Theology, Metaphor, and the Expansiveness of God

I appreciate very much Eugene Peterson’s comments on the way the Apostle Paul uses metaphor.

            He writes,

Mystery, for Paul, is not what is left over after we have done our best to reason things out.  It is inherent in the very nature of God and his works.

God and his operations cannot be reduced to what we are capable of explaining and reproducing.

The way Paul uses language in his writing is to load it with metaphor.  There is hardly a paragraph he writes that lacks a metaphor.  … Instead of pinning down meaning, metaphor lets it loose.  Metaphor does not so much define or label; it expands, forcing the mind into participating action. … [Metaphor forces] the imagination into action to find meaning at another level, engaging the imagination to look for relationships and resonances that tell us more than anything literal.  We cannot be passive before a metaphor; we imagine and enter into.  Metaphor enlists us in believing-obeying participation. … Paul uses words not to define, but to evoke. 

Paul’s language is a living energy field.  He doesn’t develop a technical jargon for the sake of being precise about God.  … He uses language like a poet.  A living faith requires this lively, participatory language. … Paul’s theological imagination enabled him to keep the soaring truths and beauties of the gospel of Jesus Christ accessible and understandable to the very people that gather still in our congregations. 

Theology comes alive in conversations and prayers.  … Theology is not talking about God but living in community with persons in relationships, who, like Paul live in communities whose names they know.

Paul brings people by name into his theology, making sure we will not conceive theology as something impersonal, something to think about and argue over without living it. [i] 

            I typed some of the phrases above from Peterson’s writing in italics because I wanted to emphasize the expansive nature of what Peterson wrote, which in turns calls attention to the expansive nature of Paul’s theology.  My brother is an Oxford-trained theologian.  I often pick his brain, trying to understand what new things need to be written and thought in terms of theology.  Hasn’t it all been covered?  Isn’t theological writing done today just a rehashing and a reworking of what’s been said previously in the two millennia of Christianity’s existence?  Hasn’t it all been said before?

            Not the way Peterson presents it.  If theology is ever expanding (because the God theology seeks is beyond human words and comprehension, but also is willing to reveal God’s self to unprepared human minds), then theology will never “know it all.”  The lively, participatory nature of metaphor is not only necessary for theological understanding; metaphor itself is fueled by God’s very nature.  In other words, we need to metaphor to understand God and ourselves and ourselves in relation to God and one another, and metaphor exists because of who God is.

            I don’t know if Peterson’s understanding of metaphor and the expansiveness of God gets as the heart of theology as my brother understands it.  But I do know what Peterson has written helps me see what my brother has insisted – that theology is necessary, ongoing work.  It is the work of scholars.  It is also the place where the church comes alive.  It is where the rubber meets the road when the church exists in the world as a community “in Christ.”

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[i] E. Peterson (2017), As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Waterbrook, a division of Random House (New York), p. 271-272.

Hard Turnarounds

            Here, I quote a little-known, unpublished but prolific writer (perhaps completely unknown).

            “[I’ve learned that] I … need to see with new eyes, but that seeing won’t come through mega-lessons.  It comes through simple lessons, new vision through the two G’s, gentleness and grace.  I have to be gentle, and to be gentle, I need to give grace.”[i]

            Of course the writer is me.  I am quoting myself from earlier this month, August, 2017.  This past week, I saw a picture of the enormity of the task I’ve set before myself – turning to become truly gentle and grace-giving. 

            For a second straight year, my family, my immediate family plus niece and nephews, parents, sister and brother-in-law came together at First Landing State Park, Virginia Beach, VA.  For a second straight year, we occupied cabins 18, 19, & 20.  There are only 20 in total.  The road to the cabins takes a sharp right curve after cabin 17 so that our three cabins, 18-20 are tucked back into their own space.  And the road doesn’t go through. It ends after cabin 20.  No one has any reason to be back there unless they’re going to 18, 19, or 20.

            However, people don’t know that. All the time, people come back there and discover – oops! – I need to turn around.

            That’s usually fine, but not last Wednesday.  We were gathered in the afternoon in one of the cabins playing Nerts.[ii]  A huge camper with Harley Davidson in large letters came through – except you can’t come through.  That incredibly long thing had to turn around and there just wasn’t space. 

            I exited out cabin to greet the harried, stressed, tattooed 50ish woman driving the monstrosity and tried to coach her through the 25-point about face.  It was an ordeal.  She screamed, she ignore me, she waited until too late to follow my directions, she demolished the sign that says, “Cabin 20,” and she is still there.  We finally left the beach the next day, her still there, still cursing, trying to turn about that Harley Davidson camper.

            Kidding.

            After a harrowing several minutes, my 9-year-old nephew Isaiah and I got her turned around.  The trailer with her bicycles got scratched and dented.  Her psyche was bruised and traumatized.  And worst of all, the Nerts game I was winning never got finished!

            Seriously though, turning around is often a mess, especially in life; especially when the turn we are trying to make is in ourselves.  Since I have declared that my Sabbatical lesson is to be gentler and give more grace, I have been gruff, short-tempered, grudge-holding, and petulant.[iii] At other times, I have had moments where grace has crossed my mind and in crossing has actually come out in my behavior.  I actually was a little gentler.  Did anyone notice?

            Here are the spiritual disciplines I committed to:

1.    Prayerful attentiveness

2.    Dependence on God (specifically seeking help when I am fatigued)

3.    Seeking opportunities to be gentle.

A week into this and these commitments are now re-commitments.  That’s why Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction is the best book title ever.  The key emphasis is on the word ‘long.’  That I have been on Sabbatical for four months doesn’t mean I’ll automatically be gentle and grace-filled.  It means I am aware that what I need is to be gentler and quicker to give grace.

Perhaps Romans 7:19 should be every Christian’s daily confession.  ^“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” It certainly was Paul’s.  And it will be mine. 

