this one a bit higher-profile than most because it’s Sarah Palin’s church, Wasilla Bible Church; the fire is estimated to have caused $1 million in damage. There is, of course, already speculation that the arson was political in nature, but as John Hinderaker of Power Line notes, “There are many possible motives, and arsonists don’t necessarily need what would normally be regarded as a motive.” What he doesn’t say but is worth adding is that church burning has been an increasingly common crime in recent years; it’s not at all necessary to explain this arson in political terms. Indeed, even if the church was selected because Gov. Palin attends there, the motive might not have been any sort of animus against her; it might simply be that her high profile attracted the attention of someone who otherwise would have burned a different church. We’ll probably never know one way or the other unless the arsonist is caught, and for now, any speculation is unwarranted; we just need to pray for the leaders and people of Wasilla Bible Church for their recovery from this attack.
Who Can Stand?
(Isaiah 40:1-11, Malachi 2:17-3:6; Mark 1:1-8)
I learned something this week: preaching on waiting can be just as dangerous as praying for patience. I’ve spent the week waiting on the folks who don’t turn right on reds, and the ones who don’t go when the light turns green, and the drivers who are afraid to get within five miles an hour of the speed limit. But you know what? I’m going to keep talking about this anyway, because it’s important for us to understand why we’re waiting, and not let ourselves be tempted into finding something else to do. In our society in which the most-pressed button in the elevator is the “door close” button, because we can’t wait ten seconds for it to close by itself, we need to understand who and what we’re waiting for, and that the waiting is necessary to prepare us for his coming.
We have a tendency to miss that, because the images we have of Christmas are such beautiful and non-threatening ones—“mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild,” with the animals watching cutely nearby. In our imaginations, even the shepherds are sanitized. Christmas is a joyous celebration, so our natural instinct is to make it safe and happy and fun, with no sharp edges anywhere in sight. The thing is, though, the coming of Jesus wasn’t like that, and his second coming won’t be either. One of the things I most appreciate about Narnia is the way in which C. S. Lewis captures this—when Aslan appears, it’s always a wonderful thing, but it’s never easy or merely pleasant, even for those who love him best; as Mr. Beaver says of him, he’s good, but he isn’t safe.
Indeed, he isn’t safe precisely because he’s good; this is why, as is so often said of him, he isn’t a tame lion. True goodness, true joy, true holiness, true love—anything which is an aspect of the character of God—these are all wonderful things, but also very perilous, because they’re powerful and deeply real; the petty parts of us, our shameful little desires and our selfish whims, cannot endure their presence. There’s a real pain that comes with any sort of intense encounter with God, or with someone who is very close to God, as those parts of ourselves are burned away or driven into hiding—or roused to fight back. This is what the judgment and wrath of God really mean: not that he picks people out and punishes them because he doesn’t like them, but simply that to our sinful natures, the goodness and holiness and love and joy and peace of God, all of his character, are intolerably painful; we can either choose to draw close to him, and allow his presence to purge us of our sin, or we can cling to our sin, and be purged of his presence.
This means that for God to be born in the world as a human being was a wonderful thing, yes, but also a terrible thing. John the Baptizer understood this, and the writers of the Scripture understood this, even if we too often don’t. That’s why we have this curious little thing here in Mark, something which you probably noticed: he says, “As it is written in Isaiah,” and then he doesn’t quote Isaiah, he quotes Malachi. It’s only after he’s thrown Malachi in there that he gets to Isaiah. The folks who like to look for errors and contradictions in Scripture jump all over this one, but the truth is, this is no mistake.
What you have to understand is that Mark has this habit of making what we call “sandwiches” in his gospel (sorry for the technical terminology), and this is a classic example. You can find another in Mark 11. Jesus curses the fig tree, it withers, and he uses that to teach the disciples a lesson. But Mark doesn’t tell that story straight through; instead, he separates it, and in between, he puts the story of the cleansing of the temple. The cursing of the fig tree “sandwiches” this story. Mark does this to give added emphasis to the cleansing of the temple, and to tell us that these two events belong together—we can’t really understand one of them without understanding the other one. It’s the same thing here. Mark says, “As it is written in Isaiah . . . the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” But he doesn’t leave this in one piece—he separates it, and in between the two halves, he puts Malachi 3:1.
