Within the disputations of Isaiah 40-55 YHWH is constantly engaged in a wisdom debate with Israel. Essentially, by appealing to his role as Creator, and therefore the maintainer and guide of history, YHWH is arguing that the way he has set for Israel is the best way. YHWH is defending his wisdom against Israel's protestations. Within the context of 40-55 it is likely that YHWH is saying that he chose Cyrus of Persia to act as the messiah to Israel, Cyrus would be the agent to bring them out of exile. But Israel rejected Cyrus, refusing to recognise that salvation could come from such a figure. As a result the return from exile is long delayed.
The essential problem is that Israel in exile, although no longer worshipping idols, is still idolatrous because she is treating YHWH like an idol. Israel refuses to trust YHWH's wisdom, refuses to recognise that YHWH would act in such new and unexpected ways, and thereby limits YHWH to acting like the idols. And, because they treat YHWH like an idol, they put their trust in the same things that those around them trust in. Therefore, when YHWH does act Israel refuses to recognise such actions as divine – and she only goes deeper into exile as a result.
It seems to me that this is also one of the fundamental problems facing our contemporary western church. Although churchgoers are not actively worshiping idols they are essentially treating Jesus as an idol, refusing to recognise the radical ways he breaks into history. Instead they choose to trust in other things – the financial security provided by a steady job, the illusory safety provided by a suburban neighbourhood, the future hope provided by RRSPs, and so on and so forth. While claiming to worship Jesus, very few people actually trust Jesus for anything significant in their day to day lives. And that means treating Jesus like just another idol. It also means that, for all the Christian talk about longing to see God break-in in radical new ways, most Christians aren't willing to recognise moments when God does – because, as a general rule, God breaks-in in ways that we don't want to call divine. God breaks-in in ways that requires us to transfer our trust to God's actions and agents, instead of the standard people and things that our culture trusts in. Simply put, many Christians don't really trust God's wisdom, and that makes it damn near impossible to follow Jesus.
Abandoned Houses
I was standing in a ruined house, the flashlight picking up dust, and insulation, and a single infant’s sock. Grey and pink and white faded to yellow. A few old items behind the mirrors and a stack of Christmas cards written in Greek. “Congratulations on the birth of your child.”
I used to go to that house late at night, pushing through the overgrown yard and the hedges that crowded around the porch at the side door. Climbing the stairs, walking over the landing and into empty rooms. Once I climbed into the attic and scrambled out of a hole in the roof. I leaned against the chimney top and smoked quietly while cars of bar-hoppers drifted home on Bayview Ave. Once my flashlight batteries died when I was in the basement. I wandered from room to room in pitch darkness before I finally found the stairs back up to the kitchen where pin-pricks of moonlight stabbed through the boarded windows.
The house was stripped of everything but baby paraphernalia. Behind the mirrors, medicine for toddlers; in a side room, a tiny bathtub and a jolly jumper; in the bedrooms an old stuffed rabbit, and a plastic boat – and of course, the Christmas cards that I found in the fireplace.
Sometimes, walking out in the early hours of the morning, a pair of deer would pass by, damp from the dew and the mist rising from the creek.
I don’t know why I’m drawn to such places. In the city I am drawn to the old, the decaying, and the dilapidated. Abandoned buildings, alleyways, and spaces under bridges. There is a sorrow in such places that is also peaceful. There is a silence that is pregnant. It is full of voices lost in the passage of time. I walk in the midst of stories I will never know, gathering hints and glimpses of lives that I will never meet.
Announcing the Forgiveness of Sins
Within Christian circles it is not uncommon to hear something that goes a little something like this:
Jesus taught us to love the sinner but hate the sin.
Now that expression has always put me off to a certain extent. To be blunt, I never saw that expression cause Christians to treat others more lovingly. There is too much arrogance involved in this statement, too much condescension. When people are viewed as sinners then hating the sin will inevitably lead to hating (or at least mistreating) the sinner.
Some more recent reflection has caused me to object to this statement on an even more fundamental level.
Jesus did not teach us to love the sinner but hate the sin.
What Jesus did do was announce the forgiveness of sins. And he did this be refusing to define people as sinners. Those that the religious leaders viewed as sinners were the ones Jesus openly embraced. These were the ones Jesus journeyed with and ate with (in contemporary western culture we miss how significant and intimate sharing table fellowship was in ancient near eastern culture). Jesus defines these people as Beloved and Forgiven.
