1^st Timothy 4:1-5       Genesis 1:26-31         Luke 7:31-35      

 

I: — “All matter is evil”, said the Gnostics, a sect that disagreed with biblical conviction in the early days of the church. “Since all matter is evil”, they continued, “and since the body is material, the body has to be evil as well.” The Gnostics (“Gnostic” is the Greek word for “knower”) were those who thought they “knew better”, knew better than others, knew better than most. The Gnostics thought they had special knowledge, privileged knowledge, secret knowledge. One aspect of their secret knowledge was just this: all matter is evil; the body is matter; therefore the body is evil.

The Gnostics infiltrated the church in the church’s earliest days. They caused much trouble. They contradicted the Hebrew root, the Jewish root of the Christian faith. They foisted neurotic guilt on Christians concerning the body and everything pertaining to the body. They left people with tormented consciences concerning bodily necessities, such as food and drink. They left people with tormented consciences concerning bodily pleasures, all bodily pleasures, sex included. The Gnostics were a blight on the church. They had to be dealt with.

Two New Testament documents were written in order to overturn the Gnostic heresy. One such document is Paul’s letter to the congregation in Ephesus ; the other document is John’s first letter to the church at large. In addition to these two epistles, there are references to the Gnostic heresy throughout the New Testament. In his first letter to Timothy, for instance, Paul warns the young man against those who give “…heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. For then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” (1^st Tim. 4:4)

As we read the passage we can sense the apostle’s vehemence, anger even. The Gnostics are deceitful people who spew doctrines of demons; their consciences are seared; they forbid marriage; they enjoin abstinence from certain foods. They think they know the truth. Plainly they don’t, says Paul, since those who really know the truth are aware that the Gnostics are spouting drivel, albeit highly damaging drivel.

How damaging? Look at what the Gnostics did with the body. One group of Gnostics maintained that since the body is evil, inherently evil, irrecoverably evil, the body should be repudiated. The body is disgusting and therefore should be disregarded, denounced. Another group of Gnostics argued that since the body is evil, inherently evil, irrecoverably evil, the body might as well be indulged. “Anything goes” where the body is concerned, since the body can’t be improved in any case. The Gnostic heresy gave rise to two anti-Hebraic attitudes to the body: harsh asceticism and its opposite, profligate indulgence.

I’m convinced that while Augustine is a notable Christian thinker and has brought blessing to the church, there are also aspects to Augustine that have brought anything but blessing. Augustine maintained, for instance, that if sexual intercourse could be enacted without so much as one tremor of pleasure, any child conceived through such utterly pleasureless intercourse would thereby be free from original sin. This is dreadful thinking. I’m convinced that such a notion, or at least the modern approximation of this notion, has put millions of dollars into the hands of psychotherapists.

Contrast Augustine’s anti-bodily notion with the approach of our Jewish friends. When mediaeval Christians were being warped by anti-body heresy, mediaeval Jewish folk were listening to their rabbis who said all married couples should have intercourse on the Sabbath evening, since the affirmation of marital delight was one way of praising God for the delights of the creation as a whole. In fact the mediaeval rabbis coined a phrase for Sabbath evening marital intercourse. The phrase? “Sabbath blessings.” In the Jewish community to this day “Sabbath blessings” means only one thing.

If we think that the ancient Gnostic heresy has nothing to do with us modern folk, then we should ask ourselves a question or two. Does our society encourage bodily renunciation, the severest bodily rejection? At the same time, does our society encourage shameless bodily indulgence?

Think of bodily indulgence. Everyone is aware that tobacco is injurious. Still, scientists are telling us that the damage done to humans through tobacco is slight compared to the damage that will be done through the rising epidemic of obesity. The rising tide of sexually transmitted disease, not to mention specifically the rising tide of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease; such promiscuity says it all about bodily indulgence today.

What about bodily renunciation? I have to be careful here. I like to exercise and need to exercise in order to stay mentally healthy. I have to be careful about what I say next. I’m convinced that many of the exercise programmes and exercise clubs and food supplements and wonder-working pills for restoring shapeliness; I’m convinced that much of this is rooted in people’s disgust at their body-image. Many people can’t seem to come to terms with their body-image. No amount of exercise will ever make me look like Arnold Schwarznegger. No amount of exercise, dieting, pill-taking will ever make my wife look like Jennifer Lopez.   The only person who will ever look like an 18-year old in a bikini is the 18-year old. The 48-year old has already succumbed to gravy and gravity. Anyone who can’t come to terms with this tortures herself with our century’s form of bodily rejection born of bodily disgust. In other words, the Gnostic heresy is alive and well in 2005.

The pendulum swings: bodily rejection, bodily indulgence, back and forth. Does the Christian community have a word to speak here inasmuch as we know what word God has spoken to us? What has God spoken to us, anyway, and what does he continue to say?

 

II: (i) –God declares, first of all, that bodily existence is good, good without qualification. Bodily existence is good just because God created it.

The creation story in the first chapter of Genesis has a liturgical “ring” to it, a rhythm, a cadence. As each item in the creation is mentioned in this matchless parable there reverberates the refrain “And God saw that it was good.” The planets are created, vegetation, animals, and finally humankind. When humankind is created, in God’s image to be sure, yet created bodily as surely as the animals, created on the same “day”, are created bodily, the pronouncement shifts from “And God saw that it was good” to “And God saw that it was very good. We are not created disembodied spirits. We aren’t created ghosts. God is said to make us from the dust of the earth. We are of the earth earthy. Our existence is inescapably bodily existence.

