Leithart Links

Peter Leithart's writing is always stimulating - here are some recent posts that seemed especially so to me.

Unbearable Burden of Evangelicalism

You Shall Know Them By Their Fear

Fear and Fear

Christian Idolatry

A huge religious marketplace has been set up in North America to meet the needs and fantasies of people just like us. There are conferences and gatherings custom-designed to give us the lift we need. There are books, videos, and seminars that promise to let us in on the Christian "secret" of whatever it is we feel is lacking in our life-financial security, well-behaved children, weight loss, sex, travel to holy sites, exciting worship, celebrity teachers. The people who promote these goods and services all smile a lot and are good-looking. They are obviously not bored.

It isn't long before we're standing in line to buy whatever is being offered. And because none of the purchases does what we had hoped for, or at least not for long, we're soon back to buy another, and then another. The process is addicting. We become consumers of packaged spiritualities.

This also is idolatry. We never think of using this term because everything we're buying or paying for is defined by the adjective Christian. But idolatry it is, nevertheless. It's God packaged as a product-God depersonalized and made available as a technique or a program. The Christian market in idols has never been more brisk or lucrative. The late medieval indulgences that provoked Luther's righteous wrath are small potatoes compared to what's going on in our evangelical backyard.

Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Resurrection, NavPress 2006, pp.35,36

How to Encourage the Church

The incident of Peter and Cornelius is a major one within the book of Acts. Cornelius is presented as a prime example of the gospel being received by Gentiles. But, in terms of reaching out to Gentiles, Acts 11:19ff could be at least as significant as the Cornelius incident. It may well have begun before Peter’s encounter with Cornelius (see v.19) and, in terms of numbers and the future significance of the church at Antioch, it is extremely important.

All of which makes it very interesting that this expansion to the Gentiles is not an organised mission but takes place naturally as the church scatters following the death of Stephen. In Acts, missionaries are sent out by churches and usually work to a clear plan but that needs to be set alongside what we see here of these early believers sharing the gospel as they went.

The calling and responsibility to reach out to others is not the preserve of pastors, evangelists and missionaries; it is a whole church calling and we each have a responsibility to take it to heart. These early believers shared the gospel naturally, as they travelled, as they set up home, as they worked. And this was the norm, not the exception.

It is, of course, right and good that churches and mission agencies plan and partner in the sending-out of gospel workers. It would be a betrayal of the Lord not to do so. But the responsibility of churches and mission agencies is not simply to initiate ministries; it is also about being sensitive to and catching-up with what the Lord is already doing in spontaneous and (humanly-speaking) unplanned ways. That was the reality faced here by the church in Jerusalem.

As the gospel spreads among the Gentiles, one of the big questions to be faced is, How will the church in Jerusalem react? When Philip preached in Samaria, they sent Peter and John to authenticate the work, to give it the apostolic imprimatur. Given that these are Gentiles, will they react with suspicion and try to suppress what is going on?

What they do is send Barnabas to them. This time they send one man, not two. He isn’t an apostle. He’s a native of Cyprus, as were many of these believers. And he was a man of exceptional spirit, warm and encouraging. This doesn’t smack of control and suspicion but of contribution and support for this young church. The church at Jerusalem was the original one; the apostles were the authentic witnesses to the Lord Jesus and his gospel. But that doesn’t mean they must hereafter control everything that happens in terms of the spread of the gospel. It is the Lord Jesus who directs the mission; they are his co-workers. So instead of sending people to check out this new development, they choose instead to send a man who will cheer on those involved in it.

Sending Barnabas to Antioch was perhaps the greatest thing the church at Jerusalem ever did for their brothers and sisters there. He is an outstanding example of a Christian and of what a church-worker should be. He isn’t jealous of their work, nor does he want to take it over; he rejoices in the work and encourages them to keep going and remain true to the Lord. His concern was not sectarian (to make them Jews) but to strengthen their Christian life and witness.

But this humble man is ready to acknowledge that he doesn’t have all the gifts necessary to help this church and so he goes on a long 200-mile round trip to bring Saul to join him in the work. He recognised the Lord’s calling of Saul and the gifts he’d been given – what a great encouragement to Saul that must have been! And, in God’s providence, this almost incidental action has immense strategic significance for the whole progress of the gospel; it is from Antioch that Barnabas and Saul will be sent out by the church into further mission.

The rest, as they say and as we know, is history.


(this piece first appeared in the UFM Worldwide magazine, 4 Corners, Jan-April 2007)

A Hermeneutic Of Trust

In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure the self-righteous villain Angelo pronounces a death sentence on Claudio, who is guilty of committing fornication. Claudio's sister Isabella comes to Angelo to plead for the life of her brother, but Angelo, who is trying to manipulate Isabella into bed with him, spurns her suit, saying,

Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isabella's reply alludes to the great theme of Romans and calls upon the hypocritical judge Angelo to see his life anew in light of God's judgment and grace:

Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? 0, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Isabella resists the oppressor by applying a hermeneutic of suspicion to his pose of righteousness and by appealing to a hermeneutic of trust in the biblical story of God's mercy. Isabella is a profound interpreter of Scripture. We should follow her example.

