The Gospel Shape of Worship

In his essay on “The Gospel in the Prayer Book” (1966), J.I. Packer (1926 – 2020), the English, Evangelical, Low-church, Anglican Theologian, wrote that “a good (worship) service is not a set of unconnected bits and pieces,” but is rather “an integrated unit, having an overall ‘shape’ and a clear, planned ‘route’ along which worshippers are led.”

Reflecting on the “journey” that his own Anglican tradition of worship takes its worshippers, Dr. Packer observed that it has “an inner structure consisting of a sequence of three themes: sin, detected and confessed; grace, proclaimed and celebrated; and faith, focused and expressed.” He explained that “in the proclaiming of grace, Jesus Christ, the Mediator, must be central, so we may formulate the sequence as, first, facing our utter need of Christ; second, acknowledging God’s merciful provision of Christ; and third, expressing our trustful, thankful response to Christ.” He saw this as the “Gospel Shape” of Christian worship.

First it makes us face “our present badness. “Second, it tells us of “the new life of grace.” And third, it leads us into “the right response,” which he said was “multiple,” including “prayer and praise for pardon; a joyful trust in God’s promises of mercy; learning of God from his Word; asking for help both for ourselves and for others; professing our own faith; and giving ourselves directly to God out of gratitude for all he has given to us.”

Growing up in this Prayer Book tradition and adding back into my spiritual repertoire now in retirement, not as a replacement for but as an addition to my Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) identity, vocation, and practice (spiritually, you can go home again), I find that I am greatly mindful of and deeply grateful for the way this “Prayer Book Path” has shaped me, and continues to move me.

Baron Friedrich von Hügel guided the people who came to him for spiritual direction into personal participation in the sacramental worship of the Church. He believed that such worship exerted “a crucial, inexorable force in the gradual spiritual formation of believers.” He said he’d seen some trees as a child on a family holiday in Brussels that had been permanently bent in the direction the wind blew, and those trees shaped by the wind became for him a picture of how the sacramental worship of the Church shapes and forms the souls of believers.

I make my home, spiritually, in churches where architecturally the Lord’s Table is front and center, and where liturgically I am led to and sent from the Lord’s Supper every time we gather. The Quaker Theologian Thomas Kelley wrote about how the two beats of Biblical religion are God pulling us into His heart where He tells us that we are His beloved daughters and sons, and then God hurtling us out of His heart and into the world where He asks us to carry its hurts and hopes with Him in “infinitely tender love.”

The liturgy of my Anglican practice with it “Prayer Book Path” insures that I am caught up into the two beats of the Biblical rhythm every time I worship with them, just as the hymnody of my Disciples practice with the richness of its “Lord’s Supper” selection (#384 – #430 in the Chalice Hymnal – That’s 46 Communion Hymns and Readings!) insures that I am caught up into the two beats of the rhythm of Biblical religion as well.

In my Anglican practice, it is the “Prayer of Humble Access” that gathers everything that I am thinking and feeling inside when it’s time to go forward for Communion, and gives it voice –

“We do not presume to come

to this your table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your abundant and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up
the crumbs under your table;
but you are the same Lord
whose character is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies

may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed

through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore

dwell in him, and he in us.  Amen.

And in my Disciple practice, it’s hymns like Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane’s standard “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” (#197 in the Chalice Hymnal) that does the very same thing for me –

“Upon that cross of Jesus
mine eye at times can see
the very dying form of one
who suffered there for me;
and from my stricken heart with tears
two wonders I confess:
the wonders of redeeming love
and my unworthiness.”

David Naugle, a Professor at Dallas Baptist University, writes about the “bits and pieces” problem that we have in the church today.  Things don’t touch from one Sunday to the next. In fact, quite often things don’t even touch on the same Sunday morning!  Worship is just a series of separate acts, each one with its own content and concern. We don’t see how things fit together. They’re like a bunch of pearls in a great big bowl. We reach in, pick one out, and hold it up all by itself. It has nothing to do with what came before. It has no connection with what comes next. It’s just one pearl at a time, and one pearl after another.

I don’t think this is how Christian worship is supposed to be.  

I think there’s supposed to be a logic, a progression, a unity to the things we do in worship. When we reach into that big bowl of pearls to pull one out, all the other pearls in the bowl come out with it because they’re all connected. They’re all strung together on the same string. There’s something that holds all its different “bits and pieces” together, and what I think that “something” is that holds together everything we do in worship is the Gospel. I think there is supposed to be a Gospel “shape” to Christian worship, an underlying skeletal structure that gets fleshed out in different ways from week to week, but that gives every worship service its basic shape and sequence.

William Sperry, (1882-1954), a Congregational Minister (the Pilgrims’ Church) and the President of Harvard Divinity School (1822-1953), wrote his book “Reality in Worship” in 1925. In it he suggested that ministers take a moment to review the order of the worship service of their churches to see if any “operative principle which determines the logical sequence of ideas and interests” is discernable, something that makes the service “a religious and artistic unity.” He observed that “the average minister, beyond picking a scripture lesson and hymn to anticipate the sermon and another hymn to follow the sermon, probably does not give five minutes thought a week to the rest of the service, and has no definite theory as to what is supposed to be happening or what a minister is theoretically doing.” Dr. Sperry said that the result is that our worship is “chaotic,” a “potpourri” of texts and gestures ransacked from diverse sources devoid of “a single guiding principle” which shapes and sustains the whole service, “flowing beneath the surface” in all of its acts.

To remedy this, Dr. Sperry turned to the narrative of the Prophet Isaiah’s encounter with the Living God (6:1-8). He saw this text as the Bible’s “formal transcript of the spiritual life,” the “simple, inevitable pattern” of the divine/human encounter.” He framed it as a dialectical sequence of two ideas colliding and then combining to create a brand new situation/condition –

Thesis: A Vision and Adoration of God – “I saw the Lord high and lifted up” (v. 1)

Antithesis: A Confession of Creaturehood – “Woe is me. I am lost” (v. 5)

Synthesis A: A Perception of a Redeeming/Reconciling Energy – “This (live coal) has touched your lips” (v. 7)

Synthesis B: A Reaffirmation of God’s Glory and a Rededication of the Self – “Here I am, send me” (v. 8)

“Why should not a religious service definitely follow this order?” Dr. Sperry asked. “What other order can it follow?” And because our worship services don’t, he concluded, more often than not, they fail to deliver the encounter with the living God that informs, forms, and transforms our lives as human beings, and we settle for entertainment, stimulation, and/or provocation instead.

The Eclipse: A Spiritual Rorschach Test

The eclipse today is proving to be something of a spiritual Rorschach Test. In a Rorschach Test a person is shown an ambiguous inkblot and is then asked to describe what they see. What a person says they see is then taken as an indication of their inner psychological and emotional state. Today’s eclipse has had this same effect on some people spiritually. Some are taking it as a sign of some impending apocalyptic upheaval.

“The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” Jesus said in his end times discourse on the Mount of Olives in Matthew 24:29-31. This imagery of cosmic shifts in the heavens and the disruption of familiar patterns here on earth were stock images in the Biblical worldview and vocabulary for a Theophany – a God appearance in time and space. Go back and read the accounts in the book of Exodus of the plagues in Egypt or Moses’ contact with the Living God on Sinai during the giving of the Law. Cosmic portends were vivid ways of talking about spiritual realities and Divine encounters. When God shows up, scary stuff happens.

This is the language Peter borrowed from the book of the Old Testament Prophet Joel to explain the events of the day of Pentecost – “And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day” (Acts 2:19-20/Joel 2:30-31). Peter painted with these colors again in his second letter when he turned his attention to delay of the Second Coming of Christ that had unsettled some people in his churches (2 Peter 2:8-13). Peter assured them that the promise of “new heavens and a new earth” was sure, and that its arrival would be signaled by that same sort of cosmic disturbance. And you don’t have to read very far into the book of Revelation before the mayhem in the heavens begins as the end draws nigh.

The folks who are taking today’s eclipse as a sign of the end of the world (something human beings have almost always done with eclipses, comets, and all other strange astronomical happenings) are taking their lead from this part of the Biblical witness. It’s part of the story, and to just write them off as crackpots is not going to foster the kind of faithful conversation that ought to be characteristic of a community that names Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. Rather than scolding or shaming those who see the eclipse as a signal of doom, I’d like to talk with them instead about how there’s another faithful way to think about it. I see something else in this cosmic inkblot.

The Biblical portends in the heavens of the Consummation are all signs of cosmic disorder, disruption, and destruction. But an eclipse is a sign of the exact opposite of this. NASA keeps a precise record and has an accurate schedule of them. We’ve known for years now the exact moment of the exact day of the exact path of this total eclipse. And we already know this about the next total eclipse, and about the one after that, and about the one after that. An eclipse is a sign of cosmic order and of God’s continuing providential care, not of disorder, disruption, and destruction.

The Christ Hymn of Colossians 1 celebrates the way that “in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,” and how “in Him all things hold together” (1:15-20). An eclipse is a better sign of this than of the Bible’s standard description of the chaos that the final dissolution of creation causes. Peace not panic is the right response to an eclipse. The moon crashing into the sun like a pool ball careening into another pool ball on a pool table – that would be a cause for some concern. That would prompt some appropriate doom and gloom. It would be hard to live in a universe where planets moved in unpredictable and unexpected ways. But an eclipse is not evidence of this.

An eclipse is instead good evidence that God has “set the planets in their courses above” as both Scripture and our beloved hymnody proclaims, and we should probably see in the predictable patterns of the natural world the common grace of a God who has ordered the universe and sustains it in such a way that human thriving is possible. This common grace is what Paul talked to the people of Lystra about in Acts 14:15-17 when he established the reality and goodness of God by pointing to how God as the Creator “made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them,” and how God as the Sustainer “does good and gives us from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying our hearts with food and gladness.”

Richard Mouw says that the first and most important theological decision we all must make is whether we think God loves us and wants to bless us both temporally and eternally, or whether we think God is mad at us and wants to make us just as miserable as He possibly can both temporally and eternally. A long time ago I concluded that God is good and generous based on what I knew about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because of Christ I know that God is not reluctant to save us. Sure, our freedom leaves open the possibility for us to turn away, but God’s grace – what I see so clearly in the face of Christ – means that this isn’t what God wants. As Eugene Peterson whispered into his son’s ear each night as he tucked him into bed when he was just a little boy – “God loves you. He’s on your side. He’s coming after you. He’s relentless.” And I hear this same whispered message from our heavenly Father in today’s eclipse –

“The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

Gratitude and not fear is what I will feel as I sit in my backyard this afternoon wearing those special glasses from Walmart watching the sun darken as the moon passes between it and me. This eclipse is not a sign of God’s displeasure with us. We’re not on the eve of destruction. I take it as a sign of God’s care instead, and of His eternal desire to bless us all.

