Death: Its Denial and Defeat

Posted on April 9, 2022 by salooper57

In 2013, Google launched “Calico,” a company headed by Arthur Levinson, whose goal is “to solve death.” The biotech company hopes to use technology to combat aging and, in Time Magazine’s words, “defeat death itself.”

Google is not the only tech company trying to defeat death. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has invested in Alto Labs, which believes technology can unravel the mystery of cellular rejuvenation and thus make death irrelevant.

Elon Musk is working on robotic body parts that run on artificial intelligence. He expects that humans may one day be capable of reproducing themselves indefinitely.

In 2016, Stanford Med student Jesse Karmazin founded Ambrosia, a company that sold blood plasma from young donors for $8,000 per liter to wealthy people with the idea it would restore health. “I’m not … saying this will provide immortality,” Karmazin admitted, “but I think it comes pretty close.”

Barbara Ehrenreich sees this attempt on the part of Silicon Valley to deny death as wrongheaded. She writes: “If you are one of the richest and smartest people in the world, death is an insult. Why would you let that happen to you? You’re too special to die.” Such people, Ehrenreich believes, are living in denial.

One would think that Christians, with their belief in resurrection, would have no need to deny death, but the philosopher Simon Critchley says it is not so. Noting that 85 percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, Critchley has written: “…the deeper truth is that such religious belief, complete with a heavenly afterlife, brings believers little solace in the face of death.”

According to Critchley, “the only priesthood in which people really believe is the medical profession and the purpose of their sacramental drugs and technology is to support longevity, the sole unquestioned good of contemporary Western life.” Critchley believes that many Christians are “leading desperate atheist lives bounded by a desire for longevity and a terror of annihilation.”

One Sunday, a few years into my first pastorate, I spoke from the pulpit on preparing for death. After the meeting, an elderly member asked me why someone my age – I was 30 at the time – was thinking about getting ready for death. I told her that I believed it took a lifetime to die well. I still do.

The 19th century literary figure W. R. Matthews wrote, “One day we shall break camp for the last time in this world and face the final adventure of death. May we then have so passed the days of our pilgrimage, with the Lord of adventurers by our side, that we may reach, in the end, our eternal home.”

I’m not quite sure what Matthews meant, though I love his line, “the Lord of adventurers.” I do, however, agree that the way we pass our days now can prepare us for the day we pass the threshold of death. Now is the time we learn to face death and think honestly about it.

No one is a better model for us on how to think about death than Jesus. He clearly thought about it – the New Testament records him using words related to death and dying 86 times – but he was never morbid about it. He viewed death differently than most people.

For one thing, he did not see death as terminal. He said of his good friend’s illness: “This illness will not end in death.” Jesus did not see any illness ending in death because he did not see death as an end.

He thought and spoke of death as an opportunity to glorify God. Death, from Jesus’s perspective, glorifies God because God raises the dead. Further, he knew that people can glorify God by the way they live as they face death. Confidence in God and love for people always honors God, but especially in the face of death.

Nevertheless, Jesus, like a Silicon Valley CEO, viewed death as an enemy. Death made him angry, as the Gospel of John points out. Jesus’s goal, unlike that of the Silicon Valley CEOs, was not to endlessly evade death but to abolish it. He willingly laid down his life so that he could defeat death from the inside. The resurrection is proof that he succeeded.

(First published by Gannett.)

For more information on how Jesus thought of death, click here.

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The Coming of the Spirit: An Essential Part of Salvation (Wide Angle)

Posted on April 7, 2022 by salooper57

(Reading time: 4-5 minutes)

Today we’ll use our wide-angle lens to focus on the strange events that took place on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost during the same year that Jesus was crucified and resurrected.  The word Pentecost is a Greek word that means fiftieth.  In the Bible it is used to refer to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which was held exactly fifty days after the beginning of Passover.  It was a harvest festival, a time when tens of thousands of people came to the capitol city to celebrate, spend time with family, and express thanksgiving.

