Finding Grace

     Protestantism began with Luther finding grace in the Epistle to the Romans where before he had only seen law.  Basically every truly Christian experience can be summed up by saying that grace was found in a place where previously only law had been seen.  The Reformation was almost entirely fueled by the discovery of grace in Paul's letters.  For 1500 years Paul's letters were read as ethical guideposts, as encouragement to do right.  And I still read them that way today.  In the Evangelicalism where I have lived my life nothing is more common than take a passage from Paul, to give a teaspoon of grace from it and then drop a ton of requirements and dos and don'ts.  These are always made to be not requirements for salvation or for God's love but things that all Christians or at least all "good Christians" want to do.  Leaving all of us who don't want to do them excommunicated, or at best on the outside looking in.  I have heard so much of these explanations of Paul that they are all that I can see when I read him.  I know that there is grace there and believe me I have looked for it, but either by my nature or my upbringing I can only find ethics there.

     So, a long time ago, I discovered grace where I wasn't looking for it.  When I couldn't find Christ in Paul and John, I found Him in Moses and Jeremiah and Hosea.  And it is real grace that He brought me, and while that grace is sufficient, I am not satisfied.  I want to reclaim the Homeland of Grace from the Law, or rather the pseudo-law.

From 1 Corinthians 6:   All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."

This, I think, is a classic example of Pauline grace that we have turned into moralizing.  A typical sermon on this passage contains about two minutes of extolling evangelical freedom, then "edifying the brother" is brought in and we get about thirty minutes of advice on how to stop sinning and live right and build the kingdom.   And honestly, that is what it looks like when you look at it.  That is in some sense the natural interpretation of this passage.  But is that who Paul is?  Is that what the New Testament is?  It may be kind of stepping out on a limb but I am convinced that Paul is talking about more than morality here.  Yes, the Corinthians were sexually immoral, but I think that Paul was trying to strike deeper than that.  And I will risk being wrong and sounding like an idiot to find grace and hopefully show it to you.  So...

The first thing that it seems to me is wrong with the moralizing interpretation is that it underrates the significance of the way Paul begins this discourse.  "All things are lawful for me,"  We read this as if it says, "Yes Christ has set you free so that you receive no punishment for your actions", and if he was talking about human law that would be the meaning.  But for something to be lawful in the sense of the divine law, not only carries no punishment but it carries positive blessings.

From Deuteronomy 28:  “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God:
“Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.
“Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.
“Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
“Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
“The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
“The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
“The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them."

Paul was absolutely immersed in the Old Testament and he could not fail to realize that saying something is lawful is saying that the person who does it calls down all of these blessings on himself.  Paul knew full well that in Christ all the promises of God are absolutely brought to us.   "All things are lawful for me" is another way of saying that "Everything that I do, whether they seem good or bad to us, wise or foolish, right or wrong, whatever in fact they are in themselves, the best things that I do and the worst, are all drowned in the merits of Christ."  Can we really believe for even a second that Paul is trying to get us to compare our supposedly good actions, the ones that we think edify our brother and build the kingdom, and are described by Isaiah as "filthy rags" with our worst actions, say sexual immorality, and prefer the one to the other?  How can any of our actions be helpful when the one who did not spare His Son but gave Him for us all freely gives us all things?  What help do we imagine we can add to "freely gives us all things"?  No, Paul's intention must be very different from that.I am no Greek scholar but look carefully at the English version.  We read it as if it says, "Not all things are helpful" meaning "Some things are helpful and some things are not." but what it says is "All things are not helpful", "all things are UNhelpful", in fact all of our attempts to contribute only take away from.

I would like to suggest that the key to understanding this passage is found in Paul's reference to food, or as many older translations appropriately put it, "meat".  Basically from the moment Paul began preaching to the gentiles, maybe even earlier, the church was embroiled in a controversy over food, basically over the kosher diet and whether or not you could be a Christian without being a jew.  And the very mention of meat here should bring this aspect of the context to mind.  If this is to do with the Judaistic controversy then when he says "I will not be brought under the power of any" then what he is thinking of is pseudo-legal so called "Third use" restrictions being placed on the freedom that Christ has bought for us.  So whether these restrictions come as straight-up judaism or under the pretenses that modern Evangelicalism prefers the moralism they are beating us down with are exactly what Paul is teaching against, as he indicates by reminding us that both food and the stomach, that the entire order of creation to which such restrictions refer, no matter how spiritual their disguise, is temporary and insignificant compared to the freedom of the Gospel.

Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

It is a fact that there was considerable sexual misconduct in the church at Corinth, as there is in any group of human beings, sadly we know all too well that however "sanctified" someone is or seems to be that where sex is concerned they are often no better than the most unrefined sinner.  And sure, Paul was trying to clean that up, I grant that.  But it must be granted to me, that Paul's mind was never far from the Hebrew prophets.  And when they mention adultery, yes they are reproving the sexual habits of the Israelites, but they are aiming much deeper and I can't believe that Paul isn't as well.

