; this fellow asked Jesus to remember him. He wanted granted to him the innermost longing of his heart and his profoundest aspiration. What was it? We can tell on the basis of what was granted him: “Forever with me, the sin-bleaching one, in paradise forever, today.”
In view of the fact that the word “remember” is richer in Hebrew than we commonly think, we should also probe the Hebrew significance of “today.” Throughout the Hebrew bible “today” refers to the event of God’s incursion, the event of God’s visitation. When “today” occurs God’s visitation is upon us, which visitation we can’t control, can’t manipulate, can’t postpone and then bring back when we are more in the mood or ready for something less inconvenient. “Today” means God has loomed before us now, is acting upon us and speaking to us now, and we trifle with him at our peril.
“Today, when you hear God’s voice, don’t harden your hearts”, both the psalmist and the writer of Hebrews warn us. (Heb. 4:7) “Today I must stay at your house”, Jesus tells Zacchaeus, only to announce at the conclusion of the meal, “Today salvation has come to your house.” (Luke 19:42, 50) When Jesus declares the paralysed man forgiven and sets him back on his feet as well, the bystanders, we are told, “were filled with awe and said, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’” (Luke 5:26. NIV) “Remarkable”? Of course. “Today” means that eternity has intersected time and the hour of someone’s visitation is upon her.
The penitent criminal knew that his last moment was also the time of his visitation. Our Lord knew it too. He knew that his proximity to the dying man was God’s visitation. The result of this visitation was that the penitent fellow was “remembered.” The man was granted his heart’s innermost longing and his profoundest aspiration; namely, that his sin be purged and he himself be cherished eternally. At the moment of his visitation this man died to sin. To be sure, he could die to it only because someone else had been appointed to die for it. Still, unquestionably he died to it.
IV: — The longer I live the more impressed I am at the unitary voice with which scripture speaks. Decades after the event of Good Friday apostles were speaking of the event in a manner consistent with those who had been eyewitnesses of it. Centuries before the event prophets spoke of the event in the same way. The prophet Ezekiel had written, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” (Eze. 18:23) Six hundred years later Paul would write to young Timothy, “God our Saviour…desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tim. 2:4) Peter would write, “The Lord…is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should repent.” (2 Peter 3:9)
God desires all to be saved. He takes no pleasure in the loss of anyone. And in the days of his earthly ministry the Incarnate One himself cried before the city, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.” (Matt. 23:37) Exactly. One fellow died in sin as surely as another fellow died to it. Yet God desires all to be saved and permits all to be saved just because the Son of God died for it.
Then whose Friday is it? Pilate’s Friday? The crowd’s? Good Friday is and always will be God’s Friday. By God’s grace it was also the penitent fellow’s Friday. By God’s grace it has been my Friday too, for years now. And by his grace it may be yours as well.
Victor Shepherd
Good Friday, 2010
The Witness of Women
Luke 23:54 -24:11
The service which the women of Streetsville UCW render bereaved people following the funeral of their loved one is an important service. After the funeral at Lee’s, next door, the Streetsville women offer tea and coffee, sandwiches and dessert to the people who are saddened at their loss, tired out from weeks of waiting for the very thing they didn’t want to happen, weary from the car-trip which brought them from another part of Ontario, more weary yet as they anticipate the long trip home. It is good that the women here provide the service that they do.
The women who were nearest and dearest Jesus sought to render a different service. They took spices to the tomb on Easter morning. The Israelite people, unlike the Egyptians, did not embalm human remains. The women wanted one tomb in particular to exude something besides a stench.
Then the women were stunned to find that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t there. Have you ever pondered what would have happened if Jesus had not been raised from the dead? It’s not the case that those who had been “taken” with him would have continued to meet with each other and remember him. In the wake of his death they realized that in being “taken” with him they had been “taken in”. The small band of disciples would not have struggled on as one more Messianic sect within Judaism; it wouldn’t even have remained a sect. Peter had gone back fishing. The two men on the road to Emmaus were lamenting their childish gullibility.
Yet you and I, gentiles no less, are worshipping today in the name of Jesus Christ. The reason for our doing so today can be pushed back all the way to the women who were first at the tomb on Easter morning out of love for the master, and who, out of the master’s love for them, were first to behold him raised.
Three things need to be noted carefully here. In the first place, the women were summoned and commissioned for a task. God does not disclose the truth of the resurrection (by including us in the reality of the resurrection) merely in order to disclose truth; nor to satisfy armchair curiosity. God discloses the truth of the resurrection in order to enlist people for a task.
In the second place, those who were first summoned and commissioned were women! In Israel (all of these Easter-morning women were Jewish) no woman could be a witness in a court of law. A woman’s testimony was inadmissible, worthless. And now it is women who are entrusted with the most crucial testimony the world can ever hear.
In the third place, the New Testament insists that a visitation from the risen One himself was essential to one’s being an apostle. Paul was near-frantic to have the leaders of the early church recognize him as an apostle. When he thought they might not he cried out, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” The same Lord appeared to some women. Those women qualify as apostles. John Calvin, a giant whom I esteem, was nevertheless rather sexist. Knowing that the appearance of the risen Lord to the women qualified women as apostles (and therefore as ministers) Calvin, with bad conscience, I trust, wrote, “God temporarily suspended the order of apostles.” No! God did not temporarily suspend anything. God fashioned the order of apostles to include women. If women have qualified as apostles from day one of the church, then the dispute, centuries old, as to whether women should be ordained is a dispute better left behind. If a woman can be an apostle, how could a woman not be recognized a minister?
In truth, while the Christian church has formally put down women and attempted to minimize their service, Christian women themselves have always known better and ventured more; suffered for their venturesomeness, to be sure, yet also been used of God in ways that should leave us both agape and adoring.
Today we are going to look at several women from whom we have much to learn.
I: — The first is Barbara Heck, known as the mother of Methodism in the new world. (Streetsville congregation, we must remember, was originally Methodist.) Whenever you hear the name, Barbara Heck, think of initiative, leadership, persistence and patience; think of small beginnings, small as mustard seed, which remained mustard seed-sized for a long time yet which found Barbara Heck undiscouraged and deflected.
Barbara von Ruckle was born in 1734 in County Limerick, Ireland. Her German ancestors had been in Ireland since the late 1600s when French soldiers under King Louis XIV had pillaged the Protestant regions of south Germany. The south German Protestants had scattered, one group moving to Ireland.
At age 18 Barbara publicly confessed her faith in Jesus Christ. Six years later (1758) John Wesley visited Ireland. (As a matter of fact he was to travel to the emerald isle 22 times in the course of his ministry.) Barbara was an exception to the people he found in the German-speaking communities. For Wesley was to note in his journal that the people of German ancestry had been without German-speaking pastors for 50 years. Wesley maintained that it was the absence of pastors that had rendered the people demoralized, irreligious, and drunk. Wesley himself, however, spoke German; he discovered that these people resonated with the Methodist expression of the gospel. Two years later Barbara von Ruckle married Paul Hescht. The surname was Anglicized to “Heck”, and together they left for America, settling in New York City.
Once in NYC Barbara was alarmed at the spiritual carelessness she saw about her, especially in the extended family (cousins, in-laws, and more distant relatives) who had emigrated with her to the new world. She pleaded with her cousin to preach. He maintained he couldn’t inasmuch as he had neither church nor congregation. “Preach in your own home and I will gather a congregation”, she replied. The mustard seed beginning consisted of four people: Barbara and her husband, plus a labourer and a black female servant. The congregation grew. A church-building was needed. Barbara herself designed it, the first Methodist church-building in the new world. A larger building became necessary. Its dimensions were 60 feet by 42 feet (the size of the Streetsville sanctuary). Two hundred and fifty people pledged to pay for it. Hundreds packed it every Sunday. The seats had no backs (never mind cushions!); the gallery was reached by means of a ladder. Then the American War of Independence broke out. Barbara and her husband remained loyal to the British crown. They were set upon by revolutionaries and hounded mercilessly. In 1778 they moved to Canada, settling near what is now Brockville. Compared to NYC Upper Canada was a wilderness. Nevertheless Barbara was undaunted. She began her mustard seed sowing all over again. It took her seven years to gather enough people to form the first Methodist class in Canada. The people she had gathered ministered to each other out of their own resources for five years; only then — that is, twelve years after she had begun her work in Canada — did a circuit-riding saddlebag preacher arrive to help them.
When Barbara was 70 years old (1804) one of her three sons found her sitting in her chair, her German bible open on her lap. This was no surprise, since she had never been able to speak English well, German having remained her natural idiom. Neither was her son surprised to see that the mother of new world Methodism had gone home.
II: — If Barbara Heck speaks to us of initiative, the Quaker women speak to us of missionary commitment and cheerful crossbearing. The suffering these women endured for the sake of the gospel beggars description.
Quakers were 17th century Christians who repudiated empty formalism, mindless repetition in worship, and priestly magic among the clergy. (One instance of the latter, for instance, was the notion that the mere application of baptismal water altered the recipient’s status before God. Quakers protested against such magic by not baptizing anyone.) While these Christians called themselves The Society of Friends, they were dubbed “Quakers” by those who ridiculed them for quaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, said he was concerned “to give women their place and stir them up to take it.” He publicized his concern in a pamphlet, “An Encouragement to All the Women’s Meetings in the World”. Quakers, while a very small Christian group, plainly thought big.
George Fox was a 22-year old shoemaker/preacher when his message pierced the heart of Elizabeth Hooton. She was 49 years old, and had languished for years in a Baptist congregation in England which she described as dead and utterly compromised with the world. Elizabeth found spiritual vitality in a Quaker fellowship. Her vocation impelled her to speak. She did, and for this was imprisoned four times in quick succession. Her crime in every case was that she had urged people to repent.
Mary Fisher was another woman who came to faith in Jesus Christ through the ministry of George Fox. When Mary Fisher began preaching (a scandalous thing for a woman to do!) she too was imprisoned. Her stated crime was that she had spoken to a priest. (She had: her parish minister.) The next 16 months found her in a fetid jail, but at the same time being schooled in the way of discipleship by other imprisoned Quakers. When she was released the mayor of a near-by city had her and other Quaker women stripped to the waist as a public humiliation, and then flogged.
In 1655 Mary, accompanied by another Quaker (a woman with five children) embarked for America. Upon landing in New England they found the authorities hostile. A hundred of their books were burned. The two women were stripped, searched for signs of witchcraft, and imprisoned. They would have starved had not the jailer been bribed. Authorities eventually released them and immediately deported them to England.
Two years later Mary Fisher believed herself called of God to commend the gospel to the Sultan of Turkey. Upon arriving in Smyrna she asked at the British Consul how she could contact the Sultan. The British Consul told her that her mission was foolhardy, and put her on a ship for England. She managed to persuade the ship’s captain that she was neither deranged nor silly. He put her ashore at the next port.
Mary travelled 600 miles overland to find Sultan Mohammed IV, together with his army of 20,000. She told him she had a message from “The Great God”. Next day he received her with all the graciousness and protocol accorded an ambassador. She laid before him what God had laid on her heart, and it was translated into Arabic. Whereupon she set sail for England. Eventually Mary Fisher married and returned to America, settling down not in New England this time but in Charleston, South Carolina, where her remains are buried.
In the meantime Elizabeth Hooton, fully aware of how Quaker women had suffered in the Boston area, nevertheless travelled to America in 1661. She was 63 years old. Her preaching met with terrible recrimination. She was beaten, taken 10 miles into the woods, and abandoned at night. Still, she was able to make her way to the Atlantic coast where she caught a ship to England. In England she told the king how Quaker women were being received in the Thirteen Colonies. The king then signed a warrant giving her the right to buy land in Massachusetts, as well as the right to build a home to harbour Quakers.
Armed with the king’s warrant, Elizabeth returned to Massachusetts only to be imprisoned again, and flogged. She was tied to a horse-drawn cart and dragged through eleven towns. Abandoned in the woods once more, again she made her way back to England, where she lived quietly for two years.
Then George Fox, the Quaker leader, called for volunteers for Christian service in the West Indies. Immediately Elizabeth stepped forward, feeling 74 years young. She did get to the West Indies with the Quaker mission, even though she died one week after landing in Jamaica.
Whenever I think of the Quaker women I think first of women whose heart-knowledge of the gospel was oceans deep. Then I think of women for whom the gospel burned so brightly (that is, women in whom Jesus Christ himself throbbed so tellingly) that no sacrifice was too great, no suffering too intense, no pain too protracted in order to have others know the same Lord, be informed by the same truth, and live ever after in the same light.
There is nothing wrong in quaking with the Spirit.
III: — Eva Burrows was born in Australia, 1929, the 8th of 9 children. Her parents were Salvation Army clergy. Her childhood years passed without any notable gospel-penetration registering with her. When she went to Brisbane University, however, a medical student invited her to a bible study, and she was never the same again. In the study-group she found intelligent people who approached scripture intelligently and didn’t find it boring. Next summer, at a Varsity Christian Fellowship camp, she owned the claim of Jesus Christ upon her. She has always maintained that her conversion and her vocation to the ministry were simultaneous. She has always maintained as well that her vocation included a call to forego marriage, certain that God had work for her which married life could not accommodate.
Upon ordination Eva was posted to Rhodesia, to a Salvation Army facility there which included a hospital, an outpatient clinic, primary and secondary schools, a teacher-training college and a seminary. She would be here for 17 years as teacher, preacher and administrator. Concerning her years in the African continent she said, “I didn’t see myself as bossing the Africans. I never had that white supremacy idea…. I made a lot of mistakes, as any young person does; but I never made the mistake of thinking I knew it all as far as the Africans were concerned.”
On her first furlough from the mission field she completed a master’s degree at Sidney University in the area of African education. Longmans, the well-known textbook publisher, regularly consulted her when it was planning textbooks for African students. The Rhodesian government continually sought her advice on the training of teachers.
Holidays were spent in South Africa, a nation notorious for its policy of apartheid. Defiant and courageous, Eva lined up in the “blacks” line; when told to move over to the “whites only” line, she walked away, staging her own boycott. While Rhodesia didn’t have an official apartheid policy, there was de facto racial discrimination. Defiant and courageous still, she insisted on taking black students with her into settings that were the unspoken domain of whites.
Eva Burrows’s 17 years in Africa concluded when she was appointed for five years to an administrative position at The Salvation Army’s international seminary in London, England. This was followed by a brief appointment as head of all Salvation Army social services for women throughout the world. These 15 months were a whirlwind, in which she appeared to step on more than few slow-moving toes as she sought to adapt facilities to changing needs. For instance, the prevalence of abortion having reduced the need for homes for unwed mothers, Eva insisted that buildings and staffs be used for women who were victims of domestic violence.
Next was an appointment to Sri Lanka as head of Salvation Army work in that country. Immediately she was faced with a cultural and political complexity that she had never seen before. There were two principal cultural groups (Sinhalese and Tamils), as well as four principal religious groups (Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians). Undaunted, she applied herself to learning yet another language.
In 1979 Eva was assigned to Scotland. Here she learned what many people have known for a long time: Glasgow is the roughest city in Europe. In Glasgow she did extraordinary work on behalf of what was known as “gutter women”. (The incidence of alcoholism among women in Scotland, it must be remembered, is 14 times the incidence of alcoholism among women in England.) It was while working among these women that she commented that in everyone there is still a spark that love can light up.
When she was posted next to south Australia she was appalled at the extent and consequences of unemployment among young adults. She developed “Employment 2000”, a factory-based programme which taught job-skills and fostered that level of self-confidence needed for survival in the labour force. For her work here the prime minister awarded her the Order of Australia.
In 1986 Eva Burrows became the General of The Salvation Army world-wide. With her forthrightness and her forcefulness she continues to impress people as Margaret Thatcher in a blue uniform. At her insistence, for example, leper colonies in the countries of central Africa have been turned into AIDS hostels. (In Zambia, a country in central Africa, one person in ten has AIDS.) Her greatest thrill the year she became international chief was her renewed contact with fellow-Salvationists in China.
Needing only five hours sleep per night, Eva Burrows works a long day, yet manages to relax with literature, classical music and the theatre.
Having the global perception on church and world that her varied life has given her, she comments pithily, “I think that a lot of Christians in the affluent countries want a religion that costs them very little.” Her top priority remains evangelism. “We must work all the time”, she adds, “we must work all the time for redemption and reconciliation.”
Yes, our risen Lord did appear to women. He speaks to women still. And still he calls them to an initiative and leadership exemplified in Barbara Heck; to a service which may entail the sacrifice exemplified in the Quaker women; to a flexibility, adaptability and global perspective exemplified in Eva Burrows.
There is one last thing we must note. Eva Burrows reminds us that God does call some Christians to a ministry which entails the renunciation of marriage. There are kingdom-services which only the single person can render. Among the women to whom the risen One appeared on Easter morning some were married and some were single; but all alike were summoned to his service. All alike still are.
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
January 1992
UCW SERVICE: 19th JANUARY 1992
Barbara Heck (Hescht): 1734-1804 Texts: Luke 23:54-24:11
Galatians 3:28
Elizabeth Hooton: 1598-1672 Colossians 1:24
Mary Fisher: 1623-1698
Eva Burrows: 1929-
The Incarnation and the Moderator of the United Church of Canada
John 1:1-14
I: — Seeing film clips of sneering guards who are herding children into railway cars destined for the death camps does it for me. Looking at the convicted child-molester or the serial rapist does it for others. Seeing the brutal murderer does it for others still. What does it for you? What fills you with revulsion, with repugnance, with pure loathing? For the Jew of yesteryear it was the spectacle of idolatry. Nothing repulsed the Jew so much as having to behold idolatry. When Paul visited Athens and saw the idols thronging the city, his stomach turned over.
The essence of idolatry is mistaking something creaturely for the Creator himself, and thereafter worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. Since the earliest Christians were Jews, we know that they had a heightened sensitivity to idolatry, never confusing creaturely with Creator, never mistaking the work of God’s hand for God himself. And yet the earliest Christians fell on their knees before Jesus Christ, a fellow-creature like them, and worshipped him. John exclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” The Word is God’s outermost expression of his innermost heart. John recognized that God had identified the outermost expression of his innermost heart with one human creature (and one only), Jesus of Nazareth. Paul exclaims, “He is the image of the invisible God….In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Peter, possessed of a conviction that neither turbulence without nor treachery within would ever take from him, said to the Master himself, “You are the Christ [God’s uniquely anointed], the Son of the living God.” Peter, possessed of a Jewish mind, knew that “son of” meant “of the same nature as.” Thomas cries before the risen one, “My Lord and my God!” The four apostles I have just quoted were all Jews. They dreaded idolatry as they dreaded nothing else. Yet when they beheld their fellow-human, Jesus, they worshipped.
There are only two possibilities here. Either Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, “God-with-us” and the apostles were devout in worshipping him, or Jesus isn’t Emmanuel and the apostles were idolaters, even if unwitting idolaters. Either generations of Christians have been devout in adoring Jesus as Saviour and Lord, or they have been supremely superstitious, even if sincere. Christians of every era have hailed Jesus of Nazareth as the world’s sole, sufficient judge and saviour and sovereign. He can be this only if he is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Otherwise he is no more than a charlatan and we are no more than suckers. In confessing him to be Emmanuel, the church catholic has always known that any diminution of Jesus, however slight, in fact is a total denial of him.
II: — Just as the church catholic has always confessed Jesus Christ to be the Word made flesh, it has also always been afflicted with those who want to diminish him and thereby deny him. While perfidious attempts at diminishing him and resolute resistance to such denial have occurred in every era, there was one period in the church’s life when all of this was brought to sharpest focus. The year was 325. The place was Nicaea, a city in present-day Turkey. The contenders were Athanasius and Arius. At different times both had been bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius insisted that Jesus Christ is precisely he whom the apostles acknowledged and confessed. Arius, on the other hand, felt he could “improve” on the apostles. Since the wording of the apostolic confessions couldn’t be altered (that is, since the vocabulary of scripture couldn’t be changed), Arius “weaseled” different meanings into familiar words. For instance, “son of” is a Hebrew expression meaning “of the same nature as.” Arius, however, “weaseled” a different meaning into “Son of God.” Now he told everyone that “Son of God” meant “similar to God.” Now the Son was said to be similar to the Father; the Son was like the Father.
The obvious question was, “How like? A lot like or a little bit like?” Athanasius replied that the real issue wasn’t how much like whether a little or a lot. The real issue, rather, was this: if Father and Son aren’t of the same nature, it makes no difference how much similar or how little similar they are, since a miss is as good as a mile. The apostles had acknowledged that the nature of the Father and the nature of the Son are identical: Father and Son have identical essence or substance or being.
Arius continued to disagree. He insisted that Jesus is a prophet, as Hosea and Amos and Jeremiah had been prophets before him. Jesus differed from the prophets, however, in that he was somewhat more than a prophet. Jesus is “prophet-plus.” Plus what? Plus a little more of the Holy Spirit, plus a little more righteousness, plus a little more obedience; it all added up to the “plus” of greater God-likeness. “Weaseling” yet again, Arius agreed that the Word had become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth but insisted that “Word” didn’t mean God’s outermost expression of his innermost heart. It was similar to that, said Arius, very much like that, almost that, but not exactly that. Then what became flesh at Christmas? What became flesh, continued Arius, was a message from God, an idea from God, a truth from God, but not God himself.
“This won’t do!”, replied Athanasius, “it isn’t what the apostles knew and confessed; it isn’t the faith by which the church has always lived.”
Athanasius then asked Arius what he meant when he said spoke of the incarnation. Arius replied that “incarnation” meant that Jesus is God’s agent on earth. “God’s agent on earth”, fumed Athanasius, “the Son isn’t God’s agent at all; the Son possesses the same substance or essence or being as the Father, and therefore the Son is the exact expression of the Father. As for God’s agent on earth, the Son is the Father’s exact expression eternally, irrespective of any earthly incarnation.”
Arius wouldn’t give up. (He also wouldn’t be corrected.) And therefore Arius came back, “Since the Son is only a prophet, albeit a prophet raised to the nth degree, the Son doesn’t know the Father fully; in fact the Son doesn’t really know the Father at all; God the Father infinitely transcends his creation and is ultimately unknowable. The Son knows something of God, is acquainted with truths of God, possesses notions of God, but in the final analysis the Son doesn’t know the Father fully. God remains unknowable ultimately.” Now Athanasius was almost beside himself. “If God isn’t knowable ultimately, on what grounds can we know him now at all? Yet the apostles were unshakably certain that they knew God himself; they didn’t merely know something about him”, said Athanasius.
Arius came back one more time. “Since the Son teaches us about the Father, therefore the Son points us beyond himself to the Father. The Son directs our worship beyond himself to the Father. The Son isn’t the focus of faith; the Father is.” Athanasius, by no means defeated, replied that the newness of the New Testament consists in its recognition of the unprecedented newness of God’s act: he has rendered himself, his nature, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Everywhere in the New Testament faith is faith in Jesus Christ. Everywhere in the New Testament faith in Jesus Christ and faith in God are synonymous. To worship him is to worship God; to obey him is to obey God; to love him is to love God. Why? Because Father and Son are possessed of the same nature, substance, essence, being.
Finally Athanasius formulated the theological expression for which he remains deservedly famous to this day, homoousios. Homo is Greek for “same”; ousios Greek for “substance, being, essence, nature.” Athanasius contrasted his expression, homoousios, with homoiousios, homoi being Greek for “similar.” The difference is the Greek letter iota, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, as the letter “i” is the smallest of the English alphabet. Is the letter iota so very small as to be insignificant? Is the letter “i” so very small as to be insignificant? Surely there’s a difference between asking someone to run your business for you and asking him to ruin it. Homoousios means that Father and Son possess the same nature, not similar natures.
And there the debate ended, for the church catholic agreed that Athanasius had faithfully reflected the conviction of the apostles, even as the church catholic agreed that Arius was an anti-gospel heretic.
III: — What does it all add up to for you and me today? Does it add up to anything crucial? As a matter of fact the difference between “same” and “similar”, homoousios and homoiousios, is the difference between gospel and no gospel, therefore between faith and superstition, therefore between our salvation and our ultimate loss. Let’s look at what would be the case if Athanasius hadn’t carried the day.
(i) The gospel wouldn’t be the self-bestowal of God. The New Testament declares that in Jesus of Nazareth God gives us himself, nothing less than himself, all of himself. God doesn’t give us something; he doesn’t give us a message or a notion or an ideal or a truth. In the gospel God communicates himself, bestows himself.
(ii) The love of God would be a niggardly love, a stingy love, a miserly love, a tight-fisted love. It wouldn’t be the love that gives all, costs all, holds back nothing. Instead it would be but a truncated love. According to the gospel, in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God has condescended to us; not merely condescended to us as creatures, but condescended all the way down to us as sinners. God has condescended to us and numbered himself among us transgressors. God has condescended to us and become one with us. God has identified himself with us sinners fully in the person of his Son.
But if the Son were only similar to the Father, only like the Father (however close the resemblance), then the Son’s love for us sinners would be profounder than the Father’s; the Son of God would have identified himself with us in our sin but God himself wouldn’t have. Then we could only conclude that God’s love for us stopped short of ultimate condescension to us and ultimate identification with us.
(iii) The acts of Jesus would not be the acts of God. Think of Christ’s acts of forgiveness. We know that everywhere in life only the offended party can forgive. Since our sin offends God, only God can forgive sinners. When Jesus pronounces sinners forgiven, what’s going on? Are they forgiven? What right does Jesus have to pronounce people forgiven when God alone is offended? What power does Jesus have to render sinners forgiven when God alone is offended? His only right, his only power, is that he and the Father are one (as he tells us himself.) His only right, his only power, is that he and the Father are identical, not similar, in nature, substance, being.
(iv) What Jesus did on the cross would have nothing to do with atonement, that act of God whereby God makes God himself and an alienated world “at one.” What Jesus did on the cross would be nothing more than the pointless torture of a third party, all of such pointless torture of a third party having nothing to do with either God or world. The apostles insist that in the cross of Jesus, which cross is God’s judgement on and penalty for sin, God himself takes on his own judgement and penalty concerning the sin of humankind. It’s correct to say that as Jesus absorbs in himself the penalty for sin the Father absorbs the same penalty at the same moment if and only if Father and Son are one in substance. If Father and Son are merely similar, however, then the death of Jesus has no more salvific significance than the death of Abraham Lincoln or the death of D’Arcy McGee.
IV: — All of which brings me to the moderator of our denomination, Mr. William Phipps. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus isn’t who the apostles recognized him to be and what the church has always confessed him to be. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus Christ, in his very humanity, isn’t the presence and power of God. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus is a window through which it’s possible to see God. While there are many such windows, continues Phipps, Jesus is that window which happens to be the most relatively smudge-free. (Phipps never tells us why Jesus happens to be the relatively smudge-free window.) The apostles, however, suffered and died in allegiance to that Lord whom they found to be not a window through which one looks to God, but that incarnation upon whom one looks as God. Jesus Christ isn’t a window to a deity beyond him; Jesus Christ is the presence and power of the deity identified with him. No wonder the apostle Paul exulted, “In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” No wonder Charles Wesley wrote, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity.” Phipps persists in denying the foundation of the church; he persists in denouncing what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” When Phipps is reminded of this he retreats, saying, “I’m no theologian, I’m no theologian.” True enough. But since he manifestly isn’t, then where theological matters are concerned why doesn’t he simply shut up?
Phipps insists that he hasn’t said anything that United Church moderators haven’t said for 35 years, all the way back to Ernest Marshall Howse. Phipps is correct. His perfidy isn’t new and is no greater than theirs. Well do I remember Ernest Marshall Howse’s public denials of the incarnation when Howse was moderator. Well do I remember Howse’s Easter sermon of 1968. I as flat on my back, encased from neck to groin in a body cast as a result of a three-fatality car accident in which my spine had been fractured. Since I was encased in plaster, I didn’t go to church in Easter ’68; instead I turned on the T.V. set and watched the Howse’s broadcast from Bloor Street United Church. Howse managed to get through the entire sermon, on Easter Sunday, without once mentioning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This, of course, was no accident, since Howse had already said many times over that such matters as incarnation and atonement and resurrection he disdained. Phipps is right: he’s no different from his predecessors in the office of moderator.
Then what are we going to do? People are always asking me what I’m going to do; many are forever telling me what I should do. One man phones me over and over and tells me every time that if I were possessed of any integrity at all I would leave a denomination whose official representative is plainly heretical.
I have no intention of leaving. Instead I encourage myself by recalling my old friends, the Wesley brothers. On 21st January, 1739, Charles Wesley preached a sermon in which he deplored Anglican clergy who, like him, had promised at ordination to uphold the gospel but who were now, unlike Charles, glibly spouting the Arian heresy. These clergy, theologically degenerate, were perforce unitarians as well. Since these men were denying the faith of the church catholic, Charles correctly pronounced them “schismatics.” And since they were now denying the faith they had sworn in their ordination vows to uphold, Charles’s unhesitatingly pronounced them “perjured schismatics.” Charles, however, would never leave the Anglican church, for he didn’t disagree with the doctrinal standards he had sworn in his ordination vows to uphold and that his denomination had never changed.
The Arian heresy was to predominate in Anglicanism for decades. Forty-seven years after Charles Wesley had spoken against it, John Wesley did as much in his tract, “On Schism.” On 30th March, 1786, at age 83, John explained to his fellow-Methodists why he wasn’t going to leave the Anglican church despite its theological degeneration, even though many of his people wanted him to leave and take them with him. Wesley’s reasoning was twofold. In the first place, regardless of the current theological miasma, the Anglican church’s official doctrinal standards had never been changed and Wesley continued to honour them. In the second place, the denomination neither requested him to do what scripture forbids nor prevented him from doing what scripture commands. As long as this was the case, said John, he had no valid reason to leave.
Three days before Wesley penned his tract, “On Schism”, he had taken a boat from Holyhead (Wales) to Dunleary, a coastal village in Ireland. Once ashore at Dunleary he had been unable to find a horse and carriage to take him to Dublin, and so he had walked to Dublin. How far? Twenty-five miles! At age 83! Why? He wanted only to visit and minister to the small group of Methodists in Dublin. They were few in number and they were harassed. The Methodists in Dublin were so very dear to him that he would have walked 25 miles on broken glass to get to them. As for the denominational defection in 18th century Anglicanism, as for the perjured clergy who ruled it; all of this was nothing compared to his love for his people and their love for him. At age 83 he gladly walked 25 miles to be with the people he loved. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing else matters still.
Victor Shepherd
December 1997
How Big Is The Baby?
John 1:1-18
Most people feel that words are easy to use; words can never be used up (there are so many of them); therefore words are largely useless. No wonder words are flung about frivolously. The microphone is stuck in front of the celebrity and she is asked to say something. She uses many words to say nothing, and no one expected her to do anything else. The politician is questioned in the legislature. He starts talking. Fifteen minutes later he hasn’t answered the question; in fact, his words are a smokescreen behind which the question is lost in “bafflegab.” And preachers? No doubt you have listened to preachers, many of them, who were no different. Words are easy to use; words can never be used up; words are largely useless — so why not fling them about?
But it was different for our Hebrew foreparents. For those people a word was an event. In fact the Hebrew word for “word” (DABAR) means both word and event. For our Israelite ancestors a word was a concentrated, compressed unit of energy. As the word was spoken, this concentrated, compressed unit of energy was released. Thereafter it could never be brought back, never re-compressed just as an event can never be undone. Once the word had been uttered this unit of energy surged throughout the world, changing this, altering that, creating here and destroying there.
The closest we modern types come to the understanding of our Hebrew foreparents is in our grasp of how language functions psychologically. We recognize that inflammatory speech can excite people emotionally; we recognize that sad stories can depress people. We’ll admit that words may alter how people feel, but we still maintain that words don’t alter anything in reality.
The Hebrew conviction is different. The psalmist writes, “By the Word of God the heavens were made.” God speaks and the galaxies occur. So weighty were Hebrew words that they were always to be used sparingly, carefully, thoughtfully. It won’t surprise you, then, to learn that at the time of the first Christmas the Hebrew language contained only 10,000 words (very few, in fact) while the Greek language contained 200,000. A word is an event, said our Hebrew foreparents. A word has vastly more than mere psychological force. Once spoken, a word is an event which sets off another event which in turn sets off another, the reality of it all extending farther than the mind can imagine.
When the apostle John sat down to write his gospel he was living in the city of Ephesus. John was Jewish; his readers, however, were chiefly Gentile, like you and me. In speaking about Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Word of God, John looked for a word which Gentiles would understand, yet a word to which he could also marry the full force of the Hebrew understanding of “word”. The word John chose was LOGOS. LOGOS is the Greek word which means “word”. But it also means reason or rationality or intelligibility. It means the inner principle of a thing, how a thing works. The logos of an automobile engine is how a cupful of liquid gasoline can be exploded to propel a two-ton car, how the engine works. The logos of a refrigerator is how electricity (hot enough to burn you) can keep food cold; how it works, its inner principle, the rationality of it all.
John brought the Hebrew and Greek concepts together when he stated that Jesus Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, is the word or logos of God. When the Hebrew mind hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the power of God, the event of God, the effectiveness of God; an effectiveness, moreover, which can never be overturned or undone, a reality permeating the world forever. When the Greek mind, on the other hand, the Gentile mind, hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the outer expression of the inner principle of God himself; Jesus embodies the rationality of God; Jesus discloses how God “works.” John brings together both Hebrew and Greek senses of “word”. John’s Christmas message is as patently simple as it is fathomlessly profound: the word of God has become flesh, our flesh, and now dwells among us. This is the great good news of Christmas.
Great as the good news is, however, we must still ask how far-reaching it might be. Is it good news, but only for a few people? Is it good news, but only for the religious dimension of human existence? Or is it good news of cosmic scope so vast as finally to be imponderable? In short, how big is the baby?
I: — Think first of science. Two or three generations ago it was feared that new scientific discoveries were taking people farther and farther from God. The advances of science added up to atheism for intelligent people. Some people reacted by speaking ill of science: “It doesn’t have all the answers, you know.” (No scientist ever said it did.) “There’s lots more to be discovered”. (Of course there is; this is what keeps science humble.) Nonetheless, the bottom line was clearly stated: “If your sons and daughters are going to study science, don’t expect them to be Christians.”
The apostle John disagrees entirely. John insists that the realm of nature which science investigates has been made through the word, made through the logos. This means that the inner principle of God’s own mind and being, the rationality in God himself, has been imprinted on the creation, imprinted on nature, and imprinted indelibly. There is imprinted indelibly upon the creation a rationality, an intelligibility, which reflects the rationality of the Creator’s own mind. What’s more, the inner principle of God himself which has been imprinted on that creation which science investigates; this inner principle is the word which has been made flesh in Jesus Christ. All of which means that however much we may come to know of science our scientific knowledge will never contradict the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; our scientific knowledge can never take us farther from God.
Science is possible at all only because there is a correlation between patterns intrinsic to the scientist’s mind and intelligible patterns embodied in the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then there would be no match-up between the scientist’s mind and the realm of nature that the scientist investigates. To say the same thing differently: science is possible only because there is a correlation between the structure of human thought and the structure of the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then no one could think truthfully about the physical world. Then what is the origin of this correlation, this match-up? The origin is the word, the logos, through which the realm of nature and scientists themselves have alike been created. John Polkinghorne, a mathematical physicist and a Christian writes, “The Word is God’s agent in creation, impressing his rationality upon the world. That same Word is also the light of men, giving us thereby access to the rationality that is in the world.”
Speaking of mathematics and physics; mathematicians don’t make scientific investigations. Mathematicians arrange symbols, the symbols representing relations within human thinking. Physicists, on the other hand, physicists do investigate the world of nature. Recently it was found that when mathematicians and physicists have compared notes they have seen that the relations purely within human thinking reflect the patterns and structures in nature which scientists uncover. In short, there is a correlation between the rationality of human thinking and the rationality imprinted indelibly in nature. How? Why? Because all things have been made through the word of God: all things in the creation, including the mind of the scientist herself.
Everyone knows that science is based on observation. But to observe nature scientifically is not to stare at it. If I were merely to stare at the stars for the next twenty years I still shouldn’t learn anything about stars. The kind of observing that science does is an observing that is guided by theoretical insights. These insights uncover the deep regularities undergirding what can be observed. Where do these theoretical insights come from, ultimately? They are produced by the word, the logos, the rationality of God, the word that became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth; for through this word both nature itself and the human mind were fashioned.
How big is the baby? Very big. He who was born in Bethlehem is the Word of God incarnate. All things were made through him. He is the outer expression of God’s “innerness”. And by him God’s “innerness” has been imprinted on the “outerness” of nature. Scientific discovery never distances us from God, never contradicts the truth of God, never points people toward atheism. On the contrary, to uncover scientifically the rationality imprinted indelibly on the creation is ultimately to ask for the ground of nature’s intelligibility. The one, sufficient ground of nature’s intelligibility can only be the intelligibility or word or logos of God himself.
II: — How big is the baby? Big enough to embrace not just someone here and someone over there; big enough, rather, to embrace all men and women everywhere. All humankind, without exception, is summoned and invited to become sons and daughters of God. To receive the Word made flesh; to receive Jesus Christ in faith, says John, to embrace the one who has already embraced us is to find ourselves rendered children of God.
A minute ago we spoke of the rationality or order in creation. Without such rationality scientific investigation would be impossible; more to the point, without such rationality or order life would be impossible. No one could survive in a world where bread nourished us one day but poisoned us the next; where water doused fire one day but fuelled fire the next. Without elemental order to the universe human existence would be impossible. And yet while this elemental order perdures in a fallen world, the fact that the world is fallen means that the dimension of disorder is always with us. Disease, for instance, is a manifestation of disorder.
Yet the disorder in the natural realm is slight compared to the disorder in the human mind and heart. We men and women are fallen creatures. We are alienated from God in mind and heart. Because we are alienated from God in mind and heart we are disordered in ourselves; in addition, we are an infectious source of disorder in nature. The environmentalists never weary of reminding us of this fact: we human beings are an infectious source of a huge disorder in nature. The environmentalists don’t understand, however, that we are such inasmuch as we are disordered in ourselves and unable to restore order in ourselves.
It is as we embrace the word incarnate who has already made us and embraced us; it is as we become children of God through faith in the Son of God that alienation from God gives way to reconciliation. Mind and heart, disordered to this point, begin to be re-ordered. We are on the road to recovery, and we are guaranteed utmost restoration.
How big is the baby? The word made flesh is big enough to embrace every last man and woman. The word made flesh, our Hebrew foreparents would remind us, is also strong enough, effective enough, to render us all children of God and keep us such until that day when nothing will even threaten to separate us from him.
III: — Lastly, John tells us that out of the fullness of the Word-become-flesh you and I have received, and will always receive, grace upon grace. To say that the Word has become flesh is to say that Jesus Christ has taken on our humanity in its totality; he has taken on our humanity in its exhilaration, its weakness, its frustration, its sin and its mortality. And this humanity, yours and mine, is so surrounded by the goodness and kindness and mercy and wisdom and undeflectable purpose of God, so steeped in the grace of God, says John, that we are always receiving “grace upon grace”. To say that we are set behind and before by the grace of God isn’t to say that God is indulgent or tolerant or blind in one eye. But it is to say that there is a gracious persistence in God as he pardons us, assists us, and takes up whatever is done to us and whatever we do to ourselves and uses it all as only he can as he moves us toward a restoration so complete as to bring glory to him and adoration out of us.
How big is the baby? So very big that out of the fullness of Jesus Christ we shall always receive grace upon grace and nothing but grace. The Lord who knows my profoundest needs better than I know them myself will always supply what I need most. It would be a very small Lord who gave me what I wanted, or gave me what I thought I needed. If I were given what I wanted or thought I needed I should only be confirmed in my superficiality and cemented into my immaturity. Yet so big is the incarnate one that he gives me not what confirms me in my disorder, but precisely what moves me a step closer to my recovery and restoration in him.
When I was ordained and appointed to a seacoast village I spent hours at the beach watching the Atlantic. Hundreds of metres out to sea a wave emerged from the ocean’s immensity. It broke on the beach, flooding the sand. Before the wave wholly receded, however, another wave broke on the beach and flooded the sand. Now the sand was flooded both by the incoming wave and the outgoing wave; that is, the sand was always flooded. And then a third waved surged onto the beach before the second one (even the first) had had time to recede. Wave upon wave. One day as I stood on the beach before the Atlantic and watched wave upon wave I understood what John meant when he wrote, “Out of God’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”
It all adds up to this. God’s immensity is always flooding us with grace. However much we blunder, our blunder cannot ungrace us. When our faith flickers and we feel like a half-believer at best, our flickering faith won’t expel us from the sphere and realm of grace. When we are proud and need humbling; when we are dispirited and need encouraging; when we are bruised and need comforting; when our resilience is shaken and we need reassurance; whatever our profoundest need the immensity of grace will always prove sufficient. The Word made flesh is this big.
At the beginning of the sermon I said that for our Hebrew foreparents a word is charged with power. It is an event that, unleashed, alters reality in a way that can never be undone. For our Gentile foreparents a word is the inner principle of a thing, its rationality, how it works. John brought these two senses together when he spoke of Jesus Christ as the Word of God made flesh.
The rationality of the incarnate word is mirrored in the structure of creation and in the structure of human thinking, thus facilitating scientific investigation. The recreative power of the incarnate word is able to render us children of God, thus remedying our disorder. The grace of the incarnate word is fathomless, thus proving daily that Jesus Christ is deeper than our deepest need.
Then John’s cry must elicit an identical exclamation from us; namely, that to behold the Word made flesh is to behold glory, glory without rival and without end.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2009
Christmas: An Event in Four Words
John 1:14
TRUTH For years I have been intrigued by the psychology of perception. What do people see? What do they think they see? Or hear? Or not hear? Everyone knows that people tend to see what they want to see and tend not to hear what they don’t want to hear. In situations of stress or fatigue or social pressure people can “see” or “hear” what isn’t there to be seen or heard at all.
Recently I found myself listening to a psychologist who has worked much in the area of perception. He told his audience the following.
An adult is placed in a pitch-black room. A pinpoint light is turned on, 10 or 15 feet away. (The light is only a pinpoint; it illumines nothing else.) Once the light is turned on it remains fixed in the same place for the duration of the exercise. Without exception, the psychologist reported, the person in the pitch-black room will say that the light moves. How much it is said to move varies from person to person: from 1 inch to 8 feet, the average being 4 inches.
There is another aspect to this experiment, an aspect that makes my blood run cold. When all the people who participated in the experiment are brought together to chat among themselves, they eventually agree (no one has overtly pressured them into agreeing) that the light moved 4 inches. Even those who, when asked alone, reported that it moved anywhere from 1 inch to 8 feet; even these people now swear that the light moved exactly 4 inches.
Note, in the first place, that people “see” what isn’t there to be seen at all: they are inventing something (a light that moves), and then are genuinely unable to distinguish what is from what they imagine. Note, in the second place, that they come to agree unconsciously lest they appear odd person out, lest they appear to be a social misfit. Note, in the third place, that all of this occurs with something (the pinpoint of light) that hasn’t been rendered deceptive or seductive in any way.
By extension, what does this experiment say about our society’s perception of political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues, issues that concern us all?
Now suppose that the pinpoint of light, instead of being left in place, were manipulated so as to deceive people. Then think about the political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues where there are attempts and schemes aimed at misleading us. In an election campaign Brian Mulroney swore that Canada’s social benefits were untouchable (“a sacred trust”). Upon being elected, the first thing he did was try to tamper with old age security. What did Canadians do about it? They re-elected him. Lest you think me politically biased I must remind you that Pierre Trudeau defeated Robert Stanfield by means of a promise never to implement wage and price controls. Trudeau implemented them within 90 days of being elected. Whereupon Canadians elected him again.
The two instances of turpitude I have just mentioned aren’t very subtle. (For all their obviousness, however, most Canadians still didn’t recognize them). Every day there are instances of deception far more subtle, far more devious, far more convoluted. Every day we are lied to, and lied to again, as falsehood is piled upon falsehood, fabrication upon fabrication.
How much worse it would all be if we (and our society) were victimized not only by the cunning of men and women, not only by the propaganda of the politicians, not only by the ideologues in the offices of social planning and the military and the church, but also by malignant spiritual forces that underlie and compound and disguise the distortions that we know to be deliberately engineered! Scripture insists that this very thing is happening all the time. St.Paul reminds us in II Corinthians 4 that “the god of this world” obstructs and obscures and perverts the spiritual perception of us all.
Then where is there truth? More profoundly, what is truth? Unless we know what truth is, we shan’t know where to look for it. If we don’t know what truth is and therefore don’t know where to look for it, how shall we ever find it? As a matter of fact, we aren’t going to find it. We are never going to find it. Truth must find us!
Our foreparents in faith were ecstatic over Christmas just because they knew that truth had appeared; truth had found them. Truth had overtaken them and stamped itself upon them when they hadn’t known where to look or what to look for. Truth had come upon them when their perception was distorted (and they were unaware of it), when they had been deceived by human cunning (and were unaware of it), when “the god of this world” had deceived them (and they were unaware of it).
Truth, in John’s gospel, always has the force of reality. Truth is reality as opposed to illusion (illusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally healthy people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to delusion (delusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally ill people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to falsehood, as opposed to mythology, as opposed to fantasy. Truth is reality, John insists.
John, we all know, was a Jew by birth and upbringing. He knew Hebrew. Truth, in Hebrew, has the force of firmness, stability, solidity. When truth (firmness, stability, solidity) describes a person, that person is said to be steadfast; and because steadfast, trustworthy.
“The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” Christmas upholds the incursion of truth into our world. The incursion of truth means the incursion of reality, firmness, solidity, steadfastness, trustworthiness. Jesus Christ comes to us with a unique power to penetrate our world of misperception, deliberate falsification, and spiritual deception. Jesus Christ is truth.
GRACE All of us make promises. When we make promises we intend to keep them. Despite our utmost resolve to keep promises, however, we break them. We are promise-breakers.
God, on the other hand, is the promise-keeper. He invariably keeps the promises he makes. There is no treachery in him that could lead him to “welch” on his promises to us; on the other hand there is much treachery in us that could excuse him for abandoning his promises to us. Still, nothing deflects him. However exasperated he is with us, he never gives up on us. However frozen our hearts may be to him, his heart throbs for us. However fitful we may be in our devotion to him, he is constant in his to us. Fitfulness in us is met with only more resolute faithfulness from him.
Now to say that God is faithful is not to say that he is inflexible, rigid. Because he is flexible his faithfulness to us takes a special form when his faithfulness meets our fickleness and folly: when his faithfulness meets our sin his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. (If God were inflexible, then as his faithfulness met our sin his faithfulness — his promise ever to be our God — could only condemn us, without provision for our rescue and without opportunity for our repentance.)
You must have noticed that St. Paul begins his letters to assorted congregations with the greeting, “Grace, mercy and peace to you”. Grace is God’s faithfulness to us, promised from of old, kept unto eternity. Mercy is God’s faithfulness “flexing” so as to deal with our sin. Peace (the Hebrew word is shalom); peace, in Hebrew, is a synonym for salvation. Whenever Paul speaks first of grace he speaks finally of peace; the peace, shalom, salvation that grace finally forges. In other words, grace is faithful love so resilient, so resolute, so undeflectable that not even our icy ingratitude, not even our defiant disobedience, can discourage such love. Grace is faithful love so flexible that it “bends” itself around our sin. Grace is faithful love so constant and consistent that not even our resistance can impede it or interrupt it. For this reason whenever Paul begins by speaking of grace he ends by speaking of peace, shalom: he has imprinted on his heart the logic of grace.
Let’s gather it up in a nutshell: GRACE is God-in-his-faithfulness keeping the promises he has made to us, all for the sake of a mercy-wrought salvation that renders us his children, members of his household and family forever.
