Contemplating the Cross :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 18, 2016
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  • Park Forum
Rejection of God is not limited to irreligion; it is possible to refuse the grace of Christ through religion. Because the heart of Christianity isn’t morality, the nature of temptation isn’t a draw toward immorality.

The irreligious version of this is obvious: the systematic or categorical rejection of God. Life apart from God through religion is more difficult to see. The religious atheist is observant—even outwardly impressive in his adherence. The religious atheist sees his efforts of living like Jesus as sufficient and acceptable to God.

The cross is perplexing to someone earning their acceptance through works. It seems cruel and vulgar—pointless in affecting daily life and practice. To the faithful—who place their trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ—the cross, while no less cruel, is also beautiful because on it we see the depth of God’s love.

In the late 19th century Edward Monro composed a five-part hymn, The Story of the Cross. In the fifth to eighth stanzas Monro writes:
Follow to Calvary;
Tread where He trod,
He Who forever was
Son of God.

You who would love Him stand
Gaze at His face:
Tarry awhile on your
Earthly race.

As the swift moments fly
Through the blest week,
Read the great story the
Cross will teach.

Is there no beauty to
You who pass by,
In that lone figure which
Marks that sky?
Monro wrestles with the weight of the cross, “For us Thy blood is shed, us alone.” Yet he is overwhelmed by the grace of God in this sacrifice. The cross is transformative in daily life because on it we see that God’s acceptance is not based on our work, but on his own—that God’s grace has no limits—that God’s love is sufficient where every earthly affection has failed.

In the final three stanzas Monro reflects on the daily impact of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf:
Yea, let Thy cross be borne
Each day be me;
Mind not how heavy, if
But with Thee.

Lord, if Thou only wilt,
Make us Thine own,
Give no companion, save
Thee alone.

Grant through each day of life
To stand by Thee;
With Thee, when morning breaks
Ever to be.

Today’s Reading
Job 18 (Listen – 1:54)
1 Corinthians 5 (Listen – 1:58)

Wandering Anger :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 17, 2016
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  • Park Forum
“Christians build up little gods, little temples of Baal. We begin to worship them. And we must tear them down, destroy them,” author Madeleine L’Engle told Christianity Today. The interview was conducted late in L’Engle’s career (she passed away in 2007), during a time when her writings were highly controversial.

Readers outside the church complained that she talked about Christ and faith far too often. Her most vocal opponents, however, were inside the Christian community. Part of the frustration, according to one book review, was that she eschewed evangelical language.

One of L’Engle’s poems, Love Letter, begins with the arresting words:
I hate you, God.
Love, Madeleine.

I write my message on water
and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs
and let it flow under your door.
Her honesty—“When I am angry with you, I know that you are there”—seems to channel David’s in the Imprecatory Psalms. Most beautifully, L”Engle’s thorough examination reaches into the depths of her own heart; “I cannot turn the other cheek. It takes all the strength I have.” In her interview with Christianity Today, L’Engle continues:

The gods we erect are easier to worship than the Creator of the universe. They’re more comprehensible. We don’t like having to depend on that which we cannot control, manipulate, dominate.

Freedom comes on the other side of work. If I want to play a Bach fugue, I must practice scales. If I hope for any transcendent experience in prayer, I have to have just done my ordinary, everyday prayers, which is the same thing as practicing my scales. I have to write every day.

Freedom and discipline, rather than being antithetical, are complementary. Permissiveness, either from others toward you or toward yourself, ends up being restricting and crippling. If you choose to be a writer and a mother, you have to be incredibly disciplined. Otherwise you won’t manage. Discipline does not imprison you.
Idols are destroyed through spiritual discipline, hearts transformed through prayer. None more-so than L’Engle’s in Love Letter. After pouring out her frustration, lament, and confession L’Engle, with her final words, cries out:
Let me hear you roar.
Love,
Madeleine

Today’s Reading
Job 16-17 (Listen – 3:40)
1 Corinthians 4 (Listen – 3:15)

How to Live as a Christian :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 16, 2016
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  • Park Forum

Fasting is as much about dedicating time and energy to activities that refresh the soul as it is about divesting from the facades we have come to rely on in place of the gospel. Discovering how to engage our faith in daily life is best done, as Miroslav Volf writes, when faith is “nourished more on its own intrinsic vision than on the deprecatory stories about others.” Volf, who we read yesterday, continues:

Notice the significance of the new birth for Christian social identity. Christians do not come into their social world from outside seeking either to accommodate to their new home (like second generation immigrants would), shape it in the image of the one they have left behind (like colonizers would), or establish a little haven in the strange new world reminiscent of the old (as resident aliens would). They are not outsiders who either seek to become insiders or maintain strenuously the status of outsiders.