Richard B. Hays - The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scriptures; Eerdmans 2005; p.200f

Loving and Hearing the Text

When I was an undergraduate at Yale University, students flocked to Professor Alvin Kernan's lecture courses on Shakespeare. Kernan's work predated the academy's current infatuation with ideological criticism. Even though it was the late 1960s and we were all living in an atmosphere charged with political suspicion and protest, none of this overtly impinged on Kernan's lectures. Kernan was not a flashy lecturer. What, then, was the draw?

He loved the texts. His teaching method - as I remember it - was simply to engage in reflective close readings of the Shakespeare tragedies and comedies, delineating their rich texture of image and metaphor and opening up their complex central themes - moral, philosophical, and religious. Often, Kernan would devote a significant part of his lecture time to reading the text aloud, not in any highly dramatic manner, but with sensitivity to the text's rhythms and semantic nuances. I would often sit in class thinking, "Oh! ... I hadn't heard that in the text before." And I would leave the class pondering the problems Shakespeare addressed: love, betrayal, fidelity, sacrifice, death, and hope.

Richard B. Hays - The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scriptures; Eerdmans 2005; p.200

Loving the text so that others truly hear the text. That's a good aim for 2007.

Two thoughts

from John 19:

i) The correlation in v.7 & v.12 of the terms 'Son of God' and 'King' suggests that the Jewish leaders were not accusing Jesus of claiming divinity but of claiming to be the Messiah;

ii) The irony of the Jewish leaders' assertion, "We have no king but Caesar" being followed in the text by Pilate finally handing Jesus over to be crucified: the irony lies in the fact that to say they have no king but Caesar is the final capitulation.

voluntary gifts (Volf)

Since God gives freely, we should too. That's how the apostle Paul thought of gift giving; it should be voluntary. He praised believers from Macedonia for giving "voluntarily" to the poor of Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:3). Similarly, he urged that the Corinthians' gift be ready when he came to collect it "as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion" (2 Corinthians 9:5).

Why is freedom in giving so important? Because the gift consists more in the freely undertaken choice to give than in the things given. In this regard, the Apostle might well have agreed with Seneca, the great stoic writer on gift giving, who said: "For, since in the case of a benefit the chief pleasure of it comes from the intention of the bestower, he who by his very hesitation has shown that he made his bestowal unwillingly has not `given', but has failed to withstand the effort to extract it."' As for Seneca, for the Apostle the "eagerness" of the giver matters more than the magnitude of the gift. God loves "a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 8:12 and 9:7).

And yet we noted earlier that we are obliged to give. God's gifts themselves oblige us, and God's commands reinforce that obligation. Now we see that we are obliged to give freely - and there's the rub. How can we give freely if we are obliged to give? Inversely, how can we be obliged to give if we give freely? Is it possible to be obliged to give freely?

The apostle Paul thought so. True, he never commanded the Corinthians to give, and he underscored this for them (2 Corinthians 8:8). But he exerted enormous pressure on them using some potent rhetorical weapons. He played with their sense of shame: they would humiliate themselves if they didn't give (2 Corinthians 9:4). He had them compete with other donors: the Macedonians gave, so the Corinthians should stick to their promise and give (which is also what he said to the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 9:2). He appealed to their debt to him: he would be humiliated if they didn't give (2 Corinthians 9:4). And he did all this in order to nudge them to give, as he put it, "not reluctantly or under compulsion", but voluntarily (2 Corinthians 9:7)!

Was the Apostle twisting their arm to be free? Some strange freedom this must be! But maybe our sense that to be free is to act under no constraint whatsoever is mistaken. We tend to think that we must be autonomous and spontaneous to act freely. Behind this identification of freedom with autonomous spontaneity lies the notion of a self-defined and free-floating person. Strip down all the influences of time and place, abstract from culture and nurture, and then you'll come to your authentic core. This core is who you truly are, the thinking goes - unique, unshaped, unconstrained.

But that's more like a caricature of a divine self than an accurate description of a human self. Using the image of the beast, Luther argued that human beings are always ridden by someone, either by God or by the Devil. That's a crude way of putting it, but it's basically right. The point is not that either God or the Devil compels us. In that case, our will would turn into, as Luther put it, "unwill". It's rather that, unlike God, we always exercise our will as beings constantly shaped by many factors - by language, parental rearing, culture, media, advertising, and peer pressure, and through all these, we are shaped either by God or by God's adversary. Often we don't perceive ourselves as shaped at all. If we are not visibly and palpably coerced, we think that we act autonomously, spontaneously, and authentically. Yet we are wrong.

