Mary

For many Christians today was the celebration of the birth of Mary, mother of our Lord, properly called Theotokos by all Christians since before the Third Ecumenical Council (which Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant all accept as doctrinally binding).  For most Protestants, though, Mary remains an unknown.  Certainly, we talk about her at Christmas, and maybe at Annunciation, but rarely else.  When we do talk about her, it amazes me how we couch our terminology about her in continued polemics.  One talk I heard, fairly recently, made sure to say that "she was a dirty, rotten sinner just like the rest of us."  As I've argued before, this language is unnecessary and quite possibly wrong Biblically speaking (can God dwell in unclean places? Not according to the Old Testament!).  Even if she never sinned, she would still need a Savior: death comes to all and only through Christ's trampling down of death by death can it be stopped.  Christ is the only one, by virtue of the fact of His divine nature and Person, who was free from the necessity of death: He, out of the great love which He has for us, voluntarily took on death in His human nature, that we, united to Him by faith and baptism, might partake of His eternal Life.

There is something more about Mary that we need to keep in mind more often.  The goal of the Christian life, a great promise of the New Testament, is to be filled with the Spirit of God, to be built into the glorious Temple, so that the old promise that "I will be their God and they will be My people and I will dwell among them" might be fulfilled.  This, of course, is the conformity of our human nature to the human nature of our Lord.  However, His hypostatic union is different than what happens to us.  He is a divine Person, with a requisite divine nature who elects to unite with a human nature for our salvation: our salvation is to have a divine Person, the Spirit, fill our nature and transform our individuated persons.  We do not become hypostatically united with the Person of the Spirit, but become "partakers of the divine nature" as St Peter says in his second epistle.  So, even though "He became what we are so that we might become what He is" as St Irenaeus puts it, there is a fundamental and unbridgeable difference between us and Christ.  So, what model do we have for what our salvation looks like?

Mary, the mother of our Lord.

The Person of the Son indwelt her, transfiguring her (even causing her to prophesy), in a way analogous to how the Spirt dwells in us, transfiguring us in the process.  The difference, of course, is that the Spirit does not become incarnate.  But Mary is a human person with a human nature in the exact same way as we are, filled with God, becoming a Tabernacle and an analogy to Heaven itself.  There is a beautiful passage in 1 Kings 8 in which Solomon says something to the effect that "The heaven of heavens cannot contain You; how much less this house I've built!"  Yet, in Mary the uncircumscribable God took on a full human nature such that St Paul can say, "in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Deity in bodily form" (Col. 2:9).  She is more able, by the grace of God, to contain God than even the highest heaven.  This is our lot as well (Eph. 3:19).  Yet, of course, she does retain a more honored place than any other God-bearing Christian for, as St Luke records for us in her prophetic (and therefore liturgical) speech, "henceforth shall all generations call me blessed" (Luke 1:48).

Glory to God.

Sermon: 1 John 2:3-6

I was very warmly received this morning at Conway Alliance Church. May God bless them richly.

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Sermon Text: 1 John 2:3-6

“And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says, ‘I know Him’ but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the Truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him: whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.”

The Christian faith is all about knowing God. As the Lord Christ prays, “This is eternal Life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (Jn. 17:3). The great promise of the New Covenant, given by the Prophet Jeremiah, is that “no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:34). The New Testament then shows us that knowing the Lord, knowing God the Father, can only be done through knowing the Son and the Spirit: “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9) and “when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about me” (Jn. 15:26). Eternal Life is found in knowing God, in knowing Father, Son, and Spirit, our sins and iniquities forgiven and forgotten.
But what does it mean to ‘know’ God? A lot rides on this question: eternal Life, in fact. My profession right now is a teacher of Bible and theology. I talk and write a good deal about who God is, according to the Scriptures, according to the great lights of Church history, according to contemporary thinkers. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean I actually know God. Knowing is more than factual information: anyone who has been married, or has children, or known anyone married, or been a child, knows this. The bare presentation of facts can keep us distant, aloof, from what or who we know. We live in a culture that constantly confuses us here: sound-bytes on news stations are not enough to actually figure out what is going on in Syria, in Iraq, in Ferguson, St. Louis, or anywhere else for that matter. We run the risk of interpreting according to our preconceived notions of how politics work, how religions work, how people work, in the process reducing the complexity of life and fellow human persons. Yet, we long to know and to be known. One of the most frightening passages in the Scriptures concerns this very problem: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and cast out demons in Your Name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23). They knew enough about the Lord Christ and the power of His Name (“for there is no other Name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved” – Acts 4:12) to use it; but mighty works do not equal knowing God.

In that Gospel passage, along with the passage for today from 1 John, we find the key to knowing God. Who knows the Lord? “The one who does the will of My Father in Heaven” and “whoever keeps His word.” It is worth noting, at the outset, that this is not works-righteousness. The texts say that we know we know God by keeping the commandments, not that we earn grace by doing them. These are passages of assurance, not magical manipulation of the divine. Rather, the commandments are given to us, not to hold us down or “kill our fun,” but to be training in our union with Christ. The goal of human existence, from Adam to today, is to be like God: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2-3). We are to be “partakers of the divine nature” as St Peter says in his second Epistle (1:4), which then leads him to encourage us to “give all diligence, adding to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (5-7). The commandments are our path, our road, to Christ-likeness. As St Paul puts it, “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10): even our keeping of the commands, these good works, has been the plan of God all along.

What, though, are the commandments of Christ? The Gospel passage earlier tells us that they are not “mighty deeds” or “exorcisms” or even “prophecy” (although these things are not therefore automatically excluded from the Christian life: they just aren’t the central concern). If the commandments are to lead us to be like God, then we must ascertain what God is like. The Lord has done this abundantly all over the Scriptures, however the definitive understanding of our God comes through our Lord Jesus Christ. He shows us the character of God in both word and deed: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in Heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:44-45). And “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). To put it simply, following St John, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). The commandment of Christ, that which makes us like God, is to “believe on the Name of Jesus Christ and to love one another: whoever keeps His commandments abides in God, and God in him” (3:23-24). As the greatest commandment has it, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:30-31). Love is the substance of keeping the commandments: not so that God will love us, but so that we might become what we always were supposed to be.

This much we know. But love is hard. We often don’t know how to love, so how can we keep the commandment? The Scriptures are awash in ways to do just this: they are a precise medical tool-kit to heal our souls and bring them into union with Christ. Many tools are on offer, but I’d like to focus on one that is very close to our experience: work. Many of us work, I’m sure, the standard 40-hour week. Some of us, no doubt, work more. Work controls many of our daylight hours in the weekday and there is always something that needs to be done around the house on the weekends. Can our work bring us into greater Christ-likeness? Can our work enable us to keep the commandment to love God, to love neighbor, to even love our enemies? Let’s see what the Scriptures say.

St Paul in Ephesians 4:28 says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” In this passage, the Apostle is revealing something vitally important about our work: it isn’t about us. The former thief works, not as a brutal penance, but so that he might love his neighbor. His disordered existence is being set right by this labor; how much more will this be true for us who may not have been thieves, but often feel enslaved by the need for more and more stuff and status and power? In another place St Paul reminds St Timothy, his co-laborer in the Gospel, “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:17-19). Our work, the labor of our hands, whether it be in homemaking, or plumbing, or financial planning, or teaching, or civic leadership, is an opportunity to care for those among us who lack, both in the household of faith and outside of it.

This leads us to Christ’s interaction with the rich ruler. The young man claims he has kept all the commandments from his youth, to which our Lord responds that he should “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” St Luke tells us, “when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.” The problem here isn’t that he was rich, for Abraham and Job were both rich without condemnation; the problem was that his riches owned him. He was unable to “love his neighbor” as himself for his god would not allow him. St Basil the Great, a wonderful early theologian of the Church, says this about this passage, explicating Christ’s words of sorrow:

It is evident that you are far from fulfilling the commandment, and that you bear false witness within your own soul that you have loved your neighbor as yourself. For if what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth? Care for the needy requires the expenditure of wealth: when all share alike, disbursing their possessions among themselves, they each receive a small portion for their individual needs. Thus, those who love their neighbor as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.

