"That which was from the beginning... we have touched with our own hands" 1 John 1:1
Life, it's often said, is full of surprises. The problem with such jolts, of course, is that they are, by nature, unexpected, and can be for good or ill, but they usually push us to face something in a way we haven't, and that can do us a great deal of good.
I was shocked this week, gradually, by a fresh awareness of what it means to (truly) be flesh.
There is that astonishing moment in Genesis 1, where God takes something inanimate, and, whilst touching it, breathes into its deadness and creates beings to reflect Himself.
The book I'm reading notes how all that truly signifies what we really are revolves around the miracle of that moment - taken from the commonplace, endowed with the most extraordinary gift, we are made magisterial by the very touch of the most high, who grants us life by His breath.
We, of course, threw it all away, but the need for what that moment made us - the ache for the touch that makes our flesh vital and genuinely living, is present at every moment in our short lives here, and when God graciously intervenes to redeem us, it is through the total inhabiting of that same flesh, and, as John notes, by touching our flesh once more.
There are many times in the Gospels where Jesus engages with the sick and the lost, not only by speaking, but by touching them, or by allowing them to touch Him. Taken in the light of our creation's first moment, we see an echo of God's great intention - to invest the flesh of His hands with wholeness and worth that cannot be provided elsewhere.
Redemption, above all else, is the unveiling of the resurrection of the flesh - the glorifying and re-engaging of all that was promised in Eden, that the kingdom begun in Christ's incarnation may be completed in the filling of the earth.
We have yet to see the great splendor of what is intended, but in creation and redemption, we are pointed repeatedly to the spark, the seed of what flesh will truly become.
Saturday, 30 March 2019
Thursday, 28 March 2019
For all the fallen (men)
Great link I came across today, regarding honesty about the male struggle to be sexually "pure".
Saturday, 23 March 2019
What's Good Here?
"The preacher is required to know the difference between the law and the gospel. If a sermon ends in 'ethics', if its 'application' (a word that needs to be avoided) amounts to something I should do, it is a sermon of law and not grace...
Whenever you hear a preacher invoking concepts like 'accountability' or 'discipleship', you can be sure you're hearing the law. Whenever you are genuinely comforted or elated or absolved, then you know you are hearing the Gospel".
Paul Zahl - Grace in the church.
There are occasions when I find it hard to be in church.
It's not when I find myself facing a contemporary song I really cannot sing because the words ("change the atmosphere") make me wonder why am I doing this. Neither is it when words in liturgy and hymns are 'updated' (no doubt by those well intentioned) because that's contemporary (when the original phrases were just fine, often better). I am sure that many would conclude it's just my age if they heard me sigh in such circumstances, because in truth, it's best to be tolerant about such minor infractions. What seriously irks me though is when whoever is charged with delivering the word - the meat and drink my soul is craving for the week to come - forgets to bring before us God's truly overwhelming, abounding care and mercy in their time in the the pulpit.
Now, don't get me wrong here -
Certainly, there is a place for reminding us we're died in the wool sinners (good services will have a time of absolution and confession, close to the start) dead to God as a race, and certainly, touching on our true state, especially in respect to our need for Christ, is a valid diagnosis before providing the essential remedy,
but where do we get the idea that telling those who have gathered to find God's grace in time of need that what they actually require is a lecture on the virtues of some expression of Christian "stoicism" - a continual shouldering of your burden and committing to 'doing better', because that's what, apparently, you've been called to.
This is dangerous stuff, which generates a very different form of "christianity". I spent years in the prison camp of 'checking your fruit' every day or week to certify you really were a believer.
Have I prayed enough, witnessed enough, read enough scripture and, first and foremost, lived a holy life today?
Have I, in effect, been the person God would expect me to be were I able to keep His commands perfectly?
Inevitably, the truthful response was no, not even close.
It left me, and numerous others I know totally uncertain about who they were because they firstly lost any assurance in Christ (where the Gospel tells them they were supposed to be looking) and then proceeded to quickly loose confidence in themselves because there is, as Paul states concerning the believer in Romans 7, nothing good in us. They needed the good news. What they were fed was a constant diet of asking 'are you really walking well?' until it crushed them, or, even worse, left them believing they were pulling it off in themselves, having a righteousness other than what's provided in Christ.
