There are a number of people in my circle of relationships who are somewhere in the process of deconstructing their faith. Among millennials, particularly educated white millennials, faith deconstruction is so common as to almost be a pastime. It is, not surprisingly, less common among black millennials.
Charles Holmes, who leads a college ministry in Durham, NC, and who is black, believes that “Deconstruction can be a form of privilege.” He continues: “It’s no accident that people in the Western part of the world are deconstructing the faith that has given many marginalized, persecuted, and oppressed people hope for hundreds of years.”
Does deconstruction pose an existential threat to religious belief? That depends on whether people go on to reconstruct what they have dismantled. Deconstruction is not an end in itself. It should be only the first step in a remodeling process.
I know people who, in the process of deconstructing their faith, concluded that what was left was not worth keeping—and they were probably right. Others, however, get down to the frame and foundation of belief, find it reliable, and rebuild from there. Their faith is more secure and fulfilling after deconstruction than before.
What does it mean to deconstruct faith? There is no simple definition, but a description might be helpful. When someone deconstructs their faith, they dismantle its components, try to understand their origin – Scripture, tradition, superstition, prejudice – and dispose of the ones they do not believe.
The philosopher John D. Caputo, while describing deconstruction in a philosophical context, expresses aptly what is happening in faith deconstruction: “Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell—a secure axiom or a pithy maxim—the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility.”
Many people have been cracking nutshell axioms about creation, sexuality, and eternal destiny, and some have not found a nut within the shell. They have had “a form of godliness” without the godliness, a system of faith without the faith. These will toss the nutshell away and, frankly, will probably not miss it.
Deconstruction begins with doubt, with cognitive dissonance over things that have been believed or at least assumed to be true. It is surprising – I, at least, experience cognitive dissonance over the fact – that so few people doubt their doubts. Why should people only doubt their beliefs? What is good for the proverbial goose of faith is good for the gander of doubt.
For the sake of intellectual integrity, people who doubt their beliefs should also doubt their doubts and consider deconstructing them. Where did the doubt originate? Is it sourced in contemporary ethical opinion, for example? If so, does that ethical opinion also need to be deconstructed? Shouldn’t one reject outright the assumption that an opinion is superior simply because it is contemporary?
If people deconstruct their doubts, they may discover that they are not sourced in the weakness of a belief but in the weakness of the person who transmitted the belief to them. Does that make the belief invalid? Of course not, for that person may have acquired the belief from someone whose strength of character and intellect is unassailable.
These two factors, the assumed superiority of contemporary ethical opinions over earlier ones, and the perceived character failure or intellectual inferiority of belief transmitters – sometimes parents, sometimes church leaders – have motivated people to deconstruct their faith. The fact that neither of these factors could ever disprove the validity of a belief should motivate people to deconstruct their doubt.
Deconstructing faith can be a good thing. Nearly everyone has some dogmatic clutter – ideas that contradict both biblical teaching and common sense – littering their belief system. These need to be discarded or replaced. Deconstruction, as Derrida himself insisted, is not nihilism. The reason to deconstruct is to rebuild, stronger and better.
People who stop after deconstructing their faith have not gone far enough. They should go on to deconstruct their doubt as well. Too many people give their doubts a free pass from intellectual scrutiny. Culture has led them to believe that skepticism is inherently smarter than faith. That is a belief that cries out to be deconstructed.
Among Jesus’s commands to his disciples is the command to make other disciples. In this class, we look at what that entails and how the church can carry it out. We start off looking at the background to the commission from Daniel 7:13-14.
The church of Jesus Christ has repeatedly divided over what we did a few minutes ago when we took 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 one turns away God’s wrath by taking it.
The monk and reformer Martin Lutherrejected those views. He believed in what he called The Real Presence. 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, he met with another key player in the reform movement, the Swiss pastor Ulrich Zwingli, and they tried to bring the two branches of the newly minted reform movement, the Evangelicals of Germany (later Lutherans) and the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, together. They failed? What tripped them up? The Lord’s Supper.
Protestants divided from Catholics over the Communion Table. Then Protestants divided from Protestants – and continued to divide. Did you know that America’s great 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 who has the right to come to the table has erupted again in the Roman Catholic church.
How ironic that this table, which proclaims the unity of Christ’s church, has been the cause of so much division. But that, I think, is not right. It’s not ironic; it’s diabolic. And the table has not been the cause of division but its occasion.
