Good Shepherd | What Is Your Only Comfort in Life & Death?

"The Good Shepherd Is On the Way" by Kevin Carden

What is your only comfort 

in life and in death?

That I am not my own,

but belong — body and soul 

in life and in death — 

to my faithful Savior,

Jesus Christ.

For this Good Shepherd weekend (4th Sunday during Eastertide), in preparing to preach the sermon, "Now What? The Good Shepherd" for First Congregational Church in Boylston for the first time, focusing on John 10:1-11, I returned to a few resources to help me reflect on what it means for Jesus to be our Good Shepherd:

 + God Is On Your Side by JRB

+ Lit by Mary Karr
+ NYT Interview Reflection

I Am the Good Shepherd

In the ancient Near East, the shepherd's staff was a symbol of royalty. It symbolized the purpose of leadership: to serve, guide, care for, and protect your people. If the title "king" speaks to the authority of a ruler, "shepherd" speaks to their ideal heart.

Jesus is the Shepherd-King.

The King of the universe comes not to take from you but that you "may have life, and have it to the full." He doesn't run from the battle but "lays down His life for the sheep." His leadership is marked by sacrifice, protection, and care.

I Am the Gate

You can go to Jesus. He knows firsthand what you've experienced. He was abused and abandoned. He was beaten and betrayed. He was stabbed in the back and pierced in the side. He was left hanging, then ditched all alone in the grave. There's an intimacy to be found with Him in your suffering. 

Jesus names what was done to you as evil. This is the first step toward healing. I've found you can bring Jesus your sorrow. He welcomes your sadness and your anger at the injustice you've endured. He can handle it.

I and the Father Are One

In Ezekiel 34, God confronted Israel's leaders as bad shepherds "who only take care of yourselves" and don't "take care of the flock."

You have not strengthened the weak 

or healed the sick 

or bound up the injured.

You have not brought back the strays

or searched for the lost.

You have ruled them harshly

and brutally.

So they were scattered

because there was no shepherd,

and when they were scattered

they became food for all

the wild animals.

If you've been hurt by bad leaders, Ezekiel 34 also offers hope. In a prophetic foreshadowing of Jesus, God promised He's on His way:

I Myself will search for My sheep

and look after them ...

I Myself will tend my sheep

and have them lie down,

declares the Sovereign LORD.
I will search for the lost

and bring back the strays.

I will bind up the injured

and strengthen the weak ...

I will shepherd the flock

with justice.

Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh

come to rescue His flock.

When Jesus calls Himself

the Good Shepherd,

Jesus is saying He is

the God of Israel

come to confront the

wicked leaders (bad shepherds)

of His people,

to search for and rescue

His scattered people

("My sheep")

to gather, guide, and care

for them as their mighty

Shepherd King.

Is Jesus really identifying

Himself with God?

Later in John 10
(after He says,
"I Am the Gate"

and 

"I Am the Good Shepherd"),

Jesus says, 
"I and the Father are one"

— and the bad shepherds

pick up boulders to

stone Him for blasphemy.

The Good Shepherd was cast out to gather you in, injured to bind you up, mistreated to meet you in your woundedness and tend to you with His care.

The Shepherd's Voice

Back in Word War I, Turkish soldiers stole a flock of sheep on a hillside outside Jerusalem. They used stealth like thieves, weapons like robbers, and the apparent indifference of a hired hand for the flock's welfare. The shepherd looked like no match for them. What was his staff against their guns? His solitary effort against their collective strength?

Yet the shepherd had a secret weapon. He put his hand to his mouth and gave the familiar call he used every day to gather the flock. At the sound of his voice, the sheep turned from the enemy and ran back to their shepherd.

Get to know the voice of your Savior. The villains may seem strong and scary, but you can find comfort and security in Jesus's voice.

+ God Is On Your Side

pgs. 144-152

God Speaks at the Toilet

I tiptoe to the bathroom and bend onto the cold tiles. 

Thanks, whoever the f&*k You are, I say, for keeping me sober.

I feel small, kneeling there. Small and needy and inadequate. Pathetic, even. Like somebody who can't handle things. Which is fairly accurate, after all, for the average inmate.

If You're God I say, You know I feel small and needy and inadequate. And tonight I want a drink.

The silence fails to say anything back. I glare at it. It feels like judgment, the silence. And at that silence I give off rage; I start ranting prayer in my head that goes something like this: F&*k You for making me an alcoholic. For making my baby sick all the time when he was so tiny. You're a f&*cking amateur, torturing a baby like that, You f&*k. And my daddy withering in that form. What pleasure do You get from ... smiting people?

I feel something stir in me, a small wisp of something in my chest, frail as smoke. It is — strangely — the sweetness of my love for my daddy and my son. It blesses me an instant like incense.

My eyes sting, and I blurt out, Thanks for them. I feel the stillness around me widen a notch. Thanks that my son is sleeping safe at home without fever or coughing; and my husband, who may yet take me back.

The boundaries of my skin grow thin as I kneel there squinting my eyes shut. For a nanosecond, I am lucent. Inside it: an idea, the thread of a different perspective than any I've ever had. It's a thought so counterintuitive, so unlike how I think, it feels as if it originates outside me. The voice — the idea — comes in solid quiet in the midst of psychic chaos, and it says, If Dev hadn't been sick so much, you'd have kept drinking ...

Which is wholly true. If Dev had been one of those blank-eyed, anesthetized little blobs who slept infancy away, I could've sotted up his early years. Staying up with him — what with the trips to the hospital, which I'd thought were my punishment or ruin — I'd found a strange kind of rescue. 

Vis-à-vis God speaking to me,
I mean ... the reversals of attitude

so contrary to my typical thoughts

— so solidly true —

as to seem divinely external.

And quiet these thoughts are,

strong and quiet.

Then it hits me. I'm actually kneeling before a toilet. The throne, as other drunks call it. How many drunken nights and slungover mornings did I worship at this altar, emptying myself of poison. And yet to pray to something above me, something invisible, had — before now — seemed degrading.

"Leave all that stuff here with me. 

God wants you to put this stuff down now.

Go wear the world like a loose garment.

And be of good cheer.
If you let God in,

He'll take this shame from you."

"God's after you.

Struggle all you want ...

You are here.
What's keeping you from 

(belonging to Him)?"

+ Lit,

pgs. 275-277, 303

Open the Gate

The early Church put the image of the Good Shepherd on their tombs. Why? Because it was a sign of their trust in Christ, their Good Shepherd, to guide them through "the valley of the shadow of death" to "green pastures" and "still waters" on the other side.

Even in this darkest journey, they didn't have to fear any evil, because Christ was with them.

Even in this darkest hour,

God is on your side.

+ God Is On Your Side

pgs. 153-154

Living Now That You're Dying

Last week Ross Douthat interviewed Ben Sasse for the New York Times. They discussed what Ben has been talking about a lot these days, which is that Ben is dying.

Watching Ben, you would almost not know what you were watching. You would think you were watching a free man who, despite appearances, is going to live forever and he knows it.

Watching him in that interview brought one particular passage to mind, and I’ll bet it has worked its way deep into him at some point, because what he is saying sounds so much like it.

