Women, Slaves, and Other Things about the Bible that Bother Us

Every so often, I am reminded that there is still a battle raging in the church world over whether or not women can serve in leadership positions in the church. And when I say ‘reminded’, I should say ‘surprised’. To me, this debate feels a little like asking whether a woman should be able to vote, or whether a woman is a human (given: the Bible doesn’t address the issue of women’s suffrage, so on this point I might be rightly accused of comparing apples to giraffes). Women who preach powerfully and teach the Bible with skill and accuracy have been a consistent feature of the landscape throughout my journey as a Christian. Priscilla Shirer, Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore, Devi Titus, Erma Contreras, Eva Rodriguez, Medina Pullings, RaeAnn Hyatt, Christina Beiser, my mother – all of these women have played a significant role in my life or the lives of people I know and respect.

But what about that passage in 1 Timothy (NLT)?

11 Women should learn quietly and submissively. 12 I do not let women teach men or have authority over them.[b] Let them listen quietly. 13 For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived by Satan. The woman was deceived, and sin was the result. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing,[c] assuming they continue to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty.

The first thing I’d like to point out here is the footnotes. Whenever you see an ‘or’ in a footnote, that’s an indicator that when you get all of the most well-trained Bible translators and experts in ancient languages together, they can’t come to an agreement about exactly how a sentence should be translated. (This shouldn’t make us wonder whether our Bible translations are reliable, by the way. God has not left any of the foundational elements of our faith to question, as this particular case will demonstrate as we proceed.)

Here are the NLT’s footnotes as they appear in the New Living Translation:
b. 2:12 Or teach men or usurp their authority.

c. 2:15 Or will be saved by accepting their role as mothers, or will be saved by the birth of the Child.

I can’t really devote the space to working through each possible translation here. But if you do the substitutions yourself, you will see that the meaning of this passage can vary considerably depending on how you select from the options.

The second thing I would point out is that the Greek word αὐθεντεῖν that gets translated “have authority over” is what’s called a hapax legomenon (that’s just fancy language for: it only appears one time in the New Testament.) The fact is, ancient Greek isn’t spoken anymore. Some words have fallen out of use completely. Others have taken on considerably different shades of meaning from what they had 2,000 years ago. All you have to do is think about the line, “Don we now our gay apparel,” and you can immediately connect with the idea of how quickly language can change over a fairly short period of time. If you were born in the last 20 years (and have never sung Christmas carols or had a love-affair with Elizabethan poetry), you might have a difficult time interpreting this English sentence, even if English is your first language. However, if it were possible to thumb through your volume of Christmas carols (or Shakespeare) and find the word ‘don’ in several other places, you might be able to determine, from context, that the word means ‘wear’. Bible translators encounter this same challenge with words in the Bible – especially those that appear only one time. And they use precisely this same method in order to arrive at a determination about the meaning of these words. If there are no other occurrences of the word, it makes it difficult to settle on a definition. Christians generally avoid building a doctrine upon a single Bible verse. How much more then, should we take similar caution when establishing rules governing church leadership on the basis of a single verse the meaning of which is uncertain.

Next, we have to consider other passages of Scripture. In Philippians 4, Paul refers to women named Euodia and Syntyche as women who “worked hard with (him) in telling others the Good News” (4:3). In Biblical terms, these women are, at minimum, performing the role of evangelists. There’s nothing to suggest here that Paul only let Euodia and Syntyche do evangelism to women. If, as it seems, these women were proclaiming the Gospel to mixed crowds of men and women, then there is no way to describe their work as anything other than ministry, and their ministry as anything other than teaching men.

In Acts 18:26, Luke relates the story of Priscilla and Aquila as taking the apostle Barnabas aside and explaining the way of God to him more accurately. Again, there is no disputing the fact that Priscilla was involved in teaching Barnabas (it is also noteworthy that Priscilla is mentioned before her husband’s). Further, a more accurate explanation of the way of God is, by nature, a more authoritative explanation. This is no mere playing with words. Priscilla’s role in Barnabas’ life was not merely instructive, but one in which she was exercising authority.

In Romans 16:7, Paul asks the church to greet Andronicus and Junia, describing them as highly respected (or outstanding) among the apostles. Admittedly, there are plenty of variant translations of this verse that call into question what appears plain in the two options provided above: Andronicus and Junia (a woman) were apostles. In many of the earliest manuscripts available at the time of the older English translations, the name Junia read “Junias.” Adding the letter ‘s’ to the end of Junia is how you would theoretically ‘doctor’ a Roman name for a woman in order to change it to a man’s name. But there is absolutely no evidence in any ancient writings for a man being named Junias. The evidence is abundant, however, that there women in the Roman world with that name. The implications of this are clear: it didn’t take long before the church had become so male-dominated (conformed to the pattern of the culture) that the professional scribes who copied Bible manuscripts changed the name, presuming that Junia must have been a ‘typo’, because of course it would be unthinkable that a woman would have been an apostle. I do not have the linguistic skills to back up this hypothesis, but it is my opinion that Bible translations that read along the lines of, “Andronicus and Junia, who are well known to the apostles” (ESV) are operating with this same bias.

What gives me this confidence? Scripture. Not just a handful of isolated proof-texts, but the entire development that can be seen across the history of God’s people, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.

In Acts 2:18-19 Peter quotes the prophet Joel where he says that in the last days, men and women, young and old, even servants will have visions, dream dreams, and prophesy. By the way, if you put ‘having visions, dreaming dreams, and prophesying’ on your resumé, what you are saying is: I am a prophet. In other words, all of the divisions in society: age and gender, wealth and position will be eliminated when the Spirit is given to God’s people. And it’s not just that everyone will be equal, it’s that all will be qualified as spokespeople for God – in other words: prophets. Spiritual leadership will no longer be determined by birth (as it was with priesthood and kingship) or via a special divine calling (as it was with prophets). In the era preceding the day when God finally and fully establishes His Kingdom, all of His people will be prophets. So now we have Scriptural grounds for women being apostles, evangelists, and prophets.

A few final examples: In 1 Corinthians 11:5, (speaking of hotly debated passages), Paul says that a woman should not prophesy with her head uncovered. Putting aside the issue of head covering for a moment*, note that Paul does not say that a woman should not prophesy. …which means that Paul anticipated that women would prophesy in church meetings. Paul refers to a woman named Phoebe as a deacon (Rom 16:4). Acts 16:40 at leasts raises the possibility that Lydia was the head of the church that met in her home.

So why would Paul allow a woman to prophesy in one place, and forbid her to teach a man in another? Was Paul confused? Did he change his mind, as some suggest? Is 1 Timothy written by someone other than Paul? You might now know this, but Paul often wrote letters to address specific problems in a church. 1 Corinthians is one of the best examples of this because Paul deals with so many problems; but you can detect problem-solving in just about every letter of Paul. Some people taught that non-Jewish Christians had to be circumcised to be saved. Some people were teaching that the resurrection from the dead had already happened. Others believed that the body and sex (even within marriage) were bad. Still others thought that the body didn’t matter at all anymore, since what was really important was the soul; as a result, they claimed they Christians could do anything they wanted (including ritualistic sex with temple prostitutes).

There is a clue in 2 Timothy to the problem that might have been going on in Ephesus, where Timothy was. In Chapter 4, Paul warns Timothy that some people are going to reject the truth, and accept as truth whatever it is that they want to hear. In Chapter 3 he describes what these people who reject the truth will be like:

For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! (2 Tim 3:2-5).

(I guess the ancient Romans weren’t so different than 21st Century Americans!)

But look what Paul says next:

They are the kind who work their way into people’s homes and win the confidence of[a] vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by various desires. 7 (Such women are forever following new teachings, but they are never able to understand the truth.) 

It looks like it’s at least possible that in Ephesus, some false teachers (probably men!) were gaining a following among some of the vulnerable women in the community, and these women were attempting to elevate this false teaching above the true Gospel.

In a culture and era where women had virtually no standing in society, what do you suppose would make these women feel empowered to take authority over men? Passages like this one from Galatians provide some helpful context:

you are all children[m] of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.[n] 28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile,[o] slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Even a passage like Colossians 3:18, which is referenced by feminists as an example of a supposed oppressive, male-dominated culture provides a surprising clue:

18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.

Why would a woman who had no place in society need to be told to submit to her husband? Only if she had been told that in Christ, categories like gender, age, ethnicity, and social status no longer married – that ALL were ONE in Christ.

If we put all these passages together, a likely scenario emerges. Women have been empowered and given the status as equals with men in a way unprecedented in human history. Like many other implications of the Gospel for culture, this new fact was causing growing pains in the church community, and the teaching was being stretched to the point of abuse. Women in Ephesus who had embraced false teaching were attempting to use the liberty and equality they had in Christ to force this false teaching on the whole community. Paul was telling Timothy in no uncertain terms: put an end to it. In Corinth, by contrast, the problem was that everyone wanted to speak in tongues. In this case – the same case where Paul allows for a woman to prophesy – he says “I wish that you would all prophesy” (Moses says much the same thing in Numbers 11:29). It can hardly be concluded from the context that when Paul said “all” he meant “only the men”.

So Paul is not contradicting himself. He is correcting a corruption of his own teaching (in much the same way that James has to correct the abuse of Paul’s teaching on the relationship between faith and works – Romans 4 and James 2 are not contradicting each other. They are addressing the opposite misunderstandings of the same issue.)

The vast majority of evidence in the New Testament points to a situation where women were permitted to operate in positions of leadership and influence (even in the Old Testament, there are women prophets such as Hulda and leaders like Deborah. It is almost unimaginable that we would see a backward progression from the Old Testament to the New.) If we have one reference that goes against the grain of all of the others, and if there are significant difficulties interpreting/translating that reference, I think we are on safe ground if we assume that the dominant voice is the one that is faithful to the whole counsel of Scripture. The sensible thing to do with the passage that doesn’t seem to fit with the others, then, is to assume that there is a perfectly good explanation, a missing piece–whether linguistic or historical or both–which, if we had access to, would result in an understanding of this passage that echoes what we hear elsewhere in the Bible.

*Multiple passages in the New Testament can assist us in working through our difficulties with some practices that offend, or at least don’t fit with, our modern sensibilities: if everyone is equal before God, then why were slaves told to obey to their masters… why were women told to submit to their husbands? Or, as in 1 Corinthians 11:5, why are women restricted to prophesying with their heads covered? The truth is, the radical counter-cultural nature of the Gospel is still working its way through the cultures that have been influenced by it. It was recognized, from the earliest of times, that the extreme modifications to human relationships that Christianity brought with it had the potential to be offensive to the surrounding culture – to such an extent that those cultures might reject Christianity and/or consider it a threat to their way of life… which did happen, by the way. Just think about what would happen today if women in more conservative sectors of Islam suddenly decided to throw off their hijabs – not only that, but to throw them off and then parade into the men’s-only section of the Mosque to pray. For this same reason, the writers of the New Testament letters encouraged the churches to intentionally limit their freedoms in order to avoid discrediting the Gospel.

