Saturday, December 12, 2015

From Many Exhortations to Joy (A Homily for Gaudete Sunday)








  

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18





The Prophecy of Zephaniah begins with a message of horrific judgment upon the surrounding nations of God’s people. In Zephaniah chapter one, the Lord declares:
I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth,”I will sweep away both man and beast;I will sweep away the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble.
The great day of the Lord is near—near and coming quickly.
....
That day will be a day of wrath—a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness—a day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers. I will bring such distress on all people that they will grope about like those who are blind, because they have sinned against the Lord.
Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like dung.
Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath.

In the following chapter, chapter two, Zephaniah then tells the people of God to watch and listen carefully to these judgments of God pronounced upon the surrounding nations. He tells the people of God to be humble and to keep seeking the Lord, searching out those things which He has commanded them to do. Zephaniah warns them to seek justice with humility in order to receive shelter on the day when the Lord comes to judge the nations (2:3).

After these instructions to Israel, Zephaniah's message becomes more specific about every thingmore specific  about which nations would receive the Lord's judgment and why they would be judged. We see that God's holy fury is against the wicked nations surrounding His people.

Our attention is first directed to the land of the Philistines with a description of God coming to visit them in his wrath, laying waste to their major cities with their temples and all their false gods (2:4-5):
Gaza will be abandoned and Ashkelon left in ruins. At midday Ashdod will be emptied and Ekron uprooted! Woe to you who live by the sea, you Kerethite people!The word of the Lord is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines!
I will destroy you, and none will be left.

Next, the Lord moves on to other surrounding nations of Israel, to the Moabites and Ammonites, who insult God and His people, boast in the power of their own idols, and threaten to conquer Israel's God, bringing them all under their rule (2:8-11). To that the Lord responds, saying:
I have heard the insults of Moab and the taunts of the Ammonites, who insulted my people and made threats against their land.Therefore, as surely as I live, surely Moab will become like Sodom, the Ammonites like Gomorrah—a place of weeds and salt pits, a wasteland forever.

The idea, again, is to emphasize their complete destruction as a powerful civilization and nation that had become morally bankrupt.

After this the Lord moves on to the people of Cush and their soon-coming destruction as a nation. Then He moves on to the Assyrian empire, because they were a people who reveled in their safety, making claims about their uniqueness and greatness as an empire. Assyria says to herself, “I am the One! And there is no one besides me!” (2:15) Does that sound like any nation you know of?

This is interesting, and dare I say, damning, because the Lord is truly the one Sovereign and only One. There truly is no Sovereign one beside Him who can compete with Him or defeat Him. Nevertheless, Assyria had grown in its imperial might, wealth, and prestige to the point of thinking so highly of itself, that they considered themselves uniquely mighty. They alone, supposedly, were great. So the Lord declares to them:
I will stretch out My hand against the north and destroy Assyria, leaving Nineveh utterly desolate and dry as the desert.
Flocks and herds will lie down there, creatures of every kind.
The desert owl and the screech owl will roost on her columns.
Their hooting will echo through the windows, rubble will fill the doorways, the beams of cedar will be exposed.
This is the city of revelry that lived in safety.
…What a ruin she has become, a lair for wild beasts!

The feeling that God’s people are supposed to have regarding all of these judgments is fear and awe. Alongside this there is supposed to be a sense of respect for what God promised to do to those wicked nations. From this it's clear that God has never been ignorant or indifferent about evil in the world. God sees how nations and people treat each other. God knows their entertainments, their idols, their indifference to His truth, their boasting against Him, and their persecution of His people. The Lord knew that the Assyrians, the Moabites, and Philistines were a people who would not humble themselves before Him and obey His commands, worshiping Him alone in His holy temple. They would not seek God on a path of humility with the meek and lowly. They were proud of being high and mighty. They would not seek God on a path of justice with the poor and outcasts of society. Instead they paved their own way to success by plundering their neighbors. That is why, on that “Day of the Lord” spoken in the first chapter of Zephaniah, the Lord promised to come and visit those nations and clear a path of holiness for Himself to walk on. If the nations would remain stubborn and rebellious, set on paving their own ways of evil and destruction, the Lord would come and bring destruction upon their cities and all of their evil ways. And it would be terrifying. When we look back at the history of these ancient nations, after the time of Zephaniah, we can see their complete and utter destruction as spoken through the Prophets, and it's not a pretty picture. The Lord most certainly did bring their evil and destructive ways to ruin.

