Crisis, Commitment, Communion

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. -- Proverbs 13:11

I think I heard that there were three winning tickets for this week’s huge Powerball drawing.  That’s means probably a minimum of a hundred million or so to each winner – a lot of money to be dumped into someone’s lap.  Most of us cannot even imagine what that means, and most people cannot handle that kind of wealth.  We have learned how to manage the income we have.  Poor people have acquired skills in dealing with poverty.  Show up at any Walmart or similar store the day after the monthly load of EBT cards takes place.  These people know to the minute when their money will be available.  They know to the penny how much they have -- three or four hundred bucks, or fifteen hundred, a person like that can manage with some degree of skill.  Give them access to a hundred thousand, a million or a hundred million, and they simply have no concept.

It happens to lottery winners, to athletes, and to some entertainers – especially those who become overnight celebrities.  To the rest of us, it seems strange that someone who has an inordinate amount of money should ever end up in debt and bankrupt, yet, this is a very common path.  Managing large amounts of money is a skill like any other.  It can be learned, but it is takes time.  If your money comes in slowly and your wealth accumulates little by little, your management skills grow apace.  Everything works out.

The same applies in the spiritual realm.  We get a picture of it in type as God promises to give Canaan to the Children of Israel:    I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.  Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land (Exodus 23:29-30). 

The problem the Israelites had was that, though they had been delivered from slavery, they were still slaves in terms of their mindset.  It took time for them to see themselves as the Lord saw them.  Upon encountering the gigantic inhabitants of Canaan, the faithless spies famously said that they were as grasshoppers in the eyes of their enemies, and in their own eyes.   After being beaten down and oppressed for generations, they could not change their minds about who they were and what they were capable of.  They had come out of Egypt in crisis which led to, quite naturally, celebration and vows of commitment, but very few of those so delivered entered into communion.

I believe that conversion is a genuine experience, but, at the same time, I am skeptical of instant Christians – just add water.  Typically, I think we come to a point of crisis where we realize what we are doing isn’t working.  We recognize and embrace the truth of the Gospel.  We commit ourselves to Christ.  The riches of God’s grace and mercy become available to us, and we rejoice.  After a while, though, most of us experience difficulties.  The same old problems confront us.  The same old man too often responds to those problems.  We wonder if we were ever “saved”, or if we need to “rededicate” our lives to Christ.  Maybe it didn’t take the first time.  I have a close relative who used to rededicate about every six months.  I don’t suppose it hurt anything, but I’m not sure it helped anything either.  How many times do you need to cross the Red Sea?  It borders on magical thinking. 

What did Jesus tell us to do in the Great Commission?  Make disciples.  Disciples are those under discipline.  They are learning and developing a new attitude and a new mindset – renewing our minds is the Scriptural phrase, to go with the new nature we have been given.  When people say that we learn to pray, we mean that people learn when to pray and that prayer is listening as much or more than pleading.  We have faith, but we need to develop it and refine it, challenge it and test it in real world situations. 

It takes time.  This is why most people do not die immediately after coming up from the waters of baptism.  A Crisis Christian can immediately or almost immediately become a Committed Christian resulting in a Celebrating Christian.  It doesn’t always happen, but it’s common.  To become a Communion Christian, however, is always going to be a process.  A few of us -- for reasons known only to God, move to that place fairly quickly.  To those watching from the outside, the transition may appear seamless and sudden.  The rest of us take the long way home.  We adapt slowly.  At times it may seem that we are making no progress at all, but we can trust that the Lord is leading by the way that is best.  Some of us take more changing than others, more dying to self than others.  Do not despair or fear.  Little by little, we grow in grace. 

Curing the Evil Conscience

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, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  – Hebrews 10:19-22

What is an evil conscience?  Is it one that calls that which is evil “good”, as we were talking about a couple of days ago?  When we come to Christ, we do get our perspective changed.  We begin to see our thoughts, words, and deeds from the Divine point of view.  We understand things we found acceptable before are offensive to God and ought to be offensive to us. 

