Luke 3:19-20
What reward does John get for all his efforts at preaching good news? He is locked up in prison – and eventually beheaded.
John, whose preaching has been all about repentance, doesn’t stop with those who come out to hear him. He speaks against the religious and political authorities holed up in Jerusalem or in their palaces. He rails against injustice and unrighteousness wherever it is to be found and regardless the outcome.
Luke reports John’s imprisonment succinctly. Herod, the Jewish ruler, has taken his brother’s wife. And that is just for starters. Long before modern democratic understandings of human government, John was proclaiming that no one, not even the human authorities of the land, were above the law. This concept is almost taken for granted in our day and age. We who have lived through Nixon’s Watergate and Clinton’s impeachment, we who have seen political leaders on both right and left as well as in the middle slam up against a more willful rule of law, assume that this is a given: that rulers are not above the law of the land.
But not so long ago and certainly in the time of John, the idea that a ruler would have to submit to the laws of heaven or earth was a rare concept. Some of the ancient empires had codes of law that said that even the emperor could not change his own edict, but that was still a far cry from our concept of law above ruler. In any age, then or now, people who impose morality on others blithely find loopholes for themselves.
So Herod adds to all his other evil deeds, Luke writes with a touch of irony, by throwing John the Righteous in prison. Luke doesn’t dwell on the injustice of this, other than to report how in doing so, Herod adds to his own list of crimes. The incident is recorded almost as dry fact.
But the facts leave the reader reeling. After all the good John has done? Why? What has he done to deserve languishing in prison? What is the purpose of all this? The questions roll down like an avalanche. You can feel the collective gasp among the followers of John, among those who have heard John preach and have responded. Where is the justice in all this?
Then we remember what John said, that he is not the final actor on this stage. He is only the forerunner to the Christ. This Christ is the one who will make all things right, who will separate the good from the bad and burn up the bad. Surely he will sort this all out.
Anyone who lives to do right, who strives to proclaim justice, goes through times when the forces of darkness appear to overwhelm. The rich cheat the poor, the righteous are imprisoned by the wicked, the powerful step on the necks of the vulnerable, the innocent suffer. And the messengers of God find themselves at the mercy (or lack thereof) of those who oppose God’s will.
If we are “into” this passage as we read it, we walk away from this text feeling deeply unresolved. Where is Jesus coming on a powerful steed to rescue John in Zorro fashion? Why doesn’t he call down lightning or dispatch a zillion angels or something. Some readers will even say, if John had more faith, or if he had only listened more closely to God’s Spirit and kept his mouth shut at the right moment…
But that is not the way life works. Even those who do no wrong, even those who love justice and do mercy and walk humbly with their God find themselves in awful straights. Good people are going to be hurt by the evil deeds of others. And the righteous will suffer for their acts of righteousness. In the end, Jesus does not rescue John – nor many another saint down through the history of the Church.
Fortunately for us, Luke is writing a whole book and not a short story. So we turn the page to see what God will make of all this mess. Just as we wait with anticipation in our own lives to see how God will redeem the perils in which we find ourselves.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Is This All?
Luke 3:16-20
As I wrote before, God always gives room for us as people to change, but if change doesn’t come, then expect “the fire next time.” When Jesus came, his words were indeed divisive. But John’s prediction of fire did not come with Jesus as John had hoped and in prison John came to doubt his own words.
However, John was not wrong. He had prophesied that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Spirit came first and then the fire. John was of the pre-Messianic order of prophet who saw the comings of the Messiah in one scope. As has often been described, that scope is like looking at mountains in the distance. They look like they are close to each other, maybe even the same, but when you reach the foothills, you see how much further you have to walk.
Hiking with one of my sons one day, we saw what seemed to be the summit. I thought it was too soon, but my son felt good that he was almost there. Imagine his dismay when we reached that peak and saw the valley and the even steeper climb on the other side to the true summit!
So it is with John. He sees what is ahead, that this Christ is going to come baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And in his mind, perhaps, it is all rolled into one. John winds up in prison for preaching repentance. Which is ok as long as there is some justice to it. OK, Jesus, I did my part. Now you call down fire on those who have put me here. Just like I said you would. Burn ‘em up, Jesus!
But as fiery as Jesus’ words could be, he is not about burning ‘em up just yet. He is about ushering in the Age of the Spirit, this theme that so permeates all of Luke’s writings. The baptism with water must come first, for then comes the baptism with the Spirit.
You get rid of the old first (through a baptism of repentance) so that you can welcome in the new (transformation, or as some theologians call it, a baptism of sanctification). John's teaching isn't specific about this baptism by fire, but it can be seen as ongoing in this life and part of that final judgment. For those who truly repent and are transformed, this fire is purifying, not destroying. They are the “wheat” that John refers to, that Jesus will separate from the “chaff”, the wicked that will be burned up in that fire that John says cannot be put out.
Baptism by water was considered, in John’s day, a rite of passage for those who were passing from a life of sin to a life of holiness in God. It was like going down into the grave, what Jesus would later call dying to self, and then coming back up out of that same watery grave a new creation. Such a baptism came to be explained by the followers of John and Jesus as the first step.
Years later Luke writes about some followers of John in Ephesus who had received John’s baptism and gone no farther in their faith. Paul told them this was John’s baptism of repentance. So then Paul offered them another baptism, one in the Holy Spirit, which they gladly received.
