fellowship

what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:3

Central to and part of the core of the Christian faith is fellowship, or what some might prefer to call communion. Just as God in God’s triunity is in communion with God’s self, of course something we can’t parse out and understand, so we humans are created to live in such a relationship in harmony with God and each other. Fellowship or communion is at the heart of who God is, the nature of God. And so if God is a reality, or in Christian or Jewish terms maybe we could say the overriding reality, then any fellowship with God automatically takes us into this space with God and with each other.

Of course as the biblical story tells us, and as we see all too clearly in life, such harmony is rarely present, and indeed our fellowship and communion is indeed broken, or at least strained and cracked. This is not where we live or at least not what characterizes our existence. We are off on another quest, far removed from that so that we’re actually removed from life itself.

But Christ, what is called the cosmic Christ, but not divorced from the Jesus of the gospels, in fact united with that, is really the reality that gives humanity the hope which brings humanity together toward a harmonious whole. In this time and present existence there will always be the principalities and powers, both human and spiritual, which are ever resistant and downright opposed to this, infiltrating everywhere. We need to know that the answer is present in Christ, but that the struggle in the present will continue. Not that there can’t be progress, but it seems that this side of the end will always include opposition and struggle.

The fellowship here is not only a sense of blissful intercourse, but also a love which is concerned for all in the love for our neighbor as ourselves. It is a fellowship not at rest until what is true in Christ becomes something true of the world itself, of all things, certainly to be finished when Christ returns, but something we are to be committed to here and now. As we more and more live and experience with each other the reality in God and in Christ by the Spirit.

a Christ-centered faith

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Colossians 1:15-20

…in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them…

2 Corinthians 5:19a

Yes, the Trinity and the Incarnation all enshrouded in mystery as God is. But what God has revealed is the point. And the center of that revelation is Christ himself. Apart from Christ there is ultimately no revelation from God, at least not in any saving way. And it is a salvation inclusive of all humankind, yet standing in judgment of all humankind as well. Judgment is needed before salvation, indeed shows the need for salvation. Collectively as well as individually we have failed to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves. Thus the judgment rendered, and God’s salvation from that judgment in Christ.

Christ might not always be invoked or explicit in our thinking. But if faith is according to the gospel, then Christ is always the light, life and power in creation to bring about the new creation, in this brokenness to bring about the needed reconciliation of all things.

This is the truth and reality on which we as Christ followers and Christ’s church stand. From which we live as witnesses.

Trinity Sunday: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Does not wisdom call
and understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all who live.

“The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
when he had not yet made earth and fields
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.”

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O LORD, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
to silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Romans 5:1-5

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

John 16:12-15

Revised Common Lectionary

participants of the divine nature

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.

2 Peter 1:3-4; NRSVue

Divinization (not to be confused with divination) or Theosis is the Christian teaching that by God’s grace in Christ, humans partake of and participate in the divine nature. In Christian teaching, humans are still distinct from God, yet are changed in that their/our humanity is “divinized” or imbued we might say with God’s nature, maybe we could say with godness. We strictly speaking don’t become gods in any primary sense so that for example we somehow become part of the Trinity. But instead we share in the life of the Trinity as humans, somehow taken up into that very life, while still remaining only human. God becoming flesh is a union with deity and humanity, so that we might say that the Trinity in and through the Son became united with humanity. The Trinity is indeed human in the Son. So that we could become “divinized” and participate in “theosis” in and through Jesus.

This takes on practical meaning for us. We are not yet glorified, and still have indwelling sin, if I understand scripture and Christian teaching and tradition correctly. But we also have godness in us as well. We’re participants of the very nature of God. So that we’re no longer what we were before faith and baptism. By the Spirit we share and participate in the very life and nature of God. This is what salvation for us as individuals consists of. Along with forgiveness of our sins, sin itself is actually both dealt with and being dealt with in our lives. A death blow to sin through Christ’s death, so that we live in a new life. And we live accordingly from that.

Yes, we still have plenty of mess in ourselves, and we can fall prey to this and that. If you read the entire letter of 2 Peter quoted above, you can see that clearly. There is what is called synergy in that there is both a divine and human interactivity in this. God works in us and we’re to work on or work out of that (cf: Philippians 2:12b-13). Essentially, we’re changed. That is why we can move in God’s direction and follow Christ. God is present with us, helping us, and giving us God’s very nature so that we are God’s children in our hearts. So that we want to remain there, and line up in our entirety completely according to that reality. In and through Jesus.

(Catch Eastern Orthodoxy and Nonviolence with Andrew Klager and Bradley Jersak parts one and two from the Inverse Podcast. Anabaptist thought on this included.)

did the Father pour out wrath on the Son at the cross, and did the Father abandon the Son there? No!

to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses…

2 Corinthians 5:19a; ASV

There is a common understanding, which I agree is a misunderstanding, that the Father poured out his wrath on the Son at the cross, and also abandoned him there. But no biblical text says that. Texts are patched together and misread to arrive to such a conclusion. But this is a common understanding, especially the belief that the Son was abandoned at the cross by the Father.

There are certain things even God can’t do. God can’t cease to be God. And that’s exactly what would have happened if the the Father separated himself from the Son. As Jesus taught in John 14 and 17 on the eve of his crucifixion, the Father is in him and he is in the Father. And the Spirit is in all of that. The Trinity is Three Persons, but not in the sense of three human beings. God is One through and through, but also Three. A mystery indeed. To separate the Trinity even for a moment would mean that God is no longer God or eternal.