It is in the very types of passages referenced above (those about the behaviors of slaves and women) that we find these directions to the churches to be careful not to let their freedoms in Christ alienate people to the faith (Tit 2:5-10, 1 Pet 2:12). When these passages feel to us like they prop up civil rights violations, we need to remember that these same Scriptures emphasize that a slave is actually a free person in Christ – and that they should take the chance to get their freedom if it comes (1 Cor 7:21-22). We have an entire letter in the New Testament devoted to the message: for a Christian, it is the right thing to do to set your slave free. These passages also say that in God’s Kingdom, women are equal partners with men (1 Pet 3:7). But overarching all of these examples is a larger theme that holds them all together: in imitation of Jesus, Christians are to lay down their rights in order to increase the likelihood that others might come to know God. One of the main reasons that many of us have trouble understanding the issues in isolation is that we are products of a culture that has trained us to be obsessed with our rights. Not many of us are willing to say, with Paul: “I will give up any behavior that will put a stumbling block in front of another person” (1 Cor 8:13). But again and again, that’s the very thing that the Bible calls us to do. In Romans 14:13, Paul switches from declaring that he won’t do anything to put a stumbling block in front of someone else to commanding that Christians resolve not to do so. “Each of you must have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, let go of His status of being equal with God, and became nothing” (Phil 2:5). When you have reached the status of ‘servant’ in the Kingdom of God, you cannot be promoted any higher. “And whoever among you wants to be the greatest, must become your slave…” (Matt 20:26). As I once heard a preacher say: “If you can’t say, ‘Amen’, at least say, ‘Ouch!’

22 September 2018 – Reading Isaiah (Part II)

In the last post, I discussed most of the significant challenges we face when reading a prophetic book like Isaiah. There is one element of Biblical prophecy that I skipped over, however, because the difficulties it has presented in the history of interpretation make it a worthy candidate for its own discussion. Ironically, of all the characteristics of prophecy, this one should be least problematic for modern readers, because it is as much a part of our world as it was the world of Ancient Israel. But for various reasons – ranging from a desire to honor the Scriptures as the word of God (that can lead to an unnecessary insistence on overly literal interpretation), to our human fascination with trauma and drama – we are conspicuously blind to this most basic property of Biblical prophecy. Our dilemma can be solved by recognizing that prophecy comes to us as poetry.

Poetry involves dramatic figures of speech: metaphor, analogies, allegory, personification, and hyperbole. In English we have poetic expressions that we use in every day conversation. You take a nap, and you say, “I feel like a new man.” Your friend gets so frustrated with her boyfriend that she says, “I’m going to kill him.” You share the news that you’re going to be a grandfather and you tell your son, “I’m on cloud nine right now.” No one takes these expressions literally. If you were a new man, you wouldn't know the person you were talking to (or where you were when you woke up from your nap, for that matter). If your friend were going to kill her boyfriend, the appropriate response would be to call 911. If you are really on cloud nine right now… well, I hope you have a parachute strapped on.

Carl Sandburg wrote the following lines that visitors to San Francisco are often introduced to in their visitors’ guides: “The fog comes on little cat feet.” If you’re familiar with San Francisco fog, those 7 words instantly communicate the accumulated experiences of a thousand mesmerized gazes at the fog (we call him Karl here). Like a cat’s approach, the fog comes in silently and swiftly. If you’re watching it come over the coastal mountains across the Golden Gate Bridge, the shape of its wisps arching over the ridges look like giant cat paws (whether I see this because I’ve heard the poem, or the poet actually saw it and thought the same thing, I’ll never know.) In any event, Sandburg’s 7 words have so much more impact and descriptive power than my much longer explanation of the reality described by his word-picture. This happens all of the time in the Bible. The prophet speaks in word-pictures that would have exactly this kind of effect on his listeners, for whom the poet’s linguistic imagery would have called up familiar elements of their world .

As just illustrated, two of the basic properties of poetry are: 1) condensing complex images down to a very few number of words, and 2) packing as much meaning as possible into each of those words in order to create potent imagery that immerses the listener in another world – in short, to try to give words the same captivating power that modern movies have. When you add the literary devices mentioned above into this recipe, the results can be as challenging to the interpreter as they are stimulating to the imagination. For example, just what are we supposed to think the writer means when he says that, “The stars fought from heaven; the stars fought from their orbits against Sisera” (Judg 5:20). The meaning, from a poetic standpoint, is immediately clear: Sisera’s defeat was spectacularly brutal. The poet does have every intention of implying that God Himself was fighting on Israel’s behalf. But it’s not at all likely that he is attempting to present an accurate accounting of a cosmological component to the battle (at least not according to our standards.)

Further, the sun, moon, and stars were seen to possess tremendous power, and, as a result, were often worshiped by ancient peoples (and, all to often, by God’s people as well.) So when we come across a passage that speaks of the sun and moon no longer giving their light, or the stars falling from the sky, the likelihood is that we are dealing with a poetic declaration that the gods of other nations have been shown to be false; or, that when the glory of the Lord is fully revealed, His brightness will so outshine every other object in the heavens that there will no longer be any possibility of temptation to worship them or confuse them with the true God. Or, to return to poor Sisera, we are to understand that his army was so powerless in battle that it seemed even the mightiest powers in the heavens were fighting against him.

Another place the heavens – including the sun, moon, and stars – play a significant role is in the story of Creation in Genesis 1-2. Light is the first created thing, and the light overcomes darkness – an overcoming that is parallel with order triumphing over chaos. This story of light and order climaxes with God creating human beings and dwelling with them within His creation. When the prophets speak of the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple, they describe it as a time when the sun will no longer shine, when the moon will turn to blood, and the stars will no longer give their light. The references to these specific signs are not meant to be a prediction about actual occurrences in the skies. They are a poetic indicator of the terrible significance with respect to God’s redemptive purpose that the destruction of the Temple means. If the Temple is destroyed, that can only mean that God no longer lives among His people. And if God no longer lives among His people, then it is as though creation itself is being reversed - that the world is being uncreated, destroyed.

Passages that mention either apocalyptic changes and/or the disappearance of the sun, moon, and stars are scattered throughout the Bible, and even show up in other ancient texts that aren’t in the Bible. They refer to actual historical events as diverse as the destruction of Egypt (Ezek 32:7-8), Edom (Isa 34:4), Babylon (Isa 13:9-10), Samaria (Amos 8:9) and Jerusalem (Jer 4:23-28). At least one of these references, (Joel 2:31) is quoted by Jesus in the Gospels (Matt 24:49) and is almost certainly a double reference to the imminent destruction of Jerusalem, and to the ultimate judgment of the world at the end of this age. I want to be clear that I am not saying that the multiple occurrences of descriptions of this sort mean that nothing like this will actually ever happen. But it doesn’t help us develop a reverence for the Word of God if we find ourselves asking why the destruction of the universe was predicted so many times and in relation to so many different historical events without it ever having come to pass. What I am saying is that when the prophets used this kind of language, their primary purpose was to make sure their listeners understood that they were warning about catastrophes of the most devastating kind. So devastating, that it was appropriate to speak of them as though they were “the end of the world.” And the purpose for speaking this way (as unpopular then as it is now) was to encourage people in the strongest possible terms: you need to take God much more seriously.

So today I pray the prayer that I so often write in the margin of my Bible as I read the prophets:

God, arise and reveal Your glory. Send a Spirit of awakening upon the Earth, that people everywhere would turn to You.  …turn away from their destructive paths that they might know You, know peace, know eternal life. Expose the shallowness of our counterfeits, and teach us that only You will ever satisfy our deepest desires.

19 September 2018 – Reading Isaiah

Reading the book of Isaiah (or any other prophet) can be a little like looking through a kaleidoscope.  Bits and pieces of imagery make sense by themselves, but no matter how long you keep turning, no recognizable picture seems to take shape.

Part of this is just the nature of reading an ancient text.  We’re not familiar with the places or the events that would have been current to Isaiah’s audience.  Someone in Sicily, today, reading the words, “Remember the Alamo!” might not have any sense of how those words would still resonate in San Antonio Texas.  There is a much, much greater time and culture ‘distance’ between us and Isaiah’s 8th Century (BCE) Israelite audience than that.  Some modern translators attempt to close the gap for us using contemporary language, but in a book as old as Isaiah, there are figures of speech whose meanings have been lost forever, and the most translators can do is make their best guess based on their knowledge of Biblical languages and on the basis of the hints provided within the overall context of the passage.

Another part of the challenge of a book like Isaiah is the nature of Biblical prophecy.  The words on the page can be Isaiah’s words or others’ words, they can be God’s words spoken to Isaiah or God’s words spoken by Isaiah. Over the course of a single chapter, you might hear all four of these ‘voices’, with little to no indication in the text that the ‘speaker’ has changed.  Some prophecies are directed to cities or geographical sites (e.g., cities, mountains, plains).  This is a little like modern news reports that refer to ‘Beijing’ or ‘the Kremlin’ responding to an international incident; in the news these names are used to mean official government sources who represent the leader of that nation. In the Bible, the prophetic word spoken to the king, capital city, god, or landmark often leaves no doubt that the pronouncement is going to effect the entire nation, and not just the ruler, a city, or a landmark.

One other significant characteristic of prophecy is that it blurs the lines between the past, present, and future. A prophet often speaks about events in the future as though they were already in the past. A warning that judgment is coming soon can transition into a promise of restoration so quickly that it sounds like the judgment might not be coming after all. (It should be further noted that many of the Bible’s prophecies of judgment were never intended to come true. As with Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh, the whole point in sending the prophet to pronounce judgment was to get the people to change their ways so that God would not have to judge.)

Perhaps the most complex feature of prophetic time is the fusing of events in the near future with events in the ultimate future. In these cases, the prophetic word has two (sometimes more) fulfillments in view: one in the near future (say, Israel’s return from exile in Assyria/Babylon) and one in the distant future (the creation of a new heavens and a new earth). Isaiah speaks of them as if they are one and the same event. But from our vantage point in history, we can see that many prophecies operate on the basis of initial, partial fulfillment and later, complete fulfillment.

Other interpretive challenges could be mentioned, but the ones provided above should give us a better picture of the world we’re wading into when we open the books of the prophets. With respect to the question, “What does all this mean for me, today?” the answer is comparatively simple. God has a plan for the world – that it be a place of truth, compassion, righteousness, justice, and peace. The world, for the most part, is nothing like that – and so it stands under God’s judgment. God also has a people in the world – a people called to introduce all the nations of the world to His ways, to be a community that points beyond itself to the kind of life that God wants for all people. There is, however, the danger that God’s people will become exactly like the world that currently stands under God’s judgment. In that case, they themselves will experience the same judgment as the rest of the world – and God will use the very nations that His people were supposed to introduce to His ways as the instruments of His judgment upon His people. He will not do that, however, without warning them again, and again, and again. The fact that there are so many prophetic books* in the Bible testifies to God’s commitment to giving His people every opportunity to return to Him.

The prophets essentially have one message: “Return to Me, or experience the awful destiny of those who have become the worst possible version of themselves” (which is what we all become unless we grab hold of God’s instructions on how to have our humanity restored to us). They use stories from the past both to encourage and to warn. They try to help people connect the dots between their rejection of God and the desperate situations they are facing. They prophesy devastation in the future to warn people about the results of their chosen paths – but more than that, to invite them to change direction. Above all, they promise a certain future restoration. God is absolutely unwilling to give up on the people He created. When His people have experienced what it is like to live completely outside of the good and loving boundaries He gave them, they will discover that, in the midst of the destruction that their own choices have led to, God’s gracious promises of restoration still stand. It will kindle within them the hope that they have not permanently forfeited their access to the essential promise of the prophet: “Return to Me, and I will return to You.” As Paul says in Romans: it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

On a personal level, the prophets remind me consistently of three things:

• God is deadly serious about sin, righteousness, and a judgment to come

• all of the nations, as they are, stand under judgment

• as someone who has been called into the people of God, I therefore have two responsibilities: First, I need to maintain my distinctiveness (i.e., holiness, godliness) in the world or else I make myself ineffective as a signpost to the life that God desires for everyone He has made, and I run the risk of becoming part of the world that will ultimately come under God’s judgment.

