Dear Pastor,
Contrary to what you may have been told, you are not a peddler of religio-cultural goods and services. No matter how the forces of western "Christendom" have historically conspired to define your vocation for you in terms that our culture at large can more easily understand, you are not a "service provider". You are not just another cog in the free market economy, offering to bring spiritual value and eloquence to social events for a reasonable fee. No. No matter what job description you may have been sold, that is not what you are. Whether you have arrived at this misunderstanding by inertia, inattention, or intent is no matter. The mantle you bear supersedes your misconceptions about it.
Yours is not to champion polite spirituality, or to "baptize" societal machinations into transcendence. You are a herald of the Gospel of Christ; a witness to the resurrection! You are an under-shepherd of Jesus; guardian and guide of the saints! You are not a service provider; you are a steward of sacrament and of souls!
The Florist: "I make it pretty."
The Baker: "I make it tasty."
The Pastor: "I make it legal and meaningful."
This is not the ground on which to take your stand, because these grounds are not yours to claim. Here, you can only ever be polite guest or malicious trespasser. All your angst and bluster about "religious freedom" will fall on dead ears in this place; the market is not obligated to heed your authority. They will reject your voice, and rightly so: you cannot spend your lifetime allowing the culture to define your vocation, and then suddenly take offense when the culture tells you what to do. So long as you accept the mantle of "service provider" - peddler and pimp of 'spiritual' value - you will remain servant to the market and the rules that govern it, and the market will be within its rights to make sure you play fairly.
I know how you fear being swallowed and undone by a culture that does not understand or value your call. That danger is real, and you are right to fear it. But, the answer will not be found in fighting more earnestly for a parcel of borrowed sovereignty within the economy of the market. Rather, your voice and vocational freedom can only be found in re-appropriating the truth that your call has been issued to you from within another economy, altogether. You are not a florist, or a baker. You are not an event-venue manager. You are a pastor; under-shepherd of Jesus, steward of sacrament and souls. Endeavor to understand this, and you will be set free to stop fighting the wrong fight, and to start having the right conversation.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
"Common Roots", part VI : Freedom
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part VI: “We affirm the reality of freedom in Christ.”
“The Apostle Paul wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). This freedom is a gift of God in Christ, and it manifests itself in a right relationship with God and others… We in the Covenant Church seek to focus on what unites us as followers of Christ, rather than on what divides us.”
As a reformation movement birthed out of historic dissent, having faced strong legal and institutional forces of resistance at the hands of state Lutheranism - of pietistic heritage and birthed upon the soil of the newly-launched “American experiment” in democratic freedom - it ought not surprise that the Evangelical Covenant Church has from the very beginning held freedom of reasonable dissent as a central value. While it is never helpful to be simply defined by what we are not, the struggles of our past indelibly shape the values of our present.
I have deeply appreciated the historic ability of the ECC to keep the “main thing” the main thing; pressing back against the natural tendency of secondary and tertiary issues to become ultimate and defining issues. Rather than crafting a rigidly and microscopically defined “bounded set” paradigm to govern corporate life and collegiality, “Covenant Freedom” allows us to fix our working convictions upon our shared center in Christ, guided by common affirmations, and then set one another free to navigate the intricacies, nuances and inevitable conflicts of our shared journey in and towards Christ in a spirit of grace and apart from fear.
Of course, the challenge of genuine freedom is that definition will always remain, in some respects, elusive. Elusive because our freedom is always understood contextually and relationally; the boundaries of freedom defined in and by each conflict or tension which emerges along the way. In a very basic sense, the trouble is that we cannot escape the sheer subjectivity of conviction, shared or otherwise. As a people “of the Book”, we want to hold the centrality of Scripture as a key border-marker of our freedom, and rightly so. Any journey towards “freedom” which involves the jettisoning or downplaying of scriptural authority over our corporate life must be rejected out-of-hand. But the objective authority of scripture is an authority delivered to us through the subjective lens of interpretation. And what are we to do when well-meaning interpreters arrive at different convictions in such a manner and to such a degree that the bonds of unity suffer tension to the point of breaking? It is here that we are faced with the reality that we cannot escape the ongoing, prayerful - and at times agonizing - task of defining what we mean by “Covenant Freedom” in light of these new tensions and challenges. May the Lord have mercy upon us, burdened as we are with freedom!
"Common Roots", part V : The Holy Spirit
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part V: “We affirm a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit.”
“We believe it is the Holy Spirit who instills in our hearts a desire to turn to Christ, and who assures us that Christ dwells within us. It is the Holy Spirit who enables our obedience to Christ and conforms us to his image, and it is the Spirit in us that enables us to continue Christ’s mission in the world. The Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to us as individuals and binds us together as Christ’s body.”
Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Never has the truth of this verse been driven home for me than it has on this journey of church planting, and it is a truth that our Covenant forebears understood deeply, as well. This understanding is well articulated, here:
“The Covenant understanding of the Holy Spirit, rooted in the New Testament, is further informed by the Reformation idea that word and Spirit are inseparable. It is the Spirit of God that enlivens the preaching of the gospel within the community of faith and grants efficacy to the sacraments participated in by the community of faith. The Covenant also draws upon its Pietist heritage for understanding the Holy Spirit. We believe it is the work of the Holy Spirit to instill in the human heart a desire to turn to Christ. We believe it is the work of the Holy Spirit to assure believers that Christ dwells within them. We believe that the Holy Spirit, in concert with our obedience, conforms us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29).
The early Covenanters in Sweden were linked by a common awareness of the grace of God in their lives. They spoke of the Holy Spirit communicating this warm sense of God’s grace to each one individually and directing them to a common devotion to God in Christ through the reading of the Bible and frequent meetings for the purpose of mutual encouragement and edification. They perceived the Holy Spirit leading them corporately to common mission and purpose.
The early Covenanters in North America were conscious of the presence and purpose of God through the activity of the Holy Spirit among them. They were certain the Holy Spirit was at work in their churches and particularly in leading them to form the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant denomination. At the organizational meeting of the Covenant, C.A. Björk spoke to the effect that an organizational meeting can never produce unity; God’s people become one, he said, through the leading of the Holy Spirit.” ( Covenant Affirmations Booklet )
Without the working of the Holy Spirit, the pietist revivals of the 17th-18th centuries could have never succeeded in so transforming the very landscape of Christendom - as well as the outside world - in the manner that they did. WITH the working of the Holy Spirit in their midst and over those many years, there was simply no hope in stopping it, no matter how much resistance those winds of change and mission may have faced! This is the truth and hope that we cling to: that, inasmuch as the struggles we face as a church remain profoundly beyond our ability to overcome, so too the power of God at work in, around and through us remains eternally greater than we have the ability to comprehend. Thanks be to God!
"Common Roots", part IV : The Church
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part IV: “We affirm the Church as a fellowship of believers.”
“The church is not an institution, organization, or building. It is a grace-filled fellowship of believers who participate in the life and mission of Jesus Christ. It is a family of equals: as the New Testament teaches that within Christian community there is to be neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).”
Much has been said in the preceding articles to make sufficiently clear how this Covenant affirmation comes to us by way of our pietist heritage. Pressing back against the crippling institutionalism of 17th and 18th century state-governed Lutheranism, the Pietist reformers - from Ardnt, Spener, Franke, Zinzendorf, to all those who would follow them - labored to reclaim the identity of the Church as a living fellowship of people transformed by and following after Jesus; the whole Church called into the whole mission of Christ. The defining structural elements of the pietist revival can be summed up by the following: Conversion, Colporteurs, and Conventicles.
Regarding conversion, I refer you to Parts II and III of this series, which speak to the centrality of “new birth” to both pietist and Covenant convictions. The other two elements are also closely related to much of what has come before, but warrant further clarification.
As we have seen, it was Spener who introduced the “innovation” of household-based gatherings for devotional reading of scripture and mutual edification to the fabric of what would become 17th century pietism. What he initially referred to as his “assemblies of piety” (“small group ministry” would be a close equivalent in the modern parlance), became popularly known and replicated as “conventicles” ( meaning, roughly, “assemblies”; from the latin “conventiculum”). This was, in fact, the Pietist’s most formative - and, by the state church, most strongly resisted - development within the life of the Church. An expression of a movement of the Spirit whereby common people grow hungry for active engagement with the scriptures, for intimacy in worship and depth of Christian fellowship, the purpose of the conventicle was not to separate from the institutional church, but to bring additive value to the life of discipleship between, and as distinct from, Sunday worship. As these gatherings increased in number and influence throughout Sweden, it was the through the ministry of “Colporteurs” that the flames of revival were spread and stoked.
Colporteurs (adapted from the French, “comporteur”; lit. “to bear or peddle”) initially were simply a practical solution for the resourcing of the conventicle movement. These were voluntary lay ministers who would travel from town to town distributing Bibles and tracts of various kinds. With the gradual increase of literacy in Sweden - and among the colporteurs themselves - their influence began to increase; soon serving as lay preachers, teachers, and recognized leaders of conventicles. As time went on and the conventicle movement grew more established, in spite of significant legal resistance from the state Church of Sweden, many colporteurs would go so far as to serve communion in the context of a household fellowship; viewed as a radical and dangerous move in the eyes of the establishment.
