Count Zinzendorf was a contemporary of John and Charles Wesley. He was a German nobleman, who committed his life to the Lord and then looked for ways to use his wealth and position for the glory of God. In 1722, he took in a group of Protestant refugees who came to his estate seeking shelter. More followed, and soon his estate had turned into a thriving community. But when people from a variety of backgrounds are thrown together like this it usually leads to trouble. They started squabbling, as people often do when they try to live together, and eventually the disunity became so serious that the community itself was threatened.
And then God intervened: "... in 1727, five years after the first refugees arrived, the whole atmosphere changed. A period of spiritual renewal was climaxed at a communion service on August 13 with a great revival, which, according to participants, marked the coming of the Holy Spirit to Herrnhut. Whatever may have occurred in the spiritual realm, there is no doubt that this great night of revival brought a new passion for missions, which became the chief characteristic of the Moravian movement. No longer were minor doctrinal differences a source of contention. Instead, there was a strong spirit of unity and a heightened dependence on God. A prayer vigil was begun that continued around the clock, seven days a week, without interruption for more than one hundred years" (Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, pp. 70-71). As a result of this outpouring of the Spirit, the Moravians sent out more missionaries in twenty years than all Protestants and Anglicans had in the previous two centuries.
When we hear stories like this, if we have any concern at all about following Jesus Christ, we instinctively respond, "I wish something like that could happen here, among us." If God poured out His Spirit among us, surely we wouldn't have the kinds of struggles we have. It wouldn't be so hard to get up in the morning for prayer; or we wouldn't have to drag ourselves to church on Sunday morning; surely it would be easier to get along with one another if we had an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our midst. It's a good thing to long for more of God's presence in His Church, but there's also a problem with this way of thinking. God doesn't always choose to work in such a dramatic way. In fact, experiences like the one at Herrnhut are exceptional in the history of the Church. The truth is that God has given the Spirit to His Church; the Spirit is present among us already. God has already done something. He poured out His Spirit on the Church at Pentecost. He is already at work. So our most urgent need is not for God to do something new, although it would be wonderful if He did; the greatest need is for us to respond to what He's already done. God has given His Spirit, and He now calls us to walk in obedience, to cultivate His presence, to avoid grieving or quenching Him, to make it our aim to walk in step with Him.
When I was a young Christian, I spent lots of time praying, crying out to God asking Him to take over my life and then waiting for Him to do it, fully expecting that He would completely overcome me and begin acting through me. But nothing like that ever happened, and as I continued reading the New Testament I saw that I was looking for the wrong thing. The Holy Spirit doesn't bypass our will. My expectations were really more in line with the New Testament picture of demon possession; demons take over their victims, but God calls His people to respond to Him in loving obedience. He empowers us to keep in step with Him, but He values our personality and individuality; He doesn't want to take over our lives, He wants to empower us to become the people He created us to be.
But this doesn't happen automatically. We can grieve the Spirit by our disobedience; we can quench the Spirit by our desire to remain in control of things. And we can also neglect the Spirit by being so caught up in our lives that we don't cultivate His presence, or don't have time to exercise the gifts He's given us for the good of the whole body. Paul is aware of this danger, so he reminds Timothy: "rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands." John Chrysostom was a 4th century preacher (the name Chrysostom means "golden tongued," a name he was given because of his great ability as a speaker). Here's something he said in a sermon from this passage: "For it requires much zeal to stir up the gift of God. As fire requires fuel, so grace requires our alacrity, that it may be ever fervent.... For it is in our power to kindle or extinguish this grace.... For by sloth and carelessness it is quenched, and by watchfulness and diligence it is kept alive. For it is in you indeed, but you must render it more vehement, that is, fill it with confidence, with joy and delight" (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IX, p. 232). If we're negligent, if we're just drifting along, or if we're completely caught up in the details of life in this world, the Spirit's presence will tend to become less and less apparent; eventually we'll look no different than those in the world who know nothing of the Spirit's presence.
The first quality Paul lists, in verse 7, is power. The NIV, along with most English translations, translates spirit with a small s, which suggests that Paul is referring not to the Holy Spirit, but to general qualities: "God hasn't give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of...." They translate this way because there's no general article in the Greek, so the original reads "spirit," not "the spirit." But even so, there are good reasons for understanding this as a reference to the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the New Testament, power, love and self-discipline are qualities that we receive from the Holy Spirit. Verse 7 is closely tied to verse 6 (notice that verse 7 begins, "for God did not give us...."); and verse 6 is talking about the gift of God that Timothy had received through the laying on of Paul's hands, a clear reference to the Holy Spirit. A few verses later, in verse 14, Paul instructs Timothy to "guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us." Throughout this passage, Paul isn't thinking about a general spirit or attitude, but the Holy Spirit living within those who belong to Jesus Christ. Gordon Fee paraphrases Paul's idea in this way: "For when God gave us his Spirit, it was not timidity that we received, but power, love, and self-discipline" (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, p. 227).
Jesus' promise to the apostles, which was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost, was that they would receive power through the Holy Spirit. For example, in Luke 24: "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high" (v. 49). Or Acts 1:8: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The power of the Holy Spirit would enable them to be witnesses. Before the day of Pentecost, the disciples were huddled in fear, hiding behind locked doors because of their fear of the religious leaders. They were gripped by a "spirit of timidity." But after they received the Holy Spirit they became bold witnesses who were willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel.
That's what Paul is reminding Timothy about. He's saying, "don't be like those who profess to believe but are too timid to speak the truth." In John 12 we're told that even during Jesus' public ministry many of the Jewish authorities believed in Him, but they weren't willing to talk about it: "Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God" (vv. 42-43). The Spirit empowers us, enables us to overcome our natural timidity, our natural reluctance to be in the minority. Paul assumes that if Timothy is faithful he will suffer; in verse 8, he says "Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." He's reminding Timothy that the Spirit has been given, and that He enables us to speak faithfully and to endure suffering graciously and with patience.
But Paul isn't only talking about power. The people we associate with power in this world are often people who are willing to crush others to get what they want. They're ruthless and self-centered; they've learned to manipulate and overwhelm others in the pursuit of their goals. Paul wants Timothy to remember that the power given by the Holy Spirit is full of love. It's a power driven by the love of Jesus, who laid down His life to rescue us from our sins.
The people who wrote the New Testament had access to four different words for love, but only two are of importance to us right now. The first is philia. In English, Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love), and philosophy (the love of wisdom) are derived from this word. This is love for those who are closest to us. The natural affection that we feel for our loved ones is philia. It is also the love we feel for those who have similar interests, those we enjoy being with, our friends. This is the spontaneous love that comes from our hearts. The second word, the one Paul uses here in 2 Timothy, is agape. This is the word used of the greatest commandment, or of Jesus' new commandment when He says "love one another." This word, in Classical Greek, meant "to prefer," especially in reference to the gods preferring one person over another. It's a "love that makes distinctions, choosing its objects freely.... It is active, not self-seeking love" (TDNT, p. 7). In Classical Greek, this word was very rare. But the translators of the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, thought it was the best word available to express God's faithful love for His people.
To illustrate what His love is like, God tells the prophet Hosea: "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord" (Hosea 1:2). So Hosea obeys and marries Gomer, but awhile later we find that she has continued to be unfaithful and is no longer even living with her husband. The Lord speaks to Hosea again: "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods..." (Hosea 3:1). The Lord loves the Israelites, though they have been unfaithful to Him, though they have turned away to worship other gods. Through the prophet Isaiah, a contemporary of Hosea, God says to His unfaithful people: "‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:10).
Jesus is the supreme example of this love. Just before He went to the cross, He said to His disciples: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.... Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:9, 13). But He goes even further than this. Paul says in Romans 5: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6-8). We were powerless, helpless, ungodly, sinners; Paul goes on to say that we were God's enemies. And while we were in that condition, in the greatest act of love in history, Jesus laid down His life for us. Paul is reminding Timothy that the Spirit who empowers us enables us increasingly to model Jesus' self-giving love, even in the face of suffering.
The third quality is self-discipline. The word Paul uses here is difficult to translate. The NASB renders it as "discipline" but suggests, in the margin, "sound judgment" as an alternative. When translators offer alternatives like this, they're saying that they can't find just the right word in English. J.B. Phillips translates it as "a sound mind," and in The Message it simply reads, "sensible." Both ideas, of sound thinking and self-discipline, are suggested by the word. William Barclay gives these two descriptions: "the sanity of saintliness"; and "control of oneself in the face of panic or of passion" (The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Revised Edition, pp. 144-45). The general idea seems to be sound judgment, or sound thinking, that affects the way we order our lives in this world.
