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.

Made to Know God (Job 13:2; 23:3-7; 38:4-7, 34-41)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, January 8, 2017

         I began 2017 by inviting the church to join me on a quest.  We seek to see God.  Just as an iceberg looks impressive, and yet we only see above the surface all the while knowing there is much more beneath, so then, God is that much more amazing.  Yet for all the wonders we know of God, there is much more we do not know. 

Together, we go into this year seeking to know more of God.  We are made to know God.  Each one of us was created by God intentionally.  God made us to be in relationship with him.  Our quest, this morning, brings us to a man who got to know more of God than he bargained for.  In fact, he wasn’t even looking as we are and yet he saw more of God than most ever do.

Turn with me to the book of Job.

Job 13:3

³ But I would speak to the Almighty,^[a]
    and I desire to argue my case with God.

Job 23:3-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

³ Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
    that I might come even to his dwelling!
⁴ I would lay my case before him,
    and fill my mouth with arguments.
⁵ I would learn what he would answer me,
    and understand what he would say to me.
⁶ Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
    No; but he would give heed to me.
⁷ There an upright person could reason with him,
    and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

Job 38:4-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings^[a] shouted for joy?

³⁴ “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
    so that a flood of waters may cover you?
³⁵ Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
    and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,^[a]
    or given understanding to the mind?^[b]
37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
³⁸ when the dust runs into a mass
    and the clods cling together?

³⁹ “Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens,
    or lie in wait in their covert?
⁴¹ Who provides for the raven its prey,
    when its young ones cry to God,
    and wander about for lack of food?

There is a gorilla named Koko who learned signed language.[i]  She was able to communicate complicated concepts.  Think about how remarkable this is: an animal, not human, having a real conversation with humans. 

However, an earthquake hit scaring the poor primate half to death.  She had never been taught the word for earthquake.  All she could say, that is ‘sign’, is “Floor.  Big bite.”  I think Koko the gorilla is to be appreciated and even admired.  Using what vocabulary and concepts she did have, she tried to say what happened and how it made her feel; obviously terrified.  She couldn’t possibly know things about tectonic plates or seismographs.  She gets high marks for saying what she knew even though we know an earth quake is more than the floor taking a bite out of us, however apt the metaphor may be.

We are like Koko when we try to describe God.  We lack the words and the experience.  Still, we try.  With our insufficient vocabulary, we speak about God and attempt to know God because God created us for relationship with Him.  From my reading of scripture to my study of the history of Christian theology to my own logical conclusions to longings deep within my soul, I am thoroughly convinced that God wants relationship with us and wants us to reach to Him. 

Even pronouns are insufficient.  God is Him.  Some might be upset if I said God was “her,” but either pronoun fits and at the same time falls short.  For tradition’s sake, when pronouns are necessary, I will use the male, but rest assured.  I don’t think God is male.

As I have talked to others about this launch into 2017 – a quest to see more of God that we might be drawn closer to God and also grow in our ability to speak about God and for God in the world – I appreciated counsel I have received.  More than one person has reminded me – we only see of God what God chooses to reveal.  One book in the Bible is called “Revelation,” but the content of the entire Bible is what God chose to reveal.  Jesus is God revealed in human flesh.  In upcoming weeks, we’ll look at bits from Jesus’ life and see what we can learn about God.  We’ll probe, inch by inch, beneath the iceberg’s surface.  This morning we do the same following what is revealed in the book of Job.

In the beginning of the book, Job’s life is ideal.  His 10 children – 7 sons and 3 daughters are young adults who all get along with each other.  They dine in one another’s homes.  And Job oversees it all.  Chapter 1 verse 5 says Job makes a point of sacrificing on behalf of his children in case they have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

I get a sense that from the outset, the book of Job presents God as a distant, punishing deity Job appeases both for himself (by not sinning) and for his children (by offering sacrifices on their behalf).  God holds Job in high esteem, but I don’t get the sense that Job has a prayer relationship with God.  God is impersonal. 

Then things fall apart.  Satan and God talk and God allows Satan to harm Job and wreck Job’s life in order to prove Job’s righteousness.  After Satan kills Job’s children and afflict Job’s health, chapters 3-37 are commentary.  Job talks about his plight with his three friends.  The friends think Job’s problems are God’s punishments for sins Job must have committed.  Job insists he is innocent and repeatedly demands an audience with God. 

We see in the opening verses a comfortable Job who is happy with life and happy with keeping God distant and appeased.  That placid Job is contrasted with the agitated Job who occupies the central portion of the book.  The agitated Job is much more motivated to have a personal encounter with God.  The agitated Job wants to have a face-to-face with God and to give God a piece of mind.

