Christmas: I Wish You Shalom

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14 ESV)

Christmas day is approaching and the end of the year and it occurs to me to indulge in sentimentality and send out some special wishes to those I love. If you are reading this you are one of them. Apologies to Pastor Doug I’m going to piggy-tail a little on his Christmas message and wish all of you shalom, which means peace, but more than you might think. This message is, of course, for the Christmas season, but also for all seasons. You may or may not know that Christians love to argue about things, and whether to celebrate Christmas at all is one of those questions that can cause controversy. So I was asked once if I thought we should celebrate Christmas, and my answer was “Yes. Every day.”

The above passage from the familiar story of the birth of Jesus tells of the appearance of the angels to shepherds near the town of Bethlehem. It tells of their announcement of the miraculous birth and a proclamation of peace. In one way we are familiar with the meaning; the birth of the Messiah was the beginning of the work that would reconcile man and God. It meant mankind’s warfare with God was at an end (Is. 40:2). So we can see this proclamation of peace as an ending of hostilities, and that is something we understand about the word peace.

But there is another sense of the word that we might not be so familiar with. These angels were not singing simply about the absence of conflict. The word used here is the same used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Isaiah 9:6 where Jesus is prophesied to be “Prince of Peace.” This peace is expressed in Hebrew by the word shalom, The word is used as part of the blessing God gave to Moses to sanctify the people: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26 ESV) The word is defined in a number of places as “total well-being.” I think in our modern understanding we could translate it as “contentment” or “bliss” or, perhaps more meaningful to some, “serenity.” These words approach the significance of shalom but do not fully convey its meaning.

In the shared Judeo-Christian heritage shalom is necessary because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve. God created the world in a condition of completeness. The relationship between God and his people was without barrier; God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God provided for every need and lived in perfect communion with his creatures. It is way beyond the scope of what I want to write here, but suffice it to say Adam and Eve made a conscious choice to separate themselves from God by desiring to be apart from him in will. That decision created the brokenness in man that according to Christians could not be healed until God himself healed it. I think anyone who is honest with him or herself, whether Christian or not, knows what brokenness looks like.

The world is a confusing and fearful place, with temptations and stumbling blocks at every turn. Our brothers and sisters around the world and in our midst suffer from injustice, poverty, sickness, and violence. Even those of us who avoid the worst of what can happen in the world find that our materialistic “good life” leaves us empty and unsatisfied, constantly yearning for more. We don’t comprehend the concept of shalom because we don’t experience it in our daily lives, nor do we see it when we look around. That’s what makes Jesus’ birth so significant.

The birth of Jesus brings shalom. So when we think of what the word shalom means we are thinking about a state of being where we are totally and completely at peace with God. In such a state we experience no fear, no want, no pain, no sickness, no death. All of our cares are forgotten, and we live in a community of overflowing love and fellowship with each other and with God. My favorite description of this is in Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4 ESV)

Most of us think of Revelation as a picture of something that is supposed to happen in the future. From God’s point of view Revelation points to a labor that has already been accomplished. It is the completion of the work of reconciliation that was begun on Christmas in Bethlehem when Jesus came to live with us. Emmanuel : God with us. And this is not for the future; it is for now.

I know that some to whom I am writing now are not Christians. I am not going to presume to comment on how God manifests himself to anyone’s soul. And I guess my writing here is a little cerebral and I probably haven’t done a great job of expressing the magnitude of the shalom that Christmas represents. But I want you to try to imagine it, and I want you to know that that is what I wish for you on Christmas and every other day, now and forever. And I want to thank you for making the shalom of God real for me in so many ways. May you have a merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Keith Cox

Advent: Waiting in the Dark

Isaiah announces God's surprising plan of grace and glory for his rebellious people and, indeed, for the world.

 

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

                and cry to her

that her warfare is ended,

                that her iniquity is pardoned,

that she has received from the LORD's hand

                double for all her sins.

 

A voice cries:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;

                make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

                and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

                and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,

                and all flesh shall see it together,

                for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:1-5 ESV)

 

There is an interesting discussion of why Christmas is celebrated on December 25 at this link http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2000/dec08.html. What I find interesting  in this article is that Church leaders of the third century chose the date to coopt pagan celebrations. There were a number of pagan festivals around that date in the Roman world, and the feeling was that celebrating the birth of the savior would overcome the allure of idolatry. I think those leaders might revisit their decision if they could see what is happening today, because essentially the opposite seems to have happened.

But from my point of view it seems appropriate. Starting in November (Halloween is apparently the kickoff for the “holidays”; retailers are putting up “Christmas” decorations before the pumpkins and candy are even off the shelves) we as a people embark upon a spree of over-indulgence. Retail sales figures for the day after Thanksgiving are national news, signifying, I think, where our values as a society lie. The “Holiday” season is accompanied by aggressive driving, bad tempers, discourtesy, reports of fist fights and worse over scarce but coveted merchandise, people robbing each other in broad daylight, riots and stampedes in retail establishments. And all of this in pursuit of “the joy of Christmas.” I can’t imagine the ancient pagan festivals could have been any more raucous or obscene.

Probably the date itself doesn’t matter. Because of course the Advent season is really all about this human tendency to completely miss God’s point. When Isaiah wrote the prophecy above there was no Christmas and the entire nation of Israel was in a sort of Advent season. What that meant for them was that God had miraculously saved them from bondage and had constituted them as a people to be set apart as a light to the nations. They had been rescued from the tyranny of Pharaoh to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham that he would bring them to the Promised Land and to bless all nations through them (Gen. 12:1-3). But Isaiah made a living giving them the unpleasant news that they had blown it.

For the Israelites, the Promised Land was to be theirs but not for their own benefit. God’s blessing of Israel and the abundance they were to experience was to be a sign of their devotion to God and his ways; concrete evidence of God’s faithfulness and a beacon of hope to a world lost in selfishness and sin. The covenant God made with the exiles from Egypt promised great rewards for obedience, but at the same time warned of grave consequences for abandoning their faithfulness. By the time of Isaiah the people of Israel had all but forgotten the covenant. Ignoring God’s warning to remain apart from the surrounding pagan cultures,they had fallen for the temptations of idolatry. Far from being a beacon of hope for the pagans surrounding them, the Israelites had become indistinguishable from them.

