There are two primary fronts in the conflict or apparent conflict between science and Christian faith: (1) Are the scientific claims intrinsically atheistic? and (2) How do we reconcile Scripture with the scientific data? Neither of these are new problems, but they play a significant role in Western society today. In his book Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes Denis Lamoureux seeks to demonstrate that scientific claims are not intrinsically atheistic, rather that it requires faith to move from science to any metaphysical claim about the existence or non-existence of God. Nothing in our scientific understanding of the universe either requires or eliminates God from the picture. We can endeavor to predict the weather based on physics and chemistry and still view it as under God’s control. Our understanding of embryology and fetus development does not require us to dismiss the Psalmist’s wonder and awe of God who “formed my inward parts” and “knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”(Ps 139:13)

Although the story of Galileo’s run-in with the Catholic Church is often cast as a paradigm for the unavoidable conflict between science and Christian faith, it is a story from which we can learn much. We can draw insights concerning the most effective way that scientists can introduce findings to the church, the manner in which the church can productively engage with science, and the approach we should take to apparent scientific claims in Scripture.

Very few today doubt that the earth and other planets orbit the sun, or that the earth is in one of many solar systems in the galaxy, one of many galaxies in the universe. For most of church history, however, there was no belief but that the earth was the center of the universe and that the Holy Scriptures clearly taught this truth.  Augustine wasn’t even convinced that the earth was spherical, although he was convinced that it was ridiculous to imagine antipodians (individuals with their feet pointing towards his) on the other side of the earth if the earth was spherical. Among other things, God could not be in the heavens above both Rome and the antipodians and this was contrary to Scripture (so Augustine thought).

By the time of the Reformation (Luther nailed his theses to the door in 1517), Copernicus (mid 1500’s) and Galileo a bit later in the early 1600’s, a spherical earth was not terribly controversial. Columbus sailed west in search of a route to the Far East in 1492. The idea of a sun-centered solar system introduced by Copernicus, accepted and popularized by Galileo, was controversial. Many arguments were raised against the idea, only some of which were grounded in Scripture. It was not at all unreasonable for the church to take an attitude of wait and see. It was unfortunate that the church authorities chose to make definite pronouncements against the ideas advanced by Copernicus, Galileo and others. It wasn’t until Newton’s theory of gravity made the scene (late 1600’s) and more refined astronomical measurements followed (1700’s) that Galileo and Copernicus were fully vindicated.

Galileo and the Interpretation of Scripture. Galileo was a devout Christian loyal to the Catholic Church. Because of this he wrestled with the interpretation of Scripture and the implications of the scientific evidence. Lamoureux digs into Galileo’s views, especially those related in his Letters to the Grand Duchess Christina. Galileo firmly believed that God was revealed both in Scripture and in nature.

Galileo believed that Scripture and nature are divine revelations. He asserts, “God reveals himself to us no less excellently in [1] the effects of nature than in [2] the sacred words of Scripture, as Tertullian perhaps meant when he said, ‘We postulate that God ought first to be known [1] by nature, and afterward further known [2] by doctrine – [1] by nature through his works, [2] by doctrine through official teaching.’” (p. 138-139)

God’s self-revelation, recorded for us in the words of Scripture provide knowledge otherwise beyond the reach of human reason. We cannot know, from reason alone, that God is love, that humans were created in his image, that God is both merciful and just, that he pursues his people, that Jesus died for the sins of the world. This revelation, however, is couched in a framework intelligible to the original audience, 2000 to 4000 years ago in the Middle East. It came to humankind though the personal relationship of God with his creation; it did not require any scientific understanding of the big-bang, the magnitude and age of the universe, quantum theory or evolution.

Lamoureux continues:

With regard to matters dealing with science and the physical world Galileo defends the priority of nature over Scripture. He writes, “I think that in disputed about natural phenomena one must begin not with the authority of scriptural passages but with sensory experience and necessary demonstrations [i.e. science].” (p. 139-140)

Later:

Galileo argued that the Creator gave us a mind that so that we could practice science. “I do not think one has to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, language, and intellect would want us to set aside the use of these. … Indeed, who wants the human mind put to death?” Galileo affirms that God is not deceptive, but faithful. We can trust our mind and the scientific discoveries we make in nature because the Creator made us that way. An implication of being blessed by the Lord with “our senses, language, and intellect” is that he wants us to use these gifts. In fact, they assist us in obeying Jesus’ commandment to love the Lord our God “with all our mind” (Matt. 22:37). (p. 141)

Because God created the universe (making it a reliable revelation) and us with senses, language, and intellect, as his image bearers, it is entirely proper to use information derived from study of the universe to aid in the proper interpretation of Scripture.  “Galileo adds that “it would be proper to ascertain the [scientific] facts first, so that they could guide us in finding the true meaning of Scripture.” (p. 143). Lamoureux points out that we all do this, we interpret the immovability of the earth, the rising and setting of the sun, and the vault above as phenomenological statements not scientific statements. We interpret the pillars of the earth and the storehouses of hail as poetic rather than scientific.

Why do [we] do this? It’s because scientists have shown us the structure of the solar system and explained how gravity works. After the Galileo affair, Christians realized that astronomers had proven geocentricism to be false. The earth is not the center of the universe with the sun circling it. Consequently, Christians could no longer read biblical verses about the earth’s immovability and the sun’s movement as factual scientific statements. (p. 143)

I’ve had this conversation many times following various blogs and in discussion groups. Most Christians simply accept without questions that the demonstrably false statements in Scripture are not intended to be interpreted literally. The mind is not located in the gut. The stars are not inscribed on a vault. Many translations go so far as to hide the original referent from the modern audience without giving it a second thought. It isn’t usually dishonest, but grounded in the realization that other language will convey the truth more clearly to a modern audience. Every translation requires interpretation.

One approach to dealing with the presence of ancient “science” in Scripture is to invoke the idea of accommodation. This is not a new idea. Among others, both Augustine and the Reformers used the concept in their approach to Scripture. God didn’t introduce seventeenth century or twenty-first century science into his self-revelation in Scripture because this would have introduced an unnecessary stumbling block for the original audience, obscuring the intended message.

What lessons should we as Christians take from the Galileo affair?

(1) Withhold judgment on scientific matters until there is a clear consensus. It isn’t necessary or desirable to shoehorn every new idea into theology. Nor is it wise to reject ideas early, before all the evidence is in. We can afford to be generous and exercise intellectual humility. Science doesn’t impact key claims of the Christian faith – the nature of God or his relationship with his creatures, the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrections.