Various theological perspectives led me to think of Job in terms of contrast – placid, comfortable Job v. agitated, insistent Job.   First, the great reformer John Calvin from whom we get the term ‘Calvinism.’  Calvin believed that God directs everything in life – even our misery.  In his most famous work, ‘Calvin’s Institutes,’ he writes, “Whether poverty or exile or prison or insult or disease or bereavement, or anything like [these things] torture us, we must think that none of these things happen by the will and providence of God.”[ii]  This view accord with the theology of Job.  Job would need to sacrifice to a God like this because he would fear this God’s discipline upon his children.  Job’s friends appeal to this retributive theology when they urge Job to confess his sin and thereby alleviate, or at least understand his suffering. 

Against is a 20^th century theology that has appeared at various times in church history.  The 20^th century version, represented by Clark Pinnock is called open theism.[iii]  Open theists believe that God, as an act of supreme love, has created beings – humans – who are capable of choosing to love God.  God is affected, we might even say changed, by the way his created being act toward him.  Open theists believe that God knows all that can be known.  However, since the future hasn’t happened yet, it cannot yet be known.  Thus God doesn’t know the future.

Calvin severely limited human free will.  What happens is predetermined by a sovereign God.  Pinnock and other open theists limit God’s sovereignty.  I don’t believe either position can be defended with certainty.  I don’t know all that God knows.  I don’t know if it is possible that there are things God doesn’t know.  I find both positions uncomfortable.  I am uneasy about the thought that my very words and ideas were predetermined by a sovereign God who micromanages the universe.  And I am equally unsettled by the thought that there are limits on God’s power and knowledge. 

Job dealt with the tension between a distant punishing God and the frustrated desire to get up close and personal with that God.  Calvin presented an all-knowing, all-controlling God and open theists respond with a God who is in process and experiences new things.  A third contrast I found comes between a wholly other God v. a familiar and close God. 

In the book Reaching for the invisible God, Philip Yancey shares his experience in Russia shortly after communism fell in the early 90’s.  He went with a Russian Orthodox priest to visit prisoners.[iv]  One of the others in their party requested that the Orthodox priest have prayer with the inmates.  The priest brought out an icon.  He donned an elaborate prayer outfit involving gold crosses and other vestments.  He went through a complex ritual.  I have visited people in prison.  When it’s time for prayer, I and the inmate each bowed our heads and prayed.  That’s too simple and too cozy for the Orthodox priest Yancey described.  For that priest, God is ‘wholly other.’  Conversation with God is not like conversation with another person and it should not be approached that way.

Contrast this with the way many popular American praise songs approach God.  Yancey quotes from Chris Tomlin’s song “In the Secret.”  “I want to know you more/I want to touch you/I want to see your face.”  It is a very intimate reaching for God.  Yancey observes and I have observed this too, that some praise songs are indistinguishable from teen-aged romance songs.   Just insert God’s name for the name of the intended lover.[v]  One of my seminary friends often joked that these are “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs.  Yancey goes on to remark, “Nowhere in the Bible do I find a promise that we will touch God or see his face.”[vi]

Which is true?  Is God so removed that like Job the best we can do is offer sacrifices?  Or find a priest who will don gold crosses and kiss them in elaborate rituals as he prays on our behalf because God is unapproachable?  Or is the relationship to which God invites us so intimate, we dare to liken it to romance? 

What has been your own experience?  How have you experienced God as all-knowing, all-powerful ‘wholly other’ who inspires and awe and fear? How have you experienced God as close, personal relation?  What would the word be?  Father?  Friend?  Disembodied Spirit that dwells within? 

“Oh that I might find him,” Job lamented in chapter 23.  “That I might even come to his dwelling.”  He knew the theology that ran through the Old Testament beginning with Moses.  Anyone who sees God will die.  Job knew this.  His wife, as a wrought with grief as him, told him to “curse God and die” (2:9).  She spoke out of her pain, not out of malice.  But Job wouldn’t take that easy route.  He would accept death, but he wanted a word with God first.  Though he lived in an era dominated by the Calvinist-type of Sovereignty of God theology which the Orthodox priest would also appreciate, Job broke the paradigm by demanding an appointment with God.  Only the select few – Abraham, Moses, the real heavyweights – came that close to God.  Job did not care.  He would not rest until he had his audience.

God gave Job what he asked for but it didn’t happen as Job thought it might.  Remember his self-assurance?  He said, “An upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.”

