Song of the Week

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In his weekly links post yesterday, Jared quoted a hymn that I’ll have to look up, because I love these lines (thanks to Sinclair Ferguson for quoting them):

O Jesus! full of pardoning grace,—
More full of grace than I of sin.

That’s perfectly put, and well worth remembering. It reminded me, though, of a hymn I haven’t thought about in ages, one which Dr. Packer used to quote us from time to time in class; so I decided to post it.

I Sought the LordI sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me;
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
No, I was found of Thee.

Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea;
‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
As Thou, dear Lord, on me.

I find, I walk, I love; but O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou were long beforehand with my soul;
Always Thou lovedst me.Words: The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1904
Music: George W. Chadwick
PEACE, 10.10.10.6

The life of faith vs. the life of politics

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“A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. As long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility,
we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get
fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for
the world of grace.”—Eugene PetersonThis quote was at the head of The Thinklings yesterday. It is, I think, one of Eugene’s more important insights (which is saying something); grace is truly an acquired taste. I think this is particularly important because it points us a bit beyond Eugene’s own point to its corollary, that it’s as easy to lose that appetite as it is difficult to acquire it; the world is always trying to pull us back into valuing its own ways and solutions as much as it does, and if we aren’t careful, we tend to go along with that pull. Falling back into old habits of mind is easier than holding fast to new ones rigorously developed.That, I think, is why so many Christians who really ought to know better are so wrapped up in politics, because we’ve lapsed back into thinking that the next election will solve the problem (whatever we understand the problem, or problems, to be); we’ve forgotten that the tools of human beings will not accomplish the righteousness of God, and we’ve gotten into the habit of thinking that the work of the kingdom of God depends on electing this or that candidate, or winning a majority for this or that party. It isn’t so. Yes, we need to do politics to the glory of God, just as we’re supposed to do everything else to his glory; yes, God calls people to serve him in the political arena; yes, politics done to the glory of God is kingdom work. But in saying that, we need to remember two things:1) Politics done to the glory of God is conducted in humility, remembering that it’s not about us or what we can accomplish—and that God’s plans and purposes are bigger than what we can see, let alone understand; the plans of God are not to be identified with our own plans and dreams and ideas.2) Politics done to the glory of God is fundamentally different than politics done to the glory of getting re-elected, or of “winning” the issue. Indeed, sometimes the two stand diametrically opposed; when that happens, the desire to win must be set aside.

Respect: the lubricant of good politics

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This happens to be a Web ad for John McCain, but that’s not the important thing about it; the only thing that makes it a McCain ad is that it was Sen. McCain’s campaign that released it. I think that fact speaks well of him, but this exact same ad could be released, unchanged except for the substitution of new images of a different candidate, for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Indeed, I could wish that both their campaigns would do that, as long as they then sought to campaign in accordance with the philosophy articulated in this ad.

The basic point is that we should feel free to argue, even fiercely, over our disagreements, but that we should do so with respect, remembering that our fellow citizens aren’t our enemies, but are our compatriots—we’re all on the same side. We need to learn to argue as friends and allies who are all seeking the good of our common nation, rather than as political opponents seeking to vanquish each other. (For help in doing so, see Timely Tips for Having a Civil Political Conversation.)

Thoughts on Jesus’ ascension

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Is there a less-noticed Christian holy day than Ascension Day? If there is, I can’t think of one. (Mind you, I’m not including saints’ days in this category, for various reasons.) Part of that, no doubt, is that it falls on a Thursday, so it can’t even get the casual-mention-in-the-bulletin kind of notice—you have to schedule a special service for it, which it seems nobody much does. (Of course, many Protestants never did; but though Catholics are supposed to, from what I can see, a lot of them don’t anymore either.) More than that, though, I don’t think most Christians in this country see the point; I would expect that most of us would affirm that Jesus died and rose again would also affirm his ascension, but have no sense whatsoever that it matters. To us, it seems more like a clerical detail than anything else. Jesus left, but he didn’t die, so, OK, he just sort of took off and disappeared, instead. If anyone came along and said, “No, no, he didn’t ascend into heaven, he just did thus-and-such,” we wouldn’t think it was all that important; we don’t think this matters.