So, how serious a problem is this?
Well, let me put it this way.
The Apostolic church of the first century never held any kind of church council or major assembly on any of the cardinal truths you'd state in the Apostles creed (The Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the Virgin Birth, and so on), or the nature of church government, or for clarifying eschatology, and so on, but they most certainly did on the issue of what we need to understand in respects to the nature of a believer's relationship to not mistaking faith as a series of rules to be imposed and then fervently kept and adhered to.
"Certain men had arisen and were teaching the brethren that unless you obey the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1).
Notice how Luke puts that - there was a teaching circulating that was adamantly stating that the saving work of Jesus in itself is not enough to save us. It was proclaiming that you had to do more for there to be any assurance of God accepting you, but therein lies the real trouble. Our diagnosis of the problem (who we are, and what's to be done about it) has to be total and exact if we're to apply the right treatment. Keeping the Law, however we dress it (deeper commitment, holiness, sinless living, discipleship), whatever appeal we think it has, negates the Gospel. Did you hear that? That is why Paul is so emphatic in his letter to the Galatians (he repeats his crucial, damning warning twice in his opening of the letter) - you cannot mess with this without detaching yourself from Christ!
It's so easy for us to foster some manner of confidence in our flesh, but it won't engender anything but the nightmare of bad religion.
False religion incubates in the warmth of self righteousness.
So, what is the solution?
There's a story which really comforts me.
One night, whilst Martin Luther was a wanted man, incarcerated because he was daring to challenge the established church with the riches of the unmerited work of Christ, the devil came and presented him with a list of charges - his many sins.
Now, Luther had known a long and very troubling paralysis because, unlike most people, he knew the real seriousness of his wrongdoing, and the fact that he was constantly in jeopardy because of his foul nature would seem to have fashioned a tool the devil could use against him to turn him into a worthless, quivering wreck.
Naturally, it would be game over for any man made to face something of the sheer awfulness of his true condition...
How would the Reformer respond?
Luther laughed.
Your list is far, far too short he countered, and what of them?
Something astonishing had happened to this man. It wasn't that his sins weren't real, or that he'd become some extraordinary creature who in himself could rise above his iniquity. Looking back later, he tells us why he could be so calm and bold before the accuser...
When the devil, he noted, throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this - 'I admit I do indeed deserve them, but I know one who has made full satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is, I am also!'
Luther was resting in the full and glorious truth that He was one made free from sin only by the life, death and resurrection of another - that is where we find God's kindly face towards us.
Our one sole place of full confidence and assurance is the benevolence we find ours at the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). The purpose of our fellowship together here and now is to gather us there, that Christ and His death and life may become ours, for only then are we more than those swallowed by sin and death.
If we think our discipleship, our ethics or works are going to cut it in any way, we've fallen into detaching ourselves from Christ alone. He does the saving. the keeping, the resurrecting.
Jacques Ellul, in his comprehensive work The Subversion of Christianity notes that the root of all our troubles as Christians is when we omit to call believers to their true birth right as God's redeemed children - to be free (Galatians 5:1). It is freedom we find so shocking, and so we, like the Israelites of old, often seek to scurry back to some manner of slavery, either to the law or to sin, rather than live boldly beneath the love of God.
To do so leaves the church seeking to find confidence in all the wrong places and opens us to all manner of draining and destructive error.
Freedom in Christ alone, that God's grace may constantly be our meat and drink. That's the true requirement and result of God's love at work amongst us.
Let's remember that, especially in church on Sundays.
Whenever you hear a preacher invoking concepts like 'accountability' or 'discipleship', you can be sure you're hearing the law. Whenever you are genuinely comforted or elated or absolved, then you know you are hearing the Gospel".
Paul Zahl - Grace in the church.
There are occasions when I find it hard to be in church.