This is the baptism John is referring to as the one with which Jesus will baptize. It is not just letting go of the past and all its problems. It is embracing all that newness offered in Christ Jesus. While repentance is the necessary first step, embracing a whole new future in Christ and the power of His Spirit is the next.
As I wrote before, God always gives room for us as people to change, but if change doesn’t come, then expect “the fire next time.” When Jesus came, his words were indeed divisive. But John’s prediction of fire did not come with Jesus as John had hoped and in prison John came to doubt his own words.
However, John was not wrong. He had prophesied that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Spirit came first and then the fire. John was of the pre-Messianic order of prophet who saw the comings of the Messiah in one scope. As has often been described, that scope is like looking at mountains in the distance. They look like they are close to each other, maybe even the same, but when you reach the foothills, you see how much further you have to walk.
Hiking with one of my sons one day, we saw what seemed to be the summit. I thought it was too soon, but my son felt good that he was almost there. Imagine his dismay when we reached that peak and saw the valley and the even steeper climb on the other side to the true summit!
So it is with John. He sees what is ahead, that this Christ is going to come baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And in his mind, perhaps, it is all rolled into one. John winds up in prison for preaching repentance. Which is ok as long as there is some justice to it. OK, Jesus, I did my part. Now you call down fire on those who have put me here. Just like I said you would. Burn ‘em up, Jesus!
But as fiery as Jesus’ words could be, he is not about burning ‘em up just yet. He is about ushering in the Age of the Spirit, this theme that so permeates all of Luke’s writings. The baptism with water must come first, for then comes the baptism with the Spirit.
You get rid of the old first (through a baptism of repentance) so that you can welcome in the new (transformation, or as some theologians call it, a baptism of sanctification). John's teaching isn't specific about this baptism by fire, but it can be seen as ongoing in this life and part of that final judgment. For those who truly repent and are transformed, this fire is purifying, not destroying. They are the “wheat” that John refers to, that Jesus will separate from the “chaff”, the wicked that will be burned up in that fire that John says cannot be put out.
Baptism by water was considered, in John’s day, a rite of passage for those who were passing from a life of sin to a life of holiness in God. It was like going down into the grave, what Jesus would later call dying to self, and then coming back up out of that same watery grave a new creation. Such a baptism came to be explained by the followers of John and Jesus as the first step.
Years later Luke writes about some followers of John in Ephesus who had received John’s baptism and gone no farther in their faith. Paul told them this was John’s baptism of repentance. So then Paul offered them another baptism, one in the Holy Spirit, which they gladly received.
This is the baptism John is referring to as the one with which Jesus will baptize. It is not just letting go of the past and all its problems. It is embracing all that newness offered in Christ Jesus. While repentance is the necessary first step, embracing a whole new future in Christ and the power of His Spirit is the next.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Dawn of a New Age
Luke 3:18
So John in this passage announces the Christ as the One who will baptize with fire and purge the land of all evil. John was preaching what Luke describes as the “good news”. It doesn’t seem all that good. Repentance? Fire? Why, John even calls his listeners a “brood of vipers.”
But it is indeed good news. For John is foretelling of this new Age of the Spirit, when transformation is the order of the day. And it is an age like nothing anyone has dared hope for.
Who could have thought, a mere 54 years ago when I was born that today we would have seen the end of apartheid in South Africa, segregation in the USA, and the election of a Non-white American President? Who’d have thought back then in 1955 at the height of the cold war that a massive spiritual revival would sweep behind the bamboo curtain, or that the iron curtain would come crashing down in our own lifetime? Who’d have predicted the amazing growth of the Church in the Two-Thirds World and the changes in and influence of Pentecostalism, the Evangelical movement and World Missions?
There is much to bemoan as wrong with our world. There is much to be concerned about the direction of society and morality, the world economy, wars and rumors of wars. But there is also much to celebrate that has changed for the better. People whine about the good old days, but we forget how terrifying those good old days were for so many of among us, what with lynchings and churches bombed and fiery crosses planted on front lawns.
Some Christians argue that the world is going to get better and better, others that it is going to get worse and worse. They all miss the point. Right now Jesus is baptizing with the transforming power of the Spirit those willing to walk through the waters of John’s repentance. And for those who resist, there will come a baptism by fire – whether they want it or not. God’s mercy and grace are abundant now and don’t you worry – justice will prevail.
That, my friend, is the good news that Henry W. Longfellow penned at the height of the American Civil War, “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail”. For “God is not dead: nor doth he sleep.” These words are taken from Longfellow’s “I heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Most editions of the poem/carol omit the two stanzas that speak of the war itself, nor is mention made in the poem that Longfellow’s son had died in the war or that his own wife had died the year before. It was a very dark time in which Longfellow wrote with such hope and expectation.
Yet out of such darkness this Nineteenth-Century poet-prophet speaks of Good News just as appealingly as John did in that dark and dismal time in the First Century. In the darkest times, watch for the Promised One to come.
So John in this passage announces the Christ as the One who will baptize with fire and purge the land of all evil. John was preaching what Luke describes as the “good news”. It doesn’t seem all that good. Repentance? Fire? Why, John even calls his listeners a “brood of vipers.”
