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On April 16, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Holy Saturday: The Body Waiting

Holy Week, like the rest of the church calendar, gives us a multi-dimensional perspective on our present lives. We exist in tensions; tensions between what is already accomplished and what is yet to be accomplished, what is true but remains in a condition of relative immaturity and what will be true when God’s promises come to complete maturity in and for us. There is, for instance, one sense in which we live in a perpetual Easter. Christ is risen and ever lives to make intercession for us. He will never die again and, therefore, be raised again. Our bodies are in union with his body, so we have died and been resurrected with him (Rom 6.1-11). But there is another reality at work at the same time. Because Christ is the head of a body, the church, there is a sense in which he still suffers (Ac 9.4; Col 1.24) and waits for resurrection on the last day (1Cor 15). He moves with us through history until we come to have bodies like his glorious body (Phil 3.20-21). In union with Christ, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are all present and continuing realities for the church as she moves through history, anticipating the resurrection of our bodies when union with our head will reach its fullest expression.

Holy Saturday is one perspective on our existence as the church in which we follow our head throughout history anticipating the resurrection. There is much to learn in the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday.

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On April 15, 2022 By In Theology

Between Two Insurrectionists: Riots in the Capital

Guest Post by Tim Gallant

No, not that capital, silly. We’re talking about real insurrectionists here. It is Good Friday, after all.

So first things first.

Insurrectionists, Not Thieves

Jesus did not die between two thieves.

“What??” you exclaim. “My Bible tells me he did just that, in both Matthew and Mark” (Matthew 27:38, 44; Mark 15:27).

The Greek word used, however, is lestai (singular lestes). While this term apparently can refer to violent bandits (and thus “robbers”), it is not a term associated with what we generally think when we hear the word thief (pickpockets, burglars, larcenists etc). Such thieves would almost certainly never have been crucified.

The Romans can justly be criticized for resorting to crucifixion frequently — but they didn’t use it on generic criminal elements. It was their great weapon against non-Romans who seriously disrupted the social order, such as runaway slaves and revolutionaries.

Moreover, the term lestai itself also happens to refer to revolutionaries — people who engage in insurrections and plotting. John 18:40 identifies Barabbas (for whom Jesus’ death basically became a ransom) as a lestes. Meanwhile, Mark informs us that Barabbas was imprisoned awaiting punishment because he had been involved in insurrection, and indeed had committed murder in the process (Mark 15:7). He is not a lestes because he is a thief; he is a lestes because he is a rebel, a revolutionary.

That verse, incidentally, says that Barabbas was bound with the insurrectionists (stasiastes) who had made insurrection (stasis) with him. This strongly suggests that the “thieves” crucified with Jesus were co-insurrectionists involved in the same rebellion that Barabbas was involved in.

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On April 15, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Good Friday: The Body Broken

Jesus told his disciples a few times over the past several years that he would have to be delivered over to the Jewish officials who would then hand him over to the Gentiles to be crucified.  He transformed the old Passover meal into a memorial meal for his people in which he displayed and gave himself through his own broken body and shed blood in bread and wine. The disciples didn’t understand this, but for them and the rest of the world to have the life of a good, healthy, functioning body, Christ Jesus would have to suffer and die; his body would have to be broken for their bodies to be made whole. Death accompanied by the sting of sin was the fate of man, Adam, as promised by God from the beginning for his disobedience. That is, unlike the death Adam experienced in the creation of Eve when he was resurrected immediately into a greater state of glory, sin would hold him in death’s grip without resurrection.

This is Adam’s fate.

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On April 14, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Maundy Thursday: The Body Given

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the night he instituted the Lord’s Supper and gave his new commandment to love one another as he loved us. He served us, ultimately giving his body and blood so that we might be healed, which is the result of our sins forgiven, being reconciled to God, reconciled with one another, and reconciled with the non-human creation. He gave his body to be broken in death so that as we partake of the bread he proclaims to be his body, we are united with one another in his body as his body. This union created in Christ Jesus demands of each one of us that we love one another in the same way that Christ Jesus loved us. That is what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. We share his own life, which is not only the gift of individually passing from death to life and having life after this present life is over, but it is also having life with one another.

As a body we are to share a mutual love, a love that is the opposite of everything described in Prov 6.16-19. The command to love one another assumes our union with one another because the “one another” is a certain group of people, namely, the other disciples of Christ. Love nourishes and enhances the unity and health of the body, which is just the opposite of what the seven abominations do.

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On April 7, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Sowing Discord

The journey to the great Passover began as it had for hundreds of years. An individual man, family, or small band of families from a Roman province began the ascent to Jerusalem singing Psalm 120, the first of fifteen Psalms of Ascent that would end at the mountain of the Lord in worship. The Psalms of Ascent begin with a desire for peace in a world of war and move through the ebbs and flows of the journey of God’s people through history, celebrating and anticipating the promises of God in the midst of present distresses.

