Seven Stanzas for Easter

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Make no mistake: if he rose at all

It was as His body;

If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,

The amino acids rekindle,

The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

Each soft spring recurrent;

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the

Eleven apostles;

It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes

The same valved heart

That–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then regathered

Out of enduring Might

New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded

Credulity of earlier ages:

Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,

Not a stone in a story,

But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of

Time will eclipse for each of us

The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,

Make it a real angel,

Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in

The dawn light, robed in real linen

Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed

By the miracle,

And crushed by remonstrance.

Seven Stanzas for Easter – John Updike

[Hat tip: Andrew]

“In small coins”

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We often think we could lay down our life in a dramatic way to show our love for others. But God often calls us to lay down our lives little by little – in small coins instead of one large payment – but it is laying down our lives nonetheless.

– David Guzik, commenting on Ephesians 1:1-2

If I may . . .

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Indulge me in some fatherly boasting for a moment.

Our son Andrew (College Freshman) made the Dean’s list at Baylor after his first semester, thanks to a 3.7 GPA. In addition, he’s been invited to a couple of honor societies whose greek names I can’t recall. And he’s way smarter than me.

Our daughter Molly (HS Senior) has received two great scholarships from the college that she hopes (I think) to attend. She earned them on the strength of an extremely strong academic career in high school and great overall leadership and service.

I also got to listen to her worship band practice on Tuesday – she plays bass, keyboard, and sings – and I had forgotten how good she is.

Our daughter Bethany (HS Sophomore) just made the honor roll, just got her braces off (yes!) and has been working her tush off all year on her academics. She’s amazing. She also is practicing for a mini-play of some sort in Theater (she loves Theater), in which she’ll be playing . . . get this . . . Gollum. 🙂

Our son Blake (Fifth grade) just got promoted up to the top team (Red Team: Legend) in his select soccer club, U11 Dallas Texans – Houston Division. This is a big honor, as he had been playing on the 2nd red pool team (Tiempo). We’ll miss that team a lot, but are also excited for the upcoming games with his new team. He also played on the DTHD U11 red team that won the DTA Elite Invitational in Austin this past weekend.

Great job kids! You get it all from your mother . . .

Spiritual Blessings

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

– Ephesians 1:3

Spiritual blessings . . . They are what Paul blesses God for in his introduction to the book of Ephesians. What follows this statement is one of those classic Pauline run-on sentences that proceeds for 11 more verses. I love that, by the way.

This brings to mind a question: what are “spiritual” blessings? Paul describes them in the aforementioned run-on sentence (vv. 4-14). The spiritual blessings he lists include things like being chosen by God, being adopted as sons, being forgiven and redeemed, among many others.

The second question that will rise, unbidden perhaps, to one’s mind is this: do I really want those? I mean really want them. Sometimes, if I take a look at my own life, I find that I spend a great deal of time chasing after physical blessings – the unholy trinity of treasure, pleasure and power.

Which fires me up more? Physical or Spiritual blessings? How about you?

David Guzik has this to say, in his commentary on Ephesians:

If we have no appreciation for spiritual blessing, then we live at the level of animals. Animals live only to eat, sleep, entertain themselves, and to reproduce. We are made in the image of God and He has something much higher for us, yet many choose to live at the level of animals. God wants us [to] know every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis writes:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Far too easily pleased. Yes, that, often times, is a very apt description of me. Which is why I need to heed more urgently the words of Paul written here in the first chapter of Ephesians; the words of a man who had very little of the physical left (he was in prison at the time). Stripped of the baubles and trinkets of this world, the vibrant, towering, monumental spiritual blessings that are found in Christ alone held an even greater awe, wonder, and joy to this crusty, scarred apostle.

May I get a glimpse of that.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Saints

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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

– Ephesians 1:1

So Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians, and to our modern ears this would seem like a polite introduction before launching into the masterpiece that is this epistle. Yet there is something hidden (to us) in this introduction that was a blessing and a scandal to those who read it.

Paul uses the word “saints” to describe the Ephesians. For many of us, this word poses a problem due to modern baggage that has been applied to the word “saint”. For many of us, the word conjures up a whiff of incense, or perhaps robes, martyrdom, cathedrals, or visions of medieval times. But to Paul’s readers, be they Jewish or Gentile, this word communicated something entirely different, and far more revolutionary.

