Daniel 3:13-18   Luke 17:1-6   1 Peter 1:3-9

 

[1] I am asked constantly how faith can be kept strong. The person seeking my help assumes that there’s such a thing as faith. But of course there isn’t, is there. There’s no such thing as faith. There’s no such thing as faith precisely in the sense that there’s no such thing as marriage and no such thing as sin. For the same reason there’s no such thing as love.

No such thing as love? Exactly! No such thing as love. Love isn’t a thing; love isn’t something. Love is a relationship; specifically, love is the relationship of self-giving; love can never be a thing!

In the same way sin isn’t something, a thing. Sin is the violation of a relationship; specifically the violation of our relationship with God. Strictly speaking, sin doesn’t exist and never will; sinners alone exist. Love doesn’t exist and never will; a person who loves is what exists.

In the same way there’s no such thing as marriage. Marriage isn’t a thing; marriage is a relationship; marriage is the unconditional commitment of a man and a woman to each other, which commitment tolerates no rivals and is meant to be terminated only by death.

There’s no such thing as marriage, sin or love. There’s only a relationship of one sort or another.

Faith isn’t a thing that we are to keep strong. What’s to be kept strong is a relationship, the most significant relationship that can occur in anyone’s life.

[2] People ask me all the time how faith is to be kept strong. The request assumes that faith is strong now and needs only to be kept strong. But is it? Whose faith is strong? The disciples, those most intimately related to our Lord, cry to him, “Lord, increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5) Why do they speak like this? Because they know that their faith is weak; they know that their relationship to Jesus Christ is anything but invincible. Jesus replies, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed…”. Plainly, the faith they have is less than a smidgen!

Peter cries to Jesus, “I’m ready to go with you to prison and to death!” (Luke 22:33) Peter feels his faith to be as resilient as spring-steel. Much more realistically Jesus rejoins, “Peter, Satan is going to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith (indisputably weak) won’t disappear. When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” Plainly Jesus feels Peter’s grasp of him, Jesus, to be only fingernail-deep, and that of Peter’s fellow-disciples to be no deeper.

It’s no wonder the book of Hebrews exhorts us, “Look to Jesus, the author and trail-blazer of your faith; look to him — lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees”. (Heb. 12:1,12) Who among us, then, wishes to boast of strong faith? At the end of the day all of us can only plead, “Lord, increase our faith.”

In it all we must remember that faith is a relationship, not a thing; to plead for stronger faith, then, is to plead for a firmer grasp of our Lord himself. To be sure, he strengthens our faith in him; he fortifies our grasp of him. At the same time, in response to him we must exercise the faith whereby he binds us to himself. How do we do this? How do we exercise this faith so as to strengthen our intimacy with him?

[3] (i) First of all we must treasure the truth (i.e., the truth of God) we have come to recognise; we must treasure truth and never surrender it. To be sure, none of us grasps the totality of the truth of God. And those who are setting out on the Christian venture may grasp relatively little of the truth of God. Still, truth is truth, however small may be that aspect of the truth which has stamped itself upon us. Then whatever aspect of the truth we know to be true we must treasure. As we do we find the sphere of truth growing larger and larger and our confidence in God’s truth growing greater and greater.

One of my friends tells me that when he was only a teenager he came to disbelieve virtually all he had heard in church and Sunday School. He came to disbelieve it all because he was becoming convinced that very little in life, very little in world-occurrence, is as it seems. When still a teenager he came to understand that appearance isn’t actuality. What is commonly perceived has little to do with what actually is. In the same vein my friend came to see, as a thoughtful teenager, that life is riddled with deception, subterfuge, misrepresentation, out-and-out disinformation, corruption of every kind. Individuals traffic in this insidious duplicity; so do institutions; so do governments. Almost despairing now, almost without an anchor, almost without any solidity on which to stand as he looked at until mesmerised by the quicksand all around him in life (i.e., almost without hope), there remained one matter that my friend couldn’t disbelieve; he couldn’t deny evil, couldn’t deny the existence and efficacy of radical evil. Radical evil abounds; radical evil disguises itself and preys upon the naive and unsuspecting. Radical evil insinuates itself everywhere, deploying every tactic from the most frontal bullying to the most subtle seduction. My friend was left with disbelieving everything; everything, that is, except the ubiquity of evil and the militancy of evil. Negative as his one certainty was, however, it was his anchor in reality. Negative as his anchor was, it was incomparably better than illusion (no anchor at all). My friend clung tenaciously to this anchor and kept clinging to it until the one aspect of truth that he treasured was joined by other aspects of truth as the sphere of truth swelled for him.

William Sloan Coffin jr., for 17 years the chaplain at Yale University; Coffin came from a family that was religiously indifferent. As a young man he had to attend the funeral for a friend. At the funeral he heard it said over and over how dreadful it was — as it is dreadful — that someone so young died when so full of promise; heard it lamented over and over that life is unfair, that so much of life is nonsensical, that the young man’s life had ended so soon, and so on. Suddenly Coffin found himself protesting — for reasons he doesn’t know yet — “‘Not fair’? What’s the measure of fairness? ‘Nonsensical’? What’s the criterion for meaning? ‘His life ended so soon!’? Whose life is it, anyway?” That was the clincher for Coffin: “Whose life is it?” It occurred to Coffin, despite his religiously indifferent upbringing, that no one’s life is her own; everyone’s life belongs to another, the Other. Coffin treasured the truth that had just stamped itself upon him as truth; very quickly the sphere of truth in which he had resolved to live grew and grew and grew some more.

We may be able to articulate relatively little of the inexhaustible significance of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. But if we know deep-down (despite all nay-sayers) that he has been raised and therefore he himself and his way have been vindicated as true even though countless others deny it; if we know even this much we know enough of the truth to keep us oriented to the truth and keep us moving deeper into the truth.

To treasure whatever truth we know is to find the sphere of truth looming ever larger for us. On the other hand, not to treasure the truth we have is to find, in the words of Jesus, that even the little we have is being taken away from us. Faith as slight as the proverbial mustard seed grows as truth as slight as a candleflame moves toward truth as bright-shining as the sun.