To see what he’s doing here, let’s look first at Isaiah 40. To really understand Isaiah 40, you have to know what comes immediately before it. In Isaiah 39:6-7, the prophet gives this word to King Hezekiah: “The time is coming when everything you have—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD. Some of your own descendants will be taken away into exile, and they will be made eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.” It was a prophecy of complete disaster, and it fell on Judah early in the 6th century BC; the country was conquered by Babylon, Jerusalem left in ruins, most of the population carried off in exile, and its kings imprisoned for their pathetic attempts to rebel.
But that bad news could not be the last word. What of the promise God had made to David that his descendants would rule Israel forever? What of Isaiah’s own prophecies of hope? And so God gave Isaiah a great word of hope and deliverance, to be sealed up until the proper time had come. God would judge his people, but in time he would relent. “Comfort, comfort my people,” he declares. “Encourage Jerusalem; my people are afraid of me now, but tell them that their time of hardship is over. Their sins have been paid for, and I have given them a full pardon.” You will note that this text doesn’t say that they have suffered long enough to pay the price for their sins themselves; rather, someone else has paid the price for their sins, and in response God has lifted their sentence.
Next, another voice calls out: one of God’s angels announcing a road to be built for God through the wilderness. This is to be a mighty road, a freeway through the desert, and nothing will stand in its way: the Lord is going to Babylon to bring his people home. The valley floors will be raised, the great peaks flattened; hilly areas will be turned into plains, and great passes opened through the mountains. When he led his people out of Egypt, God reached down and parted the sea to make a road for his people; now, in going to bring his people back out of Babylon, he will do the same to the wilderness, turning all its danger and chaos into a safe, wide road for his deliverance. The glory of the Lord will be revealed to Israel and the world as he brings his people home.
After this great declaration, another voice commands, “Call out!” The Lord has promised to deliver his people—spread the news! Shout it from the rooftops! But the reply comes back cynical and bitter: “Why bother? This is never going to happen. People are nothing but grass in the desert; all their love, mercy, loyalty, commitment are as fragile as flowers in the field. The first hot wind comes along, and they shrivel up and die.” The word translated “mercy” there is the Hebrew word hesed, which is one of those great Old Testament words that is just too big for any English word; it gets variously translated as “mercy,” “covenant mercy,” “lovingkindness,” “covenant loyalty,” etc. It is the word used of the love of God in his covenant faithfulness to his people, and carries the idea of his unchanging reliability; it is love in action, steadfast love that always keeps its promises, and unswerving loyalty and faithfulness. The idea is that our own attempts at hesed last only until the first challenge comes, and then they wither.
This bitter, cynical word had to be spoken because it had to be answered—and it is; the first voice replies, “Yes, everything you say is true, but that doesn’t matter. This is God’s word, he has promised, and his word will not fail; his word endures forever.” Deliverance, you see, isn’t based on our ability to earn it; it comes because God is faithful to keep his promises. Of course, everyone needs to know this is happening, and so the command comes to Jerusalem, Mt. Zion, to spread the word. Jerusalem had heard the news that God was bringing his people home, and her responsibility now was to pass it on to all the cities of Judah: “Look, God is coming!” The Lord returns to Jerusalem in power, bringing his people back with him as his reward, and caring for them as a good shepherd cares for his sheep.
What Isaiah’s talking about is, obviously, a wonderful and joyful moment: the Lord is coming to reveal his glory to the world by delivering his people from exile, and all will be well again. In Malachi, however, the picture is much less joyful. The Lord will send a messenger to prepare his way, and then he himself will appear; but rather than celebrating, the prophet asks, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” God will come to cleanse and refine his people, washing and burning away all their impurities. He will judge the wicked, those who do not fear him; and even for those who do, his coming will not be easy—it will be overwhelming.
