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Why Is This Friday Different From All Others?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victor Shepherd

Good Friday 2015       St Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga          

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

Forgiveness of Others, Forgiveness of Self — Where Do We Begin?

Micah 7:18-20
Psalm 32
Colossians 3:12-17
Matthew 18:21-35

1] Begin with the cross. There is nowhere else for us to begin. The cross looms everywhere in scripture. All theological understanding is rooted in it. All discipleship flows from it. It’s what we trust for our salvation. It transforms our thinking, ridding us of the mindset that characterizes the world. The cross is the only place to begin.

To begin anywhere else means that we have begun with calculating: “Should I forgive? How much should I forgive? Under what circumstances should I forgive?” Now we are calculating.

Calculation in matters that concern us fosters self-interest. We go to the bank to purchase our RSP for 2007. The interest rates are 4% for one year, 4.25% for two, and 4.5% for three. We estimate how the interest rate is going to fluctuate in the next few years, and we calculate which combination of locked-in RSP rate and time period is best — best for the bank? Of course not. Best for us. Calculation in matters that concern us fosters self-interest.

In the second place calculation is frequently a conscious cover-up for unconscious rationalization. At a conscious level I calculate whether I should forgive, how much I should forgive, whom I should forgive. But all of this is a smokescreen behind which there is, in my unconscious, a heart set on vindictiveness, a desire to even a score which has remained uneven (I think) for umpteen years, a wish to see someone who has pained me suffer a little more himself. Unconscious rationalization, like any unconscious proceeding, is a process which spares us having to admit nastiness about ourselves that we don’t want to admit, spares us having to acknowledge what we prefer to hide. Calculation is a conscious matter which cloaks an unconscious development, even as we are left thinking we are virtuous.

In the third place calculation traffics in the unrealistic. What I am prepared to forgive in others (feeling virtuous about it too) will in fact be slight, while what I expect others to forgive in me will in fact be enormous. This is unrealistic.

In the fourth place calculation both presupposes shallowness and promotes shallowness. It presupposes shallowness in that I plainly think that sin is something I can calculate or measure like sugar or flour or milk. Calculation promotes shallowness in that it confirms over and over the shallowness I began with.

We ought never to begin our understanding of forgiveness with calculation. We must begin with the cross; and more than begin with the cross, stay with the cross.

2] Nobody uses a twenty-member surgical team to clip a hangnail. No government sends out a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to sink a canoe. The air-raid warning isn’t sounded because a child’s paper glider has violated air-space.

When the twenty-member surgical team is deployed the patient’s condition is critical. When the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier puts to sea the threat it’s dealing with couldn’t be greater. When the air-raid warning is sounded destruction is imminent. And when God gives up his own Son humankind’s condition is critical, the threat facing us couldn’t be greater, and our destruction is imminent.

As often as I read scripture I am sobered to read that God’s forgiveness of you and me necessitated the death of God’s own Son. I try to fathom what this means. In trying to fathom it from the Father’s perspective I ponder the anguish of our foreparent in faith, Abraham. Abraham and Isaac. Abraham collecting the firewood, sharpening the knife, deflecting Isaac’s anxiety, trudging with leaden foot and leaden heart up the side of Mount Moriah . He and Sarah had waited years for a child, had had none, had given up expecting any. Then when everyone “just knew” that the situation was hopeless Sarah conceived. Was any child longed for more intensely or cherished more fervently? Now they have to give up this child, give him up to death.

I have been spared losing a child. I do know, however, that when a child dies the parents of that child separate 70% of the time. Wouldn’t the death of their child bring the parents closer together? The truth is, so devastating is the death of a child that calculation concerning it is useless; we can’t begin to comprehend what it’s like.

Abraham again. At the last minute the ram is provided. Abraham’s relief is inexpressible: his son doesn’t have to die. But when the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ walks his Son to Calvary there is no relief: his Son has to die. Here the Father bears in his heart the full weight of a devastation that couldn’t be greater.

Next I try to fathom what the cross means from the perspective of the Son. On the one hand I don’t minimize the physical suffering he endured for our sakes. On the other hand, countless people have endured much greater physical pain. (It took Jesus only six hours to die, remember.) It’s the dereliction that ices my bowels. What is it to be forsaken when the sum and substance of your life is unbroken intimacy with your Father? As a child I was lost only two or three times. It wasn’t a pleasant experience; in fact it was terrifying. Nonetheless, even when I was lost (and terrified) I knew that my problem was simply that I couldn’t find my parents; I never suspected for one minute that they had abandoned me. A man who is dear to me told me that when his wife left him and he knew himself bereft, forsaken by the one human being who meant more to him than all others, he turned on all the taps in the house so that he wouldn’t have to hear her driving out of the garage, driving out. Before our Lord’s Good Friday dereliction I can only fall silent in incomprehension.