Jesus taught us to love our neighbour.
So let's forget that tired expression, “love the sinner but hate the sin.” Instead, let's begin announcing (with word and deed) the forgiveness of sins.
<i>Jeremiah</i> 20.9
Just before pronouncing the tetelestai, Jesus' dying words in John's Gospel are these:
I thirst.
And I wonder…
I wonder if those who seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus are bound to die thirsty. I wonder if they are bound to die unsatisfied, empty, panting with a thirst that goes unquenched.
In Matthew's Gospel Jesus dies crying,
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
And I wonder…
I wonder if those who seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus are bound to die forsaken. I wonder if they will always be hoping for God to break in, for God to come and enact a radical transformation, a radical act of salvation – only to die abandoned by God.
Dying of thirst. Dying alone. It makes one think twice about following Jesus… and helps explain why so many twist following Jesus into something else.
Still there is this assurance:
Those who hunger and thirst shall be satisfied.
And forsakenness itself can be transformed into an experience of intimate love.
The way of glory is the way of the cross.
And those who would gain their lives must lose them first.
Ribbon
Yesterday my housemates gave me a (belated) birthday present. It was wrapped with a rainbow coloured ribbon. They said they chose that ribbon because I’m…
straight, but not narrow.
Now that makes me laugh.
Living Repentantly
In light of repeated sin our prayer should not be, “Father, forgive me.” After all, the full and final forgiveness of sins was accomplished once and for all on the cross.
Rather, our prayer should be, “Father, help me to live repentantly.” I think this gets closer to what repentance is about anyway. Repentance is not simply expressing remorse. Saying, “I'm sorry” does not equal repentance. Expressions of remorse must be accompanied by transformed living if they are to be considered genuine. And transformed living is only possible through the in-breaking of God's Spirit.
Therefore, the victorious life of the children of God is simultaneously a life that is lived repentantly. It is a common misconception to think that repentance is just the first step, something that we get out of the way at the beginning of our journey. We tend to think (erroneously) that the more we grow in Christ the less we will need repentance. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Movement toward Christ is always movement toward deeper expressions of repentance.
Note that, by saying this, I am not arguing that we define ourselves by our wrong-doing. We do not define ourselves as “sinners” but see ourselves the way that God sees us – as new creations, as beautiful and beloved. However, living as new creations means living repentantly.
Abandoning a Painless World
I swore I would never be a sinner…
Until I held your sin.
– The Indigo Girls
Tom Wright argues that, within Mark's Gospel, Jesus rejected two extremes: violent revolution and quietist retreat. Jesus took the third option, that of taking the projected evil of the world and drawing it onto himself. This had always been God's purpose for Israel. As Israel's Messiah Jesus took on the pain of Israel, which in turn was also the pain of the world. By doing so he healed the pain and vanquished the evil. Mark then calls the church to abandon both imperialistic dreams and passive nonviolence to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Therefore, as Wright notes elsewhere, the victory of Jesus over evil is not simply a fait accompli but is a victory waiting to be implemented through his followers.
And it is precisely by drawing the pain of others onto ourselves that we accomplish this victory. Christianity is not called to present quick-fixes or heavy-hitting solutions. Christianity is not a 12-step program. Not that there isn't a place for any and all of these at various times – it's just that we shouldn't say that those things are what Christianity has to offer. The Christian solution is found in the embrace of helplessness. The Christian is to be a person who journeys in love relationships with the suffering, sharing in their sufferings, entering into their desperation and joining in their groanings. Yet the miraculous thing is that by doing this, by embracing the helpless and becoming helpless with them, the victory won by the crucified Christ bursts into the contemporary context. Of course as soon as we try to package this – and use this simply as a means to the final end – we lose it. To do so is to miss the point. The ends cannot be divorced from the means, it is on the cross that evil is defeated, not after. The resurrection is simply the first proof and outworking of that victory.
The church needs to abandon a lot of her programs, her plans and her pragmatism. Instead of engaging in these things she should be moving to the margins, embracing the helplessness, the weakness and the limitations of suffering love. Instead of seeking to create a painless world the church should be drawing the pain of the world onto herself. Instead of seeking to obliterate the sufferings of others, Christians should be seeking to draw the sufferings of others onto themselves. Instead of seeking to overpower all evil the church should be seeking to draw the evil of the world onto herself. This is what it means to follow Jesus. This is the logic of the cross that is (as Paul says) foolishness to the wise and a stumbling block to the people of God.
