2 Timothy 1:7

 

It began as a youth movement.  To be sure, older people possess greater wisdom, sounder judgement, broader perspective. Our Lord knew this. Nevertheless he began with younger people. When he stepped forth on his public ministry he was in his late 20s.  The twelve whom he called to him were likely no older.  Paul took Mark on Paul’s first missionary journey when Mark was estimated to be 19. You know what happened: Mark behaved like a 19 year old.         He couldn’t withstand the hardship of the venture, left Paul and returned home. When Paul and Barnabas were about to set off on another missionary journey Paul said, “We can’t take Mark with us; we simply can’t afford to have him let us down again”. Barnabas disagreed. “He was only 19; give him another chance”. Paul and Barnabas parted over Mark; they parted amicably, without grudge or resentment, but they parted. Barnabas, however, was vindicated, since Mark proved himself on the second venture.

Why the emphasis on youth? Is it not because along with the broader perspective and greater stability of middle age there is also boredom, apathy, and more than a little cynicism? Several older clergymen have said to me with that bone-deep weariness born of disillusionment, “Shepherd, wait until you have been in this game as long as I have”.

There is another reason for our Lord’s beginning with younger people: what we have to contend with in our youth we are going to have contend with for the remainder of our lives.  I am always amused when an older adult pretends that his adolescence has been put behind him forever.  Years ago (1970), in my final year of theology, I studied under Dr. James Wilkes, a psychiatrist from whom I learned an immense amount.  He mentioned one day that emotionally our adolescence lurks just below the surface of our adult psyche. The coping mechanisms, for instance, that we developed as adolescents are the coping mechanisms we shall have for a long time. Similarly, what we had to contend with “back” when we were adolescents we shall have to contend with throughout life.  Jesus began with younger people inasmuch as what they learned from him at that time they would need and would have for the rest of their lives. A sermon, then, that has to do with younger people cannot fail to speak to older people as well.

 

[1]         Paul writes to Timothy, who is only 19 or 20 himself, and says, “Remember! God did not give us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and self-control”. Plainly the older apostle knows that young Timothy is afraid.

Are we afraid? (Does the sun rise in the east?) There are days when our fears are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, and other days when they muscle everything else out of our minds.  Some of our fears we readily understand.  The company we work for has merged with a larger company and not all management and executive personnel are going to be retained.  Our child seems unwell and we have just enough medical knowledge as not to be put off by our friends’ reassurances that there is nothing wrong. We are afraid that the psychological booby-trap which we have known of for years and which we have disguised, stepped around or hidden; that situation where we do not cope and where we appear so helpless, weak and silly – we fear it’s going to become publicly evident and we shall be humiliated.  We are afraid that since we are not married yet we are never going to be married. (I also meet people who are afraid that since they are married now they are never going to get unmarried.) And then there is a different kind of fear, unattached to any specific object or occurrence. “Existential anxiety” is the term mental health experts use.  Existential anxiety is that niggling, lapping, semi-conscious awareness of our fragility, our frailty, our ultimate powerlessness in the face of life’s accidentality and our own mortality.

The preacher keeps reminding us that “Fear not” is the most frequent command on the lips of Jesus.  His telling us to fear not, we feel nonetheless, has as much effect on us as our going down to Lake Ontario and telling the waves to stop rolling in.

I shall never make light of that fear which is part of the human condition. It is as undeniable as toothache. Then what do I do with respect to my own fears?  On those days when my fears seem nearly overwhelming I look to two treasure-stores: the promises of God and my Christian friends.   The promises of God are glorious.  The simplest promise comes from the book of Joshua: “I will not fail you or forsake you”. The psalms are a goldmine: “This I know, that God is for me… what can man do to me?” John tells us that even if our hearts condemn us, the God of unfathomable mercy is greater than our hearts. And then there are those promises from the heart and pen of Paul: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s”; “If God is for us, who is against us?”; “We know that in everythingGod works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose”.  And of course there is the climax of all of scripture, as far as I am concerned, Romans 8:38: “Neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

When Paul tells Timothy that we have not been given a spirit of fear he doesn’t mean that we are never afraid.         Paul himself was often afraid; he speaks unashamedly of his own fear. Our Lord was fearful on occasion. To tell people they should never fear is to send them in pursuit of the unrealistic and the ridiculous; it’s also to plunge them into false guilt.

To have a “spirit of fear” is something different; it’s to be so fear-saturated as to be deflected from our obedience to God. But a spirit of fear is precisely what we haven’t been given; therefore we mustn’t yield to it. We must fling ourselves upon the promises of God.

Yet I must admit that there have been occasions in my life when even the promises of God seemed to evaporate on me; occasions when fear fell on me like a building collapsing or seeped into me like poison gas. On these occasions the promises seemed ineffective, however true, unable to stem the dread whose waves came upon me like nausea.         On these occasions I have leaned my full weight on Christian friends, for they embody for us, incarnate for us, the truth of the promises in those moments when we are floundering and the promises seem to support us only as embodied in our friends.

 

[2]         If God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, then what has he given us? Paul reminds Timothy once again: a spirit of power and love and self-control.

(a)         The one question which younger people always have concerning the gospel is also the simplest question.         Their one question isn’t, “Is it true?”, because younger people suspect it might be true but also be trite; true but also pointless; true but too abstract, too remote to be of any earthly use.  Their one question concerning the gospel is, “Does it work?”  “Does it work?” means “Is it effective?”  Whether it is effective depends entirely on what end it is supposed to effect. The question, “Is a hammer effective?” depends on the end you have in mind. If your purpose is to drive nails the answer is plainly “yes”.  If you wish to crochet lace doilies the answer is plainly “no”. If you want to repair the nozzle of your garden hose the answer is “maybe”. “Does the gospel work?” — the answer here depends on what it is we are looking to see happen. The textbook-correct answer is that the gospel works, is effective, inasmuch as it is the purpose of the gospel to reconcile us to God and render us transparent before him; since the gospel does this (alone does this) therefore the gospel works and should be embraced by every last person, older and younger alike. But the answer is too slick and too abstract by half.  What reconciliation to God and transparency to him means is something we older people must exemplify ourselves if what we say about it is to have any weight.  For a long time I have felt that Maureen and I should are an advertisement of the gospel for our grandchildren.  In other words, younger people (who are much less readily deceived than older people) are going to conclude that the gospel works only if they have seen something of its work in us.