However, lest this blog descend into a nihilist’s fatalistic bleakness[iv], I refer back to Isaiah (my nephew not the prophet though he may turn out to be a prophet), me, tattooed Harley Davidson woman, and her oversized camper.  After much tears, dents, bruises, and some minor destruction (of a sign and a bush), the thing turned around.  Likewise, while there will be pain and maybe some blood and tears, our lives can turn around.  Romans does not end at chapter 7, verse 19.  After that comes chapter 8, verses 38-39.  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Neither can hard turnarounds come between us the love God has for us. 

I was asked recently what I want to accomplish as a pastor and I was grateful for the question because it forced me to a place of mental focus I’ll need as I transition from Sabbatical back to the weekly, daily work of serving God in that formal role.  As a pastor, I want to take people by the hand and walk them to the place where they understand that their lives are stories.  You are a story!  And God is a story. 

Imagine your story as a road.  And God’s story as another road.  I want to help you get to the intersection, a three-way, where your story and God’s merge and become one story.  The journey to get there will require some painful about-face turns.  There will be tears, screaming, and do-overs.  But I believe that after “the evil I do not want to do is what I do” comes “[Nothing, nothing, nothing] can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  So, I always believe that even the hardest of turnarounds are possible. 

Including me learning to be gentle and give grace. 

Now …

1.    Prayerfully, pay attention.

2.    Depend on God (specifically when I am really tired).

3.    Seek opportunities to be gentle.

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[i] http://honesttalkwithgod.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-two-gs-gentleness-and-grace.html

[ii] https://www.pagat.com/patience/nerts.html

[iii] https://www.google.com/search?q=petulant&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS749US749&oq=petulant&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2723j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[iv] https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS749US749&q=nihilism&oq=nihilism&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i131k1j0l2j0i10k1.1340322.1345590.0.1345893.18.13.1.0.0.0.175.1171.6j5.11.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..7.11.1096.6..0i67k1j35i39k1j0i20k1.b6pyxTNsaD4

Love, Love, Love

            This morning, a Sunday morning, my Sabbatical continued.  Instead of preaching at HillSong Church, my family and I worshipped for a 4^th week in a row at Citywell Church in Durham, NC.  Pastor Cleve May delivered a remarkable sermon on creation (Genesis 1).  He made the case that the creation account actually comes out of the writings of Jews in the exile, 6^th century BC.  The account is a response to the violent origins story of the Babylonian god Tiamat.  In the Tiamat creation drama, humans are the result of violent conflict among the gods.  In the Genesis story, the universe, the earth, and human beings are all created as expressions of “God’s overflowing abundance.”  A key quality in the creation is relationship.  God is relational.  The Genesis story flows from God’s love and shouts of God’s yearning for relationship.

            Pastor May’s thoughts on Genesis, and more importantly on the relationship of God and human beings, aligns well with the writing of the great author, pastor, and Bible translator Eugene Peterson.  In his sermon on Psalm 116 “Land of the living,” he says, “Every word [from God], every phrase, every sentence, every silence must be received relationally.  God does not reveal himself impersonally.”[i]  Creation is something God does.  Relationship is something God initiates.  We are created, but out of love, not violence.  We are invited, but not coerced. 

            The key is love – love between God and humans and love humans show to one another.  A Common Word (edited by Miroslav Volf, Ghazi bin Muhammad, and Melissa Yarrington) is a compilation of essays written to reflect upon the October 2007 letter written by Muslim leaders to Christian leaders.  The essence of the letter is that Muslims and Christians both have at the center of their respective faiths two central tenets or commands – to love God and to love neighbor.  Mark 12:29-31 is one of many places in scripture that make plain the centrality of these commands for Christians.  The Muslim authors who contribute to the A Common Word letter and essays to the book by the same title exhaustively demonstrate that similar commands are operative in Islam.  While both the Christian and the Muslim authors in the book recognize the likely irreconcilable differences in the two faiths, including nuanced understandings of “love,” both demonstrate that love is the key.  Furthermore, the Christian and Muslim authors make a compelling case that love is the ground upon which Muslims and Christians can meet in friendship and peace. 

            The key is love – in creation, in relationship, in drawing together parties that have experienced mutual enmity.  The theologian Miroslav Volf writes one of the Christian responses.  His essay is a tour de force of theological explanation as he explains the trinity even while demonstrating why the trinity cannot be explained.[ii]  On the love of God Volf writes, “God loves irrespective of the existence or non-existence of creation; … the contingent world is created by a God who is always love and just because God is love” (italics Volf’s).[iii] 

            One of the points of emphasis in my Sabbatical is a study of the differences between people and how those differences can be overcome for the sake of beautiful friendship, and more importantly that differences be overcome because we are family – brothers and sisters in Christ.  Admittedly, I have devoted much of my reading and conversation to the divide between European Americans (white) and African Americans (blacks) while knowing there are other divisions separating people.  I felt the black-white divide demanded my attention.  But, the animus many American Christians feel toward Muslims needs to be abolished too.  And maybe my study of A Common Word will yield reminders of the call of Christ to love that can become identity markers in interracial friendships and encounters in the church I pastor.  We Christians are called to, commanded to love our neighbors.  The church is to be the community that witnesses to the world the unity and diversity of the body of Christ.  We can do this when, within the church body, we see sacred neighbor love so powerfully that all who come in know from the start they are welcome and are at home among people who deeply care for them.

            From Pastor May’s word on God’s love as the basis for creation to Eugene Peterson’s display of God as the supremely relational One to Dr. Volf’s smart, straightforward account of God as God is Love, the point is abundantly made.  The root of who we are is love – God’s love.  My son and I saw Wonder Woman, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but I snickered at the end when her final conclusion was “the most important thing is love.”  I smugly thought, “Well that’s just Hollywood cliché, its vapid fluffiness on full display. Wonder Woman kicks some serious bad guy butt and then in a reflection both hopeful and melancholy concludes, ‘the most important thing is love’?  Seriously?” 

