Mark 1:1 

I: — Several years ago a young British surgeon, Sheila Cassidy, moved to Santiago, Chile. Once there she found herself in the midst of political strife. Since she was a newcomer and didn’t understand the history behind the strife, she didn’t take sides but simply tried to get on with her medical work. One day a patient with an injured leg came to her. Without a second thought she treated him. Next day she was arrested and imprisoned. It turned out the patient had been a supporter of Salvator Allende, a social and political reformer in Chile whose work the ensuing dictator, General Pinochet, beat down brutally. Sheila Cassidy was interrogated for hours even though she had no information to divulge, and then was tortured on and off by electrification for one month. When she wasn’t being tortured herself she could hear the screams of others nearby who were.

One afternoon at a conference in downtown Toronto a fellow conferee introduced to me, in tones of awe, a Mrs. Xyz from Argentina whom I was plainly expected to have heard of but hadn’t. I sat down beside Mrs. Xyz and together we began watching a documentary about “disappeared” people in Argentina. Suddenly I realised that the woman featured in the documentary was the Mrs. Xyz who was sitting beside me. She had (that is, she had had) two sons and a daughter: lawyer, physician, social worker. All three were among the “disappeared”, those who attempted to alleviate the distresses of totalitarianism in Argentina and were abducted in the dead of the night. All three were certainly dead.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a teacher of physics and mathematics, and subsequently an artillery officer in the Soviet Army, when at war’s end he was suddenly removed to a forced labour camp in Siberia. He spent eleven years there in terrible hardship. He lived to write about it. Many of his colleagues, the men and women he described in his Gulag Archipelago series of books, didn’t survive.

For several years two Dutch women, Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie, exercised a ministry on behalf of intellectually challenged children, children whom they cherished and whose value before God they never doubted. Then the Nazis occupied Holland. Soon the two sisters were assisting other despised people, Jewish adults this time, even though they knew that assisting these people incurred terrible risk. Eventually the two sisters were detected, apprehended, and incarcerated in the most notorious camp in Holland, Ravensbruck. Corrie survived; Betsie perished.

All the people I’ve mentioned so far are people of the most impassioned faith. They found the world inhospitable. The truth is, the world is inhospitable; cruel, in fact. Unlike us North Americans who live in Lotus Land (at least for now), most of the world’s people live where life unfolds with much greater difficulty and much greater suffering. You don’t need me to remind you of life behind the iron curtain or life in Nazi-occupied Europe only a few years ago. But I suspect you do need me to acquaint you with the carnage in Cambodia and Indonesia and Algeria, not to mention so many other places. In the course of the Indochinese conflicts of the past few years the government of Cambodia has slain three million of its own people. Former President Sukharno of Indonesia (front and centre in the news in 1999 over the action of the RCMP in British Columbia during his most recent visit to Canada) always managed to smile at the western press with his beaming brown face while his underlings mutilated and slew. All the time that French forces were torturing and killing thousands in Algeria General Charles de Gaulle, the man who had led France’s struggle against German atrocities, spoke softly of the need for political expedience in Algeria. We live in North America. The rest of the world, however, lives where the world continues to behave like the world; where the world behaves as it has characteristically behaved for as long as there’s been a world.

Think of Rome when Mark was writing his gospel. The city of Rome had one million inhabitants. Like any huge city, it had large slum areas. In July, 64, fire broke out and destroyed 70% of the city. Nero, the emperor, set about rebuilding the city on a grandiose scale, hoping to make the new construction a monument to himself. Rumour had it that he had started the fire. Fire, after all, is always the quickest and cheapest method of slum clearance. The poor people of the city, homeless now, despised him for his callousness. Nero wanted above all to regain his heroic stature with the people. He had to shift the blame for the fire to a group, a scapegoat, so marginalised that it couldn’t protest. He blamed the Christians. He accused them of “hatred against humankind” and began punishing them in three different ways. They were crucified; they were clothed in animal skins and then set upon by hunting dogs; or they were covered in tar and then ignited so that they burned like — like him who is the light of the world! — Nero smirked in derision. Two outstanding Christian leaders, Peter and Paul, perished in this wave of persecution. Nero had his day of glory.

Shortly thereafter a man named Mark came to Rome (courageous, wasn’t he) and wrote a tract to encourage the Christians he met. These Christians followed a crucified Messiah themselves and therefore didn’t expect any better treatment than their Lord had received before them. This tract (what we call “The gospel according to Mark”) was written to sustain beleaguered Christians who could be and were harassed and tormented at any time depending on Nero’s mood. You and I, remember, live in the Lotus Land of North America. Mark’s readers didn’t. They needed his “good news” about Jesus.

II: — Let’s familiarise ourselves with some of the characteristics of Mark’s work. First of all it’s a gospel of action. There’s very little teaching in Mark. In fact all of our Lord’s parables (with one exception) are found in one chapter, the fourth. The action is always fast-paced. Mark’s favourite Greek word is euthus, “at once”, “immediately”, “right away.” Jesus travels to a place and does something. “Immediately”, says Mark, he goes somewhere else and does something else. To read Mark’s gospel at one sitting is to be breathless, as Jesus and the twelve are always on the move “at once.”

Another characteristic: this gospel was written for Gentile Christians. To be sure, there were Jews as well as Gentiles in the church in Rome, but it’s the latter whom Mark has in mind. For this reason Mark always explains Jewish customs and traditions that Gentiles like us can’t be expected to know.

We mustn’t think that any of the written gospels is a biography of Jesus in the conventional sense of the term. Biographies always spend much time probing childhood influences, psychological developments, various factors that shape someone’s character and self-consciousness. None of the written gospels bothers to discuss these. We know nothing of our Lord’s childhood. We know nothing of the fellow-adults he met as a young man. In fact, if you set end-to-end all the events in the life of Jesus that Mark discusses, you would find that they took up three months of Jesus’ life at most and as little as one month. No biographer ever wrote a biography covering one to three months only of someone’s life.

Then why does Mark relate the incidents in our Lord’s life that he does relate? Of the hundreds of incidents in the public ministry of Jesus, why does Mark bring forward only two dozen? To be sure, Mark is familiar with the scores of stories arising from the ministry of Jesus, stories that have circulated orally and have been handed down for 35 years. From among the hundreds he could have selected Mark selects those stories from the life of Jesus that he thinks will be of greatest help to the Christians in Rome in view of the particular trials and torments of the Christians there. For instance, among the many stories concerning Jesus available to Mark, Mark selects the one about the stilling of the storm. He knows that this incident in the public ministry of Jesus will help persecuted Christians on whom a dreadful storm has descended and who may feel as abandoned in it as the disciples felt when Jesus was asleep in the boat.

Whenever we read Mark’s gospel, then, we must ask ourselves two questions: what did the gospel-incident mean to the people who witnessed the original event, that is, who were part of the event in the earthly ministry of Jesus 35 years ago? and what did the story mean 35 years later for the tormented Christians in Rome who believed that the same Lord, risen and ruling among them, was available to them then and there? Actually, whenever we read Mark’s gospel there’s a third question we must ask: what does this story about Jesus mean for you and me today, for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for beleaguered Christians in China and Korea and Burundi and the savage slums of Birmingham and Belfast, Miami and New York? What does this story mean for you and me whose situation isn’t quite that of others, even though our situation would certainly intensify if our discipleship were a little more intentional?

Mark wrote his gospel, then, in the year 66, shortly after Nero’s cruelties had begun to brutalise Christians in Rome. Mark wrote it believing that the One from Nazareth who had sustained harassed people during his earthly ministry in Palestine was still present, 35 years later, to sustain men and women in the empire’s pressure-cooker.

III: — And now to the gospel itself. The gospel of Mark is richly textured, and therefore there are many themes coursing throughout it. Nevertheless, there’s one major theme and one only: Jesus Christ is victor. Wherever Jesus comes upon sin, sickness, sorrow, suffering, the demonic and death, he conquers them. Jesus triumphs. He vanquishes the hostile powers that break down men and women, push them toward despair, impoverish life, undermine hope, collapse resistance. Jesus vanquishes every hostile power that afflicts us, torments us, fragments us. Jesus is victor.

You must have noticed that one-half of Mark’s gospel concerns only one week of Christ’s life, the final week, the week that builds toward the climax of his death. In other words, death is the big event, the big power, the biggest enemy of all.

Now while death is “Mr. Big”, Mr. Big is not alone; Mr. Big has errand boys, “flunkies” who do his bidding and anticipate his work. Mr. Big’s errand boys soften us up so that Mr. Big himself can intimidate us throughout our life and pulverise us all the more readily at the end. Death’s “flunkies” are sin, sorrow, suffering, the demonic (radical evil.)

Think of how suffering, especially protracted suffering, wears us down and distorts our thinking and usurps time and energy, simply preoccupies us, until we seem to have nothing left to give away, nothing left for Kingdom concerns, nothing left with which even to try to gain perspective on our suffering.
Sorrow continues to afflict bereaved people long after they thought sorrow would have ceased haunting them. Sorrow steals back over them and even whispers propaganda in their ear: “Your life is over; you will remain miserable; now that the person dearest you has died, you might as well die too; in fact you already have.”

Sin hammers all of us. If we are Christians of little maturity we think we are making wonderful progress in putting it behind us. If we are Christians of moderate maturity we are disturbed that the sin we sincerely repudiate crops up again and again until we wonder if we aren’t stalled spiritually. If we are Christians of greater maturity we know that the sin we recognise in us and genuinely deplore is yet only the tip that we and others can see; underneath, hidden from sight, is a depravity whose range and depth always surprise us anew.

The demonic? Widespread, virulent evil that seems to extend itself everywhere and claims unwary victims as easily as a con artist “fleeces” the unsuspecting and the senile? Evil for the sake of evil; evil for the perverse pleasure of sheer evil? Ten minutes’ reflection on the state of the world and its convulsions in the twentieth century alone and we ought to be convinced about the fact and virulence of radical evil.

All of these powers, says Mark, are gathered up in the power of Mr. Big, death. They are death-on-the-way, death-around-the corner, death as the ruling power throughout the universe — except for Jesus Christ who bested it once and brandishes his victory in the face of death’s refusal to quit although defeated. For this reason while Mark never undervalues, makes light of, or trifles with Mr. Big and his many manifestations, Mark always has more to say, and more to say more emphatically, about the conquering one whose victory is the ultimate truth and reality of the universe and whose victory, now known only to faith, will one day be known to sight as the defeated one is finally dispersed. We call Jesus “Master” just because he has mastered the powers that otherwise master us.

When the secret police broke down the door of a Roman Christian’s home at 3:00 am in the year 66; when wild animals dismembered believers as crowds cheered; when Nero ignited them and called it a fireworks display — in the midst of it all they knew their Lord, victorious himself, hadn’t abandoned them and wouldn’t forget them. He cherished them and gripped them so that they’d never be lost to him. They knew that their faith hadn’t been in vain, and their glorified life to come would be so very glorious as to eclipse their pain forever.

What about us? Myself, I read Mark’s gospel at least once each year. I happen to be a pastor. Every week my work takes me to the man whose industrial accident has left him with permanent disability and chronic pain, then to the schizophrenic woman who has been victimised by her body-chemistry and who knows her outer life is as awkward for everyone around her as her inner life is a horror to herself. Every week I have to go to the bereaved person who is finally emerging from “the long night” when he learns that he’s seriously ill himself. Next I see the person whose pain, of whatever kind for whatever reason, has driven her to feel she would rather die and therefore has attempted suicide. At least, she has made either a suicide attempt or a suicide gesture. If an attempt, it obviously failed. If a gesture, meant to attract attention, it has attracted so little attention it too might as well be labelled a failure. To her depression she’s now added failure. And of course there’s the person whose neurological disease is irreversible.

You people also find yourselves among friends and neighbours and relatives who suffer similarly. What is the nature of our ministry on behalf of all such? A few words of pre-packaged cheer? A quick-fix formula? But there are no quick-fix formulas in life. If our ministry consisted of waltzing in and saying, “Never mind; it’s not as bad as you think”, they’d ask us to leave. On the other hand, if we appeared with a face as long as a horse’s they would tell us we were of no help. There’s relatively little that we can say, relatively little that we can do, but ever so much that we must be. We must be those whom the triumph of Jesus Christ possesses so genuinely, so thoroughly, so profoundly that our presence bespeaks his victory for those who otherwise feel they are nothing but victims.

So far I have spoken only of those afflictions that come upon us as part of our human lot, come upon us precisely to the extent that they come upon everyone else. Mark was more startled, however, by those afflictions that come upon us just because we choose to identify ourselves with our Lord, choose to stand up and be counted among his people. Mark tells us that when Jesus began his public ministry his family came to take him home because his family thought him deranged. Mark brings forward this incident from the earthly life of Jesus and weaves it into his written gospel in that he wants his Christian friends in Rome to know that they can expect their families to think them deranged; they can expect their families to disown them and abandon them when their discipleship divorces them from a family that doesn’t share their faith. Mark also wants them to know that just as Jesus found new “family” in his disciples, so the Roman Christians will find a new “family” in the Christian fellowship.

Mark incorporates the story of John the Baptist as well. John is a prophet, in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets of old. Like them, John speaks truth to power; John addresses the truth of God to the political and social and economic power that Herod wields. Herod has John killed. Later Jesus appears before Pilate. Pilate has Jesus killed. Hostility, Mark tells his readers, is what any Christian of any era can expect from the state as soon as that Christian articulates the truth of God to the politically powerful.

I’m always moved when I read of Martin Niemoeller, a church leader in Germany during the Nazi era. Niemoeller had been a submarine commander in World War I, a loyal citizen of the Fatherland. When Hitler came to power in 1933 and authorised the state to encroach upon the church, and next to molest the church, Niemoeller (now a Lutheran pastor) protested. One day he was introduced to Hitler personally. He used the opportunity to tell Hitler exactly what he thought of him. By 1937 Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, had interrogated Niemoeller several times. One day he was thrown into a truck and taken this time not to the interrogation room but to a prison where he was to remain for the next eight years. The day he went to prison the prison chaplain met him and recognised him instantly, for the prison chaplain too had been a naval officer in the first war. “Pastor Niemoeller, why are you in prison?”, the chaplain had asked. “And why are you not?”, Niemoeller had replied.

The Christians of Mark’s era never had to ask why Nero was victimising them. They knew. They knew something else, however, and knew it more tellingly; they knew that the One who had stilled the storm on behalf of terrified disciples could still the panic that lapped at them. They knew that the Lord who had remained steadfast even when a disciple who pretended to be loyal (Judas) had proved treacherous; this Lord would fortify their steadfastness even as some in their fellowship would prove treacherous and betray them to Nero’s secret police.

Above all, the Christians of Mark’s era knew that the One who had been raised from the dead in defiance of Mr. Big would see them through their dying and would share his glory with them eternally.

When next we read Mark’s gospel we should think of a handful of Christians in a city of one million, tyrannised by an emperor whose cruelty the world will never forget. And then we should think of Jesus Christ our Lord, a villager from a one-horse town in Palestine who, being the Son of God, strengthened urban followers in the capital city of the empire. And then we should think of suffering, courageous Christians of any time or place, even as we praise God for the gospel of the One whom no power can defeat and from whom nothing can separate us, ever.

Victor Shepherd       

January 2002

 

Mark 1:13         Judges 6:19-24     Luke 2:8-14           Luke 22:43-44      Hebrews 13:2

They were always an embarrassment when I was a youngster. How could any boy who aspired to be a red-blooded male believe in angels? Besides, what exactly was I supposed to believe in? ghosts who also happened to be do-gooders? Only hysterical people believed in ghosts, and only silly people had any use for do-gooders! For most of the year I could remain relatively unembarrassed since angles didn’t appear in church-life for most of the year. But Christmas and Easter were especially embarrassing because on these festivals angels were especially prominent. In my old age, however, embarrassment has given way to wonder and gratitude. I shouldn’t want to be without the angels now. How do you feel about them?

 

I: — The Hebrew and Greek words for angel (malak and aggelos) simply mean “messenger”. In some cases what is in a writer’s mind is God himself acting as his own messenger. The clue to this use of “angel” is the expression, “the angel of the Lord”; not “an angel”, not “angels” but “the angel of the Lord”. If we examine the incidents surrounding this expression we see a common pattern emerge. Someone wrestles with the angel (like Jacob at the riverbank), or argues with it, or flees from it, or shouts at it, or trembles before it; then this person discovers, a day or two later, that she had been contending all along with the living, lordly, sovereign God himself. At the time she didn’t know exactly what she was contending with; a day or two later she knows she has been engaged in the most energetic struggle with God himself.

Another feature of the common pattern is this: when the person who was wrestling, arguing, fleeing, shouting or trembling finally grasps that it was GOD she had collided with, her experience of God stamps itself upon her so profoundly, so indelibly that she will never be able to doubt or deny that it was GOD. She will never be able to doubt or deny that this encounter has rendered her life forever different. “The angel of the Lord” is a Hebrew way of saying “I was seized by the living God himself; I didn’t know it at the time, but later I knew it to be God; this awe-ful experience has left me unable to pretend anything else; it has also left me unable to go back to what I was before the experience”. “The angel of the Lord” is God himself acting as his own messenger, stamping himself so startlingly, so clearly upon someone that this person will bear the impress of his stamp ever after. This person will never confuse the Holy One himself with any God-substitute.

Let us make no mistake: God-substitutes abound. In ancient Israel one such substitute was the golden calf. The spiritually obtuse knelt down before the golden calf. But did they? As a matter of fact no Israelite, however spiritually obtuse, pointed to a hunk of metal and said, “That’s my god”. What the Israelite worshipped was what the golden calf represented. The hunk of metal represented much. It represented a deity which the people could control. It represented a deity made in their image. No longer did they understand themselves as made in God’s image, subject to God’s judgement because of the discrepancy between what they had been made and what they had become. Now that they had a deity made in their image the deity was docile, harmless; it could even be manipulated.

The golden calf also represented ethnic advantage. After all, the Hittites had their deity, the Amorites theirs, the Philistines theirs; each of these ethnic groups claimed that their own deity gave them extraordinary advantage. Plainly Israel was not to be left behind. Israel was only too happy to exchange the sovereign ruler of the entire creation for an ethnic booster; at least the latter would give them whatever advantage they needed over their neighbours.

What about us modern types? We say, “He worships his car; she worships her house”. But of course he and she do nothing of the sort. She doesn’t worship her house; she worships what the 11,000 square foot home represents. It represents social superiority; which is to say, human superiority. He doesn’t worship his $80,000 automobile. He worships what it represents. Why, only two generations ago his grandfather had cow-manure on his boots. Today the 32 year old grandson displays his automobile as a monument to his achievement. Just think, a self-made man at 32, for which no one else need be thanked, a tribute to himself. When I was a teenager my minister remarked to me, “Imagine, Victor; your grandfather was a bricklayer and your cousin is a urologist!” Is my cousin somehow godlier, holier, better in any sense than my grandfather-bricklayer for possessing expertise at the water-works? In becoming a clergyman have I stalled the Shepherd family’s social ascendancy? We love the gods of our own making. They represent what we give ourselves to and give to ourselves; they reward us with what we have always craved.

Only a massive assault; only God’s own massive assault can shatter the gods of our own making, the delusions with which we delude ourselves. God’s own massive assault upon someone, leaving that person forever unable to doubt or deny — days later — that it was God; this is what scripture calls “the angel of the Lord”.

Professor Paul Vitz teaches psychology at New York University. As his work moved along, several years ago, he began to notice that psychology had ceased to be a description of how the human psyche functions; psychology had deified itself, elevated itself to the status of religion. Psychology had become a golden calf. People bowed down before it and did obeisance to what it represented. It put itself forward as the final judge of what is true and good; to probe one’s psyche was to engage ultimate reality; it had its own high priests, its own sacred vocabulary. Vitz — still an unbeliever at this point — was disturbed. He didn’t know yet precisely what, profoundly what it was that was disturbing him. A year or two later, as he came to faith in Jesus Christ (chiefly through reading C.S. Lewis), he knew what had been disturbing him all along: the angel of the Lord. His life has been different from that point and will be different forever. (When next you are looking for something to read pick up a copy of his book, Psychology as Religion.)

One of my friends grew up more or less agnostic. As a teenager he became aware that a cloud of unreality surrounded what most people regarded as substantial. As he came upon item after item of seeming substance riddled with unreality he set it aside. He set more and more aside until he was face-to-face with the one thing that he thought to be more substantial than it even appeared: evil, sheer evil, utter evil. He couldn’t doubt this; unable to doubt this alone, he found himself living in a world virtually unendurable. He languished in a dark night which he thought would never end. (After all, to be convinced only of the presence and pervasiveness of evil is to live in a very bleak world; to be convinced of this as a teenager when all of one’s adult life is still in front of oneself is that much worse.) Finally his languishing gave way to an encounter with the God who has triumphed over evil in his Son. All along — particularly in the bleak days when my friend thought he was contending with nothing more than evil — he was wrestling with the angel of the Lord. He came to see this, know it unshakably, and find himself altered by it forever.

 

II: — Now that you have a firm grasp of what is meant by “the angel of the Lord” — namely, not an angel at all but God himself forging himself upon us — let me tell you that this use of “angel” is not the more common use in scripture. More commonly throughout scripture “angel” means angel. More commonly “angel” means not God but rather a creature of God; not God himself but someone distinct from God.

One thing we notice right away in the bible’s portrayal of the angels is how many of them there are: there are swarms of angels. “Heavenly host” is how the description reads; “heavenly host” suggests innumerable angels, myriads.

Another feature of the angels: they are creatures of pure spirit; they do not have bodies of flesh like us. Like us they are creatures, not divine; unlike us they are not fleshly. Another thing we notice: their function is to witness to God by being servants of God. Because they unfailingly serve God they invariably witness to God.

What are you and I to make of all this? It is obvious, isn’t it, that in view of the heavenly host God’s creation is rich, richer than we have always thought. It’s obvious too that the creation is profoundly spiritual, pervasively spiritual, finally spiritual.

Most people think not. Most people insist that the material is real. To be sure, Christians would never deny that the material is actual. Trees and mountains, buildings and bridges are not imaginary. Nonetheless, Christians would also insist that there is a spiritual dimension to the creation much deeper than trees and mountains. Some people would argue that the realm of aesthetics is more real than the real of the material. Mozart’s music, Robert Frost’s poetry, Tom Thomson’s painting, Veronica Tennent’s dancing: all of this is oceans deeper than sticks and stones. Oceans deeper that it may be, it is yet not deep enough: the really deep depths everywhere in the creation are not finally aesthetic; they are finally spiritual.

Since this is the case, then everything we deal with every day has profound spiritual significance; everything has profound spiritual significance just because the heavenly host, the angels, surround everything at all times. Take the matter of hospitality. The unknown writer of the epistle to the Hebrews states, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”. With our shallower understanding we tend to think that hospitality — feeding someone in our home on Saturday evening — is to meet a physical need (for food), as well as a social need (for company), as well as a psychological need (for interchange with other minds). But if the universe is pervasively spiritual, profoundly spiritual (this is what the notion of angels means) then hospitality is fraught with spiritual significance. Our hospitality, after all, is an act which unfolds before God; it has to do with people who are creatures of God, people whom God longs to know and bless as they in turn know him. Therefore our hospitality has sacramental significance; our hospitality is used of God in ways not known to us as God secretly infiltrates the lives of those who sit at our dinner table. The mystery of God’s secret infiltration is something we cannot control, something we cannot measure, something we cannot even see immediately. But according to the apostles hospitality is the occasion of God’s secret infiltration as few other things are. Remember, to speak of the angels is to confess that the universe is ultimately spiritual.

Think about conflict. The marxist maintains that human conflict, at bottom, is the result of economic forces as the “haves” and the “have-nots” wage war. I should never want to deny the economic dimension to human conflict. The psychoanalyst maintains that human conflict, at bottom, is the result of primal intrapsychic drives which render our unconscious minds a battleground. I should never want to deny the psychoanalytic dimension to human conflict. The existentialist philosopher maintains that human conflict, at bottom, is the collision of competing wills as each person’s will is a will-to-power, a will-to-domination. I should never want to deny this dimension to human conflict.

All of these approaches have a measure of truth and therefore a measure of depth; but none goes deep enough, none is ultimately true. Human conflict, ultimately, is a spiritual problem, including the conflict within one’s self, the conflict with one’s self.

You must have noticed that Jesus is sustained by angels on two occasions of terrible conflict: when he was tried in the wilderness and when he was abandoned in Gethsemane. Conflict rages within him on these two occasions; and the conflict isn’t economic or psychoanalytic or philosophical: it is nakedly spiritual. In the wilderness he is tempted to undermine the kingdom of God; he is tempted to act on the seduction that there is a shortcut to the kingdom of God when in fact there is none; that his Father’s triumph can be won painlessly when in fact it cannot. What was at stake in his temptations? The salvation of every last one of us was at stake. Had he succumbed, you and I are lost eternally.

His temptation to avoid the cross and the dereliction is temptation to second-guess his Father. (This is outright unbelief.) It is temptation to secure first and last his own comfort and ease. (This is outright disobedience.) It is temptation to forsake us, the very people he has said he came for. (This is outright betrayal.) In Gethsemane his disciples sleep because they think that nothing is going on, when in fact spiritual conflict is raging. It rages so fiercely that our Lord needs additional resources, unusual assistance, to survive it — as he did in the wilderness three years earlier. When the gospel-writers tell us that he is assisted by angels they are telling us that his conflict is ultimately spiritual and unimaginably intense. If you and I think that our conflicts are anything other or anything less then we are shallow.

I have already spoken of the angels in connection with the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God occurs wherever God’s will is done perfectly. Every Sunday we repeat together, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will is done, done perfectly, in heaven right now. Scripture speaks of the heavenly host which bears witness to God’s kingdom. In other words, God has innumerable witnesses in heaven before he has so much as one witness on earth. The kingdom of God has come to earth, we know, in the person of Jesus Christ, for in him God’s will is done perfectly. The kingdom which he brings to earth with him is witnessed to by the myriad of angels. This means that God will always have innumerable witnesses on earth even if earth-born witnesses like you and me are sadly lacking in quality and quantity. I find immense comfort in what scripture says about the angels. However much I may fail my Lord in serving and attesting that kingdom he brings with him, there are other creatures whose service and witness never fail. And therefore the kingdom of God will eventually superimpose itself upon and subdue the kingdoms of this world.

Listen to Karl Barth, the pre-eminent theologian of our century, a thinker of the same stature as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin. Barth writes, “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth”. He wrote this a few years after World War II. Just before war had broken out Barth had been apprehended at his Saturday morning lecture in the University of Bonn, Germany. He had been deported immediately from Germany to his native Switzerland. As soon as hostilities with Germany had ceased the cold war with the Soviet Union had begun. While there was no war, hot or cold, in Switzerland, Barth never pretended that the Swiss were uncommonly virtuous; he readily admitted that his own country funded itself by harbouring the ill-gotten gains (the infamous unnamed accounts in the Swiss banks) of the most despicable criminals throughout the world. Nevertheless, “because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the…troubled state of things on earth”.

While we are speaking of the kingdom of God in the midst of a troubled earth you must have noticed that the two most angel-saturated developments spoken of in the New Testament are Christmas and Easter, the incarnation and the resurrection. Of course! The incarnation is God’s incursion of that world which he loves profligately yet which resists him defiantly. To see how much it resists him we need only look at Herod, who will go to murderous lengths in order to undo the beachhead God has established as he invades his world in his Son in order to reclaim it. So intense is the resistance that all of heaven’s resources must be mobilized to secure the beachhead and bear witness to it. At the resurrection of our Lord the angelic hosts appear again inasmuch as the victory God has won in raising his Son triumphant over the powers of death must be made known, witnessed to, throughout the cosmos. In view of the beachhead invasion which, once secured, is never retreated from; in view of the victory which, once won, is never undone on this troubled earth; in view of all this I think once more of Barth’s ringing declaration: “Because of the angelic witness to God’s kingdom we can never find intolerable or hopeless the apparently or genuinely troubled state of things on earth”. Isn’t it worth learning about the angels just to go home this morning with our hearts full of that?

In conclusion I want to make three brief statements which I do not have time to develop.

 

ONE Because the heavenly host reminds that in everything, everywhere in life we have to do with the spiritual, the single most important thing any of us can do is pray. Because we are dealing with the spiritual whenever we deal with any aspect or dimension of life, the quintessential human act is prayer.

 

TWO Because the angels bear witness to God, always pointing away from themselves to him whom they serve, the most angelic character the world has seen is John the Baptist. John lived only to point away from himself to Jesus Christ. John neither wanted nor expected an honourary degree nor a civic reception nor public recognition nor a special fuss made of him. He wanted only to direct everyone’s attention away from himself to his Lord, saying, “He must increase and I must decrease”.

 

THREE Because the angels magnify the glory of God on earth, therefore the earth, the world, human history are never ultimately bleak. Evil-ridden, yes; pain-ridden, yes; incapable of saving themselves, yes. Nevertheless because “our great God and Saviour” (to quote Paul) cherishes his creation, and because the angels magnify God’s glory on earth, God’s glory in our world, God’s glory in the midst of our history, our situation is never finally bleak. For that glory which the angels find everywhere we are given eyes to see here and there, and one day we too shall see it everywhere as the kingdom of God, hidden now, is made manifest to all.

When next you come upon the word “angel” you will know that either it refers to “the angel of the Lord”, God himself acting as his own messenger, stamping himself unmistakably upon us and altering us forever after; or the word “angel” refers to that spirit-creature whose witness to God is unambiguous just because its service of God is unrelenting. Then you must think of the heavenly host, myriads of angels which surround us especially during those episodes when our own resources are slender and only the resources of him who sustained his Son will do for us. And then you must remember that wherever we struggle in life, our struggle is finally spiritual, and will be until that day when the earth is no longer troubled and the kingdom of God has eclipsed the kingdoms of this world for ever and ever.

F I N I S

Victor A. Shepherd

April 1993

 

Mark 1:14-15

I: — I often find myself feeling haunted. Much haunts me these days.I am haunted by the “free-fall” decline of our national denomination, The United Church of Canada. I don’t pay much attention to membership statistics, for I know how inaccurate membership figures are and how easy they are to inflate. I take much more seriously the figures concerning Sunday worship attendance. No doubt they can be (and are) somewhat inflated too, but with them there isn’t the same tendency to gross exaggeration. In 1965 the average Sunday worship attendance was one million and sixty thousand; in 1996, thirty years later, it is 300,000. The Sunday worship attendance of our denomination today is only 28% of what it was thirty years ago. We have declined 72%. What is the future of our denomination? Since Sunday worship attendance declines by 25,000 people per year, how long will it be before no one is left? I shall leave the arithmetic to you.

I am haunted by the pronouncements of denominational spokespersons. In a recent position paper on scriptural authority the strongest affirmation the spokesperson could make concerning Jesus was that he is “mentor and friend.” Mentor and friend? This falls abysmally short of what the apostles knew Jesus Christ to be, what they gladly confessed before the world regardless of cost to them: he is Son of God, Saviour, Lord, Messiah of Israel, Judge, and Sovereign over heaven and earth. Mentor and friend? My favourite school teacher is that!

At the most recent meeting of General Council a former moderator declared, “Our church is dying; since it is going to die anyway, let’s use its remaining resources to drive our favourite agendas.” This is shocking. The church of Jesus Christ cannot be co-opted in the interests of socio-political agendas. The church is the body of Christ. To co-opt it (or try to) is to co-opt the head, Jesus Christ himself. As sole, sovereign head, our Lord will not be co-opted. Anyone who thinks that the body can be co-opted while the head remains complacent; anyone who thinks this is going to find herself sifted.

I don’t wish to suggest that all worshipping bodies throughout the church are shrinking. On the contrary, many are swelling. At the same time, the international bodies in the English-speaking world that have parented The United Church (such as Church of Scotland Presbyterianism and English Methodism) are dying too. Both the Church of Scotland and the English Methodist Church will disappear, virtually, soon into the next century.

When Maureen and I were in Oxford this summer I spoke with some British Methodists about their denomination’s morbidity. They laughed (blasphemously!) and chortled, “About the time we’re all washed up we’ll unite with the Anglicans.” I said nothing, but I couldn’t imagine a corpse marrying a corpse and bearing any kind of offspring.

I am haunted by our situation here in Streetsville. Our Sunday attendance is smaller now than it was fifteen years ago. On those Sundays when we receive new members, twenty or thirty people are added to the membership roll. This being the case, we should be having to hold three or four services every Sunday to accommodate the crowds. But no one had any difficulty finding a seat this morning.

I used to be haunted by the falling away of so many from each year’s confirmation class. I used to be haunted that we were “confirming” so many young people in a faith they didn’t possess. My disquiet here, however, has given way to a much greater disquiet: I am much more haunted now upon observing that when young people are confirmed, frequently their parents disappear. It seems that the parents attended worship for years only until their child could get “certified” in some sense, and then the parents disappeared, plainly possessed of no throbbing faith themselves. I am driven now to ask many questions about our congregation. For instance, what is the spiritual temperature here? Is it high enough to warm a cold heart to that heart’s flash-point? Fire we know has many properties; but surely the most characteristic property of fire is that fire sets on fire. Is the spiritual temperature here high enough to ignite someone?

I am haunted by myself, haunted by suspicions that niggle me concerning myself. On the one hand I am sure of — have never doubted — the truth and reality of Jesus Christ, my inclusion in him by faith and therefore my salvation from him, and my vocation to the ministry. While I am certain of all this I fear that the gospel-message is frequently obscured when it leaves my lips. I can’t help my philosophical turn of mind; I can’t help having to think critically. Nonetheless, by the time I have discussed life’s problems and perplexities; by the time I have anticipated objections and misunderstandings, does the gospel of Jesus Christ sound more complicated than the wiring diagram of a computer? In my efforts not to sound simplistic, has the simple truth of the gospel been clouded? Has that word, sharper than a two-edged sword, according to the book of Hebrews, been rendered more blunt and more flaccid than a frayed length of old rope? I fear that the weekly 2500-word sermon appears to be written on the head of a pin, when all the time the truth of God needs to be painted on a billboard.

II: — Our Lord himself frequently painted the word on a billboard. He never painted it more starkly than the day he declared, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” This one sentence from Mark’s testimony is as simple, as unadorned a declaration of the gospel as we’ll ever hear. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is upon you; repent — now!, and abandon yourself to God’s deliverance.” Jesus announces, “God has brought his patient yet anguished involvement with a wayward people to a climax; he has brought it all to a climax in me. The kingdom of God is here. It’s the new reality. Give yourself up to it, and never look back!”

(i) The English word “gospel” translates a Greek word that means “good news.” In the Hebrew bible (which Jesus knew rather well), “good news” always has to do with deliverance at God’s hand. The good news of Jesus, the good news of the kingdom, is God’s definitive deliverance. God’s ultimate deliverance is deliverance from sin, judgement, condemnation, death (so far as individuals are concerned); and deliverance from evil in all its manifestations, subtleties and repercussions (so far as the creation is concerned.)

God made you and me to be glad and grateful covenant-partners with him. Instead he finds us wayward, defiant, disobedient. Finally, however, there appears one human covenant-partner who renders the Father the glad and grateful obedience the Father is owed.

God is frustrated and saddened over and over as humankind succumbs to temptation as readily as a bear eats garbage. Finally, however, there is given to the world one human being upon whom temptation is concentrated and yet who does not yield.

God is shaken at the way evil scourges his creation, disfiguring people and warping nature. At a point in history chosen inscrutably by him he appoints his Son to be that agent by which the ironfast grip of evil on the entire creation is broken. In his Son God has established a beachhead where evil concentrates its assault yet doesn’t triumph, a beachhead from which the conquering one moves inland undoing evil’s disfigurements, exposing evil’s subtlety, besting evil’s persistence. Everything has changed now that someone greater than our cosmic foe has taken the field on our behalf.

Yet there remains one matter to consider. What is the fate of humankind in view of the fact that sin is endemic in humankind, sin is a contradiction of God’s holiness, and God finally won’t tolerate it? What is the fate of humankind in view of the fact that were God to wink at sin or ignore it or overlook it he would possess a character no different from Paul Barnardo’s? Of his incomprehensible mercy God has identified himself fully with the one whom he has given to us. God has so identified himself with the Nazarene that when that one bears in himself the Father’s just judgement on sin, the Father himself is bearing in himself his own judgement on sin.

It all adds up to something huge: in Jesus Christ a wholly new sphere has been forged for us. In him a new environment has been fashioned. Nothing less than a new world, a new creation, surrounds us. The kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God occurs wherever God’s will is done perfectly. In Jesus Christ the Father’s will for his creation is done. Then in Jesus Christ new “living room” has been fashioned where sin doesn’t pollute and evil doesn’t disfigure and hopelessness doesn’t dispirit and defeat itself is defeated. No wonder our Lord announces good news. Deliverance is now the sphere, the environment in which life unfolds — or at least in which it may. All we need do is enter the new sphere, enter the new environment, that now surrounds us.