That’s what I see in the inkblot.

The “Eclipse of Heaven”

On Monday we witnessed an eclipse in the heavens. Today, deep into Eastertide, I’m thinking about the “eclipse of heaven.”

That’s the name the late A.J. Conyers gave to his 1992 book published by InterVarsity Press. In “The Eclipse of Heaven” he told the story of his family’s visit to a historical park in South Carolina called “Old Dorchester,” a Colonial era village and fort. Among the ruins are the bell tower of the village church and the cemetery surrounding it. Standing next to the flat headstone of one of Old Dorchester’s first citizens, Dr. Conyers said that the tour guide read part of the Burial Service from the 1768 Book of Common Prayer, words that would have been spoken over that grave 250 years ago.

With feigned seriousness and sanctity, he intoned the liturgy with a preacher’s voice –“Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live… In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O LORD, who for our sins art justly displeased? …Thou knowest, LORD, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us …suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.”

And then Dr. Conyers said that the tour guide looked up at them and winked. “Why did he wink?” Professor Conyers asked, and answered – “It was because he knew very well that he shared a secret with us – with all of us, whether from Ohio or the Carolinas, or Timbuktu. …The secret we share is simply that we no longer take ‘otherworldly’ sentiments seriously. Ideas about the brevity of life, the last judgment of present sinful life, in short, all that devalues this life and prefers the next world, all that fears lest we jeopardize an eternal state in the enjoyment of a temporal existence – all these topics are simply not part of common polite, serious conversation.”

Heaven is in eclipse. In 1982 Morton Kelsey began his book on the “Afterlife” with the observation that the very first Christians “outlived” and “outdied” their spiritual competitors “because of a conviction that their lives went on into greater meaning.” He said that they “even believed that they had tasted something of the reality of the future kingdom of heaven in their experience of their risen Lord.” But Morton Kelsey lamented the fact that more recent Christians have “not shared very deeply in this hope.”

He wrote about a conversation he’d had with a Lutheran pastor who told him that in ten years he’d never preached a sermon on life after death, and he talked a discussion he’d had with two Catholic priests who told him that it would be hypocritical for them to talk about life after death since they didn’t believe that there was “anything in store for human beings after this present life.”

Morton Kelsey said that this was something that had developed in the church over a long period of time. “Christians do not often speak with confidence today about life after death.” He said that there is precious little conversation in the average congregation about what becomes of human beings when we die. “Only at funerals is the topic mentioned,” Morton Kelsey observed, and then only in “a half-hearted way.” More recently, the Roman Catholic Theologian John Thiel has described this as the refusal of the preachers and teachers of the Christian Faith “to speak flourishingly about the ‘last things,’” leaving people who live on “the cusp of the afterlife” without the hope, courage, and peace generating resources that so many Christians before us found so helpful. Today’s Christianity is “thin” at precisely the place where the challenge to life is often the “thickest,” at the “boundary” of death and dying.

The eclipse of heaven was forcefully driven home to me by a blog written in 2021 by Frederick Schmidt, the Professor of Spiritual Formation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, on the campus of Northwestern University.

He began by quoting things he said he’d heard his students say –

“I need to talk.  I’ve been asked to preach at my father’s funeral, and I don’t believe in the Resurrection anymore.”

“I don’t know what to say at a person’s funeral.  After all, they don’t have anything to look forward to.”

Dr. Schmidt wrote – “Statements like this are the kind of thing that one expects to hear at any funeral, when the death of a loved one cuts through the families and friendships of anyone who dies.  But they are both examples of things that I have heard seminary students say, deep into the course of their theological studies.” He says there are a number of reasons why a seminarian might say something like this –

“They may be working though their faith with seriousness for the first time.  That process can unearth questions.  It may test the degree to which a student has explored his or her faith.

Seminarians usually arrive with some kind of commitment to the church and its message.  (There is little good reason to pursue a theological education if you don’t.)  But the church itself may have done a poor job at catechesis.

The baseline materialism of contemporary America may further exacerbate a seminarian’s faith.  And it is often when confronted directly with the doctrine of the Resurrection that students discover just how deeply that materialist understanding of reality has invaded their thinking.

Then, again, seminarians are also taught not to believe in the Resurrection, or they are offered a version of it that is cast exclusively in terms that are metaphorical, symbolic or political.”

And then Dr. Schmidt concluded – “Almost every reason a seminarian might struggle that I have listed above makes sense to me.  To struggle with your own beliefs, to confront them and think through them, to realize that the culture around you has sabotaged your faith – this is the stuff of serious formation.  And clergy who have done their work and won-through to a robust Christian faith can be powerful defenders of the faith and skilled pastors to those who seek their help. The last reason, however, does not. …To be taught that the Resurrection didn’t happen or to be taught that it is a metaphor or symbol of something social, political, or personal, flies in the face of the church’s teaching. If seminarians are decisively shaped by that instruction, they will be seminarians to ‘cross their fingers’ when they take their ordination vows or – if they are at all honest – abandon their work for other endeavors.”

Sitting in church these past few weeks of Easteride, I’ve found myself deeply stirred when the Great Thanksgiving of the Liturgy that’s being prayed says – “It is right, our duty and our joy, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.”

Pastor Ben Haden said that “the world has a gurgle in its throat when it comes to death, but the Christian can speak with total confidence.” I hear that confidence in the liturgy, and it moves me. But when it’s a church that has “a gurgle in its throat when it comes to death,” then I know that heaven is in eclipse there. Their “bugle gives an uncertain sound” (I Corinthians 14:8) creating confusion and sowing the seeds of distrust and despair.  “By his death Christ has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again Christ has won for us everlasting life.” Preachers and churches are free to reject this, but I will not entrust the care of my soul, or the souls of those I love to them.

I need more than a gurgle.

“Swearing to your own Hurt” – Matthew 5:31-37 | A Sermon preached on Sunday, February 9, 2014

I have a nephew in the Special Forces of the United States Army.  My sister and brother-in-law never know when he is going to be sent out on a mission, or what that mission is going to entail, or how long he will be away.  His life is so secretive and mysterious to us that we eagerly devour anything that might give us some insight into what he does – articles in the paper or a magazine, features on the television news shows, books and movies about the Special Forces.  And so it was that a couple of weeks ago I found myself in a darkened theater to see the movie “Lone Survivor.”

I knew what to expect.  I’d read the book.  I already knew the wrenching story of “Operation Red Wings” in Afghanistan back in 2005, and how a mission to target a Taliban leader by a 4-man reconnaissance team went badly; very, very badly.  I knew that before the story was through, that 3 of those Seals would be killed and that 16 others would die in a failed attempt to rescue them.  I was prepared for the agonizing telling of this story.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the story of the Afghan villager who took the lone survivor into his village, and in the ancient tradition of something called “Pashtunwali,” put himself in-between the Taliban fighters and this gravely wounded American serviceman.

In the mountains of Afghanistan there is a code of honor among the Pastun people that goes back for more than 2,000 years, and part of it says that a host must protect a guest even if it means risking his own life and the lives of his family and friends.  And this is exactly what happened in the debacle that was “Operation Red Wings.”  The reason why there was a “lone survivor” in this story at all was because an Afghan village took him in and then defended him with their own lives, and that decision is still costing them. That village remains a Taliban target.  They have sworn to destroy it and to kill all of its residents, and yet, when asked if they regret their decision in taking in our wounded soldier, they say that they would do it all over again.  And when asked “why?” they will tell you about how their commitments define them as a people and dictate their actions.

Take a look at the Bible verse that we used this morning for our “Word Watch.”  Every week there is a Scripture at the top of the first page of your bulletin that we’ve deliberately chosen and put there for you to meditate on before worship begins.  This week it’s from Psalm 15 –

“LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle?  Who may dwell on Your holy hill?  He who walks with integrity… who swears to his own hurt and does not change…”

This is what the scholars call an “entrance liturgy.”  When people arrived at the Temple in Jerusalem for worship they were met by priests at the gates who asked: “Why should we let you in?” and “What makes you think that you have any right to be here?”   

Biblically, this is a question about “righteousness” – “Are you doing what’s right?” “Are you in a right relationship with God?”  And part of the answer that came back from the people who were trying to get in to worship was: “We are doing our best to live our lives with integrity.  When we say that we are going to do something, we do it even if it turns out badly for us and actually winds up costing us something.”  That’s what “swearing to your own hurt and not changing” means.

Recently the CEO of Thomas Nelson, the major American Publishing House of Bibles and popular Christian devotional books, learned that a former executive with his company had made a commitment to a third party via e-mail.

“It was obvious that he hadn’t researched the cost of his promise, nor did he get anyone else’s approval. The CEO was not even aware of the obligation until the other party brought it to his attention. And when he learned that the cost of the commitment was north of six figures, he gasped. Several rationalizations immediately popped into his head:

– The executive was no longer at the company.                                                   

– He obviously didn’t count the cost.                                                                    

 – He wasn’t authorized to make this commitment.                                           

– This project was already under water.                                                             

– This amount was not in their budget.                                                               

– He wasn’t even aware of the commitment.                                                       

– And the CFO wasn’t aware of the commitment either.

However, after a few moments, the CEO remembered that their first core value at Thomas Nelson is “Honoring God.” They amplify this by saying that “We honor God in everything we do.” They then go on to describe the behaviors that express this value, and the fourth item on that list is:

We honor our commitments, even when it is difficult, expensive, or inconvenient.”

That brought everything into clear focus for him, and he noted that this behavior was initially motivated by Psalm 15:1,4:

‘LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill? … He who swears to his own hurt and does not change.’

Simply put, the CEO of Thomas Nelson concluded, this means that our word is sacred.” (Michael Hyatt)

It’s the sacredness of our words, and the commitments that lie behind them that Jesus was talking about in our Scripture lesson this morning.  Jesus expected His people to be known for their integrity, for the way that we would keep our word and do what we promised to do regardless of the cost.  This is a rare quality these days. 

We live in an age of “the path of least resistance.”  We’ll do things for as long as it’s good for us, for as long as it’s meeting our needs and makes us happy.  But if a commitment should start to inconvenience us; should it start to cost us something; should some commitment that we’ve made start to pinch and scrape us, well then we’ll start looking for a way out that allows us to keep face.   This is why that story about those Afghan villagers and that story about the decision of the CEO of a major American Publishing House who each “swore to their own hurt and did not change” are just so striking.  They behaved in unexpected ways; in ways that run counter to the prevailing cultural flow. 

