Thank God for Stupid Disciples

There can be no doubt that Jesus spoke plainly enough about His death at least; and yet His death, when it happened, took the disciples as much by surprise as did the resurrection. One explanation suffices in both cases. The disciples were not clever, quick-witted, sentimental men such as Renan makes them. They were stupid, slow-minded persons; very honest, but very unapt to take in new ideas. They were like horses with blinders on, and could see only in one direction, — that, namely, of their prejudices. It required the surgery of events to insert a new truth into their minds. Nothing would change the current of their thoughts but a damwork of undeniable fact. They could be convinced that Christ must die only by His dying, that He would rise only by His rising, that His kingdom was not to be of this world, only by the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the vocation of the Gentiles. Let us be thankful for the honest stupidity of these men. It gives great value to their testimony. We know that nothing but facts could make such men believe that which nowadays they get credit for inventing.

- A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, pp. 494-495 (emphasis added)

A New Day

I will heal their waywardness

and love them freely,

for my anger has turned away from them.



Hosea 14.4

Today

Reclaiming the Baby From the Bathwater

The following thoughts are not theologically rigorous. They are more along the lines of sentiment. But I don't think they're baseless . . .

I think the Reformation was a necessary corrective to a church that had become wacked out and blatantly corrupt. I also think the Reformation was an over-corrective and we need to reclaim a few things.

In our aversion to legalism, we've made everything optional. Reformed churches, curiously, maintain the primacy of the Sabbath even while insisiting there is no sacred-secular divide in life. But aside from that exception, days, feasts, and observances are optional. So, too often, is discipleship to the Master Whom we profess.

The Passion week and Easter weekend that just passed have left me thinking that we could use a few "Holy Days of Obligation" in our evangelical churches.

No Christian holy day is more important than Easter. True, Christmas is essential, because if Jesus hadn't been born, then nothing that followed could have happened. But why was He born? He was born to die. And the Passion Week is our time to reflect more deeply on these truths and mourn our sin more fully and, on Sunday, rejoice more truly.

I was surprised this year at the number of friends I have - friends whose walk with God I respect - who treated Easter weekend as just another weekend. Concerts, dates, dinners, even skipping church(!).

I admit that I hardly spent the entire weekend, myself, in prayer, meditation, and fasting. I was on a plane returning from a business trip when my church held its Maundy Thursday service, I spent Good Friday working, and the omelette I cooked up on Saturday was absolutely incredible. But I did set aside time Friday night to attend a presentation (recitation) of the Gospel of John as a way to focus more intently on the person of Christ. At home and driving, I sought out music throughout the weekend that related to the Passion. And on Sunday morning I went to the Episcopal Cathedral for my high church fix before heading off to my own church to celebrate with my friends (surprisingly, the two services were much more congruent - the liturgy, the creed, even the sermons - than I would have expected from such different churches).

I say all this not to hold myself up as a paradigm. Rather, I'm simply trying to express my belief that this last week (my Catholic friends would say 40 days) is not just another week to be punctuated with better-than-usual music on Sunday. It is the ground of our existence, the sine qua non of our faith, and something deserving of intense focus.

.

"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead" (1 Corinthians 15.17,19,20).

.

Isn't that worthy of some extra attention?

Rice for Easter

Apropos my Friday post about Anne Rice and her Jesus books, here's part of an essay she contributed that same day to OnFaith, a joint website of the Washington Post and Newsweek. If you prefer, you can read the entire essay here. Happy Easter:

Anne Rice
My Trust in My Lord

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.

Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.

And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.
. . . .
As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.

Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.

Anne Rice is the best-selling author of 27 books, including "The Vampire Chronicles" and "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt."

Why Bach is a Genius

If you've read my 6 previous posts about Bach, you know that he's the greatest composer who ever lived. As I listen through my 155-CD set of his complete works, I'm repeatedly impressed and often amazed at his skill. I'm only about two-thirds of the way through the set, and even hearing something once (or multiple times) hardly means that I understand all the mastery that went into a piece.

Which leads to last night, and the Bach concert I was able to attend in Portland. The Bach Cantata Choir, a local group of mostly amateurs, presented Parts 4-6 of the Christmas Oratorio, and a few excerpts from Parts 1 and 2. There were 200-300 people in the audience . . . not bad at $20 a pop. We got our money's worth.

Bach wrote these 6 cantatas for the Advent and Christmas seasons. Each one lasts 20-30 minutes, covers part of the Christmas story, and includes a mix of solos, duets, trios, quartets, and choruses/chorales. It's all in German, of course, but the program we were given provided both the German text and an English translation.

