Antediluvian Widespread Evil

As someone interested in both science and theology, I have a particular interest in the human race and it's history.  Contrary to some people who believe the human race is only 6,000 years old (based on their arithmetic of Bible accounts) the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of science is that humans have been around for a lot longer.  That does not mean the Bible is wrong, just that the Bible is not that interested in telling us about exact time periods of human history.   The Bible is not a science handbook but a book of infallible truth, carried in a variety of literary genres, most of which are not concerned with being a text book.

One such idea is that there was once a great flood that God used to wipe all humanity off the face of the earth, except for 8 people he preserved in a boat. The Noah's Ark and the Flood story is about evil human nature and it's relationship to the environment, disinterest in the good God, God's sovereignty and right of judgment, and His continuous desire to redeem and recreate, and finally His inviting us into that recreating process.   The timescales are quite irrelevant. The exact extent of the flood is not the point.  The essence and quality of the truth conveyed in the Bible narrative is what is intended.

I spent my teen years tramping the upland massif of Dartmoor in Devon in England, where bronze age relics are everywhere to be seen.  Perhaps that is why i have no problem thinking about human in great antiquity.

That's Grimspound - the remains of a Bronze age settlement on Dartmoor dating from about 1300 BC.  I read today a story from the nearby county of Somerset:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150416-our-ancestors-were-cannibals

Our ongoing research shows that ancient people, although great artists and craftspeople, had a poor view of human sanctity.  If cannibalism and human sacrifice were normal ancient impulses, how much suffering did God abate when he selected a few people in a global 'do over' for humanity?
Do we need historical evidence of the 'fallenness' of human nature?  Perhaps the news headlines from various war zones and ISIS provide evidence that human morality is not evolving or improving as many modernists might suppose or hope.  Human nature, like God, is the same yesterday, today and I fully expect, tomorrow.

Thank God - for he has made a way of saving us from ourselves, from the darkness we each carry, and has made a path of forgiveness, affirmation, healing and growth.  That is the Way of Christ.

(And just in case you were worried about all the ancient humans who died in those days of flood and rain...see my previous blog post.)

A Rich Day, Part 1: Humility and Recognition

     Wednesday April 15, 2015 was an extraordinary day in the life of this chaplain.  4 aspects will remain with me, and I'll blog on each one.  In this post I want to share with you a simple moment.
     As usual for my workplace chaplaincy role, I visited with the employees of one of my companies at 6:15 AM to walk the line of field-technician trucks and meet the men and women with a one-on-one handshake and a friendly word.   Today the company was meeting at a function hall to give everyone a breakfast buffet, some hoopla and to announce the first quarter results.
     The company principals gave their presentations followed by each of the senior directors, finally the HR director.  She had a couple of slides and the final bullet-point was my name with two exclamation marks after it.  Ashley Chartier was so gracious to me, thanking me for my work over the year 'from the bottom of her heart'.  Everyone applauded and then a few people stood up, then more, and soon all 80 people in the room were on their feet, applauding me.  A standing ovation for a chaplain. For me.  I was just crushed with humility, genuinely - which I was as unexpected to me as their applause.  I motioned for them to sit down and they did.  The principal echoed Ashley's thanks and the meeting moved on.  I however was just so deeply moved.
     I don't work for either praise or thanks, but I'll take them if they come.  What moved me so very deeply was that my ministry was recognized and valued.  It was a gracious gift of God to me.  Not all the leaders of my last church shared their sentiment, a fact that has humbled me these last 3 years.
     I may not know what the next few months may bring, but I want to stay with this group of people, just as I have stayed connected to the kind people from my previous church.  Thank you God for a unique moment.  You have humbled your servant, and in due time, have lifted him up (James 4:10).  Thank you Lord for this encouragement.

Easter Saturday - Christ walks Hades

Easter Saturday. God, apparently, is dead. At least for today, because we know that Sunday is coming...tomorrow. For now though, Jesus is in the tomb. cold. dead. utterly dark. silent. sinews rigid, corpse, almost blood-drained, scarred, naked apart from the burial shroud. Humiliated, cut, brutalized.

