The steady hum of remote cars
like waves upon the shore.
It is afternoon
and a certain stillness lulls
the day through siesta.
Breeze creeps silently
across the lawn
like a child waking from nap.
Distant birdsongs drift through air
Soft echoes from the morning uproar.
I feel the gentleness across my skin, my neck.
Ever so briefly,
I breathe in the never-ending symphony
Of heaven and earth
Then return to rush of traffic.
Pilgrim Notes
Reflections along the way.
Category: meditation (page 1 of 4)
I’m not sure how people keep up. The amount of information humans produce and consume rains down like a flood across the globe. Last spring, Science Daily suggested that 90% of the world’s data had been produced in 2011 and 2012: 90%. Companies face the never-ending challenge of storing, sorting and analyzing the endless stream of data.
I love and hate technology at the same time. Some days, I feel like I’m struggling to breathe beneath the endless rain of information.
How do people read, let alone write as much as they do? Sometimes I want to simply breathe. Pause. Stare at the dead leaves on my tree in the backyard that refuse to let go and fly away in the late winter breeze. Every year, these leaves will not fall until mid-spring. Continue reading
We rise to the ordinary, the predictable, the mundane. We move through a pattern of daily repetitions: wake, shower, dress, eat, and go. Somewhere. Life is so utterly predictable.
If traumas don’t kill us, something odd happens. We keep living, breathing, existing. Peter denied Christ then woke the next day. Living in the present is so difficult because it is so ordinary. We dream of future possibilities or glorify past excitements while breathing in this ordinary present moment.
Thomas Merton once cautioned the would-be contemplative that prayer quickly becomes boring and repetitious, routine. The ordinary predictability of inhaling and exhaling becomes a weight that some cannot bear. They grow weary.
One way to respond to this utter predictability is to seek out crisis, to create crisis. Oddly, even wanderlust can grow tiresome. Crisis loses the edge of surprise over time. Reflecting on the horror of the trenches in World War 1, Eugen Rosenstock Huessy said that most of the time it was boring.
We may look at other people and dream of what could have been. In fact, some try to recreate could-have-beens. The man or woman who has an affair soon discover the malaise overtaking the newness. Binx Boling called my attention to the malaise.
In Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer,” Binx Boling is a man who has the good life. The life we all dream about. He is financially successful, comes from a secure family, enjoys the best culture has to offer, and spends his time watching movies and dating beautiful women. Binx also seems to be caught in a struggle. He feels the malaise at the back of all things, but at the same time, he is startled and surprised by existence.
Being alive is wondrous and dreadful. Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What will it take to give our lives signification? Is it praise from others? Some recognition for all our dedication, all we’ve suffered, all we have given? Are we really yearning unlimited wealth? Some spiritual power? Lots and lots of stuff?
Why doesn’t any answer satisfy?
At times, the idea of eternal life can be horrifying. “You mean we just keep living and living and living?” This terror of never-ending life may be bound us in the terror of the ordinary, in the anguish of why?
The suffering of loneliness and sickness and broken relations may hide the suffering of being alive. We are caught between the wonder and the terror of existence. We know so little and feel even less.
For those who do not know the malaise, these words will make little sense. For those who do, you might hear a distant echo of anguish the trembles deep in the soul. My intention is not to solve our human dilemma in 500 words or less.
I am looking for clues. I am looking at the Risen Christ, and hopefully through the Risen Christ. In Him, I see life lived fully, completely. I behold love poured out with no restriction. All things were made, shaped, formed, properly ordered through the Son, the Word Made Flesh. In Him, I see the wondrous order of all creation.
Order? There is an order, a shape, a form to all creation. Without order, all form is but a momentary illusion.
The word “ordinary” derives from order. Our ordinary world, our ordinary moments are ordered.
In Christ, I see a glimpse of this order. His life is poured out fully in love: every moment from birth through death. In His resurrection, I behold the unrestricted reciprocation of the Father’s love by the Spirit.