But it is indeed good news. For John is foretelling of this new Age of the Spirit, when transformation is the order of the day. And it is an age like nothing anyone has dared hope for.
Who could have thought, a mere 54 years ago when I was born that today we would have seen the end of apartheid in South Africa, segregation in the USA, and the election of a Non-white American President? Who’d have thought back then in 1955 at the height of the cold war that a massive spiritual revival would sweep behind the bamboo curtain, or that the iron curtain would come crashing down in our own lifetime? Who’d have predicted the amazing growth of the Church in the Two-Thirds World and the changes in and influence of Pentecostalism, the Evangelical movement and World Missions?
There is much to bemoan as wrong with our world. There is much to be concerned about the direction of society and morality, the world economy, wars and rumors of wars. But there is also much to celebrate that has changed for the better. People whine about the good old days, but we forget how terrifying those good old days were for so many of among us, what with lynchings and churches bombed and fiery crosses planted on front lawns.
Some Christians argue that the world is going to get better and better, others that it is going to get worse and worse. They all miss the point. Right now Jesus is baptizing with the transforming power of the Spirit those willing to walk through the waters of John’s repentance. And for those who resist, there will come a baptism by fire – whether they want it or not. God’s mercy and grace are abundant now and don’t you worry – justice will prevail.
That, my friend, is the good news that Henry W. Longfellow penned at the height of the American Civil War, “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail”. For “God is not dead: nor doth he sleep.” These words are taken from Longfellow’s “I heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Most editions of the poem/carol omit the two stanzas that speak of the war itself, nor is mention made in the poem that Longfellow’s son had died in the war or that his own wife had died the year before. It was a very dark time in which Longfellow wrote with such hope and expectation.
Yet out of such darkness this Nineteenth-Century poet-prophet speaks of Good News just as appealingly as John did in that dark and dismal time in the First Century. In the darkest times, watch for the Promised One to come.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Fire Next Time
Luke 3:15-17
John’s preaching stirred up great hope among the people that the much anticipated Messiah was about to appear. They even wondered if John himself was this Christ, which John was quick to let them know he was not. In fact, he was nothing in comparison.
John and Jesus were actually cousins. How much they had known each other is pure speculation, but it is possible, even likely, that they had spent time together while growing up. John was older than Jesus, if only by a few months. But having lived in the wilderness for so long, he may have been physically stronger than Jesus, who was “just” a carpenter.
And yet John’s comparison is not about bragging rights among cousins. The power with which John speaks of Jesus has nothing to do with abs and triceps. John says that the One to come is so much greater than him, he (John) is not even worthy to take off his sandals for him.
While in college, I worked a summer in a shoe store. One thing I learned, it was expected that you as a clerk would take off and put on the shoes of your customers. I quickly discovered a scientific principle in shoe sales. The smellier the feet, the more likely they were to want you to change shoes for them and the more shoes they would try on. Guaranteed. Taking off someone else’s shoes is no sweet honor in my book!
John wasn’t even worthy of that honor when it came to his cousin. Whatever their natural relationship when they were younger (I seriously doubt Jesus was above a boyish wrestling match as a kid), John was well aware of what role Jesus was now assuming as a man.
If you think my preaching is tough, John is saying, just you wait. My baptizing is with water, but his will be with fire. When James Baldwin wrote his classic “The Fire Next Time”, he drew his title from the old slave spiritual, "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water the fire next time."
Baldwin wrote in his book: "If we--and I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others--do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world." Otherwise, the fire next time. Better not to wait, Baldwin pleads.
John is saying that now is the time for repentance. For at this moment the rite of repentance is through water baptism. But the One coming after me is going to mop things up with a baptism of fire. He will take a winnowing fork and separate the good from the bad and burn up the bad.
You don’t want to repent of your evil deeds now? Just you wait. And I can hear my mother saying, Just you wait until your father gets home. A not so subtle threat that if you didn’t straighten up for her, you will live to regret it. The water is always preferred over the fire.
As Baldwin published those words in 1963 for the one hundredth anniversary of the emancipation of black slaves, few could have predicted that a refusal to repent of segregation would lead to the fires of revolt a mere four years later when the supposedly ineffective pacifist methods of Martin Luther King’s were violently rejected for far more painful means.
God always gives room for us as people to change, but if change doesn’t come, then expect “the fire next time.”
John’s preaching stirred up great hope among the people that the much anticipated Messiah was about to appear. They even wondered if John himself was this Christ, which John was quick to let them know he was not. In fact, he was nothing in comparison.
John and Jesus were actually cousins. How much they had known each other is pure speculation, but it is possible, even likely, that they had spent time together while growing up. John was older than Jesus, if only by a few months. But having lived in the wilderness for so long, he may have been physically stronger than Jesus, who was “just” a carpenter.
And yet John’s comparison is not about bragging rights among cousins. The power with which John speaks of Jesus has nothing to do with abs and triceps. John says that the One to come is so much greater than him, he (John) is not even worthy to take off his sandals for him.
While in college, I worked a summer in a shoe store. One thing I learned, it was expected that you as a clerk would take off and put on the shoes of your customers. I quickly discovered a scientific principle in shoe sales. The smellier the feet, the more likely they were to want you to change shoes for them and the more shoes they would try on. Guaranteed. Taking off someone else’s shoes is no sweet honor in my book!