The passage is the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism, published in 1563 and taught to children and grieving adults ever since. 

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. 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 has set me free from the tyranny 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 Father in heaven; 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.

The comfort Heidelberg promises you is not that God will keep you healthy. Not that life will make sense, or that the righteous will outlive the wicked, or that your prayers for healing will be answered the way you hope they’ll be. Not even the forgiveness of your sins, though of course that is a huge part of a Christian’s comfort.

What Heidelberg says about the source of your comfort, the only comfort you get in life and in death, is that you belong, body and soul. That you are not your own. That Christ, who bought you with his blood, is watching over you so carefully that not even a hair can fall from your head unless the Father in heaven intends it.

If you belong to Him,

then nothing that happens to you

can un-belong you.

That is the whole point of Heidelberg #1. And that is a comfort most of us find hard to actually take hold of until something comes along and strips away all the other comforts we were leaning on instead.

+ S. Sauls on

"How Ben Sasse is Living Now

That He Is Dying"

Bonus Good Shepherd Posts

+ Cling to Christ
+ Facing Fear 

+ Never Too Lost 

+ Why Believe? 

+ Emmaus Road

 

With wild wonder and hope,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

CN: The Pursuing God: Furious Love Brings Life into Death

The Father is,

through the Son and in the Spirit,

reconciling the world.

Jesus is the unique and decisive way

God has come to us.

+ The Pursuing God

| 2 | 

Taking Down the Corporation

Crucifixion Cont.

Fish on the Dock

Things have been ordered toward justice by our loving heavenly Father. We're designed for "life, and  ... more abundantly," for shalom, or flourishing in right relationship, so we can thrive. Creation is a gift from a God who is for us. But what happens if we reject this right relationship? If we rebel against the Creator's ordering? If we tear at the fabric and rip at the flourishing of God's good world?

Throughout Scriptures, God reminds his people that how we live matters – there are rewards and punishments, blessings and curses, compensation and consequences. The Creator reminds us that swimming in the ocean of his good, loving, and just ways that leads to thriving – this is the natural environment we were made for. But when we rebel against these ways, we're like fish jumping out of the water – leaving our intended environment and flopping around in the distance. + pg. 160

God has an interesting way of showing his anger; he gives us what we want. Thomas Aquinas, one of history's most famous theologians, observed how when we attack God's loving order, we unleash injustice, or disorder, into the way things are supposed to be. A husband's affair affects not only him but shoots a cannon into his marriage and family. Wall Street's bad loans impacted not only greedy bankers but threw a sledgehammer into the global economy. The BP oil spill not only hurt the company but wreaked havoc throughout the gulf. Sin lets loose ruin. ... 

But sin also does something more. It impacts not only the world around us – it impacts us. For Aquinas: "The order of creation is such that when we rebel against the order, we disorder ourselves, losing our interior order and justice to ourselves ...  When humans turn away from this divine love and refuse our debt of justice, humans lack the justice we were created to have, that is inscribed in the created order ... the resulting disorder is itself a punishment."

In other words, when we attack God's loving purposes for our world, it messes us up inside. When we reject the justice of his ways, we corrupt our character. We're like fish jumping out of the water we were made to live in, who wind up flopping around on the dock. This is why, for Aquinas, "sin itself then is a punishment – of sin." 

So again, flopping on the dock is both a natural consequence and divine punishment – at the same time. Part of the problem, perhaps, is that the phrase "natural consequence" is itself misleading. We tend to think of nature as something exists independently of God. But the Creator gifts nature with its being, and sustains it with his very presence – so "natural" doesn't get us away from the Creator; it brings us before him. The natural consequences we experience are mediated by God's sustaining presence in the creation we've disordered. 

We start to see wrath in this picture not as God being mean, or vindictive, or as something opposed to God's holy love, but rather as an expression of God's holy love. Because God desires the goodness and flourishing of his world, wrath is the opposition of God's holy love to that sin which defaces and destroys his good creation, by trying to distance it from him. Like the prodigal son who squanders his inheritance in the distant land, our self-imposed distance from the Father is a punishment. Because we were made for the ocean of God's love. + pgs. 161-163

Furious Love

Miroslav Volf, a theologian and public intellectual, shares a powerful reflection that can help us get started. Living through the horror of the war in Yugoslavia, he reflects: 

"I used to think that wrath
was unworthy of God.
Isn't God love?
Shouldn't divine love
be beyond wrath?
God is love, and
God loves every person
and every creature.
That's exactly why God
is wrathful against some of them.

My last resistance
to the idea of God's wrath
was a casualty of the war
in former Yugoslavia,
the region from which I come.

According to some estimates,
200,000 people were killed and
over 3,000,000 were displaced.
My villages and cities were destroyed,
my people shelled day in and day out,
some of them brutalized beyond imagination,
and I could not imagine God not being angry. 

Or think of Rwanda
in the last decade of the past century,
where 800,000 people were hacked to death
in one hundred days!
How did God react to the carnage?
By doting on the perpetrators
in a grandparently fashion?
By refusing to condemn the bloodbath
but instead affirming
the perpetrator's basic goodness?
Wasn't God fiercely angry with them?

Though I used to complain
about the indecency
of the idea of God's wrath,
I came to think that
I would have to rebel against a God
who wasn't wrathful
at the sight of the world's evil.
God isn't wrathful in spite of being love.
God is wrathful because God is love."

Jesus' eyes are wide open
to all the horror and tragedy
we unleash in his beautiful world.

As the popular slogan puts it,
"If you're not angry,
you're not paying attention."

Well, God is paying attention.
There's plenty of destruction
in our world that should upset us.
As D.E.H. Whiteley observes,
"the opposite of love
is not wrath but indifference."
Fortunately, God is not indifferent.
But too often we are.

+ pgs. 165-167 

When we pay attention to the plight of our neighbors, taking our eyes off our own selfish pursuits, we should be moved by the hurt in our community, the injustice in our city, the devastation in our world. There's an unrighteous anger, but there's a righteous kind too. Righteous anger is helpful in motivating us to action. And it is driven by love.

The real question is not why God would ever get angry enough to intervene, but why God waits so long. I've come to believe it has something to do with God being more patient than we are, and his patience with the destruction we unleash is itself a form of grace. But his patience will not last forever. When our sins have piled up to heaven, the reckoning day comes. ... 

As Swedish theologian Anders Nygren observed, "Only that love which pronounces judgment on all that is not love is in the truest sense restoring and saving love." God's love is not a trite sound bite but an invasive mission to rescue, rebuff, and restore. + pgs. 167-168

All creation is sustained through Jesus and in the Spirit, so it is through Jesus and in the Spirit that these judgments are enacted. This should remind us of God's good character driving the scene. As Frederick Buechner observes, when God pronounces curses, " ... it seems less a matter of vindictively inflicting them with the consequences than of honestly confronting them with the consequences. Because of who they are and what they have done, this is the result." + pgs. 169-170

During Jesus crucifixion, he is mocked, forsaken, and darkness hangs over the land, all Old Testament images for the wrath of God. The simple fact that he dies is significant, for as New Testament lecturer Peter Bolt observes, "death itself is the manifestation of God's wrath." And it's not only that Jesus dies, but how he dies – both Jews and Romans agreed that death by crucifixion was a sign of being under God's curse. Israel's law declared, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." Jesus bears the curse of the law under exilic wrath in order to redeem us from it. 

