Category: Devotionals

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (Translation and Notes)

After around 2000 years of preaching, whole nations that have claimed to be Christian, serious Bible study by well-qualified scholars, and plenty of examples to work from, does the cross still look like foolishness?

I have answer, “Yes, in every way!”

There is an element lacking in our modern culture that Paul could assume.  The vast majority of Paul’s audience would acknowledge the need to find something better, to seek after wisdom, to try to become better people.  One might even say, “to be saved.”  There was a similar general acknowledgement that people weren’t right and that they weren’t attaining righteousness.  Of course there were always individuals who pridefully proclaimed their mastery as there are today, but the public would instinctively reject them.

Today, I think, we are fast losing both the notion that greatness, “rightness”, or wisdom are things to be earnestly sought, and at the same time we are losing the sense that we are deeply in need of salvation, both in the sense of God’s rescue from this world, and in the sense of spiritual healing.  We’re losing the sense of greatness, and at the same time our sense of how far we fall short of greatness.

A survey conducted by The Barna Group, reported in The Christian Post, found that less than 1% of 18-23 year olds hold a Biblical worldview.  Now I’m personally not that happy with the adjective “Biblical” as it gets used in such a variety of ways, but Barna avoids this problem by defining it as follows:

A biblical worldview, as defined by the Barna study, is believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

The key problem?  The young people don’t believe in absolute moral truth any more.  Now some negative answers might result from misunderstanding.  I’m often accused of not believing in absolute truth when I note that we are not really capable of absolute knowledge.  But there is a great difference between claiming that absolute truth does not exist, and being aware of one’s limitations in seeking such truth.

For example, I believe in God, but I don’t believe I can know God absolutely.  I even teach what I call the doctrine of infinite ignorance.  God is infinite and thus there is an infinite amount to know about him.  My knowledge is finite.  Infinite – any finite amount is still infinite.  So I always remain infinitely ignorant of God.  Now here’s the problem with that doctrine.  For me, it’s one of my great motivators to keep on looking.  I know I haven’t attained, and that means there is always more studying and more thinking to be done.  For some others, however, it means you might as well not try because you’ll never succeed.

But if we handle our life issues in that manner we will never get anything done.  I was talking to one of the authors whose book I’m editing right now.  I pointed out to him that when we produce advance copies in a few days there will be errors in them.  We then have time to do more work to make the final copy as good as we possibly can.  I also pointed out that such final copies are never perfect; inevitably I find an error after release that is embarrassing.  So should I bother with proofreading?  I will never attain perfection!

If I decide that proofreading is no good because perfection is beyond me, then I will be a horrible publisher and will never get any better.  But if I keep pursuing perfection, the actual books will be better and better, and will be much more useful to my readers than raw manuscripts.

Similarly if in college I decided that because a perfect paper could not be attained I must not bother to try, what would happen?  Many an ‘A’ might become an ‘F’, and I would learn much less.

I believe it is similar in morality.  We do not and cannot make perfect decisions on moral issues every time.  We don’t have a final answer to all moral questions.  Because we emphasize this point, (post-)modern people are deciding that there’s no point in bothering to debate moral issues and make decisions.  Everyone’s moral view must be essentially equal, since none of us are perfect.

I think it’s fairly easy to dismiss such a view.  We may not agree on all aspects of the right to life for embryos or unborn human beings. The terminology itself slants the debate.  If I say “abortion” rather than “killing an unborn human being” I have already biased the debate.  If I say “terminate a pregnancy” it’s different from “killing a child.”  If I say “destroy an embryo” it’s different than saying “put an end to a potential human being.”  But if you ask if it would be moral for someone to kill you and take your money for any reason, people will generally find agreement quite quickly.^*

You can always find some sort of issue on which people can generally agree.  Does that not suggest that discussion of moral issues has value?  While we might fall far short of universal agreement on what is truly morally right, by continuing the pursuit we gain enormous benefits.  Reductio ad absurdum is not always a bad thing, and moral relativism is quite susceptible to it.

Now what does this have to do with the foolishness of the cross?

If we think there are no moral standards, we tend also to think that there is no bad spirituality or good spirituality, just whatever spirituality I happen to want.  We are not sinners in need of salvation, we are not spiritually wretched, seeking healing.  We are in one spiritual state which is OK, though perhaps restlessly we might like to change to another spiritual state which will also be OK.  Who’s to judge?

