Christ’s Humiliation :: A Lenten Reflection

  • March 2, 2016
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  • Park Forum

“Christ was subject to great humiliation in his private life at Nazareth,” writes Jonathan Edwards. While many of us can appreciate a great high priest who can “sympathize with our weaknesses,” the grittiness of this reality can escape us.

Edwards, the great theologian, writes of the daily toil of Christ’s vocation in Nazareth:

He there led a servile, obscure life, in a mean, laborious occupation; for he is called not only the carpenter’s son, but the carpenter. By hard labor he earned his bread before he ate it, and so suffered that curse which God pronounced on Adam; “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”

Let us consider how great a degree of humiliation the glorious Son of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, was subject to in this—that for about thirty years he should live a private obscure life among laboring men, and all this while be overlooked, not taken notice of in the world, more than other common laborers.

Christ’s humiliation in some respects was greater in private life than in the time of his public ministry. The first thirty years of his life he spent among ordinary men, as it were in silence. There was not any thing to make him to be taken notice of more than any ordinary mechanic.

In fasting we forego a luxury in order to better understand our desires and better experience the only one who can truly satisfy. The sacrifice of fasting is our way of entering into the footsteps of Christ who, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” Edwards reflects on the fulfillment of Christ’s love, even as he was subjected to the pangs of earthly brokenness:

He suffered great poverty, so that he had no where to lay his head. So that what was spoken of Christ, “My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night,” was literally fulfilled. And through his poverty he was doubtless when tried with hunger, thirst, and cold.

Christ had no land of his own, though he was possessor of heaven and earth; and therefore was buried by Joseph of Arimathea’s charity, and in his tomb, which Joseph had prepared for himself.

Christ being thus brought under the power of death, continued under it till the morning of next day but one. Then was finished that great work, the purchase of our redemption, for which such great preparation had been made from the beginning of the world.

 

Today's Reading
Job 32 (Listen – 2:12)  
2 Corinthians 2 (Listen – 2:13)

Shattering Selfishness :: A Lenten Reflection

  • March 1, 2016
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  • Park Forum
At some point we become seduced into believing our life, dreams, and work are the most significant and complex things going in the world. Though we would never admit such things, it’s only a matter of time before this belief yields a near-overwhelming concern that God cannot handle things so complicated without our guidance.

Soon our prayers are dominated by a grasping for control and longing for success. With each circumstance beyond our control we resolve ourselves to refocus—not realizing this only deepens our commitment to ourselves. Kierkegaard warns:
It is the Spirit who gives life. The life-giving Spirit is not a direct heightening of our natural powers—what blas­phemy! How horrible to understand the Spirit in this way!

Christianity teaches that you must die. Your power must be dismantled. The life-giving Spirit—that is the invitation. Who would not willingly take hold of it? But die first—there’s the rub!
Each of us can go along, dedicating our lives to pursuing our dreams or fleeing our failures—both will catch up and crush us. The invitation of Christ is to abandon ourselves—to dispense with our successes and aspirations as well as our failures and shortcomings—for the transcendent love and grace of God. Kierkegaard concludes:
You must first die to every earthly hope, to every merely hu­man confidence. You must die to your selfishness, and to the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you.

What, exactly, does it mean to die to yourself? It is more than not seeing your wish fulfilled or to be deprived of the one that is dearest to you. True, this is painful enough, and selfishness is wounded. But it does not follow that you are dying. No, but personally to shatter your own fulfilled desire, personally to de­prive yourself of the dearly desired one who is now your own: this is what it means to wound selfishness at the root.

Christianity is not what we are all too eager to make it. Christianity waits before it applies its remedy. This is Christianity’s severity. It demands a great sacrifice, one which we often despair of making and can only later see why it was necessary to hold out and wait.

