from terror to peace

O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror,
while you, O LORD—how long?

Turn, O LORD, save my life;
deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who can give you praise?

I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief;
they grow weak because of all my foes.

Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.
The LORD has heard my supplication;
the LORD accepts my prayer.
All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror;
they shall turn back and in a moment be put to shame.

Psalm 6; NRSVue

There’s not a one of us who doesn’t like to feel well, and not a one of us who likes to feel bad. That however does not line up with the human predicament in this life. Yes, we have those feel-good experiences, but more often than not, they are too few and too far in between. Well, I’m sure I don’t speak for everyone, but I’m guessing I speak for the majority of us, and certainly for myself. We do cherish those time of refreshing rest and as our faith grows, probably the experience of such grows along with it. Yet when it comes right down to it, I often find that I’m needing to manage my emotions, keep them under my hat, to myself, shared many times with my wife, but in the discipline more and more towards the goal of keeping them more between myself and God, asking for prayer along the way when need be.

The psalmist is experiencing almost as it were, violent attacks inside if not out. Shaken with terror, languishing, bed no place of rest. Internal suffering due to external threatening circumstances. It seems they had flesh and blood enemies. That translates directly in our day for the many who suffer at the hand of authoritarian regimes which are a law to themselves. And even where I live in the United States, too many languish in places of little or no hope, victims themselves of an unjust system.  For a person like me who lives in privilege compared to most on the planet, the enemies cited here would be spiritual. Yes, I believe in a power of evil that would undo creation, in fact, as it were, make something quite the opposite of such, all in rebellion against God. One sees evidence of such in different reigns of terror, as well as devasting war and violence, right up to the present time. But if we have eyes to see, we’ll see this evil at work in far more subtle ways. One can go back to Jesus as portrayed in the four gospels, stay in that for a good length of time, and that will help one discern this power at work in supposedly good ways in the world at the expense of what is really good. Jesus as God coming to be and restore our full humanity, helps us simply discern this as humans and then act, something akin to “the good Samaritan.” Note too in the psalm that the terror the psalmist experiences is ultimately turned back on their enemies.

I’m glad for God’s faithfulness in helping us, just as the psalmist notes. There is hope or assurance that God has all things in hand, that God sees, that God understands, that God will act, in fact is acting. All a matter of faith, yes, but in a reality that not only includes all the hard stuff, but the great answer even now in this present existence, with the promise of what’s yet to come.

read with caution

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Hebrews 1:1-4; NRSVue

The Bible is a dangerous book. Christians, even churches, and whole denominations and traditions have justified all kinds of things, we might say by misusing and misreading it. But for one reason or another, their theology was lacking. One example I don’t even want to share here, but it illustrates my point. There was a person in charge of me when I worked for a Christian ministry who suggested that the US should bomb a particular nation based on his reading of Joshua. In no way, shape or form did his thought represent what that good ministry thinks, quite the opposite. But if anyone reads through the entire Bible, you’ll see what I mean. The Bible is indeed a dangerous book.

In various Jewish tradition, Scripture is read discerningly and humanely. God delivers God’s people in the exodus and sets up laws for them which are humane for all, other laws quite beyond the pale of that. While explanations might be given for the brutal, unsparing sentences of stoning in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament, it does help to read the entire Old Testament through. Even then, frankly, there’s still a sort of violence that is latent in the text and story, never beyond the possibility of appearing in the name of God. There were then and are now Jewish traditions which mitigate the harshness in the text, finding what might be called more of the humane good. Some Jews and Christians will write that off as being unfaithful to Scripture, to God’s Word, to God. Most Christians would not be explicit, but when it comes right down to it, they are open to accepting violence if not explicitly condoning it.

When Jesus appears we find something quite new, even a radical newness which nevertheless is steeped in the old, a fulfillment of it which given what preceded it (consider the Apocryphal, Deuterocanonical books, as well) is easily a head scratcher since at points it seems to be contradictory and actually is. The heart and soul, spirit of it arguably, and I would say definitely is not. Love for God means love for one’s neighbor, spelling what turns out to be the goal of all Scripture.

Jesus has been aptly called God’s final word. God is seen in Jesus who is indelibly in his nature and life completely like God, so much so that indeed even in Jesus’s humanity, he is God.

Before we as Christians can interpret the meaning of any Scripture passage for our time, we need to run it through God’s word in Jesus. When we do that, we’ll see right away that there are a host of things which not only are not applicable for our time but are actually contradictory to it. One example: the famous Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha, fire out of heaven to destroy people, a bear to maul youths mocking the prophet. But Jesus roundly rebukes two of his disciples for suggesting that fire should be called down from heaven to destroy a Samaritan town which refused to receive him. Jesus told them that they didn’t know what spirit they were, since he had come not to destroy people’s lives, but to save them.

Read all of Scripture with profit. But read it discerningly. Each of us need to practice that, but it is best done together in community.

running the Jesus race

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls or lose heart.

