God’s Peace is at Hand

Introduction

Over the past month I have preached four times in Winnipeg at Grace Bible Church. GBC uses the lectionary, so I worked with the assigned texts, asking what they had to say to us today. One theme recurred in all four sermons: The already-not yet character of God’s reign on earth. It happens that today’s texts plunge me back into this theme, so we will consider it again this morning.

Already

You know what I mean by “already-not yet”: God’s reign has come in the person of Jesus. In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus brought the kingdom of God. You know that many of the parables in the gospel begin, “The kingdom of God is like …”, precisely because Jesus was teaching and preaching about the kingdom. Indeed, Matthew 4:17 describes the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with these words: “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” And Mark 1:14-15 puts it this way: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”

It is no surprise then when Jesus Luke records these words in 17:20-21: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’” In the coming of Jesus God’s reign has also come to earth.

Not Yet

Of course, we look around us and see all of the problems in our world. Conflicts and violence are normal, and it is clear to us that God’s reign is not here in power. Instead, evil reigns in many places, so much so that we wonder if God has entered our world at all. Of course God has come: That is the hope of Advent. That is “the reason for the season.” That is what we want to talk about this morning.

The Texts

Isaiah 2:1-5

This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

² In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. ³ Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

⁴ He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. ⁵ Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

Although we hear this passage often in Advent, it remains a remarkable vision of the End. (Remember that “End” means both a temporal ending and a goal towards which we move. This passage is teleological, not simply prophetic.) Isaiah lived in a time when the nations around Judah threatened its existence. During his life Assyria came close to destroying Judah and Jerusalem. People admired the powerful empires around them. They did not admire this weak small nation on the crossroads between Egypt and Assyria.

Yet Isaiah can see a future when God breaks into the scene and draws the nations to Jerusalem. We see that in this perfect future several things are true:

·         Israel (Judah) has become a place of righteousness and peace. People will come to Israel in order to find out how to experience God’s perfect justice and peace.

·         This perfection is seen in the law of God internalized in the people’s lives, so that they don’t have to explain God’s ways; they live God’s ways.

·         This internalized law leads to the settling of conflicts between people, so that God’s law achieves its purpose in the world (cf Exodus 19: 5-6).

·         The end result of this perfect relationship with God is complete peace and harmony between people and with all of creation (cf Romans 8: 18-25).

This perfect future is a description of God’s Reign at the end of all things. But, as we saw earlier, Jesus saw his ministry as the beginning of God’s Reign. That is one of the reasons that Jesus taught the way that he did. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he calls his disciples to live in a way fully consistent with Isaiah’s vision of the End. Again we see the already-not yet nature of the kingdom. God’s Reign began with Jesus, but every time we pray the Lord’s prayer, we acknowledge that it is not yet fully here: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Matthew 24:36-44

³⁶ ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³⁷ As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸ For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; ³⁹ and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰ Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. ⁴¹ Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

⁴² ‘Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. ⁴³ But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴ So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

In his words about the last hour Jesus reinforces this awareness that God’s Reign is not yet fully here. Rather, he tells his disciples that they will live in a normal world, full of conflict and distress. The last hour will be like the days before it, in which people are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Therefore, Jesus says, be ready for the last hour. “Be ready” means “live in the light of God’s Reign already here.”

What is “the last hour”? A few verses earlier (verse 30) Jesus had said: “”Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” The coming of the Son of Man, that is Jesus, with power and great glory. What we call the Second Coming. If we would read other passages about the second coming, we would find descriptions of the way that this ordinary time—people eating and drinking, marrying and growing their families—is also a time of conflict and pain. In Luke 21: 9-10 Jesus puts it this way: “‘When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.’ Then he said to them: ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.’”

This description of the time before the End parallels our passage: eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. That is, life will be moving along normally, with the usual events of our lives, and the usual problems of our world. The troubles Jesus describes are an accurate picture of human history in general. We are tempted to think that such problems and conflict must be the End of all things, and we hope for that end to come quickly. “Maranatha! Lord! Come quickly!” But we find ourselves living in this time of normality and stress, life and death and troubles and joys. The time in between; the “already-not yet”. What do we do with this time?

Excursus

The hymn, “Lo He comes with clouds descending” captures this time and our anticipation of the final end with great clarity. Go here for the service in which the hymn appears, at about the 1 hour and 17 minute mark, or here for a YouTube of the hymn. YouTube also has the 2014 First Advent service as a whole here.

Synthesis

As we look around our world, we are well aware of the “not yet” aspect of God’s Reign. Problems between our First Nations and the rest of us remind us that we are not yet in a time of full justice and peace. We are less aware perhaps of the way that God has been at work throughout history. Let me tell you a bit about that stream of history that reveals God’s Reign.