(ii) In the second place there is yet more for us to exercise if faith is to be strengthened: we must resolutely obey whenever we are aware that we are to obey. To obey in lesser matters (what we, in our shortsightedness, call “lesser” matters) is to find a solidity on the basis of which we can then obey in greater matters. Victory over temptation now is a bridgehead from which greater victories can be gained. Conversely, defeats today can only spell greater defeats tomorrow. In other words, disobedience in lesser matters lands us in a swamp wherein we can only wallow in greater disobedience.

Hockey players sitting in the dressing room before a game may exhort one another with much bravado, “We can win this game! Let’s go!” But anyone who has played hockey knows that bravado wins nothing; furthermore, no hockey team wins a game, wins the game as a whole. Games are won when the first six players playing the first shift win the first shift on the ice. Then the second shift wins the second shift — and before long, the team has won the first period. On it goes. Win the game? Nobody ever plays a game at a time; what’s played is a shift at a time.

I am always disturbed by people who speak of life as if life were an entity to be lived well (or lived poorly) all at once. But life isn’t this. Life is a series of daily matters; and not merely a series, but an accumulation of daily matters, a swelling snowball of daily matters. Since what is snowballing is crucial (what is snowballing is our life, after all), and since daily events, habits, opportunities, decisions, deeds are what the snowball gathers up, then daily events, habits, opportunities, decisions and deeds are crucial themselves — for good, to be sure, but also for ill. George MacDonald, the Scottish novelist and poet who was the single most important human factor in C.S. Lewis’s coming to faith; MacDonald writes, concerning those who complain that their faith is weak and never seems to get stronger, “It is simply absurd to say you believe in Him, or even want to believe in Him, if you do not do what He tells you.” Obedience where obedience is challenged invariably strengthens faith, as disobedience invariably weakens it.

There’s no point in our saying that all this talk about obedience is too abstract to be helpful, since no mention has been made yet as to the substance of our obedience, the details of it all. There’s no point in our saying that we have never heard a dramatic Damascus Road voice we cannot deny summoning us to an obedience we cannot doubt. There’s no point in our saying we don’t know where to begin in this matter of faith-quickened obedience. All we need do is re-read the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount or the second half of any of the epistles. What is required of us isn’t in doubt.

Even if we know what we are to do in obedience to Jesus Christ, what moves us to obey him? Positively, our gratitude to our Lord who has been to hell and back for us; our gratitude moves us to obey him. Negatively, our fear of the consequences of not obeying moves us to obey him. If you tell me that fear of consequences is a shabby motive for stifling the temptation to disobey, I shall agree with you: it is an inferior motive. But it’s infinitely better than no motive at all; what’s more, inferior as it is compared to gratitude, our fear is God-appointed. Why else the solemn warnings that scripture addresses to God’s people? Years ago, wrote a wise Christian minister, a crow was feeding on carrion (as crows customarily do); specifically, the crow was feeding on carrion that was itself floating in the Niagara River in winter. The crow continued pecking away until it heard the rumble of the falls — whereupon the crow flew away; rather, it tried to fly away, only to find that river-spray had frozen its feet fast to what it had been feeding on.

As a spiritual counsellor I have spoken with dozens of people who have foolishly turned away from that obedience which they knew in their heart to be required of them; turned away for any number of reasons, none of which can excuse the disobedience that then occurred, and none of which can undo the consequences that then followed. Thereafter, I have noticed, they found God problematic; they found worship pointless; they found faith shrivelling. Of course they did.

At the same time I have also been graced with dozens of people who resolutely obeyed what they knew to be right even when it seemed difficult, even when others didn’t know what terrible struggle was going on inside them, even when what they knew they were to do was unpopular, even when what they knew to be right they couldn’t articulate as right. They simply obeyed whatever light they had, only to find light increasing, God more vivid, worship more compelling, and faith stronger still.

(iii) There is yet more for us to do if faith is to be strengthened (i.e., if our relationship with our Lord is to be firmer): we must surround ourselves with people of faith. I am forever intrigued by the four men who brought their paralysed friend to Jesus. (Matt. 9) The text reads, “When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son…'” — and ultimately the man found a strength in his legs that allowed him to walk. (Walking, we should note in passing, is the commonest Hebrew metaphor for following the God-appointed way that spells freedom and life.) “When Jesus saw their faith.” Whose faith? –the faith of the four men who were carrying their friend. Surrounded on four sides by men of faith, the paralysed fellow found himself freed.

Certainly I agree with Martin Luther: “Every man must do his own believing, just as every man must do his own dying.” Luther is correct. When Jesus Christ addresses me and invites me to follow him and summons my obedience, no one else can answer for me. When Jesus called Matthew, Matthew’s cousin couldn’t answer for him, just as Peter’s wife couldn’t substitute for Peter or someone from the crowd for Zacchaeus. We must each do our own believing, for here no substitutes are permitted.

And yet as surely as I agree with Luther I cannot deny the significance of the four men who aren’t paralysed themselves yet in whose company someone who is paralysed is freed. The man benefited immeasurably simply from being in the company of people of faith.

Many of you are aware that Dietrich Bonhoeffer established a small, underground seminary to train pastors for the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. (The national church, the state church, had capitulated to government ideology and government control and was thoroughly Nazified. The Confessing Church consisted of far fewer pastors and people who publicly “confessed”, in the Reformation sense of the term, that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God to be heard and heeded in life and in death.) We can scarcely imagine how sorely faith would be tried as university faculties of theology “sold out” (not one faculty of theology in any German university sided with the Confessing Church); tried again as pulpits were closed to Confessing pastors; tried again as a knock at the door might just be (and sooner or later was) the secret police rounding up another candidate for imprisonment or execution. In the wake of such heart-stopping trials of faith anyone’s faith would feel weak. In this situation Bonhoeffer wrote two things we must always remember: one, Christians find immense joy and immense encouragement in the physical presence — the sheer, simple physical presence — of each other; two, the Christ I see in my fellow-Christian’s face is always stronger than the Christ I find in my own heart.

