Behold! The Man!

            You think you know the stories of the Gospels like the back of your hand, and then they reach out and slap your face.  This hit me this afternoon:

            First, some backstory.  I love the way N. T. Wright understands John’s Gospel.  Wright sees John expertly weaving several themes together.  So, the attentive reader will see that John is more consciously concerned with Passover than the other Gospels.  He is concerned with the Temple and the presence of God.  And He is concerned with new creation. 

            Wright and others think that those last two are closely intertwined.  The argument goes something like this:  in Genesis 1-2, God created the heavens and the earth as a sort of Temple for Himself, a dwelling where He could live in the midst of His beloved creation, humans.  Ever since the arrangement was torn asunder by the incident in Eden (Genesis 3), God has been working towards the ultimate renewal of the arrangement.  (Cf. Revelation 21-22, with God’s declarations that the dwelling of God is now with men.)

            So, Wright says, look at what John is doing:  John 1 begins with obvious echoes of Genesis 1 with its, “In the beginning.” And John 1 anticipates the dwelling of God with man in the Word made flesh (John 1:14).  There is a progression of six major events (the first two of which are labeled ‘signs’):  the wedding at Cana, the healing of an official’s son, a healing at the pool of Bethesda, feeding of 5,000, healing of a man born blind, and raising of Lazarus.  Then, John makes a pretty broad point that Jesus died on a Friday, or, in Jewish reckoning, the sixth day.

            Sixth day, culmination of creation, creation of Adam and Eve, death of Jesus—and here’s my brain blast for the day—Pilate stands up and declares of Jesus, “Behold! The man!”  But the Greek might be better rendered, “Behold!  The human!”  In Jesus, battered, torn, condemned, and dying, behold! Humanity!  That’s our death sentence He’s standing under there.  But, behold! The Human!” Here’s the one who by taking the whole race’s death sentence into Himself is renewing the race and re-opening a garden for humanity.  (Notice that John’s the one who tells us Jesus’ tomb was in a garden and that Mary mistook the risen Jesus for a gardener.)

            “Behold! The man!”  John loves irony.  He loves to show us God’s enemies being turned into stooges advancing God’s goals.  John tells us about Caiaphas announcing that it was better for one man to die for the nation than the whole nation dying.  (Snicker.) Do you think he lived to regret saying that when the first Christians began preaching in Jerusalem?  And John tells us about Pilate’s “Behold! The man!”  Here’s the curse and the hope of the race in one.  Here is the pinnacle of God’s creation being renewed and becoming the agents of God’s ongoing act of renewal until all things are brought under Christ’s feet.

            Maybe you saw all that before.  But it slapped me in the face at lunch today.

Expressing the Purpose of the Church

From my April article for the Chronicle, Divine Savior's monthly newsletter:

            A few weeks ago, I concluded a sermon series on the book of Ephesians, and we are still working through it in adult Bible study.  If you’ll recall, I had said that one of the reasons for studying Ephesians was to think deeply about what the church is for.

            St. Paul’s answer to that question goes something like this: the church is part of God’s eternal designs for humanity and for His whole creation.  She exists now as a sort of down payment on and demonstration of God’s plans and purposes for the whole world, namely, that He desires all humans to live together in one renewed family.  This family is not marked by the old divisions of sin, but by humility, patience, and unity.  And this new family stands as a testimony against the fallen world and the cosmic powers that dominate that fallen world, as if the Father proudly pointed at the church and declared, “See, there!  You cosmic powers who were so jealous of the creatures I made in My image that you couldn’t wait to corrupt them, look at them now—recreated in the image of My Son, gloriously reflecting My glory into My world!”

            I find that a deeply compelling vision of the church and our life together.  In practical terms, it means that the way that we live and operate together, the gentleness that we show to each other in our dealings about all sorts of things from altar flowers to budgets to acts of loving service, the bond of peace and unity that we exhibit even when we have argued fiercely over strategies and directions—all those things contribute to truly understanding what it means to be the church.  They are as important as regular church attendance and a common confession of the faith.

            I think that churches too often pass over this aspect of their life too easily.  Most churches expect their members to show up on Sundays (worship).  Lutheran churches, for sure, understand that church membership means that we’ve agreed to speak about the faith the same way (common confession).  But I wonder how often we really express to our members that our life together as a family matters just as much as 1) a function of what distinguishes a church from a club and as 2) a testimony of God’s work for the world?