In Him, I live and move and breathe. I breathe. I inhale and exhale. Each moment ordered by exhaling, inhaling: pouring out, filling up. In my very breath, I see but a tiny pattern of reciprocal life revealed in Christ. Within this wonderful and terrible existence, I breathe, we breathe. The wonder of reciprocation, of giving and receiving, of loving and being loved is enacted all around me in the sun and moon, man and woman, trees and bees. All creation echoes a reciprocation of life, a mutuality of giving and receiving.
Mostly I am deaf and blind to this magnificent symphony of love, this order of love. Some times, the blind will see. The light of Christ pierces my eyes. In this ordinary moment, I behold love unspeakable and full of glory.
* Image by Thomas Leuthard on flickr. (Used by Creative Commons Permission)
On Good Friday, we come to cross of Christ. We behold one stricken, smitten, and afflicted. As we look upon the broken body of our Savior, we behold our own broken and wounded lives. Each of us bears the scars of a world reeling from the curse of sin.
I have a scar on my left pinkie finger that dates back to my early childhood. Somehow I got my hand on a razor when taking a bath and nearly sliced the finger off. Though I faintly remember the accident, the scar remains. For all the scars we can see, there are many more we cannot see.
Wounds that damage our body and soul leave marks that are often permanent. Some wounds happen in an instant. Just as the razor scarred my finger for life, so a word, a tone, an act can traumatize in a moment. An angry word spoken in haste may leave a permanent, unseen mark on the heart.
We bear the mark of sin. It damages the heart, the mind, the emotions and even the body. We bear marks caused by the sin of others. We bear marks caused by our sin. Most of these marks we do not readily see. Yet they persist, impacting our perception of the world around us, impacting our perception of our self, impacting our perception of God.
Sin is not simply failing to do the right thing or choosing to do the wrong thing. Sin is the unraveling of God’s good creation. We are caught up in this unraveling. We contribute to this unraveling. We live in a good world gone wrong.
On this Good Friday, on this Holy Day of Days, we behold the One who steps into this world gone wrong with unrelenting love. He bears the marks of our broken hearts.
We behold His grief, and see our hidden silent grief.
We behold His affliction, and see the affliction that paralyzes us.
We behold His scars, and know that we ourselves are scarred.
As we behold our Savior, we come to see our desperate need for healing, cleansing, restoration. We realize that the wounds of sin have crippled us. We realize that we ourselves have repeated this pattern of damage by hurting others in word and act.
As behold our Savior, we behold the wounds of love. For His scars reveal the glory of God in the midst of a broken world. God’s relentless love will not allow sin to unravel this good and wondrous creation. Jesus bears the sin’s sting of death. In Him alone the cursed power of sin is unraveled. His Love bears all the destruction, hate, deception, abuse, violence, and hatred that sin releases. His Love bears it all continues to forgive,
“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
We come on this Good Friday and behold the Glory of God in the cross of Christ. On this mountain of mercy, we behold our hope. We behold the promise that these scars in soul and body have been taken up into God’s redeeming love. In Christ, these scars will shine with His glory, His love, His victory.
I have a somewhat macabre picture in my mind of zombies stumbling to Thanksgiving dinner. There’s a table full of zombies feasting on turkey, dressing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. Once they finish the appetizers, they start looking to the host for the next course.
Somehow a little bit Halloween has gotten into Thanksgiving and these “walking dead” keep showing up unannounced with a ravenous hunger.
Zombies do seem to keep showing up everywhere nowadays. They’ve broken free from George Romero’s films and are now showing up in Jane Austen novels like the awfully popular “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” They’re ambling through video games, comic books, social protests and even academic research.
In 2009, Carlton University and the University of Ottowa conducted a mathematical modeling analysis to determine the best plan of action in case of a zombie outbreak. The Center for Disease Control recently utilized zombies for an emergency preparedness campaign. So why not have zombies over for Thanksgiving?
In the modern reinterpretation of the “zombie myth,” these staggering sleepwalkers were once normal humans. Some cataclysmic event or pandemic turned them into human flesh eaters. They cannot stop consuming.