From north, south, east, and west Jews traveled, meeting up with other pilgrims along the way. Their bands grew larger and their voices stronger as they converged on the roads and finally at the gates of Jerusalem. Standing at the gates or inside the city, Psalm 133 is sung as the penultimate Psalm, declaring the goodness of the unity of God’s people as they have gathered as one body and one voice for one purpose: to pledge their loyalty to Yahweh their King and receive the promise of deliverance from him. The servants of Yahweh’s house are then called to lead them to the throne in Psalm 134.

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On March 31, 2022 By In Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Fleet Feet

In the second film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight, the antagonist, the Joker, is an incomprehensible criminal. We might write the Joker off simply as a psychopath or sociopath, a man with no common human emotions or feelings that make him reluctant to do evil or feel remorse after doing so. At one level that may be true. While not feeling like you or I would feel had we done even a fraction of the evil he did, he has emotions. Those emotions are focused on doing evil. He believes that the whole world is like him. With a little push, the thin veneer of moral restraint that holds people back from the deep evil in their hearts will shatter and chaos will ensue. He calls himself an agent of chaos. He finds his purpose, joy, and short-lived satisfaction standing, somewhat peacefully, in the eye of the chaotic storms he creates. He is not a normal criminal who wants to kill and pillage for the sake of wealth or revenge. As Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, tells him, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Some men, both individually and collectively, love evil and eagerly run toward fighting against God’s created order and creating chaos. Those men Solomon describes as having “feet that are swift to run to evil.”

In the list of six things, yes, even seven, that the Lord hates in Proverbs 6.16-19, the fifth is “feet that are swift to run to evil.” Solomon started at the head and has now reached the toe of this corrupted body. This distorted body is both the result of sin and its agent to twist the world into its image. The feet must play their part to bring to life the wicked imaginations that spring from the heart.

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On March 24, 2022 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

Wicked Imaginations

In 1971, John Lennon released the song Imagine. In that song, he created a human existence in which there was no heaven, no hell, people living only for the moment, no countries, nothing to die for, no religion, only a life of peace, no possessions, no greed, no hunger, only a brotherhood of man. (Tim Hawkins’ version is better.) Lennon probably hadn’t developed a deep philosophical or theological understanding of the imagination, but he understood its power. His song has probably had a more direct influence on people than that of a dozen trained philosophers of the same time. Through art, Lennon connected people intellectually and emotionally to a vision of the world, probably being a contributing factor to many communists in the West still living in our day. His world is a living hell, but those with wicked imaginations see it as a utopia.

At the heart of the corrupted body Solomon describes in Proverbs 6.16-19 is the heart that devises wicked imaginations (KJV). The Hebrew word translated “imaginations” could be “thoughts” or “plans,” but I believe “imaginations” captures more of what Solomon wants us to hear.

Our first thought about imaginations is probably one of wispy fantasies that have no basis in reality. These are the unreal fictions conjured up in the overly active minds of children and adults who act like children who want to escape reality. While imagination can be used to escape reality, our imaginations are God’s gift to us that, when disciplined and healthy, help us to apprehend reality and shape it as a part of our dominion mission. The imagination, simply put, is a faculty of the heart that has the ability to create images. These images can be anything from a simple object such as a rock to the complex fairy-tale fantasy world of The Lord of the Rings. Imagination fuels the role-playing of a child who has connected with a good story as well as empowers scientists or engineers who are exploring new technologies in their fields. Imagination forms objects out of the mud and inspires us to put a man on the moon. Imagination is not mere vapid fantasy or fiction (though there is nothing wrong with either per se), but it is a creative faculty that draws us into the future and seeks to mold the world according to the constructs formed in our minds and hearts.

Our imagination images that which is in God himself, not merely his raw ability to create in his mind, but his eternally begotten Imagination, the Son. Through his Imagination, his Image, everything that is was made. He is not a wispy, non-existent fantasy but a Person. In everything that is made, all the physical realities around us as well as the story of history with all of its characters, twists, and turns, his eternal Imagination is revealed. His Imagination is reality, a reality in which each object in the creation relates to the other objects as they ought. The creation of his Imagination is good.

Our imagination is derived from God so that we don’t create like him, that is, out of nothing. We work with what God gives us. A healthy imagination “enables us to see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” Our imaginations are creative and do reshape the world, but they should do so according to the reality revealed by God. Our imaginations are only truly fruitful when we work with the patterns of creation and providence. Even when the characters in our stories, for instance, are fantastic, they are good stories when they harmonize with and elucidate some aspect of God’s grand narrative. These stories ring true to us because in them we apprehend reality in ways much deeper than if we are given a list of factual propositions. As Shakespeare communicated in A Midsummer’s Night Dream (as interpreted through Dr. Malcom Guite), “Imagination apprehends more than cool reason ever comprehends.”

