Internet Grace

A couple years ago, I stumbled upon this blog through another blog I was reading at the time.  Since then I've mostly stopped reading that other blog - a number of other blogs have proven uninteresting over the long haul as well - but I keep coming back to Christine's.   Its the wit, insight, humor, all around excellent writing ,and - as I mentioned in this post - a perspective on the world quite different from my own that keeps me coming back. 

A few months ago, I preached from 1 Corinthians 6, the only sermon I've preached dedicated solely to the topic of sex.  That same week I read this post on Christine's blog and it was formative in the way I went about preparing my sermon that week.  So I invited her to listen in on my podcast.  From that invitation has arisen a continuing email discussion that has been beneficial and enriching; truly a means of grace to me.

A few weeks ago, Christine invited me to join her in a writing project on her blog.  Our collaboration has now been posted and you can read it at this link.  I hope you'll check it out and then spend some time reading some of Christine's other writing as well. 

Children of God, Practitioners of Righteousness

Similar to last week's passage of Scripture, this week's pericope from 1 John 3 is filled with a number of dialectical statements; seemingly opposing truths that tug on each other and thereby hold each other in tension and balance.  If this tug of war is decided in favor of one side over the other then the truth is lost.  The truth is in the tension.

On the one hand, John boldly declares that we are already children of God

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are." v. 1

"Beloved, we are God's children now..." v.2

In these verses we see the theology of the Gospel of John shining through clearly.  There is an emphasis on the world's judgment having already occurred by way of Christ's incarnation.  John describes salvation as something that is available now, in this life.  The light has already come into the world, the darkness is already dispelled, and those who trust in Christ are already children of God.  None of these statements are incorrect but they are incomplete.  Without other statements of truth laid alongside of them, this sole emphasis on the already aspects of salvation easily leads to a Christian faith that is out of balance.

It is difficult to say with any certainty what heresy had arisen in the Johanine community that caused 1 John to be written.  But it is easy enough to imagine the kind of problems that could arise if we believed that our salvation was already complete in this world.  For one, it could lead us to believe that all of our actions, no matter how heinous, already have a rubber stamp of approval of God.  If we are already completely and entirely saved then that must mean that everything we do is God's work.  Or at the very least, if our actions are not good then they are simply of no consequence for God has already saved us and what we do or don't do isn't going to change that.

It seems this is at least part of that to which the writer of 1 John is responding in chapter 3.  He says

"...what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." v.2

"No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.." v.6

"Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous." v. 7

 Some of these statements, verse 7 especially, appear to border on being tautologous; they are so obvious and self explanatory that they don't reveal any new information.  "Whoever practices righteousness is righteous?  Really, John?  Thanks for that gem!  That's sort of like telling us that water is wet."

But this is likely yet another place we take for granted the vast Christian tradition which stands between us and the audience of 1 John for this connection may very well not have been obvious to them. In the ancient world it was usually not assumed that there was any connection between religion/spirituality and morals.  Gentiles regularly worshiped at pagan temples without thinking there was any connection between that worship and how they lived the rest of their lives.  Religion and ethics were simply separate categories that had little if any relation to each other.  When this is combined with a belief that one has already experienced salvation in its entirety, that is one has already been made righteous, it is easy to see how these believers might have thought that being righteous had nothing to do with living righteously.  They viewed it as something accomplished entirely by God because of their trust in Jesus.

Of course, that last line sounds quite a bit like a lot of modern day Protestant professions of faith.  After all, we are saved by faith and not by works.  While I certainly don't want to lose this emphasis of Protestantism, I also think it unnecessarily bifurcates the language of the New Testament, especially terms like faith and righteousness.  As I never tire of pointing out on this blog, the Greek word pistis is the word often translated as faith in the New Testament but it can be just as easily (and often is) translated as faithfulness; in the language of the New Testament the two concepts are inseparable, to have faith is to be faithful.  Much the same thing is true of righteousness.  In many places, this word (dikaosune and its cognates) are often translated as justification which we usually take to mean something like forgiveness.  But in the Greek of the New Testament the word is related to the word for justice (dikaios) and in the Old Testament righteousness (tsedek) often refers to covenant faithfulness (God's, Israel's, or an individual's) by which the world is set in right relationship.  That is, to be made righteous is not merely to be forgiven but also to be transformed and empowered to live rightly and justly in the world.