I teach the History of Christian Missions. It is a story that always amazes me. Many of us identify the missionary work of the church with colonialism. We think that the church has acted from a position of power and forced colonized people to come into the church. That has happened. From the Crusades to the English missionaries in the British Empire, Christians have preached from a position of power. But more often the gospel has flowed along lines of weakness and gone throughout the world with the oppressed of the world.

We don’t have time for a proper review, so I say just this much. In the first five centuries of the church the people of England came to faith through travelling merchants and other migrants, until a large part of the country was effectively Christian. Ireland became a largely Christian island through the ministry of Saint Patrick, a British lad who was taken to Ireland as a teenage slave by Irish Raiders. In the next five hundred years England was conquered first by the Saxons, then by Scandinavian raiders, and finally by the Normans. The Saxons and the Scandinavians were not Christian and the church appeared to be in danger of a literal death. But the invaders captured women whom they made their wives, and they enslaved others of the local population. The women and the slaves converted their conquerors, so that when modern England was born it was effectively Christian. I could tell a similar story of Germany and of Scandinavia more fully, but that is enough to make my point. You see how it works. God’s Reign does not flow through the powers of this world, but through the weak and powerless. God’s Reign is here, and as people discover what God brings, they turn to God Incarnate, Jesus Christ.

What is it that God brings? What do we find in God’s reign that is so attractive that the powerful accept the gospel from the powerless? The answer is in the text from Isaiah: Peace, justice, a clear heart and mind following God. In place of fear and destruction we find peace and joy. This is still true today.

In A Wind in the House of Islam David Garrison describes the world (or House) of Islam as having nine geo-cultural rooms. The remarkable fact about this House is that there are unprecedented movements to follow Jesus in each of these rooms. In the first 14 centuries of Islam the movement has been all one way: From Christian faith to Islam. But in the first 12 years of this century somewhere between two and nine million Muslims have become followers of Jesus. This does not mean that they have joined the Western Church. They continue in their own communities—in Bangladesh and Somalia, in Pakistan and in Indonesia. These stories are inspirational indeed. Something that impresses me is the reasons that Muslims are coming to follow Jesus. As he has travelled throughout the Muslim world, Garrison has asked many why they have begun to follow Jesus. A common refrain goes something like this: “I lived in constant fear. We were afraid that we would die, and we hated those who we thought were trying to kill us. Now that I know Jesus, I am filled with love for all people. I am no longer afraid to die, and I live at peace with those around me.” This is a contemporary description of Isaiah 2! The nations will stream to this perfect fulfillment of God’s presence in the midst of God’s people.

Please note that these stories are not a triumphalist claim that the church has won. As I said, most of these new followers of Jesus are not joining the church; they are forming new fellowships of people who follow Jesus within their own communities. Over time, they tend to separate from the mosque, but the point is that they follow Jesus. I long for a similar moving of God’s Spirit in “the House of Christianity”. I long for a similar moving of God’s Spirit throughout Canada and the United States.

Advent

Advent is the season to remember Jesus’ first coming, and it is the time to anticipate Jesus’ return. We can begin to show the peace and wholeness of Isaiah 2 now because Jesus has begun God’s Reign in our lives. Matthew 24 reminds us that the kingdom is still coming, but we know that it is also already here. “God’s peace is at hand. Come, walk in the way of God’s heart.”

27 November 2016

Grace Bible Church

Texts: Isaiah 2: 1-5, Matthew 24: 36-44

Election Reflections

Thanksgiving 2016—two weeks and a bit after the Election. Time for a few thoughts on what we have done this time

1. My candidate (to the extent that I had one) lost. That’s not unusual—I think I have voted for the loser in most elections, including for John Anderson, independent candidate in 1980. So being on the losing side does not disturb me as much as it might.

2. I feel one great grief: Trump made a point of acting the bully and braggart. We rewarded his display of petulance and anger by giving him the presidency. My grief is more for legitimization of bullying and for what that legitimization than for any of the issues at stake in the election.

People use words like misogyny and racism, hatred of women and of other ethnic groups. I don’t know if Trump acts like this in ordinary life (although his own words suggest that at least the maltreatment of women is part of his life). I do know that he acted as though these are acceptable ways for Americans to act. We agreed. For that I am sad.

3. I am less concerned about most of the policies a Trump Administration may pursue. Our political process works by giving both sides of the aisle input, and now it is the Republicans’ turn. One may observe that they played the obstructionist for the past eight years (“the party of no”), which subverts the process. But it is still their turn.

My one qualifier to this sense of acceptance is Trump’s stated extremism on immigration. He may moderate his stated views so that they are also more reasonable, but he has stoked fear of Muslims and Mexicans in ways that remain a problem for our country and for the world.

4. I appreciated the ease with which the Indiana government made it possible for Lois and me to vote. There has been much said about depressing the vote. Our experience was that a Red state made it as easy for these two Blue voters to participate as we could ask for.