3] As often as I begin with the cross I am stunned at the price God has paid — Father and Son together — for my forgiveness. In the same instant I am sobered at the depravity in me that necessitated so great a price. It’s plain that my depravity is oceans deeper than I thought, my heart-condition vastly more serious than I guessed. It’s incontrovertible that when I have trotted out all my bookish, theological definitions of sin I still haven’t grasped — will never grasp — what sin means to God.

When I was a teenager I thought our Lord to be wrong when he prayed for his murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” I thought him to be wrong inasmuch as it seemed to me (at age 17) that they did know what they were doing: they were eliminating someone they didn’t like. They had to know what they were doing simply because they had plotted and schemed and conspired for months to do it. Furthermore, our Lord’s plea, “Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they are doing”, had to be self-contradictory — I thought. After all, if they didn’t know what they were doing then they didn’t need to be forgiven; they could simply be overlooked. Now that I’m old I perceive that our Lord was right. His assassins didn’t know what they were doing, ultimately; didn’t know they were crucifying the Son of God. They didn’t know that their sinnership had impelled them to do it, didn’t know that while they thought they were acting freely they were in bondage to sin more surely than the heroin sniffer is in bondage to dope. In my older age I see that our Lord was right. They can’t be excused; they can only be forgiven, since what they are doing comes out of their own disordered heart. To be sure, they don’t fully grasp what they are doing, can’t fully grasp it. But the reason they can’t grasp it is that they are blind to their own depravity. Of course they are; the worst consequence of our spiritual condition is that we are blinded to our spiritual condition. But being blinded to it doesn’t lessen our accountability for it, as the day of judgement will make plain. But why wait until then? Why not own the truth of the cross now; namely, that a cure this drastic presupposes an ailment no less drastic? A cure whose blessing is richer than we can comprehend presupposes a condition whose curse is deadlier than we can imagine.

4] Is everyone convinced that we should begin with the cross? Then everyone must agree that our understanding of forgiving ourselves and others unfolds from the cross; the light that the cross sheds will ever be the illumination by which we see everything else concerning forgiveness.

For instance, it’s the consistent testimony of the apostles that our forgiving our enemies is the measure of our closeness to God. When this truth first sank home with me I sank to the floor. Surely I could enjoy intimacy with God while enjoying the fantasy of my worst enemy going from misery to misery, misfortune to misfortune. Then in that light which the cross sheds I saw that I couldn’t. How could I claim intimacy with the One who forgives his assassins and at the same time relish ever-worsening misery for those who have not yet assassinated me? How can I say I crave being recreated in the image of the God for whom forgiving costs him everything while I make sure that my non-forgiving costs me nothing?

Two hundred and fifty years ago John Wesley wrote in his diary, “Resentment at an affront is sin, and I have been guilty of this a thousand times.” We want to say, “Resentment at an imagined affront would be sin, since it would be wrong to harbour resentment towards someone when that person had committed no real offence at all; but of course it would be entirely in order to harbour resentment at a real affront. After all, who wouldn’t?” To argue like this, however, is only to prove that we have not yet come within a country mile of the gospel. Resentment at an imagined affront wouldn’t be sin so much as it would be stupidity. Because resentment at a real affront, at a real offence, comes naturally to fallen people we think it isn’t sin. How can we ever be held accountable for something that fits us like a glove? But remember the point we lingered over a minute ago: not merely one consequence of our sinnership but the most serious consequence of it is our blindness to the fact and nature and scope of our sinnership. Then what are we to do with our resentment? Do we hold it to us ever so closely because its smouldering heat will fuel our self-pity and our self-justification? Or do we deplore it and drop it at the foot of the cross, knowing that only the purblind do anything else?

Our Lord’s parable of the unforgiving servant leaves us in no doubt or ambiguity or perplexity at all. In this parable the king forgives his servant a huge debt; the servant, newly forgiven a huge debt, turns around and refuses to forgive a fellow whatever this fellow owes him. The king is livid that the pardon the servant has received he doesn’t extend in turn. The king orders the servant shaken up until some sense is shaken into him. If the servant had refused to forgive his fellow a paltry sum, the servant would merely have looked silly. But the amount the servant is owed isn’t paltry; 100 denarii is six months’ pay. Then the servant is readily understood, isn’t he: the forgiveness required of him is huge. But the point of the parable is this: while the 100 denarii which the servant is owed is no trifling sum, it is nothing compared to the 10,000 talents ($50 million) that the king has already forgiven the servant.

