Fixed and Moving

This sermon was inspired by three consecutive daily entries in my other blog, Serendipitous Intersections--October 3rd, 4th and 5th (Year Two). The headings for those days' entries are: 

3   Fixed and Moving: our position is determined by our direction, our insistent metamorphosis defined by our unfolding stasis

4   The merciless spark: we stand without excuse before glimmers and hints, whispers and hues of the Kingdom--how much more, then, before the Eternal Expression  in Jesus Christ? 

5   Disobedient prayer is spirit's self-exile and no prayer at all; rebellious faith is disbelief; but surrender to deliverance is Glory's concrete entry and Forgiveness enfleshed 

Concepts of movement, responsibility and reconciliation converged to evoke the following sermon from me, which I presented in chapel at our Bible college a few days after my return from an extended stay in America. 

A linguistic note: because I was preaching to a Russian-speaking audience, I needed to explain the two nuances of English "move", since the Russian verb "move" is not used to express emotional response ("I was deeply moved by your words") as the English verb is. Interestingly, both Russian and English use the verb "touch" in this emotional sense.  

The concept I want us to contemplate today can be summed up by these two words: "fixed" and "moving". It may seem to us, sitting here in this auditorium, that we are more or less fixed in our places, sitting quietly in our chairs, if you don't count a little bit of shuffling around in our seats. Here we are in a fixed, still room, in a building firmly rooted to its spot, in this city, in this country, on this continent, on this planet--but oops, wait: the planet is spinning! 

And not only is the planet spinning, it is circling the sun in our solar system, and the solar system is riding a spiral tail of our galaxy, and our whole galaxy is floating through the universe!

So all of us, right here and now, are moving in all those ways, even as we sit very still and quiet in this room. 

Moreover, it is because we are moving in all those ways that we are fixed in a precise location. If we weren't riding the tail of a floating galaxy on a planet circling the sun and spinning around, we would not be here right now. The one is dependent on the other. 

The same can be said of our spiritual life: we are fixed and moving at the same time, and the one is dependent on the other...because where we're moving to determines where we are located right now, constantly and continually. 

Let's read John 3:19: "Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil." (The NET Bible)

This is the basis for judgment, because this has happened, the fact is accomplished, it is a fixed reality that leaves all people without excuse: LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD; THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND HAS DWELT AMONG US. 

Actually, I believe that man is and has always been without excuse before God, not only because of the Incarnation of Christ but because we inescapably sense the whispers of Truth, we feel the deep rumblings of righteousness like distant thunder, we catch the fleeting glimpses of the eternal Kingdom and we are, consequently, responsible for our choice, whether to listen (or at least try) or to tell ourselves, "No, there was nothing there--I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything." 

And if that's so, then how much more is Man without excuse before God when the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us? This is no hint or whisper merely from God; this is an explosion of heaven's light into the world in the face of God's Only-Begotten Son; this is the the Light of the World, this is a fixed, inescapable fact of human history. The God Who once said, "Let there be light" has become one of us, full of redeeming grace. 

This fact is fixed and it must move us. 

In English, our verb "move" has a nuance that it doesn't have in Russian. In Russian we say that a story was very "touching", meaning that we were emotionally affected by it. In English we say that same thing! "That was such a touching story." But in English we can also say, literally, that that was a very moving story--the story moved me, and here the verb "move" has the same meaning as "touch". It's as if I felt my heart shift inside me, as if I was drawn, pulled, by the story; this is why we say "I was moved" to mean that I was "touched" or deeply affected emotionally. 

Now, the Greek philosophers, trying to figure out Creation and cosmology, came up with a concept of God as the Fixed, or Unmoved, Mover; they pictured the Creator as one who is still and unmoving and causes everything else to move, because movement is a necessary quality of all created things, but not of the Creator. To move is to change, and the Creator neither moves nor changes. 

But when we English-speakers hear that phrase "Unmoved Mover" we quite possibly misunderstand the sense of the word "move". We take it in its usual sense, that is, to push things around this way and that. So we imagine this Greek Unmoved Mover shuffling the pieces of creation around on his playing board. But the philosophers had, arguably, the other sense of the word "move" in mind--the sense that is very close to the notion of being "touched" emotionally, that is, to be drawn, pulled, deeply affected. Picture this Unmoved Mover "moving" the whole universe precisely because the whole universe is deeply moved, by love, to come closer and closer to the Creator. This Fixed Mover doesn't shuffle pieces around on any playing board; rather, he "moves" the whole creation simply by being there and attracting it. 

Remember, I am talking here about pagan philosophy, about the concepts Man has conceived by the lesser lights of the visible creation and his God-given intuition--but doesn't the apostle Paul tell us in the first chapter of Romans that even such "Natural Revelation" possesses a compelling degree of validity and, crucially, leaves Man without excuse? 

Far from neutralizing and obliterating the valid aspects of the Natural Revelation and Greek notions of an Unmoved Mover, the Christian Revelation transcends and subsumes them. If an Unmoved Mover is conceptualized as "moving" us towards itself, by something like love, then how much more are we to be moved by this: 

"THE LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD"

Are we moved? Are we touched? Are we pulled and drawn?

Every person is moving somewhere, both physically and spiritually, whether they are conscious of it or not. All people are moving, either towards the Light of the World or away from it. And it is their direction that determines their position before God. We are, all of us, always FIXED and MOVING, and the one depends on the other. 

Christ says, "And this is the judgment." It is a fixed, certain, unwavering judgment: the light has come into the world. It is the axis of history, of time and eternity. Let's read on, John 3:20-21: "For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God." (NET Bible)

The Lord unveils the true spiritual dynamic behind all human action. No matter what the historian tells you, or the psychologists, or the sociologists, or the politicians, in actuality the one motive force behind all human action is this: we are either coming to the Light of the World, or we are retreating from it, hiding from it, rejecting it. 

In fact, this was the condition--the fluid, tentative, precarious condition--of the human spirit even before the Incarnation of Christ. If we understand that, then we can appreciate even more what incomprehensible grace is ultimately unfolded in this EVENT:"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." 

For all who want to come to the Light, for all who are willing to hear those whispers of righteousness, for all who choose not to recoil from those fleeting glimpses of the eternal kingdom, for them and their hearts there is a home, there is a "Son Given", there is a destination, a place to be and a place to move to in love. 

Unlike the Unmoved Mover of Greek philosophy, the true God moves and He is moved, in the English sense of the word. God so loved the world; the Son of Man came to seek that which was lost; Jesus wept over Jerusalem and before his friend's grave; we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched by the feelings of our infirmities.... Contrary to Greek philosophy, Heaven's true revelation discloses a God Who is continually moving towards His children in self-giving love, so that our hearts can find their true, fixed home forever. 

Where am I right now? That depends entirely on where I'm going right now. 

I want to leave you with one small phrase employed by the apostle Paul, for you to consider it in the light of the other things we've thought about so far. In his second epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes: "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:19, NIV Bible)

Notice that Paul doesn't say "the ministry of forgiveness"--because forgiveness belongs to God; it is God's business, and God has accomplished it in absolute perfection. 

Notice that Paul doesn't say "the ministry of repentance"--because repentance is the responsibility of each sinner himself. 

