"you healed me"

When I was younger, I used to think of sin as a crime. Sin was breaking the law, and God was the red lights flashing in my rearview mirror, the Cosmic Cop pulling me over to the side of the road. Sin was infraction. Rule-breaking.

But here in the fifth decade of my life, I now think of sin as sickness. God is not the police. God is not the judge, jury and executioner. And while I'm fully aware of the judicial imagery in the Bible and the creeds, and believe that framework is necessary for prophetic critique, this isn't the dominate theme in my walk with God. God isn't handing me speeding tickets. God is, rather, my healer, my doctor, my medicine, my relief. 

The prophet Jeremiah cries out, "Is there a balm in Gilead?" In Jesus we find our answer. 

Today we reach the seventh and final great pain of sin described by Julian of Norwich in her vision of the fallen servant. 

As Julian observes the servant--hurt, stunned, stuck, and alone--Julian surveys the pit the servant has fallen into and notes that the place itself was "hard and full of difficulties." 

Sin is often its own punishment. Sin brings us to a place that is hard and full of difficulties. We think, here, of the prodigal son in Jesus' parable. The father doesn't punish the son. The son ends up punishing himself as his behaviors bring about the sad but predictable consequences. At his lowest point, the son finds himself in a hard and difficult situation. And that hardship and difficulty work to bring about a change of heart. 

In the last post I described how we cannot live another person's life. We can cheer and coach, but they are the one who ultimately has to make their own choices. But the consequences of life can help us here. We just have to step back and let those consequences come about. This might take a long time, and we will grieve the pain caused by consequences suffered, but life has a way bringing us back to our senses. Not always, to be sure, but often. Life is a school of hard knocks. Hard and difficult knocks.

So, we can finger-wag or, like the father of the prodigal son, let it play out. 

I confess, I don't think this is exactly what Julian is getting at in her vision. She sees the fall of the servant into the pit as accidental rather than intentional. My sense, though, is that we tend to dig our own pits, like the prodigal son. Regardless, Julian and I agree that both sorts of pits end up being hard and full of difficulties. 

This is simply the lesson of the wisdom tradition in Scripture, that life has a logic to it. There are causes and effects, behaviors and consequences. To be sure, these connections are not inviolate. Good people, through no fault of their own, do find themselves in hard and difficult situations. This lament is also expressed in the wisdom tradition. But it is true that certain courses of behavior will, eventually, exact a price. Life will snap back at you. What is coming will come. 

But the good news, according to Julian's vision, is this. When we find ourselves, like the servant, in that hard and difficult place, our lord is close at hand to rescue and to save. There is healing for the injury, peace for the stunned mind, friendship for the lonely, and rescue for all those who find themselves in hard and difficult places.

Continuing our series about Julian of Norwich's vision of the seven "great pains" of sin.

According to Julian, the sixth great pain of sin is, in her estimation, "the most astonishing." As she surveys her vision of the fallen servant in the pit, she notices this:

"... he lay alone; I looked hard all around, and far and near, high and low, I could see no one to help him."

Sin has a way of isolating us from help. I expect most of us have experienced this from the outside. You look at someone you love who is struggling, and despair at your ineffectiveness and inability to help him or her. Try as you might, you cannot get inside the head of a loved one to make their choices for them. You can coach and you can cheerlead, but have to stand on the sideline. If the one you care for gets hurt in the game of life, yes, you can run out to provide medical attention. But even then, you're soon heading back to the sideline to watch. You can patch people up and attend to their injuries, but you cannot play the game in their place.

To be sure, there is a lot more presence and helping in my sports metaphor than in Julian's alone-in-a-pit metaphor. The similarity I'm drawing attention to is the gap that necessarily exists between our life and the life of another. Perhaps I see it this way because my view of personhood has been formed by the individualism of Western culture. But my hunch is that the mystery of human consciousness necessarily entails that we are, to some profound degree, mysteries to each other. Of course, collectivist cultures have deep social bonds of obligation and responsibility that shape the self, but the spark of consciousness burns as a solitary and inaccessible candle of subjectivity. What is it like to be you? Only you know. 

Beyond this existential isolation, there's also the fact that our sin causes us to hide from each other. And from God. We have our secrets. Sin creates loneliness.

Which brings us to another sad truth. We keep our secrets for very good reasons. We know that our confessions will cause pain, heartbreak, disappointment, and even catastrophe. A marriage might not recover. A job might be lost. An child might be banished from the home. A friendship might end. A crime might be uncovered. Tragically, our secret-keeping is a survival strategy. 

Basically, the helpers in my metaphor above also need help. We want to lean on each other, but we're unsteady partners. We don't love each other as we ought. The kids are unwell, and so are the parents. The husband is struggling, and so is the wife. The church members keep their secrets, and so do the pastors. Your friend is falling apart, and you can't keep yourself together.

Perhaps, then, the pit isn't so lonely after all. We're just all in the pit together.

I've shared here, over the years, one of my favorite Christmas poems, T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi":

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

My little poem from yesterday was, in many ways, inspired by "The Journey of the Magi." 

In my poem I describe the baby as "the Implication," as the "intimate detonation" that disrupts our world in cosmic and particular ways. Everything, large and small, gets interrupted and rearranged by Christmas.

You see the Implication in "The Journey of the Magi." The wise men come to see a birth, but what they experience is their own death: "...this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death." Experiencing this death, this transformation, the magi return home but now find themselves "no longer at ease here." The Birth has upended their world. 

The magi experience the intimate detonation of the Christ child. The Birth dislodges them from "the old dispensation." Their prior way of life among "an alien people clutching their gods" is no longer tenable. Christmas has made them strange.