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus prays whether "this cup" might be taken from him – the cup was a major Old Testament reference for "cup of God's wrath." Israel saw her exile as drinking this cup, but God's fury would not last forever – the cup would eventually be empty. When his anger subsided, the cup fully poured out, God would return for her and the end of exile would come. Isaiah held out hope for the day when God would say, "Behold I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more." The end of exile would come. Israel would be reconciled to God. 

Jesus sees himself as drinking this cup of divine wrath on the cross, bearing the weight of Israel's exile in his humanity in order to bring her home. Jesus is the head who drinks the cup that hangs over his body of people. And he drinks it down to the dregs. 

Jesus bears the curse of exilic wrath afflicting creation in its distance from the Creator. He soaks in the dark, destructive decay we've unleashed in the masterpiece, to the point that he becomes the curse he's absorbed as he carries it into the grave – to restore the masterpiece by flooding it with the presence of God. + pgs. 171-172 

Unraveling Creation

Jesus absorbs not only our personal and social destruction, but our cosmic destruction as well. ... 

Israel viewed creation as a cosmic temple, intended for God's indwelling presence. Adam is depicted as its priest, called to "work" and "take care of" its garden. These words, work and take care of, are paired together in only one other place in the Bible, to describe the role of the priests in the temple. Sacred gardens were common features of ancient temples, and Israel modeled their temple on the garden of Genesis, intending it to be a microcosm of creation. ... 

When the Spirit of God evacuates the building, giving us the distance from God we crave, the structure of creation collapses in upon itself. ...

Like Babylon's forces of chaos later invading Israel's holy land and destroying the temple, the Flood's forces of chaos sweep in upon the earth and tear down the temple of creation. We've commandeered its steering wheel and rammed the ship into the rocks, away from God, dragging it down beneath the turbulent waters from which it came. + pgs. 173, 175-176 

God is Light, Life, and Love. Move from the Light; pull your world toward darkness. Run from Life; encounter death. Rebel against Love; sink into the collapsing of a self-contained world. This unraveling is the punishment inscribed in a creation ordered for the indwelling presence of its Creator. When our mutiny pulls creation away from the Creator, and he pulls back his sustaining presence, the whole structure flops around on the dock. Creation unravels. God is good. Remove God's goodness and his good world falls apart. We were made to live on dry land, to flourish with our Creator in the good earth he's made, but we continually drive away from God, down toward the chaotic waters of oblivion – and drag the world down with us. 

At the cross, Jesus takes all this head-on: our personal, social, and cosmic judgment. He comes under the dark, destructive decay we've unleashed, crashes under the turbulent waves of the tohu va wohu, grasping our hand deep in the depths below as he receives our unraveling of creation into himself – until it unravels him. The One through whom the world was made is himself unmade. 

And yet, once he has identified fully with our tragic condition, grasping our hand and uniting himself with us in the depths below, the Father parts chaotic waters of the abyss once again, raising his Son from his baptism in the grave, and leading us in the wake of his Spirit behind him, the resurrected head of humanity and firstfruits of the new creation. + pgs. 178-179

Key Idea
  

Caricature: 
Wrath contradicts God's love
and is inappropriate for his character.

Gospel: 
Wrath arises from God's love
and deals honestly with our world.

| 3 | 
Rising Up from the Waters:
Resurrection

Life into Death

The Father is,
through the Son and in the Spirit,
reconciling the world.

The Father, Son, and Spirit
remain sovereign
through the event of the cross.

The Son is sovereign over the grave,
even as he lies dead in it – 
because the Father and Spirit
will be faithful to raise him.

The Father is sovereign, even as
his Son marches toward Golgotha – 
because Jesus will not join
humanity's rebellion and
will be faithful unto death.

The Spirit is sovereign, even when
entering the grieving
and groaning of creation
to apply the work of Jesus
to our broken world,
because the Father and Son
will receive the world he brings.

The hope of the world is
God's sovereign love. ... 

As pastor and author Tim Keller observes: "God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself." In the words of theologian Adam Johnson, "through Jesus Christ the triune God brought the reality of sin into his own proper life, that he might deal with it in and through himself." Or as Benedict XVI, the former pope, puts it: "God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes the suffering upon himself. ... God himself "drinks the cup" of every horror to the dregs and thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which, through suffering, transforms the darkness." ... 

The cross and resurrection most powerfully reveal the Trinity because they display their faithful love to one another amid our darkest depths. The Father, Son, and Spirit take in our suffering, shattering, and death in order to overwhelm it with the life, light, and love they share as the one God. + pgs. 202-204

Key Idea  

Caricature: 
The Trinity is an abstract doctrine
with no relevance for today.

Gospel: 
The Trinity changes everything – 
the Father, Son, and Spirit are
a holy communion of love
who invite us to participate
in their eternal life. 

Bad Bridge 

Jesus is: the Way our world is reconciled to God, the Truth of God's goodness outstretched to embrace resistant rebels, and the Life that restores our God-haunted, sin-struck world, back into the presence of the Father. The cross is not a bridge we use to get to God; it is the flag of God's kingdom planted deep beneath the death-dealing soil of the cracked and barren earth we tread. It is the bridge through which God breaks into us. The resurrection is not a motivational talk to get our lives together; it is God's life-giving power breaking through the walls of our rebellion, spilling around the ramparts we've erected, to receive all who will be embraced by his reconciling goodness, to restore all who will repentantly submit to his kingdom reign, to flood the earth with God's glory when all things are made new in the power of Christ's victory. Jesus is not a path we set out into the universe on to go find God. Jesus is the way God has come to find us.  + pgs. 210

The True Myth

Our stories and traditions reveal, in many ways, our deepest longings, hopes, and desires. Our stories are projected from earth up to heaven, while Jesus bears an important distinction, coming from heaven to earth. In the words of Joseph Pearce, "Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality. ... (where we encounter) God expressing Himself through Himself, with Himself, and in Himself." Jesus is the "True Myth," who does not annihilate all the dreams and aspirations embodied in our stories but rather, in some important ways, fulfills them. + pgs. 211-212 

Jesus is good, true, and beautiful, and reveals in his presence that in our culture which is good, true, and beautiful. It can only be good, true, and beautiful by participating, whether its maker wants it to be or not, in the structure of creation held by him at the center of the universe in the power of his Spirit. ... 

In our culture-at-large, my eyes are increasingly drawn to Jesus when I see the doctors bringing health to my father's body, teachers pouring wisdom into my daughter, janitors performing microbiological warfare on enemies of my immune system, or entrepreneurs launching initiatives for the flourishing of our community. ...  