(ii) To enter it is to repent. To repent is to turn, to make an about-turn. To make an about-turn is to return. And in fact everywhere in the Hebrew bible to repent is to return. To turn into the kingdom of God is to return to the God who made us, who laments over our departure from him, and who longs for our return.

When our Lord cries, “Repent, return”, he has in mind three startling images cherished by the Hebrew prophets before him.

(a) The first image is that of an adulterous wife returning to her husband. Adultery is horrific at any time. For adultery is the betrayal of the most intense intimacy; adultery is the violation of a promise; adultery is personally degrading; and adultery is a public humiliation of the faithful partner.

When Jesus cries, “The kingdom of God is upon you: Repent!”, he is urging us to return to the God whose son or daughter we are meant to be. To return is to recover that intimacy with God which is nothing less than our greatest good and our fullest humanity. To return is to uphold the promise we have made to him on countless occasions throughout our lives. To return is to leave off our self-degradation (for make no mistake: however much our society ridicules a doctrine of sin as “Victorian” or “Puritan” or even “mediaeval”, sin remains invariably degrading.) To return is turn from publicly humiliating God to publicly praising him for his incomprehensible patience.

(b) The second image of returning that the prophets cherished is that of pagan idol-worshippers returning to the worship of the true and living God. The Hebrew word for “idols” is “the nothings.” Idols are literally nothing. At the same time, only a fool would pretend that “nothing” is inconsequential. A vacuum is nothing, yet a vacuum has immense power: it sucks down everything around it. A lie is nothing, for a lie is a statement without substance. Yet lies destroy people every day. Delusions are nothing, for a delusion is without foundation. Yet deluded people are at best utterly misled and at worst out-and-out insane. Most tellingly, perhaps, is the fact that we are inevitably conformed to what we worship. To worship any of the “nothings” is to become nothing ourselves.

Since stubborn refusal of the kingdom of God is self-annihilation, why don’t we repent, return, and become someone, that child of God created in his image and impelled to cry, “Abba, Father”, eternally? When our Lord pleads with us to repent he is pleading with us to renounce our pursuit of nothing (the lie, the delusion, the spiritual vacuum) only to find ourselves plunged into truth and reality, the kingdom of God.

(c) The third image of repentance, return, found in the prophets is the image of rebel subjects returning to their rightful ruler. The rebel subjects have thought they could rule themselves, only to find that their inept attempts at self-rule left them chaotic and fragmented. Their rebellion was born of ignorance of themselves, and their ignorance was born of ingratitude to their sovereign. Grateful now to that rightful ruler who alone can subdue disorder, and possessed now of the self-knowledge that without him they are ungovernable, they return.

To repent is to return to that king apart from whose rule disorder will engulf us. Then the only sensible thing to do is suspend foolish rebellion and fall at the feet of the king himself.

(iii) “The kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe in the good news.” Everywhere in the Hebrew bible “good news” has to do with one thing: deliverance. To believe in good news is to welcome the deliverance; more than welcome it, abandon ourselves to it. We western people who are imbued with so much Greek philosophy that we assume that to believe something is to add it to our mental furniture; to believe is to increase our reservoir of ideas. But to eastern people, Jews, to believe is always to trust. To believe in the good news is to trust — entrust ourselves to — the deliverance that God has wrought for us.

For either we trust the righteousness of Christ in which we are clothed as we “put on” him in faith, or we hold up before God the rags of our self-righteousness, ragged and dirty in equal measure. Either we trust the victory of Jesus Christ over all that aims at sundering us from him forever, or we persist in attempting our own victories in the face of cosmic forces that laugh to see us so stupid. Either we trust the amnesty that the judge presses upon us just because he has absorbed into himself his own judgement upon us, or we try to exonerate ourselves before him, even as our defilement leaves him gasping in his holiness.

To believe in the good news is to renounce all pretence of self-deliverance and all delusion concerning the need for deliverance; to believe in the good news is to embrace the deliverer himself, to give ourselves up to him.

From time-to-time I feel somewhat alone in my zeal for the gospel and my passion to see people captured by the gospel. Whenever I begin to feel alone I recall Elijah, who felt similarly lonely, only to have God tell him that there were 7000 faithful Israelites who had not bowed their knee to Baal. As I recall the story of Elijah I remember that there are dozens in this congregation who have already heard our Lord’s announcement of the kingdom, returned in every sense cherished by the Hebrew prophets, and abandoned themselves to him in the new world he has fashioned.

Dozens here have already done this. Some, however, have not. Won’t you join us? Won’t you join us today?

                                                                       Victor Shepherd    

September 1997

 

Mark 1:14-20       Ezekiel 13:1-3    Romans 12:1-2        Matthew 20:29-34

 

I:– I had to see it to believe it. It happened on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. The Shepherd family was walking down a country road when a flock of sheep appeared walking up the road. The sheep detoured into a field. In order to detour into the field all they had to do was turn into the field. The first sheep, however, the lead sheep, had leapt over a sizeable rock that it could just as easily have trotted alongside; whereupon every last sheep in the entire flock had leapt over the rock too. Leaping over the rock was a wholly unnecessary complication. Still, the sheep who followed seemed incapable of understanding this; they simply did what the animal in front of them was doing. It was a lesson for me in the psychology of animal conformity.

Everyone is aware that there is a psychology of human conformity. People are easily led. People follow without thinking. Or at least what passes for “thinking” is simply an unconscious rationalization of conformity. Or what passes for “thinking” is merely the re-shuffling of the same old half-dozen items of their mental furniture. The utter mindlessness of it all is deadening.

And then Jesus appears with words on his lips that he repeats over and over: “Follow me!” He repeats himself in a hundred different contexts. “Follow me!” What’s he doing, anyway? Is he expecting to find a sheep-mentality in us? Is he trying to foster a sheep-mentality in us? Does he want to exploit it, the way self-serving political mesmerists have exploited a sheep-mentality? Does Christian discipleship reduce us to being a “camp-follower” of Jesus, “camp-follower” being a colloquial expression for someone who couldn’t think his way out of a phone booth and who has a dependency-problem as well?

As a matter of fact when Jesus cries, “Follow me!”, he wants to see none of this. When he cries, “Follow me!”, he is urging us to resist mindless conformity; he is calling us to defy social expectation; he is pressing us to think — genuinely think — rather than re-shuffle meagre intellectual furniture and re-mumble the half-dozen cliches that pass for “thought”. Our Lord’s call to follow him is a call to throw off the sheep-mentality, throw off social dependency, throw off thoughtless conformity.

II: — Let’s look more closely at Christ’s “Follow me!”, his call to discipleship. His call is a summons, a command. He isn’t suggesting that we follow him; not wishing that we might; he’s ordering us! “Follow me!” It’s a command. Coming from the Incarnate one himself, it’s a command weighted with the authority of God. We are summoned to follow him. (Plainly, there’s an urgency to the matter.) At the same time we are summonsed to follow him. (Plainly, there’s judicial authority here.)

Yet our Lord’s “Follow me!” isn’t command only; it is also invitation. Were his “Follow me!” command only, he would appear cold and coercive; on the other hand, were it invitation only, he would appear sentimental and helpless. His summons has the warmth of an invitation; his invitation has the authority of a summons.

There is yet another aspect to Christ’s “Follow me!” So far from the mindlessness of sheep-like conformity, Jesus insists that we think. And not merely think (think, that is, with the “old” mind), but rather that we acquire a new mind, a different mind, a mind shaped by the truth of God; a mind oriented to the kingdom of God. Following Jesus always entails doing the one thing that sheep don’t appear to do: think.

Ponder for a minute the place scripture gives to thinking. Think about the place scripture gives to the mind. We are to love God with our mind (Mark 12:30); we are to have the mind that was in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5); we are to have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16); we are to shun the senseless mind, the darkened mind (Rom. 1:21); we are to avoid the hardened mind (2 Cor. 3:14), the veiled mind (2 Cor. 3:15), the corrupted mind (Titus 1:15), the double mind (James 4:8). Just as we are to get rid of the base mind (Rom.1:28), we are to acquire a renewed mind (Eph. 4:23). More than merely acquire a renewed mind, we are to find ourselves transformed — head to toe, through-and-through, every which way — we are to find our entire self transformed, beginning with the renewal of our mind (Rom. 12:2). Discipleship never means sheep-like stupidity, unthinking conformity. Discipleship always includes the most rigorous thinking, thinking infused by the truth of God and oriented to the kingdom of God.

Whenever our Lord cries, “Follow me!”, he is ordering us to abandon ourselves to him; at the same time he is inviting us to join him in an exhilarating venture. And in all of this he’s insisting that we think with that renewed mind which scorns “dark” thoughts and “base” thoughts and “senseless” thoughts.

III: — How important is it to follow Jesus? It’s very important; in fact there’s nothing more important. Over and over in the written gospels we come upon our Lord summoning people, inviting people, to follow him. They do. Matthew stood up, left behind whatever it was that was preoccupying him, and followed. So did James and John, Peter and Andrew. The text tells us that these fellows “left everything behind and followed him.” Left everything? It means they threw in their lot with him; they held back nothing of themselves. They didn’t test the water with their big toe; instead they dived in. They didn’t negotiate a “trial discipleship”. (Not that our Lord would have negotiated any such thing.) Unlike Lot’s wife, who looked back, half-wistfully, at what she had left behind, only to find herself petrified; unlike Lot’s wife, they don’t look back. Instead they hear and heed the master when he says, “Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is someone not fit for the kingdom of God.”

If you and I are resolute in our following then we can only keep looking at Jesus. But because we are followers he is always ahead of us. Then to keep looking at him is always to be looking ahead. (To try to follow someone ahead of us while at the same time looking back behind us is simply to be what James calls “a double-minded person.”)

How important is it to obey the summons, to respond to the invitation? What could be more important in view of what ails us? What ails us is best seen in those who did follow Jesus in the days of his earthly ministry.

(i) Among his followers were tax-collectors. Tax-collectors were the bottom rung of Palestinian society. They were known as traitors, collaborators with the Roman occupiers, and greedy to boot. They were the most isolated people of their society. Those among them who followed Jesus found release from their acquisitiveness and relief from their inner anguish, plus company and camaraderie that they had never known before.

(ii) Among his followers were “sinners”. Isn’t everyone a sinner? Of course. But in first century Palestine “sinner” was the term used for people who weren’t religiously observant. They didn’t go to church on Sunday morning, they drank too much on Saturday night, they got pregnant when they shouldn’t have and got divorced when they felt like it (if they had even bothered to marry). And yet they found in Jesus the bone-deep truth and the undeniable solace that so much religion (let’s be honest) seems to obscure.

(iii) Among his followers were “crowds”. (“Multitudes” is the older word.) They were the people undistinguished in the vast sea of humanity. They weren’t notorious like the tax-collectors; they weren’t flagrant like the “sinners”; they were ordinary folk who suffered in the quiet way that all humankind suffers. Undistinguished in the mass, they were individually precious to the master. In following Jesus they knew something that no clever wordsmith could ever get them to deny: in the company of the master they found life brighter, happier, fruitful, promising.

(iv) Among his followers were two blind men. Blindness, in scripture, is both a distressing physical ailment and a metaphor for a much worse spiritual condition. A few people are physically blind — and this is bad enough; everyone is spiritually blind — and this is horrific. (The two blind men, in other words, represent all of us.) The two blind men hear of the approach of Jesus. They call out to him, “Son of David, have mercy on us.” “Son of David”: it means “Messiah”, the one in whom all of life’s wrongs are to be put right. Jesus stops before them and asks them what they want from him. “Give us our sight; just let us see.” He touches them. And immediately, Matthew tells us, immediately they follow him — out of gratitude.

All of us need to be made to see. How shall we enter the kingdom unless we first see it? How can we follow Jesus unless we first recognize him? Spiritual sight is ours at the master’s touch. Thereafter we follow him forever out of gratitude.

How important is it to follow? There is nothing more important than having what tax-collectors, “sinners”, crowds and blind men came to have from the master himself.

Are we not yet convinced? How important it is to obey the summons and rejoice in the invitation is obvious as soon as we look at what happens when we don’t follow — don’t follow Jesus, that is.

Peter tells us bluntly in his second letter. If we don’t follow Jesus, says Peter, then we “follow cleverly devised myths”. (2 Peter 1:16) “Cleverly devised myths” are the seductive “isms” that sweep up naive people, all the way from New Age pantheism to Old Age paganism to Every Age racism, ageism, classism, sexism, materialism.

In the second place, says Peter, if we don’t follow Jesus then we “follow our own licentiousness”. (2 Peter 2:2) The meaning of this is plain and there is no need to amplify it.

In the third place, Peter insists, if we don’t follow Jesus then we “follow the way of Balaam”. (2 Peter 2:15) Balaam, a figure from the older testament, was noted for his self-absorbing greed.

Not to follow Jesus is always to follow something better not followed at all. Then why not follow Jesus?

IV: — Those who did follow Jesus: what did they come to know? What did they come to have? What did they come to enjoy? In other words, what is the final outcome of discipleship?

(i) They came to know, have, enjoy an intimacy with the master himself that is finally indescribable. We must never undervalue this simple truth. We must never think that the final outcome of discipleship is doctrinal sophistication (important though this is) or a “world-view” that is supposedly better than someone else’s “world-view” or coping mechanisms for life that are better than anything the pharmacist sells. The outcome of our discipleship, the ultimate end of everything we do in church life, is intimacy with the living person of Jesus Christ.

I am moved every time I read Paul’s simple assertion, “I count everything loss (‘nothing’) because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Phil. 3:8) Paul doesn’t say that he valued everything about himself as nothing; he says that he valued everything about himself as nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ.

Then what is there about the apostle that is otherwise so very valuable?

He is a Roman citizen. Few residents of Rome every got to be citizens of the great city. And non-residents? Fewer still. A non-resident Jew who is a citizen? This was so very rare that Paul belonged to a most exclusive elite. Moreover, in a day when a few people were allowed to purchase their citizenship, Paul reminded a Roman military officer who had purchased his citizenship that he, Paul, hadn’t purchased his: he had been born a citizen. Paul’s father or grandfather had rendered outstanding service to the Roman cause, and had been rewarded with a citizenship that was passed down from father to son. Paul belonged to a very privileged class.

He is also a “Hebrew of the Hebrews”. This means that Aramaic is his mother-tongue. To be sure, he speaks Greek fluently, like anyone born in Tarsus, but he speaks Aramaic as his mother-tongue. Jews born outside of greater Jerusalem tended to speak Greek as their mother tongue. If a Jew born outside of Jerusalem spoke Aramaic as mother-tongue it meant that he belonged to one of the old-money, aristocratic Jewish families. It was like being a Kennedy in Boston or a Molson in Montreal or a Massey in Toronto. Paul belongs to the topmost social class.

He is also a Pharisee; that is, he is faultless in his religious observances.

He never says that all of this is a trifle. (His Roman citizenship certainly wasn’t a trifle the day he called on it to spare himself a lynching!) He says it’s all a trifle compared to the surpassing worth of his intimacy with Jesus Christ.

To follow Jesus is to know, and have, and enjoy as much ourselves.

(ii) In the second place to follow is to be admitted to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God being the present world, now capsized, turned right side up once again. To follow is to see that “kingdom of God” isn’t just another term for the world around us. Neither is at an aspect of the world, or an extension of the world. The kingdom of God is this world contradicted and corrected.

Think of power. The world looks upon power as the capacity to coerce. But in the kingdom of God, power is the capacity to fulfil God’s purpose — when God’s purpose is characteristically fulfilled by what the world regards as powerlessness (the cross, the foolishness of preaching, the social insignificance of the Christians in Corinth). Plainly, the kingdom of God is the contradiction and correction of the world.

Think of gainful employment. Why do we work? There are many reasons why we work: we need to sustain ourselves materially, non-work is psychologically stressful, work gives expression to education and training. But those with kingdom-understanding hear the apostle Paul when he says (Ephesians 4) that we are to work diligently and honestly in order to help those in need.

Think of vice. When the world mentions “vice” it has in mind the most lurid expressions of sexual irregularity. But subtle dishonesty and “profitable” shortcuts here and there? This is something of which people boast. Scripture, on the other hand groups the most lurid sexual irregularity and simple covetousness together, since in the kingdom of God they are alike, and in the same degree, manifestations of sin.

To follow Jesus is to be admitted to the kingdom of God, which kingdom is our present world contradicted and corrected.

(iii) To follow, lastly, is to gain knowledge of ourselves. Think of Peter. Peter is a fisherman. Jesus tells him he will soon be “fishing” for men and women. Of himself Peter cannot — and knows he cannot — “catch” other human beings for that kingdom which will never be shaken. Yet in time he finds himself doing what he never could do of himself.

He is told that when the heat is turned up he will melt down and deny his Lord over and over. He protests that he will never do this — only to find that he melts down worse than ever he thought he would, so treacherous is he under pressure. Yet when he recovers he’s not left knowing himself to be coward and failure and traitor. The event that acquaints him with the treachery he never thought he had in him is the same event that commissions him the leader of the young church in Jerusalem. Think of what he’s learned about himself now: he can become an enthusiastic disciple, insist naively that he won’t crumble, crumble shamefully, and none the less finally find himself exalted as the leader of Christ’s fellow-followers.

What is there yet for you and me to learn about ourselves? We are going to learn it only as we, like Peter, cry to Jesus, “We have left everything and followed you!”, only to hear Jesus say to us, “There is no follower who won’t get it all back a hundredfold, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10: 28-30)

Myself, I want only to follow, keep on following, keep on following ever more closely.

 

                                                                 (V. Shepherd May 2002)

 

Mark 1:40           2 Corinthians 5:20        2 Corinthians 7:6

 

When I was a child few things delighted me more than a kaleidoscope. I was fascinated endlessly by the bright colours, the rich patterns, the ever-changing arrangements as the kaleidoscope was rotated ever so slightly. To be sure, each pattern was repeated several times over, depending on how many mirrors the kaleidoscope had in it. Yet whenever it was rotated a new pattern, an unforeseeable pattern, always emerged.

I am no longer a child. Words have become my kaleidoscope, biblical words especially. Word-patterns delight me; more than delight me, they instruct me, enrich me, magnify my faith and my hope and my love and finally my gratitude to God.

One New Testament word that is found in a variety of patterns has helped and encouraged me for years, the word PARAKALEO. Its meaning is easy to grasp. KALEO means “to call”; PARA, “alongside”. PARAKALEO, “to call alongside”. The root meaning is always to call alongside, to call someone else alongside us. As the one word is used in different contexts its meaning takes on slightly different shades. It means to ask for help, to beseech, to beg, to plead, to urge, to exhort, to entreat; it even means to comfort.

Today we are going to look through the word-kaleidoscope, only to find ourselves helped immensely as we rotate it slightly and are given new riches in our Christian life.

 

I: — Let’s begin with the apostle Paul’s urgent plea in 2 Corinthians 5: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God!” “We beseech you.” The “we” are Paul and his fellow-apostles. He is pleading with his readers, “We have taken our stand with Jesus Christ; in his company we have found ourselves reconciled to God. Won’t you come and stand alongside us? We are calling you alongside us. Come! Stand with us! We beseech you. Be reconciled to God!”

Actually Paul’s urgent plea is his appeal at the end of his declaration of the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is the provision God has made in Christ, specifically in the cross, for sinners who are living at this moment under condemnation. Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus reminded his hearers every day ultimate loss is possible; and not only possible, inevitable — apart from our seizing in faith him who is God’s provision for us. “We beseech you. We’re calling to you; come and stand alongside us as we stand with Jesus Christ; for then you too will be reconciled to God, and the just judge will henceforth be your eternal Father.”

The “standard-brand” churches in North America are declining. Declining? They are crashing! Crashing? They have already crashed and are now burning up.

Is this regrettable? We ought not to grieve at the disappearance of institutions that have used the name of Jesus Christ but have disdained him and his truth. For 100 years the United Methodist Church (U.S.A.) has had a theology so dilute, so anaemic, that it didn’t have enough gospel in it to save a humming-bird. The United Methodists also pioneered frivolity that was worse than frivolity. (For instance, a Methodist clergyman “married” two mynah birds, and was left undisciplined by the denomination.) Currently the denomination is a leader in “political correctness” and the myriad causes connected with political correctness — all of which contradict the gospel. The United Methodists have lost 35% of their members in the last few years and don’t know how to stop the haemorrhage.

The Presbyterians in the U.S.A. are going down like a team of sky-divers without parachutes. It was the American Presbyterians who introduced the “Sophia” blasphemy, the feminized paganism — out-and-out paganism — that speaks (among other things) of the sacramental significance of women’s body-fluids. (Lest we appear to be singling out the American Presbyterians we should note that our denomination sent over 50 delegates to the Sophia conference.)

Speaking of our own denomination, the year I commenced studying theology (1967) my own pastor preached an advent sermon on John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave…”. Here he cut off the text. Still, I assumed that the remainder of the text was implied. I was wrong. “For God so loved the world that he gave. And we (Rhodes Avenue congregation) should therefore give cash instead of food hampers to disadvantaged people at Christmas. Food hampers are demeaning; cash isn’t. Therefore cash should be given. After all, God gave, didn’t he?” I refrained from leaping out of my pew and asking out loud, “Does the text tell us that God gave cash?” But I did go home heartsick and ashamed.

Richard Niebuhr, an American thinker, commented 50 years ago concerning the anaemic pulpit pronouncements of his era, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

We have expected God to sustain a church just because the word “church” appears in the bulletin or on the signboard. Yet I trust we have not forgotten our Lord’s insistence that he will deny those who deny him. I trust we are not “lounging” on his promise, “On this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it”, for his promise presupposes the “rock” of Peter’s confession of Jesus Christ himself. Where the “rock” isn’t honoured, there is no promise.

I have long been haunted by my failure to declare the gospel as unambiguously and as forthrightly as the master himself insists it should be. In the days of his earthly ministry our Lord’s opponents faulted him and his followers for not observing all the ritualistic niceties around ceremonial hand-washing. “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?”, they asked Jesus venomously. As always, Jesus didn’t answer their question; instead he replied with his own question: “Why do you fellows transgress the command of God?” Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, fully in the hearing of his opponents, “Those fellows are blind guides; leave them alone.”

Our Lord didn’t hesitate to state directly, starkly, even confrontationally, that there are individuals and groups and organizations who are so far from being spiritually helpful as to be no more than blind guides. Are we so bent on being inoffensive that we have lost our capacity to distinguish between gospel and gobbledegook? Would we rather appear to agree with an unbelieving world than appear to stand with Jesus?

A parishioner in Streetsville who cherishes me told me if the preaching here became any more stark it would sound shrill. Perhaps it would. But I am willing to take the risk.

Others have complained that the gospel (not my preaching, now, but the gospel itself) is narrow. I admit that it is narrow. After all, according to the apostles Jesus Christ alone is the incarnate one. He alone is the sovereign one, ruling over the entire creation. Through him alone and for him alone there has been made all that exists. The apostles are therefore entirely consistent with all of this when they cry, “…there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Narrow? The effectiveness of a knife depends on the narrowness of its cutting edge. Only the narrowest-edged scalpel can do life-saving surgery; no surgeon can operate with a crow-bar!

Do I sound shrill? narrow? The gospel is razor-sharp! Only such a gospel, says the book of Hebrews, penetrates profoundly and cuts curatively.

“We beseech you, we implore you, we plead with you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. We are calling you to come alongside us. For we, like Philip and Nathanael, have found the Messiah. Oddly, he’s from a one-horse town, Nazareth. But don’t let that put you off; he is God’s provision for a world lost apart from him. Come alongside us, stand with us and find out for yourselves.”

 

II: — As we turn the kaleidoscope ever so slightly a subtly different pattern appears. The root meaning is still “to call alongside”. In the new pattern, however, the word isn’t used to call neighbours alongside us to stand with Jesus; now the word is used to call Jesus himself alongside us, to call Jesus alongside us who are believers; to call Jesus closer alongside us who have already taken our stand with him and now know that we need him more urgently than ever. In the new pattern the word means to ask for help; any kind of help.

In the written gospels a Roman officer is found beseeching Jesus on behalf of his paralyzed servant. People bring a blind man to Jesus and beg him to grant him sight. A leper comes to Jesus beseeching him to cleanse him.

Of course help is sought for physical complaints: leprosy, paralysis, and so on. Nevertheless, everywhere in the written gospels physical distresses are also symbols of spiritual distresses. Deafness is a physical distress that our Lord relieves, to be sure; at the same time it is a symbol for that spiritual deafness which is an inability to hear and obey the word of God — a much greater distress. Blindness is terrible in itself; worse still is that spiritual blindness whereby we cannot even see the kingdom of God (says Jesus — John 3:3), much less enter it.

When people beseech Jesus, beg Jesus, call him alongside, regardless of what they call him alongside for initially, ultimately they are calling him alongside for spiritual relief and restoration. They are calling him alongside themselves inasmuch as they can no longer endure their own spiritual deformities and disfigurements, believers that they are.

How do we know what spiritual defects and deficits beset us? The longer we spend in the company of Jesus the more surely they are pointed out to us in any number of ways.

After a church meeting one day a man put his arm around my shoulder and kindly said, “Victor, you have many gifts — and gentleness isn’t one of them. It is a fruit of the Spirit, you know; it is a characteristic of Christ’s people. Think about it.” I didn’t need to be told any more.

The man who put his arm around me and told in the proper context for such telling wasn’t suggesting for minute that I turn wimpy or faint-hearted. He simply knew that unnecessary abrasiveness has nothing to do with quiet strength. The word that is most commonly translated “gentleness” or “meekness” in the New Testament is used in classical Greek of a wild horse that has been tamed but whose spirit has never been broken. A wild horse is of no use; a tame horse whose spirit has been broken is also of no use. A wild horse, however, now tamed, but still spirited: this is what the New Testament has in mind when it speaks of Jesus himself and his people as “gentle” or “meek”.

When the man of whom I have spoken acquainted me with a spiritual deformity that had gone unnoticed for too long, I knew I had to search my heart, go to my knees, and fall on my face before God in repentance. At the same time I knew that there are — there must be — so many other defects and deficits that shouldn’t be ignored.

Now don’t think all of this depresses me. On the contrary, it cheers me; after all, I’m being helped; I’m moving ahead in my discipleship. Continued repentance doesn’t spell chronic depression. Just the opposite: continued repentance spells constant improvement! It is in this spirit that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, 1517. It is in this spirit that Luther penned his first thesis: “When our Lord said `Repent’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

Now to say that continued repentance spells constant improvement rather than chronic depression is certainly true. At the same time, I shouldn’t want to say that as the mirror is held up to us a tear or two is never in order. When the hymnwriter cries,

true lowliness of heart,
which takes the humbler part
and o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing

— when I hear this I know the hymnwriter is right. When Peter wept upon realizing how shabby his treatment of Jesus had been in the courtyard are we going to say that Peter ought not to have wept? that his response was exaggerated? that it was a sign of mental ill-health?

Frequently in sermons I mention my favourite 17th century Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. Watson, I find, is the most helpful spiritual diagnostician I have come upon. He is also master of the pithy, penetrating word. Concerning our ongoing repentance Watson writes, “Such as will not weep with Peter shall weep like Judas.” Myself, if I have a choice between weeping with Peter or weeping like Judas, it will always be with Peter. Peter, restored, became a leader whom people so venerated that they counted it an honour just to have his shadow fall on them. Judas, on the other hand, was said to have gone “where he belonged”.

When a friend, (or an enemy, for that matter) or our spouse, or any gospel- sensitive puts the finger on our lingering depravity (which lingers despite our having stood with Jesus) we can only call out for the Master to come closer alongside us, since like the blind man and the leper and the paralytic we need help.

 

III: — We rotate the kaleidoscope slightly once more and a slightly different pattern emerges again. The root meaning of the word is still “to call alongside”, but in the new context it means “to comfort”.

Scripture everywhere makes plain that the profoundest comfort comes from God. Paul speaks of him as “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort”. (2 Corinthians 1:3) Yet even as Paul says that God is the God of all comfort he also says that he (Paul himself) is comforted by the presence of any number of Christians. Elsewhere in his correspondence Paul says it is God who comforts the downcast, while in the same sentence he writes that God comforted a downcast Paul through the visit of Titus. (2 Corinthians 7:6)

Hasn’t this been your experience a thousand times over? To be sure, occasionally when I have been downcast the person who proved to be the vehicle of God’s comfort “mysteriously” appeared at my door or at my office or on the telephone. More frequently, however, when downcast I have deliberately “called alongside” me another person whom I expected to be humanly helpful — only to have found this person an unknowing vehicle of the comfort of the One who is the God of all comfort.

When Paul found Titus to be a comfort it wasn’t merely that Paul was feeling a bit lonely one day and thought it would be pleasant to see a friendly face. On the contrary, when Paul found Titus a comfort Paul had been speaking of himself as “afflicted at every turn: fighting without and fear within”. Every day the apostle had to struggle. Every day he was immersed in conflict: conflict with political authorities who wanted to abuse him, or imprison him, or even execute him (which they did eventually); conflict with his own ethnic group that looked upon him as a traitor; conflict most painfully with fellow-Christians whose immaturity, pettiness, and failure to grasp all of the gospel and all of its implications sandpapered him. “Fighting without and fear within”: it sounds unrelievable! And yet relief! the comfort of a fellow-believer whose presence, manner, word, affection were everything! A fellow-believer who came alongside and — without ever intending to — became the vehicle of God’s own comfort.

I don’t wish to illustrate my own experience here, for to do so would embarrass several people who are here this morning. But I am unembarrassed to say that the apostle’s word rings true with me just because his experience with Titus and my experience with those I cannot name are identical.

I am no longer a child. I rarely pick up a kaleidoscope today. But I constantly pick up the book that testifies of Jesus Christ and testifies of the experience of so many of his followers. The words in the book are like a kaleidoscope to me: brilliantly coloured patterns that change slightly as settings shift.

PARAKALEO: it means to call someone alongside.

We call others alongside us to take their stand with Jesus. This is evangelism.

We call Jesus himself to come alongside us — closer alongside us — for we need help with our residual depravity. This is serious discipleship.

We call fellow-believers and our Father himself alongside us when we are beset with “fighting without and fear within”, only to find that fellow-believers are the vehicle of our Father who is himself the God of all comfort.

I have moved beyond childhood; but the child’s delight, the child’s amazement, the child’s thrill — this I never want to get beyond. For the word of God is as endlessly rich as you and I are endlessly needy.

                                                                  Victor A. Shepherd     

October 1995

 

Mark 4:1-9; 13-25

1] I have seen the Douglas Fir trees in the coastal region of British Columbia. The Douglas Firs are magnificent: their height, their circumference, their mass, their age (400 years old, in some cases.) To behold the Douglas Firs is to find oneself awed at their splendour, their resilience, their immensity.

As often as I see this arboreal magnificence it never occurs to me exclaim, “What a waste! Think of how few trees grew up compared to all the fir cones that fell to the forest floor.” Upon seeing the Douglas Firs you would never say, “What’s so very impressive? Ninety-nine per cent of the cones that fell upon the ground rotted away without remainder.” Anyone who spoke like this we’d regard as deficient on several fronts.

 

2] In the parable of the sower and the seed, a parable about a huge amount of seed sown and little seed that comes to anything, we have an incident from the earthly life and ministry of Jesus himself. This gospel incident occurred around 30 A.D. when Jesus was moving around Palestine. Mark wrote his gospel about 68 A.D., almost 40 years later. Plainly Mark thought the gospel incident to be something the Christians in Rome needed to hear in 68. Indeed they did. For by 68 emperor Nero was on the rampage. Whether sane or not, Nero was certainly savage. He persecuted Christians relentlessly, covering some in pitch and setting them on fire, feeding others to wild animals, and crucifying others still. The Christian community in Rome wasn’t large; every day it seemed to be getting smaller. Its leaders were saying to each other, “We’ve spent 40 years sowing the seed of the gospel. So little seems to have come of it, since the church remains numerically small.” Then church leaders asked themselves another question, a haunting question: “Since sowing the seed of the gospel engenders faith in Jesus Christ, and since faith in Christ entails public confession of Christ, and since public confession brings on savage persecution, is it right for us to go on sowing the seed of gospel? Should we be inviting people to their execution?”

Mark knew that the answer to their question was to be found in the earthly utterances of Jesus, which utterances had circulated orally for 40 years. Mark knew it was time to commit these earthly utterances of Jesus to writing so that Christians would always have them. And so Mark wrote his 16-chapter gospel, containing the parable of the sower (together with the explanation of the parable.) Mark knew that Christ’s word 40 years earlier would inform and sustain and direct his fellow-Christians in Rome now.

 

3] Actually the parable of the sower (as we’ve been taught to call it) is really a parable about soil. It’s a parable about different kinds of soil.

The first kind of soil is a footpath whose earth passers-by have trampled down rock-hard. The seed never even penetrates this kind of soil. The seed sits on the surface, but only for a minute before the birds eat it up. The birds? For those slow to understand (people like us) Jesus explains, “Satan immediately takes away the word that’s been sown on these hardened people.” So far as the gospel is concerned, these people are simply inert.

The second kind of soil is rocky ground. The situation of the people likened to rocky ground is more complex. In fact there are three phases to their response when they hear the gospel.

Phase 1 The seed of the gospel germinates in them. As it germinates and takes root new life appears and these people rejoice. The gospel brings peace and freedom. Their new-found peace and freedom exhilarate them. Joy!

Phase 2 Their endurance is but momentary. They thought they saw signs of stability and endurance in themselves, but the signs they thought they saw are deceptive.

Phase 3 Defeat overtakes them. They are defeated at the onset of hardship. To be sure, the seed of the gospel germinated in them; it even took root; life appeared; but it didn’t last. Hardship snuffed it out. Hardship exposed their shallow root system as so very shallow as not to be able to sustain them.

The third kind of soil is a brier patch. The seed of the gospel germinates in these people too, bringing them to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Their faith is genuine. It develops and appears full of promise. While it appears full of promise, however, it never matures in that distractions, many different distractions, find it withering from neglect. What are the deadly distractions? Jesus mentions “the cares of the world, the delight in riches, and the desire for other things.”

We must be sure to understand that the cares of the world are just that: cares. They aren’t trifles; they aren’t trivia; they aren’t toys. They are legitimate cares: earning a living, raising children, caring for aged parents, finding accommodation, coping with illness. Our Lord never pretends these cares aren’t legitimate. Even so, he says and we should note, if they distract us they are spiritually lethal. The cares are legitimate; the distraction which they occasion isn’t. Then we mustn’t allow cares to distract us.

Ever since I was old enough to reflect on the Christian life and challenges to it, I’ve been inspired by people whose challenges didn’t find them distracted but who fended off the illegitimate distraction of cares that were legitimate in themselves. These people, inspiring me repeatedly for 50 years, stand out for me like beacons, lighthouses, even icons. One such person was my maternal grandfather. During the depression my grandfather worked in the factory of the Ford Motor Company in Windsor. Factory workers in those days were paid a pittance. My grandfather had to support a wife and four teenaged children. He was out of work for five months in 1930 and six months in 1931. Throughout this period his family walked to church every Sunday, and every Sunday my grandfather placed his offering in the offering plate. My mother tells me their neighbours in the working class neighbourhood where they lived thought my grandfather crazy because he went to church to praise God in the midst of the “Great Depression”, while fellow church-members thought him crazy because he contributed his offering when he had no work. Jesus says the cares of the world are genuine cares; the distraction that they can occasion, however, is without excuse.

There are distractions in addition to the cares of the world, says Jesus. These other distractions are the delight in riches and the desire for other things. There’s nothing legitimate about them. They pander to and foster what’s basest in us: envy, greed, craving for social superiority. Of themselves, the delight in riches and the desire for other things are nothing but frivolousness and foolishness and frippery. These distractions are shallow, as shallow as cares are profound. Still, whether profound or shallow, distractions are distractions. They cause to wither that developing faith which to date has given every indication of flourishing. Distractions appear to be insignificant. But in matters of the Spirit, says Jesus, distractions are as deadly as Satan’s most frontal assault.

The fourth kind of soil is fertile soil, uncluttered, receptive. The seed that is sown here germinates, takes root, develops, matures; all with the result that astonishing fruitfulness appears. The yield is mind-boggling. Jesus speaks of the yield as 30 times greater than the quantity of seed sown, 60 times greater, even 100! We shouldn’t overpress the arithmetical analogy; our Lord means us to understand that the yield is so munificent as to be incalculable. Only 25% of the seed ever matures (without overpressing the arithmetic)? But the 25% that does mature yields a fruitfulness that no one can add up.

 

4] By 68 A.D. Christians in Rome were lamenting to each other, “So much sowing, and so few results.” Whereupon Mark brought forward and wrote up a word from the earthly ministry of Jesus 40 years earlier: “Keep on sowing; one day the yield will be and be seen to be astonishing.”

There’s more to be said. In the teaching that immediately follows the parable of the sower Jesus says, “No one who possesses a lamp puts it under a basket or hides it under abed. Anyone who possesses a lamp holds it up so that the light which has enlightened him may enlighten others in turn.” We who are disciples are never to deliberate with ourselves as to whether we should bother holding up the light or whether there’s any point to it. Our only task is to hold up the light that has enlightened us and leave the rest to God.