The thing is, though, it does matter, because the ascension is important—quite profoundly so, in fact. It’s no mere afterthought to the resurrection, nor is it just a footnote to the work of Christ on the cross; rather, it’s the necessary completion of that work. Without the ascension, the resurrection is incomplete; it’s only in the ascension of Christ that all that he accomplished in the resurrection is truly fulfilled.

Now, I imagine that sounds strange to a lot of folks; it’s certainly not the way we tend to talk at Easter, or the kind of thing we usually say about the resurrection of Christ. There’s good reason for that, because the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the central event of human history, and it’s there that the saving work of God was accomplished; we don’t want to do anything to take the focus off that truth. However, if in emphasizing the resurrection we forget about the ascension—as we too often do—then we risk losing much of the meaning of the resurrection as well. It’s only in strongly affirming that Jesus ascended into heaven that we can truly say with the people of God throughout the ages that he is risen from the dead.

There are several reasons to say this, but they all come down, ultimately, to one key truth: Christ didn’t come just so we could be “saved” in the sense that we get to go to Heaven instead of Hell. That’s certainly part of the story—part of what Christ did on the cross was take our unrighteousness and give us his righteousness, so that by his sacrifice our sins could be forgiven—but there’s more to it than that. Jesus’ purpose, his mission in this world, wasn’t only to make us legally right with God so that we could skip out on going to Hell—it was to make us right with God in order to heal our alienation from God, to remove the obstacle that kept us from having a right relationship with him. This is where the importance of the ascension comes in, because while Jesus’ death and resurrection are the core of that work, the ascension was necessary for its application to us.

You see, while Christians these days are accustomed to thinking of the Old Testament priestly system as merely a relic of a dead past, it isn’t really; as Hebrews tells us, it’s just been relocated, to a different priest, of a different priestly order, in a different temple. Jesus is our great high priest who offered the final, ultimate, total sacrifice for human sin; and under the Old Testament law, the Torah, what was to be done with the sacrifice for the nation that was offered on the Day of Atonement? The blood was brought into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God, and presented before his throne. That’s what Jesus was doing in his ascension: he was bringing his sacrifice before the throne to be presented to the Father. Having done that, he then took up his place as our high priest, bringing our prayers to the Father and interceding with him on our behalf.

Of course, all this was only fully completed and realized at Pentecost, when God poured out his Spirit on all his people; but that’s a post for another day.

Song of the Week

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I’m preaching a series on the Ascension this Easter season, inspired by the Rev. Gerrit Scott Dawson of First Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Baton Rouge and his work on the subject; this hymn is one we’ll be singing this morning as we begin the series. It’s a text by my RCA colleague James L. H. Brumm, and I appreciate it because it captures the significance of Jesus’ ascension for us.

God Has Gone Up with Shouts of Joy!God has gone up with shouts of joy!
Christ claims the throne of glory:
Immortal Word in mortal flesh
To share with God our story
Of humans lost to death and sin
Who ache to be invited in
To Love’s eternal blessing.

Christ has gone up, still bearing wounds,
Still bound to race and gender;
His royal robe all crimson blood;
His triumph all surrender.
Now we, though bound to who we are,
Can follow, with our pain and scars,
To Love’s eternal blessing.

Christ has gone up! Now Christ in us
Leads all the world to glory.
The Word finds voice on Fiery Breath;
Our lives relate the story
Of how God went through death and Hell
That we might have Immanuel
And Love’s eternal blessing!Words: James L. H. Brumm
Music: Bohemian Brethren’s Kirchengesänge, 1566
MIT FREUDEN ZART , 8.7.8.7.8.8.7.

Afterthought?

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(Psalm 110, Acts 1:1-11)

How many of you have ever heard of Ascension Day? Anyone know when it is? Nothing unusual there, most Protestants don’t; these days, I’d guess most American Catholics don’t know either. For those of you who don’t know, Ascension Day falls on a Thursday, forty days after Easter, a week and a half before Pentecost; this year, it’s the first of May. It’s the day on which the church remembers Jesus’ ascension into heaven—at least, theoretically; in my experience, most churches and Christians don’t. Oh, sure, when we say the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed in church, we say, “He ascended into heaven,” and I think most of us believe it in a vague sort of way; which is to say, I think most people who affirm that Jesus died and rose again would also affirm his ascension, but have no sense whatsoever that it matters. To us, it seems more like a clerical detail than anything else. Jesus left, but he didn’t die, so, OK, he just sort of took off and disappeared, instead. If anyone came along and said, “No, no, he didn’t ascend into heaven, he just did thus-and-such,” we wouldn’t think it was all that important; we don’t think this matters.