(2) Recognize that Scripture does contain ancient “science” and this does not detract from the message that is conveyed.

(3) Avoid proof-texting that rips passages from their biblical and cultural context and uses them to shore up a desired interpretation of Scripture. Someday I am going to write a post entitled “Lord save us from a proof-text faith.” The reliance on proof-texts is one of the biggest failings of western evangelicalism. We need to be immersed in Scripture not shored up by resting on favored tidbits.

(4) Avoid authoritative proclamations in areas outside of your expertise. Lamoureux argues “Only let those with proper training in biology, especially evolutionary biology, be given the privilege of teaching about the origins of life in our churches and Sunday schools.” (p. 150) I think this goes too far. Taken seriously it would mean that I should not teach on either Scripture or the question of origins – as I am an authority on neither evolutionary biology nor ancient Hebrew and Near Eastern Culture. I would take a somewhat looser position. We should be skeptical of anyone without expertise who teaches an idea far outside of the mainstream, and of one who does not rely openly on trusted experts in the area. This isn’t a cure-all – but it would go a long way toward a cure for what ails the church on issues of science and Christian faith. Do not allow non-Christians to pronounce on the essence of Christian faith (proclamations that science demands atheism are ridiculous). Allow Christians with expertise in astronomy, geology, genetics, and biology the primacy of place in discussions of these fields in the Church.  Allow those with expertise in ancient Near Eastern Culture and language the primacy of place in interpretation of the Old Testament.

(5) Understand the reasons given for variant positions on the questions of age and origins. Some Christian biologists and geologists hold views outside of the scientific mainstream, not because of the scientific evidence, but because of their view of Scripture. This doesn’t mean they should be silenced – but that their views should be evaluated on the appropriate grounds. Is the interpretation of Scripture reasonable and is it a sufficient reason to deviate from mainstream scientific views?

(6) Respect expertise – whether you ultimately agree or disagree. This is important for our witness as Christians.

(7) Arguing that the church has always believed this – as in the church has ‘always’ believed in a earth-centered universe (true in 1600) or the church has ‘always’ believed in de novo creation of species or kinds (true enough) doesn’t really help with resolution of science and Christian faith. The church, and before that Judaism, have adapted to our growing understanding of God’s creation. (Kyle Greenwood’s book Scripture and Cosmology is a great read here.)

We need to hold firm to truths about God and his relationship with his people, created in his image. That Scripture records ancient understandings of ‘science’ incidental to the message should cause us little concern and no angst.

In his earlier book, Evolutionary Creation, Lamoureux notes that we should expect agreement between historical events and Scripture when the text records witnessed history – this starts at some point in or after Genesis 12. This agreement will be consistent with the accepted forms of writing in ancient Israel up through the first century Roman world. We expect spiritual concord from beginning to end.   Scripture faithful records the message of God’s work in the world. We expect scientific concord when phenomenological observations (common in the ancient Near East) are re-enforced by scientific study, not when they are revised or replaced.

Scientific concordism simply doesn’t seem to be supported by a careful reading of Scripture or our growing understanding of God’s creation. The Holy Spirit did not correct errant understandings of science – whether in biology, geology, medicine or cosmology. The price of insisting on scientific concordism is large – both in driving some from the faith and in preventing others from even considering the faith.

 What is the price of scientific concordism?

What can we learn from the story of Galileo?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Marc the Travel Agent, by John Frye

Marc, the part-time travel agent, sparked enthusiasm in people and closed sales on travel packages to countries he had never visited. His customers bought into his descriptions of the foreign cities and countrysides, the delicious foods and delightful smells of market stalls, the stunning architecture and cobbled streets, the intriguing language and colorful clothing, the pleasing weather and gorgeous night skies. Eager customers usually walked away saying, “It must be nice to be him—a traveler of the world.”

Marc hardly ever left his city. Once he went to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. That’s it. Yet, Marc read his way through travel brochures, memorizing good phrases and remembering dazzling pictures. Marc also roamed the Internet. He reveled in knowing that he could travel the world on the Internet. Among the travel agents, Marc, only working 20 hours a week, got the most awards. Without going anywhere.

Marc was a good Christian guy. Even more, he was a pastor. He was as attentive to his faith and its routines as he was to his sales job. He studied his Bible, he listened to scholarly talks on the Internet, he read the best commentaries, he served his little church faithfully, and occasionally served in the city’s soup kitchen for indigents. Marc wasn’t shy to talk about his church at Rotary Club and while playing golf with other salespersons. Sometimes his friends would comment, “That Marc, he sure is a good fellow; a kind, religious guy. He sure knows his way around the Bible.”

Marc was good, but had never really visited God much either. As he had never visited Italy. What Marc had going was that he was good with words. He had a winning, whimsical way about him. He was very good at weaving an inviting story about Paris and a fascinating story about the Apostle Peter. Reading brochures and reading the Bible gave Marc the ability to sell a trip and to sell a lie. Marc wanted to be liked, but he didn’t want to be known. When people would ask, after one of his fascinating travel descriptions, “Have you actually been to Sydney, Australia?” Marc would simply say, “Oh! It’s such a beautiful city! And what a country.”

One day, Bradley, the founder and manager of Pleasant World Tours, the company Marc worked for, called Marc in for a conversation. The company was opening a new in-country extension of their business in Frankfurt, Germany. Bradley insisted on sending Marc for the opening of PWT’s new branch. “You’ll be leaving Monday. The trip’s booked and all your expenses covered. Anything you have to spend out of pocket will be reimbursed. Enjoy the trip, Marc.” Marc’s pleasure at being asked smothered underneath the anxious dread he felt. He had to really travel.

The Delta flight went fast and the jet was touching down in Germany. After deplaning and taking the shuttle bus to the Frankfurt terminal, Marc stood bewildered in the bustling airport hallways. Foreign, unintelligible words rang out from the speakers announcing flights and other information. This startled him. Marc saw no signs that he could read. He heard many different languages from the groups of people walking by him. He asked several people if they spoke English and they shook their heads no.

He was afraid. “Where’s my luggage? How do I get a taxi? How do I tell them where my hotel is? How do I pay? Will they take my US dollars?” Marc felt sweaty and very sick. He was all alone. He had no words to describe Frankfurt, Germany to himself. He had, however, exuberantly sold to others at least 15 trips to various German cities, including Frankfurt.

Marc moved from the hallway to a near-by gate area and sat down. The people in that gate had boarded so the space was empty except for two from the airport cleaning crew. It felt safe from the alien roar of the airport terminal.

