Mud Season Bolton to Richmond. VT Historical Society
These are the ugly days.
Before the new season springs forth in delicate color and texture, the world looks like a frat house the day after.
The grass is patchy, brown and nubby, and with every step comes the possibility your sneaker treads will lose the battle with God’s good mud.
Whatever snow remains crouches in the shadows in gray-black crystallized fear of extinction.
The leaves that didn’t get raked up in the fall lie soaked and limp in piles like a bowl of day-old corn flakes abandoned in the kitchen sink.
The curbs try their best to corral the litter that skitters across the street. Plastic grocery bags shriveled up like withered balloons, cigarette butts and assorted bits of paper, plastic, and metal, smashed styrofoam cups and fast food wrappers along with receipts and torn paper bags shiver and tumble in the freshening breeze.
The yard is strewn with sticks, pine cones, sweet gum balls, unraked leaves and fugitive mulch, a few tools and toys that didn’t get picked up before the snow fell, and whatever litter jumped the curb and made a break for it.
It is good that the rain comes in spring. The world needs to be washed clean.
The other day I drove through MacDonald’s in the rain and fog and as the woman handed me my coffee, she said, “Have a great day. I know the weather’s kind of ugly but it’s better than snow, right?”
I laughed and said, “Sorry, I’m one of those guys who likes the snow better.”
“Not me!” she said with mock dismay before she wished me a good day again.
After the last snow, the world was gray but lovely. Clean. Frigid, but as harmonious as a well-made bed. God’s good earth was blanketed smooth, white, still, exquisite, pleasing.
I like those winter landscapes because they are so unlike my life, my mind, the inner me. My bed is all askew, covers and pillows tossed every which way, a downy debris pile of blankets and sheets. I am an unmade bed.
And I am the world in mud season, after the snow and before the blooms.
Litter blows in and through my life and mud cakes the treads of my sneakers.
I don’t see many signs of life yet, only a freshening wind that blows warmer, hopeful air.
In the middle of the night
We try and try with all our might
To light a little light down here
In the middle of the night
We dream of a million kites
Flying high above
The sadness and the fear
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
• Mark 8:34–36
• • •
Jesus’ words are stark and starchy. Let them deny themselves. The saying is loaded and dangerous and has often been misunderstood. In more pietistic and moralistic church traditions, it is often understood as saying “no” to something you really want a lot, of foregoing something you deeply enjoy—like giving up ice cream for Lent, or meat on Fridays, or movies on Sundays . . . perhaps not in themselves bad disciplines, but not the point of Jesus’ saying. The call to discipleship is not a program to make us feel bad or impoverished or uncomfortable. Or pressed more deeply, to deny self is taken too often to mean you should have some self-hate, feel bad about yourself, ponder your failure and your guilt, and reject your worth. But that is surely not what Jesus is talking about.
Rather, he is talking about coming to see that God—the generous creator who gives good gifts—is the center of your life and that the self-taken-alone does not have the resources or capacity to make a good life. To deny self means to recognize that I cannot be a self-starter, cannot be self-sufficient, cannot be self-made or self-securing, and that to try to do so will end in isolation and fear and greed and brutality and finally in violence. It will not work because we are not made that way. It will not work even if all the consumer ads tell us to have life for ourselves. You cannot have the life you want that way.
The alternative to self-focus is to move one’s attention away from self to know that our life is safely and well held by God, who loves us more than we love ourselves, to relish the generosity of God and so to be free of the anxieties and needs and hungers of those who are driven by a mistaken, inadequate sense of self. The self who is denied is the self who is received from God and given back to God in obedience and praise.
God at the center of our lives, our true life is found only in you. May we let go of all that is not life, all that is not you, that we may live in that freedom granted through the cross. Amen.
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’
• • •
The Lord be with you.
Martin Luther wrote: “He deserves to be called a theologian…who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.”
This is one of points Luther debated in a meeting of the Augustinian Order in 1518, the year after he had posted his 95 Theses. At the heart of his argument was that the Church in his day had been overtaken by what he called a “Theology of Glory,” whereas God has revealed himself and brought us salvation through what Luther called the “Theology of the Cross.”
When I was new to the Lutheran way, I met with a Lutheran pastor, and we discussed some of the unique contributions the tradition has to offer to contemporary American Christianity. The one he felt most important was the theology of the cross. He spoke eloquently about how much that passes for “faith” today is in reality little more than “positive thinking.” People are attracted to this upbeat message, but when things start going wrong, when the bottom drops out of their lives, suddenly they discover that clichés and platitudes are not enough to sustain them.
In contrast to that kind of teaching, which continually promotes a “victorious Christian life,” the theology of the cross proclaims that God reveals himself in the most unlikely disguises.
