Solving Problems By...Creating the Same Problem?

It's funny how sometimes when we combat a problem, all we seem to do is make that very same problem worse. It may even be that in proposing a solution to a potential problem, we actually cause the problem we were trying to avoid in the first place. This isn't just a modern phenomenon; there are historical examples that sometimes make us scratch our heads in wonder.

One example is the way Victor, the bishop of Rome at the end of the second century, handled the issue of the date of Easter. Most of the churches at that time celebrated Easter on the Sunday after the 14th of Nisan, the Jewish date for the Passover. It was widely held that a Sunday was the appropriate day to celebrate the risen Lord, since Sunday was the Lord's Day in commemoration of the resurrection. Still, there were a number of Christians, mostly in Asia Minor, who thought it was most appropriate to commemorate the crucifixion of the 14th of Nisan, and the resurrection two days later, no matter on which day of the week they fell. They were called "Quartodecimans" after the Latin word for fourteen.

The issue had created some small controversy between the parties, but through the middle of the second century both sides had pretty much agreed to let each other celebrate as they chose. Victor. however, decided that unity in the church's observance was paramount, and proclaimed that all churches should call councils and set the date of Easter as the Roman church reckoned it. In fact, a large portion of the church did, but the significant region of Asia Minor was largely Quartodeciman and did not want to change their practice, which was rooted in the practice handed down to them from such figures as Philip, John, and Polycarp.

So, in order to achieve unity, Victor excommunicated the church in Asia Minor! Yes, he decided unity was best achieved by splitting off a large chunk of the church from the majority. The desire for a unified practice may have been a worthy goal (and at Nicaea would become the official position of the church), but Victor's "solution" only created the problem he sought to avoid. The churches of Asia Minor protested strongly, and Irenaeus, who himself followed Roman practice, sent a letter of reprimand to Victor stating that he needed to put a true unity in the church ahead of his desire to enforce a particular practice. To his credit, Victor backed down. He heeded Irenaeus' call not to break fellowship over an issue like this.

What kinds of problems are you facing? Are the solutions you are considering likely to help solve the problem, or might they possibly create the very problems you are trying to avoid? We need to exercise wisdom, particularly when we are standing for Jesus Christ, in order to resolve issues in such a way that the problem is properly dealt with and that we honor God in what we do to solve it.

Wikispace update

I have added another paper on the "Library" page called "The Fact, Nature, and Meaning of the Resurrection." This paper covers harmonizing the gospel accounts of the Resurrection, answering alternative theories of the Resurrection, and the meaning of Jesus' Resurrection for us today. On the same page, I have added an article to the "Second Century Sketches" on the origins of the Old Roman Symbol/Creed. Enjoy!

Sunday sermon: "Jesus Meets an Adoring Crowd"

[NOTE: As part of my promise to make up for missing posts, I present the missing Sunday sermon from Palm Sunday.]

The crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on His Triumphal Entry was in many ways no different from the crowds that acknowledge Jesus in our own time. Many of those present had likely heard about Jesus' teaching and miracles. The bulk of the crowd, in fact, was probably fellow travelers from Galilee with whom Jesus moved on His way to the Passover. These people knew about Jesus' reputation, and perhaps they believed the time was right for this wonder-working prophet from Nazareth to take charge of the situation in Jerusalem.

In the account of the Triumphal Entry in Matthew 21, we read that the people were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Their cry of "Save now!" (Hosanna!) was eerily prescient, but in their mouths was more likely to be asking that Jesus do something about their temporal and political state right at that moment. Calling Him the "Son of David" indicated that they were prepared for Him to take His place on David's throne. They wanted Jesus to kick out the Romans and re-establish Israel as a powerful and independent kingdom.

The people in the crowd that day were ready to accept Jesus as their king- provided He came on their terms. They wanted to set the conditions under which they would accept Him as their Lord. As long as He conformed to what they thought the Messiah should be, they would let Him be the Messiah. Their main concern was for themselves and their own earthly future.

This is really not much different than the reaction of people in our world to Jesus. As long as He comes in to fix their problems, bring them health and happiness, provide them with nice moral teaching, but then not be too demanding, they will accept Him. Many, including Christians, want a Jesus who doesn't threaten to overturn their lives, and who meets their needs on their terms.

