Musings on 1 Peter (1:13-25)

13-16: With mercy as a backdrop, we move forward with gratitude. Having been given life, we must live it. Life looks different than death. Life takes action. Life works and acts. Not that works and acts are the basis for salvation. May it never be. But good works have been prepared beforehand that we might walk in them. We must work out our salvation, and we only work out what God is already working in. Therefore, Peter says, get up! Get ready! Set your Hope on Christ. Keep Jesus as your center. Rest fully in the grace that has been showered upon you. This requires sober thinking. We must concentrate, and understand it, chew on it and mentally digest it. For grace is a strange thing indeed to the unregenerate heart and mind. It doesn’t make sense. Even to the redeemed, grace has a way of undoing us. It is powerful, and strong. Therefore, be sober-minded, and set your hope fully on the grace that Christ offers. Grace is eternal. Grace has been extended to us from the beginning. Even the act of creation is an act of grace, an act of bestowing and giving. We have received grace upon grace. And yet we still are waiting for more grace at the appearance of Jesus. We have the grace of His second coming to look forward to. Then we shall know Him. Then we shall see Him face to face.

As we wait with eager expectation, we must be formed by the preaching of the word. Our lives are living testimonies of God’s grace. We bear witness of God’s grace with holy living. We are but children in the Lord, and as such are to be obedient to the desires of our Father. Much like earthly fathers know more than their children, and give them commands to follow in order to teach them to grow well, so our Heavenly Father has given us commands to obey, that we might grow straight and true. How can we who have been given a knowledge of the Lord, and have experienced His grace, return to acting as if we knew nothing of what we’ve been taught? How can we return to lives of ignorance? We can see now that it was not simple ignorance, but vile rebellion. How can we who have been shown such mercy, return to lives of disobedience? Is it not the core of ingratitude? Should we not say thank you in how we speak to one another? Should not our actions at work say thank you to a Father who provides? Should we not say thank you with the attitudes we harbor in our heart regarding life’s circumstances? Every breath we take is gift and mercy. Every moment of the day is a moment in which the Lord blesses us with grace and mercy. Should not every breath we take and every moment of the day be an opportunity for us to express our gratitude? In fact it is. We express either gratitude or ingratitude with every step we take. There are only two ways of doing/saying/thinking things. Either we do/speak/think by faith, or we do/say/think apart from faith, and anything not done in faith is sin. There is no middle road. Every thought/word/deed must be taken captive to the obedience of Christ; otherwise it is allowing ourselves to be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance. Our Father is Holy. He is Holiness. We are to be like Him. We were created to be like Him, made in His image. But in the garden we despised the gift. Therefore a new image was needed. The image of God had been defiled. So God made Himself in our image. In Christ we have the first fruits of redeemed mankind. And so now we are remade in the image of Jesus, the image of an obedient and faithful Son. Therefore let all our conduct be reflective of the new life we have been given; let it be a reflection of the image we have been recreated to bear. Let us be holy, as our Father in heaven is Holy. By the power of the Spirit, we can.

17-19: The Lord God Almighty sits enthroned in the capitol city of Heaven. He judges the nations of men. He rules with a rod of iron, brings justice to the poor, and is the strong right arm of the weak. We call on Him as a Father, as our Father, for so He is. He created us. He brought us into being out of nothing. He formed us in our mother’s womb. Therefore let us fear Him. Let us honor Him as God and give Him thanks. Let us not despise His word, nor trample underfoot the vineyard of His mercy. For we were nothing, and He gave us everything. We were a pile of bones, and He wrapped us with sinews and flesh. We were empty of life, and He breathed into us the fresh wind of the Spirit. We were sons of Adam, and He has purchased us with the priceless blood of His Son, so that we might be the adopted heirs of His riches. The spotless blood of the Lamb of God cleansed us of our iniquities, purchased for us freedom, and redeemed us from the futile ways of our forefathers. Therefore, again, let us fear our God with every fiber of our being. Let us honor and obey His word. How else do we say thank you?

20-21: Our God is eternally triune. Father, Son and Spirit. From before time existed, God has dwelt in community and in fellowship. This is why He is love. The monotheistic god cannot be love in himself, for there is no one outside himself to love. And true love is never self-love. True love always has both a subject and an object. True love always flows out. In the mystery that is the Trinity, our one God exists as three Persons, able to show love for one another. In the Trinity love is modeled for us. Love was shown in the manifestation of the eternal Son of God in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He took on flesh and dwelt among us to show perfect love, to show the greatest love. In Love He laid down His life for His friend, His bride, His Church. The Father showed love in honoring the sacrifice His Son had made; raising Him in new life, He defeated the enemy’s last stronghold. He gave the Son glory so that we might find our faith and our hope in Him. For no man can thwart the plans and intentions of God.