One feature of younger people that always appeals to me is their forthrightness. If you ask them about last night’s rock concert they will reply without hesitation, “It was a drag” or “It was out of sight”.  Older people are adept at verbal smokescreens; younger people don’t bother with word-camouflages, for they are suspicious that much talk is a cover-up covering up an embarrassing lack of substance.  There was an embarrassing lack of substance in the Christian community of Corinth . The church-members there yammered a lot, lined up behind different hero-figures in the congregation, fancied themselves worldly-wise and talked up their pseudo-wisdom; they rationalized the inexcusable even as they told each other how truthful they were. Finally Paul had had enough. He let them know that their pretension to wisdom was nothing more than arrogance. He let them know that he would visit the congregation soon and deal with these motor-mouths himself. His conviction about the nature of the gospel and his resolve to hold the congregation to the gospel are evident in his concluding line: “I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.  For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power”.

Not a spirit of fear has God given us but a spirit of power.

 

(b)         And also a spirit of love. Everyone has her own understanding of love; but it’s the gospel’s understanding that matters for us. And the gospel makes plain that God’s love is a self-giving which pours itself self-forgetfully upon anyone at all without concern for consequence or cost.

Young people have no difficulty understanding this: self-forgetful self-giving without concern for consequence or cost.         It’s all so very lofty, even adventurous, that it appears as attractive as it seems true.

But younger people do not remain younger.  As older age settles upon them little by little the cost seems prohibitively high. At the same time the consequence (the result) seems woefully meagre, given the high cost. (The entire scheme plainly isn’t “cost-effective”, as the economists say.)  What happens next? Self-giving is shrivelled to thing-giving; self-forgetfulness is shrivelled to calculation; the cost of love is simply deemed too high and the consequences too scanty. Next step, the last step: we settle down into that token-generosity whose tokenism the world accepts because tokenism is all the world expects of anyone with respect to anything. How is such world-weary disillusionment to be avoided?

There are two ways of avoiding such disillusionment.  One is by returning constantly to our text: God has given us a spirit of love; not a notion of love, but a spirit of love.  Plainly there is an allusion to the Holy Spirit, that power in which God himself acts upon his people.  Then God himself must — and will — keep our hearts from shrivelling up into that tokenism that is widely regarded as good enough.

The second way of avoiding the world-weary disillusionment that reduces love to a mere artificiality which is socially acceptable; the second way is to keep people dear to us. Writing to the people in Thessalonica Paul says, “We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our very selves (this is what love is finally, sharing our very selves) so dear had you become to us.”   The longer I live the dearer people become to me.  When I was a younger minister I was so taken up with getting the job-functions done — writing the sermon, chairing the meeting, conducting the funeral — that my focus was on the function, with people more or less on the periphery. In my older age the function seems to perform itself, and people have become the focus. One reason that I have relished being a pastor is that people — all kinds and qualities — have become dearer to me with every passing year.  As they do I find today’s text confirming itself to me with greater force: God has given us a spirit of love, and this gift will keep our love from shrivelling up to a pasted-on smile plus a “townie.”

 

(c)         We have also been given a spirit of self-control.  Self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control.         Either we control ourselves or others control us; other people, other ideologies, other things. When this happens – i.e., when we are other-controlled – we are little more than an empty tin can kicked around endlessly: empty to start with and soon shapeless as well. This is not good. What is the alternative? A minute ago I said that self-control appears to be the opposite of other-control; “appears” because there is one glorious instance where self-control and other-control are one and the same.  When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 he is listing the qualities of life which Jesus Christ effects in his people by his Spirit. Included in the list is self-control.   Christ-control is self-control. You see, to be Christ-controlled is to know whose we are: we are his and his only! And to know whose we are (when we are Christ’s) is to know who we are: we are our “self”. Since Jesus Christ renders me who I am, to be Christ-controlled will always be to be self-controlled.

 

            For whether we are younger or older, whether we are newcomers to the faith or oldtimers in the household and family of God, we were never given a spirit of fear; we have all been given a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control.

                                                                                                         Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                  

    May 2007

 

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.”

 

                                                                               Victor A. Shepherd               

Easter 1996

 2^nd Timothy 2:9; 3:10-17       Deuteronomy 6:1-9     Psalm 19:7-10     Mark 12:18 -27

 

I: — We read scripture in church every Sunday. We don’t read McClean’s magazine or Chatelaine. Why not? Instead of scripture why don’t we read something that everyone finds edifying, something from Reader’s Digest or Good Housekeeping or even a story of courage and persistence from Sports Illustrated? Why don’t we?

Let’s think about something else. There are biblical expressions that are so very familiar to us that we know them as well as we know our own name. What’s more, they are all written in simple words, chiefly one or two syllables only. “My sin is more than I can bear.” (Eight words, one syllable each.)   “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “I will arise and go to my father.” “Freely have ye received; freely give.” “O ye of little faith.” Who wrote all these expressions? How did they come to be embedded in our bloodstream? For how long have they been current in everyday English?

 

II: — William Tyndale wasn’t someone who made trouble for the sake of making trouble. Neither did he have a personality as prickly as a porcupine. Neither did he relish controversy, confrontation and strife. As much as he wanted to avoid hostility and live at peace he couldn’t. At some point he became embroiled with many of England ’s “Who’s Who” of the Sixteenth Century. Anne Boleyn, one of Henry VIII’s many wives, flaunted her promiscuity – and Tyndale called her on it. Thomas Wolsey, cardinal of the church and sworn to celibacy, fathered at least two illegitimate children – and drew Tyndale’s fire. Thomas More, known to us through the play about him, A Man for All Seasons, advanced arguments that Tyndale believed to contradict the kingdom of God and imperil the salvation of men and women – and Tyndale rebutted him.

William Tyndale graduated from Oxford University in 1515, and then moved over to Cambridge to pursue graduate studies, Cambridge at that time being a hotbed of Lutheran theology and Reformation ferment. As he was seized by the truth and power of that gospel which scripture uniquely attests, Tyndale became aware of his vocation: God was calling him to be a translator. He was to put into common English a translation of the bible that the public could read readily and profit from profoundly. Such a translation was needed desperately, for England was sunk in the most abysmal ignorance of scripture, and deprived therefore of the faith and obedience and comfort that the gospel alone supplies. The clergy were ignorant too. Worse, the clergy didn’t care. Tyndale vowed that if his life were spared he would see that a farmhand knew more scripture than did a contemptuous clergyman.

The church, however, didn’t agree with him. The church’s hierarchy had banned any translation of scripture into the English tongue in hope of prolonging the ignorance of the people and thereby prolonging the church’s tyranny over them. Tyndale wanted only a quiet, safe corner of England where he could begin his work. There was no such corner. He would have to leave the country. In 1524 he sailed for Germany . He would never see England again.

Soon his translation of the New Testament was underway in Hamburg . A sympathetic printer in Cologne printed the pages as fast as he could decipher Tyndale’s handwriting. Ecclesiastical spies were everywhere, however, and in no time the printing press was raided. Tipped off ahead of time, Tyndale escaped with what he could carry.

