human effort and the grace of God

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with excellence, and excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is blind, suffering from eye disease, forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.

2 Peter 1:3-11; NRSVue

There has probably been nothing more controversial since the Reformation in Protestant circles when considering the break from Roman Catholicism than the issue of God’s grace and human works. An illustration in point is Martin Luther’s disdain for the letter of James, calling it “a right strawy epistle” and from what I can gather, while not excluding James from Scripture, put it on a kind of secondary level. There has been what seems to me is an unnecessary wedge driven between Paul’s writings and the book of James. Paul’s emphasis on salvation by God’s grace does not at all exclude what we can even call the necessity of good works following. The Anabaptists as part of the “radical reformation,” saw no contradiction to God’s saving grace in the necessity of works following. Neither did others like Calvin, though for such, human effort was still questioned I think, if not explicitly, implicitly in at least much of the theology present in their churches.

We’re not saved by our own human effort, but human effort is evident in our salvation, or we could say follows, maybe in a way significantly mysterious to us, always accompanies it. This can get into a discussion of original sin and how whatever power humans are under is penetrated by God’s grace. The salvation in Christ is likened as the light in the darkness, so that we don’t want to take away from that at all. Human effort alone, no matter how well meaning, according to Scripture is not enough. But no matter what the person understands, human effort should never be despised. There may well indeed be something of the power of God’s grace present and moving in that. I think we can see much of this in Paul’s writings, as well as elsewhere in the New Testament and in the rest of Scripture, for that matter.

But to the point of this post. Yes, our effort matters, and it turns out that it matters a lot. According to the passage above in 2 Peter, it actually makes all the difference in a certain way. Yes, on the basis of God’s life, power, and promises, but if one just goes on that and does nothing, then there is no grand entrance into the eternal kingdom of Christ, but rather a forgetting that past sins have been forgiven, even blindness and we might say a lostness in living. Consider what one is to add to their faith according to the passage, then consider what faith looks like without those things: excellence, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, love. At least we can imagine that to the writer such things would be diminished.

Then there’s the matter of making every effort to add those things to or as part of our faith to confirm our calling and election. In the words of the NRSVue:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election

That effort is a confirmation of what we already have, no effort indicating that we may lack it altogether. This passage paints it black and white, no gray. You either go all out to lay hold of what God’s grace offers, or you don’t and therefore you don’t receive it, or fall short of its fullness. I’m not sure that we have to draw lines and imagine exactly what the outcomes will be. In fact the plain reading of this passage does not make following through on this an issue of salvation at all. Instead I think this is simply a call to move us together and as individuals to respond with a pointed effort on our part, to be growing in the intention of goal of God’s grace.

God’s grace as we can see in the above passage, and many places elsewhere never excludes human effort. Quite the contrary. Even the misguided thought that we have to quit doing anything, usually always in a concern that if we do anything, it amounts to us trying to earn our salvation, is ironically so it seems to me itself an effort, and certainly never understood in those circles as simply doing nothing or doing whatever one feels like doing. We can’t earn our salvation, for sure. This is a call to be fully tuned into and moving in accordance with the salvation already present for us in Jesus. Because of that, we’re to give it our all.

war no more

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the LORD!

Isaiah 2:1-5; NRSVue

There seems little I can turn to as far as Christian resources, particularly from the community and tradition I was a part of for many years, in the way of advocating for the cessation of war and armed conflict, and a just peace. In the tradition I left we live in a time pressing closer to Jesus’s return in which they’ll only be an increase in wars and rumors of wars. And that tradition more than any other in the US is in favor of war and military buildup. So I certainly can’t expect much help from them.

We have to turn to early church fathers before Augustine and Constantine to begin to get help from the church. And we also turn to pacifist movements within the church like the Franciscans along with the Peace Church movements in the Anabaptists along with the Quakers. All others seem not only steeped in the idea of the inevitability of war, but historically right up to the present day, very much a part of it.