As our Lord says elsewhere, if something causes us to sin, it is better to cut it off and cast it away, and so enter into Life, rather than going to Hell with our whole body intact (Mk. 9:42-50): if our wealth, even that legitimately built up through our labor, causes us to pass by our brothers and sisters, it is better to cast it away than to cling on to it and miss the Kingdom of God.

Elsewhere, St Paul encourages us to “love one another…to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thess. 4:9-12) or as he intensifies his speech in the second letter to that Church: “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thess. 3:10-12). Just as the reward of our labor can help us to love our neighbor in need, so does our work keep us from being a burden on others. Both are forms of loving our neighbors, loving our brothers. There will be times, due to economic circumstances or injury, in which we will need to depend on our brothers and sisters: during those times let us joyfully and cheerfully give to one another, not expecting anything in return. However, the loving generosity of our siblings in the Lord is not an excuse to become a mooch or a free-rider. This would not be showing love to them: rather, to become like Christ, to know Him, to keep His commandments, let us work, and as we work, let us give liberally and generously, encouraging one another in this task of becoming more and more like our Lord together.

We can work in love and for the love of our neighbors, for the necessary care of our families, and for the enjoyment of God’s good creation. But can we go further? Can we work for the love of God? Indeed, we can. It is the next step we must take as we seek to be “transformed by the renewal of our mind” (Rom. 12:2). How, though? We must take a moment to consider what powers are at our disposal during our lives. A human has three faculties: the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. When we work, we most often utilize the physical and mental faculties. The spiritual we retain for worship, whether at home or in church. This seems to set our work apart from our ability to love God “with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength.” Such doesn’t have to be the case, though. St Paul, again, offers us two remedies for the transformation of our work into an area where we can love God fully. First, he says, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). All our existence, from eating and drinking to our labors, can be done to the glory of God: it is a choice of setting these things apart for that glory, offering it to God in each moment as a priest offers his sacrifice. Even our daily work then becomes worship. As St Augustine once said:

Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.

Our daily work then becomes not just a sacrifice, but an act of love for the One who first loved us. Second, the Apostle tells us to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16-18). When we work, are we rejoicing in the One who has given us “the power to get wealth, that He may confirm the covenant that he swore to your fathers” (Deut. 8:18)? When we work, are we praying without ceasing? There is such a thing as the heart praying, something deeper than just the mental prayers we often offer up. Have we sought the spiritual disciplines to develop this prayer, this prayer that prays in the Spirit even when our minds and hands are engaged in labor? When we work, are we giving thanks in all circumstances? This one, I think, is very hard. If we are honest, we love to complain about work (and especially about our bosses): the will of God for us is thanksgiving, in all circumstances. St John Chrysostom, one of the most famous preachers of all Church history, ended his life in a bitter exile. He had stood up to the corruption of the queen of the Roman Empire; she sent him to die far away from any influence he might have had. The final words he spoke, before leaving to go to his inevitable death, were “Glory to God for all things.” May God give us the strength to repeat these words in all our circumstances, most of which will not be as weighty and dire as his were.

To know God is to be saved; it is to keep the commandments and have the love of God perfected in us, as the Apostle John told us in his epistle. Our work, that normally mundane part of our lives that we share with all humankind, Christian or non-Christian, is in Christ and through His grace an avenue to know Him more deeply: to love our neighbors through generosity and diligence, to love God through our offering and our thanksgiving. Today is a day of rest, for which we can be thankful; how rest, and the giving of rest to others, can help us to love God is another topic for another day. Tomorrow, though, starts our labors once again, starts us on a path of Christ-likeness for His glory and for the sake of the salvation of the world. Let us go, then, in the strength of the Lord to our given labors, loving Him, loving our neighbors, loving our brothers and sisters, and even loving our enemies; so that through all this love we might become like Him who loved us that while “we were still enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Rom. 5:10). Glory to God.

Amen.

What Do You Care About?

At the very beginning of my teaching career, still a grad student at the time, I taught a book discussion on Steve Garber's The Fabric of Faithfulness, a wonderful journey through the questions of how to live the life of faith in the college years and beyond.  At the end of the first major chapter of my teaching, I'm going through it again with students.  Since it has been some 9 years since my last read, I'm coming at the book from a very different angle.  Instead of being a young hot-shot just beginning to struggle through the book for the sake of others (a task that I failed miserably at then), I am a man thoroughly mired in what Garber calls the "valley of the diapers," the time in which we settle into adult responsibilities.  However, I am struck at how -- maybe it has been the nature of my work -- I still cognitively and methodologically function like a student: I'm still probing the deep issues, still unsettled as to where truth (or Truth) can be found, still longing for the connection between belief and behavior to be natural.

In chapter one, Garber asks the question "What do you care about?"  I fully understand the intent, and back a decade prior I could have given a cogent and definitive answer, but now it stymies me.  I just don't know what it is I care about, aside from a few abstractions.  I wrestle, and have wrestled for long over a decade, with the question "Why do you get out of bed in the morning?"  The motivation to get moving is often linked with what it is we care about most.  I find myself distracted, wandering about the house or the office or the Internet, seeking...for what?  Often I think I'm looking for Kierkegaard's "one thing," while hoping that I'm not just waiting for Godot.  I'm not ready, at this point, to answer "What do you care about?" I can answer, though, "What do you care for?"

This might seem to be a mere semantic quibble.  It isn't; rather it gets to the core of what it means to live faithfully in the "valley."  My heady idealism has been badly chastised by time past: I've lost much, not as much as some, but enough to temper me.  What I care about is too ethereal right now, but I've got responsibilities that shape and inform what, in ten or twenty years, I will care about.  "Sufficient for the day is its own troubles."

I care for my wife, as all husbands worth their salt do.  It is improprietous to go into details of course.

I care for my children; much of my time is spent, I wouldn't call it worrying, but in a state of concern for them.  As a parent, I want them to find healthy, stable adult lives; more than that, though, I want them to be virtuous: courageous, strong, compassionate.  All around them, though, swirl the callings and temptations of the corruption in the world.  They may not, by being virtuous, have healthy, stable lives.  Being virtuous is not a road to a life of ease, but an extreme askesis, more so than even being a stylite or hermit in some respects.  I love that they are playful and love to laugh, but I hope they do not use humor as I do, as a defense against the revelation of my own incompleteness, incompetence, and ignorance.

I care for my work.  God knows this is true.  I don't take time off.  This goes deeper than just working a lot of hours (both academics and small business owners are gluttons here); much of my "leisure time" is spent trying to probe deeper, to read farther, to integrate the life of hesychastic prayer with rigorous rational questioning.  My kids, I'm sure, suffer from this: their dad is always somewhere else, trying to make sense of some quandary which he's hoping will finally put his mind to rest.  The bitter irony is that in searching for Sabbath, I often bypass it altogether.

I care for a couple of properties, both of which need large amounts of attention and labor.  Things fall apart and I must fix them.

I care for my city, especially the quest for her renewal.  This is truly hard work; the clash of my ego against other like minded folks can be brutal and intense.  Not until I know this place, and these people, as sacrament will this finally abate.

The list could go on.  "About" is a wonderful word of ideas, whereas "for" grounds me in the place I'm at, with the work at hand.  That's where I'm needed now, even as I reminisce and long for the days when "about" was the key preposition.

Gleanings: Facebook Musings

If I don't remember to post these things here, they are liable to fall down the Zuckerberg Memory Hole.

9/2/2014:

It seems to me, at this particular moment, that social media is both perfect and tragic for our cultural and spiritual moment. We are Kafka's cockroach, alienated from any forms of life, even from the self, and certainly from God (a more bitter tragedy is that so many who vaunt themselves as close to God are the most estranged). The connection that social media offers, whether the ability to connect with family on Facebook or with a multitude of bros on Tinder, is alluring and often helpful. We long to be united, to be in communion with one another, the world at large, and the divine. So we post funny memes, relate tragic news, opine on all manner of subjects, yet...yet we go away still burdened with the loneliness, anxiety, and self-interestedness that we started with. Social media, and if we are honest most real social interactions (from friendships to marriages), do this.

Could it be that these longings cannot be satisfied, that we cannot find healing, because they are infinite? You cannot tell someone you love them once and expect it to stick forever, right? Rather it is a lifetime, as close to an infinity as we get, that proves the singular statement. But what a burden we who need love bear, then, when others need that same, infinite love! And so we settle, no matter how damaging it may truly be, for a measure of loneliness, of posturing and aggrandizement, of anxiety, since we find out very quickly in life that we cannot possibly meet the demands of love.

