God's Garden

As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more. --Psalm 103:15-16

I have heard many times that we are born to live forever somewhere.  This is usually in the context of a message about salvation.  We will live forever in heaven with the Lord, or, if we reject Him, be confined forever to hell.  It’s true that life does not end with the death of our physical bodies, but it is equally true and certain that we will die, that “…this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53).

Paul may well have had this passage from Psalm 103 and similar ones in mind as he wrote the words of what we think of as the fifteenth chapter of his letter.  A person’s life on this material plane is very much like a flower that grows to blossom and fade.  Some seem to be convinced that is all there is.  Others believe that the resemblance to the flower’s cycle is more metaphorical, that the husk of our bodies contain the seed of something greater than what we see now. 

If you think about it, not all seeds are viable.  As one who saves seeds from various plants like beans, melons, and squash, I find that some seeds don’t germinate at all.  Others produce less than ideal fruit.  One of the problems is often cross-pollination.  Gardeners sometimes do not realize that watermelon, cucumbers and cantaloupe are capable of crossing with one another, or that having different varieties of squash growing together will likely result in less than ideal crops the following season.  Being set out with adequate separation prevents the loss of viability through undesirable crosses.  Perhaps there is a lesson for us. 

What grows from a seed very much depends upon what went into it.  The husk that encases it matters only in that is properly protects the life inside and does not overly hamper its sprouting.  Even though an acorn looks vastly different from a bean, the real difference is not in the outward appearance but the inner living matter.  In us, that is the spirit and the Living Word: 

The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever (Isaiah 40:7-8).

It’s not that this life is not important.  I have struggled with that.  What does my life here matter?  If that spiritual seed is going to be healthy, acceptable, and valid, the life I live here has to absorb the power of the Light.  I have to live upon and incorporate the Truth as a plant draws in the elements of vegetative life from the soil, sun, and air, that when the husk of my physical body is sown, the seed will prove to be pure, genuine, and true.

       

Terminal Life

If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  -- 1 Corinthians 15:19

Christianity has a lot to offer people as a lifestyle.  It is potentially healthy, positive, and meaningful, providing peace and answers to difficult questions, comfort and strength in loss and adversity.  Christianity, especially when viewed at a somewhat superficial, exoteric level ought to be true.  Does it matter if it is true?  Some people seem to have concluded that it does not.  Some seem to think that being a Christian means the same as being a good person. 

Christianity didn’t necessarily teach righteousness to the West, but it did show us why we had defined goodness the way that we did.  In Christ, we saw why righteousness was right and that goodness had its foundation not in the shifting sands of earth but in the rock-solid truth of heaven.  From a worldly perspective, the Church is built upside down.    

The world says that what is good is what is good for us.  As long as we understood that the perfection for which we were aiming was not attainable in this life, even if people couldn’t quite bring themselves into the Christian fold, they didn’t get too far off base.  There was at least an implicit understanding that something was eternal and absolute, and the best way of living was to approximate that absolute within the cultural confines where we found ourselves. 

More and more, in the last couple of centuries, we have strayed further from that understanding until we are trying to base all of our behavior on what we like and what we think is good for us.  This leads many to reject any ideas of struggle.  We are “born” a certain way, and that is the way we are, and we and other people should just accept it.  When we do find a non-individual standard for behavior, it comes down to “tolerance” and “the greater good”.  Thus we are convinced to give up our freedoms, our property, our privacy, our morals and convictions so that “humanity” or “the country” or “people around the world” can benefit. 

Like the image in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision (Daniel 2:31-46), our golden-headed god stands precariously on feet cast of an unstable mixture of iron and clay.  Our thoughts, plans, dreams, and intentions are beautiful, bright and highly valued, but we have based our hopes on both the strength and frailties of human nature.  Iron is not easily broken itself and it has great utility, if not always beauty.  Nevertheless, it is prone to corrosion and corruption.  Clay speaks of pliability and suggestibility that hardens into something that will hold its shape until it is subjected to stress whereupon it fractures and shatters.  Combined, these materials form a pragmatic but extremely fragile pedestal on which to attempt to raise a civilization.   