This point is bedrock for Christian understanding. We are embodied creatures by God’s ordination. We don’t honour him by denying our bodiliness either overtly or subtly. Neither do we honour him by indulging our bodies and thereby ruining them. The body is good because God-made; the body is good and is to be kept good.

(ii)– If the truth of the creation weren’t enough to confirm the goodness of our bodiliness, the truth of the incarnation certainly would be. In the incarnation God has come among us not in the form of the human; God has come among us as human. The difference is crucial. If God were to come among us merely in the form of the human God would be human in appearance, human in appearance only, but never actually human. In other words, if God came among us in the form of the human he’d be disguising himself as human, masquerading as human, all the while deceiving us. When God comes among us as human, however, there is no disguise or masquerade. He is human, even as he remains God transcendent. What greater affirmation of our bodiliness can there be than the incarnation, the truth that God has come among us as human, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh?

As a Jew Paul will never forget the truth of the creation; as a Christian he will never forget the truth of the incarnation. Little wonder, then that he urges the Christians in Corinth , “Glorify God in your body.” (1^st Cor. 6:20) The Gnostics, both ancient and modern, can’t glorify God in their body. Insofar as they reject the body they pronounce evil what God has declared good. Or if they indulge the body, their indulgence humiliates the creator who never intended such indulgence and knows better than we what degradation entails.

As always, children can help us here. Recently a survey asked children what brought them their greatest delight. Here are some of the things the children mentioned: eating ice cream that has real ice chips in it; kicking through “crunchy” autumn leaves; stroking a pet cat; sleeping in a tent when it’s raining; smelling supper cooking; feeling flannelette sheets against your skin on a cold winter’s night. What do all these have in common? They are delights of our bodily senses. The delight that children find everywhere in God’s creation we older people should find as well.

Several years ago I watched a television interview featuring Eric Nesterenko, then a star with the Chicago Black Hawk hockey team. Earlier in the season he had been injured and was unable to play. As he was recovering he took his skates to an outdoor rink in Chicago , one afternoon, and began skating by himself. Soon he was lost in the sheer delight of the physical activity. He traced figure-eights, skated backwards, cut circles tighter and tighter, faster and faster. When he stopped he heard someone applauding ardently. Turning around he found clapping and grinning and shouting an 80-year old woman who had been sitting all the while on a nearby park bench. She had been thrilled at the physical prowess, the bodily expression, of a young man lost in his own bodiliness. There’s something here that God intends for all of us; namely, sheer, simple delight in our God-ordained bodiliness. This is one way of glorifying God in our body.

There are additional ways. Jean Vanier, the lanky fellow whose tall stature is dwarfed by his compassion for disadvantaged people of all sorts; Vanier insists, in his various homes for assorted sufferers, that meal times be happy occasions. He insists on good food and wine. He forbids anything “heavy” during meal time conversation. If someone has bad news to tell or a distressing situation to related, meal time isn’t the time for it.

I’ve long been intrigued by one accusation that our Lord’s enemies levelled against him: “drunkard and glutton”. Certainly he wasn’t a drunkard and glutton. The accusation says far more about his mean-spirited accusers than it says about him. Plainly they resented the rollicking good times he had. He had far more fun at his meals than they had at theirs. He ate with losers, misfits, ne’er-do-wells; the marginalized, the despised; the neglected; the least and the last. These people in turn found in him a welcome, an acceptance, a healing they had found nowhere else. Together they rejoiced in the love and truth and wonder of God their Father even as they relished all that God had provided them. Our Lord’s enemies, on the other hand, were hunkered down in their resentment, arrogance and misery as they planned and plotted how they might demonstrate their spiritual superiority (so-called) and gain public congratulation for it.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul speaks of those who forbid marriage and forbid certain foods, all of which God has created for our blessing, all of which is to be received with thanksgiving. This matter of forbidding food and forbidding marriage (as if non-marriage were a higher calling than marriage); this matter Paul speaks of most vehemently as “the pretension of liars, a doctrine of demons”. Why is the denial of legitimate bodily delight a pretension of liars and a doctrine of demons? Because to scorn the goodness of God’s gifts is to despise God himself.

(iii) —   There is another way Christians glorify God in our body: we esteem and uphold the work of healing. The most casual reading of the gospels surprises us with the space given over to accounts of healing. In view of the healing ministry of our Lord and the healing ministry of the apostolic church, it remains a puzzle to me how Christians today can speak so matter-of-factly, so confidently (I almost said so ridiculously) of sickness as “God’s will”. When Jesus comes upon the woman who’s been bent double for eighteen years (for eighteen years her view of the universe has consisted of dirty feet), Jesus doesn’t bend over to speak with her to make sure she gets the point: “You’ll just have to accept your infirmity since it’s plainly God’s will for you.” The text tells us he’s angry – not at her, but at the evil one’s molestation of her. “Satan has done this”, he hisses; and then he frees her. When Jesus comes upon sick people he heals them; he doesn’t tell them that sickness is God’s will for them.

