Election and Predestination - this Sunday Morning at Redeemer

Monroe county

This Sunday morning at Redeemer I'm preaching out of Ephesians 1:3-10, which reads:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

I'll draw on non-Calvinistic biblical scholars to explain our "election" as being "in Christ." (Such as Ben Witherington, Gordon Fee, Greg Boyd, Klyne Snodgrass, Paul Copan, William Lane Craig [see here], et. al.; note: I've never been a Calvinist.)

The key to understanding these words of Paul is to gain an understanding of the corporate solidarity language of "in Christ" (and its variants). Here, e.g., is Gordon Fee commenting on 1 Thessalonians 1:4: 

“The noun “election” itself is found elsewhere in Paul’s letters only in Romans 9-11, all having to do with Israel. Elsewhere Paul uses the verb (Eph 1:4) or the adjective “elect.” Although this language does not occur frequently in his letters, its occurrence in a passage like the present one indicates that it is presuppositional for him. It should be noted that in the present case Paul is thinking of the whole body of Thessalonian believers as elect, not individual believers. Indeed, although he refers once to an individual as “chosen” (Rom 16:13), his understanding of such election is presuppositionally related to a person’s incorporation into the community of believers. Moreover, for Paul “election” is always a referent to believers, and thus reflects a reality after the fact, not before; and as here it is always seen as an action of God’s love, and thus it becomes a dynamic force in the life of the believing community.” (Emphasis mine)

This is a weighty, huge subject, and I am looking forward to preaching it, hopefully so even youth can understand!

Buddhist Monks are Becoming Irrelevant in Thailand

Ronald McDonald, in Bangkok

The more stuff Christians have, the less they pray; the less stuff Christians have, the more they pray because of their greater sense of dependency. This is not only true of Christianity, it is the way of all religions. This is why, for one reason, non-Westernized Muslims see Western culture as a greater threat to their faith than "Christianity." Indeed, Muslims are not far off when they equate Western culture with Christianity. And this is why, in Thailand today, the Buddhist ways of silence and meditation are very uncool.

See today's nytimes - "Monks Lose Relevance as Thailand Grows Richer."

“Consumerism is now the Thai religion,” said Phra Paisan Visalo, one of the country’s most respected monks. “In the past, people went to temple on every holy day. Now, they go to shopping malls.”

Consumerism is the American religion, too. Many churches, realizing this, acquiesce to it and work hard and spend big bucks to create a religious product for religious consumption. These are Product-driven churches. Ours is a Presence-driven church. I am still of the ancient idea that people need God, and are captivated when they meet Him. God-presence cannot be programmed.

"The meditative lifestyle of the monkhood offers little allure to the iPhone generation. The number of monks and novices relative to the population has fallen by more than half over the last three decades."

"In a relatively short time, the local Buddhist monk has gone from being a moral authority, teacher and community leader fulfilling important spiritual and secular roles to someone whose job is often limited to presiding over periodic ceremonies."

Several years ago a local "wedding chapel" asked area pastors if they would come in and do weddings for people at $75 a pop. I declined. I don't do weddings for people who aren't part of our Redeemer family. But...  many non-Jesus-followers still like to get married in a church building? I don't do that one either.

"Phra Anil Sakya, the assistant secretary to the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, the country’s governing body of Buddhism, said that Thai Buddhism needed “new packaging” to match the country’s fast-paced lifestyle. (Phra is the honorific title for monks in Thailand.)

“People today love high-speed things,” he said in an interview. “We didn’t have instant noodles in the past, but now people love them. For the sake of presentation, we have to change the way we teach Buddhism and make it easy and digestible like instant noodles.”"

 

This monk fails to understand that Buddhism will cease being Buddhism if it becomes as easy and digestible as Ramen noodles. Perhaps in Thailand we could see the birth of a new religion, "Ramenism"? This has an Egyptian ring to it, and could support some serious bling-bling.