That injury, that offence, that wound which you and I are to forgive is not a trifle. Were it a trifle we wouldn’t be wounded. The wound is gaping; if it were anything else we wouldn’t be sweating over forgiving it. We shall be able to forgive it only as we place it alongside what God has already forgiven in us. Please note that we are never asked to generate forgiveness of others out of our own resources; we are simply asked not to impede God’s forgiveness from flowing through us and spilling over onto others. We don’t have to generate water in order for it to irrigate what is parched and render it fruitful; all we have to do is not put a crimp in the hose. Either we don’t impede the free flow of God’s forgiveness from him through us to others, or, like the servant in the parable, we shall have to be shaken up until some sense has been shaken into us. (We must never make the mistake of thinking our Lord to be a “gentle” Jesus “meek and mild”. Gentle and mild he is not.)

5] Before the sun sets tonight we must be sure we understand what forgiveness does not mean.

(i) It does not mean that the offence we are called to forgive is slight. As we’ve already seen, it’s grievous. Were it anything but grievous we’d be talking about overlooking it instead of forgiving it — if we were even talking about it at all.

(ii) It does not mean that the offence is excused. To forgive is not to excuse. We excuse what is excusable. What is not excusable, will never be excusable, is also never excused. It can only be forgiven. The day you tell me you have forgiven me is the day I know that I am without excuse. To forgive is never a shorthand version of, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” To forgive is to say it matters unspeakably.

(iii) Forgiveness does not mean that we are suckers asking the world to victimize us again. To forgive is not to invite another assault. To forgive is not to advertise ourselves as a doormat. To be sure, there are people who are doormats, people whose self-image is so poor and whose ego-strength so diminished that they seem to invite victimization. Forgiveness, however, isn’t the last resort of the wimp who can’t do anything else in any case. Forgiveness, rather, is a display of ego-strength that couldn’t be stronger. Jesus can forgive those who slay him just because he has already said, “No one takes my life from me; I may lay it down of my own accord, but I lay it down; no one takes it from me.”

(iv) Forgiveness does not mean that the person we forgive we regard as a diamond in the rough, good-at-heart. Forgiveness means that the person we forgive we regard as depraved in heart. After all, this is what God’s forgiveness means about you and me.

(v) Forgiveness does not mean that the person we must forgive we must also trust. Many people whom we forgive we shall never be able to trust. The only people we should trust are those who show themselves trustworthy. Forgiveness does mean, however, that the person we can’t trust we shall nonetheless not hate, not abuse, not exploit; we shall not plot revenge against him or bear him any ill-will of any sort.

Remember, all that matters is that we not impede the forgiveness which God has poured upon us and which he intends to course through us and spill over out of us onto others.

6] Any discussion of forgiveness includes forgiving ourselves. Very often the person we most urgently need to forgive is ourselves. And since all forgiveness is difficult to the point of anguish, then to forgive ourselves may be the most difficult of all.

Suppose we don’t forgive ourselves; suppose we say, “I can forgive anyone at all except myself”. Then what’s going on in our own head and heart?

(i) Surely we have puffed up ourselves most arrogantly. There is terrible arrogance in saying to ourselves, “I’m the greatest sinner in the world; the champion. I can forgive others because they are only minor-league sinners compared to me. When it comes to depravity I’m the star of the major leagues.”

Not only is there a perverse arrogance underlying such an attitude, there is no little blasphemy as well. “The blood-bought pardon of God, wrought at what cost to him we can’t fathom — it isn’t effective enough for me. Where I’m concerned, God’s mercy is deficient, defective, and finally worthless.” This is blasphemy. Our forgiveness, which cost God we know not what, you and I shouldn’t be labelling a garage-sale piece of junk.

(ii) If we say we can’t forgive ourselves then we want to flagellate ourselves in order to atone for our sin. But don’t we believe the gospel? The heart of the gospel is this: atonement has already been made for us. We neither dismiss it nor add to it. We simply trust it.

Perhaps this is where we should stop today; at the cross, where we began. For it is here that we see that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven us. And here we see that we therefore must forgive others, and forgive ourselves as well.

Victor Shepherd
Palm Sunday 2007

Bread and Wine

Deuteronomy 8:1-10
John 6:52-59

Bread

[1] When the Japanese besieged Hong Kong sixty-plus years ago and began starving the people inside the city, a British banker was found sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter. He was dressed like a British banker: cutaway coat, Homburg hat, pin-striped trousers, grey spats. He was the picture of upper-class privilege. He had found an orange in the gutter. The orange had been stepped on several times, had been exposed to the sun, and had begun to putrefy. He was about to bite into it when a British soldier knocked it out of his hand, shouting, “Do you want to get sick?” Whereupon the banker, still sitting on the curb, hung his head and blubbered like a child.

