N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope

I've collected the five posts in my series on N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope into one article over on the Studies page. If you want the whole thing in one big chunk, there it is. If you're interested in printing it out, all the articles on the website are set up to have a printer-friendly format.

Check it out.

"Your labor is not in vain"

To wrap up this series summarizing what was memorable to me in N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, I'd like to focus on a particular verse that Wright points out as significant, and which ended up being perhaps the most significant insight in the book for me. It occurs at the end of 1 Corinthians 15--that is, at the end of Paul's powerful defense of physical resurrection as a necessary future event, and of his description of the resurrection body.  In verse 58, Paul writes:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Here's the point: the traditional view of the afterlife, with us being whisked off into heaven and this present creation being destroyed, tends to leave a futile view of our actions in the present life. It's often said in Evangelical churches that the only thing that really counts is how many people we bring along with us into heaven. Although it's seldom directly stated, we're left to infer that everything else in life is pretty much just marking time until we die or until Jesus comes.

Even a view that takes resurrection seriously can be liable to the same distortion. This present life is just marking time. God's going to remake both our bodies and our world, so what we do in this lifetime doesn't ultimately have any value. What we do to this world, or to our bodies, might be regrettable--as when we give ourselves cancer through smoking or a poor diet, or poke a hole in the bottom of the ocean and let it spew oil into our oceans--but it's ultimately unimportant. God's going to right it all.

But that's not at all the point of view that Paul is espousing in this verse. Rather than ending his treatise on resurrection by saying, "Therefore, relax. Continue trusting in Jesus, and know that God will resurrect your bodies and remake this world," Paul specifically affirms to his readers the value of their work in the Lord.  In some sense, our work is going to endure. What we do in the Lord's service, in this present fallen world, matters.

Most Evangelicals would see "your labor in the Lord" as referring, in some sense, to evangelism. What Paul means here is that  our labor produces new followers of Jesus, who will then be resurrected and inhabit God's new creation: in that way, our labor is not in vain. That is how it endures.

Certainly that is at least part of what Paul means here. But it's hard to see that that's everything that he means. For one thing, there's very little about overt evangelism either in the context of this verse, or in 1 Corinthians in general--which deals much more with Christian character and behavior than it does with evangelism--or, to be honest, in the Pauline epistles in general. This is not to say that evangelism is unimportant; but taking "your labor in the Lord" to refer exclusively to evangelism is an assumption that has to be imported into the text. You can't get it out of what Paul writes here.

It seems much more likely to me that "your labor in the Lord" refers to anything and everything that we do in this life because we are followers of Jesus--whether it's fighting against the slave trade, conducting one's business in an honorable and charitable manner, working toward conservation of the environment, reaching people for Christ, standing against abortion, helping those who are oppressed, sharing grace and mercy to people, opposing unjust business or governmental practices, or anything else we do to live out Jesus' life in us. It all matters. It's all going to carry over into the future creation that God has envisioned for us.

As a matter of fact, it might be instructive to look at how prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled. Let's take the one about the city of Tyre in Ezekiel 26. While Ezekiel makes clear that God is accomplishing the judgment against Tyre, the actual fulfillment occurred through the actions of human beings. God worked through people, including some who were not following him and were not consciously trying to fulfill the prophecy, to accomplish his work.

While the new heavens and the new earth spoken of in Revelation 21:1 and Romans 8:21-22 certainly seem to involve a supernatural transformation, there may be in some sense a redemptive aspect to what we do in this age. Perhaps, instead of God just speaking the word and the world's transformation happening, we will be a part of it happening. Perhaps we are supposed to be a part of it happening even now. And maybe that's the way in which our labor is not in vain.

Overcoming an Objection to Physical Resurrection

One of the stumbling blocks to Christians fully embracing the biblical teaching of physical resurrection lies right in Paul's exposition of the importance of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Verses 42-43 read,

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

The stumbling point is in the contrast between "natural" and "spiritual." In post-Enlightenment rationalistic thought, "natural" means material, physical, and "spiritual" means non-material, non-physical. So even though we'll affirm the reality of resurrection because it's there in the Bible, the really relevant teaching to us is "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). Being reunited with the body seems mostly anticlimactic.

But this is a misreading of the words "natural" and "spiritual." "Natural" is Greek ψυχικον, psychikon; it refers not to the substance of which the body is composed, but rather the nature of the motivating force behind that body's activity. The "natural" body's activity is driven by the human psyche--i.e., the mind. Similarly, the "spiritual" body does not refer to the substance (or lack of it) of which that body is composed. The Greek word is πνευματικον, pneumatikon; the motivating force behind that body's activity is the Spirit of God. Paul is not saying, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a non-material body"; he's saying, "It is sown a mentally-motivated body, it is raised a Spiritually-motivated body."

The main difference between the natural body and the spiritual body is not that the spiritual body is immaterial; it is that the spiritual body is imperishable, glorious, powerful, and motivated by God's Spirit. The main physical aspect of this resurrection body is that it is incorruptible, not subject to decay; but then, the entire creation will be incorruptible as well: "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).  Once again, we are confronted not with disembodied spirits sitting on clouds with harps, but with a renewed physical creation. The picture is more like Adam and Eve pre-fall than it is like what we generally think of as ghosts or spirits--or even, dare I say, the mental pictures most of us have involving heaven.

As I write this, I can look out my window on a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining, the trees are in bloom--I really should get outside today. I'm blessed to live in a place where I can see at least a little of the beauty of nature. But think of the difference in my perspective, if I think on the one hand, "This is beautiful, but temporary and corrupt. The real thing God has for me waits on the other side of death, or the Rapture. One glad morning, when this life is o'er, I'll fly away," or if I think on the other hand, "This is beautiful, and in some sense, this is the home God has given me forever. God is going to remake it, reshape it, remove the sting of sin and death; I may leave it for a while, but eventually I will be brought back, and therefore, in some sense, I am an eternal being in an eternal place."