“What am I going to do?” Marc thought sitting bent over and holding his head in his hands. No charming words. No fabulous descriptions. No sales to make. No image to maintain. “I’m good at selling things that I have no clue about,” he concluded as he endured a sharp pain in his soul and felt its sting in his eyes.

God sat down next to Marc. Invisible, yet more real than the chair Marc sat on. Marc sensed somewhere in his brain a Voice.

“Marc, you can sell what you don’t know, but you can’t love what you don’t know. You don’t love Germany right now, do you?”

Marc coughed out a garbled laugh saying out loud, “No, I don’t!” Embarrassed, he looked up and saw one of the cleaners warily staring at him. Almost involuntary Marc shouted to the cleaner, “Do you speak English?” The cleaner nodded.

“Would you help me? I’m lost.”

The small, old woman came over and sat by Marc.

“How can I help you, sir?”

Marc explained his plight to the lady.

After the conversation with and direction from the old cleaning woman, Marc found himself with his luggage in a taxi headed to his hotel. He discovered that the new PWT branch was just a city block from where he was staying.

That night a thought kept rumbling around in Marc’s mind as he lay in the hotel bed. “You can sell what you don’t know, but you can’t love what you don’t know.”

Marc said, “God, if you are here. I want to love you. Will you love me?”

The Voice answered, “I already love you, Marc. To love me back, I want the real you. Will you let me love that person? Will you lay down your fear of being fully known?”

“Yes, God,” Marc whispered into the dark.

Kindly the Voice said, “Be prepared to be frightened for awhile as you discover your authentic self. Taking off masks clued to your soul is a painful process. It won’t be easy. It will feel very much like a trip to a foreign place. Marc, love is never a sales pitch.”

The Gift

Imagine you could fix the world. All of it. The Refugee crisis, the Nuclear arms race, racial tensions, global poverty, and epidemic loneliness.

Imagine that you could fix all of that with the snap of your fingers. Would you?

Obviously, anyone with a heart would say yes to that. And yet, Jesus ironically did not.

I am in a series reviewing John Nugent’s challenging book Endangered Gospel. Last week, I wrote about Nugent’s idea about how God created the principalities and powers as a way of limiting evil in the world.  In response to sin entering the world, God creates a kind of international system of checks and balances.

These systems are fallen and broken, filled with corruption and greed and leaders who are out to make a name for themselves. And yet when they are working well they lead to human flourishing for the people who are being governed by them.

The people of God have existed in a variety of different forms of government. We have seen lots of pagan nations come and go, both used and discarded by God as He cares for the world by limiting the evil that any particular power can accomplish.

Christians believe that at the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus was faced with the temptation to rule over all the powers. After forty days of fasting, Jesus is tempted by the Satan to take the helm of the nations and fix the world.

Think about that, Jesus for President. No Hitler. No terrorism. No Jim Crow laws or slavery.

And Jesus say no.

Instead what Jesus does is reconstitute the people of God, by gathering 12 disciples, symbolically restoring Israel. He lives among real people, teaching them what God is like, and then lays down His life for the world, and asking them to do the same.

Only that is not exactly right. Jesus doesn’t ask them to first lay down their lives for the world. He does something, I think, much harder. He asks them to lay down their lives for each other.

Remember this is not just any group that Jesus has assembled. Within the parameters of 1^st century Israel this group was like nothing else the world had ever seen. Jesus calls tax collectors and zealots to follow Him. That is significant because both of these disciples would have had fundamentally opposing views on the powers of their day.

Zealots were rebels, sometimes leading violent revolutions against the Roman oppressors. Tax collectors were the financial backbone of the Roman government. And Jesus washes both of their feet and tells them that if they want to love God they have to learn to love and serve each other.

Jesus’ response to the great evil and oppression in the world was to create a community of unlikely friendships and teach them the love of God.

This has, I think, always been God’s strategy.

Remember when God first called Israel, the very community Jesus is reconstituting? God takes His people away from the nations, and makes them a different kind of nation (ta ethne). God calls his people, linguistically speaking, a new race of people, and then teaches them a radically different way to live.

And then, after this different way of life leads them to joy and flourishing, the nations of the world will take notice and be impressed by the difference and then come to learn about this way of life and the God who is blessing these people.

Nugent says this order is crucial. The nations are  not coerced and Israel isn’t called to advertise or attempt to colonize “They simply live how God calls them to live. They don’t try to make the world a better place. They humbly accept that God is making them into a better place.”

The reason this line of thinking is so important to me, is because I am tired of watching us do exactly what Nugent suggests in his subtitle, trying to fix the world even while it is killing the church.

Is anyone else tired of colluding with corruption so that we can legislate morality? Is anyone else tired of the self-righteous tirades and the never ending in-fighting through social media, all the while we rarely talk in person with the real people in our actual lives?

The Church has this God-given gift that is not forced upon the world, but one that is starting to lose its luster because the people called to embody the gift have forgotten they are stewards of  this great treasure.

Here’s how Nugent says it:

God had plenty of resources at his disposal to inaugurate his kingdom. He could have appointed a special Israelite to do so, like John the Baptist. He could have converted and made use of a powerful nation. He could have sent 10,000 angels to clean up this world and make it a better place. But he didn’t. Instead, God sent his Son, who became flesh and walked among us. It was a strange thing to do. No one saw it coming. Still, it made sense. God has always wanted a people who would accept his reign over them as a gift. Any other way into his kingdom would be just another form of subjugation. A mighty kingdom like Rome cannot offer their regime as a gift. Their military strength forces subjects into compliance. A battalion of heavenly angels would have a similar effect. Who could resist them? 

Nugent is subtly answering the question that keeps so many of us up at night. Why is the world the way it is? Obviously there are still arguments about Christian engagement with the world to be had, but I find this way of looking at things strangely compelling.

Maybe you saw in the recent Pew polls that said Evangelicals are the only religious group in the United States whose reputation hasn’t improved. While the study pointed out that Evangelicals standing hasn’t slipped at all, I still find this research intriguing.

Evangelicals are known for trying to make an active difference in all arenas of society. While we have done some notoriously good work, we have also done some work that is just notorious. For all of our good intentions, I think this new survey is revealing the results of our often over-reaching activism.

And I am beginning to think that Nugent is onto something.

God has not abandoned the world, but neither does He share our strategies for fixing it. Instead, Jesus offers His reign and rule as a gift, complete with an imperfect people working out how to love and honor one another, treating each other with the dignity befitting a royal priesthood despite whatever their reputations might be outside the community.