Paul says "the ministry of reconciliation" because his task and ours is to persuade, even beg people to move, to turn, to come into the true place and the true direction eternally appointed for their God-created hearts. 

God has done everything necessary, and that's a fixed fact, and when we evangelize we must never doubt that. The Light of the world, revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, is the human heart's true home, and when we evangelize we must never doubt that. 

Our confidence in God's answer to the human crisis must be fixed and unmoving, so that we might be moved, touched, compelled by God's love to hold out that answer to human souls hurtling towards eternity. 

We can say to them, "Come with us, and dwell in the Father's kingdom, where there will always be somewhere farther to go in His constant, unwavering love."  

Art or Guessing Game?

I have no time for the so-called “poetry” that is nothing more than a guessing game, i.e., “here’s an incoherent pile of words, now you try to guess what I mean”.

It’s astonishing how many people buy hook-line-and-sinker into the tripe that goes: “You should never ASK what a work of art MEANS, because that just shows you have no powers of appreciation and want somebody to hand you the meaning on a silver platter.” Thus, so-called artists get away with foisting no-talent rubbish on the public… a blank canvas except for a red spot in the middle… a “sculpture” consisting of, say, a thousand wads of chewed bubble gum smushed together in a blob… or a poem that goes, say:

l IF e it
IS
4398279468
it?

And we’re supposed to “ooh” and “ah” at the iconoclastic genius… yawn….

It’s really amazing how MUCH can be produced when none of it has to mean anything or requires any true “art” (effort, finesse, creative tension) AND the public is too chicken to stand up and recognize that the emperor has no clothes on.

Genuine art can STAND UP to explanation. That’s precisely what MAKES art more than a guessing game. If the only thing that’s meaningful about a work of art is “What was the artist THINKING of?”, it implies that, if indeed you could get said artist to TELL you, the work itself would have ipso facto exhausted its raison d’etre. That hardly speaks well of the work, does it! But if you research, for example, any number of the great orchestral works of the 19th century, you will find that the composers weren’t shy in the least about explaining in great detail what their works meant to them, what concepts and feelings provoked and generated their creations—never, apparently, considering that they were somehow ruining their own art by doing so, or catering to “philistines”. Indeed, I imagine that, had anyone responded with, “Well, now that you told us, you’ve RUINED it!”, that’s the person who’d have richly earned the epithet “philistine.”

I remember a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from years back, where Calvin invites Hobbes to play a guessing game. Hobbes agrees. Calvin says, “Okay, I’m thinking of a number. You guess what it is.” Hobbes looks slightly ferhoodled at this notion, but gives it the old college try: “Uh… two?” “Nope! Guess again!” “Er… 849?” “Nope! Guess again! Isn’t this fun?!” Hobbes gives the audience that Oliver Hardy stare of exasperation and walks away. Calvin stares after him in perplexity and concludes that Hobbes just doesn’t like to play games.

The analogy to my topic here is obvious!

Now, if the game had been, “Guess the number I’m thinking of between 1 and 5, and if you guess right on the first try, you get a Snickers bar,” well, then, there’s some form and definition, parameters and also a motivation. But just, “Guess what number I’m thinking of…”, means, “Try to read my mind… simply because I like it when people try to read my mind… because it makes me feel my mind is important….” Sorry, but nobody’s THAT important. And to invite people to do that implies more than subtly that you doubt they themselves have anything more significant to do with their lives than to stand around trying to guess what you’re thinking. In art, that’s called disrespecting an audience (not to mention thinking far more of yourself than is healthy). It’s precisely what’s going on when the painter, asked what his red spot in the middle of a blank canvas means, sneers, “If I need to EXPLAIN it to you… then it’s probably not worth it….” Well, I’d have to agree on the “not worth it” part—indeed, nothing about the spot on the canvas is “worth it”--but I imagine his main reason for not explaining is, there’s nothing there TO explain, and admitting it blows his cover.

Back to poetry…. When the poet isn’t AFRAID to be comprehensible (which means, having something to say and respecting his audience enough to let them hear it), and at the same time is a master of the art form itself, the result can be as shattering as any great piece of music.
The art form is a fascinating one, aimed at transmitting vivid concepts with the most economical and aesthetically effective use of language. Reading an extended work—like, for instance, Paradise Lost—demands real commitment, patience and “two ears”, i.e., an ear for the content and an ear for the form… and perhaps a third ear that synthesizes the two into a single experience.

At the moment, I’m reading Dorothy L. Sayers’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso); I’m in the final book now. Dante was, in his own way, an iconoclast (I don’t mind “iconoclasts” if they actually represent SUBSTANCE, and not simply “nothing” in place of “something”), daring to produce his life’s major work in Italian rather than the expected Latin. Moreover, I think I’m accurate in saying he invented the particular poetic form used in the Divine Comedy, i.e., the “terza rima” form, by which the rhyming end-words follow this pattern: A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, etc. Sayers was very ambitious, some might have said crazy, in setting her mind not only to translate the “sense” of Dante but actually to reproduce the “terza rima” form in her English version.

(I remember, by the way, reading a PROSE translation of the Inferno when I was in ninth grade—which strikes me now as utterly bizarre—and that I really liked it—which strikes me as even bizarrer!)

The thing about poetry that requires patience—or, at least, ONE of the things that require patience—is its syntactical freedom (freedom in word-order). The verbs can come in FRONT of the subjects; the adjectives can come AFTER the nouns; the direct object can come in FRONT of the verb, etc. What’s funny is how we accept such “non-English” under the guise of poetry when we’d immediately reject it as “ordinary speech”:

Lilies three gave she me

Here are the opening two triplets from the 10th canto of Dante’s Paradiso in Sayers’s translation. The order of words and concepts defies the “ordinary” pattern of English, though not as radically as “Lilies three gave she me”!

The uncreated Might which passeth speech,
Gazing on His Begotten with the Love
That breathes Itself eternally from each,
All things that turn through mind and space made move
In such great order that without some feel
Of Him none e’er beheld the frame thereof.

In “regular talk”, what this passage is saying is:
The uncreated Power (God, specifically the Father, Whose Being cannot be expressed in human language), as an outgrowth of His contemplating the Son in the love that ceaselessly flows between Them, has launched everything that exists, whether physical or “abstract”, into motion so exquisitely that nothing created can ever truly be perceived without some consciousness of God Himself.

To appreciate poetry means taking the time to think out WHAT is being said, and then go back and enjoy, dive into, the powerfully “aesthetic” WAY in which the poet said it, because his/her “way” of saying it has also, in the process, created new, indeed multiple, levels of meaning.

I think it is this multiplicity of meaning inherent in all genuinely great art, and the fact that no one ELSE can discover all those meanings FOR you, or create YOUR entire experience of the work—I think it is THIS that, on a cringingly nebbish, humbug-ish level, the makers of vapid, uncreative, just-stand-there-and-guess “art” are trying to capitalize on, to use as a kind of weapon to fend off all uncomfortable inquiry: “Art has MANY meanings, so don’t DARE ask me what it means!” Well, dear “artist”… if art, as you say, has “many meanings”, then surely you wouldn’t ruin our experience of your work by suggesting one? At least to give us a start? Particularly when this… thing you’ve made says NOTHING to ANYBODY? To argue that “art has many meanings” is no compelling reason for us to assume that this bit of… well, NOTHING that you’ve slapped together means… SOMETHING! It wasn't the little boy who called the emperor naked who was the “philistine”.

