Repent and Be Forgiven

Jeremiah 3

The third chapter of Jeremiah is ultimately about God’s anguish regarding his bride, the people of Israel, and their incessant tendencies towards idolatry.  Starting in verse 1 we read,

1c You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me?  Declares the LORD.  2a Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!  Where have you not been ravished?

It is also about God’s desire for his bride to return.  That through his bitter anguish, he still loves his people.

12b Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD.  I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever.  Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God…

And then in 19 God starts on how things would or should have been.

19b And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.

But this simply is not how it worked out.  In verse 24 Jeremiah laments to his fellow Israelites:

24 But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.  25Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us.  For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.

Immediately, the question that enters into my mind is: what has Israel done that they need to return to God?  The text uses imagery of adultery.  But this is obviously a figurative adultery.  The adultery in this text is clearly idolatry.  The writer uses imagery of a cheating wife in order to bring to the mind of the reader the severity of the offense.  Just as earthly marriage between a man and a woman is a covenant where each participant enters into a relationship of trust fidelity and dependence, Israel had entered into a similar relationship with Yahweh.  The covenant is tread upon literally by everyone from Abraham on.  But this is the thing, God remembers his covenant with men who are absolute failures.  The humanity of the Bible is this, Abraham pimped out his wife to save his neck, Moses killed a man with his bare hands, David had an affair with another mans wife and then had the husband executed, all 12 disciples were failures three of the closest fell asleep while Christ was at the height of his distress in the garden, one, Peter the apparent rock that the church was to built on was referred to by Jesus as Satan.  Paul went out and found Christians in order to kill them.  These are the people that the Bible chooses to emphasize.  If God’s grace is great enough to cover their sins, I feel reassurance.  Over and over, again and again, Israel fails to keep Her covenant.  Just as difficult and painful and destructive as infidelity is in a relationship between a husband and wife, God is relating, or trying to communicate with Jeremiah the pain and anguish He feels with Israel’s betrayal.  Israel was meant to be different, they entered into a relationship with Yahweh.  This relationship is marked by a number of unique cultural and religious attributes.  Namely, where as other cultures would have an image of their deity in the temple, there was no image for Yahweh.  As Eric had mentioned last week, there was not even to be a king or a political representation for Israel.  As a sign of this covenant, God was to give to the Israelites the land of Canaan, and the men of Israel were to be circumcised.  However, somewhere along the way, Israel decided that their relationship with Yahweh was not as compelling or as beneficial as they had once thought.  At least, not beneficial in the sense that they were expecting.  As an alternative to this covenant with Yahweh, Israel decided that they would give up dependence on God for political establishment.  As the concentration of the nation grew more dependent on their king and his political treaties, their concentration on worshipping Yahweh was inevitably pushed further and further on the back burner to make way for new religious icons.  This trend goes on for many generations and dynasties of kings from Solomon to Manasseh, various kings would take wives from surrounding nations as a sign of treaty with the other country.  With the new relationship, came new religious practices.  The new monarch would instill religious customs in honour of Baal and Ashera, the ancient deities of fertility.  Every once and a while there would come a king who would forsake the trend and enforce nation wide religious reform.  However, the good king would die and the succeeding generations of kings would eventually succumb to yet again forsake Yahweh.  This is the cycle of Israel.  This is the story in which we find Jeremiah.  Jeremiah lived through 7 kings of the seven kings only one, only Josiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD.  But strangely, with every failure that is brought about with Israel’s inability to keep the law, the story does not end.  It goes on, and on and on, it’s cyclical.

I do not think that it would be missing the mark to suggest that there are similar cycles in our lives, certainly in mine.  Betrayal, sin, repentance, this is the cycle of the life of a Christian.  In the fall of 2009, I had gotten involved with a girl I had intended to help.  She had just come out of a damaging relationship and I was attempting to counsel her.  But the good I had intended to do turned into one of my life’s biggest regrets.  I cannot express in words the guilt and anguish I felt and the pain I caused her.  A month after the incident, I attended the church where one of my professors and dear friends was giving a sermon.  It was an Anglican church and if you have never been to an Anglican church before, there is a part in the service where the church corporately confesses their sin. When I confessed with the rest of the congregation my sin, as much pain and anguish my sin had inflicted, I felt just as much love and peace and acceptance. It was as if I had never heard of God’s forgiveness.  Although it was relatively awkward, crying in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I didn’t care.  I finally understood the gospel.  And I was free.