"Nativity"

A baby, yes.
Unto us, a child given.
But more.

Behold the Implication.

An intimate detonation
in swaddling clothes.
The vast,
the particular,
the cosmic and mundane
interrupted, unsettled.
All furniture rearranged.
Everything now atilt.

Listen,
infinity echoes in an infant's cry.

"Christmas Eve"

The Grinch and Rudolph chat by the sheep.
Shepherds pose in ugly Christmas sweaters,
the donkey judging the winner.
Elves work busily, stacking
toys by the oxen.
The Magi exchange White Elephant gifts.
Joseph sips a latte from Starbucks
watching a Hallmark rerun.
A package from Amazon has just arrived.
Leaning on the manger
the Neiman Marcus Santa 
wearily eyes the clock.

Debris orbits the gravitational
pull of the Miracle
as the seasonal trash patch accumulates
upon the Ocean of Eternity.

But in the sleepy hours
some behold the clearer vision.
These light candles in the darkness
and sing carols in the night.

"The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness"

If you've never experienced it, a West Texas thunderstorm is an awe-inspiring sight. 

I remember once, a few years ago, driving from Dallas back home to Abilene. The country is wide open. You can see from horizon to horizon. A huge storm front was moving toward me, miles off, filling the view in front of me. Boiling clouds piled high, and flashes of lightning flickered down illuminating the darkness. I'll never forget being able to take in the full expanse of that storm front.

Biblical scholars will tell you that, in poems like Psalm 29, we see how the ancient Hebrews were influenced by their Canaanite neighbors in depicting YHWH as a storm god. To be sure, Thor, to jump to a different culture, is a particular lens to gaze upon the Creator of the universe, a sliver of the whole. As it says in Psalm 29, "the voice of the Lord thunders" and "flashes flames of fire." The pagan visions of a storm God are not wrong, just partial and incomplete.

This insight, how paganism is a window upon the Creator, is wonderfully captured by "A Liturgy of Praise to the King of Creation" from Every Moment Holy, which starts:

Leader: Our names for you O Lord, have been too few—for seldom have we considered how specific is the exercising of your authority, extending as it does into the myriad particulars of creation.

People: There is no quarter over which you are not king.

And as creation hurtles toward its liberation and redemption, the full implications of your deep Lordship are yet to be revealed in countless facets unconsidered:

Christ, you are the Snow King.
You are the Maker of All Weathers.
You are The King of Sunlight and Storms,
The King of Grey Skies and Rain.
You are The Rain King,
The Sun King,
the Hurricane King.
You are the King of Autumn
and the King of Spring.

And our names for you
O Lord, have been too few.

The old and impotent gods
our ancestors once believed in were, at their best,
but imperfect pictures of you, whose strength
and goodness and creative majesty
and wonderful mystery and love exceed those
old rumors as sunlight exceeds the tiny dimness
of stars reflected in a dark and wavering pool.
The fairy tales crafted by our old cultures
hinted at you, though they knew it or not.
Yet their perfect princes and blessed ends were
yearnings for all that has found fulfillment in you.

You might be wondering why I'm slowing going through the seven great pains of sin that Julian of Norwich describes in Revelations of Divine Love, enumerating the plights and predicaments of a servant who falls into a pit upon setting out on a mission from their lord. I'm interested in this vision of Julian's because it can be difficult to talk about sin in an increasingly post-Christian world, and especially among Christians who are deconstructing their faith. Talk about sin can be shame and guilt inducing.

Julian, though, is not guilt or shame inducing. Her vision of God's loving, non-judgmental posture toward us is the reason why she is everyone's favorite mystic. And yet, Julian shares with us a sermon about sin. But the sermon doesn't have a wrathful, judgmental God. Rather, sin is like falling into a pit and becoming injured, where the mind is stunned by the pain. In short, I think Julian of Norwich is a resource for talking seriously about sin, but a non-judgmental way.

This brings us to the fifth great pain of sin. Hurt and stunned in the pit, Julian says that the servant "cannot rise." The servant cannot get up or climb out of the pit. 

We've already described this incapacity when looking at the injury and hurt of the servant. Our powerlessness. Our stuckness. 

Here's why I think that matters.

A few years ago I did a breakout section for Rachel Held Evans and Nadia Bolz-Weber for one of their Why Christian? conferences. This was just after the publication of Reviving Old Scratch, and Rachel wanted me to talk about the devil and spiritual warfare. I entitled the class "Exorcism 101." 

That title was a bit of a provocation given the audience attending the conference. The Why Christian? audience was mostly comprised of deconstructing evangelicals, ex-evangelicals, progressive Christians, and Christian-adjacent agnostics. So a talk about the devil and demons was going to be potentially triggering, given how spiritual warfare is generally talked about in more conservative and traditional Christians spaces, especially among pentecostals and charismatics. 

One of the approaches I took with that audience concerned the "atonement wars" going on at the time, and still raging among those who are deconstructing their evangelical faith. Specifically, penal substitutionary atonement was being rejected by the Why Christian? crew as bad and shame-inducing. There was a lot of conversation then about Christus Victor views of the atonement, as an alternative to penal substitutionary atonement, as Christus Victor was deemed to be a "non-violent" vision of atonement. 

To catch you up, if you don't know about any of this, Christus Victor atonement, which goes back to the church fathers, is the view that humanity was enslaved by hostile cosmic forces--Sin, death, the devil, and the principalities and powers. In the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, these powers are defeated and humanity set free. Notice that there is no blood sacrifice to appease a wrathful deity in this view. God requires no death to forgive us. Atonement is "non-violent." 

