The Called

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours ... -- 1 Corinthians 1:2

The church is the ekklesia -- those who are called out.  Our English word church is derived from a different Greek word, kyriakon, from the root kyrios -- lord or master, thus "the lord's house".  The physical structure of a building is not holy.  It serves a holy purpose.  I think a building can develop a holy atmosphere, but it is the saints meeting together in the presence of God that sanctifies a place.  No place can sanctify us.  This is probably harder for some believers to grasp than for others.  Churches with altars and iconography that have been sanctified should be respected and may be venerated, but we are respecting and venerating not the thing itself, which is nothing, but the faith, love, and devotion of those who set it apart, and in which, by the grace of God, we may participate.  God dwells in believers, not stained glass windows or statues or cathedrals.

Because Corinth was such a messed up place, this letter spends a lot of time talking about what the assembly of believers ought to look like, how they ought to behave, and what they really are.  It addresses, point by point in some cases, a variety of questions raised by the local, mostly Greek converts.  Paul, in his linguistically skillful, systematic way, introduces the main point at the start.  We are the church; we are God's people.  We are sanctified, made holy and chosen in Christ.  We are called to be holy and called together.  The only legitimate divisions are geographic ones.  The world, as we shall see further on, will find plenty of reasons to be offended by Christianity, but we should seek to live as inoffensively as possible both with those inside the Body of Christ and those outside.

The verse quoted could be broken down like this:  we are the called-out, called to be saints, who call upon the name of our Lord, Jesus, the Chosen and Anointed One who was called to save us.

That's a lot of calling, but that's what God does. 

We live out in the country, and we have a volunteer fire department.  It is not entirely such as we have some full-time staff, but most of the firefighters and emergency personnel are not just sitting around the firehouse.  They are available and ready to answer the call when it comes in.

We're kind of like that.  We are on-call.  We do other things.  We have a building where we meet every so often for training, strengthening, and encouragement, where we sometimes rally in order to be properly equipped.  We don't actually do our work there any more than firefighters only put out fires down at the station.  Now we are different from the volunteer firefighters in that things are not always on fire, and we are not responding only to emergency situations.  Our work is done daily and everywhere in everything that we do, because, as we are indwelt by the Spirit, we are carrying God into every task that we address and every place that we visit.

That can be a sobering thought for some of us.

We are, or ought to be, learning to give more and more of our lives to the Lord each day.  Saints are not plaster.  There are supposed to be a lot of them.  Jesus said (Matthew 10:34-36) that He would bring division even in families.  The truth may divide us from those who cling to delusions and deceptions, to the idols and false gods of their own creation.  Yet the true joy and, of course, the calling, of saints is in fruit-bearing and multiplication.  Take the call.

I've Read Your Book

Put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. – Micah 7:5-6

Most of us are more familiar with this passage from Matthew chapter 10 as quoted in part by Jesus after He said that He had “not come to bring peace, but a sword” (v. 34).  Those early Christians were often seen as troublemakers and people who upset the right order of things, as described in the book of Acts.  For example, Acts 17:6 says, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also …” -- that is what the truth does.  It puts the world on its head, uprooting and thus restoring the divine order.

It isn’t just the outside world that finds this disturbing.  In dreams the house usually represents the dreamer’s life.  When the Lord is at work in our hearts, we may find ourselves in disarray, at odds with those close to us while at the same time dealing with internal conflicts.  The house is divided against itself, and a choice has to be made.  Are we going to sink back into our normal state of complacency and try to restore peace with all the elements of our old life by either partially or completely rejecting God?  To do so is to die.  As the man said, only the dead have seen the end of war.  It seems a hard way to obtain a false peace.

The alternative is to embrace God’s truth, to allow our world to be stood on its head.  The battle will move out a circle, and we will find our internal turmoil soothed and quiet.  We may be still in the midst of storm and war, but our hearts will be as still as a deep and sheltered pool.

