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Archives For November 2009

Gospel Flesh = Evangelist

November 30, 2009 — Leave a comment

One more thought on the connection between “gospel” and “flesh”:

Most of the uses of the verb BASAR, meaning to share news, give a report, etc. include actual messengers. People bring the news, they declare the report. These messengers might just as easily be called evangelists, bringers-of-the-news.

This helps explain the connection: the “news” is incarnated in the person of the messenger. The messenger, the one who declares the message is the “flesh” of the original event. The event, the verdict, the fact that is being shared in a particular situation comes in the “flesh” of the evangelist, the one who brings the good news.

Jesus is the flesh of God, the incarnation of the original event, verdict, fact. Jesus is the original evangelist. What is that fact, that event, that verdict He comes to declare? That God IS, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are and ever will be. And yet this announcement itself becomes a further event/announcement. For now this God who is and ever will be is here with us and for us and for the world.

We are evangelists of the original evangel.

In Advent, Bible - Isaiah

Gospel Flesh

November 30, 2009 — 1 Comment

In Isaiah 40, the voice is told to cry out that “all flesh is grass” and fades like flowers of the field. Only the word of God stands forever (40:6-8).

The word for “flesh” is the word BASAR.

The following verse famously addresses the mountains of Jerusalem and and the cities of Judah calling upon them to spread the good news: “O Zion, you who bring good tidings, get up to the mountain; O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength…” (40:9) And we should note that “bring good news” could just as easily be translated “preach the gospel.”

What’s striking is that the verb for “bring good tidings” has the exact same consonants as the word “flesh.” It’s BASAR. The word for “preach the gospel” has a near relative (that’s spelled the same) that means “flesh.”

In other words, the Hebrew already seems to have the incarnation rumbling around in its bones when it describes “bringing good news.” Jesus is the good news of God, the gospel of God, in the flesh.

Jesus is the flesh that is grass that does not fade. He is the Word of God that stands forever.

In Advent, Bible - Isaiah

Our Signs in the Heavens

November 30, 2009 — Leave a comment

When the Lord comes, He comes to judge, He comes to unmake old worlds and comes to remake them into something new. He comes to break up fallow ground and make it fruitful. He comes to break the sea in two and bring His people through in safety and drown His enemies in the same waves. He comes to break Adam open and remake Him with a wife in marriage. The Lord comes to break families apart, even parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and He comes to break apart the old world in order to make a new one. He shakes the heavens so that those things which may be shaken, are shaken and fall, so that He might establish that which cannot be shaken more and more. And so here we are enacting the Advent of the Lord, here at this meal. We come, we take, we break, and then we eat and rejoice together as a new loaf, a new body, a new family. The sacraments are called “signs,” and in the gospel text for today Jesus tells His disciples that they will see signs that prove that one world is coming to an end and a new one is being established. This meal is an ongoing sign of that very fact. Here we display the sign that our God rules over the world, and He comes and judges, He comes and shakes the nations, shakes our families, shakes our lives, and when we see this sign, like the signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, then we, like the first disciples ought to look up and lift up our heads, because our redemption draws near. If God has come for us in Jesus, then we can have no doubt that He continues to come for us, He comes to break us open by His Word and Spirit and to shake us and remake us in His image and glory. So come, come and be broken, come and be shaken, come and be healed, come and rejoice. Your redemption is near.

In Bible - Luke, Eucharistic Meditations

Real Penitence Real People

November 30, 2009 — 1 Comment

Today is the first Sunday in Advent and this season has historically been understood and celebrated as a season of preparation and penitence. And it might seem odd to us as we begin celebrating this season of penitence to start having parties and singing carols and putting up decorations. Isn’t penitence all about sitting quietly, morosely meditating in the dark, all alone? Of course there may always be times for quiet and thoughtful reflection, but one of the most powerful ways the Spirit plows the fields of our lives is through people, through children, through spouses, through parents, through siblings, through other friends and family and even strangers. And so I can’t think of a much better way to celebrate a penitential season than by having numerous occasions with all kinds of people in the same room. Going home for the holidays? Perfect. Going to see Great Aunt so and so for Christmas? Excellent. Having the whats-their-names over for dinner? These are all great opportunities to see the Spirit do His thing. And what’s His thing? Well, how will you respond when the dinner guests are late? Or they don’t like your food? Or they’re kind of cranky about celebrating Christmas? You know it was a pagan holiday, right? What about when the kids run through your freshly picked up living room and leave it in shambles right before the Advent party? What about when Uncle So-and-so launches into a speech on the evils and dangers of Peter Leithart and Douglas Wilson? People are ready made chances to see sin and opportunities to fight your own dragons. When does sin rear its ugly head in your life? When you’re tired, when you’re stressed, when you’ve spent too much money? When you’re annoyed at the commercialism of our culture, when the canned Christmas musack won’t stop? When the lines and crowds are milling around you? Use Advent as an opportunity to see your sins and confess them, to see your pride when you are slighted and confess it, to see your greed and envy and confess it, to see your lack of self control and contentment and confess it. Sinful people can always come up with a tidy penitence. We like the idea of confessing sin in the abstract, but we frequently hate actually doing it. Because it means saying out loud that you were wrong, that you sinned, and asking God and whomever you’ve wronged to forgive you. So plan the parties, decorate and sing and remember to confess your sins so that your joy may be full.

