Living Wittily

Converting Zeal into a Ministry of Reconciliation.

When someone states the obvious, and it comes as a surprise, it's time to pay attention. I was minding my own business, reading this commentary on Paul's letter to the Galatians, nodding my head in agreement with the author, Richard Hays. Then I read this:

"The connection between zeal and persecution is another theme worth pondering in this passage. Religious conviction and passion can have an ugly side. Paul sadly recognises in his own past that his zeal for the traditions of his ancestors led him to sanction and  commit act of violence...Those who take seriously  the holiness of the one God find it difficult to tolerate people who blasphemously deny that God or transgress God's revealed law." (p.219)  

I've been a Christian long enough to immediately recognise the truth of that. The connection is obvious between passionately held religious convictions and a dangerous hostility to those who contradict, mock or are indifferent to those convictions. What I found interesting was I both knew this, and needed to be reminded of it. Those who hold religious convictions as the certainties on which they build their lives are likely to feel threatened or outraged when others just as strongly deny the reality or relevance of such strongly held beliefs. 

In a world where there are now deep fault lines of division between religious traditions, ethnic diversities, cultural traditions, economic powers and freedoms, and political commitments, the same principle holds. Differences deeply felt as a threat provoke hostilities. These are often expressed in combative rhetoric, defensive postures, and eventually a hard to resist push towards confrontation. What I found interesting in Hays stating the obvious about potential connections between zeal and persecution, is the way that obvious danger has often been ignored in the ways we organise our communal, economic, cultural and social lives. Which raises the practical question of how Christians deal with plurality, diversity and differences in fundamental convictions.

How as a Christian do I avoid defending Christian convictions by methods, attitudes, words and actions that alienates those from whom I differ? Is zeal a bad thing? Is tolerance unfaithfulness and even betrayal of faith, if I attempt to understand those who differ from me at deep levels of life commitments? Does dialogue merely risk dangerous compromise? Here is Hays further down the page:

"In the case of the Christian gospel, the cross is the central symbol that short-circuits justifications of violence: God's way of dealing with dissenters and adversaries was not to destroy them, but to give his Son to die for them."

To those who name Jesus Christ as Lord, zeal for the truths, realities and convictions of our faith is converted and authenticated by following the way of the cross. That means loving our enemies, praying for those who "despitefully use you" which at the very least means those with whom we strongly disagree; it means doing good to those who would do us and our faith harm; and yes, it requires of us the prayer, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!" As Hays concludes, "Our responsibility is not to eradicate the enemies of God but to announce God's reconciling power in the world. (See 2 Cor. 5.17-20)"

I am so glad Hays planted this way of thinking in the deep soil of those later verses of Paul to the recalcitrant, fractious, Corinthians with their conflicting agendas, competitive spiritualities, cherished certainties of their own rightness, and need to be reminded in no uncertain terms that God's love is both powerfully constraining and expensively generous. As those who have been given the ministry of reconciliation, zeal has a new focus.

To be zealous in the love of God in Christ, to be zealous in conciliation and peace-making, to be zealous in love for neighbour, to be zealous in living as well as speaking the good news of Jesus - that is to be converted at the central core of our identity as followers of Christ. Or as Paul will write later to those same Galatians: "I am crucified with Christ; I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, I live in the body, I live by faith in the son fo God who loved me, and gave himself for me."    

TFTD Jan 13-19: Giving God His Place in the World.

Monday

Psalm 24.1-2 “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;  for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”

Stewardship is very different from ownership. Earth with all its diversity and potential for life belongs to God. It is not ours to do what we want with it. Humanity is entrusted by God with the care of the whole environment in which we live and move and have our being. “All who live in it” includes, along with humanity, all living creatures. Creation care is not a ‘green thing’, it’s a God thing. You cannot love the Artist and waste his masterpiece. This Psalm ends by telling us that human glory is transient and limited; God’s glory is ultimate, radiates authority, and invites worship.

Tuesday

Psalm 24.3 “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?”

Two questions about admission to worship. What makes us worthy to come anywhere near a holy God? We come in the name of Christ, and by the grace of God. Yes, but. The faith we profess, the Name we confess, call us to a life that is faithful and obedient, showing integrity of life and sincerity of heart. What we do, how we behave, the values that matter most, the character revealed in our behaviour, the inner life of thought, emotion and conscience – God knows and sees all that. What practical evidence do we have of a life made righteous in Christ? Well, we could start with asking how well we ourselves have looked after God’s creation!