John's words still speak to us today.  Yes, we are saved.  Yes, we are already children of God.  Yes, we have been made righteous.  And all of this has been done entirely by God's grace and not of ourselves.  But that is not a pass to go on sinning.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  It is a call to work for justice and right relationship in our world because what we will be has not yet been revealed, the kingdom is not yet.  There will be a day when "we will be like him because we will see him as he is" but until that day we are called to be a people who practice righteousness in this world.

Darkness, Light, and Entire Sanctification

1 John begins with an abrupt assertion of orthodoxy.  No introduction.  No greeting.  Just a blunt, nearly grammatically incoherent assertion of faithfulness to the Johanine teaching about Jesus.

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life..."  

It is easy for us to forget just how much diversity there was in early Christianity, how many disagreements there were over really fundamental questions like "Who is Jesus?" and "Was he really human?".  But these questions lingered for centuries before the Church worked out what it believed.  It seems likely that the Johanine community was in the midst of debating such a question, though the enigmatic, proverb-like language of 1 John (just think how different 1 John sounds from Paul's very logical, sequential arguments) makes it difficult to discern just what that question might be.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the writer of 1 John (John himself? a disciple of John?) wishes to assert right away that his understanding of Jesus is the one the Johanine community should follow.  He asserts that his teaching is the one that has been since the beginning (thereby implying that the beliefs of his opponents are heretical innovations) and that it is this teaching which has been publicly verifiable (seen, heard, even handled) and passed on to those to whom he is now writing.

This message is that God is light and in him there is no darkness (v.5).  With this summary statement, the writer turns to a series of alternating and escalating statements which describe the relationship between light/truth and darkness/falsehood in the life of the believer.  The writer begins the alternating pattern with a darkness/falsehood statement.

"If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." v. 6

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."  v.8

"If we say we have not sinned, we make him (God) a liar and his word is not is us." v.10

Each statement escalates in severity.  If we claim fellowship with God but walk in darkness then we lie.  If say we have no sin then we lie to ourselves.  If we say we've never sinned then we make God a liar.

Interlaced between these statements of darkness/falsehood are statements of light/truth, each meant to counter-balance the darkness/falsehood statement that comes before it.  

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son cleanses us from all sin." v.7

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." v.9 

 These statements are dialectical.  They are meant to stand in tension with one another.  We can almost imagine each sentence tugging on the others.  As long as each statement continues to pull its weight then a balanced view of the Christian life will emerge.  But if we begin to lean on one statement or group of statements too hard then the tug-of-war will be thrown out of whack and we will end up with a distorted view of the Christian life.

On the one hand, v.6 and 7 make plain the expectation that a Christian is to walk in light rather than darkness.  That is to say that being a disciple of Jesus requires a certain kind of living, it requires "practicing the truth" and avoiding sin.  On the other hand, v.8 and 10 tug back the other direction so as to make it equally plain that avoiding sin is not the same thing as saying that we don't sin or have never sinned.  Finally, v. 9 gives another tug back in the direction of v.6 and 7 by reminding us that if we confess our sins God really does forgive those sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This brings into clearer focus what it means to "walk in the light".  It is not sinless perfection.  If it were then confession would be failure.  Instead, the recognition and confession of our sinfulness is the very thing that allows God to forgive us and cleanse us and thereby make righteousness possible.  Confessing our sinfulness allows God to work in us in such a way that further sin can be prevented in our lives.

