In the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he tells us to pray that we will not be brought to the time of trial and that we be rescued from the evil one. With regard to being delivered from trials: it is clear that Jesus regarded his entire mission as full of trials and identifies his followers as those who share in his trials (e.g. Luke 22:24-34), those who stand by him in his trials. Also, Saint Paul pictures the church’s ongoing ministry as sharing in the sufferings of Christ, saying mysteriously that his ministry in the church (a type of all those who co-labor) makes up that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions ( Colossians 1). It would be impossible then for Jesus to have in mind that we should pray in such a way that we imagine our life can be free of trials. Indeed, I submit that the case is quite the opposite. To follow Jesus is to be in one trial after another. Most likely what is meant here is that we are to pray about our lives and our sharing in Christ’s mission with the real world full of trials and tribulations in full view - not to shy away from them. For, the one whose life is hidden in God with Christ has the courage and clear vision to see just how bad things really are. In this sense we are in a unique position to give the world a gift that, though it might not want, it needs: a diagnosis of what is wrong in the world. Christians, because of our great confidence in God’s judgment of evil and our sin on the cross, have the courage and vision to name evil for what it is when it is at work in ourselves or in the world. However, because we are Christ’s ambassadors of reconciliation, we must be careful to not only name evil but to simultaneously proclaim the good news of the gospel. Moreover, it is not permitted for the Christian to demonize those who do evil things for we are all in the same boat on that one.
So, I am suggesting that the following exhortation flows from our understanding of what is at the heart of this petition regarding trials and deliverance from evil: we are to ask God to help us remain in the power of his victory over evil in the midst of trials and temptations. This must be some of what Jesus had in his mind and heart when he honored his disciples by naming them as those who have stood with him in the midst of his trials while knowing well that they would also be unfaithful to him in his great trial!! Peter, of course, becomes the example of the one who stands with Jesus and also denies Jesus. In this way he is a type of every Christian person; and when we think of the words of the Lord’s prayer in light of Peter as typical of you and me - one who both shares in Jesus’ mission and his trials and one who fails Jesus - it helps us get the right perspective on what we are to ask in faith and hope when we ask to be delivered from the evil one and from the time of trial. We pray these words on the other side of Christ’s victory over evil on the cross; we pray these words on the other side of Jesus’ praying for Peter to turn back and strengthen his fellow disciples; we live on the other side of Jesus’ being faithful in the midst of his great trial in the garden when he prays that God’s will be done even as he struggles with the trial of the prospect of death on the cross; we live on the other side of the resurrection, the victory of God over evil as shown in Jesus’ human resurrection, the first fruits of the new creation.
In the words of N.T. Wright, “To pray deliver us from the evil one is to inhale the victory of the cross and thereby to hold the line for another moment, another hour, another day, against the forces of destruction within ourselves and the world....”
This thought of praying these words as inhaling the victory of the cross will have as many different sorts of applications as there are people in this room but one way I think of it is a call to turn from despair to hope. Think of Peter again. He renounces and denies Jesus in his greatest trial and yet is personally restored to a hopeful future of sharing in Jesus’ mission. We are reminded in all of this that inhaling the victory of the cross is to deal seriously with our sins and failures but only as we invoke the power of the cross and God’s forgiveness. We get it wrong a great deal and imagine that our failures in and of themselves are what God is looking at and what is defining us. But there is no room in following Jesus in this world to say I am defined by sins and failures; there is only room for the joy of repentance and a confident hope that God’s kingdom will come and his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we live this way with one another we keep each other focused on the gospel and continue to bear hopeful witness to a world so broken and fractured that it is often afraid to assess evil for what it is.
1. Do you think of the victory of the cross as always with you, ready to be "inhaled"? What sorts of mundane practices could you deepen or add to your routines that would help you to live closer to the victory of God in the cross of Christ?
2. Do you agree that the message of hope is always on offer in the gospel, even (especially) when we have done our worst? How can you help others who are a part of your life appreciate this more deeply?
3. The evangelical world is fond of point out evil in the culture at large but often in a way that demonizes those outside of its folds. What sorts of things should the church say and do in its prophetic voice but in a way that communicates hope?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Question Will Be: Have you shown mercy!?
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus
Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of
everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the
day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death
of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and for ever. Amen.
Last week we talked a good bit about forgiveness being God’s work through and through. Additionally, we noted the mysterious way in which Scripture points to God’s passion to redeem and to reconcile - not as an afterthought put into play after creation goes wrong and sin enters in - but as an aspect of God’s love for the world that preceded creation. One of the reasons why I am urging us to get as clear as we can get regarding forgiveness being all God’s work, a matter settled before the foundation of the world, is to safeguard us from running amok in our thinking about what goes on when we repent Our repentance does not put God in a new posture of wanting to forgive us. Moreover, our repentance does not earn us forgiveness. Our faithful repentance brings us into union with Christ’s death and deepens our participation in God’s redemptive work in our lives and in the world. Through repentance we die to our efforts at self-justification and autonomy; we die to our arms crossed posture that separates us from God and his nurturing love; we die to our identities as people who are either too proud of or too disgusted with our selves to accept God’s forgiveness. When we repent we take God’s judgment on our sins as being the true picture of what we have done while simultaneously taking God’s word that Christ has taken that judgment into himself - divine wrath is absorbed by divine mercy It is there, where God’s justice and mercy meet in the passion of Jesus’ sacrificial death that we have the promise of our forgiveness even as our sins come under God’s judgment.
This picture of sharing in Christ’s death is sometimes referred to by theologians as inclusive substitution. Here is a helpful and very brief summary of that doctrine taken from Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge, Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace: “Writing to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul made a puzzling statement about Christ’s death: “One has died for all”, he wrote, “therefore all have died” (2 Corinthians 5:14). Since Christ is our substitute, after reading, “one has died for all”, we’d expect him to continue, “therefore none of them needs to die”. Had he written that, he would have expressed the idea that theologians call exclusive substitution. According to this view, Christ’s death makes ours unnecessary. As a third party, he is our substitute, and his death is his alone and no one else’s. But that is not the way the Apostle thought. Christ’s death does not replace our death. It enacts it, he suggested. That’s what theologians call inclusive substitution. Because one has died, all have died. As a substitute he was not a third party. His death is inclusive of all.... what happened to him happened to us. When he was condemned we were condemned. When he died, we died. We were included in his death. John Donne put it this way in his ‘Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness’: “We think that Paradise and Calvary, / Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree stood in one place’. To be in Christ means that the tree from which Adam took forbidden fruit and the cross on which Christ died stood in one place, that the old self - the old Adam - died when Christ died (Volf, Free of Charge, pp. 147-148).”
