In the church, the Advent season has always been a time of waiting. On the Church calendar, Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. So, we wait. That is countercultural. Society does not wait.
Walmart doesn’t wait. They are plugging Christmas before the Thanksgiving turkey has been carved – or butchered, for that matter. The radio stations don’t wait. They begin playing Christmas music in November. The retailers don’t wait. Black Friday sales start weeks before Black Friday. The economists don’t wait. They’re publishing the Christmas economic outlook before Advent begins. If Mary had been like us, she would have delivered Jesus a month before arriving in Bethlehem—and that would have messed everything up.
We are not good at waiting, but God is. If we are going to get along with him, we must learn his ways. This is not because God is pokey but because we are his people, under his direction, like an orchestra under its conductor. It is (this is Colossians 3:12) “as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved” – because we are his people – that we “put on … patience.”
Still, a year is a long time to wait for the end of the pandemic and four weeks seems a long time to wait for Christmas. But consider how long God waited for Christmas. He began his Advent preparations thousands of years before Bethlehem’s silent night.
In the rubble of the Fall, a ray of light already beamed. Even before the curse fell on the man and woman, God spoke a word of hope: The serpent will bruise the heal of the woman’s offspring, but he will crush its head. Evil will not and cannot remain forever.
St. Paul says that God announced the good news in advance to Abraham that he would bless all the nations of the earth. Think about how long in advance that announcement was made: 2,000 years. God is not in a hurry.
To David, a millennium before Christ, God made a promise: his descendant, God’s king, would rule forever. From Isaiah, hundreds of years before the angel’s announcement in the skies of Bethlehem, the joyous gospel rang out: “Your God reigns. Your God returns. Your God redeems.”
Consider what this means. The patient God, the waiting God, the timely God was making preparations for millennia. I mentioned those preparations in the lives of Abraham, David, and Isaiah, but there were many others: Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and finally Malachi, who wrote the words we read earlier 400 years before Christ. God did not rush. He had no fears. His timing was perfect.
I have a favorite recording of the Beethoven Sonata Pathetique (or Sonata No. 8) played by my favorite Beethoven interpreter, Alfred Brendel. I listened to a different recording a while back and was left with the impression that the pianist was on amphetamines. Her dexterity was impressive. She played so quickly that her hands must have been a blur above the keyboard. But where was the feeling, the passion, the character of the piece? Brendel can also play with incredible speed when that is called for; but it is not always called for.
God’s timing is even better than Alfred Brendel’s. He doesn’t just hit all the right keys; he hits them in perfect time, sometimes with incredible speed. “In its time,” he says, “I will do this swiftly” (Isaiah 60:22), even in the blink of an eye. But God never gets ahead of himself. He is the master of timing. He doesn’t rush.
Christmas is the great example. St. Paul could say that it was “when the time had fully come” – not a moment before, not a moment later – that “God sent forth His Son…” (Galatians 4:4). God’s timing will likewise be perfect in the final movement of this great piece he is playing. Gentle and strong, slow and fast, adagio and allegro –even prestissimo. I expect there will be times when his hands will be a blur above the surface of the earth.
One of the most repeated sayings of 2020 must be: “I can’t wait until things get back to normal.” I’ve said it myself, or something like it. You’ve probably said it too. We’re Americans. We can’t wait in the best of times and COVID-19 has not been the best of times.
We not only dislike waiting; we fear it. We fear being left out in the cold. Whenever there is a surge in the pandemic, we rush off to the grocery store, afraid that if we wait another day there will be no more toilet paper. We speed off to the Speedway station because we heard rumors of a gas shortage.
The psychologist Noam Shpancer has written, “We respond strongly to—and synchronize quickly and powerfully with—our immediate, current context. When we have one dollar, having two dollars is a dream. When we have a hundred dollars, having two dollars is a nightmare. Our current context dominates our experience. We forget the past, can’t wait for the future, and interpret all of life by our current context.”[1]
We can’t wait – even for God. Why is he taking so long? Why isn’t he, like us, rushing around in a dither – doesn’t he care? Where is the God of justice?
But the Bible tells us that God is patient. Right after clarifying that “The Lord is not slow [but] … he is patient,” the Apostle Peter tells us why that is important: because “…our Lord’s patience means salvation” (2 Peter 3:15), St. Paul praises the “riches of [God’s] … patience” (Romans 2:4). When Peter wrote in his first letter that God is patiently waiting for people (1 Peter 3:20), he was echoing the prophet Isaiah: “…therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isaiah 30:18). How about that? We thought we were waiting for God, and all this time he has been waiting for us!
“We … synchronize quickly and powerfully with our immediate, current context.” We can hardly see beyond tomorrow. But God takes the long view. He sees the end from the beginning. There is no uncertainty with him, no fear, and no hurry. The better we know him, the more we acknowledge him in daily life, the more we become like him: confident and unhurried.
Worshipers take on the characteristics of the god they trust, whether that God is the Lord or an idol. The psalmist (Psalms 115 and 135) wrote: “Those who make [idols] will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” But it is also true that when we trust in God, we become like him: “…we, who with unveiled faces all contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness” (2 Cor. 3:18). That why “…he who believes [in God] will not hurry” (Isaiah 30:18). Those who trust in God become like him; and he doesn’t hurry.
[1] Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., “Lessons From the Pandemic: What Coronavirus Reveals About Us,” Psychology Today (3-23-20)
Religious people can be odd. Saints can be downright strange. If there are any contemporary saints trending on Twitter or YouTube, it is more likely because of the weird things they say and do than in spite of them.
During the third week in Advent Season, the Common Lectionary’s Gospel readings are all about John the Baptist, whose life is celebrated each year in preparation for Christmas. If one of the qualifying marks of sainthood is strangeness – and such a case could be made – John must be at the head of the class.
He was born to aged parents. Were his birth to occur today, we would call it a miracle of modern science. When it occurred, friends and family simply called it a miracle. At some point, John moved from his Judean countryside home to the rugged desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. His diet was odd – he ate locusts and honey. His wardrobe was odd – he wore camel hair clothing. His life work was odd – he dunked people in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of sins.
John’s was a strange life and also a strange death. When he stuck his prophetic nose into the king’s so-called private affairs, the king cut it off. Well, not just his nose but his whole head. The king only did this because his stepdaughter – at her mother’s request – put him up to it.
Even John’s burial was unusual. His grieving friends had to go to the authorities – not the coroner but (quite possibly) the executioner – to request his body. As far as we know that body still rests in some ancient grave, absent its blessed head.
Why is this man, so odd in life and in death, renowned among Christians? He is recognized for his special connection with God. He was spiritual from birth. He received and recognized a calling early in life. He had remarkable spiritual discernment, hearing God speak to him and understanding what he said. He possessed vibrant faith.
