Like a Stone

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

As Lindsay reminds us, the church chose to celebrate Christmas in the dead of winter[1], when the nights were at their longest, the weather at its coldest, and (in pre-modern societies) the food at its scarcest. It is in that context that we can best feel the full brightness of Christ’s coming into the world – “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.”

That is the world that Christ burst into, and it explains the exuberance of Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, Anna. Bowed down by burden and oppression, in long expectation of the Messiah who was now come.

It also explains why the church keeps Advent, a time of watching and waiting, in anticipation of Christmas (which is 12 days long, by the way!). My favorite Advent carol puts it this way:

Oh come, oh come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear

Those are timeless words, not only for the Israel of long ago, but for anyone living in this sad and broken world. We too long and look for his coming.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

I can give him my heart, but what kind of a gift is that? Like the wintry earth in the first stanza it is hard as iron, like a stone.

As it turns out, that is the perfect thing to give him. For he can be born in my heart, bringing light to the darkness. The dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Come, Lord Jesus!

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[1] And, traditionally, the dead of night

Behold, I am making all things new

The following was written for the funeral of my Grandmother-in-law

 

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Eph. 3:17-19

Paul's prayer for the Ephesians is that they might move from love to Love - that their own love, an expression of Christ dwelling in their hearts through faith, might lead them to be filled full with the love of God. There is no other way to know the love of God which is so far beyond our knowledge.

Grandma has completed that journey, from love to Love. Her faith in Christ and love for her family were well known. When Emily was born she gave up smoking, cold-turkey, for her granddaughter. She was always ready to show her love for us by preparing food and feeding us as much as she could manage when we came to her house. Even when age prevented her from cooking full meals, she was always careful to have something prepared at family gatherings. And she showed her love to us in her gift-giving, which was always done with great generosity.

Rooted and grounded in this basis, she has passed from her own faith in Christ and love for her family to now standing in the presence of Love Himself. The love whose height and depth fills all things and now completely fills her, the love that sacrificed itself for her sake, the love that moves the sun and all the stars. She is now filled with all the fullness of God in a way that we can only dream of, and she possesses that understanding of the love of God which is beyond knowledge.

But even now the full expression of God's love for her has not been completed. Her soul has been parted from her body which, worn out like a garment, she has left behind. In her old age it restricted her and failed her, but God created it to be a part of her and she is incomplete without it. The Psalms speak of the faithfulness of God to save us from death, and to rescue our bodies from the grave:

O LORD my God, I cried out to you,
and you restored me to health.
You brought me up, O LORD, from the dead;
you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.
Psalm 30:3

For you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor let your holy one see the Pit.
You will show me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy,
and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.
Psalm 16:10-11

But God will ransom my life;
he will snatch me from the grasp of death.
Psalm 49:15

These passages express a confidence in God's power to rescue His people from death. Our God is a God of Life, and it is a natural expression of His character to make us sharers in that life. He does not simply offer us blessings after death, he offers to save us from death itself.

Similarly, the New Testament promises us that because of Christ's triumph over death we too will triumph over death - not by avoiding it, but by something much greater: by emerging victorious on the far side of death as God raises and renews our bodies. "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" John 6:20. Our eternal life comes through and because of Christ's life. Because we belong to him we share in his death,  his power over death, and his resurrection life.

Someday soon the God that Grandma put her trust in will raise her body from the ground, renewing it and glorifying it. No longer worn out, no longer sick. She will run and not grow weary, she will walk and not faint. For the breadth and length and height and depth of God will fill her and be her strength. She will be more Grandma than she has ever been.

And this is what God promises to all His people. This is the life that we will share with Grandma at the resurrection of the dead:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.... 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.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
Rev. 21:1,3-5a

You have Searched me and Know me

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Psalm 139:1-3

I’ve been reflecting on these passages recently. Somewhere inside me, amid the churn of my choices and my past, my thoughts and actions, successes and failures, sins and virtues and more sins, is the Gabe Moothart that God knew before I was born. The person that he planned and intends to complete. God has great plans for this person:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Romans 8:28-29

Notice that God’s foreknowledge is not of specific events, but of persons. He foreknew me, as a whole. But where is this person that God foreknew?? Partially obscured by my mistakes and my sins, my virtues which I’ve turned into vices, a hard heart that says “my will be done”. But he is in there nonetheless.

My job is to let him come out, to labor with God to remove the obstructions that I’ve placed in his way, to dig and dig, to become more like Christ and more like myself at the same time. And the payoff is to be reborn, to receive from God’s hands the identity that he has known since before I was born, which he has prepared for me:

‘To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’
Rev. 2:17b

What will my name be? What will yours be?

