Friday, 26 June 2020
Grace
This week's submission is a link to a recent piece on Mockingbird. It is simply, beautifully true, and nothing more need be said. Enjoy.
Friday, 19 June 2020
Undiscovered?
"It's about the future - some people can be very frightened of change". Captain James T Kirk.
"There's something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness". Elizabeth Bruenig.
There have been plenty of hours spent viewing over the last few months. One of the things that my brother and I have enjoyed doing during our Skype updates is watching some good Science Fiction together, and particularly the highly enjoyable re-visits to some quintessential moments in Star Trek - not the jingoistic, virtue box-ticking new dross, but the glory days when the show and movies were clearly heralding back to earlier great sagas.
Recently, we viewed what for me was one of the highlights of the classic voyages - Star Trek VI : The Undiscovered Country, which tells the tale of how two great powers manage to forge peace on the very brink of interstellar war.
Literally weeks from retirement, Captain Kirk and his crew find themselves thrust into the centre of a diplomatic endeavour to bring reconciliation with an environmentally wounded but militarily dangerous Klingon Empire.
Kirk finds himself in (and here's where it gets deeply theological) the Jonah seat (unwilling and morally unable), having to act as an Olive Branch to the very power responsible for the loss of his only son. What makes matters worse is he is placed in this position by his long-time friend, Spock, who presumes he knows how to bring about calm between the two factions in a reasonable, logical fashion (sadly neglecting, at least at first, some of the humanity he had found in some of the other movie adventures).
The consequences of prejudice on both sides are then played out as malevolent forces wanting only chaos pray upon these presumptions to their advantage. The Klingon Ambassador is assassinated presumably by the 'good' guys, requiring Kirk to surrender to save his ship from destruction, and then becoming trapped - literally imprisoned - by his own words at a show trial. Spock must cut the Enterprise off from Starfleet and use all his skills to discover what is really taking place and then rescue both Kirk and the forthcoming negotiations from a tragic end.
The story resolves in a highly satisfactory way (see below), but what I find (to use a Spock-ism) "fascinating" is how short-sightedness on both sides, even when coupled with honest intent, is used to almost bring disaster to the entire, highly precarious, moment.
The last few weeks have allowed us to witness shocking and unexpected events in respect to social issues - the injustice of the miss-use of power, bringing unwarranted death, but equally, the excessive desire to see suppression of certain aspects of culture and history in response to this.
I have watched and listened to people of remarkable passion and integrity on both sides, who have certainly deserved to be heard and who's concerns, for all our sakes, must be held dear if we are to see life remain tolerable, but as in the film, I have also seen many dark forces in play which are merely using these moments to "see the world burn".
The movie concludes with a last moment rescue by Kirk and company of the president from assassination, but the beauty of the event is what then follows - reconciliation between all parties.
If we are to see something truly valuable result from current events, then a tearing down, as history clearly shows, must be replaced by a raising up of something good and meaningful - a deeper peace. This is truly achieved for us all by Jesus Christ in His reconciling work, who brings all into one family through the blood and suffering - the redeeming work - of His cross.
A deep price has been paid to make each of us truly free, not merely from present inequality or discrimination, but from what disqualifies us from inheriting eternal peace with God and thereby with each other.
We need to look there, as others gone before us have done, to find a resolve in these needy times.
"There's something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness". Elizabeth Bruenig.
There have been plenty of hours spent viewing over the last few months. One of the things that my brother and I have enjoyed doing during our Skype updates is watching some good Science Fiction together, and particularly the highly enjoyable re-visits to some quintessential moments in Star Trek - not the jingoistic, virtue box-ticking new dross, but the glory days when the show and movies were clearly heralding back to earlier great sagas.
Recently, we viewed what for me was one of the highlights of the classic voyages - Star Trek VI : The Undiscovered Country, which tells the tale of how two great powers manage to forge peace on the very brink of interstellar war.
Literally weeks from retirement, Captain Kirk and his crew find themselves thrust into the centre of a diplomatic endeavour to bring reconciliation with an environmentally wounded but militarily dangerous Klingon Empire.
Kirk finds himself in (and here's where it gets deeply theological) the Jonah seat (unwilling and morally unable), having to act as an Olive Branch to the very power responsible for the loss of his only son. What makes matters worse is he is placed in this position by his long-time friend, Spock, who presumes he knows how to bring about calm between the two factions in a reasonable, logical fashion (sadly neglecting, at least at first, some of the humanity he had found in some of the other movie adventures).
The consequences of prejudice on both sides are then played out as malevolent forces wanting only chaos pray upon these presumptions to their advantage. The Klingon Ambassador is assassinated presumably by the 'good' guys, requiring Kirk to surrender to save his ship from destruction, and then becoming trapped - literally imprisoned - by his own words at a show trial. Spock must cut the Enterprise off from Starfleet and use all his skills to discover what is really taking place and then rescue both Kirk and the forthcoming negotiations from a tragic end.
The story resolves in a highly satisfactory way (see below), but what I find (to use a Spock-ism) "fascinating" is how short-sightedness on both sides, even when coupled with honest intent, is used to almost bring disaster to the entire, highly precarious, moment.
The last few weeks have allowed us to witness shocking and unexpected events in respect to social issues - the injustice of the miss-use of power, bringing unwarranted death, but equally, the excessive desire to see suppression of certain aspects of culture and history in response to this.
I have watched and listened to people of remarkable passion and integrity on both sides, who have certainly deserved to be heard and who's concerns, for all our sakes, must be held dear if we are to see life remain tolerable, but as in the film, I have also seen many dark forces in play which are merely using these moments to "see the world burn".
The movie concludes with a last moment rescue by Kirk and company of the president from assassination, but the beauty of the event is what then follows - reconciliation between all parties.
If we are to see something truly valuable result from current events, then a tearing down, as history clearly shows, must be replaced by a raising up of something good and meaningful - a deeper peace. This is truly achieved for us all by Jesus Christ in His reconciling work, who brings all into one family through the blood and suffering - the redeeming work - of His cross.