Next stop was Worms , the German city where Luther had debated vigorously only four years earlier and where the German Reformer had confessed, “Here I stand, I can do nothing else. God help me.” In Worms Tyndale managed to complete his New Testament translation. Six thousand copies were printed. Only two have survived, since English bishops confiscated them as fast as copies were ferreted back into England . In 1526 the bishop of London piled up the copies he had accumulated and burnt them all, the bonfire adding point to the bishop’s sermon in which he had slandered Tyndale.

Worms was too dangerous a place in which to work, and in 1534 Tyndale moved to Antwerp , where English merchants living in the Belgian city told him they would protect him. (By now he had virtually completed his translation of the entire bible.) Then in May 1535 a young Englishman in Antwerp who needed large sums of money to pay off huge gambling debts betrayed Tyndale to Belgian authorities. Immediately Tyndale was jailed in a prison modelled after the infamous Bastille of Paris. The cell remained damp, dark and cold throughout the Belgian winter. Tyndale had been in prison for eighteen months already when his trial began.

The long list of charges was read out. The first two charges – one, he had maintained that sinners are justified or set right with God by faith; and two, to embrace in faith the mercy offered in the gospel was sufficient for salvation – these two charges alone indicate how blind and bitter his anti-gospel enemies were.

In August 1536 he was found guilty and condemned as a heretic. Labelling him “heretic” was an attempt at humiliating him publicly and breaking him psychologically. But he didn’t break. Whereupon he was assigned another two months in prison. Then he was taken to a public square and asked to recant. So far from recanting he cried out, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Immediately the executioner strangled him and ignited the firewood at his feet.

Tyndale’s work, however, couldn’t be choked off and burnt up. His work thrived. Eventually the King of England approved Tyndale’s translation, and by 1539 every parish church in England was required to have a copy on hand for parishioners to read.

Tyndale’s translation underlies the King James Version of the bible. Its importance in English-speaking lands can’t be exaggerated. A gospel-outlook came to permeate the British nation, its people, its policies, and its literature. Indeed, the King James Version is precisely what Northrop Frye labelled “The Great Code,” the great code being the key to unlocking the treasures of English literature. Without a knowledge of the bible, Frye insisted, the would-be student of English literature doesn’t even begin. More importantly, however, the translation of the bible into the English tongue became the means whereby the gospel took hold of millions.

Tyndale’s promise – “If I am spared I shall see that the common person knows more of God’s Word, God’s Truth and God’s Way than a contemptuous clergy” – was fulfilled. In the history of the English-speaking peoples Tyndale’s work is without peer.

 

II: — Why did Tyndale do it? Was he a ranting bible-thumper akin to the “thumpers” who turn you off as readily as they do me? He was nothing like this. Did he believe something bizarre about the bible, akin to what Joseph Smith claimed for the original gold plates of the Book of Mormon? Joseph Smith, the father of Mormonism, maintained that he was sitting under a tree when there fell at his feet the gold plates inscribed with the Book of Mormon. Tyndale believed nothing like this about scripture.

Then why was he willing to sacrifice himself for the book? Because he knew two things: one, he knew that intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ matters above everything else; two, he knew that scripture is essential to our gaining such intimacy with our Lord.   Concerning Tyndale himself there was nothing fanatical, silly or unbalanced.

 

And so scripture is read in church every Sunday, and Christians have traditionally read it every day. To be sure Christians don’t read scripture and nothing else. (This would be fanaticism.) We do read much else with profit. Yet however edifying other books may be they don’t supplant scripture. Why not? Because scripture remains the normative witness to God’s presence and God’s work. “Normative” means “the standard,” “the measure,” “the yardstick,” “the benchmark.” “Normative” means first in importance and the measure of everything else that claims to be important.

If scripture is this, if scripture is normative and the measure of everything in Christian faith and conduct, then how does scripture work? How does it function?

 

In your mind’s eye, in your imagination, I want you go back to the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry. I want you to think of yourself as one more ordinary man or woman living in Palestine in the year 30. There’s nothing unusual or extraordinary or peculiar about you at all. You’ve heard about this fellow Jesus of Nazareth. You’ve heard that he’s attracting crowds wherever he goes. You’ve heard that he just might be worth hearing. The next time he’s in your village you decide to show up. Now you are one more curious bystander, one of dozens in a crowd, listening to the young man from Nazareth as he speaks to any and all who will hear him.

At first he strikes you as merely one more itinerant preacher, and you’ve already heard lots of them since Palestine has all sorts of them. Still, as you continue listening to him you find that his teaching seems better than most. It strikes a chord within you. It has the “ring of truth” about it. Little by little your scepticism evaporates. While you don’t say anything out loud (only hecklers do this) you do find yourself silently saying “Yes” to yourself. “Yes, he’s right. Yes, I never thought of that before. Yes, what he says is true.” No one is twisting your arm in all this; you are inwardly constrained to say “yes” at the same time as you own it freely.

Then something more happens. Up to this point you’ve blended safely into the crowd, hearing what everyone else is hearing and remaining anonymous like everyone else. Suddenly the Nazarene looks right at you. At first you glance around you and behind you, thinking he’s looking at you by mistake. But no, he’s looking right at you. At the same time he speaks to you. Specifically, he invites you to become his follower. Many people have become followers already. You know this, even though you went to hear him not ready to be a follower yourself. But now he’s asking you. For reasons that you’ll never get anyone else to understand because you can’t fully understand them yourself, you step out from the crowd and step into his company as you join yourself to those who are followers already. A few people look at you quizzically? So what. One or two snicker? You don’t even hear them. All you know is that you are now persuaded of one matter: life in the company of Jesus Christ promises to be better than life not in his company.

Day by day your life now unfolds in Christ’s company. As it does you gain more than you ever imagined. You gain iron-fast assurance concerning him, but also iron-fast assurance concerning his words, his promises, his way, his Spirit. He calls more people into his company; the band swells of those who are possessed of like conviction, like experience, like contentment.

 

After Jesus is put to death and then raised from the dead none of this is lost. The ascension of our Lord doesn’t mean that those who knew him so very intimately are now left with aching emptiness and devastating disillusionment. On the contrary those who kept company with him in the days of his earthly ministry still do. To say he’s ascended isn’t to say he’s gone missing, absent now. To say he’s ascended is to say he’s now available to everyone, available on a scale that wasn’t possible in the days when he couldn’t be found in Bethany if he happened to be in Jerusalem.

Nevertheless there is one crucial difference in the manner in which Jesus Christ is known following his ascension. In the days of his earthly ministry Jesus spoke for himself. Following his resurrection and ascension, however, Christian spokespersons preach in his name, always and everywhere pointing to him. They are not he, and they don’t pretend to be he. These spokespersons are never to be confused with their Lord. They merely point to him. They are witnesses.