Why (IMHO) Tolkien Was Wrong on a Certain Point

I make no claim to being a Tolkien/Lewis expert, though I’ve read everything Lewis published, along with a lot that he didn’t (his letters), and, naturally, I’ve read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion (multiple times—it grows in the re-reading) and other things by him—and, finally, I’ve read lots and lots about the two of them. I’d be surprised, therefore, to find that my grasp of the disagreement between them over Lewis’s “Narnia” books is way out in left field.

It seems generally accepted that their “fight” was so intense that, if it didn’t outright end the friendship, it cast a permanent pall over it. The gist of the fight, I understand, was over Lewis’s apparently carefree/careless, tossed-salad style mix of creatures and images from the myths and folklore of different cultures—from Norse legend to Greek myth to… Santa Claus!—in a single, what Tolkien must have considered preposterous, farcical vaudeville show dressed up as “myth” (which, as we know, meant so much to Tolkien; thus, what Lewis was doing had to have struck him as a kind of sacrilege). Apparently, Father Christmas/Santa Claus was, to Tolkien, the crowning insult, for which he could never forgive Lewis.

Lewis didn’t write the Narnia Chronicles, of course, in order to win “forgiveness” from Tolkien or anybody else. The Narnia Chronicles aren’t about J.R.R. Tolkien, and what they are about, Tolkien could not, by his own admission, see. When one doesn’t see something, it doesn’t prove there’s nothing there; it simply indicates that one doesn’t see….

It’s critically important, in order to see what Lewis was aiming at, to understand Lewis’s concept of “story”. Lewis placed the highest value on “internal consistency”—the story has to be true to itself. (The Narnia Chronicles are not, of course, “true” to Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”; “Lord of the Rings” is one story and “Narnia” is another, neither being the objective standard for the other any more than Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” is the criterion of assessment for Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”.) Lewis was adamant on the point that a story must be a “real story”; that is, the inner world of the story must work on its own terms; the things that happen in it must really be what we could expect to happen there if that world really existed as such. The author carries the burden of really writing a story (thus, a “real story”), not simply taking a story or event from elsewhere,  slightly re-dressing it and pretending he has created something (along the lines of “Veggie Tales”, about which I’m tempted to say much, but will refrain… except to say I’m sure Lewis would have been appalled).   

The inner world of the story is not indebted to match any world outside of it (Tolkien’s or anybody else’s), but if it is not true to itself, then the whole show comes tumbling down. Having said that the story’s inner world is not indebted to “match” any world outside it, I must add that Lewis, at the same time, was fiercely intent that his stories should be “true-to-life” on the level of truth’s very fabric: the supremacy of righteousness, love, faithfulness, justice, mercy, the good, over all that’s evil and “bent”.

Lewis was also adamant on the point that his Narnia stories were not “allegory” in the way people generally take that word. The best, classic example of pure “allegory” is of course Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, in which every character, place and event is a “symbol” of something in the “real world,” in our Christian walk. And so, the envy or fear or laziness, or the hope, faith and love that we experience in life become, in Bunyan’s allegory, sentient creatures in their own right. It’s a kind of guessing game and we’re supposed to guess! Allegory, in this sense, is categorically what Lewis and Tolkien had no interest in writing and fiercely denied writing. They did not compose guessing games. The extent to which events in their stories are analogous to events in our own lives or in world history, sacred or otherwise, is a reflection of the way all life is inevitably analogous to itself! Every time forgiveness is shown, for instance, it resonates and correlates, on some level, with every other time forgiveness has ever been shown, ultimately expressed in the Cross itself.

Lewis somewhere explained that the notion behind the Narnia stories was: if God actually did decide to create another world and inhabit it with all these fantastic creatures, what kind of things could we expect—going by the nature of life as we know it—to happen there? That’s what makes Lewis’s story different from allegory. Bunyan’s allegory is about what in fact is happening in our lives, except Bunyan dresses it all up in make-believe costumes. Lewis’s story, on the other hand, is about something that has never happened and never will happen, but… would plausibly work out “something like this” if God ever did make such a world, based on what we know about the true and living God.

Thus, Aslan giving his life to save Edmund is not a thinly disguised allegory of Christ dying on the cross for the sins of the world. This point is critical to understand if we are not to misread Lewis horribly. In the Narnia story, Aslan dying on the stone table for Edmund is an imagined scenario of what the same Christ who died for our sins in this  world would certainly do, if there were a Narnia, where He was incarnate as a lion, and there were a crisis in which the redemption of a son of Adam required Him to make that sacrifice. As “pure allegory”, in fact, Aslan’s death on the stone table doesn’t really work—the more you try to correlate the supposed “allegory” to the “real event”, the more hopelessly it falls apart--but as a different event in a “real story” it works beautifully… and, as story, it poignantly expresses Lewis’s appreciation, his “take”, of the true Christ Who is.

But… to come back to Tolkien! Where Tolkien saw a dilettante-ish, intellectually insulting grab-bag of world myths irresponsibly tossed into a work without any genuine controlling center, for Lewis—I take this from, among other things, what Lewis said about “story”—the controlling center was the creative premise itself: what if God did create such a world, what might happen there? In the story, it is not C.S. Lewis desperately raiding all the cultural treasure troves he can lay his hands on for tasty images, it is rather God choosing—as is His perfect right—to make a world in which all of our Earth’s ancient myths, dreams and legends are enfleshed and made responsible agents in the universal drama (the drama encompassing all worlds, whether Earth or Narnia) of life in the sight of God. And the hint is more than obvious that, in this fiction, God would have created this world, stocked with everything from fauns to centaurs to Santa Claus, finally and inevitably for the delight of the children of Earth, the children of Adam, who—certainly not counter to Aslan’s wishes—“invaded” it. It is the presence of HUMANS in Narnia that adds REASON to the presence of all Earth’s most ancient dreams there. This is a world, and a story, that is internally consistent—it works on its own terms.

Tolkien seems, to me, to have paradoxically blamed Lewis for doing two opposite things at once: for writing a “Tolkienesque” work on the cheap, a farce, something caricatural and mocking of Tolkien, and for not writing a Tolkienesque work!  It’s a bit like people who can never learn, say, French because they can never quite forgive French for not being English; they can’t get past the annoying reality that “it doesn’t work like my  language.” They never come to the place where they realize, “This language doesn’t exist to be compared to English; I have to take it on its own terms.”

Tolkien could not bring himself to budge from a certain, rigid, conceptual stronghold in order to perceive Lewis’s particular creative genius in the construction of the Narnia-world. It’s as if Lewis’s creation was a foreign language Tolkien wouldn’t attempt for fear of losing his own; thus he couldn’t hear or acknowledge Lewis’s language as anything but gibberish—in Tolkien’s own terms, “unreadable”. Considering how readable the Narnia stories have been to millions (a million children can't be wrong!), the verdict “unreadable” can only be a verdict on Tolkien’s blind spot in this case.