To speak of grace and truth is to say that God’s promise-keeping faithfulness (grace) is the reality, the solidity, firmness, stability, that we can trust in a world of distortion and deception and depravity
WORD Perhaps there is a sceptic (even a cynic!) among us who has a most important question to ask. “If God keeps the promises he makes to us, does he do this merely because he wills to do it (the implication being that he could break his promises if he willed to break them), or does he keep his promises because it’s his nature to keep them?” When God keeps his promises, are we merely looking at something God does (for reasons known only to him), or are we looking into the innermost, unalterable heart of God?
We have already determined that grace means God is consistent in his attitude and act. But is God consistent in the sense of being a consistent actor? When the movie Awakenings was about to be filmed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote the book (Awakenings), spent much time with two superb actors, Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Sacks was startled and more than a little frightened at the ability of these two actors, since he noticed that they could take on any role, any identity, and act it with perfect consistency for as long as they wanted. But of course none of the roles, identities, they took on were they themselves; none of their roles reflected their innermost heart.
What about God? The “face” that he “puts on” for us in Jesus Christ; is this “face” only skin-deep, or does it reflect depths in God that are so deep they couldn’t be deeper? Does it reflect the innermost heart of God?
As we answer this question you will have to bear with me as we make a short detour into the Greek dictionary. There are two Greek words for word. One word for word is hrema, while the other is logos. Hrema means “that which we utter”. Logos, on the other hand, means “outermost expression of innermost essence”. When John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh, he uses logos. John is plainly telling us that what looms before us in Jesus Christ isn’t merely an act or action of God (as though God could act differently if he felt like it); what looms before us in Jesus Christ is the outermost expression of the innermost essence of God himself.
God doesn’t keep his promises to us just because he feels like keeping them, his promise-keeping telling us nothing about his heart or nature. God doesn’t keep his promises today, the implication being that he might not tomorrow. The consistency God displays isn’t the consistency of actors like Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are beholding the heart of God himself. God will never do anything other than what he has done in Christ and is doing now simply because he cannot do anything other.
To say the same thing differently, grace and truth are not roles that God acts superbly; grace and truth are the Word, the outermost expression of the innermost essence. God will always be — can only be — what he is for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Put the other way around, what God is for us in Christ he is in himself eternally. It is the innermost heart of God that has invaded our world of distortion and deception and depravity.
FLESH “The Word became flesh.” Typically, in scripture, “flesh” refers to our creaturely weakness. “Flesh” is the bible’s one-word abbreviation for our frailty, our fragility, our vulnerability to betrayal, to disappointment, to disease and to death. “Flesh” refers to our ultimate defencelessness in the face of everything we struggle to protect ourselves against but finally can’t.
To say that the Word became flesh is to say that God has stepped forth from his eternal stronghold and has stepped into our frailty, fragility, vulnerability and mortality. But he hasn’t done this just to prove that it can be done; and he hasn’t done this just to keep us company. He has done it in order that his grace and truth might become operative in you and me this instant. He has done it in order that grace and truth might seize us and soak us and shake us as often as we think that our vulnerability or our fragility or our mortality is the last word about us. He has done it in order that on any day of confusion or collapse truth will find us yet again; on any day of disgrace grace will bend the love of God around us and wrap us in his love as God’s faithfulness to us flexes yet again in the face of our sin. He has done it in order that on every day we shall know that we aren’t orphans lost in the vastness of the universe; rather we are children of him who has promised never to abandon us, always to cherish us, thoroughly to save us.
Christmas: an event in four words.
TRUTH: a firm, stable reality we can trust.
GRACE: God’s promise-keeping faithfulness as his love becomes mercy whenever it meets us in our sin, bringing us peace, shalom, salvation.
WORD: All of the this reflecting not merely something God does occasionally but reflecting who God is eternally.
FLESH: God himself going so far to keep his promises to us as to step forth from his stronghold and give himself up for us in the midst of our suffering and death.
“The Word became flesh…full of grace and truth.”
Victor A. Shepherd
Christmas 1995
What Christmas Means to Me
John 1:14
I: — It means a rescue operation, a salvage operation. Salvation (the unique work of the saviour) is a salvage operation.
One week after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph took their infant son to the temple to have him circumcised. There they met Simeon, an aged man who had waited years to see God’s Messiah. With a cry that relieved decades of aching longing Simeon took the baby in his arms and exclaimed, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Peace? Did Simeon mean that at last he had peace in his heart, peace of mind? No doubt he meant that too, but that wasn’t what he meant primarily when he cried, “Peace! At last!”
You see, Simeon was an Israelite. In the Hebrew language “peace” is a synonym for “salvation”. “Peace” means God’s definitive reversal of the distortion, disfigurement and distress which curse the world on account of sin and evil.
Years later, in the course of his earthly ministry, Jesus healed a menorrhagic woman. When he had identified her in the crowd he said, “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Through your faith in me God’s salvation has become effective in you; now you step ahead in the reality of your salvation; you walk in it; you live out of it for the rest of your life.”
When Simeon lifted up the week-old Jesus and cried, “Lettest now thy servant depart in peace” he added, “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation…light for revelation to Gentiles.”
Why does he speak of the Gentiles? Plainly Simeon thought that prior to the advent of Jesus Christ Gentiles were “in the dark” with respect to God. The light that Jesus Christ is, said Simeon, alone could save us Gentiles who know nothing of the Holy One of Israel. Was Simeon correct? Years later Paul would describe Gentiles as “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Apart from him who is the Christmas gift are we Gentiles Godless and our predicament hopeless? Paul assumed this to be unarguably obvious!
Two weeks ago the University of Toronto conferred an honourary doctorate on Isaiah Berlin, professor at Oxford University. Isaiah Berlin is regarded as one of the finest scholars of humanist conviction anywhere in the world. Multilingual, philosophically erudite, possessed of a remarkable grasp of history, he is intellectually awesome. In his address to the university he detailed the undeniable dark side of human history. While humankind had always been prone to warfare (with the huge loss of life unavoidable in war), it was Napoleon who first developed large-scale slaughter, large-scale in that the slaughter spread vastly farther than battlefield combatants. Then Isaiah Berlin pointed out that the 20th century was unparalleled for slaughter on an even greater scale: the Stalinist purges (not to mention the people Marxism has slain wherever Marxism has been ascendant), the Holocaust, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, and so on. It is the 20th century that has provided conclusive proof of what the previous centuries suggested to be the state of the human heart. As Berlin spoke, making his case stronger by the moment, the weight of his cumulative argument seemed on the point of convincing everyone that humankind of itself could never reverse its history of rapacity and cruelty. At precisely this moment (according to the Globe and Mail write-up) Berlin turned 180 degrees and announced, without any justification at all, that a glorious new day was just around the corner. History, to this point bleak beyond imagining, would suddenly reverse its course in the 21st century. Humankind was on the cusp of generating a genuinely new future for itself, said Berlin, and his only regret was that he, an old man now, would not live long enough to see us do finally what we had never been able to do to this point!
I was stunned. Berlin’s intellect is far greater than mine. Nevertheless, he exemplifies the point scripture makes over and over: a major consequence of our sinnership is blindness — blindness to truth, blindness to reality, blindness to the nature of sin and the necessity of the saviour. The worst aspect of blindness, of course, is blindness to our blindness; ignorance of our ignorance; insensitivity to our spiritual insensitivity. In a word, the worst consequence of our condition is utter unawareness of our condition and its consequences.
Then Paul was correct, wasn’t he! Humankind is Godless and its predicament is hopeless!
Except that the saviour of humankind that human history cannot generate; this saviour has been given to us. It is the fact of the gift that made Simeon’s heart sing. The fact of the gift means that humankind doesn’t have to remain Godless; its predicament doesn’t have to remain hopeless! What we must crave to do is receive the gift, never spurning it, never trifling with it, never pretending, along with Professor Berlin, that no such gift is needed even though the cumulative evidence is that such a gift — God’s own rescue — is our only hope.
I rejoice that this gift does not come to us with the impersonal label “humankind” written on it, as though it were for everyone in general but no one in particular. Rather I rejoice that it comes with my name on it. As often as I rejoice in this I recall the verse from the Hebrew bible — “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, says the Lord”. And then I think of the four-line ditty I learned as a child:
My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase.
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.
I rejoice that the gift with my name on it has come to me in such a manner as to impel me to own the gift, cherish the gift, glory in the gift. For I too can say with Simeon, “Peace! From the prince of Peace himself! Immanuel: ‘God-with-us'”. And because of “God-with-us”, I with God eternally.
II: — Christmas means something more to me. It means that the saved life I have been given in Christ I must henceforth live and can live. A minute ago I referred to Christ’s saying to the healed menorrhagic woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Your faith has immersed you in the salvation of God; now you live out of that salvation, live from it, for the rest of your life.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and — most importantly — could live.
When the woman caught in the very act of adultery was brought to Jesus he said to her, “I don’t condemn you; now you see to it that you never do this again.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and could live.
When the paralyzed man was brought to Jesus he said to him, “Your sins are forgiven; take up your bed and walk.” Our Lord didn’t mean, “Walk around, go for a stroll, meander, try a little sightseeing.” “Walk”, rather, is the commonest metaphor in the Hebrew bible for the obedience God requires of his people. In light of what God’s salvation, God’s people can walk as he requires them to walk.
When Jesus says to three different people on three different occasions, “Go in peace”, “See to it that you never do this again”, “Start walking and never stop”; when our Lord says these he is saying exactly the same thing to all three. What the salvaged are supposed to do the salvaged can do.
Christmas celebrates the Incarnation. The Incarnation is God himself living among us under the conditions of our existence. The Incarnation is therefore God himself living our difficulties, our disappointments, our distresses. The book of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”; he has forged a way through life’s thickets ahead of us. We don’t have to forge a way through the thicket; we need only follow him on the path he has forged for us. But this we must do, and by his grace this we can do.
Many years after Christmas, when our Lord was full-grown and had embarked on his public ministry, he told his followers that they were light and salt. Obviously we are not light in exactly the same sense that Jesus Christ is. He is the light of the world; our vocation is to shine with his light so as to reflect it into nooks and crannies where life unfolds for us.
Jesus also insisted that his followers are salt. Salt, in the Hebrew bible, is the symbol of God’s covenant with his creation. His covenant is his promise that he will never fail us or forsake us, never quit on us, never give up in disgust or despair, however angry with us he might be for a season. Christians are to be the living sign that God has not abandoned his creation and will not abandon it.
We are to be such a sign. Impossible? Except that our Lord has pioneered this for us already. We need only follow him on the proof-path. Because the salvager has been there ahead of us, we the salvaged must follow him and we can.
III: — Christmas means one thing more to me. It means that the ordinary is fraught with eternal significance. The apostle John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh. He means more than the fact that the self-utterance of God clothed itself in a human body: bones, blood, skin, hair, teeth. He means that the Word immersed itself in every aspect of our existence, from employment problems to temptation to fun-time partying to betrayal to exhilaration to grief to laughter to pain. None of it is foreign to God.
We must never forget that our Lord was born to ordinary parents, grew up in an ordinary town (Nazareth being a generic town like North Bay or Moose Jaw); he worked at an ordinary trade and ate ordinary food. He was so ordinary as not to be noteworthy; there is virtually no mention of him in the literature outside the New Testament. He was one more itinerant preacher of one more Messianic sect handled one more time in the manner Roman security guards were so good at. Yet he was also the sole, sovereign Son of God whose coming among us is the occasion of God’s most intimate presence, God’s most effective mercy, God’s unique opportunity.
Since life is 98% ordinary, it is in the ordinary moments of life that we are going to have serve God. Instead of looking for the extraordinary, the dramatic, we should understand that we are salt and light not particularly when we try to be or are challenged to be; if we are salt and light at all then we are salt and light all the time.
Jesus went to a wedding, and there was given opportunity to attest the mission of his Father. After the wedding he went to a funeral, and opportunity was given him for a different ministry. On his way to the next village a distraught parent told him of a daughter’s sickness; while he was sorting out this development someone who didn’t like him accosted him. It was all so very ordinary — and therefore it was all the opportunity of a particular word and deed and blessing and comfort.
The child in front of us in the variety store is crying because her mother has sent her to the store for a loaf of bread the child has lost her money. Two teenagers in front of us are maliciously teasing an elderly man in Erin Mills Town Centre. The stranger in the bed beside the person we have gone to see in the hospital calls out to us. Our spouse arrives home with horrendous headache and hair-trigger nerves on account of a sneak attack at work when she never expected it and therefore could not protect herself against it.
This is where we live. Christmas, the celebration of the Incarnation, reminds us that this is where God lives too. Then there is opportunity for discernment and service and intercession and courage right here. Depending on the situation there is opportunity (and need) for ironfast inflexibility or for the gentlest accommodation.
I am moved every time I recall a story of St. Francis of Assisi. An eager, enthusiastic novice among the friars told Francis that day-to-day existence with brothers in the order was suffocatingly ordinary. The two of them should move out into the wider world and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Francis agreed that this was a good idea. “But first let’s first walk through the city of Assisi from end to end”, insisted the older man. The two fellows did nothing more than walk through the city. When they had traversed it the impatient novice, puzzled now, turned to Francis and remarked quizzically, “But I thought we were going to testify to our Lord!” “We just did”, replied Francis quietly, “we just did.”
Life consists of the ordinary punctuated by the extraordinary. Punctuation marks are found relatively infrequently, aren’t they? I have yet to see a sentence that had more punctuation marks than words! Punctuation marks may help us read a sentence but they don’t make up the sentence. And strictly speaking, punctuation marks are not even necessary. (Something as important as a telegram, after all, has no punctuation marks.)
It is a sign of spiritual maturity when we understand that the ordinary is the vehicle of the eternal; it is a sign of spiritual alertness when, from time-to-time, we see how this has occurred. It is a sign of faithfulness when we live day-by-day in the certainty that there is no ordinary moment that God doesn’t grace, and therefore there is no ordinary moment that is finally insignificant.
Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation. Incarnation — the living word and will and way of God becoming flesh of our flesh in our midst; Incarnation is the foundation of everything pertaining to the Christian faith.
Incarnation means a salvage operation that is nothing less than the salvation of God.
Incarnation means that the salvaged life God grants us through our faith in Jesus Christ is a life we must live and can live, since our Lord has pioneered it for us.
Incarnation means that the ordinary is the vehicle of God’s summons to us, as well as the occasion of our obedience to him through service to others.
This is what Christmas means to me.
Victor A. Shepherd
December 1994
Come And See For Yourself
John 1:43-51 Genesis 28:10-17
“Faith is an experiment which results in an experience”, many preachers used to say a few years ago. Myself, I have never liked the expression. Anyone with even highschool training in science knows that experiments are carefully controlled set-ups designed to prove something about nature. But life isn’t a carefully controlled set-up. Therefore life has little in common with laboratory experiments. What’s more, life, human existence in all its grandeur and depth and mystery and wonder, can’t be reduced to nature. To be sure we human beings do have one foot in the world of nature; i.e., we share much with our second cousins, the animals. But we also have one foot (better, head and heart) in a higher world. We transcend nature in a way that the animals don’t. I don’t like the expression, “Faith is an experiment which results in an experience.”
There is another reason why I don’t like it. What is the experience which is supposed to follow from the experiment? Is it some kind of intrapsychic fireworks or frenzy or ecstasy? I’ve seen many people, but especially younger people, who have been urged, “Try Jesus for the best experience of all”. Then they try to work up a religiously-fuelled experience, never satisfied with the experience they have (whatever that may be), always comparing their rather mild experience to someone else’s intense experience, or at least comparing it to the intense experience they think they are supposed to have. Eventually they give up on it all, sadly turning away from the church which has disappointed them, even bitterly denouncing faith as fraudulent.
I dislike the expression, “Faith is an experiment which results in an experience”, for yet another reason. Any “experiment” in life is going to result in an experience of some kind. Driving an automobile at 200 kph will result in an experience of some sort: either the exhilaration of ultra-high speed, or the distress of being arrested, or the pain of colliding with a bridge abutment. These are all experiences too.
The purveyors of street-drugs are quick to tell young people that experiments with angel-dust and nose-candy result in a terrific experience. And so they do.
When we move from the sensational to the apparently profound the problem remains the same. Everyone is faced with a cafeteria of options for believing and living. Christianity is one item in the cafeteria, along with the New Age movement, hedonism (maximization of pleasure), nationalism, eastern religions, existentialism, you name it. When younger people especially look over the cafeteria-offerings, which one are they supposed to select as their experiment? Since all of them result in an experience of some sort, how prefer one to another?
And yet I don’t pretend for a minute that a clergyman like me, saying, “Forget the cafeteria; Jesus is the way to go”, is going to persuade very many people either. Then how do people become disciples of our Lord, follow him through life, all the while finding their conviction growing that in following him they have set out on the sure and certain route and desire to look nowhere else? We can be helped in understanding just how this happens as we probe our Lord’s encounter with Phillip and Nathanael in the first chapter of John’s gospel.
I: — Phillip says to Nathanael, his neighbour, “We have found what all of us are looking for; we have found the one who addresses the unspoken longing of every human heart; he is the satisfaction of every thinking person’s quest; he’s from Nazareth.”
“ Nazareth !” Nathanael explodes; “Can anything good come out of Nazareth ? What did that one-horse town ever produce?” Nathanael is plainly sceptical. And there’s nothing wrong with being sceptical. The opposite of being sceptical is being gullible. I’ll take the sceptical person every time. The sceptical person, the “doubting Thomas”, the man or woman “from Missouri ” is less readily damaged herself and inflicts less damage on others.
Gullible people, readily “taken in”, are always being played for suckers. Because they are always throwing themselves after anything that sounds the slightest bit appealing, they are always on the edge of throwing themselves away. Again and again they are left jaded, discouraged and embarrassed. It’s far better to be sceptical. “Nazareth has never produced anything worthwhile that anyone can recall”, is Nathanael’s ice-cold reply to Phillip’s enthusiasm, “and I don’t want to run after this fellow you say you have turned up, only to be left looking like a gullible fool.”
And yet scepticism, carried to the extreme, renders us immobilized. If I am ceaselessly sceptical then not only will I not purchase what is pushed at me through slick advertising, I won’t purchase anything. If I’m forever sceptical of the automobile salesperson, I am going to be stuck with walking everywhere. If I’m sceptical of every last woman, I’ll never be married. We can’t live like this. If we are going to avoid being frozen in 100% paralysis, then at some point we have to suspend our scepticism.
II: — How does Nathanael come to suspend his? His friend Phillip says to him, “I know you are a ‘doubting Thomas’, but come and see for yourself.” Nathanael trusts his friend enough to put his own scepticism “on hold” for the moment. Phillip himself had met Jesus on the recommendation of Andrew and Peter. All four men lived in Bethsaida and knew one another. We suspend our scepticism upon the recommendation of someone we know trust.
I didn’t always think this way. I used to think that scepticism was to be hammered out of one’s head by rigorous logic. People were to be argued out of their unbelief and into faith. Let me say right now that I don’t think faith to be illogical; I don’t think that coming to faith means pickling one’s brains. Nevertheless, to say that faith is reasonable isn’t to say that people can be argued into it. Still, I used to think that they could be, they should be, and I was the one to do it.
When I lived in residence at university and was schooled in philosophy I relished the daily after-supper entertainment. Before serious study got underway for the evening we customarily had an intellectual joust. I was good at intellectual jousting. Bold and brazen I took on all those who argued against faith and slew most of them. Some students were easier to argue into silence than others. (Generally it was easier to turn inside out someone from the social sciences than someone from the natural sciences.) I have to tell you, however, that not one of the students I hammered intellectually was won to the kingdom (as far as I know). Public defeat did nothing to overcome their scepticism. Instead, their attitude was, “Shepherd, you may have won this round through your verbal footwork, but we aren’t impressed, we aren’t persuaded, and we remain unconvinced as to the truth of what you tell us.”
As a matter of fact most people won’t be argued out of their unbelief. Then how do they emerge from it? Different factors, many different factors, work together to bring them to the one whom Phillip had met and whom he now recommended to Nathanael.
An important factor is our own transparency, our singlemindedness. Upon the recommendation of Phillip, Nathanael started toward Jesus. Our Lord saw him coming and exclaimed, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no guile” – no deceit, no duplicity. To be honest with oneself, to be without wiliness and cunning is to have taken a giant step towards truth. If at present we are able to believe so little about God that we appear to believe nothing about him, believing only that we ourselves must be transparent, without duplicity, then we have unknowingly taken a giant step towards faith. You see, to be sincere in one’s quest for truth is to find that truth comes forth to meet us. God grants truth to transparency.
Transparency, however, isn’t the only factor in the mix that moves us from unbelief to faith. Another factor is sitting under the fig tree. When Jesus said to Nathanael, “Here is an Israelite as transparent as the day is long”, Nathanael replied, “How do you know me?” Jesus came back, “Even before Phillip recommended me to you, I saw you under the fig tree”. In Israel of old the fig tree was the symbol for the salvation of God. People sat under a fig tree when they reflected upon the salvation of God, when they reflected upon it so as to quicken their longing for it. When Jesus said to Nathanael, “I saw you under the fig tree”, he meant, “I looked into your heart, and I saw that deep down you are concerned about the salvation of God and every aspect of it. Your consuming concern is God, his truth, his way, his triumph. I know that you long for God’s restoration of a world the fall has rendered false, a world evil now torments. I know that you long for God’s restoration of men and women who were created to be his sons and daughters and are currently living like orphans. I saw you under the fig tree.”
At this moment Nathanael cried out, “You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel.” At that point Nathanael’s scepticism evaporated completely. He moved from healthy scepticism to healthier faith.
Remember: he wasn’t argued into faith. He wasn’t moved by a barrage that left him unable to reply yet still unconvinced in his heart. Instead there were several factors moved him from unbelief to faith: a friend whose recommendation he could trust, his own transparency and sincerity, his concern with matters that are oceans deeper than sports scores and interest rates; namely, his concern with the salvation of God and his place in it – all these factors fused together and were made fruitful by the approach of Jesus Christ himself. Together they moved Nathanael to become a believer. This is how people become believers today.
III: — Lastly we should ponder our Lord’s promise to the newest disciple: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”. Here Jesus brought forward the old story of Jacob and his dream. Jacob lay down to sleep and dreamt of angels ascending and descending upon a ladder that linked heaven and earth. When Jacob awoke he exclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place…. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Jesus adapts Jacob’s dream, replacing the ladder linking heaven and earth with himself; he is where God “houses” himself; he binds heaven to earth and earth to heaven; he acquaints us with God just because he himself isthe outpoured heart of God and the face of God. At the same time he acquaints us with a restored humankind and a restored creation just because he himself is this.
I can say without hesitation or qualification that Jesus Christ is indeed all that he promises to be. He is truth and way and life.
Jesus Christ is truth. As truth or reality he exposes illusion and fantasy and falsehood for what they are. As I read novels or biographies I read them through the spectacles of God’s truth. And as I do this, I discern both reality and illusion not only in the characters of novel or biography, but also in the writers themselves. In turn I am moved afresh to pursue truth in my own life, repudiating the seductive illusions, the enticements that lap at me as surely as they lap at you.
Jesus Christ is life. Since he has been raised from the dead, death cannot overtake him; neither can death overtake us who love him.
For years I have been intrigued by a peculiar awareness that looms in forty-year olds and grows as they age until it becomes haunting. It’s the realization of their mortality. When someone much older, someone ninety or ninety-five, dies, even dies easily, people much younger are disturbed, I have found. The elderly person’s death has swelled even more their awareness not only of their own mortality but of the transience of everything about them – children, spouse, parents, careers, savings, aspirations. It’s all going to be swallowed up in death. Except – to love him who is resurrection and life is to know two things: first, our coming death is nothing more than mere biological interruption, nothing more than a momentary disruption of the order of a petty nuisance; second, everything about us that has reflected the goodness of the kingdom of God, will be brought with us through the momentary interruption. Jesus Christ alone is resurrection and life; to love him is to be the eternal beneficiary of what he is in himself.
Jesus Christ is way. The road of discipleship leads us to a glorious destination. The road we walk in faith never winds down into a swamp, never lands us in quick-sand or dead-end. Of course it’s not always an easy trek. Any suggestion it might be is routed by one reading of the gospels or of John Bunyan’s masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress.
Yet as challenging as discipleship is, the challenge will never be greater than the reward. And if in a moment of discouragement we are tempted to think that this way, the which our Lord himself is, is too challenging, a quick glance at other roads – meandering, desert-riddled dead-ends – will keep us following him who has pioneered the way ahead for us, now accompanies us on the road, and simultaneously cheers us on from the finish line where he awaits us.
Twenty centuries ago a man named Phillip said to his friend Nathanael, “I have found someone you should know. Come and see for yourself”. Phillip’s recommendation inched Nathanael past his scepticism. Nathanael saw for himself, with the result that Jesus Christ became the truth and wonder of his life as well as his eternal destiny.
Come and see for yourself.
Victor Shepherd
July 2006
“Our Doctrines” 24th May – Wesley Day
John 3:1-17
It would be difficult to imagine anyone more rigid, more defensive, more inflexible – in a word, more “uptight” – than John Wesley in Georgia, 1737. When day-old infants were brought to the church for baptism, Wesley insisted on immersing them completely three times over! As horrified mothers objected to this dangerous practice (wasn’t it enough that the infant-mortality rate was already 50%?) Wesley reacted by refusing to serve Holy Communion to the mothers themselves.
At this point in his life Wesley was a moralist. He thought the mission of the church to be that of improving the moral tone of the society. Like all moralists he was also a legalist; that is, he thought that people were admitted to God’s favour on the basis of rule-keeping. Like moralists and legalists in general, he was superior, disdainful, autocratic, unbending: in a word, obnoxious.
Obnoxious he certainly was; stupid, however, he was not. A graduate of Oxford University, Wesley was proficient in the ancient languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew. He knew philosophy, history, literature, logic, theology. French appears to have been the only modern language in which he was schooled formally. Still, on the three-month voyage to Georgia he taught himself German so thoroughly that years later he translated dozens of Paul Gerhardt’s hymns from German to English. In the New World he came upon some Italian settlers who were without a clergyman. Wesley conducted worship for them, reading the Anglican Prayer Book service to himself while translating it aloud into the Italian he had recently taught himself. In Frederica, a village a few miles from Savannah, Wesley came upon a Jewish community. The Jewish people were from Portugal but spoke Spanish. Whereupon Wesley taught himself Spanish in order to converse with them.
Then disaster overtook him. He was 34 years old and had become infatuated with an 18 year old woman, Sophy Hopkey. She rejected him in favour of another man whom she subsequently married, Mr. Williamson. Hurt, frustrated and angry all at once, Wesley found excuses to withhold Holy Communion from Sophy, thereby suggesting to the public that she was scandal-ridden. Her husband was outraged. He had the politically powerful summon a Grand Jury. The Grand Jury indicted Wesley, and he took the next ship back to England in order to escape a lawsuit.
Why had he gone in the first place? He had gone inasmuch as he was a spiritual groper. He had thought that going to the wilderness in the New World would somehow translate into a fresh start for him in his spiritual quest. Candidly he said he’d gone in hope of saving his own soul.
Having returned to England a disillusioned man, haunted by his failure and tormented by his quest, he floundered for months until one Sunday evening he went to a service in London. He says he went “very unwillingly”, no doubt because he felt there was no point to going: his situation was hopeless and he himself helpless. Listen to Wesley now in his own words:
“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where
one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter
before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart
through faith in Christ, I felt my heartstrangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ,
Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away
my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
It was 24th May, 1738, the occasion of the long-awaited turn-around in his life. His moralism and legalism were behind him forever. Immediately his preaching shifted from moral exhortation to gospel-offer. His attitude to people, especially those beneath his social position, shifted from contempt to compassion. His rigorous self-discipline shifted from an achievement by which he sought to gain favour with God to a simple life-style that freed up everything about him and made it available to others. It happened on 24th May, 1738, thereafter known to all Methodist Christians as “Wesley Day.”
Years later he and other Methodists (Methodism at this time was still a movement within Anglicanism) began to speak of “Our Doctrines.” The doctrines of the Methodists, however, weren’t unique to Methodists. “Our Doctrines” were the doctrines of the church-at-large. There was nothing novel about them. Wesley abhorred theological novelty, insisting that anything novel had to be heretical or cultish. “Our doctrines” were the doctrines of Christians everywhere. At the same time, Wesley insisted that his people own them, and own them with mind and heart, understanding and zeal.
[1] First among “Our Doctrines” is justification by faith. Justification or righteousness means right-relatedness to God. Justification, right-relatedness by faith is always to be contrasted with justification by something else; namely, justification by achievement. The issue is this: is our righted-relationship with God, our standing with God, a gift from God, or is it something we earn and therefore merit? With the help of friends who were spiritual descendants of Luther, Wesley came to see that scripture clearly affirms our right-relationship to God to be God’s gift, a gift that we come to possess by faith.
To say that sinners are justified is to say that those in the wrong before God are put in the right with God. It’s to say that they are pardoned, or forgiven, or acquitted, or freely accepted. All these terms mean the same. To say that this happens through the faith of the believing person is to say that such a person welcomes God’s forgiveness, endorses God’s acquittal, accepts God’s acceptance of oneself. Needless to say, faith must never be construed as a virtue that God recognizes and rewards. Faith must never be construed as an achievement that merits pardon with God.
Faith is simply the bond that binds us to Jesus Christ. Isn’t Jesus Christ the Son with whom the Father is well-pleased? Then as we are bound to Christ in faith, and bound so closely to him as to be identified with him, we are now the son or daughter with whom the Father is pleased. Isn’t Jesus Christ the only covenant-partner of God who keeps the covenant with his Father? Then as we are bound to Jesus Christ in faith and thereby identified with him, we who are covenant-breakers in ourselves are now covenant-keepers in Christ. Isn’t Jesus Christ the one whose cross bore the sin of humankind? Then as we are bound to him in faith and identified with him our sin is borne away.
The apostle Paul gloried in the truth of justification by faith. Yet we mustn’t think that Paul invented the doctrine. He had found it everywhere in the earthly ministry of Jesus.
Jesus stopped at the foot of the tree where a wistful but cautious Zacchaeus was hiding. “Come on out of that silly tree-perch”, said Jesus, “I’m going home with you to eat with you.” To eat with someone meant, in first-century Palestine, to accept that person. There was our Lord’s justification of the tree-percher! And Zacchaeus’s eager welcome of our Lord was faith.
Our Lord told a parable of two men who went to church to pray. One fellow, indisputably a moral giant, tried to use his moral attainment as a bargaining-chip with God. The other fellow could only plead, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” “I tell you”, said Jesus, “this man went home justified.”
Justification by faith is the beginning of the Christian life; it’s the beginning of the Christian life and the stable basis for all else in the Christian life. Justification by faith is first among “Our Doctrines.”
[2] Second is the new birth. Whereas justification is a change in the believer’s standing before God (from condemnation to acquittal, from rejection to acceptance, from expulsion to welcome), regeneration or new birth is a change within the believer herself. Wesley spoke of justification as a relative change (relative because of a changed relationship) and of new birth as a real change.
Through the prophet Ezekiel God had promised to create a new heart, a new spirit, within his people. Ezekiel contrasts the new “heart of flesh” with the old “heart of stone.” The heart of flesh beats, pulsates, throbs. It invigorates someone who is alive. The heart of stone, on the other hand, is the heart of a corpse, a heart taken over by rigor mortis. The difference between the heart of flesh and the heart of stone is the difference between someone who is alive unto God and someone who is inert before God. It’s the difference between someone who is responsive to God, meeting God, and someone who is insensitive, unresponsive, indifferent.
As glorious as justification is (the freely-bestowed forgiveness of God), Wesley knew it wasn’t enough. He asked himself a question as simple as it was profound: can people be changed, really changed, changed from the inside out? Everyone knew that behavioural conformity could be fostered. (Moralists and legalists major in this.) But could a change so very profound occur that someone was given new aspiration, new motivation, new obedience, in short a new nature? Wesley knew that either God can make a real change in us or the most the gospel offers is a pronouncement of pardon upon our bondage to sin even as the bondage is unrelieved. As glorious as he knew forgiveness of sin to be (no one would pretend that clemency visited upon the condemned to be anything else), Wesley knew that God could do something with sin beyond forgiving it. He insisted that the gospel not only relieved people of the guilt of sin, it also released them from the power of sin. Life could be begin again.
When Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You’ve got to be born again, born anew”, the English word “again” or “anew” translates the Greek word, ANOTHEN. ANOTHEN has three meanings: (1) again in the sense of “one more time” (Nicodemus says he can’t re-enter his mother’s uterus and be born one more time), (2) or it can mean “again, anew” in the sense of “from above, from God”, (3) or it can mean “with a completely different nature.” Nicodemus fastens on the first meaning only; Jesus has in mind only the latter two. Our Lord insisted that anyone could, and everyone should, be reconstituted at God’s hand so as to be possessed of a new nature.
People can change; better, people can be changed. God will grant them a new heart. God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it. The person he forgives he also remakes. Either this is true or the gospel isn’t good news. It is true. Hope is therefore more than wishful thinking. Deliverance can be asked for and acknowledged. The relative change of the remission of sin is always accompanied by the real change of regeneration. Believers have a genuine future.
[3] Third in “Our Doctrines” is the witness of the Spirit (i.e., the witness of the Holy Spirit.) The children of God can know themselves to be such. When people come to faith in Jesus Christ and are renewed at his hand they are no longer mere creatures of God but are now children of God. God seals this truth upon them so as to leave them with every assurance that they are his.
Wesley was aware that the spiritually hungry look to our Lord in hope of being fed. Plainly a sense of need has impelled them to look to him. Plainly the more urgent their sense of need, the more anxiously they look. If in looking to Jesus Christ they lack assurance that they have met him and are now fused to him, then their everyday bundle of anxieties remains unrelieved and is in fact swelled by a fearsome religious anxiety. Then it’s crucial that those who have passed from death to life know it.
Since Wesley invented nothing we mustn’t think that he was the first to speak of the witness of the Spirit. He found it writ large in scripture, largest of all in Romans 8:15 where Paul exclaims, “The Spirit, God himself, constrains us to cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ As the Spirit pulls this cry out of us the Spirit himself bears witness to us that we are children of God.”
Wesley knew that one thing only relieved anxious people concerning their standing with God: the “stamp” of that Spirit who presses himself and impresses himself upon believing people so as to authenticate himself to them, authenticate their adoption at God’s hand to themselves, and all of this unquestionably.
Needless to say there are mysteries to our engagement with God that leave speech halting. Wesley admitted this. Wesley, however, was never tongue-tied over the fact of the Spirit’s testimony. The manner of it, on the other hand, how it occurs, he admitted he had to leave to the inscrutable mystery of God. His laconic comment here is, “It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain ‘the deep things of God.’”
The witness of God’s Spirit resembles happiness in one respect: if we pursue it, it forever escapes us. Happiness, everyone knows, overtakes people when they aren’t looking for it but are getting on with what they have to do. In the same way God’s Spirit assures us of our standing with him (“No condemnation now I dread” wrote Charles) as we are busy with what God has given us to do.
[4] Fourth among “Our Doctrines” is the declaration of the law to believers. Believers have to be guided on the road of discipleship.
Over and over throughout the history of the church, wherever the glorious truth of justification by faith has been declared, some people have drawn the wrong conclusion. “If we are set right with God by our faith in the provision he has made for us in his Son, then it makes no difference what we do thereafter.” The apostle Paul had to contend with the same misunderstanding during his ministry. When he announced the good news of the gospel (we are justified by grace through faith, not on account of our conformity to law), some hearers assumed that the law of God had been overturned. “By no means”, the apostle expostulated. “On the contrary, faith upholds the law!” The law of God is necessary if believers are to live out, live rightly, the new life they have received in Christ.
Once again, Wesley didn’t invent anything here. Apart from scripture’s insistence on the law of God as a guide to believers Wesley took it most immediately from the Puritans who had preceded him. The Puritans took it from Calvin, who found it ultimately in Melanchthon, the fellow who “packaged” Luther’s theology. Melanchthon called it “the third use of the law.”
The first use, Luther had said, was to order the society, to prevent social breakdown, even social chaos. The second use was to convict people of their sinnership as they came to see that they violated the law of God and were therefore guilty before God. The third use of the law was to guide believers along the road of discipleship.
Think, for instance, of the prohibition concerning theft. The first use of the law forestalls a social snake-pit where community-existence is impossible. The second use convicts people of their deep-down sinnership and points them to the gospel for relief. After all, the prohibition against theft includes envy, greed, covetousness – sins of which everyone is guilty. The third use guides believers along the road of discipleship as believers now know they must repudiate any envy, greed, covetousness that laps at them even as they must put everything they own at the disposal of their neighbour.
Did I say that the third use of the law is to help believers along the road of discipleship? I did. But isn’t Jesus Christ our companion on the road? Isn’t he always our companion on the road even as he leads us? He is. Then the law of God, for believers, is simply the claim of Jesus Christ upon our obedience. Our Lord himself insists that we obey him, obey him in person. Then the third use of the law is simply our Lord’s relentless insistence that we obey him and thereby walk in that newness of life which he has already bestowed on us.
“Our doctrines” included – and must ever include – the declaration of the law to believers.
[5] Last, but no means least, is Christian Perfection. Now don’t be put off because you’ve heard the word “perfection.” Wesley didn’t endorse a perfectionism that renders people neurotic. He didn’t endorse a religious superiority that leaves people snobbish and self-righteous. He did, however, encourage his people to look to God for deliverance from every vestige of selfism.
Wesley knew, as the church catholic has always known, that selfism is the essence of sin. To be freed from sin profoundly is to be freed from a self-preoccupation that measures everything and everyone in terms of catering to the self and magnifying the self and promoting the self. Since we all need to be freed from such self-preoccupation as we need nothing else, and since all of Christ’s people have been appointed to be delivered from it in heaven, why not look to God to be delivered from it now? Why set arbitrary limits to what God can do to free any of us in this life?
I know what you are going to tell me: you are going to say that any concern with deliverance from selfism is at bottom another form of self-preoccupation. But not so for Wesley. For him Christian perfection was self-forgetfulness, self-forgetfulness that frees us for love of God and neighbour. Self-forgetful love for God and neighbour entails a self-sacrifice that is so thoroughly selfless as not even to be aware of being a sacrifice. “Lost in wonder, love and praise”, wrote Charles Wesley. Be sure to underline “lost”; self-abandoned to discerning and doing God’s will, self-abandoned to assisting the poor, the lonely, the outcast, the disadvantaged, the spiritually inert.
When Wesley saw the plight of the sick, poor people who first joined the Methodist societies he gathered to himself a surgeon and an “apothecary”, and then scrounged the money to pay them. In the first five months of this program his apothecary distributed drugs to 500 people. The drugs cost 40 pounds. He raised the money himself. By 1746 he had established London’s first free dispensary.
Wesley was distressed at the plight of aged widows. He purchased houses and refurbished them (“We fitted them up so as to be warm and clean”). Would the widows who had to live in them feel themselves demeaned as charity cases much beneath the social position of Wesley himself? Every time he was in the neighbourhood he ate from their table and ate the same food.
When the banks refused to lend money to sobered, industrious Methodists who wanted to start up small businesses, Wesley scrabbled for 50 pounds and then handed out small loans. In the first year he helped 250 people make a fresh economic start.
Remember: Christian perfection is simply self-forgetful love of God and neighbour. When Methodism moved over to America, young men were needed for a ministry that unfolded amidst appalling hardship. Of the first 737 Methodist ministers in America, one-half died before they were 30 years old; two-thirds didn’t live long enough to serve 12 years. Did their premature death cheat them? They would have laughed at the suggestion. They had in them the fire that had fired Wesley before them.
Every year, when the new president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain and Ireland is installed, he(she) is handed John Wesley’s field bible, the bible he put in his long coat-pocket as he moved on horseback throughout Britain and dismounted to preach outdoors. The flyleaf of his field bible contains his signature, the date, and two Latin words: Vive hodie, “Live today.”
I want to live today. Surely you want to live today too, even if you are still on your way to Wesleyan conviction, fire and fruitfulness in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Reverend Dr. Victor Shepherd)
The Crucial Encounter: Nicodemus
John 3:1-21
I: — They are, without doubt, fighting words. I’m speaking of the two little words “born again” or “born anew” that Jesus used in his encounter with Nicodemus. As soon as these words are repeated today people choose sides; people are polarized, and from their position (which position they will defend ardently) they contend with one another.
In one corner are those for whom the words “born again” are a badge of identification to be worn unashamedly. If others don’t use the expression, or don’t use it as frequently as they salt and pepper their food; if others are thereby thought not to support instantaneous conversion arising from a crisis, then they are deemed not to be Christians at all. In the other corner are those who minimize the element of crisis while maximizing the need for nurture. They insist that people become Christians through a steady process of nurture. Often they maintain that their approach is the only sensible one. If others disagree, they smile condescendingly and suggest that all who disagree lack social sophistication and intellectual profundity. One group suggests that if we don’t use the words “born again” we lack spiritual authenticity. The other group suggests that if we do use the words we lack intellectual substance.
When the fighting words “born again” bring out religious nastiness (as they often do, regrettably), the “nurturists” point to a few “born againers” who are manifestly emotionally unstable. The truth is, all of us are acquainted with someone who wields the expression “born again” like a hammer even as his psychological balance is precarious. On the other hand the “born againers” remind the nurturists that what often passes for Christian nurture is so very dilute, anaemic, that it wouldn’t nurture a chickadee. And besides, they add, what can nurture do for stillbirths?
These latter people do have a point. On my first pastoral charge the Sunday School lacked teachers. But this was thought to be no problem: teachers were simply recruited – usually cajoled or otherwise embarrassed into “volunteering” – from anyone who stepped through the church door, had no acquaintance with the truth and reality of the gospel, was willing to help out the village folk, to be sure, yet who seemed not to know Jesus from a gerbil. The “born againers” say to me, “Do you have any confidence in the capacity of those people to provide Christian nurture for your child?”
It’s regrettable whenever the conversation between these two groups spirals down into nastiness, for at this point neither party hears what the other is saying.
It’s also regrettable when “born again” becomes a tool to secure political advantage. When Ronald Reagan was pursuing the presidency of the USA he advertised himself as “born again” for purely political reasons (it would help him garner votes) even though he didn’t so much as go to church or exhibit any interest in the faith.
Let’s go back to the two polarized parties. We are going to move beyond the polarization only as we recognize there to be as many ways of encountering Jesus Christ as there are ways of falling in love. To be sure, some people are overwhelmed so as to be swept off their feet: “love at first sight” we call it. Despite the popularity of the notion of “love at first sight, the fact of it isn’t common at all. Relatively few people fall in love “at first sight.” Far more people find their relationship with someone they will eventually admit they love developing steadily, bit by bit, in a positive direction. Still others find that their coming to know someone else intimately is a much more drawn-out, up-and-down matter. Turbulent at times, it has to contend with dark moments and doubt, misunderstanding and confusion. But at the end of this up and down, hot and cold, more intense and less intense undertaking there finally is resolution. And two people step ahead in a relationship that they will thereafter neither regret nor renounce.
Plainly it’s false to maintain there’s only one way of forging a most significant human relationship. Because false, it would also be silly to insist on “one way only.” We don’t question the authenticity of someone else’s relationship because of the manner in which she arrived at it. We never say, “You can be in love now only if you came to be in love by the route I prescribe.”
Then surely the polarization that arises within the church is overcome as we recognize that how someone comes to faith, by what route, isn’t important at all; how someone comes to faith doesn’t impugn the authenticity and integrity of her standing in Christ.
This is the first thing I want to say in our look at our Lord’s encounter with Nicodemus: whatever the expression “born again” might mean, it doesn’t mean that there is only one way of entering into and abiding in the company of Jesus Christ.
II: — In the second place we must recognize that the reality, the life-filling, life-transforming reality to which the expression points is something that everyone longs for. At least thoughtful people long for it, and so do wistful people, and more than a few desperate people.
The word in the text translated “again” or “anew” (anothen) has three meanings. It can mean “again” in the sense of “one more time;” that is, “again” in the sense of chronologically repeated. Or it can mean “from above;” that is, from the realm of the transcendent, from God. Or it can mean “from the beginning, a re-creation, with a new, different nature.” Plainly Nicodemus fastens on the first meaning only, “one more time.” “It’s absurd,” he says in effect, “to suggest that a grown-up like me can enter his mother’s womb one more time and repeat his physical birth.” He’s right: it is absurd. But this first meaning of anothen is precisely what Jesus doesn’t have in mind. Our Lord is thinking only of the latter two meanings: everyone may, and everyone should, be born from above, from God, and thereby be reborn with a new nature. Jesus maintains that life can begin anew; there can be a fresh beginning for everyone; we can begin again with a new nature, a different nature – and all of this a gift of grace from God’s hand.
A minute ago I mentioned that everyone, deep down, longs for this, even if many of those who long for it despise the church, snicker at the gospel, and use the name of Jesus only to curse. Still, the endless religious pursuits that people pursue tell us over and over everyone wants a fresh start that is more than a repetition of the “same old;” everyone wants a new beginning that is qualitatively new.
Not so long ago I saw a television documentary on Marin County , the wealthiest area of California . Marin County leads the nation in the per capita purchase and use of hot tub baths, yoga, physical fitness zeal, transactional analysis, consumption of valium and self-help courses of a thousand different kinds. The TV documentary made several trenchant points. One of them was this: the levels of unsatisfaction and frustration never decrease. Oasis after oasis turns out to be mirage. Everything that’s supposed to advance people to the next level, a higher level, of “being” invariably fails to do so. None of the techniques, programmes or regimens, appears to work.
Marin County , of course, is at bottom an intensification and magnification of the omnipresent longing to find a new factor in life that won’t be merely one more factor but rather something that proves to be nothing less than a genuine transformation of life. They want something that’s going to make a significant difference. Thwarted, frustrated, irked, and now quietly desperate, people continue to grope. Many such people have told me they are jaded from trying new techniques and old panaceas, none of which delivers what it holds out. They are less certain of what they are looking for (if they knew precisely what they were looking for they’d also know where to look: the gospel) than they are certain of what they want to be rid of. “ Marin County ” happens to be everywhere.
At the same time that the earliest Christian community was adding daily those people who had come to know and enjoy what Jesus spoke of and delivered, Greek Mystery religions, next door to the church, were seeking converts. In one of the rites of these Greek Mystery Religions the devotee, the “convert,” stood in a pit that was covered with latticework. A bull was led onto the latticework. At the climax of the religious ceremony the bull’s throat was slashed. As blood poured down the devotee lifted her face and was bathed in blood. At this point the Mystery Religion priest pronounced her “reborn for eternity.” Greek Mystery religion knew what it was to feel after something crucial; knew what it was to long for transformation of human existence; but Greek Mystery religion couldn’t deliver the reality. What gave the earliest Christians their remarkable credibility was their ability to point with assurance to the One, Jesus Christ, who could deliver and did.
Years ago I saw the movie, Apocalypse Now. I’ve seen it six times altogether. Featuring the U.S. conflict in Viet Nam , the movie portrays the contradictions that are part of any war. The movie ends with primitive Indo-Chinese backwoodsmen ritually slaughtering bulls. The sword falls. The animal’s head is severed. Blood spews. It sounds grotesque to the point of being nauseating. Yet the movie-scene doesn’t appear to affect movie watchers in this way. Doesn’t this scene parallel the outlook of Greek Mystery religion 2000 years ago?—that is, that the shedding of blood somehow, inexplicably, unpollutes the past, restores the present to sanity and integrity, and points to a new future that is genuinely “future” just because the “new” is genuinely new? Still, regardless of what is pointed to or felt after, the reality isn’t delivered.