Not only is God’s method foolishness to us in this post-modern age, we can’t comprehend the very need for it.  If having God die on the cross in the person of Jesus is foolish when looked at as a means of salvation, of solving a serious and intractable problem, how much more foolish does it look to those who are OK and believe their situation cannot and should not be judged?

To this generation, I fear, the cross has passed from foolishness to incomprehensibility.  We need to reclaim the ability to make moral judgments, to realize our failings, and thus to look for a solution.  Once we reclaim that, perhaps the cross will look foolish, but at least we will want what it claims to accomplish.

*I am indebted here both to Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. in his book Christianity and Secularism, chapter 7, “Is Christianity Relevant?” especially pages 174-177.  For the example, I’m indebted to my professor Dr. Alden Thompson author of Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? who notes that young people do not, at the core actually believe all morality is relative.  He finds that he can always shake them up simply by using examples that apply the theory to them personally.  There is a strong sense of right and wrong covered up by the certainty that there isn’t.  This latter is an encouraging point.

I have always loved Psalm 19, and I also regard it as a unified Psalm even though it is divided into two parts.  Those two parts, however, convey a unified central message.  God is the creator and this is why he is also the lawgiver.

In the ten commandments, also part of this week’s reading, God addresses Israel and starts by saying who he is and what his claim is on them in particular.  This is one reason that it is important to remember that the ten commandments were not initially addressed universally, but rather specifically to the Israelites who were fleeing Egypt.  God addresses them and announces that he is the God who has freed them.  That is the basis for that particular piece of legislation.  But while “the” Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, is addressed to Jews, “Torah” (instruction in general) is addressed to everyone.  I would read “Torah” in Psalm 19 as this wider instruction.

So why is God the one who can give Torah to the entire world, indeed, the entire universe?  Because he is the creator, and creation tells us of him.  If we were to address a “ten commandments” to the world, it might begin “I am your God, who created everything, and specifically created you.”

But as Christians we hear the “brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” in a very special way.  Jesus has brought each and every one of us out of our own spiritual house of bondage, and led us to this place, wherever “this place” may be.  So he can address us much as he does the Israelites in combining these two passages:  “I’m both your creator and your redeemer.”

In the study Bibles I read on this passage this morning, often a fairly random selection, I was met with a contrast.  The Orthodox Study Bible reads Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm.

Psalm 18 [OSB follows LXX numbering] reveals God the Word (the End, v. 1) becoming Man in the womb of the most holy Mother of God.  For on His Nativity, all creation bore witness to the glory of God revealed in His Incarnation (vv. 1-5). … (p. 693 on Psalm 18, emphasis in the original)

Now my first reaction is that this Psalm is not about incarnation at all.  It’s about how all creation reveals God at any time and place, not in a particular instance.  But my second thought is that the incarnation isn’t “a particular instance.”  It is the ultimate representation of who God is and how he works.  The limited reflection I see of God in sun, moon, stars, trees, flowers, and animals, to mention just a few things, is made fully clear in the incarnation.

So it is not inappropriate to treat Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm, though I think the Psalmist was thinking about those ordinary reflections of God in creation.  I think it is also possible for us to undervalue what we can learn of God in the natural world.  If God is the creator, as I believe he is, then what is created and how it is created tell us something about God.  I find this an uncomfortable thought from time to time, but my comfort does not seem to be shared by the Biblical writers.

In modern Christian theology we tend to emphasize how God’s reflection in nature and his image in humankind have been diminished through sin.  Is it not possible that we spend so much time talking about how diminished it is that we fail to see how strongly God’s light still shines?

 

The story in Mark 8:31-38 fascinates me because the disciples were, in one sense, so right, yet they were so wrong.  What we often forget is that there was good reason for the disciples to expect the Messiah to take over the throne of David immediately, to rescue their nation from the Romans, and to become the ruler of the world.  He would not be divine, as such, but he would be divinely anointed.  If Jesus was the Messiah, they would be standing next to power.

And what was wrong with that?  Shouldn’t patriots want to be involved in freeing their country from foreign rule, unjust taxation, and foreign rule?