He was also extraordinarily courageous. It takes courage to be different. It takes courage to speak against injustice to those who are unjust. John fearlessly confronted oppressors. It takes courage to speak truth to power. John did not hesitate to call out even the king himself.
John the Baptist is rightly celebrated for his uncommon humility. For a while, John was the most talked about man in the country. He was a first century superstar, an A-lister, a household name. He had an impressive number of followers long before Twitter.
That kind of thing can go to a person’s head. It is a narcotic of sorts. Take it away, and a person can go through withdrawals. But not John.
At the height of John’s popularity, a new figure burst on the scene. He took John’s message, expanded on it, and drew even larger crowds. John’s deputies complained to their leader that the new guy was syphoning off their audience. Presumably, they wanted John to sanction some new business plan for regaining market share.
Instead, John said to them (my paraphrase): “I told you that I was only the opening act. He must increase. I must decrease – which is just what makes me happy!”
Like all the great saints, John faced obstacles. He was arrested, incarcerated, and treated as a political prisoner. He was nevertheless content, for he had completed his calling to prepare the way for the true king. The man who would not be king followed the would-be king’s – that is, Jesus’s – progress from his prison cell. And that’s when he began to experience doubts.
Why was Jesus not doing the kinds of things kings do? Had John been mistaken? What if he had prepared the way for the wrong person? Thrown into doubt, he sent a message to Jesus asking if he really was “the one.” Even superstar saints sometimes doubt.
Jesus sent back an affirmative answer. Yes, he was the one. What happened next is awe-inspiring. Fully aware of John’s doubts, Jesus offered this assessment: “Of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist.”
John was a humble, strange, struggling man. He was also preeminent among the heroes of the faith.
(If you prefer would prefer to listen to this sermon, you can find a link at the bottom of the page.)
John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:7-14)
V. 8: “Produce fruit in keeping with (or worthy of) repentance.” When I read this in preparation for today’s message, I couldn’t help but wonder why fruit production isn’t automatic in people who have repented. Why should John have to tell them to produce fruit? If they’ve repented, shouldn’t that just happen?
The answer has to do with the nature of repentance: it isn’t a one-and-done thing. Repentance – a rethinking of your life in the light of previously unrealized truth – takes time to process. Repentance is like a sunrise. It brings light to a mind that was previously dark, but the mind is a vast, undulating landscape. Repentance won’t shine on it all at once. Today the sun rose at 7:14 in New York City, but not until 8:02 in Coldwater. It takes time for the earth to turn into its light. It is the same for the human mind, with all its vast reaches. It takes time for the light of repentance to reach across it or, rather, for the mind to turn fully into the light.
Let me illustrate it differently. Larry Knapp and I were in a taxi in Dakar, Senegal, a metropolitan area of two-and-a-half million people, with hundreds of thousands of cars and hardly any traffic lights. There were hundreds of intersections with neither traffic light or stop sign. Then there were intersections with more lights than seems possible. Larry and I were in the last car in a caravan of taxis, taking us back to the place we were staying, but we got separated from the others in a roundabout. When our driver finally got out of the roundabout the other taxis had vanished. He entered a narrow alley and stopped. (We didn’t know what he was doing.) He rolled down the windows and pulled in the side mirrors, then he hit the gas. The G-force was like the Demon Drop at Cedar Point.
About a half an hour later, I had a repentance moment; that is, the light of a previously unrecognized truth began to shine: it became apparent to me that our taxi driver, who didn’t speak English or even French, had no idea where he was supposed to be taking us. That truth dawned on me our third time down the same street. Repentance happens when one realizes one’s true position in the dawning light of truth. I was granted repentance. I knew we were lost. But I didn’t know what to do about it; didn’t know how to produce fruit worthy of repentance.
John did not think of fruit production as automatic. It is something he told people to do, which means there must be some intent on our part. It is not all up to us – thank God, or we would have no hope – but we do have a part to play. We must bring our lives into line with our beliefs. When we realize – and this happens to repentant people repeatedly, across the years, from spiritual nativity through spiritual maturity – that our practice doesn’t match our profession, our life doesn’t match our doctrine, our walk doesn’t match our talk, we take steps to change. An unchanging Christian is an oxymoron. Christians must always be in the process of change for, as St. Paul says, we are being changed into the image of Christ, from glory to glory. We cannot be set in our ways and expect to know his ways. We can’t be stationary and follow Jesus at the same time. It takes a lifetime to take a life and make it fully God’s.
That’s not what we want to hear. We want a shortcut: religion or church or some spiritual practice that we can do and be done. People in John’s day felt the same thing. They wanted to rely on something else, something easier – in their case, their Jewish heritage – to make things right. So John says to them: “Don’t even begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our Father.’”
Many Jewish people believed they would be “grandfathered in” to the Kingdom of God through their connection to Abraham. They thought that admittance into God’s kingdom – being accepted by God onto his side – hinged on one’s ethnic heritage. If you were a Jew, you were in, unless you did something stupid and became a heretic. But John would have none of that. People were counting on the fact that they were Abraham’s children, but John told them they were the children of vipers – of snakes. Now God will even accept snakes if they are willing to become real men and women, but he will not run a DNA test to decide if they’ll get in. He doesn’t accept people on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Of course, people in our day already know that. The idea that acceptance with God could be race-based is anathema to us. But do we substitute some other identity marker in the place of Jewish ethnicity? We might. We might think, “I’ll be alright because I am a church member.” Or because I am a preacher’s kid. Or because I’ve gone to church all my life. God will take me in because I’m a Calvinist or an Arminian, a Presbyterian or a Free-will Baptist.
Listen: God will take you in because you are blood-bought. Because Jesus died for you. You don’t get into God’s kingdom – you’re not accepted onto his side – because you’re religious or because you are a church member. God doesn’t check to see if you’re good looking, or rich, or poor, or smart, or Catholic, or Protestant, or white, or black. Stop depending on such things. Depend on God who gave his Son Jesus Christ so that you could join him. Trust him.
The people John was talking to thought, “We’re alright the way we are. We don’t have to do anything.” John says: “Think again. The axe is already laying against the tree trunk. It’s just a matter of time before the Woodcutter goes to chopping.”
John is letting them know a time is coming when it will be too late to make changes. The time for change is now. Later may be too late.
John was like the guy we used to see regularly in TV shows and movies and comic strips – the guy who wore the sandwich board sign that read, “The End Is Near.” The guy was always a comic relief figure. He was a joke, a crazy person, and we all knew it. The end is near … that’s just nuts.
But it’s not nuts; it’s biblical. John the Baptist believed it. So did Jesus. So did the Apostles Peter and Paul. They all believed a day is coming when it will be too late to change sides. Call it “the end” or call it “the judgment”—call it what you will; it’s coming, and John was ringing the fire alarm. He urged people to rethink their lives in the light of it.