Wednesday

Psalm 24.4a “He who has clean hands and a pure heart…,”

Clean hands are about actions, and a pure heart about motives. Together in practical terms they come pretty close to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Clean hands negatively do no harm, and positively act in compassion, kindness and generosity. A pure heart is a heart with a single intent – “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Those who come to worship God do so as those who love God from first to last, and whose actions are consistent with the faithful mercy and steadfast love of God. Or, those who live on the assumption that, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all who live in it.”

Thursday

Psalm 24.4b “Who does not lift up his soul to an idol, or swear by what is false.”

Idolatry and lying go together. Both are an assault on truth. Whatever we make the most important and controlling thing in our lives is an idol, a usurper that takes the place of God. The three big idols are money, sex and power, and all of them have to do with our desire to possess. It turns out, what we think we own, actually owns us; what we think we control, eventually controls us. Whereas, true worship of the true God is what keeps us free, valued, and true to the purpose of our creation. Only when we lift up our soul, and give our very selves in love and service to God in Christ, does the heart find its true home.

Friday

Psalm 24.5-6 “They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Saviour. Such is the generation of those who seek your face, God of Jacob.”

True worship is not self-seeking, it’s not about us at all. Worship is an opening up of our minds to God’s truth, and the seeking of our hearts to know and acknowledge God’s presence in God’s world, and in our lives. We don’t seek God for his blessing, but for Himself, and yet in seeking God we are blessed. It follows then, that by ‘standing in his holy place’, with clean hands and a pure heart, we are serving and loving God. So our lives are vindicated, and shown to be rightly directed, by God.

Saturday

Psalm 24.7-8 “Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”

The Psalm begins with the sovereignty of God over the earth and all who live in it. Now it ends in a blaze of royal glory in the presence of God Almighty. It would be wrong to think of God’s glory as being absolute, unconstrained power. When the glory of God passed Moses, God was described as “The LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Ex 34.6-7) God’s glory is not raw power, but the power to create, redeem, forgive and renew.

Sunday

Psalm 24.9-10 “Lift up your heads, you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty— he is the King of glory.”

Repeated for emphasis. Now go back to the first verse. God the Creator is none other than the Lord Almighty. Care of creation, stewardship of ‘the earth and all who live in it’ is not just a good idea, something we should maybe think about some time. Nor is care for the earth important only because our lives depend on this small, green planet. We care for our world as an act of reverence to the Creator, as evidence that our worship is more than words. Stewardship happens when we take responsibility before God for His beautiful world, and do so as the outworking of our worship.

Footnotes as Treasure Maps.

If you know me, you'll know I am a committed footnote chaser! I don't mean those avalanches of tedium that sometimes serve as a disclaimer 'here's everything I read when writing this!" No, judicious footnotes, clear footprints on the scholars path, and where it's an extensive note, perhaps a signpost pointing back to how we got here, and pointing forward to other possible paths. Here's how this odd but happy exercise in scholarly serendipity works if you go chasing footnotes.

At the end of this seasonal festival, perhaps Good King Wenceslas gives good advice for footsteps, and footnotes! "Mark my footsteps, good my page; /Tread thou in them boldly."!

This particular jaunt began with re-reading a chapter of I (Still) Believe, a book in which 18 biblical scholars write about the relationship between their faith and their scholarship. The line-up is impressive including some of the best known biblical scholars of my generation - I mention only five - Walter Brueggemann, J. D. G. Dunn, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Richard Bauckham, John Goldingay. I've read books by all the contributors, and several of them I've read enough to know why what they are saying is well worth the reading. 

The chapter I re-read is the one by Andrew Lincoln: he chose the title 'Responding to and Searching for Truth.' In it he refers to one of his previous books which I had read, describing it as "probably the one with the most orientation to contemporary appropriation..." (p.151) I knew the book, and had much enjoyed reading the section he referred to in his clear exposition of the theology of Ephesians. I went looking for it to re-read it. It's still a brilliant summary and guide to the theological and practical appropriation of Ephesians.¹

Oh, then there was footnote 12 in which Lincoln left clear footprints showing where some of his ideas came from! Footnote 12 reads: cf. W. Brueggemann, 'Covenanting as Human Vocation'. This was first published in the journal Interpretation in 1979 - outside the dates for which the University has access. But wait a minute, I've read this. I knew I had it in one of Brueggemann's many volumes of collected essays so I went hunting. Sure enough, there it was in one of Brueggemann's most significant essay collections, The Psalms and the Life of Faith. I read it again and was astonished at how relevant Brueggemann's essay is for a world more sold on contract and competition than covenant and co-operation. 

