And Advent Begins

Hebrews 1:2  "In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe."

Place yourself back in time.  Imagine, no books have been written about Jesus yet, and in fact the thing we know of as the New Testament isn't even a remote thought in anyone's mind. A few copies of letters about The Way are floating around, back and forth among the church leaders in the towns and cities of the empire.  There's also a copy of Jesus' sayings, though you have no idea that someday people named Matthew and Luke will use this as a source for their own gospels.  Those classic accounts have yet to be written. There is no liturgy, no hymnal, no church hierarchy, in fact, no solid body of teachings…in your world there’s just you, your group of believers, and a few itinerant preachers, wandering the Mediterranean.

You’re Jewish.  You’ve given up everything to follow this idea of Jesus the Christ.  Your parents disowned you.  Your synagogue made it clear they don’t want to see your face again.  People who used to do business with you now actively ignore and malign you. 

The Roman occupiers don’t see a big difference between Jews and the new Christians, but they don’t trust your movement anyway.  Something about it seems seditious to them.  So you worship underground, sometimes literally so.  And given the circumstances some days come when you wonder if you’re just a fool for believing in this man who said he was coming back again someday.

And then, one day, you hear a sermon at one of your gatherings.  This is a special sermon, one circulated among the church leaders and written by some great preacher, though already people are unsure of who wrote it.  You hear some people guess it was Apollos.  You've never met him but you know he has a reputation for eloquence.  A few people wonder if it was written by Paul.  You've never met him either but you've heard he is a learned man.  Either way, it's largely unimportant to your fellow Christians who wrote this message, you all just know it is something special.  And moreover, though there are already a lot of gentile Christians, this sermon is meant for you, a Jew.

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

You feel a chill to hear the speaker just come out and talk like this.  He is explaining exactly what makes this faith different, and why it cannot be reconciled with Judaism as you grew up knowing it.  He explains, right here, why everyone who you know and love has turned against you.  These are the words of a spiritual revolution.  To truly believe them is an act of rebellion against all you have ever known.

But the preacher is bold.  He has this gift you’ve been hearing about called the Holy Spirit. You’re a Jew, so you know of the ruach, the spirit of God, but this is something more personal, more real, more immediate.  You don’t really understand it but you certainly know it is real.  Its power cannot be denied.  And is shivers in the bold voice of the speaker as he declares the divinity of this man:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

You were raised in a mad, mad world, full of violence and oppression. Growing up, you weren't a brilliant scholar of the Torah, but you learned a lot of it, and certainly enough to know the history of your people, where they had been, what they had been, and what had become of them over time. Many times in your youth, and now as well, you were dogged by questions.  If God’s people had sinned so badly that they were now in this sad predicament, how could they ever get out of it?  How could the people ever atone and win God’s favor back?  Was it even possible?  Did God even care anymore?  Was He simply tired of Israel?  Had He turned His back on His nation?

So when you had first heard about Jesus you were skeptical, but your interest was piqued.  You're reminded now of that first flush of hope but also of amazement; aamazement, that a man could provide purification for sins, and then go to Heaven and be there to speak for us.  The preacher mentions it as a matter of fact, but it still awes you.

After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

And he keeps saying things that rock the foundations of your world.  Things your parents would curse at you for saying:

So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”?  Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”?

The preacher uses bits of scripture to point to Jesus, and it makes a lot of sense to you, but to so many outside the walls of your little house church it just sounds like heresy and blasphemy.  The very Psalms themselves are used to prove the speaker’s point, and you shudder to think that the Lord the psalmist spoke of would have been this man who was executed on a cross.

Yes, step back in time and hear these words as they once were heard. Your world has been shaken, your past ripped from you and transformed into mere prelude; all your faith changed, energized, and challenged...and the sermon has only just begun.  By the end of the hour you will be in tears and your limbs shivering, because you are accepting the unacceptable; believing the unbelievable.  God became man, and died for your sins, and waits for you in heaven.  