The apostle John, however, possesses conviction born of experience. For right in the midst of his account of our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus, John interjects the lifting up of Jesus, the blood-shedding of that One. John knows that there is One whose blood is effectual, and there is One who does deliver what he holds out.
Regardless of how turned off people are by the glib use of “born again,” there is no little evidence that all around us are people who long precisely for what Jesus holds out. Nicodemus, a mature, middle-aged man, and a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest religious council, came to Jesus under cover of darkness. What would a sophisticated fellow like him hope to gain from a thirty-year old peasant with sawdust in his hair, who came from a one-horse town, and whose contacts with religious leaders were consistently negative? We know what Nicodemus hoped to gain.
III: — Even though he hopes to gain what he needs most, Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus’ assertion. “Born again?” he asks, “It’s physically impossible.” All the while, of course, our Lord is talking about something different. While Jesus isn’t speaking about physical birth, he’s certainly using an analogy of physical birth. Let’s think about the analogy for a minute.
Birth, everyday birth, is plainly a change of context. When a human being is born the context of that person’s life changes from amniotic fluid to air; from confinement to freedom; from darkness to light; from silence to exclamation.
The kind of birth, “new birth,” that Jesus speaks of in his conversation with Nicodemus is also a change of context: from spiritual inertia to spiritual vigour; from culpable ignorance of God to child-like wonder at God; from a human existence that prides itself on being self-sufficient to an existence that humbly thanks God for his condescension and grace. There’s nothing un-understandable or cryptic about this. “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t understand this?” Jesus asks in genuine amazement. Surely Nicodemus ought to have understood this. After all, the presence and weight and force of the living God is the context in which Israel ’s life unfolds. God has made himself known to Israel in a way that he hasn’t elsewhere, with the result that Israel ’s knowledge of God differentiates it from the surrounding nations. Israel has been given to know the One who creates life, moulds it, informs and directs and fulfils it. The prophets of Israel speak tirelessly of what it is to have life rooted in, informed by, and conformed to the God who acts upon his people and speaks to them in such a way that they know who he is and what he has done and what he requires of them. The prophets know that when God speaks to his people he quickens in them the capacity to respond and the desire to respond. Thereafter what we call “life” is life-long dialogical intimacy with him who comes to us conclusively in Jesus Christ. Such dialogical intimacy means that we live henceforth in God, in a sphere, an atmosphere, whose reality is more vivid than the vividness of our five senses. It issues in new understanding, lively obedience, and profoundest contentment.
Surely there’s nothing bizarre or spooky about this. When people today hear the words “born again,” instantly they think of a highly unusual psychological development, an inner “trip” which they’ve never been on themselves and which they suspect in any case. Instead we should always remember that birth means primarily change of context. To have our lives unfold in the context or atmosphere of the living God is to live in an ongoing dialogue with God whose reality, simplicity, profundity is deeper than our language can describe
“Too vague,” someone objects, “All this change-of-context stuff; it’s too nebulous.” What’s vague about it? Those whom Jesus first called to himself didn’t find him vague at all. Isn’t the same Lord present to us now in his risen life? My entire ministry is built on the assurance that he is. The saints of every age have known this. There’s nothing vague here at all.
“Too presumptuous,” someone else adds. No. There’s nothing presumptuous about someone who knows he’s at the banquet by invitation only. The certainty that accompanies mercy-quickened faith has nothing to do with snobbish superiority. Those whom Jesus called didn’t they’d “arrived” in any sense. Still, they were certain that they were on the right road and didn’t need to look for any other.
“Too narrow,” someone insists, “It reeks of religious sentimentality, a nostalgia-trip unrelated to life.” No. It would be sentimental only if it promoted maudlin mush. It would be unrelated to life only if were a private trip that had nothing to do with everyday matters. But in fact it has everything to do with every aspect of life.
Birth always means change of context. To be born again, born anew, born from above is to become involved with God in a dialogue wherein we know our sin pardoned, our way in life made plain (I didn’t say easy; I said plain), our hearts encouraged and our minds informed and our wills fortified.
In light of the understanding we’ve gained today let’s move beyond a polarization that helps no one. Let’s acknowledge that how one comes to faith, or how long one takes to come to faith, is beside the point.
Let’s admit that there’s a persistent and profound spiritual hunger in people all around us. And in word and deed let us point to him who is that context in which all of life is transfigured, and therefore our lives as well.
Victor Shepherd
May 2004
For God So Loved The World…
John 3:16-17
We all have our favourite author, our favourite book, our favourite food, our favourite athlete. And the all-time favourite text of scripture, I’m told, is the text of today’s sermon: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” I’m sure that the text elicits a visceral response from everyone. Some people cherish it as they cherish nothing else; others feel that the text is frequently used as a bludgeon with which to beat unbelievers. Regardless of the circumstances in which the text is uttered, regardless of the zeal with which it’s announced or the affection with which it’s cherished, the fact is this text enshrines the heart of the gospel; which is to say, this text bespeaks the heart of God himself.
I: — We are told that God so loved the world. What in the world is the world? The world, according to John’s usage, isn’t that globe which we call “the earth.” Neither is the world the earth plus all the other planets and stars; i.e., the universe. The world, in John’s use of the word, is simply people. Specifically it’s the sum total of disobedient men and women in their hostility to God and their contempt for his truth and their dismissal of his way and their postured superiority to his gospel. Plainly, the word “world”, for John, isn’t a pretty word: it bespeaks humankind’s arrogance and ingratitude, self-importance and pomposity. It bespeaks a disdainful defiance that imagines itself to be the soul of sophistication but in fact is the silliest folly. The world, for John, is the sum total of men and women in their tacit conspiracy to loathe, privately and publicly, the one to whom they owe their life, the one to whom they would cling if they possessed any sense at all.
A minute ago I spoke of “tacit conspiracy.” Both words are important. The world is tacitly conspiratorial in that there’s never been a formal agreement among humankind that it disdain the holy One of Israel. The world is tacitly conspiratorial in that its common defiance of him is plainly more than accidental; the world’s corporate posture with respect to God isn’t a random occurrence. When the next baby is born we can predict with perfect certainty that this child is going to mirror the world all over again. All such individuals, fallen creatures every one, are tacitly conspiratorial in that we — humankind — “pack” in our opposition to God the way a school class can pack on a teacher or a baseball team pack on an umpire.
II: — What is God’s attitude to the world in the face of the world’s attitude to him? Specifically, what does God do in view of the world’s having packed on him? We might expect him to do what a schoolteacher does when the class packs on her or what an umpire does when a baseball team packs on him. Since this congregation is “knee-deep” in schoolteachers, I shall let the teachers tell me what they do when the class packs. I will tell you, however, what an umpire does. He walks over to the bench where the team has tacitly conspired to give him a hard time and he expels a player, any player at all. It doesn’t have to be the player who’s giving him the hardest time; it doesn’t have to be the player who spearheaded the abuse. It can be any player at all; sometimes it’s the first player the umpire comes upon. And that one player is expelled, gone.
“How arbitrary!”, you say; “The umpire was simply making an example of that one player. He didn’t merit being singled out.” Your objection is correct. It’s also unavailing. The player arbitrarily singled out is expelled none the less.
The most astounding feature of the gospel is this: in the face of the world’s bombast and its ingratitude, God’s response isn’t to expel it but rather to love it. And not merely to love it in the sense of “feel for” it, even feel sorry for it, but rather to love it so utterly as to give himself for it.
Now right here we have to take a little theological detour. We have to journey back in time to the year 325; we have to journey to a different part of the world and visit the city of Nicaea in what is now Turkey . A huge theological debate was under way at that time over something that shallow people look upon as mere word-play but which in fact has everything to do with the integrity and preservation of the gospel. The Arians who supported Bishop Arius maintained that as Son of God Jesus is of similar nature to the Father, like the Father. The Athanasians who supported Bishop Athanasius insisted that as Son of God Jesus is of the same nature as the Father, same substance, same essence, same being as the Father. If the Son is only like the Father, said the Athanasians, is the Son a little bit like or a lot like? And even if he were a lot like the Father, almost the same as the Father, a miss is as good as a mile. The point is the Son’s suffering wouldn’t be the Father’s suffering; the Son’s identification with sinners wouldn’t be the Father’s; the Son’s weeping over the world wouldn’t be the Father’s. In short, unless the Son is of the same nature, same substance, same essence as the Father; unless the nature of the Father and the nature of the Son are identical and not merely similar, then ultimately what the Son on earth thought and felt and did had nothing whatever to do with what the Father above thought and felt and did. And if what the Son was about had nothing to do with what the Father was about, then the cross of Jesus wasn’t an act of God at all. The cross meant no more than the death of any person who died in a good cause; the world was unaffected; humankind was without provision for its sin; there was no gospel and never would be.
Tell me: is the Son’s nature the same as the Father’s or merely similar to the Father’s? Only if the same as the Father’s is there a gospel; only if the same as the Father’s is the suffering of the Son in his body the suffering of the Father in his heart; only if the same as the Father’s is the Son’s solidarity with a world he won’t abandon regardless of how badly it abuses him at the same time God’s selfsame solidarity with a world he won’t abandon regardless of how contemptuously it dismisses him.
When the apostle John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” we must never think that God is giving his Son in place of giving himself; we must never think that God is giving his Son as a substitute for giving himself. Quite the contrary: just because the Father and the Son and are one in nature, substance, being, the Father’s giving his only Son is simply the Father’s giving himself; always himself, never less than himself.
Someone knocks on my door asking for a donation to the Diabetes Association. I give her $25. To be sure, the $25 I’ve given her I now don’t have for a new CD, but in any case I already have so many CDs I can’t keep track of them. Next day someone knocks on my door asking for a donation to the Cancer Society. I give him $25. To be sure, the $25 I’ve given him I now don’t have for a new book, but already I own hundreds of books that I haven’t read yet. Next day someone knocks on my door asking for a donation for the Heart and Stroke fund. I give her $25…. And so I should, in view of the suffering that never relents and my financial resources that never diminish (apparently.)
And then one day there’s a different kind of knock at the door: my daughter needs a kidney. Now a different kind of “contribution” is involved. The $25 contributions, however many there might have been, never entailed any risk for me. Now the gift asked of me does. Still, she’s my daughter, and therefore I’ll gladly do what I can for her at whatever risk to me. Years later will she appreciate it? Or will she joke with her friends, “My old man relinquished a bit of plumbing for me some time ago. His health was never good after that. He must’ve been crazy. But then, he always was odd, you know, a ‘nerd’”. Silly fellow.” If out of love for my daughter I have resolved to surrender that kidney which I might need myself years later; if I have resolved to surrender my kidney then I’ve also resolved to surrender all control concerning her response. Still, at least I haven’t been asked to give up my life for her.
John tells us there’s a love so very loving that someone doesn’t even stop short of giving himself, all of himself, only himself, for those whom he loves unstintingly. Precisely where we’d expect God to withdraw in tit-for-tat coldness he instead pours out himself without remainder or reserve upon those who pull their carriage-trade robes of self-righteousness a little closer and tell him, “Would you mind not bleeding on me? It stains, you know.”
III: — But not all respond by cloaking themselves more tightly in those disguises which can’t even be recognised as disguises; not all respond in this way. Some respond so as to illustrate the text in its entirety: God so loved the world…that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Plainly the self-outpouring of God quickens faith in some at least. “Whoever believes in him.” We must be sure we understand the precise force of “believes.” To believe in him doesn’t mean to have correct ideas about him in one’s head. To believe in him doesn’t mean to have mental reservation give way to mental assent. To believe in the one given for us, to believe in the one given to us, is simply to trust him for that pardon which we can’t generate for ourselves. It’s to trust him for that way apart from which we are going to meander for the rest of our lives. It’s to trust him for a contentment that will steal over us again and again as surely as our superficial pleasures have left us unsatisfied. It’s to entrust him with our life when no one else is worth it, and to entrust him with our death when no one else can defuse it, and to entrust him with our future when no one else can fill it.
The faith of which John speaks when he writes, “that whoever believes in him…”, is simply entrusting as much of myself as I know of myself to as much of Jesus Christ as I know of him. The faith of which John speaks is finally my unreserved self-giving to him whose unreserved self-giving to me is my only hope and my only plea, my only future and my only good. The faith of which John speaks is my embracing in gratitude the one who first embraced me in grace; it’s my pledging myself to him who has promised never to fail or forsake me.
If such faith is what it is to “believe in him” (Christ Jesus our Lord), then what is the eternal life of which John speaks? Eternal life is life that arises in our immersion in the innermost depths of God himself. Eternal life is life that is characterised by utmost intimacy with God, utmost intensity, utmost inviolability (what could ever separate us from him now?) Eternal life is the life wherewith the eternal one blessed us in our creation, before we victimised ourselves in the fall, before our existence became a living contradiction of that which the Creator had pronounced “good”, before our existence became a dying scramble to deny what we couldn’t admit just because we couldn’t face it.
As often as I try to grasp the full import of “but have eternal life” I recall one of my favourite episodes from the written gospels where Jesus comes upon a man in the wilderness (don’t we all live in the wilderness?), who cuts himself (haven’t we spent our lives mutilating ourselves in some respect?), who runs around naked (don’t we all think we’re covering up what every last person can see in us in any case?), and who can’t be subdued (don’t we all fail to master ourselves as surely as we resent the attempt of anyone else to master us?) At the conclusion of the gospel story we are told that the fellow is found seated, clothed and in his right mind. Seated, he’s no longer driven by his 101 frenzies, any one of which he thought would let him “find himself” and all of which only left him jaded and despairing. Clothed, he now belongs to the community of the people of God. (In scripture clothing is a sign of belonging, and the kind of clothing we wear indicates precisely where we belong. When the prodigal son came home his father clothed him in that robe which indicated he belonged in the family.) In his right mind, the healed fellow has had his reasoning restored by the grace of God. Only grace restores reason to reason’s integrity; only grace frees reason from its bondage to ends that aren’t righteous. No one doubts that fallen human beings can still reason. Of course we can. But what does our reasoning produce, from the cunning of the three year old to the plotting of the self-serving adult to the rationalisation that is now second nature to all of us? Only grace restores reason to reason’s integrity; only grace frees reason from reason’s captivity to unrighteous ends. The fact that the healed fellow was found seated, clothed and in his right mind is God’s pledge and promise that the same sanity is ultimately guaranteed any believer. It takes root as we cast ourselves upon our Lord, and it will be perfected on the day that we are plunged into an intimacy and intensity so very intimate and intense and as to be indescribable. Eternal life includes the restoration of that reason whose reasoning we’ve never lost but whose reasoning has been too long in the service of everything but righteousness.
“That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Eternal life is life lived in relationship to God. It’s our creaturely, human existence now liberated to bring honour to God; it’s our creaturely, human existence now mirroring without impediment him whose image was always supposed to shine forth from us as brightly and unambiguously as a city set on a hill.
IV: — “Should not perish but have eternal life.” What’s perishing got to do with all this? Isn’t God light only, there being no darkness in him at all, to quote John once more? Isn’t God life only, death having no place in him at all? Doesn’t he come in Christ Jesus only to bless, there being nothing accursed in his nature or purpose? Then what’s this about perishing?
The purpose of light is always and only to enlighten; the purpose of life is always and only to enliven; the purpose of goodness is always and only to bless. Yet the truth is that as surely as light enlightens, anything that impedes light results in a shadow. The truth is, life rejected can only mean death. Blessing repudiated leaves one with curse. John insists that God’s purpose in sending the Son was always and only that the world might be saved, never that it be condemned. Had God wanted to condemn the world he had all the grounds and all the evidence he needed to condemn it justly without tormenting himself in his Son. Yet he tormented himself in his Son just because he is more eager to save the world than the world is itself to be saved. And that’s just the problem: God is more eager to save than the world is to be saved. That’s just the problem. While it is never God’s purpose to condemn; while it is always God’s purpose to save, the outcome of his determination to save is that those resisting him, those fixated on remaining in their God-defying arrogance and grandiose self-importance, become fixed in it.
Then it behoves us all to hear afresh the word of grace: God loved the world so much as to withhold nothing of himself in his resolve to woo and win the world. He gave himself in his only Son, without limit, without hesitation, without qualification, and all of this inasmuch as he wanted, and still wants, to save the world from the condemnation it deserves. It behoves us therefore to abandon our perverse posturing before him and own for ourselves life eternal as we trust him today for all he longs to give us; trust him today, tomorrow, ever after.
Victor Shepherd
June 2005
The Cross According to John
John 3:17 John 12:12-29 13:31 Isaiah 53:11 (RSV)
Today is Palm Sunday. Our service commenced with the familiar hymn, “Ride on, ride on, in majesty; in lowly pomp ride on to die.” The hymn has it right: Jesus doesn’t ride into Jerusalem like a conqueror, only to have the ticker-tape parade fizzle out a week later when the fickle crowd howls for his death. He rides into Jerusalem not on a horse (the sign of the military conqueror) but on a donkey, the sign of lowliness, humility, ordinariness.
In the paradox that the gospel will always be, we must be sure to note that our Lord’s humiliation is his exaltation; his degradation is his triumph; his dying gasp “It is finished” isthe declaration that his mission has been accomplished. Paradoxically, again, his victimization at the hands of miscreants is his victory. And in the paradox of paradoxes, Christ’s shame is his glory.
His shame? Sure. Crucifixion was reserved for the lowest classes in the Roman Empire . Runaway slaves could be crucified; so could despicable soldiers who had deserted; so could vulgar fellows who had raped any of the Vestal Virgins, unmarried women who had dedicated themselves to the Roman goddess, Vesta. Crucifixion was regarded as a penalty for human scum. Cicero, a prominent thinker in the ancient world, said that Roman citizens (citizens couldn’t be crucified) shouldn’t be found so much as discussing the topic.
Jesus, however, has lived for the cross. “Now is my soul troubled”, he pours out. “What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Next we are told there were heard the words, “I have glorified it; and I will glorify it again.”
The apostle John insists that Easter isn’t the recovery of glory after the shame of the cross. Easter is God’s ratification that the shame of the cross is Christ’s glory.
I: — The starting point for John’s understanding of the cross is God’s unfathomable compassion. Think of our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus about what it is to be born of God. When the conversation has concluded, John, the writer of the gospel, interprets the incident for us and comments on it. First John tells us that Jesus must be “lifted up”. Then he tells us the ground and consequence of our Lord’s being lifted up: God so loved the world that he gave, himself, for no other reason than that we might live in him. Anyone with even minimal exposure to the church and its message has heard of John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son….” Few people have lingered long enough, however, to grasp the next verse: “For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” It is God’s compassion, only his unfathomable compassion, that can get us past the condemnation we deserve.
“Deserve?” someone asks. Yes. Condemnation is the sentence that an unbiased judge must pronounce on those whose guilt is undeniable. We are sinners before the all-holy God; our guilt is undeniable; God’s judgement is unbiased; therefore we must be condemned.
I cringe every time I see or hear the category of justice thrust forward as the be-all and end-all of Christian truth. Everywhere in the churches of the western world, it seems today, justice is deemed to be the category that is now to control our understanding of every last aspect of the Christian message and the church’s life. In other words, all we are to think about and do must now pertain to justice. The gospel can be reduced without remainder to the pursuit of justice.
I am not denying for a minute that victimized people should be redressed; justice should be done and be seen to be done. Any church that obstructed natural justice would be a church in disgrace. Nonetheless, when I see the attempts at reducing the gospel to the category of justice without remainder I cringe for three reasons.
In the first place, this reduction is a falsification of the gospel. That gospel which reconciles sinners to God and restores reconciled people to each other in the fellowship of Jesus Christ; this gospel cannot be reduced without remainder to a concern for justice. To pretend that it can be is an out-and-out falsification.
In the second place, while justice may be necessary, justice alone, justice by itself is terrible. Justice means that people get precisely what they deserve, nothing more than what they deserve, nothing better than what they deserve. To plead for justice only is to plead that God will grant every last one of us (sinners) neither more nor less than what we deserve. Is there any good news here?
In the third place, in biblical Hebrew there is no word for justice. The Hebrew word is MISHPAT, judgement. Judgement is very different from justice. Justice is a philosophical principle, an abstract category; judgement, on the other hand, is a personal category. Judgement is the activity of a person. Here judgement is the activity of the living God himself — whose heart is mercy. Judgement is therefore to be welcomed. We should run to God for his judgement. Why? Because God judges us for the sake of saving us. In other words, there is mercy in God’s judgement; in fact mercy is the ultimate purpose of God’s judgement. There is no mercy at all in sheer justice. God bothers to judge us only because his compassion aims at saving us. To put it another way, the great physician pronounces the starkest diagnosis only because he intends the greatest cure.
At what cost? In other words, how far will his compassion go? Is there a limit to it? I said a minute ago that the starting point for John’s understanding of the cross is God’s unfathomable compassion. His mercy is oceans deep, impenetrably deep. Still, we are not left clueless about the cost. After all, as repulsive as you and I might find the cross, our revulsion is nothing compared to the anguish of him whose cross it is. Father and Son are one in their anguish, for they are one in their self-giving for the sake of us who deserve nothing more than justice, one in their love for us who, because of that love, are visited not with simple justice but with a judgement that clothes eternal mercy.
II: — Because the gospel is the good news of God (rather than an invention of humankind) there is eversomuch about God’s good news that isn’t readily apparent to us humans. We have already seen something that isn’t readily apparent: the difference between justice and judgement, the hopelessness of mere justice and the ultimate blessing of divine judgement. There is more about the gospel that isn’t readily apparent. God is most exalted when he appears most debased. God does his most effective work when he appears most helpless. God is most glorified when he appears most shamed. In a word, God acts most tellingly when, from a human perspective, he can’t do anything at all – the cross.
It’s different in our everyday world. When the athlete sets a record for hitting three home runs in the seventh game of the World Series; when the writer is awarded the Pulitzer Prize or the musician first place in the international competition, the athlete, the writer and the musician will be aware of several things. One, they have achieved public acclaim. Two, their triumph has elated thousands, thousands who saw the game or have read the book or listen repeatedly to the piano-recording. Three, their triumph has guaranteed that they will be remembered for decades. No wonder they look back years later and glow, “That was my hour.”
Over and over in John’s gospel Jesus speaks of his hour. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” “Now is my heart troubled, and what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No. It is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Our Lord’s “hour”, however, isn’t an hour of fame and adulation and fawning congratulation. It’s an hour of public humiliation, of mental anguish that outstrips even physical agony, of abandonment and isolation; indeed, an hour of an isolation so naked that thinking about it leaves me weak. Nevertheless, as soon as Judas has left the upper room in order to betray the master, Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
How could God ever be glorified in the deathly degradation of his Son? It all has to do with the purpose of God’s sending his Son in the first place. People normally feel themselves to be glorified when they have achieved that purpose which lies closest to their heart. When we have achieved what we have long held as the goal and aim and aspiration of our existence we are fulfilled and at rest. As our Lord breathed his last he cried out, “Finished. It’s finished.” The Greek verb is in the perfect tense, telling us that an accomplishment in the past will remain effective as far into the future as the future extends. “It’s been accomplished”, our Lord cries as he dies, “It stands done; it is currently operative, and nothing in the future will ever be able to undo it.” His achievement from the cross is the “hour” that beckoned him from the time of his baptism.
Then what about his hour? Unlike the “hour” of the public celebrity he won’t be put in anyone’s Hall of Fame. But he will be known and loved and thanked eternally by multitudes without number. He won’t be held up as a “world-class” entertainer (for that’s what athletes and writers and musicians are). But he will be adored as one whose self-giving unto death has brought others to a self-giving unto life with God. He won’t be remembered as talented above his peers. Strictly speaking, he won’t be remembered at all; we remember those who are retired or dead, and Jesus Christ is neither retired nor dead. Instead we shall hold on to him whose sacrifice is precisely what has granted us access to him, granted sinners like us access to the all-holy God whose Son he is.
This is what his “hour” is all about. No wonder it preoccupied him the day he began his public ministry, if not before. And no wonder we recognize his hour by featuring the cross everywhere: church architecture, church furnishings, church decoration, Christian symbolism, and of course Christian hymns. (You must have noticed that the hymns of Charles Wesley, the finest hymn-writer in the English language, sing about the cross more than they sing about anything else.)
Several minutes ago I stated that the starting point for John’s understanding of the cross is God’s unfathomable compassion. His compassion is unfathomable; we cannot measure the depth of it. Still, we can see more than a little way down into it; we can see enough to know that while our visceral instinct is to flee humiliation and mental anguish and physical torment, above all flee heart-stopping isolation; while our visceral instinct is to flee all of this, Father and Son are one in pursuing this and enduring it. But not because Father and Son were masochists who relished suffering; rather because what they pursued and endured was the unadjustable cost of sparing us that justice which foolish people thoughtlessly say they want. It was the cost of giving us not what we want but what we need; namely, divine judgement whose sentence of condemnation is absorbed by Father and Son alike, with the result that judgement blossoms into salvation and blessing.
When John the Baptist saw his cousin Jesus approaching, John said to his followers, “Don’t look at me; look at him. He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The cross deals with the sin of the world in that our Lord absorbs in himself, and the Father with him, that impediment which barricaded our access to the holy God who, because holy, neither traffics in sin himself nor trifles with it in us nor will finally tolerate it. The barricade crumbled, sinners can return to the God who rejoices at their approach as surely as the father of the prodigal son rejoiced to see his boy come home.
I understand now what I couldn’t seem to grasp when I was very young: how it could be that our Lord’s wretched death, miserable in every aspect, is nonetheless that “hour” when Father and Son are glorified together. You see, I used to think that the day of the cross was a bad day, the all-time bad day, in Jesus’ life – but never mind, he got over it. I used to think that this “bad day” was a momentary dip, a one-day dip in the outworking of his vocation. But Jesus never suggests that the cross is the temporary frustration of his vocation. On the contrary, Jesus insists that the cross is the fulfilment of his vocation, the crown and climax of his vocation.
Then what is Easter? Easter is the Father’s pledge that this fulfilment is eternally efficacious. “For this reason — my self-offering — have I come to this hour.”
III: — There is one last matter for us to emphasize today. As we behold our Lord in his sacrifice for us we must get beyond gazing at him. Being moved to speechlessness before his sacrifice, together with being sobered upon realizing the need for it; this is certainly appropriate. But appropriateness suggests common sense and good taste. Common sense and good taste are not what we need now. We need to make a sacrifice in the spirit of that sacrifice we trust. The sacrifice we trust is his; the sacrifice we make is our own.
As we do just this, the word of the prophet in Isaiah 53 will be confirmed again. Isaiah 53 is the prophet’s depiction of the servant of God, a depiction that was seen, centuries later, to fit our Lord like a glove. As the prophet concludes his portrait of the self-giving servant of God he comments (Isa. 53:11 RSV), “He shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.” As you and I give ourselves, or give ourselves afresh, to the One who has given himself for us, we shall be the fruit of the travail of his soul. And as we are the fruit of the travail of his soul, he will indeed be satisfied.
On Palm Sunday Jesus ‘rides on’, indeed; he rides on in order to die; and he rides on deathward in majesty just because he, this king, is king like no other. The only crown this king will ever wear is a crown of thorns; the only throne he will ever adorn is a gibbet; and the only subjects who will ever thank and praise and adore him are those who have given themselves to him as surely as he first gave himself to them and for them.
Since it is the efficacy of the cross in drawing men and women to him that satisfies our Lord, I have no difficulty seeing now that his humiliation, degradation and shame are his glory. But once again, what matters finally isn’t that I see this or see anything else. What matters is that I – you too; what matters is that we give ourselves up afresh to him who finds our adoring gratitude and love the fruit of the travail of his soul. For then he will be satisfied for ever and ever.
Victor Shepherd
Palm Sunday 2010
The Crucial Encounter:The Woman At The Well (4)
John 4:5-26 John 39-42
Recently western journalists were telling an Arab oil magnate how fortunate he was that his country had huge reserves of oil. “Fortunate?” the Arab oilman retorted, “What’s so fortunate about having oil? You people have rain.” He’s correct. The country that’s rained upon is ever so much more fortunate than the country with non-replenishable oil.
The modern state of Israel has proved that it takes only one thing to make the desert blossom like a rose: water. Water is life. People of every era have known this.
Jesus speaks of himself as living water. He is water in that he alone quenches life’s profoundest thirst. He is “living” water in that he is alive himself and satisfies parched people by giving them himself as they come to know what it is to live in his company, under his authority, suffused with his Spirit. He wouldn’t be “living” water if he offered them a formula, guidelines, principles, schemes or techniques. He is “living” water just because he is alive himself with the life of God and he draws men and women into the life that he is.
The early church exulted in the one who was life-giving water and who unfailingly lent fruitfulness to human existence. Peter writes to Christian friends, “You believe in him with unutterable and exalted joy.” Paul cries, “He loved me, and gave himself – for me.” John exclaims, “We know that we have passed out of death into life.” And the unknown author of Hebrews insists, “We have tasted the powers of the Age to Come.”
What the apostles exclaim in their ardour; what wells up out of them and spills over onto us; they don’t regard this as extraordinary or secret or meant only for a privileged few. Unselfconsciously they speak as they do because they have tasted Jesus Christ for themselves and have found that he satisfies so thoroughly as to leave them looking no farther. Their experience of their Lord has assured them that his claim to turn the desert of people’s lives into garden; their experience here has confirmed his claim as truth and confirmed him as reality. Seeking nothing else and no one else, their one task now is to announce the Nazarene as humankind’s hope.
From time to time I imagine my work over, my life concluded, and a few people gathered around my casket. Someone says, “Shepherd was smart. He knew a lot about the Sixteenth Century, especially the early Sixteenth Century.” Someone else says, “Shepherd was clever; his sermons exhibited clever wordsmithing.” And then I long to imagine hearing someone else say, “But he was more than clever. Through his testimony I came to know what the Samaritan woman came to know.”
You see, I’m always aware people don’t come to church to hear about the Sixteenth Century; they come because they are thirsty with a thirst nothing else in the world can meet. Whether or not they use the language of the apostles, they long for that of which the apostles speak. They expect their spiritual leader to be acquainted with the “living water” and they expect him to be a means whereby they can come to taste it. I’m always aware that if people come to church and leave disappointed in this regard then their thirst-fuelled anguish haunts them and stares me in the face. Margaret Anderson, a British poet, knows this anguish and his written about it. Listen to her poem, Wail of a Distressed Soul:
O preacher, holy man, hear my heart weeping;
I long to stand and shout my protests:
Where is your power? And where is your message?
Where is the gospel of mercy and love?
Your words are nothingness! nothingness! nothingness!
We who have come to listen are betrayed.
Servant of God, I am bitter and desolate.
What do I care for perfection of phrase?
Cursed be your humour, your poise, your diction.
See how my soul turns to ashes within me.
You who have vowed to declare your Redeemer
Give me the words that would save.
I: — On one occasion a woman every bit as needy as Margaret Anderson met Jesus at a well. She assumed that he was thirsty too. (Why else would he be standing beside a well?) It’s no wonder, then, she was surprised to see him standing there without a bucket. How did he think he was going to draw water? Then she got the point: he didn’t need a bucket, since he had just asked her for a drink. She was to give him a drink. Noticing that Jesus was Jewish, and painfully aware that Jews and Samaritans had been hostile for centuries, she shot back, “You, a Jew, are asking an inferior Samaritan like me for a drink? Jews don’t stoop to ask Samaritans for anything.” Jesus replied, “If you knew God’s gift of living water; if you knew who I am, you’d be asking me for a drink.”
She misses the point entirely, and continues in her off-hand, semi-flirtatious way, “You’re the only person I’ve ever seen who goes to a well without a bucket.” Ignoring her banter, Jesus speaks to her again, once more at a depth she doesn’t apprehend: “If you drink the water I give, you will never thirst again.” She misses the point yet again and playfully retorts, “Give me your super-duper water, then; at least it will spare me a daily trip to this well.”
Isn’t this the misunderstanding overheard today between believer and unbeliever, between church and world, between those who have “tasted the powers of the age to come” and those who look upon churchgoers as stuck in an antiquated habit? Those who haven’t “tasted the powers of the age to come” may converse with believers at length but they never get the point of the church’s presence and worship and mission. To be sure they’ll admit there’s a historical reason for the church’s presence; they admit there’s a moral dimension to the church’s life (even as they deny that the church is essential to morality;) but beyond this they don’t penetrate. Beyond this they don’t perceive that the church is the instrument of the living Lord whereby he renders available to others without number his own gift of living water without limit.
II: — The woman’s banter doesn’t go on for ever. Just when she’s overcome her shyness at having a strange man – and the enemy of her people at that – chit-chat with her, Jesus ends the chit-chat. “Why don’t you go get your husband and bring him here?” Suddenly the time of banter, casual chit-chat, coquettish evasiveness; it’s over. Suddenly it’s truth-time. “My husband?” the woman gasps, “I don’t have a husband.” “You are right,” continues Jesus, “you don’t have a husband. You’ve had five husbands. And the man you are currently living with isn’t one of them.” Reeling now, she knows that the game she was enjoying with Jesus has ended.
We do play games with our Lord, don’t we. We can play them for a long time, glorying in an evasiveness born of our supposed cleverness; we can play such games until his question or comment exposes our game-playing as just that: frothy fun and shallow self-congratulation – as his word to us goes to our heart like a dagger. Deflated now, we sag under the wound.
Our Lord stopped the woman’s evasive banter by forcing her to come to terms with a marital deficiency. But we shouldn’t assume that such a deficiency is the only kind. Neither should we assume that if we aren’t deficient in this area then we aren’t deficient at all, couldn’t be.
In fact Jesus Christ forces self-perception upon us, the self-perception we’ve lacked for years just because we’ve preferred to be without it, as he puts any number of questions to us:
“Go call your alienated child.”
“Produce your income tax return.”
“Show me the lonely person needing comfort for whom you gave up leisure time.”
“Bring back the person your tongue slew.”
Unfailingly he directs our attention to that area of our lives whose desert remains desert just because living water has never been seen there. He gets our attention by shattering our illusion of self-sufficiency and complacency.
C.S. Lewis, for instance, knew for many years a nameless, profound longing that haunted him and which he couldn’t identify. One day he saw that the nameless longing haunting him was the question the Master was addressing him. On that day his long-studied avoidance, his evasiveness born of years of self-willed agnosticism; on that day all of this evaporated as his resistance to the Master crumbled.
Those of us who relish abstract thought, and find few things more enjoyable than armchair philosophical speculation; one day we hear our Lord saying, “What you relish as real and defend as profound isn’t nearly as profound as you think and in fact is an unconscious attempt at avoiding reality. Why don’t you let it go and admit the truth about yourself?”
Or on another day we have to admit, however, reluctantly, that the trinkets and toys with which we’ve cluttered our lives haven’t rendered us one whit happier – and why should they, since trinkets and toys are mere trifles – we see now.
Or perhaps Jesus Christ not only looms before us but also leans on us until we admit that our besetting temptation retains its deadly grip upon us just because we secretly enjoy it.
All such discernment is merely the converse side to our Lord’s comment or question. There’s no end to the ways he stalls effectively our attempts at trifling with him. While he doesn’t say “Go, call your husband” to all of us he speaks to all of us nonetheless.
III: — And then what? How does it all end? How did it end for the Samaritan woman? We must note that she isn’t crushed; she doesn’t collapse. She doesn’t say to our Lord, “All right; you’ve pulled the skeletons out of my closet. I give up. There’s no hope for me.” So far from being crushed, she’s elated. Thrilled at her encounter with the Master, she runs off to tell her story to the townspeople. Her encounter with Jesus has done for her what nothing else has ever done or was ever going to do. To be sure, it has held a mirror up to her and forced her to look into it. What has stared back at her can scarcely be called pretty. On the other hand, because Jesus Christ is more than mirror; because he comes to move us beyond the penultimate truth to the ultimate truth about us; because he informs us of the bad news about us only to sharpen our hearing for the good news, the Samaritan woman is set on her feet with her heart rejoicing. Now she sees herself no longer rejected but accepted; no longer condemned but pardoned; no longer slinking around in shame but honoured. Yes, the mirror which our Lord is acquainted her with her private and public wretchedness; and at the same time the living water which he is assured her that from this moment the desert of her life would be a garden. “This man is truth,” she exclaims to her neighbours; “He is truth and life for all of us.”
We are told that the townspeople are startled on account of the woman’s testimony concerning Jesus. They press Jesus to stay with them. He stays two days, at the end of which these townspeople say to her, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
The ring of assurance is unmistakable: “We have heard for ourselves, and we know….” The ring of assurance is unmistakable everywhere in scripture. The first epistle of John, for instance, is only a few pages long; we can read it in five minutes. Still, the little expression “we know” or “you know;” this expression is used thirty-two times. Of course there’s a phoney kind of “certainty,” a specious certainty born of fanaticism. And we’ve all met the person whose “certainty” is iron fast because rooted in immoveable prejudice. We’ve all met someone who is certain that the world is ending in four years, or certain that all Viet Namese newcomers are crypto communists, or certain with the certainty born of a script she dare not depart from – like the Jehovah’s Witness caller who can only parrot stock lines.
Yet we all know that such “certainty” is contrived. We crave the authentic certainty of the townspeople who say to the Samaritan woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe (even as they would never have come to believe apart from her testimony,) for we have heard for ourselves, and we know….”
Faith, we must understand, isn’t something we exercise in the absence of knowing. Faith, rather, is a particular kind of knowing. Faith knows God. Faith doesn’t know God, however, the way we come to know chemistry – i.e., by manipulating chemicals while remaining personally detached. Faith knows God, on the contrary, as we suspend detachment and allow ourselves to be included in God’s own life. Faith knows God as believers meet him and love him and honour his purposes for them.
When Harold Ballard owned the Maple Leaf Hockey Club he used to go to Maple Leaf Gardens early in the morning when the arena was empty. He put on his skates, and, hockey stick in hand, skated up and down the ice tapping a puck here and there. Ballard was living in his fantasy world. He was fantasizing that he was an NHL player, a star even, caught up in the game’s intensity and explosiveness. But he wasn’t a player and was never going to be. His fantasy world, the next best thing, in fact was light years removed from the real thing. Regardless of what information he possessed about hockey Ballard would never know hockey in the sense of participating in the game.
The townspeople who came to meet Jesus after the woman had met him; they came to say with utter authenticity “We have now heard for ourselves, and we know that you are the world’s sole sovereign and saviour.” Elsewhere Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and they know me.”
Assurance swells in us as we look away from ourselves to him who comes ultimately to bless. Our Lord isn’t merely water. Water cascading over us might just drown us. He is living water, and he causes to come alive all who welcome him and receive him, thereafter to love him and obey him.
Victor Shepherd
June 2004
In Honour Of Our Sunday School Teachers
1 John 1:6-13 Romans 8:14-16
I: — I remember so very many of them, the Sunday School teachers who are memorable just because they were of unspeakable help to me during my most formative years.
June Hocking was my teacher when I was 8 years old. As we approached Good Friday and Easter she explained to us 8-year olds what the cross was about. She told us it was God’s provision for us needy, needy people who were so very needy on account of our deep-dyed depravity and God’s just judgement. (Of course she didn’t use big words like “provision” and “depravity”; she knew the vocabulary of 8-year olds; because I don’t, I shall have to tell the story in my own words.) Then she asked those who grasped this, anything of this, to stand up if they wanted to own it for themselves. I stood up. She asked me specifically if I understood what any of this meant. I convinced her I did. Again in words suitable for little people she told me that my public declaration on that day was ratified in heaven eternally.
Soon afterward my family moved to another congregation. Now Catherine Heasman was my teacher. She was quiet, gentle, understanding. She knew I felt strange in my new church-home. She went out of her way, in her sensitivity, to defuse my apprehension.
When I was 10 or 11 my teacher was Dorothy Greenshields, an unmarried woman about 50 years old. One Sunday I became embroiled in a vehement argument with a classmate as to the correct spelling of an obscene word. Can you imagine it? Your beloved pastor arguing heatedly over the spelling of an obscenity! Miss Greenshields let the argument rage for a while, then told us we should talk about something else.
By the time I was 12 Gordon Fairbank was my teacher. Gordon was a graduate of the University of Toronto in Greek and Roman history. Gordon spent much of class time telling us that Greek and Roman history was the finest university program anyone could pursue. The weekly lesson always had much to do with the Roman background to the gospel-stories, and it was in Gordon’s class that I learned the word “Mesopotamia”, together with many other unusual words. One Sunday Gordon had to be in New Orleans (he worked for a travel agency) and so he sent along his fiancee, Jean, in his place. I thought she was the prettiest woman I had ever seen.
Grace Eby was another teacher: middleaged, reserved, anything but outgoing or hail-fellow-well-met. While she was much older than I, and often appeared to a live in a world that seemed older still, there was something about her that hooked my heart — for when I was 14 I discussed with her my new-born call to the ministry. Earnestly, haltingly, fearfully I discussed my unsuppressible vocation with her, and discussed it with her when I didn’t say anything to my parents. (In fact I was 22 years old before I breathed a word of it to anyone else.)
My last Sunday School teacher was Carlton Carter. He was a superintendent with the Scarborough Board of Education. He taught a class of 15-year olds. Every Sunday he brought so many books and reference materials to class you’d have thought he was doing Ph.D research.
II: — What was the point of all that my Sunday School teachers did on my behalf? What was the point of the diligence and faithfulness and affection that they exemplified? What is the point of Sunday School teaching now?
The point of it all was highlighted for me through a recent newspaper article. The article accompanied a photograph of Mafia gangsters in Hamilton carrying the casket of one of their fellow-thugs out of a church. Mr. Dominic Musitano had died. “Tears flow at funeral of mobster”, the headline read. Dominic Musitano had engineered the beating and killing of many people in the course of his underworld career (fellow-gangsters, I assume, who had been less than cooperative). He had the conscience of a cobra. At his funeral the clergyman said, “As a young child Dominic Musitano was brought to this church for baptism with holy water. It was then that he became an adopted son of God.”
No! He didn’t become an adopted child of God because he was baptized with holy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been baptized with unholy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference of he hadn’t been baptized at all. According to scripture we become adopted sons and daughters of God through faith; only faith, always and everywhere faith. John writes in the fourth gospel, “To all who received him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” To all who received him, who believed in his name (nature, presence, effectiveness).
Paul says more about adoption than any other New Testament writer. The apostle insists that while Jesus Christ is Son of God (uniquely) by nature, you and I become children of God by adoption into God’s family through faith. The point of Sunday School is the quickening of faith in youngsters. The point of Sunday School is the fostering of that faith by which they will come to first-hand experience of what Paul speaks of when he writes to the believers in Rome, “You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery that plunges you back into fear; you have received the spirit of sonship, of adoption. When we cry, `Abba! Father!’, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
We sometimes hear it said that faith is caught, not taught. It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught. The gospel has a precise content; youngsters must become acquainted with it. The gospel is truth; youngsters must learn to distinguish it from error, falsehood and illusion. The gospel is inseparable from him whose gospel it is; youngsters must grasp, therefore, how truths are related to Truth (i.e., how correct articulation of the gospel is related to the reality of living person, Jesus Christ.) “Faith is caught, not taught”? It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught!
At the same time, something also has to be caught. If Sunday School concerns only what is taught, never what is caught, then Sunday School is simply an exercise in shuffling one’s mental furniture. To say that something has to be caught is to say that youngsters have to be infected. And the teacher, from a human standpoint, is the “infecter”.
Jesus speaks at length with a Samaritan woman, speaks with her alone. The woman in turn goes back to her village and tells the villagers all that Jesus Christ has come to be and to mean to her. A short while later several of the villagers come to faith in the master on the strength of the woman’s testimony. Then as faith grows in them and with it the assurance of faith, they tell her, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this indeed the Saviour of the world.”
What’s the point of Sunday School? — the fostering of faith, such faith as will find the youngster-turned-adult saying, “It is no longer because of your words, Sunday School teacher, that we believe; we now know, for ourselves, him whom we have trusted.”
III: — Yet more than faith is needed, and therefore more than faith is the purpose of Christian Education. A Christian mind is needed too. A Christian mind can’t be acquired overnight. It takes years to develop spiritual antennae that can discern critically what is going on in the world and whether the Christian should support or oppose, welcome or denounce, wait for further light or warn others loudly. It takes years to develop that critical sophistication without which victimization is inevitable.
During the daily update on the Bernardo trial this summer a newspaper columnist, commenting on the sexual adventures of Mr. Bernardo, poured scorn on a lawyer connected with the prosecution. The columnist spoke of this lawyer as slightly older than middleaged, gray-haired, someone who had no doubt married only once and who had had, no doubt, one sex-partner only. What would such a man understand of Mr. Bernardo and his proclivities? So that’s it! Someone who has been married only once and has had only one sex-partner (spouse) is a 14-carat “nerd”? There are several issues here that have to be assessed on the basis of a Christian understanding.
Daniel Johnson, the Quebec politician, was annoyed (again, during the summer) at the outrageous and fatuous pronouncements of Jacques Parizeau, premier of Quebec. “Who does Parizeau think he is?”, said Johnson, “an archbishop or something?” Are church leaders inherently outrageous and fatuous? Church leadership is to be patterned after the leadership/servanthood of Jesus Christ himself. He gives himself up to death even for those whose hearts are ice-cold and treacherous towards him. It takes diligence and patience to acquire a mind that thinks in Christian categories.
When our daughter Catherine returned from Hong Kong during July she told us she had had a terrific argument with her Chinese boyfriend. The argument concerned China’s practice of packaging human fetuses (10 to a package) and selling them for food. The Chinese people add ginger to the fetuses, mix them with pork, and eat them. Catherine’s boyfriend defended the practice, explaining that in a nation of 1.2 billion people anything that can be eaten must be eaten — or else people aren’t going to eat. The Chinese, he insisted, don’t have the luxury of fastidiousness.
Catherine told us she replied to her boyfriend, “The line has to be drawn somewhere, and your people don’t know where to draw it.” (I was surprised at Catherine’s vehemence, since I didn’t think she was particularly eager to draw lines.)
Once again there are several issues here: abortion, cannibalism, and the matter of what (who) is going to be eaten next. Will a corpse be eaten next, provided it didn’t die from disease but was rather a traffic accident victim?
The story Catherine related to us had already been sent to North America by means of UPI, the international wire service that sends news items around the world. Not one North American newspaper picked up the story from the UPI wire; not one! A Christian Publication, First Things, did pick it up and print it. And therefore I was able to read more about this abhorrent development. Dr. Qin, a physician in Shenzhen, said she herself had eaten 100 fetuses in the last six months. Said Dr. Qin, “We don’t carry out abortions just to eat fetuses, [but they would be] wasted if not eaten.”
Not one North American newspaper wrote up the story handed to it by the UPI wire service. At both the Ottawa Summer School of Theology and McMaster University Divinity College I have lectured students — and illustrated my lectures profusely — that the manner in which the media handle news has more than a taint of propaganda. In both institutions students have looked upon me as an extremist. Discernment is needed if we are going to identify the distortions and assess the nature of the distortions that the media foist on us every day.
If the purpose of Sunday School is to foster faith, it must be understood that the faith so fostered includes the foundations of that Christian mind which adults must acquire.
IV: — Tell me: do you think I am possessed of faith in Jesus Christ? However slight or weak or sin-riddled my faith might be, do you think it is nonetheless genuine? And the faith that possesses me: has it issued in a Christian understanding beyond the kindergarten level? If so, then my Sunday School teachers are to be honoured and thanked.
Where are my teachers now?
Misses Dorothy Greenshields and Grace Eby are enjoying that reward which Jesus has promised to faithful servants.
