The Jesus Creed 7 – John the Baptist: The Story of New Beginnings

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The ones for this chapter are: Luke 3:1-20; John 1:6-9, 15, 19-34.

In the middle section of the book, McKnight explores the implications of the Jesus Creed through the stories of different people in the gospels. He starts with John the Baptist. There are several themes in play. The Jordan River marked the time the children of Israel crossed over into the promised land for a new beginning. Likewise, John was calling for a new beginning. We also need to compare priests and prophets. John’s father was a priest. John was a prophet.

A priest speaks for humans to God in the privacy of the temple. A prophet speaks for God to humans in the publicity of the town square. Priests wiped sins from the people; prophets wiped sins in their faces. Most importantly, priests summoned people to tell the truth so they could make restitution, but prophets summoned people to tell the truth so they could start all over again.

And prophets didn’t always use words. There are many examples of prophets being told to act out the drama they were prophesying. So it is with John. Not just with words, but location. He stages his drama on the far side of the Jordan River, the side from which they entered Israel.

John is saying that if Israel wants to enjoy the blessings of God, they need to go back to the Jordan and begin again. … This is the only way to make sense of John is his world: He wants his audience to see that life can begin all over again. At the Jordan, John gives us the opportunity to start over. How? John has a word for it.

Repent! It’s the first word out of his mouth. Repentance “with an edge“. Repentance means we “must confess our sins“, in other words, “we must tell God the truth.” And that’s hard. We have layers.

Our public persona.

Our family image.

And our inner self.

And telling the truth to God means we expose all of them. “The Jesus Creed begins with loving God. Love, for it to work at all, requires truthtelling.” Don’t we see some of that in the Psalms? If we are not first honest, good and bad, we can hardly claim to love at all.

Truthtelling awakens forgiveness. By telling the truth, we are able to receive forgiveness from our Abba. If we do not learn to tell the truth, we are closed off from that forgiveness. We hide. God thrills at each reconciliation. That is clear. Truthtelling gets real, though.

Spirituality. Many of those listening had their spirituality anchored in their Jewish heritage. So does John and he’s probably proud of his heritage. Nevertheless, our spirituality must be anchored in our Abba.

Our possessions. Oh, that’s a tough one for us today. But honestly it’s always been tough. “The Bible speaks often of money because it is with money that we exercise the freedoms of choice.” That’s a heady thought. John says, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none.” How important are our possessions to us? We need to tell the truth.

Our power. To one extent or another, we all have it. Many of those John faced abused it. “If we love God and love others, we will use our power for the good of others. We need to tell the truth about power: how do we use it?“  This is why the discipline of confession strikes me as so very important today. We are all lousy at telling the truth about ourselves. It’s often not pretty. But unless we do it, we will never grow in faith.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 3

12. When the intellect is ravished through love by divine knowledge and stands outside the realm of created beings, it becomes aware of God’s infinity. It is then, according to Isaiah, that a sense of amazement makes it conscious of its own lowliness and in all sincerity it repeats the prophet’s words: ‘How abject I am, for I am pierced to the heart; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’ (Isa. 6:5)

The construction of this text is complicated, but I felt it worth selecting and discussing. I have come to understand that a lot of modern Christians hold to a belief that faith or “salvation” (whatever they might mean by that word) begins when a person recognizes their lowliness or wretchedness before God. As a result, they tend to orient the things they say to people about themselves and about God in a way designed to instill guilt and possibly fear of retribution. In other words, their proclamation of the good and victorious king (which is what an euvangelion was) begins by trying to make their target feel bad about themselves and afraid of God.

Read almost any modern “Gospel” tract. Some take a hard line approach while others soft sell it, but that is almost always the entry point. It’s also what people hear almost every time they encounter Christianity in the US today. In the past, I think the majority of our culture was perhaps preconditioned to respond in some sense to that message. And it appears to me that a steadily shrinking minority may still be. But that was not the case in the ancient world and it is increasingly not the case in the modern world. Moreover, I think that even in the contexts in which it has worked or even still “works” this approach produces a distorted understanding of God.

It is, rather, only as we are ravished by God’s love, as we turn to him and begin to know him, that we begin to see ourselves as we truly are. This is the normal order in the progression of Christian faith. I know it has been so far for me.