When God came to Job, it says God spoke out of a whirlwind.  Have you ever been in a tornado?  I haven’t and don’t want to be.  And yet, I propose that we do what Job tried to do – see God and speak directly to God.  I don’t know if we are like the Orthodox priest or like one of today’s praise song writers.  God came to Job in the whirlwind, but never ever answered a single one of Job’s questions.  Remember, as hard as we look, we only get to see what God chooses to reveal. 

“Where were you, when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  God asks Job, and us.  Yes, God is wholly other.  No, we weren’t there when God, with tender care, formed every creature, made the earth in a way that it truly is good.  But in the end, Job was found to be righteous.  It wasn’t because of his sacrifices.  He was, I believe, because he sought God. 

If out of our brokenness, out of our confusion, out of our pain, out of our curiosity we seek God, here is what we will find.  We will find that God will not give us everything we ask for.  God will not fix everything the way we think it ought to be fixed.  God will give us what God gave Job; not in the way it was given to Job.  Each person’s encounter with God is unique.  But God will do for each person who seeks Him, what He did for Job.  God will give us God’s very self. 

“Would God contend with me in the greatness of his power?  No.  But God would listen to me.”

When we explore beneath the surface and begin to see a bit more of God we discover that God created us to be in relationship with Him.  And when we call out Him, God hears us.

AMEN

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[i] Student’s Life Application Bible (1997), Tyndale House Publishers, p.984.

[ii] John Calvin, Institutes, Book 3, Chapter VIII, section II.

[iii] C. Pinnock (2003), chapter 6 in the book Alister E. McGrath & Evangelical Theology, edited by Sung Wook Chung, Paternoster Press (UK), p.147-164.

[iv] P. Yancey (2000), Reaching for the Invisible God, Zondervan books (Grand Rapids), p.26.

[v] Ibid, p.31.

[vi] Ibid, p.32.

A Tribute to John Charles: A Man and His Books

A Tribute to John Charles: A Man and his Books

News2Use – August, 2015

Rob Tennant

          My friend John Charles is nearer to the end of his earthly life than is to the beginning of it.  He is 85.  He has Alzheimer’s.  Only God knows how much time he has left.

          For me, to be his friend and his pastor these past 9 years has been a true privilege.  Pastors are, in a sense, friends to all the church members.  And whatever the relationship is, however intimate or distant, when a church member nears death, the pastor is drawn close.  This is nearly always the case.            Maybe the pastor had not been a large force in that person’s life, but as death closes in, suddenly, the pastor becomes important.  No matter how good we are at doing it, we pastors are seen as the guides who shepherd people from life on earth to eternal life in the embrace of God. 

          In John’s case, it is happening, but with a caveat.  Before Alzheimer’s took John away, he and I were close, and it was because of who he is, not because I am his pastor.  John has had many pastors before me.  And if someone else were here at HillSong, he would be as close to that pastor as to me.  It is a mark of his and his wife Marion’s faithfulness that they committed themselves to the life of the church.

          Before I mention John’s books, I need to make this clear.  Throughout his life, John was a committed Christian who took discipleship very seriously.  I remember our men’s Bible study – all men over 70 with 38-year-old me.  We were moving furniture into the apartment of a newly arrived refugee.  John was on one end of as a couch that we being carried up the stairs.  He had the skin on his knuckles ripped off as his hand scraped the brick wall in the stairwell.  But he didn’t drop his end of the couch.

          John was faithful in service.  I remember the times he told me of how members of his family became Christians.  He knew what was stake and so, he teared up as he shared the stories.  Yes, the stoic bookworm John Charles was moved to deep emotion when he thought about someone he loves accepted Jesus. 

          John was husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend, teacher, and mentor.  He was all these things.  He should be remembered for these roles and for the love he had for God and his family.  That is John Charles much more than a library. 

The library does also need to be mentioned.  John Charles was a lover of Biblical scholarship.  A Bible scholar is not someone who just reads the Bible over and over.  That in and of itself is good and noble and a worthwhile pursuit I recommend to all Christ-followers.  And John did that.  But he also studied the Bible critically.  Doing this did not demystify the Word for him.  Rather, critical study increased John’s reverence for scripture as critical study does for anyone who is a person of faith and dares to ask the tough questions.

          John studied the scripture in the original Hebrew and Greek, and he studied early commentaries in Latin and commentaries from the great 19^th century German scholars.  He was a master of languages.  He also studied in depth theology, church history, and hermeneutics (methods of scripture interpretation).  In terms of scholarship, he was a renaissance man.

