Category: Faith

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Ours to Build

The Parable of the Talents in Matthew is the Parable of the Minas in Luke, and it’s worth noting some important differences. A talent is worth more than $1000; a mina was equivalent to about three month’s wages–still a significant sum, but not in the high-roller league. Both Matthew and Luke place this parable during the week of the crucifixion, meaning it was one of the last Jesus ever told. Luke explains why he told it: because “the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.”

Luke also adds this context: the master in the story was going away to receive a kingdom. And his would-be subjects had already rejected him by sending a delegation ahead to complain, “We do not want this man to be our king.” So the servants are entrusted with a not-inconsiderable sum of money to invest in a society that’s already hostile to them.

Matthew’s use of talents may signify the incalculable value of what we’re given to invest; Luke’s mention of minas could suggest our human limits of time and resources. Both apply, but we should also consider the expectant audience listening to this now-familiar story for the first time. They thought the kingdom was going to appear.

No, he’s telling them; the kingdom must be built.

I will build my church. And my church will build the kingdom. Not on her own, not without my name or the Holy Spirit’s power or the Father’s providence.

But the kingdom is ours to build.

I will build my church. And my church will built the kingdom.

I forget that. I think of Jesus coming with his angels to judge the living and the dead and to me that’s the kingdom. It will APPEAR at the sound of a trumpet. Now, with the world in such disarray, would be a great time! But Jesus’ coming is when the kingdom will be made visible and apparent; it’s being built right now. My business, every day, is kingdom business.

That business is easy to lose track of because it has so many facets: making a living, raising a family, performing acts of charity, serving a local church–all in a culture that continually proclaims, “We do not want this man to be our king.” That’s always been the case, in churchy, straightlaced times as well as in degenerate time. The world does not want Christ as king, has never wanted Christ as king, and will never want Christ as king.

So we build his kingdom. I don’t know why he does it this way, why he doesn’t just bring it. Bring it! may be what we mean when we say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” But he’s not going to bring it, he’s going to wrap it up as a gift to present to his Father. Or, to switch metaphors, he’s coming to place a bridal crown on her head and take her hand to lead her to the wedding feast. By then the kingdom will be built, the rightful king restored, the rebellious subjects subjugated. (For don’t forget the conclusion of the story: “But those enemies of mind, who did not want me as king . . .”)

What’s my part? Where do I build? My little section of this magnificent project seems small and insignificant, but his eyes are on it, and a cloud of witnesses are cheering me on.

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The Difference a “D” Makes

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.

Luke 13:10-13

I woke up burdened before I had to wake up. I am burdened by literal stuff—a house to sell, some valuable possessions that may not be worth much anymore, a husband in declining health–and also much self-recrimination (“Why didn’t you move faster on all this?”). I woke up sullen as a rock, impenetrable as clay. I opened my Bible to Luke 13, the reading for today, asking God to speak through the words heard and read so many times before. And here’s what he said:

Woman, you are freed from your burden.

It echoed in my head: not free, the more common usage of the idea behind the word, but freed.

Suppose the word was indeed free, as in, You are free. That’s an adjective, modifying me. It would suggest that I am already in a state of freedom, only my mental hangups keep me from experiencing the sensation of running through sunlit fields (in slo-mo) surrounded by butterflies and rose petals. What’s you problem, girl? Don’t you know all that dead weight you’re carrying is crap that the world (along with relatives, dependents, friends, bosses, etc.) loaded on you? Sweep out all that junk and be who you are—free!

But Jesus didn’t say that. “You are freed,” he said (“set free” in the NIV). Freed is a past participle, indicating action. And not my action. Someone else had to do something to bring it about. This bent woman, that blind man, this dead girl, that demon-possessed boy were all bearing, not just disability, but the widespread consequences of sin. “Satan has kept her bound,” said One who ought to know. And all were freed.

But what happened to their disabilities, their burdens? If “freed” is a verb form rather than an adjective, they had to go somewhere.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when this incident happened. And he was taking all the burdens there.

