A Summer of Acts

We are planning to spend the next eight Sundays in the book of Acts – eight different episodes or stories, one for each week. This morning, I want to describe briefly how to read and apply the book of Acts, and then I want to practice what I preach, using chapter 1.

How to Read the Bible

These opening comments apply to the whole of Scripture, and especially to Acts. Remember this basic rule: The Bible was not written to us; the Bible was written for us.

Not to us: Acts was written to Gentiles (non-Jews) who were interested in who Jesus was. They were also interested in the group of Jewish believers who came into being as followers of Jesus. In Luke 1:1-4, the author tells us that he is writing so that “Theophilus”, who represents these non-Jewish seekers, can know the truth about Jesus. In Acts, the author continues the story [“The Story by Luke, volume 2”), so that they can know what happened to the followers of Jesus in the first 30 years or so.

The fact that Luke wrote to these particular people is important. He dealt with their issues – such as their concern that only Jews could become Christians. [Luke says: No! The gospel is for everyone!] He refers to events that we don’t know about and could assume that his readers did – such as the way that Paul can appeal to Caesar, the way that we appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. [Except, of course, that Paul, as a Roman citizen, knew that Caesar would hear his appeal.] This is the story of the first church in Jerusalem and Antioch and Rome, not of the Mennonite Church of Manitoba.

Written for us: Nevertheless, Acts was written for us. This is not an obvious point. The fact that the Bible is an old book, a very old book, means that we may wonder why we should read it so carefully. It is written to people who lived a long time ago and in a very different culture than we do. Why should we read it at all?

Luke-Acts claims to be the story about the Creator of the Universe coming into human existence. Jesus is God incarnate, the one in whom God comes to earth. The story of God’s coming in Jesus and of how humankind received Jesus and of how God transformed their lives is worth knowing.

My specialty is the study of culture. Sometimes we wonder if people from other cultures have anything in common with us, then I remember a quote from anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt: “People are more alike than cultures are different.” The fact is that the people in Acts are like us, and their experience of God’s presence is a lot like ours.

The Function of Story

We read the Bible as a whole – and the book of Acts in particular – as a story that shapes our lives, not primarily as a rule book that tells us what to do. Of course, the Bible has some prescriptive statements, such as “God has shown you what is good and what God requires of you: to do justice and love mercy and to walk humbly with God.” Similarly, Jesus gives us teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that may not be rules per se, but they are prescriptions about how to live. The point is that these prescriptions come in a story, and we don’t apply the “rules” without recognizing the larger story that shapes us into the kind of people God wants.

Our society also has a number of big stories that it tells us repeatedly. These stories shape us, even when we don’t realise what they are doing. Lois and I enjoy “Murdoch Mysteries”, and I find it interesting to listen to the subtext that comes through. There are ideas such as “People 100 years ago might have been decent people in their personal lives, but in fact as a whole they were prejudiced and bound by the rules of society in the 1900s. We are so fortunate to live in the 21^st Century, when we know what is really good for everyone.” I really like the series, but it is not obvious to me that our society is better or worse than other societies. We are better in some ways today and worse in others, so I resist the story’s shaping effect.

Nevertheless, we live with our culture’s stories, shaping us and moulding us even when we resist them. It is important, then, to pay attention to God’s story – not to ask, “Do we copy them in the way they acted?” but to allow God to shape and mould us into the kind of people God wants in this world. So we ask over and over again, “What kind of people was God shaping in Acts? How can we be more like them in God’s image?”

Acts 1

In the passage we read this morning from Acts 1, the disciples gather together in Jerusalem, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come as Jesus had instructed them. Listen to the story for its overall themes, not for specific things we should do.

An Example

My forebears in the Brethren in Christ Church thought that this chapter tells us how to choose ministers. A hundred years ago, they used a lottery for ministers based on Acts 1. When they needed a new minister to join the team that led the church, the elders would choose a slate of men they felt were qualified. In the selection service, then, each of the candidates would walk to the front and choose a Bible from the Bibles that had been placed there. Then they would open the Bible they had chosen. The one who found the piece of paper that had been placed in one Bible only was the new minister.

These dear brothers and sisters were sincere and full of faith, but I think they misread Acts 1. Even the New Testament did not hold to this model in other places. The only sense in which Paul won the lottery was that he was struck down on the road to Damascus. We have no suggestion that the deacons were chosen in Acts 6 by any form of lottery. Rather, they were simply chosen. It seems as though the precise form used is secondary to something deeper.

