Waiting For Sunday

Shane Claiborne has an interesting article (part 1 of 3) today at Out of Ur, the blog for Christianity Today’s Leadership magazine. I’m currently reading Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I like the book because, aside from a few sophomoric references, Claiborne defines “radical” in the correct sense of “getting back to the roots”. Hence the subtitle reference to being “an ordinary radical”; radical Christians aren’t defined by tattoos or body-piercing, but by living like Jesus, returning to the roots of Christian practice. Every Christian should be a radical in this sense, though most of us are not. Claiborne lives what he speaks. For years, he has lived in a different sort of Christian community in inner-city Philadelphia.

As for the article, the only weakness (I think) is that it seems to minimize hell as an eternal reality (though Claiborne doesn’t dismiss hell altogether), which is unnecessary to make his larger and vastly more important point: That millions of people are living in a hell on earth right now. Jesus did speak of an eternal hell, but there is no doubt that his life and ministry give us a powerful example of living among those in hell-on-earth and releasing God’s Spirit among them to set them free.

Claiborne (who is originally from Maryville, TN) is doing a great service for the church, and his book has really got me thinking about alternative ways of living in community WITH our community.

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When I was a kid, I was a committed Christian and I was really into science fiction. It didn’t take me long to see the tension between the two. My favorite science fiction writers (especially Isaac Asimov) were atheists. Their vision of inter-galactic travel and settlement of the universe had no place for God.

So I dreamed up in my own mind a vision combining the two. What if a group of Christians could settle another planet somewhere and establish it as an outpost of the kingdom of God? In my mind, I pictured a screening process which would make sure that all the settlers were true Christians. Thus, we’d start our settlement with only the good people. Then, if anyone later decided to reject Christ or if they persisted in sin, or if they committed serious sin, they’d either be sent back to earth, or else face the death penalty (I mean let’s get serious, right?). In other words, specifically the words of Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we would first uproot the wheat and transplant it elsewhere; and then we’d uproot the weeds as they sprouted up.

There were several problems with this vision, however. First, it didn’t take seriously the sin in my own heart - the benevolent founder and dictator of this colony - let alone the commoners I’d take with me. Even good Christians carry enough sin with them to infest another planet quickly. Second, my vision assumed that it is possible to set up a screening process to tell real Christians from fakes and outright sinners. It isn’t. One day the Lord will make the judgments - and his judgments will be right. But until then, we cannot do so.

The third problem with my dream of a Christian planet was that I didn’t realize that such things have been tried many times and have almost always failed. I’m currently reading a book called Illusions of Innocence about early-American religious movements (mine included) that tried to restore the primitive faith and sometimes (as with the Puritans) attempted to set up “Christian” colonies. The lessons? People who try to establish a utopian community by separating the good people into a village away from the sin without quickly see their utopia destroyed by the sin within.  The pride, the lust, the petty jealousy and legalism reveals that the wheat and the weeds aren’t really all that different in this age. In the OT, God separated his people into an isolated nation, and made it very clear by outward practice who was part of it and who wasn’t. And yet that chosen and separate nation didn’t often behave in a holy fashion. Sin infested Israel much as it did the surrounding nations.

All of this is to say that it shouldn’t surprise or discourage us to find sin in church. Of course we have to confront it (see Matthew 18:15-17). But we can rest in the knowledge that we don’t have to make church into a sin-free zone. God will handle that at the end of the age.

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This headline caught my eye: “Rabbi claims holocaust dead ‘deserved it’”. Read the article and you’ll see that the headline is only slightly sensationalized. The rabbi is Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from England who recently spoke at the controversial holocaust conference in Iran. Cohen isn’t a holocaust denier, but he holds a point of view that is at least as old as Job’s comforters - that those who suffer deserve it, and those who inflict suffering could not otherwise succeed. Cohen’s beliefs about suffering shape his view on Israel (and this is what makes him so controversial): He believes that the modern nation of Israel was formed as an act of rebellion against God, who wills that Jews live peacefully in exile.