There is a lot of confusion over the Lord’s Supper. Some large American churches have stopped taking it when they gather for worship. The process of serving communion to thousands of people is unwieldy and time-consuming. Besides that, the Lord’s Supper doesn’t fare well in focus groups.
We want it to fare well here. It is important, and it is beautiful. But I’m afraid that many people do not see it that way. I think that because there was a time when I did not see it that way.
After I became a Christian, I was hesitant to take communion. The preacher always warned us to examine ourselves, which is entirely biblical, but he never told us what to look for in that examination. However, he did 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.
So, I examined myself for sins – which were about as hard to find as a snowflake in a blizzard – and tried to feel sufficiently sorry for them before I took communion. But I never knew if I succeeded, and so I couldn’t be sure whether I was eating and drinking damnation. Whatever else the Lord’s Supper was, it was not encouraging.
There were things that taking the Lord’s Supper should have done that 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 at my sins and remember them. I was focused on my sins and not my savior. Instead of evoking wonder and worship, the Lord’s Supper evoked discomfort and 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. Christ was not my life but only my ticket to the afterlife. I did not love (as St. Paul did) the idea of pleasing him but 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 repurposed it to evoke guilt with a view to making us to do better next time. I don’t blame the pastor at our church; he didn’t know any better. He was just doing what he 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: unite us to other Christians, help us remember Christ, and evoke wonder.
We’ll look first at those cautionary verses that were regularly mentioned 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 real. 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 rebukes the Corinthians for the way they eat the Lord’s Supper, and he does so with passion. And notice in 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 (the Greek word transliterates into English as “heresies”) among you to show which of you have God’s approval.” I take this to be sarcasm. Some people disagree. They say Paul really believed it was God’s will for there to be differences in order to reveal who is genuine and who is not. I think they are 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 rhetoric.
Secondly, and more importantly, Paul never uses either the word for divisions nor the one for differences (“schisms” and “heresies”) in a positive way. They are always condemned, and it is highly unlikely that he has 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 has 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 (there would not be dedicated church buildings 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. We don’t know how often that happened. 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 service, but part of a shared meal. We don’t know if they celebrated the Lord’s Supper before the regular meal, after the regular meal, or both. 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 dining 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. And like those parties, the host’s friends (probably other wealthy people) sat in the triclinium (that’s what the dining room was called) and were served the largest portions, the best cuts of meat, and the finest wine. Those in the atrium got poorer quality and less quantity. At church suppers, some Christians – probably slaves who arrived late 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.
These divisions in the church reflected the same divisions in society. The people in the triclinium were regarded by all, themselves included, as the most important people present, and they expected to get the best. 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 than 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 this 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 in their pews. Then, Robert E. Lee himself rose and went forward. But instead of acknowledging the black 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, no 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. 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. They removed leaven from their homes, made and ate the same meal their ancestors made and ate. 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. When we remember Jesus and what he did for us, we remember 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 and sacrifice he made to be in covenant with us. By taking part in the Lord’s Supper, we self-identify as sharers in Christ’s covenant-making sacrifice.
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 share in his death We affirm our place in the covenant of blood. We say afresh: “Because of God’s grace, I am Christ’s person, and I am all in, so help me God.”
And we say this together with everyone else who takes the Lord’s Supper. Because we are each in covenant with Christ, we are in covenant together. The two aspects of the Lord’s Supper already mentioned, its proclamation of our unity and its function as a remembrance of our Lord, flow together at this Table. We are bound to each other because we are bound to Jesus Christ, and he to us.
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 table exists as an eddy in time, a temporal vortex where past and future meet. As such it should evoke wonder. We remember not just with our minds but with our hands and mouths. We reenact that night. We sit, gathered around the Christ who says to us, “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 and are flung back out. Those with faith are nourished by grace.
When we step into this temporal vortex, we don’t just remember the past; we taste it in the unleavened bread. We sip it in the juice. We hear it in Christ’s commands, “Take, eat!” and “All of you drink it.”
But we don’t just find the past here; we also find the future. 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 threat 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 live it. In John Donne’s words, we “tune our instruments at the door and what [w]e must do then, think here before.” We live the future by loving each other and living in unity with each other. That is the channel along which God’s power runs into our lives. We act on faith and step into the future by loving our brothers and sisters now and here as we will love them then and there. And in so doing, we become a sign to the world that the future – the kingdom of God – is coming upon them.