Martin Luther loved the Christmas story for this reason. In a most unexpected manner, God took on human flesh and was born in an obscure village to an unwed mother, laid in a manger among farm animals, and acknowledged only by rough and simple shepherds.
Then there was Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus did not live a “successful” life in worldly terms. Riches, power, luxury, wide influence — he knew none of these. He had nowhere to lay his head. He walked on dusty paths in forsaken regions of the empire, far from the halls of power. Even the religious leaders in the small land of Palestine dismissed Jesus as a small-time pretender from the sticks.
We also know how Jesus’ story ends. Betrayed by one of his closest followers, convicted through a mockery of a trial, tortured, abused, and publicly shamed by his captors, he was executed as a criminal on a Roman cross. And this is our God!
The cross is also the key for us — if we are going to live Jesus-shaped lives.
For example, the Apostle Paul testified, “[The Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.’”
Paul wrote these words to his friends in Corinth because they had fallen for a theology of glory. They had become attracted to an impressive religious show. Some leaders Paul called “super-apostles” had come to town peddling services and preaching that would knock your socks off. It featured impressive testimonies about their spiritual credentials, experiences, and victories. They promised a “power religion” that overcame weakness and trouble. They preached a faith for winners, with no room for losers. Paul, however, said to them that he determined only to boast in those things that revealed his weakness, because that’s how God had revealed himself in Jesus.
Many churches in the U.S. today follow similar “power religions.” They unabashedly call people to a “faith” that values big, impressive buildings and programs, whips up spiritual enthusiasm, spectacle, ecstatic experiences, promises people “abundance,” “victory,” “prosperity,” and “deliverance” from suffering. It despises weakness, struggles, doubts, and helplessness. But…
What happens when enthusiasm fades? When the spectacle that’s supposed to wow us is no longer exciting? When you “crash” and can’t find that spiritual “high” anymore? When prayers for deliverance aren’t answered? When poverty replaces abundance? When healing doesn’t come? When your marriage falls apart or your children go astray? When all the principles and methods you were counting on to bring success are ineffective? When your claim victory by “faith” but it doesn’t make a difference? Or when you just seem to live an ordinary life in which nothing spectacular ever happens?
Where is God in all of that? Is he in any of that? Yes, that is exactly where he is. This is the life in which God is present and active, for this is the God who hides himself. This is the God of the cross. Our God is the One who meets us in our sorrow, our pain, and our weakness. In fact, he is present and active in every experience of our ordinary, mundane lives. He hides himself in the midst of humanity. That is the meaning of the incarnation. He hides himself in suffering. That is the meaning of the cross.
And just as Jesus said yes to the cross as the way God had for him, so must we. Baptized into Christ, we reject the way of glory — the way of human power, wisdom, technique, control, and manipulation — and we embrace the way of the cross — the way of humility, trust, receptiveness, and the freedom to be human, weak, and vulnerable.
As today’s Gospel reminds us, the Lenten journey takes us on the way of the cross, not the way of glory. “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus said, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Amen.
Billy Graham died this past week. He was the face of evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century, distinguishing it as a defined movement between fundamentalism and mainline Protestantism.
Today, we devote our brunch to discussing this iconic figure and his legacy. Today, there is a new meaning to the word “post-evangelicalism,” for the old evangelicalism is now truly past.
I want to be remembered as a person who was faithful to God, faithful to my family, faithful to the Scriptures, and faithful to my calling … a man who dedicated his life to the Lord and never looked back.
• Billy Graham
•
“The Rev. Billy Graham was one of the most dominant Christian figures over the last 75 years. No more than one or two popes, perhaps one or two other people, came close to what he achieved.
“He was the key leader and the major spokesman of the evangelical movement during the last half of the 20th century. That movement has become one of the strongest in all of world Christianity and world religion, and he played the major role in that.
“He held evangelistic crusades in more than 80 countries; he preached in person to more than 80 million people and live through various media to hundreds of millions of others.
“He brought evangelical leaders from all over the world together, giving them a sense of being part of a great movement and showing them how to cooperate with each other to accomplish a great deal more.
“In huge international conferences, his organization taught tens of thousands of preachers from nearly every country in the world how to do the everyday nuts-and-bolts work of direct evangelism.
“He was a friend and counselor to virtually all the presidents since Dwight Eisenhower and a statesman not only for evangelical religion and Christianity but for the United States and democracy. In recognition, he received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow on a civilian.
“Billy Graham represented core American values in a singular way. Though he made some missteps, he remained free of scandal. He achieved his success by hard work rather than by inheritance or luck. He used the latest technology and media, but depended on the loyalty of a small group of friends who were with him for decades. He hobnobbed with the famous, the wealthy and the powerful around the world, yet seemed surprised that people were interested in him. He often seemed to have the kind of wonder of a small-town boy. He was both genuinely humble and genuinely ambitious and aware of the tension between those inclinations. He was not a perfect man, but he was an uncommonly good one.