As much as I need the physical presence of fellow-Christians, and as much as I need to see the Christ in my brother’s face, my fellow-Christian’s physical presence and face aren’t always available to me. What then? Next best is Christian biography. Biography doesn’t bring us the physical presence of fellow-Christians, but in the profoundest sense it does acquaint us with our brothers and sisters in faith themselves. I have found my faith strengthened as often as I have surrounded myself with the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12) who have finished the relay race ahead of me and are now cheering me on from the finish line.

I have found my faith strengthened through coming to know a man like Ignatius Loyola. Loyola persisted and persisted and persisted yet more until the pope finally recognised (in 1541) Loyola’s gift to the church, the Jesuit order. I have been encouraged again and again by the courage and the resilience of the early-day Jesuits. Those men were indomitable amidst missionary hardships during the 16th century. One of them, Francis Xavier, had a huge role in the spread of the gospel in India. In India he is venerated to this day. In 1597 the Japanese crucified 120 Jesuit missionaries, the Japanese thinking it “smart” to have the Jesuits “try on” the cross about which they said so much. What did the order do in the wake of this slaughter? It sent out another 120 young men immediately. Are you aware of the role of Patrick of Ireland in preserving the gospel — and classical learning too — in Europe amidst the barbarian devastations of the dark ages? When I was pastor in Mississauga for 21 years I made sure that the congregation heard many times each year about Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, the Puritans (there are too many Puritans to name), Alexander Whyte, John Wesley, William Sangster. Speaking of Wesley, did you know that when Francis Asbury took early-day Methodism with him to America and summoned young men who were fired with Wesley’s spirit as surely as Elisha was fired with Elijah’s, of the first 700 Methodist ministers in North America 50% were dead before they were 30 years old? Two-thirds of the first 700 Methodist ministers in the new world didn’t survive long enough to serve twelve years! If this is all we know of these men then we know enough to find our complaining slinking away and our faith surging forward.

I have a long been a member of the renewal movement in The United Church. And for years, in this regard, I have written a column, “Heritage”, in the movement’s journal, Fellowship Magazine. For years I trudged on, wondering whether there was any point to my continuing to write the “Heritage” articles on the subject of Christian biography for Fellowship Magazine. For years the only letter-to-the-editor I saw concerning any article I had sweated over was a letter from my sister! I was about to tell the editor that nobody read the articles and the column should be dropped when the magazine surveyed its readers and learned that the “Heritage” articles, Christian biography, are the single, most frequently read part of the magazine. Plainly, thousands of readers know that to absorb the life-stories of Christ’s people is to find their own life in Christ strengthened.

Faith is always strengthened as we surround ourselves with people of faith.

(iv) There is one thing more that strengthens faith: work undertaken for Jesus Christ, but undertaken in the wider world. At best the world is indifferent to faith, hostile to it at worst. When we spend ourselves at a task we’ve undertaken on account of our love for Jesus, and spend ourselves at it in the world, we shall find ourselves in an alien environment among people who don’t see why we even bother. At best, then, isolation threatens to chill us; at worst, hostility threatens to immobilise us.

In this situation, paradoxically, we find faith strengthened. How? We find ourselves akin to the principal character in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The man’s detractors kept pouring water on the flame of his faith in order to extinguish it, while unbeknown to them, out of their sight, oil was always being poured on the flame of faith to keep it burning ever brighter.

So it is with us. Faith is tested when the world is where we exercise our faith. Faith is tested when it is drenched in the cold waters of indifference, hostility, contempt, misunderstanding. Yet it will be our experience too that right here, by God’s secret operation, oil is always being poured on the flame of faith to keep it burning ever brighter.

When the disciples cried to Jesus, “Lord, increase our faith!”, they wanted only to have their relationship with him — known, enjoyed, cherished already — made stronger and stronger until that day when faith gives way to sight, hope gives way to its fulfilment, and love gives way to nothing except more love, for ever and ever.

                                                                                                     Victor Shepherd   

March 2002

 

Daniel 5:18-23

 

I: — Recently I walked into a major department store, looking for an article I was eager to purchase. I didn’t know where to find it. I asked a salesperson. I thought she would be eager to help for three reasons: one, I had money to spend; two, she had no customers to wait upon; three, I was in a hurry. But she wasn’t eager to help. “Over there”, she waved in no direction at all, “it’s over there, somewhere.” Doesn’t she have any pride in her work?

Some hockey players are known as “floaters”. They have above-average ability. They work hard for part of the game; they work hard if the score is still tied early in the game; they work hard if they haven’t scored yet themselves. But as soon as their team is two goals ahead or two goals behind they “float”. As soon as they’ve scored a goal or two themselves they skate at three-quarter speed and avoid heavy traffic. Their name is now in the scoring column and they are taking the rest of the night off. “Floaters”. Don’t they have any pride in what they’re doing? Shouldn’t they be ashamed of themselves for drawing a huge pay-cheque for so little effort?

Speaking of shame, our society assumes that shame is everywhere and always detrimental, and therefore we should all aim at becoming shame-free. In fact nothing could be worse. The person with no capacity for shame is like the person with no capacity for guilt: he’s to be pitied (since his condition is genuinely pitiable) and he’s to be avoided (since he really is dangerous). It is false shame that is detrimental and is therefore to be eliminated; false shame is being shame-bound when we have nothing to be ashamed of. But to remain unashamed when we should rightly be ashamed is nothing less than pitiable.

Plainly there are two distinct meanings to “pride.” One we shall discuss soon. The other meaning, the one presupposed so far in the sermon, pertains to the pursuit of excellence. Pride in the sense of the pursuit of excellence has nothing to do with sin. In fact, not to pursue excellence is sin. Irving Layton, Canadian poet, has penned the line, “The slow, steady triumph of mediocrity.” He’s captured it, hasn’t he! Mediocrity will triumph if only because the many purveyors of mediocrity, joining forces, can always outvote and outmanoeuvre and outmuscle the few who are committed to excellence. Mediocrity is threatened by excellence and longs to submerge it.