As a people who believe in a doctrine of Entire Sanctification, we Nazarenes would do well to meditate on these verses day and night, letting them soak into the deepest parts of our existence.  We are a people who are optimistic about the extent of transformation that is possible by God's grace in this life.  When 1 John says that we can be cleansed from all unrighteousness, we take that to mean that God frees us from all of sin's power in this life so that it really is possible for us not to sin, to really live righteously in this world.  However, as these verses remind us, that is not the same thing as saying that we will never sin again once we are entirely sanctified.  Too often in our tradition entire sanctification has been confused for a spiritual plateau, a place where spiritual growth levels off because one has already reached the highest possible state of holiness.  As a result, confession has become somewhat of a lost art in our denomination since there has at times been an implicit expectation that those who are entirely sanctified shouldn't have anything to confess.  This in turn has led to an abundance of legalism and self-righteousness.

This is not to say that we should give up on our hope of transformation, sanctification, and righteousness in this life.  1 John clearly calls believer to "walk in the light" and to be "cleansed from all unrighteousness". It is to say that such sanctification is not a state that we reach once and for all but a path we must continually walk and the means to staying on this path of light is not pretending that we have no sin.  For the concealing of anything will only require that we seek out even more darkness.  But if we remain on the well lit path then even our darkest deeds will be exposed and it is that exposure itself which will eliminate the darkness.  It is the exposure of our whole selves to the light of Christ that makes our cleansing from all unrighteousness possible.

Body Matters

The issue to which Paul is responding in 1 Corinthians 15 becomes clear in v.12.

"Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?"

The Corinthians are denying that there is such a thing as the resurrection of the dead.  To be a bit more specific, they probably are not denying the idea that someone who has died can live again (that being a much more modern objection to the resurrection).  After all, Paul surely preached that Christ had been raised and we can gather from Paul's argument here that Christ's resurrection is something on which he and the Corinthians agree.  Instead, the Corinthians are eschewing Paul's belief that everyone will eventually be bodily resurrected from the dead.  This is what Paul means he speaks of the resurrection: not merely that rising from the dead is possible but that at the end of the age all of humanity will be resurrected.

This denial of the resurrection was likely rooted in the Greek philosophical assumptions that seem to have been pervasive in Corinth.  Among those assumptions was the belief that the material world, including our bodies, is basically evil and that the goal of life is to allow our good spirit to escape our corrupted flesh.  As a result, the Corinthians thought that what it meant to be spiritual had very little to do with with their bodies.

In fact, the Corinthians rejection of the material world in their spirituality can even be seen in the series of issues which Paul addresses throughout the letter prior to chapter 15.  The Corinthians think nothing of a man sleeping with his step mother or of engaging in prostitution because they reason that what they do with their bodies has nothing to do with their spirituality.  They think of spirituality as an individual competition for spiritual knowledge rather than seeing themselves as a part of the Body of Christ and they exalt the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues above simple love and care for one another.  The Corinthians make a habit of denying the physical, whether it be their own bodies or those around them, in favor of what they see as being more "spiritual".  So it is easy to see why they would reject Paul's very Jewish notion of the resurrection of the dead which could just as easily be translated as "the raising of the corpses" (zombies anyone?).  The crude image of a bunch of decaying bodies given life is about the furthest thing from the Corinthians definition of what it means to be spiritual.

It is fitting then that Paul's words concerning the resurrection come as his closing argument in his letter to the Corinthians.  This is probably not an issue about which they have written to him but one about which he has heard reports and sees as foundational to everything else he has addressed.  So Paul reminds the Corinthians that Jesus' resurrection is not an isolated event within history.  Instead, it is the precursor of what will happen to all of us.  We will all be raised with a new kind of body.  Paul calls it a "spiritual body" in v.44, thus combining eternally the very two things, spirit and body, which the Corinthians wish to separate.