5. Recounts. A good idea! The move to electronic voting seems cool, but a paper trail is more secure. In Manitoba we still mark paper ballots. It’s just harder to hack a paper ballot. I like that. So doing an intensive audit of votes in close races is good; it can promote confidence that the process is still fair.

I have many more thoughts, but this is enough. I am grateful this Thanksgiving for the many benefits I and my family have received. I am not always sure they are “blessings”, because “blessing” includes a clear awareness of God’s Reign; but we have at least received many good things living in North America. And I am grateful.

D-Day: The Invasion Begins

Introduction

On June 6, 1944 Allied forces began the operation to land in Europe in Normandy (which we commonly call D-Day). The invasion of Europe took another year of dreadful fighting before the war was won, but in a real sense, once the landing was complete the war had been won. That is why Germany fought so hard to prevent it, and why the Allies took such losses to accomplish it.

I used to think that the D stood for Dunkirk—from where Allied forces had been evacuated four years before, but Dunkirk is about 400 kms. away. I gather that in fact D just stands for D as in Day. “Today’s the day!” In a real sense, D-Day is also a metaphor for the conflict between God and the Enemy. As C.S. Lewis has said in a well-known quote: “Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

We live in the stage between D-Day and V-Day, between the coming of Jesus into the world and his final return in power and great glory. That is what I want to speak about this morning. That is the image or metaphor I want to use to consider the Scriptures we have heard this morning. We will look at Isaiah 65, 2 Thessalonians 3, and Luke 21.

Isaiah 65:17-25

¹⁷ “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. ¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. ¹⁹ I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.

²⁰ “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²² No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. ²³ They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. ²⁴ Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.

²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.

At the end of Isaiah’s prophecies we find this vision of the goal to which all of history is moving: New heavens and earth, with evil eradicated. It appears to me that Isaiah is not describing the time beyond Time, but something that he anticipated within human history. All will live to a full age, with perfect justice and peace for people, the Land, and all who live in it (including the animals). People will still bear children and die (at a full age), but life will be as God intended it to be.

If we try to turn this into a millennial period of perfection, as some do, I think we misunderstand Isaiah. He is portraying perfect peace and justice, a full Shalom that God intends for those who follow him. We do not need to harmonize this with other prophecies of the end, but rather listen to what God wants. This passage describes a world in which the Sermon on the Mount is actualized in all of its goodness, and we have become finally what God intends us to be.

We know from Scripture more generally that this complete actualization of God’s Reign comes at the end of all things. At the same time, the fact that Isaiah portrays it as taking place within history lets us know that this is a goal we are to work towards now, not simply a description of what we will find when Jesus returns. We work towards perfect peace and justice now, although we do not see God’s full Shalom. Nevertheless we live the life that Isaiah describes because God has invaded human history and this description is the place God is taking us: the new heavens and new earth.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

⁶ In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. ⁷ For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, ⁸ nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. ⁹ We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. ¹⁰ For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

¹¹ We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. ¹² Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. ¹³ And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.

As I observed last week, one of Paul’s concerns in 2 Thessalonians is to counter the idea that the Day of the Lord had already come. Some people at Thessalonica had stopped working and sat idle, waiting to see Jesus. Paul reminds them to get back to work and live. Connecting Paul’s words here with the vision of Isaiah 65, we might say it this way: Instead of waiting for the Day of the Lord to drop out of the sky (which makes you a burden for everyone around you), work to do what is good. Paul lifts work up as necessary for true community: “To work is to pray.” I am extending his idea to do good by working well. So, Paul says, never get tired of doing what is good. Because the new heavens and earth are coming, you are supposed to live well now—live in the reality of the new heavens and earth.

Again, the perfect peace and justice portrayed in Isaiah 65 are not simply end-time realities we can anticipate and wait for, but present realities we can demonstrate to the world around us now. To put it another way, the kingdom of God is coming in fullness and power; the kingdom of God is also already visible—however imperfectly—wherever Christians embody God’s reign. Just as Jesus is the incarnation of God, to the church is intended to be the incarnation of God’s reign.

Luke 21:5-19

⁹ When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” ¹⁰ Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. ¹¹ There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

¹² “But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. ¹³ And so you will bear testimony to me. ¹⁴ But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. ¹⁵ For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.”

In the days just before his crucifixion, Jesus took his disciples into the temple and told how it would be destroyed. His words suggested to them the end of time, and Jesus both confirms and transforms their ideas about the End. The destruction of the temple means that the end is coming, but it will not come right away. The troubles Jesus describes are an accurate picture of human history in general. When I was in school, I remember reading about Pax Britannica—the 19^th Century seen as a time of peace. But if you lived in Zimbabwe and South Africa as one of the indigenous people, it was not a time of peace. Nation rose against nation, and droughts and natural disasters made life difficult. Similarly, the 20^th Century was filled with two world wars and other conflicts, such as those in Korea and Vietnam. In 2000 we anticipated a new millennium of peace and instead the events of 9/11 ushered in continuing conflict and fear.

