"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 | |||
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Wait for Dark | |||
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One of the tensions of Christian hope is that we believe
things will get worse before they get better. Yet we in no way
desire things to get worse or are pleased when they go that way.
Quite the contrary. We labor with all our strength for a world in which
God is honored and the light of Christ shines bright. Yet, we also know what Jesus said in Mark 13:24-37, that His return and the completion of His kingdom would be preceded by a time of darkness, that darkness would be one of the signs of His coming. In the text, there is literal darkening of the heavenly bodies. In the verses preceding the text, there is the spiritual darkness of apostasy and persecution of the faithful. One always treads dangerous ground in attempting to give an account of why God allows the "dark side" of life and creation. Too much pious nonsense has been spoken in response to human suffering, dishonoring God and failing to respect those in pain. So I offer the following thought not as an explanation of darkness, but as a reflection on how God can use a dark backdrop to highlight the gift of His grace in Jesus. The last few years, we've visited the Powell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Unlike the Griffith Park Observatory in the middle of my native Los Angeles, the observatory in the middle of Flagstaff has been blessed by a deliberate municipal policy of suppressing artificial lighting at night. All street lights point down. All signs are limited in their amount of illumination. Everything possible is done so that from the observatory hill one can look into a naturally dark sky and pick out faint stars that would be obliterated by the normal lights of a busy city. Letting it be dark allows one to see the farthest lights. By letting our world be dark in many troubling ways, our Lord invites us to look up and discern the light of His presence and of His future coming. Without the dark, in a world so full of the lights we generate for ourselves through science, politics, and entertainment, we might miss His farther, better, deeper light. Darkness invites us, as the text invites us, to turn our eyes toward Him, and to watch. | |||
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 | |||
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Meeting the Lion | |||
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Something like the judgment scene in
Matthew 25:31-46 is played out in a brief scene in C. S. Lewis'
The Last Battle. At the end of time for Narnia, Aslan stands
before a Door and all the people and creatures in Narnia rush toward
Aslan looking him in the face. Some behold him with fear and hatred and
our turned away to Aslan's left, into darkness. Others look at the Lion
with love and turn to his right, through the Door, which they all thought
was a doorway into stable, but is actually the Door into the recreated
and renewed Narnia that is Aslan's eternal kingdom. The parable of the text is only a little image of sheep and goats being divided in verses 32 and 33. The rest of the text is explanation and explication that is not parable at all, but a description of the last judgment. There is absolutely nothing in the context or in Matthew's Gospel at all to set up or indicate the dispensational (think Left Behind) interpretation that this is the judgment of Gentiles who were kind (or not) to Jews during the Tribulation. I'm going to assume that interpretation is nonsense resulting from fitting the text into a pre-determined scheme (which has little to recommend it in all of Scripture), rather than a genuine attempt to understand what the text itself says. It seems much better to take the "all nations" of verse 32 at face value and see here, as Lewis did, an image of all people who have ever lived standing before the Lord (the Son of Man in verse 31 and the King in verse 34, in other words, Jesus) for judgment. As we say in the creeds, "He will come again to judge the living and the dead." What gets us worried (particularly as Protestants), of course, is that the judgment here is on the basis of works of compassion. Where is our salvation by grace? Where is the need even for explicit knowledge and faith in Jesus Christ? In verses 37-39 some of the "blessed" might be understood to have been ignorant even of who Jesus is, much less His presence in those who were poor and needy. Yet they are placed on the right, in the kingdom. The fact is that Scripture has never been and is not going to get any clearer about these matters. There is a clear message of forgiveness and grace bringing us into the kingdom through no merit or work of our own. There is also a clear call for works of love and compassion toward others and a warning of judgment for those who fail to do such works. The expectation is that those who have received God's love will show love to others. Those who have been forgiven will forgive. Those who trust in grace will offer grace to those around them. Just how they are linked or how they both fit together on Judgment Day is not perfectly clear, but genuine biblical faith will contain both reception of grace through Christ and service to others for Christ. Perhaps one way to grasp this parable is as a warning that we cannot truly love Jesus without also caring about people in need. If we think we can pull off our own individual salvation on the basis of faith alone, without love, we're sadly (and perhaps disastrously) mistaken. That's not what the reformers meant by sola fide. So part of this parable is the reminder that meeting Jesus at the end is not all sweetness and light, just as meeting Aslan (a huge and ferocious lion) in Narnia is a scary deal. The more we become the kind of people He wants us to be, the less fearful that meeting will be. And what a wonderful promise there is in this text, that we may already be meeting Him in all sorts of unexpected ways as we become people of compassion and love. | |||