Finding that “something deeper” is what we want to do this Summer. We listen for the deeper matters that shaped the disciples’ lives. That deeper reality takes expression in new forms in our lives today. What is the “something deeper” in Acts 1? Two basic thoughts seem clear to me:

•          Jesus says, “Wait for the Spirit”, and the disciples wait in prayer.
•          Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses”, and the disciples become witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection throughout the rest of Acts.

 Bringing This Home

Two basic thoughts then: 1) We live in the presence of the Holy Spirit and by the power of the Holy Spirit; and 2) We are witnesses of what it means to express the reign of God in our lives in this world. This life in the Spirit is life in the kingdom. We are the ones whose lives show what Jesus looks like in today’s world. We are witnesses to the reality of the resurrection in Canada today. Let’s explore these two thoughts briefly.

Living in/by the Spirit: When we read the story of Jesus in the four gospels, that story continues in the world through the Holy Spirit. Jesus makes it clear in Acts 1 that he continues to be with the disciples through the Spirit. So we seek the Spirit of God. We open ourselves to the Spirit of God. We ask God continually for more and more of God’s Spirit.

That’s why the disciples spent so much time in prayer in the book of Acts. Someone has said that nothing important happens in Acts without the presence of the Spirit and without prayer. Do we want to know how to live in community? Pray about it. Do we wonder what shape our worship services should take? Pray about it. Do we wonder how to relate to our brothers and sisters at Manigotagan? Pray about it. We are used to making our plans and carrying them out. We’re Mennonites, and Mennos are into doing things and doing them well. Add prayer to the doing. Seek God’s Spirit in the doing. Recognize that as the poet says, “new occasions teach new duties” – that is, we ask again how God wants us to live today in the situations we face today.

Being Witnesses: In Acts 1, the apostles are to bear witness specifically to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection was the manifestation of God’s kingdom in the world. As one commentator puts it: “In Luke, Jesus came preaching the kingdom, and in Acts, the apostles came preaching Jesus.” The coming of Jesus is the coming of God’s reign. We are witnesses to the reality of God’s Reign in our lives in this community. No matter how flawed we are, no matter how inadequate we feel, we make Jesus present as the body of Christ in our community.

Look at the book of Acts for a moment. Who are these apostles? Acts 1 names them: Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They choose Matthias to make out the Twelve. Later in the story, we meet Stephen and Barnabas and Phillip and Paul. Do you notice something? No women! Where were the women? After naming the Eleven, Luke adds these words: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Why are the women not named?

I know that the whole book does name some of the women in the story – Lydia, Dorcas, Sapphira, Priscilla, but the point is clear: The story gives more names of the men, even though the writer knew that the women were also there.

First Century Israel was a patriarchal society. The Roman Empire in the First Century was even more so. Becoming Christian elevated the status of women within the group somewhat, but it did not overturn the basic fact of the way that women were second class citizens. Paul tells us that in Christ there are no men or women – all are one in Christ Jesus [Galatians 3:11], but the lesson took a long time to percolate through. Even when it did take effect, male privilege reasserted itself. Yet God worked through these men and women! A flawed society, with a basic structure that contradicts our own egalitarian commitments deeply, yet God worked through people who had accepted the norms of their own time and place. Similarly, we are part of a flawed messed-up world, and we ourselves have our own problems. These do not disqualify us from being witnesses to God’s presence. The only requirement is that we open ourselves to God’s presence in our lives. God is ready to work in us, no matter how inadequate we think we are.

Conclusion

There you have it. We will spend a Summer of Acts listening to stories of God’s work in our world. These stories shape us, because the book of Acts is still being written in you and me and in this church. When God’s Spirit moves in us, and we act in our community and in our world, we become God’s witnesses to the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Part of what I am saying is that we are witnesses: We tell our stories. I want to finish with a memory from my own experience. Back in 1981 or 1982, we lived in Lancaster County, where I was a new pastor at Speedwell Heights BIC Church. I remember working on a sermon based on Psalm 1: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly … That person is planted by rivers of water, and they shall not wither, and whatever they do will prosper.” I was struggling with the sermon, because I knew that not everyone in my congregation who loved the Lord was prospering. I went to a chair in our living room (which was beside my study) and sat down to think about this. I had some sort of out-of-body experience. I can’t describe it better than that. I was standing on a hillside, from where I could see three crosses. It wasn’t a vision. I was just there.

That was the only answer I ever had – to see Jesus hanging on the cross and know that whatever the people in my church were hurting with, Jesus was hurting with it too. Stanley Hauerwas has said that the only way the world can know the gospel of the cross is true is by reading the life of the church in their community.