From Hosea :
2 Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; For she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts; 3 Lest I strip her naked And expose her, as in the day she was born, And make her like a wilderness, And set her like a dry land, And slay her with thirst. 4 "I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children of harlotry. 5 For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my linen, My oil and my drink.' 6 "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And wall her in, So that she cannot find her paths. 7 She will chase her lovers, But not overtake them; Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband, For then it was better for me than now.' 8 For she did not know That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, And multiplied her silver and gold-- Which they prepared for Baal. 9 "Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time And My new wine in its season, And will take back My wool and My linen, Given to cover her nakedness. 10 Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, And no one shall deliver her from My hand. 11 I will also cause all her mirth to cease, Her feast days, Her New Moons, Her Sabbaths-- All her appointed feasts. 12 "And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, Of which she has said, 'These are my wages that my lovers have given me.' So I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field shall eat them. 13 I will punish her For the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, And went after her lovers; But Me she forgot," says the Lord. 14 "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the wilderness, And speak comfort to her. 15 I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; She shall sing there, As in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. 16 "And it shall be, in that day," Says the Lord, "That you will call Me 'My Husband,' And no longer call Me 'My Master,' 17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more. 18 In that day I will make a covenant for them With the beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down safely. 19 "I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy; 20 I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the Lord.
Hosea 3  Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.

To Hosea, to all the Prophets, Adultery is used to bring home Idolatry to us.  The comparison of marriage to covenant faithfulness with God is constant in the Old Testament but yet more frequent in Paul.  So how does this relate to Paul's controversy with the Judaizers?  I think that the key is to remember that in Israelitish idolatry it was almost never an issue of replacing Yahweh with Baal.  It was always an issue of supplementing Yahweh with Baal of completing Yahweh with Baal.  And Paul does nothing more than transpose the same theme into another key.  The major issue in the Apostolic church, and every church, is of supplementing Christ's righteousness with our own, of completing justification with what we call sanctification, of wearing fig leaves on top of the robe of Christ's righteousness, finishing grace with law.

And that brings us back to the problem that I have always had reading Paul and with modern Evangelicalism.  It isn't that there is no grace but that grace has been buried under the law.  Our minds are so bent towards law that the tiniest amount swamps the superabundant grace.  Our sin nature sucks up law like a sponge and is repelled by grace.  There is no question of having them in the right proportion because the only way to get any grace at all is to get grace alone.  And it is true that the moralizers can explain Paul better than I can.  They can write commentaries where every passage fits together in a harmonious and logical whole, and I can only grab one passage and stubbornly say that it is about evangelical freedom whether it fits or not.  But it is about evangelical freedom whether it seems to be or not.

Baby Christians

We can all see that this church is pretty much a failure, and it isn't hard to figure out why.  We are all basically baby Christians, none of us doing the things that it takes to make the church grow and be influential in our community.  Sure we make some small contribution, but in my case, and probably yall's too, it isn't because we care.  I get up here and talk because I like to take shots at the people who piss me off and I am hoping to offer some comfort to my fellow losers.  In pretty much every church that I have been in there are two groups more or less.  There are those who contribute to the church, time, talents, money what have you.  The group of spiritually rich, mature Christians makes the institution of the church work, always busy with the work of the Lord's kingdom, they set a good example and know how blessed they are to not be like the tax collector types around them.  And then there are the bums, the baby Christians, mooching off of God and our elder brothers, not contributing anything but just sitting staring at Jesus with an idiotic grin on our faces.

When you are reading the Bible, it is always important to know the context in which what you are reading was written.  Now this is often overdone with respect to the New Testament.   Often the so-called "higher criticism" resolves the whole New Testament into a battle between Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity, between Paul and his friends on one side and Peter and James on the other.  The writings of John are usually considered to be written against the Gnostic heresy, and like I said this can be pushed way too far, but I think in understanding the first two chapters of 1 John, which is what I would like to talk about today, it is important to know what was happening to the people that John was writing to.

1 John starting at chapter 1 verse 4:

These things we write to you that your joy may be full.  This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.
He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

The situation that this letter was sent into was one pretty familiar to most of us.  As we learn from later in chapter 2, the Christians who were toting all of the weight had gotten tired of the freeloaders and had left to start their own church.  The more spiritual people wanted to go deeper and not be held back by the materialistic half-Christians.  John's message, and mine, is for the Prodigals, the Tax Collectors, the Marys, John's little children, the Baby Christians.

Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all of this already. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

Those who "went out" from John's "little children"-his babies, were those who Christian historians call the Gnostics, they separated themselves from the Baby Christians because they wanted to do more for God and go deeper with Jesus.  They did so much for God that they decided He was dumb and evil to have created the world and went so deep with Jesus that they decided He couldn't really have been a man but only appeared to be.  If I sound like the Prodigal taking shots at his older brother then you have pretty much got the idea.  And I think that as we read the first part of John's letter the Prodigal and his brother are the two characters that we need to keep in mind.  John's great contrast, the big antithesis that we need to see is between the Screwup Little Brother and the Jerk Big Brother.

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.   ---The Jerk Brother, the Gnostics said that they were top shelf Christians, but they looked down on and despised the Prodigals, the Baby Christians.