It is a community open to anyone, and forced on no one. It is a radically different way of life that is free to anyone who has eyes to see how beautiful it would be.

It is a gift.

Matthew anchors the story of Jesus in Israel’s history. If we are unfamiliar with the Old Testament Scriptures and this history, we will miss important parts of the message.  This is especially true in the prelude to Jesus’ public ministry in chapters 1-4. Richard Hays (Reading Backwards and Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels) explores these connections.

Matthew encourages the reader to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament precursors, particularly Moses, David, and  Isaiah’s Servant figure. … Matthew’s language and imagery are from start to finish soaked in Scripture; He constantly presupposes the social and symbolic world rendered by the stories, songs, prophecies, laws, and wisdom teachings of Israel’s sacred texts. (p. 109)

Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s Scripture, he is the Messiah and he enacts Israel’s destiny the way it was intended. In the opening section there are at least seven passages where Matthew makes a direct statement or allusion to Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s Scripture.The fulfillment passages sometimes seem a reach, with 2:15 “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” a good example.  This quote is found in Hosea 11:1, which is decidedly not a messianic prophecy. This passage, and the rather simplistic assertions sometimes made about it in sermons and Christian literature, has long troubled me. It shouldn’t though. In order to understand Matthew’s point in including this citation, and others as well, we need to dig deeper than some index of prooftexts and look to the context of the passages.

Jesus enacts Israel’s destiny. In this post we will look at four specific passages: the flight to Egypt (2:13-15), Herod’s murder of the innocents (2:16-18), the baptism of Jesus by John (3:13-15), and the temptation (4:1-11). In all of these passages there is, according to Hays, “a typological identification of Jesus with Israel: Jesus becomes the one in whom the fate of Israel is embodied and enacted.” (p. 113)

(1) Out of Egypt I called my Son. 2:13-15 Hosea 11 starts with the identification of Israel as God’s son. This is a tradition that can be traced to Moses and the exodus. God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh that “Israel is my firstborn son.” (Ex 4:22)  But we should see in Matthew’s formula “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet” not simply the bald misappropriation of Hosea 11:1, but a resonance with the context of Hosea 11 and with God’s love for and rescue of his people, Israel.

Matthew transfigures Hosea’s text by seeing how it prefigures an event in the life of Jesus. Matthew now sees the fate of God’s “son” Israel recapitulated in the story of God’s Son, Jesus: In both cases, the son is brought out of exile in Egypt and back into the land.

… Matthew cannot be unaware of the original contextual meaning of Hosea 11:1 as an expression of God’s love for Israel, a love that persists even through Israel’s subsequent unfaithfulness (Hos 11:8-9). Indeed, Matthew’s use of the quotation depends upon the reader’s recognition of its original sense: if Hosea’s words were severed from their reference to the original exodus story, the literary and theological effect of Matthew’s reading would be stifled. The fulfillment of the prophet’s words can be discerned only through an act of imagination that perceives the figural correspondence between the two stories of the exodus and the gospel. … the story of Jesus acquires the resonance of the story of Israel. (p. 113-114)

Matthew’s use of the quotation also names Jesus as God’s Son. This is not independent from, but part and parcel of the figural connection between Jesus and Israel.

(2)  Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled 2:16-18. the words that are fulfilled involve lament – Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. Jeremiah 31:15 and context is not a messianic prophecy, but it is another passage where God’s love for Israel, even in their unfaithfulness, becomes evident. Jeremiah continues: This is what the Lord says:  “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the Lord. “They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants,” declares the Lord. “Your children will return to their own land.”

Surely it is not merely coincidental that in consecutive formula quotations (Matt 2:15+Matt 2:17-18) Matthew has linked these two very similar passages from Hosea 11:1-11 and Jeremiah 31:15-20. Both prophetic texts speak of the exile and suffering of an unfaithful people, and both declare that God will reach out in mercy and bring the people back from exile. By evoking these two prophetic passages in the infancy narrative, Matthew connects both the history and the future destiny of Israel to the figure of Jesus, and he hints that in Jesus the restoration of Israel is at hand.

Matthew is not merely looking for random Old Testament prooftexts that Jesus might somehow fulfill (as is sometimes suggested); rather, he is thinking about the specific shape of Israel’s story and linking Jesus’ life with key passages that promise God’s unbreakable redemptive love for his people. (pp. 115-116)

(3) It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness 3:15 The story of the baptism of Jesus by John is well known – a regular in both sermons and Sunday School. But we seldom stop to wonder why Jesus needed to be baptized by John  and why it was “to fulfill all righteousness.” After all, John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance and there is certainly little support for the idea that Jesus needed to repent. Hays connects this to Jesus enacting Israel’s  destiny.

I would propose that Jesus’ acceptance of a baptism of repentence, performed at the Jordan River, is meant to signify his symbolic identification with sinful Israel (the people whom he will “save from their sins”), and the figurative beginning of that new Israel’s entry into the land of promise. (p. 116)

(4) Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 4:1-11. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. Moses also fasted forty days and nights in the presence of God, first to receive the commandments and then, twice after, to intercede for the sins of the people (Deuteronomy 9).  “I lay prostrate before the Lord those forty days and forty nights because the Lord had said he would destroy you. I prayed to the Lord and said, “Sovereign Lord, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” There is also, of course, a resonance with the forty years that Israel wandered in the wilderness as a result of their unfaithfulness. The three responses that Jesus gives have resonance with Israel’s wandering in the wilderness. (Hays points out that Matthew could have all of this in mind.)

When tempted to turn stones into bread  Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” quoting Deut. 8:3.  In this response we should be aware of the context:

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 8:2-3

Hays notes that in this response “God’s “son” passes the first test by obediently trusting God – just as Israel should have done, when so instructed by Moses.” (p. 118)

When the tempter suggests that Jesus should fling himself down to be rescued by angels Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” a quote from Deut. 6:16.  Again we need to consider the context:

Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah. Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the Lord said. (6:16-19)

Again Jesus passes the test.

Given Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as the Messiah who brings Israel’s exile to an end, this is a highly significant passage: by resisting temptation to aggrandize himself through a spectacular stunt, Jesus again reaffirms obedience and trust in God as the means by which Israel is to be brought at last into the land of promise. And his response as obedient Son exemplifies the role Israel is meant to take in the world: not to seek to force God’s hand through risky self-assertion but waiting faithfully and doing what is right. So God’s Son passes the second test by responding obediently, typologically invoking Moses’ instructions to Israel. (p. 119)

Again the devil tempts Jesus, this time asking for worship in exchange for power and dominion. Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (Deut 6:13) Again we should turn to the context … do not follow other gods … for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God.