It is, then, the overcoming of this ugly ditch between us and infinite Love that is the true work of human existence, individual and corporate. The Source, the inexhaustible Well, has been primordially lost, and remains unattainable to mankind in their bondage. If the Well, though, were to open Itself up to us, giving freely, would we reject it? Would we, like the denizens of Plato's cave, reject the call of those freed for the comfort of our discomfort?

8/19/2014:

Forgiveness does not preclude or cancel out justice. St Paul's argument in the book of Romans, in some measure, is the revelation of the "righteousness" or "justice" (same word in Greek) that is revealed in the crucifixion of the Messiah, where our forgiveness is found. To forgive, in the deepest sense of the term, is to release (aphiami): we have been held in bondage by the one the Scriptures call the evil one, the devil, the serpent, the dragon, or the satan (yes, there is always a definite article). The Cross releases us, forgive us, from our sins by which we were held in slavery to death and unrighteousness. Since the serpent had no legitimate claim on us (he gained power by deceit and fraud), God's justice is our forgiveness.

Of course, this goes further and deeper. But this is why my last post was "forgive everyone for everything." Let's not hold each other in bondage, but release others as we have been released, just as we pray in the prayer given to us by our Lord: "forgive us our debts/trespasses, as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us." Forgiveness is the Kingdom come into our midst now; it is also the great promise of the Kingdom come in its fullness.

7/25/14:

The tragedy of Beauty in our world, one which was totally avoidable, is that we don't see it except in small snatches of time. Mere moments when what we long for, what we truly and ontologically need, is an ever deepening experience and union with the Beautiful, what I previously termed 'epektasis', following the Nyssan.

The worse tragedy, though, is that we normalize the banal, as if beauty was an intrusion, analogous to how Deists understood miracles. Short and abnormal; fleeting, ephemeral, hevel hevlim as Qohelet says. We expect what we've mistakenly termed 'reality' and are shocked when beauty bursts through.

But, and relish that disjunction for a moment, if the cosmos really is made by the Word, a multitude of logoi that lead to, and share in, the Logos, then beauty is the norm. Our normal, whether we are discussing aesthetics or psychology or ethics or engineering, is Christ. But not Christ separate from the cosmos' experience of Him. There is no Christ behind the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected One. While He was born, lived, suffered, died, and was raised in our historical plane, He was also 'the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world.' How this is so is a proper mystery: we cannot know it rationally, but we can know it cardically. I've made up that word; the classical word is noetic, but we too often confuse the nous with the intellect, when rather it should be understood as the heart, the kardia, the faculty of union with God, the Inner Temple of the Spirit, which needs so much purification to be a proper abode.

It is with the heart that we truly see Beauty. But our hearts are blind, darkened by sin, and focused on pain and pleasure and the world in its pejorative sense. The cleansing and healing of the heart, so that Christ might dwell within, is the substance of salvation. This presents us with another mystery: this purification is the work of Christ, but also requires our own effort, yet it is all by grace; no man (or woman for that matter) could revivify the heart without the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit makes it His abode, yet we -- even those with faith in Christ, or worse, especially those -- defile that Tabernacle with what does not satisfy: the Holy One dwells in holiness. This is the 'narrow gate' of the Lord.

7/24/14:

If God is beauty, not just the most beautiful thing (as if He was a thing to be objectified), but beauty Himself, wouldn't all human life be properly oriented towards desiring, knowing, and uniting with that Beauty? Not to be lost or swallowed up, but rather to become beautiful, to become an icon, streaming myrrh and light, radiant light!

When we read that God has fashioned (made is such a droll word) us -- humans, all humans, no exceptions -- in His image and after His likeness, we glimpse our own ontic state: we are, primordially and essentially, His beauty in the world -- not His essence, but His activity, His energy, separate from Him by being created, but forever joined to Him, and invited into deeper epektatic and ecstatic union.

So why is it, and this is the question of man's fall into sin -- into that brutalist nothingness of which we spoke before -- that we seek to erase the image in others, at the same time defacing it in ourselves? The world will never truly need a philosophical atheism when it has the practice of continually killing God through this virulent iconoclasm (it is only a short step from destroying wood and paint to eradicating human lives).

And so we stand at the crux of a conundrum: we are made for Beauty, yet we murder it at all times and places. The conundrum is resolved -- not in a rational way, but only in the actual entering of mystical experience -- in the Cross. Here God (you will see why reason cannot grasp this now) willingly, willingly!, submits Himself to be brutalized, to be effaced, distorted, perverted, erased, to end the tyranny of the Great Ugliness. Since death, which is nothing in itself, cannot possibly stand in the presence of life, the conundrum become a paradox: this ugliest of moments, in which is concentrated all the evil, and sin, and corruption of the world and her history, reveals the incomprehensible Beauty behind and shot through all things. The Cross is apokalypsis, the unveiling of what is true, and good, and beautiful. To face the Cross, in its strange and unnerving ugliness and beauty, is to finally see the other: it was Christ all along.

Salvation is finding Christ is us, by partaking of this apocalypse, dying and raising.

7/23/14:

We will extinguish all the beauty in the world, for comfort, for ease, for some tremulous grasp on security; worse, yet, we will hunt and hound the beautiful down to be merely right. Beauty is an expansive, encompassing thing, it (He?) yearns for inclusion and embrace; the Great Ugliness is nothing that can be perceived with the eyes or other senses, for it has no independent existence. It is hard here to grasp, for how can we reasonably talk about that which does not exist (yet is no fiction: it threatens the whole world). The Ugly, far from being analyzed in the halls of academe or the corridors of museums, is the sometimes slow, other times stark and irretrievable, reversion into the nothingness from which we have come. Existence desires existence, but emptiness is never full.

Our Natural State and Forgiveness

To hurt, or injure, or do some injustice to another human being (or any other part of the creation) is not natural to man, but an aberration, a corruption, an infection upon the original and essential participation in the Image of God.  Even sin, with its disastrous and cosmic effects, could not destroy the nature with which God made us.  It can pervert, and misdirect, and even make it seem that sin is the truly natural thing (woe to us if we believe that lie!), but it can not obliterate God's good design.

This does not mean, however, that man makes "inherently" good choices (this is, in fact, one of the great theological non sequiturs of our recent history): without the grace and glory of God indwelling and pervading us, even our attempts at good cause harm.  Two examples will have to suffice for now.

The ALS Bucket Challenge has raised a wonderful amount of awareness and not a small amount of money for research.  However, in a world that so often hurts for water, how shall we justify our actions? (One friend I have went further and asked how we justify swimming pools; the point is well taken.)  We are required to make what St Maximos calls a "gnomic" choice, an action of will in which there is no immediate right answer, but pragmatic or other factors than the Kingdom of God have full sway.

The other example, and I am going to be somewhat oblique about it, is when the financial stability of an institution requires the termination of employment for some workers (usually, as the case goes, those on the bottom rungs of the ladder, who are often the most financially vulnerable).  To cause good, we cause great harm.

Let us now imagine that we have been hurt in some way: the reaction we have (remembering that our reactions, because of sin, act unnaturally, but also retain some connection and reflection to our original state) is protests of unfairness, injustice, or undue malice.  Most likely, we will get at turns angry and depressed and so on.  This leads us to the next stage: the judgment of the injurer.  They are bad people, evil people, greedy people, etc.  The use of the adjectival modifier, though, is not meant to describe the actions of the person, but their very nature: this is why we find it so hard to believe apologies or repentance, for how can anyone really change?  It may be that the characteristic actions of a person are those called avarice, fair enough.  But what modifier have we, unconsciously, chosen for ourselves? We are unforgiving.  While we may have been hurt, and often badly and sometimes irreparably, the damage inflicted upon our souls and therefore the world by not forgiving is infinitely greater than any earthly injustice.  "Fear not him who can kill the body, but rather him who can cast both body and soul into Gehenna."  I've heard many interpretations of this passage, some saying the truly fearful one is Satan, some saying it is Christ, but the truly fearful one, the one St Augustine calls "nothing but a guide to my own self-destruction" is me.  Christ gives us the prayer to "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" for "if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you."  To be unforgiving, to remember wrongs, to not seek reconciliation is to already be cast into Gehenna in the here-and-now, with the fullness thereof to be revealed later.  To be forgiving is to be like God, so that forgiveness is His Image. By forgiveness we overcome the corrupting influences of sin: the Cross opens up the possibility to us, forgiveness is not something we do on our own.