If you are a disciple of Jesus, then today think of yourself as an eternal being in an eternal place, and see if it doesn't change your perspective on things.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

What Resurrection Implies

What Jesus' resurrection meant was that what the Jews (at least some of them) were hoping for at the end of time was breaking into present-day reality. The technical way of saying this is that their eschatalogical hopes were being realized. Imagine everything you've ever longed for beginning to come true. That's what was going on for the first believers, the ones who saw Jesus after the resurrection.

But what did this imply to them? So far, just one guy had come back from the dead (I'm not counting Lazarus and other resuscitations--I mean permanent resurrection), and he didn't even stick around all that long. Granted, Jesus' followers would certainly be happy to see him return from death, but why would that have created a worldwide movement?

Well, it didn't simply mean that there was life after death after all, and that if we believe in Jesus then we can live with him in heaven forever after we die--and yet that is what most contemporary Christians believe today. That idea reflects the view that we are really spirits trapped in earthly bodies in a corrupt world, and what we are longing for is release from this corrupt world so we can live spiritually--that is, non-physically--forever, all of which reflects Platonic philosophy more than it does the Bible.

The biblical view is that Jesus' resurrection was not an isolated incident, however pivotal or unique. It was rather the spearheading of a new age coming into being in our present one. "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man" (1 Cor 15:20-21). "Firstfruits" is an agricultural term meaning the beginning of a harvest. Its importance is not so much in itself as in the promise of the full harvest to come. The "harvest" of which Jesus was the firstfruits is not merely a harvest of souls to be saved (although it includes that) because Jesus didn't need saving. Jesus' resurrection was the firstfruits of a new age, a new creation, what Jesus and John the Baptist had called the Kingdom. God's plan is simply much larger than simply rescuing a few of us sinners off of this wicked old earth. He plans to bring into resurrection life the whole first creation:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Romans 8:19-24)

Christians generally look forward to being with God eternally in heaven, often looking to Revelation 21:1 for a new heaven and a new earth (although they are not really much interested in the new earth), especially noting that "the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." Let's not worry about this world, because God's going to scrap it anyway. But in the above passage from Romans, creation itself is eagerly longing and groaning like a woman in labor, not for its own destruction, but rather for liberation from its bondage to decay and for being brought into freedom and glory. God isn't going to scrap the old creation and start fresh, any more than he was willing to scrap us sinful human beings and start fresh with a new Adam and Eve on Venus. Just as God's desire is to renew and transform us, his plan is to renew and transform the old creation. If you will, the "new heaven and the new earth" are going to be made out of the old ones. God's not opposed to physical reality. He created it.

That's where the resurrection of our bodies fits in. Why are we going to be resurrected? Because we're going to inhabit the new physical reality that God is going to create by redeeming and transforming the old one. And just as we are still ourselves, but redeemed, purified, and changed, so also the creation will still be the same creation, but redeemed, purified, and changed. The last chapter of the Bible doesn't speak of us going off to heaven, ridding ourselves of this awful physical universe once and for all; rather, it speaks of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. It's not us going off to live with God, but God coming down and inhabiting earth with us. The passage is worth quoting:

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." (Revelation 21:2-3)

God's plan is to come to earth and be with us eternally in an incorruptible world which will be born out of the world we are presently in. While you may go off to be with God in heaven after you die--for a while--your ultimate destiny, if your trust is in Jesus, is to be an eternal resident of this world, once God is through remaking it. Jesus first, and then those of us who trust in him, are the beginnings of that new creation. And therefore, Paul's challenge to us is to live as though we were resurrected people right now:

Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:55-58)

Here's the point: if we know we're going to be resurrected, we need to begin living as though we were resurrected; and if we know that this present creation is going to be redeemed, then we need to live in it as though we were an agent of that transformation.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

What Resurrection Means

In order to understand the importance of the Resurrection, we first have to understand what the first-century views of resurrection were. What were the prior expectations of the people who first heard the story of Jesus' resurrection?

In the non-Jewish Greco-Roman world, there were two predominant views of the afterlife. The first was the basic materialist stance that there is no afterlife. The Greek Epicurean philosophical school would be an example of this stance. Although construed somewhat differently than contemporary philosophers and scientists would use the terms, this point of view would hold that the material universe is all there is. There is no "spirit" apart from the body in which there is any consciousness, hence there is no continuing existence once the physical body ceases to function. Dead is dead.

The other major strand of Greco-Roman thought is well represented by Plato. There is a continued existence after death; in fact, this is what earthly existence longs for--a release from bondage to the body and the corrupted physical realm. We are essentially spirits trapped in bodies, longing for release. You may recognize this point of view--many Christians' view of "heaven" owes more to Plato than to the Bible. This earthly life is something merely to be endured until we escape it to live in heaven forevermore with God. More on this in another post.

For now, the relevant point is that no one in the Greco-Roman world was expecting anything like physical resurrection. It would either have been considered impossible or pointless. The spirit either didn't exist apart from the physical body, or if it did, the last thing it wanted was to be re-embodied. (The concept of reincarnation did exist, but this is different from resurrection--it is embodiment in a different body, not the same one, and was not considered the goal of existence, but rather a punishment or a continued stage on the way to fully-realized--that is, disembodied--spirituality.)

But that's the non-Jewish world. Christianity arose in a Jewish cultural context. What did the Jews believe regarding resurrection?