It's not when I find myself facing a contemporary song I really cannot sing because the words ("change the atmosphere") make me wonder why am I doing this. Neither is it when words in liturgy and hymns are 'updated' (no doubt by those well intentioned) because that's contemporary (when the original phrases were just fine, often better). I am sure that many would conclude it's just my age if they heard me sigh in such circumstances, because in truth, it's best to be tolerant about such minor infractions. What seriously irks me though is when whoever is charged with delivering the word - the meat and drink my soul is craving for the week to come - forgets to bring before us God's truly overwhelming, abounding care and mercy in their time in the the pulpit.
Now, don't get me wrong here -
Certainly, there is a place for reminding us we're died in the wool sinners (good services will have a time of absolution and confession, close to the start) dead to God as a race, and certainly, touching on our true state, especially in respect to our need for Christ, is a valid diagnosis before providing the essential remedy,
but where do we get the idea that telling those who have gathered to find God's grace in time of need that what they actually require is a lecture on the virtues of some expression of Christian "stoicism" - a continual shouldering of your burden and committing to 'doing better', because that's what, apparently, you've been called to.
This is dangerous stuff, which generates a very different form of "christianity". I spent years in the prison camp of 'checking your fruit' every day or week to certify you really were a believer.
Have I prayed enough, witnessed enough, read enough scripture and, first and foremost, lived a holy life today?
Have I, in effect, been the person God would expect me to be were I able to keep His commands perfectly?
Inevitably, the truthful response was no, not even close.
It left me, and numerous others I know totally uncertain about who they were because they firstly lost any assurance in Christ (where the Gospel tells them they were supposed to be looking) and then proceeded to quickly loose confidence in themselves because there is, as Paul states concerning the believer in Romans 7, nothing good in us. They needed the good news. What they were fed was a constant diet of asking 'are you really walking well?' until it crushed them, or, even worse, left them believing they were pulling it off in themselves, having a righteousness other than what's provided in Christ.
So, how serious a problem is this?
Well, let me put it this way.
The Apostolic church of the first century never held any kind of church council or major assembly on any of the cardinal truths you'd state in the Apostles creed (The Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the Virgin Birth, and so on), or the nature of church government, or for clarifying eschatology, and so on, but they most certainly did on the issue of what we need to understand in respects to the nature of a believer's relationship to not mistaking faith as a series of rules to be imposed and then fervently kept and adhered to.
"Certain men had arisen and were teaching the brethren that unless you obey the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1).
Notice how Luke puts that - there was a teaching circulating that was adamantly stating that the saving work of Jesus in itself is not enough to save us. It was proclaiming that you had to do more for there to be any assurance of God accepting you, but therein lies the real trouble. Our diagnosis of the problem (who we are, and what's to be done about it) has to be total and exact if we're to apply the right treatment. Keeping the Law, however we dress it (deeper commitment, holiness, sinless living, discipleship), whatever appeal we think it has, negates the Gospel. Did you hear that? That is why Paul is so emphatic in his letter to the Galatians (he repeats his crucial, damning warning twice in his opening of the letter) - you cannot mess with this without detaching yourself from Christ!
It's so easy for us to foster some manner of confidence in our flesh, but it won't engender anything but the nightmare of bad religion.
False religion incubates in the warmth of self righteousness.
So, what is the solution?
There's a story which really comforts me.
One night, whilst Martin Luther was a wanted man, incarcerated because he was daring to challenge the established church with the riches of the unmerited work of Christ, the devil came and presented him with a list of charges - his many sins.
Now, Luther had known a long and very troubling paralysis because, unlike most people, he knew the real seriousness of his wrongdoing, and the fact that he was constantly in jeopardy because of his foul nature would seem to have fashioned a tool the devil could use against him to turn him into a worthless, quivering wreck.
Naturally, it would be game over for any man made to face something of the sheer awfulness of his true condition...
How would the Reformer respond?
Luther laughed.
Your list is far, far too short he countered, and what of them?
Something astonishing had happened to this man. It wasn't that his sins weren't real, or that he'd become some extraordinary creature who in himself could rise above his iniquity. Looking back later, he tells us why he could be so calm and bold before the accuser...
When the devil, he noted, throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this - 'I admit I do indeed deserve them, but I know one who has made full satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is, I am also!'