I think the zombies are already here. The walking dead dwell among us.
The Victorian author George MacDonald might say that the “walking undead” dwell among us. In his novel Lillith, he suggests that those who selfishly cling to life are undead. The undead do not yet to know how to live. Only when they die, will they live.
With a deep dose of German Romanticism, the novel follows the dark adventures of the undead Mr. Vane as he wanders across the far side of the grave. At one point, he encounters two skeletons crumbling apart as they argue. His guide, the raven explains that the skeletons are husband and wife. They’re damned to keep grumbling and crumbling until they can fully love and finally dance.
Like those skeletons, we stumble and grumble through the world, dull to wonder and glory and the utter joy of existence. We’ve been lulled into the sin of apetheia (sloth) by busyness, by disappointment, by confusion, by suffering and oddly enough by prosperity.
We can only handle so many blessings before we become bored. The monotony of daily blessings numbs us to the privilege of every breath. So we focus on our discontent while longing for more of the same. Many of us will literally stumble to Thanksgiving in state of ravenous somnolence.
I fear that we’ve gorged ourselves into a stupor. Like the ghouls on film, we can’t stop consuming. We consume news, entertainment, food, sex, ideas, and people. We use up everything and everyone for our pleasure and our misery.
Instead of realizing our uncontrollable urge, we can only realize how disappointed we are. For starters, no one gives us the recognition we’ve earned, and we deserve. We complain about people, about the world, about our families, and about God (even when we claim he’s not there).
We need some sort of shock treatment to jolt us back into the glory of existence.
After almost languishing to death in the fatalistic art scene of the 1890s, G.K. Chesterton experienced a resurrection of sorts. He woke up and was stunned to be alive. In Orthodoxy, he writes, “The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise.” Later, he would write, “Merely to exist for a moment, and see a white patch of daylight on a gray wall, ought to be an answer to all the pessimism of the world.”
By God’s grace, may we know this same jolt! If we are ever to escape the undying urge of self-consuming zombie feasting, we must know this same vital life. St. Bonaventure saw this life poured out in the cross. In love, God pours Himself into humanity in Christ. As a man, God pours his life out completely in the cross. Bonaventure saw this as the unrestrained love of the Son that holds nothing back—not even life itself. The answer to such an outpouring is unquenchable life: resurrection.
The resurrection reveals the Father’s kiss to the Son. The loving act of total outpouring of the Son is reciprocated by the Father in the act of outpouring the Spirit of Life into the Son. This death-life movement is the exact opposite of the zombie that craves human flesh. Instead of sucking life in, God pours life out.
We need a resurrection. We need the life of the Resurrected One. Thus, Bonaventure might direct our feasting to another thanksgiving meal: The Great Thanksgiving. The church calls the communion meal or the Eucharist, The Great Thanksgiving. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we encounter afresh the unrestrained love of God revealed in Christ.
This is real consuming, according William T. Cavanaugh. In “Being Consumed” he writes, “To consume the Eucharist is an act of anticonsumption, for here to consume is to be consumed, to be taken up into participation in something larger than the self, yet in a way in which the identity of the self is paradoxically secured.” In the Great Thanksgiving, we are welcomed into the communion of death and life.
We taste the mystery of love without restraint. Even as we remember the death of our Lord, we might forget our unrestrained craving. We might know the pain and joy of death and life in one movement.
Like Chesterton, we might be jolted awake from the sleep of the undead. We might discover the unexplainable mystery of being alive. Instead of killing zombies or becoming all consuming zombies this Thanksgiving, we might actually become thanksgiving, pouring out the unquenchable life and love of our Living Lord to the world around us.
Walking Away In the Cold (picture used by permission)
On May 8th, my friend Jack King delivered a sermon about the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He talked about how they are walking away from Jerusalem. That powerful image stuck in my mind, so I tried to write a meditation in responde to Jack’s sermon.
They’re walking away.