A deep price has been paid to make each of us truly free, not merely from present inequality or discrimination, but from what disqualifies us from inheriting eternal peace with God and thereby with each other.
We need to look there, as others gone before us have done, to find a resolve in these needy times.
Saturday, 13 June 2020
Angst
"Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing? " Psalm 2:1.
An interesting satirical piece appeared on my Facebook reading page yesterday morning.
Following through on the current call for disbanding Police forces, it suggested hippies employing John Lennon's 'Imagine' as a salve for the moment was an appropriate response to the current outcry for social justice. It jolted a memory of a couple of moments from the film version of Tom Sharpe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" where a spectrum of 'colourful' responses arise in regards to a particular indiscretion which impinges on political, social and racial tensions, that become a public affair.
The 'summer of love' scenario evoked by Lennon and co is nostalgically sourced as an acceptable 'small corner' to many, because of its seemingly cosy, mellow invitation to a place where peace descends because we can so readily depict somewhere without anything beyond the 'now'. That, to use 60s language, is what 'feels' right.
The problem, of course, is that we're not living amidst some ideal 60s love-in. What we are living through is far more akin to M Night Shalayman's vision in The Happening.
The film begins with a breaking-in of the inexplicable. We witness nature and society erupting in a fashion that quickly drowns and swallows the entire 'normal' of life. What we then witness is the way in which people respond to this because they cannot explain what they witness.
Our world has been split this past three months by unprecedented change, and as humanity begins to seek to 're-settle' itself in the wake of what has transpired, we find a world aflame with all manner of questions and issues that such a breaking has caused to pierce us with terrible imminence.
The shifting has got us, and it isn't stopping.
Perhaps the thing to ask is why.
Back in early March, the initial response I witnessed was panic. People were clearly afraid of what was coming, because they understood that life as they knew it was over. Uprooted, at least for the present, so many of them literally ran to grab what they could - especially from the shops. It is estimated that there were some 97 million extra visits to supermarkets in those few weeks in March and April in the UK alone.
We haven't escaped what those days released in respect to the rout, so we're now in the throes of another cycle of reaction - this one seeking anything human to grip onto that can become the centre of our attention because we cannot, we dare not, look into the face of the Gorgon that the pandemic has unleashed upon our ruined world.
We are furious at what's happened; at the confused at best and woefully inadequate at worst responses to what has set us in a place where things may appear the same, but where they are as frail as dust, and we are powerless to change them.
Now, as the anger rises, cutting in wherever it finds the slightest pretext for its 'sanctified' expression, we begin to see how deep the wound truly is.
The events of the last few days show us where such indignation can quickly travel.
What does this say?
We are a truly marred race.
Scratch us, and we not only bleed, but we exude venom that so often is only quelled when exhausted by the brutality of violence (vocal and physical) or the blunt excess of war.
The cause, so many would say, is we are not empowered to be what we should be. We must have what will make us so, whatever it takes for that to happen.
Anxiety. Anger. Avarice. Activism.
The Psalm tells us that we are awfully concluded in just such a cycle, and that this is the trap that defines the maelstrom of our existence distant from God. The intention has to be to
'break' what we deem is stifling - to exorcise what holds and haunts us in respect to the shadow of something greater than our own ambitions. We are highly industrious to rid our lives of the burden of such a higher requirement - to see an alternative that truly makes each of us not only of astonishing value, but truly free to live well.
What we learn from the 'marginalised', the maligned, the miss-placed, is that given a little power, we are all equally capable of a savagery that will furiously hammer not only anyone else, but pulverise the divine image within us into the ground - because the truth is too painful to bear.
We are children of an eternal Father, who has given us the beauty and majesty we are meant to bear in the person of His Son. We took such grace and pulped it into the bloody mess of horrific crucifixion. That is the human condition which marks and condemns us all.
In that man, we see the expression of what we need to understand and need to be - a people destined to be 'one' with each other and our world because we are one with Him who holds it, who intends for it to become whole, and who desires each of us to find our place in such a splendour.
The Happening concludes with the awful truth that what we see in the present is cyclic - naturally, there is no escape from the horror that pursues us here. Only by coming to and 'kissing' the Son, as the Psalmist tells us, centuries before the Son is born amongst us, can we find true resolve to these ever-present troubles.
An interesting satirical piece appeared on my Facebook reading page yesterday morning.
Following through on the current call for disbanding Police forces, it suggested hippies employing John Lennon's 'Imagine' as a salve for the moment was an appropriate response to the current outcry for social justice. It jolted a memory of a couple of moments from the film version of Tom Sharpe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" where a spectrum of 'colourful' responses arise in regards to a particular indiscretion which impinges on political, social and racial tensions, that become a public affair.
The 'summer of love' scenario evoked by Lennon and co is nostalgically sourced as an acceptable 'small corner' to many, because of its seemingly cosy, mellow invitation to a place where peace descends because we can so readily depict somewhere without anything beyond the 'now'. That, to use 60s language, is what 'feels' right.
The problem, of course, is that we're not living amidst some ideal 60s love-in. What we are living through is far more akin to M Night Shalayman's vision in The Happening.
The film begins with a breaking-in of the inexplicable. We witness nature and society erupting in a fashion that quickly drowns and swallows the entire 'normal' of life. What we then witness is the way in which people respond to this because they cannot explain what they witness.
Our world has been split this past three months by unprecedented change, and as humanity begins to seek to 're-settle' itself in the wake of what has transpired, we find a world aflame with all manner of questions and issues that such a breaking has caused to pierce us with terrible imminence.
The shifting has got us, and it isn't stopping.
Perhaps the thing to ask is why.
Back in early March, the initial response I witnessed was panic. People were clearly afraid of what was coming, because they understood that life as they knew it was over. Uprooted, at least for the present, so many of them literally ran to grab what they could - especially from the shops. It is estimated that there were some 97 million extra visits to supermarkets in those few weeks in March and April in the UK alone.