Among Christians, Pentecost is not a harvest festival of thanksgiving, but a celebration of one of the principal events in the history of salvation: the giving of the Holy Spirit.  God’s plan always – from the very beginning – included this.  If you stop with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus you stop too soon.  The coming of the Holy Spirit is an integral part of salvation.

Now as we take this wide-angle view of things, it is important to remember that salvation refers to something bigger than the forgiveness of sins.  Salvation is not just about getting into heaven when we die; it’s not even primarily about that.  In fact, salvation is not merely “our salvation,” as if we were the main characters. It is “God’s salvation,” for he is the chief actor in all of this.  As the multitudes in heaven say, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Revelation7:10).

The death of Jesus is the high point in the revelation of God’s salvation, but it is not the end point. We must not separate Passover from Pentecost, the Son from the Spirit, or the death of the Savior from the birth of the church.  What God has joined together, let man not put asunder.

We are tipped off to the importance of Pentecost by Luke’s wording in verse 1.  The NIV translates, “When the day of Pentecost came . . .” but Luke is using a formula that he employs elsewhere to denote significance.  The Greek is something like, “The Day of Pentecost being fulfilled…” It is Luke’s way of telling us to pay special attention (Luke 9:51).

On that date “they were all together in one place.”  Jesus had told his followers to wait for the Father’s Promise, and we have already seen that while they waited, they prayed.  There were 120 of them mentioned in chapter 1, verse 15, and in this verse Luke tells us they were all together.

“They were all together” renders a Greek construction that might be translated “they were all the same.” The implication is that they were not simply together in one place, but that they were in the same place with the same heart.  And that is fitting, because the blessing of the Spirit of God is generally reserved for those who are in unity (cf. Romans 15:5-6; Ephesians 4:2-3; Galatians 5:25-26).

So here were the friends of Jesus, waiting obediently and expectantly for the promise of the Father.  They were expectant, but they didn’t know what to expect.  Jesus told them that they would be baptized – immersed – in or by the Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). Some of them probably remembered John the Baptist’s promise that the Messiah would baptize them in the Holy Spirit and fire (Matthew 3:11). What would that be like?  They were expectant, but no one knew just what to expect.

And then it happened.  Verse 2: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”  That was the first evidence that something extraordinary was taking place. 

The disciples no doubt recalled Ezekiel’s Old Testament vision. He saw a valley full of bones – of skeletons.  Then God asked him if the bones could live again, to which he wisely replied, “You are the only one who knows, Lord.” Let me give you what happened next in the prophet’s own words: “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army” (Ezekeil 37:9).

Now in both Hebrew and Greek there is only one word for breath, wind and spirit.  So, the Ezekiel passage could conceivably be translated, “Come from the four spirits, O Spirit, and spirit into these slain, that they may live.”  Here in Acts 2 the wind of the Spirit blows and breathes a new kind of life – God’s kind – into humans.  They heard the noise of a strong wind.  Then, verse 3, “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” In the Scriptures, fire is a recurring symbol of God’s presence, and the disciples knew this well.

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What Was He Thinking? (Jesus on Death – John 11)

Posted on April 4, 2022 by salooper57
(Approximate 27 minutes)

(Excerpt) Have you ever asked, “What was he thinking?” Or perhaps said, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” We ask these questions because something has been done that should not have been done, but the question is just as valid when something good and right has been done.

For example, we might ask, “What was she thinking?” about Lauren Prezioso who was at the beach when she heard a mother screaming. A rip tide was pulling her two boys out to sea, and they didn’t know how to swim. Lauren dove in and rescued the boys, almost drowning herself. By the time she got them free of the current, another rescuer had to save her and the boys. Oh, and Lauren was eight months pregnant at the time. What was she thinking?