In the teaching that follows the teaching that follows the parable of the sower; that is, in the final teaching concerning the incident, Jesus says to the disciples, “Unless you relay the good news of the kingdom, you yourselves will lose what’s been given you. So be sure to pass it on. Your own vision and hearing grow only as you hold up the light and declare the truth. So just be sure that you keep on sowing seed.”

 

5] No one who looks at a new-born baby; no one sharing the joy of the parents in their long-awaited child; no such person says dejectedly, “Think of all the other spermatozoa wasted.” No one says this. No one standing among the Douglas Firs says, “Think of all the fir cones wasted.” Jesus says, “Yes, I’m aware that relatively little seed thrives and bears fruit; but the fruit that appears is of such magnitude and magnificence that to behold it is to think of nothing else.” Our Lord tells us that our only responsibility is to keep sowing the seed of the gospel, keep holding up the light that has possessed us, keep keeping on, never doubting that one day a yield will arise that will leave us adoring him who does all things well.

The young people whom we are about to confirm in the faith of the holy catholic church have been nurtured in Sunday School and home, as well as more recently, intensively in our confirmation class. (No one has ever accused me of lacking intensity.) With our Lord’s parable in mind we aren’t going to speculate about the degree of fruitfulness in them or lament the unfruitfulness of so many who have gone before them. We are going to anticipate, from some of them at least, yields of 30 times seed sown, or 60 times, even 100.

 

                                                          Victor Shepherd
May 1999

Mark 4:1-20; 26-32

Agriculture is a science. Today’s farmer doesn’t step out into a field and throw seed around willy-nilly. Instead he does germination tests on the seed he’s about to sow; he fertilizes the land with scientifically prepared materials; he cultivates the soil with highly technicized farm machinery; he treats the soil chemically to eliminate anything that might blight the crop.  Finally the farmer is ready to plant.

At the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry this was unknown. A farmer who wanted to plant simply picked up a handful of seed and threw it. The wind scattered it.  Some of the seed managed to fall on fertile soil, while some did not.

 

I: — The first parable we are examining today is that of the sower.  It’s about someone who simply scatters seed, keeps on scattering seed, never relents in scattering seed, and then awaits the harvest, knowing that there’s nothing else to be done.

To whom is this parable addressed?   It’s addressed to discouraged disciples. The disciples weren’t long following Jesus and embodying his mission before discouragement overtook them.  They noticed that religious leaders bitterly opposed the master.  His own family thought him deranged and deemed him a public embarrassment. The crowds, while often large, were also largely superficial and fickle.  The disciples began asking themselves, “Why are the results of our work so meagre? We have discerned the kingdom of God , present among us inasmuch as Christ the king is present with us, and it seems that most others couldn’t care less.  Or if they do care, they misunderstand the kingdom more often than not. And even if they don’t misunderstand it, they appear so easily deflected from it, so quick to give it up when difficulty comes upon them, so ready to acclaim Jesus today and accommodate his detractors tomorrow.  In light of all this, what are we supposed to do?  Perhaps we should expect less from our work, even give up on it.”

To discouraged disciples, then and now, Jesus replies, “A farmer scattered seed.  Not all of the seed ultimately yielded a harvest.  In fact most of the seed didn’t produce a harvest. But some of it did. Some of it always will. Therefore you fellows should keep on sowing. Sowing is the only responsibility you have.  It isn’t up to you to decide how effective your work is.  Simply know that your work is never pointless; some of the seed you sow will unfailingly yield a harvest.”

When my family lived in Edmonton (1938-1949) my father went to the Federal Penitentiary every Sunday afternoon for eleven years to conduct worship for convicts doing “hard time” and to preach at the service as well.         One day when I was about fifteen years old myself and had newly become aware of the “hard cases” who inhabit maximum security penitentiaries and I was beginning to wonder how some of these fellows would have looked upon my dad, I asked my father, “Did you ever see any results of the eleven years you spent in the prison?”   He looked at me as though I were benighted, as if I were ignorant of the way the gospel works and the faithfulness required of those who are wedded to its mission. He looked at me squarely and said quietly, “I never did it because I expected to see results. I did it because it was right.” In other words, my father believed the parable.  He believed that his sole responsibility was to sow.  (I must tell you, however, that one day when my parents were sitting together on an Edmonton streetcar a young man boarded the car, recognized my father, and leaned over to have a few words with him. My mother asked my dad who the young man was.  “One of the fellows I saw every Sunday afternoon”, said my dad; “he’s been released, and he wanted to tell me how grateful he is for the turnaround in his life.”)

I am asked constantly, “Shouldn’t the church be concerned with converting people?”   My reply always startles people who assume they know what I’m going to say. “No”, I answer; “the church should never be concerned with converting people.  Only the Holy Spirit (that is, God himself in his most intense, intimate presence and power) can turn people to himself.  Our responsibility is never to convert; our responsibility is to bear witness, to commend, to evangelize.  Witness is our responsibility; effectiveness is God’s responsibility.” At this point the person who asked the question is often startled, surprised that her gentle question drew such an emphatic response.  Even so, I’m not finished.  “Any church that tries to convert (“tries” since no church can, God alone being able to convert) invariably persecutes.  Sooner or later it will persecute.  What’s more, any church that tries to convert people to God announces to the world that it doesn’t believe in God, since it doesn’t trust God to do God’s own work, the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus tells disciples of any era that their responsibility is to sow seed, and keep on sowing it.  What happens after that is beyond their control and therefore not their concern. They should ensure that they don’t fail to fulfil their commission, even as they trust God to fulfil his promise. They should ensure that they continue to do what they have been charged to do, and leave God to do what he has pledged himself to do.  Anything else is an expression of atheism.

From time-to-time I hear it said of a minister that he’s had an effective ministry and as a result he’s a success. The success of Rev. Snodgrass demonstrates his effectiveness.  I don’t understand this talk.  Is Rev. Snodgrass successful inasmuch as Sunday crowds are large?  A burlesque show would draw an even bigger crowd.  Does it mean that cash flow has increased?  A congregational lottery would boost the cash flow out of sight.

Perhaps someone wants to say that genuine “success” in anyone’s ministry is stronger discipleship among those to whom the minister ministers; not to mention self-disregarding love for each other, as well as greater sensitivity to God’s Spirit, and of course more resolute, cheerful obedience. Yes.  This, and this alone is genuine “success” – and this is known only to God. It’s impossible to measure all of this and write it up for the year-end congregational report. All of this is known to God alone, and he alone is to be credited for it.  Fruitfulness (what we label “success”) is his prerogative; faithful sowing is our task.

In the parable we are probing together Jesus makes it plain that most of the seed the farmer sows, whether it germinates and grows for a while or not, doesn’t last long enough to produce a harvest. But some of it does; some of it always does. Only 25% of the seed sown comes to harvest, yet the harvest that it yields is magnificent: 30-fold, 60-fold, even 100-fold.

To disciples discouraged by the apparently meagre results of their work Jesus says, “A farmer sowed a lot of seed. Not much of it produced anything that lasted. Most of it didn’t. But the seed that did produce produced abundantly, overwhelmingly.  You make sure that you keep sowing.”

II: — The second parable we are looking at today is brief.  We are told in a few lines that seed was planted and overnight it grew – how? – “the farmer knew not how.”   This parable is addressed to disciples who are prone to deny the mystery of the kingdom.

All of us live in a world where we rightly seek to “know how”. Seeking to know how is not only permitted in the natural realm; it’s mandated by God. What we call the “creation mandate” in Genesis; the command to till the soil and subdue the threatening elements of the universe – not only may we do this; we must, since God has mandated us to do it.

In order for explorers to explore the farthest reaches of the world they had to have navigational “know how”. In order to keep sailors alive at sea for long periods someone had to know something about vitamin deficiency. In order to perform pain-relieving surgery someone had to know how to stop bleeding and administer anaesthetics and minimize post-surgical infection. In order to give us large quantities of affordable food and clothing and drinkable water and pension plans and mortgage insurance, “know how” had to mushroom exponentially.

In all of this there’s no mystery. What isn’t known of the natural world at this moment is still knowable in principle, and will be known shortly.  The profoundest mystery, on the other hand, pertains to the kingdom of God . In other words, when we are dealing not with the natural world but with realms beyond nature, above nature, we shall never be able to penetrate the mystery of God’s unique operation in our midst, God’s unique operation in any individual’s heart.

I’m always amused when someone proffers a psycho-social explanation for the apostle Paul’s turnaround.  It’s suggested that since he tormented the early church, believing as he did that Christians were out to destroy the truth of Israel , he must have had a terribly guilty conscience about it all, and one day his overstressed conscience snapped and he could no longer deny the truth of the gospel. I’m amused because there’s no suggestion anywhere in scripture that Paul was conscience-stricken in the slightest.  In the days when he harassed the church he was as happy as a pig in mud. He thought he was supporting God’s cause. He was sure he was helping to rid the world of an error so erroneous it could only be called a scourge. Then one day it happened. What happened? The seed that someone had planted in Paul grew. How?   No one knows how. There’s mystery here that no one can penetrate; no one can explain; and therefore no one can explain away – that is, demystify.

Lest I be accused of tooting my own horn I shall speak only briefly of my summons to the ministry.  I mentioned once to a sophisticated man that I was fourteen when I knew that I had received a commission from the hand of the crucified (even though I didn’t speak of it this way when I was fourteen.) “Ridiculous”, this fellow snorted; “you couldn’t have known this when you were fourteen.” I said nothing. Throughout high school I wanted to be a lawyer; went to university with a law career in mind. In the course of preparing for legal studies I fell in love with philosophy; adjusted my plans so as to become a professor of philosophy – even as I continued to suffer from my disobedience.         One day I capitulated, admitted that the Hound of Heaven was bugging me to death, and have never looked back.         Yes, I’m aware of people who speak exactly like this and are currently living in psychiatric hospitals.  But I’m not deranged, and therefore such a ready-to-hand simplistic pseudo-explanation won’t do.  I’m aware that all kinds of naturalistic explanations can be advanced – pure speculation, worthless and unprovable – as to how I must have confused my father with God almighty and secretly wanted to please my mother even as childhood anxieties were unsatisfactorily resolved etc., etc., etc. It’s all nonsense. Then what’s the explanation?   There is none – apart from “the farmer knew not how.”   God’s secret penetration and secret preparation are irreducibly mysterious just because of the mystery that names itself GOD.

The mistake we must never make is to think that what’s mysterious – incapable of explanation – is by that fact unreal. Just the opposite is the case. What’s actual – the natural world that all the sciences and social sciences explore — isn’t mysterious, however much remains to be known, since it’s all explainable in principle.  What’s profoundly mysterious – the inexplicable intersection of God’s life with your life and mine and all that arises from this intersection – this is more than actual; this is ultimately real.  How does it all work? We know not how.

 

III: — The last parable, two of them in fact, are addressed to disciples possessing stunted imaginations. “Just imagine”, says Jesus; “From the tiniest beginnings (in ancient Palestine mustard seed was thought to be the smallest of all seeds) of your work and witness something so very large will come that no one will be able to assess its significance. Just imagine”, Jesus continues; “from a smidgen of yeast that is inserted into dough, the entire batch is leavened and swells hugely.  Now it’s all expanded in a way that is unforeseeable – unforeseeable, that is, until we see it.”

From the tiniest seed, the mustard seed, Jesus insists, there comes forth a shrub, a tree in whose branches perch the birds of the air.  “Birds of the air” is a rabbinic expression that means “all the Gentile nations of the world”.  Jesus is telling unimaginative disciples that from their small numbers (twelve, at first, one of whom proved unhelpful); from such a pathetically small number, from their supposedly simplistic message, from their apparently insignificant mission, there will come – what?  There will come that kingdom which gathers in people of every nation and language and outlook as Gentiles of every description will one day owe everything that is their glory to this handful of Jews who are beginning to wonder if they shouldn’t go back to their fishing.

We know that on the first Easter morning the disciples had decided to go back to their fishing. When the risen One appeared to them he said, “You want to fish?  Then fish. And tell me what you’ve caught.” John’s gospel reports that 153 fish were caught – vastly more than the disciples had ever seen in one net in their fishing days.  Then John adds a line we need to linger over: “And the net didn’t break.” In Israel of old it was said that there were 153 different Gentile peoples.  When eleven Jews fish, and their fishing is accompanied by the risen One’s efficacy, there is created a church that can no more be rent than the body of Christ can be shredded; a church that comprehends all the nations just because that kingdom to which the church points is the whole creation healed. “Can’t you see it?” says Jesus to disciples who lack imagination.   “Can’t you anticipate it more confidently than you can the sun’s rising tomorrow morning?”

Rev. Donald MacLeod, adjunct professor at Tyndale Seminary, and retired only months ago from the Presbyterian congregation in Trenton , Ontario ; upon retiring MacLeod and his wife travelled to China to see where his grandfather had gone in 1897.  His grandfather had been the first Christian in a town.  In 1900 grandfather MacLeod had built a house (it’s still standing, intact) for the wife he brought to it in 1901.  Three weeks ago, when Donald MacLeod went to this particular Chinese city of 60,000 people, he found 20,000 Christians there, worshipping in 38 different facilities (i.e., 500 Christians per church venue – and all of this in a country that has been anti-Christian communist for 60 years.) The Chinese people fell on him, showering him with gifts, eager to see the photographs of his grandfather he had brought with him.  The Chinese people poured out their gratitude for his grandfather; his grandfather, after all, had brought them that gospel which remains dearer to them than life.  All it takes is the tiniest bit of leaven – one man – to give rise to 20,000 Chinese Christians in the midst of totalitarian hostility.

As for yeast, what institution in our society hasn’t been leavened by the yeast of the kingdom? John Wesley was appalled when he visited prisons in Eighteenth Century England. One hundred men, women and children languished in one room the size of the sanctuary of a small church building. Men beat up men. Women were violated. Children were molested. Many adults were there only on account of debts they couldn’t pay.  By the time Wesley’s kingdom-yeast had worked its leavening, each convict had his own cell (modelled on a monk’s cell — penitentiaries were to help convicts become penitent), where each convict’s cell protected him or her from molestation at the hands of fellow inmates.

Think of hospitals and the care of the sick; the treatment of the mentally ill (it was a giant step forward when they were regarded as ill, not stupid; ill, not deliberately obstreperous); employment insurance, children’s aid; the criminal justice system, founded as it is on the Decalogue. What is there in our society that hasn’t been leavened by the yeast of the kingdom?

If we think that some of the yeast appears to be coming out of the dough, then we need to be reminded that it’s the responsibility of the Christian community to ensure that the yeast is always being re-inserted into the dough. We mustn’t throw up our hands and say, “But our yeast is so small and the dough is so big.” That, after all, is the precisely the point of the parable: the tiniest bit of yeast affects the entire batch of dough.   As we are resolute here, we shall recover our confidence too that from beginnings as small as mustard seed there arises something that no one can measure.

 

Concerning the coming and growth of the kingdom – a kingdom that is real and therefore that can never be shaken, the book of Hebrews reminds us — Jesus paints pictures that the world will never forget.

Disciples who are discouraged are assured that their sole responsibility is sowing, since God has promised that regardless of how little of it germinates and perdures, its harvest is nothing less than magnificent.

Disciples who are prone to deny the mystery of the kingdom are reminded that there is no human explanation for the unique work of God.

Disciples who lack imagination are reminded that from the smallest beginning something arises of cosmic significance, and from the unnoticeable operation of yeast something comes forth that no one can fail to notice.

 

Mark tells us that Jesus came into Galilee announcing, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Turn around.  Face it. And live from this day in the new creation that it is.”

 

                                                                                                     Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             April 2006

 

Mark 5:1-20            Lam. 3:22-24          Ps. 13:6

I: — “Seated, clothed, and in his right mind”. So reads Mark’s description of the healed man whom our Lord had touched. The entire story has been one of my favourites from childhood.

“Seated” — no longer agitated and frenzied.

“Clothed” — belonging to the community, according to ancient

Hebrew symbolism.

“In his right mind” — no longer driven and distracted. Simply sane.

The fellow’s situation could be summed up in one word: deliverance.

Only a few weeks ago Maureen and I were at a cottage on Georgian Bay. One Monday evening Maureen said to me, “I have something to tell you, but I am apprehensive about saying anything because I am afraid you will react by denying it or walking away or sulking — as your custom is.” I decided that holiday time might as well be truth time, and so I asked her to tell me what she had to say.

She told me, so gently as to be a caress, that I have been angry to the point of being consumed with rage. My frustration over developments within the denomination had mounted until the pressure of my frustration had generated enough heat to keep me enraged. In addition I had become embittered. Not to mention suspicious of people here, imagining slights where there were none and imputing ill-will to the people who had supported me most in my recent struggle. As I found myself disappointed and disillusioned over the past several years a low-grade infection had settled into me which had latterly become a high-grade infection. I had become an angry, bitter, suspicious and reproachful middleaged man. To be sure, I had preached on James 1:20 — “The anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” — but I had also managed to forget whatever I said.

As Maureen held up the mirror before me I saw it all. For the first time in a long while I had no desire to deny, flee or sulk. I simply owned it all. And as I owned it, it came out of me like pus. As the poison within me drained away I thought once more of the gospel-incident: townspeople are shocked to see a frenzied, agitated fellow seated, clothed, and in his right mind. As I reflected on all that had transpired in only a few minutes I thought again of the text in the Lamentations of Jeremiah which I had read a hundred times: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is God’s faithfulness.”

There were immediate consequences to my un-poisoning. One which affects you people most immediately is that you will never hear the sermon I had planned on preaching today. In the week before my holidays, when I had my shirt twisted in such a knot that it was ready to ignite, I had written a very strong sermon — or so I thought. As I read it over in the wake of my deliverance I realized that it had been written out of a bitter heart and an angry spirit. It will never be preached.

Still, I think it’s all right to tell you something of what was in it. For instance, I had picked up a copy of the UC Observer in a hospital waiting-room and had read an editorial concerning new directions in UC worship. What I read any thoughtful person would recognize as both illogical and blasphemous. In orbit myself now at one more perfidy I had inserted this item into the sermon in order to let you people know just how bad things are. But then I had asked myself, “Who is going to be edified by hearing this from me? And who will be edified by hearing it through my bitter rage?” No one, of course. The sermon will never be preached.

Perhaps you would have made allowances for me if you had heard it. “After all, he has been under stress.” But your generous forbearance would not really have helped me. During the last war the depth-charging of submarines was unsophisticated, very much a hit-and-miss affair. In fact a submarine’s chances of being sunk through a depth-charge attack were only 6%. In other words, a submarine was almost certain to survive a depth-charge attack. One attack. Several, in fact. Nonetheless, a submarine was usually sunk on the seventh attack. You see, after six depth-charge attacks the submarine captain was so unnerved that he lost his ability to think objectively, think constructively. The he was easy to sink. I don’t want to put too fine an edge on it; still, I wonder how many times I have been depth-charged in the last few years. Often enough, I think, that I was about to lose my ability to think objectively, think constructively. My wife came to my rescue. She embodied the steadfast love and faithfulness of God.

As I pondered all that she did for me on that Monday evening I thought again of Psalm 13:6, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me.”

II: — Seated, clothed, and right-minded at last I have fresh enthusiasm for the Streetsville congregation and fresh vision for it. No doubt you have enthusiasm and vision too. Listen to a few aspects of mine for the next few minutes, and then tell me of yours over the next few weeks.

(i) One aspect of my renewed enthusiasm is adult education. Sunday morning at 9:00 o’clock sharp. (“Sharp on time”, as Stephen Leacock used to say.) 9:00 to 9:45, beginning on the 29th of September. An adult study of scripture is what I have in mind. In the past few years we have seen scripture twisted by the ideological left, and we have resisted this. At the same time, scripture-twisting at the hands of the ideological right is no better. A case in point. Concerning the NT stories of the feeding of the multitudes the ideological left says, “Nonsense. It’s all pre-scientific gobbledy-gook and should be set aside.” The ideological right says, “Not so fast. It’s one more miracle that Jesus did as proof of his divinity.” But Jesus was never concerned to prove his divinity, was he. Jesus wasn’t concerned to prove anything. When people asked for proofs concerning him or his truth or his kingdom, he refused. Instead he called disciples into his company, knowing that life in his company would generate conviction and assurance of him, his truth and his kingdom. For such disciples any “proof”, so-called, would then be as superfluous as it was inappropriate.

According to the inner logic of the NT itself the feeding stories magnify one glorious truth: Jesus Christ feeds and sustains his people in their particular wilderness. This is what we have to understand: Our Lord will feed and sustain you and me in whatever wilderness we find ourselves.

Another case in point. The ideological left sits loose to morality. Morality is thinly disguised social convention. As social convention it reflects social class rather than some truth or other etched in stone. The ideological right, on the other hand, equates immorality and sin. The immoral are the real sinners who especially need saving, while the moral, of course, are virtuous and godly. Not so according to scripture! Jesus didn’t die for the immoral, the apostle tells us; Jesus died for the ungodly. And the ungodly are the moral and the immoral in equal measure! Sinnership is common to all of humankind, whether moral or immoral. Our sinnership is the same spiritual distortion whether we behave in a manner which others congratulate or in a manner which others curse. Everyone, in equal degree, stands in need of God’s mercy and God’s patience and God’s invigoration; which is to say, everyone, in equal degree, stands in need of God himself.

From time to time people tell me that the bible is boring. Boring? With all the sex and violence in it? I want to recover biblical literacy as together we are grasped by the kingdom-reality it attests, which kingdom exposes ideologies of the right and the left at once.

Why Sunday morning at 9:00? Because Streetsvillians are too busy and too fatigued to come out one more evening in the week.

(ii) Another aspect of my enthusiasm: a deepening of our relationship with our Jewish friends at Solel. Some of us have maintained the contact through our work with the foodbank and the housing project, but on the whole our attention has been almost wholly directed to other matters recently. Even the briefest reading of the gospels makes it plain that to encounter Jesus is to encounter his Jewishness. The English text tells us that the menorrhagic woman reached out and touched the “fringe of his garment.” It wasn’t a fringe in the sense of a fashionable decoration; it was the tzith-tzith, the tassels of his prayer shawl. Jesus wore his prayer shawl as an undershirt every day. Jewish people today put on such a shawl when they go to the synagogue to worship; orthodox men and boys are wearing it as an undershirt at this minute. Because of the yiddishkeit of our Lord, engagement with Israel (the people) is not an option for Christians.

I am reminded of the church’s debt to the synagogue every time I read Romans 9 where Paul says, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants… the promises…; and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.” Be sure to note the apostle’s use of the present tense: to them belong. He doesn’t say, “To them there used to belong…”.

Then in Ephesians 2 Paul reminds Gentile Christians (you and me) that at one time we were “without Christ (the Messiah), excluded from the citizenship of Israel, strangers to the covenants based upon promise; without hope and without God in this world.” Then in an about-turn which takes the breath away from me, the benighted gentile Paul has in mind, he adds, “But now — but now you who were once far off have been included in the realm of the Messiah Jesus.” To seize our Lord in faith is to be admitted to everything that God promised Israel and fulfilled in his Son. Then surely I can disdain Israel — even merely ignore it — only to my spiritual impoverishment. At the very least, wouldn’t a close relationship to Israel help us cherish the older testament, which book, we must remember, was the only bible the earliest Christians had?

(iii) In the third place I am haunted by the fact that life (that is, bodily existence) comes far easier for most of us in Streetsville congregation than it comes for most people elsewhere. I tell my own offspring repeatedly that not one per cent of the world’s people enjoy the privileges that they, Mary and Catherine enjoy. For part of the last three summers our younger daughter has assisted at Camp Oochigeas. Oochigeas is a northern Ontario camp for children who have cancer. The camp directors are Doug and Cathy Hitchcock of this congregation. When Mary went off to camp for the first time I had a misgiving or two. After all, she was only fourteen, she was going to become attached to youngsters some of whom would not survive until next spring, and what would the effect of all of this be on Mary’s psyche, etc. Mary has come home invigorated; in the following months she has visited children her age who are hospitalized. We have had overnight in our home youngsters who are not likely to collect old age pensions. So far from being submerged by all of this Mary has thrived. What she has gained, what will be with her for life as a result of her work at Oochigeas, is inexpressible because invaluable.

In the summer of 1972 I supervised Keith Burton, the student-minister on Miscou Island, New Brunswick. (A good atlas will tell you where Miscou Island is.) Following ordination Keith went to England to work in a hospice for young men suffering from a muscular dystrophy, which disease saw most of then die at 16 or 17. (The oldest resident of the hospice was 25.) Keith wrote me from England: “Do you know what has happened to me through my work in the hospice? I have learned the meaning of the resurrection.”

One third of the women in Ontario’s jails are there inasmuch as they have been unable to pay fines. Is this the modern-day equivalent of yesteryear’s debtor’s prison? Might there be something here through which a women’s group (or a men’s group) could learn the meaning of the kingdom of God (an how it differs from the kingdoms of this world)?

Jesus Christ is victor over everything which afflicts humankind. My faith in his victory is strongest when I am knee-deep in suffering people whose suffering appears to contradict that victory. I say “appears”, because the triumph of him who has been raised from the dead is a triumph which can never be undone.

(iv) Sunday evening. I think there is a place for a Sunday evening event every month or two. There is little opportunity Sunday morning for discussion and dialogue. Why not make good this deficiency on occasional Sunday evenings?

A few weeks ago it dawned on me that the majority of the people who attend the Ottawa Summer School of Theology where I teach each July are laypersons. This summer I spoke to them for instance, about the doctrine of justification and its pertinence for real and neurotic guilt. Shouldn’t we hear of this in Streetsville and discuss it among ourselves?

In highschools, synagogues, universities and conference centres I have spoken on the often-tragic relation of the church to the synagogue (in other words, the history of Christian anti-semitism). Yet there has been no exposure to it here! Why don’t we invite our friends from Solel to join us on a Sunday evening and learn together?

For years I have been wedded to the city. I am a city-boy virtually devoid of rural blood. For long enough I have thought of Mississauga as a suburb of Toronto. But Mississauga is not a suburb of anything. Mississauga is a city in its own right. It’s population will soon be half a million. It has now all the problems which bedevil cities.

For years I have been intrigued by the biblical understanding of the city. The Tower of Babel (with its confusion and alienation) is an aspect of that city mentioned in Genesis 11. Not to speak of other cities: Babylon, Rome, Jerusalem. (Jerusalem is the holy city, supposedly, yet so unholy is it that it slays the prophets and crucifies the Messiah.) The book of Revelation speaks of the New Jerusalem, another city. Why don’t we explore together what it means to be a Christian, or a Christian community, in the midst of the city, when according to scripture the city is humankind’s proudest monument to its God-defiance? And while we are at it, why don’t we bring along a city-planner from city hall and hear what she has to say? In Paul’s day the Christians in Rome numbered no more than 75 in a city of one million. Yet this “little flock”, says Jesus, is salt and leaven. Salt and leaven, tiny in themselves, permeate and alter everything they touch; everything.

(v) Throughout all of this we must continue to cherish one another in this congregation; in cherishing one another’s humanity we may even have to learn afresh what it is to be human. I have in mind recent technological innovations which have put our humanity at risk. Computer technology has now given us Virtual Reality or Synthetic Space or Telepresence.

When you look at a computer screen or television screen you are aware that you are looking at a screen. Now imagine yourself equipped with large, electronically sophisticated goggles. As you look at someone on the screen you are not aware that you are looking at a screen. Instead you have the sensation of having the person on the screen in the room with you. You have the sensation of sight, hearing, touch, even smell. You can even reach out and “shake hands” with her (even though she herself is in Montreal). You will have the physical sensation of shaking hands, even though in reality nothing has been shaken. It’s called Virtual Reality or Synthetic Space or Telepresence. To have the sensation of touching someone when in fact no one is being touched means that our humanity has been simulated. Simulated with near-perfect simulation, thanks to computer technology, but only simulated. Then where is our real humanity? What is it to be human? What does the gospel have to do with real humanity? and the Christian fellowship?

(vi) Needless to say worship continues to be the single most important thing that we do in our life together here. Worship will continue to the setting where the living word of the living God is exalted and magnified. At the same time, the vehicle of worship is the liturgy. “Liturgy” is an English word formed from two Greek words, laos and ergon, “people” and “work”. In other words, liturgy is the work of the people, what the people do in the course of worship. There will be more for you people to do in worship as Jesus Christ is extolled, his people edified, and the reign of God discerned amidst the principalities and powers of this world.

It remains only for me to say that regardless of how you grade this sermon — A, B minus or Z — it is a much better sermon than the sermon you were going to hear. For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. Far more important that we confirm each other in that steadfast love of God which never comes to an end, just because his faithfulness to us is great indeed.

F I N I S

 Victor A. Shepherd

                                                                                                                                                 
8th September 1991

 

Mark 5:9

 

I: — “What’s your name?” Jesus asked a man on one occasion. Our Lord didn’t mean what the bureaucrat means when she’s filling out forms and asks us, “Name, address, telephone number?” If we said, “My name is Bill Smith,” it would tell her no more about us than if we had said, “My name is Sam Jones.” Names today tell us nothing at all about the person whom the name names. ” Victor Shepherd “: “Victor” is Latin for conqueror. I’m no conqueror; “Shepherd” is English for sheep-herder. I’m a city boy.

When Jesus came upon a deranged man, however, and asked, “What’s your name?”, he was asking the man to tell him something about himself, everything about himself, who he most profoundly was. You see, in the ancient world “name” meant four things: personal presence, character, power, and deserved reputation.

“What’s your name?” Jesus asks me today. He won’t be satisfied with “My name is Victor.” He already knows that. Instead he’s asking [1], “Victor, are you personally present? Are you really available to the people you meet? Are you really accessible? Or have you learned to “fake it”, smiling as if you were personally present when all the while your head and your heart are anywhere but with the people in front of you?” [2] He’s asking even more: “What’s your character? Are you honest or corrupt? patient or irascible? kind or vindictive? forgiving or vengeful?” [3] He’s also asking about power: “Are you influential or ineffective? Do you foster reconciliation or alienation? Do you spread joy or misery? In your company do people find faith easier to exercise or harder?”   [4] And then in the fourth place he’s asking me about the reputation I deserve just because I have acted in public as everyone knows I’ve acted.

 

II: — Centuries ago Jesus came upon a fellow who lived in the cemetery and mutilated himself, no one else being able to subdue him. “What’s your name?” our Lord asked him. “I don’t know!” the fellow replied, “How do you expect me to tell you my name when my name is ‘legion’, there being so many of us? What’s my name? Which one would you like to hear? What’s my character? Which of my many ‘selves’ are you talking about?” The man plainly doesn’t know who he is. He can’t tell you anything about an identity underneath his frenzy. A legion, we should note, was a Roman military unit consisting of 6000 men. The man feels he’s all of them at once.

How did he come to be many? He was overcome, overwhelmed by chaotic forces without that now were forces within.

In Mark’s gospel the story of the Gerasene demoniac follows the incident of Christ’s stilling the stormy sea for the sake of frightened disciples. In Hebrew cosmogony large bodies of water, turbulent, unpredictable, treacherous; these are everywhere a symbol of chaos.

In Genesis chapt.1 creation arises when God parts the primeval watery mass (the watery mass being the first step of creation, the raw material of creation), thus permitting land to appear, the fitting habitation for “6^th Day” creatures: humankind and our second cousins, the animals. As long as God’s providential hand holds back the primeval chaos, animate existence, human existence, can thrive. If God, however, relaxes his intervention ever so slightly, chaos creeps back in. If God withdraws the hands that part the waters, chaos inundates the creation, rendering it de-creation — as happened in the story of the Flood, when God’s judgement appointed the world precisely to what the world had been telling God for generations that it wanted: his effectual absence.

“You’d rather be without me?” God had said, “Then never say I’m a spoilsport who won’t give people what they want. I always give people what they want. You want me inoperative? I’ll grant you that.” The result, of course, was that chaos surged over the creation until such time as God, in his wisdom and mercy, gave humankind a fresh beginning.

In the wake of our sin; in the wake of our pursuit of deities who aren’t the sole sovereign maker of heaven and earth; in our ardour for spirits who are less than holy; in our zeal for twists and turns that are anything but the turn, return, of repentance; in our seeking comfort and consolation everywhere but in the Comforter; in all of this we are effectually summoning chaos upon ourselves. Why, then, are we surprised when it comes upon us? Since chaos is that from which creation emerged, chaos is that to which creation most readily reverts. Chaos always laps at creation.

Scripture testifies to God’s patience and providence in moving back chaos, fending it off, just when it’s on the verge of overwhelming creation and undoing it. We see this everywhere in Israel ‘s history. Think of its entry into the promised land; its restoration from the exile; the provision of two figures who loom largest in both testaments: Moses and Jesus. In both men God’s hands hold off the chaos that threatens any society which exalts infanticide, whether in their era or in ours.

And now we have a man from the village of Gerasa who lives — like all of us — alongside a chaos that threatens individuals and communities and nations at all times, a chaos that from time-to-time invades us and molests us. At this point God’s intervention alone can fend it off and thereby give us room to be what God has always intended us to be: sons and daughters whose earthly, earthy life nature won’t menace but rather will support.

In his derangement the Gerasene fellow is a micro instance of that chaos exemplified in the stormy sea as macro instance. The man is simply overwhelmed at the evil he knows only too well to haunt the world even as the townspeople remain naïve, shallow and unperceptive.

Evil is legion, isn’t it. There are at least 6,000 manifestations of it, expressions of it, embodiments of it. Evil is multi-faceted: both blatant and subtle, both frontal and tangential, both brutal and seductive. Evil appears in the blackest colours but in the brightest too. Evil appears both as hideous and as benign. There is no end to the faces it wears and the disguises it assumes and the approaches wherewith it stalks us and steals upon us.

As often as I read the story of the deranged man who named himself after the image and likeness of a military unit I think, soberly, of countless men whose name has become legion through serving in military units. In times of war military personnel have always suffered, or died, or gone insane. For most of history, however, a soldier’s chances of dying were much greater than his chances of derangement. At the time of the US Civil War, however, all this changed, thanks to two major military inventions: the machine gun and the timed artillery fuse. The machine gun meant soldiers couldn’t flee; the timed artillery fuse, causing the shell to explode 100’ in the air instead of on contact with the ground, meant that soldiers couldn’t hide. They died in vastly greater proportions than they had ever perished before. Because they were much more likely now to die, they also went mad in record numbers. For the first time in the history of warfare a soldier’s chances of total psychiatric breakdown were three times as great as his chances of dying. In view of the fact that the US Civil War killed 650,000 very young men, there were two million 19- and 20-year olds who were total psychiatric casualties for the rest of their earthly life.

The same ratio of insanity to death has operated in every conflict since the US Civil War; in the Russo-Japanese war, the Great War, World War II, the Korean War, and more recently, Israel ‘s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. (This is a dimension of evil we ignore when we speak of war.)

No doubt you are wondering what all of this has to do with us who are in Knox Church tonight. We, after all, are not deranged. The Gerasene fellow can’t be like us because he manifestly is.

The truth is, Christ’s question, “What’s your name?”, now addressed to us, would find us having to give the same answer as he. “I don’t know who I am, which one I am, the reputation I am, just because there are so many of us.” We are many indeed. Plainly chaos laps at us; and if we truly are “many”, then chaos has more than merely lapped at us.

Then how did we come to be “many?”

Think of the daily pressure to be something to one person and something else to another person and something else again to a third person. Think of how it seems we have to ease our way through tight spots in life by bending the truth here and telling just a little lie there and misrepresenting ourselves somewhere else, all in the interests of getting us or those dear to us past the landmines and quicksands that will otherwise take us down. The truth is, of course, we are daily putting on one false face after another, always telling ourselves that underneath our exchangeable false faces there does remain our real face, our true face, our genuine identity. If no one else is aware of who we are at this point, at least we know who we are.

But it’s never this simple. As we shuffle the false faces, falsity overtakes us little by little. We tell ourselves we haven’t reduced ourselves to phoniness; we tell ourselves that when this sticky situation is past we can revert to our real face, our true self, our proper identity. But of course life is so very fraught with sticky situations — every day brings a host of them, doesn’t it? — that we simply become more and more adept at interchanging false faces until we no longer are aware that any one of them is false; no longer aware that we have become false; no longer aware that we are phoniness incarnate.

While I don’t have a drinking problem or a drug problem, I have to tell you that I am an addict. You see, I’m a sinner, and all sin is addictive. (If sin weren’t addictive we’d have long given it up, wouldn’t we?) Since I too am an addict, I’m sobered every time I read the literature displayed by those among us who know they’re addicts. One such item is the acrostic, “DENIAL”, with the word spelled vertically. DENIAL: “Don’t Even (k)Now I Am Lying.”