This example from my life was a private and personal experience. We need communal and social examples as well. The life of the church is communal, and it is our life together that is the most powerful witness for the reality of Christ’s reign on earth. We model our life on the life of Jesus, witnesses to the truth of God’s coming into our world. If the congregation has a cross-shaped life, people can know the gospel is true. That’s what Jesus was saying. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses.”

Steinbach Mennonite Church

7 July 2019 

Texts

Psalm 78

Verses 1 to 7: My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old—things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.

He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.

Acts 1

Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” 

...

Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas

Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was one of our number and shared in our ministry.”

With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) “For,” said Peter, “it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership.’ Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.

Culture and the Bible

What is Culture?

Basic Definition: A set of ideas [thoughts, feelings, values] that people in a society carry around in their heads, and which result in social organization and material artifacts. Some images:

• Culture as an iceberg (from Darrell Whiteman's material).
• Culture as a spider web (from Chuck Kraft).
• Culture as an onion (from David Shenk).
• Culture as a map (from Paul Hiebert).

The map image is especially helpful. Maps show us what we need to see in the varied and overwhelming amount of data that we perceive with our senses. A map of Manitoba’s snowmobile trails is similar to, but also quite different from, a road map of Manitoba. Both approximate reality, but they have different concerns. So also with our various cultures.

Stan Nussbaum has described the central set of ideas of American culture in a booklet, The ABCs of American Culture. Here are what he calls the ten commandments of American culture, derived by sifting through a hundred common sayings (proverbs and expressions) in the USA.

• You can’t argue with success (Be a success).
• Live and let live.
• Time flies when you’re having fun (Have lots of fun).
• Shop till you drop.
• Just do it.
• No pain, no gain (Get tough. Don’t whine).
• Enough is enough (Stand up for your rights).
• Time is money (Don’t waste time).
• Rules are made to be broken (Think for yourself).
• God helps those who help themselves (Work hard).

Nussbaum suggests that the first three of these – Be a success; Live and let live [tolerance]; Have fun – act as the core of our cultural mindset, worldview assumptions that guide what we see in the world.

[Paul Hiebert gives a similar, but different, set of worldview assumptions in TransformingWorldviews. My point is not to establish a North American worldview with certainty, but to give a rough idea. It is a truism in cultural studies to observe that we cannot see our own worldview, because we’re using it to see, but when we move to another culture and are faced with the way other people see the world, we begin to be aware of our own assumptions.]

Reading the Bible

We are (I think) well aware that we need to know the cultures of the Bible in order to read the text accurately. The use of Semitic overstatement in Joshua is one of many examples of what we might miss: Not everyone was killed in occupying the land. We need to know their [the Jews’] cultures in order to read their texts. So we have appreciated studies such as Kenneth Bailey’s Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant’s Eyes.

My point here is that we have a similar need to know our own culture in order to read the Bible. As my mentor in my mission studies used to say, “We need to exegete our own cultural context, as well as we exegete the Scriptures.” He meant this especially in terms of application, but I suggest it applies also to hearing the text in the first place.

We need to become aware of our own eyes, our own worldview assumptions, in reading Scripture. Our cultural assumptions act as “confirmation bias” when we read Scripture. We find what we expect to find. The more self-aware we become, the more we are able to hear the Scripture in its own terms.

An Example

I have heard often that in the Letter to the Romans, Paul thinks especially in terms of guilt and innocence as he looks at God’s gift of salvation. For example:

Romans 5: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

We see the beginning statement, “we are justified by faith”, and we automatically read it using a model of the atonement that views the penalty for sin as something paid by God in Jesus on the cross (what we might call a courtroom model). Our culture deals with “guilt” using a courtroom model, but the Jews of Paul’s day – and Paul himself – dealt with guilt often in terms of shame and honour. We see that model clearly in Paul’s language here: “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory … we also boast in our sufferings …”

My point is not to set aside our Western map for reading these verses, but rather 1) to note Paul’s own mental map and 2) to note how this passage speaks to shame and honour cultures.

Paul continues:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Again, we see the language of justification and of being saved from [the penalty] of death. People in Africa reading these verses might notice something else: The idea of sacrifice is not simply paying a penalty, but also of delivering someone from the power of evil. Many cultures operate on the basis of fear-power. [The three basic orientations around the world are guilt-innocence,shame-honour, and fear-power.] These verses suggest that people (especially Gentiles) in Paul’s day understood that fear, and they could rejoice that God’s power demonstrated on the cross set them free from the power of sin.