As you can see, Christus Victor would hold a lot of appeal for deconstructing and progressive types struggling with penal substitutionary atonement. That was my audience at Why Christian? and why Christus Victor was buzzing among them. But in my talk I pointed out a lurking problem for this group. 

Specifically, for Christus Victor to "work" you have to have a pretty robust vision of being held captive by dark, enslaving powers. Powers like the devil. Powers like sin. And yet, these were the supernatural and metaphysical sorts of things many in the Why Christian? audience were struggling to believe in. Deep into their deconstruction of faith, they hardly believed in God anymore. So how were they going to believe in something like the devil? 

Which brings me back to Julian's vision. For a Christus Victor vision of atonement, you need to face Julian's fifth great pain of sin: You "cannot rise." Christus Victor atonement is premised upon the condition that you are stuck. Enslaved, even. You cannot rise. Consequently, you need an intervention from a power beyond yourself. You need rescue. 

That idea--salvation as rescue--goes to Julian's vision of sin as being in a pit of hurt, confusion, and pain. Consequently, if you want a vision like Christus Victor, salvation as rescue, you need to articulate a vision of the pit we're all in. You have to imagine something like what Julian of Norwich imagines. 

Having described the first three great pains of sin as being weakened, hurt, and injured, Julian of Norwich describes the fourth great pain of sin as cognitive.

In reflecting upon the plight of the fallen servant, the image Julian is surveying as a metaphor for sin, Julian observes the state of the servant's mental state having sustained his injuries:

...his reason was blinded and his mind stunned to such an extent that he had almost forgotten his own love for the lord.

This is the fourth great pain of sin, a mind blinded and stunned by our injuries, causing us to lose sight of God.

What Julian is describing here are what theologians call the noetic effects of sin. The way sin twists our thoughts and distorts our perceptions. The way sin makes it difficult to see clearly. Myself, others, and the world. We can stumble because of weakness, yes, but we can also stumble because we're walking in darkness.

But what especially strikes me about Julian's description is the word "stunned." Sin stuns the mind. The shock of our pain and hurt blocks our ability to think clearly. Getting injured radically affects our mental processing. Our hurt twists our perceptions. Our pain causes us to panic.

I find in all this a very evocative way to ponder our lives. I don't think people wake up in the morning with malevolent intentions or well-laid plans that are transparently self-defeating. I think, for most of us, we're just banging into things with no real rhyme or reason. We're stumbling around. We do a lot of stuff that makes no sense or is patently stupid. And it's interesting to look at all that behavior as less a product of willful decision-making than the actions of a person who is dazed and confused, stunned and concussed.

In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian continues to describe the "great pains" of sin, enumerating the hurts sustained by the servant in her vision who had fallen into a pit. 

Julian describes seven "great pains." The first is a "severe bruising." The second and third great pains are the "weight" of the servant's body and the "weakness" that weight creates. Basically, the first three great pains of sin describe being injured and incapacitated. We're hurt and cannot help ourselves. We've fallen and cannot lift ourselves up.

There is more to sin than pain. There is weakness and incapacity. Powerlessness. Impotence. This is Paul's lament in Romans 7:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...Wretched man that I am! 

This is the recognition of the recovery community in the very first of the Twelve Steps:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

This is the hard truth that stares back at you in the mirror as you struggle, for decades, with ingrained habits and patterns of thought and behavior that stubbornly persist and resist all your efforts of reform and repentance. Sin is our chronic tendency to disappoint ourselves and those we love, in small and large ways. Sin is the lament that we are far from the person we wish we were, despite all our effort and striving. 

In re-reading Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, I was struck by one of her visions in which she describes the seven great pains of sin.

These great pains come from a vision Julian has concerning a master and his servant. Prior to this vision, Julian is struggling to understand sin, blame, and wrath in relation to God and human sinfulness. In Julian's "showings" she has come to see that sin cannot be found in God, sin is "no where." Nor is there any blame or wrath in God. Consequently, if not in God, where are all these things--sin, blame, wrath--to be found in the world?

In puzzling about this, Julian is given a vision of a master and a servant. The master gives the servant a mission and the servant joyfully and obediently sets off. Tragedy befalls the servant when he falls into a pit. There he lies stunned and hurt. Julian is given the insight that this servant symbolizes Adam. And not just Adam, the servant in the pit represents the plight of all sinful humanity.

In describing the hurt of the servant upon falling into the pit, Julian writes:

[After being sent on a mission by his lord, the servant] falls immediately into a slough and is very badly hurt. And then he groans and moans and wails and writhes, but he cannot get up to help himself in any way. And in all this I saw that his greatest trouble was lack of help, for he could not turn his face to look at his loving lord, who was very close to him, and who is the source of all help; but, like a man who was weak and foolish for the time being, he paid no attention to his own senses, and his misery continued, and in misery he suffered seven great torments.

This translation is from Elizabeth Spearing. A more contemporary translation (sort of like The Message version of Revelations of Divine Love) by Mirabai Starr uses "great pains" rather than "torments." I'm going to go with "great pains" to describe in this series the "seven great pains of sin."

Julian goes on, through the vision of the servant in the pit, to enumerate and describe the seven great pains of sin. The first is simple and straightforward: "The first was the severe bruising he sustained when he fell." Spearing translates it as "grievous bruising." 

Severe and grievous bruising, then, is the first great pain of sin. 

I don't know about you, but I find this vision of sin-as-bruising to be deeply evocative. And also true. 