22-25: We have been made new. We have been washed with the purified water of the Spirit. We have dedicated our lives to obedience and faithfulness. Therefore let us love one another. With obedience comes love. Love for God and love for each other. We are family, united by a stronger blood than our own. Let us love one another with a pure heart as well. Peter knows the inclinations of our flesh. He knows we lean toward selfish desires, even as redeemed children of God. Our desire to love will be beset with temptations to demand love in return. But that is not our calling. We are to love with a pure heart, a heart that truly loves others for the sake of others, and not for anything we might receive in return. Peter calls us to love with purity because we have been born again. It does not fit the born again to love selfishly. The husband, newly married, cannot return to pursuing other women. It does not fit. It is off-key and out of tune. Furthermore, we have been reborn from imperishable seed. We were previously born of our mothers like the withering flower of the field; delicate and beautiful, but unable to last. We are now reborn of the living and abiding Word, who was with God in the beginning, and who was God. In Him we will abide forever. Unlike the flower of the field, the one who abides in the Lord will never fall, but will flourish for eternity. This Word is the good news that was preached to us. This is our Gospel hope.

Musings on 1 Peter (1:1-12)

Chapter One
1-2: Peter has written a letter. He has written a letter of encouragement to his brothers who can no longer live in their homeland. The people of God have been sent into the world. The end of an age is approaching; the end of temple worship is at hand. No longer will God’s people center around a particular place in geography. No longer will His children journey to a certain city on a map. They have been “dispersed” among the nations. And this, according to Peter, was accomplished by the foreknowledge of God the Father, so that they may be sanctified by the Spirit. The priestly people have been sprinkled with a blood better than bulls and goats, and therefore have been washed for worship. They have been prepared to kiss the Son, and obey His Word. They have been prepared to receive in abundance both grace and peace.

This is a good thing. This is a good place to be. This is a fertile field where the grace of God and the Peace of salvation can abound, and find increase. It is in the dispersion that we see God provide. It is in exile that we find our true home. For our home is no longer a place. It is no longer a destination. Our Home is a Person. Our Home is Christ. It is our purpose that we find here, surrounded by fields ready to be sown. Our theater for observing God’s abundance is on earth, but our Center is in Heaven. That is where we have citizenship. Therefore our calling is this: To go to all the nations with the grace and peace that has been bestowed upon us, and that is being multiplied within us. Being sent out of our ‘homeland’ we have been made priests, sanctified for ministry. We are to bring the nations before Him who dwells on the Mercy Seat. We hold healing and salvation in our hands, for we hold the blood that washes clean the covering that is cast over all peoples.

Still, life is difficult. We often find ourselves in spiritual, emotional or physical wastelands. Often we feel like exiles; sent away from the comforts and securities of home, be it our physical or emotional home. We have seasons of dryness; deserts, with oases few and far between. But this is where Peter encourages us. Though we find ourselves home-starved, and weary, we have been sent out by the foreknowledge of God our Father, for the sake of obedience to the Son, through the sanctification of the Spirit. This means our dispersion is purposeful. We are to remember that in Christ, we are never far from Home, because He is our Home. We are never truly exiled because the nations belong to Christ. We can never be completely undone because the circumstances we find ourselves in belong to the one who made us, remade us, and ordained us in the ministry of His life. Having been purposed for this world, we can understand our place in it. Struggles, trials, difficult circumstances are all avenues for the sanctifying work of the Spirit. They become the fire and the anvil and the hammer, as we are being shaped and honed. Being dispersed reminds us that the things of this world are not to be our primary focus. We have been foreknowingly sent into the world, exiled in strange and alien countries so that we may proclaim the glory of God. We do this with our lives, our actions, our words, our habits, our time, and our thoughts. As we find our home in Christ, our lives take on the shape of our home; as we focus on our center, our lives become centered on the Truth. This life is the life that is taken to the nations. This is the act of obedience that Peter speaks of. Not only are we sprinkled by the blood, being priests and living sacrifices, but we are to sprinkle the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, teaching them to obey all that we have been commanded. And behold, He is with us, even to the end of the age.