One of the greatest theologians that ever lived was a man named Martin Luther.  He was the leader of the reformation, although now he is greatly misunderstood.  At a time in history when the catholic church was doing some really stupid things, Luther sought for moral and theological reform within the catholic church and instead found himself an outcast.  Playing into his theological writings is Luther’s overwhelming sensitivity to guilt.  He would spend hours in the confessional booth confessing to his priest.  He would spend nights alone lamenting his sinful nature.  He was a man who was constantly plagued by his sin and quite honestly a man I can relate to.  Luther says that the purpose of the law, the purpose of the first five books of the Bible, is to show us that we cannot fulfill it.  I simply cannot agree more with him.  We simply cannot achieve right standing in the eyes of God, not alone.  I think perhaps one of the most terrifying and yet reassuring things about this statement is that Luther is not simply referring to the times when we fail at keeping the law, but that even in those select moments when we somehow manage to do well, it is simply not enough.  We cannot do it.  We need a savior, we need someone who can do what we cannot do, to live a life we should have lived, who can die a death we should have died.  We need Christ. 

In Colossians 1 starting in verse 3 we read:

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints…

Here, Paul is attributing their faith to God, the love they have for one another is from God.  It is only there because God has given it to them.  In many parts of the evangelical community there is a strange strand of Pelagianism.  Pelagius was one of Augustine’s opponents in the 4^th & 5th centuries, he believed that human nature had not been tainted by Adam’s original sin and that any one individual had the ability to be good without divine assistance.  Augustine rightly pointed out that if this were the case, then Christ’s death and resurrection were meaningless.  But here, Paul is pointing out to the Colossians that he thanks God for their love.  He goes on to say in verse 9:

⁹And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. ¹¹May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

In Jeremiah 3:12 God’s desire is for us to return to him.

12b Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD.  I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever.  Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God…

Why is October 31^st important?  Wrong, anyone else?  It’s reformations day.  What happened October 31^st 1517?  Luther nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg the 95 theses.  For those of you who have absolutely no church or theological background, Luther’s 95 Theses were Luther’s original argument against what the catholic church was doing at the time and is essentially one of the watershed moments which resulted in the reformation.  The first thesis reads: The life of a believer should be a life of repentance.  Repentance is a big deal to Luther, not because he believes in hollow rituals in order to check off our list of things we need to do as Christians, but because he recognized that the sin in his life needed to be forgiven.  We are not good, we are sinners.  It does not matter what you do for yourself, without God there is no forgiveness of sins.

         Today we are going to recite an Anglican prayer of confession, this is call and response, so you all can read the bold, I will read the rest: Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from your ways like lost sheep.  We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.  We have offended against your holy laws.  We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.  But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders. Spare us, O God, who confess our faults.  Restore us who are penitent; According to your promises declared to your church in Christ Jesus.  And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of your holy Name.  Amen

Your benediction is this:

Go, in God’s peace, knowing your sins are forgiven.  Go out into the world doing His work and spreading His good word: Christ came and died for our sins, forgiveness is found at the cross.  Acts 2:39 “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.

Why Study The Past?

One of the ineffable truths that a theologian must face is the connection between their own study and the past.  In almost every way, the development of theology is dependent on the historical development of the Church’s thought.  The foundational blocks of every legitimate theological thought are placed there by people who have most likely long since past.  In a big way, the life of the Christian is or is found in History.  With the help of Rowan William’s book Why Study The Past, this paper will posit five reasons why the study of the past is important and how the study of history informs Church ministry.

History is important for the church because history is apart of who we are as worshipers of God.  We use it to gage both how right and how wrong we are regarding our theology.  As we compare the situations of our theological convictions with the theological development through history, it is important for us to take what looks strange in light of that contrast and use it as a tool to refine our theological comprehension.  Within history, we see inconsistencies, both past and present that help guide our understanding toward the God who we are searching for.  The reality of the situation is that from our modern perspective, we expect that the development of theology, historically speaking, has developed in a way that makes our modern context make sense, when this may not be the case at all.  It is more likely that development of theology turns out the way it has in a way that seems utterly backwards to us.  Williams points out, “Eusebius and John Foxe wrote what we can’t help seeing as bad twenty-first-century history – but they were not trying to write good twenty-first-century history.”  When we read Eusebius’ writings, and we see the things that he focuses on as he relays the first few centuries of church history, we see that the things which are important to Eusebius are not necessarily the facts but the plot.  The things that should be interesting to us, the things that we should be looking for, are how the church managed to get through three centuries of persecution.

