Fifth Sunday in Lent: Learning to Die

“We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already under way. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. AS children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and heath, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word ‘good’ should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

“Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.

“Death is the most everyday of everyday things. It is not simply that thousands of people die everyday, that thousands will die this day, although that too is true. Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn one day closer. From the twelfth-century Enchiridion Leonis comes the nighttime prayer of children of all ages: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.’ Every going to sleep is a little death, a rehearsal for the real thing.”
John Richard Neuhaus, As I Lay Dying. Meditations upon Returning (New York: Basic, 2002), 3-4.

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam we all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:20-22)

Fourth Sunday in Lent: Humility

“Have the mind of Christ Jesus
Who, being in very nature God ,
did not consider equality with God something
to be grasped
but made himself nothing,
taking the very form of a servant.” (Phil 2:5-7)

Perform an act of humility this week.

Third Sunday in Lent: Following Jesus, after Easter

“Then all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matt. 26-025). There is something cruel in the way that this last phrase reiterates almost word for word the narrative of the initial scenes of vocation. ‘They left everything and followed him’ (Luke 5:11). In St. Luke’s account, after the arrest, those who accompanied Jesus are not called ‘disciples’ (mathetai); later they are called by another name (the Eleven and their companions), and in the Acts of the Apostles, the expression mathetai belongs to the Church.

“The disruption of the disciples at the moment of the Passion is of decisive importance. Between Christ and his first disciples yawns the unbridgeable abyss of the Cross. There the disciples cannot follow. The end of the earthly way of Jesus is the Cross; it is his specific vocation. He alone can submit to it, solitary, bearing the burden of all. The idea of following Jesus is not to be understood as if it were a question of imitating a great man such as we might take as a model for our own life, a Ghandi, a Socrates, for example; Christ and his disciples are not on the same plane. The Cross is unique. Even if the believer of today has in some way the possibility of walking the road that took Jesus to the Cross and resurrection it is still uniquely thanks to the grace of the One risen and glorified.

“It is only after Easter that the disciples are able to follow Jesus to the end, because following Christ reveals itself as being much more profound than a simple invitation of an ethical order, or something merely exterior.”

A Carthusian, The Call of Silent Love (Gracewing 2006), 51-52.

Second Sunday of Lent: The Habit of Faith

“Just as the Christian has his moments when the clamour of this visible and audible world is so persistent and the whisper of the spiritual world so faint that faith and reason can hardly stick to their guns, so, as I well remember, the atheist too has his moments of shuddering misgiving, of an all but irresistible suspicion that old tales may after all be true, that something or someone from outside may at any moment break into his neat, explicable, mechanical universe.

“Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality; disbelieve in Him and you face must hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all this fifth-columnist in the soul. Only the practice of Faith resulting in the habit of Faith will gradually do that.”

C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Eerdmans, 1995), 41-42.

First Sunday in Lent: Priorities

There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began “Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.” This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.

C. S. Lewis, The Quotable Lewis, 497

Practical Christianity

“Man is becoming as narrowly “practical” as the irrational animals. In lecturing to popular audiences I have repeatedly found it almost impossible to make them understand that I recommended Christianity because I thought its affirmations to be objectively true. They are simply not interested in the question of truth or falsehood. They only want to know if it will be comforting, or “inspiring,” or socially useful. (In English we have a peculiar difficulty here because in popular speech “believe in” has two meanings, (a) To accept as true, (b) To approve of—e.g., “I believe in trade.” Hence when an Englishman say he “believes in” or “does not believe in” Christianity, he may not be thinking about truth at all. Very often he is only telling us whether he approves or disapproves of the Church as a social institution.) Closely connected with this inhuman Practicality is an indifference to, and contempt of, dogma. The popular point of view is unconsciously syncretistic: it is widely believed that ‘all religions really mean the same thing.’”

C. S. Lewis, Present Concerns: Essays by C. S. Lewis, “Modern Man and His Categories of Thought,” 65. Cited in Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, eds., The Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, 1989), 50.