Once again, by allowing this Scripture to answer the devil’s temptation, Jesus identifies himself fully with/as Israel, heeding God’s commandment. With this final decisive rejoinder, Jesus has named the fundamental issue: Who is God, and whom are we to serve? His answer, scripturally voiced, is to declare his own allegiance to the one God of Israel and to reject the worship of any other. With that the tempter is confounded and dismissed from the scene. And so God’s Son passes the third test by responding obediently, just as Moses instructed Israel to do. (pp. 119-120)

Jesus enacts the faithful Israel, son of God through whom salvation comes.

At the end of his time in the wilderness, Jesus has rightly embodied the covenant faithfulness Israel was meant to render to God – and he has done it, in Matthew’s elegant narration, by simply reciting the very Scriptures through which that covenant faithfulness was originally defined and commanded. (p. 120)

We began this survey with Jesus called out of Egypt and identified along with Israel as God’s son. Traced the allusions, through Hosea and Jeremiah to God’s love for Israel, and his promise of redemption and restoration for his people. The first public acts of Jesus in Matthew reinforce this idea of Jesus taking on and restoring the destiny of Israel.  Yes, it is for all of us – but through God’s chosen people.

What do you think of this cast of the story of Jesus?

How are we to understand Matthew’s fulfillment quotes – especially when they do not seem particularly relevant?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

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EARLY CHRISTIANITY: A BOOK WORTH READING!

Larry Hurtado is Professor Emeritus of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). Hurtado is the author of several well-respected works including the seminal Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.

The following interview revolves around one of Hurtado’s latest books, Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World.

Scot McKnight did some blog posts on Destroyer of the gods. They can be accessed here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2016/10/21/not-what-you-think-it-is/ and here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2016/11/07/counter-cultural-god/ Scot also picked Hurtado’s book as one of Jesus Creed’s book of the year for 2016. Tim Keller said Destroyer of the gods was one of the best books he read in 2016.

David George Moore conducted the following interview. Dave’s videos can be seen at www.mooreengaging.com.

Moore: The previous year saw not only Destroyer of the gods published, but your lectures at Marquette were published under the title Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Centuries-Marquette-Theology-Lecture/dp/1626005044

Would you briefly describe the general terrain you cover in each book?

Hurtado: In the Marquette Lecture volume, I focus on the question in the title. I emphasize the social and political costs of being a Christian in the earliest centuries, and contend that many attempts to answer the question are banal. I don’t attempt a full answer myself, but urge that scholars should take the question more seriously.

In Destroyer of the gods I focus on several major features of early Christianity that made it distinctive, even odd or bizarre (at least in the eyes of outside observers of the time). We don’t today realize just how different early Christianity was in that context. My second point in the book is that these once-distinctive features of early Christianity have now become unexamined assumptions about “religion”, but we don’t realize how unusual they are or where they come from.

Moore: Now to Destroyer of the gods…It is commonplace to hear that “all religions are basically the same.” How do the origins of Christianity stand up to such a notion?

Hurtado: I offer early Christianity as a case-study to show that the phenomena that we group under “religion(s)” comprise a somewhat artificial category, and that “religions” are not “all the same.” In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a “superstition” (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion). Also, some modern scholars contend that in terms of what “religion” was in that setting, you can’t even call Christianity a religion. It had no shrines, no altars, no image of its god, no sacrifices, no priests, all these things typically deemed essential features of “religion” of that time.

Moore: There are many stunning insights in your book and none more so than the observation the ancient physician Galen made. Galen was unimpressed with the philosophy of Christianity, but he was complimentary towards the quality lives Christians led. Galen’s strong bias was that only the rigors of philosophical training could yield virtue.   Would you unpack that some more for us?

Hurtado: Galen recognized, with some considerable puzzlement it seems, that Christians exhibited the virtues that he associated with the discipline of philosophy. They practiced moderation and chastity in marriage, for example, and he was puzzled at how they were able to do so. His comments are a kind of back-handed compliment, I suppose. But his observations reflect one of the distinctive features of early Christianity. Roman-era religion was mainly about ritual actions vis-à-vis the gods, and there was little to do with ordering behavior otherwise. Early Christianity, like Roman-era philosophical traditions, laid emphasis on everyday behavior, about how to live your life.

Moore: After reading what you said about Galen I thought of Justin Martyr who was impressed with the philosophy of Christianity. What did Justin see that Galen didn’t?

Hurtado: Justin’s testimony about becoming a Christian is that he had been searching various philosophical traditions of the time, and then accidentally encountered a man who posed questions that pointed Justin in a new direction. The man was likely a Christian. Justin also says that he was impressed in his study of the Old Testament, at the seriousness and contents of these writings, and became convinced that Jesus fulfilled these texts.

Moore: It’s become somewhat of a self-evident truth that early Christianity only appealed to the down and out. Is that accurate to the historical record?

Hurtado: For several decades now that old notion has been discredited among scholars of early Christianity. Studies of the people named and described in earliest Christian texts show that, right from the earliest years, they included craftsmen, merchants, and owners of businesses. Of course, there were also slaves and poor among believers. By at least the second century, there were also believers from upper levels of Roman society. That upward progress socially is likely part of what prompted pagan sophisticates such as Celsus to attack Christianity so vehemently.

Moore: When most think of religion, they assume this means ascribing worship to some superior being. Was this always the case with early Roman religions?

Hurtado: “Religions” of the Roman world varied. Most of it was ritual practices. There were periodic occasions when cities honored their guardian deities with sacrifices and ceremonies, to ensure that they stayed happy and kept the city safe. There were daily rituals honoring the household divinities, with a similar concern. There were rituals honoring the deceased emperor, also the living emperor (and sometimes members of the imperial family), again, recognizing them as powerful figures. There were also newer developments such as the Isis cult, which seems to have involved more of what looks to us like adoration of the powers and kindly attitude of this deity. But, in the main, “worship” was really sacrifices and gifts to the gods to maintain their good will.

Moore: In both your latest books you mention the work of Rodney Stark, author of many works including The Rise of Christianity.   Stark is not trained as a scholar of early Christianity so how you think he does in sifting through the historical record?