And people in John’s day connected to that message. They felt it was true, but that’s not always been the case. It was in John’s day; the message it home. The same was true in St. Francis’s day and Martin Luther’s day. It was so in the 1830s through the turn of the century in our country. But at other times and in other places that same message has failed to connect. In Malachi’s day, people dismissed it. Toward the end of St. Peter’s life, people scoffed at it. People living in Rome when St. Thomas Aquinas was on the scene, made light of it. And that message certainly does not connect with most Americans in the early years of the 21st century.
There seems to be a time when the Lord may be found and a time when he may not be. Remember what the prophet said: “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). There have been historical eras when many people sought and found the Lord; when he was near, and many people turned to him. There also have been eras when that was not the case, though even then there are personal moments when God draws near and individuals realize the message is true.
The people who heard John understood he was telling the truth, but they didn’t know what to do about it. The sun was rising but they didn’t recognize the landscape or know how to travel it. They chose to align themselves with God and his cause, but they didn’t know how to go about it. So they asked John (verse 10), “What should we do then?”
John’s response has implications for us. It helps us understand how to produce fruit worthy of repentance. He told the people, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” In case you’re wondering, John is not advocating socialism. If he were, he would say, “Force the man with two tunics give up one.” But he is not talking to the state here; he’s talking to people.
But neither is this capitalism. John does not say, “Let him who has two tunics recognize a financial opportunity in the limited supply and high demand.” It is not eastern bloc socialism nor Western-style capitalism John wants; it is kingdom of God love. Repentance – the rethinking of your life in the light of God – opens your eyes and heart to the people around you and to the God who watches over you.
Notice that John didn’t give people some traditionally “religious” thing to do. When they asked, “What should we do?” he didn’t answer, “Fast for a week, spend the night in contemplation, read the Bible through, light a candle, say a prayer.” John understood that repentance doesn’t lead us to go somewhere else to do something religious. It causes us to live differently right where we are. If John were talking to us, and we asked, “What should we do?” he would tailor his response to our setting. He probably wouldn’t say, “Go to a monastery and take holy orders.” He’d say to kids, “Treat your parents with respect. Let your sister borrow your clothes.” He’d tell adults, “Use your bonus to help your neighbor who is unemployed. Drive your aunt to the doctor. Spend time loving and interacting with your family.” Repentance works itself out right where we are as it moves us to where we should be.
Verse 12 is surprising. The last people we would expect to connect to John’s message, the most despised people in Israel, the tax collectors, came asking for guidance: “What should we do?” 99 out of a 100 people in Israel in John’s time would have said, “Quit working for the Roman government. Give up being a tax collector.” But that is not what John said. He told them, verse 13, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.” Once again, he understands that repentance tales place where a person is, not where he ought to be. Repentance is the most practical thing in the world.
Verse 14 is just as surprising as verse 12: “Then some soldiers asked him, ‘And what should we do?’ He replied, ‘Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.’” These soldiers may have been Jews. Herod had some troops stationed in Judea and, if these were his troops, they might have been some of the same men who would soon be sent to capture John and detain him in Herod’s prison. But they may also have been regular Roman army, Gentiles from the Syrian garrison.
Once again, John met them right where they were. He didn’t tell them to do anything that was too difficult for them. He didn’t tell them to leave the military, for example. They were soldiers, and it was as soldiers that they would produce fruit worthy of repentance.
In those days, as in ours, most soldiers were stationed far from home and had no connections to the people living around them. Soldiers often bullied locals and some even extorted money from them. If locals didn’t pay “protection” money, soldiers would report them for anti-government activities, which was a capital offence. Soldiers frequently complained about their pay. At the beginning of Tiberius’ reign, there was the famous “frontier mutiny,” that began as a protest by soldiers over their pay but turned ugly and led to many deaths.
So, John tells them to stop strong-arming people and be satisfied with their pay. Again, repentance works itself out where people are, in their daily lives. John didn’t demand anything that was impossible to do, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. If you have two tunics and you give one away, you’re going to have to do the wash twice as often, and your wife may be mad at you. Your friends may make fun of you. If you’re the only tax collector who isn’t getting rich, who is not doing what everyone else does, your peers won’t want anything to do with you. If you’re a soldier who doesn’t act like the other guys, you’ll get mocked and harassed.
There is a cost to joining God’s side but there is also gain. You get a much simpler life. You get hope. You find friends who are real.
Repentance helps us rethink our lives in the light of the God who sees us and not just through the eyes of the people around us. If you only see yourself through the eyes of the people around you, you will never be free. You’ll never be yourself. Without repentance you cannot become your true self. May God give us the blessed gift of repentance!
If I see myself through your eyes, I will be limited by your expectations. If I see myself through God’s eyes – even though that reveals all the bad stuff – I will be stretched by his plans for me. I will become more than I could ever be without repentance. God, give us the blessed gift of repentance!
But even when we see previously unrecognized truth, we may not respond in the best way—we may not produce fruit worthy of repentance. The fire alarm may wake us up, but we may go back to sleep or head back to familiar paths. Research shows most people don’t respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead of leaving a building immediately, they stand around and wait for more information. In 1985, a fire broke out in the stands of a soccer match in England. When the television footage was examined, it showed fans took a long time to react. They didn’t move towards the exits until it was too late. 56 people died.
Research also shows that when we do move, we tend to follow old habits. For example, most people try to exit through the same door they entered, even when a nearer exit is available. A fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky left 177 people dead. Forensic experts believed that many of the victims tried to go out the way they came in, even though there were fire exits. They got caught in a bottleneck and couldn’t get out it time.[1]
What is there for us today in this strange prophet’s ancient message? I’ll mention three things. First, there is a fire coming, a fire of judgment and a time of change, and John sounds the alarm. That warning is at the heart of the Christian gospel and our hearts tell us it is true. Don’t try to escape it by going back the way you came. There is a nearer door, the only one that works: Jesus. Go through him. He once said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved…” (John 10:9). Go to him. Join him. Ask him to take you in.
Then ask God for the blessed gift of repentance for yourself and for your friends. You can’t manufacture it, any more than you can manufacture the sunrise, but you can enter it. You can see what to do in its light. If you think there is nothing for you to do, that is proof positive you need to ask God for repentance.
Finally, start where you are, otherwise you’ll never start at all. Start living out what you know in your home, in your closest relationships, and where you work. If your faith doesn’t even make it home with you today, it’s not realistic to think you’ll make it to heaven with it someday.
The county in which I live has the second highest positivity rate for COVID-19 in the entire state. The county with the highest rate is right next door. Our governor has extended the restrictions placed on gatherings. The compulsory closure of businesses continues.
With businesses in our state and around the country shuttered, Congress is still at an impasse over the next coronavirus relief plan. They will almost certainly agree to something – political survival likely depends on it – but it will be too late for many businesses and the people they employ.