The Hallowing of Matter

One of the things I find most puzzling about how God reveals himself to us is His decision to do so primarily through physical means. God is a Spirit, after all. And it seems strange to talk of matter being holy.

Nevertheless, God is actively engaged in hallowing and making Himself known through the common, physical material of the world. The Bible testifies to this throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Imagine living in a world in which events like these are part of how you understand reality:

A dead man comes to life when his body falls onto Elisha’s bones (2 Kings 13:31). Multitudes are healed when they reach out and touch Jesus’ robe (Matt 14:36, Luke 6:19, Mark 5:27-29). Jesus frequently heals by touch (Matt. 8:3 and elsewhere). The sick are cured when Peter’s shadow passes across them (Acts 5:15). Uzzah is struck dead when he reaches out and touches the ark of the covenant (II Sam. 6:6-7). God appears in a burning bush and hallows the ground on which Moses is standing (Ex. 3:5). Moses’ face shines after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:29-30). Handkerchiefs that touched Paul’s skin are used to heal the sick (Acts 19:11-12). The Israelites are warned, on pain of death, not to touch Sinai when God comes upon it (Ex. 19:10-12). The priests of the new temple are instructed to change clothes when leaving the sanctuary “lest they transmit holiness to the people with their garments” (Ezek. 44:19). The Holy Spirit (Acts 8:16, 19:6) and real spiritual power (I Tim. 5:22, II Tim. 1:6) go out to people through the laying on of the Apostle’s hands. Jesus tells his disciples to “take, eat” and to baptize with water.

Nor do such examples end with the New Testament. The history of the church records many instances in which the bodies of holy ones gave off a sweet smell after death or did not decay.

But the supreme act of matter-hallowing is the Word made flesh. Our entire redemption rests upon the notion that God, in order to save us, united Himself permanently with a real human body and was really crucified at a specific point in the history of the world! If there is no hallowing of matter, there is no redemption.

One of the benefits of looking at the incarnation this way is that it becomes clear that it is not an anomaly or a one-off event but a culmination and outgrowth of the way in which God has always worked with his people. There’s a certain inner logic to it that might otherwise be missed: the God who comes to us through matter purchases our redemption through the ultimate act of hallowing matter, by uniting it to Himself.

This understanding of the hallowing of matter emphasizes God’s presence in the mundane, the everyday. He comes down to meet you where you live (and again this has its ultimate expression in the incarnation). He is not too good for your normal life. He meets you in your normal life!

Having understood all that, it becomes clear just how important our bodies are. They are not just temporary containers for our souls, but part of who we are. This is why the church and Jesus himself practiced spiritual disciplines like fasting and solitude. It is why the liturgy is so active, involving all the senses. And it places an often-missing emphasis on the resurrection of the body. Revelation is clear that after the resurrection heaven will come to earth (another example of God hallowing matter!), and we will live for eternity with him in our new bodies on a new earth, not in a disembodied “heaven”. When you look at the history of God’s dealings with man, this is really the only way it could be.

One last comment on what it means to live in this kind of world. In the gospel story of the woman with an issue of blood who is healed by touching Jesus’ robe, he says to her “daughter, your faith has made you well.” At first this seems like a strange thing to say – if all she needed was faith, why did she have to touch Jesus’ robe? – but it provides a needed corrective. The hallowing of matter does not mean that God does magic for us when we do or say the right things and it does not mean that we can manipulate God by manipulating the matter through which he works. Faith was the reason for the woman’s healing, even though touch was the means by which the healing came to her. These two things, faith as the reason for grace and touch as the medium through which grace is communicated, can and do coexist. I think this insight explains how it is that the sacraments are means of grace to us – but that is a subject for another post.

Paper Plates and the Wisdom of the Liturgy

Trevin Wax’s blog post Steak on a Paper Plate and various responses have caught my eye (thanks Matt!). Wax worries that the focus on being casual and making people feel comfortable in many evangelical worship services is in tension with the centrality of the Word and the majesty of God. He’s not advocating a return to liturgy, but it is hard not to read his post without thinking about it. Clearly he’s calling for something more like liturgy. This is very much an inter-evangelical discussion, so I am something of an outside observer. But I can’t resist commenting.

In some responses, and even in Wax’s post itself, there’s a theme that style and structure are not the important parts of a service:

When it comes to worship, we are frequently told that form doesn’t matter. Style is not what’s important. I get that. I’m not downing contemporary music or advocating a return to liturgy, organs and hymns.  --Trevin Wax

…You don’t have to be wearing a suit and tie to get a healthy sense of the grandeur of God’s beauty, sovereignty, and holiness. Again, this has more to do with the men leading the service and less about what structure they choose to use for the service. –-Zack Nielson

We must worship God in Spirit and in Truth, and He looks on the heart. Certainly. But the benefit of a good liturgy is not that its form is so good that heart attitude doesn’t matter. The benefit is that it embodies a lot of knowledge about human nature and how best to prepare ourselves to approach God.