Having this mind like Christ, we can see those who hurt us not as monsters, but as brothers and sisters (due to their shared humanity, not necessarily their faith) in need of the healing of Christ as we are in need of healing.  St James tells us "Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins." Wandering from the truth is not just an intellectual or doctrinal error, but not living out the way of Christ.  Any time we hurt, or injure, or do an injustice to one another we wander from the truth.  So we who live out that truth, who are forgiving to those who even crucify us, participate in the salvation of our brothers and sisters.  While Christ alone saves, He calls us to assist Him in this great work, by bearing one another's burdens, by forgiving as we have been forgiven, and by turning a sinner from the error of his ways.  In this is love perfected and Christ made manifest to our hurting world: "They will know you are My disciples by your love for one another."

Gleanings: Forgiveness and Mercy

Forgiveness does not preclude or cancel out justice. St Paul's argument in the book of Romans, in some measure, is the revelation of the "righteousness" or "justice" (same word in Greek) that is revealed in the crucifixion of the Messiah, where our forgiveness is found. To forgive, in the deepest sense of the term, is to release (aphiami): we have been held in bondage by the one the Scriptures call the evil one, the devil, the serpent, the dragon, or the satan (yes, there is always a definite article). The Cross releases us, forgive us, from our sins by which we were held in slavery to death and unrighteousness. Since the serpent had no legitimate claim on us (he gained power by deceit and fraud), God's justice is our forgiveness.

Of course, this goes further and deeper. "Forgive everyone for everything." Let's not hold each other in bondage, but release others as we have been released, just as we pray in the prayer given to us by our Lord: "forgive us our debts/trespasses, as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us." Forgiveness is the Kingdom come into our midst now; it is also the great promise of the Kingdom come in its fullness.

Principles of Christian Pacifism

Being a pacifist, especially in light of the situation in Ferguson, in Syria, in Iraq, and so on, might be seen as a foolish stance.  Of course it is.  But the Cross, the end of all violence, is foolishness.  Our God was executed as a common political dissident.  And we, contrary to billions of documented cases, believe He has risen from the dead, unable to die again.  Utter foolishness.  This is exactly why there is a case, a chance, for Christian pacifism: we are the fools of the world, following in the footsteps of a foolish, prodigal God.

If there is a principle for Christian pacifism, it is this: you are already dead.

Too often we read passages in the Scriptures, or sing songs, or pray prayers that assert we have died with Christ and our life is hid in Him, but we take this as metaphorical, which is to say, as a pious fiction meant to be psychological balm.  So we feel good that after our biological cessation, we will be in heaven.  Maybe.  More often, I've noticed, we fear death in the same measure as pagans, some times we fear it more.  But the Scriptures are clear, the Tradition is clear, the lives of saints from the Apostle Peter to our new Iraqi and Syrian martyrs are clear, this is no mere metaphor: it is the truest possible truth there is.  We have already died.

Why are we so violent?  What do the protestors in Ferguson, or the police, fear so much that they would abjectly deny the humanity of the other?  Death.  I do not mean to be too simplistic, although that is how I will be read by some.  We know, in the core of our being, that death is profoundly unnatural (even though, in one sense, it is the most natural thing): so we do whatever we can to forestall it, even at the expense of another human's life.  The fear of death combines with what the Fathers call philautia, or love of self, to exclude (that is, kill) the whole world for the sake of a few moments more for us, or for our tribe, or for our nation.  But those things, proleptically in Adam and truly in Christ, are dead too.  This is why Christ can call us to "leave house or wife or parents or brothers or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God" (Lk. 18:29): these allegiances, all of which dissolve upon death, are already dead (and reborn, as He goes on to say).  But this leaving isn't some sort of Pilgrim's Progress abandonment, but rather a death of self, a taking up of the Cross, the place where Christ called even for forgiveness towards those who crucified Him (and Christian history with the Jews would well learn to remember that the Father always grants the prayers of the Son), the only safe place in the entire universe, as the greatest power man, whether government official or rioter, possesses has no power there.  Christ has trampled down death, the fell weapon, by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowed life that they might lay it down for the Kingdom of God.

This leads to the active principle of Christian pacifism: interposition.

The pacifist, who understands and knows himself to be dead in Christ and his life hid thereof, can then act as a witness to Christ's resurrection by placing his body between warring parties.  Just as Christ interposed Himself between us and death, so we can can place ourselves in His stead (as His Body) between those who kill out of the bondage of the fear of death.  While this language might not be used, this is the implicit faith of the martyrs, past and present.  They interposed -- an act of intercession before God -- themselves between the demons who have always sought to influence those in power and the corrupted image bearers wielding power.  St Ignatius of Antioch comes to mind here as a specific example of one whose faith and witness to Christ's resurrection remade the violent and depraved Roman Empire.

Martyrdom, in other words, is the base of Christian pacifism.  This is no wishy-washy, bleeding heart liberalism; this is the faith of Christ and His Church, shown to us by the martyrs for the sake of the world.

This Violent World

We live in a violent world, whether directed against others or against the self.  A world that is so hell-bent on destroying itself for the tragic irony of maintaining life.  With all that is happening in Ferguson, St. Louis right now (about which I know precious little, especially since journalists have been banned from the area by the police), I'm reminded of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.  In the first essay, he tells his nephew that part of the reason blacks had been treated unjustly and inhumanely by whites (his setting was Harlem post-WWII, but I'm finding it hard to believe it is any better today anywhere in the States) was because the symbolic universe (the sub-world or mythos) of white culture demanded the subjugation of non-whites.  The argument he makes, knowing the pressure cooker situation at hand, is that blacks must patiently show whites that their sub-world is a lie.  In fact, any mythos that does not allow for love, for forgiveness, for humility was straight out of the abyss.

We need to hear Baldwin today just as much as in the 60s.

Baldwin, famously in the second essay, rejects Christianity as a solution to what he calls the "racial nightmare."  Whereas it had promised faith, hope, and love, it offered only "blindness, loneliness, and terror, the first one actively cultivated to deny the other two."  How could such an institution change the world?  Christians are still guilty of this, I am guilty of this.

When the Church forgets herself, falls asleep, or neglects her mission, the world enters a nightmare.

When the defining characteristic of our religion is not the living saints we are to be producing, but our racism, our classism, our tribalism, our stingy affluence (Lord God, send us another St Francis!), then the world -- those desperately needing the healing love of Christ, those trapped most keenly and often most ignorantly in demonic snares -- suffer.  And the name of Christ, the only name by which healing can come, is blasphemed.

Here's the rub: all violence leads to the Cross.  All the hatred, and injustice, and malice, and cruelty -- Ferguson, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, the Holocausts of the last centuries (Jewish, Ukrainian, Armenian, aborted children), the wars, the terrorism, the everyday contempt and hatred -- are focused on the true human and true God.  Why?  Because we've turned our hearts towards self-destruction.  We abhor idols, especially those that oppress us, and who is more oppressive than ourselves?  As St Augustine said, "what am I but a guide to my own self-destruction?"  Having made ourselves gods, and then having failed at the task, we loathe ourselves and desires to smash the idols we have made.  Depression runs rampant, suicide becomes an everyday occurrence, war becomes absolute and everlasting.

What is needed is not killing ourselves, nor others, but sharing in the death of Christ. Yes, we need to die, but not in the bio-physical way (that will happen, alas, all on its own); rather, our selves -- now embroiled in pride and vanity and lust and malice and covetousness -- must die in Christ, to be able to speak the words He spoke to those who spat on Him, mocked Him, tortured Him, and crucified Him: "forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."  No one ever does: no matter how good we get at economic prognostication or psychic Tarot reading, we never know the future, especially the future created by our own actions.  We know not what we do.  So we not only need forgiveness, but have the essential need to forgive all others.  We need healing, but it can only come from joining Christ's crucifixion and allowing Him, the all-merciful One, to dispense justice.

It is long past time for a thorough examen: where have we contributed to the oppression, to the violence, to the terror of our world?  Are we willing to join in the Cross, sharing the sufferings, forgiving everyone for everything, so that the world might find peace, find true justice that heals rather than destroys further?