The claims of the early Church were mixed up not only with the theological questions of the day, and not just with the political circumstances, but also with the historical congruency of the martyrs and the practical concerns of the local ecclesia.  The theological result therefore, is incredibly complex and intermingled with the extra-theological issues.  Often the tendency is to want to just take the theological deliberations of history as an isolated whole.  It is one thing to point to the conclusion of the council of Chalcedon being the Chalecedon creed, it is an entirely other matter to delve into the 405 years of church history that lead up to those conclusions.  We also need to keep in mind how the political circumstances so greatly effected the results of that council.  It is not just a council that produced pages that go in our hymnals, there were Christians who were dying up until the point that Constantine united his empire under the banner of Chrystendom.  Constantine marked the end of hundreds of years of persecution.  In this light, the Church militant and triumphant would have meant a marked difference in the lives of every day Christians.  We also see how much the unity of the church meant to the early church, not that we should be idolizing the past, for surely there was nothing idyllic about the early church.  But at the same time, the church did not want to separate itself from its connection with the martyrs, in a lot of ways, the ecclesia of the first few centuries was the story of the martyr.  The issues that the churched concerned themselves with most in the first few centuries had to do with whether it was excusable to escape death as a bishop.  “The martyr is the conduit of divine presence who vindicates the claim to another citizenship.”[1]  It was the connection with the martyrs that connected the local ecclesia to their actual home in heaven.  This is also why the Gnostic controversies were so predominant.  This connection that the church had with the martyrs and the death of a churchman, carries over into the discussion of whether Christ was human, divine, or both, and at its core, the debate was concerned with the unity of the Church.  So far we have seen the ways in which studying history helps us to identify what is strange to us modern academics so that we can understand both what the past is trying to tells us and also so that we can be united in the story with the martyrs.  But there are other reasons why we study the past.  The next section focuses on the reformation and the extra

When we look at the reformation theologically, sometimes it seems fairly cut and dry regarding what happened and how it came about.  The pope was bad, the catholic church had become corrupt and immoral, Luther busted into the scene and the rest of the reformation followed him.  Faith, Scripture, and sacraments were of first importance and within the reformation a Christian could again become a Christian.  Obviously, this is an over-simplification of the reformation, but to the average layman, what more is known?  And truth be told, it would not be far off to assume that many people see the reformation just like a clean and clear cut distinction from the catholic church and that is all.  If we were to compare this summary with what is happening in our own day, it would be very easy to idealize the reformation, after all our own experiences with the church seem muddled and almost heavy-laden with extra circumstances and church politics.  We are surprised to find out that the reformation was in fact a very messy ordeal.  Williams puts it well when he says, “The Reformation, when it happened was neither simply about theological disagreement, nor simply about the papacy over against emerging princely states; it was both, because of lack of confidence in the papacy as an institution that could plausibly solve problems.”[2]  The reformation was neither a clear-cut break of protestants from catholics, nor was it only a theological disagreement, the reformation was the result of theological, political and social environments.  Islamic documents had surfaced and spread as the Byzantine empire collapsed.  The political thread that held Europe together, the church, had become corrupt and unstable.  There was a developing sense of nationalism, people began identifying themselves by the region they lived in.  The development of vernacular language made the distinction between region even stronger.  The development of the natural sciences begin to shake the ground of established truths, truths that were established by the church, which brings about a sense of doubt rather than trust.  These issues, along with the emergence of a middle class, and the discovery of new lands in the Americas make the situation in Europe ripe for a schism.  All this to say that there is a lot more going on in the background than just Luther wanting to break apart from the catholic church, which of course is not something that he wanted.  Luther’s desire was for dissent and reformation for the purpose of correction not divorce.

Finally, Williams points out the importance in understanding how things have come to be.  He says, “People don’t want to think to hard about the actual process by which things come to be as they are.  To think about processes here means both to understand that the record of the past is a record of change as well as continuity and to see that the way things presently are is something that itself has come to be, not something self-evidently right and final.”[3]  Often we look at our modern circumstance and assume that the past must have been much of the same or, as Williams puts it, “The present in fancy dress.”[4]  Honestly, as a young freshman in college, this was one of the most enlightening bits of knowledge that was handed to me.  I had come from a non-denominational church whose focus was on mission and practically nothing else.  I had received no biblical instruction, and my faith was largely shaped by experience and cultural influence.  When I started studying the writings of Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, I began to see much of the values that I held and was taught.  I began to realize the extent of influence that the past has on my present.  In this sense, it is more so that the present is the past in fancy dress.  As we come to understand how and why Luther began to dissent from the catholic church, as we come to understand the influence that Platonic philosophy had on Augustine, as we com to understand the effects of the 400 years that built up to the birth of Christ, we see that the past is so very strange in its presentation of events.  We see in fact that the past, in many ways is wholeheartedly different from the present.  But in these differences, we see how much we have been affected by current, or at least recent influence and circumstance.  For instance, Williams makes a point about how Karl Barth saw historical figures, “Barth’s Anselm, Barth’s Calvin, even Barth’s St Paul, owe a lot to Barth’s Kierkegaard; and Barth’s brilliant reinterpretation of Calvinist doctrine about predestination is clearly advancing a vision Calvin could not have owned.”[5]  Our perceptions and the things that influence us shape our thought and enable us to read the past in new light.  But it is imperative that we recognize this new light and not assume that our thought was Calvin’s thought.  We are joining a conversation that has been going on for over 2000 years.  In order to take part, we must approach the conversation with an air of humility.