 

"Buddhist leaders should make Buddhism more relevant by emphasizing the importance of meditation as a salve for stressful urban lifestyles."

 

Again, that's not what Buddhist meditation was intended for. To me this sounds like Christians who try to relate to drug users by claiming that Jesus will make you higher than any drug can. Imagine that being the Good News Jesus went around proclaiming, while wearing dreadlocks? 

 

"Scandals surrounding some monks have contributed to the decline. Social media has helped spread videos of monks partying in monasteries, imbibing alcohol, watching pornographic videos and cavorting with women and men, all forbidden activities. There have also been controversies involving allegations of embezzlement of donations at temples."

 

These monks need a God-encounter with the Real Jesus.

 

"Phra Nipan, the abbot, said his only real role today was to preside over rituals like funerals, weddings and the blessing of a new home. “People today have telephones,” he said wistfully. “If they have troubles, they call their friends.”"

 

Thai Buddhism is mirroring Western Christianity, which to a large degree has tried to be "relevant" but failed. I never meet a non-Christian student in my classes who is interested in the "relevant" church.

 

 

The Newtown Massacre & the Pain of God

Christian theists will do well to read Michael Brown's "The Newtown Massacre and the Pain of God."

Note:

• If there is no God, then there's really no problem of suffering and evil, except in some existential sense such as "I am now grieving and hurting." Brown writes: "If you remove God from the picture, there’s really no problem of suffering and evil. A spider kills a fly; a lion kills a zebra; a mugger kills his victim ... this is what the random products of unguided evolution do! What’s wrong with the survival of the fittest? Why doesn’t might make right? But if you believe that there is a loving Creator, then you recognize that suffering and evil really do present a problem."

How do we respond to the evil in Newtown? Brown suggests four ways, which I quote in their entirety.

1. "First, we affirm that it was right for God to create the world, without which we would not exist, and we affirm that it was right for him to give us free will. But these are gifts with consequences, and the things we cherish most--our existence and our ability to make choices for our lives--are the very things for which we fault God at times like this.
   C. S. Lewis sagely observed, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself ... Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that work like machines--would hardly be worth creating.”
   Put another way, love cannot be coerced; it must be freely chosen."
2. "Second, we recognize that God created a world that would also cost him dearly, to the point that he had to send his Son to suffer and die that we might live. That was a consequence of his choice to give us freedom of choice.
   In the words of Pastor Timothy Keller, “If we again ask the question: ‘Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?’ and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.”
   That’s why Anglican leader John Stott stated, “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross.”"
3. "Third, we understand that God is not a distant bystander but is himself in agony because of his creation’s agony.
   The Scriptures teach that he is hurt by tragedy and suffering, and Jesus was even angered by it. In the words of Isaiah, “In all Israel’s affliction, he was afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9). He may not explain to us all the reasons for our suffering or tell us why he apparently doesn’t intervene more. But this much is sure: He cares deeply and he is suffering with us.
   You don’t like the way this world is? God doesn’t either. In fact, he hates certain things that take place, but he is at work for good in the midst of it and, in the end, he will bring something beautiful out of it.
   As expressed by quadriplegic Joni Erickson Tada, “God permits what he hates to achieve what he loves.”"
4. "Fourth, we realize that only God can bring good out of evil and light out of darkness. He who hurts with us will help us, and the one who understands the depth of human evil is the one who can bring healing and hope.
   According to Kitamori, “Those who have beheld the pain of God cease to be loquacious, and open their mouths only by the passion to bear witness to it.”
   And so, in the end, we stop talking and we stop writing, and we pray for God to bring beauty out of ashes and life out of death, in this world and in the world to come. Right now, the agony is great."

Thank you Michael.

***
For further reading, see philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams's Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God.

Also: Greg Boyd's Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering.

Or, enroll in one of my Philosophy of Religion classes this fall at Monroe County Community College, where we discuss the problem of evil and the existence of God. 

Also - enroll in my Apologetics class at Redeemer Ministry School this spring (begins in March), where we discuss the problem of evil and suffering in relation to an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God.