But this remains the conviction of the Covenant church as part of the legacy of our pietist forebears: the Church is not a building, an institution, or an organization of professional, ordained clergy. The Church is the living fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, seeking the Lord and living in light of His Kingdom purposes. We must always expect and leave room for the movement of the Holy Spirit among “ordinary” people, or else we have simply crafted a well-managed religious institution rather than witnessing the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Commons holds a uniquely significant bond with the “conventicle” movement within our own structures of community life. While we continue to love and value “large format” corporate gatherings for preaching, worship, and the Lord’s Supper, the trouble with ONLY getting together in large groups is that it is hard to really get to know one another – and see genuine community develop – if we’re only seeing each other in a big room, full of activity and 100+ other folks, once a week. In the Bible - as well as in our pietist heritage - we see that the early Christian church was built upon house fellowships. They didn’t just run into one another for an hour once a week; they did life together! “Church” was spending time, sharing meals, sharing joys and struggles, studying scripture together and lifting one another up in prayer. “Church” was a space where friends in Christ could sit, learn and grow face to face, and not just side by side.
Additionally, good preaching and teaching is vital to the life and thriving of the local church. But perhaps even more important to our own growth toward Christian maturity is to be given the opportunity, experience and tools to open, read, interpret and apply the scriptures well for ourselves and in the context of our own lives. Our “Table” groups are neighborhood-centric communities of 15-20 folks, focused on shared meals, in-depth interaction with scripture, prayer, and on the daily, street-level expressions of church life. We’re so committed to the value of getting our whole community involved at this level that we give two whole Sundays a month to “Table” groups.
"Common Roots", part III : Mission
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part III: “We affirm a commitment to the whole mission of the Church.”
“The early Covenanters were known as “Mission Friends”— people of shared faith who came together to carry out God’s mission both far and near. Mission for them and for us includes evangelism, Christian formation, and ministries of compassion, mercy, and justice. We follow Christ’s two central calls. The Great Commission sends us out into all the world to make disciples. The Great Commandment calls us to love the Lord our God and our neighbors as ourselves.”
In the light of historical pietism, we would well read this affirmation as a commitment to the whole mission of the WHOLE Church. That is to say, as we understand it, no disciple of Jesus is exempt from the call of his commission and commandment.
Looking back to 1675, we remember that Philip Jacob Spener’s second reformation proposal was the establishment and exercise of the “spiritual priesthood” of ALL believers. In a religious context defined by a highly professionalized, state-managed clerical system, designed as a reliable distributor of religious goods and services to an otherwise uninvolved laity, this was a call to spiritual awakening. Spener was convinced that the the work of the Church was a work that belonged to EVERY follower of Jesus, not just professional, ordained clergy.
With this conviction in view, we can appreciate appreciate how intimately related it is to the previous affirmation regarding the “necessity of new birth”. If the Kingdom mission of Christ belongs not to the select, professionalized few, but in fact to the whole Church, then it becomes all the more important that we understand the “Church” properly. Namely, that the Church is not a mere function of shared nationality, but a living community of people being actively transformed by the saving grace of Christ and thus made ABLE to embrace this work. Which presses us still further back, to appreciate both of these affirmations as the natural outflow of the first: a commitment to the central importance of the Word of God to the life of the Christian. Spener’s “assemblies of piety” (setting the mold for the “conventicles” of the Swedish “mission friends" that would follow him) were an expression of this movement towards transforming devotion to Christ among the general populace. It should not surprise us, then, that as the undercurrents of devotional study, worship and fellowship began to gain strength, that an increase in missional energy and activity resulted.
It was very much the concern of the pietists that they embody and apply the love of Christ to the brokenness and ills of the society around them, concerning themselves with resourcing education, care for the disadvantaged, and other endeavors of mission and mercy. This missional impetus also quickly moved towards global expressions, as well. It was the Herrnhut Moravians, led by pietist Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (who studied with Franke at the University of Halle), who as a community of only 300 people inspired with evangelistic zeal, sent out their first international missionaries. These pietistic Moravian missionaries would go on to establish the first large-scale Protestant missions movement.
We here at The Commons stand in this commitment to the whole mission of the whole church. Our values - to be a “Woven”, “Neighboring” and “Hopeful” people, actively concerned with the health and flourishing of our city - are a direct expression of this. As part of the broader family that is the Evangelical Covenant, we also participate in the worldwide mission of Christ, as small as we may be. And, in fact, as a newly established church plant of the ECC, our very existence is an expression and proof of the Covenant’s commitment to the continuing Kingdom mission of the Church!
"Common Roots", part II : New Birth
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part II: “We affirm the necessity of the new birth.”
“The Apostle Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ). New birth in Christ means committing ourselves to him and receiving forgiveness, acceptance, and eternal life. It means being alive in Christ, and this life has the qualities of love and righteousness, joy and peace. New birth is only the beginning. Growing to maturity in Christ is a lifelong process for both individuals and communities of believers. God forms and transforms us—and it is through people transformed by Christ that God transforms the world.”
The trouble with ministering within the context of European Christendom in the 18th century, where being German - or Swedish - and being Lutheran were categorically indistinguishable was that there was no established precedent, motivation or means to differentiate between those people who showed up on Sunday because they were genuine disciples of Jesus, and those who were simply legally obligated to do so. Toward whom does the Great Commission compel us, when literally everyone we know is a baptized “Christian”?
August Hermann Franke (1663-1727) was a German Lutheran clergyman and scholar, deeply influenced by the teaching and ministry of Philip Jacob Spener, and whose own dramatic conversion experience shaped his convictions on what entrance into the “new creation” life of Christ entailed. “In great trouble and doubt I had bent my knees” he recounted, “but with unspeakable joy and in great certainty I stood up again. When I knelt, I didn’t believe that there was a God; when I arose, I could without doubt or fear have sealed the truth with my blood.” This personal, converting encounter with the Spirit of God led Franke to the conviction regarding the necessity of conversion for those preparing for or engaging in Christian ministry. For those of us some distance further “downstream” from pietism’s influence, this may seem absurdly self-evident. However, within a state church context, where every citizen was presumed Christian and where clergy were employees and agents of the state, this was a dangerously disruptive notion to advance.
Long before Franke and Spener began establishing the framework for what would become the pietist revivals with Germany and Scandinavia, it was Johann Arndt (1555-1621) who had prepared the soil. Thirty years before the birth of Philip Spener, Johann Arndt published his call for reformation within the Lutheran church. The volume was titled “True Christianity” and it would remain a “best seller” for hundreds of years. Indeed, it became increasingly popular throughout the 1800’s, as the winds of revival continued to blow:
“It is not enough only to write against sects and heretics, to preach and dispute, to maintain pure doctrine and true religion... These activities have fallen into great misuse in our time so that beside the many, heavy disputations, polemical sermons, writings and tracts, Christian life, true repentance, godliness, and Christian love are almost forgotten. It is as if Christianity consisted only in disputations and the production of polemical books, and not far more in seeing to it that the Holy Gospel and the teaching of Christ is practiced in a holy life.” (Arndt, “True Christianity”)
“He who is not for me is against me” (Mt. 12:30). If one compares the life of the present world with Christ’s teaching and life, one discovers immediately that the greater part of the world is completely opposed to Christ. What is the life of man now other than covetousness, concern over food, search for wealth, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life...
In a word, the whole life of the children of this world at this time is nothing other than worldly love, self-love, self-honor and the desire for self-gain.” (Arndt, “True Christianity”)
One can appreciate the challenge that sentiments such as these might cause for an institutional state church that was more or less happy to ‘baptize' standing cultural norms in order to champion political stability and general calm. A Christ who called for those who would follow him to be “birthed” out of that culture into a new manner of existence altogether was a threatening, destabilizing prospect. However, as the pietists turned anew to the teachings of Jesus, the conviction became more and more unavoidable: One was just simply not born “Christian” in the same manner that one was born German or Swedish or otherwise. Life in Christ followed after a birth of a different order: a new, spiritual birth; a work of the Holy Spirit that more and more common people were growing hungry to experience for themselves.
Living and working as we do in a thoroughly post-Christian context, here in New England, this truth is perhaps more readily accessible to us, though no less important to understand: our life in Christ is not a “default” setting or cultural/national heritage, it is a conscious decision and act of surrender to Christ made possible by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. As such we stand, as ever, a people of invitation to a world in need of the rebirth and renewal that only Christ can bring.
"Common Roots", Part I : the Word of God
This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!
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Part I: We affirm the centrality of the word of God.
“We believe the Bible is the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct. The dynamic, transforming power of the word of God directs the church and the life of each Christian.”*
The Evangelical Covenant describes itself as a “Reformation Church” that continues to be shaped by pietism. This is true to the point that there can be no real discussion about the central affirmations of the ECC without at least some cursory understanding of the genesis and lasting influence of the pietistic revivals of the 17th-19th centuries. Pietism marked a move of the Spirit that would directly influence the emergence of each of these affirmations, as we shall see, but in much the same spirit as Luther’s great reformation of the 16th century, none perhaps more so than the return to scripture as the Church’s “primary source” for doctrine and praxis.
It is true of all movements that, without a periodic challenging and refreshing, even the most revolutionary of winds eventually turns stale. Such was the case with Luther’s reformation as we head into the late 16th and early 17th centuries. What had begun as a rejection of the corruptions of one form of institutionalization (namely the selling of indulgences and unbiblical doctrines and structures surrounding this practice) eventually became a formidable institution in its own right. Catalyzed, no doubt, by the ongoing conflation between religious devotion and civic/national loyalties (democratic “separation” of Church and State was as-of-yet unheard of, and clergy were agents of the State), German Lutheranism gradually succumbed to a culture of lifeless scholasticism. The plain Gospel texts were once again buried beneath layers of creeds, confessions and debates over doctrinal/theological minutiae. Some manner of Church attendance was compulsory, sermons were heady, theological oratory, and the prophetic voice of Christ’s Church was muted and coopted as a civic/political stabilizer. This was the world into which the winds of pietism began to blow.
Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705) was a Lutheran pastor in Frankfurt, Germany. Inspired by a dissatisfaction with the lifeless formalism and rampant corruption of the German Lutheran Church of his day, he organized the first “assemblies of piety” as spaces for “organic”, heartfelt worship, spiritual conversation/fellowship, and the devotional reading of Scripture. In 1675, Spener would author his best known work, “Pia Desideria” (Pious Desires), which would lend its name to the movement that soon began to unfold. In it, he assessed the spiritual maladies of church and culture, clergy and laity, and finally proposed a series of reformations. He made (notably) six proposals for the sake of the life and witness of the Church: 1.) An intensive study of the whole Bible; 2.) A renewed commitment to the spiritual priesthood of all believers; 3.) An emphasis on the practice of Christianity, not just its doctrine; 4.) Fairness and generosity in doctrinal controversies; 5.) An emphasis on practical piety in theological education; and 6.) Simplicity and directness in preaching.
As already alluded to, Spener’s particular interest in the renewed study - and living application - of scripture was birthed out of his experience of a culture wherein debates around creeds, confessions and theological skirmishes at the boundaries of defined orthodoxy had effectively eclipsed active, personal engagement with the text of scripture itself. Sermons were given to framing and weighing in on theological debates, rather than exposition and exhortation. Pastors were more concerned with doctrinal acuity and career advancement then the shepherding and development of their flock. Spener and the pietists that would follow after him rejected this trajectory and sought to return to a simple, direct engagement with scripture itself as the Word of God. In this regard, the first affirmation of the Evangelical Covenant flows directly from its pietist headwater. The ECC describes itself as a “non-creedal” movement; which is to say that while there may be no particular argument with the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Ausberg Confession, and the like, the Covenant decided that the central commitment of Christian discipleship ought not be defined by affirmation of any creedal theological formula, per se, but by continual submission to the revealed Word of God itself: “…the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.”
Here at The Commons, we take heart and find strength in that great, historically Covenant question: “Where is it written?” It is a guiding light and ever-present exhortation to faithfulness in our calling in Christ. I am convinced that if we (both as individuals and as a movement) are to remain faithful to the way of Jesus and the life that he has purchased for us at such great cost, it will be because we have remembered our calling as a people “of the book”; an enduring conviction for which we remain deeply indebted to the legacy of pietism.
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*Heading quotations taken from the "What does the Covenant Church Believe?" pamphlet, published by Covenant Publications
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Part I: We affirm the centrality of the word of God.
“We believe the Bible is the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct. The dynamic, transforming power of the word of God directs the church and the life of each Christian.”*
The Evangelical Covenant describes itself as a “Reformation Church” that continues to be shaped by pietism. This is true to the point that there can be no real discussion about the central affirmations of the ECC without at least some cursory understanding of the genesis and lasting influence of the pietistic revivals of the 17th-19th centuries. Pietism marked a move of the Spirit that would directly influence the emergence of each of these affirmations, as we shall see, but in much the same spirit as Luther’s great reformation of the 16th century, none perhaps more so than the return to scripture as the Church’s “primary source” for doctrine and praxis.
It is true of all movements that, without a periodic challenging and refreshing, even the most revolutionary of winds eventually turns stale. Such was the case with Luther’s reformation as we head into the late 16th and early 17th centuries. What had begun as a rejection of the corruptions of one form of institutionalization (namely the selling of indulgences and unbiblical doctrines and structures surrounding this practice) eventually became a formidable institution in its own right. Catalyzed, no doubt, by the ongoing conflation between religious devotion and civic/national loyalties (democratic “separation” of Church and State was as-of-yet unheard of, and clergy were agents of the State), German Lutheranism gradually succumbed to a culture of lifeless scholasticism. The plain Gospel texts were once again buried beneath layers of creeds, confessions and debates over doctrinal/theological minutiae. Some manner of Church attendance was compulsory, sermons were heady, theological oratory, and the prophetic voice of Christ’s Church was muted and coopted as a civic/political stabilizer. This was the world into which the winds of pietism began to blow.
Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705) was a Lutheran pastor in Frankfurt, Germany. Inspired by a dissatisfaction with the lifeless formalism and rampant corruption of the German Lutheran Church of his day, he organized the first “assemblies of piety” as spaces for “organic”, heartfelt worship, spiritual conversation/fellowship, and the devotional reading of Scripture. In 1675, Spener would author his best known work, “Pia Desideria” (Pious Desires), which would lend its name to the movement that soon began to unfold. In it, he assessed the spiritual maladies of church and culture, clergy and laity, and finally proposed a series of reformations. He made (notably) six proposals for the sake of the life and witness of the Church: 1.) An intensive study of the whole Bible; 2.) A renewed commitment to the spiritual priesthood of all believers; 3.) An emphasis on the practice of Christianity, not just its doctrine; 4.) Fairness and generosity in doctrinal controversies; 5.) An emphasis on practical piety in theological education; and 6.) Simplicity and directness in preaching.
As already alluded to, Spener’s particular interest in the renewed study - and living application - of scripture was birthed out of his experience of a culture wherein debates around creeds, confessions and theological skirmishes at the boundaries of defined orthodoxy had effectively eclipsed active, personal engagement with the text of scripture itself. Sermons were given to framing and weighing in on theological debates, rather than exposition and exhortation. Pastors were more concerned with doctrinal acuity and career advancement then the shepherding and development of their flock. Spener and the pietists that would follow after him rejected this trajectory and sought to return to a simple, direct engagement with scripture itself as the Word of God. In this regard, the first affirmation of the Evangelical Covenant flows directly from its pietist headwater. The ECC describes itself as a “non-creedal” movement; which is to say that while there may be no particular argument with the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Ausberg Confession, and the like, the Covenant decided that the central commitment of Christian discipleship ought not be defined by affirmation of any creedal theological formula, per se, but by continual submission to the revealed Word of God itself: “…the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.”
Here at The Commons, we take heart and find strength in that great, historically Covenant question: “Where is it written?” It is a guiding light and ever-present exhortation to faithfulness in our calling in Christ. I am convinced that if we (both as individuals and as a movement) are to remain faithful to the way of Jesus and the life that he has purchased for us at such great cost, it will be because we have remembered our calling as a people “of the book”; an enduring conviction for which we remain deeply indebted to the legacy of pietism.
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*Heading quotations taken from the "What does the Covenant Church Believe?" pamphlet, published by Covenant Publications
Thursday, January 8, 2015
"The Good Life": Part 5 - A People of Mercy
I heard an old Jewish folk tale recently that goes something like this:
There were two merchants - lifelong competitors and bitter enemies. One day, God decided that he’d had enough of their bickering and bitterness, and he sent an angel to deliver a message to one of the merchants. The message was this: “I, the Lord Almighty, have decided that you may have anything you want in this world - riches, wisdom, long life, children - whatever you may wish to ask for. But there is one condition. Whatever it is that I give to you, your competitor will get double. (If you ask for $10 million, he will get $20 million) Understand?”
The merchant scowled, thinking long and hard. Suddenly, his eyes brightened. He turned to the angel and said, “Would you be willing to make me blind in one eye?”
The human heart is a complicated thing, isn’t it? The same thing that we most desperately wish for ourselves we find it almost impossible to wish for others, particularly those who we consider competitors or ‘enemies’. It’s not enough for us to enjoy and be grateful for those blessings that come to us; we actually begrudge those blessings that come to other people. It’s called envy, it’s called bitterness, and it infects our hearts and robs our joy.
Of course, on our better days, maybe we can aspire to be more noble. When good things come to our friends or family, to those whom we love, or to another person whom we happen to decide “deserves” blessing for one reason or another, we can occasionally ramp ourselves up to feeling happy for and with them. But those aren’t the best test cases to determine the real condition of our heart. Where the rubber REALLY meets the road is when we’re confronted with the blessings that come to those people that we don’t like. When we witness success coming to people whom we feel DON’T deserve it. What about those people who have treated us poorly; injured, abused, wronged us? How does our heart respond to see THEM blessed? Our attempts at being noble come off the rails pretty quickly under that kind of pressure.
And this is where the Gospel of Jesus gets harder for us than we like to imagine, most days. Because we love experiencing the mercy of God. We are deeply and painfully aware just how much we we need to be forgiven and redeemed from our rebellion and brokenness. We look at the cross of Jesus - we witness the price our creator God paid in order to lead us back to himself; back to life and wholeness and blessing - and all we can do is fall to our knees in gratitude and praise. We know our only hope for life lies in the mercy of God. We know that Jesus died to cover the lifetime of sins that we have committed and will commit, and all we can do is thank him for that gift of grace. But how often do we consider that Jesus did not only die to cover those sins we commit, but also to cover those sins that have been and will be committed AGAINST us?