Though there is debate on the background of the use of “son of man”  as a title for Jesus, I tend to suspect it comes from Daniel 7:13-14:

¹³I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. ¹⁴There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.  (WEB)

So here is their quite Biblical view of who the Messiah would be and what he would do.  And Jesus is telling them that they have got it wrong.  He’s telling them to give up on one whole set of proof texts and take hold of another.  Why?  Because they knew from being with him that he must be the Messiah, the anointed one.  He, in his person, would reveal God to them, and therefore God’s plans and what the real future would be like.  And it wouldn’t be pretty or easy.

Now consider this:  How truly convinced must those disciples have been that they didn’t just say, “Well, I guess you’re really not the one.  I didn’t sign up for this, and I don’t think that’s what the Bible says.”  No!  They stuck around and let Jesus convince them.  While they ran in fear at the crucifixion, they came back, confused, yes, but ready to hear the new message–“He is risen!”

We often focus on the negative, how slow the disciples were to believe, and how cowardly they were during the trial and the crucifixion.  I have to confess that I’m pretty sure I would have been slower and more cowardly than the twelve.  If I had been a disciple, I’m not sure how bad the story would have gotten, but it would have been pretty bad.

Consider this:  When you’re convinced of something what does it take to change your mind?  Are you too quick, blown about by every wind, or are you stuck in concrete when you really should be flexible?

 

Read:  Mark 9:2-9

Reading the gospel lesson for today–and I’m writing this on Sunday morning before going to teach Sunday School–I was struck by the parallel to a question I commonly get from Bible study classes.  “Why can’t God just make it clearer, unmistakable?  Why all this variety and human stuff?”

I can imagine the disciples thinking along the same lines.  Jesus keeps performing miracles, running around healing people, and proclaiming the kingdom, yet he never seems to do anything that would have to do with a coming kingdom.  Why couldn’t he just be clear?

Then Jesus takes Peter, James, and John and does something spectacular.  Now for some reason many in my classes seem to relate “spectacular” and “miraculous” with “clear.”  But Peter, James, and John don’t really get the purpose of the transfiguration either.  They think it’s spectacular, they like it, they’d like to stay where it happened, but they don’t really understand any more about Jesus than they did before.

But did it help?

That is an excellent question.  You see, I believe that Jesus was being quite clear.  It’s just that “clear in general” is not always the same thing as “clear to me.”

Frequently when my wife and I are in conversation, I’ll change tracks to another subject without warning.  Suddenly I say something.  It’s clear to me what I mean.  In fact, there’s probably something in the last sentence that suggested it to me.  But she has no idea what I’m talking about, because she’s on another program.

For conversations with my wife I’ve learned a simple solution, even though I still forget:  Tell her I’m changing the subject!  But Jesus can’t change the subject.  His disciples have one set of things in mind, and they are interpreting what he says and does in the light of their own agenda.  It will take the shock of the crucifixion and finally of the resurrection to get them off of their own agenda and onto God’s.

But did it help?  Well, yes.  But only later.  God’s spectacular act on the mount of transfiguration didn’t immediately communicate to the disciples what they needed to know, but it provided a building block that came together with others to build a new structure born in the fire of adversity at the end of Jesus’ mission.

And isn’t that really our complaint about God’s communication?  He doesn’t give us enough information to keep us from getting in trouble sometimes, or so we think.  But God knows that we’re not really going to learn it until we get into trouble.

Isaiah 40:25 asks us to consider who might be comparable with God, and who might be considered his equal.  Now we normally use this passage to talk about God’s great power and how he is unique, the creator, someone greater than anyone we know.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But when I think of the passage a bit further, it occurs to me that comparison is part of the act of talking.  We create labels for categories by comparing one item to another and then mentally producing a category.  How effective that category label will be depends on how well we observed, and how well we put things into categories.  For example, I find such labels as “table” and “chair” which generally produce a picture in my mind that is likely to correspond with what someone else may think.  I’m very dissatisfied with labels such as “left” and “right” in politics, because it is very hard to know who is in such a category.

Even verbs, such as “walk” and “run” denote categories of activities, and they are fairly useful.  In fact, without this abiity to categorize things and label them, we wouldn’t be able to communicate.  I wouldn’t be able to write this.

Enter God.  Of what or whom do I speak now?  What is the category?  What are it’s boundaries?  It’s limitations?

Isaiah 40:25 thus alerts us to a problem.  We can put God into a category, place a label on him, note his boundaries, and expect him to stay within them.  God doesn’t fit in a category.  He cannot be compared to anything else.  He is not even “he” which compares him to creatures of the masculine gender.