Take our preferences for one soft drink over another. I am thirsty, walk into a store, reach for a Pepsi, and walk away, never doubting that I acted autonomously and spontaneously. But why did I choose Pepsi over Coke or just plain water? I may like its taste better. But most likely it's because Pepsi's ads got to me the way Coke's didn't. I don't autonomously and spontaneously choose to be a Pepsi drinker; I'm made into a Pepsi drinker. Yet I freely chose that Pepsi can that is in my hand.

Recall what I said about the old and the new selves. Our old self died, and our new self was raised. It's a self in whom Christ dwells and through whom Christ acts, a self that has put on Christ and "learned" Christ. We are these new selves, and that's why we give (though non-Christians can give for many other reasons). We don't give mainly because God or God's messengers command us to. If we did, we would be giving under compulsion, and therefore, reluctantly. Instead, we give because we are givers, because Christ living in us is a giver. Informing every seemingly small act of Christian giving is a change in our very being, a transformation of a person from being one who either illicitly takes or merely legitimately acquires, into being one who beneficently gives. As I will explain in chapter 3, even as such transformed people, we still need to grow into the joy of giving. But the command to give is not compelling us to act against ourselves, even if it often feels like this.

That feeling that the command is against us, a sense of reluctance in giving, is not unfounded. When we have failed to put away our "former way of life", the new self becomes an obligation that butts against the ingrained habits of the old self. Yet as uncomfortable as it may feel, the pressure is not to our detriment, but in our favor. It pushes us to act true to who we most properly are. That's why we can be obliged to give freely: the obligation nudges us to do what the new self would do if the old one didn't stand in the way.

Imagine your life as a piece of music, a Bach cello suite. You've heard it played by a virtuoso. You love it and would like to play it well. But try as you might, you fail - not so much because you've had a bad teacher or haven't practiced enough, but because your left hand has a defect. You make music, but it's nothing like it's supposed to sound. Then you have surgery performed by a magician with a scalpel. Your hand heals. You return to your lessons with new vigor. And then one day, you play the piece nearly perfectly. Full of joy, you exclaim, "Yes! I love it! This is the way the music of my life should sound!" Constrained by the score because you have to follow its notation? Well, yes. But loving every moment of that constraint - and not feeling it as constraint at all - because the very constraint is what makes for the beauty and delight.

Something like this is what it means to be a free giver. God obliges us to give. But it is precisely when we act in accordance with the obligation that we have a sense of unspoiled authenticity and freedom. So in our best moments, we forget the command and just give the way we are supposed to give. We are like a motor-powered sailboat when it's "running", as sailors say: With the wind at the back of a powered boat, all resistance is gone; the boat is always where the wind would push it to be. The same is true of us when we give freely. Living out of our new selves, we are always already where the command would want us to be.

(Miroslav Volf, Free Of Charge, pp.64-67)

in celebration of palindromes...

Go for it, Al!

the psalms & us

The attempt to recover and renew psalmody in our time must not be undertaken merely as an embellishment of liturgical practice. Crucial possibilities for the theological, liturgical, and pastoral life of the church are involved. The liveliness and actuality of the language of the reign of God supply an organizing milieu for all the principal topics of the Christian faith. It constitutes the basis and medium of the three primary functions of our religion - praise, prayer, and the practice of piety. It provides a way of thinking and understanding that holds the individual and corporate relation to God together. Said and sung as Christian liturgy, the language of the psalms discloses the unity of the canon of scripture. It articulates a polemic against the polytheism and paganism that go unnoticed in our culture. It establishes a critical resistance to the domination of any human politics and the apotheosizing of any ideology, including democracy. The language of the psalms puts all who use them in the role of servants to the LORD God, and so lays a basis for an ethic of trust and obedience. It opens up a realm for existence in which the dying may take hope, the afflicted find strength, and the faithful encouragement.

Mere recitation of the psalms will lay hold on none of these possibilities. If, however, in the use of psalms as our praise and prayer and scripture we are led to feel and think and decide as those who live in the kingdom of God in hope of the kingdom of God, then we might begin to grasp some of them. We might be better able to trust ourselves to the One who comes saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand." That would be the right reason for the renewal of psalmody today.

James L. Mays, The LORD Reigns - A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, p.11

augustine & the psalms

In his Confessions, Augustine tells how he used the psalms in a period of retreat between his conversion and baptism. "What utterances sent I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs and sounds of devotion.... What utterances I used to send up unto Thee in those Psalms, and how was I inflamed toward Thee by them" (IX, 4).

For Augustine it was a time of preparation for a different life, of initiation into a new existence, a period in which habits of thought, customs of practice, and feelings about self and others and the world had to be reconstituted. As part of the transformation, he was learning a new language.

He spoke the psalms to and before the Christian God, who was now source and subject of his faith and life. He took their vocabulary and sentences as his own. He identified himself with the speaker of the psalms. He said the psalms as his words, let his feelings be evoked and led by their language, spoke the words that resonated in his own consciousness in concord with those of the psalms. He was acquiring a language world that went with his new identity as a Christian. It was the vocabulary of prayer and praise, the "first order" language that expressed the sense of self and world that comes with faith in the God to whom, of whom, and for whom the psalms speak.