And then something wonderful happens. As these spokespersons point to him, bear witness to him, God owns their witness and his Spirit invigorates it. As God honours the witness borne to his Son, Jesus Christ ceases to be merely someone pointed to. As he is pointed to he himself comes forth; he looms up and speaks, calls, convinces, commissions exactly as he did in the days of his flesh. As God the Father honours the human witness borne to the Son, Jesus Christ ceases to be merely someone spoken about. Now he becomes the speaking, acting, compelling one himself.

At this point people in Rome and Corinth and Ephesus, people who had no chance of meeting Jesus in the days of his earthly ministry simply because he never travelled to those cities; these people now meet him and know him and love him and walk his way with him as surely as did those who saw him in Bethany and Jerusalem years earlier.

Let me repeat. The apostles are not our Lord. The apostles are spokespersons for our Lord who point to him. They don’t point to themselves. Like John the Baptist they point away from themselves to him. They are witnesses. And by the mysterious yet real work of God their witness to him becomes the means whereby he imparts himself afresh. Those who have been listening to the apostles, mulling over what Peter, James and John have to say, are startled as they realize that the one about whom Peter, James and John have been speaking; this one is now in their midst, is speaking to them himself. Suddenly they know themselves invited, summoned even, to the same intimacy and obedience, comfort and contentment that Peter, James and John have known for years. In other words, the distinction between hearing about Jesus Christ and meeting him; this distinction has fallen away. For this reason Jesus announces, “Whoever hears the apostles hears me; and whoever rejects them rejects me.” (Luke 10:16)

But of course apostles don’t live forever. As it becomes obvious that history will continue to unfold after the apostles have breathed their last breath, their testimony is written down. Written now, it is treasured. Their testimony written will henceforth function in exactly the same way as it used to function spoken. In other words, as the apostolic testimony written is owned and invigorated by God, people today who read it for themselves or hear it expounded in church find themselves acquainted with the selfsame Jesus Christ.

The bible isn’t a book of biology or astronomy. It is the testimony, the witness, of prophets and apostles to Jesus Christ. Christ is a person; the bible is a book, a thing. Person and thing are categorically distinct. At the same time, while knowledge of the book and intimate acquaintance with the person of Christ are distinct, they can never be separated. Perhaps at this point we should introduce, on Reformation Sunday, our old friend Martin Luther. Luther used to say, “Scripture is the manger in which the Christ child is laid.” On the one hand, nobody confuses a manger of straw with a human being. On the other hand, said wise old Martin, if you want to apprehend the child you have to go to the manger, since the manger happens to be the only place where this child can be found.

The manger is made of straw; unimpressive. The manger is untidy and may even be somewhat smelly. But the child it holds is the one who will go to hell and back for us and therefore the one to whom we must cling in life and in death. Plainly, to disdain the manger is to forfeit the child. To ignore scripture is to pass up intimate acquaintance with our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Towards the end of his life the apostle Paul wrote young Timothy, hoping to encourage him in the work of the ministry. He reminded Timothy of what Timothy knew already; namely, Paul was in prison on account of the gospel. “I’m chained like a criminal,” wrote Paul, “but the word of God isn’t chained.”

Indeed it isn’t. Tyndale may have been imprisoned, strangled, and burnt. But the word of God can’t be confined or choked lifeless or burnt to ashes. It remains free, unfettered.

The shape of English life subsequent to Tyndale is unimaginable without his English translation of the bible. More important, our life in Christ – yours and mine – is impossible without scripture, for this book, the normative witness to Jesus Christ, ever remains the manger in which child is laid.

 

                                                                                            Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                         
Reformation Sunday 2004

 2 Timothy 3:14-17

 I: — Everyone is aware that technology is forever depersonalising life. As technology reaches farther into our daily lives, it is felt that spontaneity, freedom, self-expression decrease. We don’t like this. We object to technological domination. We seek to recover what is authentically human. We look for an oasis in life, a luxuriant space in life where the aridity of technology can’t overtake us. We want to find some aspect of life where spontaneity and freedom and self-expression can flourish.

One such oasis, safe from technological dehumanization, has been thought to be sex. Sex is one glorious oasis where we can be free of technology, one oasis where our humanity can thrive, one place where freedom can blossom. Let’s just “do it” and enjoy it and glory in it.

With what result? With the result that in no time at all we have technicized sex! Technology is invoked to help us have better sex. Now there are lotions, potions, pills, foods, underwear, body-paints — all of them sure-fire technologies. Every popular magazine from Reader’s Digest to Chatelaine has a “how-to” article per issue on better sex.

Better sex was supposed to result as we fled from technology. Now better sex is supposed to result as we pursue technology. What’s more, better sex is supposed to rehumanize us.

The truth is, the preoccupation with better sex makes us rely on technology even as we are supposed to be fleeing technology. The contradiction here renders sex dehumanizing.

Furthermore, while technology and sexual expression are supposed to be antithetical, it is plain that they feed off each other: after all, sex is being technicized increasingly, while technology is being sexualized increasingly. (Don’t we use sex to sell such technologies as computers, outboard motors and kitchen appliances?)

It seems that we are caught in a vortex we can’t escape. Our protest against technology intensifies our addiction to technology. Our attempt at recovering the authentically human causes us to forfeit the authentically human. Our efforts at rehumanizing ourselves end in dehumanizing ourselves.

How are we ever going to get beyond our imprisonment here and its self-contradiction?

Think for a minute about labour-saving devices. Technology is supposed to spare us the dehumanization of drudge-labour. But does labour-saving technology mean that we work any less? Does it mean that our work is any less distressing? Does it mean that work is any less the occasion of frustration or futility? A farmer with a tractor doesn’t work less or work less frustratingly than a farmer with a horse; he manages to get more acres ploughed. A fisherman with a steel-hulled trawler doesn’t work less than a fisherman with a wooden dory; he manages to catch more fish. In all of this human existence is not made more human! (A footnote about the fisherman: technology has enabled the fisherman to catch so much fish that now — in Newfoundland at least — there are no more fish for him to catch. The result is that a cherished way of life has disappeared and the fishing community is more dehumanized than ever!)

Think for a minute about the mass media. The mass media do many things. For one, they create the illusion of personal involvement. As people watch news clips about victims of earthquakes in Haiti or victims of urban overcrowding in Mexico City they unconsciously delude themselves into thinking that they are personally involved. They now think that passivity is activity. They equate their boob-tube passivity with activity, and talk thereafter as if they were involved!

In the second place the mass media persuade us that we are all on the edge of a new society. President Lyndon Johnson kept talking about the “Great Society”. Where is it? What was great about it? He meant that his presidency was the cutting edge of a greater society. Greater than what? Greater than whose? Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau kept talking about “The Age of Aquarius”. His pet cliche was “The land is strong”. He meant that the land was newly strong, strong in a way it never was before.