Walking toward Emmaus, they leave Jerusalem behind.
Three days ago they still burned with hope that Messiah had come. They still believed the Kingdom of God was at hand. They still believed the glory of God’s people would soon be restored; the oppressive rule of Rome was coming to an end; the false king Herod would soon be deposed. They believed Jesus would restore the land, the Temple, and the people. God’s kingdom was breaking into their midst, and they were filled with joy and hope and anticipation.
Today they’re walking away.
Jesus died on the cross as a lowly criminal. His bold proclamations died with him. Their faith died as well.
Walking toward Emmaus, they leave behind faith and hope and love. They leave behind dreams that rotted on the vine. They leave behind promises that hang empty in the air. They leave behind a community of disciples that now lies in ruin. They leave behind everything that gave their life meaning.
Today they’re walking away.
An ache grips their throat choking down through to the bowels. It feels as though they’ve eaten a poison that kills from the inside out. They cough out dead words of dead dreams. They look through dead eyes at a dead world. What do you do when all hope is lost?
Walking toward Emmaus, they leave behind the future and search blindly for a past that is gone. Once you’ve tasted something so wonderful, so beautiful, so hopeful, where do you go when it dies? You can’t go back to what you knew before. So you’re stuck in between a dead past and hope less future.
Today they’re walking away.
They walk and move and breathe in the numbing emptiness of limbo.
Some of us know the road to Emmaus all to well. We’ve known the excitement of God’s people hoping and believing and experiencing His touch, but we’ve also known the loss of hope, the death of dreams, the sense that God left us, forgot us and possibly even abandoned us. Some of us are walking alongside these disheartened disciples as they leave the Holy City.
Walking toward Emmaus, the Risen Jesus joins his disciples in their unsightly death march. His disciples have lost hope, lost faith, lost vision. They’re leaving Jerusalem. They’re walking away. And Jesus is walking with them.
Even when his disciples are faithless, He is faithful. He walks beside. He hears their complaint. His listens to their groans. He even asks them questions.
In the fullness of time, He speaks. He rehearses the story of God in the midst of His people. He reveals the goodness of God in the midst of dead lives, dead dreams, dead people. Again and again and again, the Lord speaks His Word to His people in distress, in blindness, in darkness. Again and again and again, His Spirit quickens faith in their hearts.
Noah hears this Word amidst his blind and deaf world and builds an ark that will be the beginning of a new world. Moses hears the Word while wondering among the Midianites. Samuel hears this Word when Israel’s light is flickering and about to go out. David hears the Word in the tomb of the cave. Ezekiel hears the Word on the banks of the River Chebar in Babylon.
Again and again and again, the Word resurrects the dry and dead bones of God’s people. Many times, God’s people are not seeking, are not looking for Him, and are not even aware of Him. Their hope and faith have long since died. The Word of Life overcomes the darkness and quickens the dead to life.
Today Jesus is walking away.
He walks away from the Holy City to join his weary disciples in their flight from God’s work. He speaks. The ache of death fades as faith sparks afresh. Anticipation burns within. Suddenly, they can see. The Risen Lord stands among them, serving them, feeding them, sustaining them.
Walking toward Emmaus, we’re leaving behind the grand expectations we had for God. Stripped of our confidences, our conditions, our conclusions, we encounter the Risen One. He is walking with us. He is listening to our complaint. He knows our frustration and confusion.
At the outskirts of Jerusalem, we hear His strange and wondrous Word of God. And who knows? As we follow the Voice of this Holy Shepherd, we may end up walking along side those who left the Holy Spirit and are waiting in darkness for the Word of Life.
David runs for his life. Death follows fast on his heels. In mad jealously, King Saul wants to take the head of the warrior who took the head of Goliath. Doeg the Edomite slays 70 priests in pursuit of this forsaken son.
And so David runs.
He runs to the Cave of Adullam. He runs to safety, to a fortress, to a tomb. From this cave he waits and waits and waits to face death.
David is not alone in the cave.
And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became captain over them. And there were with him about four hundred men.