OK, that's enough background. Now, why is Bach a genius? It was most clearly demonstrated at the very end, the final chorus of Part 6. The orchestral part is festive, joyous, celebratory. The text rejoices at the coming of Jesus and remarks on how He has pulverized death, devil, sin, and hell and brought man to the side of God. Delightful, but what makes it genius? The tune the choir is singing is "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden," which we know as "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," a hymn that we sing around Good Friday. It talks about our sin and Jesus' suffering in our place (for example, "Mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain").

So here is Bach, writing some of the most joyful orchestral music you can imagine, using a text of rejoicing, and yet introducing a tune that foreshadows the death of Christ. It is as if to say, "Yes, we're happy now because our Saviour is born, but don't forget that this baby is born to die . . . and don't forget that you're the one who will murder Him." That is genius.

You can hear a brief excerpt by going to this link, then clicking on Disc 2, Track 29.

So Merry Christmas. As we remember the birth of our Lord and Savior, may we also remember why this little baby took on human flesh . . . and how this innocent child, later to be an innocent man, will meet His death.

Before We Leave Easter

Easter was two weeks ago. But there's another sense in which, for us, it is every day. I think you'll find the following Easter sermon by John Chrysostom (349-407) encouraging. He was archbishop of Constantinople and wrote the liturgy that is used to this day in many Orthodox churches. He understood the Gospel.

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?

Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?

Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?

Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour,

let them receive their due reward;

If any have come after the third hour,

let him with gratitude join in the Feast!

And he that arrived after the sixth hour,

let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.

And if any delayed until the ninth hour,

let him not hesitate; but let him come too.

And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,

let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.

He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,

as well as to him that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.

He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.

The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward;

rich and poor, rejoice together!

Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,

rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.

Let no one go away hungry.

Partake, all, of the cup of faith.

Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,

for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;

for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.

He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.

He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said,

"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.

It was in an uproar because it is mocked.

It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.

It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.

It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God.

It took earth, and encountered Heaven.

It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting?

O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!

Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;

for Christ having risen from the dead,

is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

The Other Side of Easter

From indexed.blogspot.com.

Easter Got Stuck Down Below

Due to technical difficulties, my Easter post got stuck a couple notches below this one. If you'd like to read it, it's just below "Your Jesus is Dead." Or this link should take you directly there.

Between Friday and Sunday

Tombs and Wombs

While at the concert last week of Bach’s St. John Passion, I had a new thought – new for me, that is. The text from the book of John says that Jesus was laid in “a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (John 19.41). For some reason, it struck me that this is a parallel with his birth. He was born from a virgin womb, and He was buried in (and rose from) a virgin tomb. If there’s any theological significance to this, I haven’t yet figured out what it is. But it is a nice symmetry.


News You May Have Missed: Ahmadinejad, The Press, and Easter

When the 15 British sailors were released from Iran a couple days ago, the press uniformly reported that President Ahmadinejad said he was releasing his prisoners as an Easter gift. For example, the New York Times ran this AP version: "Irans's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he had pardoned the sailors as an Easter holiday gift to the British people.”

That caught my eye, because I wouldn’t expect the president of Iran to care much about a Christian holiday.

What did he really say? MSNBC ran a longer version of his remarks, and they’re informative:

“Ahmadinejad said he had pardoned the sailors as a gift to the British people and to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammed and Easter. On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet (Muhammad) ... and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people -- with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial -- forgave those 15."

“The occasion of the passing of Christ.” Would somebody please tell the press that the death of Jesus isn’t the definition of Easter?

(More about this story at GetReligion.org.)

Your Jesus is Dead.

Erzähle der Welt und dem Himmel die Not:
Dein Jesus ist tot!

Tell earth and heaven the sad news:
Your Jesus is dead!

-- From Bach's St. John Passion

Χριστός ανέστη

Χριστός ανέστη εκ νεκρών,

θανάτω θάνατον πατήσας,

και τοις εν τοις μνήμασι,

ζωήν χαρισάμενος!

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

(From the Orthodox Liturgy)


If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead . . .
. -- The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday commemorates the evening of:

• The Last Supper


• Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet


• The Upper Room discourse


• The institution of the Eucharist (Communion, for my Methodist friends; Lord's Table, for the Presbyterians)

It's also the evening when Judas betrays his master and Peter denies knowing him at all.

Our mental picture of the arrest is usually something like this:

But if we had been there, I think it would have felt more like this:

Easter Meditation: More From the St. John Passion

Ich, ich und meine Sünden,
die sich wie Körnlein finden
des Sandes an dem Meer,
die haben dir erregt
das Elend, das dich schläget,
und das betrübte Marterheer.

I, I and my sins,
as numberless as the grains
of sand on the seashore,
have brought down on you
this misery that you face,
and this woeful host of torments.