Hebrews 12:1-3; NRSVue

Jesus began something new which did not disregard or throw away the old, but was a fulfilment of it. Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of faith is the one we’re to follow, indeed look to (“fix our eyes on”- CEB) so that metaphorically, we can liken this way of faith to a unique race since Jesus ran it, and in the same way and kind of faith, we too are to run it. It’s evident that part of the Spirit’s work is to help us continue on in the way of Jesus. And an important part of that is to consider Jesus as portrayed to us in the gospel accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

We are to have the faith of Jesus, the same kind of faith he had. It’s important for us to be focused on Jesus in that way. God invites us to enter into the same way of faith, to run this race like Jesus did. But it’s up to us to run it. When we run it in this way of faith, we can be certain that just as Jesus had the help of the Spirit, so will we.

In the great mystery, Jesus was just as human as we are, yet God, as well. Enter into that mystery, the Trinity, so that Jesus receives help from the Spirit, even his Spirit. So even though fully human like us, which too is quite important, Jesus is distinct. So when we enter into this race with our focus on him, we too are enabled by the Spirit of Jesus to lay aside every weight and in our case the sin which clings so closely to us, and persevere to the very end come what may, not growing weary or losing heart.

I think the text suggests that it’s a race we’re in not competitively, but supportively together, but that each of us has to run it, as well. It is the Jesus race no less, with the faith that he had, the culmination of faith pointed to in the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11, perhaps watching us now as we witness each other’s faith. The faith that was made new and fulfilled, pioneered and perfected by Jesus.

“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.

let God be God

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

Romans 11:33-36; NRSVue

I think the church at large, in general has had a penchant for wanting to tame God. Putting God into categories which honestly are problematical when one considers the biblical text. For example the idea that God never changes God’s mind. Or another, that God is above becoming emotionally involved. So contrary to the Biblical text. Just start at Genesis and read (or listen) to it all. Not.

God is God and won’t respond to our attempts to explain God. Not at all. God is free. God is sovereign. God is love. God is just. God is a God of judgment and salvation and that’s not just about the next life, but this life, too.

God doesn’t have to answer to our views of God. We do need to remember though, that anyone who sees Jesus, the Jesus spelled out in the New Testament, has seen God. Jesus is the face of God, indeed the human who is God. So we need not fear this God in some cowering, evasive way. Though proper fear of God is basic and something never left behind.

Whether we like it or not, we have to take the text of Scripture and the God of that text seriously. And note the changes in that text even in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) and what this same God is up to in the coming of Jesus and afterwards.

God will be God regardless. Active and very much at work in the world.

God: loving or angry or what?

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.

John 14:1-14; NRSVue

If you look at the Biblical text, there’s no doubt that the God depicted there will give you a jolt at a good number of places. The idea that God is above emotion and lives in some sort of existence beyond it all really does not seem to be borne out at all in Scripture. God is often angry and acts on that anger. God threatens retributive judgment again and again. But thankfully, that’s not the end of the story that we see in the Bible.

The God who is called love (1 John 4) can’t seem to help God’s self in relenting and bringing back into blessing the very people God condemned before. We see this in the storyline, only if we consider the entire Bible from cover to cover. In one book God speaks of annihilating the entire earth. But in Revelation we have the picture of the kings of the earth streaming into the New Jerusalem and the leaves of the tree of life being for the healing of the nations. Might God’s anger be an expression of God’s love? I think that is unquestionably the case.

We see God fully, finally and completely in Jesus. God took on God’s self our full humanity and paradoxically suffered death itself at human hands to bring all of humankind, indeed all of creation into the new creation now present and to someday be total in Christ. We see God in Christ. And we need to read the Bible, taking all the hard parts seriously, but with that in mind. That vision can help us towards correcting our wrong views of God. God suffers with humankind and while it seems so much is lost because of the inhumanity of humans, God thankfully gets the final word coming with judgment and the salvation which follows. And it is now and always will be from a God who is love through and through.

what does love think?

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge, but anyone who loves God is known by him.

1 Corinthians 8:1b-3; NRSVue

[Love] hopes all things…

1 Corinthians 13:7; NRSVue

Knowledge is given much pride of place in our world, even if there has been a severe backsliding in that area as of late. There’s no doubt that it has an important place in human existence. Wisdom must accompany it, or otherwise we’re stuck with problems like the specter (fearful threat) of nuclear holocaust. Along with wisdom, something even greater must accompany it, according to Paul. Nothing less than love.

Surely we need to read the Bible and all of life with both the lens of Christ and love. Of course people will rightfully want to know what our definition of love is, and just who this Christ is we profess. As Christians, Christ-followers, people of faith, we point to the cross. To understand God, we have to look to Jesus hanging on the cross, God in Christ thus reconciling the world to God’s self. The God who is love is Jesus.

Only love knows in any true sense of the word, according to Paul. Only the mind animated and moved by love, considering all things with the love of God in Christ at the center, and through which we consider everything, is of any value. Sheer knowledge by itself is not only not enough, but ultimately ends up being devilish, puffed up.