The truth is that much of the Church today still struggles to hold those two things, spirit and body, together in the way that Paul did.  Often our ideas and language about our physical world resembles those of the Corinthians much more than they do Paul's.  We speak of our soul going to heaven when we die rather than our hope that God will raise us up and give us an entirely new body.  We struggle to articulate a meaningful sexual ethic that goes beyond a simple list of scriptural imperatives because, like the Corinthians, we're not really sure what sex has to do with spirituality anyway.  We become to busy with our very "spiritual" ministries and gaining our own "spiritual" knowledge to be bothered with lowly, fleshly things like actually loving and serving others.  We fail to challenge greed, consumerism, and injustice because we figure its only a matter of time before God's set this world aflame.

The resurrection forever declares to us that our bodies and this physical world matter to God.  God created this stuff, inhabited this stuff, raised this stuff, and one day God will renew and transform this stuff.  It is not an afterthought in God's work of salvation.  It is this very stuff which is being saved.

Of Fruit and Temples

I planned to preach from Psalm 118 this Sunday and probably will still refer to it one way or another.  Since this is the Psalm the lectionary provides for every Palm Sunday and because it is quoted in the New Testament, I've already interacted with this Psalm a number of times before.  Some conglomeration of what I've written here, here, and here will probably all end up in my sermon this Sunday.  But for now I want to focus on one particular irony of the way this Psalm shows up in the Gospel of Mark.

It is especially striking to me the way quotations from Psalm 118 form bookends to a group of stories in Mark 11 and 12.  The (sort of) short version, without rehearsing too much of what I've said in those other posts, is that Jesus rides into Jerusalem during the week of Passover and the crowds welcome him with shouts of "Hossana!" and "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."  That is to say, the people are welcoming Jesus as their deliverer by using the words of Psalm 118, a psalm used at Passover as a celebration of the Lord's deliverance.  Jesus' procession stops at the Temple, much as the Passover procession in which Psalm 118 was recited climaxed as the temple, but Jesus' procession is sort of anti-climatic in that after arriving at the Temple he simply leaves.

On the following day, he is on his way back to the Temple when he spots a fig tree.  Upon closer examination, Jesus finds that the tree is not bearing fruit and curses it.  This seems a little unfair for the poor fig tree since Mark notes that it was not even the season for figs.  Apparently still grumpy about missing out on his fig-breakfast, Jesus then enters the Temple and does his whole righteous anger thing, kicking out all those buying and selling.  Upon leaving the Temple, the disciples notice that the fig tree Jesus cursed has withered.  It is here that we see a piece of Mark's masterful story telling on display: the fig tree is a symbol for the Temple in that it too has failed to bear fruit and is now out of season.  As a result, Jesus cursed it just as he did the fig tree.

Naturally, the religious leaders want to know where Jesus gets his authority for all this cursing and carrying on.  So they ask him.  And naturally, Jesus answers with an enigmatic question of his own and a story.  The story is about some tenants who refuse to give the landowner his share of the harvest.  The tenants beat and reject the owner's servants and even kill his son.  At this point even the religious leaders agree that those tenants are in trouble.  Jesus then responds with more words from Psalm 118; "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."  Mark notes upon the conclusion of this story and quotation that the religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus but were afraid to do so because of the people.

So we have this pattern:
Quote from Psalm 118
A tree that fails to produce its fruit
A temple that fails to produce its fruit
Tenants that fail to produce their fruit
Quote from Psalm 118

It would seem Mark wants us to read these stories about failures of fruit bearing within the framework of deliverance celebrated in Psalm 118.  When we do so, these stories become thick with irony.  In Psalm 118, it was Israel which was the stone the builders (the other nations) rejected but that God made the chief cornerstone of his plan.  The religious leaders saw themselves as protecting Israel's place in that plan.  However, Jesus has declared their efforts fruitless and proclaimed that he is now God's chosen cornerstone; that it is through himself that the deliverance of Psalm 118 will come.  The words of the very same Psalm can be used in the people's celebration of Jesus' deliverance and the religious leaders rejection of him.  And in doing that rejecting, the religious leaders show themselves to be exactly the fruitless tenants who reject God's chosen one that Jesus has said they are.  They fulfill his prophecy about them in their rejection of him as a prophet.

