Patriotism

Sometime during the First World War Rev. Herman Hoeksema, an ordained minister in the CRC, got into trouble for not allowing the American national flag in the church’s worship area. Howls of protest ensued. Questions were asked: Was Hoeksema not a patriot? Was he a German sympathizer? It was reported Hoeksema carried a revolver for self-protection.

A visitor from Canada attended a Thanksgiving worship service in an American CRC and was troubled that the service began with the reading of the presidential proclamation. Such state involvement in worship is unknown in the Canadian CRCs. Not so for Anglican churches. An ancient Anglican church downtown Halifax has so many civic features incorporated into its building, it’s difficult to tell whether civic duty or the Christian faith determines its identity. But it is not uncommon to find the American flag in American churches, including in some CRC churches. Some even sing patriotic hymns during or at the end of worship closest to July 4th.

Scripture enjoins Christ’s disciples to be good citizens, but with a difference. The Old Testament church and state were one; the capital of the kingdom of God was also the capital of the state. That is no longer the case. The Christian Church and the state, wherever that may be, are no longer the same. Citizens owe loyalty to their country; the center of their civic life is found in the national capital: Washington, Cairo, Beijing, Ottawa, or Mexico City. The center of the Christian life is the heavenly Jerusalem, where Christ reigns at the right hand of the Father.

In Christian worship we express allegiance to our heavenly citizenship, not to our earthly citizenship. Civic rituals are about our penultimate, earthly responsibilities, and are shaped to reflect that. Citizenship ceremonies, for example, do not end with the doxology and the raising of the Christian flag. In some countries citizenship and church membership, Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox, are almost identical. In others, churches place the national flag in the worship area to dispel suspicion that Christians are not good citizens.

Civic “holidays” are set aside to honor our earthly citizenship and engage in patriotic exercises. The national hymn is often sung at sports events and during the school year students repeat their pledges of allegiance daily. Christian holy days such as Sundays, Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, remind believers of the mighty acts of God in Christ. On those days we engage in patriotic exercises that express our loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ who reigns at the right hand of God the Father, almighty. The liturgy that shapes those exercises of Christian loyalty typically end with a doxology that publicly expresses our heavenly patriotism.

ACL

Not of Works but of Grace

Lesslie Newbigin*

“While it is at the heart of true morality that it is aware of an objective moral order to which we ought to conform, yet to achieve that conformity by our own effort corrupts morality. Let us try to make that clear by a simple everyday example. When we have done wrong or failed in respect of some duty, our ordinary natural reaction is to say ‘I will make up for it by being better, kinder, more conscientious next time’ . . . . I think this is a fair description of the way our minds work when we are ‘trying to be good.’ ‘I have done badly today, but I will do better tomorrow’; and the second clause is intended to compensate for the first. In other words, we find compensation for a past fault in a future merit. We have put ourselves in debt, as it were, to the moral order, but tomorrow by an extra effort of goodness we hope to make up the deficit . . . .

“But now let us see what we have done. In the first place we have corrupted moral motives. We are going to do better tomorrow to make up for today; we are going to do good deeds, not because they are good, but to justify ourselves. Our fundamental selfishness has got into the very heart of our motives. We have introduced just that seed of egocentricity which turns free self-forgetting goodness into ‘good works’ done with an ulterior motive–between which two things there is the difference between light and darkness . . . .

“But we have not only corrupted moral motives. We have also lowered moral standards. For if we suppose, as a legalistic morality constantly does, that we can make up for past failure by extra effort in the future, we are acting on the assumption that it is possible to have a sort of credit balance in goodness–in other words, that it is possible to do more than our duty. If I suppose that my goodness today is going to compensate for my failure yesterday, I am really supposing, as far as today is concerned, that I can be better than necessary.”

*Cited by John Baillie, A Diary of Readings (London: Oxford, 1955), 218

Quodlibet

Communities

In an article of the “Cliché Community” (Weekly Standard June 2, 5008), Andrew Ferguson writes, “It’s why every group of individuals, no matter how various or loosely tethered, is suddenly called a community. In the last couple of days I’ve read not only of the vegetarian community, which would include both Gandhi and Hitler, but also of the Catholic community (actually, it’s a church) and the conservative community (which lumps me with Richard Viguerie–no thanks). It goes without saying that the best of these communities are nurturing and sustainable . . . .”

Add to these the internet community, the hair challenged community, and the community of faith (to which belong Hindus, Muslims, animists, and Calvin Seminary [actually a school]). How soon can we look forward to administrative communities (consistory, classis, synod), or the 2850 community?

Confession

Other clichés: you “share” instead of “tell.” Too confrontational; and “doing wrong” too judgmental; please say “behaving inappropriately.” Thus Ferguson. But what about the worshiping community: “sin” too rough, judgmental? Then why not “unfaithful,” “a moment of self-reflection,” “thinking better thoughts”?

