Moving Beyond Bible Study

When I say that we need to move beyond Bible study, I'm not suggesting that we should spend less time, or expend less effort, in studying God's Word.  I believe in Bible study.  My undergraduate degree is in Bible and a significant part of my graduate study was focused on the New Testament.  I spend a lot of time with a passage before I preach on it.  The problem is that early in my Christian life I thought studying the Bible would lead, in a fairly direct way, to spiritual growth.  It seems reasonable; after all, the Bible is God's Word, so coming to a better understanding of it should enable one to live in greater obedience.  And since prayer is responsive speech, a reply to what God has spoken, it seems natural that reading and studying the Bible should lead us into prayer.

I quickly discovered that it doesn't work that way.  In fact, studying the Bible can even adversely affect our spiritual lives, as B.B. Warfield notes in his essay, "The Religious Life of Theological Students:   "There is certainly something wrong with the religious life of a theological student who does not study. But it does not quite follow that therefore everything is right with his religious life if he does study" (Kindle Locations 62-64).  He warns that it is possible to study theology in a purely secular spirit and then goes on to ask: "Do you prosecute your daily tasks as students of theology as "religious exercises"? If you do not, look to yourselves: it is surely not all right with the spiritual condition of that man who can busy himself daily with divine things, with a cold and impassive heart" (Kindle Locations 74-76).  The problem he's addressing is familiar to anyone who's approached Scripture and theology in an academic setting.   We too easily imagine that because we understand an idea and believe it with our minds, we have the experience or quality we’re studying about.  But the remedy is not to turn away from academic study; the answer, he says, is to approach theology as a religious exercise, to turn one's study into meditation, prayer and worship.

Meditation on Scripture is often a struggle in our hurried society, but it's worth the investment of time and effort.  The best definition I've heard was given by a psychiatrist friend named Lowell Mann, who has since gone to be with the Lord.  I was teaching a Sunday School class on prayer and when I asked a question about meditation, he responded, "meditation is like worry; when we worry we think over and over about the same thing, looking at it from every possible angle."  So, to meditate on a passage of Scripture is simply to "worry" over it.  Dwell on it, think over and over on the words, look at it from a variety of angles.

That's really enough in itself, but for those who, like me, enjoy an ordered structure for doing this, I recommend a four-step approach called Lectio Divina (or divine reading).  The first step is simply to read a short passage, coming to the Word with the expectation that God is going to speak.  Read attentively, without rushing, then go back and read it again.  It's often helpful to read out loud, as this involves more of the senses and helps break the tendency to read passively.  "We should read them [the words] not in agitation, but in calm; not hurriedly, but slowly, a few at a time, pausing in attentive reflection.... then the reader will experience their ability to enkindle the ardor of prayer” (St. Ambrose, quoted by Mariano Magrassi, Praying the Bible, pp. 105-106).

After a brief pause, read the passage again, and stop along the way to meditate.  Allow yourself to be impacted by the Word by giving it time to sink in. You can reflect imaginatively, especially if it's a narrative, or you can simply dwell on the words, letting them enter more deeply into your mind.  “First, we must create within our hearts a flexible space of resonance, so that the Word can penetrate its deepest parts and touch its innermost fibers....  meditation is compared to the assimilation of food.... We ponder each word in order to grasp its full meaning, imprint it on our memory and taste its sweetness, find joy and nourishment for our soul” (Magrassi, p. 109).

As we continue listening to God in His Word, we begin to respond with prayer, the third step.  In the previous step, we allowed God to speak to us; now we reply to what we've heard.  “In order to pray, we do not need to rack our brains, artificially evoking interior acts, thoughts or excessively refined affections. All we need to do is react in the presence of the text with free or spontaneous prayer. And when this spontaneous outpouring stops, we return to the text for fresh nourishment....  “And when spiritual dryness prevents us from doing anything else, it is enough to address to him the same words God has spoken to us, making certain that our mind and heart are in harmony with them. This will not be simple repetition because that word, having touched my life, is rich with new meaning” (Ibid., pp. 114-15).

When you approach the end of your time, move to the fourth step, which is to sit quietly in the presence of the text.  Rest in what the Lord has said to you. Simply be present before Him with His Word, silently waiting on Him, even though nothing may seem to be happening.  It's enough to have listened to God's Word and then to sit before Him in silence: "Mostly, however, it is a matter of persevering with the low-impact landscape of quiet prayer and following our ordinary, obscure and laborious round....  We are not to curtail our devotion because it seems to accomplish nothing" (Michael Casey, Toward God, p. 167).  Many writers also recommend choosing something to continue dwelling on throughout the day.

It's possible to read through a book of the Bible in this way, a little at a time.  Or choose a passage that is saying something you need to hear at the moment.  But take it slowly; there’s no rush to get through the material. Also, don’t be rigid in applying the four steps. In practice, you will tend to flow back and forth between them, rather than going systematically from one to the next.  The four steps describe what we're doing but not necessarily the order we follow in doing it.

The Church as a Business Venture

I was recently part of a discussion about the business model of the church; not whether there is a business dimension to the church--bills to be paid, donations to be counted and used responsibly, property to be maintained--but whether the mission of the church is appropriately seen as a business venture and to what extent sales and marketing strategies are appropriate tools for ministry.

I had some experience with this in my former denomination.  I first encountered the Brethren in Christ as a student at Messiah College, and they impressed me with their emphasis on discipleship and community.  One of the bishops was fond of saying that they loved one another across more differences than any church he knew, and the differences were significant.  The denomination was rooted in Anabaptism, Pietism, and the Wesleyan holiness movement, but rather than forming a confession that resolved all conflicts, these three streams continued to exist side by side .  So, depending on where one traveled, it was hard to know what to expect in a local Brethren in Christ church, since in different areas one or another of these three streams might be prominent.  But somehow they managed to keep it all together by defining the church as a brotherhood, a family in which different members contribute to the whole.

Did they do this perfectly?  Certainly not.  I've heard and read about some of the problems and divisions that occurred.  I've encountered small-minded people in the denomination.  But despite this, there was a strong sense of community.  My wife and I, coming in from the outside, were quickly assimilated as part of the brotherhood even though I never fully identified with any of the denomination's historic streams.  An elderly friend told us once of a conflict she had with her father when she decided to stop wearing the traditional head covering.  It unsettled and shook him; he thought, at first, that she was departing from the faith.  But as they continued talking he stopped and said, "this is just about my own pride."  His willingness to humble himself combined with a commitment to maintaining unity within the brotherhood was the sort of thing I saw over and over; it was what attracted me to the denomination.  Some of my closest friends are still there.

But a new generation of leaders has adopted a business approach.  Pastors are encouraged to look at successful CEO's, salesmen and managers as examples of leadership.  While General Conference was formerly a time for prayer, worship, and working through difficult things, it has now become a place to promote the latest gimmicks for "growing the church."  It is no longer possible for leaders to humble themselves; to do so would undermine the confident, successful image they're trying to project.  Where there had once been a strong sense of community and commitment to accepting one another despite our differences in personality, culture or theology, there is now a commitment to short-term measurable success combined with a willingness to get rid of anyone standing in the way.

What has happened?  The church is no longer a brotherhood and has become a business venture run by leaders inordinately concerned with the bottom line of numerical growth.  The church has become, not a place to give and receive pastoral care and discipleship, but a place to experiment with the newest strategies for success.  Certainly the church has business matters which need to be handled responsibly and with prudence. No doubt we can learn things from the world of business that will help us operate more efficiently. The problem is in allowing business assumptions and approaches to corrupt the heart of the church.

These thoughts were prompted by the Old Testament reading I heard this morning: "For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. 14 I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice....   Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, 22 I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. 23 I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. 24 I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the LORD have spoken" (Ezekiel 34:11-16; 20-24).  When the church becomes a business venture, pastors and church leaders unwittingly adopt a mindset which is at odds with what God is doing.  Although their intention may be to win more people to the gospel, they too easily end up plundering His sheep in the pursuit of their own goals, rather than nourishing and leading them to maturity.