Now, I’m saying the same thing. 

            I am because it’s how I was made.  I was created by love (you know, 1 John 4:16, ‘God is love’).  I was made in the image of the One who is love.  He who made me knows me and in spite of my selfishness and impatience commands me to love my neighbor.  He pours His Spirit and His love into me.  Created and commanded, I must love.  Also, I know that the hope for our church (HillSong) and for the church (Christians everywhere) is that we be the living embodiment of God’s love.  Only then are we truly God’s church.  And for peace and flourishing and joy, the world needs the church to truly be the church. 

            I can’t believe I am going to say it, but I have Cleve May, Eugene Peterson, Miroslav Volf, and Diana Prince’s endorsements (not to mention the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s).  And, seriously, who am I to question Wonder Woman?  The most important thing really is love. 

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[i] E. Peterson (2017), As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Waterbook (New York), p. 74.

[ii] Volf, Muhammad, and Yarrington, editors (2010).  A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor, William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), p.130.

[iii] Ibid, p.126.  

Review of Eugene Peterson's 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire'

I am extremely thankful that this sermon collection has been released.  Eugene Peterson is the person, in my own reading, who has put the dignity into the work of the pastor.  Peterson was a scholar through and through, but he saw the daily, weekly, yearly work pastors do as being just as important as any work done by anyone in any field.  In fact, he saw a unique dignity in the work of the pastor.

            This collection is one record of how he did it.  ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ is an anthology of his sermons.  Tracking his preaching, one can see how a pastor dealt with the major movements of history as they affected a suburban congregation in Maryland.

            My own preaching is quite different.  However, I am my own person and I live in a different time.  I find myself blessed and educated as I observe how Peterson preached on Moses and Adam and Eve and creation and law.  His work informs and shapes mine.  I recommend this book as a guide to pastors and as a primer in discipleship for all Christians.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Gospel Imagination (Jonah 4:1-11)

Sunday, November 20, 2016

            Jonah chapter 3 ends with God changing his mind.  God was going to wipe out the city of Nineveh.  However, when the people turned from their evils ways, God changed the plan.  Then chapter four begins, “this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry” (4:1). 

            Eugene Peterson writes “Jonah is quarreling because he has been surprised by grace.  He is so taken aback that he is disagreeable about it.  His idea of what God is supposed to be doing and what God in fact does differs radically.  Jonah sulks.  Jonah is angry.”[i]  Peterson goes on to say that Jonah is stuck in literalism.  Because God put the message of destruction in his mouth, then in his mind, it must play out only that way; no other outcomes occur to him.  Nineveh, one of the largest cities in the world, has to be obliterated.  Peterson observes that Jonah fails to see Nineveh.  He’s so caught up in a narrative in which he is one of the “good guys” because God is on his side and the Ninevites are “bad guys” that he never considers their humanity or their need for God.  He has no grief for their destruction because he does not think about them at all.

            Peterson is the scholar who translated the entire Bible into a colloquial vernacular that is very popular today – The Message.  He originally translated Paul’s short letter to the Galatians into everyday language in order to help the members of his own church better understand the scripture.  He did not intend to translate the entire Bible.  He was a pastor trying to liven up a Sunday school class and help the people feel the full emotion and effect of scripture. 

            Editors who had worked with him on other books persuaded Eugene Peterson to give up his pastoral ministry and dedicate his time to writing The Message.  His work conveys an understanding that the power of the Bible comes in the story.  In story, we can relate to God and see how past interactions between God and humans speak into our lives.  In Jonah’s case, it is the story of someone who thinks of himself as one of God’s insiders even as he disregards those he deems outsiders.  Peterson says Jonah is guilty of a failure of imagination.

            I know in my own life as a Christian, I have been guilty of this too.  From high school to college to seminary to full time ministry, I have always been inside the church.  That’s not the same as being close to God, but I often tell myself it is.  I worked a summer in the Ingersoll Rand factory Roanoke, pulling parts for the guys on the line who made heavy digging equipment.  I played football in highs school and a little bit in college.  I went through army basic training and spent six years in the National Guard.  I am familiar with the crass language of the barracks and the locker room.  But when I spent time in those earthy places, in my mind, I was a person from the church and of the church.   I was separate from those places even when I was there.

            Restricting my identity and my sense of God to so-called holy spaces, I failed to appreciate the transcendence of God and the love of God.  Inside the church, we worship God.   He is here.  But God is not bound by the church.  When we walk out the church doors and go other places, God is in those places too.  God was with me in barracks and in those factories where I worked between semesters.  If you had asked back then, “Was God present when with you all night as you pulled parts and took them to workers on the line,” I would have responded, “Yes.”  Mentally, I knew God was in all places.  But I wasn’t conscious to the possibility that God might actually be at work while I labored in uncomfortable steel-toed shoes at the Ingersoll-Rand factory.  It didn’t occur to me that great works of transformation could happen there because God loved those factory workers who weren’t, like me, going back to college in the fall. 

It didn’t occur to Jonah that God’s love was bigger than God’s judgment.  Yes, the Ninevites were wicked.  But so was Jonah.  So am I.  We all sin.  Our sins might be different than the sins committed by the ancient Ninevites or by attendees at a frat party or by poor Syrians recruited into ISIS.  In each case the specific acts of wickedness is different, but people in every walk of life in every nation sin, and God loves us in spite of our sins.  This is the Gospel.  Jesus died on the cross out of love for human beings.  In becoming human, he embraced the end of all humans – death – even though he never did what brings death; sin.  In his willingness to die and in rising from death, he defeated death and invited us to join him in resurrection, if we would receive forgiveness from him and follow Him as our Lord and Savior. 