Laying aside Cohen’s anti-Zionist doctrine, it strikes me that Christians inhabit an entirely different universe of ideas about suffering. On one hand, we all deserve it “in one way or another” as Cohen so loosely puts it. “The wages of sin is death” says Paul in Romans 6:23. Jesus talked about people who died in a much smaller incident of anti-Semitism in Luke 13, and then he said: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:2-3, NIV)

On the other hand, at the center of our faith is the one true innocent man suffering without deserving it. The “punishment that brought us peace was upon him,” Isaiah says.

Grace is a wild, unlikely thing, isn’t it?

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This is the weekend that the next big Bible film opens in theaters. The Nativity Story stars sixteen-year-old Australian actress Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. Castle-Hughes starred as a Maori girl-who-would-be-tribal-chief in the wonderful Whale Rider a few years ago. And fans of 24 will recognize the actress who plays Elizabeth - Iranian-born Shohreh Aghdashloo, who played the awesomely wicked Mom-next-door/terrorist in season four.

David Neff at Christianity Today Movies gives the film a positive review for its realistic rendering of first-century peasant life and for developing the idea, only briefly mentioned in Scripture, that Joseph was a just and compassionate man.

I’m glad to say that, unlike The Passion, this film hasn’t been aggressively marketed to churches as “the greatest evangelistic opportunity since the feeding of the 5,000!” It’s just a movie, after all. Hopefully it’s a good one. I look forward to seeing it.

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If you’ve got some time and patience to invest, here’s an extremely enlightening article by New Testament scholar N. T. Wright called God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil. Wright challenges prevailing views on war, God’s role in the world, and interpreting evil in light of the gospels. Well worth the time. (Thanks to David Osborn for pointing me to this article).

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A. W. Tozer said that every Christian must learn to bear one of two pains; either the pain of double-mindedness, or the pain of the crucified self. The pain of double-mindedness is the pain of a tooth-ache that lasts a lifetime. The pain is always there, filling you with resentment, anger, and envy. The pain of the crucified self, on the other hand, is a deep, terrible, surgical pain. But once it’s over, it’s over.I’ve had this quote from Tozer laying around on my hard drive for many years, and I’ve used it in sermons before (and I used it this Sunday). In all honesty, though, I haven’t been able to trace it down via Google, and I’m starting to wonder if he really said it. Like I said Sunday, I agree with all of this quote except the last line: “Once it’s over…” Surgical pain fades away, but I think I was the reason Jesus told us to take up the cross DAILY in Luke 9:23.

Yet I can’t quibble with the underlying truthfulness of Tozer’s words about double-mindedness. I find myself seeking God in the morning, and looking out for myself by lunch. I pray and I count my money; I worship and I assess the honors people give me; I call myself a servant and then get angry when people treat me like one.

And it’s an awful way to live. O wretched man that I am!

How many Christians do you know who REALLY practice dying to self? I DO know a few. I work with at least two. I know a few others in church, and most of them are older. Is it their life-and faith-experience that makes them as they are? Or is it that my generation and the younger ones are failing to produce that kind of Christian?

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“Human beings are explanation generators.”

So says Daniel Taylor in his book The Myth of Certainty (p. 22). He says that we generate explanations about what life means to give us security, and that (and this is the interesting and scary part) all explanations for life are self-verifying. That means that they all seem to be true, that we can find “evidence” to back them up.

Our house is currently under the attack of fruit flies. There used to be a theory that said that fruit spontaneously generated fruit flies. It isn’t true, but if I hadn’t been taught otherwise, I would THINK it was true. It’s an explanation that works. All I have to do is leave an apple out and I’ve got fruit flies.

People used to think that the universe revolved around the earth. It seems to do just that. If you picture the night sky as a black globe enclosing the earth with the stars painted on it, that works as an explanation for most of the universe. Only a few objects mess up that theory by moving against that black globe, including the sun, moon and planets (which is why they’re called “planets” or “wanderers”).

Explanations of all kinds “work” to explain life, and everybody has one - from staunch young-earth creationists to strict Darwinists, from radical Islamic clerics to shouting fundamentalist Christian preachers to left-leaning atheists, from the Amish in Lancaster who stoically mourn the recent school shooting (and put it in God’s hands) to the baffled worldly reporters who sip Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes in front of their farmhouses…we all know how to explain the world and we all have a group of friends around us who will affirm our explanation.

Doesn’t make it true, though.