Original Sin 25 – Additional Scriptures Opposing Inherited Guilt

Earlier in the series, I posted what the prophet Ezekiel had to say about inherited guilt. Since then I’ve followed some references and found a few additional texts. I wanted to take a few moments to share them. The first is similar to the Ezekiel quote and is found in 2 Kings (4 Kingdoms if using the Septuagint book names) 14:6. Here’s the text.

But the children of the murderers he did not execute, according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, in which the LORD commanded, saying, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; but a person shall be put to death for his own sin.”

And that, of course, led me to the citation in the Torah, found in Deuteronomy 24:16.

Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin.

Finally, the prophet Jeremiah has the following to say in Jeremiah 31:30.

But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.

Or, the Septuagint version (Jeremiah 38:30), which is slightly different.

But rather, each shall die in his own sin, and the teeth of him who eats the sour grapes shall be set on edge.

As you can see, the idea that guilt is not inherited was embedded in the law and the prophets by God. We don’t simply reject the idea as human beings. God rejects the idea himself in the law he gave Israel and in the prophets he sent to them.

Original Sin 12 – God & the Nations

So God doesn’t eternally condemn or separate from his people, but he called a specific people because he does condemn the nations, right? After all, they don’t worship him, but other gods instead. They are mired in practices God condemns and it seems like God completely rejected them when he called his own people. And whether we call the people of God ‘Israel’ or we call his people the ‘Church’, they are still his people. He loves them and condemns the nations, right?

That is actually a valid question. And even if it’s not expressed exactly in those terms, how often do you hear things in Christian churches today that fall somewhere along those lines? I think you’ll find that the sentiment is broader than you might have imagined. Does it help if we call the nations the ‘world’?

In the Old Testament, I find one of the clearest answers to that question in Jonah. God loved the nations, even then, so much that he sent a prophet to them. That was a highly unusual act. After all, as far as everyone was concerned, he wasn’t the God of the Ninevites. They had their own gods. Moreover, they weren’t even a friendly nation. They were enemies of the people of God.

We usually reduce the story of Jonah to one about trying to avoid doing what God wants us to do. And while it’s true that we should not fail to do what God would have us do (even though we really don’t like much of what the NT has to say on that topic), that’s not really the point of Jonah. The focus is less on Jonah trying to avoid acting as God’s prophet and more on why he was trying to avoid that call. Jonah is running because he hates the Ninevites and wants them to be destroyed. And, as he says again and again, he knows that God is “compassionate and merciful, longsuffering and abundant in mercy, and willing to change your heart concerning evils.”

Jonah knew God better than many Christians seem to know God. He knew God had no problem with forgiveness. And he was thoroughly ticked at God for that precise reason.

The story in the Old Testament is never about inherited guilt. It’s about what people (or collectively nations) choose to do or not do. And God is first and foremost a God of patience, compassion, and mercy. That makes sense, of course, if Jesus really is God because that is one of the things that marks the Gospels so distinctively.

Baptists, Eucharist, and History 13 – Irenaeus of Lyons on Unity

I’m now going to move forward a few more decades to a period around 170-180 AD as we focus on Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons. We know that when Irenaeus was young he knew Polycarp. Polycarp, as you may recall, was a disciple of John the Beloved. So there remains a close, direct connection between the one writing and the apostles. I mentioned the emphasis of Justin on the Trinity and gave one example. That same perspective permeates the writings we have of Irenaeus. I strongly recommend a recently recovered treasure by Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. Not only will you find much on the Father, Son, and Spirit, you will also find an in depth exploration of the many ways Jesus was prophesied and prefigured in what we commonly call the Old Testament. For the purposes of this series, I will be focusing on the books of his most famous work, Against Heresies. But I do commend the above for your own personal reflection.

In Against Heresies, Irenaeus is chiefly writing against various groups of gnostic heretics. In fact, his works are one of the sources from which we’ve gleaned much about them. They were many and diverse. Unlike a heresy like Arianism, there was no single teaching in ancient Christian gnosticism. But all the groups did share some common strands. Among those were an emphasis on secret knowledge, a dualism between the material as evil and the spirit as good, and typically many hierarchies or levels of celestial beings, often called Aeons.