Second, I need to pray for God’s mercy on the nations. I have to want what He wants: that none should perish. Not only that, but I need to be actively seeking to put Him on display – to image the Kingdom – in every area of my life. The main purpose of my life is to invite as many people as possible into the life that God intends for each person to have – a life that is referred to as “eternal” both because of the incomparable quality of it in the present, and because it will last forever.

Failure to recognize the three points above is what resulted in the castrophic destruction of God’s land, God’s Temple, and God’s people. If you read Isaiah (or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, etc.), and you keep these priorities in the foreground, you will have ‘heard’ the Word of God spoken through the prophet – and it will bear the fruit that God originally intended that His word would produce. For additional perspective, the map below might be helpful. Almost all of the places pictured on the map are referred to in Isaiah. It also (literally) puts Jerusalem on the map for you – a tiny little spec sandwiched in between two of the world’s most powerful empires ever. It was the experience of being so located that provided occasion for God’s people to be tempted to rely on so many things other than God – military might, international alliances, wealth, strategy, and other gods. Coping mechanisms also abounded: the pursuit of luxury, partying, drunkenness… Those people who had power used it to exploit those who did not, and became wealthier and wealthier on the backs of poor laborers. Women and children were sold as slaves… It turns out that the world of 8th Century BCE Israel might not be so different from ours after all.

30 August 2018

If we thought Mark was treating us to a sandwich in our reading on 8.28, the past couple of days give the impression that he was serving up something closer to a 4x4 (click here for a mouth-watering visual trip to In-N-Out if you're lost).

Mark gives us two miraculous feedings, the second intended to expand our interpretation of what the first means about Jesus' mission (it's going to extend beyond the Jews).  Then yesterday the disciples come to two different conclusions about Jesus' warning about the 'yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.'  Somehow, even after witnessing Jesus feed multiple thousands of people on two occasions, their first assumption is that Jesus is scolding them for not bringing any bread.  Then, after Jesus refocuses their lenses for them, they realize He is talking about the teaching of the Pharisees and of Herod (teachings that, if allowed to permeate their understanding of Jesus' teaching, will have a negative impact on their ability to faithfully carry on His mission.)

Then we have a blind man, healed in two stages.  First, he can see, but not clearly.  The second time, "as the man stared intently, his sight was perfectly restored" (Mk 9:25).  This is no mere detail to bring the reader into the action.  It's a direction to the readers to make sure they, themselves, look intently at what's being communicated.

The story of the blind man sets up Jesus' two questions to His disciples, and the two answers they give.  "Who do people say that I am?" Jesus asks. 

"Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets."

This is the stage of partial understanding–partial sight–that the first half of each the last handful of stories has involved.  Then Jesus asks, "But who do YOU say that I am?"  Peter responds, "You are the Messiah."  Bam.  Perfect sight.  Only not so much.

Now the order of partial-sight/clear-sight is reversed.  Jesus clarifies for them just what kind of Messiah He is: the kind that will "suffer many things and be rejected... killed" (with the added piece that after three days He will rise from the again.)  Perfect sight.  But Peter doesn't like what he sees, so he attempts to add some 'rose-tinting' to his lenses.  In fact, Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him "for talking like that."  Sadly, sometimes when our eyes our opened to the truth, we would rather return to ignorance. 

Jesus instantly removes the rose-tinted film from Peter's eyes.  As a result, the reader sees that Peter is not a human in conversation with his Teacher, but Satan tempting Jesus to compromise His identity calling, and mission.  (Talk about corrective lenses!)  Then Jesus reveals the full-extent of just how poorly our sight is, just how radical a shift is required on our part to see who Jesus is, and what His mission means for us who would associate with Him: those who try to preserve their lives will lose them, but those who give up their lives will live.

Today, the theme continues uninterrupted.  Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain.  Suddenly Jesus' clothing turns radiantly white, and Moses and Elijah appear there with Him.  Truly, Jesus must be an amazing man for such esteemed figures to see out His company!: Peter thinks to himself.  But, in a reversal of Peter's humanity being exposed as demonic, a voice from heaven declares, "This is my beloved Son.  Listen to Him."  Jesus' humanity is revealed as a 'cloaking device' for His divinity.

And so it continues: John the Baptist was no mere prophet, but Elijah whose return was foretold by Malachi – whose return would precede the coming of the Lord again to His people.  

Twice in the last two days the Bible asks us, "Are your hearts too hard to take it in?  You have eyes – can't you see?  You have ears – can't you hear?  Don't you understand even yet?" (Mk. 8:17b-18, 21a).  And then, "You faithless people!  How long must I be with you until you believe?  How long must I put up with you?" (Mk. 8:19).

Today, I am challenging myself to see Jesus clearly in spite of my resistance to the challenge that following Him involves.  I am asking God to help me see what really is, rather than seeing what I see because that's what I want to see – because that's all I'm willing to see.  

Now that Jesus has touched my eyes, will I settle for spending the rest of my life with partial vision, or will I confess that I don't yet see clearly?  Will I surrender myself not just to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah (a truth that Mark compares to seeing people just clearly enough that they look like trees), but to the way that Jesus is the Messiah (a way that is required for any who would be His disciples)?  Will I respond to Jesus as though He's another great man, on par with a Moses or an Elijah?  Or will I acknowledge that He is GOD, and hear His teachings and commands for what they are – the requirements for my life made by the Only True God?

Is there a prescription somewhere in these passages?  Any Scriptural counsel offered for how to get from where I am to where I need to be?  Thanks be to God: yes.

There is a man in the final story today, of whom we can say: he sees clearly precisely because he knows he does not see clearly.  His cry is, "I believe – help my unbelief!"  From there, Jesus draws a straight line for us to an even stronger prescription.  He shows us that the belief His disciples do have lacks power, lacks authority, because they have neglected the aspect of the life of faith that lines up with the 'help my unbelief' part of the 20/20-sighted man's cry: prayer.

I believe.  It is in my returning daily to prayer that I confess to God, "Help my unbelief."  Do you want to see, understand?  Do you want to know Jesus us a good man or as God, to see Him as He is as opposed to the image we've created in Him in?  Do I want the Gospel that promises me everything I want, or the one that calls me to 'come and die' (which is actually the way to everything you want, it just takes a path that you would never chose for yourself)?  Do you want you want the courage to accept the road before you, or need the strength to overcome the obstacles before you?

Pray.  Today.  Tomorrow.  Pray and never stop praying.  Or, as the apostle Paul puts it: "Pray without ceasing" (1 These 5:17); "Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests" (Eph 6:18); "In everything, by prayer and petition–with thanksgiving–make your requests known to God" (Phil 4:6).  Prayer is actually what makes the difference between the blind man who says, "I see," (and, in fact, does) and the equally blind man who says, "You're a liar” (and who we all know is, in fact, the fool).

28 August 2018

Short and sweet today – but, we're dealing with the Word of God, so it hopefully this will be not only sweet but rich.  "You satisfy us with the richest of foods", says the Psalmist (63:5).

In 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to being led in "Christ's triumphal procession" (2:14).  When you read this, it's important to understand that this is a victory celebration that can only be interpreted through the 'secret decoder lenses' of discipleship to and faith in Christ – the crucified Christ.  A triumphal procession is the party a conquering king would throw after returning home from defeating an enemy in war.  Those being led in the procession would have been prisoners: soldiers captured alive in battle who would then be executed when they reached the end of the parade.  What Paul is saying is that it is far, far better to be condemned to die with Jesus than it is to be among the people lining the parade route, rejoicing over the humiliation of their enemies.  The cheering, mocking crowd will be alive and well tomorrow, and they revel in the smell of death.  But those being led in the procession – those condemned to die with Christ – they know that they are the true victors.  Though they die today, they will be raised to life with Christ and live and reign with Him forever.  If you have eyes to see – this is a message repeated again and again throughout the New Testament.  At the judgment, the conquerors themselves will be conquered; those who have suffered all kinds of insults and persecution will be comforted, and exalted to the place of honor in God's eternal Kingdom (Matt 5:11).

In Mark, another pair of 'secret decoder glasses' is needed to see what is going on.  Mark has a way of arranging his passages so that one gives insight into how another should be interpreted (this literary feature of his Gospel is called, amusingly, a 'Markan sandwich.')  The first passage shows us Jesus in the region of Tyre.  Tyre is a historical enemy of the people of Israel.  In Ezekiel, God condemns Tyre in the the harshest of terms because they rejoiced when Jerusalem was conquered and burned to the ground by Babylon (the dashboard lights about cheering along the parade route of a triumphal procession should be going off like crazy right about now.)  Ezekiel prophesies so harshly against the king of Tyre that students of the Bible have long wondered whether God unconsciously slips from talking about the king of Tyre to talking about Satan.  It is while Jesus is here, that a woman from that region begs Him to heal her daughter.  He resists initially, but agrees because of the woman's persistence (which Jesus refers to as faith in the story as told in Matt 15:28.)  

Spoiler alert: this is not a story about Jesus being unwilling to help non-Jews.  The purpose of this story is to set up what happens next.  In the next passage, we again find Jesus in an area inhabited by non-Jews – the Ten Towns (or the Decapolis).  A great crowd gathers and Jesus spends three days with them.  On the third day, He hints to His disciples that it's time for them to do what He invited them to do the last time a huge crowd had run out of food: feed them.  The disciples ask, "How are we supposed to find enough food for them here in the wilderness?"  

Now, the first time Jesus commands His disciples to feed a crowd of 5,000, we ought to be able to empathize with the disciples' intimidation over being called to such a seemingly impossible task.  But the disciples have just witnessed Jesus perform the astonishing miracle of multiplying the loaves and fish until everyone has eaten and there are twelve baskets of leftovers.  This is not something you would expect to soon forget.  Is there something else going on that explains the disciples' resistance to the possibility of feeding this particular group?

Think back to the story about the Syro-Phonecian woman.  Jesus initially resists helping this non-Jew, a non-Jew who might be better referred to as an enemy.  This is foreshadowing, a hint to help prepare us for what's about to happen.  Maybe, just maybe, the disciples' blindness has nothing to do with their belief in Jesus' ability to do the same miracle again, but is instead the result of their unwillingness to imagine that Jesus would perform such a miracle for these non-Jews.  

It is the difference in the details provided between the two miracle feeding accounts that dispels any suspicion that the same episode separated into two distinct stories over time.  NO.  In the feeding of the 5,000, there are five loaves; in the feeding of the 4,000 there are seven.  In the feeding of the 5,000 there are twelve baskets of leftovers; in the feeding of the 4,000 there are seven.  Five loaves, five books of Torah.  Twelve baskets of leftovers, twelve tribes of Israel.  Seven loaves and seven baskets of leftovers?  Seven nations of Canaan (Acts 13:19), whom the Lord displaced to give Israel the land.  Jesus feeds the crowd of 5,000 in Jewish territory.  Jesus feeds the 4,000 in non-Jewish territory.

