Catholicity, Orthodoxy, and Lordship
Calvin writes about our Lord’s commissioning of his disciples in John 20:
“And, indeed, to govern the Church of God, to carry the embassy of eternal salvation, to erect the kingdom of God on earth, and to raise men to heaven, is a task far beyond human capacity…no one is qualified unless he is inspired by the Holy Spirit… to perform such an office.”[1]
[1] John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, 20:22.
Easter is gone, right? Actually Easter has just begun! The Easter Season lasts for 50 days. It is glorified in the PENT-ecost season. According to the Christian Calendar, Easter lasts until May 19th (Pentecost Sunday). But didn’t we spend ourselves bodily and spiritually this past Lord’s Day? If that’s the case, stir yourselves unto good works. The party has just begun!
We–who are liturgically minded–tend to carefully attend to the Lenten and Advent Calendar, but yet we forget that apart from the Resurrection Lent and Advent would not make any sense. After all, what are we expecting? A virgin birth to a son who would simply die at the age of 33? What are we expecting? A perpetually closed tomb? A sight for annual pilgrimages to Israel?
I am suggesting we need to stock up in our champagne bottles. Every Sunday meal needs to start with the popping of a champagne bottle. “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! POP! “Children, that’s the sound of victory!”
For every day of Easter, set aside a little gift for your little ones or your spouse. We set 100 Easter eggs aside for our two oldest children and let them open them up each day. Other traditions can be added, of course. We indulge in Easter hymnody and Psalmnody. Easter is no time to get back to business as usual, it’s time to elevate the party spirit.
With that in mind, here are a few suggestions for these next 46 days:
First, for evening family readings, meditate specifically on the Resurrection account and the post-resurrection accounts. Digest every detail of the gospels, and also allow St. Paul to add his resurrection theology in I Corinthians 15.
Second, teach one another the art of hope. We live in a hopeless culture. We walk around with little enthusiasm for what God is doing in our midst. We also don’t believe that God is changing us and conforming us to the image of His son. We need to–especially in this season–to rejoice more with those who rejoice and encourage more those who weep with the hope granted to us in the Resurrection of our Messiah.
Third, invest in changing your community. Ask your pastor in what ways can you be more fruitful in your service to the congregation. Consider also your neighbors. Do you know them? If you do, how many have been in your homes for a meal or a drink, or simply to talk?
Fourth, play Easter music in your home and in the office. Here are some selections of great CDs or MP3’s.
Finally, avoid the introspective rituals that are so prevalent in our Christian culture. Do not allow doubts to overtake you. Think of your Triune baptism. Trust in Christ fervently. Allow the Covenant of Grace to shape your identity. The resurrection of Jesus was the confirmation that those in Christ are made for glory. Look to Jesus and serve Jesus by serving others. By doing so, you will not grow weary in doing well, and you will learn to party beside the empty tomb.
Christ is Risen!
The well-known Baptist minister, John Piper, has officially stepped down from Bethlehem Baptist Church. His long career, and his plethora of books have been a source of tremendous delight for many in the evangelical world. In this short post, he offers his thoughts on the first day of not being a pastor anymore. He concludes with these words:
Therefore, as I woke up on this Monday morning for the first time in 33 years without the official mantle of pastor, the only tears that came were tears of thankfulness. And under them was a great joy. It is finished. It has a completeness to it. God started it. God sustained it. God ended it. And I have loved it. And I love looking back on it, complete. Imperfect in a hundred ways, but not because it was too long or too short. Being Bethlehem’s pastor has been my life. But now it is finished. And I am thrilled at what lies ahead — for her and for me. Especially in a thousand years.
The doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffer’s execution described it this way:
Early the next morning, April 9, Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster, and four fellow conspirators were hanged at the extermination camp of Flossenbürg. The camp doctor, who had to witness the executions, remarked that he watched Bonhoeffer kneel and pray before being led to the gallows. “I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer,” he wrote. “At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. . . . In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
People of God, this is Maundy Thursday. The word “Maundy” is derived from the Latin mandatum which refers to the “commandment” that our Lord gave to His disciples“to love one another.”
This short section in John’s Gospel is right in between some gigantic events in the life of Jesus, but ultimately there is truth to the idea that this short narrative is perhaps one of the most important of Jesus’ discourses.
Maundy Thursday takes us to that Last Supper our Lord had with the disciples. This Supper was marked by this profound sense that our Lord was only hours from his death at the cross.
The great traitor of history, Judas, had traded his soul for a few coins, and as Judas sat with the other disciples at that last Supper, our Lord described precisely the nature of Judas’ character. Judas was corrupted and unclean, and instead of finding in Jesus the source of his healing, Judas sought to betray the Son of Man with a kiss. Augustine once wrote that once the apostate and unclean one had departed, all that remained …continued with their cleanser.
Of course, this theme of cleansing is a very powerful one in John. Jesus is the priest, and the priest cleanses the temple, and the world of corruption. It was important that as they gathered to feast on this last supper before the New World would come after the resurrection of Jesus, that the disciples, the representatives of God, were clean in body and spirit; in motive and loyalty. Jesus did not want his representatives to betray or corrupt the Kingdom mission.
This is why when Judas departed the Son of Man was glorified. He was glorified so that He was prepared to undergo what was ahead of him in the cruel tree, because the last seed of corruption was gone. Of course the disciples were not perfect, but apart from Judas, they all remained faithful to their Lord until the end. They were cleansed by the Cleanser. And as Judas departs, as corruption departs in human flesh, Jesus now addresses His faithful and loyal servants.
We see tenderness of Jesus displayed as He addresses His disciples as Little Children. For Jesus, they were His own. They belonged in His kingdom. And because they were His He had to protect them from what was ahead. What was ahead was something only He could undergo. “Where I am going, you cannot come,” Jesus said.
