Saturday, November 25, 2017

"Where Are You?"

I’m blind on the inside of my mouth. My tongue is clumsy and can’t see. So when I broke a tooth, and the phone-person was trying to have me do a little self-diagnosis, I wasn’t much help. I’ve heard the hygienist label and describe, but the correspondence is lost on me.

It occurred to me that if I am blind on the inside of my mouth, then I am much more so on the inside of my soul. I am aware of good things, like peace, joy and gratefulness; and also of bad things, like anger, discouragement and bitterness. How these things are related, and where they are rooted, is lost on me.

When the Lord God approached Adam and Eve in the garden, He called out the question, “Where are you?” I do not assume for an instant that God did not know where Adam was. He knew exactly. It was for Adam to figure out the answer. And from the answer he gave, it is clear that Adam was lost in his own mouth, and lost in his own soul. 

This might be regarded as the first prayer in the Bible. God calls. Man answers. And, if this is a prototypical prayer from the prototypical man, then our prayers, like Adam’s, are marked by stuttering and stumbling. “I…I…I…I.” On the outside, “I heard” and “I hid,” but on the inside, how do I describe it, “I was afraid,” because “I was naked.” I don’t know how all these things are related, or where they are rooted, but there’s my answer, such as it is.

It seems that a prayer exercise that seeks to answer the question, “Where are you?” would be good for all of us. Not geographically, though the story might start there. But where are you in relation to God? Where are you in relation to God’s words, God’s commands? This was key for Adam. I suspect that it is for us as well. Where are you in relation to God’s provision, as yet unrevealed to Adam, since God had not yet killed in order to provide adequate covering? Adam was afraid and ashamed partly because of the flimsy, foolish covering that he had made for his own condition.

Here are some soul-searching questions: What have I heard from God that I have ignored? How have I hidden myself from His direction and inspection? What am I really afraid of? Of what am I ashamed? In what ways am I involving myself in a man-made cover-up? These are soul issues. And when we try to self-diagnose, we find that we have to go by feel, because we are mostly blind. But thankfully, Jesus is the surgeon of the soul, and he loves, and he presses in on us to push through our silly reasonings and excuses, “that he might bring us to God,” back where we belong. 

Thursday, November 16, 2017

View from the Bottom of the Boat

This past Sunday, we studied the first of four miracles in Luke 8 that help prepare the disciples for mission. Jesus’ stilling of the storm reinforces the truth that Jesus is more than “just another guy,” in that “even the wind and waves obey him.” Also, the experience teaches disciples-like-us that we most need to remember who Jesus is, and of what he is capable, when we are in situations wherein we have lost control and are confronted by chaos.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says that, “in Christ, we are new creatures. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” That is, we begin now to see everything through Jesus’ eyes, even as God sees us through Jesus.

This change of perspective includes a great many things. We see ourselves as sinners differently. We now openly admit sin rather than deny and cover up, because only sinners can claim forgiveness of sins. If we deny our sin, we deny our need for Christ. We see Jesus as the eternal God who walked in human shoes. He is the center of all history, the only one through whom God can be known, and the only one who makes a right relationship with God possible. We see other people not so much as body-types or skin-colors, but we see that each one has an eternal soul - each one of great value; and each one at great risk. We see our temporal lives as but a vaporous moment in comparison to the glories of eternity, and we see the difficulties of this life as opportunities for the cultivation of spiritual virtue and strength. We are grateful and joyful; loving and forgiving. But not perfectly, because, as we said, we are indeed sinners.

One of our greatest sins is forgetting our faith, as did the disciples in this story. They cried out in panic to the sleeping Jesus, “Master, master, we are perishing.” Mark’s Gospel adds the rather impertinent, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?” Panic, or discouragement, or bitterness, or worldliness - yours and mine - these also cause us to forget our faith, and to live as those who have not come to know and value Christ.

So what should the disciples have done? I suggested last Sunday that they might merely have laid down in the bottom of the boat next to Jesus and watch the whole scenario play out - the wonders of a sometimes-fightening God, and the tenders of a protective Savior. And then, if I could see today’s trials from that same perspective, or that difficult person, or that perceived injustice. Because Jesus has already been there, in the bottom of the boat. And he is there for us. 