During my early Christian life I was involved with the charismatic movement. We were intensely aware of the Holy Spirit, but most of the people I worshiped with were hostile to doctrine and theology. They associated these things with the "dead letter;" what really mattered was having an experience of the Holy Spirit. This attitude was so prevalent that when I first started reading theology I struggled with feelings of guilt; I had a nagging sense, in the back of my mind, that I was doing something wrong, that I was getting off track. I'm thankful that Paul includes this word in his list of qualities that are given by the Holy Spirit. A large part of Timothy's ministry was resisting the influence of false teachers who were undermining the gospel. Paul begins his first letter to Timothy with this exhortation: "I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:3). Near the end of this chapter in 2 Timothy, Paul says, "Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us" (vv. 13-14).
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. He enables us to hold firmly to the gospel, without getting sidetracked by false teaching. He brings into our lives, not only love and power, but also sound thinking. And that sound thinking affects the way we live; it isn't just in our heads. It leads us to order our lives in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit brings into our lives "the sanity of saintliness," an understanding that leads us to become "imitators of God," as Paul says in Ephesians 5:2.
Timothy was a naturally timid person. This is clear in both of the letters Paul wrote to him. He was young, and likely to be intimidated by those who were older and more forceful. Being put into a situation where he had to resist false teachers would have been difficult for him. So Paul wants him to remember that "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a Spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." He'd been given all the resources he needed to fulfil his ministry.
But it wouldn't happen automatically. So Paul reminds him to be diligent, to "fan into flame the gift of God," this God who had given him "a Spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." How do we do that? How do we cultivate the Spirit's presence in a world that constantly undermines His influence? We deny ourselves–we say "no" to natural tendencies (not our personality, but the sloth that prevents us from stirring ourselves to obedience) – then we go on to walk under the Spirit's direction. Paul says in Galatians 5: "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." We walk in the Spirit by looking to Him, inviting Him into every area of our lives and seeking to live under His Lordship.
John Stott has a good description of how this works: "This will be seen in our whole way of life–in the leisure occupations we pursue, the books we read and the friendships we make. Above all in what older authors called ‘a diligent use of the means of grace', that is, in a disciplined practice of prayer and Scripture meditation, in fellowship with believers who provoke us to love and good works, in keeping the Lord's day as the Lord's day, and in attending public worship and the Lord's Supper. In all these ways we occupy ourselves in spiritual things. It is not enough to yield passively to the Spirit's control; we must also walk actively in the Spirit's way. Only so will the fruit of the Spirit appear" (Only One Way, p. 154). We cultivate these qualities Paul lists – power, love and self-discipline – by saying "no" to our own lethargy and timidity and by seeking to walk daily in active obedience to God's Word, trusting in His power to enable us to bear witness, in both our words and actions, to the suffering of His Son on behalf of this lost world.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Denying Ourselves to Follow Jesus, 2 Timothy 1:3-7
Several years ago, I met with a friend who wanted to learn how to grow as a disciple of Jesus. At the beginning of our time together he informed me that, although he wanted my advice, he really didn't want me recommending any books (he knew me well enough to know there was some danger of that). He said to me, "I have to read all the time at work, and by the time I get home I'm ready to do something else; so I don't want to do any reading." I agreed to this, because God deals with us differently; not everyone benefits from reading in the way I do; discipleship is a matter of learning how to follow Jesus with the personality and gifts He's given us. But as we continued talking, it seemed to me that, because of his personality and gifts and the point where he was in his Christian walk, he needed to do some reading. So, near the end of our conversation, I encouraged him to think about doing a very moderate amount of reading each week for the benefit of his spiritual life. I suggested that if he would read a page or two a day, he would be feeding his mind with something of spiritual value, and that I thought this would help him. So he did that, because he really was committed to doing everything he could to grow as a Christian. And the interesting thing is that he went way beyond what I had in mind. He started reading regularly for spiritual benefit, not because I dragged him into it, but because he tried it in a very moderate way and found it so helpful that he wanted to do more.
The point of this is not that everyone needs to enter into a program of reading, because it really is true that God has made us all differently. Not everyone will find the same benefit in a reading program that this man did. The point of the story is this: Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. It means taking ourselves in hand and saying, "it doesn't matter whether I feel like doing this or not; I'm going to do it, because God calls me to." Timothy, it seems clear, was a naturally timid person, so Paul reminds him to kindle afresh, or fan into flame, his spiritual gifts, knowing that God would enable him, by the Spirit's power, to overcome his natural timidity. But doing that would mean stirring himself, going against what was natural to his personality.
It's a good thing to be aware of our differences in temperament. I've known many people who struggled for years to have a consistent devotional life but failed again and again. The problem wasn't that they were unwilling to stir themselves to obedience; they did that. The problem was that the tools they were given didn't fit their personality, and what they needed was help in cultivating a life of prayer that was more suited to their natural temperament. They were willing to exert the necessary effort.
But we're often tempted to use our temperament as an excuse for disobedience. We say to ourselves, "I just don't have that kind of personality," and then we rationalize our lack of growth in Christian discipleship. Jesus said: "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Notice that He doesn't say, "whoever goes in for this sort of thing; any among you who have the kind of personality that enjoys laying aside your own desires and walking in the way of the cross...." He says, "if you don't follow me in the way of the cross you cannot be my disciple." This is not a matter of temperament; it's a matter of obedience. Just before He says this, Jesus tells a story about sending out a dinner invitation: "Come; for everything is ready now." But, He says, "they all alike began to make excuses" (vv. 17-18). They all had important, pressing things to do, which prevented them from responding to the call. No doubt they felt a pressing need to do the things they were doing; maybe they couldn't imagine that it was possible to lay those things aside right then. The invitation came at an inconvenient time. They had too many important things to do. But it wasn't a problem of temperament; it was a problem of disobedience, and Jesus ends the story with these words: "none of those who were invited will taste my dinner" (v. 24). Following Jesus is a matter of obedience to His call on our lives (our lives which He has bought with a price) and it always leads us to deny ourselves, to do things which go against the grain, things which we really don't feel like doing.
Timothy's great danger is not his natural timidity, but the sin of sloth. When we hear the word "sloth," we usually think of laziness, but that's really not what sloth is. Here's a definition: "The root of sloth and that which makes it sinful lies in the will. Sloth is an infectious evil that poisons the will so that there is no motivation – no passion – to act. Sloth is the cause of the self being overly protective of one's time and energy.... Sloth persuades the will to make no effort... expend no energy. Sloth says, ‘It's not worth it.' Sloth makes that which is of ultimate importance seem not worth the effort" (David Hall, The Seven Deadly Sins, p. 57). Sloth destroys our motivation to do that which is most essential. Some of the most slothful people I've known have been workaholics, because they were using work to escape from other things God wanted them to do. They weren't lazy; they were slothful. Work, for them, was the path of least resistance, and they were able to rationalize what they were doing: "work is a good thing, and after all, I have a family to support." Sloth prevents us from acting in response to God's call in our lives. We make excuses for ourselves, like the people in Jesus' story, but the truth is that the sin of sloth is destroying us. That's why sloth is one of the seven deadly sins; it undermines the work of God in our lives. God has given Timothy the resources he needs: "a Spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline" (notice that two of these are also listed as fruits of the Spirit), but sloth would prevent him from stirring himself and acting on what he knows to be true.
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew, Wormwood, advising him on how to destroy the life of God in his victim. In one of the letters, the human victim has just experienced spiritual renewal and repentance. Here's what Screwtape says about it: "The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel" (pp. 60-61). As long as he doesn't do anything, as long as he doesn't follow up on it, the "little brute" can wallow in his repentance all he likes and the demons will be pleased. As long as he doesn't act on it, his repentance is imaginary, because true repentance involves a change of direction, turning around and going the other way. Following Jesus is a matter of obedience, which always leads us to deny ourselves and walk in the way of the cross. If we don't deny ourselves and follow Jesus in concrete acts of obedience, our repentance is imaginary, and our discipleship is also imaginary.
One of Timothy's great resources in the life of faith is the gift of remembrance. Paul speaks of remembering four times in this short passage. He remembers Timothy in his prayers and is reminded of Timothy's tears the last time they parted. He is reminded of the great heritage of faith that Timothy inherited in his family, and then he reminds Timothy to stir up his spiritual gift. Paul isn't engaging here in nostalgia. He's not being sentimental; he's reminding Timothy of things that will help him stay on track.
One of the hazards in the life of discipleship is forgetfulness. We see, over and over, in the Old Testament, that Israel wanders from the path of obedience because they've forgotten all the great things God has done for them. So God raises up prophets who remind them of the truth. The prophets aren't primarily concerned with predicting the future; their primary function is to remind Israel of God's call on their lives. Peter, at the beginning of his second letter, lists several qualities that are necessary to discipleship, and then he says: "For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins" (1:9). Then he says, a few verses later, "Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you" (v. 12). Forgetfulness is a serious danger, so Peter is committed to reminding them of the things they already know. That's the primary purpose of preaching: to remind us of who we are and who God is.