God, help us and give us Your divine strength.

Gleanings: Justification

Every once in awhile (as in the first time in 8 years) I organize my office. As I'm shuffling through papers to be (a) filed, (b) shredded, (c) recycled, I often come across hand-scrawled notes on the back of memos, printed emails, class handouts, etc. Often time they are poems, sometimes theological musings. While they are important only to me, I need a place to preserve them. Here's the first one to share:

"Justification is the vindication of honor in the face of sharp criticism. So, Jesus is 'justified' (shown to be honorable) after His shameful death via the resurrection. For the believer to be 'justified by faith,' then, shows that he/she has the highest possible honor from God, through participating in Christ's death and resurrection. The title of 'righteous' means, then, that one is shown to share the honor of the justified/vindicated One, i.e. that we do truly participate in Christ's resurrection/vindication through faith (Christ's and ours) even if the outside world does not see it that way."

Theosis in John 1

Theosis or "Christification" is what I've come to believe is the end-game of salvation: to be united with God and so be restored in His image and likeness. St Athanasius summed it up by saying, "God became man so that man might become divine." He didn't mean that we cease being creatures, but that we take on God's "communicable attributes": we partake of and participate in God's righteousness, holiness, immortality, wisdom, etc. The only way to do this, though, is through Christ -- the ever-incarnate Lord. In other words, this isn't an escape from our mode of existence into some Platonic Form, but rather it is becoming what humans were always meant to be: "Because of the great love which He has for us, Christ became what we are so that we might become what He is", as St Irenaeus put it. Our union with God is only possible insofar as He becomes (and we remain) human. I've done a paltry explanation of what theosis is here, but I hope the main gist has come across. Just as God became human, so we, as humans, are given God the Holy Spirit to restore and, to use St Paul's language, glorify us (alongside all the Creation).

In John 1, we have this spelled out, but often gloss over it in favor of more standard readings of the text. (Brief caveat: I'm not denying the standard readings, nor trying to modify or change them. I'm noticing that the Scriptures are deep, as deep as the infinite Christ they speak of, and so can bear multiple, non-contradictory readings.) Looking at the first verse will suffice:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

The term used for "Word," famously, is Logos, a Greek term that has a rich history in the Septuagint and in Greek philosophy (especially that of the Stoics). It has a wide range of meaning, from a word to the logic of a thing to the reason or telos of something's existence. St Maximos the Confessor uses this last meaning to talk about how the Son, the eternal Logos of the Father, frames all things and draws all things to Himself: the many creational logoi are the one Logos. In other words, the reason/goal/end/telos of all created things is Christ Himself. It is this last meaning that I wish to explore today.

"In the beginning was the Purpose, and the Purpose was with God, and the Purpose was God."

It reads strange, but there is something excitingly biblical about it. Let's unpack it, starting from the final clause.

"the Purpose was God"

The Son will, even as His Kingdom has no end, hand over the Kingdom to the Father, so that "God might be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). Indeed, as St Paul says in Ephesians 1:23, Christ already is "all in all" and the Church is the fullness of Him (a verse worth chewing on and chewing on). All of this "all in all" language is the summary of what God is accomplishing in His world, "And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Eph. 1:9-10). The whole of creation is to be brought into Christ, the one who in His union of natures brings heaven and earth together: His divine nature "divinizes" the Creation. It brings it into participation with God's uncreated Glory, just as the earthly body of Christ shared on Mt Tabor.

Note that this, again, is not an eradication of the created, but rather a participation in which there is no "confusion, change, division, separation" (The Definition of Chalcedon): God remains essentially God, the creation remains essentially created, but now the creation shares in God's "energy" (to use the term of the Cappodocian Fathers and the Palamite). To share in God's glory is what we were created for (Rom. 8:30), what we've fallen short of (Rom. 3:23), and therefore what God won't share with our idols (Is. 42:8).

It is worth noting, as well, that this Glory is the Glory of the Crucified One. To become like God (to share in His image and likeness) is not "knowing good and evil" in the intellectual sense, but in the sense of being crucified to evil with the Good One. There is no "health and wealth" in theosis.

"the Purpose was with God"

The standard reading, of the Son being the Word, comes out most clearly here. The Purpose -- that of uniting all things to Himself -- was "with" God the Father. It was, to be a bit more literal with the Greek, "before" Him or "in His Face." Ephesians 1, which I've already quoted, looked at this. Here also is where predestination properly comes in: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). Whatever else predestination might mean, it means that the Purpose -- God indwelling His world and transfiguring it -- was with God in the beginning. Even the presence of sin and death and corruption works, somehow and paradoxically, into God's Purpose being fulfilled. All the Apostles, in all the Epistles, speak of similar things like this: the Christ was with God, as His Purpose, since He is "the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last" (Rev. 1:11).

"In the beginning was the Purpose"

Working backwards, this one almost needs no argument: we were created, as seen in Romans 8:30, for glorification (and woe to those who don't attain to it by faith!). There is no thought here that God meant for something different, but got sidetracked by Adam's rebellion. Rather, Christ "slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8) meant to bring all things to Himself, things in heaven or on earth (Eph. 1:9-10).

God's purpose is to fill all the world with knowledge of Himself "as the waters cover the sea" (Is. 11:9), knowledge not being an intellectual exercise, but rather a share in His unending Life (Jn. 1:4): "for this is eternal Life, to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent" (Jn. 17:3).

Still Wanted: An Authentic Spirituality

A long time ago, I wrote about this topic of spirituality.  I wouldn't agree with some of what I wrote, especially my castigation of the monastic tradition.  Years later, though, I'm still seeking that spirituality.

Recently, in popular evangelicalism, the concept of brokenness has taken on extreme importance.  You can go to churches that openly proclaim their brokenness, their corruption, their sin, as a badge of honor.  The intent, I think, is to make all feel welcome: you won't find any false, holier-than-thou piety here, just real people struggling with the same stuff you are, maybe even worse.  This is undoubtably comforting for many, especially those who have been hurt by ecclesial structures and authority figures. But it says something deeply disturbing: real, authentic, lasting holiness is a myth.  Once a sinner, always a sinner.  Jesus can change you in the eschaton, but here you are hopeless.  I'm not sure if this is what Luther meant by "simul iustus et peccator," but I know many have understood him that way.

What good is religion if any actual benefit is always out of our reach, especially if that religion commands us to be that way in the here-and-now?  By benefit, of course, I'm talking about the spiritual healing of the human person, not some psychological salve or material gain.

Over and over again in the Scriptures, especially the letters of St Paul, there is talk of the power of the Spirit to enable spiritual transformation.  Talk of sin being divested of its claim and righteousness talking its place.  Talk of a real, somehow tangible indwelling of God's Spirit, given us life and a peace "that surpasses all understanding."  Either this is true, and therefore somehow accessible on a continuous basis for the Christian, or the whole thing is a wash.

In other words, we need saints.  I don't mean the common "in Christ all believers are already saints" idea, which I've been unable to find in the Scriptures, save by exegetical equivocation.  We need folks, men and women, who have attained to the state of constant and abiding communion with God, who have been healed of their passions and errant desires, who dwell in that peace of the Kingdom.  It strikes me, as a Reformed Protestant, that the whole history of the Church is awash, from the earliest days, with the nomenclature of sainthood: martyrs, ascetics, virgins, monks, common men and women who practiced the disciplines quietly and faithfully.  This has been largely lost since the Reformation.  I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with an OPC pastor friend in which we lamented how we couldn't encourage our church youth to become like the often caustic Reformers.  How could we, we discussed, valorize the Reformation when we couldn't morally honor the leaders?  We ended up going separate ways in our conclusions.

Where the saints are, there is the Spirit, where the Spirit is, there is the Church, where the Church is, there is Christ and the Father.

I need healing and I'm still seeking it, wherever it may be found.

Sermon: Matthew 20:1-16

At the gracious re-invitation of Washington Union Alliance Church, here is my sermon on Matthew 20:1-16.