Within myself, I feel beaten up by my sin. I feel punched and hurt. I feel bruised--in my heart, soul, and mind. I feel wounded and damaged. 

A difference between my bruising and that within Julian's vision is that my bruising is largely self inflicted.  

And lest there be any misunderstanding, this isn't a moralistic or judgmental sermon. There is no wrathful God in play here. Nor any hell. I am merely being descriptive. I am bruised. 

"Incarnation"

I arrived to find myself already loved.
A forgiveness preceding, exceeding
my first crime and my last.
A prior mercy,
a predestined grace.
Anticipating my shame
a welcome offered,
a healing before the pain.

I had imagined it to be my task
to close the distance between us,
to cross the chasm,
scale the height.
My fault dictating my duty,
though futile and impossible.

But I looked up
hearing the angels sing
to find you already here.

"my rock"

In October I was honored to be one of the main presenters at the Streaming conference at Rochester University. The topic of the conference was theological anthropology. Who are we as human beings?

One of the big points I made was that, across the board, we tend to think that our fundamental problem as human beings is affirmation. A lack of affirmation, specifically. From therapy sessions, to self-help books, to the content of worship songs, to sermons, we emphasize affirmation. Self-affirmation. Affirmation from others. Affirmation from God. 

It is true, I pointed out, that we need affirmation. Don't hear me suggesting otherwise. Shame is psychologically, relationally, and spiritually crippling. And yet, I went on to argue, our deepest need isn't affirmation but stability and grounding. 

Who are we as human beings? We are creatures. Which means we are, by nature, ontologically unstable. In Biblical language we are dust. We are like the grass that quickly springs up and then withers under the sun. We cannot hold ourselves in being. 

This ontological instability creates psychological instability. Simple introspection reveals this, that felt sense that we are, at root, a bundle of neurotic symptoms and insecurities. The ego isn't a steady beacon or a firm foundation.

The point to note here is that affirmation, as vital as it may be, doesn't address this instability. You can affirm me, but I'm still a mess. I can affirm myself, but I'm still a mess. And the worship song and the sermon can tell me that God loves me, but I'm still a mess.

In short, while affirmation is important, our critical situation as creatures is that of dependency, our need for support, solidity, and grounding. 

In the language of Psalm 28, beyond a "Love Wins" affirmation from God and everyone else, our most pressing and vital need is stabilization. Given our insubstantial nature and unsteady egos, we need a rock to stand on.

That there is blood involved in our salvation strikes many as a barbaric notion. Especially if that blood is viewed as some sort of "payment" or "demand" from a wrathful God. 

I was recently engaged, again, in a conversation about the blood of Jesus and its role in salvation. In that conversation I made reference to Jacob Milgrom's work in his commentary on Leviticus, insights I shared here a few years ago.

Specifically, Milgrom speaks of Levitical "detergents." That is to say, there are substances that are taken to be cleansing agents in the ritual life of Israel. Critically, these detergents were not viewed as a "payment" for sins or impurities. Nor were they demanded by a wrathful God. Their role was simple and straightforward: Cleaning. 

In Leviticus, the four detergents used in ritual purification were fire, blood, oil, and water. Each detergent seemed to have a domain of associations:

Fire -- Associated with God. Think: Moses and the burning bush, the pillar of fire leading Israel through the desert, the blazing theophany upon Mt. Sinai.

Blood -- The primary ritual detergent, associated with the animal world. The blood is the "life force" of animals, human and non-human. 

Oil -- Associated with the land, the domain of agriculture and the human sphere of work. Accordingly, oil is used mainly in the social and political sphere, as with the anointing of a king.

Water -- With oil associated with the land, water completes the picture and functions as a multi-use detergent, from everyday to ritual purifications.

Of the four, blood was the primary ritual detergent, especially for the expiation of sin. Why was this the case? Because blood is "life":

For the life of a creature is in the blood. (Lev. 17.11a)

This notion sits at the heart of the Levitical prohibition concerning consuming blood. No human being has a right to the life of an animal. The meat of an animal may be eaten, but the life of the animal must be returned to God. Life is sacrosanct and is under the purview and jurisdiction of the Deity. 

This explains why blood, as life itself, is the ritual detergent par excellence. The basic idea at work in Leviticus is that sin accumulates in the community, like a pollution that adheres to everything. Think of an oil spill. Or the soot that covered everything in London in a Dickens' novel. The ritual and moral impurities in Israel built up in a similar way. Blood was the main detergent used to clean the community and the sacred space of these impurities. Blood had this power because the impurities marked the encroachment of death. And only life could wipe death away. 

That idea, life wiping away death, is the critical insight. 

This brings us back to the blood of Jesus, and that old hymn "There's power in the blood." Again, in the imaginations of many the atoning blood of Jesus has become associated with the appeasement of a wrathful God. But that's not what you see in Leviticus. God doesn't demand blood and blood is not offered to appease God's wrath. In contrast to the pagan gods, Israel's God pointedly didn't eat animal meat or drink blood. Blood was, rather, simply used as a detergent. 

The trouble here, however, was that animal blood was only a temporary detergent, so the cleansing had to be repeated over and over. Thus, according to the book of Hebrews, what sinful humanity needed was a detergent so strong it could be offered "once for all." This was the blood of Christ, God's very own life, his own blood, that could wipe away every trace of sin and death. Note, again, that there is no wrathful God here. Simply the graceful provision of the most potent detergent--God's very own life--that could, in a single act of purification, wipe away every sin, of every person, for all time.

