speaking simply

At the first meeting of the Steering Committee for the Anabaptist Network in South Africa last December, we had a lengthy conversation on the subject of “simplicity”. And though the bulk of our conversation had to do with economic considerations, one of our members suggested another manifestation of the life of simplicity to which Jesus calls his disciples: simplicity in speech.

Simplicity, or “simple living” as I most often heard it described, was indeed a central value in my Mennonite upbringing—and perhaps especially as it related to speech. Somehow, I picked up that boastfulness, that singing one’s own accomplishments, is about as distasteful a characteristic as one can have. I also learned that “taking the Lord’s name in vain” was an offense of the highest order; though my understanding of such “swearing falsely” has grown to include all injustice done in the name of Jesus, it also still includes an avoidance of the flippant use of any of God’s names in everyday speech. Yes indeed, my colleague’s suggestion that Jesus, simplicity, and speech somehow belong together strikes a chord with the Anabaptist faith I heard and welcomed.

It is probably for that reason then—because I carry a simple faith or a faith in the simple—that the most disturbing encounters I have had within the wide world of South African Christianity have in common the element of someone “saying too much or more than one should.”

For the sixteenth century Anabaptists, the issue that exemplified simplicity in speech was the medieval practice of the swearing of oaths, or, in the case of the Anabaptists, the non-swearing of oaths. Taking their lead from the simple commands of Jesus, the Anabaptists refused to “swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King” (Mt 5:34-35). Applied to Reformation-era Europe, obedience to Jesus’ prohibition against oaths was disobedience to the law of a society built upon injustice, for oaths were the seal of an uneven (and unholy) alliance between lords and subjects, masters and servants. By swearing an oath to human masters in the sight of God, peasants agreed to do their masters’ bidding—even to fight their wars. Oath-swearing was thus the ultimate affront to a righteous God, for it placed ultimate power, the power to take life, within the hands of violent men. It was a renunciation of faith for the faithful, for it denied the God in whom they put their trust in favor of human masters.

All this implies, of course, that the swearing of oaths is fundamentally about relationships—to whom does one owe his/her first allegiance? To whom is one ultimately loyal? Who is one’s primary relation?

Though I was unaware as events unfolded, I have had two separate relationships in which—as I see it now—a partner in ministry swore a kind of loyalty, an oath, to me. In one case, one of our brightest students at the Bible School, whom we had singled out for future leadership, declared to me that he would “come to Bethany Bible School until the rapture.” Looking back, I have wondered whether this was not a bit like “swearing by heaven.” In the second case, another pastor declared that our relationship was the one to “take us into the New Jerusalem”—was this “swearing by the city of the great King”? In each case, the wording too closely resembled the places prohibited for swearing on Jesus’ list to escape my notice as an “oath”—and therefore also implied the same limitations inherent to oaths according to Jesus’ words. For just as one who swears “by [his/her] head” has not the power to “make one hair white or black”, so these friends swore to me that which only God can see for their lives (Mt 5:36). In both cases, the one swearing the oath was not prepared to fulfill it.

It seems to me, therefore, that there are only two kinds of “oaths” blessed by God for humans to take. One, the vow of marriage, repeats the basic structure of creation, blessed by God: “God created the human being in God’s image, male and female God created them” (Gen 1:27), the same “man and wife” who share such intimacy so as to be “one flesh” before their God (Gen 2:24). A second, baptism, binds the believer to Christ and his Body, the Church, the “first fruits” of a “new creation” (2 Th 2:13). Yet because the Church is “one body made up of many members” (1 Cor 12:12), the believer’s baptismal vow is to its totality rather than its partiality, to the whole not the part, to the universal rather than the particular. For, while the commitment to the universal can only be lived within the particular, vows must not be made to any one alone; they are made to God—and even then, in the case of baptism, in order to be blown by God’s Spirit to wherever, to whomever, whenever, God chooses (Jn 3:8-9). This is the “vow to the Lord” which we might “swear”—not to say more than we should but “yes, yes” or “no, no” to the Christ who bids us follow him (Mt 5:33, 37).

-Joe

on sacrifice

When, at our gathering of Bethany Bible School last month, I asked for insights from the students on the meaning of “sacrifice” as it appears in 1 John 4:10, one old man referred me to the story of Abraham offering Isaac (Gen 22:1-19). And so it happened that I began to ponder that story once again.