God is the Author and Orchestrator of our world. All things stand in relation to him. In making culture, we can look to our Creator for guidance in our vocations. Those in education can look to Jesus as Teacher; for those in medicine, he is Healer; for those in politics, he is King; for those in law, he is our Judge; for those in communication, he is the Word; for those raising children, God is our loving Father and nurturing Spirit. Our world is grounded in God. "In him we live and move and have our being." Jesus is the way God has come to us, revealing the truth that grounds creation, that we might have life if we receive him, allowing him to cast away the corruption and treasure the true as he refines us in his image. + pgs. 215, 218

Our stories and traditions reveal, in many ways, our deepest longings, hopes, and desires. Our stories are projected from earth up to heaven, while Jesus bears an important distinction, coming from heaven to earth. In the words of Joseph Pearce, "Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality. ... (where we encounter) God expressing Himself through Himself, with Himself, and in Himself." Jesus is the "True Myth," who does not annihilate all the dreams and aspirations embodied in our stories but rather, in some important ways, fulfills them. + pgs. 211-212 

Jesus is good, true, and beautiful, and reveals in his presence that in our culture which is good, true, and beautiful. It can only be good, true, and beautiful by participating, whether its maker wants it to be or not, in the structure of creation held by him at the center of the universe in the power of his Spirit. ... 

In our culture-at-large, my eyes are increasingly drawn to Jesus when I see the doctors bringing health to my father's body, teachers pouring wisdom into my daughter, janitors performing microbiological warfare on enemies of my immune system, or entrepreneurs launching initiatives for the flourishing of our community. ... 

God is the Author and Orchestrator of our world. All things stand in relation to him. In making culture, we can look to our Creator for guidance in our vocations. Those in education can look to Jesus as Teacher; for those in medicine, he is Healer; for those in politics, he is King; for those in law, he is our Judge; for those in communication, he is the Word; for those raising children, God is our loving Father and nurturing Spirit. Our world is grounded in God. "In him we live and move and have our being." Jesus is the way God has come to us, revealing the truth that grounds creation, that we might have life if we receive him, allowing him to cast away the corruption and treasure the true as he refines us in his image. + pgs. 215, 218

Upside-Down Kingdom

Before the name Christian took hold,
Jesus' first ambassadors
were simply called
followers of "the Way."

They wanted to walk behind Jesus
and follow in his dust.
What was this way?
He summed it up for his disciples:
"If any of you wants to be my follower,
you must turn from your selfish ways,
take up your cross, and follow me."

Jesus calls us to the way of the cross.
The cross is not a way
we break out of the world
to get up to Jesus,
but a way Jesus breaks into the world
through us as his people.

In the words of Tullian Tchividjian,
Jesus forms us on this journey
to be a people marked by
"giving rather than taking,
self-sacrifice rather than self-protection,"
dying rather than killing ...
(to find) that we win by losing,
we triumph through defeat, and
we become rich by giving ourselves away."

This is tough for our culture of glory to accept. We want to find God with our best foot forward rather than let God find us in the secrets of our darkest closets. We strive to minimize our suffering and make our best life now. We're addicted to self-help: always on to that next diet fad, that next fashion trend, that next project or philosophy to put our lives together, with Oprah and Dr. Phil as our high priests along for the ride. If we get ourselves together, maybe we'll get God in the process.

But God beckons from our brokenness, breaks in through the back door, invites us to encounter him in our insecurities, sits in our suffering, waiting for us to join him there. And when his grace rather than our glory becomes the starting point, there's freedom to enter the world as it is, to not ignore or sugarcoat the pain but to call it what it is and graciously give our lives away for his glory there, as signposts of the upside-down, resurrecting kingdom.

Jesus is a one-way bridge moving contrary to our culture of glory. While we're striving to move up from earth toward heaven, climbing the social ladder to "make a name for ourselves," God is breaking in from heaven to earth, bringing resurrection power through the back door to name us as his own. We're invited not to set out and find God, but to stop running and be found. Not to strive harder and do, but to hear him say, "It is done!" To let the Father lift us on his back and carry us on the strength of his shoulders across the wasteland that surrounds us into the world he is making his home.

Key Idea

Caricature: 
Jesus is the one and only way
we go out to find God.

Gospel: 
Jesus is the unique and decisive way
God has come to us.

Blind Date 

Augustine famously said, "The church is a whore, but she's my mother." I love this quote and the tension it expresses. On the one hand, we have this checkered history (and present), yet Jesus pursues us through her. I wouldn't know Jesus without his people, and neither would you. The church has carried the words of Scripture, the witness of the Spirit, and the sacraments of God through history right on down to us. Like Hosea, Jesus pursues his messy bride and identifies with us, even when it's in confrontation. Our hope as the church is not in our greatness but in the greatness of God. 

We receive the presence of God through the people of God. As Cyprian of Carthage famously said in the early church, "you cannot have God for your Father unless you have the church for your mother." We receive God's life through her, and from her womb in the power of the Spirit we are born into the presence of God. 

Jesus is a better Hosea. He comes after us in our weakness, in our broken areas, the places where we don't have it all together. We don't have to perform for Jesus, to try and make ourselves into a shiny, sexy supermodel so he'll want to take us as his wife. Jesus delights to pursue us at our worst, to meet us where we are and take us as we are. As Luther observed, "The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it." God isn't looking for the beautiful to give his love to; it's the reception of God's love that makes us beautiful. Jesus comes looking not for our trophies, but our scars. 

So there is a freedom to get vulnerable before God with where we're really at, our frustrations and disappointments, the areas we feel as though we're a letdown or we don't measure up. Those are precisely the areas where we find ourselves in need of grace, before a God who loves to give it. The beauty of the gospel is not that we make ourselves good for God to need us; it's that God wants us and finds us where we're at. + pgs. 249-250

Key Idea

Caricature: 
God prefers the polished,
pretty, and put together.

Gospel: 
God goes after Nazis and whores,
victims and oppressors,
to make them his people and his bride.

Vampires

Here's the major distinction that sets us apart from the vampires: Jesus makes us bearers of life, rather than death, to a world that he loves. When Jesus takes us to himself, he makes us part of himself. He doesn't just invite us to join a club; he makes us part of his body. The church is not so much a collection of individuals pursuing God together as, rather, the body of people through whom God pursues the world. Jesus continues to embody his outpoured love into the world – through us. The Pursuing God makes us a pursuing people.

The point is not simply to practice a religious ritual, but to come to the living Christ at the center of our life as a people. While Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox have disagreed on the exact nature of how the Eucharist works, all the major traditions have agreed that Jesus is actually present through it. In the power of Jesus' Spirit, his presence is alive with us today. ... 

Augustine envisioned Jesus as saying: "I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me." 

As Jesus binds us into union with himself, we are brought into the body of Christ. Communion is not just an act between me and Jesus, but a participation in the people of God. As Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann observes, the original meaning of the word liturgy was "an action by which a group of people become something corporately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals." Jesus gathers us together and forms us as his people. The Eucharist is the body that makes us a body.  ... 

When we receive Jesus' body as gift, we are brought into the gift: we become part of the body of Christ we receive. Indeed, union with Jesus is wrapped up in the very nature of the gift itself. We become Jesus' gift to the world. 