More bad news. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other infectious disease specialists are expecting a surge of coronavirus illnesses just in time for Christmas. Doctors and politicians are urging families to avoid holiday gatherings this year. The effect of a COVID-19 Christmas on relationships, suicide rates, and the economy is unknown but ominous.
We live in a constantly changing story and, in America at least, we do not agree on what the story is. Is it the story of a convincing victory by the Democratic presidential contender or is it the story of massive voter fraud and an election hijacking? Is it the story of a devastating pandemic or of media hype?
Because we cannot agree on the story, we can hardly talk to each other. There was a time when there was broad consensus on the outlines of the American story. Certainly some of the plot lines – who was best qualified to carry the story forward, for example – were open to debate, but we mostly agreed on the story’s major themes.
This was largely true of both men and women, home-grown and naturalized citizens. Because of slavery, black Americans saw the past differently, as did people of Indigenous American descent, who were subject to broken treaties, theft of land, and mass extermination. But even within these groups, the future story held a similar shape.
If America is to move forward together and thrive, Americans need to share the same story. It must be an inclusive story, one that takes in men and women, birthright citizens and immigrants, people of different races, ethnicities, and religions. To accomplish this, we need more than a Commander in Chief in the White House. We need a Storyteller in Chief.
Donald Trump has not been that kind of president and I don’t know that Joe Biden fits the role either. But if Americans continue telling different stories, they will continue going different directions, and we will be indivisible no more.
Some Americans, however, have a resource that others lack: faith. They know themselves to belong to a larger story, a metanarrative. The remarkable chronicles of the United States and those of all other nations are but subplots in a story that began before the Americas were “discovered” and will continue into the age to come.
Christopher Wright, the Director of Langham Partnership International, frequently asks people, “What story are you living in?” A person of faith is able to give an answer that goes well beyond saying, “I’m living the COVID-19 story,” or “I’m living in the story of the return of nationalism,” or even, “I’m living the story of a terminally ill person.” They can say, “I am living in the Creator’s story and, though it is filled with ups and downs, it has a happy ending.” Knowing their story enables them to understand their identity and grasp their hope.
Philip Greenslade believes it is possible to “indwell” the biblical story in such a way that a person begins to “look out from the biblical world with new eyes onto our postmodern lives.” People who live this way stop “trying to make the Bible relevant” to their lives and instead find their lives “being made relevant to the Bible.”
Wright adds, “Our lives should be governed by this great, overarching story of the Bible. Our present should be shaped by the biblical past and the biblical future. This is our narrative. This is who we are…”
We cannot know who we are until we know what story we are in. If it is the biblical one, as I believe, its climax has been reached but not its end. There are good things ahead.
Between now and Christmas, I will post audio of the Adventure sermons from 2018. The series is meant to prepare worshipers to celebrate Christ’s birth and anticipate his return.
This first sermon finds striking similarities between the world in our day and the world in the days of John the Baptist and discovers that his prescription for an unhealthy world is still the best one available.
Watch here (sermon starts at 24:01 and last approximately 30 minutes) or read below.
(1 Cor. 15:1-5) Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
All writers – whether they are writing plays, novels, essays, textbooks, comic books, cookbooks, or the First Epistle to the Corinthians, it doesn’t matter – write with an awareness of what is coming. When the Apostle Paul started this section we know as chapter 15 – but really, when he penned the first words of this long letter to the Corinthians – he knew where he was headed. He knew he was going to write about the resurrection.
It was one of the chief reasons Paul wrote this letter in the first place. There were people in Corinth who were distorting the teaching of the resurrection and misleading church members – quite possibly in the public meetings Paul described in the previous section.
Paul knew that people who get the resurrection wrong will get lots of other things wrong too. If you are working on the most complex differential calculus equation ever and get 2+2 wrong, you will get everything else wrong as well. What basic addition is to mathematics, the resurrection is to faith in Jesus.
Yet it is worth noting that Paul, while taking the Corinthians’ error very seriously, does not condemn people for their wrong thinking. He doesn’t tell them that they will be accursed unless they get the doctrine of the resurrection right. It is not Paul does not use that kind of language; he does, just read Galatians. But he reserves it for people who abandon Jesus, not for people who get their theology wrong.
On the Sunday before Easter, a Sunday School teacher asked her class of four and five-year-olds: “Does anyone know what today is?” A little girl’s hand shot up and she said, “Today is Palm Sunday.”
The teacher said, “That’s right, Kara! That’s very good. Now does anyone know what next Sunday is?” The same hand shot up again. After waiting to see if any of the other children wanted to answer, the teacher said, “Yes, Kara?” And Kara proudly answered, “Next Sunday is Easter.”
“That’s right,” the teacher said. “And does anyone know what happened on Easter?”
Of course it was Kara who answered. “Jesus rose from the grave.”
But before the teacher could congratulate her on yet another right answer, she went on: “and if he sees his shadow, he has to go back in for seven weeks!”
That teacher didn’t kick Kara out of the class for getting the wrong answer and neither did Paul kick the Corinthians out of the church. Wrong answers call for instruction rather than discipline because it is faith in Jesus, not doctrinal correctness, that is necessary to salvation. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best to get our doctrines right, nor does it mean that we, if we get our doctrines wrong, won’t lose out because of it. Errors are costly.
Some of the Corinthians were getting the resurrection wrong, which is why Paul reminds them of the gospel of the resurrected Christ, which the apostles preached, they believed, and on which they had taken their stand (1 Cor. 15:11). But after Paul moved on, some of the Corinthians melded the gospel with popular beliefs in a way that was distorting the gospel.
The melding of ideas from different belief systems is called syncretism. That word is generally used to describe the blending of ideas from different religions. When I was in Senegal, I met people who identified as Muslims but who thought nothing of offering sacrifices to dead ancestors, a practice that has no place in Islam. Haitian Voodoo is the classic example of syncretism, blending elements of African and Caribbean religions with Catholicism.
But just as dangerous (and far more subtle) is the kind of syncretism that threatens us. It blends contemporary cultural beliefs with faith in Jesus – and it is not the cultural beliefs that suffer under that arrangement. Then Christianity becomes a component in a larger belief system. This was characteristic of the post-war United States in which I grew up. Many well-meaning people regarded Christianity as an important part – but a part nonetheless – of “truth, justice, and the American way” – and thought they were giving Christianity a place of special honor by doing so!
But Christianity, if it is truly faith in Jesus, doesn’t work that way. It is the belief system into which everything else either fits or falls away. If the American way can fit into faith in Jesus – wonderful! If not, it is the American way that needs to go.
In recent decades, the American way has included a politics of condemnation, a sexual libertarianism that resists all limits, a knee-bending devotion to the economy, a worship of youth and health, an addiction to distraction, and a rejection of aliens, which, in some cases, calls the baby in her mother’s womb an alien.