We haven't escaped what those days released in respect to the rout, so we're now in the throes of another cycle of reaction - this one seeking anything human to grip onto that can become the centre of our attention because we cannot, we dare not, look into the face of the Gorgon that the pandemic has unleashed upon our ruined world.
We are furious at what's happened; at the confused at best and woefully inadequate at worst responses to what has set us in a place where things may appear the same, but where they are as frail as dust, and we are powerless to change them.
Now, as the anger rises, cutting in wherever it finds the slightest pretext for its 'sanctified' expression, we begin to see how deep the wound truly is.
The events of the last few days show us where such indignation can quickly travel.
What does this say?
We are a truly marred race.
Scratch us, and we not only bleed, but we exude venom that so often is only quelled when exhausted by the brutality of violence (vocal and physical) or the blunt excess of war.
The cause, so many would say, is we are not empowered to be what we should be. We must have what will make us so, whatever it takes for that to happen.
Anxiety. Anger. Avarice. Activism.
The Psalm tells us that we are awfully concluded in just such a cycle, and that this is the trap that defines the maelstrom of our existence distant from God. The intention has to be to
'break' what we deem is stifling - to exorcise what holds and haunts us in respect to the shadow of something greater than our own ambitions. We are highly industrious to rid our lives of the burden of such a higher requirement - to see an alternative that truly makes each of us not only of astonishing value, but truly free to live well.
What we learn from the 'marginalised', the maligned, the miss-placed, is that given a little power, we are all equally capable of a savagery that will furiously hammer not only anyone else, but pulverise the divine image within us into the ground - because the truth is too painful to bear.
We are children of an eternal Father, who has given us the beauty and majesty we are meant to bear in the person of His Son. We took such grace and pulped it into the bloody mess of horrific crucifixion. That is the human condition which marks and condemns us all.
In that man, we see the expression of what we need to understand and need to be - a people destined to be 'one' with each other and our world because we are one with Him who holds it, who intends for it to become whole, and who desires each of us to find our place in such a splendour.
The Happening concludes with the awful truth that what we see in the present is cyclic - naturally, there is no escape from the horror that pursues us here. Only by coming to and 'kissing' the Son, as the Psalmist tells us, centuries before the Son is born amongst us, can we find true resolve to these ever-present troubles.
Saturday, 6 June 2020
Full Disclosure?
There's an amusing piece this week by David Zahl on the oh so easy mistake of getting things wrong when we think we know where things are going.
Recent events certainly leave us all wanting more certainty about what comes next, but if history tells us anything, it's never that straightforward.
At the heart of the city in which I live is a ruined church:
It's now a memorial to the devastation that happened through the bombing that took place in the last Great War.
Notice what stands behind it - another great cathedral, this one dedicated to the power of commerce in our times.
If I had stated 12 months ago that both buildings would be standing as empty as each other within the year, I doubt anyone would have taken me seriously, but that's exactly what has happened.
Can you imagine how crazy people would have viewed someone, when they were sinking the foundations of this shopping centre, who proclaimed that it would be closed by plague some 14 years after it opened?
People, no doubt, would have reacted in a similar way if someone had predicted 300 years earlier that the new place of worship was destined in just two days to be 'destroyed by fire reigning from the sky'.
And yet, here we are.
The edifice of what has happened should clearly warn us of what can and probably will unfold so easily around us.
So it is when we come to the foretelling of a book like Revelation. Notice how what God says to John begins in the very real events that were unfolding in his own day. The troubles that Jesus had told the disciples as they sat together on the Mount of Olives prior to His death and resurrection were unfolding as He said they would, and Jesus continues to speak to John on Patmos in that similar fashion, beginning with the troubles amidst the churches in Asia, and unfolding what 'must occur shortly' from that basis.
It's easy to get lost in all the signs and symbols that are employed in the book as it proceeds, but there are several key themes that are easy to identify as 'general trends' of what will mark the days that followed.
These include:
Power. The first 'horseman' would be conquest, and from the very days when John wrote amidst the hunger of Rome, our world has witnessed the rise of one imperial power after another, all seeking to subjugate millions beneath its sway. This, almost always, incurs the appearance of the second rider John sees - War. If there is one evil that truly marks the past twenty centuries of human 'triumph', it is the sheer carnage we have wrought upon each other by our continual invention of new and better ways to brutally kill. As one writer put it recently, we didn't split the atom to help each other, but to murder others more efficiently. The consequence of these two realities is seen in the third - Poverty. How many have been brutalised because of the greed and ambitions of others who have cruelly employed their power for evil? The conclusion to such days - Death. This, John is shown, will be the primary legacy of the days which were ahead, which would also include a continual persecution of the Christian church (John himself was already suffering because of this) and a destitution of the natural world, principally as a means of recompense for humanity's cruel actions.
It's easy to read this and to not pause and reflect on what this says about us - about our race. Think about the causes which exist in us to not only allow, but to commence such vile realities in our world. It tells us so much about the poverty and the misery of the human condition.
The book is then essentially a picture of the conflict that takes place between the expanding nature of the Kingdom of God and the ravaging yet inevitable termination of the powers of evil, which clearly become more savage and desperate as the end approaches, anger and anxiety becoming the hallmark of the age.
The book presents us with some remarkable images that define the 'key characters' of history:
The Woman (also called the Bride).
This is clearly those defined as God's redeemed people, 'brought out' (through) the travail of this age to become God's eternal joy.
The Child (also defined as the Victor/Bride groom).
Jesus Christ, who from the opening verse, is the key focus of what unfolds. He is the one in whom all history will find its true purpose and conclusion.
The Dragon.
The antagonist of the age - the Devil. The one who stirs powers against the most high and His anointed Son.
The Beasts (Land and Sea).
The world powers, which are clearly the final manifestations of those powers first predicted by the Prophet Daniel.
The Harlot.