The problem with this interpretation, of course, is that Jesus comes as King on His terms. Jesus is King and Lord whether or not we accept Him as that. We can choose to rebel, but we cannot topple Him from His throne. As Jesus comes to our world, He offers us not the choice of whether or not we will make Him King, but whether or not we will live like citizens and subjects of His kingdom. We can choose to follow another king, but only as rebels who follow a usurper.

This means that Jesus is not only King over those who believe in Him, but over all. Satan may be the "prince of this world" temporarily, but only because he is the leader of the rebellion against God. The Bible may call him a prince as a pretender, but it never acknowledges Satan as a king, even for now. We are no different; we may think we are "king" and try to rule our own lives, but we are still in reality the subjects of the Almighty King of Kings.

The question before us today is, will we live our lives in a right relationship with King Jesus, accepting His Lordship on His terms, or will we rebel and live for ourselves? Jesus is King. Our lives find their fulfillment in living as part of His kingdom.

Sunday sermon: "The Center of Our Story"

As far as Jesus' followers knew, He was dead. The disciples were in hiding. The women who went to the tomb expected to find Jesus' body there. None of His followers expected Him to rise from the dead, despite His own teaching that He would. Thus, when they found the tomb empty, the women were as surprised as anyone. When they saw Jesus, it was no vision or hysterical hallucination based on their hopes. Their own grasp of His feet was evidence enough that He was truly alive, and had left the grave in bodily form.

One of the striking characteristics of the resurrection narratives in the gospels is that they give us no description of Jesus leaving the tomb. While later apocryphal gospels and other writings invent those details, the canonical gospels do not. In Matthew 28 we have the account of the angel descending and rolling the stone away, and of the fainting of the guards at the sight, but even they do not see Jesus leave the tomb. All they know is that when they come to, the tomb is empty. It is not the triumphal appearance of the glorious Lord that is left as evidence, but the stark fact of the empty tomb.

The transformation in Jesus' disciples was complete. In a matter of days, they would go from a group depressed and defeated to one which would literally change the world. They had a message which no other religion or philosophy could match: that in Jesus, sin and death were defeated and new life was possible. The message of the resurrection is that you don't need to earn your own way into heaven (in fact, Christianity teaches the opposite, that there is no way you can earn your own salvation), but that through faith in the risen and living Lord Jesus new life is freely given to all who believe.

Matthew's gospel records the one event that was the flip side of this message. Some of the guards at the tomb, who had seen what had happened and were witnesses that the tomb was empty, went and reported this to the chief priests. These priests were the religious elite of Israel, Jews who were well trained in the Scriptures and knew the prophecies. They had, in fact, asked for a guard to be posted precisely because they knew Jesus had predicted His resurrection. Yet faced with the reality of the empty tomb and the phenomena witnessed by the guards, they willfully refused to believe that Jesus was alive. They chose to create a ridiculous cover story (how did the guards know what happened while they slept?) rather than accept what the resurrection of Jesus meant for them and their religious empire.

Christianity means many things, and there are many teachings that we as Christians have to learn and follow. The center of our story, however, is that through the power of the resurrected Jesus God has shown us the way to new life and to becoming part of the family and the kingdom of God. This is what the church still has to offer the world, a message that can be found nowhere else. As long as we have this offer of salvation and life, we will never be irrelevant to the world in which we live, no matter how our culture changes.

The Silence of Saturday

[NOTE: I apologize for the long delay between posts. I have had some issues with my Internet service, followed by a bout with a virus. I will make up for it next week!]

Maundy Thursday. Good Friday. Easter Sunday. Even in our popular observances, Saturday of the Passion Week is often overlooked. I learned that the Orthodox call it "The Great Sabbath," since on it the Creator once again rested. Jesus knew His work was finished, and that the vindication of the Father was coming.

But what about the disciples and the other followers of Jesus? What about Mary, His mother? What about the rest of His family, even if they did not yet believe in Him? Saturday was a day of darkness and despair. The life of Jesus appeared to be over, His mission unfulfilled. The hope of the Messiah was once again crushed for many in Israel. Without hope, filled with fear, Saturday, their Sabbath, would have been a day of agony.

I believe it is important that we not forget Saturday. As Christians after the Resurrection, we know how the story came out. We like to jump from the cross to the empty tomb as quickly as possible, moving to the joy and hope that we have in Jesus' victory over sin and death. We forget the pain, the agony, the depths of sorrow those who loved Jesus experienced. But it was in the despair created by the cross that the joy created by the empty tomb became possible.