We expect politicians to lie to us.  We expect products to fail.  We expect relationships not to last.  We expect institutions to let us down.  But Jesus told us:  “This is not what I expect of you as My disciples.”  Let your “yes” mean “yes,” and your “no” mean “no,” Jesus said.  And then, to make His point directly, Jesus talked about one of the main areas where our commitments take daily shape – our marriages.  You see, for Jesus, integrity was not some abstract, ethereal concept; a philosophical ideal.  It was immediate and practical.  It had to do with how you treat the person with whom you are living in the most intimate relationship of all, your wife or your husband. 

Divorce is such a personal and painful experience for so many of us, that when the Scriptures talk about it, we get a little skittish; some of us might even feel like putting our hands over our ears and running away just as fast and as far as we possibly can.  I suspect we’re like this because we expect the Bible to condemn us.  We’ve got a pretty good hunch that whatever the Bible might have to say to us about divorce, that it’s only going to compound the feelings of shame and guilt that we’re already feeling.   We’re afraid that it’s just going to rough us up further.  But, if we would lower our guard just long enough to actually hear what Jesus is saying in our Scripture lesson this morning, I think that we might actually be surprised by the grace of what Jesus has to say.

Among the teachers of the Law in Jesus’ day there were some who had a rather lax view of the commitment of marriage.  They allowed a man to divorce his wife for any dissatisfaction at all that he might be experiencing with her, and this is what Jesus was opposing in what He had to say in our Scripture lesson this this morning.  The commitment of marriage was just too sacred in His eyes to be frivolously set aside by some whim of fancy or by the first whiff of difficulty.  Marriages are supposed to last. That’s the first thing that Jesus tells us in our Scripture lesson this morning.  But as we all know, not all of them do. 

Clearly, there are choices that we can make and actions that we can take that have the power to kill a marriage.  And that’s the second thing that Jesus tells us in our Scripture lesson this morning.  There’s a realism to His words.  Marriage bonds can be shattered by unfaithfulness, and it’s incredibly painful when they are.  But when this happens, we’re not finished.  Serious as it is, contrary as it may be to what God intends for us, destructive as it is to people and their highest hopes and deepest dreams, when a marriage fails, we do not come to the end of the story.  

Divorce is not the unforgivable sin. That’s the piece that’s missing in so many of the conversations about divorce that I’ve heard in the church through the years.  It seems to me that there are those who want to make divorce different from any other contradiction to God’s revealed will in which we might personally have a share.  The grace of God in Jesus Christ that promises to make us new and to give us a chance to start all over again as “new creations” apparently has an exception, and it’s divorcees. 

Even when this is not said out loud by the church – and frankly I’d be quite surprised if you ever heard it around here – it’s still heard in the hearts of so many divorcees, and that’s because divorce has this powerful and unique capacity to condemn us.  Divorce is a fundamental upheaval in our identity and intention that affects us in our deepest places. And when it happens, when there is a broken commitment, this is when we need to know that repentance, forgiveness and restoration is the pattern of the Gospel. 

When we confess our sins, “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” John tells us in his first letter (I John 1:9).  As the refrain to an old Gospel song that makes me very happy every time I sing it puts it –

“Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus, deeper than the mighty rolling sea; Higher than the mountain, sparkling like a fountain, All sufficient grace for even me; Broader than the scope of my transgressions, Greater far than all my sin and shame; O magnify the precious Name of Jesus, Praise His Name!“

God’s grace is broader than the scope of my transgressions, this hymn says; it’s greater than all my sin and shame.  So, just exactly what does this leave beyond the reach of God’s restoring grace?  Divorce? I hardly think so!

Of course, Jesus Christ wants us to be people of integrity as His disciples, people who keep their commitments, people whose “yes” means “yes” and whose “no” means “no.”  The reason why this matters so much to Him is because this is how He relates to us.  This is the basis of our relationship with Him.  When we keep our commitments it points to the way that God keeps His commitments to us, and that gives our lives a “question-posing” quality just like we experienced here this morning when we heard about those Afghan villagers and that Thomas Nelson CEO.  It’s unexpected behavior that cuts against the grain of culture and that leaves people who witness it wondering why – Why are they like that?  And the answer for us as Christians has got to be – because this is how God in Jesus Christ is with us.  And ironically, where this shows most powerfully is not in our stretches of faithfulness, but in our episodes of unfaithfulness.

When we don’t keep our commitments, God still keeps His.  As Paul told his young associate in ministry, Timothy – “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).  And this is the power of the Gospel.  We are loved by God in spite of ourselves, that’s the truth at the center of His commitment to us, and it alone has the power to change us. God’s forgiveness of our unfaithfulness when we fail to keep our commitments is an important part of God’s faithfulness to us.  And the renewal of faithfulness in us, seen in the way that we return to our commitments with even greater intensity and intentionality after we have stumbled is one of the first results of a genuine experience with God’s faithfulness.  And what Jesus Christ is telling us in our Scripture lesson this morning is that the life of faithfulness to which He is calling us is nothing more than a reflection of the kind of faithfulness that God has already shown us in Jesus Christ.  We learn how to keep our commitments by seeing how God in Jesus Christ keeps His.

Sources

Hyatt, Michael. “Keeping Your Word.” http://michaelhyatt.com

McKnight, Scot.  The Story of God Bible Commentary: The Sermon on the Mount. Zondervan. 2013.                                                                                                                                                

Pilate’s Wife

Brian Zahnd begins the eighth chapter of his book about the cross of Christ, “The Wood Between the Worlds” by writing –

“The Nicene Creed mentions three historical figures – Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Pontius Pilate. The appearance of Jesus and Mary is obvious, but that of Pontius Pilate is startling. Unexpected as he may be, there he is, for in the creed we confess that Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate.’ What this line does is to establish the life and death of Jesus in a particular historical context. Christianity doesn’t float above history as a timeless abstract. It was born in Judea in the fourth decade of the first century during Roman occupation. Pontius Pilate was the fifth Roman procurator of Judea, holding office from AD 26-36 during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. History has given us scant information on Pilate… Through what we know about Pilate is limited to the Gospels and a few lines from Roman historians, the governor who presided over the trail of Jesus of Nazareth has captivated the literary imagination of many a writer.”

And so has Pontius Pilates’ wife, in fact, in parts of the Eastern Church Pontius Pilate’s wife is officially a Saint! She is given a name, “Claudia Procula,” and a history beyond the bare reference to her dream and the warning she gave to her husband as a result of it as he was about to preside over the trial of Jesus – “While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much over him today in a dream” (Matthew 27:19).

A reference to a “Claudia” in 2 Timothy 4:21 has been taken by some in the Eastern Church as a reference to Pontius Pilate’s wife and is offered as evidence of her inclusion in the earliest community of faith. It was Origen (185 – 253), the Alexandrian theologian of such great importance and controversy, who first wrote about how Pontius Pilate’s wife converted to Christianity.

“A more detailed account of the trial before Pilate, his wife’s dream, and her later life can be found in the apocryphal work, “The Letters of Claudia Procula to Fulvia”. It was written allegedly in the name of Claudia, Pontius Pilate’s wife, who shares the story of her life in Jerusalem with her friend, devoting special attention to events related to the Gospel story.” (orthochristian.com/102542.html)

But the most fascinating allusion to Pontius Pilate’s wife in litetature can be found in John Masefield’s 1925 play, “The Trial of Jesus” –

“Pilate’s wife stands with the centurion near the cross, watching Jesus slowly die. She asks the centurion at the end, ‘Do you think he is dead?’ ‘No, lady, I don’t,’ the soldier answers her. ‘Then where is he?’ ‘Let loose in the world, lady,’ the centurion declares, ‘where no one can stop His truth.’”

This is the perfect message for the day after Easter.

It’s not over.

It’s just begun.

Wayne Watson sang a story song back in the day about a carnival barker who “shut down the show” after “something happened” in his life.

“Old friends are mostly puzzled,

They don’t know what to say,

‘Cause ever since that afternoon

He’s just been that way.

It’s like the old man died,

And someone came to take his place.”

The song describes how that man took up a position on a downtown street corner after his change where all day, every day, with a great big smile on his face, he cried out to all who passed by –

“New lives for old.

Warm hearts for cold.

Have I got a deal for you today,

Come on, step right this way,

And get your new lives for old.”

Easter is about an event that happened in a borrowed tomb just outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, and an experience that still happens in people’s lives, relationships, and worlds right now. This is the reason why the church has always baptized people on Easter Sunday. Romans 6 connects the Easter event with the Easter experience in its discussion of baptism –

“…All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death… We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. …Our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. …So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Excerpts of Romans 6:3-11)

The tradition that Pontius Pilate’s wife became a Christian, and then actually died for her faith is affirmed in parts of the Eastern Church where she is venerated as a Saint, and in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church both Pontius Pilate and his wife, Claudia Procula, are regarded as Saints and Martyrs. They detect the seed of saving faith in what Pontius Pilate had written on the placard that was nailed to the cross above Christ as He was crucified –

“Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross; it read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. The chief priests of the Jews then said to Pilate, ‘Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written I have written.’” (John 19:19-22)

Is this tradition of the conversion of Pontius Pilate and his wife historically true? I don’t know, I suppose it depends in large measure on how much credit you are prepared to give to traditions that come from the early church. What I do know for sure is that this tradition bears witness to a truth that is intrinsic to the Gospel and integral to the meaning of Easter. “We are born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3). “If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I don’t know if Pontius Pilate and his wife actually became Christians, but the fact that the Gospel says they could have, and that the tradition of the early church is that they did, is enough for the words of the Creed that I recite each week in church – “…and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried” – to flash with promise, power, and hope.

One more thing about Pontius Pilate’s wife.

There’s just one reference to her in the Bible, Matthew 27:19 – “While Pilate was sitting in the judgment hall, his wife sent him a message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night, I suffered much on account of him.” It’s that reference to a “dream’ that captures my imagination.

Dreams as a vehicle that the Lord uses to make His will known is a prominent feature in the story of Jesus that the Gospel of Matthew tells. It was in a dream that the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph as he pondered what to do about Mary, his betrothed, who was with child (Matthew 1:20). It was in a dream that the Wise Men were told to go home from Bethlehem by a different route in order to avoid additional contact with King Herod who was raging (Matthew 2:12). It was in a dream that Jospeh was told to take Mary and baby Jesus to Egypt where they lived as refugees outside the murderous reach of King Herod (Matthew 2:13), and then when King Herod died, it was in a dream that Joseph was told to pack up his family and go home again (Matthew 2:19), with an adjustment in the plan made in response to another dream (Matthew 2:22).

All of this is said against the biblical backdrop of the importance of dreams as a way that the Divine communicated with the Patriarchs in the book of Genesis, and under the promise of the new dispensation of the Spirit when “your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, and God’s Spirit will be poured out on His menservants and maidservants” (Acts 2:17-18).