But, having said all this, we need to see also that following Paul's counsel is not going to make Timothy's life easier. In all likelihood, it will lead him into more trouble. Paul isn't giving Timothy a formula for success; he's urging him to a life of faithful discipleship. This is important to remember, because I talk to many people who assume that if they follow the Lord He will protect them from trouble and suffering. They say, "well, I'm keeping my end of the bargain, so God should keep His." And then, when they encounter suffering in one form or another, they think God has let them down, that He hasn't been faithful.
At first glance, verse 7 may seem to give some support to this way of thinking: God has given us "a spirit of power...." It sounds great, doesn't it? We like the idea of having the Spirit's power in our lives. Surely that power will enable us to live successfully in this world; otherwise, what's the point of it? But it's always important to look at the context to see what the authors of Scripture are saying. Listen to what Paul says in the next verse: "Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." There's the same word, power, in the very next verse. In telling Timothy that God has given us "a spirit of power," Paul is reminding him that the faithful exercise of his gifts will very likely lead to suffering, but the power of God will enable him to bear suffering patiently, following the example of Jesus, our suffering Savior. Paul is calling Timothy to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, but he's saying, "you won't have to do this in your own strength, for God is with you and will give you the power to bear with it graciously as a disciple of Jesus Christ."
The Puritans have been unfairly caricatured in our popular culture as stern, sour moralists whose greatest worry was that someone might be having a good time. The term "Puritanical" stands for everything our society hates. But the Puritans, in reality, were people who sought to order their lives in relation to God. They were the evangelicals of their day. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. But they didn't experience overwhelming success: "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish new Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, godly people, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. We need to be careful about assuming that we can measure the work of God on our own terms. When we insist on measurable success, we settle for something less than a genuine work of God. The Puritans remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that godliness will lead to success. But they also remind us of the great value of "keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations." God is honored when we bear witness to His power in this way, because this kind of obedience – obedience in suffering – bears costly witness to Jesus Christ.
But none of this comes naturally to us. Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. And we cultivate that kind of obedience by the small choices we make every day. I encourage you to be intentional in practicing self denial in the coming week. Say no to yourself once a day in some significant way. Drag yourself out of bed a little earlier in the morning, so that you can spend some time in prayer (whether you feel like it or not). Quit working a little earlier, so you can spend some time with your family. Do someone else's work for them, as an act of service in the Lord's name, so that they can do something they want to do. Give up something you really want, as a way of freeing yourself from the bondage of things. Let go of the need to always get your own way. Drag yourself to church on Sunday morning, no matter how you feel. Turn off the TV and spend some time in prayerful meditation on Scripture. The possibilities are endless. It's in seemingly small acts of self denial that we begin to let go of our self-centeredness and cultivate the habit of stirring ourselves to do things, in Jesus' name, that go against our natural inclinations.
Or, on the other hand, it's in refusing to do these sorts of things that we demonstrate the truth of what is in our hearts. When we do that, our problem is not personality or temperament; our problem is disobedience. God knows the secrets of our hearts, and He won't be taken in by all our excuses. If you're feeling like you want to defend yourself, don't do it. God is calling you to repentance, and His call is a gift of grace and mercy. Humble yourself before Him, cry out for mercy, and ask Him for grace to begin ordering your life in sacrificial obedience. In the concrete acts of our daily lives, we are either being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ or we are being hardened in our disobedience. May He stir our hearts to follow Him in the path of discipleship: "for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."
The point of this is not that everyone needs to enter into a program of reading, because it really is true that God has made us all differently. Not everyone will find the same benefit in a reading program that this man did. The point of the story is this: Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. It means taking ourselves in hand and saying, "it doesn't matter whether I feel like doing this or not; I'm going to do it, because God calls me to." Timothy, it seems clear, was a naturally timid person, so Paul reminds him to kindle afresh, or fan into flame, his spiritual gifts, knowing that God would enable him, by the Spirit's power, to overcome his natural timidity. But doing that would mean stirring himself, going against what was natural to his personality.
It's a good thing to be aware of our differences in temperament. I've known many people who struggled for years to have a consistent devotional life but failed again and again. The problem wasn't that they were unwilling to stir themselves to obedience; they did that. The problem was that the tools they were given didn't fit their personality, and what they needed was help in cultivating a life of prayer that was more suited to their natural temperament. They were willing to exert the necessary effort.
But we're often tempted to use our temperament as an excuse for disobedience. We say to ourselves, "I just don't have that kind of personality," and then we rationalize our lack of growth in Christian discipleship. Jesus said: "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Notice that He doesn't say, "whoever goes in for this sort of thing; any among you who have the kind of personality that enjoys laying aside your own desires and walking in the way of the cross...." He says, "if you don't follow me in the way of the cross you cannot be my disciple." This is not a matter of temperament; it's a matter of obedience. Just before He says this, Jesus tells a story about sending out a dinner invitation: "Come; for everything is ready now." But, He says, "they all alike began to make excuses" (vv. 17-18). They all had important, pressing things to do, which prevented them from responding to the call. No doubt they felt a pressing need to do the things they were doing; maybe they couldn't imagine that it was possible to lay those things aside right then. The invitation came at an inconvenient time. They had too many important things to do. But it wasn't a problem of temperament; it was a problem of disobedience, and Jesus ends the story with these words: "none of those who were invited will taste my dinner" (v. 24). Following Jesus is a matter of obedience to His call on our lives (our lives which He has bought with a price) and it always leads us to deny ourselves, to do things which go against the grain, things which we really don't feel like doing.
Timothy's great danger is not his natural timidity, but the sin of sloth. When we hear the word "sloth," we usually think of laziness, but that's really not what sloth is. Here's a definition: "The root of sloth and that which makes it sinful lies in the will. Sloth is an infectious evil that poisons the will so that there is no motivation – no passion – to act. Sloth is the cause of the self being overly protective of one's time and energy.... Sloth persuades the will to make no effort... expend no energy. Sloth says, ‘It's not worth it.' Sloth makes that which is of ultimate importance seem not worth the effort" (David Hall, The Seven Deadly Sins, p. 57). Sloth destroys our motivation to do that which is most essential. Some of the most slothful people I've known have been workaholics, because they were using work to escape from other things God wanted them to do. They weren't lazy; they were slothful. Work, for them, was the path of least resistance, and they were able to rationalize what they were doing: "work is a good thing, and after all, I have a family to support." Sloth prevents us from acting in response to God's call in our lives. We make excuses for ourselves, like the people in Jesus' story, but the truth is that the sin of sloth is destroying us. That's why sloth is one of the seven deadly sins; it undermines the work of God in our lives. God has given Timothy the resources he needs: "a Spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline" (notice that two of these are also listed as fruits of the Spirit), but sloth would prevent him from stirring himself and acting on what he knows to be true.
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew, Wormwood, advising him on how to destroy the life of God in his victim. In one of the letters, the human victim has just experienced spiritual renewal and repentance. Here's what Screwtape says about it: "The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel" (pp. 60-61). As long as he doesn't do anything, as long as he doesn't follow up on it, the "little brute" can wallow in his repentance all he likes and the demons will be pleased. As long as he doesn't act on it, his repentance is imaginary, because true repentance involves a change of direction, turning around and going the other way. Following Jesus is a matter of obedience, which always leads us to deny ourselves and walk in the way of the cross. If we don't deny ourselves and follow Jesus in concrete acts of obedience, our repentance is imaginary, and our discipleship is also imaginary.
One of Timothy's great resources in the life of faith is the gift of remembrance. Paul speaks of remembering four times in this short passage. He remembers Timothy in his prayers and is reminded of Timothy's tears the last time they parted. He is reminded of the great heritage of faith that Timothy inherited in his family, and then he reminds Timothy to stir up his spiritual gift. Paul isn't engaging here in nostalgia. He's not being sentimental; he's reminding Timothy of things that will help him stay on track.
One of the hazards in the life of discipleship is forgetfulness. We see, over and over, in the Old Testament, that Israel wanders from the path of obedience because they've forgotten all the great things God has done for them. So God raises up prophets who remind them of the truth. The prophets aren't primarily concerned with predicting the future; their primary function is to remind Israel of God's call on their lives. Peter, at the beginning of his second letter, lists several qualities that are necessary to discipleship, and then he says: "For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins" (1:9). Then he says, a few verses later, "Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you" (v. 12). Forgetfulness is a serious danger, so Peter is committed to reminding them of the things they already know. That's the primary purpose of preaching: to remind us of who we are and who God is.