The fact that mediocrity disdains excellence, however, never excuses us for abandoning the pursuit of excellence. Christians must be committed to excellence everywhere in life. Therefore Christians must be proud people in the sense in which we have used “pride” up to this point. If we lack pride then we’ve abandoned the pursuit of excellence and have prostituted ourselves to mediocrity. Mediocrity is sin.

Pride isn’t sin when it’s the appreciation of excellence. Pride is sin when it’s a God-defying and neighbour-disdaining arrogance. The key is the distinction between excellence and arrogance.

Then why is pride in the sense of arrogance to be abhorred? If the consequences of arrogance were merely that we appeared somewhat snooty and snobby then pride would be a trifle. Yet our mediaeval foreparents named it one of the seven “deadly sins”, the deadly sin. And in fact the consequences of spiritual arrogance, so far from being trivial, are ruinous.

 

II:(i) — Think of how arrogance blinds us. Pride blinds us to our fragility, our frailty. Pride leads us to think we are Herculean, a “cut above” everyone else, impervious to all the things that collapse and crumble those whom we deem “lesser breeds”. The hymnwriter cries, “Frail as summer’s flower we flourish; blows the wind, and it is gone.” “Not so”, we whisper to ourselves, “not so! We aren’t frail and it’ll take more than a puff of summer wind to scatter us.”

When arrogant people boast of physical invulnerability, thinking themselves to be beyond the reach of disease and debilitation, we pronounce them fools. We also stand back and wait a while, knowing that soon they will prove themselves helpless against the tiniest microbe.

Yet having learned our lesson so thoroughly with respect to physical health, we appear to learn nothing about our spiritual well-being. Having detected the pride that leaves people foolishly thinking themselves to be physically invulnerable, we appear unaware of the pride that leaves us on the edge of spiritual collapse.

The saints of every tradition have known that there is no spiritual resilience without frequent, habitual, heart-searching prayer on behalf of oneself and the same frequent, habitual, self-forgetting intercession on behalf of others. But if we have already watched two periods of the 97th hockey telecast this season, we shall none the less sit gluey-eyed and gluey-headed and gluey-hearted in front of the “boob tube” for the third period before we shall ever turn off the game and pray. Why? Because we are pride-blinded to our own vulnerability and to the world’s need.

If we were to appear in public with lipstick on our teeth or our slip showing by three inches; if we were to appear in public with our zipper undone or egg-yolk on our necktie we’d be annoyed at those who saw us like this but never took us aside and told us quietly what had to be done; certainly we’d never thank those who failed to spare us embarrassment, let alone humiliation. Yet our pride blinds us to our spiritual need and blinds us yet again to the gratitude we owe those who point out our deficits in order to spare us public embarrassment. When people who know us well, even those we deem good friends, gently try to tell us that we are unknowingly flirting with something that is going to be our downfall, our pride suddenly sours us and we resent being told this. We don’t thank them. We tell them to mind their own business; we tell ourselves that we are invulnerable. Why, our discipleship could never be collapsed. What can be next except collapse? The person who thinks he’s beyond disgracing himself is already on the edge of doing just that.

Frail as summer’s flower we flourish? Not we! In no time our proud denial of our frailty publicly demonstrates our frailty. Pride blinds us to our frailty, our fragility, our spiritual vulnerability.

 

(ii) — Another reason that our foreparents, wise in matters of the Spirit, deemed pride to be the arch sin: pride is also the arch-corrupter. It corrupts everything good; it corrupts everything that the gospel struggles to bring to birth in us.

Think of courage. Courage is the work of Christ within us, the work of him whose most frequent word to his followers is, “Fear not!” As soon as we are proud of our courage, however, we become show-offs. Show-offs are soon reckless. Reckless people are dangerous, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others.

Think of affection. Affection too is fostered by him who loves us more than he loves himself. Yet as soon as we are proud of the affection we pour upon others, they feel patronised by our affection. So far from exalting others, our affection (now corrupted) demeans them.

Think of both thrift and generosity. (Thrift and generosity have to be considered together, since only thrifty people have the wherewithal to be generous.) The gospel quickens generosity in us. (After all, we are rendered Christian by the self-giving of him who gave up everything for us). Yet as soon as pride appears it corrupts, since the person proud of his thrift becomes stingy, miserly even, while the person proud of his generosity uses his generosity to manipulate and bribe.

There is nothing that pride doesn’t corrupt, and corrupt thoroughly.

 

(iii) Our theological and spiritual foreparents, however, were quick to attack pride chiefly because they knew that blindness to our vulnerability and the corruption of our graces, important as they are, are yet but spinoffs of the ultimately hideous illusion that our pride visits upon us. I speak now of the illusion that we are not creatures in that we acknowledge no creator, we are not sinners in that we acknowledge no judge, we are not to be servants in that we acknowledge no master, we are not to spend ourselves for others in that we acknowledge no claim upon us, and we are not to submit ourselves to the Other in that we acknowledge no one to be our Lord. This is the ultimate illusion.

Psychiatrists tell us that people who live in a world of cognitive illusion are psychotic. The word “psychotic” means that someone’s ability to test what is actually “out there”; this ability is impaired or has even been lost. Our society is horrified at the appearance of psychotic people; our society’s response is to move them off the scene as fast as possible. In our horror at psychosis (which is a giant, all-encompassing cognitive illusion) we blithely overlook that spiritual psychosis which is far more common; universal, in fact, apart from a miracle at God’s hand. Spiritual psychosis is the spiritual condition where someone’s ability to discern God’s presence, God’s truth, God’s way, God’s inescapability; someone’s ability here is broken down (or not so much broken down as never quickened). Are we horrified at this? Not at all! The ultimate evil of pride is that it destroys our capacity to perceive the truth about ourselves under God. It even destroys our awareness that we are under God. This is the ultimate illusion and, if we were sensible at all, the ultimate horror.