The false 'church' or religion which seeks continually to raise itself up and above a true knowledge of God and persecutes and murders the true church.
Babylon.
The merchants of the world, who fund and support the false political and religious powers that are steered by the Dragon.
Since the first promise given to Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:15), human history has essentially revolved around this conflict, but in the last days (which commence, according to Peter, on the day of Pentecost as he preaches in Jerusalem), this conflict will truly reach its conclusion.
We can therefore no doubt expect an intensifying of what is both good and bad in the days ahead. Evil will abound, as it has so many times in this past century, but the kingdom of God will continue to grow until, at last, the whole world will witness His appearing.
Let's continue to encourage one another with the certainty of God what has done, is doing, and will bring to completion in the splendour and beauty of His wondrous Son, Jesus Christ, who is coming again soon. As with d-day in the last Great War, the cross and the empty tomb tell us that victory is already close by - we are merely seeing the death throws of a defeated foe. Let us stand fast in that certainty.
Recent events certainly leave us all wanting more certainty about what comes next, but if history tells us anything, it's never that straightforward.
At the heart of the city in which I live is a ruined church:
It's now a memorial to the devastation that happened through the bombing that took place in the last Great War.
Notice what stands behind it - another great cathedral, this one dedicated to the power of commerce in our times.
If I had stated 12 months ago that both buildings would be standing as empty as each other within the year, I doubt anyone would have taken me seriously, but that's exactly what has happened.
Can you imagine how crazy people would have viewed someone, when they were sinking the foundations of this shopping centre, who proclaimed that it would be closed by plague some 14 years after it opened?
People, no doubt, would have reacted in a similar way if someone had predicted 300 years earlier that the new place of worship was destined in just two days to be 'destroyed by fire reigning from the sky'.
And yet, here we are.
The edifice of what has happened should clearly warn us of what can and probably will unfold so easily around us.
So it is when we come to the foretelling of a book like Revelation. Notice how what God says to John begins in the very real events that were unfolding in his own day. The troubles that Jesus had told the disciples as they sat together on the Mount of Olives prior to His death and resurrection were unfolding as He said they would, and Jesus continues to speak to John on Patmos in that similar fashion, beginning with the troubles amidst the churches in Asia, and unfolding what 'must occur shortly' from that basis.
It's easy to get lost in all the signs and symbols that are employed in the book as it proceeds, but there are several key themes that are easy to identify as 'general trends' of what will mark the days that followed.
These include:
Power. The first 'horseman' would be conquest, and from the very days when John wrote amidst the hunger of Rome, our world has witnessed the rise of one imperial power after another, all seeking to subjugate millions beneath its sway. This, almost always, incurs the appearance of the second rider John sees - War. If there is one evil that truly marks the past twenty centuries of human 'triumph', it is the sheer carnage we have wrought upon each other by our continual invention of new and better ways to brutally kill. As one writer put it recently, we didn't split the atom to help each other, but to murder others more efficiently. The consequence of these two realities is seen in the third - Poverty. How many have been brutalised because of the greed and ambitions of others who have cruelly employed their power for evil? The conclusion to such days - Death. This, John is shown, will be the primary legacy of the days which were ahead, which would also include a continual persecution of the Christian church (John himself was already suffering because of this) and a destitution of the natural world, principally as a means of recompense for humanity's cruel actions.
It's easy to read this and to not pause and reflect on what this says about us - about our race. Think about the causes which exist in us to not only allow, but to commence such vile realities in our world. It tells us so much about the poverty and the misery of the human condition.
The book is then essentially a picture of the conflict that takes place between the expanding nature of the Kingdom of God and the ravaging yet inevitable termination of the powers of evil, which clearly become more savage and desperate as the end approaches, anger and anxiety becoming the hallmark of the age.
The book presents us with some remarkable images that define the 'key characters' of history:
The Woman (also called the Bride).
This is clearly those defined as God's redeemed people, 'brought out' (through) the travail of this age to become God's eternal joy.
The Child (also defined as the Victor/Bride groom).
Jesus Christ, who from the opening verse, is the key focus of what unfolds. He is the one in whom all history will find its true purpose and conclusion.
The Dragon.
The antagonist of the age - the Devil. The one who stirs powers against the most high and His anointed Son.
The Beasts (Land and Sea).
The world powers, which are clearly the final manifestations of those powers first predicted by the Prophet Daniel.
The Harlot.
The false 'church' or religion which seeks continually to raise itself up and above a true knowledge of God and persecutes and murders the true church.
Babylon.
The merchants of the world, who fund and support the false political and religious powers that are steered by the Dragon.
Since the first promise given to Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:15), human history has essentially revolved around this conflict, but in the last days (which commence, according to Peter, on the day of Pentecost as he preaches in Jerusalem), this conflict will truly reach its conclusion.
We can therefore no doubt expect an intensifying of what is both good and bad in the days ahead. Evil will abound, as it has so many times in this past century, but the kingdom of God will continue to grow until, at last, the whole world will witness His appearing.
Let's continue to encourage one another with the certainty of God what has done, is doing, and will bring to completion in the splendour and beauty of His wondrous Son, Jesus Christ, who is coming again soon. As with d-day in the last Great War, the cross and the empty tomb tell us that victory is already close by - we are merely seeing the death throws of a defeated foe. Let us stand fast in that certainty.
Friday, 29 May 2020
Arrival
There are very few things more enjoyable than when you've invested deeply into a book, a play, a film, or some other creative endeavour, and you reach that final act, and the conclusion is so much more than you anticipated, full of wonder and unexpected yet welcome resolution that leaves you feeling delighted and truly satisfied.
The same is true in theology. One of the reasons that Christianity's message is so rich is because it states that all of the work, the hardship, the suffering, from changing darkness into splendour, misery into joy, death into life, is worth it... because of the ending. The end of the story is garbed in a magnificence we can barely comprehend, so good theology is something which allows us to glimpse that splendour whilst we're still amidst the "not yet" days of getting there.