The Love of Power and the Power of Love
For all its talk about freedom, liberty, democracy and human rights the real power of the American Empire is found in the ability to take another's life.
Empires possess the power to kill.
And for all its talk about wholeness, strength, forgiveness and perfection the real power of Christianity is found in the ability to lay down one's life.
Christians possess the power to die.
The God of Commands
Give me hope, Give me hope
That emptiness brings fullness
And loss of love brings wholeness
To us all.
– The Indigo Girls
How often we view God as the Law-Giver, as the Morally Perfect One. God, the Giver of Commands. God the one who is never fully satisfied but always demanding more of us.
Well, come, let us reason together, what is the command that is given more than any other command in the bible?
Do not be afraid.
Fear not.
Be not afraid.
Strange that I don't hear too many sermons preached on the Law of Fearlessness. How is this the command issued more than any other? Because it is a command that essentially reveals the character of the God of the bible. That God of the bible is the God of hope, of new creation, and of resurrection. The God of the bible, revealed in Jesus, is the God of love. Thus, our fundamental response to this God is to be one of trust. It it because we trust in the unshakable and irrevocable love of this God that we are able to live fearlessly.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
For thou art with me.
– Psalm 23
God With Us? God forbid!
In Matthew 1.23 Matthew quotes the now notorious verse in Isaiah 7.14 saying:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel which translated means God with us.
This verse has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy. It has regularly been used as a proof-text to argue that the immaculate conception was prophesied by Isaiah of Jerusalem. Of course with the rise of more serious scholarship this view has been called into considerable question. Such an translation of that passage in Isaiah takes the verse completely out of context. Besides the Hebrew word for “virgin” that is used in Isaiah simply refers to a young woman that is old enough to marry. There is another word that literally means “virgin” in the technical sense and that word is not used. These scholars then go on to argue that Matthew misuses the Hebrew Scriptures to make the point he wants to make. So the debate rages between these and those committed to more traditional forms of Christian apologetics.
The thing is both sides miss the point. Matthew is not concerned with using this passage as a proof-text for the immaculate conception. Rather he is picking up on the Emmanuel motif as it is employed in Isaiah and applying it to Jesus' ministry. Let me explain that.
In Isaiah 7 the prophet goes to king Ahaz and warns him about trusting in the military might of the world nations for salvation instead of trusting in God.
In frustration he says that Ahaz should ask for any sign from God so that he will know that God is trust-worthy. Hiding behind false humility (which is really a cloak for his lack of trust) Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign. It is then that the prophet declares that the unknown (to the contemporary reader) woman will bear a child named “God With Us.” Yet there is a tragic irony at play here. Where before God's presence was being offered as the means of salvation (the prophet said to trust in God being with them for salvation), now God's presence has come to mean judgment. Because Ahaz rejects God the presence of God becomes a presence of harrowing judgment. God will still come but, because his people have rejected him, God's coming will be far from pleasant.
It is this motif that Matthew is appropriating. For the first half of his Gospel Jesus, as Emmanuel, is offering a way of salvation, a way of peace, to Israel. Yet they firmly reject Jesus' way and so increasingly in the second half of the Gospel, “God With Us” becomes a message of judgment. Thus, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple (that occur 40 years after Jesus' crucifixion) become inevitable. God comes, finds a rebellious people, and so his coming takes the form of judgment.
Of course this view is radically different than the traditional view announced by Christians, especially around Christmas, that celebrate the idea of Immanuel, God With Us.
I think we would do well to learn from this. Perhaps we should not be so quick to pray, “God come. God return to us.” Perhaps God is absent now because, given the current state of his people, if he were present he would only be able to be present in judgment. Maybe God's silence and absence are actually extensions of grace. Instead of praying for God to come perhaps we should be praying for repentance. We should be praying that we first return to being who we are called to be so that God's coming can be a glorious message of salvation and liberation.
After all, Jesus only comes after John the Baptizer first proclaims a message of repentance. Without John's work I doubt Jesus would have found even the few who embraced his message. So, as much as we long for Jesus to break in to the contemporary context I think we need to first heed the message of John the Baptizer.