We conclude now, having an understanding of the importance that studying the past has on our thought.  By studying history, we come to see the strangeness, of both the past and the present.  Through studying the past, we are joined with the martyrs who died for the church.  By studying history, we are able to understand that no instance is ever a standalone circumstance, never simply a theological, political, or cultural issue but very much so affected by any influences.  And, through studying the past, we can recognize how we are influenced by our environment and that we read the past through our modern lens.  By becoming aware of these four aspects, we are better equipped to interact with our church family, in order that we might grow into what God has created us to grow into.

References

Williams, Rowan. Why Study The Past?: The Quest For The Historical Church. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, 2005.

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[1] Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past?: The Quest for the Historical Church (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 39.

[2] Ibid., 62.

[3] Ibid., 88.

[4] Ibid., 10.

[5] Ibid., 98.

To Be Human

What does it mean to be human?  Obviously there are various aspects of being human, these components are delicately interwoven and complicated to articulate because, they are holistic.  In other words, they are inexplicably united in such a way that to describe the significance of one apart from the others is not doing justice to the nature of humanity.  Thus, it is important to maintain an understanding of the importance of all of these aspects as a whole and not as separate entities of what it is to be human.  We will be discussing four aspects that compose a picture of what it means to be human:  The Imago Dei, the distinction in gender, the importance of society as rooted in marriage and Christ as being truly human.

The biblical narrative opens in Genesis with a creation account.  Although there are certain veins of theological thought that take this account as a literal historical account of the origins of life, it is rather clear that the biblical account is rather un-interested in reiterating a scientific modernly historic account of the origins of life, or at least, if it is, it does a definitively poor job of it.  We must account for the fact that the ancient scholars and scribes were not living in a modern empirically centric environment.  The author of Genesis seems much more interested in interacting with the environment she is in.  For example, ancient near eastern societies presupposed the existence of God, or gods.  The writers were not concerned with arguing for the existence of God, they merely assumed there was one.  What was far more concerning was the relationship that the god or gods had with the people they governed or the part of creation they were directly concerned with.  For instance, in Canaan, the god Baal was understood to be the god associated with life, or rain.  Each year the God Baal would rise up give the land the water necessary to grow crops and sustain people.  Each year Baal would die and each year Baal would rise from death in accordance with the seasons.  As such, the livelihood of the gods were directly connected to the cycle of the seasons and the activity of creation.  If there were a flood, or a fire, or plague, or famine, the gods were just as much at risk of death or compromise as the rest of the creative order.  The temples that were dedicated to whichever god would have in the sanctuary, a statue erected in honor of whichever god to represent the authority and reign of said god in that area.  The human kings, who fancied themselves as gods, would also erect statues, images of themselves in the surrounding areas to represent their reign in the region. 

When we speak of humanity as being the image of God, we are referring to the same concept.  As we read the creation account that is in Genesis 1, the emphasis is on the fact that God, Yahweh, created everything that is in the world, from chaos to order.  This signifies God’s authority over creation.  Where other gods in near eastern culture were apart of creation, and therefore, susceptible to the elements, Yahweh remained unaffected by creational dangers because He had created them in the first place.  Just as He had created day and night, sun and moon, and all living creatures, He also created humanity.  He created male and female in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.  Whereas other gods and kings would erect statues to signify their rule, Yahweh established humans to rule the rest of creation.  Linguistically speaking, an image is a copy.  The question that we must now ask ourselves is this: If to be human is to be image, what is the likeness between the copy and the prototype?