Why would anyone think we are on the edge of a “new society”? What is the evidence for it? As long as the image is created of a “new society” or a “great society” or a “land that is strong”; as long as the image is created the reality will never have to be delivered! In fact the image — the false image — is created deliberately so that the reality won’t have to be delivered. What conscienceless falsification! What cynical exploitation of gullible people!

While we are talking about dehumanization we might as well mention the mass media and trivialization. The mass media bring before us pictures of starving children with protruding bellies together with pictures of mint-scented green mouthwash. Doesn’t this juxtaposition trivialize starvation and the suffering born of it? Recently I was listening to the radio. The news broadcast (supposedly a broadcast of events of immense human significance) was preceded by three back-to-back-to-back advertisements: a new kind of candy, pita bread sandwiches now available in Seven-Eleven stores, and Astroglide (Astroglide being a super-slippery vaginal lubricant). What is the human significance of the news when the news is preceded by such trivia? Trivialization? What do the mass media do better?

In American newspapers the Donald and Ivana Trump hanky-panky displaced reports on the reunification of Germany. Where is our humanity in the midst of such trivialization, which trivialization has so thoroughly victimized most people that they cannot recognize it?

Where is our humanity? In view of the fact that everything which claims to augment it and preserve it appears only to diminish it, what are we going to do? Where, how, are we going to be authentically human?

Since we have been thinking about news we might as well ask ourselves whether the news is even new. Recently the lead item in the newscast described the shooting of nine people in British Columbia. Is this new? There are dozens of multiple shootings every year.

The depredations in Bosnia are front-page news. But are they new? At the turn of the century the Turks slew the Armenians and the British slew the Afrikaners. Later everybody slew everybody in Europe. More recently the Americans ignited Viet Namese children with jellied gasoline and gloated as the torment couldn’t be assuaged. So what’s new about Bosnia?

The apostle Paul tells us (Acts 17:21) that the people of Athens “spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” The Athenians were “news junkies”. But none of it was new! After all, what can the depraved heart and mind, turned in on itself, do besides reproduce itself?

Neither is there anything new in the microcosm of the individual. When we look into individual human hearts we find people accusing themselves (as surely as they are accused by others), sinking all the way down into self-loathing. When they can no longer endure their self-loathing they “wake up” and exclaim, “Heh! I’m not that bad! I’m no worse than anyone else! In fact, after a moment’s reflection I’m sure I’m better than most!” Fleeing from self-loathing now, they flee into self-righteousness. Self-righteous people regard themselves as fine company. The problem is, their company can’t stand them. After a while the self-righteous begin to ask themselves why no one else can stand them. Soon they get the point: others can’t stand them just because they are thoroughly obnoxious. Then they begin the slide down into self-loathing — and the cycle starts all over.

How do we break the cycle? How do we learn the truth about ourselves and get off the teeter-totter?

When people are jabbed they feel they have to jab back. Their honour is at stake. Their ego-strength is at stake. Their identity is at stake. If someone uses a flamethrower on them, they have to retaliate with their own flamethrower. If they don’t, they will be regarded as wimps, will come to regard themselves as wimps, and in any case may feel themselves to be wimps already. But at all costs they mustn’t appear to be wimps. Therefore the retaliatory flamethrower has to be fired up.

But of course whenever different parties are wielding flamethrowers there are many seared hearts and many smouldering hearts. Isn’t there a better way to live? Where is it? How do we find it?

II: — There are those who have exemplified a better way. Jacques Ellul (he died only last year, aged 83) was a professor of law at the University of Bordeaux when German forces occupied France. Ellul immediately joined the French resistance movement. Working underground by night, he did all he could to aid the cause of the resistors: he sabotaged German military vehicles, disrupted communications, and so on. Then one of his law-students betrayed him to the Gestapo. Friends learned of the betrayal and whisked him out of Bordeaux to the French countryside where farmers hid him as a farm-labourer. He continued his resistance activities from his new “home”.

Any member of the French resistance who was caught was tortured unspeakably. (All of this made famous by the notorious Klaus Barbie.) In fact, French resistors were tortured so badly that the British government pleaded with the French resistors to quit: the effect of their efforts was very slight (the German war-machine scarcely inconvenienced by it) while the penalty for being caught was atrocious. Ellul refused to quit. He said that to quit (even though not quitting was terribly dangerous) would mean that he had acquiesced in the struggle against evil; to quit would mean that he had surrendered to Satan; to quit would mean that fear of pain had triumphed over vocation to the kingdom; to quit, he said, would mean that he had forfeited his humanity. And so he didn’t quit, despite terrible risks.

After the war Ellul learned of the treatment accorded war-time collaborationists. (Collaborationists were those French men and women who cooperated with the German occupation in hope of saving their own skin. When Germany didn’t win, French citizens howled for the scalps of the collaborationists.) The French government treated these people brutally. Whereupon Ellul stepped out of his law-school professorial robes and became the lawyer representing the collaborationists. He defended the very people who would gladly have consigned him to torture and death during the war. All of a sudden Ellul went from being a wartime hero (brave resistance fighter) to a peacetime bum (public defender of French scum).

Why did he do this? How was he able to do this? He declared that he lived in a new creation; he lived in a new order where standards, expectations, assumptions were entirely different from those of the old order. He noted that virtually everyone clung to the old order even though God’s judgement had doomed it, while virtually nobody dwelt in the new order, even though God’s blessing had established it.

Then Ellul said something more. He said he was tired of hearing people discuss faith in terms of belief. Faith isn’t a matter of what we believe or say we believe or think we might believe; faith is what we do by way of answering the questions God puts to us. When God questions us we have to answer. Verbal answers won’t suffice. Verbal answers are so far from faith that they are an evasion of faith. When God draws us into the light of that new creation which he has caused to shine with startling brightness, then either we do something that mirrors this new creation or we are possessed of no faith at all, regardless of how piously we talk or how religiously we behave. Either we do the truth or we have no use for Jesus Christ at all and we should stop pretending anything else.

And so brother Jacques provided a legal defense to spare the people who would never have spared him a year earlier.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul says — what does he say? “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature” (KJV). The RSV text reads, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. (This is better). Better yet is the NRSV: “If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. The difference between “creature” and “creation” is significant. I am certainly a creature, but I am not the creation; I am not the entire created order. The Greek word for “creature” is KTISMA; the word for “creation” is KTISIS. Paul uses the latter word, KTISIS, creation. The NEB captures it perfectly. “When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun…”.

The truth is, Paul has written an elliptical sentence, a sentence without a verb. Literally the apostle says, “If anyone in Christ — new creation! — the old has gone…”. Paul would never deny that the man or woman who is united to Christ is a new creature; he would never deny this. But neither is this what he is saying in 2 Cor. 5:17! Paul would never deny J.B. Phillips’ translation of the verse: “If a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether.” He would never deny the truth of this; but this isn’t what he’s saying in this text. The apostle is declaring that to be bound to Jesus Christ in faith is to be aware of a new creation, a new order; to see it, glory in it, live in it, live from it, live for it.