We see this failure to imagine that God would turn around the lives of sinners in Mark chapter 2.  There Jesus calls Levi to leave his work as a tax collector and to follow Jesus as his disciple.  Levi is so overjoyed, he has a party and invites all his friends.  All his friends are tax collectors who became rich by overcharging people who were already quite poor, and prostitutes who – well, we know what they do – and, other miscreants.  Pharisees, the legal experts, aware that Jesus was partying with this motley crew, rejoiced. “Yes Jesus,” they cried, “you’re leading these lost people back to God!”

Actually, no, that’s not what the Pharisees said.  Actually they complained bitterly because, like Jonah, they perceived themselves to be part of the in-crowd, insiders with God.  They weren’t interested in helping society’s deviants to grow closer to God.  They were happy to let the lost stay lost and magnify their own reputations as holy men. 

How do we recover imagination?  How do orient our hearts so that when great acts of God’s grace are seen, we are ready to rejoice instead of complain?  I can’t go back to the factory or the locker room or the barracks and have a “do over” from those times I failed to keep my eyes on God’s glory and failed to help other see him.   Too often, I missed opportunities to be a witness in those places.  But today God gives me new chances see Him at work among people who don’t know him.  God is calling you and me to be part of his work of inviting hurting people to the healing and love he gives.  How can I be ready to join God in this work?  How can we change our outlook so that we show up at Levi’s party full of rule breakers able to relax among them and love them?  We don’t join the tax collectors and prostitutes in immoral behavior, but do we reach out to them in friendship because we believe God will work miracles in their lives.  How do get to the point where we can do that?  How can you and I learn to rejoice when we see Nineveh saved?

First, of course, we recognize that it is a work of God, thus we must draw close to God.  We pray, we worship, we stay in the scripture, we meet in small groups to discuss life and faith with other believers in our church family, participate in works of the church, and we eliminate from our lives activities that prevent us from living more faithfully.  All this is basic to knowing God better.

Second, we live with uncomfortable honesty about our own sins and this drives us to confession.  Deceiving ourselves into thinking we’re “not that bad,” whatever not that bad means, is a total waste.  We begin to be shaped by God when are unabashedly honest with him and with ourselves. 

Third, we live on the look-out.  This is where Gospel imagination can kick into overdrive.  Suppose you’re running errands.  Might God there, at Harris Teeter?  When you go in to buy eggs, bananas, tuna, and bread, do you expect to encounter God in the aisles?  No?  Why not?  He’s there.  He’s at the post office and at the auto mechanic’s garage.  When we leave the house in the morning, headed out to the most mundane of places, do we expect to encounter God in our daily comings and goings and are we prepared to join God when we see God on the loose in the world?  When we pass people at the grocery store, at the bank, at the mall – do we see potential for great works of grace?  No, not every trip to McDonald’s is going to be akin to going to the Mount of Transfiguration.  But, we go through our days thinking “this trip has the possibility for me to meet Jesus as I see his face in the faces of the people I meet. 

Stay connected to God through life in the church in order to know God more deeply.  Be brutally honest with God and with yourself about everything that’s in your heart and mind and comes out in your actions.  Live on the look-out, expecting to see God at any time, in any place.  There’s one more thing.

This one more thing is tough because it go against the way our society has conditioned.  As we watched all the election coverage, we were told how African Americans voted, how women voted, how the LGBT community voted, how white professional males voted, how working class people voted, how Hispanics voted; and on and on.  Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were each trying to become the first Hispanic president.  Bernie Sanders would have been the first Jewish president.  Hillary Clinton would have been the first woman president. 

Taking it away from presidential politics, in our daily interactions with people, do we notice?  Was that exchange in the parking lot at the library with a man, or with a Chinese man?  Would I say the General I saw on the news was a courageous, bold soldier, or would I say she was a courageous and bold for a woman?  Would I say the guy at the party was tremendous dancer, or I would I say, he could really dance, for a white guy? 

Staying in touch with God through devotion and through life in the church; being completely transparent with God and with ourselves; living in expectation that today, we’ll meet God; the fourth essential for recovering and then living in a Gospel imagination is the release of categories.  I don’t mean we’re color blind.  We should acknowledge the pains of African Americans, or indigenous Americans, or of different immigrant.  It would be an affront to Jews to ignore the Holocaust.  It would be akin to spitting in the face of black people to pretend slavery didn’t happen. We acknowledge cultural distinctives and we celebrate them.  We rejoice in the unique contributions and accomplishments different cultures make to the human tapestry.  In art, in music, in sports, in business, in technology, in food, in dance, in personality, in style and in a 100 other ways, different cultural expressions are to be championed. 

When I say that release of categories is essential for Gospel imagination, I mean, I cannot assume anything about you.  If you’re unshaven, wearing a Dale Earnhardt hat, a camouflage-styles coat, and muddy boots, I must not assume you are a dumb bumpkin because you might be smarter than me in 100 ways.  Maybe you’re a country person, but country folk contribute a lot to make the world better for everyone.  I dare not assume you’re a racist because wearing your books and camo-shirts, you may have done immeasurably more to fight racism than I have.  I cannot assume anything.  I will celebrate who you are, I will seek the face of God in your eyes, I will not bind you in some category, and upon meeting you, I will eagerly await the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit as you and I talk, however briefly.  The same would be true if you are black or if you are Asian or female or of a different economic background.  However we are different, when I meet you, I need to release categories and come believing God is about to show up. 

I heard Kelly McEvers interview white nationalist Richard Spencer on National Public Radio.  Spencer said he found nothing immoral about swastikas or the KKK.  He intimated that different racial groups in America should stick to their own kind and that the white kind, European Americans, should be the ones in power.  Many in America believe that with Donald Trump coming into the oval office, racists like Richard Spencer will gain power and nonwhites will be in some trouble.  I pray that this is not the case.  I think one response – the church’s response is to live in Gospel imagination.

