The Path to Spiritual Growth: Insight, Decision, and Implementation

Posted on January 11, 2025 by salooper57

Spiritual growth occurs at the nexus of insight, decision and implementation. We are tempted to think that a person with spiritual insight is special, but that is simply untrue. God gives light and we look. That’s all that insight requires. Yet, even that is difficult if we have trained ourselves not to look. Some people, according to John’s Gospel, prefer to stay in the dark.

Even if we don’t choose darkness, we might like the half-light best. It offers enough light to make our way but not enough to reveal our sins. When God does send light, our gut reaction may be to head for cover, but it is essential that we stay in the light, allow our eyes to adjust to it, and see what it shows us.       

When God begins working in our lives (and that’s not really a good way to put it, since he was working on our behalf before we were born), we often don’t recognize what is happening; our eyes have not yet adjusted to the light. But God continues working and waiting for the day when we are capable – when we are big enough, when there is finally enough of us – to respond.

One day when I was 12-years-old, I was playing football in our side yard with boys from around the neighborhood. As the game was winding down, one of the guys ran to the store across the street. He came back moments later with candy he stole off the shelf. This bold exploit elevated him to stardom in our group, and he dared all the rest of us to go to the store and steal something, like he did. Anyone who didn’t do it, would be labeled a coward.

Most of the guys headed across the street, but I just stood there, thinking. That moment did not feel the least bit spiritual, but I could see that what they were doing was wrong. It was a mean thing to do to the old couple who owned the store, whom I’d known all my life. That was the extent of my insight. Nothing profound, but true nonetheless. And I made a decision based on that insight: I chose not to go along with the guys, though I knew it would diminish my standing among the group.

Looking back, I believe that decision and the insight that preceded it were important to my entire spiritual development. God was at work, shining light into the life of a 12-year-old boy, though I certainly didn’t know it then. In heaven, we will be aware of many such times – personal and profound – each a fresh occasion for giving thanks to our Father for working in our lives even when we didn’t know it or appreciate it.

When God shined light on the Pharisee Saul (Acts 9:1-19), he knew it; it knocked him off his feet (or perhaps, his mule). But this was not the first time God has shined light on the obstinate Pharisee. Saul was there when light shone from the martyr Stephen, when “his face was like that of an angel.” Saul had seen Stephen ask God to forgive the men – Saul was one of them – who were killing him.

I suspect Saul could not get away from what he saw. It stuck with him, entering his thoughts unbidden, invading his dreams. Insight was coming, bringing with it a moment of decision—a moment Saul did not want to face.

Saul kept pushing forward, but the ground was slipping from under him. I suspect that his heart faltered from time to time, but the forward motion of his fear and anger carried him on. He was being goaded in a direction he didn’t want to go, and he stubbornly kicked against the goads (Acts 26:14). Saul was running from the God he proudly claimed to serve.

The thing about running from God is that he’s everywhere. When you think you’re running from him, you’re really running to him. There is only one place you can be safe from Him, a place he designed as a refuge for those who refuse the light and hate the Light-Giver. Jesus called it “the outer darkness.” It is the only place you can be safe from God. Ironically, it is the only place you can be safe from salvation. It is not, however, a place where you can be safe from yourself and your sins.

Saul’s flight from the light brought him to the Light-Giver. He came, unwillingly it seems, face to face with the insight he had tried so hard to avoid. It was preceded, as insight always is, by revelation. The revelation that came to Saul on the Damascus Road was this: Jesus is Lord.

I can imagine something in Saul’s head saying, “No. Not that. Not … Jesus.” And then, deeper down, “Oh, I knew it.” This was revelation, not insight. Revelation has to do with what is; insight has to do with what it means. The revelation is God’s part. The insight is Saul’s—and ours.

Saul spent the next three days helpless and blind, with nothing to do but think. The man that wouldn’t stop running could not walk out of the house without help. Unable to see out, he was forced to see in. He reviewed his life – his work, his success, and his reputation – in the light of the revelation that Jesus is Lord, and he saw what that meant. This was his insight, and he later wrote about it in Philippians 3.

When the revelation that Jesus is Lord comes to us, it is just as much a miracle as it was when it came to Saul. Like him, we will either dare to look at what that means or we will turn toward darkness. This revelation (that Jesus is Lord), and the insight that follows, has the power to change us into the people we were always meant to be.

But revelation, even when coupled with insight, was not enough to change the Pharisee Saul into the Apostle Paul, nor is it enough to change me into the joyful and glorious man God had in mind when he made me. Insight must be followed by decision, and decision by implementation. Where these three exist together, spiritual change and growth will be abundant.

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Star Trek: The Voyage of the Magi Caravan

Posted on January 6, 2025 by salooper57

For Epiphany

We could title the text just read for us, Star Trek: The Prequel. This is the voyage of the Magi caravan. Its extended mission was to travel to the land of the Jews, honor and reverence that people’s newly-born king, and then return to star-base Babylon.

The magi (or wise men in the King James) were a tribal group from modern-day Iran and Iraq. The Persian King Cyrus conquered their tribe, and when they mounted a coup against his grandson Darius, their political ambitions were crushed. The magi show up on the pages of history half a millennium before Christ, and some scholars see references to magi in much older documents. In the fifth century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus described the magi as a Persian tribe with priestly duties. Apparently, their role was similar to that of the tribe of Levi in Israel.

The magi appear in the New Testament in our text, and individual Magians (or magicians, which is our English way of saying it) appear twice in Acts. There are also passages in the Old Testament that point to the magi. In the prophet Jeremiah there is a reference to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem that seems to refer to the chief of the magi. Then later, in the book of Daniel, there are numerous passages that refer to wise men, at least some of whom may have been magi. These wise men were probably Zoroastrian priests who specialized in studying the stars and making astrologically-based predictions. Very complete charts of the movements of the planets and stars were kept in Babylon from at least the 8th century B.C.

Interestingly, after Daniel won the favor of the Babylonian king in the sixth century, he was given a position of authority over (guess who?) the magi. Daniel 2:48 says that he was placed in charge of all Babylon’s wise men. Daniel 4:9 calls him the chief of the magicians. Daniel 5:11 says that “King Nebuchadnezzar … appointed [Daniel] chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners.”

Do you see what this means? Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God used the disaster of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its citizens to bring a young Jewish man to the attention of a Babylonian king, who placed him in authority over of all his wise men and astrologers (his magi).

Daniel served for many years as the chief of the wise men. It is possible that he instructed them in the words of the God of Israel? Did he teach them the ancient prophecy that “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17)? Did he tell them that “From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’” (Daniel 9:25).

If he did (as I think likely), the magi in our text may have seen the star because they were looking for it, and they might have been looking for it since the time of Daniel. And, interestingly, when the first century rolled around, it seems like they weren’t the only ones looking. The first century Roman historian Suetonius writes that “There had spread over all the Orient and old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world.” Another first century historian, Tacitus, writes that “there was a firm persuasion… that at this very time the East would grow powerful, and rulers from Judea would acquire universal power.” The seed of that firm persuasion and established belief may have been planted by Daniel almost six hundred years earlier among the magi in Babylon.

We cannot know for sure, but it would be just like God to set his plan in motion dozens of generations before it was to come to fruition. I say dozens, but that doesn’t go far enough. The star the Magi saw must have been part of God’s plan from the beginning of time. Remember the magi had been watching the stars for centuries and had kept very careful star charts and astronomical records. That’s what they were doing when they saw something in the sky that astonished and excited them, something they took to be the birth announcement of the king who was to come out of Judea.

