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.

In Praise of Unity in Diversity

by John Bolt

There is much to be said in favor of the currently fashionable emphasis on diversity. We are all enriched by authentic engagement with different cultures. They give us new perspectives, fresh angles on the human experience of living in God’s polychrome world. When we consider that each of us has a unique fingerprint and DNA we begin to grasp how much God loves diversity. None of us desires to go back to black and white television; how could we possibly prefer cultural insulation and isolation.

Diversity in catholicity

For Christians who take seriously the catholicity of the church, the gain is obvious. The rhythms, music, and dance of Africa, the deep wisdom of Asia, the Pentecostal passion of Latin America—when included with Bach, Handel and American gospel, with the Christian appropriation of Plato and Aristotle, with the spirituality of the Franciscans, the Dutch Second Reformation, the Great Awakening, Korean prayer warriors and Billy Graham—all this enriches us beyond our capacity to take it all in.

And yet . . . . diversity as we experience it today is a mixed blessing, shining discovery joined with shadowy politics. How did such a clearly beneficial emphasis become problematic for us? How did we manage to turn multi-culturalism into an ugly ideology; how did we subvert a plea for greater openness and understanding into a political hustle for power? How did we turn Dutch Calvinists who love the Genevan Psalms and were beginning to enjoy and even (slowly!) sway and clap to gospel, how did they morph into people aggravated by Al Sharpton?

Those who push diversity very hard are quick to point the finger at unresolved racism as the reason. They are probably not altogether wrong; the sin of racism is not far from any one of us and we need to acknowledge its lurking presence. Reformed folk, after all, are Augustinians and Calvinists, not Wesleyan perfectionists in their understanding of original sin. All the same, I believe there is a profound and positive reason for being uncomfortable with diversity as it is currently understood and promoted in society and church. The qualification is critical because the lingering question I have is whether there is any unity left after we have exalted diversity. Are those factors that distinguish us really greater than those that unite us as human beings, as fellow image bearers of God? And if we become uncomfortable with that conclusion, should the church not be proclaiming unity before emphasizing diversity—a unity by virtue of creation and then also a deeper unity in Christ?

The fundamental question

I believe that is the question properly posed to diversity advocates today: Do you believe that there is a fundamental and prior unity underlying all diversity in God’s creation? Do you believe that what we have in common with each other, universally, is far more important than those things that distinguish us from each other? For the Christian church, it seems to me, the answer is a clear YES! So let me state my understanding of this as a constructive principle, one rooted in a deep conviction about God himself: All diversity is grounded in and must therefore serve the prior unity of God, his world, his truth, and the humanity he created for his glory.

I claim no originality for this affirmation; I learned it from Herman Bavinck. As I spend more and more time with my teacher I am increasingly convinced that the socio-cultural, political, and intellectual issues we face today—the so-called challenge of post-modernism, for example—are really not all that new. Bavinck was aware of the tendency of modernity to drift toward nominalism and relativism as it jettisoned the intellectual moorings of Christian conviction about God and the world.

Put very simply—as the founders of modern science knew well—for us to be persuaded that our senses give us reliable knowledge about the world and that the scientific knowledge we accumulate is a reliable correspondence to reality, we need to believe that the universe is a creation and a cosmos, not a chaos. The order in the cosmos makes it possible to form universal concepts that are true. In what seems initially a counter-intuitive suggestion, Bavinck insists that when we “entertain concepts we are not distancing ourselves from reality but we increasingly approximate it.” (Reformed Dogmatics, I, 231) To abandon this conviction is to retreat into skepticism.