The thing is, though, it does matter, because the ascension is important—quite profoundly so, in fact. It’s no mere afterthought to the resurrection, nor is it just a footnote to the work of Christ on the cross; rather, it’s the necessary completion of that work. Without the ascension, the resurrection is incomplete; it’s only in the ascension of Christ that all that he accomplished in the resurrection is truly fulfilled.

Now, I’m sure that seems a strange thing for me to say; it’s certainly not the way we tend to talk at Easter, or the kind of thing we usually say about the resurrection of Christ. There’s good reason for that, because the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the central event of human history, and it’s there that the saving work of God was accomplished; we don’t want to do anything to take the focus off that truth. However, if in emphasizing the resurrection we forget about the ascension—as we too often do—then we risk losing much of the meaning of the resurrection as well. It’s only in strongly affirming that Jesus ascended into heaven that we can truly say with the people of God throughout the ages that he is risen from the dead.

That is, of course, a strong statement, and one which requires a fair bit of unpacking, not to mention considerable support; which is the purpose of this sermon series. Over the next four weeks, between now and Pentecost, we’ll be looking at just why that statement is true, and why it really does matter that Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. There are several reasons for this, which we’ll be considering over the next few weeks, but they all come down, ultimately, to one key truth: Christ didn’t come just so we could be “saved” in the sense that we get to go to Heaven instead of Hell.

Unfortunately, this is an area in which our particular stream of Christian tradition doesn’t tend to be very helpful. We’ve inherited a legal view of salvation as pardon for breaking God’s law, which unfortunately has tended to be distorted into the idea that salvation is sort of like getting a “not guilty” verdict, so you get to go back home instead of to jail. This is true as far as it goes. Part of what Christ did on the cross was take our unrighteousness and give us his righteousness, so that by his sacrifice our sins could be forgiven—but that’s only part of what he did. Jesus’ purpose, his mission in this world, wasn’t only to make us legally right with God so that we could skip out on going to Hell—it was to make us right with God in order to heal our alienation from God, to remove the obstacle that kept us from having a right relationship with him. This is where the importance of the ascension comes in, because while Jesus’ death and resurrection are the core of that work, the ascension was necessary for its application to us.

Why? Well, first of all, consider what the ascension of Jesus literally means: it means that he returned to heaven as a human being. This was a statement which was incredibly controversial in the early church—that’s why the creeds explicitly affirm that Jesus ascended into heaven, because there was a lot of argument about that point. The reason for the argument is that a lot of people just couldn’t deal with the idea that anything as gross and physical and material as a human body could be in heaven, in the presence of God. They were very “spiritual” people, in the same way as many people nowadays are very “spiritual”—which is to say, they saw “spiritual” reality as very different from, and superior to, mere physical, material reality. They’d be very happy to talk about their immortal souls going to heaven when they died—but the body? Ugh. No thanks. That was just a temporary thing, even a temporary prison, which they believed their souls would eventually escape to live a purely spiritual existence with God, who himself was pure spirit, and therefore superior to us physical beings.

Obviously, on such a view, Jesus couldn’t possibly have returned to the presence of God as a human being—that would defeat the whole purpose, and contaminate heaven. Yet this is precisely what the Scriptures affirm: the first-century Jewish human being Jesus of Nazareth ascended bodily into heaven, and at the end of all things he will return to this earth in exactly the same way. His human body, his human identity, wasn’t just something he put on for a while and then set aside—it’s a permanent part of who he is. The Son of God is still, seated in heaven at the right hand of God, the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, a first-century Jew with nail scars in his wrists and feet and the wound of a spear in his side, and so he shall ever be; he didn’t just wear a human suit for a while, he became fully human, and he remains fully human.

This isn’t something we tend to think about very often, but it’s a profound and critically important truth. Jesus took our humanity with him when he returned to his Father; which means that in Jesus, God has taken our humanity into himself. He has not discarded our flesh, nor has he separated himself again from this world we know and love; rather, the stuff of creation is inextricably woven into the being of God. This is why, as we’ll see later in this series, the author of Hebrews can declare that we have a high priest who understands our weaknesses and our struggles. It’s not just a matter of Jesus remembering what it was like once upon a time to be human, powerful a thing though that is; his humanity is not merely a memory from the past, it’s a present reality. He still knows what it is to be human, because he still is human.