No one knows for sure what the Magi saw, but that hasn’t stopped people from guessing. One theory is that they interpreted the alignment of Saturn (which was thought to have a special relationship with Israel) and Jupiter, the king of the planets, as proof that Israel’s king had been born. A recent scholar believes they saw a comet because one was seen in the sky around the time of Jesus’s birth. He believes that it first became visible in the constellation Virgo (the Virgin), and that’s what convinced the Magi that a king had been born. He’s plugged his calculations into a star chart and found that the comet would have moved from east to south in just such a way as described in Matthew.

Whichever is true, or if something else is true, think about the brilliance of God. He can create an astrological phenomenon at the beginning of time, if he chooses, so that in the fullness of time, it could lead a caravan of seekers to Bethlehem and introduce them to his Son.

And consider this too. When God spoke about his Son to these magi from the east, he did it in a way that they could understand. He used the language of astral ascensions and declinations. God knows how to communicate; he speaks to people in their own language. He comes to us where we are, in ways we can understand.

The magi saw the star in its rising, and they were as excited as modern scientists were when they found proof for the existence of the Higgs boson particle. They wanted to follow their research and see the child born king with their own eyes. But in that day (as in this), following the research required funding and, perhaps, permission from the authorities. It would have taken time to assemble a team, put together a caravan and raise the money necessary to skirt 1700 miles of desert. When the magi had worked out all the details, they set out for Jerusalem.

Why Jerusalem? Because it was the capital city of Judea. King Herod had a palace there, and they naturally assumed that the newborn king would be the son of the reigning king. But this was – quite literally – a fatal mistake. They came to Jerusalem (in a caravan big enough to attract lots of attention) and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” Or, literally, “Where is the born king of the Jews?”

Even the way they phrased the question drew attention – and concern. The reigning King, Herod, was not a “born king”; he was made king by the Roman Senate after leading a successful military campaign on their behalf. He wasn’t even Jewish – at least his ancestry was half-Idumean. He was always afraid that someone would take his throne. He was so paranoid he had his own wife, his mother-in-law and three of his sons executed at various times because he thought they might be planning a coup.

When Herod heard that there was a born king in his dominion, a shock like lightning must have gone through him. Even then, he didn’t lose his composure or his cunning. He called the magi to him secretly and questioned them closely about the time when they first saw the star. It’s clear he was planning to do to this new king what he had done to his own sons, but he was careful not to let the magi know it. He needed the location of his rival, who could be anywhere. Herod didn’t know the Scriptures – he had no use for them – but he knew who did.

So, he called together the chief priests and teachers of the law and asked them where the Davidic king of prophecy was to be born. They didn’t have to think twice. They knew right away what the Bible said. “In Bethlehem, the city of David,” they said. For Micah the prophet had written, “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”

So, Herod sent the Magi to Bethlehem and ordered them to make a careful search – he didn’t want any mistakes. With long-practiced duplicity, he said, “Once you’ve found him, let me know where he is, because I must go and reverence him too.”

They set off for Bethlehem in the evening or early nighttime. It was only a few miles, and they hoped to conclude their search before the night was over. And that’s when they saw their “star” (or comet, or whatever it was). It seems that they hadn’t seen it for a while. Perhaps the skies had been cloudy, or the star (or comet) had been hidden from sight by the sun’s glare or the moon’s obstruction, and only became visible again as they approached Bethlehem. When they saw it, they were overjoyed.

When the magi arrived in Jerusalem, they expected to find the city celebrating. They expected pomp and ceremony. They didn’t know what to expect in Bethlehem. They found a little house where a simple tradesman lived with his young wife and small child.

The magi opened their gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – and paid reverence to the Child. Did they understand that this Child was Daniel’s anointed one? Did they realize that this was the one whose goings forth were from of old, and on whose shoulders the future of the world would rest? We don’t know how much they understood – perhaps more than we give them credit for – but whatever they understood, give them credit for this: they acted on what they knew.

Others who knew far more did far less. Remember that Herod called the chief priests and the teachers of the law together to ask them the birthplace of the long-awaited Messiah. And those scholars knew the answer. They also knew (with the rest of Jerusalem) that a caravan of magi had come. They knew that the magi believed that Israel’s king, who’s coming had been prophesied in their Scriptures and whose reign had been anticipated for generations, had been born. They even knew where the long-awaited king’s birth was prophesied to take place.

And yet, while the magi (pagans from another land who worshiped other gods) traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to greet Israel’s king, these religious leaders and scholars didn’t bother to travel 6 miles. Someone has said that taking Jesus for granted is not the sin of pagans but of religious folk and Bible teachers.[1]

Verse 11 says, “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”  The scene must have been surreal. A caravan outside their door, foreign men in strange attire, speaking in unfamiliar accents. Joseph and Mary, alarmed, not knowing what to expect; the magi, surprised, and wondering what a king was doing in a place like this; and the neighbors, gossiping about it all for weeks. Then, in an oddly dreamlike moment, these strange men in their strange clothes got down on their knees before the young child, presented him gifts of great value, and worshiped him.

Those gifts would prove enormously helpful. When the Magi did not return to Herod with the exact location of the born king, the paranoid king sent his troops to kill every male child in the vicinity. Critics have accused Matthew of making this part up for dramatic effect, but it is entirely consistent with what we know of Herod. When his young brother-in-law was becoming too popular, he had a mysterious “drowning accident.” It happened in a shallow pool. After some of his officials were accused of misconduct, Herod had them beaten to death, only to find out later that the accusations were false. He ordered one of his sons executed just five days before his own death. When it became clear to him that his death was imminent, he dispatched troops to round up seventy of Jerusalem’s best-loved citizens, had them taken to the hippodrome and held there. He ordered his troops to execute every last one of them at the moment of his death because, he said, he wanted there to be tears, and he knew no one would cry for him. A man like that would not balk at killing a few (or even many) children in and around Bethlehem.

Let’s think about what this passage has to say to us today. First, it makes clear that we can never tell how people will respond to the news about Jesus. In our text, the people we would expect to receive him (the chief priests and teachers of the law) ignored him. The people we would expect to ignore him (pagan astrologers from the other side of the desert) crossed barren lands at great cost to find and worship him.

And don’t miss the fact that God sent the message of his Son to people who worshiped other gods, believed in astrology, and practiced a religion we think mistaken. God, in other words, is a missionary. I’ve had people say to me, “We shouldn’t be spending so much money overseas when the need here is just as great.” There is no denying the need is great, but we already have a missionary presence here – you and me. Many people here, like the chief priests and teachers of the law, really aren’t interested in hearing about Jesus, while some people there are dying to know him.

A few years ago, I heard a former member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and a one-time assassin for Yasser Arafat, share his story. When someone told him that he could know God and find forgiveness in Jesus, it caught this terrorist completely off-guard. A man you would never expect to show interest, gave his life to Christ and was transformed. That’s why we go to the ends of the earth. And it’s also why we should tell people in our own backyard (family members, friends and even enemies) about Jesus. You never know who will respond to the Good News.

Our text also shows us that God loves people who hold beliefs that are different than ours. We’ve just endured another terrorist attack from a Muslim extremist. When this has happened previously, there has been an outbreak of retaliatory violence against Muslims. God hates such acts. A person can do violence to a Muslim in the name of hatred and fear, but never in the name of Jesus Christ. Putting an end to Muslims is not our goal, despite what a prominent (and repulsive) Christian leader said a few years ago. Putting a savior before them is.

People who belong to other religions are not the enemy. Abraham did not treat his Canaanite neighbors as enemies. King David was closely allied with the king of Tyre, even though he belonged to a different religion. God sent Jonah to rescue the people of Nineveh, though they did not acknowledge him. When Paul went to Ephesus, the world center of Artemis worship, he didn’t see its citizens as enemies but as people loved and desired by God. Our enemies are not people who belong to other religions, but the rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12). We mustn’t forget that.