James L. Mays, The LORD Reigns - A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, p.3

In a different light

It has always struck me as a great (and regrettable irony): Festus and Agrippa agree that Paul could have been set free (Acts 26:32) but because Paul has appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11 ), to Caesar he must go. If only he'd held on a little while longer before making that last-ditch appeal, it could all have been so much simpler; still, I'm sure the Lord is able to use it for Paul's and the gospel's good. He is sovereign, after all.

But no; it's much more definite than that, in every sense. Paul has already been told that the Lord is taking him to Rome (Acts 23:11) - the only thing not specified was the how and why of the way in which that journey would come about. The purpose for going was as clear as day:

As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome (Acts 23:11)

So Paul's appeal to Caesar is neither impetuous nor desperate; it arises in the context of the Lord's clear direction and decision to send his apostle to the heart of the empire. And the forcing of Festus' hand is not a matter for regret; it is simply the Lord's time and place for enacting his plan to send Paul to Rome.

I'd never seen it that way before. I do now.

doctrine & competence

Doctrines, then, are profitable for celebrating, communicating, criticizing - and coping - provided they are used competently. The present work sets forth an account of theological competence, which involves more than academic expertise. Theological competence is ultimately a matter of being able to make judgements that display the mind of Christ. Individual Christians, and the church as a whole, have no more crucial task than achieving such theological competence. One of the chief means of doing so is by attending to doctrine - to its derivation from Scripture and its development in the believing community."

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, in the introduction to The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Liguistic Approach to Christian Theology, p. 2

final blessing

God bless you, Dad;
God bless you, Dad.

You've been
a wonderful father,
a good husband
and
a lovely grandad.

You've loved us all so much;
we all love you so much.

God bless you, Dad;
God bless you, Dad.

(the final words spoken to George Myerscough, early morning 30/11/05)

Closure

A year ago
I closed your eyes
after that last, long
gasp of life.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

You were there
when my eyes opened in life
and I was there to close yours in death;
your eyes brimmed with joy at the sight,
mine with savage pain.
The colour remained
but not the life.

A year ago
I closed your eyes;
the bruise remains.

resemblance

Some people say
I have my father's
eyes

but I've always known
I had his
heart.

the longest time

For the longest time
your voice has been
silent;
that voice which could boom
out, calling for tea,
while preserving
from sight
a thousand realities.

I've waited to see you
and to hear you
once more
but even the fullest dreams
are empty;

void.

I saw you last
in that morning light;

still and gone.

How John Mark Became Helpful

He was a deserter; a failure. And the cause of a sharp disagreement between two Christian ministers, one of them his uncle. So sharp in fact that they no longer worked together.

Later on, the one who had objected to John Mark's continued presence on the team speaks of him in very warm terms; he has proved himself to be a valuable colleague in gospel work.

So how did the change come about? How was this fallible young man recovered? Who mentored him into being a faithful gospel servant?

Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus. (Acts 15:39)

The one who didn't give up on him, presumably.

Strengthen your brothers

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31,32 TNIV)

Satan wants to sift the disciples like wheat - he wants to put them to the test, chew them up and spit them out. Jesus tells Simon about this. They are all in Satan's sights. But Jesus has prayed for...Peter, that his faith would not fail him. And those prayers are answered: in the event of Peter's testing, his faith doesn't fail him; in faith, he repents of his sin when Jesus looks at him.

But what about the others? Did they not need Jesus' prayers too? Why tell Simon that they were all vulnerable but that he had prayed only for Simon? The pronouns are deliberate and deliberately disclose that distinction.

The answer is in the commission Jesus gives the soon-to-fall and soon-to-be-restored Peter: when he has turned, he is to strengthen his brothers. Jesus will help them in their vulnerability through Peter, their fallen and restored brother.

We need the community of such brothers and sisters. They are part of the Lord's means of strengthening us in the face of our vulnerability.

Yahweh's mercy

let me fall into the hands of Yahweh,
for his mercy is very great;
and let me not fall into the hands of men
(1 Chron. 21:13)

David was offered 3 choices as punishment for numbering Israel: three years of famine; three months of war or three days of the Angel of Yahweh bringing death on the people. Three years seems a long time but they might just be able to eke things out; three months against military enemies for a seasoned warrior might not seem too long; but who knows how much damage the omnipotent God could do in just three days?

David opts for the three days, yet only on this basis: Yahweh's mercy is very great. Unlike fallen humanity, in wrath he remembers mercy. And his mercy is very great. It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God but faced with the choice between Yahweh's merciful judgement and human cruelty, David chose the former.

Because Yahweh's mercy is very great.

The Holy Scriptures

1.
Oh Book! infinite sweetnesse! let my heart
Suck ev’ry letter, and a hony gain,
Precious for any grief in any part ;
To cleare the breast, to mollifie all pain.