In the theological history of God’s people, the consequence of Israel’s idolatry would be the destruction of Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple, and a new exile in Babylon. In the above passage Isaiah is assuring the people that their great calamity would be followed by a restoration and rededication. Was Isaiah referring to the historical return from exile or was he referring to something else? For centuries the Christian Church has believed it was both.

The exiles really did return from Babylon in 538 BC, but the comfort Isaiah promised did not materialize. In the following centuries God’s people would suffer conquest, loss of independence, and persecution. Many gave in to pressures to abandon their faithfulness to the one true God in favor of once again relying on foreign customs and idols. Even those who redoubled their efforts to remain true to the covenant came to rely for salvation on adherence to the law rather than on God’s grace. Ultimately the Jews would suffer the complete loss of their national identity and a new dispersion into exile. If you were a Jew living in first-century Palestine you would have good reason to be skeptical of Isaiah’s prophecy of comfort.

But that was not the end. The same prophecy is recalled by all four of the Gospel writers in reference to John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, "Get ready! God's coming!" God was going to rescue His people again, this time not from an earthly exile but for a final freedom from bondage to sin and death. The words of the ancient prophet found a new resonance; the people once again had reason to hope. This is what the Advent season signifies, our need for and assurance of rescue. And then, the miraculous moment. God came to earth. The long awaited deliverance was at hand. Christ was born, and accomplished the reconciliation that men could not.

This is the event that has been celebrated on December 25 since the third century. This is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to His people. The truth of God’s deliverance was of such magnitude that the early Church leaders felt sure that commemorating the fact of Jesus’ birth would overshadow and ultimately banish the pagan practices. And yet here we are in the third millennium since God came in the flesh and I think the world doesn’t look that much different. The rebellious hearts of humankind have made a mockery of Christmas. We celebrate His birth by banishing His name and obscenely dancing around a golden calf.

As for the wayward Israelites, however, for Christians this is not the end. The travesty of “Xmas” and “the Holidays” makes the expectation of Advent that much more important. What better time to hopefully await Christ’s birth than in a season when our need for salvation is most obvious? As Christians seeking to retain the meaning of Christmas ours may be, like John’s, voices crying in a wilderness of self-centered materialism. But if I rightly understand Jesus’ commission, our task is not to cut ourselves off from the world, not to condemn or moralize, but to make disciples of all nations by being salt and light. Our light must shine like Israel’s light was to shine, so that our identification with Christ draws all people to Him. Let us use the time of Advent not only to celebrate once again our own expectation of deliverance but to let the light of God’s love shine so brightly through us that it shouts to the world, like Isaiah’s messenger, “Behold your God!” (Is. 40:9)

Where are the other nine?

Here’s a good story about giving thanks.

[Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers]
    On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
(Luke 17:11-19 ESV)

Interpretive Note: This story would have been shocking to Jews in the 1st century because Samaritans were shunned by the Jews as infidels. Just imagine a group that "everybody" looks down on and avoids, and you get the idea of what a Samaritan was to the Jews.

Jesus Died to Save Muslims

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34 ESV)

Even though this is probably one of the most famous verses in the Bible I’m not sure we get exactly what is being illustrated here. The event takes place in Luke’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus. As a Christian I cannot help believing this is the most profound act in all of history. It is impossible for words to convey the magnitude of what is recorded here. We can only dance around it with the some superlative language knowing that whatever expression we make falls short. Here is the supreme act of love: that God, whose people turned their backs on him, who have made themselves his enemies, now makes the ultimate sacrifice of himself (Phil. 2:6-8) in order to reconcile them to his grace. In this verse, in the midst of the horrific endeavor, he forgives even those pounding the nails through his hands.

It is too easy to forget that this act, the center of the Christian faith, was made necessary by the fact that as humans we are incapable of redeeming ourselves. All humans are slaves to sin. Paul tells us: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God." (Ro. 3:10-11) This is crucial to the gospel because sin makes all equal. All. Every single human being in the world. Without Jesus, we are all under condemnation. But with Jesus we can all share in God’s glory.

Those of us who are chosen by Jesus (Jo. 15:16) now have the privilege to follow him. Follow him where? To glory, yes, but by the same path that he followed: through the cross. We are called to love as he loved. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jo. 13:34-35)

Now I think it is really important to consider at this point who Jesus means by “one another.” We want to think it means the people we live with in our little neighborhoods or maybe even our countrymen who look like us and talk like us and pretty much are like us. But Jesus didn’t die only for “his” people, the Jews. He spent his life hanging out with people “respectable” Jews didn’t want anything to do with, and he died for people the Jews despised: Romans, Greeks, people of all nations, even those who ultimately nailed him to a cross. (Mt. 28:19)

In no place does Jesus tell us we should hate. He charges us to love our enemies (Mt. 5:43-48). In fact, the place where he commands us to love our enemies is the only place where he also commands us to be perfect, just as the Father is perfect. Perfect in love. Perfect in complete self-sacrifice. What could the Father’s perfect love be other than dying for his enemies, as Jesus did? And we are commanded to love our enemies in this way.

Now, when we hear that we are to love our enemies we are likely to think we are supposed to feel affectionate feelings for people who may really want to hurt us. So I think it is good to remember that love is not expressed as an emotion but as an act. I think this was well stated by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he described the love he envisioned overcoming the scourge of race hatred in the American south:

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving those who oppose us, we refer to neither eros nor philia; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.[1]

We are all made in the image of God, but because of sin without Jesus we are all his enemies. As Christians, knowing that we are sinners saved only by grace, and commanded as the redeemed to love as Jesus loved, it is impossible that we can hate anyone, including Muslims. If the Church and its members do not relate to the world with agape love in the same unconditional, self-sacrificial way that Jesus relates to the world, then it is not the Church of Jesus Christ. If the world cannot look at the Church and see Jesus, it is not Jesus’ Church. Jesus died to save Muslims, too. (1 Jo. 2:2)

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[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” 1958, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 19.