There are certainly aspects to this passage that are clearly positive. For one, there is the assurance that the Lord does not change. Just as in Isaiah, it is made clear that God’s people will be preserved and can trust him to do what he says he will do, because he is faithful even if his people aren’t. He will purify his people so that their offerings are acceptable to him, and in the end, all things will be as they should be. His coming, however, will be a time of judgment as well as of rejoicing, and thus his herald will bring a message of warning and judgment as well as of promise and deliverance.
This is what we see in John the Baptizer, who came preaching a message that has been summarized as “Repent or else!” That’s probably an oversimplification, but it does go to the core of what John had to say; the gospel writers’ one-sentence version of John’s ministry is that he came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” He called his hearers to radical repentance, to rebuild their lives from the ground up on the will of God, and challenged them to give away whatever they could to those in need. John’s central theme was that the Lord was coming as he had promised, and that people had better get ready; like Malachi, he emphasized that the coming of the Lord would bring judgment as well as joy. Those who repented of their sins and sought to follow him would be blessed, but those who refused would be destroyed.
The thing is, though, as Malachi points out, that even for the faithful, even for those who longed for the Lord’s coming, it would not be easy, and it will not be easy when he comes again, because he is coming to purify us—to complete the work of smelting away all the slag and the dross in our lives. “Who can stand?” the prophet asks? None of us. Not even one. The truth is in a line written by the singer-songwriter Sarah Masen: “The fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace.” All we can do is cast ourselves on the grace of God, on the price paid for us by Christ on the cross; all we can do is lay all of ourselves at his feet and let him refine us and purify us until we can bear his joy, his love, his goodness, his holiness, his peace.
That’s not an easy thing to think about; but as you think about it, remember that he seeks to refine us like silver. Why is that significant? Well, it’s captured best by a story that’s told—I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve done some research and verified the details—about a group of women who were doing a Bible study on Malachi, of whom one made an appointment with a silversmith to watch him work. As she watched, he held a piece of silver over the fire to heat up, and he explained that in refining silver, it’s necessary to hold it in the middle of the fire, where it is hottest, in order to burn away the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot, and remembered that Malachi says that the Lord will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. She asked the silversmith if he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. He said yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver in place, he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver were left in the flames even a moment too long, it would be ruined. The woman was silent for a moment, then asked, “How do you know when the silver is fully refined?” The silversmith smiled at her and said, “I know it’s done when I see my face reflected in it.”
This, you see, is what Christ is doing in us; it’s the process we’re waiting for him to complete in our lives, and in the life of our world, when he returns, and it’s what he’s doing in us now as we wait, and through our waiting.
On this blog in history: November 1-20, 2007
Continuing the retrospective posts . . .. . . and it’s not even fake Carson
An occasion for dispute between John Stackhouse and D. A. Carson provided an occasion to consider an unfortunate trend in disputes among Christian academics.Midway between luck and skill
On the Battle of Midway and the providence of God.The spirit of the soul
Lynn Redgrave, thumos, and how we face death.Ministry as trinitarian work
After I finished Andrew Purves’ book The Crucifixion of Ministry: Surrendering Our Ambitions to the Service of Christ, I went on to Stephen Seamands’ book Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service, which had been on my to-read list for a while; the two books complement each other wonderfully, I think, as Dr. Seamands’ work sets the message of Dr. Purves’ book in a trinitarian context.
In Chicago, the birds are singing
The jailbirds, that is—starting with Barack Obama’s old neighbor and associate Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Hard to say for sure, but it looks to me like Rezko started singing for his supper (and a reduced sentence) in order to make sure he got the best deal he could before Rod Blagojevich starts talking. There is no honor among thieves, and Blagojevich appears to be a particularly dishonorable specimen. (As well as, if Michael Barone is right, a particularly stupid one.)The interesting thing about this situation is that while U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has made it very clear that there’s no evidence that the president-elect was even aware of anything improper, he hasn’t made the same statement about Obama’s staff. The person of concern here appears to be the designated White House Chief of Staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), who has suddenly ceased to be a fixture at the president-elect’s press conferences; as the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass points out, there are good reasons to think that if Blagojevich wanted to work a deal with the incoming Obama administration, he’d work through Rep. Emanuel; or rather, there’s one good reason: Rep. Emanuel’s state senator, the powerful Democratic politician James DeLeo. According to Kass,
DeLeo is also considered by some to be the real governor of Illinois. Blagojevich is the nutty guy who makes the speeches and gets the federal slap. They’re so close that if Jimmy suddenly stopped walking, Rod would chip his teeth on the back of Jimmy’s head.It’s reasonable to assume that if there’s one fellow Rod would talk to about the Senate seat, it’s Jimmy. And given their relationship, Jimmy could talk to Rahm.