June Hocking is the assistant minister at Knox United Church, Calgary. I didn’t know she was there until I spoke at Knox Church one weekend last October. During the question and answer period after my first address she stood up and asked, “Do you know who it is?” Did she think I was ever going to forget the person who first acquainted me with what St.Paul calls “the word of the cross”?
Catherine Heasman is the secretary in the chaplain’s office at Scarborough Grace Hospital. As often as I have reason to phone the chaplain’s office there I speak with her and thank her again.
Carlton Carter has long since retired from the Scarborough Board of Education. With his remarkable administrative abilities he has volunteered himself to his congregation as unsalaried church-administrator. It’s important that I tell him what he meant to me when I was 14. His three adult offspring worship nowhere themselves and make no profession of faith whatsoever. I have heard him ask, “Where did I fail?” He needs to hear from me that he hasn’t failed.
This leaves Gordon and Jean Fairbank. My little book, Making Sense of Christian Faith, is dedicated to them. The inscription reads, “To Jean and Gordon Fairbank, because they were there.” When I was 19 several developments precipitated me into a dark valley that was near-hideous and that lasted longer than I ever thought it would. Jean and Gordon kept me going, one fumbling foot in front of the other, until I emerged on the other side. They stood with me at the edge of the abyss, and what I owe them I shall never repay.
Still, I do what I can. Two or three years ago Jean was waiting alone, at night, for a train in the Rosedale subway station, when she was “swarmed” and assaulted by a band of hooligans. She was badly “unhinged” by the incident. I visited her several times afterwards, lending her whatever comfort I could. Last April her husband asked me if I would serve on the board of trustees of an institution related to the University of Manitoba. I said “yes”. (Don’t worry, it involves only one, two-day trip to Winnipeg each year.) Of course I agreed to help Gordon. Street-wise people are fond of saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
When I am on my deathbed and there is little breath in me, I shall nonetheless summon what little breath I have and pronounce “Blessed!” those men and women who were my Sunday School teachers and without whom I should today be who knows where, and be who knows what.
Victor A. Shepherd
September 1995
A Note Concerning Bread
John 6:25-34 Numbers 11:1-9 Revelation 10:6-10
“They don’t have bread?” said Marie Antoinette contemptuously; “Then let them eat cake.” The people crying out for bread were the poorest, the hungriest, the most wretched of revolutionary France . They wanted an end to a wicked system of privilege that kept a few aristocrats fat and everyone else hungry. Cake? There weren’t even crumbs. To suggest that the people who lacked the plainest brown bread eat cream puffs was cruel. Marie Antoinette paid dearly for her cruelty. One day the people she disdained caught up with her. They disembowelled her. Her pronouncement spelled death.
Christ Jesus our Lord also made a pronouncement concerning bread. His pronouncement spelled life, and still spells life. He took a piece of bread and said, “This is my body, my very self, given for you. And my self, my life, given over to death for you, will bring you life.” Earlier in his public ministry, anticipating his last supper with his disciples, he had insisted that he is the bread of life. What did he mean by this? How is he the bread of life?
I: — In the first place, for the Israelite person bread suggested intimate acquaintance. In everyday conversation Israelite people spoke of eating the bread of sorrow or the bread of toil or the bread of laughter and so on. To eat the bread of something – anything — was to become so intimately acquainted with that thing as to internalize it; to internalize it so very profoundly that it altered them forever, characterized them ever after. To eat the bread of pain meant that someone had been in such pain, was so intimately acquainted with pain, that her experience of pain had altered her. She’d never be the same again.
We must be sure to note the difference between intimate personal acquaintance and textbook information. A textbook on neurology will inform us as to how an injury to our body sends a message via neural pathways to our brain. But of course a person can read the most informative books on pain without ever having been in pain herself. To eat the bread of pain, on the other hand, is to have intimate, personal acquaintance with pain, experience of pain – and all this in such a way as to leave us altered ever after. To eat the bread of joy means that joy hasn’t merely alighted on us; joy has penetrated us, now permeates us, and will always characterize us.
When our Lord insists that we eat the bread he is, he is pressing upon us the most intimate, personal acquaintance with him, and all of this with the result that we are characterized by him and marked as his disciple.
All of us people at different levels of intimacy. Some people we merely nod to; others we chat with; others still we engage. If we have one or two intimate friends, people before whom we need hide nothing; people before whom we could confide anything regardless of our shame or guilt; people who we know would never despise us or mock us or dismiss us – if we have one or two friends before whom our lives can lie open without dissimulation or disguise, we are fortunate.
At the same time, however intimate we are with our best friend, we are aware that there are recesses in us, depths in us that not even our best friend can reach; not even the most loving spouse can reach.
Then who can? Black slaves in the Deep South of yesteryear knew. They knew that God alone can. There are recesses in all of us that only the Spirit, God himself in his most intimate penetration, can reach. For this reason black slaves in the Deep South used to sing, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen; nobody knows – but Jesus.” They were right.
When Jesus directs us to eat bread, and in directing us to eat bread insists he is bread, the bread of life, he’s offering himself to us as the only one who, as the Spirit Incarnate, can reach us, meet us, heal us in the innermost recesses of our heart where no else has access however much she may love us. Our Lord – and our Lord alone – is the bread of life.
II: — Eating bread means something more. None of us eats bread the way we eat chocolate éclairs or angel food cake or French pastries. Desserts we nibble daintily. Bread we chew robustly. We bite off a hunk of bread, half-chew it and swallow it at a gulp.
Joshua and Caleb are leaders of the Israelite people on their way out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The Israelite people are surrounded by Canaanites. The Canaanites are enemies. They are enemies of God, denying the Holy One of Israel, disdaining his claim upon his creatures, sneering at the Way he appoints his people to walk. The Canaanites intend to eliminate every last Israelite. They are fearsome, and the Israelites, understandably, are fearful.
“Don’t be alarmed,” shout Joshua and Caleb; “Under God our enemies are bread for us. We can swallow them at a gulp. They aren’t going to devour us.”
The name “Jesus” is merely a Gentile way of spelling the Hebrew name “Joshua.” Jesus our Lord is always and everywhere aware that he’s been named after Joshua, 1200 years back, Joshua, whose name – Yehoshua – means “God saves.” Our Lord’s intimacy with you and me guarantees us deliverance from our enemies. Our enemies are bread for us. They aren’t going to devour us.
Who or what are our enemies? What would wound us most tellingly or shatter us most dreadfully? What occurrence do we fear might just break down our confidence and trust in God? To sit in an armchair and try to list our “enemies,” whatever it is that would eclipse God, is highly artificial. Of course we can draw up a list: the death of a child, the disgrace of a Christian leader, utter financial reversal. It’s so very artificial just because we never know how telling a suspected enemy is until we are out of the armchair and in the hands of the enemy.
Several years ago, before the dismantling of the USSR , Major Eva den Hartog spoke in Toronto . Eva den Hartog, Dutch, is a clergywoman with The Salvation Army. At that time she worked on behalf of The Salvation Army in refugee camps. She said that the human degradation of the refugee camps in Thailand and Cambodia was indescribable. Some refugees attempted to maintain minimal human decency; others decided the word “decency” had no meaning. “Now,” said Eva den Hartog to her audience, “Could you go on believing that God never ceases loving just because he is love; could you go on commending him in a situation like that?” One thing’s obvious: Eva den Hartog herself can, and obviously can just because she does; she does extol the truth and mercy and faithfulness of God – from her heart, with conviction – in situations that are plainly the enemy of all she cherishes. In fact those hostile situations have become bread for her: she, her faith, are not going to be devoured by them.
One day she flew in a small plane from one Asian country to another. When the plane landed communist soldiers grabbed the pilot and co-pilot and beat them horribly. Eva sat in the plane, knowing in a few minutes it would be her turn. She prayed, “Lord, if they want to kill me, let them kill me. But don’t let them torture me or rape me.” Then the soldiers pulled her out of the plane. They saw the “S” insignia on both sides of the collar of her uniform blouse. One fellow snorted, “Hmph! S – S: soviet soldier.” They let her go. In the presence of Jesus Christ her enemies were bread for her. She wasn’t going to be devoured by them.
What if the very thing she feared most had happened? What if she had been tortured or raped? Horrible as it would have been, even there her Lord wouldn’t have abandoned her. She’d have gone to her death knowing that her trust hadn’t been misplaced.
The truth is, Jesus Christ, the bread of life, renders all our enemies bread for us. We aren’t going to be devoured by them. Major illness? Mental illness? Terminal illness? Of course we shrink from it. Ultimately, however, it can’t expel us from our Father’s house or stifle his love for us. Cataclysmic reversal, anywhere in life? Crushing, numbing letdown? Jarring to be sure, yet it will never expose as imaginary the grip God has on us, or the grip we have on him.
Joshua and Caleb saw the people of God, their people, quaking before Canaanite enemies. “Enemies?” said the two men; “They are bread for us. We aren’t going to be devoured by them.”
“What can separate you and me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?” asks Paul. Nothing can. Anything that threatens to or wants to is but bread for us.
III: — Eating bread means something more. In biblical times bread was the chief item at every meal. And every meal – not just special meals, but everyday meals – sealed a covenant or promise. Sharing bread with someone at a meal was re-affirming the covenant. Promises were always sealed by a meal, by bread.
On one occasion Jonathan was disgusted at the behaviour of his father, King Saul. His father was bent on murdering David, Jonathan’s best friend. Jonathan left the table, refusing to eat, because he wanted to announce unambiguously that he wasn’t party to his father’s evil intent and wasn’t obliged to his father in any way. When you and I receive bread from the hand of Christ and from the hand of each other, however, we are announcing that we are obliged, and gladly obliged, both to him and to each other. By eating bread with him and with each other we are signing our name to the promises all of us have made to one other.
When we eat bread together we are announcing that we cherish one another and have pledged ourselves to one another. We mean it. To pledge ourselves to one another doesn’t mean we thereafter must agree with one another. There has to be room for disagreement within our fellowship. Still, we have promised that we aren’t going to slay or slander one another.
Paul and Barnabas disagreed over whether they should take Mark along with them on their second missionary journey. Mark had been on the first missionary journey and had “chickened out”, as we like to say. He had let them down. “Give him a second chance” Barnabas urged; “He’s only nineteen. He’s young. “If he’s that young then he’s too young” replied Paul; “We can’t risk jeopardising the mission. We can’t risk having him let us down again.” Luke tells us in the book of Acts that Paul and Barnabas “disagreed sharply.” They didn’t become foes; they didn’t flail each other; they didn’t harbour a grudge for the rest of their lives. But they did disagree. Paul moved off into his second missionary foray without Mark. Barnabas took Mark under his wing (and this time Mark didn’t let anyone down.) Years later — this is a point we mustn’t overlook – Paul spoke of Mark in the warmest terms.
I’m convinced that early-day Christianity was much less monochrome than we commonly think. To be sure, all Christians, regardless of background or outlook, acknowledged Jesus Christ to be the Son of God Incarnate, the bearer and bestower of the Holy Spirit, the Messiah of Israel, and the world’s only Saviour and Lord – faith in whom is the Father’s insistent invitation. All Christians acknowledged this. But their common affirmation of Jesus didn’t render them monochrome in all respects.
As a matter of fact there were three major clusters of Christians in the earliest days. There were Palestinian Jewish Christians like Stephen. There were Hellenistic Jewish Christians like Paul. There were Hellenistic Gentile Christians like Titus. What they had in common was Christ, and he kept them together. For there were many things they didn’t have in common. For instance the Palestinian Jewish Christians went to the temple in Jerusalem , even after the resurrection of Jesus, to sacrifice a lamb. They felt they were obliged to keep all aspects of Torah. Hellenistic Gentile Christians, on the other hand, saw no point to animal sacrifice. They killed lambs only to eat them.
The three Christian groups (Palestinian Jewish, Hellenistic Jewish, Hellenistic Gentile) were united in their common life in their common Lord. For this reason they pledged themselves to each other as well. Where they disagreed after that would be a disagreement, for sure, but not such as to undo their covenant with fellow-Christians. When the Palestinian Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were threatened with famine who gave most sacrificially to help them? – the Hellenistic Gentile Christians in Corinth . The Christians in Corinth were furthest fro the outlook of Christians in Jerusalem . Still, in pledging themselves to Jesus Christ they had pledged themselves to each other as well.
“Let them eat cake” Marie Antoinette sneered disdainfully. “Let us eat bread” Jesus invites graciously. We do eat bread.
We receive him who is the bread of life. We live with him so very intimately that he reaches us where no one else can and therein characterizes us as we are marked his.
In eating bread, the everyday foodstuff we bite off and gulp, we are confirmed in God’s truth concerning our enemies: they are bread for us. They aren’t going to devour us, for nothing can separate us from our Lord.
And in eating bread with our Lord and with each other we have signed and sealed our pledge, our promise, our covenant with him and with his people.
Let us break bread together now.
Victor Shepherd
March 2005
Bread and Wine
John 6:52-59 Deuteronomy 8:1-10
[1] When the Japanese besieged Hong Kong sixty-plus years ago and began starving the people inside the city, a British banker was found sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter. He was dressed like a British banker: cutaway coat, Homburg hat, pin-striped trousers, grey spats. He was the picture of upper-class privilege. He had found an orange in the gutter. The orange had been stepped on several times, had been exposed to the sun, and had begun to putrefy. He was about to bite into it when a British soldier knocked it out of his hand, shouting, “Do you want to get sick?” Whereupon the banker, still sitting on the curb, hung his head and blubbered like a child.
Hunger is terrible. Hunger bends people. Hunger forces people to be what they never thought they’d become. The British banker would have given everything he owned for just one slice of bread. But there was no bread.
Bread was the all-important commodity in the ancient east. Bread? Not money? Money didn’t even exist in old, old Babylon . In lieu of currency grain was the medium of exchange. Hundreds of years later, in Hosea’s day, Hosea lurched broken-hearted to the market in order to purchase his “hooker”-wife from the clutches of the local pimp. Hosea paid part of the purchase-price in grain. Whereas in our society there are few public officials more important than the minister of finance and the president of the central bank, in the ancient world the most important public official was the one responsible for bread.
[2] Bread is one of life’s necessities. Because bread looms so large in our lives and is essential to life, we use the word “bread” metaphorically. “I’ve got to have a second job just to put bread on the table.” Everyone knows what the expression is meant to convey. When we pray, as we are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are asking for all of life’s necessities: bread, to be sure, but also water and clean air and safe cities and national security and effective schooling and adequate medical care. What, after all, would be the point of bread (literal) to sustain us if disease then carried us off? What would be the point of eating bread to forestall malnutrition if we then had to breathe lung-corroding air or live in lethal streets or succumb to military aggression? When we pray for daily bread we are praying for all of life’s necessities as symbolized by bread. When our Lord multiplied the loaves and healed the sick and raised the dead he wasn’t doing three different things. He was doing one thing: bringing with him that kingdom whose manifestation we long to see.
Then is bread a physical matter or a spiritual matter? To put such a question is to pose a false dichotomy. All of us at Tyndale have been schooled in the logic of the Hebrew bible, and therefore we know that to dichotomize life into the physical (or material) and the spiritual is to dichotomize life falsely. Dennis Niles, a thoughtful South Asian Christian of an earlier era, used to say, “If I lack bread – that’s a physical problem; if my neighbour lacks bread – a spiritual problem.” Since the Christian community is birthed by the Spirit of God and is concerned with spiritual matters, the Christian community is therefore concerned with material matters – which is to say, the Christian community is always concerned with bread of every kind.
[3] While we are speaking of bread metaphorically we should recall the way the older testament speaks of the bread of tears and the bread of affliction and the bread of idleness and the bread of adversity. Because bread was the staple food in the ancient world, it was eaten in huge quantities. Then as now people knew that in one sense they were what they ate. What they ate became so thoroughly a part of them that they were characterized by what they had had to swallow.
When the Hebrew bible speaks of the bread of tears or the bread of sorrow, it means that someone is so thoroughly grief-saturated she’s consumed by her grief; someone has been so thoroughly saddened that she’s characterized by her sorrow and is now identified with it.
We all know people whom adversity has devastated so thoroughly that we would say, were we living in the time of our Hebrew foreparents, that they have eaten the bread of adversity. As soon as we hear the word “adversity” we think of those people who exemplify adversity and whom we now identify with it.
We know too people who have eaten the bread of wickedness. They have become so very wicked that they are deemed to exemplify wickedness
[4] In view of the different kinds of bread that we can eat and do eat, it’s plain that we need one more kind of bread as we need nothing else: we need him who is the bread of life. We are sinners and we are sufferers. We need our Lord, and he meets us at every point of our need.
In Israel ’s 40-year trek through the wilderness there was given them a most glorious anticipation of Jesus Christ, the bread of life. They were given manna. Manna sustained them in that era when bleakness loomed wherever they looked. “Manna” is a Hebrew word meaning “What is it?” They were sustained by God’s provision, the nature of which they couldn’t explain (let alone explain away), yet whose presence and significance they couldn’t deny. “What is it?” How God sustains his people is always a mystery; that he sustains them is never in doubt. Manna appeared to be so very ordinary, yet it was extraordinary in its origin, its nature, its effectiveness.
Twelve hundred years after the wilderness episode some descendants of wilderness-survivors said to Jesus, “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Moses fed his people. What can you do for us?” Jesus replied, “It wasn’t Moses who fed your foreparents; it was my Father. He gives true bread from heaven, and I, Jesus of Nazareth, am that bread. I am the bread of life, just because I am living bread. Whoever comes to me will never hunger; whoever comes to me will never perish.”
Manna was an anticipation of Jesus Christ. To say the same thing differently, Jesus Christ was the hidden truth of the manna in the wilderness. It was he who sustained the people even though they knew it not. “Now, however”, says our Lord, “you people are to know that I am God’s provision. To be sure, I appear so very ordinary as to be readily overlooked. Yet my origin, nature and effectiveness are rooted in the mystery of God. I am living bread, the bread of life; whoever comes to me from this moment neither hungers nor perishes.”
In the service of Holy Communion we eat ordinary bread, everyday bread, bread plain and simple, and yet we are fed him who is the bread of life. The bread that sustains our bodies also sustains, by God’s grace, our life in Christ as our Lord Jesus gives himself to us afresh.
Wine
[6] Not only was bread eaten at Israelite meals; wine was drunk at every meal as well. Where wine is concerned our Israelite foreparents differed from our society in two ways. On the one hand, they abhorred drunkenness, finding it disgusting, whereas we seem to find it amusing. On the other hand, Israelite people customarily drank wine at every meal. The rare exception was the highly unusual ascetic like John the Baptist. People like John who didn’t touch wine also refrained from touching much else, including soap and shampoo. They also avoided women. They lived on the fringe of society. Their witness had its place, to be sure, but it was never the witness that God had appointed his people to bear characteristically. John, it must be remembered, lived in the wilderness, dressed in animal skins, stank like a garbage can, and drank no wine. Jesus did none of this.
Again and again the Older Testament speaks of wine as God’s gift that gladdens the heart of men and women. Wine doesn’t appear to be essential to life. Bread is essential to life, but not wine. Yet wine is essential to life, said our Hebrew foreparents, just because joy is essential to life. Life in the kingdom of God is never to be bleak or drab or dull. Life must never become utilitarian only. In addition to the utilitarian there has to be a light heart and a glad countenance, a happy time and a festive mood.
Jesus, we know partied frequently. He partied so often that his enemies accused him of overdoing it. They said he ate too much and he drank too much. Whereupon he wheeled on his detractors, “John came neither eating nor drinking and you said he was demon-possessed, crazy if not wicked. I’ve come eating and drinking, and you call me a glutton and drunkard. You don’t care about God’s Kingdom. You care only about spearing those who challenge your self-righteousness and your lovelessness. That’s deplorable. But in any case I and the people who love me are going to a party. And we’re going to have a good time. You’re welcome to come to the party too. Maybe you’d rather stay home and pout. We can’t help that. But in any case you aren’t going to spoil our party.”
Wine is God’s gift that gladdens the human heart. When our Lord insists, wine cup in hand, that he is the true vine, the wine of life, he means that he is that gift of the Father who profoundly makes the human heart to sing. Whenever we drink wine, therefore – at the Lord’s Supper, at a meal, on any occasion – we are announcing once again that Jesus Christ is the one who profoundly delights and satisfies, doing for us what no one else can and imparting to us what no one can ever take away.
Since our Lord most profoundly gladdens us through the blessing of his shed blood, the apostles, together with the church after them, have associated wine with blood. In fact the church hasn’t hesitated to speak of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. This isn’t surprising, since Jesus himself said that he abides in us and we in him only as we drink his blood. (John 6:54)
What did he mean? What did he mean, in view of the fact that Jewish people abhor drinking blood as they abhor little else? The Torah forbids them to drink blood, and they take such precautions with kosher meat as to ensure that they don’t eat or drink blood. At the last supper, when Jesus took the cup and declared to the disciples, “This is God’s covenant with you renewed in my blood,” the one thing that his disciples never thought they were doing was literally drinking his blood. The thought of it would have sickened them.
It so happens that among the Israelite people to “shed blood” meant to murder. Murder was reprehensible. It so happens that among the Israelite people to “drink blood” meant to murder and to profit from the foul deed. While it’s dreadful to murder, it’s worse to murder and then profit from the murder.
When Jesus tells us that we are going to drink his blood, he means that our sin is going to do him in. Humankind’s sin, collapsing on him, will crush him to death. And humankind’s sin, crushing him to death, he will gladly bear and bear away for our sakes, thereby giving us life. We kill, and we profit from it. We shed blood and we drink blood. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, the treachery of the human heart, culminating in murder, the murder of the Son of God; this becomes the means of our forgiveness and freedom. Let me say it again. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, human treachery (the cross) becomes the means whereby human treachery is pardoned and purged. Plainly we do drink our Lord’s blood.
Then let us come to Christ’s table now, for as he invites us to drink wine with him, the fruit of the vine, he invites us to drink again that blood which we have already drunk in any case. And he invites us to eat bread with him, and therein know afresh that he, and he alone, is now and ever will be the bread of life.
Victor Shepherd
April 2007
On Eating and Drinking with Jesus
John 6:54 Genesis 8:13-22 Luke 19:1-10
I: — Time magazine, McLean ’s, together with most magazines that appear weekly or monthly, are customarily divided into sections according to subject matter. One section discusses business, another politics, another sport, as well as medicine, education, finance, the environment and clothing fashions. The format of the magazine suggests that these compartments have little to do with each other. Sport has little to do with business, education little to do with finance, medicine little to do with politics.
Actually, all of these subjects have been artificially compartmentalized. Sport has a great deal to do with business; sport has as much to do with business as sport has to do with sport. Education has as much to do with finance as education has to do with the philosophy of education or with pedagogical technique. And what has become more politicized than medicine? It’s always possible to compartmentalize a magazine; it’s never possible to compartmentalize life.
For this reason we should always suspect the magazine section on religion. It’s usually towards the back of the magazine, so that if the weary reader puts down the magazine before she finishes reading she won’t have missed much. What’s more, the article on religion is as highly compartmentalized as the other articles. We are informed that a church in a Vancouver suburb has been involved in scandal; or that there’s fierce infighting in one particular denomination; or that two religious bodies are going to amalgamate.
The magazine left-handedly gives the impression that religion is on the margin of human existence; it has little if anything to do with life. It may have something to do with leisure time or hobbies or abstract musing for those who enjoy abstract musing, but it has little to do with life.
People of biblical conviction, however, think differently. We know that faith pertains to life, not to the margins of life. Jesus came to restore our humanness to the glory in which it was created. He had no interest – and has no interest – in making us more religious. People whose lives were complicated and twisted pretzel-like welcomed him; people preoccupied with religion couldn’t stand him. He said himself that he came to bring life not religion, and life richer than anything available anywhere else.
My students are startled when I tell them that a Jewish youngster, upon learning the Hebrew language, is directed first to read – read where in the Hebrew bible? Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd” – wouldn’t that be a good place to have a youngster start reading Hebrew sentences? As a matter of fact the Jewish youngster is directed to the book of Leviticus (a book that the church rarely reads) just because Leviticus 17-22 describes “holiness,” holy living. We are not to bribe judges; we are not move surveyors’ stakes; we are not to falsify weights and measures; we are not to exploit defenceless people. Holiness has everything to do with life; holiness has very little to do with a trembly feeling in one’s tummy as the sun sets over the lake and the loon loons on.
II: — In our service today we are going to share the Lord’s Supper together. What’s the connexion between the Lord’s Supper and any supper? Between what we eat here and the roast beef we eat in two hours? Between this meal and any meal?
Let’s think for a minute about the matter of eating meat – ordinary, everyday meat. Let’s revisit the old sagas in the early chapters of Genesis. Humans are created to live, under God, in the realm of blessing. We are also created on the same “day”, the sixth day, as the animals. This means that we are related to the animals more closely than we are related to anything else in the creation. We and the animals are first cousins; not quite brothers and sisters, but certainly cousins. For this reason we were never meant to eat them. What sort of people eat their cousins?
Since God is the God of shalom, peace; and since he alone is Creator, the world was created to live in peace: peace between us and God, peace between us and our neighbour, peace between us and our environment, peace between us and the animals.
As the timeless story in Genesis unfolds we are told that on account of our arrogant disobedience; on account of our ingratitude and God-defiance, we are expelled from paradise. Forfeiting God’s blessing, we now know curse. Husband blames wife for what’s gone wrong. Wife blames snake. Snake has no one to blame, even though snake in turn will be despised and loathed. Cain kills brother Abel. Everyone is at everyone else’s throat. Daily work becomes frustrating and only partially productive. Difficulty and pain attend everything we do. Creation, cursed, is spiralling down into chaos.
The next episode in our collection of sagas is the story of Noah’s ark. This story informs us that as wickedness spreads throughout the creation God’s anger is aroused and his judgement is provoked. A flood occurs. But as I have pointed out here relentlessly, the purpose of God’s judgement is always his restoration. When the flood has receded, Noah and his family have been borne through God’s judgment; they have been spared. In gratitude to God for his mercy they kill an animal and offer it to God as a sacrifice; specifically, as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God for his life-giving goodness. In addition to the animal offered up in thanksgiving to God, humans begin eating animals. At this point in the old Hebrew sagas, and only at this point, humans become meat-eaters. Permission to eat meat is God’s concession to the depravity of the human heart.
At the same time, as often as our Hebrew foreparents ate eat meat at daily meals and acknowledged the depravity of their heart (after all, they were eating their cousins, weren’t they?); as often as they ate meat at daily meals our Hebrew foreparents were reminded of the sacrifices that priests offered up on their behalf in the temple. Sacrifices were the God-appointed provision whereby defiled people could come before a holy God and survive meeting him. Sacrifices were the God-appointed provision whereby sinners could repent and find pardon. Ultimately, in Israel ’s history, the sacrifices in the temple came to point to the sacrifice, the sacrifice of God’s own Son that would thereafter render animal sacrifice unnecessary. In other words, every time an Israelite family sat down to roast lamb at the dinner table, the family considered the lambs that were being sacrificed, by God’s appointment, in the temple. And every time they reflected upon the lambs being sacrificed in the temple, they anticipated the lamb of God who would gather up all the sacrifices that had anticipated his, crowning them with his own self-offering on behalf of all people everywhere. When John the Baptist saw Jesus approaching him at the Jordan he cried “There’s the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
In two hours we are going to go home and eat meat. We shall eat it because it sustains us. It provides ever so much that we need, not the least of which is iron for our blood, without which we would only flop around anaemically. Because, however, as Christians we know how it is we have come to eat meat, our eating meat will always mean more than mere bodily nourishment. Our eating meat will have about it the flavour of sacrifice, and the flavour of sacrifice in turn will direct us immediately to the lamb who has been offered up for us all. Specifically, the dead animal we eat will point us to someone else whose death has brought us life. We have been given life through the death of a fellow-creature who was slain on our behalf. Any occasion of meat-eating – even a burger at McDonald’s – sears upon us the truth that we are the beneficiaries of God’s mercy on account of another creature whose blood was shed for us. In other words, unlike Time magazine or McLean’s, we who have been to school in Israel ; we don’t compartmentalize life. Meat-eating on any occasion, for any reason, is shot through with spiritual significance.
Customarily before we eat a meal we “say grace.” The English word “grace” has two meanings. One meaning is the dozen words we utter sincerely before we pick up knife and fork and begin dismembering the meat. The other meaning of “grace” has to do with God’s undeserved mercy. Strictly speaking grace, in scripture, is God’s faithfulness to his covenant with us; and when his faithfulness to us collides with our sin, his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. There is the profoundest connexion between the grace of God and our “saying grace.” The words we utter before eating are intimately connected to the mercy of God, connected specifically to that self-offering, sacrifice, whereby God fashions our pardon and bleaches our stains and summons us home. So far from compartmentalizing life, Hebrew logic renders all of life – hamburger joint snack and weekly worship, thrice-daily meals and once-only Messiah Banquet to come – a seamless whole.
II: — Not only was meat eaten regularly at Israelite meals; wine was drunk at every meal as well. Where wine is concerned our Israelite foreparents differed from us in two ways. On the one hand, they abhorred drunkenness, finding it disgusting, whereas we seem to find it amusing. On the other hand, Israelite people customarily drank wine at every meal. The rare exception was the highly unusual ascetic like John the Baptist. People like John who didn’t touch wine also refrained from touching much else, including soap and shampoo. They also avoided women. They lived on the fringe of society. Their witness had its place, to be sure, but it was never the witness that God had appointed his people to bear characteristically. John, it must be remembered, lived in the wilderness, dressed in animal skins, stank like a garbage can, and drank no wine. Jesus did none of this.
Again and again the Older Testament speaks of wine as God’s gift that gladdens the heart of men and women. Wine doesn’t appear to be essential to life. Bread is essential to life, but not wine. Yet wine is essential to life, said our Hebrew foreparents, just because joy is essential to life. Life in the kingdom of God is never to be bleak or drab or dull. Life must never become utilitarian only. In addition to the utilitarian there has to be a light heart and a glad countenance, a happy time and a festive mood.
Jesus, we know partied frequently. He partied so often that his enemies accused him of overdoing it. They said he ate too much and he drank too much. Whereupon he wheeled on his detractors, “John came neither eating nor drinking and you said he was demon-possessed, crazy if not wicked. I have come eating and drinking, and you call me a glutton and drunkard. You don’t care about God’s Kingdom. You care only about spearing those who challenge your self-righteousness and your lovelessness. That’s deplorable. But in any case I and the people who love me are going to a party. And we’re going to have a good time. You’re welcome to come to the party too. Maybe you’d rather stay home and pout. We can’t help that. But in any case you aren’t going to spoil our party.”
Wine is God’s gift that gladdens the human heart. When our Lord insists, wine cup in hand, that he is the true vine, the wine of life, he means that he is that gift of the Father who profoundly makes the human heart to sing. Whenever we drink wine, therefore, on any occasion – at the Lord’s Supper, at a meal, in a place of public refreshment – we are announcing once again that life is seamless. Jesus Christ is the one who profoundly delights and satisfies, doing for us what no one else can and imparting to us what no one can ever take away.
III: — Since our Lord most profoundly gladdens us through the blessing of his shed blood, the apostles, together with the church after them, have associated wine with blood. In fact the church hasn’t hesitated to speak of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. This isn’t surprising, since Jesus himself said that he abides in us and we in him only as we drink his blood. (John 6:54)
What did he mean? What did he mean, in view of the fact that Jewish people abhor drinking blood as they abhor little else? The Torah forbids them to drink blood, and they take such precautions with kosher meat as to ensure that they don’t eat or drink blood. At the last supper, when Jesus took the cup and declared to the disciples, “This is God’s covenant with you renewed in my blood,” the one thing that his disciples never thought they were doing was literally drinking his blood. The thought of it would have sickened them.
It so happens that among the Israelite people to “shed blood” meant to murder. Murder was reprehensible. It so happens that among the Israelite people to “drink blood” meant to murder and to profit from the foul deed. While it’s dreadful to murder, it’s even worse to murder and then profit from the murder.
When Jesus tells us that we are going to drink his blood, he means that our sin is going to do him in. Humankind’s sin, collapsing on him, will crush him to death. And humankind’s sin, crushing him to death, he will gladly bear and bear away for our sakes, thereby giving us life. We kill, and we profit from it. We shed blood and we drink blood. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, the treachery of the human heart, culminating in murder, the murder of the Son of God; this becomes the means of our forgiveness and freedom. Let me say it again. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, human treachery (the cross) becomes the means whereby human treachery is pardoned and purged.
Plainly we do drink our Lord’s blood.
What about bread, both everyday bread and Eucharistic bread? Everyday bread, Eucharistic bread, and the body of Christ? A discussion of this will have to wait for another sermon.
Today it is enough to know, as we come to the Lord’s Table, that the wine we drink is the blood of Christ. It is enough to know that two hours from now, when we eat pork chops or fried liver, we are joining in mind and heart the animal we eat (our cousin had to give up its life for us) with the sacrifice of the lamb of God, who gave up his life for us in order to give us his life.
Life in the kingdom of God is seamless.
Victor Shepherd
February 2007
Four Judgements About Jesus
John 3:2 “You are a teacher.” (John 7:12) “He is a good man.”
“My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28) “He is possessed by Beelzebul [Satan].” (Mark 3:22 )
When most people hear the name “Jesus” they immediately think of “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” When they think of “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” they think of a kind fellow walking through the countryside patting little children on the head, spouting “bromides” here and there, being as kind and helpful as any one of us would want to be. Those who imagine Jesus to be like this always assume that everybody in first century Palestine liked him.
Then again there are those who know that every now and then Jesus said or did something that riled the people around him. He must have done something to rile others, or else his life wouldn’t have ended the way it did. People who think like this assume that the larger part of the population understood him and liked him, while a small minority didn’t understand him or like him yet had enough political “clout” to have Jesus executed.
The truth is, the reactions to Jesus throughout his earthly ministry were always mixed. Some people loved him (a few), some people hated him, some people were puzzled by him, some people understood this or that aspect of him, some people followed him at a distance (or thought they could), others followed him more closely but only for a short while.
Reaction to Jesus was always mixed; and not only mixed, extreme. Those who loved him couldn’t have loved him more; those who hated him loathed him beyond telling; those who were indifferent were cemented into their indifference. The written gospels reflect all these judgements about Jesus. Today we are going to examine four such judgements.
I: — One judgement was wholly negative: “He is possessed by Beelzebul, by Satan.” We mustn’t think that such an assessment occurred once only. “He is possessed by Beelzebul” was pronounced in Nazareth , in his home town. In Jerusalem his detractors hissed, “He has a demon.” The bottom line is the same: what was meant is, “He’s evil.” Some people accused him of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing; others accused him of being a wolf in wolf’s clothing. In other words some people thought him to be sneaky-evil; others thought him to be blatantly evil. But in any case, they thought him to be in league with the evil one himself. They judged him to be destructive, fiendish, accursed himself and cursing others. From that time until this the world hasn’t lacked those who render this judgement concerning Jesus.
When I was recovering from my fractured spine I had to have periodic check-ups with the orthopaedic surgeon who had treated me. One afternoon that I shall never forget, in the old medical arts building of downtown Toronto , this man flew into a tirade upon learning that I was a theology student. “Every society that your Jesus has penetrated now thinks it has to look out for its physical and mental cripples”, he raged, “and I want to tell you that no society has ever been able to afford the upkeep of its physical and mental cripples. You Christians have done it to us. You Christians are responsible for the economic millstone around society’s neck; and this millstone is going to spell financial ruin for all of us. No society can afford what you Christians say we must.” But to maintain that Christians have done this foul deed is to say that our Lord himself is foul. “He is possessed by Beelzebul; he has a demon.”
The next time educators speak of “Values Education,” examine closely what is put forward as “values”. The assumption is that “values” are purely subjective; “values” are really “preferences”; “values” are opinions; “values” reflect no more than what an individual or a society likes or wants. Nowhere is it even hinted that there is such a thing as truth; nowhere is one allowed to speak of the will and purpose and command of God. As soon as Christians say, “But our lives aren’t shaped and directed by what we prefer or by what we like or by opinions we have; the lives of Christians are shaped and directed by a truth of God that is as much the structure of the universe as the law of gravity. Is the law of gravity a human invention? Can we set it aside if we don’t like it? Are we going to vote on it? Is it part of the smorgasbord of choices that is arrayed before youngsters? Then why do you think that that which orders the lives of Christians is mere subjectivism? mere preference? mere whim? mere opinion?” — as soon as Christians say this we are dismissed. If you think I’ve got it wrong about “Values Education” then you should raise the issue of truth in the midst of such a discussion and see what the reaction is. The reaction will be, “These Christians are possessed by Beelzebul” — which is to say, he who forms them and informs them has a demon.
II: — Not every judgement of Jesus was negative, however. Some people said, “He is a good man.” “He’s a decent fellow.”
On the one hand I am convinced we live in a fallen world whose depravity is bottomless. On the other hand, I am aware that there remains among some people who make no profession of faith an apprehension of decency. Decency can disappear, to be sure; yet as it disappears and life becomes unendurable, decency reasserts itself if only because without it social existence is impossible.
People who say of our Lord today, “He’s a good man”, aren’t making any Christian profession and don’t care to. Yet their assessment of Jesus shouldn’t be scorned for that reason. After all, the fact that they find Jesus decent means that they appreciate decency. And therefore they are aligned with all who stand on the side of decency and stand against degradation.
We must always remember that the balance between decency and degradation is a precarious balance; the scales can be tipped by only the slightest pressure. Anyone who supports decency is to be encouraged, since our society will never lack those who are shameless, who violate that decency which, if rampant, renders social existence impossible.
I have long found what I regard as the shameless vulgarity of CFRB radio broadcasting difficult to endure. Yet I listen to CFRB if I need up-to-the-minute traffic reports. Not so long ago I needed a traffic report, turned on CFRB, and was exposed to yet another wretched phone-in scene. This time people were to phone in to the station (and have their phone call broadcast) as they answered the broadcaster’s question, “What was it (i.e., sexual intercourse) like the first time?” Can you imagine it? – the utmost human intimacy blabbed as though it were less significant than a baseball score. Scripture speaks of “the way of a man with a maid” as a wonder beyond telling. The prophets use the intimacy of marriage as an analogy for our most intimate relationship with God — a relationship so intimate as finally to be inexpressible. And vulgar oafs, devoid of decency, superficially titillate radio-listeners while the broadcaster eggs them on. One young man described his first encounter in a shopping mall. “Where’s the mall?” the broadcaster laughed lasciviously.
The people who believed no more about Jesus than “He’s a good man” at least believed that much. Many today believe no more than that. But at least they are tipping the balance between decency and degradation in the right direction. I, for one, am not going to speak ill of those who share my horror at the coarsening of society and who are endeavouring to restore a modicum of wholesomeness.
For a long time ethical humanists have perplexed Christians. Ethical humanists don’t attend church, don’t worship, don’t make a profession of faith, don’t agree with the church’s assessment of Jesus — but are morally upright. We shouldn’t look upon such people as a perplexity; we should thank God for them. In his providence he has seasoned the world with those who are going to resist the erosion of decency.
Regardless of what Jesus claimed for himself concerning Israel’s hope of a Messiah; regardless of what Jesus elicited from his disciples concerning his unique relationship with his Father; regardless of any of this the common people couldn’t help noticing that the sick were attended to, women were elevated, the deranged were restored, children welcomed and the poor honoured. Anyone could see this much; anyone with a shred of decency had to say, “He’s a good man.”
III: — There was yet another judgement of Jesus: “He is a teacher.” To say this isn’t to say, “He is an able instructor; he has mastered the technique of teaching.” When those Israelites who profited from him concluded, “He is a teacher”, they meant, “His teaching comes from above; he is a prophet; he has an authoritative word from God.” In biblical thought only the person who has first listened to God can speak for God. Only the person who has first heard can speak. The teacher, the prophet, is one whom God has drawn to himself, to whom he has disclosed himself, and whom he now commissions to teach concerning himself. When the people said of Jesus, “He is a teacher”, it was no little accolade. Moreover, in naming Jesus “teacher” they were admitting themselves to be without excuse if they didn’t take his teaching to heart.
Inasmuch as you and I honour Jesus as teacher we have logically committed ourselves to heeding his teaching; and logically we are without excuse if we do not.
At the beginning of the sermon I mentioned that more than a few people look upon the teaching of Jesus as nothing more than the handing-out of bromides, commonplaces that any thoughtful person would come up with if she thought for five minutes. Actually, our Lord’s teachings are anything but bromides, anything but commonplaces. We need to read the written gospels and re-read them until the startling teachings of Jesus jar us awake.
“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is in heaven.” Our reward will be granted us in heaven; in heaven, be it noted, and not one day before. Even so, just because it will be granted us in heaven we must and may rejoice and be glad right now. This is anything but a commonplace.
“No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a vessel, or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light.” Christians are the light of the world, says Jesus. The purpose of light is to enlighten. Therefore the light should always be held up so that others may be enlightened by the same light that has enlightened us. Our Lord’s teaching here readily makes sense and isn’t startling. Then Jesus adds a word that ought to ring in our heads constantly: there is nothing hid that isn’t going to be made manifest, and there is no secret that isn’t going to be brought to light. Yes, Christians are and are to be the light of the world; but if there is any hint of darkness in them at all, anything smudged, anything covered up, anything painted out (supposedly) — it’s going to be exposed. Finally, there aren’t going to be any secrets. That in us which contradicts our discipleship, which is anything but bright and would never illumine life for anyone; that which we think we have hidden from everyone for so long that it’s going to remain hidden forever — “think again”, says Jesus, “and deal with it now, otherwise it is going to be dealt with in a way that will shame you publicly.”
When I hear “the teacher” in such matters I sink down into a chair and ask myself, “What is there in me that would humiliate me if it appeared on the front page of the newspaper? What is there about me that would shame me if it were aired at an official board meeting? What is there that I’d prefer my wife not to see?” And then I know that there is only one thing to do: deal with it now.
When some of the men and women who surrounded Jesus remarked, “Not only is he a good man, he’s a teacher”, they meant, “God has appointed him to instruct us. We should hear him and heed him.”
Our Lord is still a teacher. And therefore still we must hear and heed.
IV: — The final assessment of Jesus is one beyond which there is no advance. It is the confession of Thomas following the risen one’s appearance to him. Our Lord’s appearance to Thomas ended forever the disciple’s vacillating, his uncertainty, his roller-coaster conviction and feeling. “My Lord and my God”: everything that had been unsettled in Thomas was settled in that instant. It is an unqualified confession of the incarnation. What Thomas affirmed in his five words Charles Wesley affirmed in his Christmas carol, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th’Incarnate deity; pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel” — “God-with-us”.
I have always believed that doctrine has eversomuch to do with life. The doctrine of the incarnation has everything to do with where we live.
(i) Think first of our suffering. Scripture tells us that God himself suffers in our suffering. Does he? How much does he suffer? With what kind of suffering does he suffer? Does he suffer in my suffering the way I “suffer” in the suffering of those in Mexico who were devastated by a hurricane? When I read about the hurricane I feel dreadful. I am moved at the plight of people who lost children, homes, livelihood, even their own lives. But as moved as I am at their plight, their plight isn’t mine. I am aware of it, am informed of it, suffer it (to some extent) with them. Nonetheless, alongside the suffering they undergo through enduring the disaster my “suffering” upon being informed of the disaster is nothing.
So God suffers in our suffering. Does that mean he is moved when he observes ours? Does it mean he is merely informed of it even as he safely remains a spectator of it?
When Thomas cried to Jesus, “My Lord and my God;” when Thomas confessed the truth of the incarnation, Thomas knew that God knows our suffering not the way we know of Mexico’s through reading about it in a newspaper; God knows our suffering in that he has lived the worst human suffering himself. In the person of his Son he has tasted first-hand the bitter taste of rejection, misunderstanding, hostility, slander, abandonment, mental anguish, physical torment. He suffers in our suffering not because he sympathizes with us (largely a useless sentiment); he suffers in our suffering just because there is no suffering afflicting us that he hasn’t endured himself in his Son. It is for this reason alone that he can comfort us profoundly, comfort us realistically, comfort us really.
Non-Jews have to be very careful in speaking of the God who comforts when they speak with Jewish people. Sooner or later our Jewish friends are going to raise the matter of the death-camps, particularly the camps like Theresienstadt where a million children perished. When I am asked how I can continue to affirm God in view of such suffering, as gently and sensitively as I can I say that I can continue to live with the God who permitted it to happen only because I see that particular horror comprehended in, gathered up in the abandonment and execution of his own Son. And because the incarnation is what it is, God himself has suffered in the distress of his Son the hideous distress of the one million children. Apart from my conviction on this matter what could I say, as a pastor, to any suffering person?
(ii) There are few things worse than our suffering. As often as the people of Israel insisted there was nothing worse than their suffering, however, the prophets of Israel insisted there was one thing worse: their sin. The people kept saying there was nothing as horrible as their suffering; the prophets kept saying there was one thing more horrible: their sin. The prophets were right.
All the questions we raised about God’s involvement with our suffering we can raise as well about God’s involvement with our sin. We say that God forgives repentant people. And so he does. Does he do so because he is indulgent? Don’t so much as breathe the suggestion that God is indulgent: the just judge indulges nothing. Then does he forgive because he is constitutionally incapable of doing anything else? Anyone who can’t help doing what he does is merely obsessive/compulsive. God is able to forgive repentant sinners for one reason: in the person of his Son he has so entered into our sinnership, so taken it upon himself, so absorbed in himself his just judgement upon it, that he can now show forth his mercy without compromising his holy opposition to it. God doesn’t know sin the way I know brain tumours: through informing myself about them. He knows sin by immersing himself in a fallen world — and all of this in order to restore those who are not ashamed of him when he comes to restore them in the humiliation of his Son.
The incarnation isn’t an abstraction good only for teasing those with a philosophical turn of mind. The incarnation has everything to do with life. When Thomas cried, “My Lord and my God”, he knew that his suffering and his sinning had been dealt with — and would continue to be dealt with — in a manner that would leave him with the profoundest comfort in his pain and the profoundest assurance of his pardon.
Whenever people came upon Jesus in the days of his earthly ministry they couldn’t avoid having to assess him. The assessments varied.
Whenever people are face-to-face with Jesus Christ today they can’t avoid having to assess him. What is our assessment going to be?
“He’s possessed by evil.” Entirely the wrong assessment, and rendered only by those who seek to work evil themselves.
“He’s a good man.” The pronouncement of those who recognize decency when they come upon it and long to exalt it.
“He’s a teacher.” The judgement of those who hear in his teaching the ring of authority just because what he teaches is the truth of God.
“My Lord and my God.” This is a confession of faith. Anything less than this, while true, remains inadequate. “My Lord and my God.”
Victor Shepherd
November 2004
How Do We Know God Exists?
John 7:17 Psalm 139 1 Corinthians 13:12
I:– “Does God exist? Does God exist for sure?” There is no single sentence which can persuade the doubter or the sceptic. There is no single twenty-minute sermon which can nail down the case for God. There isn’t a four hundred-page book which will prove, beyond any refutation, that God is. In fact, there is no proof, irrefutable proof that will convince anyone possessed of elemental logic, that God exists.
At the same time, there is no proof that God doesn’t exist. Sigmund Freud maintained that what people call “God” is simply their wishful thinking projected outside themselves. People believe in God because deep down they want to; they invent God in the way that a child invents an imaginary playmate. But of course this argument cuts both ways. We can just as easily turn Freud’s argument back on Freud himself and say that people don’t believe in God because they (Freud included) don’t want to or don’t dare to; they find it convenient not to have God around and therefore they invent God’s absence the way a child wishes away someone she doesn’t like.
