Everything is dying

The lectionary took me into Luke 8 this morning, and the account of the raising of Jairus's daughter.  I was struck again, as I have been before, by the drama of the story: the urgent pleading from Jairus which surely any parent can imagine; the nightmare delay as Jesus looks around for a sick woman who has touched him in the midst of the crowd; the messenger with his news of death and despair; the outrageous call from Jesus to believe in the face of death that all will be well; the mourners, whose wailing turns to mocking laughter when Jesus declares that the girl is not dead in spite of the clear evidence; the direct address to the corpse, calling life back in; and even the little detail that she was given something to eat.

But what I really took away from this morning was this: how we need the God of the resurrection.

It is, perhaps, a sign of my temperament that even in the midst of spring, with the evidence of new life all around, I still find myself thinking about the fact that everything is dying.  It is a fact, after all.  I don't mean this in the sense of the more alarmist ecologists of our culture - though I suspect those people might be worth listening to, at least a bit, and sometimes what passes for alarmism is just realism coming into contact with a lethargic and dismissive culture.  No, I don't mean that, I just mean the simple fact: everything that lives dies, and as far as we know the universe as a whole is also on track for (a very slow) death.

This is why gods who are bound up with the creation are no good to us.  Gods who exists within the cycle of life and death - which is in fact not a cycle, but a spiral downwards - won't suit our need.  Even gods of healing alone are not enough.

We need a God who can enable us to look death in the face and to hear his voice saying: do not be afraid; only believe.  And we need a God who has demonstrated that even at the utter end of everything - even in death - he is able to reach out a hand and recall us to life.

We need the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of the resurrection.

On life, contra Pinker

Yesterday saw Twitter graced with this from the popular science writer Steven Pinker:

Belief in an afterlife is a malignant delusion, since it devalues actual lives and discourages action that would make them longer, safer, and happier. Exhibit A: What’s really behind Republicans wanting a swift reopening? Evangelicals. https://t.co/ppo2bwiVGn

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) May 21, 2020

Is that right?  Leave aside the Washington Post article to which he links, which I think makes a rather more nuanced point: is it right to state that belief in an afterlife devalues actual lives and discourages actions that would make them longer, safer, and happier?

First of all we'd have to clarify what was meant by 'an afterlife'.  It is common in the handling of religion by our new atheists to try to lump things together as if they were all the same; indeed, the notion that 'religion' can be treated as a monolithic thing is one of the hallmarks of contemporary approaches.  But not all afterlives are the same.  'Afterlife' could cover views including reincarnation (a further life, or further lives, to be lived within this physical world, albeit possibly in a different animal form) as well as some sort of spiritual survival (a ghostly element of the human make up to live on in some form, probably in another world).  Different forms of afterlife will have different effects on the understanding of the value of this life.  For example, the ancient Greeks believed in an afterlife, but it was a grim old business, and would hardly have made one keen to go there.

Christians, as N.T. Wright is keen to point out, believe not so much in an afterlife but in life after the afterlife.  That is to say, we look forward to real flesh and blood resurrection, on the model of the resurrection of Jesus, in a renewed physical creation.  That is a particular view of what happens after death.  It has, moreover, other concomitant beliefs  - in a judgement based on the way this life has been lived; in that life as being therefore related to this life by way of consequence.  That matters.

Okay, so not all afterlives are created equal.  Does the Christian view of the afterlife devalue actual lives in the here and now?  Does it discourage action to make lives in the here and now longer and happier?

The history of Christianity would point to the opposite - and again I can't adequately recommend Tom Holland's overview of that history in Dominion.  But I think we can also think it out from first principles.  What does the physical resurrection of Christ demonstrate?  Amongst other things, that God is interested in and committed to this physical life.  Resurrection - rather than, say, the survival of the human spirit - says that this world is not a mere preliminary to a better more spiritual existence.  This world is the goal.  It is for the restoration of this world that Christ gave up his life, and it is the firstfruits of the restoration of this world which we see in his resurrection.  Not pie in the sky when you die, then.

But what about all those biblical references which seem to downplay the value of this life in comparison with the next?  When the apostle Paul says that the sufferings of this time are not to be compared with the future glory isn't he basically denigrating this life?  When he says that we Christians are pitiable if we only have hope for this life, isn't he devaluing this life?