No one he healed was free from the normal stresses of life or the certainty of death. But all could be freed from the burden of carrying an ever-increasing weight all the way to the grave.

As for me, nothing in my circumstances changed between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m. And yet, I am freed.

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The Good Infection

By now we’ve all received a crash course in infectious diseases and our hands are raw from soaping and sanitizing. (Have we ever been so aware of our hands before?) I’ve been combing the web for news, all the while reminding myself that nobody knows nothin’ yet, but I came across this bit of information that started the wheels turning in my head. I wheeled from science to theology, which is not as disjointed a track as some would think.

COVID19 is called a “novel” virus not because it’s fictional, but because it’s new. New to humans, that is; not to animals. Animals have their own viruses and are equipped to develop their own immunities, just as humans are.  As human populations adapt to the peculiar RNA sequences that make up seasonal flu, so animals adapt to their own bugs and blights. These viruses almost always stay within species. But sometimes one will jump.

That’s what apparently happened in a Wuhan “wet market,” a place where live animals are sold, and often killed and eaten on the spot. A bat virus jumped to a human carrier and—in unscientific terms—dug in. Because the human immune system didn’t recognize the RNA sequencing of the foreign invader, the human became infected. And before he (let’s assume he) even knew he was sick, he had infected a number of others, and they went on to infect others, and the thing grew and grew and some people died. 

One person. From just one person fever spirals out into the world, multiplying sickness and death and panic and enforced isolation and grim speculation about how many more millions will die before we acquire the immunity we need.

What makes this hyper-vigilance necessary is that the COVID19 virus is very quick: quick to spread and quick to mutate. Every flu develops singular strains, and so does this one: only quicker than most. Already it has developed at least two strains. The other cause for alarm is that it attacks human lungs and solidifies mucus, blocking air passages and causing asphyxiation. That’s why smokers, asthmatics and COPD sufferers are at particular risk.

Are you scared yet? Don’t be. Or, as beings better than I have said, Fear not. For behold, I bring you good news. We’ve already been infected by the most benevolent virus possible.

Take a deep breath. In the beginning we received our breath from God himself. And then we wrecked that ideal origin: “from one man sin entered the world.” The virus of sin is 100% contagious and in all cases fatal.

But after this had gone on for a few thousand years, long enough to prove beyond any doubt that the disease was not curable, a good contagion intervened. You might say that divine RNA jumped from heaven to earth, from God to man, just as an alien germ somehow bridged the gap animal to human in Wuhan.

The good contagion infected a handful of followers. Then a few hundred more. Then 3000 on one day. Eventually it spread, as fast as human feet and wheels and trains and planes could  take it, to the ends of the earth.

I’m optimistic by nature, and at the moment I’m hopeful about how long the present crisis will last. But optimism may not be warranted; those grim predictions about millions of deaths around the globe may come to pass. But this remains: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Death may be sown even in my small circle. But this remains: No malevolent virus can overcome the strain of divine life that infects a believer in Christ. So take heart, and believe.

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Revolutionary Contentment

. . . not a call to action, but a call to being.

Luke 3: John the Baptist is the talk of town and country. He not only speaks like Elijah, he dresses like Elijah, and his words, like those of that fire-breathing prophets, send shivers down your back. All that talk about baptism by fire, and winnowing forks and axes laid to the root of the tree—no wonder people are flocking to him. Big things are about to pop, and everybody wants in on the action. But when they get down to asking about that—What do we do?—what does he say?

To scribes and Pharisees: Stop being complacent.

To tax collectors: stop being greedy.

To soldiers: cut out the extortion; be satisfied with your pay.

To people generally: stop hoarding; share what you have.

. . . that’s it?

He’s preaching repentance, aiming to present “a people prepared” to Messiah. And Messiah is soon to bear down with the axe and the winnowing fork like an avenging angel. The fiery avenger is actually what John pictures, and I assume it’s exactly what he expects. The message he preaches is a way to clear the decks and purify the righteous, before the righteous suit up and get ready to spring into action when Messiah comes.