John wasn’t even worthy of that honor when it came to his cousin. Whatever their natural relationship when they were younger (I seriously doubt Jesus was above a boyish wrestling match as a kid), John was well aware of what role Jesus was now assuming as a man.
If you think my preaching is tough, John is saying, just you wait. My baptizing is with water, but his will be with fire. When James Baldwin wrote his classic “The Fire Next Time”, he drew his title from the old slave spiritual, "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water the fire next time."
Baldwin wrote in his book: "If we--and I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others--do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world." Otherwise, the fire next time. Better not to wait, Baldwin pleads.
John is saying that now is the time for repentance. For at this moment the rite of repentance is through water baptism. But the One coming after me is going to mop things up with a baptism of fire. He will take a winnowing fork and separate the good from the bad and burn up the bad.
You don’t want to repent of your evil deeds now? Just you wait. And I can hear my mother saying, Just you wait until your father gets home. A not so subtle threat that if you didn’t straighten up for her, you will live to regret it. The water is always preferred over the fire.
As Baldwin published those words in 1963 for the one hundredth anniversary of the emancipation of black slaves, few could have predicted that a refusal to repent of segregation would lead to the fires of revolt a mere four years later when the supposedly ineffective pacifist methods of Martin Luther King’s were violently rejected for far more painful means.
God always gives room for us as people to change, but if change doesn’t come, then expect “the fire next time.”
Friday, January 16, 2009
Double or Nothing
Luke 3:3-15
Apparently, repentance produces much good. People start being generous with the poor. They stop cheating each other. They become honest in their work. And in all that flurry of good works, they begin to transform society.
It is reported that as a result of the great Welsh revival of a century ago, the prisons were emptied. The Great Awakening and Holiness revivals of the 19th Century led Christians in America to fight slavery, abolish pew fees in churches, promote child labor laws, campaign for temperance in order to fight social injustices, and move toward voting rights for women.
Repentance, according to Luke, is a good thing, for it ushers in the overwhelming goodness of God. We respond to God in faith that He will forgive us. And amazingly that is exactly what happens. We discover that God’s forgiveness is off-the-charts. It is beyond-the-bounds generous.
As I’ve mentioned already, Luke uses the passage in Isaiah 40 to help us understand John’s mission. Remember the opening lines of that chapter? “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, and that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (40:1-2)
John comes preaching a baptism of repentance, Luke writes in 3:3, for the forgiveness of sins. What Luke means is that part of the process of repentance for John is the act of water baptism and this whole process is designed to usher in what God has promised. What has God promised? According to Isaiah, it is that we receive from God double for all our sins.
When we forgive someone, we recognize that some offense has to be paid for – it just can’t be ignored. Psychologists talk about this. You can’t move on until the debt for the wrong has been paid. Somehow things have to be settled between people. One option is the old “eye for an eye.” Another option is straight out forgiveness. In forgiving, we the offended choose to pay what the offender owes us.
When God forgives, He pays double. God is not content just to make it even. Godly forgiveness, according to Isaiah, is paying back twice what was owed.
Thus repentance toward God ushers in a whole new order of things. Which is why in Luke 3:15 the people were so filled with expectation that the promised Messiah was about to be revealed. Change of this magnitude could mean nothing less. In fact, they wondered if John himself might be that Christ.
When we repent and receive God’s forgiveness, our lives are filled to overflowing with God’s goodness. Picture yourself in a situation where you owe a large sum of money, say $100,000 and you have no way to pay it back. Maybe you are about to lose your house. The person you owe the money to, the banker, suddenly says you don’t owe that money any more. In fact, not only is your account wiped clean, but the bank has just given you an extra $100,000. Inconceivable!
That is how God’s forgiveness works. And what that forgiveness does in us is to create that much more anticipation as to what else God can do in our lives. This is what we call faith – the anticipation or expectation of what God will do. Repentance produces that faith, which in turn produces more faith, and so on. A whole cycle of God’s goodness is unleashed in our lives and in the world at large.
Want to start a revolution of change in the world? Repent, be baptized, start doing good things for people, and watch what happens. You just might cause an avalanche of grace.
Apparently, repentance produces much good. People start being generous with the poor. They stop cheating each other. They become honest in their work. And in all that flurry of good works, they begin to transform society.
It is reported that as a result of the great Welsh revival of a century ago, the prisons were emptied. The Great Awakening and Holiness revivals of the 19th Century led Christians in America to fight slavery, abolish pew fees in churches, promote child labor laws, campaign for temperance in order to fight social injustices, and move toward voting rights for women.
Repentance, according to Luke, is a good thing, for it ushers in the overwhelming goodness of God. We respond to God in faith that He will forgive us. And amazingly that is exactly what happens. We discover that God’s forgiveness is off-the-charts. It is beyond-the-bounds generous.
As I’ve mentioned already, Luke uses the passage in Isaiah 40 to help us understand John’s mission. Remember the opening lines of that chapter? “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, and that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (40:1-2)
John comes preaching a baptism of repentance, Luke writes in 3:3, for the forgiveness of sins. What Luke means is that part of the process of repentance for John is the act of water baptism and this whole process is designed to usher in what God has promised. What has God promised? According to Isaiah, it is that we receive from God double for all our sins.