A Lunatic Scribbles on His Wall

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." - C. S. Lewis

            There is a story in Luke’s gospel (Luke 16:19-31) about a man who was rich in his earthly life, who had all of the comforts that wealth could buy, and poor man named Lazarus who sat at the rich man’s doorstep. Lazarus was not only poor but miserable, tormented even by dogs, and yet somehow the rich man was able to ignore him. Then they both passed, Lazarus to the side of Abraham and the rich man to hell, and their roles were reversed.

There are a number of familiar themes in the story but recently while reading Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God that author pointed out something that had never before occurred to me. If you read the parable carefully, you will note that the rich man asks for Lazarus to bring him water, and he asks Abraham to warn his relatives, but he never asks to get out of hell. Keller uses this illustration as part of a larger argument addressing the common question asked by unbelievers about how a loving God could send people to hell. The very idea of hell seems so incongruent with a God of love. If you are wondering about the answer to that question then I really recommend that you read Keller’s book. You will find the answer to that and a lot of other misconceptions about hell and judgment in chapter five. For our present purposes the point we need to focus on is that the rich man does not ask to get out of hell.

This story came to my mind recently because of a news article I read about Stephen Hawking’s new book The Grand Design, due for publication next week, where the author argues that because of the existence of gravity the universe created itself and therefore needs no God to explain it. Indeed, Hawking flatly states that God in fact did not create the universe. Seriously the first thought that crossed my mind when I read that concerned the unbelievable hubris represented in the statement. Later, I marveled at the kind of twisted character that would be required to motivate someone to the tremendous effort Hawking devoted here in an attempt to prove that something, anything, doesn’t exist.

Finally I realized that it offers the perfect opportunity to consider something that is really unpopular to talk about: hell. We don’t like to think about hell but we can’t deny that the Bible talks about it and assures us that some people really are going to hell. How does that happen?

I think the best explanation is found in Romans 1:18-32 where Paul writes about God’s wrath. God reveals himself to all, therefore all have knowledge of God and all are called to acknowledge God as God. Some do not. Rather than offering worship to God they raise up idols (themselves, riches, addictions) and devote their attention to them. By doing so they separate themselves from the only source of life. They surrender the real joy that is to be found in relationship with God for the uncertain and fleeting “pleasures” (and believe me I use that term loosely) of this life. What does God do? He says, “OK then, have it your way.” (Ro. 1:24, 26, 28 “God gave them up…”) Keller describes it this way:

In short, hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity. We see this process ‘writ small’ in addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and pornography. First, there is disintegration, because as time goes by you need more and more of the addictive substance to get an equal kick, which leads to less and less satisfaction. Second, there is isolation, as increasingly you blame others and circumstances in order to justify your behavior. ‘No one understands! Everyone is against me!’ is muttered in greater and greater self-pity and self-absorption. When we build our lives on anything but God, that thing – though a good thing – becomes and enslaving addiction, something we have to have to be happy. Personal disintegration happens on a broader scale. In eternity, this disintegration goes on forever. There is increasing isolation, denial, delusion, and self-absorption. When you lose all humility you are out of touch with reality. No one ever asks to leave hell. The very idea of heaven seems a sham to them.[1]

The Bible, though not a book of physics or geologic history, captures this reality very well in the first few pages that describe humanity’s descent into sin. The expulsion from Eden was not the result of eating an apple; it was the consequence of desiring to be on an equal footing with God, to lift up the self as an object of worship. It was a choice of Adam and Eve, not of God. (Gen. 3:6) So who sent whom to hell?

I don’t think Keller’s description requires a lot of commentary but the one thing I do want to emphasize here is that for the person who has chosen self as god there really does not exist any other God. The heart can only serve one master (Mt. 6:24) It’s not like God is sitting up in heaven saying to humans begging for mercy, “That’s it. You had your chance. Now you must suffer forever!” Instead, God, the real God, does not exist for them. So in that sense Hawking is right. Having chosen to worship gravity, for him God really does not exist.

But for me He does. Knowing and loving God does not explain how the universe came into existence, but it makes living in the universe make sense, and it makes it worthwhile. Another cool quote by C.S. Lewis:

There are only two kinds of people – those who say “Thy will be done” to God and those to whom God in the end says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.[2]

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[1] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 80-81.

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: McMillan, 1961), 116.

The Beloved Community: Imago Dei as a Catalyst for Social Action

The way in which one conceives of imago Dei (the image of God in man) matters immensely because that view will determine how each man is related to and relates to God and his fellows. In this essay I will briefly consider what has been called thh “Relational View” of the imago Dei as espoused by Swiss theologian  Emil Brunner, and then demonstrate how this theological viewpoint can be related to the kind of social action championed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the non-violent Civil Rights Movement. I will conclude that the Church of Jesus Christ is called to the same ends that King espoused.

Brunner introduce two senses of the imago Dei: what he calls a “formal” and a “material” sense, but at the center of Brunner’s conception of the imago Dei is love. He uses the notion of two senses of the image as a tool for human understanding and stresses that from God’s point of view the distinction does not exist.[i]

Rightly understood, Brunner’s argument follows this line. The idea of imago Dei is the beginning point. God created man in His image (Gen. 1:26). Being created in the image of God, man is subject to God. As subject, he has freedom, albeit a limited freedom. He was created to act in a certain way, but has freedom to act in a different, unintended way, which characterizes sin. This is what distinguishes man from all other creatures, and this freedom is what Brunner describes as the “formal” sense of the image of God. Man’s original God-given freedom requires a response which Brunner describes as the “material” sense:

The New Testament simply presupposes this fact that man – in his very nature – has been “made in the image of God”; it does not develop this any further. To the Apostles what matters most is the “material” realization of this God-given quality; that is, that man should really give the answer which the Creator intends, the response in which God is honored, and in which he fully imparts Himself, the response of reverent, grateful love, given not only in words, but in his whole life. The New Testament, in its doctrine of the imago Dei, tells us that this right answer has not been given; that quite a different one has been given instead, in which the glory is not given to God, but to man and to creatures, in which man does not live in the love of God, but seeks himself. Secondly, the New Testament is the proclamation of what God has done in order that He may turn this false answer into the true one.