(1 Samuel 22:2 ESV)
The cave is a fortress of the forsaken. In the cold dark place of death they gather.
They are in distress, pressed in from all sides, and crushed under the weight of problems, threats and struggles.
They are in debt, emptied with nothing left to give.
They are bitter in soul, waiting to die.
The cave is a tomb for those who’ve lost hope and can no longer see tomorrow.
David is not alone in the cave.
Job sits in the dark, struggling to understand. His world tremors under one disaster after another. A devastating fury lacerates his land. Raiders, whirlwinds, fires ravage his family, his flocks, his world. A disfiguring illness torments his body. A relentless grief plagues his soul.
Once a powerful lord, Job is reduced to a mere shadow, crying out day and night on a heap of ashes. Caught between the pangs of death and the emptiness of living, he exists day after lonely day. His comforters, condemn. God is silent. The cave swallows Job as he waits and waits and waits to face death.
David is not alone in the cave.
Ezekiel moans inwardly. The delight of his life, Ezekiel’s wife, dies. But God’s forbids him to mourn aloud. So he lives and speaks and acts day by day with the blinding loss hidden in his gut. His life is God’s very sign of Israel’s loss.
Born into the priesthood and raised to serve as priest in the Temple, Ezekiel never serves. Before his eyes, the Temple is destroyed and Jerusalem burns to the ground. Led away to the land of black clouds and false gods, he loses his homeland, his calling and his wife. Ezekiel prophecies judgment and waits and waits and waits to face death.
David is not alone in the cave.
Mary Magdalene has come to the end of all things. As the woman with seven spirits, she knows the desolation of complete forsakenness. With no hope, no family, nowhere to turn, she was falling and falling into darkness. Jesus took her hand and pulled her into light.
But now he is dead. Her hope lies in the tomb. She has nowhere to turn, no one to call. She sits at the cave, at the tomb, at the place of death. She cries with no tears. She screams with no noise.
She comes to cover Jesus’ body in spices, but he is gone. Instead of joy, she trembles in fear and confusion. Who has taken her hope? Who has stolen her joy? Mary sits by cave and waits and waits and waits to face death.
David is not alone in the cave.
I’ve known the cold, dark death of the tomb. I’ve felt the cool clutch of death seize my heart and drain my peace. I’ve known days that passed into night and back into days with no relief. As I write, I know some of you know this tomb all too well.
This is the place where God is silent. Darkness smothers. Words fall hollow. Hope seems lost.
This is the cold sabbath of Holy Saturday. We wait outside the tomb of Christ, wondering if we misunderstood. There are no words of hope. No reassuring feelings. No glimmers of light. Only a cold tomb where the body of our Savior lies. The thundering rule of death remains unchallenged and we grow weary, waiting and waiting and waiting to face death.
Jesus is not in the cave
In the twinkling of an eye, the Father speaks, the ground quakes, the Son arises. He who was dead is alive forevermore. He walks toward Mary, but she is blind to His love.
Jesus speaks and Mary arises with hope unshakeable. She goes forth as the first evangelist proclaiming the Good News of Him who has conquered.
In the land of darkness, Ezekiel beholds the light of glory. In his tomb of loss and death, the Lord calls his name. He arises and speaks to the four winds, he speaks to the valley of dry bones.
And behold a rattling…
Israel was dead but now is alive and from her bosom will flow healing for the nations.
Job runs out words. His complaint against God chokes in his throat as he sits, in silence. Then out of the whirlwind, the Lord answers Job. And the glory of the Lord shines all around. Job cannot answer. He can only behold, dumfounded by the wonder and majesty and beauty of the Lord on High. Job obediently prays for his friends.
David and his men do not die. But come forth as dread champions of the Lord. By God’s grace, those in distress, in debt and bitter in soul, come forth in the light of God’s glory. The Lord raises up David’s throne and from this very throne, Jesus rules and reigns the cosmos.
The cave does not, can not, will not have the final word. The voice of the Lord echoes through the place of the dead and the broken and weary and wounded come forth in his glory.