          Over the course of his life, this study of God through the writings of great scholars was a passion for him and he amassed a library of over 2500 books.  A few weeks ago, his family gave me charge of the books.  I could keep as many as I liked.  The rest I needed to donate to pastors or church libraries or seminaries that would resonate with John’s approach to theological study. 

I have long known that the day would come when John and Marion would call me to be the steward of his life’s passion.  Now that it is here, I am amazed by the enormity of the task.  It is a true blessing.  My own pastoral library will just about double by the time I am done.  I have taken in great books and it has impressed upon me a sense of responsibility.  I won’t be the scholar he was.  I am terrible at languages.  I muddle along in Greek and am hopeless in the others.  But, John left me a lot of great theological writings and Bible commentaries.  To honor him, I need to read these works and be shaped by them. 

I am going to do exactly that.  It will take years and I have already begun.  I am studying two works by American scholar Karl Donfried and one by Alister McGrath of Britain.  I have changed some things, and dropped some things out of my life to give me time to get a jump on reading these great works.  I won’t ever be John Charles.  I am not supposed to be him.  But his life’s work will have a powerful effect on me living  the call God has set before me.

In addition to responsibility, the fact that I am now the steward of a significant portion of John’s life has had a great humbling effect on me.  I think I was starting to create an idol – John’s books.  I only paid homage to the idol in my mind, nowhere else, but there in my consciousness it was occupying a bigger and bigger space.  God freed me from this idolatry when God made it clear that I had to give many of these books away to pastors who I knew would cherish them, read them, and grow in theological knowledge because of them.  As we divvied up the books, many times, one of my friends claimed a book I really wanted.  It was freeing to let him or her have it.  God is the maker of my life as a pastor.  The books help, but they shouldn’t just help me.  I was humbled to pass John’s blessing on to others and they were enormously grateful. 

The responsibility to be a theologian-pastor and the humility to be a giver (and not a hoarder) are truly things God is using to shape my life.  Of course my appreciation for John and Marion and my love for them has grown immensely in recent weeks.  As time passes, this summer of the disbursement of theological blessing from a man who had more than enough to give will fade in memory. 

But it won’t fade too far into the background.  There will be an afternoon in the near future when I will be reading.  I will want to go over to John and Marion’s home and have a cup of coffee.  I can’t drink coffee without thinking of my father and of John Charles.  I will want to sit with John and discuss the protreptic purposes in Paul’s terminology in Thessalonians.  Of course you don’t know the word ‘protreptic.’  Microsoft Word’s spell checker didn’t know it either.  And to be honest, I had to look it up.  John wouldn’t. 

But, John is not here for that discussion, not anymore.  He has eternity in the resurrection ahead of him for he truly is a Christ-follower and will be with the Lord in the Kingdom forever.  But he is gone for now.  I won’t be able to go talk it over with him and listen as he shares with me how he became a reader and collector of great theological literature. We have had that conversation so many times and now I won’t be able to sit with him again.

And yet, I will.  I will sit in my office, look at my shelves, take a sip of coffee, shove my nose back into that book, and John will be there with me. 

Rob Tennant

Ezekiel 36 - God's Nature

            It is not for you sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name.  God says this in Ezekiel (36:22).  God proceeds to promise a return from exile to the land originally promised to Abraham.   Throughout his work on Old Testament theology, Elmer Martens asserts that land is a key component of God’s intentions for God’s people.[i]  Even when land does not literally mean Jews living in Palestine, Martens sees land as the word that points to gift, promise, and blessing.  Whether an Israelite ever again lives in Jerusalem does not matter.  God’s promise of land means God will always be with all Jews, all the people of God, giving blessing.  So, when God, in Ezekiel 36, promises to ‘gather’ his people (36:24), this amounts to a promise of presence and blessing, and it is a promise God keeps.

            This is who God.  God keeps promises.  God gives blessings.  God does it all for the sake of God’s name.  God’s holiness makes it impossible for God to do otherwise.

            Ezekiel 36:25-27 sounds baptismal.  “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; … I will put my spirit within you and make you follow my statutes.”  If exile was a death, it was a death followed by a new day, one created by God.  Israel’s guilt along with the guilt of the nations led to this state of dispossession.  Our sins are not inconsequential.  When humanity rebels against God over generations at a societal level, pain and suffering follow.  But, God does not leave it there.