A New and Lasting Covenant

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Reformation Sunday
Shiloh Lutheran Church

In July, 1505, a young man named Martin Luther was traveling on the outskirts of a Saxon village when he got caught in a thunderstorm.  A bolt of lightening struck nearby, knocking him to the ground, and he was so shaken he cried out in terror, "St. Anne help me!  I will become a monk."  He became an Augustinian monk, and poured his whole heart into the work of saving his soul.  One biographer says, "He laid upon himself vigils and prayers in excess of those stipulated by the rule.  He cast off the blankets permitted him and well-nigh froze himself to death.  At times he was proud of his sanctity and would say, ‘I have done nothing wrong today.'  Then misgivings would arise.  ‘Have you fasted enough?  Are you poor enough?'" (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, p. 34).
He was working with all his might to please God and to save his soul, but no matter what he did, no matter how hard he worked, he could never be sure it was enough.  But that wasn't the worst of it; he realized that the greatest commandment is to love God, but all his efforts had only made him see God as a demanding, stern taskmaster.  He said, "I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created.  Love God?  I hated him!" (quoted by Bainton, p. 44).  The more he tried to save his soul through diligent monastic discipline, the further he was from his goal.  In the midst of seeking to please God, he discovered that, in fact, he hated God.  He resented all that God was asking of him.
Here's what he was discovering: the Fall has rendered us dead in sin, incapable of restoring ourselves to a right relationship with God and the harder we try by observing the Law, doing all the right things, the further we find ourselves from God.  The Gospel is not about working to save our souls, seeking God and finding Him, or learning to live in a way that pleases Him.  It's about God seeking us and making a way for us to return, supplying everything we need to live in a restored relationship with Him.
The problem is that we want our efforts to count for something.  We'd like to think that we can at least receive some credit, that God will recognize all our hard work and that this will somehow weigh in the balance in our favor.  But the truth is that we contribute nothing toward a restored relationship with God.  Jeremiah lists some of the things that characterize Israel's spiritual efforts.  "They broke my covenant," (v. 32).  They broke His covenant, even though He "was a husband to them."  They committed spiritual adultery.  They were guilty of wickedness and sin (v. 34) and were in need of forgiveness.  Romans 3 takes this same theme and applies it to all of us: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God.  All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one.  Their throats are open graves; they use their tongues to deceive.  Then venom of vipers is under their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes" (vv. 10-18).  We want to respond, "oh come on, Paul, you've gotten carried away.  Surely it's not that bad."  But the problem with this is that these are not Paul's words; all he's done here is bring together a series of quotations from the Psalms and Isaiah.
What we bring to the gospel, our whole contribution, is emptiness, neediness, sin and guilt.  As we read earlier in the service, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.  For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight' by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:19-20).  We are alienated from God.  We are "dead in trespasses and sins" and are powerless to do anything about it.  This is what Martin Luther discovered: the harder he tried, the worse things became.  He was incapable of restoring himself to a right relationship with God.
It's a pretty depressing picture, but thankfully that's not the whole story.  The next point is that God responds to our neediness by supplying everything needed for our restoration and healing.  He says to Jeremiah, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (v. 34).  The problem with trying to save ourselves through obedience to the law is that we're not starting from a place of neutrality.  We're not starting with a zero balance.  If we were, all we'd have to do is start earning points.  But we already have a negative balance, and that balance is so large that we couldn't pay it off even if we had all eternity to do so.
The Old Covenant, the Law, shows us our guilt.  "They broke my covenant."  The gospel provides a way for us to be forgiven: "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith" (Romans 3:22-25).  God, through the sacrifice of Christ, wipes away all our guilt and forgives all our sins.  All our guilt is canceled out as a free gift through Jesus Christ.
But it doesn't stop there.  The gospel is not only about forgiveness.  The bumper sticker "Christians are not perfect, only forgiven" is wrong.  It's certainly true that Christians are not perfect, but they are not only forgiven.  The gospel wipes away our guilt and, at the same time, renews us to live in a restored relationship with God.  The new covenant is a different kind of covenant: "not like the covenant I made with their forefathers" (v. 32).  They broke that covenant and failed to keep it.  All it accomplished was to reveal their guilt and lostness.
Here's what the new covenant is like: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts" (v. 33).  In the gospel, we become new creatures, declared not guilty and enabled to live in growing obedience, regenerated and given a new nature.   "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).  God, through His Spirit, makes us new creatures.  We find, in embracing the gospel, that we've entered a new world: "What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone.  A new life has begun!" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NLT).
I worked with a guy named Steve on the U.S.S. Piedmont.  He was so hostile to Christianity that he would sometimes hound me with questions, badgering me to answer, then when I'd finally respond (which I tried to avoid doing) he'd yell at me about how Christians try to shove the gospel down people's throats.  I usually didn't want to talk to him, but he'd seek me out and wouldn't let it go.  After I got out of the Navy, friends told me he had become a Christian, and I was able to spend some time with him when I visited the ship 6 months later.  Everything about him was different.  It wasn't just that he had changed his mind and come to agree with us in areas where he formerly disagreed; even his face was transformed.  He was a different person.  It was still Steve, but there was something different about him; there was something more to his life than there had been before.  A Christian is not someone who has adopted a new philosophy and is trying to follow it.  A Christian is a new creation through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The third thing is that in restoring us to Himself, God begins healing our relationships with one another.  The gospel is not just about the salvation of individuals, "Christ died for me."  Notice the plural pronouns: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people" (v. 33).  In being reconciled to God we become united to His people, the Church.  He speaks about making a new covenant with "the house of Israel and with the house of Judah."  By the time Jeremiah is writing, these two kingdoms have long been divided; no one is now living who remembers a time when the kingdom was one.  The northern kingdom has been deported to Assyria and will never return.  But the new covenant looks forward to restoration and healing.  "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts [these people who have been enemies for longer than anyone can remember].  I will be their God and they will be my people."
We can see this in Ephesians, where Paul is describing what God is doing through the gospel: "With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (1:8-10).  God is not only saving individual souls.  He's at work restoring the whole created order that has been out of sync since the Fall.  Shortly after the Fall, Cain murdered his brother; after that, humans became so proud and self-important that God confused their languages and scattered them across the face of the earth.  The prevailing tendency in this world has been toward alienation, separation.
James describes the problem: "Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?"  Is it just a matter of simple, honest disagreement, different personalities and ways of going about things?  No.  "Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?  You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder.  And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts" (4:1-2).  The Fall has driven a wedge between us.  We are all seeking our own way and inevitably end up in conflict.  All we have to do is listen to the evening news to hear more evidence of this than we want to know about.  G. K. Chesterton said original sin is the only part of Christian theology that can really be proved (Orthodoxy, chapter 2).  How can it be proved?  Just by looking around at things going on in the world, and by looking honestly into our own hearts.  The Fall has alienated us, separated us from God and from one another.  And what God is doing in the gospel is undoing all this.  He is restoring His creation, gathering up all the broken parts, making us all one in Himself.  And the first step in this healing process is that He makes us part of His Church.
A few years ago I was discussing with my former bishop a pastor who was on the point of retiring and he said, "I think he'd be great in a twenty-something church."  In his view each church should target different groups and tailor their programs to market whichever group they're interested in.  He was in the process of moving his whole region in this direction, and his argument was that it works.  People like spending time with those who have similar interests, so it makes sense to organize the ministry of the Church in this way.  But this misses the point of what God is doing; He is breaking down all those barriers.  He wants us to learn to live together with others who are different, and who think differently.  He has called us together as part of the same body.  This approach to the church is at odds with what God is doing in His work of redemption: "And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth" (Ephesians 1:10, NLT).  We don't have the right to organize the Church in a way that is moving in the opposite direction just because we think it will be more effective in the short term.
The gospel is about God seeking us and making a way for us to return, supplying everything we need to live in a restored relationship with Him, and not only us, but everything that has been ruined and defaced by the Fall.  God is doing a work of restoration and He has graciously included us in what He is doing.  What Luther discovered, much to his delight and surprise, was that God was the One doing the seeking.  Thirty years after his vow to become a monk, Luther wrote: "Only Christians possess this victorious knowledge given from above. These two terms, grace and peace, constitute Christianity. Grace involves the remission of sins, peace, and a happy conscience. Sin is not canceled by lawful living, for no person is able to live up to the Law. The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair. Much less is sin taken away by man-invented endeavors. The fact is, the more a person seeks credit for himself by his own efforts, the deeper he goes into debt" (Commentary on Galatians, Kindle Locations 118-121, Kindle Edition).  He was speaking from experience, and he went on to say: "I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me, not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me" (Ibid. Kindle Locations 579-580 Kindle Edition).  Early in his life he had been obsessed with what he needed to do, but then he made the delightful and surprising discovery  that God had made a way for him to step back and relax, to receive the free gift, and then spend the rest of his life on this earth learning to live in the freedom purchased by the sacrifice of Christ.