When we forgive someone, we recognize that some offense has to be paid for – it just can’t be ignored. Psychologists talk about this. You can’t move on until the debt for the wrong has been paid. Somehow things have to be settled between people. One option is the old “eye for an eye.” Another option is straight out forgiveness. In forgiving, we the offended choose to pay what the offender owes us.
When God forgives, He pays double. God is not content just to make it even. Godly forgiveness, according to Isaiah, is paying back twice what was owed.
Thus repentance toward God ushers in a whole new order of things. Which is why in Luke 3:15 the people were so filled with expectation that the promised Messiah was about to be revealed. Change of this magnitude could mean nothing less. In fact, they wondered if John himself might be that Christ.
When we repent and receive God’s forgiveness, our lives are filled to overflowing with God’s goodness. Picture yourself in a situation where you owe a large sum of money, say $100,000 and you have no way to pay it back. Maybe you are about to lose your house. The person you owe the money to, the banker, suddenly says you don’t owe that money any more. In fact, not only is your account wiped clean, but the bank has just given you an extra $100,000. Inconceivable!
That is how God’s forgiveness works. And what that forgiveness does in us is to create that much more anticipation as to what else God can do in our lives. This is what we call faith – the anticipation or expectation of what God will do. Repentance produces that faith, which in turn produces more faith, and so on. A whole cycle of God’s goodness is unleashed in our lives and in the world at large.
Want to start a revolution of change in the world? Repent, be baptized, start doing good things for people, and watch what happens. You just might cause an avalanche of grace.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Prove It!
John, known as the Baptist, is not concerned whether or how we can attain God’s favor. He’s not after being accepted by God, he’s focused on showing that you are of God. For him the objective of repentance is to be able to live right, not just get to heaven. Otherwise he might have been tempted to keep his converts under while he was baptizing them, sending them straight on.
I remember riding on a bus across the country from Missouri to North Carolina when I was a college student. On one long leg of the trip, another teenager sat next to me and we talked for a long time. Spiritual matters came up at one point and I asked him about his faith. He said something about having been to church, but that he wasn’t that active currently. So I asked how his relationship with Jesus was “these days.” Immediately a woman across the aisle jumped in and challenged him, “You’ve been to the altar, haven’t you? You’ve been baptized, haven’t you? (He nodded his head to each question.) Well, then you are saved.” Case closed.
The objective of repentance, John says in Luke 3:8, is in the result of having repented, what he calls the “fruit” of the effort, using the metaphor of a tree. The fruit of righteousness is
- being generous with the poor
- being honest in your work
- being gracious and fair
- assuming the best in people
John doesn’t care when or where you were “saved.” All he cares is that your life is now demonstrating the fruit of repentance and that fruit is not just going to church or even reading your Bible and praying. It is how you treat other people. Except for repentance and water baptism, he doesn’t even talk about what we normally think of as spiritual matters.
I’ve noticed something about people who get really involved with helping with the needs of others. They tend to be highly religious people. Not just your average Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Humanist or Atheist. But your deeply devoted ones. Yes, even the Humanists and Atheists. People who are so-so in their commitments, whatever they are, are looking after Number One. People who have made their faith top priority evidence it by making a difference in the world around them.
So when the crowd asks John what they should do, he replies “share what you have with those who don’t have.” When the tax collectors, men who were known for extravagant dishonesty, asked him, he said, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.” When the soldiers asked him, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely. And be content with your pay.”
You say you are religious, a later follower of Jesus known as James writes. Then prove your beliefs by your actions. Not just your actions in pietistic devotion, but your actions out in the work place, in the marketplace, on the street. That’s where the signs of true repentance are going to evidence themselves.
And, woe to those who don’t produce the evidence of repentance, John says in this passage, for wrath is coming for them and they’ll be cut down and burned up. Pretty strong words. To those who show no grace or mercy, grace and mercy are unknown to them.
I remember riding on a bus across the country from Missouri to North Carolina when I was a college student. On one long leg of the trip, another teenager sat next to me and we talked for a long time. Spiritual matters came up at one point and I asked him about his faith. He said something about having been to church, but that he wasn’t that active currently. So I asked how his relationship with Jesus was “these days.” Immediately a woman across the aisle jumped in and challenged him, “You’ve been to the altar, haven’t you? You’ve been baptized, haven’t you? (He nodded his head to each question.) Well, then you are saved.” Case closed.
The objective of repentance, John says in Luke 3:8, is in the result of having repented, what he calls the “fruit” of the effort, using the metaphor of a tree. The fruit of righteousness is
- being generous with the poor
- being honest in your work
- being gracious and fair
- assuming the best in people
John doesn’t care when or where you were “saved.” All he cares is that your life is now demonstrating the fruit of repentance and that fruit is not just going to church or even reading your Bible and praying. It is how you treat other people. Except for repentance and water baptism, he doesn’t even talk about what we normally think of as spiritual matters.
I’ve noticed something about people who get really involved with helping with the needs of others. They tend to be highly religious people. Not just your average Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Humanist or Atheist. But your deeply devoted ones. Yes, even the Humanists and Atheists. People who are so-so in their commitments, whatever they are, are looking after Number One. People who have made their faith top priority evidence it by making a difference in the world around them.
So when the crowd asks John what they should do, he replies “share what you have with those who don’t have.” When the tax collectors, men who were known for extravagant dishonesty, asked him, he said, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.” When the soldiers asked him, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely. And be content with your pay.”