Just a simple word that I always need, to apply to everything.

they will be what they are (except for God’s grace)

“Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”

Revelation 22:11

Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11:14b

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

John 10:10

I think it’s most helpful in differentiating between God and Satan along with the demonic, just to realize who we’re considering. God is God. And to begin to try to get a handle on that, we need to go to Scripture, though God makes God’s Self known in other ways as well. Scripture reveals that God dwells in darkness, that God’s light is too much for us humans to comprehend, even to contemplate. But God is revealed in Jesus, God’s Son. So that to understand what God is like, we have to look at God’s supreme revelation of God’s Self, who is himself all that God is, as well as being human: Jesus.

God is great, whose greatness has no bounds. God is good, whose goodness has no bounds. God is for us as shown in Jesus (Romans 8). God does not condemn us, but loves us, and wants to lift us up and help us. On the other hand, the spiritual enemy wants to make us think that it is right and that we can never measure up. That we ought to do this, that, something else, and always so much more. And that gives what the enemy sends us an appearance of goodness, even godliness. But that entire scenario is not God-like at all. In the end it only results in our condemnation, since we can never measure up. But after all, that’s what our spiritual enemy, the enemy of humankind does. And what God does is completely opposite. God loves, redeems, reconciles, befriends, etc.

The same is true of us humans. Why are we the way we are? Except for the grace of God, I would be just as lost as the next person. And actually, truthfully, I feel a sense of lostness right along. But that helps me to continue to look to God, be open to continual correction and direction along the way. This also helps us understand others, including our sisters and brothers in Christ who might be influenced in a bad way. So that we can find the good, but discern what is not. But first we need to look at ourselves. We have to be sure to take the log out of own eye before we can ever begin to really see the splinter in anyone else’s eye.

Just to know who we’re dealing with makes all the difference. Yes, I know I’m going to be harassed by Satan, rather his minion on a regular basis, because that’s what it does. But I’m going to be loved, understood in all my limitations, and helped by God. That God gives and sends all the help we need as we continue on, as wobbly as we might be, looking to God in faith.

In and through Jesus.

the Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing

A psalm of David.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

Psalm 23

In Scripture God’s people are likened to sheep in need of a shepherd. God put shepherds, that is leaders over his people, but often they just took advantage of them, fleecing the sheep, and even feeding themselves off the flock, all of this metaphorical, of course.

I too am a bleating sheep, hurt in the past, and usually struggling over this or that. Just like the rest of us. Thankfully in Jesus, God is our Shepherd. In giving Jesus the name that is above all names, Yahweh (Tim Gombis), translated LORD here in most English Bibles including the one above, though that doesn’t come out on my copy, we have in Jesus the good shepherd who willingly in love gave his life for the sheep.

God is this shepherd in Jesus. And because of that we lack nothing. God will take care of everything, all of our needs. We don’t need any particular elected official or government of this world to do that, though God does hold all such accountable for what they do especially to their own people, as well as to others. Christians need to develop the mindset and attitude that the Lord can and will take care of everything.

Notice that the psalm is attributed to David, who may well have written it even as a young shepherd himself. He knew intimately firsthand what went into good shepherding and what sheep were like. He could actually identify with both.

Given the scope of David’s life, the great triumphs and utter failure and aftermath, and what followed, yes, we’re glad a greater David came in Jesus, the son of David. But it’s a great encouragement to us who have stumbled and failed along the way, that yes, God can make us into people and individuals who are people after his own heart, like David was said to be.

From start of finish, yes through everything, God will take care of it. We have to trust him for that. After all, we’re always sheep in this life, forever in need of the good shepherd who will be with us always and forever. In and through Jesus.

feel the emotion

John 10 (and note John 9 preceding it) is an interesting example of a point made in one of John R. W. Stott’s excellent books, Christ the Controversialist. Jesus was up against it time and time again, against his Jewish opponents. Yet you can see throughout that Jesus is still humbly trying to make his appeal to them. But his words were loaded for them. Jesus noted his works which he attributed to the Father, pointing to the claim that he was in the Father and the Father in him.

John 8 is not children’s bedtime reading so to speak. Jesus is not the meek and mild fictional Jesus which is understood in society at large, and it seems even in many of our churches. Jesus doesn’t mince words, and the words said would never be put in Jesus’s mouth in popular portrayals of him. Like “you are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father, you want to do.”

But back to John 10. In our habit of marking down doctrine or precious promise passages, neither of which we should dismiss, we can easily miss context. What can help us is reading Scripture in real life, and realizing what we’re reading is couched in real life. Jesus’s opponents were emotional, but so was Jesus himself. Jesus’s following words were surely mixed with pathos in the form of grief in lament, along with perhaps something of a defensiveness, even as we was trying to defend the truth that he was from God.

I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me,is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.

John 10:25-30

 John’s entire gospel was written to underscore the truth of who Jesus is.

But watch for the real life emotion in passages. What can help us is the emotion we live with. And we need the Spirit and what the church has given us, as well. As we continue on in Scripture and in this life in and through Jesus.