‘Born of the Virgin Mary’: The Miracle of Christmas
‘BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY’: THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS
I: — ‘Born of the virgin Mary’: we repeat the words every time we recite the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. Both creeds are normative for the church universal; both maintain that the virginal conception of our Lord is as essential to the substance of the faith as is the bodily resurrection of our Lord.
Yet many people tell me either they don’t see the point of ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ or they can’t affirm its historicity, its facticity.
Many people tell me virginal conception is such a stupendous miracle claim that believing it is ludicrous.
II: I happen to uphold ‘born of the virgin Mary’. And I agree with the worldwide church over the centuries that it is a crucial ingredient, a necessary ingredient, in what Christians believe.
[a] Let’s start by addressing the misgivings of the skeptics: “To uphold the virgin birth is to make a claim for a miracle.” This is correct. But to reject it on the grounds that it is a miracle is to reject all miracle, including the creation of the universe, the creation of the universe ex nihilo, from nothing.
Let’s think for a minute about the universe. The universe is vast. How vast? The Hubble telescope has found galaxies that are 14.5 billion light years away. (One light year, I should add for those of us who still think in terms of miles; one light year is approximately six trillion miles.) 14.5 billion times six trillion miles: that’s how vast the universe is in all directions.
On a cloudless night I like to look at the stars; I mean the stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s only 100,000 light years away. If I look through my binoculars I can see the next galaxy behind ours, Andromeda. Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away. In other words, the light streaming into my binoculars from Andromeda has taken 2.5 million years to reach me.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a medium-sized galaxy. It has only 300 billion stars. Galaxies tend to occur in clusters. Our galaxy, with its 300 billion stars, is one item in a cluster of 11,000 galaxies – and that’s one cluster only. (There are two trillion galaxies, of approximately 300 billion stars each.)
Who made all this? God did. Out of what? Out of – nothing. Why would anyone uphold the creation of the vast universe out of nothing and then stumble over of the historicity of the virgin birth?
[b] “Not so fast”, someone objects; “The virgin birth isn’t a core item in Christian doctrine, since it is mentioned by only two New Testament writers, Matthew and Luke. It can’t be important.”
To be sure, Matthew and Luke speak of it explicitly. Mark, John, and Paul, however, certainly speak of it implicitly. When Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown, hearers are astounded, and they cry out, Mark tells us, “Where did he get his wisdom and power? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mk 6:3) In Jewish circles a man was named by his father, always by his father. Mark doesn’t mention Joseph at all. Mark traces Jesus to his mother only: “Isn’t this man the son of Mary?” Mark is telling us, in so many words, that he agrees with Matthew and Luke concerning the virginal conception of our Lord.
John: in 1st John 1:18 John writes, “We know that those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them.” You and I: we are “those who are born of God.” In another sense, Jesus Christ alone is “the one, the Son, who is born of God.” In speaking of these two categories John uses two different verb tenses. The verb tense he uses of Jesus highlights our Lord’s unique birth, a unique birth that is essential to our ‘new birth’.
What about Paul? Paul implicitly upholds the virgin birth in several places, only one of which I shall mention. In Galatians 4 Paul speaks three times of human generation, and every time he uses the normal Greek word ‘to be born’. When he speaks of Christ’s birth, however, he uses an entirely different word. The word he uses of Christ’s birth isn’t the word that speaks of normal human generation. It’s a word that speaks of the arrival of Jesus, the event of Jesus, the coming of Jesus –tacitly denying that Jesus was generated in the way that all other humans are procreated. Unquestionably Paul upholds the virginal conception of Jesus – as do Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
III: — Before we look into what ‘born of the virgin Mary’ is telling us, we should be sure to grasp what it isn’t telling us.
[a] It isn’t telling us that normal human procreation is tainted. The Hebrew mind rejoices in children and rejoices in how children are brought forth. The book of Proverbs insists that “the way of a man with a maid” is glorious. Scripture nowhere casts aspersion on human procreation.
[b] It isn’t telling us that Mary is a biological freak. Strictly speaking, the virgin birth isn’t about Mary at all: it’s about Jesus.
[c] It isn’t telling us that Jesus is half-human and half-divine. Someone half-human is useless to you and me who are wholly human. Someone half-divine can’t save you and me since it will take all God’s resources to save totally depraved sinners like us.
[d] It isn’t telling us that the virgin birth proves our Lord’s deity. The virgin birth doesn’t prove anything. But it does point to something; it’s a sign of something; it attests something. Then what does it point to? What’s it a sign of? What does it attest?
IV: It’s a sign that Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world, has to be given to us. Humankind cannot produce its own saviour. History cannot produce history’s redeemer. We sinners all need a fresh start, what scripture calls, in various places, “new birth” or “new creature” or “heart of flesh” (rather than “heart of stone”) or “renewed mind”. The point is, human history cannot generate its rescuer. Its rescuer has to be given to it.
Make no mistake: people are slow, very slow, to admit this. The world staggers from one ‘sure fix’ to another ‘sure fix’, the previous ‘sure fix’ having failed miserably. In the preceding century there were two attempts at remaking humankind, one from the political left (communism), and one from the right (fascism). Not only did they fail to inaugurate a ‘new day’ for humankind; they brought with them unparalleled savagery and suffering.
We should distinguish here between the human situation and the human condition. The human situation can always be improved humanly. We can always assist the needy neighbour, share our abundance with those who lack, address glaring inequities and reduce criminality. We can always correct deficits and deficiencies in education and health care and social assistance.
The human condition, on the other hand, our condition before God, is different: this we can’t correct. Only the direct intervention of God himself can affect it. Because Christians are the beneficiaries of such intervention we now know, have long known, that the innermost twist to the human heart; the human perverseness beyond anyone’s understanding; the profoundest self-contradiction – all of this we know we cannot remedy ourselves; we know the remedy has to be given to us, since we cannot generate it ourselves.
In all of this I am not slighting at all those cultural riches that do ever so much concerning the human situation. Pharmacology can reduce pain. Surgery can relieve distress. Psychotherapy can untie emotional knots. Above all, literature can provide a diagnostic tool for understanding human complexity. Nevertheless, humankind’s ultimate problem isn’t complexity; it’s corruption, self-contradiction. We have to admit that the root human condition is oceans deeper than the human situation, and the cure for the root human condition only God can provide.
As I mentioned a minute earlier, the world never lacks people who think they can provide it. Marx said a new human being, the new birth, arises at the point of revolution. And what did Marxism provide except wretchedness and cruelty for 70 years in the USSR? Mao Tse Tung said he could remake humankind, and he took down 90 million of his own people. Pot Pol claimed as much, and he slew 25% of his fellow-Cambodians.
Then is the human condition hopeless? Not at all: we’ve been given the saviour we’ll never give ourselves. We’ve been provided the rescuer we long for yet know we can’t generate. We’ve been given the One who has guaranteed our reconciliation to God and our restoration with God and our new life in God.
‘Born of the virgin Mary’ is constant reminder that only the intervention of God himself can save us.
V: — It’s also constant reminder that faith in the saviour; faith has to be given to us as well. We can’t generate faith out of our innermost resources. Paul speaks of the condition of sinners before God as “dead in trespasses and sins”. Dead. And what can a corpse give itself? – nothing. Then the faith that recognizes, rejoices in, and clings to the saviour; the faith that trusts him in fair weather and foul; the faith that loves him because he first loved us (when others tell us we are silly); the faith that obeys him (when politically correct people tell us we are utterly out-of-step with our society): such faith has to be given to us.
To be sure, when I say faith has to be given to us I had better say in the next breath that such a gift has to be exercised. The gift we have received we have to affirm. The One who is now embracing us, we have to embrace in return. Of course. But it all begins with the gift of faith in that saviour who has himself been given to us.
Sometimes we hear it said that it’s much more difficult for people to have faith today than it was years ago or centuries ago. I disagree. I think the spiritual condition of people is the same in any era, any century. Was faith easier when our Reformation foreparents were being burnt at the stake? Was faith easier when, in the 14th Century, bubonic plague killed 50% of Europe? Martin Luther used to say, “Cover your eyes and open your ears.” Luther meant this: when we look out upon the world, what we see contradicts the goodness of God and the love of God and the mercy of God. For this reason, we have to “open our ears” and hear the gospel, hear it with the ‘ears’ of the heart, for only then will faith thrive in the midst of the world’s contradiction of it.
My children were raised in a clergyman’s home. This means they overheard suppertime telephone conversations. (People tend to phone their clergyman at suppertime since they think that’s when they are most likely to find him home.) To be sure, my daughters could overhear only half the conversation, my half. Nevertheless, when the conversation had ended and I sat down again to my chicken soup, my daughters were white: they had heard enough to know that devastation had overtaken someone whom they had seen the previous Sunday at worship.
Make no mistake: it is nothing less than a miracle that anyone believes. Faith has to be given to us for two reasons: one, you and I cannot generate faith out of our own resources; two, even if we could, the ceaseless negativities in world-occurrence would overwhelm it and suffocate it.
Every day I thank God for the gift of faith, to me, of course, but not to me only. For every day as a pastor I look upon people with radiant faith whose lives have unfolded with such difficulty that there’s no earthly reason why they should believe, and every earthly reason why they shouldn’t. And yet their faith sings: the miraculous intervention of God that has given us the saviour we need continues to give us faith in the saviour as only he can give.
VI: — The virgin birth, arising from the direct intervention of God, attests one more miracle: the final, full manifestation of the gift of shalom, a new heaven and earth in which righteousness dwells. The author of Hebrews maintains that already, right now, we have been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And so we have. Because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and his resurrection can never be undone; because the king triumphant has to bring his kingdom with him or else he’s no king at all; because of this the kingdom of God is here, in our midst, operative, right now, as surely as Christ the King himself is in our midst. We have been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Christ’s kingdom, however, is not yet fully manifest. It is here, but only by faith do we discern it and affirm it. It is in our midst, but it remains disputable. The day has been appointed, however, when the kingdom, real but disputable, will be rendered manifest so as to render it beyond dispute. On this day, the day of Christ’s indisputable self-manifestation, we who suffer and groan now are going to appear resplendent, holy and whole alike.
To say we are going to be rendered holy, definitively, is to say that the arrears of sin in us, all of which we have repented and aspired to put behind us, will finally be dealt with. To say we shall be rendered holy definitively is to say we shall be beyond the reach of sin and its capacity to distort us.
In addition, we are going to be rendered whole definitively. Which is to say, we shall be beyond the reach of evil and its capacity to disfigure us.
Right now every last human being is distorted by sin and disfigured by wounds. We victimize ourselves through our sin, and we are victimized by our wounds. Now while everyone is sinner equally, not everyone is wounded equally. Through sheer misfortune, some people have been wounded far more severely than others. The criminal courts recognize this. We read that someone has been deemed unfit to stand trial, for instance, on account of derangement. While the deranged person is neither more nor less sinner than the rest of us, undoubtedly he is more wounded and warped than most.
Back in my seminary days I took a course from Dr James Wilkes, a psychiatrist at the old Clark Institute, now CAMH. Each student was assigned a book to read for class presentation. The book assigned me was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Capote had written up an incident where two young men decided to break into and plunder a farmhouse in Kansas. When they broke in, to their surprise they found the house occupied. They panicked. Matters went from bad to worse to horrific. By night’s end the men had brutally murdered the three occupants of the house. One miscreant was subsequently imprisoned; his accomplice was hanged.
Both these criminals had grown up with what Dr Wilkes, psychiatrist, called “poor provision.” That is, these young men had had wretched upbringings. They had been provided none of the parental guidance and emotional support we take for granted. In addition, they had suffered horrific physical injuries, were in chronic pain, and for many reasons had remained abandoned. When I had finished my class presentation Dr Wilkes paused for the longest moment, staring down at the desk in front of him; then he remarked soberly, “The behaviour of those young men: that’s what society, any society, can expect when children and adolescents live under terrible stress with poor provision.” Some people, unfortunately, are terribly wounded.
I learned something that day I’ve never forgotten. Whenever I am clobbered in church life I ask myself one question: “The clobbering I’ve just taken from Mr. X – did it arise from his sin, his depravity? Or did it arise from his woundedness, his pain?” I don’t know, since I don’t have access to anyone’s heart. “Did she clobber me because she’s wicked, or because she’s in pain herself?” I have survived in church life by reminding myself, every day, that I am going to relate to people in terms of their suffering, and I shall leave it to God to relate to them in terms of their sin.
And then I’m going to look to that glorious day when Mr X – and you and I and all God’s people – are finally beyond the distortion of sin and the disfigurement of evil, that day when we shall be both holy and whole, our depravity remedied and our wounds healed. I’m going to continue looking ahead to that day which has to be given to us, that day when the Kingdom of God appears in its final, full manifestation, and no one is left victimizing himself through his sin and victimizing others on account of his suffering. On that day we shall be holy and whole definitively.
VII: — “Born of the virgin Mary”. At the beginning of the sermon I said it was a pointer to the gift of Jesus Christ. It’s a sign of the reality that he is. But it is it sign only? Or is the sign of the event so closely related to the logic of the event that the sign of the event is part of the event itself, so that to believe in Jesus Christ, the saviour given to us, is simultaneously to believe ‘born of the virgin Mary’?
Today I rejoice that the saviour human history cannot generate has been given us. Faith in him, impossible for us to work up, is constantly given us. And the final, full manifestation of Christ’s kingdom will be given us as surely as our Lord has been raised from the dead.
I believe without hesitation or qualification or reservation, “born of the virgin Mary”.
Victor Shepherd Advent 2017
Why Is This Friday Different From All Others?
Isaiah 53:7-12 1st Peter 2:22-25 Luke 23:32-43
Today is Passover, and in Passover services throughout the Jewish community a young child asks his parents, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” It’s assumed it’s important that the child know why this night is different from all others. It’s assumed as well that the child’s parents can tell her why.
At some point our children have asked us or will ask us, “Why is this Friday different from all other Fridays? Why do we call Good Friday ‘good’? It’s important that our children know why. And we, their parents, should be able to tell them.
The quickest answer is “Good Friday is the day on which Jesus died.” But our children will still have many questions: “Why do we make so much of the death of Jesus? We don’t make anything of the death of John the Baptist? And when aunt Susie died last year no one at the funeral said it was good.”
Children persist. “Is it because Jesus died a martyr?” But thousands of Christians have died martyrs. “Then is it because Jesus’ death was unusually painful or distressing?” But millions have died in greater physical pain and distress. “Then why is this Friday different from all others?”
‘Good Friday’ is a modern expression. In the mediaeval era Christians spoke of God’s Friday. For on this day God acted definitively on behalf of humankind. On this day God did something apart from which the human predicament would be hopeless. He did something apart from which we would have remained helpless. This Friday, God’s Friday, has eternal significance for the entire human creation.
I: — As we ponder what God did and why he did it the truth about us humans begins to settle upon us. We read the all-time favourite parable of the lost son, and we hear the father cry, “My son was lost. He was dead.” Lost? Dead? Do these words really describe the situation of sinful humankind before God? Surely Jesus didn’t mean that unbelief has consequences as serious as this. (‘Lost, dead.’)
And then our eyes alight on a few words with which Jesus introduces a teaching to his disciples: “If you fellows, evil as you are…” He’s talking to disciples, to his friends, not to atheists or moral degenerates or
ne’er do wells; to disciples. And to them he says, matter of factly, as if what he’s saying were so obvious no one could disagree, “If you fellows, evil as you are….”
We penetrate the sentimental haze that surrounds Christmas and recognize that the unrestrained effusiveness and uninhibited joy pertain to one item: we’ve been given a saviour. We catch the mood of the New Testament writers. Their mood is, “Whew. At last. Just when we thought it was all over with us and our predicament was irretrievable.” If these men and women are ecstatic over the gift of the saviour, do they know something about the human predicament that we, in our inflated self-assurance, have overlooked?
And then we hear Jesus announcing, as he looks detractors in the eye, “I didn’t come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance.” Repentance is a turn-around in life; it’s an about-face, a 180-degree redirection. Does Jesus Christ assume that my life is fundamentally misdirected now?
Yes. Our Lord’s diagnosis is that humankind is wrapped up in a deep-rooted revolt against God. Unbelief (he’s not talking now of the unbelief of the head, a relatively slight matter, but rather about the unbelief of the heart: hardness of heart); unbelief, he insists, isn’t an ‘allowable option’ that some pseudo-sophisticates prefer to hold. Unbelief of the heart is wilful rebellion and repudiation, protracted defiance and disdain concerning God himself. It’s persistent ingratitude concerning God and prideful contempt as well. Our revolt issues, in God’s economy, in a human condition that is accurately described, without exaggeration, by the words ‘lost’, ‘dead’.
A diagnosis as catastrophic as this has to be met with a treatment that’s anything but superficial, or else the treatment will prove wholly ineffective. Yet in our society shallow diagnoses of the human condition abound, and we are constantly proffered superficial treatments. Shallow diagnoses always call forth shallow treatments. One treatment is greater moral earnestness; another is hyped up religiosity; another is cultural refinement; another is more government control in order to ensure social order; another is less
government control in order to ensure individual responsibility. None of these treatments can remedy the human condition; they are all too shallow.
When I was eleven years old I was playing touch-football on the street when one of my friends upended me. My head struck the curb, and my skull was fractured. My friends managed to get me home. I was dazed, pain-wracked, and profoundly disoriented. My mother, distressed at seeing me and preferring not to think my condition critical, went to the bathroom medicine cabinet, took out a tube that was supposed to fix everything, and squirted Vaseline on my head. What was Vaseline going to do for a fractured skull? Nobody is faulting her. She didn’t perceive how badly I was injured; or unconsciously she couldn’t bring herself to admit I was badly injured; or she wanted to ‘buy time’, wait and see, by playing ‘Let’s pretend’.
In light of humankind’s predicament before God (universally denied by the purveyors of shallow diagnosis and treatment), all shallow recommendations are as ineffective as putting Vaseline on a fractured skull.
God sees our repudiation of him (the unbelief of the heart), our brazen attempts at disguising our revolt, and our shallow attempts at remedying a predicament whose profundity we won’t acknowledge. God reacts. Of course he reacts. If God didn’t react he’d be a psychopath, as character-deficient as those pathetic people who are conscienceless, shameless, and everywhere dangerous. His reaction is his condemnation. His reaction issues in our estrangement from him. His reaction fixes a gulf between him and us, which gulf our rebellion, rejection and repudiation of him aimed at anyway, didn’t it?
Our Lord is the supreme realist. His diagnosis is correct. We are, he tells us, estranged from God by our defiant disobedience, and fixed in that estrangement by God’s just judgement.
II: — Yet Good Friday is God’s Friday, remember; and God’s Friday is Good Friday. Good Friday must
be good news, it has to be good news, or nothing could be good about it. Good Friday is good news, the good news of the gospel. The gospel is God-in-his-mercy coming among us who are lost and dead just because he is more distressed at our estrangement from him than we are. In his mercy God will do anything in order to set us right with himself.
Then what has he done? At the cross he has sealed his judgement upon us and manifested that judgement incontrovertibly (bad news); and at the cross he has simultaneously taken his own judgement upon himself, thereby fashioning acquittal for us. Good news.
Think of the last time you had to discipline your child for a serious offence. You had to do two things. In the first place you had to impress on your child your displeasure at her; you had to ensure your child understood that her behaviour was unacceptable; you were not going to tolerate it, and her punishment she deserved entirely. In the second place, you had to assure your recalcitrant child that you still loved her; that her outrageous behaviour grieved you more than it grieved her; that your anger – legitimate, vivid, evident – was nonetheless nothing compared to your heartbreak. In a word, you had to assure your child that the punishment she had to undergo pained you more than it pained her, cost you more than it cost her. Every parent wrestles with this dilemma.
God wrestles with it too. And God resolves his dilemma through the cross. Through the cross he makes plain that our defiance of him and repudiation of him, so far from a slight matter, is an intolerable matter, a damnable matter. After all, our recalcitrance has cost him his Son – which is to say, has cost God himself everything, since Father and Son are one in their suffering on Good Friday.
At the same time, through the cross God declares that his mercy is without measure and without end, for he hasn’t spared his Son, hasn’t spared himself, all for the sake of sparing us. So it is that Paul exclaims, in limitless amazement, “God instantiates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
I have heard people say, “What does the death of Jesus have to do with God’s saving us? If we were drowning a hundred metres offshore, out in the middle of the lake, and someone standing on the dock took pity on us, and exclaimed, ‘I feel sorry for your predicament. I’ll jump into the water and drown too: we’ll both drown together” – I’ve heard people say that such a situation doesn’t prove that the second person loves the first or can save the first. All it proves is the stupidity and ineffectiveness of the silly person who jumped off the dock and threw his life away.
Then did Jesus merely throw his life away? In truth, our Lord’s cross is wholly different. The alienation from his Father that the Son undergoes on Good Friday – ‘the dereliction’ we call it (“Why have you forsaken me?”) is nothing less and nothing other than humankind’s alienation from God (even though we are insensitive to it). And since, according to the Incarnation, Father and Son are one in their judgement upon us, one in their execution of that judgement, and one in the alienation that judgement entails, then the Son’s alienation from the Father is simultaneously the Father’s self-alienation. And the Father’s self-alienation is nothing less than God, the just judge, absorbing in himself his judgement upon us, leaving us acquittal, pardon, forgiveness, life.
Think of it from another angle. In Jesus Christ, God the judge enacts his sentence of condemnation upon humankind. And then God the judge does what no human judge ever does in a court of law. He steps down from his elevated bench, stands with the offender, and imposes on himself the sentence he has just imposed on the offender, thereby absorbing in himself the sentence the offender deserves and has received and yet is now spared.
Let’s return to the matter of parents disciplining children. A parent comes upon a child behaving outrageously and consigns that child to her bedroom, without supper. Some time later, the parent, so very upset at the child’s behaviour that the parent can’t eat his supper, goes to the child’s room, sits with the child, and tells the child why all of this had to occur. Then the parent, having absorbed the punishment he
assigned the child, puts his arm around the child, and the two of them walk out of the room together.
III: — Together. This word brings us to the last point of the sermon. As God has absorbed his judgement upon us at the cross, he and we can live henceforth together. He can’t do anything more for us than he has already done. Whether we live henceforth together now hangs on our response.
Our response will include several aspects. It will include our recognition that the diagnosis concerning us has been correct. It will include our acknowledgement that the remedy for our predicament God alone has fashioned. It will include our admission that we do not add to this cure nor do we subtract from it: either we receive it or we spurn it. Our response will include our discernment that the remedy, finally, isn’t an ‘it’ at all but rather the effectual presence of Jesus Christ himself, and therefore we are going to embrace him gratefully or rebuff him haughtily.
Two hundred years ago it was the custom of the leaders of a vanquished army to hand over their swords (ceremonial swords) to the victor. Handing over one’s sword was the conclusive, public acknowledgment of surrender.
After the last shot was fired in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, the victorious general, the Duke of Wellington summoned the defeated French generals to his tent. They appeared, greeted Wellington, and took the seats he offered them. Immediately they congratulated Wellington on his superior military prowess. Why, they were professional soldiers too, and certainly they had an eye for military genius. In fact, they continued, so fine a soldier was Wellington that it was no disgrace to lose to him. It was an honour simply to be found on the field of battle with him. Perhaps they could all have a glass of sherry and toast each other.
The flattery mounted. Wellington listened to it for twenty-odd minutes and then said quietly, yet
uncompromisingly, “Gentlemen, I want your swords.” He didn’t want to be flattered. He wanted to be surrendered to. And he wanted a conclusive, public acknowledgement of that surrender. To this end the men who surrendered to him were going to have to stand before him empty-handed.
It is for the same reason the hymn writer cries, “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling.”
If you are offended by the simplicity of the Good Friday message, I can only say that the gospel, finally, is simple.
If you are offended by its diagnosis of the human predicament before God, I must insist on its realism.
If you are offended by the crudeness of crucifixion and blood and bedraggled Jew, I can only say that no one has ever been saved by Gentile, genteel refinement.
Why is this Friday different from all others? Why is this Friday Good Friday? Because it’s God’s Friday. And by God’s grace and the faith his grace enlivens within us, may it ever be yours – and mine as well.
Victor Shepherd
Good Friday 2015 St Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga
Pentecost
PENTECOST
The tower of Babel was titanic, trivial and tragic all at once. Titanic, for its boastful “let us make a name for ourselves” attempted to erect a structure that elevated self-important braggarts to the heavens, letting them rival God. It was trivial, for their achievement turned out to be a pipsqueak; when God heard about it he couldn’t see it and had to “come down” (Gen. 11:5) just to have a look. It was tragic in that they succeeded in giving themselves a name, an identity: God-defiant, disobedient, contemptuous men and women whose ingratitude was as hard-hearted as their self-congratulation was silly. The tragedy was only compounded when God visited his judgement upon them, rendering them unable to understand each other, unable to communicate, unable to forge community. He scattered them abroad over the face of the earth (Gen. 11:8-9), enforcing their estrangement. Like magnets improperly aligned they could only repel each other. In one sense they triumphed, for they had rendered themselves “somebodies” irrespective of God’s will and way. In another sense they failed abysmally, their isolation giving rise to babbling no less hostile for being incoherent.
Yet since God’s judgement is the converse of his mercy (or as Luther liked to say, his judgement is his love burning hot), God immediately set about rescuing them from their folly and its consequences. Abram (“exalted father”) is summoned and obeys, the model of any and all who gladly allow themselves to be named by God. Now called Abraham (“father of multitudes”), he is blessed by God where the Babel/babblers were cursed. He is promised descendants in faith as numberless as the sand on the seashore and the stars in the firmament (Gen. 22:17).
Still, God’s rescue operation taxed him unspeakably. It took him centuries and cost him vastly more than it had cost even Abraham. (After all, at the moment of inexpressible anguish Abraham’s son had been spared while God’s had not.) Still, God couldn’t be discouraged or deflected. There finally appeared one who gloried in the name his Father had bestowed upon him, Yehoshuah, Jesus, “God saves.” God had designated him such “in power…by his resurrection from the dead.” (Rom. 1:4) Throughout the seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost the risen one had appeared to his followers, instructed them in the truth concerning himself and released them from the misunderstandings of him and his work that had dogged them ever since he had called them. He had directed them to remain in Jerusalem, hier shalem, “city of salvation”, until they were “clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) Then obedient disciples, honouring the risen one’s promise, found the promise fulfilled as the Day of Pentecost unfolded.
“Pentecost” was a word coined in Israel of old to commemorate the ingathering of the harvest. Later the Pentecost festival recalled as well the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Israel had been freed from bondage in Egypt, delivered through the Red Sea, and then fused into a people at Sinai as they were acquainted with God’s will for them. The events in Israel’s history all served the definitive rescue operation when Israel’s greater Son absorbed in himself humankind’s bondage to sin, made provision for its deliverance, and schooled disciples in the Way they were to walk (“walk” being the commonest Hebrew metaphor for obedience.) Regardless of what had been done already, however, something remained to be done in that Christ’s people were gathered in Jerusalem eager, expectant, but as yet unleashed.
As surely as the descent of the Spirit signalled the public ministry of him who was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15: 24), the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost signalled the world-wide ministry of those sent “to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Pentecost found the Spirit kindling them for a mission that included people from every tongue and tribe throughout the world. Pentecost conferred an identity no enemy could deny them. Pentecost commissioned them the hands and feet of the risen, victorious one whose victory now ruled the cosmos. Henceforth they would do in his name the work he had done prior to his ascension. (John 14:12)
While the disciples had obeyed their risen Lord and had waited in Jerusalem for the Spirit, they hadn’t been waiting around. They had praised God publicly in the temple and privately in their homes. On the day of Pentecost their conquering Saviour, himself the bearer and bestower of the Spirit, flooded them with the selfsame Spirit in whose power he had preached, taught, healed, and announced the coming “Day of the Lord.” Pentecost was the final act of God’s saving mission before the End. It equipped the disciples with all that they needed to fulfil their commission. It inaugurated the era of the Spirit, which era Hebrew prophets like Joel had foretold. (Joel 2:28) And not to be overlooked, it was the first instance of revival, revival occurring when the sovereign Spirit of God overtakes large numbers of people at once, convicts them of their sinnership, convinces them of the coming judgement, brings them to repentance and faith through vivifying God’s mercy, and admits them joyfully to the people of God.
Concerning this awe-full event Luke tells us that the disciples were aware of what sounded like hurricane-force winds. Hadn’t Jesus earlier likened the Spirit to wind? (John 3:8) Wind can’t be seen yet also can’t be denied. Uprooted trees, racing clouds, tumbling waves: the effects of wind attest its power.
And on the day of Pentecost there appeared to be fire licking at each of the 120 assembled in the upper room. Hadn’t Christ’s ancestors in faith found in the properties of fire a startling reminder of what God does when he draws near to his people and “torches” them? As fire illumines it dispels darkness and confusion. As fire refines it consumes corruption, even mere worthlessness, leaving what is pure, attractive and useful. As fire warms it dispels iciness and suspicion. Most characteristically, fire sets on fire whatever it touches.
At Pentecost the Spirit moved disciples to “speak in other tongues.” The significance of the proclamation in other languages of God’s mighty acts was epoch-making in view of the diverse people gathered at that time in Jerusalem. These God-fearing Jews happened to be in the city at this time but they weren’t native to Jerusalem, having been neither born nor raised there. They had come from the diaspora, “from every nation under heaven.” (Acts 2:5) Luke means, of course, the nations of his world, the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean area where Jewish people had thrived for centuries. In speaking of the “other tongues” Luke lists the languages of five groups: people west of the Caspian Sea, Asia Minor, North Africa, visitors from Rome (Jews and converts to Judaism), and finally “Cretans and Arabs.”
This linguistically diverse, international crowd was transfixed by the simple Galileans. Galileans were known to lack cultural sophistication. (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46) Permanent residents of Jerusalem looked upon the Galilean visitors as bumpkins. Miraculously, these unlettered people were now proclaiming Jesus in the visitors’ own languages at the centre of the city of salvation. A few sour-faced onlookers sneered, “They’ve had too much to drink.” Nervous about making a realistic assessment, they distanced themselves from the truth through self-excusing mockery.
Luke left no doubt as to his understanding of the Galileeans’ speech. In the power of the Spirit the gospel of Jesus Christ transcends and bridges every barrier that people bent on making a name for themselves erect and behind which they scoff in pretended superiority at those on the other side of the wall. Such barriers are legion: language, nationality, race, education, social class, wealth, gender, ethnicity. Luke knew that Babel had been reversed. At Babel God had descended in judgement and curse when he had had to descend in any case in order to see the tinker-toy trifle by which its builders had thought themselves giants who could rival him. Now at Pentecost God descended in blessing when he found obedient followers of Jesus who wanted only to exalt the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9) Glad to have their lives, reputations, identities “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) they rejoiced in the “name” whereby God knew them. Babel pride gave place to Pentecost humility, a humility that is never self-belittlement but rather self-forgetfulness born of preoccupation with the one whose servants they were glad to be.
Since Pentecost forges and inflames Christ’s people (mission being as essential to the church as burning is to fire), Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church. Then could a day that celebrates its birth be followed eventually by a day that laments its demise? Never! No power can prevail against the church, for since the “Spirit isn’t given by measure” (John 3:34), the Pentecost-suffusion will always be adequate.
Pentecost was nothing less than a miracle. How could it be anything else? Creation had certainly been a miracle, creation ex nihilo. Then re-creation had to be no less a miracle too in view of the calcified perversity of the human heart. For Pentecost meant that life could begin again, but not “again” in the sense of déjà vu, one more time; “again”, rather, in the sense of the reversal of all that had distorted the creation into a hideous parody of what God had intended originally. The tower of Babel, remember, had been thought to be huge when in fact it was tiny. Now the new-born church was thought to be tiny but would quickly become huge. While the world regards the church as either stillborn or impotent (“How many troops does the pope have?”, Stalin had jested), it is precisely the church which the rightful ruler of the universe appoints to be his hands and feet. Henceforth it does that work which he will crown one day as he brings to perfection his work of cosmic restoration. Admittedly, the church has prostituted itself repeatedly, yet the bestowal of the Spirit ensures that it will ever be the bride of Christ. Admittedly, the church has often compromised itself inexcusably, yet the Spirit’s wind and fire will ultimately render it worthy to “judge angels.” (1 Cor. 6:3) Deformed at times to the point of being grotesque, the church lives by the promise of one day standing forth resplendent, without spot or blemish. It has been attacked but never slain, for it is more ridiculous than ghastly to think of the Lord Jesus Christ living with head and body severed.
The builders of Babel/babble had made a name for themselves, only to find themselves scattered and their name forgotten. Pentecost generated the ever-burgeoning cloud of witnesses, the gathering together of those whose names were now written in the book of life and would be remembered eternally. The Babel/babblers had boasted, “We did it our way.” Pentecost created a world-wide fellowship of those who continue to prove that “his commandments are not burdensome” but in fact are “sweeter than honey.” (1 John 5:3; Psalm 19:10) Where Babel’s frustrated communication was tragic, Pentecost was a triumph as it proved there is no communication problem, whether between God and us or between us and others, that the Spirit cannot solve.
Apart from Pentecost the 120 in a second-storey room in Jerusalem would have waited with hope haemorrhaging, one more heart-breaking instance of many false messianisms. Apart from Pentecost evangelism would be little more than propaganda and the church’s mission mere self-promotion. Apart from Pentecost our efforts at binding the wounds of a broken world would be indistinguishable from do-goodism. And apart from Pentecost, evangelicals should note next winter and spring, no Gentile would ever have heard of Christmas or Easter.
As it is, Pentecost is the only reason the gospel gives rise to “a great multitude which no man can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne… crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9-10)
Victor Shepherd
Bearing the Beams of Love
Christmas Sunday 2008
I: — I played hockey for twelve seasons. I never weighed more than one hundred and fifty-five pounds. I regularly played against two hundred and ten pound gorillas who were as mean as a junk-yard dog. I survived the twelve seasons inasmuch as I always knew how to protect myself on the ice. I took to heart the advice which Ted “Scarface” Lindsay gave to Stan Mikita when Mikita moved from junior hockey to the NHL. Mikita, a smaller fellow, had voiced his fear that he wasn’t tough enough to play in the NHL. “Stan”, Lindsay said, “as long as the stick is in your hand you are as tough as anyone on the ice. Never drop your stick.”
Because I could always protect myself on the ice I was all the more surprised to learn, years later, that I couldn’t protect myself politically, institutionally. Politically I was as defenceless as a first-time skater standing on wobbly legs at centre ice: he’s unable even to get out of the way, never mind run down anyone else.
Subsequently I learned that not only could I not protect myself politically, institutionally, I couldn’t protect myself psychologically. I seemed to get bushwacked emotionally — or felt I got bushwacked — in a way that most people seemed to avoid, or at least disguise. I seemed unable either to avoid it or disguise it.
I concluded that I had to learn to protect myself. Detachment was to be my first piece of armour. “Be laid back”, I told myself over and over. “Be detached (by now it was a mantra); stay cool; keep your gut unhooked.” It all went exceedingly well, and I thought I was really progressing at remaking myself psychologically; it all went well, that is, for three hours. Then the phone rang. A forty-three year old woman had called me from Mississauga ’s Credit Valley Hospital out-patient department. She needed a ride from the hospital to work. Take a cab? She wanted to talk to me. She was riddled with tumours, skinny as a broom handle, and had just had her pain-killer dosage increased. Her skin-colour was a ghastly yellow-green-brown and she was struggling to keep upright a marriage that was close to capsizing. End of detachment. End of being laid back. Gut hooked all over again.
Then I recalled the words of Gerald May, MD. Gerald May is an American physician, now living in Washington , who has written much in the field of spiritual direction. (A spiritual director, different from a pastoral counsellor or a psychotherapist, is someone who helps individuals discern and assist the movement of God’s grace within them and God’s way for them.) Professionally Gerald May is a psychiatrist who served, at one time, with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam . In one of his many books May has written, “Some wisdom deep inside us knows it’s impossible to love safely; we either enter it undefended or not at all”. We can’t love safely; either we love defencelessly or we don’t love. Instantly I admitted to myself what I had known in my heart all along, despite my short-lived efforts at detachment and coolness: I admitted that a disciple of Jesus Christ whose preoccupation is survival is no disciple at all. Dr. May is correct. We can’t love safely.
Next I pondered the two lines from the poet, William Blake, which May quoted in his book, The Awakened Heart.
And we are put on earth a little space
That we might learn to bear the beams of love.
Gerald May says only three things about this quotation. We are to bear love in the three dictionary senses of “bear”. (i) We are to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain. (ii) We are to carry love and spread it around — “as children carry and spread measles and laughter”, he adds. (iii) We are to bring love to birth. When I read this I was so startled that I didn’t move. Slowly my mind spun out what it is to bear love in this three-fold sense.
II(i): — We must grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain. Love’s beauty we understand. But love’s pain? Does love pain? Can it? Yes. And in my older age I have come to see that beauty brings with it its own pain.
When the Shepherd family was last in England we travelled into the Yorkshire moors. Everyone has some picture of the Yorkshire moors, thanks to the writings of the Yorkshire veterinarian, James Herriott. He hasn’t exaggerated. We Shepherds walked together upon the moors as the sun was setting. I shan’t attempt to describe it. Suffice it to say it was so beautiful as to leave us dumbfounded. The beauty was so exquisitely beautiful as to border on the surreal. In the next instant the beauty seemed so intense as to make us ache. The beauty surrounding us contrasted so very sharply with the unbeauty we find on so many fronts in life that this wordless beauty brought with it a peculiar kind of pain.
In the midst of the unlove which we find on so many fronts in life we are startled when we find ourselves loved with a love whose intensity is beautiful, to be sure, and whose beauty makes us ache. When we are loved not because we are useful to someone else, not because we are needed or convenient; when we are loved for our own sake, loved for love’s sake — this is when we learn what it is to endure the exquisite beauty and ache of love.
It’s easy to confuse love with other linkages. My adult daughters love me; they are also counting on an inheritance. My wife loves me; she is also legally bound to me. My mother loves me; she is also old and sick and has made me executor of her will and granted me power of attorney. What’s more, all of these people to whom I am related by blood or marriage would be considered nasty, deficient themselves, if they didn’t love me. At the same time, none of this means that they don’t love me for my sake, love me for love’s sake.
Still, there are circumstances where the love with which we are loved can only be love for our sake, love for love’s sake, because we aren’t linked in any way to those who love us. I marvel at the love with which I am loved when this or that person who loves me will never profit from my estate, never be the beneficiary of my life-insurance, never have any legal tie to me; when in fact there is no material advantage to loving me, no social advantage — no advantage of any kind in loving me. Yet they continue to pour upon me a love whose beauty is so beautiful as to make me ache. Not only is there no advantage accruing to them; there is every disadvantage. For I have embarrassed them in public on occasion. I have committed social gaffes in their presence that left them wishing (for a few minutes, anyway) that I was at someone else’s party. I have plunged them into emotional anguish just because they were so closely identified with me in my emotional anguish. And I have perplexed them as they stood speechless before my incomprehensible spasms of irrationality.
The longer I live the more amazed I am at all of this; which is to say, the longer I live the more I must grow in my capacity to endure love and not flee it, not find it so strange as to be foreign, not resist it inasmuch as I can’t control it, not allow its singularity to diminish its glory. The longer I live the more I must cherish it and grow in my capacity to endure it.
We must bear love in the sense of growing in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain.
(ii) — In the second place we are to bear love in the sense of carrying love and spreading it. Surely we are to carry it and spread it chiefly unselfconsciously. I know, there are situations where we have to clench our teeth and resolve that contempt won’t consume our love. There are days when we have to fight the temptation to despise or hate as surely as our Lord fought assorted temptations in the wilderness. But we can’t be fighting all the time. We can’t have our teeth clenched and our resolve clothesline-taut all the time — or else we’d be grim, grim as death. We carry or spread love chiefly unselfconsciously.
Ever since Louis Pasteur published his discoveries we have known about the transmission of communicable diseases. Such diseases move throughout the human population by means of germs; invisible to the naked eye, but no less real for that. In a fallen world disease is naturally contagious. And in a fallen world contempt is naturally contagious too. No one has to be taught to despise others; left alone, humankind does it naturally in this, the era of the Fall. Then love can be spread only by an infusion of God’s Spirit. Only the Spirit (everywhere in scripture the Spirit is the effectual presence of God) can cause the love we pour out on others to do something besides run off them like rain slicking off an umbrella. Only the Spirit of God can cause love to stick to others, to penetrate, to swell, and to declare that love has brought forth its increase in someone (all of us) who is, in some measure, love-deprived.
The body’s immune system is a good thing. It keeps us from falling sick with scores of different diseases in the same day. Yet there is one place where the body’s immune system is counter-productive: when we need a heart-transplant. Here our immune system has to be overridden or we shall reject the one thing we need most.
We human beings have an immune system, as it were, of a different sort as well. It keeps us from being “suckered” by every last fad, notion, idea, ideology, ploy, scheme, deviousness. And yet there is one place where our beneficial immune system (it renders us rightly suspicious) must be overridden by the Spirit of God if we aren’t to reject love. Only God himself can do this. And this is precisely what he has promised to do. We shall leave him to do it, even as he leaves us to what we must do: bear love in the sense of carrying it, spreading it.
(iii): — We are to bear love, finally, in the sense of bringing it forth. Once again it’s the case that of ourselves we can’t. Just as we, of ourselves, can’t make our love for others adhere to them, so we can’t, of ourselves, quicken love in them, bring forth in them that love which is soon to be love from them. Of ourselves we can’t render someone else a loving person. Once again only God can; and once again he has promised to do this as he takes up and honours our unselfconscious commitment to people who find in our commitment to them what they have found nowhere else.
Gerald May once more, the psychiatrist whose work has meant so much to me: May was with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam where he worked in the psychiatric ward of a military hospital, then returned home where he worked in an American prison before moving on to a state psychiatric hospital. Working in these three venues occupied twenty years of his life. He says these twenty years were bleak, indescribably bleak. Every day he drove to work wondering what on earth he was doing, even what on earth he thought he was doing. For instance, every day he spoke with a woman, a patient in a state hospital, who never said a word. This patient not only said nothing; she appeared so vacant as not even to notice him when he was speaking to her. Still he didn’t ignore her (even though it’s difficult not to ignore someone who is utterly unresponsive) but always did his medical duty by her, changing medications and writing up charts, speaking to her every day, mute though she remained. This situation continued for six months. One day, in the course of the same hospital routine, he was fishing in his jacket pockets for a “light” when this unspeaking woman walked out of the room into the corridor and wordlessly, silently beckoned a nurse to her. “Dr. May needs matches for his pipe”, the psychotic woman said. Only God can bring love to birth; and God does precisely this as he takes up and honours the commitments we make to others.
III: — It is Christmas Sunday. Today we praise God for incarnating in the babe of Bethlehem that love which God is himself, for the Incarnation is the outer expression of the innermost heart of God.
Unquestionably the Incarnate One bore love in the threefold sense of “bear.” Jesus most certainly received love from others; he endured that love which is so exquisitely beautiful as to ache. When the adoring woman poured the costliest perfume on his feet he remarked, “She has done a beautiful thing to me…. she has anointed my body beforehand for burying.” (Mark 14:6,8) (There we have both love’s beauty and love’s pain.)
Just as certainly Jesus carried love, spread it, spread it with his crucified, spread-out arms. As the gospel writer attests: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
And just as certainly Jesus brought love to birth. Matthew was a tax-collector who had “sold out” to Rome and now stood to gain financially by collaborating. Simon was a zealot, a terrorist who had vowed the assassination of every last collaborator he could safely stab. What kept these two men in the same apostolic band except the love which Jesus had brought to birth in both? What else kept Jews and Gentiles in the same congregation when Gentiles had always regarded Jews as anti-intellectual and inflexible, while Jews had always regarded Gentiles as bereft of God and shamelessly immoral? What else keeps any congregation in one fellowship?
You and I are to “bear the beams of love”, in the words of the poet, William Blake. We can bear love in the three-fold sense of enduring its beauty and its pain, carrying it and spreading it, and committing ourselves to those in whom God will bring it to birth; we can do this just because he whose birth we celebrate in this season has done it already and done it in us.
Then come, let us adore him, for he is Christ the Lord.
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent IV 21st December 2008
Church of St. Bride, Anglican Mississauga
Good News, Great Joy, A Saviour who is Christ the Lord
The world is always looking both for good news and for great joy. The world also knows that there won’t be great joy unless there’s first good news. Everyone wants good news. Everyone is aware that newscasts are 90% bad news. “All we ever hear on TV or radio is bad news” people complain. “Why can’t we hear good news for a change?”
The answer isn’t hard to find. We live in a fallen world. The “prince” of this world, says Jesus (not king, to be sure, but certainly prince) is characteristically a liar and a killer. Omnipresent evil means that lethal falsification riddles everything. Sophistic savagery is always ready-to-hand. It’s no wonder that newscasts announce troubles of every sort in every place. Nevertheless, we long to hear good news.
But we don’t want “good news” that’s make-believe. We want good news that’s good because true. There can be such good news only if in the midst of evil and evil-quickened conflict there is the profounder reality of God’s definitive incursion into human affairs. There can be good news only if he who is prince of this world is bested by the one who is king.
Christmas is this good news. Christmas isn’t wishful thinking or sentimental froth or saccharine make-believe. Christmas is that good news which is true, real, profound; good news good enough to engender great joy – and all of this just because there has been born to us a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.
“Christ” the Lord? What does “Christ” mean? The child whose coming among us we celebrate in Advent isn’t named Jesus Christ in the way that I am Victor Shepherd. “Christ” isn’t his family name. It’s a description. It means “anointed”. Our Lord is the anointed one, anointed by his Father for our blessing.
Throughout Israel ’s history three figures were anointed: priests, prophets, kings. When we are told that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, we know that he gathers up in himself what priests and prophets and kings embodied, as well as that to which they pointed as they too looked for the coming one.
Since we have good news and great joy only because of the anointed one, Christ, we must probe what it means to say that in him priests and prophets and kings find their fulfilment.
I: — Let’s begin with the priests. Priests ministered in the temple, where sacrifices were offered daily. The sacrifices were the core of worship inasmuch as sincere worshippers knew themselves to be sinners. They knew that defiled sinners had no right to approach the holy God. They knew that defiled sinners couldn’t survive approaching the holy God. The temple sacrifices were the God-appointed means whereby people who could claim nothing and merited nothing except God’s judgement could nonetheless find a Father who cherished them and a Forgiver who pardoned them – and all of this without in any way compromising his holiness or denying their unrighteousness. The sacrifices in the temple gave people access to God precisely where they knew their sin otherwise barred them from him.
Today, of course, we are fastidious people. We are careful to use deodorant, perfume, shaving lotion, cologne, air-wick. Today we should find the temple scene repulsive. Think of the sounds that animals make when they know their end is upon them; the smells they make. Think of the priest gathering a basinful of blood and throwing it over the steps surrounding the altar.
Alas, I fear we are too fastidious. We are shallow in our self-understanding: either we don’t think ourselves to be sinners at all or we think our sinnership to be trivial. We are cavalier in our approach to God: of course he’s going to forgive us, since that’s the business he’s in – said Voltaire on our behalf.
Ancient people knew better. They knew that sin is lethal. (Exactly what sin kills you and I could list for the next six months.) They knew that sin breaks God’s heart, provokes God’s anger, and arouses God’s disgust. And because it does all this, the forgiving of sin is never cheap. Forgiveness is always and everywhere costly.
Costly for whom? The animal brought to the temple was the best the worshipper owned. It cost a great deal to give up. And because it was a male animal, invaluable for purposes of breeding and therefore lucrative for the owner as well, when that animal was offered up to God the worshipper knew she had renounced her ticket to superiority of all kinds and was casting herself and her entire future on God.
What’s more, as the priest sacrificed the animal in the temple the worshipper placed her hand on it as a sign of her personal identification with the life offered up on her behalf. Sobered now at what her reconciliation to God cost, she surrendered herself anew to him in gratitude and adoration.
The day came when the woolly lamb in the temple was no longer the sacrifice. The day came when the curly-haired baby in the manger grew up and offered himself as the Lamb of God. Plainly he is the sacrifice by which a rebellious world is reconciled to God. Yet because he has offered himself, he is also the priest who offers up the sacrifice. As priest he’s the anointed one.
Because he’s the anointed one offering himself for our sakes, you and I all humankind have access to God. We have an access to God we don’t deserve yet which God has fashioned for us in his mercy, thanks to his Son. While our sin breaks God’s heart and provokes his anger and arouses his disgust, the sacrifice our “great high priest” offers up for us gathers up God’s heartbreak and anger and disgust and defuses it all, thereby allowing any and all who want to go home to go home.
“Oh, Shepherd”, someone objects; “Why do you get into something this heavy at Christmas? Why don’t you say something light at Christmas and save the ‘heavy’ for another day?” As a matter of fact there are several reasons why the Advent sermons should be substantial.
[1] There are usually people in church at this season who won’t hear the gospel announced for months, and they should hear something besides froth.
[2] We always administer Holy Communion in Advent. The service of Holy Communion graphically depicts our Lord’s sacrifice. Surely no one is going to tell me that the truth of the cross may be seen in the Lord’s Supper at Christmas but it mustn’t be heard in the sermon at Christmas.
[3] We sing carols at Christmas, and the best hymn on our Lord’s sacrifice happens to be a Christmas carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Listen to the words:
Hark! The herald angels sing ‘Glory to the newborn king’.
Peace on earth, and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled.
Or listen to another stanza:
Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more should die;
Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.
The baby in the manger was born precisely in order that he might become the offering on the cross. He is the lamb of God, given us by the Father for the reconciliation of any and all who place their hand on the anointed one himself. Jesus our Lord is sacrifice and priest together.
II: — Not only were priests presiding at sacrifices anointed; prophets were too. Prophets were those who spoke for God and thereby acquainted their hearers with God. Prophets teach; as they teach about God, God himself takes over their teaching, as it were; God himself surges over hearers so that hearers are overtaken, then overwhelmed, and finally constrained to confess that God-in-person has addressed them.
The prophets were aware of much that modernity has forgotten. For one, the prophets knew that no amount of gazing inside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God. They knew that every last human being is a bundle of contradictions. Looking inside ourselves, therefore, will only inform us of a bundle of contradictions. Two, the prophets were aware that no amount of gazing outside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God. Looking outside ourselves informs us of what’s “out there”: suffering, grief, propaganda, treachery, waste, and war.
To be sure, the prophets never denied that self-contradicted people living in a convoluted world could nevertheless do much that is marvellous; they would readily have admitted that we can do, and do superbly well, philosophy, engineering, science, music, poetry, mathematics. The prophets denied, however, that we can inform ourselves of the truth of God or acquaint ourselves with the person of God. For this to occur something else is needed; specifically, what’s needed is someone who has faced God, has heard him, and now turns to face us to speak for God.
One thing above all else makes the Hebrew prophets “tick”: they have heard God speak. Having heard God speak, they find themselves constrained to speak on his behalf. All the Hebrew prophets are aware that they have been admitted to the Besoth Yahweh, the council of God. They’ve been admitted to the throne-room of the heavenly court. They aren’t presumptuous, engaging God in casual chit-chat. In fact once admitted to the throne-room, they don’t speak to God at all. They describe it all as overhearing; they overhear God talking to himself, as it were. They listen in, reverently, attentively, while God thinks out loud. Suddenly God takes notice of the prophets and speaks to them directly. At this moment the truth of God is stamped upon the prophet; the judgement of God is seared upon the prophet; the mercy of God and faithfulness of God and patience of God are imprinted upon the prophet indelibly.
At this point the prophet turns around from facing God in the throne-room and faces the people in the community. “The Word of God is fire in my mouth”, Jeremiah cries to his people; “I have to let this word out or my mouth will ignite.” Amos says laconically, “God has spoken. Who can but prophesy?”
And so the prophet speaks. He has stood in the council of God. For this reason he can speak authentically of God. As the prophet speaks on God’s behalf, God himself empowers the prophet’s word and renders the prophet’s word a vehicle of God’s self-giving and self-communication. At this point hearers become aware that they aren’t hearing one man’s religious opinion; they aren’t even merely hearing someone speaking on behalf of God. At this point they are hearing God himself.
Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one. He stands in the tradition of the prophets. He speaks for God. Yet as the Incarnate one he speaks for God in a way that no Hebrew prophet could; he speaks conclusively for God just because he is God, Emman-u-el, God-with-us.
A prophet to be sure, yet more than a prophet, Jesus Christ speaks for God as God. Then he is the one we must hear and heed and cling to if we are to know the truth of God and remain fused to the person of God for ever and ever.
III: — Kings were anointed too. Kings were anointed to rule. People today don’t like the sound of “rule”. It sounds coercive, tyrannical, dictatorial, heavy-handed. It sounds as if the king has colossal clout while subjects can only cower. Nobody wants to live under such an arrangement.
In Israel things were different. In Israel the first responsibility of the king wasn’t to boss (let alone tyrannize); the first responsibility of the king was to protect the most vulnerable of the people of God. Vulnerable people might be vulnerable on account of monetary poverty or social oppression or raging disease or military attack from outside the community; they might also be vulnerable on account of treachery from inside the community. Regardless of the source or nature or occasion of the vulnerability, the king’s first responsibility was always to protect those most at risk.
Some kings in Israel met their major responsibility. Most didn’t. Little-by-little it appeared that the only king who would honour this mandate consistently would be the king who was also shepherd, a shepherd-king. David was the shepherd-king in Israel ’s history. David defended the marginalized and vindicated the exploited and protected those at risk for any reason; in addition, in the course of doing all of this David brought glory to his people. At least David did this more consistently than anyone else. But even David proved treacherous.
Little-by-little Israel came to see that God’s people were going to be protected, vindicated, and exalted conclusively only if a shepherd-king appeared who acted with the power of God himself. Then what was needed most was a shepherd-king – human, to be sure – who was also God Incarnate. And this is precisely what we were given at Christmas.
We are the people of God. We need to be safeguarded. Since the world is a battleground of all sorts of conflicts, all of which are at bottom manifestations of the primal conflict, spiritual conflict, we are always at risk of becoming a casualty.
In military engagements casualties include the wounded, the missing and the slain. In the assorted struggles in which we find ourselves and must find ourselves we are going to be wounded from time-to-time. But missing? How could any of God’s people be missing, unlocatable, when God-Incarnate is their shepherd-king? And slain? Wounded as we are from time-to-time, God’s own people can never be wounded fatally. He who is our king, anointed such from eternity, is also resurrection and life. Before God we can’t be slain and we can’t go missing.
We make far too little of this truth, for undeniably events overtake us where we feel we’ve gone missing, and gone missing just because no one seems to miss us. And events overtake us where we feel ourselves slain, unable to rise, unable to go on. But in fact we aren’t slain and we can go on. Our shepherd-king is resurrection and life.
When I was a young man and diligently reading the psalms because I’d been told I should read them, I used to grow weary of reading about the psalmist’s enemies. In every third psalm we heard again the trouble his enemies were causing him and how treacherously they had bushwhacked him and how close they had come to vanquishing him. I began to think the psalmist paranoid. But I see now that he wasn’t paranoid. He was simply aware that nobody has life domesticated; nobody has life tamed; nobody has life under control, despite the fact that we’re all control-freaks. We can find ourselves clobbered on any day, from any quarter, for any reason (or no reason.) Life remains fragile.
Not so long ago I was asked to deliver a guest-lecture at the University of Toronto on John Calvin, progenitor of all English-speaking evangelicals. When I had concluded, the questions came quickly. The ultra-feminists in the audience tried to paint Calvin as anti-woman. I fended that off. The Marxists tried to paint him as uncritical capitalist. I fended that off. On and on it went. Plainly the special interest groups were looking for some way to dismiss him. Finally someone asked, “What is the lens through which Calvin views life? Since all of us have a psycho-social determinant, what’s his?”
“Calvin was a refugee”, I replied; “and like all refugees Calvin knew that life is precarious, earthly rulers can’t be trusted, betrayal is always at hand; above all, Calvin knew that like refugees we are haunted by an outer and inner homelessness that will be overcome only in the eschaton.” The room fell silent. I understood why. Everyone in the room identified with what I had just said about Calvin the refugee.
Because we are finite and fragile, we are physically vulnerable. Because we are wounded, we are emotionally frayed. Because we are sinners, we are spiritually “in a far country” and need to get home.
Who will get us home? Who will safeguard us on our way home? Who will ensure that our innermost core, our identity, remains intact? Only he who is shepherd-king, and effectual shepherd-king just because he is God-with-us, Emmanu-el, shepherd-king-Incarnate.
“Be not afraid”, we are told; “there is good news of a great joy, for to you there is born a Saviour who is Christ, the anointed one, effectual priest and prophet and king.” This one is Lord now, and ever will be.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2005
Love Means “I Want You to Be”
1st John 4:8
John 3:16
Galatians 2:20
There are few thinkers more profound than Augustine. Born in the year 354 and living until 430, he was philosopher, theologian, political theorist, cultural commentator, and all of these at once; and not only all of these at once, but all of these superbly. His words are always weighty and need to be heard again and again. He wrote much about love, approaching the topic of love the way an appreciative jeweller approaches a gem, glowing over the different lustres it radiates as light shines on it first from one angle and then from another. One word from Augustine that we are going to linger over tonight is as brief as it is brilliant: “Love means ‘I want you to be.’”
I: — Let’s think first about the creation. On the one hand God doesn’t need the creation; i.e., doesn’t need the creation to be God. God is without deficit or defect. Therefore he doesn’t create in order to find in the creation what he somehow lacks in himself. On the other hand we know that God is life and God is love. God is the one and only “living” God in that God alone has life in himself. Because God is life God alone can impart life. Because God is love he appears to delight in creating and vivifying creatures who aren’t God themselves but who are made to live in love with the God who lives and loves by nature.
To say that God conceived us in love and fashioned us in love and constantly visits us with his love means, says Augustine, that God is forever saying to us, “I want you to be.” Be what? When God creates mountains and monkeys he says, “I want you to be that thing.” When he creates humankind, however, he wants us to be what monkeys and mountains can never be: creatures whose purpose, delight and fruitfulness are found in a living relationship with him, which relationship is love.
The apostle John has said most pithily, “God is love.” Less pithily but equally profoundly Augustine would say, “God is the one who longs to have us be; God longs to have us love him; God longs to have us reflect back to him the love with which he first loved us and continues to love us. This is what it is to be.”
The problem is, as everyone knows, that the creation didn’t remain “good” without qualification. Instead the creation was undone (in some respects) by the fall. We who were created to find our purpose, delight and fruitfulness in a living relationship of throbbing love for God now look everywhere else. We who are to reflect back to God the love with which he first loved us and continues to love us now do everything but that. For this reason God can no longer say, “I want you to be.” Now he must say in his judgement, “I want you not to be.” Insofar as God wants us not to be he plainly isn’t the creator; he’s now the destroyer. Anyone who reads scripture attentively knows that as soon as the creator is presumed upon or traded on; as soon as the attempt is made to exploit God or test him, as surely as God is disdained or merely disregarded, the creator becomes the destroyer. Scripture speaks like this on every page.
We’d like to think that if God were displeased with us, justly displeased with us, it’d be enough for him to ignore us. But destroy? Destruction sounds like “zero tolerance.” It’s odd, isn’t it, that we fault God for “zero tolerance” when we insist our legislators implement it everywhere in our society. We insist on legislation that guarantees zero tolerance for wife-beating, drug-trafficking, sexual exploitation of children; zero tolerance for income tax evasion and impaired driving. We insist on social policies of zero tolerance because we know in our hearts that tolerance isn’t a sign of generosity or magnanimity or large-hearted liberality. Tolerance is ultimately a sign of confusion, blindness, and spinelessness – none of which can be predicated of God. His tolerance, in the wake of our primal defiance and disobedience, would be only the shabbiest character defect in him.
Israel always knew this. To the prophet Amos God said, “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.” (Amos 9:7) A plumb line is used in house construction to expose deviations from the upright. The house of Israel was found deviant. And the result? When the plumb line is spoken of in 2 Kings 21 the conclusion is stark: “Says the Lord, ‘I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.” It’s over! “I want you not to be.”
II: — Yet to another prophet, Hosea this time, God spoke as anguish-riddled a word as we shall ever overhear in scripture: “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?…My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.” (Hosea 11:8-9) Not even the destroyer will come to destroy. Then what will he come to do, given his recoiling heart and tender compassion? He will come to save. “For God so loved the world”, is how the apostle John speaks of this truth. “World”, in John’s vocabulary, doesn’t mean what it means in the Oxford English Dictionary; “world” for John is the sum total of men and women who blindly yet culpably disdain their vocation of reflecting back to God the love in which he created us. The “world” is the sum total of men and women who slander God’s goodness and slight his patience and scorn his blessing and ridicule his truth and laugh at his judgements even as they lecture him, “Don’t tell us what to be; we’ll decide for ourselves what we’re going to be. We forge our own identity, and our identity has nothing to do with you.” And then with a love that will forever remain incomprehensible God so loves such ungrateful rebels that he will submit himself to the humiliation of a stable and the horror of a cross. Plainly he’s saying, once more, “I want you to be.”
But there’s a difference this time. On the day of our creation God loved into existence the glorious creature that he had conceived in his own image and likeness. So glorious were we as we emerged from God’s own hand that we mirrored his glory. It was grand, then, when he said to us, “I want you to be.” In the wake of our rebellion and subsequent disfigurement, however, when his image is defaced in us and shame attends us and we are as loathsome as we formerly were resplendent, his loving us now isn’t akin to Adam’s loving Eve on the day of their primal splendour; God’s loving us now is akin to Hosea’s loving his wife when Hosea found her, now a prostitute with three illegitimate children, shamed and disgraced and valued commercially at 15 shekels, half the price of a slave. It is for broken down creatures like this that God now breaks his own heart. “How can I give you up? How can I give you up when I want you to be?”
The love with which God created us appears to have cost him nothing; but the love with which God so loved the world manifestly cost him everything. Christmas clearly cost God everything, for the sole purpose of Christmas is the Christmas gift crucified. John Calvin was fond of saying that the shadow of the cross fell upon the entire earthly life of Jesus. And so it did. The shadow of the cross fell even upon his birth. His birth? Even upon his conception, for on the day that Mary learned she was pregnant she was told, “a sword will pierce through your heart too.” (Luke 2:35) It appears not to have cost God anything to have us come forth in primal splendour. But to have us be born anew, to have us made afresh, to have us be, at last, what we were always supposed to be; this entailed that child, born for us, who from the moment of conception gathered into himself the eventuality of the cross. Christmas, therefore, costs God everything.
III: — “God is love.”(1st John 4:8) It means, “I want you to be, be those made in my image whose love for me reflects my love for them.”
“God so loved the world.”(John 3:16) It means, “I still want you to be, even though you are a disgrace to me and disfigured in yourselves; I still want you to be those whose love for me reflects my love for them, regardless of what anguish I must suffer in the person of the cruciform child of Christmas.”
“He loved me, and gave himself – for me! (Gal. 2:20) Listen to the apostle Paul exult. “He loved me!” If love means “I want you to be”, then “He loved me!” can only mean, “I am. At last I truly am. I’m finally alive.” Is this the same as mere existence? If love means “I want you to be”, could we ever substitute, “I want you to exist”? Never! “He loved me!” will never mean, “I exist.” It will always mean, “I am! I truly am! I’m profoundly alive!”
“He loved me!” But didn’t God so love the world? Of course he did, and Paul knows he did. Then why the exclamation, “He loved me!”? It’s because the purpose of the Christmas gift has been fulfilled; fulfilled in this one man at least. The purpose of God’s so loving the world is to have this individual and that individual and yet another come to be: come to abandon herself to the one whose love incarnate for her has brought her to spend the rest of her days in love for him. Yes, God did so love the world; but only the individual can respond. “He loved me!” is precisely the cry of someone who has responded. And in such an individual the Christmas gift has proved fruitful.
We can’t help noticing that when the cry, “He loved me!”, was torn out of the apostle, it wasn’t merely that one matter was settled (he thereafter knew himself loved); ever so much more was settled. In fact, everything was settled. Thereafter he never groped and guessed as to what life means. He never hemmed and hawed, wondering what he was supposed to do with his life. He never drowned in doubt over the significance of his toil and his suffering. He knew what life means, knew what he was to do, knew the significance of his toil and suffering even if those for whom he toiled and suffered didn’t know. And his future? “Life means Christ”, Paul told the Christians in Philippi, “and my dying can only mean more of him.”
Let’s come back to one question Paul never asked. In the wake of “He loved me!” he never asked, “What’s the meaning of life?” He didn’t have to ask it. He wasn’t puzzled. The Christmas gift ends bewilderment here. The Christmas gift embraced restores us to that immediacy and intimacy we crave in our hearts. The Christmas gift cherished finds us no longer asking about the meaning of life, but not because we now have a 10,000 -word answer complete with footnotes. The Christmas gift, rather, has brought us to live in a love to God that reflects the love he has always had for us. Living in such love, in the immediacy and intimacy and contentment of such love, we need neither arguments nor explanations nor demonstrations. When the writer of Proverbs records, “He who finds me finds life!” (Prov. 18:35) we shout, “’Tis true!” When the prophet Amos records, “Seek me and live!” (Amos 5:4), we exult, “Yes!” When the prophet Ezekiel records, “Turn [repent] and live!” (Ez. 18:3), those who have turned to face God simply know it’s true. No longer are we expecting only the detachment of an abstract idea; now we glory in the immediacy of a concrete encounter. “What does life mean?” Those who have embraced the Christmas gift and henceforth resonate the Son’s love for the Father aren’t left asking the question. Those, on the other hand, who are impelled to ask the question are also unable to recognise the answer.
Forever unable? Of course not. Phillips Brooks, author of O Little Town of Bethlehem, writes, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.” The gift is wondrous; that is, it transcends human comprehension. It is given “silently”; that is, the manner of its impartation is a mystery. Because the gift transcends human comprehension, and because the manner of its impartation is a mystery, you and I are ultimately speechless before the secret work of the Holy Spirit that prepares anyone’s heart for the blessings of heaven. We can’t describe or explain the secret work of the Holy Spirit that moves the person who is incapable of recognising the answer to no longer needing to ask the question. But that there is such a work of God’s Spirit, and that such a work we can’t measure or control or describe or explain; this we never doubt. And therefore we give up on no one; we dismiss no one. Instead we pray, and continue to pray, then pray some more, knowing that in the mystery of God’s secret work “where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in.” And where Christ enters in someone has come to be. Where Christ enters in the purpose of the incarnation is fulfilled. And the love wherewith that person was created and redeemed is now reflected in her love for our great God and Saviour, who is rightly said himself to be, to be eternally, even as he guarantees as much for all who hold – and hold on to – the infant born in Bethlehem.
Victor Shepherd
Christmas Eve 2002
Son of God, Son of Mary, Son of David
Do you remember when you were a child and you couldn’t wait until Christmas? My sisters and I counted the days. By Christmas Eve we were beside ourselves. On Christmas morning when our parents finally gave us permission to get up, we children were down the stairs like the Kentucky Derby field leaving the starting gate.
There is a man, an old man now, whose anticipation of Christmas is as fresh as a child’s. What excites this old man isn’t the store-bought present wrapped in shiny paper; it’s the manger-born child wrapped in diapers. The old man’s name is Martin Luther. His Christmas exuberance is child-like. No one in the church catholic glories in Christmas in quite the way that Luther does.
There is good reason for this. Luther was no armchair spectator. He was immersed in life. Life had whirled him up into ceaseless turbulence and conflict. He was also immersed in Jesus Christ. And Christ was that luminosity which loomed before him and seized him and leant him righteousness and resilience; a righteousness and resilience that allowed him to resist the deadly forces which otherwise spewed destruction wherever one looked. When Luther spoke of temptation he didn’t mean titillating notions that lingered in one’s head like a catchy tune; he meant something so visceral, so gut-wrenching that even the strongest person shook. When Luther spoke of love, he didn’t mean benign sentiment; he meant the most passionate, self-forgetful self-giving. When Luther spoke of evil, he knew first-hand a horror as grotesque as it was terrible. Many people who are daintier than they should be are put off by Luther’s earthy language. They find it shocking. Do you know what he found shocking? – people who are so naive, so superficial, so clueless that they fail to understand that the world swarms and seethes and heaves. Luther knew that the world is the venue of a cosmic conflict which surges round and about, claiming victims here and there, while from time-to-time the front of this cosmic conflict passes right through your heart and mine. When it does, only the earthiest language is adequate.
Everyone knows what Luther said at the famous confrontation in the city of Worms , 1521. “Here I stand. I can do no other. I cannot and will not recant. God help me.” But few people are aware that he said this not in a spirit of petulant intransigence or puffed-up arrogance. He said this in anguish – anguish for many reasons, not the least of which was this: from that moment until the day he died, twenty-five years later, there was a price on his head. Even fewer people know what his opponent, Emperor Charles V, vowed in the face of Luther’s stand: “I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther: my kingdom, my dominions, my friends, my body, my blood, my soul.” In other words, the opposition Luther would face for the rest of his life was total, relentless, and lethal. And we find his vocabulary exaggerated and his delight in the Christmas gift childish? We should know what he knew: the world is a turbulent and treacherous place for any Christian in any era.
Creatures of modernity like you and me think we live in an ideational world. If we pass a motion at a meeting, we assume that a problem has been dealt with. If the House of Commons passes new legislation, we assume that injustice has been rectified. We assume that to discuss a social problem dispels the problem. We mull over different philosophies and compare them with “Christianity.” Luther didn’t speak of “Christianity;” he was possessed by the Christmas babe himself. He didn’t finesse theories of evil; he was confronted with powers of darkness so intense and so penetrating that either he looked to the One who is indeed victor or he unravelled.
I understand why Luther delighted in Christmas, why he looked forward to December 25th with a child’s tremulous longing. Then what is it about the manger-gift that sustained the Wittenberger then and sustains us now?
I: — First, he who adorns the manger is the Son of God. “Son of” in biblical parlance means “of the same nature as”. To behold the child who is Son of God is to behold the nature of God; or at least as much as can be beheld. Luther didn’t dispute the truth that God is magnificent, mighty, (almighty, in fact); God is resplendent, glorious, incomparably so. Luther never disputed this. He also said that we never see it. The God whose majesty is indescribable is hidden from us. But Christmas celebrates not God hidden but God revealed. And God revealed appears in the world as we are in the world: weak, vulnerable, suffering, bleeding.
The Nicene Creed says that “for us and our salvation the Son of God came down from heaven…” Came down? Yes. A condescension. Came down. Self-abasement. Humility? Certainly. Yet more than humility: humiliation. There’s a difference.
It is wonderful that God humbled himself for our sakes; wonderful that he didn’t confine himself to his splendour but accommodated himself to us his creatures. Yet immeasurably more wonderful is it that for our sakes he knew not merely humility, but even humiliation. We read in the gospels that the detractors of Jesus hissed that our Lord was illegitimate. “Why should we heed — or even hear — a bastard like you?” they taunted contemptuously. When he died, the same people quoted the book of Deuteronomy: “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree.” “That proves it!” the head-waggers chattered knowingly, “We were right to shun him. He was cursed by God all along. What insight we had from the start!” Humiliation? Crucifixion was a Roman penalty reserved for those deemed scum: military deserters, terrorists and rapists. Jesus is lumped in with that crowd.
Then there’s the cry of dereliction, “Why have you forsaken me?” It’s the most anguish-ridden cry that Jesus ever uttered. Yet since the Father and the Son are of the same nature, the cry of the Son’s dereliction is simultaneously the cry of the Father himself. It’s the cry of someone who has voluntarily undergone enormous wounding for the sake of those he holds dear. The cry of dereliction is really the cry of God himself over the pain of his torn heart, suffered for the sake of us whom he plainly loves more than he loves himself.
Not the hidden God (splendid, magnificent, majestic) but the revealed God (suffering, humbled, humiliated, slain;) only the revealed God can help us, said Luther. For only the revealed God has identified fully, identified himself wholly with the grief and guilt, turbulence and turpitude, conflict and slander and suffering that surround my life and yours. Only this God is of any help to us.
Luther used to say that the most comforting words in all of scripture are the six words – what do you think the six most comforting words are? – of the preface to the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God.” If we really understood these six words, he said, we should be invincible. And who is the Lord our God? The God of manger and cross who will go to any length to seize, save and secure those whom he has named his own.
II: — Yet there is more to the manger-gift. Not only is he Son of God, he is also son of Mary. Jesus isn’t apparently human or seemingly human but actually human, fully human. “Tempted at all points as we are”, is the way the NT speaks of him. The one Greek word, PEIRAZEIN, means tempted, tested and tried all at once. Tempted, tested and tried like us but with this difference: he was never deflected in his human obedience, trust and love for his Father. He didn’t capitulate in the face of either the tempter’s threats or the tempter’s seductions.
Let’s talk about temptation for a minute. We modern types always assume that temptation is primarily temptation to do something wrong, temptation to commit a misdemeanour, temptation to contradict a code. But in scripture temptation is primarily temptation to deny the goodness of God. First we deny the goodness of God; next we deny the goodness of God’s claim upon our obedience (his claim upon our obedience, is of course our blessing;) finally we spurn the claim and disobey him – as we violate him and thereby violate ourselves. It’s not that we have done something wrong; rather, we have cast aspersion on the goodness of God and the goodness of his claim; the bottom line is that we have violated our relationship with God even as we have violated our very own person. It’s no wonder the Anglican Prayer Book reminds us, “And there is no health in us.”
He who is the son of Mary has been given to us as the one human being who doesn’t succumb to temptation; the one human being whose obedience to his Father is uncompromised, whose trust in his Father is undeflected, whose love for his Father is unrivalled by any other attachment. Then by faith I must cling to the Son of Mary, because my obedience is compromised a dozen times per day; my trust is fitful, and my love for God is forever being distracted by lesser attachments. The human response to God that I should make and even want to make has been corrupted, since I am a creature of the Fall.
Then of myself I can never render God the obedience and trust and love which befit the child of God. Nevertheless, there is provision for me: I can identify myself with the one whose human relationship to his Father is everything that mine isn’t. In faith I can cling gratefully to the son of Mary.
In the last few years family-therapists have come to appreciate the damage sustained by adults who came from what are called “shame-bound families.” We’re speaking now of the adult whose childhood unfolded in a family where the all-consuming preoccupation was the deep, dark family-secret that had to be kept secret. If the secret were told, public shame would spill over the family. Therefore any number of lies, evasions, and smokescreens were invented to cover up whoever it was in the family, whatever it was in the family, that threatened the family’s artificial reputation. The adult child of the shame-bound family now finds herself guilt-ridden, fearful, inhibited.
To belong to the family of God is to be relieved of being shame-bound. In the Son of God God has identified himself with me completely; all that is or might be shameful about me God has taken on and absorbed himself. In the Son of Mary, on the other hand, I have identified myself with the man Jesus. Whatever is genuinely shameful about me is taken up into the righteous humanness of Jesus himself. In his humanness he is the one with whom the Father is well-pleased. In faith, then, I cling to him, and in him my shame is bleached and blotted out.
III: — Lastly, the manger-gift is also the son of David. When people hailed Jesus as the son of David they were recognizing him as the Messiah. David had been Israel ’s greatest king, despite his undeniable feet of clay. David had valiantly tried to redress the injustices that pock-marked the nation. David was a harbinger, a precursor of the day when the just judge of the earth would no longer be defied and a topsy-turvy world would finally be righted.
Make no mistake. The world is topsy-turvy. A man who fails to hit a baseball seven times out of ten is guaranteed ten million dollars per year for the next five years. Meanwhile homemakers are selling daffodils on street corners because cancer patients needing treatment have been told that there’s a six-month waiting list for the equipment. The public education budget increases every year – and so does the incidence of illiteracy. Please note: concerning illiteracy Canada has surpassed both the United States and Italy . Canada is now, per capita, the most illiterate nation of the west – and all of this despite unprecedented billions spent on public education.
Anyone who struggles, like King David of old, to redress the injustices of the world learns quickly how frustrating, absurd and heartbreaking the struggle can be. A friend of mine who administers a facility for battered women was invited to duplicate the facility in another municipality, simply because of that municipality’s need. (In other words, wife-beating shows no signs of going out of style.) The institution she represents was offered free land by a developer. She spoke to municipal civil servants as well as to elected representatives. They promised to support her. When a public discussion was called concerning the project, however, both municipal staff and elected representatives sniffed the political wind-direction and turned on her. They didn’t merely withdraw the support they had promised; they faked surprise, as though they were hearing her for the first time, and then they denounced her, as though what she proposed (a facility for battered women) were antisocial and irresponsible and even patently ridiculous. (You see, a facility for battered women attracts creepy males as surely as a garbage dump attracts rats – so she was told.) I saw my friend two days after the event. She was still punch-drunk. She was shocked at the betrayal, the savagery, the greasy opportunism of it all. Luther wasn’t shocked at this. He was shocked at ignorant, fastidious people found his language shocking when he tried to address it.
The whole world cries out for the son of David, however inarticulately or unknowingly, just because the world cannot correct itself. As a matter of fact, the world is not getting better and better, however slowly. Then is hopelessness the only sensible attitude to have? Not for a minute. The manger-gift is the son of David, the Messiah promised of old, the royal ruler who will right the capsized world on that Day when he fashions a world in which righteousness dwells.
Then you and I must never capitulate to hopelessness. Neither do we disillusion ourselves with naiveness. Instead we faithfully, patiently, do whatever we can in anticipation of that Day when justice is done. And if what we do in anticipating this Day plunges us into even greater conflict for now, then our friend Luther will smile at us and say, “I could have told you that; I always knew that the appearance of Jesus Christ provokes conflict.” And at such a time we shall have to find our comfort and cheer in that manger-gift, the child of Bethlehem , who made Luther’s eyes light up like a child’s on Christmas morning.
He who has been given to us is the Son of God, the son of Mary, and the son of David.
As the Son of God he is God humbling himself, even humiliating himself in seeking to save us.
As the son of Mary he renders the Father the proper human response that we should make but can’t, and therefore we must cling to him in faith.
As the son of David he is the long-promised Messiah who guarantees us a righted world in which righteousness will one day be seen to dwell.
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent II 7th December 2008
Church of St Bride, Anglican, Mississauga
Of Eden and Advent
Luke 1:46-55
Genesis 3
I: Why is there unrelenting tension between men and women? Women feel set upon by men, victimized, violated even. In the wake of the feminist protest men feel misunderstood, maligned, even conspired against.
Why is the struggle for survival just that, a struggle? We wouldn’t mind working hard if we knew that fruitfulness followed our work as surely as night follows day. But whether we are farmers or physicians, office-workers or educators, something is always going wrong; we are never clear of frustration; we are forever having to scramble and scrabble.
Why is it that mere difference between groups of people becomes the occasion of lethal hostility? As slight a difference as the difference between brown skin and white skin and black skin shouldn’t precipitate mayhem and murder. But it does!
Why are we profoundly discontented ourselves? We thought that the new house would make us happy — and it did, for three weeks or so. The new car lifted our spirits — until our neighbour drove up with a costlier car.
Why is it that humankind never advances? To be sure, we make progress in the realm of science; that is, we progress insofar as we harness nature. But humankind itself makes no progress at all. Our foreparents sinned and suffered and slew; we sin and suffer and slay. History, we have learned, is the history of warfare. Having learned this, however, we still are powerless to do anything about it.
Why is it that everyone blames everyone else for what’s wrong? The socialist blames the stony-hearted capitalist with his exploitative greed. The capitalist blames the masses with their pleasure-loving shortsightedness and their irresponsible undependability. Everyone points the finger and says, “It’s your fault!”
Our foreparents contended with bubonic plague; then with smallpox; then with tuberculosis. Now we contend with aids and its social aftermath. Is humankind on a treadmill?
Here is my last question, a different question. Why is the gospel “good news”? Wherein is it good news? If it’s genuinely good, it has to be more than news, because the last thing we need is more words. If it is genuinely good, then it has to be a new reality.
II: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Today we begin looking ahead to the birth of him whom St.John describes as “the remedy for the defilement of our sins.” In order to understand our defilement — its nature, its scope, its inescapability — we must go back to the old, old story of the Fall.
Adam and Eve — “humankind” and “mother of the living” is what their names mean respectively. This story is a parable of every man and every woman.
In this profound saga God has placed Adam and Eve in a garden; Eden, it is called, the Hebrew word for “delight”. Life is blessed here. Everything they need to nourish themselves is ready-to-hand. God’s provision attests his goodness, kindness, helpfulness. There is one thing, however, which they are to avoid. They must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now “good and evil” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “everything you can think of; the sum total of human possibilities.” Imagine yourself doing anything at all; I mean anything. The sum total of these “anythings at all” is what the Hebrew mind means by “good and evil”.n Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for one reason: God loves them, God blesses them, God protects them. Among these “anythings at all” which we imagine ourselves doing; among these are a great many which do not bless: they curse us. Among these are many which do not enrich us; they impoverish us. Many do not protect us; they expose us to influences and powers which are ultimately fatal.