Despite the literary intricacy and skill involved in Mark's telling of these stories, I suppose the question for us is still a relatively simple one.  Do our lives bear the fruit of God's deliverance?  However, if the question is simple, Mark's telling of the story cautions us against a simplistic answer.  For we must remember that the religious leaders would have readily answered this question with a clear and resolute "Yes!  Of course, we are bearing the fruit of God's deliverance.  We are God's chosen, after all!"  It might be just as tempting for us to say "Yes!  Of course, we are bearing the fruit of God's deliverance.  We are Christians, after all!".  Perhaps we too have confused certain labels and institutions with real fruit bearing.  May these final weeks of Lent be a time when we re-examine our assumptions about what kind of fruit it is that God desires.

Love Means Holding Your Nose

Several weeks ago, as we began the season of Lent, we heard Psalm 25 as a pattern for prayer.  It served as one example of what it means to respond to this life with God.  And good pattern though it is, it is just one example since there are 149 other Psalms, 149 other prayers ready to be offered.  In fact, we heard a very different prayer the very next week.  One that traded the reverence and diffidence of Psalm 25 for anger and accusation.  But somewhat remarkably we confessed that the words of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was just as much an appropriate part of our God-speak as were the pious words of Psalm 25.  Two weeks ago we heard a Psalm of praise for the God who is revealed both in creation and in the Law.  This week we have a prayer of yet another variety; one of confession and a request for cleansing from sin.

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions."  The Psalmist is quite literally asking God to "plaster over, to whitewash" his sin.  The Psalmist is looking for forgiveness so thorough that all record of the wrong is erased; asking God to act out of God's mercy and faithfulness rather than according to what the Psalmist deserves.  In fact, God is asked to "Hide your face from my sins" even as God is doing the blotting out.  The image is something akin to someone painting over an image they find so abhorrent that they can't even look at what they are painting over; like a parent trying to avoid the smell of dirty diaper even as they clean up their child.

This Psalm reminds me of the few times my daughter ate too much too close to bedtime when she was younger.  One time in particular I remember waking up to the sound of her crying and walking down the hall to her room wondering what was wrong but the moment I walked into her room, even in the darkness of night, any question about what was wrong immediately left me.  The smell of vomit was undeniable and overwhelming; enough to force me to concentrate very hard on not making my own contribution to the problem.  The introduction at the beginning of Psalm 51 says that the Psalm was written by David as a response to Nathan's uncovering of David's rape of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah.  Perhaps when we read that story we should see God doing his best not to puke over what David has done.

The words of this Psalm show that David recognizes the repugnant nature of his sin.  It is so foul that it threatens to drive God away.  In spite of that the Psalmist also recognizes that it is only God who can clean him up.  So he asks God not only to blot out the outward marks of his sin but also to "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."  The Psalmist is in need of not only forgiveness but a cleansing so deep that it goes to the very core of his being.

The smell of Hannah's vomit was nearly enough to drive me away as well.  But here was this little girl that I adore, who was sick and confused, and who only wanted her daddy to hold her and clean her up.  So I did my best to hold my nose and my gag reflex and did what she couldn't do for herself.  Obviously, this doesn't make me extraordinary.  It only makes me her father.

Growing up, I often heard the idea that God the Father turned his back on his Son while he hung on the cross.  The reasoning went that Jesus had taken upon himself the sin of the whole world and that God in all his holiness could not possibly look upon all that sin so he had to turn from his Son.  Why else, it was said, would Jesus have uttered those words of Psalm 22 "My God, why have you forsaken me?".  This strikes me as, at best, only getting half the story right.  Yes, of course, God finds our sin repulsive, so much so that God wishes to avert both eyes and nostrils from its sight and smell.  There is a very real sense in which sin threatens to drive God away from us.