“I don’t think any single person will be ‘the next Billy Graham.’ Evangelical Christianity has become so large and multifaceted that no one person can dominate it in the way that he did, regardless of talent or dedication. It’s just not going to happen. But ‘Billy Graham’ is not an office in the Christian church that has to be filled, like pope or bishop. Multitudes of people inspired by him will carry on the work of preaching the Christian gospel. And that’s what was most important to him.
“He will be remembered as a person of integrity and, if results are the measure, as the best who ever lived at what he did. He was, in the words of scripture, ‘a workman who needeth not to be ashamed.’”
• William Martin, senior fellow in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, author of “A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story” and the pre-eminent expert on the Rev. Billy Graham
ORGANIZATIONS GRAHAM PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE IN DEVELOPING
[Billy Graham] helped launch numerous influential organizations, including Youth for Christ (he was the first full-time staff member of this entrepreneurial and innovative organization), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and Christianity Today. The ripple effect of his shaping influence extends to such schools as Wheaton College in Illinois, Gordon-Conwell Divinity School in Massachusetts, Northwestern College in Minnesota, and Fuller Seminary in California. His encouragement and support helped develop the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Greater Europe Mission, TransWorld Radio, World Vision, World Relief, and the National Association of Evangelicals.
He brought the global Christian community together through international conventions: a 1966 Congress on World Evangelism in Berlin, the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, and three huge conferences in Amsterdam for itinerant evangelists in 1983, 1986, and 2000, which drew nearly 24,000 working evangelists from 200 countries.
Phillip Yancey — Billy Graham did not invent the word evangelical, but he managed to restore the word’s original meaning—”good news”—both for the skeptical world and for the beleaguered minority who looked to him for inspiration and leadership.
J.I. Packer — Up to 1940, it was every institution for itself. There wasn’t anything unitive about the situation. There were little outposts of resistance trying to keep their end up in face of the liberal juggernaut. Increasingly, from the 1950s onward, evangelicals came together behind Billy Graham and the things he stood for and was committed to.
Russell Moore — Billy Graham was, in my view, the most important evangelist since the Apostle Paul. He preached Christ, not himself, not politics, not prosperity. When many saw evangelicals as just so many Emer Gantrys, he carried unimpeachable personal integrity.
President George H.W. Bush — Billy Graham was America’s pastor … I think Billy touched the hearts of not only Christians, but people of all faiths, because he was such a good man.
President Jimmy Carter — He shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide. Broad-minded, forgiving and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve. He had an enormous influence on my own spiritual life, and I was pleased to count Reverend Graham among my advisers and friends.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of NY: As anyone growing up in the 1950s and 1960s can tell you, it was hard not to notice and be impressed by the Reverend Billy Graham. There was no question that the Dolans were a Catholic family, firm in our faith, but in our household there was always respect and admiration for Billy Graham and the work he was doing to bring people to God.
John M. Perkins — I remember Billy telling me he regretted not doing more to remove the ropes of racism. He repented and asked for my forgiveness. Even though he had done so much, Billy had humility and I admire him for this.
Randall Balmer — He became the friend and confidante of popes and presidents, queens and dictators, and yet, even in his 80s, he possesses the boyish charm and unprepossessing demeanor to communicate with the masses.
BILLY GRAHAM’S CRITICS
Lewis V. Baldwin on Graham’s less than full support in the battle against segregation — “He opposed racism and segregation in principle but refused to consistently attack it publicly and also refused to march with King and other ministers who protested against these social evils. This is where Graham missed the mark.”
Reinhold Niebuhr on Graham’s simplistic gospel message — “To proclaim that every human problem can be solved and every hunger satisfied and every potential can be fulfilled when a man encounters Jesus Christ and comes in vital relation to God in him is not very convincing to anyone — Christian or not — who is aware of the continual possibilities of good and evil in every advance of civilization, every discipline of culture, and every religious convention.”
Matthew Avery Sutton on Graham’s failure to face up to the issues facing the world because of his end of the world theology —“Graham had good intentions, as his work desegregating his crusades demonstrated. But when his influence really would have counted, when he could have effected real change, real social transformation, he was too locked into last-days fearmongering to recognize the potential of the state to do good. We are all paying the price.”
The fundamentalist critique of Graham is summarized by Mel White — “Fundamentalist Christian leaders accused Graham of: “breaking down the walls of biblical separation between sound and apostate churches,” and for “sending thousands of converts back into Roman Catholic and modernistic churches that preach heretical gospels,” and for “claiming that Pope John Paul II was a moral and spiritual leader and that when he died surely went to heaven,” and for “accepting an honorary degree from a Catholic university” and for “inviting Catholic bishops, Jewish Rabbis, and even Muslim clerics to sit with him on the platform of his citywide evangelistic campaigns.”
