The Fulcrum of History

"When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left ... And when it was about noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.' Having said this, he breathed his last."

- Luke 23:33, 44-46

"If any of our own people inquire, not from love of debate from from love of learning, why he suffered death in none other way save on the cross, let him be told that no other way than this was good for us, and that it was well that the Lord suffered this for our sakes. For if he came himself to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could he have 'become a curse,' unless he received the death set for a curse? And that is the cross. For this is exactly what is written: 'Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree' [Deuteronomy 21:23].

"Again, if the Lord's death is the ransom of all, and by his death 'the middle wall of partition' is broken down, and the calling of the nations is brought about, how would he have called us to him, had he not been crucified? For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in himself. For this is what he himself has said, signifying by what manner of death he was ransom to all: 'I, when I am lifted up,' he says, 'shall draw all men unto me.'"

- Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25

"This, according to my view, is the subjection of Christ, namely, the fulfilling of the Father's will. But as the Son subjects all to the Father, so does the Father to the Son, the one by his work, the other by his good pleasure, as we have already said. And thus he who subjects presents to God that which he has subjected, making our condition his own. Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the expression, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' It was not he who was forsaken either by the Father or by his own Godhead, as some have thought, as if it were afraid of the Passion, and therefore withdrew itself from him in his sufferings (for who compelled him either to be born on eart at all or to be lifted up on the cross?). But, as I said, he was in his own person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now, by the sufferings of Him who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved."

- Gregory of Nazianzus, Fourth Theological Oration, 5

"God did not force Christ to die, there being no sin in him. Rather, he underwent death of his own accord, not out of an obedience consisting in the abandonment of his life, but out of an obedience consisting in his upholding righteousness so bravely and pertinaciously that as a result he incurred death."

- Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, 9

"Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You; let me find You in loving You; let me love You in finding You ... For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; rather, I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that 'unless I believe, I shall not understand.'"

- Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, 1

"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority ... And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it."

- Colossians 2:9, 13-15

Taste and see that the Lord is good

Two months since my last post ... but this has been a full time in my life. In fact, it is going to continue to be so for most of this year. I said that I'd pop my head up every now and again, even while stepping back from regular blogging. And there is no better time to do that than now, in the midst of Holy Week.

In the services at my church tonight, tomorrow, and on Sunday, we will gather to worship, pray, and sing our common faith. The vigil that will begin tomorrow, and the celebration that will follow on Sunday, are the very events that all of history hinges upon. So it is appropriate that we remember the passage from Hebrews:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 6:19-20).

If you find yourself in need of a prayer for Maundy Thursday, I want to offer you this one from our Book of Worship (p.349) -

O God, by the example of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ,

you taught us the greatness of true humility,

and call us to watch with him in his passion.

Give us grace to serve one another in all lowliness,

and to enter into the fellowship of his suffering;

in his name and for his sake. Amen.

Hosanna, loud Hosanna

The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,

"Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord - the King of Israel!"

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: "Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!"

His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these had been written of him and had been done to him.

The Gospel of John, 12:12-16

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From Olivet they followed mid an exultant crowd,
the victor palm branch waving, and chanting clear and loud.
The Lord of earth and heaven rode on in lowly state,
nor scorned that little children should on his bidding wait.

"Hosanna in the highest!" that ancient song we sing,
for Christ is our Redeemer, the Lord of heaven our King.
O may we ever praise him with heart and life and voice,
and in his blissful presence eternally rejoice!

"Hosanna, Loud Hosanna" (United Methodist Hymnal, 278)

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... And so, with your people on earth
and all the company of heaven
we praise your name and join their unending hymn:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!

Sanctus, The Great Thanksgiving (UMH, p.9)

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After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

The Revelation to John, 7:9-12

Ash Wednesday Meditation

Scripture: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Have you ever noticed that, during election seasons, politicians never fail to remind us what committed Christians they are? In the 2000 presidential debates, candidates were asked about their favorite philosophers. After hearing the responses of his competitors, then-Governor George W. Bush answered, "Jesus Christ." Never mind that Jesus wouldn't have considered himself a philosopher (and no subsequent philosopher would either), Gov. Bush had seen a chance to show his piety in front of a national audience, and he took it. Then, in the 2004 election season, Howard Dean gushed about his "favorite" book of the Bible - Job - which he incorrectly located in the New Testament. Gov. Dean's own piety looked fairly flimsy at that gaffe.