But, having said all this, we need to see also that following Paul's counsel is not going to make Timothy's life easier. In all likelihood, it will lead him into more trouble. Paul isn't giving Timothy a formula for success; he's urging him to a life of faithful discipleship. This is important to remember, because I talk to many people who assume that if they follow the Lord He will protect them from trouble and suffering. They say, "well, I'm keeping my end of the bargain, so God should keep His." And then, when they encounter suffering in one form or another, they think God has let them down, that He hasn't been faithful.
At first glance, verse 7 may seem to give some support to this way of thinking: God has given us "a spirit of power...." It sounds great, doesn't it? We like the idea of having the Spirit's power in our lives. Surely that power will enable us to live successfully in this world; otherwise, what's the point of it? But it's always important to look at the context to see what the authors of Scripture are saying. Listen to what Paul says in the next verse: "Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." There's the same word, power, in the very next verse. In telling Timothy that God has given us "a spirit of power," Paul is reminding him that the faithful exercise of his gifts will very likely lead to suffering, but the power of God will enable him to bear suffering patiently, following the example of Jesus, our suffering Savior. Paul is calling Timothy to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, but he's saying, "you won't have to do this in your own strength, for God is with you and will give you the power to bear with it graciously as a disciple of Jesus Christ."
The Puritans have been unfairly caricatured in our popular culture as stern, sour moralists whose greatest worry was that someone might be having a good time. The term "Puritanical" stands for everything our society hates. But the Puritans, in reality, were people who sought to order their lives in relation to God. They were the evangelicals of their day. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. But they didn't experience overwhelming success: "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish new Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, godly people, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. We need to be careful about assuming that we can measure the work of God on our own terms. When we insist on measurable success, we settle for something less than a genuine work of God. The Puritans remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that godliness will lead to success. But they also remind us of the great value of "keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations." God is honored when we bear witness to His power in this way, because this kind of obedience – obedience in suffering – bears costly witness to Jesus Christ.
But none of this comes naturally to us. Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. And we cultivate that kind of obedience by the small choices we make every day. I encourage you to be intentional in practicing self denial in the coming week. Say no to yourself once a day in some significant way. Drag yourself out of bed a little earlier in the morning, so that you can spend some time in prayer (whether you feel like it or not). Quit working a little earlier, so you can spend some time with your family. Do someone else's work for them, as an act of service in the Lord's name, so that they can do something they want to do. Give up something you really want, as a way of freeing yourself from the bondage of things. Let go of the need to always get your own way. Drag yourself to church on Sunday morning, no matter how you feel. Turn off the TV and spend some time in prayerful meditation on Scripture. The possibilities are endless. It's in seemingly small acts of self denial that we begin to let go of our self-centeredness and cultivate the habit of stirring ourselves to do things, in Jesus' name, that go against our natural inclinations.
Or, on the other hand, it's in refusing to do these sorts of things that we demonstrate the truth of what is in our hearts. When we do that, our problem is not personality or temperament; our problem is disobedience. God knows the secrets of our hearts, and He won't be taken in by all our excuses. If you're feeling like you want to defend yourself, don't do it. God is calling you to repentance, and His call is a gift of grace and mercy. Humble yourself before Him, cry out for mercy, and ask Him for grace to begin ordering your life in sacrificial obedience. In the concrete acts of our daily lives, we are either being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ or we are being hardened in our disobedience. May He stir our hearts to follow Him in the path of discipleship: "for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Gospel of Life, 2 Timothy 1:1-2
Note: I began a sermon series on 2 Timothy in 2005, shortly before I left Perkiomen Valley Brethren in Christ Church. I never finished the series but have recently begun studying it again, because of my interest in the book. Over the next several weeks I will be revising and posting the sermons I preached in 2005 and then will be writing and posting new ones (which I probably won't be preaching at any time in the near future). This is the first sermon in the series.
Awhile back I began praying through this letter. I use a four-step process in praying scripture, which slows me down and helps me stay with a passage long enough to let it sink into my heart. The first step, after praying and committing the time to the Lord, is to read the passage out loud, very slowly, several times. The object is not to get through the material, but to listen attentively to each word, so I go very slowly (which means I can't skip over these words of greeting). As I read slowly, over and over, I move naturally to the next step, which is meditation. I begin to see connections with other things that are said in Scripture; I start to see connections with my own life, things that God is calling me to do or reminding me about. This leads to the next step, which is prayer, and I begin praying in response to the things I'm seeing in the passage. I may, at this point, only be two or three words into the passage, but I continue praying until I've finished responding to what I've heard so far, then I move on, reading, meditating and praying in response to the Word, for the rest of the time I've set aside. And then, at the end, I'll read slowly through the whole section I've read and then sit silently in God's presence, being attentive to Him. So the four steps are 1) read, 2) meditate, 3) respond in prayer, 4) contemplate, sit silently and attentively in God's presence in the light of what you've heard. I recommend this to you as a way of allowing the words of Scripture to sink more deeply into your hearts. Today I'm going to point out some of the things I noticed as I was praying through these verses. I'll go through them phrase by phrase, they way I encounter them when I'm praying a passage of Scripture, as an illustration of how the process works.
First, Paul begins by identifying himself as "an apostle." An apostle is someone who's sent out as a representative. The word means, literally, "one who is sent out," and the stress is on the sender, not the messenger. Paul isn't speaking in his own name; he's speaking in the name of the One who sent him. Right away, we see that Paul, one of the truly great intellects of the ancient world, has been humbled. As an apostle, he has authority in the Church, but that authority has strict limits. He has no authority whatsoever to enforce his own will. He has authority only as a servant of Jesus Christ, an apostle by the will of God. Earlier in his life, Saul the Pharisee had chosen his own career. He'd been well-trained under the famous teacher Gamaliel, and he tells the Galatians "I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors" (1:14). But he'd made a mess of things. In his zeal he had tried to destroy the Church and had found himself fighting against God, the One he thought he was serving. Humanly speaking, he was a great success, but he was succeeding at the wrong thing; he was going in the wrong direction. Paul, who years before had been a gifted, promising young Pharisee, has been humbled. He no longer speaks in his own name; he's an apostle by the will of God.
But he goes on to say what his apostolate is about: he's an apostle "for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." One way of looking at Scripture is to see it as the story of the fulfillment of God's promise. That promise was made, initially, right after Adam's fall into sin, when God said to the serpent, who had deceived Eve: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15). The promise is given more clearly to Abraham, when God tells him "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). And then, throughout the rest of Scripture, the promise is developed and restated until it's fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the end of the book of Revelation, we're given a glimpse of the final completion of God's promise of life in the new heavens and new earth. That's what Scripture is primarily about. It's not an instruction manual for living a successful life, although there is much wisdom in the Bible that can help us in learning to order our lives in obedience to God. But Scripture is primarily about the fulfillment of God's promise of life.
Paul's apostleship is rooted in this promise. In his earlier life, he had thought he was being faithful to the traditions of his ancestors. But when he became a Christian, when he saw Jesus face to face, he didn't throw away this connection with the past. He didn't say, "I can see that the whole problem is that I've been following traditions instead of cultivating a relationship." Paul, over and over again, stresses that his hope is rooted in God's promise to Israel. He tells the Jews in Rome: "it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain" (Acts 28:20). Paul's problem wasn't that he was trying to be faithful to the traditions of his ancestors. His problem was that he didn't understand what those traditions meant. He didn't understand that God's promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, that it was all meant, from the very beginning, to prepare the way for Jesus.
And that promise is "the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." The gospel is a message of life, not only of forgiveness. In contemporary Evangelicalism, we tend to focus primarily on the problem of guilt; because sin has made us guilty, our great need is to be forgiven. And this is part of the gospel. But it's not the only part. The gospel is not only a message of forgiveness. Through Adam, death came into the world. We live our lives in this world under the shadow of death. But Jesus has tasted death for us and is now risen from the dead, triumphant over the powers of death. We are united with Him in His risen life. The gospel is a message, not only of forgiveness, but of life. That's why I dislike so much the slogan, "Christians Aren't Perfect; Just Forgiven." It's certainly true that Christians are not perfect, but it is not true that Christians are "only forgiven." Christians share in the risen life of Christ; we've inherited the promise of life.
But we have life only "in Christ Jesus," not apart from Him. It's only in coming to Him, and remaining in Him, that we have life. He is the source of our life. Paul calls Him "Christ": the anointed, chosen One of God, who fulfills all the promises of the Old Testament. All the promises point toward Him, and everything now either looks back on what He did in the past or forward to what He is going to do in the future. But He's not only Christ; He's "Christ Jesus." The promise of life is fulfilled in this particular man, the Son of the Virgin Mary, who grew up in Nazareth, worked for most of his adult life as a carpenter, ministered publicly for three years in first-century Palestine, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and then rose from the dead on the third day.