Back in the 2nd century, an early Christian writer named Irenaeus wrote a five-part refutation of a troubling bunch of "spiritual" interlopers known as the Valentians. They deemed themselves to be the 'progressive' believers of their day, because they taught that what really mattered was how the genuinely 'spiritual' transcended such quaint things like Jesus being a real man, or scripture giving real revelation. For them, it was all a matter of what was going on in their own heads coming first so they could 'evolve' to becoming higher beings, and anyone who said otherwise was to be pitied as a lesser mortal.
For four books, the Christian writer shows how they had got it all badly wrong because they were looking for and placing the spiritual in the wrong place. If history shows us anything, he states, it's that God is all about the here and now, and if you negate that, you are going to have no road map into what truly counts.
It's in the fifth and final book, however, that Irenaeus gets us to encounter the symphony in all its brilliance, so let me just touch on a few highlights of this masterpiece, the wisdom of which is beckoning us today.
"If this flesh is not saved, the Lord did not redeem us by His blood (Colossians 1:14), and we do not commune in that same body and blood at His table".
It's so refreshing when you have a writer that can encompass the magnitude of what's involved in the drama of heaven and earth by focusing our attention on the key place, the pivotal point or in this case the person at the centre of it all.
The writer, in effect, is telling us that the present is not about us attaining our best life now. What counts isn't a contorting of ourselves into a contrived spirituality that sees eternal existence as merely the shedding of the 'peripheral' to better express the 'spiritual' being I have already become (which, in our mind, already fully transcends the trite constraints of the material realm / associated doctrinal teachings, and any redemption of that).
We are only saved, body and soul, by the flesh - the life, death and resurrection, of another. We are made partakers of a nature that has passed through the deepest waters of severance and death and are sustained by that victorious nature in our own living and dying. That is the absolute necessity to deal with our alienation from God by our sin.
"Now", the writer states, "the fruit, the labour of God's Spirit is the salvation of all flesh". What it all comes to is that in the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God has brought about something that undoes our poverty and places us back on the road to paradise - a conclusion in a real realm of total completion in a real, material world.
As we are now nourished and sustained by the creation in a very necessary way, so the outpouring of the life of Jesus has amounted to a complete provision for us to live and thrive in the full renewal of that creation.
This is what Paul addresses in his statements on redemption is Romans chapter 8. It is as we unpack this that we begin to stagger beneath the full ramifications of what this will mean.
A final quote from Irenaeus - and this is a doozy:
"God required His firstborn to descend into His creation and be held by it, and in turn for creation to hold the Word and ascend to Him, thus surpassing the angels and coming into the image and likeness of God".
Let that get into your very bones!
It's easy in these days of such troubles for us to loose sight of what's being stated here, but this is phenomenally awesome.
The Creation is secured in the future it was intended (when it was made good in the beginning) because God has lowered Himself into the very midst of its broken state to raise it into Himself to secure its mature splendour forever.
That is astonishing.
It is exactly why Christianity counts.
Spirituality isn't about becoming 'higher' beings, loosing identity in some cosmic consciousness where what happens here amounts, effectively, to zero. It's about all of this becoming dressed with the full significance that creation was intended to carry from the moment it was begun.
There are all manner of approaches to spirituality today that will 'fit' with us - our lifestyle, our needs, our ambitions. Here we see the one truth which counts - creation was made to fulfil the profound intention of the community of the Godhead - to create a realm that would be sustained and thrive forever because of the radiance and splendour of the love they know.
We're currently living in the preparation stage of that work, but it is so encouraging to know that even now, we can witness and encounter a glimpse of the wonder that is coming, and that can sustain us in our present trials and frustrations.
Don't settle for anything that subtracts from God's great purposes for those He has pursued with love that is stronger than death.
The Lord Jesus has taken creation to the throne, and will make it eternally 'good' - a home we will always enjoy.
That's surely worth a thought or two today.
Friday, 22 May 2020
Home
"To them He presented Himself alive after His suffering with many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God". Acts 1:3.
I never really got the ascension.
Sure, the cross was key to deal with our sin, and the resurrection verified the veracity of what Jesus had done, but the idea of Jesus 'beaming up' to the clouds just seemed weird - what was that all about?
Recently, as Ascension week came around, I started to have one of those 'lightbulb' moments, so let me peg out a few thoughts for you.
It really all started with an address by Chad Bird touching on the significance of the verse above. Luke is continuing to present the veracity of the faith to the person he had addressed his first collection to, and he picks up with the fact that Jesus was genuinely alive after dying on the cross, making this abundantly clear to His friends not just by being amongst them, but by "speaking" about the kingdom. I won't repeat Chad's valuable insight into this (you can find it here), but that last statement is telling us that the level of exchange between Jesus and His disciples was deep (take a look at one of the conversations we're allowed to listen into in this period in John's gospel, chapter 21:1-22).
This tells us that following His conquering sin and death, Jesus' immediate concern was to prepare His followers for what was coming next - sharing that key truth with everyone else - and doing this in a fashion that really helped them to take in everything that had happened in the time they had spent together.
(A quick aside - I think there's a real lesson here for all ministers currently finding themselves in strange circumstances due to the present crisis (that's pretty well all of them). What's coming is going to be even stranger in respect to how we operate and what's required, so take this moment to ensure there's time and space to press in to Christ to supply some initial resources for what is ahead. The opening of Psalm 1 is particularly useful in that respect).
Back to Acts.
So, having spent time 'bedding in' the truth of what they had witnessed, Jesus then returns to His Father... by heading skyward.
What, is that, all about?
Well, here's a few thoughts to help, I hope:
1. He ascends to make a statement about heaven.
I suspect that miss-understanding that statement is where so many ' twee' or at least what we deem 'manageable' ideas about heaven being about fluffy clouds with harp-laden angels comes from (just take a look at all those enlightenment ceilings filled with bared bottom cherubs!). Heaven of course appears somewhat different to that in scripture (usually as an awe-striking, overwhelming throne room), so what is really going on here is to say that Heaven of that kind is way, way above where we are. That's important because whilst God is our maker and keeper, He (Father, Son and Spirit) are also far greater than we'll ever fully comprehend. Christ is showing that in this celestial departure.