Every day throughout his public ministry Jesus announces the kingdom. The kingdom of God is the creation of God healed. The forgiveness of sin is the healing of the estrangement between God and his people. Exorcism is healing people of the evil one’s oppression. Undoing paralysis is healing people of physical frustration and futility. Overcoming disease is healing people of debilitating affliction. For this reason a concern for healing of all sorts – spiritual, mental, physical – has always been at the forefront of the church’s mission. We modern folk tend to forget that in our Lord’s understanding, the forgiveness of sin and the undoing of paralysis are alike aspects of the kingdom of God and manifestations of it. After all, if Christ’s redemptive mission is ultimately powerless in the face of bodily ailment, his mission has to be ultimately powerless also in the face of   spiritual ailment, sin, since the kingdom of God is the one, indivisible creation of God healed.

 

III: — All of which brings us to our last point today. In his first letter Peter writes, “He [Jesus Christ] bore our sins in his body on the tree.” (1^st Peter 2:24) Throughout the sermon today we’ve underlined the goodness of the body, the God-ordained delights of the body, the relation of the body to the kingdom of God . The body is good. And just because it is good without qualification, the body offered up to God as sacrifice is effective without limit.

You and I are not reducible to our body. There’s more to me than my body, as there’s more to you than your body. Who we are is more than our body; but who we are is never less. While it’s true that I have a mental life and a spiritual life, both my mental life and my spiritual life presuppose my bodily life. My mind is more than my brain. But without my brain (a body part) I have no mind at all. My spiritual life isn’t the same as my body. But without my body there’s no “me” to have a spiritual life. To be sure we’re more than our body; but the “more” that we are is impossible without our body. In other words, our body undergirds and supports everything we are. Our body makes possible everything about us that’s more than our body.

When Peter says that Jesus Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, Peter means that our Lord’s bodiliness gathered up everything he was; gathered it all up and offered it all up as atoning sacrifice for us whereby we are made “at one” with our Father. “He bore our sins in his body on the tree” means that the sacrifice he made for sin was a sacrifice of everything that he was. And the sacrifice of everything that he was grounds the redemption of everything that we are. The sacrifice of everything he was grounds the redemption of my spiritual life, my mental life, my physical life. “He bore our sins in his body on the tree” means that you and I can now glorify God in our body. We can step ahead in life knowing that everything God created good can be enjoyed without its corrupting us in this era of the Fall. “He bore our sins in his body on the tree” means that his sacrifice exposes the Gnostic heresy as dead wrong twice over. Since our Lord bore our sins, any Gnostic indulgence of the body slights our Lord’s sacrifice. And since he bore our sins in his body, any Gnostic rejection of the body can only be a rejection of Christ’s body, and therefore a rejection of his sacrifice.

 

At our communion service today our attention is directed to Christ’s body broken. His body broken (and resurrected) spells the restoration of our body and all that our body supports. Therefore his body broken (and resurrected) renders us able to love God with our mind; it enables us to rejoice in our own spirit; it enables us to glorify God in our body.

“He bore our sins – in his body – on the tree.” The body matters.

                                                                                          Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                        

May 2005

 

 1^st Timothy 4:10      Colossians 1:28-29   Colossians 4:12

 

“We are to pray as if it all depended on God and work as if it all depended on us,” Cardinal Cushing of Boston used to say. We know what he was trying to say and we agree with him; namely, that God alone can do what God is to do, while we alone can do what we are to do. While we are always beggars (in the words of Martin Luther), always beggars in the sense that we are utterly dependent on God’s grace, we are never to loll lazily in God’s grace, like a sunbather soaking up the sun’s rays passively, mind and muscle out of service.

I like what Cardinal Cushing said – for the most part. I am, however, more than a little disquieted by his use of “as if.” To say “as if it all depended on God, as if it all depended on us” means “but in fact it doesn’t.” I remain convinced, on the contrary that it does. It’s true that it does “all depend on God” even as it’s equally true that it does “all depend on us.” Everywhere in scripture we are told that we humans, however godly we may be, aspire to be, or think ourselves to be; we can’t bring in or build the kingdom of God : God alone can. At the same time, the kingdom of God , implemented by God alone, remains invisible until such time as we give it visibility. The work God gives us to do is going to get done only as we do it.

I think we need to be careful how we use the expression “as if.” When our Lord says in John 15, for instance, “Apart from me you can do nothing,” he doesn’t mean, “…as if you could do nothing.” Once again there’s no “as if.” He means exactly what he says. On the one hand, apart from him we can indeed do nothing (with respect to the kingdom.) On the other hand, unless we do what’s been given us to do, it isn’t going to get done.

My point is this. Christian faith impels us both to pray (that is, wait on God for what he alone can supply) and to work (that is, spare no effort in giving ourselves to the tasks he has given us.) We must pray because in truth it all depends on God; we must also work because in truth it all depends on us.

When the apostle Paul wants to emphasize the muscularity of faith he uses the Greek verb agonizesthai. Agonizesthai doesn’t mean he’s in agony, beside himself in unendurable pain, craving morphine as he craves nothing else. Agonizesthai is a Greek word that he has borrowed from the realm of athletics. It was first used of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece . It has to do with exertion, training, striving, persistence. But all of this needn’t imply something tortuous or grim, never mind ghastly. Any athlete knows that exertion is essential if exercise or training is to be beneficial; at the same time, every athlete (or even non-athlete) knows that such exertion pays off abundantly. After all, exertion sheds pounds, lowers blood pressure, reduces niggling depression, leaves the perspiring panting person exhilarated. To be sure, vigorous exertion may find us uncomfortable at first, even cause us to speak of “self-inflicted suffering;” but vigorous exertion ultimately leaves us exhilarated, stronger, more contented with ourselves and more useful to others.

 

I: — Listen to the apostle. “For to this end we toil and strive (agonizesthai,) because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the saviour of all men, especially of those who believe.” (1^st Tim. 4:10) “For to this end we toil and strive.” To what end? The end of furthering the entire Christian mission; the end of advancing the gospel; of magnifying the grace of the gospel, the claim of the gospel and the consequences of the gospel. To this end we toil and strive.

A clergyman my age told me that after many years in the ministry he had begun preaching without notes and was delighted now to preach without notes. “If the congregation sees that you use notes,” he explained, “the congregation knows that you prepare the sermon; then it continues to expect you to prepare. No notes? The congregation sees that you don’t prepare and never expects you to prepare anything.” And then he laughed as he told me his life was now easier, his workload lighter, and the congregation no worse off in any case. As far as I’m concerned the man’s laziness is disgraceful, his trifling with the gospel blasphemous, and the spiritual starvation of the congregation tragic. Only one hundred years ago students for the ministry in Scotland ( Scotland , Presbyterians should know, has traditionally treasured theology and worked very hard at it) were sufficiently poor that two theology students rented a room with only one bed in it. Each student slept four hours per night and studied during the other four hours when his roommate occupied the bed. When the “New Learning,” as the Renaissance was spoken of five hundred years ago, emerged in Europe and inflamed theology students as much as it did arts students, theology students in any case hired someone to keep them awake while they studied long into the night lest they forego something precious. They knew, as their Scottish descendents came to know, that a clergyman’s ministry is sustained by the depth of the well from which he draws. Where the minister’s well is shallow needy congregations perish in the heat of scorching exposure. And that clergyman laughs because the congregation now receives as little from him as he expects from himself?

You people in Schomberg know better. The proof that you know better is that you do better yourselves.   On the one hand many of you have told me how much you appreciate the preparation any sermon here presupposes; on the other hand, you work hard, very hard (agonizesthai) to support and sustain and care for each other. I remain impressed by the wonderful level of concrete caring that this congregation manifests as this person or that becomes ill, suffers bereavement, loses a job, has to be hospitalized, or appears discouraged. I’ve always been aware that while the sermon should be as good as the sermon can be, good sermons by themselves never build a congregation. Congregations are built up and strengthened by concrete caring that we all render each other as life bumps and bruises us and sometimes finds one or more among us haemorrhaging.

From time to time we sing here Charles Wesley’s fine hymn, “Jesus, united by thy grace, and each to each endeared.” We mean it. I know we mean it. We are dear to each other in Schomberg. We know the difference between caring and being nosy; between caring and gossiping; between genuine caring and sweet-smiling indifference. We know that in any congregation everyone struggles (somewhere in life); everyone hurts (whether from a recent wound or an old wound); and everyone is lonely.

Charles Wesley’s hymn again:            Help us to help each other, Lord,

Each other’s cross to bear;

Let each his friendly aid afford

And feel his brother’s care.

Two matters require comment here: (i) Wesley wrote it during the Industrial Revolution in Britain when his heart broke at the thousands of people who had to move from villages where they were known to factory cities where they could disappear overnight. (ii) When Wesley speaks of “feel” – “and feel his brother’s care” – he doesn’t mean feel in the sense of “have a warm feeling inside.” In Eighteenth Century English “feel” meant “to confirm through daily experience.” In other words, to feel our brother’s care is to confirm day after day our undeniable experience of being cared for.

As everyone knows it’s easy to care concretely in the short run; in the long run, however, endurance is needed, steadfastness, perspicacity. The Schomberg congregation is exemplary here as well. When Mark Pengilley was hospitalized in Guelph for four weeks; when Gordon Hilts was hospitalized in Newmarket for the better part of a year; people here were as ardent in their caring at the end as they had been at the beginning.

I admit that hospital visitation is relatively dramatic compared, for instance, to cutting the grass here or shovelling snow or ensuring that the toilet flushes or bringing food and drink to the coffee hour following the service. But dramatic or not, it all gets done in Schomberg, and gets done well.

We must never think it unimportant, and we must never think it fruitless. We are told in scripture that hospitality is nothing less than receiving angels unawares; we are told that a cup of water given in our Lord’s name is blessing beyond our imagining. We are told that all such striving (agonizesthai) is wonderfully fruitful just because our Lord has promised to multiply a hundredfold whatever we undertake in his name.

 

II:– “For this I toil, sweat,” Paul tells us in the second place, “striving with all the energy which God mightily inspires within me.” (Col. 1:28-29) Striving with every ounce of God-inspired energy? Toiling and sweating? To do what? To proclaim Jesus Christ, he says, warning everyone and teaching everyone so as to present every man and woman mature in Christ. Clearly the apostle believes that Jesus Christ is to be proclaimed in such a way that hearers are cautioned and hearers are instructed, all for the sake of bringing hearers to maturity in Christ.

There are many aspects to Christian maturity. When I look out over the church today, however, I think that the one aspect that seems to have receded and needs to be restored is balance. The church today appears to lack balance, with the result that it lurches lopsidedly, even staggers.