II — To be sure, there have always been arguments which claimed to prove God’s existence, such as the argument from design. If you came upon a wristwatch lying on the sand of a deserted beach, you would have to conclude there was a watchmaker around somewhere. The universe appears to be a grand design, it is sometimes said. Therefore, there must be a designer. But of course the question is begged. After all, when we see a watch we already know it’s been designed by a watchmaker. But when we look at the universe, we don’t already know it’s been designed. Eight billion years ago a huge meteor crashed to the earth at Sudbury. The force and heat of the impact left lines in patterns on the rocks around Sudbury. The lines on the rocks are exactly twelve degrees apart, like evenly-spaced-wheel-spokes. But we shouldn’t speak of a “design” here, simply because no one designed these impact-lines twelve degrees apart. It was a random occurrence. The pattern was formed by accident. No one who doubts the existence of God travels to Sudbury and comes away exclaiming, “Now I really know that God exists!” Other arguments which attempt to prove God’s existence never quite prove it. Or at least a philosopher seems to have proved God’s existence when another philosopher refutes the proof, only to have a third philosopher refute the refutation. In other words, “proofs” of God’s existence are forever inconclusive.
III — Nevertheless, if we cannot prove that God exists (or doesn’t exist) might there be some pointers which incline us in one direction or the other?
[a] Let’s be honest. There are pointers which suggest that God doesn’t exist, or at least that a God worth believing in doesn’t exist. Think of the evil that scourges people. A parishioner in my former congregation spoke to me of her relatives, husband and wife, who waited for years to have a child. At last they had the child of their dreams. A baby girl. Before long they noticed something peculiar about the baby’s eyes. An ophthalmologist informed them that the eyes were diseased. Before the child was six months old both eyes had been removed.
A pastor from Lithuania visited New York City where he listened to some American clergy discussing their work. The discussion struck the Lithuanian pastor as insufferably shallow. Finally he said quietly, “I was a pastor during the last war. The front (i.e., the leading edge of the fighting) surged back and forth through my village eight times. After it had passed each time, all I did was bury people, mostly children.”
Most of the world is hungry. In Latin America a handful of very rich people own virtually all the farmland. They use it to grow luxury crops, like carnations for dining-room table decorations in North American homes. The wretched poor have no access to the land; they are not allowed to grow the food they need. At the same time, they are paid such a pittance for their semi-slave labour that they cannot afford to purchase the food they need. They remain malnourished and disease-ridden. My cousin went to Honduras as part of a visiting medical team. He found people lining up at the clinic at five o’clock in the morning. All of them were infected with something. They all had fevers, high fevers in some cases. Many of them had been infected and feverish all their lives.
The suffering some people have to endure is simply indescribable. When I was newly ordained I became friends with a fellow my age who was also fresh out of seminary. He had come from a large family (eleven children) and had had to go into debt in order to prepare for the ministry, since his parents could provide no financial help. He was serving a small congregation which paid the minimum salary, scarcely enough to live on in those days, never mind retire a debt. One evening as he told me how long it would take him to get out of debt (by now he had three children) he wryly remarked to me, “You know, it costs a fortune to be God’s witness.” Later four inoperable tumours appeared in his head. “It costs a fortune to be God’s witness.” Does God care a fig for the love and devotion and sacrifice of his servants?
Then perhaps God doesn’t exist. At least a God worthy of being loved and adored and obeyed doesn’t exist.
[b] But hold on a minute! If God isn’t, simply isn’t, then there are sober consequences to be faced.
If God isn’t, then there is no ultimate redress for human suffering. The terrible unfairness which victimizes people heartlessly in life is never redressed finally, ultimately. Those whose lives were afflicted ceaselessly with much less privilege and much greater pain never have it made up to them, never. Victimized in life, they are cheated still in death. The random loose ends of anyone’s life are never gathered up and woven together definitively. Life is just a bagful of loose ends as pointless finally as it is patternless now.
If God isn’t, then there is no true meaning to life, no transcendent meaning, no ultimate meaning. Certainly there can be a meaning to life without God. There can be a thousand different meanings, all the way from what is humanly profound to getting rich through the porn trade or pulling the slot machine handle in a provincial casino. People who pursue these matters find them exceedingly meaningful. But if God isn’t then whatever meaning we find in life is a matter of mere whim, mere taste. Which is to say, there is no true meaning, no transcendent meaning, no eternal meaning, nothing more that this person’s opinion or that person’s taste. In a word, there is nothing ultimately substantial and finally perduring for us to pursue in life. If God isn’t then life ultimately “signifies nothing” (in Shakespearean vocabulary).
In the third place if God isn’t then we can never know what is good just because there is no ultimate good to be known; there is no good which isn’t finally arbitrary; there is no good beyond this culture’s assertion of what it deems good or that culture’s assertion or someone else’s guess as to what might be good or what we hope is good.
If God isn’t then what is now called “God” is at bottom mere preference. It may not appear to be mere preference. The preference may be preceded by and followed by reasoning of greater or less rigour, arguments of greater or less cogency, wisdom of greater or less persuasiveness. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, if God isn’t then there is no good which is eternally good inasmuch as there is no good which is good because it’s of the nature of the eternal God himself.
If God isn’t, finally, then life is a capricious jumble headed for a death whose very deadliness reaches back and begins to deaden life long before we die.
On the one hand, if God does exist, there are hard questions to be asked. On the other, if God doesn’t exist, there are equally hard questions to be asked. Then where are we?
IV: — We are precisely where the psalmist was when he was surprised by the Voice. The Voice: “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46: 10) “Be still”. The Hebrew means, “Stop being frantic. Stop your frenzy. Stop doing flip-flops in your mind and heart (`Does God exist, does God not exist?’) Stop going around in circles. Just be still for a moment and know — come to know — that I am God”.
Even if we can be still in this sense, how are we ever going to know that God is God? We have to take one step forward in however little faith we have. One step. As we do, we shall find that this one step is confirmed as a step along The Way. This one step is confirmed as God’s way, God’s truth, and God’s wisdom. Which is to say, God himself confirms himself to us as God. Whereupon we shall take a second step. After all, one step ventured in the littlest light we have means greater light; a second
step, greater light still until that day when faith gives way to sight and we are bathed in the light of him who is eternal light. On the other hand, one step not taken in the littlest light we have means greater darkness; another step not taken greater darkness still until that day when non-faith gives way to irrecoverable blindness and we are sunk in that darkness which our Lord never hesitated to call “outer darkness”.
But what is the first step we should take? There are dozens. Begin anywhere. Begin where what is regarded as the truth of God seems to collide with the inclination of your own heart. For instance, the book of Hebrews tells us we must uproot any root of bitterness in our heart, lest many people (including us) become defiled. When next we are kicked or betrayed and have every reason for allowing the root of bitterness to thrive, THIS TIME we are going to root it out and see what happens. We find that we have spared people defilement, including ourselves. We find that we have promoted reconciliation and peace, THE work of God. We understand now what it is that makes the kingdom of God the kingdom of God and how the kingdom of God differs from the kingdoms of this world. Truth and reality are stamped on us. Which is to say, God has taken on a solidity, a density, which he had always lacked for us.
Or our first step can be taken elsewhere. Having trifled with “Now I lay me down to sleep” for too long we resolve to get serious about praying. Either we are going to get serious or we are going to give up the childish recitations as surely as the person who is no longer a child is finished with thumbsucking. We start with ten minutes a day wherein we mean business. After a month we know perfectly well why Jesus never argued for prayer but simply regarded it as as natural and as necessary as breathing. Another step along the way is confirmed as truth. Which is to say, God looms bigger for us.
The apostle Paul tells us that love is not irritable or resentful; neither does it rejoice at wrong. Let’s be honest: love is hard work. Kindness pressed upon others without regard for their merit or our recompense — this is hard work in the face of situations where it’s easy to be irritable or resentful or vengeful. Yet as we become “still”; i.e., as we dampen down our frenzied irritability and resentment and pursue kindness we “know”, profoundly know, the very God whose love for us is a persistent self-giving without regard for our merit or his recompense. As we take even as small a step as the three or four we have mentioned today enough light appears for a second step. And then a third.
Several years ago I visited the Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C. For years now the Sojourners Community has exercised a ministry in what is deemed to bet the worst slum in the USA. At the time I was interested in ministering to poor people, and so I arranged to visit the community and speak with members of the congregation. (I might say in passing that while I learned much, I didn’t learn a great deal that could be used immediately in Canada, and this for two reasons. One, the social history of the United States is hugely different from the social history of Canada, if only on account of the horrific blight that slavery has been and its aftermath continues to be. Two, the American poor are much poorer, vastly poorer, than the Canadian poor. What we call slums in Canada bear no resemblance to slums in the U.S) While I was in Washington I stayed at the home of Paul and Joanne Sparacio. Paul had been raised in an agnostic household and had remained an agnostic throughout his teenage years and early adulthood. He had gone to Viet Nam in the U.S. Army. He had been in firefights of the sort depicted in movies like Platoon or Apocalypse Now: phosphorus flares soaring into the air, illuminating the battle scene; machine-gun fire, grenade explosions, mortar fire, tracer bullets glowing like laser beams, men screaming in terror and pain. He told us he knew that if he raised himself six inches off the ground he was gone. Eventually he returned to the USA and enrolled in a southern university. He was still an agnostic. The students who belonged to the Christian organizations on the campus turned him off utterly. Many of these Christian students who babbled so cavalierly about their beloved master were racist to the core. They were bent on using religion to reinforce social superiority. Paul Sparacio told these students that he wasn’t a Christian, didn’t want to be, and despised the God they believed in, if such a God there were. Thanks to the Christian students he was no longer an agnostic; he was now a soundly converted atheist. Then one day Paul began to suspect — for who knows what reason, in that providence of God which remains forever mystery — that these students might have misrepresented Jesus Christ. He avoided the students and began reading the New Testament itself. The Sermon on the Mount arrested him. He found himself taking that one step. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied”. And the longing — the profoundest hunger and thirst — which he had never been able to identify was now identified in the moment of its being met. “Don’t be anxious…but seek first God’s kingdom, and what you have will be enough”. The kingdom confirmed itself as truth.
I admit, our first step or two may seem artificial, but not for long. Our first step or two may seem awkward, even contrived, even embarrassing to us, but not for long. The day comes when we know with all the assurance we shall ever need that God is and we are God’s child. God is. God thrives. God throbs in his people.
Just when we get to this point of conviction and assurance, just when we have come to know that God is God, something peculiar happens to us. We understand that while we do know God, knowing God isn’t as crucial as being known by God. Being known is always more profound than knowing. When we were little children and felt strange or frightened, what we knew brought very little comfort. (How much does a child know?) Far more important was the fact that we were known; we were known by our parents. We were known by people we could trust; we were known by those who knew vastly more than we knew. The ground of our confidence and comfort and reassurance wasn’t anything that we knew; it was rather that we were known.
The psalmist says he has been searched by God and is now known by God. Paul says that regardless of how well we might know God, we are a long way from knowing God fully — even though we are fully known by God right now. The God who knows us fully now wants only to bless us as our knowledge of him grows surely, however slowly, until that day when we do know fully — as fully as God knows every one of us at this moment.
It all begins with one step.
Victor Shepherd
November 2002
Why is the Christian faith so judgemental?
John 7:24 Judges 2:16; 3:9,15 Matthew 7:1-15 Luke 6:37-38
I: — “There they go again. Always finding fault; always carping, criticizing, nit-picking. Who do they think they are, anyway? Why do they think they’re a cut above everyone else, not to say flawless paragons of perfection?”
Who are these people? Who are these folk who think themselves more virtuous than most, as eager to find fault as a neurotic housekeeper is to find a piece of lint on a neighbour’s carpet? Who are these people who build themselves up only by tearing others down? They appear to have less compassion than a stone has water. They seem to have no understanding of life’s complexities, of how many shades of grey there really are, of how difficult it is to sort all of this out.
Make no mistake. These people do exist. Jesus spoke of them himself. He cautioned his disciples against becoming like them. “My followers,” he insisted, “must never be found trying to remove a dust-speck from someone else’s eye when a pine tree is sticking out of theirs. What’s more,” continues Jesus, “it would be utterly foolish for you, my disciples, to be carping nit-pickers, because the measure you give will be the measure you get.” In other words, those who coldly, callously fault others are going to get the same treatment themselves. Everyone has heard quoted the KJV version of the chief text under discussion, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Good. We mustn’t make judgements. The matter is settled.
But it isn’t settled. In the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Don’t judge lest you be judged yourselves,” he also says, “Beware of false prophets. They have the appearance of harmless sheep when all the while they are fierce wolves eager to eat you alive.” Isn’t it obvious, now, that a judgement has to be made here? Doesn’t Jesus himself insist that we make a judgement of some sort? How else are we to distinguish between defenceless sheep and marauding wolf? How else survive?
Our Lord gets even tougher. Immediately after warning us disciples about dust-speck and pine tree and how we mustn’t be blind to our own depravity, Jesus adds, “Don’t give what is holy to the dogs; and don’t throw pearls before pigs – because pigs and dogs (he’s speaking here of humans) don’t appreciate the value of what you put in front of them. They will only turn on you and devour you.” Plainly Jesus is telling us that either we exercise judgement here or else we invite victimisation.
From the texts we’ve examined in the last three minutes it’s plain that Jesus insists on two matters: one, we must never be judgemental; two, we must always make sound judgements. In John’s gospel Jesus announce, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement.” ( 7:24 NRSV) Other translations are worth hearing. “Stop judging by external standards, and judge with true standards.” (TEV) “You mustn’t judge by the appearance of things but by the reality.” (JB Phillips) Plainly there’s a kind of judgement Jesus forbids us to make; and just as surely there’s a kind of judgement Jesus commands us to make.
Now I realize that you people may be somewhat weary of the weekly lesson in Greek, but only a Greek lesson can help us here. So here goes. When Jesus says “Don’t judge by appearances” the verb tense in John’s gospel refers to repeated, ceaseless action. “Don’t judge” plainly means “Don’t fall into the habit of carping all the time.” When Jesus uses the word “judge” the second time – “but judge with right judgement” – he uses a verb tense that refers to one, pointed, particular event concerning which we are to make a discernment and decisively draw the proper conclusion.
Here’s the event. People have been carping at Jesus for months. They don’t like this about him; they don’t like that. They find fault here and find fault there. One day Jesus heals a man who’s been paralysed for thirty-eight years. No problem. But Jesus has healed the man on the Sabbath. Big problem, since the Sabbath has been desecrated (they think.) After all, if a man has been paralysed for thirty-eight years, can’t his healing wait one more day? Whereupon our Lord’s detractors carp at him some more.
Jesus tells them they ought to be more discerning. They simply ought to possess better judgement. “Think about it;” says Jesus, “You carpers permit a man to be circumcised on the Sabbath. You believe – correctly – that it’s all right to circumcise on the Sabbath because circumcision is a sign that this man has been covenanted to embrace that life in God to which the Sabbath points, that life in faith which God wills for him, which life God pronounces blessed and one day will perfect. Circumcision (Jesus is still talking, since by now he’s steaming) means that his man is committed irrevocably (as surely as circumcision itself is irreversible) to a life in God that God has promised to enrich and crown. In healing this crippled man I am doing the very same thing,” says Jesus. “In healing this man I am moving him along to that ultimate restoration of body, mind and spirit that God guarantees for all who love him, a restoration which the Sabbath rest anticipates. Can’t you nit-pickers see this? Don’t you discern what I’m doing and why? Why aren’t you possessed of better judgement?” Jesus is not encouraging us to become judgemental. At the same time he commands us (note this: it’s a command) to acquire and exercise sound judgement.
II: — Surely the need for sound judgement is obvious. Recently a physician spoke bitterly to me of those people who have spent years abusing their bodies only to land on the physician’s doorstep demanding to be made better immediately. Surely such people show appalling lack of judgement. If we maintain that proper diet and exercise are good, then we have judged that junk food and inertia are bad. We aren’t advertising ourselves as superior to those who inhale potato chips in front of the TV and whose only exercise is pressing the channel changer. Still, we have made a judgement concerning bodily health and how it’s maintained. Those who don’t make such a judgement aren’t congratulated for their tolerance or magnanimity or humility; they are merely pitied for their folly.
All parents do their best to equip their youngsters with a critical mind concerning truth and goodness. The English word “critical” is derived from the Greek word KRITIKOS, “able to judge.” The authentically critical person isn’t the chronic fault-finder; it’s the person who is able to judge. We all raise our children to be critical in this sense. We all want them to be able to judge that glue-sniffing has consequences that won’t enhance them in any way. What’s more, we don’t want them to refrain from glue-sniffing just because their parents have laid a “heavy” on them and years later they are still cowering neurotically. We want them to understand truth and goodness; to understand their nature and destiny under God; to understand what reflects this and what contradicts it. And on the basis of this understanding we want them not to mimic their parents but rather to make a correct evaluation and draw the right conclusion. Does their doing this mean they’re judgemental? On the contrary, their not doing this means they’re ruined.
When our daughter Catherine was eight or nine years old she went to a party with school chums, several other girls her age. The mother of the girl hosting the party rented a video for the girls, “Rosemary’s Baby.” “Rosemary’s Baby” (I’m told) is a horror movie too horrible to describe. Catherine came home all but deranged. Maureen was up all night with her. I was ready to drive Catherine to the hospital and have her sedated with enough medicine to stun a horse. Throughout it all I was so angry at the woman who showed the video that I couldn’t even talk about it. People who aren’t critical; that is, people who aren’t able to judge, are a threat to themselves and a danger to everyone else. Let’s not pretend anything else.
The same truth applies in the realm of the Spirit. Even if the Moonies and Hare Krishnas and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons are psychologically harmless (which I doubt) we still want our youngsters to be able to judge that these groups are spiritually ruinous if only because they set aside the gospel for what isn’t the “power of God unto salvation.” Surely we want our children to be able to judge between that truth – the gospel – which Jesus engraves on the hearts of his people and the thousand-and-one distortions of it that bedevil humankind. We ought always to remember that not all the spirits are holy. We ought always to remember too that if our youngsters aren’t critical, aren’t able to judge in this domain, they can only be victimised by all such spirits.
This doesn’t mean we are encouraging them to think themselves superior in any way to those who disagree with them on religious matters. If they fancied themselves superior they’d be judgemental. And if they became chronic fault-finders they’d have shrivelled hearts. On the other hand if they lacked sound judgement they’d be suckers, suggestible, “taken in” by whatever’s blowing in the wind.
No one in this congregation knows my sister or her telephone number. She happens to live in Ontario . When the service is over I’d like you to dial her ten-digit Ontario number. (Since she lives in Ontario your chances of getting it right have improved immensely, since you can eliminate the area codes for all other provinces.) What chance do you have of getting it right? Next to none, you say? Then let me tell you something: you have a better chance mathematically of dialling her number than you have of winning the lottery. Since I don’t buy lottery tickets I’ve made a judgement here. Perhaps you have too. Does anyone think I’m narrow-minded or judgemental because I don’t sniff cocaine or ogle pornography?
III: — Before I conclude the sermon I should like to discuss the meaning of the word “judgement” as the word is used by our Lord himself, used by the prophets before him, and by those men and women (Deborah) who were judges in Israel earlier still and after whom one whole book of the Hebrew bible is named.
In ancient Israel judges weren’t like the men and women who preside in our courtrooms. They weren’t figures who said to one party, “You’re right” and to another party “You’re wrong.” Judges in ancient Israel were also called elders. These men and women who were called both judges and elders were also called saviours. Ultimately, then, the judge is the saviour. When the people of Israel were threatened by raiders they cried to the Lord, we are told, and the Lord “raised up judges who saved them.” In our modern era we assume that the primary function of a judge is to make unbiased pronouncements. Lurking deeper still in people’s minds, almost at an unconscious level, is the notion that the primary purpose of a judge is to condemn. But in ancient Israel the primary function of a judge was to save. Judges were elders were saviours. In other words the judge, in those long ago days, was a leader in times of conflict and ruler in times of peace. When the people were threatened, the judge mobilized them and encouraged them. When the people were cocksure and spiritually indifferent, the judge sobered them. When the people were about to meander, the judge guided them. And when the people, unguarded in their naiveness, found the “New Age” pantheism of the Canaanite neighbours attractive, as well as Canaanite immorality, not to mention a “tolerance” that accommodated everything and accommodated most eagerly precisely what was most lethal; in such a time the judge recalled the people to the truth and reality of God, as well as to the claim and command of God, as well as to the promises of God.
Jesus often spoke of himself as judge. Make no mistake: he is our judge. As such he will not be trifled with or taken for granted or traded on. You and I know better than to be presumptuous concerning him. At the same time, because we’ve been to school in Israel we know that the judge who was given to humankind when it cried out to God; the judge who was given to humankind when it was threatened with condemnation on account of its sin; this judge is our elder brother and our saviour. He will be our judge precisely because he is already our saviour. Since you and I face a coming judgement yet can only be judged by him our saviour, we are unafraid. We know that he is for us. We know that his judgement upon us will be that final corrective we have long needed and are at last going to receive. In a word, our saviour’s judgement is our blessing.
It’s in the light of all this that we must understand how and why we are commanded to judge: “Judge with right judgement.” We have been appointed to judge ourselves, judge our society, judge the church, judge our leaders, judge the world. We are to judge as we have been judged. We’ve been judged – and are also yet to be judged – by Jesus Christ. He recognises threats to us everywhere in life even before we do; he equips us to discern them ourselves; he moves us to acknowledge his rule of righteousness.
Then so far from refusing to judge we must learn to judge. We must learn to be discerning, critical, discriminating. We must learn to draw the right conclusion and then to act on it. And of course we are to learn to do all of this not in order to preen ourselves as superior in any respect; we are to learn to do this in order to magnify God’s salvage operation throughout the creation. We are to learn to do this in order to magnify the blessing that God has bestowed upon us, upon our congregation, upon our community, upon the world.
In all of this we must avoid warping ourselves into something grotesque: the sourpuss who nitpicks, is blind to her own faults, is happiest when she’s demolishing someone else – all the while buttressing such hideousness with a phoney piety as repulsive as it is remote from the spirit of Jesus. In all of this we shall continue to recognize that people do complicate their lives whether through carelessness or folly or outright perversity, only to find that life, once complicated, is exceedingly difficult to render uncomplicated. And of course our hearts must never petrify into icy, stony insensitivy. If we sin here, says Jesus, then the measure we give will be the measure we get. Or to put it more popularly, “What goes around comes around.”
At the same time we must learn to make sound judgements, knowing what is to be feared and what fostered, what to be avoided and what welcomed, what is to be shunned and what embraced.
As our immersion in the gospel equips us with sound judgement we shall reflect the judges of Israel , particularly the judge of Israel , Christ Jesus our Lord. For his judgement, like theirs, always furthers his salvage operation, always aims at correction, always issues in blessing. It is through Christ’s judgement that countless people have owned him as Saviour, exalted him as Lord, and will delight in him eternally.
(Victor Shepherd August 2004)
Crucial Words in the Christian vocabulary: Freedom
John 8:36 Ezekiel 34:11-16 Galatians 5:1
Everyone craves freedom. The small child asks, “Do I have to go to bed now?” The adolescent can’t wait to get clear of his uncomprehending parents. Developing nations want to shake off the economic control of the colonizer. In all of this it’s assumed that the everyday, popular notion of “freedom” is identical with that freedom of which the gospel speaks and which the gospel bestows. In fact the two notions of freedom are poles apart. The popular notion of freedom is simply the complete absence of restraint. The complete absence of restraint means the opportunity of doing anything at all, behaving in any way whatsoever. Freedom is then being able to do whatever we fancy. When people speak of the popular notion of freedom they like to think of the birds. Birds are thought to be the freest of the creatures just because the birds can go anywhere (it seems), do anything, without restraint.
A pastor sees many people who think that freedom is doing anything they fancy, the removal of every restraint. These people quickly find themselves jaded and bored. Frequently they fall prey to self-destructive habits as well. What these people label “freedom” is actually licence. Licence isn’t the same as freedom. Licence – the absence of restraint – isn’t freedom at all but is rather arbitrariness or indeterminism. Those who confuse licence and freedom find that it’s all left a bad taste in their mouth and they can’t figure out why. Still, the confusion persists. Our society as a whole thinks that freedom means doing whatever we have a yen to do. Thoughtful individuals within a society sooner or later recognize that what most others call freedom is in fact a form of enslavement, a form of bondage.
Then what about the freedom that the gospel bestows? The freedom that the Christian knows and enjoys is a reflection of God’s freedom. God is free not in the sense that he can do anything at all (such a God could never be trusted;) God is free, rather, in that nothing prevents God from acting in accord with his true nature. Nothing within God; nothing outside God; nothing inner or outer impedes God from acting in accord with his true nature.
The difference between a proper understanding of freedom and the popular confusion of freedom with licence is illustrated by everyday objects, like swimming pool filters. A swimming pool filter is designed to filter water and thereby promote safe, enjoyable swimming. Purifying water is the nature of the filter. Now imagine that the filter has become clogged, for any reason at all. We say that the filter doesn’t work. Do we mean it doesn’t hum quietly? We mean it doesn’t do what a filter is meant to do. Someone unclogs the filter. We say that the filter has been freed. If a bystander says, “Freed, did you say? Is it truly freed? Is it free to make peanut butter?” The proper response is that a filter which is perfectly free will never make peanut butter just because it isn’t a filter’s nature to make peanut butter. It’s a filter’s nature to filter water. Freedom doesn’t mean doing anything at all; freedom means acting in accord with one’s true nature. God isn’t free because there’s nothing he can’t do; God is free because he can do what it’s his nature to do.
Those who heard and heeded our Lord’s preaching; those who heard and heeded the apostle’s word; those who hear and heed the gospel in any era know and experience and enjoy a freedom they haven’t known before. “If I make you free,” Jesus promises, “then you are free indeed.” He is saying, “Genuine freedom, ultimately profound freedom, is the freedom I bestow. Such freedom can’t be found anywhere else, anyhow else.”(John 8:36) In this vein Paul writes to the congregation in Galatia , “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm in this freedom, and never go back on it.”(Galatians 5:1)
By now everyone here understands that when a swimming pool filter is freed it is freed from something and freed for something. It is freed from whatever clogs it, impairs it, impedes its proper functioning. It is now free for filtering water, the purpose for which it has been made. The freedom that Christ bestows is both a freedom from and a freedom for.
I: — What is the clog-up we are freed from? What debris, clutter, even unsightly “grunge” has to be removed if we are to function in accord with our true nature? According to scripture the clog-up is massive, and it has three faces: sin, law, and death.
[a] Two weeks ago we saw that Sin is defiance of God; a defiance, a disobedience, an ignoring of him that amounts to disdain. Scripture gathers up defiance, disobedience and disdain into one word: unbelief. Sin as unbelief (in the scriptural sense of “unbelief” of the heart) is the root human problem. It is a root-level disorientation and disease. It has to be dealt with. To come to faith in Jesus Christ (he is the presence and power of God) is to be freed from this root malaise, root disorientation.
I am not pretending that the Christian no longer commits sins (little “s”, plural.) Sins are the outcropping of our fallen humanness whose hangover, whose corpse, is still with us. Nevertheless, to be bound to Christ in faith, to aspire henceforth to obey him, is to acknowledge his Lordship everywhere in our lives. To say that he is Lord is to say that Sin no longer “lords it over” us. Sin (capital “s”, singular) has been dealt with. Root unbelief has given way to reconciliation. Root indifference has given way to commitment. Root fragmentation has given way to a life now integrated just because Jesus Christ is human existence restored, human existence integrated, and by faith we are bound so intimately to him that we are now identified with him. His wholeness guarantees mine, even if the “hangover” of my pre-Christ being hangs over for a while.
[b] Another manifestation of the clog-up we are freed from is “the law.” The gospel was heard, and is heard, as good news in that the gospel announces unambiguously that in Jesus Christ, righteousness or right standing with God, right relatedness to God; this is gift, affirmed and owned in faith to be sure, but always and everywhere gift nonetheless. The good news of the gospel relieved people, released people, who had slogged laboriously for years, thinking that right standing with God had to be earned. They had thought his favour had to be curried. They had thought his kindness had to be won. Now they had profoundest assurance that right-relatedness to God isn’t the prize awarded those who pass a religious test; it isn’t the prize given those whose moral achievement is exemplary; it isn’t the profit margin given those who make the best deals with God. It is simply gift. Those whose root situation before God has been altered are those who receive in faith the free gift of right standing with God and thereafter know themselves rightly related to him.
In a word, to be freed from the law is to be freed from having to win something from God, having to outperform in any sense, having to gain promotion or pass a test or merit recognition. To be freed from the law is to be freed from anxiety concerning our relationship with our Father.
People are anxious. People are anxious concerning much. Who needs religious anxiety piled on top? Who needs religious anxiety particularly when religious anxiety seems to compound and intensify all other anxieties? The gospel was heard as good news because it freed people from a preoccupation with gaining right standing with God and left them gratefully rejoicing in a gift.
[c] The final manifestation of the clog-up we are freed from is death; not death in the sense of biological cessation; death in a different sense. For the Hebrew mind death means not praising God; not being able to praise him, not wanting to. To be alive, according to the Hebrew mind, is to praise God. To be freed from the clog-up whose manifestation is death is to be released from every impediment to praising God. What are the impediments to praising God? Not knowing him, not loving him, not delighting in him. Those who know him and love him and delight in him invariably praise him. To be freed from death, then, is to be released from every impediment to knowing, loving, enjoying and praising God. To be freed from death is to be able to praise God, to want to praise God, to find reason without end to praise God. To be freed from death is simply to live to praise God.
Do you know that the most frequently repeated command in scripture is the command to praise God? The psalms are full of the command to praise God. “Praise God morning, noon and night. Praise God with every instrument you can rattle. Praise God at all time and in all circumstances.” On the basis of what we’ve learned this morning we now know that when God commands us to praise him he is urging us to live ourselves. His command that we praise him; his gift of life to us in Christ Jesus: these are one and the same.
To be freed from death, then, is to find that we have been brought to life in Jesus Christ; we want to praise God for our resurrection; we can’t help praising him for all his goodness to us.
Jesus says, “If the Son makes you free, you are really free.” We are free indeed: from sin, from the law, from death.
II: — But of course we are freed “from” in order to be freed “for.” We are freed for acting, doing, being in accord with our true nature as sons and daughters of God.
[a] Specifically we are freed in the first instance for being ourselves, freed to become our “self.” We are freed to become and remain proper “selves” under God.
Many people who disdain the gospel and the community of the gospel assume that faith stifles self-expression and self-development. They tell us they want room to “be themselves.” They don’t want to be forced into a religious mould or stamped by a religious cookie-cutter. We hear all the time from people, or hear about people, who insist their marriage is stifling them; it’s cramping, confining, suffocating, and if they are going to “breathe free” then they have to get out of the marriage. It’s similarly assumed that living in the company of Jesus Christ is like “doing time” in a stifling marriage. In other words, faith stifles self-development, self-expression. Faith simply suffocates one’s self.
Jean Paul Sartre, a leader in the post-World War II philosophy known as existentialism, maintained that as terrible as it is to have another human being stifle one’s own “self” to the point of suffocation, how much worse it is to have a towering God do it too. In fact, said Sartre, the mere existence of this deity whose loftiness, density, immensity towers over us and presses down upon us; the mere existence of this deity compresses us, shrivels us, shrink-wraps us. How can a God of such vastness do anything except render me the merest pipsqueak? When the “almighty” looms over me what can his almightiness do except crush me? Sartre says that if “God” were truly God (Sartre denies that God is) then it would be impossible for any human to thrive. Isn’t this exactly what our non-Christian neighbours say about the Christian faith? Religion ruins the “self” just because religion leaves no room for the self to be itself. Sartre maintains that if the human self is to thrive then God has to be slain. We must be atheists if we are to become and remain our most authentic selves.
Sartre, however, is wrong several times over. In the first place the God who is infinitely above is isn’t merely above us. In his Son incarnate he comes among us. In the cross of his Son incarnate he renders himself wholly vulnerable for our sakes. The God who renders himself wholly vulnerable for our sakes isn’t a God who is going to stifle us. The God who renders himself wholly vulnerable isn’t on a power trip that reduces us to pipsqueaks. The God who renders himself wholly vulnerable will crush himself before he ever crushes us. Sartre, a philosopher thoroughly ignorant of Christian truth, has everything wrong at this point.
In the second place Sartre fails to understand that if in fact we are made by God for God, then so far from shrivelling up under God we shall thrive only as we turn to him and find in him our ultimate good. Sartre says that God is overwhelmingly vast. True. The ocean is overwhelmingly vast compared to the smallest fish (or even compared to the biggest fish.) Still, the smallest fish isn’t more truly “fish” for being taken out of the ocean. The smallest fish can thrive as fish only in the ocean, however vast. The ocean’s vastness doesn’t imperil the fish, but the ocean’s disappearance would. This being the case, God’s presence and purpose, God’s density and immensity; so far from rendering the self impossible, God’s presence, purpose, density and immensity – sheer vastness – will ever be the condition of our most authentic selfhood. So far from stifling me, God’s gracious, vulnerable coming to me alone will allow me to thrive as me. If humans are made for God, then Sartre’s campaign to slay God would finally profit us as much as draining the ocean would profit the fish.
We are made by God for God. Then only as we live in God are we most authentically ourselves. Since the Master frees us from every hindrance to living in God; since he thereby frees us for living in God, to be freed by the Master is to be freed to become our authentic “self.”
Popular psychology is unquestionably popular but it’s not very profound. Popular psychology urges us to be “freed up,” to cast off restraint, to get rid of our baggage, to gain perspective on our “issues,” and so on. Popular psychology, however, doesn’t understand that our most burdensome baggage isn’t our defective toilet training; it’s our sinnership. It doesn’t understand that our most haunting issue isn’t unresolved teenage conflict with our parents; it’s our unbelief. Popular psychology urges us to rid ourselves of numerous restraints, but it doesn’t understand that freedom isn’t the absence of restraint; freedom, rather, is being bound to Jesus Christ and finding in him what we are meant to be and do ourselves.
Christians know that when our Lord frees us for himself he simultaneously frees to be our “self.”
[b] We are not only freed for ourselves, however, we are also freed for our neighbour as well. Specifically we are freed for the service of our suffering neighbour. Jesus said that he came not to be served but to serve. He came not to be indulged or pampered or flattered or coddled; he came to give himself to others in their need and pain and loneliness and bewilderment.
Why is it, how is it, that we need our Lord to free us for the service of our neighbour? Since “selfism” is the curse of the Fall, and since “selfism” measures everything in the universe by what it does for me, how it affects me, how it amplifies my sense of self-importance, how it caters to my being recognized and congratulated; since this is endemic in us we need to be freed from it in order to be freed for self-forgetful service of someone whose suffering our newly-granted freedom allows us to see and our newly-granted freedom moves us to address.
The truth is, it’s relatively easy to serve the neighbour, especially the suffering neighbour (we feel good about helping those in need) until this suffering neighbour doesn’t thank us; until this suffering neighbour one day says to us, “How come it took you so long to notice me?”; until this suffering neighbour doesn’t seem to do as much to help herself as we think she should. At this point we are about to say, “She doesn’t appreciate what I’m doing for her; she has never thanked me for it; she is even taking me for granted. Forget her.” We have to be freed from all such selfist considerations if we are going to persist in assisting the fellow-sufferer God has brought before us. And we are freed from this inasmuch as Jesus Christ makes us who we are, tells us who we are, and thereafter we don’t need to be needed in order to know who we are.
“If the Son makes you free you are free indeed,” says Jesus. Only the Son of God can make us free. Anything else that claims to free us won’t free us, because only the Son of God restores us to our true nature as sons and daughters of God and thereby delivers us from every impediment to acting in accord with our true nature.
The distinction between freedom and license is a distinction the world-at-large can’t make. The church must always be sure that it can.
Victor Shepherd
February 2004
You asked for a sermon on The Ethics of Organ Transplant
John 10:7-18
[1] I have already done it; I have already signed page three of my driver’s licence, “Consent Under The Human Tissue Gift Act”. Because I have consented, upon my death any one — or all — of several organs (body parts) may be removed from my corpse and used for transplant purposes in someone whose body parts don’t function as well as mine did.
[2] Why have I done it? Why have I decided to donate my organs to someone else? I have done it because I want someone else to enjoy the good health — and all that good health makes possible — as I have been able to enjoy it all. I know how good it feels to have a body that works well; I know how much life is eased by a body that works well; I know what good health allows us to do, where it allows us to go, how it allows us to feel, even how it allows us to think. (Who among us, after all, ever did her best thinking with so much as a migraine headache or severe back pain?) I can only imagine how frustrated people must be, how they feel stalled, how they look upon themselves as unproductive (or at least underproductive) if their health is poor. If I can do anything to help such a person, I am determined to do it. For this reason I am glad to will my organs to someone else.
I have done what I have done inasmuch as I am a Christian. Christians know that the body matters. Or at least Christians should know that the body matters. Our Hebrew foreparents, after all, knew that God willed us to be embodied creatures and pronounced our bodiliness “good”. This is not to deny that from time-to-time there have been Christians who sawed off the Hebrew limb on which they were sitting and then fell into an un-Hebraic rejection of the body; and not merely rejection of the body, outright contempt for the body. Think of those misguided hermits (or some of them), centuries ago, who thought it was God-honouring and a sign of devotion to God to sit in a hovel surrounded by filth while vermin crawled all over their body only to drop off inasmuch as there wasn’t one square inch of skin that was vermin-free and where vermin could alight. That which God created and called “good” we must never despise. The body is good; the body matters.
Not only must we not despise the body, we must even glory in it; and in glorying in our body we shall glorify God by means of it. “Glorify God in your bodies!”, the apostle Paul urges the church in Corinth. Plainly, if we are to glorify God in our body, glorify God by means of our body, then our body must have been created glorious.
The body matters. Anyone who reads the written gospels cannot fail to notice the attention Jesus gave to people’s bodies. Jesus spent much time restoring the bodies of people whose bodies weren’t functioning properly: the blind, the deaf, the mute, the lame, the curled-over, the menhorragic. The body matters.
Yet from a Christian perspective the most telling affirmation of the body arises from the simple fact of the incarnation. In Jesus Christ God himself took on our flesh and blood and bone. It isn’t merely that God used the human body of Jesus (the way God used the peculiar bush that startled Moses). God didn’t use a man; he came among us as man. Since there is no humanity that is not embodied humanity, the simple fact of the incarnation is the strongest possible endorsement of our bodiliness. The body matters.
[3] A minute ago I said that I had signed the consent form on my driver’s licence whereby my organs will be made available, upon my premature death, to someone else. A minute ago I said too that I was glad to have made this arrangement. Nevertheless, I haven’t done all of this without a great deal of thought; and I must tell you that having done what I have I remain haunted by numerous misgivings.
To be sure, I am glad to donate my organs, just as I am glad to donate my blood (my next visit to the Red Cross Blood Donor Clinic will be my 90th). But I’m not going to sell my blood! In the same way I don’t want to sell my right kidney. What I mean is, I don’t want my daughter to sell it from my remains after I have died, and I don’t want to sell it while I’m alive in order to finance my new car.
Yet there are many people who do sell body parts, and many more who are going to. When I was in India last January I learned that India traffics in the buying and selling of body parts. The India Institute of Medical Sciences is located in New Delhi, the capital city. A kidney specialist there, Dr. Atma Ram, himself sells the kidneys he removes from people. “We are doing a thriving business”, he enthuses.
Business isn’t thriving only in India, we should note; it thrives in North America too. In 1983 the New Jersey Times newspaper carried the following ad:
Kidney for sale.
From 32 yr. old Caucasian
female in excellent health.
Write P.O. Box….
The Los Angeles Times had already run the ad,
Eyes for sale or transplant.
$50,000 each — help someone you care for see
and in return you’ll be helping others.
Only sincere parties apply please….
Do not think that these are isolated cases. In the early 1980s a man in Georgia offered to sell a kidney for $25,000 in order to buy a fastfood restaurant. Other people in Georgia had offered to sell a kidney for as little as $5,000. Kidneys were more expensive in California, however: $16,000. An American physician, Dr. Barry Jacobs, attempted to set up an organization that would purchase kidneys from people anywhere in the world and sell them to anyone who could pay. There was an uproar in the USA over this, and in order to quell the uproar the US Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act. Be sure to note, however, that the Act does not prohibit the sale of human organs for research purposes.
What happens in one part of the world sooner or later happens elsewhere. Right now the Russian Medical Institute is offering kidneys for sale in Germany. German patients are to pay the equivalent of $68,570 (US dollars) in German marks. Right now organs are bought and sold — scores of thousands of them — in India, Africa, Latin America and eastern Europe. The body parts sold are corneas, inner ear components, jawbone, heart, heart pericardium, heart valves, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, bones, ligaments, skin, blood vessels, and bone marrow.
What do people do with the money they gain through selling their body parts? Some purchase food and shelter; some pay off old debts; some provide themselves an education. Very often what people do with the money depends on how much they acquire; how much they acquire depends on which part they sell. In India a kidney from a live donor (note: a live donor) sells for $1500; a cornea for $4000; a patch of skin for $50. In India and Pakistan people state in the newspapers what they are willing to pay for an organ; readers decide what they are willing to sell for.
If it’s medically needy people who buy, who sells? Poor people. Overwhelmingly it is poor people, desperately poor people, who sell. Poor labourers will gain more money by selling one of their two kidneys than they would ever be able to save over a lifetime. One woman, mother of two children, found herself in desperate financial straits when her husband lost his job. She sold one of her kidneys, remarking as she did so, “It was the only thing I could sell and keep my self-respect.”
One spot in the world where the business of body parts thrives extraordinarily is Bombay, on the west coast of India. Wealthy Arabs go there to receive the organs that poor Indians sell. Madras, on the east coast of India, is the city of choice for people from Thailand and Singapore who need replacement organs. In all of this the Indian government has refused repeatedly to pass any legislation prohibiting the commercial traffic in body parts.
So huge is the demand for transplantable organs that some societies don’t even wait for donors to die; such societies don’t even wait for sellers to sell; they simply kill people and remove organs. Recently the British Medical Journal exposed a scam in Argentina wherein organs were removed from patients in a state psychiatric hospital. The hospital authorities reported to relatives that the patient had died of natural causes or had escaped. From 1976 to 1991 hospital authorities maintained that 1400 had escaped and almost 1400 had died of natural causes. When relatives complained vociferously and persistently the hospital was investigated — whereupon there turned up the remains of several people who had been reported as “escaped”, including the remains of a 16-yr. old supposed escapee whose eyes were missing.
It’s easy for us to say, “Nations like Argentina and India are a long way from us in many respects. Those people think differently. What happens there could never happen here.” But it can happen here. A recent editorial in the newspaper USA Today advocated paying the families of deceased donors. The article suggested that paying families for the organs of their deceased relatives would make more body parts available. The editorial opined that a “death benefit might provide incentives that altruism could not.” In other words, people will do for money — make available the body parts of their dead relatives — what they would otherwise not do at all.
It’s plain that the commercialization of organs has landed us in a market system with respect to the human body, a market system governed by the laws of supply and demand. The demand is always increasing. What about the supply? The most elementary student in economics knows that according to the market system as more and more money is offered for organs, more and more organs will be supplied. We may cringe at the crass commercialization of the human body. Market advocates don’t cringe, however; so far from cringing, market advocates extol the market system’s effectiveness in proliferating available organs. Market advocate (and legal expert) Mr. Lloyd Cohen enthuses,
Markets are most effective at transferring goods from low-
valued uses to high-valued ones. And I can think of no good
that fits that category better than a cadaveric organ. The
difference in the value of a kidney to the dead versus a
kidney to the ill means that there is an enormous price range
over which a mutually satisfactory transfer can take place.
“There is an enormous price range over which a mutually satisfactory transfer can take place.” The meaning of this sentence is simple: when the price is high, people sell.
Ms. Lori Andrews, also an American lawyer, insists that the debate about body parts should unfold in the context of legal discussions concerning property. Body parts, in a legal context, are property. To nobody’s surprise Dr. Jack Kevorkian (better known to us these days as “Dr. Death”) states bluntly, “Body parts are property. The person owns them and has the absolute right over what will be done with them in every situation.”
Let’s pause right here. Are body parts property? Surely not. Our society (that is, the Canadian society with which I am acquainted) clearly recognizes that the human body is not property. The penalty for stealing my bicycle is nowhere near as severe as the penalty for assaulting my body. Why? Because to steal my bicycle is to deprive me of a thing; but to assault my body is to violate my person. We recognize the category-distinction between thing and person. When someone is assaulted we say, “Mr. Jonathan Johnson was assaulted”. We never say, “Johnson’s body was assaulted.” We know that Johnson himself was violated, and violated in a way he is not violated if his bicycle is pilfered. We say, “Johnson was murdered”. We never say, “Johnson’s body was rendered non-functional.”
Our society has never legalized prostitution, even though we all know that prostitution is here to stay. We haven’t legalized it for one reason: we know intuitively that to legalize prostitution is to “thingify” a woman’s body, and to “thingify” her body is to “thingify” her, “thingify” the person; in other words, to destroy the person as person.
“But it’s my body and I may do with it as I wish!” No! My body isn’t my property and I may not do with it as I wish. For instance, I am not allowed to sell my body into slavery, for to sell my body into slavery is to enslave myself. And this our society will not permit us to do. (Not only may I not sell my body into slavery, I’m not even allowed to sell my labour for a price so low that my person is deemed to be violated.)
In the USA it has been argued that if long-term prisoners give up body parts then their prison sentences should be shortened. I am outraged at this proposal. Objections to it flood me. Let me say this much: I regard this proposal as the crassest “thingification” of a human being, when the criminal justice system was designed precisely to ensure that such “thingification” doesn’t occur. What about the prisoner whose kidneys or corneas aren’t the best? What can he sell to shorten his sentence?
Needless to say, once body parts are commercialized and the market system appears, the market system will triumph; the market system will become the dominant factor in the trade, if not the only factor. What this means is that throughout the world poor people will exchange their body parts for rich people’s money.
[4] Perhaps you are thinking now that you shouldn’t make your organs available for transplant upon your death. If you are thinking you shouldn’t, no one is going to fault you for it.
Nonetheless, despite having said all that I have said this morning, I have not torn up the organ donor consent form that I signed and always carry with me. For when I have considered again the profoundest issues pertaining to the body and the person; when I have surveyed again the horrific abuses around the world, I still want to will my usable organs to a needy person.
I admit, we could argue that donating blood is not the same as donating a kidney (blood is replenishable, while kidneys are not), but I’m not going to develop such an argument today.
I do know that if I am killed in a motor-vehicle accident this afternoon, and if someone can be helped to see by means of my corneas, I want them used. If tomorrow my daughter or my wife develops irreversible kidney problems and someone’s kidney is available for her, I can only be grateful. And if no kidney is available, I should never hesitate to give one of mine.
Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” While our Lord was plainly willing to lay his life down, he wasn’t willing to squander it or throw it away or fritter it. He didn’t think for a minute that he was only a helpless victim who could only submit passively to violation at the hands of others. He gave up his life. Since no one takes it from him, then when he said his body was broken for us he meant that he broke it himself for us. In saying that his blood was shed he meant that he poured it out himself for us.
Following the example of my Lord I insist on retaining a similar privilege. I insist on the privilege of doing something, however slight, that reflects my Lord’s self-giving, however slightly.
Victor A. Shepherd
June 1996
(Awarded “Second Best Opinion Piece”, 1997, Canadian Church Press)
No Need for Suspense
John 10:24
Most of us enjoy suspense. We enjoy suspense, that is, as long as the suspense pertains to entertainment, but not if it pertains to life. We enjoy the suspense of a detective story or a good novel. We enjoy the “suspense”, as it were, of hearing the opera singer sustain a high note so very long that we can’t imagine her sustaining it longer. We enjoy the suspense of the football game when victory and defeat are decided on the last play of the game.