Confession has fallen on bad times in churches, especially the sensitive evangelical mega-communities. And who does not fall over their feet to imitate? Reformed churches have not traditionally had confession as a liturgical item. Even so, we've not been afraid to be bold: sin in the sermons, in the long prayers, and at least four times a year a list of “gross sins” was part of preparation from the Lord’s Supper. In those days, if you didn’t come to the Lord’s Supper you had a reason. Reading the list of gross sins before the Lord’s Supper is still encouraged by the official community, but the nurturing and the sensitive think it inappropriate, insensitive to the people’s struggles. Maybe we ought to rethink the Reformation’s doing away with confession, having the opportunity to confess your real sin to an authorized listener, and to hear a word of forgiveness. More believers struggle with being truly forgiven than with saving the environment.

A good beginning for your devotional life is John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer. Not a word to please the politically correct community, no clichés, only honest confession of real human sin, and petitions to discipline the Christian life as a member of the body of Christ, the church.

Priestly worship: On earth as it is in heaven

by Herman Bavinck

“People have almost forgotten why they go to church and what they do there because they fail to understand the true purpose of public worship: that we openly gather to engage in priestly service. In public worship we go about our Father’s business, we bring sacrifices to God’s temple, we offer ourselves to him with all we have. In worship we do not passively receive but actively seek to build up ourselves and others in our most sacred faith. That is the true meaning of going up to the house of prayer.

“The key to this understanding is rooted in the truth that all believers are priests. The priestly task today no longer . . . focuses on a mediating intercession of the Old Covenant which belongs to a specific priesthood. This disappears with the universalization of the priesthood. Nevertheless, this remains: observing the service of the holy place, that spiritual and heavenly offering which coincides with the sacrifice of the New Covenant. This offering consists in confessing the name of Christ, in revering God, in our participation in Christ’s intercession, and in the presentation of gifts for God’s work and the poor in Christ.

“It is God’s will that we call upon him in public gatherings. In public because he is worthy of such honor and because it is proper that the world hears God’s people acknowledge him as God. In gatherings because God only wants and recognizes believers as the body of Christ, as an entity wholly organized in Christ. Outside of Christ, that is outside his body, God has no communion with the individual, as of old he would not with an Israelite separate from Israel.

“For this reason the faithful gather on the day of rest. Every local congregation represents the body of Christ. Her members are called to priestly service in the congregation, which is the temple of the Lord. As priests they come together, as priests they bring the Lord offerings of praise and thanksgiving, of petition and lament, as priests they present gifts for the temple and the faithful. That is the essence, the wonderful meaning, and the joy of our gathering on Sunday, or whenever we gather as God’s people. Thus we find ourselves in communion with those gathered in heaven, and work as one with them; even the angels, as a sign of that unity: are present in our meetings as they are in the heavenly congregation.”

Excerpted from “De Predikdienst,” in Kennis en Leven (Kok, 1922), 80-81. Translated by ACLeder.

This is my body (2)*

by Arie C. Leder

Scripture’s high view of the human body tells us it is nothing less than what God has created for joyful and sensual service. From the day Adam sang of Eve as “flesh of my flesh,” they were so gifted and without embarrassment (Gen. 2:23-25; cf. Song of Songs). But then Eve and Adam compromised their bodily service, touching and eating what God had prohibited. In priestly terms, they defiled their bodies, and by so doing defiled the presence of God in which they moved and had their being. Life would forever be changed: the most ordinary bodily activities, birth and work in the field (Gen. 3:16, 17-18), would bear the marks of the broken relationship between God and his human creatures (Gen. 3:10, 23-24), and between men and women (Gen. 3:21, cf. 2:25).

By virtue of their disobedience all Adam and Eve’s descendants are broken and impaired, both in body and soul. Thus, Paul teaches that we are dead (Rom. 5:12; 6:23) in our trespasses and sins. “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness,” he urges his listeners, “offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness” (Rom. 7:12-13). It is only within the body of Christ that our bodies, that we as body-soul beings who are fundamentally broken, can begin to experience and practice a righteous use of the body. All of us, whether cognitively or physically impaired. Leviticus already points us in this direction.

Lessons from Leviticus

In its theological description of life in the presence of God Leviticus employs the human body, its ordinary processes, fluids, and a still difficult to define skin disease. Although ordinary, these processes are so “yucky” that chapters 11-15 receive less than their due attention in the pulpit. After all, it might be asked, how can ancient instructions about eating, post-birth uterine discharges, skin disease, and genital discharges be spiritually enlightening? Strangely enough, they are.