3-5: What joy we find in Christ. May our lives truly say, “Blessed be our God and Father.” It was His mercy that brought us life. It was His love that brought us hope. In the resurrection, and only in the resurrection, is found living hope, hope that does not die. Wishful thinking dies away. Hope, true hope, will never pass away, for it is grounded in the death of death, and therefore cannot die. Not only have we been raised to new life in this hope, we have been given an inheritance that cannot die either. Our inheritance sits at the right hand of the Father, and has already died once. The promise land of eternal life is freely given, and cannot pass away. Nor can we, for we are being guarded through faith, through the faithfulness of Christ, for a salvation that will come. Full and final salvation awaits, and is the answer to every question that arises in the desert. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming. It makes every season worth it. It makes every trial and every struggle seem bearable, nay, hopeful.

Peter’s encouragement begs us to have this hope now, in the middle of the trials, in the middle of the struggles. To have the perspective of heaven means to see everything that happens here and now as a preparation for that day. These are the months and weeks and days leading up to the Royal Wedding. All preparations are being made. The heads of state are being notified. Invitations are going out. The Bride is being fashioned and beautified. All of it points to the day that is coming. Not one day of preparation is without purpose or importance. The Bride, pressured and stressed, sees the joy that is coming, understands the trajectory of it all, and rests in the faithfulness of the groom to be there at the altar on that coming day. To see Him there makes it all worthwhile. That is our unfailing hope.

6-7: In this we rejoice. We find joy in hope. When hope is sure, there is no room for despair. Even though the externals of this world and its circumstances are painful, difficult, or seemingly impossible. We have all been grieved by various trials. We have all seen and felt and undergone painful and trying events. Whether it be a loved one dying, loss of income, estranged friendships, infertility, family tragedy or whatever; life is hard, life is real, and the hardship and pain is real too. But the trials really do have purpose. Its one thing to say that, and another thing to have that be the mold that forms our attitudes while in the midst of the trial. But Peter declares that these trials, these very real hardships are testing the genuineness of our faith. This is not for God’s benefit either by the way. God knows if our faith is genuine. God knows better than we do ourselves. If our faith is genuine, our faith can only be strengthened that we might see God strengthening it. This changes us. It does not prove anything to God. God is proving something to us. This can only result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter may be referring here to the final coming of Christ, when all shall be revealed. But I believe it is also true that when we are being tested, and the genuineness of our faith is being proved, Jesus Christ is being revealed…in us! And this is what we give praise to God for. What started as a lump of clay, is now being fashioned and formed by the Master Potter into glorious vessels of mercy. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in and through us. This is the purpose of trials: that Christ may be revealed in us, that Christ might be shown to the world through our lives. This tested faith takes on more value than gold, which perishes though tested with fire. It is more valuable because it will not perish. It will go on, into eternity.

8-9: We have not seen Jesus face to face. Not then, not now. But we love Him. We believe in Him. This can only be a work of the Spirit. How can an unregenerate heart love someone they have never known? How can an unregenerate soul believe in someone they have never seen? Our hearts truly have been made new. How else could even the idea of loving and believing in Jesus sound plausible? Truly we have been reborn through the Spirit. In this love and through our faith, which is pure gift, not something we have accomplished, but rather something we have obtained, through this faith we have seen salvation. We have tasted life. Salvation has been given to us. And because of the pure grace of it, the undiluted mercy shown to us by God our Father, we find ourselves unable to adequately express the joy that fills our hearts. It is inexpressible. Joy cannot be explained or diagramed. It can only be eaten, laughed, shared, cried, drunk. Words fail our finite tongues. Raising a glass begins to scratch the surface of what this joy means. It means glory. Our lives now take on the weight and the purpose of glory. Our Father glorifies the Son and the Son glorifies the Father, and the Spirit together is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. We now partake in that glory, for we partake of the Father, in Christ, through the Spirit. It is what we are saved to. This glory then fills our lives, transforming us from one level to the next, overflowing into our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and our markets. This salvation, this joy, this glory becomes the center that defines our lives. It becomes the mold that shapes our reactions to trials of varying degrees of difficulty. Salvation and glory and joy are the liquid that the sponge that is our life soaks in, so that when squeezed, the liquid of glory and joy comes rushing out. This is our gospel witness. This is true evangelism.