But where life is concerned we find suspense agonizing – like the suspense of waiting until a loved one is through high-risk surgery, or the suspense of waiting to see if we’ve been accepted into the university course that will set us on our life-work, or the suspense waiting for the jury to decide if we are going home acquitted or going to prison for ten years. Suspense here is terrible. Suspense is agonizing where life is concerned.
This latter kind of suspense was the kind that drove some people to shout at Jesus, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” We can readily understand what drove them to shout. All Israel had awaited the Messiah for 1400 years. What could be more urgent than knowing whether Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited one or not? Throughout Israel ’s history different individuals at different times claimed to be the Messiah. In each case some enthusiastic people gathered around the claimant, only to find themselves let down. By now many were jaded. Most were sceptical. And then the Nazarene had appeared. He seemed different from most people, different even from most Messianic pretenders. At the same time, he hadn’t rid Palestine of the Roman occupation – yet. Then again, perhaps he wouldn’t rid Palestine of the Roman occupation until he had a bigger following. So what were people to do? Join themselves to him and risk making fools (or worse) of themselves? Or not join themselves to him and risk missing the blessings of the Messianic Age? “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly. Prove yourself to us. Convince us first, and then we’ll side with you.” They wanted our Lord to say starkly, unambiguously, “I am the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world, the One promised of old.”
I:[a] – We hear people say as much today: “I would certainly get serious about God if only he’d prove himself.” People often say this in distressing circumstances. I came to know a young man who stutters as you have never heard anyone stutter. He finds his stuttering a public humiliation, more hideous than the worst skin disease imaginable. In the midst of his discussion with me concerning the Christian life one day he flew into a rage and shouted he couldn’t believe in God as long as his social shame went unrelieved.
Equally heart-rending is the situation of the person with a loved one who is neurologically afflicted. He wants to plead with the God he doesn’t quite believe in, cannot plead until he’s convinced there’s a God to plead with, and fears that if he does plead it won’t make any difference in any case. Finally he’s left with a gaping hole in his own heart, more disappointed and bitter than he’s ever been.
“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are who you are said to be; if you are who you have indicated yourself to be; if you are the effectual presence and power and purpose of God, won’t you just tell us plainly?”
[b]—In our gospel story Jesus doesn’t tell the people plainly. Why not? Not because he likes to see people play guessing games; not because he enjoys tormenting people where the most crucial matters of life and death are concerned. He doesn’t tell the people plainly for one reason: they are looking for proof of who he is and then they will abandon themselves to him — maybe. The truth is, we can’t know who he is until we abandon ourselves to him. Proof pertains to mathematics and to science. Proof has nothing to do with persons. The truths of mathematics are proven deductively; the truths of science are proven inductively. But where persons are concerned, no proof is possible.
From time to time two young people come to me, describe their relationship with each other, and then ask me, “Do you think we should get married?” It’s almost as if they were saying, “We have red spots all over. Do you think we have dermatitis or measles?” Measles and dermatitis are things. Love pertains to persons. There’s no proof possible here.
There’s no way I can prove that my wife loves me. Everything she does the cynic or half-cynic can explain away. She’s the comfort and consolation of my life? She behaves this way because she plans to ask something huge of me two days later. She has remained faithful to me for thirty-six years? She has an unconscious fear of venereal disease. She listens sensitively and responds understandingly when we talk with each other? She has nothing better to talk about herself. She’s supported me in all my ventures? She’s fond of the prestige that goes with being married to a clergyman and a professor. If the cynic smirks “Prove that your wife loves you”, I’ll readily admit that I can’t. Still, does this mean that there is any doubt, so much as a trace, in my mind concerning her love for me? Of course not.
Some people who resisted our Lord asked him for a sign. They wanted him to do something dramatic, something persuasive, something compelling — that he was the one in whom they should believe. Jesus refused to give any such sign. He refused for one reason. His detractors wanted proof that he was indeed God’s visitation Incarnate – and all of this without committing themselves to him. Once Jesus had given them the “proof” they’d asked for, they could look at one another and say, “Well then, that settles it. He is the promised One of the Father.” Something would occur in their heads – they now had information they had heretofore lacked – but nothing would occur in their hearts. The “proof” they would have asked for and received would have altered nothing about their lives. The “proof” would have made no difference in their lives.
Instead of “proving” himself Jesus said, “Certainty concerning me arises only as you commit yourselves to me. Certainty that I am God’s visitation seizes you only as follow me, trust me, obey me, and even come to love me. Those who do this find an assurance concerning me and their life in me that obliterates doubt. Those who don’t commit themselves to me remain forever unpersuaded. I want followers who are members of my kingdom and agents of its work; I don’t want spectators who play guessing games about me and expect me to resolve the game. Life isn’t about games. Life is about the kingdom. Do you want to follow me, or do you want to stand there demanding a sign concerning that kingdom you don’t plan to enter in any case?”
[c]—Perhaps someone wants to protest, “But the miracles were signs. Scripture says so. Since Jesus worked miracles he must have given signs, a few at least.” They were signs of the kingdom only to those who lived in the kingdom and were therefore kingdom-sighted. They were signs of nothing to kingdom-blind curiosity seekers. If today a man with a tin flute made a rope stand on end, people wouldn’t exclaim, “This man has to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world!” They would ask him, “Where did you learn to do that? You belong on TV. With the right contacts you could make a lot of money.” This isn’t the response Jesus wants to elicit. The response he’s looking for is the response of Matthew, Peter, Andrew and the others who leave everything to follow. Our Lord isn’t looking for admirers; he wants disciples. He doesn’t want congratulation; he wants commitment. He doesn’t want curiosity-seekers; he wants faith that remains faithful.
And those who yield Jesus Christ such commitment and trust and faithful following; all such find that he convinces them more certainly than any so-called proof ever could: he is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Possessed of such certainty, they move more deeply into him every day at the same that his kingdom becomes ever more vivid, with the result that they seek no one else; with the result that they can’t be deflected from him; with the result that life’s adversities find them clinging even closer to him. The question of “proof” now becomes a laughable irrelevance. At this point we don’t shout at him, “Don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us plainly.” It never occurs to us to shout “Don’t keep us in suspense” for one reason: he has surged over us in such a way as to dispel all suspense. We don’t shout “Tell us plainly” for one reason: he has authenticated himself to us in so very many circumstances that we don’t need anything plainer than the assurance we already have.
II: — In the light of all that’s been said to this point I want us to examine more closely some of our Lord’s pronouncements so that their truth might be seared afresh upon us today and any lingering doubt dispelled.
[a] The first is “I am the resurrection and the life.” Usually we hear it at funeral services, and rightly so. Yet it refers to much more than post-mortem developments. “I am the resurrection and the life” – it means that right now, in this life, there is always a new beginning. Every day is a fresh beginning before God. Every day is a day in which the sin and culpable stupidity of yesterday are blotted out. Every day is the first day of the future just because “I am resurrection and life” means that our past, however discoloured, can’t negate our future. Every day is redolent with hope just because who I am is given by where I’m going rather than by where I’ve been. Every day is redolent with hope just because who I am is given by what God has promised to do for me rather than what I’ve done to myself.
If the people around us snort, “She doesn’t seem any different to me”, no matter; we have been appointed to a future more glorious than we can imagine, even as we can imagine a future in which our self-contradiction and self-destructiveness are finally no more.
If we are possessed of a smidgen of sensitivity we know that our own garbage stinks. To be sure, everyone is aware that everyone else’s garbage stinks. Still, we must become aware that our own garbage is fetid. Yet because Jesus Christ is resurrection and life there’s always more to us than our garbage. What more is there? There’s the new being that our Lord is himself and promises to make ours; there’s a truth concerning us that is hidden to unbelief but known to faith; there’s a recognition that much about us needs to change, a certainty that our Lord can effect such change, and an awareness that such change is already underway.
When our Lord says “I am resurrection and life” he is awakening us to the difference he makes: our past he pardons, our present he accompanies, and our future he guarantees.
Few incidents move me more than the risen One’s encounter with Peter at least a week after Easter. Earlier a fifteen-year old servant girl had remarked, “Your accent; it’s Galilean; the same accent as the fellow who’s going to be crucified”; and a frightened Peter, swearing like a sailor, had denied that he had ever had anything to do with the Master. Spokesperson for all the disciples? Now Peter didn’t appear fit to be spokesperson for the prison population. But because Jesus is resurrection and life, all considerations of who is fit and who not are beside the point. Now the risen One asks simply, “Peter, do you love me?” Note that Jesus doesn’t ask, “Peter do you feel properly wretched? You should, you know, since you behaved worse than anyone would’ve expected you to.” Note that Jesus doesn’t ask, “Peter, don’t you think you should be put on probation for a year or two until we all see whether or not you’re going to hold up?”
“Peter, do you love me? Then feed my sheep.” In the company of Jesus Christ our past, however, deplorable or disgraceful, is cancelled. In the company of Jesus Christ the present issue is only “Do you love me, even a little bit?” In the company of Jesus Christ our future unfolds in terms of his commission: “Keep on feeding my sheep.”
Does anyone doubt all this? Is anyone in suspense concerning it? Suspense disappears as morning by morning we step ahead knowing that our Lord is resurrection and life, and therefore our past and present and future are comprehended in him and his newness.
[b] The second pronouncement of our Lord that I want us to look at is “I am the vine; you are the branches. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me….Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit….” Plainly the fruitfulness of our life depends on our keeping company with our Lord, his abiding in us and our abiding in him. At the same time, such mutual indwelling guarantees our fruitfulness. This point is crucial, for all of us are prone to fasten on the unfruitfulness we think we see, the unfruitfulness (apparently) for which others blame us, and, worst of all the seeming unfruitfulness for which we blame ourselves.
At all times and in all circumstances we have to know that as long as we so much as aspire to keep company with our Lord, our life isn’t going to dribble away in final uselessness and insignificance regardless of how much or how little we think we see it amounting to. In other words, we are not the measure of ourselves.
You must have noticed that the arrogant, self-important person always assumes that he is the measure of himself, and is always convinced that he has triumphed. Having made himself the measure of his significance, he pronounces himself superior.
At the same time, the self-rejecting person assumes every bit as much that he’s the measure of himself too; he’s convinced that he has failed. Having made himself the measure of his significance, he pronounces himself inferior.
Our society tends to deploy one measuring rod above all others: salary. The expression “a good job” means only one thing: a highly paid job. Oh yes, we do make exceptions here and there: large sums of money gained criminally don’t count as “a good job”. Still, wealth remains the first measure of human significance.
Then we make subdivisions within this first significance: the athlete and the judge may make the same money, but the judge’s work is more important. The factory auto worker and the school teacher may make the same money, but the teacher’s work is more important.
In the church we make a further subdivision: if we are engaged in a “spiritual” occupation – minister, missionary – then our work is more significant than that of Christians who are engaged in banking or baking.
But Jesus undercuts all of this: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit”. That’s it. He doesn’t say we are going to see much fruit; he doesn’t say we’re going to be recognized for much fruit. He simply guarantees that as long as we trust, obey and pray our lives are going to possess kingdom significance; which is to say, our lives are going to bear fruit of eternal substance and worth regardless of that value we think we or others can put upon them.
I’m convinced this point is crucial. We pour ourselves into one of our children and she turns out as we’ve always hoped, whereupon we congratulate ourselves. We pour ourselves equally into another who turns out differently and ask ourselves, “Where did we go wrong?” Neither approach is correct. All we can do is pour ourselves upon those given to us, aspire to abide in Christ as surely as he abides in us, and trust him to render our existence fruitful with that fruitfulness that he alone supplies, he alone sees, and he alone has promised to preserve.
Frustrated people shouted at Jesus, “Don’t keep us in suspense. If you are the One we await, the One in whom God’s kingdom becomes operative, tell us plainly.” But our Lord won’t, and won’t just because he refuses to satisfy the inquisitiveness of detached spectators. Instead he says, “If you want to know who I am as much as you say you want to know, come with me; follow; and in following your suspense will evaporate and the answer you seek will be plainer than you ever imagined. And as it is with the truth that he is, so it is with the truths he pronounces.
Victor Shepherd
July 2005
Three Forms of Christian Community
John 13:1-14
No one in all of church history is as moved at Christmas as is Martin Luther. Every time Luther comes to write anything about Christmas he seems like a child, at least in some respects. He’s as excited as a five-year old who has counted the days for months. He’s as eager as the child who has wanted something dear to her and now can’t wait to see if the gift she’s craved is finally hers.
Yet even though Luther is child-like around Christmas, he is never maudlin; never sentimental; never gushy. Luther is always profound. Characteristically Luther is so very profound that every year, this year included, there are more books published about Luther than about any figure in history, Jesus included. Luther is so very deep that we can never get to the bottom of him, never exhaust him. Yet as profound as Luther is, he’s customarily simple. This shouldn’t surprise us, since the deepest matters in life are simple at the same time.
Whenever Luther speaks of Christmas, he speaks of the congregation. And therefore whenever he speaks of congregational life, he speaks with his characteristic simplicity and profundity. In the season of Advent, 520 years after the birth of Luther, let’s listen to Luther on the three forms of church community.
I: — Martin Luther maintained that the first level of Christian community, the first stage of our life together, is putting our time, talent and treasure at the disposal of everyone else in the congregation. Eric McDonald fixes things, fixes anything a fixer-man can fix. Pat McKinnon bakes shortbread. Ralph Finch fiddles. There’s nothing extraordinary about this, because what Eric and Pat and Ralph contribute they can do with their eyes shut. Furthermore, what any of us can do to help, we do without expecting extraordinary recognition for it. All of us bring forward our natural gifts and abilities, as well as our money and our time, wanting only to be helpful in any way we can. This “physical service,” as Luther called the first stage of Christian community, we offer readily and gladly.
It sounds so very ordinary, doesn’t it. In fact it is ordinary. But 95% of life is ordinary; and therefore the ordinariness that we offer up on behalf of the community of Christ’s people is always vastly more important than many think.
When I was younger and occasionally mulled over what is meant by gifts and abilities and talents I tended to think of what we commonly call “talented people”. Their talents were dramatic, eye-catching, sensational, striking, even freakish. In my older age I esteem more and more the non-startling, non-sensational gifts that finally help us much more profoundly.
When I was in Frankfurt ( Germany ) and Stockholm ( Sweden ) with the World Council of Churches on behalf of Jewish-Christian relations I noted the gentle way and undramatic ability of Krister Stendahl, the chairman of our group. A Swede by birth, Stendahl had taught at Harvard for twenty-five years, then had returned to Stockholm as Lutheran bishop of the city. At the WCC meetings the Americans spoke their mind (forcefully), as well as the British, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Africans. As everyone continued to speak out it appeared that we were moving farther from consensus, closer to chaos, one step away from the fragmentation we seemed unable to avoid. At such moments Stendahl would stare at the table in front of him while someone else generated more heat than light, say nothing for a minute or two, and then gently propose the idea or the statement or the motion that marvellously gathered up what we all wanted to say but didn’t have the wherewithal to formulate it and therefore could only push the meeting further towards collapse. As Stendahl did this several times over we all forgot the pricks where we thought we had been jabbed and moved ahead together to accomplish what we had come from the four corners of the world to do. Stendahl himself, in his genuine humility, made no more of this than he would have made of saying “hello”. On the one occasion when Stendahl took three minutes on account of an especially thorny conundrum and someone became impatient, he dispelled even the whiff of animosity as he smiled good-naturedly and said, “You will have to excuse me; it’s been months since I thought in English” (English being his third language, after Swedish and German.)
I shall always be grateful for those whose gift is so undramatic as simply to help us see that our perspective on a matter is not the only perspective; and therefore those who disagree with us are neither incurably stupid nor wilfully vicious. If you sit at ice-level on the side of a hockey rink, the ice-surface appears long from blue-line to goal-line, short from side to side across the ice. Actually, it’s only 60 feet from blue-line to goal-line but 85 feet across the ice. Yet at ice-level it seems 20 feet across the ice and 150 feet from blue-line to goal-line. It’s no wonder that ice-level fans complain that the Maple Leafs skate leadenly when they bring the puck out of their own zone, while opponents look like hornets buzzing around inside the Leaf end. As soon as we move to the end-zone seats our perspective on the game changes with the altered angle of vision. If we move high up into the nose-bleed seats it’s a different game again.
Several people in this congregation whom the world would find undistinguished have spared me public humiliation (and worse) by gently sharing with me their capacity to see things from a different angle, all the while doing this without precipitating knee-jerk defensiveness in me.
Talents and gifts and abilities need not be the violin-playing of Pinchas Zukerman or the singing of Pavarotti or the writing of Alice Munro. The talent that most frequently assists the congregation most profoundly is much less dramatic than that. Whatever our talent, then, we must put it at the disposal of the congregation.
From time to time a meeting in any congregation unfolds and appears to go nowhere. Whether the board members be few or many, they can’t seem to agree on anything. By meeting’s end, of course, there is one thing everyone is eager to agree on: adjournment. We shake our heads and go home mumbling to ourselves, “That wasn’t much of a meeting tonight. All we did was turn back motion after motion.” I happen to think it was a wonderful meeting. Think of what didn’t happen. Board members didn’t fall silent before something they secretly disagreed with, pass it out of politeness so as not to hurt the feelings of the person voicing it, only to realize that now everyone was stuck with a decision that very few wanted. Think too of what didhappen. Those at the meeting had freedom to be honest with each other. At the end of the meeting everyone could smile about it. For everyone knew that everyone else in the meeting had been generous for years with time, talent and treasure, generous many times over in congregational life. Because of our common generosity there was common goodwill, even if this or that motion didn’t find support from other voters.
Luther insists that the simplest, humblest gift, put at the disposal of the congregation, is the first stage of Christian community.
II: — According to Luther the second stage of Christian community is more intentional, more deliberate, more pointed. The second stage has to do more specifically with the strengthening of faith. Here Luther lists three matters: instruction in faith (teaching), consolation, intercession.
(a) Teaching is plainly essential. The old saying, “Faith is caught, not taught”, simply isn’t true. Those who think the saying to be true never seem to have come to terms with the fact that Jesus taught every single day of his public ministry. The apostles taught. In the Presbyterian tradition the minister is known as the “teaching elder.” The church has always known that apart from teaching, ignorance triumphs. And with the triumph of ignorance concerning the gospel, human depravity swells. We have to be taught.
It’s plain to any and all here that the Schomberg pulpit places massive emphasis on teaching, on instruction in faith. But what else should we expect? Over and over scripture insists that mind and heart must be developed in equal measure. To be sure, if the Christian mind develops in isolation from the heart we are left with abstract theological head-trips that may amuse the pseudo-intellectuals among us but finally help no one. On the other hand, to develop the believing heart in isolation from the knowing head would leave us only with sentimentality, nostalgia and superstition. The heart believes upon him whose truth the head has been taught. Then teach we must.
Teaching occurs in many settings besides the pulpit. Teaching occurs in the Sunday School, in our Wednesday evening adult study groups, at the occasional men’s breakfast. (Please note that what is learned at the men’s breakfast won’t be learned anywhere else.).
The apostle Paul writes to the younger Timothy, “Be unfailing in patience and teaching.” We must always be teaching inasmuch as the natural state of the mind is a darkened state (in the wake of the Fall); the mind has to be enlightened. Donald Coggan, former archbishop of Canterbury and former professor at the University of Toronto ; Coggan used to say, “People are saved from the dark, not in it.” At the same time we must always be patient in our teaching inasmuch as a Christian mind isn’t acquired overnight.
Teaching is a major ingredient in stage two, the more intentional stage, of Christian community.
(b) Yet teaching isn’t the only ingredient; consolation is as well. Faith grows through the instruction of teachers; and the faith that grows through teaching takes a beating from life. Just because we are always taking a beating we are always in need of consolation.
The unnamed prophet who sustained God’s people during their exile in Babylon cries, “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her….that you may suck and be satisfied with her consoling breasts.” The prophet is writing to people who are taking a beating in Babylon . They are nowhere near the geographic Jerusalem . The ” Jerusalem ” he calls them to rejoice in can’t be the city at the eastern end of the Mediterranean . The Jerusalem whose breasts console them is the community of God’s people, the church of Israel .
The consolations of Jerusalem , the consolations of the church, are more profoundly consoling than anything else just because the consolations of the church are finally the consolations of God himself.
At the beginning of his second letter to Corinth Paul refers to but does not identify a clobbering he and others underwent in Asia . “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death….” The clobbering was indescribable. Nonetheless at the beginning of his second letter to Corinth Paul writes as well, “…the Father of mercies and God of all comfort…comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Those most clobbered are most able to console, and most able to console because first most consoled by God himself.
At stage two of Christian community we are that Jerusalem whose breasts console those in our midst. We are this just because there are always among us those who have tasted the consolation of God and therefore can now console others, even as these others will one day see the comfort given them as God’s own.
(c) The third aspect of stage two community is intercession. We are to pray for each other.
The precedent for praying for each other is as moving as it is authoritative. The precedent is our Lord himself. On the eve of his death Jesus poured out his heart before his Father on behalf of the twelve. “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one….Sanctify them in the truth….And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
All of us in the Schomberg fellowship are to consecrate ourselves for the sake of everyone else in the fellowship. We are to do this in order that we all alike might be consecrated in truth, confirmed in truth, cemented into truth.
I pray for you people. I know that many of you pray for me. All of us need to be maintained in truth. The alternative to being maintained in truth is to be found languishing in error, falsehood, delusion — and ultimately, in degradation. The alternative to being sanctified in truth is to fall victim to that one, the evil one, whom Jesus pronounced a liar and a killer. Then it’s no wonder we are urged everywhere in scripture to pray for one another.
Pray for each other with the cavalier indifference of “Now I lay me down to sleep”? No. We are to pray for each other with an exertion that rivals the exertion of the lumberjack or the athlete. Paul tells the three men whose kingdom-work immerses them in danger (Aristarchus, Mark, Jesus Justus) that Epaphras “prays earnestly” for them. The English text says “earnestly”. The Greek text uses a much stronger verb: AGONIZOMAI — (from which we derive the English word “agony”.) Agony: this is the measure of the intensity and anguish of Epaphras when he prays for the three men in danger every day. For that matter our Lord was scarcely the picture of “Now I lay me down to sleep” when he cried out for us on Thursday evening in Gethsemane , “Keep them from the evil one; sanctify them in truth.”
When we were children and we were learning scripture through such vehicles as bible quizzes we soon learned the answer to the question, “What is the shortest verse in the bible?” (Answer: “Jesus wept”. John 11)
Here is another quiz-question. What is the second shortest verse in the bible? It’s in 2 Thessalonians 5: “Brethren, pray for us.” Oceans are concentrated in these four words.
Intercession is an aspect of the second stage of Christian community, the more deliberate, more intentional, more pointed stage.
III: — Luther maintains that the first level of community (giving up time, talent and treasure for each other) is relatively easy. Somewhat more difficult is the second level of community: the effort and learning and patience needed for teaching, the heart-wrenching empathy required for consolation, and the anguish of ardent prayer.
Difficult as the second level is, says Luther, there is one level even more difficult: bearing the weakness and sin of our fellow-Christian, fellow-parishioner, brother or sister in faith. Writes Luther,
Now it seems to be a great work of love when we let our possessions become the servants of someone else. But the greatest of all is when I give up my own righteousness and allow my righteousness to serve my neighbour’s sin.
If “giving up my own righteousness and allowing my righteousness to serve my neighbour’s sin”; if this most effectively, most characteristically, forms and cements Christian community, then what most thoroughly, most characteristically, fragments and destroys it? Luther says nothing breaks down community like using our sister’s weakness and sin to fuel our self-exaltation; nothing destroys our life together like using our brother’s misstep to feed our supposed superiority. If sin overtakes our brother and we feel good about it, feel good about it for any reason at all, then — says the Wittenberger — we are simply despicable.
Have you ever pondered what it is to be hated? Luther says we can be hated when the person hating us has no feeling of hatred toward us at all. We are most hated when the following happens. “When I am stuck in my sins, he [my brother] should weep bloody tears and come to my help; instead he [my brother] rejoices and says, ‘I am righteous in God’s sight’.”
Let’s come back to the statement of Luther that may have startled you. “The greatest of all is when I give up my own righteousness and allow it to serve my neighbour’s sin.” What does Luther mean by this? He directs us to 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake God made Jesus Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” By the Father’s appointment the sinless Son became the sin-bearing one in order that we, the sin-condemned, might be pardoned before God. What our Lord has done no one else can duplicate. At the same time, what our Lord has done must move us to do what we can do; what he has done must fire us with the same spirit and outlook. We are to support, cherish, uphold, and bless the brother in our fellowship whom sin has overtaken. We are never to turn up our nose at our sister and thank whoever might be listening that whatever else we might be at least we aren’t like her.
This is not to say that our fellow-Christian’s sin is to be indulged. It is never to be indulged, never to be approved, never to be winked at. Our Lord forgave sinners, after all; he never excused them or indulged them or winked at them. In his discussion of this point Luther refers us repeatedly to Philippians 2:5: “Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus.”
As Luther returned to the theme of bearing our fellow-Christian’s sin in the congregation he returned as well to the gospel-incident of our Lord’s washing the feet of the disciples. We too must be willing to wash the feet of those we judge (rightly) to have sinned atrociously. And who is able to do this? Who is able to wash his brother’s feet? Only those who cannot deny that they have had to have their feet washed by the master himself.
Luther’s childlike amazement at the birth of Christ is matched by his wisdom and profundity concerning the congregation, the community of Christ’s people.
Victor Shepherd
December 2003
MARTIN LUTHER ON CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
2 Timothy 2:4
Isaiah 66:11
2 Corinthians 2:4-9
John 17:15,17
Colossians 4:12
2 Corinthians 5:21
Philippians 2:5
John 13:3-14
A Threefold Conversion
John 14:6
Everyone is aware that words change meaning as they are used day-by-day 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 under the influence of 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 – if it ever does.
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 mere 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 nothing more crucial in any person’s life than that development wherein the invitation is heard and the summons is unmistakable and the fork in the road is undeniable. Everything hangs on this development. 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 many thoughtful people come to associate it only with something negative?
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 schemes 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 many 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 and car crashes) – to religion. You don’t assume responsibility in the local congregation; instead, you look on your hero with coiffed hair from afar. It’s much easier to admire the TV star than it is to endure the local pastor. If scandal beclouds the TV presentation, such scandal is incomparably easier to withstand than the anti-gospel currents and 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. 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 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 a 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 the world’s 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 finally.
It’s time we reclaimed the word “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
June 2005
What is Faith? Listen to the Testimony of Four Witnesses
John 14:1-9 Genesis 17:1-8 Hebrews 11:1-3; 8-12 Mark 1:14 -15
It happened at the corner of Simcoe Street and Rossland. It was a collision. A crowd gathered quickly, as crowds always do. But the crowd was no help once police officers and insurance adjusters and lawyers wanted to know what happened. These people weren’t interested in hearing from the crowd; they wanted to hear from witnesses.
When the handful of witnesses (witnesses are always fewer than crowds) began to testify, their testimony had much in common. It couldn’t be doubted they were all speaking of the same collision. At the same time, no two witnesses said exactly the same thing. Each testimony differed slightly according to the witness’s angle of vision on the event.
No one thought of saying that only one witness could be right and therefore all others were wrong. Precisely because different witnesses bring forward slightly differing testimonies we know that their story is authentic. We know that they haven’t conspired secretly to “cook up” something artificial.
In the days of his earthly ministry Jesus Christ collided with many persons and many institutions. The “collision” which he was invariably drew a crowd. But the crowd he drew can’t help us to understand what happened when our Lord acted then and what continues to happen when he acts among us now. For this we need the testimony of witnesses. Their testimony is indispensable in our coming to grasp who Jesus Christ is and what faith in him entails.
As we receive their testimony we shall find that these witnesses agree in essence concerning Jesus Christ. Nevertheless we shall find too that different witnesses highlight different insights. This fact only reassures us that their testimony is authentic and therefore can be trusted.
In the course of the many collisions he occasioned Jesus summoned men and women to join him. He summoned them to faith in him. He promised to sustain and strengthen their faith. He summons, sustains and strengthens today as well. Then there’s one, crucial issue for us to sort out: What does faith in Jesus Christ mean? What does it entail? In order to answer this question we must receive the testimony of four witnesses: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Today, however, we are going to listen to them in reverse order: John, Luke, Mark and Matthew.
I: — First, John. Faith, says the apostle John, is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the mirror-image of God the Father, the conviction that Jesus Christ is the living presence of God embodied in our flesh and blood. Faith is also confidence in the mission and message of this Emmanuel, “God-with-us.” Faith is also confession of loyalty to him. According to John faith always entails conviction, confidence, confession.
Phillip is a disciple, a follower, who happens to be tossed around by the turbulence that always surrounds Jesus. After months of being jostled and jarred, months of being thrown off-balance just when he thought he had everything figured out, Phillip hungers for one, conclusive disclosure of God. “Just show us the Father and that will be enough,” he cries to Jesus. “Phillip,” replies the Master, “to see me is to see the one you want. I am the disclosure you crave.”
It’s odd, isn’t it: the answer that satisfied Phillip irks people today. “To see me is to see the Father,” says Jesus, and this annoys people today. “How narrow,” they complain, “how insufferably narrow.”
I admit it is narrow. If John had said that the living Word of God, God’s self-utterance and self-giving – if John had said that this Word became words, human speech, speeches, no one would object. But John never says that the Word became words, speeches, chatter. John insists that the Word has become flesh. One man; one man only. From Nazareth at that, a one-horse town. (Nazareth was to Jerusalem, in terms of sophistication and glamour, what ‘Podunksville’ today is to Paris.) What’s more, “flesh” for John refers not only to human existence; “flesh” also means concrete human existence under the conditions of sin. Then is John telling us that the Word became flesh, that God has identified himself wholly with a hayseed from Nazareth who in turn has identified himself with sinners? Yes, John is saying exactly this. God is to be found definitively in a one-horse town in the person of an ordinary Jew who is also “numbered among the transgressors.” In this one man God has drawn so very near to us that he couldn’t draw any nearer.
If you are irked by the supposed narrowness of John’s conviction and confession and you are starting to fidget, please note what is not said.
1: It is not said that God has neglected or forsaken people who are non-Christians. Nevertheless it is in Jesus Christ that we learn that God neither neglects nor forsakes anyone.
2: It is not said that God isn’t free to disclose himself as he wishes. Nevertheless, the witnesses we are hearing and heeding today were convinced that in Jesus Christ God can always be found for sure.
3: It is not said that while God may be present with all peoples, God is active only in the history of Israel, the one people that gave us Jesus. As a matter of fact Amos tells us that just as God was active in Israel’s history, bringing the Israelites up out of Egypt, so God has been active, no less active, in the history of the Philistines and the Syrians. Nevertheless, in Jesus Christ we can identify what God is doing in human history among diverse peoples.
4: It is not said that God has been sensed only in Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, in the man from Nazareth God has seized us with a clarity and cogency that constrains us to speak of him and forbids us to remain silent.
Faith, says John, is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the living address of the God who has come among us in our own humanness and identified himself with us in our sinfulness. Faith is also confidence in this man’s mission and message. In addition faith is public confession of our loyalty to him.
II: — Luke. For Luke Jesus is all that Jesus is for John, together with Luke’s particular angle of vision; namely, for Luke Jesus is especially the friend of those whom the world laughs at, or laughs off, or overlooks, or conveniently prefers to forget. For Luke Jesus is the friend of the least, the lonely, the last and the lost. As a witness Luke has noticed that Jesus consistently stands up for and stands with anyone who is trampled or rejected or simply defenceless.
Women for instance. In Luke’s day women were often regarded as little more than an item of their husband’s property. A divorcee or a widow was extraordinarily vulnerable. Not only was she brushed aside as a “no-account,” she was financially strapped as well. In his testimony to Jesus Luke mentions thirteen women who are not mentioned in any other written gospel. Perceptively Luke noticed that Jesus honoured women and elevated them.
Luke’s heart is as big as a house when he thinks of those whom life has ground down or when he thinks of the struggle, relentless struggle, that renders life ceaselessly difficult for some people. Yet Luke’s heart is as big as a house only because he has first found his Lord’s heart even bigger. He has witnessed Christ’s concern for social outcasts – such as the swindler who fleeces people and turns the entire community against himself (Zacchaeus,) or the dying terrorist (concerning whom people mutter, “Good riddance,”) or the hooker from the red light district. Not to mention the poor. Luke testifies most movingly of Christ’s care for the poor and his esteem for those people.
There is something else. More than any other witness Luke speaks of joy, rejoicing, laughter, merriment, partying. He knows that Christ’s concern for the overwhelmed and underfed, the “loser” and the outcast, the defenceless and the diseased; he knows our Lord’s championing of these people is never shrill, never grim. There’s neither the grimness of the steely do-gooder nor the nastiness of those who want to bring down the privileged. There’s only irrepressible joy that these people, the marginalized, have a place in God’s Kingdom. Jesus laughs and jokes and parties with them all. Everything he does for those sunk in misery he does so very cheerfully as to render them cheerful ever after.
When Maureen and I first visited the Iona Community of the Church of Scotland (located in the Hebridean Islands) we met several people who go there for much-needed restoration just because their work unfolds every day among the seemingly hopeless, the impoverished, of Britain’s slums. One middle-aged woman we met works among the “squatters,” as they are called in the shabbiest parts of London. As residents move out of subsidized housing for any reason at all, workmen are hired to refurbish the newly-vacated apartment. Before the workmen can follow on the heels of the outgoing residents, however, squatters move in and take over. Any attempt at ousting them precipitates ugly confrontations with the squatters themselves; with sympathetic neighbours; with unsympathetic housing authorities and with beleaguered police officers. Housing authorities, weary of endless trouble, have capitulated. The woman we met works among these squatters (whose building is now called “the squats”) on behalf of the London Housing Authority. Her male colleague has already been beaten up. She hasn’t been assaulted, even though she finds herself in the most fearsome situations.
We mustn’t paint the picture any less bleak than it is. The “squatters” are chiefly unemployed, even unemployable. They avoid homelessness by occupying homes to which they have no legal right. Their material future is dismal beyond telling. They have nothing to lose, and therefore are quick to become violent. It takes no little courage to work among them. Yet it takes more than courage; it takes a special sort of huge-hearted humanness that silently gains the trust of desperate people.
This particular woman says she loves her work. She senses in it the surge of God’s Kingdom. As she spoke of it to Maureen and me she glowed. And she does it all with a radiance that her people see in few others. Her joy in the midst of them is a manifestation of that Kingdom which knows no misery.
Faith, according to the apostle Luke, entails living in the company of Jesus Christ as he moves among the loneliest and the least and the last.
III: — Mark’s angle of vision is slightly different again, therein acquainting us with his particular insight and emphasis. Mark testifies that faith means holding up Christ’s victory anywhere there seems to be human defeat. Mark has observed that Jesus is the conquering one. Mark sees Jesus taking on hostile power after hostile power: sin, sickness, sorrow, suffering, the demonic. These hostile powers are really errand-boys, “go-fors”, flunkies, who do the bidding of Mr. Big, the comprehensive hostile power, death. Mr. Big, death, has many errand-boys or flunkies. These lesser powers molest you and me and others. Not content with molesting us, they torment us. Sin torments all of us. Sickness torments and teases the ill. Sorrow continues to torment the bereaved long after they expected sorrow to leave them alone. Death’s errand-boys wear us down. They crumble our resistance to Mr. Big, who gets every one of us at the last.
However, Mark announces, Jesus Christ is Conqueror. Death overtook him only to find him overtaking it. Death frustrated him only to be frustrated itself as he was raised from the dead.
Faith in Jesus Christ, Mark testifies, is a matter of holding up Christ’s victory wherever anyone is molested and tormented by Mr. Big’s flunkies who soften us up for Mr. Big himself. As you and I are possessed of faith we soak ourselves in Christ’s victory; we are steeped in such assurance of his triumph that our assurance fortifies the assurance of those who are harassed at this moment.
A pastor, everyone knows, is expected to attend the dying. But not because the pastor has a pre-recorded bedside message he can flip on. A pastor attends the dying for one reason: he has Christ’s victory so deep in his bloodstream that he radiates it; it oozes out of him, even if he says nothing.
It’s the same with all Christ’s people. We sit with our friend who is ill. We sit with our friend whose husband, aged forty-seven, has just been carried off with a heart attack. We visit someone whose elderly parent has deteriorated mentally and is all but unrecognizable, yet manages to arouse sadness and shame and anger and guilt in his family all at once. We sit, and we say little. We are possessed of such assurance of our Lord’s victory that our assurance, as deep as our DNA, spills over onto our friend and finds its way past her tears.
Faith, says Mark, is being drawn into Christ’s triumph, being forever altered by it, and thereafter flaunting that triumph in the face of everything that wants to deny it.
IV: — For Matthew faith is all that it is for all witnesses alike: public acknowledgement that Jesus is the Son of God Incarnate, the Word become flesh, the Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of the World. All witnesses agree in this matter. Yet Matthew too has his particular angle of vision; namely, faith is hearing and heeding and obeying the chief rabbi. Matthew’s gospel, 28 chapters long, is divided into five blocks of teaching. The five blocks of teaching correspond to the five books of Moses. Jesus is clearly Moses enlarged. When Jesus begins teaching the Sermon on the Mount he sits to teach. Rabbis always sat to teach. To be sure, Jesus is more than a rabbi, Matthew would insist, but he’s a rabbi at least, greater in authority than Moses; Jesus is the rabbi above all other rabbis. Therefore we must hear him and heed him and obey him.
Admittedly, it’s relatively easy to support our suffering brothers and sisters as we surround them with our assurance of Christ’s victory. (In fact, we feel good about doing this.) It’s easy to agree that Jesus cherished the poor and the maimed and the trampled, and therefore we should support them too. It’s easy to assent to the truth that Jesus is the Word made flesh. Yet it’s always possible to do all of this while remaining indifferent to our own concrete, specific obedience. Matthew insists that to have faith in Jesus means we are going to obey him, do it.
Jesus tells us, for instance, that if we write off another human being, or merely speak contemptuously of her, we are in danger of ultimate loss ourselves. If we act compassionately only toward those whom we think to deserve our compassion, then we haven’t a clue about the nature of God. If we think that God is going to forgive us at the same as we harden our heart against those who have wounded us, then we are pathetically mistaken. If we come to worship on Sunday without having attempted to repair the breach with another congregant, we are wasting our time. We mustn’t evade the road we’ve been appointed to walk, even if the road is narrow and the way hard and those who persist in it few. Of course the road we’re appointed to walk is challenging at all times and difficult at some times. Were it anything else we’d be meandering or shuffling or sashaying or even strolling, merely strolling. Matthew says the Christian life isn’t a stroll; it’s a resolute walking of that way which Jesus says identifies us as his people, since he walks the same road with us. This road ever remains the road we must walk if we are going to remain in the company of Jesus, for he is the companion of those who walk this road and he pledges himself nowhere else.
I began today by reminding us that our Lord collided with all sorts of individuals and institutions in the days of his earthly ministry. The collision that he was attracted crowds, as collisions always attract crowds. Crowds, however, are mere onlookers. Witnesses, on the other hand, are part of the event. The witnesses we call ‘apostles’ testify to Jesus Christ, even as they testify to him from their own perspective.
The testimony of John – faith in Jesus is conviction that he is Emmanuel, God-with-us, confidence in his mission, and confession of the truth concerning him – John’s testimony is bedrock for the other three.
On top of this Luke testifies that Jesus is the friend of the lowly and the despised; Mark, that Jesus is the conqueror of everything that threatens to separate us from God, death pre-eminently; Matthew, that Jesus is the chief rabbi whom we haven’t truly heard unless we’ve aspired to obey.
Jesus tells us that even the person of the strongest faith, apparently, is actually weak in faith. For this reason, he insists, we are to pray for increased faith, strengthened faith. Then may you and I cry to God, “Increase our faith,” knowing that he wants this for us even more than we want it for ourselves.
Victor Shepherd First Baptist Church,Oshawa
22 February 2015
When the Day Of Pentecost Had Come
John 14:26 John 16:8-11 Acts 2:29 -42
If today were Christmas Sunday or Easter everyone would know it was Christmas Sunday or Easter and the turnout would be large.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. Few are aware of it. The turnout isn’t larger than usual. This should surprise us, since Christmas (the incarnation) and Easter (God’s vindication of the cross); Christmas and Easter exist for the sake of Pentecost. Pentecost, after all, was the occasion when there was fulfilled everything that Jesus had promised his followers concerning the Spirit, everything Jesus had promised concerning the Spirit’s application of Christ’s earthly achievement.
[1] In anticipation of Pentecost Jesus told his disciples, “The Spirit will convict/convince (the one Greek word means both ‘convict’ and ‘convince’) the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement: concerning sin, because they don’t believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father…; concerning judgement, because the ruler of this world is judged.” (John 16:8)
We must be sure to understand something crucial here: only the Spirit can genuinely convince people of the truth of God. Which is to say, only the Spirit can genuinely convict people of sin, convict them of the nature of sin and the scope of sin and the depth of sin. Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are moralists at heart they will always equate sin with immorality. They never grasp the profundity of the apostle Paul when he declares that Jesus died for the ungodly, not the immoral. They never grasp the profundity of Jesus when he insists that harlots and tax-collectors (moral failures who are also indifferent to their moral failure) enter the kingdom God ahead of the morally faultless.
Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are not moralists but socialists they will equate sin with rich people’s economic exploitation of the non-rich. They never hear Jesus when he exclaims, “It’s from within, from the heart of every individual, that there come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, slander, pride. All these come from within, and these defile.” (Mark 7:22-23)
Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are not socialists but social conservatives they will equate sin with the self-victimization of the weak, the lazy, the loser; and then equate sin again with the tyranny with which weak, lazy losers tyrannize everyone else in the society. Alas, they seem never to hear what Jesus says about the deadly power of wealth, the callousness of the wealthy and the brutality of the powerful.
Only the Spirit can bring home the truth that sin is what Jesus says it is, what all of scripture says it is: unbelief. Unbelief, we must note, isn’t a matter of lacking the right beliefs, even the right religious beliefs. Unbelief isn’t ideational insufficiency of any kind. Unbelief, everywhere in scripture, pertains not to so much to the head as to the heart. It’s hardness of heart; it’s defiance of God, disobedience to God, disdain for God. It all ends in estrangement from God, estrangement from humankind’s ultimate good; in short, it ends in estrangement from God, loss of intimacy with God, and depravity or corruption within. Do I exaggerate? Argue not with me but with Jesus. “From within, from the heart, come ….” Only the Spirit can convince us of the truth about ourselves in the course of convicting us of our violation of the truth of God.
In anticipation of Pentecost Jesus told his followers that the Spirit would convict and convince the world of righteousness. Now we all think we don’t have to be told what righteousness is. Righteousness is rectitude, rectitude of some sort. The most righteous people are those who possess rectitude of all sorts.
But righteousness can’t be rectitude, since Jesus insists that people will be convinced of the nature of righteousness only as Jesus himself “goes to the Father.” Only as he goes to the Father? What do our Lord’s resurrection and ascension have to do with convincing the world of righteousness?
Throughout his earthly ministry, and particularly in the last week of it, Jesus was savaged again and again by people who thought they knew what righteousness was. And that’s precisely why they executed him. Pilate thought he knew; so did Herod; so did the crowd that hailed him one week and howled for him the next. Let’s be honest: his mother thought she knew too. That’s why she had pleaded with her son months earlier to stop embarrassing the family and come home quietly.
“When the Spirit comes (Jesus had said), he will convince the world of righteousness because I go to the Father.” Our Lord knew that his resurrection and ascension would vindicate him and vindicate the cross specifically. His resurrection and ascension would vindicate that righteousness which is unique to the cross.
Everyone “just knew” that execution by means of a cross meant shame before God, even rejection by him. More than rejection, it meant God’s curse pronounced upon the crucified one himself. Everyone “just knew” it. To be sure, “everyone” had one thing right: a cross did mean shame and rejection and condemnation. What nobody knew, however, and would never know apart from the Spirit, was that in the Son of God whom the world didn’t recognize God had taken upon himself that very shame and rejection and condemnation, therein bridging the gap between himself, holy God and just judge, and a world that could otherwise only perish. Righteousness is God’s righting of a capsized humankind that can otherwise only drown. First it’s the self-sacrificing of the Father in the cross whereby people who are deservedly barred from his presence are graciously granted access. Secondly, righteousness is the righted relationship that individuals enter upon and enjoy as they renounce their unbelief and cast themselves upon the clemency of their creator.
The Spirit, only the Spirit, convinces us of the nature of righteousness and thereby convicts us of our unrighteousness. And the Spirit can do this only because our Lord’s sin-bearing cross is vindicated as he is raised from the dead and ascends to his Father.
Our Lord has something more to say. The Spirit, God’s power to convict and persuade, will also convince the world of judgement; specifically, the Spirit will convince the world that God’s judgement is operative now. “The Spirit will convince the world of judgement”, says Jesus, “because the ruler of this world has been judged.” Plainly the evil one had been exposed in the cross of Jesus and defeated in the resurrection of Jesus. Exposed and defeated, the evil one still prowled around in search of victims, but his destruction was inevitable; defeated, he was destined to be destroyed. Judgement had been rendered.
Our Lord’s point is this: because the evil one has been defeated and is now destined to destruction, judgement is plainly operative now. Because judgement is operative now, God is sifting men and women at this moment. Because judgement is operative now, it’s ridiculous to think that judgement can be postponed, let alone evaded.
But who believes this? Doesn’t the world continue to unfold as it always has? Don’t some people even maintain that “the world is unfolding as it should”? Then who is going to believe that judgement is operative now, that the verdict has been rendered, that the outcome is inevitable? Only those will believe it whom the Spirit has convinced.
[2] On the day of Pentecost Peter preached a sermon that was boring by anyone’s standards. The sermon had no illustrations, and no “catchy” title. It had no big words wherewith to impress the wordsmiths. It didn’t even have especially small words wherewith to please the anti-wordsmiths. Boring? Half of Peter’s sermon was a lengthy quotation from the older testament. When Peter had finished quoting a book already hundreds of years old he began accusing his hearers. Accusing people antagonizes them, makes them resentful and angry. Therefore the only reaction Peter’s sermon could ever generate was sleepy-eyed boredom followed by resentful anger.
But this wasn’t how hearers reacted to Peter. Instead they were “cut to the heart”, we are told, and cried out, “What are we going to do?” They certainly weren’t bored; neither were they angry. They were defenseless and desperate at the same time. How did they come to be defenseless and desperate? The Spirit had precipitated a response within them so very different from a merely human reaction. Their Spirit-quickened response demonstrated that they knew the judgement of God to be operative; the resurrection and ascension of Jesus had convinced them of his cross-wrought righteousness; their unbelief – both the source and the outcome of their deep-dyed sinnership – now confronted them undeniably.
They were “cut to the heart.” Were they terrified of God’s judgement? Yes. Were they terrified only? No. They were also horrified at their heart-condition, horrified that they had dabbled for decades in the pseudo-comfort of the ghastliest self-delusion. As the Spirit surged over them they knew they were a disgrace before God, a shame to themselves, and more self-deluded than the most naïve child.
“What are we going to do?” they cried in their helplessness and horror. Peter told them what they should do. They should repent, believe, and be baptized as a public declaration of their repentance and faith.
But of ourselves we can’t repent; of ourselves we can’t make a “U-turn” in life; of ourselves we can only wear even deeper the grooves we’ve worn for years and now can’t escape. That’s why repentance and faith are depicted everywhere in the book of Acts as possible only by means of the Holy Spirit.