Should Christians Pray the Vengeance Psalms?

It was just a passing comment between songs: “I hope you all pray the Psalms.” This was the first time I'd heard John Michael Talbot in concert and I didn’t know what he was talking about.  It sounded like a good idea, though, so I tried it, although I floundered a lot at the beginning; most of the Psalms didn't fit my mood at the time I was praying, so what was I to do with them?  I have to admit that for the first year or so, my praying of the Psalms was pretty sporadic.

It's usually difficult to tell, at the beginning, whether a new spiritual practice is going to help, especially when it doesn't immediately connect with a felt need. Eugene Peterson has wise counsel in this area: “Believers must be aware that most of the time discipline feels dull and dead. We’re impatient if we have to wait a long time for something, especially in America. If we don’t find instant zest in a discipline, we make a negative snap judgement about it. But often what we describe as deadness, dullness, or boredom is simply our own slow waking up. We just have to live through that. Simple desire for more in our Christian lives is sufficient evidence that the life is there. Be patient and wait. It’s the Spirit’s work. We simply put ourselves in the way of the Spirit so he can work in us” (Living the Message, p. 295).

Historically, the Psalms have had a high priority in the Church.  I was interested, around this time, to learn that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a short book entitled Psalms: Prayer Book of the Bible.  Here's how he describes the importance of the Psalms for prayer: “In the ancient church it was not unusual to memorize ‘the entire David.’ In one of the eastern churches this was a prerequisite for the pastoral office. The church father St. Jerome says that one heard the Psalms being sung in the fields and gardens in his time. The Psalter impregnated the life of early Christianity. Yet more important than all of this is the fact that Jesus died on the cross with the words of the Psalter on his lips. Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power” (p. 26).

I've come to the conclusion that it’s more important to get started and keep at it than to spend a lot of time at the beginning figuring out how all the Psalms fit into prayer. Questions come up as we’re going along, and these can be sorted out with the help of a few resources. But it's more urgent to establish a consistent habit than to work out a rational explanation for what we're doing.

Often the biggest hurdle is learning how to deal with the Psalms of Vengeance. How can we pray these as followers of Jesus Christ?  Many prayer psalters, including the Liturgy of the Hours, either omit these Psalms altogether or remove the most offensive sections.  Christians often find them to be an embarrassment. What are we to do with these Psalms?

It's easy enough to simply skip over them in our prayers, writing them off as inconsistent with the further revelation we have in Jesus Christ. Many Christians, understandably, take this approach.  But maybe these Psalms have something to offer us that we won't find elsewhere.  As Eugene Peterson points out, "The Psalmists are angry people” (Answering God: the Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 101).  They are angry, but their anger has driven them to God, not away from Him.

Are the angry cries of the psalmists an Old Testament relic, something that belongs to an earlier stage of revelation?  As tempting as this might seem, this longing for vengeance is not confined to the Old Testament, as is clear in Paul's words to the Romans: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). He doesn't instruct Christians to repress the desire for vengeance, but to leave it in God's hands.  If this sort of thing is only for those at a more primitive stage of spiritual development, what are we to make of these words in Revelation:“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. The called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:9-10).
It's true that Jesus calls us to pray for our enemies and forgive those who sin against us, but the danger is that we may end up deceiving ourselves, and accepting a counterfeit, by moving too quickly to forgiveness without recognizing and facing what is really in our hearts.  The question is how to get from where we are to where we know we should be.  And this begins with a recognition of the truth about ourselves: “The articulation of vengeance leads us to a new awareness about ourselves. That is, the yearning for vengeance belongs to any serious understanding of the human personality.... The capacity for hatred belongs to the mystery of personhood. The Psalms are the rhetorical practice in fullest measure of what is in us. John Calvin describes the Psalms as ‘An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul.' And so they are. They tell us about us. The Psalms provide space for full linguistic freedom in which nothing is censored or precluded” (Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 58).

The vengeance Psalms provide a context for facing the worst in our hearts.  As much as we want to be like Jesus in asking forgiveness for those who hate us, we can't get there without acknowledging what we really feel.  Peterson recommends a way through, rather than around these Psalms: “For those who are troubled about the psalms of vengeance, there is a way beyond them. But that way is not easy or ‘natural.’ It is not the way of careless religious goodwill. It is not the way of moral indifference or flippancy. It is, rather, the way of crucifixion, of accepting the rage and grief and terror of evil in ourselves in order to be liberated for compassion toward others.... My hunch is that there is a way beyond the psalms of vengeance, but it is a way through them and not around them. And that is so because of what in fact goes on with us. Willy nilly, we are vengeful creatures. Thus these harsh psalms must be fully embraced as our own. Our rage and indignation must be fully owned and fully expressed. Then (and only then) can our rage and indignation be yielded to the mercy of God. In taking this route through the Psalms, we take the route God has gone. We are not permitted a cheaper, easier, more ‘enlightened’ way” (p. 68).  The Psalms are part of God's Word and are safe -- all of them -- as a school for prayer, training us to bring the full range of our emotions into God's presence where they can be transformed.  It's our hearts, not the Psalms, that need cleansing.

Pressing On to Know Christ (sermon)

Pressing On to Know Christ

Philippians 3:1-16

Shiloh Lutheran Church

16^th Sunday After Pentecost

During my first meeting with the Candidacy Committee, when I was seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, I was listing the things I like about Lutheranism, and someone asked me if I saw any weaknesses or problems in the Lutheran Church. I responded that as Lutheranism has developed there has been a tendency to so emphasize justification by faith that other dimensions of the Christian life are neglected. Even the bishop admitted to me that Lutherans, himself included, get nervous when anyone talks about discipleship, because they’re worried that this will lead to legalism, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They worry that a call to discipleship will drown out the good news of the Gospel.

It’s not that they’re too aware of the legal dimension of our salvation, the truth that God, in Christ, has declared us not guilty. We can never be too aware of this; one of the great enemies of the Christian life is false, persistent guilt, guilt that we just can’t get away from. Not being confident of our acceptance in Christ cripples us, hinders us in our relationship with God. It’s not that Lutheranism over-emphasizes the legal dimension of salvation; it’s that Lutheranism has tended to focus exclusively on this and has neglected other aspects of salvation.

Justification is not an end in itself. God doesn’t remove our guilt so that we can then say to ourselves, "well, now, I’ve gotten that over with and I can get on with my life." No, the whole point of justification is to restore us to a right relationship with God, so that we can spend the rest of our lives seeking to know Him better. We can see that clearly in these words from the apostle Paul. For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. His overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ.

He begins, in verses 1-6, by saying that fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is such a priority for him that outward advantages no longer matter. He tells them to beware of the Judaizers, those who were going through the churches urging Gentile believers to be circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses. Here’s how it reads in The Message: "Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances...." These Judaizers are only interested in appearances. They think it’s enough to just get everything right on the outside, that what God really wants is exact observance of every religious ceremony. A few years ago I was in a church where the minister rattled off the liturgy so quickly it made me tired just listening to him. It was almost like being at an auction. I think if I had been able to talk to him afterward he’d have responded that it’s enough just to say the words and go through the right ceremonies.

Paul himself had once been like that. He had done everything right. He was, he says, "circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book" (The Message). He had once seen himself as one of God’s favorite people, because he was so meticulous in observing the Law. But then he met Jesus face to face on the Damascus road, and suddenly he saw that his whole life was going in the wrong direction. He saw that all his religiosity was worthless. He was making a good appearance, but he didn’t know God.