In my own life I can think of 2, maybe 3 dreams, or dream-like states by which I think God unmistakably spoke to me about decisions I was making and issues I was facing that gave me some real insight into where God was and what God was doing in my life at those moments, in those circumstances. And I can’t help but wonder how many other times God was trying to use my dreams as a way of leading me “in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3), but I didn’t have an expectation of this being something that God did, or the resources to make proper sense of what it was that God was doing and saying?

Well, I’m now one of those “old men” that Peter/Joel was talking about who in the new dispensation of the Spirit will “dream dreams,” and I just want to say that I’m open to whatever it might be that God needs me to know at this point in my life.

“And They’ll Know We are Christian by Our Love”

In Christian College we said that a person’s spirituality was proportionate to the size of the Bible they carried. We joked that they functioned like ballast, holding the super-spiritual down from prematurely floating off to heaven. Spiritual midgets carried pocket New Testaments. Spiritual giants carried a full-sized, four-pound Thompson Chain Reference Bible, King James Version, Large Print. Jesus warned us about this very thing, about making religious gestures and sending religious signals for others to see. Jesus was deeply suspicious of religious behavior, the way we do outward religious things in order “to be seen by others” (Matthew 6:1;2;5;16) and to have them think better of us as a result. There is a long-standing Biblical tradition of criticizing of this kind of showy religiosity.

The scholars talk about the Bible’s “prophetic critique of religion” (Amos 5. 21-24; Micah 6:6-8; Isaiah 58), and show how Jesus Himself stood firmly in its tradition by quoting its veritable motto – “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6) – in Matthew 9:13 when He was publicly challenged about His relative disinterest about the ritual niceties of the religious observation of His day. In fact, Jesus was openly critical of those who were given to outward displays of religiosity as an identifying “brand” without it corresponding to the inward reality of that person’s heart, one’s inner dispositions, devotion, and disciplines. Jesus called such people “whitewashed tombs,” people who look so holy and devout on the outside, but who inwardly are “full of dead men’s bones – hypocrisy and iniquity” (Matthew 23:27-28).

This gets complicated because our faith commitments are supposed to show. What’s going on inside of us spiritually is supposed to show outwardly, but not in word and speech but in deed and in truth (I John 3:18). This is why Jesus said we would be known by our fruit. Jesus said “every sound tree bears good fruit, but bad trees bear bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17), and then He gave other people the right to look at what we say and at how we behave as Christians, and to answer the question of the truthfulness of the Gospel based on what they see (John 13:35; 17:20-21). It’s not our desks littered with “Jesus junk,” or our speech peppered with pious platitudes, or our cars plastered with witness bumper stickers, or the signals we send that identify us with some cause, or the religious veneer we put on our public personas to show that we are Christians. It’s love.

Not “luv.” But “love.”

“Luv” is what the Roman Catholic Philosopher Peter Kreeft calls the shallow, sentimental, transitory, and contingent flush of emotion that ebbs and flows with passing days and changing moods. The love by which we are to be known as Christians is the love with which God in Christ have loved us. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (I John 4:9-10). To be a Christian is to be loved by God in Christ, and then it is to love like God in Christ.

Early in my journey of faith I had a teacher who suggested that anytime I came across the description of love in I Corinthians 13:4-8, that first I read it as a description of how God loves me in Jesus Christ –

“God’s love for me in Christ is patient and kind; God’s love for me in Christ is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. God’s love for me in Christ does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. God’s love for me in Christ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God’s love for me in Christ never ends.”

And then that teacher suggested that I immediately read the description of love in I Corinthians 13:4-8 a second time as a description of the kind of love that others need to see in me because I am a Christian –

“Because of God’s love for me in Christ, my love for you will be patient and kind. Because of God’s love for me in Christ, my love for you will not be jealous or boastful; it will not be arrogant or rude. Because of God’s love for me in Jeus Christ, my love for you will not insist on its own way; it will not be irritable or resentful; it will not rejoice at the wrong but will rejoice in the right. Because of God’s love for me in Christ, my love for you will bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, ensure all things. Because of God’s love for me in Christ, my love for you will never end.”

As we sang all the time back in the day – “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Not our rhetoric. Not by our public posturing. Not by our religious gestures, signals, statement, or signs, but by love, a love that is patient and kind, neither jealous nor boastful, neither arrogant nor rude, neither selfish nor domineering, neither irritable nor resentful, that doesn’t rejoice at what’s wrong but rather rejoices in what’s right, that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that has no end. They will know we are Christians when we love like this, because this is how God in Jesus Christ loves. This kind of love is the observable fruit that grows in the life of a person who knows that they are loved by God in Jesus Christ.

A Contemplative Approach to the Cross

I’ve been reading Brian Zahnd’s new book, “The Wood Between the Worlds” (IVP  | 2024), this Lent. He describes it as a “Poetic Theology of the Cross.”  “I want to be drawn,” Brian explains early in the book, “into a contemplative orbit around the cross.”  So do I.

The Gospel doesn’t “yield its mysteries” so much to “analytical methods as to mediation,” Brian explains. Believing that theology is more like poetry than physics, and that the things the Bible tells us about God should be approached more like a painting in an art gallery than a law book in a library, Brian wants a theology that makes him sing. He wants to move past the dispassionate academic ways he was taught to critically analyze an ancient text and be ushered instead into an encounter with the same God those ancient texts report as living, and moving, and acting in the experiences of the lives and world of the ancient Hebrews and the very first Christians. He says he wants his Bible to be a “portal into the divine mystery.” When he visited Brite Divinity School as a guest lecturer when I was a student there back in the mid-1970’s, John Westerhoff, the Christian Educator, said that there are some things about our faith as Christians that are better sung than explained, and this is the same point that Brian Zahnd is making in his new book.  Our heads can only take us so far in our journey to God, at some point our hearts have got to take over. As Catherine de Hueck Doherty said, we need to “fold the wings of the intellect to open the door of the heart.” This is easier said than done for some of us.

I am given to explanation. My faith seeks understanding.  It always has. This is my ordinary mode. Loving God “with all my mind” comes naturally to me. But just about 20 years ago I came to what I perceived to be the outer limits of that way being and believing. I could argue the case that God is good. I’d read the books, sat through the lectures, written the papers, gotten a good grade. It wasn’t enough.  I desperately needed to “taste and see” that God was good too (Psalm 34:8). I needed a faith that was less a theory and more a love affair. I needed to undertake that 12-inch journey from my head to my heart again. It’s a familiar trip for me.

Earlier trips to this boundary on the spiritual journey of my life had gotten me born-again (Evangelical), Spirit-filled (Charismatically renewed), better aware of the inner light who is the indwelling Christ (Quaker), and a heart-strangely-warmed (Pietism/Emmaus). This time I set out on that trail intending to become a contemplative, or perhaps more accurately I should say, to open myself to a more contemplative way of being and believing, for this is the work of the Spirit, and as Jesus told us (John 3:8), the Spirit is like the wind. It blows when, and where, and how it wants.

We don’t control the Spirit’s movements. We can’t schedule the Spirit’s appearances.  We don’t manage the Spirit’s work. We can’t engineer the Spirit’s effects. The most we can do is to try to be open to the Spirit’s presence and power, and to try to position ourselves in those places and practices where the Spirit has a history of showing up. The terrain I consciously pitched the tent of my soul on 20 years ago was in the space where silence, liturgy, music, and icons all intersect, and from there the wind of the Spirit blew me eastward, into the world of Orthodox Christianity. And this is where I bumped into Mary. In Eastern Christianity, Mary traverses that same ground, the terrain of silence, liturgy, music, and icons. Twenty years ago she has become my companion on the contemplative way, and my example of what it means to be a contemplative believer.

In his epic 1968 poem on Mary – “A Woman Wrapped in Silence” (Paulist Press) – author John W. Lynch zeroed in on Luke’s description of Mary quietly observing the cosmic events unfolding in her life, and in the life of her Son, and treasuring them, “reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19; 2:51). Mary is at the Cross, but she is silent. Luke tells us that she “stood at a distance” with the other women, that “she saw these things” (Luke 23:49) but said nothing.  “Here a woman wrapped in silence,” John Lynch wrote, “and the words were closed within her spacious heart for pondering.” “Through long years of pondering God’s word and cherishing the memory of these mysterious events in her heart, Mary penetrated the truths they held and her understanding of them grew.”

Every Holy Week I return to a Pastoral Prayer I wrote for the last Sunday of Lent several years ago. I don’t just want to go to church this week, I want to enter into the mystery of faith, and so I pray –

Lord, our journey to Easter has turned the corner and is heading for home.  Today we find ourselves stand on the precipice of Holy Week.  From here we can hear the shouts of “Hosanna!” From here we can taste the bread and cup of the Last Supper, feel the wounds of the cross, see the sealed tomb and smell the fear and despair of shattered expectations.  This is familiar terrain.  We know this story well.  We know how it unfolds and where it winds up. 

Save us, Lord, from familiarity and complacency; from the boredom and inertia of being old hands at all of this.  We’ve sung all of the hymns before.  We’ve heard all of the sermons before.   We’ve gone through all of the rituals before.  We’ve prayed all of the liturgies before.  Our appetites have been honed by a culture that craves the new and improved, so teach us to love the old, old story.  Send your Spirit to close the circuit between the needs of our hearts and world, and the promises of grace that you made for us in Jesus Christ. 

Help us to discover the Gospel again, Lord, not just on the pages of Scripture and in the traditions of the church, but in the twists and turns of our lives and in the hopes and hurts of the world.

On Palm Sunday, when we hear about Christ’s triumphal entry, help us to join the shout of the crowd as they cry out for salvation.  Come as Prophet, Priest and King into our hearts and into this church to be our way, our truth and our life. 

On Maundy Thursday, when we hear about the Last Supper, make room at that table for us; a place where we can love and be loved; a place where we can belong and believe.

On Good Friday, as we hear about the way of the cross, gather up our suffering, and the suffering of the whole world, and carry it to the heart of the Father. 

On Holy Saturday, when we hear about Christ in the tomb and the disciples behind closed doors, come and sit with us in our own fears and disappointments.

And on Easter Sunday, when we hear about the empty tomb and the Risen Christ, shift our gaze from then to now, giving us hope for the possibilities of the newness of life, both abundant and eternal.

We don’t need another history lesson, Lord.  We need the assurance of your presence in our lives that are filled with struggle, and we need the provision of your grace to continue to live courageously and compassionately in this very scary world of ours.  We need to know where you are and what you are doing, Lord, so bring us to Holy Week where your story and our stories can intersect and intertwine once again, and then anchor us there where we can know that “resurrection is stronger than crucifixion, that forgiveness is stronger than bitterness, that reconciliation is stronger than hatred, and that light is stronger than darkness,” we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

The Lenses of Good Friday

More than once this week I’ve seen a meme posted online about how Jesus was crucified for standing up to the empire and not to atone for the sins of humanity, and I wonder why this is being pitched as a forced choice. Why must we divide into camps, the “redemptives” who view the cross of Christ as an atoning sacrifice in one corner, and the “politicals” who view the cross of Christ a regime-toppling act of socio-political defiance in the other corner?