I became a credentialed worker in an established denomination in 1981 and was ordained three years later. I have not served in that denomination since 1988, but I still have sincere respect for it. One of its distinctives, established by its 19th century founder, was an emphasis on the return of Christ.
While I was going through the credentialing process, I met with the Committee on Licensing and Ordination at least twice. After completing a written test for theological integrity, I faced an oral exam before the committee. They were an august group of pastors and denominational administrators, and I was intimidated.
After answering questions that spanned theological and practical ministry issues, I was asked about an answer I had given on the written test concerning eschatology – the doctrine of last things. One of the denominational executives was not satisfied with my answer, and he instructed me to read two massive books on the subject.
After dutifully reading the books, I found myself more confused than ever. Neither book offered a convincing rebuttal of the view I held, at least as far as I could see, but they did offer an alternative theory which I, in turn, could not rebut. I was scheduled to meet with the committee again in a couple of months and I was afraid that they would decline to credential me.
The next time I met with the committee, the dreaded question about Christ’s return was never brought up. The committee issued credentials and the district soon placed me in a small church on the poor side of a rustbelt city.
I have seen how the Bible can be used to support alternative and even contradictory beliefs regarding Christ’s return. As a pastor, I have also seen how this ambiguity leaves room for some teachers to exploit people’s natural interest in the last things to their own advantage.
I was installed as the pastor of Lockwood Community Church in August of 1988. I had not even found my way around the building before someone handed me a booklet titled, “88 Reasons Christ Will Return in 1988.” Over the next weeks, one person after another asked what I thought of this booklet, which had sold over 3 million copies.
People were deeply concerned, and some genuinely convinced, by the arguments the author presented. When, a month later, Christ had not returned, the excitement faded, and people moved on to other things. Three months after that, the same author produced a new book titled, “On Borrowed Time,” which offered, if I remember correctly, 89 reasons why Christ would return in 1989.
Christ’s second coming sells; there is no doubt about it. Jerry Jenkins’ “Left Behind” series sold 65 million copies and has spun off a children’s book series along with a chain of major motion pictures. Both John Hagee’s “Four Blood Moons,” which predicted the beginning of the end times in 2014 and 2015, and Jonathan Cahn’s “The Harbinger” made the New York Times best seller lists.
I do not mean to imply that these writers got it all wrong, and I am certainly not suggesting that they produced these books merely for economic gain. I am, however, saying that the subject of Christ’s coming is immensely popular with curious readers, and this leaves an opening for spiritual swindlers to operate. One of Jesus’s most common instructions regarding his return was: “Do not be deceived.”
How can we avoid being deceived? We can refuse to listen to date-setters. Jesus said that even he did not know the day of his return. Some people will try to convince their readers that there is a way around this inherent ignorance. There is not.
Don’t be motivated by fear. False prophets play on people’s fears while Christ’s genuine spokespeople encourage their hope. Fearful people are a charlatan’s best friend.
The people least likely to be deceived are not the ones who study Christ’s coming most, but the ones who love it best. To “love his appearing” – those are St. Paul’s words – is very different from being curious about it. Those who “love his appearing” serve his kingdom now and prepare for his reign then. Nothing offers a greater degree of protection from deception.
Jesus told us to always watch for his coming. How do we go about obeying him in this? (Once we start getting practical about it, we see that obedience is not easy!) In this class, we think through the answers to this question as we explore what to watch for, how to watch, and the obstacles that might get in the way.
The Christian’s commitment to the world is multifaceted. It includes a commitment to people’s welfare, to justice, and more, but it is rooted in the commitment to Christ. One aspect of our commitment to the world is our intention to be a channel of God’s goodness to others. This is possible because of Who We Are, What we Do, How We Do It, and Why We Do It. It is these things that we examine as we look at 1 Peter 2:9-12. (Text of sermon is below.)
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But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us (1 Peter 2:9-12).
This is the final message in a series that examines our church vision statement through the lens of Scripture. The vision statement is: “Committed: to Christ, to Christlikeness, to each other, and to the world.” This week, we explore our commitment to the world against the backdrop of 1 Peter 2:9-12.
1 Peter 2 is one of many Scriptures that address the Christian’s complex relationship with the world. We won’t see everything there is to see, but we will see some things that we can put into practice in our own lives and church.