So far, the word of the Lord through Zephaniah is powerful and dreadful. It's a message which, if we were the people to whom the Lord spoke these words, we too ought to be fearful. This is important to keep in mind because it is in light of this dreadful message that we find our lectionary reading for today (3:14-20). Intriguingly, that reading is not about dreadful judgment, but rather, is about rejoicing. However, before we get to the part about rejoicing, we need to remember carefully what the Lord had said to His own people back in chapter two. Recall that brief warning I cited earlier in passing (2:3). Speaking to the people of Jerusalem, Zephaniah said: 
Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands.Seek justice. Seek humility.
Then you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.

The reason why I'm stressing that particular warning to God's people is because of what comes next in Zephaniah's prophecy. In order to appreciate the message of great joy pronounced to God’s people, we need to empathize with those people who were willing to seek God with humility.

After denouncing Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Cush, and Assyria, and just before God's people hear the great news of salvation and rejoicing, Zephaniah cries out one more time this way:
Woe to the city of oppressors! The rebellious and defiled! She obeys no one! She accepts no correction!She does not trust the Lord!She does not draw near to her God! Her officials within her are roaring lions!Her rulers are evening wolves who leave nothing for the morning!Her prophets are unprincipled! They are treacherous people!Her priests profane the sanctuary and do violence to the Law! The Lord within her is just.He does no wrong.Morning by morning He dispenses His justice.Every new day he does not fail, yet the unjust know no shame.

For those who are new to the book of Zephaniah and his message, you might be thinking that this message is not surprising at all. It sounds like the same message of justice and judgment, re-hashing the same old news to the surrounding nations. But it's not.

When we look closely at this message, this is the climax of Zephaniah's entire message, and it's not at all directed at the surrounding nations of Israel. It is a message directed at Israel. It's about the people of Jerusalem. When the prophet cries out, "Woe to the city of oppressors! The rebellious and defiled!", that is a woe to the people of God's land. When the Lord describes them as accepting no correction, of having civil rulers who strip their people of sustenance, leaving them in poverty, that's a description of civil rulers in Israel. And when God condemns the people who lie and deceive and use perverse speech to promote greater injustice, God is condemning people who carry His name among them

This is not a light matter. The people of God were addressed at the climax of Zephaniah’s message because they were the most peculiar people in the world at that time. They were a peculiar people chosen out of all nations by God, and set apart to be like God—to be Godly. But here, at the climax of Zephaniah’s message, we see that they have become just as ungodly as their surrounding nations.

The Lord continues speaking through Zephaniah, saying:
Of Jerusalem I thought, ‘Surely you will fear me and accept My correction!’ Then her place of refuge would not be destroyed, nor all my punishments come upon her.
But they were still eager to act corruptly in all they did.
Therefore wait for me, for the day I will stand up to testify.
I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms
and to pour out my wrath on them—all my fierce anger.
The whole land will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger.
On that day you, Jerusalem, will not be put to shame for all the wrongs you have done to me, because I will remove from you your arrogant boasters.
Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill. But I will leave within you the meek and humble.
The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord.
They will do no wrong; they will tell no lies.
A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths.

The Lord is coming, Zephaniah says. He is coming to visit the nations surrounding Israel, but He is also coming to visit the city where His name dwells, the city of Jerusalem where both His people and his own house reside. And when he comes, Zephaniah says, the fire of His jealous anger comes with him, consuming “the whole land” because the whole land of Israel had become accustomed to their own defilements, approving of their own evil desires, just like their surrounding nations. A terribly jealous fire comes with the Lord's visitation, but here at the end of Zephaniah’s message we learn that His visitation of fire does much more than destroy cities and their buildings. Above all the things which the fire of God brings, most importantly it brings purification.

When the Lord comes to visit His people, the lips of His people are cleansed so that they can call upon Him with thankfulness, serving Him without defiled offerings of speech (3:9-11). The Lord says to them, You will not be put to shame (v. 11). I will leave within you the meek and humble (v. 12). They will do no wrong. They will tell no lies. A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths (v. 13).

Notice carefully that when the Lord gathers the nations together for judgment, He has no intention of destroying His own people in their midst. His judgment included the land of Israel and the people of Israel, but the remnant of His people were purified by His visitation. So in that “Day of the Lord” which Zephaniah spoke about (that day when the people of Jerusalem saw their own city and temple brought to ruin by the Babylonian armies, and the subsequent deportation into Babylonian captivity), that was not the destruction of God's people. That was the destruction of all their idols and entertainments, basically the entire world as they knew it, but it wasn't the destruction of God's people. God was destroying all the vain confidence they had in themselves, and their arrogant boasting like the nations around them. God was destroying their love for lies, and their deceitful tongues, promoting gross injustices and treachery toward their neighbor.