Jesus stands at the door knocking (Rev. 3:20). In total reality, he comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. He confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you're looking for something to read during Advent, let me recommend the lovely collection God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas sharing Advent and Christmas reflections from Bonhoeffer.

I have been reading Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love and was struck again, at the start of her meditations, by her prayer for "three wounds."

As you likely know, Julian's Revelations is considered to be one of the great works of the Christian mystical tradition. And at the start of her Revelations, Julian shares how she asked the Lord for three wounds:

Moved by this I conceived a great longing, praying our Lord God that he would grant me three wounds in my lifetime: that is to say, the wound of contrition, the wound of compassion and the wound of an earnest longing for God.

What's striking here, and a little jarring for modern readers, is how Julian calls these "wounds." Feeling sorry about one's sin is a wound. Feeling compassion for others is a wound. Longing for God is a wound.

That Julian calls these wounds goes to her identification with Christ's passion in the Revelations. The wounds of Christ's passion wound our hearts, causing us sorrow, enflaming our love, and deepening our desire for God. And while there is undoubtedly something medieval about describing love as a wound, I'm struck today by the image. For love can very much feel like a wound. Love, as we say, causes our hearts to bleed. We are stricken. There is something in love that makes the heart tender to the touch. Love makes the heart vulnerable and sensitive. Love causes the heart to ache. 

A wounded heart is not cold, distant, inert or dead. A wounded heart has touched the world and that touch comes with pain. 

As I've mentioned, this year I've made the Gospel of John the focus of my daily Bible reading. Instead of reading through the Bible in a year, I've settled down into this gospel.

As you can imagine, when you read through a gospel over and over again, little things you've never noticed before jump out at you. You catch little details. I've spent the year chasing down these details and any mysteries that might lay behind them. Here's one from John 2, the miracle of Cana:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

Did you catch the odd little detail? (I'm sure you did because of the title of the post.) The story starts off with "on the third day." On the third day of what? There is no reference point. Third day after some event? Third day of the week? It's just "on the third day."

If "on the third day" has a reference, my best guess is that it refers back to the events in Chapter 1, the gathering of Jesus' first followers. On the first day, Jesus meets Andrew and Peter. On the second day, he meets Philip and Nathaniel. And then, on the third day, they all go to the wedding in Cana.

But some scholars see "on the third day" as a hint about the resurrection. On the third day Jesus turns water into wine. On the third day ordinary existence becomes transformed into something wondrous, joyful, and abundant. "On the third day" links the first sign with the last.

In that sense, every day with Jesus is "the third day," a day of resurrection and life where joy and celebration flow.

"Peace"

Hear, O Lord,
my prayers of malediction.
Receive these petitions of imprecation.

I confess in this asking
that my easy hatreds--
well-worn or freshly bleeding--
render me disonant
with the harmony of your kingdom.

So I set down
this incongruous offering.

Prince of Peace, hammer smooth
the sharp edges of my heart.

"to behold the beauty of the Lord"

Everyone loves God.

Not everyone believes in God, but everyone loves God.

Sure, there may be a handful of souls on earth so dark and twisted that they recoil in the face of goodness and light. But for the vast majority of us, we imagine horizons of goodness, love, and beauty. And as our imaginations reach for the light our hearts ache at the beauty of that vision. 

True, we might convince ourselves that the light isn't real, that what our hearts long for is imaginary. We could be like those prisoners described by Plato in his Allegory of the Cave, chained up in a dark cavern of skepticism, unwilling to believe in the rumors of sunlight. (For isn't that what the gospel is, a rumor of sunlight?) We may choose to live with shadows. 

So, we might not believe in God. But everyone loves God. No one can behold that beautiful vision and not love and long for it. 

You might not believe in the sun. 

The sun shines nonetheless. 

And the rumor of sunlight stirs the darkened, shadowed heart.

This will be our last post trying to unpack Paul's gospel. 

I don't want to claim that this series is exhaustive and comprehensive. But I do think it describes our central predicament, as seen by Paul, and the work of Christ in saving us from that predicament. Christ rescues us from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe, which Paul most fully describes in Romans 5-8, through the pouring out of the Spirit and removing the curse of the law. Salvation involves both these aspects, the ontological and the forensic. The gospel involves both power and atonement. 

And yet, that isn't all there is to the gospel. I want to end this series by making three additional observations.

First, the Spirit of Christ has been poured out upon both Jews and Gentiles. Both groups are rescued from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe. Consequently, not only did the Spirit emancipate us from our ontological predicament, it created a new humanity, where "there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female." For we are "all one in Christ Jesus." In short, beyond the ontological and forensic, the gospel also has social implications. And one of those implications is that the Gentiles, as Gentiles, have been given access to the covenantal promises made to Abraham. Much of Paul's writing about the gospel is making this point, the inclusion of the Gentiles. As Paul describes it in Romans, through the Spirit the Gentiles have been "grafted into" the olive tree of Israel. 

Much as been written and said about the social implications of the gospel, the dismantling of the "wall of hostility" that had existed between Jews and Gentiles, along with the possibility this creates for the pluralistic community of God. I simply want to draw your attention to those implications.

A second point I want to make concerns the status of righteous moral action in Paul's gospel. 

Again, it is wrong to think that the Jews were legalists who were trying to "earn their salvation." The problem was, rather, that the sarx/sin/death catastrophe had caused all people, Jew and Gentile, to come under condemnation. We are all mired in sin and death. And Christ pulls us out of that morass. Having been set free we are now called to be responsive to God's commands. As Paul says in Galatians 5, faith must work itself out in love. If the Spirit of Christ lives within us, we must "walk by the Spirit and put away the works of the flesh." We must display in our lives the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." As Paul continues in Galatians 5: "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit."

