Wounded for Life

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, … let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith … -- Hebrews 10:19-22

This isn’t what I really want to talk about.  I want to talk about joy and how we take the wrong things too seriously.  I wonder if there is such a thing as being seriously joyous or joyously serious.  But I’m not ready to do that, and this may be the way to it anyway because joy must have the right environment.  Just as a plant needs light to live, joy needs confidence and assurance.  We can only experience joy in anything when we lose ourselves in it.  I can’t lose myself if I’m worried about my performance and measuring up.  I can’t lose myself if I constantly checking to see if I am good enough, if I have to go back and see if I meticulously followed all the right steps and used the correct protocol. 

When Jesus died upon the Cross, we are told:  And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:51).  That same passage tells us that tombs were opened up by the quake and … many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many (vv. 52-53). 

The veil in the temple between the Holy Place and the Most Host Place was symbolic.  God could not dwell among men.  We usually think about this in terms of God’s holiness and our sinfulness as if God would be offended.  We would appear so filthy and horrible that He would just be sickened and disgusted, that He would have to kill us because He is just too pure to look upon us apart from the blood of Christ.  I think, though, that God’s locking Himself away, so to speak, under the Old Covenant, was a mercy to us.  Remember that Adam hid himself in the Garden.  The fallen are repulsed by the Divine.  We are the ones who cannot stand it, who cannot stand in or stand to be in His presence.  So God dials it back, veils it. 

Now we have Christ to mediate for us, to be the conduit, to make the fullness of God accessible to us because He is fully man as well.  When it talks about flesh here, as one commentary says, it’s not talking about the Lord’s body which is the temple, but about His frail human flesh, His human nature.  It is through the fully man part of Jesus that we are now able to enter into to the fully God part – God and man united, brought together in Jesus of Nazareth. 

Christians talk about grace, but we still have this bias toward performance.  It may no longer be about washings and kosher food and not doing work on Saturday, but we emphasize church attendance and service and giving.  People who do all that are better Christians -- people who go on the mission field, people who pray two hours every day, people who read their Bibles through every year, and so on.   These are a better class of Christians.  Sure, jokers like me will go to heaven but I’ll be in steerage.  We’re not first-class Christians.  It’s the first-class Christians that are advancing the kingdom and all.  I’m not much better than a stowaway or a hitchhiker, kind of a parasite. 

I’m not criticizing the first-class Christians because I don’t think they see themselves that way – the genuine ones.  It’s that I’m striving on my own to be a first-class Christian, and I know I’m not making it.   The reason is because I’m not seeing the way that has been opened by and in Jesus Christ.  I’m not in the Presence, and I’m not going to enter in by performance or by striving.  I will perform – or better – I will be fruitful once I’m in. 

You can a limb off a fruit tree and take it over to another fruit tree and graft it.  But in order to do that, you have to make a cut in the second tree -- the new, living tree -- so that limb can connect.  Once you do that, it is going to be a productive branch.  You can take the same limb and tie it on a fence post or even tie it onto a tree, and it’s not going to do anything except die.  I guess you could even tie fruit on the dead stick so it looks good, but all you are going to wind up with is decay and stench. 

A Roman soldier shoved a spear into the side of our Lord the same way a gardener would make a cut on a living tree for a graft.  Through that rent in His flesh, I may be grafted in as a son of God.  We are in.  Life, eternal life, the life of God is flowing into us.  How can we, then, not be fruitful?

Good Gifts

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. -- John 15:7

Often prayer can seem a hope dim,
Relegated to last resorts,
Knowing God, if He might be real,
Could never feel my human fear.

But the things I love long to seek:
Liberty, justice, joy, and truth,
Are the dreams of God manifest
Upon the sphere, in hearts broken
Open, to light a wick or two,
And laugh at the empty darkness,
And, in endless hope, ascend.

God does dream, though never asleep,
His waking dream becomes His sheep
Who hear the Shepherd calling deep,
And following, His dream they keep.


The things that we desire and hope for are from God.  Sometimes those things are distorted and perverted by minds darkened and twisted themselves.  Evil is without substance, empty and vain.  It is only when it clothes itself in an illusion of good that it has any attraction for us.  Evil offers us good but in an evil way.  Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride all purport to offer us the satisfaction, peace, contentment, joy, honor, and fulfillment that can come only from righteousness.  If the Good that God wants to pour into us then to pour out of us has to be filtered through such unholiness, it becomes defiled.  The Source, however, remains pure, always. 

The first step in prayer is pushing away the filters of diseased worldly thinking, which most of have to one degree or another, and returning to that Source.  When we seek the good in our own lives and in the lives of others, we are seeking God's pure and perfect will.  Our Father is not in the business of denying His children anything that is good for them.

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!  (Luke 11:11-13)

The Holy Spirit is that pure and undefiled Source.  Through the Spirit we are able to pray in truth and holiness, undeceived and undisturbed by "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions".  We bypass our own muddied, muddled thinking to pray with clarity and  certainty.  By the intercession of the Holy Spirit within us, we are transmitting God's will for ourselves and for His kingdom back to Him in an endless, unbroken, fertile cycle like the rain rising from the sea to return to the sea having brought its life-giving and life-sustaining blessings. 

The Play is the Thing

We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. – 1 John 3:16-24

Despite what we might think, our English word hypocrite is not transliterated from the ancient Greek word for socialist politician, nor is it from the related word for journalist. A hypocrite was an actor – though, admittedly, Hollywood elites do show an amazing affinity for fascist third-world dictators and warlords.

When Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites, He was not implying merely that they said one thing and did another. He wanted His hearers to know that the Pharisees were actors, players in their own little production, pretending to be something they knew in their own hearts they were not. They spoke their lines and played their parts before the world, but their lives were another story. William Shatner was never a starship captain, and he knows that. Tom Cruise knew that he was not a Navy pilot. Sean Penn pretended to be Harvey Milk, but we know and he knows he is not a gay politician because he is married to Robin Wright was once pretended to be Princess Buttercup. Sean Penn also played a mentally challenged person in “I Am Sam” – the exception that proves the rule.

I have claimed to be a Christian for some years now, and I have also done things that are very un-Christian, even in that same time frame. My heart has not always been convinced that I am what I say I am. I have lived with self-condemnation. It is a miserable condition for a believer, and it is a condition that must be addressed. To live in that state of conflict for any length of time would surely result in insanity. John says that the remedy for condemnation is self-sacrificing love. Our actions, our deeds will reassure our hearts.

Who but God could have come up with such a counterintuitive plan for freeing us from the doubts of our heart? And it is the heart of man that is the whole problem. Jeremiah tells us that the heart of man is desperately wicked, and, he asks, who can know it? Yet God knows us perfectly. He does not need to be convinced. Our need is not to win Him over to our side. He’s already on our side, having made provision in His Son for us to be His children. Or, as Romans 8:32 says, He did not even spare His own Son, but offered Him up for us all; how will He not also with Him freely grant us everything?.

Our good actions do not secure salvation for us. They do not put God in our debt. There even seems to be something contradictory in thinking that we are “here to help others”. Isn’t everyone more or less in the same boat? Sure, some people are born with more limitations or disabilities than others, but most of us, apart from government bureaucrats, politicians, ACORN, and the SEIU, consider it undesirable to be freeloaders, dependent on someone else for our bread and NGC (non-government cheese).

The one who benefits from my doing right is most of all me because I am the one who doubts and feels alienated. I am the one who needs to be convinced and assured and confident in my standing in Christ. My obedient interactions in the horizontal translate to greater confidence and assurance in my vertical interaction. I can converse with God in complete faith that my prayers will be heard and answered for I now know that I am abiding in Christ.

I am not always going to feel “right” any more than I always feel married. If I were counseling potential brides and grooms, I’d tell them it isn’t how you feel that keeps your marriage intact, it’s what you do. If we allow our feelings to dictate our actions, we will soon find ourselves in despair. If, conversely, we do right, our feelings will follow our deeds.

Crossings

“I will go further, Polwarth, and say, I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him.” Thomas Wingfold -- George MacDonald

The context of this statement is that the doubting curate, Wingfold, has been mentored by the dwarf Polwarth (you know this is Victorian literature – there has to be a dwarf). He has dealt to some extent with his doubts about Christianity mainly by studying the Gospels and coming to know about the Christ. Focusing on the four Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, was a favorite theme in MacDonald’s writings. He emphasized knowing Jesus directly and believed the narratives of the Evangelists provided the clearest depiction of the Lord, both in terms of His Person as well as His teachings.

The character is still developing. He does not have the faith that gives him rest. Yet he has seen something that pushes him onward. The life of Christ is a life worth living. Everything else is a shadow, a cheap imitation. While Wingfold does not believe that he possesses that life yet and perhaps does not even know that it is his to possess by faith, he sees that it is real life, true and abundant life. He has seen that, apart from Christ, there is nothing of value.

Jesus asked, “What good is it to a man to gain the entire world, yet lose his own soul?” A soul is worth more than the world. The world is temporary, passing away. The soul is infinite and eternal

Rejection of the world’s value system is a necessity for following Christ. We drop all the accretions of Mammon and take up the Cross. In order to do that one must see the beauty of Christ contrasted with one’s own dark, ugly soul. A traveler must understand that not only is there a wrong road but a right one. Moral teaching is good but alone it is inadequate. A man may treat his neighbor decently yet still possess a twisted soul. We don’t need people who merely act better; we need people who are better.

MacDonald’s curate saw the chasm and he believed there was a Bridge, but he had not yet set his foot upon it to test it.

By contrast there are many who deny that the chasm exists or that it is as wide as claimed. They believe it can be traversed by a mere step or, at worst, a Knievel-like leap. A wise man said long ago, “There is a way that seems right to a man but it ends in death.”

Others admit there is a yawning abyss but have no hope of a bridge. Convinced there is no way to cross, they turn away to find something that will deaden a hopeless existence further.

Wingfold eventually moved forward, tried the Bridge and found it would bear the weight. I was talking to my father a week or two back and he spoke of this same point in his own way. He had come to realize where the road led, saw the promise of Life, but was unsure that it could ever be his. Speaking to his friend and pastor, Dad said, “This will run a man crazy.” The preacher replied wisely, “No. It won’t.” Sunday came and Dad listened to another sermon. A few days later, thinking about some statement the preacher had made, he came to that old Bridge and found it more than adequate for the crossing.

I kind of wonder what the old preacher said. I knew him well myself. Dad can’t remember, but it has been many years. It’s likely that it would not have much meaning for anyone else anyway. Old Jordan probably wouldn’t know either, but he long ago made a different crossing and it may be a while before I get a chance to ask.