The Apostle Peter, writing some years later, mentions a beautiful early Christian tradition (1 Peter 3:18-20) that Jesus was not inactive in His death, but that He was busy in Hades bringing new life to those who had died trusting in God, for all the years leading up to this momentous day. The penitent thief who died alongside Him on the cross would have experienced hades turned into Paradise as Jesus came to greet him. The faithful men and women, boys and girls of Old Testament times too. Even the ancient ones who died in and before the great flood, says Peter.
Wherever Jesus Christ walks, death turns to life, darkness to light, indifference to love.
There is a movement among some modern Christian theologians to think that hell cannot exist, because it is incompatible with the central notion of the loving all-power all-knowing God. Yet Jesus, whom I follow, never taught such thinking, Notably, Jesus Christ taught more often and at greater length about hell, that he did about heaven. God, He reminded us, is equally about justice, as He is about love. And justice seeks righteousness. Since Jesus IS God, He is speaking with self-understanding here. Who will provide the righteousness needed to undo the the darkness we each carry? It was God come to us, revealed to us as Jesus, who allowed all humanity - the hegemony of state power (Imperial Rome), and the baying crowds, and the self-righteous right-wing conservative religious elite (Pharisees), and the left-wing liberal intelligentsia (Sanhedrin) - to brutalize, mock, marginalize and execute Him. The Holy One absorbed into Himself all the darkness, hatred, self-righteousness and brutish ignorant stupidity of humankind. There is noting more we can do to Him, we have done it all in our fore-fathers, confirmed in our every micro-decision to prefer our own ways. Yet here comes Jesus, walking though the hallways of our minds, bringing paradise, bringing life, and always saying - "come follow Me".
Love has satisfied Justice and here He comes. On Easter Saturday we get the chance to decide to follow Him into Resurrection Sunday, or stay in hades.

Investing

“Gentlemen, there are only two things on earth that will last forever—the Word of God and the souls of men. Give the rest of your life to these two things.” Dr. B. Gray Allison, past president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

These words were reported in a recent blog post I read.  I agree with them.  (To be gender-inclusive I would say the souls of people.)  This is the essential nature of my own calling into ministry: a relational commitment to God, The Bible and People, and the place where they intersect.  It's a complex place.  Of course The Bible is the written word of God, and The Lord Jesus Christ is the living Word of God.  So wherever the Bible is being read/heard then Jesus is especially present, inspiring the reader/hearer, just as he did when those words were being written, and transmitted to us through the centuries.   The words lift off the page, and enter our hearts.  Not just the words, but the very presence of God Himself.  

So I am bold to say that if you need God, crave God, seek God, then read the Bible.  Better still, read the Bible in the context of a worshiping community that honors Christ and the Bible.  That could be a church, a Bible study group, a simple group of friends.

www.ChristTheWay.org 

A poem from my Family: Andy

Andy

That grey day it was raining on the cobblestones of Oxford

We hugged and kissed my brother before he stepped on the bus

His long hair and blue corduroy jacket

and all his worldly goods in a duffle bag

Off to Spain and the rest of his life

We stood silently after the bus, and he, had left our sight

And our lives, knowing it would never be the same

That by any definition we were now three, plus one in Spain.

Dad suggested fish and chips for lunch and we tried to be cheerful

As the mugs of steaming tea fogged the café window while

People outside were shopping, their lives having not taken

Any irrevocable turns today.

That summer came photos falling out of letters sent with foreign stamps.

Of  a sunlit apartment, a beach, blue sea, a pretty girl.

Then the news we already knew – they had decided to marry

Mum cried and Dad tried hard not to.

And they decided to be happy for him.

And he wrote I could have his guitar if I wanted it.

Which I didn’t, because it was his stupid guitar.

And anyway, he was too dumb to know I’d already bought one.

Be Sanctified - Christ's Very Purpose.

John 17:19 ends with 4 words that describe Christ's desire for us, that we be 'be sanctified in truth'.  Four little words.  Four colossal words. The first two words are the topic for this blog post: be sanctified.

Sanctified:  The Greek word here is 'hagiazo'.  It is a perfect, passive verb-participle and plural, nominative and masculine, just so you know!  Let's unpack what that means and why it is so dynamite:

This is a participle, form of verb, a doing word.  The tense of this word is 'perfect'.  "The basic thought of the perfect tense is that the progress of an action has been completed and the results of the action are continuing on, in full effect. In other words, the progress of the action has reached its culmination and the finished results are now in existence. Unlike the English perfect, which indicates a completed past action, the Greek perfect tense indicates the continuation and present state of a completed past action."

So my friend, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, Christ wants that you will have already been sanctified, that He wants this work to be complete in you, so that the full effects of your sanctification will reverberate on in full beauty throughout all of your life!  If you have not been sanctified, or if your life is only partially sanctified (made holy) then this falls short of what Jesus wants for you.  he wants for your sanctification to be complete...that is fully... and ongoing.