To discern what fits and what does not fit into the way of Jesus can be extremely challenging. We should expect that. We were born into a belief system before being born again into the faith of Jesus. We were immersed in that belief system before we were immersed in the waters of baptism. Recognizing contradictions under these circumstances takes time, instruction and, most of all, the illumination of the Holy Spirit. This is not something new. It has been true of Christians in every culture around the world and in every era since Christ walked the earth.
It was certainly true in Corinth, where people lived and moved and had their being in the landscape of Platonic idealism. The friends and family they loved, as well as the celebrities and public figures they looked up to, took the truth of their culturally sanctioned ideas for granted. We’ll see how that affected their understanding of the gospel in a moment. But just keep in mind that we live and move in the landscape of post-modern ideals. People we know and respect – family, friends, as well as celebrities and public figures – take for granted ideas that are contrary to the way of Christ. We, like the Corinthians, need instruction and insight from the Holy Spirit even to recognize it.
First century Greeks scoffed at the idea of resurrection. When Paul spoke about resurrection in Athens (just 50 miles from Corinth), people sneered and called him a babbler. It was crude. It was 300 years out of date. Are there really people who still believe that stuff? Let that sink in: 2,000 years ago, people were thinking, “We’re too advanced to believe that kind of stuff anymore.”
Isn’t it interesting that people today repeat those same lines with the same supercilious arrogance, only now it is faith in God, biblical inspiration, and Christian sexual ethics they mock? I have been ridiculed by readers who have accused me of being ignorant, unsophisticated, and simply irrelevant because of my faith in Jesus.
The Corinthian Christians found themselves in a bind. The gospel they believed and on which they stood declares that Christ was raised from the dead. There is no wiggle room there. Yet their culture regarded a belief in resurrection as primitive and anti-intellectual. So some of the Corinthians compromised. They engaged in syncretism.
They continued to affirm the gospel truth that Jesus the Son of God died and rose from the dead but they also affirmed the culturally accepted view that humans are bound for a bodiless afterlife in a platonic heaven, where they will live a purely spiritual existence, free forever from the bondage of physical matter.
They managed this seeming contradiction by holding that Jesus’s resurrection was a one-off event. Yes, the Son of God rose from the dead but the rest of us don’t rise. Only people stuck in the past, uneducated and naïve, could believe such a thing in today’s world.
The subjects have changed in the last 2,000 years but the attitude hasn’t. People aren’t mocking resurrection these days, but if you believe in a Creator God, practice sexual chastity, and uphold the value of the nuclear family, you’ll draw the same kind of comments. If you can’t stand being called simple or unsophisticated, you are going to have a hard time following Jesus.
With that warning, let’s look at Paul’s argument. He raises the subject of the gospel in verses 1-11 not because the Corinthians didn’t believe these things but because they hadn’t thought through what they believed and what it meant for their daily lives.
This first section’s key verses (in terms of literary construction, not theology) are verses 1 and 11. Verse 1 is: “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.” Verse 11: “Whether, then, it is I or they,” (that is, the other apostles) “this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.”
Do you see what Paul was doing? He had known when he started this letter that he needed to address the issue of resurrection. But before doing so, he wants to remind the Corinthians of two things: (1) that all Christians everywhere hold the resurrection to be an indispensable part of God’s good news; and (2) that the Corinthians themselves believed it and took their stand on it. Paul is not saying, “I want to convince you of something new,” but “I want you to know what it means to believe what you say you believe.”
He places in front of the Corinthians a truth they would not and could not deny: they did believe that Christ rose from the dead. Given that they still believe it, his reasoning goes like this (this is the argument of verses 12-20): If you believe Christ rose from the dead, you must believe that you too will rise. Your resurrection and his are indivisible. If you admit his resurrection, you must expect your own. If you disavow your resurrection, you have disavowed his, as well. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have Christ’s resurrection without yours. “If (and this is the big if) we have been united with him like this in his death (through faith in Christ), we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). The two are inseparable.
Throughout this carefully worded argument, Paul never refers to Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection as if they were two different things. Jesus’s resurrection is a part of the resurrection. Or it might be more better to say that the resurrectionflows out of Jesus’s resurrection. The two cannot be isolated from each other any more than a sunbeam can be isolated from the sun. One resurrection, two phases. Paul is adamant: Christ was not merely raised; he was the beginning of the resurrection. As I’ve said before, Jesus was the first stone in an avalanche.
Why is this important? Because resurrection is about more than a spirit being reunited to a body following death, which seems to be what the Corinthians were assuming (and what many contemporary Christians assume as well). That is far too individualistic a way of looking at it. Resurrection is the pivot on which God’s program to “make all things new” turns. It is the key event in God’s plan to bring blessing on creation. Resurrection inaugurates the new age, begins the Great Renewal, and forms the bridgehead by which the kingdom of God breaks into our world. When we say we believe in the resurrection, this is what we mean. This is why resurrection is gospel – good news.
Most of Paul’s fellow Jews already believed something like this about resurrection. What they didn’t realize was that resurrection had already begun … in Jesus. That was the Christians’ stupendously good news. It was not just that people go on living after they die – most of the world believed that then and believe it now! It was that the new age, the age of God’s kingdom and the Renewal of all things, had already kicked off …when Jesus rose from the dead.
Because Christ’s resurrection and ours are inseparable, the Corinthians’ claim that we will not be resurrected was tantamount to saying that God doesn’t reign, doesn’t win, and the good news of the kingdom is a baseless rumor. But the gospel announcement is that Christ “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Do we know what that means?
It does not mean – as is often taught – that the spirits of faithful people get to live forever in “future disembodied bliss.” That was Plato’s heaven, not St. Paul’s. Paul would not even have considered such spirits saved, because they would not be saved from death and corruption.[1]
If the resurrection is nothing more than spirits flying off to heaven, then God has given up on earth and on his plan for universal blessing. He has settled instead for shuttling decent people off the planet before it blows. He has given up on creation, on his covenant promises, and on bringing all things together under one head, even Christ. Apparently that was too ambitious a goal. He wasn’t able to pull it off.
But resurrection is much more – and far different – than shuttling disembodied spirits off to heaven. Resurrection means God has begun the rescue of his people. He has neither given up nor has he given over his wayward people to death. Resurrection means he is keeping his promise.
Do you see? God has not abandoned us in life – in this messy life with viruses and cancers and divorces and injustice and doubt. And he will not abandon us in death. “For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death” (Psalm 48:14). And beyond.
The resurrection means that Jesus and no other is the Son of God, the Messiah. Right at the beginning of Romans, St. Paul lays this out. He claims that Jesus “…through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4). There is more in that one verse than we can possibly unpack in the time we have, but I’ll mention a couple of things.