To be made in the image of God has three primary implications: we are image insomuch as we are endowed, have function, and participate.  There are three main veins of thinking when it comes to God’s image as being endowed and we see these strands being associated by the thinkers who are responsible for them.  Augustine saw our endowment as being the ability to reason.  Thomas Aquinas saw our endowment emerging as we use our senses to interact with the world beyond us.  Finally, Calvin somewhat lumps the two ideas together in saying that endowment is the excellencies of creation as we see in wisdom and beauty, but in the sense that these excellencies are a type of reason our endowment therefore involves both our reason and our senses.  When we speak of the image in terms of function, we are ultimately speaking of God’s commands to fill the earth and subdue it.  We need to understand that image is not a static quality, such that we bear Gods image and we reflect his quality.  Image is a way of describing relationship.  Calvin wants to recover this understanding of image as dynamic, sin is not that I have lost something, sin is the interruption of a relationship, in the same way that grace is not a thing, it is the restoration of a relationship.  Finally, we understand image through language of participation.  Both endowment and function are united in participation.  Participation in God’s image must be understood separately from the concepts of fellowship or relationship.  We should understand participation within the concept of gift. We are insofar as God gives us, and insofar as we live in God’s gracious gifting.  Humanity is only human insofar as it participates with God.  Human being is being always being mediated through God.  It is always mediated through the mediator.  We are insofar as we are in Christ, the mediator.

Since being human is to be the image of God, and to be the image of God is to be understood as something we participate in, we must discuss how we participate with God.  The relation between male and female are the two primary ways of being human.  Male and female together are image.  We are the image in that we are either male or female.  These are the two distinct ways of being human.  Male is not more human than the female, and yet both are different. It is not good for the human being to be alone.  Adam names the animals, but he has no equal.  Marriage is embedded in the fabric of creation. The command to fulfill the earth and subdue it lies on men and women equally.  It is this that defines us from the rest of creation.  This includes our sexuality.  It includes all facets of being human. The self is expressed through the body and our bodies define who we are.  Our bodies are not merely vehicles for our souls.  To be without a body is to not be human.  Through the body we relate to the rest of creation, and through the body we relate to other humans. There are two ways of being a body, as male and female.  In our solitude we are image of God, and we become a community of God as we together are individual persons.  Although the world consists of many types of relationships and interactions, it is crucial to understand the concepts of marriage since it is the most fundamental interaction between the two primary ways of being human.  God gives to us the ability to participate with him by being in relationship mediated by Christ between both God and us, and between each other.  As such, the gift of new life in children is the complete gift of oneself.  Therefore, children are a necessary, yet not exhaustive aspect of Christian marriage.  It is through loving our children that we come to understand God’s love for us.  If the family is to properly mirror God as Ephesians 5 and 6 says it ought, the reflection is simply incomplete if children are not included in that picture.  Being a child is ultimately something you do not have a choice about.  That is, we do not have a choice regarding the family in which we find ourselves.  Our choice involves the choice of obedience alongside others who are covenanted.

Now that we have established the foundation of all society and culture, marriage, we should spend a little time identifying the implications of this on a larger scale.  While society is established upon marriage, God establishes broader based commands to humanity with regards to culture.  Culture is the sum social response to human being in the world.  Culture is the total of what humans make with which God has made.  Religion is apart of culture and culture is a human construction therefore religion is a human construction.  Culture must be understood within the constructs of the created order as we see in the creation narrative, so we will take a look at the expository aspect in Genesis.  We need to understand our relation to the rest of creation as much as we need to understand our relation to God and to each other. God animates Adam, and is the source of Adam’s life.  Life is received, and therefore we are not separated from the rest of creation, we are apart of it.  In Gen 1, day is a spatial reference and not a chronological one.  In three of the days God makes space, and the next day God fills the space.  It is about moving from Chaotic and empty to ordered and beautiful.  We receive our being from creation every bit as much as we receive our being from God.  We are sixth day creatures, with them we share the breath of life, we are formed by the stuff that makes the universe and when we die we will become the stuff that makes the universe.  We are human in as much as we recognize that this place, this world, this earth is our home.  Furthermore, we are human in so much as we die.  Mortality is embedded in the good creation from the beginning, but mortality in the form of death is a unique result of the fall.  Immortality is an extra gift that is the result of being in relationship with the creator.  Even in the garden, immortality is not a sure thing.  Immortality is eschatological, it is the life after life.  The common task that is laid upon all human beings as the children of Adam and his wife is to represent God as stewards of this world.  This is a radical concept in the ancient near east.  As we have already said, the ones who represent the gods is the king.  The king has dominion and the people are the chattel.  The Bible’s mandate is not limited to one class of people but to the whole human race.  So there is exultation.  And at the same time there is limitation.  God is the creator, not us, Adam tends, and extends but he does not plant.  Adam names the animals, but it is God who brings the animals to Adam and forms them to be named.  Whatever Adam names the animal, that is the animal’s name.  If this is the case, stewardship denotes a fundamental disposition towards the world.  Striving toward stewardship is to move toward the goodness of work and away from the evil of toil.  It is a sign of sanctification.  If it is a disposition it applies to all our work.  The term stewardship can get high jacked, to mean finances or environment.  Stewardship applies to everything we do, in so far as we see ourselves becoming human being in the pattern of receiving from creation and giving to creation.  So we see that in all that we do, we are stewards.