Our imagination constructs new worlds. While those worlds ought to cohere with the way God puts the world together, they often don’t. John Lennon is not the only one with wicked imaginations. The heart’s wicked imaginations have fueled man’s rebellion against God from the beginning. The serpent, the man, and the woman constructed a world in their minds and tried to make a new reality. The people on the plain of Shinar imagined a unified world connecting heaven and earth with their tower (Gen 11). Jewish leaders imagined a world in which Jesus wasn’t king, and they plotted and killed him.

Wicked imaginations continue to construct alternate realities. Men are “inventors of evil” (Rom 1.30). Every idol created has its genesis in a wicked imagination. The history of philosophy divorced from God’s revelation is a playground of wicked imaginations about reality. Evolutionary biology begins with and fills in the evidential gaps with its wicked imaginations. Hollywood and news media imagine worlds for which they create narratives that they want you to accept as reality and draw you in to love this world and work to create it. Whether through visual images or through “romance stories,” pornography taps into your imagination to create an unreal world.

Wicked imaginations are not harmless because what begins in the heart expresses itself in haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, and feet that run to evil. Wicked imaginations are the impetus for creating a Godless world.

Wicked imaginations shape you as an individual as well as shape cultures. That is why each of us individually and all of us collectively must guard our hearts with all vigilance, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2Cor 10.4-5). We must cultivate the heart and its imaginations so that we may see the world as it is, submit to God’s reality, and work to create what is true, good, and beautiful.

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On March 17, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Bloody Hands

Whenever we hear of or see innocent people suffer or die at the hands of the ruthless, our sympathies trigger grief for them and deep ire for the perpetrators. We know it isn’t right. We feel the injustice in our bones. We long for order to be restored by the assailant paying for his crime. But why? Why do we have this deep sense of the need for justice and, therefore, hatred of the suffering and death of the innocent? We long for justice and hate the destruction of the innocent because we are the image of God who hates hands that shed innocent blood.

In Proverbs 6, Solomon describes a deformed, decaying body, a body that is the object of God’s hatred. This body can be an individual who embodies all of these sins in his own person, or it can be a body-politic, a society, a world-within-the-world that is disordered and is in the process of being de-created. The son being instructed is to be transforming his own body and bodies-politic into the kingdom of God. To do this, he must avoid allowing the corruption of these seven abominations to control him or those bodies he reigns.

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On March 10, 2022 By In Theology, Worship

Holy Worship: Psalm 99

Contemplation of God’s holiness can be terrifying. When we meditate on the blazing purity, the uncompromised integrity, the sinlessness of an all-powerful God who is also the judge of the earth, seeing our impure selves in the light of his presence is frightening. We read and, in some small measure, can identify with the story of Isaiah in the Temple, who, seeing YHWH enthroned and hearing the seraphim crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” proclaimed his desperate grief at his undone-ness because of his impurity (Isa 6.1-7).

God’s holiness is dangerous; so dangerous that during the time before Christ, he kept his people from it through distance and a veil. His purity destroys all impurity. It would seem that his holiness would not be an encouragement to worship, to draw near to him, but rather a reason not to do so. Who wants to be shamed and then destroyed? Yet there is something attractive to us about God’s holiness; something that draws us in like a moth to a flame; something so beautiful about it that, despite the pain we experience through seeing our deep impurities and dissatisfactions it reveals about us, we are drawn to it.

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On March 3, 2022 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Live Not By Lies

“I don’t trust the media. I don’t trust our political leaders. I don’t trust foreign governments. I don’t trust my own government. I don’t trust the mob. I trust almost no one at this point and that’s not because I want to be this way. It’s just because I’ve been paying attention.”[1] This is the lament of Matt Walsh regarding our current cultural environment. Who can blame him? It is quite difficult not to be cynical when government officials along with their allies in much of the media are using the language playbook of 1984. Reversals on positions (at least with words) happen so fast that your brain is disoriented with a type of cognitive whiplash. The conspiracy theorists that we once believed were insane have become the prophets of culture. The difference between many conspiracy theories and the news of the day is about six months. We live by lies at the highest levels of our society, and it is destroying us.

Solomon told us it would. God hates a “lying tongue” and a “false witness who breathes out lies” (Pr 6.17, 19). With the smorgasbord of sins to put in his seven-fold list, Solomon includes two forms of lying. God must really hate lying.

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