Luther was resting in the full and glorious truth that He was one made free from sin only by the life, death and resurrection of another - that is where we find God's kindly face towards us.
Our one sole place of full confidence and assurance is the benevolence we find ours at the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). The purpose of our fellowship together here and now is to gather us there, that Christ and His death and life may become ours, for only then are we more than those swallowed by sin and death.
If we think our discipleship, our ethics or works are going to cut it in any way, we've fallen into detaching ourselves from Christ alone. He does the saving. the keeping, the resurrecting.
Jacques Ellul, in his comprehensive work The Subversion of Christianity notes that the root of all our troubles as Christians is when we omit to call believers to their true birth right as God's redeemed children - to be free (Galatians 5:1). It is freedom we find so shocking, and so we, like the Israelites of old, often seek to scurry back to some manner of slavery, either to the law or to sin, rather than live boldly beneath the love of God.
To do so leaves the church seeking to find confidence in all the wrong places and opens us to all manner of draining and destructive error.
Freedom in Christ alone, that God's grace may constantly be our meat and drink. That's the true requirement and result of God's love at work amongst us.
Let's remember that, especially in church on Sundays.
Saturday, 16 March 2019
Much more than principles
"I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, and also, that they should eat and drink and take pleasure in their toil. This is God's gift to us". Ecclesiastes 3:12,13.
When was the last time you said or did something that was immensely satisfying?
Something which made you feel that all was well with the world, because you had been able to help feed into an issue in such a way that people had been helped and you had been instrumental in moving things forward, at least a little, to clarity or even a resolution?
That manner of inter-action, I think, is what is touched on in the verse above. Amidst the rightness of reveling in the inherent joys of this life, even when we are often weak or troubled, we engage with others in such a way that something "momentous" happens, not because it is seen to make vast changes to everything, but because it allows us and another, or a few others, to encounter the 'live current' of being part of something larger than ourselves because we are brought together, and that facilitates care, value and meaning that transcends the utilitarian and the mundane. It conveys the reality of loving another.
Christianity isn't about setting-up a set of 'must do' principles on the chalk-board of our inner resolve and then, with great determination, seeking to constantly push these into our will through gritted teeth, telling our wayward desires that we "must" succeed in funneling our entire output through these commandment-like laws. Religion is often very good, in respects to cosmetics, in establishing such schemes, but that leaves our genuine needs and callings untouched, as they are entirely detached by such cruelty - think of the character of Morpheus in the movie, Forbidden Planet; outwardly appearing so moral and concerned, but inwardly, a monster who's humanity had been incarcerated by his pride.
For things to truly be deep and meaningful for us, for them to resonate with the beauty that conveys the eternity of truth behind our days here, we have to know the God who is totally involved and engaged with us amidst all the joys and futility's of the present - that is key to our being able to really do good; to discovering genuine significance and satisfaction in our being good to each other, but the resource for such things comes from beyond us.
We have to dump our weak and beggarly attempts at 'doing' (resolution-like) for a life and a benevolence far above what we can ask or think, found in the good news of the giving of Jesus Christ.
Paul prays that we might really come to know for ourselves the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:19) - something far beyond mere mental assent to some principal of doing good. This is a love that fills us with the presence and life of God Himself, and it is that life, working through us, that facilitates genuine care and affection, genuine fellowship that brings a taste of what we are meant to be - those who live well.
When Christ is understood as the one who enables us to put away the childish yet deadly notion that we can achieve goodness in ourselves, we can look beyond the ruination of fallen human will to find a new hope, a new reality that can do what we naturally ruin.
Christ alone, revealed among us as God in human flesh, is the fulfillment of all our shattered realms, and He has come to give us that beauty and delight, here and now.
If we put aside our 'religious' industry, He will grant us a joy the world never achieves.
As we approach Easter, it's worth more than we can imagine to look at Jesus afresh, and see the astonishing life God has given to us exclusively in Him.
When was the last time you said or did something that was immensely satisfying?
Something which made you feel that all was well with the world, because you had been able to help feed into an issue in such a way that people had been helped and you had been instrumental in moving things forward, at least a little, to clarity or even a resolution?