            “I will save you from all your uncleanness” God promises (36:29). God does this because it is in God’s nature to save and renew.  This is who God is.  God punishes with (sometimes with exile, sometimes with war, sometimes in other way).  But then God moves beyond punishment to a new day.  Without God, no new day comes, no new life is possible.  But there is no such thing as “without God.”  There is no time or place where God is not.

            Atheists would have us think there is no God.  Agnostics would say we cannot make any definitive statements about God: it’s just an unreachable mystery.  Deists would say there is God but one who is mostly uninvolved in the state of things.  Fundamentalists would say God is concerned about the future and afterlife of individuals but has nothing to say to humanity as a whole.  Ezekiel rejects each of these stances.

            God is in everything, in control of everything, and the events of our lives fall within the purview of God’s plans.  Remember, this is a big picture perspective.  God is in this, whatever “this” is.  God may be in it condemning ungodly behavior.  God may be the cause of the pain, using that pain to draw us back to himself, but God is omnipresent – everywhere.  And God is omnipotent – all powerful. 

            The good news (Gospel!) is God will end each story in which we find ourselves with a new day, new life, and blessing.  God does this for God’s own sake.  It is God’s nature to bless us humans.  That’s what God does.  Walter Brueggemann says, “Yahweh [God] is a Character and Agent who is evidenced in the life of Israel as an Actor marked by unlimited sovereignty and risky solidarity.”[ii]  The all-powerful God joins with humans in relationship for God’s sake, and the result is we have life with God which means blessing, love, and joy.

            I have tried to at least declare if not show God’s unlimited sovereignty.  The “risky solidarity,” to use Brueggemann’s term, comes in joining with humans, Israel in the Old Testament, and the church added in the New.  Israelites are not better than other humans.  Christians are not more holy than non-Christians.  We make mistakes and bow to idols and behave in a way that we deserve exile as much as those who lived in Jerusalem in 586 BC.  But when it comes, whatever the exile looks like, God does not bail out.  God stays with us.

            God does not impose unending wrath.  Even as we suffer, God is working on a new story.  “I will cause towns to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt” says the Lord (Ezekiel 36:33).  God’s siding with us when we are at our lowest gives the skeptic ammunition.  What kind of God do you worship that He would let you wallow in such misery?  God’s reputation is at stake, but He risks it because God is unmoved by the skeptic’s taunts.  God is not bothered in the least by the jawing scoffers.  God’s concern is God doing things God’s way.  As Ezekiel (and the rest of Bible, Old and New Testaments) shows, God’s way is to risk solidarity with people He knows will sin.  Because of who God is, God will love us when we are at our worst. 

            In what “waste place” do you find yourself right now?  God is going to rebuild it and you along with it.  We experience joy when we willingly yield ourselves and live in God’s ways by choice instead of by divine force.  Every knee will bow in obeisance (Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:10).  Those who resist the rule of God are “kicking against the goads” (Acts 26:14).  Those go God’s way, even while in suffering, find that as He rebuilds the waste places he works through them and they are renewed and invited to enter the “joy of the master” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

        As God, for his own sake re-creates the world humans who live by faith are remade.  With our new hearts, we live in joyful relationship with God.   

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[i] E. Martens (1981).  God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, p.243.

[ii] W. Brueggemann (1997).  Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.268.

What Can you Imagine?

I begin by saying that until a second ago, it was pouring rain outside.  It has now lightened up to a bit more than a sprinkle – but still raining.  I only point that out because I went on two weather websites, one national and one local.  Both had down for our zip code at this hour a 0% chance of rain. 

We (“we” being humans) don’t know much!  I have no idea what weather forecasters do.  I don’t know how they decided to type in on The Weather Channel website “0” for % chance of rain.  It may be an impossibly hard job, like trying to call the block/charge in an NBA game.  Impossible.  We humans simply are lacking in knowledge.

Even more, we lack wisdom.   All the craziness in the world – Al Shabaab in Somalia, Islamic State in Iraq, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Vladimir Putin in Russia; there is suffering all over the planet.  There is violence right here in the United States.  We are a nation born of immigration now trying to put a cap on immigration.  The hypocrisy in our attitudes to immigrants, especially Mexican, is unspeakably cruel.

But wait!  I intended this to be a positive post.  I start with rain and bad news; and the declaration that humans do not know much, are sadly lacking in wisdom, and sorry in our failure of compassion.  Alright!  That’s off my chest.

Maybe the biggest failure is my own lack of creative thinking.  And this leads me to two of the wonderful verses in all of scripture.  I hasten to add my recommendation that you read this in the NIV.  I don’t often recommend that version, but I am convinced that in this case, the NIV gets the spirit of the verse best.  Other versions may offer a better technical translation, but the NIV captures the essence, I believe. 