In the context of this passage, the writer talks about drawing near to God.  In this case, what is meant by an evil conscience has more to do, I think, with keeping us at a distance.  As Christians, our conscience may accuse us to the point that we feel condemned and unworthy of having access to the Father. 

I don’t mean to treat repentance lightly, but sometimes enough is enough.  When it comes to being convicted with regard to a fault in our lives, we are to repent.  We do that by admitting to God that we are guilty and wrong.  Then it is done.  But what if we do it again?  We’re going to feel bad and need, again, to acknowledge our failure.  Yes, but what if I just can’t quit?  What I’m really doing, at that point, is acknowledging that I know something is wrong but I rather enjoy it and don’t want to quit so long as I suffer no serious consequences from it.   If I don’t want to quit, I won’t, and I shouldn’t call it repentance because I haven’t “changed my mind” – no metanoia. 

Regardless of that point, I still have access to the Father in Christ, even if my “evil” conscience tells me otherwise.   The ultimate cure for wanting to continue under the flesh’s control is intimacy with God.  God does not fix us at a distance then bring us in.  He brings us in to fix us. 

The cure for an accusing conscience is to recognize the finished work of Jesus as Savior.  That’s all that I have going for me, but it is more than enough.  The Blood of the Cross is the answer to that nagging doubt that I am good enough for God.  Alone I cannot be accepted.  In Christ I cannot be rejected.  The Cross brings me into communion with the Lord, and once I am there, He will [c]reate in me a clean heart …  and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10).

Here, Hearing

 I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.  Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. -- Psalm 116:1-2

It is understandable that one would love God for paying attention to his cries for help in time of need.  We call out in petition and supplication because the situation is beyond our ability, if it exceeds the power of the human mind and the human hand to remedy.  Notwithstanding that all are not always willing to admit it, there is much that is beyond us, questions we cannot answer, puzzles we cannot solve. 

Yet once we know the Lord hears us and cares to listen, once we truly grasp this ever-present reality, we may, with the psalmist, find, greater than relief, a positive joy almost compelling us to keep on calling to Him.  His presence draws forth from us deeper longings for communion and what Christianity weakly names fellowship. 

There is, for me, essentially one reason to go to church:  I am a better man in the presence of my sisters and brothers.  We may get labeled as hypocrites because of this.  That's not what it is.  I used to be able to lower my shields in church, to put aside, for a while, the visor and helm.  I don't go and fellowship in a local church much any more because I bear the scars of the wounds I received in the house of my friends.  These days, I am more circumspect and, sadly, a lot less trusting that just anyone with a hymn book in his or her hand on Sunday morning is my brother or my sister. 

There are still those with whom I share Christian camaraderie, who keep me from wandering over the edge -- including some of you reading this.  I appreciate every one.  The One, though, who knows me best and who is undeterred by any defense, shield or armor is the One who listens in the dark of night.  Almost breathless until I breathe out, the Lord hovers over me.  He waits to hear my soul's expression.

I have been very thirsty and, a few times, hungry, when nothing was there to satisfy me.  Other times I have started to drink cool, clear water only to realize that I had been unaware of or ignoring my thirst.  In fact, not too long ago, I noticed that thirst makes me irritable and edgy well before I am aware of the physical signs of the craving. 

In times of sickness or loss or tumult, we may know that our only hope is in the Lord.  But there are often those smaller annoyances and stresses and even, perhaps, failures that call forth our calling to His listening ear. 

Flying the Black Flag

And when they go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering and lay them in the holy chambers. And they shall put on other garments, lest they communicate holiness to the people with their garments. -- Ezekiel 44:19

Most of us would like to think that the Lord would want to "communicate holiness" to His people.  A stricture such as this seems, in our day, excessive and exclusive and elitist.  The priests are the only ones who get to go into the temple.  They don't earn the right to minister, but they are born to it.  The whole idea does violence to our egalitarian posture and democratic mindset.  Why should the people be denied the benefits of holiness?  Whatever that is.