It’s important to notice that Paul frames this whole section, from 3:1 to 4:4, with the words "rejoice in the Lord." Gordon Fee points out that "for Paul, ‘joy’ is primarily a verb, something we do rather than how we feel. The verb itself means to verbalize with praise and singing" (p. 131). To rejoice means to verbalize with praise and singing. It doesn’t mean to feel a certain way. It means to say, in God’s presence, "I will rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise." The focus of this praise and singing is the Lord. Paul had, at one time, been focused on himself and his religious attainments. But then he met Jesus face to face and everything changed. Rejoice in the Lord. Exalt Him in word and in song. Forget yourself--put no confidence in the flesh--and rejoice in Him.

Paul had more reason than most to put confidence in the flesh, but when he met Jesus he counted all this as loss. He goes on, in verses 7-11, to say that he considers everything worthless compared to knowing Christ. The name "Christ" appears 5 times in these verses. Paul is not saying that everything is worthless in itself. It’s worthless in comparison with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He’s exalting the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than devaluing everything else. I’ve sometimes seen people get this backwards. They worry that maybe they love family members--spouse, children, parents--too much. They want to put Christ first, the way Paul does here, but they try to do that by loving other people less. They try to put Jesus first by denying the value of His gifts. That’s not what Paul is doing. He has seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in comparison with Him, everything that he’s lost for the sake of Jesus means less to him than a pile of rubbish.

The emphasis, for Paul, is not on all the things he’s lost. The emphasis is on the fact that he knows Christ. Martyn Lloyd Jones was trained as a medical doctor and had exceptional gifts in that area. At the age of 23 he became Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician, and was well on his way to a successful career in medicine. But four years later he left his medical career behind to pastor a struggling church in South Wales. This created a public sensation in London and his story was all over the news. Many people thought he was making a foolish choice, and others praised him for the great sacrifice he was making to serve the church. But he later said this: "I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honor God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel" (from the dust jacket on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939, by Iain H. Murray). He didn’t like hearing people make a fuss about how much he had sacrificed, because he really didn’t see it that way at all. That’s how Paul is; following Christ has meant losing many other things, but the gain in knowing Christ is so great that it’s not a sacrifice at all. He doesn’t grieve over the things he’s lost any more than we grieve when the trash truck drives away with our week’s worth of garbage.

In verses 12-16, Paul describes how intensely he longs to be all Jesus wants him to be. He longs to be perfectly transformed into the image of Jesus, because he wants to be pleasing to Him. Everything he does is centered around his relationship with Jesus Christ. This comes out clearly in The Message: "I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward--to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back." He’s not seeking to establish his own righteousness; he’s not following a moralistic program for self-improvement. He’s seeking the Lord with all his might, and through this fellowship with the Lord he’s being transformed. His goal is to know God, and in knowing God he is transformed more and more into His image.

The author of Hebrews says God "rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6). This is a consistent theme in Scripture. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). God said to the Israelites who had been taken into captivity in Babylon: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God is pleased when His people seek him earnestly.

In chapter 4, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all circumstances. But in chapter 3 he’s not content. He’s not content with where he is spiritually. A.W. Tozer, who was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in the mid-20th century, said this: "Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. The man who believes he has arrived will not go any farther.... Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts" (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. What are you desiring lately? What are you hungering and thirsting for? Are your desires moving you closer to God, or further away from Him?

I’ve known many people who wish they were more spiritual. They’ll say things like, "Oh, I wish I had the discipline to spend more time with God." Or, "I wish I would spend more time in God’s Word." They see others growing spiritually, and they admire from a distance: "I wish I was more like that." But the truth is that we can spend a lifetime wishing for this sort of thing, and it will do us no good. Proverbs 13:4 describes these people: "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." A sluggard, a slothful person, wishes things were different, but he won’t apply diligence and self-discipline. He craves, but he gets nothing.

Paul presses on "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [him]." He strains toward what is ahead, and presses on toward the goal. But he also forgets what is behind. He doesn’t dwell nostalgically on the things he left behind to follow Jesus. He doesn’t daydream about what a great Pharisee he could have become if things had gone otherwise. But he also doesn’t spend time dwelling on his past failures. Several years ago I heard an excellent sermon on "Triumphing Over the Past." Here’s how the sermon began: "I doubt that there is any more debilitating problem for Christian people than the problem of regrets. We feel subject to the guilt of something that we have done or haven’t done: the past, with skeletons in closets, with fears that seem to haunt us, things about the past that cripple us. As a result, we constantly find ourselves drawn back like iron filings drawn to a magnet.... People turn around and say, ‘If only I had done that ten years ago, I would’ve been so much better.’" (Robert M. Norris, Preaching Today, Tape No. 65).

Regrets about the past can keep us from seeking God in the present. We think, "If only I had gotten started sooner, I’d be so much better off by now." Or the memory of some past sin plagues us and cripples our attempts to get on track spiritually. Or we begin with a program of regular devotions, but after awhile we get distracted or something happens so that we neglect our devotions for a week or two. And then we think to ourselves, "I’ve failed; I can’t maintain a consistent devotional life; what’s the use of starting again?" Paul would say, in all these cases, along with the author of Hebrews: "Now that we know what we have--Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God--let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all–all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help" (Heb. 4:14, 16, The Message). Walk right up to him and get what he’s so ready to give: mercy for the past, and help for the present. And then, like Paul, we lay aside the past and keep going forward, no matter how many times we fail along the way. C.S. Lewis said, very wisely: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence" (The Business of Heaven, p. 17).

For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. He hasn’t yet been made perfect--that will come when he is in the Lord’s presence--but his overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ and to live in a way that pleases Him. He’s not content with anything less. How do we, in our highly intrusive and distracting culture, develop this kind of passion to know Christ? Here, briefly, are a few suggestions before I close.

1) Realize that discipline and hunger for God belong together. Paul stresses both in this passage. If you, at this point in your life, have little hunger to know God better, don’t wait for something to happen. Take yourself in hand and begin setting aside time each day to spend with God, in His word and in prayer. There have been times in my spiritual life when I’ve almost been carried along by an intense desire to spend time in the Lord’s presence, but generally those times don’t just happen. And they don’t continue indefinitely; they tend to come and go. They happen when I’ve been diligent in seeking God. God calls us to seek Him by faith, and then He sometimes helps and refreshes us with His Spirit. Hunger for God usually comes to us when we seek God by faith, whether we feel like it or not. Make it a priority to spend time in His presence, and be grateful when you sense the Spirit drawing you to seek Him.

2) In setting aside time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, remind yourself often that your purpose is to cultivate a relationship. There are two opposite dangers in this area. On the one hand, it’s tempting to approach our devotional times legalistically, as if we were fulfilling a legal requirement. As long as we fulfil the requirement, everything is fine. This is the danger of "formalism," of just going through the motions without any concern for cultivating a real relationship with the Living God. At the other extreme, we’re tempted to think our devotional times are a failure if we don’t feel some sense of exhilaration each time. If you’re persevering in your devotional life during a dry period, you’re not guilty of formalism. Think about the relationships you have with people in this world. There are times when you’re aware of how great it is to be together, times when you’re conscious of how much you value the privilege of being with that person. But there are also times when you really don’t feel much. You continue to show love and concern for one another, and you continue spending time together, but the feelings just come and go over time. Prayer is like that. Our purpose is to know God by spending time with Him, and when we spend time with Him sometimes we feel refreshed and renewed, and other times we don’t feel much of anything. It’s as we persevere in seeking Him over a lifetime that we cultivate a strong relationship. The purpose is not to make sure we "have devotions," so that we can cross it off our to-do list, and the purpose is not to have our hearts warmed so that we feel refreshed and ready for another day. Our purpose is to cultivate a relationship with God throughout the course of our lives here in this world.

3) Remember that Paul frames this whole section with the phrase "rejoice in the Lord." Be intentional about including this element of rejoicing in the time you spend with God. Some devotional approaches reduce everything to Bible study. We’re not just seeking to learn more information about God’s Word. We’re seeking to know Him, and part of the process is intentionally giving thanks and rejoicing in Him: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs" (Psalm 100:1-2). Spend regular time giving thanks and praising God for who He is and what He has done. I recommend including some singing, both hymns and praise songs, as a way of rejoicing in the Lord.