It is in that context in mind that we finally reach our reading for today. It is in the context of God visiting His people to change the way we live our lives—to think and live Godly again—that Zephaniah proclaimed God's good news:
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel!Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!The Lord has taken away the judgments against you!He has cleared away your enemies!The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst!You shall never again fear evil! On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:“Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will direct you by his love; He will exult over you with loud singing. I will gather those of you who mourn for the appointed time, so that you will no longer suffer reproach.Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors.And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.At that time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes”

When God comes, He comes to clean His house, but the purpose of cleaning house is because He wants to live there. And if His people are going to dwell in his house, they need to be holy and pure even as He is holy and pure. 

Notice carefully that this message is virtually the same as what we find in our gospel and epistle readings for today. In our gospel reading, John the Baptist is approached by the rulers of Israel in his day. And he message is very much like Zephaniah’s. He scolds them for their corruption and vain confidence. You vipers!, he says. Who warned you to flee from God's wrath that's about to fall upon this generation? The axe is already laid to the root of the tree, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Don't say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' so God won't come and cut us down like he does with the surrounding nations.

That was the message of John the Baptist. It was a message of God coming to judge Israel as an idolatrous nation that boasted like all the other surrounding idolatrous nations.  
The crowds then asked John the Baptist, “What then shall we do?”He answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

John's message was about God coming to purify a remnant of people for Himself, and a bunch of people understood that. Notice carefully that when some of the people asked John what to do, he told them what to do. John didn’t say ‘There’s nothing you can do! Just sit back, do nothing, and let God do His thing.” Not only does John not say that, but he says the very opposite of that. It is precisely because God was coming to visit His people that he told them to prepare to meet Him. In preparation for that meeting, he tells them to purify the way they've been speaking, and thinking, and behaving with their neighbors, in their homes, and in their workplace. To the one he says, in essence, help others in need with the abundance of good things that God gives you. If you have two tunics in your closet or enough food for a buffet at dinnertime, don't covet what you have. If one of your neighbors is in need of a tunic (and there definitely is at least one), give one of your tunics to him, and invite his family over for dinner too. 

To you, the tax collector, John says not to collect more in taxes just because you have the power to do so. Don't ever capitalize by an injustice to your neighbor. Even if it’s legal. Even if it’s “safe.” Even if you could move up the corporate ladder by just taking a tiny advantage of your neighbor, don’t do it. Resist that temptation. Don't encourage or advance business policies which exploit the poor and needy.

Even soldiers—military and police men of the region—came to John asking what to do, and notice carefully again that John didn't tell them to stop protecting the peace of the city. He doesn't advocate that they quit their jobs or throw away their weapons. Instead, he tells them to stop their abuse, and the cover-up of their scandalous abuses. He tells them to stop their threats and false accusations, their extortions and discontent. He tells them a message which many people in our American police force need to hear. 

John is directing the people, telling them to turn to God and His ways for purification. He's telling them to seek God's ways of humility and justice, because God was coming to pay a visit. One mightier than him was coming, the strap of whose sandals he was not worthy to untie; and that One comes with a winnowing fork in his hand, to clear the threshing floor of Israel, and to gather the wheat into his barn, leaving the chaff for burning.

Does that sound like good news to you? Do these messages of God, through John or Zephaniah, sound like the gospel of our Lord? Does all of this talk about justice and purification sound like a gospel which helps our hearts rejoice? Our answer might be 'No', but it should be 'Yes'! At least that's what Luke tells us. Luke tells us that this message of purification was essential to the gospel. In verse eighteen of our gospel reading today, Luke says this:

So with many other exhortations John preached the gospel to the people.

God's gospel is, first and foremost, a dreadful message of purification. When we hear about God coming in these terrifying ways, we cringe, as we should. God's good news is that He cares so much about this world we live in, and the sins we persist in, that He doesn't leave us alone in our sin. He comes to change us. He comes to purify nations and cities, villages and towns, neighborhoods and homes, parents and children. He comes to lay an axe to the root of our pride and arrogance. He comes with a winnowing fork in his hand to gather up our heaps of lies, threats, and false accusations, to destroy them. He comes to purify our abusive speech, evil schemes, and unholy discontent. He comes to clean house so that he can dwell with us, in our midst again.

Take a few moments to reflect upon this idea of God dwelling with us. Ask yourselves: When I look around at my surrounding neighborhood and city, does it look like a city filled with people who God wants to dwell with?

Look at the police force in this city, or the military personnel stationed around our state, and ask yourself, Are these people who God wants to dwell with?

Look at the politicians of your city and ask, Are they people who God wants to dwell with?