We need to keep firmly in mind that in both cases Paul is talking about resurrection, and the restoration of creation, and not the immortality of the soul - that is to say, not escape from this physical world and this ordinary human life, but the hope of the renewal of the world and the perfection of this human life.  That is the consistent perspective of the Bible.  But more than that, it's important to consider that Paul is in fact expressing his willingness to pour himself out for others, in their service, because he doesn't need to squeeze everything he can for himself out of this mortal life.  He doesn't need to, because resurrection is assured.  The hope of resurrection, then, gives Paul the liberty to put his life wholly at the service of others.  Now, I'm sure Steven Pinker wouldn't like the way Paul serves others - as a missionary preacher - but that's because there are fundamental disagreements between Pinker and Paul on the subject of what life and the world is all about.  But for the purposes of this argument, the key thing is just this: the Christian's resurrection hope - being a certain hope, based on Jesus' resurrection - liberates from self-interest and enables devotion to others.  And of course over the centuries that devotion has expressed itself not only in missionary endeavour but also in nursing the sick, or raising up schools.  Because it is commitment to life.

To conclude, it's worth briefly considering the alternative.  Suppose we emerged from a meaningless world, sentient by accident, by a cruel trick of fate concerned for - indeed, needing - meaning and purpose in a universe which ultimately has none...  It is not clear to me why any of this should lead to valuing life.  It may lead to a clinging to life, because the alternative is the collapse back into the meaningless darkness from which we came; but then, why prefer the meaningless light to the meaningless darkness?  I just can't see it.  And you know what, if you only live once, I think there's a huge amount of logic to getting as much out of it as you can, regardless of the impact on others.  I'm glad atheists like Pinker don't typically think like this - but I think they're hugely illogical in not drawing this conclusion.  You see, the expectation of post-mortem judgement by God for the Christian is simply a reflection of the profound certainty that in God's meaningful world every action matters; our being and doing are significant, of consequence.  Remove God and you can of course removed the burden of that responsibility; but you also remove the significance of human life.

Take out the resurrection, and you may well be committed to making human lives happier, longer, safer.  But who cares?  What is the value of a human life?  What would it matter if you had chosen differently?

An idle tale

An aspect of the Easter story which I didn't touch on in my brief sermon on Sunday is the initial reaction of Jesus' followers to the news of the resurrection.  We are continuing a long-running series in Luke's Gospel, so picked up the story from Luke 24:1-12.  The women go to the tomb; the stone is moved and the body missing; two angels appear who proclaim the resurrection of Christ.  And then, naturally, they go tell the male disciples.

Who don't believe a word of it.

The way Luke tells the story, they weren't violently opposed to the idea of Jesus being raised; they didn't feel the need to argue about why it was impossible.  They didn't engage with the message at all.  It seemed like nothing more than an idle tale.  A fantasy.

Partly I guess we're seeing the reaction of a misogynistic culture.  As many preachers will no doubt have pointed out at the weekend, the testimony of a woman was automatically suspect in the ancient world, and legally inadmissible.  And of course such attitudes persist.  But I don't think that's the heart of it.

The disciples of Jesus find it easy to dismiss rumours of his resurrection because they know that this sort of thing does not happen.  Their indifference to the report of the women is motivated by the exact same force which lies behind much contemporary rejection of the same report: it doesn't happen that way.  People die and stay dead.  That's just the way it is.

I find this reaction encouraging in some ways.  The first Christians weren't naive; they didn't belong to a time where resurrections were believable.  Bear in mind that according to the Gospel writers, these disciples had witnessed Jesus raising people from death to life; they had also heard his promise that he himself would rise on the third day.  But this was not enough to overcome the basic human intuition, backed up by overwhelming experience, that death is a one-way trip.  The only thing that did overcome it was an encounter with the risen Jesus himself.  To me this makes their testimony more believable.  They were sceptics too, and had to be won over.

I suspect that in some ways it was harder for them than it is for us.  We've had centuries to become accustomed to the idea of Christ rising, even if we still regard it as an idle tale.  As N.T. Wright tirelessly points out, the first disciples knew what resurrection was; it was something which would occur at the end, when everyone would rise to judgement.  This resurrection, of a singular person, was not it.  It ran contrary to everything they knew about the world, just as, for different reasons, it runs contrary to what we know about the world.

But is it an idle tale, though?  Was the world turned upside down, were millions of lives changed, by an idle tale?  Was it a fantasy which brought this all about?

Which story, in the end, is more unbelievable?