Here, therefore, the fact that man has been “made in the image of God” is spoken of as having been lost, and indeed as wholly, and not partially lost. Man no longer possesses this Imago Dei; but it has been restored through Him, through whom God gives and glorifies Himself: through Jesus Christ. The restoration of the Imago Dei, the new creation of the original image of God in man, is identical with the gift of God in Jesus Christ received by faith.

The Imago Dei in the New Testament, “material” sense of the word, is identical with “being-in-the-Word” of God.[ii]

Brunner is emphatic about the proposition that man can only be fully human and thus can only be in the image of God when he “in Jesus Christ.” Man can only be understood by looking at Jesus, for he is human in the sense that God intended. And Jesus’ humanity is not expressed in genius (reason), but in love.[iii] So Brunner affirms “When the heart of man no longer reflects the love of God, but himself and the world, he no longer bears the ‘Image of God’, which simply consists in the fact that God’s love is reflected in the human heart.”[iv] So in this sense the “structural” or “formal” sense of the image is that God created man as subject and with freedom, but freedom to be used for a distinct purpose, and the “material” sense is the reality that man can and has used this freedom to a different purpose. Finally Brunner notes that the distinction can only be understood from the viewpoint of man and not God, because God did not create man to do right or wrong, but only to do right.

If the image of God is love, it follows that it must be relational, because even God cannot love without an object of love. If there is no beloved, there can be no love. This relational aspect is hinted at in Genesis in the words “Let us create” (Gen 1:26, emphasis mine). The Trinitarian God consists of an everlasting relationship of love between the persons of the Godhead. The intended relationship of God to man is that same relationship of love, but because man was created with freedom, and man did not use that freedom rightly, the image was lost. When through faith man becomes identified with God in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the proper relationship is restored. But even more, because the image is universal in humans, the love of God that is reflected in man must be reflected to man as well, in the form of love toward our fellows. If the image of God in man is a reflection of the love relationship of the Trinity, then the relationship between man and man must also reflect that.

Now, there are a number of fascinating avenues that can be explored with this assumption as a starting point. But for the purposes of this short study I want to focus only on how this understanding of the image of God provides a catalyst for social action. In doing so I will examine briefly the theology and praxis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The central vision that drove Dr. King was the concept of “The Beloved Community.” We find this idea throughout his speeches and writings. Essentially, the Beloved Community is a society of “persons-in-community” living in cooperation and harmony and reflecting the image of God.[v] The community consists of all people. A widespread misconception about King is that as a Civil Rights leader his main concern was for African Americans, but it only takes a cursory glance at the corpus of he work to realize that he was always concerned with the idea of bring all people into fellowship.[vi]

The force that King envisioned bringing about and sustaining the community was what he called agape, essentially understood as the love of God. In an early speech describing nonviolence as a tool for building community King says:

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving those who oppose us, we refer to neither eros nor philia; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.[vii]

Going further, King declared that agape is the force that creates, restores, and sustains the Beloved Community.

            The similarities between Brunner’s relational idea of the imago Dei and King’s concept of agape as the creating and sustaining force of the human community are striking. Whether those similarities are intentional remains a topic for further research, but the conceptual relationship cannot be denied. In an analysis of the development of King’s theological thinking Richard Wills concludes that to consider the “imago Dei” as a cooperative enterprise between God and humanity represents the culmination of King’s philosophy.[viii]

Wills suggests that the image of God underlay King’s activism in four ways. The first was that the imago Dei caused all men to be possessed of human dignity. The second was that the image entitled all men to commensurate rights (i.e., to equal treatment). The third was that the image endowed all men with the capacity to create justice, and the fourth posited that justice, and agape itself, are embodied in the Beloved Community.[ix] Thus the impetus and the means for building the Beloved Community are to be found in the image of God in man: agape, which as Brunner points out is the love of God reflected in and by man. Again, whether or not King’s ideal is informed by Brunner, Brunner’s explanation coincides with the thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr.

There remains, however, the method. How can this concept of agape as the imago Dei translate into the action required to inaugurate the Beloved Community? The answer lies in the Body of Christ. As Christians, following the lead of the Apostle Paul, we like to equate the Body of Christ with the Church. And I think ideally this is the proper understanding of it. But in praxis the Church as we know it today in North America cannot be equated with the Body of Christ, nor could it have been in the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. The reason for this is because the institutional Church does not reflect agape or the image of God, but rather has aligned itself with secular culture.

In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” written to a group of white pastors opposing the non-violent anti-segregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama as “unwise and untimely,”[x] King assailed the Christian Church for its collusion, through silence and outright support, with brutal segregationist policies.

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.[xi]

So again I think ideally King envisioned that the Church and the Beloved Community could be co-equal, but that did not reflect the reality of his day and could only occur by a change of attitude on the part of the institutional Church. I will further argue that as a general rule this is true today as well.

            How can King’s philosophy of action to create the Beloved Community be associated with a relational concept of the imago Dei? The key is what King calls agape love, which I contend is the imago Dei. As noted above, agape love is the indwelling Christ, the love of God for God and also for man. But, also as noted above, love cannot exist in a vacuum. For love to exist there must be a relationship. The agape relationship between God and man is represented in an act: the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the total surrender of self by God for the sake of the beloved (Phil. 2:6-8). To reflect that love and thus possess the imago Dei those who are in Christ must also sacrifice self for other. Indeed that sacrifice is the image of God.