All this is contained in Paul's identification as an apostle. Paul's life is no longer his own. He's like John the Baptist, who said: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). He had been a very successful Pharisee, but then he had seen Jesus face to face. Now he identifies himself as "an apostle," one sent out as a representative, carrying out a ministry not of his own choosing, but "by the will of God," and without any message of his own, but "according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." Paul lost his life in the gospel pattern that Jesus laid down: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). In losing his old life, he entered into eternal life: "and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).
Next, Paul identifies Timothy as "my dear (or beloved) son." Paul's love for Timothy is obvious in this letter. But I wonder what Paul would have thought of Timothy before, when he was still Saul of Tarsus, the strict Pharisee. After all, Timothy hadn't even been circumcised when Paul first met him. Paul was a dogmatic, fanatical Pharisee, and Timothy's father was a Greek. I doubt that Saul of Tarsus would have found anything at all in common with someone like Timothy. But the gospel of life reconciles people who are alienated from each other. Death separates us from God, from one another, and even from ourselves. But the gospel, the promise of life in Christ Jesus, restores us into relationship.
God has revealed Himself in Scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons in One God. God exists eternally in relationship. Personal relationship is in the very fabric of creation. We don't live in an impersonal universe, we live in a creation that breathes the personal life of its Creator, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not only important as a theological truth; it's important for knowing how we live our lives in this world. We were created in God's image, and part of what this means is that we were created to live in relationship.
Paul's conversion led to much rejection. His former friends and associates hated him and even sought to kill him. He experienced much loneliness as an apostle. But that's only part of the story. His alienation from the world of death was directly connected with his entrance into the kingdom of life. In the Church, he was given a family. In the Church of Jesus Christ, as people in fellowship with the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we begin the life of the future kingdom of God while we're still here in this world. We enter into relationships which will continue for ever. Because of the "promise of life in Christ Jesus," Paul is able to address Timothy as "my dear son."
And then, in the second half of verse 2, Paul pronounces a blessing: "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." The source of the blessing is "God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." In the gospel, God becomes our Father. For some people, I know this isn't a welcome idea because their worst nightmare would be to discover that God is like their earthly father. Those who've grown up with abusive, small-minded, mean-spirited, or emotionally distant fathers naturally struggle with this idea of God as our Father. The best way to approach this is to understand that God is everything fathers were intended to be; He is the model of perfect Fatherhood. When we see abusive fathers, we know there's something desperately wrong; they're violating their calling, misusing their God-given authority and privileges for their own advantage. We see that and we instinctively recoil from it. For a father to abuse his position is desperately wicked, because he's not only harming his children; he's also defacing the image of God. We need to acknowledge that for what it is and then go on to cultivate the knowledge that God is everything we wish our fathers had been and infinitely more – because even the best fathers fall short. He is, to absolute perfection, our Father. If you want a picture of how He treats His children, look at Jesus in the gospels, because He is the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1). And Christ, His perfect Son, becomes our Lord. In submission to His lordship, in laying down our lives at His feet, we experience His blessing: "whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."
Paul sums up this blessing with three words: "grace, mercy, and peace." The word translated "grace" is often translated as "gift." The promise of God comes to us in the form of a gift, which both gives us access into God's presence and begins the process of healing the effects of our lostness. Grace brings us into God's favor and begins transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ. Paul says, in Romans 5, that we are standing in grace. Our whole relationship with God is permeated by a sense of givenness; the promise of life comes to us in the form of a gift which sets us free to become the kind of people God created us to be.
Mercy is being given the opposite of what we deserve. We are guilty, because of sin, but God has shown us mercy in Christ. God has shown us mercy, and He continues to show mercy. Paul is saying to Timothy, "may you continue to experience, in abundance, the mercy of God." And because we've experienced grace and mercy, we're no longer estranged from God. We're at peace with Him. That's the point Paul makes at the beginning of Romans 5: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." He's not talking here about a feeling of peace, but the reality of being at peace with God, no longer being at war with Him. Then, because we are at peace with Him, we are able to experience inner peace, the "peace that passes understanding" (Philippians 4). Our relationship with God has been healed by the promise of grace and mercy, and we are now at peace with Him.
All this – Paul's conversion and apostleship, the relation between Paul and Timothy which causes this to be the most warmly personal of all Paul's letters, and the possibility of a life characterized by grace, mercy and peace – all of this is rooted in the "promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." The gospel is not a cheap ticket to heaven. The gospel is a message of life that puts us on the path to becoming the kind of people God created us to be. In the gospel, we are incorporated into the life of the Holy Trinity, we are restored in our ability to live in relationship with one another. We begin the life which will reach its fulfillment in the new heaven and new earth. We don't experience it in its fulness here, but what we experience in the "grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord" is the life of eternity: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." May God enable us to hunger and thirst for more of this life and to live in the light of that day when we will see Him as He is, He who is the fulfillment of all our deepest longings.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Mark 15:33-39
Palm Sunday
Shiloh Lutheran Church
I used to backpack with some friends in a place called Hoover Wilderness Area, just outside the northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. To get there from northern California, we had to drive to Nevada then enter from the eastern side of the Sierra mountains. The elevation when we started hiking was about 8,000 feet or so, and the trail climbed steadily to Virginia Pass, at 10,500 feet. It was a tough way to begin the trip. We lived at sea level and weren't used to the altitude, and as we got closer to the pass, there were always several disappointments. We'd see a point up ahead that we thought was the top, so we'd push ourselves to get there, only to look up at another high point a seemingly impossible distance away. Climbing mountain passes is like that; you can never be sure where the top is until you actually arrive, and along the way there will be times when you think you're nearly there, only to discover that there's more climbing to do.
Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. If we were reading about this event for the first time, we might think that this is the "peak." Everything seems to be falling into place. The people have finally "gotten it." There have been some difficulties, but now they've recognized Jesus for who He is and are welcoming Him as their King, the promised Messiah. If we were there, watching Jesus enter Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, we would be likely to conclude "the kingdom is about to begin. Everything we've been waiting for is happening." Even the Pharisees are thinking this way, although they aren't happy about it. When they see the crowds at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem they cry out to one another, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him."
But in John's gospel this high point in Jesus' popularity is preceded immediately by His anointing for burial (chapter 12). Jesus knows what is coming as He enters Jerusalem. He isn't taken in by all the excitement. He knows that things are going to turn around very quickly. He enters Jerusalem at the beginning of the week in triumph, being welcomed as the King; but by the end of the week He is being taken outside the city and crucified as a common criminal. The cry on Palm Sunday is "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." But the cry on Good Friday is "Away with Him; crucify Him." The joyful welcome of Palm Sunday is followed very soon by the profound alienation and rejection of Good Friday. That's why Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday. The triumph of Palm Sunday is followed, in only a few days, by the Passion.
I've mentioned, in the past, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has no obvious connection to its title. Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, are on a motorcycle trip across America, and in the context of telling the story of their journey, Pirsig engages in philosophical reflections. As they ride through the sparsely-populated Western states, he comments on loneliness: "It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much. The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...." (pp. 321-22). We saw something similar on the ship Logos when we arrived in southern France. A missionary who lived there came and told us that one of the most pressing problems was loneliness, people living in apartment complexes who never spoke to their neighbors. They were surrounded on all sides by lonely people who had no connection with one another. It's psychic distance, a sense of alienation, that leads to loneliness.
There's a reason for this sense of alienation. Listen to Paul's description of the Ephesians before they heard the gospel: "remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12). Their basic spiritual condition was alienation: "without Christ," "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," "strangers to the covenants of promise." Outsiders, people who don't belong. And, even worse, "having no hope and without God in the world." Their basic spiritual condition was alienation, he says. That's what the Fall has brought into this world: because of sin we're alienated, separated from the purpose of our existence. And Jesus, on the cross, has entered into our alienation. He's become one with us in our experience as people who have no hope, who are without God in the world. That's what this cry of dereliction, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is about. Jesus is experiencing the full force of the alienation that is ours in this fallen world.
For Lent, a few years ago, I read Richard John Neuhaus's meditations on the last words of Jesus from the cross, Death on a Friday Afternoon. Neuhaus says that we see the truth about our lives by looking at Christ: "The ancient Christian fathers spoke of the Christ event as the ‘recapitulation' of the entire human drama. In this one life, all lives are summed up; in the eternal present of this one life, the past is encompassed, the future is anticipated and the life of Everyman and Everywoman is most truly lived. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,' he said. Not a way among other ways, not a truth among other truths, not a life among other lives, but the way of all ways, the truth of all truths and the life of all lives. Recapitulation. It means, quite simply and solemnly, that this is your life, this is my life and we have not come to our senses until we see ourselves in the life, and death, of Christ" (pp. 4-5). If we want to understand, and come to terms with, the alienation we feel living in this world, the place to begin is by looking at Jesus on the cross, crying out, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In this cry of dereliction we see the truth about ourselves; by nature we are aliens and strangers, people who don't belong, without hope and without God in the world.