(Kass further suggests, interestingly, that DeLeo’s quid pro quo for setting that up might well have been appointment to Rep. Emanuel’s House seat. Welcome to Illinois politics.) Given that we know that Rep. Emanuel talked multiple times with Blagojevich (see video below), it seems quite possible that he could be the next Illinois politician in the crosshairs. This, obviously, would not be a good start for the Obama administration, in a lot of ways.
HT: Scott Johnson
The Great Books perspective on Harry Potter
There’s an interesting article up on Touchstone by a chap named John Granger, the author of several books on Harry Potter who’s a graduate of the University of Chicago, analyzing Rowling’s books as “the ‘shared text’ of the twenty-first century.” This is a more significant statement than it might seem, coming from a former student of Allan Bloom, who argued “that ‘shared books’ are the foundation of culture, politics, and individual thinking; as such, Granger is arguing—quoting Chuck Klosterman in Esquire—that
Over time, these novels (and whatever ideas lie within them) will come to represent the mainstream ethos of our future popular culture.
Klosterman thinks that’s a bad thing, but Granger strongly disagrees:
Before meeting Allan Bloom and, through him, the Western canon, my friends and I were a sarcastic and self-absorbed, if good-hearted lot, nourished on stories that were only diversion and dissipation. I have to think my children are better prepared and more willing to embrace that tradition than I was because of their years of instruction at Hogwarts castle. . . .I struggle to think of any fictional work of the last two or three centuries that had the potential to shape the cultural and political agendas of its time as this one does. Dickens’s crusading social novels? Uncle Tom’s Cabin? The Jungle? Harry Potter differs from these in that the others ignited a latent Christian conscience. The Potter novels help foster one into existence. . . .From this text, we can build a conversation about virtue and vice, and about what reading does to the right-side-up soul. From it, too, we can take an invitation to go on to even better books—ones that our grandparents’ great-grandparents had in common, and others that our children may one day write. Hasten the day!
It’s an interesting argument, and I think he may be on to something. It’s certainly worth considering seriously.
I hope there are no skeletons in the Obama closet
because Rod Blagojevitch is going down, and he’s going down hard; and unlike Tony Rezko, who kept his mouth shut after his conviction when the government tried to roll him, I don’t think Blagojevitch has the necessary selflessness or nobility of character to take whole hit himself. Indeed, as Rosslyn Smith notes,
Blagojevich may have more reasons that the obvious reduction of sentence to offer additional political scalps for Patrick Fitzgerald’s trophy wall. Hell hath no fury like a sociopath who sees himself on the losing end of a power struggle.
If he thinks Barack Obama can be one of those scalps, I have little doubt Blagojevich will wave it in Fitzgerald’s face, for whatever he can get out of it, and just for the sheer pleasure of the thing; in fact, even if he doesn’t have anything on the president-elect, I suspect Blagojevich may try to bring him down anyway. I hope he doesn’t, but this is Illinois politics, and particularly Chicago politics . . . you just never know for sure. Let’s hope Senator Obama did indeed come through the Chicago machine clean, and that his former colleague doesn’t have anything to use against him; if not, we’re all in for a really bad time.