This might seem like a bunch of tedious attention to obscure numbers and geographical details of questionable relevance, but I refer you again to the idea of a Markan sandwich.  Any good sandwich has bread (or a bun) on the top and the bottom. So we should expect the passage either immediately before or following these two will have the same theme... and that is, in fact, exactly what we find.  The first half of Mark 7 (vv. 1-23) has to do with the laws and traditions that serve to preserve the separateness of the Jewish people:  washing hands (a ritual given to reflect the purity of the priesthood), and foods that are off limits (a prohibition given to help the earliest Israelites separate themselves from the customs of the people God was calling them to be different from).  

To skip to the punch line: Jesus ends up calling all foods clean, thus breaking down one of the dividing walls separating Jews and non-Jews.  He reveals that the Law has resulted in a focus on the boundary itself rather than the reason for the boundary.  The Israelites were called to be separate not so that they could stay separate, but so that they would be able to become a people who reflected God's character, who would formed into a community on earth whose life was a foretaste of heaven.  But God's people (not unlike us with our denominational loyalties, our confessions, rituals, and our crosses), ended up thinking of rule-following as a badge of honor that indicated their 'in/superior' status, relegating everyone else to the status of 'out/inferior'.  The Israelites had been called to draw the nations to God, to be a "light to the nations" (Isa 49:6), but instead, they became self-focused, self-interested, and judgmental toward all who failed to live up to their standard–not to mention dead-set on the destruction of their enemies.  They had so lost touch with the purpose of the Law, that they even manipulated it to benefit themselves at the expense of not only non-Jews, but even of their own parents.  They found a loophole in the Law that allowed them to hide their money in a kind of religious 'tax-shelter', so that it would be unavailable in the event that their mothers and/or fathers happened to be in need.  The money would still be there, available for withdrawal, when the time of the parents' need (or the parents themselves) passed.  It's a wonder that we don't find Jesus angry much more often in the Gospels.

So, when after all this we find Jesus feeding a massive crowd of non-Jews, we can be nearly certain that He is educating His disciples–slowly, so that they don't end up with a case of whiplash so severe they can't recover–He is preparing His disciples to do what God had always intended His people to do: to take the blessing of God and share that blessing with all the nations of the world.  Despite Jesus telling this plainly to His disciples in places like Matthew 28:18-19, John 20:21, and Acts 1:8, it would still require the onset of brutal persecution by their enemies to force the early Church out of its comfort zone in Jerusalem out onto the roads leading through Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The bottom line of this Markan sandwich: there is more than enough for everyone.  The Kingdom isn't just for my people or our people – our obedience to Jesus isn't just for our sake (so that we can feel good about our own moral uprightness or assured about our own eternal destiny) – the goal and purpose of the Kingdom of God is to swallow up the kingdoms of this world until all barriers that divide people are brought down, all hatred has been overcome by love, all enemies have been reconciled to each other and to God – until creation itself has been made new by the Spirit that compels the sons and daughters of God to groan along with Him for the redemption of His creation.

This is what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 2 when he writes:

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For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and non-Jews into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and non-Jews by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.

He brought this Good News of peace to you nations who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

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If there's anyone in your life today, anyone in your world, who you cannot, will not, imagine being swept up into this act of divine re-creation, I would gently point out to you that you are standing against the narrative current of the entire Bible.  If you self-identify as a Christian, your claims about yourself reveal less about your actual status with God than do your attitudes and behavior.  The blessing you receive by God's grace alone is not for you alone, not for your benefit alone.  It is given to you so that you will serve as a conduit for it to reach others – even those 'others' – especially those others – who you have most excluded, who you have most counted yourself righteous in comparison to, about whom you are most likely to use the label 'enemy'.  

Romans 5:5 makes it perfectly clear that when, in love, Jesus gave Himself for you, you were God's enemy.  Go and do likewise.

(Ok, maybe not so short – but hopefully nonetheless sweet and rich on account of being a little longer than anticipated.)

27 August 2018

The Book of Job might seem like an odd place to turn in order to make a Biblical appeal for Pentecostal spirituality.  But, as our One-Year Bibles have demonstrated once again, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures carry on such a consistent dialogue that it seems we can expect almost any two passages chosen at random to interact with and inform each other in wonder-inspiring ways.  This really should not come as a surprise to Christians, since we believe that throughout all 66 books of the Bible it is a single Voice who speaks.  (But then again, we Christians are also surprised when God answers prayer...)

In our reading on August 25, in one column we found Job expressing a longing for a hope beyond death – a hope that would give him the comfort needed to endure his time of unimaginable agony.  Across the page in 1 Corinthians 15, there was Paul, insisting on the absolute necessity of the historicity of the resurrection if the Christian faith is to have any relevance at all. "If there is no resurrection... then your faith is useless and you are still dead in your sins" (1 Cor 15:15a ,17b).  Job intuited this anti-Gospel perfectly some 2,000 years before Paul.

In fact, in the ongoing conversation between the First and Second Testaments, the Book of Job gives articulation to many of the major tensions introduced in Biblical faith to which Christianity supplies the resolutions.  Not only does Job conclude that it is necessary, for the sake of righteousness, for there to be some moment of reckoning in the afterlife (for how can God be just if innocent victims who died in their misery are never compensated and the rich oppressors who prospered on the backs of their victims are never held accountable?)  Job also voices a longing for a mediator between God and man – someone to plead man's cause before the invisible and unapproachable One.  The Book of 1 Timothy answers back: "For there is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile both God and humanity: the man Jesus Christ" (2:5).  Romans 8 gives the echo: "the Spirit Himself intercedes for us in accordance with the will of God" (8:27), and again: "Jesus... is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us" (8:34).  Bible scholars refer to this conversation running through the Scriptures (all the more impressive for its unity on account of its having been carried on over a span of two thousand years and in cooperation with roughly 40 human authors) as 'intertextuality.'  I say it's just what you ought to expect to find when you examine a book that claims to have a divine Author: God's fingerprints.

But the component of Job's predicament that most anticipates the answer God will give at the dawn of the Christian Era stands as the interpretive key to the entire book of Job, if not to the whole of our existence in this world.  What Job needs more than answers to his questions, what will benefit Job more than the promise of afterlife, or of any guarantee that the righteous and the wicked alike will receive justice, what would still leave Job longing for explanation, even in the event that his friends had managed to maintain a spirit of tenderness and compassion toward him... The event in the book of Job that eclipses all his questions, all his complaints, and even causes his pain to vanish from the scene altogether – is the arrival of God's presence.

More than spiritual gifts – more than miracles, signs, and wonders – it is the privilege of being able to experience the presence of God that forms the heart of Pentecostal spirituality.  Naturally, a fully developed theology of the Spirit's presence carries within it the expectation that the gifts will follow, but it is the God-with-us aspect of Pentecostalism that distinguishes it from other Christian movements. "May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too wonderful for you to comprehend," Paul writes in Ephesians 3:19.  (Your translation might put 'know' in place of the word 'experience'; I would just point out that the word 'know' is also used to describe the physical intimacy between a man and woman in marriage.  Hold that in your mind while you consider what you usually mean when you use the word 'know', and you will understand why 'experience' is probably the better word.)

From the earliest days of the movement, the pronouncement that Pentecostalism is 'an experience looking for a theology' has been directed toward Pentecostals in a tone of withering criticism.  Job's story ought to inspire a little bit of humility in those who would make such a condescending assessment.  Job is an experience looking for a theology.  And it is no mere theology that God gives Job in order to relieve his agony, it is an experience- an experience of God's presence.

Even as we come to the close of 1 Corinthians and begin reading Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth, we find a continuing, Spirit-facilitated conversation between Job and Paul.  Job's friends failed him because their perfectly orthodox wisdom about God's righteousness, of the fate of the wicked, and of the promise of restoration that awaits those who repent was completely inadequate to provide Job any comfort in the midst of his anguish.   In 2 Corinthians, we find Paul claiming that it is those who have themselves been comforted by God in their distress who are capable of giving comfort to others in theirs.  It is those who have experienced the love of God who are able to do more than quote Scripture in their attempts to bring hope to the devastated.  Specifically, it is those who have shared in the experience of Jesus Himself – those like Paul who, for the sake of love, "expected to die", and, as a result, "learned to rely on God, who raises the dead" (2 Cor 1:9), who have been qualified to "speak the truth in love" (Eph 4:15).  Once you have seen the logic of this it is impossible to unsee.  Jesus, the Word of God who is Love, is the Truth incarnated in a spoken Word of Love.  The person who follows Jesus in the way of the cross and resurrection learns the language of Love along the way, which is also the language of Truth.  And it is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who actualizes all of this–whose presence in the believer takes up the pain of our existence in this world, unites it with the death of Jesus, and leaves in its place the life, the hope, and the comfort that are active in the believer through the the power of the resurrection.

Life is an experience looking for a theology, and Job's life is the essence of all that demands an explanation from God.  The spirituality that draws its resources from the events of Pentecost recognizes that in our darkest moments no explanation is adequate, no theology is sufficient, nothing less than the presence of God will do.  It is not as if experience is the point, however.  The point is that humans, after years of self-imposed exile from God's presence, finally have the opportunity to be reconciled to God – to return to the kind of intimacy that we were created to have with Him.  If our hearts flutter, our spirits buzz, and our minds are set awhirl by the experience of meeting the person who might be 'the one', or who you sense deep down is the soul mate for whom you have been waiting your whole life, and with whom you will spend the rest of your life, how much more should the experience of meeting God engage the whole breadth of human emotional capacity and exceed the limits of even the most descriptive language?

To refer again to some verses I've referenced in previous posts: our love for Jesus give us a glorious and inexpressible joy (1 Pet 1:8); the experience of the Spirit is a taste of the heavenly gift, of the goodness of the Word of God, and of the power of the Age to Come (Heb 6:4-5); God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, producing a hope that will never disappoint (Rom 5:5); God's peace surpasses understanding (Phil 4:7); the reason that Jesus came was that you and I might have life – life overflowing, life abundant (John 10:10).  I could continue to pile up references in the Bible that together paint a picture of a level of human flourishing that is virtually unknown in this world.  Yes – these are benefits that all Christians gain access to on the basis of Jesus' crucifixion.  But, according to Paul at least, the redemption Jesus won for us on the cross was so that "the blessing promised to Abraham might come to all nations through Jesus Christ" (Gal 3:14).  Paul goes on to describe the content of this blessing as the gift of the Holy Spirit–a blessing that Peter, on the day of Pentecost, declared was not for 1st Century Jews only, but for their children and even the nations, "for all who are called by the Lord our God" (Acts 2:39).  

Biblical faith always begins with experience.  Creation (the ultimate gift of grace), restoration, Exodus, Sinai, miraculous deliverance from enemies, fire flashing out from the newly erected wilderness Tabernacle, the glorious cloud of the Lord's presence filling the Solomon's Temple, suspension of the laws of nature, the dead brought back to life, supernatural multiplication of bread and oil – all these happen before the New Testament even begins. It would be quite surprising to think, especially after the miracle-filled ministry of Jesus and the continuation of that ministry in the lives of His apostles, that suddenly, for the first time ever in the story of God's gracious dealings with His people, all manifestations of God's wonder-working power were to cease.  In the trajectory of salvation-history, such a development would be a backwards one indeed, and dramatically so in light of the glorious culmination of history that the New Testament insists we are moving rapidly toward. 

The fellowship of churches to which I belong, the Assemblies of God, has for its motto Zechariah 4:6: "'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord."  If the Spirit were to speak through a Zechariah to the Church of today, I wonder if He might say, "'Not by commitment to orthodox doctrine, not by a perfectly contextualized liturgy, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord."

So with Paul the Apostle, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every namethat is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come" (Eph 1:18-23).

25 August 2018

As a Pentecostal pastor, I have listened many times as someone shared a dream, or a vision, or a 'word from God' with me.  Many of them have borne all the marks of the genuine.  Others have brought the Scripture to my mind where Paul writes about people who "go into great detail about visions they have seen, and their unspiritual minds puff them up with idle notions" (Col 2:18).  I have also heard and received many prophecies (though I think there is a bit of confusion over the difference between prophecy and the gift of knowledge.)  Many of these prophecies and words of knowledge have been dead on.  I have witnessed and received words given by people who had no access to the kind of information they were referring to as they spoke.  Some of these words have resonated in my spirit to such an extent that I could shout a whole-hearted 'yes!' to the Lord's question to Jeremiah: "Does not my word burn like fire? Is it not like a hammer that shatters rock into pieces?" (Jer 23:29). I can remember many of them word-for-word, despite their having been spoken 10 or 15 years ago.  These words have carried me through the darkest of times in my life, they have given me hope to hold onto while I felt like I was being torn apart, they have come to pass despite every indication that their fulfillment was unlikely bordering on impossible – right up to the moment when suddenly, in a way that defied all prediction – the circumstances lined up and things fell into place precisely as they had been told to me.  

I have also attended more than one event called a 'prophetic conference.'  I would say that I witnessed some genuine prophecy and words of knowledge at these conferences.  But I also saw scenes that reminded me of a story narrated in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18.  

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King Ahab of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah, dressed in their royal robes, were sitting on thrones at the threshing floor near the gate of Samaria. All of Ahab’s prophets were prophesying there in front of them. One of them, Zedekiah son of Kenaanah, made some iron horns and proclaimed, “This is what the Lordsays: With these horns you will gore the Arameans to death!”

All the other prophets agreed. “Yes,” they said, “go up to Ramoth-gilead and be victorious, for the Lord will give the king victory!”

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This sounds to me like a prophecy circus gone off the rails.  When I've found myself in an atmosphere like this, it was very difficult to discern the genuine from the counterfeit.  Further, the piling up of questionable 'words from the Lord' called the validity of the gift itself into question, and brought dishonor on the genuine.

I personally know people who were diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, who requested new scans from their oncologists after having been prayed for, and those scans came back: cancer free.  And I can never forget the day, when, in the course of a normal worship service, I was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming level of gratitude to and love for God, when I started to thank Him and found that my mouth could no longer keep up with the torrent of emotion that my heart was attempting to give voice to, until my speech finally broke free of every law of syntax and grammar and I was able to vocalize the content of my innermost being without the burden of coming up with language to communicate what was happening in me.  At that point in my life, I had dedicated a vast amount of the preceding years to writing songs–dozens and dozens of songs.  The first conscious thought that went through my mind after hearing this new form of speech coming out of my mouth was: "I'll never have to write another song again.  Because this is what I've been trying to say for my entire life."

It is possible to read the Book of Acts, and see in it a pattern of how speaking in tongues (the indisputable evidence of what the Bible calls the Baptism in the Holy Spirit), along with the other spiritual gifts, break into the world according to the order of expanding geographical and cultural spheres in which Jesus told His disciples they would be His witnesses: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  Instances of Spirit Baptism occur in the story at precisely the points that relate how the gift of the Spirit crosses over into one of these territories for the first time.  So it is possible to conclude that the purpose of tongues was 1.) to demonstrate the faithful fulfillment of God's redemptive-historical promise, and/or 2.) to provide sufficient supernatural confirmation to overcome the initial resistance to the Gospel within each new people group, such that a permanent inroads for the Gospel into that culture would have, ostensibly, thereby been established.  This line of reasoning provides plausibility to a view of the gifts of the Spirit in which they cease to function after the apostolic age (a position called cessationism).

In my opinion, a much more natural reading of the Book of Acts understands the expansion of the Gospel by signs and wonders (including the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues) as being presented as a normative model for the whole Church Age.  The Book of Acts functions as a representative example, a kind of 'here's what you should expect' account for Christians to refer to as they go about the continuing work of making disciples of all nations.  It is well known that the narrative structure of Acts follows the pattern mentioned previously: the center of the action moves from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the known world.  I don't think that anyone would conclude, on that basis, that the spread of the Gospel should therefore cease with the end of the apostolic age, since Jesus' promise to the Apostles with respect to the Gospel's expansion had been fulfilled.  To suggest that the Gospel should spread but that the gifts given to assist in the spread of the Gospel should cease is to superimpose an external structure on Scripture.  The argument, based on the narrative structure of Acts, that the examples of Spirit Baptism with speaking in tongues are one-time salvation-historical milestones cannot be applied in favor of a cessationist view of the gifts without also arguing for a cessationist position with respect to the need for ongoing evangelism.  Why would the gifts be needed to overturn unbelief and help the Church establish a foothold in Ephesus, but not in Barcelona, Bogotá, or Bangkok?  

It is my conviction that opposition to the ongoing validity of spiritual gifts arises mainly on account of three specific causes:

First: a lack of the experience leads (unnecessarily) to a discounting of the ongoing validity of the experience to the degree that the determination is made that the possibility of any future instances of the experience is thereby excluded; this then crystallizes into a prohibition with the force of a doctrinal position.

Second: consequently, those indoctrinated in the cessationist tend to engage with the phenomenon of spiritual gifts from a place of entrenched opposition.  There is no room for dialogue that includes openness to other views.

Third (and sadly), people who claim to be in possession of the gifts give cessationists additional incentive to remain closed to ever reassessing their position.  This happens in all the same ways as in 1 Corinthians.  Spirit-filled believers place a higher premium on operating in the gifts of the Spirit than on developing the character of Christ (i.e., the fruit of the Spirit.)  As a result, these believers abuse and bring disrepute on the gifts by neglecting their proper use; the gifts are given in order to benefit everyone in the church and to confront unbelievers with an experience that excludes every other possible conclusion apart from, "Surely God is among you!" 1 Cor 14:25).  The 'gifted' ones fail the ultimate test, that is, to keep the gifts functioning as a means of maintaining a community whose supreme ethic is self-denying love (thus Paul's placement of 1 Corinthians 13 right in the center of his discussion of spiritual gifts).  And then, the nail in the coffin: the displacing of Christlike love as the highest goal of the worshiping community results in other symptoms: disunity (there are far more Pentecostal/Charismatic movements than any other family of Christians), immorality, pride, indulgence, and competition (I don't think any Christian denomination can claim to have clean hands on every one of these matters.)  It's worth noting here that William Seymour, one of the founders of the modern Pentecostal movement, objected to the hailing of tongues as the Pentecostal distinctive.  His conviction was that any people who claimed to be living in an enhanced state of participation in the life of the Spirit should be most distinct on account of the quality of love that they have.  ("The world will know you are My followers because...")

As a Pentecostal, I am absolutely convinced that believers empowered by the gifts of the Spirit are the world's last and best hope for a 4th Great Awakening (why the Pentecostal movement in the early 20th Century is not called the 3rd Great Awakening is a mystery to me.)  But in order for the movement to which I belong to play such a privileged role in salvation history, we need to immerse ourselves in what we've been reading in 1 Corinthians this last week.  The gifts are mission-critical.  Paul desires that we would all speak in tongues.  Even more he desires that we would all prophesy.  But the gifts must be used according to their purpose: in a way that benefits the whole church and in order to overturn unbelief and demonstrate the truth of the Gospel.  And if we have to choose between walking in supernatural power and living in Christlike love, than we need to choose love every time.  Because if we have all the gifts but we lack love, we are nothing. 

Historically, the churches have a mixed record of refusing to choose between elements of our faith that the the Bible commends.  We stood our ground when it came to the question of how Jesus could be fully man and fully God.  'Both', we insisted (hypostatic union).  We embraced the unthinkable as a result of working through the question of how there could only be one God, when the New Testament regularly refers to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  'There is only one God', we said, 'but God is Triune – three distinct Persons in one Being without any confusion in their identities.'  We didn't do so well when it came to the problem of free will versus sovereignty.  Scripturally, it has to be both. In much the same way that, with respect to the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, if you refuse to insist fully on both you are forced to disregard the plain meaning of significant portions of Scripture, so it is with the sovereignty of God and the free will of His humanity.  And so it is, I believe, with love and spiritual gifts, agape and charisma, Christlike self-giving and Spirit empowerment.  If we insist on choosing one or the other, something central to our Gospel is lost; our Churches will fall short of their potential to put God's image–to put the life of heaven–on display when we gather together and in our individual lives.   As a committed Pentecostal, I must still stand with Scripture: and the greatest of these is love.  And yet my prayer is that we would find ourselves even more capable of maturity, of what the Ephesians 4:13 refers to a the "full stature of Christ", than I have proposed so far.  For Paul said to Timothy that we have been given a spirit not only of love and of power, but also of sound mind (2 Tim 1:7).  

"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all" (Eph 4:4-6).

Amen.

19 August 2018

Today's Bible reading brings us to the heart of those Scriptures that are central to Pentecostal spirituality and theology.  As Paul transitions from the issue of unity in the Church as related to its practices around the Lord's Supper and into his discussion of spiritual gifts, the thematic aspect of his letter continues seamlessly.  Especially because of the way chapter divisions have a way of creating conceptual divisions in our minds as we read, of subtly suggesting to us that a brand new topic is being discussed that lacks any real points of contact with what has been said previously, it is important for us to maintain our awareness of what Paul has been saying throughout the letter.  As in so many of his letters, Paul has been describing what Henri Nouwen calls 'downward mobility', or what John Howard Yoder names 'revolutionary subordination.'  In other words: in the Church, what is best for me is whatever benefits the whole Christian community to which I belong.  As Paul begins speaking of supernatural gifts given by the Spirit, the subject may change, but the principle he applies to the subject remains the same: the gifts serve to reveal and to reinforce the unity of the people of God.  The one Spirit who gives the gifts is the same Spirit who binds believers together in their shared life in Christ Jesus.

I offer this and the next post to Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., because his work relates to this topic in some very interesting ways.  On the one hand, I think he would agree that the resurrection of Jesus is what theologians might call the eschatological event, par excellence.  That's just another way of saying what Pentecostals celebrate on the basis of passages like Acts 2:16-21 (where Peter quotes Joel 2:28-32).  Namely, that the arrival of the Spirit together with the resurrection of Jesus are the indisputable evidence that, "The time promised by God has come at last", as Jesus puts it in Mark 1:15.  The concept is helpfully boiled down in the following formulation: This is that.  This (the arrival of the Holy Spirit with all of its accompanying supernatural signs, and the abilities that believers receive as a result), is that (everything that was referred to in the Hebrew prophetic writings about a coming Day when God would right every wrong, dry every tear, heal everything broken, and forgive sin as part of the process of restoring the entire Creation to its originally intended purpose.)  Gaffin, with his highly developed sense of the unfolding history of redemption that the Bible narrates, rightly coordinates the resurrection of Jesus with the arrival, at least in part, of the Day of the Lord.