The old model of the Aaronic priesthood served its purpose, but it was flawed by the weakness of man and limited by death.  Jesus is our Great High Priest who entered but once into the Holy of Holies, finished His work of expiating all sin, and sat down at the Father's right hand (Hebrews 4:14-16, 9:11-12, 10:12).  Still, it is a model which can tell us about our condition and about the remedy. 

The truth is that we must reject and abandon the old nature -- everything of the old nature.  That's hard to conceive of, especially for people who are naturally meek and mild and not given to rebellion or selfish ambition.  Some of us are born good.  OK, not me.  Some of you.  Growing up, I had a cute little blonde cousin, Deb, a few years younger than I was.  She was -- and as far as I know, is -- a sweet and gentle person, a throwback, perhaps, to her grandmother, my aunt, who was of a character radically different than any of her nine violent, vicious, hot-tempered siblings.  You couldn't offend Deb.  A harsh word never came out of her mouth.  If one of us accidentally hurt her, physically or emotionally, she would try not to cry in front of us, lest we feel regret for our roughness.  How could God say to a person like little Deb that in her flesh dwells no good thing?  On the surface, it doesn't seem right, but He does say it:  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail.

That's the message the rigorous separation of the sons of Aaron is meant to convey.  Light and darkness have no communion.  One is either in light or in shadow.  We are either living and walking by the Spirit in faith, or we are in bondage, in the shackles of the flesh.  There can be no alliance between the holy and the profane. 

Ah, but, I say, I have this strength, this talent, these resources, this wealth.  Surely my skill and intelligence are of some value.  Surely God does not expect me to abandon this and embrace only the poverty of spirit? 

He does. 

That "good" part of myself has to be purged and refined.  It must be abandoned to the sacrificial fires of judgment.  If what we see as good goes up in smoke, well, we misjudged it.  If it endures -- even if it endures, it may be unrecognizable, so transmuted as to leave us wondering as to its continued value or usefulness.  But we are free to take up whatever is left and make the best use of it in our obedience. 

We really can't live a mixed life.  There is weird stuff in the regulations Moses gave to Israel.  Don't yoke two different kinds of animals together to plow.  Don't wear "wool blend" suits.  How does that hurt anything?  It seems silly, but it's a picture.  A life that is mixed is a life that painful.  The spirit and the flesh contend, and one is always making the other to suffer.  If you ever get the flesh down, show it no mercy.  Finish it off.

Altered Ego

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. -- Matthew 23:27

The word hypocrite comes to us from ancient Greece.  Hypocrites were people who wore masks to portray characters in a Greek play.  In Latin, the word for mask is persona.   The development of a human personality is the development of a mask.  We simply cannot “be” without some channel for interacting and relating to others.  When I ask someone how he is doing, I generally do not want a brain dump.  I am expecting something like, “Not bad.  How about yourself?” 

I wondered as I was thinking about this if Jesus had a mask.  He did.  John 2:24-25 says, “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.”  The Lord, of course, did not deceive anyone, but He did not fully reveal Himself to everyone, either.  He allowed people to believe about Him according to their own hearts.  No one had to tell Jesus that the world is full of people who are not what they seem. 

In a fallen world, a persona is a survival mechanism.  There are places where we can – or should be able to drop all masks.  Family is one of those places.  It isn’t always the case.  A lot of us experience stress and pain because of the necessity of always being on the defensive.  We can find no one with whom we can drop the mask and be only what we are.  This is why betrayal is such a horrible sin.  When I drop my mask, the other person is supposed to drop his or hers as well.  Betrayal says that didn’t happen, that the pretense was maintained. 

Communion is another place where we should be able to lower our shields.  We often learn the hard way that our “brothers and sisters in Christ” are as duplicitous and conniving as some of our brothers and sisters in the flesh.  The lesson can be costly on many levels.  The religious hypocrites whom Jesus addressed were like many professors of Christianity today.  Externally their lives present a beautiful and seamless façade while inwardly they are broken, disintegrated, and dead. 