In such times the human response is to be afraid. God’s people, however, live within the peace that God brings. Even when an election in the United States appears to ratify fear and power as the best ways to confront the troubles of our days, God’s people continue to embrace love and peace and justice. Such a stance brings us into conflict with the authorities. Jesus says, “Don’t worry about that. I will give you words to say and courage to endure.”

Synthesis

The common theme in each passage, especially in the way that I have drawn them out, is the coming of the End, which gives us a reason to live rightly now. The End is a time of perfect peace and justice, and God wants us to live God’s Shalom now, in our contexts of violence and fear.

We can work for God’s peace and justice because the end is certain. We are part of God’s people bringing God’s peace and reconciliation to a hurting and divided world. To return to the idea of D-Day and the quote from C.S. Lewis with which we began, we are a part of God’s action invading the world that is in rebellion and bringing it back into God’s reign. The decisive event comes from the reading in Luke. As Jesus foretells the destruction of the Temple, he is talking also about his own death and resurrection: D-Day, in the metaphor I have been using.

Working It Out

What do we do with this? How do we live, if God has invaded a world in rebellion against the reign of God? Remember Lewis’ point: We live in a war zone. The war is between good and evil, God and Satan. One could even say that we are the war zone. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn has written, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.” Along the same lines Chuck Coulson wrote the following:

In my book Being the Body, I tell the story of Nazi mass murderer and Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann. Kidnapped in 1960 by Israeli agents, he was put on trial in Israel. One witness against him was an Auschwitz survivor named Yehiel Dinur. Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at Eichmann. Their eyes met. After a few tension-filled moments, Dinur broke down and began to shout and sob. Why? Was it the memories of Auschwitz? Was Eichmann evil incarnate? No, as Dinur explained on 60 Minutes, it was the fact that Eichmann was an ordinary man. Dinur saw so clearly that sin and evil are part of the human condition. “I was afraid about myself. I saw that I am capable to do this . . . Eichmann is in all of us.”

Our passages combine the hope of God’s triumph with the call to work and live in this world precisely as God’s people—to live in light of the New Heavens and New Earth. We decide which side we are on: the side of good or the side of evil.

The point of the D-Day metaphor is to make it clear that this war between good and evil is a civil war—between God who made all things and a created derivative power of evil. Once God invaded the world and established a beachhead through the cross and resurrection, we can see that the war is won. Just as the final victory of the Allies was certain once they had established a foothold on the continent, God’s victory in our world is certain. In truth, God’s victory is far more certain than the Allies’ victory was, for the Allies and the Axis powers were both alike human and part of creation, whereas in the end evil cannot win against God.

One can illustrate this certain victory with many stories. I told you some of them last week, from David Garrison’s study of the House of Islam. These stories are inspirational indeed. Consider the story of a businessman in the Arab world. He made his fortune as a billionaire, and then his wife, whom he loved dearly, died. He lost his will to work and sold his business. His health declined and he ended up in emergency surgery for a blocked artery. He tells how, as he went under the anesthesia he cried out the name of “Jesus”, and was filled with peace. In a dream he saw Jesus and his wife, welcoming him to Heaven. Just before he reached them, they receded and he returned to the hospital room. The surgery had been successful. But the vision of his wife with Jesus drove him to read the Bible and over the next few years he brought 70 other families (besides his own) to faith in Jesus. They continue to read and study the Bible together. When Garrison asked him if his wife knew Jesus he said, “Oh yes.” She had an icon of Jesus and Mary, which she had treasured throughout her life, although she never spoke about Jesus.

There are many such stories. In light of what we have said this morning, we can say that Jesus is present in the House of Islam. Jesus has landed! D-Day has come! Although we look at the Muslim world and see much fear and enmity of the West, inside that fear and conflict Jesus is at work. I do not conclude from this that the church has done something great. Rather I would see a similar movement in the House of Christianity. I want to see God’s Holy Spirit blowing throughout our land as well. We also are filled with fear and distress. We also wonder if God is still at work, or if somehow the enemy of God has won the victory. Jesus has landed! D-Day has come! In his death and resurrection Jesus has won the victory, and we can live in the fullness of God’s peace and joy today.

Conclusion

Seven and a half years ago I went through a time of darkness, which I wondered if I would ever escape. In fact, God brought me through into light. Thinking of our theme this morning, I see that time as are-discovery of D-Day, a re-awakening of my desire to see Jesus and walk with Jesus. Here is a description of that darkness and coming to light, which I wrote in the months after the event. (You can read the original blogs here, and here, and here.)

Prologue

In some sense the six months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 were the most difficult of my life. In objective terms I see no reason to have experienced a particular crisis. There were professional pressures of working in a tight economy. There are the personal pressures of living in one’s 59^th year. But many around me have had more real difficulties to deal with than I. For whatever reason I came to the edge of some sort of crisis in February, which found the beginning of resolution in March. Lent was a season with more than usual meaning this year.