Jesus takes us in his Spirit, breaks us like that bread, and pours us out like wine, giving our lives in sacrificial love to his world. In the words of Catholic theologian William Cavanaugh, the Eucharist is "the heart of true religio (religion), a practice of binding us to the body of Christ which is our salvation ... the stunning public leitourgia (liturgy) in which humans are made members of God's very body. .... As members of the Body, we then become nourishment for others – including those not part of the visible Body – in the unending trinitarian economy of gratuitous giving and joyful reception." 

The Father embraces us through his Son, in the power of their Spirit, and pours our lives out for his world. Jesus continues to take on flesh and bone today, as he unites himself to us through his Spirit for the Father's glory in the world. + pgs. 254-256

Communion confronts my individualism. ... In Communion, I am being gathered into the global and historical body of Christ. I am bound with the Afghan villager and the Vietnamese businesswoman across national borders, united with my homeless neighbor and the CEO who runs my bank, drawn into life together with the soldier, the soccer mom, and the starving artist sitting in the pew next to me – the people of God in all our diverse array. Jesus didn't die so I could hang out with my buddies; he died to reconcile a gloriously diverse humanity.

This confronts the individualistic way many Americans approach life with Jesus. For example, we often read the New Testament books as if they were written directly to us like personal letters. But as a friend once pointed out, "The yous of the New Testament are plural. ... 

The emphasis is less on "me" and more on "we." God cares about our life together as his people. The one another statements throughout the New Testament also strongly showcase this dynamic: Romans 12:10 encourages us to "honor one another above yourselves"; Galatians 5:13 to "serve one another humbly in love"; and 1 Thessalonians 5:11 to "encourage one another and build each other up." ... 

Lesslie Newbigin observes how we want to encounter God through the "skylight," opening our own personal window to the heavens above to have a direct one-on-one encounter with God. But God prefers instead to come through the "front door," encountering us through the neighbor who comes bearing the message and presence of Jesus.

Why? What reason could God possibly have? It is because, Newbigin reflects, God is not as interested in millions of scattered, one-on-one relationships with isolated individuals as he is in building a body, forming a community, gathering a people to himself and through himself to one another. "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." God enters through our front door so that we can only receive him by receiving the presence of our neighbor. We enter his body by receiving his body. + pgs. 256-258 

Baptism is entrance into the church. We rise not only into union with Jesus, but into the body of Christ in all its fullness. The two are simultaneous. We do not join our lives to Jesus, then go find a church. When we are bound to Jesus, we are – by the very nature of that act – bound into union with the church. Union with Jesus means communion with his people.

While Jesus' death and resurrection are central, when we zoom out to the broader biblical storyline, baptism is loaded with more layers of meaning. The waters, as we have seen, are a Hebrew symbol for the primordial chaos, the tohu wa vohu, the state of disorder that sin wants to unravel the world back into. As we go under the waters, we identify with the trajectory of our sin: the nothingness of separation from God, the annihilation of the world in its distance from our heavenly Father, the unraveling of creation under our rebellion against the Creator. 

And yet, God's gracious Spirit parts the waters once again. As in the beginning to make space for creation; as in Noah's day to bring forth restoration; as in Exodus to bring slaves into freedom, the Creator parts the waters, bringing us out from the enslaving chaos of our life under sin and into the fresh space of kingdom life for his new creation. 

Baptism is not only our entrance into God; it is God's entrance into us, and through us into his world. Some people think of the church as a fortress, a holy huddle clambering inside the defensive walls, trying to protect ourselves from the big bad world outside. We want to make sure we get "upstairs" to God and aren't left behind on earth below. But the life of the church works in the opposite direction. 

As we are brought into the embrace of the Father, through the life of the Son, in the power of the Spirit, we are caught up through God's pursuit of us into God's pursuit of the world. We are no longer afraid of being tainted or inconvenienced by the messiness around us. We can dive headfirst into the sin-struck war zone of God's world to embody his life, hope, and sacrificial love. + pgs. 259-260

Bigfoot Jesus

Jesus wants to fill his world through us. Heaven is breaking into earth. A people are coming under the rule of the King. Jesus takes us to himself as his body, in order to embody his presence in the world through us today. The Father is present through his Word and in his Spirit, gathering a people to him and pouring them out for his world. We who feed on the body become the body. We who drink the blood are poured out. The Pursuing God pursues through us. + pg. 271

Key Idea

Caricature: 
The church is a collection
of individuals pursuing God together.

Gospel: 
The church is a body of people
through whom God pursues the world.

Next post

Yawning at Tigers Part 1 of 3

– Sully

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CN: The Pursuing God: Jesus Covers the Cost to Set You Free

A good place to start
with the crucifixion

is to recognize that Jesus

is an active agent,

not a hapless victim.

+ The Pursuing God

City Notes

City Notes are more than a book review. They are meant to provide you with direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read.

| 2 | 
Taking Down the Corporation:
Crucifixion

Lion and Prey

A good place to start with the crucifixion is to recognize that Jesus is an active agent, not a hapless victim.

He is not coerced or manipulated
to the cross against his will.
Jesus boldly declares,
"No one takes my life from me;
I lay it down of my own accord."

Jesus goes of his own volition
to accomplish his purposes.
He is taking down the destructive power
of sin, death, and hell. 
Jesus is a lion; the cross is his prey. 

Jesus "set his face (toward) Jerusalem" long before his execution and, like an arrow streaming toward its target, made his way toward Zion to atone for the sin of the world. Jesus is constantly saying things like, "the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, and be killed," while the disciples, confused and blind, rebuke him, saying, "May it never be!" While we see the cross as a detour, Jesus sees it as a destination. Jesus sets sail into the storm to bring us home. ... 

The Gospels depict the Son of God taking on flesh and emptying himself on our behalf, running toward the cross as a man on a mission. ... While he truly agonizes and suffers, Jesus is thirty-three, emotionally stable, and goes to Golgotha to conquer our grave. Jesus is a jaguar out to devour death. 

The cross is not happening to Jesus; Jesus is happening to the cross.  ... Jesus goes to the cross compelled by affection, driven by desire, moved by longing. He sees the cross as an act of service, explaining his mission: "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The cross is a signpost of divine love poured out for the world. Jesus points to the cross as a way of life, saying that those who love him are to "take up their cross" and follow in his footsteps, to lay down our lives in sacrificial love for others. A cruciform life is an act of love. + pgs. 90-91

Why does Jesus bear our exile and death? To better understand this, let's return to the early church's idea of recapitulation: that Jesus relives our story, being faithful where we've rebelled, to be established as the new head of humanity. Jesus relives Israel's story: his virgin birth reminds us of the nation's miraculous birth from Sarah's barren womb; his childhood years in Egypt recall Israel's early years under Pharaoh; his wilderness temptation relives Israel's desert testing; his life and ministry fulfill his people's kingdom calling to embody God's reign in the land.  

Jesus faithfully bears Israel's story in his own life to redeem it. In Jesus' rejection and crucifixion, he is bearing Israel's exile and death, living out this next major era of his people's story. Jesus is an Israelite, and as her Messiah he carries her story within himself in order to redeem it. As Jesus is cast outside the city, he is recapitulating Israel's banishment from the land. As he is crucified under the pagan powers, he takes upon himself her national destruction. Though personally innocent, he takes upon himself the exile and death of his people. 