The apostle Paul, a learned OT Scripture reader by training, helps us to understand the theology of Leviticus when he reproaches the sexually immoral Corinthian Christians: “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Cor. 6:19; cf. 3:16-17). The human body is endowed for priestly service (Roman. 12:1-2), like the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and the tabernacle in the desert. In this Paul reflects nothing less than Leviticus. Our bodies are not our worlds to do with or think about as we please, but God’s. That is, he rules over our bodies as his temple. Our bodies then are a microcosm of the macrocosm, a small version of the world God created and in which he is present as its Creator, Ruler, and Redeemer.

In the world of Leviticus, God is in Israel’s midst and Israel in God’s close presence. But God’s close presence is dangerous because the sinful descendants of Adam and Eve’s need grace to survive in God’s close presence (Lev. 10:1-3; Ex. 20:18-19; cf. Heb 12:28-29). Thus Leviticus addresses us as Adam and Eve’s descendants: about their, and our, deep brokenness in body and soul; their, and our, lack of wholeness; their, and our, being subject to death and decay like the flowers of the field. Leviticus uses our own bodies to instruct us. For our purposes we will look briefly at Leviticus 13-14, two chapters on skin dis-ease (We’ll exclude the part about mildew in the walls.)

The Levitical body and brokenness

Several things we know with a high degree of certainty: the skin disease in question is not Hansen’s disease, leprosy, but something like psoriasis. Second, the uncleanness and the resulting excommunication from the camp is not the result of human intentionality. No one wills to have this skin disease. Unlike life-style diseases such liver problems which result from alcohol abuse or sexually transmitted disease, the skin disorder of Leviticus 13-14 comes upon the person randomly, like most diseases and impairments. Third, the human body is treated like two other important spaces: the camp and the tabernacle. Like these spaces, the human body must be clean, without defilement of any kind. The tabernacle must be clean because it is God’s dwelling place, the camp because the tabernacle resides in its midst, and the bodies of Israelites because they reside in the camp, in the close presence of God.

When any one of these spaces becomes unclean, certain rituals are prescribed for its cleansing. Thus, the Day of Atonement rituals serve to cleanse the tabernacle from the defilement of Israel’s sin (Lev. 16:16). Human life in the presence of God ought to be pure, whole, clean, and stay within its assigned limits or boundaries, but sin has introduced unwholeness, uncleanness, impurity, and the transgression of limits or boundaries. This is now the “natural” state of humanity before God. Leviticus uses the human body, its natural processes and unintentional defilements, to speak about one’s relationship with God.

Because skin disease breaks the skin and may form patches of scales, a person so afflicted carries in her or his body evidence of unwholeness, decay, and death. Because the body is broken and defiled, the person is broken and defiled. The afflicted and unclean must then move from the camp, life continues, but now outside of the normal relationships. Daily, the defiled person experiences a “little exile,” i.e., being removed from the place where her true identity is rooted, the presence of God and her family and friends. And there is no fault attributed. Disorder appears randomly. When it so breaks into someone’s life the afflicted must warn everyone: “Unclean, unclean.” Similar with normal bodily processes such as post-birth uterine and genital discharges. In this case uncleanness occurred repeatedly, or, seemingly, without end (Mark 5:25-34).

Such is the grace of divine pedagogy: Our own bodies, “whole,” “normal,” or “broken,” are conscripted to serve as kingdom-of-God signs that point us to the truth of our “natural” state.

Wholeness and unwholeness

Only through the hearing of the gospel (Rom. 10:14-15) can such pedagogy be effective. Through it alone can we confess that we are fundamentally impaired, no matter what our “normal” or “broken” cognitive and physical abilities may be. But that very confession also allows the Christian to bear the whole range of brokennesses–including emotional, cognitive, physical, and spiritual dis-ease–as signs that participate in God’s reminding us of our natural unwholeness. Outside a profound commitment to the gospel this understanding of life in the human body makes no sense; it is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:18-31). It is folly because the world considers our bodies “our only comfort,” our very own garden to accept or deny, and then cultivate as we will.

The knowledge of our fundamental impairment shapes us when we experience the random physical impairments that come from disease. We will know that our wholeness does not reside in our bodies, whether “normal” or “broken,” but in our being one with the Lord of life during the times of our “normal” or “broken” lives (Mark 5:34). Wholeness derives from belonging to the body of Christ, a body that is perfectly whole from before the foundations of the world, a body whose wounds and suffering comprehends all the wounds, suffering, abuse, cognitive and physical impairment, that may come upon the sinful descendants of Adam and Eve. And when members of that body suffer such impairments in this life they, we, pray for the sick and disabled, the suffering.