Jesus' plan caught everyone, even His disciples, by surprise. They had their Messianic expectations shattered, only to be remade in the light of the Resurrection. Salvation would not be political or national rescue, but the even greater and deeper rescue from the power of sin and death. As Jesus' followers mourned on Saturday, they were being prepared for something so great they had yet to imagine it.

Today, even as we look forward to our celebrations tomorrow, let's not forget that expectation. Jesus does not come to solve the problems of our life (although He certainly does do that); He came to solve the problem of our death. In dying and rising, He conquered death. He changed the way we think about God and salvation. Saturday was a day to let old expectations die, and to open the heart to new and better expectations. May we change our expectations in the light of what Jesus has done for us.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I had the opportunity, while browsing in my local Barnes and Noble, to skim through Dr. Bart Ehrman's new book Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Books like this fascinate me, although never enough to actually buy them. In fact, this book is just part of the ongoing wave of material pushing the Baur hypothesis which has garnered quite a bit of attention from the a press and public generally uneducated about the issues involved.

Since I have not read the book thoroughly, this is by no means an extensive critique of the entire work. However, my reason for not immediately adding this book to my must-read list is that it really contains nothing I have not seen elsewhere, sometimes many times over. Ehrman seems to be attempting to popularize a strand of Biblical criticism that has long been known in student, professional, and academic circles. To some of his readers it will seem new and shocking, but it really is just old hat.

Ehrman goes through the boilerplate liberal criticism surrounding several of the NT books. He also reviews a number of books excluded from the NT canon, although they were known in the early days of the church. None of his material appears to be anything you would not learn from a standard "mainstream" NT introduction-or for that matter, from a standard conservative NT introduction, which would interact with the material. Going from Moody to Princeton certainly seems to have been a shock to Ehrman's system, although the impression he leaves is that of someone who was looking for a way around much of what he had learned and grateful to find it in other circles than those in which he had traveled.

The one aspect of the book for which I give Ehrman a great deal of credit is his honesty concerning pseudopigraphy. Most scholars who reject the traditional authorship of NT books, even liberal ones, make the case that pseudopigraphy isn't really a serious problem, because it was widespread and the readers knew it was being practiced. Ehrman calls it like it is on this; he claims any book that was written under an assumed name should be classified as a forgery, and its authority questioned. I strongly disagree with his evaluations, but he at least follows through consistently with what he believes about a book's authorship.

Rejecting the authority of many NT books allows Ehrman to go on to his usual arguments for "multiple Christianities," in which other belief systems (particularly Gnostic ones) that formed around orthodox Christianity are given equal weight and status with the orthodox consensus. This allows a scholar such as Ehrman to pick and choose what he believes "authentic" Christianity was in the patristic period, and to explore the implications of allowing these rejected systems to have an equal voice at the Christian table today. If most of the surviving NT has no more authority than the works of Gnostic writers or other heretical groups, Ehrman could make a case for this, which is why he argues the critical points so strongly.

This book covers no new ground, yet is sure to get a huge amount of attention from the mainstream press. I expect the History Channel special with Dr. Ehrman to be available sometime this fall. In the end, though, I doubt that Christianity or the authority of the NT will crumble under the featherweight of Ehrman's rehashed arguments. 

Sunday sermon: "Jesus Meets Persistent Pleaders"

Putting the two pericopes (a fancy scholarly term for "paragraph" or "short literary section") from Matthew 20:20-34 in context highlights the contrast between two similar events. In each section, two men are asking Jesus for something. (James and John try to sneak their request through their mother, who some scholars think may have been Jesus' aunt, but Jesus sees through that.)  In each Jesus asks "What do you want?" And, despite what some people have written, both were answered.

The major difference between the two requests was not in their content, but in their motivation. James and John (and possibly their mother) were motivated by pride. They wanted the chief positions of honor in the kingdom. Perhaps they legitimately thought they had earned those positions, as two of Jesus' closest confidants (as well as possibly His cousins). They may also have just been trying to preempt the other disciples by getting their request in first. In either case, their was a lot of self at the center of their request.

That really isn't much different than what we see in a lot of what passes for "Christian" teaching today. A whole group of "health and wealth" preachers teach that you should ask for what you want, and expect God to give it to you. Some even say that if you ask the right way, God must give you what you ask for. This places the emphasis in prayer on the petitioner, who puts him- or herself at the center of the universe. Prayers like this are made by people who essentially think of themselves as God. the one in control.