So when I go to speak about my experience of God I should be unsurprised when I find that my vocabulary runs out and that others have difficulty understanding what I say.  God isn’t easily tamed, even by the rules of language.

I have posted a devotional to my wife’s devotional list under this same title.  It includes a partial translation of the Old Testment lectionary for this week (Christ the King Sunday) and some meditations on Judgment.  Read it at Jody’s Devotionals.

This week’s gospel reading is Matthew 25:31-46.  There will be plenty of sermons preached on serving one’s neighbor and how this is serving Christ himself.  There will also be quite a number preached on the judgment and how we will stand in it.  I have already written a bit about how the texts today would work well in a sermon on judgment.

But there’s another angle on this story that I think is worth thinking about, especially for intellectually inclined people like myself.  Not only am I more driven by ideas than people, but I often tend to be quite sure of myself, even dangerously so.

The vision of the sheep and the goats presents us with a reversal of fortune. The folks who think they have it made find out they haven’t been doing nearly as well as they thought.  The king, whom they believe they have served constantly, tells them that he never knew them.

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Scripture:  Matthew 25:14-30, especially 24-27.  Partially cross-posted from Jody’s Devotionals.

I’m interested in knowing just what meets God’s disapproval. We all have our ideas on this, which often involve truly despicable and perverted behavior according to our cultural standards. But sometimes the Bible will shock us and make us stop and think.

This thought was first called to my attention some years ago when I was reading 2 Kings 17:2. It says that King Hoshea did evil, but not like the kings before him. King Hoshea wasn’t as bad as his predecessors. Why should this be significant? If you’re interested in knowing what God disapproves of, you should bookmark 2 Kings 17. It’s the chapter that tells of the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel. Hoshea, the one who was not as bad as, was the king when Samaria was conquered and nation went into exile.

Now Jesus shocks us a bit with a parable. The whole parable runs from Matthew 25:14-30. I’ve just chosen the part when the one-talent servant comes back to report. He’s worried, but at the same time, I think he feels safe. He’s been careful with his master’s money. He hasn’t stolen it. He buried it in the ground and it’s safe. No risk taker here. He didn’t know for sure that he would be successful, so he stayed at home.

But the master has no good words for his care. He isn’t thankful that his talent has been returned well-preserved and unharmed. He doesn’t commend him for taking the safe route. No! He calls him wicked and lazy. He could have, and should have done something!

How many of us think like the one-talent man.

• We could have witnessed for Jesus, but we really don’t know how, and isn’t it better not to prejudice them? When the person who really knows how comes along, they’ll be ready to listen.

• I have only one dollar in my pocket, or perhaps a bit of change. I’m not going to put it in the offering plate. The clink of the coins or the sight of that one dollar is too embarrassing when others are giving so much. Besides, what is one dollar against the need? So I don’t put that little bit in.

• A Sunday School teacher is needed, but I’m not going to volunteer because people will think I’m proud and arrogant, and they’ll find out I’m pretty ignorant. The class would be better off without a teacher.

• I could speak an encouraging word, but I don’t really know the person who needs to hear it, and I might say it wrong. So I keep silent.

• That person up at the altar needs someone to pray with them, but I don’t want to seem pushy, and besides, any prayer is fine. I’ll just stay right here and nobody will know.

One talent Christians?or no talent Christians?in our own minds. We think we’re being humble, thoughtful, and careful.

Unfortunately for us, Jesus thinks we’re being wicked, lazy, and useless.

This isn’t about doing big things and great things. It’s not about doing what everyone else thinks you should. Other people can burden you with things God hasn’t called you to do. Jesus is talking about the talents he gave you.

I think that if you listen for the Holy Spirit, you’ll know when you’re truly being wise and careful, and when you’re busy hiding that talent in the earth.

Reading:  Psalm 123 (From proper A28)

Is there a correct attitude for prayer?

Many people have rigid standards for how to pray, the type of language, the attitude one must have toward God, things that one must ask for–or not.  Who must be addressed (Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit), and how much praise and thankfulness is needed as opposed to requests.

In teaching about prayer, the vast majority of questions center around things one should or should not do.  It’s a great deal like learning how to approach a powerful figure, a king, or even just your boss.  What does he like to hear?  What does he hate hearing?  What is likely to open his ears to your request?

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