When I heard those comments at the time they were made, I neither admired Bush nor felt sorry for Dean. I simply doubted both of them. The Bushes, Deans, and other luminaries of the political world would be more believable in their piety if the rest of their lives (especially their political lives) bore the fruits of an active faith. Call me cynical, but I think that great power and great faith are just hard to achieve together; we can pursue one or the other, but pursuing both is almost impossible.

"Power corrupts," the British nobleman Lord Acton wrote in an 1887 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But don't take his word for it. The Bible has plenty to say about what worldly power does to the viability of faith.

The powers and principalities of the world are, in point of fact, regular bad guys in Scripture. Jesus tells his disciples that the faithful will be forced to "stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them" (Mark 13:9). The Apostle Paul fulfilled that prophecy just a few years later, in his recurring run-ins with earthly authorities. His own life is a testament to the conflict inherent in confessing the lordship of Jesus Christ over that of kings and governors, and not even his powerful preaching was able to make King Herod Agrippa or the Roman governor, Festus, convert to the Christian faith (see Acts 26). Nevertheless, in his letter to the Colossians, Paul tells the church that, through the cross, Jesus "disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it" (Colossians 2:15).

So why would both our Savior and our greatest missionary be so negative toward the rulers of this world? Why would they preach against earthly power instead of backing the candidate who most closely matches their own religious views?

Well, rulers are those who have power. They have say over how tax money gets spent, who gets preferential treatment from the government, and even who lives and dies. Power like that will go to your head. Rulers are apt to make decisions based on where their power comes from and whom they think they have to please. When they think they can get away with it, earthly rulers will even crucify the Son of God (see Pilate, Pontius).

But let's not throw stones. Our messy present is no more or less messy than the messiness of other times and places. Power will always be wielded in lots of ways. Governments will rule over their citizens - that's certainly one way. But power is also wielded in families, in relationships, and in the workplace. It simply won't do for Christians to go pointing out the specks in others' eyes while we have a forest of timber in our own. And so the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount can help to serve as a corrective to all our power relationships - whether we happen to be Barack the President or Joe the Plumber.

How should we practice our piety? On the street corners, or babbling with many words? With grandiose demonstrations and pronouncements? As a way to garner power or prestige in the public eye?

Jesus teaches us to practice our religion for the purpose of faith rather than status. He would have us seek humility rather than power - storing up treasures in heaven rather than on earth. And his sacrifice on our behalf shows us why: true status and true power come only from giving of oneself completely for others (Philippians 2). This is what it means to not be conformed by the ways of this world but rather to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12).

Moreover, our teacher is also our pattern. The one who shows us the way is the Way himself. And because of that, power and piety themselves are definitively recast. The world and its problems - in politics, in war, and in the economy - can tempt us to get depressed. But the real reason for depression comes when we start thinking that our ultimate hope is grounded in what party controls the White House or Congress. I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or something else - if you're betting that your party has the right plan for The Future, then you are betting on the wrong horse. If our hope is in those who wield great earthly power, or if our hope is in our own attempts to attain such power, then we are doomed.

"Happy are those ... whose hope is in the LORD their God" (Psalm 146:5). The Apostle Paul writes, "...[W]e have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people" (1 Timothy 4:10).

When our hope is in God, we have no need to act publicly pious, no need to impress others with superficial signs of our faith. We have only to be willing to follow Jesus and learn from him, all the way to his destination, which remains the cross at Calvary.

And that calls us to realize why we would come together as Christians on this one Wednesday of the year at all. Today we begin the season of Lent, when we will prepare for the joy of Easter by walking 40 difficult days with Jesus. He came into the world for us and for our salvation, but the path he took to bring us that gift required everything of him. It required a cross. And Lent calls us to look at the cross first as a symbol of mortality and death. The instrument of our salvation is also an instrument of execution. That should humble us.

Jesus' own example calls us to make our own sacrifices to God - sacrifices of love and discipleship. We do that during Lent, beginning today as we mark our repentance and commitment to him by receiving the ashes on our foreheads. We are all created out of dust, and to the dust we shall return. The only reason why hearing that message today is good news is because we have a Savior who conquered death by dying himself and rising again.

Let us remember that the way of the Christian is not health, wealth, and worldly success. It is being made to be like Christ, who laid down his life to save us. And his command to us is to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). When we think about how far that love goes, it should humble us indeed. It is the greatest power the world has ever known.

O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done?