Our name can also become “legion” through moral compromise. When we are tempted to make moral shortcuts our conscience pricks us at first and we hesitate; pricked now, we have to rationalize the compromise to pacify our conscience; conscience pacified now, we have the inner tranquility, inner permission even, to go ahead with our treachery — just this once, of course, because of extraordinary circumstances — after which we shall revert to our integrity. It seems not to occur to us that integrity which can be set aside opportunistically is no integrity at all. Very quickly the compromise becomes second nature. A pastor now for 33 years, I have had people tell me the first time they committed fraud or adultery or something else they were in torment; the second time they had only a momentary twinge; the third time was as easy as falling off a wet log. When someone identifies them in terms of their sin and they protest, “That isn’t who or what I really am,” the obvious retort is, “Oh? Why isn’t it?”

Again, our name becomes “legion” through mindless conformity to social convention. Social convention seems to have nothing to do with chaos and the evil that chaos engenders. Social conventions, after all, are necessary. Social conventions facilitate the movement of people throughout the society the way traffic lights facilitate the movement of traffic through intersections. Our society agrees to stop at red lights. But of course there is no intrinsic connection between red light and stopping. In the same way we “collide” less frequently socially if we all agree to abide by social conventions even though there is no intrinsic connection between arbitrary convention and the behaviour associated with it. The peril in our doing so, of course, is that the social convention comes to tell us who we are.

People address me as “reverend.” It’s a social convention. “Reverend” means I’m revere-able, and I’m revere-able (supposedly) inasmuch as I’m extraordinarily holy. People also call me “Doctor”, Latin for “teacher.” I’m extraordinarily learned. You know, I like the sound of it: ” Reverend Dr .” It sets me apart, doesn’t it? It sets me apart from the common herd that is neither holy nor learned. ” Reverend Dr. “: it tells me who I am; it makes me who I am.

It makes me who I am, that is, until Jesus Christ looms before me and asks, “What’s your name?” And when I start to say, ” Reverend Dr. ” he butts in, “Do you think I’m fooled by arbitrary social conventions? Do you think the label that you relish disguises for a minute what oozes out of your every pore?”

The sad truth is most people take as their name whatever the silent majority represents. As the silent majority shifts from this to that, picks up this and drops that, believes this now when it used to believe that then; this is what most people are. What’s their name? Their name is the myriad, ill thought-out ideation that forms the mental furniture and the clogged cardiac system of the silent majority. Their name is legion.

Of course there are always those who think they’re smarter than most and can recognize all this. Therefore they are going to react to it: they are going to be whatever the silent majority isn’t. Alas, they don’t see that their “name” is still determined by the silent majority: reacting to the silent majority, they have become that noisy minority which the silent majority has made them in any case, unbeknownst to them. Their name too is “legion.”

 

III: — The man in our gospel incident was violent. No one could subdue him. After a while no one tried. Anyone who doesn’t know who she is; anyone whose identity is fragile; anyone who is forever scrambling to find an identity lest the one she doesn’t really have is taken away from her in any case; any such person will behave violently.

When I was younger I used to think that people who lashed out were uncommonly nasty. Having observed people for decades, however, I see that I was wrong. Those who lash out violently and cause havoc aren’t uncommonly nasty; they are commonly insecure. Their fragile, arbitrary, undefendable identity is threatened with extinction. They have to shore it up lest anyone “see through” them and discover that they are hollow inside.

When I was younger I was perplexed as to why people exploded if someone merely disagreed with them. And if they managed to stay cool when someone disagreed with them, they didn’t stay cool when someone refuted them. I was perplexed that what passed for a discussion on a topic became a battle in which someone, being led to see that the point he had advanced wasn’t actually sound, suddenly clung to the point regardless, enlarged it, raised his voice, reddened his face, and attempted to browbeat others into admitting he was right. The reason, of course, that it’s so difficult to admit we are wrong is that our identity is tied up with a position we’ve adopted (regardless of the issue), and to admit we are wrong is to forfeit an identity that is so fragile in any case that

it is readily pushed over and caused to fragment. Still, anyone threatened with loss of face and looming fragmentation will likely become violent. Anyone threatened with extinction is going to turn ugly. We shouldn’t be surprised.

 

IV: — In our gospel story Jesus heals the man whose name is “legion.” The townspeople find him “sitting there, clothed, and in his right mind”, the English text tells us. In the Greek text there are three pithy, parallel past participles: “seated, clothed, right-minded.” The three parallel past participles — “seated, clothed, right-minded” — underline the fact that something definitive has occurred to the man, something conclusive, something that is as undeniable as it is unmistakable.

SEATED   In Hebrew symbolism to be seated is to be in authority, to rule. Whenever a rabbi made an authoritative pronouncement he sat to speak. When Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount he sits to teach. Our Lord wants us to know that in the Sermon on the Mount he isn’t offering an opinion; he’s speaking authoritatively, sealing upon us the meaning of life in the kingdom of God .

Following his ascension the risen Jesus is said to be “seated at the right hand of the Father.” He is seated inasmuch as his resurrection has rendered him victor; his ascension has rendered him ruler; as victorious ruler he is sovereign over the cosmos.

The man whose name had been “legion” is now found seated. He is no longer the helpless victim of whatever forces howl down upon him. He is no longer a function of everyone he’s met and everything he’s seen. For the first time in his life he is sovereign of himself. He is now the subject of his own existence. As subject of his own existence he is a self; a self; one, unitary self. Now he is simply himself, his own self, the subject of his own life. Hereafter he speaks and acts with the authority of someone who knows who he is and what he’s about.

CLOTHED   In Hebrew symbolism to be clothed is to belong. When the prodigal son returns from the far country and comes home his father clothes him in a robe. The robe means that he belongs; he belongs to this household; he belongs in this home; he belongs with this family. He belongs.

In our Lord’s parable of the wedding garment the guests are streaming into the reception when one fellow tries to crash the party. He isn’t wearing a wedding garment. (In Israel of old, we must note, not merely the wedding party but the wedding guests too wore distinctive clothing.) The party-crasher is denied admission to the wedding reception. Lacking the proper clothing, he doesn’t belong, and everyone knows it.

When the apostle Paul speaks of the new life that Jesus Christ is for us, and speaks as well of the features of this life (readiness to forgive enemies, patience, kindness, humility, etc.), he makes his point by telling us that we are to “put on” Christ with his gifts. “Put on” is a metaphor taken from the realm of clothing. We are to clothe ourselves in Christ and his gifts. Our clothing ourselves in this way tells everyone that we belong to him.

The man whose name had been “legion” is now clothed. He belongs to Jesus Christ; he belongs to Christ’s people; he belongs to the wider community (whose ground and goal Christ is); he belongs to himself.

RIGHT-MINDED   In Hebrew thought to be possessed of a right mind, a sound mind, is to be sane, to be sure, but also, even more profoundly, to have one’s thinking formed and informed by the truth and reality of God.

Most people are sane now. Most people, however, aren’t “right-minded” in that they don’t think in conformity with the kingdom of God . If they are asked what is real, what is good, what they should trust, what they should pursue, what is central in life and what is peripheral; if they are asked these questions they can answer them all in a few words: “whatever promotes my plans for myself; whatever advances my self-interest; whatever makes my life easier and makes me self-satisfied.”

Most people are sane; most people, however, are not right-minded, not righteous-minded in terms of right-relationship with Jesus Christ and right pursuit in conformity with this relationship. The thinking of most people isn’t governed by any of this; it’s governed by rationalization, rationalization that aids and abets their selfism.

The man whose name had been “legion” is restored both to sanity and to a manner of thinking that is now governed by one grand preoccupation: the reality of God, the truth of God, the kingdom of God ; God’s plan and purpose for him here; his pursuit of this. What governs his thinking now isn’t thinly-disguised scheming connected with self-promotion; what governs his thinking now is a vision of the kingdom of God and a vocation to render this kingdom visible.

 

V: — What happened, ultimately, in the Gerasene village on that never-to-be-forgotten day? What happened isn’t what we expect. We expect a celebration. A man, after all, has been living in the cemetery, amidst the dead. His existence — violent, self-destructive, fearful — has been a living death. Now he is healed. Surely the event should be publicly hailed a triumph. Instead the townspeople recoil from the man. (Plainly he’s a greater threat healed then he ever was deranged.) They look askance at Jesus, the one at whose hands the man has been restored. They want him gone. They beg him to depart, the text tells us. They implore him. They plead with him. “Just leave us alone. We like the way things were before you showed up.”

Whatever else the townspeople might be they aren’t stupid. They have seen that the great healer is the great disturber, seen that healing is a disturbance. They have seen that wholeness is disruptive; peace engenders conflict; sanity is hard to live with. They had life figured out when the man they had long known (and could therefore write off) shrieked and howled, gashed himself and raved. Let him rave! Raving is harmless; sanity, however, isn’t. Inarticulate shouts and cries mean nothing; sober, lucid, penetrating speech now means everything. Every community has its misfits. And everyone knows where and how the misfits fit.

Yes. Misfits fit, because we tell them where they had better fit. Fit people, however, won’t be told. Therefore fit people, paradoxically, are forever misfits. The Gerasene village has been turned upside down. Before, no one had to take the ranting man seriously; now, those who don’t take him seriously are fools. Before, however economically unproductive he might have been (certainly he couldn’t have been gainfully employed), at least he was socially useful: he was Class-A Entertainment. Now he isn’t entertainment. His wholeness — self-perceived, owned, enjoyed — is a rebuke to those who pretend they aren’t as warped inwardly as he had been outwardly.

It’s plain that the man can’t be “put in his place” as he was always “put in his place” before Jesus appeared. It’s plain that he now sees with kingdom vision amidst townspeople who are kingdom blind. It’s obvious he can’t be domesticated just as Jesus of Nazareth, the one who has given him back his life, can’t be domesticated. Those who are socially ascendant are always nervous around those who can’t be tamed and won’t come to heel.

The townspeople had made their peace with the world as it is and also with themselves as they are. Once Jesus has appeared, however, such peace is seen to be a pact with evil. Since Jesus has identified what distorted the man manifestly, Jesus won’t stop short of identifying what distorts the villagers secretly — or not so secretly. Then the Master will have to leave. And if he’s rather slow to leave, they will beg him to step along lest he linger and torment them as he seemed, only a short while ago, to torment the villager they’d all dismissed as insignificant.

Nothing has changed. Throughout history, when the church has been most preoccupied with Jesus the world has been unable to tolerate it. When, on the other hand, the church has tried to out-world the world, forfeiting its birthright and making itself look ridiculous, the world has welcomed it. Prior to the collapse of the Berlin wall and the dismantling of the USSR , a Russian Orthodox Church that lent itself to the treacherous purposes of the state was a church the state could tolerate. Those congregations, however, that met Sunday by Sunday to exalt Jesus Christ; communist leaders from Lenin through Stalin to the most recent could never leave these congregations unmolested. They knew that whenever Christians remain preoccupied with Jesus, such Christians will always be a rebuke to the state, to the society, to the culture, as surely as the healed man of Mark 5, together with the one who had healed him, was more than civic authorities could endure. Isn’t this what we saw last August, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit, when CBC TV interviewers kept trying to have young people badmouth him or badmouth the church or badmouth whatever when all that the young people wanted to do was exalt Jesus?

 

The Gerasene fellow wants to join up with Jesus and the twelve. Jesus, however, has a different expression of discipleship for different individuals. And so he says to the man, “You go home to your family and your friends; you go back to the people who know you best, the people quickest to detect inauthenticity and the fastest to spot a profession of faith unmatched by performance; you go back to those who will most readily hold you to your newfound integration and integrity; you tell them what the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.”

The man does just this, with the result, we are told, that many others “marvelled.” The Greek text is an iterative imperfect: kept on marvelling, continued to marvel, and continued to marvel just because the healed man continued to be anything but a flash in the pan.

 

VI: — The questions Jesus asked in the days of his earthly ministry are the questions he continues to ask, the questions he always asks.

And therefore when he says to any one of us today, “What’s your name?”, the answer he’s looking for isn’t “Sam” or “Samantha.” He asks the question only because he already knows the answer. He already knows that our name is, or has been, “legion”, since there are so many of us. And of course he asks the question only in order that he might speak to us, touch us, and thereafter display us as citizens of his kingdom, possessed of his truth, preoccupied with his plan and purpose for us. In short, he asks us the question only because he ultimately wants to render us seated, clothed, right-minded; and thereafter to witness in word and deed to all and sundry that he has done this for us, and done it all for us just because he has had mercy on us.

 

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd
July 2003   

(Knox Summer Fellowship, July 2003)

   

 

                                                                                                 

 

Mark 5:34         Mark 10:52        Luke 17:19

 I don’t like intellectual snobs. For this reason I neither want to be an intellectual snob nor sound like one. If on Sunday morning I repeatedly direct the congregation to biblical languages and biblical meanings, it’s because I’m convinced a recovery of biblical meanings for biblical words is crucial for our life in Christ. I’m not showing off. I’m not discouraging people from reading the bible for themselves. I’m merely trying to provide whatever help I can so that a text thousands of years old will speak compellingly to modern folk like us.

Today we are going to examine several occasions of our Lord’s saying, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” “Has made you well:” in Greek it’s the verb that elsewhere means “has saved you.” It’s important that we know this, for the people whom Jesus “made well” were certainly “made well” in the sense of “made better, healed.” Yet even as they were made well or healed of this or that ailment, they were also “saved” in a deeper sense.

In the same way we must ponder the word “peace.” When we modern Gentiles hear the word we immediately think of inner peace, peace of mind, the absence of anxiety. When our Lord’s Israelite hearers heard “peace,” however, they didn’t first think of peace of mind; they thought of the Hebrew “shalom,” the Hebrew word we usually translate “peace” but which in fact has a much larger meaning. In Hebrew “shalom” means “salvation,” and salvation, everywhere in scripture, is the creation restored and relationships in it healed. “Salvation” and “ kingdom of God ” are exact synonyms. To enter the kingdom of God and to know the salvation of God are the same.

When Jesus says “Go in peace,” then, he isn’t referring first of all to peace of mind. He’s referring first of all to something bigger, grander, richer. “Go in peace” means “step forward, step ahead in the shalom or salvation of God.” Shalom is the reality of restoration at God’s hand. Christ’s people have come to live in it. Now that we live in it we are to live from it.

A minute ago I said that peace, shalom, didn’t refer in the first place to peace within us. But certainly it does in the second place.   To live in the peace or shalom of God “out there” is to be possessed of peace “in here.”

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” It’s as though Jesus said “Through your trust in the king, through your clinging to me, you have come to live in the truth and reality of the kingdom. Now that you have come to live in it (‘your faith has “shalomed” you’), live from it. Move ahead in that truth you know to be unshakable.” As we move ahead in that kingdom, shalom, which cannot be shaken we find we are possessed of peace within us as well.

Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus engaged people beset with different problems and perplexities. Repeatedly he sent them on their way with good news ringing in their ears: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Today we are going to look at three such instances.

 

I: — In the first instance a simple woman of immense need said to herself, “If I can just touch the hem of his garment” (as the old hymn says.) Actually she didn’t touch his hem, either the hem of his cloak or the cuffs of his trousers. She touched the tzith tzith, the tassels on his talith. All Jewish men wore their talith or prayer shawl as an undergarment (as orthodox Jews do today.) The four tassels (a daily reminder that the truth of God and the immensity of God extend to the four corners of the world) hung down beneath whatever Jesus was wearing that day on top of his prayer shawl. The woman who had haemorrhaged for twelve years (by now she was weak, poor and embarrassed) felt she had nothing to lose. If she could reach out to any aspect of our Lord, even to the fringes on his under-shawl, then the shalom of God, restoration, would be hers.

Was she superstitious? I think at one level she might have been. After all, grasping cloth fringes doesn’t do anything for anyone. At a deeper level, however, what she really wanted to do was make contact with Jesus. At bottom what counts in every era isn’t this or that minor superstition that’s often found mixed up with faith; what counts is that people want to make contact with Jesus Christ, albeit in the only way they know how. The woman in our story may have believed much or little about Jesus, both what is true and what isn’t true. But what she believed about him or didn’t wasn’t the point ultimately: she knew that if she could touch him, somehow, her entire life would be reordered.

When I was a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Toronto I used to eat lunch with a graduate history student who had become startled, shaken even, at the disorder in the world and the disorder in her own life. She hadn’t had a Christian upbringing; she had no Christian memory. She had never been exposed to the gospel. Yet for some reason that only the mystery of God’s providence accounts for she thought that Jesus Christ might be the key to shalom without and peace within. She began attending church membership classes. There were many classes to attend. They discussed numerous theological subtleties, the place of angels, the role of Mary, the nature of the sacraments, and of course the superiority of denomination “A” over denomination “B.” One day at lunch she told me she had left the class. Frustrated, sad and more than slightly bitter she said, “All I ever wanted to do was make contact with him.”

However subtle we may become and should become in our understanding of Christianity let’s remember where the twelve disciples began. They began knowing little more than one all-determining truth: they simply knew that life with Jesus Christ was going to be better than life without him. In his company the disorder in the world gave way to the kingdom as the disorder in them gave way to peace. Apart from his company disorder, both outer and inner, would remain just that.

When discipleship became arduous and fair-weather followers abandoned Jesus he turned to the twelve and said, “Do you fellows want to quit too?” Speaking for all of them Peter replied, “Quit? Leaving you won’t help us. You alone wrap us in the shalom, the peace of God.”

When we are pressured in life, really pressured, I have found that theological hair-splitting isn’t very helpful. When we are being hammered whether we believe in Calvin’s extra-Calvinisticum or Luther’s communicatio idiomata doesn’t make any difference. When we are hammered and feel we are floundering we cry out with one cry only: “If I can just make contact….” It’s simpler than we think.

Still, what is simple in life isn’t thereby easy. It was simple for the woman to reach out to Jesus, but it wasn’t easy. She had to get through a crowd of men who didn’t understand, would never understand, her feminine problem with its attendant humiliation. No doubt some men dismissed her as silly; others as a nuisance. Certainly some would have made vulgar remarks about her, obscenities that didn’t even rise to the level of locker room humour. Still, she persisted, and while simple persistence is simple it isn’t easy.

It takes courage for people to persist today. It takes courage to reach out today while others snicker and ridicule. It takes courage amidst the pseudo-sophistication of those who equate faith with infantilism and scepticism with maturity.

Yet we persist in reaching out to Jesus because we have discerned the disorder “out there” and the concomitant disorder “in here.” As we do, we find our courage met instantly as our Lord does for us all that we expected and more. For we, in the company of countless others, hear him say “You haven’t touched me in vain. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

 

II: — Having made contact with our Lord, having made this crucial beginning, we crave more. Now that we are living in the shalom or salvation of God; now that we are living in the kingdom, the peace we have frees us to see what we’ve never seen before. When I say “frees us” I mean exactly that. After all, apart from the transformation that Christ works in us we don’t really want to see, however much we say we do. Psychological experiments have demonstrated irrefutably how prone people are to see what they want to see, even as they fail to see what they don’t want to see.

Then who wants to see? Only those whose living in the company of Jesus Christ frees them from fearing what they might see if they are made to see. For this reason Jesus asks Bartimaeus, a blind man, a question that only seems to be silly: “What do you want me to do for you?” Courageously, with that courage Christ’s company supplies, Bartimaeus replies, “I want to see; I really do.” He is made to see. And then our Lord adds, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

The truth is, if we are going to “be well” then in addition to making contact with Jesus Christ we also need to be made to see. And if we are going to be made to see most profoundly, salvifically even, then only our Lord can do it. To be sure he rarely does it directly; that is, we aren’t made to see all by ourselves. Instead our Lord brings us to see through the instrumentality of someone we trust and love.

I have had the mirror held up to me on several occasions. It’s painful. It’s embarrassing. I’m not referring here to the situation where someone has waited weeks to get us “in his gun sights” and finally pulls the trigger. In other words I don’t have in mind the situation where someone out to get us abuses us verbally in public or   humiliates us. In this situation we may be so very devastated that we can’t defend ourselves; or we may be able to defend ourselves, in which case we should. I’m speaking, rather, where someone we trust, someone we know to have only our best interests at heart – a colleague, a friend, a spouse — gently confronts us with what we’ve never admitted about ourselves. It’s actually an indirect form of our Lord’s touching us so that we can finally see what heretofore we’ve never dared admit.
Within a year or two of my arrival in Mississauga (in other words I’d had time to attend several presbytery meetings) an older minister put his arm around me one night at the conclusion of the meeting and said warmly, non-accusingly, non-threateningly, “Victor, you have many gifts. Gentleness isn’t one of them. But gentleness happens to be a fruit of the Spirit. You aren’t helping yourself.” Did I resent him? On the contrary, I found in him the approach of the master himself as he said, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

One day I was lamenting to Maureen the seeming coldness of a woman, wife of a friend, in our congregation in Mississauga . Maureen cut off my complaining as she said, without hint of nastiness, without hint of rejection, “I don’t find Mrs. X cold at all. It’s not that Mrs. X is cold; she simply won’t flirt with you.” I went to the floor with that one. Tell me: do I flirt? Perhaps you’d better not tell me until I’m certain that you love me.

We shouldn’t dismiss out of hand the person who gently tells us we appear to view many people with contempt since our speech is riddled with sarcasm. We need to be told if we are irked by people who are less than transparent when all the while our proclivity to exaggeration or deception or misrepresentation is common knowledge. We should hear and heed our children if they dare to tell us that what they do appears not be nearly as important to us as how they cause us, their parents, to appear.

The truth is there are very, very few secrets about any of us. Privacy isn’t the same as secrecy. Privacy is essential to mental health. Good. Let’s not give it up. But privacy and secrecy aren’t the same. What’s private and should be private isn’t necessarily secret and is rarely secret in any case. In other words, other people “read” us more quickly and more accurately than we think. Then we shouldn’t assume they’re wrong when they help us perceive that we do resent someone else’s good fortune; we are hostile toward those who merely disagree with us; we are indifferent to those who don’t flatter us.

In the company of Jesus Christ we want to see. What he enables us to see he also remedies. As he remedies our blindness he says, “Your faith has made you well, saved you; go in peace.”

 

III: — Being made well has to do with more than making contact with our Lord, more than even being made to see; it has to do as well with being rendered thankful. In other words gratitude is an aspect of our salvation.

Jesus healed ten lepers. Nine thoughtlessly went on their way. The tenth fellow returned, Luke tells us, “prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” At this point Jesus said, “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.”

Plainly, gratitude is a necessary ingredient in faith. Faith is genuine only if it includes thankfulness.

In the year 1563, when turbulence riddled Europe and life was riskier than we can imagine, two young men drew up what turned out to be the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation documents; namely, the Heidelberg Catechism. The Heidelberg Catechism aimed at nurturing and strengthening faith amidst threats to faith from all sides. The catechism has 129 questions and answers. They are divided into three sections: one, “The Misery of Humankind;” two, “The Redemption of Humankind;” three, “Thankfulness.” The third section discusses the whole of the Christian life: the Ten Commandments and the obedience we owe them, service to the neighbour, prayer, repentance, spiritual discipline. In other words the whole of the Christian life is gathered up in one word: thankfulness.

Our Reformed foreparents were correct: thankfulness does comprehend the whole of the Christian life. Thankfulness to Godgets us away from ourselves and neutralizes our whining about ourselves even as it neutralizes our envy of others. Only ceaseless gratitude to God will keep us shaping our lives after God’s commandments when so many people around us don’t understand why we should obey anyone. Gratitude to God is the lifeblood of our public worship, even as the same gratitude finds us humbled before God in private. Only thankfulness to God frees us to spend ourselves for others who cannot repay us and may not even notice us.

There’s even more to thankfulness; namely, what it fends off. When Paul speaks in Romans 1 of people with “darkened minds” and degenerate conduct, he succinctly states the reason for their darkened thinking and degenerate living: “They did not give thanks.” Ingratitude entails spiritual decline; spiritual decline entails degenerate living. When our Lord told the grateful leper, “Your faith has made you well, saved you,” it was no exaggeration. To be sure, the other nine lepers were lepers no longer, like the tenth. Unlike the nine, however, the tenth who returned to thank his healer was healed of far more than leprosy: his inner life and his outer life thereafter were one, and thereafter were righteous.

 

What’s the connection among the people we’ve looked at today? A desperate, courageous woman knew that if she could simply touch Jesus, make contact with him, her outer world would be altered and her inner turmoil rendered peace. A blind man knew that if he submitted to Christ’s touch he would see what he’d never seen before. A healed leper knew that he had to thank Jesus if all that the master longed to do for him was going to be his.

What’s the connection? You and I must want to make contact with Jesus Christ. Having made contact with him, and rejoicing in our new relationship with him, we must want him to make us see, lest we remain blind to spiritual defects in us that are no secret in any case. Having been made to see we must want to thank our Lord for his astounding mercy – only to hear him to say to us, “Your faith has made you well; now you go in the peace of God, shalom, as your life without and your life within is made forever different.”

 

Victor Shepherd

February 2005

Mark 7:14 -23        Genesis 3:1-7     Romans 1:28-30     Ephesians 2:1-10

Some people enjoy restoring antique automobiles. Some people enjoy driving them. Most of us enjoy watching others drive the antique automobiles which they have restored. We smile when we see an antique car chugging along in the village parade. But none of us would want to contend with rush hour traffic or a highway trip in an antique car.

Yet this is what the church persists in doing, many people tell us, whenever the church speaks of sin. Surely the notion has been antiquated, we are told. Surely it belongs to the era of the Model “T” Ford. Let’s be honest: outside the community of faith the notion of sin, the word “sin”: these are out of fashion. How did it all come to be unfashionable?

   For one, thanks to some zealous but uninformed Christians sin came to be associated with innocent pastimes, like card playing or dancing or theatregoing. To speak of such matters as sin is ridiculous.

For another, sin became associated with lurid immorality, with a degradation (admittedly) that was also secretly coated with juicy, lurid lewdness. Since very few people are luridly immoral, and since no one will admit to finding it juicy, few people today understand sin as pertaining to them at all.

Finally, sin was rendered unfashionable by the self-confident secularism of our society. Years ago a European who thought autosuggestion to be the key to self-improvement urged people to say repeatedly, “Every day in ever way I am becoming better and better.” We smile at the naiveness, even the arrogance. Yet we smile too soon, for any society that worships the myth of progress (and the myth of progress is the mirage that North Americans chase) most certainly believes that it is getting better and better. We shall progress, we are told, only as we jettison such antiquated encumbrances as sin.

Nevertheless, the church, in her singing, preaching and praying continues to use the word. Profounder people among us won’t let it drop. Karl Menninger, internationally known psychiatrist and founder of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas , has written a thoughtful book, Whatever Became of Sin? Paul Tillich, philosopher and theologian, said in an interview for Time magazine, “For twenty-five years I have tried to find another word for ‘sin.’ There is no other word.”

 

[1] Since the community of faith isn’t going to drop the word, we should be sure we know what it means. Sin, at bottom, is as simple as it is dreadful: sin is simply telling God to “buzz off.” The telling may be explicit and conscious. More often, in fact nearly always, it is implicit and disguised because unconscious. It makes no difference. God is told to get lost. He claims us for himself. We say, “Leave me alone.” He insists that he wants only our blessing, and the obedience he wants from us will prove to be our blessing. We reply, “Everywhere else in life obedience is something we have to render a boss we can’t stand. Why should we think you are different?” He grounds his claim upon us in his love for us. We say, “I didn’t ask for your love. Furthermore, I resent your love; it’s an intrusion; I want my life to be mine.” The root Sin (and the fountain of all concrete sins) is a self-important, proud posture of defiance, of rejection, of disdain and disobedience. The posture pretends to be a sophisticated looking past God born of a sufficiency without God. Our sufficiency, however, is only a ridiculous figment of our imagination, and our innocent sophistication in fact culpable contempt.

We read children’s stories where someone highborn, aristocratic, sets out on a walk. He steps around peasants and paupers, disdaining them. From his position of aristocratic aloofness he never really sees them, never takes note of them, never engages them, so far beneath him he does he find them to be. As the children’s story unfolds one of the peasants or paupers was in fact a prince or a princess. The aristocrat’s proud aloofness, his groundless superiority, has caused him to forfeit something precious. Men and women strut like aristocrats disdaining the God who in his Son is lowly and humble, the God whose condescension to us for our blessing we regard as weakness in him. In our posture of proud aloofness we do not apprehend the God whose coming among us at Christmas and Calvary through peasant woman and cattle poop and criminal justice system is so very ordinary. When he does plant himself in front of us and presses both his love and his claim upon us we dismiss him: “Out of my way, ordinary fellow.” At bottom is our self-important posture of repudiation, rejection, dismissal – of him.

 

[2] What are the consequences of this posture? The first consequence, obviously, is estrangement from him. God isn’t indifferent to our postured superiority. He reacts. He thrusts us away from him. He won’t allow us to denounce him, defy him, and at the same time remain on casual terms with him. On account of his judicial reaction to our disobedience an abyss opens between God and us. The one who is eternally Father now looks upon alienated sons and daughters. The rightful ruler sends away rebellious subjects. Created to be God’s covenant-partners and co-workers, we relentlessly conspire against God and his truth. We sabotage God’s work. We deafen ourselves to God’s word. We trade on God’s kindness – or think we can.

The second consequence is estrangement from our fellows, those who were given us to be our brothers and sisters. When I was very young and warring with my two sisters my mother would say in exasperation and bewilderment, “Why can’t you just get along?” Why couldn’t we? Why can’t people throughout the world, in any era or culture, “just get along”? A Samaritan woman says to Jesus, “You are a Jew. I am a Samaritan. Samaritans and Jews: we get along like cobra and mongoose.” The first question in scripture is addressed to Adam and Eve, every man and every woman, after they have alienated themselves from God: “Where are you?” God says. The second question in scripture is addressed to Cain after he has murdered his alienated brother: “Where is your brother?” That’s a question God is forever asking all humankind all the time: “Where’s your brother? Where’s your sister?” An abyss has opened up between those given us to be brothers and sisters with the result that we are all hauntingly estranged from each other.

If the sociologists could eliminate the social conditions that are the occasion of human conflict (I said “occasion” not “cause”) would we then be living in a utopia? Tell me: if the Garden of Eden were reconstructed and repopulated would we all then be living in Lotus Land – or would we wreck the garden (again)? There can be no utopia just because improving our social environment may change the expression our sin takes but it won’t change us profoundly; it may change the manifestation of our sin but won’t eliminate sin itself. For the cause of humankind’s wrecking itself is that profoundest inner disorder rooted in our defiance and disobedience concerning God.

The third consequence of God’s judicial reaction to our root sin is alienation from ourselves. An abyss opens up, somehow, between me and myself. You see, God can always be refused. Still, our persistent refusing him doesn’t change the fact that he has made us for himself and therefore we are going to be most authentically human, most authentically our “self” only in him. To refuse him is always somehow to refuse ourselves. To be estranged from him is to be estranged from ourselves. To think we can get rid of him but continue to possess our “self” by means of our “self” – this is folly twice over. The self we’ve lost can’t be the means to possessing a self we are trying to find. It’s no wonder we are chronically discontent, dis-eased, ill-at-ease, self-alienated. It’s no wonder we keep asking “What’s wrong with me?” when in fact everyone is suffering from the same ailment for the same reason. It’s no wonder we keep trying to anaesthetize ourselves with adult toys and trinkets and playthings. Yet every so often the anaesthetic breaks down and we are startled to find “it’s still there” – the haunting, non-specific but undeniable apprehension that there’s something of the innermost “me” that I’m missing yet can’t quite find.

 

[3] Do you think this sermon is a “downer?” Have the last ten minutes been pessimistic and therefore depressing? Then what I’m going to say next should send you home rejoicing: “Today’s sermon is the most optimistic I have ever preached.” Why? Because the most optimistic thing to be said of any of us is that we are sinners.

If we don’t say that we are sinners then what expression are we going to use to describe, ultimately explain, the outer and inner wreckage we can’t deny? Are we going to say that humankind is sick? But “sick” has dubious connotations today, and they aren’t going to help us at all. Besides, if humankind as a whole is sick, then are there some among us who are considerably less sick than the rest and can therefore “cure” everyone else? The history of the world tells us that whenever a group in any society thinks it can “cure” everyone else it behaves with conscienceless savagery. On the other hand, if we say that there’s no privileged group in the society that can cure the rest of us, then there’s no physician adequate to our disease; there’s no physician with curative powers equal to the disease.

At this point someone will want to say that the problem lies with the word “sick” as a diagnostic tool. Instead of regarding humankind as sick we should regard ourselves as socially maladjusted.   To speak of ourselves as socially maladjusted, however, is to invite social engineering. The last ninety years, from the October revolution in Russia to the current situation in China and North Korea , from Germany of 1933 to Apartheid’s South Africa ; this period alone has told us as much as we want to know about social engineering. In any scheme of social engineering the “engineers,” the “answer” people, will insist upon the right to enforce their social solutions. They can only put us on the road to totalitarianism. The safest thing to say, because the truest thing to say, is also the most optimistic thing to say: we are sinners.

Let’s examine this assertion more closely. When we say that humankind is a sinner we aren’t using “is” in the same way as when we say a horse is four-legged. When we say that a horse is four-legged we mean that a horse is supposed to be four-legged, has to be four-legged. It was never meant to be anything else and is never going to be anything else. But when we say that we are sinners we are saying just the opposite: we are sinners but we aren’t supposed to be. We are sinners but we were never meant to be. We are sinners now but by God’s grace we shan’t be.

To say that we are sinners now is to say that we have falsified ourselves somehow, but by God’s grace we can recover our true identity. We can recover what we were made to be. Our capsized situation can be turned right side up. Most gloriously, it can all begin now.

Now you understand why it is optimistic to speak of humankind as sinner but pessimistic, hopeless and dangerous to speak of humankind as sick or socially maladjusted. Under God we can begin our journey toward the destination to which we’ve been appointed – which is nothing less than the overcoming of alienation everywhere in life: reconciliation with God, with our fellows, with our innermost, profoundest “self.”

Many times today we have used the word “alienation” to describe the threefold consequences of our root rejection of God. Think for a minute of what it is to be an alien. An alien is someone living precariously in a country to which he doesn’t belong, living precariously in a country of which he isn’t a citizen. Since he isn’t a citizen he lacks the rights and protection of citizen; he can be deported at any time. To be a citizen, on the other hand, is to belong, to have one’s life unfold in the security that one isn’t going to be deported. To be reconciled to God, and thereafter to fellows and self, is to know that we belong. It’s to know that life “fits.” The most optimistic diagnosis is that we are sinners, aliens, for only as the diagnosis is owned are we going to ask, “How do I become a citizen?”

How do we become citizens of the Kingdom of God ? The Apostles’ Creed gathers it all up in one pithy sentence: “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” To believe isn’t to add an item to our mental furniture, even an item of furniture called “the forgiveness of sins.” To believe, rather, is to entrust our entire future to the One who comes to us as Saviour and wants only that we trust him to save us.

Let’s return to the optimism of the diagnosis. Optimism, if it is to be genuine optimism and not mere wishful thinking, has to be grounded in realism. The realism of the human predicament is that we are sinners before God. The optimism of the human predicament is that we have been appointed to embrace our Lord who is also Saviour just because the forgiveness he pronounces he also effects. As we are forgiven and know ourselves forgiven, our reconciliation with God begins to effect reconciliation everywhere in life.

Think of the Samaritan woman in John 4. As a Samaritan she’s alienated from Jesus, a Jew: ethnic alienation, virulent today. As a woman she’s alienated from him because he’s a man: gender alienation, virulent today. As a five-time married woman who is currently shacked up (what’s the point of getting married a sixth time?) she’s alienated from Jesus because he’s sinless: moral alienation, virulent today. Because of her reputation she’s alienated from her townspeople (that’s why she’s at the well by herself at high noon when everyone else indoors seeking shelter from the heat): social alienation, virulent today. Jesus presses upon her the living water, the profoundest thirst-quenching water, that he himself is. In that moment, without ever having heard of the apostle Paul (who isn’t even an apostle yet), she understands what Paul means when he comes to say that forgiveness is nothing less than resurrection from the dead.

 

The church is entrusted with the message of forgiveness, just because the church, the Christian community, consists of those who have tasted forgiveness themselves. We know what it is to have been an alien and what it is now to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God . We know what it is to have many-faceted alienation give way – or at least begin to give way – to a many-faceted reconciliation. We see the folly and the ridiculousness of pipsqueak human beings who tell the creator of the cosmos to “get lost.” We see the folly and ridiculousness of it, but we don’t laugh at anybody who still lives there, because we once lived there ourselves. By God’s pardon, however, we have been brought from death to life, from darkness to light, from sinner to sinner forgiven. And we know that one day we are going to stand without spot or blemish before our great God and Saviour.

 

                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd                                                                                             

February 2004

 

 

Mark 8:34-38     2^nd Samuel 23:13-17     James 1:2-8

 

I: — A beach holiday looks good in the March break. Snow-shovelling is behind us, heating-bills are decreasing, and the cough-syrup stays in the bottle. When the travel company dangles the beach holiday in front of us nothing ever looked so good.