We could keep going, but perhaps this is enough to illustrate one aspect of what I am saying. The further part, which I have not worked out here, is to ask: “How do the controlling ideas in our society (mentioned by Nussbaum above) skew the way that I read Scripture in general?”

Rethinking Life as an Evangelical Christian

Recently a friend of ours sent an email in which, among other things, he said the following: 

I have recently been thinking about some very fundamental ways that my religious beliefs have changed (or are changing, as I'm not sure quite where I will end up on some things) in recent years.  … Some of the areas in which my beliefs are shifting, that I would not have foreseen a few years ago, include

·         my view of scripture

·         existence of hell

·         importance of a conversion experience

·         substitutionary atonement

·         beliefs about homosexuality

The questions he raises are questions for many people today, and especially for those of us who grew up within what is sometimes called Evangelicalism. [Defining “Evangelical” is another blog, and has been worked in detail by good Evangelical scholars; I won’t say more about it here.] Although I do not sense a radical shift in these areas in my own thinking, I also have thought a lot about these questions. This brief essay is an effort to suggest what I have been thinking. Obviously this is not the space for an in-depth consideration: These are beginning thoughts.

1. Scripture. Within the Brethren in Christ Church inerrancy-infallibility has never been part of our official statement of belief. Many of our people subscribe to some form of such language, but I have never found it helpful. Clark Pinnock’s book, The Scripture Principle, stated well what I thought 30 years ago, and what I still believe. I accept Scripture as my final written authority in matters of faith and life.

Here is a brief summary of why I hold the view I do.

·         We need some authority outside of ourselves in order to evaluate what is true. If that outside authority is only societal norms, they are as subjective as my own personal opinions; I need something with deeper grounding than “the spirit of the age.”

·         Scripture (OT and NT) has a clear general validity so far as ancient documents are concerned. F.F. Bruce’s The NT Documents: Are They Reliable is an older statement of this validity within the NT, and I find it persuasive. Good arguments do not become false because we keep questioning them! [A current example is the tendency of some to think that climate change will go away if they can resist the findings of climate scientists long enough. They are wrong; the findings of the experts stand, whether we question them or not.] The Bible’s general truthfulness does not prove its authority, but it does mean we can rely on what it says about the life and death of Jesus, for example. Which leads to the next point.

·         The importance of Scripture in our lives today rests on what it teaches about Jesus. The NT tells us that Jesus taught his disciples [most people today like what they know of his teaching]. The NT also tells us that Jesus claimed a unique union with God—that he was one with God. Among the Jews such a claim could only lead to his death for blasphemy. The NT says that he was duly executed, and that he rose from the dead. In Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis tells how an atheist history tutor at Oxford helped lead to Lewi’s conversion to follow Jesus. In an after-dinner conversation, the tutor commented on the NT along the following lines: “Rum thing, Lewis,” he said, “It looks like that resurrection thing really happened.” Speaking as an historian, he found the documents credible. The tutor remained an atheist, but Lewis saw the force of the statement and recognized that Jesus must be more than human.

Such an abbreviated argument for the reliability of Scripture does not deal with weaknesses in the argument or with objections to it. I am doing no more than sketching the way that I conclude that the Bible is true and that it leads us to God. This line of thinking leads me to search for Scripture to find how God—the Creator of all—reveals God’s self to us—human, finite creatures. The problems that people raise within Scripture are of less interest to me than this search for what God reveals about God through the self-revelation of Jesus.

Infallibility-Inerrancy gets bogged down in other questions: Seven days of creation [which Genesis 1 has no interest in teaching]; Jonah and the big fish [an acted out parable not intended to tell us about marine biology]; the extra day from thee time that Joshua told the sun to stand still [really? We’re chasing ancient calendars to find God?] The language of Inerrancy superimposes our scientific categories on people from two to three thousand years ago. If Scripture had been written to answer our modern questions of science, it would have been incomprehensible to the people for whom it is written.

Hard passages of Scripture (such as the apparent calls to genocide in the OT) must be understood through the lens of the language and culture and literature of the people for whom they were written. We wrestle with these passages because we read them as moderns (and sometimes as post-moderns) who don’t know the categories and thought patterns of the ancients. Here is a link for a sermon in which I try to understand one such passage. And here is a sequel.