The passage is Ephesians 3:20-21, a doxology.

“²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

It seems simplistic to say it, but God can bring rain when the weather people say there no chance, zero %.  God can bring peace even into a world of Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and Islamic State.  God overwhelm people with joy as they meet Him in the Holy Spirit.  I feel like a child, like a simpleton, but I believe it is true.

These verses are a statement of glory raised to God.  He is glorified (that is what a ‘doxology’ does; it speaks a word of glory about God).  Ephesians 3:20-21 is appropriately used when the words are read in worship, corporate or private, as an act of praise.

But, notice what is embedded in the praise: theology. 

First, a theology of limitation dominates.  “Immeasurable” is unacceptable for business men and researchers alike.  God’s deeds cannot be counted and rational thought really does not tolerate that which it cannot measure.  I do not think enlightenment or reason is antithetical to God or faith in God.  But I am certain God, while speaking to us in our rational processes, goes way beyond what we can observe, count, measure, and describe.  God goes immeasurably beyond. 

We are limited in our view of God.  We are ridiculously limited.  God delights in our praise of Him, but does not need it.  We need to praise God so we can realize with certainty God is God and only God is God and we are not God.  I know I wrote “God” in that sentence six times, but it was not enough. 

People may think they can without boundaries.  When Han complained about rescuing Princess Leia, Luke promised that her riches would bring a handsome reward.  Han pressed Luke wanting to know how rich she was.  Luke said she had more than Han could imagine to which Han replied, “I don’t know kid.  I can imagine an awful lot.”  So we think.  God is so much more.  In fact, it is nonsensical that I would even try to convince my readers of God’s greatness and vastness and magnificence.  In doing so, I am trying to make the case for something that’s immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine.

However, God would have me do it because the second aspect of theology seen here is a theology of partnership.

The doxology says that he who does more than we can ask or imagine has his power “at work within us.”  Furthermore, the glory given him is given in the church.  This unreachable God reaches to us, fills us, works with and through us, and calls us His own.  Maybe the most unimaginable reality is that the solution to the problems caused by the terrorists and dictatorial governments I referenced earlier – the solutions will come from God working his love into the earth through His people the church.

I just had a conversation today with a friend whose wife had been a senior pastor but now is out of church altogether.  The church she was leading was such an unhealthy community, she had to get out.  I trust her calling, so I believe she did the right thing.  But here she is, someone with almost a decade of experience, a seminary degree, and a calling from God, and she is out because the church wounded her so badly.

This is where (and in whom) God’s power is at work?  In the church?  Seriously?

Absolutely – yes.  It makes no sense.  But I think that was Paul’s point in another of his letters, 1^st Corinthians.

“¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
    and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.” 

The wisdom of God makes no sense in the eyes of a world that is actively rebelling against his rule.  We have the Spirit of God in us when we are in Christ, so we see differently.  We realize, going back to the Ephesians 3 doxology, that God always intends for human agents acting in unity, His church, flawed as we are, to be His representatives to the dying world. 

Unimaginable?  Oh, yes.  Of God?  Most definitely.

So, I wrap this up by thanking God. 

God, my Father, Savior, Redeemer, and Lord, thank you.  Thank you for the people who make up the church, warts and all.

Sustain my friend while she prayerfully seeks you in this time away from preaching and pastoring.  Convict the people in the church who hurt her – break their hearts that they might repent and turn inward to You.

Protect the Christians in the path of evil – those in Nigeria and Syria and Iraq and other places.  Protect them with your presence.  Through their witness, work miracles.

In my life, fill me with compassion that is unmistakable so that when people are doused by the compassion that pours from me, they will not even see me, but look to you, Oh Savior God.

That is my prayer.  It has stopped raining and is way past my bed time.  Good night.

What God Does - Ephesians 1:15-23

Back-to-school and a crisis for students; my summer is over!

            A closer than expected race in the American League Central division and a baseball crisis for Detroit Tiger fans; we might not make the playoffs!

            Mommy and Daddy keep fighting and it’s getting louder and louder; a child’s crisis is his family is falling apart.

            A shooting, some rioting, and a town – Ferguson – and a nation – the United States face a racial crisis; or more accurately, we turn our face back to a racial crisis that has not resolved.

            Terrorism, war, death, and humanitarian crises run through every Middle East nation.