There is one other thing that I have believed for a long time and stated on occasion, though I was never able to give a good reason or a Scripture reference as to why I believed it.  It may be that I picked it up from verse 5 above.  Sometimes we have to be careful of whom we ask prayer.  Not all people have my best interests at heart, but beyond that, not even all of those who love me (few enough in my case as it is) are willing to accept what God wants to do for me.  Many of us are confounded by this.  Pride, envy, and jealousy are powerful.  I’ve known fathers who were troubled by their sons’ successes for fear that it might overshadow their own achievements, forgetting, perhaps, that the sons’ accomplishments redound to the glory of the fathers.  How much more likely that the prayers of other family members or of some friend might be chilled by an envious frost?    

Are there not mothers who fear that God’s will done in a child’s life might loosen her own influence?  Some of those close to us may draw a slightly perverse pleasure from our dependence on them.  I have to watch that tendency in myself with regard to family and friends.  It’s a dangerous thing to play god, though it can be thrilling.  We should beware of polluting our good intentions toward others and likewise of their best intentions toward us being less than perfectly pure.  

We don't even have to mean to do harm.  Suppose a friend of modest means comes to me and asks that I pray with him for a car to replace his broken-down, unreliable vehicle.  I should pray that God will bless him with the perfect car for him -- not the one he wants or the one he'll settle for or the one I think would be good enough for him.  For all I know, the Lord may have a Lexus convertible for him while I'm envisioning a solid, low-mileage Toyota pickup.  Would I feel bad if he got a better rig than I have? 

Sadly, to know my enemies, I may not need to do as Patton did with Rommel and read his book.  I may need look only to my own heart, my own impulses and inclinations.  

There is One we may always fully trust and to whom we may make known our deepest desires without fear.  But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Bid the Mob Good Day

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.  And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.  But passing through their midst, he went away.  — Luke 4:28-30

This is a rather intriguing passage that sounds more like a scene from a Chuck Norris movie than from the Gospel.  There is no mention of arm-bars or round-house kicks so we are left to wonder exactly how it was that Jesus "passed" through the middle of a hostile crowd and walked off. 

Keep in mind that this occurred in Nazareth, the boyhood home of Jesus.  These were people who had known Him most of His life.  His mother, brothers and sisters (or cousins if you are Catholic) still lived there. 

What had Jesus done to stir up so much animosity?  He had declared His destiny.  After reading from what we know as Isaiah 61, Jesus said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 

The Bible can be studied as literature and as history.  It can be discussed and examined as a basis for establishing a good and equitable and even a free society.  God is not opposed to our using His book in ways that make the world a better and more beautiful place.  At its highest level, though, the Bible is more than a record; it is a revelation.  It is the means for unveiling the Divine to us and ultimately in us.  Consequently, by the grace of God and the power of the Cross,  we may become living epistles for those around us, which would be, we might think, wonderful.  Except that a lot of people, even religious people, are rather offended by God if He is other than what they have come to understand Him as or what they want Him to be. 

As long as religious people can make their god into an image or in some other way clearly define the boundaries of what this god might be or be allowed to do, they are perfectly content.  The ones who attacked Jesus were accepting of a fully transcendent God, of One who Could Not Be Named.  And that God is very real and very much Reality.  Those good Jews were in no way common idolators.  The immanent — you might even say, invasive God, present in the universe, in Christ was simply too much for them to comprehend.  This manifestation of God's presence shattered their understanding.  Instead of accepting the Unveiling, they attacked it.

Hostility toward the immanent God did not end with the Crucifixion.  As Jesus told His disciples, "Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours."  When we become earthen vessels filled with the Light, when we are truly invaders behind enemy lines and not collaborators, we, too, are likely to be attacked.  There is no need to be taken by surprise if we find, on occasion, that "... a person's enemies will be those of his own household.".  It happens.  Our families, our friends, those who have supported us and assisted us in the past may turn away if not become outright antagonistic. 

The answer to this kind of antagonism is not to kick the mother-in-law in the head (as temporarily satisfying as that might be from time to time) or put a submission hold on the next-door neighbor.  It is, instead, to be so secure in our peace and our purpose and our confidence in Christ that the violence of the resistance has no hold on us.  We, like Jesus, are well able to "pass through" the objections that would hem us in on the precipice.  The world and even worldly religion will try to cast us down, but the mob and the press of public opinion or "consensus" can never control us or contain us.  We may have to face rage and walk in the middle of it, but it is, ultimately, the hopeless, helpless rage of impotence.  

The Man from Snowy River