Simply stated, because the Spirit gives us moral capacity the Christian life carries moral expectations. We are required and expected to bear fruit. 

The point, obviously, is that if you have a clear understanding of Paul's gospel the whole "works versus grace" debate evaporates. The grace of the Spirit, accepted by faith, gives you the capacity to follow God's commands. And because of Christ's death on the cross, the blood of Christ continually cleanses us should we falter and stumble. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Again, salvation is both power and atonement.

Now let me turn to a final observation.

There is a lot of scholarly debate about how Paul thought about the law in relation to Jews who come to faith in Jesus. Are messianic Jews still required to follow the law? Lots of ink has been spilled on this topic. There is an argument that, according to Paul's gospel, Jews remain Torah observant Jews after coming to Christ, that the Torah remans in force for them. Again, the law was never the problem. Thus, now empowered by the Spirit and liberated from the curse of the law, messianic Jews are now set free to follow the path of Torah, Jews coming to God as Jews. Gentiles, by contrast, do not need to become Jews, as Paul argues in Galatians. But Gentiles do need to display the fruit of the Spirit and are required to fulfill the law of love. Gentiles don't need to become circumcised or follow Jewish dietary laws. Basically, this is a "two paths" vision of the gospel, how the pouring out of the Spirit upon both Jews and Gentiles allows the Jews to be saved as Jews and the Gentiles to be saved as Gentiles. 

This "two paths" vision of Paul's gospel sits in contrast to the supersessionist views held by many (most?) Christians. In this view, Judaism comes to a dead end in Christ and is wholly replaced by the church. The Old Testament law is nullified and set aside. Jewish people, in this view, must "convert" to Christianity and leave their Jewish ways behind. 

The scholarship behind the two paths vision--Jews retain the law and have their own distinctive path to God in contrast to Gentiles--is very concerned with the anti-Semitism and Marcionism they see at work in supersessionism. This is good, but I think the debates here could use some clarification. 

In favor of the two paths view, I think it is clear that, for Paul, God does not set aside the law and is perfectly happy in seeing Jews seeking God as Jews and in a distinctly Jewish way. I don't think Paul was a supersessionist. 

And yet, I also don't think Paul was concerned about Jews who felt at liberty, in light of Christ, to step away from Jewish practice or observance. Paul himself is evidence of this. Paul felt at liberty to conform to or reject Jewish practices as he deemed best. You see this in statements of Paul's like, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Gal. 5.6). In my estimation, what characterized Paul's vision here was freedom. As he says in 2 Corinthians, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom." This was a freedom to follow the law and a freedom to let some of those things go. The crucial issue for Paul was treating each other respectfully in light of how we make these different discernments. You see Paul discussing this in Romans 14.

All that to say, my views are a little bit different from the "two paths" view of Paul. I agree that Paul was no supersessionist, and that he wasn't calling for the Jewish people to abandon Torah. Jews come to Christ as Jews and remain Jews. However, I don't think Paul would have been bothered if a Jewish believer, having come to Christ, started to stop eating kosher. Or stopped observing certain Jewish holy days. I don't think that would have bothered Paul in the least. These observances were not set aside by Christ, but neither were they strict requirements. As I read Paul, the law was not nullified, but a certain wind of freedom had begun to blow. As Paul says in Galatians, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."

What is revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus is that salvation through mere human effort--zeal for God's law--is impossible. Human nature, being mere sarx, is weakened by sin and death making us unable to obey God's commandments. Consequently, we break God's commandments and come under condemnation. 

Christ died and was raised to save us from this predicament. And this salvation has both ontological and forensic aspects.

When I say salvation has ontological aspects, I mean that our reality is changed. The furniture of our existence is rearranged. The cosmos is fundamentally altered. 

In Paul's gospel, the world changed because of Easter and Pentecost, Christ's defeat of death and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. These are intimately linked in Paul's gospel:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom. 8.11)

Through the Spirit we are able to overcome death. Relatedly, the Spirit strengthens sarx, making us responsive to the will of God:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Rom. 8.13)

In short, the empowerment given through the Spirit is central to Paul's gospel, for it is the Spirit that saves us from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe. We were stuck in ontological quicksand, and the Spirit pulls us out. Salvation comes by an infusion of God's very life. No longer merely sarx, our very nature and reality is changed. 

That salvation is ontological, that we are rescued via the Spirit from the powers of sin and death, goes to Christus Victor aspects of salvation. And yet, salvation also has forensic aspects. Again, our moral incapacity brings us under the condemnation of the law. We stand under a curse. Consequently, Christ not only rescues us from our ontological predicament, he also takes upon himself the curse that stood over us. As Paul describes in Galatians:

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them...” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." (Gal. 3.11, 13) 

Relatedly, since the blessings of God come to those who obey God's law, and we were unable to do so, Christ came to satisfy the requirements of the law on our behalf:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8.3-4)

Since we could not follow the law, weakened as we were by the flesh, Christ accomplished on our behalf "in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us." 

The point, again, is that salvation also has forensic aspects. The curse of the law needed to be dealt with, along with fulfilling the righteous requirements of the law. Christ deals with both of these, becoming a curse for us and fulfilling the law when we could not. We accept Christ's work on our behalf through faith. Christ accomplishes what we could not accomplish on our own.

I have one more post to say a few more things about Paul's gospel, but I want to suggest that this is the core of it. And what I think is important to note, in reflecting on Paul's gospel, is how both Christus Victor and forensic dynamics are at work. Typically, in the atonement debates Christus Victor and forensic visions of salvation are pitted against each other as an either/or. But for Paul's gospel, it's not an either/or, it is a both/and. 