These are not mere words on a page. These are not mere pages in a book.  This is the spoken message about the Word, the Logos, the very breath of God Almighty.  This is the first flush of hearing the message and believing it.  If you want to comprehend Advent, you have to understand that.  You have to live it, or re-live it.  You have to go back in time, put yourself in that frightening, exciting place, and believe.

Two or Three...or One

Matthew 18:20  "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."

Oddly enough, I've never been particularly comfortable with this verse, as benign as it appears.  Whenever I have heard it I have wondered, What about when I am alone?  It may seen naive or nitpicky to think that but really, is Jesus saying here that he is only present with us when we are in community?

Considering it though, I find my comfort in the word, "with."  When I consider my relationship with Jesus, I don't think of him being "with" me so much as "in" me.  We may say things like, "He walks with us," but when it comes right down to it I carry Jesus in my heart -- he's not sitting in the chair over there or something.  He abides in me, not in the next room.  So perhaps that's all there is to it -- Christ is "in" me, and yet when I am with other believers, he is "with" us.

I've read that the Mishnah, a set of ancient rabbinic teachings and expositions, tells us that, "If two sit together and there are words of the Torah between them, the Shekhinah [the presence of God] rests between them." Jesus obviously knew this saying from the oral traditions that eventually made up the Mishnah, and here gives it new meaning and a new dynamic by essentially proclaiming himself to be that presence of God.  Seen in that way, we realize that this simple sentence would have been earth-shaking to his original audience.

One concrete example of this concept comes to mind immediately, and that comes from the Prophet Daniel.  In Chapter Three of Daniel, we are told about how members of the court basically tricked King Nebuchadnezzar into having three talented young Hebrew men executed -- Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They were thrown into a blazing furnace despite absolute innocence, but they placed their trust in God, saying:

“King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” 

Once they were in the fire the king was amazed to see, not only that they did not burn, but that a fourth person was in the midst of the furnace with them. Convinced that an angel, a god -- or The God -- was in the furnace protecting the three young men, Nebuchadnezzar had the men brought out and he praised the God of Israel. 

In much more mundane situations we can have the confidence of knowing that when we are together in God's name, Jesus is indeed there amongst us, protecting us and guiding us.  He is as present with us as he was with his disciples two millennia ago.  If we don't hear his voice or see his face, that is not his fault, but our own.

Getting Priorities Straight

Luke 12:15b  "One's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

Recently we drove to a church in a nearby town for a meeting.  Over one hundred years old, that building is one of the grand structures that harken back to a time when many churches were spacious, ornate, and majestic. It was a symbol of the heyday of the old Mainline churches.  Inside, we were struck by the soaring ceilings, lustrous woodwork, intricate stained glass, and numerous "extras," such as giant wooden pocket doors which could be lowered from the ceiling as dividers.  A towering pipe organ took center stage behind the pulpit, and everywhere were paintings and other artwork.


And yet a placard ff to the side bore witness to the reality of this beautiful place.  "Last Sunday Attendance: 56"  This grand structure, with a balcony big enough to accommodate entire congregations, was simply limping along as a shadow of its former self. 


Don't get me wrong, art and architecture have an important role to play in the life of the church.   I am no iconoclast.  It is important for churches to display art and utilize architecture that instructs and inspires, and I can be just as awestruck as the next person by the grandeur of such a church.  Nevertheless, standing in this place, one imagines a time when the emphasis was on the edifice, not on the spirit within it.  Small town money was poured into this project during the Gilded Age, while not nearly as much was invested in the building and upkeep of souls.  Along one wall the original blueprints of the church, laminated and carefully hung in layers, are on display.  It's as if to say herein lies our solid footing -- in a cold, unyielding architect's draft.


Isn't it easy for us to treat our own lives in the same way?  We measure success and stability on the basis of material gain, something that can easily be lost, destroyed, or left behind.  Almost all of us fall into the trap, forgetting that Jesus and his disciples had nothing to speak of in terms of money or possessions.  Yet the pull is a heavy one and the temptation to think this way comes from every corner.


