The Gospel of the Resurrection

Christ has risen!

Christians around the world celebrate—rejoice in—this central fact in this season, and every Sunday. And I say “central” advisedly: Christ—”crucified, killed, and buried” yet risen—is the cornerstone on which our faith (and, in the end, every person, institution, and idea) stands or falls. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless,” Paul says to the church at Corinth and to us, “and so is your faith.”

But since Christ has indeed been raised, to announce this glorious fact, as the Church has done from a mere seven weeks after the event to this very day, is to proclaim Good News—which we still call by the older name, “gospel”. First, and most importantly, the Resurrection was tangible evidence that “all God’s promises find their ‘Yes!’ in Christ”—because Jesus had risen “just as he said,” as they had seen and touched, the apostles could be certain that every other promise would also be fulfilled. Second, it is a demonstration of victory: sin and death have been defeated, and the world is being restored to its proper ownership. “Death has started working backward”—or, at least, has started coming undone. And third, the Resurrection (the event whose anniversary we are marking) is only the beginning; the same power that raised the Christ from the dead is now at work in the elect—us— and through us in the world. “We have passed from death to life,” because we are in Christ.

Christ has passed from death to life, and so too shall all those whom he shall call. Christ’s resurrection brings light into the darkness for all those whom he has made alive. Christ’s blood has made death pass over us, and his rising has brought us out of our bondage in the kingdom of darkness and into true freedom.

The message that John the Baptist preached, and that Jesus himself preached from his baptism until his death, was that “the kingdom of God is near.” That alone is good news, but the message of the gospel—the message of the resurrection of the Christ—the message of Easter—is even stronger: that the kingdom of God is here, and has won. And is within us.

Ashes

Ashes.

For dust I am, and to dust I shall return.

For of myself I am dead, and without any hope; indeed, my only hope lies in the death of what semblance of life I have, by participation in the death of the Christ.

And I am not my own; I belong to Jesus Christ, for I have been bought at a price.

Because of this, I ought not to live lightly, or flippantly, according to the pattern of this rebellious world and the sin to which I once was bound, but rather to pattern my life after its Maker and rightful Master.

And so it is fitting to, in the forty days each year before the anniversary of the Resurrection, reflect and meditate on these truths and on the sufferings of the Christ by which our—my—redemption was accomplished, setting aside lesser things in favor of the eternal and important.

Against Inanities

Our time on earth is limited; our time shared in corporate worship even more so. Why, then, do we spend this valuable time on inanities? What each does in his or her “own” time is of course between him or her and God, but the seriousness of corporate worship is a matter for the concern of every member of the Body. Today I’ve identified a few areas where far too many churches accept—and even promote or insist on!—mere inanity when profound, meaningful forms of worship are readily available.

De Operatio Sacramentorum: A discussion

A few years back I mused on the question of “What is a sacrament?” In that essay I tried to get at what makes these two rituals that we Protestants accept “special”, and not the other five that the Roman Catholic Church identifies as such, or the innumerable other “mysteries”—but I don’t think I came to a firm conclusion.

Today, I’d like to continue that discussion by looking at what’s going on in the sacraments—because the Church has always held (and with good reason) that a baptism is not just some words being said and someone getting wet, and that in the Eucharist the consumption of the bread and wine is not all that happens. What’s really going on?

As I noted in my earlier essay, a somewhat standard description of a sacrament (perhaps coming from Augustine) is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.” Just as a rainbow, even an artificial one, is a sign of God’s promise to never again destroy the world by water, not just a pretty sight or (even more prosaically) merely light refracted through water, so each sacrament is a sign of something that God is doing, has done, or promises to do.

But that’s not all. The Church also understands the sacraments to be “means of grace”, tools that God uses to convey his grace to us. (This is part of why excommunication is the most severe penalty it can impose.) There’s a great deal of argument within the Church about how this works, but I’ll explain my understanding in a moment.

It’s important to note that the sacraments are, well, “sacramental”—valid—even if the leader doesn’t intend them to be. Even if he isn’t a Christian at all. What makes them “work” isn’t the faith of the minister or liturgist, or the words used in the ritual, or even (though of all the elements I’ve mentioned so far this one is the most relevant) the faith of the catechumen or celebrant. Instead, it’s God who provides the substance that the rituals are intended to evoke (and invoke).