First, let's talk about what Jesus is experiencing. This subject is shrouded in mystery. We can't comprehend what it meant, in psychological terms, for Him to be both fully divine and fully human at the same time. We can't grasp what it meant for Him, as the perfect Son of God, to enter into our lostness. But we can at least say this: on the cross, Jesus is overwhelmed by darkness. The darkness that covers the land from the sixth till the ninth hour corresponds to the condition of His heart. He's experiencing profound spiritual darkness, a "darkness that can be felt."
Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and writer, has a wonderful series of meditations for the days of Lent. If you're looking for something to use during this season next year, I recommend it. It's entitled Reliving the Passion. He has a great description of what is happening to Jesus on the cross: "It is against him that heaven has been shut.... He has entered the absolute void. Between the Father and the Son now exists a gulf of impassable width and substance.... This is a mystery, that Christ can be the obedient, glorious love of God and the full measure of our disobedience, both at once. But right now this mystery is also a fact. And the fact must seem to last forever. Hell's horror is that it lasts forever. And this, precisely, is the bitterest drop in the cup: that, crying down eternity unheard, separated absolutely from God – from the God he cannot help but love even still – Jesus is in Hell. The darkness that covers Jerusalem from noon to the middle of the afternoon, is no less than the damnation of the Messiah, who wails and gnashes his teeth in an utter solitude from now (so it must seem) unto eternity. Hell is eternal. And he has descended into Hell" (p. 126). Jesus, at this moment on the cross, is in utter darkness; He's experiencing complete alienation from the Father. He's tasting, in full measure, the experience of being "without hope and without God in this world." He has, in the words of the creed, "descended into Hell."
Second, notice how Jesus responds. He's experiencing profound alienation; His whole being is enveloped in darkness. How does He respond to this experience? He prays; He cries out to the Father, who's withdrawn His presence. But there's more than this. He prays with words from the Psalms. The beginning of Psalm 22 becomes a vehicle for crying out in the darkness. Have you ever wondered why Jesus puts these words into the form of a question? He knew this was coming. He told the disciples ahead of time that this was going to happen, and in the garden He surrendered to the will of the Father, saying "not my will, but yours, be done." And now He says "why have you forsaken me?" The words are in the form of a question because He's taking them directly from the psalm. He's spent His life praying the psalms as part of the synagogue worship, and now that He's in darkness He uses these words that perfectly express the cry of His heart.
Several years ago I visited a man in the hospital. He'd been afflicted with one health problem after another and was at the end of his rope. He said to me, "I just don't know what to pray any more." Every time he tried to pray, he found that he didn't have anything to say; he didn't have words to express the cry of his heart. He was experiencing darkness and confusion. So I recommended praying the psalms, and he responded with disgust, "I thought we were supposed to pray from the heart." I answered, "pray these from your heart; they'll give voice to some of the things you don't know how to say." The psalmists cry out to God from the whole range of human experience, and by praying the Psalms we train ourselves in a language for prayer. Jesus' example here encourages us in the regular practice of praying the Psalms. In His time of greatest need the words were there on His lips, because He had been praying these things all His life. Pray the Psalms regularly, but especially pray them when you're going through times of darkness. They'll help you say things in God's presence that you otherwise wouldn't know how to say, or maybe wouldn't even have the courage to say.
The third thing to notice is the outcome. In verse 37, Mark says that Jesus "gave a loud cry and breathed his last." He doesn't say what that cry was. Luke tells us that Jesus used another prayer from the Psalms: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46, quoting Psalm 31:5), and in John's gospel Jesus cries out: "It is finished" (John 19:30). Jesus has finished the work the Father has given Him to do, so He lays down His life and breathes His last. And then, because He's finished the work the Father gave Him to do, Mark says: "And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom" (v. 38). The function of that curtain was to limit access into God's presence. The only person allowed behind that curtain was the high priest, and even he was only allowed there once a year. It was a very graphic symbol of our alienation. The tearing of the curtain tells us that the way into God's presence has been opened. The barrier that stood between ourselves and God, keeping us out of His presence, has been removed.
Jesus tasted all the horror of the world's alienation from the presence of God, and by experiencing our alienation He's opened the way for us to be dis-alienated. He's opened the way for us to be reconnected with God and with the purpose of our creation. Earlier in the sermon I quoted from Ephesians 2:12, where Paul says that our condition was that of aliens and strangers, "without hope and without God." In the very next verse, he says: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13). In Christ we've been brought near. One of John Michael Talbot's early songs has the line, "No longer strangers; no longer aliens; now we are citizens with the saints in the kingdom of God." He entered into our darkness, so that we who were far away from God, cut off from His presence, could draw near to Him in confidence that He will accept us willingly. We're not strangers and aliens any longer.
That's what we're celebrating during this Lenten season, and it comes into the clearest focus in the events of the coming week. Spend some time this week meditating on the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. We're headed toward Easter and the Resurrection, but let's not rush ahead. We haven't yet reached the peak. By reflecting on the events of Holy Week, we're able to enter more deeply into the joy and wonder of Easter Sunday. We're able to come home into God's presence because of what Jesus did on Good Friday; He entered and endured the full weight of our darkness and lostness. Because Jesus hung on the cross, crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we're able to enter freely into the Holy of Holies, as the author of Hebrews reminds us: "And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God's people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water" (Hebrews 10:19-22, NLT). Since the barrier has been taken away, let's come boldly and confidently into God's presence, knowing that He will receive us willingly. Whatever we may feel at any given moment, the truth is that in Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens; in Christ we are citizens of God's kingdom.
Palm Sunday
Shiloh Lutheran Church
I used to backpack with some friends in a place called Hoover Wilderness Area, just outside the northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. To get there from northern California, we had to drive to Nevada then enter from the eastern side of the Sierra mountains. The elevation when we started hiking was about 8,000 feet or so, and the trail climbed steadily to Virginia Pass, at 10,500 feet. It was a tough way to begin the trip. We lived at sea level and weren't used to the altitude, and as we got closer to the pass, there were always several disappointments. We'd see a point up ahead that we thought was the top, so we'd push ourselves to get there, only to look up at another high point a seemingly impossible distance away. Climbing mountain passes is like that; you can never be sure where the top is until you actually arrive, and along the way there will be times when you think you're nearly there, only to discover that there's more climbing to do.
Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. If we were reading about this event for the first time, we might think that this is the "peak." Everything seems to be falling into place. The people have finally "gotten it." There have been some difficulties, but now they've recognized Jesus for who He is and are welcoming Him as their King, the promised Messiah. If we were there, watching Jesus enter Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, we would be likely to conclude "the kingdom is about to begin. Everything we've been waiting for is happening." Even the Pharisees are thinking this way, although they aren't happy about it. When they see the crowds at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem they cry out to one another, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him."
But in John's gospel this high point in Jesus' popularity is preceded immediately by His anointing for burial (chapter 12). Jesus knows what is coming as He enters Jerusalem. He isn't taken in by all the excitement. He knows that things are going to turn around very quickly. He enters Jerusalem at the beginning of the week in triumph, being welcomed as the King; but by the end of the week He is being taken outside the city and crucified as a common criminal. The cry on Palm Sunday is "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." But the cry on Good Friday is "Away with Him; crucify Him." The joyful welcome of Palm Sunday is followed very soon by the profound alienation and rejection of Good Friday. That's why Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday. The triumph of Palm Sunday is followed, in only a few days, by the Passion.
I've mentioned, in the past, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has no obvious connection to its title. Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, are on a motorcycle trip across America, and in the context of telling the story of their journey, Pirsig engages in philosophical reflections. As they ride through the sparsely-populated Western states, he comments on loneliness: "It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much. The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...." (pp. 321-22). We saw something similar on the ship Logos when we arrived in southern France. A missionary who lived there came and told us that one of the most pressing problems was loneliness, people living in apartment complexes who never spoke to their neighbors. They were surrounded on all sides by lonely people who had no connection with one another. It's psychic distance, a sense of alienation, that leads to loneliness.