But what does Jesus say? What does Scripture say? Jesus was steeped in the prophets and the word from Isaiah quoted above along with a host of other passages advocates for the end of bloodshed and war. Yes, there’s no doubt we live in an evil time, but what if we Christians were focused and committed to “the things that make for peace,” (Jesus’s words: Luke 19:42) instead of given to the idea that the present order needs to be maintained at all costs? What if violence and war were considered a very last resort and there would be a commitment to a society and world in which those bent on violence and advocating war were more and more marginalized?

Yes, I realize that the tradition I came out of can never receive this. That’s why in part I left it and am now back to the tradition I was raised in. But those of us in the so-called Christian Peace Church tradition need to raise our voices and do what we can to stem the tide of violence. Only then through Christ will we be a needed light in the darkness, calling the nations and peoples to work on better solutions in solving problems, with the sense that we are inescapably in this together.

“Jesus, you have the words of eternal life.”

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

John 6:66-69; NRSVue

In our hymnal, in morning and evening prayer in the back, we run across the words, “Jesus, you have the words of eternal life,” just before the gospel reading (meaning a reading from either Matthew, Mark, Luke or John). Those words are taken from John 6 which is an important, interesting read in itself. Certainly, it would be included among Jesus’s “hard teachings.” He talks about the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. From those words came the church’s teaching on the Eucharist with “the real presence of Christ” in both the wafer and the wine. The Anabaptist understanding of this would be that we partake of this reality by simple faith understood with it to be a full commitment to Christ sealed in water baptism. I actually have some respect for the former. We once were a part of an Anglican fellowship, and if I wouldn’t have found the Mennonite fellowship we’re now a part of, we may have settled for an Episcopalian fellowship. I’m glad to be back to my Anabaptist Mennonite roots and prefer the latter interpretation. And I might add to that the thought that by faith we become immersed in Christ as Christ’s body so that the distinction between us and Christ is all but lost in the communal, experiential aspect. Christ as the God-human (both fully God and fully human) remains forever unique and distinct from us, but we are taken into the family of God not only in terms of adoption, but in a complete union so that we are partakers of Christ’s very life, of the divine nature.

While we need to consider Peter’s words, “You have the words of eternal life,” in the context of John 6, we also do well to think of all of Jesus’s teaching as given to us in the gospel accounts (again, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). If we heed those words, take them to heart so as to put them into practice in our lives, then we’re ushered into God’s promise of eternal life which begins in a personal and communal sense now, but is destined for the world, for all of creation in the new creation to come. This may sound surreal and heavenly in the sense that it’s all but lost on us as to what it means. But when one goes over the gospels, we begin to find that it is quite down to earth, for the world, and for life in this world. Yes, it speaks to a new world to come which through Christ is breaking into this old world of which we’re a part. The beginnings of that are with us now, yes in and through Jesus himself and through Jesus’s teaching, his words to us.

the gospel is indeed political, but not like we’re seeing today

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

Luke 2:10-11; NRSVue

I’m meddling again. I’m not the one to write a post on this. And to really do this justice, you would need to write at least a long article, which I don’t do on this blog, or really, a book. And we would want someone really qualified in both study and wisdom to do such. They’re out there actually, people like Walter Brueggemann, women and men, both. But I will try my hand at this, a shorthand attempt.

The Enlightenment brought with it not only the birth of a nation unlike any before, the United States, determined to break the shackles of authority in the brand-new quest at the time for freedom from all such to pursue fully what the Renaissance breakthrough had begun. Only this time no church would tell the state what they had to do. My ancestors on my mother’s side had a stake in this, because for all the real faults in the founding and what followed in this nation just like any other nation, the Anabaptists with Mennonites and others were escaping a heavy-handed state church in the old country in which refusing baptism at birth was considered heretical which then was punishable by death. On my father’s side, one of our direct ancestors was a soldier in the Continental Army of the Thirteen Colonies, later the United States.