The resurrection demonstrated that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. Son of God was one of the titles Jewish people gave to Israel’s messiah, whom they expected to establish God’s kingdom over all the nations of the earth. Because of this, the resurrection was political dynamite. It’s no wonder the government in Israel was so anxious to squelch talk about Jesus rising from the dead.
But if Jews called the Messiah the Son of God, guess who the Romans (to whom this letter was written) called the Son of God? Nero Claudius CaesarAugustus Germanicus, also known as Our Lord Emperor Son of God. Uh-oh. Jesus Son of God and Nero Son of God, and neither brooks any rivals. From the very beginning, Jesus claimed his follower’s loyalty over all others – even country, even family.[2] Opponents tried to use Christians’ loyalty to Jesus against them, dragging them into court and charging them with treason: “They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus” (Acts 17:7).
Caesars and Sadducees then and government leaders now are never happy with people who put loyalty to Jesus before loyalty to them. In ancient Rome, citizens throughout the empire were required to offer an annual sacrifice to Caesar, bow to him, and confess him as “lord.” Things haven’t changed much. Today, the Chinese have a massive loyalty program in place for their people. North Koreans are ranked on their devotion to the Kim dynasty.[3] If people insult the president of Azerbaijan, they can spend up to two years in prison. In Venezuela, it is up to 40 months, Bahrain as much as seven years.
Leaders live in fear of being ousted from power. Our leader does not. The invasion has begun, the great battle won, the turning point in the conflict is past. All nations on earth, all people on earth, will bow their knees – not to Caesar, not to Kim, not to China, not to America but to the powerful Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The resurrection means that his kingdom has been inaugurated. We’ve seen D-Day, and we are waiting, working, and hoping for Victory Day. The resurrected Christ is unstoppable. Because Christ has been raised, we will be raised. Because Christ has been raised, death itself is neither deterrent to our obedience nor threat to our success. Because Christ has been raised, our end will be better than our beginning.
The resurrection does not mean that we get to go on living after we’re gone (though we do). It means that we can start living while we’re here. And it means we have something worth living – and dying – for: the kingdom of God and its king, Jesus Christ our Lord, who “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
[1] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 332
Christian faith is often pictured, by Christian and non-Christian alike, as a kind of insurance policy that secures a person on Judgment Day from a guilty verdict and a sentence of eternal damnation. Some people choose to purchase the policy, some choose not to, and others ignore it altogether.
This picture misrepresents the story the Bible actually tells. It is a caricature, having less to do with what the Bible says than with the concerns we bring to it, chief of which is saving our own skin. Or, failing that, our own soul.
God wants to save our souls and our skin even more than we do, hence the importance of the biblical doctrine of the resurrection. But God has other concerns as well. Humanity is but one part, albeit an important part, of the larger creation which God, according to the biblical revelation, intends to save and restore.
If asked, many people – both those who attend church and those who don’t – would say the whole point of Christianity is to get into heaven. Death is looming, eternity awaits, heaven is the much-preferred destination, and Christianity offers an affordable plan for getting there.
Were someone to lay out this synopsis of the faith to St. Paul, he would not recognize it. If we told him we had come to this understanding through his letters, he would be appalled.
Christianity purports to explain how to come to God, not how to get to heaven. People who have no interest in coming to God will certainly not find heaven to their liking. This is hard for people to accept or even to hear, since so much of western Christianity, both pre- and post-Reformation, has been focused on getting to heaven.
Does this mean that heaven and the afterlife are just a myth? Not at all. The Bible presents heaven as a real, joyous, and glorious place. But God’s goal for humans involves much more than mere relocation, even to a better neighborhood. His stated goal for humans is that they should live and reign with him, they as his people and he as their God. God himself, in all his boundless joy and endless energy, is humanity’s future hope.
Because so much attention has been focused on how to get to heaven, many people have missed the biblical teaching that heaven is coming to earth; this despite the fact that tens of millions of us regularly pray, “Thy kingdom come.” “Going to heaven” only make sense when a person has aligned with heaven’s kingdom here on earth, joined God’s people, and committed to his cause.
Imagine working for Citizenship and Immigration Services where it is your job to decide whether people are granted citizenship or not. There are criteria on which to base this decision but, even so, you are often uncertain about what is the right thing to do. There are times, however, when the decision is perfectly clear.
Such was the case when one applicant bluntly stated: “I don’t believe in this country. I won’t sacrifice anything for this country. I believe my country of origin is better and I will serve that country and be a propagandist for it.
“Further, I cannot promise to be loyal to this country, knowing that prior allegiances may get in the way. And I admit that I intend never to pay a cent in taxes to this country if I can possibly help it. However, in accordance with Article 8, section 1, clause 4 of the U.S. constitution, I am applying for citizenship and the privileges it entails. I ask you to grant it.”
What would your decision be? I know what mine would be.
Do we think God’s decision should be different? Should he grant us kingdom citizenship while we are serving another kingdom? Have we any right to expect a place in the very command center of his kingdom?
The good news is that God wants to confer kingdom citizenship on as many people as possible, but he will only do so if they will confess Jesus as Lord. No one can enter God’s kingdom while refusing to be ruled by its king.
This is our sixth sermon in a series titled, Finally, Some Good News. We have been seeing what the good news is, according to the Bible, learning why it is good news, and figuring out what we ought to do about it. The last time we dug into this, we looked at the astonishing first bullet point in St. Paul’s summary of the gospel, “Christ died for our sins.” We want to go further today and try to get a handle on the explanatory phrase, “according to the Scriptures” and the second bullet point, “was buried.” We will take the burial first.
I know that means going out of order, which will drive some of you to distraction, but the inclusion of the burial here powerfully illustrates a truth we looked at several weeks ago, so going there first will serve as a brief review before we move on. Besides that, the line about Jesus’s burial frequently gets skipped over altogether. But Paul included it, as did each of the Gospel writers and, what’s more, Paul even mentioned it his evangelistic preaching,
But why? What is there to say? He was buried. Stuck in a hole in the ground. There is not a lot of color commentary to go along with that. When preachers go to their illustration files for something to highlight the burial, they usually come up empty-handed.
In the recent past, historically speaking, some preachers and apologists have focused on the empty tomb as proof that Jesus rose from the dead. Those who deny Jesus’s resurrection, they say, need to explain the empty tomb. And people have tried. Some suggest that the women, confused and overcome by grief, simply went to the wrong tomb. When they didn’t find Jesus’s body, they recalled something he had said and jumped to the conclusion he had been resurrected.
There are all kinds of problems with that theory, starting with the chauvinistic assumption that women are overly emotional and directionally challenged. But even if these women were, the disciples who buried Jesus knew where his body lay. And so did the authorities, who were desperate to squelch the news that he had risen. If they could have refuted the error – “Those over-emotional, directionally-challenged women went to the wrong tomb; it is as simple as that. His body is right where we left it” – they would have.