The arrival is only "in part" because, like the consequences of humanity's disobedience in Garden of Eden played in reverse, only parts of the Day of the Lord foretold by prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and Ezekiel, arrived with the Spirit's outpouring on that first Pentecost.  Very few Christians in the 1st Century (except maybe some at Corinth!) would have found plausible the claim that the New Heavens and the New Earth prophesied by Isaiah had arrived in full.  The phrase 'already but not yet' is well-known among pastors and theologians who speak and write about this characteristic of the salvation-historical era that began with the resurrection of Jesus.  In 1 Corinthians 10:11, Paul refers to this unanticipated time as one in which "the ends of the ages have overlapped"; in Acts 2, Peter calls it "the last days" (v 17).  Today it is commonly referred to as 'the end times'.  The more technical word that applies to the study of all these related ideas is eschatology.  Regardless of the label used to refer to it, the concept is widely misunderstood.  (As far as I know, few, if any, have recognized that this already-but-not-yet dimension is already operative in the story of humanity's disobedience and the penalty of 'death' that follows from it in Genesis 3.  It's a pattern that continues in the Bible long before any subjects that would fit a study of eschatology come up.)

I realize that we are not used to thinking this way; in the same way that we have been heavily influenced by large bold chapter headings, we have deeply internalized a belief that this life is entirely separate from the afterlife, with respect to which (as in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man) there is no crossing over from here to there, or vice versa.  Christians (and even most non-Christians) do believe that the way we conduct ourselves in this life determines in some way what the afterlife will be like, but this influence is one-directional; we do not tend to think of the afterlife as exercising any direct influence on this life.  I imagine that it's even less common for people to think that the afterlife has, in any sense, already arrived in this one.  But this is, in fact, the Scriptural view.  The resurrection of Jesus and the sending of the Spirit from heaven mean more, but not less than this: Heaven has invaded Earth.  It is possible, in this life, to experience the "foretaste of heaven" (2 Cor 1:22).

From a this-is-that perspective, through already-but-not-yet lenses, the spiritual gifts Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 12, along with those in Romans 12 and 1 Peter 4 (the gifts referred to in Ephesians 4 belong to a slightly different discussion), make all the sense in the world.  The Day of the Lord (like the day of the Fall in Genesis 3) has been split into two different events or eras.  At the Fall, spiritual death was the immediate consequence, but physical death was postponed in order that the possibility of redemption would not be immediately and permanently lost.  At Pentecost, spiritual life is the immediate consequence, but the transformation of the physical world that will include us receiving new physical bodies has been delayed for the same reason: to extend the period of time in which redemption, reconciliation with God, is possible.  So the 'judgment' aspects of the Day of the Lord have been postponed while the 'salvation' aspects have been foregrounded.  

These 'salvation aspects' enable a believer in Christ to experience "the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come" (Hebrews 6:5).   From a salvation-historical perspective then: in light of the fact that Jesus said anyone who believes in Him has already passed from death to life (John 5:24); considering what Jesus says about the time announced by God having arrived, what Peter says about the outpouring of the Spirit indicating that the last days are upon us, and what Paul writes about the ends of the ages having overlapped on us––not only should it not come as a surprise that abilities of the kind Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12 would become available to believers, it should be difficult for us to imagine that God would have it otherwise, since the gifts are explicitly given in order that the Church might have everything it needs as it awaits the return of Jesus (1 Cor 1:7) .  Why would Paul say that spiritual gifts are everything the Church needs?

• 1:8 The gifts keep the Church strong to the end so that believers will be able to stand blameless on the Day of the Lord (the 'judgment' aspect of the Day of the Lord that is yet to come.)
• 1:9 The gifts equip the Church in the mission for which it was called into existence: to be in partnership with the Son in extending God's offer of reconciliation to the ends of the earth.

In other words, these spiritual gifts are precisely what is needed for the Church to fulfill the Great Commandment: to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls; and they provide the necessary equipping to fulfill the Great Commission: to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded.  As it turns out, these are exactly the parts of the church's life and mission that Paul will write about in the next several chapters: using the gifts in a way that benefits the whole church, and in way that does not create an obstacle to belief on the part of non-Christians, but rather demonstrates to them that the Gospel is the absolute Truth.

With God's help, I'll follow Paul on his journey into that territory as we read the rest of 1 Corinthians 12 tomorrow, and on to chapters 13 and 14 Tuesday-Thursday.

(If you're an English major, an expert in discourse analysis, or just highly detail-oriented, you may recall that I used the phrase, 'on the one hand' in reference to Richard B. Gaffin's work.  I have left the 'on the other hand' part of my interaction with his work unidentified; it will not be discernible to anyone unfamiliar with his work.  I have presented my points of disagreement in the form of a positively constructed, alternative view.  In light of the fact that I hope to have the privilege of being in direct conversation with him one day, I have engaged with him in this way out of a desire to engender mutual respect and avoid, as far as I can, putting us on adversarial footing.) 

18 August 2018

One of the benefits of growing up Catholic is that I don't have any of the baggage of growing up evangelical.  I started studying the Bible seriously, for the first time, as an adult– apart from any strong doctrinal or catechetical influence.  My reading of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures was a case-study in what the Reformers called the 'perspicuity' of Scripture.  That's a $25 word that means anyone is able to be read the bible and understand its meaning.  

I learned Scripture in much the same way that I learned music: by ear.  Before I became a worship pastor, I could play just about anything on the piano, but I had never learned the musical terminology for what I was doing.  In other words, I could play a C# minor 7 flat 9, but under no circumstances could I look at my fingers and tell you that's what I was doing if you had asked, "Hey, what's that chord you're playing?"  Similarly, as I began to read the Bible, I didn't have any authorities looking over my shoulder, teaching me to read passages from an Arminian or Calvinist perspective.  I didn't know what it meant to have a high or low view of the inspiration of Scripture.  I just read the Bible, began to internalize it and develop an understanding of it, and–most importantly–began to live in accordance with it in the best way I knew how.

20 years later, at least that many times reading the Bible cover-to-cover, and after tens of thousands of pages of commentary and theology, I hope I can say that I have journeyed consistently along a path toward being a more faithful reader of Scripture.  Not faithful only in the sense of reading it every day, but in the sense of understanding it in a way that is in accordance with the intended meaning of the Author.  And I hope this history of 'studying to show myself approved, that I might rightly teach the Word of Truth' gives me a little bit of credibility as I get ready to challenge one of the poor interpretations of Scripture that has taken quite a prominent place in evangelicalism over the past 50 years or so.

First, a disclaimer: while I would never diminish the power of God's Word to impact the lives of any and all who read it (it certainly did mine!), irrespective of their level of Biblical or theological training, I would say that the Bible is an incredibly complex book, and it is extremely difficult to interpret well.  If you're familiar with red-letter Bibles (the ones that put the words of Jesus in red print so you can find them easily with your eyes, or so that you know that those are somehow the words of God in a way that the other words in the New Testament aren't?), you'll be able to appreciate this illustration:

One morning, I was doing what every good, new, evangelical believer does when they read their Bibles.  It's called, 'Bible roulette'.  That's when you sit down, flip open the Good Book to whatever page it lands on, and start reading wherever your eye happens to fall on the page.  (You have to be very careful to make sure that you don't let your eyes stray even a line or two up or down – you might just miss God's word to you that day if you do!)  My eyes rested on the following words: "Now as for those wicked men who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and execute them in my presence!"  Now, as shocking as those words would be in any context, here I was reading them in my Bible.  And–as if that wasn't already disturbing enough–those words were written in red ink.  That was Jesus talking! (Luke 19:27.)  I slammed my Bible shut in .1 seconds flat.  I think it was probably a few days before I dared open it up again.

Now, to be fair, I've never heard anyone in the church spout off some bad teaching on this particular verse.  (In fact, I've never heard anyone teach on it at all.)  But, as I mentioned above, there are certainly some glaring examples of misinterpretation/misapplication that I have heard.  One of the most common ones people quoting Jesus' saying that "The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me", with the intent of minimizing any sense of responsibility that Christians might have that caring for the less fortunate is a non-negotiable aspect of our faith.  The problem with this application of Jesus' words is that He is quoting a passage in Deuteronomy where it says, "The poor you will always have with you; therefore I command you to open your hand to the poor and the needy" (Deut 15:11, italics mine).  It doesn't take a Bible scholar to feel embarrassed for anyone trying to use Jesus' words to suggest that giving to the poor doesn't need to be a priority for Christians.

Which finally brings us to today's reading.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard that we need to examine ourselves before we take communion, or else we risk eating and drinking judgment upon ourselves.  I have never heard it used to refer to anything other than a warning to make sure I don't have any secret or unconfessed sin.  Because that, after all, is what will make me unfit to partake in the Lord's Supper.  My individual sin.  My guilt.  My hidden motives.  My unconfessed failures.  Only a culture that could produce the word 'selfie' could arrive at such an individualistic and self-centered view of this passage, in spite of Paul explicitly stating that the direction of his thought is running in exactly the opposite direction.

Following on the heels of, 1 Corinthians 8-10, where Paul's extended focus on surrendering our personal freedoms for the benefit of others could be summarized as, "I would rather die than allow the use of my freedom to harm another believer, or to make Jesus unattractive to someone who doesn't know Him", it should come as no surprise that Paul continues the same theme here.  The entire passage is about the way that some members of the church (namely, the wealthy) are treating other members (namely, the poor – do you notice a pattern here, by any chance?)  According to the Scripture, at least (despite what you might have been taught), the sin that puts us in danger of eating and drinking condemnation on ourselves has to do with us acting in a way that is opposite of what Paul has been drilling down on for 3 chapters now: putting the needs of others first.  "Being rich, He became poor for our sakes, so that you might be enriched by His poverty," Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9 (the same idea of Jesus 'becoming a slave' from Philippians 2, expressed in yet another way).  THIS is what the character and nature of God look like in action; and the Church is supposed to re-present, re-image, God's character to and for the world.  And when the Church's interior life is exactly the opposite of God's own interior life, then it stands under His judgment along with the rest of the world.  It fails at exactly the mission God called it into existence for in the first place.  

I don't know when you will take communion next, but between now and then I hope you will grow in your awareness that what matters is "faith working itself out in love" (Gal 5:6).  What matters is that the Church is God's plan to demonstrate His wisdom to the world (Eph 3:10).  Yes, yes, and again yes: you ARE the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and God dwells within you.  YOU, as an individual, are capable of putting God's character and love on display, and it is your incomparable privilege to be chosen by God to be used for this very purpose.  But as important as your personal relationship with God is, what is far more important is the degree to which the Church as a whole functions like a window into the character and love of God.  Because to the extent that the Church reimages God to the world, people who encounter the Church will experience what the Bible calls 'the foretaste of heaven.'  The Church is designed to be the place where heaven literally meets earth, where people can stand as though their toes are just over the line into eternity and experience in their hearts what that eternity will be like.   And for the Church to fulfill that mission, we must examine ourselves.  

Of course the question, 'Do I have any unconfessed sin?' is important, even critical.  But it doesn't go far enough.  The larger question is, 'Does the worshiping community of which I am a part put the inner life of God on display for the world?'  Are we pursuing that kind of unity?  And are we achieving that unity be the 'strong' among us becoming weak for the sake of the 'weak'?  ...by the rich among us sharing our resources so that God's design that there should be no needy people among us (Deut 15:4) can become a reality once again (Acts 4:34)?  ...by the educated, sophisticated, and cultured refusing to think that they are too good to associate with those who aren't on their 'level' (Rom 12:11)?  By those in 'high' positions 'coming down' as Jesus did, and taking the position of the servant of all?  If that's what we are pursuing in our churches, then and only then have we begun to understand the importance of examining ourselves before taking communion.

15 August 2018

I suspect that the prospect of tweeting the revelation that God had given him would have been impossibly frustrating for Paul.  In Chapter 1 alone of the Greek version of 1 Corinthians, there are 1,937 characters.  Chapter 15 is twice as long.  (Even before this parenthesis, this introduction is 100 characters too long to be tweeted.) 