Lewis's work is not Tolkien's work. It's not even an attempt at being Tolkien's work. Tolkien's work, and tastes, do not define what Lewis was about, and, evidently, Tolkien was deaf to what Lewis was about when he created Narnia. Which is sad. Not every concert work of genius must sound like Beethoven's Fifth or "Thus Spake Zarathustra". Genius may be heard as well in "The Afternoon of a Faun" or "The Carnival of Animals." I must add to this point, that the distinct and exquisite level of genius hidden in the Narnia Chronicles was brought stunningly to the fore not long ago with the publication of Michael Ward's "Planet Narnia". The book argues that each book in the Narnia series contributes to an unfolding motif centered on medieval cosmology, the characteristics, qualities and mythical associations of the classic seven "planets" (including the sun and the moon) quite directly and vividly setting the stage in each book: the silvery moonlit atmosphere in "The Silver Chair"; the golden sun-drenched world in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the oppressive, saturnine heaviness of "The Last Battle".... When the concept was sketched to me, even before I had the chance to read the book, I knew instantly that it was right; it was something I had already felt but had no way to formulate. The evidence Ward presents in his book is utterly compelling, above and beyond the fact that it's something you recognize as true on a gut-level. Interestingly, the best attempt I've read, in an issue of the annual journal "Seven", published by Wheaton College, to refute Ward's theory, falls utterly flat.  

When Nixon went to “Red China”, everybody said that “Only Nixon could go to China.” That is, only the legendary anti-communist crusader Richard Nixon could make such a move without wrecking his anti-communist credentials. On a higher plane, C.S. Lewis said of Christ that only the Author of the commandment "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart... and thy neighbor as thyself" could pronounce with utter rightness, "Anyone who does not hate his father, his mother, his brother, his sister for My sake cannot be My disciple." Such "hate," enjoined by the Author of love, could only be right, and true and, ultimately, love. In a similarly paradoxical way, I will say that only C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest classicists of the 20th century, a man who cherished the riches of the "pagan" world (which is to say, the whole world that Christ came to redeem) and saw their best meanings caught up into and realized in the refining, transfiguring glory of Christ--only C.S. Lewis could, with such audacious abandon, ransack those riches and throw them together, willy-nilly, into his story, without doing them insult; rather, he did them honor and, in the process, expressed his rock-bottom conviction that, in the real world, all things belong finally to one Maker and living God, and that it would be sacrilege ever to deny it. 

"What would You have me do?" Calling in Paul's life, and ours!

This is a message I gave on Saturday, March 29th in Zaporozhye at a gathering of youth from across the province. The general theme of the conference was "calling", the "banner phrase" of the day being, "What would You have me do?" from Acts 22:10. 

I decided to speak in English, mostly because I had only just found out a few days beforehand I would be doing this, and I preferred to devote my time and energy to working on the content, not the language (i.e., Russian). Also, I thought it would be a bit "exotic" and thus interesting to a lot of the young people, especially those who could follow some English and would enjoy the challenge. Finally, I also considered it advantageous to present the message, as it were, in "stereo", the second voice being that of a much younger person, and of the "fairer sex", so as to increase the "identification quotient," as opposed to just being a lone old codger up there at the pulpit. And I really do think that helped! 

A few times I broke intentionally into Russian. Where I did that will be plain here. I include a transliteration, in Latin letters, of what I said in Russian, with the English next to or under it in parentheses. Before getting into the message at all I did say a few introductory words in Russian, so they were prepared for the fact that I could speak Russian! 

In 1 Corinthians 9:16, the apostle Paul says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ Paul was called to preach the Gospel. When we hear the word “calling”, we think of service. To answer God’s calling means to serve Him. Yes, that’s true. But allow me to add another side, another aspect, to that: Calling means not only service; calling means change. When we answer God’s call, we change. And in God’s plan, to change means to grow, and to grow means to become like Jesus Christ—in concrete ways through obeying His commands. Paul could just as easily have said, “Woe to me if I do not become like Jesus Christ!”

But, one of you may object, “Wait! Being an apostle, or a traveling evangelist, isn’t the only way to become like Jesus Christ!” Perfectly correct. What I mean is, the only way to become like Jesus Christ is to answer God’s special calling in your life, whatever that may be—we are all different.

“Woe is me,” said the apostle, “if I do not preach the gospel.” Yes indeed, woe to him, because if he stopped proclaiming the message of Jesus, then the whole meaning and richness of his existence would disappear. If Paul stopped evangelizing, he would stop knowing Christ, because for Paul, to know Christ was to be His apostle.

We are not all called to be evangelists or preachers. But—we are all called. Perhaps one day you will say, “Woe is me if I do not adopt an orphan; woe is me if I do not feed the poor; woe is me if I do not witness to my coworkers; woe is me if I do not use my writing skills for God; if I don’t sing for God; if I don’t comfort the suffering; woe is me if I don’t learn sign language and minister to the deaf; woe is me if I don’t go to serve Christ in Mongolia, or Nepal, or Peru… or a small village in Ukraine.” No matter what your calling may be, you can say, “Woe is me if I don’t do it, because then I won’t know the fullness and richness my life should have in Christ.”

And whatever may be your personal calling from God, you can be sure of this: your calling will require you to change and develop, and grow into the likeness of Christ—that you change in concrete ways that you cannot imagine ahead of time. Let me emphasize that: life cannot be fully experienced simply on the level of imagination. You cannot know life simply as... predvkusheniye (anticipation, foretaste). Christ didn’t save us by thinking about dying on the cross. Paul didn’t simply dream how wonderful it would be if Gentiles across Asia came to Christ. No. Life must be lived in action, and the fruit of action is your becoming—your concrete becoming what you could never have been if you had not answered the call of God.

Calling is not an idea. Calling is a crisis. You know what the word “crisis” means? It comes from a Greek verb that means “to judge”, “to discern”. A crisis is a turning point; it is a moment of decision. Calling is a crisis, and it changes our lives, and changes us, radically. Paradoxically, this crisis also reveals what we really are, in our deepest nature—the nature that God designed from the very beginning.

Paradoxically, the more we change under God’s true plan, the further we enter into our true character. But if we reject calling because we’re afraid of change, we will lose even what we were trying to keep.

Let’s look at Acts 9:1-2 (read).

This Pharisee Paul was eager, zealous, ambitious. He had aspirations, expectations of becoming something—a great Pharisee and teacher in Israel; of becoming one of the great champions of God’s Law.

Listen carefully: Paul believed he was doing right. I think he would have announced without apology that his heart was full of righteous anger and holy hatred at these followers of Jesus. And here is the stunning thing: Paul was catastrophically wrong and horribly deceived. Believing he was conducting a holy war for God’s Law, Paul was actually committing an unspeakable evil. Isn’t it amazing that people can think they’re so right when they’re so wrong? Such is the dreadful consequence of sin. But how great God’s love is, that He looks deeper than our sin to see our need.

And this divine love appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, in a burst of light: (read Acts 9:3-6).

“Who are you, Lord?” This Paul, who one day stood nearby and approved the killing of Stephen, and this Paul who went to Damascus to destroy anyone who professed the name of Jesus, this Paul now confesses his blindness and his ignorance: “Who are you, Lord?” The man who knew everything now knows that he knows nothing. This is change. This is the indispensible requirement of calling. It is painful when it is happening, but it is good and necessary.