Others have suggested, including Israel’s leaders at the time, that the disciples overpowered the Roman soldiers who were stationed there, removed and hid the body, then claimed Jesus had been resurrected. Again, there are all kinds of problems with this theory, beginning with the idea that a few frightened disciples with two swords between them could somehow overpower a Roman military unit.
But besides that, as Kevin pointed out three weeks ago, everyone of those disciples endured torture and/or execution because they insisted that Jesus rose from the dead. Th torture and executions didn’t happen all at once but over a period of decades and across thousands of miles. The idea that these disciples would die independently of each other over numerous decades for what they knew to be a lie is simply unbelievable.
There is much more that could be said about this. The burial of Jesus, when combined with the empty tomb, is a compelling argument for Christ’s resurrection but that is not why Paul includes it as the second bullet point in his gospel summary. As an apologetic for the resurrection, the empty tomb argument didn’t develop until much, much later. The biblical writers simply didn’t think of it that way.
Then why does the burial merit a place in this brief summary of the gospel? That takes us back to something we saw earlier in the series. The gospel is an announcement of something that has happened. It is not an advertisement. It is not an argument. It is not the offer of a sweet deal. It is a news report. That is why the burial is included. It happened. It was part of the story.
Some of them – Joseph and Nicodemus – were the ones to perform the burial. Some of them – the two Mary’s, Joanna, and others – watched as Jesus’s body was placed in the tomb. The inclusion of the burial in this brief summary reminds us that the gospel is the announcement that something tangible, actual, has happened in real time, something orchestrated by God.
But before he was buried, Jesus “died for our sins.” That was the first bullet point. The Messiah, the kingdom-of-God-bringing king, died. The words “Christ died” feel like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The Christ doesn’t die! The very idea is preposterous. When, in John 12, Jesus signified the kind of death he was going to die, people responded this way: “What are you talking about? We have heard in the law that the Messiah will last forever” (John 12:34).
Yet the gospel announcement is that Messiah died. The rescuer was killed in the act of rescuing people. The king died at the very moment of establishing his kingdom. It is the Bible’s most unexpected twist – unexpected by us anyway. But it was not unexpected by Jesus. He had been warning his friends about what was coming for months.
Nor was it unexpected by God. He knew “before the creation of the world” that his anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah, would die for sins. That had always been the plan. So Paul says, “Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3).
That prepositional phrase has sent preachers and Bible scholars scrambling through the Old Testament in search of the texts that Paul had in mind. And the idea wasn’t just in Paul’s mind. All the disciples shared it. Jesus himself had told them, “This is what is written [in the Bible]: The Messiah will suffer and rise” (Luke 24:45). To Cleopas and his friend Jesus said, “How slow you are to believe the prophets. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things?” (Luke 24:25).
But where in the Old Testament is it written that the Messiah would suffer these things? The hunt usually begins in Genesis 3:15, with the curse of the serpent: “he (the offspring of the woman) will crush your head, and you will strike his heal.” We find symbolism in Genesis 22, when the beloved “only” son Isaac is offered as a sacrifice. We go to Psalm 22, with it odd lines about pierced hands, “counting all my bones,” and laying in the dust of death. Psalm 69 mentions being given vinegar to drink, which, of course, happened to Jesus on the cross. We turn to the symbolism of Jonah, which Jesus himself sanctioned when he said, “As Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). We find Zechariah’s prophecies of the gentle king who is pierced. There are many others.
Yet, more than any other passage, we think of Isaiah 53, which is quoted directly by New Testament writers on six different occasions. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). “…the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). “…he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death” (Isaiah 53:9). “Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days” (Isaiah 53:10). “…he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12).
We know the Gospel writers had these texts in mind because they referred to them again and again. Yet when Paul says, “according to the Scripture”; when Jesus said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44); they both had more in mind than isolated texts which in hindsight appear to refer to the Messiah’s death. When Paul writes, “according to the Scripture,” he has in mind the story the whole Bible tells.
Remember that Paul was writing this to Gentiles living in Corinth, some of whom had never seen or heard the Bible before he arrived. With his help, those Gentiles had learned how to read the story of the Old Testament. More than that, with his help they were learning how to read that twisting story of sin and rebellion – and redemption – as their story.
Now they had a story long before Paul arrived with the gospel. They were Corinthians. Their city had been around for thousands of years. They had one of the most prestigious universities in the world. They had the Corinthian Games, which rivalled the Olympics and drew elite athletes from around the Mediterranean. They were affluent and influential and cosmopolitan. They were also an economic powerhouse.
The Corinthian story was impressive. When people asked, “Where are you from?” the first readers of this letter could answer proudly, “I’m from Corinth.” Their people had fought successfully in the Peloponnesian wars. They were part of the Achaian League. Their entire city had been rebuilt in 44 B.C. and was, in Paul’s day, a modern, beautiful, thriving place.
But Paul was teaching the Corinthians to locate themselves not on the Isthmus of Corinth but in the pages of the Bible. How absolutely crucial that is to success in the Christian life. They might be proud of Corinth’s history, but when they joined Christ it was the Bible story that became most important for them. It was the Bible story that revealed their true identity. The Bible story signaled who they were now.
The same thing is true of us. It is absolutely crucial that we find ourselves in the pages of the Bible. The most important parts of your story (if you are a Christian) didn’t happen in Michigan or Indiana or Ohio. They happened in Egypt and Babylon and, especially, in Israel. They didn’t happen in your lifetime. They happened thousands of years before your introduction into the narrative. They didn’t happen because of something you did. They didn’t happen because of something your parents did. They didn’t happen because your grandpa fought in the Battle of Midway, or George Washington led the charge at the Battle of Monmouth, or Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
I’m not saying you should not be proud of your grandpa or your country or your state. I’m saying you should be even prouder of Jesus. Your identity has much more to do with the victory won at Calvary than the victories won at Midway or Saratoga. Our story is the story of the Bible and that is where our identity is found.
Our story is the story of Adam and Eve, the rebels who rejected the rule of God, were exiled from the Garden, and found themselves under the curse. But the story of sin, loss, and alienation – which has been repeated in every human life – doesn’t end there. It goes on to tell of the God who refused to give up on his creation, who chose Abraham and made a covenant with him to reverse the curse and bring blessing to all the people of the earth. It is the story of slavery and exile, but also of redemption and rescue, and it is our story.
Someone might say it is the worst kind of cultural appropriation to filch the story of Israel for ourselves. But this isn’t Israel’s story. It is God’s story. He brought Israel into it through Abraham, and he brought us into it through Jesus, and the story continues to this day. Did we think the world started with us?
It is a story of exile – lostness, weakness, and oppression by powers greater than us. (That is Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Chronicles.) But it is also the story of redemption, release, and return. (That is Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah). It is especially the story of the return of the King and the establishment of his kingdom (2 Samuel 7; Isaiah 52; Daniel 7; Zechariah 12). And we have a place in this story.