I often teach Bible school students and preach to church members, "If you've never read a book like Romans or 1 Corinthians straight through in one sitting, the chances are you don't know what the book is about."  Reading, as we are, in a One-Year format that breaks up the Jewish and Christian Scriptures into bite-sized daily morsels, it's easy to miss the fact that Paul started a train of thought in Monday's reading (8:1-13) that carries straight through, uninterrupted, to the end of tomorrow's (10:14-33).  Over the course of these chapters, Paul refers to subjects as diverse as sacrificial meals in ancient Greek/Roman temples, the authority of an apostle, the right of a preacher of the Gospel to expect material provision in return for his/her ministry, adopting the lifestyle practices (i.e., Jewish or non-Jewish) that will give Paul credibility with his audience, living with purpose and self-discipline, the disobedience and resulting death of nearly the entire Exodus generation of Israelites, grumbling, temptation, immorality, vegetarianism, and the Lord's Supper (Communion, or Eucharist).  And these are only the main topics...

As you read today and tomorrow, I want to point out to you that everything Paul is saying over this four-day span is to make a single point.  It's a point Paul touched on first in Chapter 6–a point so counter-cultural and uncomfortable for us that we might have sped right past it without reflecting on what a significant challenge it throws down in the face of our most unconscious assumptions and deeply-held values.  It's worth separating out visually to maximize the impact:

"Even to have lawsuits with one another is a defeat for you.  Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that?  Why not let yourselves be cheated?" (6:7, italics mine).  Another translation reads: "Why not rather be wronged?"

Think about that for a second.  If you were born in the U.S.A., it's almost impossible to imagine a logic more dramatically opposed to ours.  I remember the words, 'It's a free country' in the mouths of my childhood friends, flying out like fists in defense of 3rd graders' right to do whatever it is that they were doing at that moment–something that often involved hurting someone else's feelings.  They were usually too busy insisting on their rights to recognize that their actions were violating someone else's.  (I'm not convinced that this blindness diminishes with age for most Americans.)

In America, our rights are what what we fight and die for.  When they are violated we want justice.  What we do not want, under any circumstances, is to prefer to be wronged, to accept injustice.  I can only assume that's because we cannot easily conceive, even in the church, of a higher value to live and die for than freedom, than the justice that guarantees me my rights.  

It is precisely here where the "Jesus whom Paul preaches" asks us: Of which kingdom are we citizens?  Do you live by the American Way, or the Jesus Way?  Do you abide by the laws of the land, or the royal law of love?  Paul spends 73 verses (6,926 Greek characters – or 50 tweets) on illustration after illustration of this most fundamental of all principles for followers of Jesus.  This kind of repetition leads me to suspect that this is so important, that something absolutely core to the Gospel gets lost, that our Gospel becomes less-than-Gospel, something other-than-Gospel– that we actually abolish the Gospel... when we insist on our rights.  Listen to Paul's variations on this theme: I lay down my rights to financial compensation as an apostle; I willingly restrict my freedom in order to show respect for the religious convictions of others; I spend so that others can have; I go out of my way to avoid doing anything that might offend another person or cause them to violate their conscience; even though I am a free man, I have become a stave to all to bring people to Christ; I would rather die than allow the use of my freedom to harm another believer, or to make Jesus unattractive to someone who doesn't know Him.

In a tragically ironic twist, almost the only Americans who live by anything approaching this demanding of an ethic are our soldiers.  They kill and lay down their lives so that we can have our freedom and live in security, prosperity, and peace.  But Jesus didn't call followers to Himself with the instruction: let others take up arms and kill so that you can live a life free of sacrifice and service.  He said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.  If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  But if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve–and to lay down His life as a ransom for many."  Paul apparently got the message.  He wrote, "Each of you should have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who gave up all of His rights and privileges."  And Paul lived what he preached: "I become all things to all people so that by all means I might win some (to Christ)."  He was also unapologetic about calling people to follow His example: "You should Imitate me just as I imitate Christ."

So today as you read about the generation that came out of Egypt, notice that Paul says their story was recorded in order to warn us not to assume that 'we're in' because we've seen God do miracles on our behalf, or because we we've been Baptized or regularly take Communion... As you read tomorrow about participating with demons and eating meat sold in the marketplace ... Don't lose sight of the fact that Paul has one point and one point only over these four days in our Bible readings: "Don't be concerned for your own good but for the good of others" (10:24; almost a word-for-word echo of Philippians 2:4).

Or, as I paraphrased it earlier: I would rather die than allow the use of my freedom to harm another believer, or to make Jesus unattractive to someone who doesn't know Him.

Exactly 140 characters.  You can tweet that.  

But you probably shouldn't unless you're at least willing to try to live it.

26 July 2018

Once again, it's amazing to see how passages from the Old and New Testaments chosen virtually at random will dialogue with one another in profound ways.  It shouldn't really surprise us, in light of the fact that there is one Author behind all 66 books and one Voice speaking across the thousands of years in which the Scriptures were produced.

In our story in 2 Chronicles today, we see that King Ahab of Israel has no fear of the Lord–and therefore no acknowledgment of the prophet of Yahweh.  It's worth noting from the outset that significant points in this passage get obscured because, where we see the English word ‘God’ in our Bibles, the Hebrew word is ‘Baal’, the generic word for ‘god’.  

For Ahab, the prophets are nothing more than a cheering section who give him spiritual legitimacy in the eyes of the people for whatever he happens to want to do. Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, doesn’t care what the ‘gods’ might have to say. He wants to hear from Yahweh alone.  So it’s no surprise that Ahab wants to lock up the opposition. But it’s astonishing that Jehoshaphat, after having the conviction to insist on inquiring of Yahweh, goes into battle anyway–even after His prophet clearly reveals what’s happening from Yahweh’s perspective. 

As is often the case with Old Testament leaders, passages that talk about how they became prosperous, secure and successful because they followed the Lord are often followed by stories about how these same leaders completely blew it. There is certainly a connection (one that God explicitly warns against in places Deuteronomy 8:10-20); when God makes us successful, that is when we are most likely to forget Him. 

With this background in mind, Matthew 16:24 makes all the sense in the world.  Taking up a cross is the only solution to the world’s fallenness. No matter how successful we get, our cross-bearing will keep us dependent upon God.  We will remain those who ‘tremble at the Word of Yahweh.’  Or, as the NT puts it, those who ‘work out their salvation with fear and trembling.’  ...which, if you read that passage in Philippians carefully, you realize is another way of saying ‘walking in obedience’, something that Jehoshaphat clearly lost touch with the importance of.

At the heart of the issue is the ever-present 'if.'  Read Deuteronomy 28 for the long version, but the essence is: IF you obey me, all will go well with you and you will enjoy a long and full life–the highest and best of God's plans for you will be worked out in your life.  IF, on the other hand, we ignore the boundaries He places on us, we will encounter hardship, misery, and disaster.  It's not that God has a desire to punish the disobedient.  It's that walking in God's ways can be compared to 'going with the grain' of reality itself.  Since God is the Author and Creator of all that is, He knows which paths lead to the fullest kind of life–a life of flourishing.

It's the same in the New Testament. As I've been exploring in the blog next door, Jesus says, "IF you hold to my teachings, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."  The Old Testament side of the IF is written all over the pages of the New Testament as well.  IF you do not believe in Me, then you will be condemned with the world.  IF you hear what I say and don't do it, you will be swept away when the floodwaters of judgment come.  

At the center of every moment of every one of your days lies this 'IF.'  Throughout the Bible we find God reminding us that the choice is ours when it comes to the two sets of outcomes that are available to us.  And at each point, we find God encouraging us: choose life.  The cross reminds us that we only remain in this life through entering into the continual dependence upon God that results when we deny the instinctive and automatic ways of acting that belong to the part of our nature whose desires are at war with the desires of the Spirit.  When we carry our crosses and deny ourselves in this way, even if and when God's highest and best plans for us involve making us prosperous, secure, and successful, we will remain in what Psalm 1 calls "the path of the righteous."  It's the path that leads to life.  We know that it is, because it is the path that He Himself walked, in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, and in doing so, placed footprints ahead of us that we might walk in them and follow Him along the way of life that is so powerfully alive that it leads straight through the realm of death and out the other side to eternal life. 

"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!"  Deuteronomy 30:19

"Repent, and turn from your sins. Don’t let them destroy you! Put all your rebellion behind you, and find yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O people of Israel? I don’t want you to die, says the Sovereign Lord. Turn back and live!"  Ezekiel 18:30-32

“How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”  Luke 19:40-44

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock."  Matthew 7:24-25

"Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God."  Revelation 2:7

23 July 2018

In today's Gospel reading (January 24/Matt 14:13-36), a giant detail jumped out at me that I have never noticed before.  

Of course, it's worth pointing out that Jesus had withdrawn to 'a desolate place' to mourn the recent execution of His cousin, John the Baptist.  But the crowds had figured out where he was going, and they were waiting for them when He got there.  Putting off His own need to grieve, He had compassion on the people and healed all of the sick.  

Because the place was desolate, and, presumably, it took Jesus some time to pray for each person, the practically-minded disciples urge Jesus to dismiss the crowd before it gets so dark that it's unsafe for them to travel to the nearest towns to get food on their way home.  Jesus' view of His circumstances, however, is not dictated by practical considerations.  He tells His disciples: you feed them.

For those of us familiar with the story, it's so easy to stop right here, shift to the edge of our seat, and adopt the position of a spectator.  This is our go-to, whether at home in front of the TV, at the movie theater, at a concert or athletic competition; we watch while other people do the exciting, the heroic, the impressive.  Or we read the story through our proof-obsessed lenses, as though the whole point of this story is to demonstrate to us that Jesus really is God.  

But the point of greatest anticipation and excitement in this story is the words: you feed them.  Jesus didn't intend to feed the crowd.  He intended for His disciples to trust that He wouldn't give them an instruction to do what was impossible if He didn't intend to make it possible.  He had just demonstrated to them, in His own life, that God's resources are sufficient to meet even the greatest of needs (i.e., healing every sick person in a huge crowd), at precisely the moment where you have the least to offer (i.e., when you are devastated by the death of your cousin, and over what that death likely forecasts about your own fate, since your mission is essentially a continuation of his.)  

YOU feed them.

Here's the part I never noticed before.  It would seem that Matthew is using the story of Peter walking on the water to interpret the story of Jesus' feeding of the 5,000.  Jesus, again, invites a disciple to do something impossible.  This time, (maybe because the disciples' faith is still sky-high from having witnessed the multiplication of the loaves and fish), Peter accepts Jesus' invitation into the impossible.  He steps out of the boat and onto the water.

We all know what happens next.  Peter allows the 'facts' of his circumstances to eclipse the Truth of Jesus' love for Peter and His authority over Peter's circumstances.  The fearful logic of the natural world overpowers His faith in the one who has power over all the world.  And so he sinks.

But today, for the first time in my life, I don't think this is the point of the story.  It's a very important point of the story, to be sure – and I do not want in any way to undermine its significance for us.  If we keep our eyes fixed on the author and the finisher of our faith, He will absolutely hold us firmly in His hand as our discipleship to Him calls us to tread upon even the most treacherous of terrains.  