Our text also warns us of the danger of taking Christ for granted, as the chief priests and teachers of the law did. Matthew has a particular interest in those two groups: he mentions them each more than twenty times. This is the first time he links them together – when they are living next door to Christ the king but don’t bother to acknowledge him. They exposit the Scriptures about him, but they don’t act on them.

The last time Matthew links the chief priests and teacher of the law together is – can you guess? – when they were conspiring (Herod-like) to get rid of Jesus. Taking anyone for granted – parent, spouse, child, even, and especially, the Christ of God – is the soil in which hostility and rejection grow. This generation of chief priests and teachers of the law took the Messiah for granted. The next took him to the cross. If we take Jesus for granted, and I’m afraid millions of professing Christians have, what will our children do?

Finally, this text calls us to wonder at the grace of God and be awed by it. I said earlier that God knows how to speak our language. In Star Trek lingo, he has a universal translator. (Or, more accurately, he is a universal translator.) He spoke, for example, to magi in the language of the stars. But the greatest example of God speaking our language is this: the divine Word became flesh, lived among us and translated God for us. He helped us comprehend grace and truth. He made visible the invisible God. And he did it in a way we could understand. He spoke our language. And it was all because “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in his should not perish but have everlasting life.” Let us respond to the love of God.

[1] Craig Keener, op. cit.

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The World Is Too Much in Us

Posted on January 4, 2025 by salooper57

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” William Wordsworth wrote that in 1802.  By “world” I assume he meant something similar to what St. John had in mind when he exhorted his readers not to love the world – a world comprised of the “lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”

If Wordsworth thought the world was intrusive at the turn of the 19th century, what would he (or St. John) say now in this time of continuous advertisements, outsized corporate ambitions, and persuasive social media influencers? It impinges on us every waking hour. It screams for our attention and, if we ignore it even for a moment, warns us of the danger of missing out.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

It is not only the social world that presses on us. The physical world does too, all day, every day. One can think of human beings – empiricists do it all the time – as astonishingly complex sensors, recording inputs through touch, hearing, taste, sight, and smell. Additionally, the entire human body – and not just its sense organs – maintains a nearly constant sense of where it is in relation to its surroundings. This is the sixth sense, known as proprioception. To be human is to process millions of data points daily through our sensory inputs.

So, how can we, being human, have any attention left over for spiritual pursuits? How can we hear God speak in “a still, small voice” when our ears are being assaulted by the washing machine, the baby’s cries, and the incessant dinging of text alerts?

After writing a book on hearing God and developing a conversational relationship with him, Dallas Willard said in the epilogue, “I am still painfully aware of the one great barrier that might hinder some people’s efforts to make such a life their own. That barrier is what Henry Churchill King many years ago called ‘the seeming unreality of the spiritual life.’ We could equally well speak of it as ‘the overwhelming presence of the visible world.’”

Willard goes on to say that the “visible world daily bludgeons us with its things and events… Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.” The visible world “bludgeons us,” while the spiritual world “whispers at us ever so gently.”  

The terms “visible world” and “spiritual world” are not strictly biblical, but the idea is close to what St. Paul had in mind when he said, “…we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,” and then, a few paragraphs later, adds, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

The conflict between faith and sight is one of resource sharing. When my computer’s direct memory access controller competes with the express root port for the same memory address, something is going to lose out. Something similar happens when my ability to hear God’s voice and my addiction to the Legion voice of media compete for my limited attention: one will lose out.

Most of our resources are gobbled up by the visible, noisy world. It is simply more demanding than the spiritual world. It “is too much with us” for us to ignore it—Goliath to the spiritual world’s David.

Then why, if God wants us to be spiritual, does he allow this confounded inequality? But this question is misleading. It is not that God wants us to be spiritual; we already are. He wants us to “walk by the Spirit,” and that will not happen because the spiritual world becomes more intrusive but because we have made the choice to trust him and to listen for his “still, small voice.”

As Willard reminds us, “[N]either God nor the human mind and heart are visible. It is so with all truly personal reality. ‘No one has ever seen the Father,’ Jesus reminds us. And while you know more about your own mind and heart than you could ever say, little to none of it was learned through sensory perception. God and the self accordingly meet in the invisible world because they are invisible by nature.”

But meeting in the invisible world remains a choice, a choice based on faith: confidence that God is there and wants to meet with us. Another way of saying that is, “that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

I think Wordsworth was wrong. The world is not too much with us. We are too much with the world, and that will only change if we choose it.

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Hebrews 10:5-10 (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by salooper57

Excerpts:

Some years ago, Queen Elizabeth visited the U. S. She brought with her four thousand pounds of luggage, including two outfits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid‑leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a score of other attendants.[1] How different was the royal visit to Bethlehem. When the King of glory came the ancient gates were not raised; the doors were not opened. Even Motel 6 didn’t keep the lights on. He had no royal attendants. He did not bring pints of plasma. Quite the contrary: he came to donate blood.

The King of Glory did not come to earth so that he could lie in a manger. Bethlehem is momentous and mind-boggling, but it is only phase one in God’s plan to rescue humanity from ruin. Bethlehem leads to Calvary, Calvary to the empty tomb, and the empty tomb to the life-changing, humanity-transforming Spirit. God’s plan is comprehensive. He has thought of everything.

I said a moment ago that people in Israel were already deeply religious. But the Son of God did not undergo incarnation – bilaminar disc formation, cell mass differentiation, organogenesis, and nine month’s internment in a womb – to make people religious. He didn’t die on a cross to make you religious; he died to make you good – that is, strong, loving, joyful, faithful.

After Thanksgiving, many people go to their garage or shed and take out their nativity scenes and set them up in their front yards. They put up cows and sheep, wise men and shepherds, Mary and Joseph, and then they take the newspaper wrapping off the Baby Jesus and place him in a plastic manger. When the season ends, they swaddle baby Jesus in newspaper again and bury him in the back of the shed until the next holiday season comes ’round.

Some of us do the same kind of thing. We love the baby Jesus. We get excited about him every Christmas, sing songs about him, listen to sermons about him. But when the holiday season is over, we wrap him up and bury him in the back of our minds until next year. It’s the American way to do Christmas.

Christ did not come to Bethlehem to sleep in a manger. He came to offer God his love and obedience, even to the point of death. But he did not offer this life of love and obedience so that we wouldn’t have to—that is the “we’re off the hook” theory of the atonement. He lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the dead, and was exalted to God’s right hand so that he might give the Spirit that was in him to us. Because of what he has done at Bethlehem’s stable, Calvary’s cross, Jerusalem’s empty tomb, and heaven’s throne, we, too, can say, “Here I am … I have come to do your will, O God.”

  [1] Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995)

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Hope! I Need Somebody (Hope! Not Just Anybody)

Posted on December 28, 2024 by salooper57

I was once searching for a title for a sermon on Colossians 1. Having grown up in the sixties, I naturally thought of song-inspired titles: “Hope Me, I Think I’m Falling”; “With a Little Hope from My Friend”; and “I Can’t Hope Myself,” (which is both solidly biblical and delightfully Motown). But I settled on, “Hope! I Need Somebody.”

The beginning of the new year finds many of us short on hope. We blame the state of society, or government corruption, or our spouse’s unwillingness to change for tearing a hole in us and draining our souls of hope. But these things did not make the holes through which our hope is leaking; they only exposed them.

Years ago, after officiating at the funerals of numerous – far too many – victims of suicide, I realized that people don’t kill themselves because their lives are so hard. They kill themselves because they have lost hope. Hope really is a lifesaver.

Of course, not all hopeless people take their own lives. Many people hold down jobs, drive their kids to school, go to the movies, plan vacations – they carry on normal lives. But all the while hopelessness stalks them like a wild animal. They can feel its presence, especially when they’re tired, especially when they are still.