A physician-friend of mine dropped over to see me one evening. He asked me if I knew what the single largest threat to public health was in the world today. I didn’t. He told me: promiscuity. Then we talked about “crack”. The first wave of crack-babies has entered school. Already it is incontrovertible that these children have attention spans so short that they are not going to learn anything; they bristle with the ugliest hostility, and they are unable to form any conscience at all. Does anyone still doubt that there are some “anythings at all” which really are ruinous? The two I have mentioned are dramatic and glaring. There are other “anythings at all” which are far more subtle; discernment is needed to recognize them. Yet discern we should, since in eden, Eden, God wants only to protect us and bless us.
In our ancient story (as relevant, of course as today’s newspaper which confirms it one hundred times over) temptation is personified by a talking snake. (Don’t laugh; even fairy tales are always profound.) Temptation personified says softly, “Now about this tree whose fruit you are not to eat; did God really say you were not to eat it? Did he really say that?” In other words, temptation casts doubt on the command of God. And since God loves us, to cast doubt on the command of God is to cast aspersion on the love of God and the goodness of God. At this point all of us are whispering to ourselves, “God didn’t say it; or if he did, he had no business saying it; he must be a spoilsport; he is certainly arbitrary.” First we doubt the goodness of God’s command; then we deny that violating it will turn blessing into curse.
In our old story the woman replies to the serpent, “God says that we aren’t to eat of this tree; furthermore, he said we aren’t even to touch it.” She is lying! She exaggerates. As soon as she exaggerates she lies! God never said they weren’t to touch it. She is making this up herself. First, doubt of the goodness of the command of God; second, denial that violating it (violating God himself) turns blessing into curse; third, inventing a law of life for ourselves. We make ourselves lawgivers; we decide by what code we should live. The living voice of the living God isn’t heard at all now, because we are telling ourselves what we think renders life blessed.
The serpent has all of us on the slippery slopes now. The serpent says, “I’m aware that God said you would die; that is, be estranged from God himself, with horrible consequences — I’m aware that God said you would die if you extended your lives into those “anythings at all” which he says are ruinous. But what does he know? You won’t die! Just the opposite! You will be exalted. Your consciousness will be altered. Your mood will be elevated. Life will be beautiful. You will be freed up as never before. Your self-awareness will be expanded until you feel you are the centre of the universe. Your self-confidence will be inflated until you feel there is nothing you can’t succeed at. You will have a perspective on life that you have never had before — the same perspective as that of God himself.”
Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Yada”, the Hebrew verb to know, doesn’t have the force of “to acquire information”. We modern folk assume that to know something is to have information about that thing. To know automobiles is to have information about horsepower and wheel bases. But for our Hebrew foreparents to know always has the force of personal acquaintance with a reality. To know sorrow is to be personally acquainted with grief. To know pain is to be in pain. To know God is to be personally acquainted with God himself. Not to know God is to thrust off God himself; to repudiate him and spurn his goodness and his protection and his blessing. Not to know God, therefore, is to know ‘good and evil’. It is to have personal acquaintance, intimate acquaintance with that reality which impoverishes life, curses it, and ultimately destroys it.
AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE! We are — every one of us — profoundly alienated from God, hauntingly alienated, fatally alienated.
III: — And then the question which God puts to Adam, to everyone: “Where are you?” Well, where are you? Where am I? Speaking for all of us Adam says to God, “I’m hiding from you.” How silly! As if anyone could hide from God! Adam is now as ridiculous as the four year old playing hide ‘n’ seek who thinks that because she regards herself hidden away no one else can see her or find her.
To be a fallen human being (which all of us are) is to flee God, flee into hiding, ridiculously thinking that we can hide from God. Our situation fails to be humorous simply because it is tragic. After all, life is not a game. We have said to God, “We don’t want you.” And God has said to us, “You don’t have to have me. But then neither do you have to have my goodness, my protection, my blessing. To do without me — your preference! — is to be stuck with the consequences of doing without me.”
There is something we must understand clearly. To thrust away the only righteous ruler of the earth is to be stuck with manifold unrighteousness and its spinoffs. To cast aspersion on the goodness of God is to wade around in wickedness. To disdain God’s protection is to be defenceless against exploitative evil. To assume that God’s wisdom can be improved upon is to be poisoned with the unwisdom of folly. In a word, to forfeit blessing is to be stuck with curse. AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE!
“But can’t we go back to Eden?”, someone asks with more than a hint of desperation. Many attempts are made. All utopias are an attempt at recovering Eden. All such attempts are going to fail. Marxism was such an attempt. Its failure is writ large. Every pronouncement that men and women are only the product of their environment reflects another attempt. Rousseau’s notion of the “noble savage” — that primitive peoples were somehow intrinsically virtuous and were corrupted only by civilization — another attempt. Anyone who disagrees with Jeremiah — “The heart of many is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt” — anyone who thinks that Jeremiah exaggerates assumes that Eden can be recovered. In our ancient story an angel with a flaming sword bars the way to the tree of life in the garden. We can’t go back and seize the tree of life ourselves and undo the deadly curse we have brought down on ourselves. We cannot resurrect ourselves. We cannot restore ourselves. The flaming sword which turns every which way in the hand of the angel fends off any and all who are so naive and foolish as to think that they or their scheme can undo the Fall and its consequences. Eden cannot be recovered. Looking back is pointless just because going back is impossible.
IV: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is the season of longing, of waiting, of expectancy. What are we longing for? We long for Eden. Not everyone uses this vocabulary. Most people long for they know not what. In truth, nonetheless, they long for Eden. What are they waiting for? They are waiting for someone who can undo Eden’s curse. Why the expectancy? Because deep down they want to be delivered from the dis-ease which keeps gnawing at them. They are mature enough to realize that the grab-bag of grown-up trinkets and toys does nothing to the halt the dis-ease which haunts them. But since there is no return to Eden the entire world must be doomed to unending frustration.
Not so! Advent reminds us that we are not to look back, but ahead. In Advent we stand on tiptoe anticipating the very blessing which we cannot give ourselves. In Advent we await Christmas as eagerly as the youngster awaits opening the first gift. THE gift of Christmas for us all, of course, is that new addition to the human family which is more than an addition; the gift is he himself who is both humanity renewed and lord of the renewed humanity.
Advent recalls another woman speaking. Not Eve rationalizing her capitulation to temptation; this time it’s Mary exulting in her service to the world. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour… henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Generations to come will call her blessed, for in her child what we have lost and cannot recover ourselves God has given us just because in his mercy he will suffer anything himself to save us from our self-inflicted misery.
Adam and Eve succumbed to the blandishments of the tempter. But the Christmas child, grown up, will resist the tempter in the wilderness, resist throughout his ministry, resist again in another garden (Gethsemane, this time), resist finally on the cross when mockers tell him he might as well unhook himself since he is not doing any good in any case.
In the garden of Eden we were barred from storming the tree of life in an effort to save ourselves. We are not allowed to arrogate to ourselves what rightly belongs to God alone. Yet by God’s mercy there is another tree. Concerning this tree no angel with flaming sword bars us access. Instead access is guaranteed us and the invitation is sounded continuously: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” What hangs from this tree we are urged to taste and so to see for ourselves that God is good indeed.
The apostles discerned that in Jesus Christ we were given not only that saviour whom we need individually. With him we are introduced to a new world. In other words, our Lord brings a renewed creation with him. All who cling to him in faith find their renewed life unfolding in a new world, a new environment.
For this reason Paul says that in Christ there is neither male nor female. He doesn’t mean that gender-distinction is eliminated in a unisex muddle. He means that gender-distinction is preserved and enriched just because gender-hostility is overcome. In Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile. He doesn’t mean that the distinction is eliminated. (Paul was always aware that the gentile world never lets Jews forget that they are Jews; he was also aware that God requires Jews not to forget that they are Jews. He insists that in Christ (and in Christ alone is what he means) the deepest-grained hostility anywhere in the world — the hostility between Jew and non-Jew — is overcome. And if this hostility is overcome in Christ, any hostility is as well. What other instances of renewed life in a renewed world can you share with the rest of us?
A few minutes ago we saw that to do without God, to want to do without God, is to do without God’s blessing and therefore live under curse. But in the One who is God incarnate there is blessing only. How could there be anything else? And therefore in his company that disease which can neither be named nor denied is eclipsed by gratitude for him whose name we now know, whose name, Yehoshuah, means “God saves”, and whom we have no wish to deny.
In Christ our dust-to dust exile is overarched by the promise of resurrection: our destiny is not death, decomposition of body and dissolution of personhood. Our destiny is eternal life at God’s own hand.
The last question I left with you in introduction of the sermon was, “Why is the gospel good news?” It’s good news not in the sense that it is up-to-the-minute information (like Barbara Frum’s broadcast.) It is good news just because it announces a new reality so winsome as to breathe its own invitation.
In Advent we don’t look back in nostalgia and regret; we look ahead in eagerness and confidence. For there is given to us the one whom all humankind craves, whom Christians know to be Jesus the Christ, and who caused Mary’s heart to sing, even as he will make our hearts sing for ever and ever.
F I N I S
Victor Shepherd
Of Mothers and Sons
1 Samuel 1: 12-20
Galatians 4:4-7
Matthew 1:18-25
There are some expressions of human suffering so terrible that the pulpit can mention them only with fear and trembling, in view of the fact that sitting in the pew are those who are suffering the anguish under discussion. One such anguish is childlessness. I have been a pastor now for 32 years, and I have concluded that there is no anguish like the anguish of childlessness.
If it is less than wise for me to discuss this publicly, what I am going to say next is even more foolish, since it may be pilloried as sexist. I think that while it is husband and wife together who are childless, women suffer more, and suffer in a way that is difficult for men to understand. When Hannah was tormented by her childlessness her husband, Elkanah, no doubt heartbroken himself over their infertility, no doubt near-frantic at his wife’s inconsolability, and no doubt clueless as to what to say next; Elkanah finally blurted out, “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam. 1:8) No, he wasn’t more to Hannah than ten children. He was her husband; she was his wife. But she wasn’t anyone’s mother. Wife is categorically different from mother! Elkanah was her husband; he couldn’t be more to her than ten children; he couldn’t even be more to her than one child.
Today, in this Advent season, we are going to look at four childless women — and at four children (sons) whom the world will never forget, as it will never forget their mothers.
I: — The first we shall look at is Sarah. She was to be the foremother of all God’s people. God had promised her and her husband, Abraham, descendants as numberless as the sands on the seashore. Before there can be numberless descendants, however, there has to be one; yet Sarah was childless. It’s difficult to believe in God’s promises, isn’t it, to keep on believing year after year!
Then Sarah was told she would conceive. She laughed. Being told, at her age, that she would conceive was as ludicrous as my being told that I am going to be the next middleweight boxing champion of the world. Laughter befits the ludicrous.
But Sarah did conceive, and gave birth to Isaac, the Hebrew word for “laughter”. Now it was easy to believe in the promises of God.
Or was it? For the day came all too soon when her faith in the promise-keeping God was tested. Her husband was told to offer up their son Isaac as a sacrifice to God; Isaac, their son, their only son.
Their dilemma was this. God had promised numberless descendants within the household of faith, generation after generation. Two things were needed for the fulfilment of the promise concerning the household of faith: people who were descended from Abraham and Sarah, and people of faith who were descended from Abraham and Sarah. If Ab. and S. obeyed God and offered up Isaac, then their faith was intact but their descendants were snuffed out. On the other hand, if they second-guessed God and preserved Isaac, then descendants were guaranteed (biological descendants), but in their second-guessing and disobeying God faith was snuffed out — with the result, of course, that there would be no descendants of faith.
In other words, if they obeyed God in faith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant. If, on the other hand, they disobeyed God in unfaith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant of faith. Regardless of what they did, the promise was null and void — when all the while they had been called to faith in the promise-keeping God. So what were they to do?
With unspeakable anguish of heart they elected to obey God and trust him to keep his promise to them even though they couldn’t see how God was ever going to keep his promise! Rather than second-guess God and try to sort out for him what he couldn’t seem to sort out for himself, they elected to trust God and trust him to sort out for them what they couldn’t sort out for themselves. And so with breaking hearts they trudged up Mount Moriah, knife in hand, determined to trust God to fulfil his own promise in ways beyond their imagining — only to find that a ram had been provided for the sacrifice.
God has made many promises to us. One is that the powers of death will not prevail against the church. But right now the powers of death seem to be prevailing against the church. So what are we going to do? We can trust God to keep his promise, in ways that we can’t see at this moment; or we can second-guess him. We can continue to hold up the gospel, even though it is steadfast allegiance to the gospel-message that seems to keep contemporary secularites out of the church, or we can develop a new message, a new attraction, new entertainment, new gimmicks — all of which we hope will keep people here even as the gospel has long since gone. So what are we going to do?
Ten times per year I am asked why I won’t approve of raffles or other games of chance for church fundraising. Wouldn’t a raffle bring in truckloads of money? (And everyone knows it takes truckloads of money to maintain any congregation.) Wouldn’t a raffle get us past our chronic financial squeeze and let us concentrate on other matters? Concentrate on what other matters? Certainly not on the gospel, because by the time we got around to the raffle the gospel would have been long given up. What answer would Sarah give to us, even as she wept over Isaac?
A friend of mine, a pastor in Montreal, “locked horns” with his congregation (the conflict ended in his dismissal) over the Sunday morning prayer of confession; confession of sin. They told him they didn’t believe they were sinners; at least they weren’t sinners in the real sense of the term. Furthermore, in an era of declining turn-outs on Sunday morning they needed to attract upwardly mobile young couples. How were they ever going to do this as long as the pastor told “wannabe” social climbers every Sunday that they were sinners? What would Sarah say to all this? We know. She was willing to give up the son she had awaited for decades.
Sarah trusted God to keep the promises he had made, even though she couldn’t see, at this minute, how it was all going to work out. Sarah trusted.
II: — Hannah longed for a child so ardently and prayed so intently and wailed so incoherently before God that her clergyman, Eli, thought she was drunk. “Put away the bottle!”, Eli rebuked her. “I’m not drunk”, Hannah had said, “I’m troubled; I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord.”
And then it happened. A child. Samuel. “Samuel” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “His name is God.” What an unusual name to call a child! But before Samuel was born Hannah had consecrated him to God. She didn’t give him up to death as Sarah had done before her; nevertheless in the profoundest sense Hannah gave up her son unconditionally to the service of God. “As long as my son lives”, Hannah had cried, “he is lent to the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:28)
Samuel became a prophet, one of those uncompromising truth-tellers who made politicians and rulers wince when the truth was made public. Samuel anointed Saul the first king of Israel. Upon witnessing Saul’s disobedience, however, Samuel deposed Saul and anointed David king. Plainly Samuel wasn’t one to waste time.
Samuel grew up in the town of Ramah and lived in Ramah for the rest of his life. “Rama” has a familiar ring these days. Rama is a town near Orillia; Rama is one more site of the provincial government’s protracted disgrace: casino gambling. What do you think Samuel would say if he were to visit the Rama casino? What do you think he would have said (or done) if he had gone to Casino Rama on opening day several summers ago when the parking lot was crammed with milling children, neglected, while their parents (chiefly single moms), were inside squandering the money they keep telling us they don’t have? What would Samuel have done when the public address speakers kept pleading with mothers to go to the parking lot and take charge of their children — all to no avail?
The province of Ontario will sell anyone a return GO-rail ticket (Toronto-Rama return) for only $29.95. Plainly the ticket is heavily subsidized. The government (the tax-payer) subsidizes the poorest people in our society to squander their money on a set-up rigged in favour of returning six billion dollars per year to the provincial governments of Canada. The day the Ontario government introduced state-sponsored casino gambling (Windsor) it eliminated all funding to psychiatric programs for gambling addicts.
What do you think Samuel would have done? King Saul had cozied up to a foreign king who was tormenting God’s people in Israel of old. King Saul had kept the best of this foreign king’s livestock in order to enrich himself even though he had been told he must not profit from the foreign ruler who had brutalized God’s people. Samuel had come upon Saul at that time and had said, “For personal gain you have cozied up to the fellow who tormented your people? You aren’t fit to be king, Saul, and as of today you are deposed.” And then Samuel had slain the foreign king, Agag.
So what would Samuel do in Rama today? We can only guess. But we needn’t guess in one respect. We know for sure that Samuel, distraught at the spiritual declension in his people, would have pleaded with God until the sweat poured off him as it was to pour off Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Samuel would have pleaded with God concerning a government so conscienceless and a people so stupid and a greed so shameless. A heartbroken Samuel would have pleaded until he was hoarse. To be sure, Samuel had deposed Saul and slain Agag; but this wasn’t the sort of thing Samuel did every day. Then what did Samuel do every day? He had a reputation for being a tireless intercessor. He would have interceded with God for his people every day. When he looked out over the broken-down, soft-headed, hard-hearted people of Israel, meandering like sheep without a shepherd and following whoever was making the biggest noise, Samuel cried to the people, “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” (1 Sam. 12:23) A fierce prophet in public, in private Samuel was the intercessor whose tear-runnelled cheeks told everyone what he was doing when no one was around to see him doing it.
III: — Elizabeth and Zechariah had been childless for years. Then they learned they were to have a child: “Yo-chan”, “gift of God”. Their child would be a prophet; not any prophet, but a prophet “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, Luke records.
Elijah wasn’t merely Israel’s greatest prophet; Elijah was the end-time prophet. Elijah was to come back when the Messiah was at the door. Elijah was to prepare the people to meet the Messiah.
Jesus himself insisted that John the Baptist was Elijah all over again. John had been sent to prepare the people for Jesus.
What was the preparation? What is it, since John still prepares people to receive the gift of Christmas?
(i) “You’ve got to make a U-turn in your life”, thundered John, and so we must. And we had better be sincere. If our “repentance”, so-called, is nothing more than a calculation designed to get us “fire insurance”; in other words, if our “repentance” is just one more expression of our endless self-interest; if it is anything other than horror at our sin and anything less than a repudiation of it, John will say to us what he said to the fire-insurance phonies of his day: “You nest of snakes, you slithering creeps; you are revolting. Get serious while there’s time to get serious.”
(ii) The second item in John’s agenda of preparation: “Put your life in order. If you are truly repentant inwardly, your life must display integrity outwardly”. Those whose occupations give them social clout (like police officers and military personnel) must stop brutalizing people; those whose occupations give them access to large sums of money (like accountants and bankers) must stop lining their pockets; those who hoard money and ignore the human suffering around them had better open heart and hand and home. Inward repentance must issue in outward integrity.
(iii) The last aspect of the preparation John urges: “Don’t linger over me; look away from me to my cousin. Don’t stop at listening to me; hear instead my younger relative. He is the one appointed to be your Saviour and Lord in life and in death!”
When John announced he was preparing the way of the Lord many responded. Many more did not. Among the latter was Herodias, Herod’s wife. John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you had your daughter dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Herodias, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.”
What happened next? Everybody knows what befell John next. Elizabeth had to make that sacrifice required of all the mothers we are probing this morning; she too gave up her son for the sake of the kingdom.
IV: — And then there is Mary. While Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth had become pregnant through an extraordinary intervention of God, there was no suggestion of anything other than ordinary intercourse and ordinary conception. But it was different with Mary, and different with her just because her Son was to be different; Mary’s conception was unique just because her Son was unique. Isaac was a patriarch; Samuel and John were prophets; but Jesus was — and is — the Son of God incarnate. Isaac and Samuel and John pointed away from themselves to God; Jesus pointed to himself as God-with-us.
Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus indicated over and over that to worship him was not idolatry. He persisted in using the formula, “I am” (“I am the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, etc.) when he knew all the while that “I am” is the self-designation of God. He agreed with his enemies that only God could forgive sin — and then proceeded to forgive sin himself. He admitted that the law of Moses was divinely authoritative — and then went ahead and announced its definitive meaning. Everyone knew that God alone is judge; whereupon Jesus announced himself to be the judge and insisted that the final criterion for all of us would be our attitude to him.
Mary was unique just because her Son is unique. He — he alone — is the world’s redeemer. He has to be the world’s redeemer just because the world cannot generate its own cure. Every time the world has attempted to generate its own cure (there have been two notable instances of this in the 20th century alone, one in Russia and the other in Germany), it has left the world worse. The cure for a world gone wrong has to be given to the world. History cannot produce the saviour of history; history’s saviour has to be given to it. And if the current talks about “world government” give rise to some kind of international mega-sovereignty, then we shall have to learn all over that humankind’s attempt at self-sovereignty issues in self-annihilation. For precisely this reason Jesus Christ has been given to us — not produced by us — as the world’s sole sovereign and saviour. And if we are ever so foolish as to try to program any form of the superhuman we shall have to see — again — that all such attempts issue in the subhuman. Humankind cannot generate humankind’s redemption. Our redeemer has to be given to us. This is what Mary’s virginal conception is all about.
Mary learned what it was all about the day she was told she would bear Jesus, “Yehoshua”, “God saves”. On the same day she learned that a sword would pierce her heart; a sword would pierce her heart as surely as a spear and nails would pierce her son.
Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth. Each offered up her son. Mary offered up hers too. Mary gathers up in herself all that her sisters knew before her.
Isaac, Samuel, John. The Lord Jesus whose birth we celebrate in this season gathers up in himself all that his brothers knew before him. Yet even as he gathers up them all in himself he is so much more than they. He himself is God’s incursion into human history, and for this reason he himself is the action of God saving us.
Because our Lord Jesus is himself the action of God saving us, he is unique. His mother’s uniqueness testifies to his uniqueness. Rightly, then, did Mary cry, “Henceforth all generations will call me blessed.”
We too are eager to call her blessed, for we too have been blessed in her Son. We have been blessed pre-eminently in the Son’s resurrection from the dead. In that kingdom which his resurrection established the wounded hearts of Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary have already been healed. In that selfsame kingdom your heart and mine — wounded and broken, savage and self-contradictory, devious and disconsolate — whatever our heart-condition it is to find its cure in him who has been given to us to do for us and in us and with us all that will redound to the praise of his glory and the splendour of his kingdom.
Victor Shepherd
December 2002
392 Hark, a Herald Voice stanzas 3&4
390 O Come, O Come stanzas 3&4
391 On Jordan’s bank stanza 2
415 O Come, Let Us Adore Him stanzas 2&5
His Name Will Be Called PRINCE OF PEACE
Isaiah 9:2-6
Luke 2:21-32
Everyone (everyone, that is, except the manifestly unbalanced) craves peace. We long for peace among nations, peace within our own nation, peace within our family, and, of course, peace within ourselves. In our psychology-driven age it’s the lattermost, peace within ourselves, that’s the pre-eminent felt need. The pharmaceutical companies have profited immensely from our preoccupation with inner peace. Prominent preachers like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller have made a career and attracted a following through preaching the same sermon over and over for forty years; namely, how to acquire inner peace.
And yet a moment’s reflection reminds us there’s a peace we ought not to have. There’s a peace born not of inner contentment but rather of inertia. Several years ago an Anglican bishop penned a greeting to all the parish clergy in the diocese wishing them peace. One clergyman wrote back, “My parish doesn’t need peace; it needs an earthquake.”
There’s another kind of “peace” (so-called) that God doesn’t want for us and which he’s determined to take from us: that peace which is the bliss of ignorance, the bliss of indifference, the bliss of the deafened ear and the hardened heart in the face of suffering and deprivation, abuse and injustice. Our Lord himself cried to detractors, “You think I came to bring peace? I have news for you. I came to bring a sword.” We mustn’t forget that the metaphor of soldiering, of military conflict, is one of the commonest apostolic metaphors for discipleship: to follow Jesus is to follow him in his strife.
Nonetheless, he whose coming we celebrate at this season is called Prince of Peace. He himself says, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” Then what is the nature of the peace he longs for us to have?
I: — The first aspect of such peace is “peace with God.” The apostle Paul writes to his fellow-Christians in Rome , “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To be justified by faith is to be rightly related to God in a relationship of trust, love and obedience. To be rightly related to God is to have and enjoy peace with God. Plainly, not to be rightly related to God is have enmity with God. Is it also to be aware of enmity with God? Not necessarily. Most people who lack peace with God and therefore live in enmity towards God remain unaware of it. When they are told of it they smile patronisingly and remark, “Enmity towards God? I have nothing against him. I’ve never had anything against him.” Such people need to be corrected; they need to be told that even if they think they have nothing against God, he has much against them. He reacts to their indifference; he resists their disdain; he opposes their disobedience; he is angered by their recalcitrance.
Yet even as God rightly resists the indifference of ungodly people (indifference that is actually contempt of him), and even as God reacts as he must, it distresses him to do so. He longs only to have the stand-off give way to intimacy, the frigidity to warmth, the defiance to obedience, the disdain to trust. For this reason his broken heart was incarnated in the broken body of his Son at Calvary ; for this reason his Spirit has never ceased pleading. Sometimes in the earthquake, wind and fire like that of his incursion at Sinai, at other times in the “still small voice” that Elijah heard, God has pleaded and prodded, whispered and shouted, shocked and soothed: anything to effect the surrender of those who think they have nothing against him but whose indifference in fact is enmity.
What God seeks in all of this, of course, is faith. Not faith in the popular sense of “belief”; faith, rather, in the Hebrew sense of “faith-fulness”, faith’s fulness: faith’s full reliance upon his mercy, faith’s full welcome accorded his truth, faith’s full appropriation of his pardon, faith’s full love now quickened by his ceaseless love for us. It all adds up to being rightly related to him. With our hostility dispelled, ignorance gives way to intimacy and cavalierness to commitment. We simply abandon ourselves to him. “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He who is the Prince of Peace effects our peace with God.
II: — Knowing and enjoying peace with God, Christ’s people are now blessed with the peace of God. The peace of God is that peace which every last individual desires. The peace of God is that “eye” of rest at the centre of the hurricane, the oasis in the midst of the desert storm, the calm in the midst of convulsion, the tranquillity that no turbulence can overturn ultimately. The peace of God is that peace which God grants to his people as they face life’s assaults. No one is surprised to hear that peace with God issues in the peace of God; a peace with God that didn’t issue in a peace deep inside us would be an exceedingly hollow peace.
The peace of God needs to be renewed moment-by-moment throughout life. The peace of God isn’t static, isn’t a state; the peace of God is dynamic, a constantly renewed gift blessing those constantly waiting upon God. Why the emphasis on “moment-by-moment” and “dynamic”, on “constantly renewed” and “constantly waiting upon”? Because disruption without us and disturbance within us; these unfold moment-by-moment too. The doctrine of creation reminds us that creation occurs as God suppresses chaos so as to allow life to arise. In a fallen world, however, chaos always threatens to reassert itself; in a fallen world, chaos always laps at creation, always nudges it, sometimes jars it. A fallen world unfailingly reminds us that the political chaos of disorder, the biological chaos of disease, the mental chaos of unforeseen breakdown: these are ever-present door-knocks of a chaos that ceaselessly knocks at the door of everyone’s life.
Many of the assaults that leave us craving the peace of God are not merely unforeseen but even unforeseeable. They resemble the “blind side hit” that leaves the football player momentarily stunned. The football player is running full-tilt down the field, looking back over his shoulder for the quarterback’s pass. Just as the ball touches his outstretched fingertips an opponent, running full-tilt up the field towards him, levels him. The collision is devastating physically because of the full-speed, head-on impact; it’s devastating psychologically because it wasn’t expected. The worst feature of the blind side hit isn’t the pain of the impact, or even the helplessness of temporary prostration; worse is the disorientation that accompanies it; worst of all is the fear that may arise from it, for if the player becomes fearful of the blind side hit he’ll never want to look back for the quarterback’s pass. In other words, the fear of subsequent blind side hits has taken the player off the field; he no longer plays the game.
As life unfolds for you and me we are blind-sided again and again. We are clobbered by circumstances we couldn’t foresee and therefore didn’t expect. Because we didn’t expect them we weren’t particularly armed and equipped to deal with them. Pain of some sort is inevitable; momentary disorientation is likely. And fear? It would be unrealistic never to fear life’s blind side hits. The ultimate issue here isn’t whether or not we fear; it’s whether or not our fear is allowed to take us off the field, induce us to quit. Plainly, the peace of God has everything to do with our ardour for life and our commitment to kingdom-work in the face of the clobbering we can’t avoid.
To his fellow-Christians in the city of Philippi Paul writes, “The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” The Greek word for “keep” (phulassein) is an expression drawn from the realm of military engagements. “Keep”, in ancient military parlance, has two major thrusts. In the first place it refers to the action of an army whereby the army repels attackers, holding attackers at bay so that while attackers may assault, even assault repeatedly, they never gain entry, never overrun, never triumph and therefore never annihilate. In the second place phulassein, “keep”, refers to the protection an army renders inhabitants of a besieged city so as to prevent the city’s inhabitants from fleeing in panic. The apostle draws on both aspects of the military metaphor: the peace of God prevents life’s outer assaults from undoing us ultimately and thereby prevents us from fleeing life in inner panic.
The apostle says one thing more about this peace of God: it “passes understanding”. In fact, it passes “all understanding.” It passes understanding inasmuch as it isn’t natural; it isn’t generated by anything the sociologist or psychologist or neurologist can account for; it isn’t circumstantial. In a word, there’s no earthly explanation for it. Peace of mind that arose in the midst of peaceful circumstances would be entirely understandable and therefore entirely explicable. On the other hand, innermost peace in the midst of turbulence and treachery and topsy-turvyness; this is peace that occurs for no apparent reason.
There are parallels, of course, everywhere in the Christian life. Jesus says to his disciples, “In the world you are going to have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Our good cheer arises in the midst of tribulation just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for good cheer, even as he gathers his people into his triumph. In exactly the same way peace arises in the midst of turbulence and treachery just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for peace, even as he includes his people in his triumph.
It is the prince of peace who gives us that peace of God which passes all understanding.
III: — The one dimension of peace that remains for us to discuss this morning is peace among men and women. Once more there is a logical connexion with the dimensions of peace that we have probed so far: those who know and enjoy peace with God and who are beneficiaries of the peace of God are commissioned to work indefatigably for peace on earth. Jesus maintains that his people are ever to be peacemakers; peacemakers, we should note, not peacewishers or peacehopers or pseudo-peace manipulators.
There are several pretenders to peace among men and women that are just that: pretenders. Pretend-peace, make-believe peace, is simply a matter of pretending that injustice and exploitation, savagery and enforced wretchedness don’t exist. Pretend-peace, make-believe peace; Jesus says he has come to expose this; expose it and eradicate it.
And of course there’s another form of pretend-peace; it arises not from pretending that injustice and abuse don’t exist; it arises from the deliberate lie, the cleverly-couched deception, intentional duplicity, even out-and-out propaganda.
I am told that those used car dealers who are unscrupulous are adept at a technique known as “paperhanging.” A used car has a rust-hole in the fender. The hole isn’t fixed properly. Instead, paper is glued over the hole and the paper is painted the same colour as the rest of the car. Anyone could poke her finger through the paper, of course, but it’s hoped that the paper deception will hold up long enough to get the car off the lot.
Paper-hanging abounds everywhere in life. Much peacemaking, so called, is little more than a smooth tongue smoothing over a jagged wound. Paperhanging peacemaking never works in the long run, of course, but it’s used all the time in the short run to get us quickly past conflicts that will otherwise be publicly visible (and therefore embarrassing) in a family or a group or a meeting. In six weeks paperhanging peacemaking gives way to worse conflict than ever, conflict now marinated in bitterness and frustration; it then gives way to worse conflict still six weeks after that.
When Paul writes, “Let us pursue what makes for peace”; when the author of Hebrews counsels, “Strive for peace with everyone”; when Jesus urges his people to make peace; in all of this we can’t fail to hear the note of urgent doing even as in all of this there’s no suggestion at all of paperhanging.
Then how are we to make peace among our fellows? In the first place we must always be concerned to see that justice is done. The Hebrew prophets denounce anything else not only as ineffective but as an attempt at magic. God himself castigates the religious leaders of Israel as he accuses them, according to Jeremiah, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” It’s often assumed that naming something thus and so makes it thus and so. It’s assumed that pronouncing “peace” over glaring injustice will yield peace. But it never does. Peace cannot be made unless injustice is dealt with first.
Please don’t think I am suggesting something impossible for most people, such as ensuring justice in the Middle East or in Latin America or in war-torn countries of Africa . I’m speaking of situations much closer to home. And in this regard I’m convinced that we fail to name injustice for what it is out of fear: we’re afraid that to identify injustice or abuse or exploitation is to worsen conflict. Likely it will worsen conflict, in the short run. But often conflict has to worsen if any genuine peace is to be made eventually. To expect anything else is to want magic. There’s no shortcut here. The psalmist cries, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne.” There’s more to God’s throne than righteousness and justice, to be sure, but without them, the foundation, there would be no throne at all.
In our efforts at peacemaking it’s important for us to examine carefully the earthly ministry of our Lord. Whenever he himself is made to suffer, he simply absorbs it. On the other hand, wherever he sees other people made to suffer unjustly, he acts without hesitation. He will go to any lengths to redress the suffering of those who are victimised. He will stop at nothing to defend the defenceless and protect the vulnerable and vindicate the vilified. Yet whenever he is made to suffer himself he simply absorbs it.
You and I will be the peacemakers he ordains us to be if we can forget ourselves and our minor miseries long enough to be moved at someone else’s victimisation. But if we are going to remain preoccupied with every petty jab and petty insult and petty putdown, most of which are half-imagined in any case, then so far from promoting peace we are going to be forever rationalising our own vindictiveness.
Remember: when our Lord sees other people abused he’s mobilised, acting instantly on their behalf; when he’s abused himself, however, he pleads for his benighted tormentors. We are always a better judge of that injustice which afflicts others than we are of that injustice which we think we are suffering ourselves. We retain an objectivity in the former that we abysmally lack in the latter. Peacemaking requires more than a little wisdom.
We are told that he whose coming we celebrate at this season has a unique name: “Prince of Peace.” As we are bound to him in faith we are rightly related to God and therein know peace with God. Secure in our peace with God, we are the beneficiaries of the peace of God. Possessed of the peace of God, we are freed from our self-preoccupations to work for peace among men and women.
The prophet Isaiah anticipated Jesus of Nazareth as the “Prince of peace.” Centuries after Isaiah our Lord’s birth constrained angels to cry, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd
Advent II 14th December 2008
Church of St. Bride, Anglican, Mississauga
Manifesto of the Real Revolution
Luke 1: 39-56
It’s easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements, since revolutions are spawned by shocking injustices and unendurable oppression. It’s easy to see a new day dawning in revolutionary movements, a new day for those who have endured the long night of exploitation and frustration.
Because it’s so easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements we are all the more jarred — if not left feeling hopeless — when at last we admit that the movement which promised human liberation has delivered no such thing. No one knew this better than Robespierre, an architect of the French Revolution with its threefold promise of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. Robespierre was executed at the hands of the social transmutation he had engineered. Little wonder he commented, minutes before his death, “Revolutions consume their daughters”.
As we watch Latin American countries lurch from fascism to communism, from the political far-right to the political far-left, we see it happening all over again. The African nations that threw off colonialism because it was cruel have installed a political monster whose human rights violations make colonialism appear almost benign. In pre-Revolutionary Russia Czarist rule was deemed insupportable; yet in the early period of Leninist rule the state executed one thousand people per month. A revolution that had promised to feed people still couldn’t supply each citizen with a loaf of bread 70 years later. Promising people freedom it demoralized them with a secret police; promising human fulfilment it couldn’t even grant mere recognition of human beings.
Revolutions founder over one thing: human nature. And in a fallen world, “human nature” means “human depravity”. The problem with revolutionary movements is this: they are incapable of being genuinely revolutionary! They merely “revolve”; that is, turn up, recycle, the same fallen human nature. Revolutionary movements cannot get to the heart of the matter simply because they are powerless to deal with the human heart. Political leaders may speak of a “New World Order”; Christians, however, know that the only new world order is the kingdom of God. “New” orders (so-called) are merely a case of deja vu. The only real revolution is the kingdom of God, fashioned and ruled by the king himself. It alone supplies the new heart, new mind, new spirit of which the prophets spoke, for which everyone longs, and which Jesus Christ alone bestows.
I: — According to Mary, mother of our Lord and spokesperson of his revolution, real revolution begins with the scattering of the proud in the imagination of their hearts. “Heart” is biblical shorthand for the innermost core of a person, the “nerve centre”, the “control panel”. “Heart” has to do with thinking, willing, feeling and discerning. In addition, “heart” means identity, who we really are underneath all cloaks, disguises and social conventions. The “imagination of our heart” is our fashioning a deity of our own making, a god after our own image and likeness, which deity we follow zealously. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations.” Isaiah knows that first we disdain the Holy One of Israel and his claim upon us; then we fabricate whatever deity will legitimate and satisfy our craving, whether we crave wealth or recognition or ascendancy or anything else.
While Mary is customarily depicted as demure and dainty, naive to the nth degree, the picture she paints of human nature is anything but naive: it is stark. She tells us of proud people who are victimized by the imagination of their heart — all of us; we are at this moment stumbling down paths “which are not good”, certainly not godly. All of us are like the fool of whom the psalmist speaks, the fool who “said in his heart, ‘There is no God'”. He’s a fool not because he doesn’t believe God exists; he’s a fool just because he believes God exists and yet maintains that there are no consequences to dismissing the Holy One of Israel while preferring and pursuing the imagination of the heart, no consequences to exchanging the deity we fancy for the God who claims our faithfulness. Blinded by and in love with the gods of our own making we are all alike fools whose folly is going to prove fatal.
Yet Mary remains spokesperson for a revolution which is to be announced as good news, the uniquely good news of Christmas: God has scattered the proud! Our first response to learning that God scatters us vigorously may not be that we have just heard good news! To be told that we have been scattered, at God’s hand, suggests that God has hammered us so hard as to fragment us, and then dismissively swept away the fragmented remains. To be sure, we have been judged; we have been found wanting. Yet this is not to say that God sweeps us away in his judgement. The Greek verb “to scatter” (DIASKORPIZO) also means “to winnow”. To winnow grain is to toss a shovelful so that the wind carries away chaff but leaves behind the kernel, prized and soon to be put to use. In other words, God scatters us, the proud, inasmuch as he longs to save us and intends to use us. In getting rid of chaff he lays bare that heart which he can then renew in accord with his nature and kingdom, and then use ever after.
“Scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts” is essential if a revolution is to be real and not merely a recycling of human depravity. Mary insists that in the invasion of his Son God has scattered us all and will continue to do so, yet not out of petulance or irritability or frustration or disgust. God scatters us — winnows us — inasmuch as he plans to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and use us in ways we cannot anticipate.
II: — Mary maintains that God has done something more; God has “put down the mighty from their thrones”. But has he? Has God levelled those who strut? Has he crumbled those who tyrannize? In one sense it appears that God has done no such thing. Caesar Augustus was not deposed the day Jesus was born. No mighty ruler has been unseated just because the gospel was upheld. We need think only of Stalin’s cynical comment when told that the pope opposed Stalin’s mass murders. “The pope?”, snickered Stalin, “How many troops does the pope have?” Stalin strutted just because he knew that he, and no one else, ruled the former USSR.
And yet at a much deeper level the advent of Jesus Christ does mean that God has put down the mighty from their thrones. Herod wasn’t paranoid when he raged that the Bethlehem child was a threat to his throne. After all, in the coming of Jesus Christ into our midst the world’s only rightful ruler has appeared. Herod intuited correctly that the Christmas Gift would win to himself the loyalty of men and women who would never transfer that loyalty back to Herod. All political manipulators and ideologues and social engineers and “educational” programmers; in short, all who want to reshape society, even remake humankind, must know sooner or later that just because the world’s rightful ruler has appeared and is now enthroned their authority has been exposed as mere posturing and their promises as mere wind. Discerning Christians testify that those who think they can coerce or control have in fact been dethroned. They have been dethroned in that no ruler or tyrant can tell Christians who they are (Christ alone does this); no ruler or tyrant can make Christians who they are (Christ alone does this) — which is to say, no ruler or tyrant can ever make Christians what they don’t want to be. Corrie Ten Boom was as simple a Christian as one could find. (She was a fifty-year old unmarried daughter of a Dutch watchmaker who kept house for her father and sister). Yet Corrie Ten Boom defied Hitler by harbouring Jewish refugees in German-occupied Holland. She knew the terrible risk involved; she knew what the penalty would be. Whereupon she persisted all the more resolutely in her defiance. The moment she refused to admit any legitimacy to Hitler’s rule; the moment she refused to conform to it — in that moment Hitler was dethroned. Plainly the most coercive man in Europe was powerless in the face of a fifty-year old, unarmed woman. Yes, he could imprison her (and he did); but he could never tell her who she was; he could never make her who she was; and he could never make her what she didn’t want to be. Any Christian who refuses to conform anywhere to the blustering and bullying of “the mighty” just because that Christian acknowledges the rulership of Christ alone; any such Christian testifies that God continues to dethrone.
The revolution of which Mary speaks is unquestionably real. Still, the question can always be asked, “Real as it is, how far does it go? Whom does it finally affect?” It’s easy to say that it manifestly affects all the bullies we don’t like in any case and whom we are glad enough to see dethroned. But Mary’s revolution is unique, qualitatively different from all social dislodgings and historical upheavals, only if that innermost tyrant, that self-important egotist who manipulates me, is dethroned as well. I know how easy it is to look disdainfully at the person who is so obviously ruled by chemical substance or psychological habituation or shameless self-promotion when all the while I secretly scramble to hide the things that control me and brazenly try to excuse them when I can no longer hide them. I know how easy it is to speak of a new heart and mind when my reactions, in unguarded moments, suggest a heart still ruled by passions and instincts which serve my lingering sin, my self-indulgence, self-advantage, and self-promotion.
Then I can only cry out to God that I do want the revolution of which Mary speaks to reach me and revolutionize me. And so far from gloating over the fact that God has put down the swaggerers whom I am glad to see put down, I must plead with him to dethrone in me whatever has usurped the rule of Jesus Christ. For only then will the genuine “new world order” be under way.
III: — It is a singular mark of God’s kindness that the work of God’s left hand assists the work of his right; to say the same thing differently, a mark of God’s kindness that his right hand is stronger than his left, that mercy triumphs over judgement, that whatever wound he inflicts is only surgical repair for the sake of restoration to health. Having “put down”, God now “exalts”; he exalts “those of low degree”, the humble.
The humble, it must be noted, are not those who belittle themselves miserably and otherwise display abysmally weak self-image. (Crippling self-image isn’t humility; it’s illness.) Neither is “humility”, so-called, a religious technique whereby we can get ourselves “exalted”. And of course humility could never be the end-result of struggling to make ourselves humble, since the effort of making ourselves humble merely reinforces pride. Humility is self-forgetfulness, the self-forgetfulness that steals over us when we lose ourselves in something or someone who is bigger, richer, deeper.
In the revolution of which Mary speaks it is these humble people, self-forgetful people, whom God exalts. To be exalted, ultimately, is to be lifted up a child of God. When John speaks of the incarnation, its purpose and its result, he writes, “To all who received him [Jesus Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” In other words, to “forget” ourselves into Christ is to become sons and daughters of God. To the believers in Thessalonica Paul writes, “You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We don’t belong to the night or to the darkness.” What it is to be exalted — lifted up, held up — as a child of God who no longer belongs to the night or to the darkness Paul makes clear in his letter to the congregation in Philippi; those people are “children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life.”
There is nothing more revolutionary than the person who shines in the midst of a perverse world. No one, believer or unbeliever, has ever doubted that the world can repopulate itself (that is, no one has ever doubted that a crooked and perverse generation can produce crooked and perverse offspring). Humanists insist that the world doesn’t have to repopulate itself (that is, left to itself the world can produce better and better citizens — this belief is clung to even though the wars of last century alone have slew one hundred million.) Christians, however, know that the world has to repopulate itself, can do nothing except repopulate itself, for the only person who is profoundly different, before God, is the person whom God’s grace has rendered self-forgetful and then rendered God’s own child. This person shines like a Westinghouse light bulb in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. This person is a beacon of hope, because this person is living testimony that at God’s hand there is something genuinely different.
IV: — Mary gathers up everything about her revolutionary manifesto in her pithy summation: “God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”
Who are the rich whom God has sent away empty? Bashing the rich is fashionable nowadays. And of course those who like to bash the rich are quick to tell us who the rich are. The rich are those who have fifty dollars more than the bashers have; the rich are those who have a slightly better pension or a slightly larger home than the bashers have. Such an attitude bespeaks only envy and resentment. The truth is, those whose “riches” are a spiritual threat aren’t those who have money but rather those who are preoccupied with money — whether they have it or not.
The mediaeval Christians who spoke of the “Seven Deadly Sins” were correct in naming gluttony one of them. They were also correct in insisting that gluttony is not a matter of eating too much; gluttony is being preoccupied with food, even if one’s preoccupation with food is a preoccupation with avoiding food! (In other words the person obsessed with slenderness is as much food-preoccupied — and therefore gluttonous — as the person who can think only of what he is going to eat next.) It is no different with respect to money. Those who don’t have it can be as absorbed by it as those who are awash in it.
In those revolutions which remain forever ineffective those who have money disdain and dismiss those who lack it, while those who lack it hate and envy those who have it. While appearing to be poles apart, those who have it and those who lack it in fact are identical, since both alike are engrossed with it. Only the real revolution gets us beyond this, for only the real revolution makes our preoccupations shrivel as the holy God looms before us in his awesome, all-consuming immensity. As this One looms before us the chaff we have been gorging is simply forgotten, and we become aware of a hunger we never knew.
Our Lord Jesus has promised that all who hunger for God and his righteousness are going to be filled. All who crave the ultimate satisfaction of a relationship with God which can’t be snatched away by a paperback putdown or evaporated by the fires of harassment; all who finally hunger for this as they hunger for nothing else will be given that bread of life which profoundly satisfies yet never satiates. For this bread leaves us seeking none other yet always seeking more of him who is himself way and truth and life.
The rich who are sent empty away; they need not remain away. For as soon as they recognize their preoccupations as unworthy of someone who is created to be a child of God they too will hunger, will look to him who alone satisfies, and will be yet another fulfilment of Mary’s Christmas cry.
Victor Shepherd
December 2001
Of Itzakh, Isaac, and “The Wonders Of His (Christ’s) Love”
Luke 2:1-14
Col. 1:15-20
Many people who are musically sophisticated regard Itzakh Perlman as the world’s finest violinist. Yet his violin-playing isn’t the most noticeable feature about him. Anyone who has seen him winces when he walks, if it can be called “walking.” Perlman had polio as a child and ever since has barely been able to shuffle along, ever so slowly, each step laboured and clumsy, swinging his caliper crutches in a monumental struggle just to get onto the concert-hall platform, while an assistant carries his precious violin for him. Perlman is the only violin virtuoso who has to sit to play.
Not so long ago in Lincoln Centre, New York City, Perlman was only a few bars into a violin concerto with the N.Y. Philharmonic Orchestra when a string broke on his violin. He waved his bow to the conductor to stop. Perlman removed the broken string from his instrument and signalled the conductor to begin again. Then Perlman played the entire concerto on the three remaining strings of his violin. Thunderous applause greeted him at concerto’s end. When it had finally died away Perlman said to the hushed audience, “Sometimes in life we have to do our best with what’s left.” Then he handed his defective violin to his assistant, retrieved his caliper crutches, and shuffled haltingly off the platform, once more doing his best with what was left.
Many people who appear — and are — extraordinarily gifted nevertheless have had to do their best with what was left. One such person was Isaac Watts, known throughout Christendom as “the father of the English hymn.” He wrote hundreds of hymns, many of which will never be forgotten. What few people know is that Watts was deranged frequently, and deranged for extended periods of his life. There were protracted periods when he wrote nothing, did nothing (apart from survive in the care of a kind family that protected him) as he waited until sanity returned. There were periods in his life when it would have been just as accurate to speak of episodic sanity as of episodic derangement. What did Watts write when sanity caught up to him and his suffering abated? “Come, let us join our cheerful songs with angels ’round the throne; ten thousand thousand are their tongues but all their joys are one.” Or again, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run.” As ill as he was for so much of his troubled life, Watts could still write from his heart, “My God, how endless is thy love!” Perhaps he is best known for “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” Certainly we’ve all sung his splendid Christmas carol, “Joy to the World!” It’s plain that Watts’s literary output was a matter of doing his best with what was left, what was left of his sanity. He always did his best.
God does his best, too, with what’s left. Yet there’s a difference here. When God does his best with what’s left of a fallen world, does his best with a disfigured creation, does his best with an evil-riddled cosmos; when God does his best with this he doesn’t merely extract bravely whatever good remains in it. Rather, he restores it. When God does his best with what’s left of a warped world, he recreates that world.
Isaac Watts knew this so very well. He articulated it for us in his Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.”
I: — “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground”, cries Watts. Plainly it’s a reference to Genesis 3, the old, old story of the world’s fall. What has happened? God has never been indifferent to humankind’s root defiance of him and root disobedience to him and root ingratitude; he’s never been indifferent to the primordial posture we assume before him, a posture wherein our “know-it-all” smirk casts aspersions on his goodness, on the goodness of his promise to us and his claim upon us. His claim upon us is rooted in his promise to us; his promise to us is rooted in his own heart. Heart and promise and claim are one in wanting only to bless us. We, however, assume he’s an arbitrary spoilsport out to make us miserable. We doubt him, defy him, disdain him, disobey him.
Contrary to what the person-in-the-street thinks, God always gives us what we want. No longer pressing himself upon us, he takes a step back from us. (This is what we want: a little more distance between him and us.) As he takes a step back from us, the crown of creation, he thereby takes a step back from every aspect of the creation beneath its crown. A vacuum opens up between him and the creation. Into the vacuum there pours all manner of evil. Now the creation is marred and disfigured and warped. “Thorns and thistles” infest the ground, as the old, old story in Genesis tells us. In a primitive agricultural society, thorns and thistles infesting the ground bespeak frustration; so much frustration, in fact, that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off utter futility. (Everyone with even a backyard vegetable garden knows that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off the frustration of having the vegetable-enterprise end in utter futility.)
As for “sins and sorrows”, they are as endemic in a fallen world as thorns and thistles. Jesus says, without argument or proof, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Foregoing argument or proof, he assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is incorrigibly stupid. “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Since we all sin, we are all in bondage. Sorrows? “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows”, says the psalmist. The Hebrew verb can as readily mean “run after” as “choose.” “Those who run after another deity multiply their sorrows.” The fall of humankind means that we do run after other gods; and just as surely do we multiply our sorrows.
Yet Watts can write his carol, “Joy to the World!”, because he knows that the coming of Jesus Christ means that the curse upon the world is overturned; it’s reversed. The coming of Jesus Christ means that the blessings of Christ are as far-reaching (and known to be as far-reaching) as the curse has been. While our Lord’s pronouncement is unarguable, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin”, equally unarguable is his declaration, “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” While those who run after other gods unquestionably multiply their sorrows, those who join our Lord on that Way which he is, join him in running the race of life, always looking unto him who has pioneered the way for us — these people unquestionably multiply their joys. As for frustration, frustration so intense as to border on futility; in so far as we do the work that he has given us to do, kingdom-work, our work will never prove futile and we ourselves shall never go unrewarded.
“No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
II: — Watts has even more to say about the joy that has come to the world in the coming of Jesus Christ. “He rules the earth with truth and grace.” The same Lord who restores the world now rules it, and rules it with truth and grace.
Christ’s rulership is remarkable. After all, the rulers we are acquainted with do rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth. They rule with something other than truth. They rule with disinformation. (Think of the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the American warship. The U.S. government arranged this bit of disinformation in order to bring the U.S.A. into the Viet Nam war.) Or they rule with duplicity. (Think of Toronto Councillor Howard Moscoe. When asked, two weeks ago, why charity casinos would be installed in North York after the citizens of North York had voted in a referendum against charity casinos, Moscoe unashamedly replied, “The referendum meant nothing.”) Or they rule with propaganda. (Think of the federal government’s promise a few years ago never to implement wage and price controls. Within ninety days of being re-elected it introduced the controls!) Or they rule with sheer, simple, self-interest and self-enrichment. (Illustrations here are superfluous.) Rulers rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth.
Neither do they rule with grace. Our Lord, however, does. He rules with grace. Grace, throughout scripture, is God’s faithfulness to his own promise ever to be our God. Grace is his undeflectible resolve never to quit on us in anger or abandon us in disgust or dismiss us in impatience. Grace is God’s unalterable determination to remain true to himself in his promise to us regardless of our unfaithfulness in our promise to him. Since grace collides with our sin, then when grace meets our sin grace takes the form of mercy. And since mercy, so far from being mere benign sentiment, is effectual in the face of our sin, mercy issues in salvation, shalom, peace. For this reason the threefold “grace, mercy and peace” is found over and over in scripture. (Once again, in its collision with sin grace takes the form of mercy, and mercy triumphs so as to effect our peace with God, our salvation.)
Unlike the rulers we read about every day, our Lord “rules with truth and grace.”
III: — Several minutes ago I spoke of our need to “do our best with what’s left.” Perlman and Watts have done so. But in doing their best with what was left, were they merely doing what they could to prevent a disaster from sinking all the way down to total disaster, unrelieved disaster? At the end of the day are you and I realistically doing no more than this? In doing our best with what’s left, are we merely doing what we can to prevent a calamity from sinking all the way down to complete calamity?
No! In view of the fact that when God does his best with what’s left (a wounded, warped creation) he restores that creation wholly; in view of this our doing our best with what’s left is much more than merely salvaging a catastrophe: it’s an anticipation of the day when God’s perfect restoration is going to revealed; it’s a preview of the day when God’s restoration is going to be rendered as undeniable as it is unmistakable. Watts did what he did not because there was nothing else to do besides fall into total despair; Watts did what he did, rather, because he foresaw the day when he, like the deranged man in the gospel-stories, will be found seated, clothed and in his right mind. Perlman did what he did in anticipation of the day when he, like so many whom Jesus touched, will be found no longer lame but now leaping and cavorting, unhindered and uninhibited in every aspect of life. When you and I “do our best with what’s left” we aren’t merely trying to put a happy face on a monumental misfortune; we are anticipating the day, says Watts himself, when our Lord “makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”
IV: — All of this being the case, what are we to do at this moment? Watts knew what we are to do: “Let every heart prepare him room.” We are to receive, or receive afresh, him whose blessings flow far as the curse is found. We are to receive, or receive afresh, the one who rules with truth and grace now and who is going to make the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.
We are to receive our Lord. We are going to do so as in faith we receive bread and wine, the vehicle of his self-giving to us now, as surely as body and blood were the vehicle of his self-giving for us then.
“Let every heart prepare him room.”
Victor Shepherd
December 1997
How Big Is The Baby?
John 1:1-18
Most people feel that words are easy to use; words can never be used up (there are so many of them); therefore words are largely useless. No wonder words are flung about frivolously. The microphone is stuck in front of the celebrity and she is asked to say something. She uses many words to say nothing, and no one expected her to do anything else. The politician is questioned in the legislature. He starts talking. Fifteen minutes later he hasn’t answered the question; in fact, his words are a smokescreen behind which the question is lost in “bafflegab.” And preachers? No doubt you have listened to preachers, many of them, who were no different. Words are easy to use; words can never be used up; words are largely useless — so why not fling them about?
But it was different for our Hebrew foreparents. For those people a word was an event. In fact the Hebrew word for “word” (DABAR) means both word and event. For our Israelite ancestors a word was a concentrated, compressed unit of energy. As the word was spoken, this concentrated, compressed unit of energy was released. Thereafter it could never be brought back, never re-compressed just as an event can never be undone. Once the word had been uttered this unit of energy surged throughout the world, changing this, altering that, creating here and destroying there.
The closest we modern types come to the understanding of our Hebrew foreparents is in our grasp of how language functions psychologically. We recognize that inflammatory speech can excite people emotionally; we recognize that sad stories can depress people. We’ll admit that words may alter how people feel, but we still maintain that words don’t alter anything in reality.
The Hebrew conviction is different. The psalmist writes, “By the Word of God the heavens were made.” God speaks and the galaxies occur. So weighty were Hebrew words that they were always to be used sparingly, carefully, thoughtfully. It won’t surprise you, then, to learn that at the time of the first Christmas the Hebrew language contained only 10,000 words (very few, in fact) while the Greek language contained 200,000. A word is an event, said our Hebrew foreparents. A word has vastly more than mere psychological force. Once spoken, a word is an event which sets off another event which in turn sets off another, the reality of it all extending farther than the mind can imagine.
When the apostle John sat down to write his gospel he was living in the city of Ephesus. John was Jewish; his readers, however, were chiefly Gentile, like you and me. In speaking about Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Word of God, John looked for a word which Gentiles would understand, yet a word to which he could also marry the full force of the Hebrew understanding of “word”. The word John chose was LOGOS. LOGOS is the Greek word which means “word”. But it also means reason or rationality or intelligibility. It means the inner principle of a thing, how a thing works. The logos of an automobile engine is how a cupful of liquid gasoline can be exploded to propel a two-ton car, how the engine works. The logos of a refrigerator is how electricity (hot enough to burn you) can keep food cold; how it works, its inner principle, the rationality of it all.
John brought the Hebrew and Greek concepts together when he stated that Jesus Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, is the word or logos of God. When the Hebrew mind hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the power of God, the event of God, the effectiveness of God; an effectiveness, moreover, which can never be overturned or undone, a reality permeating the world forever. When the Greek mind, on the other hand, the Gentile mind, hears that Jesus Christ is the word of God it knows that Jesus is the outer expression of the inner principle of God himself; Jesus embodies the rationality of God; Jesus discloses how God “works.” John brings together both Hebrew and Greek senses of “word”. John’s Christmas message is as patently simple as it is fathomlessly profound: the word of God has become flesh, our flesh, and now dwells among us. This is the great good news of Christmas.
Great as the good news is, however, we must still ask how far-reaching it might be. Is it good news, but only for a few people? Is it good news, but only for the religious dimension of human existence? Or is it good news of cosmic scope so vast as finally to be imponderable? In short, how big is the baby?
I: — Think first of science. Two or three generations ago it was feared that new scientific discoveries were taking people farther and farther from God. The advances of science added up to atheism for intelligent people. Some people reacted by speaking ill of science: “It doesn’t have all the answers, you know.” (No scientist ever said it did.) “There’s lots more to be discovered”. (Of course there is; this is what keeps science humble.) Nonetheless, the bottom line was clearly stated: “If your sons and daughters are going to study science, don’t expect them to be Christians.”
The apostle John disagrees entirely. John insists that the realm of nature which science investigates has been made through the word, made through the logos. This means that the inner principle of God’s own mind and being, the rationality in God himself, has been imprinted on the creation, imprinted on nature, and imprinted indelibly. There is imprinted indelibly upon the creation a rationality, an intelligibility, which reflects the rationality of the Creator’s own mind. What’s more, the inner principle of God himself which has been imprinted on that creation which science investigates; this inner principle is the word which has been made flesh in Jesus Christ. All of which means that however much we may come to know of science our scientific knowledge will never contradict the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; our scientific knowledge can never take us farther from God.
Science is possible at all only because there is a correlation between patterns intrinsic to the scientist’s mind and intelligible patterns embodied in the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then there would be no match-up between the scientist’s mind and the realm of nature that the scientist investigates. To say the same thing differently: science is possible only because there is a correlation between the structure of human thought and the structure of the physical world. If this correlation didn’t exist then no one could think truthfully about the physical world. Then what is the origin of this correlation, this match-up? The origin is the word, the logos, through which the realm of nature and scientists themselves have alike been created. John Polkinghorne, a mathematical physicist and a Christian writes, “The Word is God’s agent in creation, impressing his rationality upon the world. That same Word is also the light of men, giving us thereby access to the rationality that is in the world.”
Speaking of mathematics and physics; mathematicians don’t make scientific investigations. Mathematicians arrange symbols, the symbols representing relations within human thinking. Physicists, on the other hand, physicists do investigate the world of nature. Recently it was found that when mathematicians and physicists have compared notes they have seen that the relations purely within human thinking reflect the patterns and structures in nature which scientists uncover. In short, there is a correlation between the rationality of human thinking and the rationality imprinted indelibly in nature. How? Why? Because all things have been made through the word of God: all things in the creation, including the mind of the scientist herself.
Everyone knows that science is based on observation. But to observe nature scientifically is not to stare at it. If I were merely to stare at the stars for the next twenty years I still shouldn’t learn anything about stars. The kind of observing that science does is an observing that is guided by theoretical insights. These insights uncover the deep regularities undergirding what can be observed. Where do these theoretical insights come from, ultimately? They are produced by the word, the logos, the rationality of God, the word that became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth; for through this word both nature itself and the human mind were fashioned.
How big is the baby? Very big. He who was born in Bethlehem is the Word of God incarnate. All things were made through him. He is the outer expression of God’s “innerness”. And by him God’s “innerness” has been imprinted on the “outerness” of nature. Scientific discovery never distances us from God, never contradicts the truth of God, never points people toward atheism. On the contrary, to uncover scientifically the rationality imprinted indelibly on the creation is ultimately to ask for the ground of nature’s intelligibility. The one, sufficient ground of nature’s intelligibility can only be the intelligibility or word or logos of God himself.
II: — How big is the baby? Big enough to embrace not just someone here and someone over there; big enough, rather, to embrace all men and women everywhere. All humankind, without exception, is summoned and invited to become sons and daughters of God. To receive the Word made flesh; to receive Jesus Christ in faith, says John, to embrace the one who has already embraced us is to find ourselves rendered children of God.
A minute ago we spoke of the rationality or order in creation. Without such rationality scientific investigation would be impossible; more to the point, without such rationality or order life would be impossible. No one could survive in a world where bread nourished us one day but poisoned us the next; where water doused fire one day but fuelled fire the next. Without elemental order to the universe human existence would be impossible. And yet while this elemental order perdures in a fallen world, the fact that the world is fallen means that the dimension of disorder is always with us. Disease, for instance, is a manifestation of disorder.
Yet the disorder in the natural realm is slight compared to the disorder in the human mind and heart. We men and women are fallen creatures. We are alienated from God in mind and heart. Because we are alienated from God in mind and heart we are disordered in ourselves; in addition, we are an infectious source of disorder in nature. The environmentalists never weary of reminding us of this fact: we human beings are an infectious source of a huge disorder in nature. The environmentalists don’t understand, however, that we are such inasmuch as we are disordered in ourselves and unable to restore order in ourselves.
It is as we embrace the word incarnate who has already made us and embraced us; it is as we become children of God through faith in the Son of God that alienation from God gives way to reconciliation. Mind and heart, disordered to this point, begin to be re-ordered. We are on the road to recovery, and we are guaranteed utmost restoration.
How big is the baby? The word made flesh is big enough to embrace every last man and woman. The word made flesh, our Hebrew foreparents would remind us, is also strong enough, effective enough, to render us all children of God and keep us such until that day when nothing will even threaten to separate us from him.
III: — Lastly, John tells us that out of the fullness of the Word-become-flesh you and I have received, and will always receive, grace upon grace. To say that the Word has become flesh is to say that Jesus Christ has taken on our humanity in its totality; he has taken on our humanity in its exhilaration, its weakness, its frustration, its sin and its mortality. And this humanity, yours and mine, is so surrounded by the goodness and kindness and mercy and wisdom and undeflectable purpose of God, so steeped in the grace of God, says John, that we are always receiving “grace upon grace”. To say that we are set behind and before by the grace of God isn’t to say that God is indulgent or tolerant or blind in one eye. But it is to say that there is a gracious persistence in God as he pardons us, assists us, and takes up whatever is done to us and whatever we do to ourselves and uses it all as only he can as he moves us toward a restoration so complete as to bring glory to him and adoration out of us.
How big is the baby? So very big that out of the fullness of Jesus Christ we shall always receive grace upon grace and nothing but grace. The Lord who knows my profoundest needs better than I know them myself will always supply what I need most. It would be a very small Lord who gave me what I wanted, or gave me what I thought I needed. If I were given what I wanted or thought I needed I should only be confirmed in my superficiality and cemented into my immaturity. Yet so big is the incarnate one that he gives me not what confirms me in my disorder, but precisely what moves me a step closer to my recovery and restoration in him.
When I was ordained and appointed to a seacoast village I spent hours at the beach watching the Atlantic. Hundreds of metres out to sea a wave emerged from the ocean’s immensity. It broke on the beach, flooding the sand. Before the wave wholly receded, however, another wave broke on the beach and flooded the sand. Now the sand was flooded both by the incoming wave and the outgoing wave; that is, the sand was always flooded. And then a third waved surged onto the beach before the second one (even the first) had had time to recede. Wave upon wave. One day as I stood on the beach before the Atlantic and watched wave upon wave I understood what John meant when he wrote, “Out of God’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”
It all adds up to this. God’s immensity is always flooding us with grace. However much we blunder, our blunder cannot ungrace us. When our faith flickers and we feel like a half-believer at best, our flickering faith won’t expel us from the sphere and realm of grace. When we are proud and need humbling; when we are dispirited and need encouraging; when we are bruised and need comforting; when our resilience is shaken and we need reassurance; whatever our profoundest need the immensity of grace will always prove sufficient. The Word made flesh is this big.
At the beginning of the sermon I said that for our Hebrew foreparents a word is charged with power. It is an event that, unleashed, alters reality in a way that can never be undone. For our Gentile foreparents a word is the inner principle of a thing, its rationality, how it works. John brought these two senses together when he spoke of Jesus Christ as the Word of God made flesh.
The rationality of the incarnate word is mirrored in the structure of creation and in the structure of human thinking, thus facilitating scientific investigation. The recreative power of the incarnate word is able to render us children of God, thus remedying our disorder. The grace of the incarnate word is fathomless, thus proving daily that Jesus Christ is deeper than our deepest need.
Then John’s cry must elicit an identical exclamation from us; namely, that to behold the Word made flesh is to behold glory, glory without rival and without end.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2009
Christmas: An Event in Four Words
John 1:14
TRUTH For years I have been intrigued by the psychology of perception. What do people see? What do they think they see? Or hear? Or not hear? Everyone knows that people tend to see what they want to see and tend not to hear what they don’t want to hear. In situations of stress or fatigue or social pressure people can “see” or “hear” what isn’t there to be seen or heard at all.
Recently I found myself listening to a psychologist who has worked much in the area of perception. He told his audience the following.
An adult is placed in a pitch-black room. A pinpoint light is turned on, 10 or 15 feet away. (The light is only a pinpoint; it illumines nothing else.) Once the light is turned on it remains fixed in the same place for the duration of the exercise. Without exception, the psychologist reported, the person in the pitch-black room will say that the light moves. How much it is said to move varies from person to person: from 1 inch to 8 feet, the average being 4 inches.
There is another aspect to this experiment, an aspect that makes my blood run cold. When all the people who participated in the experiment are brought together to chat among themselves, they eventually agree (no one has overtly pressured them into agreeing) that the light moved 4 inches. Even those who, when asked alone, reported that it moved anywhere from 1 inch to 8 feet; even these people now swear that the light moved exactly 4 inches.
Note, in the first place, that people “see” what isn’t there to be seen at all: they are inventing something (a light that moves), and then are genuinely unable to distinguish what is from what they imagine. Note, in the second place, that they come to agree unconsciously lest they appear odd person out, lest they appear to be a social misfit. Note, in the third place, that all of this occurs with something (the pinpoint of light) that hasn’t been rendered deceptive or seductive in any way.
By extension, what does this experiment say about our society’s perception of political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues, issues that concern us all?
Now suppose that the pinpoint of light, instead of being left in place, were manipulated so as to deceive people. Then think about the political issues, educational issues, moral issues, spiritual issues where there are attempts and schemes aimed at misleading us. In an election campaign Brian Mulroney swore that Canada’s social benefits were untouchable (“a sacred trust”). Upon being elected, the first thing he did was try to tamper with old age security. What did Canadians do about it? They re-elected him. Lest you think me politically biased I must remind you that Pierre Trudeau defeated Robert Stanfield by means of a promise never to implement wage and price controls. Trudeau implemented them within 90 days of being elected. Whereupon Canadians elected him again.
The two instances of turpitude I have just mentioned aren’t very subtle. (For all their obviousness, however, most Canadians still didn’t recognize them). Every day there are instances of deception far more subtle, far more devious, far more convoluted. Every day we are lied to, and lied to again, as falsehood is piled upon falsehood, fabrication upon fabrication.
How much worse it would all be if we (and our society) were victimized not only by the cunning of men and women, not only by the propaganda of the politicians, not only by the ideologues in the offices of social planning and the military and the church, but also by malignant spiritual forces that underlie and compound and disguise the distortions that we know to be deliberately engineered! Scripture insists that this very thing is happening all the time. St.Paul reminds us in II Corinthians 4 that “the god of this world” obstructs and obscures and perverts the spiritual perception of us all.
Then where is there truth? More profoundly, what is truth? Unless we know what truth is, we shan’t know where to look for it. If we don’t know what truth is and therefore don’t know where to look for it, how shall we ever find it? As a matter of fact, we aren’t going to find it. We are never going to find it. Truth must find us!
Our foreparents in faith were ecstatic over Christmas just because they knew that truth had appeared; truth had found them. Truth had overtaken them and stamped itself upon them when they hadn’t known where to look or what to look for. Truth had come upon them when their perception was distorted (and they were unaware of it), when they had been deceived by human cunning (and were unaware of it), when “the god of this world” had deceived them (and they were unaware of it).
Truth, in John’s gospel, always has the force of reality. Truth is reality as opposed to illusion (illusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally healthy people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to delusion (delusion being, as Freud taught us, deception that mentally ill people cling to). Truth is reality as opposed to falsehood, as opposed to mythology, as opposed to fantasy. Truth is reality, John insists.
John, we all know, was a Jew by birth and upbringing. He knew Hebrew. Truth, in Hebrew, has the force of firmness, stability, solidity. When truth (firmness, stability, solidity) describes a person, that person is said to be steadfast; and because steadfast, trustworthy.
“The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” Christmas upholds the incursion of truth into our world. The incursion of truth means the incursion of reality, firmness, solidity, steadfastness, trustworthiness. Jesus Christ comes to us with a unique power to penetrate our world of misperception, deliberate falsification, and spiritual deception. Jesus Christ is truth.
GRACE All of us make promises. When we make promises we intend to keep them. Despite our utmost resolve to keep promises, however, we break them. We are promise-breakers.
God, on the other hand, is the promise-keeper. He invariably keeps the promises he makes. There is no treachery in him that could lead him to “welch” on his promises to us; on the other hand there is much treachery in us that could excuse him for abandoning his promises to us. Still, nothing deflects him. However exasperated he is with us, he never gives up on us. However frozen our hearts may be to him, his heart throbs for us. However fitful we may be in our devotion to him, he is constant in his to us. Fitfulness in us is met with only more resolute faithfulness from him.
Now to say that God is faithful is not to say that he is inflexible, rigid. Because he is flexible his faithfulness to us takes a special form when his faithfulness meets our fickleness and folly: when his faithfulness meets our sin his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. (If God were inflexible, then as his faithfulness met our sin his faithfulness — his promise ever to be our God — could only condemn us, without provision for our rescue and without opportunity for our repentance.)
You must have noticed that St. Paul begins his letters to assorted congregations with the greeting, “Grace, mercy and peace to you”. Grace is God’s faithfulness to us, promised from of old, kept unto eternity. Mercy is God’s faithfulness “flexing” so as to deal with our sin. Peace (the Hebrew word is shalom); peace, in Hebrew, is a synonym for salvation. Whenever Paul speaks first of grace he speaks finally of peace; the peace, shalom, salvation that grace finally forges. In other words, grace is faithful love so resilient, so resolute, so undeflectable that not even our icy ingratitude, not even our defiant disobedience, can discourage such love. Grace is faithful love so flexible that it “bends” itself around our sin. Grace is faithful love so constant and consistent that not even our resistance can impede it or interrupt it. For this reason whenever Paul begins by speaking of grace he ends by speaking of peace, shalom: he has imprinted on his heart the logic of grace.
Let’s gather it up in a nutshell: GRACE is God-in-his-faithfulness keeping the promises he has made to us, all for the sake of a mercy-wrought salvation that renders us his children, members of his household and family forever.
To speak of grace and truth is to say that God’s promise-keeping faithfulness (grace) is the reality, the solidity, firmness, stability, that we can trust in a world of distortion and deception and depravity
WORD Perhaps there is a sceptic (even a cynic!) among us who has a most important question to ask. “If God keeps the promises he makes to us, does he do this merely because he wills to do it (the implication being that he could break his promises if he willed to break them), or does he keep his promises because it’s his nature to keep them?” When God keeps his promises, are we merely looking at something God does (for reasons known only to him), or are we looking into the innermost, unalterable heart of God?
We have already determined that grace means God is consistent in his attitude and act. But is God consistent in the sense of being a consistent actor? When the movie Awakenings was about to be filmed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who wrote the book (Awakenings), spent much time with two superb actors, Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Sacks was startled and more than a little frightened at the ability of these two actors, since he noticed that they could take on any role, any identity, and act it with perfect consistency for as long as they wanted. But of course none of the roles, identities, they took on were they themselves; none of their roles reflected their innermost heart.
What about God? The “face” that he “puts on” for us in Jesus Christ; is this “face” only skin-deep, or does it reflect depths in God that are so deep they couldn’t be deeper? Does it reflect the innermost heart of God?
As we answer this question you will have to bear with me as we make a short detour into the Greek dictionary. There are two Greek words for word. One word for word is hrema, while the other is logos. Hrema means “that which we utter”. Logos, on the other hand, means “outermost expression of innermost essence”. When John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh, he uses logos. John is plainly telling us that what looms before us in Jesus Christ isn’t merely an act or action of God (as though God could act differently if he felt like it); what looms before us in Jesus Christ is the outermost expression of the innermost essence of God himself.
God doesn’t keep his promises to us just because he feels like keeping them, his promise-keeping telling us nothing about his heart or nature. God doesn’t keep his promises today, the implication being that he might not tomorrow. The consistency God displays isn’t the consistency of actors like Robin Williams and Robert de Niero. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are beholding the heart of God himself. God will never do anything other than what he has done in Christ and is doing now simply because he cannot do anything other.
To say the same thing differently, grace and truth are not roles that God acts superbly; grace and truth are the Word, the outermost expression of the innermost essence. God will always be — can only be — what he is for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Put the other way around, what God is for us in Christ he is in himself eternally. It is the innermost heart of God that has invaded our world of distortion and deception and depravity.
FLESH “The Word became flesh.” Typically, in scripture, “flesh” refers to our creaturely weakness. “Flesh” is the bible’s one-word abbreviation for our frailty, our fragility, our vulnerability to betrayal, to disappointment, to disease and to death. “Flesh” refers to our ultimate defencelessness in the face of everything we struggle to protect ourselves against but finally can’t.
To say that the Word became flesh is to say that God has stepped forth from his eternal stronghold and has stepped into our frailty, fragility, vulnerability and mortality. But he hasn’t done this just to prove that it can be done; and he hasn’t done this just to keep us company. He has done it in order that his grace and truth might become operative in you and me this instant. He has done it in order that grace and truth might seize us and soak us and shake us as often as we think that our vulnerability or our fragility or our mortality is the last word about us. He has done it in order that on any day of confusion or collapse truth will find us yet again; on any day of disgrace grace will bend the love of God around us and wrap us in his love as God’s faithfulness to us flexes yet again in the face of our sin. He has done it in order that on every day we shall know that we aren’t orphans lost in the vastness of the universe; rather we are children of him who has promised never to abandon us, always to cherish us, thoroughly to save us.
Christmas: an event in four words.
TRUTH: a firm, stable reality we can trust.
GRACE: God’s promise-keeping faithfulness as his love becomes mercy whenever it meets us in our sin, bringing us peace, shalom, salvation.
WORD: All of the this reflecting not merely something God does occasionally but reflecting who God is eternally.
FLESH: God himself going so far to keep his promises to us as to step forth from his stronghold and give himself up for us in the midst of our suffering and death.
“The Word became flesh…full of grace and truth.”
Victor A. Shepherd
Christmas 1995
What Christmas Means to Me
John 1:14
I: — It means a rescue operation, a salvage operation. Salvation (the unique work of the saviour) is a salvage operation.
One week after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph took their infant son to the temple to have him circumcised. There they met Simeon, an aged man who had waited years to see God’s Messiah. With a cry that relieved decades of aching longing Simeon took the baby in his arms and exclaimed, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Peace? Did Simeon mean that at last he had peace in his heart, peace of mind? No doubt he meant that too, but that wasn’t what he meant primarily when he cried, “Peace! At last!”
You see, Simeon was an Israelite. In the Hebrew language “peace” is a synonym for “salvation”. “Peace” means God’s definitive reversal of the distortion, disfigurement and distress which curse the world on account of sin and evil.
Years later, in the course of his earthly ministry, Jesus healed a menorrhagic woman. When he had identified her in the crowd he said, “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Through your faith in me God’s salvation has become effective in you; now you step ahead in the reality of your salvation; you walk in it; you live out of it for the rest of your life.”
When Simeon lifted up the week-old Jesus and cried, “Lettest now thy servant depart in peace” he added, “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation…light for revelation to Gentiles.”
Why does he speak of the Gentiles? Plainly Simeon thought that prior to the advent of Jesus Christ Gentiles were “in the dark” with respect to God. The light that Jesus Christ is, said Simeon, alone could save us Gentiles who know nothing of the Holy One of Israel. Was Simeon correct? Years later Paul would describe Gentiles as “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Apart from him who is the Christmas gift are we Gentiles Godless and our predicament hopeless? Paul assumed this to be unarguably obvious!
Two weeks ago the University of Toronto conferred an honourary doctorate on Isaiah Berlin, professor at Oxford University. Isaiah Berlin is regarded as one of the finest scholars of humanist conviction anywhere in the world. Multilingual, philosophically erudite, possessed of a remarkable grasp of history, he is intellectually awesome. In his address to the university he detailed the undeniable dark side of human history. While humankind had always been prone to warfare (with the huge loss of life unavoidable in war), it was Napoleon who first developed large-scale slaughter, large-scale in that the slaughter spread vastly farther than battlefield combatants. Then Isaiah Berlin pointed out that the 20th century was unparalleled for slaughter on an even greater scale: the Stalinist purges (not to mention the people Marxism has slain wherever Marxism has been ascendant), the Holocaust, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, and so on. It is the 20th century that has provided conclusive proof of what the previous centuries suggested to be the state of the human heart. As Berlin spoke, making his case stronger by the moment, the weight of his cumulative argument seemed on the point of convincing everyone that humankind of itself could never reverse its history of rapacity and cruelty. At precisely this moment (according to the Globe and Mail write-up) Berlin turned 180 degrees and announced, without any justification at all, that a glorious new day was just around the corner. History, to this point bleak beyond imagining, would suddenly reverse its course in the 21st century. Humankind was on the cusp of generating a genuinely new future for itself, said Berlin, and his only regret was that he, an old man now, would not live long enough to see us do finally what we had never been able to do to this point!
I was stunned. Berlin’s intellect is far greater than mine. Nevertheless, he exemplifies the point scripture makes over and over: a major consequence of our sinnership is blindness — blindness to truth, blindness to reality, blindness to the nature of sin and the necessity of the saviour. The worst aspect of blindness, of course, is blindness to our blindness; ignorance of our ignorance; insensitivity to our spiritual insensitivity. In a word, the worst consequence of our condition is utter unawareness of our condition and its consequences.
Then Paul was correct, wasn’t he! Humankind is Godless and its predicament is hopeless!
Except that the saviour of humankind that human history cannot generate; this saviour has been given to us. It is the fact of the gift that made Simeon’s heart sing. The fact of the gift means that humankind doesn’t have to remain Godless; its predicament doesn’t have to remain hopeless! What we must crave to do is receive the gift, never spurning it, never trifling with it, never pretending, along with Professor Berlin, that no such gift is needed even though the cumulative evidence is that such a gift — God’s own rescue — is our only hope.
I rejoice that this gift does not come to us with the impersonal label “humankind” written on it, as though it were for everyone in general but no one in particular. Rather I rejoice that it comes with my name on it. As often as I rejoice in this I recall the verse from the Hebrew bible — “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, says the Lord”. And then I think of the four-line ditty I learned as a child:
My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase.
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.
I rejoice that the gift with my name on it has come to me in such a manner as to impel me to own the gift, cherish the gift, glory in the gift. For I too can say with Simeon, “Peace! From the prince of Peace himself! Immanuel: ‘God-with-us'”. And because of “God-with-us”, I with God eternally.
II: — Christmas means something more to me. It means that the saved life I have been given in Christ I must henceforth live and can live. A minute ago I referred to Christ’s saying to the healed menorrhagic woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He meant, “Your faith has immersed you in the salvation of God; now you live out of that salvation, live from it, for the rest of your life.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and — most importantly — could live.
When the woman caught in the very act of adultery was brought to Jesus he said to her, “I don’t condemn you; now you see to it that you never do this again.” What she had been given in Christ she was obliged to live and could live.