10-12: This story is not a new one. It has been foretold from the beginning. The seed of the woman would destroy the seed of the serpent. Throughout history we see the two lines warring and attacking one another, with the seed of the woman always coming out on top. The prophets saw this, and proclaimed the Word of the Lord, declaring the coming sufferings of Christ along with His subsequent glories. Here we are again. Glory is not an add-on. Glory is not like a sticker that you put on your window. Glory does not adorn anything. Glory is the product of trial. Christ suffered, tremendously. Because of His suffering He obtained glory. We who are in Christ, participated then, through faith, in the sufferings He underwent on the cross. We also live out the cross in our daily lives, bearing the pain and trials of living in a sin cursed world. But we also, through faith, obtained the glories of resurrected life with Christ as He ascended and took His throne above. We also, having taken up our cross daily, and having died daily to the temptations of our flesh, join in the glory of the resurrection now. It was revealed to the prophets that we were the reason Christ would come and suffer. Their writings were intended for our elder brothers the Jews, so that they may obtain hope. We, as true Israel, are served by the prophets therefore in being the recipients of the good news which was preached to us. This gospel was brought to us through the Holy Spirit who was sent from Heaven. This story of grace is so marvelous, so stupendous, so ridiculously beautiful that angels long to understand the theme. They long to see what it is God is doing. They are desperate to look into the book of grace that is being enacted daily in our lives. We have experienced something that no other creature, in heaven or on earth, can experience. That something is mercy.

Living the Sabbath

If anyone out there is interested in reading a 20 page response and commentary on Norman Wirzba's book, Living the Sabbath, there might be one found here.

Blessings

Bonhoeffer's words for Advent

We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand...And then, just when we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.

-Letter to fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, December 13, 1943

Pain and Suffering

(The following is an excerpt from a longer paper responding to the book Living the Sabbath, by Norman Wirzba.)

As Christians we are servants of a dying world, a world ravaged by the fall, ravaged by sin. A world that is full of injustice, pain, misery, suffering, and despair. Real life is hard. Real living is difficult. However, what we fail to see is that, though the pain is real, and not to be made light of, the despair is of our own making. The problem lies in how we understand the world: the presuppositions we carry concerning ourselves, our ‘natural and inalienable rights’ that we feel should naturally be a consequence of all the good we do in this world where there are so many worse sinners than us. Wirzba is quick to point this out, and reduce the problem to its core:

Especially in an era of individualism, we are readily tempted to reduce suffering to whatever impedes our freedom or brings us displeasure and discomfort. Think here of the common complaint that life does not go as we planned or expected. It is easy to interpret events as evil or to claim that the world we live in is rigged against our personal success. But is it really? The problem with this anthropocentric, even egocentric approach is that it assumes that the whole of reality should be geared to the satisfaction of our narrow wishes. This assumption is deeply at odds with the creation narrative that proclaims God’s [Sabbath rest] as creation’s ultimate goal, and with the experience of Job, who learns through his pain and suffering that the goods of this world are not tailored to his interests and that the scope of God’s concern extends far beyond humanity to include all of creation. Our best efforts to establish an accountant’s ledger of good and evil will often miss the mark. (79)

As Christians, we are servants of a dying world. Our purpose is to be a light, a city on a hill, leading the way for people who are fallen, broken and full of despair, bringing them to a place where pain and suffering are given meaning, and context. As Christians, we offer the only way of understanding pain and suffering that leads to hope and peace. It is simple. If there is no God, there is no final justice, where all that is evil and bad will be punished. More than that, if there is no God, there is no such thing as “evil and bad”. There is no fixed, absolute standard upon which to base any system of morality. Again, if the individual is king, and the independent mind is the final authority, you have simple chaos. If self and self’s desires are the standard upon which we build our moralities, our ethics, the basis for whether we do this or that where it regards others, then all is relative, and whether I shoot you in the head or bring you flowers doesn’t matter. They are potentially both equally valid actions consistent with the standards established by the reigning authorities: me, myself, and I. In this system, there is no hope for utter and final judgment, and all past atrocities simply become meaningless instances of the individual’s right to choose. If Darwin was right, why was Hitler wrong? In this system the death camps of 1940’s Poland become no better or worse than Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood. Both are equally valid expressions of the individual’s right to choose. And the freedom of the individual to choose as he or she desires, is, as we know, a “natural and inalienable right”. Pain and suffering therefore become meaningless adjectives, unable to hold any real significance.