Now, let’s look at them individually. First is baptism. I understand baptism to be a sign of entrance into Christ’s Church and of membership in his new covenant, as circumcision was to the old covenant. By it the catachumen is symbolically shown to have died and been raised with Christ. In times past, new believers were trained in the faith (using what became the catechism) for up to a year before being baptized on Pentecost (which is also called Whitsunday because of the white robes they wore) and only then could fully participate in the life and rituals of the church. So baptism is intended to be the outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence in the believer—the seal of salvation—and a statement to the Church that the new believer has indeed become a member of the Body.

In churches that deny the sacraments to children, it’s common to call adult baptism “believer’s baptism” (though I’m not sure of where the apostrophe ought to be placed there). (I wrote a little bit about this earlier.) This shows a great deal of confusion, because the churches that baptise infants assert that the children of believers, brought up “in the fear of the Lord”, are regenerate—i.e. believers—from infancy. What saves us is not “our decision to accept Christ”, but God’s grace. Even the faith by which we are saved is a gift from God.. It’s telling that in churches that only baptize after profession of faith, children often enough make profession of faith and are baptized as soon as they are permitted. And there is far too long a list of former nominal Christians who professed faith and were baptized as adults but then fell away, so a profession of faith is no guarantee that the candidate is truly, not merely nominally, a believer.

Second is the Eucharist (or “communion” or “the Lord’s Supper”). It is (we know from Paul’s instructions on the matter) a proclamation of the Lord’s death. And we repeat the ritual regularly because it is commanded. But that’s not all that’s going on in it. First, I am convinced that for those who believe, by the ministry of the Spirit on us and on them, the elements are (to us, at the very least) the body and blood of the Lord, as all but the most deliberately liturgically ignorant churches claim each time the sacrament is celebrated. (“King of Kings, yet born of Mary, once upon the earth he stood; Lord of Lords we now perceive him in the body and the blood …”) Second, by tasting them, we become “partakers in the divine nature.” This is why it’s called “communion.” And this is part of why we are warned against eating “without recognizing the body of Christ” (in the elements? or in the church?) or “in an unworthy manner”—communion with God is always dangerous for us (“‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”), and it is only by the grace of God that the “mystery” is life, not death, to his elect. But it is; this sacrament is spiritual nourishment to the believer.

What exactly takes place in the Lord’s Supper is a matter of great debate. I find Luther’s stand in the Marburg Colloquy somewhat compelling (“‘Hoc est meum corpus! Hoc est meum corpus!’” Churches that say “Christ said it, I believe it, and that settles it” about all sorts of other doctrines, even when it’s not remotely that clear, shy away from the idea that he might have meant what he said in the Institution …), though I certainly wouldn’t, as he did, deny that anyone who disagrees could be a Christian. On the other hand, Calvin’s position, that Christ is “sacramentally and spiritually” present, and when we partake of the sacrament the Holy Spirit raises us up to heaven—by partaking we are united with Christ, who is even now seated at God’s right hand—is quite persuasive, and the more I read his arguments the more I find to agree with. But on the gripping hand, I am even now only beginning to understand the various issues and positions on them, let alone what is really going on …

Christmas and Celebration

I wish you all a happy Christmas, and a merry and most blessed Christmastide. (This greeting is still somewhat premature, but my quarrel is more with the celebration of “the Christmas season” ending a day or so after it properly ought to begin than with celebrations beginning prematurely.)

Christmas, like every season of the Christian year, is a particular celebration and emphasis of one particular part of the Christian faith, gospel, and life: in this case rejoicing and the Incarnation. We celebrate that God has given us, who were his enemies, his Son, and through the Son have given us life.

How should Christmas, then, be celebrated? Following the command to “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children …” (though that’s pulling that verse entirely out of context), I think the giving of gifts is entirely proper, provided the motivation is right (love, not duty, envy, or pride) and (though, if the motivation is right, this should go without saying) the gifts are chosen based on what the giver and (more importantly) the recipient value rather than market values or cultural hype.