The passive voice of this verb-participle means that we are NOT the one doing the sanctifying, but rather that we are the one's receiving the sanctification.  The sanctification is being done to us, or perhaps in us.  Our work is to receive/accept the sanctification.  Chris is the subject, we are the object.  Christ is sanctifying us.  To be more exact, this connects back to verse 17 in that Christ is asking The Father to sanctify us.  That Christ declares he is consecrating Himself to this end makes it clear that God the Father is achieving our sanctification through Christ's consecration.  Connecting this to the rest of John's gospel, it is clear that the cross and the empty tomb - Christ's death and resurrection - provide the necessary means and power for the Father to sanctify us through Christ. Wow. 

It is a participle, which means it isn't the main verb, but accompanies the main verb.  The main verb is 'be'.  Jesus wants us to 'be'.  It's about what we are, not what we do.  How does Jesus want us to be?  Well, he wants us to be sanctified.  The 'sanctified' here is modifying the verb 'to be', acting as an adverb that describes the verb 'to be'.  It answers the question 'how are we to be?  (It is an instrumental adverbial participle, and adverbial participles are always nominative case.) The type of being Jesus wants for us is 'sanctified'  Sanctification is what Jesus wants us to be.  It's not our work, but our condition, our way of being, our mode of existence. 

It's plural - Jesus wants this not just for one of his disciples, but for all of us.  This is a universal desire for all those who follow Christ, love Him and belong to Him. Sanctification is not for the select few, the top-class Christians, but for each and every one of those who are following Jesus.

In summary, to 'be sanctified' is a beautiful way of being that Christ wishes for us, and that we receive from Christ.  We can't get their ourselves, it is something that is done in us, from The Father, through Christ's work, in Christ's personhood.  The work of sanctification is not the point really.  The point is that the 'state of being' or ongoing condition that Christ wants for all of us is to continually be sanctified.  That is Christ's desire, prayer and action.  Christ's very purpose is that we be sanctifed. 

John 17:19 "And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth."

John 17 is a deep and rich passage of scripture.  Jesus is praying, and He is soon to be crucified.  John is listening in and reporting the prayer to us.  On this occasion Jesus is fully aware that His prayer is being listened to.  This prayer (usually called the 'High Priestly Prayer') is Jesus' gift to His immediate disciples, and to us.  We can be confident of this because Jesus makes it clear.  The prayer is given in three discrete but connected passages:

• John 17:1-5  Jesus opens his prayer by detailing His relationship with God The Father, for our benefit.  This is a theological goldmine - a gift from Christ to all Christians, and indeed to all people, for all time.  If you ever had any doubt about how Jesus Christ understood Himself, this is a go-to passage of scripture. 
• John 17:6-19  Jesus prayers for this immediate disciples (the 12 - or possibly a wider circle of believers) - the "people You gave Me out of the world".  Even Judas Iscariot gets a mention albeit by an unhappy description as "the son of destruction" (verse 12).  Jesus uses this part of His prayer to make crystal clear the relationship between The Father, Jesus Christ, the 'world' and his disciples.  There are enough complex themes here to keep a small group Bible study busy for weeks!
• John 17:20-26 Jesus prays for all the believers who will ever live.  Yup - that's us! Again there is compact depth and richness here, enough to ponder on for a lifetime. 

This is a wonderful chapter of scripture to chose as 'food' for Lent.  As Jesus prays on the very threshold of His passion, death, resurrection and ascension, they are all in view here in these 26 verses of prayer. 

But for today, and I suspect for some days to come, I will focus in on just one little dynamite verse.  Right now I have only a shallow sense of what it means.  It is verse 19: "And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth."

Jesus is speaking; 'They' refers to His then-current disciples...the "people you gave me out of the world";  Jesus wants them to be sanctified in the truth.  

What would that look like exactly?  Jesus' method of ensuring that this goal would be achieved is for Him to 'consecrate' Himself.  What does that mean?  How did He do that?  What would it matter if this verse had been omitted from the Bible?  What effect does this verse have on our understanding of God The Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  Is the Holy Spirit even involved?  How does this verse effect the church, me and you?

I apologize for that string of unanswered questions.  If you are still reading,  thank you. May we be sanctified by Christ, not because of anything we deserve, or anything that we may do, or anything that we may already be, or not be.  But rather, because Jesus wants it.  Because Jesus prayed it.  And Jesus is God.  So that means we have it, because when God prays, His prayers never fail.

I hope to journey into this verse and penetrate it's depth and riches.  Pray for me, and let me know the truth that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you about, so that we can stand together in Christ's consecration, and be sanctified.  I need it.  I know this from deep  within my own brokenness.  I need Him.  How about you? 

Amen.