There is a kind of preaching which is just like this. People are jaded on account of life’s jolts. The preacher speaks of joy and peace and contentment; great surges of strength and wonderful infusions of enthusiasm. The preacher links it all to Jesus. When he dangles Jesus in front of jaded people, it’s all as attractive as the prospect of a beach holiday in the March break.

There is only one problem with the preacher’s presentation, but it’s a big problem: regardless of what he says, in fact he has left out Jesus. He thinks he has included him, since he ascribes all the “goodies” we get to him. But the huge error the preacher has made is this: he thinks we can have all that our Lord genuinely wants to give us without having our Lord himself. But we can’t. Jesus Christ does not give us joy, peace, contentment, strength and encouragement as though he were dispensing tonic from a medicine bottle. Our Lord can only give us himself. As he gives us himself, he does indeed give us “all things with him”, in the words of Paul. Popular preachers too often persist in overlooking something crucial: to be bound to Jesus Christ is to be bound to a cross. Warmly Jesus invites people to become disciples; realistically he also tells them that there is no discipleship, no intimacy with him apart from cross-bearing. To take up with him is to take up our cross.

I should never deny that fellowship with Jesus Christ is glorious indeed. He does bring us peace which the world cannot bring, peace which therefore passes the world’s understanding, peace which nothing and no one either gives or takes away. At the same time, fellowship with our Lord is double-sided: he insists that he brings not peace but a sword; specifically, that sword with which a hostile world wounds his disciples.

When the mother of James and John asks Jesus if her two sons can have extraordinary places of honour in the kingdom of God , Jesus, as his custom is, does not answer her question. Instead he asks his own question: “Can your two sons withstand getting kicked in the teeth on account of me?”

Jesus insists that cross-bearing is as essential a part of discipleship as obedience or prayer or worship. It’s not the case that we become disciples and then discover, much later, that every now and then there is a minor down-side to it all. Quite the contrary. Jesus calls us saying, “I promise you such blessing as to be available nowhere else, so wonderful that you may describe it but never explain it; I also promise you suffering that you have never imagined. Now do you still want me?”

Scripture never moves away from this conviction. In the Sermon On The Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Elsewhere, “you cannot be my disciple unless you take up your cross.” In Acts 5 the apostles finally leave the Sanhedrin (call it the church courts) “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for [Christ’s] name.” Paul writes so matter of factly, “Anyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” James encourages his readers, “Count it all joy … when you meet various trials.”

One thing is plain: to shun cross-bearing, to shun that suffering which faithfulness to our Lord brings upon us, is to shun our Lord himself. Peter wept heart-brokenly in the wake of his denial. Peter had seen that the most intense suffering would shortly be visited upon his Lord. Quickly he disowned any connection with Jesus in order to spare himself similar suffering. In the same instant Peter knew he had divorced himself from the one for whom he had earlier said he would walk on broken glass.

When the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations Within The United Church of Canada was formed the Rev. Gervis Black, senior minister from Metropolitan UC, London, toured the maritimes speaking on behalf of the Alliance (my former congregation Streetsville United Church, was a founding member.) At his first stop he found half-a-dozen congregations expressing much interest in the Alliance and eager to meet with him. The ministers of these congregations, however, were so frightened (of denominational authorities) that none of them would permit his church-building to be used for the meeting. The meeting had to be held in a school; in Halifax the meeting had to be held in a hotel. I understand why the ministers were frightened. I understand why Peter was frightened. Who wouldn’t have been frightened? Peter, however, wept. His weeping was his salvation.

 

II: — Christians live in the world. There is an aspect to our existence in the world to which Christians are surprisingly naive: the world is hostile to Jesus Christ and therefore hostile to the gospel. The world, however, is not hostile to religion. The world tolerates religion, even approves it. In fact, it is a mark of sophistication and broad-mindedness to find value in religion. As long as Christian discipleship, so-called, passes itself off as religion all is well. But as soon as Jesus Christ is seen to contradict the world’s self-understanding and self-projection, then Christ’s people are set upon. When Jesus sends out his missioners he says, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; you are going to get flogged in the churches.” (Why would the church flog apostles of Jesus? Because religion is acceptable in the church as it is in the world; whereas Jesus Christ, his truth and his people frequently are not.) “You will be hounded by all on account of me”, the master says chillingly. In John’s gospel Jesus prays for his people. Earnestly he says to his Father, “I have given them your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

But why does the world (including a worldly church) hate our Lord and his people? Because the world sees Christians as disturbers of the peace. Jesus himself is a disturber of the peace. He and the world collide. Righteousness and sin cannot be reconciled. Truth exposes falsehood for what it is. Transparency shames duplicity. The kingdom of God and the work of the evil one are forever incompatible.

The irony of it all, of course, is that Jesus is the world’s friend as no one else is. And yet the world hates the only one who can save it. Christians stand with their Lord in solidarity with the world for the sake of the world; yet the world abuses them. In brief, to be a Christian is always to be saddled with affliction. There is no escape. Affliction at the hands of the world progresses through three phases. The first is defamation. Things are said about disciples, accusations are made, which are simply not true. The second phase is ostracism. You aren’t on the inner circle any longer (if you ever were); you aren’t on the “A” team; you’ve been waved to the back of the bus. The third phase is out-and-out abuse. Jesus illustrates this progression himself. First he was called a demon-possessed bastard. Then he was relegated to the fringes of the religious establishment. Finally he was “terminated”. What have you been called? I’ve been called much. Of course it hurts. But in fact it’s a badge of honour, a mark of our discipleship.

 

III: — People who ask about cross-bearing don’t usually have in mind what we’ve discussed so far. They usually have something else in mind. When people speak of bearing their cross they customarily mean not that extraordinary suffering brought upon us through our loyalty to him whom the world despises; they mean the ordinary suffering that comes to us simply because we are fragile creatures who live in an unpredictable environment. We fall sick, our teenager gets derailed, our aged parent is chronically confused, our brother-in-law is meaner than a junk-yard dog, we lose our job. We sigh with genuine weariness and wonder how we are going to “bear our cross.”

There are two things I want to say about this. In the first place, the suffering that comes upon us as part of the human lot the NT never speaks of as a cross to be borne.   If tomorrow I am found to have encephalitis or Lou Gehrig’s disease it will be dreadful, and not to be made light of. At the same time, it is not a “cross”, strictly speaking, since it is suffering brought on me simply through being human, not through being Christ’s disciple.

The second thing I want to say bears very careful attention. In the Roman Catholic tradition especially, it is acknowledged that the suffering we incur simply through being human, if borne cheerfully, without bitterness or rancour or resentment — this “ordinary” suffering becomes a sacrifice offered up to God and now has the significance of suffering incurred through being a disciple. You see, it comes naturally to us to resent suffering, chafe under it, be embittered by it and then poison ever so many others on account of it. Left to ourselves, this is how we fallen human beings react. It is by grace; in the words of Hebrews it is by “looking unto Jesus” that the suffering we neither brought on ourselves nor are able to get rid of doesn’t embitter us, disfigure us and poison others.

If, as our Roman Catholic friends insist, suffering borne in this way is indeed a sacrifice offered up to God, then it is legitimate for us to speak of it as a cross to be borne. After all, it is our discipleship which keeps us looking unto Jesus in the midst of our ineradicable suffering.

A year or two ago I was a speaker at a summer Conference in the course of which there was to be a healing service where the worship-leader laid hands upon people as he prayed for them. Two people at this event captured my attention: a 60-year old woman, a widow, together with her 35-year old son. She was a Registered Nurse and worked for the Peel Board of Education. She had had a small stroke. It had not impaired thought or speech, but it had inhibited movement in one arm and one leg. She hobbled. Her son, on the other hand, was very ill; he was severely schizophrenic. He lived with his mother inasmuch as he couldn’t live anywhere else. She was struggling to go to work every day despite her disabilities, even as she had to look out for and look after her psychotic son. In the afternoon before the evening’s healing service the son and I were sitting in front of the coffee machine chatting about anything at all. Suddenly he faced me in dead earnestness and said, “At the service tonight I am coming to you to have you lay hands on me. I want to be free from the voices; you know, the voices.” My heart sank. I staggered to my feet, bought us each an ice-cream cone, and took him for a walk. Ever since then I have pondered his unrelieved suffering, his mother’s difficulty, the struggle she has day by day — and the genuine cheerfulness in which she contends with it all. That’s what I ponder most: her transparent good nature and cheerfulness in the face of it all! It is by her looking unto Jesus that the suffering which isn’t a consequence of her discipleship has the significance, before God, of that suffering which is; for it is by looking unto Jesus that she has offered up to him what would otherwise embitter and disfigure her even as it poisoned others.

 

IV: — There is something more we must be sure to notice today. While in passage after passage the NT insists that cross-bearing is a necessary part of discipleship, in no passage does the NT speak of this in terms of protest or complaint. No complaining, no bewailing our appointment, no griping, no self-pity. Why not? Simply because Christians of apostolic discernment and experience know that Christ’s cross is that by which he conquers. They know that his resurrection means not that his cross has been left behind; his resurrection is precisely what continues to make his cross effective; they know that his resurrection is precisely what makes his ongoing suffering victorious in the world.

Few people understand that the risen Jesus suffers still. Many people assume that Jesus had a bad day, one Friday. Then he had a super day on Easter Sunday and things have gone swimmingly ever since. In other words, they assume that in his resurrection Jesus left his crucifiedness behind him forever. Not so! It is the risen Christ who says to Thomas, “Look at my gaping wounds.” Even as raised he is still wounded. It is the risen Christ who cried out to Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?”, when Paul (at that time Saul) was persecuting Christ’s people. The risen one suffers still. However, his resurrection means that his ongoing suffering is now the leading edge of God’s victory in the world.

The cross which you and I bear is the leading edge of God’s victory over whatever evil laps at us. Taken up into this victory ourselves, we know that the afflictions we bear will never best us. Indeed our affliction itself will be used of God to alleviate someone else’s affliction. Is it not Christ’s wounds which heal us? Is it not his death which brings us life? Is it not his suffering which comforts us? Then as cross-bearers with him it is our privilege to be used of him in similar manner on behalf of so many others. Remember, nowhere in the NT is cross-bearing, an inevitable aspect of discipleship, spoken of in terms of protest or complaint.

None of this is to suggest that cross-bearing is pleasant or will ever be. It is difficult; frequently it is dreadful. Our Lord knows this. That’s why he urges patience and cheerfulness upon his people. “In the world you will have tribulation”, he says, “but be of good cheer, the world is precisely what I have overcome.” Intense as suffering is, however, it is not the case that we are to hang on grimly until the day comes when we are finally relieved by him who has overcome the world. Right now, rather, Christ’s people are those who have “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come”. What we have already tasted convinces us that it is real; it quickens our longing for more; and it assures us that what we have already tasted and now long for, God will supply one day in fullest measure.

Paul says that the life of Christ’s people, our true life, real life, is at present hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, we shall appear with him in glory. Then may you and I ever be found cheerfully bearing whatever cross we must. For just as our Lord endured suffering and shame only to be vindicated before the entire creation, so shall we be vindicated as his people; for he will have brought us, cross and all, through that turbulent, treacherous world which he has overcome on behalf of every one of us.

 

                                                                                            Victor Shepherd

January 2005

 

 

 

 Mark 9:2-29

 

The human heart fills up with blood, expanding as it fills.  Then it contracts, sending blood throughout the body.         A second later it happens again.  Blood is gathered into the heart, blood is expelled from the heart, over and over. With some people, however, the heartbeat becomes irregular.  The rhythm is upset. These people have a lopsided pulse. Their condition is known as arrhythmia. Plainly their heart needs medical attention.

There’s a heartbeat of a different kind that regulates the Christian life. There’s a normal pulse that indicates a healthy balance between input and output.  And in the Christian life as well, arrhythmia points to an irregularity. Arrhythmia here should be checked out too.

The truth is, most of us tend to suffer somewhat from arrhythmia in the Christian life. Some of us are doers. We emphasise output. We are eager to fix the world, and invariably find ourselves unable to turn down any request for assistance. In fact, we don’t even have to wait for a request.  Any suggestion that we might pause and take stock we dismiss as indifference or laziness or heartlessness.

On the other hand, some of us are contemplatives.  We emphasise input. We meditate. We ponder.  We cultivate inwardness. We are more concerned with what is going on in the recesses of our hearts and heads than with what is happening in the wider world.  But both these conditions are arrhythmic; both indicate an irregularity in the Christian life.

As we reacquaint ourselves once more with the story of the Transfiguration we shall hear the regular, rhythmic heartbeat of discipleship. And hearing it in the old, old story, we shall find, by God’s grace, that our own heartbeat has been normalised; our own heartbeat is corrected by the master himself, just as he first corrected the heartbeat of the apostles before us.

 

I:         Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain with him.  Right away our ears should perk up.  Having been exposed to scripture for decades we should know that mountains, in scripture, are the venue of revelation: Mount Sinai, Mount Carmel, Mount Zion , the Mount of Olives, the “hill” of Calvary ”, “The Sermon on the Mount.”         “Mountain” always points to God’s self-disclosure and the change within those who are beneficiaries of it.  As soon as we hear that Jesus has taken Peter, James and John with him up a mountain, we know that an epiphany is occurring whose truth and reality will stamp itself indelibly upon these men and upon all, like us, who receive their witness and therein find the same epiphany occurring again. While the three men are with Jesus on the mountain, Jesus shines before them with a luminosity they can neither explain nor forget.  He is highlighted in such a way as to leave them knowing that he is the effectual presence of God. They are startled yet also satisfied; taken aback yet also contented.         They know that once more, on this mountain, they are standing on holy ground not because of anything about the ground but rather because of him who has shone before them.

All of us have had similar experiences at the level of the merely creaturely, the merely human. There must be, there has to be, some situation where the human love that spouse or friend or child or parent has poured over you for years suddenly staggers you, overwhelms you in one way or another and leaves you “spaced”, as teenagers like to say.         You are startled that anyone should love you that much; startled even more that this person in particular, who knows you inside out, should love you that intensely and intentionally, that freely and forgivingly.  As startled as you are, however, you aren’t the slightest bit sceptical or suspicious. You simply glory in the glow of someone’s all-enveloping love for you.

There mustbe, there has to be, some situation where truth has broken in on you. It broke in on you like a wave breaking on the beach and running up the shore. Before it all receded, and your surprise with it, it soaked into you.         The fact that it was hidden within you; the fact that no one else was aware of what had happened; the fact that the truth that now seized your mind and heart you didn’t have words enough to articulate; none of this diminished in any way your conviction and the difference it made to you from that day.

There must be, there has to be, some situation in which Jesus Christ ceased to be a problem or a perplexity or the occasion of more questions than answers.  He loomed before you as bedrock reality on which you could stand and from which you could gain perspective on the mirages and deceptions that had beset you and kept you off-balance, confused and nervous.  As startled as you were, however, you weren’t frightened.  In fact this time your shock was also the end of your fear.

Usually we say little about such occasions.  We don’t want to appear a religious “spouter” or worse, a religious exhibitionist. We don’t want to appear as tasteless as those who blab marital intimacies at a cocktail party. Still, we know that something has established itself so deep within us that words will never do justice to it. Words will never do justice to it, to be sure, but some words, at least, come much closer than others to doing justice to it; such as the matchless words of Charles Wesley:

O disclose thy lovely face,

Quicken all my drooping powers;

Gasps my fainting soul for grace

As a thirsty land for showers:

Haste, my Lord, no more delay!

Come, my Saviour, come away!

When Wesley penned these lines he had in mind verse 13 from chapter 2 of the Song of Solomon:

Arise, my love, my fair one, come away.

The Song of Solomon is a love-poem of undisguised eroticism.  Wesley found the imagery there expressing his longing for his Lord together with that longing fulfilled.  No doubt he had read the Song of Solomon a dozen times per year for years beyond counting, and then one day words written for a different purpose became the vehicle of his heart’s greatest longing and its fulfilment as the lover of all men and women lit up before him.

One Sunday evening in Aberdeen, Scotland (at one time I was a postgraduate student in Aberdeen), I was in an upside-down mood: depressed, miserable, petulant, fed up and frustrated over a professor who had encouraged me for two years to go to Scotland to study under him. Ten days after I had arrived he had left without ever informing me of what he had known for months he was going to do. In my upside-down mood I knew I wouldn’t be any company for Maureen, and so I hopped on a bus and went to a small downtown church tucked away at the end of a narrow, winding street.  The president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain and Ireland was to speak. I went expecting nothing. “O disclose thy lovely face, quicken all my drooping powers….”   It happened.  And I can’t remember one word of the sermon.

When I was a younger minister I thought that parishioners should be able to take home huge chunks of the sermon week by week.  After all, I had spent many hours working up this material; surely the least they could do was remember it.  Then one day a parishioner questioned me about the sermon I had preached three Sundays ago, and I realised I couldn’t recall the sermon. From that moment I ceased expecting worshippers to be a blotter.  From that moment instead I wanted not information blotted but fire struck. I wanted some aspect of worship, whether prayer or hymn or anthem (although the sermon would do too) to become the event of self-disclosure where Jesus Christ lights up and we are startled and moved yet also contented as truth and love and fathomless profundity steal over us, confirming both him and ourselves in him.

When mediaeval Roman Catholics were visited with such moments they spoke of them in the language of vivid visions.  Such language strikes many people as exaggerated, even grotesque.  When our Protestant foreparents were visited with such moments they spoke of them in the language of poetry (hymns), which language strikes many people as overblown, even saccharine.  But the vision and the poetry aren’t exaggerated at all for those, like Peter, James and John, before whom Jesus Christ has loomed illumined.  No language I speak to my wife or she to me strikes either of us as exaggerated. It would be exaggerated to someone who had never been in love and therefore had never lived in that world. Once we are in love and do live in that world, we know that the most intense love-language falls far short of the heart’s surge.  “O disclose thy lovely face….”   And when our Lord does precisely this?  There are only two responses: say nothing inasmuch as no word is adequate, or say something knowing that every word falls short.

II:         What next? Peter wants to freeze the moment, preserve it before it disappears.  Who doesn’t?  Nevertheless, to try to freeze such a moment is to kill it.  (Frozen fish, we must remember, may be preserved indefinitely but they certainly aren’t alive.) Much as we want to, we can’t seize the moment that has overtaken us, grasp it and try to hang on to it. If we grasp at it, we are grabbing the gift-wrapping when we should be glorying in the gift, for the gift is simply the giver himself.  To try to freeze the moment is to try to prolong the ecstasy when we should be looking to its author.

What’s more, we should always remember that God has something for us beyond ecstasy. When Peter tries to freeze the moment on the mountain, a cloud appears (clouds, in scripture, are a symbol of God’s presence), and out of the cloud a voice comes: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” “Listen”, for the Hebrew mind, always has the force of “obey.”  If we don’t obey we haven’t heard.

Only hours earlier Jesus had told the twelve he would have to suffer. “Can’t be” they had shot back. Undeterred, Jesus had insisted even more persistently that his vocation entailed suffering, and because his did, theirs did too.         He had told them they must deny themselves: self-renunciation was an aspect of discipleship. He had told them they must shoulder their cross; not his, to be sure, but theirs nonetheless, sacrifice being as essential to discipleship as paint to a painter. Their Lord had told them they must never, simply never, be ashamed of him and his truth and his way – not when they were mocked; not when they were slandered; not when they were hammered. Everything that Jesus had shared with them only hours earlier and which they had forgotten already, so intense was their moment of ecstasy; all of this was brought back as ecstasy gave way to sobering voice: “This is the Son I’ve appointed you to hear and heed. Listen to him.”

We can’t freeze the moment of God’s self-disclosure.  We shouldn’t even try. We must rather allow it to lead us to God’s claim on our obedience.

 

III:         Peter, James and John accompany Jesus back down the mountain.  They are returning to the turbulent, treacherous world whose trouble is unrelenting. Immediately they come upon a boy with epilepsy.  A distraught father has brought the boy to them.  The youngster can’t stop convulsing and foaming.  A crowd gathers, crowds always gathering at the gripping spectacle of human distress. In the midst of the boy’s neurological seizure and the crowd’s psychological seizure, a knot of religious hair-splitters is having an argument.

Everyone’s world convulses from time to time.  Families convulse, societies convulse, denominations convulse, and occasionally there’s a convulsion inside us so terrible that we foam. And amidst it all there are perverse people with shrivelled hearts who relish religious strife as they relish nothing else.

The disciples endeavour to do something for the boy and discover that they can’t. Once they have owned their helplessness Jesus comments, “This sort of thing can be driven out only by prayer.” We know he’s right. Of ourselves, what can you and I do for convulsions within and without?   Of ourselves, what can we do for others that doesn’t end up increasing their burden and perplexity and pain?  Only by prayer can all of this be dealt with.

Yet prayer doesn’t mean magical incantation.  It doesn’t mean a religious formula, the mere reciting of which brings sure-fire success. It doesn’t mean “abracadabra” repeated over and over with the name of Jesus tacked on the end to make it “work.”   It means, rather, a patient, disciplined waiting on God.  It means a self-exposure to God as persistent as our self-exposure to human need. It means a sensitivity to the heart of God commensurate with our sensitivity to the heart of our fellow-sufferer.  It means a glad and grateful, non-defensive willingness to be corrected by other Christians who are walking the Way with us.

IV:         As God takes us from mountaintop down to a valley of trouble we mustn’t shirk the crossbearing to which he has appointed us.  Yet our crossbearing must have about it no trace of resentment.

Our faithfulness to Jesus Christ amidst ceaseless turbulence certainly entails self-denial. Yet our self-denial must have about it no trace of sourness or self-righteousness.

In a world that is already riddled with deviousness and deception we must stand by and stand up for that truth which our Lord has planted amidst falsehood. Yet our boldness here must have about it no trace of aggression or arrogance.

To be sure, our activity on behalf of Jesus Christ and his people will always unfold amidst religious strife.  Yet we must exalt our Lord without magnifying fruitless controversy. And of course we must never become so taken up with argument, even edifying discussion, that we fail to see people who are in pain.

It’s only by prayer, says Jesus, that all these distortions and disfigurements can be driven out of us and render us fit instruments of the master’s word and touch. It is only as we betake ourselves to him, to his word, to our fellow-believers that we shall avoid the impotence that the twelve knew in the face of overwhelming human need.

 

When we come back down the mountain, what are we going to find?   We are going to hear the world’s bleating.         (Sheep without a shepherd, Jesus said the people were.)   We are going to hear the religiously argumentative who never quit in any case. But over all of this we are going to hear someone here, and another person there, who cry out to us, “I believe a little.   Won’t you and your congregation help me believe more?”

Those who cry out to us in this manner are those who’ve come to admit that life can’t be domesticated.  They used to think that life could be tamed, and now they see it can’t. They used to think that only neurotics and weaklings were fragile; now they see that fragility is the human lot. They used to think that any reflection on death was morbid; now they know that life is short and death is sure.

Sometimes these people begin with a request of us, sometimes with a bitter accusation, sometimes with a grope as they try to grasp anything that will stop their spinning and quell their nausea.  Often they begin with a perplexity which, on account of their pain, has moved from their head (perplexities in the head are harmless) to their heart (perplexities in the heart are distressing.)  At this point they look to us and say, “I do have some struggling faith; can’t you help it grow?”   This is what we find when we come down the mountain.
The pulse of the Christian life should be like the pulse in the body: rhythmic. It becomes arrhythmic as soon as we neglect any aspect of the Christian life, thereby rendering our discipleship lopsided.  In fact it’s not difficult to keep it rhythmic.  It’s just a matter of going up and down the mountain, up into moments of our Lord’s self-disclosure, glorious and satisfying at once, then back down with him into a world whose pain makes it writhe – doing this over and over until that day, says Charles Wesley, when our Lord’s ultimate self-disclosure obliterates all pain, and all God’s people are forever lost in wonder, love and praise.

 

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd                           

February 2007

Mark 9:14-29

1] The recent controversies in Canada’s largest Protestant denomination have generated sharp disagreements and more than a little anguish. For Christians such controversy is unavoidable. Peter tells us in his first letter that we should always be ready to articulate our gospel-convictions when those convictions are challenged. Time after time, on his missionary journeys, Paul went to the marketplace or a church-hall and argued for the truth and substance of Jesus Christ. This isn’t to say that he argued nastily, that he became bad-tempered or contemptuous or sarcastic. But it is to say that he was prepared to argue on behalf of the one who had seized him and now shone so brightly for him as never to be denied. In other words, he was ready to speak for, speak up for, the gospel of God whenever this gospel was maligned or distorted or simply misunderstood. As the gospel has been contradicted in our own denomination some of us have known what we had to do: we had to speak up, argue, dispute, and do all of this in a manner which adorned the gospel itself. As we have done this a crowd has gathered. Because of the controversy I have addressed crowds larger than any I had addressed before. In addition, news reporters and magazine writers have ensured that there was always a crowd to read if not to hear.

God has ordained that there be a place for this. DIALOGIZOMAI is a rich NT word; it means to dialogue, to discuss, to argue, to reason, to question, to contend. Yet while there is certainly a God-ordained place for this, it isn’t ultimate. Arguing and reasoning with respect to the gospel are never ends in themselves. Paul didn’t argue in the marketplace because he was argumentative or prickly; never because he relished arguing and enjoyed defeating someone in a verbal joust. He argued only for the sake of the gospel. We do as much today only in order to dispel misunderstandings of the gospel, to clear away any obscurities which might be impeding faith in our hearers. Ultimately our purpose in arguing on behalf of the gospel is to get beyond argumentation and have others embrace the gospel itself; that is, have them cling to Jesus Christ in the strength and desire which his grip on them lends them.

When we find the disciples of Jesus arguing with the scribes (according to Mark) we understand why they argue, why they have to. We understand too why a crowd gathered: crowds love controversies. Yet as soon as Jesus shows up the crowds forget the arguing and flock around him. They do so, Mark tells us, insofar as they are amazed at him; as soon as they see him they are startled at the authority he exudes. As soon as they see him they recognize that he can do for them what no one else can.

One of the crowd has brought his ill son to the disciples. This man assumes that where there are disciples of Jesus there is also the power of Jesus. He wants help for his disordered son. As soon as Jesus appears the parent recognizes that this man is the one he is really looking for.

People from “the crowd” come to our services. Recently several of them have come inasmuch as they have heard that there is argument, controversy here. At the same time some have come inasmuch as they have recently become parents and are sobered by their new responsibility; or they have lost someone dear to them and they have questions they cannot answer and a heartache they cannot assuage; they come after any one of life’s countless jarrings have left them wondering profoundly or wobbling drunkenly. In coming here; in coming into the midst of us who are disciples of Jesus, they assume they are drawing near to Jesus himself. They assume that from the midst of Christ’s people there will be given them what they need, or at least what they are looking for and what our Lord alone can supply.

Sometimes they come only to go, feeling that what they expected to find here isn’t here. Some, however, remain long enough that Our Lord himself appears to them . In that instant, like the crowd of old, they recognize that he is the one with authority. They are startled as they recognize what they cannot put words to, yet they know. Whether they have been attracted by the argumentativeness of this congregation or put off by it, they now know that the disputes were never ends in themselves but were always for the sake of the one who has loomed before them and whom they know to love them.

 

2] The anguished parent in our gospel story brings his son to Jesus. The boy goes rigid; he convulses; he foams. Plainly he is epileptic.

The ailments which were brought to Jesus in the days of his earthly ministry were certainly distressing ailments in themselves. At the same time they were signs of a deeper, more difficult spiritual problem besetting humankind. Think for a minute of the blind people who are brought to Jesus. Blindness is a dreadful affliction. To be deprived of sight is certainly to be victimized by evil. Since Jesus resists evil wherever he comes upon it, he restores sight to those who are blind.

But blindness is also symbolic of humankind’s spiritual condition, as the NT stories point out starkly. We are blind to the nature and purpose and truth of God. We are blind to the signs of God’s presence. We are blind to the truth about ourselves, blind to the nature of our own depravity and blind to our situation before God, the just judge.

At the same that Jesus restores sight to the physically blind, then, he expands the meaning of his action to include the spiritual blindness which afflicts us all. You must have noticed that in the account of our Lord’s meeting with Nicodemus Jesus says to him, “Truly, unless one is born anew (born of God) one cannot even see the kingdom of God, much less enter it.” In other words, only as the truth and power of God penetrate us do we become spiritually perceptive and discerning.

An epileptic boy is brought to Jesus. His epilepsy needs attention and is given attention. At the same time, the symptoms of the boy’s epilepsy point to the symptoms of humankind’s spiritual condition.

First, the boy is dumb; mute; can’t speak at all. Which is to say, humankind does not praise God. This is startling, since we are commanded to praise God. As a matter of fact the command to praise God is the most frequently repeated command in scripture. The characteristic of God is that God speaks. God speaks to us in expectation of eliciting speech from us. The absence of heartfelt and heartmeant exclamation to God is spiritual dumbness; as such it is a sign of our spiritual disorder, for it is first a consequence of our spiritual disorder. Only as there is a restorative work of God within us are we freed to praise God from our heart.

In the second place, the boy’s behaviour renders him unsightly and self-destructive. No one pretends that an epileptic seizure is pretty or pleasant to behold. A seizure never yet made anyone beautiful. Neither does our sin render us attractive. Our condition of sinnership, of course, is what underlies those unsightly outcroppings which we call sins. We don’t pretend for a minute that the outcroppings produced themselves. The outcroppings which disfigure us are outcroppings of a spiritual condition which is so deep in us as to be hidden to all except those with Spirit-quickened understanding. Still, it is the outcroppings which everyone sees, whether believer or unbeliever.

No list of sins could ever be complete, since our underlying sinnership effervesces inexhaustibly. Nevertheless, here and there in scripture we come upon partial lists. When Jesus speaks of our root condition of sinnership and refers to its outcroppings he speaks off the top of his head of “evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. He stops there only because he assumes he has made his point. In the same way Paul rattles off “covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insolence, abuse of parents, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness.” He stops there only because he has run out of breath. Any one of us could add another fifty.

The point is this. As we soberly look over the partial lists none of us would say that these outcroppings are other than unsightly. Blemishes, in fact. And in view of what God created us for they are hideous disfigurements. And these disfigurements, insists Jesus, are a consequence of the root human spiritual condition.

The boy’s behaviour also renders him self-destructive: his affliction has often thrown him into water and fire. Sin is humanly destructive. Sin slays, to be sure, and it issues ultimately in spiritual annihilation. This too is part of the human condition.

In the third place, when the boy’s father is asked for how long his son has been afflicted, the father blurts out, “From childhood; he’s been like this from childhood!”   I know for how long I have been afflicted with my sinnership, and I know for how long you have been afflicted with yours: from childhood. Several years ago someone asked me for a sermon on original sin. I preached it, and it is ready-to-hand in my little book, MAKING SENSE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. I won’t repeat the sermon now. Suffice it to say that “from childhood” is no exaggeration.

Our Lord’s depiction of the human condition is accurate. Few people, however, believe him. They believe that education, the welfare state, improved recreational facilities, better health care will together transmute the human condition. It won’t. Only the touch of our Lord does this.

 

3] The father brings his boy to Jesus and says, “If you can do something, anything, have pity on us and do it.” “Do you believe that I can?”, asks Jesus, “or are you simply giving utterance to a bit of wistful thinking?” “I do believe that you can”, the man says, “but I can’t seem to believe enough! Do something about my unbelief!” Whereupon Jesus restores the boy to health. You and I are no different. We do believe that our Lord is saviour. We are not dabbling in wistful thinking. We do believe that he alone can deal with that sinnership which is the root spiritual condition of every last human being. Yet when we search our hearts, look out onto the world and note what awaits us there, look back into our hearts — why, it’s like Peter getting out of the boat with a modicum of confidence, only to look at the waves around him, and finding himself going under. In other words, every time we say, “I believe”, we are also driven to cry, “but I can’t seem to believe enough”.

To say this, however, is to admit that we cannot generate faith ourselves. We cannot come to be possessed of greater faith by fostering or facilitating something inside our psyches. There is no incantation or meditative technique or guru-gimmick or mystical magic by which we can generate faith out of our own resources. We come to be possessed of greater faith only by looking away from ourselves, away from our half-believing hearts, to the God who has promised to enlarge even mustard-seed faith. God alone can do this. Then we must keep on looking to him, for only as we look away from ourselves to him will we be fully assured that our Lord can restore us and will restore others.

 

The disciples have witnessed the restoration of the boy. They are taken aback at their own spiritual impotence. The boy’s father had brought the boy to them (as we mentioned several minutes ago) assuming that disciples of Jesus are themselves possessed of the very thing which their master exemplifies in himself and lends to his followers. Now the disciples are sobered. They cannot deny their own spiritual poverty. “Why do we appear ineffective in the face of humankind’s condition and need?”, they ask. Jesus replies tersely, “It’s a matter of prayer; always a matter of prayer.”

In saying it is a matter of prayer our Lord does not mean it is a matter of muttering a religious formula; not a matter of pious abbracadabbra. It is, however, a matter of petitioning God morning and night to magnify the faith he has given us. It is a matter of exercising the faith we have by concentrating more on the risen one who stands in our midst than on the turbulence which forever laps our lives. It is a matter of contending for the truth of the gospel (as we must) without crushing ourselves by thinking that the future of God’s kingdom hinges on the success of our argumentation. It is a matter of acknowledging that we share in Christ’s victory only as we participate in his sufferings. And prayer is always a matter of not fleeing or cluttering the wilderness-episodes of our lives but rather recognizing that we are led into wilderness-episodes in order that we, like Jesus before us, might hear our Father speaking to us with new clarity. All of this is gathered up as Jesus says to the disciples, “Spiritual authenticity is found in those who pray.”

 

 

It’s an old account of a disordered, disfigured fellow who has been afflicted from childhood. He typifies the root human condition. He typifies as well, however, that work of grace by which our Lord renders you and me all believing people creatures who redound to the praise of God’s mercy — even as the selfsame grace renders our insufficient belief sufficient; sufficient unto that day when faith will give way to sight and we shall behold our blessed Lord face-to-face, forever and ever.

 

                                                                                                    Victor A. Shepherd
November, 1991

Mark 10:15

There may be some dyed-in-the-wool romantics who maintain that children are innocent, pure, always and everywhere nice like sugar and spice.  Such romantics, however, have never been parents or schoolteachers or police officers. Anyone who has lived with children or worked with children knows that children aren’t innocent. Children are cruel; they will gang up and pick on another youngster.  Children are devious; they will invent “explanations” without end to extenuate themselves when their wrongdoing is exposed.  Children are manipulative; they know how to set one parent against another, how to extort something they want from playmate or adult.

Jesus never pretended that children are innocent. He insisted that no one was spared the Fall. He wouldn’t have disagreed with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a book that details the savagery of socially privileged adolescents. (Lord of the Flies, the title of Golding’s book, also happens to be the English translation of the Aramaic word Beelzebul.  Didn’t our Lord speak of Beelzebul throughout his public ministry?)

Jesus isn’t a romantic.  He doesn’t pretend children are guileless or guiltless.  Nevertheless, the gospel story tells us that Jesus picked up a child, set the child in the midst of adults, and said, “Now look.  If you are ever going to enter the Kingdom of God you must receive the Kingdom like this child.”  Plainly our Lord is urging us to be childlike (but not, we should note, childish.) He says that unless we are childlike with respect to the Kingdom, we shall forfeit the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God , needless to say, is the Kingship of God. The Kingdom of God isn’t a territory such as the Kingdom of Great Britain or the Kingdom of Belgium . To live in the Kingdom of God is to live under the Kingship of God.  It’s to acknowledge that he who is our Father is also the Royal Ruler. Israel ’s greatest king was David, and David was a shepherd.  In other words, according to Jewish understanding the Shepherd of Israel has to be King or else his shepherding is ineffective; and the King of Israel has to be Shepherd or else his kingly rule promotes misery. The Shepherd who is King is the effective shepherd; and the King who is shepherd is a ruler who wants only to rescue and bless his people.

When we enter the Kingdom of God we enter upon, enter into, a relationship with that Shepherd King whose royal rule over us serves only to remedy whatever is wrong with us.  We enter this Kingdom, says Jesus, only as we become not childish (infantilism is never to be venerated) but childlike.

 

I: — What’s involved in being childlike? The child receives everything as gift, sheer gift.  In first century Palestine the child had no legal rights. There was no International Year of the Child reminding forgetful parents that every child has rights. The child had none. The child lived only by the good pleasure of its parents.  Anything the child received, then, it received as gift.

Have you ever noticed how many images in biblical thought concerning the Kingdom are pictures drawn from family life? The apostle Paul speaks of adoption, the sheer gift of a new parent who provides a new home whereby the wandering waif or orphan becomes full son or daughter, and is given all that the newfound parents have to give.         According to Luke Jesus speaks of a father who is so happy to see his defiant, disobedient son come home that he gives him shoes, ring, robe, party. All the gospel writers speak of the meals people share with Jesus.  Do they eat and drink with Jesus because at the end of the meal they’re going to purchase something from him?   The whole point of these eating episodes is that at the end of the meal these people are given what they never expected; they’re given what will find them forever different and forever grateful.  Scripture speaks consistently of Christ’s Kingdom ministry as a ministry characterized by gift.