Salvation is both ontological and forensic. Ontologically, the Spirit rescues us from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe. Forensically, Christ deals with the curse of the law and satisfies the requirements of the law. The gospel is both power and atonement. 

Let me summarize the last two posts. On the road to Damascus, two things are revealed to Paul. First, a tragedy had befallen Israel. Israel had crucified her Messiah. And Paul's own path was continuing on this trajectory: he himself was persecuting the Messiah. Second, zeal for the law, as illustrated in Paul's own life, had brought about this cataclysm. 

In short, what is revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus is that righteousness won't and can't be obtained by diligently following the law. If anything, this path had been tried and it culminated in disaster. 

What, then, had happened? 

The answer Paul came up goes to the heart of his gospel.

The fullest explanation of what had befallen both Israel and Paul is found in Romans 5-8. 

To start, again, Paul is keen to point out that the problem with trying to obey the law isn't with the law itself. Wanting to obey God is, and has always been, good. As Paul says, following Psalm 119, the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7.12). 

The trouble comes when the law intersects with human flesh (sarx). Sarx is a hugely important word for Paul. Sarx simply means "flesh," as in "meat." But why would the word "meat" hold such theological significance for Paul? Because flesh alone is impotent and powerless to fulfill the demands of the law. Paul is clear on this point: 

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom. 8.7-8)

In Chapter 7, Paul gives a vivid account of how the flesh interacts with the law:

For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness ... For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. (Rom. 7.7-8;14-17)

This situation is key to understanding Paul's gospel, how sarx lacks the ability to carry out the dictates of the law. The issue of guilt isn't the focus here, but moral incapacity. Sarx does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot. 

Why does sarx lack this moral capacity? As Paul describes it, sarx (as mere meat) is weakened by the powers of sin and death. This weakening is crucial for Paul. In Chapter 5, Paul describes how death comes to reign over human life: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men." Due to Adam's fall, "sin reigned in death" over humanity. And sarx is impotent in the face of these powers: 

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Rom. 7.20-24)

Salvation, then, is being rescued from this predicament. This sits at the heart of the Paul's gospel. Notice, therefore, a couple of things. 

First, observe that the issue here isn't about guilt and forgiveness. The issue is about how sarx is weakened by sin and death, making us unable to follow God's law. To be sure, because of our weakness we come under condemnation and curse. We break the law and as law-breakers face forensic, penal consequences. But that guilt is a surface-level symptom of a deeper problem. The runny nose and not the underlying virus. Mere forgiveness for crimes, therefore, doesn't get deep enough. Consequently, overcoming the weakness of sarx in its desire to obey God is critical to what Paul means by salvation. Simply stated, forgiveness without empowerment would leave us mired in a body chronically weakened by sin and death. 

Second, the issue for Paul's gospel isn't a works-based righteousness, legalism, or "trying to earn your salvation." Again, the Jewish desire to follow God's law is spot on. Let's say it again: Paul is very clear that obeying the law is holy, righteous and good. Attempting to follow and obey the law--righteous works--is not the problem. Obeying God's law is never a problem. The problem is that we can't follow the law, and that failure brings us under condemnation. 

In short, the Jewish people were not prideful legalists in trying to obey God's law. That desire was on point. The trouble was, as Paul came to see the situation, is that human beings, being sarx and weakened by sin and death, could not carry out God's righteous commandments. And it is precisely this weakness that caused the catastrophe revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus. This predicament caused Israel to reject her Messiah and is the reason Christ came, died, and was raised. 

How Christ accomplished this work we'll turn to in the next post. For today, let's return to the issue in Galatians and Paul's concern about Christ dying for "nothing."

Simply stated, if Christ died to set us free from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe you can see why Paul would object in Galatians to any teaching that was asking Gentile and Jewish believers to simply obey the law. Not because this was legalistic or a works-based righteousness. Rather, this "false gospel" wholly ignored the sarx/sin/death catastrophe, how no one, not Jew and not Gentile, can simply "follow the law." You can't follow the law without Christ. Christ died to give us the capacity to follow the law, and you can't do an end run around this work. For if righteousness could be achieved merely through "works of the law" then Christ indeed "died for nothing." 

In short, the false gospel was failing to face the deeper disaster revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus, the disaster Christ saved us from. Ignore that disaster, and you ignore and nullify everything Christ did to save us. 

In Galatians, Paul describes how he received his gospel as "an apocalypse of Jesus Christ" (1.12). Something was revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus when he encountered the Risen Lord Jesus.

Imaginatively, I like to ponder how Paul saw the world when he set out that morning to arrest members of a heretical messianic sect. And then imagine what was going through his mind for those three days he sat blinded in the darkness. His entire world had come crashing down. Flipped upside down. Everything Paul believed at the start of his journey was suddenly revealed to be a catastrophic mistake. 

For my part, I think meditating on this catastrophe is the clearest path to understanding Paul's gospel. 

For a catastrophe it surely was. On the road to Damascus it was revealed to Paul that Israel had crucified her own Messiah. And Paul himself was persecuting the Messiah. As Jesus says to Paul, "Why are you persecuting me?" Paul must have wondered, how could this have happened? How could this disaster have befallen God's chosen people?

The answer, I'd suggest, goes back to Numbers 25.

