The Roost

And a scribe came up and said to him, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.  And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. – Matthew 8:19-20

Commentaries and preaching about this verse typically focus on the poverty of Jesus or the fact that the poor person who has no great possessions may be more like Christ than the rich.  Because of the context, I think we can allow that Jesus is issuing a challenge to the scribe who offered to follow Him.  He is not, He makes clear, the ordinary type of rabbi who is interested in finding a place in this world. 

The word translated “nests” is related to the word “tabernacle”.  It is more like a roosting place for the night than a nest for eggs.  There was no place on earth for the Lord to settle, though He had “tabernacled” with Israel and had, to a degree, dwelt in the temple.   In Luke’s account of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:26-36), we read of Peter’s reaction:  And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah—not knowing what he said.  The Lord had no intention of staying here, of building houses, temples, cities, palaces or fortresses. 

One reason I have probably remained a Protestant is because I find a disconnect between the primitive (in the sense of primacy) “Book of Acts” church and the kind of medieval tradition of Catholicism and Orthodoxy with the tendency toward cathedrals and an emphasis on buildings.  Of course, Protestants learned that worshipers like nice facilities with good parking, and that become one of the trademark gimmicks for “church growth” in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  It probably still is today, but I pay a lot less attention. 

The church is not a building, though parts of it may meet in one.  Jesus says that wherever two or three gather in His Name – where there are relationships, communion, and fellowship, there He is.  His dwelling place is in us, and ours is to be in Him. 

Nothing, Nor Anything

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  – Romans 8:35-39

I don’t have much to say today.  I probably need to sleep more.  This passage doesn’t need any help from me anyway.  It came up in the comments on One Cosmos yesterday as Kurt spoke of it, and it seemed like a good way to end the week.

What was it that caused the Lord such agony in the Garden of Gethsemane?  For eternity He had been with the Father.  Throughout the Incarnation, even as a man, He had never known the absence of His Father or of the Father's love.  He knew, though, He was about to experience the wrath of Divine Justice.  He was going to suffer the righteous and appropriate consequences of humanity’s sin.  He would be cut off from God’s love in death.  The thought of that caused such trauma in His soul that blood mingled with His sweat as He prayed. 

The Lord endured this suffering on our behalf, that we who were separated from the Father might be welcomed into His presence and experience, not His wrath and judgment, but His mercy and His love.  We are in Christ.  Because the Lord stepped in and took our place in being cut off by our sin, we can step into the Presence clothed in Him and His righteousness and remain, now and forever.

Passing through the door of death only brings us that much closer to Him. 

RE: TARDIS

In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, declares the LORD who does this. -- Amos 9:11-12

The booth or tabernacle of David was the tent in which the Ark rested after David brought it up to Jerusalem until the completion of Solomon’s temple.  Amos is prophesying some two hundred years after the reign of Solomon.  Referencing the tabernacle of David would have been analogous, in a historical sense, to our referencing that period when the seat of the federal government was in New York rather than in Washington, D.C.  The words of Amos, though, look forward to the Son of David and His resurrection. 

We were talking about the Ark and how we are God’s dwelling a couple of days ago.  It is sometimes said, in words to this effect, God is so vast and transcendent that the cosmos itself cannot contain Him yet so immanent, so personal and intimate that He is able to dwell within a human heart.  We are not worried by paradoxes, recognizing enlightenment reconciles parallel lines at the vanishing point of language.     

I am not a diehard Dr. Who fan, but I know what TARDIS is, and I know that it is bigger on the inside than on the outside.  Humans are the same way.  We tend to think, in common sense, of our bodies as containers.  They are more like three-dimensional interfaces.  I won’t be tattooing this old carcass – too much like branding cattle – but if I were of that persuasion, I would consider:  Cosmos Inside.      

Restoring the booth of David would serve to unite the people of God.  Edom, that is Esau, and Israel are brothers separated and often at odds with one another.  The Lord rejected Esau as He had previously rejected Ishmael but not forever.  The rejection of the nations, whatever their lineage, was only temporary and relative.  Eventually all are reunited in and under the one Tabernacle: Christ.  We are all in Christ, and He dwells in us.  The kingdom of God is within you.   

Give Me Shelter

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
till the storms of destruction pass by.
-- Psalm 57:1 

David was hiding out in a cave, pursued by Saul and the armed forces of Israel.  There were no safe places.  He tried going over to the side of the Philistines, and they wanted to kill him.  His courage, skill, and dedication had made him an enemy of all who sought power, self-gratification, and self-aggrandizement -- of all who were indifferent or opposed to the will of God.  

Do the right thing, and you have every man's hand against you like a sheep-killing dog.  That would have probably been the first line of my psalm had I been in David's place.  We could hardly blame a person in that sort of trial for becoming bitter, complaining and bemoaning such a fate.  The Bible often calls David a prophet, and his psalms are replete with messianic prophecies.  He was a prophet not in word only; he is a prophetic type.  His life illustrates and solidifies the principles and purposes of God -- as Paul said was the case with of all the events in the history of Israel. 

Disorder, destruction, and disruption are everywhere today.  The chaos will increase because so much of the world is turning away from God, and even more are not turning to Him.  I do not have a solution to the many puzzles that plague us.  I know Someone who does.   Like David, the only thing we can do is call to God for mercy and trust Him to shelter us from the storms of destruction set to sweep across the face of the earth.

I'm not worried about myself.  The worst that can happen to me does not hold a lot of terror.  I suppose I'd hate to lose my mind or become a burden to anyone else.  Otherwise, while the pain of transition my physical nature seeks to avoid, death itself mean only that I will see the face of Jesus rise like daybreak in the holler. 

The ones I would leave behind are my concern.  Have I been faithful enough in telling the truth to the next generation?  Have I been a good enough example?  Have I demonstrated sufficiently and efficaciously that God alone is my Refuge?  Will they take the message to heart and do the same?     

I've ended up saying this every day, sometimes several times a day, for the last couple of weeks in various contexts:  if we are abiding "in the shadow of" His wings, everything comes to us through Him and by His will. 

Bide and Abide

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.  Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. – 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4

From our perspective, the Lord “returned” once to visit destruction upon Jerusalem.  He will return again to collect and judge the saints.  I don’t pay much attention to “Rapture” discussions, because I think it will be pretty obvious when Jesus does touch down.  That’s essentially what Paul is saying here. 

My preferred response to people who want to get into debates about eschatology and the Mark of the Beast, the identity of the Antichrist, when the Great Tribulation is going to start, and all that stuff, is to suggest they read John’s Second Letter:  For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist (2 John 7).   The antichrists are already here.  You probably know one or two personally.

 The “man of lawlessness” would be one who denies Christ, a false Christ, possibly – if indeed this is referring to a single individual.  I think it might be a class or a category – like saying “the man about town” or “the big man on campus”, a type rather than a particular individual.   The number of people who think they are god seems to be ever expanding.  When that comes to be the typical message preached and presented by so-called Christian churches, we will be seeing “the rebellion” – the great apostasy, the great “falling away”.  Sort of like with the man of lawlessness, I don’t think that will necessarily be made manifest in an acute way but rather chronically.  It is happening now and has been happening from way back. 

Our job is not to predict but to practice.  Back to 2 John, verses 8 and 9: 

Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God.  Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.   

So even the Bible agrees, to practice Dude-ness, one must abide.