The old man’s point, I think, was that “sacrifice” is an act of “love”—the main theme of the 1 John text we were studying. That, of course, is also how the author put it there: “Not that we loved God but that God loved us, and sent his only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).

Many theologians in the West, both professional and lay, would dispute the assumption that sacrifice is an expression of love, that God’s sending of the Son to his slaughter proves not God’s love but God’s cruel detachment. However one interprets the Aqedah, “the binding of Isaac” from Genesis 22, on its own merits, the New Testament’s interpretation of that story—of which the 1 John text may be one example—is a classic example of employing a human story to speak of the mysteries of God. In other words, the story of Abraham offering up his “only son, Isaac, whom [he] loves” became for the New Testament authors a window on the Heavenly Father who offered up his “only begotten Son” for a sinful world. For the New Testament authors, the story of Abraham and Isaac illuminated the story of Jesus, the one whom they “declared to be the Son of God” (Rom 1:4).

The key, of course, is that the New Testament’s declaration of “the Son” does not imply his distance but his closeness to the Father—a closeness so close so as to reveal that they were really One Person. Yet, when that One should appear in flesh—a new realm for the One who is not a human being—he cannot but acquire another human title which differentiates him from the experience of him in the realm of pure Spirit. That title, of flesh married to Spirit within God, is “the Son”.

Once, therefore, the Son is understood, not from the perspective of pure flesh (“from a human point-of-view”) (2 Cor 5:16) but from flesh-in-Spirit, the Son ceases to be a pure object of slaughter, something acted upon by someone else. The Son becomes, rather, both Subject and Object, One who gives himself to the world of flesh. The Son is not simply the human Jesus, sent to his death by Another; the Son is Jesus the “Christ”, the one “in” whom “God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The “Father” is not detached; the “Father” is in the “Son.”

From the perspective of closeness, therefore, one also begins to appreciate the metaphor of Abraham and Isaac, a father and his son, for the Father and the Son. For, when we read that Abraham heard the word to “take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him there as a burnt offering . . .” (Gen 22:2), we remember, from knowing the whole story, that this Isaac was the same son of his old age, the one promised him with his wife Sarah before they as yet had any heir. It was this Isaac for whom they waited and scarcely dared to hope, this Isaac who, when announced by angels, was greeted with the laughter of incredulity (Gen 17:17; 18:12). It was this Isaac who, when born, actualized the promise of God that Abraham might become the father of many nations, his descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky (Gen 15:5). This is the Isaac whom God now says to sacrifice, he the long-awaited promise now given up.

It is from this perspective--the story of a human father Abraham giving up his human son Isaac--that 1 John 4 has drawn its interpretation of God in human flesh in Jesus the Christ. In other words, it is not from the characterization of God at the outset of Genesis 22--the God who simply "tests" and commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a "burnt offering"--that the author of 1 John has found inspiration; it is from Abraham's, the father's, "sacrifice" of his "only son, whom he loved." 1 John's inspiration, moreover, comes not specifically from the father Abraham, that is, in isolation, nor from the son Isaac, but from the "sacrifice"--with all its intense relational implications. Abraham the father with Isaac the son approaches, becomes the best available analogy for God in Christ, because the story so vividly "counts the cost" of "offering up", of "sacrifice" (Lk 14:28). Whatever Abraham's reasons for heeding the call to offer Isaac, or however obvious it may seem that Abraham's will to kill Isaac was to deny his love for him, the background to the text--the personal history of father and son and all the implications of their relationship--and the text itself illustrates the complexities, the hardships, the suffering inherent to love. Precisely because Abraham "loved" Isaac is their story a story of sacrifice. Only that which is loved is truly "offered up".

Because the story of Abraham and Isaac is, therefore, a true offering, it invites, for those who know it, comparison with another story of authentic love. Considering the giving up of the son of promise, the one through whom the world was promised to Abraham, we glimpse the depth of the love of the God who "sent his only Son into the world . . . to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 Jn 4:9-10). We see, that is, that God gave up God's own Self-identification. Like Abraham who gave up his God-promised dreams for posterity in offering his son, so God gave Godself in the person of the Son. The Spirit takes on flesh. The Source of life enters death. The Light confronts the darkness. The blessed becomes the cursed (Gal 3:13). The Righteous One is made to be sin (2 Cor 5:21). In the Son, God denies Godself--everything, that is, but his love. "So that we might live through him" (1 Jn 4:9).

