Hearing the Music

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Recognizing the King

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 In a 2016 interview, Australian pastor/author Mark Sayers has the following to say:    

Post-Christianity is ultimately the project of the West to move beyond Christianity, whilst feasting upon its fruit. Thus it constantly offers us options and off ramps, in which we seemingly have what we enjoy about faith, but without the sacrifices and commitments. It does not demand that we become apostates rather that we reshape our faith to suit the contours of the day, and in the process offers us the promise of tangible freedoms and pleasures for doing so. It does not challenge our faith head on in a kind of apologetics debate; rather it uses soft power, offering a continual background hum of options and incentives which eat away at our commitments. We are offered the mirage that we can have community without commitment, faith without discipleship, the kingdom without the King. 

The interview is now seven years old, but that last line has stuck with me as being so true to the human condition. We want the fruit of our labors without the labor part. Applied to God, we want all the benefits that relationship with God produces, but we don't want the hard work of pursuing and living in a relationship. In particular, that descriptor of modern people, we desire a kingdom without the King, seems quite apt and is part of an old, old story that we are going to be picking up in Samuel over the course of the spring and summer.

Samuel (1st and 2nd is really all one narrative) is a book about kingship. Coming on the heels of the Judges when "there was no king in Israel" and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (Judges 21:25); we encounter the stories of Samuel (the kingmaker), Saul (the king like the nations), and David (the king of YHWH's own choosing). Israel is striving after the shalom of living in covenant with YHWH, all the while failing to acknowledge YHWH as their one, true King with disastrous results all around. But through it all YHWH remains committed to his people, repeatedly saving them from themselves and even granting them an earthly king from whose line will come the ultimate King, our Lord Jesus Christ.

This week we are going to look at the the overarching storyline of Samuel. In 1 Samuel 1:1-10, 2 Samuel 1:17-27, and 2 Samuel 22 we encounter three songs all centered around the theme of kingship. These songs capture the faithfulness of YHWH despite the unfaithfulness of humanity and connect the book of Samuel to the overall storyline of the scripture in which we realize that YHWH is the King for whom our hearts truly long. As we study this book together the question that will be before us will be one of fealty. After all, who wants to be part of a kingdom without a King?

 

Photo by William Krause on Unsplash

Forgiveness Floundering?

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I hope that your post Easter week has you encouraged. I know for me the weather has been a major boon to couple with a fresh reminder of God's grace and victory over death.  

Two significant things as we go into this weekend. First, I will be starting an Adult Institute class on the topic of forgiveness. We will be using Tim Keller's book Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? as our guide. It will be helpful if you read along with the book, but it is not necessary. The topic of forgiveness can hardly be more relevant culturally and remains before us personally almost daily. One of the reasons that forgiveness is so hard is that it demands that we look both at ourselves as well as those that need our forgiveness through the cross. Where, if we have eyes to see, we recognize simultaneously how much we are loved and how much our sin cost God. Miroslav Volf sums it up well in Exclusion and Embrace:

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude my enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion — without transposing the enemy from the sphere of the monstrous… into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person’s humanity and imitate God’s love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that God’s love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God’s justice and so rediscover one’s own sinfulness.”  

I am looking forward to exploring this topic together.

Second, we will be welcoming Dr. Hans Madueme to our pulpit this Sunday. Dr. Madueme is an Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College and was one of my son Josiah's favorite professors during his time at Covenant. Dr. Madueme is in Grand Rapids assisting the college to connect with local churches by serving pastors and elders with a talk on Monday morning. For our worship Sunday he will be opening Luke 9:28-36, the account of the Transfiguration. If you know of folks who you think might benefit from exposure to Covenant College, invite them to join us for worship.

 

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

Is It Nothing to You?

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In Handel's Messiah there is a short Arioso surrounding the crucifixion where the composer quotes Jeremiah "Behold and see, if there be any sorrow like my sorrow." The full text (in the ESV) goes like this:  

   “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
        Look and see
    if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
        which was brought upon me,
    which the LORD inflicted
        on the day of his fierce anger.
                                                                                             Lamentations 1:12

Jeremiah is speaking of the desolation of Jerusalem, but surely these words find their fulfillment in the one who embodies all of the sorrows of the Israelites; our Lord and Savior. Is there any sorrow like his sorrow?

It is good for us on this day to pause for a moment and try to think about the horrors of the cross. It really is difficult for us to comprehend due to the cultural distance and the way images of the cross have become part of the wallpaper of our lives, hanging around our necks and decorating our homes and churches. There is NOTHING attractive about crosses and crucifixions. It was a particularly brutal form of punishment aimed at not only death, but through shame and degradation sought to eradicate the recipient from the human race. "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

As brutal and as shameful as crucifixion was, the particular depth of suffering that our Savior experienced had as its focal point the hours of darkness from 12-3 when all of the just wrath of God was poured out on the innocent Christ, who willingly stepped forward as our substitute (cf. Mark 10:45). It was this torment that evoked the cry of dereliction, "My, God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) It was the only time that Jesus addresses God the Father as "God" and not as his "Father", so deep was his affliction on the day of the Lord's fierce anger.

Why the crucifixion? Why go to such extremes? Couldn't the purposes of redemption have been accomplished in another way? Rudolf Bultmann, a 20th Century German Theologian had this to say about the cross, "The way to God leads not to hell but through hell, or, in Christian terms through the cross. It leads us not to hopelessness but to a hope which transcends all human hope; and we must silence all human hope, if that divine hope is to dawn for us."  Surely this is the answer. The cross of Christ is the gateway to hope. He was forsaken in order that we might be forgiven. He bore the crown of thorns, that we might receive a crown of glory. As you pass by the cross today, may it not be nothing to you. Rather pause and drink in the love of God displayed in sorrow.

 

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