In Advent, Exhortations

Is Sarah Human?

November 20, 2009 — 4 Comments

With the advent of Sarah Palin’s new book Going Rogue and the spotlight turned on our Alaskan hockey mom again, a few thoughts:

First, I’m not a Republican and I’m not a Democrat. While I’d certainly line up with the prolife stance of some Republicans, I’m increasingly convinced that most of them are only selectively prolife. Very few if any of our representatives are Biblically prolife, very few are interested in defending life according to the standards of Scripture. Many are romantically prolife; they are opposed to abortion because babies are cute. But bomb the hell out of Afghanistan and Vietnam and who’s to say? Muslim school kids aren’t as cute as American babies.

Second, I just can’t get that worked up about Barack Obama. Sorry. Some of my most respected friends and family are worked up, but this all feels like normal to me. Normal and awful, sure, but normal. We’ve been in a downward spiral, and Obama is just par for the course it seems to me. And there’s at least a great deal of momentum built into the system: you know, defense contracts and money to be made in foreign oil. And there’s a lot of mixed motivations, good and bad and well, here we are. I don’t trust Obama, but I didn’t trust any of his predecessors either. So what’s new? Printing and spending gazillions of dollars we don’t have? We’ve been doing that for a while. Socialized medicine? We already had that with lots of government regulations, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Torturing suspected terrorists? Already had that too. Killing babies? Check.

Third, and what’s interesting to me, is that some of this seems to fall along generational lines. I remember talking to several men in their 50s and 60s in the summer before the last election, and when I told them I thought Obama was sure to be elected, they completely disagreed. They didn’t think Obama had a chance. But I couldn’t see how he couldn’t be elected. I didn’t think McCain had a chance. How’s an old white man going to beat a sexy black man? And I honestly think Obama was elected primarily for his smooth words and good looks. And he’s got credentials that make him a darling of big money liberals. That helps too.

Last, and to the point, I’m not yet convinced that Sarah Palin is the run of the mill GOP candidate. She still intrigues me for basically two reasons. First, I still can’t figure out why the liberals are so worked up about her. If she’s such the country bumpkin, why not just ignore her and let her go quietly into that good night? Why the shrill rhetoric from the left and for that matter, why so much crap from her own party? It sounds like she talks the party line on foreign policy and economics which is very annoying, but I wonder why she’s such a threat. And this leads to the second thing that intrigues me about Sarah, it’s the long list of complaints that so many conservatives have about her. She’s an outsider, she’s inexperienced, she’s ignorant, she’s got all kinds of naiveté. She’s quaint, she’s country, she goofs up in interviews, she has a funny accent, etc. She’s completely unvetted for the political scene, and that’s what’s intriguing. She’s cute, but she’s not slick. All the other politicians got neutered in law school. They got cloned into slight variations of one another, talking heads with talking points. They got their union cards, and it doesn’t really matter which party they are in. It’s like there are two baseball teams and they just counted off by one’s and two’s and now they have their team assignments.

But Sarah obviously didn’t get a union card. She doesn’t know the secret handshakes, and stares like a deer in the headlights sometimes because she doesn’t know the game. And time will only tell whether she doesn’t know the game because she really is just a newbie and she’ll settle into business as usual with the rest of the clowns in DC. But maybe, just maybe, all these liabilities are proof that at some level, she refuses to play the game. And that’s huge. If she were elected she’d make bad decisions, she’d say silly things, and we might laugh at some of the ways she’d run things. But it would be legit. It would be a human in office and not a machine. It would be a person for a change. And I could go for that.

In Politics

The Politics of Omnipresence

November 17, 2009 — Leave a comment

Bucer outlines the similarities and differences between the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdoms of this world. He says that one significant difference is that while kings of this world must have “representatives, vice-regents, and other authorities, and also have in their power men outstanding in prudence and wisdom, whose counsel they may use in their royal administration,” our King on the other hand, “is according to His promise, with us everywhere and every day,” and “He himself sees, attends to, and accomplishes whatever pertains to the salvation of his own.”