      Up until this point we have discussed what it is to be the image of God absent of the importance of the cross.  Let us be clear, there is nothing that we can speak of that is not affected by Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.  As such we cannot speak of humanity as being the image of God without also speaking about the necessity of seeing our role as image in light of the Christ.  After all, in light of the Fall, we cannot speak about what it truly means to be human without speaking about He who is truly human.  The reason why this paper has been altogether silent about the integration of Christ in the topic of what it is to be human is because we will be discussing this in a later paper.  For now, we will simply assert that our humanity is Christ’s humanity. All being is mediated by the Logos of God.  This should function as our lens of stewardship.  Since we cannot confer about what it is to be human without talking about Christ, we also must mention the importance of the sacraments.  Since it is through the act of baptism that we are wed to Christ by faith, and the substance of the bread and wine truly coexist with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, It is with the water and at the table when we are most human.  There is a real union with Jesus, such that he really gives himself to us, so that we might be an obedient humanity towards God.  In that connection we remain united to him and in him united to his father.

In conclusion, we have a comprehensive understanding of the four aspects that compose a picture of what it means to be human:  The Imago Dei, the distinction in gender, the importance of society as rooted in marriage and Christ as being truly human.  In the next paper we will be discussing how our image is affected by sin, and therefore form a more substantial understanding of the importance of Christ as the definition of what it is to be human.

The Ascension

Acts 1:6

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  ⁷He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  ⁹When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by the.  ¹¹They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

In this text we see that upon Jesus rests the hopes of the disciples to restore Jerusalem to its former glory.  This is known as the day of the Lord, the coming of the son of man or what have you.  Here Jesus somewhat side-steps the question of the disciples “Will you now finally bring about the kingdom of Israel?”  He replies saying that those days are not known to any but the Father, and then directs the conversation in a seemingly whole other direction.  In answering the question of “When will the kingdom of God come?” Jesus says, “Go and be my witnesses.”  And then he floats up into the clouds.

            The ascension is a holistically bizarre account, not least of all to our empirically oriented minds.  It seems to be one of the miraculous events in the Bible that we feel uncomfortable with, perhaps even more so compared to the resurrection.  Whereas the resurrection signifies what we can expect when Christ comes again, and embodies the hopes of the Christian, the ascension appears to be an oddly placed, seemingly unnecessary fairytale rendition of Christ going back to heaven.  As a result, the ascension is an often overlooked and drastically neglected marker on the church calendar.  This is rather unfortunate because, within the ascension is the validation of the resurrection, without the ascension, the resurrection is nothing.

            But what does the ascension mean?  How can we understand it?  In a series of articles written for Bibliotheca Sacra, Peter Toon, a distinguished Anglican scholar and clergyman helps to explain the importance of the ascension for both Christ and therefore, for us believers. 

Regarding Christ:

            First, the Ascension meant and means for Jesus a position and state of glorification.  Second, the Ascension meant and means for Jesus that He has become and is the fullness of all divine blessing to His people. Third, the Ascension meant and means that Jesus is and will be the Conqueror and Judge of the enemies of God.[1]

Regarding Us:

            As head of the body, which is the church, Christ went ahead of us by ascending, we therefore now have hope.  Hope for the “victory over the devil and its implications for the church.”  Christ entered heaven to intercede for us. The Presence of his human nature in heaven is itself an intercession for us; for God, who exalted the human nature in Christ, will also show mercy towards those for whose sake this nature was assumed.  Because Christ is our Head we share in what has been conferred upon him: since Christ was raised, we will be raised, since Christ has a place in heaven, we will have a place in heaven, since Christ is at the right hand of the father, we will be at the right hand of the father.[2]

            In short, the ascension helps us to recognize the divinity of Christ and to be reassured in the promises of our heavenly home with God.  For we have a savior both fully divine and fully human that has taken on our sins, who knows what it is to be human and who loves us.  For not only is our past made his past by his humanity, but his heavenly residence will be made ours by his divinity.