 

Our Civilization of the Spectacle, the Triumph of Confusion, and the Root of Violence

Damselfly on a stick,
on the river in our backyard
 

Mario Vargas Llosa interviews sociologist Gilles Lipovetsky on the relative merits of "high" and "low" culture in the world today - "Proust is Important for Everyone." Here is some valuable reflection on today's Western happiness-seeking culture.

Today, low culture has overtaken high culture. This allows people greater freedom of choice between the wide range of cultural possibilities; it also creates the current "civilization of the spectacle" as "culture becomes a unit of consumption." Lipovetsky says:

"We're no longer waiting for culture to change life, change the world, as Rimbaud thought. That was the task of the poets, such as Baudelaire, who rejected the world of the utilitarian. They believed that high culture was what could change man, change life. Today, nobody can possibly believe that high culture is going to change the world. In fact, on that score it's the society of entertainment, of the spectacle, that's won. What we expect from culture is entertainment, a slightly elevated form of amusement; but what changes life today is basically capitalism, technology. And culture turns out to be the crowning glory of all this."
In a kind of strange positive, our shallow cultural expectations (like the city people in "The Hunger Games"?) allow greater freedom. Lipovetsky says that the society of the spectacle, consumer society, has massified behaviour patterns, has given a greater degree of autonomy to the individual. This is because...

"...it has meant the collapse of mega-discourses, the grand political ideologies that confined individuals within a tight set of rules, and has replaced them with leisure, with cultural hedonism. By and large, people no longer want to submit to authority: they want to be happy and to seek that happiness with all the means at their disposal. Hedonistic, consumer society has allowed these lifestyles to proliferate. Television, for example, has been a sort of graveyard for high culture, but it has also provided people with other references and opened up new horizons: it enables individuals to make comparisons. On that level, the society of the spectacle has enabled individuals to become autonomous, creating a kind of society à la carte in which people construct their own lifestyles."

Vargas Llosa agrees with some of the positive aspects of  La civilización del espectáculo. Yet "happiness culture" has led to the "triumph of confusion." Llosa:

"The old canon that enabled us to distinguish between the excellent, the mundane and the execrable is no longer available: today, it depends on the customer's fancy. In the art world, the confusion has reached sometimes comical extremes....

The old canon that enabled us to distinguish between the excellent, the mundane and the execrable is no longer available: today, it depends on the customer's fancy. In the art world, the confusion has reached sometimes comical extremes."

"If culture is purely entertainment,' reasons Llosa, then "nothing is of importance."

The culture of entertainment has not given us the peace, serenity and conformity that will eliminate, or at least reduce, violence. Llosa says that,

"On the contrary, violence is still out there, a constant presence in our crime-ridden cities, in sex crimes and in discrimination of all kinds. There are phantasms stemming from the economic crisis that result in xenophobia, racism and discrimination. Violence is present against sexual minorities, for instance, and is rife, with very few exceptions, throughout the world. How do we explain all this? One way in which this violence is manifested is precisely the collapse of high culture. It is this that enriches our sensibilities and that leads us, come what may, to concern ourselves with the big issues. A culture that as well as being entertaining is preoccupying, disturbing, that inculcates non-conformity and a critical spirit, is something that a culture which is pure entertainment can never be."

This is an immensely valuable dialogue, worth reading in its entirety as two great thinkers attempt to understand just are the effects of the current cultural waters we swim in.

Jesus is the Messiah - 31 Days with Jesus - Day 25

Israeli solider, in the Western Wall area,
Jerusalem

JESUS IS THE MESSIAH - DAY 25

One little sentence can say a lot. Here's a sentence that says much about the Real Jesus.

Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [υἱοῦ θεοῦ].