In all honesty, I think we’d rather NOT think about that, most days. This is our standard operating paradox, isn’t it? We cry out “mercy!” for ourselves and “justice!” for them, and we’re usually more than happy to pick up the gavel ourselves. But while God is, indeed, a God of both mercy and justice, that’s not the way things tend to break down. The Gospel truth that Jesus confronts us with, again and again, and does not let us sidestep, is this:
The mercy of God cuts both ways: forgiving those sins which we commit, as well as those which are committed against us.
This is a hard teaching, but it’s as we press into it, and allow Jesus to work in our hearts through it, that we will begin to truly understand the redemptive freedom that is forgiveness in Christ, and find ourselves moved from being mere consumers of mercy to becoming a PEOPLE of mercy.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
There were two merchants - lifelong competitors and bitter enemies. One day, God decided that he’d had enough of their bickering and bitterness, and he sent an angel to deliver a message to one of the merchants. The message was this: “I, the Lord Almighty, have decided that you may have anything you want in this world - riches, wisdom, long life, children - whatever you may wish to ask for. But there is one condition. Whatever it is that I give to you, your competitor will get double. (If you ask for $10 million, he will get $20 million) Understand?”
The merchant scowled, thinking long and hard. Suddenly, his eyes brightened. He turned to the angel and said, “Would you be willing to make me blind in one eye?”
The human heart is a complicated thing, isn’t it? The same thing that we most desperately wish for ourselves we find it almost impossible to wish for others, particularly those who we consider competitors or ‘enemies’. It’s not enough for us to enjoy and be grateful for those blessings that come to us; we actually begrudge those blessings that come to other people. It’s called envy, it’s called bitterness, and it infects our hearts and robs our joy.
Of course, on our better days, maybe we can aspire to be more noble. When good things come to our friends or family, to those whom we love, or to another person whom we happen to decide “deserves” blessing for one reason or another, we can occasionally ramp ourselves up to feeling happy for and with them. But those aren’t the best test cases to determine the real condition of our heart. Where the rubber REALLY meets the road is when we’re confronted with the blessings that come to those people that we don’t like. When we witness success coming to people whom we feel DON’T deserve it. What about those people who have treated us poorly; injured, abused, wronged us? How does our heart respond to see THEM blessed? Our attempts at being noble come off the rails pretty quickly under that kind of pressure.
And this is where the Gospel of Jesus gets harder for us than we like to imagine, most days. Because we love experiencing the mercy of God. We are deeply and painfully aware just how much we we need to be forgiven and redeemed from our rebellion and brokenness. We look at the cross of Jesus - we witness the price our creator God paid in order to lead us back to himself; back to life and wholeness and blessing - and all we can do is fall to our knees in gratitude and praise. We know our only hope for life lies in the mercy of God. We know that Jesus died to cover the lifetime of sins that we have committed and will commit, and all we can do is thank him for that gift of grace. But how often do we consider that Jesus did not only die to cover those sins we commit, but also to cover those sins that have been and will be committed AGAINST us?
In all honesty, I think we’d rather NOT think about that, most days. This is our standard operating paradox, isn’t it? We cry out “mercy!” for ourselves and “justice!” for them, and we’re usually more than happy to pick up the gavel ourselves. But while God is, indeed, a God of both mercy and justice, that’s not the way things tend to break down. The Gospel truth that Jesus confronts us with, again and again, and does not let us sidestep, is this:
The mercy of God cuts both ways: forgiving those sins which we commit, as well as those which are committed against us.
This is a hard teaching, but it’s as we press into it, and allow Jesus to work in our hearts through it, that we will begin to truly understand the redemptive freedom that is forgiveness in Christ, and find ourselves moved from being mere consumers of mercy to becoming a PEOPLE of mercy.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
"The Good Life": Part 4 - Hunger and Thirst
I took a trip this past fall, spending a few days with a couple of friends in the Adirondack region of upstate New York. These are friends of mine from the ten years or so that Becca and I spent in RI, through college and afterward. One of these friends used to spend his summers as a trek guide for the boy scouts up in the Adirondacks, and it usually works out that once every couple of years we’re able to get a trip up there on the calendar; hiking, canoeing, etc., almost always in the Fall.
There's just something about the Adirondacks in the Fall. Even just getting there, making your way across mid-state Vermont, is an experience in itself. It's as if, driving along, you cannot help but be overcome by this palpable sense of desire, wishing you could just consume these vistas; breathe them in, in all their breadth and beauty, and make them PART of you.
As parents with our children, we have instances like this, too. It's a sublime thing when we find ourselves stumbling upon this sense of awareness from time to time that we are - in that particular moment - experiencing a single, particular snapshot of time with our kids possessed of such untold and transcendent meaning that our heart just ACHES. Perhaps it's that we stumble into a moment of a child’s innocence and unfiltered, joyous PRESENCE. Maybe we feel their adoration, or it's the smell of their hair as they collapse into an embrace. And it is at once an unspeakably deep joy - a joy so deep it unleashes pangs of an even deeper longing - while in the very same instant it is a joy mixed with mourning, because we know that it’s an instant that must eventually and inevitably pass. Children are exhausting and maddening and destructive, but we all have these moments where we catch a glimpse of that transcendent perfection of joy and purpose beneath all that, and in those moments, we wish we could reach out and grab time itself; pull it to our chest, and soak in that distant perfection until our hearts don’t ache anymore.
We could describe similar moments of beauty that occur between spouses, or in the context of time spent with really good friends: moments that come upon us and we find ourselves wishing that they would not pass us by. Moments of truth and beauty and longing that we wish we could just breathe in, consume, such that they might become a PART of us in some lasting way.
And maybe this is all just way too poetical for you, but I do believe that all of us - if we’re paying attention - experience these moments where we could say that we are soaking in or receiving exactly what we’ve always longed for and, in the midst of that very joy and gratitude - at the heart of it - we unexpectedly discover an even deeper, more profound longing.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, Jesus says, “For they will be satisfied.” We are a hungry people. We are thirsty. We are FULL of desires and wants and longings, yearnings and unfulfilled aspirations. But at the heart of all that longing lies something deeper; something more profound and more foundational. As I wrestle with this statement - as I press into the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4, and as I seek to understand what lies within and beneath the longings of my own heart - I come to this understanding:
At the root of every other human desire, lies the hunger of the heart for God.
Such that, even were we to receive and accomplish every earthly thing that we might ever hope or imagine, this hunger would and will remain, until such a time that we find ourselves restored to our father and creator in and through the embrace of Jesus.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
There's just something about the Adirondacks in the Fall. Even just getting there, making your way across mid-state Vermont, is an experience in itself. It's as if, driving along, you cannot help but be overcome by this palpable sense of desire, wishing you could just consume these vistas; breathe them in, in all their breadth and beauty, and make them PART of you.
As parents with our children, we have instances like this, too. It's a sublime thing when we find ourselves stumbling upon this sense of awareness from time to time that we are - in that particular moment - experiencing a single, particular snapshot of time with our kids possessed of such untold and transcendent meaning that our heart just ACHES. Perhaps it's that we stumble into a moment of a child’s innocence and unfiltered, joyous PRESENCE. Maybe we feel their adoration, or it's the smell of their hair as they collapse into an embrace. And it is at once an unspeakably deep joy - a joy so deep it unleashes pangs of an even deeper longing - while in the very same instant it is a joy mixed with mourning, because we know that it’s an instant that must eventually and inevitably pass. Children are exhausting and maddening and destructive, but we all have these moments where we catch a glimpse of that transcendent perfection of joy and purpose beneath all that, and in those moments, we wish we could reach out and grab time itself; pull it to our chest, and soak in that distant perfection until our hearts don’t ache anymore.
We could describe similar moments of beauty that occur between spouses, or in the context of time spent with really good friends: moments that come upon us and we find ourselves wishing that they would not pass us by. Moments of truth and beauty and longing that we wish we could just breathe in, consume, such that they might become a PART of us in some lasting way.
And maybe this is all just way too poetical for you, but I do believe that all of us - if we’re paying attention - experience these moments where we could say that we are soaking in or receiving exactly what we’ve always longed for and, in the midst of that very joy and gratitude - at the heart of it - we unexpectedly discover an even deeper, more profound longing.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, Jesus says, “For they will be satisfied.” We are a hungry people. We are thirsty. We are FULL of desires and wants and longings, yearnings and unfulfilled aspirations. But at the heart of all that longing lies something deeper; something more profound and more foundational. As I wrestle with this statement - as I press into the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4, and as I seek to understand what lies within and beneath the longings of my own heart - I come to this understanding:
At the root of every other human desire, lies the hunger of the heart for God.
Such that, even were we to receive and accomplish every earthly thing that we might ever hope or imagine, this hunger would and will remain, until such a time that we find ourselves restored to our father and creator in and through the embrace of Jesus.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
"The Good Life": Part 3 - The Blessed Meek
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." - (Matthew 5:5 ESV)
Let's be honest: Who among us isn’t interested in being an heir/heiress? Who isn't interested in being the inheritor of some fabulous financial windfall? We all like to joke about what we would do if we happened to hit the power ball jackpot, and being the heir to fortune is pretty much just like winning the power ball of genetics, isn’t it? You happen to be born at a particular place and time to a particular family and, Boom: Ivy-League education, and a life of privilege on a silver platter. Consider, for a moment some of today’s most notable heirs-in-waiting:
Sam Branson: Sam’s father, Sir Richard Branson, is worth an estimated $3.8 billion and is the man behind the Virgin collection of companies such as Virgin Records, Virgin Books, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Mobile and Virgin fuels. Sam is often seen hanging with Hollywood celebutantes, modeling, and relaxing on his dad’s private 74 acre island, Necker Island.