Now, to really unpack everything this means for us will take several sermons—don’t worry, I’m not going to try to cover everything in one service—but the most important point in all this, the meaning I want to leave you with, is this: consider just how much God loves you, that he would go to such lengths as this for you. God did something permanent, taking our human flesh on himself for all time, for your sake, and mine. He did that, and he suffered in that body more than any human being has ever suffered, before or since, for you. Where our love reaches a limit, a place where we say, “Yes, I love you, but not that much,” the love of God just keeps going, far beyond where we would expect. No matter how far you go from God, the Father’s love goes farther. No matter how great your sin, it has a limit, and God’s love doesn’t, and neither does the meaning of his sacrifice on the cross; no matter how great your sin, it’s covered.

That’s important for us to remember in our down times, and the times when we’re wrestling with a temptation we just can’t seem to beat, because those are the times when we risk giving in to despair; those are the times that the devil comes and whispers in our ears, trying to convince us that God has given up on us, that he can’t possibly love us anymore after all we’ve done. The fact of the matter is, when you look at everything Jesus did for us, everything he went through to save us, there’s no way that anything we can do can change his mind about that; the very worst we can do is but a small part of the pain he bore for us. He didn’t come down to this earth under the illusion that we’re better than we actually are; he didn’t come down to take just some of our sin, as if there were some things that even he wouldn’t die to redeem. No, he came down here to pay the price for all our sin, to heal all our wounds and carry all our diseases; he came to raise the dead of a dying world, and now he has gone on ahead to prepare our way. Christ has gone up with shouts of joy in order that we might follow him, that we might be invited to live forever in the eternal blessing of the love of God.

Just for grins

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I remember reciting this poem in 7th grade, because I thought it was funny; it still amuses me, though it sounds a bit formal to my ear now. It was written, I believe, by a woman named Carolyn Wells.

The Overworked ElocutionistThere was once a little boy whose name was Robert Reese;
And every Friday afternoon he had to speak a piece.
So many poems thus he learned, that soon he had a store
Of recitations in his head, and still kept learning more.

And now this is what happened: He was called upon one week
And totally forgot the piece he was about to speak.
He brain he cudgeled. Not a word remained within his head!
And so he spoke at random, and this is what he said:

“My beautiful, my beautiful, who standest proudly by,
It was the schooner Hesperus–the breaking waves dashed high!
Why is this Forum crowded? What means this stir in Rome?
Under a spreading chestnut tree, there is no place like home!

“When freedom from her mountain height cried, ‘Twinkle, little star,’
Shoot if you must this old gray head, King Henry of Navarre!
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue castled crag of Drachenfels,
My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills, ring out, wild bells!

“If you’re waking, call me early, to be or not to be,
The curfew must not ring tonight! Oh, woodman, spare that tree!
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on! and let who will be clever!
The boy stood on the burning deck, but I go on forever!”

His elocution was superb, his voice and gestures fine;
His schoolmates all applauded as he finished the last line.
“I see it doesn’t matter,” Robert thought, “what words I say,
So long as I declaim with oratorical display.”

Brief meditation on gratitude and discipleship

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“See, I believe that if you were chosen—that if you were elected—I believe that if God has anything for you it’s not just to make you happy. God did not choose you and call you out of this world just to make you high. And God didn’t choose you and God didn’t call you out of this world just so that you could be pious. Because there are enough pious people
and there are enough happy people in the world. What God called you for
and what God called you to is to make a difference in the world.”—Rich MullinsHappiness is a good thing, and piety is a good thing. (Piety has a bad name with some folks, but that’s only because they’ve come across distorted versions of it rather than the real thing.) The limitation to each of them, though, is that they’re inner-directed. That’s not bad, it’s not a flaw, it’s just a simple fact: every person and every thing is limited, and this is their limitation (or one of them, anyway). Happiness is about me and my life and my circumstances, and piety is about me and my life and my relationship with God. Both are good and perfectly appropriate things; they just aren’t enough in and of themselves. God doesn’t call us to be primarily inner-directed (not that you’d know it from a lot of American spirituality); he calls us to be directed outward, in love, and grace, and gratitude. Indeed, the primary response God asks of us for our salvation is gratitude for what he has done for us and given us; out of that gratitude, then, he asks us to share what we have been given, and to love as we are loved. He calls us to make a difference in this world not out of a grim sense of duty, but out of a deep sense of joy, in simple thankfulness for the opportunity.