In our era the smallest tail has learned how to wag the biggest dog. A small minority with a piercing yell can pass itself off as the voice of the people. A lobby group which in yesteryear would have been regarded as silly is now heard as if it were the essence of wisdom. (And whether it’s the essence of wisdom or not, it certainly knows about the essence of manipulation.) Balance is lacking.

It’s no surprise, then, to hear someone say that the gospel can be reduced without remainder to a crypto-Marxist program of social dismantling. Someone else wants to say that the essence of the gospel is psychotherapy, and the church ought to be the vehicle of inexpensive psychotherapy. And then we are told that the real business of the church and the “faith” (so-called) it attempts to proliferate is ensuring the morality essential to preserving social order.

It’s plain that balance is a major aspect of the Christian maturity we must toil, strive, sweat to restore.

[1] For instance, we must strive to restore the balance between urgency and patience. If we lack urgency concerning the gospel, urgency concerning the gospel’s forging of faith within hearers and the gospel’s fostering of obedience within them simultaneously; if we lack urgency here then we are telling the world that the gospel isn’t important at all. So far from being good news, unique news, it isn’t news at all. At the same time, urgency without patience becomes frenzy in us and coercion visited upon others.

On the other hand patience is needed sorely in our “instant” society. (Instant coffee, instant breakfast, microwave cooking, one-stop shopping, fast-drying varnish, video watching for two hours instead of reading a book for twenty.) The gospel takes time to seep into hearers; the gospel takes time to seep into them, soak them, pool within them, only then to bring forth the fruit of faith and obedience. Patience is always needed. At the same time, patience without urgency dribbles off into shallow indifference.

In other words, urgency keeps patience real and prevents patience from becoming indifference. Patience keeps urgency real and prevents urgency from becoming frenzy. Balance is the preservative.

[2] We also need balance between head and heart. Faith (so-called) that is merely a collection of theological doctrine housed in one’s head is no more than an abstract parlour game that happens to use religious vocabulary. Yet faith (so-called) that is only mindless mush is no more than useless romanticism.

Think of the balance between head and heart in terms of a surgeon and the surgery he performs. A surgeon who lacked the head knowledge of anatomy would be a surgeon whose surgery could only kill the patient. On the other hand, someone who possessed the finest head knowledge of anatomy but wholly lacked heart would be someone who didn’t care enough for sick people to operate on any of them – with the same result; the patient dies.

Years ago lopsidedness in the church arose as a one-sided emphasis on the head – sound doctrine – considerably outweighed an emphasis on the heart – the believer’s love for the Nazarene who embodies the truth of God. In our era, however, the lopsidedness pertains to the heart as the church has all but surrendered the truth that Jesus Christ is just that: truth.

Head without heart issues in abstract sterility. Heart without head issues in mindless sentimentality. The head keeps the heart informed; the heart keeps the head warm.

[3] We need to strive for balance between the contemplatives and the activists within the congregation. Contemplatives teach us to examine ourselves. Where and why and how do we rationalize our sin? Why is it that our anxiety is increased hugely by developments that are trifles, devoid of kingdom significance? What particular “attachment” has “hooked” us and now deflects us from giving ourselves wholly to our Lord? If we aren’t serious about the contemplative dimension of the Christian life then we are strangers to Jesus Christ. For one look from him can unlock the secrets and subterfuges of the most self-deceived heart. And concerning contemplation, he insisted on going himself to a solitary place not once but habitually, didn’t he?

At the same time if we aren’t serious about the activist dimension of the Christian life then we are strangers to the One who immersed himself in the world’s anguish until his fatigue nearly frayed him. Jesus stood with and stood up for a woman who was about to be stoned; a youngster whose epilepsy had collapsed him into a fire; a deranged man whose violence a straitjacket couldn’t restrain; a widow whose only son (that is, her sole economic support) had just died. In addition Jesus faced up to and faced down church authorities who impeded the kingdom of God , or slandered him, or sneered at the people who believed in him.

Three areas where we have to strive for balance, sweat for it? There are three dozen. What matters is that we begin and then go on to toil and strive relentlessly, labouring to overcome the lopsidedness that renders us individually and the church at large less than mature. Paul toils and strives with every ounce of energy, he tells us, to present every man and woman mature in Christ.

 

III: — The last instance of agonizesthai we are going to examine this morning: Paul conveys greetings from Epaphras (Epaphras lived in Philippi, was visiting in Rome , and had friends in Colosse) to the congregation in Colosse. In conveying Epaphras’s greetings Paul reminds the Christians in Colosse that Epaphras prays for them with intensity and fervour, zeal and anguish. When Epaphras prays for the congregation in Colosse, he sweats.

One of the most misleading paintings found in church basements is that of Jesus praying in Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion. A bright beam of light highlights his brown-blond hair. His hands are clasped in front of him, his hands resting on the smooth, flat rock beside which he kneels in peace. Peace? The Greek text of the written gospel tells us that he was beside himself. When the gospel tells us that Jesus “knelt” it uses a verb tense that means Jesus fell to his knees repeatedly; his knees kept buckling on him, so very overwrought was he. His knees collapsed; he got up, staggered, and went down again; over and over.

Jesus, Epaphras, plus countless others haves been so very intense about their intercession just because they cared. When Jesus was in Gethsemane facing that ordeal in which he would be the intercession for the entire creation, he cared. When Paul reflected on his congregations (most notably Corinth) that had certainly come to faith in Jesus Christ yet behaved as if they had scarcely heard of him he didn’t toss it off, saying, “Not my fault that they are such a poor advertisement for the gospel.” He cared.