Finally on Sunday we brought all of this talk of forgiveness around to Jesus’ challenging words in the Lord’s prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” We also had the reading from Matthew 18, a parable that Jesus told about the importance of showing mercy to others as God has shown mercy to us. What Jesus is talking about here, for lack of a better word, is the “social” aspect of God’s redemptive work in the world, and his command that we be involved in this aspect of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself. This “social” aspect of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself is terribly neglected in certain quarters of the Christian world. Here are some remarks by Volf on this aspect of God’s forgiveness:
“We cannot be fully saved unless we are reconciled—not only with God but with each other. From this it follows that the undiluted experience of salvation in the world to come must include social reconciliation. Isn't it enough, though, for God simply to give us eternal life and a completely fresh start after freeing us from the desire to sin?When I was a teenager, a popular preacher used to illustrate what happens at conversion by using the image of a new page. When he was a boy (in a time before delete buttons and ballpoint pens), the preacher said, he could never write out a whole page without making a mistake or spilling ink. He was troubled by the mess he kept making and would always be relieved when he could turn to a new page and start afresh. This is, he said, what Christ offers to us—a fresh start. And this is what heaven will be like—our mistakes will be gone and we will be given a fresh start in such a way that from then on we will always write flawlessly.But that is not quite right. Heaven is more than just a fresh start. It is more than just the creation of a new future. It is also redemption of yesterday, today, and tomorrow—redemption of our whole lived life. Heaven is having had your messy pages made clean and right again. Apply this now to the wrongdoings we commit against each other—a majority of our sins. If the past, which is suffused with enmity, is to be redeemed, it is not enough for us to be given a fresh start. Our relationships will have to be restored. Hence the final social reconciliation of those who died unreconciled must be part of the transition from the present world to the world to come.” Here is the link to the article from which this quote was taken: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/october23/7.94.html
Questions for discussion:
1. Does Volf’s discussion of inclusive substitution stimulate your thinking about your repentance? Do you think of repentance as something you do to earn God’s forgiveness? What other erroneous versions of God’s repentance do you sometimes drift into? Why do you think it is so hard to think clearly about this subject?
2. Are you offended by Jesus’ requirement that you forgive those who sin against you? Can you think of someone you have not forgiven that you need to forgive for something? How should you proceed to address the issue of forgiving those who have sinned against you? Are there ways to proceed that would be dangerous and wrong for you to undertake? If so, how can you address the issue of forgiving the person within boundaries of safety for yourself?
3. How does the notion of redemption being about our entire lived lives strike you? Does that sound good or would you prefer the blank slate that Volf critiques above? What difference could it make in your life if you thought of your redemption as a redemption of your entire life, including relationships with others?
Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of
everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the
day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death
of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and for ever. Amen.
Last week we talked a good bit about forgiveness being God’s work through and through. Additionally, we noted the mysterious way in which Scripture points to God’s passion to redeem and to reconcile - not as an afterthought put into play after creation goes wrong and sin enters in - but as an aspect of God’s love for the world that preceded creation. One of the reasons why I am urging us to get as clear as we can get regarding forgiveness being all God’s work, a matter settled before the foundation of the world, is to safeguard us from running amok in our thinking about what goes on when we repent Our repentance does not put God in a new posture of wanting to forgive us. Moreover, our repentance does not earn us forgiveness. Our faithful repentance brings us into union with Christ’s death and deepens our participation in God’s redemptive work in our lives and in the world. Through repentance we die to our efforts at self-justification and autonomy; we die to our arms crossed posture that separates us from God and his nurturing love; we die to our identities as people who are either too proud of or too disgusted with our selves to accept God’s forgiveness. When we repent we take God’s judgment on our sins as being the true picture of what we have done while simultaneously taking God’s word that Christ has taken that judgment into himself - divine wrath is absorbed by divine mercy It is there, where God’s justice and mercy meet in the passion of Jesus’ sacrificial death that we have the promise of our forgiveness even as our sins come under God’s judgment.
This picture of sharing in Christ’s death is sometimes referred to by theologians as inclusive substitution. Here is a helpful and very brief summary of that doctrine taken from Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge, Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace: “Writing to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul made a puzzling statement about Christ’s death: “One has died for all”, he wrote, “therefore all have died” (2 Corinthians 5:14). Since Christ is our substitute, after reading, “one has died for all”, we’d expect him to continue, “therefore none of them needs to die”. Had he written that, he would have expressed the idea that theologians call exclusive substitution. According to this view, Christ’s death makes ours unnecessary. As a third party, he is our substitute, and his death is his alone and no one else’s. But that is not the way the Apostle thought. Christ’s death does not replace our death. It enacts it, he suggested. That’s what theologians call inclusive substitution. Because one has died, all have died. As a substitute he was not a third party. His death is inclusive of all.... what happened to him happened to us. When he was condemned we were condemned. When he died, we died. We were included in his death. John Donne put it this way in his ‘Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness’: “We think that Paradise and Calvary, / Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree stood in one place’. To be in Christ means that the tree from which Adam took forbidden fruit and the cross on which Christ died stood in one place, that the old self - the old Adam - died when Christ died (Volf, Free of Charge, pp. 147-148).”
Finally on Sunday we brought all of this talk of forgiveness around to Jesus’ challenging words in the Lord’s prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” We also had the reading from Matthew 18, a parable that Jesus told about the importance of showing mercy to others as God has shown mercy to us. What Jesus is talking about here, for lack of a better word, is the “social” aspect of God’s redemptive work in the world, and his command that we be involved in this aspect of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself. This “social” aspect of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself is terribly neglected in certain quarters of the Christian world. Here are some remarks by Volf on this aspect of God’s forgiveness:
“We cannot be fully saved unless we are reconciled—not only with God but with each other. From this it follows that the undiluted experience of salvation in the world to come must include social reconciliation. Isn't it enough, though, for God simply to give us eternal life and a completely fresh start after freeing us from the desire to sin?When I was a teenager, a popular preacher used to illustrate what happens at conversion by using the image of a new page. When he was a boy (in a time before delete buttons and ballpoint pens), the preacher said, he could never write out a whole page without making a mistake or spilling ink. He was troubled by the mess he kept making and would always be relieved when he could turn to a new page and start afresh. This is, he said, what Christ offers to us—a fresh start. And this is what heaven will be like—our mistakes will be gone and we will be given a fresh start in such a way that from then on we will always write flawlessly.But that is not quite right. Heaven is more than just a fresh start. It is more than just the creation of a new future. It is also redemption of yesterday, today, and tomorrow—redemption of our whole lived life. Heaven is having had your messy pages made clean and right again. Apply this now to the wrongdoings we commit against each other—a majority of our sins. If the past, which is suffused with enmity, is to be redeemed, it is not enough for us to be given a fresh start. Our relationships will have to be restored. Hence the final social reconciliation of those who died unreconciled must be part of the transition from the present world to the world to come.” Here is the link to the article from which this quote was taken: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/october23/7.94.html
Questions for discussion:
1. Does Volf’s discussion of inclusive substitution stimulate your thinking about your repentance? Do you think of repentance as something you do to earn God’s forgiveness? What other erroneous versions of God’s repentance do you sometimes drift into? Why do you think it is so hard to think clearly about this subject?
2. Are you offended by Jesus’ requirement that you forgive those who sin against you? Can you think of someone you have not forgiven that you need to forgive for something? How should you proceed to address the issue of forgiving those who have sinned against you? Are there ways to proceed that would be dangerous and wrong for you to undertake? If so, how can you address the issue of forgiving the person within boundaries of safety for yourself?
3. How does the notion of redemption being about our entire lived lives strike you? Does that sound good or would you prefer the blank slate that Volf critiques above? What difference could it make in your life if you thought of your redemption as a redemption of your entire life, including relationships with others?
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Forgiven Before The Foundation of the World
We returned this week to our meditation on the Lord’s prayer. We mentioned earlier in this series that this prayer reminds us that we are vulnerable creatures who have all sorts of needs whether we will admit those needs are not. Not admitting that we have certain needs gets us into all sorts of trouble but we stubbornly cling to all kinds of defense strategies in order to make it seem as if we don’t have as many needs as we have. For the sake of discussion, let’s just call this a kind of self-sufficiency. I am fully aware that most of us would proclaim adamantly that we do not try to present ourselves as being self-sufficient but I think we behave that way in spite of ourselves, and proclaim loudly that we are not because we know that it is wrong for Christians to present themselves as self-sufficient. It is one thing to take care of your needs and not be overly burdensome upon others but if we pretend we don’t have needs when we do we end up in a precarious position.