There's a reason for this sense of alienation. Listen to Paul's description of the Ephesians before they heard the gospel: "remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12). Their basic spiritual condition was alienation: "without Christ," "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," "strangers to the covenants of promise." Outsiders, people who don't belong. And, even worse, "having no hope and without God in the world." Their basic spiritual condition was alienation, he says. That's what the Fall has brought into this world: because of sin we're alienated, separated from the purpose of our existence. And Jesus, on the cross, has entered into our alienation. He's become one with us in our experience as people who have no hope, who are without God in the world. That's what this cry of dereliction, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is about. Jesus is experiencing the full force of the alienation that is ours in this fallen world.
For Lent, a few years ago, I read Richard John Neuhaus's meditations on the last words of Jesus from the cross, Death on a Friday Afternoon. Neuhaus says that we see the truth about our lives by looking at Christ: "The ancient Christian fathers spoke of the Christ event as the ‘recapitulation' of the entire human drama. In this one life, all lives are summed up; in the eternal present of this one life, the past is encompassed, the future is anticipated and the life of Everyman and Everywoman is most truly lived. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,' he said. Not a way among other ways, not a truth among other truths, not a life among other lives, but the way of all ways, the truth of all truths and the life of all lives. Recapitulation. It means, quite simply and solemnly, that this is your life, this is my life and we have not come to our senses until we see ourselves in the life, and death, of Christ" (pp. 4-5). If we want to understand, and come to terms with, the alienation we feel living in this world, the place to begin is by looking at Jesus on the cross, crying out, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In this cry of dereliction we see the truth about ourselves; by nature we are aliens and strangers, people who don't belong, without hope and without God in the world.
First, let's talk about what Jesus is experiencing. This subject is shrouded in mystery. We can't comprehend what it meant, in psychological terms, for Him to be both fully divine and fully human at the same time. We can't grasp what it meant for Him, as the perfect Son of God, to enter into our lostness. But we can at least say this: on the cross, Jesus is overwhelmed by darkness. The darkness that covers the land from the sixth till the ninth hour corresponds to the condition of His heart. He's experiencing profound spiritual darkness, a "darkness that can be felt."
Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and writer, has a wonderful series of meditations for the days of Lent. If you're looking for something to use during this season next year, I recommend it. It's entitled Reliving the Passion. He has a great description of what is happening to Jesus on the cross: "It is against him that heaven has been shut.... He has entered the absolute void. Between the Father and the Son now exists a gulf of impassable width and substance.... This is a mystery, that Christ can be the obedient, glorious love of God and the full measure of our disobedience, both at once. But right now this mystery is also a fact. And the fact must seem to last forever. Hell's horror is that it lasts forever. And this, precisely, is the bitterest drop in the cup: that, crying down eternity unheard, separated absolutely from God – from the God he cannot help but love even still – Jesus is in Hell. The darkness that covers Jerusalem from noon to the middle of the afternoon, is no less than the damnation of the Messiah, who wails and gnashes his teeth in an utter solitude from now (so it must seem) unto eternity. Hell is eternal. And he has descended into Hell" (p. 126). Jesus, at this moment on the cross, is in utter darkness; He's experiencing complete alienation from the Father. He's tasting, in full measure, the experience of being "without hope and without God in this world." He has, in the words of the creed, "descended into Hell."
Second, notice how Jesus responds. He's experiencing profound alienation; His whole being is enveloped in darkness. How does He respond to this experience? He prays; He cries out to the Father, who's withdrawn His presence. But there's more than this. He prays with words from the Psalms. The beginning of Psalm 22 becomes a vehicle for crying out in the darkness. Have you ever wondered why Jesus puts these words into the form of a question? He knew this was coming. He told the disciples ahead of time that this was going to happen, and in the garden He surrendered to the will of the Father, saying "not my will, but yours, be done." And now He says "why have you forsaken me?" The words are in the form of a question because He's taking them directly from the psalm. He's spent His life praying the psalms as part of the synagogue worship, and now that He's in darkness He uses these words that perfectly express the cry of His heart.
Several years ago I visited a man in the hospital. He'd been afflicted with one health problem after another and was at the end of his rope. He said to me, "I just don't know what to pray any more." Every time he tried to pray, he found that he didn't have anything to say; he didn't have words to express the cry of his heart. He was experiencing darkness and confusion. So I recommended praying the psalms, and he responded with disgust, "I thought we were supposed to pray from the heart." I answered, "pray these from your heart; they'll give voice to some of the things you don't know how to say." The psalmists cry out to God from the whole range of human experience, and by praying the Psalms we train ourselves in a language for prayer. Jesus' example here encourages us in the regular practice of praying the Psalms. In His time of greatest need the words were there on His lips, because He had been praying these things all His life. Pray the Psalms regularly, but especially pray them when you're going through times of darkness. They'll help you say things in God's presence that you otherwise wouldn't know how to say, or maybe wouldn't even have the courage to say.
The third thing to notice is the outcome. In verse 37, Mark says that Jesus "gave a loud cry and breathed his last." He doesn't say what that cry was. Luke tells us that Jesus used another prayer from the Psalms: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46, quoting Psalm 31:5), and in John's gospel Jesus cries out: "It is finished" (John 19:30). Jesus has finished the work the Father has given Him to do, so He lays down His life and breathes His last. And then, because He's finished the work the Father gave Him to do, Mark says: "And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom" (v. 38). The function of that curtain was to limit access into God's presence. The only person allowed behind that curtain was the high priest, and even he was only allowed there once a year. It was a very graphic symbol of our alienation. The tearing of the curtain tells us that the way into God's presence has been opened. The barrier that stood between ourselves and God, keeping us out of His presence, has been removed.
Jesus tasted all the horror of the world's alienation from the presence of God, and by experiencing our alienation He's opened the way for us to be dis-alienated. He's opened the way for us to be reconnected with God and with the purpose of our creation. Earlier in the sermon I quoted from Ephesians 2:12, where Paul says that our condition was that of aliens and strangers, "without hope and without God." In the very next verse, he says: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13). In Christ we've been brought near. One of John Michael Talbot's early songs has the line, "No longer strangers; no longer aliens; now we are citizens with the saints in the kingdom of God." He entered into our darkness, so that we who were far away from God, cut off from His presence, could draw near to Him in confidence that He will accept us willingly. We're not strangers and aliens any longer.
That's what we're celebrating during this Lenten season, and it comes into the clearest focus in the events of the coming week. Spend some time this week meditating on the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. We're headed toward Easter and the Resurrection, but let's not rush ahead. We haven't yet reached the peak. By reflecting on the events of Holy Week, we're able to enter more deeply into the joy and wonder of Easter Sunday. We're able to come home into God's presence because of what Jesus did on Good Friday; He entered and endured the full weight of our darkness and lostness. Because Jesus hung on the cross, crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we're able to enter freely into the Holy of Holies, as the author of Hebrews reminds us: "And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God's people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water" (Hebrews 10:19-22, NLT). Since the barrier has been taken away, let's come boldly and confidently into God's presence, knowing that He will receive us willingly. Whatever we may feel at any given moment, the truth is that in Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens; in Christ we are citizens of God's kingdom.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Power of Jesus' Word
The Power of Jesus' Word
Mark 1:21-28
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Shiloh Lutheran Church
About 20 years ago, when I was working in the continuing education department of a mission organization, I had a disagreement with my boss (anyone who's known me for any length of time probably won't be surprised at that). I had been telling pastors on the field that they should be spending 15-20 hours weekly in sermon-related work, and he said to me, "they have no business spending that much time on preaching. They should be out with their people!" I suggested that they wouldn't have much to offer on Sunday morning if they weren't spending time studying and meditating on God's Word, but his solution was for them to buy sermons in the mail. If they bought their sermons and did some revisions during the week, they'd be able to spend time with their people rather than hiding away in their studies.
Contemporary America is obsessed with the need for activity. Our response to every problem is that we need to do something. I was once talking with a friend about a book I'd read, and when he criticized the author's suggestions, I responded, "but we need to do something." The problem, of course, is that doing something isn't the same as doing the right thing, and my friend's observations about that particular book were right. Simply doing something, while it might make us feel better, won't necessarily accomplish anything. It may even make things worse, and the only benefit is that it soothes our conscience. We may not be doing anything useful, but at least we're doing something.
What is the benefit of preaching God's Word? Is it worth the investment of our time? Couldn't we accomplish more by getting involved in politics or working for social change? I was struck once, at a ministerium meeting, to observe that none of the pastors in the group believed in preaching the Word. They were excited to be getting their parishioners to volunteer in soup kitchens or involved in political causes, because these were things that really mattered and made a difference in the world. They believed in doing something; preaching doesn't really accomplish anything; what's needed is more action.