And so, they try never to be still. They go, go, go. They shop, buy things they don’t need, go to places they don’t care about, take pictures they’ll never look at, get addicted to pain killers (or porn or booze), all because they can’t stand to be still. They sense that if they stop, hopelessness will pounce.

Distraction is one of the chief symptoms of hopelessness, and we have made it into an art form. Or perhaps a science. If you don’t have hope, you’ll need a shot of distraction, the way a type-one diabetic needs a shot of insulin. The more dependent a person is on distraction, the more serious his or her hope deficiency.

Hopelessness is a disease of the soul. Distractions treat the symptoms pretty effectively at first, but it requires higher and higher doses to keep it in check, for hopelessness becomes distraction-resistant. A diagnostic test for hopelessness is this: how long can you go without seeking distraction—skimming your news feed, checking your phone, doomscrolling Tik-Tok videos or, if you’re older, binge-watching episodes of MASH.

Can hope be renewed? Before that question can be addressed, it is necessary to think about what hope is. Hope is the confident expectation of a preferred future. That differentiates it from a wish, which is merely a desire (albeit sometimes an overpowering desire) for a preferred future.

A wish can be also distinguished from hope in another way: a wish proceeds from us but hope comes to us. We cannot find hope by “digging deep,” since hope is not sourced in us. Hope comes from believing in something outside ourselves.

Hope may not seem possible in our situation. When we look down the tunnel, there is no light at the end. We see no end. We cannot even think of a way for things to get better.

Here’s a suggestion: Stop staring down the tunnel and try looking up to heaven instead. That’s where your hope will come from—from God. The Psalmist knew this. “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” We can see no light at the end of the tunnel. God brings the light with him.

Years ago, I met Scott, who was in the last stages of ALS. When I went to visit him at his home, I found an emaciated young man who was nearly paralyzed by the disease. Even his vocal cords were beginning to lose function.

I sat in a chair by his bed and we talked. Scott told me that he had become a Christian two months earlier. We talked about that and other things and, after a while, I asked him if he was afraid of dying.

He told me something – and it was hard for him to talk, so I had to listen closely – that I have never forgotten. He told me that the last two months, since he had come to faith in Christ, had been the two best months of his life. I looked at him in wonder. Here was a man from whom everything had been taken. His former life was gone. His world was a bed. His body was a prison. And the last two months had been the best two months of his life?

How was that possible? What had happened? The God of hope had come and put hope in his soul.

If Scott could have hope, so can we. But hope comes from God, not from government, not from material acquisitions, not even from some wished-for event. So, it is to God that we must look for hope. When we do, we will find that “hope does not disappoint us.”

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The Visited Planet

Posted on December 21, 2024 by salooper57
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Ours is a visited planet. Our little world, situated as it is in a lower-middle class solar system, circling a mediocre star on the outskirts of a commonplace galaxy, has little to commend it. If the entire planet exploded in a fiery conflagration that could be seen from the sun, some 93 million miles away, it would attract no more attention in the universe than a gunshot in a ghetto.

And yet ours is the visited planet. The Wonderful Counselor himself, the Mighty God, has come down our dead-end street and stopped at our place. And he came in the most extraordinary way: He was “made flesh” in the Virgin’s womb.

That he came is remarkable. How he came no sage could ever have imagined. But why he came – that is the profoundest mystery.

People seem to think that God’s great and glorious Son came to earth to establish a religion. But that is “too small a thing.” The Eternal one was not straight-jacketed by time, the infinite one did not wear the shackles of space in order to make us a little more religious, or so that we would attend church two out of every four Sundays. He visited our planet in order to save people, or so the angel declared.

That he is savior is the good news of great joy. We often get this confused. We think that the good news is peace on earth, good will to men. But peace is a consequence of the good news, not its content. The angel told the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

The good news was that a savior had been born. Normally when we hear the word savior, we think of one person who rescues another (or others) from a desperate situation. The new coach saves the football program from disaster. The CEO saves the corporation from bankruptcy. The Coast Guard saves the boater from drowning.

If we were to make a list of the things from which we need to be saved, sin would probably not be at the top. If it made the list at all, it would come somewhere after hair loss and high cholesterol.

But we, at least most of us, are not in a desperate situation. So, a savior has been born to us; what difference does it make? Will he save us from irrelevancy? Or insolvency? Or lunacy?

To answer that question, we have to turn to another of the Christmas narratives; this one in Matthew’s gospel. There an angel appears to Joseph, who had resolved to leave his fiancé, Mary, after hearing the shocking news that she was pregnant. But the angel assured Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful to him. No, the Baby in her womb was miraculously conceived. Joseph’s fiancé was carrying the child of promise, the long-awaited deliverer. He was to be named Jesus (which means, “Yahweh saves”) because he would save his people from – from what? Boredom? Illiteracy? Hardship? No – he would save his people from their sins.

I suspect most people experience a letdown upon hearing those words. If we were to make a list of the things from which we need to be saved, sin would probably not be at the top. If it made the list at all, it would come somewhere after hair loss and high cholesterol. Even Joseph may have experienced a momentary disappointment. He was expecting a Messiah who would save people from their enemies and from the armies that occupied their homeland, not from their sins.

Why do we need a savior from sin? That is the fundamental question. According to the theologian Millard Erickson, sin is an inner force, an inherent condition, a controlling power. It is a disease that has been passed down through every member of the human family. It manifests in a variety of symptoms – some more apparent than others – but whatever the symptoms, the outcome is always death. Thus, St. Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.”

There are also more immediate consequences. Restlessness is one. The prophet speaks of those who are “like the tossing sea; for its waters cannot rest.” Another consequence is guilt – the kindthat our own efforts cannot absolve. Sin also brings trouble on us and our children, leaving us weary and sorrowful.

Even more disturbing is the self-propagating nature of sin. Sin begets sin; it fosters evil. The 100,000+ deaths that have occurred in current armed conflicts in places like Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, and elsewhere are not occurring in a vacuum. Sin layered upon sin has resulted in hatred and malice and, inevitably, death.

We don’t have to go to Kiev to see the results of sin. We can look in our own homes, where sin results in anger, unkindness, and division – division from people and, more ominously, from God.

Now go back to Bethlehem. Here lies the Baby over whom so much fuss is made. He is about 19 inches long and weighs about six pounds. How can this helpless baby save his people from their sins?

We look in the manger and see a baby wrapped up like a mummy to ward off the cold. God sees the Bridge between heaven and earth—Jacob’s ladder, if you will, by which heaven descends to earth in order to carry humanity back with it. He is like every other baby ever born: he is fully human. He is unlike any other baby ever born; he is fully God. He is the bridge between humanity and God, the doorway to eternal life. In Bethlehem that first Christmas, by the very nature of what this Child was, the long work of salvation had begun.

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Mary Knew Who (No, it’s not a Dr. Seuss Story)

Posted on December 19, 2024 by salooper57

Orville and Wilbur Wright somehow persevered through one failure after another in their attempts to get their new flying machine off the ground. If you’ve ever sat on an airport terminal floor with thousands of other people waiting for flights to resume, you may have wished they hadn’t. But they did. On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville achieved the first successful manned flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle. After some very public failures, it was their moment of triumph. The brothers were so excited that they ran to the nearest Western Union office and wired their sister Katherine, “We did it [stop]. We have actually flown in the air 120 feet [stop]. Will be home for Christmas [stop].”

Katherine was elated. She showed the telegram to the newspaper editor, who read the message and was impressed. His story appeared in the next edition. It was headlined, “Orville and Wilbur Wright Will Be Home for Christmas.”  

Like that editor, we can miss the point, especially when Christmas is involved. This Advent Season, we want to look at the point of it all – what Christmas is really about – and we are going to begin with the first scene in the Christmas story, which takes place nine months before Bethlehem and its overcrowded “inn.” We are going back to what the Church calls “the Annunciation” – the day when Mary was told that she would give birth to God’s Son, the Messiah.