And I want you to look at verse 20, because something most significant is hidden in the verse. It is hidden openly, transparently, because it’s right in front of our eyes but we don’t pay attention to it because we read the verse so quickly: “…and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”

What is significant here? This is the earliest description of the content of Paul’s preaching; this is the essence of his gospel, especially as he preached it to the Jews. And what does this “essence” consist of? That Jesus is the Son of God. For Paul, the revolutionary revelation is not so much that Jesus is the Christ, but that Christ is the Son of God. Paul always expected that some day some man would be the Christ, but he never expected that the Christ would be the Son of God! This has changed everything for Paul.   

Change. Upon the revelation of the Son of God, Paul’s whole world changed—and so Paul had to change; he was called to change, to grow to live in Christ. This is what calling means.

A part of this chapter where I glimpse a very subtle bit of humor is in verses 26-31 (read). Again, this is a part you can read quickly without noticing significant details. As soon as Barnabas convinced the church in Jerusalem that Paul was a genuine believer, Paul started preaching like fire all over town. The text doesn’t tell us that he converted anybody, but it does tell us that a plot arose to kill him! And what did the Church do? Did the Church say to Paul, “Get ready—now you will offer up your life as a martyr to God like Stephen did”? No. The Church decided it would be better for everyone if this young, fiery, confrontational new convert left town and went home to Tarsus for a while. “And then the church had peace throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria”—whew! peace!—“and it became stronger and grew”—what? How can that be?! Yes, dear young brother Paul, without you the church had peace, and became stronger, and grew. Imagine that!

Calling. Calling doesn’t mean we will always be the managers of our own affairs. It doesn’t mean: “From now on, it’s just me and the Holy Spirit, and I don’t need anybody’s advice!” No. If calling means that we are accessible and susceptible to the sound of God’s voice and direction of His will, then it also means we are open to the human channels through whom God will work in our lives. Even more, it means we must be sensitive, ready to perceive that God is telling us something through people. Calling means not just calling to serve, but calling to learn.

One of the things we learn when we submit to God’s calling is, we learn who we really are. It is important to know who you really are. Why? Because then you know what you are offering to God! The more you know who you really are, the better you can truly offer yourself to God.

I like to teach, and I think I’m not the worst teacher in the world. In fact, on occasion… if I’ve had a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast… I’ve been known to teach pretty well. Not every time that I teach is like a glorious mountaintop experience, but there are some special moments when my students and I together feel truth opening itself up to us with its almost shattering power. Those are truly peak moments, the kind that remind me again that teaching is my calling – even if I don’t always love it. I will tell you a secret about myself: I’m not an extrovert; I’m an introvert. It is always difficult for me, even painful, to get up in front of an audience. No, I don’t just mean that I get nervous. We all get nervous about things sometimes—but in fact I didn’t feel nervous at all about speaking to you this morning. No, I’m talking about something different. I mean quite literally that is painfully uncomfortable for me to stand in front of an audience. And yet, I am called to teach! Woe is me if I don’t teach!

Khotya, gore mne dazhe yesli ya prepodayu!

(Though, woe is me even if I do teach!)

V lyubom sluchaye, gore.

(Woe, regardless.)

Gore byvayet v zhyzni.

(In life, woe happens.)

Our Lord knew woe. But to experience woe in the fulfillment of God’s calling is to sow with tears and bring in a harvest with rejoicing.

When I came to Zaporozhye in February of 1995—that’s over 19 years ago!—I didn’t know that I was called to teach. I only knew I was called to Ukraine. I didn’t even come here with the intention of associating with the Bible college. The founders of the Bible college worked for one mission and I worked for a different one; we didn’t come here together. But when I got to Zaporozhye they asked me to help teach English, and I agreed. But to me that wasn’t really a “teaching ministry”—I was just helping. So when did the “great revelation” come to me that I must teach for Christ? It would be very interesting, of course, if I could tell you I saw a vision or heard a voice from heaven. But what really happened was this:

It was a Wednesday and the college was expecting an American guest to arrive on Friday to start teaching a course on Monday. On Wednesday this American brother wrote us to say he had broken his leg and couldn’t come. So Mark, the college director, handed me a textbook and said, “You have to teach this course starting Monday.” I was horrified! It’s what we call in English a baptism in fire.

But you know what? When I began doing this, I slowly discovered that I liked it, that the students reacted well, that they really learned something (!) and seemed to appreciate my work. In short, I discovered I was a teacher. I had to come to Ukraine, at the age of 37, to find myself—because when you answer God’s calling on your life, you certainly find yourself.

Such a discovery will bring the unexpected, even the unpleasant, and will often contradict what we assumed about ourselves.

Young Paul assumed that his calling simply meant that, if before he was fiery and zealous against Jesus, now he should simply be fiery and zealous for Jesus. Yes, a big change in his official position, but fundamentally the same character and approach to his task. Imagine his perplexity, his befuddlement, when the Church said to him, “Paul, you know what you need to do now? You need to get out of town, go home, and be quiet for a while.”

Calling doesn’t only change what we do, it changes who we are, and most of all it convinces us, to the deepest part of our souls, that we no longer sit on the throne of our lives, and that the most important question is not what we’re comfortable with, or what we like, or even what we understand. The most important question is: “Shto povelish’ mne delat’?” (“What will You have me do?”- Acts 22:10)

Before I came to Ukraine I was a pastor in America—that was my work—and I loved my church and I think they loved me! But a time came when I knew I had to go to Ukraine. It was clearly God’s direction. I wasn’t in control, God was. My heart was broken as I prepared to leave my country, my family, my friends, my church and everything that was familiar and comfortable to me—including my language! My family and friends were heartbroken, too. I felt very guilty for putting them through such pain. I remember one friend really was irritated with me, because he saw how sad I was, and he said, “You have such a happy life here, you love your work, you have close friends—why are you ruining it by going away?” And I could only say, “I must. That’s all. I must. God is doing this.”

There was a multitude of good reasons to stay home in America. There was only one little reason to come to Ukraine: calling.

Shto povelish’ mne delat’?

(What will You have me do?)

Calling changes everything, beginning with yourself. And when you answer God’s call, you will find yourself like never before.

The last thing I want to say now about calling is this: Calling brings chapters into your life—beginnings, endings and new beginnings. In Acts 14:8-20 (we won’t read the whole thing here now) we read about Paul and Barnabas in Lystra. What they experienced there brought them, it seems to me, to the close of a chapter in their lives. Barnabas was something like a mentor to Paul. He was the first believer in Jerusalem who trusted Paul after Paul’s conversion, and he introduced Paul to the apostles. After Paul had been back in Tarsus for some time, it was Barnabas who went to find him and bring him back to Antioch, so Paul could see the great things God was doing there among the Gentiles. “Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith.” He was like a father to Paul, and the two of them were sent together as a team to evangelize the world.

But when they came to Lystra, things began to change. Before this, Luke the writer of Acts constantly says, “Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Barnabas” when he talks about them. Suddenly, in Lystra, Luke says, “Paul”. It was Paul who took the initiative to tell a crippled man to stand up, and the man was healed.

Very interestingly, Paul and Barnabas receive two extreme reactions from one and the same city, Lystra. First, they are received as gods in the most enthusiastic reception they ever got anywhere—and it was a reception they didn’t want! (It’s also interesting to me that the people of Lystra thought Barnabas was the greater god, Zeus, and Paul was just his messenger Hermes!) And the same people accorded to Paul the opposite extreme not much later by trying to stone him to death!