Thou art all health, health thriving, till it make
A full eternitie: thou art a masse
Of strange delights, where we may wish and take.
Ladies, look here; this is the thankfull glasse,

That mends the lookers eyes: this is the well
That washes what it shows. Who can indeare
Thy praise too much? thou art heav’ns Lidger here,
Working against the states of death and hell.

Thou art joyes handsell: heav’n lies flat in thee,
Subject to ev’ry mounters bended knee.


2.
Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glorie!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.

This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destinie.

Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do finde me out, and parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.

Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse
This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.

(George Herbert)

Professional Daydreamer (Over The Rhine)

Part of me
You are a part of me
I never want to lose
Hard for me
This is too hard
Maybe I can't get through
What will I miss the most
Pray that I'm haunted by your ghost

Listening
You're always listening
I don't know what to say
Why don't you turn and run at break-neck speed
Just to get away
And when you catch your breath
Pray I said every word I meant

Alright it's alright now
Alright it's alright

Broken down
We're all so broken down
Bandages on our wings
I know I don't have to tell you
Only broken hearts can sing
I'm hoping for a sign
Pray that I'm anything but fine

Some things are never gonna change
You ought to know by now

*******

words: Bergquist/Detweiler
music: Bergquist

Election and Covenant

"The Sinai event is a kind of axle for holding together two basic realities: one, everything God does involves me (election); and two, everything I do is therefore significant (covenant). Because I am chosen, I have consequence. Election creates a unique identity; covenant describes a responsible relationship. Election is the declaration that God has designs upon me; covenant is the description of how the things I do fit into those designs."

Eugene H. Peterson
Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

Ruth

"is the inconsequential outsider whose life is essential for telling the complete story of salvation."

"is the instance of a person uprooted, obscure, alienated who learned to understand her story as a modest but nevertheless essential part of the vast epic whose plot is designed by God's salvation."

Eugene H. Peterson
Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

The best questions

about heaven are usually those to which the answer demands a sustained and creative reflection upon our current life in this world.

For example, will I be able to paint well in heaven? My artistic ability with paints is very limited, if not entirely absent. But will everything not be perfect in heaven? If yes, surely I'll be able to paint and paint well? Me and Rembrandt (should we both be there) would be on a par.

Given that part of the way in which humanity is created in the image of God is the diversity of people and their gifts, I wonder if there will still be differences between us when glorified? If everyone was perfectly capable of doing everything themselves, would that not also militate against true community and our mutual dependency, which again seems part of living in the image of God.

Maybe others will be able to teach me how to paint. Maybe I won't be jealous of those who can.

And maybe not.

Life as an Adolescent (Fretheim)

The wilderness wanderings, or at least their length and breadth, were a surprise to Israel. Instead of a land of milk and honey, they get a desert. The promise falls short. Deliverance at the sea leads into the godforsaken wilderness. Dancers and singers are stopped dead in their tracks. Salvation from one kind of death leads into the teeth of another. The sea crossing seems but a point of unreal exhilaration between one kind of trouble and another, only the last is certainly worse than the first. Bondage with security and resources seems preferable to freedom and living from one oasis to another. The wilderness is a place betwixt and between...

And the wilderness seems permanent. Forty years is a long time in the old sandbox. Even that grand mountain-top experience at Sinai looks like a one-time thing: it is out of the wilderness only to be led right back in. The wilderness is beginning to look a lot like home. What does it mean for God to create a people out of those who are no people, the grandest of all creative acts, only to leave the rest of their world in chaos? The experience of order leads immediately into disorder, freedom becomes anarchy. Into the jaws of the wilderness, where demons howl and messiahs are tempted, where familiar resources are taken away....Lifelessness seems to be the only order on which one can depend. The journey from the Red Sea to the promised land is littered with freshly dug graves, and not a single birth is recorded.

Wilderness is life beyond redemption but short of consummation; but the former seems ineffective and the latter only a mirage. The promise has been spoken, but who can live by words alone? The hope has been proclaimed, but the horizon keeps disappearing in the sandstorms. And so trust in God often turns to recalcitrance and resentment. Faith erodes with the dunes. Commandments collapse into the disorder that shapes daily life. And judgment is invited in to share one's tattered tent.

Yet even in the wilderness God is responsive to the needs of these complaining people. God provides what the context cannot. The protests are answered, the cries are heard, quite undeservedly. Deliverance comes, but not in being removed from the wilderness. A table is spread in the very presence of the enemy (cf. Ps. 23:5). There is a gift of food where the resources are only ephemeral. There is a gift of water where only rocks abound. There is a gift of healing where the pain never ends. The movement from death to life occurs within the very experience of godforsakenness. Death is transformed into life from within a death-filled context. A sanctuary is provided, but in the wilderness.

Deuteronomy 2:7 proclaims: "These forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing." Surely this is a delusion, a late pious endeavor to cover up the realities of that meandering trek through the desert. The desert in such a view is not only painted, it is whitewashed. The disciples of such poppycock are legion. Or are they? Only if they neglect the fact that the complaints from the wilderness are genuine indeed. Only if they neglect the fact that true life must always be shaped by the wilderness, even for those who are living in the promised land. Only if they neglect the fact that God's own life has been decisively shaped by that same wilderness.