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God,...
- Mark 1:1

New Testament scholar Chris Keith  writes:

"Seemingly insignificant, this short sentence is packed with important information concerning Jesus. It identifies Jesus as the long-awaited Christ (christos, “Messiah”) and Son of God. With both these titles, Mark taps into Jewish expectations of a kingly deliverer who would rid Jews of foreign domination and reestablish Israel by reestablishing God’s reign in Jerusalem." (Chris Keith, "Jesus Inside and Outside the New Testament," in Hurtado and Keith, Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introductionto Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle Locations 835-842; see Keith's The Jesus Blog, highly recommended by Ben Witherington) 

The word "Christ" (Χριστοῦ) means, literally, "anointed one." From this we get an English word that's not so much used anymore, "to christen," which can mean:

chris·ten (krsn)

tr.v. chris·tened, chris·ten·ing, chris·tens

1.

a. To baptize into a Christian church.

b. To give a name to at baptism.

2.

a. To name: christened the kitten "Snowball."

b. To name and dedicate ceremonially: christen a ship. (See here for a recent "christening ceremony.")

3. To use for the first time: christened the new car by going for a drive.

Jesus of Nazareth was "christened" by the Father at his baptism when heaven opened, the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Jesus is like a ship constructed for the purpose of sailing stormy seas to save people who have made shipwrecks of their own lives. At Jesus' baptism the Father launched the Christ into the dark waters of corrupted human existence.

Jesus is Messiah, "the Christ."


***
NOTE:

The book if Isaiah has been referred to as "the fifth Gospel" because of its Messianic expectations that fit the historical Jesus. Here's an excellent book to enter into this discussion - The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology, eds. Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser. Some very good scholars contribute essays, to include Bock, Michael Brown, Craig Evans, and Walter Kaiser. See the book reviewed here.  

Jesus Reinterpreted the Temple - 31 Days with Jesus - Day 24

Dome of the Rock, the Temple Mount, Jerusalem

JESUS REINTERPRETED THE TEMPLE - DAY 24

A few Sundays ago I saw a person I did not recognize at Redeemer. I went up to her and asked her name. "Is this your first time with us?"

"I've been here before, but it's hard to get here since I have to walk."

That morning was cold, rainy, and very windy. "Where dID you walk from?"

"LaSalle," she said.

This woman walked at least 5 miles in the cold, wind, and rain to be in the presence of God!

For ancient Israel the place to be, when it comes to experiencing God, was the Temple. Observant, God-seeking Jews and Gentiles would travel, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to the great festivals held in Jerusalem, centered around the activity of the Temple. Richard Bauckham writes:

"The Temple was the symbolic centre of Jewish faith and it was also the place where God was accessible to his people in a special way. It was God’s holy presence in the Temple that made Jerusalem the holy city and Palestine the holy land. It was God’s presence in the Temple that made it the only place where sacrifice could be offered." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 21).

New Testament scholar Michael McClymond adds:

“The overriding importance of the Temple in first-century Judaism becomes apparent in the persistence of the Jewish people in rebuilding and maintaining the Temple and in the large place given to it in ancient literature. Bruce Chilton notes that the Jewish Temple was renowned throughout the world and was perhaps “the largest religious structure in the world at that time.”” (McClymond, Familiar Stranger, 53)

In Jesus's final weeks on earth we see him in Jerusalem, walking daily up the mountain to teach and stir the religious pot in the Temple courtyards. Jesus intimately referred to the Temple as "my Father's house." It was part of his family estate. The Temple was the House of God, the spatial locale where God especially manifested his presence. It was always intended to be a House of Prayer, where the dialogue happened between God and the people of God. It was a most holy, set-apart place. But, sadly, no longer.

As Jesus the Light of the world stood in the courtyard, the Temple was a place of spiritual darkness. Nothing more devastating could be said than Jesus's words in Matthew 23:13: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."  (This is, BTW, the real meaning of "Church"; viz., the corporate, flesh-and-blood sanctuary wherein the presence of God abides.)