Last, but not least of importance, look at the people you work with, or those who are just friendly acquaintances here around you in this city. Take a good look at the way they speak, and how they discuss the treatment of others. What are their views about people of color? What do they say about refugees? Is their speech unjust or arrogant? Is their view of our nation like that of Israel or Assyria, that "we" are special descendants of Providence, that “we” are "the one" and there is no other like us? That “we” must not tolerate "them" or that they must become one of us?

Does God want to dwell with people like that? 

Again, our instinctive answer might be 'No', but that kind of answer tells us more about how much purification we need as His people. Our answer should be an emphatic 'Yes' because our God comes into the midst of this messed up world as the One and only, the Almighty One who can save us from the mess we create. Like we saw earlier in Zephaniah, God has no interest in destroying us. Instead he wants to clean up this messed up world. That's why he came in Zephaniah's day, that's why He came in John's day, and that's why the Lord continues visiting His Church throughout all nations today.

When we consider how messy this world is, and how our own lives contribute to that mess, don’t let that become an opportunity of despair for you. Rather, let your conviction of that truth become an occasion to rejoice in the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is an occasion to rejoice because it means that God is coming to dwell among you and in you. Even for those of us who are like the soldiers and tax collectors in John's day, earnestly questioning what it is that we must do to prepare for God to enter our homes and our lives, this is still good news because in our readings for today we are told what to do. We are not left wandering around in despair. We ought to seek the Lord and His ways with humility. We ought to put away the foolish and wicked ways of the world, and instead put on Christ. We know that when God comes into our homes, and into our lives, He comes to clean us up. He cleans us up, not so he can kick us out and boast in his might, but so he can rejoice over us with gladness, direct us by his love, and change our shame into praise (Zeph 3:14-20). 

When you look at the messiness of life, do not despair. 
Turn to God and rejoice in Him always. 
The Lord is very near. So Again I say, rejoice! 
In baptism, our shame has been washed away. 
When we confess our sins together, we are welcome to draw near to Him at His Table, to eat a meal with that One who alone is mighty to save the world
Let that joy be known to everyone. 
With great thanksgiving, direct your prayers to God. 
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

* * * * * * *
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us, and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.







Thursday, November 26, 2015

I'm thankful for


I'm thankful for many things:

For the sound of tiny 3-year-old feet running toward me for a hug, shouting "Daddy!" 
For a daughter who is potty trained at 15 months and just as excited about that as I am
For children who love to sing the Doxology, Gloria Patri, and Nunc Dimittis
For a wife who cares deeply for our family and works diligently to show it. She is beautiful in every way
For my wife's family who cared deeply for her all her life, raising her and shaping her into the godly woman she is today
For my own family that fears God, and takes his word very seriously
For my Puritan upbringing, the Anglican communion in which I now serve, and the entire baptized Body which shares in the same Life
For cassocks, albs, cinctures, stoles, and all those called to wear them
For morning prayer and forgiveness each day
For water, bread, and wine

For eggs and coffee in the morning
For briar, meerschaum, icons, and holy incense
For theologians with great imagination, humility, and charity
For neighbors with whom I disagree about many things, but listen carefully and are teachable
For friends who post blessercise videos for fun (you know who you are)
For Facebook, which keeps me mindful of how little I know, how many half-truths are propagated around the world, and how important face-to-face relationships really are
For elderly friends who care, and the multiple, daily phone calls I receive from them
For the Riverwest Food Pantry and Hunger Task Force
For pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, and the news of another life saved
For water, bread, and wine

For electricity and all the conveniences which accompany that
For text messaging, email, and e-bills
For Netflix and Amazon Prime's exhaustive lists of clean, educational kid shows
For books, children who LOVE them, and a wife who loves our love for books
For smartphones, YouTube, and the global awareness of social injustice
For Twitter, which forces me to condense my thoughts or just shut up
For the few Pilgrims who ate meals peacefully with Indians
For the Indians who showed mercy toward pilgrims despite the horrible treatment they received from Christians
For the few Presidents who acknowledged God's abundant mercies upon such unworthy people
For the water, the bread, and the wine


Friday, November 6, 2015

He still listens




Because of various trials and circumstances surrounding our city, our neighborhood, and the Church, my family (along with others in our church) is setting this day apart for prayer and fasting. Providentially, during morning prayer today, both BCP lectionary readings for this morning involve prayer and fasting. Consequently, I couldn't keep myself from jotting down some of my thoughts about those Scripture passages.

Ezra leads the people with prayer and fasting (Ezra 8:21-36) because he understands that they are truly in danger on their journey back to the land of Israel, back to where God's House is to be rebuilt. As they seek the Lord diligently, He listens to their cry, and provides for them.