One of the bold assertions of the gospel and it is seen clearly in this prayer is that each of us is a person who has a basic human need to be forgiven. That may sound pretty old fashioned to some of you but I would suggest that if you just look around at the world you will see a pretty dramatic need for forgiveness as people continue to wrong each other, demonize each other, hurt each other and often kill each other. I would say that the human need for forgiveness is just as alive today as ever before. Moreover, the gospel, and this prayer, make it clear that you can’t have talk about forgiveness among human beings on that plane unless you talk about the human need to be forgiven by God (the prayer also makes it clear that you can’t have talk about forgiveness from God without acknowledging that his forgiveness is always intended to bear the fruit of forgiveness in the person who is forgiven - we’ll talk about that next week).
There is a lot of confusion about God’s forgiveness and I am sure I am confused about it too. There is a lot of mystery in the air when anyone starts talking about God’s forgiveness in Christ because relevant questions about, among other things, divine foreknowledge and human responsibility come up quickly. Even though all of our theological reflection is provisional because of our limitations I do think it is helpful to try our best to flesh out some theological thoughts about God’s forgiveness. Among some other questions we asked on Sunday was this one: does God forgive before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20). If so, what difference does it make?
Miroslav Volf, along with many other theologians suggests that God does forgive before the foundation of the world. “God decided to redeem the world of sin before the Creator could lay its foundations. Each of us exists because the gift of life rests on the gift of forgiveness (Volf).” Put another way, the same love with which God created the world is the same love that drives him to redeem that which he created. Forgiveness for God is not so much a response once creation has gone wrong as it is an expression of the creator’s love from the beginning, mysteriously woven into the fabric of the universe. Or, to put it another way still, where God’s love is there is always forgiveness.
Questions for discussion:
1. Do you know of aspects of your life wherein you give the impression to others and maybe to yourself that you don’t have needs when you do? What drives this in you? Where does it come from? What can you do to change and acknowledge your vulnerability.
2. Do you often think of asking forgiveness as a response to a gracious command? Does thinking of it this way encourage you or not? Explain.
3. When you think about the possibility that God was thinking in a forgiving way before he ever created make you think about God’s character in a way that is different than you, perhaps, have in the past? Put in your own words what you think about the suggestion that God forgives before the foundation of the world.
One of the bold assertions of the gospel and it is seen clearly in this prayer is that each of us is a person who has a basic human need to be forgiven. That may sound pretty old fashioned to some of you but I would suggest that if you just look around at the world you will see a pretty dramatic need for forgiveness as people continue to wrong each other, demonize each other, hurt each other and often kill each other. I would say that the human need for forgiveness is just as alive today as ever before. Moreover, the gospel, and this prayer, make it clear that you can’t have talk about forgiveness among human beings on that plane unless you talk about the human need to be forgiven by God (the prayer also makes it clear that you can’t have talk about forgiveness from God without acknowledging that his forgiveness is always intended to bear the fruit of forgiveness in the person who is forgiven - we’ll talk about that next week).
There is a lot of confusion about God’s forgiveness and I am sure I am confused about it too. There is a lot of mystery in the air when anyone starts talking about God’s forgiveness in Christ because relevant questions about, among other things, divine foreknowledge and human responsibility come up quickly. Even though all of our theological reflection is provisional because of our limitations I do think it is helpful to try our best to flesh out some theological thoughts about God’s forgiveness. Among some other questions we asked on Sunday was this one: does God forgive before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20). If so, what difference does it make?
Miroslav Volf, along with many other theologians suggests that God does forgive before the foundation of the world. “God decided to redeem the world of sin before the Creator could lay its foundations. Each of us exists because the gift of life rests on the gift of forgiveness (Volf).” Put another way, the same love with which God created the world is the same love that drives him to redeem that which he created. Forgiveness for God is not so much a response once creation has gone wrong as it is an expression of the creator’s love from the beginning, mysteriously woven into the fabric of the universe. Or, to put it another way still, where God’s love is there is always forgiveness.
Questions for discussion:
1. Do you know of aspects of your life wherein you give the impression to others and maybe to yourself that you don’t have needs when you do? What drives this in you? Where does it come from? What can you do to change and acknowledge your vulnerability.
2. Do you often think of asking forgiveness as a response to a gracious command? Does thinking of it this way encourage you or not? Explain.
3. When you think about the possibility that God was thinking in a forgiving way before he ever created make you think about God’s character in a way that is different than you, perhaps, have in the past? Put in your own words what you think about the suggestion that God forgives before the foundation of the world.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Seeing the World Through The Eyes Of God
This Sunday, our Pastoral Intern, Tim Bowyer, urged us to see in the sacrament of communion a startling reality, a face to face encounter with God. Drawing on the important work of theologian, David Ford, Tim helped us to draw on the many rich metaphors from Scripture of salvation in the face of God. Maybe, Tim will post his notes here soon.... I’ll ask him. Tim, are you reading this?
God is always facing us and he is always inviting us, even to the point of wrestling us, to turn our face towards him. This is the way God is. He is always facing every human being made in his image and inviting her or him to be fully alive, to flourish as a human being. In spite of our wrestling to turn our faces away from God, his gaze is always there on us, wishing to impart love and forgiveness to us. We are the bearers of his image and he has attached himself to us in love and hospitality.
This is an important thing for us to keep in mind as we think about the meaning of these words of the Lord’s prayer: your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These words are to meant to be a petition on behalf of all of humanity - an agonizing cry for each human being made in God’s image to be made fully alive to God’s love and forgiveness. And when we remember that this is what we are praying and not just for ourselves or our churches but for all human beings in all circumstances - well, that begins to help us see the world a little bit more as God sees the world and a little less like we would see it if left to our fears, our prejudices, our self-righteousness, and our pure selfishness.
When we think of this petition in this way then we pray for and give thanks for human flourishing in all of its manifestations. We pray for all people to come to know and experience the love that Christ has shown for us and we will also pray for our Muslim neighbors to enjoy the same freedom of worship that we do. We pray for the child soldiers in Sudan - that they come alive to God’s love and grace in Christ and we pray that the efforts to bring psychological healing to their trauma will bear much fruit whether that care comes from a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew or an atheist. The prayer for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven is a prayer for the coming of shalom on this earth, a state of peace between human beings and each other and human beings and God; in the world to come the peace between people and each other and people and God will be in full fruition because, to quote St Paul, Christ will be all in all. However, in order to represent God as generously as he represents himself in this in-between-time some Christians, most Christians, you and I must repent of reducing our understanding of human flourishing in this fallen world to a matter of already actualized conversion to Christ. We must pray for human flourishing to come in all of its forms and celebrate it wherever it occurs and mourn it whenever it is absent.
In speaking to a group of Bishops of the Anglican church in Africa last month, Rowan Williams , archbishop of Canterbury said this in his homily of the role of a bishop and I think it is in a sense the place where all Christ followers should want to stand: “We have the responsibility brothers and sisters of showing the world how precious a thing is a human being – and a special responsibility to show the world the preciousness of those who are hated or neglected by others or by society at large.”