Resolution began with two dreams and with a voice in the silence. The following lines describe something of the experience – a journey into darkness to find God’s limitless love, patience, and grace. I do not yet understand what happened, or why. This record of the path through the undergrowth (of my life) to the cliff overlooking a pit, the cross beside the road, the sea, and the circle around the ashes is an effort to keep the whole in mind long enough for it to form the journey of the coming months and years.

Four brief descriptions of that struggle, in verse.

One: The Path

The path wandered through the undergrowth,

A pathless way deeper into the darkness.

Wandering unwilling, compelled, pressed, constrained

I stumble like a sloth into the dark.

It did not seem so dark at first,

this crosspath; but as I walk on

Through under-undergrowth, the need grows

To break clear, escape

Some cataclysm, a burning.

Wandering aimless and looking for freedom/ I, trapped in fear.

Relentless the pathless path wanders down

The growth of many year, shapeless fears

Forming in the darkling gloom.

So many years of growth underfoot

Obstructing, clutching, pulling.

At last I break free into a clearing

At the edge of a cliff, and find

Only darkness burning deep within the pit of myself.

A pathless path balanced on the edge of time.

Two: The Cross

Beside the road stands a cross, unheeded, unneeded.

People hurry past, hardly looking.

I stand, lending my weakness to keep the cross

From falling.

I am not needed, not heeded – let me go!

A building close by beckons, offering safety, privacy,

A chance to slip out of the light, a place to hide.

Stay!

I cannot leave.

Unnoticed, unneeded, I want only to go and change.

I promise to return …

Stay!

There is no escape,

Compelled to stay, to stand by the cross beside the road.

“I want nothing between us.”

Immediate fervent assent

To live at the cross by the side of the road.

Three: The Sea

A dream

Floating in a dream

Floating in the sea.

Completely secure, endlessly rocking

Floating in the calm and stormy sea of love.

Four: A Voice in Silence

Circled around the ashes

Waiting for a sign,

We sat in silence, ritual simplicity.

My friend gave up coffee for Lent,

Waiting for a sign.

My friend gave up wheat and wine,

Waiting for a sign.

We sat in silence, ritual simplicity.

Circled round the ashes I heard (can I say “heard”)

A voice in silence.

“There is no more. I have done all. Receive.”

The imposition of the ashes.

13 November 2016

Grace Bible Church

Election 2016

"Father forgive me, for I have sinned." I almost feel like going to confession. I had decide some years ago not to vote in American elections when I don't live there -- a decision strengthened by taking Canadian citizenship (dual American-Canadian). I decided when we moved here to vote in the country where I live and not in both the USA and Canada.

So I did not vote in this election. I almost have non-buyer's remorse. Almost.

But I can still say who I would have voted for (in my case, by absentee ballot in Indiana).
President: Clinton. I would have voted for Kasich given a chance. Character is important enough to me to vote against Trump. The character charges against Clinton seem to me to lack substance. (Benghazi: She should not tell us what she knew and did -- giving such information would be irresponsible. Computer server: Good grief! So she made a bad computer choice. Welcome to the world of people over age 60!) I dislike a second candidate from the same family, and I object to her dismissal of republican opponents as "deplorable", But Trump's short temper and readiness to operate by insult and threats makes him unfit (in my estimation) for the presidency. (See Ana Navarro's opinion piece on CNN for a devastating critique.

Senate: Evan Bayh (if I remember the candidate's name correctly). Indiana is so solidly Republican that it needs a Democratic senator.

On the whole I would like a "hung" government -- a Democratic president with a Republican congress -- with one proviso: that they learn to collaborate. We need Republicans and we need Democrats, and we need to learn to work together. If Trump wins, he will have to learn to be a different person. If Clinton wins, she will have to learn to respect and trust Republicans. Perhaps the friendship that has grown between the Bush family and the Obamas can serve as a model: Admit that those with whom we disagree are honourable and worth listening to.

A vote for Gary Johnson seems worthwhile to me: The Libertarian critique is worth taking on board, even if its vision of limited government is unrealistic. A vote for the Green candidate? Well, I have voted Green at least five times so far ....

Who will win as the votes are counted tonight? I hope we all will. I doubt that any of us will. I believe that Trump will be less able to destroy than we fear (even the president's power is limited). I believe that Clinton will be hamstrung by an uncollaborative Republican congress. I hope that I am wrong.

Neither candidate, neither party, can save the country. The candidates at all levels reflect the people who are voting, and we need to examine ourselves more than we need to denounce them. They have articulated our fear and anger and angst and unwillingness to compromise. As a Christian, I believe that only God can heal our personal fears, enabling us to work together to move into a better future.