Once again, there were two predominant views. And once again, one of them precluded resurrection. The Sadducean group, which dominated the Temple priesthood, rejected resurrection (as well as angels and providence). While present-day Christians tend to scoff at this point of view, it actually accords with the Sadducees' generally more strict reading of the Hebrew scriptures, which must be admitted to have little to say on the afterlife in general and resurrection specifically.

On the other hand, the Pharisaical group which dominated the rabbis in the synagogues did believe in resurrection. However, this resurrection was not expected to occur until the eschaton--the final culmination of history. After the death of Lazarus in John 11, his sister Martha expresses this point of view in her dialogue with Jesus: "Martha answered, 'I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day'." So yes, there were Jews who believed in resurrection, but not in present-day reality--only at the end of history. It's also worth noting that resurrection played no part in Jewish messianic expectations. Messiah was to bring about the liberation of Israel as a nation and reestablish the throne of David; neither the death of the messiah nor a resurrection was envisioned.

What does this all mean with regard to Jesus' resurrection? Quite simply, it means that the usual explanations for why Jesus' resurrection is important are wrong, or at least beside the main point.

Christians generally view Jesus' resurrection in terms of God vindicating Jesus, demonstrating that he was the Messiah, God in flesh, and innocent of any crime or sin for which he should die. But while this all is true, it reflects backward reasoning: if we come to trust in Jesus and believe that he was God in human flesh, then his resurrection takes on all these meanings. But resurrection itself would not have demonstrated any of these things to anyone in the first-century world. Remember, nobody was expecting anyone to be resurrected--not in the Gentile world at all, and not in the Jewish world in the here-and-now.

But for those who were hoping for resurrection "at the last day," as Martha was, Jesus' resurrection would have meant something mind-blowing and worldview-changing: that something that had been hoped for at the end of time was a present reality, right now. It was a glimpse into a deeply longed-for future, breaking into the present. Evidently, when Jesus (and before him, John the Baptist) were proclaiming that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), it really was.

Everything they had ever hoped for was beginning to come to pass. Right now.

That's what Jesus' resurrection meant. What it implies, for those who believe, is where we're headed next.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

The Problem with a Cross-Centered Theology

Those who know me know that I wear a cross signet ring. It's actually my college class ring; I wanted something that I would want to continue wearing, and not just put in a box somewhere, so my parents bought me a plain signet ring and had a cross etched in it. It was intended as a statement of my faith, as an opportunity to share Jesus with others.

The cross has been the main symbol of Christianity for most of its history. Not all of its history--it wasn't until crucifixion stopped being actively used by the Romans as a means of torture and death that Christians began widely using it as the symbol of their faith. But it has long been Christianity's predominant symbol. Every church has at least one. Most Christian organizations use it in their logos. And it's not hard to see why. What Jesus did on the cross for us is central to what we believe.

Most Christians, if asked what they believe, would offer something like this: "God created human beings to be in a relationship with him, but we messed that up through sin, so he came to the earth as a human being--Jesus--and lived a sinless life and then died on a cross in our place, so we could be in a relationship with him again and spend eternity with him in heaven." You'll notice that the cross is at the very turning point of this statement of faith. It's completely central.

Now, although I agree with every part of that statement, there's something I think is missing--and it's more significant than simply the fact that the whole thing needs a lot of fleshing out and explanation. What's missing is the resurrection of Jesus. Having had this issue brought to my attention by N. T. Wright's fantastic book, Surprised by Hope, it is astonishing to me that any statement of Christian faith could ever be made without reference to the Resurrection. And yet I wonder how many people, reading that statement the first time through, noticed its absence or considered it significant.

Of course, you could tuck it in there, right between "place" and "so," and it would fit. And Christians do believe in the Resurrection and do think that affirming the Resurrection is important. My problem isn't that Christians don't believe in Jesus' resurrection; it's that the Resurrection ends up being an afterthought in the way most of us think about our faith.

Think about it: we view the central problem as sin, and the fact that a holy God can't simply let sin slide. The penalty--death--must be paid. The solution is a substitute: if someone who doesn't deserve to die dies in our place, then we don't have to die ourselves. The crime is paid for. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. But notice what we've done: Jesus' work on the cross solves the problem. When He said, "It is finished," it really was--that is to say, the whole problem is solved. It's like the end of a detective story: once the detective solves the crime, the story is, for all intents and purposes, over. The technical term for the ending of a story, after its climax, is denouement. It's really just window dressing, and a lot of modern writers try to get rid of it entirely, and just end at the climax. You can think up your own window dressing, imagine how it came out on your own.

That's what happens to the Resurrection, in the typical way of looking at it. It happened, and we believe in it, but it's not really crucial to the story. If it hadn't happened, it wouldn't really matter, because the sin problem is already taken care of at the Cross. We try to make it matter, by saying that it demonstrated that Jesus really was who he said he was, or that it proves that there is life after death. But whatever it demonstrated, or whatever it proves, really doesn't matter in the end--the real work had already been done.

But that's not how the Apostle Paul saw it. "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor. 15:14). For Paul, the Resurrection is absolutely central. All of the gospel messages preached in the book of Acts make the Resurrection central. What Jesus did on the Cross was very important. But the biblical writers seem to indicate that what he did by rising from the dead was equally important, maybe even more so.

In my next few blog posts, I'm going to sketch out why I think the Resurrection needs to occupy a more central place in our theology. And I'm wondering if we've missed a rather obvious symbol of the faith. The world has seen us as people of the cross for a long time. Maybe it's time we need to be seen as people of the empty tomb.