Cliff Barrows, Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea singing together in 1984
Note from CM: The death of Billy Graham, the face of U.S. evangelicalism in the 20th century, made me a bit nostalgic and reflective of my own journey through that world he helped create. Tomorrow, we will have a special Saturday Brunch dedicated to Graham and his legacy, but for today, walk with me through a review of the path I took, which often intersected with Graham’s evangelicalism.
• • •
I have spent my adult life primarily in Bible-believing, non-denominational church settings.
I experienced a spiritual awakening during the “Jesus Movement” of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
I went forward during an invitation in a Southern Baptist church. Got dunked.
Our youth group was serious about Bible study.
We attended Bill Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts” seminars.
I still remember listening to the first Maranatha “Praise” album. On vinyl. Simple and sweet.
I myself wrote testimonial songs about Jesus and sang them with my guitar.
I once sang in meetings for an evangelist who wore a white belt and shoes.
I wore a wooden cross around my neck.
I cut my hair so I could go to Bible college.
We studied dispensationalism there and read the Bible through that grid.
We suspected that Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College might be liberal — neo-evangelical we called them.
We certainly did not trust the amillennialists. They spiritualized the Scriptures!
No way would we approve of baptizing babies.
Or wearing robes in the pulpit.
Or using the RSV.
Or, heaven forbid! the Good News Bible!
Roman Catholicism? We quietly considered it a cult.
I never even heard of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Some of our professors thought Francis Schaeffer was off his rocker.
The “Church Fathers” to us were Lewis Sperry Chafer and C. I. Scofield.
Calvin and Luther were OK, as long as you stuck with, “The just shall live by faith.” They were awfully weak in their ecclesiology and eschatology, however.
Billy Graham allowed liberals on his platform. A definite no-no.
And we mocked when evangelists like him sang too many verses of “Just As I Am” until they got a response.
In fact, our pastoral studies department frowned on public invitations. Too much appeal to the emotions. Just teach the Word!
Charismatics were deluded. Maybe not even Christians.
Denominations were apostate.
Women preachers? What are you, crazy?
We were forbidden to listen to anything that might be interpreted as “rock” music.
I think we were “soft” fundamentalists though. A pastor once turned his back on me at the table when he found out where I went to school. He was from Bob Jones University. He considered our school, and therefore me by association, compromised.
All I wanted to do was teach the Bible.
I carried all this into my first church at the wise old age of 22.
Kyrie eleison!
I preached expository Bible messages.
We sang hymns and choruses. With organ, piano, sometimes guitar.
We baptized those who got saved.
I visited the shut-ins, led the youth group, held “sword drill” with the kids, separated myself from the sinners, performed a lot of funerals, tried to dry all that wetness behind my ears.
We had a baby.
I was ready for seminary. We moved back to Chicago.
In my heart, I was moving away from fundamentalism, but I had no conception of leaving the Bible-believing nondenominational way of life and church.
I found I couldn’t subscribe to dispensationalism anymore. At least not the pre-trib variety.
I liked rock music too much.
I was ready to think for myself a little bit.
We settled in an independent fundamentalist church anyway.
We thought Willow Creek was liberal, maybe even heretical.
And so it continued…
…it took a long time to break free.
I’m still breaking free.
Why? What’s so bad about this environment of faith? Why must I break free?
Certainly not because I no longer believe the Bible. I trust and value God’s Word more than at any other time in my life. It’s the Story in which I found life, the Story in which I live, the Story that continually brings Jesus to me.
Not because the people I’ve known in those circles were bad. They remain dear friends, and I love them, and we love Jesus together.
Not because I got hurt or disillusioned in some personal way.
Not because God didn’t work in and through us in those settings.
Rather, it is because I can no longer believe that God confines himself to those settings.
Because it all looks to me now like a little tunnel where people hide from a great big scary world. Where I hid too.
But now I see that that world is exactly where God is and has been all the time.
Because I now believe, even though I don’t remember it consciously, that God was there when my parents brought me to the font to be baptized as an infant.
And he was there when I looked with curiosity and fascination through the books we had at home about Jesus and the twelve disciples.
And when I was a young child and wanting to stay with my parents in “big church” to see the light streaming through stained glass, the colorful robed people processing down aisles and across balconies, the somber vision of the white-haired minister kneeling to pray before worship; the rhythm of his words when he preached. Singing, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen.”
My mom taught me to follow the words in the hymnal by tracing a path with her finger. I loved hearing her sing.