That manner of inter-action, I think, is what is touched on in the verse above. Amidst the rightness of reveling in the inherent joys of this life, even when we are often weak or troubled, we engage with others in such a way that something "momentous" happens, not because it is seen to make vast changes to everything, but because it allows us and another, or a few others, to encounter the 'live current' of being part of something larger than ourselves because we are brought together, and that facilitates care, value and meaning that transcends the utilitarian and the mundane. It conveys the reality of loving another.
Christianity isn't about setting-up a set of 'must do' principles on the chalk-board of our inner resolve and then, with great determination, seeking to constantly push these into our will through gritted teeth, telling our wayward desires that we "must" succeed in funneling our entire output through these commandment-like laws. Religion is often very good, in respects to cosmetics, in establishing such schemes, but that leaves our genuine needs and callings untouched, as they are entirely detached by such cruelty - think of the character of Morpheus in the movie, Forbidden Planet; outwardly appearing so moral and concerned, but inwardly, a monster who's humanity had been incarcerated by his pride.
For things to truly be deep and meaningful for us, for them to resonate with the beauty that conveys the eternity of truth behind our days here, we have to know the God who is totally involved and engaged with us amidst all the joys and futility's of the present - that is key to our being able to really do good; to discovering genuine significance and satisfaction in our being good to each other, but the resource for such things comes from beyond us.
We have to dump our weak and beggarly attempts at 'doing' (resolution-like) for a life and a benevolence far above what we can ask or think, found in the good news of the giving of Jesus Christ.
Paul prays that we might really come to know for ourselves the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:19) - something far beyond mere mental assent to some principal of doing good. This is a love that fills us with the presence and life of God Himself, and it is that life, working through us, that facilitates genuine care and affection, genuine fellowship that brings a taste of what we are meant to be - those who live well.
When Christ is understood as the one who enables us to put away the childish yet deadly notion that we can achieve goodness in ourselves, we can look beyond the ruination of fallen human will to find a new hope, a new reality that can do what we naturally ruin.
Christ alone, revealed among us as God in human flesh, is the fulfillment of all our shattered realms, and He has come to give us that beauty and delight, here and now.
If we put aside our 'religious' industry, He will grant us a joy the world never achieves.
As we approach Easter, it's worth more than we can imagine to look at Jesus afresh, and see the astonishing life God has given to us exclusively in Him.
Theology laid bare
Following through from my posting last week, I came across two items in the past few days that really help to clarify some of the issues I was seeking to consider on the nature of redemption and the body. The first of these is a jolting review from the Mockingbird website, which really examines the way that our faith is entirely physical in respect to its consequences and future ramifications.
The second is a conversation from Christianity Today, looking at the way our faith has sought to represent and appropriately honor the physical beauty of the female form in theology and art, which may surprise you.
What both items help to unpack is exactly the nature of what Lewis understood in respects to where our faith is heading - towards full material redemption and a bodily life that will indeed be the fulfillment of all that was fleetingly encountered in Eden.
The second is a conversation from Christianity Today, looking at the way our faith has sought to represent and appropriately honor the physical beauty of the female form in theology and art, which may surprise you.
What both items help to unpack is exactly the nature of what Lewis understood in respects to where our faith is heading - towards full material redemption and a bodily life that will indeed be the fulfillment of all that was fleetingly encountered in Eden.
Saturday, 9 March 2019
The Naked Truth ?
"Yet in my flesh, I shall see God" Job 19:26
"Not in another flesh, but in my flesh shall I be resurrected. Some say the soul will be clothed in a new body, but then it would not be a resurrection. If the body did not rise again, the believer would not be completely happy - if the soul goes to eternity, but not the body, then we are never fully saved". Thomas Watson. A body of Divinity.
I have really enjoyed re-visiting this week 'An offering of Uncles' by Robert Farrar Capon (as you will see from my last entry, as well as this one). You can truly savour that this man was a gem in his practical gifts of cooking and writing; his thoughts zing and crackle across the pages of this reflection on what it means for us to be priests, and inspires you to think and act in ways that respond to the marvel and splendor of this fact.