Consumerism is Thoroughly Pagan

This paragraph from Alan Hirsch's The Forgotten Ways encapsulates much of where my thinking is at recently:

Speaking to the insecurity of the human situation, it was Jesus who said "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matt. 6:31-33, emphasis mine). Consumerism is thoroughly pagan. Pagans run after these things (Gk. epizēteō "seek, desire, want; search for, look for"). Seen in this light, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Extreme Makeover, Big Brother, and other lifestyle shows are of the most pagan, and paganizing, shows on TV. Even the perennial favorites about renovating the house paganize us, because they focus us on that which so easily enslaves us. In these the banality of consumerism reaches a climax as we are sold the lie that the thing that will complete us is a new kitchen or a house extension, whereas in fact these only ad more stress to our mortgages and our families. These shows are far more successful promoters of unbelief than even outright intellectual atheism, because they hit us at that place where we must render our trust and loyalty. Most people are profoundly susceptible to the idolatrous allure of money and things. We do well to remember what our Lord said about serving two masters and about running after things (Matt. 6:24-33).

One of my greatest concerns right now is that the church world, at least in the US, far from being a prophetic voice against this paganism in our culture, is enthusiastically in bed with it. To take a stand against the consumerism of our culture is to be labeled a communist.

Wise Words about Relevance

Wise words from David Wayne, the "JollyBlogger," on relevance and the gospel:

All these years I have been in ministry and have been on a constant quest to make the gospel relevant to my hearers.  I now see that as misguided.  The question is not how we can make the gospel relevant to us, but how we can make ourselves relevant to God.  In other words, God defines reality and it is our task to conform our lives to reality as He defines it, not "make Him" relevant to us.  He is always relevant, but we are often irrelevant to Him.

So true.  Pray for David, who has been going through cancer treatments this past year, as well as for Michael Spencer, the iMonk, who has also been recently diagnosed with cancer.

The Jobless Rate for People Like You

Check out this graphic: The Jobless Rate for People Like You - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com. It shows the various jobless rates for varying groups of people. Some of the results are a bit surprising: women, for example, are faring better than men right now. Others are disturbing: black college graduates, while doing better than the population as a whole, do only about the same as white people of all education levels combined. The recession is clearly toughest on the young. It's just interesting to see this all visually.

HT: Scot McKnight

Has Modern Conservatism Become a Cult?

Has Modern Conservatism Become a Cult? » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

The vast majority of the right subscribes to a form of libertarian populism inflected with social conservative attachments—an unholy hybrid of Ayn Rand, William Jennings Bryan, and Morton Downey, Jr.

This is a terrific article written by Joe Carter, formerly of the Evangelical Outpost. It encapsulates much of what has disaffected me from the conservative movement over the last several years, and what has made me rethink how exactly the Christian vision should be expressed in the social and political spheres. Check it out.

ht: JollyBlogger (David Wayne)

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Leonard Ravenhill

I'm not generally a fan of this type of video - basically spoken text - but the message of this one is pretty powerful. Very challenging and humbling.

A Few Minor Repairs

I obviously haven't kept up with the site for a while, and came back to find that a few things had fallen into disrepair. Sorry if that was an inconvenience to the handful who were actually reading. I've been doing a few repairs to get things back up to speed.

Both the javascript that worked the magic for the "Read More" tags and the audio files that had the messages on the Audio page were hosted at third-party sites and eventually quit, so evidently both haven't been working for who knows how long. My apologies. I had found and imported the javascript into this site's source code a few days before Google came out with this announcement that it had created its own means of accomplishing the same thing. I'm trying out Google's version on this post.[Yeah, I tried it, it didn't work. I'll stick with what does.]

I've also uploaded my sermon files onto a more reliable platform, so they shouldn't disappear again. I also always intended to upload music files as well, but haven't gotten around to finishing any song recordings. Maybe I'll get inspired again someday.

So once again, sorry for the inconvenience if anyone experienced problems with the site over the last few months.

Additional note: it appears that the audio player doesn't work in Explorer. I'm not sure if it ever did, or if I just assumed that if it works in Firefox it will just work. (Stupid, stupid assumption, I know.) Anyway, I'll keep trying to get the bugs out, but if the player doesn't work, you should be able to right click the hyperlinked text and download the mp3 files to play in whatever way does work.

Reflections on Passion Week: The Resurrection

What did it mean for Jesus to rise again?

Of course the disciples would be overjoyed to see their friend and mentor again. But beyond that; what did it mean to them? What should it mean to us?

First of all, Jesus' resurrection was a spectacular vindication of the idea of resurrection in the first place. Resurrection wasn't explicitly taught in the Old Testament, and Jewish rabbis had differing ideas about it. The Pharisees believed in resurrection, and Jesus' resurrection vindicated that point of view (Acts 4:1-2; 23:6). So Jesus' resurrection gave evidence that resurrection could happen, and therefore it gave hope that death was not the end for us.

Second, Jesus' resurrection was a vindication of Jesus' claims about himself, especially, claims with regard to the resurrection: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die" (John 11:25-26), he told Mary when she was grieving over her brother Lazarus. Peter connects Jesus' resurrection with God's exaltation of him (Acts 2:31-36), as does Paul (Rom. 1:3-4). Jesus' resurrection demonstrated who he was. To have authority over death itself was to have ultimate authority. Caesar could kill; only Jesus could give life from the dead.

These two elements were combined: Jesus himself is the key to our hope of resurrection. We are to be in union with Jesus in both his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:5; Phil. 3:10-11). Our hope for resurrection is based on Jesus' resurrection (1 Cor. 15); if he has no life, then we have no hope for life either. Perhaps Peter puts it most evocatively when he writes of a "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. 1:3).