I remember times after youth choir practice, wandering around the dark hallways of the church building and coming upon a little chapel lit by an eternal flame. The smell of the old wood. The feeling of silence.
I remember the wonder. He was there.
I recall the pastor visiting my grandparents in their home, always friendly and kind.
Kneeling at the altar rail for communion.
Wishing I could be an acolyte carrying the flame.
Singing my first solo as a robed elementary choir member.
Joking with our choir director and having so much fun.
I remember, though vaguely, my confirmation class. The white-haired minister spoke to us in somber tones about how God met him and changed his life. I felt so serious as I bowed my head in prayer.
Standing outside at night after youth group as the snow fell upon the old stone church building.
He was there.
Somehow, one day that world ended.
It was dark for what seemed like forever. And then…
…a newborn fundamentalist came into the world.
In my born-again mindset, I have looked back on childhood as the time when I was lost and knew nothing of God. Is that right?
Now I wonder.
Don’t get me wrong. Whatever my “conversion” experience as a young adult actually involved spiritually, I know for sure that I needed God’s intervention to turn me around at that point. I was the prodigal son. Our version of Billy Graham, calling for decision and inviting us to come forward, hit me square in the heart and changed my life.
However, for years now, I’ve known that the narrow-minded path I started walking on at that moment is not enough, at least for me. It’s not a big enough God. It’s not a big enough life. It’s not a big enough vocation.
I hope I’m going forward now into something newer, bigger, more wonder-filled.
But in doing so, I find I’m looking back a lot.
Perhaps my desire for an “ancient-future” faith is a longing for nothing more ancient than the childhood where God first made himself known to me in ways that made a child dream.
Polkinghorne notes there are ten other books in the New Testament, but he is only going to highlight a few of them. The first is Acts. Its opening verses addresses someone called Theophilus. Since the name means “lover of God”, Polkinghorne notes the common theory that it is addressed to the figure of a typical enquirer, rather than the name of a specific person. Luke’s Gospel (1:3) is similarly addressed and almost all scholars agree that the two books are by the same author. Polkinghorne thinks it is significant that he felt the story had to be told in two parts. The first being the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the second the account of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the life of the early Church. There is much less scholarly agreement about when Acts was written with some favoring the early 60s and others the 80s. The book ends when Paul arrives in Rome, but give no account of his subsequent trial and execution. Therefore, Polkinghorne favors an early date. The dating is relevant to the question of the detailed historical reliability of the story Acts tells. There is considerable variety of scholarly opinion about that issue also (what a surprise).
Polkinghorne feels that the account of Pentecost has the ring of truth to it. When Peter addresses the crowd, he says, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (2:36). The way Peter puts it sounds like adoptionism, the theological idea that Jesus was made God’s son at his resurrection because he had been faithful even to the point of accepting death on the cross. However, it was very soon realized in the Christian community that this theory was inadequate, since surely God must have been at work in Jesus in a special way throughout his life, and not just opportunistically at the end. Hence there soon developed the stronger theory of the sending of the Son, that we find in Paul. This adoptionist tone in Acts 2 suggests to Polkinghorne that the chapter derives from a very early source, near to the events themselves. He says:
It is certainly the case that Luke shows an accurate knowledge of the first-century world, giving precise details of the titles of important people and of judicial procedures which can be confirmed from independent secular sources. Acts is very much rooted in the period it purports to be describing and it does not seem to me to have the air of a later imaginative writing.
The next New Testament book Polkinghorne talks about is the Epistle to the Hebrews. Its author is unknown although older English versions assigned the book to Paul. It seems certain, from considerations of style and theological stance, that this is not correct. He had an almost platonic concern with the contrast between the appearance of things, which for him included the Mosaic Law and Jewish worship, and ultimate reality, which is the heavenly status of Jesus.
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. Hebrews 9:11-12
The tabernacle or tent is the temple of the wilderness wandering. The writer always refers to the tent rather than the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus is said to be a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek (5:10, 6:20-7:3), a reference to Psalm 110:4 and set out in contrast to the Levitical priesthood that served the Temple.
The writer has a very high Christology, “Hebrews 1:2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Nevertheless, the writer is far from seeing Jesus just as a spiritual being who appeared to be human. A good deal of the first chapter refutes the notion that Jesus was an angel in disguise. His full humanity is asserted. We are told: “it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered” (2:10) and “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” (2:18). Hebrews 7:7-9 contains the only clear reference to Gethsemane outside of the Gospels.
Scholarly opinion is divided about the dating of Hebrews, although Polkinghorne believes that without any reference to the destruction of the Temple means it is prior to 70. I agree with Polkinghorne, it is unthinkable as much of the writing that is devoted to the tabernacle, he would have left out reference to such a major event.