Friday, November 10, 2017

My Life Bound Up with His

We can agree that a baby’s life is bound up with that of one’s mother’s. Yes, there are other helpers or, at times, stand-in’s. But the baby is a largely dependent creature, and in most cases, that weight on mom. So much so, that if something threatens the life of the mother, then the life of the baby is also imperiled. And otherwise, good health for the mom should generally redound to good health for the baby.

For the follower of Jesus, we can also say that the life of the disciple is bound up with the life of Christ. What happens to him happens to his followers, in at least a couple of ways.

This has application for our present lives. Jesus, having been raised from the dead, is ascended to heaven and is at the right hand of the Father, with all enemies placed under his feet. Now not all his (our) enemies have met their final defeat, but the resurrection and ascension show how this is going to go. Therefore, since my life is bound up with his, I need not fear evil. Enemies may not be currently completely vanquished, but they have no enduring power. And even if they are able to bring physical harm or death, my future is secured by the One who lives forevermore. 
But spiritually, our lives are bound up with Jesus’ life in another way. Romans 6 in particular shows that we are bound to Jesus in his death, so that our relationship with servitude to sin and evil is broken. And if we are bound to Jesus in his death, then we are also bound to him in his resurrection, so much so that we now live new kinds of lives, fueled by faith, lived out in love, helped along by hope, all energized by the Holy Spirit given from heaven.

If archeologists were able to find and conclusively prove that they had uncovered the body of the 1st century Jesus - if they were able to disprove the resurrection which is so clearly attested and substantiated in Scripture, then real Christianity would die. Sinners would have lost their Savior. There would be no deliverance, and no hope. Since archeologists and historians can prove little conclusively, my statement is not so helpful, other than to illustrate how literally this maxim is intended: my life is bound up with his. 

Or is it? If we can go from Sunday to Sunday with no thoughts of Jesus in between, is my life really bound up with his? If I face a trial or disappointment, and do not turn to Jesus for direction or help, is my life really bound up with his? Once again, what we say we believe needs to be put into practice.  

Saturday, November 04, 2017

Cover-Ups and Cover-Alls

Human history is full of cover-ups. Your personal history probably has a few as well. Cover-ups are those hiding tactics that we use to conceal the things of which we are ashamed. We do not want our failings to be made public. So we cover up.

We can conceal with bravado. We suppose that if we look good, people will think that everything is good. We can be experts at the fake smile, as if everything is ok, or with that little lie “fine” in response to “how are things?” They aren’t always “fine,” by the way, but you don’t want to say so, and you are dead sure you don’t want the other person to hear the whole story. We come across people concealing a cancer diagnosis who say, “fine,” or who are about to be foreclosed, and they say “fine.” It’s the human practice of cover-up.

1 John 1 confronts us with the contrast between the truth and cover-ups. In verses 6,8 and 10, John says, “if you say …” something that is not true, then you are a liar, and the truth is not in you, and you are actually making God a liar. But in 1 John 1:9, John offers us another word, But “if we confess …” To “confess” means to agree with God. It means to agree with God about what is right - like God’s perfections, including His righteousness and purity and goodness; and it also means to agree with God about what is wrong - those things that we have been lying about - the things you have been covering up. The verse goes on to say that “if we will confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That brings us to cover-alls.

Cover-alls are used by painters and mechanics to keep the worker clean from paint and grease. Theoretically, you can work all day in all kinds of slop, and then peel off those coveralls at the end of the day, and you’re clean as a whistle. Yes, the illustration suffers from frequent failures.

But the cover-all that God provides in Christ is not a protection from the outside in, but rather a cleansing from the inside out. “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Completely covered.

In the Old Testament, God would look down on us His people through the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, the kphr, or covering. In the New Testament, God looks upon His people through the righteousness of Christ, as we place faith in Him. And according to His promise, we are completely “cover-all-ed” by Him, left with no need to cover-up.