            Again, as a practical matter, business guru Peter Drucker always says that you ought to be able to fit your vision on tee shirt.  So, how do you say all of the above in a succinct way that says what exactly it means to be part of a church?  I’ve kicked this around a lot over the years and I’ve come up with these two vision statements for the church:

Exhibiting Christ to the Word

Inviting the World to Christ

Loving God,

Loving One Another,

Loving the World

I wonder if either of those resonate with you as a ‘slogan’ for Divine Savior?  If you have thoughts, especially about the two vision statements, post them in the comments section.  Perhaps we can have a small conversation about how to express what it means to be the church.

Permanence

I haven't posted for a while, and I'm not sure I've ever posted anything that wasn't a commentary Scripture.  (I started the blog to assist my last congregation in Bible reading, after all.)  However, this quote is on my mind.  It's from Wendell Berry's A Place on Earth.  If you haven't read Berry, you should.  I haven't read his non-fiction, but his fiction is a wonderful observation of the meaning of community and the human cost when community is lost.  Anyhow, this exchange happens between Mat Feltner and his daughter-in-law, Hannah, as he is describing a farming mistake that his son, Virgil, had made which resulted in a landslide.

"'Finally, I put my arm around him and I said, Be sorry but don't quit.  'What's asked of you now is to see what you've done and learn better.'  And I told him that a man's life is always dealing with permanence--that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary.  That, anyhow, is what I've tried to keep before myself.  What you do on earth, the earth makes permanent.'  He laughs, and looks at Hannah, 'Every time I make a mistake, that gets more painful to believe.'"

I've come to see the wisdom there.  I've certainly been guilty of not seeing the permanence in my actions.  Theologically, I tend to think on my feet.  I tend to talk until I've worked out an answer.  I notice this especially in Bible study, but sometimes I find it happening in sermons, too.  I say something for shock value, to elicit a gasp, to gain attention, and I forget that words once spoken can't be unspoken.  Said another way, I'm struggling to understand that nothing is purely academic.  A preacher talks about suffering as an academic, bloodless subject at his own peril because he is talking to a roomful of sufferers.  A preacher who discourses on the fate of the unbeliever better reckon with the reality that his hearers include a lot of folks who know a lot of folks about whose salvation they are less than certain.  Frankly, it's one of the reasons I don't talk much about politics:  what I take as obviously ill-advised, another may take as equally obviously wise--and a word once spoken is permanent.

Every word is spoken into a context.  Some contexts we can identify and address.  Some contexts surprise us when a landslide opens at our feet.  Everything is personal for someone.  I wish I were better at anticipating the many contexts in which my words will be heard than trying to clean up the landslide.

1 Chronicles 21

            The key thing that the Chronicler highlights here is the way that David chose and acquired the future site for the temple.  That’s part of a larger agenda that will play out over the next few chapters, an agenda to demonstrate that it could just as well be called David’s temple:  he might not have built it, but he was integral to its planning in all phases.
            I suspect, though, that the thing a modern reader will come away with is a question about responsibility.  After all, 2 Samuel 24 says that the Lord incited David to take the census and 1 Chronicles 21 says that Satan stood against Israel.  Which is it?  God or Satan?  Remember that Satan is less a name and more a job description; the word means ‘accuser.’  So, let me throw this out there:  the Satan/the accuser/the prosecutor stood before the Lord and accused Israel of wrongdoing.  Two things to note:  according to Job 1-2, this seems to be exactly what the Satan did.  Second, he probably wasn’t making things up; he probably had all sorts of evidence about worship at high places, etc. to present.  Under this construction, Satan stood against Israel (1 Chron. 21:1); his accusations angered the Lord, who suggested a test, namely, a census to see if David would trust Him.  David failed the test, but repented when he saw the tragedy being inflicted on his people.
            Now, I think that reconstruction is fair to the biblical evidence, but it’s not terribly helpful in sorting through whether God or Satan is responsible for inciting David.  Lutheran theology teaches that God does not tempt for evil but that He does offer tests for good.  Further, it’s a safe statement to say that Satan uses any such test from God as an opportunity to undermine faithfulness.  (That’s certainly what happens in Genesis 2-3:  the Lord sets a boundary that man may honor Him and Satan is right there challenging the boundary.)  Now the distinction between test and tempt is a fine theological distinction, but it’s a little hard to make in practice.  When you’re in the midst of trial, it’s hard to sort out, “Is God offering me a chance to do what is right, or is Satan tempting me to do what is wrong?”  The answer, unfortunately, seems to be, “Yes.”  Sin/Satan seizes the opportunities presented by God’s command to lead us astray (Romans 7:8).