A living hope. That's what resurrection means. Jesus coming back to life in the here and now brings us a living hope. How do you express that living hope? What does it mean to you?

Reflections on Passion Week: Holy Saturday

What must it have been like?

You've been following him for the better part of three years. You've seen amazing things that no one else would believe in. You've watched him confound his opponents and open your mind to new ways of seeing that you couldn't have imagined on your own. At first it came as a thought, too far beyond the pale to do more than chuckle over. But then it was persistent, and at last you came to formulate it, at least as a question: could this be the Messiah? He was different, certainly, than what you had expected. But his teachings were so different, and yet so self-evidently true, and the works of power that you had seen with your own eyes! Whoever he was, he was no ordinary man. And so you began to dare to hope.

And you saw the danger coming. These people he was tangling with, you don't mess with them. They're nothing compared with the Romans, of course; big fish in small ponds. But don't let that fool you: they rule the small ponds. You would be frightened every time he suggested going back into Judea. They didn't mean to defeat him; they meant to eliminate him. But he would go anyway. It was like he had no fear. But only a fool would have no fear.

And this last week.... It would have been enough to slip into town unnoticed, although of course he could never go anywhere unnoticed. But the crazy parade they had, openly calling him a King! They're cheering and he's weeping over the city. And then he goes into the Temple and totally rips everything apart. He was daring them. And for a while he seemed to get away with it. Every question they throw at him, he has an answer no one could have expected. He was turning everything you thought you knew on its head.

And then that final night. He didn't act fearless anymore. He didn't act afraid either, but troubled. Said he was going somewhere you couldn't go. You panicked. You've been following him for so long; what happens if he up and abandons you? A lot of what he said you couldn't process; it didn't make any sense. Some of it makes sense now, but he couldn't have meant that--he couldn't have actually known! A sane man would run. You don't just let the lion pounce if you have time to get away.

Yesterday was awful. You didn't have the nerve to stand up for him; what could you have done? Gone down with him? He didn't want to fight, and once the Romans are involved, you don't fight, whatever you do. You wanted to get away but you couldn't bear to leave, so you stay on the outskirts, just within eyeshot. To see your teacher mocked and ridiculed and stripped and flogged and hoisted up! You'd seen crazy miracles, but there were no miracles yesterday. Unless you count how fast he died. Thank God, he went fast--probably the beating.

So now it's tomorrow. How could the sun just rise again like nothing ever happened? He's gone; the Romans and the Rabbis are watching out for you. Nothing to do but hide and grieve. You'll slip out of the city when the Feast is over, with all the other pilgrims. You'll drift away from the rest of them; what's left to hold you together? And then what?

He wasn't who you'd hoped for after all. That much, at least, is clear. You'd put your faith, your trust, years of your life. All for nothing. Where do you go from here? What do you do? You won't follow another crazy miracle worker, that's for sure. You won't trust. Never again will you trust like you did with this man.

Because you never, ever again, want to feel the total blackness and emptiness that you feel right now.

Reflections on Passion Week: Good Friday

    The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
          --T.S. Eliot, East Coker

There is nothing remotely new that I could possibly write concerning the events of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. But in the vein of re-reminding us of how revolutionary Jesus' message had been in its original context, and how unsurprising it is, after all, that his message and actions would lead to his rejection, not only by the religious leaders, but by the people as well, it might be well for us to remember how odd and unexpected and unfitting would have been crucifixion as the mode of God's redeeming humanity. It's so easy for us now to parrot, "Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day." We forget that neither the Jews nor anyone else could possibly have expected this. As Paul writes to the Romans, "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles," (1 Cor. 1:23).

The Messiah was the hope of Israel's deliverance from foreign domination. To be crucified by that same foreign power would have been the last thing the Jews would have been looking for in their Messiah, and if they had truly thought he was the Messiah, they would not have delivered him over to Pilate or cried out for his crucifixion. Actually being crucified, if there were any doubt, would have disqualified him in the eyes of the Law: "anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse," (Deut. 21:23).

For the Greeks and Romans, the idea of a crucified god was the height of idiocy: paganism worshiped beauty, honor, and power, not weakness, helplessness, and shame. The pagan philosopher Celsus mocks the very idea:

You acknowledge that he openly suffered. How is it credible that Jesus could have predicted these things? How could the dead man be immortal? What god, or spirit, or prudent man would not, on foreseeing that such events were to befall him, avoid them if he could; whereas he threw himself headlong into those things which he knew beforehand were to happen?...

So the crucifixion makes no sense either to Jews or to pagans. And yet, this is the means by which God chose to save the world. It made no sense. The nonsensical nature of it should not be lost on us today. Because we've come into a time in which the crucifixion is once again nonsensical. But it nonetheless woke the hearts of many, even as it brought the scorn of some, and so may it do today. Let's not be afraid of the foolishness of the Gospel. It's wiser than the wisdom of humanity.

Reflections on Passion Week: The Passover Lamb

The last thing that Jesus does, before the events that directly lead to the Crucifixion, is eat the Passover meal with his disciples (Mk. 14:12-26). While a lot has been written regarding the symbolism of the original Passover in Egypt and the Passover lamb specifically as both relate to Jesus and the crucifixion, I'm not sure we reflect very much on what the Passover meant to the Jews at that time.

Passover was both a remembrance and a promise of freedom. The Jews were recalling God's deliverance of them from bondage in Egypt. If we were to take what Independence Day means to Americans (or meant, in a more patriotic time), and multiply it about a hundredfold, we might get a sense of what Passover meant. God's miraculous deliverance from slavery! The birth of a new national identity, the beginnings of the journey to the Promised Land, the new realization of God's special concern for them as his chosen people. That is what Passover meant, except that now it was bittersweet, because Israel was no longer free. They had failed to fulfill God's commandments to them, had been judged, and had lost their independence. And so now the remembrance of being set free had become a promise of future freedom. Once again, God may deliver us! Once again, we may be a free people under the rulership of God alone! This is what the prophets had foretold, and it was what every Jew devoutly longed for.