Likewise, the Psalmist fasts (Psa 69:10-11) and prays diligently (Psa 69:3) because he is truly in danger. His circumstances are different though. He is in danger day after day because of two things: (1) he manifests an outspoken trust in God throughout the public square, and (2) he makes foolish decisions sometimes. God's enemies exploit both to their advantage, and his shame. Those foolish faults are his own and are not hidden from the Lord (Psa 69:5-6). Yet through his example, we see that when he fasts and prays, the Lord still listens to his cries, and provides accordingly.

These examples not only describe the life and struggles of faith in ancient Israelite experience, but they also foreshadow the life and struggles of all God's children. Even when our fasting is turned into a reproach by our enemies, and society murmurs against us, making songs about us, mocking our trust in Him (Psa69:8-14), we need to remember that He is still listening to all those who seek Him

He is listening to our cries because He understands our sorrow from first hand experience. He made us and He tabernacles among us. He suffered real afflictions of this world because of its foolishness and sin. He remembers what it's like to do good and yet still be mocked and murmured against for his decisions. Zeal for his Father's House consumed him (Psa 69:9; c.f. John 2:17). He understands the feeling of betrayal, and the reward one receives for wickedness (Psa 69:25; c.f. Acts 1:17-20; and Psa 69:22; c.f. Rom. 11:9-10). He lived with our weakness. He hungered and thirsted (Psa 69:21; c.f. Matt. 27:34-48). He lived daily in danger, want, and need.

Today, let's remember that He is still listening as one who deeply knows our frailty and needs. He is with us as we fast and pray. He tabernacles among us and makes room for us, listening to our cries and meeting our needs. He listens and cares because we need Him, and because He knows exactly how much we need Him.



Friday, August 7, 2015

Rules in a real world





Below is an intriguing excerpt about ethics from Peter Leithart's latest book, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience:

   We apply rules differently from situation to situation, and we don’t really know how a rule works or which rule to use unless we know the variations. You don’t even know which rule to use unless you have examined the facts. “Love your enemies,” Jesus said. To apply that, we need to identify our enemies. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said, quoting Leviticus. And the lawyer’s response was a reasonable one: “Who is my neighbor?” “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or his house or his cattle,” Yahweh thundered from Sinai, but you need to see a marriage certificate and a bill of sale to know what woman, house, and cattle are off-limits. You can’t even use a rule unless you know something about the situation, since rules always have to be applied to a real world that is always in the form of a particular situation. 
   Rules cannot be followed without attention to situations, and the effort to sidestep situations is ultimately unethical. It’s another version of the attempt to escape time and change that we’ve seen before. 
   On the other hand, you can’t abandon rules and reduce ethics to situations either. Situational ethics is incoherent.
Master: Always conform to the situation
Disciple: Is that an absolute command?
Master: How 'bout those Seahawks? 
   Worse, a purely situational ethics is ultimately unethical. Are we faithful only when situations demand faithfulness, or is faithfulness a trans-situational virtue? Asked whether rape might be legitimate under certain circumstances, no one will seriously answer, “Yes, of course. There are times when rape is the ethical course.” If anyone does say that, you can be morally certain he is a philosophy professor, that he lives a highly protected life in the academy, and that he would have a very different reaction if the rape victim were his daughter or his wife. 
   Right dispositions are just as necessary. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is wrong because goals and motives determine what kind of action an action is. Taking care of an old lady out of greed for her inheritance is not an act of kindness, or even an act of kindness with a patina of disquieting immorality. It’s a different sort of act entirely, an act of avarice. Conforming to the prescriptions of a religious ritual without real devotion to God is not worship but hypocrisy, a vice condemned by ancient Jews like Isaiah and Jesus, by Christians like Aquinas and Calvin, by the Buddha, Muhammad, and Hindu sages through the ages. Evil dispositions make an act evil, but good dispositions don’t by themselves make an act ethical. We might pity the whore with the heart of gold, but the category of “well-meaning rapist” doesn’t make any ethical sense. 
   So, the only way to be ethical or think ethically about ethics is to juggle all of these factors, to keep all the balls in the air all the time. And here we glimpse again the pattern we’ve encountered throughout this essay, the pattern of mutual indwelling, operating at the level of theory: ethical concepts and ethical authorities have to indwell each other to be truly ethical. If we extract rules from the intricacies of situations and the motivating power of dispositions, the rules are useless. If we siphon off situations from rules and dispositions, we will find ourselves justifying horrors. If we reduce ethics to dispositions, we can defend any action, so long as one’s heart is in the right place. 
   Each has to be defined by the other. Rules apply to situations, and we conform to rules only when our motives and goals are right. Situations need to be seen in the light of ethical rules, since rules are part of the situation we’re in. We can make sense of our ethical dispositions only when they attend to rules and remain attentive to situations. These three are one, because each is a home for the others; each makes its home in each. Unless each dwells in each, we don’t have ethics at all. Ethics is constituted by the mutual indwelling of rules, real-life situations, and virtuous dispositions. When we inquire into the “ontology” of ethics, in other words, we find at a conceptual level the same pattern we found when exploring the world outside our heads. We discover the contours of mutual habitation. Since we’re talking ethics, though, the “is” becomes a “must”: ethics is a study of dispositions, rules, and situations. Ethics also must be such, or it ceases to be ethical.