Because of this, Jesus said the Temple is going down. People won't worship God on this mountain anymore. Not one brick of this magnificent structure will be left standing. It is hard to grasp the enormity of what Jesus was saying. Imagine someone walking in the outer courts of the White House in Washington, D.C., openly proclaiming its impending ruin.

This Temple will soon be gone. It happened in 70 A.D. But the Temple will remain. Because Jesus has already said, with jaw-dropping self-referential clarity:

I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.
- Matthew 12:6

And:

I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.
- Matthew 26:61

But the temple he had spoken of was his body.- John 2:21

Jesus reinterprets the Temple in terms of his own self. Jesus hosts the very presence of God. And as we abide in Jesus, corporately and individually, the followers of Jesus become portable Temples, portable sanctuaries, hosting God's manifest presence.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
-1 Corinthians 3:16


***
Notes:

See James McDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs For. What Every Church can Be, on the loss of God's manifest presence in America churches today. He writes:

"Whether you are 15 people around a candle and a coffee table or 150 people in a tired building trying to turn it around or 1,500 people on the rise with plans for another service— regardless of size: if you don’t have the thing that makes us distinct, you have nothing, no matter what you have. And if you do have it— what we were made to long for; what makes us a true church of the one true God— you have everything you need, no matter what you lack." (Kindle Locations 1003-1006)

And that thing is...?

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath - 31 Days with Jesus - Day 23

Biblical scholar Hal Ronning, walking ahead of us in Jerusalem

JESUS IS LORD OF THE SABBATH - DAY 23

I was born in the first half of the last century. In 1949. Some things were very different then. Like the Sabbath laws.

Growing up in Rockford, Illinois in the 1950s, no one shopped on Sundays. Restaurants and grocery stores were closed. Gas stations took Sundays off. Every restaurant was "Chick Fil 'A." Only a little over 50 years ago, that was our way of "remembering the Sabbath to keep it holy."

Sabbath. Shabbat! (Hebrew) Which means: Cease! Remember the Sabbath Day by setting it apart. (Exodus 20:8) In your weekly planner set aside one day a week especially dedicated to God. Which meant, for observant Christians and Jews, do no work on this day. Which raises the question: How does one define 'work'?

Linda and I were in Jerusalem on a Sabbath Day. It was here that I learned something about the meaning of work. We stayed in a beautiful hotel, on the 25th floor. What a view of the city we had! There were six elevators in the hotel. On that day I rode one, non-stop, to the first floor, got some food, and then boarded a different elevator to ascend. A hasidic Jewish man got on this elevator with me. It stopped on floor one, but no one was there to get on. The door closed. Up we went, only to stop on floor two. Again, no one got on. I peeked outside the elevator to see if someone had pushed the button. No one was there. This elevator stopped on every floor. The Jewish man got off on floor 22. I had three more stops on my way to the 25th floor. I had boarded a special "Sabbath elevator." The reason it stopped on every floor was because pushing an elevator button was seen as "work," and Jews are to do no work on the Sabbath. Think of this as you read the following.

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath.

- John 9:13-14

Uh-oh. You don’t make mud on the Sabbath, because that’s doing work. This irritates the religious leaders. How does the man feel about the fact that he can now see? Answer: very, very good.

Welcome to what scholars call the "Sabbath Controversies." Jesus was controversial.
 

15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."

- John 9:15

 

The former blind man has to tell the story a second time, this time speaking to a new audience and adding the dramatic note that it was the Sabbath. The crowd had wanted to know how the healing had happened out of understandable curiosity.

 
The Pharisees now ask the same question but with different intent, for they want to determine whether any Sabbath laws have been broken. The man recounts his healing with great brevity (v. 15).

Many scholars see in this brevity an exasperation with having to retell his story, but this is only the first time he has told it to these people. Perhaps he senses their displeasure and sticks to the bare facts, as peasants have a tendency to do when interrogated by the junta--not an inappropriate image for this story, as we will see. (Note: I'm here quoting from some commentary on John, which I remember not. I doubt that Jesus minds.)