The gospel, the good news we share, is always the good news that God’s kingdom has arrived though Jesus Christ. That is the “according to the Scriptures” story. “Christ died for our sins” means what it means according to the Scriptures”; that is, within the story of the restoration of God’s rule – his kingdom – over all the earth. Because he died for our sins, we can be admitted into God’s kingdom as citizens and agents.
But for what sins did Christ die? Surely a little anger, sloth, pride, lust, or greed isn’t enough to bar a person from God’s kingdom? Why, everyone on earth is guilty of such things. If God were to exclude us from entering his kingdom because of sin, there would be no one in his kingdom!
That’s not true. There still would be one person in the kingdom: the messiah, the servant of God, the promise keeper, the covenant mediator, the Rescuer-King, Jesus. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). He was what God’s people were meant to be. He did what God’s people were meant to do. He is Israel personified. He is humanity summed up.
We fail to understand why sin should be an obstacle to the kingdom of God because we don’t know what sin is. We think of sin as an I shouldn’t have done that but I’ll do better in the future kind of thing (though, left to ourselves, we won’t do better in the future because sin always grows deeper in and further out).
But sin doesn’t keep us out of God’s kingdom because it is a mistake but because it signals a rebellion. Sin is a seed that bears bitter fruit – greed, lust, anger, sloth, and pride – but the kernel of that seed is always rejection of God’s rule. Our story is about people – starting with Adam and Even but continuing right down to us – who turn away from God and reject his rule.
It is the story of humans suppressing the truth, ignoring God, and replacing him with other gods, ones they themselves have made. You say, “That was thousands of years ago when humans were superstitious and illogical. 21st century people don’t do that kind of thing.” But I say, “The gods have always been shape-shifters and they are as present today as they ever have been. In the prophets’ day, Baal and Molech were among the gods that could make someone successful. People sacrificed a great deal to them, on occasion even their own children. Today the shape-shifting gods have assumed other names: education, economy, science, and politics. If you think people aren’t still sacrificing to these gods – sometimes even their own children – you are fooling yourself.
I’m not saying that education and science and these other things are bad. Quite the opposite: In themselves they are good and it is important we understand that. But when they become a substitute for the God who made us; when we trust in them instead of him; when we turn from him to embrace them – which millions of people across our country have done and are doing – we are on the wrong side. C. S. Lewis was right: “…fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must laydown his arms.”[1]
Imagine you work for Citizenship and Immigration Services and it is your job to decide whether someone is granted citizenship or not. One person you interview tells you: “I don’t believe in this country. I won’t sacrifice anything for this country. I believe another country is better and I will serve that country and be a propagandist for it. I don’t promise to be loyal to this country and, if I can find any way around it, I will never pay a cent in taxes. However, I am applying for citizenship and the privileges it entails and I think you should grant it.” What would your answer be? You know what it would be.
But we want God’s answer to be different? We want him to grant us kingdom citizenship when we are serving another kingdom? God wants to grant us kingdom citizenship, but only if we will confess King Jesus as Lord. We simply cannot enter God’s kingdom if we refuse to be ruled by Jesus. That is a contradiction in terms.
Yet that is the nature of sin – to refuse, reject, and replace God. Do you see? We are still in “the according to Scripture” story – the kingdom of God story of rebellion and ofredemption, of sin and of the Rescuer-king who dies for our sin. And, because it is still going on, it can also be the story of forgiveness, a new start, and a life that is finally on track for those who give their loyalty to “Christ [who] died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.”
[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; repr., San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 56.
2020 has been called the annus horribilis (“the horrible year”) and described as hellacious, apocalyptic, awful, and exhausting. The pandemic rages on, with some areas seeing higher infection rates than ever before. Many people are out of work and out of money and, as the coronavirus spikes, some are out of time.
Those who manage to avoid the virus can’t sidestep the measures taken to prevent its spread. In my state, restaurants are closed, mask requirements are in place, high schools and colleges have moved online, and theaters are shut down. Sports stadiums are empty. Churches, like ours, are seeing half their members attending worship gatherings.
Experts warn that the pandemic is causing anxiety, stress, stigma, and xenophobia. A review published in The Lancet linked an increase in mental health problems to the boredom, loss of freedom, and uncertainty caused by quarantine. Children and teens are most at risk.
We have heard the welcome news that an effective vaccine is around the corner, but many Americans are wary of taking it. Even those who are eager for the vaccine may be looking at the summer of 2021 before they are able to get it.
As if the pandemic was not bad enough, there was also the election. Usually after a general election, the nation recovers and, to some degree, reconciles. This year’s election did little to decrease divisiveness but rather increased it. Many people have lost faith in the election process, while others have doubts about the transition process.
The pandemic brought many things screeching to a halt. One thing that did not stop was war. There are serious conflicts in Yemen, Afghanistan, the South China Sea, on the Indo-Tibetan border, in Mali, Nigeria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. If only countries and warring tribes would practice greater social distancing.
This year has earned the title of annus horribilis for many reasons, most of which can be located under three categories: loss of comfort; loss of faith; and loss of hope. The first category includes sickness, bereavement, financial need, isolation, stress, and the other physical and emotional conditions that have accompanied the pandemic.
The second category includes loss of faith in experts and authorities. How, under the circumstances, could it not? So-called “expert opinion” can be claimed for almost anything one wants to believe in both science and politics. Experts contradict each other and sometimes themselves – witness the changes regarding the effectiveness of masks and the length of quarantine periods. Who can one trust?
The third category, loss of hope, seems to me to be the most devastating. People can live and even thrive with pain, but without hope they can only shrivel.
So, should we forego Thanksgiving in 2020 and try again next year? Or is it possible to expand our field of vision and find things for which we can genuinely be thankful? That may depend on the person. As someone who believes in God and a larger spiritual reality, I find gratitude not only possible, but also reasonable and powerful.
It is possible to be genuinely thankful in painful circumstances, as long as we retain our faith and hope. I have known people, characterized by friends and family as spiritual, who have demonstrated not only gratitude but joy in the midst of pain. I saw this repeatedly when I worked with Hospice and have seen it many times since.
These thankful people were people of faith. They might not have trusted the experts and authorities, but they had a robust faith in the Expert and Authority – in God. They trusted his intentions, his ability, and his character. Whether they lived or died, they were convinced that God was for them and would take care of them.
They were also hopeful people. It is inspiring to be around someone with a terminal diagnosis who is nevertheless overflowing with hope. I have sat with them, their hope undiminished and their faith unshaken, even as death stole into the room.
If what they (and I) believe is true, we have good cause for faith and for hope. Giving thanks is more than reasonable; it is warranted. Even in 2020, the annus horribilis.
The Way Home 