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Sermon Text: Matthew 20:1-16

One of the enduring lessons I learned in college at Geneva is that Americans, such as myself, like formulas, especially in our media consumption. We need to know, going into really any movie or TV show, who the good guy is, who the bad guy is, who the damsel in distress is going to be, and so on. The good guy often turns out to have a secret past that he is trying to live down, or that he doesn’t even know about: Luke Skywalker comes to mind. He is, when we meet him in “A New Hope,” just a farm-boy on a wasted planet far from significance. But then we see him in action and wonder: “why is the Force so strong with this one?” It turns out that his past, and the clearly defined bad guy (black armor, raspy voice, gruff demeanor, helmet shaped like a WWI German soldier’s, and so on), are the key to unraveling the mystery and, therefore, his power. Generally speaking, we want the bad guy to meet a ‘just’ end (usually a violent death). Darth Vader, though, throws a wrench in the machine: he is ‘saved’ by his son’s love. The Emperor, though, the true bad guy, meets a particularly gruesome end in some sort of pyrotechnic engine exhaust shaft that happens to run straight through his imperial suite. Our love of the pat formula is therefore resolved: the real bad guy got his comeuppance, the good guy prevailed, and the oppressed (Vader) was freed. When things don’t go according to plan, though, we balk. That’s just not the way it is supposed to be. These sorts of movies – and we are seeing more and more of them yearly – we call “gritty,” “dark,” “realism.” Could it be that our fear of the chaos of life in a sin-marked, death-corrupted world throws us into our neat formulas?

Here is where Jesus comes to us with His parable about hiring and paying workers. But note, at the very beginning, that He says this story is about “the kingdom of heaven” (v. 1). This phrase means the same thing as “kingdom of God” in the other synoptic Gospels (Mark and Luke) and, arguably, as “eternal life” in John’s Gospel. But what is it? When we pray the prayer our Lord taught us, we say “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10): we ask for whatever this kingdom is to be manifest – to be true reality – in our realm of existence (“on earth”) as it already is in God’s reality (“in heaven”). This isn’t a destruction of our reality (although it will involve judgment on sin and death through the Cross of Jesus), but rather an indwelling of our world by God’s world. It is the leaven that makes a whole loaf rise (13:33): you cannot separate the yeast from the loaf once it has been mixed in, but you can notice the change, the difference it makes. For those of you who are bakers, you have first-hand experience of this. This doesn’t quite, though, tell us what the kingdom is, but only a taste of what it does. The closest we get to see the kingdom as it is comes from the account of the Transfiguration (16:28-17:9), but that will have to wait. Knowing what the kingdom does is the point of this passage and our main concern today.
What we need to note is that this kingdom does not follow our formulas or scripts. The landowner certainly seems to follow them, though, for a time. The workers hired at the first hour (6 am, roughly) he agrees to give a denarius, a small coin that they readily agree to accept for a day’s labor. The third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour laborers he agrees to give them “whatever is right”: a bit vague but they agree nonetheless. We assume, as we are confronted with the parable, that these later workers will get pro-rated wages: a bit less for the third hour guys, a lot less for the eleventh hour guys. This is fair, right? We should be paid according to our work. Job’s friends thought the same way; Deuteronomy seems to give a similar formula.
Here is where we see the twist: the landowner pays the eleventh hour workers (the guys hired at around 5pm) first. He pays them a denarius. This gets the first hour guys thinking: hey, fairness dictates that we should get more, since they worked an hour and we worked six. So, in their hearts, they forget the covenant that their employer had made: a denarius for a day’s work. By the time they come for their wages, then, their greed is in full swing: they want what is coming to them. But the landowner – the kingdom of heaven – gives them what they agreed to work for: a denarius. Unfair! Unjust! Cruel! A breach of good faith and contract! But no, the landowner says, “is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?” (v. 15) He had not cheated them, as they supposed, but rather shown great mercy and grace to all those who were hired later. In the kingdom of heaven, mercy and grace trump fairness, so that all may bask in the beneficence of the King. Jealousy and greed have no place, but rather “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Rom. 12:15) or “if one member [of Christ’s Body] is glorified, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). The rule of the kingdom is grace and life and joy and peace: the kingdom is the Holy Spirit of God who pours out the love of God the Father in our hearts (Rom. 5:5).

All analogies, even the parables of Jesus, break down at some point. They are images that point to a deeper reality: remember the first verse in which the Lord Christ said “the kingdom of heaven is like,” any simile or metaphor conceals as much as it reveals. Will we, who strive to find the “narrow gate” (Matt. 7:13), who seek to have our righteousness – which we receive from Christ Himself – “exceed that of the scribes of Pharisees” (5:20), be working for a heavenly pittance, as a denarius in today’s terms is between 15-20 cents? What do we expect to be the reward of our Christian life? Asking that question, of course, raises up a whole host of thoughts and dreams and desires in our minds: I remember going to a church when I was young that interpreted Jesus’ statement that “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children of lands, for My sake and the Gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time – houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions – and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30) in a most literal manner. We should expect, the line went, to have all sorts of good things in this life (with persecutions, which meant the Tribulation) and expect to rule the earthly creation in the next. While I don’t think the pastor intended this, it could easily turn into a desire of the flesh: think of a certain religion that promises 72 virgins (as the minimum) to its male adherents. We turn the American Dream into our eschatological hope, even amidst calls from the Lord Christ to “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor…come, take up the Cross, and follow Me” (10:21).

What is our inheritance, then? What does the denarius mean in the kingdom of heaven? The Apostle Paul tells us that “He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Cor. 1:22) and “In [Christ] you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:13-14). Our inheritance, our denarius, is the Holy Spirit as a “guarantee” or a “down payment.” This is a curious statement from the Apostle, though, if we stop to ponder it. We have, in Christ, the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts, who pours out the love of God into them. The Spirit is God Himself. When we are promised the Spirit, we are promised nothing less than the one true God fulfilling His ancient promise that “I will be their God and they will be My people and I will dwell among them” (Ez. 37:27, among others). The infinite, uncreated, incomprehensible, transcendent-yet-immanent God is our down payment! Now, for those of you who are home owners, you know that a down payment is only the start: you have yet to take possession of the home and make it yours, but the down payment means that the fullness is coming. What could be fuller, though, than God Himself? St Paul does discuss this in Romans 8: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God…because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (18-23). We cannot possible receive anything greater than God Himself, but God, in His great mercy and love, gives us not only Himself, but restores, sanctifies, and glorifies our own selves – body, soul, and spirit. Already has He given Himself to us, but more than that He will give us what we truly are in Christ: “your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:3-4) and “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:2).
As we enter this reality, the “in heaven” part of the Lord’s Prayer, it changes all of our lives. When both Sts Paul and John talk about sharing in this divine glory, they finish their thoughts by calling us to greater Christ-likeness: “Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5) and “everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3). This isn’t a call to be more moral, since in our world that often leads to radically immoral attitudes: we reach a level of morality and then judge others who do not conform it that (for whatever reason). Rather, we are talking about having the life of God – the Spirit – be so present in us and among us that we can truly say “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). As St Irenaeus says, “Because of the great love which He has for us, He became what we are so that we might become what He is” (AH V. Prologue). To partake of God’s fullness, to receive the Spirit, requires and produces a different form of existence: a crucified existence, one that is dead to “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16), so that it might be alive to God and know Him and His kingdom.