2. He ascends to complete the journey.
The Scriptures make it clear that when it comes to God rescuing us from the mess we've made, it took a complete and total coming down on His part to do this. Christ had put aside His majesty in heaven and been born as one of us so that He could bring redemption through being truly human. That humbling went on right through His life and ministry, but there are occasions when something of His true majesty and authority are allowed to peek through (Matthew 17). This giving up of Himself reaches a point where it is made available for the world following the resurrection, so in the ascension, we see the opening moment of His exaltation - His acceptance back to the heavenly realm as the King of the eternal Kingdom (take a look at Psalm 24).
3. He ascends as one of us.
This is the really startling truth of this event. Jesus doesn't return to the throne room of eternity as a 'spirit' or just as He had been prior to His incarnation. He had stepped out of the tomb clothed in His body, His humanity, to underline what His life here really meant - that the handiwork of God, marred by human folly, had been restored to its true intention and place in God's purposes, and that was categorically underscored in the inseparable marrying of the eternal Godhood of the Son to His incarnate humanity.
This is, for example, Paul's key argument in his letter to the Colossians. After telling the believers there that in Christ God has housed all wisdom and knowledge (2:3), He states that in Christ all the fulness of the Godhead is evidenced - in other words, in the physical being of Jesus (2:8 and 9).
God is so gracious that when it comes to mediating His love and the essence of His very nature to us, He does so in the guise of the fully human presence of His beloved Son!
So, as the disciples stood there, seeing Jesus depart, they were, once again, witnessing something that probably didn't make immediate sense to them (they probably didn't want Him to go), but as they began to unpack this, and witnessed what unfolded in the days that followed, it all began to make sense.
This is all really great news, as I've been reminded this week, so next time, I may get around to unpacking a little more as to why it's sooo good.
In the meantime, have a look at and consider what Paul is seeking to unpack about Jesus in the second chapter of Colossians, because it's really good news.
I never really got the ascension.
Sure, the cross was key to deal with our sin, and the resurrection verified the veracity of what Jesus had done, but the idea of Jesus 'beaming up' to the clouds just seemed weird - what was that all about?
Recently, as Ascension week came around, I started to have one of those 'lightbulb' moments, so let me peg out a few thoughts for you.
It really all started with an address by Chad Bird touching on the significance of the verse above. Luke is continuing to present the veracity of the faith to the person he had addressed his first collection to, and he picks up with the fact that Jesus was genuinely alive after dying on the cross, making this abundantly clear to His friends not just by being amongst them, but by "speaking" about the kingdom. I won't repeat Chad's valuable insight into this (you can find it here), but that last statement is telling us that the level of exchange between Jesus and His disciples was deep (take a look at one of the conversations we're allowed to listen into in this period in John's gospel, chapter 21:1-22).
This tells us that following His conquering sin and death, Jesus' immediate concern was to prepare His followers for what was coming next - sharing that key truth with everyone else - and doing this in a fashion that really helped them to take in everything that had happened in the time they had spent together.
(A quick aside - I think there's a real lesson here for all ministers currently finding themselves in strange circumstances due to the present crisis (that's pretty well all of them). What's coming is going to be even stranger in respect to how we operate and what's required, so take this moment to ensure there's time and space to press in to Christ to supply some initial resources for what is ahead. The opening of Psalm 1 is particularly useful in that respect).
Back to Acts.
So, having spent time 'bedding in' the truth of what they had witnessed, Jesus then returns to His Father... by heading skyward.
What, is that, all about?
Well, here's a few thoughts to help, I hope:
1. He ascends to make a statement about heaven.
I suspect that miss-understanding that statement is where so many ' twee' or at least what we deem 'manageable' ideas about heaven being about fluffy clouds with harp-laden angels comes from (just take a look at all those enlightenment ceilings filled with bared bottom cherubs!). Heaven of course appears somewhat different to that in scripture (usually as an awe-striking, overwhelming throne room), so what is really going on here is to say that Heaven of that kind is way, way above where we are. That's important because whilst God is our maker and keeper, He (Father, Son and Spirit) are also far greater than we'll ever fully comprehend. Christ is showing that in this celestial departure.
2. He ascends to complete the journey.
The Scriptures make it clear that when it comes to God rescuing us from the mess we've made, it took a complete and total coming down on His part to do this. Christ had put aside His majesty in heaven and been born as one of us so that He could bring redemption through being truly human. That humbling went on right through His life and ministry, but there are occasions when something of His true majesty and authority are allowed to peek through (Matthew 17). This giving up of Himself reaches a point where it is made available for the world following the resurrection, so in the ascension, we see the opening moment of His exaltation - His acceptance back to the heavenly realm as the King of the eternal Kingdom (take a look at Psalm 24).
3. He ascends as one of us.
This is the really startling truth of this event. Jesus doesn't return to the throne room of eternity as a 'spirit' or just as He had been prior to His incarnation. He had stepped out of the tomb clothed in His body, His humanity, to underline what His life here really meant - that the handiwork of God, marred by human folly, had been restored to its true intention and place in God's purposes, and that was categorically underscored in the inseparable marrying of the eternal Godhood of the Son to His incarnate humanity.
This is, for example, Paul's key argument in his letter to the Colossians. After telling the believers there that in Christ God has housed all wisdom and knowledge (2:3), He states that in Christ all the fulness of the Godhead is evidenced - in other words, in the physical being of Jesus (2:8 and 9).
God is so gracious that when it comes to mediating His love and the essence of His very nature to us, He does so in the guise of the fully human presence of His beloved Son!
So, as the disciples stood there, seeing Jesus depart, they were, once again, witnessing something that probably didn't make immediate sense to them (they probably didn't want Him to go), but as they began to unpack this, and witnessed what unfolded in the days that followed, it all began to make sense.