Reasonable, because real

On Sunday I preached from the opening part of Acts 17, and amongst other things noted that Luke reports that the apostle Paul "reasoned", "explained", and "proved" the content of the Christian message in the synagogue.  A noble response to the message, according to Luke, was not so much to just take Paul's word for it, but to "examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so".  Because he was in the synagogue, Paul was able to make use of the Scriptures as an acknowledged authority, in a way that we mostly won't be able to do in our context, but the broader point I was making was this: the gospel is the sort of thing that can be discussed, argued over, reasoned.

To put it another way, the gospel is reasonable, because it is real.  Contemporary Western culture wants to put a hard border around a world of 'facts' which can be debated, and to put religious claims outside that border, in the world of 'opinions' and 'beliefs'.  Some people think they're doing religion a favour here - putting it outside the grubby world of argument and within a transcendent realm where you can hold your beliefs in a mystical way without being bothered.  Others think, more accurately, that they're defending the secular order against dangerous religion - it neuters religious opinion by making it the sort of thing which one can't really discuss.  Either way, the point is that religion may be a nice interpretive story that people tell themselves to find meaning in the world, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with truth (not, at least, the everyday sort of truth which concerns the way things are), and therefore can't be argued over, except in ways unrelated to truth: we can argue, for example, about whether religion is helpful or harmful, but not about whether it is real.

The whole Bible stands against this point of view.  Everything in the Christian faith stands or falls with the reality of Christ's resurrection, in history, at a particular place, in reality.  If Christ didn't rise, Christians are pitiable fools.  The book of Acts stresses again and again that the message proclaimed by the apostles has to do with public, accessible events: these things were not done in a corner.

If this is true, it is possible to argue, to reasonably engage in a demonstration of the truth of Christianity.  (I don't mean here the sort of Enlightenment reasoning, as if a person sat down with nothing but their intellect and the world around them ought to be able to arrive at Christian conclusions; I mean that given God's revelation in Christ in history, it is in principle possible to discuss the reality or otherwise of the Christian faith).

I argued on Sunday that there is one thing in particular that it is incumbent on Christians to know about: why do they believe that Jesus rose from the dead?  There are some good resources out there on this question.  N.T. Wright's big book on The Resurrection of the Son of God is the very best, in my opinion, setting the question in its historical context and showing that there really is no other plausible explanation.  Some of the arguments are summarised in the first part of his more popular level Surprised by Hope, which might be more manageable.  It doesn't seem to have got the attention it deserves, but Daniel Clark's little book Dead or Alive? is a helpful introductory presentation of the evidence for the resurrection set in the context of a gospel presentation, and would be a good one to have on hand to give away.  And of course there is still the classic Who Moved the Stone.

On the broader question of the rationality of faith, a good introductory run through many of the questions that people ask about Christianity can be found in But is it Real? and Why Trust the Bible? by Amy Orr-Ewing.  I continue to find the argument of C.S. Lewis in Miracles to be deeply convincing, though I'm aware it has its detractors.  The Reason for God by Tim Keller is excellent.  I would warn against many more philosophical works, for example those by William Lane Craig, not because there is nothing useful in them but because in my view they ultimately depend too little on God's revelation in Christ.

Have others found particular books (or other media; I'm aware that I don't really engage much with audio or video presentations, just because I like books better...) helpful in thinking through the rationality of faith?

Why I am a Christian

There are lots of ways you could tell this story, of course, with the emphasis falling in different places.  There are plenty of circumstantial factors that would have to be borne in mind - pre-eminent among them the fact that I was born into and raised within a family where the Christian faith was sincerely believed and seriously practised - and I'm sure many people would want to reduce the whole answer to the sum of circumstances like that.  For myself, I could also give an 'upper storey' account of why I am a Christian, pointing to the agency of the Holy Spirit enabling my agency in belief - an account which would, of course, only be plausible for those who were also operating with a commitment to Christian faith.

But this is the account of the middle storey, the account of what reasons I could give for being a Christian.  If somebody were to ask me why I believed, and of course people do ask just that, this is the answer I would give.

Incidentally, for me faith is not a thing that comes easily.  I know that for some people it does, and over time my attitude toward that has changed.  For a long time I tended to think that those who seemed to have an implicit trust in God were just being naive.  I was a bit patronising about it, to be honest: they don't seem to have wrestled with the hard questions at all, how can that be genuine faith?  (The implication being that my own belief was somehow more valid for being more complicated).  Well, I repent.  Simple, straightforward faith is a great and glorious gift of God, and not to be despised.  Perhaps rather to be envied.  But that's not where I am or have ever been.  I walk somewhere on the border of Christianity and atheism, and I'm thankful that I've typically kept to the faith-full side of the border.  But why?