This kingdom, which is God Himself in His out pouring for us in Christ and the Spirit, is what we have now and look forward, with the rest of creation, to entering fully. No matter when you come to Christ and are known by Him, you receive this same treasure. For all of us, those who cannot remember coming to faith because it happened when you were two or three and those of us who are now struggling to find Christ, the treasure is the same: it is God Himself. The sense of ‘unfairness’ we get when we see others’ prayers answered, or lives blessed, when we languish in a “dry and thirst land” (Ps. 63:1) shows us that we think of God as a measurable commodity. There is only so much God to go around, so we must conserve and hoard and keep Him to ourselves. But this is the infinite God, the one who created the universe, the one to whom belongs “the earth and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1); instead of needing to keep Him to ourselves, He gives Himself to all of us. We have no need for jealousy, or greed, or miserliness when it comes to Him: He Himself will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15: 28). Rather, we rejoice when others in the Body receive more of Him, knowing the promise that in His time and in His way, He will bring us into His fullness: in fact, He already has, if we had eyes to see it and hearts to believe it. “And [God] put all things under [Jesus’] feet, and gave Him to be head over all things for the Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22). If you are in the Church by faith and baptism, you partake of the fullness of Him who fills all in all now.
This brings us back to the parable of the day. Our Lord Christ ends it by saying, “So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen.” The kingdom of heaven breaks all of our formulas down: here the good guy doesn’t triumph through force of arms, but with outstretched arms on the Cross. The kingdom, our inheritance, isn’t a set amount of which we must ration, but the infinite God calling one and all to inhabit and indwell, regardless of past history: while the roles of first and last are reversed, this does not mean that the first are now cast out. Rather, we are made one in Christ, the self-giving God, that the world might find healing. Listen to these words from St John Chrysostom’s Easter Homily:

If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived thereof. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.
And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.
O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

This is the kingdom of heaven, this is the presence of Christ, this is the divine denarius given to us – regardless of our merit – by the divine landowner. What shall we do in the presence of this kingdom by act like the merchant in another parable? “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:45-6). Or the famous finder of treasure: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for joy over it goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (44). We have found the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who gives us Himself in the Spirit. What shall we do but forsake all to gain Him who is all in all? Whether you’ve come to Him at the first hour, or tarried till today, come and partake of this One who generously gives us “life and that more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10), not life defined by more stuff or more experiences, as good as these things can be, but a life characterized by being filled with the Spirit, becoming the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Amen.

The Use of the Old Testament

When I was in seminary, I focused for my STM on the study of the Old Testament (OT).  My thesis was on understanding the census numbers in the book of Numbers, so that they could be read as Christian Scripture.  Passages such as those are often ignored in preaching and catechesis, as they seem like good history (maybe), but not much else.  My answer, after surveying all the possible English (and some German and French) arguments, was that scholars didn't have an answer.  No extant theory can be plausibly sustained: some got close, but all left interpretive lacunae.  Nothing answered all the problems.  I knew, at the time, that some sort of hermeneutical 'paradigm shift' was necessary.  But I didn't have one. I still don't, honestly.

This was brought back to my mind by my pastor's sermon today.  In discussing Acts 17, he noted that St Paul ignores the OT in his evangelism.  In front of diaspora Jews, sure, there's lots of OT history and Psalms.  On the Areopagus, none.  He said to them it would have been irrelevant.  Just like the census lists (I added internally).  So, if we don't need an understanding of he OT for salvation (at least St Denys believes at this point), what good is it?  What, for the Christian, is the utility of the Old Testament?

The Old Testament is mystagogy.

The Lord Christ tells us, in Luke 24, that the whole of the OT (summarized as Law, Prophets, and Psalms) is about Him.  How can that be so?  If we read it straightforwardly as history, as I'd be taught in good Calvinist, redemptive-historical fashion, then it is hard to see this, except to say that the OT gives us the necessary historical conditions for the appearance of the Messiah.  The prophecies point forward, some of the more cryptic Psalms do as well, but once the set has been set, it is hard to see how to apply the OT to the Christian life. (As a side-note, I think this is why Theonomy/Christian Reconstruction became so popular amongst many Reformed in the late 80s through the early 2000s: it made the OT real). But this, truly, isn't satisfying: Marcion could probably jive with such a reading of the OT, as it sets the proper evolutionary tone for its own vestigial obsolescence.

So, what? How is the OT mystagogical? This goes back to my pastor's comment. Mid the OT historical background was so necessary, the Apostle would have started with at least a brief introduction.  But he didn't: he started (and finished) with Christ.  The Messiah is the framework and substance of our salvation, not the history of Israel.  However, as we can see from his letters, mostly written to those who were former Gentiles, the OT has a role yet to play, one that goes beyond history, without ever forgetting its historical truth.  It is the witness, on every page, to Christ and His work.  However, until we have been brought to Christ, and died with Him in baptism, we cannot even begin to read it that way.  It will be so much history, some of which is hard for us moderns to swallow (kill every living human in Canaan?!). If it is pointing to Christ, that means it is also pointing to His Body, which means Mary, the Eucharist, and the Church. In other words, what the Fathers call the allegorical or symbolic level of interpretation, leading to the anagogical (in which we, like St Palamas, behold the heavenly glory of the incarnate Christ and are transfigured by Him).

The allegorical, which we are generally allergic to because of perceived Medieval abuse thereof, is strictly bounded.  The touchstone, as in all things, is Christ.  Hence the early regula fidei, which remind us of the essentials of faith (the purpose of which, may we remind ourselves, goes beyond justification, to Christification or theosis), and therefore call us to greater intimacy and knowledge of our Creator and Redeemer.  St Paul lays is out in 1 Corinthians 10, where the OT stories of the Exodus and Wanderings (including, then, the census lists!) are shown to be typos, examples, for us "upon whom the completion of the ages has come" (v. 11).  This completion, often I helpfully translated 'ends,' is shown to be Christ Himself, gathering up everything in heaven and on earth to Himself (Eph. 1:10, cp. Dt. 30:3-4), so that the Father might be "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). The OT, more than just mere history, can become what it was always supposed to be: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17), so that we might be "wise unto salvation by faith" as was St Timothy.

(Reflecting on this, here is why Jews have the advantage in Romans: while both Jew and Gentile come to Christ on equal terms -- faith in the faithfulness of Christ -- the Jews had been entrusted with the "oracles of God" (3:1-2) and so could grasp the mystagogical meaning of their Scriptures much more easily, especially if they were faithful in practice of the Torah, which would render them purified and ready for deeper revelation.  Sts Athanasius, Cassian, and Gregory of Nazianzus all speak in this way about the necessity of purification before Scriptural interpretation, so I will refer the curious reader to them.)

What does this look like in practice?

Let's take the theme of the Tabernacle/Temple as our (necessarily cursory) example:  all sorts of legislation and historical narrative surround the planning, building, operation, and maintenance of the Hebrew cultus. Since Christ, of course, it is passing away and has become obsolete (Heb. 8:13).  So what good does it do us, apart from antiquarian interest to study the purity regulations or the forming/filling construction narratives of Leviticus and Exodus (respectively)?  As St Paul might say, much in every way. For, "the Word dwelt (lit. tabernacles) among us and we beheld His glory" (Jn. 1:14, so much could be said here, as this passage is pointing us right back to Ex. 40). The Word of God came among us as in the tabernacle.  What does this tell us?  First, it means that wherever the Word dwelt, there must be holiness, for the true God called for this over and over again,  in fact, once the Temple had been hideously defiled, the glory left it, as shown in Ezekiel 8-10. What does this, then tell us about the Virgin Mary?  First, she truly is Theotokos, for she has given birth to the tabernacling Word.  Second, it is theologically necessary that she be holy, free from sin and defilement, for at least as long as she carried the Word (some might say, how could she do this? "Hail! Mary, full of grace...").  More, of course, could be said.  I refer the curious reader to the Fathers for more (Christian history, and the increasing veneration of Mary -- note: I didn't say worship -- makes a lot more sense once you see these things).  What does our (brief) look into the OT tell us about Jesus? The Temple was the site of cleansing (Lk. 8:43-48), of the forgiveness of sins (Mt. 9:4-6), of the manifestation of God's uncreated glory (Mk. 9:2-7).  Jesus, as the incarnate God-man, is the fullness of what the Temple was.  To understand Him, we must look back through Him to the OT Temple.  At one point, He says that the Jews could destroy this Temple and in three days He would raise it up, referring, as John tells us, "of the Temple of His Body" (2:21).  St Paul remind us that we are His Body, the Church (Eph. 1:22-23, etc.), so all the OT language about the purity of the Tabernacle/Temple (1 Cor. 6) and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2, cp. Ex. 40 and 1 Chron. 5) are for, and about, our ascetic lives "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

The OT has everlasting value, then, as it speaks in a fullness about Christ that can only be brought out and experienced by the Church, the "pillar and ground of the Truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

Sermon: Luke 23:39-43

Here is the text to my sermon at Chippewa United Presbyterian Church in Beaver Falls on Memorial Day weekend, 2014. I was greeted with hospitality and hope to come back soon.
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Scripture Text: One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”


This weekend is the weekend, in our civil holiday calendar, that we remember and celebrate those who have gone before us in national faithfulness. Regardless of whether or not you have veterans who have fallen in your family, this remembrance is regarded as an important part of our civic consciousness: part of being American is to honor those who have died for the defense and spread of our national ideals – freedom, justice, and democracy. But we know that our memories are short and rather selective; it has become a proverb in my family that if there is something important to remember, I’ve already forgotten it. Last night, around the dinner table with friends, my wife told a variety of stories, some involving me, of which I had no recollection. My age must be finally showing through.