We repel the ideology of Richard Spencer by living with arms wide open to all people.  She is not that black woman; she is my beautiful African American sister in Christ and when we get together we both believe something amazing can happen because God is in it.  When Spencer advocates for advancing the white race, we announce the Kingdom of God.  Where Spencer promotes segregation, we display our diverse unity – the full colors of God’s church.  Where white nationalist groups process down the street in a parade of hate, filled with the Holy Spirit, we lock arms with one another in a show of love. 

We even pray for Richard Spencer because we know that God took Saul the Christian-killer and turned him into Paul the church-planter.  Release him from the categories to which he clings.  His mouth speaks hatred, but he is a lost soul who needs Jesus.  We are free to see that even as we renounce his hateful words.  We are free to pray for Donald Trump because we know God is God in the white house and in Trump Towers.  God’s sovereignty reigns in those places, so those places, even there, can be a site of miraculous transformation.  We are free to go to Levi’s party of sinners and laugh and eat alongside Jesus as he loves people who need him.  We are free to sit with Jonah overlooking Nineveh, and we are free to rejoice in the mercy God has shown. 

America is in transition.  Acts of harassment and bigotry have been reported.  There’s an uneasy wind in the air and many are scared.  But there is another story to tell, the one in which God is God and is on the loose in the world.  Let’s tell that story.  Let’s believe all the things we say about God in our song and our prayers.  Let’s live that story. 

What’s going to happen this week?  I am not sure.  But I look and I see a lot of people who are going to walk out of here ready to love all people and ready to meet God in the simplest of places.  I see a people ready to cheer for the salvation of Nineveh, the people and the animals. 

What’s going to happen?  I don’t know, but God is about, so we will find out.

AMEN

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[i] E.Peterson (1992), Under the Unpredictable Plant, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Grand Rapids), p.157.

Gospel Imagination (Jonah 4:1-11)

Sunday, November 20, 2016

            Jonah chapter 3 ends with God changing his mind.  God was going to wipe out the city of Nineveh.  However, when the people turned from their evils ways, God changed the plan.  Then chapter four begins, “this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry” (4:1). 

            Eugene Peterson writes “Jonah is quarreling because he has been surprised by grace.  He is so taken aback that he is disagreeable about it.  His idea of what God is supposed to be doing and what God in fact does differs radically.  Jonah sulks.  Jonah is angry.”[i]  Peterson goes on to say that Jonah is stuck in literalism.  Because God put the message of destruction in his mouth, then in his mind, it must play out only that way; no other outcomes occur to him.  Nineveh, one of the largest cities in the world, has to be obliterated.  Peterson observes that Jonah fails to see Nineveh.  He’s so caught up in a narrative in which he is one of the “good guys” because God is on his side and the Ninevites are “bad guys” that he never considers their humanity or their need for God.  He has no grief for their destruction because he does not think about them at all.

            Peterson is the scholar who translated the entire Bible into a colloquial vernacular that is very popular today – The Message.  He originally translated Paul’s short letter to the Galatians into everyday language in order to help the members of his own church better understand the scripture.  He did not intend to translate the entire Bible.  He was a pastor trying to liven up a Sunday school class and help the people feel the full emotion and effect of scripture. 

            Editors who had worked with him on other books persuaded Eugene Peterson to give up his pastoral ministry and dedicate his time to writing The Message.  His work conveys an understanding that the power of the Bible comes in the story.  In story, we can relate to God and see how past interactions between God and humans speak into our lives.  In Jonah’s case, it is the story of someone who thinks of himself as one of God’s insiders even as he disregards those he deems outsiders.  Peterson says Jonah is guilty of a failure of imagination.

            I know in my own life as a Christian, I have been guilty of this too.  From high school to college to seminary to full time ministry, I have always been inside the church.  That’s not the same as being close to God, but I often tell myself it is.  I worked a summer in the Ingersoll Rand factory Roanoke, pulling parts for the guys on the line who made heavy digging equipment.  I played football in highs school and a little bit in college.  I went through army basic training and spent six years in the National Guard.  I am familiar with the crass language of the barracks and the locker room.  But when I spent time in those earthy places, in my mind, I was a person from the church and of the church.   I was separate from those places even when I was there.

            Restricting my identity and my sense of God to so-called holy spaces, I failed to appreciate the transcendence of God and the love of God.  Inside the church, we worship God.   He is here.  But God is not bound by the church.  When we walk out the church doors and go other places, God is in those places too.  God was with me in barracks and in those factories where I worked between semesters.  If you had asked back then, “Was God present when with you all night as you pulled parts and took them to workers on the line,” I would have responded, “Yes.”  Mentally, I knew God was in all places.  But I wasn’t conscious to the possibility that God might actually be at work while I labored in uncomfortable steel-toed shoes at the Ingersoll-Rand factory.  It didn’t occur to me that great works of transformation could happen there because God loved those factory workers who weren’t, like me, going back to college in the fall. 

It didn’t occur to Jonah that God’s love was bigger than God’s judgment.  Yes, the Ninevites were wicked.  But so was Jonah.  So am I.  We all sin.  Our sins might be different than the sins committed by the ancient Ninevites or by attendees at a frat party or by poor Syrians recruited into ISIS.  In each case the specific acts of wickedness is different, but people in every walk of life in every nation sin, and God loves us in spite of our sins.  This is the Gospel.  Jesus died on the cross out of love for human beings.  In becoming human, he embraced the end of all humans – death – even though he never did what brings death; sin.  In his willingness to die and in rising from death, he defeated death and invited us to join him in resurrection, if we would receive forgiveness from him and follow Him as our Lord and Savior. 