My summary statement is that my faith rests on Jesus, forged through my relationship with Jesus, the Son of God. Scripture is the only written witness we have to meet God in God’s self-revelation. I read the Bible to know Jesus and God better. Those passages that stump me become paradoxical problems that stimulate further reflection and continued searching. In most areas of learning, unresolved problems lead to new discoveries. When one decides to set aside a paradoxical problem and go around it, one loses the chance to penetrate further into the mysteries of life as God’s creatures in this world.

2. Heaven and Hell. My friend wonders then, is Hell there? The question of Hell is one that theologians wrestle with. Jerry Walls is an example of a philosopher who has researched in this area (Hell: The Logic of Damnation). My friend Terrrance Tiessen is an example of a theologian who has thought deeply about such questions (“Thoughts Theological”). Here are a couple of my own thoughts.

·         It seems to me that it is primarily Christians in prosperous relatively stable countries who want to do away with Hell. Christians in Zimbabwe may pray for Mugabe and desire his conversion, but they can understand the logic or need for Hell. [I have a good Zimbabwean friend who believes that all people, including Mugabe, will finally be with God, so my statement is not universally true.] My sense, however, is that our desire to do away with Hell takes the reality of evil in our world too lightly.

·         I do not see a particular need for what some Evangelicals call “eternal conscious torment” as part of our understanding of Hell. Scripture is remarkably sparing in descriptions of Hell, spending more time talking about the rewards and joys of Heaven. Jesus speaks more about Hell than anyone else in the NT, so we must take it seriously, but he does so in picture language that does not lend itself to systematic description. Jesus also tells us to not be afraid of those who can kill our bodies, but to fear [live in awe and respect towards] the one who can destroy both soul and body. Those who consider “annihilationism” refer to such passages as part of their belief.

·         I affirm the reality of Hell, defined as a final and eternal separation from God, but see no benefit in describing Hell more precisely than that. I do not see Hell as necessary to serve God’s wrath, but rather as a logical extension of the dignity of free will that God has conferred on those of God’s creatures made in and as “the image of God”. God has given us the dignity of choice, and God respects our choice to be with God—or not—so much as to make that choice last forever.

3. Conversion. The importance of conversion lies simply in the need to choose and state the centre of our lives. Everyone has something or someone at the centre of his/her life. If our centre is not Jesus it will be something else. An emphasis on conversion derives from recognizing that God is the centre of life.

I don’t know in what way my friend was questioning conversion. This question may have to do with a related issue: Must one insist that only those who have a specific conversion experience are going to Heaven. That is a big question! I have found help in John Sanders (No Other Name!) and Terry Tiessen (Who Can Be Saved?). My short answer to the question is that Jesus is the only way to God, but we try to know more than we can know if we try to work out precisely what that means in each person’s life.

For my part I prefer to state core confessions without trying to harmonize them into the classical positions (exclusivism-inclusivism-universalism-pluralism). So I can say, “Jesus is the Only Way.” I can say that all who are with God in eternity are saved through the blood of Jesus on the cross. I do not need to decide what happens to each individual, but can affirm with C.S. Lewis and John Wesley (and others) that all who truly seek God will find God.

4. Atonement. This is a subject that I am thinking through in more depth at the moment. In a recent sermon I dealt with the topic briefly. Here it is enough to say that I think that those who insist on one model for atonement have gone astray.

·         Some (often mainline Christians) hold up the moral theory (or imitation theory) [that we seek to live like Christ] as the essential model. But the ability to follow Christ is part of the new life described as “you must be born again”. We take up our cross (imitation), and God works in us to give us new life.

·         Some (often Evangelicals and Roman Catholics) insist that penal substitution is the necessary model [in Jesus’ death “the wrath of God was satisfied”]. But this version of the satisfaction theory is only one way to describe what is happening in the atonement.

I could go through other models or theories in the same way. For now just these comments: 1) Any image of the atonement we use must be derived from Scripture. When we as finite creatures try to comprehend and describe the ways of God, who is Creator and infinite, we will fall short. So we use images from God’s self-revelation in Scripture. 2) We use those images that speak most clearly to us and help us draw closer to God in Christ. 3) We do not forbid others the use of other images of atonement, nor do we insist that our way is the only way we can understand what God is doing.

Many turn away from substitutionary atonement because they think it demeans God, who is Love. I would rather continue to use the biblical images, which include substitution. At some level, the idea of substitution is found in all of the images of atonement that the church has used. Jesus in some way beyond understanding did for us what we could not do, whether or not we can understand it. As John puts it, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus laid down his life for us, and there can be no greater demonstration of the truth that God is Love.