16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."
      But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.
- John 9:16

Jesus is seen as a "sinner," He's off the mark. Why? Because he works on the Sabbath. The Pharisees only show interest in the Sabbath violation. This is wild… because A BLIND BEGGAR JUST GOT HEALED!!!! This is an example of how rules and structures – while they can be good and even necessary – lock people out of what God may be doing.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.
- John 9:16

The controversy gets white-hot in Mark 2, when Jesus makes a shocking self-referential claim. We read:

²³ One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. ²⁴ The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

²⁵ He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? ²⁶ In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

²⁷ Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. ²⁸ So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

New Testament scholar Michael Wilkins writes that we have here, coming from Jesus, "a remarkable clarification of his identity and authority." (Wilkins, The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, 441) 

Jesus is Lord of all.

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus Reinterpreted the Jewish Festivals in Terms of Himself - 31 Days with Jesus - Day 22

Teacher and students, in Jerusalem

JESUS INTERPRETED THE JEWISH FESTIVALS IN TERMS OF HIMSELF - DAY 22

The following story is not true.

On July 4, 2012, as all of America was celebrating Independence Day, John Piippo drove into Washington, D.C. in a rusty, beat-up car. A million people were gathered in the National Mall. A breathtaking display of fireworks was coming to a close as the military band led the people in the singing of the National Anthem. It was summer, and Piippo was walking through the crowd and making his way to the top of the Lincoln Memorial. As the singing ended he grabbed the microphone and cried out, "You who have ears to hear, listen! I am the way to freedom! All who want Independence, follow me!" From that day on our government leaders made plans to put Piippo to death.

False. How absurd to view oneself as the fulfillment of over 200 years celebrating America's greatest holiday!

But... consider Jesus. "The Festival of Dedication then took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon's portico."
-John 10:22-23

Uh-oh. It was Hanukkah. What is Jesus doing? Two things. He is attending the Festival as an observant Jew. And, he will interpret the Festival, indeed every Jewish Festival, in terms of himself. Craig Keener writes:

John's "Gospel connects Jesus' mission with features of each of the festivals: Jesus is portrayed, for example, as a (probably) Passover lamb. Likewise, he appears as the foundation stone from which living water would flow, a hope specifically celebrated at the festival of Tabernacles. John's Hanukkah passage might also make a similar point. Some scholars suggest that this passage depicts Jesus as consecrated or dedicated to God the way this festival celebrated the altar's rededication (cf. 10:36; elsewhere this Gospel connects Jesus with the temple)." (Keener, Jesus and Hanukkah: John 10:22-23)

Jesus takes Israel's "Fourth of July" and sees himself as it's real meaning, as that which it has always been pointing to. N. T. Wright writes: “Understand the Exodus, and you understand a good deal about Judaism. And about Jesus. Jesus chose Passover, the great national festival celebrating the Exodus, to make his crucial move.” (Simply Jesus, 33)

As the cries of Passover lambs are heard in Jerusalem, Jesus hangs on a cross atoning for the sins of humanity. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! And before that, recall how Jesus ate that last Passover meal with his disciples, and radically reinterpreted the wine and the bread in terms of his own life and death.

Jesus as the "new Moses" who is leading his people in a "new Exodus" to freedom. 

No Thinkers in Church, Please

Thanks to Greg Boyd for this.

Jesus Restored Purity Outside the Sacrificial System - 31 Days with Jesus - Day 21

Muslims here wash their hands and feet before praying in the mosque
on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

 

 

JESUS RESTORED PURITY OUTSIDE THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM - DAY 21

When I was growing up my parents did not allow a deck of playing cards in the house. Card-playing was wrong, it was sin, and therefore made us spiritually impure. I didn't know why this was so. As a child I didn't question it or find it weird. When I became a Jesus-follower I began to wonder where this purity law came from.