The most famous Biblical incidence of this is found in the book of Genesis, in the Joseph narrative. Joseph properly interprets the dream of the cupbearer, bringing him good tidings of restoration, and asks “Only remember me, when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit” (40:14-15). However, as the story proceeds we learn “the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him” (23). It isn’t for another two whole years (41:1) that Joseph comes up to the remembrance of the cupbearer and eventually joins him as a valued and trusted servant of Pharaoh. The rest of the story, how Joseph saves the kingdom from famine and rises to be chief vizier of the Pharaoh, is well known. How was Joseph able to bear the wait, which must have been excruciating? The text does not tell us, but I think it is safe to speculate that he did not trust in the memory of the cupbearer, but in the memory of God.

It may seem strange to talk about the memory of God. Is it even possible for the God who has made everything, who has declared “the end from the beginning” (Is. 46:10), to forget? Let any such thoughts be far from us! Memory, in the Scriptures, is not mere calling to mind something that has been forgotten. Joseph asked the cupbearer to remember him long before he was forgotten! Rather, it is a term of grace: the one who remembers will act in favor towards and for the one brought to mind: to remember is to act on behalf of someone. So we see, all over the Scriptures, God remembering. His remembrance, though, leads not just to a position of power, as in the case of the cupbearer. His memory leads to our salvation. Again, in Genesis, we read of how “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (8:1): God acted on Noah’s behalf, not leaving him stranded, but guiding that ark of salvation for the world to its resting place. The Psalms, that prayerbook of the Bible, record over and over again cries for God to remember and so to act: “Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of Your goodness, o Lord” (Ps. 25:6-7). To be remembered by God is to be saved.

When we reach the criminal on the cross next to the Lord Christ, then, we see his appeal is more than just a casual “bringing to mind.” Rather, he is asking Jesus to act on his behalf in God’s Kingdom. The context of the passage will help us to understand this request more clearly. During the crucifixion, the criminals and the elders of the people and the Roman soldiers all mocked him: “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one!” and “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself” and the mocking title from Pilate “This is the King of the Jews”. Through this Luke is bringing to our attention another incident earlier in his Gospel: Jesus is reliving the first temptation from Satan, who had sought to entice Him away from His saving work by promises of status, sovereignty, and safety. The Devil used the same language of “Son of God” as his ace-in-the-hole. Just like in that first encounter with the enemy, Jesus’ answers overcome: there, He had untwisted the Scriptures that the Serpent perverted; here, He offers forgiveness for their ignorant actions (“Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do”) and does not return taunts for taunts, evil for evil, but rather is “like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not His mouth” (Is. 53:7). In the light of this, as the criminal on the left continues the taunting (“Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”), the criminal on the right begins to see that this One truly is the King of Israel. He has done nothing wrong, nor does He seek vengeance against His enemies, nor does He break out in imprecations against His accusers; rather, He offers clemency to the worst offenders, even to those justly condemned who are being crucified next to Him. And so the thief believes.

This faith is what prompts him to ask for the Lord’s remembrance, for Messianic action on his behalf. “Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom.” Rather than asking for immediate relief from the tortures of death on a cross, though, he contents himself to share that fate with his new Lord. His request is for some future action, once God has vindicated the King and given Him glory, although it is hard to tell what he would have been imagining. The criminal, who tradition names as Dismas, is like Joseph, seeking remembrance from the cupbearer of God, the human messiah, once he is lifted up into the presence of the Great King. The Lord Christ, who in His human nature is the Davidic king, the right-hand man of God, but who in His divine nature and person is that self-same Great King, offers the penitent much more than human remembrance. He offers Dismas immediate divine action. “Truly, I say to you,” offering him a strong oath, “today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Is this not the great mercy and grace of our God? We come, as the prodigal son, seeking merely to be servants to the One we have wronged; He offers us the fatted calf and the family robe and the angelic celebration over one wicked person who repents! But what does this mean “today you will be with me in Paradise”? Didn’t our Lord first need to descend into Hades, the abode of the righteous and unrighteous dead, “in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Pt. 3:19)? Wasn’t He in the tomb for three days before He was resurrected and 40 more days amongst us before He ascended to the Father’s right hand? What is this “Paradise” and how could our Lord have offered it to the criminal “today”?

It will help us to examine some of the symbolism in this passage. I mentioned earlier that these events play out as a repeat of the temptation by Satan found in Luke 4. That passage, along with this one, shows how Jesus, the Son of Adam, overcame the temptations by which our foreparents fell. In the earlier passage, Jesus overcomes the Serpent by properly using Scripture. In this passage, the symbolism is deeper: Adam died by eating from the forbidden tree, Jesus hangs on a Tree and dies. Where Adam was disobedient, Christ is fully obedient to the Father. Where Adam accuses Eve and even God Himself (“the woman that You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree…”), Jesus blesses (“Father, forgive them…”). Christ has rejected the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and instead ascended the Tree of Life, by which He conquered the ancient enemy of humankind. Satan is undone: by the cross Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15). He ascended this Tree so that “through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14): that which held Adam and all his descendants in bondage to sin has now been undone, unraveled.

The consequence, though, of Adam’s sin was exile and a barred entrance into God’s garden. The Lord “placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Gen. 3:24). The way is shut, for Adam cannot “reach out his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever” (3:22). If Adam were to do so without repentance, then the corruption of death and sin would always stay in God’s good creation and God, who had warned Adam about death (“on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die”) would be made into a liar. No, for man’s good, so that he might be saved from the slavery to sin and death, Adam must die. He is, as the thief says, “justly condemned.” How, though, shall we reenter that communion with God that Adam and Eve originally enjoyed? Here it is important to note that the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which the New Testament authors knew, read from, and loved, renders the word ‘garden’ as ‘Paradise.’ Jesus, seeing the faith through death of the penitent, opens up the gates of Eden again, banishing the flaming sword, dismissing the cherubim. He has “opened for us a new and living way through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” so that we might “have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:20, 19). The criminal, by faith, rejects the Serpent’s way and reaches towards the Tree of Life for this restored communion with God Himself, for “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

The Lord Christ, acting as the Creator God, has planted this Paradise and now is placing this newly-made man in that place with Himself. Instead of understanding “Paradise” as a physical location to which Christ and Dismas go, we should understand it in the same symbolic way the Apostle Paul does: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:14-17). The Lord Jesus, taking upon Himself Adam’s self-imposed curse, has died – the righteous for the unrighteous – that all might die in Him through baptism and repentance, being found as new creations through faith. In this new creation is the true Paradise of God, as St Peter tells us, “according to His promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pt. 3:13).

The penitent criminal, bound for Paradise, functions as a symbol of all of us. We who have, by faith, cried out to Jesus for mercy, for remembrance, are made, by His grace, new creations; no longer should we consider one another after the flesh, but as those who are indwelt by and walking according to the Spirit of God. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Our flesh, though, by which the Apostle means our connection to the corruption and death brought about by Adam, is crucified with Christ, as the penitent was. We shall no longer walk according to that life, so take hope you who, like me, struggle against the flesh: Christ has put it to death, so that we might share in His eternal, resurrected life, which is the Spirit: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law” (Gal. 5:16-23): this is Paradise, this is the new creation, this is the remembrance of the Lord our God, crucified for us, in which we are invited now, “today” as He says from the Cross, to partake in. How shall we partake in this, when it seems so hard and so tiring to fight against the flesh? As the author to the Hebrews says, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24-25), for “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the daytime…put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:11-14). “The Day” is at hand: beloved, it is here! For the penitent, “today” was the day of his death with Christ: this same Lord calls us to “take up our cross daily” (Lk. 9:23): let today be the day that we call to remembrance our Lord Christ and lose our life for His sake, that it might be saved (9:24). All over the Scriptures, this day is the day we are to turn to God and remember Him: “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15); “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Ps. 95:7-8); “Working together with [Christ], then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now it the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation…Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 6:1-2; 7:1). Above all, let us remember that He first has remembered our lowly state in Adam (1:52) and visited us (1:68). Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, blessed be the Lord Christ, blessed be the Lord and Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit; one God now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.