But how should we offer such prayer. Take the following samples of prayers for the sick. Note the honesty about our “natural” state. See how the brokenness of body and soul are taken up into a confession of sin, but also of complete trust in the Lord to whom we belong, body and soul, in life and in death. Do we pray this way? Should we pray in this manner? Are these but old-fashioned prayers that do not meet “my needs”? Are our prayers for healing rooted in Christ’s wholeness?

Prayer and wholeness

“I acknowledge, Lord, that your chastisement is just; I have deserved them thousand-fold. My sins have so provoked you that you are just in striking me with the rod of your anger. I have also failed to do my neighbor the good I could have while I was strong. Even more, my carelessness has endangered the souls of my neighbor. Therefore you come in righteousness to banish me from the fellowship of my friends and set me among strangers. But Lord and good God, there is grace and mercy with you; and even though this contagion . . . prevents me from being with my children, I have complete access to you, through Jesus Christ my Lord.” (Excerpt from “A Prayer for one visited by Pestilence,” by Willem Teellinck [1579-1629].)

“We beseech Thee that Thou wilt grant us the grace of the Holy Spirit, that He may teach us to know truly our miseries, and to bear patiently thy chastisements, which as far as our merits are concerned might have been ten thousand times more severe. . . . We submit ourselves without reserve to Thy holy will, regardless whether Thou wouldst leave our souls here in these earthly tabernacles or whether Thou wouldst take them home unto Thyself. We have no fear because we belong to Christ, and therefore shall not perish. We even desire to depart from this weak body in the hope of a blessed resurrection, knowing that then it will be restored to us in a much more glorious form.” (Excerpt from a “Prayer for the sick and the spiritually distressed,” Psalter Hymnal [1976], 187.)

“We acknowledge that we have within ourselves nothing but evil inclinations and inability to do any good. On this account we have merited this affliction, yea, have deserved far more. . . . count not our sins against us, . . . give us patience and strength to bear it all according to Thy will; and may it thus in Thy wisdom redound to our edification. . . . . Rather chastise us here, Lord, than that we should have to perish with the world hereafter. Grant that we may die to this world and to all earthly things, that we may be renewed daily after the image of Jesus Christ. Suffer us never to be separated from Thy love . . . .” (Excerpt from a “Prayer for the sick and the spiritually distressed,” Psalter Hymnal [1976], 188.)

Or, in the words of the hymn: “Lord Jesus, for this I most humbly entreat; I wait, blessed Lord, at Thy crucified feet; By faith, for my cleansing, I see Thy blood flow; now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalter Hymnal [1976], number 379, st. 3)

*Part one, June 2007, this website.

Hope and the private soldier

by W. R. Inge

“But we must not disguise from ourselves that God’s dealings with this world are still a very difficult problem. After reading the Old Testament we have no right to think that what perplexed the chosen people for so many centuries will all be plain to us even with the New Testament to guide us. There is a great deal of shallow optimism which ‘heals too slightly’ the wounds which experience inflicts upon Faith and Hope. It is useless to say, ‘God’s in His heaven; All’s right with the world,’ when many things are obviously wrong in the world. It is vain to argue, as Emerson does, that divine justice is an automatic self-adjusting machine, so that all get their deserts (not of course in a grossly material sense) in this life. Eminent literary men in the last century were too secure and comfortable to see what a rough place the world is for the majority of those who live in it. It was only after long travail of soul that the Jews learned their lesson; we shall not learn ours by turning epigrams. Remember that complacent optimism, no less than pessimism, is treason against Hope. The world, as it is, is not good enough to be true. We ought not to be satisfied with it. ‘God has prepared some better thing.’ . . .

“This world exists for the realization in time of God’s eternal purposes. Some of these are bound up with individual lives, for God intended each one of us to do and be something; others have a far wider scope, and require far more time for their fulfilment. The manifold evils in the world are allowed to exist because only through them can the greater good be brought into activity. This greater good is not any external achievement, but the love and heroism and self-sacrifice which the great conflict calls into play. We must try to return to the dauntless spirit of the early Christians . . . And let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle.”

“Day 19,” in John Baillie, A Diary of Readings (Oxford, 1955).

The Returning Church

The Returning Church will be holding a meeting in Michigan on Thursday, April 17 at 7:00 p.m. We will again be hosted by 1st CRC in Byron Center.

The purpose of this meeting is to discuss "The Vibrancy of Confessionalism" and the place of biblical truth in our local congregations. Dr. Robert Swierenga (Research History Professor at the VanRaalte Institute and CRC member) will be giving a brief background on the role of the Form of Subscription in the Reformed churches to set a starting point for maintaining biblical truth in a denomination. His speech will be followed by an open forum/panel discussion on the broader topic of the place of biblical truth in our local congregations and the role of our confessions. In light of rampant post-modernism - even an all-out assault on truth - in our society and even in our churches, this topic could not be more timely.