Today, it strikes me that the point is that when Jesus calls us to attempt the impossible, we do not have to fear the possibility of failure, because He will be there to catch us if, in mid-flight during our leap of faith, we end up falling.  Do we really think that Jesus will let us drown when we're stepping out in obedience to His command to do the impossible?  As a lead pastor, I get the privilege of inviting people to do things that are beyond their expertise, beyond their capacity and training.  If they happen to fall short, far more than I am disappointed in them, I rejoice with them over their willingness to attempt what can only succeed by way of the working of faith in cooperation with the Spirit's power.  I celebrate their attempt.  I do not scold them for their apparent lack of success.

Admittedly, Jesus does say to Peter, "You don't have much faith.  Why did you doubt?"  I'm not setting myself up as a more gentle teacher than Jesus.  Peter was in some very different circumstances.  He had, after all, just had the experience of distributing a never-ending supply of bread with his own hands.  He had, after all, just walked on the water (a point that we often overlook).  Further, in my mind, when I imagine Jesus speaking to Peter, what I hear is a compassionate teacher speaking to a disciple at the level appropriate to his stage in apprenticeship.  "I am surprised at how little faith you have in light of everything you have just experienced.  Why would you doubt me?"

But for me it comes back to the idea that Jesus is not going to abandon us to failure in those moments when we are stepping out in faith, in obedience to Him, in imitation of Him.  He WANTS us to succeed in the things that He has called us to do.  If not, why else would He have left such things to us in the first place?  (You know – little things like revealing Him and His plan of salvation to the whole world.)  YOU CAN TRUST HIM.  If He is calling you to walk on water today, my advice to you is to be confident that the water will hold you.  A God who IS love is not calling you into circumstances that will result in your death by drowning in the very same waters He calls you to walk upon.

Today's readings from Chronicles and Romans interrelate with this theme in ways so elegant that  are only be possible on account of being God's word.  In Chronicles, a word of warning.  Solomon's kingship coincides with and implements the height of God's plan for the nation of Israel.  The Bible tells us that he rules over the entire area that God had promised to Abraham 1,000 years earlier.  At the center of that Kingdom there are two thrones.  One is the Ark of the Covenant (a footstool rather than a throne, really) in the Temple where God dwells.  The other is the throne that Solomon has installed in his palace.  Solomon's throne has six steps leading up to it.  I cannot help but hear an echo of Genesis 1-2 here.  God enacts a six-step creation plan.  He builds Himself a Temple to dwell in and fills it with His glory.  On the seventh day, the seventh 'step' of His plan, He rests–He sits down to rule over the Kingdom He has just built for Himself... a Kingdom over which He has placed a human being as His representative ruler.

This is a reminder that from the beginning, God's plan has always been that our work would overlap with – be coextensive with – His own work.  That humans would be the means by which He implemented His good and perfect will in the world.  It is a warning because, in light of all of the dignity and authority and power He has given us as human beings, there is a very real danger that we will forget that it is HIS work that we are supposed to be doing.  We might decide to use all of the resources He's given us for our own purposes.  Or we might forget where the resources came from in the first place, and make the mistake of thinking that the power and authority we have our OURS.  That we have dignity apart from the One who gave it to us by making us in His image, and entrusting to us the privilege of exercising authority on His behalf.  

Every time Solomon walks up those six steps, he can either remember that God created the world in six days and sat down to rule over it, and see that throne as ultimately belonging to God... to see it as a place where he can only sit insofar as he uses the authority it grants to him in accordance with the purposes and will of the One whose authority it represents.  OR–Solomon can become so accustomed to the thought of ruling, he can make the mistake of thinking that it is his own work he is doing from that throne, and by virtue of his own authority.  In essence, along the way on his journey up the six steps to the throne, he can begin to think that he is God.

If Chronicles gives us the warning, Romans gives us the promise of hope.  When we reach the height of God's plan for humanity – God's Spirit taking up residence not in a Temple, but in within our hearts – it is now within our reach to succeed where every other human being before us (other than Jesus) failed.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to resist the distractions and temptations and desires that lead us off course, the complacency that results in us failing to use the resources God gives us in a way that fulfills His purposes in giving them to us, the confusion that so easily makes us live as though we are God and forget that we will not one day stand before Him, accountable for how we used the things of His that were given to us.

His presence within us creates an ever-deepening longing for intimacy – to know Him more and more.  The awareness of His absolute authority, His unchallengeable rule (this awareness is known as the Fear of the Lord) will keep us living in the position of servants.  His power reminds us that we dare not confuse His throne with a place where we have any right to sit.  Along with that power, His love reminds us that He would in no way ever call us to an obedience that results in anything but our highest good.  Even if we fail in our attempt – there is still nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

It is for freedom that He set us free.  It is for good works that He has made you a new creation in Christ Jesus.  There is nothing that He has called you to do, no water He has called you to walk on, that He will not also bring the power and provision to accomplish as you walk out in trusting obedience that which He has given you to accomplish.

16 July 2018

"Don't be afraid of those who threaten you."

"Don't be afraid of those who want to kill you."  

God said very similar words to Joshua as the nation of Israel was about to invade the land of Canaan.  In fact, God told Joshua over and over not to fear, and to be strong and courageous.  

I remember when my good friend Henry Smith pointed out how odd it is that we tend to think of Joshua as a strong leader and a courageous warrior in spite of the fact that God thought it necessary to tell him again and again not to be afraid.

I think that need, fear, and pain are the essence of what it means to exist in this world.  If you could create a stethoscope that was able to translate the voice of the human heart, you would hear, "I need, I fear, I hurt... I need, I fear, I hurt..." as you listened through the earbuds.  Admittedly, there are also powerful creative drives in us–good and generous and loving drives.  But a little reflection yields the conclusion that these drives exist in tension–in conflict–with the more basic experience of need, fear, and pain that define our existence.  If we're honest, we'll admit that our 'better angels' are engaged in a struggle to overcome an unsettled darkness within us, an anxiety that, from the moment of our birth, causes us to literally cry out on account of our longing to be comforted–to be rescued from the environment that is interpreted and narrated to us with every heartbeat: I need, I fear, I hurt.

From a Christian perspective, our basic experience in the world functions a little like a crater to the curious scientist.  It begs the question: what object explains these physical features in the earth's surface?  What kind of event could account for this emptied space?  The impact zone indicates that an asteroid's path through space converged with the earth's orbit around the sun.  The asteroid is long gone, but its effect remains.  In the same way, our innermost discomfort in this world indicates that there was a cataclysmic event, the details of which are us inaccessible to us as the meteor that geologists think created the Gulf of Mexico, yet of which the results are no less apparent.  There is an empty space in us.  And the emptying of that space removed soil and bedrock and crust, leaving a massive hole in our humanity, and allowing the untamable waters of the Caribbean to flow in and submerse the scar, hiding it from view.  (Incidentally, in Biblical thought the Sea represents chaos and all of the forces that threaten to tear apart God's good creation. You could argue that it was one of our earliest conceptions of the idea referred to now as 'hell.')

The Bible tells us that in the original creation, God dwelled with humans in such a way that we need, fear, and pain were experiences that would have simply been unknown to us.  But our ancestors decided that, rather than remaining within the boundaries that God had set for them–rather than relying on God to determine what was good and not good, right and not right–they wanted to see for themselves.  The amount of information and experience we amassed in the instant of that decision was infinitely greater and more destructive to human life than any inter-galactic impact.  We immediately learned what it was like to experience the world without God's intimate presence, the consequences of choosing our own paths rather than God's, the blindness that is living by sight rather than trust.  With all that had once been provided for us in the protective embrace of God's presence now removed, in the deafening silence that ensued we first began to hear our own heartbeats: I need, I fear, I hurt... I need, I fear, I hurt...

In our Bible readings today, we find David telling Solomon, "Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or lose heart!"  A few sentences later, David provides the 'why' that makes his encouragement sensible: "The LORD God is with you... He has given you peace."  Peace is exactly what we would have known before the culture shock we experienced when the experiential presence of God was removed from our lives.  If you pause to think about it for just a moment, we wouldn't even have had a word for it–it would have been the only experience we knew.  Peace is a word that you have to invent with only after you have lived through the loss of it.  Only after have having endured trauma–only after having had to come up with language to describe your new reality: a life of need, fear, and pain.  But if God withdrawing His presence was the event that left the crater, then the restoring of His presence is the event that promises a return to peace.

Which brings us to Jesus.  The Bible tells us He is the presence of God come to earth.  He is called the Prince of Peace.  He says to us, "I have come to give you peace... a peace that is not at all like what you refer to as peace."  

Since at least as long ago as Joshua, we have been overcoming our fear by overcoming by force those who stand in our way or threaten our existence.  By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, even a man as committed to and radical for God as John the Baptist cannot imagine that Jesus is Israel's Savior, because His agenda seems to be focused on bringing hope to the oppressed, offering inclusion to the outcast and healing to the broken rather than rising up in the invincible power of the Almighty God, wiping out the oppressor, and taking dominion over the world by means of divine power.  Worse yet, Jesus seems to indicate that He will leave the oppressor's power unchallenged.  Because after saying, "Do not be afraid by those who threaten you... Do not be afraid of those who want to kill you...", He says, "If you cling to your life you will lose it; but if you give it up for me you will find it."  To John the Baptist, He adds the additional warning, "God blesses those who are not offended by me."

I think too many followers of Yeshua of Nazareth have come to the mistaken conclusion that they can obtain the peace He promises by the same means that Yeshua son of Nun, Joshua who led the Israelite conquest into Canaan.  Jesus said that the servant will share the master's fate.  Put the other way around, your fate will reveal who you chose to follow as your master.  Despite our best efforts to spiritualize Jesus' ultimatum, our creative strategies to make His clear directive into a mysterious metaphor, His word to us remains: "If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are to worthy of being mine."

Taking up the cross was how Yeshua of Nazareth would bring peace.  By walking the path of self-sacrificial love (sacrifice without love is nothing) Jesus showed us the way, the walking of which brings the end of need, fear, and pain, as enter into the presence of Him who gives, who protects, who heals.  But our fear of those who oppose us, who threaten to take what we need and hurt those we love–the people that our conflicts with lead us down the path of labeling them enemies–this fear triggers our habit of taking up the methods of Yeshua son of Nun.  But it is the cross and not the sword that the Master calls His followers to.  It is the cross by which Jesus establishes the Kingdom without end with its eternal peace.  Yeshua of Nazareth reminds us that there is only one person who we should rightly fear: God the Father, who has the power to bring eternal judgment on those who continue to insist on 'seeing for themselves' rather than trusting, on those who continue to choose their own paths rather than the ones He marks out for us.  Fearing God is the cure to all other fears because His path is the way in which our lives are returned to the experience of peace that He created us for.

The cross was not only the means by which Jesus paid the price for our sin, won our forgiveness, made a way for our relationship with God to be restored.  It was also a demonstration of the way that God overcomes need, fear, and pain in the world.  It is the way that He restores peace.  Counterintuitively, it is the way that He overcame those who threatened Him, who wanted to kill Him, who actually did kill Him.  In conquering death, Jesus conquered the only enemy that really matters: the one who kills, steals, and destroys, the one who causes need, fear, and hurt.

The cross was also God's declaration to us that we only overcome as we walk the same path to victory that He walked.  It is a way of faith not sight, of hope rather than possession, of love rather than dominance.  "And the greatest of these is love..."  Will you choose the sword of Yeshua son of Nun, or the cross of Yeshua Son of God?  Will you choose to defend yourself, or to risk loving the one who threatens you?  Will you try to grab hold of life according to your own strategy, or will you obtain the true life that can only be had by laying yours down?  Choose today whom you will serve.