This is all really great news, as I've been reminded this week, so next time, I may get around to unpacking a little more as to why it's sooo good.
In the meantime, have a look at and consider what Paul is seeking to unpack about Jesus in the second chapter of Colossians, because it's really good news.
Friday, 15 May 2020
Dislocation
This entry has a subtitle -
Christianity without Gospel is pure religion.
In some of the southern states of America, you can still find the occasional 'church' which takes the closing passage of Mark's gospel literally.
Playing with poison or swaying with snakes is seen as the done thing, even though every once and a while things go badly wrong and someone dies, because the scriptures are not meant to be 'tested' that way.
If a "serpent" tries to kill God's child before his work here is done, then that's one one foolish creature (see Acts 28), but woe betide us if we think it's good to outlive God's calling (see 2 Kings 20).
It's wise to keep such thoughts in mind at present when we consider the thorny issue of what's currently happening, or not, in respect to our being 'church'.
This week, I listened/watched two broadcasts from a popular reformed presenter across the pond.
On the first, he noted that however much we may be enthralled by the current usage of tech to see each other during this crisis, whatever we think we're doing when we 'commune' like that on line, we're not really "doing church".
The reasoning here was sound enough - church has to be about the material gathering of the saints, because the Bride or Body of Christ is that company of those made whole purely by the redemptive work of Christ.
Great.
So far.
The second presentation was asking whether communion (taking the Lord's supper) was 'do-able' at home, or whether the church really had to be physically together for this to count. After laying out the various views on what goes on at the table, clearly favouring the approach that it was something entirely 'spiritual' (in the Reformed sense), the presenter then began waffling on about how some 'special dispensation' in respect to taking the elements might have to be agreed upon because of our present circumstances.
I was speechless.
Did my ears deceive me?
Nope - 'leaders' and 'pastors' may indeed come to a consensus where communion is 'done' differently whilst we are locked away from each other.
I appreciate that Christians have a spectrum of views on communion, but can you explain to me how it's possible to hold both of these expressed views from the same show at the same time?
Now, let me spell out what worries me here, and for this (for reasons that will quickly become very clear), I'm immensely grateful to my friends over at Mockingbird this month.
Let me begin by quoting from Brad Gray. In a piece on Tolkien and preaching this week, He wrote:
"As a clergyman, I will admit that preaching can become almost second nature. It is the repeatable task you can count on week-in and week-out. There’s a routine to it. And there is great comfort in that, but also great danger, too. The processes necessary to crank out another homily can become so implanted into your brain’s muscle memory that if you’re not careful, you can preach without ever feeling or sensing the words that comprise your sermon. The danger of preaching arises when the preacher himself is unmoved by that about which he is preaching. Such is why Tolkien’s words are, for me, so affecting. The import of the sermon is unlikely to stir the churchgoers unless I, too, am deeply stirred by the significance and truth of the 'myth' about which I am sermonizing. “Our people must realize that we are bent on serious business,” Protestant minister John Henry Jowett affirms, “that there is a deep, keen quest in our preaching, a sleepless and a deathless quest.” As a preacher, I see myself more as a storyteller than anything else, and the one story with which I’ve been charged to proclaim is the story God himself wrote with his own blood".
Did you hear that?
Church is the place, notes Steve Brown in Hidden Agendas, where we are in such deep relationship with others that preaching, ministry and fellowship opens up the depths - "no sin is a surprise, no pain is suffered in private, and no fear is faced alone".
None of that is actually possible on zoom.
If we think it is, then the so-called TV evangelists of the last several decades, holding out every possible "blessing" in remote response to your faith (and your cash) clearly were right in their definition of 'church' all along and the rest of us are only now catching up.
What is possible is something that so easily slithers into the manner of 'reasonable spirituality' that we can 're-define' the word or sacraments so they are effectively detached from their true place, role and purpose, and that's where the second, deeper depth charge ignites.
Luke Roland noted in another article:
"The real danger to your Christian life is not sin but religion, which insists on muddling the message of the free gift of forgiveness. Religion seeks to put salvation in your hands and give you the false impression that works-righteousness can save you. Anything that draws you to works-righteousness and away from justification by grace alone through faith is big trouble. Remember what the Apostle Paul said: If anyone comes preaching another gospel to you then let them be accursed. Said another way, if anyone comes to you with anything other than the finished work of Christ, well, they can just go the hell on. Our message should be Christ and him crucified".
This is landing us on the right shore. I don't want the Preached word or Sacraments to be mine to steer or control, to 'define' and pragmatise by my criteria, because the door quickly swings wide open to something other than Christ and our fellowship in Him.
Luke continues:
"Religion demands your participation for survival, but there are no more requirements. Jesus has wiped out the requirements that were against us (Col. 2:14)! We have permission to stop doing! Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling! Jesus paid it all! You are now free.So then, what do you want to do now that you don’t have to do anything? To me, that is exactly what enjoying your forgiveness means. The freedom to do anything. When you don’t have to do anything, then you can enjoy the freeing gift of forgiveness, and the world opens up around you".
He notes that being free, belonging to Christ and His own, makes him aware of how religion is thriving everywhere amidst this crisis, and he hates that.
I couldn't agree more.
Religion is primarily that which severs us from the unmerited mercy of God in Christ and puts what is deemed and determined as 'right' into our own hands (Galatians 5:4).
Christianity is the declaration that we are welcome to come, freely, to Christ in the sacraments and the faith to share with others in the freedom and fellowship that brings (1 John 1:7-10, 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 17).
It is imperative that at this moment, we stand fast together in that freedom, and not an empty caricature devised by religious inclination and devilish dilution of what God alone provides.
To conclude, the 'enoughness' of religion is a very real plague that the Gospel requires we avoid at all costs, so why these days are indeed hard to bear, it must be "Christ, and Him Crucified" that sustains us in the trial - whatever waters are faced, and whatever needs we may have (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). It is when the saving work of the Gospel alone addresses all of us, gathered by word and sacrament, that our hunger and thirst and quelled, because there alone we share in His death and resurrection. That is the single 'agenda' that heals.