-Joe

the way of grace

As I prepared to teach on the Psalms—150 “psalms” in five “books”--at Bethany Bible School earlier this month, I found a unifying thread in the subject of “enemies”. The Psalms seem obsessed with “enemies”—how shall one deal with one’s enemies?

Different psalms seem to recommend different courses of action. There is, for example, the violent approach toward enemies in Psalm 18; “David” seems to boast: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them; and did not turn back until they were consumed. I struck them down, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet . . ..I beat them fine, like dust before the wind; I cast them out like the mire of the streets” (18:37-38, 42). In Psalm 58, again “of David”, there is—if not a boast of violence inflicted—delight in the painful demise of “the wicked” (58:3): “Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime; like the untimely birth that never sees the sun” (58:8). And then, most emphatically: “The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked” (58:10).

If Psalms 18 and 58 represent, on one side of a spectrum, a recommendation of violence against one’s enemies (Are the righteous bathing in blood that they have spilled?), others recommend more clearly a path of leaving the course of vengeance to God. For example, Psalm 37:

“Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices. Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil. For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land” (37:7-9).

Perhaps between the violence of Psalm 18 and the “stillness” of Psalm 37 is what we might call the “confession” of Psalm 139. Without any mention of vengeance taken by his own hands, “David” nonetheless erupts with his mouth against the wicked:

“O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies” (139:19-22).

Even this verbal tirade, however, this eruption against “the wicked” is not directed at them—it is direct address to God: “O Lord”, the Psalm begins, “you have searched me and known me” (139:1). And, after all malice has been said—but not yet done—the Psalm ends where it began—with the Psalmist’s need for God to “search [him] and know [his] heart, with the Psalmist’s need for God “to see if there is any wicked way in me” (139:23-24). Before giving physical expression to his anger, before even any direct expression of his anger against his enemies, the Psalmist gives it to God. And giving it so, “David” finds himself again, after pondering all thoughts far and wide, only with his God (see v. 18). The grace of God, it would seem, is sufficient for him (see also 2 Cor 12:9). It also seems, therefore, that confession—that speaking truth in the presence of God about one’s own condition conditioned by others—is the means of that grace given to us.

So Psalm 32:3-5:

“While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

-Joe

“perfected in us”

The small-group Bible study text that I chose for our February lesson at Bethany Bible School on soteriology was 1 John 4:7-12, one of the great “love” texts of the Bible.

The text contains four key, repeated nouns and one key, repeated verb. The nouns are “Beloved” (vv. 7, 11), “God” (all verses), “the Son” (vv. 9-10), and “love” (which can also be, of course, a verb) (all verses). The verb is “sent” (vv. 9-10). We might approach this text by asking how these nouns and this verb fit together.

Who, for example, is being “sent”? Who is sending? Why, or for what purpose, was the sent one sent? Or why did the sender send the one who was sent? The answers to these questions may help us to understand the meaning of every key word which we have found.

The text proclaims, then, that “the Son” was “sent”. Moreover, “the Son” was sent by “God”. Furthermore, “the Son” was sent “into the world”. And why did God send the Son into the world? “In order that we might live through him” and “to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (vv. 9-10). We might go even further and ask about the motivation of the sender: Why does God desire that we “live through him”; why does God make an “atoning sacrifice for our sins”? The text is clear—because of God’s “love”.

So far we have accounted for the usages of “God”, “the Son”, and “love”, as well as the verb “to send”. The missing noun, “Beloved”, is also, however, implied within this schema. The “beloved” is the “we” who might “live through him”, the “our” whose sins have been atoned for. The “beloved” are, in other words, the objects of the love of God who “sent the Son into the world”. “Beloved” is a collective noun. The “beloved” are the many-in-one, made to be so because of the love that brought them together.

It is on the note of the unity of this collective, this one body made up of many members, that this text ends—with an astonishing claim. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (v. 12). “God is love”; the text has already said so in no uncertain terms. Indeed, “love is from God” and “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (vv. 7-8). “God is love”.