Surely we all agree that genuine friendships are gift. The relationship between two persons that isn’t gift isn’t friendship; it’s a contract. Contracts are one instance of bartering wherein someone has something we want or need, and we have something she wants or needs.  The two persons interact for the sake of mutual convenience.  When mutual capacity to supply the other’s need disappears, so does the barter-relationship. It doesn’t pretend to be friendship because it never was gift.

I’ve never liked the expression “make friends.” I don’t think friends are made. That person who can comfort us when we are shredded and bandage us when we are haemorrhaging; who can see the anguish in our heart when we’ve managed to keep it off our face; who knows what profoundly delights us when others have no idea; this person isn’t made. This person is given to us.

To be childlike is to recognize that we who have no rights at all before God; we are yet those to whom he gives good gifts, all of which are summed up in the gift – of himself – as he seizes us and holds us fast and cherishes us and wants only that we should find in our intimacy with him and our obedience to him a satisfaction so satisfying that we’d never think of looking anywhere else.

And yet, tragically, there are those who don’t appreciate the gift as gift.  They think it’s their responsibility to earn it or merit it or achieve it. They confuse gift with contract.

“So what” someone says.  “Is a minor theological mistake all that important?  Does anything harmful arise from confusing gift with contract and remaining before God?” The truth is, the error isn’t minor, and something harmful does arise.  What exactly? There arises either anxiety or pride or self-loathing.

The anxious are those who will live and die uncertain of their standing before God, since they have always suspected that they’ve never “measured up.”   Their God, whether they are conscious of it or not, has always been the Grand Examiner. “Religion”, loosely called, has always been for these people an occasion of anxiety. But in view of the anxiety that laps at everyone’s life, does anyone need the additional burden of religious anxiety? Could the gospel ever be good news if it multiplied disquiet?  The anxious are always left wondering if their “good” is good enough.

The proud, on the other hand, are those who are not only convinced that standing with God is something they can merit; they’re also convinced that they’ve merited it.  Their rectitude, their dutifulness, their diligence – it’s all been sufficient. Their superiority, evident at least to them if to no one else, guarantees them whatever they might need on Judgement Day.  Jesus, however, deprecates this attitude and speaks against it repeatedly. In the parable of the Tax-Collector and the Pharisee the latter fellow, the Pharisee, reminds God, “You have to be aware that I’m not like this religious incompetent beside me. Religiously, morally too, he wouldn’t know his right hand from his left.”         The God of the proud is always the God who is supposed to recognize and reward self-important superiority.

The self-loathing, in the third place, are those who regard themselves as religious failures.  Preoccupied with achieving, they differ from the proud in that they know they haven’t measured up; and they differ from the anxious in that they are beyond wondering if they’re going to measure up.  They know they don’t measure up and they’ve given up.

The anxious, the proud, the self-loathing; while they appear to be remarkably different since their misunderstanding of God is so different, in fact are “birds of a feather” just because at bottom their misunderstanding of God is the same: they’ve confused the giver who gives gifts with a negotiator who finesses contracts.

The eager child at the birthday party standing in front of the table piled high with gifts for her; this child isn’t thinking of anxious self-examination or proud superiority or self-rejecting self-loathing.

Theological errors are never harmless.  Theological errors of such a magnitude hold people off that blessing wherewith God longs to bless them; namely, that gift of himself which is nothing less than his arm around our shoulder and his smile looking us in the face and his Fatherly word of pardon and peace – and all of this giving rise to our heart overflowing in gratitude and gladness as we want only to obey him and love him forever.

How important is it be childlike?

How important is it to know the difference between gift and contract? “Whoever does not receive the Kingdom like a child shall not enter it.”

 

II: — There’s another respect in which we must all become childlike: a child is always eager to grow up. All children crave becoming adults. Why else would the three year-old girl scrape her mother’s high-heeled shoes across the floor, teetering precariously with every step, asking her mother at the same time when she will be allowed lipstick and pierced ears? When the child is four he can’t wait until he’s five and can begin school.  When she’s four she can’t wait until she’s old enough to go to Brownies. When he’s 15 he’s dreaming of the day he’s 16 and can drive.

Peter Pan, the fellow who never grows up, is pathological.

Everywhere in scripture the leaders of God’s people are concerned with the threat that immaturity poses to God’s people. The prophets lament that so many in Israel prefer the childish to the childlike.  Childish as some are, their understanding of God is infantile; they can’t distinguish between their redeemer and a magician; they can readily be deflected onto the wrong road by any smooth talker whose enticements the immature can never recognize and resist; they are petulant and whiney before God as any three year-old is soon petulant or whiney.

The leaders in the young church have to contend on the same front. Peter urges his people, “Keep on growing in grace and knowledge.”  Paul pleads with the Corinthian congregation, “In thinking be mature.” Luke finds it important to tell us that even Jesus increased in wisdom as he increased in stature.

The day before I was ordained I had to attend a rehearsal for next day’s service of ordination.  Following the rehearsal two middle-aged ministers took me aside (I was 26) and told me that learning had very, very little to do with ministering. Most church people, they told me with the confidence born of 30 years’ experience, had the understanding of a twelve year old.

I was suspicious when I heard it then and I’m angry when I hear it now. In the first place, it simply isn’t true: the people of Schomberg Presbyterian Church do not have the Christian understanding of twelve year olds.  In the second place, to think so and worse, to say so, is to regard the congregation with contempt.  In the third place, a minister who thinks a congregation’s understanding is fixed at a twelve year old level will soon have a congregation sophisticated in all matters except faith.  The congregation’s stunted growth in matters of faith will be self-fulfilling prophecy as the minister’s contempt guarantees the spiritual impoverishment of his people.

Jesus deplores childishness in his followers. He insists on childlikeness. Immaturity characterizes the childish. Eagerness to grow up characterizes the childlike.

 

III: — Then what are the signs, or at least some of the signs, of our growing up?

[1] One sign is our coming to understand the truth that God has promised to bear us through our suffering. He hasn’t promised a way around it. For many reasons – not least because of widely-disseminated broadcasting – many people absorb what the childish will seize readily.  When Maureen and I were in Washington last November, I turned on the hotel room TV while Maureen prettied herself before we went to church. Mr. Joel Osteen was preaching. He is preacher to the largest live congregation in the USA . (Fifteen thousand people throng his building every Sunday. This figure doesn’t include the TV viewership.)   Osteen was preaching on “Guardian Angels”.  When he was a youngster he and his family had guardian angels.  He and his four brothers played high school football – and not one of them was ever injured.

Many things can be said about this.  At the level of the trite, it’s plain that I lack a guardian angel, since I’ve been injured many times and hospitalized three times. At the level of the profound, what does Osteen think he has said about his Lord?   Jesus survived several years as a carpenter, but survived only months when he began his public ministry.  The Sunday morning I watched the Osteen telecast I noticed the cameras moving over the live audience.         Everywhere in the building people were nodding in assent.   They all agreed with the speaker: to have a guardian angel is to be spared injury and mishap and misfortune throughout life.  How many were going to find their “faith”, as it were, shaken when life’s turbulence left them thinking God’s promises were hollow?

Faith isn’t an invisible shield that fends off disappointment, grief, betrayal, or pain.  Faith binds us to our Lord who knew that even for him there was no “way around” even as there was certainly a “way through”.

God has promised never to fail us or forsake us. He bears us through our distress as he holds us fast to the Son whom he has borne through. The way through pertains to faith. The supposed way around pertains to magic.  The childlike person who is growing up knows the difference.

[2] Another sign that we are growing up: Jesus tells us we are to be innocent as doves, yet wise as serpents. Serpent-wisdom is our understanding of the fallen world we inhabit: how it operates, how it beguiles, what treachery it traffics in, where it can threaten the unwary Christian. There are Christians whose zeal is not to be doubted, whose intentions are the best, and yet whose naiveness resembles that of the child who can’t discern the danger that the candy-offering stranger brings with him.  It isn’t enough to be innocent as doves; we also have to be wise as serpents. Maturity is crucial here.

[3] It’s a sign of maturity that we are eager to balance what I call the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the Christian life, and eager to ensure that they intersect. The vertical dimension of our Christian life pertains to worship, prayer, meditation, study. The horizontal pertains to our concern for our neighbours, specifically our suffering neighbours. If the vertical is isolated and thought to be the totality of the Christian life, it becomes an insular pietism, a self-indulgent inner “trip” unrelated to life. If, on the other hand, the horizontal is isolated it becomes a pagan “do-goodism” that soon finds itself resourceless, discouraged – and, worst of all, embittered. Maturity means we can perceive why both vertical and horizontal are necessary and how they intersect.

What other signs of increasing maturity are there? We could mention dozens. No doubt you have several in mind that I have never thought of.  What matters is that we are always maturing in our understanding, trust, love, and obedience.

 

We began today by noting that children are certainly not innocent.  Therefore we are never to emulate their depravity.  Children are also childish. Childishness isn’t going to help any adult. Adults will be helped, however, as we pursue being childlike.

The childlike receive God’s good gifts as just that: gifts. The childlike want nothing to do with an achievement mentality or a reward mentality or a meritocracy of any sort.  They never lose their amazement and wonder that the gifts they are given have their name on the gifts.

The childlike are always eager to grow up.  They are zealous for greater wisdom, obedience and love.  The know that God has loved them since the foundation of the world. After all, did not our earthly parents love us even before we were born?

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd       

January 2007

Mark 10:45

 

Not so long ago the New York Times newspaper published an article concerning a man and his peculiar hobby. The man lives in New Jersey , and his hobby is collecting items connected with state prisons and executions. “Here is the horsewhip with which unruly prisoners used to be flogged,” he announces dramatically. “And here are the manacles by which violent convicts were cuffed to the floor. And here is the noose that circled the neck of fourteen men and two women as they dropped to their death.” Government authorities in New Jersey wish the fellow would find another hobby. They look upon him as perverse. He’s an embarrassment. But the fellow refuses to find another hobby. He relishes bringing sightseers to the climax of his display: an electric chair where dozens of convicts were executed.

Are we Christians any less perverse? Every Lent we speak of the suffering of Jesus: the cruelty of his abandonment as the worst of his friends betrayed him and the best of his friends deserted him.   Every Lent we recall the injustice meted out to him, the blows he received at the hands of judicial authorities, the cold contempt of soldiers, the whipping, the crown of thorns. And of course the climax of our annual rehearsing all this is the instrument of execution itself: the cross.

We are repelled by the man in New Jersey who polishes up his electric chair and then invites people to see it even as they pay him to lecture them about it. But don’t we polish up our cross (the church custodian does this)? Don’t we invite people to contemplate it even as we pay someone (the minister) to speak to them about it? Then what’s different about us? Is the church’s preoccupation with the cross as ghoulish as the fellow whose life revolves around his execution devices?

Everyone in this room finds any instrument of execution repugnant. We aren’t the first to feel this way, for in the ancient world everyone found the instrument of execution repugnant. The cross was repugnant to Romans, Greeks and Jews alike, albeit for different reasons.

The Romans viewed the cross with loathing. No Roman citizen could be crucified – for any reason. Then who could? Only subject peoples could be crucified, and in Roman eyes subject peoples were scarcely human in any case. Subject peoples who happened to be terrorists or military deserters or rapists: they could be crucified. Terrorists, deserters, rapists: the scum of the earth, Romans thought: loathsome.

The Greeks viewed the cross with loathing as well. The Greeks sought wisdom in philosophy. Philosophy dealt with notions that have universal validity: truth, goodness, freedom. Then Christians came along and insisted that truth and goodness and freedom were found not in universal ideas but in a particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, who wasn’t even a philosopher. Greeks regarded all of this as ridiculous to the point of repugnant.

Jewish people viewed the cross with loathing as well. After all, they deemed Jesus to be a Messianic pretender. Since Jesus had been a victim of cruelty when the real Messiah was to eradicate cruelty, Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah. What’s more, any Jewish person who knew the sacred scriptures, especially the book of Deuteronomy, knew that anyone impaled on a stake was under God’s curse. The book of Deuteronomy said so in black and white.

The ancient world, whether Roman, Greek or Jewish, regarded the cross as every bit as repugnant as we regard electric chair or noose repugnant. Then why do we Christians feature the cross in every place of worship and announce it in every service of worship? Are we any different from the man in New Jersey ?

 

Yes, we are different. Unlike him we don’t regard the cross – unquestionably a means of execution – as entertainment. And like the apostles before us, we don’t trade on the physical horrors of the cross (even as they were no more horrible for Jesus than for the two men who died on either side of him.) More profoundly, like the apostles before us we glory in the cross because we know that here something was done for us we could never do for ourselves; here something was done for us that has the profoundest consequences for our life now and our life to come. In speaking of the cross week in and week out we aren’t perversely prattling on about something ghoulish. We are praising God for our salvation. Strictly speaking, in recalling the cross we aren’t recalling any execution, as if it made no difference who was executed. In recalling the cross we are seizing afresh the crucified one himself; in recalling the cross we are embracing as ardently as we can the one who died there for us, now lives among us, yet lives among us forever bearing the wounds of the cross. For while we can embrace our Lord Jesus today only because he’s been raised, he’s been raised with the signs of his crucifixion upon him still.

Gathering it all up we can say that Jesus Christ stands among us as the one whose cross-shaped wounds continue to call us to him. What can we say about him and his cross?

 

I: — The first thing we must say is that in his cross he has identified himself with sinners. To be sure, prior to the cross, throughout his earthly ministry, he identified with sinners.

Sinners, by definition, are those who aren’t “at home” with God. Jesus knew what it is not to be “at home.” He was born in a stable since there was no room for him in the inn. He didn’t belong. Subsequently he said he had nowhere to lay his head. A wanderer. Homeless. Misunderstood by family. Abandoned by friends. Isolated. He tasted the full taste of what it is not be “at home” anywhere.

It’s a favourite theme with novelists.   It’s a major motif in existentialist philosophy. Humankind is rootless, alienated, wandering, homeless; lost in the cosmos.

The problem with the analysis which novelists and philosophers supply is that it isn’t nearly profound enough. They don’t get to the bottom of problem. They don’t understand the real problem is that we feel we’re not at home just because we aren’t at home; we aren’t at home with God. And the reason we aren’t at home with God is that we’ve been driven from intimacy with God on account of our sin. God’s judgement upon our sin has driven us from him. We don’t feel “at home” in the cosmos? What do we expect? We’re never going to feel “at home” in life when God’s judgement upon us has rendered us homeless as surely as Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden they called “home.”

When the cross loomed in front of Jesus he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with.” But hadn’t he already been baptized? Yes, he had. He went to the Jordan where his cousin John was baptizing startled people who were newly horrified at their sinnership and were confessing it and repenting it. When John saw Jesus he said, “What are you doing here? You’ve nothing to confess.” “Baptize me just the same,” said Jesus, “for I am confessing on behalf of all men and women everywhere; I’m confessing on behalf of those who have just begun (but only begun) to see how twisted their heart is and on behalf as well of those who have yet to see it. I’m repenting on behalf of those who think their repentance is as deep as their sin (it isn’t) and also on behalf of those who are still spiritually asleep. I’m identifying myself with sinners; that is, with every last human being who has ever lived or ever will.”

Having identified himself with us in his baptism; having identified himself with us in his being nowhere “at home” throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus Christ now identifies himself with us to the uttermost in his Father’s judgement upon us sinners. Unquestionably sinners are under the judgement of God. God’s judgement means condemnation. When Jesus cries “Why have you forsaken me?” he is identifying himself with us in his Father’s judgement on sinners. “Why have you forsaken me?” This is the cry of a man who feels the anguish of not being “at home” with his Father and knows precisely why, even as men and women everywhere feel themselves to be not “at home” but don’t know why.

But of course to look at the cross, to apprehend the cross, is to know why. To apprehend the cross is finally to have our sinnership made plain to us.   To understand the cross is finally to understand just why we’ve never felt “at home”; namely, we haven’t been “at home” – with God – and none of this we knew until Jesus our Lord identified himself with us in his ministry, in his baptism, and pre-eminently in the “baptism” of the cross. Our situation before God has finally been disclosed to us.

 

II: — Sobered as we are at the disclosure of our situation before God, we nevertheless rejoice in the disclosure and thank God for it. For the revelation of our predicament is simultaneously the revelation of God’s provision for us. Certainly the cross acquaints us with the bad news about ourselves. But the cross acquaints us with the bad news only in acquainting us with the good news. For the good news is good just because the cross highlights our sin for us only in the course of bearing it and bearing it away. The cross acquaints us with the disease only in the course of providing us the cure.   The cross informs us of our condemnation only in the course of telling us that someone else has borne that condemnation for us.

A minute ago I spoke of the man in New Jersey who won’t stop talking about his execution museum pieces. We think he’s unbalanced, since his prison artefacts announce only death. We Christians too won’t stop talking about the cross – but for an entirely different reason.   We keep talking about the cross (admittedly an instrument of execution) just because the cross announces life.   And knowing now that the cross announces life, we now understand how it is Jesus insisted from the first day of his earthly ministry to his last that the cross was the purpose of his coming. “The Son of Man,” Jesus said of himself, “came to give his life a ransom for many.” “And I, if I be lifted up (i.e., crucified) will draw all manner of men and women to me.” “This hour is my glory. Father, glorify yourself in me.” Unquestionably Jesus regards the cross as the purpose of his coming and the glue that integrates everything he does in his life leading up to the cross.

I fear there are many people today who think that Jesus came for some other purpose, any other purpose. I keep running into people, for instance, who think that Jesus came among us primarily to be a teacher, came among us to inform us wherever we might happen to lack information. The truth is, when it comes to his teaching, Jesus said very little that others didn’t say before him. There is very, very little in the teaching of Jesus that is unique to him. He is, after all, a son of Israel ; most of his teaching is simply a carrying-forward of what he learned from the spiritually learned people around him. For instance Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” But the rabbis in Israel had already said, “Where two or three are gathered around the Torah, around the Word of God, there the presence of God shines forth gloriously.” What our Lord is saying is so close to what he learned at school that we can’t acclaim him a startlingly novel teacher. But of course the Son of God who is also the Son of Man tells us himself that he came not to be a teacher primarily; he came to give himself a ransom for us. He came to be that provision which sinners need. He came to be that provision whereby the cure for our sin discloses the fact and nature of our sin. He came to be that remedy for our defilement by which we’d understand ourselves defiled. He came to be that salvation in the light of which we’d know we need saving.   For it’s only the saved, isn’t it, who now know they must have needed saving.

 

Several times today I’ve quoted the text where Jesus says he came to give himself a ransom. The word “ransom” is always used in scripture to speak of release or deliverance. There were two kinds of people who were customarily ransomed: slaves and prisoners of war (in other words, those who are in bondage and those who are in the power of the enemy.) Jesus uses the analogy for one reason: it fits. Our sinnership binds us as firmly as if we were slaves or prisoners of an alien power. In point of fact there’s no “as if” about it: our sinnership is something from which we can’t deliver ourselves.

Still, there is deliverance as we receive, cherish and praise God for the provision he has made for us. If anyone says, “What’s all this talk about provision? Doesn’t God love us? Hasn’t he always loved us? What ‘provision’ has to be made?” – anyone who says this doesn’t understand the difference between love and mercy. To be sure God has always loved us, since he is love. Still, even while he loves us he can’t deny his judgement upon us. Since he can’t deny his judgement upon us, when his love and our sin meet – which is to say, when his love and his judgement meet – his love takes the form of mercy. Mercy is love absorbing the judgement we merit.

Then there is deliverance as we refuse to trifle with God’s mercy but instead welcome his provision whereby his loved poured over us, his judgment insisted on the truth about us, and his mercy brought it all together and provided our release from condemnation. There is deliverance as we embrace the One who is, in himself, all of this for us.

 

    From time to time people tell me that the Christian faith is complicated. I hope they don’t think I make it appear complicated. In fact the Christian faith is simple. It’s gathered up most pithily in a statement Paul announced to the church in Corinth when the church there was on the point of misrepresenting the gospel. The statement: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us in order that we might be made the righteousness of God.” (2^nd Corinthians. 5:20) In other words, Jesus Christ is God’s provision for us amidst our sin, and the provision that he is tells us the truth about ourselves. Is the truth about us the truth that we are sinners? The truth about us is that we are forgiven sinners. Remember, only the cure discloses the disease. Only the provision discloses the predicament. Only the remedy for the problem acquaints us with the problem. The truth of the cross is that we are forgiven sinners, thanks to the one who identified himself with us in all respects, thanks to him in whose company we can be “at home” with God and know it.

 

In truth aren’t at all like the odd-ball fellow in New Jersey . In fact strictly speaking we aren’t preoccupied with the cross; we are preoccupied with him whose cross it is; we are preoccupied with our Lord Jesus Christ, who comes to us in grace and wants only to bind us to him in faith.

He came to give himself a ransom. He came to clothe himself in our sin in order then to clothe us in his righteousness. Therefore we are glad to exclaim with the hymn writer, “In the cross of Christ I glory.”

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                    

Good Friday 2004

 

Mark 10:46 – 52

Several years ago William Nolan, an American surgeon, wrote a bestseller, The Making of a Surgeon. The book describes in detail the financial cost of a medical education, the sacrifice one has to make in order to acquire surgical expertise, the disruptions in family life as emergencies have to be dealt with, the low pay of the intern and the resident. Part of the purpose of the book is to justify to the public the staggering incomes that American surgeons enjoy, and to improve the public image of MDs.

Mark the apostle has written a bestseller too. His book could be called The Making of a Disciple. Mark probes the matter of discipleship more thoroughly than any other gospel writer. Unlike Dr Nolan, however, Mark doesn’t write to justify the huge incomes of disciples. (Disciples, he knows, are promised anything but riches.) Neither does he write to improve the public image of disciples. (It’s impossible to improve the public image of those who follow a bedraggled Jew soon to be executed between two terrorists at a city garbage dump.)

Then why has Mark written his book? For two reasons. In the first place he wishes to encourage those who are disciples now. He wants to remind them of how they became disciples in order to given them fresh heart in view of the savagery that emperor Nero has recently visited upon them. In the second place he’s confident that God will use his book, The Making of a Disciple, to enlist yet more disciples of Jesus Christ.

Mark wrote his gospel for Christians in Rome in the year 65. There were five “house churches,” five small congregations, in a city of one million. Think of it: one hundred Christians approximately in a city of one million. Obviously discipleship wasn’t very popular. In fact, dreadful persecution had descended on these five house churches. Mark wrote his gospel to encourage these people and to enlist others who weren’t disciples yet but who would become such as God himself owned and used Mark’s brief book.

Then how does one become a disciple? What characterizes those who’ve enlisted? In other words, what distinguishes disciples from onlookers? Today we haven’t time to examine the entire book, but we will examine one small section of the book that encapsulates the process whereby disciples are made. The small section has to do with Bartimaeus.

 

I: — Bartimaeus was blind. Since there was no CNIB in the first century world, no social assistance, blindness always entailed poverty. Bartimaeus was blind and poor: symbolically, he lacked both illumination and resources. Yet he had heard that the man from Nazareth , Jesus, was in the neighbourhood. He called out, hoping that this man could relieve him of his darkness and his resourcelessness. The first moment in the making of a disciple, then, is the transparent admission that however much we may know about however many matters, and however much expertise we may claim in however many fields, when it comes to the profoundest issue of life we haven’t a clue: we’re blind, poor.

Be sure to notice one thing: Bartimaeus doesn’t have the profoundest understanding of Jesus. He doesn’t call out “Son of God” or “Saviour” or “Lord.” Any of these terms would mean that he has recognized the deity of the Incarnate One. He can only affirm that Jesus is related to Israel ’s greatest king, David. Now “son of David” means “Messiah.” Then was Bartimaeus possessed of unusual prescience? I think not. I think it more likely that in his desperation he called out to the reputed wonder-worker, hoping Jesus might be God’s agent in remedying the world’s wrongs and vindicating the victimized and even granting sight to the blind. While he thinks Jesus might be God’s end-time agent, he hasn’t yet apprehended that this Messiah is also ‘Emmanuel,’ God-with-us, the Incarnate One. For this reason he makes no theologically definitive confession of faith. He simply calls out, “Help me; help me.”

We should note, then, that discipleship doesn’t begin after we’ve achieved theological sophistication. Discipleship begins when we recognize the murkiness and impoverishment of our lives. We simply ask for help. Discipleship begins before we can hang the correct theological labels on Jesus, sometimes a long time before. Like Bartimaeus, of course, we must persist with our plea – “help me” – even in the face of an unsympathetic crowd that tells us to be quiet. As fledgling disciples we must want what we are looking for so badly that we are going to persist despite others’ scorn or belittlement or apathy. We can’t be deflected by those who maintain that Jesus has been dead for 2000 years, or by those who maintain that faith is merely a crutch for the immature and the inept, or by those who maintain that discipleship is a throwback to killjoy Victorianism. Bartimaeus heard it all, yet called out the more persistently.

Discipleship is in truth much simpler than people imagine. It’s simpler because our slightest admission of our own need and Christ’s availability will render us disciples-in-the-making. At the same time it’s more challenging than people imagine because we have to persist despite detractors.

Do you ever ponder the large number of people who join congregations and then slowly drift away, never to be seen again? Do you ever wonder about ministers who persuaded three levels of the church courts that they were called of God to the work of the ministry, and are now selling life insurance or teaching school or earning a living as parole officers? As much as we need to perceive our spiritual blindness and our spiritual poverty, we have to persist.

Bartimaeus persisted in calling out to Jesus, and persisted just because he knew that unless Jesus helped him he would always be blind and resourceless. His persistence, born of his unsatisfied craving, was enough to stop Jesus in his tracks and have Jesus say “Call that fellow.”

 

II: — The second moment in the making of a disciple is the exhortation to take heart. Someone in the crowd who hears his repeated plea and sympathizes with Bartimaeus says to him, “Take heart, Jesus is calling you.” But this is no fluffy suggestion to cheer up. While there’s only one reason why we can realistically take heart, the one reason happens to be the profoundest reason and sufficient reason: Jesus Christ is in the neighbourhood. Since Bartimaeus is blind, he can’t see just how close Jesus is. The truth is, Jesus is as close to him right now as Jesus can ever be.

Everywhere in scripture this exhortation “Take heart,” tharseite, “Be of good cheer,” “Courage!” is found in the imperative. It isn’t a suggestion or even a recommendation of our Lord as he utters it; neither is it wishful thinking on the part of hearers as they hear it. We are commanded to take heart, we must be of good cheer, and this only because the master has heard our sincerest plea, has turned to us and isn’t going to overlook us or pretend he didn’t hear us. We may and must take heart just because our Lord is at this moment pouring out upon us what we need most. He meets us precisely at the point of our pain or distress or confusion or fright. And we do take heart, for as he speaks, his word to us becomes his deed within us. “Take heart:” it means that he, our Lord, has lent us his heart.

Think of the situations in the written gospels where these words were spoken and welcomed. A man whose guilt has paralysed him is told to take heart, for his sins are now forgiven and his paralysis undone. A desperate woman who wants only to touch the fringe of Jesus’ prayer shawl, wants merely to make contact with him, is told to take heart, for through her simple faith she is now healed. Disciples who are frustrated as they try to row into a gale and who feel they are about to founder are told to take heart, for the one who quells chaos everywhere in life is now with them.

Jesus doesn’t come waltzing onto the scene with a camera-ready smile and ooze, “Cheer up folks, it’s the happy hour.” Rather just as we began to cry, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” because he had come into our “space,” so now that he has come even nearer to us (for has he not turned to us and called us, albeit through those already disciples?) his even greater closeness has rendered effective and believable the word that makes and sustains disciples, “Take heart.”

 

III: — And then there’s the third moment in the making of a disciple: Bartimaeus followed Jesus. More precisely Mark tells us that Bartimaeus “followed Jesus on the way.” There is simply no substitute for following.

Like any skilful literary craftsman Mark uses several metaphors to speak of discipleship. But Mark’s favourite metaphor for discipleship is the Way or Road or Journey or Venture. Over and over Mark refers to Jesus walking on the road. The disciples are with their Lord on the road. As they keep company with him he teaches them. It is while they are walking the Way that their understanding of the truth of God, slender at first, is filled out and fortified. It’s on the Way, while the journey is in process, that disciples learn not merely the meaning of discipleship but more importantly how to live it. It’s on the Road that they learn what it is to make mistakes, stumble, get up again, press on after him who walks far enough ahead of them to be their leader but not so far ahead as to be out of sight. It’s on the way that they learn what it is to have their profession of loyalty to him collide with a world that ridicules such loyalty and mocks disciples who uphold it and snickers at all they hold dear and denies the truth that has seized them.

We should see immediately that what counts above all else concerning discipleship isn’t how much we understand; it’s what we do with even the little that we understand. Myself, I have long thought that many people think of discipleship in Christ’s company as something like going to school. The school curriculum has to be learned; discipleship has to be learned. The problem here, of course, is that while school learning is largely abstract – we have to learn historical concepts and scientific theories and mathematical manipulations; while school learning is largely abstract, discipleship is entirely concrete. When Jesus came upon some people who claimed to be his followers yet preferred the abstract to the concrete he rounded on them and said, “Why do you call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’ and yet you don’t do what I command you?” If we want to learn what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ we mustn’t think it’s like going to school. Instead we must understand it’s like being an apprentice. The apprentice auto mechanic or electrician or plumber doesn’t read 30 books and announce “I think I’ve got it!” Instead he learns from a journeyman auto mechanic or electrician or plumber. He learns on the job, learns while doing, learns by observing, learns through making mistakes that the journeyman can correct. To learn like an apprentice isn’t to read great wacks of information; it’s to absorb, almost unconsciously, a little today and little more tomorrow and still more another day until the apprentice eventually comes to know as much as the journeyman although he can’t exactly tell you how or when he came to know.

Disciples live in the company of Jesus Christ. He is both the Way we are to follow and our companion on the Way; both simultaneously. Discipleship isn’t armchair acquisition of theories about the Christian life; discipleship is a matter of doing it in the company of our Journeyman who has done it all before us. It’s far more important that we live the little that we understand than it is to understand much and fail to live it.

Once Jesus had made Bartimaeus to see he didn’t say, “You’d better start studying for the exam.” Once Jesus had made Bartimaeus to see he summoned Bartimaeus to follow him. Bartimaeus was to follow up his deliverance from blindness with following after Jesus forever. There is no substitute for following.

While there is certainly no substitute, there are many evasions. There are many ways of avoiding the Way, of sidestepping the road, of declining the journey.

[1] One evasion is doing nothing while throwing around religious clichés, stock expressions, code words. If someone peppers his conversation with “saved,” “blood,” “the Almighty,” and so on, it’s often assumed he must be a long-time venturer on the Road, while if someone doesn’t use this vocabulary or can’t, it’s assumed she hasn’t even set out.

Both assumptions are false. Too often being able to toss out the Christian code words is a cover-up for evading the road. The test of discipleship isn’t what we say but what we do. That’s why the apostle Paul writes, “If you are children of the light, then walk in the light.”

[2] Another evasion is substituting the rites and rituals of the church for faith and obedience. For instance, we baptize infants as the sign that God in his mercy has made provision for this particular child in anticipation of the day when she owns, owns for herself, owns for herself in throbbing faith, the provision of grace and mercy that God has fashioned. But if we think that the sacrament of baptism is a substitute for the faith and obedience it anticipates then we are dabbling in voodoo. In the service of baptism the parents declare publicly that they themselves are at this moment walking the road they want their child to come to walk with them. If, however, the parents think that baptizing the child renders unnecessary both the child’s subsequent discipleship and their current discipleship then they are self-deluded twice over.

[3] Another evasion is an armchair preoccupation with a hypercritical orthodoxy. Too often the sign of discipleship is whether a person can assent to this or that creed, whether someone can finesse the doctrine of the Virgin Birth or the Trinity.   Now I happen to think that the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the Trinity are crucial to Christian understanding. I’m the last person to make light of theological adequacy. I’ll never be found promoting doctrinal superficiality.

But this isn’t where we begin. Jesus called many people to follow him; Zacchaeus, for instance. But Jesus never said, “Come down out of that tree; we’re going to bury the hatchet and eat together – if you first tell me you believe there’s something peculiar about my mother.”

When Jesus called disciples to follow him and thereafter urged them to follow even closer, he knew and they knew that they understood very little. In fact they likely understood only one matter: life in his company was going to be better than life not in his company. To be sure, their understanding grew. Mark’s understanding swelled until he could write a gospel narrative. Peter’s understanding swelled until he could write matchless letters. But they didn’t begin there. They began with a simple following that was riddled with incorrect assumptions, silly rationalizations, glaring mistakes, and sometimes a zeal which outstripped wisdom by far. All that mattered was that they were now on the road, undertaking the journey as apprentices learning from the journeyman himself.

If someone tells me he’s certain about very little of what the church says, even of what the church says about Jesus, and yet he feels that Jesus has light to shed and truth to impart and strength to lend; if such a person tells me all he can do for now is try to do the little he genuinely believes – that person is a disciple.

If we have received only enough light for one step, let’s be sure to take that one step. Does it ever occur to us that we can take only one step at a time in any case? Does it ever occur to us that if Jesus Christ is light enough for one step today, and we take it, then the selfsame light will be light enough for another step tomorrow? There is no substitute for following.

“The Making of a Disciple.” It begins when, like Bartimaeus, our need of illumination and resources for living bring us to cry to Jesus, “Have mercy on me.” It proceeds as we hear our Lord telling us to take heart, since help is around the corner. It matures as we follow him on the Way, every day receiving greater confirmation that he is the Way, but only because he’s also Truth, and for this reason will prove to be our Life.

 

Victor Shepherd

June 2004

 

Mark 12:28-34    Ephesians 3:7-10, 20, 21   James 1:22-25

 

“What God has joined together, let no one put asunder”, the marriage service reads. Our Lord’s pronouncement here reflects God’s intention concerning marriage: two become one, indissolubly one, inextricably one. In a Christian understanding of marriage two people are joined together so that their lives are fused; their lives interpenetrate. It’s not the case that marriage joins two people the way two blocks of wood are glued together, side-by-side. Two blocks of wood that are glued together can be unglued with the application of glue-dissolving solvent. Once separated again, the two blocks are intact, exactly as they were before they were glued, simply because gluing them together never changed them in the first place. It’s entirely different with a tree graft. When one kind of fruit tree is grafted to another kind of fruit tree, the two trees thereafter grow into each other. They grow together so as to become a single organism. Any attempt now at separating one tree from the other doesn’t leave both trees intact; any attempt at separating one tree from the other doesn’t leave even one tree intact. Any attempt at separating them destroys both. What God has joined together, no one should put asunder — or even try.

In the Christian life there is much that God has joined together. And in the Christian life to separate what God has joined together entails destruction. Then as is the case with marriage, we must strive to keep it together. Exactly what has God joined?

 

I: — God has joined MIND AND HEART. The mind apprehends truth, the truth of God, the truth about ourselves. The heart is where we live, what we experience, meeting someone in an encounter so profound and so intimate as to leave us altered ever after. Mind and heart, truth and life, “knowledge about” and “acquaintance with”, understanding and experience, information and intimacy — all of these are to be grafted into each other and interpenetrate each other.

If they are separated, destruction results. Mind separated from heart leaves the truth of God cold and sterile. Mind separated from heart turns the gospel into an abstract philosophy that just happens to use an old-fashioned vocabulary. Mind separated from heart turns the gospel (Jesus Christ himself in his power to make us his) into an idea, a notion that may elicit after-dinner discussion but will never forge throbbing faith in anyone.

We can come at the matter from another angle. To speak of the mind is to speak of reason. To speak of the heart is to speak of faith. Reason and faith should always be joined. If they are separated, destruction results. When reason is separated from faith (that is, separated from its anchor in God), then reason is little more than rationalization. When reason is separated from faith, reason is little more than a mental cleverness that always justifies whatever we want justified in us or our group or our nation. When reason is separated from faith, reason is little more than a debating tool that can defeat others in a verbal joust and leave them humiliated and frustrated and vengeful — even as such reason cannot effect any genuine human good or forge any human bond.

Faith, we know, anchors our entire being in God. And therefore when faith is joined to reason, reason profits from our anchorage in God. When faith is joined to reason, reason is delivered from its proclivity to rationalization; when faith is joined to reason, reason serves the nobler purpose of edifying and helping. In other words, when faith and reason are joined, faith frees reason for reason’s integrity and reason’s role as a servant of the human good.

On the other hand, when faith is separated from reason, then faith is corrupted as surely as reason is corrupted when reason is separated from faith. When faith is separated from reason, God is no longer loved with the mind. When faith is separated from reason, then the human heart runs after superstition. When faith is separated from reason, all concern for truth is abandoned as people splash around in sentimentality like 5-year olds in a wading pool. When faith is separated from reason, the ability to think is no longer cherished, truth is no longer pursued, superstition is prized, and confusion reigns everywhere, in private life and public life equally.