4) Develop the habit of turning to God at specific times throughout the day. Our goal is to walk with God all the time, to invite Him into every area of our lives. Our personal devotions can help tune our hearts and realign our priorities. But we don’t want that to be the only time we spend with God. It’s often helpful to memorize a few short phrases that we can use to just pause briefly and turn our hearts to the Lord. This really doesn’t require much time or effort, but if you persevere with it you’ll increasingly see the Lord’s presence in the details of your life.

When the nation of Israel was at its worst spiritually, when they seemed beyond hope, the prophet Hosea issued a call to repentance which included these words: "Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3, NLT). Let’s press on to know Him, like Paul did, laying aside the past and seeking Him with all our hearts. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

Receiving Christ in the Eucharist

When I was an evangelical pastor I talked to my church board about increasing the frequency of communion; after all, both John Wesley and John Calvin encouraged weekly communion, so this is not necessarily a "Catholic thing."  One of the arguments I used followed from this quote by Robert Weber: "Sometimes students or other persons struggling with a painful experience in their lives will come to me for counsel.  I always say to them, 'I'm not a counselor and I don't have the tools necessary to help you with this problem.  But I can suggest one thing -- flee to the Eucharist.  Get to the table of the Lord just as fast as you can, because it is there that God can and does touch his people in a healing way.'  In all the years that I have been giving this advice, not a single person has come back and told me it is not true.  On the contrary, many have affirmed that God through the Eucharist reached into their pain and touched them with his healing presence" (Ancient-Future Faith, p. 111).

The problem is, how does one "flee to the Eucharist" in a church that only celebrates communion four times a year?  It's simply impossible to follow Weber's advice in most Protestant churches.  The reason given for quarterly celebration, one that was voiced by some church board members, is that frequent communion tends to become mundane, that restricting it to four times yearly helps keep it more special.  My observation has been just the opposite.  Those I know who receive the Eucharist more often tend to value it more than those who only celebrate occasionally.

Two scriptural phrases are especially pertinent in this context.  Paul says to the Corinthians, "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor. 11:26).  The Eucharist is a visual proclamation of the Lord's death.  It's not something to be reserved for special occasions but something to be done regularly, as regularly as the Lord's death is proclaimed in words.  The visual, physical proclamation follows necessarily from the preaching of the Word.  "There is preaching in the full sense only where it is accompanied and explained by the sacraments" (Karl Barth, Homiletics, p. 58).

There are also the words of Jesus Himself: "Take, eat; this is my body....  Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:26-28).  Contrary to most Protestant churches, the early Church took these words literally.  Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century, refers to the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ" ("Letter to the Ephesians," 20). In another letter he speaks of heretics, saying they "abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up" ("Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 6.2).  St. Ignatius, who was taught by the apostles, reflects the consistent teaching of the early Church.  The memorialist view, which sees communion as a purely symbolic act, came along many centuries later.

Why do we experience healing in the Eucharist?  Not because it's an indispensable memory aid.  In the bread and wine we truly receive the body and blood of Christ.  St. Leo the Great, writing in the fifth century, said: "For the effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive.  As we have died with him, and have been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do" (St. Leo the Great, quoted in The Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 2, p. 661).  Henri Nouwen, fifteen centuries later, says something similar: "the Eucharist is the sacrament of love, given to us as the means of finding that descending way of Jesus in our hearts. Jesus himself says, ‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.’ You see here how the descending way of Jesus can become your way too. Whenever you eat the bread of heaven you not only become more profoundly united with Jesus, but you also learn gradually to walk his descending way with him. Jesus wants to give himself to us so much that he has become food for us, and whenever we eat this food the longing is aroused in us also go give ourselves away to others. The self-surrendering love which we encounter in the Eucharist is the source of true Christian community.... Whenever we eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood, we participate in his descending way and so become a community in which competitiveness and rivalry have made way for the love of God" (Letters to Marc, pp. 48-49).  Communion is an opportunity to reflect on the sacrifice of Christ, yes, but it is much more than that.  In the Eucharist we  receive the body and blood of Christ into our bodies and become one with Him in a way that goes beyond our comprehension. 

For most of the past six years I've worshiped in churches that have communion in every service, and rather than becoming mundane the Eucharist has become more important to me; it's now difficult to imagine receiving it only a few times a year.  In the liturgy, we enter the Lord's presence by confessing our sins, then we hear the Word read and preached; we respond to the Word, as Christians have done for two thousand years, by receiving the body and blood of Christ.  And after we receive the Eucharist, our pastor pronounces this blessing: "Now may this precious body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in the one true faith unto life everlasting.  Go in His peace, you are loved with an everlasting love in Christ." 

Christianity is Inescapably Traditional

In 1976, a friend and I were passing out tracts in Naples, Italy when we encountered a Catholic priest.  He didn't speak English, and we didn't speak much Italian, so I pulled out my Italian Bible and started reading to him from Matthew 16: "for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God..." but before I got to the end of the passage he started laughing and finished it from memory.  I had never seen this man, and I really knew nothing about Catholicism, but I was certain he needed to hear Jesus' rebuke.  After all, Catholic tradition distorts the gospel. 

What I had been taught was that Protestants believe in the Bible and Catholics believe in a combination of Scripture and Tradition.  What that tradition involved was unclear to me, but obviously it was something that undermined the purity of biblical teaching.  A few years ago a popular faculty member at Wheaton College was fired after he converted to Roman Catholicism, and in the controversy that followed the president of the college, Duane Litfin, appealed to this same idea: Protestants and Catholics differ primarily over the issue of authority, Protestants believing in sola scriptura and Catholics believing in both Scripture and Tradition.  Richard John Neuhaus, however, pointed out in response to Dr. Litfin's appeal to "Reformation distinctives," that that what is really at issue is a conflict of traditions: "Another term for Reformation distinctives or 'the Reformation heritage' is the Reformation tradition.  Thus does it become evident that the dispute is not over sola scriptura, on the one hand, and Scripture and tradition, on the other.  The dispute is over which tradition is normative; one that interprets Scripture in continuity with a tradition that extends from the apostolic era to the present, or one that interprets Scripture according to a tradition... that began in the sixteenth century" (First Things, #161, March 2006, p. 65).

Even the most anti-traditional Protestants rely implicitly on tradition.  After all, Scripture does not provide a list of books to be included in the Canon.  The Church, over a period of centuries, was led by the Spirit in a process of discernment, and when we open our Bibles today with the confidence that we're reading God's Word, we're relying on the Church's verdict.  Saying, as many Protestants do following John Calvin, that Scripture is self-attesting, doesn't solve the problem.  Even if we grant that this is so, the overwhelming majority of Christians simply accept that the Church came to the right decision.  The question is not whether or not Scripture is self-attesting, but who engages in the work of discerning the limits of the Canon.  Christians, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, trust the verdict of the early Church, and, whatever their scruples about the authority of tradition, are willing to hold at least to this one tradition, that the Church was right in its choice of books to include or reject (laying aside, for now, the dispute over the deuterocanonical books).

But it's not only the issue of the Canon; the truth is that we all read Scripture from within a particular tradition, and many things seem clear to us which have not been clear to Christians in earlier centuries, because we've been traditioned into a particular way of looking at and reading the Bible.  Tradition trains us to read particular parts of Scripture in the light of  the larger context as understood by our denominational understanding: "tradition is like the conscience of a group or the principle of identity that links one generation to another" (Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, p. 2).  The question is whether or not the tradition we've received is in continuity with the teaching of the apostles.

Although Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for allowing their tradition to distort God's revelation, the New Testament also speaks of tradition in a positive way.  Paul, before he speaks to the Corinthians about head coverings and the Eucharist, says "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (11:2).  Later, he urges the Thessalonians to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:15).  Then, before he closes, he goes on, "keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us" (3:6).  In speaking to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians, Paul is concerned with things he had told them in both unwritten and written form.  Unfortunately, the NIV obscures this by translating paradosis, in these verses, as teaching.  But apart from questions of translation, Paul is speaking about things he had communicated to the church in an unwritten form; he's speaking about what is normally described as tradition.  It's the same word that is used in Matthew 16, quoted at the beginning of this post. 