And here is what indicates that something has changed, that a chapter is ending: they stoned only Paul, not “Paul and Barnabas”. Let’s read 14:19-20.

“But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium and won over the crowds. Then they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples surrounded him, he got up and went into the city. The next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.”

Who do we see rising up from the road, as if from the dead, and walking adamantly back into Lystra? Paul and Barnabas? No. We see Paul—and his disciples with him. Barnabas isn’t even mentioned. It is Paul who not only has been stoned by the Lystrans, but Paul who now leads the disciples back into the city. Something has changed. Paul has entered a new dimension as a man and apostle. And the time for Barnabas’ special ministry in Paul’s life is clearly coming to an end, even if the two of them didn’t fully realize it. A chapter is quickly closing. Very soon after this, as we all know, Paul and Barnabas separated—on a superficial level the cause was a difference of opinion about letting Mark join them on a missionary voyage, but the real, the intrinsic reason was that it was time; change was necessary for both Paul and Barnabas because a chapter had ended. It was time for them both to go and fulfill their callings separately. Barnabas could no longer play the old role in Paul’s life. Perhaps if both Paul and Barnabas had understood this better, they wouldn’t have argued but would have separated in peace.

Calling means change, growth and chapters in our lives, as we discern what God wants, do what God directs, and discover who we really are in God’s great, glorious plan. Don’t be afraid of change, don’t be afraid of chapters ending and chapters beginning, and DON’T be afraid of… CALLING.

Shto povelish’ mne delat’?

What would You have me do?

Open your hearts to whatever God will answer.

Divinization and the Sigh of Relief

The more aware we become (in creeping, minutely incremental ways) how God is incomprehensibly other than we are, the more at home we are and genuinely content in our finite human skin. There's something beyond humility (though it likely turns out to be quintessential humility) in uttering with a sigh of relief, "Thank God I'm not God!"

Part of the relief is, of course, that the existence and state of the whole created order doesn't depend on me! Another part of it is, I realize there's a particular thought-experiment I need never invest my energies in conducting because it's a sheer waste of time. It's the one that starts: "Imagine what it's like to be God...." (Ah yes... yes, let's just... imagine that, shall we? Hold on, hold on, I think I'm getting it now...!)

Yet I can imagine someone, once, seriously setting himself that task, actually believing he could comprehend the essence and totality of God's... what? God-ness. And, having conceived that challenge to his powers of conceptualization, he reached the conclusion that he'd done it, figured it out, broken it down to its constituent parts, mastered the conundrum and qualified himself to assume the role and execute the duties thereof. He was called Lucifer.

What is piercingly poignant, in comparison, is what Scripture tells us about the only human being ever competent, capable and, yes, essentially entitled to indulge in that very thought-experiment: "What's it like to be God?"--essentially entitled because He was (and is) God. He is the single, singular case, out of all humanity through all time, of one who would not have engaged in something on the order of Monty-Pythonesque absurdity in saying, "Now my mind will conceive--authentically and clearly--what it's 'like' to be God. And I will enter into that reality now."

The thing that is piercingly poignant is, Scripture tells us He never did that. He chose, willed, not to. He completely set aside even the thought, having committed wholly to live as Man in absolute obedience to the God Who is not Man.

It's in the light of these things that what Scripture goes on to say about Him (and us, too) is so stunning. It is precisely this Jesus, Who, "being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage," but, instead, lived out, to the final degree and last extent, "the nature of a servant", and "being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!"  It's because of that alone that "God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:6-11, NIV-UK).

In the (to us) gloriously paradoxical way of God's victories, it's the One who never conceived in his heart a creaturely lust for the Eternal Throne but expended Himself instead to the point of virtual annihilation, apparently reward-less and comfortless as Death closed in to swallow Him up, Who turns out to reign eternally with the Father in Heaven, "God from God, Light from Light," on the "throne of God and the Lamb."

"But wait, there's more," as the saying goes.

As for us, the Scriptures speak of the consummate realization of our redemption, which is a kind of glorification, in Christ--not to become the same as God or usurp His throne, as Lucifer conceived it in his heart to do, not to be identical in every possible way to Christ the Word Incarnate--only One will ever be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the Alpha and Omega, the express image and effulgence of the Father's Being. And yet, the apostle John says that "we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is." The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, speaks of the body that is "raised imperishable... raised in glory... raised in power... raised a spiritual body." In an echo and affirmation of John's assertion--which, considering how different we mistakenly tend to think of Paul and John being from each other, is really stunning--Paul too points to the moment when "we shall be like Him": "...as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. ...[W]e will all be changed.... For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."

Our resurrected state--in body and spirit as entirely redeemed and everlastingly, divinely renewed souls--within the entirety of the New Creation of God, will be possessed of a nature, of a quality and capacities, of a fullness and integrity of life, drenched with the living love of God Himself, such that, were it possible for us to see these future selves of ours, now, strolling toward us, we'd very likely fall on our faces like dead men. We might well imagine it was Christ Himself, or at least an angel, coming toward us. The apostle John did a fair bit of falling on his face before the heavenly glory revealed in the Revelation, whether at the aspect of Christ Himself or just an angel of God.

The theologians, and, yes, the mystics, speak of a process, "divinization." This isn't man-becoming-God. Rather, it's this very process of growing into the likeness of Christ through what is, in the simplest of terms, the "entire takeover" of the human will by divine love. Paradoxically, our divinization is so radically not man-becoming-God that it is, to the contrary, entirely dependent on the immutable fact--an eternal "verdict"--that we are not God. In other words, the only reason we may go on forever and ever growing in similitude, manifesting ever more sublime reflection of God is, quite logically, that we are other than He is. Otherwise all talk of "becoming like" is pure nonsense. We cannot go on "becoming like" what, actually, we have at some point become. I cannot be "like" myself, because I am myself! I may, however, become "like" the God Who I am not.

Divinization, then, turns out to be an eternally, endlessly "realizing" reality, because there is no end to the Being of the One Living God Whose life and love we are to engage, adore and extol, in infinite ways as yet unimaginable, all the more, forever and ever. Because He is infinite, our divinization, as His forever-finite creatures, is necessarily infinite. Such a singular, incomparable appointment and glory in the order of God's creation would be an impossibility to us if we were not... FINITE. Only the finite may infinitely "become". Only the finite may confront an infinite world of unknown, unexplored possibilities. These possibilities well up and spring, first and last, from the very life and creative will of the Living God.

Such is the glory proper and unique to Man, that of our created-ness and God-likeness in the sphere of the ultimately unfathomable designs and counsels of the Living Infinity that is the One True God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think it appropriate here to repeat what I said at the outset: the more aware we become (in creeping, minutely incremental ways) how God is incomprehensibly other than we are, the more at home we are and genuinely content in (and everlastingly thankful for) our finite human skin. There's something beyond humility (though it likely turns out to be quintessential humility) in uttering with a sigh of relief, "Thank God I'm not God!" It seems appropriate, too, to remark that the way of this divinization begins, for the Christian, not in the "by and by" but right here and now--pointedly, inescapably and uncomfortably by having "the same mindset as Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5), which brings no promise of earthly glory or splendor... quite the contrary....