I found out that, among the Finnish Lutherans of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where my family was from and where I was born, card-playing was associated with drinking and gambling. Someone who was a Christian didn't drink, gamble, or play cards. We were to be "set apart" from such things because they were impure and brought stain to our souls. Put biblically, we were to be "holy." (Greek hagios, 'set apart') God would accept us if we kept the cards out of our house.
In our home we had a "holiness code." Every culture has its holiness code with its accompanying purity laws. Purity laws come with lists of religious 'Dos' and 'Don'ts'. During Jesus's time one could not touch a dead body lest it make you ritually impure. Or eaten certain foods.

Impurity is best thought of as a sort of invisible dirt that people picked up through contact with various things. Many traditional peoples have ideas about ritual purity. In the Jewish version, one contracted impurity through contact with corpses, sexual fluids, other genital discharges, skin disease, and, in the case of women, through childbirth.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes: "Originally, in Judaism, purity and impurity only really mattered when one visited the Temple.  God’s presence in the Temple made it a kind of pure space that would be defiled by someone in a state of impurity.  But by the 1st century AD, there was a tendency to think that, since purity was a good thing, one should aim at being pure as much as possible.
All over Palestine, archaeologists have found ritual baths, which indicate that it was not just groups such as the Pharisees who cared about purity. Many ordinary people evidently took care to remove impurity when they contracted it. It was part of the desire to be the holy people of the holy God." (Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, p. 23)

Jesus violated many of the existing purity laws. In doing this he clashed with the religious leaders of his time. If your church had a law that said "Don't watch movies," this would be like inviting your people to come see "The Hobbit" with me this weekend. In regard to this Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith write:

"Jesus’s healing and teaching caused turmoil for Jewish leaders because it created a point of access— Jesus himself— to forgiveness and purity outside the sacrificial system and the temple. It also therefore created alternative definitions for who is in God’s community, who is out, and who decides. Jesus placed himself at the center of God’s restoration of Israel, a place that Jewish tradition reserved for God. These symbolic claims from Jesus, among other aspects of his ministry, are what infuriated the Jewish leadership in the Gospels." (Hurtado, Larry; Keith, Chris, Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, Kindle Locations 992-996; emphasis mine)

Jesus redefined purity, and gave us a new way of attaining it before God. Many impure people, hearing of this, sought out Jesus. Jesus was now the road, the door, the Way, the point of access, into the family and presence of a holy God.

The hemorrhaging woman was impure according to Leviticus 15: 25; the ten lepers were impure according to Leviticus 13– 14; the woman who washes Jesus’s feet, if a prostitute, was impure according to Leviticus 15: 17– 18; and Zacchaeus was likely considered impure because he consistently came in contact with impure gentiles and handled their money. Jesus’s healing of the bleeding woman, lepers, and sinful woman thus restores their purity, just as dining with Zacchaeus as a legitimate “son of Abraham” symbolically restores Zacchaeus to Israel. (From Hurtado and Keith, K986-991; emphasis mine)

Bauckham says that the key question for Jews during this time was how to maintain purity and be God's holy people in the situation of the hyper-impure Roman occupation. Facing this situation, the Pharisees "greatly extended the purity rules in the Torah and made purity a major concern of daily life" (Bauckham, 25)

Jesus came against the social, economic and gender stratifications of his society. This means that he fought against Judaism's purity codes. Purity codes are about distinctions, divisions, and separation. Jesus broke down the walls of separation from God and others as he proclaimed and lived out the new reality of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus ate with the poor, with outcasts and sinners. Jesus touched and healed the sick -- the leper, the demoniac, the hemmorhaging woman. In doing this Jesus shattered and subverted ritual law. Jesus disregarded the existing purity taboos and approached both women and Gentiles, thereby demonstrating his contempt for the prejudices of purity.

 

Jesus moved outside the prevailing religious system of atoning sacrifices, and independently - in himself and by his authority - proclaimed the forgiveness of sin and thus restored purity and holiness to people. 

² A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. ⁴ Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
- Matthew 8:2-4

The Real Jesus came to make people clean, holy and acceptable to God.