Without reason, faith degenerates into sentimentality and superstition. Without faith, we saw a minute ago, reason degenerates into rationalization and a tool for humiliation. Reason and faith must always be joined together.

 

There is yet another way of approaching mind and heart, reason and faith. Think about the doctrines that Christians uphold. Doctrine, of course, is a reasoned statement of Christian truth. As a reasoned statement doctrine is abstract by definition. Faith, on the other hand, is where we live, what we know in our experience. As heart-experience faith is concrete by definition. Abstract truth and concrete experience, mind and heart, should always be joined.

Think about the foundational Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the Incarnation. Incarnation is the truth that the eternally transcendent God has identified himself with the Jew from Nazareth so that what the Nazarene says, God says; what the Nazarene does, God does; what the Nazarene undergoes, God undergoes.

God undergoes? The eternally transcendent one undergoes? Yes! All of this means that there is nothing befalling us in life that God himself hasn’t experienced as man. Does God know my pain? In what sense does he know it? Does God know pain in the sense that a neurologist like Oliver Sacks knows about Parkinson’s disease and can write learned books about it even though Oliver Sacks has never had Parkinson’s disease himself? Or does God know pain in the sense that he has been in pain himself, been in a divine pain that we humans know nothing about inasmuch as we aren’t divine? (God does know a uniquely divine pain; of this I am sure.) Or — more profoundly still — does the eternally transcendent God know human pain just because he has been human himself and therefore has himself lived, lived out, lived through our pain and sorrow and temptation?

The doctrine of the incarnation upholds the lattermost: the truth of the incarnation is that God himself has identified himself with our humanity in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the truth of the mind. What does it all mean for the heart? It means that when I look to God I am looking to someone who has tasted everything life throws in my face. It means that I can trust him and cast myself upon him without reservation or hesitation. Even though God is holy and not a sinner, it means that even the severest penalties for our sin, even the worst consequences of our sin, God has endured himself and absorbed into himself in his Son’s dereliction — and therefore not even our sin or any aspect of it need separate us irretrievably from him. Therefore I shall never cower from him in terror but will always count on him for forgiveness.

It’s obvious that doctrine has everything to do with life, mind with heart, information with intimacy, reason with faith. What God has joined together we must never put asunder.

 

II: — In the second place God has joined PIETY AND PRACTICE. The psalmist writes, “I have hid God’s word in my heart, that I might not sin against him.” James writes, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, lest you deceive yourselves.” These two truths are complementary and must always be kept joined together.

“I have hid God’s word in my heart.” This sounds like a privatized piety that shuts out the big bad world so that the person who hides God’s word in her heart may remain unstained. It sounds so very exclusive as to be little more than narrow self-interest, albeit religious self-interest. On the other hand “I must be a doer of God’s word” sounds so very inclusive as to suggest that the doer is naive about the treachery of the human heart, naive even about the world’s resistance. It sounds so very inclusive as to be shallow and simplistic. Actually, both are needed, and needed together, if both are to retain their integrity.   Hiding God’s word only in one’s heart is a religious indulgence. Doing God’s word only is presumptuous, and presumptuous just because we have assumed we can do God’s word without first hiding his word in our heart.

John Calvin used the word “piety” more than any Christian thinker I know. Calvin, to be sure, had something precise in mind whenever he used the word: Calvin defined piety as “love for God and reverence for God induced by a knowledge of God’s benefits to us.” We must love God and reverence God. At the same time, Calvin tells us, that word of God now rooted in us must also yield “tangible fruit” from us. Piety and practice must always be joined.

Cardinal Cushing of Boston used to say, “We must pray as if it all depended on God and work as if it all depended on us.” Cushing has it almost right. I say “almost” because I’m unhappy with “as if.” We don’t pray as if it all depended on God; our praying means it all does depend on God. We don’t work as if it all depended on us; our working means it all does depend on us. Piety and practice must be fused.

Whenever I read Mark’s gospel two features of Jesus’s life leap out at me. One feature is the amount of time Jesus spent praying, even spent praying by himself. Again and again we are told that Jesus went away by himself to a lonely place or a solitary place or a secluded place, and there he prayed. The second feature of Mark’s depiction of a day in the life of Jesus that leaps out at me is the little word EUTHUS: “immediately.” Jesus ministers to an epileptic boy whose convulsions leave him flailing and frothing. “Immediately” Jesus hikes to the next town where he finds hostile people with venom in their hearts whom he rebukes and reduces to silence as only he can. Then “immediately” he gets into a boat (storm and all) and straightens out his disciples who have managed to misunderstand him wholly — again. Then “immediately” he comes upon a sick child whose parents are distraught and a psychotic man whose violence has left him isolated. We get indigestion reading about one day in the life of Jesus. At the same time, we know that Jesus arose a long while before dawn, when it was still dark, went off by himself, and prayed.

In the same vein we read of the apostle Paul and his ceaseless comings and goings (ceaseless, that is, until he was imprisoned). Three missionary journeys in and out of Jerusalem throughout his part of the Mediterranean weren’t enough for him; he wanted above all to get into Spain and announce the gospel where it had never been heard before. Did he do the word? Yes; just think of his efforts on behalf of the starving Christians in Jerusalem during the famine. Did hide the word in his heart? Yes; just think of his being caught up in the Spirit only to hear what may not be uttered and see what may not be described.

It is only as we hide the word in our heart that we can keep on doing the word in the face of setback and disappointment and opposition and inappreciation and even ridicule. The Corinthian congregation had glaring needs and Paul worked very hard among those people. Did they appreciate all that he did for them? On the contrary they laughed at him; they told him he was a poor speaker with a comic physique. What then did Paul do in the face of this outrageous contempt? He did the word all the more zealously among them even as he refused to cool his ardour for them or his affection for them; and he was able to keep on doing the word just because he kept on hiding the word.

Piety and practice must be joined together. Once separated, piety alone becomes a religious indulgence, a privatized “trip” for religious self-stimulators; once separated, practice alone becomes a compulsive “do-goodism” that soon leaves the do-gooder herself sour and sarcastic. What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.

 

III: — In the third place God has joined CHURCH AND INDIVIDUAL. Church and individual can be discussed (although not discussed fruitfully) in terms of “chicken and egg”. Which comes first: the church or the individual? Some say the church, since the church has preserved the substance of Christian truth for centuries and the church is the custodian of the gospel and the church is that which God has preserved despite assaults from without it and sabotage from within it. Others would say that the individual comes first, since individuals make up the church and the church is always one generation only from extinction. But such a discussion bears no fruit at all. Instead we must resolutely keep together what God has joined together.

C.S. Lewis used to say that when Christians look at the church as a whole they see divisiveness everywhere, and not merely divisiveness but even a history of nasty divisiveness. On the other hand, said Lewis, when atheists look at the church (especially atheists who lack assurance of the truth of atheism) they see a unity, a oneness in truth that has perdured for millennia, a solidity that threatens the atheist and the agnostic. When Christians view the church from the inside they see the disagreement between Roman Catholic worship with its liturgical movement and music, and Quaker worship where everyone sits in silence for a much of the service (if not most) and where the only liturgical act is a handshake between two elders signifying the conclusion of the service. But when non-Christians view the church from the outside, says Lewis, they see enormous commonality: a doctrine of the Incarnation, whose particular historicity embarrasses atheists with a philosophical turn of mind; a conviction concerning original sin that contradicts any and all assumptions about the perfectibility of humankind and progress in the world; an insistence on sacrifice (both Christ’s and the Christian’s) that flies in the face of the notion that happiness is the meaning of life. To an outsider, says Lewis, the church is solid, coherent, stable, durable. It will outlast any assault upon it; its greatest thinkers are the equal of (if not superior to) the thinkers its detractors put forward. And it is this church that guards the truth and hands it on from generation to generation. Any individual who thinks she can do without the church is a fool, for she thinks her wisdom is greater than that of any of her foreparents; she thinks she can do without the communion of saints, that body of believers who will carry her when she is weary or wayward; she thinks she can do without the “great cloud of witnesses”, those Christians who have finished the race ahead of her and urge her never to quit. Any individual who sunders herself from the church commits spiritual suicide.

At the same time, the church must never forget that the church consists of believers, and only individuals can ever believe. The church consists of disciples, and only individuals can ever become disciples.     I am moved whenever I notice again how much of our Lord’s earthly ministry was private. Yes, he certainly addressed multitudes. He addressed them; but he called individuals. He came upon Matthew and said, “I have something else for you to do; come with me.” It didn’t matter that crowds were pressing and multitudes were confused and many were needy; at that moment all that mattered was, “Matthew, come; yes you; come right now.” One day there was a “Bread and Honey Festival” parade through Streetsville; Jesus stopped at the foot of one tree out of thousands and said, “Zacchaeus, birds perch in trees; I have something better than bird-life for you; come with me.” In front of several critical men Jesus allowed a grateful woman to wipe his feet with her hair. A psychiatrist-friend of mine tells me that a woman wiping a man’s feet with her tresses is a highly erotic act. Yet amidst the suspicion and contempt of hostile men Jesus let her do it. And to her alone — alone — he said, “Your sins are forgiven.” And then of course there are our Lord’s numerous conversations, protracted conversations, with individuals: Nicodemus, the woman at the well, plus so many others.

Martin Luther said, “Just as we must each do our own dying, so we must each do our own believing.” Of course we must do our own believing. From page one on of the older testament it’s evident that while God loves the entire creation and while God deals with a people collectively, God speaks only to individuals. Any church which forgets this truth is a church that is nothing more than a social club or a bureaucracy.

It is no wonder, then that the apostle Paul insists, “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”

 

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd                               

June 1997

Mark 12:28-34

 It can always be argued that the 25 year-old should come (or come back) to church for precisely the same reason that any person of any age should come (back). In this respect the 25 year-old is no different from the 85 year-old. God is to be worshipped; God is to be worshipped in the company of his people; God is to be worshipped as a public witness to his public activity. Why does the 25 year-old think she’s different from the 85 year-old?

At the same time I appreciate the sermon-request as it came to me, since a 25 year-old is different from the 85 year-old. The concerns and questions and opportunities and expectations are very different for each age-group.

For years I wondered why wars have always been fought by 18 to 20 year- olds. And then one day, as I was reflecting on car insurance rates for 18 to 20 year-olds, I had my answer. People of this age are heedless of danger. They feel themselves to be invulnerable. They’re reckless. They have a sense of adventure that eclipses any awareness of risk.

By the time someone is 25, much has changed. Several years have been spent acquiring an education or gaining work-experience or both. Recklessness has been tempered with wisdom. The sense of adventure remains, but now it is moderated by sobriety and a realistic perception of life. (By the time I was 26 years old, for instance, I was ordained and the spiritual advisor to people three times my age; by age 26 my cousin was three years past graduation from medical school.) How, then, are we to approach the 25 year-old concerning the church, its message and its mission?

I: — I’d start with the issue of truth, truth in the sense of reality. The 25 year-old is old enough to ask herself, “What is, ultimately? What is reality? And therefore what is worth pursuing?” To ask this question is also to ask, “What is merely seeming? What is deceptive? What is it that promises more than it can ever deliver?”

In response to the crucial question, “What is, with what (or whom) do we have to do ultimately?”, the materialist insists that reality is material, or at least rooted in the material. One form of materialism tested over and over in our century is Marxism. Now we mustn’t dismiss it too quickly. We must never forget that iniquitous class-distinction has been more pronounced in Britain than anywhere in continental Europe. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital out of his immersion in the horrible social consequences of industrialization in Britain. If we had been immersed in those social horrors, could we have prevented ourselves from joining anything that promised social amelioration? Can you imagine the spectacle of five year-old children raging not on account of a temper tantrum but on account of the “DTs”? (A child with the DTs was a common sight in 19th century England.)

At a meeting of Maritime Conference in 1971 a retired coal miner from Cape Breton addressed us young United Church clergy. With tears in his eyes he told us of the horrors of coal-mining in Nova Scotia when he was a young man. The men worked seven days per week for a pittance, amidst dangers that no mine-owner or government body attempted to minimize. He told us the men were desperate and looked everywhere for help in changing their conditions. They looked to the church, and were given no help; they looked to the communist party, and were promised everything.

There are several problems with the materialist philosophy of Marxism, chief of which is, it simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t deliver what it promises; in fact, it delivers the starkest contradiction of what it promises. Marxism promises freedom but finally enslaves. It promises foodstuffs for the masses but fails to provide so much as a loaf of bread. It promises the classless society but requires brutal secret police to maintain social rigidities. It promises the tranquillity supposed to emerge in the absence of ruthless capitalistic competition but issues in the savagery of black market competition. In our century no experiment has failed as notoriously. Need we say more to our 25 year-old friend?

Marxism is only one kind of materialism. There are others. Another one (or at least an aspect of another one) is epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism maintains that mind is reducible to brain; it maintains that what we call thinking is nothing more than the “steam” thrown up by lightning-fast movement of brain cells (i.e., of matter.)

To be sure, no one denies the connexion between mind and brain. No one denies that brain is necessary for mind. No one denies that physical alterations to brain produce altered ideation. (Ponder the effects of alcohol or head-injury.) Yet to admit all of this is not to admit that mind is reducible to brain, reducible without remainder. For if mind is reducible to brain, then what we call thinking simply isn’t. If thinking isn’t, then what we call imagination, creativity, genuine newness; all of this isn’t. What we call “ideas” is no more than the exhaust fumes of an underlying biological state. If mind is reducible to brain, not only does thinking disappear; so does responsibility, so does reasoning. (And the sermon should stop here, for a sermon is an attempt at persuading people, by means of reason, that they are responsible creatures accountable to the God who made them to love him with their mind, their genuine mind.) Is our 25 year old going to accept the form of materialism known as epiphenomenalism?

What are the alternatives to materialism? Humanism is one alternative, humanists affirming that ultimate reality is the profoundly human, the uniquely human. Humanism venerates cultural riches transcending the merely material as culture fashions us and informs us. Culture renders us most profoundly human.

Humanism was recovered in the Renaissance as the learning of ancient Greece and Rome was recovered and added to by the Renaissance thinkers themselves. It thrived throughout the Renaissance (15th through 17th centuries). Then the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers dealt it some hard blows. The 19th century discoveries of Darwin, Freud and Marx (yes, there is a measure of truth in Marx) dealt it still harder blows. And historical developments in the 20th century have all but killed it. When, soon into the 20th century, the most sophisticated nations slew each other, day after day, piling up scores of thousands of corpses each day (I speak now of World War I); when the nation most advanced in medicine, science, philosophy, theology and music perpetrated a hideousness so hideous that the world is always wanting to deny it (I speak now of you know what); when the nuclear age dawned and the two mightiest nations looked at each other with fingers poised on the buttons that would vapourize millions instantly, leave many more millions to die slowly of radiation sickness, and render the earth uninhabitable — when both nations pursued their policy of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (“MAD”); when all of this unfolded in the 20th century, humanism withered.

We have come at last to the alternative to materialism and humanism; namely, the notion that Spirit is reality. Spirit isn’t vague or fantastic; Spirit isn’t ethereal or ephemeral; Spirit is without parallel for its density, solidity, opacity, weightiness. Spirit is reality. When we think of “spirit” we should spell it with both an upper case “S” and a lower case “s”, for “Spirit” refers to God, and “spirit” refers to our God-forged capacity for God and our human uniqueness of being uniquely related to him. At the end of the day the context in which all of life unfolds and the truth that drives world-occurrence is S(s)pirit. Because Spirit is ultimate reality, to ignore Spirit is to discount spirit; and to do this is to will one’s life to unfold in unreality. To persist in unreality is to court falsity, and to court falsity is to end in illusion. Then why not declare forthrightly that Spirit is reality, Spirit is substance, Spirit is the environment that surrounds us at all times and in all places? Spirit is the environment apart from which we shouldn’t be human. Flee it? Escape it? Can you imagine a fish that, by dint of very hard swimming, could finally escape water? Every time such a fish exerted itself to swim beyond water it merely reconfirmed water. No wonder the psalmist remarks, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Ps. 139:7) Once we’ve recognized that Spirit is substance, Spirit is reality, we find everything in life reconfirming the truth.

Where is Spirit recognized as ultimate reality? In the church. Where is Spirit-incarnate cherished and honoured and obey? In the church. Why should the 25 year-old come back to church? We’ve already dealt with this question.

II: — The 25 year old is likely soon to be a parent. Parental responsibility is awesome responsibility. While scripture insists that God has set parents in authority over children, it also insists that there is one ground, and one ground only, for the authority that parents have over their children: parents are to model for their children the relationship that God has with his people.

Two conclusions can quickly be drawn. (i) Apart from their mandate to model with their children God’s relationship with his people, parents have no legitimate authority over children. (ii) Not to nurture a child in the things of God is a terrible dereliction on the part of parents. This morning we are going to think about the latter, the responsibility parents have to provide spiritual nurture for their children.

I used to be amused (I’m now merely dumbfounded) at parents who say they aren’t going to provide any Christian edification for their child, preferring to leave the child’s mind uncluttered (they mean unprejudiced) so that the child can make up her own mind when she’s older. While such parents assume they are the acme of wisdom, in fact their stupidity would be instantly evident anywhere else in life. What should we think of the parent who said, “I’m not going to send my child to school when he’s five years old; I want him to make up his own mind; then he’ll be able to decide for himself whether he wants to bother with this intellectual stuff”? Such a parent thinks she’s keeping open the greatest number of options for her child, when in fact she’s closing options for her child. Her child won’t read, will likely never learn to read, will be scarcely employable if employable at all, will be socially isolated and psychologically traumatized. What are we to think of the parent who says, “When winter arrives I’m not going to insist my child wear an overcoat when he plays outside; he can decide for himself whether the encumbrance of winter clothing is finally ‘worth it’. We don’t want to encumber him unnecessarily.” Thinking she’s expanding the child’s options, she’s foreclosing them. Soon the child will have pneumonia and won’t be playing anywhere. What are we to think of the parent who says, “I’m not going to have my child vaccinated. I don’t want to impose on him something he might find unpleasant. I’ll let him make up his own mind when he’s older.” Make up his mind when he’s older? He won’t be around to make up his mind. He will have succumbed to diphtheria or something like it.

The folly of such parenting is evident in such matters as schooling and clothing and hygiene. It should be obvious with respect to matters of Christian nurture. It is obvious as soon as we know Spirit to be substance. The folly is self-evident.

There’s more to be said. If parents say, “We’re going to allow our child to make up his own mind on …”; the parents who say this in fact aren’t allowed to do it. The state won’t permit parents to exercise their folly. The state insists that children be schooled. The state insists that children not be neglected. If the parents are found guilty in this respect, the parents will be charged with a criminal offense. The state insists that schoolchildren be vaccinated. If the parents prefer not to have their children vaccinated, their children will be removed from the classroom. Why? Lest their children infect other children.

Do you think it’s possible for children to infect other children with something besides microbes? Do you think it’s possible for young people to infect young people? If so, what’s to be done? Where do we turn?

When parents say, “We want to keep an open mind; we want our child to make up his own mind”; when parents say this in everyday matters, the state intervenes and overrides the parents’ folly. Should the state intervene and override parental folly in matters of spiritual nurture? I’m not going to debate this point today. But the fact that the state intervenes where it does and doesn’t intervene where it doesn’t indicates much about the society’s failure to understand the nature of reality.

The 25 year-old is soon to be a parent. Children have to be nurtured. Enough said.

III: — Another consideration for our 25 year-old. I want to speak briefly of a German poet, Heinrich Heine. Because Heine was a poet his friends assumed if ever he needed comforting profoundly, he would find all the comfort he needed, indeed all the comfort possible, in the realm of cultural excellence. When tragedy overtook Heine his friends sent him off to the arts. He listened to the German musical genius. He probed literature. Standing in front of the famous statue of Venus, that beautiful sculpture whose arms have unfortunately been broken off, he cried, “It’s beautiful; but it has no arms!” No cultural excellence could finally touch his grief.

How different is the conviction (a conviction born of experience) of the unnamed writer of Deuteronomy: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deut. 33:27) We mustn’t think that because the everlasting arms are ever underneath us life is therefore ever rosy. The everlasting arms are always underneath just because life isn’t always rosy. Neither should we think that “everlasting arms” means that God has reached down and remotely given us a hand, only a hand, while all the while remaining above our frailty and fragility. His arms are around us, rather, just because he shares our frailty and fragility. It is a Hebrew prophet who asks, “To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”, only to go on to speak of “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief…surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” (Isaiah 53:1,4)

When we are 18 years old it’s hard to imagine life ever turning down; when we are 18 we think that the world is governed by reason and is ultimately fair. By the time we are 25 we know that fairness isn’t found in life: unfairness proliferates everywhere. By age 25 we know that many things control the world: prejudice, hatred, fanaticism, hunger for power, ambition, folly — and reason? Reason is the last determinant, the slenderest determinant, of how the world unfolds.

Then what are we to do? Where are we to look? What can we expect to find? If the “what” is capricious and borderline chaotic, then whom can we expect to find? Isaiah looked up and heard, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10)

IV: — My last comment to the 25 year-old is a challenge: “Do you want to help what our Jewish friends call, Tikkun Olam, the mending of the world? Or do you merely want to profit from the inequities that riddle it now?”

I have informed this congregation many times that the congregation sees only part of my work; it sees chiefly that part which pertains to the people who come to worship. The other part is known to virtually no one else. This part of my work occurs among people who don’t have the good fortune and grand opportunities that we take for granted. Naturally enough, we tend to make ourselves the measure of the universe. Therefore we assume, unthinkingly, that we in this congregation represent life in Canada. In fact we don’t. We think we’re a cross-section of the Canadian people, or at least a cross-section of Mississauga’s people. Cross-section? We’re the skim off the top; we represent the top 1/10th of 1% in terms of income and education and opportunity. There are strugglers all around us who don’t have our good fortune and privilege. There are legions whose sheer bad luck or upbringing or genetic coding has excluded them from so much of what we lucky people take for granted. We in Streetsville are so very privileged we’ve lost sight of those who aren’t. Compare the average Canadian family-income with that of this congregation; compare the average formal education with that here; compare the average retirement package with that here. Compare the average social opportunity and employment opportunity and recreational opportunity and intellectual opportunity with those here. If we are hard-hearted and spiritually inert we might recite that wretched hymn, “The rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate; God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate.” To be sure, we can always resolve to continue to benefit from our extraordinary privilege, determined not to think of anyone else lest our tummy become upset. On the other hand, we can soberly, truthfully, conscientiously admit that much will one day be required of those who have been entrusted with much. We can pursue Tikkun Olam, the mending of the world.

Our Lord came upon a woman who had been bent over for 18 years. He didn’t say to her, “Why are you bent over? Is it your fault?” Neither did he say, “Eighteen years already? What are two or three more? Besides, you don’t have much longer to live.” Instead he became angry, but not angry at her; angry at someone else. Our Lord hissed, “Satan has done this.” And then he freed her.

And so my challenge to the 25 year-old is, “Are you big enough for this? Are you willing to be made big enough? Or do you want to take your self-indulgent ease within the cocoon of unusual luck and privilege, all the while thinking your exclusive cocoon to be the product of extraordinary virtue?”

I’d like to talk with some 25 year-olds.

 

                                                                   Victor Shepherd       

February 1998

 

 

Mark 12:29      Psalm 42:4; 84:2     1 John 4:8       1 Corinthians 2:9

 

I have never had a stroke, as far as I know. (To be sure, I have been concussed four times and fractured my skull once, and therefore I must have sustained some neurological damage. Still, I have not had a stroke.) One aftermath of some strokes is that the stroke-sufferer cannot say what she wants to say, cannot articulate what she longs to communicate. Those attending the stroke-sufferer can only guess and guess and guess again.

Sometimes I feel that I too am not articulating what I long to communicate, and therefore people are left guessing again and again.

One guess is that I am trying to improve the moral tone of the community. To be sure, I should be happy if the moral tone of the community were improved. I am scarcely a booster of immorality or amorality. Nevertheless, at the end of the day I am not a moralist, concerned with having the community conform to a code. I am a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Another guess is that I am concerned to have religious observances better attended. To be sure, I should like to see them better attended; it bothers me that church-rolls carry so many people who are never or rarely seen at worship. At the same time, Jesus himself reminds us that the way is straight, the gate is narrow, and the few who enter upon it and persist in it are few indeed.

Another guess (guessed chiefly by those without church-connection) is that I am in the business of providing an affordable counselling service. To be sure, I am glad to offer whatever help I can to any suffering human being. Still, I’m not a psychologist.

Then what am I trying to do here? At the risk of speaking again like the stroke-sufferer who cannot articulate what she wants to communicate, I shall make another attempt: I AM TRYING TO FACILITATE AND FOSTER LOVE FOR GOD. I am trying to move us — all of us — to love God. You see, I have never lost sight of the “great commandment” reinforced by Jesus himself. When asked, “Which commandment is first of all?” he replied, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.” These two are never to be separated. At the same time, the first cannot be reduced to the second or collapsed into the second. It is not the case that by loving the neighbour we also love God. God insists on being loved for himself; being loved as God. The first command ever remains the first: we are to love God.

Actually, we are not exactly commanded to “love God”; we are commanded to “love the Lord our God”. The difference is crucial. “The Lord”, Yahweh, is the proper name of God everywhere in the Hebrew bible. The Hebrew name YHWH is spelled with no vowels. A word with no vowels cannot be pronounced; and a word which cannot be pronounced cannot be translated; neither can there be a substitute for it. Yahweh, “the Lord”, cannot be translated into Zeus (the deity of the ancient Greeks), or into Gitchi Manitou (the deity of Amerindians), or into Supreme Being (the deity of modernity). Neither can it be translated into any of the gods which people worship all the time: the American way of life, Canadian nationalism, or even something as crude as undisguised mammon. Neither can Yahweh, “the Lord”, be translated into the highest cultural achievement (however rich) or the profoundest environmentalism (however necessary). The name of God is spelled without vowels: it cannot be pronounced or translated. It admits of no rivals or approximations or substitutions. We are not to love God-in-General; we are not to love any vague deity. We are to love “the Lord” our God. He alone is creator; he fashioned a people to be a light to the nations; he spoke with Moses and seared upon him what the world will never be without; he arrested and infused prophets; and he, ultimately, became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Yahweh alone is God and he cannot be co-opted by anyone or anything. Him we are to love.

 

I: — But why? Why should we love God? Because we are grateful. Surely our gratitude to him compels our love for him. He has made us and ever sustains us. This is reason enough. Yet this is not where the Hebrew mind begins. The Hebrew mind begins not with creation but with redemption: God has saved us. The Hebrew heart is always moved most profoundly in reflecting upon our rescue at God’s hand.

Think of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are not an abstract moral code; neither do they enjoin conformity to a code. The Ten Commandments describe the shape, the pattern, the direction and the freedom of the life of that man or woman who knows that God has rescued her and is thereforeverlastingly grateful to God. The preface to the Ten Commandments is crucial: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt , out of the house of bondage”. Deliverance. This is what leaves us breathless. If we have stood, adoring, before the cross then we know we’ve been rescued from ultimate loss. Then of course our gratitude will render us eager to have our lives take on the shape, pattern, direction which our rescuer wills for us. We shall love God ardently inasmuch as our gratitude to him dissolves all hesitation or reservation.

 

(ii) Yet we love God for another reason: God’s love for us creates in us and elicits from us our answering love for him. I love my children (who are now adults.) I am overjoyed to find them loving me. I like to think that I could continue to love them even if they never loved me, even if they answered my love with arctic iciness. But how difficult it would be, because what a heartbreak. I want my love for them to create in them and elicit from them a love for me; their love for me would then magnify my love for them, and my magnified love for them would in turn swell their love for me as the spiral of love became more intense and more wonderful.

A minute ago I said I should like to think that I would continue loving my children even if they never returned my love, but I am not sure that I could; at least not sure that I could for ever. But God can, and God does. God’s love remains undiminished even though there are countless hearts which remain cold and stony. What such people have not yet grasped is this: they were made for love. They were made to love God. They would be most authentically human, most richly human, most nobly human, if only they surrendered their indifference or defiance. For then they would find that God’s great love had begun to create in them and elicit from them a love for God through which they became most truly themselves.

Obviously I am speaking here of human self-fulfilment. We have to be careful in speaking of self-fulfilment, since what passes for self-fulfilment in our era is, at bottom, selfish-fulfilment. When people complain that they are not fulfilled they usually mean that they can’t get what they want. Seminars which provide techniques for “self-fulfilment” give people the tools whereby they can finally get what they want. What’s more, since I am a fallen creature and therefore sin-riddled, fulfilment of my sinful self could only result in a monstrosity better left unimagined. (Secularites who prattle glibly about self-fulfilment never seem to grasp this point; never seem to understand that fulfilment of the depraved self results in intensified depravity.) At a much profounder level, however, to love God is the true fulfilment of my self, since to love God is to know the remedy for my sinful self.

The psalmist is correct when he writes, “My soul thirsts for God… my heart and flesh cry out for the living God”. To have our thirst and our outcry met is surely to be fulfilled, most profoundly fulfilled. It should not surprise us, then, that we are most profoundly ourselves when we most self-forgetfully love God. After all, we were made “in the image and likeness” of God, and God, John says so very pithily, God is love. We have been made by love for love.

The answer to the question, “Why ought we to love God?” the answer to this question has been rather long. But the length of the answer is nothing compared to the depth of the reality: we are to love God inasmuch as the God who is love has created us and has rescued us. In addition, he has fashioned us in such a way that we can become what we are created to be only by giving ourselves up to him and loving him with an ardour which reflects the ardour of his love for us. Paradoxically, it is as we love the God who is not an extension of ourselves that we most profoundly become ourselves.

 

II: — The next question can be answered more briefly. The next question is, “How ought we to love?” The answer is stated in our text: with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Fancy preachers (or fanciful preachers) finesse the four words, “heart”, “soul”, “mind”, “strength” and develop a four-point sermon. The truth is, there aren’t four points here. There is only one. “Heart”, “soul”, “mind”, “strength” are virtual synonyms in Hebrew! Each word means the same as the others. When Jesus insists we are to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength he is increasing the intensity until we understand that we are to love God totally, with everything in us. We are to love God without hesitation, without reservation, without qualification, without calculation. Our love for God is to be whole-soulled, admitting no rivals.

To say that we are to love God with all that we have and are is not to say that we are to love nothing else and no one else. There is much else that we are to love: our neighbour, to say the least. We are to love children, parents (scripture insists that neglect of parents is heinous), spouse. We are to love much else, yet love nothing else pre-eminently. Our love for God must come first.

Since the commonest metaphor for faith, in scripture, is marriage, it is fitting that we discuss our love for God in terms of marriage. Everyone knows (or should know) that exclusivity is of the essence of marriage. Regardless of our society’s preoccupation with inclusivity, exclusivity remains of the essence of marriage. The relationship we have with our spouse we are to have with no other man or woman. My wife occupies a place in my heart and life which no one else can occupy. But this is not to say that others have no place in my heart and life. They do! It is just that the place which others occupy (and even occupy at my wife’s urging); the place which others occupy cannot encroach upon the place which she occupies.

The older marriage vows contained the line, “…and forsaking all others”. These words did not mean that the newly-married couple forsook absolutely everyone else, dismissing friends, relatives, needy human beings, henceforth to live in a shrivelled, miserable universe of two. “Forsaking all others” meant that they forsook having the kind of relationship with others which they now had with each other. Exclusivity is of the essence of marriage. Where this truth is doubted or denied, the marriage is destroyed.

If you understand this then you understand what prophet and apostle mean when they tell us that God is jealous. To say that God is jealous is not to say that God is insecure or suspicious, like the insecure and suspicious husband who rages if he sees his wife talking to another man at a social function. To say that God is jealous is simply to acknowledge that exclusivity is of the essence of our love for God.

Our Israelite foreparents in faith, always earthy in their expression of spiritual truth, used to say, ” Israel has gone a-whoring after false gods!” They meant that the Israelite people had given to other things the whole-soulled love which they owed God alone. In doing this they had violated their covenant-promise to God, had become unfaithful; and like anyone who “goes a-whoring” they had debased themselves.

If we become most profoundly ourselves through loving God, then we debase and denature ourselves through deflecting our first love from God to something else, anything else. For God is a jealous God, we are told again and again. God is not insecure or suspicious; he does insist, however, that he be acknowledged as God. If we refuse to acknowledge the exclusivity of our relationship with him, we destroy the relationship.

 

III: — With what result do we love God? What is the outcome of our love for God? One result we have already discussed at length: insofar as we answer with love the love that has made us and redeemed us we become most truly ourselves.

Another result is that we love our fellow-believers who, like us, aspire to love God without hesitation or reservation. In his first epistle John writes, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God; and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” To be sure, we are to love the neighbour (the neighbour being, according to the parable of the Good Samaritan, any suffering human being). Nevertheless, we are especially to love fellow-believers, fellow-lovers of God.

In the year 1663 one of England ‘s finest puritan writers, Thomas Watson, wrote a little book called A Divine Cordial. It was meant to be a tonic for Christians who had become dispirited through savage persecution in Britain . In his brief book Watson lays down fourteen “tests of love to God”. One such test of love to God is love for fellow-Christians. A fellow-Christian, Watson says, “is like a fair face with a scar”. Then he adds, “You who cannot love another because of his infirmities, how would you have God love you?” I am emphasizing the matter of our loving fellow-Christians because I know that discouragement abounds in the Christian life, difficulties abound in church life, dispiritedness alights on us like the ‘flu, isolation blows its chill breath upon us, and before we know what has happened someone else has dropped away from the congregation. One test of our love to God, says Watson, is that we love those who love God.

Another result of our love to God is that we rejoice to see God’s name glorified and God’s truth exalted. One afternoon a parishioner came to see me and told me that she would do anything to help me in my work, anything she could do to free me for my work because, she said, what issues from this pulpit honours God. I trust it does. Of this much I am certain: through the work which she does, through the service which she renders, that woman herself honours God every bit as much. Myself, I rejoice to see and hear God glorified, the gospel commended, his truth enhanced, his love owned, his mercy confessed, his faithfulness welcomed, and his people cherished.

Another result of our love for God is that we, his people, are humbled. One day I overheard a conversation between a friend of mine and another woman. The second woman mentioned that she had been asked to do something, to render some service in the congregation, and then added that she regarded it beneath her. “I’m not that small”, she said in conclusion. My friend quietly replied, “What you really mean is, you aren’t that big; you aren’t big enough.” God’s love, poured upon us, never demeans us, never shrivels us. God’s love dignifies us and renders us big. So big, in fact, that no service to him and his people will ever be found too small. Our love for God humbles us without humiliating us. No service is beneath us. After all, we are only loving him whose love for us washed dirty feet and endured the contempt of the cross.

The final result of our love for God is this: our love for God will be consummated by what God has prepared for all who love him. Paul insists that what God has prepared for all who love him cannot be described, cannot even be imagined, so glorious is it. Our love for God will be crowned so gloriously as to leave us speechless yet forever adoring. Nonetheless, that love of his which he has already shed abroad in our heart is surely a clue to it. Then for the full splendour of what he has prepared for us we can wait confidently now, just because we have already tasted and enjoyed that love which has quickened ours.

 

Then we shall continue to love him. We know why we are to love him. We know how we are to love him. Do we know how much? Let Bernard of Clairvaux, a medieval thinker and hymnwriter, have the last word today: “The measure of our love to God is to love him without measure.”

 

                                                                                                          Victor Shepherd                                                                                                      

September 2004

 

Mark 12:41-44

I really like Jim Houston, the handsome man who chairs our finance committee. He’s very able — and there’s no substitute for competence. He’s also personable — and I much prefer the company of the personable to the company of the prickly. He’s funny — in fact his sense of humour is the best I’ve ever come across.

Because I like Jim so very much and enjoy being around him I felt bad when I told him not to lay his “trip” on me at the last executive meeting. The executive of the Official Board had been talking about today, Stewardship Sunday. Jim had said to me, “Victor, I won’t be writing your sermon for that day, but no doubt you’ll have a scorcher!” I had replied with a weariness that went all the way to my bone-marrow, “Jim, I don’t have another Stewardship Sunday sermon in me. In the 17 years that I’ve been here I’ve preached a dozen stewardship sermons. Plainly they haven’t worked — or why should I be asked for yet another? Besides (by now brother Jim didn’t know what he had uncorked in me); besides even if I wanted to preach a stewardship sermon on 29th October, I couldn’t: I simply don’t have another one in me.”

Poor Jim (I really felt bad laying my “heavy” on him) — for the first time in my acquaintance he didn’t have anything funny to say. He mumbled something to the effect that regardless of what I had or didn’t have in me he’d be ready with his “Rock’em, sock’em” depiction of “The Year’s Biggest Hits” — the hits being not bonecrushing bodychecks but the “hits” we’ve taken in getting the building put in order, the leaky roof repaired, and so on.

I know I disappointed Jim. I know he wanted me to bring forward a tear-jerker. But everyone’s heard my tear-jerkers.