Hurtado: I think that he puts his foot wrong on some things where he simply wasn’t sufficiently current on scholarly developments. But I think he makes a substantial contribution to the study of early Christianity in posing the kinds of questions that he pursues (which reflect his social-science background). I also think that his studies of new religious movements in the modern world give us some insights into the kinds of questions that we can ask about early Christianity.

Moore: What is your next book project?

Hurtado: My immediate writing plans are a series of essays for various conferences and multi-author publications. I’m also pleased that there are two separate volumes of selections of my previously published articles working through the press right now. One (to appear in the Library of New Testament Studies series from Bloomsbury T&T Clark) brings together several of my articles on early Christian manuscripts. The other is a much larger collection of studies of early “Jesus-devotion”, to be published by Baylor University Press. These projects take me well into 2018. Beyond that, at present I have some ideas, but nothing started yet.

[Larry Hurtado is an active blogger at https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/ As one who consults it on a regular basis, I can attest to the treasure trove of materials available there. I will also add that Professor Hurtado has always been quick and gracious to answer my queries about topics related to New Testament scholarship.]

Our Northern Seminary cohort was treated to this sermon by Amanda Hecht in the private garden next to the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem last week.

[For those interested in reading on Peter, here’s my #1 recommendation: Larry Hurtado, Peter in Early Christianity. #2: Martin Hengel, The Underestimated Apostle. #3: Larry Helyer, The Life and Witness of Peter.]

Now to Amanda.

You have probably heard of me. My name was Cephas/Simon; but Jesus liked to call me Peter – the rock. Which is   laughable, really. Because, if you put together the pieces of my story, I am anything but rock-like. I am  more like the weather on the Sea of Galilee that I know so well, having spent so much of my young life as a fisherman there – unpredictable. Sometimes things go perfectly, and I get it oh so right. But, other times,  sometimes even the very next moment it seems, things flip, and I get it oh so wrong. You know that by the end of my life I was one of the leaders, the pillars, we were sometimes loftily called, of the followers of Jesus, the Christ-ones, the “Christians”, the “little-Christs” that carried on to tell the world about him when he went up into  heaven. And, to be sure, I dedicated everything I had in me to the community of Jesus Christ, just as I had dedicated everything I had in me to Jesus when he walked the earth. The thing is, if you continue to read my story, as much as Peter the Rock has in ways achieved a legendary status as a saint and leader of the church, you will also know that this leader definitely has feet of clay. I was far from perfect; I will be the first to admit it. You have all heard the story of how I denied my Lord, my God, my best friend, when he was on trial, just before he was condemned to die upon that cross. He was on trial inside, and I was outside more concerned with trying to save my own neck. It doesn’t get much worse that than!

And my friends, my fellow-workers for the gospel of Jesus – they know of all my flaws too. And, they wrote it down for the world to see. My friend Mark shows how inept I am. My friend Paul had to correct me, and  sometimes found me shallow and unconvincing. My friend John respected me, but pointed out that he was the  faster runner when we received the news that tomb that had held the body of our Lord was empty. How does that saying go? “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” But, in all truth, I am glad they told the truth about me. Of course, it is hard to see your flaws, your mistakes, the times when you got it wrong, your darkest moments, the things that you regret the most in your life, told for the world to see and dissect, to become the subject of sermons and devotionals and conversations for thousands upon thousands of years to come. Would you like your greatest    failures in life broadcast to the world, even if they also knew of your greatest successes? But I am glad that they      told the truth, because I want everyone out there to know this: “God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”[1] I know this to be true because Jesus called ME. Simon, whom he later renamed Peter. If Jesus can use a man like me to lead his community, if Jesus called a man like me to learn from him and to follow him, if Jesus entrusted the gift of the Holy Spirit to the likes of me (and my friends, who are less dissected, but dear friends with flaws all the same as well), with spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth – then nobody    else has any excuses. God wanted me in his family. Jesus asked us to carry on the thing that he had started. And, if God wanted me, my friends, I can guarantee he wants you too.

I can’t say when it all started, not precisely. That day on the Sea of Galilee, was part of it certainly, though that wasn’t the first time I had met Jesus. But one day, Jesus came by my workplace – the shores of the Sea of  Galilee. There, he found me. Again, perhaps? It seemed that Jesus found me a lot throughout my life. Heaven  knows, I needed finding a lot in my life, for I was often lost. And then, one day, there he was, on the shore, with a  crowd around him. They wanted to hear him, to be near him, to learn from him. And so, he looked around, and saw me and my partners. Perhaps the most miserable fishing boats on the lake that day. Our boats were empty, after    having worked our hardest all throughout the night and catching nothing. I can’t explain why he came over to my  boat at that time – the sorriest fisherman on the beach. Was it because he recognized me from when he had  healed my mother-in-law? How I hung around and watched his every move when he was in our village? I don’t  know if he recognized me, but I knew I recognized him. And I was as surprised as anyone when he got into my empty, fish-less boat that morning, and asked if I would put out a little from the shore. But, I did as he asked, and I got a front-row seat that morning, as he sat in my own boat, and began to teach the crowds on the shore.

After Jesus had finished speaking to the crowd, there was just me and him in this big, old, empty boat. You know, the one that I had spent fishing in throughout the night, and not caught anything? With the matching pair belonging to my partners, still on the shore, also empty. And Jesus tells me that I should go to deep water and try letting out my net, to see if there might be a catch. After I had spent the whole night doing just that, to no avail.    Now, Jesus was a miracle worker. A teacher. Clearly, a man of God, with amazing powers, the likes of which I had never seen. But, did he know anything about fishing?

Still, I had seen and heard too much to just dismiss him. I told him about the disappointment of the  previous night fishing. But, then, I added, “but, on your word, I will let out the nets.” And so, I did. And, to my utter amazement, I caught not a couple of fish, not a dozen or so, but I found my net was so full of so many fish that I had to get my partners with their empty boat to come out and help me. We had so many fish that they filled up my boat, and their boat, so full, full to the brim, so that we nearly sank as we brought these fish into shore!

I was amazed. My friends were amazed. Never had we seen anything like this before. We could hardly        believe our eyes. Who was this man? He could heal, he could teach and comfort and cast out demons, and now he knew where to find all these fish – he had bested all of us who had worked our tails off in the boats all night. I was filled with awe, and wonder.

The best way I can describe what happened to me that day, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee is to say that I was captivated by Jesus. I was “swept off my feet” if you will. And not just me, but my friends and companions,  John and James – they felt the same way. Hearing Jesus as he taught, seeing Jesus at work, and the fact that he      refused to leave me, even though I felt totally unworthy of having him there – this captivated us. At his word, we    pulled our boats onto shore permanently, left everything and followed Jesus wherever he went.