We see this failure to imagine that God would turn around the lives of sinners in Mark chapter 2.  There Jesus calls Levi to leave his work as a tax collector and to follow Jesus as his disciple.  Levi is so overjoyed, he has a party and invites all his friends.  All his friends are tax collectors who became rich by overcharging people who were already quite poor, and prostitutes who – well, we know what they do – and, other miscreants.  Pharisees, the legal experts, aware that Jesus was partying with this motley crew, rejoiced. “Yes Jesus,” they cried, “you’re leading these lost people back to God!”

Actually, no, that’s not what the Pharisees said.  Actually they complained bitterly because, like Jonah, they perceived themselves to be part of the in-crowd, insiders with God.  They weren’t interested in helping society’s deviants to grow closer to God.  They were happy to let the lost stay lost and magnify their own reputations as holy men. 

How do we recover imagination?  How do orient our hearts so that when great acts of God’s grace are seen, we are ready to rejoice instead of complain?  I can’t go back to the factory or the locker room or the barracks and have a “do over” from those times I failed to keep my eyes on God’s glory and failed to help other see him.   Too often, I missed opportunities to be a witness in those places.  But today God gives me new chances see Him at work among people who don’t know him.  God is calling you and me to be part of his work of inviting hurting people to the healing and love he gives.  How can I be ready to join God in this work?  How can we change our outlook so that we show up at Levi’s party full of rule breakers able to relax among them and love them?  We don’t join the tax collectors and prostitutes in immoral behavior, but do we reach out to them in friendship because we believe God will work miracles in their lives.  How do get to the point where we can do that?  How can you and I learn to rejoice when we see Nineveh saved?

First, of course, we recognize that it is a work of God, thus we must draw close to God.  We pray, we worship, we stay in the scripture, we meet in small groups to discuss life and faith with other believers in our church family, participate in works of the church, and we eliminate from our lives activities that prevent us from living more faithfully.  All this is basic to knowing God better.

Second, we live with uncomfortable honesty about our own sins and this drives us to confession.  Deceiving ourselves into thinking we’re “not that bad,” whatever not that bad means, is a total waste.  We begin to be shaped by God when are unabashedly honest with him and with ourselves. 

Third, we live on the look-out.  This is where Gospel imagination can kick into overdrive.  Suppose you’re running errands.  Might God there, at Harris Teeter?  When you go in to buy eggs, bananas, tuna, and bread, do you expect to encounter God in the aisles?  No?  Why not?  He’s there.  He’s at the post office and at the auto mechanic’s garage.  When we leave the house in the morning, headed out to the most mundane of places, do we expect to encounter God in our daily comings and goings and are we prepared to join God when we see God on the loose in the world?  When we pass people at the grocery store, at the bank, at the mall – do we see potential for great works of grace?  No, not every trip to McDonald’s is going to be akin to going to the Mount of Transfiguration.  But, we go through our days thinking “this trip has the possibility for me to meet Jesus as I see his face in the faces of the people I meet. 

Stay connected to God through life in the church in order to know God more deeply.  Be brutally honest with God and with yourself about everything that’s in your heart and mind and comes out in your actions.  Live on the look-out, expecting to see God at any time, in any place.  There’s one more thing.

This one more thing is tough because it go against the way our society has conditioned.  As we watched all the election coverage, we were told how African Americans voted, how women voted, how the LGBT community voted, how white professional males voted, how working class people voted, how Hispanics voted; and on and on.  Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were each trying to become the first Hispanic president.  Bernie Sanders would have been the first Jewish president.  Hillary Clinton would have been the first woman president. 

Taking it away from presidential politics, in our daily interactions with people, do we notice?  Was that exchange in the parking lot at the library with a man, or with a Chinese man?  Would I say the General I saw on the news was a courageous, bold soldier, or would I say she was a courageous and bold for a woman?  Would I say the guy at the party was tremendous dancer, or I would I say, he could really dance, for a white guy? 

Staying in touch with God through devotion and through life in the church; being completely transparent with God and with ourselves; living in expectation that today, we’ll meet God; the fourth essential for recovering and then living in a Gospel imagination is the release of categories.  I don’t mean we’re color blind.  We should acknowledge the pains of African Americans, or indigenous Americans, or of different immigrant.  It would be an affront to Jews to ignore the Holocaust.  It would be akin to spitting in the face of black people to pretend slavery didn’t happen. We acknowledge cultural distinctives and we celebrate them.  We rejoice in the unique contributions and accomplishments different cultures make to the human tapestry.  In art, in music, in sports, in business, in technology, in food, in dance, in personality, in style and in a 100 other ways, different cultural expressions are to be championed. 

When I say that release of categories is essential for Gospel imagination, I mean, I cannot assume anything about you.  If you’re unshaven, wearing a Dale Earnhardt hat, a camouflage-styles coat, and muddy boots, I must not assume you are a dumb bumpkin because you might be smarter than me in 100 ways.  Maybe you’re a country person, but country folk contribute a lot to make the world better for everyone.  I dare not assume you’re a racist because wearing your books and camo-shirts, you may have done immeasurably more to fight racism than I have.  I cannot assume anything.  I will celebrate who you are, I will seek the face of God in your eyes, I will not bind you in some category, and upon meeting you, I will eagerly await the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit as you and I talk, however briefly.  The same would be true if you are black or if you are Asian or female or of a different economic background.  However we are different, when I meet you, I need to release categories and come believing God is about to show up. 

I heard Kelly McEvers interview white nationalist Richard Spencer on National Public Radio.  Spencer said he found nothing immoral about swastikas or the KKK.  He intimated that different racial groups in America should stick to their own kind and that the white kind, European Americans, should be the ones in power.  Many in America believe that with Donald Trump coming into the oval office, racists like Richard Spencer will gain power and nonwhites will be in some trouble.  I pray that this is not the case.  I think one response – the church’s response is to live in Gospel imagination.