We should routinely ask that question about Jesus: What was he thinking? What was he thinking when he hung out with tax collectors and sinners? What was he thinking when he spoke against the nation’s leading political figures? What was he thinking when he approached his arrest, torture, and death, knowing what was in store for him?

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Biblical Theology Class 12: Isaiah 53 (Where Law Meets Gospel)

Posted on April 3, 2022 by salooper57
Viewing Time: 54 minutes (approx.)

Isaiah 53 is where Law meets Gospel. The Law spoke of covenant and sacrifice, including the festival sacrifices of the Passover and Day of Atonement. In Isaiah 53, these separate streams of covenant, Passover, and the Day of Atonement flow together into one great reservoir of fulfillment. They come together in the person of the servant of God.

This class helps us understand how the Old and New Covenants meet in Jesus Christ.

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A Different Way to Read the Bible

Posted on April 2, 2022 by salooper57

(Reading time: approximately 3-4 minutes)

My family started reading the Bible together when I was in middle school. Hearing my dad read the Bible was a new and unexpected experience, one that left a lasting mark on me. We started in Genesis 1, and read one to three chapters a day, immediately after dinner.

Genesis has many fascinating stories I had never heard before. The first 24 chapters of Exodus are chock-full of drama. But then we got to the specs for the tabernacle, and I had trouble paying attention. Leviticus, with its successive pages of ordination ceremonies and purity laws, was almost too much for me.

We stopped reading together as a family about that time. My brother’s health took a turn for the worse and my parents were frequently away from home, spending time with him in the cancer ward of a Cleveland hospital. After he died, we never got back to reading the Bible as a family.

When I was in high school, I met an older man (he must have been in his 30s!) who encouraged me to read the Bible for myself. He gave me some pointers and I, spiritually hungry as I was, decided to give it a try. That began a routine of personal Bible reading that has lasted for nearly half a century.

With all that time spent reading the Bible, one would think that I would have it all down by now. I don’t. I have been an enchanted wanderer in the lush fields and forests of biblical truth, but I spent many years not seeing the forest for the trees. I missed the story within the stories.

There were so many stories, hundreds of them. I had heard of some of them even before I started reading the Bible: Adam, Eve, and the apple (though Genesis does not mention an apple); the parting of the Red Sea; the entry into “the promised Land; mighty Samson and treacherous Delilah; patient Job; the baby who was laid in a manger; and many more.

For years, I approached these wonderful stories as if they were isolated units of devotional material. I would read them to find instructions for living as a student of Jesus, to receive encouragement, and even to hear God’s rebuke. I learned a lot from reading the Bible this way and grew in God’s grace.

However, reading the Bible this way turns it into a spiritual self-help book. Though I was reading the word of God, the focus remained on me: What could I learn and how could I be a better Christian? The stories of Abraham, Moses, David, and even Jesus became fodder for spiritual self-improvement.

There is something right and good about that, but there is also something missing. The Bible is not primarily about me and my spiritual growth. It is much more than the collected stories of spiritual heroes and villains. It is the story of God. He is the hero of the Bible.

If we forget that, the trees will obstruct our view of the forest. We may even miss the beauty of the trees themselves because we are thinking only about what they can do for us – what soothing shade they can provide or how we can use them for building theological cabinets or spiritual fires.

The Bible with its hundreds of stories is really telling the one story of the great and good God. The account of the beginning relates his stunning project to make creatures capable of relating to him and with whom he can live. They are given the lofty role of governing his creation wisely and lovingly.

The next section focuses on the humans’ insurrection and its disastrous consequences. Then follows the Bible’s longest section, filled with stories of God’s intervention to rescue humans from themselves and restore his creation. The Bible closes with a vision of a restored creation and a humanity that is finally capable of living with God.

Seeing the Bible’s larger picture saves us from shrinking salvation to a heavenly passkey. It also prevents us from mistaking the sovereign Lord for a personal spiritual trainer. And it gives us a framework into which our own stories perfectly fit.

(First published by Gannett.)