Today’s Reading
Job 31 (Listen – 4:16)
2 Corinthians 1 (Listen – 3:52)

Take and Eat :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 29, 2016
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  • Park Forum

The image of Scripture as food is never more vivid than in the season Lent. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” said Jesus. The offer had been extended to Christ: quench your material longings by your own ability. Jesus’ reply?In the end, that wouldn’t satisfy my deepest longings.

But how are we satisfied by the word of God? The basic metaphor of Scripture as nourishment demonstrates Christ’s expectation that we would not simply intake his word, but digest it. It is through daily meditation that we carry the word of God with us—breaking down the whole into discrete parts which can be processed into our thinking and habits.

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote that this action—carrying and integrating the word of God—is what separates real faith from false religion:

Genuine faith is never satisfied with the religious way of doing things – Sabbath worship or an hour or a half-hour of each day. Christianity is nothing else but faith right in the middle of actual life and weekdays. But we have reduced it to quiet hours, thereby indirectly admitting that we are not really being Christians. That we should have quiet times to think about God – this seems so elevated and beautiful, so solemn. It is so hypocritical, because in this way we exempt daily life from the authentic worship of God.

Yet this process activates our heart’s defense mechanisms. Kierkegaard confronts our refined ways of avoiding this tension:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to under­stand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accord­ingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget every­thing except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

Nourishment is incomplete until food is converted to energy—faith to action. Truly our lives are transformed through the food of God’s word; our potential for flourishing is unlocked through its nourishment. It is our desire to maintain control over our lives, Kierkegaard warns, that keeps us from living by every word from the mouth of God; “Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

Today’s Reading
Job 30 (Listen – 3:14)
1 Corinthians 16 (Listen – 2:54)

Be Ye Perfect :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 26, 2016
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  • Park Forum
“Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas,” warns C.S. Lewis. “Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.” Lewis, after examining how we cling to earthly pursuits, goes on to show how letting them go radically reorients the life of a Christian:
You must realize from the outset that the goal towards which he is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal.

Many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted him to do, and we should be obliged if he would now leave us alone. As we say, “I never expected to be a saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.” And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble.
The discipleship process, then, is not defined by the Christian, but by the Scriptures, Church, and Paraclete. “The question,” Lewis says, “is not what we intend ourselves to be, but what he intended us to be when he made us.”

Likewise, if the Lenten season is reduced to what we want to gain or lose through fasting we miss the point entirely. Fasting is the process of winnowing the clutches of our flesh so that the glory of God might be fully realized in our appetites, attitudes, and actions. Lewis, imagining the words of Christ, writes:
That is why he warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians. “Make no mistake,” he says, “If you let me, I will make you perfect. You have free will and, if you chose, you can push me away. But if you do not push me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect—until my father can say without reservation that he is well pleased with you, as he said he was well pleased with me.”

Today’s Reading
Job 27 (Listen – 2:21)
1 Corinthians 13 (Listen – 2:23)

This Weekend’s Readings
Job 28 (Listen – 2:44) 1 Corinthians 14 (Listen – 5:40)
Job 29 (Listen – 2:26) 1 Corinthians 15 (Listen – 8:06)

Clutching Earthly Pursuits :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 25, 2016
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  • Park Forum
There is no season of self-discipline in the church calendar. No period in which Christians are instructed to bear down and try to live better lives. And yet, tellingly, our hearts bend this way—to grasp for holiness with our own power.

C.S. Lewis remarks, “We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.” This conflict—clutching earthly pursuits while attempting to spiritually self-regulate and manage sin—is exactly what makes us miserable. “This is what Christ warned us you could not do,” Lewis explains:
Something else—call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behavior’, or ‘the good of society’—has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call ‘right’: well, we shall have to do them. But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes.
As the season of Lent makes us conscious of this sinfulness, so the Church calendar as a whole reorients our attention to Christ’s presence. We are not left on our own. Christ redeems us from the wilderness of pride and brokenness. Lewis concludes:
If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short, but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

Christ says, “Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”

Today’s Reading
Job 25-26 (Listen – 1:52)
1 Corinthians 12 (Listen – 4:25)