But when Messiah comes, he speaks pretty much the same message: be content. He was supposed to lead a revolution–where’s the fire? Where’s the day of the Lord that burns the arrogant to stubble? When do we get to tread down the wicked? (All predicted in Malachi 4:1-3) Why is he talking about lilies of the field and birds of the air?

It is a revolution, just not the kind anyone expected. Contentment itself is a radical departure from the way humans tend to operate—wasn’t it a large part of the original sin? Wanting to be like God is, by definition, dissatisfaction with being human. Jesus calls us back to Square One in the garden. But when we look around, the place is shabby and unkempt (and whose fault is that?)

It’s still a revolution: not a call to action, but a call to being.

The revolution begins not with fire, or swords, or pikestaffs, or guns. It begins with personal repentance and builds on personal renewal and will end in personal glory. Any number of persons doing it together (the church) is a revolution indeed.

Like everybody else, I have my plans, my own Pilgrim’s Progress, and barriers to that progress make me frustrated and short-tempered. I forget that the real Pilgrim’s Progress is inside of me. Square One (which I have to keep going back to) is contentment. I can truly progress only from that point.

It seems so passive. Revolutionary contentment sounds like an oxymoron. But it isn’t. It’s a radical reorienting of my natural compass. It’s getting myself into a stance where the Lord can do something with me.

I want to move.

I may not be able to.

If that’s the case, the Lord can do something with my willingness to stand still.

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The “Nothingness” of Idolatry

A deep dive into the etymology (history and development) of the word idol:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Greek eido’lon (Latin idolon) encompassed the notion of

Baal – Israel’s nemesis. For centuries. What did they see in him?

image in many forms: phantom, idea, fancy, likeness.  The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed around 250 B. C.) appropriated the Greek word to refer to a carved representation, and that’s the usual sense in Hebrew.  But the Hebrew word saw’, occasionally translated idol, means a falsehood, a vain thing, a “nothing.” An idol is, in the contemptuous Hebrew sense, “nothing,” and prophets like Isaiah had a lot of fun with the idea: cutting down a tree to carve it, cooking your food over the scraps, then bowing down to it (see Is. 44:12-17).

But an idolatrous “nothing” doesn’t seem like nothing to an idolater, and that’s the danger of it.

One intriguing use of the Greek applies the word to a reflection in water or a mirror.  Other classical uses include an effigy, a counterfeit, an imitation, an insubstantial appearance (such as a shadow), a mental fiction or fantasy, a false conception.  The wisdom of etymology subtly unfolds—who would have guessed this many shades of meaning for a word usually associated with crude images made from wood, metal, or stone?

Take “reflection.”  Aside from the myth that gives “narcissism” its name, this form of idolatry is a cartoon image, the smitten individual gazing at himself in a mirror while surrounded by fluttering hearts.  We’re too sophisticated for that, or almost.  I’m old enough to remember a video that made the rounds during the 2004 election: John Edwards, the Democrat candidate for V-P, taking 14 minutes to comb his hair in front of a mirror just before his one televised debate.  (To be fair, he possessed exceptional hair.)

Most of us don’t fall in love with our reflections.  But we do project, and the things we love become part of us, and when we pursue them, we pursue that which feeds, builds, expands, and often flatters us.  It’s possible to fall in love objectively—that is, for the object itself.  An aspiring ballerina loves dance for its own sake, as an athlete loves the game, a reader loves literature, a hiker loves mountains.  But in time the temptation to identify with the object of our affection can overtake us.  We no longer pursue out of love, but out of pride, possessiveness, or position.  Get two or more enthusiasts together and clock how long before arguments break out.  The more vehemence, the greater the personal investment.

When does enthusiasm become idolatry?  That’s hard to say.  When life makes no sense without it, when it brings pain—even when it dries up, suddenly and completely, because it couldn’t sustain your passion forever.