After Jesus states in Luke, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” he follows up with a parable:

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” 

Jesus' point is that the rich man was foolish to rely on his abundant wealth alone.  When death comes, possessions are entirely unimportant, and priorities are switched.  When his death came all the man's savings had done no good.  He would not be judged by his acquisitions but by his life.  Jesus isn't saying that saving resources for the future is bad, but he is pointing out that all our goods have a finite purpose.  It is spiritual richness that should be our priority.


It should be instructive for us that the most vital churches in our world are in fact our poorest.  Suburban megachurches may attract a lot of people, but the truest spirit of Pentecost is found in half-built structures without chairs or running water, found in parts of the world where "want" and "need" take on different meanings than we normally experience in America.  There, people walk miles to church, stand for hours, and give of meager resources all because of a fiery love of God.


There is no doubt that the beautiful church we saw has produced and nurtured some true saints over time.  Yet I almost feel sorry for those who worship there week by week.  They are distracted by man-made beauty which far too often obscures the true, more perfect beauty of the Savior.
 

The Error of Their Ways

Matthew 22:29  "Jesus replied, 'You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.'"

I always say that the Church is its own worst enemy.  With all of the tasks left undone in this world, with all the lost people walking the streets and all the evil rampant across the globe, the Church too often spends its time and energy wrapped up in the silliest, most ignorant issues and arguments.  Sometimes the only possible explanation to what we see happening is that Satan himself is moving the in-fighting along, and accentuating piddling details that are almost designed to divide.


Not that church people -- and especially church leaders -- are free of guilt in these instances.  Far from it, if people had a sufficient focus upon the true Gospel message, then these issues would not ruin our work.  We must be a true exasperation to God when we bicker with each other over fine points of doctrine and praxis [how we go about things].  But even worse, we must surely enrage him when we stymie others by imposing our own silly laws upon them, judge them by Pharisaical standards, and all-in-all pretend to play God.


During Bible study a couple of weeks ago conversation turned to a time in the Nazarene denomination when legalism had crept into the church and become a defining mark of its character.  Open-toed shoes, television sets, and going to the prom were sinful things that God apparently forgot to mention when handing Moses the tablets.  In diving into the minutiae of people's outward appearance and  in declaring them too susceptible to the devil's snares to dare exposure to the culture around them, the church floundered about while the moral compass of the world most needed its vision.  Entire congregations awoke in the '80s to a new world where everything they believed was challenged, and where Americans by the millions were utterly uninformed about the love of God.  Why?  Because Satan had blinded them to their real work in this world.  This was the reality for most of the so-called evangelical churches of the United States.  They experienced incubated evangelism at best.


But there's nothing new about all this.  Think back to these Sadducees, wise and learned, asking Jesus a theoretical question about a woman whose husband dies, and then the next husband, and then the next, until she goes through seven altogether (all of whom are brothers, which is creepy enough, but that's a different subject).  So in the time of the resurrection, they ask, whose wife will she be?


Jesus dismisses their question and dismisses them as well.  "You are in error," he says, "because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God."  They spent their time on asking questions that only showed a lack of imagination about God.  In heaven, and in the resurrection, things will be perfect, and so these humanly issues will not exist.  How they will be handled is not our business.  God knows, and that should be sufficient for us.  


We still have such thinkers today, heading up our churches, asking questions about things that are below God.  They forget that they are not called to argue over fine points and silly questions, they are called to spread the Gospel. For instance, they forget that the Great Commission says, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit;" it doesn't also say to bicker over what Jesus means by "baptize," nor does it say to fidget over whether making disciples of all nations is a form of colonialism.  No, Jesus is more straightforward than that.


Worse though are those insular church leaders -- clergy or laity -- who feel so secure in their place at God's table that they think they can make the rules for who gets to eat there with them.  Though we are of course called to discern right from wrong, we are not called to burden other believers with our personal judgements at every turn.  We can become so obsessed by the perceived peccadilloes of our brothers and sisters that we forget the overarching needs of this world.  As Thoreau put it, "Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up."  And so it is with the church leader who lacks the pastoral graces.  His fruit is acidic, and he works not for God, but against him.  He is one of a type that pushes people away from God's grace instead of drawing them inwards.  The Gospel is bigger than them -- so much so that it will consume them in the final refining fire, for they are the chaff of this world.