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken: Charlene became the wealthiest woman in the Netherlands when her father, Alfred Heineken, passed away in 2003. The heiress to the premium beer from Holland is worth more than $7 billion and is currently maintaining the business’ operations.
The Ikea sons: IKEA is the world’s premier supplier of affordable home furnishings. Headed by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA is, in fact, the world’s largest furniture retailer generating around $28 Billion dollars per year in worldwide sales. Ingvar’s three sons are expected to inherit tens of billions of dollars while also sitting on the company’s executive board.
Ivanka Trump: As the daughter of Donald Trump, Ivanka stands to inherit her father’s undisclosed amount of personal wealth as well as real estate and entertainment assets. She is already the vice president of real estate development and acquisitions of the Trump Organization. Her brothers, Donald, Jr. and Eric, are also executive vice presidents of the corporation and along with Ivanka will inherit most of what “the Donald” leaves behind.
Ah, to be a Trump child…
Let’s forget for a moment the dangerously corrupting power of possessing functionally limitless material wealth. Let’s forget how we ease our own jealously with thoughts like, “Yeah, they may be fabulously wealthy, but they’re probably unhappy, miserable human beings." Let’s forget all that for a moment and just bring to mind the simple blessings that might come with a large inheritance.
My wife probably wouldn’t have plywood kitchen countertops, for starters. We hit the end of our remodeling budget for our recent move some time ago; a roof, a couple porches, some foundation repairs and a bathroom or two short of complete. Now, if Becca had been born a Trump, she could go out and order kitchen counters inlaid with antique pearls for all that I might care. Things like car repairs, medical bills, heating oil, paying for our kid’s education: None of that would even blip on the radar of concern if - as Tevye of the Fiddler on the Roof so famously put it - “I were a rich man.”
For all the ways that material wealth is deceptive and can be corrupting and fleeting, what comes to mind for most of us as we daydream about discovering that we are descendants of royalty isn’t really the lavish trappings of wealth; it’s security. We fantasize about the experience of never worrying about finances again. We imagine how freeing that would feel; how the stress would melt off of our shoulders, and how much better equipped we would feel to face all the other challenges of life, if we just didn’t have to worry about where the next paycheck was coming from. If only we were heirs to some modest fortune, life would be so much different.
Do you realize that the language of inheritance is woven throughout scripture? It’s a pretty big word in the Biblical story. And as I watch Jesus use that word here; as I watch Jesus proclaim, “Blessed are the meek, for they will INHERIT the earth.”, I can’t help but wonder what the connection is and what experience of relationship with himself Jesus is inviting us into. What is it about the “meek” - the gentle, the quiet, the easily overlooked, misunderstood and taken advantage of - what is it about meekness that connects in Jesus’ mind with the promise of inheritance?
And the answer that popped out to me as I press into this passage, and Psalm 37, and others is this: If the meek - the gentle, that Jesus refers to here - are those in the world who are either unable or unwilling to stand up and demand their own rights, if they are those who are unable or unwilling to duke it out, to fight and scrap for their piece of the pie, if the meek are those who, by nature or disposition find themselves pushed aside by those who are more aggressive, violent and naturally self-assertive in staking their claim in the world, then Jesus has a word of blessing for them; these gentle ones. And that is, apparently, that they are heirs. Which is to say that, according to Jesus, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have it in them to fight and claw their way to the top of the pile, because their inheritance - their security and future flourishing - is already secure. They can live in strength and peace, even as they are disregarded and misunderstood - or worse - because in Jesus they are freely offered a richness that no person or circumstance can threaten or take away from them.
For those in Christ, our future and lasting hope is not about the FIGHT that’s IN you, but about the FAMILY you BELONG to.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
Let's be honest: Who among us isn’t interested in being an heir/heiress? Who isn't interested in being the inheritor of some fabulous financial windfall? We all like to joke about what we would do if we happened to hit the power ball jackpot, and being the heir to fortune is pretty much just like winning the power ball of genetics, isn’t it? You happen to be born at a particular place and time to a particular family and, Boom: Ivy-League education, and a life of privilege on a silver platter. Consider, for a moment some of today’s most notable heirs-in-waiting:
Sam Branson: Sam’s father, Sir Richard Branson, is worth an estimated $3.8 billion and is the man behind the Virgin collection of companies such as Virgin Records, Virgin Books, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Mobile and Virgin fuels. Sam is often seen hanging with Hollywood celebutantes, modeling, and relaxing on his dad’s private 74 acre island, Necker Island.
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken: Charlene became the wealthiest woman in the Netherlands when her father, Alfred Heineken, passed away in 2003. The heiress to the premium beer from Holland is worth more than $7 billion and is currently maintaining the business’ operations.
The Ikea sons: IKEA is the world’s premier supplier of affordable home furnishings. Headed by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA is, in fact, the world’s largest furniture retailer generating around $28 Billion dollars per year in worldwide sales. Ingvar’s three sons are expected to inherit tens of billions of dollars while also sitting on the company’s executive board.
Ivanka Trump: As the daughter of Donald Trump, Ivanka stands to inherit her father’s undisclosed amount of personal wealth as well as real estate and entertainment assets. She is already the vice president of real estate development and acquisitions of the Trump Organization. Her brothers, Donald, Jr. and Eric, are also executive vice presidents of the corporation and along with Ivanka will inherit most of what “the Donald” leaves behind.
Ah, to be a Trump child…
Let’s forget for a moment the dangerously corrupting power of possessing functionally limitless material wealth. Let’s forget how we ease our own jealously with thoughts like, “Yeah, they may be fabulously wealthy, but they’re probably unhappy, miserable human beings." Let’s forget all that for a moment and just bring to mind the simple blessings that might come with a large inheritance.
My wife probably wouldn’t have plywood kitchen countertops, for starters. We hit the end of our remodeling budget for our recent move some time ago; a roof, a couple porches, some foundation repairs and a bathroom or two short of complete. Now, if Becca had been born a Trump, she could go out and order kitchen counters inlaid with antique pearls for all that I might care. Things like car repairs, medical bills, heating oil, paying for our kid’s education: None of that would even blip on the radar of concern if - as Tevye of the Fiddler on the Roof so famously put it - “I were a rich man.”
For all the ways that material wealth is deceptive and can be corrupting and fleeting, what comes to mind for most of us as we daydream about discovering that we are descendants of royalty isn’t really the lavish trappings of wealth; it’s security. We fantasize about the experience of never worrying about finances again. We imagine how freeing that would feel; how the stress would melt off of our shoulders, and how much better equipped we would feel to face all the other challenges of life, if we just didn’t have to worry about where the next paycheck was coming from. If only we were heirs to some modest fortune, life would be so much different.
Do you realize that the language of inheritance is woven throughout scripture? It’s a pretty big word in the Biblical story. And as I watch Jesus use that word here; as I watch Jesus proclaim, “Blessed are the meek, for they will INHERIT the earth.”, I can’t help but wonder what the connection is and what experience of relationship with himself Jesus is inviting us into. What is it about the “meek” - the gentle, the quiet, the easily overlooked, misunderstood and taken advantage of - what is it about meekness that connects in Jesus’ mind with the promise of inheritance?
And the answer that popped out to me as I press into this passage, and Psalm 37, and others is this: If the meek - the gentle, that Jesus refers to here - are those in the world who are either unable or unwilling to stand up and demand their own rights, if they are those who are unable or unwilling to duke it out, to fight and scrap for their piece of the pie, if the meek are those who, by nature or disposition find themselves pushed aside by those who are more aggressive, violent and naturally self-assertive in staking their claim in the world, then Jesus has a word of blessing for them; these gentle ones. And that is, apparently, that they are heirs. Which is to say that, according to Jesus, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have it in them to fight and claw their way to the top of the pile, because their inheritance - their security and future flourishing - is already secure. They can live in strength and peace, even as they are disregarded and misunderstood - or worse - because in Jesus they are freely offered a richness that no person or circumstance can threaten or take away from them.
For those in Christ, our future and lasting hope is not about the FIGHT that’s IN you, but about the FAMILY you BELONG to.
www.ChurchoftheCommons.org/media
"The Good Life": part 2 - The Blessed Broken-Hearted
Jesus has recently begun his public ministry. He’s been traveling around, teaching in synagogues, healing the sick and the oppressed, and as a rabbi, he’s gathering his group of initial disciples. People start to take notice, word starts to get out, and suddenly it’s hard for Jesus to go most anywhere without gathering a massive crowd; people who are sick and hurting, people who are looking for hope, and a whole lot of people who are just curious to find out what all the fuss is about. And on one occasion, Matthew tells us, Jesus looks out, sees the crowds, and heads a ways up a nearby hill where his disciples join him. He sits down, and starts to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
The last entry began to reflect on that first promise, and the good news that, when it comes to overcoming our own spiritual poverty, it not about what strength we’re able to muster for ourselves, but about the life and strength and flourishing that Jesus freely offers us in spite of ourselves. Now, we’re going to press into the reality and experience of mourning, and the promise of comfort that Jesus offers to everyone who mourns.