5. Homosexuality. Well look at the time! I must run! We’ll have to leave this question for another time!

Seriously, I won’t try to state my own position here and now. I will make a couple of observations. How we respond as the church to issue of same sex relationships is a great opportunity, one that for the most part the church has not taken. “Traditionalists” note that the story arc of Scripture is based on male and female as God’s image in the world. Embracing same sex relationships as marriage cuts against that story arc. “Progressives” note that another story arc in Scripture involves the way that God (and God’s people) includes those whom society has marginalized. Embracing same sex relationships as marriage is one way to include those whom we have too often rejected.

I have been part of difficult conversations about this subject, in which progressives make it clear that traditionalists are homophobic and unfaithful to the gospel. Such judgments do not help us move forward. In the same conversations I have heard traditionalists make it clear that progressives are “false prophets” and sinners. Such judgments do not help us move forward.

The societal shift that has taken place in my lifetime is so massive that it requires careful exegesis of our social setting as well as careful exegesis of Scripture to discover what God wants us to do now. I have more questions than answers. Question: What changed in our society to lead to where we are now? Question: Are these changes all good? Do we embrace them all? Question; What themes in Scripture speak to these issues? I am not particularly interested in proof texts, individual verses or brief sections of Scripture, but rather in the overall themes that shine through all of Scripture. Then I want to bring those themes together with what our culture teaches and look for how God speaks to us today.

Society is fickle and demanding. Same sex issues and transgender issues and many others are brought together with an absolute commitment to the rights of the individual, including those based entirely on their feelings. We insist too quickly on affirming one side of the argument or the other. I would rather take the time to listen and reflect and work at discovering what is truly good and right in a radically new situation.

I doubt that these brief thoughts are an adequate response to my friend’s probing thoughts and questions, but they are a beginning. It is important to keep thinking together, and not to submerge these issues. We do better when we think and talk together, listening together for God’s Spirit to speak within us.

Daryl Climenhaga

29 July 2017

Reading the Church's Bible, 2

Why Should We Even Read the Bible?

Introduction: The Question

Last week we talked about why we read the Bible—“why” in the sense of “for what purpose”? I suggested (based on Jesus’ words in John 5) that the Scriptures are intended to bring us to God through the person of Jesus Christ. I added (based on Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3) that they are also intended to teach us how to live as God’s people. We can see these two purposes for reading Scripture in the Great Commission (Matthew 28): Jesus told his followers to “make disciples of all nations”, baptizing those who come to faith in Christ and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has told us to do. The Scripture bring us to Jesus in conversion and then helps us to grow spiritually as followers of Jesus.

Many people around us, however, have a more basic objection. They wonder why we should read the Bible at all. The Bible was written over a period of about a thousand years, finishing about 1,900 years ago. What can such an old book have to say to us today? It was written by people in very different cultures from ours, in very different times from ours. Many people around us think the Bible is simply irrelevant. Why should we even read it at all, let alone make it our guide for faith and life?

Towards an Answer

To read the Bible with the eyes of faith requires an encounter with Christ. God saves us by grace through faith, and in faith we begin to read the Bible and find God there. This is not something that one can prove with human reason. We cannot say to people, “Here are the reasons,” and prove to them with human logic that this book is God’s Word for us today.

At the same time, our faith in God is a reasonable faith, and trusting the Bible is consistent with human reason. We would expect this to be true, since God made human reason. Here is a beginning step, then, towards believing in Christian faith by reading the Bible. In the passage that we read, Paul makes it clear that the centre of Christian faith is the person of Jesus Christ—Jesus lived in Palestine, Jesus died on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead. This is where our faith begins. Paul argues in the rest of the chapter that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the founding truth of Christian faith. If the resurrection did not happen, he says, our faith is misplaced and “we are of all people most miserable” (vv 14, 17). But, Paul says, Jesus did rise from the dead, so that our faith is true (v 20).

This is the key point. Dead people do not rise to new life. We know that, and the early church knew that too. Sometimes people think that the first Christians were just naïve and did not really understand that resurrections don’t happen. But of course they knew well that this event was not normal. That is one reason that they found the appearance of a healthy, glowing Jesus, full of life before their eyes over a period of 40 days, to be so amazing.

So if it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, we have something quite unique in history, something that changes everything that we think we know from nature and human reason.