O Love divine, what has thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father's co-eternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th'immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Is crucified for me and you,
to bring us rebels back to God.
Believe, believe the record true,
ye all are bought with Jesus' blood.
Pardon for all flows from his side:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Behold him, all ye that pass by,
the bleeding Prince of life and peace!
Come, sinners, see your Savior die,
and say, "Was ever grief like his?"
Come, feel with me his blood applied:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

- Charles Wesley, 1742

Mandatum Day

Like countless other children, I grew up hearing the term "Maundy Thursday" during the Lenten season and just assumed that the grown-ups around me were saying "Monday Thursday." I knew Easter was a special time, so I just assumed that this "Monday Thursday" thing was part of the deal. If Jesus could come out of the tomb on Easter morning, why couldn't we have Monday and Thursday on the same day??

I was actually in divinity school, about ten years ago, before I never learned the origin of Maundy Thursday. By then I knew enough to say "Maundy" instead of "Monday." And I knew the term had to have something to do with the final gathering of Jesus with his disciples on the night he was betrayed. But I still didn't know what the strange modifier "Maundy" meant, nor why it had been attached to a day that otherwise would have done just fine as "Holy Thursday."

Tracing Maundy Thursday's lineage actually requires doing something that Protestants almost never do: opening up the Latin Vulgate. Turning to John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet, we read this in verses 34-35:

Mandatum novum do vobis, ut diligatis invicem. Sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem. In hoc cognoscent omnes quia mei discipuli estis, si dilectionem habueritis ad invicem.

Here is a literal, if somewhat clunky, translation:

A new commandment I give to you all, that you love mutually. Just as I have held you dear, so that you may also hold one another dear. In this way, everyone shall learn that you are my disciples, if you will have love for the purpose of mutuality.

The Latin mandatum novum translates as the English new commandment (think of our synonym "mandate"). And Maundy is just a corruption of the original mandatum. So Maundy Thursday is really just Commandment Thursday, the day when Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Moreover, wrapped up in Jesus' mandatum to us is a deeper implication: namely, that if we are doing it right, the world will be able to identify us as Christians by the very quality of love that we bear toward one another.

When we preach this passage on Maundy Thursday, we should take care to emphasize the extent of the love Jesus was talking about. Specifically, Jesus' qualifier, "Just as I have held you dear" (or more conventionally, "Just as I have loved you"), calls us to look both forward and backward in the gospel for those specific ways that Jesus loves the disciples.

Looking backward, we recognize that Jesus says these words right after he has disrobed and, taking the role of a servant, washed each of the disciples' feet. He models love for them not by a long-winded discourse on the virtue of love, but rather by showing them love firsthand through his actions. The footwashing conveys a depth of meaning that simple words could not.

We also look forward to how Jesus will love the disciples (and indeed, the whole world) through his death on the cross. So while the love he models for us takes the form of servanthood, it also carries that servanthood to an absolute extreme. It includes the sacrifice of the servant's own life, or as Jesus himself says, the laying down of the shepherd's life for his sheep (John 10:11). And this is the love with which we are to love one another.

As difficult as this teaching is for Christians, we should recognize that it is not an option. Jesus teaching is a mandatum, a commandment. And there is a reason for this. In English translations, the end of the passage reads, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." But the static quality of "know" in English obscures the meaning of the Latin cognoscent, which carries the progressive meaning of learning or acquiring knowledge. The world does not understand the true meaning of love. But through the church's witness to Christ's love for the world - expressed through the love of the disciples for one another - the world can learn what love really means. So the telos of Mandatum Day is that our embodiment of the command becomes the means of salvation for the world. Only when the church faithfully practices Jesus' love can the world learn that there is a better way to live.

Happy Ash Wednesday

Holy God,
as we enter into
this season of preparation
let us be mindful of the path
your Son walked
on our behalf.

Grant us the clarity to see
our own mortality
and face with courage
the reality of death.

Give us the strength also
to meditate
on the mortality of Jesus,
and on his willingness to die
so that we might live.

Bring us through these forty days
to the time of rejoicing and celebration,
when we stand again and marvel
at the empty tomb.

And so, let this season be a season of purpose
for the faith that defines us
and the church that sustains us
and the promise that gives us hope.

Amen.

Good Friday

In On the Incarnation of the Word, St. Athanasius describes the crucifixion in a way that echoes the Scriptures:

"For the sun hid his face, and the earth quaked and the mountains were rent; all men were awed. Now these things showed that Christ on the cross was God, while all creation was his slave, and was witnessing by its fear to its master's presence."