What must it have meant for Jesus, as his last act before being delivered over to the Gentiles to be crucified, to celebrate the Passover? We know that he agonized over going through with the crucifixion in Gethsemane, begged the Father to prevent it from happening. John writes that he was "troubled in spirit" at the meal itself (John 13:21). Here they were, celebrating deliverance, looking forward to promised freedom, and Jesus knows that his freedom and his life will be taken from him in a matter of hours. And he knows that these men, who are closer to him than anyone else on earth, do not and cannot understand. They will not understand until it's all over with. One of them, in fact, has misunderstood so badly that he will betray Jesus into the hands of his enemies. The rest will run away from him; the one who protests the loudest that he will defend Jesus to the death will in fact deny any knowledge of him. All this, he knows, as together they eat the sacrificed lamb and the unleavened bread, as they dip their bread into the same dish and drink from the same cup.

Jesus knows that he comes to bring freedom; he also knows that the freedom he brings is not what his disciples expect or long for. He knows he is a king; he also knows that his kingdom is not of this world. He knows that all must be disappointed in him before they can have their faith renewed. He knows that he has come to bring them, not what they want, but what they need, and at a cost far greater than any of them can imagine. He knows that the deliverance from Egypt, grand and spectacular as it was, is merely a foreshadowing of the deliverance he has come to offer.

In what ways is our own vision limited? How far do our own desires fall short of what he longs to give us? Don't imagine merely a greater degree of what we already want. Imagine something else, something other, something different. Abraham, Moses, David, Paul; each of them and countless others saw the death of what they longed for before they saw the birth of what God had for them. In what ways do we misunderstand God's purposes? And are we open to having our vision changed?

Reflections on Passion Week: Everything You Believe Is Wrong

During Passion Week, a number of pronouncement narratives are related (Mk 12:13-44 and parallels). You may have noticed that in many types of stories that the Gospels tell about Jesus (technically called "pericopes,") the story ends with Jesus making a final pronouncement. We never find out what the reaction to it was; the climax, and the point, of the story lies in Jesus' pronouncement. So one way of looking at an extended series of these stories and tying them together is by pulling out the significant pronouncements and setting them together. This is particularly useful in this case, since for most of us the stories are sufficiently familiar that merely citing the pronouncement brings to mind the entire context. So here goes:

• "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
• "When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.... He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"
• "The most important one is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
• "Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."
• "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything­­--all she had to live on."

What do we get when we put all these pronouncements together? It seems to me that Jesus is correcting a number of different misperceptions that either his opponents or the people themselves have. He's essentially saying, "Everything you believe is wrong."

For example, the Pharisees and the Herodians--otherwise bitter enemies--join forces in order to try to trap Jesus over the issue of taxation. Taxation here is representative of the whole relationship between the Jewish people and the Roman government, opposed by the Pharisees and supported by the Herodians. The real question is, should the people of God be in support of a hostile pagan government? Jesus here deals with the conundrum by essentially saying, "You're both wrong; you're conflating religious with political allegience. Don't get tied up in knots over the government; give them their due, but focus your true allegience upon God."

Similarly, when the Sadducees question Jesus about marriage and the resurrection, Jesus tells them that they're wrong in their presuppositions about both. While Jesus confounds the Sadducees' skepticism regarding a resurrection, he does so by also confounding what were probably the Pharisees' assumptions concerning the nature of the resurrection. Rather than thinking of the resurrection as a simple extension of earthly life, with aspects such as marriage being continued, Jesus affirms resurrection but asserts that it is a completely different mode of being, in which the categories of marriage do not apply.

In response to the question of the greatest commandment, Jesus responds with what would have been a perfectly acceptable answer from the Shema ("love the Lord your God"), but then extends it by adding Leviticus 19:18 as a second commandment that is "like" the first. Essentially, Jesus is saying, "You are wrong in your understanding of what it means to love God: it necessarily entails loving people as well."

Jesus moves on to challenge the nature of authority as popularly understood at the time: spiritual authority is not a means to receiving honor, preference, and prestige, and those who wield it for that purpose, instead of being blessed by God, will in fact be "punished most severely." Matthew 23 extends Mark's short denunciation and demonstrates how scathing Jesus' condemnation is. We miss the point, since we have come to view Jesus' opponents as the "bad guys" and his criticisms as rather obvious (Jesus' examples of the Pharisees' pomposity appear ridiculous largely because of the cultural distance between them and us). In reality, the Pharisees were relatively popular among the people at the time, and honor accorded to them was considered normal.

Finally, Jesus challenges the contemporary view of giving to God. Instead of focusing on the absolute value of gifts, Jesus focuses on what the gift means to the giver: the proportion of one's goods being given, and therefore the degree of faith required to give.

So, in essence, Jesus says: You're wrong about one's relationship to the government; you're wrong about the nature of marriage and the resurrection; you're wrong about what love of God entails; you're wrong about the nature of spiritual authority; and you're wrong about the value of gifts given to God. If you want to follow God as he wants to be followed, you're going to have to unlearn almost everything you think you know about God.

And we wonder why the crowds turned against him. How many of us would turn on anyone who challenged our preconceptions in that way? How many of us, in fact, do?