I have known the cave, and I have known the Father’s voice calling me forth to rest in the resurrection of Christ. In the cave, we are changed, transformed, and the tomb becomes a womb of new life in Christ.
So do not fear the cave. Eventually, we all go to the cave. But we are not forgotten. So rest. Wait. For the Risen One is Calling. By His word, we rise to new names, new vocations, new tomorrows. By His Word, we will rise and we will rise and we will rise to live in Christ forevermore.
One day my brother-in-law bought my dinner. I reached to take the ticket saying, “You don’t have to do that.”
He smiled and said, “You’re right. I don’t have to do this.” Then he proceeded to pay for my meal.
He didn’t have to act. He was free to act.
Makes me think of an old story.
The late afternoon sun beat down upon Mechab’s arms. Heat rose from the dry and broken soil beneath him. His body ached. His thoughts drifted.
Mechab dreamed of eating honey, bread and some fresh cheese. Traveling back to Samaria from Jericho, he’d soon be resting in the arms of his beloved. Mechab smiled. The draining swelter of this balmy day would not slow his pace toward home.
A groan interrupted his thoughts.
Turning aside, Mechab looked for the source of this human anguish. Lying down the hill in a ditch that sometimes flowed with spring water, Mechab saw him.
As he looked, the grief of suffering pierced his side, and Mechab felt the grieving of this poor fellow deep in his bowels. Called by the agony of a fellow traveler, Mechab ran to the side of this, this Jew.
Without considering the implications of his actions, Mechab wrapped his strong arms around this wounded merchant. His sweat mixed with this man’s blood.
This was not his blood. Or the blood of his people. This man was his enemy. This Jew despised Mechab and his people. This Jew might just consider it God’s justice if Mechab were beaten and left for dead. This Jew could not even look at Mechab.
The force of ethnic tabus should have repealed Mechab, should have driven him away, should have formed an unassailable barrier between Mechab and this man.
But they didn’t.
Answering the call of one groaning voice that penetrated his thoughts, his heart, his stomach, Mechab acted without consideration. He violated his tribal, ethnic expectations to love this one man who cried out for help. In Mechab’s world, he violated the ethics of his culture to love and care for this man.
He didn’t have to help this man. He was free to help this man.
Ivan Illich once described this parable as a story of freedom. As Jesus told this strange story to bewildered Jewish listeners, he described a freedom that no one could understand. He described the freedom of the people of God.
This is a freedom from obligation, a freedom from duty, a freedom from cultural or ethnic expectations. This is a freedom that steps outside of status, race, and all power structures. This is a freedom to simply love another human being.
When Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. He didn’t have to serve them. He was free to serve them.
When Jesus reconciled us to Himself. He didn’t have to bear our sin and suffering. He was free to bear our sin and suffering.
Jesus reveals a freedom of love that flows between Him and His Father. Jesus reveals a Love of the Spirit that blows where it will. In the Father, Son and Spirit, we behold and are immersed in a freedom that cannot be constrained, cannot be blocked, cannot be defeated. We behold a Love that creates and sustains us. We behold a Love that redeems.
Outside of this love, we are not, cannot be free. We are bound by our culture, our family, our society, our emotions, our sexual and physical drives, our expectations, our hurts, our struggles, our resentments, our memories.
In Christ alone, we are free.
There is more to say on this, but for now I’ll stop.
May we ask the Spirit of God to teach us the freedom to live by the breath of His love. We are free to bless, to encourage. By His Spirit, we step forward into a boundless love that knows no limit. A love that embraces friend and enemy alike.
We are free to love one another extravagantly, giving everything away–even our lives.
Resurrection of Christ by Matthias Grunewald
In order to begin thinking about John’s Revelation of Jesus Christ and the end of all things, it might be helpful to think about the revelation of Jesus Christ throughout the whole Bible. Here are a few highlights just to get the mind (and heart) ruminating upon the revelation.