Ephesians 6:12 has long been one of those reality-defining verses for me – “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” If this is true – and I think it is – then “standing up to the empire” and “atoning for the sins of humanity” are not mutually exclusive competing agendas, but part and parcel of the very same thing. Sin is personal and social. The cross is political and atoning. Salvation is spiritual and temporal. We struggle against “flesh and blood” systems and structures, and “principalities and powers in  heavenly places.”

Because there was an attempt on His life by King Herod when He was born “King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:1-18), and He spent three years announcing that “the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15), and He was tried, condemned, and ridiculed “under Pontius Pilate,” a Roman official (Matthew 27:11-231; Mark 15:1-20; Luke 23:1-25; John 18:28-19:16), and had a placard nailed to His cross above His head that read “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek (John 19:19-20), and had Roman soldiers dispatched to guard his tomb (Matthew 27:62-66), there is an unmistakable political lens through which to view the events of Good Friday. It is one of the Biblical angles through which to view the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Empire killed Jesus. That’s abundantly clear from the Biblical witness. They killed Him because He was perceived to be a threat by them. That’s why Rome killed the two men beside Jesus on Good Friday too. But the death of Jesus means something more than just this. That’s abundantly clear from the Biblical witness as well. This is why when Pontius Pilate, the Empire’s legate in Judea, told Jesus that he had the power to release or crucify Him, Jesus relativized the boast by telling Pilate that any imagined power he thought he had had been “given to you from above” (John 19:10-11). The mechanics of the crucifixion were the work of the Empire, but the laying down of His life was something that Christ did “of His own accord” (John 10:18). “No one takes my life from me” Jesus explained, not Annas, not Caiaphas, not Herod, not Pilate. There was something more than just the struggle between political values and visions that put Jesus on the cross.

Jesus died. That’s what history tells us, and the Empire had a hand in it. That makes it a political act of violence triggered by Christ’s subversion of the “flesh and blood” agents of oppression that disregard the image of God that gives every human being dignity and worth. But Jesus died for our sins. It was the culminating act in his struggle with “the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” That’s what the Gospel tells us, and that’s makes what Christ did on the cross an atoning sacrifice.

My “progressive” friends and colleagues shake their heads at those of us who read the texts of Good Friday primarily and emphatically through redemptive lenses, and they wonder how we could be so blind to its obvious political implications.  And my “traditional” friends and colleagues shake their heads at those who read the Good Friday texts primarily and emphatically through political lenses, and point to its “eclipse of the atonement,” and to its “lack of clarity about the salvific efficacy of Christ’s suffering and death,” as examples of everything that’s wrong with the church today. 

Like children on the blacktop at recess getting up a kickball game, we’re all busy choosing up our sides. “Redemptives” over here, “politicals” over there.  The only problem is that I don’t want to play. One of the more troubling aspects of the church today is the way that we’ve stopped listening to each other.  So convinced are we of the rightness of our own positions as “redemptives” or “politicals,” that we’ve stopped listening to each other.  And the tragedy of this, again, if you ask me, is that in doing this, we’ve both settled for just half of Biblical Christianity.

It was reading E. Stanley Jones’ book “The Christ of the Mount” (Abingdon 1931) when I was a freshman in Christian College that persuaded me of the fact that Christianity has both a redemptive and an ethical side, and that “if the ethical side of our gospel is unworkable, then by that very fact the redemptive side is rendered worthless.”  To be sure, I find the redemptive side of the Gospel to be primary in my thinking and believing.  You may find the ethical side of the Gospel to be primary.  But so long as we both acknowledge that the Gospel is bigger than just what we ourselves regard as primary, that there is an ethical side to our redemptive side, or vice versa, depending on our perspective, then we’re within “hearing distance” of each other, and the possibility of the formation of a vital community of interpretation exists. But, for this to move from the potential and the possible to the actual and the experienced, then we’ve all got to act on it. “Politicals” need to show that they are just as interested in talking to “redemptives” as they are in talking to other “politicals,” and we “redemptives” have got to show that we are just as interested in talking to “politicals” as we are in talking to our fellow “redemptives.” 

As a first step, as a gesture of good will, we might begin by refusing to caricature each other, erecting stereotypes to be smugly and gleefully dismantled with our respective airs of spiritual superiority.  This is the “good faith assumption” that I find to be so missing from so much of recent theological and political rhetoric. It says that I will begin with the assumption that the person with whom I disagree is just as interested in and serious about the matter at hand as I am.  And then, as a second step, we might become more deliberate in sending signals that we are aware of the others in the interpretive community who see the texts with different lenses, and to embrace the idea that there is always more to the text than just my experience, perspective and presuppositions allow me to see. We’ve all got to stop speaking and acting as if matters of our shared faith that are held by equally faithful people in a rich variety of ways will finally sort out into a single position when everyone else truly understands it – and agree with what I think!  When I am just as committed to listening to you and your interpretation of the Gospel, as I am in trying to explain to you my interpretation of the Gospel, and to persuade you that I’m right, I believe that it is the Gospel that is actually served.  

“When I Tread the Verge of Jordan”

A Reflection in Remembrance and Thanksgiving for Dr. Charlie Harris (1940-2024)

“Jesus” is just a Hellenized version of the Hebrew name “Joshua.” In Matthew 1:21, the angel of the Lord told Joseph that the child conceived in his betrothed, Mary, was “of the Holy Spirit,” and that he should be called “Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The name “Joshua” means “Yahweh is salvation” in Hebrew, and as the Old Testament book of Joshua narrates, it was Joshua who fed the people of Israel out of the wilderness of wandering, through the waters of the Jordan, and into the Promised Land. This has become an important picture of salvation for those of us who are Christians, who have looked to Jesus, our “Joshua,” to save us. It’s something we sometimes sing about.

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,

And cast a wishful eye

To Canaan’s fair and happy land,

Where my possessions lie.

I am bound for the promised land,

I am bound for the promised land;

Oh who will come and go with me?

I am bound for the promised land.”

“Shall we gather at the river,

Where bright angel feet have trod,

With its crystal tide forever

Flowing by the throne of God?

Yes, we’ll gather at the river,

The beautiful, the beautiful river;

Gather with the saints at the river

That flows by the throne of God.”

“There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar;

For the Father waits over the way

To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore;

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

“When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound,

and time shall be no more,

And the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair;

When the saved of earth shall gather

over on the other shore,

And the roll is called up yonder,

I’ll be there.”

“I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.”

These good old Gospel hymns have been playing in my head and heart all day long, and that’s because earlier today I gathered with a bunch of my dearest friends to remember and give thanks for our precious friend and brother in Christ, Charlie Harris. Charlie recently crossed that river we call death, and because Charlie knew Jesus (the other “Joshua”) as his Savior, we believe that he arrived safely on that other shore.

I actually stood with Charlie on the banks of the Jordan River on one of the pilgrimages to the Holy Land that I was privileged to lead. In the devotional guide I put together for those trips, I always included an excerpt from John Bunyan’s (1628 – 1688) “Pilgrim’s Progress” (1678) because it’s such a beautiful and powerful picture of the journey of the Christian life. Jeanne Kun helpfully writes –

“Scripture, the early Church Fathers, and later spiritual writers often liken our earthly life to a journey, urging us to keep our eyes fixed on heaven as our final goal. As Saint Augustine wrote: ‘We are but travelers on a journey without as yet a fixed abode; we are on our way, not yet in our native land; we are in a state of longing, but not yet of enjoyment. But let us continue on our way, and continue without sloth or respite, so that we may ultimately arrive at our destination.’ Or again, as Saint John Vianney, the beloved Curé of Ars, so simply expressed it, “Our home is—Heaven. On earth we are like travelers staying in a hotel. When one is away, one is always thinking of going home.”

The final scene of “A Pilgrim’s Progress” is about Christian’s crossing over the river of death into the Kingdom of Heaven – “Christian and his companion …came in sight of the gate, (and) further saw, that betwixt them and the gate was a river; but there was no bridge to go over, and the river was very deep. At the sight of this river the pilgrims were much stunned… The pilgrims then began to despond in their mind, and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river.”

John Bunyan explained – “This river has been a terror to many, yea, the thoughts of it also have often frighted me. But now methinks I stand easy, my foot is fixed upon that upon which the feet of the Priests that bare the Ark of the Covenant stood, while Israel went over this Jordan. The waters indeed are to the palate bitter and to the stomach cold, yet the thoughts of what I am going to and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.”

And so Christian and his travelling companion Hopeful stepped into the river, but immediately upon “entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, ‘I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head; all his waves go over me.’ …Then said Christian, ‘Ah! my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about, I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey.’ And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, …he had horror of mind and heart-fears that he should die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the gate. …(But) Hopeful spoke these words, ‘Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.’ And with that Christian broke out with a loud voice, ‘Oh, I see Him and He tells me, ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee’ (Isaiah 43:2). Then they both took courage, and Christian found ground to stand upon, and so it followed that the rest of the river was but shallow. Thus they got over.”

Charlie and I once stood together on the banks of the literal Jordan River as “fellow pilgrims,” and we both understood that there was coming another day when we would have to cross the other Jordan River. But because of our “Joshua,” Charlie and I both knew that the way through had already been “pioneered and perfected” for us (Hebrews 12:2), and just as Christian discovered when he floundered as the waters rose and rolled about him, threatening to wash him away, Christ is there, holding on, and reassuring us, saying – “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”

Tonight I will go asleep thinking good and gladsome thoughts of Charlie, one of my companions on the journey to eternity, with the words of another good old Gospel hymn sounding in my head and heart –

“When I tread the verge of Jordan,

Bid my anxious fears subside;

Death of deaths, and hell’s destruction,

Land me safe on Canaan’s side.

Songs of praises, songs of praises,

I will ever give to Thee;

I will ever give to Thee.”

Alleluia!

“Carnal” ~ I Corinthians 3:1

Stephen R. Covey in his signature 1990 book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” said that there are two points of view required of those who are making their way through a jungle. You need some people on the ground cutting the trail with the best tools in hand. Their focus is the next tree in front of them. But somewhere there must be somebody else who has shimmied up to the top of the tallest tree to make sure that they are still in the right jungle and moving in the right direction. Studying the Bible requires these same two perspectives. Sometimes it’s important to step back from the specific tree you’re examining (a verse, a word, a story, a concept) to take a good look at the whole forest (the big picture – the main point of it all). 