Which is all the more reason for that "sigh of relief." Yes, relief... because the very sigh is the sound of faith that HE IS.

Clouds

This sermon is about as far as you can get from a "three-pointer", and forget about anything approaching "expository preaching" here. It's a cluster of notions united by a single image or figure: clouds. The conclusion is hardly a conclusion as much as a "gathering storm" of praise. 

A few weeks ago we celebrated "Harvest Festival" in the church, which is always a very enjoyable Sunday service - especially when it's followed by a big lunch! At Harvest Festival Sunday we thank God for all His many physical blessings -- the sun, the rain, the fruits of the earth... blessings we're grateful for, even if we don't always talk as if we're grateful! Let's admit it, on other days, when it's not "Harvest Festival", it's very easy for us to whine and moan if the day's cloudy or drizzly; we look outside and say, "Ugh, what a gloomy, dreary day." Though, personally, I have to say that I've always really liked gray, rainy days. When the sky is thick with clouds and the sun can't break through, I always feel very cozy and safe, like I'm under a big blanket in bed. I can't stand the feeling of being "broiled" under the sun. But even if you don't like overcast days at all, you must admit that clouds promise blessing -- the blessing of rain without which we can't live! 

Psalm 135 talks about these clouds God has created. Let's read verses 6 and 7 (read). 

In the sphere of visible nature, clouds, like all of nature, are a symbol of God's power and blessing-- and more than just a 'symbol', clouds are a vehicle of real blessing in the natural realm. Psalm 147:7-8 likewise tells us: (read). 

But clouds aren't only a vehicle of blessing in the natural dimension. There are clouds that announce and at the same time conceal the presence of God. (Read Exodus 19:9, 16, and 24:15-18). 

What is this "thick cloud" into which God summoned Moses? I don't know, but I know what it did. It simultaneously manifested and concealed the presence of God. Because of the cloud, the nation knows that God is there, and because of the same cloud, the nation knows they cannot see Him. In this way the cloud teaches us a timeless lesson, which is that we can know that God is near--yes, we can even hear His voice, see His power, love and worship Him and know His fellowship... but, but, on the other hand there will always be, figuratively speaking, a CLOUD, a certain cloud, in which is concealed the infinite glory and eternal depths of God's very being which we can never plumb. 

This is what the apostle John is talking about when he says, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known" (John 1:18, NIV-UK). 

No one has seen God, even though several times the Bible tells us, quite literally, about people who did see God! Is this a contradiction in the Bible? It tells us people have seen God and people haven't seen God! No, it's no contradiction. Because even those people who saw God didn't see God. Why? Because there's always a cloud, because even the very manifestation of God is a cloud concealing God--what He reveals of Himself is a limitation accessible to our finite understanding, which necessarily excludes infinite depths of being in Him from all conceivable apprehension. There is always a "cloud". 

Here's a quite elementary, primitive, but apt illustration! (Holding out my hand, palm forward, to the audience) Now I'm showing you my hand. I'm also hiding my hand from you at the same time, because when I show you this side (pointing to my palm), I'm automatically hiding this side (pointing to the back of my hand, which the audience can't see).  You can't see both sides at once - it's impossible! 

Now, if that's true on such a simple, physical, human level, just imagine how much more true it is on the level of God and the inexpressible, immeasurable degree of His eternal being. Whatever God shows us of Himself automatically excludes "everything else" that He isn't revealing to us of Himself at the same time. The very fact we finite creatures can perceive anything of God means that what we're perceiving is already a limitation, a finite phenomenon, which paradoxically means that what we are perceiving is both God and not-God at once. "No one has seen God", the apostle John tells us, and not by accident in the direct context of his exposition of the Eternal Word's Incarnation, because it is only Jesus Christ, the Word and Son of God, who has seen and known God the Father in the "cloudless" perfection of unlimited knowing. 

Let's look at another place in the Old Testament where "clouds" come up: (Read Exodus 40:34-38)

Here's a wonderful paradox. Even though God surpasses all our capacities to fathom His essence, and even though even the most stunning revelation of His presence and glory hides more than it reveals, nevertheless this incomprehensible, uncontainable God abides among His people, fellowships with them, accompanies them, leads them and, in the unsearchable depths of His love, loves them. That's the mystery of the Presence of God: there where we cannot penetrate the infinite presence of God, right there, nevertheless, He is infinitely present and we can understand that He is infinitely present. To put it differently, the God Who is absolutely everywhere is absolutely able to be absolutely near, without contradiction. 

This truth manifests itself in the highest degree--historically, personally--in the very person of Jesus Christ, "Who is the image of the invisible God", "for it pleased God that in him all the fullness of the Godhead should dwell bodily." 

As God did in the wilderness, in the cloud as He led the nation, so now in Christ He abides with us, fellowships with us, accompanies us through life's long way, in Christ in Whom abides His infinite fullness, even if that's a truth we can't possibly encompass by human logic. It's enough that it's so. It's enough that the "fullness" is there, in Him, and that He is with us - Immanu El, our "God with us"!

Here is another picture of the cloud of God's presence in the Old Testament, and note especially the way the nation responded to the movement of the cloud. (Read Numbers 9:15-22, with special emphasis on all the times the text says that the nation always responded immediately and exactly to whatever the could did; if it moved on, they moved on, if it stayed put, they stayed put)

May our following after Christ be as attentive and faithful, with full cognizance of that glory that once appeared to three disciples on a mountain top, when Jesus was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, His clothes became whiter as light itself, and then, a cloud, a shining cloud, overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice spoke: "This is my beloved Son, in Whom is all my pleasure. Listen to Him."

This very God Who unveils His glory in the cloud, gives us as well a cloud of witnesses, as it says in Hebrews 12:1; they are the witnesses of faith whose testimony provokes us to ruthlessly abandon whatever interferes with our all-out race for the goal and run with eyes fixed on the Originator and Culminator of our faith, Jesus Christ, Who promises that one day we will see the Son of Man "coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). For, as it says in Thessalonians 4, "the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord." 

"Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him." (Revelation 1: 7 - NASB)

Now, "to Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood--and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father--to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen." (Revelation 1:6 - NASB)

Morning Devotions in Armenia, October 2013, Number 6

I have another blog, a private one, called Serendipitous Intersections, which features one post every day of the year. The gist of the blog is, it's a melding of three other 365-day "devotionals", one the famous work of Oswald Chambers and two others containing the work of George MacDonald. What I do is, I juxtapose the daily readings, usually in excerpt form but sometimes in whole, from the three sources and then add a heading of my own intended to unite them in a single concept or angle. Here in Armenia to teach a two-week course, I lead the morning devotions. I decided to use some of my blog posts as material for my "meditations". I specifically took those posts in which the excerpts from Oswald Chambers include a direct Scripture citation. Here is one I shared on Friday, October 18th. First I will give the title from my "Serendipitous Intersections" blog (which I did not include in my talk to the students and staff). In the meditation, parts taken from Chambers or MacDonald, whether in direct quote or paraphrase, will be in bold font with "[Mc]" afterwards for MacDonald and "[OC]" for Oswald Chambers. 

(Based on my May 24th post in Serendipitous Intersections: "Brave the terror, run into Love's fearsome power"-- which is itself based on the May 24th readings in "My Utmost for His Highest" [Chambers], "Diary of an Old Soul" [MacDonald], and reading #145 in "365 Daily Readings from George MacDonald", [MacDonald, edited by C.S. Lewis].)