Bucer immediately recognizes that Christ does have ministers and a number of specific offices which are established for “his work of salvation,” but he says this is quite different than representatives in the ordinary, civil realm. Those representatives act with some degree of autonomy and must make decisions independent of their sovereign and prove their worth through their diligence, industry, and judgment. The work of Christ’s ministers on the other hand “is vain unless he himself gives the growth to their planting and watering… For they cannot even think that they of themselves contribute anything to the administration of this Kingdom…” (De Regno Christi, 179-180)

In Church Polity, History - Bucer, Why I Won't Convert

Martin Bucer to Obama

November 16, 2009 — 1 Comment

“It would seem fitting to write for Your Majesty a little about the fuller acceptance and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Christ in your realm. Thus it may be better understood how salutary and necessary it is both for Your Majesty and all classes of men in his realm, thoughtfully, consistently, carefully, and tenaciously to work toward this goal, that Christ’s Kingdom may as fully as possible be accepted and hold sway over us.” (Bucer, De Regno Christi, 175-176)

In Church Polity, History - Bucer, Politics

No More Wrath to Pour

November 16, 2009 — Leave a comment

In the sermon text, we read the words of Jesus’ prayer to the Father, “let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will but as You will,” and then the second time, “if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done…” Matthew says that Jesus went away and prayed again, a third time, saying the same words. His prayer to the Father concerns the cup of God’s wrath and judgment against sin. Notice though, that there is a slight but significant progression in Jesus’ prayer. He begins by explicitly asking for the cup to be taken away from Him, allowing for God’s will to be done. But secondly He prays that God’s will would be done even if it means taking the cup away after He has drunk it. Jesus prays that the cup would be taken away either by God removing it all together or by taking it away after Jesus has tasted it. We know that it is the will of the Father for this latter scenario to come to pass. The cup of God’s wrath and judgment is taken away after Jesus drinks that cup on the cross. He drinks the cup of wrath, and the wrath and judgment of God is absorbed by Jesus in His sufferings. The resurrection is the proof, the event of the cup of judgment being removed. This is why for all those who are in Christ, this cup is not a cup of judgment, but the cup of blessing, the cup of forgiveness, the wine of joy and gladness in the blood of Christ. This means that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God does not pour out his wrath against sin on us who are in Christ. He does not pour out His wrath on us because there is no more wrath to pour. The cup of wrath is empty; Jesus drank it all for us. But then what of our hardships and sufferings? We know that God does discipline us as a faithful Father His children. And that means that this cup has been refilled. What was the cup of wrath and judgment for sin was emptied in the cross – Jesus drank it, and then Jesus bled, and His blood has become the wine of a wedding feast, a cup of joy and blessing.

In Bible - Matthew, Eucharistic Meditations

Making a Big Deal About the Goodness of God

November 16, 2009 — 1 Comment

We are drawing near to the end of Trinity Season in the Church calendar. Two weeks from today is the First Sunday in Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent is the beginning and the end of the Church Year. It is the end in so far as it commemorates the final coming of the Lord Jesus in judgment at the end of the world, the culmination of all things. And it is the beginning in so far as we look back and remember all the advents of God in history, culminating in the Incarnation. And as we look forward to this season, I want to exhort you to two things: First, on the practical side, you should start preparing now for Advent and Christmas and the coming celebration of the life of Christ. But your preparation should not be based on the commercials and advertisements and catalogues that are beginning to fill your mailboxes. Of course, we want to be a people full of generosity and gift giving is certainly part of that, but begin planning for it. This means planning with regard to your budget, planning to be generous, planning to share with others. This means planning your calendar: how will you celebrate Advent with your family? What about Christmas? How about Epiphany? How will you remember together and with friends and neighbors? Remember that the calendar is really just an excuse to say thank you; the calendar is a way of organizing your thankfulness to God and we express that gratitude by sharing it with our children, with our neighbors, and coworkers. The last point is that we want to do all of this in light of the end. Advent remembers all the ways God has come, and looks forward in faith to all the ways He will continue to come, culminating in His second coming, the Final Advent when the Lord comes to judge the living and the dead. And this means that we want to celebrate, give thanks, and rejoice in light of eternity, in light of the Final Advent. We want to celebrate now as those who are ready for the return of the Master. Of course Jesus may not return for another fifty thousand years, but remembering the end of the story is one of the best ways to be faithful in the middle of it. And the point is just be thankful and rejoice in the Lord, don’t put on a show, don’t envy your neighbors, don’t pat yourself on the back for doing more than the guy down at that other church. Just be thankful, and use every chance you get to make a big deal about the goodness of God.

In Advent, Church Calendar, Exhortations

The Life Span of a City

November 13, 2009 — 3 Comments

Just a got a copy of Douglas Wilson’s new book: Five Cities that Ruled the World (Thanks, Doug!).

He writes in the introduction: Cities, like the men and women who live in them, have life spans, and that life span is approximately 250 years. John Glubb pointed to this seemingly obvious truth, but one that is still routinely missed: “Any regime which attains great wealth and power seems with remarkable regularity to decay and fall apart in some ten generations.” (Introduction, xviii)

In Books, History