Idolatry is tricky, twisty, and deceptive.  And ultimately, an illusion—a “nothing” after all.  The only sure remedy is Reality Himself.

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Establish the Work of Our Hands

Here’s a newsflash from the world of medicine.

A Professor of surgery at London’s Imperial College, with the delightful name of Roger Kneebone, reports that he’s concerned about the increase in surgical students who lack certain vital skills.  Can you guess which ones?  Not diagnostic acumen or imaging analysis—many of these students ace their exams and blaze through their diagnostic computer programs.

But they don’t know how to sew.  And they aren’t too proficient in cutting, either—which, if you need to have your appendix out and patched up again, might be a skill you’d want your surgeon to have.

How does a bright young person get through medical school, all the way to the surgical theater, without learning how to stitch up a kitchen wound or dog bite?  How did she even get through kindergarten without learning how to cut along a straight line?*

We see a similar decline in the States, too: even kids who aren’t aiming at brain surgery for a career find themselves stymied when it comes to doing laundry or even folding clean clothes.

Cooking?  They can probably manage the microwave, but can they turn on an oven?

Changing the oil every 2000 miles?  Forget it.  In fact, they often do.

Yes, I’m pushing 70, so I’ve earned the right to rag on kids these days, just as my father used to rag on me for my taste in music and my mother for the way I wore my hair.  But this looming scandal in the medical field, like the shortage of skilled craftsmen here in the U.S., is more than a cultural trend.  It’s a symptom—one of many symptoms—of a shift in thinking that grew up with digital technology.  It’s the idea that we don’t really need our hands any more.  Just our fingers.  Manual labor is a thing of the past, meaning manual skills are no longer necessary.  Musicians, dancers, sculptors, and painters may follow their dream through the arts, but those who are not gifted in those pursuits can sit back and be entertained with a swipe of the screen.

This is a deeply gnostic belief, and it ties in with other popular contemporary illusions like transgenderism.  It’s why some school districts have eliminated shop and home ec classes, pared art, music, and drama programs and cut back on recess time.  We live in our heads, and “knowledge” is the only thing that matters. The future (supposedly) belongs to “knowledge workers,” not electricians and carpenters.

But no one lives in a virtual world, as much as some misfits and sociopaths may think they do.  There’s no real disconnect between brains, hands, feet, and that incorporeal being otherwise known as Soul.  God made us to be integrated beings, hand and mind working together.  What he has joined, no man can pull asunder without great damage to both.

To work in this way is a tremendous honor, because in doing so we imitate Creator.  God may not have “hands,” as we understand them, but he is so active in the world–making, unmaking, and recreating–that Bible writers can’t help but speak of “the hand of the Lord.” Even in an act as basic as turning over a row in the garden and planting seed, we follow in his metaphorical footsteps.  Angels, so far as we know, don’t make anything, or certainly no material thing.  That privilege belongs to us.

So put down the phone or tablet (as soon as you finish reading this!) and go make something.  Take a pottery class. Draw a tree.  Build a birdhouse, or paint one.   If nothing else, figure out how to thread a needle and sew on a button.  Apply the workings of your mind to the skill of your hands, then teach someone else to do the same.  Ask the Lord to establish the work of your hands (Ps. 90:17), and rejoice in following his creative, productive ways.

*In Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote of his own lack of ability to cut with scissors.  It was a strange disconnect between his very acute intellect and the parts of the brain that controlled small motor activity.  As a child, many a project begun hopefully had to be abandoned with tears.  He never learned to drive or do math, either, which suggests an interesting connection between manual dexterity and figures.  The Canadian writer Robertson Davies was the same way.

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Leaving God Out of Account

What business have you reciting my statutes,

Standing there mouthing my covenants,

Since you detest my disciplines

and thrust my words behind you? . . .