Hence, although the people are often ungrateful and disloyal, the divine blessing and graciousness pervade the narrative. Israel's time in the wilderness is finally shaped by God's incredible patience and mercy and the divine will to stay with Israel in this time of their adolescence as children of God. Coping with “teenagers” is no easy task, even if the parent is God (cf. Hos. 6:4). No divine flick of the wrist is capable of straightening them out without compromising their freedom. If God wants a mature child, the possibility of defiance must be risked. Parent and child even do a certain amount of "testing" of each other. God will not compromise in holding Israel to high standards – for the sake of the creation. And so God works through their feelings of abandonment and helplessness, their words of complaint and acts of rebelliousness, and their need for reassurance, protection, a new self-identity, and non-oppressive life structures. God sticks by them through it all. God has made promises to this people, and God is a promise-keeper. Only in Numbers will it become clear that the process of maturation takes longer than a single generation.

(Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation Bible Commentary, John Knox Press, pp.171-173)

ministry & pain

In his comments on Ezekiel 3:4-15, Peter Craigie made the following observation:

The point to be remembered in any suffering associated with ministry is that it is a participation in the suffering of God; that insight may not reduce the pain, but it does portray the privilege of suffering. And it does remind all servants of God that one of the many faces of love is that of agony and pain.
(Ezekiel, Daily Study Bible, p.20)

On Singing

Following on from Alan Davey's comments on singing here the following comments by Peter Enns in his excellent NIVAC commentary on Exodus seemed worth posting, as grist to the mill.

Singing has universal appeal. The Creator made us that way. We sing for different reasons. Sometimes we are happy, other times miserable. Sometimes we know why we sing, other times it just comes out. We sing to remember good times and to take our minds off bad times. Singing changes our moods as well as simply reflecting them. What we sing can have a tremendous influence in how we subsequently think or behave. Song can enter portals of our being that prose and logic cannot. The capacity to sing and to react to song is part of the human experience, so much so that without it, we would truly be less than human.

Singing is such a characteristically human trait because it is divine as well. I do not know whether God sings, but he has certainly woven song into the fabric of creation. It is a means not only of reflecting or changing our moods, but it is also a means by which we "connect" with God, or to put it in more traditional language, it is a means by which we worship God. We do not have an "order of worship" anywhere in the Bible, although there are sufficient clues as to the types of things that probably went on in both Old and New Testament worship. But by God's good will, we do have a fairly extensive record of one thing they most certainly did: singing. The Bible records a lot of singing; there is even an entire book devoted to the subject (Psalms).

What we see in Exodus 15, and the other songs discussed above, is worship, pure and simple. Most Christians I know, including myself, find worship to be a frustratingly elusive thing. It is something we know we are supposed to do, but often we just can't seem to get a handle on it. It is something we are supposed to feel like doing, but, to be honest, we would often rather be off doing something else. But this is where these songs can help us.

Although neither I nor anyone else can prove the point, I do not think that the songs of the Old Testament were spontaneous outpourings of worship quickly jotted down and then preserved in a glass jar for future ggenerations to gawk at. They are rather models for worship. They were written down precisely so that they could be pondered, studied, and reflected one and not just for ancient Israelites, but for those who live in the light of the resurrection of God's Son. They are not trophies on a mantel but inspired examples, not so much because they have to be followed word for word, but because they give us a glimpse of who God is and, therefore, what our proper stance toward him should be.

One thing that strikes me about the biblical songs we have discussed is the lack of focus on oneself. And any attention that is paid to the one uttering the song (as in the case of Mary's song) quickly recedes into the background to let the true focus of the song come through-praise to the Lord. Songs in Scripture are about what God has done for his people. Although many psalms offer praise to God for more "abstract" things (though that is hardly a fair characterization), such as his creation, this is not the case for the songs examined here. They are songs filled with thanksgiving, gratitude, awe, and power because God has shown himself to be mighty in some situation, and his might is to be recognized throughout all the earth. To put it another way, these songs are thoroughly theocentric. Our worship of God in song should be equally theocentric and, ever since Easter morning, Christocentric as well.

I resist with all my heart making simplistic, blanket statements, but the biblical model for "hymnic worship," as we may call it, should cause us to think long and hard about the state of music in the church today. Different kinds of music reflect different personalities and create different kinds of moods, and it is a hopeless task to get any ten people to agree on what kinds are and are not appropriate for worship. My point here, however, has little to do with the musical dimension, but with the content of the songs.

Does worship really happen when stanza after stanza of a hymn or other type of song focuses on the personal status of the worshiper rather than the nature, character, and acts of God? I have become more sensitive to this over the years. When I hear myself singing "I," "me," or "we" too often, I begin thinking that our emphasis at that moment is misplaced. I am not suggesting that songs in worship should make no reference to the worshiper. I am simply suggesting that we remain in an "analytical" (but not judgmental) mode in order better to discern what is right and what is wrong in how we worship God.