Unquestionably Ellul lived in this new order. Do we? Whether we do or don’t is never indicated by what we say, insists Ellul; whether we do or don’t is announced by what we do. What we do is how we answer the questions God puts to us. Needless to say the pre-eminent question God puts to us is, “Where do you live?”

Centuries before Ellul the apostle Paul, plus so many others in the primitive church, knew where they lived. For this reason the apostle had startling advice to give to Philemon concerning Onesimus.

Onesimus was a slave. He stole from his master, Philemon, and then ran away. In the days of the Roman Empire a runaway slave was executed as soon as he was discovered. Onesimus surfaced in the Christian community in Rome, no doubt assuming that Christians wouldn’t turn him in. Under the influence of Paul, Onesimus came to faith and repented of his theft.

To Onesimus Paul said, “You had better high-tail it back to Philemon before the police department catches up with you, or else you will be hanged.” To Philemon (who had earlier come to faith under Paul’s ministry in Asia Minor) Paul said, “I am sending Onesimus back to you, sending my very heart.”

People today excoriate Paul, “Why did he send Onesimus back at all?” For the simple reason that either Onesimus went back or Onesimus was going to be executed. Let’s hear what else Paul wrote to Philemon. “I am sending Onesimus back to you, sending my very heart. Take him back. But don’t take him back as a slave; take him back as a beloved brother…. Receive him as you would receive me.” As Philemon would receive Paul? Paul was a citizen of Rome! Then Philemon must receive his runaway, light-fingered slave as he would receive a citizen and a free man.

On the one hand the legal status of Onesimus was still “slave”, since his slave-status was something only the Roman government could alter. On the other hand, Onesimus was going back to Philemon not as a slave but as a family-member. “Take him back no longer as a slave”, wrote Paul, “take him back as brother in the flesh and in the Lord.” Because Onesimus was a brother in the Lord he was therefore to be cherished as a “brother in the flesh”, as a blood-relative, a family-member.

Inasmuch as the primitive church lacked political “clout” it couldn’t do anything about overturning slavery as an institution. Yet because the primitive church lived in the new creation, a new order, it disregarded the institution of slavery and looked upon Philemon (aristocratic) and Onesimus (low-born) as blood-brothers. And so the institution of slavery (unquestionably a feature of the old order) was subtly sabotaged as Christians held up the new order.

Let us never forget that Aristotle — whom some regard as the greatest philosopher of the ancient world — maintained that a slave was merely an animated tool that had the disadvantage of needing to be fed. Aristotle maintained that as well that a woman was an odd creature half-way between animal and male human. Yet Jesus addressed women as the equal of any male! Luke especially cherished this fact about Jesus, and so Luke’s gospel contains thirteen stories about women found nowhere else. Paul insisted not that wives subject themselves to their husbands, but that husbands and wives subject themselves to each other “out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph. 5:20) The gospel annihilates male dominance!

Jesus Christ brings a new order with him. He is Lord of this new order. And he makes us new by calling us into it.

New? How new? What do we mean by “new”? When I was in India I was startled by the good condition of the countless 1956 Fiat automobiles that scooted everywhere. Then someone told me that these cars were not forty years old. Many were brand new. The car manufacturers in India have never changed the machinery that makes 1956-model Fiats. Every car that the factory produces is a brand-new copy of the same old car!

A brand-new copy of the same old thing. Ellul maintains that this is what the world mistakenly calls new: a recent copy of the same old thing.

There are two Greek words for “new”: NEOS and KAINOS. NEOS means quantitatively new, chronologically new, merely more recent; KAINOS, on the other hand, means qualitatively new, genuinely new, new in substance.

Scripture insists that the qualitatively new, the genuinely new, is found only in Christ. Jesus Christ is new (kainos) creature himself; he brings with him a genuinely new creation; he is Lord of new creation and new creature; he summons us to join him under his Lordship and live in a new order as new people.

Of all the verses in scripture that move me few move me more than 1 Corinthians 10:11, where Paul speaks of Christians as those “upon whom the end of the ages has come.” The apostle uses “end” in both senses of the word: end as termination, and end as fulfilment. In Jesus Christ the fulfilment of the creation has come; and because its fulfilment has come, the old creation, old order is now terminated. Since the fulfilment of the creation has come, and since the termination of the old is underway right now, why aren’t we living in the new instead of in the old? Paul says that Christians live in the new by definition. Then the only thing for us to do is to live out what we already live in.

III: — You asked for a sermon on the authority of scripture. Scripture is the normative witness to all that we have pondered this morning. Scripture is not the new creation itself; not the new creation, not the new creature, not the Lord of new creation and creature. Scripture is merely the witness to all of this, yet the indespensable witness to it. Apart from scripture’s testimony it is impossible for us to know of new creation, new creature, and Lord of both; apart from scripture it is impossible for us to see the truth, to grasp the reality, to glory in a new world, to repudiate the old, to live out what we are called to live in. Because scripture uniquely attests what is genuinely new, apart from scripture the best that human existence can hold out for us is the most recent copy of the same old thing.

But to hear and heed the testimony of scripture is to refuse to settle for this; to hear and heed the testimony of scripture is to hear and heed him to whom it points: Jesus Christ our Lord. To hear and heed him is to find ourselves knowing, cherishing, exemplifying that new “world” which he has brought with him.

Jacques Ellul wouldn’t settle for the most recent copy of the same old thing. The French government and the French citizenry hailed him as hero one day and bum the next. Ellul couldn’t have cared less. He knew what’s real. The apostle Paul wouldn’t settle for the most recent copy of the same old thing. He knew that to be united to Christ is to live in that new order which Christ brings with him. The Roman government condemned Paul. He couldn’t have cared less. He knew what’s real.

I too know what’s real. What’s real is the end of the ages now upon us. What’s real is a new heaven and new earth in which righteousness dwells (to quote Peter now instead of Paul). I know too that it is only through the testimony of scripture, only as the Spirit of God vivifies this testimony and illumines my mind and thaws my heart, that the really real will continue to shine so luminously for me that I shall never be able to pretend anything else.

Ellul died last year. Peter and Paul died 2000 years ago. All three have joined the “great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us now. All three cherished scripture as the normative testimony to “that kingdom which cannot be shaken”. (Hebrews 12:28)

Faithfully they kept that testimony. And now the Lord of that testimony keeps them.