I see these life-explanations at work in Christians around me:

• Money doesn’t buy happiness. Money and Christ buy happiness.
• Pursuit of pleasure is empty…unless you go to church every other Sunday. Then pursuit of pleasure is quite admirable.
• The greatest commands of the faith? Learn to love yourself so you can love your neighbor and give ten percent of a tithe to God’s work.

Daniel Taylor: “Once in operation, a belief system processes all information, all evidence in its own terms, appropriating that which verifies its outlook and defusing or ignoring anything else” (p.23).

Remember, friends…there are many people who will affirm your version of the truth, for now anyway.

And then there is One who is Truth Himself.

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For many centuries after Christ, Christian pilgrims in Europe found spiritual meaning in traveling to the Holy Land, especially to the birthplace of Christ. The rise and spread of Islam didn’t interfere with these peaceful pilgrimages. But as the year A.D. 1100 approached, things changed. Seljuk Turks, aggressive and warlike converts to Islam, seized Jerusalem from their fellow Muslims and began to take control of what had once been the eastern part of the Roman Empire. And reports reached Rome that Christian travelers to Israel were being harmed.

In this context, Pope Urban II launched what became one of the most shameful eras of Christian history – the crusades. When Urban launched the first of these “holy wars” he promised his soldiers spiritual rewards in heaven and also the temporal benefits of having more land. He said: “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.” In this and the subsequent six crusades that followed, all regard for the principles of just war fell away in the name of this holy battle. Non-combatants and prisoners were tortured, raped, and their towns plundered. Jews and Christians often fell victim to the attacks by the “Christian soldiers” who sometimes cut open bodies in search of gold.

Perhaps the most awful fact about the crusades is that the name itself – “crusade” – refers to taking up the cross, after the example of Christ. What horrible blasphemy it was to use the cross as a weapon of hatred and murder.*

Now, if you were to read back through my three previous paragraphs, and you switched places between Christians and Muslims, I think you’d find an account that parallels today’s news. A holy war proclaimed by religious leaders, attacks against “infidels”, disregard for non-combatants, and promises of earthly and heavenly rewards for soldiers – it all sounds so familiar.

Here’s something else to notice: A large number of Muslims today (the majority, I think) cry out: “This isn’t Islam. My faith has been hijacked by people who know nothing about it, men who want only power. Jihad, holy war, properly refers to the war within, the war to overcome sin, not to this!”

Christians should be able to identify with this latter group. We correctly say that “crusade” or to take up one’s cross, properly refers to the process of denying self, lifting up Christ, and serving others. “The crusades weren’t Christianity,” we say. “They were a perversion of our faith, quests for riches and power.” We have tried to live down the crusades and forget them. Yet we cannot. They are part of our history. They illustrate the terrible sin we can commit when we allow our religion to draw us away from relationship with Christ. In my understanding, the crusades pointedly illustrate Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:21 – “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Is it fair that Christians are sometimes known only for their wars, murders, and lust for power? No. But it is understandable, given our history.

And what about us? Maybe your view of Islam is so colored by war that you can’t imagine something like Islamic Relief. IR is a charity that works to relive suffering caused by natural and man-made disasters around the world, and focuses on things like water and sanitation, orphan sponsorship, and economic development – much like World Vision, the Christian relief group to whom we recently donated more than $27,000 for water wells. Many millions in Islam find more to identify with in Islamic Relief than they find in the current popular definition of jihad.

Please do not think for a moment that I am saying that all faiths are the same, or that Islam is as valid a way to God as Christ. Our Savior claimed that no one would come to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Jesus Christ is the ONLY begotten Son of God, God’s way of reaching out to us. All other religious systems represent our futile attempt to reach Him. Christ also expressed a profound desire for every willing person to be saved, for he came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).

This is why the Communion Meal is so important, so special to us. At no other time in worship do we confront the sacrifice so pointedly of the one who gave himself for us. Our sins are crimson stains. History bleeds with the scarlet sin of people of all races, nations, and religions. So does the heart of every person. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level and we are equals all.

May we never miss this opportunity to lift up Christ, and only Christ, so he can draw all people to himself.