In our text, there are four principal issues that have bearing on our commitment to the world. The first is Who We Are; the second is What We Do; the third is How We Do It; and the fourth is Why We Do It.
Peter starts with who we are—well, that is where he starts in this particular text, but in the larger context of the letter, he starts with what God has done in sending Christ into the world. Who we are comes out of what God has done and what we do comes out of who we are. We Americans are tempted to skip over the character part to get to the practical stuff – the job description: what we do and how we do it. That is a mistake.
That would be like hiring an employee based only on their skill set and without regard to their character. So what if they have left their last five jobs within 18 months? They can write code. But God knows that the quality of our contribution depends on the development of our character. He shapes who we are and that changes what we can do.
Peter lists six truths about who we are in verses 9 and 10. In verse 9, believers in Jesus are (1) a chosen people. This is something we should constantly celebrate. We were chosen. God wanted us. He didn’t choose us because he needed us. If that were the case, when he no longer needed us, he would lose interest. He didn’t choose us because we were (maybe just barely) better than someone else. He chose us because his heart is set on us. He chose us because of what he wanted to do for us. We are not the cast-off, the unwanted, or the overlooked. We are the chosen.
But don’t assume that the choice is all about getting into heaven. Life is not a raffle for an all-expense paid trip to a cosmic Disney World. We are chosen to join heaven, to work for heaven, to be on staff for the king of heaven. Chris Wright put it this way: “It is as if a group of trapped cave explorers choose one of their number to squeeze through a narrow flooded passage to get out to the surface and call for help. The point of the choice is not so that she alone gets saved, but that she is able to bring help and equipment to ensure the rest get rescued.”[1]
We are also (2) a royal priesthood. That is, we are a priesthood assigned to serve the king. We Protestants take our stand on this, and we are right to do so, but we often put the emphasis in the wrong place. We think that the priesthood of all believers only means that we don’t need some guy in a clerical collar to act on our behalf with God; we can do it ourselves.
I am not saying that is wrong, but it misses the point. We have been given the extraordinary honor to act as God’s priests, even though we do not descend from a priestly family. We can help other people come to God. We can pray for other people. We can extend forgiveness to the repentant in Jesus’s name. We can offer spiritual sacrifices. To be part of the royal priesthood is a remarkable privilege and responsibility.
We are (3) a holy nation. By nation, Peter does not mean an ancient province like Asia Minor nor a modern country like the United States. He is talking about a united people group (in this case, united by a relationship to Christ) that is holy. Holy doesn’t mean “morally superior” but “set apart for God.” The New Testament scholar William Barclay said the main idea the word “holy” conveys is being “different.” We are different because we are God’s.
We are (4) a people belonging to God. The NIV 2011 translates that as “God’s special possession.” The KJV has, “a peculiar people.” The NET Bible has “a people of his own.” These translations are trying to bring out the meaning of a difficult-to-translate Greek word.
Think of a woman who has a locket given to her by her grandmother. She has lots of other jewelry too, almost all of which has a higher monetary value than that old locket. She lends her other jewelry freely to her friends, but she never loans out her locket. It is her special possession. She cherishes it and protects it and keeps it for herself. The Greek word here might be used to describe that locket. We are special to God. He cherishes us, protects us, and keeps us for himself.
In verse ten we have two other descriptions of who we are. We are (5) a people who once were not a people. This is not about belonging to God but about belonging to each other. The church of Jesus comes from all different ethnicities and national backgrounds. Its people had little in common, until they had Jesus; and when they had Jesus, they had each other. In Paul’s words, “each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5). We have someone now; we have each other. We are a people.
We are (6, also verse 10) beneficiaries of mercy. We have not earned a spot among God’s people. We weren’t so special that God couldn’t do without us. It was rather the opposite. We were timid and arrogant, false and fearful, lost, going the wrong way, and obstinate about it. But instead of putting us in our place one and for all, God took our place once for all, so that we could be with him in his place now and forever. That’s mercy.
So that is what Jesus’s people are; that’s the character stuff. But what is it that they do – what is their job description? We find that in verse 9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” What does that mean? It means we are in advertising. The church is God’s advertising agency on earth.
Imagine that you got a job as an editor at ESPN and your first big project was to assemble a half-hour special of Michael Jordan’s greatest hits. It is a half-hour highlight reel with commentary. So, you pick the foul line dunk shot, the six three-pointers in the first half against the Trail Blazers, the shot over Craig Ehlo to beat the Cavs, the hand-switching layup against the Lakers, and then the steal against Karl Malone followed by the final shot of his career to win the Bull’s sixth NBA championship.