The road to recovery begins with unsparing self-criticism
and J.R. Dunn of American Thinker has done a wonderful job of helping start that process for the Republican Party, stating bluntly, “The GOP Must Take Out the Trash.” It’s an excellent piece (though I think his comments on the Democrats are overstated, that doesn’t invalidate his points about the party of elephants), and I commend it to your attention. I particularly appreciate Dunn’s point that even for conservatives,
voting for the Democrats in 2008 was a rational act. Not a very smart act, and in the fullness of time definitely to prove a mistaken one. But rational because the alternative was to vote for the party of Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, and a gaggle of beggars drooling for earmarks and willing to throw small children onto train tracks to get them. In 2008, the party of Trash went up against the party of Change. That brand of Change is no doubt empty, specious, and dangerous, but you can’t argue with the fact that it smells better than trash.You pay a price for tolerating trash. Perhaps not an obvious one, perhaps not an immediate one, but you always pay a price. The GOP is now paying that price, after getting its wakeup call in 2006 and refusing to roll out of bed. As for current efforts at reform, everything else is on the table except this one factor, despite the easily comprehended fact that everything else will be totally irrelevant if this one factor is not dealt with. Corruption cannot be ignored. As has been demonstrated time and again this past decade, sane, moral, and intelligent voters will not settle for a party comprised of the reprobates that have populated the GOP in recent years.
And though Dunn doesn’t mention Sarah Palin, I want to note that this is one of the major reasons I support her: taking out the trash is a major part of her political MO, and of her reason for being in politics.
Wise words on pride
Pride is a blossom of ashes—bitter in the mouth, sharp to the nose, stinging to the eyes, and blown away on the first wind from the mountains. Plant no pride, lest you harvest shame.—Proverb of AltiplanoThis proverb (and the whole society of Altiplano) comes from Elizabeth Moon’s novel Once a Hero; Moon’s one of the better writers of military science fiction around, and this is one of her best. I note the irony of posting a proverb from a fictional society so soon after posting the title sequence for a non-existent sitcom, but for all that it was created in the service of a Secondary World (to use Tolkien’s term), it has the ring of old truth, and is well worth remembering.
Ten good questions for Barack Obama
courtesy of Politico‘s Johnathan Martin and Ben Smith, which were offered as suggestions for Tom Brokaw for the president-elect’s appearance on Meet the Press this past Sunday. He didn’t ask them, but they’re still good questions.
Obama’s Senate seat up for auction—get your bids in now
Even by the standards of Illinois politics, this is a big one: this morning the FBI arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, on federal corruption charges. Perhaps the most staggering part of the indictment is that, as U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald put it, “Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator.”
Blagojevich is accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy, including alleged attempts by the governor to try to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. Blagojevich also is accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.
It’s no secret that the president-elect wants his longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett named to his Senate seat; apparently, Blagojevich was irate that his former colleague wanted him to do so without offering him anything in return, referring to President-Elect Obama in highly profane and unflattering terms. According to the story in Politico,
Federal prosecutors allege that Blagojevich explored one possible quid-pro-quo—he’d appoint a top adviser to Obama in exchange for Obama giving Blagojevich the post as as secretary of health and human services. The indictment makes clear the Obama adviser is Valerie Jarrett, now an Obama White House aide.“Unless I get something real good . . . I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying,” Blagojevich was taped saying on Nov. 3, the day before Election Day.Blagojevich, a Democrat, added that the Senate seat: “is a . . . valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”
None of this, as Fitzgerald was careful to point out, suggests that President-Elect Obama is in any way guilty of anything; the fact that Blagojevich was trying to wrestle some sort of benefit out of him doesn’t mean that he or any of his staff were guilty of anything, and there appears to be no reason to think they were. If anything, it appears that they responded to Blagojevich’s demand for some sort of bribe by ending the conversation. That sets them apart from some of the other people Blagojevich was considering appointing to the seat, since at least one of them offered money “up front” for the job. (Update and correction: that candidate has now been confirmed to be Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), but the only evidence so far that he or any of his associates offered Blagojevitch money is the governor’s own statements, which have not been independently corroborated.)This whole fiasco certainly sheds light on the political milieu through which Barack Obama rose to power, but the real import here has nothing to do with him, but rather with his successor: with the indictment against Blagojevich, who’s going to appoint the next junior Senator from the state of Illinois?HT: Power LineUpdate: You know things are getting bad when the lolcats are laughing at you: