Bill’s Musings

I originally posted this on my church web site. I thought I would x-post it here in my personal blog.

One of the occupational hazards of being a pastor is the impulse to give answers to people’s questions…even the ones they don’t ask. I am, however, becoming increasingly convinced that questions are far more valuable than answers. Let me explain.

The more I learn from the Scriptures, the more questions I have. Although the questions become deeper, sometimes the questions raised are “simple” ones. It isn’t that the Scriptures don’t provide answers. The issue is, what kind of answers do we seek?

An answer that raises no questions, acknowledges no questions or even doubt, is a dead end. There is no where to go to dig deeper, grow in understanding and perhaps even correcting error. On the other hand, answers that raise new questions promote deeper understanding, open the door for fresh dialogue and yes, even correction. This means of course that there are in a sense, no answers, only new questions.

Some may find this endless line of questioning troublesome, but I don’t. It is through the questions that we gain understanding. We grow in our knowledge of the Scriptures, of Theology, of God Himself as we dig deeper, asking new questions. We stagnate when we merely accept answers with no further questions. Our life as Christians becomes stale when we quit asking questions.

My own journey with Christ began not with answers, but with questions. I asked a couple of Christian friends a question. They tried to answer it, but realized that the answer they had was inadequate. That lead us to embark on a journey of questions together and the rest is history. By the way, I haven’t found the answer to the question.

From time to time I go back to those basic questions of the Christian faith. I need to step back because it seems as humans we are constantly complicating things. With respect to being a Christian, we add on expectations and duties we deem necessary if one is to be considered a “real Christian.”

Consider this statement, “if you are right with God you will read your Bible every day.” Is that a true statement? How about, “if you are living for Christ you will be in a right relationship with everyone else around you.” Is that a true statement? I know some people who would say yes, but I say no.

The problem is that both of these imply the necessity of the action, reading your Bible or being in right relationship, in order to be “right with God” or “living for Christ.” There is an implicit priority of doing the “right thing” to be acceptable to God. As well intended as these kind of statements are, they are wrong.

The statements are wrong for two reasons. First they presume, if only by a thread, that our works justify us before God. The implicit priority is right behavior and then acceptability. “You are good when you do ________ .” Second, and closely related, they negate grace. The statements in effect suggest, modify behavior and then “be right with God.”

That is not to say that what we do does not matter. For that matter, there is even something of a priority of act. Consider Matthew 10:38,

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

… and Matthew 16:24,

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Exactly what it means to ‘take up your cross’ is no trivial question. The question of how do we ‘follow Jesus’ is also no trivial question. A life time is too short to fully grasp either one, yet as Paul wrote in Philippians 2:12-13,

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

That God works in us is nothing other than grace, grace that makes it possible to take up our cross and follow Christ. What that means is something we work out daily in our lives. That is the Christian life.

One of the ways we figure this out daily is by spending time reading the Bible and meditating upon it. Reading the Bible, a relatively modern benefit of the printing press and literacy, is an important way of growing in knowledge and being shaped by God, but we are not “right with God” because we spend time in the Bible. We are right with God because God made it possible through Jesus Christ to be right with God the Father.

Likewise, doing our best to live in right relationship with other people is not living for Christ. On the contrary, it is because we are in Christ, with our warts, thorns and relational thistles, that we have any hope of living at peace with one another. Yes, as we become more Christ like, we will become easier to love. Perhaps more importantly, we will find it easier to love those who are the hardest to love.

When Jesus took up His cross, He demonstrated His love for those who were hard to love. Jesus did not need to do what He did, but His love for sinners was worth more than death on a cross.

When we take up our cross and follow Him, at least in part, it means that we love others, warts, thorns, thistles and all. Loving like that is impossible for us apart from the grace of Jesus Christ and the formative work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

So to return to our two opening statements, let me suggest another way of wording them. “By the grace of God we can spend time daily reading the Bible.” “By the grace of God we can walk by the Holy Spirit, growing in Christ-like love for one another.”

More importantly, “By the Grace and Mercy of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can take up our cross and follow Jesus.” That is the heart of the Christian life. That changes how we live.

For those who have read my blog in the past, I apologize for the scarcity of posts over the past many months. At long last we are settled into our new home–well almost settled in. After four months of house sitting, as wonderful a blessing as that was, it is a delight to be in our own town home. It isn’t anything exotic, but it is a place to call home. The need to have a place to belong, a place that is ours, is probably worth reflecting on in the months ahead.

Another topic that I have been grappling with is the tension between personal holiness and loving those who are unholy. Of course we are the unholy in and of ourselves, but in Christ we are made holy. We are called to be blameless and above reproach, yet also to love as Jesus loved. Jesus didn’t exactly avoid the blamable and the reproachable, if He did, what hope would there be for us?

So here we are, called to holiness and to love the unholy. Putting aside the “who are you to call yourself holy or to judge others as unholy” question–for that is not the immediate question here–we are left with what appears to be an irresolvable disjunction. How can the “holy” love the “unholy” with out becoming unholy. It sounds like taking a mud bath and staying clean. Yet, is that not what Jesus did?

It is hard to blame the Pharisees for questioning how Jesus could be the Messiah when He ate and drank with sinners. All we have to do is to look in the mirror and see our own tendency to distance our selves from the “unholy” when we are feeling “holy.” It is as if fleeing un-holiness makes us holy.

So what of it? Can we grow in holiness while growing in love for the unholy? Can we be holy and love those who Jesus loves?

Maybe the better question is, can we grow in holiness apart from growing in love for those who we would judge as “holiness challenged”?

Paul, in a prayer for the Thessalonians wrote,

Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints (1 Thessalonians 3:11-13).

It would seem that love for one another–the “holiness challenged” apparently not excluded–is a prerequisite for being established “blameless in holiness.”

This does not mean that we love un-holiness, but it does mean that we do love one another despite our mutual un-holiness. In that sense, we are called to love those who are un-holy. After all, Christ loved us first while we were “un-holy,” and apart from Christ we have no holiness worth speaking of anyway.

Perhaps the, or at least a measure of our own holiness is our love for those who seem to us to be “unholy.” 

I have been intending to write on lament for some time, but when ever I sat down to write a post on lament, I had the sense that there was something lacking in my understanding. While I thought that I had a grip on historical Biblical lament as found in the Psalms, I needed to break out of the box to complete the conceptual transfer to pastoral ministry.

In this past month I have jumped out of the academic world into pastoral ministry. This first month has been deeply challenging. Specifically (but devoid of details) I have watched people face the loss of a love one. While age catches up with all of us, this individual was younger than I am. The reality of the pain and suffering experienced in this world became poignant if not pungent.

My struggle with lament is this, if Biblical lament such as the Psalmist’s is directly connected with the covenant and rightful covenantal expectations, what is appropriate lament for the Christian?

The Psalmist’s complaint (such as Psalm 44 for one) is not just complaining about life, it is a complaint rooted in  covenantal expectations. This leads to the question, what part of, if any, do these covenantal expectations apply to the Church today? How does this relate to suffering and loss in our context?

The quick answer is that we must turn to the New Covenant. This leads to the next question of what is our rightful expectations under the New Covenant. I do wonder if the common expectations of North American Christian’s really line up with what Jesus promised. A quick read of the Sermon on the Mount casts some doubt in my mind.

Setting aside such broad generalities, allow me to return to a somewhat more specific lament event, the suffering of illness and loss.

The New Covenant does not promise that we will not suffer. Suffering is part of the human experience in this present life. While the sting of death is gone, the reality of it is not. People suffer, be it physically or emotionally. Life is messy and not always pleasant. What the New Covenant does promise is that in the resurrection suffering is no more.

 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (ESV, Revelation 21:3-4)

The Psalmist’s laments would have us acknowledge above all else that God is God and we are not. The laments often look forward to a sure resolution cast in stone, but not necessarily fully realized by the Psalmist. This is the now and not yet that we live in. Yet, God knows a glorious future that He only gives us a teasing glimpse of.

Like the Psalmist, when faced with troubling questions, the unanswered “why”, the “how long” we must turn to God in faith, looking to the ultimate fulfillment of the New Covenant. We ought to join with the Psalmist in his lament and cry out,

But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me (Psalm 13:5-6).

Yet the Christian lament goes beyond even a declaration of trust. The closing verses of the book of Revelation provide the final word on lament.

“Come Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

This is the Christian lament.