We repel the ideology of Richard Spencer by living with arms wide open to all people.  She is not that black woman; she is my beautiful African American sister in Christ and when we get together we both believe something amazing can happen because God is in it.  When Spencer advocates for advancing the white race, we announce the Kingdom of God.  Where Spencer promotes segregation, we display our diverse unity – the full colors of God’s church.  Where white nationalist groups process down the street in a parade of hate, filled with the Holy Spirit, we lock arms with one another in a show of love. 

We even pray for Richard Spencer because we know that God took Saul the Christian-killer and turned him into Paul the church-planter.  Release him from the categories to which he clings.  His mouth speaks hatred, but he is a lost soul who needs Jesus.  We are free to see that even as we renounce his hateful words.  We are free to pray for Donald Trump because we know God is God in the white house and in Trump Towers.  God’s sovereignty reigns in those places, so those places, even there, can be a site of miraculous transformation.  We are free to go to Levi’s party of sinners and laugh and eat alongside Jesus as he loves people who need him.  We are free to sit with Jonah overlooking Nineveh, and we are free to rejoice in the mercy God has shown. 

America is in transition.  Acts of harassment and bigotry have been reported.  There’s an uneasy wind in the air and many are scared.  But there is another story to tell, the one in which God is God and is on the loose in the world.  Let’s tell that story.  Let’s believe all the things we say about God in our song and our prayers.  Let’s live that story. 

What’s going to happen this week?  I am not sure.  But I look and I see a lot of people who are going to walk out of here ready to love all people and ready to meet God in the simplest of places.  I see a people ready to cheer for the salvation of Nineveh, the people and the animals. 

What’s going to happen?  I don’t know, but God is about, so we will find out.

AMEN

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[i] E.Peterson (1992), Under the Unpredictable Plant, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Grand Rapids), p.157.

How to "Eat this Book" (Revelation 10:1-11)

Nothing sweeter will ever enter us than God’s word, the content of the Bible.  The truth, the hope, the joy, the peace, the promise – all of it fills us and provokes change in us so that we infect one another and people outside our church family with a disease known as the Gospel.  Symptoms include salvation, Holy Spirit power, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and abundant life. 

          Nothing more difficult to swallow will ever sit in our stomachs than God’s word, the content of the Bible.  The Bible confronts us in our sin.  The Bible demands that we tell the truth about the damages of sin in the world, and in doing so, we criticize extremely popular institutions in our culture.  Being confronted is no fun.  Confronting others is no fun.  God’s word does the first – confronts us - and then commands us, followers of Jesus. To do the second – confront the world.

          Sweet in the mouth and sometimes tough to swallow – the word of God is both.  Overall, it is life.  Even the tough parts are truth.  When we swallow the tough parts, and by swallow I mean take them in and conform our lives – our speech, choices and relationships – to the tough parts, we discover joy.  It is not an easy joy, but a penetrating one, a lasting joy.

          Revelation chapter 10 serves us this metaphor of honey and bitterness – here we are invited to think of God’s word as both sweet and challenging. 

          Entering the chapter, it might be helpful for us to see the word rather than hear or read it.  Close your eyes and wake up your imagination.  John is in the throne room of Heaven, in God’s presence, surrounded by heavenly beings and by the apostles, all dressed in white robes. 

          What does that look like, Heaven’s throne room?  I have never been in a throne room of any kind.  I have to guess at it.  How about when John sees the visions – what does that look like?  Is it on a screen?  Or is it in 3-D?  Imagine John being shown things by God.

          The vision of chapter10 begins. 

          I saw another powerful angel come down from heaven. This one was covered with a cloud, and a rainbow was over his head. His face was like the sun, his legs were like columns of fire (v.1).

          A powerful angel … a cloud and rainbow … face like the sun, legs like columns off fire … what do you see?  Imagine you are seeing what John sees.  In your mind, describe it as if you were telling another person what you are seeing.

          With his hand he held a little scroll that had been unrolled. He stood there with his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. ³ Then he shouted with a voice that sounded like a growling lion. Thunder roared seven times (v.2-3).

          I have walked along the shore, the lapping waves washing over my bare feet.  It could be said that I have stood with one foot on land and one on the sea.  That is not what I envision here.  I picture a great angel, gigantic, with an enormous foot planted in the sand and the other foot way out in the waves.  How tall is this angel?  20 feet?  50 or 100?

          I imagine my bones within me trembling at the angel’s thunderous roar.  Weakened as I am before this great one of Heaven, feeling small as I do, still I remember I am in John’s vision, seeing what John has seen.  He has already witness as seven wax seals on another scroll were opened.  He watched the graphic scenes of God’s wrath poured out as judgment on a rebellious world.  Then he saw it all again as seven trumpets were blown. 

          Seven seals of judgment, seven trumpets of wrath, and now seven thunders; John has been commanded to write down all he sees, so his picks up his pen again.  But we continue through the chapter and we see that this is different.

          After the thunder stopped, I was about to write what it had said. But a voice from heaven shouted, “Keep it secret! Don’t write these things” (v.4).

          Some things are not to be revealed.  God shares what we need to receive blessing and live as his followers, worshiping him and walking with him in love.  But God does not share all.  Some mysteries stay mysteries. 

          The angel I had seen standing on the sea and the land then held his right hand up toward heaven.⁶ He made a promise in the name of God who lives forever and who created heaven, earth, the sea, and every living creature. The angel said, “You won’t have to wait any longer. ⁷ God told his secret plans to his servants the prophets, and it will all happen by the time the seventh angel sounds his trumpet. (v.5-7).

          As great as this magnificent angel that stands on land and sea is still, the angel is beneath the mighty God.  He serves God and speaks for God.  Here he promises that fulfillment has come. 

          Remembering the seven wax seals, after the 5^th seal was opened, John saw the martyrs.  There in Heaven’s throne room were the martyrs who had died for their faith in Christ.  Many experienced torture before death, yet they did not speak against Jesus.  Even when it was painful to do so, they announced that Jesus is Lord. 