*My source for historical information: Church History in Plain Language, by Bruce L. Shelley. Word Publishing, 1982 pp. 205-06

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Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

To me, this is one of the best promises of heaven that there is. Not just to know God fully, but to KNOW that he knows me fully, that he has all along. My heart’s greatest longing is for someone who KNOWS me as I am, not as I appear to be, not by the political or religious or cultural mold someone has chosen for me, not as a pastor or a white man or an American or a small town hick (though I am all of these things, without regret). I need that Someone who knows me in my sin, which is uglier than I can ever admit, and yet who calls me higher, “further up and further in”*, someone who sees the stained and rotten clothing I have left behind and no longer defines me by it.

There is, of course, no one one earth who can do this for us completely. In the best marriages and friendships, we sometimes come close. But then we see in the other that which threatens us, and we attack it and run.

That’s why I always return from my fruitless searches to the One who promises in Revelation 2:17 that one day (if I overcome) he will give me “a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.” Ah, to be NAMED by Him is to be known by Him, to receive His blessing, and to be granted a new destiny.

AMEN! Come (and name me) Lord Jesus!

*(A Narnia reference from The Last Battle(?))

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Even though I love movies, I rarely go to the theater. But I usually make it to the multiplex for the big blockbusters that are released at Christmas (Lord of the Rings 1-3, The Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia) and at the Fourth of July (Minority Report, Terminator 3, War of the Worlds). This year I think Superman Returns will get me there.

It isn’t just the big-budget effects that attract me, but the idea of Superman himself. When I was five, I put my underwear on outside my pajamas and pretended to be Superman. I haven’t done that in awhile (honestly) but I do have in my heart a lasting esteem for the super-hero.

At some point in our lives, didn’t we all see that same appeal in Jesus?

In his book The Myth of Certainty (more about it here), Daniel Taylor has a fictional professor at a Christian college describe her attraction to Jesus:

“When I was a young girl, I had a love for Jesus that I’ve never quite matched since. He was so clearly everything I wanted to be - not just good, but a force for good. I didn’t want to just be good, I wanted to do righteousness - like Jesus did when he healed the sick and cast out demons. I looked at my own little world and at the bigger one beyond and said, ‘Sarah, there’s casting out to be done here and you and Jesus are going to do it.’”

You’ve seen that in Jesus at some point in your life, haven’t you? And yet it’s easy to lose sight of it, easy to make Christianity more about being good than doing righteousness.

Don’t get me wrong: What we do has to flow from who we are. The Pharisees illustrate what happens when action replaces inner righteousness. But Jesus attracted people by acting as a force for righteousness. He still does.

Superman is one of those good stories that remind our hearts of the One True Story. And remember, Jesus came not just to do righteousness himself, but to create followers to be a force for righteousness: He said in John 14:12 - “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

For some good reading on Superman Returns, check out Christianity Today’s interview with director Brian Singer, and this wonderful article at Relevant Magazine.

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There can be no doubt that our traditional ideas about Jesus sometimes get in the way of knowing Him as he really is. For a serious treatment of this theme, read Phillip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew. For a not-so-serious treatment, check out this funny short video (2:22) which was developed by a church called Vintage21 in Raleigh, NC. This video is one of four.

Hat tip: I saw it for the first time last night as part of the presentation by the Group Work Camp team currently staying at our church (thanks, Jessica and Mallory).

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I just finished listening to a sermon called “Conviction vs. Preference” by Andy Stanley. Some of his themes lead perfectly into my upcoming series on Hot Issues (things like gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war). These issues are being debated and decided in terms of personal preference rather than conviction. Stanley says:

We have preferences. We have very few convictions. We know what is right and what we’re taught. We look around at society, and we’re sure we can tell the difference between right and wrong. But we develop few real convictions, and consequently our walk does not match our talk. Many of us are people of preference. Not enough of us are men and women of conviction.

In the book of Daniel, thousands of Hebrews are captured by the Babylonians. Among them are Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men make up their minds that they will not disobey God and betray their convictions no matter what the consequences.