On the other hand, while there are any number of ways that the holiday and the season ought not to be celebrated (though reviving the old Saturnalia traditions en masse is the only one that leaps to mind), I very strongly doubt that there are any that ought to be obligatory. This is an area properly left to the believer’s (or the church’s) responsible freedom. (An important doctrinal term which unfortunately has become a buzzword and thence a joke in some circles.) There’s a very wise dictum (which I got, I suspect, from reading Charles Williams, but which may have originated with the Church of England or somewhere before them) that sums it up nicely: “All may, some should, none must.” Various symbols—trees, St. Nicholas, candy-canes, holly and ivy, even the giving of gifts—are helpful to some Christians, but are objectionable to others. (The complaints about these being derived from older pagan holidays are not without merit; I seem to recall that at one point accommodating new converts by co-opting some pagan symbols was the official policy of the Church. If I remember I’ll write more about this debate later.) And so we should let our conscience, the teachings and traditions of the Church, and (most importantly) the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit guide us.

Merry Christmas!

Gaudete!

Last Sunday was “Gaudete Sunday”, so called because the specified Introit for the day was “Gaudete in Domino semper …” (“Rejoice in the Lord always …”) This is a helpful reminder that this season of Advent calls for joyful anticipation of our Lord’s coming as well as penitent preparation.

Even if we are not ready (and, in and of ourselves, we cannot become ready) for his coming), because of what we have already been given and the assurance faith gives us that he is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”, we ought to be eagerly and joyfully anticipating his coming, and in fact rejoicing at the news that he is coming or has come. Only the most worthless servants of a kind master, as the “Parable of the Talents” illustrates, would not rejoice at their master’s return. And as believers, we are not only servants, but children, how much more should we rejoice!

The message of Advent is the same as the message proclaimed by John the Baptist, and by Jesus himself at the beginning of his ministry: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” But, because we have been promised (regardless of our unreadiness) a share in that kingdom and (more importantly) a share in Christ’s righteousness, its message to us who have believed its message is also, “Rejoice, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” And, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice!”

Gaudete!

Advent: A Season for Penitence

Last week I wrote about what should be our first concern for Advent, understanding how desperate our situation is without Christ. That understanding is crucial for truly meaningful joy and celebration at Christmas—but the Christmas season has not yet arrived, and the more we think about it the more we should become aware of how small we are compared to God, and how pitifully we fall short when measured against his righteous standard for us. In short, as the season celebrating God’s “advent” (his “coming”) waxes on, and the season celebrating his incarnation approaches, we should become increasingly mindful of how unfit we are for his visit, just as (or, rather, just-as-only-more-so-than) we would for the (announced or unannounced) visit of some Very Important Person to our cluttered, neglected hovel.

Now, as I tried to point out last week, in and of our own power we are utterly incapable of improving this situation, so our preparations are at best along the same lines as (as Lewis put it) asking our father to lend us sixpence to buy him a Christmas present. But that does not excuse us from making the attempt, and the same word from which we learn of our dismal situation also assures us that the power which raised Christ from the dead is at work within us, to accomplish what we cannot, so that when we stand before his judgment we shall be ready.

However, as we are not ready yet, the proper attitude—emphasized in this season of preparation as rejoicing is emphasized in Christmastide—is one of penitence and humility. Until God has exalted us, we ought to consider ourselves to be as nothing—for, except for the position and share he has given us in Christ, we are—and seek to turn ever further away from our unrighteous (and imperfectly-righteous) ways and ever further and more perfectly toward the way of which Christ was the pioneer.

In short, perhaps, Advent is a reminder to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling,” for

Behold, the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple—even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in. And who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire …

Advent: Understanding the Need for a Savior

In my Thanksgiving meditation last week, I quoted the Heidelberg Catechism’s answer to its first question, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” Today, nearly a week into Advent, it’s particularly fitting to consider the point to which the Catechism immediately turns: our desperate situation without Christ.