When we the affections of our heart are shaped by daily praying for others to come to understand how precious they are in God’s sight we are praying in line with the Lord’s prayer: your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Questions for discussion:
1. Respond to the Williams quote above. Can you think of one person you know who you ought to help understand more fully what a “precious thing it is to be a human being”? If not too personal, can you share a bit with the group?
2. During the remarks leading into communion, Tim Bowyer, drawing on David Ford’s work, invoked the story of Jacob and the angel. Do you ever sense that you are wrestling with God? Do you think that wrestling with God is a normal part of a healthy relationship with God?
3. "Salvation in the face of God": what a wonderful metaphor. Why and how is it helpful to think of our relationship with God in metaphors?
God is always facing us and he is always inviting us, even to the point of wrestling us, to turn our face towards him. This is the way God is. He is always facing every human being made in his image and inviting her or him to be fully alive, to flourish as a human being. In spite of our wrestling to turn our faces away from God, his gaze is always there on us, wishing to impart love and forgiveness to us. We are the bearers of his image and he has attached himself to us in love and hospitality.
This is an important thing for us to keep in mind as we think about the meaning of these words of the Lord’s prayer: your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These words are to meant to be a petition on behalf of all of humanity - an agonizing cry for each human being made in God’s image to be made fully alive to God’s love and forgiveness. And when we remember that this is what we are praying and not just for ourselves or our churches but for all human beings in all circumstances - well, that begins to help us see the world a little bit more as God sees the world and a little less like we would see it if left to our fears, our prejudices, our self-righteousness, and our pure selfishness.
When we think of this petition in this way then we pray for and give thanks for human flourishing in all of its manifestations. We pray for all people to come to know and experience the love that Christ has shown for us and we will also pray for our Muslim neighbors to enjoy the same freedom of worship that we do. We pray for the child soldiers in Sudan - that they come alive to God’s love and grace in Christ and we pray that the efforts to bring psychological healing to their trauma will bear much fruit whether that care comes from a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew or an atheist. The prayer for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven is a prayer for the coming of shalom on this earth, a state of peace between human beings and each other and human beings and God; in the world to come the peace between people and each other and people and God will be in full fruition because, to quote St Paul, Christ will be all in all. However, in order to represent God as generously as he represents himself in this in-between-time some Christians, most Christians, you and I must repent of reducing our understanding of human flourishing in this fallen world to a matter of already actualized conversion to Christ. We must pray for human flourishing to come in all of its forms and celebrate it wherever it occurs and mourn it whenever it is absent.
In speaking to a group of Bishops of the Anglican church in Africa last month, Rowan Williams , archbishop of Canterbury said this in his homily of the role of a bishop and I think it is in a sense the place where all Christ followers should want to stand: “We have the responsibility brothers and sisters of showing the world how precious a thing is a human being – and a special responsibility to show the world the preciousness of those who are hated or neglected by others or by society at large.”
When we the affections of our heart are shaped by daily praying for others to come to understand how precious they are in God’s sight we are praying in line with the Lord’s prayer: your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Questions for discussion:
1. Respond to the Williams quote above. Can you think of one person you know who you ought to help understand more fully what a “precious thing it is to be a human being”? If not too personal, can you share a bit with the group?
2. During the remarks leading into communion, Tim Bowyer, drawing on David Ford’s work, invoked the story of Jacob and the angel. Do you ever sense that you are wrestling with God? Do you think that wrestling with God is a normal part of a healthy relationship with God?
3. "Salvation in the face of God": what a wonderful metaphor. Why and how is it helpful to think of our relationship with God in metaphors?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
God in whose image?
What is below is really only a partial recap of the homily. I have intentionally left for next week the discussion of God’s power with regard to the phrase in the Lord’s prayer, “your kingdom come”. Stay tuned.....!
This past week, NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote an essay entitled, The Gospel of Wealth. In typical Brooks style he employs his sarcastic wit to critique what he thinks is a malaise of our day: the lack of ability to restrain ourselves from being addicted to the more and the bigger - a refusal to never be content (my words not his). But here are his: “Maybe the first decade of the 21st century will come to be known as the great age of headroom. During those years, new houses had great rooms with 20-foot ceilings and entire new art forms had to be invented to fill the acres of empty overhead wall space. People bought bulbous vehicles like Hummers and Suburbans. The rule was, The Smaller the Woman, the Bigger the Car — so you would see a 90-pound lady in tennis whites driving a 4-ton truck with enough headroom to allow her to drive with her doubles partner perched atop her shoulders. When future archaeologists dig up the remains of that epoch, they will likely conclude that sometime around 1996, the U.S. was afflicted by a plague of claustrophobia and drove itself bankrupt in search of relief.”
Interestingly, Brooks’ jumping off point for this particular column is his acquaintance with the writing of a young Southern Baptism Minister from Alabama, called David Platt. In his book, “Radical: Taking Back your Faith From the American Dream”, Brooks notes that Platt critiques certain quarters of the Christian church in America for their complicity in idolatrous materialism.... and the first target is the megachurch itself. “Americans have built themselves multimillion-dollar worship palaces, he argues. These have become like corporations, competing for market share by offering social centers, child-care programs, first-class entertainment and comfortable, consumer Christianity. Jesus, Platt notes, made it hard on his followers. He created a minichurch, not a mega one. Today, however, building budgets dwarf charitable budgets, and Jesus is portrayed as a genial suburban dude. “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.”
I am grateful for Brooks’ calling attention to the issue and doing so within an essay where Jesus is referred to as one who can give wisdom to those who are guided by the idolatry of materialism. Critiques of excesses within any culture, though, can come easy. Offering a way forward is the tricky part. Brooks calls for a recalibration toward moderation, and identifies prophetic voices such as Platt’s as a constructive influence. Brooks finishes: “The United States once had a Gospel of Wealth: a code of restraint shaped by everybody from Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie. The code was designed to help the nation cope with its own affluence. It eroded, and over the next few years, it will be redefined.”
I thought about Brooks’ essay on and off all week as I thought about the gospel in preparation for this Sunday’s homily. It occurred to me that the question that is looming behind sweeping cultural critiques such as Brooks’, regardless of how spot-on the critique, is what constitutes a life well lived? A life well lived, according to the gospel, is a life of human flourishing, or to use the words of a leader within the early church, Iranaeus, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive”. What does human flourishing look like with regard to the concerns that Brooks has raised? Well, human flourishing is not guaranteed by Hummers and MacMansions (and is made arguably harder when cluttered with such “things”), but human flourishing is neither defined by an ascetic lifestyle on the one hand, or unintentional poverty on the other. Nor am I persuaded that human flourishing is fostered as deeply as God intends by adhering to any “code of restraint” that is inherently dependant on rationalistic assertions about the good of society, etc.
I suggest that we become more fully alive when we learn to imitate God’s generosity in ways that reflect thoughtful and intentional sacrifice on our part. Our capacity for imitation of God, however, is complicated by our love of making God in our own image. One of John Calvin’s great insights was that knowledge of self could only grow truthfully when one had a proper knowledge of God. The greater the knowledge of God, the greater one can know oneself with reference to who one is and who one wishes to become. So far so good but Calvin pointed out that the grim problem in all of this is that we don’t have a proper knowledge of God on our own; on our own our hearts are idol factories, bent on making God in our own image. Princeton theologian, Daniel Migliore, puts it this way: Calvin’s insight.... “exposes a secret we would rather keep hidden. All knowledge of God, like other kinds of knowledge, is colored by our personal interests or those of the group to which we belong. We usually have no difficulty seeing this process at work in other people..... More difficult to detect, however, are the ways in which our own thinking and acting, in matters of religion or otherwise, are influenced by our own economic and social interests or those of our own community. If we are beneficiaries of the present social order, we are likely to uphold it and resist any significant changes (from the Power of God and the gods of Power)”.