When the paralyzed man was brought to Jesus he said to him, “Your sins are forgiven; take up your bed and walk.” Our Lord didn’t mean, “Walk around, go for a stroll, meander, try a little sightseeing.” “Walk”, rather, is the commonest metaphor in the Hebrew bible for the obedience God requires of his people. In light of what God’s salvation, God’s people can walk as he requires them to walk.
When Jesus says to three different people on three different occasions, “Go in peace”, “See to it that you never do this again”, “Start walking and never stop”; when our Lord says these he is saying exactly the same thing to all three. What the salvaged are supposed to do the salvaged can do.
Christmas celebrates the Incarnation. The Incarnation is God himself living among us under the conditions of our existence. The Incarnation is therefore God himself living our difficulties, our disappointments, our distresses. The book of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”; he has forged a way through life’s thickets ahead of us. We don’t have to forge a way through the thicket; we need only follow him on the path he has forged for us. But this we must do, and by his grace this we can do.
Many years after Christmas, when our Lord was full-grown and had embarked on his public ministry, he told his followers that they were light and salt. Obviously we are not light in exactly the same sense that Jesus Christ is. He is the light of the world; our vocation is to shine with his light so as to reflect it into nooks and crannies where life unfolds for us.
Jesus also insisted that his followers are salt. Salt, in the Hebrew bible, is the symbol of God’s covenant with his creation. His covenant is his promise that he will never fail us or forsake us, never quit on us, never give up in disgust or despair, however angry with us he might be for a season. Christians are to be the living sign that God has not abandoned his creation and will not abandon it.
We are to be such a sign. Impossible? Except that our Lord has pioneered this for us already. We need only follow him on the proof-path. Because the salvager has been there ahead of us, we the salvaged must follow him and we can.
III: — Christmas means one thing more to me. It means that the ordinary is fraught with eternal significance. The apostle John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh. He means more than the fact that the self-utterance of God clothed itself in a human body: bones, blood, skin, hair, teeth. He means that the Word immersed itself in every aspect of our existence, from employment problems to temptation to fun-time partying to betrayal to exhilaration to grief to laughter to pain. None of it is foreign to God.
We must never forget that our Lord was born to ordinary parents, grew up in an ordinary town (Nazareth being a generic town like North Bay or Moose Jaw); he worked at an ordinary trade and ate ordinary food. He was so ordinary as not to be noteworthy; there is virtually no mention of him in the literature outside the New Testament. He was one more itinerant preacher of one more Messianic sect handled one more time in the manner Roman security guards were so good at. Yet he was also the sole, sovereign Son of God whose coming among us is the occasion of God’s most intimate presence, God’s most effective mercy, God’s unique opportunity.
Since life is 98% ordinary, it is in the ordinary moments of life that we are going to have serve God. Instead of looking for the extraordinary, the dramatic, we should understand that we are salt and light not particularly when we try to be or are challenged to be; if we are salt and light at all then we are salt and light all the time.
Jesus went to a wedding, and there was given opportunity to attest the mission of his Father. After the wedding he went to a funeral, and opportunity was given him for a different ministry. On his way to the next village a distraught parent told him of a daughter’s sickness; while he was sorting out this development someone who didn’t like him accosted him. It was all so very ordinary — and therefore it was all the opportunity of a particular word and deed and blessing and comfort.
The child in front of us in the variety store is crying because her mother has sent her to the store for a loaf of bread the child has lost her money. Two teenagers in front of us are maliciously teasing an elderly man in Erin Mills Town Centre. The stranger in the bed beside the person we have gone to see in the hospital calls out to us. Our spouse arrives home with horrendous headache and hair-trigger nerves on account of a sneak attack at work when she never expected it and therefore could not protect herself against it.
This is where we live. Christmas, the celebration of the Incarnation, reminds us that this is where God lives too. Then there is opportunity for discernment and service and intercession and courage right here. Depending on the situation there is opportunity (and need) for ironfast inflexibility or for the gentlest accommodation.
I am moved every time I recall a story of St. Francis of Assisi. An eager, enthusiastic novice among the friars told Francis that day-to-day existence with brothers in the order was suffocatingly ordinary. The two of them should move out into the wider world and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Francis agreed that this was a good idea. “But first let’s first walk through the city of Assisi from end to end”, insisted the older man. The two fellows did nothing more than walk through the city. When they had traversed it the impatient novice, puzzled now, turned to Francis and remarked quizzically, “But I thought we were going to testify to our Lord!” “We just did”, replied Francis quietly, “we just did.”
Life consists of the ordinary punctuated by the extraordinary. Punctuation marks are found relatively infrequently, aren’t they? I have yet to see a sentence that had more punctuation marks than words! Punctuation marks may help us read a sentence but they don’t make up the sentence. And strictly speaking, punctuation marks are not even necessary. (Something as important as a telegram, after all, has no punctuation marks.)
It is a sign of spiritual maturity when we understand that the ordinary is the vehicle of the eternal; it is a sign of spiritual alertness when, from time-to-time, we see how this has occurred. It is a sign of faithfulness when we live day-by-day in the certainty that there is no ordinary moment that God doesn’t grace, and therefore there is no ordinary moment that is finally insignificant.
Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation. Incarnation — the living word and will and way of God becoming flesh of our flesh in our midst; Incarnation is the foundation of everything pertaining to the Christian faith.
Incarnation means a salvage operation that is nothing less than the salvation of God.
Incarnation means that the salvaged life God grants us through our faith in Jesus Christ is a life we must live and can live, since our Lord has pioneered it for us.
Incarnation means that the ordinary is the vehicle of God’s summons to us, as well as the occasion of our obedience to him through service to others.
This is what Christmas means to me.
Victor A. Shepherd
December 1994
From Elijah to John the Baptist, from David to Jesus
I: — My appetite does not improve when I see a crow pecking at a dead animal on the side of the highway. And if perchance a crow were to drop a bit of ragged roadkill in my lap I should be repulsed. Elijah the prophet was told (who told him?) to hunker down by the brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan and crows would feed him there. Feed him what? Everyone knows what crows eat.
Elijah looms out at us from the Hebrew bible as a man who is utterly God-saturated. Over and over we are told, “The word of the Lord came to Elijah…”, and off Elijah goes to do and say what has been laid on him. Today we should find many different ways of speaking of him. He was God-soaked — for the text explains him entirely in terms of the God who has inundated him. He was humble — for it takes more than a little humility to allow oneself to be fed carrion. He was courageous — for it takes enormous courage to speak truth to power, particularly when the political power (King Ahab and his cruel wife Jezebel) is murderous. He was unpolished — for subtlety and soft speech were foreign to him. Most notably he was impassioned. Wherever we find Elijah his passion is aflame: his preaching, his praying, his scorn, his rage, his dejection; it’s all a firestorm. Moderation? Elijah never heard of the word. Balance? The “golden mean”? He wouldn’t understand. We wonder why Elijah is always and everywhere afire; he wonders why we appear not to be lit.
The greatest of the Hebrew prophets, according to Jewish opinion both ancient and modern, Elijah was God’s spokesperson in the face of the Baalism which surrounded Israel and threatened to infiltrate it. Baalism had several aspects to it. It was nature-worship, and nature worship (both ancient and modern) conveniently lacks any grasp of evil or sin. Nature-worship will always attract the hordes who want religious sentimentality without ethics. Not surprisingly Baalism tolerated, even encouraged, lasciviousness of all sorts.
King Ahab, an Israelite who knew exactly what God meant when God insisted that he is a “jealous” God (God abides no rivals; worship of him cannot be mixed with worship of anything else); Ahab nevertheless thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the true and living God, together? Why not have the self-indulgence which Baal permits his people and the security which Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication which Baal laughs about and the forgiveness which Yahweh weeps to bestow? Why not? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that God wants us to “have it all”? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that we can have all the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?
Elijah rightly says, “No, a thousand times no!” And so we find Elijah, the prophet of God, standing amidst the 450 prophets of Baal. “The Holy One of Israel”, Elijah says to them, “will shortly expose your Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that it is. And as for you, Ahab, so far from being a real king you are a double-crosser; you have betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector you were commissioned to be.” Whereupon Ahab stabs his finger at Elijah, “You troubler of Israel ; why do you have to be such a disturber?”
Jewish people always knew that Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, would come back. He would come back at the end-time when the kingdom of God was breaking in on the world; he would come back when what all Israel called the “Age to Come” was dawning as it superimposed itself on what Israel called the “Present Evil Age”. Elijah would surely come back. And when he came back, ancient Jewish people insisted, he would do four things. He would restore the people inwardly through repentance; he would gather together the scattered people of God; he would proclaim salvation; and he would introduce the Messiah.
Centuries later John the Baptist appeared. John didn’t eat carrion brought to him by crows; he ate honey made for him by wild bees, with grasshoppers added for protein. John too spoke truth to power, even lethal political power — just as Elijah of old had. This time it wasn’t king Ahab; it was king Herod, a Jew in name only who had sold his soul to pagan Romans and now betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector he had been commissioned to be. And just as Elijah had ringingly denounced Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard, so John denounced Herod’s theft of his brother’s wife.
John had an elemental message which he declared tirelessly. “Repent. Right now. Don’t say, ‘Tomorrow’. You don’t have tomorrow. The axe is laid to the root of the tree now; it is the height of spiritual stupidity to think that the tree itself is going to last until tomorrow. Get right with God now. How will anyone know if your repentance is genuine? By the subsequent shape of your life. Will baptism in the Jordan (or anywhere else) save you? No it won’t. For unless your life is reordered before God, getting yourself baptized in desperation is no different from a snake slithering away in panic from a grass fire.”
And then John began gathering together the scattered people of God. After all, he urged repentance even upon soldiers, and they, despised gentiles as they were, were yet added to the “household and family of faith”. In the same breath John proclaimed the salvation brought by his cousin, Jesus, whose shoelaces John felt himself unworthy to untie. Did he introduce the Messiah? Repeatedly John urged the people, “Don’t look at me; look at him. He is the one to baptize you with the fiery Spirit of God!”
Months later the detractors of Jesus taunted him, “You can’t be the Messiah. Everyone knows that Elijah must come back before the Messiah can appear. And Elijah hasn’t returned for 800 years!” “Wrong again”, said Jesus to his detractors, “you are dead wrong. Elijah did come back. He came back recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: ‘the dunker, the dipper’. Elijah did come back. And you dismissed him. Didn’t John urge repentance, gather the scattered people of God, declare the salvation of God, and introduce the Messiah?”
Today is Advent Sunday. We are preparing ourselves to receive (or receive afresh) him who is the Messiah of Israel and the saviour of the world, him who is nothing less than Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yet we can properly receive him only as we first admit that the Messiah can’t be known without the reappearance of Elijah, only as we admit with our Lord himself that John the Baptist is Elijah given to us once more. Which is to say, we can receive the Christmas gift himself only as we first hear the forerunner’s word and take it to heart and do it. The single forerunner of the Christmas gift is Elijah and John compressed into one. Let us hear our Lord Jesus once more: we can receive him who is the Christmas gift (our Saviour) only as we first hear and honour the word of the forerunner, Elijah and John compressed into one.
II: — Elijah was Israel ’s greatest prophet; David its greatest king. Many generations later David’s descendants gave birth to the Son of David, Jesus our Lord. David and Jesus were even farther apart temporally than Elijah and John: one thousand years separated David and his Son. Yet they had much in common.
They both came from simple country-folk; David and Jesus, that is.
They both gained notoriety when they were still adolescents: David as a shepherd boy who accidentally “showed up” older men when they would not respond to Goliath’s challenge, Jesus as a 12 year old who stymied learned clergy in the temple.
They both possessed enormous backbone, neither one a pushover, neither one cowering before brute power. When David saw the terror which had paralyzed his countrymen in the face of the Philistine threat David scornfully said of the Philistine leader, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” When Jesus knew that Herod wanted to terminate him Jesus scornfully said to whoever would listen, “Go and tell that fox”, when “fox”, in first century Middle Eastern street-talk was shorthand for the most loathsome “creep” imaginable.
They both showed mercy to their enemies: David, when he knew Saul wanted to kill him and he had Saul helpless yet let him go, Jesus when he prayed at the last, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
They both were men of passion. When David exulted without restraint “before the Lord” his wife, Michal, despised him for it. When the passion of Jesus fired his public ministry and rendered him heedless of danger his mother thought him deranged and wanted to take him home and sedate him.
They both were fighters, and both declined the weapons which everyone else assumed they ought to use. David was offered Saul’s armour, but put it aside, trusting a simple slingshot and the use God would make of it as God honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father. Jesus, summoned before Pilate, told Pilate that he, Jesus had at his command legions of angels whose unearthly power could have vapourized Pilate on the spot, together with everything Pilate represented. Instead Jesus trusted a simple cross and the use his Father would make of it as his Father honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father.
Both David and Jesus were born to be king. David was born in Bethlehem , a village outside Jerusalem . ” Bethlehem ” means “house of bread”. One thousand years later Jesus was born in Bethlehem too. Both were born to be king.
What was an Israelite king supposed to do? I say “supposed to do” since most Israelite kings didn’t do what a king was supposed to do. Instead they lined their pockets and slew their opponents. David was different. David knew that an Israelite king had three responsibilities. The king was to protect the people, uphold justice, and serve as a priest.
David did protect the people. In fact David was a military genius, like the Duke of Wellington or Ulysses S. Grant.
David did uphold justice. Justice today means little more than seeing that criminals are convicted and sentenced. Not so with that justice which God decrees. As a matter of fact there is no Hebrew word for justice; the Hebrew word is “judgement.” The king was to uphold God’s judgements just because the king was the agent of God’s judgements. And God’s judgement is not primarily a matter of convicting criminals and sentencing them. God’s judgements, scripture attests over and over, are God himself setting right what is wrong; freeing those who are enslaved; relieving those who are oppressed; assisting those who are helpless; clearing the name of those who are slandered; vindicating those who are despised. David did this. Those who had been set upon were set upon no longer. Anyone who “fleeced” the defenceless or exploited the powerless learned quickly that king David had zero tolerance for this sort of thing. When David himself was fleeing Saul’s murderous hatred 400 men and their families gathered around David, “Everyone who was in straits and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was desperate.” To be desperate is literally to be without hope; to be in straits is to have no way out, no escape. All such people found in this king one who would never disdain or ignore or abandon them.
And priest? The role of the priest was to intercede with God on behalf of the people. Frequently David went into the tabernacle “and sat before the Lord”; that is, he had his people on his heart, and pleaded with God for them all.
One thousand years after David a blind beggar minutes away from receiving his sight called out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” “Son of David”. It meant “messiah.” The messiah was to be a great king, greater even than David. A blind man who could see what supposedly sighted people couldn’t see knew Jesus to be the long-awaited king greater even than David.
The protection which Christ the king gave his people — continues to give them — is more glorious than any protection David furnished, for Christ our king has promised that nothing will ever snatch you and me out of his hand; nothing will ever separate us from that love of God made concrete in the king himself.
That Son of David who is Christ the king upholds justice as he implements God’s judgements. Jesus himself has said that all judgement has been delivered over to him. And since the primary purpose of judgement is to restore the right, to say he is judge is to say that he is saviour. If the primary purpose of the judge is to set right anything that is wrong, anywhere, from the sin of a child to the disfigurement of the cosmos, then the judge has to be the saviour as well.
And priest? In his atoning sacrifice Christ the king uniquely pleads with the Father on behalf of the people. For this reason the book of Hebrews speaks of Christ the king as “our great high priest”.
All of which brings us to the last point concerning David and David’s greater son: the matter of sin. Here their paths diverge. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was “tempted at all points as we are, yet without sin”. David, it can safely be said, was also tempted at all points; but he sinned grievously. He lusted after Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. His lust warped his thinking. Adultery-on-the-way rendered murder perfectly reasonable. David didn’t merely stumble; he sprawled, sprawled shamefully. Everyone knew it.
A few days later, as David slunk out of Jerusalem (or tried to slink out), a man named Shimei walked on the other side of the street, cursing David and throwing stones at him. (No doubt the stones were a not-so-subtle reminder that the law of Moses prescribed stoning for adultery.) Abishai, David’s loyal friend, was outraged that the king should be insulted like this. “Why should this dead dog curse the king?”, cried Abishai, “Let me take his head off!” “No”, replied David sadly, “No. Shimei curses me only because God has told him to. The treatment Shimei accords me is no worse than I deserve.” David was publicly humiliated, yet refused to flee his humiliation inasmuch as his public humiliation was the God-ordained consequence of his sin.
King David’s greater son didn’t flee his public humiliation either. Jesus was “numbered among the transgressors”. He was assigned that death — crucifixion — which the Romans reserved for insurrectionists, deserters and rapists; that is, reserved for those whose disgrace could not be greater. Jesus refused to flee his public humiliation inasmuch as his humiliation was the God-ordained consequence not of his sin but of his sin-bearing righteousness. The apostle Paul, as so often, says it most compactly: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The Christmas announcement to the shepherds in the field was plain: “Don’t be afraid. Good news! Great joy! For to you is born in the city of David a saviour who is Christ the Lord.”
The city of David is Bethlehem , “house of bread”. And in the house of bread is born David’s greater son who is himself the bread of life. Then this one, given to us anew at this season, we must receive anew, for he is saviour inasmuch as his humiliation is his invitation to us to become that righteousness of God which we need as we need nothing else.
Elijah, David, John, Jesus. The Christmas story begins in a lowly cattle shed, once upon a time, in royal David’s city.
Victor Shepherd
Advent 2003
Who Ought to “Come and Worship Christ the New-Born King”?
Isaiah 60:1-3
Matthew 2:1-12
Who ought to worship? Everyone ought to worship. (We all know this much. Everyone ought to worship.) Still, the Christmas carol, Angels, from the Realms of Glory, speaks of different sorts of people who ought to worship. It speaks of angels and shepherds, sages and saints.
I: — Today we are going to start with the shepherds. Shepherds were despised in 1st century Palestine. The social sophisticates in Jerusalem and other city centres of urbanity looked upon shepherds as uncouth, since shepherds worked with animals. Shepherds were also regarded as dirty. Sheep, after all, have very oily fleece and the shepherd has to handle them; besides, sheep poop everywhere. Shepherds were also looked upon as less than devout. It was awkward for them to get to all the church services as expected, since their animals were forever getting lost or falling sick or breaking a leg or having obstetrical difficulties.
Like all people who are despised for any reason, however, the shepherds were also useful to the very people who despised them. At both morning and evening services in the temple, the cathedral of Jerusalem, an unblemished lamb had to be offered up to God. High quality lambs, therefore, were always in demand. Temple authorities had their own private flocks just outside Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem hills. The Bethlehem shepherds looked after both their own flocks and the flocks of the temple authorities, always looking out for the perfect lamb to be sacrificed in the temple. These shepherds, despised as they were, were ordained by God to be the first people to behold the Lamb of God, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. They were the first to hear the good news, gospel, of Christmas: “For to you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”
I understand why the shepherds were the first to hear and see, apprehend and know, believe and trust. The shepherds were first in that like other people in general who come from the south side of town they aren’t taken in by the smokescreens and false fronts that middle and upper class people love to hide behind. People from the south side of town see it the way it is and tell it the way it is.
My first day on the job in Streetsville (I came to the congregation in 1978 and remained for 21 years) I arrived early at my office and waited for the church secretary. Promptly at 8:30 a.m. the secretary, a large, imposing woman, loomed in the doorway to my office, looked me in the eye and said, “I’m married to a truck driver; you get it from me straight.” That was her first utterance. Her second was like unto it: “There’s a toilet between your office and mine, but it’s noisy, if you get what I mean.” Is there anyone who wouldn’t get what she meant? Right away I knew I was going to get along with this woman. Because she, married to a truck driver, was utterly transparent and non-duplicitous, frontal, she spared me untold grief over and over in congregational life.
She and I had much in common, not the least of which is the simple fact that we both live in the shadow of a dog food factory. And there’s nothing wrong with this. After all, Moses was minding sheep when the Lord God accosted him and the world was different ever after. Gideon was threshing wheat when he was summoned from heaven. Elisha was ploughing a field when he was named successor to Elijah. No congregation can afford to be without shepherds and all those like them.
This being the case, why do we see so few of these people at worship in virtually all the churches of historic Protestantism? Roman Catholicism has always been able to attract people from the whole of the socio-economic spectrum, from the most affluent to the most materially disadvantaged. To be sure, the Protestant churches do see some of the latter; Protestant congregations aren’t completely homogeneous. Still, we see far too few. Their absence dismays me, since I have found that these people have no difficulty with me, at least. Several years ago a man with a grade ten education chuckled, “Victor, we can always be sure of one thing on Sunday morning: you’ll never be over our heads!” Such people live in Toronto in large numbers. But they are proportionately underrepresented in virtually all Protestant congregations. Why? Can any of you enlighten me? Their absence haunts me. For shepherds have been summoned to worship Christ the new-born king. And if they do worship, they’ll be the first to see and seize the Lamb of God who takes away their sin too.
II: — Sages ought to worship as well. To be sure, the hymnwriter insists that where sages are concerned “brighter visions beam afar”; brighter, that is, than the sages’ contemplations. I agree. But to see Jesus Christ as brighter, even the brightest, is not to say that lesser contemplations aren’t bright at all and aren’t to be valued. They are bright, and they are to be valued. To say that God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ supplies what no sage will ever arrive at is correct; but to say that because God’s self-disclosure is this what the sages are about is worthless – this is wrong. To say that the event of Christmas gives us what no philosophical exploration will ever impart is not to say that philosophy (or another scholarly discipline) is therefore foolish and useless. The uniqueness of the Christmas event never means that intellectual rigour isn’t a creaturely good, a creaturely good that gives God pleasure.
Philosophy is an academic discipline that I cherish. Please don’t tell me that philosophy’s significance is measured by the old question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Philosophy, after all, taught me to think, and 90% of good preaching is just clear thinking. Moreover, insofar as philosophical enquiry is the exploration of what is there is an intellectual excellence to it that we ought not to slight, for God takes pleasure in any human excellence. (Let’s be sure of something else: God takes no pleasure in mediocrity of any sort.)
Jesus Christ is truth. I am glad to affirm this. He is that “brighter” luminosity that sages are summoned to worship. But to say this isn’t to say that the contemplations of the sages are inherently vacuous and invariably useless, let alone evil. Because the church has undervalued the sages’ contemplations the church has largely abandoned the arena of intellectual endeavour. At one time the thinkers inside the church could out-think the thinkers outside the church; at one time. In my second year philosophy course the professor, a man who made no religious profession, had the class read both Bertrand Russell and Thomas Aquinas. Russell is an atheist; Aquinas, a Christian and the greatest philosopher of the middle ages. It’s easy to see why an agnostic or atheist professor would have us read Russell. But why Aquinas? Just because that professor wanted us to appreciate the intellectual power of the “Angelic Doctor”, as Aquinas was known in the 1200s.
Years ago I overheard Emil Fackenheim, himself a marvellous philosopher, remark that Kierkegaard was the greatest thinker to arise in Christendom. I thought the statement was perhaps exaggerated Then I found others saying the same thing. Then I noticed that Ludwig Wittgenstsein, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century (together with Martin Heidegger); I noticed that Wittgenstein had said that Kierkegaard was by far the profoundest thinker of the 19th century. Will the profoundest thinker of the 20th century turn out to have been a Christian? And of the 21st? Not a chance. Why not? Because the church has abandoned the intellectual field. Fuzzy-headed feel-goodism is as profound as we get today.
At the time of the Reformation (16th century), those who had first been schooled as “sages” (i.e., humanists) before they applied themselves to theology also wrote theology that we shall never be without and provided leadership for the church. Those, on the other hand, who studied theology only without first drinking from the wells of humanism wrote no worthwhile theology and provided no leadership for the church.
Yes, sages should worship Christ the new-born king, since he is king and brings with him what the sages can’t supply of themselves. But this is not to say that the sages’ sage-ism is worthless. There is creaturely wisdom that is genuinely wise, even as the pursuit of that wisdom gives pleasure to God.
III: — Saints too are summoned to the cradle. “Saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear.” The saints are those, like Simeon and Anna of old, who wait on God. The saints are always found “before the altar bending”; i.e., the saints worship, profoundly worship. They are always found “watching long in hope and fear”; i.e., the saints are both expectant and reverent. “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple shall appear.” Shall appear; shall continue to appear. In other words, the Lord who came once in Bethlehem of old comes again and yet again, continues to come. Insofar as any of us are found at worship, waiting on God expectantly and reverently, the selfsame Lord will unfailingly appear to us.
It was while Isaiah was at worship that the sanctuary filled up with the grandeur of God and the holiness of God and the glory of God. The glory of God is the earthly manifestation of God’s unearthly Godness. It all overwhelmed Isaiah so as to leave him prostrated under the crushing weight of God, only then to be set on his feet so that he might henceforth go and do what he had been appointed to.
It was while Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, was at worship that he was rendered speechless for as long as he needed to stop talking in order to hear and heed what God was saying to him.
It was while the apostle John was at worship, exiled for the rest of his life on the island of Patmos, that he was “visited” and wrote, when he had recovered, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength…and when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, ‘Fear not….’”
What do we expect when we come to worship? Three hymns and a harangue? What if “Suddenly the Lord descending in his temple did appear”?
He who came once doesn’t come once only. He comes again and again. As often as he comes the saints before the altar bending – the saints at worship – are overtaken yet again, and like John of old can barely croak, “His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his face like the sun shining in full strength….” The saints in any congregation today know as surely as the saints of old knew. And the saints at worship today declare, “Come with us and worship Christ the new-born king.”
IV: — What about the angels? Make no mistake: the angels are real. It is the height of arrogance to think that we are the only rational creatures in the universe. Who says that a creature has to possess flesh and bone in order to possess reason and spirit? The Christmas carol invites the angels to “proclaim Messiah’s birth.” Such proclamation, such witness, is precisely what scripture says angels are always and everywhere to be about. Such proclamation or witness is crucial. You see, because the angels are mandated to bear witness, specifically to bear witness to Jesus Christ, God will never lack witnesses who attest the truth and power of his Son and of that kingdom which the Son brings with him. To be sure, you and I are mandated to bear witness to all of this too. Flesh and blood witnesses like you and me, however, are sadly lacking in quality and quantity. Still, where we are deficient, the angels are not. Therefore I find much comfort in the angels. However much I may fail in serving and attesting and exalting Messiah Jesus and his truth, there are other creatures whose service and witness and exaltation never fail.
Listen to Karl Barth, the pre-eminent theologian of our century. A few years after World War II Barth wrote, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.” Just before the outbreak of the war Barth had been apprehended at his Saturday morning lecture in the University of Bonn, Germany. He had been deported immediately from Germany to his native Switzerland. As soon as hostilities with Germany had ceased the cold war with the Soviet Union had begun. While there was no war, hot or cold, in Switzerland, Barth never pretended the Swiss were uncommonly virtuous. He readily admitted his own country financed itself by harbouring the ill-gotten gains (the infamous unnamed accounts in the Swiss banks) of the most despicable criminals throughout the world. Nevertheless, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth.”
V: — Lastly, the Christmas carol invites us all, everyone, to worship Christ the new-born king. It tells us that this infant has been appointed to fill his Father’s throne. Since Christ’s sovereignty over the whole of creation is unalterable, acknowledging his sovereignty is not only an invitation to be received and a command to be obeyed; it’s the soul of common sense.
Our Lord is the new-born king. To be sure, the only crown he will ever wear is a crown of thorns. Finding no room in the inn and having no home in which to lay his head throughout his earthly ministry, the one house he’ll eventually occupy is a tree house, ghastly though it is. And of course the only throne he will ever adorn is a cross. Still, he is king. We mustn’t allow the bizarreness of his royal trappings to deflect us from the fact that he is king. He rules, he will judge, and he can bless.
Then acknowledge him we must. The writer of our carol cries, “Every knee shall then bow down.” Since everyone is going to have to acknowledge him ultimately, like it or not; since every knee is going to have to bow before him either in willing adoration or in unwilling resignation, it only makes sense to adore him and love him and delight in him now, together with sages, saints, angels, and by no means least, shepherds.
Victor Shepherd
December 2000
What the Incarnation Means for Me
Colossians 1:19
Canada is religiously diverse. Muslims outnumber Presbyterians in Toronto and outnumber us again in Canada as a whole. We used to read about Hindu people in India and elsewhere. But when a trustee from the Toronto Board of Education spoke of Mahatma Gandhi in a manner that offended the Hindu community, we learned quickly that our Hindu fellow-Canadians are more numerous and less visible than we had thought.
Unquestionably we live amidst religious pluralism. In the sea of religious pluralism the Christian conviction concerning the Incarnation sticks out like a sore thumb. If we remain silent about the Incarnation we can always pass ourselves off as vague theists; i.e., people who believe in a deity of some sort, people who believe enough about God to appear religious yet who don’t believe so much as to appear offensive.
Then should Christians downplay the Incarnation, as one professor suggested to me? We can never do this, for the truth; the undeniable, uncompromisable truth of the Incarnation has seized us. At any time, but especially at Christmas, we exult in the truth that the Word was made flesh, that God has come among us by identifying himself with all humanity in the humanness of one man in particular, Jesus of Nazareth. We who have cherished the gospel of the Incarnation for years are like those men and women of old whose elation concerning Jesus caused them to shout in exultation. Detractors didn’t like this. They told Jesus to silence his followers. “Silence them?” said Jesus; “If my followers fell silent the very stones would cry out [in acclaiming the truth.]”
We who cling to our Lord today must cry out too in gratitude for all that God has given us in him and done for us in him. We are never going to be found denying our Lord by denying the Incarnation. We are never going to surrender the particularity of the Incarnation in order to blend into the blandest religion-in-general. Without hesitation we are going to thank God for his coming to us as Incarnate Son in Jesus of Nazareth. Without embarrassment we are going to announce this truth in season and out of season.
Why are we going to do this? What does the Incarnation mean? Why is it crucial to all men and women everywhere even if they disdain it?
I: — In the first place the Incarnation means that God loves us in our misery so very much that he is willing to share our misery with us. He loves us enough in our alienation from him as to stop at nothing to fetch us home to him.
But do we need to be fetched home? In his best-loved parable, “the parable of the prodigal son,” as we call it, Jesus uses two pithy, single-syllable words to describe our condition before God. The first word is “lost;” the second, “dead.” Please note that Jesus doesn’t attempt to explain what he’s said in order to defend himself for saying it. Neither does he argue for it in order to persuade us to believe it. He merely states it: “Lost, dead.” He expects us to agree with him.
On another occasion people are gathered around Jesus, listening. They hear him using the strongest language concerning the spiritual condition of humankind. They assume he’s referring to “others,” “others” being inferior sorts whom they don’t like in any case and whom they could readily agree to be spiritually defective. “But what about us?” these hearers ask Jesus, expecting to be exempted. “What about us?” Whereupon our Lord utters two more words: “blind, deaf.” Suddenly enraged, these people fly at him: “Don’t talk to us like that. We are better than that. We have Abraham for our father.” “Abraham?” says Jesus; “You wouldn’t know Abraham if you fell over him. Your father is the devil.”
You and I ought never to deceive ourselves about our sinnership. We ought never to forget it. We should recall it daily, and daily feel better immediately, since to recall our sinnership is to recall the Christmas truth that God loves us enough to condescend to us sinners and number himself among us.
We speak of God’s love presumptuously and therefore shallowly. “Of course God loves. What else can he do? Of course God loves me. Who wouldn’t love me? Of course….” It’s all so very shallow.
We need to ask a profounder question. “How much does God love? How far will he go in loving me? What price will he pay to love me? How much will he suffer to love me?” The truth is, God loves us sinners so much that his love will stop at nothing to reclaim us and rescue us. His love doesn’t go “only so far” and stop there; his love goes as far as it has to go in order to have us home with him again. Plainly it wasn’t sufficient that he love us “from a distance;” plainly he could love us savingly (anything less is useless) only if he condescended and came among us as one of us humans, and humiliated himself by identifying with us sinners.
In my first congregation I came to know an old man, Jim MacCullum, who had served in World War I. One day he and his best friend were moving forward in “No Man’s Land,” the open space between allied and enemy trenches. Enemy fire became so intense that the Canadian troops had to fall back. When Jim got back to his trench he couldn’t find his friend. Whereupon Jim went back out to “No Man’s Land,” into the teeth of murderous fire, searching and calling out until he found his friend. His friend was badly wounded and unless rescued would shortly perish. The wounded man looked at him and said, “Jim, I knew you’d come.”
There’s a moving similarity between the situation of Jim’s friend and our situation before God. In Romans 5 Paul speaks of us as helpless. That’s the similarity. There’s also the profoundest dissimilarity between Jim’s friend and our situation before God. In Romans 5 Paul also speaks of us as enemies of God. Jim’s friend wanted to see Jim as he wanted nothing else. We sinners – blind, deaf, spiritually inert – don’t expect a saviour and don’t want one.
And it is for all such perverse people that God’s love swells and swells until his love has to find embodiment in the Nazarene. At this point God has loved us so very much that his love has humbled him in a manger, humiliated him with a reputation he doesn’t deserve (“sinner”) and tortured him in Gethsemane and cross.
Tell me: people who speak so very glibly about God’s love – how do they know that God loves them at all? We know that God loves us at all only as we see him loving us to the uttermost, only as we see him loving us until his love stops short of nothing in order to reconcile us to himself.
Let’s be sure we understand something crucial: while the Incarnation is essential to our salvation we aren’t saved by it. We are saved by the Incarnate One’s sin-bearing death. Then beyond God’s condescension and humility there’s humiliation as he, the holy one, identifies himself with unholy rebels. And his humiliation takes him even into a torment wherein he absorbs in himself his just judgement upon us in order that we might be spared it. This is how much God loves us. And only as we see him loving us this much do we have any reason to believe that he loves us at all.
For years now I have pondered the fact that the best Christmas carols sing about the Incarnation for the sake of singing about the atonement, the cross. Think of one of my favourites, “Hark! The Herald Angels sing!” But first let’s listen again to our text: “For in Jesus Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Incarnation) and through him to reconcile all things…making peace by the blood of his cross (atonement.)” Now listen to the carol: “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.”
Think of the carol, “As With Gladness.” It says, “So may we with willing feet, ever seek thy mercy-seat.” In ancient Israel the mercy-seat was the gold lid on the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the place where God met with his people; and the mercy-seat, the gold lid, was the place where costliest sacrifice was offered. Jesus Christ is where God meets with his people; his cross is the mercy-seat. Costliest sacrifice is offered here, which sacrifice bathes us in effectual mercy. And we learn it all from a Christmas carol.
I glory in the Incarnation. I know that God loves me at all just because I first know that his love stops short of nothing in his searching for me and his rescuing me.
II: — In the second place I glory in the Incarnation in that Jesus of Nazareth, human with my humanness, has fulfilled on my behalf the covenant obedience that God’s love wants from us humans. God covenants himself to us in that he promises ever to be our God. We in turn covenant ourselves to him in that we promise ever to be his people.
God unfailingly keeps us covenant with us. What he promises he performs. What he pledges he delivers. And we? We promise unfailing obedience to God. We promise exclusive loyalty to God. We promise uninterrupted love to God. We promise truthfulness before him. Whereupon we break all the promises we make. Even the promises we make with the best intentions we break nonetheless. We are covenant violators.
God looks out over his entire human creation, hoping to find promise-keepers. Among six billion people he can’t find one human being who gladly, gratefully, consistently, fulfils humankind’s covenant with God. At this point God is faced with an alternative: write off his human creation on account of its disobedience and rebellion, or fulfil humankind’s covenant himself. He has already fulfilled his covenant in loving us undeflectably. Now he also has to fulfil our covenant with him if our covenant is ever going to be kept. In the Incarnate One of Nazareth God not only fulfils his covenant with us; he also fulfils our covenant with him. In other words, in view of humankind’s disobedience God has to come among us as human and in this way fulfil our covenant himself.
I glory in the Incarnation in that the Incarnate One is the human covenant-keeper to whom I must cling, covenant-breaker that I am. To be sure, I have heard the gospel invitation and responded to it. I am a new creation in Christ and grateful for it. Yet the old man, the old being, still clings to me. When we became new creatures in Christ the old man, old woman, was put to death. But as Luther liked to remind us, the old man or woman won’t die quietly; the corpse keeps twitching. This being the case, it’s plain that in Christ I am a new creature; in myself I remain the old covenant-breaker. Then I must cling to Jesus Christ so that his covenant-keeping comprehends my covenant-breaking.
To be sure, I do love God. But I never love him as much as I’m supposed to. Then I must cling to that Son whose human love for his Father is defective in nothing. To be sure I do trust God. But somehow my trust in God is always being punctured by episodes of distrust when I dispute that he can or will do for me all that he’s promised. To be sure, I do obey God. At least I aspire to obey him; I want to obey him. But actually obey him? In all matters? Without exception? Then I can only cling to that Son whose human obedience to his Father is faultless. To be sure, I am possessed of faith. Yet how faithful is my faith? Faith of the head comes easy to me: I believe all major Christian doctrines and have never doubted any of them. So much for my faith of the head. But what what about the faith, faithfulness, of my heart? My heart is treacherous. Then I must cling to that Son whose human faith in his Father was never compromised.
Let me say it again. God unfailingly keeps his covenant, his promises, to us. Just as surely we violate ours to him. Then we must cling to the Inarnate One in whom God as man has come to keep that human covenant with him which we can’t keep.
In other words, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate One, mediates God to us and at the same time mediates us to God. He is the one and only Mediator – both manward and Godward – whom God has provided us in our great need.
III: — Lastly, I glory in the Incarnation since it is the greatest affirmation of life. After all, if human life is so precious to God that he chooses to live our human existence as human himself, then human existence must be rich, wonderful, a treasure. If God so prizes human existence then we must prize it no less. If in living every dimension of our humanness God endorses every dimension, then we must endorse every dimension too.
Life is good. I didn’t say easy. I didn’t say life is trouble-free or confusion-free or pain-free. I said life is good. The Incarnation is the story of God’s coming among us to rescue us inasmuch as he deems our existence worth rescuing. Then human existence, however problem-riddled, remains good.
I feel sorry for the people who have slipped or skidded or otherwise fallen into the rut of not being life-affirming. Frequently they tell me they don’t feel very good because they have had the ’flu six times this year. But no one gets the ’flu six times per year. ’Flu-like symptoms – dragginess, weariness (“psychomotor retardation” is the fancy medical term) – these are the symptoms of low-grade depression. Low-grade depression is usually so very low-grade that it’s not recognized as depression. It’s what people slide into unawares when they don’t have reason enough to be life-affirming.
The Incarnation is reason enough. I love that verse from the book of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in all his toil.” (2:28) We are to enjoy eating and drinking and working not simply because they keep life going; we are to enjoy these because they are pleasurable, good in themselves.
I’m always impressed with the child’s exuberance. A child is on the tear every waking moment. He doesn’t want to go to bed – even when’s so tired he’s staggering – in case he misses something. Yes, I know; we adults don’t have the child’s physical stamina, and we are aware of the world’s grief in a way the child isn’t. Nonetheless, the child’s exuberance should inflame ours.
One day after church the Shepherds’ lunch-hour table-talk roamed hither and yon from that morning’s sermon to Canada ’s newest submarines to Alice Munro’s most recent collection of short stories to the Argos ’ Grey Cup victory. Maureen looked at me said, “You have a thousand enthusiasms.” Indeed I have. Isn’t this better than a thousand wet blankets? In the Incarnation God affirms everything he pronounces good.
The Word became flesh. The Word was embodied. Then to say “life-affirming” is also to say “body-affirming.” The taste of green apples and blue cheese. The crunch of buried ice fragments in the middle of our ice cream cone. Flannelette sheets on a winter night. Renee Fleming’s soprano voice. Yitzhak Perlman’s violin. Riding a bicycle for hours longer than we thought we could. One day I was walking through the ward of a nursing home where the residents were in the worst condition imaginable. One malodorous, old man was hunched over in his wheel chair, head on his folded arms, seemingly more dead than alive or virtually comatose. I assumed he was asleep or depressed or deranged or all three at once. As I tiptoed past him he sat up, grinned at me and shouted, “Did you bring the sweets?” I could have kissed him.
It’s Christmastide. Together we are pondering the foundation of our faith, the Incarnation, God’s coming among us as human in Jesus of Nazareth.
– Because God has visited us in this manner we know how much he loves us: he will do anything, suffer anything, absorb anything, to have us home with him again, reconciled to him forever.
– Because God has visited us in this manner we know that he as human has fulfilled our covenant with him when we couldn’t fulfil it ourselves.
-Because God has visited us in this manner he has affirmed the goodness of our existence, and insists that we affirm it too.
Yes, we do live amidst religious pluralism. So did Jesus himself. Yet he remained who he was amidst it and never apologized for being who he was and is. We are unapologetic. For that truth which has seized us we could never deny – and in any case would never want to.
Victor Shepherd
Christmas 2004
John the Baptist and Jesus
Matthew 3:1-12
We expect to find a family resemblance among relatives. John and Jesus were cousins. Not surprisingly, then, they were “look-alikes” in many respects.
Both were at home in the wilderness, the venue of extraordinary temptation and trial and testing, but also the venue of extraordinary intimacy with the Father.
Both preached out-of doors when they began their public ministry.
Both gave their disciples a characteristic prayer. John gave his followers a prayer that outwardly identified them as his disciples and inwardly welded them to each other. In no time the disciples of Jesus asked him for the same kind of characteristic prayer, with the result that we shall never be without the “Lord’s Prayer.”
Both John and Jesus lashed hearers whenever they spoke of God’s severity and the inescapability of God’s judgement.
Both summoned people to repent.
Both discounted the popular notion that God favoured Israel with political or national pre-eminence.
Both were born through an uncommon act of God.
And both died through having provoked uncommon rage among men and women.
John insisted that the sole purpose of his mission was to point away from himself to his younger cousin, Jesus. Jesus, for his part, never uttered one negative word about John. Jesus even endorsed John’s ministry by submitting to baptism at John’s hand. Indeed Jesus said, “Among those born of women (that is, of all the people in the world), there is none greater than John.”
I: Elizabeth and Zechariah named their long-awaited son “Yochan.” “Yochan” means “gift of God.” This gift, however, didn’t come with the pretty ribbons and bows and curlicues of fancy gift-wrapping. This gift came in a plain brown wrapper.
Think of John’s appearance. He wore a camel-hide wrap-around, and it stank as only camels can stink. (Jesus, by contrast, wore a robe fine enough that soldiers gambled for it.)
Then there was John’s diet: wild honey. How many bee stings did he have to endure to procure the honey? No doubt he had been stung so many times he was impervious, bees being now no more bothersome than fruit flies. And the locusts? There’s lots of protein in grasshoppers, since small creatures like grasshoppers are the most efficient in converting grain protein into animal protein. Grasshoppers are good to eat, as long as you don’t mind crunching their long legs and occasionally getting them stuck in your teeth. John was anything but effete, anything but dainty, anything but a reed shaken by the wind.
John’s habitat was noteworthy. The wilderness, everywhere in scripture, is the symbol for a radical break with the posturing and the pretence, the falsehoods and phoniness of the big city and its inherent corruption. Jerusalem , hier shalem, describes itself as the city of salvation. But is it? Jerusalem kills the prophets and crucifies the Messiah. By living in the wilderness John contradicted everything the city represented.
And of course there was John’s manner. He had relatively few tools in his toolbox. When he saw that the truth of God had to be upheld and the sin of the powerful rebuked, he reached into his toolbox and came up with its one and only tool: confrontation. It wasn’t long before he confronted Herodias, wife of Herod the ruler. John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you allowed your daughter, Salome, to dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Mrs. Herod, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.” Whereupon Mrs. Herod had said, “I’ll have your head for that. Watch me.”
We mustn’t forget John’s singlemindedness. Because his camel-hide loincloth lacked pockets, John’s one-and-only sermon he kept in his head and his heart. It was a simple sermon. The judgement of God is so close at hand that even now you can feel God’s fiery breath scorching you and withering everything about you that can’t stand the conflagration. And in the face of this judgement, thundered John, there are three things that cosy, comfortable people think they can take refuge in when there is no refuge; namely, parentage, piety and prestige.
Parentage. “Abraham is our parent. We are safe because we are descendants from the grand progenitor of our people, Abraham our father.” We are Abraham’s son or daughter only if we have Abraham’s faith, John knew. In light of the crisis that God’s judgement brings on everyone, we’re silly for putting stock in the fact that our grandmother was once a missionary in China and our father once shook hands with Billy Graham.
Piety. “We are Israelites. Only last week we had our son circumcised.” “We’ve been members of St.Matthew’s-by-the-Gas Station for forty years. We had all our children ‘done’ there; we also contributed to the repairs to the steeple.” Piety, said John, is a religious inoculation. Like any inoculation it keeps people from getting the real thing. For this reason piety is worse than useless: it guarantees that what can save us we shall never want.
Prestige. “We are the Jerusalem aristocrats.” In 18th Century England an aristocrat was asked what she thought of John Wesley’s movement. “A perfectly horrid thing”, the Duchess of Buckingham had replied, turning up her nose as if someone had just taken the lid off an 18th Century chamber pot; “Imagine being told you are as vile as the wretches that crawl about on the earth.”
It was little wonder that those who found John too much to take eased their discomfort by ridiculing him. Baptizein is the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk. John the dipper. “Well, Yochan, what’ll it be today? Dunk your doughnuts or dip your paintbrush? Here comes the dippy dunker.”
Might John have been deranged? His enemies said he was crazy. But the same people who said John was crazy said Jesus was an alcoholic. Certainly John was crude. Jesus admitted as much when he told those whom John had shocked, “What did you expect to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A feeble fellow smelling of perfume?” John lacked the polish of the cocktail crowd. But he was sane.
II: — Regardless of the family resemblance between John and Jesus they’re not identical.
John came to bear witness to the light. Jesus was (and is) that light.
John pointed to Jesus as the coming one. Jesus pointed to himself as the Incarnate one.
John reminded the people of God’s centuries-old promises. Jesus was, and is, the fulfilment of all God’s promises.
John administered a baptism of water as an outward sign of repentance. Jesus administered a baptism of fire as the Spirit inwardly torched his people.
With this lattermost point we have highlighted the crucial difference between John and Jesus. John could only point to the kingdom of God , the all-determining reality that was to heal a creation disfigured by the Fall. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t point to it: he brought it inasmuch as he was the new creation, fraught with cosmic significance, the one in whom all things are restored. John’s ministry prepared people for a coming kingdom that the king would bring with him. Jesus’ ministry gathered people into that kingdom which was operative wherever the king himself presided — which is to say, everywhere.
It’s not that Jesus contradicted John. Rather, Jesus effected within people what John could only hold out for them. Because the ministry of Jesus gathered up the ministry of John, nothing about John was lost. At the same time, the ministry of Jesus contained so much more than John’s — as John himself gladly admitted. In other words, the ministry of Jesus was the ministry of John plus all that was unique to our Lord.
Ponder, for instance, the note of repentance sounded by both men. John thundered. He threatened. There was a bad time coming, and John, entirely appropriately, had his hearers scared. Jesus agreed. There is a bad time coming. Throughout the written gospels we find on the lips of Jesus pronouncements every bit as severe as anything John said. Nonetheless, Jesus promised a good time coming too. To be sure, Jesus could flay the hide off phoneys as surely as John, yet flaying didn’t characterize him; mercy did. While Jesus could speak, like John, of a coming judgement that couldn’t be avoided, Jesus also spoke of an amnesty, a provision, a refuge that reflected the heart of his Father. Everything John said, the whole world needs to hear. Yet we need to hear even more urgently what Jesus alone said: “There’s a party underway, and at this party all who are weary and worn down, frenzied and fed up, overwhelmed and overrun — at this party all such people are going to find rest and restoration, help, healing and hope.”
Jesus, like John, spoke to the defiant self-righteous who not only disdained entering the kingdom themselves but also, whether deliberately or left-handedly, impeded others from entering it; Jesus spoke to these people in a vocabulary that would take the varnish off a door. Jesus, however, also had his heart broken over people who were like sheep without a shepherd, about to follow cluelessly the next religious hireling — the religious “huckster” of any era who exploits the most needy and the most defenceless.
Because John’s message was the penultimate word of judgement, the mood surrounding John was as stark, spare, ascetic as John’s word: he drank no wine and he ate survival rations. Because Jesus’ message was the ultimate word of the kingdom, the mood surrounding Jesus was the mood of a celebration, a party. He turned 150 gallons of water into wine – a huge amount for a huge party. He is the wine of life; he profoundly gladdens the hearts of men and women. His joy floods his people.
With his laser vision Jesus stared into the hearts of those who faulted him and said, “You spoil- sports with shrivelled hearts and acidulated tongues, you wouldn’t heed John because his asceticism left you thinking he wasn’t sane; now you won’t heed me because my partying leaves you thinking I’m not moral. Still, those people you’ve despised and duped and defrauded: your victims are victors now; they’re going to be vindicated. And their exuberance in the celebrations they have with me not even your sullenness can diminish.” Whereupon our Lord turned from the scornful snobs that religion forever breeds and welcomed yet another wounded, worn down person who wouldn’t know a hymnbook from a homily yet knew as much as she needed to know: life in the company of Jesus is indescribably better than life in the company of his detractors.
I’m always moved at our Lord’s simple assertion, “I am the good shepherd.” What did he mean by “good”? Merely that he is a competent shepherd, as any competent shepherd can protect the flock against marauders, thieves and disease? There are two Greek words for “good”: agathos and kalos. Agathos means “good” in the sense of upright, proper, correct. Kalos, on the other hand (the word Jesus used of himself), includes everything that agathos connotes plus “winsome, attractive, endearing, appealing, compelling, comely, inviting.” I am the fine shepherd.
Malcolm Muggeridge accompanied a film crew to India in order to narrate a documentary on the late Mother Teresa. He already knew she was a good woman or he wouldn’t have bothered going. When he met her, however, he found a good woman who was also so very compelling, wooing, endearing that he titled his documentary, Something Beautiful for God.
John was good, agathos. Many people feared him and many admired him. Jesus was good, kalos. Many people feared him, many admired him, and many loved him. Paul speaks in Ephesians 6:24 of those who “love our Lord with love undying.” Did anyone love John with love undying? If we’ve grasped the difference between agathos and kalos, between what is good, correct, upright and what is so very inviting and attractive as to be beautiful, then we’ve grasped the relation of John to Jesus.
There’s another dimension to Jesus that carries him beyond John. It’s reflected in the word he used uniquely at prayer, abba, “Father.” Now the Newer Testament is written in Greek, even though Jesus customarily spoke Aramaic. In other words what our Lord said day-by-day has been translated into another language. Then why wasn’t the Aramaic word, abba, translated into Greek? The word was left untranslated in that Jesus had first used it in a special way, and to translate it would seem to sully its distinctiveness.
Abba was the word used by a Palestinian youth to speak of his or her father respectfully, obediently, confidently, securely, and of course intimately. It wasn’t so “palsy walsy” as to be disrespectful. Neither was it so gushing as to be sentimental. It was intimate without being impertinent, confident without being smug. Abba was trusting one’s father without trading on the father’s trustworthiness, familiar without being forward, secure without being saccharine.
We must be sure to understand that when early-day Christians came to use the word abba in their prayers they weren’t repeating the word just because they knew Jesus had used it and they thought it cute to imitate him. Neither were they mumbling it mindlessly like a mantra thinking that if they kept on saying it, mantra-like, whatever it was within him that had given rise to it would eventually appear within them. On the contrary, they were impelled to use the word for one reason: as companions of Jesus they had been admitted to such an intimacy with the Father that the word Jesus had used uniquely of his Father they were now constrained to use too, so closely did their intimacy resemble his. When Paul writes in Romans 8:15 that Christians can’t help uttering the cry, “Abba, Father”, any more than a person in pain can help groaning or a person bereaved can help weeping or a person tickled by a good joke can help laughing; when Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that this is normal Christian experience, “normal” means being introduced by the Son to the Father in such a way and at such a depth that the Son’s intimacy with the Father induces the believer’s intimacy. Abba.
We should note that the written gospels show us that Jesus used this word in Gethsemane; Gethsemane , of all places, when he was utterly alone at the most tormented hour of his life. I understand this. William Stringfellow, Harvard-taught lawyer and self-taught theologian who went to Harlem in a store-front law practice on behalf of the impoverished people he loved; Stringfellow, ridiculed by his denomination, suspected by the Kennedys and arrested finally by the FBI for harbouring Daniel Berrigan (a Jesuit anti-Viet Nam War protester); Stringfellow wrote in a little confirmation class book he prepared for teenagers, “Prayer is being so alone that God is the only witness to your existence.”
The day comes for all of us when we are so thoroughly alone we couldn’t be more alone. And in the isolation and torment of such a day we are going tofind that God is the only witness to our existence. But he will be witness enough. And because it’s the Father who is the only witness to our existence, we shall find ourself crying spontaneously, “Abba.” Surely Jesus had this in mind when he said, “There has never appeared anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John.”
We all need to be shaken up by the wild man from the wilderness, the grasshopper-eating, hide-wearing prophet whom no one should have mistaken for a reed shaken by the wind. Yet as often as we need to look at John, we find fearsome John pointing away from himself to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the lamb of God and the Saviour of the world; someone no less rigorous than John to be sure, but also so much more than John – someone so very winsome, compelling, inviting as to be beautiful.
Victor Shepherd
St.Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga
Advent 2007
Waiting, but not Loitering
Isaiah 25:6-10
Psalm 40:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-18
Luke 2:22-38
Loitering is illegal. Loiterers can be jailed. Why? What harm can there be in standing around? Police departments are quick to tell us how much harm there is in standing around. Police departments know that the person who stands around for no reason, with nothing in mind, is someone who won’t be merely “standing around” for long. Someone merely standing around is someone who is readily drawn into whatever disturbance might boil up around him. Idleness is readily co-opted by evil. The empty-handed, empty-headed loiterer who claims he’s only standing around readily becomes an accomplice of whatever evil is lurking.
Advent is a time of waiting, but not a time of waiting around, not a time of loitering. To wait, in scripture, is always to wait for, to anticipate, to expect. To wait, in scripture, is always to be on the edge of your seat in anticipation of something that God has promised.
The Hebrew verb “to wait (for)” is derived from two Hebrew words meaning tension and endurance. If we are waiting for something momentous, waiting eagerly, longingly, expectantly, then we live in a tension as great as our endurance is long.
I am always moved at the people in the Christmas story who wait in such tension with endurance.
Elizabeth , for instance; she had been childless for two decades. In Israel childlessness was the worst misfortune that could befall husband and wife. Each year’s barrenness found Elizabeth waiting, her endurance tested.
Zechariah, Elizabeth ’s husband; he was unable to speak from the time he learned of his wife’s pregnancy until their son, Yochan, “gift of God”, was born. Nine months may not strike us as a long time to wait for speech to return, but it’s unimaginably long when you don’t know if your speech is ever going to return.
Simeon had spent years looking for, longing for, the Messiah of Israel.
Anna had been married only seven years when she was widowed. Now, at 84 years of age, she lived on the temple precincts, “worshiping with prayer and fasting, night and day,” Luke tells us. When she finally beheld the infant Jesus she knew that what she had waited for for 60 years had appeared at last.
These were godly men and women. And like all godly folk they knew how difficult it is to wait; how difficult it is to wait for God. It is difficult. No wonder the psalmist exhorts us, “Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.”
At the same time we must remember that to wait, in scripture, is never to “wait around.” To wait is never to loiter, doing nothing, available for whatever evil looms up. To wait, in scripture, is to wait knowing that we don’t wait alone; God waits too. God waits for us, his people. The prophet Isaiah tells us that God waits for Israel to bear fruit. When God waits, and waits specifically for his people, it’s never the case that God is “waiting around,” doing nothing. God always waits for Israel by working in Israel . God waits by doing.
Think of the diverse pictures scripture paints of God’s involvement with Israel , God’s working among his people.
- a mother nursing her infant. The mother nursing her infant is waiting in one sense; she isn’t doing anything else, can’t be washing the kitchen floor. Yet in nursing her infant she isn’t “doing nothing.” What could be more important than the wellbeing of her babe?
- a father helping a young child to walk. The father is waiting for the child to grow up even as he does something about it.
- a heartbroken husband (we’re still talking about how the bible portrays the waiting God) resolving not to leave the wife who has disgraced herself and humiliated him. Such waiting, replete with resolution, is a long way from doing nothing.
In none of this could God be said to be waiting around, loitering, up to no good at all. As a matter of fact, the one word that characterizes God’s involvement with Israel is passion. And since God waits for Israel to bear fruit by doing whatever he can with Israel , it’s plain that God’s waiting for us is his impassioned involvement with us. God waits by hastening.
Then our Advent-waiting must never be waiting around, loitering. Our Advent-waiting must be marked by impassioned involvement.
But impassioned involvement with what? What exactly are we waiting for?
I: — The apostle Paul says that the entire creation is “waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” In other words, the entire creation is waiting for, longing for God’s deliverance from anything and everything that stands in the way of its fulfilment. Right now the entire creation is frustrated; it doesn’t unambiguously serve the purpose for which God fashioned it.
[a] For instance, the earth was created to sustain all of humankind. To be sure, bodily good isn’t the only good. There are also an intellectual good and a cultural good and an emotional good and a spiritual good. At the same time, unless the bodily good is maintained; that is, unless physical need is met, the remaining goods never arise. No intellectual good or cultural good or spiritual good is going to appear in the person who is starving to death or merely malnourished. For centuries the earth yielded enough food to feed the world’s population many times over, even as malnutrition and starvation consumed millions of people. So far as feeding people is concerned, the earth has been frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.
And then in the twinkling of an eye a corner was turned. In the twinkling of an eye a new situation has arisen: as of today, for the first time in human history, more people will die prematurely from overeating than will die prematurely from undereating. Once again so far as sustaining people is concerned, the earth is frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.
[b] Physicians tell me that the most sophisticated aspect of all the growing edges in medicine (and medical science has many growing edges) pertains to fertility. For decades infertility was deemed a female problem. The new growing edge pertains to male fertility. Huge advances are underway here. Good. Millions of couples will conceive otherwise never could have. And right next door to the fertility clinic, in any hospital, we can find the abortuary. The contradiction here leaves me speechless.
[c] Billions of tax-payer dollars are spent each year on public education. The end result is that the level of adult illiteracy in Canada has slowly risen from 35% to 47%. Yes, as much as is spent on public education, it can always be argued that not enough is spent, since other jurisdictions spend more than we do. At the same time, social problems are never remedied simply by throwing more money at them. Trillions of dollars have been poured into slum areas of American cities, and the slums are no closer to disappearing.
[d] And then there are the people who continue to approach me; the chronically mentally ill. Twenty-five years ago the development of neuroleptic drugs was heralded as a breakthrough inasmuch as the new drugs would permit ill people to live outside of institutions. Undoubtedly some ill people have benefited. A great many, however, have not. Many defenceless people were put on the street with a bottle of pills. In two days they had lost their pills, or traded them for something else, or had forgotten how frequently to take them. They couldn’t return to the institutions from which they had been discharged, because these institutions had been replaced by carriage-trade condominiums. Many of these people are in worse condition than ever they were when they were institutionalized. When Maureen and I were in Washington four weeks ago we were startled at the number of psychotic people found in downtown Washington . It’s the same in every major North American city.
The entire creation is frustrated, says the apostle. It waits – and we who are part of it wait too – for its restoration.
But waiting never means waiting around. Waiting for God’s deliverance of the creation entails our impassioned involvement with it, entails our zealous doing on behalf of it, wherever it is frustrated and for whatever reason. Unless we are doing something about the world’s frustration we aren’t waiting for God at all; we’re merely waiting around, loitering, soon to be part of the problem instead of its alleviation.
Remember: God waits for Israel to bear fruit by spending himself unreservedly for Israel .
II: In the second place, says the apostle, we ourselves wait for adoption as daughters and sons of God, “the redemption of our bodies”, as he puts it. But aren’t we sons and daughters of God by faith now? To be sure, scripture insists on the distinction between creature of God and child of God. Every human being is a creature of God, made in God’s image, loved and cherished by him. Children of God, however, are those who have heard and heeded the gospel invitation, and who now cling in faith to the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, their elder brother. Believing people are God’s children now. We are born of God and have been granted a new nature from God.
Then why is it said that we are waiting for adoption as God’s sons and daughters? The apostle’s point is this: while we have been made new at God’s hand, we don’t appear very new. To be sure, sin no longer rules us; Jesus Christ does. But while sin no longer rules us, sin continues to reside in us. Martin Luther used to say, “Yes, we are new people in Christ; but the old man, the old woman, won’t die quietly. The corpse twitches.”
The apostle is puzzled about the gap, the undeniable gap, between his new life in Christ and his contradiction of it every day. On the one hand he knows that all whom Jesus Christ draws to himself are made new in him; on the other hand he’s surprised at how much of the “old” man seems to hang on in him. Listen to Paul as he speaks of himself in Romans 7. “I don’t understand my own actions. For I don’t do what I want, but rather I do the very thing I hate. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” Still, he knows that his ultimate deliverance is guaranteed: “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When Paul speaks of himself as ‘wretched’ he doesn’t mean primarily that he feels wretched. He’s not telling us how he feels; he’s telling us what he is. No doubt he didn’t feel good about it; still, he’s telling us primarily of his condition, not of his feeling. His condition is this: there’s a dreadful contradiction within him. He recognizes that his practice falls abysmally short of his profession. Until he was apprehended by Christ he wasn’t aware of any contradiction within him; now he knows that Christ has rendered him new even as everyone around him finds him entirely too ‘old’. It’s his condition that’s wretched. “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”
The ancient Romans devised a terrible punishment for criminals; namely, strapping a corpse onto a criminal’s back. Imagine the sheer weight of it. Imagine the odour, the leaks, the overall hideousness. It must have been ghastly beyond description.
Did I say “ghastly beyond description”? But such ghastliness is my spiritual condition; such ghastliness is my outward life compared to my inward truth and my Christian profession. Who will deliver me from this hideous contradiction, this body of death?
In our sober discussion of this topic we must be sure to notice something profound. The apostle dares to admit his own innermost contradiction, dares to raise the question, only because he already has the answer. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s going to be delivered from the walking contradiction he is. The burden of the ‘old’ man that seems strapped to him is going to be lifted. He knows it. He’s waiting for it. We wait for it too.
But we don’t wait around. We don’t loiter. We genuinely wait for our deliverance only if we are doing something about our self-contradicted discipleship, only if we are doing something about the inconsistencies in us that are so glaring that many people wonder if there aren’t two of us.
We must remember, in this season of Advent-waiting, that God waits for Israel to bear fruit by sparing nothing of himself to have Israel bear fruit. We wait for the final, full manifestation of our adoption as God’s sons and daughters by sparing nothing of ourselves to shed that corpse, repudiate it, which renders us grotesque at this moment. And “thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, we shall one day be rid of the burden on our back and perfectly reflect that image of God in which we were created, which image our Lord is now, and which image we cannot fail to display.
III: — Lastly, we wait with our Lord as he waits himself. We stand by him in his waiting. The book of Hebrews tells us that after Jesus Christ had offered up himself for us, “he sat down at the right hand of God, and since then has been waiting until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.”
The reference to footstool in Hebrews 10 is borrowed from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 – about footstool and enemies – is the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament. This fact alone tells us that the apostles, and all Christians after them, know that enemies abound. Enemies are enemies; that is, enemies can do enormous harm.
When I was a youngster I couldn’t grasp why the psalmist spoke so very often of enemies. Was he unusually nervous, even paranoid? Now I understand. Enemies are anything that hammers us, anything that threatens to undo us, anything that assails us from without or wells up from within.
Enemies from without are easy to identify. Jesus had enemies in the religious hierarchy of Jerusalem ; he had enemies in the civil government of Rome ; enemies in the dark depths of the spirit-world; enemies among his followers (Judas, traitor), even enemies among his closest friends (Peter, whom Jesus described as satanic, on at least one occasion.) As I have read church history, I have learned that every forthright Christian spokesperson has been flayed at some point by all the enemies just mentioned.
In addition there is one enemy which you and I must contend with that our Lord never had to contend with; namely, himself. Of all the enemies who might assault us, there seems to be one who always assaults us: our very own self. More often than not we are our own worst enemy. For this reason a principal enemy, always lurking, is the enemy within.
Whether our enemy exists inside us or outside us, however, enemies are enemies. We need to identify them and resist them.
But we never have to resist them alone. Even now our Lord is at work, resisting those enemies who molest his people. To be sure, even our Lord is waiting for that day when all the enemies of his people are made his footstool. But until that day, he isn’t waiting around, loitering. On our behalf he resists those enemies he has already defeated, waiting for that day when defeated enemies are dispersed forever. We genuinely wait for our Lord only as we wait with him as he continues to resist everything that molests his people, and all of this in anticipation of that day when his enemies (ours too) have been dispersed.
Elizabeth waited during that first Advent, as well as Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. They all waited for the one who was to be the Messiah of Israel and the ruler of the cosmos. But they didn’t wait around, loiter. They were as impassionedly engaged as the God of Israel whom they knew. Therefore the only form our waiting can take is an impassioned doing of the truth.
In Advent we wait for him who came once for the world’s redemption. We wait for him who continues to come to us unfailingly day after day. We wait for him who will come again to vindicate all who are about his business now.
Victor Shepherd Advent 2006
A Christian Understanding of Work
Proverbs 6: 6-11
2nd Thessalonians 3:6-15
John 9:1-5
Several decades ago we began hearing of the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Some people thought they had come upon the notion among early-day Protestants that material prosperity was a sign, even the sign, of God’s favour. Christians were to work hard and prosper in order to secure God’s favour, or to give evidence that they had already secured it. In addition the so-called Protestant Work Ethic was supposed to have boosted the modern addiction known as “workaholism.” Workaholics don’t merely work hard; they work compulsively. (Plainly a psychiatric judgement has been rendered here, since compulsiveness is a manifestation of neuroticism.) Workaholics are obsessed with work; they work fifteen hours per day, day-in and day-out, sacrificing spouse, children and health. If they work any less they feel guilty and unworthy. Their holidays are the most stressful time of the year for them, which holidays they customarily abbreviate in order to flee back to work. They need work the way a “junkie” needs cocaine. (I want to say in passing that the so-called Protestant Work Ethic, the notion that work justifies us before God can’t be found anywhere in the thought of the Protestant Reformers.)
Some people maintain that the bad publicity surrounding the “P.W.E.” has precipitated a pendulum swing all the way over into the opposite extreme: people are reacting to work-addiction by escaping into non-work-addiction. Work is now done less well, less responsibly, less conscientiously. Work now appears often to be regarded like diphtheria: to be avoided if at all possible. The ultimate paradox and perversity, of course, is the person who works ever so hard at avoiding work.
Where do we stand as Christians?
I: — In the first place we must acknowledge that work is a divine ordinance. According to scripture God ordains that we work, men and women. (Homemaking is work; in fact it’s hugely important work, and remains work whether done by housewives or househusbands.) Work is as much a part of the God-instituted order as is the earth’s revolving around the sun. God commands us to work. His command is a blessing. Work is therefore good, and good for us in that it enhances our humanness. God has made us working creatures.
Yet not everyone has thought this to be the case. The ancient Greeks regarded work as demeaning, beneath highborn men and women. Aristotle insisted that no one be allowed citizenship unless he had forsaken trades work for at least ten years. Philosophers like Aristotle should have to do no more than reflect. In the Middle Ages in Europe work was considered beneath an aristocrat. Jesus, on the other hand, was a labourer. Paul was a tentmaker. And since King Saul, royal ruler of all Israel , was found ploughing behind oxen, it’s plain that the Greek and Hebrew minds are polar opposites with respect to work. The Hebrew mind insists that work is good; God, after all, works himself, and has constituted us working creatures whose humanness is threatened by non-work. Without work we lack something essential to human wholeness.
It’s for this reason that unemployment is so very serious. The worst consequence of unemployment isn’t poverty (dreadful as poverty is); rather it’s loss of self-esteem. As self-esteem evaporates, self-deprecation sets in. Demoralization follows. Soon the unemployed feel themselves dehumanized, even disgraced. (I noted years ago that when church members lose their job they often cease attending worship, and reconnect with church life only when they are employed once more.) Not to work, not to be able to work, not be allowed to work is to be on the road to inner fragmentation.
Admittedly, however, there are some people who don’t want to work. Work is too much bother. They’d rather be kept. They won’t work as long as they can sponge off their parents, off their children, off their disability or employment insurance, off government “goodies.” (Let me make a parenthetical comment here. In my experience the poor are rarely those who sponge off the social welfare system. The poor — who are as intelligent as anyone else — lack the social sophistication and the social contacts need to exploit the social welfare system. The poor customarily lack access to the levers that have to be “pulled” in order to make the social welfare coffers ring; lacking such access, they lack the opportunity to exploit. Those who are adept at finessing the system, I have found, are those who have the “tools” needed to pry money loose where they know it is kept. The middle class, I have discovered, is more adept at exploiting social provision than the poor.)
The apostle Paul came upon some people in Thessalonica who had decided not to work. “We hear that some of you are living in idleness,” he remarked, “mere busybodies, not doing any work.” His approach to them was blunt: “If you don’t want to work, don’t expect to eat.” God ordains work. It’s good to work.
II: — But is work good without qualification? Is work always and everywhere good? We frequently hear work spoken of as a curse. People who speak like this have seized half a truth: work itself isn’t a curse, but in a fallen world (according to Genesis 3) work lies under a curse.
When we speak of a fallen world we mean a world that rebels against God; a world that defies him, disdains his way and word and truth; a world that flaunts its disobedience of him. Such a world can’t fail to be characterized by greed and deceit, hostility and strife. In such a world work becomes an occasion of frustration, and the workplace a battleground. God intends work to be the sphere wherein humankind exercises its stewardship of the creation and cooperates under him for humankind’s well-being. In a fallen world, however, God’s purpose is contradicted, with the result that work becomes the scene of self-seeking and quarrelling, exploitation and rancour. In a fallen world the blessing of work is riddled with the curse of frustration and hostility.
We moderns have short memories. We tend to forget that only 150 years ago children worked fourteen hours per day in factories and mines under conditions so very dangerous and damaging as almost to defy description. Only 150 years ago? That long ago in Britain and continental Europe , but today in so many countries of the world children are granted no relief.
My grandfather began working for a major automaker almost from the beginning of car manufacturing — in other words, in the days before the autoworkers’ union. A car engine, weighing several hundred pounds, travelling on an overhead conveyor, would fall from time to time and crush a worker on the assembly line underneath it. When workmates bent over the bleeding pulp ( i.e., what was left of the man) a company official would hasten to the scene and snarl, “Get that thing (the mangled worker) off the line and get back to work.” My grandfather used to tell me of loading freshly painted car axles onto railway boxcars throughout the morning. By noon he had wet paint up to his elbows. At lunchtime he wasn’t allowed to wash his hands: there was no provision for washing. A company official would walk throughout the factory, and then point out to the foreman a worker whom the foreman was to suspend without pay for three weeks. The worker had done nothing wrong. The company policy, however, was to promote a “reign of terror” designed to keep workers cowering before sheer arbitrariness. (Needless to say, the suspended worker had a family to support.) When workers attempted to organize in order to protect themselves, company officials had Walter Reuther and his brother (the first leaders of the autoworkers’ union) beaten so badly they were both hospitalized for six months.
“That’s old stuff,” someone objects; “we live in a different era.” It isn’t so different that the workplace has ceased to be a scene of frustration and hostility. Ralph Nader, the American lawyer and advocate who represents consumers (he was also a presidential candidate in the last USA election), exposed dangerous defects in consumer goods only to have private detectives “tail” him night and day hoping to catch him in “compromise”; i.e., a situation with a woman which could then be used to ruin him and destroy his credibility. This operation continued for months, companies always denying it. It was only in the light of public exposure and a threatened lawsuit that Nader’s harassment ceased.
But of course extreme is always matched to extreme. If employers behave indefensibly, so do employees. We read of situations in Britain where for the slightest matter involving an employee, British workers will shut down an industrial operation completely. One of my relatives, a white-collar union steward in a Canadian business office, found employees approaching her frequently inasmuch as these employees resented being disciplined for habitual tardiness. They couldn’t seem to understand why the company was opposed to chronic lateness. (My relative, by the way, maintained that any adult who couldn’t get to work on time didn’t deserve a job. Shortly she was relieved of her steward’s position.) Few things are more frustrating, not to say costly, than hiring people to do a job only to find that their “protection” allows them to do as little as possible, as slowly as possibly, and as shabbily as possible.
Obviously it’s silly to suggest that employers as a class are demons while employees as a class are angels. In a fallen world employer and employee alike are going to be exploiters, given the opportunity. Both will tend to push their exploitation all the way to criminality. That’s why we find corruption, bribery and beatings within worker organizations supposedly pledged to the well-being of the worker.
III: — Where does all this find us as Christians? We know that God ordains work to be a human good, an essential ingredient in our humanness, even as we are aware of hostility and conflict in the workplace. Then what expression does our witness assume?
i] The first aspect of our Christian witness is both plain and simple: we are to do as good a job as we can. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock. A day’s work is to be rendered for a day’s pay, or else our “witness” is no witness at all and we are merely part of the problem. Paul tells Timothy, a much younger man, that work done should be work of which a worker need never be ashamed. This kind of work, the apostle continues, “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” It’s a most unusual notion, isn’t it: what we do conscientiously, consistently, competently in the workplace “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” The quality of our work lends attractiveness and credibility to the truth of God by which we are known. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock.
Are you aware that the chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year? Bank employees pilfer it. (Please note that the banks lose vastly more money to employee theft than they lose to “hold ups.”) The manager of a department store in suburban Toronto tells me that every year $600,000 in cash and merchandise disappears from the store. Little of it is shoplifted by customers; nearly all of it finds its way into the pockets of employees. A foreman working on the Trans Canada Pipeline tells me that at the beginning of the year he purchases twelve dozen pipe wrenches, and by year’s end his crew has stolen all 144 of them.
We mustn’t think that integrity pertains only to money and goods. Integrity pertains to time and attitude and diligence as well. Today employers wince when they think of the outlook of so many who make up the work pool. They wince when they think of the carelessness, slovenliness and indifference that pretends to be doing a job. The Christian’s work is to be conscientious, consistent, competent — and therein “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.”
ii] There is yet another Christian responsibility: we must try to understand the situation of those whose work is especially stress-riddled, or whose work is especially unfulfilling, boring, even mind-bending. Some of us work at jobs we find stimulating and rewarding. We are very fortunate; we are also very few. Most people work at jobs that don’t use anywhere near their resources and abilities. For this reason they crave more holidays and earlier retirement. We must endeavour to understand the plea of these people when they speak of the dehumanization and danger peculiar to their job.
Red Storey, an outstanding hockey referee of yesteryear, says he refereed when every NHL game was “survival night.” Recently I have found more and more schoolteachers, for instance, describing their situation in terms of survival. The public has become largely impatient with teachers, perhaps with some justification. At the same time, test after test has indicated that inner-city elementary schoolteaching is the most stressful job in North America . In addition, the public doesn’t know, among other things, that boards of education have asked newspapers not to write up incidences of classroom assault on teachers for one reason: it was found that whenever classroom assaults on teachers were printed in the news media, such assaults increased.
Think of the people who work at jobs that are mind numbing. When I was a university student I had a summer job I shall never forget. I sat at a table where I picked up one sheet from each of three piles (i.e., I was collating them), pushed the packet under an electric stapler (“kerchunk”), and set the stapled item aside. One day I stapled 10,000 units. I didn’t count them. By the end of the day I was in no condition to count. I happened to have used an entire box of staples, and there were 10,000 staples per box. My mother tells me that when I arrived home after work, anyone who so much as looked at me risked annihilation. Some people are consigned to jobs like this throughout their entire working life, with individual and domestic and social consequences that are not to be dismissed.
I readily admit that I know little of industrial relations; I know little of the research done concerning the social and psychological and domestic effects of different kinds of work. But if the church is ever going to attract someone besides the upwardly socially mobile, then we shall have to learn to listen to people whose work experience is very different from that of the professional types who tend to assume that everyone’s on-the-job rewards parallel theirs.
iii] A third responsibility is that our congregation must reflect the gospel truth that work is what people do; work is not who people are. We must never be seduced into the mentality that sees people as more valuable or less valuable just because the job they do is paid more money or less. Paul insists that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. For “neither slave nor free” read “neither minimum wage-earner nor company executive.” In his Corinthian correspondence (2nd Cor. 5:16 ) he states that Christians are to “regard no one from a human point of view.” The “human point of view” is the attitude that ignores someone who earns $20,000 per year but flatters someone who receives $200,000 (the sort of person we are extraordinarily pleased to see affiliate with our congregation.) This attitude has no place in the Christian fellowship.
Several years ago I attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where a newcomer, a university professor, newly rendered sober through the AA movement, needed a sponsor. A sponsor is an AA friend of greater maturity and wisdom who can steer a newcomer around the pitfalls that might trip up his newfound sobriety. The sponsor assigned to this professor happened to be a truck driver. And the professor wasn’t ashamed to admit that the truck driver possessed a maturity, wisdom, discernment and experience in this area of life that he lacked. Surely the Christian fellowship can’t be found wanting here, when to us is entrusted the truth, “In Christ there is neither slave nor free.”
Perhaps you are thinking that the three points I have made concerning our Christian responsibility don’t go very far in overturning the turbulence in the work world. Still, they give us a starting point for understanding God’s mandate concerning work and the world in which we have to work. In any case, as our seventeenth Century Quaker foreparents liked to say, it’s always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Victor Shepherd
September 2006
Workshop Teachings
Workshop Teachings
or
More than a Carpenter
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Ephesians 4:25-30
Matthew 7:1-5
If there’s to be a national holiday for Queen Victoria ‘s birthday and Canada Day and “civic” whatever, how much more important is it that there be a national holiday that honours labour. On Labour Day Canadians wisely acknowledge the place of work in our nation as a whole and in our individual lives. We work not merely because we have to in order to survive; we work inasmuch as God has ordained us to work. His command enjoining work is prior to the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. In other words, regardless of what frustration or pain or seeming futility might arise with respect to work in the wake of the Fall, work itself is good. God’s command is always and everywhere good, always and everywhere attended with blessing. In recognizing work on Labour Day we are gladly owning the dignity of labour; we are saying that humankind is meant to work, is honoured through work, is to find work fulfilling. We are also saying, by contrast, that there’s nothing demeaning about work, hard work.
We should know this in any case, for Jesus himself worked. Prior to the work of his public ministry he worked with his father in their “rough carpentry” business, “Joseph and Son”, in Nazareth . From what we glean here and there in the gospels the two men made large, functional items like ox-yokes and ploughs. When Jesus begins his work of preaching and teaching, those who hear him are astonished and say, “Where did this fellow get his wisdom? He’s only a carpenter, isn’t he?” Yes, he is a carpenter from a sleepy town in Galilee , yet he’s more than a carpenter. He has more to say to us than up-to-the-minute woodworking advice. At the same time, the “more” that he has to say to us is all the more credible just because we know he isn’t an armchair wordsmith. His workshop days have given him down-to-earth, workshop wisdom.
I: — Think about his pithy comment concerning plank and sawdust. Sawdust is always blowing around in a workshop. Sooner or later a speck finds its way into someone’s eye. It’s bothersome, and work can’t continue until the speck is removed. A fellow-worker who means well (of course), whose intentions are the best (of course) immediately offers help: “Here, let me take the speck of sawdust out of your eye, and then you’ll be able to see better” — all the while forgetting that he himself has a two-by-four, ten feet long, sticking out of his own eye. “First take the plank out of your own eye”, our Lord insists, “then you might be able to do something to help your neighbour with his sawdust-speck.”
Jesus insists that we, his disciples, mustn’t fall into the habit of fault-finding, carping, nit-picking, ceaseless criticism of matters small and smaller still, as we whittle our neighbour down until she has the stature of a toothpick (we think) when, by contrast, we appear larger than life ourselves, gigantic even, in our inflated self-estimation. The habit, the deep rut of constant, niggling criticism, is a habit that is as self-intensifying as any addiction. It’s a habit easy to fall into just because we all want to think highly of ourselves, and the surest way of building ourselves up is to grind someone else down.
I have learned that many people perceive the wisdom and force of our Lord’s teaching yet are confused about its application. At the same time as they hear Jesus speaking of plank and sawdust they also hear him saying, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Confusion arises when such people mistake judging (in the sense of hyper-critical faultfinding) with making sound judgements. The two shouldn’t be confused: disdainful judgementalism has nothing to do with the formation of sound judgements.