He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.  ---In other words, the ones who seemed to have all of the spiritual riches and maturity, those who appeared to be and claimed to be "in the light", didn't even know God at all.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.  ---They probably didn't come right out and say that they had never sinned or that they weren't still sinners, but they thought that they were better than their brothers.  They were Pharisees thanking God that they weren't tax collectors.  And John's little babies felt like garbage and could only cry "God have mercy on me a sinner.", knowing that they hadn't done any of the things that Christians are supposed to do.  They stood, we stand, before God with nothing but a cry for mercy not having done anything right but believing that Our Father loves us anyway.

Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.--- So, John isn't saying here that we have to do the right things to be what God has called us to be, He isn't placing Martha's works above Mary's staring at Christ like a baby at her daddy.  The Older Brothers, the Jerks have been claiming to have this great knowledge about Christ, they were claiming to be advanced and spiritual, but John is pointing out here that if they were spiritual they would act like Christ, who instead of looking down on the babies declared that they were the kingdom of Heaven.  And the New Commandment that they were not fulfilling was given in John 13 by our Lord, that of loving the brethren.

So what is the point of all of this?  It is that we are all vastly overestimating our own maturity and spirituality.  We think that we have gotten somewhere and made some kind of progress in the Christian life, but we haven't.  The wisest, most mature, most spiritual Christian is in truth just a baby a few months old, and if He is looking down on the only minusculey less mature newborn Christian and thinking that He is contributing something to God's kingdom then he is being very infantile, which is only natural I guess.  The only thing that any of us is contributing is to put a smile on our Father's face and I promise that daddy smiles at the newborn just as much as he does at the baby a few months old.

But John began by saying that he was writing so that "our joy may be full" what does any of this have to do with that?  You all know how prone I am to depression and a grim view of the world, so I am probably the last person who should stand up here and talk about Christian joy, but you are just going to have to deal with it and be grateful that I am about to be done and not complain about how I close so long as I close briefly.  I have never heard a good definition of joy.  It is clear that it is something different than happiness, that it is possible to be joyful even in the midst of sadness, but no one seems to be able to explain why or what that means.  I am about to take a shot at it.  Recently Lily has taken to crying in her carseat a lot.  And we have looked for what is bothering her, searching for any discomfort.  I worried she was hot so I made this elaborate vent to get cool air around her carseat, Cheyenne had me adjust her carseat, we have made a point of making sure that she had toys in the car, we have stopped to feed her and stopped to burp her and finally are left with only one conclusion.  Only one thing stops her crying.  It is when mommy or daddy comes and sits beside her while she is riding.  The whole thing seems pretty irritating, but as I thought about it more I realised that there is a kind of purity, a simplicity about it.  Nothing in the world makes her happy except to have mama or daddy with her.  And hence this definition of joy.  It is simply knowing that when you cry your daddy will come and be with you.  We've all grown too old, older than we really are, and we will only find heaven, in this life or the next by being babies again.  So, John's message to all of the Baby Christians, is that you don't have to do anything to be close to God, He has already come close to you.  That we all have to become like Christ is the Law and we have all been beat to death with it.  The Gospel however is that Christ has become like us.  You are God's baby.  Helpless in His arms, as close as two people can be.  You may not know it, you may not feel it.  But you are just a baby what do you know about it anyway?

The Binding of Isaac

Our text today is the 22nd chapter of Genesis, the Binding of Isaac, when Abraham's faith was tested.  

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”  And he said, “Here I am.”

The Lord is most emphatic about this being a test.

From Hebrews 11 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” 19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.

So, why?  What is the purpose of God testing Abraham?  Testing is always designed to reveal something about the person or thing being tested.  I think that we can take it for granted that this is a test designed to reveal Abraham's faith, but reveal it to who?  It didn't reveal anything to God, who didn't merely know Abraham's faith with omniscience, but knew that faith as it's constant maker and sustainer.  Was it to reveal it to Abraham?  For what purpose?  That instead of depending on God's mere grace Abraham might bring his faith forward as if it gave him some claim upon God?  I can't think of any good that it ever does a man to know that he has faith.  We are not meant to dwell in God's salvation in sedentary confidence but in the fear and trembling of always knowing that it is only a goodness that we have no claim on, a grace which God is in no way bound to give us.  We are made to trust in Him, not to trust in our faith, and so I say that the purpose of this test was not to reveal Abraham's faith to Abraham.  Well if it wasn't for God and it wasn't for Abraham that he was tested who was it for?

From Romans 4 speaking of Abraham's faith  Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, 24 but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

What does Abraham's faith have to do with you and me?  Abraham is the father of us all.(from Romans 4 again)  Your faith follows the pattern of Abraham's faith, there is nothing in your faith which is not contained in Abraham's faith.  And that is why it has to be revealed to us in such dramatic fashion.  And what is the faith that is revealed by this test?  It is often held up as some kind of perfect model of faith but I don't think that that is the case at all.  The Father of the Faithful's faith does have all of the good and beautiful things that any of his children's faith has, but it seems to me that it also has all of the defects.  And this is the point I want to look at today.  Not to drag Abraham through the mud but to say to you as plainly and emphatically as I can, what I believe is the message of God's test of Abraham, that no defects in your faith, no flaws of any kind, exclude you from the community of the faithful, and that who you are cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ.