Hunger is terrible. Hunger bends people. Hunger forces people to be what they never thought they’d become. The British banker would have given everything he owned for just one slice of bread. But there was no bread.

Bread was the all-important commodity in the ancient east. Bread? Not money? Money didn’t even exist in old, old Babylon . In lieu of currency grain was the medium of exchange. Hundreds of years later, in Hosea’s day, Hosea lurched broken-hearted to the market in order to purchase his “hooker”-wife from the clutches of the local pimp. Hosea paid part of the purchase-price in grain. Whereas in our society there are few public officials more important than the minister of finance and the president of the central bank, in the ancient world the most important public official was the one responsible for bread.

[2] Bread is one of life’s necessities. Because bread looms so large in our lives and is essential to life, we use the word “bread” metaphorically. “I’ve got to have a second job just to put bread on the table.” Everyone knows what the expression is meant to convey. When we pray, as we are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are asking for all of life’s necessities: bread, to be sure, but also water and clean air and safe cities and national security and effective schooling and adequate medical care. What, after all, would be the point of bread (literal) to sustain us if disease then carried us off? What would be the point of eating bread to forestall malnutrition if we then had to breathe lung-corroding air or live in lethal streets or succumb to military aggression? When we pray for daily bread we are praying for all of life’s necessities as symbolized by bread. When our Lord multiplied the loaves and healed the sick and raised the dead he wasn’t doing three different things. He was doing one thing: bringing with him that kingdom whose manifestation we long to see.

Then is bread a physical matter or a spiritual matter? To put such a question is to pose a false dichotomy. All of us at Tyndale have been schooled in the logic of the Hebrew bible, and therefore we know that to dichotomize life into the physical (or material) and the spiritual is to dichotomize life falsely. Dennis Niles, a thoughtful South Asian Christian of an earlier era, used to say, “If I lack bread – that’s a physical problem; if my neighbour lacks bread – a spiritual problem.” Since the Christian community is birthed by the Spirit of God and is concerned with spiritual matters, the Christian community is therefore concerned with material matters – which is to say, the Christian community is always concerned with bread of every kind.

[3] While we are speaking of bread metaphorically we should recall the way the older testament speaks of the bread of tears and the bread of affliction and the bread of idleness and the bread of adversity. Because bread was the staple food in the ancient world, it was eaten in huge quantities. Then as now people knew that in one sense they were what they ate. What they ate became so thoroughly a part of them that they were characterized by what they had had to swallow.

When the Hebrew bible speaks of the bread of tears or the bread of sorrow, it means that someone is so thoroughly grief-saturated she’s consumed by her grief; someone has been so thoroughly saddened that she’s characterized by her sorrow and is now identified with it.

We all know people whom adversity has devastated so thoroughly that we would say, were we living in the time of our Hebrew foreparents, that they have eaten the bread of adversity. As soon as we hear the word “adversity” we think of those people who exemplify adversity and whom we now identify with it.

We know too people who have eaten the bread of wickedness. They have become so very wicked that they are deemed to exemplify wickedness

[4] In view of the different kinds of bread that we can eat and do eat, it’s plain that we need one more kind of bread as we need nothing else: we need him who is the bread of life. We are sinners and we are sufferers. We need our Lord, and he meets us at every point of our need.

In Israel ’s 40-year trek through the wilderness there was given them a most glorious anticipation of Jesus Christ, the bread of life. They were given manna. Manna sustained them in that era when bleakness loomed wherever they looked. “Manna” is a Hebrew word meaning “What is it?” They were sustained by God’s provision, the nature of which they couldn’t explain (let alone explain away), yet whose presence and significance they couldn’t deny. “What is it?” How God sustains his people is always a mystery; that he sustains them is never in doubt. Manna appeared to be so very ordinary, yet it was extraordinary in its origin, its nature, its effectiveness.

Twelve hundred years after the wilderness episode some descendants of wilderness-survivors said to Jesus, “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Moses fed his people. What can you do for us?” Jesus replied, “It wasn’t Moses who fed your foreparents; it was my Father. He gives true bread from heaven, and I, Jesus of Nazareth, am that bread. I am the bread of life, just because I am living bread. Whoever comes to me will never hunger; whoever comes to me will never perish.”