Clement of Rome wrote a letter to the Corinthians before the end of the first century.  No doubt some who read it remembered receiving Paul's epistles to the same church.  A few years later, Ignatius of Antioch wrote seven letters while he was being escorted to Rome to be executed.  He was a friend of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John the Apostle.  Irenaeus met Polycarp as a child and went on to write the first Christian systematic theology later in the second century.  And the Didache, which contains instructions about the practice of the Eucharist, was begun during the apostolic period.  In addition to writing, these early leaders gave verbal instruction in the Church.  How did the early Christians know how to celebrate the Eucharist?  Did they figure it out by reading the handful of references in what we now know as the New Testament?  No, they were taught by the apostles.  The early Christians knew how to practice the Eucharist, not from Scripture, but from the apostolic tradition which had been handed down to them from the apostles and those who'd been taught by the apostles: "the written  teaching in the New Testament on the Eucharist fills a small number of verses, and the faith of the churches in this absolutely central mystery depends directly on the oral teaching of the apostles, on the example of their celebration of it and on the eucharistic reality itself, placed in the heart of the communities as an unfailing fountain of truth, much more than on the Gospel texts, which were written at a period when the Eucharist had been celebrated in the Church for at least thirty years" (Congar, pp. 103-104).

The issue for me is different now than it was in 1976.  The question is not why Roman Catholics follow the tradition of the early Church, but why Evangelical Protestants feel free to despise tradition and depart from that which was handed down from the apostles and their successors.  One doesn't have to visit many Evangelical churches to see that the Sacraments, and even the Scriptures, have been reduced to the margins of church life and that entertainment has become central.  In the absence of a larger, more rooted tradition, which is "the communication of the entire heritage of the apostles, effected in a different way from that of their writings" (Congar, p. 22), local churches are subjected to the whims and idiosycracies of contemporary Christian pastors.

Imitating God's Generosity (sermon)

Imitating God’s Generosity

Matthew 14:13-21

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

Shiloh Lutheran Church

One of our former landlords was a successful businessman who made lots of money and was proud of it. He paid his own way wherever he went and never wanted to receive anything for free. He often pointed this out, and it was clear that he saw it as a moral issue, something that made him a good, admirable person. He always paid his own way, and he was suspicious that others were trying to take advantage of him, that others were trying to get something for free at his expense. Just as he didn’t want to take anything without paying for it, he didn’t want anyone else to get something they hadn’t paid for with their own money.

I was thinking about him recently, and Pope John Paul II came to mind as an obvious contrast. George Weigel tells of him as a young priest: "The new curate’s personal charity soon became apparent. Determined to live simply, he gave away what he thought he didn’t need. When an old woman complained that she had been robbed, he gave her the pillow and comforter some parishioners had just given him, somewhat to the donors’ disgruntlement. As for Father Karol, he went back to sleeping on a bare bed" (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 93). This pattern continued after he became archbishop in Poland. He didn’t have a bank account or personal money, since his needs were met by the archdiocese. "If a priest or parishioner gave him a gift of money during a parish visitation, he wouldn’t even open the envelope, but gave it away the same day to someone in need" (p. 201). He believed that God calls us to give freely to others, that only in this way do we become fully ourselves. He said, "It is through the free gift of self that one truly finds oneself" (Pope John Paul II: In My Own Words, p. 48).

The first man jealously grasped after things he felt entitled to, and he dehumanized himself in the process. The more I talked to him the more I was aware of his impoverishment as a person. John Paul II was constantly giving; we might feel hesitant to give him a gift, because he’d probably give it away as soon as we were out of sight, not because he despised the gift but because he saw someone in greater need than himself. He emptied himself, and in doing so he became more.

This is rooted in the Gospel: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). Grasping after everything we think we deserve will eventually destroy us. It’s in the way of self-emptying that we enter into the fulness for which we were created. It’s only in the way of self-emptying that we become fully human. Here’s John Paul II once more: "The Gospel contains a fundamental paradox: to find life, one must lose life; to be born, one must die; to save oneself, one must take up the cross. This is the essential truth of the Gospel, which always and everywhere is bound to meet with man’s protest. Always and everywhere the Gospel will be a challenge to human weakness. But precisely in this challenge lies all its power" (p.32).

In God’s created order, buying and selling, earning our own way, are not terribly important. We do these things as part of life in this world, but we need to realize that these things are part of a world that is passing away. We heard these words today in our Old Testament reading: "Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isaiah 55:1). At the very center of creation is a free gift; God gives and we receive freely from His bounty. The ability to make a living, a stable society in which to carry out our occupations, sufficiently good health to do our work, all these things are given to us. We need to always keep that in mind as we conduct business in this world; the very ability to do this comes to us as a gift. We emphasize that the Gospel is offered free of charge, but this truth is not limited to the Gospel. All of creation is built on the free gift of God. We can see something of this spirit in today’s Gospel reading.

Notice, first, that Jesus freely gives His time to this crowd that has just interrupted a private retreat. Jesus and His disciples had learned of the death of John the Baptist, and we see in the parallel account in Mark’s gospel that the Twelve had also just returned from a missionary trip. Jesus says to them, "‘Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile,’ [then Mark explains] for many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat" (Mark 6:31). They need to be able to process what happened while they were out preaching, and they need time to come to terms with John’s death. This is really not a good time to interrupt. They’re in need of a break from the constant demands of the crowds.

And yet, Jesus responds to these uninvited guests with compassion. He lays aside His plans for a retreat and begins ministering to them in their need. He sees this interruption as the Father’s call. Often the things we see as interruptions are things God is calling us to respond to by laying aside whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish and paying attention to what He is doing. Listen to these words by a French author on responding to God in the present moment: "O, glorious celebration! Eternal bounty! God forever available, forever being received. Not in pomp or glory or radiance, but in infirmity, in foolishness, in nothingness. God chooses what human nature discards and human prudence neglects, out of which he works his wonders and reveals himself to all souls who believe that is where they will find him" (Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, p. 20). "God chooses what human nature discards and human prudence neglects," inconvenient interruptions, disturbances to our schedules and plans, lack of resources, weariness with human neediness. We experience God as we respond to His call in the present moment..

By the end of the day, the disciples have had enough. After all, they were intent on having some time alone with Jesus and everything fell apart as soon as they left the boat. So they say to Jesus, "send the crowds away." Jesus responds by telling them, "no, that’s not necessary; you feed them." It’s clear that they don’t have much, certainly not anywhere near enough to feed several thousand people. But Jesus doesn’t call them to give enough; He calls them to give what they have.

Of course, if they give what they have they won’t have enough to eat themselves. Their giving puts them at risk, and it also seems pointless; they’re going to be hungry and they won’t have accomplished anything toward feeding so many people. Jesus is calling them to empty themselves, not only in a spiritual sense, but in a very concrete, tangible way. He’s calling them to give up their possessions in a way that truly puts them at risk. He’s calling them to give freely without worrying about the consequences.

Following Jesus in the way of self emptying will often seem imprudent. He may call us to do things that don’t seem sensible, that aren’t cost-effective. On another occasion, Jesus and His disciples were in the temple, watching people put money into the treasury. "Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" (Mark 12:41-44). Jesus praises her, but what she is doing doesn’t make any sense. She’s not giving enough to make a difference; her offering is a drop in the bucket compared to those of the rich. And now she doesn’t have enough to meet her own needs. Why does Jesus praise her? Because He doesn’t value things in the way that we do; He calls us to give what we have, not what we think is needed to remedy the particular situation we’re faced with.

The same thing is true of the early Church in Jerusalem. Luke says about this church: "And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need" (Acts 2:44-45). Did they really need to do this? We don’t read that this was the pattern in other churches. It’s not recommended in any of the epistles. I’ve even heard preachers claim that this was a mistake, that they over-extended themselves in their new zeal, because later in Acts we see other churches sending them help during a time of famine. The claim is that if they had held onto their property and acted with greater prudence, they wouldn’t have been in need of help. But there’s not a hint of this in the Book of Acts. Luke suggests that their generosity was a direct result of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And he also sees the help provided by other churches later in the book as another instance of the work of the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t seem overly interested in cost-effectiveness. He calls us to follow Jesus in the way of self emptying, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.