"If anyone causes any of these little ones who believe in me to sin," Jesus says in Mark 9, "it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck."  Indeed, how many young Christians have been turned away by a hypocrite who saw the speck in their eye but not the plank in their own, and would have rather seen their soul condemned than to see them sitting in their church?  Thankfully, this is the exception, not the rule, but for those who have faced the church at its ugliest, where is the direction?  It is in knowing that the Church is bigger than a building or a single set of people.  It stretches across time and space and at its best it exists in the heart of Christ himself, to whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.  He is the only person, in the end, we really need to answer to, and his judgement can already be conveyed by the Spirit.  Jesus is God of the living, not of the dead.  So where we encounter dead Christians, who are no longer stirred by the Gospel but instead by gossip, let us leave them to their own devices.  God has work for us to do.  Let's arise and move forward.

Joy in the Morning

Psalm 30:5  "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning."

I have always been a night owl, and it is easy for me to stay up until two or three in the morning.  I am fortunate to be one of those persons who can function well on just three or four hours of sleep for days in a row, and in fact I find that too much sleep makes me groggy and unfocused.  So given all of this it should come as no surprise that I have had plenty of experience with "all-nighters."  Even now
in my late thirties I stay up all night at least a couple of times per year.  The spring semester of my last year in divinity school, when I was 30, I had ten all-nighters in about a six week period.  That was a bit much, but an occasional night spent working away at something isn't a big problem for me at all.

This verse from the Psalms has always seemed beautiful to me but I never fully understood it until I put it in terms of an all-nighter.  As a night owl, the morning is my least favorite time of day.  I drag myself out of bed and slowly get back into the day's action.  I envy those people who can get up at dawn and hit the ground running, because I'm certainly not one of them.  Because of my aversion to mornings I also find them depressing.  So if something is deeply bothering me I don't find myself imbued with a bright and shiny attitude when I awake -- not at all -- if anything I feel more fear and anxiety as I wake up than at any other time in the day.  It is then that I feel the most vulnerable and the least prepared to deal with life's troubles.  So where is the joy?

But thinking more deeply not just about the verse, but about the entire psalm, I realize that David, the psalmist, wasn't just talking about life's anxieties. He was talking about those rare and horrible times that force us into an entire night's worth of worry and despair, those times when our soul most pitifully and helplessly cries out to God. 

To you, O Lord, I cry,
   and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
   if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
   Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me!
   O Lord, be my helper!”

David knew those times. He feared for his life, he felt utter abandonment, he broke God's own laws and knew contrition.  He had been through it all in his life.  And he knew that despite the immense pain and agony that life can produce, our God can wipe it all away and replace it with joy:

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
   you have loosed my sackcloth
   and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

And yet the most famous night anyone in the Bible ever spent without sleep did not turn out this way.  When Jesus prayed through the night in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood in his anguish, he was not rewarded with a joyful daybreak.  He was instead faced with arrest, slander, beatings, and crucifixion.  And here again we see another example of how Jesus Christ went through suffering so that we may have those moments of God's grace, those mornings where we are freed from the shackles of our sinful world and provided a glimpse of God's love and glory.  For let us remember that the verse above is but half a verse; the entire verse makes it clear that what David fears here is not an earthly power or an earthly problem, but God's own anger.  From that, through Jesus' death, we can also be preserved...

For his anger is but for a moment,
   and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
   but joy comes with the morning.

Melting the Mountains

Psalm 97:1, 5-6  "The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice... The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see his glory."

Ever since I was young I always enjoyed the hymn, "This is My Father's World."  It's a bouncy tune [I'm displaying my ignorance of music by using a term so non-technical as "bouncy"] with vivid imagery and a hopeful, positive quality.  But it dawned on my today that the concluding line is from a psalm that portrays God as anything but, well, bouncy.  "God reigns; let the earth be glad," the concluding line of the hymn, is indeed the first line of Psalm 97.  And though the psalm tells us to rejoice, it goes on to present horrifying imagery:

Clouds and thick darkness surround him;
   righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
   and consumes his foes on every side.
His lightning lights up the world;
   the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
   before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
   and all peoples see his glory. 