Unity in God

For Bavinck, the conviction that there is a deeper unity undergirding all diversity is finally grounded in the Christian belief that God has revealed himself to us as One Being, yet in three persons: “Just as God is one in essence and distinct in persons, so also the work of creation is one and undivided, while in its unity it is still rich in diversity.” (Reformed Dogmatics, II, 422) And in another place: “The unity and diversity in the works of God proceeds from and returns to the unity and diversity which exist in the Divine Being.” (Our Reasonable Faith, 144)

This fundamental conviction is the basis of a Christian worldview. The unity of God points to the unity of the human race created in the divine image. There is, Bavinck argues, no other foundation for international law. There is no other possible ground for international justice than the conviction, articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal” and for that reason have “inalienable rights.” Without such a basic belief, international relations become nothing more than power plays; the world becomes a Hobbesian jungle where the fittest survive and the weak are exterminated. Only the Christian doctrine of creation, accompanied by a belief in the catholicity of the church, is capable of creating a just international order: “International justice ultimately rests (and must rest), either implicitly or explicitly, on two pillars: the Christian principle of the oneness of the human race in origin and essence, and the principle of the catholicity of God’s kingdom.” (Essays on Religion, Science and Society, ed. J. Bolt, trans. H. Boonstra and G. Sheeres [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008], 277)

I believe that this means we need to reconsider our push toward diversity. Not that we should deny diversity or fail to celebrate it in appropriate ways. However, diversity for its own sake will always disappoint and fail to achieve social good if it is not grounded in a prior conviction about unity. Our diversity rests in unity because God is one, his truth is one, the human race is one, the holy, catholic church is one.

Preaching Home Runs

by Calvin P. Van Reken

For years now my kids and I have used baseball hitting as a metaphor for preaching success. When we hear a sermon we will discuss whether the preacher struck out, hit a single, double, triple, or a home run. While we never had strict criteria for evaluating a sermon’s success, in what follows I suggest some possibilities.

Truth

For a sermon to be a single, it needs to be true. A sermon cannot reach first base if the main point of the sermon and its central corollaries are not all true statements. I say the main point and central corollaries because it’s rare to hear a sermon in which some minor comment that is untrue isn’t said, usually it’s some kind of an overstatement. A preacher may get some statistics wrong, or have the problem I often seem to have with getting calculations correct. Such mistakes are bad enough, but a surprising number of sermons have main themes or central points that are false. Some preachers herald a health and wealth gospel; some preachers state, in effect, that you need to work your way into God’s good graces; some preachers tell you that you can improve yourself by trying harder.

Biblical

If a sermon gets to first base, it will get no further if it is not biblical. The Bible doesn’t teach every truth, it has very little on quantum mechanics or even on how to drive a car. A sermon can be true without saying something that is taught in the Bible. One common example of this occurs when a preacher spends a whole sermon explain something that is really pop psychology, and may be true enough, yet doesn’t announce any revealed truths at all. Or a preacher takes some effort retelling a Bible story, and then draws some comparison between the main characters and people today. No doubt this can be done so that nothing false is said–no doubt it’s true we need to have more courage like David did when we confront the Goliaths in our lives. Yet such moral truths are thin gruel for people who have come for a real meal. A sermon which is not biblical never gets to second base.

Textual

To get to third base, a sermon needs not only to be true and biblical, it must also be textual. This is not exactly the same as being biblical. A biblical sermon simply needs to be something revealed somewhere in the bible, to be textual a sermon has to express truths revealed in the text on which the sermon is based.

Relevant

Finally, to be a home run a sermon needs to be true, biblical, textual, and relevant. Some sermons are very good at explaining theological, spiritual, or moral truths without ever showing how such truths make any difference in the life of anyone. Such sermons languish on third base. Home run sermons always have some clear and specific applications showing how the textual truths uncovered can and should affect the real lives of those who hear it. A sermon should include how this word from the Lord matters, for example, to a teenage boy, or a stay at home mom, or a retired widower.

No preacher hits all home runs. Still, like Babe Ruth, a preacher ought always to aim for the fences.



The renewal of preaching

by Richard Lischer*

“The renewal of preaching will not begin with a new form or style of the sermon. It never has. The poet says, ‘I gave up fire for form till I was cold.’ No, not form. In fact, renewal will not begin with the sermon at all. It begins with those who make sermons. The first step in the recovery of preaching is the renewal of our faith in the priority of Jesus Christ and the priority of his language toward the world. In Luke’s account of the confusion at Pentecost (Acts 2), he does not tell us that the Holy Spirit created only one language or that there had ever only been one language of faith. ‘Each one heard them speaking in his [or her] own language’ (Acts 2:6). The miracle of Pentecost is that there is one Lord surrounded by many languages and world-views, who cannot be translated away. He must be restored to the center of our theology and church life.