            So much demands the attention of the church.  How do we bring it all together – the news, our individual lives, our specific community?  How can looking to God make sense of everything?

            For the next five weeks, we will search for the answer to this.  From the chaos, we seek order and peace by opening the Bible to Ephesians and looking for God.  We are not simply seeking information about God.  We seek God – a meeting with the almighty. 

            Ephesians is written as poetry.  The sentences are impossibly long.  In Greek, Ephesians 1:15-23 is one long sentence.  English translations do not usually depict this.  English translations of the Psalms do; most English renderings lay out the Psalm in verse, with stanzas.  Ephesians is cleaned up so that we English readers can digest it as prose – neat sentences arranged in tidy paragraphs.

            This morning, as we go through Ephesians, we pay special attention to the verbs.  In the spirit of back-to-school and in the search for God, we read with an eye toward God’s activity. 

I am reading the NRSV.  In other versions this will be worded differently and due to the nature of Ephesians, there is potential for a wide range of English readings.  If the Bible version you normally use is considerably different, don’t worry.  Rather, pray.   Ask God to help you hear His living word as you read the Bible.  Ask God to make the words of scripture come to life in your everyday life.

            Here is what God does.

            God the Father … has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (v.3).  God has blessed us.  The online dictionary I used lists about 6 definitions of bless, blessing, and blessed.  The Greek, euloghsas, is the root of the English word eulogy.  In Ephesians 1:3 it specifically means benefits given by God.  Fine!  Blessing is benefit.  What exactly is the benefit? 

It is presence.  In Christ, we know we have God with us in personal relationship and we are with God.  It doesn’t mean life is always easy, but it does mean we have God with us in all times, including the hard times.  God blesses.  This is who God is – one who blesses by benefiting us with God’s presence.  God is for us.

          Ephesians 1:4-5: he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.  And he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.  God blesses – God also chooses and adopts.  God chooses to adopt you and me.  God does this by sending Jesus as the atonement for our sins and at the same time, God nudges us toward Jesus.  This is an adoption we can resist. God intends the death of Jesus to be the means of salvation for all people because God loves all people.  God loves the police officer who shot Michael Brown.  God loves Michael Brown. God hates that death happens, but God loves all people.  Therefore Jesus has come and through Jesus God the Father invites us to faith and in faith we become children of God. 

          God blesses.  God chooses.  God adopts.  What else does God do?

            “In Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.  … He has made known to us the mystery of his will” (from 1:8-9).  Here Ephesians moves fluidly to the point that identifying the precise subject of each verb is a challenge.  It seems, reading in the NRSV, that Jesus, the Beloved Son, lavishes grace upon us.  Instead of a bucket of ice water, God pours grace over us and keeps pouring more and more grace.  But this is no challenge.  God does this out of love, not because we agreed or accepted or stepped up.  God’s grace is amazing because we don’t deserve it but God gives it anyway and in all-you-can-eat buffet sized portions.

            No matter how meanly you speak to others – Jesus has a basket of grace for you.  You are accepted and acceptable to God because he loves you.  No matter how many times I repeat the same mistakes – the same sins – forgiveness comes as an expression of grace.  Jesus douses me in grace.   Jesus covers every  sinner.

            Then in the very next clause, same sentence, God the Father makes known to us the mystery of his will.  If someone tells you they have unlocked the secret code in the Bible stop listening and walk away.  Well, that would be rude, so maybe that’s not the best response.  Instead point them to Ephesians 1:9.  God doesn’t keep secrets from us.  We don’t need to have advanced degrees in Greek, Latin, Hermeneutics, and Theology.  There is nothing to unlock.  In Christ, God the Father makes known to us the mystery of His will.

            I wonder at this point if you noticed something.  We are seeing God by what God does – God blesses, God chooses (us), God adopts (us), God makes known God’s will.  All this is God the Father.  God the Son, Jesus, the Incarnation, lavishes grace.  God is presented as Trinity – the Triune God – in Ephesians 1; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Don’t look for the word ‘trinity.’  It is not here nor is it anywhere in the New Testament.

            Rather, look to God.  See how God is revealed.  What the Father does, the Son does.  What the Son does, the Spirit does.  Each is a unique personality, but the unity is so perfect, the relationship of love within the Trinity so complete, we can accurately say God is three, God is one. 

            Verse 12 then says we live for the praise of God’s glory.  Our reason for existing is to worship God.  If we could draw all the world’s troubles into a worship service, the problems would dissolve as the holy glory of God forced all darkness to flee and all evil to evaporate to oblivion.  The day will come when exactly this will happen.  Until then we live to praise God amidst the chaos.  We declare in the face of defiant sin and death that the lasting story, the more real reality is eternal life with God.  And verse 13 says our guarantee of this is we are marked by the Holy Spirit.