After Adam forfeits his rule by obeying the serpent, God promises his seed will arise to crush the serpent’s head. Paul teaches us that Jesus in the second Adam (who does in fact crush the serpent’s head).
Moses gives the Law to Israel, but realizes they will falter and disobey. He proclaims another Lawgiver will come. The people will hear and obey Him. Jesus comes as that Lawgiver and Law fulfiller. He gives His Spirit to the people and now the Law is written on the hearts of God’s people, so they will obey the law of love.
Joshua goes to battle on behalf of Israel. As he leads the armies of Israel, he meets the “Captain of the Lord’s Army” who will truly battle the enemies of God by harrowing hell and rescuing the captives. Jesus is the supreme warrior and commander of angel armies who defeats evil, so that the weak and oppressed may rest in the goodness of God’s love.
Israel lives through 400 years of judges. These judges can only offer a provisional peace and victory to Israel. But one day the true judge of Israel will come. When Jesus comes, the day of the Lord arrives. He is the judge who will separate the sheep and the goats. He is the judge who will exalt the humble and humiliate the exalted.
Israel lives through an age of kings. Some rule with wisdom and many rule foolishly. David is a king after God’s own heart and is promised that one day a king will come from the house of David who will defeat all Israel’s enemies, bring peace the the land and restore worship in the land. Jesus, the Messiah, is that king. He is born to the house of David and defeats the enemies of God, restores the land (the whole earth) and makes a way for the people of God to worship in spirit and in truth. He is the king before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess: Jesus is Lord.
The prophets call Israel back to the Law and the Covenant. They appears as voices in the wilderness (often literally), proclaiming judgment on the enemies of God, calling for repentance, and offering a vision of the kingdom of God that extends to all nations. The greatest prophet of all, John the Baptist says that he baptizes with water, but another prophet is coming after him who will baptize with fire. Jesus is the prophet of God who baptizes His people in the fire of the Holy Spirit and sets these blazing bushes loose to bring the good news of the kingdom to every tribe and nation.
These are highlights and there are many more rhythms that final consummation in Jesus Christ. Before we can tackle the John’s Revelation of Jesus Christ, we must come to realize the whole Bible has been a revelation of Jesus Christ, and John’s writings are written within this movement that is always finding fulfillment in the gracious, gentle and every loving ruler of time and space. All persons and all things find their consummation in Jesus. Thus, the end of all things is not the non-existence but the fulfillment of all things in Jesus.
Here are a few thoughts on Psalm 46 that I wrote over ten years ago. I found it this morning in an old html file from a website I had in the 90s. As I reread, I think it is still relevant for today.
This psalm reveals the holiness of God moving in and through His people in the midst of chaos. I believe this speaks to what is coming upon the earth.
First Stanza
Verse 1 – 3. “God is both refuge an strength for us, a help always ready in trouble; so we shall not be afraid though the earth be in turmoil, though the mountains tumble into the depths of the sea, and it waters roar and seethe, and the mountains totters as it heaves.”
(Vs. 1) The Lord is Holy. His holiness is perfect order. Therefore, his holiness is our only true refuge in the midst of the chaos.
(Vs.2-3) Sin brings disorder. Sin always works to chaos. It removes the core, and everything begins to fall apart. Here is a picture of chaos tearing the earth apart. There is no internal unity, thus the foundations are crumbling and the world is returning to the dark waters before creation.
This passage can be understood globally and individually. Anywhere sin has a stronghold, chaos will follow. Sin will always bring internal disorder. It moves people out from the purposes of God. And outside of God’s purposes all cohesive energy dissipates, thus everything moves into disorder and chaos. Many people live in a state of chaos. Their internal world is falling apart. Soon more will follow. Entire nations reel to and fro in the midst of this lack of cohesive energy.
The crumbling brings confusion, darkness, fear, and destruction.
Refrain. Yahweh Saboath is with us, our citadel, the God of Jacob.
(Note: The New Jerusalem Bible inserts the refrain found in verses 7 and 11 after verse 3, thus dividing the Psalm into three stanzas.)