 

                                                                   Victor A. Shepherd
May 1996

 

2 Timothy 4:13

 

“I know a man”, says Paul, “who, 14 years ago, was caught up to the third heaven…. and this man heard things that cannot be told, which no one may utter.” Who is this man whom Paul knows? It’s Paul himself; he’s talking about himself! He was caught up to the third heaven. The “third heaven” was an ancient way of speaking of the most intimate, most intense, most vivid presence of God. At that moment, 14 years ago, the apostles wasn’t “seeing in a mirror dimly”. (1 Cor. 13:12) At that moment he was bathed in a splendour and frozen in an awesomeness and scorched by a blaze all at once. All at once he was transfixed by the purity of God and prostrated by the enormity of God and dazzled by the brightness of God.

Isn’t it odd, then, that the man whose experience of God was so intense that he cannot speak of it then writes to the young man, Timothy, and asks for books? “Be sure to bring me the books.” Books? Why would he need books? What could a book do for him?

Paul’s experience of 14 years ago wasn’t the only time he had had an electrifying encounter with God. Three years before he was “caught up to the third heaven” he had been crumbled on his way to Damascus when the risen Lord had arrested him. In addition to the Damascus road experience Paul had had a vision of the man from Macedonia who had pleaded with Paul to go there with the gospel. In addition to the Macedonian episode Paul had fallen into a trance while praying in the Jerusalem temple, and while in the trance had been told unmistakably to get out of Jerusalem. The apostle’s experience of God had been vivid over and over.

And now he wants books? Compared to his experience of God reading a book sounds so flat, so pedestrian, simply so dull. Yet he wants books! Obviously he thinks he needs books. Books are essential to his discipleship as a Christian as well as to his vocation as an apostle. Obviously (note this point carefully!) he thinks that his vivid experience of God does not render books unnecessary; his startling awareness of God doesn’t render reading superfluous.

Books are vital. People who read books are very different from those who do not. A society that reads books is very different from a society that does not.

In his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell depicted a society crushed in the tentacles of cruel totalitarianism. One feature of such a society, Orwell insisted, was the banning of books. The oppressor would continue to oppress his victims by many means, not the least of which was the banning of books.

Aldous Huxley, in his novel, Brave New World, didn’t fear a society where books were banned. He feared something worse: a society where books weren’t banned simply because no one wanted to read a book.

Do we want to read one? read many? Some people who lived a long time before us, and who are foreparents in faith, have wanted to.

Like the Jewish people, in whose house all Christians are guests. In the year 799 Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. At the coronation he was supposed to sign his name to a document. But he couldn’t write (or read). However, he remembered seeing his name written in Latin: CAROLINUS. He recalled that one letter (“U”) had two vertical strokes in it. Whereupon Charlemagne grabbed an instrument of some sort and made two crude strokes on the document. Meanwhile, the Jewish people were 100% literate. In whose house are Christians guests? Abraham and Sarah are our foreparents in faith, not Charlemagne.

And then there are the Puritans. Don’t listen to those who defame them wickedly! When persecuted Puritans left the old country and settled in New England every Puritan minister was given 10 pounds with which to start a church library. Between 1640 and 1700 the literacy rate among men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was 93% — while it was only 40% in England. (The rate of literacy among Puritan women in the new world was 62%, 10% in England.) Six years after these people landed in Massachusetts they voted 400 pounds “towards a school or college.” The “school or college” they built was Harvard (1636).

By 1650 virtually all New England towns had developed grammar schools. As people there learned to read, the effect of the printed page was immense. People were released from the domination of the immediate and the local. People who don’t read live in a very small world, a world of the immediate (in time) and the local (in space). Books are vehicles that convey us to a different era, a different history, a different geography, a different culture. Books free us from the domination of the immediate and the local.

Are we ashamed of our parents? That is, are we ashamed to be spiritual descendants of the Puritans? I’m not. Yes, our immediate spiritual roots in Streetsville Methodist Church obviously lie in Methodism. To be sure John Wesley imparted his own ethos, his own spirit, to the Methodist communities. Nonetheless the substance of Methodism is largely Puritan. Of the 50 books in Wesley’s “Christian Library” (books that he expected all followers to read) 32 are by Puritan authors. I am as little ashamed of my Puritan ancestors in faith as I am of my Jewish ancestors.

The single largest anti-reading force today is television. Where reading is profound, television is shallow. Reading encourages critical reflection; television encourages uncritical absorption. Reading forces us to think; television numbs us with mindless trivia. Reading presents us with ideas for thoughtful evaluation; television presents us with flitting images for our amusement. As soon as the politician goes on TV what he says is of no importance; what matters is how he appears. Is his tie knotted properly? If it isn’t, he can’t be elected. Menachem Begin’s media advisors told him he had to stop wearing shirts with oversized collars, since a shirt with an oversized collar makes a man appear terminally ill. John Turner’s media advisors told him he had to break his habit of licking his lips. “Who is going to vote for a man who looks like an anteater at a picnic?”, they corrected him scornfully.

Television doesn’t encourage thinking; it encourages emoting. TV turns human anguish into entertainment. A “good” TV program doesn’t end with critical reflection; it ends with mindless applause. Reading presents us with arguments that we have to assess; TV presents us with impressions that we merely blot up.

Television moves from a disaster in Chile to a house-fire in Buffalo to a baseball score to a weather forecast to an advertisement for mouthwash — all in five minutes. The effect on the human mind and heart is deadly. Never forget that the average TV news story lasts 45 seconds. It is impossible to convey a sense of seriousness about the most momentous occurrences in 45 seconds, especially when a 45 second “blip” is followed by a 45 second replay of the pitcher’s last three strikeouts of last night’s game. Visual stimulation is a shabby substitute for thought, just as emotional manipulation is a shabby substitute for verbal precision.

Are we going to read or are we going to sit, hour by hour, in front of what Northrop Frye called “the boob tube” back in the days when “boob” meant “simpleton”?

Surely we are no longer surprised that the apostle wrote, “Bring me the books.” Then what books are we going to read?

Biography is one of my favourites. As we read biography we realize we are not alone in the Christian venture. The book of Hebrews tells us that we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” The cloud of witnesses lives. These people nourish us.

I was 19 when I came upon a biography of William Edwin Sangster, an English Methodist preacher, scholar, writer, evangelist. Sangster died in 1959 at age 59, and died miserably of a neurological disease, progressive muscular atrophy. Like all us “general practitioners” of the ministry Sangster was a pastor as well. One day a distraught, middleaged woman called on him and told him brokenheartedly she had just received word that her daughter, a woman in her 20s, was going blind. Would Sangster visit the daughter? With leaden foot he trudged to the hospital, not knowing what he was going to say. He was standing, tongue paralyzed, at the bedside for several minutes when the young woman cried out, “God is going to take away my sight!” It was a hideous moment. Sangster croaked, “Don’t let him. Don’t let him take it from you. Give it to him.”