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The Continuing Presence of Jesus (Wide Angle: Acts 1)

Posted on March 31, 2022 by salooper57

(Reading time: approximately 3-4 minutes)

After Jesus’s ascension, (Acts 1), the disciples “returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath’s day’s walk” – about 3/4 mile – “from the city” (Acts 1:12). How must they have felt as they walked back to the city? What did they talk about? There was something final about Jesus’s departure. They probably understood that they had entered a new phase of life, but how were they to live it? “Witnesses to the ends of the earth”—how were they to do that? What would it look like?

As they walked back to their accommodations in Jerusalem, they had no clue about how to answer those questions. The future was a blank. They didn’t know what their lives were going to look like. All they had was Jesus’ instruction.

They did not know what was next, or what to expect, so they did a wise thing. Jesus had told them to wait, and they did, but while they waited, they also prayed. Verse 14: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

If we are looking through our wide-angle lens, we will see that the era into which they had transitioned – the witnesses-to-the-ends-of-the-earth era – has continued to this day. We, like them, do not see the Lord Jesus in the flesh. We, like them, carry on the commission to be witnesses, making disciples of every nation. We, like them, have the words of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord to guide us.

Don’t forget that Jesus once said, “I tell you the truth: It is better for you that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). The coming of the Holy Spirit ushered in a new era, in keeping with God’s plan. With our wide-angle lens we can see it: God lived with Adam and Eve until the rebellion, when their relationship was broken, and man and God were estranged. The thousands of years that followed, the sacrifices, the building of the temple, the promise of a new covenant was all so that God could live with his people again.

He came to us in Jesus, who was Immanuel – God with us. But as a physical being Jesus could not be with ­a lonely old man in India, a young Christian mother in Ecuador and you in your town or city at the same time. The transition was necessary.  It was better for the disciples; it is better for us, that he went away.

While we have our wide-angle lenses on, it is important to see that even after the ascension, Jesus continues to show up all over the place. Up, up, but not away: because of the coming of the Spirit, Jesus could be everywhere. In chapter 2, verse 47 we find him bringing people into his church: “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” It wasn’t the apostles and teachers and programs that added people to the church; it was the Lord Jesus. In chapter 9, verse 34 we find him healing people: “‘Aeneas,’ Peter said to him, ‘Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and take care of your mat.’ Immediately Aeneas got up.” In chapter 14, verse 3, we find Jesus working miracles among the Gentiles: “Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.” We see the same thing throughout the book.

And that theme continues. Jesus is here, living in his people, acting through them by his Spirit. His ministry on earth, his death, resurrection, and ascension were only the beginning of what he was doing and teaching. He is still at it, and we are invited to join him, to be a part of the kingdom he inaugurated.

(For more Wide Angle posts, type “Wide Angle” into the search box to the top and right of this page.)

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Resistance Is Not Futile: How to Resist the Devil (1 Peter 5:5-11)

Posted on March 28, 2022 by salooper57
Viewing Time: 27 minutes (approximate)

Both Saints James and Peter tell us to resist the devil. How does one do that? 1 Peter 5:5-11 gives us a quick-start guide. This sermon is for those who have joined the Resistance.

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Soul Work: It’s an Inside Job

Posted on March 26, 2022 by salooper57

(Approximate reading time: 3-4 minutes.)

When work needs to be done, but no one qualified is available to do it, it is sometimes necessary for unqualified people to attempt it. I know this from personal experience.

When I entered pastoral ministry, the denomination I served sent me to a little church that was on the verge of closing. Membership was small and most members were on a fixed income, so we were always short of funds. When the roof leaked, I tried to fix it. When the parsonage washing machine stopped, I tried to repair it. When the boiler didn’t heat, I tried to get it working again.

The boiler was old, probably from the 1930s, and had once been coal powered. It had been converted to run on natural gas and, by the time I came in 1981, had a control module to regulate it. It was this module that I would tinker with whenever the boiler stopped working.