“Belhar Reflections (3)”

by
John Bolt

In the two previous reflections I summarized the CRC’s decision at its 2008 synod and took a close look at what it means for the church to declare that it is in statu confessionis, i.e. “when the truth of the gospel and Christian freedom are at stake.” As we now consider the first two sections of the Belhar, let us keep this important context in mind. (A friendly reminder: the text of the Belhar can be found on the CRCNA website at http://www.crcna.org/pages/belhar.cfm )

The first two articles are solid affirmations of biblical truth, beginning with an appropriate expression of faith in the triune God:

1. We believe in the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gathers, protects and cares for the church through Word and Spirit. This, God has done since the beginning of the world and will do to the end.

The Belhar then bypasses the credal affirmations concerning Christ and jumps to what is usually considered the third part of the Creed, the affirmation of what the Holy Spirit is doing in the church:

2. We believe in one holy, universal Christian church, the communion of saints called from the entire human family.

As sub-points under this statement we find six further elaborations that are decidely Christological: (Don’t be satisfied with my summary here; check out the full statements.)
- Christ’s work of reconciliation is made manifest in the church
- Unity is both a gift and an obligation
- Unity must become visible so “that the world may believe that Christ has alreadyconquered sinful separation, enmity, and hatred between people and groups.”
- Unity must be manifested and active in a number of ways . . . “that we have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, . . . work for one cause and share one hope. . . .”
- This unity can be established only in freedom and not under constraint.
And finally, the most important: That faith in Jesus Christ is the only condition for membership of this church.”

Observation: If this were all that the Belhar confessed; if the standard set here were maintained in the entire Confession; then, there would be little to object to. All this is a ringing endorsement of classic Christian, trinitarian doctrine with a focus on the church as a community of reconciliation.

Question: If we stopped right at this point, paid little attention to the historical context in which the Belhar was written, would the CRC and other Reformed and Presbyterian churches outside of South Africa itself feel led to adopt it as an addition Standard of Faith? To put it in other words, granted that it is an eloquent statement, is there anything here that warrants raising the Belhar to a status that puts it on par with the Heidleberg Catechism?

My question is somewhat rhetorical. I do not see anything here objectionable or anything, for that matter, that is even all that new. “The triune God gathers his church; Christ’s work of redemption is its foundation; we are called to become what we are in Christ.”

While I find nothing objectionable in statements 1 and 2, I do have some lingering questions, even before going to the “rejection of errors” that follows # 2. The fourth bullet point under #2 needs its own attention, quite apart from the intended application to the situation of apartheid.

Let me cite it in full here:

"We believe
that this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to the new humanity; together know and bear one another’s burdens, thereby fulfilling the law of Christ that we need one another and upbuild one another, admonishing and comforting one another; that we suffer with one another for the sake of righteousness; pray together; together serve God in this world; and together fight against all which may threaten or hinder this unity (Phil. 2:1-5; 1 Cor. 12:4-31; John 13:1-17; 1 Cor. 1:10-13; Eph. 4:1-6; Eph. 3:14-20; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; 1 Cor. 11:17-34; Gal. 6:2; 2 Cor. 1:3-4);"

Remember here that this is a confession that was made necessary because the South African Reformed church was declared to be in statu confessionis, i.e. “when the truth of the gospel and Christian freedom are at stake.” If that is indeed the case then the confession places us in an impossible situation. Set aside here the questions of racial separation that rightly troubled the authors of the Confession; every church in the world is then in statu confessionis because there is no church in Christianity that truly and full expresses the unity described in the lengthy paragraph above.

One cannot have it both ways. If any failure to measure up to the description above means that the “truth of the gospel and Christian freedom are at stake,” then it is wrong to single out racial separation as a distinct instance of such sin. However, if all failures are such a sin, then no church can be said to proclaim the gospel any more and singling out the sin of racism is an instance of sinful pride against other Christians. That strikes me as a perfectionist position from which there is no return.

Question: Has our proper indignation about racial injustice and our passionate desire to speak out prophetically against it led us to adopt positions that are theologically as problematic as any theological justification for apartheid might be?

In my next reflection I am going to look at the “rejection of errors” that follow article 2. I want to ask whether the problem I have pointed to in this reflection is exacerbated by these repudiations.