2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!”And he said, “Here I am, my son.”Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. 10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

The links between this passage and our Lord's crucifixion are numerous and strong.  I am not going to try and trace all of the similarities right now, but rather to use this comparison as a lens to look at Abraham and his faith.  The first thing that strikes me in our passage, is Abraham's silence.  He didn't tell Isaac what was going on.  It seems clear that the two men who came with them didn't know the purpose of their journey.  And although it isn't directly mentioned, I feel certain that Isaac's mother didn't know that her husband was planning to stab and burn her son.  Why?  Abraham was silent because he was trying to be faithful.  He felt certain that if he told Sarah his plan that she would prevent him.  He had nothing to show to anyone that would distinguish him from a madman.  What could he say, what could he do that would convince even the most trusting that the destruction of his son was an act of love and divine obedience?  So, Abraham remained silent, in order to avoid difficulties which he imagined would arise to stop him from completing his mission.  Did this silence come from faith?  I say no.  It was the typical scheming of fallen man.  For a contrast, look at our Lord's repeated predictions of His death, a course which set all men against him causing most of His disciples to abandon Him and straining terribly relations with those who remained.  He was not silent about the scandal to come.  He embraced the possibility of offense and of being isolated from all men.  But Abraham didn't.  Abraham was silent.  If Abraham is not like Christ in this respect then who is he like?  Abraham's silence is analogous to Peter's denial and to the disciples hiding wherever they were when their Lord was killed.  Abraham's feet may have been walking up the mountain but he was trying to stay as far from it as possible.



Abraham led Isaac up the mountain deceitfully.  He wasn't merely silent, when Isaac asked where the sacrifice was He cunningly concealed from his son the truth, under a mask of piety.  I am not saying that the piety was fake, I am not saying that Abraham didn't believe that God would provide a sacrifice, but Abraham betrayed his son, he plotted his murder.  Abraham must have known that Isaac, tired from carrying a bundle of wood up a mountain, weighed down by that same wood which his father had tied to him, and caught in shock and surprise when attacked by his beloved father would have no chance to resist him.  We always tell the story with Isaac as a willing victim, and perhaps that makes the parallels with Christ the strongest, but we really don't know that.  Isaac very probably had no chance to resist, whether or not he tried to we will never know.  His father betrayed him, maybe quite literally with a Judas kiss.

The Gospel is death to who we are, death to our selves.  The way that God chose to reveal faith, through Abraham binding Isaac, shows us a faith that includes cowards and weak men like Peter and the other disciples.  It includes men who are silent when they should speak, who are hidden in the bushes when they should be a light to all men.  The Gospel is hard to take.  It is hard to swallow when its light shines on Peter's denial and the disciples cowardice and shows that they are me.  But it is worse when it shows Abraham betraying his son for his own gain, I can't say why Abraham was sacrificing Isaac, but he deceived him and rendered him helpless to make this hated task easier on himself, and to guarantee that his design succeeded.  I don't pretend to know Judas' fate, but Abraham's faith includes men like Judas.  This is the faith that God's test reveals to us, a faith that is contaminated with selfishness and treason.

From Romans 4 What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

The faith which God counts as righteousness is not some perfect, celestial faith.  It is a faith which is cowardly, deceitful, and treacherous.  It is a faith which denies Christ like Peter and betrays Him like Judas.  It is a faith which holds the knife above an innocent victim, condemning him just like Pilate did.  Perhaps the greatest thing about the Crucifixion as recorded in Scripture is that there are no good guys.  We must place ourselves somewhere in the story, and since we aren't Christ at best we are the weak and cowardly disciples.  But more and more I see myself in Judas and Pilate.  The faith which God counts as righteousness in Abraham, deserves exactly what Judas and Pilate deserve.  But it doesn't get what it deserves.

Romans 4:4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,

Faith is not meritorious.  It doesn't deserve anything good.  If what I have is faith, then faith is contemptible and deserving of damnation.



11 But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”

So he said, “Here I am.”

12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

15 Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” 19 So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.

Faith is not meritorious, but God treats it as if it is.  And the only reason for it is because of His love for us, love which he pours out on the most unworthy.

5 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Acts 2

2 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
5 And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. 7 Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” 12 So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”

Whatever could this mean?  That is the question that Peter set himself to answer and that is the question that I want to try to answer this morning.  So what was it that was actually happening? We have all heard about, and some of us have heard people "speaking in tongues", allegedly speaking in some secret language, whether it is claimed to be the language of angels or a "private prayer language", whatever that means, it sounds like nonsense to the uninitiated, a mechanical, meaningless babble.  That is most emphatically not what was happening here.  What was happening is almost the reverse of modern speaking in tongues.  Everybody understood what was being said.  These men's message was mysterious, it was incomprehensible, but it was unmistakable.  Their hope was repellant, and their faith offensive, everybody understood what they were saying.  The choice was to be offended and reject the message, or to step outside the bounds of humanity and accept it.  But the first question for us is how could they understand it, and what did it all mean.  To answer that I want to back up just a little to a question that we often forget to ask in this context.  Not why could everybody understand these men, but why is it that most of the time we can't understand one another?  Why can't I speak Chinese?  Why can't foreigners understand me when I yell at them?  Why is the customer service guy on the phone from wherever so stupid?