When you came to Jesus, you were given the same kind of work to do, only you are highlighting God. You want to convince the world that he is the Greatest of All Time—and eternity. So, you choose creation. The splendors are endless, his brilliance shines everywhere, his absolute power is breathtaking. You choose the appearance to Abraham. After God’s team failed so miserably, he didn’t give up on them; he went to pick them up. You’d talk about Sinai and the wonderful gift of his law.
But things didn’t get better, except for brief periods of time; they got worse. People became obstinate in their ways. It looked like the game of life was lost. Then the greatest of God’s greatest feats: The Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). Instead of rejecting the rebels he came to them. Instead of despising sinners, he lived with them, ate with them, and loved them. Instead of exterminating them, he died for them.
But was it for nothing? It seemed like it, until he rose from the dead, the first of humanity to conquer death – but not the last. This is our corporate story, the story behind our advertising. This is the good news of God in Christ.
Peter says, “…that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” The word “praises” here is not the usual word. It is sometimes translated “virtues” and has the idea of “excellencies” (which is how the NASB translates it). In this context, the excellencies are the highlights, God’s greatest hits. But it not just his highlights in the world that we advertise, but also his highlights in our lives. Every follower of Jesus should have a personal highlights reel of God’s feats in his or her life. We declare the praises of the one who brought us out of darkness into his marvelous light and made our lives worth living.
But why does God want us to “declare his praises”? Is he haughty and proud? Is he stuck on himself? Does he have something to prove? Not at all. He has nothing to prove, but he has something to gain: people. Just as he wanted and chose us, he wants other people. He wants them to join him, to be his “special possession.” He wants them to know him, to have lives worth living. He wants their lives to be saved, not wasted, restored, not ruined.
To put it succinctly: God, as Paul does in 1 Timothy 2:4, God loves all people and wants them to be saved. That is why we “declare his praises.”
But advertising is tricky business. Words matter, as Mitt Romney found out when he ran for president. His marketing firm introduced a phone app with the title, “A Better America: I’m with Mitt.” It was not bad, except they misspelled America. H&M sold a T-shirt with the famous Thomas Edison quote: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” They misspelled genius.
Words matter in our advertising too. It’s not that you need to be clever or funny, though if you are, that’s great. But your words need to be filled with grace (Colossians 4:6). Gracious words are sometimes funny and clever, sometimes direct and serious, but they always come from a desire (this is St. Paul) “to build others up according to their needs” (Ephesians 4:29).
Words that tear people down – swearing, condemnation, insults – what Paul calls “unwholesome” or “rotten” words – make God undesirable, even when they make people laugh. Sexist language and racial slurs from a professing Christian diminish God in people’s eyes—even when those people are sexist and racist. Our job is not to fit in but to tell out the praises of God.
I said that words matter, but words are not the only thing that matters, or even the chief thing. People who make commercials understand that the words they use are important, but the backdrop to those words – the people we see, the smiles on their faces, the beauty of their surroundings – can make or break a commercial.
When I drive down I-94, I see billboards for casinos. If people are pictured, they are always laughing. They are always young, and are usually attractive, well-dressed women. The words may appeal to greed or the desire for excitement, or a new car, but the images are what grab people’s attention.
I have only been in a casino once, and then it was an accident. Karen and I followed our GPS to a steakhouse on the north end of Lake Tahoe, just inside Nevada. We went in the wrong door, that led down a bare hallway, past closet doors and out into a small casino, which we had to cross to get to the restaurant.
I didn’t see a cadre of laughing people, or groups of twenty-year old beauty pageant contestants. What I saw were grizzled old men and disappointed old women, sitting alone, downing yet another drink. It was not a happy place. If people hear our words about God but see us as angry, hopeless, selfish people, our words will backfire. You see, in the divine plan, we don’t merely present advertisements for God; we are advertisements for God.
That brings us to the third issue that affects our impact on the world. The first was who we are (a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession). The second was what we do: we declare the praises of God. We run the highlight reel of God’s greatness in creation, in the Bible, but also in our lives. The third issue is about how we do it. The progression is from who to what to how.