I’m leading a weekly online Bible Study of I Corinthians right now. We go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, week after week. We let the text take the lead. We try to go where it goes. We try to think what it thinks. And then we talk about what it might mean for us as Christians, for our churches and the world, We’ve just made our way through the wisdom section of 2:6-3:4, and its discussion of “unspiritual” people (2:14), “spiritual” people (2:15), and “carnal” people, those who remain “babes in Christ” (3:1).

I live in Dallas, Texas, where the influence of Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871 – 1952), theologian and one of the founders of Dallas Theological Seminary, remains strong. I became acquainted with his teachings through my involvement with the youth group of a Bible Church back when I was in high school in Southern California in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, through an association with the Campus Crusade for Christ organization when I was a student at a small Christian College in Oregon that was right next door to the state’s biggest liberal arts university, and in the years I served as a youth minister at a church in a university town in southeastern Idaho before I went to seminary. My very first evangelistic attempts were made under their supervision, using their materials. Two of them featured rather prominently in the work, the “Four Spiritual Laws” [www.cru.org/content/dam/cru/legacy/2012/01/thefourlaws.pdf] and “Have You Made the Wonderful Discovery of the Spirit-Filled Life?” [www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/the-spirit-filled-life.html].

Later I would learn that much of the thinking behind these ministry tools was Dr. Chafer’s. The “Four Spiritual Laws” tract was just a distillation and practical application of Dr. Chafer’s understanding of the distinction between “unspiritual” people and “spiritual” people at the end of I Corinthians chapter 2, and the “Spirit-filled Life” tract was just a distillation and practical application of Dr. Chafer’s understanding of the distinction between “carnal” people, those Christians who unnaturally remain “babes in Christ” when they should have moved on, and more “mature” Christians. Dr. Chafer’s 1918 book “He That Is Spiritual” [Spirituality.pdf (lewissperrychafer.org)] is a good summary of what he believed and taught about these things. These are ideas that have exerted great influence in the lives and on the “walks” of many Christians I know and have served as a pastor/teacher, and I find them to be a helpful way of getting at the big question of what it is that God is doing in Jesus Christ when He saves us.

William Blake (1757 –1827), the English poet and artist, wrote of a golden string that when wound into a ball will lead us to a gate built in the heavenly Jerusalem’s wall. One way of reading the Bible is to find that “golden string” (sometimes it has been better described as a “scarlet thread”) that runs through all its stories, characters, thoughts, and truths, and winding it into a ball, follow where it leads. If the Bible has a point, if the Bible solves a problem, if the Bible answers a question (and I think it does), then by tracing its story line back to its narrative beginning, we should be able to catch a glimpse of what it was that first launched it.

When Gardner Taylor (1918 –2015), the pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn for 42 years, was asked what the Bible was all about, he answered – “God is out to get back what belongs to Him.” When you wind the golden string of the Bible into a ball, where it leads is to the first chapters of the book of Genesis, to a garden and a rebellion, to a painful separation and a plan to repair the damage that’s been done. This is not the only way to read the Bible, but in the history of Christianity it has been one of the primary ways, and it’s the way that has made the most sense to me.

David H. Kelsey, a professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, calls this the “health-disease-healing plot structure” of the Bible. The opening scenes of the Bible in the creation stories of Genesis chapter 1 and 2 are pictures of cosmic harmony and human thriving where everybody and everything fits together perfectly in a web of mutually beneficial relationships that serve the interests and flourishing of all. “Shalom” is the Hebrew word for it, and at the center of this “shalom” are human beings in right relationship with God, the “maker of the heavens and the earth.”  Humanity, male and female created in God’s image and after God’s likeness, is positioned as God’s full partner in the tending and keeping of the garden in the narrative beginnings of the story the Bible tells. “The glory of God,” wrote Irenaeus of Lyon (135-202), is “a living human being,” and this is the idea that the Bible’s stories of creation celebrate. Being human is good, as Psalm 8 extolls –

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet…” (vs. 3-6)

Our very existence as human beings gives God glory, but when humanity refused to consciously and consistently give God the glory that was due Him as Creator (Romans 1:20-21), the harmony of the created world, its “shalom,” began to unravel (Genesis 3:14-19; Romans 8:19-25). When you throw a rock into the middle of a placid pond, other disturbances quickly radiate out in concentric circles from its point of entry, and Francis Schaeffer (1912 – 1984), the popular evangelical thinker and writer, wrote about the disturbances on the pond of God’s good creation that followed in the wake of the story we find in Genesis chapter 3. He said the “great separation” between God and humanity (theological) narrated in Genesis 3 (the rock thrown into the middle of the placid pond that was Eden) “underlies” all the other separations we experience as human beings in this life and world – the divide we feel deep inside ourselves with our very own selves (psychological), the divide we experience with others because of race, gender, economics, culture and nationality (sociological), and the divide we feel with nature that is no longer a garden (ecological).

Genesis 1-2 are the narrative beginnings of the “health” thread in the Bible’s plot structure. Genesis 3-11 are the narrative beginnings of the “disease” thread in the Bible’s plot structure. And the story of Abram in Genesis 12:1-4 is the narrative beginning of the “healing” thread in the Bible’s plot structure, a story that finally leads to the Christ event (His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, sending of the Spirit, and return at the close of the age). This saving work of Christ is what “heals” us. This is why so many of the pictures of final salvation the Bible paints are of a “new heavens” and a “new earth” (Isaiah 65:17-25; Ezekiel 47:1-12; Romans 8:18-25; 2 Peter 3:10-13; Revelation 21-22). The resurrection of Jesus Christ marks this new beginning, which is why Easter was called the “eighth day” of creation by the early church. The newly baptized were told that in Christ they had become new creations, that the old had passed away and the new had come (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is the picture that baptism by immersion paints –

“…All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Romans 6:3-6)

Those who by faith are united with Christ have a share in His resurrection, the very thing that believer’s baptism by immersion “pictures,” and the “newness of life” in which we are called to walk as Christians can be understood as a return to the “fully alive” status of human beings in Genesis 1-2 that is the “glory of God” (Irenaeus). God’s work of salvation is an act of re-creation. God’s saving work in Christ by the Spirit restores our humanity. It changes us back into who we were always meant to be. As the Scottish Charismatic theologian Thomas Smail (1928–2012) explained –

“Grace perfects creation and does not abolish it; it brings creation back to the point it finds its wholeness, that it does not have in itself, in the re-establishment of its ‘koinonia’ (‘fellowship’), its shared life with God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, and he comes to us clothed in Christ’s humanity, not to make us super-spiritual saints, or ascetic anchorites, or miracle-mongering supernaturalists, or chandelier-swinging fanatics – but quite simply to make us human… The concern of Jesus is for the wholeness of our humanity. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him and has anointed him so that he may release people and make them whole (Luke 4:18). The effect of the release of the Spirit in a friend of mine was later described (by his wife!) as having made him ‘far less religious and far more normal.’ If it did that, it was indeed a work of the Holy Spirit, for according to the ‘Today’s English Version of the New Testament,’ God’s Spirit ‘fills us with power and love and self-control’ (II Timothy 1:7). The Greek of the last word – ‘sophronismos’ – which the King James Version renders ‘sound mind,’ could almost be rendered ‘balanced normalcy,’ and this verse emphasizes (the fact that) this is one of the chief concerns of the Spirit.” (“Reflected Glory: The Spirit in Christ and Christians” – 1975)

The moment we become Christians by faith, “we have peace with God, …we obtain access to grace, …we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God, and …God’s love gets poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us” (Romans 5:1-5). In the language of I Corinthians 2:14-16, this is what happens when we cross the threshold from being “unspiritual” people to being “spiritual” people by the decision of faith, and this happens in an instant, “the hour we first believe.” But it doesn’t stop there with this. Becoming a Christian is one thing. It’s a good thing, a momentous thing to be sure, but it’s just one thing, and it’s only the first thing.

It was often said in the early church that salvation is like a seed that gets planted in us when we first “repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). In time that seed stirs and sprouts, it flowers and leafs, it grows and begins to bear fruit. Becoming a Christian happens the minute one crosses the threshold of faith. But being a Christian unfolds gradually over time. This is why every picture of the Christian life in the New Testament is a picture of growth. Not only is being a Christian like a plant growing from a seed to a sprout to a harvest, being a Christian is like a building going up from a foundation to a superstructure to the roof, and it’s like running a race from the starting blocks to the course to finish line, and it’s like the growth of a human being from birth through childhood and adolescence to maturity.

“The central goal of all spiritual formation is the transformation of the disciple into the likeness of Christ” (Michael Avery). We are to grow up in every way into Christ (Ephesians 4:15); we are being conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29); we are to put on Christ (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:12-17); Christ is to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19); we are to follow in the steps of Christ who is our example for life (I Peter 2:21). But this is a process. It doesn’t happen all at once. Just as Abram journeyed “by stages” to the promised land (Genesis 12:9 – NRSV), so we mature spiritually, only gradually “reaching to the measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13), slowly being changed into Christ’s likeness “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18), that is, step by step, and bit by bit.

We made good use of Willow Creek’s “Spiritual Life Continuum” in the last church I pastored. This model came from Willow Creek’s congregational self-study back in 2007. Believing that Christians are supposed to grow into greater and greater intimacy with and obedience to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior over time, Willow Creek tried to assess the spiritual maturity of its members by tracking their movement along a “spiritual pathway” that moved from the stage of “Exploring Christ” (the people in this stage have a basic belief in God, but they are unsure about Christ and his role in their lives) to the stage of “Growing in Christ” (the people in this stage have made a commitment to Christ, but they are just beginning to learn what it means), and then from the stage of “Growing in Christ” to the stage of being “Close to Christ” (the people in this stage turn to Christ on a daily basis for help and guidance for the issues they face in their lives), and then finally from the stage of being “Close to Christ” to becoming “Christ-Centered” (the people in this stage would identify their relationship with Christ as the most important relationship in their entire lives). Because this is a process, a journey, sometimes it can stall. We can get “stuck” in a stage. The “Reveal” survey at Willow Creek back in 2007 indicated that one of every four of its members thought of themselves as “stuck” or “stalled,” and this is how Paul described the Corinthian Christians. This is what Paul meant when he called them “carnal, babes in Christ” (I Corinthians 3:1).