His section on personhood (discovering who we are) is sublime, and he follows this by looking at how everyday activities well-nigh cry from the rooftops concerning how we see our value resonate in these callings. He goes from there to the means God provides us to facilitate all of this - the wonderfully adaptable but equally admirable dress of our bodies.
He starts well, noting how going gnostic about this key part of us is totally wrong - "God made it, loves it, put Himself in it, died, rose and ascended to redeem it, and reigns forever in it ... showing all that pertains to the perfection of man's nature".
After touching on how we can effectively desecrate God's gift (by seeking to loathe the body) and how we can, when seeking to truly appreciate our forms, validate such, he makes the comments that as we will be eternally garbed in 'white robes', nudity (in respects to nudism - social nakedness) would appear to be a "wrong turn".
A couple of initial observations to think on.
First, the 'robes' we ARE clothed in by God are the garments of salvation (Isaiah 61:10) - the righteousness made ours in Jesus Christ's giving up of Himself for us, hence our 'garments' are made pure and spotless by His precious blood (Revelation 7:14).
Secondly, one of the key passages on the nature of our adornment in the new creation is found in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, where the Apostle Paul informs us that just as we are currently dressed in the 'tent' of our present bodies, we will be eternally clothed in the 'mansion' of those bodies once they are glorified (that is, as he shows in 1 Corinthians 15, have put on immortality).
Nudity, as part of everyday social life, was actually enjoyed principally without issue in the early church. If you wanted to get clean in Roman times, then the baths were the best place, and although some of these had divisions for men and women, some also were places of mixed bathing. Archeology has shown that Christians used these places for baptisms and early writings show that baptism itself was often performed naked.
This 'down to earth' approach to life and theology speaks deeply to us. Whilst critical of contemporary attempts to ill-fit equality through practices like modern naturism (the philosophy was faulty from the start), C S Lewis understands what is entangled in such ambitions.
In his work, The Weight of Glory, he speaks of how we all know this deep longing (see Romans 8:19) to not just encounter or appreciate beauty, but to be united to it in a manner that is whole and complete. Later in the same work, he states that this longing is wholly true of our bodies, alive amidst our garments, which long to be naked in the fashion once tasted in Eden. That true estate lies ahead.
The splendor of what is being promised here is often lost behind the splintering of approaches towards the spiritual that wish us to divorce the physical and the eternal, but the Incarnation and the ramifications of this for God and His children are total.
God has married our full redemption to Himself in the offering of all that is found in Him through the life and body of Jesus, that we might indeed become a people who in turn offer all that is good in worship through our bodily existence. Death temporarily severs the body and soul, but eternal life is seeing these united in living well so that creation truly conveys the majesty and beauty intended when all was 'very good' on that glorious day in the garden.
The coming pinnacle of the new creation may be a city, but it is a garden city, with a river flowing from the tree of life where the throne of the Lamb resides (Revelation 22:1). This will crown a renewed realm where all that was good in the beginning is evidenced once more (Romans 8:20-24). This was expressed in early Christian art and the rejoicing in such beauty depicted in the Renascence. It should equally inform our faith, life and actions today.
"Consider the lilies", said Jesus, for such natural glory is truly a gift from God. It is and always will be part of our significance as well.
"Not in another flesh, but in my flesh shall I be resurrected. Some say the soul will be clothed in a new body, but then it would not be a resurrection. If the body did not rise again, the believer would not be completely happy - if the soul goes to eternity, but not the body, then we are never fully saved". Thomas Watson. A body of Divinity.
I have really enjoyed re-visiting this week 'An offering of Uncles' by Robert Farrar Capon (as you will see from my last entry, as well as this one). You can truly savour that this man was a gem in his practical gifts of cooking and writing; his thoughts zing and crackle across the pages of this reflection on what it means for us to be priests, and inspires you to think and act in ways that respond to the marvel and splendor of this fact.
His section on personhood (discovering who we are) is sublime, and he follows this by looking at how everyday activities well-nigh cry from the rooftops concerning how we see our value resonate in these callings. He goes from there to the means God provides us to facilitate all of this - the wonderfully adaptable but equally admirable dress of our bodies.