And Jesus bears our exile and death as the new Adam. As Paul observes, "Sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." Like Adam, we've all wanted to be like God rather than with God; we've all declared independence from the kingdom; we've all severed earth from heaven. Our distance from the Giver of Life gives rise to death. Sin's river flows downstream along the banks of exile and empties in its deadly ocean. 

And death is the ultimate penalty. "Sin reigned in death," writes Paul, depicting evil as a king who rules over a dominion called death. Sin tears apart creation, back toward the nothingness from which it came. Our rebellion rips apart the world, unleashing the disruptive decay that's out to destroy the masterpiece. 

But fortunately, Jesus bears our exile and death, Paul concludes, to exhaust its power, "so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." So when the Artist absorbs the corruption in his masterpiece, when the Lamb takes upon himself the sin of the world, when Jesus endures our exile and death, he is receiving the penalty our rebellion has unleashed; he is bearing our punishment for sin. ... 

The early church had a saying, "The unassumed is the unhealed." What they meant was that Jesus takes on, or assumes, the full weight of our condition in order to redeem it. If our world's distance from God is the problem, then God bridging that distance to unite us with him – in our condition – is the solution. 

It is Jesus' union with us that brings our healing. If Jesus only had a soul with no body, for example, his union with us would only extend to our souls. But since we "have flesh and blood, he too shared in (our) humanity," Hebrews tells us, in order to assume the full weight of our condition. He was "made like his brothers and sisters in every way," to break the power of death.  

Similarly, if Jesus took on a body but never suffered temptation or pain, his redemption would not enter the depths of our distress with the same weight and power. So "he himself suffered when he was tempted," Hebrews goes on, in order to identify fully with us. Through our union with him, he is now able to help us when we are tempted, lifting us up with his power as his people. + pgs. 92-94

Sin makes us less human, not more.
We're not talking about accidental mistakes;
we're talking about willful insurgency.
We were made in the image of God,
to reflect his glory,
yet when we reject and run from God,
we scratch markers across the surface
of our lives that efface this reflection.
We dehumanize ourselves
and diminish the glory
of life we were given. 

Irenaeus famously declared, "The glory of God is man fully alive." Jesus is "fully alive" without sin – and God's goal in Jesus is to make us fully alive, more human, not less. Jesus is more human without sin, not less, as "the image of the invisible God," radiantly reflecting the splendor of the Father in pulsating, life-giving glory. When we look at Jesus, we see the face of the Father clearly displayed. Jesus is true humanity.

And yet, though he had no sin, Jesus becomes sin for us. The Artist absorbs our destruction, the Savior soaks up our death, to the point that he is identified with it. The fact that Jesus is spotless, blameless, without defect or blemish, is part of what makes him not only a sacrifice, but the perfect sacrifice, to bear our exile and death – and to annihilate it in the grave. The Deliverer takes in our decay in order to make us whole. Jesus joins us in our distance in order to bring us home. + pg. 95

Jesus is a Wall Street CEO 

Forgiving your neighbor doesn't do away with the bill or dissolve the damage; it means you eat the cost. ...  

At the cross, God is eating the cost. The Father, Son, and Spirit are forgiving the debt by dealing with it themselves. The Artist is absorbing the corruption in his masterpiece. The CEO is bearing the exile and death of Humanity Inc. The Savior is swallowing our sin in order to make us whole. Why can't God just forgive the debt? This is what is happening at the cross: God is just(ly) forgiving the debt – by personally covering the cost. God takes in the decay we've unleashed to extinguish it in the power of divine love. 

I misspoke earlier when I said the White House gave Wall Street the most expensive bailout of human history. Actually, the most expensive bailout was when the Father established his incarnate Son as the new CEO of a corrupt corporation called Humanity Inc. and together, in the power of their Spirit, they took upon themselves the most outrageous debt-forgiveness plan the world has ever known. + pgs. 100-101

Key Idea  

Caricature: 
Jesus bearing our punishment
is an act of divine child abuse.

Gospel: 
Jesus bearing our punishment
is an act of divine love.

Muggers and Physicians

On the one hand, the cross arises from the absence of God. At the climax of Jesus' crucifixion, he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The Father's protective presence has left the building, the glory has departed the temple of Jesus' body, and his Son is now vulnerable as the pagan powers invade to tear down this Most Holy Place, to desecrate the sanctuary of his flesh and bone, to demolish him to rubble and carry him down to captivity in the grave. Jesus is forsaken, the temple of his body destroyed. The cross arises from God's absence.

And yet, from another angle, God is present in the crucifixion. When Jesus cries out, he cries out to My God! And you don't cry out to someone who isn't there. More so, Jesus' final words are of trust: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." As Jesus breathes his last, he entrusts himself to his Father and looks to him for vindication on the other side of the grave. As we murder God's Son, the Father's arms receive the tattered, lifeless body of his beloved child. God is present at the cross.

Here's what's crazy, however: God is doing something through this event. The Father is present not only over his Son, but in his Son. At Golgotha, Paul declares, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." In Jesus' darkest hour, the Father is actively present accomplishing something – the reconciliation of the world. Colossians declares in a similar vein: "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. God is dwelling in Jesus, working through Jesus, actively present at the cross – and his endgame is reconciling the world.

God's motives are radically different, however, from ours: we are out to crush the Son, while the Father is bearing our destruction in him to exalt him as Savior of the world. We kill Jesus to tear him down while God is at work uniting us to him, tearing our corrupted body down in him to ultimately build us up and lift us up through him. We are striving to keep our world distant from God, while God is – in the very same event! – drawing our world most intimately close to him. The Father is present through his Son and in his Spirit at the cross, working to bring us home. + pgs. 107-108 

Jesus was, like Joseph, mistreated and sold into captivity by his brothers (Israel), where he was beaten and crushed by a pagan empire (Rome), and enslaved in a foreign land (the grave). And yet, God was not simply absent or watching from the sidelines through all this. He was at work for our redemption: the Father united his Son to us in our famished and failing estate, in the midst of our arrogant empires, in order to save the world through him.

Jesus is our greater Joseph. As the resurrected King, he now stands before us, the brothers and sisters who betrayed him, and offers the reconciling embrace of forgiveness. We can hear Jesus echo the ancient words of his ancestor Joseph, spoken now to us regarding his death: "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." God and we are both involved in the same event, though with radically different motives – in fact, opposite motives. Jesus views the tragic event under which he suffered, the cross, as both the cruel power of our sin and the sovereign, saving action of God, in a way that magnifies his Father's goodness and love. God intends good; we intend evil. While we seek to destroy his Son, the Father is judging evil in order to deliver us through him.

So the cross is the revelation of God's sovereign, self-giving love. God is taking on the destructive power of sin, death, and the grave. The Father is working through his Son and in his Spirit – for the reconciliation of the world. The Pursuing God is finding us in the distant land, to bring us into his divine life and carry us home. + pgs. 110-111 

For God So Loved ...