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[1] Peter Toon, “Historical perspectives on the doctrine of Christ's ascension, pt 2: the meaning of the ascension for Christ,” Bibliotheca sacra 140 no 560 (O-D 1983): 294.

[2] Peter Toon, “Historical perspectives on the doctrine of Christ's ascension, pt 3: the significance of the ascension for believers,” Bibliotheca sacra 141 no 561 (Ja-Mr 1984): 18.

My First Sermon

As I’m sure you are aware, we as a church are spending this first month of the year as a kind of orientation month.  Over the last few weeks Cody, Eric, Gavin and Jeff have been sharing with us their hopes for us as a community as we jump into this new year.  Cody began our series talking about the calling that Christ has placed on our lives, that we have been called by God to the professions, locations, and lives that we live.  Eric then told us of the call to joy, that there is Joy to be found in Christ and we should be taking that particular fruit of the Spirit seriously. We also heard from Gavin and The Bishop about the Loving God and getting Jesus right, I couldn’t be here last week and I’m actually disappointed that I missed that one.  If you will listen to me and turn you ear to what Christ has to say through me, I would like to contemplate our call to worship.  So if you have your Bibles with you, you can go ahead and turn to Revelation 14, that’s where we’ll spend a large chunk of our time today.

If we were to look at the grand narrative in the Bible, we would see the interactions and responses between God and Humanity, the root of enmity and conflict between us and God is really an issue of worship.  The cycle of conflict that we see regarding humanity and God is one of humanity’s idolatry and of God’s fidelity.  From the third chapter in Genesis to the end of Revelation we see that man seeks to worship literally anything and everything other than God.  We, worship: foreign gods, idols crafted by the hands of other men, work, youthfulness, bloodshed, relationships, possessions, other people’s possessions[1], and most devastating of all, ourselves.[2]

            It is in Genesis that the story of man begins.  In the beginning God created.  God created everything.  God created day and night, God created heaven and earth, God created plants, God created the sun and the moon, God created fish and birds, God created beasts of the land, God created man and woman in his image, and then God rested.  After God created the man, he placed him in the garden, and then said that it is not good that the man should be alone, and in an act of divine mercy, prudence, and grace he created woman.  A decision I will be forever thankful for. 

In chapter 3, we see humanity’s active and passive rebellion against God come to fruition as Eve takes the forbidden fruit and eats, and as Adam stands off to the side like a scared little boy and does nothing.  The serpent deceives both the man and the woman “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  What is the greatest irony of the fall of humanity?  It’s that we were made in God’s image.  We already were like God.  It is in the desire for knowledge of good and evil that we are enticed to elevate ourselves to be our own authority.

            It is in the garden where man is placed to do nothing but enjoy God’s presence and bask in the glory of all that God has made.  And it is here where man first turns from worshipping God and resting in his authority to attempting to be his own source of truth and placing himself first and foremost in the created hierarchy.

To crystallize this notion we can look to Deuteronomy 6, this is where we find Moses sharing with God’s people the greatest commandment:

The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Later on in Matthew 22, Jesus adds: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.[3]  I am told that these commandments assume all ofthe other commandments.  If we affirm these two, the others by default are affirmed.  And in turn, if we deny the others then by default these ones are denied as well.

For us, who get to see Israel’s future unfold in the rest of the first Testament, we see that the last thing that God’s people do is affirm this first commandment.  The rest of the first Testament’s story is the telling of how God’s people again and again, sought after anything and everything other than God.  The times when God was closest to them, were the times when they worshipped him and only him.  And much to our dismay, those times are few and far between.  The Bible, instead of telling the story it should be telling, tells not a story of fidelity, but a story of deceit and betrayal as time after time, Israel pushes God away, refusing his love and seeking fulfillment in anything but what they will find it in.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking, how does any of this connect with the passage that we are supposed to be focusing on?  Thank you for reminding me, the answer is simple.  Because where we turning to, there is hope.  Where we are turning, the tone of the story takes a drastically new approach.

It is in the second Testament that we meet God’s final and all encompassing response to our idolatry, and his response is Christ.  So, being a good student of theology, I turn to Revelation, because the book of Revelation is the theology of the Church.  For those of us who worship God, Revelation is a source of over abounding hope.  And because this is where we find our hope, this is where we will find joy.

Revelation is probably the most misunderstood book of the entire Bible, if not, the New Testament for sure, and to a certain extent, understandably so.  I mean, let’s face it, if it were not for the fact that the church had indoctrinated Revelation into the canon, we would pass it off as a peyote tripping crazy old guy rambling on about angels, beasts, bowls and prostitutes.  Right?  Like, I’ve never done drugs, but I imagine that if I got hopped up shrooms and then proceeded to write out my thoughts, the result would be something akin to Revelation.