If God is love, it would seem that love has already been “completed” or “made perfect”. Even before the creation, love is perfect in the God who is, the God who is love. And this may be so—except that the text claims that God has a purpose for God’s love beyond God’s own invisible Self—whom “no one has ever seen”. God’s purpose was that love would not be contained within God, but overflow to those whom, because of love, God created. As soon as God creates, as soon as the possibility of other lovers becomes a reality, there is more love to share, more love that needs to get out, more love seeking completion. The love of God is seeking completion in the members of God’s creation. Though “God is love” and no other, though it was “not that we loved God but that God loved us” (v. 10), it is yet only in us, the “beloved”, that God’s love can be perfected. God cannot perfect his love in us without us. We must “love one another” (vv. 7, 11, 12). Only then do we have the assurance of God’s abiding presence with us. Only then do we know that God remains. Only then can the One “whom no one has ever seen” be seen.

“God sent the Son into the world in order that we might live through him.” “If we love one another”, that same world to which Jesus came will see the glory of God.

-Joe

Jesus Our Obedience

Our topic last Saturday at Bethany Bible School was Creation, Sin, Redemption, or the basic course I've outlined on soteriology, the Christian teaching on how Christ saves. I included the three words--creation, sin, redemption (or salvation)--in the course title in order to make it clear that salvation from sin is of or for the creation. In other words, salvation is not an experience unrelated to how God created us to live as God's creatures in God's creation. On the contrary, salvation has everything to do with human life. It is not simply preparation for a future, as-of-yet unexperienced reality (though it does prepare us for whatever lies ahead); it is, simply, the life that God created us to live. Because of sin, our rebellion against God, our disobedience to the Creator's will, salvation is new creation, that is, it is a making new of something which had lost its way or fallen away from the Creator's design. Therefore, albeit "new", the connection of creation to salvation, is, quite obviously, close.

I take as critical to my understanding of the relationship between creation, sin, and redemption the logic which the Apostle Paul employs in Romans 5-6. Paul talks about sin entering the creation through human disobedience (see Rom 5:19). Sin is the force of disobedience. If therefore, sin is the sickness, that from which humans must be saved in order to be restored to the will of God, it follows that its cure, that which takes away its effect, is obedience. Salvation is the force of obedience.

All of this brings us to Christ, the Savior. Christ is the force of obedience. By becoming like us, "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8:3), yet "without sin" (Heb 4:15), Christ reversed the curse of disobedience in the human will. Through his obedience to the love of God, Christ opened the way of obedience to God for all human beings. As the writer of Hebrews said, "he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (5:8-9). As the Son's obedience to the Father was the source of his salvation in the flesh, his rescue, his being made perfect, his exaltation (Php 2:9), his being raised from the dead, so our obedience to the Son, to walk in the way of Jesus, is our salvation. And because Jesus is raised, exalted, complete, beyond what we have been, he is, in the words of Paul, a spiritual person who gives life--not merely a human being to whom life and breath was given (see 1 Cor 15:45). He is a Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who abides with us as we hear his Word and begin to live by it. He is the One who inspires our obedience to the love of God--and so saves us.

-Joe

a better word

On the occasion of having to preach at a funeral for a man who was the victim of a stabbing, I found myself pondering again the first murder in the Bible, the story of the brothers Cain and Abel (Gen. 4).

That these were indeed “brothers” is not something the text will allow us to forget.

After birthing Cain, Eve “bore his brother Abel” (v. 2).

After having his offering disregarded by God, “Cain said to his brother Abel . . . (v. 8a).

“And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him” (v. 8b).

“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ (v. 9a)

“He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ (v. 9b)

“And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand” (vv. 10-11).

By emphasizing their familial connection, indeed their relationship of blood, the text heightens for the reader the horror of Cain’s murder of Abel. Perhaps a person might conceive of taking the life of a stranger; a brother does one scarcely conceive to kill.

Such a taking of life before God, the giver of life, is an offense of the first magnitude—an offense for which the blood that was shed “cries out to God from the ground” (v. 10).

What was the blood of Abel, the blood that Cain shed, saying?