From Genesis 11 Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

The story begins with human anxiety.  The fear of being separated from one another, "let us make a name for ourselves, so that we won't be scattered", the fear of the future, basically just saying, "I don't know what God has planned for us but, I don't trust Him."  That fear is the result of us deciding for ourselves what is good and what is not.  Distrustfully taking from God the determination of what is good for us and taking to ourselves the knowledge of good and evil always bears the fruit of fear and of death.  We were going in a bad direction, and God brought us this confusion as a way of putting the brakes on us.

13 Others mocking said, “They are full of new wine.”
14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. 15 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in heaven above
And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
21 And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the Lord
Shall be saved.’
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. 25 For David says concerning Him:
‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face,
For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;
Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
27 For You will not leave my soul in Hades,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’
29 “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, 31 he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. 33 Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.

So, the confusion went away because the sin that made it necessary was taken away.  Confusion of tongues is a roadblock that God put in the way of our sinful course, there is no reason for there to be such a roadblock in the way of the spread of the Gospel.  And both in this passage and historically we see that the obstacle of confused languages provides little obstacle to the Gospel which has gone forth into the whole earth to tribes and tongues unknown to the rest of the world.  In Christ sin is forgiven and taken away, the fact of sin, the guilt of sin, the effects of sin, the consequences of sin both temporal and eternal, everything about sin is like it never was.  In fact, in its place we receive the fact of His righteousness, His merit, the results of His righteous acts both in this life and the next.  The heart of the curse of sin is death, and Peter's message is that Christ has overcome death, as is proven by His resurrection, and with the defeat of death, all of the lesser effects of sin, the confusion of tongues, the division of people, goes away.  Obviously for now this is only partial.  What Christ has obtained for us, God has only made a downpayment on.  Sometimes the curse vanishes from our lives, like it did on the day of Pentecost, as a sign that it is ending, that the curse is broken.

34 “For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself:
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
35 Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”’
36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

And how is this sin and its effects removed?  By being identified with Christ and with His death.
 That is what the baptism that Peter called them to is.  It is to identify yourself with Christ in His death.  We have been judging for ourselves what is right and what is wrong for all of our lives.  And there is nothing that we will ever see that seems more wrong than the death of Christ.  It is an affront to the deepest part of our hearts and minds.  The good Father betrays His righteous Son when He needs Him the most, for don't forget that while Peter says that we murdered Him with lawless hands that it was all done by the determinant plan of God.  How can we trust a Father that would do that to His own son?  Why place our hope in someone who does the opposite of what we would hope for?  Christian hope cannot help but look and often feel like despair.  What more horrible place is there to be than in the hands of an omnipotent child abuser?  Christian faith cannot help but look like absolute cynicism and atheism.  What kind of trust can I have in the one who brought a sword to divide brother against brother, who makes our families our enemies and says that we are not worthy of Him if we do not abandon them?  All that we are is in rebellion against such a God.  We have judged good and evil and have judged ourselves to be good and Him to be evil, our way to be right and His way to be wrong.  But Christ didn't.  He put Himself into the hands of His Father when He seemed least good and least trustworthy with absolute faith and unshakable hope.  He endured the uttermost depths of His Father's wrath, certain that it was dispensed by a good and loving Father.  All baptism is, is agreeing with Jesus Christ.  It is believing that all appearances to the contrary, God is good and He loves us.  It is refusing to take the forbidden fruit, in the unreasonable faith that it is forbidden for good reason.  It is accepting having no name for yourself and no lasting place on the Earth, to choose the life of an exile, a despised pilgrim, outside the camp of human brotherhood, walking the Via Dolorosa for the joy that is set before you.  And in so doing, we gain a voice that can touch all men, that penetrates all confusion.

The Sacraments-the Eucharist

We live in a very political culture, we are very partisanal.  On any social issue, ethical issue, religious issue we know what side we are on, we know why anybody who is on the other side is wrong and probably evil.  Or at least I used to know what side I was on.  An issue seems simple but then the more that you get into it, the more folds it has.  It soon becomes clear that there is right on both sides and wrong on both sides and we are expected somehow to balance them.  We are convinced that righteousness should be simple, just apply a few rules and the answer will present itself.  All of the problems in our lives come from somebody not following the formulas.  There is a feeling that life was simple at some previous time and that somehow we have complicated it all to the point that simple answers, maybe any answers at all are impossible.  What kind of inconsiderate jerk has made our lives so complicated?  Who would be so thoughtless as to muddy the waters in so many of the issues of our lives?  Don't they know that our righteousness, our future, our very salvation depends on finding the right way?  It is as if the way to Heaven was once a broad and easy path, and Someone made it into a narrow, mountain pass, a continual struggle with failure and death close enough to taste.