We care. We care about the course of the gospel in our congregation and in our community; we care about the course of the gospel in our own lives. Since we care, our intercession can never be “Now I lay me down to sleep…,” mumbled thirty seconds before sleep cuts us off in mid-mumble. Since we care, we strive with God when we pray; we struggle; we sweat.

Abraham intercedes for the city of Sodom . Moses intercedes for his people. Paul, Epaphras, above all Jesus himself pray to the point of perspiration. It wasn’t a Yoga-like exercise in “getting it all together.” It was exertion, the exercise of a ministry to which God ordains all of his people. Such intercession is work, to be sure, yet never fruitless work, for our confidence is in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe.

 

Then let us exert ourselves in all the work that’s been given us to do. We must toil, strive, spend ourselves for the enlargement of the Christian mission, for restoring balance in the church, and for interceding on behalf of others. Let us exert ourselves in any endeavour we take up on behalf of Jesus Christ, for it all depends on us – even as first it all depends on God.

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                   

  January 2004

A Study in AGONIZESTHAI: To Struggle, Strive, Toil, Do One’s Best

 

  1 Timothy 4:11-16 

 

Part One

Actually, his name wasn’t “Melanchthon”; it was “Schwartzerd”, “black earth”, literally, in German. But like all humanist scholars of the Renaissance, who treasured the Latin and Greek languages, Philip felt he had to give himself a classical name: “Melanchthon”, Greek for “black earth”. He was known by his Greek name for the rest of his life.

Born in a small village near Frankfurt in western Germany, and recognized as brilliant from the day he began school, Philip entered Heidelberg University at age 13. He finished his B.A. degree in two years, and began studying for his M.A. When he had completed the requirements for the degree and had awed professors yet again, university officials told him he was too young to be an M.A.! Whereupon he moved over to Tuebingen university and found this institution eager to confer its degree upon him. Tuebingen also launched him on his teaching career, making him professor of classics. Saturated with the Renaissance’s love of learning, Melanchthon exclaimed, “On earth there is nothing next to the gospel more glorious than humanistic learning, that wonderful gift of God.” While Ingolstadt, one of Germany’s oldest universities, wooed him as professor repeatedly, Melanchthon was drawn to the new university at Wittenberg in eastern Germany, and attracted as well to its notorious firebrand, Martin Luther. At Wittenberg Melanchthon developed his reputation as a superb humanist scholar. He was especially gifted as a linguist and philologist, but equally at home in philosophy. The “little grammarian”, as he was known among students, forbade any student to use slang. Slang, he insisted, is always imprecise use of language; and imprecise use of language necessarily issues in blurring the truth. (This is a point you and I should ponder for the rest of our lives: slang, or imprecise language of any sort, weakens our perception of truth and undermines our articulation of truth.)

Throughout his life Melanchthon vigorously defended humanist education. Candidates for the ministry had to know much besides theology; they had to master the classical languages, as well as philosophy, logic, history and physics. (Physics, said Melanchthon, illustrated the harmony of the creation.) Church-folk who were never going to be clergy should none the less be humanist scholars too, he maintained, for apart from humanist learning, zeal for reform in the church would turn shrill and even violent. And those citizens who weren’t church folk should none the less be schooled in humanist learning, for without this they would never be able to govern themselves adequately.

Yet we mustn’t become so mesmerized by Melanchthon’s humanist learning that we lose sight of his gifts in theology. In fact, he was the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation. Systematic theology expounds the truth of God seen whole, and the truth of God seen in its intraconnectedness. His friend Luther (Luther always thought Melanchthon to be his intellectual superior) geysered theological riches, like a spewing oilwell that pours forth invaluable substance. And just as oil that gushes out of the well has to be gathered, refined and distributed if it is going to warm and illuminate millions elsewhere, so Melanchthon dealt with the riches that Luther poured forth every day. Melanchthon’s Loci Communes (“Common Places”) was the first theological textbook of the Reformation. In only a few years it went through 18 Latin editions (plus several German ones); it was required reading at Cambridge University; Queen Elizabeth memorized virtually all of it (in Latin, of course) in order to grasp the theological foundation of English Christendom (she also found herself enthralled by the elegance of its language). It remained the chief textbook in theology throughout Germany for the next 100 years.

Melanchthon also wrote Protestantism’s basic doctrinal statement, the Augsburg Confession. (The Confession, together with its accompanying Apology, also written by Philip, have remained the benchmark of worldwide Lutheranism to this day.) His commentary on Romans was the foundation of every one of the 80-plus Romans commentaries written in the Reformation era. He was Protestantism’s chief spokesperson in virtually every colloquy for 30 years. And he was Luther’s right-hand man and steadfast friend for virtually all of Luther’s adult life.

Yet Melanchthon’s most enduring accomplishment may not be his theology writings or his language studies; his most enduring accomplishment, I think, is his educational reforms. Melanchthon established the first public school system in Germany. As early as 1524 (he was then only 27 years old) he began developing public schools throughout Germany; he reorganized the universities; he fashioned the pedagogical methods in which hundreds of teachers were trained; and he wrote school textbooks, subsequently used by pupils without number.