But though you cannot go with me, I will give you this new commandment that you are to cling to in life, and as you continue to spread my message: that you love one another. But if know your Pentateuch well, you will note that in Leviticus 19:18 our Lord had already said that you are “to love your neighbor as yourself.” So why is this a new commandment? This is a new commandment because unlike Leviticus, here Jesus says “love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The difference is God became flesh and literally loved His disciples in word and deed. And the disciples now have the example of God in the flesh of what love truly looks like. Yes, it is a new commandment: Love one another. But when Jesus says Do this, it is because He has already demonstrated for us what it looks like.
Love is the center of Christian discipleship. How will the world know who we are? It should not be because of our intellectual expertise, or our professional accomplishments, but rather by the love we have for one another at our tables, living rooms, workplaces, and in the place of worship.
The Christian history has only triumphed because God has loved us in His Son, and Christians have reacted to that love by loving one another. Without love there is no Christian faith; without love we are noise-makers, clanging cymbals, self-delusional religionists, but when we obey this new commandment, the world sees us and they will know that we are disciples of the Crucified King, Jesus Christ.
In The Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin Mandatum. The word comes from Jesus’ command on the Last Supper to love one another just as He loved them (Lk. 24). The message of love is very much central to the Gospel message. Evangelicals are all too quick to set the topic of love aside because it draws our attention away from the more important doctrinal disputes and discussions. Yet Paul and our blessed Lord keep bringing us back to this theme of love. God is love. No, love is not God, but it is very much a foundational aspect of all His actions toward us in Christ Jesus.
Maundy Thursday then becomes a special historical reminder that we are called to be a people of love. Paul refers to the useless instruments in his I Corinthians 13. If love is absent, our actions become like those clanging cymbals. The very core of Paul’s love narrative in I Corinthians occurs in the midst of a dying Church. Paul’s application then is an ecclesiastical command. In the same manner our blessed Lord on the night in which he was betrayed– by that unclean man called Judas– called us to a greater ethic. It was not an ethic foreign to our Lord. What Jesus commands is first and foremost something he has experienced and displayed already. To a greater and cosmic extent, our Lord proves that love in a cross of hate. But this is love personified in the God/Man. By sacrificing Himself on that cruel tree He turned the symbol of hate into one of the most beloved symbols in the Christian life.
It is then very appropriate that our Lord would command us to love as a response to the Last Supper. This is the case because in the Supper we are being re-oriented in our affections for one another. The Supper is a meal of love and Jesus would transform that meal in His resurrection. He would glorify love for His new disciples. He would become Himself the manna from heaven that would bring joy to this newly created community.
Love is most clearly displayed and obeyed in this new fellowship of disciples we call the Church. This is why Maundy Thursday was a significant historical event. It was not just a didactic lesson for the disciples, it was also a meal that sealed the theme of love for this new community that would emerge from the darkness of the tomb.
Atheism has become increasingly bold in her declarations and actions over the years. The atheist star, Madylin O’ Hair, who thrived with her vicious condemnation of Biblical Christianity in the 70’s and 80’s has birthed a new generation of God-hating disciples. College professors in public universities have learned that the classroom is the best place for a non-religious experience.
An example of this comes from Florida Atlantic University who contrived the following exercise:
‘The assignment called for students to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, put the paper on the ground, and stomp on it.”
A halfhearted apology was issued and now classes can continue with their daily scheduled de-christianization hour. The professor does not claim to be an atheist, but with friend like these. Former Governor Mike Huckabee “questioned if any program at FAU would have allowed “Muhammad” to be written on the paper and stomped instead.” When they reach that fearless pinnacle, I will write another piece.
My point here is not just that education cannot be neutral– that is too obvious– but that public education no longer masquerades her neutrality. There was a time when government curriculum attempted to deny their anti-theistic direction, but that time is past. This is the time when atheists can declare their loss of fear publicly and unashamedly.
Much like the homosexual community is becoming more and more comfortable coming out of the philosophical and theological closet, atheists today put on a robe and march to their pulpits with their well-scripted homilies. These pastors of the dead are not only situated in the comfortable chairs of the academic halls of well-funded state universities, they also sneak into the high-school curricula with a fancy diversity library card. For an example of this, here is the latest fearless atheistic move:
The California Department of Education has revised the statewide recommended reading list for its 6.3 million K-12 students, adding roughly 40 titles focused on homosexuality or gender confusion.
One example will suffice:
The Bermudez Triangle, by Maureen Johnson. “Since childhood, the Bermudez Triangle consisted of Nina, Avery, and Melanie. But when Nina leaves for a summer-school program, all three experience changes in the way they view each other. The three teenage girls explore the meaning of friendship and love while trying to keep long-distance relationships intact. Avery and Melanie begin to understand their homosexuality, and Nina feels left out. This novel illustrates the stresses, jealousy, and anxiety of teenage girls trying to understand themselves as they mature.”
If this is not sufficient to detail the loss of fear in the anti-Christian establishment, media, and the country’s education system, then nothing will convince the reader. “These are just isolated examples,” some may argue. If so, their PR team is performing a stupendous job.
I understand that Richard Dawkin’s atheist camp is not drawing the masses, but can we assert at the very least that atheism is losing its fear? As their platforms increase their hunger for converts becomes insatiable. They want our children and they want them now.
As pietistic Christians become more and more fearful of the world around them, non-Christians continually gain intellectual ground. As the Easter Season approaches, we need to be reminded once again that the tomb is empty and the world is filled with the glory of the risen Christ. Let us not fear. Our faith is not in vain.
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.