If, when this life ends, we end, Christianity is a lie and a delusion.  There is no truth, and we find that all our self-denial and self-sacrifice has been offered to the service of yet another version of the same idol that Daniel described -- attractive and inspiring in theory, but, in reality, doomed to conflict, confusion, degradation and destruction.  

Here is where we must decide the road we will walk.  We can choose to follow the visible or the invisible, the eternal or the temporal, truth or lie.  If the truth is a lie as well, we are lost without hope.  

The truth is true.  Christ is risen.  Jesus is alive, and we are raised with Him and in Him.  Our faith assures us that our hope is well-placed and proves the unseen Absolute is no false image. 

Life here is the terminal -- that place from which we depart.  No one wants to live in the terminal.  We understand it is where we go to get where we are going.  Our journey through this earthly existence is only the beginning, the strait, narrow path that leads us to a new country and a new, everlasting life.  

Branch Office

… [F]or it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure – Philippians 2:13

I’m just thinking – not really out loud, I guess -- out in the open.  I was thinking about the Resurrection and Paul’s assertion in First Corinthians, Chapter 15:  And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 

Misrepresenting God, or, to put it more generally, misrepresenting reality would be a damnable offense, if, indeed, reality is such that one can be damned.  Every once in a while it is probably a good idea to step back and consider more broadly what it is we are claiming is true.  It is easy to get into an argument with the world and start holding to some position that may contain some truth at the expense of the whole truth.  There are entire religious systems that have done this, not to mention the sects, cults, and denominations that pop up after a little knowledge like fungal growths after a heavy summer rain.  There is no need to name all the offenders for we may content ourselves with the egregious examples, such as “oneness” Christianity, Jehovah’s Witnesses, democracy, witchcraft, astrology, climate science, and Keynesian economics. 

The New Testament account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and especially His death, burial, and resurrection are accepted as true by anyone who can genuinely claim to be a Christian.  We can disagree on a lot of things, but if we agree that Jesus is the unique Son of God, that He died a vicarious, atoning death, was buried then rose physically on the third day after His crucifixion, we are Mere Christians, as Lewis might say – or Near Christians, at the very least.  I’m not sure there is much conviction and power in Near Christianity, but it seems to satisfy the mixed multitude. 

We can read a lot in the Bible that sounds really nice.  Depending on a person’s inclinations, personality, and circumstances, they might be drawn to passages that talk about prosperity or health or relationships.  We may try to seek out a formula for victorious living, but it all hangs on whether or not it is true. 

What is revealed to us is that the transcendent God is not only over all as Creator but involved with us as individuals, seeking to live in us and out through us as we burst forth into the material world like flowers on a vine.  The life in the Vine is made known through us.  There are way too many of us – like me too much of the time – walking around focused on how we live as if our life were our own.  Imagine a blossom becoming self-aware and being caught up in the folds of its petals, intoxicated with its awareness, making plans on what it intended to do, how it would draw more bees and butterflies to it. 

The form of the blossom is going to pass away into fruit, into seed so long as it stays attached to the vine, no matter what its thoughts and plans might be.  The difference for us is that we have a will, and we can choose to remain with the Vine or to separate ourselves and attempt to pursue our own ends.  God has granted to humanity a sort of encapsulated version of life – a little like a battery pack -- that allows us to move away from Him if we choose.    He will allow us to pursue our own ends and develop our little limited lives.  Some of us realize the futility of a life apart from the Source immediately, others only when the batteries start running down. 

Some think we can plug in and recharge then head off in our own direction the rest of the time.  Others seem to believe that the only way is to stay plugged in all the time.  Still others believe that their battery is non-rechargeable and that they had better go as far as they can before it runs down.  There are even some folks who think they can build their own batteries. 