When we celebrate Holy Communion each week, we proclaim the death that occurred for us on this day. It is a death that forgives, because in it Christ takes all the sin of creation into his own body. Thus, the death suffered by the incarnate Word is not just his own death, but ultimately ours as well. Athanasius continues,

"And so it was that two marvels came to pass at once, that the death of all was accomplished in the Lord's body, and that death and corruption were wholly done away by reason of the Word that was united with it."

May we all gather together this evening at the foot of the cross and bear witness to the crucifixion of our Lord. And may we keep the Easter vigil together.

Why we need spiritual direction

Church growth strategies are based on the I wrote a column and accompanying blogpost a few weeks ago, where I described the way that the associate pastor at my church approached Lenten observance. She told us that she expected a certain practice out of us - a Friday fast - rather than giving us a buffet of choices and asking us to each select one.

In both my column and this blog, I expressed approval for her approach. By giving us a pastoral expectation, and giving it to the entire congregation, I thought she showed guts. And I thought she showed a mature understanding of the need for congregational (as well as individual) spiritual formation.

The responses I got from both the column and the blogpost were interesting. Some agreed with my point of view. But others thought that I was rejecting the need for personal discernment in favor of a sort of unthinking obedience to pastoral authority. I admit that I hadn't thought of it that way at all, although I could see where these folks were coming from.

On respondent on the Methoblog wrote:

"Wow, that's a new view for me, but I think it has some merit. While the point is powerful for those of us in the laity, it also has deep implications for those of us preparing to enter the ministry. I find it almost equally challenging to imagine myself asking my pastor what I must do to faithfully follow Christ ( and accept the answer without question) as to imagine a parishioner asking me the same question. This seems to assume that our pastors have a special knowledge and authority, rather than the model of pilgrims together on a journey which has become popular where I'm from. How does this traditional understanding ministerial authority jive with the emergent church?"

The interesting thing to me is that I wasn't trying to put forward anything like a "traditional understanding of ministerial authority" (a 'my way or the highway approach' approach, you might say). I was rather trying to suggest something along the lines of spiritual direction, which is not about towing the line, but is about viewing one's discipleship in such a way that admist the need for pastroal guidance and direction.

Another perspective will help. In Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor writes,

"I can better be comforted by my own considerations if another hand applies them, than if I do it myself; because the word of God does not work as a natural agent, but as a divine instrument: it does not prevail by the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only, but chiefly by way of blessing in the ordinance, and in the ministry[,] of an appointed person."

Taylor was a huge influence on John Wesley, by the way (and that is Taylor's portrait at the tope of this post). And I think his instructions here are helpful. We can read the word of God on our own, but it is only fully illumnated for us when it is explained by another person. The reason for this, of course, is that our sin gets in the way of our own interpretation.

This does not at all assume that pastors have all the answers. What it does assume is that each one of us is not really qualified to make all our choices about how to pursue the path of discipleship. The reason, of course, is that we are all shot through with sin and will tend to make selfish, sinful decisions. The pastor, too, needs someone giving her direction about her path of discipleship. Because pastors are not immune from sin and selfish choice, either.

So our very condition makes spiritual direction a need for all of us. And spiritual direction is exactly what I think my pastor was doing at the beginning of Lent. Not beating us over the head with authority, but giving us instruction and expectation for our own spiritual benefit.

A real Lenten sacrifice

Give anything up for Lent?

I did. In fact, I chose to give up several things. And not all of them will be easy to sacrifice for these 40 days.

But the hardest thing about this year's Lent is what I did not choose to give up.

At my church on the Sunday before Lent, our associate pastor told us that she expected the entire church to fast during the noon hour on Fridays, spending the time in prayer and giving the lunch money we save to the poor.

This is a reasonable sacrifice. It is one that I have (so far) been successful at keeping. What makes it remarkable is not the thing in itself, but the way it was presented to the church.

We were not asked whether we thought fasting would be an appropriate Lenten observance. Instead, we were simply told what to do.

I write about this experience in my column this week. As Americans, we worship at the altar of individual choice. We instinctively recoil at any suggestion that someone else knows better than we do the choices we should make for our lives. And perhaps the most difficult thing we can ever do is accept the command of another person with complete obedience.

For all these reasons, I think the most difficult thing for us to sacrifice is our choice. And so, in a strange way, I'm really grateful to my pastor that she told me what to give up for Lent. By expecting our obedience, she is helping us to understand what life in the Christian community is about. And she is helping us understand what discipleship is about as well, for as disciples we follow one who issues commands rather than offers suggestions.