I often quote C.S. Lewis in my sermons. Lewis was one of the greatest Christian writers of the 20^th century. As you may know, however, he was an atheist before he was a Christian. Born in 1898 in Belfast in an Anglican family, he lost his mother to cancer when he was 10 years old. His father sent him off to boarding schools in England, where for a variety of reasons he became an atheist. He fought in World War One (which reinforced his atheism), and after the war attended Oxford University. After he graduated he found work at Oxford as a tutor in Philosophy, and then as a professor in Medieval English Literature in 1925.

His life at Oxford included friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a convinced Christian and Roman Catholic. Along with various other influences, their conversations and arguments opened Lewis up to the possibility that Christian faith is true. As began to read the Bible again, he realized that, if the resurrection of Jesus were true, then the Bible as a whole is true and God himself is real. He resisted accepting the resurrection because he saw where the logic of the resurrection would take him.

One day he was talking with a friend, an atheist (I think he was himself a professor of history at Oxford) who unintentionally helped Lewis move closer to Christian faith. Here is how Lewis describes it in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy:

Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.” To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not—as I would still have put it—“safe,” where could I turn? Was there then no escape?

There were other factors in Lewis’ conversion—especially his friendship with Christians and the discovery that the authors he liked best were all Christians. But this realization that historical evidence was on the side of the resurrection was an important piece. This is not of course hard proof that God exists, but once one accepts the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, then the door is open to faith in Jesus as God’s incarnate Son.

So How Do We Read?

Once we decide that we can and should read the Bible, we have the further question of how to read the Bible. This question requires a further series of sessions on its own, so I make only a few brief comments. I note two basic ways: critical reading and devotional reading. By critical reading I mean trying to understand what the original authors meant. By devotional reading I mean listening to Scripture seeking to hear God’s Spirit speak to us directly.

Critical Reading

Critical reading is necessary whenever we preach or teach from the Bible. If we want to apply what the biblical authors say to our own lives, we must know what they intended to say to their audience. We must know what the passage meant in its own literary and historical context before we can hear it speak clearly to our own time. Sometimes we want to derive rules for living directly from the Bible without paying attention to these critical questions, but of course we must study the original setting to know what was being said.

A good resource if you want to go into more depth for critical reading is a book by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart titled How to Read the Bible for all Its Worth. Fee and Stuart give good insight into the various kinds of literature in the Bible. We have letters and poetry, stories and history, legal material and parables, gospels and apocalypses. We read each of these differently. For example, poetry and law are quite different, and we do not read poetry like law, or law like poetry. We learn to read the gospels in paragraphs, not verses, looking for each complete episode as the writer puts it together. We learn to read letters as what we call “occasional documents”—something written for a specific occasion. We don’t have time to explore these different kinds of literature this morning. It is enough to note that we should know what we are reading before we are sure we know what it says.

Sometimes we refer to the unchanging nature of God’s Word. As we read the Bible, we see many things that are different from our time, so we may wonder how we can talk about God’s word forever true. We recognize, then, that what does not change is the principles that are being expressed in different situations. For example, 1 Corinthians 11 tells us that women should cover their heads in church. If we read this as a simple instruction, we miss the principle that Paul is applying. In Corinth there was a lot of disorder when Christians met together. In chapters 11 to 14 Paul deals with communion meals, with head coverings, with tongues and interpretation in worship, with prophecies, and with spiritual gifts. He concludes these chapters by reminding his readers that God is a God of order (which we know from many other places in Scripture). His concern with the various instructions about speaking in tongues and covering one’s head and so on all have to do with this principle: That order in church life reflects and demonstrates the presence of God’s Shalom.

There is more in these chapters than just this principle, but you see the idea. The principles undergirding all of Scripture are principles that are true always. So critical reading helps us find these principles by helping us understand the passages in their original context.

Devotional Reading

Critical reading can also be devotional. That is, as we seek to hear God’s Word clearly in its own context, the experience draws us closer to God. But we can also read the Bible devotionally without always asking what the original language said or what the historical context was. For example, I have heard many people appeal to the verse from 2 Chronicles 7: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Now reading this verse critically we observe the context in Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, and the fact that the prayer refers to an extended drought within the Promised Land. It fits into a cycle of grace and disobedience as part of the Deuteronomic promises.

Reading devotionally, however, we hear it speak to our own fears for our own country at critical moments in our history. It is dangerous to build doctrine on devotional reading, because we may misread the verse in its original context. At the same time, God does speak directly to us through devotional reading, and God wants us to listen for his voice as we read our Bibles regularly. This kind of reading is an act of and aid to faith. In devotional reading we do not come to the Bible with questions of historicity or accuracy or anything else. We come rather as part of our relationship with God, desiring deeply to hear God’s voice.