Theologically uninformed people often go around talking about "the God of the Old Testament," as if that God were indeed a different one than the God of Jesus and Christianity.  In fact, one of the Church's earliest heretics, the second-century bishop Marcion, taught basically this exact same thing -- that the Old Testament was about one God, and the New Testament was about another.  We know (or should know) that this is not the case.  But it is still hard to reconcile the imagery of these verses with our view of a gentle God, such as the hymn itself praises:

This is my Father's world,
the birds their carols raise,
the morning light, the lily white,
declare their maker's praise.

But look again, after the destructive language of Psalm 97 -- mountains melting like wax, foes consumed by fire -- we see the hope:

Zion hears and rejoices
   and the villages of Judah are glad
   because of your judgments, LORD.
For you, LORD, are the Most High over all the earth;
   you are exalted far above all gods...
Light shines on the righteous
   and joy on the upright in heart. 

One can't help but be reminded of Jesus' words in Luke 21, "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." This psalm is eschatological, it has to do with the end of time and judgment, whether a literal end of time or a moment of redemption for the people or Israel.  Either way, the psalm is to be seen as one of hope, that even when things are at their worst for the people of God, we can remember that God always has the last word, and he is powerful enough to handle anything that comes against us.  If mountains can't stand in his way, if his lightening lights up the world, then when he is on our side, what can come against us in the long run?

And as bouncy as the hymn may sound, it concludes with the very same message, because Jew or Christian, Old Testament or New, the One God rules heaven and earth, and of that we can rejoice indeed:

O let me ne'er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!

Overcome the World

John 16:33b  "In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world."

The more I look at this verse the more I think, really, is there any greater understatement in the Bible than the words, "In this world you will have trouble"?  Yet this understatement is immediately followed by an overstatement: "I have overcome the world."

"I have overcome the world."  What a claim.  What a comfort.  If we can truly believe it, it can make all the difference.

The last few months I've been reminded over and over again of the lines from a Fleetwood Mac song:

Can the child within my heart rise above?
And can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I suppose the [eventual] encroachment of 40 makes such lines more poignant.  Nevertheless, we all ask these sort of questions at all manner of times in our lives.  At any age, in any situation, as we face the troubles this world has in store, we want to know, can I handle it?  How can I handle it?  How can I navigate the waters and deal with the changing seasons?  Where will I get the wisdom?  Where will I get the strength?

The answer to the questions posed by the Landslide lyrics is, no.  You can't do it.  Or more to the point, you can't do it alone.  You can try, and you can try really hard, but on your own you don't have the wisdom or the strength to make it through.  It takes something bigger than you are.  It takes the one who overcame this world.

I have always loved Paul's encouragement that we are "more than conquerors," a phrase that reminds us that in Christ we can do more than conquer; we can transcend.  Imagine that: we have the power at our disposal not just to beat the enemy, but to live above him and do so for eternity. 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

Just attempt to fathom that list of "neither...nors":

death....life
angels....demons
present....future...powers
height...depth....anything else in all creation

None of this will separate us from God's love in Christ.  None of it.  Nothing can.  There is nothing between us and God unless we allow it to step in the way.  But we don't have to allow it. We're more than conquerors.  We can transcend anything this world has to throw at us and still find the one who made us and saves us.  It's mind-bending.

Paul also points out, "If God is for us, who can be against us?"  Well, who can?  What can?  Sure, things appear to come against us all the time, but what are these things in the scope of eternity?  What can we not overcome through God's power working for us?  We have the complete storehouse of supply at our disposal.  The God who made the world, who sacrificed his son, will surely provide what we need.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Do we have an answer?  No.  As long as we believe at all we need to also recognize that through faith, through trust, we have access to all the power of the universe, and the worries and cares and wants and needs of this sad and sorry little world are really nothing in our sight.  We are above it all.  We are more than conquerors.

But we are only more than conquerors because first, he ovecame the world.  Through his victory we also have the victory.  Claim your victory.  And praise God you can.