Consider Cornelius. Cornelius was a Gentile, an officer in the Roman army. He first heard the gospel when Jewish Christians preached in the synagogue that Cornelius frequented but had never joined, preferring to remain on the fringe. As the Spirit surged over Cornelius he moved from a fringe hanger-on at the synagogue to the most intimate companion of Israel ’s greater son; for the Spirit had granted him that repentance and faith which he could now exercise for himself.
It’s the same story over and over in the book of Acts. Everywhere in the early church it was known that people can repent and believe only as the Spirit first grants them repentance and faith. There were people in Corinth who thought frenzy, unrestrained frenzy, to be the pre-eminent manifestation of the Spirit. They jumped and jabbered and spouted ejaculations that were not only ridiculous but even blasphemous. Paul told them they were dead wrong. He told them the manifestation of the Spirit is that someone is constrained to confess from the bottom of her heart that Jesus is Lord. It’s our sincerest faith in Christ that attests the Spirit’s possession of us.
“They were cut to the heart and cried, ‘What are we going to do?’” Peter told them what they had to do. They had to make the farthest-reaching “U-turn” in their lives (i.e., repent); they had to embrace Jesus Christ from the bottom of their hearts (i.e., exercise faith); and they had to make a public declaration of all this.
[3] On the day of Pentecost Peter told his hearers that as they did as instructed they would receive the Spirit; that is, receive the Spirit fully. To be sure, the Spirit had already convinced them, convicted them, and converted them. One aspect of all this, however, was that the Spirit would not only inform them and move them; the Spirit would also saturate them. What does the Spirit’s saturation involve? Elsewhere in the New Testament the Spirit’s activity within believers has to do with fruit and gifts.
(i) The fruit of the Spirit is the effect of the Spirit upon the believer’s character. The fruit of the Spirit, say the apostles, is love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, self-control, and so on. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruitfulness of the presence and power of God. To be sure, some people are more patient than others by nature, more patient than others simply by genetic coding. Some people are cheerier than others, or more self-controlled than others, simply by nature. But regardless of what we are by nature, there is a transformation wrought by the Spirit that transcends natural endowment.
The apostle Paul contrasts the fruit of the Spirit with the works of the flesh (“flesh” being human life lived without reference to God.) The works of the flesh are fornication, idolatry, jealousy, selfishness, bickering, etc. (Galatians 5:19-22) The works of the flesh, of life lived without reference to God, are the spontaneous outcroppings of fallen human nature; they are what fallen human nature, left alone, invariably yields. The fruit of the Spirit, however, is precisely what God alone can effect in us. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruitfulness of that Spirit now rooted ever so deep in us and suffusing us throughout.
(ii) The gifts of the Spirit, on the other hand, have to do not with the formation of Christian character but with the ministry or service that we render to the congregation or to the world. Fruit has to do with character; gifts have to do with service.
The service we are to render is whatever talent or ability we have, now made available to others for the edification of others. What’s different now isn’t the talent or ability itself, whether the talent is music-making, public speaking, care-giving, accounting, cooking, concrete-pouring or painting. What’s different is our motivation: the desire to honour God and exalt the kingdom. What’s different is our aim: the edification of others in congregation or wider world. Paul insists that gifts of the Spirit are given “for the common good.” (1 Corinthians 12:7) Peter insists that gifts are to be deployed “for one another.” (1 Pet. 4:10)
Fruit and gifts are the result of the Spirit’s saturation of the man or woman whom the Spirit first convicted and convinced and brought to repentance and faith.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. On the day of Pentecost two millennia ago our Lord’s promise concerning the Spirit was fulfilled: “The Spirit will convince, convict, the world of sin and righteousness and judgement.” On the day of Pentecost itself Peter preached a sermon boring in the first half and antagonistic in the second. Many hearers, however, were neither bored nor antagonized. They were terrified and horrified in equal measure. They found relief as they embraced the risen Jesus Christ who in turn poured his Spirit upon them. And thereafter they were blessed with the fruit of the Spirit and were made a blessing to others through the gifts of the Spirit.
Pentecost is plainly every bit as important as Christmas and Easter. Indeed, Christmas and Easter, incarnation and vindication of the cross, exist for the sake of Pentecost. Then why aren’t the Christmas and Easter crowds here today?
Victor Shepherd
May2007
Friends and The Friend
John 15:1-16 2nd John 12 Proverbs 18:24
[1] Not so long ago a woman asked me what I have been doing for the 37 years of my ministry or what I have aimed at doing. I told her I have wanted, above all else, to probe intimacy for myself and to foster intimacy in others; that is, intimacy with God as well as intimacy with other people. This isn’t to say I’ve spent 37 years in “touchy-feely” mindlessness. But it is to say that however cerebral I may appear, the purpose of my cerebralism is never to leave hearers behind, let alone show off. My purpose is always to enlarge understanding so as to increase intimacy. The more God is understood, the more he can be loved; the more he is loved, the more he can be understood – whereupon understanding and intimacy interpenetrate each other and spiral up together, always taking us deeper into the heart of God. As much can be said for our life with each other.
All my life I’ve craved intimacy. But I haven’t craved it in vain, for I’ve never lacked it. To say I’ve never lacked it, however, doesn’t preclude my craving it still, for when our desire for intimacy is met we are satisfied, to be sure, yet never satiated. We are profoundly satisfied, but never surfeited. Years ago my old friend, Ronald Ward (Anglican clergyman, superb Greek scholar, and a man whose godliness is both my despair and my hope) pointed out to me that the apostle Paul longed for even greater intimacy with his Lord just because his life in Christ was already indescribably rich.
[2] Shortly before his death our Lord took his closest followers aside and told them, “No longer do I call you servants, for servants don’t know what their master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15) The customary Greek word for “servant” is diakonos. In the text just quoted, however, the word is doulos. Strictly speaking it means “slave.” “No longer do I call you servant-slaves, for slaves are never taken into their owner’s confidence.” Slaves, we know, merely do what they are told to do, without knowing why they have to do it or to what end. A servant-slave is merely a witless tool.
Not so with a friend. Our friend (as opposed to mere acquaintance) is someone with whom we share mind and heart. In the upper room, on the eve of his death, Jesus made known to the disciples what he knew of his Father. Earlier in his ministry he had cried out, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal the Father. Come to me, all who labour and are heavy-laden…and I will give you rest, restoration.” In the upper room the disciples, however labouring and heavy-laden to date, were shortly going to know a much greater labouring and load. And in the upper room Jesus rendered them his friends. Their new level of intimacy with him admitted them to a new knowledge of and engagement with the Father. This, of course, would sustain them in the difficult days ahead, and more than sustain them; it would be the occasion of their restoration.
[3] Since Jesus Christ is God incarnate, to be his friend is to be “friend of God.” In the older testament there are two men who are specifically named “friend of God”, Abraham and Moses.
[a] Abraham is the foreparent of all believers, the foreparent of all who put their trust in God. Their trust? How much trust? At the call of God Abraham left old securities and familiarities behind and ventured forth to the land to which God had appointed him. Abraham ventured everything on God, living in what could only strike onlookers as utmost insecurity, insecurity so utterly radical as to be utterly ridiculous. At the call of God Abraham went forth knowing nothing of his future except that his future held the God who had called him, had made a promise to him and had insisted that he would be Abraham’s unfailing friend as Abraham was now his.
Was Abraham’s trust tested? Many times, but never tested as it was the day the voice said to him, “Take your son, your only son….” You know the rest of the story, my favourite in the entire Hebrew bible. At the end, Abraham’s trust in God remained iron-fast even when the ground of that trust seemed to have disappeared. Abraham’s trust remained iron-fast even when the reason for his trust was undiscernible. Abraham’s trust remained iron-fast even when his obedience to the command of God (to sacrifice Isaac) undercut the promise of God (Isaac’s descendants would be as numberless as the sands of the seashore). Abraham’s trust remained iron-fast when, from a human perspective, there was no resolution of the contradiction. Abraham’s trust got him through anguish and incomprehension, got him through to the exclamation, only days later but no doubt aeons later to him, “Yahweh Yireh”, “the Lord will provide.”
[b] Moses too is named “friend of God.” Moses is the transmitter of the Torah, that “way” which gives shape and structure, integrity and identity to the obedience of God’s people. While shallow Christians misunderstand Torah as promoting legalism, the truth is that obedience rendered Torah is obedience the believer renders the person of the living God through the vehicle of the Torah. We must always remember that when Jesus tells his disciples in the upper room that they are henceforth his friends, he adds, “if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14)
Just as shallow Christians misunderstand Torah as promoting legalism when in fact it promotes righteousness, so they misunderstand Torah as promoting servitude when it promotes freedom. In fact, just because Torah claims Israel ’s obedience, it yields freedom. The mediaeval rabbis used to say, “When Torah entered the world, freedom entered the world.” Of course. To obey God is to be spared the servitude of sin; to obey God is to be freed to live in accord with our true nature; namely, as children of God. Didn’t Jesus, Torah Incarnate, say, “Those whom the Son sets free are free indeed”? (John 8:36)
[4] Like Abraham and Moses of old, like the disciples of Jesus in the days of his earthly ministry, we too are summoned to be “friend of God.” As soon as people in the era of our Lord’s public ministry heard “friend” three vivid pictures flashed in their imagination.
[a] The first had to do with “friend of the king.” In the courts of oriental kings “friends of the king” had access to the king at all times. “Friends of the king” were admitted to the king’s bedroom even at daybreak. In other words the king spoke with his “friends” before he began the day’s work, before he probed the day’s perplexities, before he troubled himself with all the trying things that trouble any ruler. The king gave his friends access to him before he spoke with generals about military campaigns, or spoke with statesmen about domestic strife, or spoke with ambassadors about foreign nations.
When Christ the king told his disciples that henceforth he would deem them “friends”, he was telling them that from this moment they would be granted an access to him and would know an intimacy with him that most profoundly identified their relationship with him before they went out to contend in his name with problems and perplexities, principalities and powers. To be Christ’s friend doesn’t mean merely that he makes us privy to the reason for the work he wants us to do (the slave, remember, doesn’t know the reason for anything); to be Christ’s friend means he grants us access to him and intimacy with him before we are conscripted to do anything. Intimacy with a friend, after all, is an end in itself. It’s not a means to getting something done. The fusion of two friends and their unimpeded interpenetration of each other is so very glorious as to need no justification beyond itself.
[b] “Friend” had yet another meaning in the ancient world. “Friends of Caesar” were soldiers who had proven themselves undeflectably loyal. And how had they proven themselves loyal? They had remained steadfast throughout assaults, hardship, suffering. They hadn’t deserted or revolted or sought another leader or even complained when battle campaigns with Caesar had found them afflicted, had even found them in such pain that only the danger they were in could distract them. The “friends” of Caesar counted it such an honour to soldier with Caesar that no campaign was too arduous and no adversity too wearing.
However put off church people may be today by military images, the fact is there are many references to them in scripture, including Paul’s advice to Timothy, “Put up with your share of hardship in Christ’s army.” (2 Timothy 2: 3) (JBP)
[c] In Jewish circles “friend” had a third meaning. A man’s “friend” was the best man at his wedding. Plainly the best man is intimate with the groom. But not intimate only; the best man assists the groom and is a witness on the groom’s behalf.
Now here the imagery borrowed from weddings becomes somewhat complicated. Scripture speaks of the church as the bride of Christ. We must understand, of course, that it’s the church collectively that is “bride of Christ.” Individual Christians, on the other hand, are declared to be Christ’s “friend” or his “best man”. Collectively, all Christians of both genders constitute Christ’s bride; individually, all Christians of either gender are his “best man.” Each one of us is invited and appointed to assist him in his work and bear witness to him in his truth.
Does our Lord need our assistance? Either his friends do what he insists needs to be done on earth or it doesn’t get done at all. (Remember Augustine: “Without him we cannot; without us he will not.”) As for bearing witness to the truth, we should all be aware by now that the vocation of witness looms so very large in scripture just because, at the end of the day, we can and ever must bear witness to the truth when we have long been unable to argue people into the truth.
[5] At the beginning of the sermon I said that for 37 years I have been concerned with fostering intimacy with God and intimacy with our fellows as well. I’m convinced that intimacy with our fellows is as rare as intimacy with God. What passes too often for human friendship is unreal. What passes for friendship is a compound of superficial camaraderie and companionship of convenience, plus subtle exploitation of usefulness. What passes for friendship should be but too often isn’t a meeting with another person so deep that all attempts at controlling are foresworn and all attempts at profiting are renounced.
Genuine friendship is meeting someone where the person (not merely the appearance or the usefulness) of the other becomes known. And what is it to know another person? Here I must mention once more the Jewish thinker I’ve mentioned many times from this pulpit, Martin Buber. Reflecting the logic of scripture Buber correctly expounds, “What we know of another person is the difference that person has made to us, the alteration which that person has effected in us.” What I know of my friend is simply the change that has occurred in me in the course of the relationship. [What I know of you is the difference that meeting you has made in me. What you know of me is the difference that meeting me has made in you.]
With respect to our human friendships I’ve long recognised the need for physical proximity. I’ve long been moved at the conclusion of two of the shortest books of the bible, John’s 2nd and 3rd epistles. He says, “Though I have much to write you, I would rather not use paper and ink, but I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” There is simply no substitute for seeing others face to face. No paper trail, no fax, no telephone call, no e-mail comes close to seeing each other face to face.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer first drew my attention to the concluding verses of 2nd and 3rd John. In his book, Life Together, Bonhoeffer pointed out that Christians find immense joy in each other’s physical presence. Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together during his time as leader in an underground seminary in Finkenwalde. The Nazis were in power throughout Germany . The gospel had been sabotaged in the national church, the state church. There were 18,000 pastors in the national church; there were only a few score in the confessing church. The confessing church was struggling to find pastors whom it could trust to announce the gospel of Jesus Christ instead of a religionised version of the ascendant ideology. The confessing church became smaller every day as the penalties for supporting it increased. He prepared pastors for the confessing church when those pastors knew they faced betrayal and arrest and horrors they couldn’t imagine. And in this context Bonhoeffer insisted that the physical presence of fellow-Christians brings a joy that can’t be brought any other way.
Nothing in my life comes close to the trials of a pastor in the confessing church in Nazi Germany. Nonetheless there have been developments in my life, including my life as a minister of the church, when I have needed to see a friend face to face as I needed nothing else. And in the providence of God, such a friend has been available.
When I say I have spent years probing intimacy I wouldn’t want anyone to think it’s risk free. To be sure, it’s risk free with respect to God, but not with respect to the human “other.” Yes, I have been blessed beyond telling in my friends. I have also had friends with whom I had been so deep and had forged such a bond that I assumed the friendship would remain as resilient as spring steel; I have had such friends disappear on me in a way that I can’t understand yet and now know that I never shall. Painful as it is, and no less painful for being ununderstandable, I’m not crushed by it. For he who does all things well has not only never left me without his comfort and consolation; he has also never left me without that human comfort and consolation whose arms are the vehicle of the everlasting arms. (Deuteronomy 33:27) In it all I have never wavered in my conviction: Martin Buber was both correct and profound when he wrote fifty years ago, “All real living is meeting.”
Let’s gather together all that I’ve attempted to say this morning: By God’s grace and the faith his grace has wrought in us:
We’ve been admitted to the innermost mind and heart of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
We are one with Abraham in that we venture all on God; one with Moses in that we rejoice to obey him who has redeemed us.
We have access to the king of kings at all times and in all circumstances.
We aspire to be found undeflectably loyal.
Our Lord has honoured us by naming us “best man” (“woman”) as he calls us to assist him in
his work and bear witness to him in his truth.
It all adds up to joy in the master and love for each other. (John 15:1-16) For while we are
blessed with friends and aspire to be friends, he is that friend who will ever stick closer than one’s nearest kin. (Proverbs 18:24)
Victor Shepherd
July 2007
The Holy Spirit: Floodlight To Christ
John 16:14
Few people are more obnoxious than those who keep talking about themselves. Regardless of what is being discussed, the self-advertising “blowers” insert themselves. They have out-travelled even the tour-guide, out-achieved the genuinely accomplished, out-lived the most vivacious. Their attraction-grabbing neuroticism is as incessant as it is offensive.
Not so the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is that person of the Trinity who is the opposite of all this. Jesus maintained that the Spirit would glorify him. (John 16:14) Scripture insists that the Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son, never in the Spirit’s own name. In other words, the Spirit is a floodlight. Floodlights are positioned in such a way that one does not see the floodlight itself, only that which it lights up and to which it therefore directs attention. The Holy Spirit is the power of God within us and among us, turning our attention to Jesus Christ at the same time as it binds our hearts to his. (Any “spirit” which draws attention to itself is plainly not the Holy Spirit.)
Early-day Christians knew that the Spirit cemented their relationship with their Lord and invigorated them for a discipleship which was always rigorous and frequently dangerous. They could continue in their crossbearing — never mind thrive in it — only as the Spirit in them proved stronger than the pressure of the forces arrayed against them.
And whereas the world always thinks that effectiveness is the result of strong-arm coercion, Christians know that effectiveness in matters of the kingdom occurs as the Spirit honours the self-forgetful servanthood found first in the Vulnerable One himself. When even the religious world is shouting or suggesting that God’s strength is made perfect in the strength of his people, Christians know that God’s strength is made perfect in their weakness.(2 Corinthians 12:9) For this reason the apostle glories in his weakness (the world always boasts of its strength), for it is weakness only which God can use. (What, after all, is weaker than a humiliated representative of that people which the world has always despised dying the death of a felon, abandoned together with the city’s refuse?)
Whenever the church has forgotten the unique ministry of the Spirit, the church has ceased to serve and begun to tyrannize, even persecute. The church’s responsibility is always and only, in word and deed, to bear witness to Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility (i.e., God’s responsibility) to honour and empower such testimony in bringing people to faith in and obedience to the Incarnate One himself. In a word, witness is the church’s responsibility while conversion is the Spirit’s. Whenever the church loses sight of this and thinks that it is the church’s responsibility to convert, the church advertises its unbelief as it loses patience with God and bludgeons those who resist its message. To believe in the Spirit is to believe that God keeps the promises he makes concerning the effectiveness he will ultimately lend our witness.
Since Christians inhabit the same world that proved hostile to their Lord, it is the Spirit — and only the Spirit — who can render Christians joyful in the midst of circumstances which foster misery. “You received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit”, says the apostle to those whose joy in the midst of distress was the Spirit’s “secret”.(1 Thessalonians 1:6) But of course in the midst of the “brainwashing” of a pagan environment the Christians in Thessalonica had found the gospel credible — even self-authenticating as the truth — only because the Spirit had surged over them and disarmed the rebel citadel of their Christless hearts. “For our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.”(1 Thessalonians 1:5)
Those who become sons and daughters of God by adoption (only Jesus is son by nature) are granted access to all the resources of their new parent. One of the ever-needed riches is assurance that they are a child of God whom the Father will cherish eternally. And just as a happy person can’t help smiling nor a perplexed person frowning nor an excited person trembling, so the new heir to the Father’s riches can’t help crying out, “Abba! Father!” Assurance is pressed upon her that she is now and will ever be that daughter whose place in the family of God is secured. The cry welling up out of her heart, says Paul, is “the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…”.(Romans 8:15)
Everywhere in scripture the Holy Spirit is evidently associated with Christian experience. Early-day Christians knew that life in the company of the living, ascended One was more than intellectual apprehension (the onesidedness of those who magnify doctrine above all else), and more than lifeless legalism (the pitfall of those who magnify duty above all else). It was “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”(Romans 14:17) There was a stomach-grabbing immediacy to their life in Christ which is the common experience of those who cling to the same Lord. When the Christians in Galatia were in danger of giving up a discipleship which was gospel-fired and Spirit- infused for a dreary, self-justifying moralism, Paul needed to put but one question to them: “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”(Galatians 3:2) His reference to the Spirit called their attention to an aspect of their experience so vivid, so horizon-filling, so unmistakable as to be undeniable. It’s as though he had said, “That raging headache you have: Did you get it through too much coffee or through a blow to the head?” No one with a raging headache can pretend — or wants to pretend — that he doesn’t have a headache. No one possessed of the Spirit can pretend — or wants to pretend — that she isn’t possessed of a throbbing reality which became hers (she knows) only as she heard the gospel with faith.
Needless to say, it is the Holy Spirit’s penetration of us now which quickens our hunger for the final, full flowering of God’s work in us on the Great Day. Since the primary fruit of the Spirit is love, the Spirit-birthed love which seeps out of us now longs for that Day when love and nothing but love will pour out of us in self-forgetful self-giving. Since the same Spirit which floodlights Jesus Christ also floodlights our adoration of him, we find ourselves longing for that Day when we are finally and fully “lost in wonder, love and praise.” Since the Spirit is so intimately associated with gifts for ministry, we eagerly anticipate the day when the church, that “royal priesthood”, will serve God without self-consideration.
The New Testament speaks of the Spirit as an “arrabon”, a pledge. In modern Greek “arrabon” is a woman’s engagement ring. Delighted as she is now, she knows that something better, something to be consummated, awaits her. The Christian, moved by God’s Spirit now, knows that the Spirit is but the promise and pledge of something so grand as to leave God’s people filled so as never more to hunger.
O “floodlight” the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.
Psalm 34:3
Victor Shepherd
A Note On Cheerfulness
John 16:33 Romans 12:8
Cheerfulness. Is it an emotional high like excitement, frenzy? Or is it an act of the will like determination, resolve? Emotional highs we may have from time to time but we shouldn’t expect to have them most of the time. After all, no one can live at a constant, emotional high. On the other hand, if being cheerful is an act of the will, an intensified act of the will (like determination), then we may have it from time to time but we shouldn’t expect to have it most of the time. After all, no one can live at a constant intensity of will. The truth is, cheerfulness is neither an unusual emotional high nor an unusual intensity of will. Cheerfulness is a settled disposition. Cheerfulness is a settled outlook on life and settled input into life. Of course we have bad days, and will continue to have them. Nonetheless, it’s the settled disposition that counts. It’s the backdrop against which our life is lived. Cheerfulness is the atmosphere we live out of ourselves and the atmosphere we breathe out on other people.
Cheerfulness is crucial. We have to be cheerful if we are going to be life-affirming. Mental health experts tell us that the major symptom of low-grade depression isn’t feeling sad. (Many depressed people don’t feel sad.) The major symptom of low-grade depression is what psychiatrists call “psycho-motor retardation”, or what we’d more commonly “dragginess”. Someone tells us he doesn’t have any energy, can’t seem to get going, can’t seem to get interested, is always weary — because he had the ‘flu five times last winter. But nobody gets the ‘flu five times per winter. He’s not ‘flu-ridden; he’s depressed. Without cheerfulness we can’t be life-affirming.
You must have noticed that cheerless people are an emotional dead weight. They strike us as being dead but somehow unable to fall over. Not only are they emotionally inert themselves, they are an emotional drain on others. If we are around cheerless people for any time at all we feel our own vitality being bled away. Soon everyone is left feeling anaemic. The cheerless person debilitates. Then plainly cheerfulness is important. Scripture mentions it again and again. It’s obviously part and parcel of the Christian life.
I: — But why would anyone be cheerful, then or now? We read the newspaper, contemplate world-occurrence, ponder our own struggles — and we aren’t moved to much cheerfulness. The truth is, no apostle ever pretended that we are made cheerful by looking around us. When the apostles looked out around them they saw an army of occupation. They saw grinding poverty. They saw betrayal at the hands of political leaders and religious leaders alike. They saw unfairness, disease, suffering, and untimely death.
Martin Luther maintained that when the Christian looks out upon the world what she sees contradicts the gospel, contradicts the truth that God loves each one of us more than he loves himself. (Didn’t he give up his Son for us?) Yet Luther was anything but cheerless. Luther, you see, distinguished carefully between eye and ear. What we all see with the eye contradicts what “hear” with the “ear” (i.e., hear with the ear of the heart.) What we hear – the gospel – persuades us of God’s truth: we are loved in a way that world-occurrence can never confirm but can only deny.
Luther then, and the apostles first, insist that all disciples of Jesus Christ may and must be cheerful. They insist as well that such cheerfulness isn’t rooted in what’s going on around them; rather it is rooted in the call they have heard, in the response they have made to that call, and in the reception their response has been accorded.
(i) Call Blind Bartimaeus isn’t merely one blind man. Blind Bartimaeus is included in the gospel story because he’s every man and every woman. One day Bartimaeus is sitting around in his customary semi-depressed dragginess – perfectly understandable, in view of the fact that he’s blind — when a neighbour says, “Be of good cheer. Jesus is calling you”.
(ii) Response A woman who has suffered from an embarrassing complaint lasting twelve years one day finds herself adjacent to Jesus. She responds to his tacit invitation by reaching out and touching him. As she responds he says to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer. Your faith has made you well”.
(iii) Reception A son comes home to his waiting father, Jesus tell us in that parable which everyone knows, and the reception the son receives is a reception he never expected. His father doesn’t listlessly pussyfoot around, “Well, son, we had better wait and see. For now, you’re on probation”. Instead the father exclaims four times over in a few verses, “Let’s make merry.”
The ground of our cheerfulness is never what’s going on around us. The ground of our cheerfulness is something else. It’s the call — to live in the company of Jesus Christ. It’s the response his call has freed us to make. It’s the reception our response has been accorded. This is where our cheerfulness is rooted. His call has quickened our response; and our response has met with a reception characterized by merriment. Now we know why and how we can be cheerful.
II — But cheerfulness doesn’t mean much when we are hassle-free or relaxing in the bathtub. Cheerfulness does mean a great deal, however, when we are being harassed. Knowing this, Jesus said something profound when he looked his followers in the eye and said, “In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
It’s easy to believe the first half of our Lord’s pronouncement: “In the world you will have tribulation.” Tribulation? Difficulty? Affliction? We can’t get away from it. When I was very young and my mother was feeling overwhelmed she would sigh heavily and remark, “There’s always something.” Yes there is. And the fact that there is “always something” puts the acid test to our cheerfulness. It’s easy to believe the first half of Christ’s pronouncement “in the world you will have tribulation”. What does the world offer besides tribulation?
Our Lord found it easy to believe this concerning himself. His parents didn’t understand him. His mother found him to be an embarrassment. His brothers and sisters thought him deranged. His disciples disappointed him. (One betrayed him, while the others forsook him.) Church authorities molested him. The crowds turned on him. The shadow of the cross fell upon him, as John Calvin reminds, throughout his life, at all times and in all circumstances.
Like him, you and I meet with resistance; we meet with a resistance which afflicts us as soon as we attempt to accomplish anything worthwhile, to do anything of real human help and healing. We feel like a hockey player who is trying to score: the closer he gets to the goal, the greater the resistance he meets. The closer he gets to the goal, the greater the hammering he takes from opponents. The hockey player who parks himself in front of the goal where he can deflect the puck for a sure score takes a terrific beating. (Look for it the next time you see a game “live”.) When he’s a hundred feet from the goal nobody’s bothering him. But where he is likely to score he is hammered incessantly.
In life we shall be harassed very little as long as we have a “don’t care” attitude, as long as we “go with the flow”, not caring where we drift. But as soon as we take a stand; as soon as we aspire after something worthwhile and pursue it; as soon as we attempt to move towards a goal we meet resistance. If you exercise any leadership or responsibility at work, at church, in a school, a service club, an organization of any sort, you will survive longest, and survive longest scar-free, by doing nothing, planning nothing, saying nothing, being nothing — just drifting. But as soon as you recognize the goal and begin moving yourself and others toward it, the hammering starts. Now you have to contend with the dead weight of the lethargic ones; as well as with the jealousy of those who envy your leadership; as well as with the hostility of those who resent your visibility. As soon as you attempt to do anything of genuine kingdom significance you learn a great deal about tribulation. If Jesus had merely sawn a few boards and patted a few children on the back of the head he too would have been hassle-free. But instead he says and does what he knows he must be about. At the same time as he asks as much from you and me he states, “In the world you are going to have tribulation”. Does he need to remind us?
Certainly he needs to remind us of the second half: Nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world”. Even as we are resisted and harassed we can be cheerful, and we must be — for our Lord has overcome everything which harasses us, and he now shares his triumph with us.
“Be of good cheer.” Is it a pipedream? Romantic exaggeration? Or is he pressing something genuine upon us, something which will be hidden from most people but known to us in our innermost heart and confirmed in our day-to-day experience? There is only one way to find out. We have to immerse ourselves in those situations where we are hassled. In looking to him there, and stepping forward with him there, we shall be surprised by our very good cheer, for he does include us in his overcoming of our world.
During the last war military fliers were instructed in the technical details of their parachute. No doubt the flier understood adequately the words which described how parachutes function. But one day he would find himself in the midst of a “tribulation” when he had to move beyond understanding the instructions and step out into thin air, seemingly. The test was upon him; namely, was he going to trust that his parachute was as effective as the manufacturer had said it was — or was he going to perish?
“Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”, says our Lord. When we are harassed the test is upon us. Now we have to step out, step forward, entrusting ourselves to him whose promise we have understood up to this point, but whose promise we now have occasion to prove. And like the flier, we shall find that we are gently saved. We shall find ourselves marvelling at the good cheer which has stolen upon us. We shall confirm our Lord’s promise in our own experience: he has overcome the world, and we can be of good cheer. Therefore we shall persist in doing what we know we should be doing.
II:(ii) — Cheerfulness is necessary for a second reason. Cheerfulness is necessary if that kingdom-good we endeavour to do is going to be life-giving, profoundly life-imparting, life-enhancing, humanly upbuilding. Imagine someone standing at your door one evening. He has a face as long as a horse’s. He tells you, miserably, that he is collecting on behalf of the Canadian Diabetic Association, or the Heart and Stroke Foundation. It’s obvious that he would rather be doing something else. But he has “virtuously” given up an evening to go out and “do good”. One look at his horse-length face and you would say, “Brother, the diabetics don’t need you ”. Of course the fellow can pick up a few dollars in the short run. But in the long run what real, human helpfulness and healing is going to come out of a cheerless do-goodism? Now you understand why Paul writes to the Roman Christians, “If you are doing acts of mercy, be sure to do them cheerfully.” A cheerless act of mercy may appear merciful, but the very cheerlessness of it contradicts the appearance and makes it — an “act of mercy” — an act of cruelty.
In his letter to the church in Corinth Paul writes, “God loves a cheerful giver”. Shouldn’t God be pleased with having us givers, whether cheerful or not? But the apostle is correct in insisting that where the giver isn’t cheerful there’s no gift given at all., The “gift”, so-called, is then merely a compulsiveness arising from a psychological quirk or social conformity arising from social embarrassment. Insofar as the “gift” is generated by psychological quirk or social embarrassment it isn’t properly gift at all. How many times have we received — or watched others receive — something that was given grudgingly? The grudging spirit turned the gift (so-called) into a millstone; it turned the occasion of helpfulness into an occasion of torment and humiliation. We’d all rather be left alone — whatever our need – than be “helped” grudgingly. Cheerfulness saves help from being a humiliation even as it saves comfort from being cruelty-in-disguise.
When Paul writes, “God loves a cheerful giver” the Greek word he uses for cheerful is HILAROS. It means a joyful readiness that is eager and prompt to do something. The Greek word HILAROS gives us the English word “hilarity” and “hilarity” suggests a party atmosphere. Cheerfulness is necessary if what we do is really going to contribute to the healing of minds and spirits. Without cheerfulness we have only a do-goodism that is humanly demeaning and is resented by those who are supposed to benefit from it. But with cheerfulness we have an act of mercy that can raise the dead.
We began today by noting that the cheerless person leaves us all feeling drained. We noted too that the cheerfulness of Christians isn’t rooted in our surroundings but is rooted rather in Christ’s winsome call to us, our self-abandoning response to him, and the joyous reception he accords our response. Rooted in this cheerfulness we shall find our Lord’s word confirmed in us as he tells us again and again to be of good cheer just because he has overcome our turbulent world. And we shall know with the apostle that what is offered to God and given to our neighbour our hilarious cheerfulness renders a life-bestowing act of mercy.
Victor Shepherd
July 2005
What is it to Know God?
John 17:3
Every three or four years a city somewhere in the world hosts an international conference on pain: pain-management, pain-control, pain-alleviation. Plainly there are many experts at these conferences who know ever so much about pain, about neural mechanisms, about analgesics. Nevertheless, the experts who read the learned papers are plainly not in pain themselves; not in pain so severe that they can’t concentrate or eat or sleep. While they know ever so much about pain, then, in a profounder sense they don’t know pain. To know in this profounder sense is qualitatively different from gathering up all the information available; to know in this profounder sense is to be personally acquainted, intimately acquainted, with pain itself.When scripture speaks of knowing hunger it doesn’t mean that someone is an expert on malnutrition; it means that someone is herself intimately acquainted with hunger. To know grief isn’t to take a course in the psychology of bereavement; it’s to be grief-stricken oneself.When prophet and apostle speak of knowing God, then, they are speaking of intimate acquaintance with the living God. Such engagement is what the bible means by “faith”. Faith, in scripture, isn’t something we exercise in the absence of knowing; faith isn’t an alternative to knowing. Faith is knowledge; faith is that knowing which corresponds to faith’s author and object, God. Encounter with God, engagement with God, the interpenetration of God’s life and our life; all of this adds up to the knowledge of God.
Today we are going to look at four aspects of our knowledge of God: gratitude, love, trust and obedience.
I: — First, gratitude. Oblivious to anyone else, a woman stumbles up to Jesus, pours over his feet a bottle of perfume whose price amounted to a year’s wages, wipes his feet with her hair and kisses them repeatedly. The disciples are bug-eyed: the cost of the perfume. They remark that there has to be a better use for this much money. I think too that the disciples are startled for another reason: what the woman is doing is in appallingly bad taste. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist (a Christian too), casually remarked to me one day that what the woman did was highly erotic. The disciples had to know it was. They lived in a culture where a man didn’t so much as speak to a woman in public, not even to his wife. And here is this tasteless woman pouring out what advertising industry always associates with eroticism at the same time as she does what is unquestionably erotic. And, as my psychiatrist-friend pointed out to me, Jesus let’s her do it.
The disciples object. Jesus replies, “You fellows can’t understand; your arid hearts have never swelled to bursting with the gratitude that has burst this woman’s heart.”
Through meeting the master the woman has found someone who has pardoned her, set her on her feet, sent her on her way with a new vision and a new hope and a new song. She has a new future (in fact she now has the only “future” worthy of the name — venture with Jesus Christ); and of course she has a new friend. However wasteful her poured-out perfume might appear; however erotic her foot-kissing/wiping might seem; what matters above all is that gratitude spills out of her and expresses itself in whatever ways it can find expression regardless of the incomprehension of the heart-shrivelled.
If you or I were convicted of a capital offence and sentenced to death; and if by the mercy of the judge we were pardoned, our first response would not be a diligent study of the penal system; our first response would not be a psychological analysis of the judge who has just pardoned us. Our uncontrived, spontaneous response would be gratitude. And if we stumbled up to the judge’s desk and slobbered all over it as we couldn’t find words for what our hearts wanted to cry out, we wouldn’t care if spectators sitting at the back of the courtroom smirked at our loss of emotional control.
Isn’t this our situation before God? The event that fills the horizon of all biblical thought is the event of the cross. The apostle Paul declares that he has but one sermon in his filing cabinet: Jesus Christ crucified. The cross embodies two unalterable truths: God’s judgement and God’s mercy. In the light of the cross we are brought up short to know we have to do with the just judge who has secured a conviction against us — even as we are brought up short to find ourselves pardoned. The woman with the perfume knew what nobody around her appeared to know.
We live in an age that is shallow in many respects. Our age has no grasp of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of the human heart; no grasp of God’s righteous wrath and his uncompromisable condemnation; and therefore our age has little wonder at the provision God has made for us who deserve anything but mercy. Our age is shallow in yet another respect: we have forgotten what it is to be grateful. We expect so much; we think we have a right to so much; we claim so much; we presume so much; we have such an enormous sense of entitlement. Nothing surprises us as gift; and therefore nothing impels us to gratitude.
It wasn’t always thus. Some of our foreparents knew better, such as our foreparents in faith who cherished the Heidelberg Catechism. You have often heard me say that the Heidelberg Catechism (written in 1563) is the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings. Part I of the HC is titled, “the Misery of Humankind”; Part II, “The Redemption of Humankind”; Part III (by far the largest part), “Thankfulness”. That’s all: “Thankfulness”. Part III of the HC discusses the whole of the Christian life; all of it. Our discipleship in its entirety is rooted in gratitude and motivated by gratitude and directed by gratitude.
You and I have no claim on God’s mercy. Yet so crucial is this mercy that the Apostles’ Creed gathers up the totality of our blessing at God’s hand in one brief expression, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Gratitude will always remain a vital aspect of our knowledge of God.
II: — Another aspect is love. Enduring love for God. Gratitude will remain gratitude only if love fuels it; otherwise gratitude, however large-looming at the moment, will gradually evaporate until gratitude is little more than a word and a memory. However grateful we might be to the person who gets our car going on the highway after it has stopped we don’t maintain any relationship at all with our benefactor; we thank him – genuinely — and wave him good-bye. Just because God isn’t to be thanked and then waved away, gratitude must always be supplemented by love.
This is not to say that we are supposed to “work up” love for God; we aren’t supposed to fish around inside ourselves until we have generated a peculiar affect. But it is to say that we shall love God as we are overtaken again, and overwhelmed yet again, at the love wherewith God loves us. The apostle John writes, “Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he first loved us.” The emphasis is on “first”. Our love can only be second; it can only be a response; it can only be an answering love. But it must be this.
Few things are more pathetic than the sight of someone trying to generate love for someone else who doesn’t love her. At first she feels she doesn’t have to generate love for someone else; she simply loves him spontaneously. Sooner or later, however, it’s an effort, as secret doubts and unspoken misgivings and sheer fatigue all take their toll. Eventually she admits she doesn’t have it in her to work up love for someone who is affectively inert. At this point her marriage is dead, she knows it, and the rest is commentary.
Because God loves us ceaselessly his love quickens in us an answering love for him. Yes, the command to love God is a command, and people who say, “But that’s impossible, since love can’t be commanded”; people who speak like this speak too soon, for they haven’t understood that love can be commanded in the sense that we are to set our hearts only on him who has set his heart on us eternally. And what’s more, God commands us to love him only as his love for us ignites our love for him.
As part of the Easter event the risen Jesus confronted Peter in front of the other disciples and asked, “Peter, do you love me?” We had better not pretend that the question wasn’t “loaded”; it was. Earlier Peter had insisted that he would never deny his master; only the spiritually feeble would do such a thing. Besides, Peter had declared still earlier in the earthly ministry of Jesus that he had left everything to follow him. And then all it took was a fifteen-year-old girl saying in front of street-wise loiterers, “Your accent is odd; you come from Galilee too; you must be one of his followers.” Peter spews vulgarity after vulgarity as he lies through his teeth that he has never so much as seen the Nazarene before. Then the question three times over, once for each courtyard denial, “Do you love me?” — and the answer three times over, barely croaked out in view of Peter’s distress, “You know that I love you”. Distress? Yes. It’s always distressing to be loved still by the very person we have failed and betrayed. Yet the love that distresses us in such circumstances; this love alone can quicken and maintain the profoundest answering love in us.
We are Christ-deniers. Every day, in a dozen different ways, we deny the One who is life to us and to whom we have professed loyalty. And all our Lord does in the midst of our denying him is to laser his love into our treacherous hearts so that we can find ourselves saying honestly, however distressingly, “You know that I love you.”
III: — The third aspect of our knowledge of God is trust: trust in the midst of darkness, of pain, of confusion, of sheer incomprehension. A few centuries ago Christians used to speak of “the dark night of the soul.” By this expression they were not referring to that spiritual “chill” which comes upon us when we sin and persist in sin and disguise our sin and excuse our sin. There is nothing incomprehensible about spiritual chill arising from spiritual self-destruction. “The dark night of the soul” refers rather to those periods in any Christian’s life when we feel so bereft of God, so God-forsaken, we couldn’t feel more orphaned. Medieval Christians distinguished such “desolation” from depression. Depression is a psychological condition; desolation, a spiritual condition.
In addition to spiritual desolation where we unaccountably feel ourselves “orphaned”, as it were, for protracted periods, there are also those periods when God seems eclipsed by the crushing misfortune that falls on some people.
Paul was familiar with the latter. At the beginning of his second Corinthian letter he writes, “Brothers, we don’t want you to be ignorant of the affliction we experienced in Asia . We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt we had received the sentence of death.”
What are we going to do when either crushing misfortune or spiritual desolation overtakes us? We are going to trust; we are going to trust that the love we cannot feel is yet a love that has never been revoked; we are going to trust that the providence which is currently opaque will one day be made gloriously translucent. Paul tells us that as a result of the crushing affliction in Asia (we are never told what it was) he could only trust the God who raises the dead. Yes. The God we are to trust has already proven himself trustworthy by keeping his promise to us in the resurrection of his son. Since we know him to have borne his son through the son’s affliction, we can trust him to bear us through ours as well.
IV: — The final aspect of our knowledge of God is obedience. John writes in his first epistle, “We may be sure that we know him if we keep his commandments.”
To speak of obedience is not to suggest that God is like a prison-camp commandant, whip in hand, with everything in his heart except benevolence for us, insisting that we conform “or else.” On the contrary, since God wills only our good there can be genuine obedience to him only if our obedience is glad, eager, willing, joyful. Having told us that to know God, and to know that we know God, is to obey him (“keep his commandments”), John adds, “and his commandments are not burdensome.” (I John 5:3)
Jesus said it all when he told his hearers, “Take my yoke upon you.” Yoke, the collar by which oxen pulled a load, is the everyday Hebrew metaphor for obedience. “Take obedience of me upon you”, Jesus means, and then adds, “My yoke is easy; my burden is light.”
Several things need to be said here. Christ’s yoke is easy; his burden is light. Other burdens — the “baggage” we saddle ourselves with as a result of our folly and our sin — other burdens are heavy. Other yokes — the false gods and foolish causes to which we harness ourselves — these yokes only chafe and irritate until we are rubbed raw and infected as well.
But Christ’s yoke is easy. Since our Lord apprenticed in a carpenter shop he made ox-yokes every day. He knew that if the yoke fit well, the ox could pull the heaviest load with maximum efficiency and minimum discomfort; but if the yoke fit badly, at best the animal suffered, and at worst it strangled.
There are two truths we must preserve about Christ’s yoke. One, his yoke is easy; two it is a yoke. Obedience ever remains an essential aspect of faith; keeping the commandments of God in the spirit of obeying the living person of God; this ever remains an ingredient in our knowledge of God. To know God, then, is to honour the shape, the direction, the orientation that God ordains for human existence. To know God is to relish the discipline of discipleship, certain that anything else issues ultimately in spiritual suffocation.
As I moved through the requirements of my doctoral program I was sent to Professor Jakob Jocz ( University of Toronto ) for an oral examination. Jakob Jocz was a third-generation Hebrew Christian. He was a delightful man, wise, profound, spiritually alert. Jocz had suffered much in his life. Decades earlier he and his wife had gone from Poland to England where he had delivered a set of lectures in a British university while his wife had delivered a baby in a British hospital. While the Joczs were in England Germany invaded Poland . Since Jocz was Jewish by birth, he never returned. He and his wife walked away from everything they owned. As my oral examination with him drew to a close I knew that I had triumphed; I didn’t need to wait for his evaluation; I knew I had “nailed” the thing magnificently. He dismissed me and sent me on my way. Then he called me back. I think he had discerned a hint (more than a hint) of smugness and arrogance and triumphalism in me. He called me back and said very soberly, “Mr. Shepherd, you have done well in the examination. But remember: theology, important as it is, remains an abstraction. What really counts is the shape of a man’s life.” I have remembered: what really counts is the shape of a person’s life.
To be sure, our Lord’s yoke is easy; easy as it is, however, it is still a yoke we must put on. For not to obey God is simply not to know him at all.
The prophet Hosea lamented that his people were destroyed for lack of knowledge of God. There is no need for this. God invites us at all times and in all circumstances to that knowledge of him which is life. To know him is to thank him, love him, trust him, obey him.
John had it right when he wrote that eternal life is nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, than knowing “…thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)
Victor Shepherd
January 2006
The World and Worldliness
John 3:16; 15:18; 16:33; 17:251 John 5:19; 4:1; 3:1; 4:9; 2:15; 3:14; 5:4-5
1] How would you people react if I announced publicly that I had syphilis or gonorrhoea? Would you say to each other, “What a wonderfully honest pastor we have!”? Would you go even farther and say, “This man is a social hero! He has demonstrated extraordinary bravery!” I trust you would say nothing of the sort.
Several months ago Magic Johnson, a basketball star with the Los Angeles Lakers, called a press conference and told everyone he could that he had tested positive for the AIDS virus. Immediately he was acclaimed a hero. His physician, present at the televised press conference, insisted that Mr. Johnson had performed a feat of unusual bravery.
Next day the Johnson story eclipsed all other sports news in the Toronto newspapers. The newspapers extolled Johnson’s courage as though he had singlehandedly rescued a dozen sleeping children from a burning orphanage. One writer turned the entire episode into a melodramatic discussion of God’s inscrutable way of dealing with life. “There is one question which haunts all of us in this matter”, he intoned solemnly, “one question which urges itself upon us, a question to which there is likely no answer: WHY? WHY MAGIC?” I almost laughed. The writer was plainly of the opinion that Magic Johnson had been singled out unfairly, an arbitrary victim of the cosmic fates. But while I almost laughed I didn’t laugh, for the simple reason that the sportswriter’s mindset — ridiculous and silly and childish, I thought — the world at large regarded as sensible, reasonable, fair and just. Something that I have known in my heart for decades was confirmed once more: the way my mind works and the way the world’s mind works have virtually nothing in common.
As this development was written up day after day I noticed that nowhere was there even a hint that what Magic Johnson had been up to was wrong. On the contrary, it was everywhere suggested that he was an innocent victim of extraordinary bad luck. Because there was no suggestion of anything wrong neither was there any suggestion that repentance might be in order. By now the Johnson event had become for me a living illustration of what scripture means by “the world”; how the world thinks, what it espouses, what it pursues, how it reacts — a living illustration too of how everything about the world contradicts the truth of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
Next, right after the press conference, professional basketball games began with an athlete or coach leading 16,000 fans in prayer. I thought this odd; after all, 16,000 basketball fans don’t bow their heads before a game on account of a floorful of infants dying in the leukaemia ward of a children’s hospital. Actually, I found it more than odd; I found it blasphemous to invoke God in this situation. Don’t these people know that to invoke God is always to invoke the Judge? Not the Judge only, but the Judge certainly. Don’t these people know that to invoke God is to invoke One who is not deflected by gospel-less sentimentality ? Don’t they know that to invoke God is to invoke the holy One himself, all of him, his truth, his claim, his resistance to our disobedience? Don’t they know that to wave off that way, truth and life which add up to God’s blessing is to guarantee curse? Through the prophet Isaiah God declares, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” We ought never to invoke God on the assumption that our thoughts are his thoughts and his ways our ways.
While all the crocodile tears were being shed for Magic (let me say right now that tears should be shed for Magic; after all, Jesus wept over impenitent people who were headed for irretrievable loss); while tears were being shed for Magic not one mention was made of the countless women whom Mr. Johnson as undoubtedly infected with the AIDS virus. Not that these women are guiltless themselves; nevertheless, the silence concerning them suggests that Mr. Johnson is not guilty at all. And then to invoke God on the piled up sin and treachery at the same time that all of this is applauded and the chief perpetrator adulated? When Jesus says that the world lies in the grip of the evil one he cannot be thought to be exaggerating.