In the grand scheme of human relationship, I tend to think that there is nothing more difficult than these two challenges: to mourn well, and to comfort well those who are mourning. As Americans, particularly, we are - culturally speaking - terrible at both these things. We don’t know how to mourn and, for that reason, we don’t know how to comfort one another very well. Why is that? There are a lot of reasons for this struggle, to be sure, but underneath it all it seems to me the trouble is that mourning is, in its essence, about loss, and we just aren’t quite sure how to handle loss. In bold, generic strokes, the American narrative is about victory, overcoming obstacles, carving out a life for yourself from a land of wilderness and adversity. So when one of us misses a step on that road to triumph in a way that leaves us genuinely wounded, we’re just not all that sure what to say. Is there anything that makes us feel more awkward or powerless than being confronted with another person in mourning?
Maybe it’s a friend who recently experienced the loss of a loved one - a death in the family. Maybe they just found out that they’ve been cheated on or served divorce papers. Maybe they’ve been unceremoniously laid off and suddenly uncertain of how they’re going to provide for their family. Confronted with genuine loss, we quickly find ourselves at a loss for words. Or worse, we try to find comforting things to say, and end up saying the most terribly trite, empty things. What do you say to a friend who just found that their 4 year old child is going to die from cancer? (Or to Michael Brown’s mom, or to an Iraqi father who just lost his whole family in an emerging genocide?) Imagine: This is someone you care about, whose heart is being ripped out by an unspeakable circumstance, and they’re coming to you, their friend, looking for a word of comfort. What do you say?
Sometimes, when a word is the thing we need most, words are the one thing we just don’t have. Because we know that, no matter what we say, it can’t bring back that person, that elemental value, that has been lost. And we say, “I’m SO sorry…”, though we’re not apologizing for anything. Or, worse, we try and fill the void by saying something philosophical and profound like, “We just need to trust that everything happens for a reason.” Or, “God must think you’re really STRONG, because you know he never gives us more than we can handle.”…
Our bad theology becomes glaringly obvious at the worst possible times, doesn’t it?
If we are powerless and - at best - wordless in the face of genuine suffering and loss and mourning, how might we ever hope to find and offer comfort to one another? When a piece of ourselves has been lost, how can we ever hope to be made whole again? “Blessed are those who mourn”, Jesus says, “for they shall be comforted.” To understand what this means and how this works, we’re going to look at another story in scripture, and watch as Jesus himself engages with loss and death and grief. We’re going to observe as Jesus offers and embodies this comfort he promises. And as we do so, we’re going to find that: there can be comfort in mourning because we know that in the love of Christ, we do not mourn alone, and in the victory of Christ we will not mourn forever.
The Love of Christ: The God Who Mourns
In John chapter 11, we find the story of the death of Lazarus. Which, as many of you know, has a bit of a surprise ending. We’ll come to that in a moment. But to begin, the account unfolds something like this:
Jesus is traveling around teaching, ministering, healing the sick and freeing the spiritually oppressed when word is sent to him that this man - Lazarus - has fallen dangerously ill. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, and by all accounts these were some of Jesus’ closest personal friends. In fact, the message that Mary and Martha send along to Jesus was simply this: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” A couple of verses later, John again reiterates the point. He tells us that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” There were a lot of people around Jesus most of the time, but it’s made pretty clear that these folks were not just a few more faces in the crowd.
For reasons that were not immediately clear, though, Jesus does not rush to Lazarus. In fact, we are told that after receiving that urgent message, he stayed where he was for two more days. And, by the time he and his disciples finally do begin to make their way towards Bethany, Lazarus has already died. Why did he stay away? Why did he not come sooner? These are questions that we’ll have to seek the answers for in time, but whatever the case may be, as Jesus arrives in Bethany we know that he’s no longer headed to the hospital to visit a sick man; he’s headed to the funeral home to mourn a dead man. And whatever the circumstances and questions may be that are swirling around the timing of Jesus’ arrival, we cannot miss the significance of this: Jesus DOES mourn. In verse 32 of John 11, John tells us this:
"Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” - (John 11:32-37 ESV)
As church kids doing memory verse exercises and memorization challenges growing up, John 11:35 was always a favorite. It was a really easy verse to memorize, because it’s only two words: “Jesus wept.” I remember joking about it as an 8 year-old boy: we might struggle to get more complicated verses memorized, but at least we always had John 11:35. We may not have had a clue about its context or meaning, but it was an easy one to check off a list.
But for a verse so quickly mastered by Sunday School kids everywhere, you could build a doctoral thesis on these two little words. Because, as Jesus weeps with and for his loved ones, we find ourselves introduced to the suffering sovereign. We see the God for whom life, death, creation itself spins around in the palm of his hand, crumpling to his knees, tears streaming down his face, mourning. Sharing in the suffering of his people to the point that he is overcome. The lower jaw of God himself begins to clench and quiver, his eyes glass over with tears, and he loses it in front of all these people. “See how he loved him!” they say.
Paradoxically and profoundly, it is in this discomfort of Jesus that we find hope for our own comfort restored. Because as we see in Jesus the heart of a creator God who, compelled by love, enters into and inhabits the journey of suffering and loss and mourning alongside of us, we come to understand that no matter where we are, no matter what we have lost and how broken that loss has left us, we have never been left to mourn alone.
Words fail us when we are faced with a crippling loss. And we know that, more often than not, what our friends in mourning need from us are not our hasty and ill-conceived attempts at a philosophy of suffering. They just need our presence. They need to know that they are not alone; that there are others who are willing to bear their burden of grief with them. That’s what good friends do for one another in times of mourning. And if there is any comfort to be gained from the presence and compassion of friends in our seasons of grief, how much more so may we be comforted by the knowledge that, should even every earthly friend fail us, the very creator of the universe still remains at our side, on his knees, sharing our tears?
In the love of Christ, we know that we do not mourn alone.
The Victory of Christ: Suffering and Mourning Undone
It’s incredible, and it’s totally unheard of - even blasphemous - to consider under almost any other worldview or system of religious thought, but the God we meet in Jesus is a God who suffers with us, and shares our tears. Isaiah refers to Jesus as a “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”; “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
Jesus suffers and mourns, but that is only half the equation. And as profound as it truly is, on its own that is not enough. The tears of Jesus are not enough to make hope possible. Because if Jesus is only a co-sufferer; if all he has to offer are his tears, then he is little more than just a really good friend. But Jesus is more than that; oh so infinitely more! You see, Jesus has tears. But it turns out that the tears of God are profoundly different from our tears. And as we continue to unpack this story around the death of Lazarus, we discover just how different they are.
Our mourning - human mourning - is an expression of sadness and heartache that comes from being in a place of powerlessness and loss. We mourn, because we have lost someone or something that we have absolutely no power to bring back, so our tears are tears of emptiness and frustration and injustice. Human mourning is a sadness that has no place to go for consolation - with no escape from the emptiness - so we end up depressed, or destructively angry, and eventually our heart just gets tired, and we resign ourselves to the fact that there’s nothing that can be done and so do our best to carry on, trusting that the passage of time will dull the pain. But the tears of Jesus are not tears of powerlessness. In fact, they are quite the opposite. When Jesus hears that Lazarus has fallen ill, scripture says that Jesus tells his disciples: ”This illness does not lead to (end in) death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Of course, Jesus then stays where he is, Lazarus succumbs to his sickness and dies, and then Jesus and his disciple finally arrive in Bethany in the midst of this community’s season of mourning. And, as we have discussed already, the heart of Jesus is “deeply moved”, he is troubled, and he mourns. But our English translations of the originally Greek new testament can be a little misleading, however. Because where our bibles read that Jesus was “deeply moved”, the word being translated there is “embrimaomai”, the emotional thrust of which is one of prophetic anger; righteous indignation. (Think: Snorting of horses. Nostril-flaring indignation) Jesus sees the pain of these people whom he loves, he comes face to face with the evil of death and loss that has thrust itself upon the good creation of God, and laid waste to these persons created in love, and to reflect the image of, God himself. And what is his response? Jesus doesn’t just get weepy… het gets heart-rendingly pissed off. And this Jesus, who proclaims that he, himself is the resurrection and the life that humanity’s hopes hang upon, with tears still in his eyes walks up to death itself and just throws down. Jesus steps up to the grave of his friend and declares the authority to overturn death and loss. “Lazarus!” Jesus speaks into the darkness of the grave; “Come out.” And Lazarus gets up and walks out of his own grave. Do you think the tone of that party changed a bit?
What we realize is that even though you and I may be powerless to stand up to death, powerless to restore those things that have been lost and left us broken and a little less whole, Jesus is not. He is the one who declares victory over death and brokenness, and he is the one who will restore all things to rights. As dramatic as the whole Lazarus episode may have been, that was only a picture and preview of what Jesus will one day work over all of creation itself; made possible by the price paid, and the victory secured, through his own death and resurrection. The Apostle John writes of his vision of this future day:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”, Jesus says. It is in light of the victory of Jesus that we believe and can cling to the knowledge, that in the end even the most unspeakable losses will be completely overcome and undone. It isn’t just that in light of heaven we will somehow forget the pain and losses of this present life, but the victory of Jesus goes backwards as well as forwards. Jesus does not only redeem our future. One day, in his glory and utter victory, he will redeem and restore our past, too. And that is why Jesus can say “Blessed are those who mourn.”; because he knows that when Heaven crashes into Earth, the deeper our wounds have gone, the more deeply his healing will go… “They will be comforted.”
C.S. Lewis put it this way: that “Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into glory". In the Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien envisions a time in which "everything sad is going to come untrue."