The book of Daniel tells us that when King Nebucchadnezzar became swollen with pride his spirit was hardened, he was deposed from this throne, his glory was taken away from him, he went mad and ate grass like an animal. His pride brought on “melt-down”. His pride blinded him, blunted him, dehumanised him. The text tells us that he remained in this state “until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of men….”

 

III: — Since all of us are afflicted with a pride comparable to Nebucchadnezzar’s, all of us desperately need to be cured of it. What is the cure? Where does the cure begin?

 

(i) It begins with truth; the truth (i.e., the truth of God); the whole truth. The truth is, we are unrighteous people who have nothing to plead on our own behalf. Since we can plead nothing of ourselves, we can only plead God’s mercy, his forgiveness, his remission of our sin.

As long as we think there is anything in us that God can recognise and reward, we are pride-deluded. The fact that our only righteousness is God’s gift tells us that there is nothing in ourselves that we can call up or brandish or use as a bargaining chip with God. Several years ago I was counselling a woman, on her way to a divorce, when her husband — a Texan — dropped into my office to pay me for the service I was rendering his wife. I told this Texan that there was no counselling fee; I was paid by Streetsville congregation, and was paid adequately. He insisted on writing a small cheque ($25.00) to the congregation. “I may be poor”, he told me emphatically, “but I’m no ‘field nigger’.” Plainly a field nigger is someone with no standing and no respectability. This man was telling me he had some. But the fact of God’s pardon, his forgiveness, his mercy, his remission; the fact of this means that you and I are beggars before God. To be sure, forgiveness means more than this, a great deal more; but it never means less. The fact that we can live before God only by his mercy means that we have nothing to call up or brandish or use as a bargaining chip with God. When Richard Nixon was charged and convicted, Gerald Ford, his successor, granted him a “Presidential Pardon”. The fact of Nixon’s pardon meant there wasn’t one person who could think of one thing to excuse one offence. Since there wasn’t one person who could think of one thing to excuse one offence, either Richard Nixon was to be sentenced or he was to be pardoned. He was pardoned. His pardon, however, presupposed his guilt. We must be sure we understand this point: Nixon’s pardon meant he was undeniably guilty. What is excusable we excuse; the wholly inexcusable, the utterly guilty, can only be pardoned.

If we think no pride remains in us, then we need to ask ourselves if we understand what God’s forgiveness means: it means that the Holy One can’t think of one thing that would excuse anything about us. God’s gift of righteousness – his gift of right standing with him pressed upon those who cling in faith to the ever-righteous Son – means that of ourselves we have no standing with him and aren’t fit to appear before him.

 

(ii) If the first truth about us is that the gospel unmasks us, the second truth about us is that the gospel gloriously heals us and exalts us. The second truth is also a second test: are we willing to wrap the healing/exalting gospel around us despite the gospel’s bloodiness (say pseudo-sophisticates) and despite the gospel’s narrowness (say the supposedly broadminded) and despite the gospel’s Jewishness (say the anti-Semites among us)?

Naaman was commander of the Syrian army. He learned he had leprosy. He longed to be rid of it. A young Israelite woman, a prisoner of war, told Naaman’s wife that a man named Elisha, a prophet in Israel, could cure Naaman. Naaman swallowed his pride and called on Elisha. What a humiliation! He, a military commander, a cosmopolitan Gentile, appearing cap-in-hand before this scruffy enemy fellow who also belonged to that people the world loves to loathe. Naaman was so humiliated he knew there couldn’t be any pride left in him — until Elisha told him what he had to do to be cured. He would have to wash seven times in the Jordan River (the Jordan being then what the Don River is today). Naaman stormed off, shouting at Elisha, “Can’t you just wave your hand and make me better? And if I do have to wash, can’t I wash in a river of my choosing?” That was what Naaman really wanted: he wanted to wash in a river of his choosing. He hadn’t quite swallowed all his pride. Meanwhile, Elisha was adamant: the Jordan or no cure.

All of us want an easy cure for our pride. We’d all prefer a wave of the hand; or at least a cure of our choosing. We all want relief from symptoms; we all want deliverance from self-deception and corruption. At least we all want deliverance from self-deception and corruption at the same time that we want to cling to our own righteousness, the righteousness we think we have, lest we have to admit with the hymnwriter, “Nothing in my hand I bring; nothing!”

Naaman went home and thought it over for a while. He thought it over until his loathsomeness was as loathsome to him as it had long been to everyone else. Then he did as the prophet had commanded: seven times in that river proud people didn’t go near.

Seven is the biblical symbol for completeness, for wholeness. Naaman, a Syrian, (today we’d call him an Arab); this Arab remained immersed in the river of Israel until he was completely cured, whole once more.

You and I must remain immersed in the gospel until our life’s end; we must remain immersed in the gospel however ridiculous a secularised society finds the gospel; we must remain immersed in the gospel until that day when we shall no longer need the gospel just because arrogance will no longer be able to overtake us and irrupt within us, delude us and deform us.

 

(iii) The third truth about our pride-warped hearts and the cure we need is this: we need to wash feet. Jesus washed feet. It was the work of a servant, never the duty of the householder. Jesus never pretended it was the duty of the householder; he knew it was the work of a servant – and he said it was pure privilege.

The next time we are asked to do something we instinctively feel to be beneath us, something that makes us feel small, we need to do it. We must come to see that footwashing is a privilege in a world that boasts of its self-importance but only displays a shrivelled heart. We must come to see that only a very small person is ever big.

 

(iv) The fourth truth about us and the cure for our deep-seated pride: we have to allow our own feet to be washed. In some respects it’s much harder to be washed than to wash, because at least when we are washing someone else’s feet we likely feel somewhat heroic and hugely generous. To admit that our own feet need washing by anyone at all is very difficult. Years ago I spoke with a university professor who was struggling desperately with a temptation whose details we needn’t discuss; the professor told me the only man who had been able to help him was a truck driver — and he needed this truck driver as he needed no one else.

Isaac Watts, hymnwriter extraordinary, tells us that when he beheld the humiliation in which the Son of glory died he was able to pour contempt on all his pride.