Menno Simons and others who were Anabaptist had a view of church and state which one might say you could find in suggestive form when reading the latter part of Romans 12 with the first part of Romans 13 together. Vengeance was to be left in the hands of God so that Christ-followers were to love and do good to their enemies, God using the state as long as the state kept in its ordained place, God’s people even giving due respect and paying taxes to such. But there’s clearly a distinctive present here. The church was not to be subsumed into the state, nor the state into the church, as if the two were one. Christ-followers have one ultimate Lord to whom they answer and give allegiance to. And any other lords and authorities are under this one Lord. But never in a way in which Christ’s reign is considered to be manifest or part of what they do. It is only in terms of them answering to Christ.

The gospel in no small part due to Enlightenment thinking has become a privatized, individual matter. The reality in Christ is that there are to be Christ colonies spread throughout the world as churches, who live under God’s reign of grace in Christ, not only in individual terms, but also together and out from that in their influence as “the light of the world.” Our culture and the way of thinking has shackled us all, and we need to get away from that to see that what any nation pretends to be, only Christ in God’s reign and “kindom” (referring to kinship) actually is. Politics basically has to do with how people live together. To imagine the United States to be a Christian nation or to try to make it into such is a complete misunderstanding of Jesus’s coming and teaching and God’s promise in Jesus, not to mention a misreading and misunderstanding of the founding fathers. One hundred percent wrong. And yet we have a so-called apostolic movement more or less spearheading this with a wide swath of Christians more or less cheering this on.

The announcement to the lowly shepherds was that the Messiah had arrived in a lowly birth with the titles which belonged to Caesar. To bring a kingdom or reign never of this world, but indeed for this world, yes now. With the later promise that he would return and that all the earth would be under that reign. Until then, Christ is present in the church, and whatever Christ is doing elsewhere in the world is never in the way or manner of any nation-state or empire, but only in God’s will of the more than complete, bursting love to challenge and break all worldly bounds and norms, part of God’s heart and hand of judgment and salvation active in the world now.

returning to the teaching (“sayings”) of Jesus

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

Matthew 5:1-2; NRSVue

I remember a Bible teacher who I esteem once saying that he was going to spend a rather lengthy period of time in the gospels because he felt that he was not like Jesus. I remember another Bible teacher who I also esteem who said that the wheat of Scripture are the gospels. Of course, we need to be in all of Scripture. Every part of it has its place in the whole, God’s Word fulfilled in Jesus. There is much to try to say about all of it, every part, including I would add, the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books. But I think we do well to return again and again to the gospel accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In the Great Tradition, liturgy incorporates these books last in the reading as the climax, beginning with a psalm, an Old Testament reading, an epistle (such as Romans) and then the gospel. In Mennonite liturgy, we read the psalm first, then the gospel, followed by an Old Testament or New Testament reading. Or that’s one way we do it. That might be so that we can see what follows in light of the gospel account.

I think our grounding is found in the gospel accounts. I don’t think we get grounded by say reading Romans first, or Galatians, or whatever other book one might choose. Each book is important, indeed gold in its place. The fulfilment is in Jesus. All of the Bible is God’s Word to us but the Word strictly speaking or at least in the final sense is Jesus himself. That is in part why I think we need to keep the gospel accounts, including Jesus’s teachings front and center, while we don’t neglect the rest of Scripture.

We can’t rightfully understand the rest of Scripture apart from the gospel accounts and Jesus. Yes, we need to try to understand each book on its own terms, and we can get needed, great help from non-Christian Jewish scholars. It will seem dangerous to some, and it indeed has been abused to the harm of many, but as Christians or followers of Christ we need to say that we take our cue and find our ultimate understanding in Jesus: his life and teachings, his death and resurrection. And all is to follow from that.

very mixed feelings about this blog

Beginning in late 2005, and at least most every day by 2007 I’ve been writing on “Jesus community,” here at Blogger, and now on WordPress since for a time, my blog became inaccessible to me and actually still is as far as editing goes. Before that, when blogging was hot (like podcasting is now), I spent quite a lot of time on Scot McKnight’s blog, “Jesus Creed.” I found out to my surprise that I could blog and tapped into a passion for communicating what I understood of biblical truth in a simple, understandable way. The Emergent Church was on the rise then, and in some sense, I felt a part of that.