Brueggemann does footnotes, and he does them with considerable diversity of sources across biblical studies, sociology, cultural criticism, philosophy and psychology. There it was again, a footnote that sent me further down the promising paths of possible discovery. Footnote 36 contains a telling quotation from  A. J. Heschel, from his 1963 lectures Who is Man. I've read Heschel for years, and that book more than once. But I took it down and read that final lecture on 'How to Live' as a human being in the presence of God in God's own world.

So there's the footnote circle that took about an hour to complete. A New Testament scholar sends me to another of his own books, which shoves me in the direction of an Old Testament scholar whose essays I consider hard wearing gold, and he in turn points to a Jewish philosopher whose thought remains seminal in my own understanding of what it is to be human before God. Ignore the footnotes and you miss so much.

^{1 The Theology of the Later Pauline Epistles. (CUP: 1993)}  

TFTD Jan 6-12: Various Verses from My Reading, Recent Conversations and Worship in Church.

Monday

Psalm 103.2 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

This verse was used on our last Sunday service of 2024. It describes that hinge point from which we look back with thankfulness and look forward with trust. Certain kinds of forgetting are embarrassing, especially if it is someone’s birthday, or missing an important planned meeting. To forget suggests it didn’t figure high in our priorities. The Psalmist warns against such careless taking of God for granted. Don’t embarrass yourself by forgetting God whose blessings tumble regularly into our lives!

Tuesday

Colossians 3.3 “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Paul starts by saying “You have been raised with Christ…” What that means is that our old self has died, and we are now a new creation in Christ. Not only that – but we are drawn into the life of Christ, and Christ dwells in us by faith. We are hidden, held and secure within the eternal love of God in Christ. ‘Hidden’ means protected, and it is in the perfect tense – which means what happened then, remains accomplished now, and will continue to be true. “Blessed assurance, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blessed….filled with his goodness, lost in His love.”

Wednesday

 John 3.21 “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be clearly seen that what he has done has been done through God.”

Truth in the Gospel of John combines what we believe with how we live. It involves believing the revelation of God in Jesus, and living in a way that demonstrates the reality of that faith. Faith is both the assent of heart and mind, and the obedience of a life lived in the light of what we believe. This verse emphasises that what we do shows who we are, and to whom we belong. As we come into the Light that is Christ, and open ourselves to the one who is full of grace and truth, the evidence will be there for all to see – our way of life is a walk with integrity and trust in the truth of Christ, so that by God’s grace we radiate the Light and Life that is Christ in us.

Thursday

John 2.11 “This, the first of his signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their trust in him.”

Water into wine! An irrecoverably embarrassing social gaffe is avoided because Jesus quietly ‘revealed his glory’. This was no party trick. Wine, rivers full of it, streaming down mountain tributaries, was a sign of the Lord’s blessing and coming amongst his people. Amos, Joel, Isaiah and the Psalm-poets described the age of the Messiah as just such an age of joy, plenty and transformation. Water into wine was a sign for those who had eyes to see beyond the miracle, and behold the glory of the One who was present. The extravagance of the quality and quantity is a sign that “of his fullness we have all received, grace, after grace, after grace – one blessing after another!” John is saying, “God’s glory revealed in Christ is absolutely extraordinary!”

Friday

2 Thessalonians 2.16-17 “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

I don’t know, but maybe Paul became the apostle of encouragement because at the very beginning it was Barnabas, the son of encouragement, who stood up for him as guarantor of his good faith. Paul knew the importance of encouragement, words of reassurance, and building confidence. These words could be a good prayer to start your day – just change the pronouns to “our hearts” and “strengthen us.” So may God our Father who loved us gives us “eternal encouragement and good hope.”

Saturday

Matthew 7. 12 Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.”

Those first three words, “So in everything.” Careful thought about how we treat others can’t be selective. If we are only kind, considerate, generous in judgement of those we already like, that won’t do. We would have people respect us, look out for us, forgive us, take time to understand us, listen to us – the list of our expectations is demanding and long. For followers of Jesus, every person we encounter should be able to expect the same. I know that’s idealistic. Of course it is! Because it means living and enacting those other words of Jesus: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Sunday

1 Peter 4.11b “If anyone serves, they should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

Our service to God is always by God’s grace, in God’s strength and for God’s praise. God is never our debtor. What we give we were first given. Peter of all people knew that following Jesus could be hard going. But here he was, late in life, still following, still serving as best he could, and over the years had grown a chastened sense of his own importance. He could just as well have written Paul’s words: “Continue to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Phil 2.12) So, going into 2025, we continue to serve God by serving others, doing so with the strength God provides.