            Two human difficulties must be overcome in order to engage in the action required to bring about the Beloved Community. This was true for King’s practice of non-violent Civil Rights movement and it is true for the modern Church. Overcoming the first impediment requires the abandonment of the human idea about how to bring about justice in favor of God’s idea. The human idea sees the struggle for justice in terms of an adversarial relationship where one party wins and the other must lose. God’s idea sees the struggle as a sacrifice of self for the sake of all others, even enemies (Mt. 5:43-48).

The second obstacle is found in the relationship of the Church to the world. Like the Church King admonished from his cell in the Birmingham jail the modern Church too often sees itself as normative and thus tends to support the status quo. But the Church of Jesus Christ is the Beloved Community, a “holy nation” set apart from the world (1 Pet. 2:9-10). Even more, the Church of Jesus Christ is God in the world. This relates directly to the relational concept of imago Dei, because the Church is the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-26), and each individual is one with the body (1 Cor. 12:27).

What makes this so is agape. Agape characterizes the relationship of the persons of the Trinity and it is the same agape that characterizes the relationship of the members of the Church to Jesus Christ and to each other. Thus if the Church and its members do not relate to the world with agape love in the same unconditional, self-sacrificial way that Jesus relates to the world, then it is not the Church of Jesus Christ. If the world cannot look at the Church and see Jesus, it is not Jesus’ Church.

We may look at the career of Martin Luther King and conclude that his ideas did not work, or that the cost is too high. Dr. King was murdered and we are still far from achieving the Beloved Community. But these discouragements must not deter us. Whatever the outcome seems to be in the world our task is clear. In order to be called the people of God we must reflect His love in the world. And if that results in hardship and struggle we are privileged to share in Christ’s crucifixion.

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[i] Emil Brunner, Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1952), 61.

[ii] Ibid., 58

[iii] Ibid. 58-59

[iv] Ibid. 59.

[v] Rufus Burrows, God and Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, and Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr, (Notre Dame, In.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 160.

[vi] “And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’" “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 220.

[vii] Martin Luther King, Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” 1958, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 19.

[viii] Richard Wills, Martin Luther King and the Image of God, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 81.

[ix] Ibid., 114-136.

[x] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter From Birmingham City Jail,” 1963, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 289.

[xi] Ibid., 300.

Anne Rice Quits Christianity. So What?

The other night in Systematic Theology class the topic of Anne Rice “leaving Christianity” came up and the professor read Rice’s words wherein she declared her decision:

I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or being a part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Of course I had heard about this but I really didn’t think much about it one way or the other. My faith, after all, is not predicated on what someone else believes and I’m pretty sure God knows what’s up with Anne and doesn’t need my help sorting it out.

My first reaction to her statement was that it expresses immaturity and a real lack of understanding of the Christian gospel as I have experienced it, and I will hold to that. This is the kind of statement you would expect from someone who has gained their knowledge of Christianity from the secular culture; the kinds of things I myself might have said not that long ago.

Interestingly, the professor related to the class, mostly second and third year seminary students, that in his experience when charging Christian leaders to enumerate ten things Christianity was against the response was quick and thorough, but when challenged to enumerate ten things Christians were for the response of the leaders was quite different. Try it yourself. How long does it take to tick off ten things Christians positively promote?

Well, for some probably it will take less time than others and the timing isn’t really important, anyway. What is important is that this is a very real perception held by many both outside and inside the church, and not without reason. Americans tend to identify professing Christians with what they reportedly oppose. In a 2007 survey of young non-Christians, only 16% professed to have a “good impression” of Christianity, and still less “Born Again” (10%) and “Evangelical” (3%) Christians.[i] The following conclusions were reported by the authors of this survey:

In our national surveys we found the three most common perceptions of present-day Christianity are anti-homosexual (an image held by 91 percent of young outsiders), judgmental (87 percent), and hypocritical (85 percent). These “big three” are followed by the following negative perceptions, embraced by a majority of young adults: old-fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing.[ii]

We can argue that these perceptions are not fair and represent neither what we believe nor how we act, but the fact remains that this is how we are identified. Clearly American Christians are not doing a very good job of telling our neighbors the “Good News”. And, assuming that Rice as a professing Christian was churched somewhere (if she wasn’t, that would explain a lot), we may not even be doing that well reaching our own members.

The first thing that came to my mind when challenged by the professor to think of ten things Christians are for was that we don’t really need to be for ten things. Jesus did not come with a ten point plan. We only need to make sure that we and everyone we come into contact with know that we are for one thing: amazing grace.

It is true that the Christian church in all of its manifestations is full of the most amazingly judgmental, spiteful, and hypocritical people, just like the world outside the church. It is also true that the sins of those within the church are just as wicked and just as offensive to God as those outside it. But that is no more true today than it was when God himself took on human form and poured himself out. He did that so that “a bunch of quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious” sinners, enemies of God who were completely lost and without hope, could enjoy abundant life. He also did it for no apparent reason (hence the term grace), and that is the Good News we should be shouting, by our deeds and our words, to each other and to everyone around us.

From the very beginning there have been those inside and outside the church who have misrepresented the Gospel. Late in the first century, when Christianity was just getting started but after many of the first Christians had passed from the scene, a lot of people who had not been around to see Jesus started to doubt the things that were said about him; the things he had said about himself. Some of them started teaching these things in the church. John, the disciple who Jesus loved and probably the last living disciple at the time, wrote the letter we now know as 1 John to set the record straight. He wanted to remind everyone before he died that he had been there and seen it all with his own eyes and to make sure everyone knew it was all true.

If you get a chance you should read 1 John. It’s short and contains some of the most amazing teachings in the Bible. In it he refocused the attention of the church to the one thing that matters. It applies to us because it is also the one thing we need to remember we are for, and that we must represent to the world around us if we are truly to be followers of Christ:

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:10-11 ESV)

This is the Christianity I found. Let us pray that Anne finds some of those Christians, and that they might be us.

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[i] David Kinnaman, UNchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity... and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2007), 25.

[ii] Ibid., 27.

What does it mean to "Really Love"?