Spiritual immaturity is a phase we all go through as Christians on the journey of faith. We should never be surprised when new Christians act like babies because spiritually that’s what they are. This is why Paul insisted that new converts not be made spiritual leaders in the church (I Timothy 3:6). Without instruction and experience, we are all subject to error and deception (I Timothy 2:11-13).  The problem comes when, rather than passing through spiritual immaturity as a stage on the way to spiritual maturity, Christians get stuck in their spiritual immaturity by refusing instruction and failing to grow. This was Paul’s assessment of the spiritual state of the Corinthians –

“Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh (carnal), as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh (carnal). For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?” (I Corinthians 3:1-3)

In a parallel New Testament text, Hebrews 5:12-14, this same concern about the spiritual immaturity of its readers gets voiced – “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” John Stott (1921 –2011), one of the principal faces and voices of 20^th century global evangelicalism, made this same observation about Christians today – “Nothing troubles me more in the church today than our Christian superficiality.  So few of us are mature in Christ!   We deserve the rebukes Paul addressed to the Corinthians, for we are still babes when we should be adults, and need milk when we should be eating meat.  While we rejoice at the astonishing statistics of church growth in some parts, our euphoria should be tempered by whether such growth is as deep as it is broad.” And A.B. Simpson (1843 – 1919), the Presbyterian minister and Founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance, shifted the entire focus of his ministry in response to the spiritual immaturity of the churches and Christians he encountered in his day. He wrote –

“Even the most superficial observer must have noticed in the records of Christian experience, and the observation of life, that there are two very distinct types of Christians in the world, in every age; one representing an experience of despondency, anxiety, doubt, inconstancy and frequent declension – a life so unsatisfying as to make one question whether it is really worth all it costs; and the other full of confidence, victory, joy, satisfaction, power and stability… There is not a congregation of Christians on earth today but contains the same two classes – the people who have simply come out of Egypt and are wandering in the wilderness… and those who have been filled with the Spirit and are walking in the light and joy of the Lord.”

The consistent expectation of Scripture is that Christians will “grow up into salvation.” Three times in I Corinthians Paul called the Corinthians to spiritual maturity (2:6; 13:11; 14:20), and in his first letter (I Peter 1:22; 25; 2:1-3), Peter explained that when we are regenerated (“born again”), the “good seed” of the “living and abiding word of God” gets planted in us, and as it is nourished, it grows. Diadochus, a fifth century bishop of Photice in Epirus (a city in a western region of Greece), explained – “Grace hides its presence within the baptized, waiting for the soul’s desire when the whole person turns wholly to the Lord, then in an unutterable experience it reveals its presence in the heart, …the fire of divine grace diffuses itself even to the exterior senses of the hearts.”   But if neglected, that good seed while present lays dormant.

In his discussion of the “Personal Experience of the Holy Spirit According to the Greek Fathers” (silouanthompson.net/2008/08/experience-of-holy-spirit/) Kallistos Ware asked “them” (the Greek Fathers) if the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that comes as a gift with repentance and faith at baptism (Acts 2:38) is a conscious experience, or “can there be an indwelling of the Paraclete (Helper, Comforter, Counselor, Advocate – John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) which is unconscious yet nonetheless real?” To answer this question, Fr. Ware first turned to the writings of St. Mark the Monk, an important fifth century Egyptian theologian –

“Mark makes a crucial distinction, summed up in the two Greek adverbs meaning ‘mystically’ or ‘secretly’, and ‘actively’. Initially, at sacramental baptism the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is given to us ‘secretly’, in such a way that we are not at first consciously aware of it. We only become ‘actively’ conscious of this presence if we acquire a living faith, expressed through our practice of the divine commandments. In this way baptism plants within us a hidden seed of perfection, but it rests with us – assisted always by God’s grace – to make that seed grow, so that it bears conscious and palpable fruit.. While we cannot ‘add’ to the completeness of baptism, God nevertheless awaits a response on our part; and if we fail to make that response, although the Spirit will still continue to be present ‘secretly’ in our heart, we shall not feel His presence ‘actively’ within us, nor experience His fruits with full conscious awareness.”

When a Christian fails to grow and thrive, it creates a certain dissonance. There’s a gap between who we think are and who we actually are. We carry about in our heads and hearts this seed of our true identity and potential, but it gets challenged and contradicted all the time by what we do and how we actually are. We’re not the people we think we are. We’re not the people we want to be. We’re not the people we’re supposed to be.  And this creates feelings of frustration and futility. It was a feeling of such emptiness that brought J. Rodman Williams, a well-known and highly respected Presbyterian theologian, to the place of seeking “something more.” In his 1972 book “The Pentecostal Reality” he wrote –

“At the heart of much of our life and activity a deep spiritual crisis exists. Despite multiple attempts by the church at reassessment and relevance, there remains the haunting sense of something lacking or unfulfilled and a feeling of spiritual impotence… Where, many are asking, is the dynamic reality of God’s presence? In an article appearing in ‘The Christian Century’ (May 13, 1979) entitled ‘The Power of Pentecost: We Need it More Now Than Ever,’ the author asks, ‘Why in every sector of Christianity today… [is] there so little evidence of spiritual power…?’ ‘I am haunted,’ he continues, ‘by the memory of Pentecost and its power surging into the hearts of the disciples long, long ago. Where is that power today? Can it come among us again?’ Then, finally, he adds, ‘It is time we took Pentecost seriously and eagerly received a new infusion of the Holy Spirit?’”

I believe that it’s this awareness of “something missing” that prepares us for the “something more” that the experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit brings into our spiritual lives when the seed that gets “secretly” planted in us at conversion begins to stir and grow, bearing “conscious and palpable fruit.” It’s when we hunger and thirst for the reality of the things that we say we believe are true that we will to ask, and knock, and seek, and that’s when Jesus said that the fullness of the Holy Spirit will be given to us (Luke 11:13; Ephesians 5:18). So momentous can this experience be that it is sometimes described as a “second conversion.” The Rev. Joel Hawes )1789 – 1867), Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1818 to 1864, described it as such –

“What is meant by ‘Second Conversion’ – It implies that there has been a first conversion; that is, a principle of true piety has been implanted in the bosom, but it has hitherto been there in a weak, imperfect form. The heart has been changed, but the change is superficial and defective. The repentance is sincere, but not deep and thorough. The faith is real, but not strong and controlling. The love is genuine, but inconstant and feeble. And so, of all the Christian graces; they exist in him who has had a first conversion, but in an imperfect, partially developed state, weak, unstable, unsymmetrical, and bearing but little fruit in the life. Now the effect of a second conversion is to take the subject out of this low, inadequate, and ineffective state of piety, and raise him higher, and make him more faithful in the Divine life. The antecedents of this change are often very similar to those that precede first conversion. It commences in a serious, scrutinizing view of one’s spiritual state and prospects. The subject of this change becomes dissatisfied with his present type of religion. As he passes through this second conversion as I call it, he seems to himself to enter into a new spiritual region. He sees Divine things in a clearer and more affecting light than he ever did before.”

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980), Founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and currently in consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church, said that “Most cradle Catholics have gone through, or need to go through, a second conversion which binds them with a more mature love and obedience to the Church.” Billy Graham experienced this “second conversion” (find an account of his experience of it in Appendix 1), and so have I.

I was “sacramentalized” before I was evangelized, or maybe the right way to say this is that I was “pre-evangelized” by being “sacramentalized.” My good parents of true faith took me to church as an infant to be baptized, raised me in church where an “experienced” faith nurtured me, and delivered me to the “affiliative” faith of my confirmation when I was 12. My spiritual awakening happened in 1965.  The seed of the Christian faith that had been sacramentally planted in me as a child burst into life when I became a teenager.

One of the catalysts that moved me from the “affiliative” and “experienced” faiths of my childhood to the “owned” faith of my adolescence was a televised Billy Graham Crusade in the middle of the night. When, at the end of his message, Billy asked us to pray with him, I did. I consciously invited Jesus Christ into my life as my Savior and made a personal commitment to follow Him as my Lord. Stephen Neill, (1900–1984), the British Anglican Bishop, used to end his parish preaching missions by asking people to “commit as much as they knew of themselves to as much as they knew of God in Jesus Christ,” and that’s exactly what I did that night after watching Billy Graham on TV. In that moment, my faith went from a theory to a lived experience.

Sacramentalized, I already knew that God loved me. The Prayer Book liturgies we prayed every Sunday in church saturated me with the claims of Christianity. I could recite the Creeds and rattle off the words of the Lord’s Prayer by the time I was in the first grade. But it wasn’t until my heart was opened and I prayed that prayer that these things moved from being outside of me to taking root inside of me. With that prayer, suddenly all the things I had been told all my life in church were true about God and how He felt about me became real to me. It was this evangelical awakening that kindled the fire in the fireplace of my spiritual life. Light, life, and warmth were all brought to my spiritual life when I welcomed Jesus Christ in as my personal Lord and Savior.

But everything in the “fire” of my evangelization was focused on the experience of conversion itself. I was so focused on that initial decision of personal faith that when I finally made it, everything that followed felt a bit anticlimactic. So much attention was paid to how someone becomes a Christian, that no one took the time to tell me anything about what it means to actually be a Christian. I got my sins forgiven. I experienced peace of heart and mind. I got my ticket for heaven punched. And then it felt like all that remained for me as a Christian was to spiritually keep my bags packed until it was time to go. But there is more to Christianity than this.

Explaining the teachings of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Kallistos Ware wrote – “Our spiritual program can be summed up in the maxim ‘Become what you are’. We are already, from the moment of our sacramental baptism as infants, ‘Spirit-bearers’ in an implicit and unconscious manner. Our aim is therefore to acquire conscious experience of Him who already dwells within us.” E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973), the Methodist missionary and “Higher Christian Life” theologian, made much the same point when he wrote in his book “Abundant Living” (1942) –

“Here is where the Christian Church is weakest. It believes in and teaches the Holy Spirit— partly. The disciples were at this stage when Jesus said to them: “He [the Holy Spirit] remains with you and will be within you.” (John 14:17 ~ Moffatt). The Holy Spirit was ‘with’ them, but not ‘within’ them. The same is true today. Most Christians know the Holy Spirit is ‘with’ them— He disturbs them by momentary touches, by flashes of nearness, by illuminations and insights, by saving here and saving there. But all this is ‘with,’ and not “within.” He goads us rather than guides us, illuminates rather than invigorates, prods us into activity rather than penetrates all activities — it is from ‘without in,’ instead of from ‘within out.’ The capital and government is on the outside, rather than on the inside. This sense of outsideness will persist in religion until we enter into what the disciples entered into at Pentecost. There they passed over from the ‘with’ stage to the ‘within’ stage. Their religion was no longer a prodding, but a penetration; no longer a restriction, but a release.”

My conversion happened in 1965 after being “sacramentalized” as an infant and child.  I then “received” or “made welcome” the Holy Spirit (see Appendix 2: “Entertaining the Holy Spirit” – Richard Sibbes, and Appendix 3: “Receiving the Holy Spirit” – Dennis and Rita Bennett) six years later when I was a freshman in Christian College.  For six long years the Holy Spirit was living in the house of my life, but I wasn’t aware of His presence or plugged into His power. I wish somebody had told me sooner about “receiving” the Holy Spirit – about consciously and consistently “entertaining” Him. 