From the surroundings of the story, it seems that the blood of Abel was crying, “Vengeance!” Indeed, it is vengeance that Cain fears when confronted for his offense. It is likewise vengeance—of a “sevenfold” variety—that God threatens for the punishment of any who would kill Cain in retribution for his brother—an ironic godly prohibition against vengeance and a provision for Cain. Moreover, it is again vengeance—this time of the “seventy-sevenfold” variety—which Lamech, Cain’s fifth-generation descendant, boasts, taking advantage of God’s mercy for Cain, will be his vindication for the murder of a “young man” (4:23-24). Shall we sin in order that grace may abound indeed! (see Rom 6:1)

Thus, as sure in the story as God’s grace for the offender is God’s justice for the victim; vengeance may be foregone for Cain, but the blood of Abel is in the mind and in the ears of God.

In the immediate context, the redemption God prepares for Abel comes in the form of Seth, another son for the bereaved mother Eve: “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him” (v. 25).

In the broader biblical, canonical context, the redemption of Abel and Cain—indeed for every victim and offender throughout time—comes in the form of Christ, the one whose “blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:24). For the blood of Jesus, like Abel’s, also had a voice crying to God—not vengeance but “Father, forgive them" (Lk 23:34).

-Joe

trust that this is true

At our recent Mennonite mission worker retreat, our input person, Jack Suderman, led us in eight sessions of "refreshing" our understandings of Christian mission. Among many priceless nuggets of wisdom and stories, he reminded us of Jesus' "first words" in the gospel of Mark. When Jesus first appeared on the scene, "proclaiming the gospel", he said nothing more, nothing less than "the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mk. 1:14-15). In other words, Jack contended, though the gospel may mean many things to many people, according to Jesus its entire meaning can be broken down to two basic ideas/realities: the time is now (has been fulfilled) and God's kingdom is here (has come near, is at hand). Everything else about the gospel is an elaboration of "the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand."

In response to his gospel, Jesus prescribed repentance and faith in, again, the "good news" ("gospel"). Or, as Jack put it, we are called to "trust" that this proclamation of the good news "is true." We are to trust that the time is indeed, truly, fulfilled and that God is present, is ruling, is King over the world in which we live.

As I pondered trusting the truth of the good news within the theme of Christian mission, an outline for a spirituality of mission (or a missionary spirituality) dawned on me. Just as Jesus was sent by the Father, or in Jesus God sent Godself to the creation, so, through the gift of his Holy Spirit, we too are sent. The mission of God has been extended to us, that is, to anyone and everyone who comes in Jesus' name. If we are thus, in some way, sent as Jesus was sent, then Jesus' mission reflects on our mission and our mission reflects on his. This means that, for Jesus, God in human form, his coming to the earth, his arrival, his engagement with the creation, was as sudden or as in-breaking as ours is. He also had to arrive in a setting that was, in the sense that he was not an original member of it, not his own. Being thus foreign to him, as the flesh is to the Spirit, the creation was for Jesus a field which he had to observe, explore, experience in order to know. The created world was for Jesus a field in which he saw--and proclaimed--the presence and activity of God: "the kingdom of God is at hand". Jesus came to where he came, to whom he came, proclaiming upon his arrival--and therefore, even before he got there--that God was present, ruling, reigning, working.

Indeed, when Jesus taught the nature or character of the "kingdom of heaven", he did not preach himself but identified the presence of God through the creation and its interactions: a woman kneading yeast through dough, a sower scattering seed upon different kinds of soil, a merchant in search of fine pearls, and on and on (Mt 13). All of these were things present before he got there, but they were not things seen because people had neither "eyes to see nor ears to hear". Thus God ordained an outsider to alert insiders to "God with us", God among them. And Jesus proclaimed to them, among them, within them, that "the kingdom of God is at hand". Such a proclamation is at once both a radical affirmation and critique--a judgment--of the creation, wherever it may be. It is an affirmation, for it proclaims, consistent with God's initial act of creation, that the flesh is a worthy carrier of God's Spirit; it is a critique because the presence of anything found not of God cannot reside in that in which God was pleased to dwell. First and foremost, however, simply, "the kingdom of God is at hand."

"The kingdom of God is at hand". Jesus "trusted that this was true." Jesus trusted that God's presence, wisdom was among the creation to which he came. That is the cornerstone of a missionary spirituality that affirms, challenges, transforms, loves.

-Joe