1 Chronicles 18-20

            Chronicles sets out to demonstrate God’s faithfulness to David, and, in the bargain, the Chronicler highlights David as a paradigm of faithfulness, too.  Consequently, a lot of the less savory things David did are skipped over.  This is very clear in today’s reading.  2 Samuel 10 records the war with Ammon and Syria (1 Chronicles 19-20), and 2 Samuel 21 records the war with the Philistines (1 Chronicles 20).  But from 2 Samuel 11 to 2 Samuel 20 we have the stories of David’s adultery, and Tamar’s rape, and Absalom’s revolt—not David’s finest hours!

            This is as good a test case as you’ll find for the idea that the biblical writers wrote for particular purposes, purposes of which we should be aware.  So, neither the author of Samuel nor the Chronicler are interested in history—as we moderns consider history.  Modern history is concerned with neutrality.  (Although I’d argue that historians are not as objective as they like to think; I’m reading a book about American foreign policy in China in the early 20^th century, and while the author is trying hard to balance his approach, his biases do show.  He’s eager to show how, mistakes and all, American policy was fairer to the Chinese than European policy.  I can’t help but think that a Chinese historian would write a considerably different story.)  Anyhow, the writer of Samuel and Kings wants to show that the problems Israel faced were not about military or political issues but about faithfulness to the Lord.  The writer of Chronicles wants to highlight the special place that David occupies in God’s interaction with Israel.  We moderns might call that propaganda; the Bible calls it good story-telling.

            In practical terms, it’s a good lesson on the 8^th Commandment.  The Catechism’s explanation of that Commandment states that we keep it when we put the best construction on everything.  I wonder how willing we are to leave aside the more sordid elements of a story to highlight the positive ones?

1 Chronicles 1-4

            What an unfortunate choice!  To start blogging again in the week that my Today’s Light reading has me running through the first four chapters of 1 Chronicles.  Now if you read the reading, or if you just remember Chronicles, you know that Chronicles 1-9 is almost completely lists of names—genealogies, and very detailed genealogies, at that.  To add insult to injury, the genealogies are not even strictly chronological.  From 2:3-3:24 you have the line of Judah through the kings of the southern kingdom.  Then, without warning, in 4:1 you’re back in Judah’s day with the rest of his clans.  What gives?

            Well, hard as it is to read, it strikes me that there is method in this madness.  I read in an online edition this morning, and the layout wasn’t helpful.  But tonight I’m looking at an NIV print edition, and the editors have titled the text helpfully.  What they have made clear is the Chronicler’s desire to highlight God’s faithfulness to His promises, especially as those promises flow through David.  So, we go from Adam to Noah—that’s easy enough.  Then, the sons of Shem come in for extended treatment, culminating in Abraham.  The Chronicler dispenses with Abraham’s ‘other’ sons briefly, and then gets to Isaac and his boys, Esau and Jacob.  Again, Esau is taken care of first (all the way to Edom, because Edom is a ‘frenemy’ of Israel—ask your teenager what a frenemy is), but the real story is Jacob and his boys, especially Judah, through whom the promise continues to David and to the exile.

            The point of the whole thing, then, is to remind the reader that God has been at work on His promise to restore humanity for a long time.  Given that Chronicles is written in the period after the exile (cf. 2 Chronicles 36:22-23), this was a welcome word for the recipients.  Their temple was a shadow of its former self; their nation was a mere puppet under foreign governance; shoot, until the time of Nehemiah (around 430 B.C.), their city didn’t even have a wall.  Surely, they were thinking (sarcastically), “This is some fine blessing!  Sure we’re the people of God.  Absolutely.  Anyone could see it.”  The Chronicler reminds them that God’s been faithfully working on this story for a long time.  Even if the recipients don’t know what God’s up to, they should rest assured that He knows what He’s up to.

            Not a bad pay off for us either:  We may not know what God’s up to, but we know what He’s done in Jesus, and we know where the stories headed (the final restoration).  We can take comfort in God’s faithfulness to His promises and we can take hope in that, too.