Why can't people just follow the Bible, let God be our guide, decent, Christian folks don't have this constant struggle to find the right way do they?  I mean there are things in the Bible that are hard to understand, but the big ideas make everything else plain.  What could be simpler than God forgiving sins, than a Virgin birth and the baby literally being God, than an Innocent man being judged guilty and guilty men being judged innocent by a Judge who is never wrong, than true and eternal Life existing in the Death of the Cross?  What could be simpler than a physical washing producing spiritual cleanness, than bread and wine being the body and blood of God, than a part, a man, being greater than the whole, and an Individual being greater than the Law that binds us all?  These are the simple, plain, direct things at the heart of the Christian religion.  These are the message that we believe and preach.  And to anyone who thinks that they are crazy, that they are not just insane but impossible, I say, Yep I'm with you.

The Law is a simple matter.  Do it, follow the rules, apply the formula, color inside the lines, and live.  Don't do it and die.  Motives don't come into question.  Well, when they do they are only a part of the formula.  Have the right motives or you lose.  Your heart, your mind, your soul, You yourself are just something in the balance, Make the cut or the writing is literally on the wall, "You have been measured and found wanting" as it was written for Belshazzar.  The complication, the mystery, the Paradox, the Sacrament comes in with the Gospel.

When we open the New Testament the very first thing that we find is a Virgin having a baby.  That really kind of sets the tone for the whole doesn't it?  The miracles of the New Testament are actually the most plain and believable parts of the whole thing.  Christ feeds five thousand with one little boy's lunch with the plainness and simplicity of a cook at Waffle House.  He casts out demons like a carpenter hammers nails.  But when He comes to Himself, to explaining Who He Is and what He is doing, all of a sudden things are not so simple.

28 Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

We start with a simple and direct question.   What can we do to please God, to contribute to the Kingdom, bottom line to be saved.

29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

Kind of a strange answer that is about to get WAY worse.

30 Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
32 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

He takes this plain question and His best answer is to start comparing Himself to a loaf of bread.  I can only imagine how helpful this must have been to them.  I mean it could be worse He could start confusing the whole thing with, I don't know, what is the most off topic confusing thing He could bring up?  Maybe the mystery of predestination?

36 But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. 40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

If He was deliberately trying to make the issue as complicated and confusing as possible would He have done anything differently?  Their complaint seems perfectly reasonable to me.

41 The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” 42 And they said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Our wonderful teacher's response?  He is going to mention predestination again, this time in its even more offensive form, reprobation, the election to damnation, followed by telling them that they have never seen God, in other words don't even have a chance to understand.

43 Jesus therefore answered and said to them, “Do not murmur among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. 47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.

When I read this, I get the impression that after He said all that, He felt that He had just been too direct and plain and inoffensive and must have been like, "Hmm, what could be more offensive than predestining people to Hell?  I know!  They want to know what God wants them to do, Let's tell them that to be saved they have to become cannibals."

48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
52 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”
53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

 Why?  What is the point of this totally indirect, vague, deliberately confusing diatribe flung at such an inoffensive question as "What does God want us to do?"  It is said somewhere that Christ spoke in parables so that people wouldn't understand, even the prophets were sent with this charge,
"9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 “Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”Isaiah 6

The whole goal of Isaiah's ministry, and of Christ's parables and the text we just looked at is not to lay out God in the form of a systematic theology, not to draw a map that leads you to Heaven, its not to give you some Eureka moment, it's to make it clear that you don't understand and...never will.  Now we have obscured this fact.  We have decided that this message, the message of being excluded from understanding, is just for some people, and that those people are not us.  It is them out there.  All the people in here get it.  We don't need anybody to give us the talk about birds and virgin bees.  Virgins have babies, obviously.  Yeah, God is God and He is a man, could be some guy in Walmart  and He is God at the same time.  I get it.  And Ishould eat that guy?

Traditionally Christianity has called these issues, Sacraments, literally Mysteries, things that we don't get.  But I prefer the word Paradoxes.  I think that that word makes the point nicely that the issue is not just that we are messed up and don't get it, there are plenty of things like that that maybe we will figure out someday, but that isn't what we are dealing with here.  The Mysteries of Christianity aren't just beyond you or me and accessible to some better human, they aren't above all humanity and comprehensible to some angel, they are above all Creation.  We can no more understand them than we can understand God Himself.  In fact, if, and I want to insist on that if, IF God understands these paradoxes, it is only because He understands Himself.  Then what's the point?  If it isn't understanding?