We can fall into the trap of maintaining appearances even as we suffer and agonize over how to bridge the yawning gulf between who we are and who we appear to be, who we want to be.  I think we are safe so long as we recognize that masks must be discarded.  Is hell a place where our shields are stripped away?  Or is the place where those must go who have nothing to shield, who are nothing except a mask? 

The persona is something we create in order to function effectively in a world of concepts.  The mask is not needed, nor can it survive, in pure existence.  As long as we are in contact and communion with God, we will see our shell for what it is – an interface for the world.  But, if we disconnect from the Source, we risk becoming nothing except a pretty tomb. 

Commemorate

And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you.  When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.  When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” – Joshua 4:5-7

To remember, we raise monuments -- to commemorate is a communion, a sharing of thoughts and feelings.  We remember together.  It is this shared memory that makes community.  We may not have a personal connection with another individual, but we can have a shared memory of who we are as a people. 

It works both ways.

One of the worst things that has ever been done in this country – and feel free to place the blame wherever you like – is the desecration of how we as a people felt on September 11, 2001.  It should have been another Pearl Harbor, something we honored, not for the death and destruction but for the way it brought us together against barbarism.  As it is, we are allowed to remember the tragedy, fear, and despair, even the heroism of the police and firefighters who perished, but we are supposed to be ashamed of the righteous indignation we felt in the aftermath.  They took the images off of television so we wouldn’t be continually stirred up by the inhumanity and insanity of the perpetrators.  They told us that we did not need to sacrifice, that the best thing we could do was go shopping.  They trivialized the awful reality of war and turned it into a video game, distancing us from it, except and until they wanted us to feel guilty and ashamed for the deaths of our servicemen and the “innocent civilians” in the places we attacked. 

In the process, we ceased to be America.  You may say I’m crazy or overstating or oversimplifying or whatever.  I know that I felt like an American all my life.  I tried to figure out a way to volunteer for military service when I was too old to be accepted after 9/11.  I no longer feel that way.  I could say it is because of Barack Obama who is certainly despicable, but I also have to blame George Bush who, for all his “Christian compassion” and resolve after the attacks, refused to call us to war – all of us, refused to call us together against an enemy.  Instead he talked about the “religion of peace” and warred against a methodology.  Instead of sweeping through Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, punishing and destroying and making it clear that attacking us is a really, really bad idea, we have wasted years, billions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to “democratize” a bunch of people who just want their tribe and their chiefs and their sickness and demons and can understand nothing except force.   

I didn’t mean to get political with this when I started.  I was just thinking of how we become a people, how God made Israel a people, how He wants us to live and operate as the Church.  For us, it is around the table of communion – take this cup, this bread.  Every time, do this in remembrance of Me, Jesus said.  We who share in the memory of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ are the Body of Christ.  We are a people.  And this, regardless of where we live, the language we speak, the name on the building where we worship, is our identity. 

If I have lost, to some extent, my identity as an American, it may be for the good.  More than ever I am convinced that I am at war with the world system, that anyone who hopes in political, economic, or military solutions will be gravely disappointed – sooner or later.  Probably sooner at this point.  I am far from hopeless, and I do not fear the future.  I do get stressed by little things day-to-day, but it is because they are personal, and I hate to disappoint or fail people who depend on me directly in some way, whether family or friends or co-workers.  Then I remember. 

Sometimes I remember the things that God has done for me, miraculous interventions, and trials He carried me through personally.  These are like the memorial stones that the Israelites stacked there on the banks of the Jordan.  I have crossed over into the Promised Land, and this is the way I came, how I got here.  Sometimes I remember the experiences of my youth and recall members of my family and, renewing  the ties to the land and the clan, know that I did not get here alone, that I am who I am and what I am by the foundations they laid.  We have laid stones to commemorate them on the hillsides.

Most of all, I remember the Cross, the bread and the wine, the One who forgives and to whom I belong.  This is who I am.