Everywhere in scripture God’s people are commanded to form sound judgements. God isn’t honoured when his people remain naïve, readily victimized or fooled or “fished in.” We have to discriminate between what enriches us profoundly and what appears to enrich but actually impoverishes. We have to discern what can be welcomed and what must be shunned. We do everything in our power to foster such discrimination in our youngsters just because we know what disasters await those who lack sound judgement. To lack sound judgement anywhere in life renders people tragic concerning themselves and dangerous concerning others. Jesus tells us we have to be as wise as serpents. His apostles tell us we have to test the spirits, since not all spirits are holy. Once we understand the distinction between our Lord’s command to form sound judgements concerning ourselves and his prohibition of a contemptuous attitude concerning others; once we understand this distinction, confusion evaporates.
Jesus Christ speaks so very vehemently on this matter because he knows our hearts. He knows, for instance, our capacity for unconscious rationalization. You and I can insist with genuine sincerity, genuine, conscious sincerity, that is, that the sawdust speck in someone else is real while the plank in our own eye is only imaginary.
A few years ago I was asked to conduct an afternoon communion service and to preach at Emmanuel College , U of T, the seminary where I was prepared for the ministry of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. I took unusual pains with the sermon because I knew that theology students come to chapel with their sermon-dissecting knives super-sharp. And besides, I wanted to impress the students with an uncommonly fine sermon. The week had been exceptionally busy. The morning had brought several pastoral upheavals before me. The traffic on the way to Toronto was heavier than usual. And then of course I had to scramble for a parking spot. Still, as I walked into the building I felt I was ready to meet the students and show them a thing or two. Out of a student body of 150, six came to the service. I preached and administered Holy Communion as scheduled. After the service a student who had attended said to me, gently, “You were hostile this afternoon.” “I was not!”, I told her, “I’m not the slightest….” “Victor, you were hostile today.” “I may have been upset, but I wasn’t hostile.” There’s the rationalization, as sincere as the day is long: when other people are hostile, they are hostile for sure and hostile without excuse; when I appear hostile, however, I am in truth merely upset. Our unconscious capacity to rationalize is so vast that we can magnify our neighbour’s sawdust-speck into an oak tree, even as we shrink our plank to a twig. In it all we seem not to know how ridiculous we appear; more than ridiculous, how cruel.
Again our Lord speaks so vehemently on this matter because he knows that berating someone for her sawdust-speck often discourages her, then depresses her, and even immobilizes her. In the face of relentless criticism she feels she can’t acquit herself. She gives up trying. She is simply crushed into immobility.
Our Lord knows too that our habit of faultfinding drives the person faulted farther and farther into self-righteousness (how else can he protect himself?), whereupon, of course, we fault him for being self-righteous. When our constant criticism drills him like a woodpecker’s beak drilling into tree bark until it finds the insect it’s looking for, he insists that he’s a better person than he’s made out to be. What else can he do to ward off our painful pecking? As he defends himself we find our approach to him confirmed, for now it’s plain that he can’t stand the truth about himself. We forget that his self-righteousness swelled only in response to our savagery.
The worst consequence of our carping, however, is that it forces the victim to retaliate in kind. Carping begets carping, pecking pecking, savagery savagery. Psychologically fragile people may crumble when ceaselessly faulted; the psychologically resilient, however, fight back.
When Jesus speaks to us about faultfinding he uses strong language: “hypocrite.” Hupokrites is the Greek word for the actor who wore a false face. When we see the speck in our neighbour’s eye but not the plank in our own we are phonies. We have forgotten that we too are fallen creatures, as warped in mind and heart as the person in front of us whose depravity we find glaring.
Jesus ends his workshop teaching bluntly: “First take the plank out of your own eye; then you will see clearly to take the sawdust-speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” It is only as we admit frankly, even fearfully, our own inner depravity and corruption, and it is only as we do something about it that we will ever be able to help, correct and encourage our brother or sister. To pretend anything else is to be a phoney, hupokrites.
II: — Another workshop saying, this time less severe and more comforting: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus made yokes every day. He knew that if the yoke were made well and were well fitted to the animal’s neck, the ox could pull the heaviest load efficiently and with minimal discomfort. If, on the other hand, the yoke were poorly made, it would rub the animal’s neck raw. Pulling the load would be a torment. Trying to pull the load might even strangle the animal.
Our Lord knew that some loads in life we simply cannot avoid. We must pull them. “Since there are some loads in life you must pull”, he says, “why not pull them with a yoke that fits well? A yoke made by anyone other than me will only torment you, perhaps choke you. My yoke is easy.” When he says, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden”, the word he uses for “labour” isn’t the normal word for “work.” The word he uses for “labour” has about it the air of frustration, grief, weariness, the matter of being worn-down and worn-out, tired to the point of being utterly fatigued and fed up.
Earlier in the sermon I said that work as such is not a sign of the Fall but rather an instance of God’s blessing. Frustration at work, however, grief over work, futility and self-alienation and frenzy: these are a sign of the Fall. And all of us are fallen creatures living in a fallen world. Therefore there is an element of frustration and futility and self-contradiction in the matters we “labour over” throughout life.
The ten year-old wants to be a firefighter or a police officer or physician or ballerina. The ten year-old can’t see anything negative about these jobs. Why, working at any one of these jobs is tantamount to endless glamour and play. The same person, now 40 years old, has found more frustration in the job than he thinks he can endure. Now he wants to get away from it all and raise beef cattle or write novels — as if beef farming were without frustration and the literary world were without treachery! The truth is, frustration and fatigue won’t disappear with the next job. They have to be pulled along throughout life. Then with whose yoke do we pull them? Jesus insists that his yoke fits best, for only his yoke lets us pull life’s burdens without torment or strangulation.
Think about grief. The only way we can avoid grief at the loss of someone dear to us is not to have anyone dear to us. The only way to avoid grief is to avoid love. But to protect ourselves in this manner against losing someone dear to us is to have lost everything already. In other words, to love is to ensure grief. Then grief is another of life’s burdens that can’t be dropped.
As for burdens, one of the cruellest myths floated in our society is the myth that life can be burden-free. The myth survives for one reason: everyone wants to believe it. In our silliness we often think that our life is burden-riddled, but so many others’ is burden-free. The truth is, no one’s life is burden-free. There is no magic formula which, recited frequently and believed ardently, will evaporate burdens overnight.
Our carpenter-friend doesn’t specialize in magic formulas or mantras. He specializes in yokes. His yoke allows the burden that must be pulled to be pulled without tormenting us or ruining us. But there’s something more. Not only were oxen yoked to the burden they had to pull, oxen were always yoked to each other. Ox-yokes are always made in pairs. At the same that we are yoked to the load we have to pull, we are always yoked to someone who pulls alongside us.
Who? To whom are we yoked as our companion throughout life’s burden-pulling? Christ’s people are forever yoked to him. The yoke he fits to us he fits to himself as well. In other words, there is no burden known to you and me that isn’t his burden as well. His yoke is easy, then, in two senses: one, the yoke he makes for us fits well; two, the yoke he makes for us he makes for himself in addition. He has bound himself to us in all of life’s struggles.
III: — The last workshop teaching we shall examine today, a stark one this time: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God .” There’s urgency about entering the kingdom through faith in the king himself. There’s urgency about moving ahead in the kingdom, undeflected by distractions great or little. There has to be resolve, determination, to enter the company of the king and remain in it. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back ploughs a furrow that meanders in all directions, a hit-and-miss matter that would shame any farmer. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back resembles Lot ‘s wife: she looked back to the city she was leaving in that she thought there was greater security in what she was leaving behind than there was in what she was journeying towards. Under God, however, in God, there is always greater security in what we are journeying towards than in what we are leaving behind. The automobile driver who persisted in looking in the rear-view mirror alone would crack up in no time and go nowhere.
Jesus comes upon a man who gushes that he’d like nothing more than to be a disciple. “Then follow me”, says Jesus, “Follow me now.”
“I’ll follow as soon as I’ve buried my father”, the man replies, “I have domestic matters to attend to before I can begin following.”
“That’s an evasion”, says our Lord, “it’s a delaying tactic. Let the dead bury their dead. You come with me. If you put your hand to the plough and start looking around at this and that, the “this and that” will take you over and the kingdom will pass you by. You’ll disqualify yourself.”
It’s difficult for us modern folk to appreciate our Lord’s urgency. We don’t grasp why his invitation to join him always has “RSVP” on it and why we mustn’t dawdle or delay. We overlook something that Jesus found transparently obvious and undeniable; namely, we can always delay making up our mind, but we can never delay making up our life. The man who says he hasn’t made up his mind about getting married is a bachelor. The woman who says she hasn’t made up her mind as to whether or not she should have children doesn’t have any. The student who says he hasn’t decided whether he should study tonight or take the night off isn’t studying. And those who have not yet made up their mind about following Jesus have not begun to follow. We can always delay making up our mind; we can never delay making up our life. Jesus won’t allow anyone he meets to deny this truth or forget it. Again and again he stresses the urgency of entering the kingdom as we abandon ourselves to the king himself.
This third carpenter teaching, the starkest of the three we have probed today, has much to do with the first two, the ones about sawdust and yokes. It is only as we put our hand to the plough and do not look back; it is only as we resolve to live in the company of Jesus Christ and never reconsider; it is only as we continue to love him rather than fritter our affection on trifles and toys; it is only as we are instant and constant where he is concerned that we find ourselves free to hear and heed his word about sawdust and planks and the phoniness that laps at all of us; free to hear his word, we should note, and no less eager to do something about it.
In the same way it is only as we are serious about the yoke-maker, serious enough to move from detached mulling to ardent embracing of the one who has already embraced us; it is only when we are this serious that we find ourselves proving in our experience that his yoke is easier than any other, that what life compels us to pull is pulled better when his yoke both connects us to our burden and connects us to him.
We can always avoid making up our mind; we can never avoid making up our life. Either our hand is on the plough and we are looking ahead or we are looking around elsewhere, distracted, preoccupied with everything but him, perhaps majoring on minors, perhaps concerned with much that is good but with nothing that is godly.
Yes, our Lord was a carpenter. He knew about work, about salty sweat and sore muscles and slivers. But he is also more than a carpenter. He is the incarnate Son of God. With the ring of authority, therefore, he urges us to come to him and never forsake him. In this we shall find ourselves both corrected and comforted. Corrected when his sawdust-reminder challenges us to drop our carping born of pseudo-superiority; comforted when he yokes himself to us and pulls with us the burden that would otherwise torment us or strangle us.
Knowing all of this, today we should bind ourselves to him anew, and never, ever look back.
Victor Shepherd
September 2005
The Saints on All Saints Day
Joshua 24:19-24
Acts 5: 12-16
Matthew 4: 18-22
[1] “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi…”; “to the saints who are at Ephesus”; “to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colosse”; the apostle Paul begins virtually every letter with the same greeting: “to the saints in Schomberg.” Plainly he insists that every Christian is a saint, a holy person. But what about the Christians in Corinth, with their bickering and their party-strife and their cavalier toleration of sexual irregularities? Were they saints too? Yes. The word “saint”, as used in the newer testament, doesn’t have to do with lofty spiritual achievement; the word “saint”, rather, is used there to translate the Latin word sacer, the Greek word hagios, the Hebrew word kadosh – all of which mean the same: “different”, “set apart.” Saints are holy people; holy people are those who are different because set apart.
In the older testament the tithe, or one-tenth of the harvest, is said to be holy in that it is “the Lord’s”; it’s different in that it’s been set apart. Throughout the older testament the Israelite people are said to be holy in that they are different from all other peoples, different because set apart. Different because set apart for unique privilege? No. Different because set apart for a unique purpose.
All Christians are saints or holy in that we’ve been set apart for a special purpose; we’ve been set apart to live as light amidst darkness, as salt amidst what will otherwise rot, as yeast amidst an environment that needs to be leavened. All Christians without exception have been appointed to this and are therefore different, holy, saints.
This is not to say, however, that all Christians are spiritually mature. Peter said that some Christians could digest spiritual meat while others were still at the breast-milk stage of spiritual development. (1 Peter 2:2) It isn’t to say that all Christians are profound. Some are exceedingly shallow, as the legalists in Galatia demonstrated. It isn’t to say that all Christians are a glorious advertisement for their Lord. Some Christians are a disgrace, as the perverse in Corinth demonstrated. Nevertheless, they are Christians, and are rightly addressed “saints.”
[2] At the same time, everyone is aware that throughout the history of the church there have been men and women who stood out and imprinted themselves on others, stamped themselves on others without trying to or even wanting to. To be sure, all Christians are found “in Christ”, to use the little expression that Paul deploys 132 times; still, we all know that some Christians have struck us as particularly transparent to the master himself. All Christians are possessed of the Holy Spirit, the life-bringing presence and power of God; still, we’ve met those who exemplify this fact most tellingly. All Christians are undergoing transformation from fallen creature to someone in whom God’s image shines, a “work in progress”; still, some Christians manifest such transformation right now as to leave us glorifying God. I have met several such people myself, and they have encouraged me unspeakably in my own discipleship, for to know them is to know afresh that God can effect the profoundest alteration, the most concrete alteration, in those who call upon him and love him and live in him. These people have been a lighthouse for me when I’ve been buffeted in the storms of church controversy, or when I’ve been dismayed at the perfidy of denominational leaders, or when I’ve been frustrated as large numbers of the lukewarm lazed about indifferently. The people who have been lighthouse and inspiration and encouragement to me have certainly been saints in the sense that all Christians are saints by definition; in addition, however, they’ve been saints in the way that the church has traditionally understood the term. While I used to groan every time a preacher, desperate for an illustration, used the hackneyed story of the child who looked at the stained glass window and concluded that “saints are those who let the light shine through”, I groan no longer. I have profited immeasurably from many people who let the light shine through, albeit unknowingly, and were used of God to bathe me in a light that I have gloried in knowingly.
[3] About these people who are saints in the latter sense; there are several things we should note concerning them.
They understand themselves to be called of God, awakened by him and awakened to him by grace alone. They never think of themselves as spiritual achievers of any sort. They never boast of spiritual attainment. Like John the Baptist, they are always found pointing away from themselves to their Lord, wanting only to find him exalted.
So far from thinking themselves less sin-riddled than most, they are uncommonly aware of the residual sin that has not yet been burned out of them. Unlike the spiritually immature, they know that the closer anyone is to the light, the darker the shadow that the light casts. It was the man, glowing ever after at the truth and vividness of his Damascus Road encounter, even knowing what it was to be “caught up to the third heaven”; it was this man who could only speak of himself, at life’s end, as “the foremost of sinners.” (1 Tim. 1:15)
If the saints are possessed of anything in uncommon measure, they are possessed of uncommon humility; and because their humility is genuine and not affected, they are humble without knowing it. They would agree with Thomas Watson, my favourite Puritan thinker, who commented, “All Christian growth is finally growth in humility.” They would agree with Watson even as they would never think that they had grown at all. This is not to say they wallow in self-belittlement. Self-belittlement has nothing to do with humility. Self-belittlement is another form (albeit perverse) of self-preoccupation, and self-preoccupation is pride pure-and-simple. Humility is self-forgetfulness. The genuinely humble never think they are. They would blush to be told they are found to be unusually transparent to God’s will and way and work.
Ever since my teenage days I’ve been helped through the many books by and about William Sangster, a Methodist minister in Britain who was born in 1900 and died 59 years later of progressive muscular atrophy. Sangster used to say, “The saints aren’t resigned to the will of God; they aren’t even conformed to the will of God; they are abandoned to it.” There’s nothing more important for any of us than to discern the will of God for us and abandon ourselves to it! There’s nothing that so renders such a person “a city set on a hill that cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14), in the words of Jesus.
I am moved every time I read Luke’s account of Peter in Jerusalem following the resurrection of our Lord and the incursion of Pentecost. People carried their sick relatives outside and laid them in the street in hope that even the shadow of Peter might fall on them as Peter himself passed by. (Acts 5:15) Jerusalem had been the site of Peter’s disgrace; Jerusalem was now the site of Peter’s acclamation in the early church. Was there an element of superstition in those who laid their sick friends in the street, hoping that Peter’s shadow would fall on them? I think there likely was. Still, they did what they did out of recognition of the Spirit-wrought turn-around that left Peter demonstrably a man of God and a flame that no longer flickered and faltered. The English text reads, “…that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them.” The Greek text reads, “…that as Peter came by his shadow might overshadow them.” “Overshadow”: episkiazein. Luke had already used the verb twice in his written gospel to speak of God’s presence and power. Luke is telling us that people recognized God’s presence and power in Peter as unmistakably as they recognized Peter’s hair-colour and his facial features.
Some Protestants are uncomfortable with all such talk. They point out that the sanctity of any Christian isn’t something that can be measured or transferred or borrowed or leant. But to speak of holiness or godliness or saintliness as the church has used these expressions throughout its history isn’t to speak of a thing in any case. Some Protestants object, “Isn’t everyone a fallen creature, and fallen in equal degree?” Of course. No one is going to dispute this point. “Don’t we all merit condemnation?” Certainly. “Aren’t we all able to survive the present fire of God’s judgement (never mind the future fire) only by clinging to the cross?” Yes. “Then there’s no place for speaking of a greater godliness manifested among those who have abandoned themselves to God’s will and work and way.” Wrong. To be sure, Paul never suggested that the woebegone Christians in Corinth weren’t Christians; but he did insist they were immature, shallow, unwise and a disgrace. Many of us have met Christians who are mature, profound, wise and, so far from a disgrace, bring honour to their Lord. The influence of such people, on me at least, has been incalculable.
I’m always saddened at those who dismiss godly people from other branches of the Christian family on the grounds that the theology of these other people is deficient here or there. I’m the last person to dismiss theology. Yet important as it is, it’s only penultimate. Then what’s ultimate? Godliness is. I shall never forget one of the oral examinations I sat with Professor Jakob Jocz on the way to my doctorate. Jocz, a Lithuanian Hebrew-Christian, knew the difference between the penultimate and the ultimate and insisted on the difference relentlessly. After he and I had jousted intellectually for an hour in the examination he told me I had done well and would report my grade to the registrar. He dismissed me and I began walking away. I was almost out of the building when he hailed me and called me back. Speaking to me now not as examiner but as spiritual advisor he said, “Shepherd, what we’ve done here today is important but not ultimately important; what finally counts is the shape of a person’s life. You be sure to remember this.”
When I was teaching at a seminary in India a few years ago I noticed that the remains of Francis Xavier are buried there. Xavier was one of the six young men who, with their leader, Ignatius Loyola, formed the Jesuit order in the 16th century. They were missionaries who cheerfully embraced the severest hardships for the sake of Christ’s kingdom. Francis Xavier ministered for several years in India, having walked there from Spain. How long a walk is the walk from Spain? What did he encounter? What was the heat like, the danger from animals and snakes, the greater danger from hostile natives, the danger from tropical disease? To be sure, I wouldn’t agree with Xavier’s theology in all respects. But what finally counts is the shape of a person’s life! The saints continue to do more for me than I am able to tell you.
[4] Another man who has done ever so much for me I think of almost every day: Ronald Ward. Ward was a British-trained classics scholar-turned-New Testament scholar who came to Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. An Anglican clergyman, a gentle spirit, a fine preacher with a vivid imagination, a walking lexicon of Greek vocabulary and a master of Greek grammar, Ward could open up a Greek dictionary, comment on any word there, and in commenting on a point in morphology or syntax bring me, at least, before the throne of grace where I could only adore in amazement. Needless to say, I’ve met many New Testament scholars with fine Greek backgrounds who never did this for me. Then how is it Ward could? He was simply the godliest person I have ever met.
I first heard of Ward from my father. For years my father worked in downtown Toronto at the Canada Trust office at Yonge and Temperance streets. The downtown Anglican cathedral hosted Lenten noon-hour services lasting 40 minutes: hymn, prayer, scripture reading, sermon. My father attended every noon-hour in Lent and in time came to hear Ward. My father came home that night astonished at Ward’s scholarship and glowing at the authenticity with which Ward spoke of his life in his Lord. On my 24th birthday my mother (now a widow) gave me a book of Ward’s that expounded the theological significance of the subtlest points in Greek grammar. By now I was afire myself over the Greek grammatical subtleties that were more effective than Elijah’s chariot in bringing one before the face of God reflected in the face of that Lord whom Ward knew and loved. When I was ordained and settled in New Brunswick, the 400-mile round-trip drive to Ward, now a clergyman in Saint John, was nothing. For when I was in his home he would speak to me naturally, unselfconsciously, of matters of the Spirit, and speak so as to leave me craving his immersion in the heart of God.
Ward glowed with the Spirit. Genuinely humble like all the saints of God, he simply spoke from his heart of that gospel whose truth had validated itself in him over and over. Never intending to impress me, he none the less impressed me so thoroughly as to leave me unable to forget him. On one occasion he smiled warmly as he remarked to me, “Victor, if we fear God, genuinely fear God, we shall never have to be afraid of him.” I have pondered this simple statement a thousand times. “Victor, the worst consequence of sin is more sin.” I have proved the truth of this too many times, I’m ashamed to tell you. “Victor, the worst consequence of prayerlessness is the inability to pray.”
That book of his that my mother gave me on my 24th birthday: it discussed imperative and subjunctive moods, peculiar verb tenses like the gnomic aorist and the periphrastic perfect, as well as compound verbs and unusual prepositions. The book electrified me with gospel insights that I use repeatedly to tell my students they can’t afford to bypass Greek. One day, Greek testament in hand, I told Ward I was puzzled by two verses close to each other where Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off…if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.” The verb is skandalizein, to cause to stumble. In these two verses two different tenses are used. One tense suggests completed action in the past, a single instance only; the other tense suggests an ongoing phenomenon. When I asked Ward about it he replied without hesitation. “Victor, in a moment of carelessness or inattentiveness or outright folly the Christian can be overtaken by sin. Horrified, she says, ‘Never again!’, and it’s done with, one instance only. And then there’s the Christian’s besetting sin with which she has to struggle every day.”
Ward died in 1986 at the age of 78. He’s so deep in my head and heart that he’ll never be out. I glow every time I think of him, and want only that the same Spirit which made him luminous for me might render me luminous for someone else.
[5] Everyone is aware that the saints whom the church catholic recognizes are frequently martyrs as well. Why are so many saints martyrs too? It’s simple: when the gospel meets the world, the gospel collides with lethal hostility. We must never, never think that the gospel is heard and beheld in a world that is spiritually neutral; the gospel is heard and beheld in a world that hates it.
When I was in Korea in 1998 I spoke with an American scholar who had been a missionary in Japan for 20 years from 1955 to 1975 (more or less.) He lit up as he told me he’d shortly be preaching in Japan and would see there a Christian woman, the daughter of a man who had come to faith in Jesus Christ when my friend had been a missionary. He was so very excited about this because a Christian who perseveres is so very rare, given the social stigma the Japanese visit upon anyone who makes a Christian profession. Not only is there social stigma, my friend said, there is right now a social harassment so intense that very few Japanese can withstand it. In years past, of course, there was out-and-out murder.
We shall never comprehend the suffering of Christians in China since the communist takeover of 1948; we shall never know the extent of those murdered in the cultural revolution of the last 30 years. As for Christians in Islamic countries; at this moment Christians in Islamic countries are being slaughtered in unprecedented numbers.
Remembrance Day is soon upon us, and with it all that Remembrance Day recalls. For me it always recalls Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, and his execution at the hands of the Nazis following a two-year imprisonment. When I was in Korea I spoke with some European theologians about Bonhoeffer. What did they think of him? How is he viewed in the academic circles of German theology? “We find him too pietistic”, they said with a supposed superiority that disgusts me, “especially his book The Cost of Discipleship. Too pietistic.” Bonhoeffer wrote the book knowing that the cost of genuine discipleship is no little cost; he wrote it knowing that he himself would pay the price. Bonhoeffer said simply, “It costs everything to follow Jesus.” And university professors of theology, whose predecessors were cowards during the Nazi era and who now enjoy fat-cat salaries and immense social prestige and whose discipleship costs them nothing; they dismiss the man who followed our Lord so closely as never to flee the cross he ordains for his people as surely as our Lord himself has never fled the one ordained for him. Leonhard Goppelt, a Hamburg New Testament scholar who saved his hide during the war by pretending he had never heard of Jesus Christ and whose work I refuse to read, remarked to a friend of mine (Goppelt’s doctoral student), “Bonhoeffer puzzles me; to survive all he had to was keep his mouth shut!” How can a witness to Jesus Christ keep his mouth shut?
To be a witness (martus) is frequently to be a martyr.
[6] Frequently, but not always. Many exemplary witnesses have been spared martyrdom. One such Christian, another fellow to whom I return often, is William Stringfellow, New York lawyer, Anglican layman, extraordinarily perceptive with respect to the principalities and powers. (The principalities and powers are the institutions, ideologies, images and “isms” that enslave people and break them.) Stringfellow acquainted me with the scope and depth of the world’s hostility and its bondage to death. Stringfellow also acquainted me with the scope and depth of God’s love for the world, which love means that God will never abandon it and therefore never should we. Lest we foolishly think that the saints are otherworldly and therefore of no earthly use, we should be aware that the saints love the world just because God loves it and love it with the same sort of love with which God loves it. Stringfellow died in January, 1985, three months before I was to visit him in New York. It was said at his funeral, “In his vocation and by his example he opened up to us the Word of God.” This is the vocation of all the saints, of all God’s people.
In this Presbyterian congregation John Calvin is going to be given the last word today. Calvin said, “The only foundation for that holy living which constitutes genuine righteousness is to cast everything else behind us and embrace the cross…of Christ with both hands.” The saints of every branch of the Christian family know this. They cast everything else behind them just because they want always and everywhere to embrace the cross of Christ with both hands.
Victor Shepherd
October 2001
Let Us Run The Race With Perseverance
Hebrews 11 and 12:1,2
Christian discipleship is a race, says the unknown author of the book of Hebrews. It’s a race of a peculiar sort, a relay race. Some runners have run before us; others will run after us. Those who have run before us haven’t disappeared from the course. Having finished their “leg” of the race they have gathered at the finish line where they can cheer on those who are still running. Those who have already finished the race are “the great cloud of witnesses” of whom Hebrews speaks. We who are running now are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses. They are encouraging us moment by moment, telling us constantly that any difficulty, all difficulties can be surmounted and must be surmounted if we are to join them at the finish-line.
Think of the great cloud. Abel, for instance: he kept running despite lethal harassment from a hostile brother. Joseph: he kept running despite wicked slander against him and repeated attempts to seduce him. Moses: he kept running despite the opposition of neighbours who wouldn’t have known God from a gopher. And of course the person in the “great cloud of witnesses” is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Hebrews speaks of him as the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” We who are running now are to keep our eye on him above all. He didn’t merely run one leg of the relay race; he forged the whole race ahead of us and now summons us to keep on running with our eyes on him.
We are told not simply to run, but to run with perseverance. Plainly, nothing must be allowed to inhibit or obstruct our perseverance.
Then what is it to run with perseverance?
I: — In the first place we must keep on running regardless of detractors.
My family left Winnipeg in January, 1950. Three months later the Red River flooded. Soon the streets of downtown Winnipeg were five feet under water. (Note: we are not talking here about five feet of water in the basement, but rather five feet of water above the sidewalk.) Southern Manitoba has flooded episodically ever since the passing of the ice age.
When Mr. Duff Roblin was premier of Manitoba thirty years ago he legislated the construction of a huge floodway along one side of Winnipeg that carries off the overflow from the two rivers — the Red and the Assiniboine — that rise dangerously every spring. The floodway cost $58 million. For this public expenditure Duff Roblin was pilloried in the legislative assembly. His political opponents “ate him alive”, all the while ridiculing his project as “Duff’s Ditch”.
It so happens that Duff’s Ditch is going to spare Winnipeg from the flood when the flood inundates everything else around Winnipeg. It so happens that Duff’s Ditch has spared the city of Winnipeg colossal damage on at least ten occasions. It so happens that Duff’s Ditch has saved the city billions of dollars.
Roblin paid a very high price for his perseverance. No matter! He stands vindicated now!
In the race of discipleship to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running regardless of detractors.
II: — In the second place to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running regardless of distractions. We must run singlemindedly; run with a focus, a concentration, a determination that is aware only of the matter at hand. We must run with an intensity that unfailingly announces our steadfastness.
I am gripped whenever I see a singleminded intensity that sheds distractions. Recently I saw Itzhak Perlman (reputed to be the world’s finest violinist) playing a “pop” concert. He was playing the music from the movie, Schindler’s List. He had already played the music when the sound track was made for the film. Now he was playing it again before a live audience.
The audience was relaxed, comfortable, cool. Perlman, however; perspiration streamed off him. Playing music associated with the Holocaust plainly strained the Jewish violinist. Still, he matched the strain with his own strenuousness and kept on playing as only he can play, sweat-soaked while spectators coolly enjoyed the music.
Regardless of what it was costing him Perlman wasn’t going to spare himself; neither was he going to let anything distract him. In his singleminded concentration he wasn’t even aware of would-be distractions.
How different it was with the woman in the relay race during a recent Olympic Games. She was running her “leg” of the race, baton in hand, when a mean-spirited opponent elbowed her in the ribs. Jabbed, in pain now, and momentarily breathless, she “lost it”. Angrily, petulantly — understandably, to be sure, yet foolishly nonetheless — she threw her baton at the woman who had fouled her. When she threw her baton she threw away the race. She disqualified herself; she disqualified her entire team. Instantly she grasped what she had done and stopped running.
In the course of life we do get fouled. We get jabbed. We get “clobbered”. We get victimized in a thousand different ways. The one thing we must never do is allow our manifold victimizations to distract us. We must never allow them to distract us so that we lose our focus, our singlemindedness, our intensity, our horizon-filling dedication to the task at hand. We must never allow our manifold victimizations to move us into that space where we “throw it all away” with the result that the only thing left is to stop running.
To run with perseverance is to keep on running regardless of distractions.
III: — In the third place to run with perseverance means we shall keep on running patiently. The race of Christian discipleship isn’t a sprint that ends in 9.35 seconds. It’s a long race, a lifelong race. We must run patiently.
Before the dismantling of the Berlin wall in 1989; before the dissolution of the Soviet Union; when the USSR was a totalitarian tormenter; in those days one of the USSR’s military heroes was denounced publicly. Col. Lev Ofsischer had been a flier in the Soviet Air Force in World War II. He had distinguished himself in the Battle of Stalingrad, that great turning point in the war. He was an Air Force hero, and his name and photograph were featured in a book depicting the Battle of Stalingrad and his place in it.
In a subsequent edition of the book his name and photograph had been removed. His rank — colonel — had been reduced to private. And his pension had been cancelled. What had he done to bring this on himself? In 1967 he had asked the soviet government to permit him to emigrate to Israel. Permission was denied. Meanwhile a Baptist Christian had given him a bible. (Ofsischer had grown up in communist Russia where bibles were illegal, and had grown up thoroughly secularized.) In 1977, ten years later, he was still denied permission to emigrate. For ten years he had read the bible that the Christian missionary had given him, and in those ten years had learned the history of his people’s frustrations in the biblical era alone.
The KGB (soviet secret police) told him that if he withdrew his application to emigrate his Air Force pension would be restored. Ofsischer told the KGB that if he had to choose between pension and honour there was no choice: he would never besmirch his honour for the sake of a pension.
The KGB told him he might as well give up. “You’ve already waited ten years !”, they said. “Wrong!”, replied Ofsischer, “I haven’t waited ten years. I have waited 2000 years; and I can wait a few more.”
To run with perseverance is always to run patiently.
IV: — Important as it is to run regardless of detractors, run regardless of distractions, run patiently, it isn’t enough: we must also run so as to finish.
Another Olympic Games, this time in Mexico City, 1968. It was the marathon race: 26 miles, 385 yards. The first-place runner crossed the finish line, then the second, the third, and so on. As the last runner, it would seem, straggled in, the spectators and camera crews noticed an ambulance with lights flashing several hundred yards up the course. The flashing lights warned the crowds not to surge onto the track as the race wasn’t yet over. One runner remained on the track.
This fellow had come from a developing country in the two-thirds world. His nation had no funds for state-sponsored training programs. The people had simply sent him off with whatever encouragement they could press upon him. Now he was running with men whose economic privilege gave them enormous advantage.
This fellow, ambulance alongside him, would stagger a few feet and fall on his face, get up and stagger a few more feet and go down again, over and over until he had traversed the last few hundred yards. When asked why he had persevered at such a price he replied, “My people didn’t send me here to compete (they knew I couldn’t compete); they didn’t even send me here to run; they sent me here to finish.”
My final word to those whose race-running we are recognizing this morning is this: be sure to run so as to finish. It is only as we finish — who cares if we get to our goal with scraped knees and bleeding face? — it is only as we finish that we find ourselves admitted to the great cloud of witnesses in the company of our elder brother, Jesus. And it is only as we finish that God himself is glorified.
Victor Shepherd
May 1997
Not a Spirit of Fear, but a Spirit of Power and Love and Self-Control
2 Timothy 1:7
It began as a youth movement. To be sure, older people possess greater wisdom, sounder judgement, broader perspective. Our Lord knew this. Nevertheless he began with younger people. When he stepped forth on his public ministry he was in his late 20s. The twelve whom he called to him were likely no older. Paul took Mark on Paul’s first missionary journey when Mark was estimated to be 19. You know what happened: Mark behaved like a 19 year old. He couldn’t withstand the hardship of the venture, left Paul and returned home. When Paul and Barnabas were about to set off on another missionary journey Paul said, “We can’t take Mark with us; we simply can’t afford to have him let us down again”. Barnabas disagreed. “He was only 19; give him another chance”. Paul and Barnabas parted over Mark; they parted amicably, without grudge or resentment, but they parted. Barnabas, however, was vindicated, since Mark proved himself on the second venture.
Why the emphasis on youth? Is it not because along with the broader perspective and greater stability of middle age there is also boredom, apathy, and more than a little cynicism? Several older clergymen have said to me with that bone-deep weariness born of disillusionment, “Shepherd, wait until you have been in this game as long as I have”.
There is another reason for our Lord’s beginning with younger people: what we have to contend with in our youth we are going to have contend with for the remainder of our lives. I am always amused when an older adult pretends that his adolescence has been put behind him forever. Years ago (1970), in my final year of theology, I studied under Dr. James Wilkes, a psychiatrist from whom I learned an immense amount. He mentioned one day that emotionally our adolescence lurks just below the surface of our adult psyche. The coping mechanisms, for instance, that we developed as adolescents are the coping mechanisms we shall have for a long time. Similarly, what we had to contend with “back” when we were adolescents we shall have to contend with throughout life. Jesus began with younger people inasmuch as what they learned from him at that time they would need and would have for the rest of their lives. A sermon, then, that has to do with younger people cannot fail to speak to older people as well.
[1] Paul writes to Timothy, who is only 19 or 20 himself, and says, “Remember! God did not give us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and self-control”. Plainly the older apostle knows that young Timothy is afraid.
Are we afraid? (Does the sun rise in the east?) There are days when our fears are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, and other days when they muscle everything else out of our minds. Some of our fears we readily understand. The company we work for has merged with a larger company and not all management and executive personnel are going to be retained. Our child seems unwell and we have just enough medical knowledge as not to be put off by our friends’ reassurances that there is nothing wrong. We are afraid that the psychological booby-trap which we have known of for years and which we have disguised, stepped around or hidden; that situation where we do not cope and where we appear so helpless, weak and silly – we fear it’s going to become publicly evident and we shall be humiliated. We are afraid that since we are not married yet we are never going to be married. (I also meet people who are afraid that since they are married now they are never going to get unmarried.) And then there is a different kind of fear, unattached to any specific object or occurrence. “Existential anxiety” is the term mental health experts use. Existential anxiety is that niggling, lapping, semi-conscious awareness of our fragility, our frailty, our ultimate powerlessness in the face of life’s accidentality and our own mortality.
The preacher keeps reminding us that “Fear not” is the most frequent command on the lips of Jesus. His telling us to fear not, we feel nonetheless, has as much effect on us as our going down to Lake Ontario and telling the waves to stop rolling in.
I shall never make light of that fear which is part of the human condition. It is as undeniable as toothache. Then what do I do with respect to my own fears? On those days when my fears seem nearly overwhelming I look to two treasure-stores: the promises of God and my Christian friends. The promises of God are glorious. The simplest promise comes from the book of Joshua: “I will not fail you or forsake you”. The psalms are a goldmine: “This I know, that God is for me… what can man do to me?” John tells us that even if our hearts condemn us, the God of unfathomable mercy is greater than our hearts. And then there are those promises from the heart and pen of Paul: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s”; “If God is for us, who is against us?”; “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose”. And of course there is the climax of all of scripture, as far as I am concerned, Romans 8:38: “Neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
When Paul tells Timothy that we have not been given a spirit of fear he doesn’t mean that we are never afraid. Paul himself was often afraid; he speaks unashamedly of his own fear. Our Lord was fearful on occasion. To tell people they should never fear is to send them in pursuit of the unrealistic and the ridiculous; it’s also to plunge them into false guilt.
To have a “spirit of fear” is something different; it’s to be so fear-saturated as to be deflected from our obedience to God. But a spirit of fear is precisely what we haven’t been given; therefore we mustn’t yield to it. We must fling ourselves upon the promises of God.
Yet I must admit that there have been occasions in my life when even the promises of God seemed to evaporate on me; occasions when fear fell on me like a building collapsing or seeped into me like poison gas. On these occasions the promises seemed ineffective, however true, unable to stem the dread whose waves came upon me like nausea. On these occasions I have leaned my full weight on Christian friends, for they embody for us, incarnate for us, the truth of the promises in those moments when we are floundering and the promises seem to support us only as embodied in our friends.
[2] If God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, then what has he given us? Paul reminds Timothy once again: a spirit of power and love and self-control.
(a) The one question which younger people always have concerning the gospel is also the simplest question. Their one question isn’t, “Is it true?”, because younger people suspect it might be true but also be trite; true but also pointless; true but too abstract, too remote to be of any earthly use. Their one question concerning the gospel is, “Does it work?” “Does it work?” means “Is it effective?” Whether it is effective depends entirely on what end it is supposed to effect. The question, “Is a hammer effective?” depends on the end you have in mind. If your purpose is to drive nails the answer is plainly “yes”. If you wish to crochet lace doilies the answer is plainly “no”. If you want to repair the nozzle of your garden hose the answer is “maybe”. “Does the gospel work?” — the answer here depends on what it is we are looking to see happen. The textbook-correct answer is that the gospel works, is effective, inasmuch as it is the purpose of the gospel to reconcile us to God and render us transparent before him; since the gospel does this (alone does this) therefore the gospel works and should be embraced by every last person, older and younger alike. But the answer is too slick and too abstract by half. What reconciliation to God and transparency to him means is something we older people must exemplify ourselves if what we say about it is to have any weight. For a long time I have felt that Maureen and I should are an advertisement of the gospel for our grandchildren. In other words, younger people (who are much less readily deceived than older people) are going to conclude that the gospel works only if they have seen something of its work in us.
One feature of younger people that always appeals to me is their forthrightness. If you ask them about last night’s rock concert they will reply without hesitation, “It was a drag” or “It was out of sight”. Older people are adept at verbal smokescreens; younger people don’t bother with word-camouflages, for they are suspicious that much talk is a cover-up covering up an embarrassing lack of substance. There was an embarrassing lack of substance in the Christian community of Corinth . The church-members there yammered a lot, lined up behind different hero-figures in the congregation, fancied themselves worldly-wise and talked up their pseudo-wisdom; they rationalized the inexcusable even as they told each other how truthful they were. Finally Paul had had enough. He let them know that their pretension to wisdom was nothing more than arrogance. He let them know that he would visit the congregation soon and deal with these motor-mouths himself. His conviction about the nature of the gospel and his resolve to hold the congregation to the gospel are evident in his concluding line: “I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power”.
Not a spirit of fear has God given us but a spirit of power.
(b) And also a spirit of love. Everyone has her own understanding of love; but it’s the gospel’s understanding that matters for us. And the gospel makes plain that God’s love is a self-giving which pours itself self-forgetfully upon anyone at all without concern for consequence or cost.
Young people have no difficulty understanding this: self-forgetful self-giving without concern for consequence or cost. It’s all so very lofty, even adventurous, that it appears as attractive as it seems true.
But younger people do not remain younger. As older age settles upon them little by little the cost seems prohibitively high. At the same time the consequence (the result) seems woefully meagre, given the high cost. (The entire scheme plainly isn’t “cost-effective”, as the economists say.) What happens next? Self-giving is shrivelled to thing-giving; self-forgetfulness is shrivelled to calculation; the cost of love is simply deemed too high and the consequences too scanty. Next step, the last step: we settle down into that token-generosity whose tokenism the world accepts because tokenism is all the world expects of anyone with respect to anything. How is such world-weary disillusionment to be avoided?
There are two ways of avoiding such disillusionment. One is by returning constantly to our text: God has given us a spirit of love; not a notion of love, but a spirit of love. Plainly there is an allusion to the Holy Spirit, that power in which God himself acts upon his people. Then God himself must — and will — keep our hearts from shrivelling up into that tokenism that is widely regarded as good enough.
The second way of avoiding the world-weary disillusionment that reduces love to a mere artificiality which is socially acceptable; the second way is to keep people dear to us. Writing to the people in Thessalonica Paul says, “We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our very selves (this is what love is finally, sharing our very selves) so dear had you become to us.” The longer I live the dearer people become to me. When I was a younger minister I was so taken up with getting the job-functions done — writing the sermon, chairing the meeting, conducting the funeral — that my focus was on the function, with people more or less on the periphery. In my older age the function seems to perform itself, and people have become the focus. One reason that I have relished being a pastor is that people — all kinds and qualities — have become dearer to me with every passing year. As they do I find today’s text confirming itself to me with greater force: God has given us a spirit of love, and this gift will keep our love from shrivelling up to a pasted-on smile plus a “townie.”
(c) We have also been given a spirit of self-control. Self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control. Either we control ourselves or others control us; other people, other ideologies, other things. When this happens – i.e., when we are other-controlled – we are little more than an empty tin can kicked around endlessly: empty to start with and soon shapeless as well. This is not good. What is the alternative? A minute ago I said that self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control; “appears” because there is one glorious instance where self-control and other-control are one and the same. When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 he is listing the qualities of life which Jesus Christ effects in his people by his Spirit. Included in the list is self-control. Christ-control is self-control. You see, to be Christ-controlled is to know whose we are: we are his and his only! And to know whose we are (when we are Christ’s) is to know who we are: we are our “self”. Since Jesus Christ renders me who I am, to be Christ-controlled will always be to be self-controlled.
For whether we are younger or older, whether we are newcomers to the faith or oldtimers in the household and family of God, we were never given a spirit of fear; we have all been given a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control.
Victor Shepherd
May 2007
The Meaning and Timing of Confirmation
I: — Many of you have voiced to me your misgivings concerning confirmation, the service itself as well as the understanding behind the ritual. No one has suggested that we cancel the service outright. Nonetheless, even those who have never suggested that the event be cancelled continue to express serious reservations about it. A few people are plainly cynical. I imagine that virtually everyone feels that something isn’t quite right with confirmation; something important is somehow not happening, a mythology if not a superstition has taken hold, a game of “let’s pretend” is being played even though most of us can’t really pretend any longer. While almost no one is content with the current practice of confirmation, no one appears to have an alternative.
Everyone knows what happens on Confirmation Sunday. Some of the confirmands we know well. We have seen them and their parents at worship for years. Other confirmands we don’t know at all. We don’t recognize the surname, aren’t acquainted with the parents, assume that the youngster is being confirmed simply because his parents have made him come to the six or seven mandatory classes and get himself “done”, the parents plainly attaching much superstition to getting “done.”
When adults wish to join our congregation through transfer of membership the secretary asks for the transfer, only to learn, quite frequently, that the person in question was not a member of the previous congregation; may have attended, but was never formally a member. I then ask the person in question if she was ever confirmed. Very often she replies that she doesn’t know; she can’t remember whether she was ever confirmed. Were I to ask her, “Did you ever get married?”, she would be able to reply instantly. Apparently confirmation is not particularly memorable.
And then there are the photographs, in the hallway outside the choir room, of the confirmation classes of years past. Where are all those young people today? As painful as it is to say it, would it be truer to say that confirmation is less the congregation’s welcome to the young people than it is their good-bye wave to us?
Many people understand confirmation as a kind of graduation. Once we have graduated from high school, for instance, we don’t go back. Once we have graduated from “church” (Sunday School being a form of church) we don’t go back.
And then there is an aspect to the confirmation service which should jar us all, that part of the service where hands are laid upon the candidate. There is only one other service in the church where hands are laid upon a candidate: ordination to the ministry. Obviously there is close connection between the meaning of confirmation in the faith and the meaning of ordination to the ministry. What is the connection? What would we think of candidates for the ministry who were ordained at a public service and then promptly disappeared from church life?
Then of course there are the promises made during the service itself. One such promise is that the confirmand will be diligent in attendance at public worship. The promise is made by the confirmand and heard by the congregation when everyone knows that diligent attendance at public worship is the last thing many confirmands (and their parents) have in mind.
The promises are followed by the commissioning: “Go out into the world to fulfil your high calling as a servant and soldier of Jesus Christ.” “Go out into the world”: it appears that the theatre, the venue of the Christian’s discipleship is vast. “Servant of Christ”: it appears that extreme self-denial is involved. “Soldier of Christ”: it appears that hardship is cheerfully to be endured. What do we expect a 15 year old to make of all this?
Lastly, at a recent meeting of the Christian Education Committee grave misgivings were voiced concerning the adequacy of six or seven 45-minute sessions as preparation for an event as momentous as confirmation. Frankly, I don’t think that six or seven sessions times 45 minutes is adequate preparation. But surely these sessions aren’t the preparation! Surely the profounder preparation is 15 years of Christian formation through exposure to Christian truth and the Christian way embodied in congregational life and witness.
II: — Many people have asked me about the timing of confirmation, the age at which young people make public promises and are said to be “confirmed”. Why age 15? I simply don’t know. I suspect that it has much to do with the fact that around this age people graduate from elementary school and move on to high school. At the same time, Sunday School customarily concludes for people 14 or 15 years old. When I was new in Streetsville I commented, at a C.E. meeting, that I was concerned about the immediate disappearance of so many confirmees. I suggested that we try something different: postpone the event for a few years to see if the losses were as great then. My suggestion was shot down instantly. “If we postpone the class we might lose those people”, I was told right away. Might lose them? But the present practice has scarcely kept them! I cannot believe that we have genuinely, profoundly “kept” people within the fellowship of the congregation just because their names have been added to record-books.
(I’ll say more about timing later. Let’s move on to the meaning of confirmation.)
III: — The meaning of the service is stated plainly in the service itself. “When those who have been baptized as children have grown up and have been taught the essentials of Christian faith and duty, they come before the church to own for themselves the covenant (i.e., the promises) of their baptism. In this act they confess Jesus Christ openly as Saviour and Lord that they may be confirmed by the Holy Spirit and welcomed to the Lord’s table.” (Let me say in passing that I should welcome any person of any age to the Lord’s table at any time, confirmed or not.) The major point in all this is that those being confirmed now own for themselves and publicly endorse the promises which their parents made on their behalf as infants on the day their parents had them baptized.
Everywhere in the New Testament baptism is a sign of several things. (i) It is a sign of repentance. To repent is to change direction. Christians take their marching orders from a different leader. We walk resolutely that road which leads to the kingdom of God. Other roads — self-inflating ambition, wealth for the sake of wealth, social superiority, self-indulgence — these roads we shun as we move in the direction of the kingdom. (ii) Baptism is a sign of faith. Faith is keeping company with Jesus Christ. Living unashamedly in his company, we share his identity. We are publicly known as those who know him and love him and obey him. (iii) Baptism is commissioning for service. While we certainly love our Lord, we do more than merely love him; we work in his name, work on behalf of others whom he loves as surely as he loves us. (iv) Baptism means one thing more. It means that the repentance and faith and service we exercise, we exercise inasmuch as God’s own Spirit, God himself, has touched us and moved us and constrained us. We haven’t “decided”, of ourselves, to follow Jesus the way we decide to buy a Ford instead of a Chevrolet or a bungalow instead of a townhouse. We are disciples inasmuch as our Lord called us; our resistance melted and we couldn’t do anything else.
Baptism means this. Parents make promises concerning all of this for their children when their children are baptized. Then the day comes when the child, now much older, recognizes what his parents have sought for him for years. He recognizes too that he wants this now for himself. Therefore he owns it all for himself and publicly declares that this is what he will pursue until life ends.
When I was pondering the meaning of “confirm” I went to the Oxford English Dictionary. The O.E.D. gives four meanings for “confirm”. (i) to establish more firmly. Certainly when people are confirmed we want their discipleship to be established more firmly. (ii) to corroborate. Certainly we want their zeal for discipleship to be corroborated, supported, by the Holy Spirit and by others. (iii) to encourage a person in a habit or an opinion. Certainly we want confirmands to persist in the habit of discipleship and persist in their conviction of truth. (iv) the fourth meaning the O.E.D. discusses only in the past tense. It uses the illustration, “confirmed drunkard”, and mentions synonyms like “inveterate”, meaning “life-long”. And certainly we want confirmands to aspire after life-long loyalty to their Lord.
The United Church service speaks of being “confirmed by the Holy Spirit”. We should all want to add, “and by the congregation as well.”
IV: — This is what the service means. How do you feel now about our confirmation practice? Having asked the question, I am in no position to receive 300 replies at this time. But I shall gladly hear from any of you at any other time.
Having asked you a question, I can only go on talking myself. What I say next is only my opinion. Feel free to disagree with it, modify it, endorse it or bury it.
I think we need many “rites of spiritual passage” in our church life. There is nothing wrong with a public service for people 14 or 15 years old, a service which acknowledges the Christian formation they have undergone so far in their lives, a service which points them ahead to deeper understanding and faith and service, a service which encourages them to persist more profoundly in it. Therefore I am not suggesting for a minute that we eliminate the “rite of spiritual passage” for people of this age.
At the same time I have long felt that the kind of promise we ask young people to make at this age we should defer to a later age. We all agree that no 14 or 15 year old should be asked to make a promise concerning marriage. (For that matter no 17 year old should be asked, either.) We don’t ask 15 year olds to make promises concerning marriage because we know that they cannot understand the force of what they are pledging. Might it not be the same with respect to the promises made at confirmation? Teenage years are often characterized by religious enthusiasms, but also characterized by religious denunciations; doubts, perplexities, denials of all that their parents have cherished, questions, uncertainties, contradictions. A Roman Catholic woman remarked to me that when her daughter was 16 her daughter was vowing every day to become a nun; when her daughter was 17 she couldn’t get her daughter out of bed and to church on Sunday morning.
Teenagers 14, 15, 16 years old feel they have to question everything. There is nothing wrong with this. After all, none of us wants our children to grow up uncritical, mindless dupes. At this age too teenagers become aware that the world as it is is not quite the neat, cosy, justly-ordered world of their early childhood. They learn that there is nothing in the real world which unfolds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They learn now of the evil which excoriates the world, of the shocking unfairness which riddles life, of the misery in which most of the world’s people will have to live. And then they put all of this against the supposed goodness and mercy of God.
At this age too teenagers learn of the arguments brought against faith by Freud and Marx and Darwin. Dealing with these arguments may be “old hat” to a middle-aged person like me, but to a 15 year old it is all so new, so startling, so powerful as to hang a huge question mark above all that he has understood to date of the Christian faith. I often feel that the confirmation process stifles the teenagers’ searching, their inquisitiveness, their wrestling issues to the ground, when we should be encouraging all of this; we smother precisely what we should stimulate. Of course we should support them while they search. But what is to be gained by exerting pressure from parents, peers and congregation upon a teenager to conform to the confirmation practice when all the while some of them, at least, want to cry out, “But I’m not convinced yet; and I have many more questions; and why do I have to submit to this?”
I have long felt that we need to support youngsters throughout this searching, questioning, doubting, probing phase; support them and encourage them in it, and wait for them to emerge on the other side of it with a faith they have hammered out for themselves and can own without reservation. At this point, I feel, we should have another public “rite of spiritual passage” for those who are now 22 or 25 or 28 — or 55.
V:– While the congregation owns and supports teenagers throughout this process and then publicly celebrates the culmination of their search, its flowering into fruit-bearing faith, the congregation should also, I feel, recognize, own, support all kinds of people who act in the congregation’s name. Yes, we do recognize the UCW leadership each year when we install the executive. “Install”? We install heavy appliances, like stoves, fridges, washers and dryers. We shouldn’t “install” these women; we should commission them. We should commission them on behalf of the UCW for the ultimate blessing of the whole congregation. We shouldn’t “install” Sunday School teachers as we call it at present. We should commission them to bring to children, in the way that children can understand, the faith which this congregation as a whole owns. We commission the teachers to render this service for us.
What about the prime neighbours? We need a service which sets forth the way in which the neighbouring program extends Christian hospitality, and what we are trusting to result from this ministry.
The thrust of the visiting program is different. Whereas the prime neighbours have others into their own homes, the visitors go out to other people’s homes, with a different purpose in view. We need a service which recognizes this and commissions them for it.
Youth work in the congregation: youth group, girls’ work, Boy Scout/Girl Guide work. It all happens here in the congregation. We need a public service of recognition, gratitude and commissioning.
VI: –And then I think there may be one thing more needed. Perhaps we need to allow an individual to speak on Sunday morning from time to time. Not to make an announcement in the announcement period, but rather to share her testimony of God’s victory somewhere in her life, or to request special intercession of us in special circumstances, or to lay an extraordinary concern before us which is searing her heart. Do we need a place for this as well?
VII: — Let me say again what I said a minute ago. You asked for a sermon on the meaning and timing of confirmation. I have put before you my best thinking on the subject. But it is only mine. I need to hear yours. Speak to me, to anyone on the Official Board, to anyone on the Christian Education Committee, to anyone in the Sunday School. But be sure to let us know what is on your mind.
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
January 1994
Sunday School: How Important Is It?
Proverbs 1:7
Joshua 4:19-24
Deuteronomy 4:1
Exodus 4:10-12
Isaiah 28:10
I: — How important is our Sunday School? I know, it’s important that adult worship not be disrupted, and therefore younger people leave the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. But more profoundly, how important is the Sunday School itself? Surely one measure of how important it is is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.
One hot Sunday in July when I was 7 or 8 years old there were so few of us youngsters that in place of our age-divided classes there was an open session conducted by one teacher. The lesson was simply a protracted children’s story. It had to do with mailing a letter through Canada Post (at that time, Royal Mail). We were told that the moment we dropped a letter into a letter-box vast resources were mobilized. The simple act of sending the simplest communication activated unseen myriads in ever so many places. Why, things hummed at the local post office, at a regional postal station, even at the airport where an airplane would soon be speeding to Zambia or Zimbabwe, only then to render operative ever so much there! The simple act of communicating shifted so much in the world as to leave the world altered ever after. I was only 7 or 8, but I was old enough to remember the point which the teacher made from the story: every time we prayed we called on resources vaster than anything we could imagine. Not only did we call on them, they were rendered operative, mobilized, so as to leave the world forever different. As often as we pray our praying is honoured and its fruitfulness guaranteed. As often as I pray now I think of the story — and find myself encouraged to pray again.
Some time later, at another open session, a woman introduced us to the ‘tater family. The ‘tater family consisted of potatoes which had had faces carved in them and had been dressed up. There were several members of the ‘tater family: spectator, dictator, prestidigitator, plus so many others. Spectator said much, did nothing, offered useless advice, helped no one. Dictator, nasty, was everywhere disruptive and destructive. Prestidigitator was a trickster, a phoney, deceiving people day after day. It took 30 minutes for us to meet all of the members of the ‘tater family. The teacher has been dead for several years now, but I have never forgotten her or what she brought to us.
During the season of Lent, when I was 9 or 10, the teacher told us of Good Friday, told us about the cross and what it meant. After the class I stayed behind to tell her that I now understood the provision that Jesus had made for me in the atonement. As a 9 year old I certainly didn’t use the words “provision” and “atonement”; of course I used the vocabulary of a 9 year old. Nevertheless, that particular Sunday has been seared into my mind and stamped on my heart forever.
A few years later I was walking down a Toronto street with two fellows who weren’t in my Sunday School class inasmuch as they were older than I. (I was 12, they 14.) Still, we were friends, and soon we had the idea of a contest among ourselves as to who could think of the most repulsive thing. What was the most revolting thing imaginable? I did my best but I lost. When Gordon Rumford brought forth the fruit of his fertile imagination we all agreed that Gordon was the winner. (I won’t tell you what his ultra-revolting idea was, since I want you to hear the rest of the sermon.) Gordon Rumford is currently the preacher at Erindale Bible Chapel, just south of us at Dundas and Mississauga Road. We get together frequently at Pastry Villa for coffee. Recently he told me that as a 14 year old he ran with a rough, rough crowd, several members of which went to prison. Gordon was tempted to fall in with them too in their assorted escapades, but couldn’t quite let himself do it, for as often as he was about to he asked himself, “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd”? (my father, and Gordon’s Sunday School teacher). Gordon tells me that the fellows in the Sunday School class (not to be confused with the crowd he ran with) ridiculed my father behind his back, played the occasional practical joke on him, were regularly rude, smart-alecky, obstreperous. My father’s response, Gordon tells me he will always remember, was endless kindness and affection and patience. “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd?” Gordon tells me that my dad’s unwearying kindness and affection and patience stayed him when nothing else would have. (I have asked Gordon to write my long-widowed mother, and he has.)
II: — I am aware that many people are fearful of teaching Sunday School. We say we are not born-teachers. We say we don’t know enough; the children are too smart; our biblical and theological resources are too slender; we can’t make the lessons sufficiently interesting for the children, and therefore won’t have their attention. All of this is little compared to the natural curiosity of children. The natural curiosity of children is the entry-point, the beachhead, from which we can move ahead in exposing children to the riches of our faith. Put differently, the natural curiosity of children is their invitation to us, an invitation to impart information, to be sure, but more profoundly an invitation to include them with us in our ventures in life and faith. The question the child asks us is the occasion of our inviting the child into that venture under God which discipleship is.
Before the Blue Jays came to Toronto the city had a professional team in the topmost level of the minor leagues. In those days players were not introduced one-by-one through the public address system. Instead, when the clock struck game-time the dugout exploded as nine men ran onto the field at the same instant. It was a moment of magic for me. The magic, however, was complicated by one perplexity. As soon as the Toronto catcher ran behind the plate he dragged his cleated shoe through the lime which marked out the catcher’s box and scuffed it until he had obliterated it — when the groundskeeper had painstakingly limed the perimeter of the catcher’s box only minutes earlier. I asked why and my father told me why. If an opposing baserunner attempted to steal a base and the catcher had to rifle the ball to the proper base; and if at that moment the pitcher inadvertently threw the ball into the dirt, the catcher didn’t want it coming up with lime on it, for then his grip on the ball would slip and he would throw it wildly.
Because children are naturally curious they are always inviting us into their lives and inviting themselves into ours. As they invite themselves into our lives they invite themselves into our apprehension of truth and life and way. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of himself as way, truth and life — in this order. Our Hebrew foreparents scarcely undervalued schooling children in the truth, scarcely undervalued schooling them in truth for the sake of life. At the same time they knew that such schooling unfolds most naturally and penetrates most thoroughly as youngsters are exposed to that way which the parents themselves are walking. As children see the way their parents endeavour to walk the children will ask questions concerning the truth and come to know the life.
Joshua is the leader of the Israelites as they move toward the promised land. Their deliverance at the Red Sea and their crossing of the Jordan are behind them. Joshua has brought with him 12 stones from the Jordan riverbed. He has the people set up the stones in a pattern that will intrigue children. Then Joshua tells the adults, “When your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’, tell them! Tell them about slavery in Egypt and deliverance at the Red Sea! Tell them about their parents’ resolve to cross the Jordan and never go back! Tell them of your resolve always to be moving ahead to the promised land!”
In the same way it is assumed that the peculiarities of the Passover celebration will be the occasion of a child’s natural curiosity as the child asks, “Why is this night different from all others?” And then the parents will have an entry-point for telling their children of the mighty acts of God.
I was riding in a car when a boy spotted a bird in the sky and asked, out of the blue, “How high does an eagle fly?” In the same way when children see what we use in worship and do in church life they will ask, “Why do we worship on Sundays? Why is the cross everywhere we turn? Why is there a candle on the communion table? Why does the minister wear a gown? Why do we always read the bible in church? Why is money received at worship?” The questions arise as children see us older people in our venture on the Way. The children’s curiosity invites the children themselves onto the Way with us. As they move onto the Way with us our schooling them in the Truth of the Way unfolds naturally and penetrates profoundly. The result is Life at the hands of him who is himself Way and Truth and Life.
I mentioned a minute ago that adults are often reluctant to teach Sunday School because they fear they are going to be “stumped”; lacking vast erudition, they feel they can do little beyond retelling bible stories.
But this is the most important thing we can do! Northrop Frye, the peerless scholar of English literature in Canada, insists that children should be told and retold the stories until the stories have sunk into the child indelibly and have become the interpretive key which they must have to unlock the riches of English literature, replete as it is with biblical allusions.
English literature? In Sunday School we have to do with something far more important than English literature; we have to do with life under God, in the world, at a particular point in history, for the sake of a creation which God loves ceaselessly. Our children have to be equipped for this. The old, old stories must sink into the child indelibly so as to become the interpretive key for life. You see, the old, old stories are never merely old. Stories which have to do with the human condition are rendered forever new as they are used of God to illumine our situation before him and his people and his creation. It doesn’t matter if the child doesn’t understand the story thoroughly right now. Nobody, whether child or adult, even octogenarian, understands the story “thoroughly” in the sense of understanding it exhaustively, since the story is inexhaustible. What matters is that the story become permanently part of the child’s mind and heart, for then the story will forever yield riches as it is pondered years later in different life-settings and perplexities.
This past summer I re-read the old story of Lot’s wife. She and her husband and others were fleeing Sodom, now in flames, when she looked back, according to the ancient legend, and became a pillar of salt. I had heard the story a hundred times ever since I was 3 years old. At one point I was satisfied with the most arbitrary understanding of God’s judgement: she had been told not to look back, she looked back anyway defiantly, she became frozen salt right there. As I grew older and understood what Sodom was all about I thought she had been attracted pruriently by the luridness which Sodom represented. And then during the summer as I read the story again I saw that there is nothing in the text to suggest that she was attracted by the luridness of Sodom. I thought about the thrust of biblical narrative as whole, thought of the surge forward of it all, realized that the God of history is always directing us ahead. Ahead, forward, onwards! We look ahead to that city whose maker and builder is God; we look ahead to that kingdom which cannot be shaken; we look ahead to the visible manifestation of him whose triumph is known now by faith. Lot’s wife looked back inasmuch as what was behind her possessed greater significance for her than what was in front of her; and such a mindset is fatal! We don’t look back! Never look back!
In my older age I have been nurtured endlessly by stories on which I was raised: Abraham and Isaac, the deranged fellow who ran around in the Gadarene hills and whom our Lord restored to his right mind (even as the townspeople objected!), the woman who unselfconsciously poured out on the feet of Jesus everything she had and was, the dying criminal whose eleventh hour desperation wrung from him a one-sentence prayer of repentance which rendered him a citizen of the kingdom.
When we feel we can do little more than tell the stories we should understand that this is the most important thing any of us will ever do.
If we are still fearful of becoming Sunday School teachers we should remember that we are not the only teacher in the classroom. Not only are we not the only teacher, we are not even the primary teacher. According to the book of Deuteronomy God sends Moses to be the teacher of Israel. At the same time that Moses is to be the teacher of Israel (without peer to this day), God says to the people, “Give heed…[to what]…I teach you”. When Moses complains, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and of tongue”, God replies, “I will be with your mouth…”.
If we feel that the Sunday School enterprise appears to move ahead so very slowly, with little seeming to be taught and even less appearing to be learned, then the prophet Isaiah reassures us that the process is cumulative, and the accumulation is always underway even if we cannot measure it. Says Isaiah, “For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” It takes a long while to build up a coral reef in the ocean, but no one doubts the fact of coral reefs!
If we still feel under-equipped to teach Sunday School we must remember that everywhere in scripture the effectiveness of the teacher has much less to do with what the teacher knows than with who the teacher is. The apostle James makes this point most tellingly; so does Peter; so does Jude; so does Jesus himself. It is the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, not a postgraduate degree in theology. It is that respect and reverence for God and his living truth which the teacher quietly exudes, however little might be said; this is the beginning of wisdom for our children.
III: — I began the sermon with the question, “Does anything of lasting significance happen in Sunday School?”, and I said then that the answer is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.
A confirmation class is a Sunday School class for adolescents. In 1932 Dietrich Bonhoeffer conducted a confirmation class for youngsters from the slums of north Berlin. Bonhoeffer himself had been born to the aristocracy. His family was well-to-do, socially prominent, cultured. His father was professor of neurology at Berlin University and chief of the hospital’s department of neurology. Germany of 1932 was in dreadful economic condition. Inflation galloped at 1000% per day. The economic collapse was matched by near-social chaos. Bonhoeffer himself was brilliant, having completed his doctorate by age 21. Now he was with a class of rowdy boys who were poor, ill-educated, and whose future was materially bleak. The first day Bonhoeffer appeared on the scene and walked up several flights of stairs to the classroom the boys pelted him with balled-up paper as they threw it down the stairwell at him. Later in class one boy took out his lunch and began eating his sandwich. Bonhoeffer said nothing, merely looked at him until he put his lunch away. Gradually, however, the boys came to cherish their teacher. In his spare time Bonhoeffer taught them English; weekends he took them to a cottage in the Harz mountains. One boy fell ill and was told that his leg would have to be amputated. When the youngster was hospitalized Bonhoeffer travelled across Berlin by streetcar three times per week in order to be with the boy during the latter’s difficult days.
1932 was 60 years ago. I like to think that somewhere in Germany today there is a 75 year old man whose life was rendered forever different because of his Sunday School teacher. More likely there was a 25 year old serviceman who died in North Africa or the North Atlantic and who died in the holy comfort of a gospel pressed upon him by his Sunday School teacher.
The boys in Bonhoeffer’s class were poorly educated and expressed themselves haltingly. The story I have just told you comes to us from one of the boys in the class, Richard Rother, who has written himself, “The gratitude I feel for having had such a [teacher] in our confirmation class makes me write down these recollections”.
Is it really important — Sunday School, that is? How important was it for Richard Rother?
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
1993 September 12
In Honour Of Our Sunday School Teachers
1 John 1:6-13
Romans 8:14-16
I: — I remember so very many of them, the Sunday School teachers who are memorable just because they were of unspeakable help to me during my most formative years.
June Hocking was my teacher when I was 8 years old. As we approached Good Friday and Easter she explained to us 8-year olds what the cross was about. She told us it was God’s provision for us needy, needy people who were so very needy on account of our deep-dyed depravity and God’s just judgement. (Of course she didn’t use big words like “provision” and “depravity”; she knew the vocabulary of 8-year olds; because I don’t, I shall have to tell the story in my own words.) Then she asked those who grasped this, anything of this, to stand up if they wanted to own it for themselves. I stood up. She asked me specifically if I understood what any of this meant. I convinced her I did. Again in words suitable for little people she told me that my public declaration on that day was ratified in heaven eternally.
Soon afterward my family moved to another congregation. Now Catherine Heasman was my teacher. She was quiet, gentle, understanding. She knew I felt strange in my new church-home. She went out of her way, in her sensitivity, to defuse my apprehension.
When I was 10 or 11 my teacher was Dorothy Greenshields, an unmarried woman about 50 years old. One Sunday I became embroiled in a vehement argument with a classmate as to the correct spelling of an obscene word. Can you imagine it? Your beloved pastor arguing heatedly over the spelling of an obscenity! Miss Greenshields let the argument rage for a while, then told us we should talk about something else.
By the time I was 12 Gordon Fairbank was my teacher. Gordon was a graduate of the University of Toronto in Greek and Roman history. Gordon spent much of class time telling us that Greek and Roman history was the finest university program anyone could pursue. The weekly lesson always had much to do with the Roman background to the gospel-stories, and it was in Gordon’s class that I learned the word “Mesopotamia”, together with many other unusual words. One Sunday Gordon had to be in New Orleans (he worked for a travel agency) and so he sent along his fiancee, Jean, in his place. I thought she was the prettiest woman I had ever seen.
Grace Eby was another teacher: middleaged, reserved, anything but outgoing or hail-fellow-well-met. While she was much older than I, and often appeared to a live in a world that seemed older still, there was something about her that hooked my heart — for when I was 14 I discussed with her my new-born call to the ministry. Earnestly, haltingly, fearfully I discussed my unsuppressible vocation with her, and discussed it with her when I didn’t say anything to my parents. (In fact I was 22 years old before I breathed a word of it to anyone else.)
My last Sunday School teacher was Carlton Carter. He was a superintendent with the Scarborough Board of Education. He taught a class of 15-year olds. Every Sunday he brought so many books and reference materials to class you’d have thought he was doing Ph.D research.
II: — What was the point of all that my Sunday School teachers did on my behalf? What was the point of the diligence and faithfulness and affection that they exemplified? What is the point of Sunday School teaching now?
The point of it all was highlighted for me through a recent newspaper article. The article accompanied a photograph of Mafia gangsters in Hamilton carrying the casket of one of their fellow-thugs out of a church. Mr. Dominic Musitano had died. “Tears flow at funeral of mobster”, the headline read. Dominic Musitano had engineered the beating and killing of many people in the course of his underworld career (fellow-gangsters, I assume, who had been less than cooperative). He had the conscience of a cobra. At his funeral the clergyman said, “As a young child Dominic Musitano was brought to this church for baptism with holy water. It was then that he became an adopted son of God.”
No! He didn’t become an adopted child of God because he was baptized with holy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been baptized with unholy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference of he hadn’t been baptized at all. According to scripture we become adopted sons and daughters of God through faith; only faith, always and everywhere faith. John writes in the fourth gospel, “To all who received him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” To all who received him, who believed in his name (nature, presence, effectiveness).
Paul says more about adoption than any other New Testament writer. The apostle insists that while Jesus Christ is Son of God (uniquely) by nature, you and I become children of God by adoption into God’s family through faith. The point of Sunday School is the quickening of faith in youngsters. The point of Sunday School is the fostering of that faith by which they will come to first-hand experience of what Paul speaks of when he writes to the believers in Rome, “You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery that plunges you back into fear; you have received the spirit of sonship, of adoption. When we cry, `Abba! Father!’, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
We sometimes hear it said that faith is caught, not taught. It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught. The gospel has a precise content; youngsters must become acquainted with it. The gospel is truth; youngsters must learn to distinguish it from error, falsehood and illusion. The gospel is inseparable from him whose gospel it is; youngsters must grasp, therefore, how truths are related to Truth (i.e., how correct articulation of the gospel is related to the reality of living person, Jesus Christ.) “Faith is caught, not taught”? It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught!
At the same time, something also has to be caught. If Sunday School concerns only what is taught, never what is caught, then Sunday School is simply an exercise in shuffling one’s mental furniture. To say that something has to be caught is to say that youngsters have to be infected. And the teacher, from a human standpoint, is the “infecter”.
Jesus speaks at length with a Samaritan woman, speaks with her alone. The woman in turn goes back to her village and tells the villagers all that Jesus Christ has come to be and to mean to her. A short while later several of the villagers come to faith in the master on the strength of the woman’s testimony. Then as faith grows in them and with it the assurance of faith, they tell her, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this indeed the Saviour of the world.”
What’s the point of Sunday School? — the fostering of faith, such faith as will find the youngster-turned-adult saying, “It is no longer because of your words, Sunday School teacher, that we believe; we now know, for ourselves, him whom we have trusted.”
III: — Yet more than faith is needed, and therefore more than faith is the purpose of Christian Education. A Christian mind is needed too. A Christian mind can’t be acquired overnight. It takes years to develop spiritual antennae that can discern critically what is going on in the world and whether the Christian should support or oppose, welcome or denounce, wait for further light or warn others loudly. It takes years to develop that critical sophistication without which victimization is inevitable.
During the daily update on the Bernardo trial this summer a newspaper columnist, commenting on the sexual adventures of Mr. Bernardo, poured scorn on a lawyer connected with the prosecution. The columnist spoke of this lawyer as slightly older than middleaged, gray-haired, someone who had no doubt married only once and who had had, no doubt, one sex-partner only. What would such a man understand of Mr. Bernardo and his proclivities? So that’s it! Someone who has been married only once and has had only one sex-partner (spouse) is a 14-carat “nerd”? There are several issues here that have to be assessed on the basis of a Christian understanding.
Daniel Johnson, the Quebec politician, was annoyed (again, during the summer) at the outrageous and fatuous pronouncements of Jacques Parizeau, premier of Quebec. “Who does Parizeau think he is?”, said Johnson, “an archbishop or something?” Are church leaders inherently outrageous and fatuous? Church leadership is to be patterned after the leadership/servanthood of Jesus Christ himself. He gives himself up to death even for those whose hearts are ice-cold and treacherous towards him. It takes diligence and patience to acquire a mind that thinks in Christian categories.
When our daughter Catherine returned from Hong Kong during July she told us she had had a terrific argument with her Chinese boyfriend. The argument concerned China’s practice of packaging human fetuses (10 to a package) and selling them for food. The Chinese people add ginger to the fetuses, mix them with pork, and eat them. Catherine’s boyfriend defended the practice, explaining that in a nation of 1.2 billion people anything that can be eaten must be eaten — or else people aren’t going to eat. The Chinese, he insisted, don’t have the luxury of fastidiousness.
Catherine told us she replied to her boyfriend, “The line has to be drawn somewhere, and your people don’t know where to draw it.” (I was surprised at Catherine’s vehemence, since I didn’t think she was particularly eager to draw lines.)
Once again there are several issues here: abortion, cannibalism, and the matter of what (who) is going to be eaten next. Will a corpse be eaten next, provided it didn’t die from disease but was rather a traffic accident victim?
The story Catherine related to us had already been sent to North America by means of UPI, the international wire service that sends news items around the world. Not one North American newspaper picked up the story from the UPI wire; not one! A Christian Publication, First Things, did pick it up and print it. And therefore I was able to read more about this abhorrent development. Dr. Qin, a physician in Shenzhen, said she herself had eaten 100 fetuses in the last six months. Said Dr. Qin, “We don’t carry out abortions just to eat fetuses, [but they would be] wasted if not eaten.”
Not one North American newspaper wrote up the story handed to it by the UPI wire service. At both the Ottawa Summer School of Theology and McMaster University Divinity College I have lectured students — and illustrated my lectures profusely — that the manner in which the media handle news has more than a taint of propaganda. In both institutions students have looked upon me as an extremist. Discernment is needed if we are going to identify the distortions and assess the nature of the distortions that the media foist on us every day.
If the purpose of Sunday School is to foster faith, it must be understood that the faith so fostered includes the foundations of that Christian mind which adults must acquire.
IV: — Tell me: do you think I am possessed of faith in Jesus Christ? However slight or weak or sin-riddled my faith might be, do you think it is nonetheless genuine? And the faith that possesses me: has it issued in a Christian understanding beyond the kindergarten level? If so, then my Sunday School teachers are to be honoured and thanked.
Where are my teachers now?
Misses Dorothy Greenshields and Grace Eby are enjoying that reward which Jesus has promised to faithful servants.
June Hocking is the assistant minister at Knox United Church, Calgary. I didn’t know she was there until I spoke at Knox Church one weekend last October. During the question and answer period after my first address she stood up and asked, “Do you know who it is?” Did she think I was ever going to forget the person who first acquainted me with what St.Paul calls “the word of the cross”?
Catherine Heasman is the secretary in the chaplain’s office at Scarborough Grace Hospital. As often as I have reason to phone the chaplain’s office there I speak with her and thank her again.
Carlton Carter has long since retired from the Scarborough Board of Education. With his remarkable administrative abilities he has volunteered himself to his congregation as unsalaried church-administrator. It’s important that I tell him what he meant to me when I was 14. His three adult offspring worship nowhere themselves and make no profession of faith whatsoever. I have heard him ask, “Where did I fail?” He needs to hear from me that he hasn’t failed.
This leaves Gordon and Jean Fairbank. My little book, Making Sense of Christian Faith, is dedicated to them. The inscription reads, “To Jean and Gordon Fairbank, because they were there.” When I was 19 several developments precipitated me into a dark valley that was near-hideous and that lasted longer than I ever thought it would. Jean and Gordon kept me going, one fumbling foot in front of the other, until I emerged on the other side. They stood with me at the edge of the abyss, and what I owe them I shall never repay.
Still, I do what I can. Two or three years ago Jean was waiting alone, at night, for a train in the Rosedale subway station, when she was “swarmed” and assaulted by a band of hooligans. She was badly “unhinged” by the incident. I visited her several times afterwards, lending her whatever comfort I could. Last April her husband asked me if I would serve on the board of trustees of an institution related to the University of Manitoba. I said “yes”. (Don’t worry, it involves only one, two-day trip to Winnipeg each year.) Of course I agreed to help Gordon. Street-wise people are fond of saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
When I am on my deathbed and there is little breath in me, I shall nonetheless summon what little breath I have and pronounce “Blessed!” those men and women who were my Sunday School teachers and without whom I should today be who knows where, and be who knows what.
Victor A. Shepherd
September 1995
What Do I Want For Our Children?
Sunday School Teachers’ Dedication, 1996
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Romans 5:1-5
I have never looked upon the Sunday School as babysitting. I have never regarded Sunday School as a means of keeping adult worship free from distracting sights and sounds. On the contrary I know that Jesus Christ can surge over and forge himself within the youngest hearts and minds. For this reason I pray for our Sunday School teachers every day. After all, what can be more important than having a youngster awakened to God by God himself as the boy Samuel was three millennia ago? (I Samuel 3:1-10) I long to see our Sunday School children “arrive at real maturity — that measure of development which is meant by`the fullness of Christ’.” (Eph. 4:13 JBP) One aspect of such “real maturity” is to know the love of God. I want our children to have first-hand acquaintance with the God whose nature is love. (I John 4:8) I want our children to find themselves startled and awed and overwhelmed at the love God has for them, for others, for the entire world. I want them to come to know, together with the maturest saint, that the tidal waves of love that wash over them repeatedly are but a ripple in the seas of love that will remain inexhaustible eternally. Through our Sunday School I want our children to know — and keep on knowing — the love for them that streams from the heart of him whose love is undiminishing and undeflectible.
I: — First of all I want our children to know that God so loved the world; so loved the world that he gave himself for it in his Son; gave himself without hesitation, without calculation, without qualification — just gave himself — gave himself up, for us all. (John 3:16)
To know that God loves the world is to know that God loves those who don’t love him; don’t love him at all; hate him, in fact. Everywhere in the writings of the apostle John “the world” consists of the sum total of men and women who are hostile to God; and not merely hostile to God individually, but united in a semi-conscious conspiracy to resist him and mock him and repel him. And this is what God loves with unrelenting constancy and consistency. In other words, God loves to death what you and I would long since have given up loving out of frustration and anger, given up loving for reasons that make perfect sense.
The history of humankind is the history of our repudiating that which is our sole good: God. The history of humankind is the history of our preferring our fatal sickness of selfism to him and his healing love for us. Adam and Eve — whose names mean “humankind” and “mother of the living” (respectively) are awash in blessing upon blessing; unalloyed blessing, unconditional blessing, with nothing to mar their blessedness or even put it at risk. What do they do? (What do we all do?) They cast aspersion on the goodness of God and endeavour to prove themselves God’s equal. Yet despite this outrageous effrontery God refuses to quit on humankind, so incomprehensible is his love.
Noah, together with his family, is delivered from the flood, in the old, old story, in order that God might begin anew the fulfilment of his heart’s desire: a holy people who are the faithful covenant- partners of the holy God. And what does Noah do upon his deliverance at the hand of God’s measureless mercy? He gets drunk! The irreverence, the ingratitude, the culpable stupidity of his response is mind-boggling.
Undiscouraged in his quest of a holy people for himself, God liberates his people from degrading slavery, brings them through the Red Sea, and acquaints them with his will (their blessing!) at Sinai. Or at least he tries to acquaint them with his will, tries to press his blessing upon them. But they will have none of it, preferring to caper around a hunk of metal oblivious to their self-induced spiritual infantilism.
The prophet Hosea swears he hears God say of these people of perverse heart, “Lo-ammi, lo-ruchamah!”: “Not my people, not pitied.” Then Hosea knows he has heard God say in even clearer, louder voice, “Ruchamah, ammi!”: “Pitied — loved — and therefore my people still.”
I trust no one here this morning misunderstands the unrelenting intransigence of the human heart, its wilful blindness and deafness, its irrational folly. Remember, when the apostle John speaks of “the world” he means the sum total of unbelieving men and women hardened in their defiance of God and their disobedience to his will for them and their disdain for his gospel. So unimaginably senseless is the depraved heart of humankind that it will even despise the gospel, its one and only cure!