The Shaking of God’s Presence

Introduction

I must tell you up front that the title (“Already—Not Yet”) you see in the bulletin and the direction that the sermon takes may be only loosely related at best. I had Remembrance Day in mind for the Already: that aspect of the coming of God’s Reign that was inaugurated in the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. We remember what has been. As we remember the heroism and courage of those who have died in service of their country, we remember the even greater love expressed in God’s gift of Jesus, the Son of God, who came and died and rose “for our sin and for our salvation”. I had All Saints Day in mind for the Not Yet: that aspect of God’s reign that still remains to come in fullness with the return of Jesus. As we anticipate reunion with our loved ones who have died, we think of that great crowd of witnesses before whom we run our race.

Then I read the texts again as I attended a conference this week, and the combination of the texts and the conference gave me the direction that we will go this morning. If it fits with my first thoughts above, that will be a gift of God’s grace. So we turn to the texts and ask what they say to us today.

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

In the second year of King Darius, ¹ on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: ² “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, ³ ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? ⁴ But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the Lord. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ⁵ ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’

⁶ “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. ⁷ I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ⁸ ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ⁹ ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

In contrast with the prophecy we read last week from Joel, Haggai gives precise specifics: In the second year of King Darius; on the 21^st of July (to use our seventh month); Haggai speaking to Zerubbabel. The generality of Joel allows us to hear prophecy as applying to all of us; the precision of Haggai reminds us that God works in specific space and time with actual people. In Haggai the context is set in Judah among those who had returned from exile in Babylon. Cyrus ordered the return (Ezra and Nehemiah), and Darius continued it. Now Haggai encourages the exiles to proceed with rebuilding the Temple (verse 3). Verses 6 to 9 then describe a shaking of the nations that leads to the rebuilding of the Temple as the symbol of God’s full presence with God’s People.

Note: The NIV says, “and what is desired by all nations will come”, while other translations talk about the treasure of the nations being brought into the Temple. I work with both ideas in my remarks.

The full presence of God’s glory brings in God’s peace—which suggests that we have here a picture of the final consummation of all things. Similar passages in Isaiah and Micah talk about beating swords into ploughshares and the lion and lamb lying down together. These are all images of a peace beyond human understanding.

So we move on to 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, ² not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. ³ Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. ⁴ He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

⁵ Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? …

¹³ But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. ¹⁴ He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁵ So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

¹⁶ May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, ¹⁷ encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

Paul wrote his letters to the Thessalonians (writing with Silas and Timothy) somewhere around 50 a.d., so that these are perhaps the first books of our New Testament to be written. Chapter 2 focusses one of Paul’s primary concerns in these letters: To respond to those who thought that Jesus had already returned. He says that instead of “the Day of the Lord” (verse 2), they are in a period of rebellion in which the “man of lawlessness” is being revealed. This time of trouble [compare to Haggai’s “shaking of the nations”] has begun, but also still lies primarily ahead.

Note that the verses in the text refer to the future coming of the rebellion and of the man of lawlessness, while I take this period of rebellion to have already occurred. I base my reading on the way that verse 7 speaks of the period of lawlessness as having already begun. This already-not yet quality of the rebellion parallels the already-not yet character of God’s reign.

Verses 13-17 then encourage the Thessalonians to live according to the gospel and the teachings of Jesus, so as to share in “the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of all things. That is, as in Haggai the shaking of the nations leads to the establishment of the Temple, which is the body of Christ.

Luke 20:27-38 recounts a controversy concerning the reality of the resurrection.

²⁷ Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. ²⁸ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. ³⁰ The second ³¹ and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. ³² Finally, the woman died too. ³³ Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

³⁴ Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. ³⁵ But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, ³⁶ and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. ³⁷ But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ ³⁸ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Linking Luke’s account of the controversy of the resurrection with the first two passages, one notes that the internal religious debates between the Pharisees and Sadducees shook the Jewish people so that the living God was revealed to them. God is indeed the God of the living and not of the dead—God of the Jewish People in Luke’s Gospel and our God as well, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of our time and all people in the world today. We will not say more about this controversy, but move to a synthesis based on this idea of “shaking”.

Synthesis

There are many pieces one could explore in these passages. “The God of the living and of the dead” is a theme worth pursuing, but we leave it aside today. The theme of the “man of lawlessness” (or the “man of sin”) is also of interest, a figure I take to be roughly synonymous with the anti-Christ, a recurring character in human affairs rather than simply a figure at the end of time. I take this figure to be someone who presents himself/herself as a follower of Christ and at the same time undermines God’s reign by acting completely against God’s reign—you can fill in names that fit the description yourself. Again, I leave this theme aside to return to Haggai’s words about the shaking of the nations so that the desire of all nations shall come.

Shaking

Haggai 2:6-7 states: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

Paul puts it in 2 Thessalonians 2: “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” Note that I understand Paul to be pointing at what they saw around them—not to say that therefore now the end is here, but to say that the end of all things has begun (what we have called the “already-not yet”). The letter as a whole makes it clear that the return of Christ has not come. We are to live in anticipation of the End, but not to assume that it has occurred.