To say that God is above us, beyond us, is just a tautology, a truism.  We hear it and immediately begin to imagine how He is beyond us and draw out the plan of His transcendence, make a system out of it.  And then, once we understand God's transcendence, He doesn't really transcend us anymore.  He is still better than us but we get it.  We know how, and where, and when He is better.  We can lay odds on the incalculable.   Our explanations of mysteries always start with making them not be mysterious, making them not be themselves, which is fine for ordinary earthly things but if we do it here it will leave us with no Christianity or worse a Christianity that is not itself.  Our calling, then is not to understand, but to accept our inability to understand, and believe anyway.  Now to head off a misunderstanding, we don't believe first and understand later.  Belief doesn't produce understanding.  We believe, and we believe that what we believe cannot be understood.  This is the form that a revelation of Someone who is truly beyond us must always take.  A Creed and a Theology are truly and forever contradictions.  Belief and knowledge are not just separate, not just different but contradictory, and the statement "I Believe" contains in it the idea, "I don't understand.  I can't explain."  The Paradox isn't to be explained, it is to be preached.  It is to be brought to life.  The contradiction, the collision isn't to be softened and smoothed out, it is to be made as stark and irreconcilable as possible, that is to say as stark and irreconcilable as it really is.  Now we don't do that by clever ways of speaking, by artfully chosen phrases, or people will get the impression that we are taking something that is plain in itself and making it mysterious to keep people's interest.  No, we just present it as it is, without clogging it up with all of our reasonable, agreeable, synthesizing, syncretistic, opposite combining religious garbage.

Something that we understand can be a revelation, but not a revelation about who God is.  Because something that we understand isn't divine it is human, and if there is anything that is human, that isn't divine, about God then He isn't God.  Which brings us against the brick wall of our first paradox.  That God is a man.  And I want to insist that all of these revelations, these mysterious Sacraments, ARE revelations of God's eternal, divine character, of who He is, especially His humanity.

The humanity of Christ, of God, is the cornerstone of the entire Christian revelation.  If God is really a man, not He looks like a man, not He acts like a man, not He was a man a long time ago, but He is really, from all eternity to all eternity in the absolutely divine essence absolutely human.  Not that some man is like God in a lot of ways, not that some man is called God but is really a creature, not any of the million evasions we have come up with, but if God is really and truly a man and there is a man who is really and truly God, then what does that reveal about Him and what does it reveal about us?


So, I wrote everything up til here about two weeks ago.  And I hit a wall.  It looks like it is time to explain how God is a man and what that means.  And that is what I thought I was gonna do.  Which is pretty funny if you think about all of my insistence on the mysterious and paradoxical nature of the whole idea.  But it is what I thought.  But what I should do, and might can do, is not to explain the paradox but just draw a picture of it.  So that I can see it and you can see it.  I don't really know what it is like to be God, but I have some idea what it is like to be a man.  I think the first, most obvious thing about being a man is that most of the time you really don't know what is going on.  The older that I get, the more clear it is to me that the causes of most of the things in my life are hidden from me.  I don't even understand the things that I think and feel myself.  Is that what Christ's life was like?   We spend so much time analyzing His actions, "Why did He tell His mom it wasn't time for Him to work miracles?  Why did He deliberately push away all of the good people?  What about His bizarre answers to Satan's temptations?"  And we ask these questions trying to sniff out hints of the divine, trying to find the hidden God within the Man.  But when we do that we miss the man, and Him being a man is allegedly the whole point of the Christian religion.  We try and sniff out the divine but His actions fairly reek of the human.  The strange combination of shyness and stubborn courage and angry compassion and compassionate anger that we don't like but that feels real familiar to us.

Maybe the second thing about being a man, is that even when you know and understand that something is good, a lot of the time you don't like it.  Second guessing, buyer's remorse, fear and trembling is the touchstone of being a man.  Have any of us had something good come into our lives without feeling, at least a little, that Gethsemane moment?  That crying, "God, I know this is good but I don't want it.  I don't like it."  And in that moment, we can't miss the humanity of Christ.  And this is where we make the opposite mistake.  We can't miss His humanity when He cries and fears so we miss His divinity.  We take the whole Christ and say this part is His human side and that part is His divine but we cannot divide what God has joined, there is not a human Christ and a divine Christ, but one Divine-human Christ, not the Law and then the Gospel separately, but the two of them together, this is the mystery, the sacrament for which Christ, a man, left His Father and cleaves to us, and the two are one flesh, in the marriage of the Divine and us, represented in the bread and the wine that is flesh and blood.  And that is where I am gonna end this.  With the challenge to myself, and to you, to see the divine in the Garden.  To believe that it is really God that says and does these things.

From  Matthew 26  36 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.” 37 And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. 38 Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”

39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

40 Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? 41 Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

42 Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” 43 And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.

44 So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. 45 Then He came to His disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand.”