Now, I have to say, very much has been made about my actions, and the actions of my friends on the          beach that day. We got up and left everything – even though it meant that we were leaving our livelihood, our         families, everything and everyone that we had ever known, to follow Jesus around. If I am very honest with you, I  am not sure that we had really counted the cost at that moment.

There were no shortage of moments when we were completely amazed at the things that Jesus could do, like how he could heal and cast out demons, or the time that he was transfigured on a mountaintop, and I got to    witness it. And there were no shortage of moments that scared us out of our wits – when were caught in storms    that seemed destined to end us, when Jesus was the target of religious authorities and other people in power over us, there were times when the crowds turned against Jesus. On the beach that morning, I knew none of the fear,    none of the worries that I would have. I never knew that following Jesus would lead me here to this very mountain, where I would be asked to watch and pray with my friend, my teacher, my Lord, as great tear drops rolled down his face as he prayed that he would not have to face the trial before him. All I knew was that I was captivated by this  man. The rest of it came later. And there were multiple times on this journey as a follower after Jesus where I could have turned back. But I didn’t. Being a follower of Jesus means that you keep saying ‘yes.’ Yes, I will fish where you tell me to fish. Yes, I will go into the villages on your authority .Yes, I will climb this mountain. Yes, I will stand by you when the authorities turn against you and the crowds go home. Yes, I will let you wash my feet. Yes, I will accept    your forgiveness after I have failed. And, there were times…lots of times, even, when I had to accept forgiveness    and grace so that I could continue. That is what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, from the shores of the Sea of Galilee, to the Garden of Gethsemane….and beyond.

What I want you to notice about this story is not what I did, not what my friends did. Because in a lot of ways I simply felt that I could do nothing else. “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the ways of eternal life. And  we have believed and come to know that you are the holy one of God.” I believed that when I said it, and it was    what guided me through all the lows, and all the highs, that following Jesus my entire life entailed. I was captivated, what else could I do but follow the one who my soul loves?

What I want you to notice about this story is not the faith that I put in Jesus. What I want you to notice    instead is much more unbelievable than that. I want you to notice instead the faith that Jesus put into me. Into      Simon, not-yet-Peter, the one who Jesus called a “rock” even though I was throughout my life as unpredictable as    the waves and weather on the beach.

Jesus found me by an empty boat – me and my companions were the least successful fishermen on that  beach – which is the only reason my boat was empty so that he could borrow it to teach the crowds. Jesus didn’t    find me in a synagogue or at the temple, where the holy people hand out and work. He found me on the beach. I was not a priest, I was a fishermen. And yet, Jesus wanted me on his team.

I was not a holy person, not a person of learning. I was so shocked by what I saw that day with the catch of fish that I tried to send Jesus away. There is no way the likes of him should hang out with the likes of me. And yet, Jesus wanted me. Jesus called ME.

I did not follow perfectly. I have testified that I was captivated by Jesus, that he ‘swept me off my feet.’      And he did, he had. But, even so, I failed as much as I succeeded. Perhaps I failed even more than I succeeded. I      had to be convinced, restored, corrected, over and over and over again. I am not the perfect leader – and yet Jesus chose me to lead anyway.

That day on the beach, after seeing all the things that Jesus could do, I know to my core that Jesus could  do anything that he wanted, without help from anybody at all. The one who made the universe, the one who         makes the wind and waves obey, the one who can heal and even raise people up, he can certainly do anything that he wants, anything that he needs to do, without the help of people, who get in the way, who sin, who get things    wrong, who get tired and discouraged and confused, who snap at their families, who are insecure, who fret, who  don’t trust enough, who fall away, who give into temptation, who deny their Lord with their words or their actions.

And yet, and yet, he chose to partner with me. He wanted me on his team. He wanted these hands, these feet, this face, this mind, this heart, to help him out. And, he wants your hands and feet and face and mind and heart to do his work on earth even now. Even though the world that I walked in was very different from your world, this thing has not changed. Even now, God chooses to use people captivated by Jesus to do the work that God wants to do in this world.

What I want to you remember from my story is not what I did, but what he did. Namely, that Jesus put a lot of faith in an ordinary fisherman that he found on the beach, and swept him off his feet. And he still does the    same thing with people all over the world.

If Jesus chose me, He will choose you too. He wants you to be his hands and his feet, and to take the good news of Jesus Christ to your homes and families and friends and acquaintances, to your co-workers and the people you meet as you go about your life, and to the very ends of the earth.

[1] Quote attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

By John Frye:

Tom Wright, in his popular book Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good, writes, “…[T]he God who masterminds both creation and covenant is a God of love—utter, self-giving, merciful, reconciling, healing, restorative love” (69). In our many discussions about the gospel, robust and reduced, we must not move from the core reality: the New Testament gospel reveals the character of the loving God who saves us.

One version of the reduced gospel wedges into that “good news” the bad news that God is angry with the human race over their sins. God’s wrath has got to be acknowledge before God’s love can be received (the law/grace dualism). Scot McKnight notes that the reduced (soterian) gospel is a Good Friday only gospel (The King Jesus Gospel, 53). The tiny gospel is all about our sins, Jesus’s blood, God’s forgiveness, and the troubling threat of hell replaced by the promise of heaven. Tiny salvation is, at heart, the removal of our sins by the death of Christ. Eternal life is something we experience after we physically die. The sweeping salvation “good news” Story from Genesis to Revelation is reduced to 6 hours on Good Friday. With the reduction of the gospel to how to get saved, the staggering wonder of salvation itself is greatly short-changed.

Recently I read a stirring reminder of the bigness of salvation. Josh Duckworth, a UMC pastor, wrote a brief and beautiful answer to the question why his church does not do altar calls in an article “Preaching Salvation the Wesleyan Way.” John Wesley’s counsel to Thomas Coke, who was coming to America to preach, urged, “Offer them Christ.” Because of 18th century revivalism (think Jonathan Edwards, Charles Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Finney), the gospel’s view of salvation had been truncated to the often emotional experience of getting converted at the anxious bench. The apocalyptic question was “Are you saved?!”