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. (Romans 12:9 NLT)

I have been reflecting on the posts of the last two weeks and I can to see that insistence on loving others as a sign of discipleship carries with it a danger. One of my main themes has been to differentiate between the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in relation to the requirements of the covenant. The essence of the Pharisees’ error had been to turn God’s covenant of grace into a covenant of works. To misunderstand the free gift of salvation from God, based only on his love and compassion, as a privilege to be earned.

I think we have now a basic intellectual understanding of what it means to love others as Jesus loves them. If we have any familiarity at all with the Gospels we can see Jesus’ radical concern for those who had been tossed aside by society, even for those who abandoned and betrayed him, to the point of completely emptying himself as a sacrifice. If we have any familiarity at all with Jesus’ commands to his disciples we know that as disciples we are all called to the same level of concern and commitment as he displayed both in his life and in his death.

I suspect that is why what passes for Christianity today is really a parody of what Jesus calls us to. It is just too hard. Even the thought of giving up everything is scary. Going deeper, am I going to abandon my responsibilities at home in order to sacrifice for people I don’t even like and who don’t like me? Even if I had the slightest inclination to do so I would be ridiculed for doing it. It just doesn’t make sense. Jesus, who gave all and demands all, will have to be satisfied with a half-hearted some, even though I may dress it up emotionally to make it seem like more. If you think I am being too harsh look at what passes for sacrifice among Christians today and compare it to the price that was paid by the Apostles and the early church.

But here is the danger. If I translate the above observation to mean that because sacrificial love is required of the disciple then sacrificial love makes the disciple I have just crossed the line between grace and works. If I think that giving up everything in order to minister to the world will somehow gain me God’s favor no matter how much good I do I will remain in the same place as the first century Pharisees: participant in a transactional covenant requiring me to perform some action in order to gain (or retain) salvation. I can no more love my way into the kingdom than I can work my way in.

Well, we seem to have painted ourselves into a corner. Being a disciple of Jesus demands sacrifice, but one cannot become a disciple of Jesus by sacrifice. What are we to do then?

Let’s take another look at the big picture. Why did Jesus come? Was it not because God’s beloved creatures were trapped in a situation where their sin kept them separated from God but they could neither atone for their sin nor even stop sinning? And God in his mercy, knowing that we could never find our way, came to dwell among us, to show us the way out of the trap, to pay the price for our transgressions, and to make us righteous through him. God came to be with us (Emmanuel means “God with us”). He gave up everything to be with us (Philippians 2:6-8). And he never left us, because he gave us his Spirit to live within us (John 16:13, Acts 1:8; 2:4). So we are not doing work for Jesus, Jesus is working in and through us.

Here is where the cost of discipleship transforms from “must” to “will.” Rather than saying “In order to be a disciple of Jesus I must love” we say “Because I am a disciple of Jesus I will love.” On the human level our transformation is a process. It does not happen in a flash. But as we come more and more to trust Jesus’ Spirit, as we become more and more like him, we are compelled more and more to sacrifice as he did. Eventually we can say with Paul “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

To really love means to abandon ourselves to Jesus and to trust his Spirit within us. Ask him what he wants you to do and trust what he says. As our perception of his Spirit within us increases we will find ourselves doing what once seemed unthinkable. And we will do it with joy. “for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13 ESV)

How to Give God a Good Name

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

Last week we saw how both Jesus and Paul condemned the religiousness of the Jews of their day. Their religion consisted of a difficult regimen of observing minute regulations in order to avoid breaking any of the 613 stipulations contained in the Mosaic Law. It was thought that by doing so they could keep the covenant and ensure God’s continued benevolence. The problem was not in their pursuit of righteousness; it was that their practice had become a pattern of empty rituals. Further, as barren as their practice was, they arrogantly assumed it set them apart from their contemporaries and gained for them God’s favor. At the same time, though they painstakingly observed the stipulations of the law, their conduct in the world was no better than those who didn’t have the law. Their moral failure was heightened by hypocrisy that in their arrogance they could not even perceive.

I think it was then successfully demonstrated that many of us who profess to be Christians have fallen into the same trap as those first century Jews. We believe our religious observances set us apart from the world and guarantee our salvation. But at the same time our lives are materially indistinguishable from our non-Christian contemporaries. We fail to fulfill the mission of the holy race we are called to be, which is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) We are instead what our critics accuse us of being: hypocritical, judgmental, and effectively irrelevant.

These observations are more than just interesting. They are crucial to us who publicly claim to be followers of Jesus. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Let’s consider further the plight of the Jews of Paul’s day.

There is a common misperception that the God of the Old Testament was angry and punishing, but that the God of the New Testament is characterized by love. In fact, God is a God of love from the beginning. The Old Testament narrative is a long story of God’s passionate love for his creation, the Israelites’ disobedience, and God’s forbearance and continued love and care. It is true that the Israelites were punished over and over again in the Old Testament, but it was their willful disobedience that punished them. Even though the Israelites violated the covenant over and over, God never abandoned his love for them.

What was the nature of their disobedience? The common perception imagines a God who says in effect, “Love and obey ME or I will crush you!” The truth is that God insists on being the focus of humanity’s affection because that is the only way humans can be happy, joyous, and free. Though the distractions of this world persuade otherwise, there is no contentment apart from God. The sin of man, going all the way back to Adam, was trying to achieve fulfillment through worship of created things rather than the Creator. Yet in spite of humanity’s crazy disobedience God never ceased to love his creation or his creatures. God did not allow his beloved creatures to fall without devising a plan for restoration.

Let’s look a little closer at this dynamic. God created a perfect world that reflected his nature. It was world of life, joy, and plenty. It was a world of complete happiness and absolute justice. Through disobedience, i.e., through the worship of creation rather than the Creator, mankind marred the world, introducing suffering, injustice, and death. Though humans abandoned God, he did not abandon them. He set in motion a plan to re-create the world. His covenant with the Israelites at Sinai, where the Mosaic Law was given, was the means by which the plan was to be implemented. This was the same covenant the Jews of Paul’s time believed they had inherited, that gave them their identity and sense of being “chosen.”