Thomas Watson, my favourite 17th century Puritan thinker, has written, “All Christian growth is finally growth in humility.”

 

                                                                                                  Victor Shepherd
May 1999

Daniel 6:10-24               Acts 5:27-32                 Mathew 10:24-31

 

 

I: — God’s children have long known that their faith immerses them in a world that is both turbulent and treacherous. God’s children are painfully aware that the world-at-large resents any and all who are the sign of God’s presence and purpose.

Daniel of old was no different: he learnt quickly that the world’s hatred gathers itself around the person whom God has appointed to be a beacon, a witness, salt, light, unmistakable as a city set on a hill. At the same time Daniel knew that God has promised never to fail or forsake those whom he appoints but always and everywhere to protect them.

The story begins with King Darius of old.   Darius (approximately 540 BCE) was a gifted ruler and administrator. He divided his kingdom into 120 provinces and set a premier over each province.   Above these 120 premiers he set three presidents, Daniel being one of the three.

Daniel happened to be the most talented of the three, and King Darius planned to make Daniel the leading civil servant of the kingdom, second in power and authority only to the king himself.

The reaction of those who had been passed over for promotion was swift and sure.

[a] They envied Daniel, and their envy was lethal.   Never think that envy is merely a twinge of heart or mind whereby we fleetingly wish we had what someone else has, the twinge disappearing a second later. Envy is a poison that seeps into our bloodstream and renders us toxic to ourselves and deadly to others. First we covet what someone else has. Then we resent her for having it. Next we invent nastiness about her and project it onto her, the projected nastiness now legitimizing the venom we shall surely inject with our next “bite.” Our venom can assume many forms. We may gossip and ruin her reputation; we may harass her subtly in a hundred different ways; we may make her life miserable by refusing to co-operate with her; we may slay her through engineered humiliation.  If we are her boss we may even be able to demote her if not fire her. Envy ultimately aims at someone else’s annihilation.

[b] Not only did government officials envy Daniel on account of his ability; they also hated him on account of his goodness.  Daniel was said to be “blameless”: he couldn’t be bribed, bought, threatened, corrupted, co-opted.         He couldn’t be drawn into influence-peddling or bookkeeping wizardry or payola of any sort. Daniel’s integrity was unimpeachable.

Was he loved for it? On the contrary he was hated. Darkness hates the light. People of integrity who stand upright are hated by those who wriggle in the slime of clandestine corruption.

[c] What’s more, the people over whom Daniel had been promoted resented him because he was a foreigner. “Xenophobia” is the social science word for the phenomenon.  Xenos means “strange”; phobia, of course, is neurotic fear. Xenophobia is a neurotic, groundless fear of strangers.  Once again, however, we mustn’t think that because xenophobia is neurotic it isn’t harmful. Xenophobes hiss their ultimatum: “assimilate or leave”.

Plainly Daniel already had three strikes against him.

[d] Still, there was a fourth vulnerability to Daniel, perhaps the most dangerous one of all: he was a Jew among Gentiles.   Here we come to the heart of what the apostle Paul calls “the secret forces of wickedness” (2^nd Thess. 2:7 REB) or “the mystery of lawlessness” (RSV). Groundless Gentile hostility to Jewish people, so deep-seated it couldn’t be deeper, is utterly irrational, of course.  Still, the sheer irrationality of evil is one aspect of evil’s evilness. To the extent that evil could be understood or evil explained or evil accounted for; to this extent its evilness would be lessened.

It saddens me to have to tell you that where virulent anti-Semitism is concerned the same irrationality is found in many Christians and frequently flares out of the church institution.  Until 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Jewish people customarily received far better treatment at the hands of Muslims than they received at the hands of Christians.  Why is it that while the inquisition, spawned by the church and maintained by the church, began in the 14^th century, a second inquisition was launched in the 15^th, this time targeting the Jewish people specifically? Why is it that anti-Semitism, virulent throughout the Middle Ages, reached such irrational depths that one aspect of the “blood myth” whereby Jewish people were libelled; one aspect of this myth was that Jewish males menstruated? You have never seen it? Who needs to see it when one segment of our society is labelled monstrous so as to justify treating it as monstrous?  Never assume that irrationality is harmless.

We must never forget that it was Erasmus, the Christian humanist without intellectual peer in the sixteenth century, who wanted to see Europe rid of its entire Jewish population, and who coined the term Judenrein, purified of Jews — which term had a horrific history in the 20^th century.

Daniel was dead four times over.  The rest was commentary. Since Christians believe that humankind is fallen, that the prince of this world is nefarious, Christians of all people ought to have no illusions as to the world’s turbulence and turpitude and treachery.

 

   II: — The men who envy Daniel, hate him, resent him and loathe him now conspire to frame him. Since they can’t accuse Daniel of anything, they have to invent something that will render his present behaviour — exemplary in every respect — newly criminal. They persuade King Darius to pass a law forbidding anyone to petition any deity or human except Darius himself for the next thirty days.  Aware of Daniel’s ironfast faith, they know for sure that an Israelite like Daniel will never petition a mere mortal like Darius while refusing to petition God. Not to address God is unbelief, while addressing a mortal as a deity is blasphemous because idolatrous. It would all have sickened Daniel inasmuch as he had long known he would never, simply never, accommodate a pagan king where that king’s request contradicted the claim of God upon him.  Daniel was aware that if he forgot for one minute who he was because of whose he was, then in one minute he’d be useless to God and humankind.

 

Why did King Darius promulgate the law?   King though he was, undoubtedly he felt enormous pressure from all the civic officials who had now “packed” on him.  When mediocrity packs it is nothing less than terrifying.  Darius saw in a flash that king though he was, once all his subordinate officials packed on him he couldn’t administer his kingdom. He would be a king without a kingdom, a toothless tiger, a laughing stock.  When mediocrity packs it can always render excellence inoperative, can’t it? Darius saw instantly that he was soon to be a king without “clout” unless he capitulated to the mediocrities around him.  None of them could individually out-muscle him, but collectively they could render him politically impotent.  He capitulated.