There are three reasons, basically.  The first and most foundational is that I am convinced that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.  At first this simply meant that I found the testimony to this event convincing: I read the accounts and I thought the witnesses seemed sincere, in a position to know the truth (or otherwise) of what they were saying, and ready to venture a great deal on this testimony (their lives, in fact).  I was struck by the lack of art or manufacture about the various strands of testimony to the resurrection.  Even the inconsistencies struck me as evidence of truthfulness; nobody inventing a story would do it that way.  When I have doubts about aspects of Christian faith, I circle back around to the resurrection: I don't see how it can be explained away, and everything else rests on it.

Of huge help to me in thinking about the resurrection more thoroughly was Tom Wright's book The Resurrection of the Son of God.  Wright sets the testimony to the resurrection within its context, showing that this wasn't something anyone - Jewish or pagan - was expecting, and yet that it did in the end  fit within the Jewish story, as the fulfillment of the ancient hopes and promises.  It's a really big book, but if you're serious about thinking through whether this really happened - and what it would mean if it did - this is the place to go.

The second reason is basically this from C.S. Lewis:  “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.” In other words, putting the resurrection of Jesus in its place at the centre of my view of the world causes everything else to make sense. In particular, I know of no other worldview, religion, or philosophy which enables and encourages me to be a human person, and to take my humanity and personhood seriously, in its glory and its limitations. The world is a confusing and often dark place, and human thinking about the world is a muddle. Contemporary culture seems to be elevating that muddle to a position of unassailable orthodoxy. But I keep wondering - can you live as if this were true? Can you really live as if you were a meaningless blip in a meaningless universe? With Jesus, I find that the world, and my life, and indeed the very darkness and muddle, receive a powerful explanation. It's like the sun rose, or someone turned the lights on.

The third reason is that this morning, like almost every morning, I spent some time speaking with God and listening to him speak to me. Which is to say, I am a Christian because I know (relationally) the God who made the universe.

I'd be interested to hear why you are, or are not, a Christian. Let me know.

The work done by a doctrine of creation

It can be easy for the doctrine of creation to function merely as a backdrop - establishing a baseline, as it were, to make it easier to see the effects of the fall.  Yes, God made the world, and yes, it was good; but that's all in the past, and this side of Genesis 3 what matters is just pulling souls out of the wreckage before the whole thing goes up in smoke.

But a robust doctrine of creation - of the view that God made all this stuff and that it is therefore good, because it bears the mark of its Creator and serves his purposes - is so much more important than that.

Doctrinally, you can't make sense of Jesus without a sound doctrine of creation.  The idea that God the Son took on flesh makes no sense except in a scenario where God the Maker is still concerned for the stuff he has made.  The emphasis on stuff that pervades the gospel accounts - the physical healings, the miracles of food and wine, baptism and Supper - is inexplicable without a God who has not turned his back on his creation, or had second thoughts about the sheer physicality of the thing.  And then the resurrection - why all the insistence that it was with a real body that Jesus appeared after his crucifixion?  Why the eating of fish, the barbecue on the beach?  This is all such earthly stuff for the risen Son of God to be involved with, don't you think?  I wonder if a lot of the aversion which some people have to the idea of incarnation and resurrection actually comes from a sense that it just isn't spiritual enough for their idea of god.

The Christian hope also depends on our doctrine of creation.  Jesus rose in a physical body, and will return to raise our bodies and to renew the whole physical creation.  It is a new heavens and a new earth we're looking forward to, not an ethereal floaty existence as disembodied spirits.  Because God loves this creation he has made, he will redeem it.  All creation groans together in anticipation of that glory; it's a shame if Christians aren't excited at the prospect.

Ethically, there are a whole range of issues which Christians will tend to neglect without a firm doctrine of creation.  Environmental stuff, of course, but it goes a lot further than that.  I'm sure some of the debate a couple of decades ago about the right balance between evangelism and social action sprang in some measure from a deficient doctrine of creation: a sense amongst some that what matters is souls, not bodies or social systems or politics.  But if God is the Creator, all those things matter.

Most recently I've been thinking about how lack of a decent doctrine of creation makes our witness and evangelism harder.  It's easy for Christians to become interested only in 'Christian stuff', to the neglect of the world around.  Whether it's the person who can talk intensely about Christ and the need to be saved but has nothing to say about sport or art, or the person who sees value in reading theological tomes but has never enjoyed a good novel - it all serves to make Christianity seem anti-creation, anti-stuff.  Our lives are impoverished if we go even a little way down this road, and then who will want to join us in our impoverishment?