Melanchthon’s influence in Canadian education is inestimable. Egerton Ryerson, the architect of Ontario’s public school system, travelled to Europe to acquaint himself with what Melanchthon had accomplished 300 hundred years earlier. In fact, Ryerson visited the Wittenberg/Berlin area of Germany twice. George Brown, the owner and editor of The Globe, a Toronto newspaper, ranted in the 1850s as he relentlessly accused Ryerson of introducing “the Prussian system of education into Canada.” Ryerson wore the accusation like a badge, proudly. Prussian [German] public education was the model of high quality public education, owned and funded by the citizenry as a whole. Where public education was concerned, Ryerson was never ashamed of his debt to Melanchthon.

On April 9th, 1560, Philip, now 63, stumbled to his classroom in Wittenberg for the last time. Sick unto death, he was able to lecture his students for 15 minutes only. He expounded the atonement, the reconciliation with God wrought on the cross for us all. Ten days later he slipped away quietly, freed at last from yearning for his departed wife, Barbara, who had died three years earlier.

Part Two

Melanchthon’s vision for public education was glorious. Ryerson knew it was. Millions of Ontario young people owe it more than they will ever be able to say. A few of us (like me) have the opportunity to say “thank you” publicly.

What was the situation in Ontario (and elsewhere) before Ryerson developed public education? Prior to the system we have today, the children of the wealthy were accorded educational opportunity; so were the children of the socially prominent; so were the children whose parents belonged to the established church (Anglican.) These children had educational opportunity. Actually, these children were not drawn from three groups; they were drawn from one; this one group happened to be privileged three times over.

Egerton Ryerson (everyone in Streetsville is aware that Ryerson preached at the opening service of Streetsville Methodist Church in 1876; at the conclusion of the service, when pledges were received to defray the cost of constructing the brand new building, the church was entirely debt-free); Ryerson wanted Ontario to have high-quality education. He wasn’t interested in babysitting 15-year olds. He wasn’t interested in a two-tier system whereby children from privileged families received a superior education and everyone else a decidedly inferior. He knew that to be financially underprivileged or socially underprivileged or religiously underprivileged (everyone who wasn’t Anglican was deemed religiously underprivileged); he knew that none of this implied intellectual inferiority. And since it didn’t imply intellectual inferiority, it shouldn’t imply educational inferiority.

Ryerson always knew that the life of the mind is a good in itself. Intellectual activity and intellectual achievement don’t posses mere utilitarian significance; they aren’t good just because they will one day prove useful; they aren’t good as a means to some end. They are good as an end in themselves. The life of the mind is its own justification. What’s more, we are commanded to love God with our minds. While it isn’t a sin to be ignorant (nobody can know everything), it is a sin to be more ignorant than we have to be. And it is an evil when a society relegates the relatively disadvantaged to lifelong ignorance. While Ryerson knew that the life of the mind is an end in itself, he also knew that the life of the mind is useful; it does have utilitarian significance. People with greater education in fact can do more of wider usefulness than those who have been unable to gain adequate education. Ryerson knew, then, that the public good is always served by better quality public education.

There is another point to be made here. Education doesn’t merely equip us to know more; it doesn’t merely equip us to do more; education equips us to live in a bigger world. Education equips us to live in a different world, a richer world, a world of greater complexity and more profound linkages and greater wonder. Maureen and I noticed this when we moved, in 1970, to a fishing/lumberjacking village in northeastern New Brunswick. We noticed immediately what our educational opportunity had given us. Had it merely enabled us to do algebra when others around us couldn’t, or to read Latin when others around us couldn’t? To be sure, we could do algebra and read Latin; but what really mattered was that our education (algebra and Latin plus so much more) equipped us with a larger world; a larger world outside us, but also a larger world inside us (i.e.,inner resources as well). Maureen noticed this especially in the women her age who were as dear to her as she was to them, women whose under-education had restricted them to a much smaller world outside and a much smaller world inside.

Before Ryerson’s work on our behalf there was one world for the socially privileged and a different world, a shrivelled world, a horribly shrivelled world, for everyone else. When I was a boy my father delighted in telling me story after story about Benjamin Disraeli, one-time prime minister of Great Britain during the 1800s. One story had to do with Disraeli’s address to the news media wherein he lamented, “There are two Englands, and neither one knows anything about the other.” When Ryerson came on the scene there were two Ontarios. One was grand to live in because ever-so-deep; the other was scarcely fit to live in, and Ryerson saw too many children who were forced to live in the latter.

Prior to Ryerson, education was a pay-as-you-go matter. Again, this meant that the rich could afford quality education while others could not. Ryerson maintained that since the public good (that “good” enjoyed by the socially advantaged too, since they were undeniably part of the public) was better served by quality education, the public should underwrite education. In other words, public education was to be supported out of tax revenues. There was to be no financial means test for admitting children to school.

In the same way, there was to be no religious means test. Bishop John Strachan, the Anglican authority in the diocese, saw to it that the children of Anglicans had access to good education; he was indifferent concerning the education of anyone else. (I cannot forbear reminding you that Bishop Strachan had become an Anglican only after he was turned down as a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry.)

One thing more needs to be mentioned in this connection: in Ryerson’s day, the schoolteachers who presided over classrooms of poorer children did just that: they presided, but they scarcely taught, for many of these “teachers” were ignorant; more than a few were out-and-out illiterate. Many teachers could do little more than beat children. Ryerson was determined to make a major change here as well.