The Epistle of James, quite possibly written by the brother of Jesus, is a very Jewish piece, concerned with issues of right conduct. The author declares, famously, that “faith without works is dead” (2:18-26), leading Martin Luther to call it “an epistle of straw”, continuing in that great tradition of ignoring Scripture passages that don’t comport to your particular theological hobby-horse. Of course, any good Southern Baptist knows that true faith must be manifested in deeds as well as words, or you didn’t say the magic words with enough sincerity you didn’t really get saved. Better walk the aisle again, you backslider, and get it right this time, because once saved, always saved!!! I know, I know why am I opening that C.O.W?
Polkinghorne says that 1 Peter is obviously an early letter but the sophisticated nature of the Greek style makes it unlikely to have been penned directly by Peter. Although I don’t know why an amanuensis wouldn’t account for the writing style while Peter just reminisced. Consider this quote from Justin Martyr:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. Justin Martyr: First Apology Chapter 67 (ca 150 AD)
The the memoirs of the apostles; gee, I wonder what those could have been, (cough) gospels (cough). Look, to me personally, and I acknowledge I’m not a scholar, the idea that the resurrection and divinity of Jesus were late legendary accretions does not pass the smell test. It is well known that Polycarp was a disciple of John the apostle, and that Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp; that’s a pretty short chain. So it seems likely to me that John passed on what he knew to Polycarp, who passed it to Irenaeus (whose writings we indisputably have). And what was passed on was what Jesus Himself had said, “Game of telephone” notwithstanding. In fact 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life”, even though the writing of that phrase down may well have occurred later, is just the type of thing that John would have said, and would be a phrase likely to have been passed down just like it was said from the disciple who laid his head on Jesus’ breast. And even though 2 Peter is almost universally recognized as one of the latest of all New Testament writing, 2 Peter 1:16, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty”, is a quote from Peter the eyewitness as passed down from those who knew him.
Finally, Polkinghorne mentions Revelation, noting that John of Patmos probably is not the author of the fourth gospel. He notes:
…noting its strange character of the alternation of passages of heavenly worship with passages of sadistic punishment. The latter have the crude and repetitive style that makes one think of an animated cartoon.
As Wikipedia says: Revelation was the last book accepted into the Christian biblical canon, and to the present day some “Nestorian” churches such as the Church of the East reject it. Eusebius, in his Church History (c. 330 AD) mentioned that the Apocalypse of John was accepted as a Canonical book and rejected at the same time:
… it is proper to sum up the writings of the New Testament which have been already mentioned… After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings [Homologoumena]. 4. Among the rejected [Kirsopp. Lake translation: “not genuine”] writings must be reckoned, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others class with the accepted books.
The Council of Laodicea (363) omits it as a canonical book. The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419), classified it as a canonical book. The Apostolic Canons, approved by the Eastern Orthodox Council in Trullo in 692, omit it.
Doubts resurfaced during the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther called it “neither apostolic nor prophetic” in the 1522 preface to his translation of the New Testament (he revised his position with a much more favorable assessment in 1530), and it was the only New Testament book on which John Calvin did not write a commentary. As of 2015 it remains the only New Testament work not read in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, though Catholic and Protestant liturgies include it.
As for me, I could care less. Back in the day, when I had just converted from atheism, and was an over-zealous evangelical, I bought into the whole Hal Lindsey thing. Now, I never read it, read anything about it or its interpretation, and my eyes glaze over when I encounter anyone who starts waxing eloquent about its meaning. The last time somebody was trying to tell me that Revelation just has to have some meaning for us today, I said fine, before I listen to your meaning for today you have to tell me what it meant to the people to whom it was first directed. The first rule of biblical exegesis is that you have to understand what the original author meant when he was writing to his original audience. If you can’t tell me that then fugedaboutit.
I have lately begun to suspect that maybe John was turning the whole apocalyptic genre on its head. The picture of the conquering warrior covered in the blood of his enemies was pervasive in his day (and maybe still is). Instead the conqueror is covered in blood BEFORE he goes into battle. Whose blood? His own maybe. And it’s a lamb that conquers. How does a lamb conquer anything, except by its own sacrifice? The sword that slays the nations is a two-edged sword coming out of Jesus’ mouth (Hebrews 4:12). Could that be the words of the gospel of reconciliation that slays the violence of this world’s systems? Well, YMMV, and like I said, I really just don’t care anymore. I’m a pan-millenialist—it’ll all pan out in God’s own time and way.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the hillside and sat down. His disciples came to him. He took a deep breath, and began his teaching:
“Blessings on the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours.
“Blessings on the mourners! You’re going to be comforted.
“Blessings on the meek! You’re going to inherit the earth.