Speaking of tears. What would you think if you came upon a 35-year old woman sitting at the kitchen table, weeping, while she tried to glue together the broken pieces of the lens from her eyeglasses? Can you imagine anyone so benighted as to try to glue together a broken lens? In the first place the glue available at that time didn’t glue glass; in the second place, even if the pieces could be glued there would still be cracks where they had broken; in the third place there would be glue-smears all over the patched-up lens and you wouldn’t be able to see through it in any case.

Then why did my mother sit at the kitchen table trying to glue together her broken lens while we three children looked on? Because the family didn’t have enough money to replace the lens. Why was she weeping? Because (she told me years later) she felt that the family’s financial position was hopeless.

Still, it was at this time that my father — you know the story about my dear old dad, how a broken-down stranger (intoxicated to boot) approached him as we Shepherds were on our way into church one Sunday, how my dad gave the man all the money he had with him.

Two weeks ago I told Jim Houston I didn’t have any more such stories in me; no fresh stories. But that was all right. Not even fresh stories would be effective. After all, my old stories were fresh the first time, weren’t they? — and even when they were fresh they were singularly ineffective. There is no point in my telling such stories when they don’t work!

I’m going to do something different today. Since I don’t have any drum-beating, tear-jerking, conscience-tormenting stories to put before you, I’m going to tell you simply why Christians give money, and give it sacrificially.

I: — Believers give money to the church for four reasons. The first should be obvious. The church has been entrusted with the gospel. There is no more important event amidst all the events of world-occurrence than a ringing declaration of the gospel. There is nothing more important — there can be nothing more important — than a non-fuzzy, non-fumbling announcement of Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t your heart resonate with the apostle Paul when he says so very simply yet so very movingly to the congregation in Philippi, “For me to live is Christ”? “Life means `Christ’ for me”, is what he has in mind. The One who had overtaken Paul when Paul had been looking in the wrong direction and moving down the wrong path; this One ever after loomed so big in the apostle’s mind and heart that he couldn’t contain himself and could only let his ever so rich experience pour out of him. What is the money we give compared to that?

Let’s not fool ourselves. The church has been entrusted with the gospel of Christ not because our Lord is an “add-on” for suburbanite yuppies who already “have it all” and now want a little decoration on top of the “all”. Neither is our Lord the fixer-upper of those who have made it most of the way themselves and who now need a little boost to achieve whatever it is they regard as worth achieving. Our Lord is first and last Saviour from a peril so perilous it is finally indescribable.

Indescribable? Of course it is. For what other reason would our Lord paint incompatible pictures in trying to speak of it? The most fiery fire, he says repeatedly, along with the darkest outer darkness. But fire isn’t dark! In painting incompatible pictures (the brightest fire and darkest darkness) our Lord is telling us that ultimate loss, before God, is something we cannot adequately comprehend, even as it is something we ought resolutely to avoid.

The gospel is life just because it is the effectual self-declaration and self-bestowal of Him who is resurrection and life. You must have noticed that every funeral service repeats the words of Jesus, “Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” Our Lord means exactly what he says. To live in the Son is to be reconciled to the Father; to be reconciled to the Father is to be bound to him in a bond whose truth, intimacy, intensity must finally remain a wordless wonder. And to live here is to be fixed so firmly in the heart of God that our coming physical death and biological dissolution are but a momentary irritant and inconvenience.

Humankind needs saving and Jesus Christ is its sole saviour. Let us not pretend anything else or settle for anything less. Humankind needs saving from the judgement of God and from the consequences of its own sin. Let us not waste our time saying that we need “saving” (as it were) from such matters as meaninglessness. I have never yet found someone whose life was meaningless. I have met many for whom life’s meaning wasn’t worthy of any human being (e.g., lining up to drool over the big lottery-draw, or looking at 7 NFL football games on a weekend; even the derelict who wants only to panhandle enough quarters to buy a bottle of the cheapest wine — the meaning of his life is just that!). It’s not that people find life meaningless; it’s rather that their lives are cluttered with myriad inferior meanings and they need truth, which truth is given with the Saviour who wants only to give us himself.

Prior to his seizure at the hand of the Risen One the apostle Paul didn’t find his life meaningless; nevertheless, after his seizure at the hand of the Risen One he counted all the meanings that had preoccupied him to this point as garbage compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. (Phil. 3:8)

The church has been entrusted with the gospel. We who are Christ’s followers must announce him. When we announce him, however, more than a mere announcement happens; when we announce him he himself emerges from our witness and acts in our midst. Did not our Lord say to his earliest followers, “Whoever hears you hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, rejects him who sent me”? (Luke 10:16)

Why do Christians make financial sacrifices on behalf of the church? — because we have found that Jesus Christ is life for us, and we never want it said that we withheld such life from anyone else.

II: — There is another reason, a related reason, for our financial sacrifice. We want the gospel’s “indirect lighting” of our society to continue. When indirect lighting is used in a building the light-fixture isn’t seen but the illumination is evident. For centuries the illumination of so much of our society was the result of the indirect lighting of the gospel. Think of the laws that govern us; think of our criminal justice system; think of education; think of health care. And then imagine (if you can) the shape of a society where indirect Christian influence has been removed.

We must never think that the indirect lighting that has been in place for centuries will take centuries to disappear. On the contrary, it can disappear overnight. During the last 80 years of Czarist rule in Russia prior to the Revolution of 1917 there were 20 state-executions (no doubt for heinous crimes). During the first month of Revolutionary rule under Lenin there were over 1000 executions.

I have to smile when I hear church-detractors complain that the church of yesteryear gave rise to “moral legalism”. People who speak like this, I have found, are so very shallow that they couldn’t define legalism if they were asked to. More to the point, would our society be better off if instead of moral legalism (so-called) we had immoral lawlessness?

The influence of the Ten Commandments has been inestimable throughout the western world. The people today who snicker at them as “Victorian”: wait until their employer withholds earnings to which they are entitled, or wait until their employer won’t give them another day off work since Christmas falls on a Sunday. They will be the first to complain that they have been stolen from. Stolen from? Who said stealing is wrong? A minute ago the complainers were snickering at Victorians who spoke of right and wrong!

The people who snicker at the Ten Commandments as Victorian are too shallow to see that if only 1% of the population (just 1%!) behaves criminally then social existence is impossible. At many times throughout history social existence has been impossible — at least for a short while until a totalitarian arm-breaker appeared whom people were glad to see, since totalitarian arm-breakers at least allow a society to exist.

Needless to say, the indirect lighting of the gospel that illumines the wider society; this indirect lighting continues only as long as there is direct lighting of the gospel elsewhere; specifically, only as long as the gospel shines directly in the church. Indirect gospel-lighting of the wider society will remain only as long as direct gospel-lighting floods the church.

We must keep the gospel shining directly in the church, in the first place, just because the gospel quickened us and we want others to be quickened as well; in the second place we must keep the gospel shining directly in the church so that the indirect lighting of the gospel will continue to illumine our society. Where society isn’t rendered livable by indirect illumination it is rendered livable by a state-brutality other societies have found preferable only to mob-brutality.

III: — There is yet another reason for our financial sacrifice. Our giving money away is the confirmation that the power of money is a broken power in our lives.

According to Jesus there are only two powers in the cosmos: God and mammon. (Since you have heard me say many times that the only two powers in the cosmos are God and the power of death, death being the ruling power in a fallen world, it is plain that the power of money is most intimately related to the power of death. But more of this on another occasion.) Jesus says, without argumentation, “God or mammon: these are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. God or mammon. Which one do you worship? Which one do you serve? Which one is going to triumph finally in you?” All of us know what the right answer is. There isn’t a person in this room ready to jump up and say, “I wish to ally myself with the power of mammon!” We all know what the right answer is. Still, there is only one way to demonstrate the answer we have given in the secret places of our heart; there is only one way to show where we have truly lined up; there is only one way to show that the power of money in our lives is a broken power. We must give it away. The only freedom we have with respect to money is the freedom to give it away.

Economists tells us that money is a medium of exchange. It’s easier for the farmer to pay money for an automobile than it is for him to take six million apples to the Ford dealer and hope that the dealer wants six million apples as much as the farmer wants a new car. Money is a medium of exchange that avoids the inconvenience of the barter-system, say the economists.

The economists are correct; but they are also exceedingly shallow unless they say a great deal more. After all, everyone knows that money is eversomuch more than merely a medium of exchange. Don’t we all say that money talks? If money “talks” then money is a power. Don’t we whisper to each other that money secures votes? Everybody knows that money makes or breaks people; money intimidates, money coerces, money enforces silence. (Not only does money talk; money keeps people from talking. In other words, money is a power so powerful that it can do anything.) All we need do to observe the power of money is to note how people thought when they lacked money, and how they think now that they have money; how they voted when they lacked money, how they vote now that they have it; what they expected from government when they lacked it, what they expect when they have it; how highly they thought of public schooling when they lacked it, how highly they think of private schooling now that they have it.) Money is a power so powerful, says Jesus, that it rivals the power of God himself. We confirm that the power of mammon is a broken power in our lives as and only as we give it away. The only freedom we have with respect to money is the freedom to give it away.

IV: — The last consideration for our financial sacrifice has to do with need.

(i) Admittedly, our church-building has been “needy”. We had two choices when we were told that it wouldn’t be long before the city-authorities put the yellow tape around the building and allowed no one to enter. Our two choices were to repair the building or to walk away from it. At the congregational meeting where this was discussed we voted 100% to repair the building.

We didn’t repair the building because we are museum “freaks” who are especially fond of antiquarian architecture. We repaired the building for one reason only: to facilitate the praise of God arising from those for whom life means Christ.

(ii) Another area of need is the material distress, physical distress of so many around us, together with emotional distress arising from material disadvantage.

“But isn’t it the responsibility of government to meet such needs?”, someone wants to ask. I’m not going to debate whether it is or isn’t the responsibility of government. I shall simply say that governments everywhere are getting out of the business of providing the assistance so many need. With what result? With the result that the church’s historic diaconal ministry will come back into its own.

Throughout the church’s 2000-year history the ministry of the diaconate has been distinguished from the ministry of the word. The ministry of the word was preaching, teaching, counselling, while the ministry of the diaconate was the providing of material help for those in especial need. In the past two decades The United Church of Canada has altered the meaning of “diaconal”; no longer does it refer to the providing of concrete assistance. Instead it refers to a professional church-worker half-way between lay and ordained. Those who are described as “diaconal”, in our denomination, are deemed “more” than lay but “less” than ordained. But this is a distortion of the historic meaning of the term. For 2000 years “diaconal” has meant “providing assistance to the materially needy.” In Calvin’s Geneva, for instance (in the year 1550, approximately), deacons had two major responsibilities: care of the sick and care of the poor.

During the middle ages an order of nuns took it upon themselves to provide proper Christian burial for those who had been executed by the state and to provide material assistance for their survivors (i.e., for widows and now-fatherless children).

I am convinced that as governments reduce government spending precisely where the church historically shone and where we have recently expected governments to shine; as governments reduce spending here the church will be called to recover its historic diaconal ministry. One result of the church’s recovering its historic diaconal ministry will be that the church will have handed to it, on a silver platter no less, the opportunity of recovering that credibility which the church complains at present of having lost.

(iii) The final need I shall mention today concerns outreach. Think of our congregation’s mission project in India. We are going to be supporting development-projects in two small Indian villages. We must never think that our money buys mere tokenism in India. What our money produces in terms of development there will benefit the village-people enormously.

Several years ago one of my friends, now on the medical staff of Sunnybrook Hospital, spent three years doing surgery in Africa. He tells me he thinks his surgery did some good in Africa; in fact his surgery did as much good in Africa as surgery does in Canada. It benefits one person at a time, one person at a time in the midst of millions. He told me that if we really want to do vastly more good than surgery can do we should send over a well-driller. “If you want to improve living conditions hugely”, he told me, “teach the people to do two things: drill a well and dig a latrine. A well and a latrine will do more than any amount of surgery.”

We have enormous opportunity to improve the material wellbeing of our friends in Indian villages. Let it never be said that they suffered unnecessarily on account of our stinginess.

Two weeks ago I told Jim Houston that I didn’t have another stewardship sermon in me. I didn’t. I still don’t. Therefore in place of a stewardship sermon I am going to ask us all to ponder four questions:

[1] How intimately do we know Jesus Christ, and what does he mean to us?

[2] What will our society look like if the indirect lighting of the gospel disappears and with it the illumination that remains essential?

[3] Have we ever confirmed, by giving money away gladly and readily, that money is a broken power in our lives?

[4] Are we going to allow our stinginess to cause others to suffer unnecessarily?

There is no sermon today, merely four questions.

                                                                    Victor A. Shepherd
October 1995               

Mark 14:3-11        Deuteronomy 15:7-11

Shortly after ordination I was transferred to Maritime Conference of The United Church. I had been in my New Brunswick congregation only a few weeks when Dr. Robert McClure, missionary surgeon and, at that time, moderator of the denomination, visited the area. The regional clergy met with him over supper in a steakhouse.  I ordered my steak rare. When it came to me it appeared not to have been cooked at all. My steak was hemorrhaging. In that gruff abrasiveness for which McClure was known everywhere he barked at me, “Shepherd, do you want a tourniquet for that thing?”

A few months earlier I had seen a different side to the man, and a different manner of expression. McClure was speaking to a group of students at the University of Toronto about his work in the Gaza Strip. He was telling us that we North American “fat cat” students knew nothing about much that matters in life; specifically, we knew nothing about gratitude. He told us that on one occasion in the Gaza Strip he had stopped at a peasant hovel to pay a post-surgical call on a woman on whom he had operated.  (He told us he had done a “rear axle job” on her.  Since I lack medical sophistication I can only guess what this might be.) The woman and her husband were dirt-poor. Their livestock supply consisted of one Angora rabbit and two chickens.  The woman combed the long hair out of the Angora rabbit, spun it and sold it. She and her husband ate or sold the eggs from the chickens.  Following her post-surgical examination the woman insisted McClure remain for lunch. He told her he had to see another patient a mile or two down the road, but would be back for lunch in an hour.  When he returned he peeked into the cooking pot to see what he was going to have for lunch: one rabbit and two chickens.  The woman had given up her entire livestock supply, her own food supply, her livelihood, her income.  She had poured out herself upon him, reserving nothing.  As he related the incident to us students, McClure –gruff, blunt, abrasive – wept like a child, and could only blubber and blurt, “You students know nothing of gratitude, nothing.”

There is another incident of gratitude that will never be forgotten, says our Lord. A woman broke a bottle of expensive perfume and poured it over his head and over his feet even as she wiped his feet with her hair.  Make no mistake: it was expensive. Three hundred denarii was a year’s income for a labourer in Palestine . Why did she do it?         We’ll come to that. What rejoinder did her deed elicit? With either disappointment or dismay or even disgust Judas retorted, “What a stupid waste! Why not sell the perfume and give the proceeds to the poor?”   Jesus replied, “Let her alone.  The poor you’ll always have with you.  She’s done something beautiful.”

 

I: — We would misunderstand this gospel story abysmally if we thought for a minute that Jesus was cavalierly dismissing the horror of poverty and the plight of the poor themselves. We are people of shrivelled, stony hearts if we read this story as legitimating any society’s disregard of the poor.  Only the most insensitive people are unaware of wasted money that would do eversomuch for the wretched of the earth.

We must remember that the poor of first century Palestine weren’t those who had a little less than their neighbour, those whose automobile was older than most people’s, those whose home had only one toilet. They weren’t those who had fallen into downward social mobility only to be caught in the social safety net that we have in Canada , which net prevents any of us from falling anywhere near as far as we otherwise might. In first century Palestine the poor were really poor. The houseguests who witnessed the perfume-pouring, including Judas; they had a point; they weren’t without sensitivity or understanding. They were piercingly aware of the poverty they couldn’t fail to see and the staggering value of the perfume wasted on the head and feet of one man.

These people were Israelites.  They knew the Hebrew bible. They knew that the first responsibility of Israel ’s king, back in the days before the Roman conquest when Israel still had a king, was to safeguard the poor.  (This point we should linger over.  The first responsibility of political authority is to safeguard the poor.) So exquisitely sensitive was Israel to the horror of poverty that it had many different Hebrew words for “poor.” One Hebrew word for “poor” referred to those who were physically frail, sick, handicapped, lame, wasted. Another Hebrew word for “poor” referred to those who were forever dependent.  To be uncommonly dependent on others, for any reason at all, is to be poor, if only because such people are always at the whim and mood of those they depend on. A third Hebrew word for “poor” referred to the oppressed.  The oppressed were the powerless, the helpless who were exploited relentlessly and ground down ruthlessly.  Israel was so exquisitely sensitive to the plight of the poor for one reason: God is exquisitely sensitive to the plight of the poor.  The psalmist reminds his people, “God does not forget the cry of the afflicted.”

Jesus was a faithful son of Israel – and more: Jesus is that Son of God with whom the Father is well pleased. Then our Lord’s concern for the poor reflected perfectly his Father’s concern and gathered up the concerns of his kinsfolk.

We Canadians live in a country that continues to display concern, some concern at least, for the poor. I have never doubted why or how we came to display such concern: our nation has been informed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. In those countries that lack a Christian history and a Christian memory the attitude to the poor is very different.  While I was appalled at the wretchedness I saw in India , given India ’s widespread poverty, I was startled to learn how many rich there are in that country and how rich they are.  Never think that India is populated by poor people only. Never forget that every year since 1870, including the years of the worst famines, India has been a net exporter of food. But India has little Christian history and therefore little Christian memory.  For this reason the attitude to the poor there is different.  I have no doubt too that as secularism erodes the Christian background in Canada and dilutes the Christian infusion, Canada ’s attitude to the poor will change, and change for the worse.         Is there any governmental leader in Canada at this moment who knows that his or her chief responsibility, by God’s ordination, is to safeguard the poor?

In Israel the poor could take grain from a field or grapes from a vine, and take these at any time if they were without food.   (This wasn’t deemed theft on account of the manifest emergency.) Every third year 10% of the harvest was given to the poor, no questions asked. Every year a border had to be left standing in every grain field following the harvest, the border of grain being for the poor alone.  The poor were allowed to borrow money interest-free.         Job says he won’t be able to face God if he hasn’t assisted the poor. Amos says God will punish Israel for its failures with respect to the poor.  The apostle James is livid when the wealthier members of a congregation receive preferential treatment.  Since all of this is gathered up in our Lord himself, the people who rebuke him over the woman’s extravagance can’t be faulted.  They are sensitive to the plight of the poor; they expect him to be; he is. Then why doesn’t Jesus fend off this weepy woman and have her do something useful with the money she wants to give up?   Whatever our Lord meant when he said, “The poor you have with you always”, he didn’t mean that the poor can therefore be overlooked. Tragically, what our Lord didn’t mean is precisely what too many people have thought he meant.  It was the social consequences of our Lord’s words abused that drove Karl Marx to speak with no little justification of religion as the opiate of the people, the drug that tranquillizes the wretched of the earth in the face of their misery.

The poor matter. They matter to God. They should matter to us. Every Israelite knew this. Jesus knew it too. Judas knew that he knew, as did the other onlookers.  Therefore their protest, upon seeing money thrown away on anyone in a display that lasted only a minute, is entirely understandable.

 

II: — Then why does Jesus permit the woman to waste her money and jeopardize the poor?   Before we answer that question we must ask and answer another question. When McClure, the missionary surgeon, looked into the cooking pot and saw the rabbit and two chickens, why didn’t he say to the woman, “Why have you deprived yourself of your livelihood? Don’t know you know you’ve rendered yourself penniless?   What do you think you’re going to do now?”         Why didn’t McClure shake his head in amazement and say to us university students, “Those impoverished people in the Gaza Strip; they are their own worst enemies. We’ll never be able to do anything for those who evidently can’t help themselves.” McClure said no such thing because he knew the meaning of her act: her act didn’t mean she was unaware of her material predicament.

Jesus said no such thing because he knew the meaning of the woman’s act: her act didn’t mean she was unaware of the plight of the poor. Our Lord knew that what the woman was pouring upon him wasn’t perfume, ultimately, however costly; it was love she was pouring upon him. It was gratitude taking the form of love. It was a spectrum of gratitude and love that could be seen as pure gratitude or pure love or any gradation of the two if it even makes sense to distinguish love and gratitude in this woman’s heart.  Her pouring out the perfume wasn’t the most adequate expression she could find of her love for the one who meant everything to her; it was the only expression that occurred to her in that instant. Of course it was a waste in one sense; in another sense, no waste at all, since it was categorically different from all considerations of waste and usefulness and thrift and expedience.  It can be considered waste as long as a price tag (300 denarii) is attached to the perfume; it can’t be considered waste as long as no price can be affixed to love. Does anyone want to suggest that she should have mailed our Lord a letter for only 52 cents, or even e-mailed him for nothing?

Jesus didn’t object to her doing what she did once.  Had she attempted to do it repeatedly, I’m sure he would have stayed her. But to stay her when every impulse within her moved her to disregard social convention and public niceties and yammering tongues and cruel gossip; how could our Lord have halted such an expression of love and gratitude without crushing her? Had he stayed her she could only have concluded, to her endless embarrassment, that she had been as gullible as a child, when in truth she had found herself forever different thanks to the ministry of this man.

In first century Palestine a woman didn’t speak to a man in public, or a man to her, lest they be thought to be involved in an impropriety.  Neither did they touch each other.  A friend of mine, a psychiatrist whose psychiatric expertise is matched by his Christian ardour; my psychiatrist friend, in discussing this incident with me one day, remarked that the woman’s act was extremely sensual: wiping a man’s feet with her hair, kissing his feet, trying to dry them with her hair – this is erotic.  Her hair must have been long, so long that she would let it down and then let herself down; no, not let herself down, simply collapse at his feet oblivious to everything and everyone, aware only of him upon whom she was now pouring out everything. Then was there an erotic element in her deed? There was. And so what. Our Lord was no fool. He wasn’t unaware of the erotic trace element in the woman’s self-giving. But while he was no fool, neither was he a sledgehammer about to crush her.

One hundred years ago James Denney, a fine Scottish theologian, remarked, “You show me someone who hasn’t purchased a gift he couldn’t afford for someone he loves and I’ll show you someone who isn’t fit for the kingdom.” Of course none of us could afford such a gift every week and therefore we wouldn’t purchase such a gift every week.         The Scottish fellow’s story has point, we should note, only if we can’t afford such a gift at all, not even once, and yet purchase it anyway in our poured-out gratitude for someone who is dearer to us than life.  If we have done such a thing, we won’t bother replying to those who say that such a deed is the height of irrationality and foolishness and improvidence and should therefore be eschewed everlastingly.  We won’t bother replying just because there is no word that can express inexpressible gratitude and love and devotion.

Not so long ago Maureen’s best friend from her New Brunswick days telephoned us on a Saturday night.  She wanted us to pray for her on the spot, that is, over the phone. She was very ill, sick unto death. Her husband, she told us, wasn’t in the house but rather was stumbling around outside, beside himself at his wife’s condition and his dread of losing her, so much does he love her.  She telephoned me subsequently with the same request.  Again her husband couldn’t bear to overhear the conversation.  When Maureen and I lived in her village we often commented on this couple’s straightened financial circumstances.  They had little money and had come from families with little money, she being one of 17 children and he being one of 14.  The first Christmas we were in Tabusintac she purchased a Christmas gift for her husband; it was the most outlandishly expensive cologne for men. Now he was a lumberjack. Thereafter he was the sweetest-smelling lumberjack in the New Brunswick woods. But she hadn’t bought the carriage-trade cologne to make him smell sweet; she had bought it because it had been the only vehicle she could think of for expressing her love for her husband.

Let’s come back to the woman in the gospel story.  Different accounts of the story in different gospels tell us that she poured the perfume on the head of Jesus or on the feet of Jesus.  In different gospels Jesus is recorded as making different comments, entirely understandable in view of what it is about the incident that most impresses different gospel writers.  When the woman poured the perfume out on the head of Jesus she was anointing him. Kings and priests were anointed in ancient Israel . When the woman anointed Jesus, then, she was recognizing him to be the one to whom she owed obeisance and allegiance and lifelong faithfulness, for he was now her effectual sovereign. When she anointed him she was also recognizing him to be priest, not a priest like those who offered up sacrifices in the temple, but rather the priest who offers up himself, priest and sacrifice in one, and therefore her effectual redeemer. In fact she honoured him as rightful ruler of her life only because she had first known her sin pardoned at his priestly hand.  It was her experience of forgiveness and freedom that constrained her to bind herself to him forever. “You show me someone who hasn’t spent a fortune he didn’t have for someone he loves, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t fit for the kingdom”, said the old Scot. Was the woman in our story fit, fit for the kingdom?   We shouldn’t be asking about her.  We should be asking about ourselves.  What are we going to say when the same question is posed concerning us?

As a matter of fact our Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, puts the question to us that he put to Peter on Easter morning in the wake of Peter’s denial. He asked, “Peter, do you love me…?” In fact he asked the question three times in the wake of Peter’s three denials. On the one hand, by asking the question three times over he was saying to Peter, “Don’t answer glibly; take your time and think about it; don’t ‘pop off’ with something ill-considered and hasty.         Ponder the question and weigh your answer.”   On the other hand, by asking the simple question without mentioning the repeated denials he was sparing Peter the downward spiral into self-loathing and self-rejection and ever-worsening guilt.  The question was sharp enough not to let Peter off, yet gentle enough not to let Peter go. “Do you love me?” Our Lord puts the same question to us in exactly the same spirit for exactly the same reason. Peter said, “Lord, you know that I love you.”   Months earlier a woman whose tears bespoke more than could ever be said anointed Jesus in public, witnessing to the watching world that she gloried in his priestly pardon and gladly submitted to his kingly claim.

 

A woman’s poured-out perfume, poured-out tears, poured-out heart told our Lord how much she loved him.  It should have told the onlookers too.  It didn’t, however, but not because they were concerned – rightly concerned – for the poor.  Our Lord was unfailingly concerned for the poor, as no doubt the Israelite woman herself was. Her deed couldn’t tell onlookers how much she loved him, however, in that they lacked such love themselves, and lacking such love themselves were unable to recognize it in someone else.

Then how much do I love him?  How much more should I love him?  And you?

 

                                                                                                     Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                         

February 2008

(preached February 10 2008, Markham Presbyterian Church, Ontario)

Mark 16: 1-8

I: — “Did he really rise from the dead?” the skeptic asks. “Prove it. Prove that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the Dead. If you can prove it, then the Christian message might be true after all.”

Let me tell you right now: there is no proof. Jesus consistently refused to traffic in proofs. At the outset of our Lord’s public ministry the tempter took him up to the top of the CN Tower. “Jump off, and land without spraining your ankle; then the whole world will know that you are the Son of God.” “No”, Jesus had replied, “If I do that, people will only look upon me as a sideshow freak, they may find me entertaining or even puzzling, but they will never follow me and magnify my work in the world.” A few months later some bystanders were uncertain as to whether they should throw in their lot with Jesus or wait and see. “Give us a sign”, they told him, “an unmistakable sign that you are the one we should follow.” “No sign”, said Jesus; “Signs are for armchair debaters who lack commitment; signs foster arguments among armchair dabblers; I want foxhole followers. If you join me you will know who I am and rejoice in it; if you don’t join me, a sign won’t get you to change your mind. A sign will only set you to squabbling among yourselves as to what the sign means.” You see, for those who have met the risen Lord signs are superfluous; for those who have yet to meet him, no sign is ever sign enough.

From time to time people ask me if the resurrection of Jesus can be proved. It can’t. What’s more, Jesus himself has never wanted it proved. He has always wanted followers, not detectives.

 

II: —   Then what can be proved? What is confirmed historically? History confirms two facts.

(i) Jesus of Nazareth landed himself in immense trouble with religious leaders. He was labelled a false prophet. Since “everyone” knew that the days of the prophets were past, anyone who sounded like a prophet had to be false. Therefore he was a false prophet.

He was a blasphemer too. He appeared to speak and act with the authority of God. When he was pressed to deny that he did so, he refused to deny anything. Anyone who claims to speak and act with the authority of God is a blasphemer.

He was a seducer of the common people. The ne’er-do-wells, the amoral, the irreligious — he drew them all to himself instead of sending them back to the pseudo-wisdom of the self-important and superior.

Not surprisingly, he was disposed of at the city garbage dump where the Roman executioner kept a scaffold ready-to-hand.

This is fact one. Thirty year-old upstart lands himself in trouble with religious officials who then ask civil authorities to execute him.

 

(ii) Fact two. His former followers, who had misunderstood him over and over and who had finally forsaken him and written off their time with him as embarrassing naiveness; his former followers began announcing zealously that he was alive. They were convinced he was alive, they said, simply because they had met him. Therefore they would no more think of trying to prove he was alive than you would try to prove me alive when you meet me at the door of the church after the service. No longer regarding him as deluded and themselves as naive, they worshipped him as Lord – he hadn’t been blasphemous after all when claimed to be the Son of God – and they insisted that with him a new age had dawned, the dawn of the “Age-to Come.”

History confirms that he died. History confirms that his former followers declared him to be alive, and declared him to be exalted as Lord of the entire creation.

“But wasn’t the tomb empty?” someone asks. If you were an ordinary citizen of Jerusalem and you heard reports of an empty grave in the city cemetery, you would merely conclude that someone, whether friend or foe, had removed the body for whatever reason. An empty tomb never proves that someone is alive; an empty tomb “proves” no more than that a tomb is empty; an empty tomb never proves that dead wandering teacher is now living ruler of the cosmos.

To be sure, early-day Christians insisted that the tomb was empty. Nevertheless, no early-day Christian believed upon Jesus risen because of an empty tomb. Early-day Christians believed upon Jesus risen because the living Lord Jesus himself had seized them and convinced them that he was alive and was in fact the very one they had seen crucified. This is the only reason anyone believed in the resurrection of Jesus then; it’s the only reason anyone believes in the resurrection now.

The apostle Paul didn’t make a trip to the Jerusalem cemetery, see an empty tomb, and finally draw the right conclusion. Quite the contrary. Paul was preoccupied with his cruel business of persecution when the risen One himself stepped in front of him and floored him. Peter was fishing. Mary Magdalene was grieving. Fearful disciples were fearing. All of these people were busy with the things which preoccupy us. And it was while those people were about everyday matters — working, weeping, fishing, fearing — that they were stolen upon, overtaken; they were impelled to acknowledge that Jesus had been brought to life and installed as sole, sovereign Lord. It still happens exactly like this.

 

III: — Let us be clear about something crucial. Romantics may tell us that Mozart “lives on” in his music and Shakespeare “lives on” in his plays and Martin Luther King Jr. “lives on” in the cause of justice for Afro-American people. But romantic talk is entirely inappropriate for Jesus. Jesus does not “live on” in his disciples. Jesus lives himself. Period. And because he lives himself, he directs and sustains and empowers his own cause throughout the world.

No early-day Christian remembered Jesus. Do you understand the force of this? No early-day Christian recalled Jesus. We remember or recall only those who have departed. We recognize those who are alive in our midst. Christians have always recognized Jesus. We meet him and adore him, hear him and cherish him, embrace him and obey him. We do. So did our ancestors before us. What did it mean for them?

 

(i) Our ancestors in faith revelled in their conviction that death had been conquered; not cancelled, but conquered. The difference is crucial. On my first pastoral appointment I sat with a woman who was most distressed at her 65 year old sister’s terminal illness. “If only Emma could be cured”, she kept saying, “if only a miracle would occur”. Gently, as gently as I could, I pointed out that if Emma’s terminal illness were reversed now, she would still have to die later. In other words, if she didn’t die at 65 she would still have to die at 69 or 72 or 81. If for some reason she came back to health at 65, then death had been cancelled at least for the moment; i.e., postponed.

But to say that death has been conquered is to say that death has been stripped of its power. On the day when the Lord was raised from the dead and death was stripped of its power, his people — you and I — became gloriously free. The writer of Hebrew insists that Jesus Christ has “destroyed the power of death and has delivered – freed – all who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” (Hebrews 2:15) Sigmund Freud maintained that no human being could honestly face the prospect of dying, and therefore all human beings were unconsciously controlled by fear of death. But Christians aren’t determined and governed by their fear of death; Christians are determined and governed by the risen one who has freed us from that bondage in which the fear of death imprisons people and manipulates them.

Because the Christian is freed from the power of death and therein from the bondage arising from the fear of death, the Christian is free to give her life away. The Christian is free to risk himself on behalf of the one who risked everything for the people he loved. And since the world-at-large unconsciously tries to protect itself against death by piling up things and fortunes and reputations and rewards, the Christian is gloriously freed from preoccupation with things and fortunes and reputations and rewards. Because death is now stripped of all power to dislodge us from our security in Christ, we are freed from having to pursue the false securities, abysmal insecurities, of money and fame and mastery. We are free to give ourselves away.

 

(ii) The resurrection meant something more to our ancestors in faith. It meant that God guarantees the effectiveness, the triumph, of all cross-bearing. When Jesus died on Black Friday, his followers had concluded that his cross meant one thing: his suffering was utterly disastrous and completely useless. But when God raised him from the dead, they knew something else: God had vindicated Christ’s suffering and now advertised it as victorious. The resurrection of Jesus – and only his resurrection – turned Black Friday into Good Friday, “God’s Friday.” Resurrection means that our Lord’s cross-bearing has triumphed: atonement has been made for the sins of the world. If his cross-bearing has triumphed, ours always will too; ours will always be effective.

Our Lord guarantees the effectiveness, the triumph of whatever cross we take up for him and for his work and for his people. Resurrection doesn’t mean that cross-bearing can now be stepped around; it doesn’t mean that what we used to call “cross-bearing” is now no more than a minor nuisance. Resurrection means something entirely different: the crosses we take up anywhere in life, everywhere in life, will always yield fruit of some kind. The crosses we shoulder are gathered up in that one cross which includes them all. And they will all be rendered fruitful by the power of that resurrection which made our Lord’s fruitful.

For this reason my mother spent years patiently assisting young girls who had been sent to an institution when their parents no longer wanted them or couldn’t look after them. The girls, aged 8 to 16, were ill-behaved, devious, frequently mean-spirited, and of course psychologically stressed. On one occasion they harmed my mother physically. I suspect that more than a few grew up to be psychopaths. Yet my mother always knew that what she endured from those girls for the few years of their lives she was in touch with them would bear some fruit which she could leave with God.

For this reason my late father went to the Fort Saskatchewan Penitentiary every single Sunday afternoon for as long as he lived in Edmonton (eleven years) to provide music and a sermon for a service of worship. He knew that the convicts often seemed indifferent and uncomprehending and even resentful. Yet he never felt that his time was wasted. One day when I was about twelve years old I asked my father (innocently, I thought) if he’d ever seen any results for his eleven years’ work among convicts. Immediately he turned to me and said, a bit sharply, “I didn’t do what I did in expectation of seeing results; I did it because it was right.” Still, in the providence of God he was permitted to see the fruit of his work on one occasion at least. One day my father was sitting on an Edmonton streetcar with my mother when a man approached him, whispered briefly to him and shook his hand. The man had come to repentance and faith through the prison ministry, and now exulted in the fact that he could live, one a day at a time, without falling back into criminality.

The sacrifices we make right now for the sake of the kingdom; likely only we are aware of them, and it would be both poor taste and unbiblical blabbing to speak too much about them. And of course there are days when we resent the pressure of the wood and wish we could ditch this cross plus so many others. Of course there are such days; after all, Jesus wasn’t grinning on Calvary . Nonetheless, on Easter Sunday we are given fresh heart because our conviction is renewed: that resurrection which vindicated our Lord’s suffering and rendered it victorious guarantees as much for us.

 

(iii) Lastly, our ancestors in faith knew that because Christ had been raised from the dead and now lived and ruled in their midst, he would always use them, honour their discipleship, empower their testimony, regardless of how badly they had failed him in the past or might fail him in the future. The Bible is an agonizingly honest book. It portrays God’s people with all their defects. There’s no cosmetic cover-up to make God’s people look good. Peter denies. David murders. Moses rages. James and John think they are going to get positions of privilege in the kingdom. With shocking insensitivity born of selfishness the disciples squabble among themselves over who is going to look best precisely when Jesus is at his worst.

It’s no wonder that on several occasions Jesus sighs with exasperation and addresses the disciples, “O you midgets of midget faith!” Yet because Jesus Christ is alive and honours the mission his people take up in his name, it is we, people of midget faith, fumbling faith, stumbling, bumbling, falling down faith; we are the ones he will ever use.

Regardless of everything we find amazing in life what’s most amazing, unquestionably, is the humility, patience and helpfulness of our Lord who continues to deem us indispensable and honour our work as only he can. We are people of little faith; yet little-faith-people are the only people he has. Then we his followers are the very people whose service he will magnify in a manner as wonderful as it is unforeseeable. I don’t need any proof of all this.

I am as confident about it as were my foreparents in faith, and for precisely the same reason. He who was raised from the dead overtook them not once but many times. As often as he did he reconfirmed himself as living, as lordly, as loving.

He has done as much to me. As much, I trust, as he has done to you.

 

                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd

Easter 2004