There are, obviously, major problems with this way of thinking. First, it simply isn’t true. There is a God and He laughs at those who think and act otherwise. Second, it is inconsistent with how the natural mind works. Even pagans understand that what Hitler did was wrong. They understand pain to be painful, and suffering to be difficult. They are real experiences, the meaning of which transcends culture and language and time. This is so because all human beings bear the image of God, and in so doing know, deep down, the difference between good and evil. We know instinctually that shooting your neighbor deserves judgment and some form of justice. And so the disconnect becomes clearer. We want justice and desire punishment for the breaking of moral and civil law. We want the standards that make it possible to determine what is right and what is wrong. These are necessary for any civilization to endure and achieve peace. We want standards that apply across the board, and are a higher authority than our individual freedom to choose. We want the standards, but we don’t want the One who gives the standards, because He Himself is the Standard. So we are left with an inconsistent and dysfunctional society, heading inevitably toward dissolution. A house that is built on sand, no matter how stable it looks, and how close the builders copied the blueprints of the house built on rock, that house will fall. It may take longer for the siding to deteriorate because it borrowed materials from the other house, but it will, and must fall.

As Christians, we are servants to a dying world, a world whose foundation is sand; a society whose moral fiber is borrowed; a people who are blind to the ridiculousness of a Standardless-standard. But their blindness is self-inflicted. They suppress what they know to be true. A real problem arises, though, when the Church, who is not suppressing what she believes, acts in such a way as to offer no hope and no peace. We, as the Church, do this when we minimize the reality of pain and suffering. We know that our God is a God of love, and believe that He has created a world full of joy and delight, and trust that He desires our good in giving us Sabbath rest. But when we minimize pain and suffering, or define the offending events as random, meaningless acts, we betray a heart that does not trust God. We minimize pain by defining it as every instance in which we don’t get what we want. It is at these times that life becomes “hard”. Things are not going are way, and so we bring out our sheets of sanctimonious sackcloth. But this understanding of pain rests on the conviction that our needs, our desires, our wills and choices are the standard to which life must obediently play out. If this is our hermeneutic to interpreting life, then there is no room left for serving others. We need therefore to recover a biblical definition of pain.

The problem in the Church arises from our wanting to protect the holiness of God. There are two available options. Either God is a bystander, watching random and unfortunate acts occur, or He is sovereign, and the author of life, the difficult parts as well as the joyful ones. In the first instance, He is not really God at all, and so therefore if pain is the result of randomness, who cares. What does it matter, for there is no real god able to redeem or give meaning to the pain? But in the second, there is a Father who has created us for a reason. He has fashioned us and breathed life into us, so that we may glorify Him, and share His love with others. It is with this interpretive key that we unlock the meaning of pain and suffering in our lives. When we truly experience hardships, not the disappointments that come from our desires not being fulfilled, but from physical or emotional trials, we are being equipped for communal living. If the whole focus of life is outward, and not inward, every circumstance, and every experience is imbedded with an outward trajectory. The question should not be, “Why am I going through this?” Rather our inquiries should sound like, “What does this trial equip me to do as I live in fellowship with other people who will eventually face similar situations?” And more importantly, “How does this trial create in me and in my life an ability or opportunity to bring glory to the Author of all things, even this trial?” The real problem with pain is not that we experience it, but that we do nothing with it. In attributing it to blind forces of chance, we surround ourselves with purposelessness, and continue to feed the lie that what matters is our own comfort and security. As such pain and suffering become forces that need to be combated, like enemies. We must work hard to fend off the antagonistic attacks of hardships. But, as Wirzba notes:

Pain and suffering should not be cast as “problems” that need to be “explained” or “solved,” eliminated because they represent an affront to the world we would choose or make for ourselves. In fact, it is a mistake to look for a “solution,” since this becomes an excuse to avoid the communal disciplines of care and constancy that enable us together to bear, absorb, and grow through each other’s hurt. (79)

It is at this point that we see the connection between pain and suffering, and Sabbath rest. At first these two might seem to be at odds with one another. If all things in our life are meant to have an outward teleology, then certainly the Sabbath rest God has created for us must be seen in the same way. If Sabbath rest is Gods intention for all of creation, then our pain and our suffering play a part in achieving that end. This is true because the foundation for Sabbath Rest is the Cross of Jesus. Ultimate Pain and Ultimate Suffering was endured for the joy of Sabbath Rest. This act of the God-Man Jesus at once gave meaning to pain and gave purpose to suffering. In the cross of Jesus, and in the daily crosses we ourselves bear, we see Sabbath rest being brought to others. We see Him serving the dying world.