Advent is the season of preparation—for Christmas (which is the celebration of Christ’s first coming), for his coming in glory on the last day, or for God’s coming in power or in judgment, but primarily for Christmas. And an essential part of being prepared for any holiday is understanding what it means and why what it represents is or was necessary. For example (aside from every religious or secular holiday that is still celebrated as more than an excuse for days off, retail sales, or obligating people to buy stuff …), when God commanded the celebration of the Passover, his directions explicitly included the edification of his people’s children, so that it would not become empty ritual, with the personal phrasing “… what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt,” a way of putting it that continues (in different contexts) even when the immediate audience primarily consisted of those who had been at most young children at the time of the Exodus.

Christmas is not primarily about the details of and circumstances surrounding the Savior’s birth. Not that thee are unimportant—but they are of secondary importance. As I wrote last year, the fact of the Incarnation—that God became man—is what we ought to be celebrating as of first importance, just as at Easter it is the fact of his resurrection, rather than any of the stories of how it was discovered or announced, that is the cause of yearly jubilation world-wide. And, just as at Easter, we must bear in mind the reasons. In the case of Easter and its preparation-season Lent, this is the knowledge that had Christ not died, we would have to pay for our own sins, and had he not arisen we would likewise still be dead in our sins. Similarly, in this season and for Christmas, to have the comfort that God by his gospel provides to his elect, we must understand “how great our sins and misery are.”

Why should we be surprised that Christmas has become a “shopping holiday” and no more for our no-longer-Christian culture? The true joy of Christmas depends on a right understanding of the gravity of our sins and shameful, hopeless condition, but our culture (as well as, to our shame, many who call themselves Christians) has lost even the comprehension of the term, let alone any acknowledgment of God’s rightful authority or shame at our failure to keep his just law.

But, as I said, the true joy of Christmas depends on knowing “how great our sins and misery are” (as the Catechism puts it)—which, in this season, ought to lead us to penitence, repentance, and holy living, just as an awareness of God’s possibly-imminent coming (whether in glory at the end, or in judgment or in power) should also do. So why does so much of the church ignore everything but (premature) celebration for this entire season?

“But thanks be to God”: A third reflection

Today is the day designated for public thanksgiving to our Creator for the gracious gifts his divine Providence has lavished on us. Two years ago I wrote at length about many ways he has blessed me over the span of my life so far, and in particular the many people he has brought into my life in important ways for whom (and for which) I am thankful, and last year I continued more briefly, adding blessings which had occurred since the first essay, and those that I had forgotten the first time but remembered in the succeeding year.

As everything I wrote in the lengthy first essay is still true, and would be worth repeating, I urge you to go back and (re)read it. But I won’t repeat those ideas here, since I again have less time to prepare this than I would like.

I begin again with the most important reason to give thanks. I am grateful for the good news of the Gospel, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” That our rightful Lord and Master, against whom we had been in rebellion, came down from heaven to “reconcile us to him by the blood of his cross,” and bound us to him and himself to us by a gracious covenant, sealing it and us with his eternal Spirit.

[It is my only comfort in life and death] that I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and set me free from the power of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my heavenly Father. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

I am thankful that this faith has been passed down by, and with the additional witness of, innumerable saints, whose words (such as these from the Heidelberg Catechism) readily allow us to praise him, contend for the faith, and otherwise speak truly and precisely when our own words fail.

I am grateful for another year of life and health, for the small income God has provided me, and for continued ellowship in person with my family and church here, and with my friends virtually.

I am very grateful for the chance to meet with many very dear friends at our reunion early this summer, and for the hospitality of our hosts, who provided a bed and a roof for me on very short notice. I am also thankful for the chance I and my dad got to go to Evart again, for the first time in a few years, and to see dear friends (and dear acquaintances whom I would like to know better, some of whose names I could not remember even ten minutes) again.

I am thankful for the glory that God again opened my eyes to see in his creation and in the faces of the people I encounter. I’m grateful for the chance to go to several dances this year.

I am again thankful that God has given me words this year, in large quantities with effort in the background work I’m doing for the Shine Cycle, and (with scarcely more than delight) more poetry than I’d hoped for. (As I’ve said before, I consider how often I have poetry come to me, and with how much effort it comes, to be a symptom of my spiritual and emotional health.) I am thankful for the critique and general feedback I have finally begun to receive.