Look at verse 26: “In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.” Luke was writing to Gentile readers for whom the name Nazareth would mean nothing. Nazareth was a little town, undistinguished by association with any great men or women, and few Gentiles would have ever heard of it, so he informs his readers that it was located in Galilee.

God sent the angel Gabriel to a young woman who was engaged to a descendent of King David, a man named Joseph. There are some important words to note in the 27th verse. First the word, virgin. Any reader familiar with the Old Testament would immediately recognize an allusion to the messianic prophecy of Isaiah: “This will be a sign unto you: the virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and he will be called Immanuel.”[1]

Bible scholars point out that the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7 can signify any young, unmarried woman, and not just a virgin. That is true enough, but that that is what Luke intended to convey is beyond doubt. Look at Mary’s question in verse 34, “How can this be,” (that is, “How can I have a child?”), “since I am a virgin?” Though the NIV uses the word “virgin” to translate both verses, a literal rendering of verse 34 runs, “How can this be, since I know not a man?” To know in this context is an ancient euphemism for having sexual relations. Mary was a virgin.

The other word to look at in verse 27 is the one the NIV translated, “pledged”. It is a perfect tense verb meaning to betroth. In Jewish culture, a betrothal or engagement was as binding as marriage. If a man wanted to end an engagement, he didn’t just ask for his ring back. He had to file divorce papers! We know from St. Matthew that this was just what Joseph had decided to do, because he believed Mary had been unfaithful to him. She told him she was pregnant, and he knew it wasn’t his baby.

Apparently, the meeting between the angel and Mary took place indoors, because verse 28 says (literally), “And entering to her he [the angel] said…” Do you remember what happened when this same angel Gabriel entered the temple to deliver a message to the priest Zechariah? The text says Zechariah was “startled and afraid.” Mary doesn’t seem to be either. While she was “troubled,” it was by the angel’s words rather than his presence. This was an altogether extraordinary young woman.

“The angel went to her” (v. 28) “and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored!’” The Douay-Rheims Version, following the Latin Vulgate, translates, “Hail, full of grace!” which is, of course, the language of the “Hail Mary” prayer. But the idea here is not that Mary is so full of grace that she is able to dispense it to others, but that she herself is graced by God—is highly favored. Even contemporary Catholic versions translate it that way.

Verse 29: “Mary was greatly troubled (or “very perplexed,” as in the NASB) at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” Mary was troubled and wondered what… Now, that’s beginning to sound like the rest of us. We are frequently troubled by what: What is going to happen? What does this mean? What am I supposed to do? Apparently, the mother of our Lord, blessed among women (as Elizabeth calls her in verse 42), also wondered about these things.

Verse 30 is a restatement of the greeting in verse 28: “You have found favor with God.” We are liable to think that those who have favor with God will have an easy time in life, but it doesn’t really work that way. Having favor is not at all synonymous with being pampered. Those most favored by God are those from whom God expects most. Noah found favor with the Lord and was given a hundred years of labor. Mary, who is highly favored and is blessed among women, is promised a soul-piercing sword.

Now, look at the second part of the angel’s message. It answers the what question. Verse 31: “You will be with child and will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” Now, we have the what: this young Jewish girl will conceive and bear a Son who will be a great and powerful king, and will be called the Son of the Most High.

That sounds wonderful, but there is a problem. There usually is. The problem is not with the content of the message, the what – that’s great – but with the fulfillment of the message, the how. “How can this be,” Mary asks (this is verse 34), “since I am a virgin?” Or, as it is in the Greek, “since I have do not know a man.” That is, “I’ve not had sex.” The “What” leads Mary to ask “How?” God’s favored people often find it so. The what can be so unexpected, so unmanageable, that they cannot get a handle on it. So, of course, they ask “How can this be?

The Lord says to Moses, “I am going to free my people from slavery in Egypt. So, you, Moses, go and do it.” That was the what, and it left Moses in shock. “How can a failure like me do this? How is anyone even going to believe me? How can I, of all people, go to Pharaoh?” When the Lord tells Samuel what – “It is time to anoint my new king” – Samuel says, “How can I anoint the king? When Saul hears about it, he will kill me.” To Nicodemus Jesus says, “Your only hope of even seeing the kingdom is to be born again.” That was the what. Nicodemus’s response: “How can this be?” Jesus says to Philip, “Feed this massive crowd.” Immediately, the good Philip’s mind asks, “How?” “Feeding this crowd would take eight month’s wages!”

But whenever God tells us what, he already knows how. And when he shares with us the how, we will find that it is His way, not ours. Who would ever have guessed that God would free Israel from Egypt the way he did, with an army of frogs, gnats, and locusts? Who would have thought that he would send his people to conquer Jericho with trumpets and ram’s horns, or use the farmer Gideon and his three hundred men to defeat an invading army? He does things his own way. Look at the answer to Mary’s how question, verse 35: “The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God’.” The how was something that no one would have guessed. The Virgin will conceive by the direct and miraculous intervention of God.

I wonder what Mary thought of that answer. We moderns have somehow got the idea that ancient people could believe in virgin births without much trouble. They were, after all, unenlightened, uncivilized, credulous innocents. But that is nonsense! Mary was no more likely to give credence to virgin births than you are. Nor was her fiancé, Joseph, who planned to call off the engagement when he heard about the pregnancy. I think Mary must have been expecting a different kind of answer, something like: “You’ll marry Joseph and you will soon bear him a child, and will live happily ever after, as befits the mother of a king”—a Hallmark movie ending. That’s what we would expect. It was not what God did. His way was completely unexpected.

The angel understands how hard this is to believe and helps Mary resolve her doubts. This is verse 36: “Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” The angel does not go into the technical aspects of miraculous conception, mitosis, and cell division. He knows that what Mary needs is not instruction, but assurance. Some of you older folks remember the song “It is no secret what God can do.” The second line is, “What He’s done for others, he’ll do for you.” That is how the angel encourages Mary to trust God. He says, “Are you worried that God cannot handle the how? Just look at what he did for Elizabeth! That was impossible, too, but what is impossible with people is a lead pipe cinch for God.”

That verse, verse 37, reads literally, “Because with God every word is not impossible” or, smoothing it into English, ” Nothing God says he will do is impossible for Him.” If God says it, he will do it.

Mary takes him at his word, which is the essence of faith. “I am the Lord’s servant,” she says. “May it be to me as you have said.” Here is a shining example of faith, a beautiful model of the submission that we also are called to offer to God. But when Mary said yes, do you think she had a clue about what she was getting herself into—the rumors, gossip, ostracism, and hostility? Instead of the beautiful wedding young girls dream about, a quick and private ceremony. Then compelled to relocate to a new community. And that was all in the first nine months. Unwelcome in Joseph’s hometown, alone at the birth of her son. And as if that were not enough, when things finally settled down, the family was again uprooted and forced to flee as refugees to Egypt. But even that does not touch on the great pain that faithful Simeon predicted would come: “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” Did Mary know what she was getting into when she said yes to God? Not a chance. Will we know what we are getting into when we say yes to God? Certainly not. But we don’t have to.

You see, Mary was able to take God at his word and yield to his will because she knew the answer to a more important question than what or how. She knew that answer to the question, Who? We get all frazzled with the what and how whenever we fail to ask, Who? Mary knew Who. Look at her famous song, called the Magnificat, which begins in verse 46 with “My soul praises the Lord,” or “My soul magnifies the Lord.” She knows who is at work in her life. He is the Lord. He is, verse 47, the savior. He is the one who, verse 48, is mindful of our state. (One thinks of David in Psalm 8:4: “What is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that Thou carest for him?”) Mary knows her God is deeply concerned about his people. What about you? Do you really believe that God cares for you? That he wants what is best for you? Or do you feel like you are on your own?