This is from verses 11-12: “…abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds…”
“Abstain” has the idea of keeping something at a distance. People who are wrapped up in addictions, whether alcohol, drugs, porn, shopping, video games, or food are not good advertisements for the freedom-bringing Christ. So, Peter counsels us to keep away from these things. If you are addicted to any of these or other things so that you are always thinking about them, planning for them, giving yourself to them, your first step is to get away from them. You will likely need help with that and there are resources within the church. So, talk with me.
Eliminate the negative – “abstain from sinful desires” – and accentuate the positive: “Live such good lives among the pagans” – the people around us – “…that they may see your good deeds.” Peter’s program for declaring God’s praises depends on God’s people doing good deeds.
He got that straight from Jesus who said, “Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Doing good works in not a requirement for getting into heaven, but it is a requirement for living a worthwhile life on earth. God, who is committed to us and wants us to succeed, has done everything to make that possible. He has personally selected good deeds for us to do, has arranged opportunities, and has even put them in our path. St. Paul says, “For we are his work, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance that we should do them” – literally, that “we should walk in them.” In other words, God has placed these good works along our daily paths. We don’t need to go out of our way to find them. But we do need to do them.
Is your life characterized by good deeds? When was the last time you did one? They don’t have to be, and rarely are, anything big. It might be to pray for someone. It might be to help them when they’re in trouble. To feed them when their hungry. To encourage them when they’re down. To give them money when they’re in need. If you can’t think of a time, it’s time for a change. A life without good deeds is not good advertising for the transforming power of God.
We’ve looked at who we are, what we do, how we do it. The only thing left is why we do it. Why do we live such a different kind of life? Why do we advertise God’s excellencies? We do it, verse 12, so that people will glorify God when he comes. There are many aspects of our commitment to the world – more than we have time to discuss now – but at the heart of it is our longing to see the world and all its people restored to the loving Creator.
That longing must not remain abstract and broad. It must become concrete and particular. Ask God to give you someone – family, friend, coworker, neighbor – to whom you can advertise the excellencies of God.
[1] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People (Zondervan, 2010), p. 72
A great cast of characters in literature groan. Romeo groans in his love for fair Juliet. Huck Finn’s pap, with enough whiskey for “two drinks and one delirium tremens,” groans and moans and thrashes about. Jack London’s tyrannical Sea Wolf groans in his horrible suffering. Euripides has the King of Thebes shriek and groan as his end approaches.
Everyone, I suppose, groans, but not everyone groans about the same thing. What causes a person to groan says a lot about the person. To groan from aches and pains, which I sometimes do, is a world away from groaning like Romeo or Huck Finn’s pap or, for that matter, like Jesus.
Jesus groaned? Yes, Jesus groaned on a number of occasions. The Bible tells us that he “groaned in spirit” after his friend Lazarus died and the mourners had gathered. This, however, is not the usual word translated as “groan,” but another that carries a hint of anger. Jesus was angry at death, at the devastation it causes, and the grief.
In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus groaned – some versions translate, “sighed deeply” – when he was about to heal a man who could not hear and could barely speak. We are not told the exact reason he groaned. Was it the man’s disability? Was it the behavior of the people who brought him for healing?
In this case, Jesus looked to heaven – an onlooker might have thought he was rolling his eyes – and groaned. It almost seems that he looked to heaven for sympathy. Was it the pains of earth and the helplessness of its residents that drew this groan out of him?
On the other hand, Jesus would moments later command the people who brought the man not to tell anyone how he was healed, and he knew that some of them would not heed his command. Is that why he groaned? The crowds that now regularly surrounded him made going out in public problematic. Teaching, which Jesus said was one of the reasons for his coming, was treated by some as a mere preliminary of the real business of healing.
In the very next section of Mark’s Gospel, we find Jesus groaning again. This time, the word that Mark uses is intensified by a perfective prefix. Translations try to bring this out by adding an adverb: “He groaned deeply.” Whatever its cause, this groan came, as one Bible scholar put it, “from the bottom of his heart.”
The circumstances here are instructive. Jesus had just performed an outstanding miracle, the feeding of 4,000 people. St. John calls miracles like this “signs” because they point to Jesus’s divine origin and relate important truths about God. Yet, the leftovers weren’t even gone before some religious leaders approached him asking for a sign from heaven.