Manna was an anticipation of Jesus Christ. To say the same thing differently, Jesus Christ was the hidden truth of the manna in the wilderness. It was he who sustained the people even though they knew it not. “Now, however”, says our Lord, “you people are to know that I am God’s provision. To be sure, I appear so very ordinary as to be readily overlooked. Yet my origin, nature and effectiveness are rooted in the mystery of God. I am living bread, the bread of life; whoever comes to me from this moment neither hungers nor perishes.”

In the service of Holy Communion we eat ordinary bread, everyday bread, bread plain and simple, and yet we are fed him who is the bread of life. The bread that sustains our bodies also sustains, by God’s grace, our life in Christ as our Lord Jesus gives himself to us afresh.

Wine

[6] Not only was bread eaten at Israelite meals; wine was drunk at every meal as well. Where wine is concerned our Israelite foreparents differed from our society in two ways. On the one hand, they abhorred drunkenness, finding it disgusting, whereas we seem to find it amusing. On the other hand, Israelite people customarily drank wine at every meal. The rare exception was the highly unusual ascetic like John the Baptist. People like John who didn’t touch wine also refrained from touching much else, including soap and shampoo. They also avoided women. They lived on the fringe of society. Their witness had its place, to be sure, but it was never the witness that God had appointed his people to bear characteristically. John, it must be remembered, lived in the wilderness, dressed in animal skins, stank like a garbage can, and drank no wine. Jesus did none of this.

Again and again the Older Testament speaks of wine as God’s gift that gladdens the heart of men and women. Wine doesn’t appear to be essential to life. Bread is essential to life, but not wine. Yet wine is essential to life, said our Hebrew foreparents, just because joy is essential to life. Life in the kingdom of God is never to be bleak or drab or dull. Life must never become utilitarian only. In addition to the utilitarian there has to be a light heart and a glad countenance, a happy time and a festive mood.

Jesus, we know partied frequently. He partied so often that his enemies accused him of overdoing it. They said he ate too much and he drank too much. Whereupon he wheeled on his detractors, “John came neither eating nor drinking and you said he was demon-possessed, crazy if not wicked. I’ve come eating and drinking, and you call me a glutton and drunkard. You don’t care about God’s Kingdom. You care only about spearing those who challenge your self-righteousness and your lovelessness. That’s deplorable. But in any case I and the people who love me are going to a party. And we’re going to have a good time. You’re welcome to come to the party too. Maybe you’d rather stay home and pout. We can’t help that. But in any case you aren’t going to spoil our party.”

Wine is God’s gift that gladdens the human heart. When our Lord insists, wine cup in hand, that he is the true vine, the wine of life, he means that he is that gift of the Father who profoundly makes the human heart to sing. Whenever we drink wine, therefore – at the Lord’s Supper, at a meal, on any occasion – we are announcing once again that Jesus Christ is the one who profoundly delights and satisfies, doing for us what no one else can and imparting to us what no one can ever take away.

Since our Lord most profoundly gladdens us through the blessing of his shed blood, the apostles, together with the church after them, have associated wine with blood. In fact the church hasn’t hesitated to speak of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood. This isn’t surprising, since Jesus himself said that he abides in us and we in him only as we drink his blood. (John 6:54)

What did he mean? What did he mean, in view of the fact that Jewish people abhor drinking blood as they abhor little else? The Torah forbids them to drink blood, and they take such precautions with kosher meat as to ensure that they don’t eat or drink blood. At the last supper, when Jesus took the cup and declared to the disciples, “This is God’s covenant with you renewed in my blood,” the one thing that his disciples never thought they were doing was literally drinking his blood. The thought of it would have sickened them.

It so happens that among the Israelite people to “shed blood” meant to murder. Murder was reprehensible. It so happens that among the Israelite people to “drink blood” meant to murder and to profit from the foul deed. While it’s dreadful to murder, it’s worse to murder and then profit from the murder.

When Jesus tells us that we are going to drink his blood, he means that our sin is going to do him in. Humankind’s sin, collapsing on him, will crush him to death. And humankind’s sin, crushing him to death, he will gladly bear and bear away for our sakes, thereby giving us life. We kill, and we profit from it. We shed blood and we drink blood. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, the treachery of the human heart, culminating in murder, the murder of the Son of God; this becomes the means of our forgiveness and freedom. Let me say it again. In the paradoxical mystery of God’s grace, human treachery (the cross) becomes the means whereby human treachery is pardoned and purged. Plainly we do drink our Lord’s blood.

Then let us come to Christ’s table now, for as he invites us to drink wine with him, the fruit of the vine, he invites us to drink again that blood which we have already drunk in any case. And he invites us to eat bread with him, and therein know afresh that he, and he alone, is now and ever will be the bread of life.

Victor Shepherd
April 2007