In our age of ascendant secularism we nod knowingly and say that secularized people are indifferent to the gospel. They are indifferent, to be sure, but such indifference is never mere indifference. In the face of a love that pleads and entreats, such indifference is nothing less than defiance. We must never agree with those who cavalierly suggest that secularized people are ignorant of the truth and righteousness of God. They are ignorant, to be sure, but such ignorance is never mere ignorance. Their ignorance of the truth arises from a suppression of the truth; their ignorance of God’s righteousness arises from a repudiation of righteousness. Truth is suppressed until it can no longer be discerned; righteousness is repudiated until it can no longer be recognized. Indifference to and ignorance of a gospel that is wrung out of the Father’s heart and displayed in the Son’s anguish; this is not mere indifference and ignorance. This is nothing less than contempt.
And in the face of it all God stands loving. Nothing can get him to stop. His love cascades ceaselessly; his love also infiltrates undetectably. Both are needed — both the torrent and the infiltration — if the calcified human heart is to be softened and wooed and won. Hearts are softened and wooed and won. The most stunning miracle of all is that people do come to faith and obedience and love of him.
The most stunning miracle that a child in our Sunday School will ever witness is the miracle of her own coming to faith; the most astounding development to amaze any of us, young or old, is the beginning of one’s own heart to beat in time with the heart of God. Nothing less than the love of God — both its “Niagaroid” torrent and its undetectable infiltration — is needed to remove us from the category of “the world”. It is as God loves “the world” that we are released from “the world” as we are made children of God by faith.
I want our Sunday School children to know that love of God which brings them and others to faith.
II: — Even as God’s love for us does this it continues to do something more: it continues to pulsate within us, with the result that we are little by little transformed in the midst of life’s unavoidable pain. Paul begins his first paragraph in Romans 5 (Rom.5:1-5) with the ringing reminder that we are justified by faith; that is, we are set right with God by clinging to the crucified one. Paul ends the paragraph by affirming emphatically that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit; has been poured into us and now fills us up. What happens in the middle of the paragraph between the ringing reminder and the emphatic affirmation? Suffering; suffering is what happens in between.
Because of our righted relationship with God, because God’s love fills us to the brim, our sufferings are never bare sufferings. Our sufferings, undeniably difficult, don’t render us desolate. Our sufferings are now the occasion of our endurance, and endurance of character, and character of hope (hope being our confidence that it all ends in our being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory).
When Paul speaks of endurance he doesn’t mean that we hang on grimly by the skin of our teeth. “Endurance” is a military term borrowed from the Roman army. Soldiers exemplified endurance when (i) they remained steadfast, (ii) they remained steadfast just because their commanding officer had acquainted them with the purpose of the battle and its unavoidable suffering. The soldier could remain steadfast — could endure — just because he knew how crucial the struggle was.
When God’s love floods the heart of those who have been set right with God through faith, suffering produces endurance; i.e., suffering produces steadfastness in those who know why it is necessary to keep up the struggle. Such endurance produces character, maintains the apostle. The Greek word Paul uses for “character” is DOKIME; literally it means refinement. He has in mind the kind of refining that a smelter does. A smelter subjects metallic ore to intense heat and pressure. In this process of intense heat and pressure base elements, worthless elements, are purged away; what’s left is a precious metal that is both valuable and attractive. Refining is a proving process that results in what is proved being approved. We who are set right with God through faith and flooded now with God’s love; we know the ultimate outcome of our suffering, endurance and refining; the ultimate outcome is “hope” — being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory.
Before I leave this point I want to make sure we understand something crucial. When Paul speaks of God’s love flooding us he is speaking of experience: immediate, visceral, palpable experience. He is not speaking of an idea, the idea of God’s love. We always tend to reduce concrete spiritual realities to mere ideas: we unconsciously reduce God’s love to the idea of God’s love. Odd, isn’t it, but we never do this with our suffering; we never reduce pain to the idea of pain. We can’t reduce pain to the idea of pain just because our pain is too real! After all, what is more immediate, less deniable, than pain? Paul’s point is this: in Christians what is more immediate, less deniable, than God’s love? God’s love flooding us is as immediate, visceral, palpable as our pain is piercing us. As God’s love surges over our pain, suffering yields endurance, endurance character, and character the confidence that one day it will all be taken up in the splendour of God’s glory.
I want our Sunday School children to know this when they are 30 years old or 45 or 60 years old.
III: — Lastly, Paul prays that the hearts of the Christians in Thessalonica will be directed into God’s love (2 Thess. 3:5 NIV); farther into God’s love, deeper into God’s love. Is this possible? Are we not at this moment either “in” God’s love or not “in” his love? To be sure, either the love of God is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold, says the apostle John, or else “the world” is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold. Of course! Either we are united to Christ or we are not; either we are “in the right” with God through faith in his Son or we are “in the wrong”. Nevertheless, even as believers are “in” the love of God, we can always move farther into God’s love, go deeper into it. We can, we should, and Paul prays that we shall.
In 1964 I came to know that Maureen loved me. She loved me then. She loves me now. To say that she loved me in 1964 and loves me in 1996 is not to say that nothing has happened in 32 years. Each year has found me moving deeper — and deeper still — into her love. Just when I think she loves me so much she couldn’t love me more, I discover that there are reservoirs of love in her that I never guessed and before which I can only marvel — and love her yet more myself.
Several months ago I did something that did not cover me in glory. In fact I was ashamed. It haunted me. I said nothing. Maureen knew something was wrong but didn’t guess what. Finally I told her. Now I know Maureen well. (Remember, we have loved each other since 1964.) Because I know her well, and because of my shameful misadventure, I expected her to react in any combination of the following: she would be hurt, she would be angry, she would think ill of me. Contrary to everything I expected from the woman I already knew so well she said only, “It took a lot of courage for you to tell me what you have.” It was obvious to me that as well as I knew her, knew her love for me, I didn’t know her and her love as thoroughly as I thought I did. More to the point, as deeply as I had lived in her love for years, that moment found me moving into her love yet again, deeper into a love that was plainly greater than anything I had known to date.
So it is with our life in God. As much of his love as we have known to date; as deeply in his love as we are at this moment, it is still the apostle’s prayer that our hearts be directed into, farther into, God’s love for us. So vast is God’s love for us that we can only plunge deeper into it, and deeper still, until we are astounded at it, then lost in it, thence to find ourselves, with Charles Wesley, “lost in wonder, love and praise.”
I don’t expect our Sunday School children to grasp now all that I have said in this sermon. I merely want the door to be opened for them, the seeds to be sown, the truth declared, the child’s first steps encouraged. Then when they are older and they are acquainted with the intransigence of “the world” plus the anguish of their own suffering and above all the fathomless depths of God; when they are older they will newly apprehend every day the love wherewith God loves them, loves an unbelieving world, and loves his own people yet deeper — always deeper — into himself.
Victor A. Shepherd
September 1996
It’s The Jordan That Matters
2 Kings 5:1-18;
Luke 3:3-18
I: — “Everyone should get done”, said the anxious mother to me. She meant, of course, that everyone should be baptized. Should everyone? And if perchance everyone should, why? Under what circumstances? To what end? The person whom we should consult concerning these questions is the man who had most to say about baptism, John the Dipper. “John” was his name, Yochan, “gift of God”. BAPTIZEIN was the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk, as in “dip your paintbrush” or “dunk your doughnut.” “The baptizer, the dipper, the dunker” was the term hung on him by those who thought that John was the most ridiculous spectacle they had ever seen. Dressed in animal skins like Tarzan, living in the waterless wilderness where he hadn’t sat in a bathtub in years, possessed of a voice that ruptured eardrums, unmindful of the bee-stings acquired through gathering wild honey, John looked like a nature-boy who could have been locked up. He thundered that people needed to get right with God. A sign (but only a sign), a declaration, of their getting right with God was their plunge into the river Jordan. It was a public acknowledgement that the truth of the living God had pierced them to the heart and they wanted to drown their corrupt nature and henceforth live under God’s royal rule.
When the people did respond John didn’t smile with relief and say, “That’s more like it, that’s what I like to see.” Instead John looked at the hordes who were tripping over each other in their haste to get to the Jordan and raged, “Look at the snakes coming out! You can always tell when the underbrush catches fire; the snakes slither out in self-preservation! You people aren’t serious about God and his kingdom and his truth and his service; you don’t want to abandon yourself to him; you merely want fire insurance for the life-to-come: snakes bent on self-preservation!”
None the less, along with the superficial multitudes who weren’t sincere there were also those who were in earnest. John’s message had seared them: they did long for God and his kingdom, his truth and his service. They knew that John was preparing men and women for radical, rigorous discipleship. They knew that just around the corner was Jesus, John’s cousin, and Jesus would draw into his company the disciples whom John had prepared.
We shouldn’t belittle John’s work. The Jordan represented something serious. To be baptized in the Jordan meant that John’s convictions were your convictions. You were stating publicly that you and John were of one mind about the kingdom of God and the urgency of entering it and serving it.
What were John’s convictions? (i) His first conviction: false securities are useless. When John preached many people scoffed. They took refuge in their parentage or their piety or their privilege.
First, their parentage: “We don’t need to repent. We have Abraham as our father”, they threw back in John’s face. “Why talk about Abraham’s blood-line?”, John replied, “What alone counts is Abraham’s faith.” Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was a missionary in China? So what! It won’t do anything for me and I shouldn’t put any stock in it.
Next they tried to hide behind their piety: “We are extra-careful about religious observances”. (This is piety talking.) But what is the virtue in outward conformity to a pious code if inwardly there is lacking that whole-souled, single-minded self-abandonment to the living God?
Lastly they sought refuge in privilege (parentage, piety and privilege): “We belong to Israel. We don’t belong to the pagan nations who wouldn’t know God from a gopher. We belong to a religious tradition over a thousand years old. And not only is our tradition old, it embodies the truth of God”. “Substituting a tradition for intimate acquaintance with God himself”, countered John, “is like reading a handbook on lovemaking and assuming you are therefore married.”
The false securities of parentage, piety and privilege are useless. We must own for ourselves the forgiveness that God has fashioned for us, or remain unpardoned. We must exercise the faith that God has given us and by which we are bound to him, or remain forever estranged from him. Moment by moment we must resolve to obey the One who insists that obedience is freedom, or else languish in bondage to our sin. John’s first conviction: false securities are useless.
(ii) John’s second conviction: the sincerity of our profession is indicated by the consistency of our discipleship. When tax-collectors told John that they wanted to be immersed in the Jordan as a public sign of their seriousness John said, “If you are as serious as you say you are then you will stop cheating the people from whom you are collecting taxes.” When soldiers asked for baptism — “If you really mean it then you will stop molesting civilians and stop extorting protection money from them”. When the multitudes streamed to the Jordan John explained, “Before you get wet you must understand that to take the plunge is to pledge yourself and everything you own to needy people.”
Then, only then, John welcomed all who responded to his preaching and baptized them, exuberantly, in the Jordan.
II: — Yet there is more to the Jordan. Jesus was baptized there too. Unlike the people who responded to John, however, Jesus wasn’t publicly declaring a change in life-style. He had no need to change anything. When Jesus stood in the Jordan he was endorsing everything that cousin John was about; but he was also doing more. He was inaugurating his own ministry. Thereafter all whom Christ called into his company and were baptized as he had been were owning their ministry. In other words, for Jesus and his followers too, baptism is ordination to ministry.
To be sure different Christians have different ministries. Your ministry and mine differ in several respects. Yet underlying the many differences there forever remains a commonality that we must own together. The commonality arises, of course, in that the ministry of every Christian is generated from the ministry of Jesus Christ. He is the “great high priest”, in the words of the book of Hebrews. You and I in turn are that “royal priesthood” of which Peter speaks. His ministry is intercession in behalf of a tormented world. In Israel the ministry of the priest is intercession. Since we are a royal priesthood generated by the great high priest himself, our ministry too can only be a ministry of intercession in behalf of a tormented world.
One Monday not so long ago the telephone rang once more. The caller was a minister-friend. His wife was having an affair with a colleague at work. As you’d expect, the more intense the affair became, the more icily she treated her husband and the more distant from him she rendered herself. When my minister-friend phoned he had just returned from tests at Princess Margaret Hospital. He had been treated for cancer some time ago, had undergone surgery, and then appeared to be “out of the woods.” The day he phoned me was the day that the most recent tests indicated there was a new growth on another organ. Naturally he concluded it was malignant. He stumbled home from the hospital and told his wife. She stared at him with unblinking iciness, said nothing, and walked away. I can’t imagine a silence any more cruel, just as I can’t imagine isolation more isolated.
The intercession of Jesus Christ is a major motif in the New Testament. The apostles know that our Lord has fused himself to all humankind in solidarity with us. One with us all, he lifts up before his Father every last sinning, suffering human being. The ministry of the Christian is intercession too. Which is to say, our ministry consists of fusing ourselves to those whose lives intersect ours, in order that they might know their sin can’t deprive them of our compassion, know they are never alone, know their pain isn’t unnoticed, know themselves cherished.
No sooner was I finished with my long telephone call when the phone rang again. This time it was a paranoid fellow, one of the many deranged who look to me and of whom I am fond. This fellow suffers terribly. After all, it’s dreadful to live in constant fear of assassination. In the course of our chit-chat he told me he had to get up to the toilet several times during the night. Now since he is a middle-aged male you don’t have to be a medical genius to know what his problem is. I told him I would make sure a urologist saw him. “Urologist!”, he raved at me, “What good’s a urologist when someone is poisoning my orange juice?”
This past July Maureen and I visited our friend Louise in Montreal. She is schizophrenic. She isn’t deranged like the fellow whose orange juice is forever being poisoned; she’s closer to normal mental functioning than that. Still, she’s ill, and she suffers. One fine summer day two months ago she piloted us to the eastern townships, 90 minutes’ drive from Montreal, to Lake Memphramagog. (I was delighted to visit the lake for many reasons, two of which were the beautiful scenery and the fact I’d read so often about the lake in the writing of Mordecai Richler.) Louise has been a dear friend for 17 years, ever since we met in 1982 in La Pocatiere.
To be sure, it’s often inconvenient and often wearing to keep company with mentally ill people. At the same time, it’s often instructive. Ill people tend to lack the social niceties, the insincerity that passes for diplomacy. They don’t have the social duplicity that sane people can no longer recognize as duplicity. They’ve forgotten the social conventions that keep you and me (I’m assuming now that you and I are sane) insisting publicly that the emperor is magnificently attired when everyone knows he has no clothes and only very young children and very ill adults blurt out the truth, and blurt out the truth just because they lack the social skill of how to be false. In this regard we must always remember G.K. Chesterton. Mentally ill people, said Chesterton, haven’t lost their reason; they’ve lost everything except their reason.
Then what does intercession mean for all such? That we pray for them? Of course we shall. Praying for them is also the easiest — and the cheapest — expression of intercession. Then what other expression does our intercession for them take? What do we do for people who can’t defend themselves? What do we do for people who suffer extraordinarily? If you can’t imagine what “intercession” might entail, think of “intervention.”
Baptism in the Jordan is a public declaration that we have been called into the service of our Lord whose intercession in behalf of all sufferers is relentless.
III: — Yet the Jordan means even more. It means not only that we are going to minister, but also that we shall allow ourselves to be ministered unto; and allow ourselves to be ministered unto even if this entails our being humbled — or perhaps humiliated. The Jordan is the river into which Naaman must plunge himself if he’s to be healed. Naaman is the five-star general of the Syrian army that has overrun Israel. He’s also afflicted with leprosy, and he finds his affliction humiliating. An Israelite girl, a prisoner of war, is his wife’s attendant. The Israelite girl tells Mrs. Naaman that Elisha, the Israelite prophet, can cure her husband. Naaman is humiliated again. He, the commander-in-chief of a victorious army, has to appear cap-in-hand and submit himself to a fellow from the conquered people? But leprosy is no trifling matter; Naaman swallows his pride and appears before Elisha. Soon he’s not merely humiliated, he’s disgusted: Elisha has told him that he must bathe seven times in the Jordan. The Jordan then was as filthy as Toronto’s Don river is today. Seven times in that fetid pollution? Surely seven times into the Jordan would leave a man with afflictions worse than leprosy! Vehemently Naaman objects, “Why can’t I bathe in the clear, clean waters of my native Damascus? Why can’t Elisha simply call on the name of his God and wave his hand?” But Elisha is adamant: “Seven times into the Jordan, General Naaman, or leprosy for life.” Naaman added it all up. If it had to be the Jordan, then the Jordan it would be.
My first summer placement as a student minister was a frontier town in northern British Columbia that had recently been inundated with construction workers. On my last Sunday in town before returning to Toronto for seminary I preached on faith. I thought it was a good sermon. After the service a man who had attended worship throughout the summer approached me. He was an alcoholic who had been contentedly sober for several years. He looked me in the eye with a look that was all-searching and all-knowing and said quietly, “Victor, faith is serenity.” From his look I knew that he thought he had detected non-serenity in me. He thought I was prone to agitation, prone to vehemence, prone to flare-ups, prone to roller-coaster mood-alterations, prone to knotting my shirt on short notice! I looked him back, trying to say through my look, “Mister, you’ve got me wrong.” It didn’t work. He smiled again and said, “Victor, faith is serenity.” And then I bristled. After all, I was a theology student and I had forgotten more doctrine than he would ever know; and besides, by vocation I was his spiritual superior, wasn’t I? What’s more, he was so weak (“weak” is how I thought of it in those days, to my shame) that he’d never be able to take a drink again without going haywire. And he was correcting me? And then I recalled the word of Elisha: “Either the Jordan, or your affliction for life.”
It has happened to me a dozen times since then, and will continue to happen, since I am not yet fully healed.
I want to come back to the question I left with you at the beginning of the sermon. Should everyone be “done”? Should everyone be baptized? Anyone be baptized if the water in which we are baptized is the Jordan. For the Jordan means
(i) we are abandoning ourselves to a discipleship so far-reaching as to be unmistakable and undeniable,
(ii) we are accepting ordination to a ministry of intercession in behalf of suffering people,
(iii) we are submitting to a correction and a restoration that entails humility, even humiliation, but without which we shall never be healed of our affliction.
Parents have brought their children for baptism today. This means the parents are promising to do everything they can to have their children one day own “the Jordan” for themselves.
You and I are witnesses to all of this; but not witnesses only. Even less are we idle bystanders. You and I are those who were baptized ourselves, whether as infants, adolescents or mature adults. Then the question we must ask ourselves is this: the water in which we were baptized, was it the Jordan? After all, it’s the Jordan, and only the Jordan, that matters.
Victor Shepherd
September 1999
You asked for a sermon on Baptism
Romans 4:6-4
I: — “He’s three months old and he hasn’t been done yet”, the conscientious mother says to me. She is conscientious; she wants to be a responsible parent. Responsible parenting includes taking her child to the family physician for regular checkups, providing the nutrition which promotes growth, ensuring that inoculations and vaccinations and immunizations are received on schedule lest infectious disease overtake the child. Responsible parenting also includes getting the child “done”, says our friend.
I used to ask why. (I don’t ask why any longer, and in a minute I shall give you the reason.) The answers I used to receive were startling. (i) “My child might get hit by a car.” It wasn’t thought that baptism was a charm which fended off mishap, since it was admitted that baptism would not prevent automobile mishaps; but it was thought that when the automobile had done its worst to the child, the child’s baptism would make all the difference imaginable before God. (ii) “Until my child is baptized she won’t really have a name”. What the parent is struggling to say here is that name is associated with identity; until the child is baptized it will be lacking identity; the child will be some sort of non-person or half-person, forever humanly incomplete. (iii) Another reason for having the nipper baptized: “he needs to have his sin washed away.” If only it were this easy! If I could lighten the enormous weight of sin upon humankind by administering water I should never move away from the font. A bizarre aspect of the reply, “He needs to have his sin washed away”, was that the parent stating it appeared to be entirely unconcerned about her own sin. (iv) A fourth response to my question had to do with the notion that baptism was one facet of a multifaceted birth announcement, other facets being a few lines in the newspaper and a card sent via Canada Post.
A minute ago I said I should tell you why I no longer ask the question, “Why do you want your child baptized?” Here’s why: most of the answers I received were out-and-out superstition, and in my heart I knew that parents were simply giving back to me the superstition they had acquired from the church. When I was newly ordained and newly exposed to presbytery meetings, grave concern was expressed at a presbytery meeting that parents in our secularized society were not bringing their infants to the church for baptism as they once had. At the same meeting, I noted carefully, there was no concern about the parents who were thoroughly secularized; that is, there was no concern about evangelism, no concern about commending the gospel to ungospelized people; no concern about the spiritual life of congregations (that is, no concern about the environment of children who might be brought to the church for baptism; above all, no concern that if parents had brought their children for baptism, the congregation would have been asking parents to promise for their children what the parents did not cherish for themselves (in other words there was no concern over the fact that parents were going to be asked to perjure themselves.) Myself, I don’t feel I can fault parents for a defective understanding, even a superstitious non-understanding, of baptism, when it has been an indifferent or confused or ignorant church which has fostered the superstition in the first place. For this reason I think it inappropriate for me to ask parents why they want their child baptized; and in fact I never do.
II: — Then what is baptism all about?
(A) Baptism is first of all a public acknowledgement that before the all-holy God our sinnership has become a horror to us. Not an acknowledgement that we commit sins from time to time; this would be much too superficial. Not an acknowledgement that we have the spiritual equivalent of a rash: slightly unsightly, but scarcely life-threatening; an acknowledgement, rather, that we have blood-poisoning, a systemic disorder. When Peter preached, Luke tells us, men and women were “cut to the heart” and “cried out”. They were cut to the heart in that they were suddenly aware that they were disordered in their innermost core. They cried out, in desperation, inasmuch as they knew they could not alter their innermost core themselves. No wonder the gospel struck them as good news!
John the Baptist shocked people in his day not because he told sinners they should repent and be baptized; Israel had always invited gentiles to become baptized as a sign of their repentance and new-born faith. Gentiles (known popularly in Israel as “dogs”) upon coming to faith in the holy One of Israel,had always had themselves baptized as a sign that they were washing away pagan impurities. John was shocking not because of what he said; he was shocking because of the people to whom he said it. Israelites, he said, need to repent every bit as much as gentile dogs, since Israelites and gentiles have exactly the same status and standing before God. Church-membership going back for generations confers no superiority. In fact, said John, church-membership is too readily co-opted as a smokescreen behind which silly people think they can hide their sinnership from the coming judge; a smokescreen which leaves people dangerously deluded.
By now John the Baptist was in full flight. “I baptize you with water”, he continued, “but the coming one whose way among you I am preparing, he is going to baptize you with fire.” In other words, John and Jesus together administered the one baptism of God. And the one baptism of God consisted both of water and of fire.
Saturated in the prophets as both John and Jesus were, they knew that God’s fiery judgement was nothing to be trifled with. Everywhere in the Hebrew bible God’s fire cleanses those who humbly acknowledge their sinnership, even as it destroys those who do not. Daniel, whose very name means “God is my judge” (Dan-i-el), had said of God, “A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him…and the court sat in judgement, and the books were opened.” Inspired by the same Spirit the prophet Malachi had written, “The day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, says the Lord of hosts…”. Yet we must not think of Malachi’s message as bleak, for the fire of God which was to consume the arrogant would also refine the non-arrogant who admitted the legitimacy of God’s judgement upon them and who submitted to it as surely as the person with blood-poisoning gladly submits to medical expertise. Concerning these people Malachi wrote, “God will refine them like gold and silver;…those who fear his name shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall.” To be refined like gold and silver is to be precious before God and now rendered useful to him. To go forth leaping like calves from the stall is to rejoice before God with carefree exuberance.
John’s preaching electrified people and they came to him for baptism; these people welcomed God’s fiery judgement because they knew that the fire would refine them. They would be useful to God and would ever after rejoice before him with carefree exuberance. It was as if, having already passed through God’s refining fire, they were now cooling off in the Jordan.
When you and I are baptized we are publicly acknowledging our sinnership; not admitting that we behave inappropriately now and then, but rather confessing that life-threatening systemic infection is the human condition before God and we know it. In addition we are acknowledging that our sinnership merits the judgement of God. We are also publicly declaring our gratitude that God’s fire has not consumed us as we deserve but has refined us, thus rendering us useful to him. And rejoicing in all of this we are found cavorting like calves let out to frolic.
Baptism means this.
(B) It also means something more. In his letter to the congregations in Rome Paul states that in baptism the old man, old woman, was buried with Christ, so that the new man, new woman, might actually walk “in newness of life” as Christ himself stands newly raised from the dead.
The weather was frequently hot in first century Palestine; the one thing you didn’t do with a corpse was leave it lying around. A corpse wasn’t merely repulsive, it was a source of contamination. So bury it! Deep! And what has been buried should be left buried, never to be disinterred, lest others be contaminated.
Think about ambition. The “old” Victor is ambitious to gain promotion or recognition, whether in church or university or community. The “new” Victor (I trust) is eager to glorify God and magnify Jesus Christ his Son, saying with John the Baptist, “He must increase and I must decrease.”
Think about our children. What do we want for them? Are we going to settle for that greater ease, greater comfort, which succeeding generations have had in Canada for the past 150 years? Or do we want, above all else, that our children should discern God’s will for them, obey him in it, never look back, and find in him and his way for them that contentment they will never find anywhere else? Do we want this for them regardless of cost to them and separation from us? The new parent wants only the latter for his/her children.
Think about the confidence in God we say we have. The old man and woman look out over modern life with its boastful secularity, then out over the mainline church with its feebleness and foolishness — only to despair and do nothing, or get desperate and resort to gimmickry. The new man and woman, on the other hand, stake everything on the promise of God. We live in an era which bends over backwards to ensure results. We have polls and market surveys and psychological techniques. When an election is to be called, when a new product is to be marketed, when a government policy is to be changed, we know what the techniques are for “bending” people. Frankly, the “church-growth movement”, generated in the USA and exported to Canada, is one more “bending” technique. Denominations of every theological colour have pinned their hopes to the “church-growth movement” inasmuch as denominations are getting desperate for warm bodies. The new man/woman, however, does not traffic in this. The new man/woman bears witness, in word and deed, to the person, presence and promise of Jesus Christ. We are confident that Jesus Christ will, in his own way, own that witness to him which his people render him. Because he will own it the truth of the gospel will penetrate the head and heart of the most self-preoccupied secularite. Because our confidence in our Lord’s promise is unshakable we forswear any and all techniques which merely manipulate people, even as we fend off any and all temptations to doubt, discouragement and despair.
Baptism is a public declaration that the “old” man or woman, the person who blindly assumes that the world’s game is the only way to live and therefore tries to exploit the world’s game for profit; this person has been drowned, is now appropriately buried, and has given way to the new person who walks henceforth in newness of life.
(C) Baptism means something more. Everywhere in the New Testament baptism is public commissioning for Christian service. The service to which all Christians are commissioned is of the same nature as the servanthood of Jesus Christ himself. When Jesus was baptized the word which was heard from on high appeared simple enough: “Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased.” It appeared simple but in fact was revolutionary, in that it brought together two matters which had never been found together before. “Thou art my beloved son” comes from Psalm 2. It is God’s appointment of the king, the royal ruler, the one possessed of genuine authority. The words, “With thee I am well pleased”, come from Isaiah 42. This pronouncement is God’s approval of the servant of the Lord, more commonly known as “the suffering servant”. We read about the suffering servant at least once per year, on Good Friday. “He was despised and rejected by men…and we esteemed him not.”
At his baptism, when Jesus heard both pronouncements, he knew that his kingly authority was to be exercised through a servanthood which entailed hardship and sacrifice and social rejection.
That ministry to which all Christians are commissioned is a ministry of service, not domination. It’s a ministry of self-forgetfulness, not personal advantage. It may even entail social rejection rather than public congratulation. Every time someone is baptized, that person is being commissioned to a ministry which is one with the ministry of Jesus Christ himself. Such a ministry will unquestionably be effective as surely as it will invariably entail hardship and sacrifice.
(D) Baptism means one last thing. It means solidarity with all Christians everywhere; it means oneness with Christians throughout the world. In a word, it means that we have more in common with fellow-believers in Sri Lanka and Thailand, Ukraine and Uganda, than we have with non-Christians two blocks away. To be sure, the Christian in Thailand speaks a different language, is marked by different skin-pigmentation, knows different customs, eats different food, wears different clothing; unlike us in so many respects, yet identical with us, ultimately, in all respects. That person and we are followers of the same Lord, are invigorated by the same Spirit, aspire to the same obedience, know the same pardon, and have been appointed to the same future; namely, to praise and enjoy God eternally. However much Christians may differ socially, ethnically, linguistically, historically, what we have in common with each other is so profound and so pervasive that it eclipses our commonality with those Mississaugans who disdain the gospel. Baptism is a public declaration that the most important (because the most profound) linkage in our life is our linkage with fellow-believers throughout the world.
III: — There is one matter to be discussed this morning. What does all this mean when we baptize infants? Let’s be sure we understand this much: no magic is being worked in the child. The child hasn’t suddenly been given an invisible shield which magically protects him against who knows what. Neither has the child been given preferential status before God. Then what are we doing when we baptize infants?
(A) The parents are stating publicly that they want for their child everything of which baptism speaks, everything which we have examined throughout the sermon today. They want it for their child so badly that they are willing to make a public promise to God, a promise to which the congregation will hold them, that they will do everything in their power to foster in their child everything of which baptism speaks. Whatever sacrifice this may entail they will regard as a trifle compared to the riches which their child will know in Christ when the child matures to an age of discretion.
We might think of the service of baptism for infants like a cheque promising riches which is made out to the child. At this moment the parents are holding the cheque in trust. When the child matures the riches will be his/hers, as long as the person to whom the cheque is made out endorses it. They endorse it by entering upon the way of faith and obedience themselves. At this point they own the promises which were made on their behalf, and everything which the promises held out they now subscribe to themselves.
(B) When we baptize infants we are saying as well that we, the congregation, have such confidence in the understanding and integrity of the parents that we suspect neither superstition nor perjury. We are confident the parents mean what they say and say what they mean.
(C) Lastly, when we, the congregation, baptize infants we are declaring our confidence that this congregation is so gospel-possessed that it will most certainly provide the nurture and encouragement needed for Christian development.
In a word, we are saying that we feel we can baptize the child in anticipation of the child’s subsequent discipleship.
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
March 1992
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
1809-1847
Unlike so many composers, superbly gifted people who are unhappy, miserable, depressed, neurotic, sometimes out-and-out psychotic, Mendelssohn was happy. He was cheerful and contented and enthusiastic throughout his entire life, brief as it was. His name — “Felix”, Latin for “happy” — couldn’t have suited him more.
His father’s given name was “Abraham”, and his grandfather’s, “Moses”. Mendelssohn was Jewish. His grandfather, Moses, was an able philosopher much esteemed in academic circles in Germany in spite of the virulent anti-semitism of Frederick the Great. His father, Abraham, used to say, “Formerly I was known as the son of my father; now, as the father of my son.”
Felix himself was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1809. Three years later his mother, Leah Salomon, and his father became members of the Lutheran Church and had their son baptized Christian, adding the name “Bartholdy” in hope of lessening the social penalties of being Jewish.
Felix showed musical promise very early in his life. His mother, a cultured woman (she read English, French, Latin and Greek) was his first piano teacher. She recognized his prodigious talent and next year sent him to Paris for training. He emerged as a “boy-wonder” pianist when he was nine and as a composer at ten. At age eleven he was taken to visit Goethe, Germany’s greatest poet, then seventy-two years old. Immediately the older man recognized the child as his intellectual and creative equal.
At seventeen Mendelssohn composed the overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which composition was deemed thereafter to be as fine a piece of music as he would ever write. Also at seventeen he conducted Bach’s St.Matthew’s Passion. The performance was hailed as one of the glories of German music-making. In the midst of the adulation heaped on him around this event Mendelssohn commented, “And to think that it should be…a Jew who gave back to the people the greatest Christian work.”
By this time Mendelssohn was dazzling music-lovers as a composer, pianist, violinist, violist, and conductor. (Less widely known were his gifts as painter and poet.) When only twenty he stunned English audiences on the first of his ten trips to England. He loved to travel, and since he regarded the sea as the finest of nature’s beauties, a trip to Scotland’s Hebrides inspired the masterpiece, Fingal’s Cave.
Mendelssohn knew he was extraordinarily talented, yet he never flaunted it, always preferring in genuine humility to elevate and encourage those around him. On one occasion, when he was to be the pianist in a piano-cello-violin trio, his music, the music for the piano-part, was missing. Now he didn’t need his music, being able to play his part out of his head. But not wishing to embarrass the cellist and the violinist who needed their music, he placed any music he could find upside down on the piano (so as not to distract him) and then had a friend turn the pages throughout the performance.
A prodigy as a conductor too, Mendelssohn found himself music-master of Dusseldorf and leader of the city’s symphony orchestra. Here he began his first oratorio, St.Paul. Plainly a genius, he was promoted to the world-famous music-position in Leipzig, where he was introduced to Chopin, Schumann, and Schumann’s future wife, Clara (herself a superb pianist).
In 1837 (by now he was twenty-eight) he married Cecile Jeanrenaud, a painter and the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman in Frankfurt. Together Felix and Cecile had five children.
Mendelssohn penned two hundred musical compositions, his violin concerto being acknowledged one of the best. He is regarded as the consummate nineteenth century writer of oratorios. Notwithstanding his German identity, his music is performed more in England to this day than in any other nation.
In 1847, at the age of thirty-eight, he fell ill and died. One year earlier he had written an oratorio specifically for an English audience: Elijah. The inspiration for the oratorio was the Hebrew figure of old, Israel’s greatest prophet.
Elijah
Unlike Mendelssohn, Elijah looms up at us out of nowhere. We know nothing about his parents, his upbringing, his inner or outer life apart from his vocation as prophet.
But what a prophet! The God of fire ignited him again and again. Wherever we come upon Elijah he is aflame. Polish? Subtlety? Social niceties? Soft speech? He was as far from all this as anyone could be. If we can’t understand why he is always and everywhere afire, he can’t understand why we appear not to be lit.
King Ahab, the wickedest king in Israel’s troubled history, decided it would be politically correct and personally advantageous to have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix together Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the holy one of Israel? Why not have the self-indulgence that Baal permits his people and the security that Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication that Baal laughs about and the forgiveness that Yahweh weeps to bestow? Haven’t popular preachers always retained their popularity by telling hearers that we can all have the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?
In a blazing rage Elijah thundered, “No! The holy one of Israel will shortly expose Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that he is. And as for you, Ahab, you are finished. Dogfood, in fact; the scavenger canines that forage in the city streets will lick your blood.” And so they did.
Jewish people always knew that Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, would come back. He would come back at the end-time when the kingdom of God was breaking in on the world; he would come back when what all Israel called the “Age to Come” was dawning as it superimposed itself on what Israel called the “Present Evil Age.”
When our Lord Jesus Christ began his public ministry his detractors taunted him saying, “You can’t be the Messiah; everyone knows that before the Messiah comes, Elijah must return. And Elijah hasn’t been seen for eight hundred years!” “Yes, he has!”, Jesus retorted. “Elijah did come back, recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: John the `dunker’, `dipper’, `ducker’, `soaker’. But make no mistake: Elijah is here. And therefore his word is still operative.”
Paul
Yet another Israelite pointed to our Lord. Whereas Elijah pointed ahead to him, the apostle Paul pointed at him. Paul was unshakably convinced that Jesus Christ is alive, present to our world, present in it, the contemporary who can never become antiquated or obsolete.
Paul came from a sophisticated, well-to-do Jewish family on the north Mediterranean. Unlike Jesus, who grew up in a one-chariot town, Paul grew up in a centre of learning and commerce and culture. He knew Hebrew and Aramaic and Latin and Greek.
Paul’s vocation owes everything to that never-to-be-forgotten encounter on the Damascus road, where the risen Lord knocked him down with the kind of violence that was so foreign to Paul (but so natural to Elijah). Thereafter Paul could no more have denied the intimacy and immediacy and intensity of his life with his Lord than he could have denied that he was alive and breathing. It’s no wonder that he said simply and unselfconsciously to the congregation in Philippi, “Christ means `life’ for me.” The Christ who was indeed `life’ for him was always the crucified Messiah. Unlike so many modern church people who look upon the cross as something that Jesus endured for a few hours on Friday and left behind forever on Sunday, Paul knew that his Lord was raised, to be sure, yet raised as crucified. He knew that the risen one was raised with the marks of his suffering still upon him. He knew that Christ’s resurrection doesn’t mean that Jesus of Nazareth has been elevated beyond suffering and vulnerability and misunderstanding and treachery; he knew instead that Christ’s resurrection means that Jesus of Nazareth has been rendered victorious, triumphant, effective, in the midst of suffering and vulnerability and misunderstanding and treachery. The modern hymnwriter who penned the line, “Rich wounds yet visible above”, captured it perfectly.
Paul knew that only a crucified Messiah could get close enough to fragile people like you and me to help us; and he knew that only a crucified Messiah whose raised and therefore rendered triumphant would be able to help us.
For years the apostle had wanted to get to Rome, the nerve-centre of the empire. Then he had wanted to push beyond Rome into Spain, announcing the gospel where it had never been heard before. He got to Rome but not to Spain. While he was in Rome, under house-arrest, emperor Nero decided to make scapegoats of Christians and blame them for a fire that had devastated a sizeable part of the city. Along with Peter, his fellow-apostle, he died in the savagery Nero unleashed. All his death did was permit him to know what he had anticipated for years: the Christ who was his everything to him in life was richer still in death.
Victor Shepherd
March 1996
Isaac Watts
1674-1748
The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship most
clearly related to heaven; but its performance among us
is the worst on earth. (I.W.)
Watts wrote them superbly, yet he wrote eversomuch more than his 697 hymns. A textbook on logic, for instance, that was used for years at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. Not to mention his two books on geometry and astronomy. Upset at the inability of students to handle the English language creditably, he penned The Art of Reading and Writing English. It was followed by his Philosophical Essays (with its appendix, “A brief Scheme of Ontology”, ontology being that branch of philosophy that discusses being), then by Improvement of the Mind (this was actually a “how-to-study” book, and even A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth. A minister for virtually all of his adult life, Watts also published ten volumes of sermons and scores of theological treatises.
Isaac Watts was born in 1674, the eldest of eight children, six of whom survived. The last quarter of the 17th century was a troubled time in England. Dissenters (those who refused to conform to the established church) were not only denied access to suitable employment and the universities; Dissenters were liable to prosecution and imprisonment for no greater “crime” than persisting in worshipping God according to their conscience. Watts’s father, a Dissenter, was imprisoned one year after he was married. His wife, Watts’s mother, gave birth to Isaac while her husband was in jail. She regularly nursed her infant son on the jail steps in the course of visiting her husband. (When Isaac was nine years old his father was jailed a second time — for six months — for the same offence: refusing to conform to the worship-practices of the established church.)
Young Isaac was plainly precocious. He had learned Latin by age four, Greek at nine, French at eleven, and Hebrew at thirteen. French was not usually studied in English elementary schools during the 1600s, but Watts was raised in Southampton, and Southampton was a city of refuge to hundreds of refugees who were fleeing persecution in France. The youngster thought he should know French so that he could converse with his neighbours.
A physician recognized the boy’s intellectual gifts and offered to finance his education at either Oxford or Cambridge. But regardless of his brilliance Watts would be admitted to either university only if he were willing to renounce Dissent and conform to Anglicanism. He wasn’t willing. (Had his father suffered for nothing?) He would never surrender conviction to expediency. As a result he went to a Dissenting Academy, the post-secondary institution for those barred from the universities. While completing his formal education Watts wrote much poetry, most of it in Latin. Upon leaving the Academy at age 20 he wrote his first hymn, “Behold the Glories of the Lamb” — yet did so only when challenged sharply by his father.
The writing of his first hymn was significant in view of the fact that hymns weren’t sung in English churches. German Lutherans had been singing hymns for over 100 years. Calvinists in Switzerland and France, however, had not. The Calvinists disdained hymns as unscriptural and popish. Calvin had wanted his people to sing only the psalms of scripture. English Protestants of Calvinist parentage had adopted the practice of singing only metrical psalms in worship. The texts of these metrical psalms were poetically crude and frequently ludicrous; for instance,
Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
Your Master’s praises spout,
Up from the sands ye coddlings peep,
And wag your tails about.
The texts were ludicrous, the mood was ponderous, the tone of the entire service dreary, and one day Watts discovered he couldn’t endure any of it a minute longer. Returning from the service one Sunday morning he complained vehemently to his father about the psalm-singing that put people off worship. “Why don’t you write a hymn suitable for congregational singing?”, his father retorted. In the course of the afternoon Watts did just that, and the congregation sang hymn #1 the same evening.
Yet it must not be thought that Watts disesteemed the psalms. Far from it. So highly did he value them, in fact, that he immediately set about rewriting the metrical versions in a smoother idiom. Compare the metrical version of Psalm 20 with Watts’s version:
In chariots some put confidence,
Some horses trust upon;
But we remember will the name
Of our Lord God alone. (Metrical)Some trust in horses train’d for war,
And some of chariots make their boasts;
Our surest expectations are
From Thee, the Lord of heav’nly hosts. (Watts)
(As relatively smooth as Watts’s hymn-line was, it would be made even smoother by 18th century poets such as Charles Wesley.)
Not everyone thanked Watts for his efforts. Some of his contemporaries complained that his hymns were “too worldly” for the church. One critic fumed, “Christian congregations have shut out divinely inspired psalms and have taken in Watts’s flights of fancy!” His hymns outraged many people, split congregations (most notably the congregation whose pastor, years earlier, had been John Bunyan, himself the author of an English classic), and got pastors fired. Still, Watts knew what his preeminent gift was and why he had to employ it.
Needless to say we of Streetsville United Church, having been thoroughly exposed to the genius of Charles Wesley, cannot help comparing the hymnwriting of Wesley and Watts.
Wesley’s hymns concern themselves chiefly with God and the individual human heart: their relations, their estrangement, their reconciliation, their union. Watts writes of this too, but with a major difference: the backdrop of God’s intercourse with the human heart is the cosmos in its unspeakable vastness. Watts sees the drama of the incarnation and the cross, the dereliction and the resurrection, as apparently small events that are in fact possessed of cosmic significance. Watts’s universe is simply more immense than anything Wesley imagined. For Watts nature is more prodigious, time more extensive, eternity more awesome. (This is not to say that Wesley is inferior. Indeed no one would rate Watts a better poet. Wesley had more poetic skill than Watts, and more thorough training in the forms of classical poetry. It is simply to say that Watts’s universe was larger.) It is said of Milton that he is the English poet who, above all others, makes the reader aware of the sky. In the same way Watts, with his fondness of astronomy, singularly makes the reader aware of the hugeness of the firmament.
There are technical comparisons as well of the poetry of Watts and Wesley. Wesley preferred a six-line stanza, but when writing a four-line stanza usually rhymed first and third lines as well as second and fourth. Watts preferred a four-line stanza and usually rhymed only the second and fourth lines. As a result Watts’s stanzas tend to read less compactly than Wesley’s. While Wesley combined Anglo-Saxon expressions (they are customarily blunt, one-syllable words like “hit”) with Latin expressions (usually multi-syllable words like “transported” or “ineffable”), Watts wrote page after page of hymns lacking even one word with a Latin derivation (despite the scores of Latin poems that he wrote). Watts evidently preferred to write hymns in words of one syllable.
Watts was a man with limitless appreciation of the passion of God. He himself was possessed of the profoundest experience of God. Listen to him:
Here at the cross, my dying God
I lay my soul beneath thy love.*
The mount of danger is the place
Where we shall see surprising grace.*
Turn, turn us, mighty God,
And mould our souls afresh;
Break, sovereign grace, these hearts of stone,
And give us hearts of flesh.
(Note that the last line, “And give us hearts of flesh”, consists of six words of one syllable each.)
Watts was accorded the recognition he deserved. By age 50 he was a national figure, esteemed by Anglicans and Dissenters alike. John Wesley had long acknowledged the genius, discipline and piety of Watts, and when Wesley came to publish his first hymn book, one-third of its hymns were Isaac’s. When John Wesley published his tract, The Doctrine of Original Sin, he incorporated 44 pages of Watts’s earlier work, Ruin and Recovery.
The poetic genius of Watts is evident. Yet since few poets (if any) have made a living from poeticizing, how did Watts manage to survive?
Upon graduating from the Academy Watts eked out a living as tutor to the son of a well-to-do English merchant. He never thought for a moment, however, that this was his vocation. In 1702, when he was 27 years old, he was called to a pastorate in London. The next ten years were spent fruitfully and happily as Watts immersed himself in the relentless round of responsibilities that every pastor must attend to — at the same time as he wrote books, treatises, poems and hymns.
The easygoing ten years were ended abruptly by a major illness from which he never recovered fully. While he was unable to work during his illness he asked the congregation to discontinue his salary. The congregation refused, and instead raised it so that he could pay his medical bills.
The illness incapacitated him for four years. When the worst of it abated he was left frail, fragile, sickly. In addition there was an apparently non-specific psychiatric component to his now-chronic weakness. On the one hand he wasn’t sick enough to die for another 38 years; on the other hand, he wasn’t sickness-free enough to be well. A wealthy benefactor, Thomas Abney, invited him to his home to assist his recovery. He gratefully accepted, and went on to live there for the rest of his life.
Watts preached whenever he could. There were periods when he could preach with little interruption, as well as periods when he was simply deranged and couldn’t function at all.
In 1739, at age 65, Isaac suffered a stroke that left him able to speak but unable to write. A secretary was provided for his dictated poems and hymns.
He died on 25th November, 1748.
Isaac Watts was unusual in many respects. A short man (five feet tall), his frail body was capped with a disproportionately large head. Virtually all portraits of him depict him in a large gown with large folds, an obvious attempt at having him appear less grotesque.
Unusual? How many working pastors write a textbook on logic that is used for decades by the preeminent universities of the English-speaking world?
Unusual? Who among us can write a book on metaphysics that probes ontology, and at the same time write a book of children’s poetry that goes through 95 editions within 100 years of its publication?
Unusual? Who has written hymns that have been translated into dozens of languages from Armenian to Zulu?
Unusual? What modern thinker has published a learned tome on astronomy and also published graded catechisms (one for five-year olds, another for nine-year olds, another for twelve-year olds)?
Watts was unusual: he regularly gave away one-fifth of his income, deploying his tithe locally yet also sending it as far afield as Germany and Georgia to help beleaguered people there.
Yet surely he was most unusual in that the jockey-sized man, ugly as well, handicapped by a thin voice and a history of psychiatric illness, could appear in a pulpit whenever sanity overtook him and draw hundreds who hung on words rising from a heart that hearers knew to be wrapped in the heart of God.
Watts was not unusual in one important respect. Like all Christians he knew that God is to be loved with the mind, and therefore reason must never be discounted in the exercising of faith or the discipline of the Christian life. Yet he knew too that the mystery of God himself, while never irrational, is oceans deeper than reason can fathom. Who among us would say anything else? Then it is proper for us to conclude with a four-line stanza Isaac Watts wrote concerning the fathomless mystery of God.
Where reason fails,
With all her pow’rs,
There faith prevails
And love adores.
Victor A. Shepherd
October 1994
Why Sing?
Ephesians 5: 18-20
I: — Why do we sing hymns at every service of worship? Why do we sing hymns at all? To ask this question is to find ourselves asking another question, “Why sing?” But if “Why sing?”, then also “Why make music? Why dance? Why paint? Why write poetry?”
Let’s begin with the last question. Why write poetry? Wouldn’t prose do as well? No, it would not. Poetry has what prose will never have. There is a density to poetry, a compression, a compactness which prose lacks. There is an immediacy to poetry, an intensity, a passion which prose will never have. Because of the vivid imagery in poetry there is a concreteness to poetry compared to which prose is very abstract. You must have noticed that children do not think abstractly; children think concretely. So do primitive peoples. That’s why poetry comes naturally to children and primitive peoples. Only developed societies use abstract prose. Poetry, like music and dancing, is rooted so deep in the human psyche that it could not be deeper.
Poetry plus music gives us song. We sing inasmuch as our psychic constitution impels us to sing.
And why do we sing hymns? Because God himself has reached into the very deepest depths of our heart. God, after all, is our creator. He has fashioned us in his own image. Luke tells us that all humankind has been made to “feel after” God. In addition, in Jesus Christ God has come upon us, poured himself over us, pressed himself upon us, overwhelmed us and soaked us. Every time he thinks of this St.Paul is startled afresh: “He loved me, and gave himself, for me”. St.John says, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead.” Jeremiah exclaims, “The word of the Lord is like fire in my mouth.” The psalmist cries, “The Lord…delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant!” Mary, mother of Jesus, shouts, “My spirit rejoices in God my saviour”.
Something this profound can find expression only in a vehicle which is deeper than deep. The vehicle is poetry and music together. It is no wonder that we sing.
As the gospel informs us we learn the depth of God’s mercy, the extent of God’s patience, the scope of God’s wisdom. All of this stamps itself upon us as Jesus Christ stamps himself upon us. Not surprisingly, then, our hymns come to have a precise content, a rich substance, a specific theme and thrust. Our hymns articulate more exactly that truth of God which has seized us and now sustains us. It is surely obvious now why we sing hymns, and why we shall always sing them.
II: — What kinds of hymns should we sing? Hymns are divided roughly into two kinds: objective and subjective. Objective hymns sing about God, even sing to God. Subjective hymns sing about us. An objective hymn is “Glory be to God the Father, Glory be to God the Son”. A subjective hymn, “O that will be Glory for me”. Many hymns fall in between, embodying elements of both.
Remember, objective hymns sing about God, his person, his truth, his way with us. Subjective hymns sing about us, our moods, our feelings, our aspirations, our response. Now think about this. The New Testament is of one mind that on Calvary’s cross something was done for us, done on our behalf, done, ultimately, by God himself. What was done for us was done in order that something might also be done in us. The order is important. Scripture always moves from the objective to the subjective, from God to us. St.Peter says compactly, “Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree, in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness”. Ultimately God did something for us in order that God might consequently do something in us.
If I were to ask you to name the best hymn in the English language concerning the cross, which hymn would you select? Many would select, “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross”. But have you ever noticed that this hymn really isn’t about the cross at all. It says nothing about the atonement. It is about the way our attitudes change when we survey the cross. When we. behold the cross we pour contempt on our pride; we count our richest gain but loss; we cease our boasting. These are all appropriate changes of attitude, to be sure. Nevertheless, the hymn is not about what was done for us on Good Friday. The best hymn about what God has effected through the cross, in my opinion, is a Christmas carol: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” Listen to some of the lines:
“Pleased as Man with man to dwell” (an affirmation of the incarnation, the presupposition of the atonement)
“God and sinners reconciled”
“Born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth”
“Light and life to all he brings”.
Let’s sing a stanza or two of each kind of hymn, objective and subjective, to illustrate the difference. The objective hymn is “All hail the power of Jesus’ name”. Note how the music supports the theme of the hymn. The sustained notes stand out just because they are sustained; they support the theme, Crown him Lord of all”. The subjective hymn is “O brother man, fold to thy heart they brother.”
III: — Let me say that there is a place for both kinds of hymns. At the same time we must be careful to retain a proper balance and emphasis. The emphasis has to be on the objective hymn; the balance is that we bracket a subjective hymn by having objective hymns on either side of it. We sang a subjective hymn immediately prior to the sermon today: “Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand.” It is unquestionably subjective: “My sinful self, my only shame, my glory all, the cross.” Yet we began the service with an objective hymn and we shall end with one, as we always do.
Let me tell you of my experience a year or two ago. I was flown to Winnipeg to deliver the annual academic lectures at a bible college. I had never had anything to do with the place; I had never had anything to do with any bible college, and didn’t know what to expect. When I arrived I discovered that the students were not interested in academic lectures at all. Following the lectures I was asked to preach at a chapel service. For the service I selected hymns such as “A safe stronghold our God is still” and “Now thank we all our God”. The students would not sing. They stared at the hymnbook and uttered not a sound. The worship-leader, eager to save the day, jumped in and added half-a-dozen highly subjective ditties of minimal substance and maximal sentiment. Whereupon the students sang with gusto. Do those students think that their consciousness, their feelings are the measure of truth? Do they really want to sing about themselves to the exclusion of singing about God? Do they have more confidence in their own (supposed) piety than they have in the gospel? Do they think their faith is stronger than the Word and grace of God which engendered their faith? I was appalled.
Let me repeat. We should sing subjective hymns, for reasons we shall bring forward in a moment. Yet proper emphasis and balance must be maintained. After all, the gospel did not originate with us; the gospel is the self-disclosure and the self-bestowal of God.
To say that there is a place for subjective hymns is not to say that there is a place for mindless sentimentality. Years ago a hit-parade song had one line repeated endlessly: “All you need is lu-uv, doodely doodely doo”. There is a church equivalent: a ditty which consists principally of one line, and says very little. For instance, “Jesus is my friend/Jesus is my friend/Jesus is my friend/ My very own friend.” In terms of substance it doesn’t come close to the great hymns of the church. It says nothing about who Jesus Christ is, what he does, or what he calls forth from us. It is virtually mindless.
There are subjective hymns, however, which are much better than this; subjective hymns which profoundly gather up and articulate our fears, our guilt, our loneliness, as well as our exhilaration and exclamation — all in the light of the goodness and patience, the truth and triumph of God. These hymns we should sing, and sing every week. For we should be honest about ourselves and give expression to what is going on in our hearts, especially in view of the storms within and the storms without.
Think for a minute about bereavement. While it is not healthy for the bereaved person to be weeping all the time, it is equally unhealthy if the bereaved person never weeps. The person who has suffered enormous loss and yet never has a bad day thereafter is unconsciously denying her grief. What is denied is actually buried, soon festers and eventually causes greater emotional discomfort, distortion and even disability. Hymns which permit us, even encourage us, to express our suffering and sorrow in the light of God’s care are health-giving; they are the vehicle of our outcry to God as we hold up our burden to him.
If a thousand and one stresses are beginning to unravel us it is good to sing, “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto me and rest.'”
When we are newly-acquainted with the bottomless depths of our depravity and we are stunned at how vast a work of restoration remains to be done in us, we shall be glad to sing, “Sin and want we come confessing, Thou canst save and thou canst heal.” When we are feeling abandoned (and who hasn’t felt abandoned) it is good to sing, “O love that wilt not let me go”. When we are so wounded that we are beyond even shedding tears we shall sing, as our foreparents did, “Come ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish”.
In all of this we must never lose sight of one glorious truth: how we feel is no indication of where we are. Believing people are “in Christ”, to use Paul’s favourite expression. Our Lord cherishes and secures us even if we feel we are only minutes away from extinction. We are in Christ, and he will ever bind us securely to him.
A splendid hymn which gathers all of this together is “Jesus, lover of my soul”. Before we sing it I want to say a word about the tune to which the lyrics are set. One tune is in a minor key, the other in a major key. Music in a minor key moves us toward introspection, reflection. Minor-key music is haunting, evocative. Not sentimental in the sense of maudlin, but certainly sober, pensive. I like to sing in minor keys now and then, since there is a place for singing soberly, pensively. At the same time, I am especially pleased when Robin Dalgleish resolves the last chord of a minor-key hymn so that we conclude on a major-key note; our mood then shifts from pensive introspection to affirmation. Let’s sing, “Jesus, lover of my soul”, the first two stanzas in a minor key, the latter two stanzas in a major key.
IV: — You must have noticed that we begin and end every service of worship in Streetsville with objective hymns. When we sing a subjective hymn it is always in the middle. (Remember what I said about emphasis and balance!) Have you ever noticed how the written gospels begin and end? Matthew and Luke begin with the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, Messiah, Saviour and Lord; they end with a narrative of the resurrection. Mark begins with a comment on Christ’s public ministry, and ends with his appearance to startled women. John begins with the foundational Word, with the insistence that the entire creation was made through this Word which became flesh. John ends with the risen one commissioning Peter to feed the flock of God. The written gospels neither begin nor end with people looking in upon themselves, fishing around inside themselves for who knows what. They begin and end with with a ringing declaration of the purpose of God in Christ and the fulfilment of that purpose. Shouldn’t this be the way we begin and end a service of worship?
Look at Paul’s letters. They begin with the apostle’s saying, “Grace and peace”. They end with the very same affirmation. Grace is the faithfulness of God whereby God keeps his promise to be our God and not give up on us. Grace points to God’s mercy-riddled steadfastness. Peace, shalom, is God’s end-time restoration of the creation when everything which contradicts the love of God and the truth of God, everything which harasses God’s people, will be dispelled forever. Every epistle begins and ends with the pronouncement of grace and peace.
What happens in the middle of the epistle? Highly disturbing stuff. In Corinth one parishioner was committing incest and appeared not to be the slightest bit upset about it. Some women in the congregation were dressing like streetwalkers and speaking out with comparable brazenness. Some charismatics were trying to turn the service of worship into an emotional exhibition.
In Galatia some church-members were bent on circumcising everything in sight, thinking that in order to be a Christian you first had to become a Jew. Paul was so angry about this that he boiled over and wrote, “If you are so knife-happy why don’t you go all the way and castrate yourselves?” In Colosse some church folk had decided to go in for asceticism: bizarre diets and silly self-denials, none of which was going to help their discipleship at all.
Nevertheless, at the conclusion of every epistle Paul speaks of grace, and only of grace. In other words, regardless of what silliness is going on in congregational life, however painful the truth he has to tell, however ridiculously some people have skewed the gospel, he concludes it all by commending his people to the faithfulness of their God who has promised never to fail them or forsake them. Isn’t this how we should conclude our service of worship?
V: — This morning it remains for us to hear how we are to sing. We are to sing with the same exuberance, ardour and unselfconsciousness that intoxicated people sing with at a party. Paul noted how many of the townspeople in the city of Ephesus became drunk regularly. He told the Christians in Ephesus that they shouldn’t be filled with fire-water; they should be filled with the Spirit (capital “S”!), “singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.”
Centuries earlier still the psalmist had cried, “Sing praises to God, sing praises.” Isaac Watts, perhaps the best hymnwriter in the English-speaking world, said, “Let those refuse to sing who never knew our God.”
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
October 1993
The Instruments of Worship
TAMBOURINE/TIMBREL God’s deliverance of Israel from soul-destroying slavery in innermost Egypt; God’s rescue of Israel from Pharaoh’s cruelty at the shores of the Red Sea; no event would ever root itself more deeply or fix itself more securely in Israel’s consciousness. To this day Passover is a festival in Jewish homes, a day of rejoicing, frolicking, and even fun-and-games for children.
Miriam, a prophet in Israel, was one of the first to magnify Passover celebrations. She grabbed a tambourine and began to dance. In no time scores of others followed suit. The book of Exodus tells us that “Miriam … took a timbrel in hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam sang to them, `Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea.'”
In Israel of old the tambourine provided the rhythm for dancing. People danced whenever they beheld something magnificent at the hand of God.
When David came home after a major victory over the Philistines people turned out for a ticker-tape parade; as their hero passed before them they danced unselfconsciously.
The unselfconscious dancing of David’s admirers, however, was nothing compared to the unrestrained dancing of David himself a few months later. After their initial defeat, the Philistines regrouped, raided Israel, and carried off the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark being the sign of God’s presence among his people. When David’s men managed to wrest the Ark away from the Philistines and bring it back, David’s elation soared. He danced. The English text says, “He danced.” The Hebrew text, however, says, “He whirled about.” He leapt, he cavorted with greater agility than an acrobat. (David wasn’t into ballroom “gliding”; he had passion!)
Michal, his wife, on the other hand, had none. Michal was Saul’s daughter, a blue-blood, aristocratic. Compared to her David was a vulgar oaf who came from a social class 16 levels below hers. Then why had she married him? He was everybody’s hero. Once she was married, however, she found out that David loved to dance, while she couldn’t dance at all. Michal couldn’t dance for two reasons. One, she had no passion in her; two, the Ark of the Covenant meant nothing to her. (If the Ark had meant something to her, she would have had passion in her.) To be sure, the Ark of the Covenant was only the sign of God’s presence; it was God’s presence that mattered unspeakably. Yet because God mattered supremely to David, the Ark mattered too. But not for Michal. It didn’t matter simply because David’s God mattered less to her. She could never have written, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want… for God’s goodness and mercy will drive my life for as long as I have breath”; she didn’t have it in her. When David wept his heart out over his misadventure with Bathsheba and wrote through his tears, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”, Michal didn’t weep one tear. She didn’t have any in her.
Michal never knew David’s God. For this reason she was deaf to the song in her husband’s heart. Those who are deaf always despise those who dance, don’t they? When David danced and his kilt flew up and the servant-girls snickered at his knickers Michal sneered, “You jerk!” David replied, “What’s your problem? I was dancing before the Lord. Nothing else matters.”
One thousand years later Jesus told a story about a young man who became sick of home; in a few months — poor now, degraded, humiliated — he was homesick; then he was home again. Sick of home, homesick, home. His father threw the biggest party the village had ever seen: a feast, music, dancing.
Shouldn’t we dance when someone dear to us finally bows to God and is restored to the Father and admitted to his household and family? Shouldn’t we dance when we ourselves are the person who is home at last, and home forever?
TRUMPET I want with all my heart to be a pacifist (believe it or not). I am almost “there”, almost a pacifist by conviction, when I happen to see again a film clip of little children huddled on a railway platform anywhere in Europe. Distraught parents are trying to comfort the children, trying so very hard not to let their dread betray the false hope with which they can ease their children for a day or two. As soon as I see once more a film clip of this scene, my pacifism vanishes.
Recently I was discussing the U.S. Civil War with a parishioner. We were talking about the never-before-seen horrors that emerged in the civil war. The new horror was threefold.
One, the machine gun. It cut men down like a scythe. No soldier could escape a weapon that fired hundreds of bullets per minute.
Two, the pre-set artillery fuse. Prior to the civil war artillery shells exploded upon impact with the ground. When the shell exploded, the shrapnel flew upwards and outwards. The safest place to be was flat on the ground. The smart soldier lay down during an artillery barrage and didn’t lift his head so much as one inch. Then the new shell was invented. The shell’s fuse was pre-set to detonate the shell in mid-air, 200 feet above the ground. Now shrapnel hurled down on the soldier. He couldn’t hide. Lying down was no protection at all. And in the civil war, he had no protection for his head. During the fiercest fighting there were 25,000 casualties per day.
Three, the phenomenal increase in psychiatric breakdown. This horror was the result of the first two. In previous wars relatively few soldiers had collapsed psychiatrically. Now they were collapsing in droves. During the civil war psychiatric casualties outnumbered physical casualties three-to-one. Hundreds of thousands of 20 year-old fellows would be deranged for life.
The parishioner with whom I was discussing all of this remarked, “Then there was no justification for the civil war!” Whereupon I told her a story about Abraham Lincoln. One day Lincoln stood with the crowd at a slave-auction in New Orleans. Male slaves were auctioned off at a good price. Then a female slave was led up onto the platform. She was young and healthy and strong; would be useful in the cotton fields. She had a six month-old baby in her arms. A plantation owner said to the auctioneer, “I’ll take the woman — but get rid of the child. The child will only distract the mother from her work.” And so mother and child were separated, never to see each other again. Lincoln returned home and swore he would stop at nothing to overturn this iniquitous practice.
Twenty-five thousand casualties per day; hundreds of thousands of young men deranged for life. Was it worth it? Should we prefer to see a slave-auction with a baby ripped away from its frantic mother?
St.Paul writes in I Corinthians 14, “If the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” I know, the conflicts he had in mind didn’t concern Jewish children in Eastern Europe or black children in North America. Nevertheless, there does come a time when the sound of the trumpet must be distinct lest someone think he has an excuse for not showing up when he should.
The conflict Paul refers to immediately is that spiritual conflict which rages in the heart of every believer. For believers would never agree with Oscar Wilde that the best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. (Yield to it, and the temptation is over!) Jesus sweat in Gethsemane until the sweat poured off him like blood from a forehead gash. Jesus wrestled with the evil one for 40 days in a contest to see who was going to face down whom.
We are called to do as much ourselves. The trumpet must sound a distinctive note — or else the sleepyheads among us might forget there’s a battle to be fought!
In fact there are countless battles to be fought in the name of Christ. Some of them all Christians are called to fight. Other battles only a few Christians are called to fight. (For instance, the few who are extraordinarily gifted intellectually are to meet the intellectual challenges of a world that thinks its self-understanding to be the only understanding possible.) And then there is that one battle that the individual Christian is to fight: the battle against that one besetting sin that the individual alone knows about, surrender to which is unthinkable.
“If the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” The trumpet-note must be as unmistakable as it is undeniable.
HARP Israel was — and is — unreservedly grateful for its release from Egypt. Yet Israel was not so disgusted at Pharaoh as to disdain everything Egyptian. Israel left Egypt with Egypt’s favourite musical instrument, the harp.
Throughout scripture the harp is the instrument of comfort and consolation. When King Saul was overcome by what is spoken of as an “evil spirit”, David helped Saul by playing on his harp. Now the evil spirit that overcame Saul was no small matter: Saul would become suspicious, then agitated, then paranoid, finally murderous. The harp defused his explosiveness and suffused peace throughout him.
Last October, when we honoured Isaac Watts, we learned that Watts wrote not only hundreds of hymns but also many different kinds or classifications of hymns. One classification he referred to as “Hymns of Consolation”. These “Hymns of Consolation” sing not so much about God in his glory as they do about us in our need, us in the comfort God lends us. Two of Watts’s better-known “consolation” hymns are “When I survey the wondrous cross” and “O God, our help in ages past”.
Did Watts write these hymns merely because he thought other people needed them? I think not. I am sure he wrote them also for himself. Watts, we learned last October, was mentally ill episodically. There were long periods when he had to be absent from his pulpit because he was in “different space”; very different space. Plainly he didn’t write hymns when he was ill. When healthier, however, he penned words that will comfort people until the day of our Lord’s appearing relieves them definitively.
I have been a pastor for 25 years. As I am rendered speechless at the “clobbering” life hands people, I am not at all amazed that some people break down; I am amazed that many do not.
The harp has its place. Hymns of consolation have their place. They aren’t the only hymns we should sing; they aren’t the chief hymns we should sing. But we should never be without them.
Think of some of the better-known consolation hymns. For instance, “Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts” — with its fourth stanza, “Our restless spirits yearn for thee, where’er our changeful lot is cast.” And then there is Charles Wesley’s fine hymn, “Jesus, lover of my soul”, with a poignant second stanza:
Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee.
Leave, ah! Leave me not alone;
Still support and comfort me.
And perhaps the most haunting of all, because written out of palpable anguish,
Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish.
Come to, the mercy-seat, fervently kneel.
Here, bring your wounded hearts; here, tell your anguish.
Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal.
The harp has its place.
FLUTE/OBOE/”PIPE” Flute-like instruments (i.e., woodwinds) were used at weddings and funerals, events where people are most touched, most moved.
Let’s think for a minute about weddings. In ancient Israel a wedding was regarded as the most significant human event anyone could share in or witness, as well as the most joyful event. Because a wedding was the most joyful event in Israel, the prophets used the absence of wedding-joy as a vivid picture of national disasters. Whenever the prophets had to wake up the people to the bad times God’s judgement was bringing upon the nation, the prophets horrified the people not by saying that the interest rate was going to rise or the stock market was going to fall; they said, “There shall no more be heard in the land the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.”
Israel of old knew that there is nothing like a wedding, just because there is nothing like marriage. Marriage is the most significant human undertaking anyone can enter upon; it is also the most joyful. A rabbi’s instruction was deemed so important that nothing was allowed to interrupt it; nothing, that is, except a wedding. If a wedding procession wound through the village the rabbi and his students suspended their exploration of the word of God and fell in with the procession. They magnified the wedding-celebration and soaked up the joy surrounding it.
Scripture speaks profoundly of marriage. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife; the two shall be come one, one flesh.” Marriage entails radical exposure to each other, radical vulnerability before each other, radical commitment to each other, radical penetration of each other.
In the Hebrew bible marriage is the commonest metaphor for faith. If marriage is the commonest metaphor for faith, then faith means that God and I, God and you, are radically exposed to each other, radically vulnerable before each other, radically committed to each other; it means we radically penetrate each other, right to the other’s innermost heart.
To be aware of this can only mean that we must consecrate ourselves to God anew.
Victor A. Shepherd
April 1995
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
1756-1791
I: — A French atheist, proud of his atheism, who heard the seven year old concert pianist in Paris exclaimed, “I have seen a miracle.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wasn’t a miracle in the biblical sense of the word; nevertheless, he was a marvel.
Today he couldn’t be exploited and exhibited as he was in his childhood. (After all, today people who are highly unusual physically, for instance, aren’t allowed to be exploited and exhibited in circus side-shows.) Mozart’s father, however, was less wise and therefore less kind. The elder Mozart, himself a composer and violinist of no little ability, quickly recognized that his son was extraordinary. Mozart’s sister, Marianne (five years older), was gifted too. Father Mozart sent the two children on a concert tour that lasted three and a half years. Crowds sat agape as the seven year old boy and his twelve year old sister played two-piano duets breathtakingly. Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, Winterthur, Schaffhausen; at last the concert tour was over and the exhausted children were home again.
Mozart was born 27th January 1756 in the city of Salzburg, Austria, and was named Johannes Chrysostomos Wolfgangus Theophilos Mozart. “Theophilos”, Greek for “lover of God”, was Latinized to “Amadeus”. Thereafter he was known by his last three names, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
His father began instructing him in music theory when he was three. By age four he was playing minuets flawlessly and had composed his first piano concerto. His father looked at his son’s composition and remarked that wonderful as it was on paper, it was so difficult that no one would be able to play it. Whereupon the four year old played it. When he was eight he was asked to accompany a singer in an Italian aria. He had never heard it before. Still, he improvised each repetition by developing it from the previous stanza. When the singer had finished, Mozart kept playing the piece, fully scored, ten times over, each time with a different variation. He would have continued playing in his inner transport and untrammelled spontaneity had not the adults in the room stopped him.
In 1782 Wolfgang married Constanze Weber. His father vehemently opposed the marriage, vowing he would have nothing to do with her; thereafter he treated Constanze contemptuously if he had reason to deal with her at all. Wolfgang, for his part, wrote his father, “I am just beginning to live.” Her life would never be easy. In six of her nine years of marriage she would be either pregnant or recovering. (The longest interval between pregnancies was seventeen months; the shortest (twice), six months.) In 1789 she was bedridden for weeks with fever, severe nausea, and lameness. The pseudo-medical treatment prescribed for her was to bathe her feet in water in which the entrails of an animal had been boiled. The child she was carrying died at birth. Throughout her life she lacked everyday wisdom, homespun “horse sense”. Despite her appalling lack of worldly wisdom and her relentless suffering, Constanze remained uncomplaining.
The young husband and wife were happy. They were both silly, frivolous, and financially unteachable, apparently a perfect match. They moved twelve times in their nine years of marriage, house-rent being one of the financial items they could never quite manage.
In the social pecking order of eighteenth century Europe musicians were generally disdained, being one step (but only one) above the bricklayer or stonemason or blacksmith; certainly nowhere near the gentry, let alone the nobility. Constanze belonged to the same social class and knew it. She and Wolfgang never strove to leave it. Whereas Beethoven was socially ambitious and committed notable social blunders in his zeal for social climbing, Mozart didn’t blunder in that he scorned the game; he never cared a fig for ingratiating himself with social superiors.
In some respects he never grew up. Emotional immaturity was as natural to him as musical sophistication. On one occasion he was practising the piano in an auditorium when he suddenly took note of the silence of those who had come to hear him rehearse as they hung on every note. He thought these people entirely too serious, entirely too adulatory; after all, he was only practising. Whereupon he jumped up on the back of a seat and capered around the room from seat-back to seat-back, all the while meowing like a cat.
Despite the people who recognized his gifts, and despite his fondness for partying, Mozart was so very isolated that it hurts even to read of it. Other musicians envied him and shunned him. Salieri, a court-composer of vastly less ability, plotted intrigues to ensure Wolfgang’s non-recognition. As has already been mentioned, his father detested Constanze. (Later she burned every letter the older man had sent to his son.) His sister, not wishing to alienate her father, took the father’s side and was barely civil to Constanze.
So lonely was Mozart that his heart leapt when he found recognition and affirmation in a bird. He was passing a pet shop in Salzburg when he heard a bird chirping a few notes from one of his piano sonatas. Now only recently he had decided to attempt a measure of financial responsibility by writing each expenditure in a notebook, hoping thereby to see exactly where his money was going and get himself and his wife beyond their pecuniary precariousness. The notebook shows careful entries of small sums for pencils or buttons or food; then a huge entry for the bird. Mozart had done it again: bankrupted himself unthinkingly, recent resolution thrown to the wind, as he knew he had to have this bird. Having dutifully jotted the purchase price in his notebook, he wrote down the musical notes he heard the bird chirp, commenting that the bird did not sing a G-sharp and several grace-notes. Underneath all of this he penned, “Das war schoen” — “That was beautiful.” The bird lived three years. When it died he mourned it as he was to mourn little else.
A talent as rich as his would always ensure isolation. His music pioneered new harmonies. His grasp of counterpoint left people gasping. (Counterpoint is the art of writing two different melodies in the one piece of music.) Whereas many composer/performers wrote a few piano or violin pieces and then took them on the concert tour, playing them over and over to different audiences in different cities, Mozart found that the more he performed the more he was inspired to write. As a result he frequently wrote new sonatas and concertos for each performance on a concert tour. When he did repeat a piano item with orchestral accompaniment, the orchestra, of course, played the music he had scored for it. Mozart himself, however, played what he had written for himself the first night only; from the second night on he improvised, composing on the spot, nothing written at all, his on-the-spot creation fitting perfectly into the orchestral score. Each night there was the same orchestral accompaniment but a brand new piano rendition, never heard before, and never to be heard again, since nothing was written and nothing recorded.
Unlike Rachminoff who had huge hands, Mozart’s hands, like his body, were small. So dextrous were they nonetheless that they caused the most difficult passages to resemble “flowing oil”, in the words of the little man himself. At the same time, his wonderfully able hands were useless for virtually everything else. And yet at the dinner table his wife customarily cut up his meat, a knife and fork being too difficult for him to coordinate.
On one occasion he asked a fellow-composer if he could look over the latter’s new symphony. The man refused to let Mozart see it. Whereupon our friend went to a concert hall where it was being performed, heard it once, returned home and wrote out every note for every instrument.
Despite his financial disasters and his isolation at the hands of the musical fraternity he never lost his confidence. In fact he was self-assured in a way that others found off-putting. When the Austrian emperor, no less, remarked that an aria had too many notes in it, Mozart replied (to the emperor), “…there are just as many notes in it as there ought to be.” (Wolfgang, remember, wasn’t a social climber.)
Most composers created music at the point of a pencil, writing and erasing over and over until they got down what they wanted. Mozart, however, created exclusively in his head; then he wrote it all out once, once only, never erasing a note. Not surprisingly, he found the writing of music mechanical drudgery and a bore. When asked about his musical inspiration and his manner of composing he remarked that he had very little to say about it. “Travelling in a carriage, walking after a good meal, during the night when I can’t sleep; it’s on such occasions that my ideas flow best and flow most abundantly. Whence and how they come I know not; nor can I force them…. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once.” As soon as he had heard the full orchestra in his head at once, all that remained to be done, he liked to say, was mere scribbling.
There was no form of music which he didn’t write superbly. Symphonies, quartets, trios; piano, violin, cello, clarinet and trumpet concertos; operas, church music. Indeed it was as church musician that he acquired what he had long wanted: a job with a salary and therefore a regular income. As Master of the Chapel in Salzburg he wrote music for the Sunday services. He and the archbishop, however, could not get along. Their relationship worsened until in May, 1780, having had the long-awaited steady job for a year and four months, he was fired.
While our soloist is singing Mozart’s church music today and the congregation a hymn-tune, relatively little of his church music is sung in Protestant worship. His church music is largely the musical setting for the Roman Catholic mass. Furthermore, the Protestantism Mozart was exposed to was exceedingly dilute. The rich gospel of the Reformation, addressed to the entire person, had given way to a dry, cold, mental abstraction, little more than an intellectual parlour game employing a religious vocabulary. It led Mozart to comment that Protestant Christianity was a head-trip that left people unmoved, inert.
Another critical observation was even more telling. The Lutheran recovery of the biblical truth of justification — namely, that God justifies sinners or puts them in the right with himself as they seize in faith the crucified one whom God has given as provision for sinners — this glorious dimension of the gospel was distorted and diluted until “justification” was nothing more than the thinnest coat of whitewash applied to sin, which sin was deemed only skin-deep and didn’t matter anyway. For this reason Mozart commented that Protestants rarely understood the core of the Roman mass, “O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world.”
His poverty worsened. In order to earn money he gave piano lessons to the children of aristocrats, virtually all of whom were without musical talent. One fellow, however, pleaded with him for lessons, and Mozart recognized enormous talent in the youngster; but Mozart’s father was dying and he felt he couldn’t spare the time or the concentration which so promising a pupil needed. He declined to take on this one outstanding student. The student’s name was Beethoven.
Wolfgang began selling as much as he could part with. His long, green velvet coat with the flared skirt, plus his red velvet coat (his favourite), even his viola — he sold them all, his viola fetching only a few dollars. Between major compositions he dashed off little ditties, tunes for what had become the new rage in Austria, mechanical music boxes with revolving metal cylinders. These music boxes sat on a woman’s dresser and tinkled a tune while she brushed her hair. Surprisingly, he was well paid for these. Still, he was so far in debt that he was beyond help.
By now he was not only poor but sick. His illness worsened rapidly. In the last year of his life, knowing himself in a race against death (as he often said), he produced a torrent of glorious music. At the same time, with only months left to him, he performed 20 two-hour piano concerts in four weeks. Very ill now, he wrote to a friend in England, “I go on writing because composition tires me less than resting.” A stranger commissioned him to write a Requiem. He put the finishing touches to his last opera, The Magic Flute, and began work on his final piece of church music. Sick unto death, he summoned three men who sat with him for several afternoons while he hummed the parts and dictated the score. When he whispered to Constanze, “I have the taste of death on my tongue”, she summoned a priest. He died at 1:00 o’clock in the morning, 5th December 1791, aged thirty-five, and was buried in a pauper’s grave, unmarked.
His debts were massive. The emperor sponsored a benefit concert for Constanze, as did his old friend Haydn, and the money gave her a small monthly pension. Her health improved now, and she lived until she was seventy-nine. Whereupon she was buried in the grave of the man who had afflicted her for years and whose letters she had burned, her husband’s father.
Mozart’s life was short. His published works number six hundred and twenty-six. We shall never know how much more music he wrote which his elbow knocked onto the floor and a broom later swept up. And of course we shall never hear the music he played but never wrote.
Music-experts regard him as the most gifted composer ever. Leonard Bernstein, American composer, conductor and pianist, maintains that compared to other outstanding composers Mozart resembles a deity who kissed the earthy briefly and then departed.
This little deity, however, was humble too. All his life Mozart was especially fond of people below his social station. He loved to play for sick, elderly people in nursing homes. “The unlearned will appreciate my music without knowing why”, he commented. They did. They do. And they always will.
II: — Why are we honouring Mozart today in a service of worship? Music isn’t the Word of God. To cherish Mozart’s gift isn’t to relish the gospel. Then why do we bother with him at Sunday worship?
(i) In the first place, while music is not the gospel it does assist us in our praise of God. Architecture also assists us in our praise of God. Sunday by Sunday we worship God in this building. It cost much to build and it costs much to maintain. Yet we continue to maintain it and gather within it inasmuch as it facilitates our worship of God. Music does as much.
It always has. Our Hebrew foreparents knew this. They used the flute at weddings and funerals; in other words, the flute was used in services of worship which had to do with the extremes of elevated joy or piercing grief. The tambourine was used in conjunction with dancing, and was always associated with gladness. The trumpet was used to remind the people of God’s summons to spiritual conflict.
We sing here Sunday by Sunday just because singing expresses a devotion, an ardour, a response of the heart so deep that merely spoken words can’t do justice to it. The lyrics of our hymns are poetry. But we don’t stand and recite poetry together week after week; we sing it. Poetry which is sung comes from depths in us even deeper than poetry which is said. Music assists us in our praise of God. This being the case, it’s only fitting that we recognize someone who was musically gifted above all others.
(ii) In the second place Mozart’s music is known for its structure, its order. The order of his music reminds us that our world remains ordered by God’s providence and God’s mercy. To be sure, in the wake of the Fall the world is disordered; not superficially disordered, but profoundly disordered. Sunday by Sunday worshippers hear me illustrate and analyse the world’s disorder and also hear me point, I trust, to its recovery in Jesus Christ. Disordered as the world is, however, it’s never as disordered as it could be. It’s never disordered entirely. If it were, existence would be impossible.
Everyone knows that life is impossible amidst chaos. A completely chaotic world would be an uninhabitable world. Scripture insists over and over that humankind’s wickedness imparts an element of chaos into human existence. Then as one generation’s wickedness is added to another’s, why doesn’t chaos mount until it overtakes us and life becomes impossible? Because God himself, in his goodness and patience and mercy, constantly keeps chaos at bay as he preserves order enough to let us live.