Pastor Josh Duckworth reminds us all that the robust gospel of salvation in the New Testament asks more than one question. It actually asks three questions: Are you saved? Are you being saved? Do you know you will be saved? We ALL need saving every day. Josh explains, “Sunday after Sunday, we face a congregation full of people in need of Christ’s salvation. Sinners and saints alike hunger for it. I believe that every sermon should be inviting us into the way of salvation and helping us develop a holistic understanding of God’s salvation. We need Christ every step of the way. So whether our hearers are unchurched, new believers, or lifelong Christians, we should always ‘offer them Christ.’ We never get beyond the need to be saved by God. After a sermon everyone should be able to answer this question: ‘How is God saving us?’”

I know I need saving every day. Call me to the altar. The love of God expressed in salvation is not just a Good Friday love. We wouldn’t have hymns like “O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free” if God’s love was exhausted at the cross. The robust gospel of the New Testament offers us the robust salvation of God who furiously loves us.

By Sean Palmer Sean Palmer is the lead Pastor at the Vine Church in Temple Texas. You can follow him @SeanPalmer

I wonder how many of us shouldn’t take communion this Sunday? 

At my church, just like many others, to share communion is also to share in making the public confession that “Jesus is Lord.” This simple statement means that Jesus is the firstborn of God and was vindicated as the true God through resurrection. It is not just the most basic belief of Christianity, but the essential one. In communion we celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the very thing that make Jesus lord.

But over time, the church has forgotten what a powerful, disturbing, political, and counter-cultural statement it is.

These days saying, “Jesus is Lord” has become so violently castrated that saying you believe it is little more than announcing you’re vegan or eat gluten-free: It impacts life significantly, but it doesn’t invade all of it. And, perhaps like no time in my life, the neutered nature of the contemporary church is on full display.

First, a quick word about words. 

In the early days of the church, saying “Jesus is Lord,” wasn’t merely religious talk. It caused a fire-storm! In antiquity, Caesar was Lord. He was to be worshiped and adored. Gods — and they were everywhere — were fine as long as the stayed regional, isolated, and removed, from well, politics. When the early Christians said, “Jesus is Lord,” they were also saying Caesar is not.

It is lost on contemporary Christians that in 42BC the Roman Senate proclaimed Julius Ceasar as Divine, and in 27BC conferred the title “son of God” to Augustus. Below Augustus’ image on the denarius were inscribed the words “augustus divi f,” meaning, “Augustus, Son of God.” So, when the church declared Jesus was Lord or the Son of God, that was no quaint nor quiet act. It was a political affront. It was thoroughly unpatriotic, an announcement against the state.

Jesus, Peter, and Paul were tortured by the state because they would not deify the state! They said, “Jesus is Lord.”

“Jesus is Lord,” was never simply a private commitment governing personal ethics centered around the nuclear family. When Paul tells the Colossians that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God,” he is spitting into the face of the god who was visible everywhere, Caesar.

What the contemporary church misses when we say “Jesus is Lord” is that those words, all by themselves are a slap in the face of worldly political powers. All of them!

When we are baptized and declare “Jesus is Lord” we are determining that we stand against any and all powers that are in any way antithetical to the will of Jesus, including our own choices. 

Yet by the standard of the first Christians, our modern proclamations of Jesus fall woefully short. When modern Christians say “Jesus is Lord” we mean it in a privatized, insular way foreign to the disciples.

What we mean is that from this point on I will make particular personal commitments regarding how I organize my life. I will try to live with integrity, character, and personal ethics. It’s spiritual veganism.

Claiming Jesus is Lord has become something we do because we choose to make some tweaks to better our individual moral code. 

Mind you, this isn’t bad. When Christians are able to live up to our stated goals, the world is made a better place. But that’s not nearly close to what it means to call Jesus Lord. Rather, the claim that Jesus is Lord means we reject everything and everyone who attempts to place him or herself in lordship.

I worry that we no longer believe Jesus is Lord — at least not in the politically-threatening, turn the world upside down way it did in the early days of the church. To state it bluntly, the politics and priorities of Jesus have become subservient to the platform and priorities of our chosen political parties.

A Bunch of Partisan Hacks?

Have we taken the honorable call to redeem politics and simple become unimaginative, partisan hacks?

Have you noticed that Christians on the American political Left and Right seem to find in Jesus teachings the very thing their politics suggest they believe?

Increasingly, we have enshrined our politics as Lord then fumble through scripture until we can wedge bits and pieces of the Bible into our partisan worldview. Not to put too fine a point on it, but many Christians say “Jesus is Lord” (supposedly rejecting other “lords”) but actually enshrine their political ideologies as their true Lord.

There is a pretty simple test to determine whether you’ve made your politics your lord. If you don’t see major moral and ethical concerns inside your political party which then call you to stand in strong opposition against some of its personalities, policies, and positions, your party is your lord. If you fall back on the lazy, intellectual weak position that, “The other guys are worse,” therefore you won’t speak out against the corrosive forces within your party, then your party is you lord. Why? Because your party is populated by some percentage of unscrupulous, craven, greedy, careless, lying people. Sinners.  Your party can’t possibly always be right or righteous. If so, the Bible is wrong when it tells us that none are righteous and good but God! If you can’t see the unrighteousness in your party, you’re neither loyal nor faithful. You’re just calling your politics “lord.”

Again, this happens on both sides of the aisle, but that is no excuse. Deficits in others is never an allowance for deceitfulness in you.

If you fail to notice the shockingly un-Christian practices, attitudes, and maneuvers inhabiting your political party, you’re a partisan.

If you cannot honor the praiseworthy across the aisle and if you refuse to name the despicable within your own, you’re a partisan. If, when pressed about the inconsistencies harbored in your party, your response is to innumerate the inconsistencies in the other party as an excuse or an equivalent, you’re not incisive or clever, you’re a partisan. Your words don’t serve the truth, they serve your party interests. As St. Paul says of our fallen predicament, “They (us) exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator… (Romans 1:25).” Partisans, by definition, adhere to the party, not the truth. To adhere to the party is to confess another lord.

During the most recent presidential campaign, former Reality TV contestant, Omarosa, said, “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump.” What she failed to say, but what is equally true, is that not only do politicians and political parties want their detractors to bow down, they want their supporters to bow too. Partisans just bow willingly. 

Politics, as always, presents us with choices about how to interact with the powers and principalities of this world. The powers want us to believe they warehouse all that is good while the opposition is birthed from pure evil. It’s slight of hand, asking us to willingly disbelieve what we know to be true.

They want to scare us into believing they are our only choices. But this was also the case in the days of Joshua, and we should always spurned their preconceived and baseless premise:“…if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD (Joshua 25:14).”

You can have Jesus as lord…or your political gods. Not both. You choose.

As for me, I will take communion this Sunday because Jesus is Lord.