R. Kent Hughes, in his book Ephesians – The Mystery of the Body of Christ, puts it this way:

[I]n the Greek translation of the Old Testament the people of Israel, and sometimes even the angels, were given the honored title “saints.” Therefore, as Marcus Barth explains, “By using the same designation . . . the author of Ephesians bestows upon all his pagan-born hearers a privilege formerly reserved for Israel, for special (especially priestly) servants of God, or for angels.” Applying the privileged word “saints” to pagan Greeks was mind-boggling to those with a Jewish background. Hebrew detractors considered it a rape of sacred vocabulary. But from the Christian perspective it was a fitting word to celebrate the miracle of God’s grace.

The word is hagios in the Greek, and it means “holy and called out ones”. And here Paul is using this high word, in the past reserved only for God’s chosen people, the people of Israel, to address formerly pagan Gentiles! As Hughes states above, to many Jewish people of the time, this was “mind-boggling”.

The Gospel does this: it boggles the mind. We think of ourselves as being more tolerant than God, don’t we? I know I do at times. And yet there He goes, welcoming into the Kingdom those that I would never have given a chance! And He doesn’t distinguish levels of sainthood; He calls them saints too! Holy and called out ones, indeed, having been made holy by Christ’s atonement and called out to a life of service to the King.

Saints. This word, if you take the time to look at how it is used in Scripture, will kill “Us and Them” Christianity.

If you’ve been rescued by Jesus, there is no “Them” when it comes to your fellow rescue-ees, regardless of background, ethnicity, political beliefs, denomination, class, social status, sin-background, family dysfunction, or any other division you can come up with.

In Christ, it’s all “Us”.

Tax day

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Nothing profound to post at this time. But I’m doing my taxes today.

I’m thankful to the Lord for providing, as He has always done.

And also overwhelmed at the complexity of all of this! 🙂

For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” -1 Corinthians 10:26

On battling doubt

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Jared over at Gospel Driven Church has a great post on the subject of battling doubt. Read the whole thing. Below is my favorite part; this is a view of the matter that I’d not considered before:

4. Re-focus your doubts toward your own failings and inability. Doubt yourself, in other words.



For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

— 1 Corinthians 1:25

This is counter-intuitive to some, and it sounds like bad advice in this age of “Believe in yourself” and self-help and the therapeutic gospel of human potential, but we will not believe God more fully until we despair of ourselves more fully.

In this sense, the counter-attack is not to “stop doubting God” — telling someone awash in doubt to simply “stop doubting” is like telling a drowning man to thrash harder — but to start doubting yourself. It is telling a drowning man to stop thrashing, to doubt his own ability to thrash his way into safety. And in fact, when a drowning man relaxes and stops “fighting,” giving up trust in his ability to save himself, his rescuer is better able to swim him to safety.

If you think God can’t be trusted, think about yourself. How together are you? How well do YOU have it figured out? How in control are you? How are your plans coming together for a great life? How is “following your heart,” which is deceitful above al things, working out for you?

If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize our utter dependence and feebleness. And when we doubt ourselves, we are ready to trust God.

He must become greater; I must become less.

— John 3:30

“Completely unmanageable”

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Wickle over at A True Believer’s Blog offers a profound view of why Christmas is, often times, a holiday we prefer over Easter.

My pastor speculated that it’s because it’s really easy to deal with the baby in the manger. There He is, being born, there are shepherds around because God loves poor people, there are angels because it’s a big deal, and magi because they’re there to celebrate. Great. We can deal with this.

Once you take that baby and make Him into a man, He becomes harder to handle. He said things, He did things, and He called us to be changed. Then, He died and came back out of the tomb.

God out of the tomb is completely unmanageable. We can’t hold that one back, limit Him, or try to pretend that it’s just a nice story. The Nativity can be trivialized and tamed – the Resurrection can’t.

There is talk about how to “keep Christ is Christmas,” or whether Christians should observe Christmas at all, and just about everything in between.

For my own part, I think that it’s fine to observe Christmas as a remembrance of the event. But while we’re at it, let’s remember that the Incarnation of God on earth wasn’t an end unto itself. He came to the earth to live, teach, die, and rise again. He didn’t stay in the manger.

That’s part of why I was so excited to see the second chorus of “What Child is This?” when I read it. Right there in the Christmas song, it reminded us that He came not to be born as a baby and stop there, but to be pierced with nails and a spear (among the other things that ripped His flesh that day). It wasn’t His birth that redeems us, it was His death.

Yes, by all means, celebrate the birth. The birth of Jesus is the beginning of the process that leads us to the death and resurrection, which is what makes it possible for any of us to have eternal life.

But let’s never forget that ours isn’t a God in a manger, He didn’t stay wrapped up in swaddling clothes, and He sure wasn’t a baby forever.

Regarding the second verse of “What Child Is This”, mentioned above, here it is:

Why lies He in such mean estate,

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christians, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,

The cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Praise Him for His incarnation!