You say you are religious, a later follower of Jesus known as James writes. Then prove your beliefs by your actions. Not just your actions in pietistic devotion, but your actions out in the work place, in the marketplace, on the street. That’s where the signs of true repentance are going to evidence themselves.
And, woe to those who don’t produce the evidence of repentance, John says in this passage, for wrath is coming for them and they’ll be cut down and burned up. Pretty strong words. To those who show no grace or mercy, grace and mercy are unknown to them.
Monday, January 12, 2009
You can’t claim special status
John’s message was simple. Repent and be baptized, he said, for the forgiveness of sins. In 3:8, Luke writes that John told his audience that they couldn’t go around exempting themselves from having to repent by claiming special status.
When it comes to sorting it out with God, you can’t claim special status. Why not? Settling it with God, pure and simple, requires repentance and repentance requires change.
These days there are a lot of plans abroad to help people change their polluting habits. One publicity stunt is the idea that you can buy credit on your carbon footprinting. Polluting too much? Buy some penance so that you can get away with more. A nice gimmick for the rich, but it tends to avoid change, excusing the lack of it even.
In “Fiddler on the Roof”, one of Tevia’s buddies jokes that if the poor could die for the rich, the poor could make a nice living. Fact is, if the poor lived like the Western middle class, the world would be awash in the resulting pollution. You cannot get out of real transformation by anything short of actual change. Surprise, surprise.
Just as you can’t buy righteousness, you can’t inherit it either. It is not a commodity to be passed down in your parents’ will. You can’t say, look, my surname name is such-and-such or I am a ____ (insert some classification). We finally have an African-American president. But for the first two centuries of our country’s history, two unwritten and immutable qualifications for that office were that you be white and male, qualifications which have nothing to do with ability. Folks may fuss about the abuses of affirmative action, but some form of it has been with us a long time.
Even more heartbreaking is that for much of church history, even up to our own present day, ethnicity has often been a barrier to receiving the Good News. Being white and of European descent has been for far too long a key determinant in whether you get an invite to heaven.
In John’s day, just as in ours, people argued that their ancestry ought to count for something. His response? You can’t get an exemption just for having a certified pedigree, like some dog in a show.
God is not dependent on human standards. Why in fact, John said, God can take mere stones and out of them produce children of Abraham. Reality check: Abraham’s children are a dime a dozen. An old silly song went like this: “Father Abraham had many sons / many sons had Father Abraham / And I am one of them / And so are you / So let’s just praise the Lord.”
Being a child of Abraham is no big deal from God’s perspective – and it is certainly no claim to righteousness. That and a quarter (to use an old saying) will not even get you a cup of coffee, let alone get you into heaven. Your pedigree or any other degree or other human measurement of having arrived won’t count.
Only one thing does count and that is producing good fruit. In this, we humans all tend to be in short supply. Bottom line, John says, we produce good fruit by repenting (making a change) and being baptized (making a commitment) and trust that responsiveness counts toward God forgiving us.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Wilderness vs. God
John’s ministry was singular: to prepare the way for the Lord. Luke puts it all in context in 3:4-6 where he refers to the writings of the prophet Isaiah.
In my NIV translation, Luke’s rendition of Isaiah’s words are, “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘prepare …’” When I jump back to look at Isaiah, the break comes at a different place: “A voice of one calling, “In the desert prepare…’” Isaiah is saying, “In the desert prepare the way…make straight in the wilderness a highway….” Luke is connecting with John’s physical location in the desert, using John’s actual position as metaphor.
John goes to the desert to demonstrate that it is in the very wildernesses of our lives that God comes to make all things new. Of all the prophets of Old, Isaiah is the most stellar in speaking of this New Order, when God ushers in a whole new perspective. It is perhaps part of the beauty of Handel’s “Messiah”, for the composer draws heavily on Isaiah’s message of hope and newness.
I hear the lilting, soothing music of “The Messiah” in the opening verses of chapter 40 of Isaiah. “Comfort, comfort my people.” This and what follows after verse 6 are the context out of which Luke draws his refrain of a voice calling in the desert to prepare the way for the Lord (40:3-4). What follows in Isaiah, for a long stretch in fact, is a stark comparison between the ephemeral nature of man and the permanence and power of God. Even Isaiah’s choice of length for describing each – a few verses for man, long passages to speak of God’s greatness – draws a deep contrast between the two.
The passage that Luke uses to capture the ministry and message of John is nothing short of a message of hope. Isaiah has just concluded the tragic story of Hezekiah, the king who sells the future of his nation for security in his own time. Depressing, to say the least.
And now Isaiah dares to speak of the audacity of hope – truly bold, for how can one possibly speak of hope at such a time as this, when the nation’s future is doomed by the whims of a weak and selfish ruler? And yet hope has the inherent right to speak at just such a time.
Mankind in all his ways, good and bad, is as transient as, says Isaiah, grass. Years ago, a role I had took me on an annual reporting visit to a pastor named Wannenmacher. Every time I went to see him, he would conclude our appointment by drawing out of his desk a bit of prose. The text said that when we are tempted to boast of our own greatness, we should remind ourselves that we have as much lasting impact as the hole left when we’ve withdrawn our fist out of a bucket of water. Pastor Wannenmacher understood Isaiah’s meaning about man’s power and permanence.