I am thankful for continued correspondence with dear friends. (Though I have months-old emails that I keep meaning to reply to Really Soon Now …) As I mentioned already, I’m grateful for fellowship with absent friends; this correspondence has been a large portion of that, and so a generous contributor to my continued (more or less) happiness.

I am grateful for the communities of Christian fantasy writers and enthusiasts into which I have been drawn, through which my fiction has already begun to improve, in which I have found kindred spirits and excellent writers whose work I have greatly enjoyed reading, by which my faith has been strengthened and my mind sharpened, and from which (I suspect) have come most of my more recent, more talkative (and helpful) readers.

I am thankful for music, and the modern technology that lets us with little talent receive music of exceptional quality (and infinite variety, following our whim) at the touch of a button for no more (incremental) cost than perhaps a slight increase in our electric bill.

I am grateful … but may I be mindful, and as grateful, always, not just on this day a competing ruler designates for the purpose.

“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who gives us bread from the earth, and who gives us the fruit of the vine. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us in life, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.”

And, readers: What are you thankful for?

The Purpose(s) of Prophecy

What is the purpose of prophecy in Scripture? Or, rather, what are the purposes—because each prophecy (and each passage not originally intended by its human author to be prophetic, but now interpreted prophetically) has at least two: its purpose for being written, and its purpose for remaining in our Scriptures.

This is an important point to make. Very few Scriptural prophecies were given so that the remote descendants would know that the events of their later day had been foretold; in fact, every example of that kind that I know of says so more or less explicitly (by saying something like “Seal up the words of this prophecy until such-and-such”). Instead, most were given so that the people might be encouraged by impending deliverance (or chastened by impending judgment), either immediate or very soon. And those prophecies often used language of cosmic collapse—stars falling from heaven, the sun going out, and so forth—which we comparatively illiterate modern Christians are surprised to find in the Revelation to the Apostle John—but no reasonable interpreter disputes that such Old Testament prophecies of imminent deliverance and judgment were fulfilled. Those typical prophecies of doom—for God’s people or their oppressors—then shifted into prophecies of far-off final deliverance, restoration, and renewal—again, exactly what we find in the Revelation that closes the Canon.

But, if those prophecies (except for their eschatalogical bits) were fulfilled, why are they preserved in our Scriptures, when often the record of their fulfillment is not? Mainly, I think, they may be preserved for us so that we see that God has always kept his promises, so that our faith may be strong. (It would be unreasonable for God to ask us to trust him “on faith” if we had no evidence of his trustworthiness.) Secondly, they show us that these events of history—which some always want to portray as arbitrary, meaningless, and random—were really the acts of God, who prepared them in advance and told his people what was to come, and so these prophecies continue to glorify God. Additionally, some of the prophecies were preserved because they had (usually, as I said above, additional) fulfillments that were yet to come in the person of the Incarnate Word, “in whom all God’s promises are always ‘Yes!’”

But even with those, we need to be very careful not to assume that because they are preserved (and the Gospels and Epistles don’t explicitly say “this was to fulfil what was written by so-and-so the prophet”) that their fulfillment is still to come. The promises—and consistently, those passages of the writings of the prophets are more promises than prophecies—of consummation, yes. But why should God change his consistent practice of speaking imminently-relevant words through his prophets (or saying “seal this up until …” when the prophecies were for later generations but not that generation) when the Canon was closed?

And, even more importantly, we need to make sure that we don’t assume that any given promise or prophecy in the Bible is speaking to or about us. The reason, I think, that these are preserved in Scripture is for us to learn about God. (Not about our circumstances or (especially) ourselves.) We can—and should—learn what he is like and how he deals with his people. But just as it’s folly to interpret the prophetic proclamations of doom upon Nebuchenezzer’s Babylon apply to present-day Iraq, we ought not to assume that any other prophecy applies to our present day or (especially) our immediate future. God has spoken obscurely to his servants at times in the past, but he is not treating us as servants, but as children, and so speaks to us (when he does) plainly. If we have to resort to trying to match up headlines with lines of prophecy, we are clearly on the wrong trail.

So, to bring my tangents back to my original question: What is the purpose of prophecy? The same as that of all Scripture: to glorify God, and (at least one of) “teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.”