There is more. Mary’s God is not only mindful, He is masterful; he is the Mighty One, verse 49. He wants what is best for us – that goes to his character. And he is able to bring it about – that goes to his ability. He performs mighty deeds with his arm. He brings down rulers, verse 52. He is sovereign. Mary knew all this. Do you? If your God cannot do what he wants to do, if he is not strong enough to govern the universe or caring enough to govern your life, your God is too small. You must come to David’s conviction: “That you, O God, are strong, (you do what you want), and that you, O God, are loving (what you want is always our good).[2] You will never be able to take God at his word, you will keep stumbling over the what and the how, until, like Mary, you can answer the question, Who?

Now, there is one more question that can plague us and, unanswered, can keep us from the obedience of faith: The question, “Why?” Mary does not get deeply entangled in “Why?” because she knows Who. She gives the why question a brief answer in verse 55: “…to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Why? Because he said so. He keeps his word. Why is not a big problem when you know Who.

But when you don’t know Who, Why can ground you into dust. Why, God, did you allow this to happen to me? Why did you let my wife suffer this illness? Why let the business I work for close down? Why make me the way you did? Why? Why? Why?

Glenn Chambers was a young man from New York who was planning on working with the Christian organization, Voice of the Andes. It had been his dream to serve God in the lives of South Americans through Christian Radio. He was on his way to fulfill that dream when the Avianca Airline flight he took from Miami to Quito crashed into a mountain outside Bogota. Glenn, the entire crew, and all the passengers were killed.

Before he left the Miami Airport earlier that day, Glenn decided to write his mom a note. He had no paper so he picked up a scrap of advertisement from the floor that had the word WHY printed in large letters across the front of it. He dashed off a quick note to his mom, stuck it in a mailbox, then got on the ill-fated plane.

A few days later, after she heard about the plane crash, an envelope with Glenn’s handwriting was delivered to Mrs. Chambers. She opened it to find the word WHY in large, bold print, staring up at her. The jarring echo of her own thoughts must have stunned her. But Mrs. Chambers did not get stuck on WHY because she understood WHO. The sovereign one who works out all things according to his plan – that’s Who. The Caring one who is concerned with our eternal well-being – that’s Who. The Mighty One who has the power to do whatever he chooses – that’s Who. He is too kind to do anything cruel and too wise to ever make a mistake, though he is too deep for shallow creatures like us to understand.[3]    

But he is not too far to hear us, or too busy to come to our aid. He has come. And he did so by a route we could never have imagined: via the virgin’s womb. He has taken our humanity on – and into – himself. And he will allow nothing to separate us from God’s unending, unstoppable love.

[1] Isa. 7:14

[2] Ps. 62:11

[3] William Peterson, How to Be a Saint While Lying Flat on Your Back. Quoted in The Tardy Oxcart by Charles Swindoll. Nashville: Word Publishing, C 1998. Pp. 245-246

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A Case in Point: Christmas and the Competence of God

Posted on December 14, 2024 by salooper57
Event Planning Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

If God were to write a resume, what kinds of things might he include on it? One thing is for certain: it would not be like any other resume ever written. Who else has worked as a universe creator, galaxy-spinner, nuclear engineer, quantum mechanic, genetics specialist, wind-maker, earth-shaker, sky-walker, life-giver? His resume is endless. One important role it would include is Event Planner.

God is the ultimate Event Planner. We see evidence of his extraordinary ability throughout Scripture, but especially in the incarnation. He started planning a long time before the event, laid the groundwork perfectly, and pulled it off with enormous grace and supernatural ability.

After Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took their new baby to Jerusalem to make the required sacrifice. God led Simeon, an old man living there (Luke 2:25), into the temple at just the right moment for the four of them to meet. George Balanchine himself could not have choreographed it all so well. (Of course, Choreographer is also on his resume.)

But even the greatest choreographer needs dancers who know the steps. God will not use marionettes. His people need to learn the dance, and old Simeon was well-practiced in it. He knew the steps.

I’ve wondered what Mary and Joseph thought when this old man took their special baby from them. Were they worried? Was the old guy some kind of crank? Some religious nut? Was Jesus safe with him?

Ah, but Simeon was one of the great ones, though the people around Jerusalem may not have noticed. Who pays attention to old men with no money and no political power? But that didn’t matter to Simeon—he did not dance for them! He lived before the Audience of One, and it was his approval that motivated him.

He took the baby from them and felt the consolation of Israel, for which he had so long watched and waited, squirming in his arms. And Israel’s consolation weighed about six pounds. He looked down at the Lord’s Messiah, (2:26), and though his feet were still on the ground his heart soared to heaven.

Filled with perfect contentment, this beautiful, holy man says to God, “Dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation . . .” Other people saw a baby carried by a poor woman and her husband, but Simeon’s eyes saw salvation. Not only had the old man taught his feet to dance, he had taught his eyes to see.       

What he says next (2: 31) brings us back to God’s event planning superpowers: “…your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people.” Here we see the Event Planner at the top of his game. The word translated “prepared” is the same word used of preparing a room for guests, of preparing a meal, and of the preparations under way for us in our “Father’s house.”

Simeon says that the preparations for this child had been made in the sight of all people, or literally, “in front of the faces of all people.” Preparations were begun before the foundations of the earth were laid. A thousand years earlier, the Event Planner revealed that a descendant of King David would reign on his throne forever. Then, he issued a press release: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). 700 years before Mary and Joseph met Simeon, the Event Planner’s publicist Micah announced that Bethlehem would be the site of the big event (Micah 5:2). The Event Planner does not procrastinate.

And when there are hiccups, he knows what to do. The virgin Isaiah mentioned did not live anywhere near Bethlehem. She was already well-along in her pregnancy, and her home was in another part of the country. Her new husband had a job in Nazareth, in Galilee, and they had no intention of going to Bethlehem. So how could the Event Planner make things turn out right? Even though he had an eternity to make plans, it seemed as if he had run out of time.

But the Event Planner never breaks a sweat. He has the resources of heaven at his disposal and the duration of eternity in which to work, and he has thought of everything. We see it in the incarnation. Mary is in Nazareth, with no reason on earth to go to Bethlehem. But then a man living 2,500 miles away, whom Mary knows almost nothing about (and who certainly never heard of her), speaks a few words in a conference room. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” That was all it took to get Mary to Bethlehem. Does the Event Planner know what he’s doing, or not?

George Balanchine, watch and learn! The Master brought it all together, and he used steps in the choreography that others would never have thought of—would have said were impossible. But then he not only plans, he also has the resources to work “out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

The Event Planner uses the skills displayed in the incarnation in our lives too. He is able to make all things (and people, including us) co-labor with him in bringing good for his children. Christmas is the proof that he “is able … to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20, NLT).

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Holy Communion: What Is All It About?

Posted on December 12, 2024 by salooper57

“For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself” (1 Cor. 11:29, KJV).

If that verse has ever scared you (or some pastor has scared you with that verse), you might want to read this sermon.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

The church of Jesus Christ has repeatedly divided over what our church is going to do a few minutes from now: take the Lord’s Supper. In the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, the Church of Rome officially adopted the view known as transubstantiation, which holds that the substance of the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. 350 years later, at the Council of Trent, the church determined that the Eucharist (which is another word for the Lord’s Supper) is propitiatory, which means that by taking it we can turn away God’s wrath and find forgiveness.

The monk and reformer Martin Luther rejected those views. He taught his followers that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the bread and the wine, but that the bread and wine do not change substance to become body and blood.

In 1529, Luther met with another key player in the Reformation, the Swiss pastor Ulrich Zwingli, and they tried to unite the two branches of the newly minted reform movement, the Evangelicals of Germany (we know them as Lutherans) and the Reformed Church of Switzerland. They failed. They couldn’t get past their differences regarding the Lord’s Supper.