What a contrast with God’s awesomeness! No matter what man does or doesn’t do, God’s strength and ability, His plan and His Word, His very will are all unthwarted.
When I hear people determining courses of social or personal action out of concern for affecting prophetic promises, I think of how little such people understand the God they serve. Sure our actions have consequences, grave ones even, just like Hezekiah’s did. But only to a point. For these are the kind of people who also like to say that they’ve “read the end of the Book and we win.” In this they are very correct, that is if they mean that they are on God’s side, for God, the God of Isaiah and Luke and John, is always victorious. Which is exactly how Isaiah concludes what we know as chapter 40.
You read Isaiah 40 for yourself. And then watch "Chariots of Fire" as Eric Liddell quotes from this very passage. Follow that up with listening to a full recording of "The Messiah." When you've done all that, see what you think of the wilderness you find yourself in. For, as Isaiah writes in verse 5: "For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Your wilderness or God's good purpose in your life? No contest as to which will endure.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Bypassing Proper Protocol
From the
One of the hallmarks of the Spirit’s outpouring on the Day of Pentecost, as Luke records it in Acts 2, is that God will not follow the dictates of mankind in speaking to and through people – or even choosing not to speak. This was the siren call of the 19th century holiness and Keswick movements and the 20th century Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and restoration movements of both centuries, that God’s spokespersons were not to be legislated by human choice. Throughout the history of the Church, you can find this same message, even long before the Reformation cry of the priesthood of all believers.
Monday, January 5, 2009
To be Human is to Grow
One of the characteristics that makes us human is growth. From our earthbound perspective, we cannot envision angels and other heavenly beings growing, except Hollywood versions like Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” To us mere mortals, immortality sounds very static. Heaven is perfection, a place where you’ve arrived and growth is passé. C.S. Lewis thought otherwise. I guess he’s found out by now if he was correct.
Whatever the case on that, Jesus certainly exhibited the human characteristic of growth once he entered the created order. Twice Luke comments on this in chapter two. “The child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” (verse 40) And verse 52, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
In the art of writing, character growth is an essential element in story development. No growth, no story. And yet, we have a hard time seeing growth in our picture of Jesus on earth. Growth seems to imply imperfection. A God in the process of becoming something more than He was before flies in the face of all monotheistic sensibility.
This is the amazing story of the Gospels, that God became man – and thus a being who grew, who transformed from newborn to child to adult, who as another New Testament writer says experienced life’s temptations just as we do. Was Jesus’ growth purely physical? Not according to Luke. The growth Jesus went through was inclusive of wisdom, spiritual development and social skills, as well as the more expected physical changes.
So many Moderns and post-Moderns struggle with the divinity of Jesus. So many people of faith struggle with the humanity of Christ. This is the incarnational imponderable. And Luke as writer embraces the whole somewhat ambiguous mix. Whereas the tensions of Jesus’ Messianic mission are highlighted in his first visit to the Temple, the tensions in his incarnational role are emphasized in the Temple visit at age twelve.
He must be about his Father’s business, yes. His Father’s business for now is to go home with his parents and be obedient and grow – not like a human, but as a human. And this distinction is far more than mere semantics, for the former is outright heresy, the latter is transformational truth. The tension for Jesus was not just in his God-man combination, it was in his humanness, for he was fully man. Growth brings tension to all of us, for we are ever in transition between what we have been and what we are becoming. Those tensions of mission and role remained with Jesus until the Resurrection. It was only then that those ambiguities were erased once and for all.
Whatever growth looks like in the hereafter, it must contain a different tension than Jesus felt on earth, than we feel in the here and now. But as we have a hard enough time understanding how this factors into our present, we surely have an impossible task fathoming what growth looks like in the eternal hereafter.
Growth is what Elizabeth George speaks of in Write Away as development of fictional characters. Growth is what my therapist speaks of as the necessary ingredient of character development. It is what makes us quintessentially human now, and in all probability somehow even in eternity.
I have seen people who stopped growing in this life. And it is not a pretty sight. For the absence of growth is death.
Whatever the case on that, Jesus certainly exhibited the human characteristic of growth once he entered the created order. Twice Luke comments on this in chapter two. “The child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” (verse 40) And verse 52, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
In the art of writing, character growth is an essential element in story development. No growth, no story. And yet, we have a hard time seeing growth in our picture of Jesus on earth. Growth seems to imply imperfection. A God in the process of becoming something more than He was before flies in the face of all monotheistic sensibility.
This is the amazing story of the Gospels, that God became man – and thus a being who grew, who transformed from newborn to child to adult, who as another New Testament writer says experienced life’s temptations just as we do. Was Jesus’ growth purely physical? Not according to Luke. The growth Jesus went through was inclusive of wisdom, spiritual development and social skills, as well as the more expected physical changes.
So many Moderns and post-Moderns struggle with the divinity of Jesus. So many people of faith struggle with the humanity of Christ. This is the incarnational imponderable. And Luke as writer embraces the whole somewhat ambiguous mix. Whereas the tensions of Jesus’ Messianic mission are highlighted in his first visit to the Temple, the tensions in his incarnational role are emphasized in the Temple visit at age twelve.