The dying world we inhabit is a system based on violence and death. A world in which the wills of every citizen compete for supremacy can have no other outcome. Wirzba comments,

Christ’s resurrection, as the revelation and overcoming of our death-wielding ways, makes possible a new kind of life, restoring creation to its original intent of participating in God’s own life of joy, peace, and [Sabbath rest]. The resurrection, in short helps us know what Creations is ultimately about as a forgiven and reconciled existence formed in grateful acceptance of gift upon gift. (83)

All of life is a gift from the hand of a Father who knows far more about ‘what is good for us’, and ‘what we really need’ than we ever could. As Christians, we are servants of a dying world. In picking up our cross daily, we are given the tools to appropriately understand the pain we experience, and are given the grace to come along side others and bear their burdens as well. Wirzba continues,

This humbling realization enables authentic thanksgiving and praise. It is also the basis upon which to build practices of forgiveness and reconciliation. Once we learn to appreciate our own lives and those around us as gifts from God, we do not need to enter into bitter struggle and inflict various forms of pain and suffering upon each other. The many relations that feed into our being and literally constitute it can now be embraced and celebrated as so many forms of manna from heaven. (83)

Our natural, unredeemed instinct is to find fault in others for our suffering. The Cross breaks this cycle by exposing the fact that true fault lies in ourselves. We are the fallen race of God-haters, worthy of the flood waters of judgment. But God in His grace has given Sabbath rest to us, His adopted children, through the sacrifice of Jesus. This means two things: first, “we have no right to expect a painless life, because Christ Himself did not” (83). “If the world hated me, they will also hate you.” Secondly, we have been lavished with rest, and when we least deserved it. In this we too have been given the ability, and the responsibility to give rest to others. This is done primarily when they need rest, or in other words, when they are suffering. Sabbath rest, again, does not mean escapism, or relaxation. It means a full awareness of who God is, what it is exactly that He has done for you, and a willingness “to be transformed by the suffering of God Himself, and then from the perspective of this transformation welcome the whole creation with humility, care, gratitude, and the overall aim of celebration” (88).

We must not minimize the reality or the depth of pain that suffering brings. We must understand its full weight. Therefore we must not see it outside the context of a God who Himself endured the full weight of suffering and loss, and in so doing gave rest, peace, wholeness, and joy to the very people whose suffering He bore. To minimize pain and suffering is to minimize the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is to remove completely the hope that we have; hope that was given to us so that we might bring it to a dying world.

Cosmology and Epistemology

I just came across a quote from Garret Green’s Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination which made me put down my book and pick up a metaphorical pen and paper. The quote is this:

From Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Stephen Hawking, the reigning scientific
models of the cosmos have provided the larger culture with powerful analogies
and metaphors that shape its epistemology, its poetry, its politics, and its
religion…many of the leading postmodernist ideas borrow much of the their
imagery, and not a little of their social prestige, from scientific notions of
relativity, uncertainty, and incommensurability.

The thought that struck me was this: How might our reading of Scripture be different were we not living in and under an Einsteinian cosmology? How quick are we to allegorize and metaphorize passages of Scripture simply because we 'know better'? We know that the heavens have no vocal chords, they have no personhood, so how can they declare the glory of God (Ps 19) in any way other than a metaphorical one? How can they “day to day pour forth speech”? We know that space is simply a vast and immense void spotted with spheres of flaming gas and frozen rock? Right? Since we know that to be the case, Ps 19 must be speaking in a less than realistic mode. Right?

Here is my contention. It is not to argue specifically for a certain reading of Ps 19. It is much broader than that. It is to argue for the reigning paradigm that will necessarily shape our “epistemology, [our] poetry, [our] politics, and [our] religion.” From what paradigm does our epistemology come? Who determines the basic, most foundational, even subconscious, mode of our understanding? What well do we draw from to make our every day determinations as to what is real, what is symbol, what is metaphor, and what is hard, cold fact? What paradigm determines even our vocabulary for such discussions to inhabit?

Was the medieval church wrong to think of the cosmos in terms of reigning personalities? Was the Psalmist wrong to think of the heavens, day to day, pouring forth speech, “their voice [going] out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world”? How do we understand the Psalmist? From what altar do we sit and judge?