But look how they had screwed it up. They were supposed to be a “light for the nations,” so that God’s “salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is. 49:6) How were they to be that light? By demonstrating the nature of God in the world. That was the purpose of the law: to make a holy community who would bless the world. To be a people who would make God’s nature so irresistible that all would be drawn to him. But the Jews had turned God’s purpose into a list of dos and don’ts that mocked his nature and thwarted his plan of salvation. Instead of being a light for the nations they turned their covenant identity into hypocritical, judgmental religion that few who were not born into it wanted to be any part of.

Jews believed then (and many still do) that the servant referenced in Isaiah 49 is the Jewish people with whom God made the Sinai covenant. Christians believe the servant is Christ, and that through Christ a new covenant has been given that creates a new Israel consisting of all who profess him. Yet though there is a new covenant the purpose of the covenant is the same: to create a holy people who will demonstrate God’s nature in the world and draw all people to him.

God’s fervent love for his creation can be traced throughout the Old Testament and the New: from Genesis to Revelation, from the first page of the Bible to the last. It is best demonstrated by Jesus. On the night of his arrest, when he knew he would be tortured and later crucified, Jesus gave instructions to his disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) This, I believe, is the essense of the new covenant, and its stipulation is both simple and terrifying. We are to love “just as I have loved you.” How did he love us? He gave up everything for the sake of those he knew would revile and spit on him. His love was not a feeling of affection; it was an act of complete self-sacrifice. And he commands his disciples to conform to this model.

Are we his disciples? If we are, then here we have the instructions for how to give God a good name.

How to Give God a Bad Name

You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:23-24 ESV)

With what seems to me an amazing degree of chutzpah the Apostle Paul wrote to a church he had never visited and cut directly to the chase by laying out a case for God’s righteous condemnation of all humanity. It goes something like this: “Dear Church at Rome, You don’t know me. My name is Paul and I’m writing to introduce myself and seek support for evangelizing the western part of the Roman Empire. To begin with, let me just point out that you are all sinners and deserve eternal damnation.” In our day we would hardly consider this an effective way to “win friends and influence people,” even if our accusations were true.

In the first three chapters of the letter to the Romans Paul lays out the basic tenets of Christianity. In chapter one he describes the spiritual condition of the Gentiles. They act as if God does not exist. Though they do not have the law or the covenant (more on this in a minute), God has revealed himself and his character to them through nature, and therefore they are without excuse in refusing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. They deserve God’s wrath. In chapter two Paul takes aim at the Jews. They have the law and the covenant but do not keep it and therefore they, too, are without excuse.

The beginning of chapter three summarizes the arguments of the first two and famously concludes “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) There is good news here as Paul goes on to show that our salvation is a free gift and not merited by any action on our part. But at this point in the argument, if we divide the world into two groups as Paul does: Gentile and Jew, then we can see that by rights everyone is pretty much toast.

Curiously Paul’s seems to imply that the sins of the Jews are worse than those of the Gentiles. In the passage Romans 2:17-24 Paul chastens the Jews for “boasting” about their special relationship with God while at the same time not living up to the requirements of the law and the covenant. One of the most fundamental aspects of Jewish self-identification at that time was knowledge that as Jews they were specially chosen by God. God had delivered them out of bondage in Egypt and turned them exclusively into “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6) I think the audacity of publically affirming this belief alone was enough to sow the seeds of the anti-Semitism that was rampant in the Roman world.

But what made it worse was what Paul alludes to here. The covenant entered into by Yahweh with the Jewish people is summarized in the previous verse in Exodus: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.” (Ex. 19:5) Paul tells us in Romans 2:17-24 that the Jews loved the last part of the covenant (“treasured possession and holy people”) but weren’t too keen about the first part (“obey my voice and keep my covenant”). In all of their long history the Jews had never obeyed the law or kept the covenant. They had always denied God’s sovereignty and chased after idols. And though in Paul’s day the Jews generally adhered more strictly to the Mosaic Law than they ever had before, both Jesus and Paul condemn their religious practice. Why?

The answer is obvious: they were hypocrites. One can picture a Jewish Christian reading Paul’s condemnation of the Gentiles in chapter one with a smug sense of satisfaction. Secure in the knowledge of their covenant relationship they cast scorn upon the unrighteous pagans and their filthy habits. They could not imagine that they were equally guilty. They trusted in the law and thought it made them safe from condemnation, but because they could not fulfill the requirements of the law their trust was misplaced. And, going even further, the misplaced self-satisfied confidence that allowed them to condemn their pagan neighbors produced an affront to God because they too were guilty. So God was blasphemed by their hypocrisy.

One of the reasons I think this concept would have been difficult to grasp by Jews of Paul’s time is that many of them really were very pious. Paul himself was a member of the Pharisees, the most devout and respected Jewish religious group of the time. They kept the letter of the law meticulously, and because of this they were absolutely certain of God’s favor. But in chapter 23 of Matthew Jesus demolishes their illusions and calls them “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Mt 23:24) The allusion here is of punctiliousness in the letter of the law but blindness to the spirit of the law.

Thank God we are not like them! Oh, but we are! How many of us rely on “election” as our ticket to righteousness? How many of us believe that by going to church and writing checks, and watching the right TV shows and movies and listening to the right music and supporting and condemning the right politicians and causes we are somehow set apart from our neighbors who are not “chosen” like us? But at the same time we pursue with zeal the idols of our age: material prosperity, emotional security, and sensual pleasure, all with full knowledge that our brothers and sisters throughout the world and right in our midst are crying out; suffering and dying from hunger, poverty, oppression, violence, and persecution.