So at the cross, to borrow respected theologian J. Todd Billings' language, the Father "has compassion" on his suffering Son (who cries out as the innocent one in corporate identification as our head). The Father "grieves over" creation's self-destruction (borne in the flesh of his Son). The Father "is angry" at the cross (in response to our evil, injustice, and wickedness fully displayed). The Father "delights in" the cross (as it displays the obedience of the Son ordered towards the restoration of creation's goodness).

The Father has a massive, multifaceted relation to the death of his incarnate Son. One of the reasons the cross is so profound is that it reveals the beautiful love of God from so many different angles (like the compassion, grief, anger, and delight mentioned above). Like a symphony when multiple instruments play in harmony, all these dimensions of God's affective relation to the world are revealed in the power of the cross.

All of these angles are, to again borrow Billings's language, "the appropriate relational, affective response" of God's impassable holy love – the Father is not "blindsided or manipulated" by the cross, but acts in a way that is "utterly consistent with his identity as the covenant Lord." The Father does not "lose himself," but rather is fully himself – the life, light, and love of his being in relation to the multifaceted angles of all that he is sovereignly engaging and accomplishing at the cross. + pgs. 118-119

If we look through a more robust relational lens (at the cross), things take on a new light. We see not only the passion of the Son, but the sacrificial love of the Father. The One of whom the Father said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," bears our destruction in his flesh as he carries our sin and death into the tomb. As the Son goes into exile, he bears our distance in his humanity. The Father introduces this distance in order to bind the Son in union with fallen humanity and raise us with him from the grave.

They act in one accord, with an unbroken communion of will, in love for the world through the power of their Spirit, as the Father's greatest object of most intimate affection, the eternal beloved Son, is shredded to pieces and severed from the earth into the grave. On Holy Saturday, while Jesus lies dead and buried, the living, loving Father looks upon the desolate earth that covers the face of his dead, incarnate Son.

The Father makes, I would suggest, the greatest sacrifice in the event of the cross. He does not passively suffer the world, but he does something much greater. The Father actively endures the death of the Son. + pgs. 121-122 

Key Idea  

Caricature: 
The Father is cold, distant,
and unengaged at the cross.

Gospel: 
The Father endures
the greatest sacrifice of all:
the death of the Son.

Destroy This Temple

Why did Jesus identify himself
with the temple?

The temple was
the center of the people of God,
the "hot spot" of God's presence,
like Jesus, where the Creator dwelt
most intimately in creation.

We tend to think of it as tiny,
like a regular building,
but it was massive,
taking up around
a quarter of the city of Jerusalem.

We tend to think of it as a religious site,
but its significance was like
Wall Street, Times Square, and
the White House all rolled into one 
– the hub of Israel's political,
economic, and social existence.

The temple was
the center of the kingdom.

And of the nations. Israel sat at the crossroads of the mighty empires, at the intersection of the trade routes between ancient powerhouses such as Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Rome. They traveled through her to get to one another. God places Israel there to be a "light for the nations," a "kingdom of priests," living a life that displayed God as King to her neighbors. And the temple was her headquarters.

Israel saw the temple as something like the umbilical cord of the world. God resided there as King, and from there his kingdom was mediated to the nations. This was where the Creator made his home in creation, and from which his presence extended to the earth. If Israel was at the center of the nations, the temple was at the center of Israel. ... 

Jesus fulfills the temple. He is where the Creator makes his home in creation, where the King resides at the center of the kingdom, where God's presence most intimately dwells – the umbilical cord that brings life to the earth. + pgs. 129-130, 132

Dead Meat 

Back in the day, sacrifice was universal. From Egypt to Rome, China to the Americas, and giant civilizations to nomadic indigenous peoples – it was a staple of ancient life. In fact, on the historical scene we today are the oddballs.

Sacrificial animals were often at the center of a community celebration. Far from devaluing the animal, this often added a sacred significance. I think I got a sense of this once, attending an indigenous ceremony in which the elder offered a public prayer of gratefulness to the Creator for the sheep that was about to provide the community meal. Laying her hands on the lamb's head, she offered words of thanks and recognition that life is received from life given. The ceremony seemed to say, "Life is gift." And the proper response is gratitude.

Then they ate the meat. This may seem too obvious to mention, but many seem under the impression that animals were just killed for the gods and then tossed in the trash. For Israel, the sacrificial system went a long way toward feeding the priestly tribe and providing for community celebrations. The irony is that throwing unused food in the trash is way more indicative of the modern West than the ancient world. 

We still kill animals today, though most often without the recognition of life given or gratefulness. We are disconnected from the process. We get our meat shrink-wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam at Costco, cut into perfect proportions, sanitized, and clean. And we definitely don't treat their lives as sacred: we crowd our animals into jam-packed stalls far from the open fields, standing in their excrement, unable to move, and stuff them full of antibiotics to deal with the disease that floods their unlivable conditions.

We should be wary before too quickly pointing a finger at the ancient world; we may find a much larger mirror pointing right back at us. Our culture hasn't stopped killing animals; we've stopped remembering that life is sacred. We haven't lost the dead meat, simply the awareness that life is gift. + pgs. 136-137

The most honest way to receive life is to acknowledge that it is given. Our lives are not earned but received; our breath is upheld by gift. When we deny this, we cut against the grain of the universe. We are not our own; we belong to the creation that sustains us – and ultimately to the Creator from whom it has come. ... 

For Israel, many of her sacrifices were simply ways of saying, "Thank you" and "I'm sorry." For example, in Leviticus 1-7, the grain and fellowship offerings were ways of saying thank you, while the sin, guilt, and burnt offerings were ways of saying I'm sorry – and saying this together as a people to God. The food wasn't thrown away but rather provided for the Levites (the tribe of priests), and for the national celebration (think of the biggest neighborhood block barbecue you've ever seen) with one another and God. Community formation was in view – to be a people inscribed with humility and gratefulness before their Creator. ... 

Israel was unique from her neighbors in important ways. In the surrounding empires, the gods were often seen as violent and capricious, so sacrifice was a way to appease them – to get them to bless your crops, make you virile, and beat your enemies.

Israel, however, approached things differently. To them, sacrifice was not something you did to get favors from God; it was the way you entered into the favor God already had for you. And Israel got rid of the debauchery – or at least was supposed to. Ancient idol worship was filled with orgies, hedonism, and child sacrifice. Temple prostitution was common. Violent practices mirrored the brutality of the gods being appeased. Babylon's creation story, for example, had one god slicing another in half like a fish, then making heaven and earth from the two bloody filets – creation was a product of violence and sheer power. Ritual practices could celebrate and continue this narrative.

For Israel, however, creation was gift. The Creator brings forth creation in love, and it is to be received and celebrated as such. There was a different underlying story at work. In place of gratuitous violence and hedonistic debauchery, Israel's practices were ordered toward loving submission under the Creator's life-giving reign. + pgs. 138-139

The first civilization in history to bring an end to sacrifice was the Roman Empire – and the reason was Christianity.

The gospel spread throughout the empire, and with the rise of the church came the downfall of the public altars. In the fourth century, as Constantine put an end to the sacrificial slaughter of Christians in the arena and stopped gladiatorial combat, he also removed the requirement of sacrificing to the gods to serve high-ranking positions in the empire, and he eventually outlawed civic sacrifice altogether.