More questions. Does Scripture ever speak in terms of facts? Did Paul ever speak in terms of discovery (as opposed to revelation – the distinction is important)? Did Abraham look up at the stars and see flaming balls of gas? Even if he knew that’s what they were made of (like we do), is that what he would have seen? Did David see a tree as simply a whole made of up of distinct parts (root, trunk, stem, branch, leaf)? Did John ever speak of 'inanimate objects'?

Is there room in our current cosmology for seriously thinking of the sun as a “bridegroom”, let alone as a “bridegroom leaving his chamber…running his course with joy”? Does our epistemology have a category for heavens which declare the glory of God with speech and words whose voice is heard? Does our understanding of planetary motion and heliocentricity leave room for concepts of planetary obedience, response and submission?

How would our worldview be different if we supposed these things to be true? How might we think of creation differently, were we to see the Creator/Creature dialogue occur even with ‘inanimate objects’? Do we really believe Jesus when He says even the stones would cry out in praise to their Maker?

The purpose of these questions is not so much to answer them, as it is to provoke thought. We necessarily sit on an altar and judge all that comes before our eyes. The question is what altar do we sit upon? An altar on which all is sacrificed to the Most High God, even our cosmology and epistemology? Or do we sit on an altar dedicated to the gods of science, realism, relativity, and cold, hard facts? We must sit somewhere. We must serve one or the Other.

Living the Sabbath

This is an excerpt from a paper I am writing in response to Norman Wirzba's book Living the Sabbath. It is an excellent book, and comes highly recommended. I will post a link to the paper once it is completed. Please leave me your thoughts. Thanks

From Sabbath to Sunday
"Put succinctly, in the person of Jesus the Sabbath aspirations that heretofore guided the Israelites now find a most visible and compelling expression. If we want to see, feel, hear, taste, and touch what God’s delight in creation concretely amounts to, we can do no better than to consider the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. As the early medieval pope Saint Gregory the Great put it: 'For us, the true Sabbath is the person of our Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ.'" (43)

Many believers do not even realize that sometime in the first century AD, Christians began meeting on Sunday, instead of on Saturday, which was the Jewish Sabbath. From Creation on, the people of God celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday, which was, and still is, the seventh day. It was on Saturday that God created rest. It was on Saturday that God commanded our elder brothers to cease from all work, and to keep it holy; to turn back their feet from doing their own pleasure, and to call the Sabbath a delight. But if this was the day on which rest was created, which for thousands of years bore the name of Sabbath, then why have we all grown up worshipping on Sunday? The answer to that question is fully and completely one Name: Jesus. Wirzba notes, “Just as the Sabbath represents the climax or fulfillment of creation, so too Jesus reveals what God’s intentions for life have been all along” (43).

To understand this we must remember on which day Christ made all things new. It was on the First Lord’s Day, on the morning after the Sabbath, that Mary and the others came to visit the tomb, and found it empty. It was on a Sunday that our Lord was raised from the dead. And we find in this act, the central hope that we have, that the dead can be made alive. Death now is conquered. There have been two events in history that bear the authority to change everything, to reorient all things to themselves. The first is the birth of Christ, which has changed even our calendars. We live in the year we do, because Jesus was born in a manger 2009 years ago. The second is this day of resurrection, this day of new birth. It too has changed our calendars. We now worship our God on this first day of the week, instead of the last day, as did our elder brothers, the Jews of the Old Covenant. They looked forward to their salvation, they anticipated it, much like they anticipate the Sabbath throughout the week. Their mindset was “Salvation is coming, our Rest is coming, our eternal Sabbath is coming.” This was pictured for them in the structure of their week. Saturday, being the last day, was always before them, in front of their schedules. They continually moved toward it. In the world Christ has transformed, we have the honor of looking back at our salvation. Our mindset is, “Salvation has come, our Rest has come, our eternal Sabbath has come in the Person of Jesus.” This is pictured for us in the structure of our week. Sunday, being the first day, the day of resurrection and new life, is always where we start, and move out from. Our days start here, and move out into the world. We start in Christ, and take Him to the nations throughout the rest of the week.