Thank God for Augustine.  From Augustine we receive the lens for the right way of interpreting Revelation.  And here it is, Are you ready, this is important, if you walk away today and you learn nothing else other than what I am about to say, I will be satisfied.  DO NOT READ REVELATION LITERALLY.  Breathe.  The book of Revelation is about worshipping God.  The book is addressed to several communities of believers, much like ours.  In chapters 2 and 3 John addresses the specific churches that he has in mind as he writes Revelation.  Then from chapters 4-11we have the recounting of the story of humanity played over and over again with specific focus on different things.  Chapters 12-14 are we call the deeper conflict.  It is here that the author explains to us the spiritual struggles that we do not see or understand.  And the rest of the book is focused on God reassuming his authority and dominion over everything.  It is in the deeper conflict that we see the desires of the author for the churches.  And not just the seven, but the global church.  It is his desire for us as well.

            And so we turn to Revelation 14.  As I had said earlier, the book of Revelation is really a book about worship.  If the deeper conflict is the focus of Revelation, then chapter 14 can be seen as the focus of the deeper conflict.  The section serves as a hinge to Revelation.  It is the gateway from history to consequence, and it is in chapter 14 that we find the meat and potatoes of the message of Revelation.

So here we go.  Chapter 14, starting in 6.

The first angel passes by saying, “Fear God and give him glory… worship him who made heaven and earth.[4]  This is our call to worship.  The second angel tells us that Babylon, or the great idol, has fallen.  The idols have been destroyed.  And the third angel tells us that those who worship the idol will fall just the same as the idol itself.  The author betrays his narration to explain to the people what this all means:  Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.  This connects us back to the commandments, and ultimately the greatest of commandments.

John is writing in the context of oppression, a time when the Romans and Jews are persecuting and killing Christian men women and children daily for what they believe.  The line between oppressed and oppressor is sharply defined.  John is writing to the communities to remind them that they have nothing to fear in life, for their reward in death is greater than the suffering that they will experience in life.  However, we are not in a time of persecution.  We cower in the folds of safety that our society has put in place to protect religious freedom, and grow fat on the prosperity that we earn for ourselves, and as we become drunk with the luxuries of our times, we eventually forget our need for God altogether.

While Revelation is a book given to the believing community to bolster their faith against the persecuting oppressors, John offers us as believers absolutely no compromise.  In the eyes of the revelator there are those who worship God, and those who do not, and the consequences of our decisions lead either to rest in God’s peace or to eternal enmity.  I don’t know about you, but this scares the dickens out of me.

I have a very easy time identifying the sins and iniquities in my life.  Sufficed to say that I am more often than not one of those who does not worship God, at least not with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my might.  Thankfully, I am not dead yet.  And every so often I can swallow my pessimism and see God’s redeeming work in my life, and rest in knowing that he is not finished sanctifying me yet.  I could go on for a good month’s worth of sermons regarding sanctification, but since my time is fast disappearing, I will relent.  It boils down to this, Christ’s yolk is easy, and his burden is light.  “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

The question then, that I am so eager to answer is, “What does it mean to worship God?”  I believe the answer is found by looking to the God man.  I believe the answer is found by looking to the one, who lived the way I should have lived, and died the death I should have died.  I think that we see what it is to worship God, by looking to Christ.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Christ reiterates what we have already been told.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”[5]  To worship God is to love him with literally every part of our lives.  It means to submit my pride to the love of Christ.  It means to submit my lustful mind to the will of Christ.  It means to submit in my utter lack of wisdom to Christ.  And it means to love God.

Amen.

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[1] Deut. 5.

[2] Gen. 3.

[3] Jesus also changes might to mind.  This may be changed because of the drastically different kingdom that the Jews had expected him to instate.  Although unfortunate, war is sometimes necessary.  Christ did not come waging war, he came to bring peace to those who recognized him as God.

[4] The end of the verse actually says: “and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the spring of water.”  The terms ‘Sea’ and ‘Water’ refer to chaos.  It is out of chaos that God forms the earth and all that is in it.  The idea here is that even though there are things in life that seem utterly chaotic, God reigns over even the most unreasonable circumstances.  It is because God is sovereign that we can continue to worship him joyfully in spite and through the darkest of paths and the driest of desserts, for it is he who made the paths and the deserts.

[5] Matthew 22:37