Monday, May 11, 2015

Where he would start



    To those who are "tired of" all the culture war rhetoric, I have one last point to make. If North America were one vast pagan empire, and the apostle Paul just arrived here, what would he do first? I quite grant that he would not start by circulating petitions against the gladiatorial games. He would start with the foundations, which would be planting churches, establishing worship around the empire, and teaching Christians to live like Christians in their families and congregations. We are going to judge angels, so let's start by learning self-government. If the meek will inherit the earth, you don't start with the inheriting part--you start by learning meekness, which can only be learned through the gospel. So that's where he would start. 
    But if one day we got to the point where there were tens of thousands of churches, and millions of Christians, and the gladiatorial games were still going on merrily, and new stadiums were being built every year, then the only possible conclusion would be that the churches in question were diseased. 
    "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under the foot of men" (Matt. 5:13). 
- Douglas Wilson (from his blog, dougwils.com)






Thursday, May 7, 2015

Be like the eunuch (an Easter meditation)




My wife and kids were all sick this past Lord's Day, so we stayed home and worshiped as a family, using the readings from the BCP as our focus for the day. Below are some of my thoughts about those readings. 

Year B, Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8



Our passage from Acts is well known. Philip receives a message from God, informing him to go south to the road which travels from Jerusalem to Gaza; there he would meet a eunuch and court official of the Queen of Ethiopia, who was in charge of her entire treasury (Acts 8:27). This eunuch "had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah" (vv. 27-8). When Philip meets with him, the eunuch asks about whom Isaiah was referring--about Isaiah himself or another person--when he wrote: 
Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.
Philip then uses that passage of Isaiah to teach him the gospel of Jesus Christ (v. 35). This eunuch then responds with faith in Jesus by receiving baptism (v. 38), and continuing on from there in his travels he rejoices (v. 39).

Upon reading this the first time, what struck my attention first was the fact that this eunuch had just visited Jerusalem to worship the God of the Jews, but while he was in Jerusalem worshipping, none of the Jewish authorities taught him about Jesus, the messiah whom they had recently crucified. The second thing which struck my attention is that he is found traveling away from Jerusalem while reflecting seriously upon Isaiah 53, a messianic passage specifically about "justice being denied" a servant of God, during "his humiliation." These references to injustice and humiliation are particularly intriguing, because Luke describes this man as both a eunuch of the Queen (which, ordinarily, was a humiliating status) and her treasurer; but if this man is a genuine eunuch--that is, a slave surgically castrated according to a King's orders, for the purpose of serving in an official capacity for his wife, the Queen--then he would not have been allowed to enter Herod's Temple, no matter how great his faith was. The Jewish authorities would not allow it, based on their interpretation of Torah. This man's status as a eunuch disqualified him from having direct access to God in Jerusalem's Temple. Although this eunuch was given a surprisingly high status in his own culture, among those of similar faith, he was marginalized; he was forbidden to become a full proselyte of Judaism.1 

This message of marginalization echoes in our other readings for this day. In John's first epistle, he writes to a marginalized Christian congregation, a congregation filled primarily with Jews, but also Gentile God-fearers like the eunuch. John writes to Christians whose faith was being "shaken up" and challenged by anti-Christian Judaizers and proselytes of Judaism. John could not have been any clearer about why he wrote such polemical, black-and-white statements:  
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. (I John 2:26)
These allies of anti-Jesus Judaism were intentionally trying to deceive Christians into believing their worship of God, in Christ, was false worship. Similar to the Jewish authorities who kept the Ethiopian eunuch from learning the gospel of Jesus, so these antichrists are intentionally deceiving the Christians of John's congregation. A few verses earlier (I John 2:18) we learned that "many antichrists have come," and these antichrists infiltrated the Christian community to become "one of them," eventually making it plain among all, when they left, that Christians worshiped another God than the God of the Jews. Christians affirmed the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, and also One-with-the-Father (I John 2:22), which the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem emphatically denied (John 5:18). Christians affirmed that they worshipped God the Father and the Son together as the one true God, whereas these antichrists denied that they could worship both the Son and the Father as one (vv. 22-23). 