          Man of these martyrs lived in the first century, but many have lived in the two millennia since then.  In fact, there were more people killed for their testimony about Jesus in the 20^th century than the previous 19 combined.  John saw the martyrs after the 5^th seal judgment.  They asked, “How long, holy and faithful Lord, before you bring justice” (6:10)?  Here in chapter 10, we have the response.  But what we don’t count on is our role in God’s justice.

          Again, put yourself there.  See what John sees.

          ⁸ Once again the voice from heaven spoke to me. It said, “Go and take the open scroll from the hand of the angel standing on the sea and the land.”

          ⁹ When I went over to ask the angel for the little scroll, the angel said, “Take the scroll and eat it! Your stomach will turn sour, but the taste in your mouth will be as sweet as honey.” ¹⁰ I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. The taste was as sweet as honey, but my stomach turned sour (V.8-10).

          Eugene Peterson uses this text as a metaphor for living the scripture.  John is there, so small, and he is told to approach the mighty angel, he of the voice of thunder.  A voice from Heaven tells John to go and get the scroll from the angel’s hand.  I feel like I would be too terrified to move.  But John does as he is told and the angel tells him to eat the scroll.

          This is what Eugene Peterson writes about John, the 1^st century Christian who was taken up in the vision that in our Bible is called the Revelation.

“He was the pastor of marginally, economically, and politically powerless Christians in a society in which their commitment to following Christ branded them as criminals of the state.  His task was to keep their identity focused and their lives Spirit-filled, their discipleship ardent, their hope fresh against formidable odds – the living, speaking, acting Jesus front and center in their lives.  He didn’t settle for mere survival, throwing them a plank to hang onto in the storm; he wanted them to live, really live – outlive everyone around them. This is what prophets and pastors and writers do, and it is never easy. No easier now than it was for John.[i]

          I believe the scroll tasted sweet because it is the Gospel – the story of our salvation, our life in Christ.  We are forgiven, made new, called to love, filled with the Spirit, and joined together with God and each other.  In Jesus we are one.  The gospel is a life we can savor. 

          But John immediately knew this gospel also meant naming the injustice of corrupt governments.  For us it means confronting racism and deception, materialism and exploitative sexuality.  The rampant craving for immediate satisfaction, the give-me-what-I-want-and-I-don’t-care-who-gets-hurt mentality, the lie that money and expensive stuff will satisfy – this all poisons our world and we have to speak against it.  To speak the truth about Jesus is also to confront sin. 

          In his quote, Peterson said this is what prophets and pastors and writers do.  I would add it is what eaters do – those who consume the word of God. 

          Peterson says,

Christians feed on scripture.  Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the body.  Christians don’t simply learn or study or use scripture; we assimilate it, take into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing, and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feed washed in company with the Son.[ii]

          To this I would add our consumption of the Word becomes our announcement of it and sometimes we have to make that announcement as prophets declaring “The Lord has said.”  The final word for John and I would contend for readers of Revelation has an ominous note.  This time it comes not from the angel but from other voices in Heaven.

          “Then some voices said, “Keep on telling what will happen to the people of many nations, races, and languages, and also to kings” (v.11).

          Following through Revelation what happens to kings, to some kings at least, is judgment and death.  Revelation 18 is a funeral dirge for Babylon.  “Fallen!  Powerful Babylon has fallen and is now the home of demons.  It is the den of every filthy spirit and of all unclean birds and every dirty and hated animal” (v.2).  Babylon is Rome, it is the Inquisition, it is Nazi Germany, and even, when our own beloved empire exports values contrary to the Gospel, it is us.  And it is not popular to announce Babylon’s fall prior to that fall happening.  Babylon does not like that and tends to punish the prophets who make that announcement with persecution, isolation, and dismissal.

          The day after judgment, after God has rendered final punishment to those who rebel against God and hurt people – that day is sorrowful for the prophet.  We do not rejoice at the death of sinners.  We weep for them as Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

          The word of the Lord can seem like a tough pill to swallow but swallow it we must. We must eat this book.  We must devour the word of God.

          It does not end with a funeral.  It ends with a wedding – an unending wedding banquet.  Revelation 21 sees the bride, the church joined to the groom, the exalted Lord Jesus.  The tears in this story give way to lasting joy in God’s embrace. 

          As we have talked about getting into the Bible and getting the Bible into us, I have proposed different pathways into Bible reading.  I offer another now as we close.  Take the Bible to bed with you. 

          I did this several years ago and will take up the practice again this week.  Psalm 63 is a prayer of great desire for God.  The singer says in verse 6, “When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches.”

          I took that literally.  For a period of time, before bed, I would take that verse or meditating on God, seeking God, praying to God.  It was the last thing I did before drifting off to sleep.  I did it every night.  Any time I awoke in the middle of night, I did not just go back to sleep.  I would sit up and meditate on that verse and seek the Lord.  When I woke in the morning, the first thing I did was to go to Psalm 63:6 and again seek the Lord in prayer.

          I urge this practice for you this week, but not necessarily with Psalm 63:6, nor with the command to eat in Revelation 10.  Remember, it is a metaphor, eat this book. 

          I recommend another passage in Revelation – 21:3-4.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:^[a]

Look! God’s dwelling^[b] is with humanity,
and He will live with them.
They will be His people,
and God Himself will be with them
and be their God.^[c]
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will no longer exist;
grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things^[d] have passed away.

          Before bed read it, think about it, pray it, especially as you contemplate your life.  If you wake in the middle of the night, go to this passage.  Read it.  Pray it.  The first thing when you wake – read it.  Pray it.  This is how we stomach and enjoy even the challenge of the word.  This is how we eat this book.  This is how we are filled.

AMEN

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[i] E. Peterson (2006), Eat this Book, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, p.19.

[ii] Ibid, p.18.