It’s not that the way Christians act is fundamentally different or worse than the way non-Christians do. But because we profess to be followers of Jesus we bring ourselves greater condemnation. For as the Apostle Peter tells us we have inherited the covenant and therefore the stipulation of the covenant to be a light to the nations: “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.” (1 Peter 2:9)

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by things we are against but we are not able to articulate let alone demonstrate what we are for. In fact, many of us lead lives indistinguishable from our non-Christian neighbors, except perhaps in our religious fastidiousness. This is exactly the sin of the Jews that both Paul and Jesus condemn. Jesus pointed out to his listeners that they had “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Mt. 23:23) And so have we. And that, Paul tells us, gives God a bad name.

Next week we will consider what gives God a good name.

Blessed to be a Blessing

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.” (Ps. 67:1-2 ESV)

Most of the people I know including myself are incredibly well off in material terms. We are not worried about where our next meal will come from or how we are going to protect ourselves from the elements. We are surrounded by an incredible assortment of gadgets and gizmos that move us from place to place and keep us connected, informed, and entertained. Almost every single one of us has at our fingertips access to power the vast majority of our ancestors, including the most powerful of them, could not have even dreamed. Here in the United States even the poorest are wealthy by world standards. And yet, blessed as we are with such bounty, we are anxious and afraid.

Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. once remarked that modern man “suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance.” The focus and direction of material advancement has been to make our lives more secure and more comfortable. And, as witnessed by the affluence around us, mankind has accomplished remarkable things in the material world. But I will argue that these endeavors have not been able to address the greatest human needs because humanity’s deficiency is not material but spiritual.

I am not against material achievement. I do believe science and technology can and should be harnessed to alleviate suffering and hardship wherever and to the maximum extent they can be. The problem as I see it is that rather than channeling our efforts to uplift our brothers and sisters the fruits of our achievements are largely employed in a vain attempt to temporarily fill a vast experiential emptiness. We allow ourselves to be programmed to believe the best use of our material wealth is to satisfy our own craving for relevance. Watch broadcast television for one evening and notice the number and appeal of skillful advertisements for material goods promising to bring meaning and fulfillment to what we are told is an otherwise dreary and unsatisfying life. Dreary and unsatisfying! In the midst of such unparalleled prosperity!

Our material well-being is a modern day Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11 humans united to build a tower that reached to heaven. The implication of that story is that humans sought to place themselves on equal footing with God, even to replace Him. And God responded by confounding their efforts. The sin of Adam and Eve was essentially the same. Whenever mankind denies and attempts to usurp God’s sovereignty disaster follows. The destruction resulting from the misapplication of science and technology should be readily apparent to any student of twentieth century history: from the killing fields of the Western Front to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The less apparent but no less devastating tragedy lies in the soul of modern man who, spoiled and pampered beyond imagining, feels emptier than ever before.

The problem is not the blessing; it is what we do not do with it. In the passage cited above the psalmist petitions God for blessing, but notice what he does not pray for. He does not write “bless us… that we may have more fun, buy a nicer car, live in a bigger house, go on a more decadent vacation, have more material security, or just in some way feel less profoundly empty inside.” His focus is on making God real in the earth. He is saying the very act of God blessing us will be a blessing to others. It was for this that God chose Israel – to be a light to the nations. And it is to this that we Christians, the new Israel, with the incomparable blessing of the Cross, have also been called. The truth that all of our scientific and technological cleverness has not been able to grasp is that a blessing to ourselves is only really a blessing when it is freely shared.

Our Father

[Y]our Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven…” (Mt. 6:8-9 ESV)

Jesus taught the people how to pray. There are a number of very good works considering the Lord’s Prayer as a unity, among them a classic by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship and a more contemporary one by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in a recent book on prayer entitled Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, both of which I recommend highly. But here I want to consider only one aspect of the prayer, the earth shattering assertion by Jesus that God is the father of us all.

Jesus spoke these words during his earthly ministry and they were spoken to Jewish listeners. I imagine few if any of those in his audience would have thought of the phrase “Our Father” as including anyone outside of the Jewish fold. Yet we know it was his intention to be inclusive by his commission in Mt. 28:19 to “make disciples of all nations.” This was such a revolutionary idea that many of the first followers of Christ, Jews who believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises only to the nation of Israel, could not imagine including Gentiles into their midst. But in fact Jesus did intend that. Jesus established a kingdom for people of all nations.

The first century Jews Jesus ministered to were possessed of an almost unbelievable exclusivity. Had not God chosen them from all the nations of the world to be his holy people? So ingrained was this sense of election among them that they felt defiled even by touching foreign ground. The custom of shaking the dust from one’s feet was practiced by Jews returning from Gentile regions as a symbol of ridding oneself of the corruption of the foreign world. A Gentile could become a proselyte but only by subscribing to the practice of the entire Mosaic Law as it was then understood, which included circumcision. To Jewish Christians, Gentiles who claimed God’s promise outside of the law remained unwelcome strangers. They were, in effect, illegal aliens.

But Jesus threw the gates of God’s kingdom wide open! And, as it was later revealed by the Holy Spirit through Phillip, Peter, and Paul, it seemed the price of admission had just gotten a lot lower. The former condition for inclusion in the kingdom by strict adherence to the law was replaced by a single requirement: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another” (John 13:34). This is a mandate we inherit, and it is not to be a romantic or sentimental attachment. Jesus means for us to love each other “just as I have loved you.” How did he love us? He gave everything, and then he died so those who despised him could enter his kingdom.

The first thing Jesus tells us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer is that God’s kingdom be established “on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus’ heavenly kingdom is one that includes people of all nations, and we are commanded to pray for that kind of kingdom here and now. God established Jesus’ kingdom through his death and resurrection but the work is not yet finished. It is not yet done on earth as it is in heaven. But I am convinced that this prayer does not let me off the hook to go about living in the fallen world as if nothing had changed, expecting God at some point to step in and finally make everything right. In fact, if I claim to be a follower of Christ, this prayer is a call to action: to work to make his kingdom a reality.

Throughout the Bible God demonstrates concern for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed both Jew and Gentile. That concern was epitomized in the crucifixion. I cannot claim to be a follower of Jesus if I will not follow him to the cross.