When I was a young minister in rural New Brunswick I had to call, one day, on Emma Nolan. Emma had been a registered nurse, and had worked for years in New York City. I often called on her just so we could discuss city-life together. Because of her nursing background Emma always accompanied me when we had to drive psychotic villagers to the provincial psychiatric hospital in Campbellton. We had made several such trips together, trips of pure anguish. Emma hadn’t been feeling well for several weeks when she betook herself to Saint John (200 miles away) for a checkup. She was told she didn’t have much longer to live. Emma had had a hard life: an abusive, alcoholic husband, derailed children, several years of widowhood. When she was back from Saint John I called on her. She chit-chatted about this-and-that, plainly avoiding any discussion of her imminent death, when suddenly she cried out, “God is going to take away my life!” What could I say? “Don’t let him, Emma, don’t let him take it. Give it to him.”

Charles Colson. I knew of his unflinching devotion to President Richard Nixon and his part in the Watergate affair. Colson had headed up the committee to re-elect the president. He had boasted that he would cheerfully run over his grandmother if it meant getting Nixon elected again. Then he was arrested, tried, convicted, imprisoned. Then there was an arrest of a different sort at the hands of him who had arrested Paul centuries earlier. When his autobiography, Born Again, appeared, I purchased it expecting the worst of American religious “smarm”. Anything but. Colson, a lawyer, is as profound as he is brilliant. He has written a dozen books since. His grasp of the church’s mission (as well as his grasp of the church’s dereliction) is without peer in North America.

Biography. It keeps us surrounded with the cloud of witnesses.

Don’t forget history. The Christian tradition is rich. We are not the first generation of believers. Neither are we the first to be perplexed, harassed, misunderstood, or ignored. A familiarity with history provides us with a wisdom we should never generate ourselves, even as it describes pitfalls we should never be able to avoid ourselves. G.K. Chesterton stated simply that tradition extends voting privileges to the dead. To the extent that we are serious about history, the dead can vote.

I often approach history from another angle. The person or institution without any acquaintance with history is like the person with amnesia. Amnesia is total loss of memory. Loss of memory is bad enough; worse still is what follows loss of memory, loss of identity. To have no memory is to have no identity. To have no identity is to be like a tree without roots or a sailing vessel without ballast in the keel: the first strong wind overturns it. It’s not the case that persons and institutions with no memory are extraordinarily nasty. They aren’t. It is the case that persons and institutions with no memory tend to be quixotic, erratic, unpredictable, inconsistent, always controlled by the latest fad, fashion, whim, notion or scheme.

All of the mainline denominations of North America demonstrate this over and over. All of the mainline denominations have chosen to ignore history. They have assumed either that history has nothing to teach us, or that history can teach us only what is better left untaught; namely, old-world theological wrangles and old-world political intigues that have no place in the churches of the new world.

The result of this neglect of history? A huge loss of Christian memory in the churches of North America, a dreadful case of ecclesiastical amnesia. That’s why North American Christendom is theologically quixotic, erratic and faddish.

To be acquainted with history is to draw from a tradition that allows the dead to vote. We can’t afford to shun the dead. A knowledge of history, however slight, will prevent us from being victimized by our own amnesia; this in turn will keep us from victimizing others.

What about fiction? Too many people regard fiction as a waste of time. “Why give up precious reading-hours for something that isn’t true?”, they ask. Who said fiction isn’t true? Because stories are stories rather than reports they certainly aren’t factual. But to say they aren’t factual isn’t to say they aren’t humanly true.

Think of our Lord’s parables. “A sower went forth to sow.” “Once upon a time a man had two sons.” “Did you hear about the farmer who woke up one morning only to discover that some stinker had sown weeds in his wheatfield?” The parables of Jesus are sheer fiction, every last one of them! An opponent challenges Jesus; a “wannabe” disciple needs the last bit of misunderstanding cleared away; a sermon has to be illustrated. On the spur of the moment, off the top of his head, Jesus makes up a story. Fiction! “Not true”? No! “Not factual”. Yet 100% true — and, say Christians, eventually the Word of God written.

Fiction. Start with someone like Madeleine L’Engle, an American whom I bumped into in a church-library in New York City while Raymond Cummins explored the Anglican Cathedral where she worships.

John White, a psychiatrist (now retired) and preacher (not yet retired) maintains that a good fiction writer (good, not necessarily Christian) has more insight into the human heart than the best of the social scientists. He’s right. We can’t afford to be without fiction.

And then there are the books that train us in discipleship. Richard Foster, a Quaker, has written the best book on prayer, and another on spiritual discipline, that I have read in the last 10 years.

Jacques Ellul (only three months dead and therefore still a voting member of the church), a lawyer and professor in France whose work on the dangers and dehumanization of technology ought to startle you as little else does.

Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor-turned-Roman Catholic priest; his book on the ministry is superb.

John Stott, an Englishman, has written on almost every aspect of the Christian life. He is said to be the most influential Anglican of the 20th century.

We shan’t live long enough to ingest the provender of these people.

“Bring me the books.” The apostle’s experience of God was indescribably rich and unspeakably awesome. And still he needed books!

Yet there was something he craved even more than books: “above all the parchments”. The parchments were scrolls of the Hebrew bible, what we of this congregation call the older testament. Books were crucial; yet most important were the parchments, the scriptures. By extension “parchments” refers to the newer testament as well.

We have to school ourselves in scripture relentlessly. But where to begin? Begin with a small paperback by George Caird. Caird began and ended his teaching career at Oxford University, with a mid-life stint at McGill. Years ago Caird wrote a brief commentary on Luke’s gospel. When it came into my hands I thought I had come upon a new planet. The book is a gem. There are dozens more like it. From time-to-time I recall the metaphors which different biblical authors use to speak of scripture as a whole:

– food — for newborns, necessary if they are going to thrive
– a mirror — it lets us see ourselves as no other book does
– a lamp — its light forestalls groping, stumbling, tripping up
– a fire — it consumes everything about us that should be consumed
– a hammer — it crumbles even rock-hard resistance
– a sword — it penetrates like nothing else.

We haven’t time today to develop a detailed exposition of the nature of biblical authority. We can only conclude with a story told by Charles Spurgeon, a superb 19th century English preacher.

When people asked Spurgeon how they might be convinced of the power of scripture (and therefore of its authority), he replied with a story about lion. “Imagine a caged lion. Someone could bring forward any number of arguments aimed at persuading onlookers of the lion’s nature and the lion’s strength and the lion’s tenacity, and so on. Some onlookers might believe the arguments while many would not. But there is a sure-fire way of convincing everyone about the might of the lion. Let the lion out of the cage.”

An argument about scripture might convince some, and then again it might not. Far better to open up scripture every week. As it is opened up and God owns the Word written, hearts are pierced only to be healed.

“Bring me the books, and above all the parchments.” Books are essential, even as the lion — “The Lion of the tribe of Judah”, in the words of John — has to be let out of the cage.

F I N I S

                                                                                              Victor A. Shepherd
October 1994

“When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas,
also the books, and above all the parchments.”