Jesus first challenges James and John with the price they would have to pay: the same kind of suffering He was facing Himself. Their glib "Yes, we can!" response was met with the assurance that they would indeed pay a great price. Still, Jesus told them "no." He would not give them the position they sought, because it was not His to give, but was already prepared by the Father for those whose it was.

The rest of the disciples, scarcely less ambitious, were angry with the two, and Jesus rebuked them as well. The key to greatness in His kingdom is not position, but service. The greatest is the one who serves the most; first place goes to the lowliest. How would this attitude taking root in our churches today change the dynamics of our congregations? What would it mean if we chose leaders on the basis of who served the most rather than who jockeyed for power best?

The two men in the other pericope stand in contrast to the disciples. They certainly want their request heard, and they call out persistently for Jesus. Their cry shows their heart: "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" They acknowledge who Jesus is, as Lord and as Messiah, and they ask for mercy, not for something they think they deserve. They believed Jesus could help them, so they cried out for Him.

Jesus answers them with a "yes." In their case, He heals their blind eyes, and in response they follow Him. This apparently means they took to the road to Jerusalem with Jesus' band of pilgrims. Perhaps they were there for the eventful week that led to the death and resurrection of Jesus. In any case, their response to Jesus' mercy was to give Him themselves.

What is our attitude in prayer? Do we pray like we expect God to recognize our worthiness to receive anything we want? Or do we humbly ask our Lord to show us His mercy? Do we respond to the mercy and generosity of God by asking for even more, or by giving Him all we are? We can't buy God's grace; we can't match the price He paid. All we can do is give Him what we have, in humble service and gratitude for all we have received by His grace.

Wikispace update

I've spent the last couple of days getting two new articles ready for the Transitions page on my Wikispace. One deals with Adam and Eve and their transition from the Garden to the world, and the second deals with the transition of Israel from captivity back to the Promised Land. I hope you find these articles helpful if you are dealing with transitions in your own life.

Sunday sermon: "Jesus Meets a Dead Man"

In studying John 11, you can find a lot of information, discussion, and opinion on a wide range of topics. I wasn't kidding when I told the congregation this morning I could get several messages out of the material in this chapter.Much attention is paid to Jesus' statement to His disciples about the glory of God, to the responses of Martha and Mary, to the mourners who were present, and of course to the great statement "I am the resurrection and the life."

The one character who seems to be neglected is Lazarus. Many studies I looked at almost treat the raising of Lazarus as an afterthought, as if it was done just to illustrate the previous portions of the passage. Yet the raising of Lazarus shows us Jesus in a powerfully emotional light, one that is almost perplexing as we read the strong words used of His reactions.

Verse 33 is the key. Depending on which translation you read, you see words like "angry," "deeply moved,"and "groaned," followed by "deeply moved" and "troubled."  The Greek words translated here are not often used, and they are very strong words. Clearly something in this scene affected Jesus greatly. While some commentators believe Jesus was just caught up in the general emotion of the family and friends, I don't believe that does justice to what He felt, especially given that He was going to bring Lazarus back to life shortly.

I believe that what upset Jesus was seeing the effects of sin on the world He had created. There was sickness, death, pain, sorrow, and unbelief all around Him. A world which had originally been created "very good" was now corrupted and cursed due to sin. Jesus did not take the corruption of the world lightly; it brought out strong emotions in Him, even as He was about to do something about it-not only here at Lazarus' tomb, but shortly thereafter on the cross.

It is easy for us to shrug our shoulders at all the disasters, corruption, and evil in our world and say, "Well, that's just the way it is." While that certainly may be so, we should never treat the effects of sin and the curse on our world with indifference. Jesus  was powerfully moved emotionally, so much so that He took the greatest action possible and sacrificed Himself to erase the judgment of sin for those who believe on Him. We should not only mourn with those who mourn, but be moved to act to alleviate the effects of our sinful world in whatever way we can.

Of course, the greatest way to defeat sin is to see someone come to faith in Jesus. Like Lazarus, the person who is still in their sins is dead. They cannot help themselves, and they need to respond to Jesus' call to life. We can be used by the Spirit as the voice of Jesus calling to the dead to come to life. Only Jesus has the power to bring life, through the work of His Spirit, but He chooses to use us to call sinners to life in Him.

As you meet "dead people" this week wherever you go, be the voice of Jesus, and show the life He gives, and call people to eternal life through Him.