“Blessings on people who hunger and thirst for God’s justice! You’re going to be satisfied.
“Blessings on the merciful! You’ll receive mercy yourselves.
“Blessings on the pure in heart! You will see God.
“Blessings on the peacemakers! You’ll be called God’s children.
“Blessings on people who are persecuted because of God’s way! The kingdom of heaven belongs to you. “Blessings on you, when people slander you and persecute you, and say all kinds of wicked things about you falsely because of me! Celebrate and rejoice: there’s a great reward for you in heaven. That’s how they persecuted the prophets who went before you.”
Today, I was praying for a woman in the hospital who was unresponsive and near death, who had lived an extremely difficult life, and whose family had suffered and dealt with a multitude of problems over the years. In these circumstances, I often turn to the Beatitudes to voice my prayers. I hope it will become clear as you read this short overview of this well known text why I pray it in these settings.
I’m convinced, and have written here several times about my conviction, that the Beatitudes have been profoundly misunderstood and foisted upon people by well-meaning preachers and teachers as virtues or character qualities to be developed.
I don’t buy it in the least.
The Beatitudes are Jesus’ announcements of grace. He has come to bless, and the recipients of his blessings will be the most unexpected people.
The first four Beatitudes are Jesus’ announcements that he has come to bless the needy, whom the world ignores or considers “losers.”
The second four Beatitudes are Jesus’ announcements that he has come to bless those who serve God and the needy, whom the world ignores or considers idealistic, ineffective “fools.”
Who are the needy?
Those who are spiritually bankrupt.
Those who are overwhelmed by sorrow.
Those who have little or no power.
Those who suffer injustice and long for it to be made right.
Who are those who serve God and the needy?
Those who show mercy.
Those who care about the condition of their own hearts.
Those who work to make peace.
Those who elicit opposition because they serve God and others.
The Beatitudes are Jesus’ announcement that he has come to fulfill what Mary sang about in the Magnificat.
He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.
The Beatitudes are parallel to the “mission statement” — a “Jubilee” proclamation — that Jesus made when he preached in Nazareth.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.
We have begun our way into the Lenten season. It may be a good time for a refresher on the relationship of this season to the Gospel story.
In our January 7, 2011 post, “Epiphany and the Days to Come,” we pointed out that the Epiphany season is representative of the first half of the story we read in the Synoptic Gospels. These are the days when Jesus reveals God’s glory. The Light of the world has dawned in our darkness.
The Child is recognized as the King whose star lit up the heavens.
The divine voice affirms his identity as he rises from the waters of baptism.
Jesus travels throughout the land and the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, the dead are raised, multitudes hear the Good News, disciples are called, trained, and sent forth, and Satan falls from heaven like lightning.
At the climax of this revelation, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ.
Then Jesus takes three disciples to the mountaintop and is transfigured before them in divine glory.
From that point on, Jesus’ teaching was dominated by predictions of his impending death and the disciples proved how “slow of heart” they were time and time again as their Master pulled back from the crowds and focused more specifically on the Twelve and the dynamics of discipleship.
This is the journey we travel in Lent, a journey to Jesus’ cross, and a journey of learning what it means to take up our cross and follow him.
From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. (Matt 16:21)
Let’s briefly survey part two of the Gospel of Mark to see this emphasis on the struggles of the disciples as they make this journey with Jesus.
After Peter confesses Christ and Jesus begins to teach about the cross, the Lord must rebuke Peter for his rejection of the message. Then Jesus teaches them about taking up the cross and following. (8:31-38)
After the Transfiguration, they descend the mountain, and the disciples are incapable of casting out an unclean spirit from an afflicted boy. (9:14-29)
Jesus again foretells his death, but the disciples fail to understand. (9:30-32)
Along the road, they argue with one another about who is the greatest. (9:33-37)
They try to stop another exorcist, casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but Jesus forbids them, and then teaches them about causing others to stumble and being at peace with one another. (9:38-49)
The disciples struggle to understand Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce. (10:1-12)
The disciples rebuke children when they try to come to Jesus. (10:13-16)
They find it hard to understand Jesus’ teaching about how hard it is for the rich to enter God’s kingdom. (10:17-31)
After a third Passion prediction, James and John ask for seats next to Jesus’ throne in glory. (10:35-43)
The disciples join the crowd in rebuking blind Bartimaeus for crying out to Jesus for mercy. (10:46-52)
That is the journey from Peter’s confession to the entrance to Jerusalem. The next story is that of the Triumphal Entry — Holy Week arrives. But the road that gets us there is marked by failure, misunderstanding, missing the point repeatedly, conflict and arguing; a general inability to grasp what Jesus is saying and doing. Every story emphasizes how the disciples fell short.