What is shocking is that this was the first time sacrifice was removed from a major civilization, and it rippled out through the centuries into the world as we know it. As Peter Leithart observes: "Constantine's reign marked the beginning of the end of sacrifice. ... A desacrificed civilization has become so commonplace that we think it is the natural order of things. ... Historically speaking, though, we are the aberrations. For millennia every empire, every city, every nation and tribe was organized around sacrifice. Every polity has been a sacrificial polity. We are not, and we have Constantine to thank for that."

Christendom became the first civilization in history to abolish sacrifice. So the next time someone asks you why we no longer offer dead meat to the gods, you can explain it's not because we became more enlightened or rational or less encumbered by superstition. It's because of Jesus.

Christianity's logic, however, was not that sacrifice was bad, but rather that it was no longer needed. The early church did not say, "What a horrible mistake! Thank goodness Jesus finally arrived to set us straight." They said, rather, "Jesus has provided the once-for-all sacrifice that sets our world aright." They did not point back at Israel and say, "Whoa, what a massive blunder all those lambs were!" They pointed instead at Jesus and declared: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" 

The God Who Walks Alone

As as a sign of his faithfulness, God has Abraham bring some animals for a covenant ceremony. Abraham cuts the animals in half and lays the halves opposite each other to make a pathway between them. This may sound weird to us, but was common practice back then: the two parties would walk through the pathway together between the animals as a way of saying, "If I don't keep up my end of the bargain, may I get sliced up like these animals!" With Abraham, however, something strange happens next. God walks through the animals alone.

Great King God takes a stroll on the covenant pathway by himself. The significance? God takes on sole responsibility for this commitment to Abraham's family. If Israel messes things up, makes a blunder of the relationship, and fails the covenant, Great King God says, "May I get sliced up like these animals if I still don't keep my word." God will be faithful to his end of the deal, even if Israel is not to hers. ... 

Abraham is not pursuing God in this scene; God is pursuing Abraham – and through him, the world. The sacrifice does not signify Abraham's faithfulness to God; it proclaims the opposite: God's faithfulness to Abraham. It is not something Abraham uses to show God he's serious about their relationship; it's something God uses to show Abraham he's serious about their relationship.

For Israel, when the people brought their animals to the temple, they were not "sealing the deal" with God, but rather, celebrating the God who sealed the deal with them. Like Abraham their ancient ancestor, they split the animals before their Great King, who walks alone through the animals for them.

While the sacrificial system did many things, an important one was this: it reminded Israel that God was for them with an unwavering commitment. That however unfaithful they might be, God was going to be faithful to keep the vows he made to his bride.

And after? They feasted together in celebration. Following Abraham's ceremony, God passed through the animals as a "smoking firepot with a blazing torch," preparing the animals for a feast. Great King God cooks a meal for Little King Abraham, and upon their sealed deal they sit down together to celebrate their shared hope for the setting right of the world. + pgs. 144-146

We're invited to a similar feast today. While we don't kill animals in our church services, we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, feasting on the bread of his body and the wine of his blood. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus declared, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." Did you catch that word covenant? Jesus is making a new covenant, like Abraham's covenant so long ago. Great King Jesus is sealing the deal with us, his little people, not with the blood of animals but with his very own life, as he prepares to go to the cross. In Christ, God is about to walk the path alone.

Jesus tears the bread in half as a sign of his broken body, and pours the wine as a sign of his life poured out. And he says, "Do this in remembrance of me." When we tear the bread and pour the wine, we don't do it to show God how serious we are about him. We do it to be shocked afresh at how serious God is about us. We don't prepare the table to give something to God; we prepare it to receive life from God. 

We don't create 

the reality of the Eucharist;
we enter the reality of the Eucharist.

We acknowledge:
our life is received from his life given.

The word Eucharist means,
literally, "to give thanks."

In the early church, it was a celebration of Christ, who bore our death and brought us life. We come not only to a table prepared by Jesus, but to feast upon Jesus, to receive his life that forms us as a people. We come to encounter the living Christ, who conquered death on our behalf. And as we do, he forms us as a community marked by humility and gratefulness.

When I receive Communion, I love breaking a big chunk off the bread. As my teeth tear it apart, fracturing its wholeness into tiny scraps of what it once was, I encounter afresh how Christ was torn asunder in love for me. And as I drink a massive gulp from the chalice, swallowing its intoxicating waves deep into my parched and thirsty bones, I soak in the immense weight of his poured out to bring me life.

I'm not taking Communion
to show Jesus I'll be faithful to him;
I'm celebrating the fact
that Jesus is faithful to me.

Jesus invites us to drink deeply from his life and to feast together upon his love, for it is he who makes us whole. + pgs. 146-147  

Soaking Up Death

I've heard people compare God's presence to radioactivity, saying, "Don't get too close because it can kill you." But I think this gets it backward: God is not like radioactivity; sin is. Sin is the deadly force running amok in the masterpiece, the dangerous corruption in God's good world. We were made to dwell in the presence of our Creator. But God's life, light, and love are so strong that death and its toxic allies cannot stand in his presence. ... God's radiance destroys radioactivity.

Notice with Isaiah how God's glorious goodness drives the scene (in Isaiah 6). Isaiah doesn't say, "Oh no! God's really big and mean; I hope he doesn't beat me up." He says, "Woe is me! I'm unclean." The light of God's presence reveals Isaiah's uncleanness. The power of God's beauty unveils the wickedness of his people.

Isaiah is not afraid because God has a dark side, but because in God's presence the prophet sees more clearly what we do. Luckily, God is ready and waiting to wash us clean. ... 

The coal taken from the altar (in Isaiah 6) is burning – a sign that a sacrifice has just been offered. The coal touches Isaiah's lips and, like a fresh burst of water washing through his soul, he is cleansed. Here's the important observation I want to draw our attention to: Isaiah is not using sacrifice to clean himself up to God can stand to be with him; rather, God is cleansing Isaiah – so that Isaiah can stand to be with God. ... 

Through Jesus' sacrifice, God washes us clean. Jesus is like Windex: he cleans the gunk off the window of our hearts so we can see our Father clearly again. He is also like a hazmat suit: he protects us from the radioactive gunk that would put in a "death state." And finally, Jesus is like a shower: his holiness and righteousness wash us clean. Jesus fills in the holes we've punctured in our space suits so we can bask again in the life-giving radiance of God, and reflect that presence to the world. Jesus takes our impurity upon himself to atone for it, and transfers his purity to us. Jesus uses his sacrifice to cleanse us and make us whole. + pgs. 153-155   

Key Idea  

Caricature: 
Sacrifice is how you clean yourself up
so God can stand to be with you.

Gospel: 
Sacrifice is how God cleans you
so you can stand to be with God.

Links to previous City Notes:

A Meal with Jesus

Gospel-Centered Discipleship

The Art of Neighboring

A Praying Life

Encounters with Jesus

One Thousand Gifts

The Rest of God

The Pursuing God

Next post:

The Pursuing God
Part 3

– Sully

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