So anyway, God looked at everything he had made and saw that it was very good.

So, that was 2018 then

Just a brief retrospective from me this morning.

Personally, 2018 has held a number of challenges.  Many of these have been related to my position at Cowley Church Community (although on balance this continues to be a joy!), on which see below.  The year ended with a bit of a shock, as I had a curious episode which has been diagnosed as a probable transient ischemic attack (TIA) - essentially, a mini-stroke.  The episode was very brief, and no harm done, but it's certainly a shot across the bows from my own mortality.  So, roll on the statins, roll on the low-dose aspirin, roll on the 'lifestyle changes'.  I can report, having been forced to take a closer interest in such things, that all the food you like eating is poisonous, and that it is a sad business to have to moderate one's cheese intake over Christmastide.  Most fundamentally, I'm happily surprised to find that I really do look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come; one never knows, it seems to me, how much one really believes something until pressed a little to put some practical weight on the belief.  I am reassured.  However, I hope and intend to be with you all for a long while yet.

In terms of ministry, 2018 has been a mixed bag.  I continue to feel the fragility of our little church in Cowley - we are too small to be sustainable, and that comes with a degree of financial uncertainty - but on the other hand I see spiritual growth in so many of those who gather with us regularly.  The year has hit many of our church members with really hard things, and in the midst of them it's been a privilege to minister the gospel and see the Lord supplying faith, and with faith comfort and the ability to endure.  But whilst genuinely rejoicing at God's work amongst his people, can I be honest and express frustration with the slowness and difficulty of our evangelistic efforts?  Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?

In wider culture, I think one of the most important currents of 2018 surrounds the transgender debate.  It is striking that the elimination of the Christian doctrine of creation, having wreaked havoc in the sphere of human sexuality, now seems to be eroding something more basic: the idea of gender as a given, and thus human 'nature' at its most foundational level.  David Robertson at the FIEC Leaders' Conference opined that Satan may have over-reached here; certainly the reaction is interesting, and places biblically-oriented Christians in odd alliances with radical feminists and others.  One thing to note about the wider cultural debate is the effort to create an ideological space for those (particularly feminists) who disagree with the transgender agenda (so to speak) but do not see themselves as 'transphobic'; one wonders whether a similar space might not have been created in the sexuality debate, except that it was not politically expedient at the time for anyone to allow it.  We will see whether there is greater success here.  For the church, it is important to distinguish the wider debate - into which we must be free to speak boldly - from the pastoral response to gender difficulties which will inevitably crop up in a fallen world.  The church needs to learn to speak at two levels, but with one essential message.

Politically, 2018 has been a depressing time to be a British subject.  It is hard not to feel that the Lord gives us the leaders we deserve.  The interminable negotiations around Brexit seem to have reached a conclusion which is designed to aggravate all parties, and meanwhile much bigger issues (like domestic poverty, or the need to respond to a changing balance of global power) are ignored.  Personally, I've gone and joined a political party, for the first time since my teens.  (I think I recall then briefly being a member of the Conservative party, although I may be mis-remembering).  The SDP is looking to push its way back onto the political scene, and I felt inspired to join up.  The reasoning?  Well, it seems to me that when everything in politics is going to pot the responsible thing for concerned folk to do is not to disengage but to lean in, to put a shoulder to the wheel.  I don't think it's appropriate for a Christian minster to make too much of party politics, but I'll just take this opportunity to suggest you read through the SDP's New Declaration and see what you make of it; for me, the explicit rejection of intersectionality/victim discourse, coupled to the effort to find a sensible and pragmatic economic model, is compelling despite my doubts about some other elements (I remain, for example, unconvinced about PR).  But if not this party, could there be a party that you might join, and seek therein to have an active influence?

One thought I have going into 2019 is the importance of relating the passage of time to eschatology.  That is to say, to explicitly recognise that the sands of time are sinking; whether we're talking about personal endings or the grand ending of all history, each passing year (and month, week, day, hour...) is another step towards the breaking in of that dawn of heaven.  It is not in the past, nor the present, nor even the conceivable human future that we find our hope, or solutions to the great problems and issues of our times; but our hope is in the "fair sweet morn" of Christ's appearing.

Dark, dark hath been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand;
And glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land.