The refrain occurs three times. Each time it reminds us that God of Peace remains present to those who humble themselves and cry aloud for mercy. It is imperative we learn to enter and dwell (by faith) in God’s holy presence. This is the only place of rest and peace. Those who fail to abide will grow weak and faint before having entered into what God has planned for them.
Rabbis have debated the meaning of Yahweh for centuries. Sometimes it is rendered, “IAM IAM,” or “I will be as I will be.” In his book Moses, Martin Buber explains that many ancient cultures believed that names had power. They believed if you spoke the true name of a person or a god you could control them. Thus their religion sometimes incorporated a form of divination. They thought they could control their gods through the name.
Moses asks God for his name. But God doesn’t give him a name, instead he says, “YAHWEH.” Buber interprets this phrase, “I Am and Remain Present.” Thus God communicates to Moses, “You cannot summon me like the Egyptians summon their gods. I Am and Remain Present. In the midst of your 400 long years of suffering, “I Am and Remain Present.” You cannot summon me, but I Am and have always been present. Even when you rebelled. Even when you killed the Egyptian. I did not turn my back. I Am and Always Remain Present- calling you to turn towards me, to face me, and yield to me. Thus life is listening and turning to the voice of God.
Using Buber’s interpretation, consider the refrain. In the midst of chaos, God says to His people, “I Am and Remain Present.” The Holy One of Israel, the source of creation and all order, remains in the midst of His people. He calls us to turn and listen. To find refuge in His holiness. Like Jacob, we cry aloud for mercy, and His holy presence surrounds us, engulfs us. The holiness drives out chaos from within. Holiness brings fire, not to destroy, but to root chaos. Holiness restores creation to perfect order.
Second Stanza
Verses 4 – 6. There is a river whose streams bring joy to God’s city, it sanctifies the dwelling of the Most High. God is in the city, it cannot fall; at break of day, God comes to its rescue. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms are tumbling, when he raise his voice the earth crumbles away.
Jesus said that streams of living water flow out from his people. Each of those who cry out for mercy, are immersed in holiness. This holiness springs out through them. When the believers come together, these streams form a river of holiness which brings joy to the church and prepares the way for the coming of the Lord. As the Lord descends in the midst of the church, this river of life flows out from her. She is unconquerable. Moving in His purpose, the people of God, as one body, one river, stands strong.
The church has been weak and frail. While many churches have externally stood against the world, the internal forces of the world of selfishness worked chaos within the church. In the midst of the battle, she was weak. But as the holiness arises in and through God’s people, the church is rescued.
The true order is Christ in the center of the church in the center of creation. When the church is restored, then the Word of the Lord goes out from the church which brings an end to systems and structures and governments which operate in chaos keeping the curse upon the earth. The Word of the Lord flowing out from the church, breaks this power, kingdoms of darkness fall giving way to the light, to restoration.
At this point there is another refrain. Reminding us that God is and remains present. He is and remains our refuge. We can never move beyond the simple truth of practicing the presence of God.
Third Stanza
Verses 8 – 10. Come consider the wonders of Yahweh, the astounding deeds he has done on the earth; he puts an end to wars over the whole wide world, he breaks the bow, he snaps the spear, shield he burns in the fire. “Be still and acknowledge that I am God supreme over nations, supreme over the world.”
All the effects of the chaos come to a halt through the power of holiness. Works of destruction are brought to an end. And all mankind will see the glory of the Lord. This seems to point to the ultimate restoration of all things into Christ. Holiness does not simply change our inward character, it also transform everything outward. It brings true justice into the world. This is possibly the beginning of a second Eden.
The psalm ends with the refrain. Regardless of what has been or is coming, God is and remains present. We must not look for him in the past (i.e. – focusing too heavily on what he did in the past, including the Early Church). We also must avoid looking for him in the future (simply waiting for the great revival or renewal or restoration to come). As servants of the Lord, we learn to watch for His coming and meet Him in the now.
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