The Hebrew mind always thinks concretely. When it thinks of chaos it envisages water, torrents of water, both coming down from above and welling up from below. When the two waters meet, chaos overtakes the world and life is impossible. It is the testimony of scripture that God, by his goodness, patience and mercy, holds the “waters” back and preserves order, order enough to let us live and work.
When I hear Mozart’s music, with its marvellous structure, its exquisite order, I know it to be a reflection of that order by which God preserves the world in his mercy. However fallen the world is, however tarnished, weakened and vicious it might be, it is never this entirely; if the world were this entirely, it would no longer be good. But God created it good and pronounced it good. Its goodness remains even in the wake of the Fall, for otherwise it couldn’t be the theatre of God’s glory.
Mozart’s music embodies an order, intricately worked out, subtle to be sure, yet always balanced and elemental. His music is a token of that order by which God preserves a world which, if left to itself, could only collapse into chaos. World? Your life and mine: left to itself, without God’s preservation — it too could only collapse into chaos.
(iii) Lastly, Mozart’s music is to be received with thanksgiving simply because it’s a thing of beauty. Beauty is a gift of God. Not the gift (Jesus Christ, with all that he does for us and in us, is the gift); but a gift nonetheless, and a glorious gift.
Think for a minute of the Lord’s Prayer. We are commanded to pray for daily bread. Daily bread is not the bread of life. (Our Lord is this.) But to say that daily bread isn’t the bread of life isn’t to say that daily bread is unimportant. Indeed, so important is daily bread that we can’t live without it, and must ask God for it without ceasing.
Just as bread is food for the stomach so music is food for the mind and heart. Music too is a kind of “bread” that humankind needs and for which we are to thank God.
Do you ever think about the cloak which our Lord wore? It wasn’t a potato sack. It was beautiful, so beautiful that the soldiers who stripped him didn’t throw it aside. Instead they gambled for it, each one wanting to be the lucky fellow to take it home.
Do you recall what Mozart wrote in his notebook about the bird that could chirp a few notes of his music? “That was beautiful.” How much more beautiful was the gift of the man whose piano-playing resembled “flowing oil” and whose compositions are without peer.
At one point Mozart’s father, exasperated with his son, wrote to Wolfgang, “It’s always too much or too little with you, never the middle of the road.” The older man was correct on one thing: for Wolfgang it was never the middle of the road. But he was wrong when he said that with Wolfgang Amadeus it was always either too much or too little. It was certainly never too little. Then was it ever too much? There can’t be too much of Mozart’s gift.
There can’t be too much of the gift; there can’t be too much of the love our Lord poured out upon us at the cross and continues to pour out. There can’t be too much of the love we must pour out upon him and upon one another. Love, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself, is always a spendthrift.
Victor Shepherd Updated July 2014
Remembrance Day
Of Enemies, Violence, Sacrifice
and
Life’s Crosses
2nd Samuel 23:13-17
James 4:1-10
John 2:13-22
I: — For years I have arrived at church on Remembrance Day Sunday with my heart in my mouth. For years I have wondered what this service says to people of recent German ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? To be sure, we in Schomberg are orthodox enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone — without exception — “is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding.” (Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation, one people in particular are extraordinarily deceitful, uniquely corrupt and thoroughly un-understandable?
The century just concluded, the twentieth century, has found Germany our enemy and France our ally in two major wars. But it hasn’t always been like this. One-and one-half centuries ago the situation was reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.
Think of the United States . We Canadians have been allies of the U.S.A. for decades, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies; there were slaughters in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive stone fortress in Quebec City , was constructed in the 1800s to protect you and me against the Americans. As soon as the American civil war ended Canadians were nervous lest the victorious Union army, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, decide it might as well turn north and make a clean sweep. From 1900 on the British and American navies vied with each other for superiority just in case the two countries went to war. In the year 1900 there was a celebration for Queen Victoria , and 2,500 British warships were on display for it in British waters. (Not included, of course, were British warships patrolling the high seas. And all of this in a country the size of a postage stamp.) The U.S.A. was determined to develop a navy that could conquer the Royal Navy. And in fact the U.S.A. had on file in Washington as late as 1932 plans for war against Great Britain .
Speaking of the Americans, when Rene Levesque became premier of Quebec in 1976 he began talking about claiming sovereignty over the St. Lawrence Seaway; he talked about reducing exports of hydroelectric power to the United States ; he talked about cozying up to Castro in Cuba . The Americans didn’t say anything about this; they merely did something. They immediately stationed one entire division (10,000 men) of light infantry opposite Kingston in upstate New York , so that these 10,000 soldiers could move quickly to Ottawa and Montreal in case Quebec refused to respect American interests. At the same time the CIA, America ‘s intelligence force, quietly slipped hundreds of French-speaking operatives into the province of Quebec . America wasn’t our ally in the 19th century; it was in the 20th century; I hope it will remain our ally in the 21st.
The expression “concentration camp” has been especially ugly in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? The British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa . The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps, we should note (principally through disease), than they suffered through enemy fire.
Jeremiah is correct. The corruption of the human heart is universal.
Nonetheless, while all hearts are corrupt, there do occur in history extraordinary concentrations of evil that are to be resisted at any cost. We cannot use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular concentration of evil. Naziism was such a concentration.
II: — It goes without saying that to approve armed resistance to an evil like Naziism is to approve violence. Those people who say they are opposed to violence in principle, opposed to violence of any kind, for any reason, must therefore approve non-resistance (at least non-armed resistance) to Naziism. Those people are therefore pacifists.
The tradition of Christian pacifism is long and noble. Many pacifists have suffered terribly for their conviction. There is much about them that appeals to me. I too want to be a pacifist. I am almost a pacifist by conviction — until I see once again a photograph or film footage of little children, four to twelve years old, tightly huddled on a railway platform in eastern Europe or Holland or France . Their parents are frantic. The children are waiting for a freight train — waterless, toiletless, near-airless — that will take them to an extermination site. In a few days they will not be gassed and their remains burnt (the fate of their parents); in a few days these children will be burnt alive. At this point my pacifism evaporates. No longer a pacifist myself in the face of such a hideous spectacle, I have difficulty understanding how anyone else can be.
Please don’t think that because I can’t approve of pacifism in principle I therefore approve of violence in principle. I don’t approve of wanton violence, gratuitous violence, violence for the sake of violence. To approve of violence in principle is to approve the sort of Nazi depredation we rightly deem reprehensible.
At the same time, we should be honest and admit that violence is another word for coercive power, and everyone exercises coercive power in some form every day. If everyone exercises coercive power, then everyone is violent.
When I speak of coercive power I mean that we impose our will on someone else who is unwilling. To impose our will on the unwilling is to coerce them; to coerce them is to violate them.
When the police officer arrests the criminal suspect at gunpoint the police officer is imposing his will on someone who is unwilling. He is coercing the suspect. The police officer with a revolver in her hand exercises the same coercive power as the bank robber with a revolver in his hand. The bank robber is coercing the bank teller; the police officer is coercing the suspect. But both are coercing. Both are imposing their will upon the unwilling.
When the judge sends the convicted person to prison he is imposing society’s will upon the unwilling. Violence has been done. Imprisonment, necessary to be sure, nevertheless remains a horrible form of violence.
When the parent says to her child, “No, you aren’t going to the overnight party. I don’t want to hear any more about it. One more word from you and you won’t go anywhere this weekend”; when the parent says this she is coercing the child. It’s impossible to pretend anything else.
When the dangerously deranged person is sedated and whisked off to the provincial hospital he isn’t asked if he’d like to go. He is strong-armed off to the hospital. The school principal about to suspend the pupil for striking a teacher doesn’t first ask the pupil and her parents if they agree with the suspension. The pupil and her parents are unwilling with respect to the suspension? Too bad. Their will is going to be violated (as it should be).
Someone like Gandhi is often held up as a model of non-violence. I don’t think for a minute that Gandhi believed in non-violence in principle. Gandhi used non-violence as a technique whenever he thought it would be effective; he disregarded non-violence whenever he thought it wouldn’t. If Gandhi had frontally opposed British military forces in India , he and his followers would have been decimated. Therefore he didn’t oppose British military force with whatever military force he could muster. Instead he deployed non-violence as a technique (always assuming, of course, the British tradition of justice, and always assuming that British military might — i.e., violence — would protect him and his followers in their protest against the British.) Gandhi used non-violence against the British in order to establish the oppressive power (violence) of the Indian state.
We can’t pretend that our Lord was less than violent the day he cleaned out the big church in Jerusalem . John tells us that Jesus made a whip out of leather cords. How long did it take him to gather up the cords? How long did it then take him to braid the whip? Plainly, our Lord’s violence was premeditated. He didn’t lose his temper in a flash; he didn’t lose his temper at all. He planned what he was going to do; his violence was premeditated, deliberate.
This story is rooted firmly in the gospel tradition. Every written gospel mentions it. John puts it at the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, thereby having it set the tone for his public ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke put it at the end of his public ministry (just prior to the cross), thereby making it the climax of his public ministry.
In any case every gospel-writer understands the incident to be crucial. Jesus was not a devotee of non-violence. This shouldn’t surprise us. There is no one who is utterly non-violent. Even the pacifist punishes her misbehaving child; and punishment of any kind is coercion, the imposition of someone’s will upon the unwilling, and therefore a form of violence.
III: — Then wisdom is needed, much wisdom, if we are to forego the illusion that all violence is avoidable and forego as well the wickedness that any violence is acceptable.
Think of our Lord once again. He doesn’t hesitate to act violently when he is exposed to injustice and exploitation. He arrives at the temple (which he loves) only to find devout worshippers being “fleeced”. They are defenceless people. The animal they have brought to the service (or purchased locally for the service) must be blemish-free. The temple authorities, in league with the sellers, pronounce the animals unsuitable. The authorities tell the worshippers the only blemish-free animals are those that the sellers inside the temple are selling. It so happens that these animals cost fifteen times the market price.
The worshippers were financially poor – and were swindled unconscionably. They were devout — and their devotion was exploited shamelessly. When Jesus saw defenceless people being duped and exploited; when he saw poor people rendered poorer still, he became violent on their behalf.
Yet when Jesus is victimized himself, he doesn’t become violent on his own behalf. Concerning himself he exercises not violence but self-renunciation. When his victimizers are nailing him to the wood he will only intercede for them, “Father, forgive them; they don’t even know what they are doing.”
Self-renunciation is sacrifice. To renounce oneself is to give oneself up, to sacrifice oneself. To renounce oneself is to absorb violence, and in absorbing it, to learn that there is a cross at the heart of life. Christians believe that the crosses everywhere in life are to be picked up and shouldered willingly, gladly, even cheerfully.
Several years ago a well-known leader in the British Methodist Church , Rev. Scott Lidgett, objected to the attention and adulation heaped on a very popular preacher and able psychologist, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead. On one occasion when his heart was especially twisted Scott Lidgett said publicly of Weatherhead, “We are not interested in stars that scintillate but do not illumine.” It was a vicious remark. What did Weatherhead do? He absorbed it. When I say he absorbed it I don’t mean that he gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to retaliate. I mean he never let the remark impair his relationship with Lidgett; he never let the remark curdle his spirit. The remark was simply absorbed and therein neutralized. But we should never underestimate the sacrifice involved in such renunciation.
A year or two ago my mother was reading the newspaper obituary column when she came upon the name of one her former office-colleagues. My mother told me (again) about her late colleague. The woman and her husband had had a child born with spina bifida. The child had to be turned every hour. The woman and her husband took turns getting up in the night, hour-on, hour-off, to turn their son. They did this for thirty years. Having had her sleep interrupted frequently during the night, every night, the woman would come to work in the morning and cheerfully set about the day’s tasks, never once complaining about her lot or suggesting that she and her husband were hard done-by. What kind of self-renunciation is involved here? There is a cross at the heart of life.
A man in one of my former congregations was at worship every Sunday, diligent in his responsibilities on the official board, and enthusiastic at the weekly bible study Maureen and I had in the manse. He and his wife had married in their mid-twenties. Shortly after they married, his wife began behaving oddly, and soon was diagnosed schizophrenic. After that she had good days, bad days, and terrible days. On her worst days she abused her husband. When this fellow was having an especially difficult time he would talk with me. At the end of every conversation he would tell me he was feeling better and could go on caring for his wife (in every sense of “care for”). “I made a promise on our wedding day”, he told me often; “I made a promise to her.” Some promises entail enormous sacrifice, nothing less than a cross.
Our Lord made a promise too. (The bible calls it a covenant.) Our Lord made a promise to all humankind. His promise kept meant self-renunciation for him, self-renunciation so extreme as to end in a dereliction, a forsakenness that is unique.
The truth is, self-renunciation worthy of the name, anywhere in life, is never less than a cross. We should never pretend anything else.
IV: — Today is Remembrance Day Sunday. It is not a day in which we gloat over the superiority of some nations while despising the inferiority of others. Neither is it a day when we boast of violence in principle.
But it is a day when we understand soberly that violence and non-violence are not the simple alternatives that we have been taught. Violence is the exercise of coercion, and coercion is a household commodity: everybody exercises some form of it every day, even must exercise some form of it. The question we must ponder today is, “What kind of coercion (violence) are we to exercise? When? Where? Why? How?”
On Remembrance Day we recall the example of our Lord in the violence he chose to exercise and the violence he chose to absorb. We who are his people must come to the same understanding and make the same self-renunciation. For there is a cross at the heart of life, and therefore a cross everywhere in life. And such a cross God has promised to honour in such a manner that it will redound to his praise even as it eases the distress of us his creatures.
Victor Shepherd
November 2005
Of War and Peace
Jeremiah 6:14
Romans 12:18
Hebrews 12:14
Matthew 5:9
I: — I have seen the veterans weep as young people belittled, even despised, their service and sacrifice. I have seen veterans rage as people too young to have faced war taunted them with “war-monger,” “killer.” I understand why the veterans weep and rage. I remember what they have told me.
I sat with one such veteran the night his fifteen-year old son was decapitated in an automobile accident. The man was shaking uncontrollably, dry-mouthed, beside himself. “I haven’t felt like this since D-Day,” he told me. What does this tell us about D-Day? Anyone whose fifteen-year old son is killed is scarred for life. Plainly anyone who survived D-Day is scarred for life.
I have long known a clergyman who served on a warship in the Royal Navy throughout World War II. To this day he sits up in bed from time-to-time, terrified, screaming, “My life-jacket; I can’t find my life-jacket.” His wife awakens him and makes him a cup of tea. Together they sit and sip and wait for the sun to rise.
The man is shell-shocked. He’s also irked. He’s irked because when he returned to England after the war his former chums, all of whom had been conscientious objectors, told him he was a cold-blooded killer. They told him this from the pinnacle of their business careers. Since many young men were in the forces during the war, those who weren’t rose extraordinarily quickly in the business world. My friend’s business career, of course, had been stalled for six years. He told his chums that had Britain been invaded (certainly this was Hitler’s intention) they would have had no business career at all – or much of anything else. But they only scoffed at him.
At the conclusion of World War II there were hundreds of airmen who had been burnt horribly. For the most part they had been Spitfire pilots. The Spitfire aircraft, so crucial in the Battle of Britain, had its fuel tank behind the flier. The fuel line ran through the cockpit to the engine in front of the flier. When the aircraft was hit and caught fire, in three seconds the heat in the cockpit was so intense that the flesh melted off the flier’s face. Those men would never have their faces restored. What sacrifice would these men continue to make for the rest of their lives? After all, how many women are going to marry a face they can’t kiss?
Those who scorn the service and sacrifice of veterans even defame them, forget one thing. They forget that they have the freedom to publicize their opinion only because those they are defaming paid the dearest price to guarantee them that freedom.
II: — Don’t think I’m glorifying war. I’m not. I repudiate utterly the outlook of General George Patton who said, “War is humankind’s noblest endeavour. Our humanness is never so rich, our character never so pure, as when we are waging war.” General Sherman, a Union officer in the American Civil War, was far closer to the truth when he announced, “War is hell.”
The greatest military leader in scripture is Joshua. He won many battles. Yet the bible never boasts of them. Why not? Because Israelite conviction shuns war. The Hebrew prophets refuse to sanctify war. Hebrew poets refuse to romanticize war. In his farewell address to his people, Joshua , Israel ’s greatest soldier makes no mention of his military triumphs. Why not? Because the people don’t want to hear of them; because he doesn’t want to be remembered for them; because Israel ’s Messiah is Messiah in truth only if he brings with him peace wherein swords are beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, peace wherein war isn’t learned any more.
Whenever war is mentioned someone speaks of Gandhi. Gandhi was committed to non-violent resistance. Let’s be sure to understand something crucial about Gandhi’s movement and method. A leader can rouse the world as Gandhi did only in a setting that upholds natural justice and the right of assembly. Without the right of assembly Gandhi and his followers wouldn’t have lasted a day. Who guaranteed him the right of assembly? Who protected him against mob violence while he orchestrated protests day after day? The British Army did. Gandhi survived day after day as he continued to recommend non-violence just because he was protected by soldiers who weren’t committed to non-violence. Gandhi knew that if he were mistreated he could rely on British justice to help him. In the USA the same was true of Martin Luther King jr.: he could advocate non-violence as a means of social protest just because the Unites States government guaranteed him (by means of heavily armed personnel) the right of assembly and access to the courts.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived under a different regime: no natural justice, no guaranteed right of assembly, no protection against molestation. Bonhoeffer, initially impressed by Gandhi’s example, soon saw that Gandhi-type non-violence would do nothing to stem the rising tide of death in Germany and elsewhere. Bonhoeffer was convinced that the fastest way to end the slaughter of combatants and civilians was to assassinate Hitler. He joined a plot (unsuccessful) to do just that. He knew that in some situations the choice isn’t between taking life and not taking it; in some situations the only choice is between taking much life and taking little. This is a terrible choice. It so happens that life often traffics in terrible choices.
George Orwell, then, may have been right. Orwell said, “War has never been right; war has never been sane; but sometimes war has been necessary.”
II: — At the same time Orwell never lived in the nuclear era. What could be said of yesteryear’s conventional warfare can never be said of nuclear warfare. When Orwell said “War has sometimes been necessary” he meant that war has sometimes been the lesser of two evils, sometimes the only way to safeguard the victimized neighbour.
Nuclear war is different. Nuclear war can never be the lesser of two evils. We must understand that it’s impossible to win a nuclear war; it’s impossible to limit or contain nuclear war. It’s impossible for nuclear war to protect the neighbour in any way. And, we should note, it’s impossible to defend against nuclear war. Richard Nixon admitted this thirty years ago. Nixon admitted that while there might be a slight defence against the piloted bomber, there is no defence against the intercontinental missile and none against the submarine-launched missile.
Neither can we protect ourselves against nuclear radiation, fallout. Fifty years ago a small nuclear warhead was detonated on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. One hundred miles away from the point of the explosion another island was saturated with eight times the lethal dose of radiation.
A twenty-megaton warhead isn’t large by today’s standards. Nevertheless, a twenty-megaton explosion in Toronto in one second would raise the surface temperature of the city to four times the heat at the centre of the sun: 150 million degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature people don’t burn; they don’t even boil; they are vaporized, without so much as ashes left over. Anyone in Toronto who survived the blast would suffocate as the ensuing firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Those outside the city would die slowly of radiation.
Why do I speak of nuclear warfare at all? Hasn’t the USSR crumbled? Let’s not be naïve: the countries of the former USSR are staggering economically. If their economic malaise worsens they could re-communize themselves tomorrow. In this case the arms race would heat up instantly. What’s more, many smaller nations now have nuclear arsenals. Who knows when these smaller nations are going to inflict nuclear war on each other? Once it began, where would it end?
IV: — The truth is, with present-day conventional weapons nations can wreak the kind of havoc they could only wreak with nuclear weapons thirty years ago. In other words, conventional weapons today have the killing capacity of last generation’s nuclear weapons. Conclusion: armies that don’t have nuclear weapons can kill as effectively as armies that have. Then who needs nuclear weapons? Since nuclear weapons aren’t needed, some nations will be tempted to wage conventional warfare with its new levels of killing power, but without the disadvantages of nuclear war; namely, that nuclear war is unwinnable and uncontainable. If nations think that conventional warfare (now as deadly as nuclear) is winnable and containable, then it becomes more likely that conventional warfare will break out. When it does break out it will annihilate as many people as only a nuclear war could have consumed three decades ago.
The truth is, many conventional weapons are now deadlier than nuclear weapons. The F-4 Phantom Fighter aircraft delivers greater destruction conventionally than does the nuclear cruise missile. Conventional chemical warfare can readily obliterate cities the size of Hiroshima . So who needs nuclear weapons?
The Starlight scope, a heat-sensor the size of a small telescope, can tell the difference between male and female bodies at a range of 1000 metres by means of the difference in heat given off by the pelvic areas of a man and a woman. The Starlight scope can therefore detect any heat-producing item: tank, soldier, missile-launcher, artillery piece.
Speaking of artillery, we should understand that the killing capacity of conventional artillery is 400% greater now than in World War II. In World War II TNT was the explosive in artillery shells. Today it’s plastic. Plastic explosives are far more powerful than old-fashioned TNT. It used to be that an artillery shell killed people by means of metal fragments that spewed out and struck people within a few feet of it. Today a small artillery shell only four inches in diameter but containing plastic explosive will kill anyone within 200 feet of it – but not by metal fragments; by concussion, sheer blast, without any metal fragments at all.
In World War II aiming was very inexact. It took an artillery crew six minutes to zero in on a target. Today all aiming is done by computer. The computer zeroes in on a target in fifteen seconds. In WW II it was very difficult to hit a moving target. Today laser illumination will direct an artillery projectile onto a target 30 km. away moving at 80 kmh.
So much for artillery. What about armour? In WW II a tank could penetrate 5 inches of steel plate at a range of one mile. Today a tank can penetrate 10 inches of steel plate at a range of three miles.
But of course tanks don’t merely fire at targets. Tanks are also targets to be fired at. Anti-tank guns can penetrate the most-heavily armoured tank. The truth is, however, the tank doesn’t have to be penetrated at all. One kind of anti-tank projectile doesn’t penetrate the tank; instead, when the projectile strikes the tank it spreads a “blob” of plastic explosive no bigger than a dinner plate on the tank’s surface. The dinner plate of plastic explodes so powerfully that the thick armour of the tank is dented, only dented. Still, the explosion outside the tank is so thunderous that chunks of metal are blasted off inside the tank and the crew dies instantly.
What about air power? One helicopter ( America ’s C-130H), discharging all its conventional weapons at once, can reduce all the buildings in a city block to rubble in less than one minute. So who needs nuclear weapons?
The Fuel Air Munition bomb carries an explosive liquid that is released in a dense cloud over a heavily populated city. When the cloud is properly formed a fuse in the same bomb ignites the cloud. The ensuing destruction is greater than that of many nuclear warheads. So who needs nuclear weapons?
And then there are chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are exceedingly destructive. They happen to kill exceedingly slowly. Plainly the worst feature of chemical weapons will be their psychological devastation.
While we are speaking of psychology we must be sure to understand that in any war psychiatric casualties outnumber deaths 3-1. This 3-1 ratio has remained constant since the American Civil War in the 1860s when it was found that a soldier was three times as likely to become deranged as he was to be killed. The same ratio obtained in both World Wars. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon , once again psychiatric casualties prevailed at a ratio of 3-1. (When a war ceases all sides have myriads of veterans who are psychiatrically ruined for life.)
This ratio will change when war next breaks out. It is expected, for several reasons, that the ratio of psychiatric casualties to deaths will change from 3-1 to as high as 100-1. In other words, any major conflict today will see unprecedented carnage and unprecedented craziness.
V: — What I have brought forward today: where does it all leave us? It should leave us hearing with unstopped ears our Lord Jesus Christ who cried, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” If our ears are really unstopped we shall note that Jesus speaks of peacemakers, not peace-wishers or peace-hopers or peace-preferrers. War, we know, “breaks out.” But peace never “breaks out.” Peace has to be made. Jesus insists that peace, unlike war, has to be made. Then we must never begrudge money and effort given over to peacemaking. We must never begrudge money spent on international travels and visits and exchanges. For as long as we are meeting one another we recognise a common humanness in each other. As long as we are meeting each other we de-mystify our neighbour as ogre or monster or less-than-human.
Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” “Son of” is a Hebrew expression that means “reflecting the nature of.” To be a son of God is to reflect the nature of God. Therefore it must be God’s nature to make peace. And so it is. Then we have to examine how God makes peace with us, his rebellious creatures, so that we might learn to make peace among our neighbours. How does God make peace?
[1] We are told in scripture that God has made peace with a wayward world “through the blood of the cross.” In other words, God makes peace with a wayward world through a sacrifice that he makes at enormous cost to himself. If God can make peace only through his self-offering and self-renunciation, we can be peacemakers only in the same way ourselves.
I stress this because we tend to venerate the sacrifices made for war but belittle the sacrifices made for peace. I am not denigrating in any way the sacrifices Canadians and others made in war. Still, I do want us to understand that sacrifices made for peace are to be honoured as much. Peacemaking entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.
Then we must never scorn the service peacemakers render and the sacrifice they make. Fifty years ago we applauded the person who made costly sacrifice, especially the supreme sacrifice, in time of war. Then we must do as much for those who strive to make peace. If a soldier crouched in freezing mud in a foxhole for hours on end we thanked him. I know people who, for the sake of peace and the demonstrations essential to peace, have done as much and suffered as much – yet they are rarely thanked. Surely they are entitled to something besides scorn and ridicule. They merit the same recognition as the bravest war hero.
The “Sojourners” organization in the USA is a group of Christians dedicated to pursuing peace and justice. Several years ago, during the “cold war” between the USA and the USSR , the Sojourners community learned of a railway train that was transporting nuclear warheads across the country to a military site. One of the “Sojourners,” protesting the traffic in nuclear weapons, lay down on the railway tracks. The train ran over him, severing both legs. He survived only because a nurse happened to be nearby and she prevented him from bleeding to death. The press ridiculed the man as silly. Had he thought the train was going to stop? (In truth, he had thought it would.) And now he was legless for the rest of his life? “He gave up his legs for nothing, stupid man,” public opinion opined.
No Christian who clings to the cross can say this. Bystanders on Good Friday would have said that our Lord gave up his life for nothing. He announced himself, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” Then plainly he didn’t have to go to the cross. The two criminals on either side of him – their lives were taken; they had no choice in the matter. Jesus laid down his life. Uselessly? God made his peace with the world right there. You and I must never be found saying “pointless” dismissively when we hear or read of what someone, somewhere, is doing to make peace. Remember, peace has to be made; peace doesn’t break out.
[2] While we are pondering how God makes peace we must understand that God never short-circuits justice. The prophet Jeremiah insists that a false peace (soon to break down) occurs when “wounds are healed lightly;” that is, when injustices aren’t redressed. To want peace without justice is to want magic – and everywhere in scripture God’s face is set flint-hard against magic. Peace without justice is impossible. When Jeremiah denounces those who shout “Peace, Peace” where there is no peace, no shalom, Jeremiah means we mustn’t cry for peace where we won’t do anything for justice.
In all of this I want to return to the cross. Plainly God doesn’t make peace by “puppeteering” people and situations and events. God makes peace between himself and the world by that sacrifice whose price he himself pays gladly. In his self-giving, justice is served; legitimate grievance is addressed; violations are admitted to be violations; and there is no false peace. Genuine peace between God and his creation is made as God himself enters the fray and sacrifices himself for the sake of peace.
The peace that Christ summons us to make; our peacemaking (genuine peace that doesn’t attempt a false peace through healing wounds lightly) entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.
The unknown writer of Hebrews urges us, “Strive for peace with all men….” Paul pleads, “If possible, as far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.” Jesus insists that it is the makers of genuine peace who are going to be recognised on the Day of Judgement as having mirrored in especial manner the nature of God himself.
Victor Shepherd
November 2004
What It is to Remember (and to Forget)
1st Chronicles 16:8-13
Galatians 2:1-10
Luke 22:14-23
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 an 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 items amount to the same thing. 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 repentant 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, wise again when her plea which pushes aside all frivolous requests is simply, “Jesus, remember me”. This plea is a plea that the mercy which was 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 as it worsens 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 that 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 be 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 but will rather 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 when someone knocks at your door. The involuntary way is income tax. The income tax which we pay supports those who cannot maintain themselves elsehow. When Maureen’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 who are 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.
Because of my responsibilities on Sunday morning I rarely socialize on a Saturday evening (no more than once or twice a year.) On one such occasion, however, I was to go to a brass band concert in which one of my friends was playing. I was about to back my car out of the driveway 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 until I had to leave for my social engagement. 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 an exclusively couple-oriented society almost 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 that 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. He 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 2006
Remembrance Day – Martin Niemoeller
1892 – 1984
I: — For years I have arrived at church on Remembrance Day Sunday with my heart in my mouth. For years I have wondered what our service has said to people of German ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? To be sure, we in Streetsville are orthodox enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone — without exception — “is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding”.(Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation in particular are exceedingly deceitful, corrupt and ununderstandable? The last thing I want to do today is foster the myth of superiority; namely, that some of us are superior inasmuch as our hearts are more benign than the hearts of others.
Yes, the two major wars of this century found Germany our enemy and France our ally. If we were to push back one century earlier, however, we should find the situation reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had the British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.
Think of the United States. We Canadians have been allies of the US throughout this century, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies; there were slaughters in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive fortress in Quebec City, was constructed in the last century to protect you and me against the Americans. Around the turn of the century British and American navies vied for superiority just in case the two countries went to war; and in fact the US had on file plans for war against Great Britain as late as 1932.
The expression “concentration camp” has been especially ugly in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? Not the Germans; the British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa. The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps than they suffered through enemy fire. Jeremiah is correct. Human sinnership is universal.
Nonetheless, while all hearts are alike deceitful and corrupt, there do occur in history particular concentrations of evil which are to be resisted unremittingly. We cannot use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular evil, a concentration of evil. Naziism was such an appearance.
II: — Today we are honouring a German pastor who resisted. His name is Martin Niemoeller. Born in 1892 into the home of a Lutheran clergyman, N. insisted throughout his boyhood that all he wanted to do was go to sea. Having finished first in his highschool class he was accepted into the Naval Academy (a most prestigious institution) and entered as an officer-cadet. Quickly he established his reputation: academically brilliant, and brazenly impudent (at least to the extent that naval regulations permitted.) Both qualities would stand him in good stead when he came to defy naziism. Further training qualified him as a submarine officer. Throughout World War I he served on several submarines, narrowly escaping death twice: once when his boat was depthcharged while submerged and once when rammed while on the surface. In between sea-duties he was appointed to naval headquarters in Berlin, an experience he treasured in that it taught him how bureaucracies work.
Niemoeller maintained that the turning point in his life came on the 25th January, 1918, as he and his fellow-officers huddled in the claustrophobic confines of their underwater death-trap. They were debating the horrors of warfare. Niemoeller insisted that he saw at that moment that the world is not a morally tidy place; the world is not guided by moral principles; neutrality in the world’s struggle is not possible; at the same time, those who uphold the right are scarcely without fault themselves. He jotted in his diary, “Whether we can survive all trials with a clear conscience depends wholly and solely on whether we believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
In March, 1918, he resigned from the navy; on Easter Sunday of the same year he married his best friend’s sister, Else Bremer. Soon he was a theology student at the University of Munster. Needing money (by now he and his wife had one child; eventually they had seven) he found work as a plate-layer on the state railways. At this point he was a full-time railway labourer, a full-time student, and a husband and father. “As a young fellow you can take it”, he was heard to comment years later.
When he began ministerial work in an inner-city parish he was not paid enough to support his family. Inflation was skyrocketing in Germany. Carefully his wife picked the gold lace off his submarine-commander’s uniform and sold it to a jeweller. The money didn’t last long. He was unemployed several times. His naval officer’s monthly pension, greatly devalued on account of the collapsing German economy, purchased half a loaf of bread. Years later he wrote, “I discovered and still know what it feels like to have no fixed employment and means of existence and sustenance.”
His ministerial training concluded in 1924, N. was ordained, even preaching at his own ordination service. The text was Philippians 3:12: “I press on to make [the power of his resurrection] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Within a few years (1931) he was pastor of St. Anne’s church, Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin.
Hitler took the nation by storm. It is easy to understand how. Following World War I Germany was in economic ruins. The people were humiliated by the defeat of 1918, impoverished, confused, lost. Hitler promised to rebuild the economy, restore the people’s pride, overturn their national humiliation and eliminate the rampant immorality in the larger cities. Hitler seasoned his public speeches with religious references. He talked about the blessing of Almighty God, a necessary pillar in the new state. He handed out pious stories to the press. He showed a tattered bible to some deaconesses and declared that he drew strength from the Word of God. When speaking to religious people he imported an unctuous note into his voice. Then he announced, “Today Christians, not international atheists, stand at the head of Germany.” It is little wonder that people came on board.
It is greater wonder, then, that Niemoeller did not. He discerned that Hitler was distorting the Christian faith in order to use it in the service of political power. The state church, known as “German Christians” (to be distinguished from the Confessing Church, confessing that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God) published manifestos boasting of national superiority. Pastors were ordered to read out a proclamation of thanksgiving, praising the state “for assuming, in addition to all its other tasks, the great load and burden of reorganizing the church”. Niemoeller refused to read it. Already he realized that Hitler merely wanted to use the church politically, thereafter leaving it to “rot like a gangrenous limb”, in the words of the Fuehrer himself.
In 1932 nazi leaders ordered a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. To his horror Niemoeller saw that his theology professors, together with thousands of other academicians, supported this move; worse, they wrote and spoke vigorously in behalf of the ideology. Soon a nazi decree appeared which targeted pastors of Jewish ancestry. They were to be ousted from their pulpits. Of 18,000 Protestant pastors in pre-war Germany, only 23 were of Jewish ancestry. Yet so very intense was the anti-semitic hatred that the machinery of the state was mobilized to eliminate a trace element.
The pseudo-faith of the state church was labelled “Positive Christianity”. “Positive Christianity” gathered up rabid nationalism, racial purity and military superiority. N. denounced “Positive Christianity” passionately, insisting that the gospel permits the church to preach Christ-crucified only. At the same moment Hitler announced, “If you are a nationalist you are already a Christian”. N. replied that the Fuehrer’s fulmination was mere neo-paganism.
When N. noticed that most pastors promoted “Positive Christianity” in order to save their skin he stated publicly that there was “a shameful faintheartedness among many ministerial brethren”; furthermore, any clergyman who took refuge in being “politically correct”, waiting for the storm to pass, was “a traitor to Jesus Christ”. Of the 18,000 pastors only 7036 sided with Martin.
From 1933 on N. was aware that the Gestapo (secret police) was shadowing him wherever he went. And then on 11th November (Armistice Day!) the government informed him that he had been “permanently retired”. Whereupon the congregation of Dahlem, as resolute as their pastor himself, informed the government that their pastor would continue to shepherd them. Two days later a huge rally in a sports stadium featured a speaker who shouted, “If we are ashamed to buy a necktie from a Jew, we should be absolutely ashamed to take the deeper elements of our religion from a Jew”. “Positive Christianity” had clearly repudiated Jesus Christ.
Matters came to a head in 1934. Niemoeller courageously appeared at a meeting of nazi officials. Excerpts from a secretly taped conversation exposed him. Hitler, enraged, ordered him to step forward, berating him furiously. “I was very frightened”, N. admitted later. Hitler continued his tirade. “Every time I leave this Chancellery [building] in my car, I am aware that someone might take a revolver and shoot at me.” At this point Niemoeller was bathed in a freedom he had never expected. Listen to him: “I felt absolutely liberated. That was my salvation. I knew that this man was more anxious than I. I felt, ‘You have given yourself away’. If he has more anxieties than I, then I have the courage to face him. His authority was absolutely negated when I felt that he was more governed by fear than I.” Emboldened now, N. spoke into Hitler’s face, “We pastors have a responsibility for the German people laid on us by God. Neither you nor anyone else can take that away from us.” Hitler turned on his heel and stormed off.
When Martin returned home his frightened wife asked him, “Is Hitler a great man?” “He is a great coward”, replied N., and then added that Hitler would certainly brutalize the man who had contradicted him to his face. That evening the Gestapo raided the N. home, taking away the lists of pastors who had joined the pastors’ protest organization. A few days later a bomb exploded in the house, setting it on fire. Immediately thousands of pastors resigned from the protest movement. Niemoeller’s friends offered to smuggle him and his family to Sweden. He turned down the offer.
As a theology student Niemoeller had asked one of his professors, “What is the meaning of the expression ‘the church’? The professor had dismissed the question cavalierly: “Why worry about it? Is it so important?” Now thousands of people throughout Germany were asking N. for an answer. He stated publicly, “It is dreadful and infuriating to see how a few unprincipled men who call themselves ‘church government’ are destroying the church and persecuting the fellowship of Jesus.” And then he reminded his congregation of the conviction of the apostle Paul: it is a privilege to suffer for the sake of the gospel.
On 1st July, 1937, he was eating breakfast with his wife when the secret police arrested him. He had already been to prison five times, had always been released within a day or two, and expected the same quick release this time. His assumption was incorrect. This time he would be in prison for eight years. As he was being admitted to the Berlin prison he was accosted by the prison chaplain, a man whom N. recognized from his naval days, a man who was now a nazi stooge. “Pastor N.”, the chaplain remonstrated, “Why are you in prison?” N. stared at him and replied, “Why are you not?”
During his imprisonment in Berlin N. wrote to his wife frequently, as well as to others. We should listen to excerpts of these letters, for they show us faith refined in the fire of harassment.
In February, 1938, Niemoeller was put on trial. To the surprise of many he was acquitted. Before he could be released, however, Hitler announced that N. was now the personal prisoner of the Fuehrer himself.
Then he was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp, and stripped of his possessions. He asked for, and had returned to him, two items dear to him: his bible and his wedding ring. In solitary confinement now, he was not permitted to converse with anyone. The only sounds he heard were the cries and groans of men undergoing torture. He was spared execution only because nazi authorities did not wish to sully their international reputations. Else suffered a nervous breakdown. Then she and the seven children were expelled from the manse, and were now without accommodation or livelihood.
In 1941 Niemoeller was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau. The years crawled by. Four years later, in April, 1945, together with 150 other prisoners and accompanied by an execution squad, he was taken to northern Italy. His overseers knew, however, that the war’s end was imminent and would be followed by the war crimes trials. They decided not to execute anyone. Three days later American soldiers took Niemoeller into their care.
He was exhausted, scrawny and tubercular. All he wanted was to be reunited with his family. Allied forces detained him, however, and questioned him by the hour, aware that he had vast knowledge of the inner workings of the Third Reich. Niemoeller begged to be allowed to go home. His request was refused. At last the tuberculosis patient went on a hunger strike. Four days later, scrawnier than ever, he was allowed to go home. On 24th June, 1945, he was reunited with his wife. Immediately he was sent to a sanatorium. He did not return to his church in Berlin, certain as he was that the Russians would kidnap him.
After the war he worked tirelessly in behalf of food relief and Germany’s economic reconstruction. A British school principal wrote him telling him how much the schoolboys admired his resistance to Hitler, and asked him to write the boys a line or two telling them how he found the strength to resist. Niemoeller merely quoted our Lord’s words in Matthew 6:34: “Don’t worry at all then about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself! One day’s trouble is enough for one day.” New York University awarded him its most prestigious recognition, inscribing on the bronze medal which honoured him, “Martin Niemoeller — Courageous Churchman”. Accolades were heaped on him. Nevertheless, whenever dignitaries asked him how he wished to be introduced he invariably replied with transparent simplicity, “I am a pastor”.
He died in 1984, aged 92. A few days before his death he remarked, “When I was young I felt I had to carry the gospel; now that I am old I know that the gospel carries me.”
III: — As often as I reflect on the man whom the gospel carried I ask myself in what way he continues to inspire and nourish and hearten me, and just as often I come back to the matter of courage; simple courage. Niemoeller was intellectually gifted; but so were the many university professors who tested the political waters and decided that their intellectual gifts would be used in the service of self-preservation. Niemoeller’s intellectual gifts were never used in the service of head-game rationalizations and cowardly excuses. All his gifts were vehicles of his courage.
Courage, we must remember, is not the absence of fear. The bravest people are afraid. Courage means that for frightened people their fear has not deflected them from doing what they know they are appointed to do.
Niemoeller frequently quoted a text from the book of Joshua: “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”(Joshua 1:9) The Israelite people have known the bitter taste of bondage in Egypt and they have endured the hardships of the wilderness; now they are poised to enter the promised land. Then they realize that enemies abound in the promised land. If they are going to possess the promise they cannot avoid conflict. Their spirits sink. “Be strong and of good courage…for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”. Even when a child of God goes face-to-face with the most powerful and evil man in Europe; even when a child of God goes to prison; even when a child of God goes on a hunger strike he does not do any of this alone!
C.S. Lewis used to say that courage is not one more expression of our Christian obedience, along with patience, faithfulness, honesty, cheerfulness, etc; courage, rather, is every expression of our obedience at the testing point. Generosity, for instance, comes easy when the recipients of our generosity are appreciative; easier still when our generosity is granted public recognition. But when our generosity is met with ingratitude — or worse, ridicule — then courage is simply generosity being tested lest our hearts shrivel.
Truthfulness comes easy except when it doesn’t come easy. A trite remark? Not at all. So un-trite is it that we make excuses for people who are untruthful under pressure; we make even more excuses for people whose untruthfulness varies directly with the price of truthfulness. Courage is truthfulness when the price of truthfulness is staring us in the face.
Yet we must never think of courage only in the sphere of heroism on an international scale. Courage is exemplified every day by the most ordinary people in the most ordinary circumstances. the highschool student who doesn’t “borrow” someone else’s essay when cheating is a way school is survived; the single mother who struggles to see her children arrive at something higher than the lowest common denominator on the street; the person haunted by any of the longterm mental difficulties which have to be contended with every day lest such difficulties be surrendered to; the person with severe arthritis for whom climbing stairs is more arduous than ascending Mt. Everest. The woman who was Maureen’s maid of honour at our wedding; she died slowly, aged 36. Her brother said to me later, “She made it so easy for everyone else in the family.” How much courage it takes to “make it so easy” when capitulation to resentment and envy and petulance and anger can make it wretchedly difficult for everyone else!
Only infrequently has my work as a pastor taken me among heroes. But every day my work as a pastor takes me alongside people whose courage leaves me awestruck. What courage it takes not to let adversity embitter; not to let disappointment sour; not to let sheer bad luck provoke spite and envy! What courage it takes in the most straitened circumstances not to yield to despair.
Courage, as Niemoeller knew, is both a gift and a summons. “Be strong and of good courage… for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”. Courage is both something God supplies and something we must do.
But of course even our doing, however much it is our doing, is finally that which Jesus Christ forges in us. “When I was young, I felt I had to carry the gospel; now that I am old, I know that the gospel carries me.”
F I N I S
Victor A. Shepherd
November 1991
Lest We Forget – Remembrance Day 1998
Is. 2:1-4
Mat. 10:34-39
Mat. 5:9
[1] For years now I’ve arrived at church on Remembrance Day with my heart in my mouth. For years I’ve wondered what our service says to people of Germany ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? Oh yes, we in Streetsville United are both orthodox enough and charitable enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone, everyone without exception, is “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding.” (Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation in particular are especially corrupt and unusually ununderstandable? The last thing I want to do today is foster the myth of superiority; namely, that some of us are superior because our hearts are more benign than the hearts of others.
Yes, the two major wars of this century found Germany our enemy and France our ally. If we were to push back one century earlier, however, we’d find the situation reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had the British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.
Think of the United States. We Canadians have been allies of the U.S. throughout this century, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies. They warred in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive fortress in Quebec City, was constructed in the last century to protect you and me from the Americans. At the turn of the century British and American navies vied for superiority just in case the two countries went to war again. The United States had on file plans for war against Great Britain as late as 1932. When the Parti Quecbecois came to power in Quebec in 1976 and began talking about asserting sovereignty over the St.Lawrence Seaway and impeding American access to electricity and fresh water, the United States government moved an entire infantry division (10,000 men) to upstate New York opposite Kingston so as to be able to move immediately should American interests be threatened. We mustn’t assume that because America is Canada’s ally today it will always be Canada’s ally.
The expression “concentration camp” has been especially distasteful in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? Not the Germans; the British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa. The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps than they suffered through enemy fire. Jeremiah is correct. Human sinnership is universal.
At the same time, while all hearts are deceitful and corrupt, there do occur in history particular concentrations of evil that are to be resisted relentlessly. We can’t use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular evil, a concentration of evil. Nazism was such an appearance, such a concentration.
[2] While there are many aspects to the evil of Nazism that we could discuss today we are going to examine one in particular: Nazism’s victimization of the Jewish people. We mustn’t think that the holocaust was simply part of the war, or at least a consequence of the war, neither more nor less evil than war inevitably is. The holocaust was unprecedented as evil for the sake of evil. Acts of war are customarily undertaken for the sake of something else. A military invasion, for instance, is undertaken for the sake of acquiring territory. Acts of war are customarily viewed as evil (at least by victors) even as those acts of war are undertaken for the sake of garnering natural resources or restoring national reputation or expanding “living room.” The holocaust occurred for none of these reasons; it was evil for the sake of evil.
We should consider several respects in which the holocaust differs from acts of war. Wars are fought by competing parties where both parties have power. Both parties may not have equal power, but both parties have some power. The Jewish people had no power. They made up less than 1% of Germany’s population. They had no access to the armed forces or the government. They were never a threat to the Third Reich; they couldn’t be. Therefore the aggression visited on them can’t be called an act of war.
Neither should we regard the holocaust as another of those collateral “spillovers” of war. Wartime “spillovers” occur when passions are unleashed inadvertently and people are found behaving subhumanly. The holocaust, however, wasn’t the result of mindless passion loosed unintentionally. The holocaust, rather, was planned with utmost rationality, executed with utmost deliberation, perpetrated with utmost detachment. Passion is spent quickly. If the holocaust had been the result of passion loosed in the course of war, it wold have disappeared as quickly as it flared up. It didn’t disappear, however, in that it had never flared up. It was coolly conceived, rationally implemented, deliberately executed, dispassionately protracted. It wasn’t done as a result of collective loss of self-control; it was done with utmost self-control. It was evil for the sake of evil.
Neither should we regard the holocaust as yet another instance of racism. Needless to say, the Nazis were racists. But they weren’t anti-semites because they were racists; they were racists because they were anti-semites. The Nazis, we should remember, pronounced the Japanese to be honorary Aryans! Since the Japanese were honorary Aryans, the Nazis weren’t racist in principle. They were racist to the extent that they were anti-semitic in principle. Moreover, racism asserts that some races are humanly inferior. In North America black people have been deemed inferior to white people; in central Africa, brown people inferior to black people. The Jewish people weren’t deemed humanly inferior, however; they were deemed not human at all but rather verminous. The racially inferior are customarily enslaved; vermin is always exterminated.
Neither were the Jewish people mere scapegoats in the holocaust. To be sure, in the early stages of the Nazi movement they were used as scapegoats. Jews were blamed for all of Germany’s woes; they were blamed for Germany’s loss of international prestige, its financial collapse, it’s defeat and humiliation in World War I. Very quickly, however, the Jewish people ceased to be a scapegoat for anything. As long as any were to be found alive they were to be ferreted out, degraded, and then murdered. Now they were singled out as evil was done for the sake of evil. Auschwitz wasn’t the first time they had been singled out. They had been singled out at Sinai. There, however, they had been singled out for life and a task. Now they were singled out for torment and slaughter.
Let’s be sure we are clear on a point that most people confuse: the holocaust wasn’t an aspect of Germany’s war effort, however misguided. The holocaust wasn’t perpetrated because it was thought to advance Germany’s war effort. It was never going to advance the war effort. By 1943-44 the tide was turning against Germany. An all-out effort was needed if Germany was to regain military ascendancy. Freight trains were needed desperately to transport materials to troop-fronts and airfields and naval depots. These trains were diverted to other destinations and used to transport people to death camps. Zeal for the holocaust undermined the war effort. After D-Day it was obvious that Germany would be defeated. Allied leaders announced that those who were orchestrating the holocaust would be tried, at war’s end, as war criminals and punished. And still the zeal for the holocaust didn’t abate. The holocaust wasn’t an aspect of the war effort; it jeopardized the war effort. It was evil for the sake of evil.
[3] In light of such monstrosity we ought never to undervalue the sacrifice that so many Canadians made in the face of it. We ought never to undervalue it, even though we persist in downgrading it to a trifle, even denouncing it. If you think I invent or exaggerate let me refer you to several textbooks in Canadian history written by Canadians for use in Canadian university and highschool classrooms. Discounting the 30,000 men Canada lost in the last war; discounting the 10,000 air crew that were lost in defeating Germany the only way Germany could be defeated, the most recent textbooks on Canadian history discuss Canada’s contribution in only a paragraph or two if they discuss it at all. I consider all such Canadian writers of Canadian history to be violating the ninth commandment, the commandment that enjoins us not to bear false witness against our neighbour. I consider all such revisionism to be disgusting, as revisionism always is.
When the best-selling, two-volume History of the Canadian Peoples comes to discuss the different fronts on which Canadians fought in World War II, its entire discussion lasts one paragraph. Robert Martin, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario whose father perished in the last war, pointed out in a November, 1991 newspaper article that recent history textbooks in Canada had “airbrushed” off the page the sacrifice Canadians made. In a November, 1996 submission to the Globe and Mail a school vice-principal from Surrey, B.C., asked why, on Remembrance Day, her school should have “some veteran…come in and stand up there and bore us all to death with his medals.” When “Victory in Europe” Day was being highlighted overseas (particularly in Holland) Nova Scotia’s Ministry of Education provided no curriculum resources concerning the event of V-E Day and the anniversary celebration currently underway. One board of education in Nova Scotia, however, did hold a daylong training session for teachers on the topic of human rights. The irony would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. Had the Third Reich lasted 1000 years as planned, no teacher would be sitting around a coffee urn discussing human rights. In 1996 an attempt was made to provide curriculum resources for Remembrance Day in Ontario’s schools. The Ministry of Education at Queen’s Park stifled the attempt.
What occurs at the provincial level occurs at the federal as well. In 1992 the CBC and the National Film Board colluded to show on national television The Valour and the Horror. Brian and Terence McKenna, the two men who crafted the details and mood of the movie, implied that the RCAF was a clone of the Nazis. We should note that while the movie vilifying Canadian airmen had the support of the CBC, the CBC refused to air No Price Too High, the response of air force veterans. Canadians forget because Canadians are programmed to forget.
The Dutch, on the other hand; the Dutch don’t forget. The Dutch remember because they want to remember. In May, 1995, the Dutch people festooned their homes and streets with banners commemorating the Canadians’ liberation of Holland. The Dutch have never pretended that Canadian efforts were of the same order as those of the Nazis. The Dutch remember the brutality of the occupation. They know who Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom were. They remember the cold-blooded killing of underground resistors who were captured. They remember the treachery and ignominy of fellow-citizens who collaborated. Does this mean that the Dutch harbour an ever-festering hatred towards Germans? Of course not. Myself, I have found very few Dutch people who don’t speak some German and are glad to speak it. The border between Holland and Germany today isn’t armed; in fact, it isn’t even manned. There’s only a sign that tells travelers they are leaving one country and entering another. Dutch and German forces train together today in NATO exercises.
Still, the Dutch remember what Canadians did for them. They take entire schools to the cemeteries of Canadian servicemen and remind their schoolchildren that political freedom comes with price tag attached. On the anniversary of V-E Day in 1995, fifteen thousand Canadian veterans marched through the city of Apeldoorn. The parade was scheduled to last two hours; it lasted eight, so frequently did the Dutch people run into the parade to hug, bedeck and press gifts upon the veterans. Mothers still in their twenties held up their infants so that the baby might receive a veteran’s kiss. The Dutch remember because they have reason to remember. We Canadians have reason too. Yet the CBC refused to televise No Price Too High. PBS, an American network, aired the film in any case.
[4] Yet as fine as Canada’s contribution was in the last Great War, Christians can never pretend that war is glorious, let alone godly. General George Patton was never more wrong when he said, “War is humankind’s noblest effort.” What can be noble about the human activity that advertises our innermost depravity and outermost wretchedness? What can be noble about the spectacle of those created in the image and likeness of God sparing no effort to maim and kill others made in the image and likeness of God? So far from being glorious, war proves as nothing else proves what the church holds up as patently obvious: humankind needs saving, and humankind will never save itself. Humankind doesn’t need to be helped; it doesn’t need to be inspired; it doesn’t need to be “topped up” with tonics intellectual or moral. Humankind needs to be saved.
To be sure, on Remembrance Day Sunday we are “remembering” in church. At the same time, the church knows that war isn’t an aspect of the kingdom of God or a herald of the kingdom of God. George Orwell was surely correct when he said, “War has never been right; war has never been sane; but sometimes war has been necessary.” In order to gain proper perspective on the matter we should invert Orwell’s aphorism: war has sometimes been necessary, but war has never been sane, never been right. Never been right in the sense of never been righteous. Righteousness pertains to the kingdom of God, and war is a contradiction of the kingdom of God.
How unrighteous is war? Who knew war better than Ulysses S. Grant, and who waged war more masterfully? When Ulysses S. Grant was leader of the Union forces during the War of the Great Rebellion (its official title in the U.S.A.) Grant used to say, “The purpose of war (the purpose of the war he was waging) is to end war. Then war should be ended as quickly as possible. War is ended fastest when war is waged against civilians. Governments surrender much faster when their civilians are being slain. Therefore always endeavour to wage war against civilians.” War, however necessary, has never been right, righteous. Only the kingdom of God knows righteousness.
Then the church’s responsibility, especially on Remembrance Day, is to exalt the triumph of the Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. Our Lord has been raised from the dead; not merely raised from death, he’s been raised beyond death, beyond the reach of death. The powers of evil that overtook him once can never overtake him again. Raised from the dead and raised beyond death, he now bestrides the world as the guarantee of that new creation in which, says Peter, righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:13)
Unquestionably evil afflicts God’s creation at this moment. Then is evil to distort and disfigure forever what God created out of his goodness and pronounced good? Is evil to linger so long as slowly but surely to gain the upper hand and thereby submerge even the residual goodness of the creation? No! Our Lord has been raised from the dead. His victory can never be overturned. God’s decisive intervention has already occurred. The struggle between the righteousness of God’s kingdom and the unrighteousness of a fallen world is a struggle whose outcome can never be in doubt. Because of our Lord’s victory we who are called to resist evil can never be involved in a losing cause. In resisting evil, rather, we are bearing witness to that triumph whose irreversibility renders our resistance fruitful.
Yet we must be sure to understand that resistance to evil is more than mere defiance of evil. Defiance of evil is certainly necessary; yet defiance of evil is never sufficient. Defiance of evil leaves us locked in a stalemate, with evil always setting the agenda. Defiance of evil, then is essentially negative. Resistance to evil, on the other hand, is essentially positive. Positively, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, we are to “go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:1-4)
For the Hebrew mind “mountain” always has to do with revelation, and revelation is God’s gift of himself accompanied by the illumination of his gift. “House of God” has to do with the venue of worship. The God who longs to give himself to us is apprehended – that is, both understood and grasped — only as he is worshipped. It is only as we worship that we know ourselves the recipients of God’s gift, find ourselves illumined as to the meaning of this gift, learn the ways of God and therefore, ultimately, walk in God’s paths.
Resistance to evil, essentially positive whereas defiance of evil (admittedly necessary) is only negative; resistance to evil always entails peacemaking. Here we should note carefully the difference between peacemaking and peacekeeping. Peacekeeping (once again necessary in our world) presupposes the capacity to wage war. All peacekeepers are armed. This point is surely significant: all peacekeepers are armed. In other words, peace is kept only as the threat of non-peace is a real threat. Peacemaking, however, is different. Peacemaking, so blessed that Jesus pronounces peacemakers “sons (daughters) of God”, those who mirror God’s nature; peacemaking has to do with shalom, and shalom is a synonym for salvation. God has made provision for us in the cross, his characteristic deed of sin-absorbing self-renunciation. We can make peace only as we “go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob”, and there “learn God’s ways and walk in his paths.” It’s plain that God’s way is the way of the cross; it’s plain that to walk in God’s paths is to walk the way of the crucified.
Ascending the mount of the Lord, worshipping in the house of the God of Jacob and learning his ways; all of this exists for one thing only: that we might walk in his paths. Walking in his paths happens to be most difficult of all. Ascending, worshipping, learning: all of this is easy compared to walking, for that walking which is the closest following of our Lord always entails crossbearing. Peacemaking, then, is every bit as arduous and dangerous as warwaging. Peacemaking entails as much hardship, discipline, self-renunciation – sacrifice – as warwaging.
Therefore we must always support those who pursue peace. We must never think that warriors are virile while peacemakers are “pantywaists.” We must never think that peacekeeping, necessary to be sure, is more important than peacemaking. We must always thank God for peacemaking wherever it occurs on however small or large a scale. The resurrection of our Lord from the dead (which resurrection is irreversible) means that the self-renunciation of peacemakers is never finally futile. Peacemaking, on whatever scale, is ultimately an anticipation of that God-appointed day, itself irreversible, when, in the words of the prophet Micah, all
shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. (Micah 4:4)
Victor Shepherd
November 1998
The Life and Work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906-1945
His Life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s foreparents were people of much courage and much ability. In 1933, when his paternal grandmother was 91 years old, she walked defiantly through the cordon which nasty stormtroopers had thrown up around Jewish shops as part of the anti-Jewish boycott. His maternal grandmother was a gifted pianist; in fact, she had been a pupil of the incomparable Franz Liszt. Bonhoeffer’s mother was the daughter of a world-renowned historian. His father, a neurologist, was a professor in the University of Berlin, and chief of Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin’s major hospital.
Bonhoeffer himself was born on 4th February, 1906, in Breslau, then part of Germany, now part of Poland. He and his twin sister, Sabine, were the last of seven children. By age 10 his own musical talent appeared (he was now playing Mozart piano sonatas) as well as his proclivity to do the unusual. (For instance, a special treat on his birthday was an egg beaten with sugar. It tasted so good that the ten year old gathered up his pocket money and bought himself a hen!)
The family was religiously indifferent, the father being an agnostic. Bonhoeffer therefore startled the family when he announced, at age 14, that he was going to be a pastor and a theologian. The response was incomprehension. His older brother, Karl-Friedrich (who later distinguished himself as a physicist) tried to deflect him from this course, arguing that the church was weak, silly, irrelevant, unworthy of any young man’s lifelong commitment. “If the church really is what you say it is”, replied the youngster, “then I shall have to reform it.” Soon he began his university studies in theology in Tuebingen and completed then in Berlin. His doctoral dissertation exposed his brilliance on a wider front and introduced him to internationally-known scholars.
Following ordination Bonhoeffer moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he was the assistant minister to the German-speaking Lutheran congregation there. While he had been born to the aristocracy and therefore knew a social privilege denied most German people (especially the 25% who lived on the edge of starvation) Bonhoeffer yet displayed a remarkable ability to relate genuinely to all sorts and classes and types of people.
In 1930 he went to the United States as a guest of Union Theological Seminary, NYC. There he was dismayed at seeing how frivolous American seminarians were concerning the study of theology. His dismay peaked the day a most moving passage from Luther’s writing on the subject of sin and forgiveness was greeted with derisive laughter. Bonhoeffer retorted, “You students at this liberal seminary sneer at the fundamentalists in America, when all the while the fundamentalists know far more of the truth and grace, mercy and judgement of God than do you.” Quickly he recognized the plight of black people in the US, worked among impoverished blacks in the city, and worshipped regularly at a Baptist church in Harlem. In 1931 he returned to Berlin and resumed his university teaching.
While he was certainly a gifted scholar and professor, Bonhoeffer was always a pastor at heart. Not surprisingly, then, at the same time that he lectured he also instructed a confirmation class of 50 rowdy boys in one of the worst slums of Berlin. His first day with the boys was remarkable. As he walked up the stairs to the second floor room the boys at the top of the stair-well pelted him with garbage and began chanting repeatedly the first syllable of his name, “Bon, Bon, Bon…” He let them continue until they wearied of it. Then he quietly began telling the boys of what he had known in Harlem; how there existed another group of people whose material prospects were as bleak as theirs; how it was that Jesus Christ neither disdained nor abandoned anyone; that no human being, however bleak his circumstances, is ever God-forsaken. Bonhoeffer moved into the boys’ neighbourhood and lived among them until the instruction was over. Many of the youngsters remained his friends for life.
In 1933 Bonhoeffer took a leave of absence from the university and moved to London, England, where he pastored two German-speaking congregations. By now he was immersed in the ecumenical movement, assisted, of course, by his facility in French, Spanish and English (he spoke English flawlessly). The life-and-death struggle for the church in Germany was underway. Did the church live from the gospel only, or could the church lend itself to the state in order to reinforce the ideology of the state? Bonhoeffer argued that the latter would render the church no church at all. An older professor of theology, who conformed to nazi ideology in order to keep his job, commented, “It is a great pity that our best hope in the faculty is being wasted on the church struggle.” As the struggle intensified it was noticed that Bonhoeffer’s sermons became more comforting, more confident of God’s victory, and more defiant. The struggle was between the national church (which supported Hitler) and the confessing church, called such because it confessed that there could be only one Fuehrer or leader for Christians, and it wasn’t Hitler. Lutheran bishops remained silent in the hope of preserving institutional unity. Most ministers refused to support the confessing church, whispering that there was no need to play at being confessing heroes. In the face of such ministerial cowardice Bonhoeffer warned his colleagues that there was no chance of converting Hitler; what they had to ensure was that they were converted themselves. An Anglican bishop who knew him well in England was later to write of him, “He was crystal clear in his convictions; and young as he was, and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth and spoke it with complete absence of fear.” Bonhoeffer himself wrote to a friend at this time, “Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone who still confesses him.”
Bonhoeffer was much taken with Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, and planned to go to India to learn more of Gandhi’s pacifism. Before he could get to India, however, he was urged to return to Germany in order to lead an underground seminary at Finkenwald. (This seminary aimed at supplying pastors for the confessing church, since not one of the university faculties of theology sided with the confessing church.) In no time Nazi authorities withdrew his Berlin professorship. Bonhoeffer calmly replied, “I have long ceased to believe in the universities.”
While instructing his students at Finkenwald he became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer. He was 35 years old, she, 18. (Maria von Wedemeyer married after the war and lives in Germany today.) During the long days of Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment the two were to correspond as often as authorities and censors permitted them. She visited him once a week. He always wanted her to let him know when she was coming. If she surprised him, said Bonhoeffer, he was deprived of the joy of anticipating her visit.
At this time North American and British church leaders were impatient with any discussion of theology, preferring to concentrate on the church’s politics. Bonhoeffer irked them by insisting that they were preoccupied with symptoms only. While the political compromises were dreadful indeed, the root problem, the disease, was theological: the church was infested with heresy. For this reason Bonhoeffer tirelessly addressed the issue of heresy, maintaining that the church can live only by its confession of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God which it must hear and heed and proclaim.
Two American professors coaxed him into returning to the US and to a teaching position in NYC. As soon as the boat docked Bonhoeffer knew he had made a mistake. He knew that Germany would shortly be at war, knew that the devastation of his native land would be indescribable. He was convinced he would have no credibility in assisting with its recovery and restoration unless he himself endured the devastation first-hand. He was in the US only four weeks.
By this time he was forbidden to speak anywhere in the Reich. Visser’t Hooft, the General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, asked him, “What do you pray for in these days?” “If you want to know the truth”, replied Bonhoeffer, “I pray for the defeat of my nation.”
While he had been a pacifist only a few years earlier, Bonhoeffer’s pacifist convictions were receding. He saw that untold suffering among the German people (especially civilians), as well as among the allies, would swell unless Hitler were removed. He quietly met with several high-ranking officers of German military intelligence who were secretly opposed to Hitler. Together they conspired to assassinate Hitler. Unbeknown to them, the intelligence arm of the secret police was spying on the intelligence arm of the army. The conspiracy was discovered. Bonhoeffer was arrested and assigned to a prison in Berlin. It was April, 1943. He was to be in prison for two years. He was allowed to read, and naturally enough spent most of his time perusing literature, science, philosophy, theology, and history. Much of his reading had to do with the 19th century cultural heritage of Germany. He also managed to reread the Bible 2.5 times
In July, 1944, the hidden bomb which was meant for Hitler did explode, but exploded while he was out of the room. The incriminating files which the secret police turned up pointed to Bonhoeffer directly, as well as others like General Oster and Admiral Canaris. Underground plans were being made to help Bonhoeffer escape when it was learned that his brother Klaus, a lawyer, had been arrested. Bonhoeffer declined to escape lest his family be punished. (He was never to know that Klaus was to be executed in any case, along with a brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi.) It was at this time particularly that Bonhoeffer ministered to his fellow-prisoners awaiting execution, among whom was Payne Best, an office in the British Army. His tribute to Bonhoeffer deserves to be heard.
“Bonhoeffer was different, just quite calm and normal, seemingly
perfectly at his ease… his soul really shone in the dark desperation
of our prison. He was one of the very few men I have ever met to whom God was
real and ever close to him.”
Bonhoeffer was removed from prison and taken to Flossenburg, an extermination camp in the Bavarian forest. On the 9th of April, three weeks before American forces liberated Flossenburg, he was executed. The tree from which he was hanged bears a plaque today with only ten words inscribed on it: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.
The physician who signed his death certificate, Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung, was profoundly impressed by Bonhoeffer, and later wrote of his impression. It is only fitting that we have a physician read such a tribute, and I have asked Dr. Robert Bates of our congregation to acquaint us with Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung’s testimony.
THEMES FROM BONHOEFFER’S WRITING
I have read Bonhoeffer for years and have profited from him unmeasurably. Many themes recur in his writings, and I want to introduce three of them to you at this time.
(i) First the cost of discipleship. In 1937 Bonhoeffer wrote a book with just this title:
COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. It is an extended discussion of the sermon on the mount. The first chapter is called “Costly Grace”. It begins, “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession… . Costly grace is…the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”
Bonhoeffer was always rendered angry and sad upon hearing Luther’s discernment of the gospel falsified and perverted. Such perversion riddled the doctrine of justification. “The justification of the sinner in the world”, said Bonhoeffer, “degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. … The only person who has the right to say he is justified by grace alone is the person who has left all to follow Christ.”
Bonhoeffer knew something that we often prefer not to know, that Jesus Christ certainly invites us to become his follower and companion, even as our Lord insists that we can be a companion of him, the crucified one, only as we willingly shoulder our own cross. In other words, the rewards of the kingdom are for those and those only who embrace the rigours of the kingdom. We are disciples ourselves, and the fellowship we belong to is Christian, only as suffering and sacrifice are gladly taken up for the sake of the kingdom.
(ii) The second theme: Christian community. I have already spoken of the underground seminary which Bonhoeffer operated in Finkenwald. While it was indeed a seminary, ie, a school for the training of ministers, it was also more than a school, since all of the students lived on the premises, eating and sleeping and relaxing together. Not surprisingly the students, under Bonhoeffer’s leadership, learned what it is to exist as a community. His wisdom and insight are available to us through his little book, LIFE TOGETHER.
The book is studded with gems. Bonhoeffer notes on the opening page that the physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to all. It was so in NT times when people like Paul and John craved seeing the faces of those to whom they were writing; it is so today. In fact, says Bonhoeffer, the physical presence of one Christian to another is a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ himself.
Bonhoeffer maintained that in any Christian fellowship we belong to each other only because we first belong to Jesus Christ. We are united to Christ in faith, and because united to him, we are united through him to one another. God has ordained that we be united to one another through Christ inasmuch as every Christian needs other Christians to speak and reflect the Word of God to the Christian herself. None of us is so thoroughly possessed of Christian wisdom and maturity that we no longer need our fellow Christians. I need my sister Christian as a proclaimer and bearer of God’s word. And why do I need her in this way? Bluntly Bonhoeffer states that the Christ in my own heart is never as strong as the Christ in my sister’s presence or my sister’s word. Therefore within the Christian community we shall always need each other as the embodiment of God’s word of grace.
What’s more, since all of us have feet of clay and sin-riddled hearts, it is only as I see my bother or sister through Christ that I am no longer impeded by hear faults, nor she by mine. Bonhoeffer had in his bloodstream Paul’s word to the Christians in Rome: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.”
Perhaps the pithiest comment Bonhoeffer made on the matter of community is this: “he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing more than prattle in the presence of God too.”
(iii) The last theme I am going to discuss pertains more to me and Joan than to you: it concerns the work of the pastor. Bonhoeffer was a university professor who wanted nothing more than to be a pastor. He esteemed the work of the pastor even as he recognized the spiritual discipline which must surround all pastoral activity. “No pastoral conversation is possible without constant prayer”, he wrote; “other people must know that the pastor stands before God as the pastor stands before them.”
Bonhoeffer, sophisticated as he was in many branches of learning, yet knew that the ministry of the Word is just that: the ministry of the gospel of the crucified one. The pastor may certainly draw on whatever insights he gains from his learning; yet he must never forget that he is spokesperson for that word which is ultimate. For this reason Bonhoeffer never hesitated to say, for instance, “We do not understand sin through our experience of life or the world, but rather through our knowledge of the cross of Christ. The most experienced observer of humanity knows less of the human heart than the Christian who lives at the foot of the cross. No psychology knows that people perish only through sin and are saved only through the cross of Christ.”
Bonhoeffer recognized that the pastor slakes the thirst of his congregation only as the well within the pastor is deep. He wrote, “A parishioner must be able to sense that the pastor’s words overflow out of the fullness of his heart. They can tell if our proclamation is a spiritual reality for us.”
Today is Remembrance Day, a day when we commemorate the departed in a special way. As expected, Bonhoeffer had something to say about commemoration and cemeteries. “The cemetery surrounds the church to show that the place of worship is simultaneously the place of burial. The whole congregation is gathered here, the church militant and the church triumphant, those who are still being tested and those whose trials are over.”
The trials of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are over. May you and I be found as faithful in the midst of ours. Then we, like him, shall move from the church militant to the church triumphant.
A M E N
What Abundance!
(A word-study in the Greek verb PERISSEUEIN, “to abound”)
Text: Colossians 2:7 — “…abounding in thanksgiving.”
Aren’t you amazed at God’s magnanimity, his generosity, his large-heartedness? Clues to his magnanimity (but only clues) are seen in his handiwork. His creation abounds in examples of munificence. Think of the stars. There are billions of them in our galaxy (even as ours is not the only galaxy). Not only are there are innumerable stars, many of these stars are vastly larger and brighter than the star we know best, our own sun. The largest star is 690,000,000 miles in diameter; it is 800 times larger than our sun, and 1,900 times brighter. (Can you imagine a star 800 times larger than the sun?) And how vast is the star-world? Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. Other galaxies have been located as far away as six billion light years.
The creation is profuse just because the heart of the creator himself overflows ceaselessly. How many kinds of plants are there? And within the plant domain, how many kinds of trees? And within the tree domain, how many kinds of pines? Ninety! There are ninety different kinds of pine tree alone!
And then there is food. When I moved to the Maritimes I was astounded the first time I saw a fishing boat unload its catch. As the gleaming fish spilled out of the hold I felt there couldn’t be another fish left in the North Atlantic. And I was watching one boat only, an inshore-fishery boat at that, unloading only one day’s catch!
As much as we are inundated with fish we have to remember that only 1% of the world’s protein comes from fish. The rest comes chiefly from grain. And right now there is enough grain grown to give every last person 3000 calories per day. (We need only 2300 to survive.) When I was in India I saw tons of food piled at the roadside, in village after village. To be sure, there’s often a problem with food-distribution — since 15,000 people starve to death throughout the world every day — but there’s no lack of food-production. Let us never forget that France is the breadbasket of the European Economic Community, yet the nations of central Africa — where protein-deficiency diseases proliferate — produce more food per capita than France does. Even in its very worst years of famine India has remained a net exporter of food.
Whenever I reflect upon God’s overflowing bountifulness I pause as I think of food; I pause, but I don’t linger. I do linger, however, whenever I think of God’s great-heartedness concerning his Son. The apostle John cries, “It is not by measure that God gives the Spirit!” (John 3:34 RSV) [“God gives the Spirit without limit!” (NIV)] The rabbis in Israel of old used to say that God gave the prophets, gave each prophet, a measure of the Spirit; but only a measure of the Spirit, since no one prophet spoke the entire truth of God. Upon his Son, however, God has poured out the Spirit without limit. The Spirit hasn’t been rationed, a little here, a little there. No rationing, no doling out, no divvying-up; just the Father pouring out everything deep inside him upon the Son, then pointing to the Son while crying to the world, “What more can I say than in him I have said?”
It is not by measure that God has given Christ Jesus the Spirit. To know this is to know that in our Lord there is to be found all the truth of God, the wisdom of God, the passion of God — as well as the patience of God — the will and work and word and way of God. It’s all been poured into him.
If God has poured himself without limit into his Son, then you and I can be blessed without limit only in clinging to the Son. If God has deluged himself upon his Son, then we are going to be soaked in God’s blessings only as we stand so close to our Lord that what has been poured into him without limit spills over onto us as well.
I: — Paul tells the church-folk in Ephesus that the riches of God’s grace are lavished upon us in Christ. Grace is God’s love meeting our sin and therefore taking the form of mercy. (Eph. 1:8) Since God’s mercy meets our sin not once but over and over, undiscouraged and undeflected, God’s mercy takes the form of constancy. God’s constancy remains constant not because God is inflexible or rigid (and therefore brittle); God’s mercy remains constant not because he expects human hearts, now hard, to soften (some will, some won’t); God’s mercy remains constant in the face of our sin just because he has pledged himself to us and he will not break his promise to us even if every last human heart remains cold and stony and sterile. Grace, in a word, is God’s love meeting our sin, expressing itself therefore as mercy, and refusing to abandon us despite our frigid ingratitude and our senseless resistance. To speak of grace at all, in this context, is plainly to speak of the riches of grace. And such riches, says Paul, are lavished upon us, poured out upon us without calculation or qualification or hesitation or condition.
Several years ago in Cook County Jail, Chicago, the prison chaplain visited a prisoner on death row. The convict had only hours to live. Quietly, soberly, gently, sensitively the chaplain acquainted the convict afresh with the truth and simplicity and sufficiency of God’s provision for all humankind, and specifically for this one fellow who would shortly appear before him whom any of us can endure only as we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The convict — angry, frustrated, resentful, envious of those not in his predicament, just blindly livid and senselessly helpless — the convict spat in the chaplain’s face. The chaplain waited several minutes until a measure of emotional control seemed evident and said even more quietly, soberly, sensitively, “Would you like to spit in my face again?”
When the apostle speaks of “the riches of God’s grace” he never means that God is a doormat who can only stand by helplessly while the entire world victimizes him endlessly. When he speaks of the riches of God’s grace, rather, he means that the patience of God and the mercy of God and the constancy of God — the sheer willingness of God to suffer abuse and derision and anguish for us — all of this cannot be fathomed. Two hundred years before the incident in Cook County Jail Charles Wesley spoke for all of this when he wrote in his hymn, “I have long withstood his grace, long provoked him to his face”. Because of our protracted provocation, God’s grace can only be rich, can only be lavished upon us. Little wonder that Paul exclaims, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Rom.5:20) The marvel of God’s grace is that as abhorrent as our sin is to God, it is so very abhorrent to him that he wants it to become abhorrent to us as well; therefore he meets our sin with even more of his grace.
Why does he bother to meet our sin with grace abounding? Because he knows that if only we glimpse how much more he can give us we should want nothing less for ourselves. Jesus insists, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Our Lord has come that his people might have life aboundingly, hugely, wholly, grandly, plentifully.
We should note that while Jesus urges “abundance” upon us, he doesn’t tell us in what the abundance consists. He simply says that what he lends his people is to be described as bountiful, copious, plenteous, profusive. Why hasn’t he spelled it out more specifically? I think he hasn’t in order to minimize the risk of counterfeit imitation. If our Lord had said, ‘Abundant’ life consists in a,b,c,d, then people would immediately endeavour to fabricate or imitate a,b,c,d — all of which would render abundant life, so-called, utterly artificial.
People crave reality; they won’t settle ultimately for artificiality, regardless of how useful artificiality may appear in the short run. They crave reality. Surely that which is genuinely profound and truly significant will also be attractive. And surely that which is so very attractive will move more people from scepticism to faith and the possession of abundant life than will a clever argument which leaves them unable to reply but more sceptical than ever.
A minute ago I said that when Jesus speaks of “abundant life” he doesn’t say in what the abundance consists. Nevertheless, from the apostolic testimony as a whole we can put together a composite description. If generosity is a mark of discipleship, then one feature of abundant life is ungrudging, anonymous generosity. If love is too, then another feature is uncalculating concern for others regardless of their merit or their capacity to repay. If forgiveness of injuries and insults, then a marvellous forgivingness and an equally marvellous forgetfulness. If seriousness about prayer is a feature of abundant life, then equally significant is a willingness to forego much before foregoing the time we spend with our face upturned to God’s. Nobody wants to reduce holiness, the holiness marking Christians, to sexual purity. At the same time, wherever the New Testament urges holiness upon Christ’s people the context nearly always pertains to sexual conduct. (This is something the church has simply forgotten today.)
Needless to say, in all of this we shall always know that the abundant life streaming from us arises at all only because of the riches of God’s grace proliferating within us.
II: — In view of all that God pours into us, generates within us and calls forth from us we are to “abound in thanksgiving”. (2 Cor. 4:15; Col.2:6-7) We are to spout — geyser-like — uncontrived, unscheduled outbursts of gratitude to God. Of course there’s a place for scheduled acknowledgements of God’s goodness to us as we offer thanksgivings at set times (including Thanksgiving Sunday). More frequently, however, and more characteristically, unplotted effusions of thanksgiving overflow even the channels of good taste and middle class demeanour.
Despite all the sporting events that can be watched on television, there remains no substitute for seeing them “live”. Saturday night broadcasts into one’s living room and the Maple Leafs “live” at the Air Canada Centre are simply not the same event. One thing that never ceases to thrill me at a live game is the crowd’s spontaneous eruption when the home team scores. A Leaf player “drains one” (as they say in the game), and 19,000 people shout with one voice. There are no signs that suddenly flash, “Applaud now.” There is nothing prearranged to cue the crowd. There is only uncontrived exclamation.
Surely you and I will “abound in thanksgiving” only as we are overcome yet again at God’s astounding munificence and we cannot stifle our exclamation. And on Thanksgiving Sunday in particular, is there anyone whose heart doesn’t tingle at blessings too numerous to count? Then of course we are going to abound in thanksgiving.
III: — To know we have been given so much, to be grateful for having been given so much, is to shout “Amen” instantly when Paul urges us to “abound in every good work.” (2 Cor.9:8b) Anyone who has been blessed profoundly, anyone who gives thanks profusely, will always want to abound in “every good work”.
The older I grow the more I realize how important the ordinary, the undramatic, the “ho-hum” (so-called) is everywhere in life. Often the dramatic is deemed especially important, if only because the dramatic is unusual. An automobile strikes a pedestrian crossing the street; the pedestrian’s leg is severed, and the throbbing artery spouts blood, quickly draining away life — when along comes a fellow in his brand-new Harry Rosen Italian wool suit; without hesitating, he rips up the sleeve of his jacket and twists on the tourniquet — just in time. Good. None of it is to be slighted.
At the same time, 99.9% of life isn’t dramatic. For every dramatic assistance we might render there are a million opportunities for the most undramatic, concrete kindnesses whose blessings to their recipients are priceless. Maureen and I in Brandenburg, Germany, for instance, (one hour off the airplane) trying to find the tourist information bureau (needed for a list of “Zimmer mit Fruehstueck” — Bed & Breakfast); we have made four circuits in our rented car of the downtown maze of a mediaeval city, know by now that we aren’t going to find the tourist information bureau if we make 40 circuits, know too that we don’t know how to stop making circuits; a woman who speaks German only saying, “It’s too complicated for me to describe how to get to the bureau from here; I’ll walk you to it” — and then walking the longest distance out of her way to help two strangers from a foreign country whom she will never see again. The young mother across the aisle from me on the train to Montreal; her baby is only six months old, too young to be left alone; the woman is exceedingly nauseated and needs to get to the washroom before; would I hold her baby until she has returned from the washroom? Of course.
Because the undramatic abounds in life (as the dramatic does not), the apostle is careful to say that we are to abound in every good work.
IV: — There is only one matter left for us to probe. What impels us to do all of this? To be sure we are commanded to abound in thanksgiving, commanded again to abound in every good work. We can always grimace grimly and simply get on with it just because we’ve been ordered to; or we can recall the riches of God’s grace that have been lavished upon us. But to have to recall something is to admit that we are lacking an incentive that is immediate; and to grimace grimly and do onerously what we’ve been told to do is to admit that discipleship is a pain in the neck. Then what impels us to abound precisely where we know we should abound? Paul says we “abound” from the heart as joy — joy! — wells up within us.