Tuesday, 11 November 2008 | |||
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Gold Standard | |||
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I'm about to commit an exegetical sin. Klyne Snodgrass and
other commentators make it very clear that this Sunday's parable in
Matthew 25:14-30 is not about stewardship. But it's the text
for my sermon on what we're calling "Triple T Sunday," for that
old cliche about "time, talent and treasure." Actually, we've
got four T's going, because our folks are bringing frozen turkeys to give
away in Thanksgiving baskets as well. Our modern English use of the word "talent," to denote aptitude or ability was derived in the 15th century from reflection about the use of the Greek work talanton in this parable. Before that, a "talent" was only a unit of money. The pervasive use of the Christian Bible has often changed language, and here's another case where that has happened. In any case, the "talents" [or "bags of gold" in the TNIV -- a helpful translation] in Jesus' story were simply very large sums of money (maybe 20 years ordinary wages each). So one ought not jump too quickly to interpretations that focus on how one uses one's natural abilities to serve God. Neither should we focus too much on literal money, making the parable all about what we do with whatever financial resources God gives us. Instead we need to stay in the "Kingdom" frame of mind set by verse 1 of chapter 25 ("the kingdom of heaven will be like,") and reiterated by verse 14 ("Again, it will be like," although that translation is a bit of a leap). The parable is about how we receive the Kingdom of God into our lives. The huge value of what was entrusted to the three servants should recall the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price. What's at issue here is how we receive and what we do with the priceless gift of the Gospel, with God's welcome into His Kingdom through the grace of Christ. Stewardship is relevant here, because part of receiving the Kingdom well is to place all our resources at its disposal. But stewardship is not the whole story. The larger issue is receiving the Gospel and responding with good fruit in all of life. Witness, transformed character, stewardship of resources, and service to others are all part of producing a good return on our Lord's Kingdom message invested in us. So, at the least, let's forget readings of this parable that make it all about doing and becoming the best I can with my own individual abilities and resources. This is not about what I do with what I've got to offer (which is pretty pitiful). It's about what we do with the Kingdom God has offered us in Jesus Christ, which is beyond price. But, everyone from VCC, please don't forget to turn in your Triple T pledge anyway. :-) | |||
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 | |||
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A Blonde Joke | |||
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How do you get a blonde's eyes to twinkle? Shine a
flashlight in her ear. I confess that I enjoy that sort of joke, and I
further confess to the rather ridiculous imagination that Jesus told the
parable of the ten virgins in
Matthew 25:1-13 with a twinkle in His own eye as a kind of first
century blonde joke. The word for "foolish" in verse 2 is moros, from which we get "moron." These five foolish virgins are truly dumb girls. Lest anyone get too upset with me (or Jesus) for chauvinist stereotyping, let me note that there are also five wise women in this story and that the previous parable in Matthew 24:45-51 is about a man who is not only dumb, but vicious. Of course, blondes in Palestine then (as now) were few and far between. So this is not really an amusing stereotype about hair color, but a depiction of a kind of foolish carelessness about the future. Jesus is telling all of us, male and female, that we are fools if we take no thought to preparing for His return and the coming of His kingdom. And we are definitely to be preparing for Jesus' kingdom as well as His return, as can be seen in the familiar formula which introduces the parable in verse 1, "... the kingdom of heaven will be like..." That is, wise Christian living is not only individual preparation to meet Jesus (by accepting Him as Savior, let's say), but also holy living that prepares one to be a fit citizen of God's kingdom. It may be foolish to fail to prepare for future events like a wedding or retirement or economic hard times. As Christians we are even more fools if we fail to consider what we say and do in light of the consequences for living in an eternal kingdom. So there's the blonde who keeps a coat hanger in the back seat in case she locks her keys in the car. . . Let's be better prepared. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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