So, to imitate God’s generosity requires a refreshing of our imaginations and a turning of our hearts - a conversion of our imaginations fueled from the regular and disciplined worship of the God who reveals his power and wealth in giving himself away (Philippians 2:1-11). What is needed in our lives and in our culture is not merely a code of restraint but a repentant response to the generosity of God in Christ, coupled by a life-style of sacrificial generosity, especially to those who have less than we do. The gospel cure for materialism is not a formula but a disciplined moment-by-moment, spirit empowered response to God’s generosity. In this vein of thinking, there is a striking parallel between the cure for promiscuity and the cure for materialism, two of the worst enemies of human flourishing in our time. The cure for promiscuity comes when a person’s moral imagination is captured by God’s love at work in human relationships in attractive, healthy ways; the cure does not come from simply denouncing promiscuity. Similarly, the code of restraint that Brooks seems to want will not come from a call to ascetism; it will come from a daily breaking of our stony hearts before the generosity of God and a reminder that we are called to share our wealth with others as a mark of our discipleship.
1. If Migliore is correct when he says that we will tend not to critique our idolatrous images of God on our own, what sort of things can we do in order to help us see our idolatries?
2. What sorts of decisions can you make about how you live and what you do which will make it more likely for you to have a truer image of God?
3. Do you think that the gospel calls you to make tangible sacrifices in your life-style in order to flourish as a human being? If so, what sorts of habits or conversations can you cultivate in order to gain more wisdom about how this ought to look for you?
This past week, NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote an essay entitled, The Gospel of Wealth. In typical Brooks style he employs his sarcastic wit to critique what he thinks is a malaise of our day: the lack of ability to restrain ourselves from being addicted to the more and the bigger - a refusal to never be content (my words not his). But here are his: “Maybe the first decade of the 21st century will come to be known as the great age of headroom. During those years, new houses had great rooms with 20-foot ceilings and entire new art forms had to be invented to fill the acres of empty overhead wall space. People bought bulbous vehicles like Hummers and Suburbans. The rule was, The Smaller the Woman, the Bigger the Car — so you would see a 90-pound lady in tennis whites driving a 4-ton truck with enough headroom to allow her to drive with her doubles partner perched atop her shoulders. When future archaeologists dig up the remains of that epoch, they will likely conclude that sometime around 1996, the U.S. was afflicted by a plague of claustrophobia and drove itself bankrupt in search of relief.”
Interestingly, Brooks’ jumping off point for this particular column is his acquaintance with the writing of a young Southern Baptism Minister from Alabama, called David Platt. In his book, “Radical: Taking Back your Faith From the American Dream”, Brooks notes that Platt critiques certain quarters of the Christian church in America for their complicity in idolatrous materialism.... and the first target is the megachurch itself. “Americans have built themselves multimillion-dollar worship palaces, he argues. These have become like corporations, competing for market share by offering social centers, child-care programs, first-class entertainment and comfortable, consumer Christianity. Jesus, Platt notes, made it hard on his followers. He created a minichurch, not a mega one. Today, however, building budgets dwarf charitable budgets, and Jesus is portrayed as a genial suburban dude. “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.”
I am grateful for Brooks’ calling attention to the issue and doing so within an essay where Jesus is referred to as one who can give wisdom to those who are guided by the idolatry of materialism. Critiques of excesses within any culture, though, can come easy. Offering a way forward is the tricky part. Brooks calls for a recalibration toward moderation, and identifies prophetic voices such as Platt’s as a constructive influence. Brooks finishes: “The United States once had a Gospel of Wealth: a code of restraint shaped by everybody from Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie. The code was designed to help the nation cope with its own affluence. It eroded, and over the next few years, it will be redefined.”
I thought about Brooks’ essay on and off all week as I thought about the gospel in preparation for this Sunday’s homily. It occurred to me that the question that is looming behind sweeping cultural critiques such as Brooks’, regardless of how spot-on the critique, is what constitutes a life well lived? A life well lived, according to the gospel, is a life of human flourishing, or to use the words of a leader within the early church, Iranaeus, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive”. What does human flourishing look like with regard to the concerns that Brooks has raised? Well, human flourishing is not guaranteed by Hummers and MacMansions (and is made arguably harder when cluttered with such “things”), but human flourishing is neither defined by an ascetic lifestyle on the one hand, or unintentional poverty on the other. Nor am I persuaded that human flourishing is fostered as deeply as God intends by adhering to any “code of restraint” that is inherently dependant on rationalistic assertions about the good of society, etc.
I suggest that we become more fully alive when we learn to imitate God’s generosity in ways that reflect thoughtful and intentional sacrifice on our part. Our capacity for imitation of God, however, is complicated by our love of making God in our own image. One of John Calvin’s great insights was that knowledge of self could only grow truthfully when one had a proper knowledge of God. The greater the knowledge of God, the greater one can know oneself with reference to who one is and who one wishes to become. So far so good but Calvin pointed out that the grim problem in all of this is that we don’t have a proper knowledge of God on our own; on our own our hearts are idol factories, bent on making God in our own image. Princeton theologian, Daniel Migliore, puts it this way: Calvin’s insight.... “exposes a secret we would rather keep hidden. All knowledge of God, like other kinds of knowledge, is colored by our personal interests or those of the group to which we belong. We usually have no difficulty seeing this process at work in other people..... More difficult to detect, however, are the ways in which our own thinking and acting, in matters of religion or otherwise, are influenced by our own economic and social interests or those of our own community. If we are beneficiaries of the present social order, we are likely to uphold it and resist any significant changes (from the Power of God and the gods of Power)”.
So, to imitate God’s generosity requires a refreshing of our imaginations and a turning of our hearts - a conversion of our imaginations fueled from the regular and disciplined worship of the God who reveals his power and wealth in giving himself away (Philippians 2:1-11). What is needed in our lives and in our culture is not merely a code of restraint but a repentant response to the generosity of God in Christ, coupled by a life-style of sacrificial generosity, especially to those who have less than we do. The gospel cure for materialism is not a formula but a disciplined moment-by-moment, spirit empowered response to God’s generosity. In this vein of thinking, there is a striking parallel between the cure for promiscuity and the cure for materialism, two of the worst enemies of human flourishing in our time. The cure for promiscuity comes when a person’s moral imagination is captured by God’s love at work in human relationships in attractive, healthy ways; the cure does not come from simply denouncing promiscuity. Similarly, the code of restraint that Brooks seems to want will not come from a call to ascetism; it will come from a daily breaking of our stony hearts before the generosity of God and a reminder that we are called to share our wealth with others as a mark of our discipleship.
1. If Migliore is correct when he says that we will tend not to critique our idolatrous images of God on our own, what sort of things can we do in order to help us see our idolatries?
2. What sorts of decisions can you make about how you live and what you do which will make it more likely for you to have a truer image of God?
3. Do you think that the gospel calls you to make tangible sacrifices in your life-style in order to flourish as a human being? If so, what sorts of habits or conversations can you cultivate in order to gain more wisdom about how this ought to look for you?