Christianity without Gospel is pure religion.
In some of the southern states of America, you can still find the occasional 'church' which takes the closing passage of Mark's gospel literally.
Playing with poison or swaying with snakes is seen as the done thing, even though every once and a while things go badly wrong and someone dies, because the scriptures are not meant to be 'tested' that way.
If a "serpent" tries to kill God's child before his work here is done, then that's one one foolish creature (see Acts 28), but woe betide us if we think it's good to outlive God's calling (see 2 Kings 20).
It's wise to keep such thoughts in mind at present when we consider the thorny issue of what's currently happening, or not, in respect to our being 'church'.
This week, I listened/watched two broadcasts from a popular reformed presenter across the pond.
On the first, he noted that however much we may be enthralled by the current usage of tech to see each other during this crisis, whatever we think we're doing when we 'commune' like that on line, we're not really "doing church".
The reasoning here was sound enough - church has to be about the material gathering of the saints, because the Bride or Body of Christ is that company of those made whole purely by the redemptive work of Christ.
Great.
So far.
The second presentation was asking whether communion (taking the Lord's supper) was 'do-able' at home, or whether the church really had to be physically together for this to count. After laying out the various views on what goes on at the table, clearly favouring the approach that it was something entirely 'spiritual' (in the Reformed sense), the presenter then began waffling on about how some 'special dispensation' in respect to taking the elements might have to be agreed upon because of our present circumstances.
I was speechless.
Did my ears deceive me?
Nope - 'leaders' and 'pastors' may indeed come to a consensus where communion is 'done' differently whilst we are locked away from each other.
I appreciate that Christians have a spectrum of views on communion, but can you explain to me how it's possible to hold both of these expressed views from the same show at the same time?
Now, let me spell out what worries me here, and for this (for reasons that will quickly become very clear), I'm immensely grateful to my friends over at Mockingbird this month.
Let me begin by quoting from Brad Gray. In a piece on Tolkien and preaching this week, He wrote:
"As a clergyman, I will admit that preaching can become almost second nature. It is the repeatable task you can count on week-in and week-out. There’s a routine to it. And there is great comfort in that, but also great danger, too. The processes necessary to crank out another homily can become so implanted into your brain’s muscle memory that if you’re not careful, you can preach without ever feeling or sensing the words that comprise your sermon. The danger of preaching arises when the preacher himself is unmoved by that about which he is preaching. Such is why Tolkien’s words are, for me, so affecting. The import of the sermon is unlikely to stir the churchgoers unless I, too, am deeply stirred by the significance and truth of the 'myth' about which I am sermonizing. “Our people must realize that we are bent on serious business,” Protestant minister John Henry Jowett affirms, “that there is a deep, keen quest in our preaching, a sleepless and a deathless quest.” As a preacher, I see myself more as a storyteller than anything else, and the one story with which I’ve been charged to proclaim is the story God himself wrote with his own blood".
Did you hear that?
Church is the place, notes Steve Brown in Hidden Agendas, where we are in such deep relationship with others that preaching, ministry and fellowship opens up the depths - "no sin is a surprise, no pain is suffered in private, and no fear is faced alone".
None of that is actually possible on zoom.
If we think it is, then the so-called TV evangelists of the last several decades, holding out every possible "blessing" in remote response to your faith (and your cash) clearly were right in their definition of 'church' all along and the rest of us are only now catching up.
What is possible is something that so easily slithers into the manner of 'reasonable spirituality' that we can 're-define' the word or sacraments so they are effectively detached from their true place, role and purpose, and that's where the second, deeper depth charge ignites.
Luke Roland noted in another article:
"The real danger to your Christian life is not sin but religion, which insists on muddling the message of the free gift of forgiveness. Religion seeks to put salvation in your hands and give you the false impression that works-righteousness can save you. Anything that draws you to works-righteousness and away from justification by grace alone through faith is big trouble. Remember what the Apostle Paul said: If anyone comes preaching another gospel to you then let them be accursed. Said another way, if anyone comes to you with anything other than the finished work of Christ, well, they can just go the hell on. Our message should be Christ and him crucified".
This is landing us on the right shore. I don't want the Preached word or Sacraments to be mine to steer or control, to 'define' and pragmatise by my criteria, because the door quickly swings wide open to something other than Christ and our fellowship in Him.
Luke continues:
"Religion demands your participation for survival, but there are no more requirements. Jesus has wiped out the requirements that were against us (Col. 2:14)! We have permission to stop doing! Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling! Jesus paid it all! You are now free.So then, what do you want to do now that you don’t have to do anything? To me, that is exactly what enjoying your forgiveness means. The freedom to do anything. When you don’t have to do anything, then you can enjoy the freeing gift of forgiveness, and the world opens up around you".
He notes that being free, belonging to Christ and His own, makes him aware of how religion is thriving everywhere amidst this crisis, and he hates that.
I couldn't agree more.
Religion is primarily that which severs us from the unmerited mercy of God in Christ and puts what is deemed and determined as 'right' into our own hands (Galatians 5:4).
Christianity is the declaration that we are welcome to come, freely, to Christ in the sacraments and the faith to share with others in the freedom and fellowship that brings (1 John 1:7-10, 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 17).
It is imperative that at this moment, we stand fast together in that freedom, and not an empty caricature devised by religious inclination and devilish dilution of what God alone provides.
To conclude, the 'enoughness' of religion is a very real plague that the Gospel requires we avoid at all costs, so why these days are indeed hard to bear, it must be "Christ, and Him Crucified" that sustains us in the trial - whatever waters are faced, and whatever needs we may have (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). It is when the saving work of the Gospel alone addresses all of us, gathered by word and sacrament, that our hunger and thirst and quelled, because there alone we share in His death and resurrection. That is the single 'agenda' that heals.
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