When Paul saw that the Christians were going to go hungry in Jerusalem during the famine there he asked the Christians in Macedonia for help. The Macedonian believers were poor, dirt-poor. And yet when the apostle asked them to help people they had never seen they “gave beyond their means.” (2 Cor. 8:3) Not only did they give beyond their means, they begged Paul to grant them the privilege of helping others in dire need.
What impelled them to do it? Paul says simply, “…their abundance of joy overflowed in a wealth of liberality.” (2 Cor. 8:2) It was their joy — not their sense of duty, not the obligations of obedience — just their joy in Christ, their joy at the mercies of God, their joy at the super-abounding grace of God in the face of their abounding sin; it was their abundance of joy that impelled them to give beyond their means, poor as they were, as soon as they heard of those who were poorer still.
Only a superfluity of joy renders us those who are willing to make a real sacrifice for the kingdom; and only a superfluity of joy allows us to see that alongside the wounds of Christ we shouldn’t be speaking of our sacrifice at all.
On Thanksgiving Sunday, 2002, I want such abounding joy in my heart as to attest the mercy of God lavished upon me and lavished upon me endlessly in the face of my all-too-abounding sin and undeniable need. For then abounding thankfulness will stream my lips, even as abounding kindnesses flow from my hands.
Victor Shepherd
October 2002
Of Gratitude and Godliness
1st Thessalonians 5:15-20
“Who do you think you are?”, someone asked me recently. But the question wasn’t nasty or hostile. The question was asked in a spirit which was a peculiar blend of humour and seriousness. I felt the only thing for me to do was reply in the same spirit, a peculiar combination of humour and seriousness. “I think I am a mathematician-turned-grammarian”, I replied, “because grammar is the key to life”. The more I ponder my reply the more I think it was more serious than humorous: grammar is the key to life.
Think of the brief sentences in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Rejoice always”, “Pray constantly”, “Give thanks in all circumstances”. Now here is the lesson in grammar. The mood of the verbs is imperative; the tense of the verbs is present iterative. The imperative mood means we are commanded to do something; the present iterative tense means we are commanded to do it continuously, without letup, ceaselessly, unfailingly. We are always to rejoice, ceaselessly to keep on praying, unfailingly to give thanks in all circumstances. We are to thank God from the moment we regain consciousness in the morning until that moment when we fade out at night. Our thanksgiving is to be unremitting.
But note something crucial: the apostle tells us we are to thank God in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. We are never commanded to thank God for all circumstances. It would be the height of spiritual ignorance to thank God for all circumstances, for then we should be thanking God for those things which he opposes, against which he has set his face, and which he does not will.
Yet while not thanking God for everything we must thank him in everything, for there is no development in our lives where God is absent or inaccessible; there is no development which God does not attend in person and which he cannot penetrate with his grace. We must never think that the very things God abhors he therefore shuns. On the contrary the very thing God abhors he hovers over just because he knows that his presence, his grace, is especially needed there! We are not to thank God for all circumstances, for then we should be thanking him (ridiculously) for evil and wickedness and sin. Yet we must thank him in all circumstances just because he is with us in them all and remains unhandcuffed in them all.
A minute ago I said that grammar is the key to life. The present iterative imperative means we are to thank God not once, not spasmodically, not episodically, but constantly. And what has ceaseless thanksgiving to do with life? Life flourishes, life glows for those who are ceaselessly grateful. To be ceaselessly grateful means, in the first place, that we recognize the gift-aspect in all of life. Whether it is the food we can’t cause to grow or the friends we don’t deserve or the serendipities which surprise us or the unwearying patience of God or the ever-effervescing truth of God or the fathomless mercy of God, it is all gift. We are endlessly convinced that life is gift above all else.
To be ceaselessly grateful means, in the second place, that we recognize a giver whom we can thank, since there can be no gift without a giver.
To be ceaselessly grateful means, in the third place, that we shall also be the happiest and healthiest — because holiest — people anywhere. People who give thanks to the giver are those who have stopped looking inward; people who give thanks to the giver are those who are now lifted out of themselves and lifted above themselves. Let’s not be fooled. As psychology is popularized more and more, people gain a smattering of psychological concepts and vocabulary; at the same time they spend more and more time thinking about themselves — with the result that the popularizing of psychology (which is supposed to make the populace feel better) appears to make the populace feel worse. Hypochondria concerning physical aches and pains is bad enough. Add to it a hypochondria of the psyche and people are convinced they aren’t well only to render themselves unwell. You understand the progression. To engage in endless self-preoccupation is to imagine that you have a pain in your tummy. Next you worry about the (imaginary) pain in your tummy until your worrying gives rise to a tummy-disorder. Now you have a real pain in your tummy. When neither the pain nor the anxiety disappears readily the next stage is depression over the syndrome. On it goes. So far from helping people, much pop-psychology turns people into themselves, fixes them upon themselves, addicts them to themselves. We need to be turned out of ourselves. But how?
How? You understand the progression. To discern the ceaseless gift-dimension is to be moved to gift thanks; to give thanks is to thank someone in particular (namely, the giver himself); therefore to give thanks ceaselessly is ceaselessly to be fixed upon God. End of hypochondria, whether hypochondria of body, mind or spirit! End of moaning, groaning, griping, whining! Now we are lifted out of ourselves as we look above ourselves to thank God for gifts he has strewn lavishly throughout our lives. I have mentioned the food we can’t cause to grow, the friends we don’t deserve, the serendipities which surprise us, the unwearying patience of God, the ever-effervescing truth of God, the fathomless mercy of God. I mention these because these so riddle my life that they leap to my mind unbidden. What would fall off your tongue in an instant? And in five minutes with a sheet of paper in front of you? In five minutes you would be looking for a second sheet! The happiest and healthiest people — because the holiest — are those who resonate with the verb, “Give thanks”, in the imperative mood and the present iterative tense: “Give thanks – always”. I was serious when I told my questioner that grammar is the key to life.
In the time that remains today I want to indicate briefly how gratitude renders us holy and therefore profoundly healthy and happy as gratitude turns our gaze away from ourselves and fixes our gaze upon God.
(i) In the first instance thanksgiving is the essence of worship. The note sounded in Psalm 100 is a note heard everywhere in scripture. “Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures for ever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” Worship is adoration. And what we adore in God is precisely what we are moved to thank him for. Then thank him we shall. And in thanking him we shall adore him; we shall worship.
I sag every time I hear the expression, “worship-experience”. Why do I groan at the mention of “worship experience”? Here’s a hint: Martin Buber, a wonderful philosopher and biblical thinker; Buber has said, “The moment you become aware that you are praying, you are no longer praying.” He’s right. Prayer is the heart’s outpoured exclamation before God. The moment I say “I am now praying”, I’m preoccupied with myself, not preoccupied with God. Recently a fellow-professor in whose course I was asked to teach for six hours one Saturday stepped up to the lectern right after I had finished, right after I had told the class what Buber had said and why he he had said it. This fellow-professor urged the class, “Now be sure to journal your prayer-experiences”. Journal one’s “prayer-experiences”? That guaranteed they wouldn’t be praying at all.
Now you understand why I’m upset at the expression “worship-experience”. A Saturday morning or Wednesday evening church event that begins with a service of worship is evaluated at the conclusion of the event. Everyone filling in the evaluation-sheet is asked to comment on “the worship-experience”. But as soon as we speak of “worship-experience” we plainly have in mind our own experience. At this point worship has been corrupted into something which is supposed to fuel our experience. But it’s nothing less than a corruption! Worship is not a technique or tool for elevating us; worship is the adoration of God, even as the essence of adoration is thanksgiving.
Not fewer than six times a day do I tell my wife that I love her. I don’t tell her repeatedly that I love her because I enjoy the experience of telling her, because telling her makes me feel good. Neither do I tell her because she is neurotically insecure and if I don’t tell her she will unravel or even leave me. I tell her I love her because I cannot thank her enough. She has loved me so lavishly that the love she spills over me splashes back upon her in the form of gratitude. It is love so deep that it uncovers the inconsistencies and contradictions in me without shaming me or annihilating me; love so undeflectable that not even my residual sin has induced her to stop loving me.
Nonetheless my dear wife would be the first to admit that she is a spiritually stunted, sin-riddled creature whose sinnership warps her, and therefore warps her love for me. Then let us say no more about her but instead contemplate GOD: his love for all of us is inexhaustibly deep and eternally undeflectable. Little wonder, then, we are commanded to enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise! Because you and I are deformed creatures of dull wit and calcified heart the psalmist knows he has to repeat himself if we are to get the message. Therefore he tells us immediately that God is not only good but also faithful; i.e., God is constant with respect to his love.
To grasp this — because first grasped by this — is to be overwhelmed with a gratitude which expresses itself in adoration. Thanksgiving is the essence of worship.
(ii) In the second instance thanksgiving renders us holy — and therefore profoundly happy and healthy — in that thanksgiving ensures contentment. The uncontented are those who are not grateful just because they are covetous. Covetousness and contentedness are mutually exclusive. To covet is to forfeit contentment; on the other hand, to be contented is to dispel coveting. Martin Luther was correct when he said that to keep the first commandment is to keep them all, while to violate the tenth commandment is to violate them all. The first commandment is that we recognize no other deity than the Holy One of Israel; the tenth, that we covet nothing at all. Honour the first, and we honour them all; violate the last, and we violate them all.
It’s easy to understand. If we violate the tenth; that is, if we covet, we covet whatever our neighbour has, including his good reputation, and soon we are bearing false witness against him. At this point the ninth commandment is violated. If we covet, we covet our neighbour’s goods, and soon we are stealing from him. Now the eighth is violated. If we covet, we covet our neighbour’s spouse, and soon we are committing adultery. Now the seventh is violated. As covetousness comes to rage in us we get to the point where we resent everything about our neighbour, and soon we feel murderous toward him. Now the sixth is violated.
Then are we to will ourselves not to covet? But coveting comes naturally to fallen people, people whose orientation is sin. Given this orientation, fierce determination not to covet will only produce grim frustration and scarcely suppressed fury. Plainly we need a new orientation. Our new orientation must be gratitude to God for the gifts he continues to give us — regardless of what someone else appears to have! Thankfulness ensures contentment. To give thanks in all circumstances is profoundly to be contented in all circumstances; not to be pleased with all circumstances, not to be complacent in all circumstances, not to be stupidly indifferent to all circumstances, but profoundly to know that there is no area or development in life where the gift-dimension is absent, and therefore there is no day on which the giver himself is not be thanked and our hearts to be rendered content.
Contentment crushes covetousness. Contentment is born of gratitude. Thanksgiving ensures contentment.
(iii) In the third instance thanksgiving attests our recognition of God’s provision in the past and fires our courage for the future. The apostle Paul had wanted to go to Rome for three years. Rome was the capital city of the empire, and he wanted to declare his gospel in the seat of the imperial power. Rome was also the gateway to western Europe, and Paul’s missionary vocation impelled him to push on past Rome into Spain where he could announce the news of Jesus Christ to those who had never heard the name.
Three years had elapsed since he had written the Christians in Rome , informing them of his plans. No doubt he had often wondered, in those three years, if he were ever going to get to Rome . No doubt he had wondered too what sort of reception he would find among the Christians in Rome . After all, many Christians were suspicious of Paul, to say the least. Since his reputation as a fierce Christian-basher was widespread, Christians tended to dismiss their suspicion only upon meeting him face-to-face and spending time with him. The Roman Christians had never met him. To what extent would they suspect him? How long would it take for them to trust him? Would they ever “warm up” to him? His courage sagged.
And then there were the sights which greeted Paul as he approached Rome . The huge Roman fleet anchored at Misenum; the holiday beaches at Baiae where “swingers” splashed around mindlessly; the vast storehouses and granaries and merchant ships at Puteoli. What was he, a diminutive Jewish tentmaker, supposed to do in the face of all this? His courage sagged again.
Then he saw them. A delegation of Christians from Rome ! They couldn’t wait for him to get to the city, and so had walked miles to meet him. Some had walked as far as the town of Three Taverns, thirty-three miles from Rome ; others had walked to the Forum of Appius, forty-three miles! And what a greeting it was! In his write-up of the incident Luke tells us that there was a “meeting”. Meeting? The English word is far too weak. The Greek word APANTESIS is the word used when dignitaries go out to greet a king or a general or a victorious hero. The Christians from Rome who had tramped forty-three miles (and would have to walk forty-three miles back) were investing Paul with immense honour and esteem and appreciation.
In that instant the apostle’s misgivings disappeared. Provision had been made for him. He wasn’t suspect; he wasn’t met with ice-cold frigidity; he didn’t have to prove himself; he wasn’t going to be kept to the fringes of the Christian fellowship in Rome on account of his past persecutions. Luke tells us that when Paul saw the delegation of Roman Christians he “gave thanks and took courage”. He gave thanks for provision made in the past, and took courage because he knew that provision would be made for the future.
Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. We give thanks because we are impelled to thank God for his unending goodness to us. As we do give thanks we are lifted out of ourselves, lifted above ourselves, and find that whining and complaining and bellyaching are fleeing.
What’s more, our thankfulness will ever be the essence of our worship; it will ever ensure our contentment, dispelling covetousness; and it will ever signify our recognition of God’s mercies in the past even as it lends us courage for the future.
Then let us exclaim with the psalmist,
“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
Victor Shepherd
October 2005
OF GRATITUDE AND GODLINESS
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18**
Psalm 100:6
Ephesians 5:4
Acts 28:15
Psalm 106:1
To grasp this — because first grasped by this — is to be overwhelmed with a gratitude which expresses itself in adoration. Thanksgiving is the essence of worship.
(ii) In the second instance thanksgiving renders us holy — and therefore profoundly happy and healthy — in that thanksgiving ensures contentment. The uncontented are those who are not grateful just because they are covetous. Covetousness and contentedness are mutually exclusive. To covet is to forfeit contentment; on the other hand, to be contented is to dispel coveting. Martin Luther was correct when he said that to keep the first commandment is to keep them all, while to violate the tenth commandment is to violate them all. The first commandment is that we recognize no other deity than the Holy One of Israel; the tenth, that we covet nothing at all. Honour the first, and we honour them all; violate the last, and we violate them all.
It’s easy to understand. If we violate the tenth; that is, if we covet, we covet whatever our neighbour has, including his good reputation, and soon we are bearing false witness against him. At this point the ninth commandment is violated. If we covet, we covet our neighbour’s goods, and soon we are stealing from him. Now the eighth is violated. If we covet, we covet our neighbour’s spouse, and soon we are committing adultery. Now the seventh is violated. As covetousness comes to rage in us we get to the point where we resent everything about our neighbour, and soon we feel murderous toward him. Now the sixth is violated.
Then are we to will ourselves not to covet? But coveting comes naturally to fallen people, people whose orientation is sin. Given this orientation, fierce determination not to covet will only produce grim frustration and scarcely suppressed fury. Plainly we need a new orientation. Our new orientation must be gratitude to God for the gifts he continues to give us — regardless of what someone else appears to have! Thankfulness ensures contentment. To give thanks in all circumstances is profoundly to be contented in all circumstances; not to be pleased with all circumstances, not to be complacent in all circumstances, not to be stupidly indifferent to all circumstances, but profoundly to know that there is no area or development in life where the gift-dimension is absent, and therefore there is no day on which the giver himself is not be thanked and our hearts to be rendered content.
Contentment crushes covetousness. Contentment is born of gratitude. Thanksgiving ensures contentment.
(iii) In the third instance thanksgiving attests our recognition of God’s provision in the past and fires our courage for the future. The apostle Paul had wanted to go to Rome for three years. Rome was the capital city of the empire, and he wanted to declare his gospel in the seat of the imperial power. Rome was also the gateway to western Europe, and Paul’s missionary vocation impelled him to push on past Rome into Spain where he could announce the news of Jesus Christ to those who had never heard the name.
Three years had elapsed since he had written the Christians in Rome , informing them of his plans. No doubt he had often wondered, in those three years, if he were ever going to get to Rome . No doubt he had wondered too what sort of reception he would find among the Christians in Rome . After all, many Christians were suspicious of Paul, to say the least. Since his reputation as a fierce Christian-basher was widespread, Christians tended to dismiss their suspicion only upon meeting him face-to-face and spending time with him. The Roman Christians had never met him. To what extent would they suspect him? How long would it take for them to trust him? Would they ever “warm up” to him? His courage sagged.
And then there were the sights which greeted Paul as he approached Rome . The huge Roman fleet anchored at Misenum; the holiday beaches at Baiae where “swingers” splashed around mindlessly; the vast storehouses and granaries and merchant ships at Puteoli. What was he, a diminutive Jewish tentmaker, supposed to do in the face of all this? His courage sagged again.
Then he saw them. A delegation of Christians from Rome ! They couldn’t wait for him to get to the city, and so had walked miles to meet him. Some had walked as far as the town of Three Taverns, thirty-three miles from Rome ; others had walked to the Forum of Appius, forty-three miles! And what a greeting it was! In his write-up of the incident Luke tells us that there was a “meeting”. Meeting? The English word is far too weak. The Greek word APANTESIS is the word used when dignitaries go out to greet a king or a general or a victorious hero. The Christians from Rome who had tramped forty-three miles (and would have to walk forty-three miles back) were investing Paul with immense honour and esteem and appreciation.
In that instant the apostle’s misgivings disappeared. Provision had been made for him. He wasn’t suspect; he wasn’t met with ice-cold frigidity; he didn’t have to prove himself; he wasn’t going to be kept to the fringes of the Christian fellowship in Rome on account of his past persecutions. Luke tells us that when Paul saw the delegation of Roman Christians he “gave thanks and took courage”. He gave thanks for provision made in the past, and took courage because he knew that provision would be made for the future.
Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. We give thanks because we are impelled to thank God for his unending goodness to us. As we do give thanks we are lifted out of ourselves, lifted above ourselves, and find that whining and complaining and bellyaching are fleeing.
What’s more, our thankfulness will ever be the essence of our worship; it will ever ensure our contentment, dispelling covetousness; and it will ever signify our recognition of God’s mercies in the past even as it lends us courage for the future.
Then let us exclaim with the psalmist,
“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
Victor Shepherd
October 2005
Grateful Again
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
2nd Corinthians 9:6-15
Luke 17:11-19
I: — The writer of Proverbs tells us that there are four things so wonderful as to defy understanding: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the seas, and the way of a man with a maid. These four are wonderful. At the same time, I am sure that the writer would never restrict the wonders of the universe to four. So rich is the creation, so marvellously diverse, that the universe is wonder upon wonder without end.
Vast and rich as the creation is, the Creator himself can only be vaster and richer. Today, on Thanksgiving Sunday, I am led to wonder and gratitude and adoration as I ponder the universe which has come from God’s hand.
Think of the navigational instinct of birds. Myself, I have the poorest sense of direction. Following a road map is almost an insuperable challenge to me when road maps are supposed to render a sense of direction unnecessary. So poor is my sense of direction that I have difficulty recognizing streetscape or landscape that I saw only five hours earlier. Yet the homing pigeon can always get home.
The best navigators are sea birds. Best of all is the shearwater. One of them, taken from its nest and transported 3,200 miles away, returned to its nest 12.5 days later. In other words, the bird had flown, on average, 10.5 miles per hour, 24 hours per day, 12.5 days, and had found its way to the nest from which it had been taken.
Bees aren’t birds, but bees are top-notch navigators as well. In order to orient themselves bees need to see only the tiniest bit of blue sky. You see, light from blue sky is polarized. (Polarized light has different properties in different directions, whereas the light that shines through cloud cover isn’t polarized.) As long as bees have access to polarized light from the smallest patch of blue sky they will never lose their way.
Then there is the brain. The neural complexity, the cellular complexity of the brain astounds me. More marvellous than the structure of the brain is the functioning of the brain. Brain is connected to muscle by means of nerves. Nerves, muscles and brain work together in such a way that we can will to do something and do it!
More marvellous still is the realm of thought. In the creaturely world there is no thought without brain. Yet thought isn’t mere brain-activity; “thought” isn’t just a fancy term for electrical connections among brain cells. While mind, at the creaturely level, never occurs without brain, mind is never reducible to brain. After Albert Einstein had died his brain was sliced ever so finely and examined under a microscope. His brain was found to be no different from anyone else’s. Yet his mind was startlingly different. Why? How? No one knows.
Brain-researchers tell us that one part of the brain has to do with hearing and smelling and seeing, while another part has to do with locomotion, body-movement. It’s easy to confirm this every time someone sustains brain-damage. The area of injury is correlated to loss of sense-perception or loss of movement. Still, the most sophisticated brain-research hasn’t been able to unearth the exact seat of consciousness or how consciousness functions. We know that consciousness is related to the mid-brain, but we don’t know at all how what is organic (brain) is related to what isn’t organic in any respect (consciousness). The everyday commonness of consciousness renders the marvel no less marvellous.
I am rendered near-speechless as well every time I contemplate the heavens. There are 100 billion stars in “our” galaxy alone. A star, as you know, is actually a sun. Stars, unlike planets, are self-luminous. “Our” sun, the sun without whose light and warmth life would never have appeared on earth; “our” sun is 92 million miles away — very close, really, since the next closest sun or star is 270,000 times farther away again (i.e., 270,000 times 92 million miles.) The only reason “our” sun seems so much brighter than other stars is simply that “our” sun is so much closer to us.
You might think that the sun is solid, like hot volcanic rock. Actually, the sun is gas, pure hydrogen gas, held together by gravity. While we usually think of gas as light and airy, the hydrogen gas of the sun is heavy, so dense that there isn’t a person here who could carry a four-litre milk bag of it — since a milk bag of the sun’s hydrogen gas weights 400 pounds.
While the earth revolves around the sun, the sun itself is never standing still. The sun revolves around a point in our galaxy, and revolves once every 220 million years.
We mustn’t think of the sun as the brightest star. Another star in our galaxy, Orion, is 18,000 times brighter than the sun, but it only seems to twinkle inasmuch as it is 545 light years away from us (a light year being approximately six thousand trillion miles.)
So far we haven’t moved outside our galaxy. If we move next door to an adjacent galaxy, we find a tight cluster of stars that is a billion times brighter than “our” sun.
II: — And yet so rich is God that he has made something more marvelous than the firmament: he has made you and me and countless others. For a long time I have known that other people energize me. I don’t have to know these people; I need only be around them, in the midst of them. Just why they energize me I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with the marvelous diversity in human beings who are, after all, the crown and the glory of God’s creation. In the old creation story in Genesis 1 we read that after God created anything he pronounced it “good.” He created planets — “good”; vegetation — “good”; animal life — “good”. But when he created humankind there were two uniquenesses in the old story: one, God blessed man and woman — blessed them in that they alone were created in his image and appointed to fellowship with him; two, he pronounced what he had done “very good.”
The people, the crowd or the throng that energizes me; they are nameless to me, but they aren’t nameless, and certainly not nameless to God. They are the crown of God’s creation. Every last one of them is a beneficiary of our Lord’s sacrifice. He surrounds them arms and hands whose nail prints they may ignore for now but can never finally deny. Again and again, therefore, people whom I do not know at all are an occasion of thanksgiving for me.
And then there are those who do something extra-special for me: children. On several occasions I’ve travelled overseas to attend international conferences. When I went to Korea in August 1998 for the meetings of The International Congress on Calvin Research I had to get there two days ahead of the conference on account of airline scheduling. I felt lonely. I felt lonely in the same way upon arriving in both Stockholm and in Frankfurt when I was in Europe for meetings of the World Council of Churches. I did in Korea what I had learned to do on my earlier forays: I went looking for children. Finding children isn’t difficult in Seoul, a city of 13 million. The children there were like children everywhere: eager, energetic, oblivious of so much that renders adults cautious or jaded or cynical or hesitant. On an even earlier jaunt to Germany with the World Council of Churches I had felt lonely at the start of my stay. I hadn’t become acquainted with anyone at the conference yet, and in any case it soon appeared that they all knew each other from previous conferences, while I was new and strange. I went for a walk through Arnoldshain, a suburb of Frankfurt, aware that if I could just see some children I should no longer feel lonely or strange. In no time I came upon them. A few rosy-cheeked four year olds were sliding down snow banks. Some were throwing snowballs. Others were waving to their mother as they set off for afternoon classes. Two were locked in a life-and-death dispute. I was far from home, in a country whose citizen I was not, among children who spoke less English than I did German. Nonetheless, they were children. They typified promise, as surely as Isaac had typified promise to Abraham and Sarah, as surely as John the Dipper had typified promise to Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were cherished. Parents had counted the days until they were born and now felt that nothing mattered in all the world as much as their child. Suddenly I was no longer lonely. For me, to be among those who are cherished and the bearer of promise is to understand afresh how much I am cherished and what promise there is about me.
And then there are the men and women I meet in ways that leave me amazed. It happened to me with most poignant profundity when I went to a funeral at Temple Sinai, a synagogue in the Bathurst and Wilson area of Toronto. Because I had arrived 45 minutes early I went to a Jewish restaurant, Marky’s Delicatessen, for a cup of tea. The sign inside said, “Please seat yourself”. I noticed two things. One, there were no seats available. Two, I was the only man without a hat on. All the other men were wearing either a yarmulke or a fedora. It was obvious that I was in an Orthodox Jewish stronghold, and I stood out as the only non-Jewish man on the premises. I waited for a minute, not knowing quite what to do, when at the back of the restaurant an old, thin Jewish man with the warmest smile and the face of an angel moved over on his seat and beckoned to me as he called out, “There is room for us both!”
My heart melted. I had grasped the double meaning he had uttered deliberately when he had said, “There is room for us both.” I sat down beside him and we began to talk. His older sister had brought him to Canada prior to World War II. He and his sister were the sole survivors of his family. I asked him what he had done for a living. “I was a simple peddler. I went door-to-door peddling tablecloths, sheets and pillow cases.” Now he was old. He went to Marky’s Delicatessen every day for lunch. Every morning when he got up, he told me, he did his house cleaning. “I clean my house as well as any man can”, he said with his eyes dancing, “not as well as a woman could, but as well as I can.” I asked him where he had grown up. Southeast Poland. “But I shan’t tell you the village, since it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway.” He told me next that small and insignificant as his village was, it had had a famous rabbi, a most famous rabbi. “It’s a tradition”, he continued, “that a rabbi remain in the place where he begins his work. Now a minister has to go wherever he is sent. But our rabbi stayed in our little village, even though he could have gone anywhere at all, because the tradition meant more to him than the money; and besides he loved us so much.”
I hadn’t told the old man that I was a minister. Was he psychic? It wasn’t anything psychic at all. It was spirit resonating with spirit. It was heart responding to heart. I told him that in fact I was a minister. “Oh, I knew that already”, he said as if it need not have been mentioned.
In view of the fact that words like “minister” and “Christian” are synonymous with persecution going back for centuries in Poland, do you have any grasp of what grace floods that old man’s heart for him to have said to me, “There is room for us both”? He knew I represented that institution which has afflicted his people for centuries.
As the thin old man finished his lunch and I finished my tea he told me that he had had the most wonderful grandmother in Poland. Every night throughout his childhood his grandmother had asked him the same two questions: “Have you prayed? Have you worked?”
I’ll not see that dear man until the day when Messiah tarries no more. But for my meeting with him I shall thank God for the rest of my life.
If people whom I meet once are an occasion for thanksgiving, what about friends? And beyond friends, what about those people — one or two or perhaps three — who are soul mates and who know us even when we are silent and love us even when we are obnoxious?
Today my heart overflows in gratitude to God for the people whom he has brought before me, people from the big city as well as the tiny village in southeast Poland, not to mention soul mates because of whom I shall never be forsaken.
III: — Neither shall I ever be forsaken by our Lord himself. “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:16), exclaims the apostle Paul. The inexpressible gift is plainly Jesus Christ. He is inexpressible inasmuch as his sacrifice grants us access to the Father himself, and it is his face which mirrors the face of God so as to give us the knowledge of the glory of God. (2. Cor. 4:6)
I do marvel at the vastness and richness of the creation. At the same time, I’m aware that the creation which came forth from God’s hand isn’t exactly the creation which confronts us now, for the creation now exists in the era of the Fall. Certainly I relish all that children give me. At the same time, everyone knows that to be among children, whether as parent or as schoolteacher, is to shed all doubts concerning the doctrine of original sin. Of course I’m enriched by the people whose lives flow through mine like osmosis. But I also have no illusions about the human heart; I haven’t forgotten that the 20th century, just concluded, is the most murderous in the history of humankind. Nature is beautiful; and in a fallen world nature is also blood red.
The gift of Jesus Christ is inexpressible just because it is the one gift, the only gift anywhere in life, which isn’t marred by the Fall. This gift has no downside, no qualification, no reservation, isn’t impaired in any way. In giving us what is dearest to him — his eternal Son — God has given us himself. At what cost we can only glimpse dimly, yet glimpse enough to know that the cost is as inestimable as the gift is inexpressible.
The apostle’s exclamation is effusive — “inexpressible gift!” — just because the apostle’s experience of the gift is so rich. He knew that as the risen Lord stole into his heart the myriad confusions and contradictions in his life disappeared. No longer did he think it was God-honouring to persecute Christians. No longer did he think that only his ethnic group made up the people of God. No longer did he think that favourable standing with God was something he had to achieve, could achieve, or had achieved. He knew himself gathered up in an embrace that freed him to give up his misguided frenzy.
On many occasions in my life different people (as well as the same one or two people many times over) have forgiven me, cherished me, waited for me, refused to reject me or humiliate me when they had ample ground for despising me or dismissing me. What these people have done for me has left me knowing that I am blessed inexpressibly. I also know that what they have done reflects a vastly greater blessing from God himself. When Paul writes with amazement and brevity, “He loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), he uses so few words just because he knows that the inexpressible can’t be expressed.
Can’t be expressed, but can be held in one’s heart, can become the truth which quietly transforms us and informs us for the rest of our lives, can become the foundational certainty which sustains us in our living and will see us through our dying. “He loved me, and gave himself for me.”
To know this gift is to know that the gift will be pressed upon me until God completes that good work which he has begun in me. (Philippians 1:6) To know this gift is to know that God will indeed heal that creation of his which, although fallen now, still exhibits splendour and marvel everywhere.
Knowing the One whose depths are unfathomable and whose gift of himself is inexpressible, I am rendered ever more grateful for people whose richness is inestimable, and for a universe whose wonders are endless.
Victor Shepherd
October 2001
Of Gratitude and Grumbling and a Cheerful Heart
Exodus 16:2-3
Proverbs 17:22 ; 15:15
2nd Corinthians 9:11-12
Colossians 2:7
John 16:33
I: — Petulant whining, complaining, grousing, grumbling; it always strikes us as so very childish. It rains on the day of the picnic. The child pouts and sulks, mumbles and mutters. Finally her mother has had enough. “I can’t to anything about the weather,” mother says, thinking that her reasonable word to the child will undo the child’s irrationality and sweeten the child’s sourness. Not a chance. The child seems to prefer to mumble and mutter petulantly, seems to enjoy being miserable. Mother, still assuming that her rationality can undo her child’s irrationality, sweetly replies, “All right; so we can’t have a picnic today. Just think of all you have to be grateful for.” Petulantly the child mutters that she can’t think of anything at all. Of course she can’t. Ingratitude shrivels hearts and distorts perception and perverts understanding. At this point mother shakes her head and finds consolation that one day her child will be an adult and will see such matters as powerlessness over weather from an adult point of view. At which time gratitude will appear and life will be assessed quite differently.
Yet there are some adults who, while “adult” in the sense of being post-adolescent, never mature. Ingratitude born of short-sightedness never gives way to gratitude for blessings visible everywhere. An unthankful spirit, worsened by petulance, is always a sign of childishness, to say the least.
But more than the least has to be said. In other words, while ingratitude is a sign of childishness, it’s also a sign of something worse than childishness. It’s a sign of grave spiritual sickness.
When scripture speaks of ingratitude and the grumbling that noisily advertises ingratitude, it gathers up the inner attitude and the outer manifestation in one onomatopoeic word: “murmuring.” Everywhere in scripture unthankful people are said to murmur.
We first read of God’s people murmuring when they are in the wilderness, halfway between Egypt and the Promised Land. Earlier they had been slaves in Egypt , and had found slavery unendurable. They had cried out in those days, and God had been moved by their outcry, since they had grounds for crying out. God had delivered them with his outstretched arm. Then he had forged them into a people after his own heart at Mount Sinai when he had given them the Ten Words, a way of living that would end forever the social chaos and the spiritual disintegration they had seen in the pagan nations. The only thing left them to do was to fall on their faces in gratitude; sheer, adoring gratitude. After all, they had been spared the misery and humiliation of slavery as well as the confusion and corruption of ungodliness. In view of what God had spared them, the hardship of the wilderness – rigorous to be sure – would nevertheless have been inconsequential. However, as their gratitude evaporated, reasonableness evaporated too. Now they wanted to go back to Egypt . “At least we had lots to eat in Egypt ,” they whined, “even if we were slaves.”
Are the ungrateful people, now advertising their ingratitude through grumbling, willing to forfeit their calling as God’s people? Do they really want to hand themselves over to the indignity and dehumanisation of slavery? Do they really want to embrace the spiritual vacuity and the amorality of the nations that haven’t been to Mount Sinai ?
Yes. Insanity of the sort just described is a spin-off of ingratitude. In view of what God had done for them; in view of what God continued to do for them; in view of all this, ingratitude could only spell disaster as surely as gratitude would have guaranteed their faithfulness as God’s people and guaranteed the fulfilment of their vocation as a light to the nations.
I am moved whenever I read the Heidelberg Catechism, written in 1563. The Heidelberg Catechism is the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings. It is a gem. The first section of the Catechism is titled “The Misery of Man.” Ten questions and answers realistically probe and portray the human predicament in the era of the Fall. The second section is titled “The Redemption of Man.” Seventy-Five questions and answers tell us of God’s glorious mercy and patience and persistence, all motivated by his oceanic love of sinners. The third section is titled “Thankfulness;” simply that: “Thankfulness.” This third section begins by posing the question, “Why should we obey God?” It doesn’t answer that we should obey him lest we provoke his anger. It doesn’t even say that we should obey him out of enlightened self-interest (things will go better for us if we obey him.) It says that we should obey him out of gratitude to him for all that his goodness has done for us. In other words, according to the Heidelberg Catechism the whole of our discipleship, our obedience, whatever renunciation is asked of us; it’s all motivated by one thing: thankfulness.
By the time the Catechism gets around to speaking of prayer it’s at question #116. “Why is prayer necessary for Christians?” Why do you think prayer is necessary for Christians? Because it’s the instrument for getting what we need? Answer #116: “Prayer is the principal element in the thankfulness God requires of us.” Every aspect of our response to God derives from our gratitude.
“Gratitude for what?” someone asks. All Christians, together with our Hebrew ancestors in faith; all Christians have stood at the edge of the Red Sea; all Christians have stood at the foot of Sinai; and all Christians have stood, above all, at the foot of the cross. We are the beneficiaries of God’s goodness so many times over that minimal spiritual sanity means maximal gratitude. Ingratitude, murmuring, can only mean that we are so blind to what we’ve been given as to be insane.
II: — “Is unthankfulness as serious as that?” someone asks. “Is grumbling that dangerous?” Yes it is.
In the parable of the workers in the vineyard Jesus points out that ingratitude, grumbling, reveals resentment and reinforces it. In this parable some men are hired to work in the vineyard. At the end of their eight-hour shift they are paid the agreed-upon sum. Other workers, hired late in the day and therefore who have worked only four hours or two hours or perchance one hour; these other workers receive the same sum. This parable, we should note right here, has nothing to do with economics or labour relations. This parable has rather to do with God’s grace and mercy and help. You see, in ancient Palestine day-labourers, the bottom rung of the working class, were paid at the end of each day. They had to be. They lived so close to the line that they had no savings at all, nothing in reserve. With the money they were paid for that day’s work they fed their families the same evening and next morning. The men in the parable who had worked a full day were given one day’s pay – and immediately used it to sustain themselves and their dependents. The men who had worked less than a day were nonetheless given a full day’s pay. Why? Because anything less than a full day’s pay would have been useless. If they had received a quarter of a day’s pay for a quarter of a day’s work, they and their dependents would have starved. Because the owner of the vineyard was generous, all the men were given what they needed regardless of what they deserved. Even so, says Jesus, people with ungrateful hearts murmur and mutter and grumble at the vineyard owner inasmuch as they resent seeing others appear more fortunate than they. Had they been grateful themselves, they would also have rejoiced to see other needy people given as much as those people needed.
A clergyman who had served in the prairies during the Great Depression told me of the joy in his village the day a boxcar of vegetables from the east was uncoupled from the train and left in the village. People were given cabbages and turnips and carrots and corn and ever so much more. It so happened that the postmaster was the only man in the village with a permanent job. Therefore he was extraordinarily privileged. And when the vegetables were distributed, the old clergyman told me, this postmaster denounced the fellow-villager who had been given a slightly larger turnip. Ingratitude reveals resentment and reinforces it.
Ingratitude does something more: it cloaks a mean spirit. Thankfulness publicises a generous spirit; unthankfulness cloaks a mean spirit.
A woman fell at the feet of Jesus and poured out on his feet the costliest bottle of cologne as she wiped his feet with her hair. Why did she do this? She did it out gratitude to him for all that he done for her. Mark tells us that several bystanders, people who plainly were possessed of no gratitude at all, carped and complained, muttered and murmured, groused and grumbled, “This money could have been given to the poor.” Since when were these grumblers concerned with the poor? When have complainers ever been concerned with the poor? Every time Jesus had eaten with the poor the murmurers had murmured. They weren’t concerned with the poor. They were ungrateful people whose mean spirits found them relishing every opportunity to complain.
The price of the cologne indicated the depth of the woman’s gratitude. Then how grateful was she? She had spent 300 denarii on the bottle of cologne; 300 denarii, an entire year’s income. Luke tells us that the woman was a harlot. In those long-ago days of sweaty-hot Palestine when bathtubs and water were scarce, harlots used cologne as a tool of the trade. In other words, her gratitude moved her to a public renunciation of her sin and her sin-begotten employment. Her gratitude moved her to a public penitence. Her gratitude moved her to a costly sacrifice, for this woman had given up her livelihood.
How grateful are you today? And I? Grateful enough to renounce sin and proffer penitence and gladly make that sacrifice whose cost we count only to forget? Are we so grateful that compared to our gratitude the sacrifice our Lord asks of us is nothing?
Bystanders who watched the woman carped at her and complained, ungrateful grumblers that they were. Their inner ingratitude and their outer murmuring merely cloaked a mean spirit.
Ingratitude is lethal for yet another reason. Inner ingratitude and outer murmuring blind us to God’s breaking in upon us in the most ordinary moments and circumstances. It’s just the opposite with the grateful heart. The person whose heart is characteristically grateful recognises the incursion of God in her life in the most ordinary circumstances and in the most undramatic ways. The grateful person instantly, gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she finds herself discerning more sensitively even more subtle incursions of God in her life. Once again she instantly, gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she finds herself discerning even more sensitively the even more subtle incursions of God in her life. It all keeps spiralling up as her gratitude is rewarded with discernment and her discernment with greater gratitude and her greater gratitude with still greater discernment.
It’s just the opposite with the ungrateful grumbler. Everything spirals down for him. Jesus quietly announces that he is the bread of life, that gift of God no less miraculous than the manna which sustained God’s people day-by-day when they had no other resources. Immediately the murmurers around Jesus begin to murmur. “How can he be the bread of life? We know his mother and father. He’s nothing more than a carpenter’s son. He’s too ordinary to be God’s visitation and God’s definitive blessing.” Murmuring shrivels our heart, dulls our understanding, numbs our spiritual sensors. Murmuring invariably blinds us to those moments, ordinary to be sure yet not ordinary, when we know that God has spoken to us, whispered to us or shouted at us, nudged us or shaken us, startled us or quieted us, convicted us and corrected us yet also finally comforted us. We alone are aware of it inasmuch as the public event surrounding it is so very ordinary even as the private event within us is overwhelming. Ungrateful grumbling blinds us to this. Ungrateful grumblers find it all spiralling down as ingratitude is punished by non-discernment or insensitivity, insensitivity by colder ingratitude, colder ingratitude by still duller non-discernment.
It’s plain that prophet and apostle weren’t exaggerating when they insisted that inner ingratitude and outer grumbling were together a spiritual sickness severe enough to find the ungrateful person soon on the critical list. Neither were prophet and apostle exaggerating when they insisted that gratitude, thankfulness, wasn’t merely a sign of spiritual health but even the way to better health.
III: — It’s plain that prophet and apostle agree with the writer of Proverbs, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine; a cheerful heart has a continual feast.”
Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Words like “continual feast” are therefore especially telling. “Continual feast” suggests “continual thanksgiving.” And continual thanksgiving is precisely what we find everywhere in scripture. The thanksgiving we are to render God, say prophet and apostle, is never grudging, never paltry, never “once-in-a-lifetime.” The apostle Paul says that the heart of the Christian “overflows in many thanksgivings to God.” As “grace extends to more and more,” he tells the Christians in Corinth , it will surely “increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.” He tells the same congregation that God’s goodness enriches us “in every way for great generosity” to others, and our “great” generosity in turn moves these other people to great thanksgiving to God. He tells the Christians in Colosse that they are to treasure Jesus Christ, with the result that they “abound in thanksgiving.” The psalmist tells us he customarily joins fellow-worshippers at church in “glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”
Clearly the picture painted for us is a picture of the heart throbbing with thanksgiving. It’s the heart that “abounds” with thanksgiving, “overflows” with thanksgiving, is “greatly” grateful. It is this heart that is cheerful and has a continual feast.
Then do we ever have grounds for grumbling? Of course we have grounds for grumbling. In everyone’s life there is a ceaseless undercurrent, an undertow even, of stress, difficulty, suffering, disappointment, apprehension, uncertainty, illness, grief. Therefore there are grounds for grumbling.
Then is grumbling finally permitted, even though scripture insists, and we saw earlier, that grumbling is spiritually lethal? No. Grumbling isn’t finally permitted. It’s not permitted for one reason: our grounds for grumbling are always less than our grounds for gratitude. In a verse from John’s gospel that I memorized when I was barely past infancy (and therefore the last thing I’m going to remember when I’m a senile old man in the nursing home) Jesus tells his followers, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Our Lord has overcome, has already overcome, everything that is grounds for grumbling. In other words, our grounds for grumbling have been eclipsed by our grounds for gratitude.
Several years ago my mother had a major heart attack and was hospitalised for 75 consecutive days. In the course of visiting her I noticed that she never complained about her damaged heart or her restricted activity or her protracted institutionalization. On the contrary she always appeared grateful for the slightest service rendered her. When I visited her on Thanksgiving weekend I noticed on her tabletop her church bulletin, in which she had written fellow-parishioners thanking them for their many kindnesses. At the conclusion of her note she had written, “Psalm 59:16.” I looked it up. Psalm 59:16 is an exclamation of thanksgiving to God. “I will sing aloud of your [i.e., God’s] steadfast love, for you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.” Since the fortress and refuge of God’s steadfast love were known and dependable; since tribulation had already been overcome, her grounds for gratitude would always be greater than her grounds for grumbling.
It is the ever-grateful heart that is ever-cheerful, and this ever-cheerful heart has a continual feast.
Blessings on you, every one, on this, the festival of Thanksgiving.
Victor Shepherd
Thanksgiving 2004
Do Seed Time and Harvest Never Cease or Five Myths That Slander God
Genesis 8:22
2 Kings 6:24-31
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
John 6:27-35
In the course of a food shortage in Hong Kong, decades ago, a British executive of the Bank of Hong found a British soldier staring at him. The bank executive had come upon a half-rotten orange in the gutter and was about to eat it when the soldier hollered that the food was crawling with maggots and would certainly make him ill. The man became hysterical, shrieking and crying. Can’t you imagine the spectacle: a man in grey-striped formal trousers, black vest and suit jacket, bowler hat and umbrella — plainly someone from the highest echelon of Britain’s highest class – this man blubbering hysterically because he wasn’t allowed to eat his vermin-ridden garbage?
Hunger doesn’t merely make the tummy ache. Hunger doesn’t merely produce diseases and deformities born of protein or vitamin deficiencies. Hunger also bewitches the mind. Hungry people start thinking about doing, and actually do, what they would otherwise never imagine themselves doing. Hunger exposes civilisation as no more than skin deep. When an airliner crashed in the Andes Mountains in South America several years ago it was learned that the survivors had survived by eating the remains of fellow-passengers who had already died. Immediately the tabloids featured headlines on cannibalism, while more thoughtful magazines probed ethical issues raised by this turn of affairs. Hunger bewitches.
Reflect for a minute on a story from the life of the prophet Elisha. Syria’s army besieged the Israelite people, and these people were soon hungry. And hungrier. Desperate. So desperately hungry that 80 shekels of silver (80 shekels would normally buy you 40 roasting rams or 90 bushels of grain); so desperately hungry that people were now paying 80 shekels for the head of a dead donkey. A dead donkey’s head? Hungry people will eat anything. If you had only 5 shekels you could purchase half a pint of bird-droppings. (There’s food in bird-droppings, you know; if you poke around in bird-droppings you’ll eventually find a few seeds.) If you had no shekels what did you do? Two Israelite women knew what to do. “Let’s make a deal”, one said to the other; “today we’ll boil your infant son and eat him; tomorrow we’ll do the same with my son.” One mother boiled her son and shared him with her friend. Next day the second woman said she couldn’t. The king was called in to settle the matter. The king exploded and swore he would kill the prophet Elisha.
Kill Elisha? What did the prophet have to do with this horrible turn of events? Nothing at all. Then why go after him? Hunger makes even rulers irrational, doesn’t it? Hunger twists people’s minds until a pretzel looks like a straightedge.
Hunger is terrible. How terrible Jeremiah knew when he wrote, his mind reeling, “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children….” (Lamentations 4:10)
I: — Today is thanksgiving Sunday. Today we customarily thank God for food. The people in our world who don’t have food, millions upon millions of them; for what do they thank God? After all, God has promised to supply food. He who is our creator would be a mocker if he created us only to turn his back on us. (Human beings who turn their back on their children are sent to jail, aren’t they?) God maintains that he’s not only creator; he’s also provider and sustainer. Now I believe that he is. But then, I’m not hungry.
Still, I am persuaded that God is as good as his word. He does provide for us creatures whom he’s fashioned in his own image. He does keep the promise he makes: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest…shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22) I’m persuaded it’s entirely correct to thank God for food, and thank him as often as we eat it. In the words of a common Eucharist liturgy, God does care for all that he makes.
And yet even with God caring as much as he can care, a great many people are hungry. Scores of thousands starve to death every day. Far more are permanently damaged in mind and body on account of their hunger.
On the one hand, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about food since God feeds his people as surely as God feeds the birds of the air. On the other hand, the apostle Paul tells believers that not even famine can separate them from God’s love vouchsafed to them in Christ Jesus their Lord. Clearly Paul knows that God feeds (as promised) yet famine occurs, and famine kills. Famine kills even as God continues to feed. Famine kills even as God’s love remains uncontradicted.
Yet every day someone tells me that the fact of widespread hunger throughout the world does contradict God’s love. Then where are we with respect to God? Where is God with respect to us?
II: — It’s plain to me that God has been slandered; perhaps slandered unknowingly (in other words, the people who have faulted him in the face of the world’s hunger have done so thinking they were telling the truth about him), but slandered none the less. “He doesn’t care”, they have said, or “He doesn’t care enough.” Today I wish to vindicate God’s name. I wish to show that the appalling hunger in the world at this moment can’t be blamed on a deficient supply of food. In clearing God’s name of the calumny that attends it I’m going to explode several myths.
MYTH #1 People are hungry because food is scarce. In truth, food isn’t scarce. There’s enough food in the world at this moment to feed adequately every man, woman and child. Think of grain-production alone. There’s enough grain grown right now to provide everyone with sufficient protein and with 3000 calories per day. (Most of us need only 2300 per day.) The 3000 grain-calories per person per day produced right now doesn’t include many other foods that aren’t grains, foods like beans, root crops, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grass-fed meat.
What’s more, sufficient food is produced right now even in those countries where millions are hungry. Even in its worst years of famine, for instance, India has produced so much food as to be a net exporter of food. (India has been a net exporter of food every year since 1870.) In India, while millions go hungry, soldiers patrol the government’s six million tons of stockpiled food — which food, of course, now nourishes rats. In Mexico, where at least 80% of the children in rural areas are undernourished, livestock destined for export are fed more grain than Mexico’s entire rural population. There’s no shortage of food.
MYTH #2 — Hunger in any one country is the result of overpopulation in that country. If this were the case, we should expect the worst hunger in those countries where there are the most people per food-producing acre. But it’s not so. India has only half the population density per cultivated acre that China has. Yet the Chinese eat while millions in India do not. China has eliminated visible hunger in the last 50 years.
There’s dreadful hunger in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Yet these countries have scant population per cultivated acre. In Africa, south of the Sahel, where some of the worst hunger continues, there are fewer people per cultivated acre than there are in the USA or in Russia; there are six to eight times fewer people in Africa south of the Sahel per cultivated acre than there are in China.
Please note that I’ve spoken of “cultivated acre.” We must be sure to understand that less than 50% of the world’s land that could grow food is now growing food. (It’s plain to everyone, by even this point in the sermon, that the real barriers to alleviating hunger aren’t physical but rather political and economic.)
MYTH #3 — In order to eliminate hunger our top priority must be to grow more food. Already you’re aware that the world is awash in food right now. The real problems concerning feeding hungry people lie elsewhere. For instance, land-ownership is concentrated in too few hands. A recent United Nations survey of 83 countries disclosed that 3% of the world’s landlords control 80% of the land. In most countries only 5% to 20% of all food-producers have access to institutionalised credit, such as banks. The rest, the other 80% to 95%, have to get their credit from virtual loan sharks who charge up to 200% on farm loans.
What’s more, new agricultural technology benefits only those who already possess land and credit. It’s been documented irrefutably that strategies which simply aim at having more food produced have dreadful consequences. Here’s what happens. New agricultural technology (for instance, hybrid seeds that produce bigger crops from less fertiliser) attracts investors whose primary interest is investment, not food-production; i.e., new agricultural technology attracts investors who see agriculture simply as a good investment. Moneylenders, city-based speculators and foreign corporations rush to get in on the good investment. The new money swells the demand for land. The price of land skyrockets. Tenants and sharecroppers are then squeezed off the land. These folk can’t feed themselves and now go hungry. What about the crops that the new technology has made possible and that speculators now produce in record quantities? These crops are luxury items (carnations, for instance, to adorn dining room tables); these luxury items are purchased by consumers in the western world and the northern hemisphere. In other words, new agricultural technology reduces food production.
We’ve all heard of the Green Revolution, a breakthrough in agricultural technology that promised to generate oceans of foodstuffs for the world’s hungry. The Green Revolution was born in northwest Mexico. Overnight the average farm size jumped from 200 acres to more than 2000. And overnight three-quarters of the rural workforce was squeezed off the land — now with nothing to eat. The Green Revolution found rural people hungrier than ever.
Any attempt at remedying hunger simply through greater agricultural sophistication renders people hungrier than ever.
MYTH # 4 — The increase in population (and therefore the need for greater food production) requires the use of chemicals that are environmentally dangerous. In fact very little pesticide or fungicide or insecticide is spread on farmland. I know, when we hear of the tonnage of these assorted “‘cides” it sounds colossal. For instance, the USA alone spreads 1.2 billion pounds of pesticide every year. One-third of this, however, is used on golf courses, lawns and public parks. Very little farmland is treated with these chemical substances. In fact, in the USA only 5% of cropland and pastureland is treated with insecticides; only 15% with weedkillers; only one-half of 1% with fungicides. Over half of all the insecticide used in the USA isn’t used on food crops at all. (Most of it is used on cotton, and even then, most of the land that grows cotton isn’t treated.)
Greater demand for food doesn’t issue in overwhelming chemical pollution.
MYTH #5 — In order to help the hungry we should improve our foreign aid programs. The truth is, increased foreign aid will do very little to alleviate hunger. The question we must always ask concerning foreign aid is this: when the government of a western nation sends financial aid to a hungry country, into whose hands does the money find its way? The money falls into the hands of that tiny number of people who exercise social and political control. This tiny number benefits; few others do. In Guatemala, for instance, virtually all the money sent as foreign aid merely enriches still more the handful of largest landholders.
What happens overseas is much like what I’ve seen in Canada. When I was a pastor in New Brunswick and lived closer to corruption than I do in Ontario, the federal government of Canada launched its “LIP” programme. (“L.I.P.”: local initiative project.) Ottawa was handing out millions to small communities in order to help the poorest people in them survive. My village received an LIP grant. The grant amounted to thousands of dollars ($200,000 in today’s money.) In my village four men worked five days per week for twenty weeks, building a small vault in the local cemetery. The vault was so small it would hold only two caskets. These four men laid one concrete block per day each. (Think of it: four men each laying one concrete block per day for twenty weeks.) Who were the men who pocketed the money? Were they the poorest in the village whom the programme was meant to help? Of course not. Poor people aren’t “connected”; poor people don’t have access to the levers of influence and favours. But well-to-do people have such access. In my village it was the sons of the richest, those with connections, who siphoned off the government “goodies.”
Next year our village received another LIP grant, this time to put a washroom (worth $75,000 in today’s money) in a small building that was used four hours per week. Same story. Third year, third grant. But not one needy person was ever hired for any of these projects.
Increased foreign aid won’t feed hungry people. But it will build highways and bridges, thereby making land a better investment. Land that is now a better investment attracts investment speculators who then use the land for purposes unrelated to food production.
Historically, it was different in England and America. In England political changes ended the landholding arrangement of feudalism and gave people access to land, at the same time that additional political changes gave common people protection against the powerful, the wealthy and the state. In the USA a constitution (it had to be secured by force of arms) guaranteed the people freedom from the oppressions that had ground down common people in Europe for centuries, which oppressions America would fend off at any cost. The oppressions fended off in the English and American revolutions are the oppressions we see in developing countries today. Political change, not foreign aid, is what feeds people in the long run.
With respect to the short run I want to say a word here about mission support from the local church. It’s important. When the late Dr. Allen Knight, an agricultural missionary who spent years in what was then Angola, spoke to my congregation in Mississauga about the “Seeds for Africa” programme, the congregation supported him without hesitation. We knew we could trust him. The money we gave for seeds purchased seeds; money given for well-drilling actually drilled wells. People were fed. When my friend Dr. Peter Webster was performing surgery in Africa and schooling villages in preventive medicine, any monies he received from friends and congregations were used for their designated purpose, used for that purpose only, and used immediately. We must never diminish our support for trustworthy Christian workers who are doing front-line work among needy people.
Have you heard enough this morning to convince you that God doesn’t merit the slander that is customarily heaped on him? God is defamed repeatedly on the grounds that he doesn’t keep the promises he makes; he doesn’t care for all that he has made; day and night and seedtime occur without interruption to be sure, but the harvest doesn’t — say those who tell us that God lies.
I trust you are persuaded that the presence among us of hungry people, together with the bodily and mental distortions that hunger produces, can’t be blamed on God. He is as good as his word; he does care for all that he has made. And for this reason he is to be praised.
III: — God is to be praised even more, for not only has he provided bread, he’s provided the bread of life. No one lives by bread alone. Without bread we humans disappear; without the bread of life we humans remain fixed — fixed in what? Fixed in our perverse rebellion against God, fixed in our deadly defiance of him, fixed in our frustration and futility, which frustration and futility we can either rage against or surrender to but in any case can’t remedy. Still, the Creator of us all doesn’t give up on us.
Because God won’t give up on us he’s forever pressing the bread of life into our hands. The bread of life isn’t made anew each day, but it’s offered anew each day. “I am the bread of life”, says Jesus, “whoever comes to me will never hunger again.” (John 6:35) The bread of life became available to us when provision was made for us in the cross. Now it’s offered afresh as often as our Lord steals upon anyone anywhere and says, “Why don’t you stop running past my outstretched arms?”
No one lives without bread; no one lives most profoundly by bread alone. Only the bread of life can restore men and women made in the image of God to the favour of God. Only the bread of life can relieve us of the consequences of our rebellion against God by releasing us from the rebellion itself. Only the bread of life can reconcile us where we are estranged, thaw us where we are frozen and sensitise us where we are unresponsive.
In his 2nd letter to the congregation in Corinth Paul is glad to acknowledge that God provides seed and bread. Unquestionably he’s grateful for seed and bread. Yet his ecstatic exclamation, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” plainly pertains to him and only to him who is the bread of life, Christ Jesus our Lord. Then the bread of life we must seize or seize afresh today.
The church has only one mission: to offer Jesus Christ to any and all, near and far. For in offering him, the one through whom and for whom all things have been made (John 1:3,10), we shall remind detractors that God has kept his promise to provide seedtime and harvest; and in offering him, the bread of life, we shall recall rebels to their rightful ruler, to their Father, as it turns out, from whom they henceforth receive eternal life.
Victor Shepherd October 2014
You asked for a sermon on The Tower of Babel; You asked for a sermon on Pentecost
Part One
Anyone who loves Jesus cherishes his parables. As a matter of fact many of us came to know Jesus by means of his parables. We began hearing these stories when we were four years old. At first they were intriguing stories. As we grew older they became moving stories. As we grew older still they became revelatory stories; they revealed the truth of God concerning God, concerning us, concerning our world.
No one dismisses the parables of Jesus just because the parables don’t describe historical events. “A certain man had two sons”, Jesus begins his best-seller about the prodigal. Jesus isn’t referring to an actual historical figure, Mr. X on 42nd Street, Mr. X being a man known to everyone in Nazareth who happens to have two sons. The parable, rather, is a story that Jesus makes up on the spot. Luke tells us (Luke 15) how the parable of the prodigal came to be. Our Lord’s opponents are mumbling and grumbling and grousing and not-so-quietly accusing him of dirtying himself by befriending irreligious people. Jesus, never as stupid as his opponents think him to be, is aware of what they are saying about him. They are faulting him. In order to exonerate himself and the people he’s befriending he spins out the parable on the spot. The parable is utterly fictitious. Jesus makes it up on the spot. It is utterly fictitious, and utterly true; true, that is, in that it tells us the truth about ourselves under God, true in that it tells us the truth about God over us. Wholly fictitious, wholly true. No one denies that the parables of Jesus are revelatory just because they are fictitious.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are parables too. Like the parables of Jesus, the parables in Genesis 1-11 tell us the truth about ourselves under God and the truth about God over us. Then why is it preachers have been expelled from pulpits for saying so, hearers have been crushed or enraged at hearing so, and congregations have been split over it all?
If someone says, “But if we admit that the first eleven chapters of Genesis aren’t historical, where will it all end? What will we deny to be historical next?” If someone advances this argument, the immediate reply is, “But if we ever admit that the parables of Jesus are parables, everything is lost!” This is not a very profound argument.
All of the parable-stories in Genesis 1-11 are profound. One such story is the Tower of Babel.
I: — Our story begins with humankind’s cry, “Let us make a name for ourselves! Let us build a city, and a tower, a tower so tall that everyone will be able to see our tower. As our city becomes famous on account of our tower, our name will be known everywhere. Let’s make a name for ourselves!”
“What’s wrong with building a tower?”, someone asks. “Is there something wrong with creativity?” Of course there is nothing wrong with creativity. God is creative. We are made in his image and likeness. We have an inborn urge to create. To stifle this urge is to impoverish ourselves and to disdain his good gift. There is nothing at all wrong with creativity.
“What’s wrong with building a tall tower, even the tallest tower?”, someone else adds. “Is there something wrong with the pursuit of excellence?” Of course there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence. There is everything right with it. We need to see more of it. After all, we live in an era that congratulates mediocrity. Mediocrity is sin. The pursuit of excellence can only be commended.
“What’s wrong with building a city, the venue of civilization?”, a third questioner asks. “Is civilization bad? Is culture bad? Should we be more holy or more virtuous or more human if we lived in caves and swung from trees and ate bugs and grunted in monosyllabically?” Of course there is nothing wrong with culture. Culture is riches without which we should be humanly poorer.
“Then what is the problem with fashioning city and tower? What is wrong with making a name for ourselves?”
According to the parable the problem with making a name for ourselves is that we reject the name that God has given us. He has named us his creatures. When he names us his creatures he emphasizes both words: “his”, “creature”. He is Lord and life-giver. We come from him, we belong to him, we can be blessed only in him. Because we come from him and belong to him and can be blessed only in him, to reject him is to reject blessing and therefore be stuck with curse.
“Name”, in Hebrew, means “nature”. The name God gives us is our nature. Our nature is to be God’s loving, obedient, grateful, faithful covenant-partner. Anything else is unnatural.
But we don’t like the name God has given us. We are irked by the nature God has given us. Be his obedient covenant-partner? Surely it is servile to have to obey anyone! We want to make our own name, make a name for ourselves. The name we give ourselves will be a better name; it will render us superior.
The problem is, of course, that there is no agreement among humankind as to what this name is going to be. The name we give ourselves will render us superior? Superior to whom? If I find it demeaning to be inferior to God, how much more demeaning do I find it to be subordinate to my fellows! Then I shall have to be superior to my fellows. I shall have to give myself a name that establishes my superiority over them!
And so we set about naming ourselves.
(i) One such name is race. The name of racial superiority isn’t mentioned in polite company, yet it is a name that no one renounces readily. Professional boxing is always looking for what it calls “the white hope”: a superior caucasian boxer who can end black domination of the “sport”. Several years ago when Sean O’Sullivan was in the newspaper every day it was hoped that this Canadian welterweight (147 pounds, the most competitive division in boxing, whose champion is nearly always the best boxer in the world) would become world-champion. The media “hyped” him. The fact of the matter is, O’Sullivan was never in the top 20 welterweights; I don’t think he was even in the top 30. Still, he was “hyped” as a future champion, only to lose in the second round to a black man who has never distinguished himself. Nevertheless, for a few months we had our “white hope”.
All races attempt to make a name for themselves through pretended racial superiority. Wherever black people have assumed power in African countries they have treated brown people savagely. And if you want to commit a huge social blunder and call down someone’s fury on you, simply mistake a Japanese person for a Korean.
(ii) Another such name is harder to describe. It isn’t racial, it isn’t even nationalistic. It is deep-down ethnic. When I was studying in Britain I noticed that war films appeared on TV every week; not Hollywood movies about war, but actual film-footage of World War II: the Battle of Britain, Rommel in North Africa, submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, and so on. When I returned to Britain in the mid-80s I saw the same films on TV. I thought this must be unhealthy, since it must surely inflame anti-German hatred. And yet I kept noticing that the British appeared much fonder of the Germans than of the French, when the French had been their allies twice in this century. I was puzzled and spoke of it to one of my relatives. Whereupon he smiled cheerfully as he said, “It’s not difficult to understand why we like the Germans but not the French. The British and the Germans are descended from the same Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic stock. We and they constitute the master-people. But the French are Latins, inferior.” There is no end to the ways we can make a name for ourselves.
(iii) Another name is social class. The jokes about social-climbing are legion. The jokes are legion, of course, just because social-climbing itself is never-ending.
A woman, no longer in our congregation, tore into me one day inasmuch as she felt I hadn’t made enough of her husband’s Ph.D and his work-place position. His Ph.D had elevated him in the work-place. His work-place ascendancy issued in social ascendancy, according to this woman. By not fussing about his Ph.D I was failing to acknowledge his social superiority. Her parting shot was, “You are a phoney. You won’t recognize a Ph.D, but you worship the ground that M.D.s walk on.” (And all along I had thought myself to be rather hard on M.D.s!)
(iv) Language is another “name” we give ourselves. In our saner moments we might think that language-diversity can only be enriching. At the very least another language exposes us to another literature. What is more enriching than this? Besides, thinking in another language is a good check that our thinking really is thinking and not merely the shuffling of cliches. Yet most of the time any suggestion of another language begets suspicion and hostility.
There is a delightful touch in the parable we are probing today. When we have finished building that tower so tall that it reaches to the heavens, God still can’t see it! Our tallest tower, as high as the heavens, we think to have penetrated even the abode of God himself. But in fact our tall tower is such a pipsqueak thing that God can’t see it. The text in Genesis tells us that he has to “go down”; he has to leave his abode, get down on his hands and knees with his magnifying glass in order to see this puny fabrication.
The racial superiority we deem simply obvious; the ethnic advantage that is surely self-evident; the social elevation that declares itself to the world; all of these are so paltry, so puny, such trifles that God has to get down on his hands and knees to see them.
In any case we have achieved what we set out to do: we have made a name for ourselves. But others have just as effectively made a name for themselves too. They are now boasting of their superiority in blind ignorance of our boasting of ours. The consequences are far-reaching. Our story-teller tells us of two consequences. We are “scattered over the face of the earth”; which is to say, there is no community. There are crowds everywhere, but no community. The second consequence is that we do not understand each other. We talk, we listen, we even claim to hear. But we don’t understand each other. We certainly know the meaning of the talk we utter; we know the meaning of the talk we hear. We say we understand others even as we insist they don’t understand us. Everyone claims to understand but not to be understood. In other regards, regardless of the words we understand, we don’t understand each other. Of course we don’t. People understand most profoundly not with their ears but with their hearts. Our hearts are clogged and calcified. We don’t understand each other. But we keep talking anyway. We talk past each other. Our attempt at communicating has become babble. The builders of the tower of Babel can only babble.
Part Two
What is the solution to the “Babel-babble” that is endemic to humankind? Many solutions are proposed, virtually all of them one form or another of social engineering.
One man, a schoolteacher, bent my ear several times about Esperanto, an artificial language whose devotees are attempting make the international language. A common language will undo everything that the parable of the Tower of Babel describes, says this man. Most of us needless to say, find this naive, albeit harmless.
Equally naive, but not harmless, are the attempts of totalitarian states to enforce conformity, including thought-conformity. Citizens don’t appear to understand each other? don’t appear to understand their rulers? don’t seem to know their place? won’t surrender their pretension to individual superiority even as they are told to support a national superiority which finds them dead on battlefields? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet alike insisted that people appear to understand much more quickly when threatened with torture; solutions seem to be forthcoming much more quickly when a gun is held to people’s heads. But of course what such tyrants describe as a solution is actually a brutal manifestation of the problem.
The Ba’hai religionists and the New Age ideologues are touting world-government. Why do they think that world-government is going to solve what governments on a smaller scale have never been able to solve?
The only genuine solution to Genesis 11 is the one that begins in Genesis 12. Genesis 12 begins with the calling of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are promised that through them all the families of the earth will be blessed. Through Abraham/Sarah and their descendants the curse of Genesis 11 will be overturned. Through Abraham’s and Sarah’s lineage there will come someone, finally, who doesn’t have to make a name for himself in that he honours the name which his Father has given him; someone who knows not only that he is the Father’s creature but the Father’s son; someone who doesn’t have to twist himself grotesquely in the attempt at rendering himself superior just because he is willing to be humbled, humiliated even, for the sake of those whose preoccupation with “climbing” is killing them. The turnaround comes fully and finally in Abraham’s descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.
The turnaround which Jesus is is magnificent as God’s triumph over humankind’s self-victimization. As magnificent as it is “out there”, as an event in world-occurrence, it is nonetheless useless for us unless what occurs “out there” also occurs “in here”. That turnaround which our Lord is is useless for me unless it also turns me around. Can it do this? Can he do this? Is our risen Lord merely risen (i.e., risen but also ineffective), or is he risen and able, able to turn us away from our self-destroying and neighbour-destroying tower-building and name-making? The event of Pentecost answers this question with a huge “Yes!”. Pentecost, after all, is the incursion of that Spirit who is simply the power in which Jesus Christ acts upon us and within us; Pentecost is the celebration not merely of Christ risen (resurrection), not merely of Christ ruling (ascension) but of Christ reversing and reforming; reversing the curse of the tower and reforming the people who are otherwise fixed forever in the curse.
On the first Pentecost, Luke tells us, there are crowds of people in Jerusalem who have come from civilized lands. They hear the apostles declare the gospel. As the apostles speak and the gospel is declared hearers understand “the great things God has done”, says Luke. Hearers, scattered in places near and far, are alike grasped by what God has done. As they are grasped by what God has done for them, God does it afresh in them. Pentecost is God’s reversal of Babel. In Jesus Christ alone, and through the power of his Spirit alone, people find that they don’t have to make a name for themselves, glorying as they are now in the name that God has given them. They don’t have to invent something like Esperanto in order to understand each other, for now they understand with a heart refashioned by the heart-specialist himself. They don’t have to exhaust themselves in a quest for superiority which only disfigures them and afflicts others. They are content to identify themselves with him who ate and drank with anyone at all and was glad to do so.
Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves through nationality or nationalism? But Jesus Christ has made us members of his body, the church. And the church, St.Peter reminds us, is the holy nation. Are we still tempted to advertise ourselves as extraordinarily talented at tower-building? But we are now identified with the tower, “towering o’er the wrecks of time”, the cross. Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves, give ourselves whatever nature we want to have, through that city whose cultural achievements let us strut and boast and sneer? But we are citizens of another city, the New Jerusalem. Not only are we citizens, we are heralds of this new city; we point to it and point others to it, therein pointing them away from those other cities where they trample each other in pursuit of a name that isn’t worth having.
These other cities are many, old and varied. They are Rome, Babylon, Sodom, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Montreal, Mississauga. Jerusalem is the city that slays God’s prophets and crucifies his Messiah (i.e., Jerusalem is every city inasmuch as it spurns the gospel). Sodom is the city of those whose sensuality will prove destructive on all fronts. Rome (ancient Rome) is the city of admirable cultural accomplishment and also the site of every idolatry imaginable. Modern Beijing is the city of conscienceless cruelty. (Think of Tiannemen Square.)
Babylon is almost in a class by itself. Babylon is the city that gathers up all other cities. Babylon is the city whose paganism grows with its wealth and whose affluence swells only as a blind eye is turned everywhere. Everybody lives in Babylon; we can’t help living in Babylon. But as Christians we aren’t citizens of Babylon. We are citizens of the New Jerusalem. We belong to the holy nation; we are people of a new name and a new nature and new understanding and a new community.
There is a most important feature of the parable of the Tower of Babel which we must not fail to mention. The Hebrew bible puts forward the tower of Babel as the Hebrew equivalent of Babylon, Babel and Babylon alike being Jewish and Gentile monuments to humankind’s God-defiance. But paradoxically the literal meaning of the word “Babel” is “gate of God”. Bab-el is the gate of God. God meets us at our point of greatest defiance (the cross of him whom we crucify) and by his grace renders it the point of our access to him.
Pentecost is that miracle of grace, that miracle of the Holy Spirit, that wonder at the hands of Jesus Christ risen and ruling whereby our God-defiance collapses just because we are granted access to God. Babylon (“babble on”) is rendered the gate of God, where we hear each other as never before, understand each other, cherish each other, find community in each other — and all of this because we are no longer desperate to make a name for ourselves, but want only to be named citizens of that city which cannot be shaken, the city of God, the holy nation, the church of Jesus Christ.
Pentecost, everyone knows, has to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that power whereby the victory of Jesus Christ becomes his victory in us. Our Lord was never driven to make a name for himself in that he cherished the name his Father had given him. He never had to bend himself out of shape by trying to give himself a nature he was never meant to have. He was son by nature. You and I are to become sons and daughters by faith, thereby regaining that nature we have long since forfeited through our building and babbling.
Pentecost means this: the Holy Spirit is the power by which Jesus Christ does in us what he has already achieved for us. In other words, Pentecost celebrates that power by which the wreckage of Babel-babble is turned into the gate of God, as by faith we own our place in the holy nation and in faith cling to him whose name is above every name, above all the silly, false and dangerous names we should otherwise give ourselves.
Victor A. Shepherd
June 1995
When the Day Of Pentecost Had Come
Joel 2:28-32
Acts 2:29-42
John 14:26; 16:8-11
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
The Holy Spirit as Breath, Oil, Dove and Fire
Joel 2:27-29
Acts 2:1-21
Luke 11:5-13
Some people crave money; others, fame; others, power. The desire for power, everyone knows, is greater than the desire for fame or for money. Power is a narcotic to which people become addicted even as their craving for it visits suffering upon those nearest and dearest them.
In the book of Acts we learn of Simon Magnus, a man who trafficked in occult power. Simon Magus noticed the unusual effectiveness of apostles like Peter. He concluded that he should have whatever power they had, for such power would magnify his manipulation of the occult. He approached Peter, flashed his money and attempted to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostle. Peter was outraged at his crassness and blasphemy. “Away with your and your money, thinking you can buy God’s gift with cash!” the text says with undisguised vehemence and disgust. The truth is, we can’t buy God’s gift with money. We can’t grab it and hoard it and then use it for whatever self-serving end we have in mind. We can’t co-opt God in our pursuit of power; we can’t harness his power to our schemes. We can, however, find ourselves infused with the unique power that is God’s Spirit. Pentecost is the festival of the Spirit, the acknowledgement of God’s singular effectiveness in and with his own people. Let’s think for the next few minutes of how God’s people before us, centuries before us, were moved to speak of the Spirit.
They spoke of the Spirit as breath. “Breath” in Hebrew denotes creativity. The breath of God that God breathes into his own people is that movement of God upon us and within us which enlivens our creativity and frees it for service in God’s kingdom. We mustn’t think of creativity here in the sense in which this overworked word is used every day: the creative person is the one with rare talent as writer or painter or composer or dancer. Where the Spirit is concerned, creativity has nothing to do with extraordinary artistic talent. The creativity of the Spirit, rather, is simply the freeing, the freeing up, the magnification and multiplied usefulness of any gift we have in order that this talent might now be sued for God’s purposes among those near and far.
One of my friends was employed as a chemist all his working life. Having become weary of the “grind,” he decided to retire early. At the conclusion of several of those twists and turns in the road of life that we can make sense of looking backward but can never see looking ahead, he ended up teaching mathematics to high school dropouts who were serving prison sentences. Until he began this work no one knew he could teach mathematics. He didn’t know this himself, for the simple reason that he had never taught anything. More important, no one (including himself) was aware that he could relate to convicts. (Not everyone can.) He looks upon his work with these sufferers (he has come to see them not merely as offenders but as men who have usually sustained extraordinary childhood wounds) as kingdom-service the likes of which he has never known in his life.
There’s something about Spirit-creativity we must take to heart. The Spirit, or breath, of God fosters and frees up such creativity as and only as we first decide to do something. I don’t think the best approach in congregational life is to draw up a list of talents in the congregation and then conclude that we can attempt only those things for which we have demonstrable talent. It’s just the opposite. Suffused with the gospel, our hearts pierced by the suffering around us that the gospel frees us to stop denying, we see what has to be done and therefore what we must do, since there’s no one else to do it. Then, as we resolve to do it, even in fear and trembling, the Spirit breathes upon us and whatever is needed always turns up. (By now we should have stopped saying “somehow turns up.”)
A year after I arrived in the Mississauga congregation I last served the congregation decided to assist a refugee family from Viet Nam . We discovered talents and gifts among us that we never guessed existed. We discovered that lifelong office workers could teach English to Asian people who had no familiarity with a western language. Whenever we decided something less dramatic – something as apparently mundane as making improvements to the physical plant or building a new sidewalk or rearranging plumbing – we turned up talent we should otherwise never have heard of.
Whenever we’ve wanted to do anything little or much out of the ordinary at worship here in Schomberg, we’ve found people here who can write, act, dance, arrange music, handle lighting, sing, blow, encourage the timid, and pray down God’s blessings. It’s never a congregation’s responsibility to sleuth out what it thinks people can do and then tell God that this is the range of his Spirit’s breath. It’s always our responsibility to discern what the king and his kingdom require, and resolve to do it. For only the, but certainly then, the Spirit will breathe life, vitality, creativity, as gifts come for that not even their possessors are aware of. The Spirit is breath.
Our Hebrew foreparents in faith also spoke of the Spirit as oil. Oil was used for anointing. Moses anointed Aaron. Samuel anointed David. Anointing was the sign of being equipped. The Spirit equips those whom the Spirit has appointed to a specific task. Such anointing is necessary just because our “doing” will have to last longer than ten minutes; it has to last past discouragement and setback.
The one bible verse that everyone can recite is from Psalm 23: “Thou anointest my head with oil.” We frequently overlook, however, the one thing that the psalmist wants us to remember: we are anointed precisely at that table which is prepared for us in the presence of our enemies. To be anointed with oil doesn’t mean we’ve been supplied with a cosmetic like suntan oil; it doesn’t even mean that we’ve been supplied with a safeguard like sunscreen. To be anointed with oil in the presence of one’s foes is to be nerved; it’s to be fortified; it’s to be comforted in the Renaissance English sense of “comfort.” In Renaissance English “comfort” is formed from two Latin words, con and fortis: “with strength.” Profoundly to be comforted isn’t to be pampered or even consoled. It’s to be strengthened. There’s an old tapestry of William the Conqueror hanging in an English museum. The artwork is titled, William Comforts His Soldiers. It depicts William himself standing behind his men with the point of his sword one millimetre away from their posteriors.
The old Molson’s Brewery advertisement said, “You’ve got to have heart, miles and miles of heart.” It’s true. We’ve got to have heart. But beer won’t give it to us. Oil will, specifically the oil of anointing, the Spirit, God’s effectual presence and power.
Our enemies are many. Often we are our own enemy, even our own worst enemy. For instance, we tell ourselves we’re past the immaturity of not needing to be congratulated for what we do; we tell ourselves we’re past being tempted to quit the project when it doesn’t go exactly our way; we tell ourselves we’re grown-ups now and therefore the indifference of others to what we hold dear and hold dear just because it’s true and right and good; the indifference here can’t chill us or deflect us or discourage us. We tell ourselves. We keep on telling ourselves in the attempt at nerving ourselves, but it doesn’t work. We need to be oiled.
We all have “those days,” days when we are tired out, done in, fed up, broken down. Out, in, up, down. On these days we say, “I’m getting it from all directions.” What next: capitulation? Quitting? vindictiveness? a shrivelled heart and a sour disposition? We can only fall on our face before God and plead for oiling.
The Good Shepherd who provides us (in his own way and his own time) with green pastures is also the Good Oiler who anoints us, nerves us, in the presence of everything that threatens to deflect us from the course we are to pursue until our life’s end.
Our Hebrew foreparents also spoke of the Spirit as dove. Romantics like us associate the dove with romance. Doves appear to be lovebirds who sit side-by-side and coo to each other, oblivious of everything else. In scripture, however, doves are something else. In scripture the dove is associated with the Holy Spirit coming upon someone at a specific time for a specific task, and associated as well with the sacrifice that faithful worshippers offer to God as the sign and seal and vehicle of their self-sacrifice, their self-renunciation. Where the Spirit is concerned, then, the dove speaks of God’s suffusing us with himself so as to summon from us that sacrifice which is nothing less than our self, given back to him who gave us our self in the first place and then gave himself, all of himself, for us.
Having been a parent of teenagers myself I appreciate the concern parents have to get their youngsters through the minefields of the teenage world; specifically to get them through school undrugged, unpregnant and unsavaged. I’m not making light of any of this. At the same time I’m aware that our efforts in this regard, doubled and redoubled and redoubled again, all the while rendering our youngster the focus of everything we parents have and are aspire after; our efforts here can get through the undrugged, unpregnant and unsavaged to be sure, but also render them narcissistic. In ensuring that our youngsters aren’t under-attended we can easily leave them with the impression that the world exists for them; nothing matters except them; no one is as important as they, and they can do no wrong even though others without end can do wrong to them.
While it’s important to get our young people through the minefield, such a victory is hollow if they emerge on the other side of it uncaring, uncompassionate, as unwilling as most in our society to sacrifice any comfort for the sake of the wounded people who have never known the silver spoon privilege of this congregation’s youth. What have we gained if, in keeping all the members of our smaller and larger family “on the rails” we render ourselves self-preoccupied, concerned only with our own ease? What will we have accomplished if we confirm each other as those who are decent, sophisticated, able to move around in drawing rooms and city hall receptions and political backrooms but don’t have in it us to share ourselves with people whose lives would be enriched immeasurably, if not transmogrified, by even the slightest, self-renouncing generosity?
In Jerusalem of old some people took a lamb to the temple service when they joined others in worship. Those who couldn’t afford a lamb took two doves. A week after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph took their son to the temple “to present him to the Lord,” the text tells us. (Luke 2:22) They were offering back to God the one who was dear to them above all else, their child. They took two doves with them. They sacrificed the doves at the same time as they offered back their child to God. In accord with Hebrew understanding, at the moment of the doves’ being slain, Mary and Joseph put their hand on the birds as a sign that they identified themselves with the life that was being offered up to God. At the same time, of course, that they identified themselves with the life in the doves that was being offered up to God, they were declaring that they would never do anything or be anything that impeded their son and his self-renunciation for the sake of others.
Surely we want nothing less for our children; surely we want nothing less for ourselves. Then the Spirit as dove must alight upon us as surely as the Spirit-dove alighted upon our Lord at the commencement of his public ministry.