Monday, August 16, 2010
"Hospital for Sinners"
As you may know, if you have been attending Grace lately, we have been moving through 1 Peter during our homilies, reflecting on the text together and asking God’s spirit to enable us to apply the teaching of the gospel for this 1st century church to our situation. As we have lingered in this epistle, it has occurred to me in a fresh way that the questions we bring to the biblical text, and/or the assumptions we make about why Peter says what he does are extremely important. The questions and assumptions that we bring with us to a text shapes profoundly what we are able to hear in a given text.
Here is one example of what I mean. We read in 1 Peter 5 that leaders in the church are to be examples to the flock. But if we imagine that being an example to the flock is primarily about displaying one’s strength and goodness - and inviting others to imitate these - then we have not let the overall meaning of the gospel guide us in our assumptions we bring to the words, “be an example”. Dr. J. Warren Smith, of Duke Divinity School, has a helpful explanation of what leading by example should like in a gospel saturated community. The following is excerpted from a sermon transcript entitled, “The Weakness in Virtue, the Virtue in Weakness”:
“Yes, your virtue matters, and it will make a difference in your ministry. Without such virtues, how can anyone hope to lead God’s people and build up Christ’s body? ..... whatever you contribute in your ministry.... its source is not your strength or your virtue or your excellence, but its source is your weakness. For as Paul tells the Corinthians, “When I am weak, then I am strong..... For what work is the apostle sent into the world but to bear witness to the power of God, who raised Christ Jesus from the dead. The apostle does this by being the earthen vessel in whom God manifests his resurrecting power. The same is true for us who walk in the footsteps of the apostles. Our ministry is not about displaying our wisdom or eloquence or compassion or righteousness. Were that the case, people would see nothing greater than cultivated natural talents. The aim of our ministry is always to point beyond ourselves to God, who is at work in us. One of Karl Barth’s mantras was John the Baptist’s declaration, “I must decrease that he may increase.” Jesus commanded us, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Yet when we read Jesus’ words alongside Paul’s, we realize that the light of God’s power is revealed in the weakness that always accompanies even our best good works, and God is glorified through us . (J. Warren Smith)” (here is the link to the sermon transcript for those interested: http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/the-weakness-virtue-the-virtue-weakness)
In a similar vein, our expectations of what a church community should be for its people will either make it more likely or less likely that its members will grow in their confidence in the gospel. If our expectation of church is that it is a place where we put on a front, wear a mask over our pain and problems, and display only our good behavior then we will be stymied in our growth in the grace of the gospel; moreover, we will make it hard for others in the community to grow in grace as well. The talented writer, Heather Moffitt reflects on her experience of learning what a church should be for its people through the humbling experience of parenting a son with special needs in the context of her church community: “We do not attend a church where ushers ask noisy children to leave the sanctuary. We were never shunned because of our challenging child. Instead, people prayed over him with love. Our pastor would get down on his knees to meet him at eye level every week and talk to him. One lovely couple even offered to keep our son some Sunday afternoons so we could have a break. I slowly realized that this church was a manifestation of God’s grace to us, for it is not a church where everyone arrives with a Sunday-morning mask of perfection over the heartbreaks of life. And I realized that, as much as I wanted my son’s spiritual formation to happen in the church, I had wanted even more to be acknowledged as a good mother based on his model behavior. A challenging child in church forces everyone -- parents and other parishioners -- to confront whether we value compliance over compassion.... Even though I’ve long known how to behave in church, I’ve had to accept how to be broken in church. I wanted to be praised for my parenting instead of healed from my hurt. I thought I was seeking spiritual formation for my son, and discovered I needed it for my own soul.” Here is a link to this essay in its entirety http://www.faithandleadership.com/content/broken-behavior-going-church-challenging-child
Finally, we came back to the passage we have been looking at for a few Sundays now: 1 Peter 5:1-5. In keeping with our theme for the day, our observation that the questions, concerns, and assumptions we bring to a text can either help us get to the heart of the passage or detour us from the heart of the passage, we noted this: many Christians come to the portion of this passage that speaks of submission to elders and become immediately preoccupied with the rationale and mechanics of why and how human beings submit those human beings who have authority over within the context of the local church. I suggest that this line of questioning will take us away from the heart of this passage. It is kind of like meeting someone for the first time and thinking about her primarily with regard to how much money she makes. How much money she makes is part of her story but if it is the first thing you think of it makes you lose sight of what is most important about them as a person. Similarly, if you look at 1 Peter 1:1-5, especially v.5, and think first and foremost about vertical relationships, hierarchy, and the importance of being submissive to those who have authority, you will miss the description of how the gospel is at work within that church community. Why do I say this? Because the whole of this passage is a movement away from the extremely vertical expression of human authority, a product of the culture of the day, and a movement towards mutual submission. In the new community being formed in Christ, everyone is to be desirous of submitting to one another because everyone wears the same garment, humility..
To offer an example of what this might look like in a gospel saturated community I raised one of the harder issues that a church community can face, the tragedy of adultery, an issue which always makes thoughtful Christians concerned about the need for admonition and exhortation to be expressed and hopefully received in the spirit of Christian love. When a member of the community sins deeply against another member - and this could be any sin for the sake of conversation - what norms how the community deals with situations like this (and specifically how leadership acts on behalf of the community) is the desire to love one another deeply from the heart (1 Peter 1:22). In other words, the required admonition and exhortation should not grow out of a commitment to throw down human authority along a vertical axis. It is rather the case that each person is on the same plane, called to love one another deeply from the heart. So, the exhortation, admonition, and mercy required are born from a desire to love deeply the offending party and protect fiercely the injured one. In situations like this sometimes reconciliation is not possible and most of the energy expended will be in support of the injured. But to reiterate - what norms how the community deals with all of this is not a macho demonstration of muscle flexing against the sinner - as if those doing the muscle flexing are without sin and 100 percent pure - but a steadfast commitment to loving deeply from the heart coupled with a steadfast commitment to calling the person, if he is unrepentant, away from sin and back to fullness of life in Christ.
In summary of this Sunday let me offer this: it matters what assumptions, concerns, and questions you bring to a text or to church. If church is primarily a place where human power or virtuous achievement is on display the power of the gospel is harder to see; if church is primarily a place of intellectual challenge and stimulation then..... well one thinks of St. Paul’s remarks about knowledge puffing up. But if the church, to borrow a metaphor from St Augustine, is primarily understood as a hospital for sinners, a place, to use Peter’s language, where people are learning to love one another deeply from the heart..... well that is a place where the gospel can get to work in us in a deep way.... and may our church be this sort of community.... AMEN.
Here is one example of what I mean. We read in 1 Peter 5 that leaders in the church are to be examples to the flock. But if we imagine that being an example to the flock is primarily about displaying one’s strength and goodness - and inviting others to imitate these - then we have not let the overall meaning of the gospel guide us in our assumptions we bring to the words, “be an example”. Dr. J. Warren Smith, of Duke Divinity School, has a helpful explanation of what leading by example should like in a gospel saturated community. The following is excerpted from a sermon transcript entitled, “The Weakness in Virtue, the Virtue in Weakness”:
“Yes, your virtue matters, and it will make a difference in your ministry. Without such virtues, how can anyone hope to lead God’s people and build up Christ’s body?