I suppose I am an advocate for wireless recharging.  I think God gave us mobility for a reason, as part of His plan for us.  In this, I tend to fall in between the group that thinks it can recharge and go off on its own and the group that thinks it has to stay plugged in and out of the fray.  I think we can stay connected in the midst of a world of interference, jammed signals, and poor reception.  Not that it is easy, but it can be done.   God intends for us to get out there while staying connected.  Sometimes it’s good to come back to the base and plug straight in – remember the Sabbath and all, but mostly we can keep from going dark and dead by staying in the line of sight.

When we stay connected, we will recognize how wonderful the truth is that it is God who is at work in us.  His will is becoming our will, and we are working His works by His strength and power.  All that spiritual stuff that sounds so cool, if slightly disturbing, becomes quite real, though never mundane.  Insights come to us that seem to have no basis in our material experience.  We pass beyond the self, beyond the form of the blossom, to the life and purpose behind it.

I will close with this last thought from John 15:5:   You are a branch of Jesus Christ.    

Fishing on Sunday

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. -- 1 Corinthians 15:50

This would seem to say that the kingdom of God is completely out of reach of flesh-and-blood, material entities.  Yet Jesus Himself spoke frequently of how we might strive to enter into the kingdom.  Both He and John the Baptist preached that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  In the prayer He taught His disciples, we read, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Also when we read Christ’s parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price, the Lord is telling us that we must give up everything if we would gain the kingdom.  The very next parable in Matthew’s gospel describes the kingdom as a net cast into the sea that brings out fish of all kinds – large, small, acceptable and unacceptable.  It suggests that many are lured by the kingdom, but not all find a home therein. 

Though Paul is primarily addressing the death of believers and the necessity of a resurrection both of the Lord and of His saints, our transformation out of the flesh does not begin with physical death, for, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”   In order to be a part of the kingdom one must belong to Christ which can only happen if the Spirit of God dwells in us.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:8-11).  That is a new kind of life, a life that is eternal in its nature, not just its duration.  This mortal begins to put on immortality.  It's almost like being a little pregnant, but it is true.

In the same way and at the same point, our death to the flesh begins as we are drawn into the kingdom.  Maybe we should take a closer look at the Parable of the Dragnet:  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.  When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.  So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:47-50).  Normally we think of each fish as a person who is judged by God’s standard, i.e., Christ, to be worthy or unworthy of inclusion in the kingdom.  That is correct, but there is another way to look at it.  I caught, filleted, and deep-fried a couple of fish this past weekend.  They are, as animals, quite simple.  You could not construct a human being out of hundreds of fish – except, to some extent, by the process of a person digesting said fish.  We are far more than the sum of our parts; yet there are parts to us. 

When by His Spirit the Lord draws us into His kingdom, if we are willing to surrender ourselves completely to Him, He will sort through us like the fisherman opening his net.  Some of those seemingly alive parts of us -- “raw and wiggling” as Gollum prefers them – are acceptable while the Spirit must dispose of other parts.  He is separating "the evil from the righteous".  The flesh cannot enter in, and all that is flesh that must be consigned without mercy to the furnace of judgment.  Weeping and gnashing of teeth indeed is present there. 

How I have wailed over my weaknesses, often less because I could not overcome them than out of fear that I might lose them and lose, in the process, something I thought of as an essential part of my identity.  Have you ever said, “that’s just me”, or of another, “that’s just him” with regard to a foible or “eccentricity”?  It is a sacrifice to surrender those ugly, useless, worthless fish.     

Under the Law, God decreed that the fires of the altar might burn throughout the night for the burnt offering.  Those fires would, nevertheless, from time to time, need to be lit and fueled.  In the kingdom, the fire is never quenched.  There are flames always patiently waiting to consume the flesh we will sacrifice that we may pass clean through the gates.