Honor, reputation, and sacrifice

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I wrote a while back, with reference to John McCain, about the difference between honor and reputation, arguing that Sen. McCain knew the difference even if the New York Times didn’t (and presumably still doesn’t). Now Sen. McCain’s campaign has released a rather extraordinary Web ad which, inter alia, proves that he does indeed know that difference well. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this ad is that it’s all about how he learned that difference—and that it’s unsparing about just how much he had to learn, and how much growing up he had to do, before he went to war. He’s not pulling any punches about the kind of person he was before his stay in the “Hanoi Hilton,” and I respect him even more for that.

Martin Luther King Jr.: yad vashem

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Forty years ago this evening, at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, America lost one of her great-souled sons when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down by an assassin. The memorial at the hotel appositely cites Genesis, from the story of Joseph:

They said one to another, “Behold, here cometh the Dreamer. Let us slay him and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”—Genesis 37:19-20 (KJV)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Rev. Dr. King’s death is that so much of his dream died with him. Too much of the church, too many of his brothers and sisters in Christ, have set aside his call, which is the call of Christ, that we are to be one in our Lord across all our divisions, racial no less than any other—and for what? For business as usual, and the easiest, most expedient ways to grow congregations. There’s no denying, the “homogeneous unit principle” serves the cause of numerical church growth; what it doesn’t serve is the cause of the gospel, the work of the kingdom of God on this earth. On this point, more people should listen to Markus Barth:

When no tensions are confronted and overcome, because insiders or outsiders of a certain class or group meet happily among themselves, then the one new thing, peace, and the one new man created by Christ, are missing; then no faith, no church, no Christ, is found or confessed. For if the attribute “Christian” can be given sense from Eph. 2, then it means reconciled and reconciling, triumphant over walls and removing the debris, showing solidarity with the “enemy” and promoting not one’s own peace of mind but “our peace.” . . . When this peace is deprived of its social, national, or economic dimensions, when it is distorted or emasculated so much that only “peace of mind” enjoyed by saintly individuals is left—then Jesus Christ is being flatly denied. To propose, in the name of Christianity, neutrality or unconcern on questions of international, racial, or economic peace—this amounts to using Christ’s name in vain.

It’s easy to blame the white church for this, of course, but it’s not only the white church that’s guilty of leaving the Rev. Dr. King’s vision behind; as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, one of his good friends and coworkers, writes, those who claimed the role of leadership of the black community did the same, and did so intentionally. Where the Rev. Dr. King preached the gospel of Jesus Christ for all people, many of those who would claim his mantle “were in no mood for reconciliation, and are not to this day.” The year after his death would see the beginning of black liberation theology with the publication of James Cone‘s book Black Theology and Black Power, which argued that

In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors. . . . Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not.

The following year, Dr. Cone took his seat at Union Theological Seminary in New York and published his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation. In that book, he wrote,

The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism. . . . The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God’s own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation.

That’s how we got from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; and it’s why so many folks who looked at Barack Obama and thought they were getting the incarnation of the Rev. Dr. King’s dream are now wondering if they were sold a bill of goods. The good thing in all this, though, is that Sen. Obama is right—words do matter—and that however the name of Martin Luther King may be used or misused, and however his work and legacy may be invoked or distorted to whatever purpose, his words remain, and they ring with power. Whatever else he was, the Rev. Dr. King was a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he spoke the word of God to America—and when God sends out his word through one of his followers, that word will not return to him empty-handed, but it will accomplish the purpose for which he sent it. As such, it is not too great a thing to say, as Fr. Neuhaus does, that the Rev. Dr. King’s words will continue to echo until their purpose is fulfilled.

As long as the American experiment continues, people will listen and be inspired by his “I Have a Dream,” and will read and be instructed by his Letter from Birmingham Jail, and will once again believe that, black and white together, “We shall overcome.”

Amen. In the house of God and within its walls, he has a memorial and a name that shall not be cut off. May Jesus Christ be praised.