While Jesus was among his people, he had spoken clearly about such escalating unbelief in Israel, and that God would come and visit them to prune the vine of Israel, removing every branch in Jesus which does not produce fruit. In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus says, 
I am the true vine, and my Father is the winegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. ...Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:1-6)
This pruning began with the first disciples of Jesus, and the gathering of dead branches culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and its idolatrous anti-Christian Temple in 70 A.D.. Jesus was abundantly clear about this message, as the gospel of Matthew testifies. The epistle of first John was likely written very close to the end of that idolatrous old covenant system, as seen by John's reference to it being the "last hour" (I John 2:18). 

In 2:28 John reminds his congregation about this promise of Jesus to come to them, delivering them from their oppressive enemies (i.e. the antichrists, the anti-Christian Jewish authorities). John says that no one born of God persecutes God's own children, as these antichrists have been doing (I John 3:1-24). Moreover, John commands his congregation to not believe every spirit, because some spirits put on a great show, claiming to be of God while rejecting Jesus as God the Father's Messiah.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. They are from the world...and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 
This is the message which takes place immediately before our lectionary reading today. And so, in light of this marginalization of Christians from Jewish antichrists, I think it's important to notice how John instructs his Christian congregation to respond. He tells them to respond with love toward their brother; and not just any brother. In context John seems to be referring to Jewish brethren, the same brethren who are challenging them to publicly walk away from the Christian congregation with them, back to Jerusalem, back to Herod's Temple where faithful, Torah-keeping "believers" have exclusive access to God, and can draw near to Him with a sacrifice.

From the very beginning, John exhorts his Christian congregation to hold fast to the faith by loving their brothers while resisting the Judaizing cultural pressure to go back and worship the Father in their Temple, where they can offer the old covenant sacrifices of God again. 
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world
John's message was the same as Philip's. God sent his Son, Jesus, the Messiah, into the midst of his own people, to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of Israel, and not for them only but also for the sins of the whole world, even for eunuch's from Ethiopia, who would not have been allowed to draw near to God in Herod's Temple. Even Isaiah prophesied about these days with the coming kingdom of Israel's Messiah: 
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, "The Lord will surely separate me from his people."
And do not let the eunuch say, "I am just a dry tree." 
For thus says the Lord: "To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." 
Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: "I will gather others to them besides those already gathered." (Isa. 56:3-5, 8)
God's love was revealed to the whole world in this way: God sent his only Son into the world to be the atoning sacrifice for its sins, so that the whole world could live through him (I John 4:9-10). God sent his only Son in the world so that the world could no longer find life through the Temple, Torah, liturgy, priesthood, and sacrifices of the Old Covenant. "We have seen and do testify," John says, "that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God" (4:14-15).

In our day and age, nearly 2,000 years past those events of which John spoke, Christians are still confessing the same truths and are still being marginalized by "the world" because of it. Just look at the Islamic terrorist groups in the middle east, terrorizing, torturing, and killing them as enemies of God. Christians confess that Jesus is both Lord and Savior of the world, which includes Muslims too, but some people simply don't want to receive that truth claim. Apart from the vine of Jesus Christ, there is no salvation for the world. Time doesn't change the hearts of people who love darkness, and refuse to step into God's light.  

Even 2,000 years of Church history doesn't change the way brothers treat each other, marginalizing some because of zeal for the truth. Did you ever meet a Christian who behaved that way? Did you ever meet a Christian brother, baptized into the Body of Christ, who turns on you or someone you know, treating them as though they're not true Christians, as though they can tap into the secret councils of Almighty God and deliver His sovereign message about your personal salvation to your front door? Did you ever meet any Christian who marginalized others because that so-called Christian actually enjoys drinking alcohol, and he doesn't think it's sin! Or they enjoy "worldly movies" and entertainment? Or, God forbid, they're Catholic, or Charismatic, or anything that's not in accordance with the true Christian doctrine, and so they know who is and not a true Christian? (That's sarcasm, by the way.)

If you haven't met any Christian brother like that, you are very fortunate. In reality, our so-called "Christian nation" is plagued with unloving, foolishly zealous "brothers" like that. They love you just enough to insult and demean your intelligence, but they have the best of intentions for your soul. Even more unfortunate is the fact that all "Christian" cults in America have been like that too, and they try to recruit Christians out of Trinitarian churches to save them by joining their cult. They tell you you need to use their rituals to draw near to God. You need to abide by their laws to be saved. You are welcome to feast at the table of their god once you repent and believe what they believe, as they understand "belief" to be. 

Thankfully, these are not the ways in which we know God. Our congregation uses a formal liturgy, but our liturgy is not essential for drawing near to God. We even have rituals which condition us week after week, year after year to focus our attention on Jesus Christ, His spoken Word, and His Table, but He is essential, not the rituals; our rituals and liturgy can change from church to church, but God can still be known in all of them. Our lives are caught up in the life of God, not our rituals. Because Jesus is our life, the cycles of our life and the boundaries we place around us are approved by Jesus, boundaries which are faithful and beautiful and holy in God's sight. 

Each week we gather together in the eucharist to feast at the Lord's table, not a Mormon table or a Presbyterian Table or a Roman Catholic table. It is the Lord's table, and you know the significance of that message. You know its significance because you know the One who goes out into the margins of a violent, ungrateful, and unloving world to heal, comfort, and love, to bring them into His Church and be renewed by His Spirit, to bring justice and peace to the oppressed, and to proclaim liberty to those enslaved in sin. You know the God who I'm talking about because greater is the One in you than the one who is in the world. Those who are violent and ungrateful in the face of Christ, in the face of God's children, are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God, and we confess that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh from God, to reach beyond the margins of Israel to the margins of the whole world, to be the true bread and true drink of heaven for the whole world.  

If you ever doubt God's word about you, about how he sees you in Christ--as a brother, a sister, a child of God, and friend--that is why the Lord offers the waters of baptism for you, as he did with the Ethiopian eunuch. If you have not been baptized, be like the eunuch and point to some water, asking, "What prevents me from being baptized?" After God has claimed you for himself, go on rejoicing like the eunuch too! 

Unlike the Pharisees and other Judaizers of John's day, God doesn't marginalize anyone who puts their trust in him, no matter how great your sins are. (Yes, I said that right: no matter how great your sins are.) Just as there is no sin so great but that it deserves God's wrath, so there is no sin so great that it can bring God's wrath upon all those who truly repent. Because of what Jesus has accomplished for us, God doesn't deny us justice in our humiliation, or treat us as insignificant or peripheral to the world he came, in flesh, to save. In Baptism he gives us an everlasting name that we can live  forever rejoicing in, a name that will never be cut off, the name of "son" or "daughter." At the Table he gathers the outcasts of the world and brings them beside other sons and daughters that have already been gathered. That is why our Lord sets His table before us each and every week. If God has claimed you for himself, don't come doubting whether you are welcome to feast with Jesus. It is his Table, and you are welcome to feast upon the faithful sacrifice who died for your sins. 

Be like the eunuch. Believe and rejoice in this glorious gospel of our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.










1.  See Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Volume 2) [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic; 2013], pp. 1567-1573 




Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Trinitarian Hospitality




 
    Some philosophers, like Jacques Derrida, say that hospitality must be absolute. We are to welcome all, and welcome them as they are. That is not the sort of ethic I propose here. Rather, it is an ethic of hospitality that welcomes in order to change. We don’t welcome the naked so they can be naked in our presence; we don’t show hospitality to the hungry so they can watch us eat. We welcome the naked and hungry to change their circumstances. We make room for them so we can clothe and feed them.
    So too with moral hunger and personal shame. We don’t welcome addicts so they can continue in their addiction. We make room for them, and take up residence in their lives, in order to be agents of ethical transformation. We don’t receive the prostitute to help her get more tricks. We open our lives to the prostitute so we can deliver her from her slavery— to the pimp, perhaps to drugs, to poverty, to a destructive life. Hospitality is not universal approval. It is universal welcome for the sake of renewal. We make room not to tolerate but to transform. We’ve made some advances in our turn from ontology to ethics, more than we might have noticed. From this point in our climb, we can begin to see the peak and begin to have something more than suspicions about what’s up there.
    The nature of the universe as I’ve described it encourages an ethic of self-giving love; if we are going to live in accord with the shape of things, we need to adopt a stance of availability, of openness to others and willingness to enter when others open to us. And that suggests a way to reason back from ethics to ontology. If the ethics of mutual penetration is an ethics of love, then the ontology of mutual indwelling is an ontology of love. The world is open to me and I to the world. Persons are capable of being open to other persons, and times to other times. Words make room for other words, and chords have room for all the clustered notes that contribute to their sound. At every terrace, it seems, even when we were only looking through a glass darkly or hoping for some insight into the way things are, we were glimpsing traces of love, love wired into the world, love as the operating system of creation. And as we look up to the peak, we might begin to see the outlines of a love that moves the sun and all the other stars.1




1.  Peter J. Leithart, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience [Brazos Press, 2015]