And just as bad if not worse is the idea that the Father poured out wrath on the Son at the cross. Instead we learn who God is supremely I believe by looking at Jesus on the cross. This is a misreading of Hebrew Scripture which attributes all that happens to God, when it says in Isaiah that God struck him. The idea is that Jesus was made sin, that God can’t look on sin, and that God poured out his judgment on Christ at the cross. The Father is wrathful while the Son takes that wrath in love in this false picture. We’ve heard this in my circles for so long, we almost don’t even blink an eye or give it a second thought. It’s like the same reaction we have when we hear the unbiblical notion that God pours out his wrath on sinners forever in hell. All of this is dead wrong.

Instead of going on, I would much rather stop here, and share a helpful, if somewhat lengthy article with a full explanation. Did the Trinity break at the cross?

the one constant

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Hebrews 13:8

Scripture points us to Jesus, and God’s fulfillment of all things in and through him. One might want to say that Scripture is the constant, and it’s certainly central in all traditions of the Christian faith, of the faith itself, as we might put it. But it points beyond itself to Jesus.

This doesn’t mean for a moment that we shouldn’t pay close attention to all the details in Scripture, because indeed we should. Pre-Christ, during his time on earth, and post-Christ we might say, meaning after his ascension. Jesus made that clear:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter,^[a] not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

Matthew 5:17-18

And what is accomplished includes everything. The church should be the light in Jesus which both exemplifies the beginning of that, as well as speaking out on it by those who are pastors and theologians and lay people who learn from such and are so gifted.

Jesus is the one forever constant, and God’s will fulfilled in him. To bring us into the fullness of God the Source of All Being, the Eternal Word, and the Holy Spirit. To right all wrongs and make all things new.

And the church is central to the beginning of this now. In and through Jesus.

Trinity Sunday: John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:1-17

Revised Common Lectionary

the mystery of Christ’s conception and birth

I was struck this morning by the thought of how Christ was in the womb, soon to be born. The idea that God through a miracle, was fully human, to soon pass through his mother’s womb into the world as a newborn.

That is amazing in itself, a mystery of the faith to be sure. And evident of God’s triunity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We might say the Father oversaw it all, the Spirit was active in it, and the Son was the human embryo, nine months after conception to be born.

It is amazing, but somehow tied to God’s amazing work in our own lives.

Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great:

He appeared in the flesh,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.

1 Timothy 3:16

 

trying to fully understand (much less, explain) God

Then Job replied to the Lord:

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job 42:1-6

I am both heartened and a bit disheartened reading of attempts today to portray God in a way that resonates with humans, particularly emphasizing God’s love, but all too often at the expense of not considering all of Scripture, which doesn’t cast doubt on God’s love, but reminds us that God can’t be put into a box, or made plain by any systematic theology, or any explanation for that matter.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we don’t have any understanding of God. God has given that to us through the revelation of Scripture, and in Jesus as given to us in Scripture.

The book of Job is a conundrum for modern sensibilities, and in the end, God denies Job what Job might wish, since God is actually way to big for Job to take in, even by revelation. I take it that for all the redeemed, the knowledge of God will unfold forever throughout eternity, yet never end.

What we do have revealed about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and as seen in the face of Christ within the context of Scripture, we must hold on to. Not letting go of any of that, and realizing we’ll never comprehend it all. But being satisfied just to know that God knows us and that we know God, and that God is love through and through. In and through Jesus.

it take a church

Nowadays there seems to have been a backlash against what was used by a political candidate here in the US some years back: “It takes a village.” Actually that has plenty of truth in it, just as does the idea that we can’t depend on others to do for us what only we can do. They can’t live our lives for us. Nor should we expect others to do for us what we can do ourselves. True. But the prevailing emphasis on individual rights and freedom nowadays perhaps is the idea that we can get along just fine on our own, that we need no one else.

God’s word and its fulfillment in Jesus tells us something entirely different. Humans are made for community. Yes, some of us like our space, and need more separation than others. But none of us were made for isolation, for solitary confinement. As God says in Genesis: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make one corresponding him,  as complements to each other” (Genesis 2; my paraphrase).

Sin divides us from God and each other. At its core sin is a violation of love for God, and for neighbor, which really ends up being all humanity, especially in the world in which we live today, a shrinking globe due to our ability to traverse so well. God’s saving work in Christ is at heart a reconciliation to God and to each other. That reconciliation is front and center in the church. Through the gospel: baptism and the Lord’s table being central in enacting and displaying it.

“It takes a church” we might say. Yes, made up of imperfect, broken, yet being put together people like you and I. Just ordinary people, and often struggling to one degree or another. But our lives are meant to be lived not in isolation, but with others. If we’re “in Christ” by faith, then we’re in Christ’s body, the church. Our identity then, is not only in Christ, but in his body, the church.

That seems often minimized in evangelical Christian circles, with an emphasis on people’s individual response to the gospel and God’s word. But it is not minimized in the very Scripture we evangelicals hold as central to our faith. We need to acclimate ourselves to something different. The life of God we find in Jesus is especially made known in the church. And imbibed and then lived out yes even in the church through what we might call the sacraments, and our lives lived together in communion with each other. And from that sent out on mission. In and through Jesus.