Common to both of these is the theme of shaking—the sense of chaos and threat that is common to our day as well. In “The Messiah” Handel combines Haggai with Malachi 3, thus: “Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come. The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the Covenant, whom you delight in; behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire.”

The Old Testament uses this theme repeatedly—that God shakes, purges, refines us in order to bring about what is good in us (the desire of all nations). Thus the hymn, “How Firm a Foundation”, suggests a purging and refining action to that fire: “When through the fiery trials they pathway shall lie,/ My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply./ The flames shall not hurt thee, I only design/ Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.” The hymn writer goes beyond Isaiah 43 (his source for the image of the fire), but captures accurately the sense of this idea through Scripture.

The Contemporary Scene

This brings me to our experience in the present. We sense the shaking of the nations, from a rattled economy to political fears, from unstable regions where violence prevails to the reality of personal loss. I think of a friend whose mother just died: She and her husband are plunged into grief and loss without warning, shaking their world to its core. When C.S. Lewis died, his old friend Tolkien said, “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”

This is the way of our world. No matter how secure we feel at any point, threats lie around the corner and we can find our world shaken to its core. When that happens, we find out what we truly desire; we find out what is “the desire of the nations”—or at least what it is we most desire. What is “the desire of the nations”? In Haggai it is the Temple, the symbol of God’s presence. In our world, it is the presence of God the Creator, who comes to us in the person of Jesus, the Son of God. I speak as a Christian, and I know that those who are not Christians will not agree that I have expressed their desire. They may be right. I can only say what I believe to be true.

David Garrison has written a book on this theme title, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God Is Drawing Muslims Around the World to Faith in Jesus Christ. He states that in the years before 1900 there was perhaps one effective movement of Muslims into Christian faith. In the 1900s there were perhaps 10 such movements. In the first 12 years of this century there have been, by his count, at least 69 such movements. His web page states (http://windinthehouse.org/):

In this new global study, Dr. David Garrison reveals that the first Muslim movement to Christ did not occur until the 19th century, more than 1000 years after Muhammad’s message first echoed from the minarets of Medina. This first movement was followed by a further 10 Muslim movements to Christ in the late 20th century. But something now is happening. In the first 12 years of the 21st century, we have already seen more than 60 new Muslim movements to Christ!

Leaving aside questions of how he defines a movement, it is clear that across the Muslim world God is shaking the nations, and some people within these countries are discovering Jesus the Messiah, Isa al-Masih.

I encourage you both to read the stories and to increase your own interaction with Muslims and other immigrants in Canada. I warn you also that they bring us the temptation to respond with a sense of triumphalism. We may cheer as if we are playing a game of football and our side just scored a touchdown. That kind of response undermines “the desire of the nations”. This is not a game, but an intense search for meaning and power to live in our world. We are being shaken, and God wants to bring us closer to Jesus, God’s Son—to reveal Jesus within us.

That is my closing word to you. Embrace the shaking of the world around us and of our own inner worlds as part of God’s work to bring to completion our desire to know God better. Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, and I pray for you: That God will teach you to know him better, to love him more fully, and to serve him with your whole hearts, until the Day Christ appears.

Grace Bible Church

6 November 2016

Solus Christus – Christ Alone: An Anabaptist Perspective.

My assignment this afternoon is to reflect as follows (quoting from the email Peter Bush sent me):

[The panel is] a mixture of academics and ministry practitioners who will each be given 15-20 minutes for their presentations. … The invitation is to reflect on what “Christ Alone” means in our present context – what are the challenges and strengths of this concept? How is it incorporated (or not) into the church’s life and the lives of Christians now? How might it be understood now in ways that the Reformers would find troubling? Are there contemporary metaphors that help us understand the watchword’s meaning now?

So the following questions: What does “Christ Alone” mean today? What are the challenges and strengths of the concept? How is it part of the church’s life today? What would the Reformers think of the way that we use this concept? Is there a better way to think of it today?

I think about this from the perspective of someone within the larger Anabaptist-Mennonite family. I come from the Brethren in Christ Church, which is a part of the Mennonite World Conference, and now hold membership in Mennonite Church Canada/MC Manitoba in Steinbach. My theological training was at the Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, and my missiological training at Asbury Seminary’s School of World Mission, a Methodist school in Kentucky. So I am a Wesleyan-Anabaptist, and I speak from within that somewhat unique and unstable synthesis (which also, as it happens, describes the BICC).

A Contemporary Metaphor

I leave most of the questions above to the others here today. Here are some brief answers, before I move on to my particular interest this afternoon.

·         What does “Christ Alone” mean today?

It has become something of a bromide in Christian thinking. I graduated from Messiah College, whose motto is “Christ pre-eminent”. Providence, where I teach, says that we are Christ-centred. My home church says that our mission is to follow Christ faithfully. We all say this, but I doubt that many of us have thought it through all that much.