He starts well, noting how going gnostic about this key part of us is totally wrong - "God made it, loves it, put Himself in it, died, rose and ascended to redeem it, and reigns forever in it ... showing all that pertains to the perfection of man's nature".
After touching on how we can effectively desecrate God's gift (by seeking to loathe the body) and how we can, when seeking to truly appreciate our forms, validate such, he makes the comments that as we will be eternally garbed in 'white robes', nudity (in respects to nudism - social nakedness) would appear to be a "wrong turn".
A couple of initial observations to think on.
First, the 'robes' we ARE clothed in by God are the garments of salvation (Isaiah 61:10) - the righteousness made ours in Jesus Christ's giving up of Himself for us, hence our 'garments' are made pure and spotless by His precious blood (Revelation 7:14).
Secondly, one of the key passages on the nature of our adornment in the new creation is found in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, where the Apostle Paul informs us that just as we are currently dressed in the 'tent' of our present bodies, we will be eternally clothed in the 'mansion' of those bodies once they are glorified (that is, as he shows in 1 Corinthians 15, have put on immortality).
Nudity, as part of everyday social life, was actually enjoyed principally without issue in the early church. If you wanted to get clean in Roman times, then the baths were the best place, and although some of these had divisions for men and women, some also were places of mixed bathing. Archeology has shown that Christians used these places for baptisms and early writings show that baptism itself was often performed naked.
This 'down to earth' approach to life and theology speaks deeply to us. Whilst critical of contemporary attempts to ill-fit equality through practices like modern naturism (the philosophy was faulty from the start), C S Lewis understands what is entangled in such ambitions.
In his work, The Weight of Glory, he speaks of how we all know this deep longing (see Romans 8:19) to not just encounter or appreciate beauty, but to be united to it in a manner that is whole and complete. Later in the same work, he states that this longing is wholly true of our bodies, alive amidst our garments, which long to be naked in the fashion once tasted in Eden. That true estate lies ahead.
The splendor of what is being promised here is often lost behind the splintering of approaches towards the spiritual that wish us to divorce the physical and the eternal, but the Incarnation and the ramifications of this for God and His children are total.
God has married our full redemption to Himself in the offering of all that is found in Him through the life and body of Jesus, that we might indeed become a people who in turn offer all that is good in worship through our bodily existence. Death temporarily severs the body and soul, but eternal life is seeing these united in living well so that creation truly conveys the majesty and beauty intended when all was 'very good' on that glorious day in the garden.
The coming pinnacle of the new creation may be a city, but it is a garden city, with a river flowing from the tree of life where the throne of the Lamb resides (Revelation 22:1). This will crown a renewed realm where all that was good in the beginning is evidenced once more (Romans 8:20-24). This was expressed in early Christian art and the rejoicing in such beauty depicted in the Renascence. It should equally inform our faith, life and actions today.
"Consider the lilies", said Jesus, for such natural glory is truly a gift from God. It is and always will be part of our significance as well.
Sunday, 3 March 2019
Ending Place-less-ness
"Could be right before your very eyes
Just beyond a door that's open wide
Could be far away or in your own backyard
There are those who say, you can look too hard
For your place in the world" Mary Chapin Carpenter
"He has placed eternity in our hearts" Solomon
Ever find yourself thinking that time should be more than just something you're rushing against, that a location shouldn't just be generic 'space', or that life itself is surely meant to be anchored in more than just existing in the brevity of the current moment?
Why, when so much of what's considered 'usual' is comprised of the above, would we even want to think outside of the box - not only think, but want... need what's beyond that?
We all know what it's like to really inhabit a time and a place in a way in which time no longer becomes defined by what we see on a clock face or schedule, but by the value, the weight, of what we experience in a realm which could last for seconds, minutes or hours. We know what happens when we are in a place which holds a value to us we cannot really put into words, and we are enriched when we recall those moments, in such times and places, where something truly meaningful and defining happened to us.