One of the most touching sights I ever see is when a parent has disciplined a very young child, with a stern word or even a light slap on the bottom, and the child, heartbroken as only a very young child can be, in that end-of-the-world way that will be completely forgotten in ten minutes, in a flood of tears and sobs envelops itself and disappears into the arms of--the parent who just performed the distressing discipline! The logic of cause-and-effect suggests the child should run away from the source of its pain and frustration. But here an entirely different logic is at work: the logic of love. Mysteriously and wonderfully, the child knows, without ever needing to analyze it, that parents whose word can ruin all your plans and spoil all your fun, whose hand may bring a certain twinge to posterior places, are the same parents whose enfolding embrace, soothing words and loving eyes will heal your hurt, will assure you yet again that you are treasured and have a home in somebody's heart--and not just "somebody's", but in the heart of the ones who are the center of your whole world. 

Christ says, "Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." I think this implicit, wholehearted trust--the trust that runs into the arms of the parent who has just punished you--such childlike trust is exactly what Christ calls us to. 

George MacDonald writes, "If then any child of the Father finds... that the thought of God is a discomfort to him, or even a terror, let him make haste--let him... rush at once... for shelter from his own evil and God's terror, into the salvation of the Father's arms." [Mc] There's the delightfully intriguing paradox: we rush into the Father's arms for salvation from our own fear of the Father. 

In the Book of Revelation, the apostle John tells how he naturally, spontaneously reacted at the sudden vision of the Heavenly Christ: "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead." Now just think: this is Jesus, the beloved Master with whom John walked and talked, lived and worked, laughed and wept, in the most intimate, implicit trust, for three years. In the simplest of human terms, this was John's "old friend", his cherished friend! But at this overwhelming 'materialization', before his eyes, of the Risen, Glorified Son of God, John can only fall in a dead faint.... 

Analogies are always limited, and that includes the one I began with this morning. We cannot always rush un-self-consciously into the arms of God, like a child wanting comfort. Sometimes we can only fall down in awe and, yes, dread. And you know who understands that best? God. God doesn't despise the pitiful helplessness of His utterly overcome child. What does Jesus, the "Old Friend", do when John  falls prostrate? "Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid."Oswald Chambers says, "In the midst of the awfulness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. ...In the midst of all His ascended glory the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, and to say, 'Fear not.' ...I delight to know that there is that in me which must fall prostrate before God when He manifests Himself, and if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God." [OC]

Even if I am too overwhelmed to rush into the Father's arms, I hope, I trust it will be the hand of God that touches me and the voice of God that says, "Don't be afraid."

But when Jesus raises His beloved disciple back to his feet, it isn't only to calm his fear. It is to give John a task: "Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later." A disciple always receives a task; otherwise he is no disciple. The child of God's true joy is when the heavenly Father says, "Come, let's do my work together." But the work of God is love, and that can be frightening. To run into the Father's arms for His love, even for rescue from fear of Him, that's one thing. But what about when He tells us to love Man? To love all the people around us, the people we don't know, the people who will never take a friendly step toward us if we don't step first... and maybe not even then? Do we run into that assignment? Do we embrace the task the same way we want the Father to embrace us? Do we demonstrate that same wholehearted, childlike trust to God in the work as we do in our our most private, solitary recourse to Him? 

We can never--fortunately or unfortunately--divorce the authenticity of our most intimate meetings with the living God from the authenticity of our life for Him in the world. It is inevitable that to whatever extent the one is inauthentic, so will the other be.

George MacDonald writes, "O God of man,.../...Love of my kind alone can set me free;/Help me to welcome all that come to me,/Not close my doors and dream of solitude liberty!" [Mc]

The apostle John says it more prosaically and more piercingly (1 John 4:20): "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 

Morning Devotions in Armenia, October 2013, Number 5

I have another blog, a private one, called Serendipitous Intersections, which features one post every day of the year. The gist of the blog is, it's a melding of three other 365-day "devotionals", one the famous work of Oswald Chambers and two others containing the work of George MacDonald. What I do is, I juxtapose the daily readings, usually in excerpt form but sometimes in whole, from the three sources and then add a heading of my own intended to unite them in a single concept or angle. Here in Armenia to teach a two-week course, I lead the morning devotions. I decided to use some of my blog posts as material for my "meditations". I specifically took those posts in which the excerpts from Oswald Chambers include a direct Scripture citation. Here is one I shared on Wednesday, October 16th. First I will give the title from my "Serendipitous Intersections" blog (which I did not include in my talk to the students and staff). In the meditation, parts taken from Chambers or MacDonald, whether in direct quote or paraphrase, will be in bold font with "[Mc]" afterwards for MacDonald and "[OC]" for Oswald Chambers. 

(Based on my May 21st post in Serendipitous Intersections: "Beyond the fear: surrendered to the Making Will (or, From first fear to first love)"-- which is itself based on the May 21st readings in "My Utmost for His Highest" [Chambers], "Diary of an Old Soul" [MacDonald], and reading #142 in "365 Daily Readings from George MacDonald", [MacDonald, edited by C.S. Lewis].)

Does the Bible say that love casts out fear? No, it doesn’t exactly say that. Let’s read 1 John 4:18 (read).

So it is perfect love that casts out fear. Yes, “there is no fear in love,” but it is only perfect love that casts out fear, all fear.

Just as the Law was a good tutor to control and guide us till we came to Christ, so fear is a good “supervisor” until we come to perfect love. Ultimately, love is the whole essence and substance of our relationship to God, but until perfect love is realized, it is good that fear serves as at least a poor, elementary bond with God, a bond between Man and his Maker. [Mc]

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It’s not the end of wisdom, but it’s the beginning, and if you don’t begin the journey you’ll get nowhere!

Jesus told His disciples, “I have called you my servants, but now I call you my friends.” The servant fears his master, and, yes, he may love his master, too, but only friends partake together in perfect love that casts out all fear.

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus scolds the Ephesian church for losing their first love. They have lost their first love in two senses: the love they experienced at first, when their faith was new and vibrant and zealous; and the love that should always have first place in their lives. “First love” is first with respect to both time and priority. It is the entrance into life with the living God and it is the “pearl of great price” for which we are ready to lose everything else… if, by God’s mercy, we are in our right minds.

And in His perfect love Jesus gives the Ephesian church something: a reason to fear; He will remove their light if they don’t repent and return to their first love.

Thank God for a healthy, correcting fear. But fear cannot be the perfection of our life in God; it is only the beginning of wisdom. The soul that stands distant from God, in alienation from Him and darkness—there is no hope for that soul if it never experiences fear. The path to the true fulfillment of the human soul is from first fear to first love, from first love to the perfect love that will cast out all fear forever, when we live for only “the Making Will” and the soul-filling breath of God [Mc]. When we live for that alone, no place is left for fear, only for perfect love.

Then we will understand, in starkly new dimensions of understanding, what it means to seek first--first of all, most of all, in all and after all--to seek first the kingdom of God [OC]. Perfect love casts out all that pretends to be first but is not the life of God. Perfect Love is First Love's conclusive victory and triumphant arrival, with all contenders vanquished, at the union of wills with the Beloved.