One feature of the entire episode which leapt out at me was the absence of shame. No one connected with the incident, and no one commenting on it, suggested for a minute that shame was in order. Myself, I have long pitied the person with no sense of shame, since the person with no sense of shame at all is a psychopath and will have to be locked up in order to protect society from him. But when the society appears unshamable, where are we? Who or what is going to protect such a society from itself? When the apostle John writes, “We know that…the whole world is in the power of the evil one”, he is plainly telling the truth.
2] So far today we have used the expression “the world” a dozen times. What is “the world”, anyway? In one or two places only the word “world” means “the entire creation”. For instance, when John tells us in the introduction to his written gospel that the entire world was made by the Word of God he means that God “spoke” the entire creation into being. Remember, however, that it is only in one or two places that the word “world” has this meaning. Everywhere else “world” has a narrower focus and a negative meaning as well. The world is the sum total of men and women who do not know God; men and women who, in the words of John, are not “born of God”; men and women who are unknowing servants of the one whom John calls “the prince of this world”.
A few days after the Magic Johnson expose there was a newspaper write-up of two new textbooks on Canadian history for use in Canadian universities. Both books were written by Canadians about Canadians. Both books managed to make no mention of World War II — even though 30,000 Canadians perished in that conflict. In the first place this kind of historical revisionism is out-and-out falsification. In the second place, to slip over the evil which Hitler and his henchmen were, to slip over the suffering they visited upon millions outside Germany and inside Germany as well; this is to advertise one’s inability to apprehend the actuality of the world. We must not think that these professors and their books are so bizarre as not to be taken seriously. One book has been published by a major American publisher, the other by Oxford University Press. Both are intended to shape the thinking of Canadian university students. These students; what grasp of radical evil — its subtlety, its power, its intransigence — what grasp of this can we expect our students to have, especially since the students will have to pass an examination set by these professor-authors? John cannot be doubted when he writes, “We know that…the whole world is in the power of the evil one.”
You see, John insists that the earth seethes with spiritual conflict. In this conflict the evil one is “prince”. Needless to say, John knows that while the evil one is prince Jesus Christ is King. To be sure, in several places John does speak of the evil one as “the ruler of this world”; but “world”, remember, doesn’t mean the entire cosmos; “world” means the sum total of men and women who have not yet recognized and honoured and owned Christ as king and lord over all.
John has a great deal to say about the world. For instance, false prophets are found everywhere in it. These false prophets may be explicitly religious spokespersons who mislead people sadly. They may be cult figures whose cults mislead the unwary. More frequently they are people without any religious identification, yet people of more than a little influence whose opinions are not harmless, especially where pliable people can be readily bent. When I was in high school an athletic assembly was held each year at which the athletic awards were presented. Graduates of Riverdale Collegiate who had made their mark in professional sport were brought back to their old school to address the assembly. One year the speaker was a football player who had gone on to have a standout career with Queen’s University and the Ottawa Roughriders. (He is now a lawyer in Ottawa.) With an assembly-hall of students hanging on his every word this fellow said in complete seriousness, “I know how nerve-wracking examinations can be in high school, but I found a way of getting through them: cheat!” No one commented on his deplorable remark. No teacher or school official even humorously corrected the worldling, goodnaturedly proposing something better.
The false prophet is anyone at all, whether socially prominent or virtually anonymous, who confirms the world in its falsity. If Jesus Christ is king, then the false prophet is anyone at all who suggests, explicitly or implicitly, that the ultimate ruler of the earth is something else.
Surely so very many of our social customs confirm John’s insight concerning the world and its lying in the hands of the nefarious prince. Think about the courtroom procedure of having witnesses swear on a bible to tell the truth. Plainly it is assumed that apart from a special oath to tell the truth people regularly do not tell the truth and apart from the special oath are not expected to tell the truth.
It is obvious that the “world”, in John’s sense of the term, collides head-on with Jesus Christ and therefore with Christ’s people. The head-on collision is nasty and cannot be anything else. Bluntly Jesus tells his disciples, “The world hates you; if you fellows were of the world, the world would love you; but it hates you. And remember this: the world hated me before it hated you.” Kingdom of God and world are irreconcilable.
For a long time I have felt that the world’s three biggest preoccupations are success, status, and superiority. These are the blandishments which the world offers, blandishments which “hook” people who, having been hooked, now lend enormous force and power to the blandishments themselves. Success, status, superiority.
Success? Anyone who reads the gospel stories knows that Jesus is pure failure. Born into a despised people, raised in the boondocks, misunderstood by his family, betrayed and deserted by friends, executed in the company of criminals at the city garbage dump. Whenever you think of Jesus be sure to spell “Loser” with a capital “L”. Success? Jesus promises us cross-bearing! To be his follower is to dog the footsteps of someone whose failure is compounded by suffering.
Then what about status? When two of his disciples ask him for places of honour in his kingdom Jesus tells them (and their mother) that they are asking him for something he does not traffic in. Status? Humility is what he presses upon his followers.
As for superiority or domination, pre-eminence or privilege, Jesus summons his people to servanthood. He himself is the servant of God of whom the Hebrew prophet spoke centuries earlier. Surely his people would never think that while their Lord is a servant they themselves are going to be lords!
In his first epistle John tells us that while Jesus knows the world inside out, the world does not know him at all. Which is to say, Christ’s people, schooled by their Lord, certainly understand the nature of the world, while the world doesn’t have a clue as to the real nature of a faithful church.
4] Question: since the world is blind to God and hostile to the Son of God, what does God do about the world? He does precisely what no one would expect: he loves it until he could not love it any more. Blind, defiant, hateful as the world is, God loves it to the point of giving for it everything that he has to give: his Son. Does this startle you as much as it startles me? Surely the world’s disdainful dismissal of God’s love; surely its continuing contempt for his self-outpouring is like rubbing salt in the wound of his sacrifice. Nevertheless love is poured out upon the world, and continues to be poured out without letup, until the world is saturated in God’s love; so soaked in it that the world’s icy indifference renders the world inexcusable even as it renders the kindness of God incomprehensible.
A dear friend of mine has fallen on hard times. Several months ago his wife told him that she no longer loved him. Her heart has been given away to a fellow with whom she works. My friend’s worsening distress took him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist urged him to withstand his distress for as long as he could, not close the book on his marriage, in the hope that his wife would finish scratching whatever itch she thought she needed to scratch and return to her husband while he was still there for her. At the same time the psychiatrist told my friend that he might get to the point that he could not withstand the distress any longer and would have to close the book on his marriage. My friend endured the distress for months. Then a few weeks ago he told the psychiatrist that he could bear the pain no longer. The book has been closed. I do not fault my friend for this at all. Neither does anyone else. As I watched him arrive at the outermost limit of his endurance I marvelled again at the endurance of God. For God’s book has not been closed on the world. The pain of frustrated love doesn’t increase until God has to move away from the world in order to survive himself. The pain which God’s love brings upon God himself he endures without limit just because he is love; his nature is love. He loves without limit, without condition, without qualification.
Why does he bother? Why does he persist in such love? John tells us in his first epistle: “…he sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”
4] Then what are Christ’s people to do? Plainly we are to keep our eyes wide open. John tells us that the world hates the truth, hates the light, and prefers the falsehoods of the false prophets and the murky deeds of the night. In the same vein John tells us we are “not to love the world or the things of the world”.
Now when John insists that we not love the world or the things of the world he means that we are not to be enticed into the world’s agenda; we are not to be seduced by the world’s blandishments. We are not to love the world inasmuch as the world is filled up with “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.” “Lust of the flesh” is a preoccupation with the materialistic trinkets which appeal to the person of no spiritual depth. “Lust of the eyes” is mesmerization through glitz and showiness and surface appearances. “The pride of life” is empty pretence, groundless boasting, phoney image-making. No wonder Christ’s people are not to love the world or the things of the world!
And yet there is a sense, a much different sense, in which Christ’s people must love the world. After all, our Lord himself loves it, doesn’t he? Then as long as we keep company with him we must love it too. John insists that as surely as hatred is characteristic of the world, love is characteristic of the Christian. What’s more, the love which characterizes the Christian is the kind of love which our Lord exemplified: he so loved as to give himself without qualification, without regret, without bitterness. Lest we think anything else John reminds the Christians to whom he is writing, and reminds them rather starkly, “Whoever does not abide in love abides in death.”
As often as all of this surges over me I am quietly corrected, enormously stimulated, and sent on my way with a lighter heart. Whenever I am tempted to magnify the difficult time I think I am having in the midst of the world I call to mind other Christians who have had a much more difficult time and still have continued to love the world with a light-hearted buoyancy. Then I am buoyed up for days as well.
I have a pastor-friend who spent ten years as a prison chaplain; can you imagine any endeavour more bleak, more frustrating, less promising? Yet he did it without rancour, trusting the ten-year investment to the One who so loved the world. Christian schoolteachers who are not deceived for a minute by the sub-Christian ideology of much educational philosophy; such teachers, recognizing pagan naiveness and narcissism for what it is, continue with their task, knowing that there are youngsters in front of them every day whose need for love is inestimable. Employees of huge corporations, corporations so vast as to appear heartless to the point of hateful; yet the employee goes to work every day knowing that before week’s end the real business set before her is not automobiles or refrigerators but rather an aching human being for whom she will have the face of an angel.
The last thing we should note about the Christian’s involvement with the world is this: not every day will the universe unfold as it should. There will be days when the world makes no attempt to disguise its ugliness, days when the Christian feels crunched and no one suggests he is paranoid. What then? On those days Jesus will repeat to us what he said to the first generation of his disciples: “In the world you are going to have tribulation; but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” He has overcome it? Yes, he has. Wonderful news, to be sure. Yet the news would be better if his victory were made over to me. The truth is, it is made over to us through our faith. “This is the victory which overcomes the world, our faith”, John shouts. On darker days you and I shall remind each other that our faith does grant us to share in our Lord’s victory. Knowing this, we shall be able to love the people of the world while not being seduced by the things of the world. As did the self-giving One before us. As have done his people at all times and in all circumstances.
Victor A. Shepherd
April 1992
“Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”
John 18:34
I: — Gossip and hearsay are not the same. Gossip is unfounded whispering, unfounded whispering that tarnishes someone else’s name, weakens her reputation, even destroys her. Gossip is both untrue and harmful.
Hearsay, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily untrue or harmful. In fact, hearsay is often true and helpful. Hearsay, after all, is how we acquire most of our knowledge about the world. I have been told on good account that the sun is 90-plus million miles from the earth. But I have never measured or calculated the distance of the sun from the earth. I have taken someone else’s word for it. I heard it said, and I believed it.
As with our knowledge of science, so with our knowledge of history. Napoleon besieged Moscow in 1812, sacrificing thousands of French soldiers in a dreadful military blunder. Did it actually happen? I have to take someone else’s word for it. Plainly what I affirm is hearsay. And there’s nothing wrong with accepting such hearsay.
Yet there is a setting where hearsay isn’t accepted at all: a courtroom. No courtroom judge puts any stock in the testimony of someone who says, “I never actually saw Mrs. Brown shoot her husband, but when I was at the grocery store, or maybe it was the barber shop, I heard it said that she shot him.” Hearsay isn’t enough when testimony has to be rendered in a court of law.
II: — Already you can see where hearsay is acceptable and where not. It is acceptable with respect to acquiring information; but it isn’t acceptable with respect to testimony concerning persons. As we move from information about things to acquaintance with persons hearsay has no place. If you were to ask me what it is to love a woman and be loved by a woman, my answer might sound somewhat self-conscious and rather awkward. Still, I profoundly know, unshakeably know, in my heart what it is to love and be loved by a woman. However awkwardly I might convey this to you, neither of us would be helped by consulting a textbook on gynaecology. Information of any kind, however sophisticated, is never a substitute for intimate acquaintance with a person.
Words always become less adequate, less helpful, as we move deeper and deeper into what is profoundly human. In fact words can never finally do justice to human intimacy. There is a level of experience that others can apprehend only if they come to share the experience themselves. They will never apprehend the experience by having it described in words.
Think of Hannah’s anguish over her childlessness. Hannah is heartsick and can’t eat. Her husband, Elkanah, helpless here himself, asks her, “Why do you weep? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” Elkanah simply hasn’t apprehended the horror that has seized Hannah’s heart. How could any man understand what it is for a woman to be barren?
After my mother had been a widow for several years I came upon C.S. Lewis’ fine book, A Grief Observed, which book he wrote following the death of his wife. The book begins very powerfully: “No one ever told me that grief was so much like being mildly concussed or being mildly drunk….” I decided to give it to my mother. A few weeks later she thanked me for the book, told me it was very good, and added, “But what would you know about it?” Her point was valid. I have never lost the one human being who is the earthly comfort and consolation of my life; I have never lost the one human being to whom I’ve been grafted, the loss of whom, therefore, is nothing less than dismemberment.
It is firsthand acquaintance with the Word of the Lord that makes the prophet a prophet. The prophet is the immediate recipient of that unmistakable address from the mouth of the living God. The prophet speaks only because someone has first spoken to him. Once God has spoken to him, however, the prophet must speak himself. “The Word of the Lord is a fire in my mouth,” cries Jeremiah, “If I don’t open my mouth and let it out I’ll be scorched.” The false prophet, on the other hand, is under no such compulsion just because the false prophet has no firsthand acquaintance. The false prophet merely babbles and blabbers.
I am convinced that the spiritually sensitive among us can distinguish between the preacher who speaks because he’s first been spoken to and the preacher who simply blathers Sunday by Sunday. Discerning people simply aren’t fooled.
III: — The matter of discernment surfaced with Pilate. Some religious leaders hauled Jesus before Pilate and said, “This man’s an evildoer. Fix him!” These leaders were hostile to Jesus while Pilate was not. On the other hand, Pilate could enact the death the sentence while they could not; hence their request that Pilate “fix” Jesus. Now Pilate has on his hands someone whom he doesn’t dislike, yet also someone around whom an uprising might develop, thus ruining Pilate’s career in the civil service. Wearily Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you king of the Jews?” And as Jesus does so often when he’s asked a question, he doesn’t answer. Instead he asks his own question: “Am I king of the Jews? Do you say this on your own, of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” In other words, “Do you have firsthand acquaintance with me, with the truth that I am, or are you merely parroting hearsay?” “Am I a Jew?”, Pilate retorts, “How on earth do you expect me to know?”
“My kingdom isn’t of this world,” Jesus comes back. “Ah, so you are a king,” says Pilate. “Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? You say that I am king,” continues Jesus, “…I have come to bear witness to the truth.” Then, in a voice steeped in weariness and frustration and vexation and cynicism Pilate mutters, “What is truth, anyway?”
“Truth,” in John’s gospel, always the force of “reality.” “What is real, anyway?” This is what Pilate is asking, and is asking just because he doesn’t know.
Pilate doesn’t know who Jesus Christ is. He has heard lots said about our Lord, but he has had no firsthand acquaintance with our Lord, born of journeying with him. Oddly, such firsthand acquaintance with Jesus is the common possession of apostles whose names the world will never forget as well as of countless ordinary Christians whose names the world has never remembered; and such firsthand acquaintance with Jesus is utterly foreign to Pilate. Because it is foreign to Pilate, cruel compromise comes easy to him. So what if Jesus has to be sacrificed to keep religious leaders happy, an unruly crowd at bay, and Pilate’s own career intact. What is one more ragged Jewish victim of Imperial Rome’s political expedience?
Let’s be fair to Pilate. Who Jesus Christ is also escapes the religious leaders. They insist he’s an “enemy of the people.” It isn’t true. Jesus isn’t an enemy of Israel ; he’s the fulfilment of Israel . The religious leaders are blind. Pilate is spineless. Meanwhile one question continues to reverberate: “Do you say this (who or what I am) on your own, or did others say it to you about me?” In other words, “Do you have firsthand acquaintance with me, or are you merely repeating hearsay?”
The question that reverberated then reverberates still. It has to be dealt with today. “Do you sing hymns and repeat confessions of faith and say ‘Amen’ to the prayers of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” “Do your hymns and prayers and creeds and eucharists and session meetings; does all of this come from your intimate acquaintance with me or are you merely repeating hearsay that you picked up from who knows where?” The question is still asked, and still it must be answered.
IV: — As you and I move away from picking up mere hearsay about Jesus to our own intimate acquaintance with him, what difference is it going to make to us?
i] First of all it will give us assurance of our faith in Jesus Christ, assurance of his hold on us, assurance that we are his younger brothers and sisters and citizens of his Father’s kingdom, assurance that we are being used of God now and are destined to see our Lord face-to-face. Our foreparents, both Presbyterian and Methodist, spoke much of assurance. Calvin said quite starkly, “Where there is no assurance of faith there is no faith at all.” I think his assertion was too strong. Wesley said (at least at one point), “Assurance is the privilege of every believer.” I think his assertion was too weak. In scripture it is simply taken for granted that those who genuinely know Jesus and love him also know that they know, know that they are loved of their Lord and are bound to him. The first epistle of John, for instance, is one of the shortest books in scripture (five very brief chapters), yet the confident, firm, emphatic expression, “We know”, is used in it fifteen times. “We know that we have passed from death to life; we know that God abides in us.”
I admit that there is the “we know” of the know-it-all: insufferable pomposity. There’s also the “we know” of prejudice: “we just know that immigrants are corrupt and they take away ‘our’ jobs.” There’s even the “we know” of outright ignorance where nothing is known. Nevertheless, when all this is taken into account and dealt with we are left with the conviction, spirit and word of the apostle John and countless Christians after him: “He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.”
Decades ago when I was studying for the ministry we had to preach to our classmates in our homiletics courses. One of my classmates, entirely unawares, preached a sermon in which he said many times over, no doubt out of habit, “I suppose….” When he had finished, the homiletics instructor, an older Church of Scotland minister who was as deep as a well, stared at the student and said, “You suppose? You suppose? Young man, when you mount the pulpit steps either you know or you don’t say anything. No one is going to have her faith strengthened by a preacher who merely supposes.”
“He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself,” says the apostle John. Faith born of intimate acquaintance with our Lord brings with it that assurance which confirms us every day in the truth of faith.
ii] In the second place, as we move from acquaintance to hearsay we shall magnify the credibility of the gospel itself. We shall render more believable for others the fact that Jesus Christ is truth and life and way; that there is forgiveness and freedom for any repentant person at all; there is comfort and strength and healing and a forever new beginning for anyone who may know little or much about Jesus but above all clings to him and wants only to cling more closely. As we ourselves move from hearsay to acquaintance we shall be the magnifying glass that causes the truth and substance of the gospel to loom so large as to be both unmistakable and unavoidable. You and I, possessed by the gospel, will always be the most effective advertisement for the gospel. As we radiate not an arrogant cocksureness but rather the simple assurance of those who know that living in the company of Jesus Christ is better than any alternative; as we radiate this, discipleship will become ever more attractive to people whose life-needs, like ours, cry out for the gospel yet who have not found the Christian way attractive to date.
iii] Lastly, as we move from hearsay about our Lord to acquaintance with him we shall see him whole. There’s always a tendency to see Jesus Christ fragmented, bits and pieces of him here and there. People latch onto a piece of him, a partial truth, one aspect of him, and then assume that this one piece or aspect or partial truth is all there is.
For instance, people hear what he said about the danger of riches (no doubt he said it and meant it) and then they assume that he supports any ill-conceived program of social disruption resulting in social dismantling. Or they hear what he said about rising early to pray and seeking his Father’s face in private, only to think he supports a pietistic escapism that turns its back on the human distress around us, distress that we can address and should. Or they see him elevate women (unquestionably he did) and then tell us that the gospel supports every last plank in the shrillest feminist platform, even where that shrillness denies the gospel.
The only way we avoid reducing our Lord to one aspect of him; which is to say, the only way we avoid shredding him grotesquely is to encounter and cherish all of him. This isn’t difficult. Genuinely to meet someone anywhere in life is always to meet that person in her totality. The whole Master is what God has given us. Then why should we settle for less? What’s more, since the whole Master has been given to us, we must have him whole or we shan’t have him at all. It is as we move from hearsay about him to acquaintance with him that we embrace the whole of him who has been given to us, only to learn that he has always longed to possess us wholly.
“Do you say this on your own, of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Jesus put this question to Pilate. Pilate fumbled and stumbled and faltered, for he knew what he was meant to say he couldn’t say truthfully, and what he could say truthfully he wasn’t meant to say.
The same question is put to us. “Do you say this on your own, or did others say it to you about me?” Our Lord means, “Do you have firsthand, intimate acquaintance with me, or are you merely mouthing whatever you’ve absorbed unknowingly from your environment?” He expects you and me to reply, “Of our own, on our own accord;” and having rendered this reply once to render it again and again as we seize him afresh and follow him forever.
Dr Victor Shepherd
February 2003
Taking Away the Tombstone and Removing the Graveclothes
John 20:1-10
[1] “What do you think happened back then?”, I am often asked concerning the story in John’s gospel of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, or concerning other stories like it. Frankly more often than not the questioner puts the question to me in such a manner as to suggest that the questioner himself is not seeking enlightenment. More often than not the question is put to me as though I were somehow on trial before the questioner. “Do you believe the story exactly as written? Yes or no!” If I say “yes” the questioner concludes that I am an anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, fundamentalist, obscurantist bible-thumper as gullible as the child who believes in Jack and the Beanstalk. If, on the other hand, I say “no” I am accused of unbelief, of doubting the power of God, of impugning the authority of scripture, of prejudging what God can or cannot do, will or will not do. Nowadays whenever I am asked the question I always question the questioner, “Where are you coming from? what is your agenda? what do you plan to do with my reply?” I have immense sympathy for any of you today who have felt yourself set upon in this way, as though you were on trial before religious inquisitors. I have immense sympathy too for any who are simply puzzled as to what to make of the story.
Let us be sure to understand something that most people overlook: the resuscitation of Lazarus (that is, a corpse reanimated) is not the same as the resurrection of Jesus. The resuscitation of Lazarus (the mere reanimation of his remains) is a sign, but only a sign, of the truth that Jesus Christ has rendered Lazarus alive unto God eternally.
I trust that this talk about resuscitation (or reanimation) versus resurrection has not confused you. If it has, however, please bear with me a while longer. We must always remember that the one thing John, like the other gospel-writers, does not want to do is portray Jesus as a mere wonder-worker, a magician, a tricky circus-performer. Wonder-workers abounded in the ancient world. Each religious group had stories to tell of its larger-than-life figures who performed wonders. Each group thrust its own forward: “Come and see our wonder-worker, since ours is better than yours, and therefore our cult or group or conventicle is more important, more worthy than yours”. P.T. Barnum, the turn-of-the-century circus magnate, made millions bringing people into the big tent to see oddities, freaks, bizarre occurrences, and outright bamboozlers.
Let us not lump Jesus in with such stuff. Let us also remember that tricksterism was the very thing Jesus resisted in his wilderness temptations just because he knew that tricksterism is evil; it is deceitful entertainment followed by heartbreak; it brings no one at all to faith in the Son of God. Let us also remember that Jesus capped his mighty deeds with the stern command, “Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t utter so much as a peep” — for the last thing Jesus wants is a crowd of shallow sideshow gawkers clamouring for yet more trickster entertainment. The one thing our Lord himself will not permit us to make of the story of the raising of Lazarus is that the event is a sensational spectacle which draws a crowd and makes people more gullible for what Jesus is going to say later.
As a matter of fact the crown of the Lazarus incident, the interpretative key to the incident, is not the resuscitation of Lazarus; it is the truth that Jesus Christ himself is resurrection and life. He, the Son of God, lifts up the spiritually dead before the Father so that they come alive unto God. Declares the master himself, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” The last nine words sum up the message of John’s gospel: “whoever lives and believes in me shall never die”. Never die? Literally never die? Of course not. “Never die” means never be lost to God, never be dead unto God, never be inert before God, never become a spiritual casualty. “Never die” here means to live eternally before God through that liveliness which God lends us out of his own eternal liveliness. While the resuscitation of Lazarus is certainly miracle, it isn’t the miracle of the entire incident. The miracle is that mighty deed of Jesus Christ whereby he vivifies the spiritually moribund and animates the spiritually inert and invigorates the spiritually flaccid. The resuscitation of Lazarus is the sign of this greater miracle.
Think of John’s story of the man born blind. The ultimate point of the story isn’t that a man is rendered able to see trees and hedges and cats and dogs with his new-seeing eyes; the ultimate point is that at the touch of Jesus the man “saw”; that is, discerned, recognized, acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and followed him as an enthusiastic disciple. The granting of physical sight is a subordinate miracle which is the sign of the greater miracle, the ultimate miracle; namely, spiritual sight or conviction or discernment which commits someone to following Jesus on the road of discipleship.
With respect to Lazarus the subordinate deed is that his physical decomposition is undone; this is the sign of the final point in the episode: the Word of God incarnate brings the spiritually dead to life in Christ. The point that John is at such pains to make isn’t that Jesus is a more dazzling wonder-worker than other wonder-workers; it’s that Jesus Christ is the one source and giver of true life, abundant life, eternal life, just because he is one with the Father and Father one with him.
The development in the eleventh chapter of John’s gospel which we are probing today was anticipated in the fifth chapter of John’s gospel. There Jesus had said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
A Christian is nothing more than, nothing less than, nothing other than someone who, spiritually dead like all humankind in the wake of the fall, has while yet dead paradoxically heard the voice of the Son of God; and in hearing this Word has found herself quickened, rendered alive unto God.
Let us be clear on something crucial. It takes a miracle to bring anyone to faith in Jesus Christ, nothing less than a miracle. Why should we assume that spiritual restoration is any less difficult to effect than physical restoration? Then think of all the inducements to unbelief. Think of the countless pressures, some subtle and some frontal, which bend people into the deformity of unbelief. Think of the sheer difficulty and discouragement with which life unfolds for many. Think of stresses and distresses, distractions and disasters, large and small, known and unknown, individual and corporate, which add up to a weight so suffocating that faith is going to remain forever stifled. Forever stifled, that is, if faith is something we are left having to generate for ourselves. Faith is never humanly possible; yet faith arises and thrives just because — and only because — Jesus Christ himself still speaks to you and me as he spoke to Lazarus. And in the mysterious working of God’s grace even the dead are enabled to hear and believe, arise and follow. It takes a miracle to bring anyone to faith in Jesus Christ, in any era. It is the voice of the Son of God himself which unleashes the miracle as the dead come forth, praise God for their life in him, and leap to follow ever after.
[2] I find the story of Lazarus fascinating and endlessly challenging. One aspect of it which always fascinates and challenges me is compressed into four words which Jesus speaks: “Take away the stone”. Jesus addresses these words to his disciples who have accompanied him to the village of Bethany and the home of Lazarus and his sisters. “Take away the stone”, says Jesus to those who are already disciples themselves. In view of the miracle which Jesus is going to work in the next minute or two he easily could have removed the tombstone himself. Instead he asked his followers to remove that stone which would permit the newly-raised Lazarus to step forth.
I have said many times today that since a miracle is needed for anyone to come to faith the unique power of God is needed. In other words Jesus Christ alone can quicken confidence in him. Nevertheless, there is something the Christian fellowship must do if the Christ-quickened person is to step forth, emerge from the realm of the dead, and be seen to be the beneficiary of the life-giving Word. There is something the Christian fellowship must do. What is it that we must do? What must our congregation do if those whom our Lord summons to life in him are to emerge in our midst? Help me! We need to put our heads and hearts together and help each other, help each other to take away the stone!
And then there is another aspect of the Lazarus story which fascinates and challenges me. This aspect is compressed into six words which Jesus speaks: “Unbind him, and let him go”. He who has just brought the dead to life could free Lazarus from his graveclothes in an instant. But he doesn’t. Instead he directs his disciples, those who are followers already and have accompanied him to Bethany, “Unbind him, and let him go; turn him loose”. Once again it is plain there is something the Christian fellowship must do if the Christ-quickened person is to give expression to his newly-granted life. In other words, there is something the Christian fellowship must do in assisting newer disciples to be salt and light and leaven amidst a world which is corrupt and dark and deflated. What is it the congregation must provide in order to help believers give concrete expression, concrete embodiment to their faith?
Let me say it again. Only our Lord himself can raise the dead; only our Lord can move anyone out of spiritual inertia and render that person alive unto God. The congregation does not do this because it cannot. Nonetheless, the congregation does have a two-fold responsibility in its service of that work which is always Christ’s alone: the congregation must take away the stone, thus permitting enlivened people to step forth, at the same time as the congregation must turn these people loose for service in church and world.
All of which brings me to my next point. There isn’t a precise distinction between which sort of activity is taking away the stone and which sort of activity is turning people loose, unbinding them and letting them go. There isn’t a precise distinction between what permits faith to emerge and what gives concrete expression to faith. Think for a minute of the two, six-week Sunday morning bible studies we held here a year and a half ago. When I planned the first one I thought that ten people would get up early for it. Ten would have pleased me, and I should certainly have operated the class for five. We averaged thirty-five! Plainly there was a hunger for it. Now which sort of activity is the bible study? Is it taking away the stone or is it removing graveclothes? That is, does it help people come to faith in Jesus Christ or is it a vehicle for the expression of their faith? I think it is likely both, depending on where we are in our faith-venture.
Consider something as simple as hospitality. I think hospitality is both taking away the stone and turning people loose, depending on where we are. For hospitality-givers hospitality is a concrete expression of their discipleship; it is something people do as they are turned loose. For hospitality-receivers, however, it is likely more akin to taking away the stone. After all, it is in the context of hospitality that people who are looking for faith come to share the faith of those who are believers already as they come to share the food of those who are believers already.
I regard few things more important in church life than hospitality and visiting. (Hospitality and visiting are so close to each other that I regard them as two sides of the same coin.) I don’t mean that hospitality/visiting are important for the sake of keeping the institution solvent and the grass cut; I mean important for the sake of the faith of individuals and the health of the entire congregation.
In 1786 John Wesley was travelling from northwest England to northeast Scotland. As he moved into northeast Scotland he passed through Edinburgh, Dundee, Arbroath (a delightful town on the east coast of Scotland constantly freshened by invigorating North Sea winds) and on to Aberdeen (where Maureen and Catherine and I lived for part of my graduate studies). Wesley was now eighty-three years old. As an itinerant preacher he had travelled hundreds of thousands of miles, speaking everywhere throughout the British Isles. Yet the always-on-the-move evangelist had the heart of a pastor; he never ceased probing what would help people come to faith and what would help them give expression to the faith they had come to. In May, 1786, he wrote his tract, “On Visiting the Sick”. By “sick” Wesley included “all such as are in a state of affliction, whether of mind or body; and that whether they are good or bad, whether they fear God or not”. (Plainly all of us are “sick” in some respect, according to Wesley’s definition, since all of us are in some affliction, of either body or mind.) Then Wesley said something shocking for an Anglican: he said that visiting (or hospitality) is a means of grace. No tradition-steeped Anglican should have said such a thing. After all, holy communion and baptism and scripture-reading are means of grace, means whereby God gives himself to us and strengthens our faith. Hospitality or visiting are but good deeds. But the eighty-three year old would not budge: insofar as we visit someone else our life in Christ is strengthened and matured and rendered more useful. What about Christians who don’t visit or extend hospitality? Wesley spoke of these people as believers “who were once strong in faith [and] are now weak and feeble-minded”. They don’t know how their faith came to be weak and their Christian understanding feeble; after all they worship, pray, read, attend holy communion, don’t they? The old man insisted that when our hearts and hands and homes are not open to others, believers or not, our own faith is going to shrivel. In fact Wesley insisted there are four curses attached to ignoring this “means of grace”: our own faith shrivels, our empathy with suffering people is diminished, opportunities for doing good are choked off, and the community-at-large is weakened.
Wesley startled the Anglicans of his day by insisting that hospitality/visitation was a means of grace for those who did it. He also insisted that it was a means of grace for those who received it. “In administering to them the grace of God you give them more than all this world is worth… and while you minister to others, how many blessings may redound into your own bosom.”
Let’s think about other aspects of church-life. The Sunday School, for instance. We have one of the largest Sunday Schools in the entire denomination. We have superb leadership in our superintendent, Pat Major. The ability and mood and morale of the teachers are wonderful. The Sunday School teachers of this congregation cherish and support and encourage each other in a way I have seen nowhere else. Several times per year they have a party. I go to them all, since these parties are among the best I get to. We must never undervalue what happens in Sunday School. Precisely what happens at the confluence of teacher and youngster and Holy Spirit we cannot calculate or control. Yet it cannot be doubted that something happens. It was while in Sunday School that I became aware of the provision God had made for me in the cross; while in Sunday School that the seeds of my vocation to the ministry were sown.
Pastoral Care, Outreach, Property: the work of every last one of these committees is both the means of taking away the stone and removing the graveclothes; both an activity which fosters faith and an activity which expresses our faith on behalf of the wider world.
[3] My last point. Next Saturday we are gathering in Auditorium “B” in honour of Lazarus. (The name “Lazarus” is a shortened version of the name “Eleazar”, “God is my helper”.) God is our helper, the helper of all of us. He is going to help us grasp what we need to do in congregational life to take away the stone and what we need to do to turn people loose. You must come — all of you must come — and tell us of your dream or vision or aspiration or inspiration. You must not think it silly or simpleminded or impractical or anything else. What matters is that it is yours, you have held it close to your mind and heart for a long time, and now it is going to be taken seriously.
What would you like to see in worship? How do you feel about adult Christian Education? What would you like to see done to the building and grounds? How should pastoral care be exercised? You must come along next Saturday, for you and I are among the disciples who accompany Jesus to Bethany, who witness the miracle of the birth of faith as our Lord himself does what only he can do. But like the disciples of old we are more than mere witnesses of the miracle; we are part of the miracle itself — because we, and only we, can take away the stone and remove the graveclothes. Next Saturday we want to share with each other how we might be of even greater service to the master as he continues to call forth from the dead those who will follow him for the rest of their lives.
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
October, 1993
All in an Easter Evening
John 20:19-23 Judges 6:19 -24
John tells us that on Easter Sunday evening the disciples were huddled together in a room, having locked the door “for fear of the Jews”. Apparently the disciples feared THE JEWS. Feared all of them? Every last Jew in Palestine ? Every last Jew in the world? It’s preposterous to think that every last Jew had ganged up on Jesus a few days earlier. It was the leaders of Jewish institutions, leaders of the Jerusalem temple, who had conspired against him and killed him. It was religious officials who had felt themselves threatened and who had decided to end the threat. In the written gospels we are told that the common people – who were Jews themselves – had heard Jesus gladly throughout his earthly ministry. And of course the disciples in the room on Easter evening were all Jews too.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the religious leaders in Palestine “cozied up” to the political authorities and became little more than the religious legitimation of political power and social ascendancy and religious self-interest. It happened then. It happens now. It’s always happened.
When John Strachan was Anglican bishop of Toronto in the 1800s he insisted that only the sons and daughters of the Anglican elite had the right to the best education. Bishop John Strachan also provided the religious buttress for the “Family Compact”, that handful of well-to-do people of superior social standing and extraordinary wealth who controlled everything in the province of Ontario .
We shouldn’t be surprised that religious officials in Palestine struck a “deal” with political officials on the eve of our Lord’s death. On the eve of World War II the pope signed the infamous “Concordat” with Hitler: as long as Hitler left the Roman Catholic Church unmolested, the pope would remain silent concerning Hitler.
Religious officials have always lined up with the echelons of power and money and social ascendancy. Therefore it’s no surprise that Jewish officials acted as they did concerning Jesus.
But it’s grossly unfair — and worse than unfair, murderous, as history has shown — to think that every last Jew was (and is) a “Christ-killer”. And yet this is the slander that has been visited on the Jewish people. The most notorious antisemites have regularly quoted the New Testament, quoted especially the passage we are examining today, “for fear of THE JEWS”. The conclusion antisemites have drawn is chilling: Jews (all of them, without exception) hated Jesus. Having killed Jesus Christ, Jews must think as little of Christ’s followers as they thought of the master himself. Therefore THE JEWS are always to be suspected. Therefore any severity visited upon THE JEWS is deserved, even necessary if we Christians are going to protect ourselves against the subtle, sneaky evil of THE JEWS. For this reason the most murderous antisemitism in history has been churchly antisemitism.
Do I exaggerate? Let’s look more closely at the Middle Ages. Jewish people were tormented relentlessly throughout the Middle Ages. In the modern era Jewish people have regarded the USA as the next thing to the Promised Land for one reason: the USA has never known a mediaeval period, which period, for the Jewish people, was one, long night.
Jews could be set upon and beaten at any time of the year throughout the Middle Ages. They were always set upon with renewed ferocity during Lent, and especially during the week preceding Easter. Since Holy Week reached a climax on Easter Sunday, Easter — the church’s festival of Christ’s resurrection — became the occasion of climactic savagery inflicted upon the defenceless. THE JEWS had killed Christ, hadn’t they? And Christ in turn had overturned their victimization, hadn’t he? Then it was time for the victimizers to be victimized themselves, wasn’t it?
I am not exaggerating. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose hymns we love to sing (“Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts…”, for instance); Bernard of Clairvaux wrote vitriolic slander about the Jewish people. John Chrysostom of the Eastern Church (“Chrysostom” means “golden-mouthed”, and the man was given this name inasmuch as he was the finest preacher of his era — the fourth century — and one of its gentlest spirits); John Chrysostom said that Jews were no better than pigs and goats (the goat being the mediaeval symbol of rampant lust); Jewish people deserved whatever murderous treatment was meted out to them. Martin Luther said Jews should be hounded out of the country and their synagogues torched. On and on it went without letup.
When I purchase milk and bread at the corner variety store, I don’t shout at the Greek storekeeper, “You killed Socrates.” And when I speak to someone of Italian descent I don’t shout, “You tortured Galileo.” Yet large areas of the church think it permissible and reasonable to say of Jews in any era, “You killed Christ.”
I am particularly sensitive about this issue for two reasons. One, I am an expert in the centuries-long history of churchly antisemitism; two, I am aware that Jewish people maintain the New Testament itself to be inherently antisemitic.
I can’t do anything about the history. But I will maintain that I don’t believe the New Testament to be inherently antisemitic. I will admit, however, that there are many passages in it which have been distorted inasmuch as Christians haven’t been careful enough in reading the text.
“The disciples were huddled together for fear of THE JEWS.” Not for fear of the Jews who had heard Jesus gladly. But certainly for fear of a handful of religious officials. The same handful of religious officials has been party to power-brokering in every era. Let’s be sure we understand this and then expunge from our misreading of the gospel every last vestige of antisemitism, which nastiness isn’t in the gospel in any case but may yet lurk in our hearts.
Part Two
I: — It is while the disciples huddle in fear, afraid of the abuse and torment and untimely death that they have seen Jesus himself suffer; it is while they are immobilized by their fear that the one who has conquered what they still fear steals upon them. They can’t explain how the risen Lord has penetrated their hideout. Our Lord always reveals himself when and where he wills, in a manner beyond our comprehending. To this day we can’t explain how the risen one looms before any of us; not being able to explain it, however, doesn’t prevent us from knowing it and glorying in it. We can’t comprehend it (in the sense of mastering the logic of it), but we can certainly apprehend it as the risen one apprehends us, seizes us, and we seize him in turn.
As our Lord apprehended the fearful disciples he said, “Peace be with you.” It was the everyday Hebrew greeting. It had the same force as our present-day “Good morning.”
Having greeted the disciples Jesus showed them his hands and side. He did this to establish his identity. The risen one was the crucified one, and the crucified one was the risen one. The risen one hadn’t replaced the crucified one. The risen one wasn’t a ghostly substitute for the crucified one. The one whom they were mourning was now among them alive. Whereupon, John tells us, “…the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.”
Of course they rejoiced. To see him was to know that they weren’t bereft of him. To see him was to know that he hadn’t perished finally. To see him was to know that he hadn’t abandoned them. To see him was to know that since death hadn’t been able to deprive them of him, nothing would ever deprive them of him. As soon as Jesus identified himself to them they rejoiced, for the one in whose company they had ventured for three years they now knew they hadn’t lost.
Whereupon the risen one spoke a second time to them, “Peace be with you.” Why the second time? A minute ago I said that you and I regularly greet each other with “Good morning.” Do you know the origin of “Good morning?” “Good morning” originally meant “God’s morning.” When people greeted each other with “God’s morning to you” they were confirming one another in a new day, a new creation, fresh from God’s hand and surrounded by God’s providence and suffused with God’s promises. “God’s morning to you” originally wasn’t the equivalent of “Hi there.” Originally it was an affirmation of the truth and triumph of God in the face of everything in the day ahead that would appear to contradict God’s truth and triumph.
When the risen one said “Peace be with you” the second time he wasn’t saying, “Hi there, fellows.” He was saying “shalom”, with all that “shalom” meant for the godly Israelite.
What did it mean? “Shalom” means “peace”; but not peace in the minimalist sense of the absence of war; and not peace merely in the privatized sense of inner contentment. Shalom, peace, is salvation.
Centuries before Jesus, Gideon built an altar to remind his people of their deliverance at God’s hand. Gideon named the altar, “The Lord is peace”. Two hundred years later the psalmist wrote (Psalm 27), “The Lord is…my salvation.” What’s the difference between the two statements? There is no difference. “Peace” (shalom) and “salvation” are synonyms in Hebrew.
At its narrowest salvation was the individual’s deliverance from God’s judgement and her re-creation at God’s hand; at its widest salvation was the restoration of the entire cosmos to what it was before evil invaded it and sin defaced it. Plainly, then, salvation, peace, is the same as the kingdom of God . All three terms mean the same.
When the risen one loomed before his befuddled disciples with “Peace be with you” he was saying, “Fellows, my crucifixion isn’t the negation of the kingdom as you have thought for the last few days; my crucifixion is the foundation-stone of the kingdom. Because of it, because of what it altered in the commerce between earth and heaven, the kingdom can come fully. A new day has dawned. God’s morning is now operative. Raised from the dead, I am the pledge and guarantee and cornerstone of that new creation, the reality in which you stand now.”
All of this is gathered up in our Lord’s second utterance of “Peace be with you”. The disciples (who are the first Christian congregation) rejoice to know that shalom, salvation, is present in the master who himself is present.
II: — Next our Lord does three things, all three of which arise from the truth and reality of that kingdom which he, the king, guarantees.
(i) First the risen Jesus commissions the disciples: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” Just because peace, God’s salvation, is now the operative reality, the disciples can no longer huddle self-protectively. They have to “body forth” this truth, just as their Lord did before them, and must “body forth” this truth for the same reason that their Lord did: they, like him, have been sent.
(ii) Secondly, our Lord equips them for the mission on which they have been sent. “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the presence and power of God equipping men and women for the work to which God has appointed them. Because the disciples are now Spirit-suffused they don’t have to generate the power or the effectiveness or the results of their mission. Because they are now Spirit-suffused they don’t have to worry about its outcome. All they have to concern themselves with is their own obedience. Having been sent, they must go; having been commissioned, they must do.
(iii) Thirdly, our Lord charges them most solemnly: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
“Just a minute”, someone objects, “only God can forgive sin, since sin is a violation of God by definition. Didn’t the psalmist write, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned”?
It’s all true. Since God is uniquely victimized in our sin only God can forgive us our sin. Then what does Jesus mean when he charges the disciples, “Those whose sin you forgive is forgiven, and those whose sin you retain is retained”? He means that where and when the disciples obediently declare in word and deed the gospel of the crucified and risen saviour, the Spirit empowers their proclamation; and wherever the Spirit empowers gospel-proclamation, hearers are confronted with the risen one himself; and whenever they are confronted with Jesus Christ they can cast themselves on him and know peace, salvation, life in the kingdom of God. On the other hand, if the disciples fail to announce the gospel, then Jesus Christ isn’t known, isn’t clung to, isn’t cherished as saviour — all of which means that men and women are left in their sinnership. And since the disciples are the first Christian congregation, whatever is said of them is said of all congregations. If through the gospel-witness of the congregation of Schomberg Presbyterian Church people find themselves alive unto God because forgiven, they are forgiven and alive indeed; and if through the congregation’s non-witness people are spiritually inert, they remain inert.
“Surely not”, someone objects again. “Surely there isn’t this much depending on the disciples’ honouring their commission and Spirit-empowerment and charge. Surely the most that the text can mean is that through the ministry of the congregation people are brought to an awareness of God’s forgiveness; and if the congregation falls down in its proclamation then people aren’t brought to any such awareness.” But this isn’t what the text says, and this isn’t what our Lord means. He means exactly what he says: where and when the congregation fulfils the mandate it received on Easter morning from the hand of the crucified one himself; where and when the congregation fulfils its mandate people are admitted to the salvation God has wrought for them; and where the congregation fumbles its mandate, people are not. In other words, the congregation has an indispensable role in God’s economy. And because we have an indispensable role in the economy of salvation, we have an unavoidable responsibility.
Our foreparents in faith knew this. Our contemporaries frequently do not. For this reason we continue to hear that the church “has had its day”. Tell me, how can the church’s “day” have passed as long as people sin and God is the just judge and the day of repentance hasn’t been foreclosed?
I was ordained in 1970. On the morning of the evening’s ordination service a group of ministers sitting in a coffee shop invited me to join them, since I was only hours from being admitted to their club. These clergymen joked blasphemously with each other as to who believed the least concerning the substance of the historic Christian faith. My own pastor, assuming an all-knowing air, opined that the church’s day was indeed over. The reason the church was obsolete? The rise of the social sciences and the welfare state. The sociologist, the psychotherapist, the social worker, the parole officer, even the welfare clerk had together rendered the church obsolete. A few months ago a dental specialist who had my mouth wedged open for an hour and half (thus rendering me incapable of replying) told me repeatedly that he used to “support” the church (whatever that means) but did no longer because society had matured beyond the church. Any society has matured beyond the gospel? It’s preposterous to say that spiritually destitute people have matured beyond their need of the mercy of Jesus Christ; it’s sheer ignorance (and a mark of spiritual obtuseness) to think therefore that the congregation is without indispensable role and unavoidable responsibility.
Let me say it again. Where and when the church falters in its declaration of the gospel, in word and deed, then Jesus Christ isn’t known. Where he isn’t known he can’t be apprehended. Where he isn’t apprehended the salvation which he is is slighted, he himself isn’t obeyed, and false gods continue to be pursued.
III: — What does all of this add up to for us today?
(i) We must be sure we understand that while the peace, shalom, salvation, which our risen Lord is is ultimately cosmic in scope, it becomes operative in individuals individually. Therefore we must each surrender ourselves to our Lord or consecrate ourselves to him anew. Anything else is but to trifle with him.
(ii) We must ever own the congregation’s vocation concerning the gospel: the congregation has an indispensable role in God’s economy, and because it has an indispensable role it also has an unavoidable responsibility. The congregation’s mission is charged with eternal significance for those who are the beneficiaries of the congregation’s work and witness.
(iii) We must put behind us forever all foolish, frivolous and faithless talk as to whether or not the church is now obsolete or currently irrelevant or senescently insignificant. We must put all such faithless talk behind us, since men and women are sinners, since God is both undeflectable judge and merciful saviour, since God’s patience isn’t exhausted and the day of repentance isn’t foreclosed. Nothing has greater relevance, significance and efficacy than the church on account of the gospel entrusted to it.
(iv) We must search our own hearts. What are we about, ultimately? What thrills us profoundly? What saddens us? disgusts us? What forms and informs our commitments, our moods, our aspirations? What calls forth our sacrifice? What are we about finally?
(v) Lastly, we must assess all that we do in church life, from Board of Managers to Sunday School to Session. Does it all honour God by magnifying that Son whom he gave up to death and raised for us? Does it all honour God by magnifying that Son who has commissioned and equipped and charged this congregation as surely as he did the disciples, the first congregation?
When the fearful disciples discerned the risen Lord in their midst, their fear evaporated and their hearts rejoiced. For myself, and for you as well, I want always to discern the selfsame Lord, know the same release, and manifest the same joy.
Victor Shepherd March 2008