I call this “Jesus’ Discipleship Training Program.” It consists of two parts:
Teaching his followers things they do not understand.
Putting them in situations where they fail time and time again.
This is how Jesus turns us into disciples!
Remember, this is a journey to the cross. On our way we need to learn why we must go there. It is not because of our great wisdom and ability to be good disciples. It’s because of our weakness and sinfulness, our lack of faith and spiritual insight, our failure to love and be generous toward others, our discomfort with God and his ways. It is because we need forgiveness, cleansing, and renewal.
Lent is not so much about giving up something as a spiritual discipline, though there is a place for that. It’s more about giving up. It’s about learning to die. Daily.
The second part of the Gospel story is not pretty. Or easy. You can’t program discipleship like this and put it between the covers of a three-ring binder. It’s about stumbling and falling, ripping holes in the knees of my jeans and getting covered with mud. It’s a demanding hike along a difficult path.
As a hospice chaplain, my work revolves around supporting the dying and their families. I officiate many funerals. I deal with questions about death and what happens after people die. I am asked regularly about mysteries beyond our human experience in this life.
The final two chapters of part one, which gives an overview of various perspectives on what happens to human beings after death, explore how some have concluded that people die and become a part of Nature, taking their part in Nature’s eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
I am only a wavelet in the ocean. The wave comes and goes. The ocean remains; it is forever.
or
we’re the people who walk the fields soon we’ll be people under the fields and will all become field and oak yes, we’ll be proper country folk.
From proponents of certain Eastern religions, to pagan pantheists, to those who track the natural biological processes by which the atoms from which we are made separate from us and move on to new associations, to sentimentalists who “see” their deceased loved ones in the flowers, wind, and rain, there has always been a stream of thinking that has longed for dissolution of the individual into the oneness of the cosmos.
Every day I look deeply at everything around me; the trees, the hills, my friends. I see myself in them all and I know I shall not die. I will continue in many other forms. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
One of the poems I see regularly on funeral folders and hear recited at memorial services is this piece by Mary Elizabeth Frye:
Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
Whatever truth or comfort may be found in us taking our place in nature’s cycle, Lohfink will have none of this in the end. Not only Christianity, but even the processes of evolution teach us that the movement of life is not from the individual to dissolution, but from simpler to more complex, definitive individualism:
When I look at this whole mysticism of dissolution, which (supposedly) is happy that we can flow into trees, mountains, and meteors, I ask myself: Didn’t human biological and cultural evolution develop in precisely the opposite direction? — namely, to a more and more powerful awareness of the self, freedom from mere instincts and compulsions, emancipation from the dominance of the collective, becoming persons, a more and more intense understanding of the irreplaceable nature of every individual? (p. 45f)
And, as Gerhard Lohfink concludes this first section of the book, he argues that the desire for immortality rather than mere extinction or dissolution into the natural elements has always been a dominant human desire.
Easter Vigil 2014
The question of what comes after death was proposed with the fullest intensity millennia before Christianity; we need only think of Egypt. …And it has not been silenced even now. It emerges in the most varied forms over and over again, often hidden and in dubious guises. It belongs to the nature of humans, who reach for infinity in everything they do.
Therefore we may and must ask: What happens to us in death? What happens to our life, our “I,” our consciousness, the history of our life? Is it all over for us? Is death followed by profound night, eternal sleep, and absolute nothingness? Is our self extinguished forever? Or is it followed by the life Christians describe in that worn-out but irreplaceable phrase as “eternal bliss”?
But not only that: we may and must ask about the history of the world. What will become of the countless people who have been degraded, tortured, raped, murdered? Will the injustice, lies, manipulation, suffering of billions of innocent people never be uncovered, revealed? And in turn: Will the endless efforts to discover truth, to ease the sufferings of the downtrodden, to improve the conditions of society ultimately lead to nothing, because not only do individuals die but whole nations and cultures vanish, and inevitable destruction awaits everything in the end? Or will there be a revelation by God of everything that has ever happened throughout history, and with it the resurrection of all history into God — into the love of God that creates justice? (p. 55f)
…
Jesus’ words are stark and starchy. Let them deny themselves. The saying is loaded and dangerous and has often been misunderstood. In more pietistic and moralistic church traditions, it is often understood as saying “no” to something you really want a lot, of foregoing something you deeply enjoy—like giving up ice cream for Lent, or meat on Fridays, or movies on Sundays . . . perhaps not in themselves bad disciplines, but not the point of Jesus’ saying. The call to discipleship is not a program to make us feel bad or impoverished or uncomfortable. Or pressed more deeply, to deny self is taken too often to mean you should have some self-hate, feel bad about yourself, ponder your failure and your guilt, and reject your worth. But that is surely not what Jesus is talking about.
– by John Polkinghorne
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