Reflections on Passion Week: Authority and the Parable of the Tenants

After Jesus cleansed the Temple, all the Synoptics record Jesus' authority being challenged (Mk. 11:27-33; Mt. 21:23-27; Lk. 20:1-8). We often focus on Jesus' actual response and neglect the nature of the question and the irony of the situation. The "chief priests, the teachers of the Law, and the elders" are all arrayed against Jesus, even though the different designations indicate different factions that would ordinarily be competing with one another. They challenge Jesus, not on the substance of what he has done (which would commit them to trying to justify the money changers and sacrifice sellers) but by what authority he presumes to challenge the system. The irony of the situation is clear: these groups claim institutional authority from God, but have been tolerating sinful and exploitative practices in the Temple complex; meanwhile Jesus, who actually posesses authority from God and has been using it to oppose their corrupt system, is being questioned on the basis of his authority to do so.

This irony is what allows Jesus to dismiss their question without answering it: his authority derives from the same source as that of John the Baptist, also an outsider rejected by the Jewish authorities. What he and John were doing--calling people to repentence, challenging a corrupt religious system--itself attests to the authority by which they were doing it. The situation is analogous to the one in which the disciples stopped a man who had been driving out demons in Jesus' name (Mk. 9:38-40), "because he was not one of us." It should give us pause, when we're tempted to challenge the authority of someone to act, when we can't actually oppose the action itself.

Jesus responds with the Parable of the Tenants (Mk. 12:1-12; Lk. 20:9-19; Mt. 21:33-46--actually in Matthew, Jesus responds with three parables that increasingly develop the same theme). A landowner rents his vinyard out to tenants and goes away on a journey. Later, he sends servants back to collect the fruit due him. The tenants abuse or kill the servants; lastly, the landowner sends his son, who should have been respected more than any of the servants; instead, the tenants kill him, specifically because he is the heir and they hope to gain the vinyard for themselves.

Aside from the clear allegorical features, this is specifically a parable about authority. Who, specifically, has authority from the landowner--the tenants or the servants? They both have a kind of delegated authority. The tenants have the authority to work the land and produce as much fruit as they can, as well as not to give it to just anyone who comes along. But the servants, and preeminently, the son, have the authority to take from them what is due to the landowner, and it is that authority that the servants challenge. They have forgotten that it is the landowner's field, and greedily covet it for themselves. In doing so, they bring down judgment on themselves, and those who have challenged Jesus' authority clearly understand that Jesus has turned the tables, challenging their authority and placing them under judgment. While the crowds may still be with Jesus, all of their leaders are now firmly opposed to him. It's the priests against the prophets: do you side with those who have all the institutional authority, or with the guy who comes out of nowhere, claims to be speaking for God, and challenging the status quo? It's a tougher decision than many of us would like to admit.

When we have been given a place of service, one of the hardest things to do is to remember that the service still belongs to the Lord. We speak of "our" church and "our" ministry as a descriptor of association: it is the one that we give our service to. But it is too easy for "our" or "my" to become a possessive: the one that in some sense we think we own. We need to recall that any place of ministry that we have is actually God's, and whatever success we attain is also God's. If we don't, we challenge His authority over "our" church and "our" ministry (or "our" home, "our" family, or "our" job, for that matter). And as the ending of Jesus' parable makes clear, that's not a position we want to put ourseves in.

Reflections on Passion Week: The Cleansing of the Temple

Just a change of title; no new material.

The synoptic tradition places Jesus' cleansing of the Temple on Monday of Holy Week (Mk. 11:12-19). Here we see that, instead of attacking the hated Romans, Jesus attacks the Temple system--more specifically, the system of money changing and sacrifice selling that had grown up around the Temple. It's difficult to say what effect this would have had on the Jewish populace, and specifically, the crowds who had hailed him as King the day before. The money changers (who exchanged Roman coinage, necessary for commerce in the world at large, for Hebrew shekels, to pay the Temple tax) and sacrifice sellers (who sold animals suitable for sacrifice) provided services that were both useful and extortionary. And the scripture records that the crowds were "amazed at his teaching" (Mk. 11:18), so some of the reaction was evidently positive.

And yet there was a subtext to Jesus' message that would have been disturbing. He specifically recalls Isaiah's prophecy that the Temple would be "A house of prayer for all nations." The word "nations" (ethnoi) was used specifically for Gentiles, and the area of the Temple complex that the money changers and sacrifice sellers would have been set up in was the Court of the Gentiles. So the area that had been specifically set up for people from other nations to have access to God had been co-opted by those who had something to gain from exploiting the sacrificial system. (We'll leave aside the point that the court of the Gentiles itself was the outermost court--a type of inclusion that really meant exclusion and made a mockery of Isaiah's words, "my house," not an outer courtyard surrounding the house, "will be called a house of prayer for all nations.") It was probably easy to justify elbowing out the Gentiles: there were presumably few Gentiles using it, so it could be rationalized as utilizing wasted space.

The issue of separation from the Gentiles is a thorny one. Throughout the Old Testament, God had told Israel that they must be separate from the rest of the nations, and for much of that time, Israel didn't want to be. They wanted a king, just like all the other nations. They were constantly being drawn into idolatry and the religious practices of surrounding nations. This continued until the Babylonian captivity, when Israel was finally made to understand that they had to be separate. With the conquests of Alexander the Great and the advent of Hellenism, the party of the Pharisees ("separated ones") developed as an anti-Hellenistic movement devoted to preserving Judaism and keeping it separate from encroaching foreign cultural forces. E.P. Sanders argues that the aspects of the Law that were focused on most strongly during the Second Temple period were those aspects--sabbaths, dietary laws, circumcision--that separated Israelites from the Gentiles. It is in this milieu that Jesus brought back the issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles prophesied by Isaiah.