            The Holy Spirit had to get in on this.  The Father is blessing, choosing, adopting and illuminating.  Jesus is lavishing grace.  The Spirit does things; we in Christ are marked with the Spirit’s seal.  This is the pledge of our inheritance.  We are God’s people (1:14).  We don’t worry about the future because are promised eternity.  We try to transform the world today by telling the story of the hope we have in Christ.  Even when we mess up – and Christians do mess up – we are marked by the Spirit. 

            The prayer in Ephesians is for God the Father to give us – we who have been marked by the Spirit, wisdom and revelation (1:17).  Already it has been stated that God has made known – past tense – the mystery of his will.  We are saved by faith in Christ.  With His Spirit dwelling in us and with the wisdom and revelation he gives, we then are God’s spokespersons. 

            In a country ravaged by racial strife, in a world damaged by the horrors of terrorism and war, and in a town in which so many are confused and hurt, by God’s grace we, God’s church, can and must point people to God.  We do this with words.  We do this with Vacation Bible silliness and warm coffee pot laughter.  We do this when we build ramps, hug those who weep, pray at the hospital bedside, open our doors with welcoming hearts, and draw all who enter into songs of praise.  By God-given wisdom, we share the revelation that hatred is not humanity’s only story.  There is another possibility – the gospel – and, it leads to eternal, joyful life. 

            Stepping out of the grammar boundaries we’ve set, I look at verse 19 which does not have a verb describing what God does.  Rather in the NRSV it speaks of “the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power for us who believe.”  In this verse, God’s power works even if it does not exactly say, “God is working it.” 

            When we love beyond our ability to love, when our compassion is so great it seems like Jesus put it in us, when we serve in pure agape love with unquestioned regard for the other, these are indications that is God at work.  The word for power, dunamis, points to the Holy Spirit.  Ephesians 1 does not explicitly say the power mentioned repeatedly beginning in verse 19 emanates from the Spirit.  However, when we think of God’s constant presence in all places, we think of the ubiquitous Holy Spirit. 

            The chapter ends with verbs describing God’s work in and for Christ (vss 20-22).  The Father raised the Son from the dead, seated him at the right hand of the Father in Heavenly places, and made him head over all things.  What does God do?  In the case of Christ, God resurrects, God elevates, and God exalts so that we see that Jesus is human and at the same time divine.  Jesus is literally king over all kings.  He lived in a particular place at an exact time in history and died.  And he rose from death to reign in sovereignty and love. 

            Finally, the chapter ends with that elusive verb ‘to be.’  It is a different kind verb in that it describes not what something does but what something is.  In this chapter full of verbs that show an active God whose involvement in our lives is immediate and unavoidable, this final verse tells us about ourselves.  The church is the body of Christ.  Christ is God and we are the location of the presence of God in the world.

            In a world of shootings that shake up a community, we are here to say, “God is here and healing is possible.”  In a world where terrorists kill in genocidal proportions, we are here to say, “Death is not the only story; life is possible and we love our brothers and sisters who suffer.  We pray for them and with them and open our doors and hearts to them.”  In a community where many are in individual crises we stretch out our arms, God’s arms, and say, “Come in.  Don’t go through your trials alone.  We’ll walk with you.”

            How are we able to do this?  Ephesians says we are the body of Christ, but as we look around the room at each other we can plainly see we are a bunch people with weaknesses and limitations. We also have gifting and strength but are our attributes enough to heal Chapel Hill let alone the world?  No, of course we are not enough.  So how is it we can so calmly, confidently say, God is here?

            There’s one more verb and I almost forgot it. 

            The end of verse 23 says God fills all in all.  Now is this God the Father, God the Son, or God the Spirit?  In the English, it’s not clear.  It could be Father or Son.  But when we think of filling, we think of the Spirit.  I don’t know that the question can be answered.  I doubt that precise distinctions can be made in identifying the actions of the individual members of the Trinity.  I don’t think we need to pinpoint whether it was Father, Son or Spirit every time.

            We need to see God.  We need to feel the vibrations of the drumbeat of God actively working  in the world.  We are splashed with warm grace as God acts.  We know He is here and He loves us and will be involved in our lives.  This is true for all who come to Him in confession and in faith.

Blessed involvement to bring out hope and life: that is what God does.

AMEN