Fastforward to today, and much has changed, not the least of which is getting older. Given everything and the world in which we live, I consider this a critical time not merely in my life, but in the world here at home and abroad. Global matters are pressing, and in fact the entire earth is at risk. And those of us who are older especially want to think of the younger generations.

But back to the point of the blog today, I really was playing with the idea of discontinuing this blog entirely. I’m not an expert in anything at all. And my faith is evolving, some would say devolving, but I naturally think it’s for the good. I’ve been at tension with Protestant Evangelicalism for some time, and now no longer self-identify as such. Getting back to my Anabaptist roots, but with some profound differences, partly in a more activist, and if I may say, though this is fraught with much misunderstanding, but in a liberal theological, social gospel context. We describe something of where we’re living as far as our limited understanding goes.

I personally don’t care at all what I think, but I do care about what I’m struggling to understand and let go of. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know, and also that inevitably there is mystery in much. Gone are the days when I want to give a quick answer for anything. I will often say something like, “It’s complicated,” or “It’s more complicated than that,” nothing new actually, and better, more and more I want to say nothing at all. Better yet, “I don’t really know,” because on so many things I don’t.

Jesus Christ and the gospel as spelled out in scripture from which we receive truth from God or hear God’s voice (as well as elsewhere) is central to me, and in an Anabaptist understanding which takes seriously all the good from other traditions. Of course, like everyone else I’m on a journey.

At this point I will continue to write, hopefully short (preferably no longer than two, at the most three paragraph) posts, for the most part. I consider myself nothing more than a witness. Trying to share understandings which are vital and helpful to me, as well as ideas which I consider truth needed in my own understanding for life, which in some measure might be helpful to others. And this in needed collaboration with others.

In and through Jesus.

faith is not just what you believe, but what you do

…humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:21b-27

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless^[a]? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”^[b] and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

James 2:14-26

The Protestant Reformation emphasized faith apart from works along with a creedal emphasis, stating “we believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” Etc. But in so doing what people could easily slip into is the notion that works didn’t matter, as long as they have faith. After all, our good works can’t save, but only Christ so that the one requirement is faith. That’s good and even vital as far as it goes. The problem as James tells us here is that it doesn’t go far enough.

Yes, faith alone saves us, but the faith that saves us is not alone. True saving faith is always accompanied with a life change evident in works of love. Our lives are summarized in love for God and for our neighbor. Unless our faith results in good works, then it’s not faith at all, not the faith which saves. If we look to Christ for salvation, we’re also looking at the Christ who bids us to come and follow. You can’t separate the two. Theology which does is destructive. Note the separate components for sure, but note too that these components end up together. In God’s saving work. In and through Jesus.

the Anabaptist (Mennonite) difference

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matthew 5:3-12

For some time on my spiritual journey, really beginning around 2000 or so, I’ve been nudged back toward my Anabaptist, specifically Mennonite roots. Now no church or denomination or tradition has got it all right, in fact I prefer to insist on the thought that none is better than another. And that we’re all in this together, for better or for worse. But the Anabaptist tradition has a history to appreciate, and I would like to say, a difference, too. Not unique to itself in that it has never existed elsewhere. But stamped all over its origins.

Back at the time when the church and the state were essentially one in the “old country,” Anabaptists and especially their leaders were persecuted, specifically, executed either by drowning, or being burned at the stake (or even racked, I read) by both Catholics and Lutherans. Yes, it was a different time, and this was the punishment then for “heretics.” The Anabaptists learned the wisdom of being explicit about their acceptance of the creeds of the church. But the hot button issue was their refusal to submit to the baptism of babies. All who lived in a nation then had to submit to that, at least for the most part. And the Anabaptists would not fit an exception to the rule.