·         What are the challenges and strengths of the concept?

A basic challenge is precisely the self-evident clarity of the concept: of course we live for Christ alone! This is so obvious that it loses meaning. A basis strength is this same clarity. Christ really is the centre of Christian faith. Christ is the One who sets Christian faith apart from all other paths to God. 

·         How is it part of the church’s life today?

I think that it functions primarily as a way to allow us to cut free from traditions and denominational identity. If we are all “of Christ”, we don’t have to listen to our own founders and past, our own history. We are free to forge our own path today, which is not necessarily a good thing.

·         What would the Reformers think of the way that we use this concept?

They would be bemused—a bit puzzled and perhaps dismayed. In the Mennonite church, for example, we have made the pursuit of peace (to which I am wholeheartedly committed) more important than a relationship with God or complete faithfulness to Scripture—and we have done so in the name of Christ. Conrad Grebel and Menno Simons would be puzzled and dismayed. 

·         Is there a better way to think of it today?

This is the question I want to pursue. 

Missiological thinking (along with various other disciplines) has picked up on the mathematical concept of “centred-set vs. bounded set”. In missiology Paul Hiebert is the one who brought the concept into our thinking as a way of answering the question: When should we baptize a new convert? [1] Hiebert asks the question this way: If a Christian evangelist travelling through North India comes to a village where the gospel has never been heard before, and preaches the gospel, and if a villager who has never heard the gospel before responds and seeks to follow Jesus, how much must that villager learn and accept before we can say he has been converted? 

Although the concept, “Christ Alone”, is a genuinely centred-set concept, bounded set thinking continued to predominate in the Reformation. That is, we have a catechism—a list of questions and answers that one must master in order to be confirmed, which functions as a boundary of belief separating Christians from non-Christians. In the Mennonite Church we have a catechism of commitment, in which belief is present, but a willingness to do is more important. Again, it forms a boundary of action separating Christians from non-Christians. 

Hiebert recommends that we use a centred-set approach instead. Christians are defined by their orientation to a common centre—Christ alone—rather than by an external boundary. In the Reformation the five “alones” remembered over this five year-period can be seen as a centre, replacing the boundary of the existing Roman Catholic Church. I suggest that this metaphor of a centred-set church may help us today to move ahead. 

Some Possible Implications

In the cultural and religious wars of the contemporary scene, particular beliefs have functioned as boundary markers to determine who is accepted as genuinely Christian. One camp has boundary markers such as commitments to the inerrancy of Scripture, to the traditional family, and to a number of other fundamental beliefs. If one does not give assent to these boundary markers, those in the camp label one as outside the true faith. Another camp has a different set of boundary markers—a commitment to social justice and a consecration of positions held by the Liberal Party of Canada. Again, if one does not give assent to the boundary markers, one is labelled as outside the true faith, committed to an individualistic Christianity that is somehow less than fully Christian. There are other camps inside and outside the church, Christian and non-Christian in character. 

This past weekend I listed to Michael Enright describe Christians of a particular sort as hypocrites and hardly worth any respect—primarily on the basis of his own boundary markers for what makes one a good citizen of Canada or of the world. It is not only Christians who set out boundary markers to exclude those with whom they disagree. 

The Reformers would not much care about Michael Enright and CBC, for of course they lived in a context still controlled by the church. Christendom is now dead, and a new reformation impulse within the church needs also a new metaphor. I suggest that the centred-set, drawn from mathematics and mediated to missiology through Paul Hiebert, gives us such a metaphor. 

The centred set consists of those elements with a common centre, as opposed to the bounded sets of those elements within a specific boundary. The centred set can embrace a greater diversity than can a bounded set—if the centre is sufficiently strong. In my own formulation of this idea I have suggested holding Christ, Scripture, and the Lord’s Table as the centre,[2] but I think that we can also state it through the common centre of the statements in this series of celebrations of the Reformation: sola gratia, sola fide, sola Scriptura, solus Christus, and soli Deo Gloria. By grace, through faith, with Scripture as our only written authority, centred on Christ, and all for God’s glory. The Reformers themselves did not move fully to this centred set model, but they began the process; we can complete it.

Sola gratia. Sola fide. Sola Scriptura. Solus Christus. Soli Deo Gloria.

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[1] See Paul G. Hiebert, “The Category Christian in the Mission Task”. Originally published in International Review of Missions 72 (1983): 421-427, this essay appears in fuller form in Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994, pp. 107 to 136).

[2] See “A Missiological Exploration of Church Membership”, paper presented to the Brethren in Christ Study Conference, “Who’s In? Who’s Out?: Rethinking Church Membership in the 21st Century”, held October 9-10, 2014, which appeared in Brethren in Christ History and Life, August 2015 (38:2), pp. 285–301.