You are leaving God out of account; take care!  Psalm 50:16-17; 22

This reminds me of my dialogue with a liberal friend from college, even though “mouthing” and “reciting” are not fair descriptions of her heartfelt love of the covenants.  The question is, whose covenant?  God’s extension of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ is built on a foundation stretching back through millennia.  The beloved covenants of today are (apparently) brand-new, sweeping away the old because it’s no longer needed.  Or because we’ve evolved into a more caring and accepting society.  Some of God’s words she treasures; others she thrusts behind her.  Or rather, rationalizes or explains away.

She’s not the only one of course; it’s the spirit of the age.  Even those who talk about God every day can “leave him out of account.”  He’s the Facebook meme of a silhouetted figure on a ridge with hands raised in triumph, or sunbeams raying out from clouds.  He’s the beauty, the wind, the sunrise, and every good feeling.  He is not the muscle, the hot iron, the oil-slicked, invisible gears that make the earth move and history pop.

He’s the mountaintop we climb for inspiration, not the valley where we live our lives and make our daily decisions based on everything but what he actually says.  This can be outright rebellion (I know what he says and I reject it).  But more often it’s sheer frivolousness: I’m okay, God’s okay; he’s fine with me as I am with him.  Even with God brooding directly over them and history dogging their every step, Israel failed to take him into account.

But he took them into account—and you and me, too.  That can be good news, or very, very bad.

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Seven Words and a Noose

This woman:

Nine years ago she was of no particular importance.  She was a field worker in Pakistan, poor and uneducated, with a husband, two daughters, three stepdaughters.  As common as dirt, except for one thing:

She knows Jesus.  Knows him well enough to speak up for him, and that’s why this woman is now of supreme importance.

Here’s how it started.  Back in 2009, she was at work as usual.  When she went to get water for all of them, her co-workers, all Muslim, objected when she took the first drink.  Didn’t she know she was second class?  Didn’t she know she had contaminated the water?  She was a Christian—a pariah.  One drop of her spit ruined the water for the rest of them.

Her reply, as reported: “Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world.  What has Mohammed ever done for you?”

Blasphemy.  In Pakistan, speaking against a Muslim can earn you a prison sentence.  But speaking against Mohammed gets you death.

Most blasphemy offenses in Pakistan see quick vigilante “justice.”  Last year a university student was lynched by his peers.  Another culprit, a Christian business owner, was on death row for two years before a surprise acquittal.  But this woman, Asia Bibi (otherwise known by her maiden name, Aasayia Noreen) has lingered in prison for nine years, two appeals, and most recently a sentencing hearing.  Any day now the final decision is supposed to come down: acquittal, or execution.

Allowing the case to linger has pumped up the passion.  Two men, so far, have been murdered for speaking up for her: Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, was shot by one of his own bodyguards in 2011.  The guard was subsequently executed—you can’t just shoot down government officials with impunity—but has become a folk hero.  That same year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Christian minister of Minority Affairs, was assassinated in an ambush.

If the sentence is carried out, Asia will be the only woman to be executed for blasphemy in Pakistan.  (Presumably other women have been murdered on the same charge, but not officially.)  The case is a matter of international interest, with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and several Christian groups joining the outcry against blasphemy laws.  The U.N. is harder to pin down, with their nonbinding resolutions and endless debates, but seems more adamant against defaming religion than keen to defend human conscience.  From our perspective, I t looks like a lose-lose: if Asia hangs for seven words about Mohammed—which she may not even have said—it’s a tragedy.  If she’s freed, it’s a blowup.

The judge’s response to the sentencing appeal is expected any day.  In the meantime, mobs are gathering to shout down any move toward clemency.  Hang her! they scream. Hang her!

Hated by thousands, prayed for by millions, truly known by only One.

I look forward to meeting her one day, in His presence, whether she leaps there from the noose or comes by a more orderly, quiet way.

What matters is that she knows Him, and more importantly, He knows her.

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Invasive Love

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

His love endures forever . . . .