“This recentering also takes place by means of language, but not the language of homiletics. Where do sermons come from? They come from prayer, worship, and the daily witness of ordinary Christians. We will not fix preaching by tinkering with our sermons by relearning the distinctive language of the church’s faith.

“It begins and ends in self-abandonment to the word of God.”

*Taken from Richard Lischer, “The Interrupted Sermon,” Interpretation 50 (1996): 179-180.

Epiphany 2008: New Year’s Resolutions

by Arie C. Leder

A week into our first New Year’s in Puerto Rico the neighbor boys asked our twins: “¿Qué les trajeron los reyes?” “What did the kings bring you?” Three Kings Day, the last of the twelve days of Christmas, was a much anticipated event. Like the celebration of Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, children prepare for the day by placing hay in their shoes the evening before. For the kings’ horses, of course. Three Kings Day is still all about gifts; the gifts received, not given.

Three Kings Day, the feast of the Epiphany in the Christian liturgical calendar, is a new year’s festival. Many Christians, however, celebrate another, more secular, New Year’s festival: Resolutions. If Christmas is for giving others gifts, Resolutions is for giving ourselves gifts: no more smoking, dieting, more exercise, be more friendly, don’t touch what isn’t yours, and so on. And we fail, every year, usually. So, what kinds of resolutions?

An Epiphany

One of our resolutions may be to put Christ back into Christmas, make it less commercial. Next year, of course. Perhaps take over the Dutch tradition of small gifts, with poems, several weeks before Christmas. Too counter-cultural, I’m sure. Or do the twelve days of Christmas. In Puerto Rico we once practiced this: one gift a day for each child until Three Kings Day. We thought it was a good thing. We had a twelve day lament. Our laudable goal of connecting two important events on the liturgical calendar met with resolute opposition. We stuck with the Puerto Rican tradition of having a family night on “Noche Buena,” the night before Christmas. We still do.

Three Kings Day, Epiphany, is not about us receiving gifts, however, but about Christ receiving recognition of his kingship, and that from the ends of the earth (Ps. 72:10-11), right under the world’s nose. The powers that be were not pleased with this recognition (Matt. 2:3, 7-8), and sought to destroy him (Matt. 2:16-18). Herod’s agents slaughtered many children in Bethlehem.

Giving Christ gifts put him in danger; he escaped to die another day. It also places the giver in danger: to give Christ gifts is to honor his Kingship and no other; it puts the giver in deadly conflict with the powers of this world. But is that not what Paul urges his readers to do? Give Christ the gift of undying loyalty, be a living sacrifice in body and soul (Romans 12:1-2).

Sacrificial resolutions

Whether you want to quit smoking, clean up your language, work on your lust or greed, it will cost you dearly. You yourself have to change. The world’s inhabitants agree, it is good not to covet another’s spouse, to quit smoking, not to overeat. All are worthy goals and resolutions. But, what kind of resolutions is the church capable of, what goals does it consider crucial, worth dying for; what can the church resolve to do that the world has no interest in, and even opposes?

Let our worship connect more with the church of all ages, its hymns, prayers, and liturgies, for the sake of those whom the Lord will gather into his fold today. Serious worship takes place in the presence of God, not in the presence of the world. Let us be noticeably Christian in our liturgy and life-style. Let our worship be undefiled by the culture of this world.

Let us read Scripture as it has been once for all delivered to the saints. As in early Christianity, there are those today who would add “gospels” because, it is argued, the church did not give a fair hearing to other voices. But the so-called gospels of Peter, Philip and Judas take away from the apostolic testimony about Jesus Christ. The world loves these gospels; it makes Jesus more palatable. If Jesus was married he is a real guy, one “we can truly understand.” What can be wrong with that? Besides, those gospels give more room to women. Isn’t it time to expose the male dominated foundations of the church? So the argument goes. Let’s not add to Scripture for the sake of the world.

Let the church examine its ways with multiculturalism. Let it have an epiphany and resolve not to mirror the world’s desires for tolerant pluralities that have a strange way of undermining the truth we have confessed throughout the ages. Are the ecumenical creeds and the post-Reformation confessions really only true, or mostly true, for their own time? Let our commitment to the creeds and confessions remain as firm in 2057 as it was in 1857, 1907, and 1957.