The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” - (1 Corinthians 2:9 ESV)
The truth is that sometimes, when a word - a profound word, a comforting word - is the thing we need most, words are the one thing we just don’t have… and that’s ok. Because Jesus has the LAST word. And that word is healing. It is comfort. It is restoration. That word is Jesus himself. The temptation for us, though (particularly in the social media age), is to FORCE a word - to find SOMETHING to say in the face of suffering/mourning, no matter how trite or terrible or empty that something may end up being. But what our world - our friends, our loved ones - what we need is not a quick and empty word. What our world needs is not 100 million twitter users leaping to 100 million bully-pulpits, raging and railing or offering saccharine platitudes. What our world needs is a people who are practiced in the ministry of faithful, tearful, but hope-filled PRESENCE. We are called to be a people in whose tears the world may see the tears of Christ, and in whose hope the world may see the victory of Christ. A people who are willing to sit in the humility of wordless tension long enough to let Jesus speak HIS word of compassion and victory, over and through our mourning.
There can be comfort in mourning because we know that in the love of Christ, we do not mourn alone, and in the victory of Christ we will not mourn forever.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
The last entry began to reflect on that first promise, and the good news that, when it comes to overcoming our own spiritual poverty, it not about what strength we’re able to muster for ourselves, but about the life and strength and flourishing that Jesus freely offers us in spite of ourselves. Now, we’re going to press into the reality and experience of mourning, and the promise of comfort that Jesus offers to everyone who mourns.
In the grand scheme of human relationship, I tend to think that there is nothing more difficult than these two challenges: to mourn well, and to comfort well those who are mourning. As Americans, particularly, we are - culturally speaking - terrible at both these things. We don’t know how to mourn and, for that reason, we don’t know how to comfort one another very well. Why is that? There are a lot of reasons for this struggle, to be sure, but underneath it all it seems to me the trouble is that mourning is, in its essence, about loss, and we just aren’t quite sure how to handle loss. In bold, generic strokes, the American narrative is about victory, overcoming obstacles, carving out a life for yourself from a land of wilderness and adversity. So when one of us misses a step on that road to triumph in a way that leaves us genuinely wounded, we’re just not all that sure what to say. Is there anything that makes us feel more awkward or powerless than being confronted with another person in mourning?
Maybe it’s a friend who recently experienced the loss of a loved one - a death in the family. Maybe they just found out that they’ve been cheated on or served divorce papers. Maybe they’ve been unceremoniously laid off and suddenly uncertain of how they’re going to provide for their family. Confronted with genuine loss, we quickly find ourselves at a loss for words. Or worse, we try to find comforting things to say, and end up saying the most terribly trite, empty things. What do you say to a friend who just found that their 4 year old child is going to die from cancer? (Or to Michael Brown’s mom, or to an Iraqi father who just lost his whole family in an emerging genocide?) Imagine: This is someone you care about, whose heart is being ripped out by an unspeakable circumstance, and they’re coming to you, their friend, looking for a word of comfort. What do you say?
Sometimes, when a word is the thing we need most, words are the one thing we just don’t have. Because we know that, no matter what we say, it can’t bring back that person, that elemental value, that has been lost. And we say, “I’m SO sorry…”, though we’re not apologizing for anything. Or, worse, we try and fill the void by saying something philosophical and profound like, “We just need to trust that everything happens for a reason.” Or, “God must think you’re really STRONG, because you know he never gives us more than we can handle.”…
Our bad theology becomes glaringly obvious at the worst possible times, doesn’t it?
If we are powerless and - at best - wordless in the face of genuine suffering and loss and mourning, how might we ever hope to find and offer comfort to one another? When a piece of ourselves has been lost, how can we ever hope to be made whole again? “Blessed are those who mourn”, Jesus says, “for they shall be comforted.” To understand what this means and how this works, we’re going to look at another story in scripture, and watch as Jesus himself engages with loss and death and grief. We’re going to observe as Jesus offers and embodies this comfort he promises. And as we do so, we’re going to find that: there can be comfort in mourning because we know that in the love of Christ, we do not mourn alone, and in the victory of Christ we will not mourn forever.
The Love of Christ: The God Who Mourns
In John chapter 11, we find the story of the death of Lazarus. Which, as many of you know, has a bit of a surprise ending. We’ll come to that in a moment. But to begin, the account unfolds something like this:
Jesus is traveling around teaching, ministering, healing the sick and freeing the spiritually oppressed when word is sent to him that this man - Lazarus - has fallen dangerously ill. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, and by all accounts these were some of Jesus’ closest personal friends. In fact, the message that Mary and Martha send along to Jesus was simply this: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” A couple of verses later, John again reiterates the point. He tells us that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” There were a lot of people around Jesus most of the time, but it’s made pretty clear that these folks were not just a few more faces in the crowd.
For reasons that were not immediately clear, though, Jesus does not rush to Lazarus. In fact, we are told that after receiving that urgent message, he stayed where he was for two more days. And, by the time he and his disciples finally do begin to make their way towards Bethany, Lazarus has already died. Why did he stay away? Why did he not come sooner? These are questions that we’ll have to seek the answers for in time, but whatever the case may be, as Jesus arrives in Bethany we know that he’s no longer headed to the hospital to visit a sick man; he’s headed to the funeral home to mourn a dead man. And whatever the circumstances and questions may be that are swirling around the timing of Jesus’ arrival, we cannot miss the significance of this: Jesus DOES mourn. In verse 32 of John 11, John tells us this:
"Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” - (John 11:32-37 ESV)
As church kids doing memory verse exercises and memorization challenges growing up, John 11:35 was always a favorite. It was a really easy verse to memorize, because it’s only two words: “Jesus wept.” I remember joking about it as an 8 year-old boy: we might struggle to get more complicated verses memorized, but at least we always had John 11:35. We may not have had a clue about its context or meaning, but it was an easy one to check off a list.
But for a verse so quickly mastered by Sunday School kids everywhere, you could build a doctoral thesis on these two little words. Because, as Jesus weeps with and for his loved ones, we find ourselves introduced to the suffering sovereign. We see the God for whom life, death, creation itself spins around in the palm of his hand, crumpling to his knees, tears streaming down his face, mourning. Sharing in the suffering of his people to the point that he is overcome. The lower jaw of God himself begins to clench and quiver, his eyes glass over with tears, and he loses it in front of all these people. “See how he loved him!” they say.
Paradoxically and profoundly, it is in this discomfort of Jesus that we find hope for our own comfort restored. Because as we see in Jesus the heart of a creator God who, compelled by love, enters into and inhabits the journey of suffering and loss and mourning alongside of us, we come to understand that no matter where we are, no matter what we have lost and how broken that loss has left us, we have never been left to mourn alone.
Words fail us when we are faced with a crippling loss. And we know that, more often than not, what our friends in mourning need from us are not our hasty and ill-conceived attempts at a philosophy of suffering. They just need our presence. They need to know that they are not alone; that there are others who are willing to bear their burden of grief with them. That’s what good friends do for one another in times of mourning. And if there is any comfort to be gained from the presence and compassion of friends in our seasons of grief, how much more so may we be comforted by the knowledge that, should even every earthly friend fail us, the very creator of the universe still remains at our side, on his knees, sharing our tears?
In the love of Christ, we know that we do not mourn alone.
The Victory of Christ: Suffering and Mourning Undone
It’s incredible, and it’s totally unheard of - even blasphemous - to consider under almost any other worldview or system of religious thought, but the God we meet in Jesus is a God who suffers with us, and shares our tears. Isaiah refers to Jesus as a “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”; “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
Jesus suffers and mourns, but that is only half the equation. And as profound as it truly is, on its own that is not enough. The tears of Jesus are not enough to make hope possible. Because if Jesus is only a co-sufferer; if all he has to offer are his tears, then he is little more than just a really good friend. But Jesus is more than that; oh so infinitely more! You see, Jesus has tears. But it turns out that the tears of God are profoundly different from our tears. And as we continue to unpack this story around the death of Lazarus, we discover just how different they are.
Our mourning - human mourning - is an expression of sadness and heartache that comes from being in a place of powerlessness and loss. We mourn, because we have lost someone or something that we have absolutely no power to bring back, so our tears are tears of emptiness and frustration and injustice. Human mourning is a sadness that has no place to go for consolation - with no escape from the emptiness - so we end up depressed, or destructively angry, and eventually our heart just gets tired, and we resign ourselves to the fact that there’s nothing that can be done and so do our best to carry on, trusting that the passage of time will dull the pain. But the tears of Jesus are not tears of powerlessness. In fact, they are quite the opposite. When Jesus hears that Lazarus has fallen ill, scripture says that Jesus tells his disciples: ”This illness does not lead to (end in) death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Of course, Jesus then stays where he is, Lazarus succumbs to his sickness and dies, and then Jesus and his disciple finally arrive in Bethany in the midst of this community’s season of mourning. And, as we have discussed already, the heart of Jesus is “deeply moved”, he is troubled, and he mourns. But our English translations of the originally Greek new testament can be a little misleading, however. Because where our bibles read that Jesus was “deeply moved”, the word being translated there is “embrimaomai”, the emotional thrust of which is one of prophetic anger; righteous indignation. (Think: Snorting of horses. Nostril-flaring indignation) Jesus sees the pain of these people whom he loves, he comes face to face with the evil of death and loss that has thrust itself upon the good creation of God, and laid waste to these persons created in love, and to reflect the image of, God himself. And what is his response? Jesus doesn’t just get weepy… het gets heart-rendingly pissed off. And this Jesus, who proclaims that he, himself is the resurrection and the life that humanity’s hopes hang upon, with tears still in his eyes walks up to death itself and just throws down. Jesus steps up to the grave of his friend and declares the authority to overturn death and loss. “Lazarus!” Jesus speaks into the darkness of the grave; “Come out.” And Lazarus gets up and walks out of his own grave. Do you think the tone of that party changed a bit?