It would be foolish to say that Jesus abolished the Jewish Sabbath, just as it is foolish to say that He came to abolish the Law. Rather he came to fulfill both the Sabbath, and the Law. In both cases his fulfillment meant a transformation. Which makes sense, for in the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, the whole world was made new. Therefore the Sabbath has not been exiled to the realm of ancient historical practices. Much to the contrary, it has been re-born in the very person of Christ, and on His day of resurrection. Seen this way, it is inevitable that Sunday has become the new Sabbath. It is the day of rebirth, of new life, of the hope of our eternal rest. Paul tells the Colossians,

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." (Col 1:15-20)

The world has been recreated, and once again, it takes place in a garden (Jn 19:41). As God, in and through and for the Word, created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1, so again, God, in and through and for the Word, recreates the heavens and the earth in John 20. It is why John tells us in his vision, the one sitting on the throne declares “Behold, I am making all things new.” All things, whether on earth or in heaven, are being reconciled to God, making peace by the blood of his cross.

So here we are now. We live and move and have our being in the new creation. This does not mean that the world will not be finally and completely transformed at the end of days. It simply means that the transformation has already begun. Just as our own bodies being in the end fully and finally transformed into the incorruptible does not contradict the truth that we are undergoing transformation this side of glory, so it is with all creation. What are the means God uses to bring about this transformation of all creation? It is clearly the Church, the new Israel. As Peter says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10). We are a nation of priests, and what do priests do? They go proclaim, and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to obey all that they have been commanded. Why? Because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to our Lord Jesus Christ, and Lo, He is with us always, even to the end of the age.
This is why it is inevitable that our Sabbath be transformed and reborn into the day of rebirth and transformation. Every week we celebrate a “little Easter.” How is celebration marked if not by and through feasting? As Isaiah says,

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Is 25:6-9)

The central symbol of this feast is of course the Table that Christ Himself sets before us. It is at this Table, a Table we sit at every week, that we partake of the rich food of the body of Christ, and the well-aged wine of His blood. It is here that bread and wine become a feast of joy and resurrection, because “He has swallowed up on this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.” How does God accomplish this, if not through sending His Church to the nations, making disciples of them, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey Christ? It is to this purpose the Sabbath has been reborn. We come to worship, to start the week in Christ, in public, as a public proclamation that Christ indeed sits on His Throne. It is this reality that we take to the nations Monday through Saturday, proclaiming that the veil of death has indeed been cast off in the person and work of Christ. It is also how we must live locally, in the context of our local communities. If we do not live unto our neighbor as if death has been cast off, how will we ever be effective on the national scale? Living Christ to others starts where you are, and moves out. It starts in your own home with your own loved ones. Then it continues out to your neighbors, your community, your town, your city, your county, your state and so on. Salvation is not just a personal event. It happens in space and time, unto space and time. Our personal salvation recreates the world of our existence and reorients the time through which we pass. It gives us new purpose and new direction. It is not simply a blue ribbon that we attain, and pin onto our bulletin board of personal achievements. Wirzba again,
"[We] need to move beyond the highly individualistic notion of salvation that many of us assume – that Jesus is significant because of the salvation he makes possible for individual believers… The work of Christ extends to and links up with the whole of creation…Christ, in other words, does not take us out of creation to save us, but rather saves us precisely by enabling us to enter more fully and more harmoniously into it, and then to find in this deep immersion the reality of God." (45)
Wirzba continues,
"We do not live alone or as rugged individualists. We need each other and depend upon the sympathy and support we provide to each other. In a very real sense, the health of human living, its success and fulfillment, depends upon the health and wholeness of the many relations that bodily existence requires…All wholeness, in the end, is a reflection of a gracious God who cares for us all be showering us with the gifts of bodies, food, and community. To be healthy in any way whatsoever is, whether we appreciate it or not, to bear witness to God’s continuing involvement in the maintenance and wholeness of creation. If we are attentive, our whole lives should be long act of thanksgiving and praise." (46-47)

This long act of thanksgiving and praise is our Sabbath life. It is Sunday living itself out Monday through Saturday. To return to the Table, it is why it is called Communion. It is a public celebration done in Community. The table was never meant to be an individual experience, the same way salvation is never an isolated event. The Body of Christ is the new humanity. We are the new creation, recreated in the garden of the empty tomb. This is our hope and our rest. It is our eternal Sabbath.

"Sunday, far from being the obliteration of Sabbath teaching, represents a profound rearticulation of God’s overarching purpose and plan for creation. Sunday is our day of joy, for here we remember our memberships one with another and commit ourselves to the health and wholeness – the salvation – of physical and social bodies, of communities and creation, made possible by Christ’s resurrection power and redeeming love." (51)