It's true that we have a tendency to speak without acting, that our words are often empty. We speak without knowing what we're talking about, or we don't have either the power or the will to act on our words. But Jesus' speech is different than ours. He doesn't make empty claims; He doesn't make promises that He's unable to fulfil. Jesus speaks with authority as the Incarnate Son of God, the One who said, after His resurrection, that He possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. When He speaks He is not just conveying information. He is not speaking empty words. His Word is powerful and active.
Notice, in this passage, that Jesus' main focus is on His teaching. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath and teaches. Why does He teach? Because the people need to know the truth. They are in bondage to error, to falsehood, and they need to be set free. And the thing that will set them free is the truth: "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). Because they are in bondage to error, there are things they need to know, things they need to understand, so Jesus focuses on teaching them.
In my charismatic days, my friends and I used to listen to sermons by a man named R.W. Shambach. He was a very dynamic and entertaining speaker, and he often criticized modern churches because miracles weren't taking place in most services. His tent campaigns were called "Shambach's Miracle Revivals," and miraculous gifts, especially healing, were at the very center of his ministry. I've hardly thought about him in the past 35 years, but as I was studying this passage last week I remembered him and discovered, on the Internet, that he had just died two days before. He was an interesting character, but in at least one area he was out of step with Jesus: for Jesus, miracles were not the main thing. He didn't make a big deal out of them and He didn't criticize the Pharisees and Sadducees for not working miracles. He confronted them with their self-righteousness and hypocrisy, but not because they weren't faith healers or exorcists. He concentrated on teaching; His teaching was the central thing. He worked miracles throughout His ministry, but they were always done in support of His teaching.
The second thing to notice is that the immediate result of Jesus' teaching is conflict with evil forces: "Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out...." (V. 23). When Jesus teaches, He's not just passing on information. His teaching is a threat to the evil forces in this world. These forces keep people in bondage through error, so His teaching calls them into question and threatens their very existence. The spirit cries out, "What do you want with us?.... Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are!" This last thing, "I know who you are," may be intended as a threat, since knowing a person's name in the ancient world implied having power over that person. It may be, but in any case it didn't work. Jesus commanded the spirit to come out of the man, and the spirit obeyed. Jesus' teaching was a threat, and not only a threat; it was the beginning of the end for the spiritual forces that were keeping people in bondage through lies and false teaching.
Two years ago I took a course in Lutheran confessions and was startled to learn that nearly everyone I met seemed to deny the existence of evil spirits. The prevailing attitude was, "well, of course people in the ancient world believed in evil spirits, but we know better now. We know that these things are just symbolic. Demons are really things like addictions or compulsions or oppressive social structures." I have to confess that I didn't know this and still don't seem to have caught on. When Jesus refers to Satan as the "father of lies," He's talking about a real personality who is in rebellion against God and is seeking to undermine His kingdom. When Paul says "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11), he speaks of the devil in a personal way, just as he has been speaking of God. Just because we think differently than people did in the ancient world doesn't mean we know better. What's happening in this event is a personal revolt against the Word Jesus is speaking. His teaching threatens the ability of these spirits to keep people in bondage to their lies.
The result of all this is that the people are amazed at Jesus' authority and news about Him spreads throughout the region. Casting out the demon demonstrates His authority over unclean spirits, but even before that the people could see a difference. Verse 22 says "The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law." In graduate school I made friends with a student from Germany who told me he came to America to study because he was fed up with German scholarship. German scholarship has very high standards, but that wasn't his complaint. He said his German professors wanted papers to be a list of citations showing what other scholars had said on the subject and that there was very little room to speak with his own voice. I don't know whether or not his perception was accurate, but what he was describing was similar to what the teachers of the law did. They would read a passage and then cite the opinions of various rabbis who'd written on the subject. In that context, Jesus' approach was startling. He spoke the truth with authority, not an authority borrowed from the weight of scholarly opinion but the authority of the Incarnate Son of God.
Jesus' teaching is powerful and active; His words are never empty words, because they have the power of the Triune God standing behind them. The author of Hebrews says "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (4:12). And God, speaking through Isaiah, says "For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:10-11). When God speaks, He is acting. Jesus' teaching threatens evil forces, because they recognize that the One speaking is also the One who spoke the universe into existence.
The great Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to discourage people from taking notes during his sermons. He was a great expositor, and his sermons were full of teaching, so it was understandable that people wanted to take notes and retain as much as possible. But his concern was that note-taking, focusing too much on collecting information, would distract them and get in the way of listening to God's voice in His Word. There is more going on than passing information when the Word is read and preached in the context of corporate worship.
Lloyd-Jones quoted this statement by Jonathan Edwards on the benefit of preaching: "The main benefit obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at the time, and not by an effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered. And though an after-remembrance of what was heard in a sermon is oftentimes very profitable; yet, for the most part, that remembrance is from an impression the words made on the heart at the time; and the memory profits, as it renews and increases that impression" (Works, vol. 1, p. 394). He's saying that the benefit is not so much increased knowledge but an encounter with God through His Word.
How do we encounter God in His Word? We hear these things over and over, year after year, but they seem to have no impact. What is the problem? The problem is that our hearts are dull. We're too much like the religious leaders who were there when Jesus was presented in the Temple but were clueless about what was happening. The greatest event in the history of the Temple was taking place at that moment: the One to Whom all the sacrifices pointed was there. The Lamb of God, the One who takes away the sin of the world, was being presented in the Temple, but none of the religious leaders saw what was happening. They all missed it, all except Simeon and Anna, these people who had cultivated attentiveness to God over a lifetime. Neither of them were leaders; neither had any influence outside the small circle of their friends and associates. But they perceived something that all the leaders of Israel were missing at that moment.
How do we become more like Simeon and Anna and less like the religious leaders? I have two suggestions in closing. 1) Practice attentiveness in worship. I love the Liturgy, but the repetitiveness in the Liturgy can affect us in two different ways. We can become dull and simply rattle off the words, or we can offer them attentively to the Lord, offering them as the cry of our hearts. It's not that we do this all at once with perfection. Our hearts are fickle and we are easily distracted. But here's the thing. What do we do when we get distracted? Do we just give ourselves to the distraction and say, "oh well, it's no use; I just can't concentrate on these things." We can respond to the distractions either by giving in to them and giving up. Or we can pull ourselves back to the task at hand, which is to offer these words of the Liturgy to God in worship. Not just once, but over and over again. (By the way, this problem of distractions and just going through the motions is not unique to liturgical churches.) The point is not to avoid distractions but to respond to them, no matter how often they happen, by turning our hearts back to the Lord. And when distractions come a few seconds later, which they often will, we pull ourselves back again. Over time we will develop a habit of attentiveness to God in His Word, but it won't happen all at once; we need to cultivate the habit by turning our hearts to Him over and over again.
2) Meditate on God's Word throughout the week, not only on Sunday. Be attentive to His Word in worship, but then follow up on this by practicing attentiveness to Him at other times. If something in the service strikes you, spend some time with it on Sunday afternoon or evening. You don't need to reread the whole passage. Just spend time with one or two verses. Read them over and over; read them out loud, which gets more of your senses involved. Give the Word time and space to impact you, to sink into your heart. Often the problem is that we're so busy and distracted that we don't really hear what God is saying. God doesn't usually shout to get our attention, so if we don't make an effort we're likely to miss what He is saying. So take time to quiet your heart and make space for God's Word. Spend time sitting in His presence listening. You don't need to hear anything, and if you come to the time expecting great revelations you'll probably be disappointed. The point is simply to be in God's presence with His Word. Read attentively, give yourself time to absorb what you're reading, and then respond in prayer. Ask God to apply it to your life, or ask Him to give you wisdom to know how to respond, or simply read the words back to Him and ask Him to do what He thinks best. But make space in your life to wait expectantly on God by listening and responding to His Word.
Romano Guardini was an Italian-German priest who had an immense influence on Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. My graduate school advisor studied theology in Munich and often heard Guardini preach. This past week I picked up one of his books and read this: the "words [of Scripture] express more than mere truth or good counsel. They are a force that stirs up the listener, a room which he may enter, a direction that guides him" (Romano Guardini, The Rosary of Our Lady, p.26). The words of Jesus, the words of Scripture, are not empty words. They are a force that stirs us up, a room that we can enter, a direction that guides us. They have the power to change the whole direction of our lives not only for the present, but into eternity. That's why it's worth making time to meditate on Scripture. That's why the preaching of the Word is worth a large investment of time. I remember hearing, shortly before he died, that Pope John Paul II spent about 6 hours a day in prayer. How could he do that, given all his other responsibilities? How could he afford to lay aside all the other things he needed to do and spend so much time in prayer? Shouldn't he have been spending time with his people? Spending time in God's presence, in His Word and in prayer, enabled him to speak and work in a way that continues to impact us today. May God enable us to follow his example rather than being molded by the frantic activism of our society.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
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.
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.
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