In a similar vein, our expectations of what a church community should be for its people will either make it more likely or less likely that its members will grow in their confidence in the gospel. If our expectation of church is that it is a place where we put on a front, wear a mask over our pain and problems, and display only our good behavior then we will be stymied in our growth in the grace of the gospel; moreover, we will make it hard for others in the community to grow in grace as well. The talented writer, Heather Moffitt reflects on her experience of learning what a church should be for its people through the humbling experience of parenting a son with special needs in the context of her church community: “We do not attend a church where ushers ask noisy children to leave the sanctuary. We were never shunned because of our challenging child. Instead, people prayed over him with love. Our pastor would get down on his knees to meet him at eye level every week and talk to him. One lovely couple even offered to keep our son some Sunday afternoons so we could have a break. I slowly realized that this church was a manifestation of God’s grace to us, for it is not a church where everyone arrives with a Sunday-morning mask of perfection over the heartbreaks of life. And I realized that, as much as I wanted my son’s spiritual formation to happen in the church, I had wanted even more to be acknowledged as a good mother based on his model behavior. A challenging child in church forces everyone -- parents and other parishioners -- to confront whether we value compliance over compassion.... Even though I’ve long known how to behave in church, I’ve had to accept how to be broken in church. I wanted to be praised for my parenting instead of healed from my hurt. I thought I was seeking spiritual formation for my son, and discovered I needed it for my own soul.” Here is a link to this essay in its entirety http://www.faithandleadership.com/content/broken-behavior-going-church-challenging-child
Finally, we came back to the passage we have been looking at for a few Sundays now: 1 Peter 5:1-5. In keeping with our theme for the day, our observation that the questions, concerns, and assumptions we bring to a text can either help us get to the heart of the passage or detour us from the heart of the passage, we noted this: many Christians come to the portion of this passage that speaks of submission to elders and become immediately preoccupied with the rationale and mechanics of why and how human beings submit those human beings who have authority over within the context of the local church. I suggest that this line of questioning will take us away from the heart of this passage. It is kind of like meeting someone for the first time and thinking about her primarily with regard to how much money she makes. How much money she makes is part of her story but if it is the first thing you think of it makes you lose sight of what is most important about them as a person. Similarly, if you look at 1 Peter 1:1-5, especially v.5, and think first and foremost about vertical relationships, hierarchy, and the importance of being submissive to those who have authority, you will miss the description of how the gospel is at work within that church community. Why do I say this? Because the whole of this passage is a movement away from the extremely vertical expression of human authority, a product of the culture of the day, and a movement towards mutual submission. In the new community being formed in Christ, everyone is to be desirous of submitting to one another because everyone wears the same garment, humility..
To offer an example of what this might look like in a gospel saturated community I raised one of the harder issues that a church community can face, the tragedy of adultery, an issue which always makes thoughtful Christians concerned about the need for admonition and exhortation to be expressed and hopefully received in the spirit of Christian love. When a member of the community sins deeply against another member - and this could be any sin for the sake of conversation - what norms how the community deals with situations like this (and specifically how leadership acts on behalf of the community) is the desire to love one another deeply from the heart (1 Peter 1:22). In other words, the required admonition and exhortation should not grow out of a commitment to throw down human authority along a vertical axis. It is rather the case that each person is on the same plane, called to love one another deeply from the heart. So, the exhortation, admonition, and mercy required are born from a desire to love deeply the offending party and protect fiercely the injured one. In situations like this sometimes reconciliation is not possible and most of the energy expended will be in support of the injured. But to reiterate - what norms how the community deals with all of this is not a macho demonstration of muscle flexing against the sinner - as if those doing the muscle flexing are without sin and 100 percent pure - but a steadfast commitment to loving deeply from the heart coupled with a steadfast commitment to calling the person, if he is unrepentant, away from sin and back to fullness of life in Christ.
In summary of this Sunday let me offer this: it matters what assumptions, concerns, and questions you bring to a text or to church. If church is primarily a place where human power or virtuous achievement is on display the power of the gospel is harder to see; if church is primarily a place of intellectual challenge and stimulation then..... well one thinks of St. Paul’s remarks about knowledge puffing up. But if the church, to borrow a metaphor from St Augustine, is primarily understood as a hospital for sinners, a place, to use Peter’s language, where people are learning to love one another deeply from the heart..... well that is a place where the gospel can get to work in us in a deep way.... and may our church be this sort of community.... AMEN.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Don't be a Hero
The past two Sundays we have been taking a look at 1 Peter 5:1-5. In this passage Peter encourages the leaders in the church to “not lord it over” the flock but rather to lead in humility and by example.
Peter’s admonition to not lead by “lording it over” is almost certainly a deliberate allusion to Jesus’ own words from Matthew 20. When the mother of James and John asks him the favor of choosing her two sons to rule as his vice-regents in his kingdom Jesus takes the opportunity to contrast sharply the way authority is to work in the kingdom he is inaugurating with the way in which power and authority were wielded in the culture of the day. His followers are not to use power over people, as was common in their culture vis a vis the patron client relationship; instead they are to serve others even as they have been served by Jesus: “But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
So far so good. Leaders within the Christian community are to serve as Jesus has served them. But what are we to make of the encouragement to lead by example? “Leading by example!” We have said and heard that phrase so many times that we may run the risk of thinking we know what it means in general, and within the context of this passage. Usually, however, when we think of someone leading by example we think of someone who is more or less heroic. “I want to be just like John”, we say, and then set out to take stabs at being just like them. Or, we may say, “if I could be more like Cathy my life would be so much better!”, and then bemoan our perceived failure of a life in contrast. Sometimes, we throw the phrase, “lead by example”, like a dagger - usually at someone who has disappointed us profoundly. The problem with trying to be just like John, however, is that whatever is good in John was produced through a unique journey of faith and repentance. John may have had to go to jail for DUI in order to deal with the pain he was trying to drown in alcohol abuse - pain that came from a loveless marriage. His marriage now, which you admire, was restored through his meeting Christ in repentance through suffering. The problem with imagining that your life would be so much better if you could be more like Cathy ignores Cathy’s unique journey too, but further complicates things by introducing an element of fantasy to the picture, encouraging you to ignore your own journey by escaping into a fantasy about one day being more like Cathy. Finally, the problem with throwing the phrase, “lead by example!” as a dagger at someone who has let you down does nothing to move towards forgiveness and reconciliation and keeps things at the superficial level of behavior modification.
What we need is a pattern of what it looks like to lead by example for people following Jesus in faith and repentance. The New Testament offers just that. The Christ poem in Philippians 2 points the way: “Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” The pattern that each Christian is to follow is the pattern of Jesus’ humility and self-giving love. Jesus, in his unique vocation as the new Adam, in all that he does, points away from himself by living his life completely in the service of others and the saving purposes of the triune God. The question for us: what does imitating this pattern look like for each of us?
We are at our human best when we are pointing away from ourselves, our accomplishments, and our perceived strengths and pointing towards God and his grace towards us. For Jesus this took the form of doing for us and all of humanity what we could not do for ourselves. For us, this imitation of Jesus’ self-emptying entails finding our strength and our hope through dependence upon God’s power at work in our weakness. The patterns to imitate for one another are patterns of perpetual repentance and ongoing faithful petition for God to enable us to live in a way where we love others as we have been loved by him.
Lets come back now to our discussion of John, Cathy, and throwing daggers. So often we think of being a good example in terms of being as close to perfect as we can possibly be. I have suggested that this focus on perceived accomplishment and achievements is unhelpful. I have suggested that we ought to desire to cultivate and copy the pattern of Christ’s humility in each other instead. When we think of imitating the “self-emptying pattern” in each other in the way we have just suggested, the focus is where it belongs, on the means of grace that makes John and Cathy more fully human - not the perceived accomplishments of unique persons. And when we desire for our lives to be shaped in the imitation of Jesus’ self-emptying love, we become more and more cruciform, finding ourselves less likely to throw the dagger of accusation - “you are not a good example!” - and more likely to initiate reconciliation.