Stanley points out something that should be obvious to us, but which may be obscured by our familiarity with the stories - namely that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego obeyed not knowing how their story would end. WE know that all will work out well. Daniel won’t be eaten by the lions and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will not burn in the fiery furnace. But THEY don’t know that. They only know that it is better to obey God. Shadrach and friends make that memorable statement of faith in Daniel 3:16-18:

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

In every area of life - money, dating, entertainment, sex, business - we need to obey God out of Biblically-informed conviction rather than follow our personal preference. Like the four young men in Daniel, we don’t know exactly how it will turn out if we do. What we DO know is that, from the perspective of eternity, it will always be worth it.

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All About GOD is a website devoted to answering lots of questions about God, Jesus Christ, and Christianity. It’s a great place for seekers or for Christians who want to review the basis of their faith.

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Here’s a post I meant to make this past Saturday, the day that stands between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Philip Yancey writes eloquently that we live in a Saturday world, a world that stands between the hope announced on Resurrection Day and the time of the end when Christ will return and reign victorious. He writes:

“What the disciples experienced in small scale - three days, in grief over one man who died on a cross - we now live through on a cosmic scale. Human history grinds on, between the time of promise and fulfillment…It’s Saturday on planet earth. Will Sunday ever come?”

Yancey, of course, believes that it will. Through the miracle of Amazon’s search-inside-a -book, you can view the page from The Jesus I Never Knew that contains this passage here.

Brett McCracken draws from this same idea in recent article at Relevant: “We exist in a Saturday world. Between Friday and Sunday, when the world was still, the tears fresh, the grave sealed—the darkest day past, a brighter morning imminent—but until then … waiting.”

Come Lord Jesus.

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If you’re up for some intellectual heavy-lifting, Mark Dever has a good article at Christianity Today called “Nothing But the Blood”. The article summary says:

“More and more evangelicals believe Christ’s atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination.” Atonement is the word we use to indicate that Christ’s death paid for our sins - his blood in place of mine.

Dever opposes this view of course, and so do I. But the criticism he outlines in his article makes me wonder if we emphasize enough the other two explanations of the cross in Scripture besides atonement. Namely:

1. Ransom - “…humanity’s main problem is that we are trapped and oppressed by spiritual forces beyond our control. Christ’s death, then, is seen as a ransom that frees us from captivity.”
2. God’s love demonstrated - “Christ’s death on the Cross demonstrates God’s love so dramatically that we are convinced of his love and are now able to share it with others.”

In my own preaching, I probably tend to emphasize atonement and the demonstration of God’s love more than ransom. All three are Scriptural.

In listing the problems some people have with atonement theology, Dever hits on a valid concern - that focusing only on Christ’s payment for my sin often leads to a very individual Christianity that is only about personal guilt, ignoring social action. His article is worth reading just to see the other potential problems.

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This month I’m reading Henry Blackaby’s book Experiencing the Cross. (I can almost guarantee you’ll hear me quote it in my upcoming Easter series.) Blackaby has already grabbed me by the throat with this quote early in the book:

“Not many people seriously think of themselves as God’s enemy. Even believers often resist this way of thinking. They’ll say with all sincerity about their past: ‘Well, I wasn’t really going against God; I just wasn’t going with Him.’ But they’re sincerely wrong. God’s perspective is all that matters, and He says in His Word that we were His enemies (Colossians 1:21). Or as Jesus put it, ‘He who is not with Me is against Me’ (Matthew 12:30).”

Henry Blackaby goes on to talk about how we fail to understand the gravity of sin, and therefore we miss the meaning of the cross and the depth of God’s love for us.

This squares with my experience, both as a preacher and a sinner (two words which don’t mean the same thing!) Few of us in church have dramatically transgressed the ever-lowering standards of the world. To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 1:26, “Not many of you were ax-murderers when you were called; not many were thieves, pornographers, drug-dealers or email spammers.” Our very respectability works against us in understanding God’s grace. We say, in effect, “I meant no offense, God, by my rebellion. I’m sure you didn’t take it too seriously.” If we feel any guilt about our sin, it probably has to do with the areas where we broke trust with our families and loved ones. This is an important area, of course, but by no means is it the only place where we have violated God’s holy standards. Besides, it isn’t our feelings of guilt that define sin. God has done that already, and His standard is perfect.

Why do I bring this up? Because without an understanding of sin – OUR sin – the story of the cross is only a lot of religious talk. But when we finally get it, His grace becomes magnificent.

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