At the risk of getting too specific, allow me to provide an example.

Jesus, we just want to thank You (3x)
Thank You for being so good.

Jesus, we just want to praise You (3x)
Praise you for being so good.

Jesus, we just want to tell You (3x)
We love You for being so good.

Savior, we just want to serve You (3x)
Serve You for being so good.

Jesus, we know you are coming (3x)
Take us to live in Your home.

The point here is not the quality of the music or the question of whether repetition is an aid or hindrance to worship. (It could be both. Ps. 119, for example, is very repetitive.) Nor am I addressing whether such a song would be profitable in a setting other than a worshipful one. But the focus of this song is clear: It is on the worshipers, on what we are doing (thanking, praising, telling, serving, knowing). Again, this is not to say that there should be no mention of the worshiper. That would be equally ridiculous. Even the Song at the Sea begins, "I will sing to the LORD." The difference, however, is that this biblical song shifts quickly to the object of praise, God, rather than lingering on the one giving the praise. I am not saying the above song is not appropriate for worship and should be excluded from the hymnal. Still, when I look at the songs of old-not just the hymns of recent centuries, but of the Old Testament-I cannot help but wonder if we could do better.

There is another aspect of this hymn that stands in stark contrast to the biblical examples. It is, for all intents and purposes, devoid of any specific content. Why is Jesus good? Is such a basis for praise too vague? Another example will make the point even clearer.

Jesus is the sweetest name I know,
And He's just the same as His lovely name,
And that's the reason I love Him so;
Oh, Jesus is the sweetest name I know.

Again, I am not saying that such songs should not be sung, but it does raise some questions. Why is Jesus' name so "sweet"? And just what is a "sweet name? I am not calling for a full-blown, Latin oration every time we open our mouths in song. Different levels of content are appropriate for different Christians. It is a matter of wisdom rather than applying black-and-white categories that will contribute to the discussion. But when I think of how praise is offered to God in the Bible, there is more meat to them. Skimming the biblical songs we have looked at above shows the types of things God is praised for: his universal rule, power, eternality, incomparability, love, faithfulness to his people, and coming universal recognition.

It is not too much, I am sure, to expect the church's worship of God to be thoughtful, biblical and awe-inspiring. Our natural tendency throughout the week is to focus on ourselves. This should not be the case for Christians when we gather together in order to worship God; rather, we should make a decided effort to turn from ourselves and toward him who is truly worthy not just of our attention but of our adoration. It is perhaps in this context that we can come to a deeper understanding of passages such as Colossians 3:16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."

The "word of Christ," which we can safely equate with Scripture, is to dwell in us richly, not only as we teach and admonish each other, but as we sing to God "with gratitude" in our hearts. We show this gratitude by making the focus of our singing the nature and work of God in calling us to be his own. We need constant reminders of who God is and what he has done. What we sing should, like the biblical examples, reflect these things.

This is all the more true in light of our high calling in Christ. We participate in an act of God that is far greater than the Exodus, for it is God's climactic act of deliverance. Focusing our attention in worship relentlessly on God is not mundane nor tedious. Rather, it places the focus where it ought to be. This is the great "content" that is the acceptable form of worship for the church, not only in its teaching, preaching, and missions statements, but also in its music. We do not sing in worship to reflect our moods any more than our sermons and Sunday school lessons should reflect our pet theories on the gospel. Rather, quite bluntly, we sing in an effort to take us away from what we think and draw us toward what we ought to think, feel, experience. We sing to create a mood more than to reflect one.

This is why the content of what we sing is so vital. Our songs are, like the songs of the Bible, reminders of who God is and what he has done. This is not to say that only one type of song fits this description; for example, the ‘classic’ hymns of the church. To argue as I have done is not to close off discussion on the subject because the issue is now settled. Rather, the discussion can truly be opened when we have all agreed at the outset that, like the biblical examples, who we sing to and what we sing about is a matter worthy of constant reflection and spiritual energy.

Peter Enns, Exodus (NIVAC), pp.314-317

I wear your ring

with memory strong
and clear;
stronger than a link
with your past,
my present
holds your life and love.

I wash my hands
and feel it there;
it sometimes seems that I am you
and that you are still.
I raise my hand
with silent shock
at the sight of your finger;
I am not you and yet
you remain
in memory and chromosome
and intangible touch.

I take and eat
the bread and wine
given by Another,
tasting and touching
beyond time,
memories brought to birth
of life before my own.
Tasting love, touching grace;
a life and grief
observed, redeemed.

I wear your ring;
I bear his name.

Images of God, Reality of God (Volf)

There is God. And there are images of God. And some people don't see any difference between the two.