Addendum:
During the meditation before communion on Sunday we talked about the passage in Ephesians where Paul calls us to imitate God in our desire to forgive one another. Not surprisingly we meet in this call to imitate the same kind of humility and powerlessness that we have discussed above. Here is the quote I read from as an illustration of this concept:
“It is a gross distortion of forgiveness that sees it as a sort of claim to power over the other – being a patron or a benefactor towards someone less secure. We should rather think of those extraordinary words in the prophecy of Hosea (11.8-90) about the mercy of God: 'How can I give you up, O Ephraim? For I am God and not a mortal'. To forgive is to share in the helplessness of God, who cannot turn from God's own nature: not to forgive would be for God a wound in the divine life itself. Not power but the powerlessness of the God whose nature is love is what is shown in the act of forgiving. The believer rooted in Christ shares that powerlessness, and the deeper the roots go the less possible it is not to forgive. And to be forgiven is another kind of powerlessness – recognising that I cannot live without the word of mercy, that I cannot complete the task of being myself without the healing of what I have wounded. Neither the forgiver nor the forgiven acquires the power that simply cuts off the past and leaves us alone to face the future: both have discovered that their past, with all its shadows and injuries, is now what makes it imperative to be reconciled so that they may live more fully from and with each other (Rowan Williams, from his keynote address at the Lutheran World Federation Assembly, Jully 22, 2010).”
Questions for Discussion:
1. Do you think of yourself as having power over other people because you may or may not want to forgive them? If so, where do you think you learned to think and feel that way? What will help you move away from that attitude?
2. When someone disappoints you what is something you might likely say that would be damaging and point away from reconciliation? What might you say instead that would be at once honest and humble, pointing towards reconciliation?
3. Why is it so tempting to long to be just like John or fantasize about what your life would be like if you were more like Cathy? What process in our own lives is short-circuited when we operate in that mode? What sorts of things do we need to repent of to keep us from operating in the mode of imagining we can or should imitate the perceived grand successes of other people?
Peter’s admonition to not lead by “lording it over” is almost certainly a deliberate allusion to Jesus’ own words from Matthew 20. When the mother of James and John asks him the favor of choosing her two sons to rule as his vice-regents in his kingdom Jesus takes the opportunity to contrast sharply the way authority is to work in the kingdom he is inaugurating with the way in which power and authority were wielded in the culture of the day. His followers are not to use power over people, as was common in their culture vis a vis the patron client relationship; instead they are to serve others even as they have been served by Jesus: “But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
So far so good. Leaders within the Christian community are to serve as Jesus has served them. But what are we to make of the encouragement to lead by example? “Leading by example!” We have said and heard that phrase so many times that we may run the risk of thinking we know what it means in general, and within the context of this passage. Usually, however, when we think of someone leading by example we think of someone who is more or less heroic. “I want to be just like John”, we say, and then set out to take stabs at being just like them. Or, we may say, “if I could be more like Cathy my life would be so much better!”, and then bemoan our perceived failure of a life in contrast. Sometimes, we throw the phrase, “lead by example”, like a dagger - usually at someone who has disappointed us profoundly. The problem with trying to be just like John, however, is that whatever is good in John was produced through a unique journey of faith and repentance. John may have had to go to jail for DUI in order to deal with the pain he was trying to drown in alcohol abuse - pain that came from a loveless marriage. His marriage now, which you admire, was restored through his meeting Christ in repentance through suffering. The problem with imagining that your life would be so much better if you could be more like Cathy ignores Cathy’s unique journey too, but further complicates things by introducing an element of fantasy to the picture, encouraging you to ignore your own journey by escaping into a fantasy about one day being more like Cathy. Finally, the problem with throwing the phrase, “lead by example!” as a dagger at someone who has let you down does nothing to move towards forgiveness and reconciliation and keeps things at the superficial level of behavior modification.
What we need is a pattern of what it looks like to lead by example for people following Jesus in faith and repentance. The New Testament offers just that. The Christ poem in Philippians 2 points the way: “Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” The pattern that each Christian is to follow is the pattern of Jesus’ humility and self-giving love. Jesus, in his unique vocation as the new Adam, in all that he does, points away from himself by living his life completely in the service of others and the saving purposes of the triune God. The question for us: what does imitating this pattern look like for each of us?
We are at our human best when we are pointing away from ourselves, our accomplishments, and our perceived strengths and pointing towards God and his grace towards us. For Jesus this took the form of doing for us and all of humanity what we could not do for ourselves. For us, this imitation of Jesus’ self-emptying entails finding our strength and our hope through dependence upon God’s power at work in our weakness. The patterns to imitate for one another are patterns of perpetual repentance and ongoing faithful petition for God to enable us to live in a way where we love others as we have been loved by him.
Lets come back now to our discussion of John, Cathy, and throwing daggers. So often we think of being a good example in terms of being as close to perfect as we can possibly be. I have suggested that this focus on perceived accomplishment and achievements is unhelpful. I have suggested that we ought to desire to cultivate and copy the pattern of Christ’s humility in each other instead. When we think of imitating the “self-emptying pattern” in each other in the way we have just suggested, the focus is where it belongs, on the means of grace that makes John and Cathy more fully human - not the perceived accomplishments of unique persons. And when we desire for our lives to be shaped in the imitation of Jesus’ self-emptying love, we become more and more cruciform, finding ourselves less likely to throw the dagger of accusation - “you are not a good example!” - and more likely to initiate reconciliation.
Addendum:
During the meditation before communion on Sunday we talked about the passage in Ephesians where Paul calls us to imitate God in our desire to forgive one another. Not surprisingly we meet in this call to imitate the same kind of humility and powerlessness that we have discussed above. Here is the quote I read from as an illustration of this concept:
“It is a gross distortion of forgiveness that sees it as a sort of claim to power over the other – being a patron or a benefactor towards someone less secure. We should rather think of those extraordinary words in the prophecy of Hosea (11.8-90) about the mercy of God: 'How can I give you up, O Ephraim? For I am God and not a mortal'. To forgive is to share in the helplessness of God, who cannot turn from God's own nature: not to forgive would be for God a wound in the divine life itself. Not power but the powerlessness of the God whose nature is love is what is shown in the act of forgiving. The believer rooted in Christ shares that powerlessness, and the deeper the roots go the less possible it is not to forgive. And to be forgiven is another kind of powerlessness – recognising that I cannot live without the word of mercy, that I cannot complete the task of being myself without the healing of what I have wounded. Neither the forgiver nor the forgiven acquires the power that simply cuts off the past and leaves us alone to face the future: both have discovered that their past, with all its shadows and injuries, is now what makes it imperative to be reconciled so that they may live more fully from and with each other (Rowan Williams, from his keynote address at the Lutheran World Federation Assembly, Jully 22, 2010).”
Questions for Discussion:
1. Do you think of yourself as having power over other people because you may or may not want to forgive them? If so, where do you think you learned to think and feel that way? What will help you move away from that attitude?
2. When someone disappoints you what is something you might likely say that would be damaging and point away from reconciliation? What might you say instead that would be at once honest and humble, pointing towards reconciliation?
3. Why is it so tempting to long to be just like John or fantasize about what your life would be like if you were more like Cathy? What process in our own lives is short-circuited when we operate in that mode? What sorts of things do we need to repent of to keep us from operating in the mode of imagining we can or should imitate the perceived grand successes of other people?
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