I’m going to start our series today with what Irenaeus writes in Chapter X of Book I of Against Heresies, Unity of the Faith of the Church throughout the whole world. He is specifically making this point because the gnostic heresies are so varied and diverse by contrast. However, it does have particular bearing on this series as well. Recall Ignatius’ emphasis on “one eucharist”. Recognize that what Irenaeus will be writing is not merely his sole opinion. Rather, the faith is so coherent and unified that he can write the following words and expect them to be recognized as manifestly true.  Then compare what Irenaeus says to the modern Western landscape of extreme, individualistic Christian pluralism in which the various theologies and sects are even often named for the one who invented them. If you can find any commonality between the two visions of the Church, you have a more discerning mind than mine. Here are Irenaeus’ own words.

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess” to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send “spiritual wickednesses,” the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.

As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it.

Baptists, Eucharist, and History 11 – Justin Martyr on the Trinity

This post continues our reflections on Justin Martyr’s First Apology. I want to take a slight detour here for an examination of the Trinity. I’ve heard the assertion a number of times that the doctrine of the Trinity was a late-developing dogma of Christianity. While it is true that some of the first dogmatic and creedal expression of that doctrine are still a couple of centuries away as we read Justin, nevertheless, we find that the Trinity permeates his writing. But I want to specifically look at Chapter VI, one of the clearest short statements.

Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him, and the Son (who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him), and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to every one who wishes to learn, as we have been taught.

One of the common charges laid against ancient Christians was that they were atheists because they did not believe all the other gods were real. But the key thing to note here is that Justin writes that they worship the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We see some of the roots of what Athanasius declared to Arius, “This is not what the Church has believed!” I gather that some don’t like the fact that it’s hard for us to wrap our head around a triune God. Nevertheless, this lies near the center of Christian belief and practice and has ramifications that permeate our faith. If we do not hold to this, then much of what we do is wasted.

Baptists, Eucharist, and History 10 – Justin Martyr on Administration of the Mysteries

Now we will move forward several decades and reflect on Justin Martyr’s First Apology. This places us right in the middle of the second century. There are few left alive at this point who personally encountered any of the apostles, but there are still those few. There are now many who have been taught by those who were directly taught by the apostles. Hopefully that places some perspective on where we stand in the thread of history. As always I recommend you read the entire apology. In this post, however, we will focus first on Chapter LXV.

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

I want to focus here on the structure and order surrounding the thanksgiving or eucharist. It is only for the baptized. The one who presides over the assembly offers extensive prayers over the bread and wine. (The one who presides, consistent with earlier, contemporary, and later writings is probably best understood as the episcopos (bishop) or one of his presbyters (priests).) The people then all assent as their participation. Then the deacons hand out the eucharist, keeping some back to carry to those who could not be present, typically the ill and infirm.

If a person has had any exposure to any modern liturgical Christian practice, I feel confident they will recognize the connection to the above in the liturgy of the Eucharist. I have personally experienced Luthern, Episcopal, and Roman Catholic liturgies over the course of my life. And I have listened to a number of occurences of, but not yet been in, the Orthodox Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. And I immediately sense how the description above is continuous with all the liturgical traditions. There is much less connection to the non-liturgical traditions like my own SBC. Even before we delve into what we mean in the Eucharist itself, our practice around it seems … disconnected from history. We see that again in Chapter LXVII where the weekly worship practice is described.

And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.

Here we see even more strongly the structure of the liturgy. We see that first the Holy Scriptures are read and then the one who presides instructs and exhorts. Today this is often called the Liturgy of the Word. (It’s also interesting to note that the “memoirs of the Apostles” were being read. This almost certainly refers to the Gospels.) Following the Liturgy of the Word, we see the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This form is preserved to one degree or another within the liturgical churches. Among the non-liturgical churches? Not so much. It’s also worth noting that the Liturgy of the Word is similar in form to the synagogue worship. So basically we see an adaptation of synagogue worship in which the Gospels are read along with Torah and the Prophets and then the Eucharist — something new and not from Jewish synagogue worship at all in origin — is added as the focal point of worship.

The Didache 34 – Watch For Your Life’s Sake

This series is reflecting on the Didache if you want to read it separately. Today we reach the end of the Teaching and the conclusion of this series.

Watch for your life’s sake. Let not your lamps be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ready, for you know not the hour in which our Lord will come. But come together often, seeking the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your faith will not profit you, if you are not made perfect in the last time. For in the last days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate; for when lawlessness increases, they shall hate and persecute and betray one another, and then shall appear the world-deceiver as Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning. Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but those who endure in their faith shall be saved from under the curse itself. And then shall appear the signs of the truth: first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet. And third, the resurrection of the dead — yet not of all, but as it is said: “The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.” Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.