We don’t enter the church in silence just because we’ve always done it that way. We do it because it has been discovered to be a powerful way of preparing the heart for worship. Likewise, we kneel during prayer because generations of Christians (and Jews before them) have found it a powerful way of humbling the heart. We read a passage from the Gospels, Psalms, New Testament and Old Testament every week because it is important as the people of God to be exposed to the breadth of Biblical teaching, and also to put special emphasis on the words of Jesus and the Psalms. We sing old music and take special care for the vessels of the altar and the aesthetics of our service as an offering to God of the best we have. We use incense because it is a strong picture of our prayer rising before God. We pray written prayers corporately because they have been found by many generations to powerfully express the thoughts of our hearts, and to be helpful in drawing us toward God. We involve all 5 senses in our worship because it has been found to be an excellent way to drive home what we are doing.

All of these things are grounded not in the details of a particular culture but in the details of human nature. To understand the wisdom of the liturgy is to understand that we are whole persons, that our bodies are part of us, and that what we do with them (kneeling, dressing them up, etc.) actually matters. It is to realize that the tradition and ritual of the church are grounded not in anachronistic legalisms but in living truths.

Which is not to say that you can never change anything, only that you must be careful. Like writing your own wedding vows, it’s easier to make it worse than to make it better. How you construct your service can have unintended consequences. Wax puts it this way: “Form and content mirror one another.” The early church had a phrase for that: lex orandi, lex credendi. As the church worships, so she will believe. You say a lot about your theology in how your service is constructed, and your members will pick up on it.

But I’m not trying to convince evangelicals to embrace liturgy, really. I just get carried away. I’m trying to spotlight some of the truths about how we humans relate to God that are not emphasized by most evangelical forms of service. Many of these could be fixed without subjecting your poor members to a King-James prayer in Ben Stein monotone. Here are some unsolicited suggestions on how Evangelicals might incorporate the wisdom of the liturgy into their services:

• Ask your members to keep pre-service conversation in the foyer. When you enter the sanctuary, spend your time in silence or quiet prayer until the service starts.
• As you plan your sermons, remember that the lectionary places special emphasis on the Psalms and the Gospels. Never let your members get too far away from them.
• Make Holy Week a little less spartan. For heaven sakes, institute a Maundy-Thursday footwashing service!
• Try kneeling occasionally in corporate prayer or when receiving communion.

A Short Catechism on Prayer

None of the catechisms I recently examined contain a section on prayer that highlights all of the things that I think ought to be highlighted. So, with a great sense of inadequacy and a certain amount of fear and trembling, I decided to write something myself.

Q1 What is Prayer?
A conversation with God about what is important to him and to us. More than that, it is working together with God to accomplish those things.

Q2 What are those things which are important to God and to you?
First, the increase of God’s rule in the world. And secondly, everything that we need both spiritually and physically.[1]

Q3 Are these two things or one thing?
One thing! God created us for Himself, so our best and perfect good is only in Him. But because of our sin and blindness, they look like two things.

Q4 If your sin keeps you from seeing what you truly need, how can you pray the right way?
By myself, I can’t. But Christ teaches me to pray and helps me to value what He values[2]. Also the Holy Spirit, who lives inside me, prays to God for me when I don’t know what to say[3].

Q5 Why is prayer a conversation with God?
Because the Bible encourages us, by many examples and by Jesus himself, to be active in prayer. We should argue our case[4] and not give up[5], reminding God of his character and promises.

Q6 Can we improve God’s plans or change His eternal decrees?
Certainly not!

Q7 Then why do we pray?
Because God as he reveals himself to us does indeed change his mind[6]. The examples of prayer in the Bible teach us to contend with God for the sake of his revealed will, working hard for God to grant our request[7].

Q8 Why is prayer a working-together with God?
Because when we pray we participate with God and his plans for the world. As a loving Father he lets us in on what he is doing. By praying we work alongside God’s will toward the same goal.

Q9 What is the benefit of prayer?
God lets us help him in a real way with his plans for the world. As we pray we grow closer to Jesus, and as we grow closer to Jesus the gap between our will and God’s will narrows. This happens not because God’s will changes to conform to us, but because our will changes to conform to God’s.

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[1] Matt. 6:8-13
[2] Matt. 6:8-13
[3] Rom. 8:26-27
[4] Gen. 18:22-33, Ex. 32:9-14
[5] Luke 11:5-13, Luke 18:1-8
[6] Ex. 32:15, Isaiah 38:1-5
[7] Col. 4:12-13, Gen. 32:24-30