There Was a Concert, Too

Had my car not been towed, the most memorable part of the weekend would have been the concert I mentioned earlier: the Atlanta Symphony and Chamber Chorus performing Bach's St. John Passion. What a nice way to spend a Saturday evening - to me, performances of Bach's longer choral works have the effect of being a worship service. The combination of Biblical texts, old hymns, and marvelous singing & playing can hardly be beat. It helped that I was in the first row, in the center, close enough to tell whether the soloists had trimmed their fingernails that morning. Being that close, the concert feels more immediate and personal to me, even if I can't see everyone further back on the stage.

So, this is Easter week and the St. John Passion is, of course, about the betrayal, trial, and death of Jesus. Here's one verse from a chorus in the work that I particularly like (the whole piece was performed in German, by the way; the English translation I give here is mostly the work of Robert Shaw, with a couple alterations by yours truly):

»Durch dein Gefängnis, Gottes Sohn,
ist uns die Freiheit kommen.
Dein Kerker ist der Gnadenthron,
die Freistatt aller Frommen.
Denn gingst du nicht die Knechtschaft ein,
müßt‘ unsre Knechtschaft ewig sein.«

It’s from your bondage, Lord, alone,
That now our freedom flowers.
Your dungeon is our mercy-throne
And liberty is ours!
Had you not chosen a slave to be,
We’d all be slaves eternally.

Antinomianism and My Expensive Concert

I like to break rules – or at least push against them from time to time. I don’t like dumb rules to get in the way of my accomplishing things, so I’ll either argue with the maker/enforcer of the rules, or I’ll just decide the rules don’t apply to me and ignore them. My persistent, get-it-done nature has served me well, overall.

For example, I was at the airport last week, coming back from a business trip. As I attempted to exit the terminal and get to the West Economy parking lot, I was blocked by several policemen who had closed off all passage to the West side of the building. Apparently, a construction crane had gotten stuck with a full load, and there was some concern the cables would snap. So no was allowed to walk over to the parking lot or to any of the shuttle buses that went to rental car lots, other parking lots, etc. As you can imagine, people were getting irate, everything was disorganized, and there was no indication how long all this was going to last. The airport authorities redirected the shuttle buses to the South side of the building, but there’s no shuttle bus to West Economy – it’s way too close for that. And meanwhile, cars were still allowed to drive in all the lanes – it was just pedestrians that couldn’t go anywhere. So, in my impatience, I decided after about 20 minutes of this silliness to walk in the street and go to West Economy. One of the shuttle bus drivers warned me that I’d probably get arrested, but I told him I’d take my chances. I made it to the lot in about 3 minutes, didn’t get run over, and no one stopped me. And as it turned out, that was probably a good move, because they ended up blocking the area for 4 hours (if you can believe it).

So that was a success, and I was pleased with myself for taking action and making something happen. But sometimes, this approach gets me into trouble.

For example, last night I went to hear the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus perform Bach’s St. John Passion. (More about the concert in a subsequent post.) Since I drove, I needed to park somewhere. I don’t like paying for parking, so I parked in my usual spot on Peachtree Circle, despite some new (to me) signs that said parking wasn’t allowed on that street after 8:00 p.m. on weekends. “That’s a silly thing, and besides, the police never enforce this stuff.” So imagine my surprise as I walked back to my car after the concert, only to see it leaving without me on the back of a tow truck, honking and flashing its farewell! I was in good company, though: about 20 of my fellow concertgoers were in the same carless situation. Thanks to MARTA, I got home, and thanks to one of my roommates, I went to get my car this morning. $130 later (for towing and a parking ticket), my car and I are reunited. It seems no worse for its experience, but my checkbook is complaining a bit.

Somehow, this all connects with the Easter story. We may break some of man’s rules and get away with it. We may push for a change in policies and sometimes succeed. But God isn’t open to negotiation, and nothing escapes His notice. Nor does He grade on a curve. It’s all Pass/Fail, and we all fail: “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2.10). So we get nailed. Or Jesus gets nailed.

That’s the Easter story.

(By the way, have I ever told you how fast my car will go?)

Noted & Quoted: Crucifixion (Easter is Coming)

"It has been remarked thousands of times that Christ died under torture. Many of us have read so often that he was 'a humble carpenter' that we feel a little surge of nausea on seeing the words yet again. But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments of torture were wood, nails, and a hammer;' that the man who built the cross was undoubtedly a carpenter too; that the man who hammered in the nails was as much a carpenter as a soldier, as much a carpenter as a torturer. Very few seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a 'humble carpenter,' the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip."

• Gene Wolfe, Author, Engineer, and Father of Pringles, quoted in First Things, 4/07, p. 27