A capable, good-hearted, and devout servant by the name of Felicite from Gustave Flaubert's "A Simple Heart" fell prey to this confusion between God and God's images. She was alone and unappreciated, and her parrot Loulou became "almost like a son, a lover to her", so much so that, when he died, she had him stuffed. Soon the gospel's image of the Holy Spirit as a dove began to merge with her stuffed parrot, and she fell "into the idolatrous habit of saying her prayers on her knees in front of the parrot". Finally, Flaubert wrote, as she breathed her last, "she thought she saw, as the heavens opened, a gigantic parrot hovering over her head."' Abandoned by others, she transferred her love to the parrot, transforming it into a god. An earthly image morphed into a divine reality.

Most people who fuse God's image and God's reality aren't nearly so naive. Some, like great critics of religion, argue that God is simply a projection of human ideals onto a heavenly screen; that God is, as Karl Marx thought, a reflection of the human need to be consoled in misery and to cope with weakness. For them, God doesn't exist as a reality independent of human beings. "God" is the name that the foolish, the miserable, and the weak give to what is nothing more than a useful figment of human imagination.

I will leave these critics aside here, and instead focus on what is perhaps the most troubling confusion between God's reality and God's image, which falls somewhere between the naive Felicite and the shrewd Marx. It's believers who fall prey to this confusion. We don't see them kneeling before parrots. Neither do they trumpet, "God is a human projection." They don't brazenly say, "God doesn't exist; only images of God do." To the contrary, they piously affirm, "God is a reality independent of our minds" and "God is nothing like a parrot, or any other creature."

And yet they worship idols without even knowing it. Unlike Felicite's parrot, their gods are not made of the hard matter of this world and don't sit elevated on sacred pedestals. Instead, they dwell in their worshipers' minds and are made of the soft stuff of their own cherished ideas. They simply assume that who they believe God to be and who God truly is are one and the same. God is as large (or as small) as they make the Infinite One to be, and none of the beliefs they entertain about God could possibly be wrong.

But in fact, our images of God are rather different from God's reality. We are finite beings, and God is infinitely greater than any thoughts we can contain about divine reality in our wondrous but tiny minds. We are sinful beings, and God is different from what we conceive in our selfishness and pride. Finite and self-centered as we are, we often forget God's warning through the prophet Isaiah: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (55:9). When we forget that, we unwittingly reduce God's ways to our ways and God's thoughts to our thoughts. Our hearts become factories of idols in which we fashion and refashion God to fit our needs and desires.

Yet the most powerful and seductive images of God are not the ones we craft in the privacy of our hearts. They are the ones that seep into our minds as we watch TV, read books, go shopping at the mall, or socialize with our neighbors. Slowly and imperceptibly, the one true God begins acquiring the features of the gods of this world. For instance, our God simply gratifies our desires rather than reshaping them in accordance with the beauty of God's own character. Our God then kills enemies rather than dying on their behalf as God did in Jesus Christ. To use Flaubert's metaphor, the dove of the Spirit becomes the parrot whose plumage bears a striking resemblance to our culture's values.

To worship God rather than idols of our own making, we must allow God to break apart the idols we create, through the Spirit's relentless and intimate work within our lives. First, we need to know where to look for knowledge of the true God. It would be a mistake to seek that knowledge primarily in the world around us. God is not an object in this world. There's no map that says "X marks the spot." Whatever we find in the world will be ... the world, and not God. Neither can we find God in the infinity that lies beyond the cosmos. God is not an unnamed something on the other side of the temporal and spatial edges of the universe. Rather, as Christians, we find God in Jesus Christ, God's Word incarnate as witnessed in the Scriptures, God's written word.

It's not enough, however, to know where to look for God. We also need eyes and ears that can recognize the true knowledge of God when we come across it. For it could be that even as we look at Jesus Christ and read Scripture, as the prophet Isaiah put it, we "keep listening, but do not comprehend" and "keep looking, but do not understand" (6:9). Think of people who observed Jesus teach and heal and embody the life of God - and they saw nothing but a "false prophet" or a "political rebel". Our eyes and ears need a heart ready to receive the truth of God's reality rather than one that longs for the comforts of false gods.

Finally, even when we look in the right places with a ready heart, we still might miss the one true God. We need to be willing to let our very effort to know God slide out of our hands, opening them to God's continued and unexpected self-revelation. Otherwise, like the dog from Aesop's fable, we may end up dropping the real piece of meat in order to grab its reflection in the water.

(Miroslav Volf, Free Of Charge, pp.21-23)

How to Know the Truth

Jesus' words in John 8:31,32 seem to speak of an epistemology of faith and obedience:

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (TNIV)

Knowing the truth is consequent to holding to his teaching, honouring him with our faith and obeying him as his disciples. Even if the kai in v.32 is simply translated as 'and' and not 'then', there still seems to be a progression in what he is saying, that knowing follows the doing of faith and obedience.

Of course, we ought to expect just this in the light of the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, that

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7a)

A genuine reverence for the LORD which results in changed thoughts and actions is the precondition for knowing - truly knowing.

The implications of this must surely be significant, both pastorally and evangelistically.