Watch for your life’s sake. Is that truly our attitude as we go about our business each day? Oh, not in fear and not in ways that cause us to withdraw from those around us. And not in obsessive ways that we see in some trying to calculate the moment or constantly looking for signs. But simply ready for we do not know the hour. I remind myself that I also do not know the hour of my death. I’m reminded of the parable Jesus told of the man who made plans to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to hold his wealth of grain. He was a fool for he had no time left at all.

I like my modern luxuries and wealth very much, thank you. But it is easy to be lulled into comfortable rhythms and complacency. It is so very simple to stop watching. My tradition has abandoned the disciplines (church calendar, set prayers, corporate fasting, etc.) that maintain rhythms in our lives that are different, that remind us that we are not governed by anyone or anything other than Christ, that act for our healing so that we might work out our salvation in fear and trembling, the salvation that flows from Christ, that we might participate now in the Kingdom of Christ.

This also affirms once again the resurrection of the dead, which Paul defended so eloquently in 1 Corinthians 15. If the dead are not raised, then our faith is meaningless. We are not looking forward to some disembodied existence like Plato’s happy philosophers. Our spirits and bodies are inextricably intertwined and interdependent. Only in that union are we living souls. Death is the ultimate enemy Christ had to defeat for our salvation. We were enslaved to death and through death to all sorts of powers, evil, and sin. But Christ has “trampled down death by death” and we in him we find life.

Thanks to those who have meandered through the Teaching with me. I hope you’ve found something interesting somewhere in my reflections on it.

The Didache 32 – Appoint Bishops and Deacons

This series is reflecting on the Didache if you want to read it separately.

Appoint, therefore, for yourselves, bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek, and not lovers of money, and truthful and proved; for they also render to you the service of prophets and teachers. Therefore do not despise them, for they are your honored ones, together with the prophets and teachers.

This bit reflects the very early nature of the tradition in the Didache. The bishop was the center around which the church formed and the deacons served those in it. Later in the first century and well-established by the second century when there came to be too many believers in a city for the bishop of that city to personally care for, the bishop anointed presbyters (priests) to act in his stead in many circumstances. (There were still a few things only the bishop of a place could do.)

Christianity was always traditionally centered around physical place. You had the bishop of this city or angel of that city (revelation) or church of this other city. There was no concept of multiple separate churches in a given place even, as we see clearly in Romans, the church was too large and scattered to meet in a single location. We see Paul paying particular attention to the need to draw the Roman church together as one in that letter.

By the second century, we see a developed picture of the fullness or wholeness of the church pictured by the bishop of a place surrounded by his presbyters and deacons and people. It’s only in recent centuries that we’ve devolved into the sort of christian pluralism that permits many different “churches” competing with each other as different franchises within a particular place.

And that’s really sad.

The Didache 30 – Supporting Prophets

This series is reflecting on the Didache if you want to read it separately.

But every true prophet who wants to live among you is worthy of his support. So also a true teacher is himself worthy, as the workman, of his support. Every first-fruit, therefore, of the products of wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, you shall take and give to the prophets, for they are your high priests. But if you have no prophet, give it to the poor. If you make a batch of dough, take the first-fruit and give according to the commandment. So also when you open a jar of wine or of oil, take the first-fruit and give it to the prophets; and of money (silver) and clothing and every possession, take the first-fruit, as it may seem good to you, and give according to the commandment.

Giving the first fruits resonates with the Jewish background of Christianity.  Though Paul did not use the language of first fruits, the sentiment here clearly echoes his teaching. We know that Paul and Barnabus mostly did not accept money or other support and worked as tentmakers. They did not want there to be any confusion or question about their motives. However Paul taught in no uncertain terms that a prophet is worthy of being supported by his community.

While Paul did not accept such support very often, we know that others certainly did. Among the apostles, Peter and John were supported by different churches. And many of the early bishops were as well.

I’ve noticed there has arisen today an idea in some corners that a “proper” minister should be bi-vocational rather than being paid. While there is certainly nothing wrong with it, and it can even be a very honorable thing to do, there’s nothing in either the NT or in early christian writings to support the idea that such an approach is either required or is somehow “better”.  Or so it seems to me.