Protestants divided from Catholics over the Communion Table. Then Protestants divided from other Protestants – and continued to divide. Did you know that America’s greatest theologian, Jonathon Edwards, was removed from his pulpit and fired because of his view that only church members should be allowed to take part in Communion? In the last twenty years, controversy over the table has erupted again in the Roman Catholic church, with archbishops denying communion to high-profile politicians.

How ironic that this table, which proclaims the unity of Christ’s church, has been the cause of so much division. But it is not merely ironic. It is diabolic.

There remains a lot of confusion over the Lord’s Supper. Some large American churches have dropped it from their worship gatherings. The process of serving communion to thousands of people is too unwieldy and time-consuming. And besides that, according to something I read a few years ago, the Lord’s Supper does not fare well in focus groups.

But we want it to fare well at California Road Missionary Church. It is important, and it is beautiful. But I’m afraid that many people do not see it that way. I say that because there was a time when I did not see it that way.

After I became a Christian, I was reticent to take communion. The preacher would always warn us to examine ourselves, which is entirely biblical, but he never told us what to look for in that examination. He did, however, make the consequences of a slipshod examination perfectly clear: Unless one discerned the Lord’s body – whatever that meant – he would eat and drink (this was the King James Version) “damnation” to himself – whatever that meant. I, for one, didn’t want to find out.

So, I examined myself for sins – which were about as hard to find as snowflakes in a blizzard – and tried to feel sufficiently sorry for them. But I never knew if I succeeded, and so I couldn’t be sure whether I was eating and drinking damnation.

Things that the Lord’s Supper should have done it did not do (at least for me, though I think this was true for others as well). Instead of uniting me to other Christians, it isolated me from them in an introspective bubble. Instead of helping me look to Christ and remember him, it led me to look to my sins and remember them. Instead of evoking wonder and inspiring faith, the Lord’s Supper evoked discouragement and inspired dread.

I think this happened for a couple of reasons, one having to do with my failure and the other with the church’s. The Lord’s Supper did not bless me because I was often not in a place where I could be blessed. I did not know Christ as my life but only as my ticket to the afterlife. I did not share St. Paul’s desire to please him; I only feared the trouble that would come from displeasing him. I thought (at least when it was time to take communion) about losing my salvation but not about living my salvation. How could someone like that be blessed at the Communion Table?

But the church failed too. It lifted the Scripture about examining oneself out of its context and used it to evoke guilt so that church members would try harder next time. I don’t blame the pastors at our church; it’s what they had been taught. They were just doing what they had seen done. But this approach to Scripture amounts to biblical malfeasance.

Let’s look at St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, and we will find there three things that the Lord’s Supper should do: (1) unite us to other Christians; (2) help us remember Christ; and (3) stimulate our faith.

First, we’ll look at those cautionary verses that were always read in my home church, verses 27-31: “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgment [damnation in the King James] on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment.”

I do not want to downplay the warning that is present in these verses. It is serious. But if we lift these verses out of their context, as I have just done, we are liable to misunderstand what we are being warned against. So, let’s place them back in their context.

Beginning in verse 17, Paul sternly rebukes the Corinthians for the way they eat the Lord’s Supper. Notice (verse 18) what is uppermost on his mind: “I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.” The idea that when they gathered to worship there were divisions (we get our words “schisms” from this Greek word) and that those divisions were intentional, horribly upset Paul.

In verse 19, he adds: “No doubt there have to be differences (this Greek word passes over into English as “heresies”) among you to show which of you have God’s approval.” I take this to be sarcasm, as do most biblical scholars. Some people disagree. I once heard a man argue that there must be differences in order to reveal who is genuine and who is not. That idea is wrong for two reasons: one, this part of the letter drips with rhetorical flourish. One of the Corinthians’ criticisms of Paul was that he lacked the oratorical skills of Corinth’s best public speakers, so Paul was giving them rhetorical flourish with both barrels, and sarcasm was standard ammunition in ancient rhetoric.

Secondly, and more importantly, Paul never uses the word for divisions nor the one for differences (“schisms” and “heresies”) in a positive way. They are always condemned, and I find it extremely unlikely that he made an exception in this case.

Paul hated divisions in the church, which is God’s living advertisement for his reconciling power. In its race-, nation-, and ethnicity-transcending love (think of first century Jews and Gentiles), the church offers a foretaste of the age to come. Its unity reflects the eternal unity of the Father and the Son. But the Corinthian church was undermining its own message by allowing, ignoring, and reinforcing divisions.

We need a little background to understand what is happening here. The Christians in Corinth met together in homes (church buildings would not exist for a couple of centuries). At least on occasion, they all met together in the same home, which seems to be what verse 20 is describing. Perhaps they only took the Lord’s Supper at these big gatherings, but they may have done it at their smaller meetings as well.

When they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, they did it differently than we do. It was not part of an hour-long worship service, but part of a shared meal. We don’t know if they celebrated the Lord’s Supper before or after the regular meal. What we do know is they incorporated the Lord’s Supper into a church fellowship meal.

That meal had become an occasion of division. These large gatherings required a large house, which meant the church gathered at the home of one of its wealthier members. The best room would only seat a small number of people – twelve, at most. The rest of the church would be seated here and there around the atrium.

This was very similar to the other large dinner parties that wealthy people gave. (Large dinner parties were a thing in first century Corinth.) And like those parties, the host’s friends (usually other wealthy people) sat in the triclinium (the dining room) and were served the largest portions, the best cuts of meat, and the finest wine. People in the atrium got poorer quality and less quantity. Some Christians – probably slaves who came late to dinner because of work – even went without. By the time they arrived the only food left was the bread of the Lord’s Supper, and the only drink the wine of the cup of blessing.

The Corinthian church mirrored Corinthian society. But the church was meant to reflect Christ, not culture: “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11).

The church of Jesus was designed to be different from every other people group on earth. Men are brothers, women are sisters, regardless of their race, their nationality, their language, or their economic status. And the Communion Table proclaims this. Paul had just written, “Because there is one loaf [at the Communion Table], we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” The Corinthians’ behavior at the Lord’s Supper contradicted that proclamation.

On a Sunday not long after the Civil War ended, people were at church in Richmond, VA, for worship. Unlike us, their practice was to go forward to receive communion. To everyone’s surprise, the first person to go forward was black.

A shockwave ran through the congregation. People gasped and murmured. The Episcopal priest refused to give the man communion. The rest of the people – all white – remained fixed in their pews. Then, Robert E. Lee himself rose and went forward. But instead of acknowledging the man as a brother, he acted as if the man didn’t exist. The rest of the all-white church followed his example, including the priest. That week, Richmond’s newspaper praised General Lee for his “dignified and self-possessed manner” and called it “a grand exhibition of superiority by a true Christian.”[1] The church mirrored society, not Christ. The Apostle Paul would have rebuked them with both barrels.

This table proclaims our oneness. Those who come to this table not only accept Jesus into their hearts; they accept his people there too. If you are unwilling to do this, you are unready for this meal. This is the primary meaning – I don’t deny that there are others – behind Paul’s words about “discerning the body.” And it is about this – again, I don’t deny there may be secondary meanings – that we examine ourselves.

This table is also the occasion for our remembering Christ. We do this as a remembrance (verse 25). A remembrance is more than a thought captured in a memory. When the Jews remembered Passover, they didn’t just have a thought about it; they reenacted it. For example, they removed all the leaven from their homes and made and ate the same meal their ancestors made and ate on that first Passover. When they remembered the Lord’s faithfulness during their wilderness wanderings, they built lean-tos and put up tents and lived outdoors for a week, just as their ancestors had done in the wilderness. They didn’t just remember with their heads, but with their hands and their bodies. We remember Jesus and what he did not just with words, but with actions, not just with our heads but with our hands and our mouths. We reenact the covenant meal Jesus and his disciples ate.