1+1=1

The first year of my marriage was the hardest year of my life.  I was 25 and very used to the kind of freedom that being a bachelor entails.  I had spent 8 years doing what I wanted when I wanted.  I went to work, I came home and ate chicken wings, chips, and drank mountain dew.  I read, I played video games, I looked at porn and that was pretty much my entire life until the day we married.  And I took this poor, young girl, Cheyenne won't care for that characterization but being married to me definitely entitles her to pity, and I took her 2 1/2 hours from her family, to be dirt poor, completely alone, and scared to death.  Her shyness and a terrible economy combined to prevent her from finding a job or making friends, she was just alone and miserable whenever I was gone.  We loved each other and had a sort of honeymoon period, it lasted every day until it was time for me to go to bed so I could get up for work the next morning, time for her to have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to.  In my mind, the few little dollars I made was the only thing keeping us from being starving on the street so I did whatever it took to be ready to get to work the next day, I went to bed at 9 o'clock, I threw myself into work trying to find a way out of our crushing debt taking a second job and doing anything I could to make a dollar.  To her, I was ignoring her and putting other things ahead of her when she was so much in need.  She forced me to pay attention to her.  She would yell at me, hit me, break my stuff, slash my tires, in short spare no effort to make me see how much she was hurting.  And I would keep ignoring her, trying to show her that her bad behavior couldn't force me to do anything, that whatever she could dish out I could take, and that being nice to me was the only way to get what she wanted.  We both knew that it was an impossible situation.  She would go to her mom's for weeks at a time and really had no interest in coming back home to Hell, fortunately for me being with her family was pretty hellish in its own ways, but more to the point there was some incomprehensible bond between us, something kept dragging us back together so that we could fight and hate each other some more.


We had been married about 8 months when she printed divorce papers off the internet and demanded that I sign them.  It seemed like the only thing keeping us together was my stubbornness, it wasn't but it seemed that way.  It wasn't really stubbornness, I mean it was but there was more to it.  Whenever we were pulled apart, something brought us crashing back into one another like some demented yoyo.  It was the most toxic of all relationships, but the poison that we were to each other was the only air we could breath, the only food and drink that could satisfy our hunger.  I didn't understand it, but I knew that nothing that a judge said could change this.  The Law was utterly powerless to change this basic fact of our existence, that we were together, that we were one.

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. 

All of the good things that God had made were presented to Adam, it might as well literally have been on a silver platter.  The whole of Creation was his to pick from.  And all of Eden was empty to him.  He walked with God through paradise and He was desperately alone.  I can't read this without thinking of a dad with a depressed child going out and getting him a puppy.  If you ever want to know who is really your friend, who really loves you, take your wife and your dog, and lock them up in the trunk of your car and leave them there for a few hours.  Then when you open it see which one is happy to see you.  I love man's best friend, and my dog Darby is literally my best friend, faithful, loyal, always happy to see me.  God gave Adam a puppy though, and it just didn't do the trick...

But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.  And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

When Adam looked, when we look, into the universe there are tons of great and wonderful things, and behind it all there is the God to whom none of it compares.  But all we can see is "Otherness", it isn't us.  Each of it individually, including Darby, and all of it together, including God in His Glory, fails to meet our needs, because it isn't us, it is different, and He, God not Dog, is the most different of all.  None of it can take away the emptiness in the depths of our soul.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Genesis 2

What is it that can take away the emptiness of the world?  It is that psycho sitting next to you.  And let's be honest.  Our spouses are the most fucked up people in the world.  No one will ever hurt you like your mate.  Our society talks a lot about broken marriages, but truthfully, your spouse could literally eat you like spiders do their mates, and She would still be the only thing in the universe to you.  And this is a great mystery, which brings us back to the paradox at the heart of Christianity.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.  1 Corinthians 6

The words which first introduced the mystery in Genesis 2, are the words to which Paul constantly recurs.  I have railed often enough about trying to reduce life and Christianity to formulas, but after all of that the formula of Genesis, the formula of Paul really does work, "Two shall become one flesh" "1+1=1", the addition which adds nothing, because it adds what is already there, your self.  I introduced Paul's words from 1 Corinthians 6 to make a particular point.  You see, what he is talking about, what we are talking about, is not a legal, moral thing, it is not a judge or a preacher saying "You may now kiss the Bride".  It is so far from that that it may even be an illegal, immoral thing, like being with a whore.  It is not a ceremony that makes a marriage but the night after, even if it comes before.  The Law recognizes this, recognizes that even if all of the forms have been filled out and the legal ritual performed, and the part that we are talking about is lacking, the marriage is "annulled"-empty, it has not been "consummated"-completed.  I said earlier that no judge could take away what Cheyenne and I had, well they couldn't give it either, neither could a preacher.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5

If all of this seems mysterious and subtle, I have only been talking about physical, human marriage.  This is all true in a much higher degree of the marriage between God and man.  It is Christ who placed himself in a toxic relationship with us, literally in Hell.  It is He who hung on through the long, dark night of the soul.  It is He who was alone, even when He was in Heaven with His Father.  It is not good for man to be alone.  He is the Man who was more alone than you or me or Adam can even conceive of.  The whole universe was His puppy, and without you it was all nothing to Him.  He is not "God in His Glory" who I said earlier failed us and left us alone, He is Immanuel, God with Us, God the Same as Us, God the One who added to Us is One.  And as ridiculous and childish as it sounds, His Cross is a giant plus sign that only adds Our Selves to Our Spouse, 1+1=1.  And that is why we eat Him, like the female spider does Her Husband, and nothing is lost because they are already One.  1-1 also equals 1.  And no math, no Law can contain, can add, or subtract to this sacramental arithmetic.

Wish You Were Here