So the disciples go ahead and do what He’s telling them to do. They contribute their handful of food, five loaves of bread and two fish, and Jesus multiplies it to feed the whole crowd. They give the little they have, which is barely enough for themselves, and Jesus multiplies it so that there is more left over in the end than there was to begin with. In giving of their limited resources, they experience God’s abundance.

Anne and I worked with Operation Mobilization on the ship Logos in 1982 and 83. There were 25 or so nationalities onboard the ship, and the cultural differences often led to conflict. Besides this, there was a lot going on all the time. There was all the work of keeping a ship in condition, dealing with port authorities, and working together with local believers. We had conferences onboard, a large book shop, evangelistic teams on shore, and there were also training programs for those involved in the ministry. It was easy, in the midst of all this, to lose sight of what we were doing. And I was often startled, as we were wrapping up the ministry in one port and getting ready to move somewhere else, to hear what God had done in the lives of the local people. We could see nothing but trouble and weakness and conflict, but God ministered to people in ways that went beyond anything we were doing or saying. I suspect that it may have been something like this for the disciples. They offered what they had, which was not much, and Jesus multiplied their offering with an abundance that took them by surprise. They may have felt just as empty and drained in the end as they had felt when they came to Him and said, "send the crowds away." But God had multiplied their small offering to meet the needs of this large crowd; by making use of their loaves and fish, He had graciously included them in this great thing He was doing.

Jesus is the One who multiplies the loaves and the fish, but before He does that, the disciples need to give what they have. He calls them to empty themselves, to step out in faith and take a risk, before He works the miracle. God gives us a part in the work He is doing, but that part is not easy or free from risk. It involves emptying ourselves, which often leaves us feeling empty. We want Him to work in a way that feels better. We’d like to feel His power surging through us, with an immediate certainty that we’re being used. But the truth is that God very often works in a way that we can’t feel. All we’re aware of is our own lack of resources, five loaves and two fish; why can’t someone else give? After all, there are plenty of people out there who could give ten times as much and hardly notice the difference. We barely have enough for ourselves. But Jesus calls us, like the disciples, to give not what we think is needed, but what we have; the sufficiency is not in our giving but in Him. He is "able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work" (2 Cor. 9:8).

Francis and Edith Schaeffer started a ministry to young people in Switzerland called L’Abri, which means "shelter," or "refuge." People from all over the world found refuge there and still do. The Schaeffers also gave freely to people who came to them in need asking for help. One day Edith said to Francis, "do you know that we’re getting a reputation for giving handouts, and some of these people are taking advantage of us?" He responded, "I’d rather be taken advantage of than to turn away someone who is really in need." His idea was that it’s better to err on the side of generosity than on the side of protecting our possessions.

God, in both His creation and redemption, has given to us freely from His abundance. Jesus emptied Himself – became poor – to restore us to life in the Father. Self-emptying generosity is of the very essence of God, and as people made in His image it’s central to our humanness. The choices we make in using our resources are moving us in two possible directions: we’re either emptying ourselves, using our resources to bless others (like God does) or we’re grasping after the best for ourselves, making sure we get everything we think we deserve. May God enable us to use His gifts in ways that we will not be ashamed of when we stand in His presence.

Following the Truth to an Uncertain Destination

My counselor told me I was an "odd duck."  I didn't know what he meant, so he went on to elaborate: "you have a strong drive to investigate the truth and you feel bound to follow wherever it leads."  I didn't think that was such an odd thing, but maybe he was right.

I had started graduate school, some years previously, with the naive assumption that this was the point of academic life.  But one experience was especially illuminating: I was listening to another student arguing with the professor in an ethics class, when it suddenly dawned on him that the professor was probably right.  He admitted this, but then he went on angrily, "you could ruin my life with that argument; people from Germany sent me here to study, and if I go back and say those kinds of things, my career will be over!"  He was persuaded, but he wasn't willing to admit that in public; doing so would ruin his academic career.

One would expect that following the truth wherever it leads should be a characteristic of those who belong to the One who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Who told a group of would-be followers, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31-32).   Stanley Hauerwas makes a great observation about this: "I slowly learned... that to be a Christian meant that you could never protect yourself from the truth" (Hannah's Child, p.11).  By definition, a Christian should be someone who cares deeply about and is willing to follow the truth, even if it leads in an unexpected (and maybe unwelcome) direction.

The problem is that openness to the truth can be very costly.  One missionary I knew told me he was worried that if he ever moved to a different region and had to be examined by a new presbytery, his ordination would be in danger.  He was still comfortably within the Reformed tradition, but on the mission field he had seen and experienced things that broadened his outlook in ways that some presbyteries would find unacceptable.  Not heretical, but outside the accepted norms of that group.

Denominational identity tends to degenerate into tribalism; the main concern, all too often, is "how does this fit the identity of our group," rather than "is it true?"  As I was working toward ordination in my former denomination, there was a group of leaders obsessed with denominational identity.  They were worried, with so many new people coming in, that they would lose what was distinctive about their movement.  So for them, the most pressing question was always, "is this person one of us?"

I'm not suggesting that we lay caution aside and be open to everything that comes along.  There are plenty of errors out there that will harm us, and we need to be aware and attentive; but some of the strategies we use to protect ourselves from error can also shield us from the truth.  The question is, how do we guard against error without protecting ourselves from those areas of the truth that stretch and challenge us? 

It doesn't help to say we're only going to believe the Bible, because heretics and extremists also appeal to Scripture.  The problem with appealing to Scripture alone is that it was never intended to stand alone.  Paul, in 1 Timothy, calls the Church the "pillar and foundation of truth (3:15)."  It's Scripture, as it's been understood by the Church throughout the centuries, that protects us from error.  We commit ourselves unconditionally to what the historic Church has understood as orthodoxy, or "right teaching."

The early creeds, as authoritative statements of orthodox faith, are a good place to begin.  One popular speaker I've often heard is fond of disparaging the early ecumenical councils, saying "do you really think they got it all figured out?"  But they didn't claim to have it all figured out; they were setting parameters, saying "within this circle is the orthodox teaching of the Church, and outside is heresy."  Why?  Because if Christ is not fully God He cannot save us from our sins, and if He is not fully man He cannot stand in our place.  The ecumenical creeds were written to protect the gospel from errors that would undermine our salvation.

"But isn't this Catholic teaching?" someone might respond.  "I thought for Protestants the Bible was the only source of authority."  It's certainly true that many contemporary American Evangelicals say this sort of thing, but listen to these words from Charles Hodge, the great 19th Century Princeton theologian (whom no one would describe as a closet Catholic): "Protestants, in rejecting the doctrine of tradition, and in asserting that the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures... is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do not reject the authority of the Church as a teacher.  They do not isolate themselves from the great company of the faithful in all ages, and set up a new faith.  They hold that Christ promised the Holy Spirit to lead his people into the knowledge of the truth; that the Spirit does dwell as teacher in all the children of God, and that those who are born of God are thus led to the knowledge and belief of the truth....  Any doctrine, therefore, which can be proved  to be a part of the faith (not of the external and visible Church, but) of the true children of God in all ages of the world, must be true.  It is to be received not because it is thus universally believed, but because its being universally believed by true Christians is a proof that it is taught by the Spirit both in his Word and in the hearts of his people.  This is a sound principle recognized by all Protestants.  This universal faith of the Church is not to be sought so much in the decisions of ecclesiastical councils, as in the formulas of devotion which have prevailed among the people....  From the faith of God's people no man can separate himself without forfeiting the communion of saints, and placing himself outside the pale of true believers" (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 249-50).

As David Hall said recently in his blog, "Heart for God": "The symbiosis of authority found in Scripture and the historical continuity of the Church is necessary for assessing current issues and discerning 'progress.' Someone who has no fixed points to guide him and no goal cannot make any progress, but at best just wanders around."  Christian orthodoxy (unlike denominationally specific teachings) is not constricting; it opens us to a large world where our minds are free to explore.  We needn't be afraid to face the fulness of truth that comes to us in the historic Church.  We are safe, within the boundaries of orthodoxy, to examine the shortcomings of our own particular group and to be enriched by the largeness of the Church throughout the centuries.