The normal Christian life consists of both being “born again” and being “Spirit-filled.”  Jesus Christ as the Savior came to do both.  He is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and He is the “One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33).  But my spiritual life was artificially truncated for six frustrating years because nobody told me this.  As the disciples of John the Baptist told Paul outside of Ephesus in Acts 19:2 – I hadn’t even been told “that there was a Holy Spirit!”  And then, everything changed for me at a prayer meeting in a college dormitory room when I was encouraged to “receive,” to “make welcome,” to “entertain” the Holy Spirit, and it has made all the difference.  Being filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18-21) is part of the Gospel, and, in fact, it is what makes what is true, real for us, and in us.  It is the experiential part of Christianity for which we who are looking for more than just theories about God but an actual relationship of intimacy and affection with God are so hungry and thirsty for.

At the end of his discussion of the difference between having the Holy Spirit “with” us, and having the Holy Spirit “within” us, E. Stanley Jones prayed – “O Spirit of God, I, too, long for this withnness – I would be every whit whole. I would have the seat of Thy authority within me. For I cannot conceive that Thou hast come so far in Thy redemption and wilt not come the full way. Thou wilt not stop on the threshold— Thou wilt move within. Come, Spirit, come — within, within, entirely within. Amen.” And we know that this is a prayer than God in Christ welcomes (Luke 11:13 – “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”).

Jeffrey Simmons was an Episcopal Priest who got irritated when some members of his parish kept urging him to go to a certain conference where he could “get the Spirit.” He finally wound up going, but resolved that he wasn’t going to let anybody pray for him while he was there. Dodging offers to be prayed over at every turn, and becoming increasingly irritated by the whole idea, he finally retreated to a quiet garden where he could hide.

“Sitting with my back against the trunk of a tree, I tried to sort out my feelings. I felt trapped (someone else had driven and I didn’t have a car.) I felt pressured and manipulated… But as the sunlight sparkling through the cool green leaves started to calm me, I became aware that I (also) felt curious and a little ashamed of myself for not being more adventurous. The theme of the conference, boiled down to the essentials, was nothing more than, “God wants to have a closer and more productive relationship with you, if you will just open yourself to receive it.” I couldn’t argue with that… so I sat under that tree for an hour and a half praying the hardest I had ever prayed in my life, ‘Dear God, if you have something for me that I don’t have, I’ll take it.'”

And he concluded – “This is a prayer for everybody. I didn’t have to join any faction in the church in order to pray it. It can’t, like some prayers I have heard, be used by one group to gain political advantage over another group. It does not imply that anyone else is inadequate or defective. It simply says, as I think Christians should always say, that God always has more for me, and I am standing before him with empty, receptive hands.”

Appendix 1 – An Account of Billy Graham’s” Second Conversion” – “A Personal Look at Billy Graham, the World’s Best-loved Evangelist” (1997) – Sherwood Eliot Wirt (1911 ~ 2008) 

“During his visit to Britain in October 1946, a meeting was arranged at Hildenborough Hall in Kent where Billy was to be introduced to Christian leaders before his evangelistic tour of cities in England, Ireland, and Wales. He arrived in time for the closing service of a youth conference, at which the speaker was Stephen Olford.

…At Hildenborough Hall Olford preached a fervent message on the text: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the spirit.”1 When he had finished, he seated himself and rested his head in his hands. He became aware of someone nearby and looked up to see Billy Graham standing over him.

“Mr. Olford,” said Billy, “I just want to ask one question: Why didn’t you give an invitation? I would have been the first one to come forward. You’ve spoken of something that I don’t have. I want the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life too.”

Billy told his biographer John Pollock, “I was seeking for more of God in my life, and I felt that here was a man who could help me. He had a dynamic, a thrill, an exhilaration about him I wanted to capture.”

They arranged to meet in Wales where Billy was scheduled to preach in a town named Pontypridd, eleven miles from the home of Olford’s parents . In a room in a stone hotel in Pontypridd, Stephen and Billy spent two days together. Billy told Stephen. “This is serious business. I have to learn what this is that the Lord has been teaching you.”

The first day was spent, according to Stephen, “on the Word  and on what it really means to expose oneself to the Word in the quiet time.” They spent the hours turning the pages of the Bible, studying passages and verses. Billy prayed, “Lord, I don’t want to go on without knowing this anointing You’ve  given my brother.”

That night Billy preached to a small crowd. The sermon was “ordinary,” according to Stephen, and “not the Welsh kind of preaching.” Billy gave an invitation, but the response was sparse.

The next day they met again, and Stephen began concentrating on the work of the Holy Spirit by declaring, “There is no Pentecost without Calvary,” and that we “must be broken” like the apostle Paul, who declared himself “crucified with Christ.” He then told Billy how God completely turned his life inside out. It was, he said, “an experience of the Holy Spirit in His fullness and anointing.” He explained that “where the Spirit is truly Lord over the life, there is liberty, there is release — the sublime freedom of complete submission of oneself in a continuous state of surrender to the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.”

According to Stephen, Billy cried, “Stephen, I see it. That’s what I want.” His eyes filled with tears — something rare with Billy. It seems he had no appetite that day, only taking a sip of water occasionally. Stephen continued to expound the meaning of the filling of the Spirit in the life of a believer. He said it meant “bowing daily and hourly to the sovereignty of Christ and to the authority of the Word.”

From talking and discussing, the two men went to their knees praying and praising. It was about midafternoon on the second day that Billy began pouring out his heart “in a prayer of total dedication to the Lord.” According to Stephen, ‘all heaven broke loose in that dreary little room. It was like Jacob laying hold of God and crying , ‘Lord, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.’

They came to a time of rest from prayer. Billy exclaimed, “My heart is so flooded with the Holy Spirit!”  They alternately wept and laughed, and Billy began walking back and forth across the room, saying, “I have it! I’m filled. I’m filled. This is the turning point of my life. This will revolutionize my ministry.”

Said Olford, ‘That night Billy was to speak at a large Baptist church nearby. When he rose to preach, he was a man absolutely anointed.’ Billy’s Welsh audience seemed to sense it. They came forward to pray even before the invitation was given. Later when it was given, Olford said, ‘The Welsh listeners jammed the aisles. There was chaos. Practically the entire audience came rushing forward.’

Stephen drove back to his parents’ home that night, deeply moved by Billy’s new authority and strength. ‘When I came in the door,’ he said later, ‘my father looked at my face and asked, ‘What on earth has happened?’

‘I sat down at the kitchen table said, ‘Dad, something has happened to Billy Graham. The world is going to hear from his man. He is going to make his mark in history.’ The heavenly reservoir had overflowed. A close colleague of Billy’s before Pontypridd, Chuck Templeton, heard the young preacher after that experience. Astonished, Templeton remarked that Billy’s preaching had taken on ‘a certain magnificence of effect…fascinating…really impressive.’”

Appendix 2  – “Entertaining the Holy Spirit”  | Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)

Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), a Puritan “Divine” (synonym for “Theologian”),  believed that the Holy Spirit must be “an integral part of our lives, our churches, and our world,” and that the way that this happened was through what he called “entertaining” the Holy Spirit in every facet of our life and experience.  For Richard Sibbes, “entertaining the Holy Spirit meant to welcome with hospitality and then to nurture our friendship with the indwelling Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the agent of conversion.  It is the basic work of the Holy Spirit to take the objective work of the salvation that God in Jesus Christ has accomplished in history on the cross and out of the empty tomb, and to subjectively apply it individually to our hearts and corporately to the church.  The Spirit convicts us of sin and then draws us to believe, and when we do, the Holy Spirit then takes up residence in our hearts to assure us that we are the children of God and to direct the process of sanctification by which we are increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  It is this “indwelling Spirit” who must be “entertained” by us, that is, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us is something that we must consciously welcome and then consistently acknowledge.  Just like a “bad marriage” in which one partner can take advantage of the other partner’s contributions while failing to appreciate him or her, it is possible for us as Christians to “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30) and to “quench the Holy Spirit” (I Thessalonians 5:19) by presuming on the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives without being aware of them or appreciative for them, and so Richard Sibbes urged Christians to “make a daily effort to appreciate the Holy Spirit.”

Appendix 3 – “Receiving the Holy Spirit” – Dennis and Rita Bennett

What Richard Sibbes wrote about “entertaining the Holy Spirit” in the early seventeenth century, Dennis and Rita Bennett wrote about in their book “The Holy Spirit and You” (Logos – 1971) at the beginning of the Charismatic Movement in America Christianity in the mid twentieth century.

“Some are puzzled by the term ‘receiving the Holy Spirit.”’ A Christian may ask the question: ‘How can I receive the Holy Spirit when I already have Him living in me?’ (The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit – the ‘gift of the Holy Spirit’ – is ‘part of the package’ of conversion – Acts 2:37-38; Romans 8:9; I Corinthians 12:3; Galatians 3:1-5). We all know what it means to ‘receive a person.  Let us imagine the Brown household.  It is 5:40 p.m., and Mr. Brown has just come home from work, and is taking a shower before supper.   Mrs. Brown is putting the finishing touches on an especially nice meal, for the Browns have invited the Joneses over to eat.  Their guests are scheduled to arrive at 6:00 p.m., but alas, at 5:45 comes a ring ar the doorbell.  Mrs. Brown flutters a little – she isn’t through with the gravy; she has flour on the end of her nose; and her hair is a mess!

“Susie?” she calls to her daughter, “for goodness’ sake will you go and let the Joneses on; give them the evening paper, or visit with them – I’m not ready for them yet!”

Just then the phone rings in the kitchen, and Mrs. Brown answers.

“Hello! Marie?” says the voice on the line.  “This is Helen.  Do you have the Joneses over there?”

“Yes,” replies Mrs. Brown, “we do.”

“Well, how are they?” says the voice of the caller.

“I really don’t know,” says Mrs. Brown, patiently.  “I haven’t received them yet.  I’m still out here working in the kitchen.”

“You’d better hurry and receive them,” says Helen.   “I happen to know that they have some wonderful news, and that they have brought you some beautiful gifts!”

So, Mrs. Brown hangs up the phone, quickly finishes her cooking, straightens her hair and powders her face, and then, together with her husband, receives her friends, hears the news they have, and accepts the gifts they’ve brought.  The Person of the Holy Spirit has been living in your “house” ever since your new birth, but now you fully acknowledge His presence and receive His gifts.

…The first experience of the Christian Life, salvation, is the incoming of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to give us new life, God’s life, eternal life.  The second experience, is the receiving, or making welcome of the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus Christ can cause Him to pour out this new life from our spirits, to baptize our souls and bodies, and then the world around, with His refreshing and renewing power.”