But the other half of the story is that of the Father who, even while nearly gagging on the stench we have created, still reaches into our vomitaceous mess with his two hands of Son and Spirit in order to do for us what we can not do for ourselves; a Father whose love is greater than his gag reflex.  Perhaps, when we think of Jesus on the cross, rather than the Father turning his back on the Son, we should imagine the Father holding close his beloved Son, even as he wreaks of the sin of the world.  Perhaps this is the real glory of proclaiming that God is love; that even when the profane horror of crucifixion and the weight of all the world's sin threatened to break the bond of love between Father and Son that bond held fast.  That  even when sin itself entered the very life of the Triune God by Jesus taking it upon himself it did not dissolve the loving relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but instead that love swallowed up the sin of the world and overwhelmed it.  Perhaps this, most of all times, was when Jesus knew his Father as his Abba.

Psalm 51 speaks out of the conviction that God is willing to hold his nose for us.  Indeed, our Father is even willing to get some of our own filth and stench all over him if that is what it takes to hold us in his arms and clean us up.  Because his love for us is greater than his repulsion at our sin.  Because this kind of love is who God is.  Because this is what it means for us to call him our Abba.

Holy, Righteous, and Good Law

"The heavens declare the glory of God" begins Psalm 19.  The Psalmist goes on to speak of God's creation as God's own words to us.  Every new day is a new speech from God, every new night a new revelation.  This word from God goes forth throughout all of creation since creation itself is the word that God is speaking.  In v. 5-6, the Psalmist focuses specifically on the daily movement of the sun across the sky as one of God's greatest works.  Wherever its light touches, the glory of God is revealed.

However, the Psalmist also acknowledges that while creation might be a word from God to us, it is not the whole conversation.  We are not left to make every inference about God from creation alone.  Indeed, though the Psalmist doesn't explicitly state it here, any faithful Israelite would certainly see that as a quick path to idolatry.  We need something more.

So after praising God for God's revelation in nature the Psalmist gives thanks for God's revelation in God's law.  This law the Psalmist describes as perfect - that is, it is complete, blameless.  It brings wholeness and clarity to what would be an otherwise fuzzy and potentially misleading picture of God's character. It tells us what we could never surmise about God from creation alone.  We are told that this law revives the soul, makes the simple wise, gladdens the heart, brightens the eyes, endures forever, and is altogether righteous.  Therefore, it is to be desired more than the finest gold and the sweetest honey.  The law is not a burden or a list of rules.  It is something to be cherished and enjoyed because it reveals God to us.  Without it, we would be left worshiping dumb idols of our own making.

The final verses of the Psalm turn from words of praise to words of request.  The Psalmist recognizes that he, even with the law as a guide, can not discern his own faults (v.12) so the Psalmist prayer is for forgiveness for when he does sin and for safe keeping from the ways of sin.  In v. 13:

"Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me!  Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression."  

This is a telling request for in it is a recognition, that even the law, for all of its perfection and revelation of the character of God, is not itself able to prevent the Psalmist from sinning.  The Psalmist not only needs God's law to know what is right but also needs God's power to do what is right.  As the Psalmist says "let them (sins) not have dominion over me!".  There is a recognition that even with the law before us and even as we confess that it is a good and perfect law, the law itself is still powerless to defend us against sin.  We need God himself to act on our behalf in order to keep us blameless.

As Christians, we confess that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are that act of God on our behalf.  It is precisely this idea for which the apostle Paul argues in Romans 5-8.  By his death and resurrection, Jesus has inaugurated a new age in which we are not only forgiven but in which the power of sin has been broken so that it no longer has dominion over us.  We are now empowered by the Spirit to fulfill the law of Christ so that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts are indeed acceptable to the Lord who is our rock and redeemer.