Priesthood in the Bible starts with a pretty dull definition - it's likened to the base of a structure, but it isn't long before Adam (the first person given responsibilities) discovers there's a breadth to what pivots on his viably interacting with the garden he's been placed in, and the role deepens rapidly as that engagement unfolds.
I often think that Eden would have become somewhat akin to Dr Ana Stelline's (Blade Runner 2049) world of unceasing possibility if we'd reveled in the splendor of what was ours and not headed into the cul de sac of violent servitude to severed existence.
Occasionally, we still stop and smell the honeysuckle, and, oh, how it reaches in as we're transported to somewhere we know we should be instead of the dirt and diaspora of our broken lives.
Christianity is about genuine priesthood. It tells us that Eden isn't over - that the paradise sold for a sour lie is not so far away when God comes for us again.
It means that those moments when the seasons facilitate our souls warming to the beauty that whispers of the eternal set our feet back to the true intent of God - life, abundant and unceasing.
Religion gives us copious regimens of rules and abstractions about the divine. Priesthood puts us right back beneath the tree of life and desires us to eat to our heart's content.
It heals us by making the pathetic blind thing we are into persons, tall and erect, once more, endowed with a dignity that makes all of life shameless and naked before the one who walks with us in joy.
Heaven isn't some weird harp academy where we wish we were elsewhere. It's the renewal of all that is so good about life without all the sharp deaths of selfishness cruelty and evil malevolence. It's an earth where we can breathe easy, because the servitude of 'must' will be replaced with the pleasure of 'can'.
Next time you have a 'moment', when heaven seems closer, consider what it says about you, and what life can be, when we're freed to be His Priests again.
Just beyond a door that's open wide
Could be far away or in your own backyard
There are those who say, you can look too hard
For your place in the world" Mary Chapin Carpenter
"He has placed eternity in our hearts" Solomon
Ever find yourself thinking that time should be more than just something you're rushing against, that a location shouldn't just be generic 'space', or that life itself is surely meant to be anchored in more than just existing in the brevity of the current moment?
Why, when so much of what's considered 'usual' is comprised of the above, would we even want to think outside of the box - not only think, but want... need what's beyond that?
We all know what it's like to really inhabit a time and a place in a way in which time no longer becomes defined by what we see on a clock face or schedule, but by the value, the weight, of what we experience in a realm which could last for seconds, minutes or hours. We know what happens when we are in a place which holds a value to us we cannot really put into words, and we are enriched when we recall those moments, in such times and places, where something truly meaningful and defining happened to us.
Priesthood in the Bible starts with a pretty dull definition - it's likened to the base of a structure, but it isn't long before Adam (the first person given responsibilities) discovers there's a breadth to what pivots on his viably interacting with the garden he's been placed in, and the role deepens rapidly as that engagement unfolds.
I often think that Eden would have become somewhat akin to Dr Ana Stelline's (Blade Runner 2049) world of unceasing possibility if we'd reveled in the splendor of what was ours and not headed into the cul de sac of violent servitude to severed existence.
Occasionally, we still stop and smell the honeysuckle, and, oh, how it reaches in as we're transported to somewhere we know we should be instead of the dirt and diaspora of our broken lives.
Christianity is about genuine priesthood. It tells us that Eden isn't over - that the paradise sold for a sour lie is not so far away when God comes for us again.
It means that those moments when the seasons facilitate our souls warming to the beauty that whispers of the eternal set our feet back to the true intent of God - life, abundant and unceasing.
Religion gives us copious regimens of rules and abstractions about the divine. Priesthood puts us right back beneath the tree of life and desires us to eat to our heart's content.
It heals us by making the pathetic blind thing we are into persons, tall and erect, once more, endowed with a dignity that makes all of life shameless and naked before the one who walks with us in joy.
Heaven isn't some weird harp academy where we wish we were elsewhere. It's the renewal of all that is so good about life without all the sharp deaths of selfishness cruelty and evil malevolence. It's an earth where we can breathe easy, because the servitude of 'must' will be replaced with the pleasure of 'can'.
Next time you have a 'moment', when heaven seems closer, consider what it says about you, and what life can be, when we're freed to be His Priests again.
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