Our Hebrew foreparents spoke of the Spirit as fire. Fire warms. Fire thaws cold hearts and limbers up cold hands. Fire brightens surroundings, enabling us to see what there is to be seen, even as fire brightens moods. (We know that fire brightens moods. For what other reason would people whose homes have central heating spend thousands of dollars on fireplaces?) As fire the Spirit must ignite us if we are to bring real warmth and brightness to people whose situations are colder, darker, bleaker than ours. And whatever we do on their behalf we must do cheerfully, or else our doing is an insult that begins by demeaning them and ends by having them resent us.
Most of you know me well, and therefore you know how concerned I am with the cerebral dimension of faith. I’m concerned – rightly concerned, I’m convinced – with having people understand the truth of God and the purpose of God and the way of God. Unless people understand something their deity is an idol, their worship is superstition, and their discipleship (so-called) is cult-following. At the same time, in the maturer years of my pulpit ministry, I’ve come to see as never before that while understanding is necessary it’s never sufficient. Correct understanding alone leaves people sitting in an armchair, and leaves them sitting their while regarding as inferior those whose understanding is less sophisticated. In addition to be brought to understand, people have to be warmed and brightened; they have to be lit. Then the fire of Pentecost has to ignite us as surely as it ignited disciples in a Jerusalem room two millennia ago and has continued to ignite men and women ever since.
Throughout my ministry I’ve found that church folk usually have a more-or-less adequate idea of Christmas (the saviour of the world was born,) of Good Friday (they know that Jesus died for us in some sense) and of Easter (resurrection is an even tin world-occurrence that can never be overturned.) When it comes to Pentecost, however, I’ve found that most church folk apprehend little, if anything. Then we must grasp the simple truth that the Holy Spirit is God’s effectual presence and power.
Today, on Pentecost Sunday, let’s think of the Spirit in terms of biblical symbols connected with the Spirit: breath, oil, dove, fire. For then we shall know that the Spirit is the effectual presence and power of God, whereby our gifts are made fruitful in his kingdom (breath;) we ourselves are anointed for service and nerved in the face of opposition (oil;) self-renouncing sacrifice is required of God’s people everywhere (dove;) and all of this is to warm and brighten others as we, “lit” already, are the occasion of his igniting others (fire.)
Victor Shepherd
Pentecost 2004
A Word, A Question, A Promise
John 21:1-19
I: — What do people do when they are let down terribly? What do people do when they suffer enormous loss and are bereaved beyond telling? They can do several things.
They can deny their loss; i.e., consciously deny the significance of their loss or unconsciously deny the fact of their loss. They can put on a false face and pretend that everything is as rosy as ever. Conscious and unconscious denial, however, exact a terrible price psychologically. Denial renders people become inwardly bent and outwardly lame.
Or people who suffer enormous loss can simply be overwhelmed by it; so overwhelmed as to be frozen, immobilised by it. Life stops for them. This is a living death.
Or people who suffer enormous loss can admit their loss, own their pain and endure their disappointment. They can admit, own, endure, and go back to work. They can begin doing once more what they have customarily done in the past. The job they have worked at they continue to work at. This is by far the healthiest response. It’s the best thing that any bereaved person can do.
My wife Maureen and I often comment on the fact that when my mother was Maureen’s age my mother had been a widow for eleven years. At the time she was widowed my mother was working part-time and was content to work part-time. One week after my father’s death, however, she was working full-time. My father had left her an insurance payout of $1000 (1967). After funeral expenses she had $200. The decision to work full-time was a decision my mother arrived at quickly after little deliberation: if she didn’t work, she didn’t eat. She often joked about riding the subway train to work, packed so tightly into the rush-hour car that if she had fainted she couldn’t have fallen down, her face pressed into the back of a tall man’s rain-soaked woollen overcoat, everything smelling like wet dog. She also says that what she had to do was the best thing she could have done: work.
And this is what the disciples did in the wake of the death of Jesus. They went back to fishing. They had been rocked by the events in the last week of Jesus’s life, shattered by the ending of that life. Worst of all, they felt themselves deluded, self-deluded, as gullible as kindergarten-age children. “How could we have been so naïve?”, they asked each other incredulously, “Our earlier enthusiasm for the mission was as groundless as a mirage in the desert. How could we have been so simple-minded, so silly about ‘The Messiah’? We aren’t suggestible people. Then how were we swept up in the tide of exuberance and ardour? Worse still, how many others have we misled? How ardently have we commended to any who would hear us what has dribbled away without trace like water in the sand?”
All of us – you, I, and everyone else – all of us are eager to think ourselves sophisticated. We hate being “suckered” as we hate little else. All of us like to think we are worldly-wise, able to identify hucksters and charlatans and outright phoneys. We shudder at being thought as naïve as a child standing wide-eyed and open-mouthed in front of a magician. There’s no humiliation like the humiliation of public benightedness.
And there’s no humiliation like the humiliation of being taken in religiously. Who doesn’t feel sorry for the person who, perchance at a moment of unusual need or unforeseen vulnerability, makes a religious declaration that strikes us as hugely overblown or espouses a religious cause that’s plainly exaggerated? We share the embarrassment of that person who, months later, feels she “went off the deep end.” What do such people do next? If they are wise they put their embarrassment behind them and simply get on with the business of everyday living.
A minute ago I spoke of bereavement, of loss. We mustn’t think that jarring loss is loss of loved one only. There are bereavements everywhere in life. There are familiar scenarios and situations that are so very familiar as to appear unlosable. But they are lost! Not merely a familiar scenario and situation can be lost but even a familiar world. Someone’s entire world can be lost, and lost more quickly and more thoroughly than she would ever have thought; than she would ever have thought, that is, until the day it was lost. She always thought she knew how the world turned and what made it turn. Then one day she found out. The day she found out — the day of her shattering disappointment — was also the day she was bereft of her world.
Denial won’t help. Immobility won’t help. The only thing to do is also the best thing to do: go back to work. If our work is the work of a homemaker, it’s still work: children have to be fed, the schoolteacher dealt with, the haemorrhaging husband bandaged.
“I’m going fishing”, said Peter; “We’ll go with you”, the rest chimed in; “What else is there to do?” Back to fishing they went.
II: — It’s while they are fishing that Jesus appears to them. They don’t recognise him. Of course they don’t. In the first place, they aren’t expecting him; in the second, they’re fishing. None of us can be conscientious in our daily work and “be looking for Jesus” at the same time. Besides, where would we look? The men and women who tighten wheel nuts on cars in Oakville or Oshawa aren’t standing around, looking for Jesus.
Still, despite all non-expectations the risen Lord steals upon the disciples and startles them. He speaks. As he speaks, Peter recognises the One he’d put behind him forever – he thought.
It still happens. William Sloane Coffin, among other things chaplain at Yale University for 17 years, and before that an officer with United States military intelligence; Coffin was raised by a wealthy, socialite family that recognised his prodigious talent as a child pianist and prepared him for a career on the concert stage. His family provided no Christian formation at all. When Coffin was an adolescent his best friend died suddenly. Coffin wasn’t sure why he was going to the funeral, but went anyway, if only to curse the God he didn’t believe in. Sitting through the funeral service he mysteriously found himself addressed: “Whose life is it, anyway? What makes you think you’re the measure of the universe?” He emerged from the funeral service turned around for life, retiring a few years ago as minister of Riverside Church , New York City.
A friend of mine; his parents couldn’t get him to church regardless of what technique they deployed. This fellow – atheist, sceptic, cynic – went to university to pursue a program in Honour English. Naturally enough his program required him to read English criticism, including criticism of mediaeval English. Scholars in this field opened up literary riches to him, cultural wealth he hadn’t known to exist. One such scholar was C.S. Lewis, Cambridge Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance English. Soon he moved from reading Lewis’s formal academic writings to Lewis’s popular Christian writings. And like Peter of old he came to say, “It is the Lord.”
Neither of the two men I’ve mentioned was expecting any such thing. Both were immersed in everyday matters. Yet both were addressed. In the course of being addressed both came to know who had addressed them.
The apostle John adds a comment to his resurrection narrative that we read this morning: “This was the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.” The third time? Why was a third time necessary? Weren’t the previous two times enough? First the risen Jesus had appeared to the eleven in the upper room when they were fearful. Then he had appeared to them with Thomas when they were doubting. And after two such appearances the disciples still want to go back fishing? The truth is, all of us always stand in need of a new visitation from our Lord and a new word from him. We never get beyond needing yet another apprehension and word.
Maureen and I have been married for 37 years. Even so, a dozen times a week we ask each other, “Do you love me?” I don’t think for a minute we are insecure in our relationship. I don’t think for a minute that our marriage is at risk and I might go home Monday evening only to find Maureen’s shoes no longer under the bed. Then why do we ask each other, “Do you love me?”, as often as we do? It’s because both she and I live and work in jarring, turbulent environments where it’s easy to see there are many people who aren’t loved; easy to see there are many people who were once loved; easy to see that love is scarce in the world. Therefore it’s all the more important to meet each other yet again, affirm each other once more, declare and exhibit and embody our mutual love as often as we need to; better, as often as we can.
We shouldn’t be surprised at the third appearance of Jesus. Before you and I are finished our Lord will have to visit us 300 times. Needy as we are, our need is never greater than his grace.
III: — Yet our Lord does more than visit us again and renew our life with him once more. He also puts a question to us, the same question he put to Peter: “Do you love me more than these?” 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 remainder or regret – in his Son.”
“Do you love me like that”, the master says to Peter; “Do you love me more than these other fellows love me?” Now Peter is shaken. “These other fellows” were present, one week earlier, when Peter told Jesus that these fellows might crumble, cowards, when the crunch came, but he, Peter, “the rock”, would remain steadfastly loyal, brave and true. Then these fellows saw Peter fall all over himself. Now they are watching him. 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. And so now Peter replies, “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 Peter’s word, 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 honestly say, 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.” It’s a commission, an invitation and a promise: “Feed my sheep.”
I am and continue to be a disciple not because of superior insight or unusual loyalty or extraordinary grip on Jesus Christ. Like Peter I’m a disciple only because my Lord keeps coming to me, keeps speaking to me, and continues to hold me with a grip greater than my grip on him. And when he says, “Victor, do you love me?”, I don’t jump up and say, “Of course I do! Isn’t it obvious? Have a look!” I don’t say this because, like Peter, I’ve heard the rooster crow. Instead I barely manage to croak, but do manage to croak, “You know that I care for you.” Never has he said, “Not good enough; see me in six months.” Always he has said, “Feed my sheep.”
Now you mustn’t think I’m discouraged or depressed or immobilised or even suffering from low self-esteem. On the contrary, the master’s question, “Do you love me?” plus his commission, “Feed my sheep” are a double safeguard. In the first place we are safeguarded against spiritual presumption. “Of course I love you. My faith is proverbial, my obedience faultless, my life exemplary.” The question Jesus puts to us repeatedly just because he has to put it to us repeatedly; this question spares us a spiritual presumptuousness as repugnant as it is false.
At the same time his commission, “Feed my sheep”, reinforced relentlessly, safeguards us against despondency and uselessness. He has promised that whatever we do in obedience to him; whatever we undertake in his name will become food for his sheep. We aren’t asked to be super-achievers or heroic or even merely impressive; we need only be faithful, and our faithfulness, even when pot-holed like Peter’s, he will yet use to expand his own life within his own people. For our Lord’s commission, “Feed my sheep”, is more than a commission; it’s more even than an invitation; it’s a promise: we can feed his sheep, and we shall, just because he, unlike us, keeps the promises he makes.
The last word to Peter is, “Follow me.” To follow our risen Lord means that he asks us to go only where he has already been himself. He asks us to do only what he has already done himself. He asks us to intercede on behalf of the world only as he has already interceded on its behalf himself. To follow him means that we are never appointed to a work whose venue and environment he hasn’t already prepared for us. To follow him means that he’s forever drawing us to himself, never driving us on ahead of him. To follow him means that our obedience always decreases the distance between him and us; only our disobedience can ever increase the distance. To follow him means that his word of pardon and freedom and encouragement is a much louder word and a more penetrating sound than the raucous screech of the rooster. To follow is simply to know that our Lord will ever use us to feed others in ways that we cannot see and don’t have to see.
He who appeared to disciples so very long ago with a word, a question and a promise will continue to come to you and me. His word will let us recognise him. His question will save us from any suggestion of superiority. And his promise, “Feed my sheep”, will ensure that we do just that.
Victor Shepherd
Easter 2006
The Cross: The Victory of God’s Holiness
Mark 15:33-37
1 Peter 2:22-25
[1] There’s no word in biblical Hebrew for “doubt.” Are you surprised at this? Biblical Hebrew has no word for “doubt.” Isn’t it odd, then, that for the past several decades so much preaching has tried to assuage people’s doubts. Modern preaching often aims at identifying people’s doubts, voicing their doubts, classifying their doubts, illumining their doubts. On the one hand I understand why preachers think they have to address people’s doubts. On the other hand I have heard many sermons on doubt that ended up legitimating doubt, ended up confirming doubt. And I have heard more than one sermon where the preacher himself voiced his own doubts and many listeners went home relieved, since they now felt their own unbelief was all right.
We should rather understand why biblical Hebrew has no word for “doubt”: for our Hebrew foreparents God was the immediate, intense, intimate atmosphere in which their life unfolded, and to doubt him would have been as nonsensical as doubting the air they breathed and the fact of breathing itself and the necessity of breathing.
If you came upon someone who told you he sincerely doubted that there was air to breathe, sincerely doubted that he was breathing at this moment, sincerely doubted that it was important to breathe, you wouldn’t mobilize all your powers of suasion and argument and reason with him. You would telephone for an ambulance and whisper to the operator at least two attendants should come with the ambulance, for plainly the doubter was in a bad way.
If a fish could reason and talk, no one would attempt to persuade the fish swimming in the aquarium either that there really is water or that there really isn’t. The fish would know that water is that in which all fish live and move and have their being; without it they perish instantly.
There’s no word in biblical Hebrew for “doubt” just because God is the environment as immediate to them as water is to fish or air (breathed air) is to any of us. And therefore I’m not going to begin the sermon by identifying and voicing doubts. I’m going to begin with the immediacy and intensity and intimacy of God. Specifically I’m going to begin with God’s holiness.
[2] God’s holiness is God’s own Godness, that which constitutes him uniquely God. In the first place God is holy in that he’s utterly distinct from his creation. God is not to be identified with any part of his creation or any aspect of it.
In the second place God’s holiness means that he can’t be measured or assessed by anything other than himself. God is the absolute standard of himself.
In the third place God’s holiness means that God’s character is without defect or deficiency. God’s character is free from taint of any sort. God’s love is free from sentimentality; God’s anger is free from ill-temper; God’s judgement is free from arbitrariness; God’s patience is free from indifference; God’s sovereignty is free from tyranny.
In the fourth place God’s holiness means that all the aspects of God’s character just mentioned are gathered up into a unity. Just as every shade of the spectrum from infra-red to ultra-violet is gathered up into what we call “light”, so every dimension of God’s character and God’s transcendence is gathered up into God’s holiness.
God’s holiness is what scripture is actually about from cover to cover. To be sure, scripture is also about the holiness of God’s people, but always about his derivatively, secondarily. Primarily scripture has to do with God’s resolute assertion of his uncompromised holiness. If everything in scripture has to do with this, then Good Friday has to do with this as well. In other words the cross of Jesus has to do with God’s holiness.
[3] This lattermost point is important, for in our era the cross isn’t seen to be about God’s holiness. In our era the cross is viewed simply as one more instance of human virtue. The world has never been without its martyrs, for instance, and the cross of Jesus bespeaks his martyrdom. The world has never been without those possessed of the courage of their convictions, and Jesus plainly possessed the courage of his convictions. The world has never been without those victimized by political and religious power-brokers, and Jesus is one more victim.
But the apostles never speak like this of the cross of Jesus. John the Baptist was victim; John possessed the courage of his convictions; John was a martyr; yet the apostles never speak of the death of John as they do of the death of Jesus. The cross of Jesus has a force, a significance that the beheading of John doesn’t approach.
What’s more, the cross of Jesus is that one, singular event that looms over everything in scripture. While the public ministry of Jesus lasted up to three years, over 50% of the written gospels concerns one week (the death-week) of Jesus. The apostles see that the older testament anticipates the cross on page after page, from the story of Abraham and Isaac to the pronouncements of the prophets. They insist, together with Paul, they will preach only “the word of the cross.” They understand the resurrection of Jesus to seal the sacrifice of the cross; they understand the Holy Spirit to vivify the preaching of the cross. Then what it is about the cross that renders it the event in human history, the event in drama of salvation, the event in the life of God himself apart from which, say the apostles, there is no possibility of life eternal in us?
[4] Here we return to he centrality of God’s holiness. In view of the centrality of God’s holiness, everything about him and us must be understood in terms of his holiness. Our sin is our defiance of God’s holiness. God’s anger (his reaction to our sin) is the reaction of his holiness. God’s patience with us is the persistence of his holiness. And his love? God’s love is his holiness refusing to refusing to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us. If God’s holiness refuses to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us, where does it all come to expression? What is the outcome? It all comes to expression in the cross. And the cross, the outcome of it all, is the triumph of God’s holiness.
Let’s be sure we understand something crucial. Because God is holy, he is jarred by our sin. Jarred? Sin does more than assault him; sin offends him. He’s repulsed by it. He finds it loathsome, so very loathsome, in fact, that he can’t tolerate it. Since there’s no sin apart from sinners, God finds sinners loathsome and can’t tolerate them. Then he has only two choices: either he annihilates sinners, or he remedies their sinfulness. It’s plain that God has chosen not to annihilate sinners (for the time being, at least.)
To be sure, he has every right to annihilate us. For we are ungrateful, defiant, insolent people who owe him our existence and our every blessing, even as we persist in ignoring him, all the while thinking that our ignoring him is reasonable on account of our “doubts.” After all, doesn’t everyone have doubts? Surely we can no more help doubts from settling on us than we can help ‘flu “bugs” from alighting on us! But our doubting him and his goodness is no more reasonable than someone’s doubting the air she breathes and the act of breathing. Such a person we don’t congratulate; such a person we pity, even as we take steps to make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Our society assumes that to ignore the God whose holiness is his very Godness; our society assumes that to ignore him is merely an option, a preference, a taste. A few people seem to relish “religion”; most do not. But any case there’s no disputing taste. Fools! To ignore the one to whom we owe our existence and our every blessing is colossal ingratitude, inexcusable ingratitude, as offensive as it is unreasonable. Such ingratitude is never mere ingratitude; it is also contempt. Yet our contempt of God is also folly for us. To perpetuate such folly when God sustains us moment-by-moment, and sustains us despite our folly; this is more than folly; this is folly-induced blindness. In view of our ingratitude, insolence and self-willed blindness it shouldn’t surprise us that God finds us loathsome. Anything else would mean that his holiness had disappeared; which is to say, that he himself had ceased to be God.
Revulsion, we should note in this context, is an affective reaction to human sin: it’s how God feels about us. Anger, on the other hand, is a volitional response to sin: it’s what God does about us. What does he do? He disbars us; he denies us access to him. He can’t pretend that we are glad and grateful, obedient sons and daughters when we aren’t. He can’t pretend that we are fit to enjoy his presence when we are not more fit for him than a deaf person is fit to enjoy a concert or a blind person fit to enjoy an art gallery. God’s holiness has brought us to this point: either in his holiness he has to annihilate us or he has to remedy us.
Because God’s love is holy too he is going to provide what the apostle John calls “the remedy for the defilement of our sin.” To say that God’s love is holy is to say that his love isn’t sentimental. Because his love isn’t sentimental his love won’t let us off; yet also because his love isn’t sentimental (and therefore isn’t petulant) his love won’t let us go. Not only is God’s love righteous, it’s also resolute. His holy love will provide the remedy for the defilement of our sin.
The reason that the cross dominates all of scripture is that in the cross God’s holy love absorbs his holy anger and his holy revulsion. In the cross the judgement of the holy God is enacted and displayed. In the cross of Jesus the judgement of the holy God is borne by the Son of God — which is to say, borne by the Father himself, for Father and Son are one in nature, one in judgement, one in its execution, and one in its absorption. The cross is the triumph of God’s holiness in that God’s relentless opposition to sinners and his unending love for them; his revulsion before sinners and his patience with them; his authority over sinners and his self-willed humiliation beneath them; all of this is concentrated in the cross and finds pin-point expression there.
I have said that in the cross the judgement of God is seen to be operative: his face is set against sin, and sin must issue in alienation from him. Were there no judgment upon sin, God would cease to be holy. Yet if there were judgment only, the wrath of God would be fulfilled but the purpose of God would be frustrated, for now God would have given up that for which he made us in the first place, a people dear to him who live for the praise of his glory. In the cross, however, God honours all that his holiness entails even as he fulfils his purpose in fashioning a holy people who love him, obey him, serve him and lend glory to his name.
Much has been said about Moderator William Phipps’s denial of the incarnation. I hope that those who are upset are upset for the right reason. We shouldn’t be upset at his denial chiefly because he’s denying a fact; of itself this is no more upsetting than the denial of any other fact. We should be upset, rather, in that the incarnation is essential to the atonement. We can be made “at one” with God only as God the judge does two things: one, as God the judge exercises his judgement on sin and the penalty (alienation from him) is enforced; two, as God the judge absorbs that judgement in himself. Without the first, God’s character has degenerated and he has ceased to be holy; without the second, God would remain holy but our predicament would remain hopeless. God can condemn sin and absorb that condemnation himself only if the human bearer of that judgement is also the divine bearer. Apart from the incarnation the cross is nothing less than monumental injustice: Jesus is punished undeservingly by a God who is simply unfair. Apart from the incarnation the cross has nothing more to do with our destiny and our future than has the death of John the Baptist. In light of the incarnation, however, the just judge whose holiness will not permit him to wink at sin is also the loving father whose absorbing his judgement in himself creates a future and a hope we should otherwise never have. This is the point Phipps never gets.
In the cross God’s judgement is unsoftened, as our Lord’s cry of dereliction makes plain. In the cross too God’s love is undiminished, for how much more could he himself love us than to submit himself to humiliation, torment, and self-alienation in the Son?
In denying the incarnation Phipps isn’t merely getting rid of something that he regards as excess baggage, an encumbrance in the 20th century. In denying the incarnation, rather, Phipps is cutting the nerve of faith, for the only God there is to believe in is the one whose holiness can’t be compromised; and the only future we sinners can have depends on the God who in the Son incarnate bore his own judgement on us and bore it away. No incarnation, no atonement; no atonement, nothing but annihilation for humankind without hope of reprieve.
The atonement, the cross, is the triumph of God’s holiness in the face of human sin as God’s character is unimpugned and his truth is unaltered and his purpose is fulfilled and his people are recovered to be and remain the apple of his eye.
[5] At the commencement of the sermon I said there was no word in biblical Hebrew for “doubt.” There are, however, many words in biblical Hebrew for “wonder.” There’s no word for “doubt” just because God’s inescapable holy presence, charged with his power and purpose, renders doubt groundless. There are many words for “wonder” just because God’s inescapable holy presence, charged with his power and purpose, calls forth no end of wonder.
We hear such adoring wonder in the hymn, “How Great Thou Art”:
And when I think
That God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die,
I scarce can take it in.
And in a hymn older still Isaac Watts exclaims, “When I survey the wondrous cross” only to conclude,
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.
God’s holy love is brought to effectual focus in the cross. The cross in turn is the triumph of God’s holy love over sin and ingratitude and unbelief. Then why not suspend your unbelief? Why not suspend your unbelief, especially since unbelief is as groundless, as unsubstantial, as the psychotic person’s raving about an imaginary world that doesn’t exist. Why not suspend your unbelief, more especially, since God hasn’t suspended his mercy but rather prolongs the day of grace?
Faith is our grateful surrender to God’s holiness, therein to be rendered holy ourselves and made fit to glorify him and enjoy him forever.
Victor Shepherd
April 1998
The Cross According to John
Isaiah 53:11 (RSV)
John 3:17
John 12:12-29; 13:31
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” is the 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
Our Risen Lord
2 Timothy 2:8-9
I: — “No apostle ever remembered Jesus.” I was startled the first time I read this line. “No apostle ever remembered Jesus.” Then I understood what the author meant: we remember the departed whereas we don’t remember those who are alive and present. There’s no need to remember those who have never left us. The living are here, present, active, assertive, even intrusive. We remember only those who are dead, departed.
Jesus Christ is not among the departed. He is alive, vibrant, vivid. Therefore we don’t remember him. Then why does Paul instruct young Timothy, “Remember Jesus Christ!” Certainly Paul knows that Jesus Christ is alive. Paul is an apostle only because the resurrected one arrested him and shook him. Since the living Lord is the most vivid aspect of Paul’s existence, why does Paul tell Timothy to remember Jesus?
It’s because Paul is Jew. He thinks like a Jew. In the Hebrew language the verb “remember” doesn’t mean “recall to conscious”, “become aware of again”. In Hebrew, rather, to remember is to render an event in the past an operative reality in the present. Carved into our communion table are the words of Jesus, “This do in remembrance of me.” Does he mean that we are to observe the Lord’s Supper as a device to keep him from fading from our consciousness? Of course not. Jesus too is a Jew; he too thinks in Hebrew. To remember Jesus — and specifically remember his death — is to render a past event an operative reality in the present. An event from the past is made operative, effective, life-altering — now.
The prophet Habakkuk cries to God, “…in [your] wrath, remember mercy!” Habakkuk isn’t trying to “jog” God’s memory. When he cries to God, “Remember [your] mercy” he means, “That mercy which you have manifested in the past; make it the operative reality of our lives right now.”
Rachel wanted a child more than she wanted anything else. Hannah was desperate for a child too. We are told that God “remembered” both Rachel and Hannah — with the result that both women became pregnant. Then plainly to remember in Hebrew is to render a past event (their wedding) operative in the present and to make this present reality fertile, fruitful.
While we are talking about remembering in the Hebrew sense of the word we might as well talk about forgetting. In Hebrew to forget something isn’t to have it fade from consciousness; to forget something isn’t to become unaware of it. To forget, in Hebrew, is to make a past event non-operative in the present; and in making it non-operative to make it ineffective, insignificant, non-profuse; to neutralize it, cancel it. When God speaks to Jeremiah, and through Jeremiah to the people of Israel; when God says, “I will remember their sins no more”, God he doesn’t mean that he will slowly let the memory of his people’s sins fade away. He means, rather, that his people’s sins from the past will not be the operative reality now. Their sins he will neutralize; he will render them of no effect. When God forgets our sin, our sin is non-operative, out-of-commission, insignificant. When God forgets, what he forgets ceases to be.
We must be sure to note how the Hebrew bible links God’s forgetting and God’s remembering: he remembers his mercy, and just because his mercy is the operative reality now and limitlessly fruitful, he forgets our sin.
When Paul urged Timothy to remember Jesus, he never meant that the memory of Jesus was fading from Timothy’s consciousness and Timothy should recall the memory of Jesus. Paul meant something else. He wanted to make sure that Timothy continued to live in the vivifying, vivid, vibrant reality of the resurrected one. He wanted Timothy’s life to be fertile, profusely fruitful. He wanted Timothy ever to have Jesus Christ remain the heart and soul, the life-blood, the throb of Timothy’s ministry. He wanted Timothy to know that just because Jesus is alive and is “remembered”, Jesus can never become antiquated or obsolete. And Timothy himself need never become fruitless or sterile. “Remember Jesus Christ.”
II: — “Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead.” Paul knows that Jesus is alive, and is alive not inasmuch as he has not yet died; Jesus is alive, rather, inasmuch as he has died yet has been raised from the dead. To remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead is to appropriate now in faith, to continue to appropriate in faith, the operative benefits of Christ’s death.
What are the benefits of Christ’s death? There are many. Our Lord’s resurrection crowned and confirmed them all. Time permits us to ponder one only today. During his earthly ministry Jesus had said that he “came to give himself a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) “Ransom” is a word borrowed from the slavetrade. Slaves were said to be “ransomed” when the purchase price was paid for them — and they were then transferred from one slaveowner to another? No! The slave whom another slaveowner bought had merely been bought; he hadn’t been ransomed! A slave was ransomed (rather than merely bought) when his purchase price was paid so as to set him free. To be ransomed was to be released.
Our Lord said that he came to give himself a ransom for us. Plainly he regarded humankind as enslaved. To what? The rabbis who taught Jesus in Sunday School used to speak of the “yetzer ha-ra”, the evil inclination. The church speaks of original sin. Original sin is (among other things) that deepest-seated inclination that keeps us homing in on sin more surely than the homing instinct in a pigeon’s head keeps it returning to the coop. (Everybody knows that a child doesn’t have to be taught to do wrong.)
In casual conversation with his disciples one day Jesus said, “You fellows, evil as you are…”. He said it without qualification, without hesitation, without argument, without proof; “evil as you are…” . Obviously he regarded it as so blatantly self-evident that anyone who denied it would be as stupid-looking as the flat earth society.
We need something set right in us at the innermost core of our life. We need an alteration, an operative “fix” that will put us on a new road and point us to a new destination and grant us a new destiny.
In the wake of the freedom, release, our Lord’s atoning death brings to us we are freed from eversomuch more as well, freed from eversomuch more as the consequence of our foundational release. We are freed from a self-preoccupation that narcissists can’t hide from their psychiatrists as surely as mentally healthy (but spiritually sick) people can’t hide ingrained selfism from God. We are freed from the acquisitiveness that seizes us as tightly as we seize our trinkets and trifles and toys. We are freed from social climbing that thinks we are extraordinarily virtuous or unusually holy just because we don’t eat peas off a knife and can whistle five notes of Beethoven’s fifth. We are freed from having to posture ourselves as the measure of the universe and the judge of everyone in it. Released!
I said a minute ago that when slaves were ransomed they were freed; they weren’t transferred from one slaveowner to another. In this manner he who has paid our ransom inasmuch as he is our ransom now frees us — with this difference: in freeing us he does transfer us to the possession of someone else. He transfers us to himself. He now owns us. Bound to him now, we quickly learn that bondage to Jesus Christ is the only bondage in the world that liberates; in submitting to his authority we quickly learn that his authority is the only authority in the world that will never become authoritarian, tyrannical, demeaning. When Augustine said that serving Christ is our only freedom, Augustine was right. And when Martin Luther insisted that just because the Christian is free from all he is servant to all, Luther was right too.
“Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead.” “Remember the ransom, now crowned and confirmed by the ransom’s resurrection from the dead. In remembering him, remember your own release, Timothy. Remember your consequent enslavement to Jesus Christ. Make sure that this is the operative reality of your life; make sure that this is fertile, profusely fruitful. Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead.”
III: — “Remember Jesus Christ…descended from David.”
(i) To say that Jesus is descended from David means many things. At the very least it means that Jesus was genuinely human. (No one ever doubted the humanity of David.) Is the humanity of Jesus a point that has to be made? It always has to be made. The first heresy to afflict the young church was the notion that Jesus was only apparently human; he was unquestionably the Son of God, but he was only apparently human, only seemingly human. This heresy was named “docetism” after the Greek verb DOKEO, “to seem”. We must always insist with the apostles that Jesus was really human, fully human, authentically human.
You see, if Jesus isn’t genuinely human, how can he be my saviour, since I know that I am human? If Jesus isn’t genuinely human, how can he offer himself as ransom, representing all of humankind? How can he be representatively human if he is only apparently human and therefore not human at all?
There’s more to be said. If Jesus isn’t fully human then God has never become fully incarnate. If God has never become fully incarnate, then God’s love hasn’t condescended all the way down to me, since I am certainly human. If Jesus is only seemingly human, then God merely seems to love us without limit. If Jesus is only seemingly human, then God’s love hasn’t “gone all the way”; God’s love doesn’t reach all the way down to earth where we humans grope and stumble; God’s love never moves him to identify fully with our shame; God’s love doesn’t penetrate all the way in to our innermost depravity. Then God’s love simply isn’t quite loving enough. If Jesus is only seemingly human then God’s love almost condescends to us, almost reaches us, almost identifies with us, almost penetrates us, almost saves us.
Almost? A miss is as good as a mile. What good is a lawyer whose clients are almost acquitted? A surgeon whose patients almost survive? A teacher whose pupils almost learn to read? An engineer whose bridges almost stand up? What good is a saviour who almost saves? A father whose love is almost effective? “Remember Jesus Christ…descended from David.” In the full humanity, authentic humanity of Jesus God’s love has reached us, identified with us, penetrated us, and therefore saves us.
(ii) To speak of Jesus as son of David means even more. It means that Jesus is the Messiah, the Messiah promised to David. David had been Israel’s greatest king. Like no other king before him or after him David had upheld justice, protected the vulnerable, assisted the poor, defended the defenceless, helped the afflicted, suppressed enemies, vindicated his people, and exulted in the God whose name he sought to adorn. The years of David’s reign were glorious.
But David’s reign was geographically local and temporally short-lived. At best all that he did — wonderful as it was — remained shot through with the evil that infiltrates everything; more to the point, all that David did was marred by the sin of David himself.
As a result all Israel longed to see the day of the King; that king whose reign would know no end, that king whose reign would preside over a kingdom which was nothing less than the entire creation healed. The promise of such a king, the Messiah, is mentioned in several places in the older testament; Psalm 89:16, for instance — “You [God] have said, `I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David that I will establish his descendants for ever, and build David’s throne for all generations’.”
“Remember Jesus Christ…descended from David.” Jesus Christ, king of that kingdom which cannot be shaken, is the operative truth of the world’s life, even if the world doesn’t know it. Jesus Christ is the operative truth of the creation-restored, even though the creation (for now) persists in contradicting it. Paul is telling Timothy that he, Timothy must ever be sure that he, Timothy lives for and lives from a new creation, the kingdom of God, made new at the hand of him through whom and for whom all things have been made.
IV: — “Remember Jesus Christ…as preached in my gospel.” My gospel? Did Paul think that the gospel was his possession, like his coat or his chariot. Did Paul think that the gospel was his and nobody else’s? Or was it “his” gospel in the sense that he invented it? He thought no such thing. When the congregation in Galatia decided to invent its own gospel Paul told them most vehemently that they were accursed. And even if another “gospel” were invented by an angel from heaven, he fumed, it would still be accursed. There can be only one gospel: the message of Jesus Christ charged with the power of Jesus Christ.
Then what does the apostle mean when he speaks of “my gospel”? He means that he has appropriated the gospel personally; he means that he has claimed the gospel for himself; he has drunk it down and now perspires it; he has inhaled it and now breathes it out; he has clothed himself in it and now displays it. He has tasted the gospel, owned it, identified himself with it; he lives by the gospel, commends it, is unashamed of it, stands by it, is wedded to it — and will even die for it. When I speak of Maureen as “my wife” I don’t mean that I possess her, and I don’t mean that I invented her. I mean that she has won my heart, that she is fused to me and I to her, that we are now inseparable, that we know and cherish an intimacy with each other that words can only approximate. Maureen is “my” wife in the sense Paul has in mind when he says, “Jesus Christ is `my’ gospel.”
When the older apostle says to the younger Timothy, “Remember Jesus Christ…as preached in my gospel”, he means, “Timothy, be sure that Jesus Christ is the same operative reality, profusely fruitful, for you that he has been for me. See to it that “your” gospel is nothing less than the message of Christ charged with the power of Christ so that everyone knows you are acquainted with the person of Christ.”
“Remember Jesus Christ
risen from the dead
descended from David
as preached in my gospel.”
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
All in an Easter Evening
Judges 6:19-24
John 20:19-23
Part One
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
“If Christ Be Not Raised From the Dead . . . .”
1st Corinthians 15:12-20
In the course of my holocaust studies I frequently come upon accounts of heartbreaking delusion. I read, for instance, of Jewish people in the 1940s who hear of something dreadful said to be on the point of befalling their people. They look at each other in horror — but only for a few seconds — and then console themselves, “But of course it isn’t going to happen; it couldn’t happen here; we live in a civilized nation; this is the land of Beethoven and Schubert and Goethe and Heine and Schiller; this is the country whose appropriation of the Enlightenment gave Jewish people recognition and opportunities unparalleled anywhere else in Europe. What we’re told is about to happen could never happen here.” But it did happen, and when it happened the delusion was exposed as lethal – albeit exposed too late.
Our hearts go out to anyone we find living in a delusion.
The newscast tells us of yet another elderly person who opened her door to a man in a fine business suit, and who told her he was a bank official bent on uncovering a fraudulent bank employee. In order to help the bank in this important task would she kindly cooperate and temporarily withdraw her savings as well as her late husband’s life insurance benefits. We all know the rest of the story: another trusting eighty year old who has been swindled out of all her material resources.
Perhaps the most extreme form of living in a delusion — and therefore the one to which our hearts go out the most — is the delusion of the mentally deranged person. He tells us he is Napoleon fighting in the American Revolution, pursued alternately by the RCMP and Admiral Nelson. The psychotic person’s delusion appears to extend everywhere and comprehend everything. He appears most to be pitied.
What did I say? Extend everywhere and comprehend everything, most to be pitied. The apostle Paul insists that if Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead then those who believe in him are deluded, overtaken by hallucination. Since those who believe in him believe that he is the one through whom and for whom everything has been made, that he is sovereign over the entire cosmos, then the delusion in which such believers are sunk is no little delusion. This delusion extends everywhere and comprehends everything. “If Christ be not raised from the dead”, says Paul, “we believers are of all people most to be pitied, for we are in the grip of a hallucination that’s total.”
I: — “If Christ be not raised”, the apostle begins, “then our preaching is in vain.” Of course it’s in vain. Preaching is always a matter of pointing to Jesus Christ as the living one who not only lives now but whom death will never be able to overtake again. What could be more futile, vain, than commending as living, living eternally, someone who is at this moment deader than a dinosaur? This is not to say that such a preacher herself is fraudulent or hypocritical; merely to say that such a preacher is deluded. And because she is deluded with respect to the truth about Jesus, what she urges upon others is unsubstantial, groundless, ineffective; in short, utterly unreal.
Preaching is never merely a matter of setting forth a cluster of ideas or notions on a religious topic. Preaching the gospel to the yet-ungospelized is not the same as commending capitalism to communists, or commending the Prime Minister’s platform to those who support someone else’s, or commending the monarchy to republicans, or commending sobriety to the substance-habituated. In every situation just mentioned someone is placing one set of ideas alongside another set, at the same time assuming that the other party will see the inherent superiority of the contrasting set of ideas. The western capitalist assumes that the notion of capitalism is transparently better than the notion of communism. The Chinese communist, needless to say, assumes the exact opposite.
Preaching isn’t this; preaching isn’t articulating notions whose inherent superiority is self-evident. Preaching, rather, is testifying to the living person of Jesus Christ as he is clothed with his truth. In the course of this testimony the living one himself emerges from the sincere but garbled utterance of the preacher and stands forth as living person to be seized and trusted and loved and obeyed. Preaching is a matter of uttering many words about Jesus when, in the midst of these many words, the Word himself steps forth in such a way that hearers are no longer assessing words; hearers are confronted with that Person whom they cannot evade and concerning whom they must now decide. But of course the one spoken about can loom up out of the many words about him and stand forth as the world’s sole redeemer and sovereign and hope only if he is alive. Unless Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is now alive, preaching is nothing more than an exercise in comparing idea with idea, notion with notion, even bias with bias.
When next you hear a sermon ask yourself this question: does the preacher exude confidence in the promise of the risen Lord, confidence that he will startle hearers as witness is borne to him? Or does the preacher exude no such confidence, with the result that the sermon has to resort to shrillness, exaggeration, or manipulation? Preaching that resorts to such devices is already in vain, since these gimmicks attest the absence of any conviction that Jesus Christ is alive.
On the other hand, preaching that rests its confidence in the promise of the living one to manifest himself; rests its confidence in the one spoken about to speak for himself; rests its confidence that he who is pointed to as if he were far off in truth is here to meet us now; preaching that exudes the preacher’s experience of Christ; namely, that he can unstop deaf ears and open blind eyes and thaw frozen hearts — such preaching is never in vain just because the risen one himself will always honour it and use it to confirm himself alive as he puts another new-born on the road of lifelong discipleship.
II: — “If Christ be not raised from the dead”, the apostle continues, “then your faith is in vain.” Of course it’s in vain. Faith is our glad, grateful, adoring embracing of the one who has first embraced us. But the dead don’t embrace. Then if Jesus hasn’t been raised what we thought to be our faith (we thought we were embracing him) is the ghastliest delusion. Little wonder the apostle says we would then be the most pathetic, pitiable creatures on earth.
Think of it this way. Faith is always faith in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate One, the Son of God. On Good Friday it appeared that his Father had abandoned him to contempt and cruelty. What if Easter hadn’t occurred? What if the Father had abandoned his Son forever to contempt and cruelty? Faith in such a God would be ludicrous, and if ludicrous then surely in vain, for such faith (so-called) would be nothing more than the desperation of naïve people in the face of a snickering deity.
Or think of it this way. Faith in Jesus is faith that he is the one in whom God routs the tyranny of evil and renders the strongholds of Satan the kingdom of God . Faith in Jesus is faith that the mighty deeds of his earthly ministry were signs and instalments of that kingdom where only God’s will is done. But if Jesus isn’t raised from the dead then his mighty deeds, so far from being signs and instalments of the kingdom, were nothing more than transient, sideshow amusements.
What about his teachings? His teachings, he insisted, are the manufacturer’s manual to that kingdom which cannot be shaken. Are they? Or are they merely the exaggerated expostulations of an extremist? Let’s be honest: of themselves, our Lord’s teachings do resemble the exaggerated ranting of an extremist. Just listen to him. “Either you love God — profoundly love God — or you are more surely addicted to money than a junkie is to cocaine.” On the face of it this assertion is ridiculous. Why did he juxtapose God and mammon, God and money in this way? Why did he assume that God and money are the rival powers, jointly exhaustive, in the entire universe? His assertion is categorical, without qualification. He offers no argument, no explanation, just a bald, bold assertion. “Do you lust after someone to whom you aren’t married? Then you are an adulterer, just like those promiscuous types you despise in your heart and warn your children against.” “Either you forgive from your heart the person who has violated you or you have invoked the death sentence upon yourself, for either you pardon the person whose treatment of you is inexcusable or you forfeit God’s pardon of you.” “You won’t give up anything that inhibits your spiritual growth? Then you aren’t fit for the kingdom of God and you might as well depart for the outer darkness right now.” Our Lord’s teaching sounds so very extreme. It is extreme. Then is it wildly exaggerated and for that reason false? If he hasn’t been raised from the dead then his teachings can be dismissed as the raving of a zealot we do well to forget. If, on the other hand, he has been raised and now lives eternally, then we should pause and ponder his teachings, for they are the manufacturer’s manual to that kingdom which cannot be shaken.
III: — “If Christ be not raised…you are still in your sins”, the apostle continues. Of course we are. We are still in our sins in two senses. In the first place, if Christ be not raised then his Father’s ratification of his death as the effectual sacrifice for sin hasn’t occurred. The death of Jesus is then no different from the deaths of the two terrorists who died alongside him. Concerning the deaths of these two terrorists Charles Wesley never wrote, “God and sinners reconciled.” Concerning their deaths another hymnwriter didn’t write, “In the cross of terrorists I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.” When John the Baptist was executed his friends lamented that a good man had been bushwhacked; his friends never exulted that the sin of the world had been dealt with definitively.
The resurrection of Jesus, on the other hand, is the Father’s declaration that this execution is unique in all the world; this execution isn’t defeat but victory. This execution isn’t finally martyrdom but amnesty. This execution isn’t finally ultimately to be lamented but celebrated. Because Christ has been raised from the dead we know what his death means. Because Christ has been raised the Father has declared to the world that the Son’s sacrifice is sealed, accepted, honoured, made effective for all men and all women everywhere.
There is a second sense in which the Corinthian Christians, to whom Paul wrote these words, would still be in their sins if Christ had not been raised. If Christ had not been raised then Christ could not seize the people in Corinth and claim them for obedience and righteousness. Had they not been seized, claimed for obedience and righteousness, they would still be stumbling in disobedience and wallowing in unrighteousness.
Make no mistake. The reputation of the people of Corinth was known the world over. It resembled the reputation of present-day Thailand . Everyone knows what the major tourist attraction is in Thailand . Everyone knows that the business of venereality is so lucrative in Thailand that the government there won’t do anything about it, won’t even protect the twelve and thirteen year olds who are exploited by it. The ancient world had a word for all this, a verb: “Corinthianize”. In the ancient world if you wanted to speak of every kind of degenerate human sexual activity from the shamelessly immoral (but not perverse) all the way to the unmentionably perverse, you needed only one word: “Corinthianize”. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, he wouldn’t have — couldn’t have — seized and startled and claimed those who came to faith in him and were added to the congregation in that city. Those people would still have been doing what they had been doing before the risen one had arrested them. In this sense they would still be in the midst of their profligate sins.
You and I are less dramatic sinners than the people of Corinth . To say we are less dramatic sinners, however, is not to say we are any less sinners. Yet because Christ has been raised from the dead we too are no longer in our sins; no longer in our sins in the sense that we are now endeavouring to repudiate sin as quickly as we recognize it, endeavouring to put it behind us, never so much as to entertain it or flirt with it. We want only to triumph over it and praise God for the victory, like any authentic disciple.
IV: — “If Christ be not raised”, the apostle says in conclusion, “then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” Of course they have perished. Only the deluded would think anything else. Christians have always known that death is death. Romantics may disguise death romantically and pretend any number of silly things about death, but Christians know that death isn’t sleep. (Jesus didn’t sleep on the cross.) Death is death.
It is the presence of Jesus Christ — and only the presence of the risen one – that renders death sleep for his people. When Paul speaks of “those who have fallen asleep in Christ” he means Christians who have died and who have trusted the resurrection of Christ to be their resurrection too. But if Christ has not been raised then there is no resurrection for them to trust to be theirs. They died trusting a phantom; they died deluded.
Yet Christ has been raised from the dead. Their trust in him has not been misplaced, has not been in vain. What it all means is that we can entrust our departed loved ones to the care and keeping of the God who will preserve them and us as surely as he has preserved his own Son.
Christ has been raised from the dead. Preaching is not in vain. Faith is not in vain. We are not still in our sins. And our friends in Christ who have died have truly “fallen asleep in Christ”, for his resurrection is theirs — and ours — as well.
Christ has been raised from the dead. We are not deluded folk who are briefly living out a giant fantasy. We live in truth. We shall never have to be pitied, let alone pitied above all others.
Christ has been raised from the dead.
Victor Shepherd
Easter 2007
Of Trees and the Tree (revised)
Genesis 2:8-9; 15-17
Genesis 3:1-7
Deuteronomy 21:22-23
Galatians 3:13
1 Peter 2:24
John 19:16b-30
I: — What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with the world? What’s wrong with the world is something the world would never guess: it slanders the goodness of God.
The old, old story (saga, legend) of Genesis 3 is a timeless story about the history of every man and every woman, for “Adam” is Hebrew for “everyman” and “Eve” for “mother of all the living”. According to the old story God has placed us in a garden abounding in trees: “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”. God has placed us in a setting that delights us and nourishes us abundantly. In addition to the myriad trees in Eden (“Eden” being Hebrew for “delight”) there are two extraordinary trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life symbolizes the fact that the origin of life and the conditions of life and the blessings of life rest in God; the tree of life symbolizes this and reminds us of it. As John Calvin says so finely, “God intended that as often as we tasted the fruit of the tree of life we should remember from whom we received our life, in order that we might acknowledge that we live not by our own power but by the kindness of God.”
In addition to the tree of life there stands the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Good and evil” does not mean “good plus evil”. “Good-and-evil” (virtually one word) is a semitism, a Hebrew expression meaning “everything, the sum total of human possibilities, everything that we can imagine.” To know, in Hebrew is to have intimate acquaintance with, to experience. In forbidding us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God is warning us against intimate acquaintance with the sum total of everything that we can imagine. He is warning us against thinking we must experience or even may experience whatever we can dream up. In other words, God has set a limit to human self-extension; God has set a limit to our extending ourselves into anything at all that the mind and heart can invent.
Why has God set such a limit? Why does he urge us to become intimately acquainted with everything that is both nourishing and delightful, both essential to life and culturally rich — and then in the same breath warn us not to become intimately acquainted with “good and evil”? He sets such a limit just because he loves us; he sets this limit for our blessing. This side of the limit is blessing; the other side is curse. This side of the limit there is the blessing of curative medicines; the other side of the limit there is cocaine, curse. This side of the limit there is the one-flesh union of marriage, blessing; the other side there is the curse of promiscuity and perversion with their degradation and disease. God, who is good in himself, wants only what is good for us.
Good? We don’t think that God is good when he tells us, “Every tree except the one tree”; we think he’s arbitrary. After all, he didn’t consult us when he decided where the boundary line was to be; he simply told us; arbitrary.
The root human problem is that we disparage the goodness of God. We disparage the goodness of God when we scorn the tree of life, dismissing the goodness of God and the truth of God, even as we tell ourselves that he has proscribed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not because he longs to bless us but just because he’s arbitrary; and not only arbitrary, but a spoilsport as well since he won’t allow us to extend ourselves into all those possibilities that would surely enrich us.
The tree of life represents discipleship; the tree of life represents what it is to be profoundly human: human beings are created to be glad and grateful covenant-partners with God. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil — prohibited! — is the alternative to discipleship, the alternative to glad and grateful covenant-partnership with God. The root human problem, then, is that we don’t want life from God’s hand under the conditions God sets for our blessing. We prefer an alternative; we want to be the author and judge and master of our own life.
According to our ancient story the garden of profuse creaturely delights continues to delight us as long as we hear and heed the creator who gave them to us. As soon as we try to “improve” upon him, however; as soon as we disobey him, proposing an alternative to the covenant-partnership of discipleship, the creaturely delights no longer delight us. They become the occasion of endless frustration, emptiness, futility, curse.
II: — The process by which we typically arrive at God-willed curse in place of God-willed blessing is subtle. The serpent is the personification of this subtlety. The serpent asks with seeming innocence, “Did God say? Did God say you weren’t to eat of that one tree?” The serpent hasn’t exactly lied: at no point does it say, “God never said….” While the serpent never exactly lies, neither does it ever exactly tell the truth. The serpent (subtlety personified) smuggles in the assumption — without ever saying so explicitly — that God’s word, God’s command is subject to our assessment.
The subtlety takes the form of a question that appears innocent but in fact is a doubt-producing question with a hidden agenda. What’s more, the doubt-producing question is an exaggeration: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’” Any tree? There’s the exaggeration. God has forbidden us to eat of one tree, one tree only.
Eve (mother of all the living) decides to correct the serpent. Surely there’s no harm in correcting an exaggeration. But for her there is, for as soon as she attempts to correct the serpent she’s been drawn into the serpent’s territory; now she’s dialoguing with a subtlety to which she isn’t equal. When first she heard “Did God say?” the only thing for her to do was to ignore the proffered subtlety. Correcting it looks harmless but is ultimately fatal, for now she’s been drawn into the tempter’s world.
Isn’t it the case that as soon as you and I begin to reason with sin we are undone? As soon as we begin to reason with temptation we’re finished. Temptation can only be repudiated, never reasoned with, for the longer we reason with it the longer we entertain it; and the longer we entertain it the faster our reasoning becomes rationalization — and rationalization, as everyone knows, is perfectly sound reasoning in the service of an unacceptable end.
As soon as Eve attempts to correct the serpent’s exaggeration she exaggerates. “God has told us not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree; we aren’t even to touch the tree, lest we die.” God had never said they weren’t to touch it. They were certainly to be aware of the tree, always aware of it, and never to eat of it, never to experience it. In trying to correct the serpent’s exaggeration, Eve now exaggerates. In trying to undo the serpent’s distortion of the truth, she now distorts the truth. Of course. To dialogue with a subtlety pertaining to temptation is invariably to be seduced by it.
Eve doesn’t know it yet, but she’s undone. She doesn’t know it, but the serpent does. For this reason the serpent leaves subtlety behind and accosts her blatantly. “You won’t die”, it tells her as plainly as it can, “You won’t die; you’ll be like God, the equal of God.” It’s the tempter’s word against God’s; it’s temptation’s contradiction of God’s truth.
But God has said that we shall die if we defy him; we are going to be accursed if we extend ourselves into areas and orbits beyond blessing. “You won’t die.” Please note that the first doctrine to be denied is the judgement of God. Doctrines are the truths of God, and the first truth of God to be disdained is the judgement of God. We should note in passing that Jesus everywhere upholds the judgement of God.
Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the result that “their eyes were opened”. They had thought that by defying God they were going to be enlightened. By defying him, however, they have moved to a new level of experience; their eyes are opened — but they are anything but enlightened. They now know “good and evil”. They now have intimate acquaintance with, first-hand experience of, what God had pronounced off-limits. Too late, they now know too why it was pronounced “off-limits”: it’s accursed.
To sum it all up, the primal temptation to which every human being succumbs is the temptation to be like God, to be God’s rival (actually, his superior). The primal temptation is to regard God’s truth as inferior to our “wisdom”; to slander God’s loving “No” as spoilsport arbitrariness; to regard obedient service to God as demeaning servility; to pretend that a suicidal plunge is a leap into life. Ultimately the primal temptation is to look upon God’s goodness as imaginary, his will as capricious, and his judgement as unsubstantial.
III: — The result is that Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden. Expelled means driven out. By God’s decree. Does forced expulsion strike you as too heavy-handed for a God whose nature is love? Then be sure to understand that the forced expulsion is also the logical outcome of disobedience. After all, Jesus insists (John 17:3) that life, eternal life, is fellowship with God. And fellowship with God is precisely what humankind repudiates. Then a forced expulsion from the garden — a forced expulsion that issues in estrangement instead of intimacy, creaturely goods that frustrate instead of delight, daily existence that is cursed instead of blessed, and a future bringing the judge instead of the father — all of this we have willed for ourselves. We think the expulsion to be heavy-handed? We wanted it.
In the ancient story the cherubim, spirit-beings who safeguard God’s holiness, together with a flaming sword that turns in every direction; these guarantee that God means what he says: humankind is out of the garden, can’t find its way back in, is now living under curse, and can’t do anything about it.
IV: — We can’t do anything about it. Only the holy one whose holiness cannot abide our sinfulness can. Only he can. But will he? Has he? Peter cries, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree!” (1st Peter 2:24) He himself did? Who is “he himself”? It is our Lord Jesus Christ, he and none other.
We must never think, however, that after Peter had denied his Lord and run away he suddenly came to the happy conclusion that Jesus is the great sin-bearer for the whole wide world. At the cross he had concluded only that Jesus was accursed. After all, the Torah said it all clearly: “…a hanged man is accursed by God. Therefore, if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and you hang him on a tree, don’t leave his body on the tree overnight; remember, anyone hanged on a tree is accursed by God.” (Deut. 21:22-23) Since Jesus had been hanged on a tree (of sorts), Jesus had to be accursed by God. Such people weren’t accursed because they were hanged; they were hanged because they were accursed; and they were accursed because they were unspeakably debased sinners.
It was only in the light of Easter morning that Peter understood what had really happened. It was through his Easter morning encounter with the risen one himself; it was in the light of the Father’s Easter vindication of the Son that Peter saw several things simultaneously.
[1] Jesus was accursed; he had died under God’s curse.
[2] Yet Jesus wasn’t accursed on account of his sin; he was accursed on account of humankind’s sin. That is, while he was not a transgressor himself, he was “numbered among the transgressors”. While not a sinner himself, he identified himself so thoroughly with sinners as to receive in himself the Father’s just judgement on them.
“He bore our sins in his body on the tree.” To “bear sin” is a Hebrew expression meaning to be answerable for sin and to endure its penalty. The penalty for sin is estrangement from God. In bearing this penalty — demonstrated in his forlorn cry of God-forsakenness — Jesus answered on our behalf.
[3] Because Jesus Christ is the incarnate son of God he possesses the same nature as God. Father and Son are one in nature, one in purpose, one in will. It is never the case that the Son is willing to do something that the Father is not, that the Son is kind while the Father is severe, that the Son is eager to pardon while the Father is eager to condemn. Incarnation means that Father and Son are of one nature and mind and heart. To say, then, that Jesus bore the judge’s just judgement on our sin is to say that the judge himself took his own judgement upon himself. But of course he who is judge is also father. Which is to say, when Jesus bore our sins in his body the Father bore them in his heart. The just judge executed the judgement that he must; then he bore it himself and therein neutralized it, and this so that his characteristic face as Father might be the face that shines upon you and me forever. Father and Son are one in judgement, one in its execution, one in anguish, and one in pardon. What the Son bore the Father bore, in order that justice uncompromised might issue in mercy unimpeded.
In the light of Christ’s resurrection the truth of the cross and the nature of its curse flooded Peter.
V: — When Peter cried, “He bore our sins in his body on the tree” (the Good News of Good Friday), he went on to say in the same breath, “in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”
Then the only thing left for us to decide this morning is whether or not we are going to die to sin and live to righteousness. Here only do we have anything to say, to do, to become. We can’t do anything about Eden. We have been expelled, and rightly expelled, having disparaged the goodness of God and disobeyed the wisdom of God and disdained the blessing of God. Just as we can’t do anything about Eden we can’t do anything about our consequent condition: we can’t overturn it, can’t right it, can’t alter it however slightly. In the same way we can’t do anything to effect atonement, can’t do anything to make ourselves “at one” with God once more. We can’t do anything here for two reasons. In the first place, offenders can’t finally achieve reconciliation in any personal relationship anywhere in life. Reconciliation is always finally in the hands of the offended party anywhere in life. Since we are offenders any possibility of reconciliation rests with the God we have offended.
We can’t do anything to effect atonement, in the second place, just because it’s already been done.
God wrought our reconciliation to him in the cross. To think we can improve upon it is to disdain the blessing he has fashioned for us; and this is to commit the primal sin all over again.
Then there is only one matter for us to settle. Are we going or are we not going to die to sin and live to righteousness? If we intend to do this today or to go on doing it today we must cling in faith to the crucified one himself. He is the son with whom the Father is ever pleased. Then in clinging to him in faith we too shall become that child of God who delights the Father. He is the wisdom of God. Then in clinging to him we shall forswear our folly and know blessing instead of curse. In clinging to him and following him throughout life we shall know that his service, so far from servility, is in fact our glory. His tree, the cross, is now become the tree of life. To become ever more intimately acquainted with it is to relish the rigours of discipleship, recognizing all alternatives as the spiritual suicide that they are.
VI: — As we cling to our Lord Jesus Christ in faith the psalmist will say of us what he said of others so long ago:
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do they prosper.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:3,6)
Victor Shepherd
Revised March 2013
How Do We Know He’s Alive?
Mark 16: 1-8
I: — “Did he really rise from the dead?” the sceptic asks. “Prove it. Prove that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the Dead. If you can prove it, then the Christian message might be true after all.”
Let me tell you right now: there is no proof. Jesus consistently refused to traffic in proofs. At the outset of our Lord’s public ministry the tempter took him up to the top of the CN Tower. “Jump off, and land without spraining your ankle; then the whole world will know that you are the Son of God.” “No”, Jesus had replied, “If I do that, people will only look upon me as a sideshow freak, they may find me entertaining or even puzzling, but they will never follow me and magnify my work in the world.” A few months later some bystanders were uncertain as to whether they should throw in their lot with Jesus or wait and see. “Give us a sign”, they told him, “an unmistakable sign that you are the one we should follow.” “No sign”, said Jesus; “Signs are for armchair debaters who lack commitment; signs foster arguments among armchair dabblers; I want foxhole followers. If you join me you will know who I am and rejoice in it; if you don’t join me, a sign won’t get you to change your mind. A sign will only set you to squabbling among yourselves as to what the sign means.” You see, for those who have met the risen Lord signs are superfluous; for those who have yet to meet him, no sign is ever sign enough.
From time to time people ask me if the resurrection of Jesus can be proved. It can’t. What’s more, Jesus himself has never wanted it proved. He has always wanted followers, not detectives.
II: — Then what can be proved? What is confirmed historically? History confirms two facts.
(i) Jesus of Nazareth landed himself in immense trouble with religious leaders. He was labelled a false prophet. Since “everyone” knew that the days of the prophets were past, anyone who sounded like a prophet had to be false. Therefore he was a false prophet.
He was a blasphemer too. He appeared to speak and act with the authority of God. When he was pressed to deny that he did so, he refused to deny anything. Anyone who claims to speak and act with the authority of God is a blasphemer.
He was a seducer of the common people. The ne’er-do-wells, the amoral, the irreligious — he drew them all to himself instead of sending them back to the pseudo-wisdom of the self-important and superior.
Not surprisingly, he was disposed of at the city garbage dump where the Roman executioner kept a scaffold ready-to-hand.
This is fact one. Thirty year-old upstart lands himself in trouble with religious officials who then ask civil authorities to execute him.
(ii) Fact two. His former followers, who had misunderstood him over and over and who had finally forsaken him and written off their time with him as embarrassing naiveness; his former followers began announcing zealously that he was alive. They were convinced he was alive, they said, simply because they had met him. Therefore they would no more think of trying to prove he was alive than you would try to prove me alive when you meet me at the door of the church after the service. No longer regarding him as deluded and themselves as naive, they worshipped him as Lord – he hadn’t been blasphemous after all when claimed to be the Son of God – and they insisted that with him a new age had dawned, the dawn of the “Age-to Come.”
History confirms that he died. History confirms that his former followers declared him to be alive, and declared him to be exalted as Lord of the entire creation.
“But wasn’t the tomb empty?” someone asks. If you were an ordinary citizen of Jerusalem and you heard reports of an empty grave in the city cemetery, you would merely conclude that someone, whether friend or foe, had removed the body for whatever reason. An empty tomb never proves that someone is alive; an empty tomb “proves” no more than that a tomb is empty; an empty tomb never proves that dead wandering teacher is now living ruler of the cosmos.
To be sure, early-day Christians insisted that the tomb was empty. Nevertheless, no early-day Christian believed upon Jesus risen because of an empty tomb. Early-day Christians believed upon Jesus risen because the living Lord Jesus himself had seized them and convinced them that he was alive and was in fact the very one they had seen crucified. This is the only reason anyone believed in the resurrection of Jesus then; it’s the only reason anyone believes in the resurrection now.
The apostle Paul didn’t make a trip to the Jerusalem cemetery, see an empty tomb, and finally draw the right conclusion. Quite the contrary. Paul was preoccupied with his cruel business of persecution when the risen One himself stepped in front of him and floored him. Peter was fishing. Mary Magdalene was grieving. Fearful disciples were fearing. All of these people were busy with the things which preoccupy us. And it was while those people were about everyday matters — working, weeping, fishing, fearing — that they were stolen upon, overtaken; they were impelled to acknowledge that Jesus had been brought to life and installed as sole, sovereign Lord. It still happens exactly like this.
III: — Let us be clear about something crucial. Romantics may tell us that Mozart “lives on” in his music and Shakespeare “lives on” in his plays and Martin Luther King Jr. “lives on” in the cause of justice for Afro-American people. But romantic talk is entirely inappropriate for Jesus. Jesus does not “live on” in his disciples. Jesus lives himself. Period. And because he lives himself, he directs and sustains and empowers his own cause throughout the world.
No early-day Christian remembered Jesus. Do you understand the force of this? No early-day Christian recalled Jesus. We remember or recall only those who have departed. We recognize those who are alive in our midst. Christians have always recognized Jesus. We meet him and adore him, hear him and cherish him, embrace him and obey him. We do. So did our ancestors before us. What did it mean for them?
(i) Our ancestors in faith revelled in their conviction that death had been conquered; not cancelled, but conquered. The difference is crucial. On my first pastoral appointment I sat with a woman who was most distressed at her 65 year old sister’s terminal illness. “If only Emma could be cured”, she kept saying, “if only a miracle would occur”. Gently, as gently as I could, I pointed out that if Emma’s terminal illness were reversed now, she would still have to die later. In other words, if she didn’t die at 65 she would still have to die at 69 or 72 or 81. If for some reason she came back to health at 65, then death had been cancelled at least for the moment; i.e., postponed.
But to say that death has been conquered is to say that death has been stripped of its power. On the day when the Lord was raised from the dead and death was stripped of its power, his people — you and I — became gloriously free. The writer of Hebrew insists that Jesus Christ has “destroyed the power of death and has delivered – freed – all who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” (Hebrews 2:15) Sigmund Freud maintained that no human being could honestly face the prospect of dying, and therefore all human beings were unconsciously controlled by fear of death. But Christians aren’t determined and governed by their fear of death; Christians are determined and governed by the risen one who has freed us from that bondage in which the fear of death imprisons people and manipulates them.
Because the Christian is freed from the power of death and therein from the bondage arising from the fear of death, the Christian is free to give her life away. The Christian is free to risk himself on behalf of the one who risked everything for the people he loved. And since the world-at-large unconsciously tries to protect itself against death by piling up things and fortunes and reputations and rewards, the Christian is gloriously freed from preoccupation with things and fortunes and reputations and rewards. Because death is now stripped of all power to dislodge us from our security in Christ, we are freed from having to pursue the false securities, abysmal insecurities, of money and fame and mastery. We are free to give ourselves away.
(ii) The resurrection meant something more to our ancestors in faith. It meant that God guarantees the effectiveness, the triumph, of all cross-bearing. When Jesus died on Black Friday, his followers had concluded that his cross meant one thing: his suffering was utterly disastrous and completely useless. But when God raised him from the dead, they knew something else: God had vindicated Christ’s suffering and now advertised it as victorious. The resurrection of Jesus – and only his resurrection – turned Black Friday into Good Friday, “God’s Friday.” Resurrection means that our Lord’s cross-bearing has triumphed: atonement has been made for the sins of the world. If his cross-bearing has triumphed, ours always will too; ours will always be effective.
Our Lord guarantees the effectiveness, the triumph of whatever cross we take up for him and for his work and for his people. Resurrection doesn’t mean that cross-bearing can now be stepped around; it doesn’t mean that what we used to call “cross-bearing” is now no more than a minor nuisance. Resurrection means something entirely different: the crosses we take up anywhere in life, everywhere in life, will always yield fruit of some kind. The crosses we shoulder are gathered up in that one cross which includes them all. And they will all be rendered fruitful by the power of that resurrection which made our Lord’s fruitful.
For this reason my mother spent years patiently assisting young girls who had been sent to an institution when their parents no longer wanted them or couldn’t look after them. The girls, aged 8 to 16, were ill-behaved, devious, frequently mean-spirited, and of course psychologically stressed. On one occasion they harmed my mother physically. I suspect that more than a few grew up to be psychopaths. Yet my mother always knew that what she endured from those girls for the few years of their lives she was in touch with them would bear some fruit which she could leave with God.
For this reason my late father went to the Fort Saskatchewan Penitentiary every single Sunday afternoon for as long as he lived in Edmonton (eleven years) to provide music and a sermon for a service of worship. He knew that the convicts often seemed indifferent and uncomprehending and even resentful. Yet he never felt that his time was wasted. One day when I was about twelve years old I asked my father (innocently, I thought) if he’d ever seen any results for his eleven years’ work among convicts. Immediately he turned to me and said, a bit sharply, “I didn’t do what I did in expectation of seeing results; I did it because it was right.” Still, in the providence of God he was permitted to see the fruit of his work on one occasion at least. One day my father was sitting on an Edmonton streetcar with my mother when a man approached him, whispered briefly to him and shook his hand. The man had come to repentance and faith through the prison ministry, and now exulted in the fact that he could live, one a day at a time, without falling back into criminality.
The sacrifices we make right now for the sake of the kingdom; likely only we are aware of them, and it would be both poor taste and unbiblical blabbing to speak too much about them. And of course there are days when we resent the pressure of the wood and wish we could ditch this cross plus so many others. Of course there are such days; after all, Jesus wasn’t grinning on Calvary . Nonetheless, on Easter Sunday we are given fresh heart because our conviction is renewed: that resurrection which vindicated our Lord’s suffering and rendered it victorious guarantees as much for us.
(iii) Lastly, our ancestors in faith knew that because Christ had been raised from the dead and now lived and ruled in their midst, he would always use them, honour their discipleship, empower their testimony, regardless of how badly they had failed him in the past or might fail him in the future. The Bible is an agonizingly honest book. It portrays God’s people with all their defects. There’s no cosmetic cover-up to make God’s people look good. Peter denies. David murders. Moses rages. James and John think they are going to get positions of privilege in the kingdom. With shocking insensitivity born of selfishness the disciples squabble among themselves over who is going to look best precisely when Jesus is at his worst.
It’s no wonder that on several occasions Jesus sighs with exasperation and addresses the disciples, “O you midgets of midget faith!” Yet because Jesus Christ is alive and honours the mission his people take up in his name, it is we, people of midget faith, fumbling faith, stumbling, bumbling, falling down faith; we are the ones he will ever use.
Regardless of everything we find amazing in life what’s most amazing, unquestionably, is the humility, patience and helpfulness of our Lord who continues to deem us indispensable and honour our work as only he can. We are people of little faith; yet little-faith-people are the only people he has. Then we his followers are the very people whose service he will magnify in a manner as wonderful as it is unforeseeable. I don’t need any proof of all this.
I am as confident about it as were my foreparents in faith, and for precisely the same reason. He who was raised from the dead overtook them not once but many times. As often as he did he reconfirmed himself as living, as lordly, as loving.
He has done as much to me. As much, I trust, as he has done to you.
Victor Shepherd
Easter 2004
Concerning the Cross: Are We Perverse or Profound?
“For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:45
Not so long ago the New York Times newspaper published an article concerning a man and his peculiar hobby. The man lives in New Jersey , and his hobby is collecting items connected with state prisons and executions. “Here is the horsewhip with which unruly prisoners used to be flogged,” he announces dramatically. “And here are the manacles by which violent convicts were cuffed to the floor. And here is the noose that circled the neck of fourteen men and two women as they dropped to their death.” Government authorities in New Jersey wish the fellow would find another hobby. They look upon him as perverse. He’s an embarrassment. But the fellow refuses to find another hobby. He relishes bringing sightseers to the climax of his display: an electric chair where dozens of convicts were executed.
Are we Christians any less perverse? Every Lent we speak of the suffering of Jesus: the cruelty of his abandonment as the worst of his friends betrayed him and the best of his friends deserted him. Every Lent we recall the injustice meted out to him, the blows he received at the hands of judicial authorities, the cold contempt of soldiers, the whipping, the crown of thorns. And of course the climax of our annual rehearsing all this is the instrument of execution itself: the cross.
We are repelled by the man in New Jersey who polishes up his electric chair and then invites people to see it even as they pay him to lecture them about it. But don’t we polish up our cross (the church custodian does this)? Don’t we invite people to contemplate it even as we pay someone (the minister) to speak to them about it? Then what’s different about us? Is the church’s preoccupation with the cross as ghoulish as the fellow whose life revolves around his execution devices?
Everyone in this room finds any instrument of execution repugnant. We aren’t the first to feel this way, for in the ancient world everyone found the instrument of execution repugnant. The cross was repugnant to Romans, Greeks and Jews alike, albeit for different reasons.
The Romans viewed the cross with loathing. No Roman citizen could be crucified – for any reason. Then who could? Only subject peoples could be crucified, and in Roman eyes subject peoples were scarcely human in any case. Subject peoples who happened to be terrorists or military deserters or rapists: they could be crucified. Terrorists, deserters, rapists: the scum of the earth, Romans thought: loathsome.
The Greeks viewed the cross with loathing as well. The Greeks sought wisdom in philosophy. Philosophy dealt with notions that have universal validity: truth, goodness, freedom. Then Christians came along and insisted that truth and goodness and freedom were found not in universal ideas but in a particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, who wasn’t even a philosopher. Greeks regarded all of this as ridiculous to the point of repugnant.
Jewish people viewed the cross with loathing as well. After all, they deemed Jesus to be a Messianic pretender. Since Jesus had been a victim of cruelty when the real Messiah was to eradicate cruelty, Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah. What’s more, any Jewish person who knew the sacred scriptures, especially the book of Deuteronomy, knew that anyone impaled on a stake was under God’s curse. The book of Deuteronomy said so in black and white.
The ancient world, whether Roman, Greek or Jewish, regarded the cross as every bit as repugnant as we regard electric chair or noose repugnant. Then why do we Christians feature the cross in every place of worship and announce it in every service of worship? Are we any different from the man in New Jersey ?
Yes, we are different. Unlike him we don’t regard the cross – unquestionably a means of execution – as entertainment. And like the apostles before us, we don’t trade on the physical horrors of the cross (even as they were no more horrible for Jesus than for the two men who died on either side of him.) More profoundly, like the apostles before us we glory in the cross because we know that here something was done for us we could never do for ourselves; here something was done for us that has the profoundest consequences for our life now and our life to come. In speaking of the cross week in and week out we aren’t perversely prattling on about something ghoulish. We are praising God for our salvation. Strictly speaking, in recalling the cross we aren’t recalling any execution, as if it made no difference who was executed. In recalling the cross we are seizing afresh the crucified one himself; in recalling the cross we are embracing as ardently as we can the one who died there for us, now lives among us, yet lives among us forever bearing the wounds of the cross. For while we can embrace our Lord Jesus today only because he’s been raised, he’s been raised with the signs of his crucifixion upon him still.
Gathering it all up we can say that Jesus Christ stands among us as the one whose cross-shaped wounds continue to call us to him. What can we say about him and his cross?
I: — The first thing we must say is that in his cross he has identified himself with sinners. To be sure, prior to the cross, throughout his earthly ministry, he identified with sinners.
Sinners, by definition, are those who aren’t “at home” with God. Jesus knew what it is not to be “at home.” He was born in a stable since there was no room for him in the inn. He didn’t belong. Subsequently he said he had nowhere to lay his head. A wanderer. Homeless. Misunderstood by family. Abandoned by friends. Isolated. He tasted the full taste of what it is not be “at home” anywhere.
It’s a favourite theme with novelists. It’s a major motif in existentialist philosophy. Humankind is rootless, alienated, wandering, homeless; lost in the cosmos.
The problem with the analysis which novelists and philosophers supply is that it isn’t nearly profound enough. They don’t get to the bottom of problem. They don’t understand the real problem is that we feel we’re not at home just because we aren’t at home; we aren’t at home with God. And the reason we aren’t at home with God is that we’ve been driven from intimacy with God on account of our sin. God’s judgement upon our sin has driven us from him. We don’t feel “at home” in the cosmos? What do we expect? We’re never going to feel “at home” in life when God’s judgement upon us has rendered us homeless as surely as Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden they called “home.”
When the cross loomed in front of Jesus he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with.” But hadn’t he already been baptized? Yes, he had. He went to the Jordan where his cousin John was baptizing startled people who were newly horrified at their sinnership and were confessing it and repenting it. When John saw Jesus he said, “What are you doing here? You’ve nothing to confess.” “Baptize me just the same,” said Jesus, “for I am confessing on behalf of all men and women everywhere; I’m confessing on behalf of those who have just begun (but only begun) to see how twisted their heart is and on behalf as well of those who have yet to see it. I’m repenting on behalf of those who think their repentance is as deep as their sin (it isn’t) and also on behalf of those who are still spiritually asleep. I’m identifying myself with sinners; that is, with every last human being who has ever lived or ever will.”
Having identified himself with us in his baptism; having identified himself with us in his being nowhere “at home” throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus Christ now identifies himself with us to the uttermost in his Father’s judgement upon us sinners. Unquestionably sinners are under the judgement of God. God’s judgement means condemnation. When Jesus cries “Why have you forsaken me?” he is identifying himself with us in his Father’s judgement on sinners. “Why have you forsaken me?” This is the cry of a man who feels the anguish of not being “at home” with his Father and knows precisely why, even as men and women everywhere feel themselves to be not “at home” but don’t know why.
But of course to look at the cross, to apprehend the cross, is to know why. To apprehend the cross is finally to have our sinnership made plain to us. To understand the cross is finally to understand just why we’ve never felt “at home”; namely, we haven’t been “at home” – with God – and none of this we knew until Jesus our Lord identified himself with us in his ministry, in his baptism, and pre-eminently in the “baptism” of the cross. Our situation before God has finally been disclosed to us.
II: — Sobered as we are at the disclosure of our situation before God, we nevertheless rejoice in the disclosure and thank God for it. For the revelation of our predicament is simultaneously the revelation of God’s provision for us. Certainly the cross acquaints us with the bad news about ourselves. But the cross acquaints us with the bad news only in acquainting us with the good news. For the good news is good just because the cross highlights our sin for us only in the course of bearing it and bearing it away. The cross acquaints us with the disease only in the course of providing us the cure. The cross informs us of our condemnation only in the course of telling us that someone else has borne that condemnation for us.
A minute ago I spoke of the man in New Jersey who won’t stop talking about his execution museum pieces. We think he’s unbalanced, since his prison artefacts announce only death. We Christians too won’t stop talking about the cross – but for an entirely different reason. We keep talking about the cross (admittedly an instrument of execution) just because the cross announces life. And knowing now that the cross announces life, we now understand how it is Jesus insisted from the first day of his earthly ministry to his last that the cross was the purpose of his coming. “The Son of Man,” Jesus said of himself, “came to give his life a ransom for many.” “And I, if I be lifted up (i.e., crucified) will draw all manner of men and women to me.” “This hour is my glory. Father, glorify yourself in me.” Unquestionably Jesus regards the cross as the purpose of his coming and the glue that integrates everything he does in his life leading up to the cross.
I fear there are many people today who think that Jesus came for some other purpose, any other purpose. I keep running into people, for instance, who think that Jesus came among us primarily to be a teacher, came among us to inform us wherever we might happen to lack information. The truth is, when it comes to his teaching, Jesus said very little that others didn’t say before him. There is very, very little in the teaching of Jesus that is unique to him. He is, after all, a son of Israel ; most of his teaching is simply a carrying-forward of what he learned from the spiritually learned people around him. For instance Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” But the rabbis in Israel had already said, “Where two or three are gathered around the Torah, around the Word of God, there the presence of God shines forth gloriously.” What our Lord is saying is so close to what he learned at school that we can’t acclaim him a startlingly novel teacher. But of course the Son of God who is also the Son of Man tells us himself that he came not to be a teacher primarily; he came to give himself a ransom for us. He came to be that provision which sinners need. He came to be that provision whereby the cure for our sin discloses the fact and nature of our sin. He came to be that remedy for our defilement by which we’d understand ourselves defiled. He came to be that salvation in the light of which we’d know we need saving. For it’s only the saved, isn’t it, who now know they must have needed saving.
Several times today I’ve quoted the text where Jesus says he came to give himself a ransom. The word “ransom” is always used in scripture to speak of release or deliverance. There were two kinds of people who were customarily ransomed: slaves and prisoners of war (in other words, those who are in bondage and those who are in the power of the enemy.) Jesus uses the analogy for one reason: it fits. Our sinnership binds us as firmly as if we were slaves or prisoners of an alien power. In point of fact there’s no “as if” about it: our sinnership is something from which we can’t deliver ourselves.
Still, there is deliverance as we receive, cherish and praise God for the provision he has made for us. If anyone says, “What’s all this talk about provision? Doesn’t God love us? Hasn’t he always loved us? What ‘provision’ has to be made?” – anyone who says this doesn’t understand the difference between love and mercy. To be sure God has always loved us, since he is love. Still, even while he loves us he can’t deny his judgement upon us. Since he can’t deny his judgement upon us, when his love and our sin meet – which is to say, when his love and his judgement meet – his love takes the form of mercy. Mercy is love absorbing the judgement we merit.
Then there is deliverance as we refuse to trifle with God’s mercy but instead welcome his provision whereby his loved poured over us, his judgment insisted on the truth about us, and his mercy brought it all together and provided our release from condemnation. There is deliverance as we embrace the One who is, in himself, all of this for us.
From time to time people tell me that the Christian faith is complicated. I hope they don’t think I make it appear complicated. In fact the Christian faith is simple. It’s gathered up most pithily in a statement Paul announced to the church in Corinth when the church there was on the point of misrepresenting the gospel. The statement: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us in order that we might be made the righteousness of God.” (2nd Corinthians. 5:20) In other words, Jesus Christ is God’s provision for us amidst our sin, and the provision that he is tells us the truth about ourselves. Is the truth about us the truth that we are sinners? The truth about us is that we are forgiven sinners. Remember, only the cure discloses the disease. Only the provision discloses the predicament. Only the remedy for the problem acquaints us with the problem. The truth of the cross is that we are forgiven sinners, thanks to the one who identified himself with us in all respects, thanks to him in whose company we can be “at home” with God and know it.
In truth aren’t at all like the odd-ball fellow in New Jersey . In fact strictly speaking we aren’t preoccupied with the cross; we are preoccupied with him whose cross it is; we are preoccupied with our Lord Jesus Christ, who comes to us in grace and wants only to bind us to him in faith.
He came to give himself a ransom. He came to clothe himself in our sin in order then to clothe us in his righteousness. Therefore we are glad to exclaim with the hymn writer, “In the cross of Christ I glory.”
Victor Shepherd
Good Friday 2004