Jesus had just given people a sign. Was he frustrated that they were not reading it? The wording of the sentence could mean that the religious leaders were asking for a sign that would emanate from heaven. The Old Testament prophets had spoken of signs in heaven, and it is possible that these leaders thought that Jesus, if he were truly the Messiah, should be able to provide one.
However, “from heaven” could also mean, “from God,” for Jews often used a circumlocution to avoid impious talk about God. Either way, on the tails of a major miraculous sign, here were people asking for a sign.
But I don’t think that is what made Jesus groan. I suspect he groaned because he knew that no number of signs would be sufficient to convince people who would rather not be convinced. If a thousand signs would help, a thousand signs would be given. But if they would not help, would never help, no sign would be given.
Jesus went on to warn his disciples against the hypocrisy of these leaders. That, I believe, is what made Jesus groan. He groans when people hide themselves from themselves and from others behind a veil of pious-sounding talk. A sign from heaven was never any problem for Jesus, but the soul-numbing hypocrisy of people was.
These classes are all about what it means to follow Christ today, but we are not following Christ when we refuse to forgive; we are standing still. So many of us have trouble with this, but forgiveness – and the freedom it brings – is possible. In this class, we explore some of the obstacles that need to be overcome in following Jesus as one who forgives.
The Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard once asked, “Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”
I cannot think of anyone but Annie Dillard who could have written those lines, but I can think of many people whom she might have been describing. I have been one of them myself on more occasions than I care to admit.
People of faith routinely underestimate the seriousness of what they do. We say things like, “A person’s immortal soul hangs in the balance,” yet we cast the Creator in the role of heaven’s bellboy, whose purpose is to escort people to their eternal inheritance. We “blithely invoke” a power we have not begun to understand.
Dillard’s “children playing on the floor,” turn the incarnation of Christ into an occasion for schmaltzy movies and white elephant gifts. Few people apprehend the fact that Christmas marks the divine invasion of planet earth and the beginning of a campaign to wrest control from hostile powers.
In the hands of us “cheerful, brainless tourists,” Easter is an opportunity to dress our daughters in pastel-colored dresses and send our kids to hunt for colored eggs. St. Paul, however, saw it as nothing less than the overthrow of death – nothing less, and certainly a great deal more.
People who come to Jesus are not joining a religious club or a theological society. They’re joining the Resistance. They are ordinary men and women who know that things are not the way they are supposed to be in the world and, more importantly, in themselves. They are willing to change, and yet their commitment is not so much to change as it is to their King. They have sworn allegiance to his kingdom.
These men and women are Christ’s operatives in the world. Their role is not to set up a kingdom; Christ will do that. Their job is simple: always keep communication lines with headquarters open and, when a communication is received, follow orders. The Resistance gathers regularly to send communications to headquarters, to receive instructions, and to be encouraged. When they leave their gatherings, they do not leave the Resistance.
They go into their schools, into their workplaces, into public settings and private homes and work for the Resistance; that is, they obey their leader. They make car parts and study history and teach elementary school and drive trucks and wait tables. They do what everyone else does but, unlike everyone else, they are always awaiting instructions from their leader.
The people of the Resistance have confessed their leader Jesus to be the Lord, the rightful king, and have given him their unconditional allegiance. They have entered an agreement with him, an agreement of greatest consequence. In the Bible and in other ancient documents, such agreements are known as covenants. There are numerous covenants in the Bible, but the one that is most important to the Resistance is known simply as “The New Covenant.”
A standard component of such agreements was the covenant meal. After entering into a covenant, the parties would share a meal – the reception dinner that follows a covenant of marriage ceremony is one example. The church participates in the New Covenant meal whenever it takes Holy Communion, also known as The Lord’s Supper, and the Eucharist.
Do those who participate in this ritual understand what they are doing? Are they aware that they are affirming their covenant with the true king? Do they acknowledge those who eat the meal with them as brothers and sisters in the Company of the Committed?
Or are they just mixing up another batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning? But even that would be better than playing with “a form of godliness but denying its power.” Sacred things are powerful things, but they are not, as Annie Dillard wants us to understand, playthings.
The church of Jesus Christ was intended to be a society of forgiveness, modelling God’s forgiven in its relationships with others. This is a chief way the gospel is conveyed. Yet, we are not very good at forgiving. One reason is that we don’t understand what forgiveness is.
In this lesson, Kevin and Shayne look at the nature of forgiveness and explore how we can know if we are following Jesus in this most important way.
The Way Home 