I assume that the Streetsville congregation deems Maureen and me to be educated. We are now living amidst a congregation whose formal schooling and informal intellectual capacity are greater than those in any congregation I have known. How did Maureen and I get here? We were able to get off Gerrard Street. How did we do that? We both attended a first class highschool, Riverdale Collegiate. We were told, on our first day in grade nine, that we could work hard in school or we could leave. And we were told as well that if we worked and therefore learned what there was to be learned, we’d be admitted to worlds inside and worlds outside that we had scarcely dreamt of.

It was all true. When I was ordained in 1970 and was transferred to the Maritimes, I was paid the minimum salary of a United Church minister. In addition I was given a car allowance, and I was allowed to live in a manse. (There was no housing allowance; I was simply allowed to occupy the manse.) And in my first year as minister on the minimum salary of The United Church, I made more money than my father was earning when he died three years earlier.

How many times have I spoken of my delight in my university studies in philosophy? I appear to have a reputation in the church at large as an adequate preacher. Ninety per cent of good preaching is clear thinking. Where was I exposed to such thinking? How did I learn it for myself? Who taught me? But of course I could never have gone to university to study philosophy without adequate schooling in my earlier years. Apart from high-quality education, funded by tax resources, I’d have never received an education, for my parents were in no position to pay for it. Where would I be, what would I be doing, who would I be, if I hadn’t had access to good schooling?

I think we should ponder soberly what will happen if high-quality public education is allowed to erode.

(i) For one, social democracy, or at least whatever social democracy we’ve managed to achieve, will disappear. We must distinguish carefully here between political democracy and social democracy. Political democracy is easy to achieve: each citizen is given the right to vote. One vote per citizen and we have instant political democracy. Social democracy, however, is exceedingly difficult to achieve. Social democracy is achieved when all citizens have equal access to opportunities within a society. Social democracy doesn’t mean that all outcomes are equal. (Trying to legislate outcomes spells socialism, and socialism is a sure way to totalitarianism.) Social democracy, however, means equal access and opportunity for all regardless of social position or privilege. This has nothing to do with socialism.

Concerning social democracy I want you to reflect on the situation of one of my dearest friends. He is the senior minister of a large church in southwestern Ontario. He studied first at the University of Western Ontario, then at the University of Toronto, and finally, for this third degree, at the University of British Columbia. My friend tells me that when he was growing up in southern Ontario, his home provided no intellectual encouragement at all. In the 18 or 19 years he lived with his family, there wasn’t so much as a single magazine brought into the house. His family held up no educational goals, provided no encouragement, and quickened no intellectual appetite. Needless to say, the non-intellectual environment was matched by a non-cultural environment; culturally, the household was a wasteland, bleaker than the barren surface of the moon. Only one thing provided my friend with a much-needed educational goal and encouragement and appetite: his school. Only one thing sowed the seed of intellectual fruition in his life: high-quality public education. The same thing, the same thing alone, equipped him to serve church and society in the manner he now does. Where would he be, what would he be doing, who would he be, if his social inferiority had denied him access and opportunity? Such access and opportunity is what is meant by social democracy. If people like him are denied access and opportunity, then social democracy has disappeared, even though political democracy remains. (After all, my friend could still vote, but would likely regard voting as a waste of time.)

(ii) In the second place we must understand that if public education is allowed to evaporate and social democracy allowed to disappear, then something else will appear, or reappear: the English class system, or something like it. Another friend of mine, a United Church minister in Ottawa, grew up in a working-class home in Britain and emigrated to Canada as a young man. His first job in Canada was delivering truckloads of Coca Cola. The job permitted him to save money, and having saved money, he went back to school. He too subsequently attended university and, as I have mentioned, went on to university (twice.) When I was in Ottawa not long ago to preach at the anniversary service of his congregation, he said to me, “Victor, you know how we keep hearing today that the English class system is disappearing? Well, it isn’t.” He had access and opportunity here that he didn’t have elsewhere.

We must always remember what the social historians have brought to light; namely, that while Britain was the first European nation to achieve political democracy, its class system remained the worst in Europe. We must always remember that this class system has been so very iniquitous that as recently as the years between World Wars I and II, 50% of the people in Britain were clinically malnourished.

(iii) We must understand, in the third place, that if public education is allowed to evaporate, and with it all that quality education fosters, then the different socio-economic clusters, now frozen immovably throughout the society, will hunker down in their respective camps and turn hostile. Their hostility will intensify, and intensify some more. People will become increasingly defensive, increasingly non-understanding of others elsewhere in the society, increasingly rancorous, increasingly isolated, and increasingly a major threat to each other. It will become a social arrangement I’d prefer not to have to live with.

All of which brings me to a matter I’ve already stated in several different ways but must state yet again: Egerton Ryerson’s vision was glorious. His legacy has meant riches for millions in Ontario. Philip Melanchthon struggled for its predecessor in 16th century Germany. Ryerson struggled for it in 19th century Ontario. And I, in the 20th century, will struggle for it with my third last breath.

My third last? Yes. What about my second last breath? Many people maintain that public education, however glorious in days past, is now bending and breaking. If it is, then I intend to help fix it — with my second last breath. My last breath, of course, will be spent in the service of the gospel. It is “next to the gospel“, Philip Melanchthon reminded us, that “there is nothing more glorious than humanistic learning, that wonderful gift of God.”

                                                                        Victor Shepherd
November 1997