As later history would show, the developing Christian church would continue to have problems with the assimilation of the Gentiles. It turns up in Acts 11, when Peter is questioned about evangelizing the household of Cornelius. It returns in Acts 15, when a council is convened to determine whether Gentile converts must be required to follow the entire Law of Moses. It recurs in Acts 21, when Paul returns to Jerusalem and is accused of subverting Judaism and defiling the Temple by bringing in Gentiles. Once again, we are in a position where it is difficult to appreciate the import of the Bible's words: the Jew/Gentile issue is no longer a live one in the Church (largely because the Church has long since become predominantly Gentile). It's easy to say, "Yes, Paul was right to argue that Jewish laws shouldn't be mandated for Gentile believers." The question is, what roadblocks have we erected that present artificial stumbling blocks for other groups to receive the gospel?

Exclusion seems to be a perennial feature of human nature. Everyone wants to belong to an "in" crowd, and the existence of an "in" crowd necessitates that some must be defined out. It's both amusing and saddening to see someone protest bitterly against "cliques," only to cease protesting upon inclusion in one of them. Jews divided humanity up into Jews and Gentiles; Greeks divided humanity up into Greeks and barbarians. It's easy to cheer Jesus on for opposing religious profiteering; a little harder to examine the "in" crowds that we may have created for ourselves and the cultural roadblocks we may have erected against others. "Neither do I condemn you" and "Go and sin no more" are both parts of the gospel. But the first one comes first.

Reflections on Passion Week: Palm Sunday

Just a change of title; no new material.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Passion Week, the final week leading up to Jesus' crucifixion and Resurrection. A number of different approaches to this event reveal layers of meaning....

The first approach is that of responding with the crowds. When churches celebrate Palm Sunday by giving out palm fronds and encouraging the congregation to wave them in recognition of Jesus as messiah, they are encouraging this response.  On the surface, the crowds appear to recognize Jesus as messiah, although the liturgical and celebratory usage of Psalm 118, which the crowds were quoting, was already well established, for example as the benediction to the feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles). Mark seems to leave open the possibility that Jesus was in the middle of a celebration that was not necessarily self-consciously directed toward him (11:8-11), but Matthew and Luke tie the celebration directly to Jesus' presence (Mt 21:8-11; Lk 19:36-40). John also ties the celebration to Jesus but adds, "At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him" (12:16 NIV), indicating that whatever they had understood themselves to be doing at the time was given new meaning after the Resurrection. So this first response is one of recognition: we are to recognize that Jesus is King.

The problem with this response, as the second approach argues, is that it ignores subsequent events, especially the crowds' later rejection of Jesus before Pilate (Mk 15:11-14; Mt 27:20-23; Lk 23:13-23). While it is dangerous to regard "the crowds" as a static group of people comprising the same individuals, it is at least possible that members of the "crowds" of Palm Sunday were also members of the "crowds" standing before Pilate at Jesus' trial--at any rate, the crowds crying "Hosanna" were not a force of opposition to the crowds crying "Crucify him"; they had either changed allegiances or disappeared into anonymity. The second approach recognizes the crowd's recognition of Jesus as messiah as superficial, and calls for not mere recognition, but for commitment to him. The crowds were fickle: as long as the wind appeared to be backing Jesus, they were with him; but when the going got tough, they ran, or worse, turned on him. This approach recognizes the possibility of apostasy, especially in the face of persecution, and encourages steadfastness. The second response is one of commitment: we are to commit ourselves to his service, regardless of trials or difficulties.

Yet another approach questions the reasons for the crowds' apparent change of loyalties. It's easy to lose track of the events of Passion Week, since the Gospels give so much detail to them: about 3/8 of Mark (by chapter count) is devoted to the events of Passion Week; 1/4 of Matthew and Luke; and nearly half of John. These chapters do not reveal a rising opposition to Jesus that had not existed before. Certainly we see the Pharisees and Sadducees trying to trap Jesus, but this had long since been going on, as especially John's Gospel reveals. So if the crowds had already recognized Jesus as messiah and were following him as late as the beginning of Passion Week, what happened to change their allegiance so quickly? The answer would seem to be, not the actions of Jesus' opponents, but Jesus' actions themselves.

The crowds recognized Jesus as messiah, but the concept of messiah was thought of in political terms: the messiah was to deliver the people from their oppression by the Romans. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem with the crowds that were there to celebrate the Passover--a feast dedicated to remembering God's deliverance of Israel from the oppression of slavery in Egypt--it could have been expected that He would rally the people against Rome. Not necessarily to lead an actual revolt, but some anti-empire rhetoric may have been well received. But that's not what he did. On the next day, Jesus enters the Temple and challenges, not the Romans, but the Temple system itself.

We all like to think that Jesus is on our side, challenging issues and authorities that we oppose. We think, in short, that we're on his side, when we're really wanting him to be on our side. What shakes us up is when Jesus starts challenging our sacred cows, shaking up our systems, opposing our assumptions and cherished ideas. Jesus did this, during his final week, to a greater degree than he had done before. It's hard for us to see this in a modern reading of the Gospels, since Jesus is opposing a system that we no longer strongly identify with. We don't recognize how revolutionary his teachings were, how astonishing his words and actions would have been to those who heard him first. And this may explain how those who initially paved Jesus' way into Jerusalem with their own clothing and acclaimed him as their king could, in a few days, turn against him so violently. And it might be worth considering: how many of our cherished balloons would Jesus burst if he were to come physically into our own sanctuaries? And how many of us would be crying out, "Crucify him," if we didn't know for sure who he was, and he was threatening our own beliefs?

What do you think? Anyone want to peel the onion further?