Christians are the insiders who have diverted from their culture by being born again. They are by definition those who are not what they used to be, those who do not live like they used to live. Christian difference is therefore not an insertion of something new into the old from outside, but a bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old.

The question of how to live in a non-Christian environment, then, does not translate simply into the question of whether one adopts or rejects the social practices of the environment. This is the question outsiders ask, who have the luxury of observing a culture from a vantage point that is external to that culture. Christians do not have such a vantage point since they have experienced a new birth as inhabitants of a particular culture. Hence they are in an important sense insiders. As those who are a part of the environment from which they have diverted by having been born again and whose difference is therefore internal to that environment.

Christians ask, “Which beliefs and practices of the culture that is ours must we reject now that our self has been reconstituted by new birth? Which can we retain? What must we reshape to reflect better the values of God’s new creation?”

Today’s Reading
Job 15 (Listen – 3:23)
1 Corinthians 3 (Listen – 3:05)

Soft Difference :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 15, 2016
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  • Park Forum
The Lenten season’s focus on inward sin is meant to be catalytic—a renewal of self, through Christ, for the benefit of the world. Through holiness, the faithful are rooted, nourished, and able to bear fruit. Sin saps the branches—a gospel-centered understanding of sin promotes human flourishing. Forming a distinctly Christian understanding of sin is essential.

Religious identities rooted in their rejection of a particular social environment are inherently violent. Miroslav Volf notes that it is only when faith is “nourished more on its own intrinsic vision than on the deprecatory stories about others” that it is able to live in and not of the world. Volf, a theologian at Yale, continues:
It is Christian identity that creates difference from the social environment, not the other way around. When identity is forged primarily through the negative process of the rejection of the beliefs and practices of others, violence seems unavoidable, especially in situations of conflict.

We should keep in mind, however, that the call to follow the crucified Messiah was, in the long run, much more effective in changing the unjust political, economic, and familial structures than direct exhortations to revolutionize them would ever have been.
The New Testament’s call to meekness, something which Volf calls “soft difference”—becomes the key to winsome and transformative faith.
People who are secure in themselves—more accurately, who are secure in their God—are able to live the soft difference without fear. They have no need either to subordinate or damn others, but can allow others space to be themselves. For people who live the soft difference, mission fundamentally takes the form of witness and invitation. They seek to win others without pressure or manipulation, sometimes even “without a word.”

Soft difference is not simply a missionary method. Rather, the soft difference is the missionary side of following in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. To be a Christian means to live one’s own identity in the face of others in such a way that one joins inseparably the belief in the truth of one’s own convictions with a respect for the convictions of others. To give up the softness of our difference would be to sacrifice our identity as followers of Jesus Christ.
Today’s Reading
Job 14 (Listen – 2:23)
1 Corinthians 2 (Listen – 2:26)

Tempting God :: A Lenten Reflection

  • February 12, 2016
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  • Park Forum

If morality was all that Christ desired for the lives of his followers, the cross would be superfluous. Christ’s response, when tempted in the wilderness, wasn’t “that would be immoral,” but, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Theologian J.P. Lange explains; “To tempt God is to involve oneself in four contradictions: (1) faith without obedience, (2) prayer without self-surrender, (3) action without warrant from on high, and (4) success without comfort or assurance.”

To tempt God is to give the appearance of spiritual vitality, as Lange points out, but still live unfaithfully. Jesus’ success in temptation shows how broken we are. The Christian experience isn’t just about doing the right things—if we cultivate righteousness under our own power, we still miss relationship with God.

“If the truth of being justified by Christ alone—not by our works—is lost, then all Christian truths are lost,” Martin Luther cautioned. The great reformer believed one of the keys to faithfulness was renewing the gospel—the good news of Christ’s work—in our hearts daily. Luther continues:

Now both these things continue while we live here. We are accused, exercised with temptations, oppressed with heaviness and sorrow, and bruised by the law with its demands of active righteousness. These attacks fall upon our flesh—the part of our heart that still seeks to earn our salvation.

There is no middle ground between Christian righteousness and works-righteousness. There is no other alternative to Christian righteousness but works-righteousness; if you do not build your confidence on the work of Christ you must build your confidence on your own work. On this truth and only on this truth the church is built and has its being.

This distinction is easy to utter in words, but in use and experience it is very hard. For in times of struggle, the devil will seek to terrify us by using against us our past record, the wrath, and law of God. So learn to speak to one’s heart and to the Law. When the law creeps into your conscience, learn to be a cunning logician—learn to use arguments of the gospel against it.
Today’s Reading
Job 11 (Listen – 2:01)
Romans 15 (Listen – 4:32)This Weekend’s Readings
Job 12 (Listen – 2:21)  Romans 16 (Listen – 3:30)
Job 13 (Listen – 2:27)  1 Corinthians 1 (Listen – 4:03)