I had no qualifications for working on a boiler, unless that it was that I had once cleaned carbon deposits out of the massive boiler tubes where I worked. In my defense, when the church had no heat and no money to pay a repairman, something had to be done.

Once, when all my tinkering failed to restore the boiler to working order, we hired a repairman. I took him to the boiler room, showed him the control module, and waited around to learn what I could. He examined the controls for a short time, then turned to me and said: “Don’t ever touch that again.” Later, when I was coiling his extension cord for him, he took it away from me and did it himself. The look on his face said everything: “You’re an idiot.”

A decade later, in another town, I had a computer that sometimes failed in startup. Once, when my brother-in-law, who was a programmer, was visiting, I had him look at the computer. He got into the root directory and began making changes to the autoexec.bat file as I watched. After that, whenever there were problems in startup, I would enter the root directory and begin making changes.

There came a time when nothing I did would successfully launch the operating system, and I had to ask a friend at church – another programmer – to take a look. He worked intently on the computer for a few minutes. Then, with the same look the boiler repairman had given me, said these hauntingly familiar words: “Don’t ever do that again.”

It’s enough to give a guy a complex. This week, I took it on myself to repair the dishwasher, which wasn’t heating, and which had developed a small leak. I had ordered a new heating element and spent five minutes watching a repair video on YouTube. I removed the dishwasher from the cupboard, loosened the retaining nuts, removed and replaced the heating element, then put it all back together. We tested it the next evening. It didn’t heat and the leak was a little worse.

I am afraid of the look the repairman is going to give me. I am planning to busy myself in the other room until he leaves.

Many people who would never think of repairing boilers or rewriting root directory files assume that ordering their spiritual lives is a piece of cake. Yet the complexity of a human soul is far greater than that of boilers or computers, which can be repaired by an outside professional. The soul is an inside job. It is something we must do ourselves.

But we needn’t do it alone. Others with more experience – established believers, pastors, and spiritual directors – can guide us. Older generations of Christians referred to this guidance as “soul work” or “the cure of souls.” It is wise to seek guidance, but others cannot do the work for us.

We must do the work ourselves, yet it can only be done in cooperation with God. The instruments used in the cure of souls routinely include Scripture, prayer, meditation, and select spiritual practices, but such practices are not substitutes for confident interaction with God. They are rather a means to it.  

(First published by Gannett.)

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The Psalms: Biblical Theology Class #11

Posted on March 24, 2022 by salooper57
Viewing Time: Approximately 51 minutes

The Psalms: the role they play in worship, personal devotion, and the attainment of wisdom. This class looks at how the psalms have been used by believers through the years and gives today’s believers ideas for benefitting from the Psalms in their own lives.

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Pastors’ Motives: A Sermon based on 1 Peter 5:1-4

Posted on March 22, 2022 by salooper57
Viewing Time: Approximately 23 minutes.

Excerpt from Pastor’s Motives (1 Peter 5:1-4).

Peter operated from a mind that had been saturated with thoughts and ideas that had come from Jesus. You could say that he had (in the words of St. Paul) “the mind of Christ.”

Why take time to expound on this? Because I am afraid that some of us have the mind of Fox News or of MSNBC. We can (and do!) repeat their talking points but we cannot repeat Jesus’s talking points! Our minds are saturated with ideas that did not come from Jesus and, in some cases, conflict with his ideas. And we probably don’t even know it.

I mentioned the news shows, but the entertainment shows – the primetime sitcoms and dramas – can also fill our minds with ideas of what is normal and good. The mind forms around what it takes in. We will think the thoughts and take for granted the assumptions that have been filling our minds. That is how humans were designed. Why is that important? Let’s take Peter for an example. He had a mind that was saturated with the wisdom of Jesus. He looked at life through the lens of Jesus’s teaching and example. Because that was true, when the crisis came in his life, he acted like Jesus.

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