He must be about his Father’s business, yes. His Father’s business for now is to go home with his parents and be obedient and grow – not like a human, but as a human. And this distinction is far more than mere semantics, for the former is outright heresy, the latter is transformational truth. The tension for Jesus was not just in his God-man combination, it was in his humanness, for he was fully man. Growth brings tension to all of us, for we are ever in transition between what we have been and what we are becoming. Those tensions of mission and role remained with Jesus until the Resurrection. It was only then that those ambiguities were erased once and for all.
Whatever growth looks like in the hereafter, it must contain a different tension than Jesus felt on earth, than we feel in the here and now. But as we have a hard enough time understanding how this factors into our present, we surely have an impossible task fathoming what growth looks like in the eternal hereafter.
Growth is what Elizabeth George speaks of in Write Away as development of fictional characters. Growth is what my therapist speaks of as the necessary ingredient of character development. It is what makes us quintessentially human now, and in all probability somehow even in eternity.
I have seen people who stopped growing in this life. And it is not a pretty sight. For the absence of growth is death.
Friday, January 2, 2009
It’s all in the Timing
Joseph and Mary did everything they knew to do for Jesus in raising him as their son. Theirs was a simple, peasant-like faith and, yet, Jesus, the boy, prospered under their humble tutelage.
Only once is any tension between the parent’s peasant piety and Jesus’ Messianic mission recorded. And that is at the second Temple visit when Jesus is 12, which Luke records in chapter 2. Whether or not Jesus went with his parents every time (the record is not clear), his parents made the Temple visit an annual trek at Passover.
Now at age twelve, Jesus was considered adult enough to be more independent and to engage with other adults. Which is exactly what he did. There was astounding depth to this boy, wise beyond years. Knowledge can be demonstrated in facts and ideas. But Jesus amazed these teachers in the Temple with his thoughtful listening and questions which probed their breadth of understanding. While answers may show how smart you are, questions can reveal your depth of wisdom. Jesus provided proof of both, though not in a way that said such was his intention.
His parents were not as impressed with Jesus performance as the teachers were, for parents tend to use a different measuring stick. These parents were folks to whom the boy and his safety and upbringing had been entrusted. Luke doesn’t record the stories Mathew does about the way Jesus was hunted down as a baby and how many other boys lost their lives as a result. I am sure Joseph was ever vigilant for Jesus’ physical safety.
However his parents saw his Messiahship unfolding, they knew that this manchild of twelve was still in their care. He might be a child prodigy, but it was time for the child to go home.
Joseph and Mary don’t have a clue about Jesus’ behavior in the Temple or his response to them, “I must be taking care of my Father’s things” (Luke 2:49). The young lad Jesus is starting to express his unique calling. He senses that he must be working for Father God. But even without knowing the whys and the hows, Mary as mother has the innate sense that the timing is not right. It would be later in a story recorded by another chronicler (John) that Mary would sense the time had come. By then Jesus would be a more mature 30. But now was not the time for Jesus to unfurl his Messiahship. He was to go home and be an obedient son.
My mother often said that people don’t miss the will of God as much as they miss God’s timing. Perhaps it is a Mother thing, this sense of being in sync with the biological and emotional clock not only for themselves but also for their offspring. In any case, Mary and Jesus were both right in this situation. Jesus did not press his rightness, choosing to submit to the earthly authority in whose care he had been placed.
Only once is any tension between the parent’s peasant piety and Jesus’ Messianic mission recorded. And that is at the second Temple visit when Jesus is 12, which Luke records in chapter 2. Whether or not Jesus went with his parents every time (the record is not clear), his parents made the Temple visit an annual trek at Passover.
Now at age twelve, Jesus was considered adult enough to be more independent and to engage with other adults. Which is exactly what he did. There was astounding depth to this boy, wise beyond years. Knowledge can be demonstrated in facts and ideas. But Jesus amazed these teachers in the Temple with his thoughtful listening and questions which probed their breadth of understanding. While answers may show how smart you are, questions can reveal your depth of wisdom. Jesus provided proof of both, though not in a way that said such was his intention.
His parents were not as impressed with Jesus performance as the teachers were, for parents tend to use a different measuring stick. These parents were folks to whom the boy and his safety and upbringing had been entrusted. Luke doesn’t record the stories Mathew does about the way Jesus was hunted down as a baby and how many other boys lost their lives as a result. I am sure Joseph was ever vigilant for Jesus’ physical safety.
However his parents saw his Messiahship unfolding, they knew that this manchild of twelve was still in their care. He might be a child prodigy, but it was time for the child to go home.
Joseph and Mary don’t have a clue about Jesus’ behavior in the Temple or his response to them, “I must be taking care of my Father’s things” (Luke 2:49). The young lad Jesus is starting to express his unique calling. He senses that he must be working for Father God. But even without knowing the whys and the hows, Mary as mother has the innate sense that the timing is not right. It would be later in a story recorded by another chronicler (John) that Mary would sense the time had come. By then Jesus would be a more mature 30. But now was not the time for Jesus to unfurl his Messiahship. He was to go home and be an obedient son.
My mother often said that people don’t miss the will of God as much as they miss God’s timing. Perhaps it is a Mother thing, this sense of being in sync with the biological and emotional clock not only for themselves but also for their offspring. In any case, Mary and Jesus were both right in this situation. Jesus did not press his rightness, choosing to submit to the earthly authority in whose care he had been placed.
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