When the Jews reenacted Passover, they took their place as God’s covenant people. When we take the Lord’s Supper, we take our place as God’s new covenant people. The Lord’s Supper is not just a ritual, it is a reminder. It is not just a custom, it is a commitment – a reaffirmation of the choice we made to be in covenant with God Almighty and, more importantly, the choice he made to be in covenant with us at great cost to himself.

When we come to this table, we step into the past or, perhaps, bring the past into the present. Here we are, with Christ. We affirm our place in the covenant of blood. We share in his death. We say to the Lord Jesus, “I take my cross and follow you.”

I said a moment ago that when we come to the Table, we step into the past or bring the past into the present. But there is more to it than that. The Lord’s table exists as an eddy in time, a temporal vortex where past and future meet. We reenact that night. We gather around Jesus and hear him say, “This is my body, which is for you. This is my blood of the new covenant.” We meet him by faith at the table. Those without faith who step into the eddy are flung back out. Those with faith are nourished by grace.

When we step into this temporal vortex, we don’t just remember; we taste the past. It tastes like unleavened bread and like grape juice. We hear it in Christ’s commands, “Take, eat!” and “All of you drink it.”

And we don’t just find the past here – here’s the wonder of it – we encounter the future; and that inspires our faith. Jesus said, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). From our vantage point at the table, we can see the kingdom of God coming. We can almost taste that feast for all peoples, prepared by God himself, with its “best of meats and finest of wines” (Isaiah 25:6). At this meal, we can hear the voice from the throne saying, “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both small and great!” (Rev. 19:5). We hear the great multitude shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (Rev. 19:6-8). We join in the shout: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

And when we leave here and go back into our time and place, our routines, our hassles, our sicknesses, the threats we face, even the coming of death itself, that shout rings in our ears. We know that “All things are [ours], whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are [ours], and [we] are of Christ, and Christ is of God” (1 Cor. 3:21-23). We know this because we touched the future when we came to this table.

We not only touch the future; we are a portent of it. In Dubai, you can tour the newly-opened Museum of the Future. There are 23 floors of exhibits, one of which is named, “Tomorrow Today.” Another is a three-floor exhibit of life in 2071. You can see what futurists think people will be like and what they will be doing in time to come.

You don’t need to go to Dubai to see an exhibition of the future. You can just go to church. We put the future on display, or at least that is what God intends. By declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord, we anticipate the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. By loving each other and living in unity, we show what the people of the future will be like. It is an act of faith to love our brothers and sisters now and here as we will love them then and there. But when we do so, we become a sign to the world that the future – the kingdom of God – is coming upon them.

PRAYER

We are about to transcend time, touch the past, herald the future. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, I invite you to step into the vortex. I invite you to eat this bread, and drink this cup, and love these people.

[1] Quoted by Skye Jenthani in What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church, Moody Publishers, © 2022, p.89

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Searching for the Gate of Heaven

Posted on December 7, 2024 by salooper57

Your doorbell rings. You open the door and find two strangers handing out pamphlets. They ask if you know whether you will go to heaven when you die. You know where this is heading, but you go with it and say, “How can I know I am going to heaven?”

Depending on the religious tradition, they will tell you how you can know, or tell you that no one can know. If they are from an Evangelical Christian tradition, they will tell you that if you believe in Jesus, you can know that you are going to heaven, and they might use (or misuse) 1 John 5:12-13 to support their claim.

Gate of Heaven, Pura Luhur Lempuyang, Bali (Wiki Media Commons) Photo by Mehmet Kalcay on Pexels.com

It’s interesting that people today want to know how they can get into heaven. In earlier ages, people were very interested in where they could get into heaven. The idea that there is a portal – or portals – into heaven is very old.

Even today, there are numerous places on the planet that are reputed to be gateways into heaven. In China, for example, there is the Tianmen Mountain, with its enormous opening that appears to lead into the heavens. There is a Hindu temple in Bali that features the picturesque “Gates of Heaven.” Tourists travel from around the globe just to see it.

The ziggurat mentioned in Genesis 11, known as the Tower of Babel, was likely constructed to be a gate of heaven. The idea that humans could advance upon God, could enter his space unbidden, is a powerful idea. Those who control the gate of heaven can control humanity—just think of the churches and religious leaders who have appointed themselves the gatekeepers of heaven. No wonder God intervened to put an end to the construction project.

Later in Genesis, the patriarch Jacob has left home in a hurry. He has deceived his father, infuriated his brother, and worn out his welcome. He is on his way to visit relatives in Paddan-Aram, about 450 miles to the northeast. After traveling about fifty miles, he makes camp near the ancient town of Luz.

Jacob finds a flat rock to use as a pillow, and as he sleeps, he has a vivid dream. (If I slept on a pillow like that, I suspect I would have dreams too.) In his dream, he sees a ladder (or better, a staircase) reaching into heaven. On those stairs are angels ascending and descending, and from the top of the stairs God speaks to him.

When Jacob awoke, it was with a sense of awe. He said to himself, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” He had stumbled on a portal into the heavenlies. He set up a marker for himself, and named the place Beth-El – “House of God.”

Humanity has always been fascinated with the idea that there are gateways on earth that lead into heaven. That fascination showed up again in the 1990s, and the results were tragic. Marshall Applewhite left his post as a music teacher at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and then met Bonnie Nettles, a nurse who was deeply interested in the occult. The two of them launched a religious movement that became known as “Heaven’s Gate.”

Early on, Applewhite and Nettles taught that people could transform themselves into immortal, extraterrestrial life forms by practicing a kind of asceticism. They described this transformation as the next step in evolution. Applewhite and Nettles represented themselves as the bodily vehicles of extraterrestrial beings with superhuman knowledge.

After Nettles died of cancer, Applewhite shifted his teaching. Instead of ascending to the next level of evolution through asceticism, they would ascend via a spacecraft. The Gate of Heaven was to be the Starship Enterprise—or something like it. Of course, only those who were following Applewhite’s lead would be qualified for transport.

When the Hale-Bopp comet came near to earth in the mid-1990s, Applewhite claimed that a UFO hidden in the comet’s tale was coming to take away his followers. He revised that teaching later, saying that only the spirits of his followers would be able to ascend, and so it would be necessary for everyone in the group to free themselves from their bodies, i.e., commit suicide. The group posted the following message on their website just prior to the mass suicide: “Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven’s Gate … our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion… We are happily prepared to leave ‘this world’ and go…”

Jesus also used the language of heaven’s gate. He did not suggest the gate into heaven was fixed locally at places like Beth-El or Tianmen Mountain. He presented himself as the gate of heaven (or better, the gate into life). “I am the gate,” he says in John 10:9; “whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief” – think of Marshall Applewhite – “comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

In language intended to evoke Jacob’s experience at the “gate of heaven,” Jesus told the disciple Nathaniel, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Today, people talk about how to get into heaven. The ancients talked about where to get into heaven. But there is a better question than “How?” and “Where?” We should be asking, “Who?” Who can lead us into life? Who can bring us to God?

Jesus is the one who grants access into God’s grace (Romans 5:1). The Greek word for “access” is “prosagōgē.” The prosagōgāse was the powerful official who had authority to grant men and women access to the king. The Bible presents Jesus as the prosagōgāse. He is the “door into life,” the true “gate” of heaven, the one who suffered “that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 10:19-21).

The Gate of Heaven is not a place, like the temple at Pura Luhur Lempuyang in Bali. It is not a thing, like Marshall Applewhite’s hidden UFO. It is a person.

Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (1 John 14:6)

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