I suspect that the kind of conflict we have been experiencing may either separate us from reading the Bible simply to hear God’s voice, or it may drive us back to the Bible because we realize that we are in crisis. I pray that it drives us back to the Bible and back to God.

Richard Foster tells a story that describes what I mean. It appears in his book, Finding the Heart’s True Home, in a chapter on what he calls “meditative prayer”. I have given this example before, but it shows what I am talking about more clearly than anything else I can think of.

Allow me to tell you the story of Jim Smith, a former student of mine. … Jim went on to do graduate work …. By the second year, however, he was struggling to maintain his spiritual life, and so he decided to take a private retreat. He arrived at the retreat house and was introduced to the brother who was to be his spiritual director ….

The brother gave Jim only one assignment: to meditate on the story of the Annunciation in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. That was it. …. For the first couple of hours he sliced and diced the passage as any good exegete would do, coming up with several useful insights that could fit into future sermons. The rest of the day was spent in thumb-twiddling silence.

The next day Jim met with the brother to discuss his spiritual life. … Jim shared his insights, hoping they would impress the monk. They didn’t. … “Well, there is more than just finding out what it says and what it means. There are also questions, like what did it say to you? Were you struck by anything? And most important, did you experience God in your reading?” The brother assigned Jim the same text for that entire day. All day Jim tried doing what his spiritual director had instructed, but he failed repeatedly … and still it was lifeless. Jim felt he would go deaf from the silence.

The next day they met again. In despair Jim told the brother that he simply could not do what was being asked of him. [The brother replied,] “You’re trying too hard, Jim. You’re trying to control God. Go back to this passage and this time be open to receive whatever God has for you. Don’t manipulate God; just receive. Communion with him isn’t something you institute. … All I want you to do is create the conditions: open your Bible, read it slowly, listen to it, and reflect on it.”

Jim went back to his room and began reading. …. By noon he shouted to the ceiling, “I give up! You win!” …. He slumped over the desk and began weeping. A short time later he picked up his Bible and glanced over the text once again. The words were familiar but somehow different. His mind and heart were supple. The opening words of Mary’s response became his words: “Let it be to me…let it be to me.” The words rang round and round in his head. Then God spoke. It was as if a window suddenly had been thrown open and God wanted to talk friend to friend. What followed was a dialogue about the story in Luke, about God, about Mary, about Jim. The Spirit took Jim down deep into Mary’s feelings, Mary’s doubts, Mary’s fears, Mary’s incredible faith-filled response. It was, of course, also a journey into Jim’s feelings and fears and doubts, as the Spirit in healing love and gentle compassion touched the broken memories of his past. Though Jim could barely believe it, the angel’s word to Mary seemed to be a word for him as well: “You have found favor with God.” Mary’s perplexed query was also Jim’s question: “How can this be?” And yet it was so, and Jim wept in the arms of a God of grace and mercy. …. They talked about this—God and Jim—what might be, what could be. Jim took a prayer walk with God, watching the sun play hide and seek behind the large oak trees to the west. By the time the sun had slipped below the horizon, he was able to utter the prayer of Mary as his own: “Let it be to me according to your word.” Jim had just lost control of his life, and in the same moment had found it!

Conclusion

We must read critically: The original meaning is essential to understanding how Jesus calls us to live today, and the principles that God’s people applied in their lives still live for us today. We build church doctrine on critical reading of the Scripture. This is a task that we engage in together as the community of faith. There is space at the table for experts and non-experts, people who have studied Greek and Hebrew and those who know only English (not even French or German!), people who have read the Bible many times and those who are just beginning. We all work together at the task of hearing God speak to use.

We must also read devotionally: God wants to speak to us deep within where no one else sees. This is a task we can do together and on our own. When you have many people in the church who grew up in Christian faith, the danger is that we may live on the memory of past encounters with God and lose sight of the Risen Christ within our own lives. Then the passage we read at the beginning speaks to us anew: Jesus lived; Jesus died; Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles and the disciples … and last of all has appeared also to us, even though we were born too late to see him on this earth. We see Jesus again, on our knees and in our homes, praying and reading and asking God to touch our hearts.

Different people have different passages that speak most clearly to them. For me it is verses about the cross, and especially about how Jesus bore the cross for us and how he calls us to bear the cross for him. For each of you there are other passages we can share with each other as we encourage each other to walk faithfully with Jesus. In our darkness and fear we turn again to God’s Word and ask God to bring us back to Jesus.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

25 September 2016

Text: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11

The Resurrection of Christ

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹ Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.