 

Daniel learned of the newly promulgated law.  He disregarded it. He continued doing what he had always done; namely, he went to the upper floor of his home where the windows were open and where he knew he would be seen. He knelt down and prayed. Daniel knelt to pray in private even as his private devotion was visible, thanks to the open window. In other words, private worship is a public event. (This point must be underlined in our society: private worship is a public event.)

 

Daniel won’t apostatize. When the law is passed forbidding him to pray to the Holy One of Israel, the only true and living God, he prays.  Centuries earlier the prophet Elijah, together with thousands of others, it turns out, had refused even to bow to Baal, let alone kiss him. Centuries later two apostles of Jesus Christ will cry out, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), and then step ahead rejoicing that they are counted worthy to suffer on account of the name of him who has incarnated himself in the Nazarene. Daniel is fully aware of the consequences of his non-compliance: anyone found defying the king will be executed. He ignores the edict and prays.

 

Where did Daniel find, how did he find, whatever it takes to remain faithful to God and therein sign his own death warrant?   Our text tells us that when Daniel opened his window to pray he faced Jerusalem ; Jerusalem , hier shalem, city of salvation.  Jerusalem was that spot on earth, we are told, where God “chose to make his name to dwell”, according to Deuteronomy 12; that spot of which God was to say, “My name shall be there”, according to 1^st Kings 8. God’s name is God’s living person; God’s name is God’s person, presence and power. God’s name is the God who is high and lofty and lifted up focussing himself to pinpoint concentration so as to render his presence and power palpable.  God had pledged himself to this at Jerusalem .

 

Daniel wasn’t young at the time of this incident with Darius and his drones. Daniel was estimated to be 70 years old. We mustn’t think that Daniel’s courage and resilience came upon him merely in the moment of trial; his resolve not to capitulate didn’t “just occur” to him on the spot like a bolt from the blue.  Daniel’s spiritual formation had been developing for decades.  For years he had prayed facing Jerusalem without ever being able to see Jerusalem . Living in Babylon he oriented himself to the city he couldn’t see or visit just because he knew that God had pledged his name to hier shalem, city of salvation, and God’s name was nothing less than the concentrated, effectual presence of God’s person.

 

The resources that Daniel needed at this moment didn’t arise from this moment. The resources Daniel needed arose from the spiritual discipline that an old man had maintained for decades. These resources now fortified the 70-year old man with a defiance that wasn’t childish petulance but was rather righteous resilience.  Such resilience couldn’t admit even the thought of self-serving, skin-saving compromise.  When Daniel prayed to the God his Gentile tormentors despised and prayed facing Jerusalem , the earthly guarantee of all that Israel ’s God had promised, Daniel knew precisely what he was doing.  He knew that private prayer is always public event; more to the point, private prayer is always public protest.

 

Was Daniel afraid?   John Wesley insisted that it is impossible not to fear.  We all fear and must fear. Then the only matter to be decided is what or whom we are going to fear.  Wesley maintained that either we fear God and then fear nothing else and no one else, or we don’t fear God and then fear everything and everyone else. “Give me a hundred men who fear no one but God and hate nothing but sin and we can turn England upside down”, Wesley said. All biblical faith begins in the fear of God, said Martin Buber, 20^th century philosopher and exegete.

 

Then did Daniel fear? Of course he did. Yet because he feared God more than he feared Darius he ceased to fear Darius.  Because he feared God he remained undeflectable.

 

III: — Darius proceeds with Daniel’s execution.  Is Darius a psychopath, someone seemingly like us but utterly conscienceless and therefore never to be trusted?  No. So far from conscienceless Darius is conscience-stricken.         He’s devastated. He’s distressed that he has allowed himself to be backed into the corner from which he can’t escape without losing face.  Once Darius has had Daniel thrown into the den of lions he spends the night fasting. Pagan though he is, he intuits that fasting, a religious rite known throughout the religions of humankind, has something to do with self-denial or purification or intercession or whatever — anything that might somehow mitigate his guilt and lessen Daniel’s pain.  Darius is so very conscience-stricken that he can’t sleep.

 

Darius isn’t a psychopath.  But neither is he harmless. The fact that what he’s done to Daniel upsets him dreadfully doesn’t mean he hasn’t done it. Never think that just because a person is conscience-stricken that person isn’t dangerous. As a matter of fact the insecure person is always more dangerous than the nasty person. The nasty person is characteristically nasty, consistently nasty, and therefore predictably nasty. Because we can count on the nasty person to be nasty we know what we must do to stay out of harm’s way. But the insecure person is different. The insecure person will lash out unpredictably in a way that we can never foresee. Not only will he lash out unpredictably, he will lash out with consequences that are themselves unpredictable. The insecure person who dreads loss of face, dreads public humiliation and therefore dreads loss of his fragile identity; this person is far more dangerous than the mean-spirited person whom everyone has learned to step around.

 

We must never think that super-sensitive people like Darius are by that fact harmless. They are dangerous, more dangerous than the characteristically nasty.

 

So Darius isn’t conscienceless.  But he is cowardly. And he can be compromised. Is he also cruel? He isn’t inherently cruel. Still, his sensitivity, his dread of losing face before the mediocrities who are essential to him and who have “packed” on him; his dread of losing face before them renders him cruel with that unintentional yet deadly cruelty peculiar to the fusion of cowardice and compromise.

 

Darius is reluctant to execute Daniel; in fact he’s heartbroken over it. So what. Execution is execution regardless of whether the executioner is smirking or weeping. Daniel is going to be murdered.

 

IV: — When Darius ordered the execution of Daniel he had a stone rolled against the mouth of the lions’ den. Then the stone was sealed.

 

This aspect of the story causes the reader to think of the tomb in which the body of our Lord was laid.  Once our Lord’s remains were laid in the tomb, a stone was rolled against the entrance to the tomb lest the body be snatched or governmental process be violated in any way.

 

On Easter morning our Lord was raised from the dead in a transfigured body. His resurrection vindicated him. His resurrection vindicated everything about him.  On the day that our Lord was raised from the dead he stood forth vindicated, vindicated in all that he said and did and is.