In Numbers 25 the men of Israel have been drawn into pagan worship by Moabite women. This causes a plague. To stop the plague, God demands that those who committed idolatry be killed. Right as that command is given, in front of everyone, an Israelite man takes a Moabite woman into a tent to have sex with her. It's a pretty brazen act. Beholding this effrontery, Phinehas, priest and son of Aaron, grabs a spear, goes into the tent, and stabs the man and the woman. The plague stops. God then says to Moses:

"Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”

Phinehas is explicitly praised because he was zealous for God. And in the memory of Israel Phinehas' zeal is commemorated in Psalm 106:

They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor
and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods;
they aroused the Lord’s anger by their wicked deeds,
and a plague broke out among them.
But Phinehas stood up and intervened,
and the plague was checked.
This was credited to him as righteousness
for endless generations to come.

Alert readers of Paul's letters should recognize that phrase, "credited to him as righteousness." That notion about what, exactly, gets "credited to you as righteousness" plays an important part in the development of Paul's gospel. 

For Phinehas, we know exactly what gets credited to him as righteousness. Zeal for God, for God's honor and for God's law, is what makes Phinehas righteous before God.

I draw your attention to the story of Phinehas because, if you want to understand Paul's mindset and worldview the day he set out on the road to Damascus, this is the story that unlocks what was in his head. When Paul set out that morning to persecute Christians, he was setting out in the footsteps of Phinehas. On the road to Damascus, Paul was Phinehas. And his zeal would make him righteous in the eyes of God. As Paul would later describe in Philippians 3.6, looking back on that fateful morning on the road to Damascus, he was "in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless."

And yet, the zeal Paul thought would be "credited to him as righteousness," in the footsteps of Phinehas, had caused him to persecute the Messiah. And as Paul reflected for three days in blindness, the awful truth would have sunk in, that it was this same zeal for God's honor and law that had caused Israel to crucify Jesus. 

Recall the point from Part 1. For Paul and his fellow Jews, the Law of God is good. Again, read Psalm 119. There is no "works-based righteousness" in Psalm 119. No legalism. No trying to "earn your salvation." Those were Martin Luther's problems, not Israel's. 

Consequently, since the law was, as Paul says in Romans, holy, spiritual and good, then the only part missing of the equation was zeal. Zeal would make us righteous, just like Phinehas' zeal was credited to him as righteousness. Which is exactly what Paul was trying to do the morning he set out for Damascus. 

This is oversimplified, but here's a sketch of what Paul had in his head on the road to Damascus:

The Law + Zeal = Righteousness

This is the "Phinehas Formula." And yet, the "apocalypse of Jesus Christ" shown to Paul on the road revealed that this equation had gone catastrophically wrong. Zeal had caused Israel to reject, crucify, and, in the hands of Paul, persecute the Messiah. How had this happened? What blew up the "Phinehas Formula"? How had zeal led to disaster rather than to righteousness? 

These questions, in my estimation, were what Paul pondered during his three days of blindness. And the answers Paul came up with became the heart of his gospel. To see this, let's go back to that line from Galatians 2:

"For if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing."

With the story of Phinehas in hand, we can see a bit more clearly what Paul is driving at here. According to the "Phinehas Formula," all that is needed to attain righteousness is zeal, passion for obeying the law of God. That was what Paul was trying to do before the "apocalypse of Jesus Christ." And here's the critical point to hammer home. If zeal had been enough there was no need for Christ to die. If zeal is what made you righteous, just like Phinehas, then the path ahead was crystal clear: Just be more zealous. Just obey. Just do the thing. Zealousness for the law was the solution to our problems. The law is holy and perfect, so all that is needed from us is passionate adherence. 

And yet, this passion for obeying the law of God, this zeal, was revealed to Paul to have led to the greatest of catastrophes. Which means, and here we arrive at the point, zeal alone is not the solution to our problem. Obedience alone can't get you to righteousness. Because zealous obedience led to the crucifixion of Jesus. 

But even more importantly, if zeal alone were the solution our problems, then Christ died for nothing. If zeal had been enough, there was no need for Jesus to die. Because Paul and Israel had zeal in spades. What was revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus was the catastrophe wrought by zeal, and how Christ had died to rectify that disaster. 

Which bring us back to Galatians. If righteousness could be gained through the law, Paul is saying, then we're still playing by the Phinehas playbook. Here's the law, just obey it. Be zealous, like Phinehas, and it will be credited to you as righteousness. But if that's true, if the Phinehas playbook is still in effect, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is superfluous and unnecessary. If zeal is all we need--a passionate 100% commitment to God--then Jesus died for nothing. All you'd need is zeal. 

And yet, Christ did die, and he died for something. And that something has everything to do with why zeal and the Phinehas Formula created such a catastrophe. We'll turn to that catastrophe in the next post.

"Exile"

Waiting cracks
the glass,
spiderweb fractures,
spreading branches
of inevitable, prospective failure,
weakening promises
no longer able to carry
the heaviness of hope
and the impatience of generations.

Trust is a fragile thing,
hard to hold together
with stories aging into legend.

Too much time has passed.

"men of bloodshed"  

The opening petition of Psalm 26 is: "Vindicate me!" 

The poet stands in the middle of a blood-soaked world, full of harm, violence, and deceit. In the midst of all this wickedness and evil, the poet cries out, asking God to see, to vindicate, their struggle to be a person of integrity and peace in a world overrun by men of bloodshed.

The lonely path of the righteous in a dark and evil world. 

It is a difficult thing to keep your heart pure, to move with kindness in a world filled with men of bloodshed. It is a difficult thing to cry out for peace in times of war. It is a difficult thing to speak the truth in the face of lies. 

The path of the righteous is a lonely path. It is a difficult thing.