What we realize is that even though you and I may be powerless to stand up to death, powerless to restore those things that have been lost and left us broken and a little less whole, Jesus is not. He is the one who declares victory over death and brokenness, and he is the one who will restore all things to rights. As dramatic as the whole Lazarus episode may have been, that was only a picture and preview of what Jesus will one day work over all of creation itself; made possible by the price paid, and the victory secured, through his own death and resurrection. The Apostle John writes of his vision of this future day:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”, Jesus says. It is in light of the victory of Jesus that we believe and can cling to the knowledge, that in the end even the most unspeakable losses will be completely overcome and undone. It isn’t just that in light of heaven we will somehow forget the pain and losses of this present life, but the victory of Jesus goes backwards as well as forwards. Jesus does not only redeem our future. One day, in his glory and utter victory, he will redeem and restore our past, too. And that is why Jesus can say “Blessed are those who mourn.”; because he knows that when Heaven crashes into Earth, the deeper our wounds have gone, the more deeply his healing will go… “They will be comforted.”
C.S. Lewis put it this way: that “Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into glory". In the Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien envisions a time in which "everything sad is going to come untrue."
The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” - (1 Corinthians 2:9 ESV)
The truth is that sometimes, when a word - a profound word, a comforting word - is the thing we need most, words are the one thing we just don’t have… and that’s ok. Because Jesus has the LAST word. And that word is healing. It is comfort. It is restoration. That word is Jesus himself. The temptation for us, though (particularly in the social media age), is to FORCE a word - to find SOMETHING to say in the face of suffering/mourning, no matter how trite or terrible or empty that something may end up being. But what our world - our friends, our loved ones - what we need is not a quick and empty word. What our world needs is not 100 million twitter users leaping to 100 million bully-pulpits, raging and railing or offering saccharine platitudes. What our world needs is a people who are practiced in the ministry of faithful, tearful, but hope-filled PRESENCE. We are called to be a people in whose tears the world may see the tears of Christ, and in whose hope the world may see the victory of Christ. A people who are willing to sit in the humility of wordless tension long enough to let Jesus speak HIS word of compassion and victory, over and through our mourning.
There can be comfort in mourning because we know that in the love of Christ, we do not mourn alone, and in the victory of Christ we will not mourn forever.
"The Good Life": Part 1 - Blessed Bankruptcy
"Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
(Matthew 5:1-3 ESV)
Have you ever felt... powerless?
The annual renewal notice for our AAA membership arrived in the mail just the other day. Between Becca and I over the past 10+ years of being AAA members, I think we’ve managed to need their roadside services just enough to make it worth the $75 a year it costs us to keep it going: a lock-out here, a breakdown there, the occasional handful of free maps… Like all insurance products, you’re paying less for the services and more for the peace of mind. But, occasionally, the services do come in handy. Particularly the older and more derelict your vehicle happens to be.
At the moment, “older” and “derelict” are pretty good descriptors of my daily driver. We just call her the Blue Bomber, and she's a ’98 GMC pickup with a well-worn 200,000+ miles on her. I picked her up for $1000 bucks off of Craigslist a couple years back from a guy of questionable mechanical abilities up in the woods of Wakefield, and she’s more or less what you’d expect. The tires on her are worth more than the whole rest of the package, but she’ll generally get you where you need to go. Generally. A couple of weeks back, though, we ran into an exception to that rule.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I was heading into Dover from my parent’s place in Rollinsford when, at a full 40 mph gallop, the engine just cut out. My guess - and what turned out to be the case - was that the fuel pump had died. The fuel pump in the Bomber was always a little questionable, even though my friend in Wakefield said he had just replaced that fuel pump right before handing me the keys. For whatever reason - cheap parts, poor install, whatever - that pump always sounded like it was working a little too hard. Most of you have probably never heard your fuel pump at work, but on the Bomber, listening to that thing prime up and run was like a sound effect from a Transformers movie. In any case, when the engine cut out on me unexpectedly and refused to be revived, I had a good idea where the problem might lie.
It was a bizarre experience, though, stalling out at 40mph, because for a moment, you’re not even sure what just happened. You’re still rolling along, the radio’s still playing, but there’s suddenly less vibration and noise then you’ve come to expect. It was like my ’98 GMC truck suddenly went into Prius-mode; silent and just gradually losing speed as I rolled up this slight incline. The telltale sign, though, was that the gas pedal went totally unresponsive. Pump it, floor it… nothing. No signs of life or power. So you do the only thing you can do: carefully guide your now coasting vehicle to the edge of the road and call AAA, at which point you’ll have 45 minutes or so to sit and ponder the meaning of life and the liabilities of older vehicles.
But it’s funny: that haunting feeling of pressing down a powerless, ghostly gas pedal has kind of stuck with me. It’s that memorable sense of tension between what ought to have been and what actually was - between the expectation of power and response and the experience of powerlessness and deadness. It’s striking. When I hit the gas in a moving vehicle, I expect to find some power there. But, in that moment, the truck just had nothing to give: rolling along with a burned-out fuel pump, it was broken and powerless.
As we begin our journey into the Sermon on the Mount, our brokenness and powerlessness stand out as themes that we will continue to see pop up. Because Jesus has come for the broken and burned-out. "Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt", Jesus says. Blessed, because those are precisely the people he has come for: He’s come for the lost, the confused, the apathetic and spiritually dulled. He’s come for the people who don’t know what to make of “religion” or “church”. He’s come for the busted and the coasting. He’s come, and at the center of the good news that he’s proclaiming is this: when it comes to reclaiming the life that we have been created and intended for, it’s not about what you and I have in the tank. It’s about what he’s giving us, anyway.
I'm looking forward to this journey!
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
(Matthew 5:1-3 ESV)
Have you ever felt... powerless?
The annual renewal notice for our AAA membership arrived in the mail just the other day. Between Becca and I over the past 10+ years of being AAA members, I think we’ve managed to need their roadside services just enough to make it worth the $75 a year it costs us to keep it going: a lock-out here, a breakdown there, the occasional handful of free maps… Like all insurance products, you’re paying less for the services and more for the peace of mind. But, occasionally, the services do come in handy. Particularly the older and more derelict your vehicle happens to be.
At the moment, “older” and “derelict” are pretty good descriptors of my daily driver. We just call her the Blue Bomber, and she's a ’98 GMC pickup with a well-worn 200,000+ miles on her. I picked her up for $1000 bucks off of Craigslist a couple years back from a guy of questionable mechanical abilities up in the woods of Wakefield, and she’s more or less what you’d expect. The tires on her are worth more than the whole rest of the package, but she’ll generally get you where you need to go. Generally. A couple of weeks back, though, we ran into an exception to that rule.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I was heading into Dover from my parent’s place in Rollinsford when, at a full 40 mph gallop, the engine just cut out. My guess - and what turned out to be the case - was that the fuel pump had died. The fuel pump in the Bomber was always a little questionable, even though my friend in Wakefield said he had just replaced that fuel pump right before handing me the keys. For whatever reason - cheap parts, poor install, whatever - that pump always sounded like it was working a little too hard. Most of you have probably never heard your fuel pump at work, but on the Bomber, listening to that thing prime up and run was like a sound effect from a Transformers movie. In any case, when the engine cut out on me unexpectedly and refused to be revived, I had a good idea where the problem might lie.
It was a bizarre experience, though, stalling out at 40mph, because for a moment, you’re not even sure what just happened. You’re still rolling along, the radio’s still playing, but there’s suddenly less vibration and noise then you’ve come to expect. It was like my ’98 GMC truck suddenly went into Prius-mode; silent and just gradually losing speed as I rolled up this slight incline. The telltale sign, though, was that the gas pedal went totally unresponsive. Pump it, floor it… nothing. No signs of life or power. So you do the only thing you can do: carefully guide your now coasting vehicle to the edge of the road and call AAA, at which point you’ll have 45 minutes or so to sit and ponder the meaning of life and the liabilities of older vehicles.
But it’s funny: that haunting feeling of pressing down a powerless, ghostly gas pedal has kind of stuck with me. It’s that memorable sense of tension between what ought to have been and what actually was - between the expectation of power and response and the experience of powerlessness and deadness. It’s striking. When I hit the gas in a moving vehicle, I expect to find some power there. But, in that moment, the truck just had nothing to give: rolling along with a burned-out fuel pump, it was broken and powerless.
As we begin our journey into the Sermon on the Mount, our brokenness and powerlessness stand out as themes that we will continue to see pop up. Because Jesus has come for the broken and burned-out. "Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt", Jesus says. Blessed, because those are precisely the people he has come for: He’s come for the lost, the confused, the apathetic and spiritually dulled. He’s come for the people who don’t know what to make of “religion” or “church”. He’s come for the busted and the coasting. He’s come, and at the center of the good news that he’s proclaiming is this: when it comes to reclaiming the life that we have been created and intended for, it’s not about what you and I have in the tank. It’s about what he’s giving us, anyway.
I'm looking forward to this journey!
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