 

When Daniel emerged from the lions’ den he too was vindicated totally. Everything about him was made to shine forth resplendently as God now honoured before the world a man who had faithfully honoured God.  Daniel had served God with integrity in the course of his daily work as pre-eminent civil servant in the service of King Darius.         Daniel had remained a steadfast son of Israel even though he was an exile in a strange land far, far from home.         Daniel had been unwavering in his loyalty to that kingdom which transcends the kingdoms of this world, unwavering in his zeal for truth, undeflectable in his thrice-daily recognition of all that Jerusalem represented. In short, Daniel had never forgotten God’s name.  And God’s name, Daniel knew, is God’s person, presence, power fused as one — now operative, effectual, in such a way as to declare God himself the hidden truth and reality of the world regardless of the world’s recognition or the world’s non-recognition.  Daniel had never forgotten God’s name.

 

Neither had God forgotten Daniel’s name.  Dan-i-el: “God is my judge.”   The Hebrew notion of judge, we should note carefully, differs significantly from the modern notion of judge.  In our era a judge is an impartial arbitrator.  In our era a judge pronounces something but never does anything. In Israel of old it was different. The first responsibility of the judge was to rescue the oppressed and free the enslaved, and then to vindicate the newly rescued and freed as righteous before God and henceforth the beneficiary of God’s blessing.  Daniel’s name — “God is my judge” — now declares that God has rescued him from the lions, freed him from the den, vindicated him as a righteous man and rendered him the beneficiary of God’s blessing.  God remembers those who remember him.

 

V: — But does he? Does God invariably remember those who remember him? In the course of his faithfulness to God in Nazi Germany Dietrich Bonhoeffer unfailingly remembered God’s name.   But it can’t be said of Bonhoeffer as it was said of Daniel, “God sent his angel and shut the lion’s mouth.”   For that matter no one shut the mouth of the lion whose paw-swipe decapitated John the Baptist. No one shut the “mouth” of Mary Tudor when the gospel was surging throughout England in the days of the English Reformation and “Bloody” Mary responded by executing Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer, together with 300 others. No one shut the lion’s mouth on that never-to-be-forgotten day in 1597 in Nagasaki when the Japanese, who had never heard of crucifixion until missionaries told them the story of Jesus, crucified 125 Jesuit missionaries at once, and then burnt and beheaded dozens more 25 years later in 1622.

 

The truth of the matter is, more often than not — far more often than not — the lion’s mouth isn’t stopped, with the result that yet another witness becomes a martyr.

 

While we are thinking of Bonhoeffer we should think as well of another brave witness in the Confessing Church during the same era, Martin Niemoeller.  Both men were Lutherans. Both were scholarly pastors. Both formed and informed the Confessing Church , those Christians who refused to say “Hitler ist Fuehrer”, who refused, like Daniel, to abide by the edict of the political ruler.  Niemoeller was in prison for eight years, was scheduled for execution, but was rescued by allied forces three days before he was to be hanged. Bonhoeffer was in prison for two years, was scheduled for execution, and was not rescued but rather was hanged three weeks before allied forces reached Flossenburg.

 

Calvin has said that God’s providence is “inscrutable.”   Calvin is correct: providence is inscrutable.  The apostle Peter was executed in Nero’s persecution, while the apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos . Self-denial is required of all Christians, to be sure, but the nature of the self-renunciation involved varies hugely from Christian to Christ Peter is permitted the comfort and consolation of a wife in his apostolic struggles; Paul reminds us that he has been given no such comfort. My discipleship has cost me very little, it would seem, while Father Damien’s obedience took him to a leper colony on the island of Molokai where he ministered until he died from leprosy himself.         No lion’s mouth was stopped for him.

 

Or was it? Surely the lion’s mouth is stopped for all Christ’s people ultimately.  Peter and John met very different earthly ends, yet neither had his life dribble away fruitlessly. Both have been used of God to introduce millions to Jesus Christ and nourish them in him.

 

Bonhoeffer died at 39 and Niemoeller at 92, yet both have equipped countless Christians who are threatened by totalitarian rulers to hold out, hold on, hold up Jesus Christ as the transcendent truth-bringer and therefore the world’s only hope.

 

Damien died of leprosy among lepers, while Shepherd will likely die of old age among the elderly infirm of the local nursing home.  But both will have relished discerning God’s will for them and abandoning themselves to it. Both will have been sustained by their steadfast confidence that the Word they aspired to keep on earth is going to keep them in eternity.

 

Since no Christian’s life ultimately succumbs to the forces of destruction that surround us on all sides, therefore every Christian’s life has been rendered kingdom-fruitful even if the King alone has seen and noted and magnified the fruitfulness.

 

There remains another sense in which the lion’s mouth is stopped for all Christians. Regardless of the earthly circumstances under which our life unfolds, regardless of the circumstances under which our days are terminated, none of Christ’s people is consumed ultimately.   On the day of judgement all disciples without exception are going to stand forth gloriously as irrefutable proof that they were rescued by God’s outstretched arm, were freed from bondages both dramatic and seemingly ordinary, were vindicated as righteous before God and are now the beneficiary of his eternal benevolence.  Since God is a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29) and yet we are not consumed on the day of judgement, then for us the lion’s mouth has been shut and can never be opened.

 

In John’s gospel the risen Jesus tells Peter that Peter one day will be bound and carried and stretched out; in other words, Peter will be crucified like his Lord before him and in this manner glorify God.  Then Jesus urges Peter, “Follow me.”  Peter sees another disciple following too, a disciple concerning whom Jesus hasn’t said anything yet.         “I’m going to be crucified?”, says Peter, “What about him?” Jesus replies, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

 

The truth is, regardless of the circumstances under which both Peter and the unnamed disciple died the lion’s mouth was stopped for both. For both now stand forth in glory as servants of Christ whom the master rescued, freed, vindicated, commissioned, used, blessed and will continue to bless for ever and ever, as surely as all of this can be said of Daniel too and will even be said of you and of me.

 

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                             

   August 2010