Psalm 136:1

Psalm 136 notably includes the refrain, “His love endures forever” in every alternating line.  The Hebrew verb translated “love” is hesed.  Some translations focus on the “forever,” making use of a linking verb (e.g., “His love is everlasting”).  Speaking as a non-scholar of Hebrew, I’m sure that’s grammatically correct, but might not be the best interpretation.  God’s hesed (often translated “steadfast love,” “lovingkindness,” “unfailing kindness,” “mercy,” etc.) endures.  More than that, it actively endures.  It’s not a feeling extended toward us, but a tool (or weapon) continually wielded on our behalf.

Suppose Psalm 136 read something like this:

His thoughts dwell longingly on us.

His love is everlasting.

He rehearses our many excellent qualities.

His love is everlasting.

He’s already picked out the ring.

His love is everlasting.

Tomorrow he intends to pop the question.

His love is everlasting.

Though human-like emotions are attributed to God (our emotional nature comes from him, not the other way around), they are not manifested in ways especially human, like a besotted young man contemplating the girl who’s captured his heart.  Almost all the non-refrain lines in Psalm 136 are active.  Even violent: He struck down, brought out, divided, overthrew, led out, killed, gave, remembered, rescued.  “Mighty wonders” are the tokens of his love.  Steadfast love is not a generalized benevolence, but a frightfully specific, focused, burning, overpowering force.

Thomas Cole “Voyage of Life” series – Adulthood (seems suitably stormy and active)

In English, love is both a noun and a verb.  In Hebrew, hesed implies action—a reaching, searching, interfering kindness that speaks more of the lover than the object.  It invades our space and shakes us awake, bundles us up and pulls us out of destruction.  It outlasts time, and endures.  Endures conflict, indifference, disobedience, rebellion . . .

Most of all, it endures us.

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Recovering a Heritage of Hymns, Part Four

To Sum It Up

Here are three reasons to re-think the contemporary model of congregational singing:

  • The music. The free-flowing, repetitive character of many praise choruses is designed to make it easy for unchurched people to join in. However, the opposite may be true.  The lack of a substantive melody line leaves little for minds and voices to grasp.  The tunes are no sooner sung than forgotten, especially since the music is never shown in musical notation.  It’s written to be sung to standard guitar chords, which is helpful to worship leaders but difficult for the congregation—who end up “singing along,” rather than singing.
  • The words. Contemporary worship songs rightly fix on God: His glory, majesty, uniqueness, and faithfulness. Typically they are sung at the beginning of worship during a period that lasts 15-20 minutes while the congregation stands.  The words are often meditative and repetitive, for the obvious purpose of creating a mood for worship.  However, there are other biblical reasons for singing.  Scripture ordains singing for instruction, for encouragement, and for admonishment (Col. 3:15-17, Eph. 5:18-21).  The lyrics can be recalled on the road and in the home, while working or walking and talking with our kids.  As the Lord takes pleasure in his people, so they should take pleasure in him: “Let the godly one exult in glory, let them sing for joy on their beds” (Psalm 149:5).
  • The history. Discarding the old disconnects contemporary Christians from some of the best in their history: musically, theologically, and spiritually. The foundation of Western music, including the best of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, is the church.  Until recently, the Christian songbook included songs from the earliest days of the church all the way up to the present.  Now, the ever-changing video screen overwhelmingly features the lyrics and melodies written just yesterday, and many of those will be gone tomorrow.

Again, I’m not suggesting that the church discard all contemporary worship songs.  I’m only saying that we already know what stands the “test of time,” and it’s in those hymnbooks stored in the church basement.  Some contemporary songs will stand the test of time as well, and we can let time have its say.  There’s a reason why Christians still sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Blessed Assurance.”  There’s a reason why little children–the world over–still sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.”  The Holy Spirit has been at work in the church all through the ages, and these songs are a testimony to His work.  Let’s not let them go.

This is the final post in a series on Christian musical heritage.  The previous posts are

One: A Tuneful History

Two: Why Let It All Go?

Three: Intentional about Singing