On the Communion of the Saints

Defending the invocation of the saints in a conservative Presbyterian church was probably not the best idea.  But there was a young guy in the discussion who was in over his head and seriously outnumbered, so I decided to give him some support.  I threw out a few ideas, suggesting that invoking the saints is biblically defensible and should be an area of Christian liberty.  In the end, one man became very heated and exclaimed, "Jesus is enough; we don't need the saints interceding for us!"

Of course, if that's true, why do we ask anyone for prayer?  Why did the apostle Paul ask the Thessalonians to pray for him (2 Thess. 3:1)?  Didn't he think Jesus was enough?  The question is not whether Jesus is sufficient or whether we strictly need the intercession of the saints; we don't pray for others because we doubt the sufficiency of Christ, but because we are called to support one another as members of His body.  The question is, what do we mean when we confess in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe... in the communion of saints"?

Alan Schreck gives a definition with which, I think, most Christians would agree: "The phrase 'the communion of saints' refers to the bond of unity among all those, living and dead, who are or have been committed followers of Jesus Christ" (Catholic and Christian, p. 151).  Certainly the saints of the past serve as examples for us to follow, but does our connection with them in the body of Christ go further than this?

The early Christians thought so.  Those who lived during the Roman persecutions felt a strong connection with those who had died for their faith.  In their minds, these martyrs had not travelled far away; they had simply passed over into the presence of the Lord with Whom all Christians were in constant communion.  The churches soon started preserving relics and celebrating birthdays of the martyrs.  "From this it was a short step, since they were now with Christ in glory, to seeking their help and prayers, and in the third century evidence for the belief in their intercessory power accumulates.  In arguing for it Origen appealed to the communion of saints, advancing the view that the Church in heaven assists the Church on earth with its prayers" (JND Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 490).  Why would they suddenly stop praying once they were safe in heaven?  It seemed more likely to assume that, since they were now in the Lord's presence they would pray to Him all the more for the welfare of those they had left behind.

There's really no difference, in principle, between asking other living believers to pray for us and asking for the prayers of a departed saint.  We know that we are connected, in Christ, with all those who are members of His body, and we know that those who've departed this life are still involved with, and concerned about, the struggle that is going on in this world.  Any hesitancy we might feel about this should be resolved by the prayer of the martyrs under the altar: "O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?" (Revelation 6:10).

Then there's the question whether invoking the saints is somehow idolatrous.  St. Augustine responds to that question: "we venerate the martyrs with the same love and fellowship that we give to the holy men of God still with us....  But the veneration strictly called 'worship,' or latria, that is, the special homage belonging only to the divinity, is something we give and teach others to give to God alone" (quoted by Schreck, p. 158).  We  show them honor, as we would if they were still here, and we value their prayers, knowing that they see the Lord face to face, but we don't worship them, .

The bottom line is that invoking the saints is not, in itself, superstitious or idolatrous.  It rests on a different, larger view, of the communion of the saints, a view that is biblically defensible.  We're surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1).  Are they passive observers, or are they actively involved in our struggle?  Evangelical Protestants may disagree with the practice, but they should do so respectfully, recognizing that it is possible, within the bounds of believing orthodoxy, to see things differently.

Some Thoughts About Mary

Shortly after the death of Pope John Paul II, I read an Internet discussion in which he was referred to repeatedly as a "Mary worshiper."  The general consensus was "he was an outstanding man and an extraordinary leader, but it's too bad he was a Mary worshiper."  It wouldn't have been that much trouble to find out what the Catholic Church actually says about devotion to the Virgin Mary: "From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of 'Mother of God,' to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs.... This very special devotion... differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 971).  She is given honor, but not adoration, and the claim is that devotion to the Virgin Mary "greatly fosters" adoration to the Triune God. 

From an Evangelical Protestant perspective, it seems, of necessity, that any kind of Marian emphasis detracts from the preeminence of Jesus. But whether this is true is as much an empirical question as a theological one. It makes a prediction: "if you indulge in devotion to the Virgin Mary you will become less Christ centered."  So it's worth asking whether this has happened in the lives of those who are devoted to Mary.  Pope John Paul II worried about this early in his Christian life, but he said he came to see that not only does Mary lead us to Jesus, Jesus also leads us to Mary. His experience was that in drawing nearer to Jesus he also came to a more exalted understanding of Mary. What if, rather than an unfortunate and relatively inconsequential addition, John Paul's Marian emphasis was an essential part of his extraordinary Christ-centeredness? The same things could be said about Mother Theresa. The Catholic and Orthodox teaching is that Mary always points beyond herself to Jesus, so that in drawing near to her we are drawn to exalt Jesus more, because Mary is the ultimate model of self-emptying discipleship.

These words from Tom Howard, who grew up in a prominent Evangelical family, shed a helpful light on Marian devotion: "A parsimonious notion of God's glory has been one result of the revulsion felt by so many over the [sometimes excessive] honor paid to Mary, as though to say, If God alone is all-glorious, then no one else is glorious at all. No exaltation may be admitted for any other creature, since this would endanger the exclusive prerogative of God. But this is to imagine a paltry court. What king surrounds himself with warped, dwarfish, worthless creatures? The more glorious the king, the more glorious are the titles and honors he bestows" (Evangelical is not Enough, p. 87).  The apostle John, who had recently seen the risen Christ in all His glory, fell down to worship at the feet of an angel (Revelation 19:10).  Is it so difficult to imagine that the Theotokos, the birth-giver-of-God, is today someone we'd be tempted to worship if we saw her as she is?  To see Mary as now full of glory, honoring the promise that "those who humble themselves will be exalted," in the end will bring glory and honor to God, as long as we follow through in our thinking and don't stop at Mary herself; there's a good reason why Orthodox icons don't portray Mary alone, but always have her with Jesus.

The Importance of Using Our Spiritual Gifts

A friend of mine had, for years, been teaching a course on spiritual gifts, when he made a startling discovery: helping people discern their gifts led them, almost without fail, to leave that church.  It wasn't a small church; I believe the Sunday morning attendance was around 800 or so, but there were very few opportunities for people to serve, apart from doing nursery duty.  I had once spoken to the senior pastor about possibly teaching Sunday School, and he had informed me that they had enough teachers and would not consider letting anyone teach adults who could not be assured of a weekly class attendance of 75-100.  My friend stopped teaching the course, then, a few months later, he and his wife left the church, even though they were founding members.  What was the point, anyway, in helping people discern their gifts if there was no way for them to exercise those gifts in the church?   

Why does this matter?  Do people somehow have a right to use their gifts in the Church?  Well, it seems more accurate to say that God calls us to exercise the gifts He gives, and that the Church, when it recognizes the presence of those gifts, has an obligation to make use of them for the good of the body.  It's not at all about self-fulfillment.  Those who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are given gifts which they are called to exercise, and the Church is called to receive and nurture these gifts.

Although the spiritual gifts we have received are for the good of the Church and the glory of God, rather than for our own sense of fulfillment, not using them tends to have a negative effect on our spiritual lives. There's a striking example of this in the life of John Wesley. Most things written about him stress his Aldersgate experience (when his heart was “strangely warmed”) as the turning point in his life, and yet eight months after this experience he was still struggling, saying “My friends affirm that I am mad because I said I was not a Christian a year ago. I affirm I am not a Christian now” (quoted by Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 196).

There’s no doubt that Wesley was unsettled by an inordinately subjective approach to conversion, but Dallimore makes this observation: “he must find some great mission in life, some field of labour large enough to call forth all his mighty powers and utilize all his energies” (p. 198). In addition to the theological weakness of his understanding at this point, Wesley was floundering because he didn’t have a sphere in which to exercise his extraordinary gifts.  The gifts we receive from the Spirit are given for the good of the Church, but not using them tends to harm us spiritually, and using them provides a context for us to grow in Christlikeness.

Since using our spiritual gifts is a necessary part of growing in grace, part of a pastor's calling is to nurture the gifts of those under his care.  Jesus did that repeatedly with His disciples, as when He sent out the Seventy then talked to them afterward about how it went.  Teaching people about spiritual gifts and then refusing to lead them in learning to exercise those gifts is an abdication of pastoral responsibility.