The picture above is that of Dirk Willems, a Dutchman who escaped prison, but rescued the one chasing him who had fallen through ice, only to be tortured and executed. This epitomizes the heart of Anabaptism in the best sense of its tradition: Seeking to follow the way of Jesus come what may. As some like to say, not just the religion about Jesus, but the religion of Jesus. With an emphasis on the way of the cross, love for one’s enemies, love for all.

So I’m getting back to my roots: Mennonite. Yes, it’s not exactly the Mennonite I was raised in the first seventeen or so years of my life. But probably with more of an emphasis at being distinctly Anabaptist in a Sermon on the Mount kind of way especially with the distinctives of love for one’s enemies, and never resorting to violence. As well as seeking to be peacemakers. But minus the emphasis on rules of what was thought to be literal obedience to Scripture such as distinctive dress. And more, I’m sure. I have some catching up, and actual learning ahead.

Certainly on many things we are in agreement with the Church. That our salvation is through Jesus in his incarnation, life and teachings, death and resurrection, ascension, and promised return. The promise of the kingdom of God in the new creation. Whatever tradition, through faith and baptism we are all one body in Christ. We’re in this together, in spite of what differences we have.

I’m thankful for my upbringing, and now would like to end there. In that expression within the full body of Christ. In and through Jesus.

what hill are you willing to die on?

Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

Mark 8:34-9:1

There has been a big shaking going on in society for some time now, akin to the 1960s, and I say the true color of Christians is coming out in response to that. Just where people will take a stand, what hill they’re willing to die on. One could say that where people have been for the last several decades is now being confirmed and solidified.

The question I think we need to ask ourselves is simply what our priority is, what overrides everything else. What defines us, what factors into how we see everything. What hill are we willing to die on?

Jesus made it plain to his disciples what their first priority was to be. To simply follow him, taking their own crosses, to do what he was doing. And that meant to abide by his teachings, both the general aspect and the details in it.

That meant to repent of their ideas of what the coming kingdom of God should be. What Jesus brought was not what they wanted. For us today, we need to apply what Jesus taught and lived out to the current situation. Are we taken in by something other than God’s kingdom in Jesus?

This is especially difficult when those we more or less favor are in power. So I speak to my white evangelical friends here. I’m no longer in that fold, but I’ve been a part of that tradition for decades. Why do we put our confidence in any political stance, or somehow think it’s Christian? I mean American politics. Unfortunately there’s little or more likely no understanding of the politics of Jesus, or that the gospel is political, that in a true sense everything which God is about in the world is indeed political. By political I simply mean the ordering of life: how humans live together, and how humans live on earth.

Evangelicals put politics in a different category than their faith, and yet they insist that a certain American political stand is necessary because of their faith, or for whatever reason. They are willing to talk and talk and talk about that, which indeed gives you the impression that it’s indeed important, that it’s likely a hill they’re willing to die on.

Yes, a whole bunch of issues need to be considered in light of God’s revealed will, not just one or two. We do need in love to speak out on such issues. To try to listen and learn. To pray, and hopefully discern.

But we must beware of giving ourselves to something other than what our Lord calls us to give ourselves to. We have one Lord. Are we inadvertently and mistakenly being taken into something else? Even for good reasons? We must be careful. No political party of this world deserves such commitment from us. I’m not referring to the Christians who may serve as elected officials of a political party, though they too must be wary. But to the church at large. And we in our commitment as individual Christians, followers of Christ.

However we might vote, we follow only one Lord. One politic, that which is in Jesus and God’s kingdom in him. Not two. That’s impossible. We either follow Jesus all the way, or not at all. Not easy, but the Lord will help us and see us through as we endeavor to do this with others. As we take up our crosses, the hill by God’s grace that we are called to be willing to die on. In and through Jesus.