None of these possible resolutions is easy to keep; we’ll be working on them way beyond next Epiphany. Until Jesus comes again. May he find us faithful, if tired to the bone.

Esther at Christmas: In Exile “Here”

by Arie C. Leder

Luther argued that neither belonged to Scripture. Maimonides thought Esther was second in importance only to the Torah; what he thought about James I don’t know. I do know that the more I reflect on Esther the closer I come to Maimonides, no doubt for different reasons, and find greater similarity between Esther and James. Especially at Christmas.

The similarity begins with James’ address. He writes “to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (1:1); Esther’s Jews are scattered among the 127 provinces of Xerxes’ empire. Joy and testing are James’ first concern; Esther ends with joy and celebration. Taken together, Esther and James urge God’s people of every age to sing, “O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that dwells in lonely exile here.” Especially at Christmas.

Scattered like the exiles

Like Esther’s Jews, Christians live scattered among the nations. There’s nothing wrong with that. In Esther the Jews are not condemned for causing their own exile; there is no desire to return to Jerusalem, not a hint about God’s mighty acts of salvation, not a line about divine instructions and decrees. The Jews, including Mordecai and Esther, are simply there, citizens of Xerxes’ empire. It’s about them and what they do when their existence is threatened.

That is James’ problem, too. No glorying in the cross like Paul, no reveling in God’s mighty acts of rescue or the wonder of his grace. James only pushes his readers to exercise the faith once for all received, to embody the cross, to live out grace. We Christians are simply there, scattered among the nations, in China, Darfur, and Myanmar. James is about us Christians and what we do when we are tested, what our tongues achieve with our speech, how we keep ourselves from being polluted by the world (1:27).

Esther and James are about who we are and what we do, scattered among the nations. Especially at Christmas.

Keeping our identity in exile

In sickness or in health, James writes, remember who you are. Count it joy when something or someone tests your faith (1:2-3), that way you’ll grow up, stop whining, and learn patience (5:10). Want to be happy? Forget about prosperity, sing songs of praise (5:13). Remember what it’s all about: the truth about sin and turning from the way of death (5:19-20). Scattered among the nations, says James, is not bad; its what you let happen to yourselves there if you don’t keep the faith.

Haman, enemy of the Jews, was the way of death Mordecai and Esther turned from. With all the power of the empire Haman sought to rid the earth of the likes of Mordecai and Esther, people who wouldn’t bow to the ways of the world. At the gate and in the harem they used their tongues to steer Xerxes’ ship of state for the salvation of many. Their testing led to joy and celebration (9:22), to the annual memory of rescue from the enemy far from Jerusalem.

In exile “here”

Why do these things happen to the Jews and Christians? Opposition to God’s people in Esther, the early church, under the Inquisition, and in Darfur happens for one reason: we are in exile “here,” scattered among the nations, in this world. The world will not be kind to God’s elect; there you will only have trouble, Jesus said. In Esther Xerxes’ empire was not home for the Jews, but neither was earthly Jerusalem. Not a hint of “next year in Jerusalem!” Only this: remember what can happen to us in the world.

We who find ourselves scattered throughout the 127 provinces of the world, still await our true home. We are waiting for Immanuel. Even as Christ came to dwell among us after the first exile (Matt. 1:17, 23; John 1:14), so he will come again that we might dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:24). In the meantime, let our faith define us, not the world, so that we may be found without defilement at his appearing (21:27).

Read Esther at Christmas, until the Son of God appear. Be joyful and celebrate, for we have received relief from our enemy (Esther 9:22; Col. 2:15).

Evangelism throughout the Generations

“In a fair bit of Western evangelicalism, there is a worrying tendency to focus on the periphery. . . . [Dr. Paul Hiebert] analyzes his heritage in a fashion that he himself would acknowledge is something of a simplistic caricature, but a useful one nevertheless. One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything. Assuming this sort of scheme for evangelicalism, one suspects that large swaths of the movement are lodged in the second step, with some drifting toward the third.”

D.A. Carson, Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Baker, 1996)