The only finished human

I don't know if this is a cross-cultural constant - my hunch would be probably not - but here in the West it seems to be universally assumed that life takes the form of a story of some kind.  I think it's almost impossible for us to avoid narrative as a way of understanding the (often apparently random) events which fill the span our existence.  We tell the story of our lives to ourselves and to others because that is how we integrate our experiences and experience our selves in the world.

That latter would imply that our tendency toward life-narrative is deeply connected to issues of identity.  This surely is the case.  In telling our life story, we also present ourselves.  The story of the things that have happened to me, and how I have reacted to things or brought things about - that is at one level surely about synthesising myself as a character in a story.  One interesting thing about that is the interplay of given and created in my self-understanding.  To a certain extent I can tell the story my way, and thus create my own character; but at some level there are events and reactions over which I have no apparent control, and my character is given to me.  (And of course this is not just retrospective: I can make decisions which affect the future course of the story, and in that way I have input into who I will be; and yet, not all my decisions will work out as planned, and to a certain extent I will always find myself in a future story not of my making).  I am both who I make myself, and a constant surprise to myself.  I make myself and discover myself.

The thing is, the story is not yet finished.  It's not even as if we've written the first part in stone, and we're writing on into the future.  As anyone who has tried to write a story (or even read one) knows, sometimes things happen in the later narrative which require the complete re-evaluation of earlier events.  We might need to re-write the early story in light of what is coming.  And that means that we can only have a provisional knowledge of who we are: we can only say that this is who I seem to be to me at the moment.  (And I'm not even touching here on the fact that other people looking in might tell our stories, and portray our characters, very differently - and is it really all that clear that we should privilege our own narrative voice, even if practically it is inevitable that we will do so?)

So here's a thought: Jesus Christ is the only finished human.  The story of his life is complete, from birth to death.  That could be said of countless people, of course.  But the difference is that in raising Jesus - from the dead, and then up to his own right hand - God has pronounced the authoritative verdict on Jesus' life.  God has endorsed a particular telling of Jesus' story - and God's endorsement implies truth.  Jesus now lives forever as the person he was.  His complete story means a complete character: we know who he is.  He will always be that person.

This has two implications for the way I think about my personal future.  At the one level, I can say: I don't know who I will be for eternity, because in the here and now my story and character are not fixed.  One day, I will know who I am, but not yet.  But at another level, if I am thinking in faith - which is just to say, if I am not ignoring Jesus Christ - I know that the me I will discover in that eternal future will be the me eternally determined already by him.

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.

Irreversible and Victorious

The eschatological climax of God's historical self-communication, in which this self-communication becomes manifest as irreversible and victorious, is called Jesus Christ. Karl Rahner

The Israelite of the Old Testament lives with a certain fear that perhaps the favour of God will be withdrawn.  You can see it in the people removing their ornaments and mourning at the prospect of Canaan without Yahweh.  You can see it in David, pleading that God's Holy Spirit not be taken from him.  You can see it in the final words of Lamentations.

In each case, the fear relates to human sin.  The dreadful thought is two-fold: firstly, that the patience of God might be exhausted, and that this last sin might be the one which causes him to finally turn away in disgust; secondly, that the evil of humanity - my evil - might prove to be invincible, and that even if God continues to be patient, all his patience might be in vain, because I will not be changed.

Might God walk back on his covenant promise?  Surely he would be justified.

Might my sin be such that his grace will find no foothold in me?  Surely that fits with what I know of myself.

But in Jesus Christ, God shows himself absolutely committed to communicating himself to us in grace and mercy, and absolutely powerful to overcome our opposition to that grace and mercy.  God has taken humanity to himself in his Son, uniting himself to us forever.  Moreover, the Son has endured everything that this 'uniting' means for him: the death of the cross.  And he has been raised, living again.

In the being of Jesus Christ, as it was lived out in Palestine two thousand years ago, we see God walking a path which is irreversible, committed to the point of death and beyond.  Just as nobody can reverse the resurrection and the cross, so nobody can undo God's great love.

And we see God walking a path which is victorious.  Just as nobody could keep Christ in the grave when his Father called him out, so nobody can prevent God's work in the lives even of dead-in-sin human beings.

Christ, the Firstfruits

In 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul engages a fairly fundamental problem in the church in Corinth: some of the Christians are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead.  It appears they are not questioning the resurrection of Christ, because Paul's counter-argument is to point out that if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ himself is not raised.  And if Christ is not raised, the apostolic preaching is a lie, and the faith of the Corinthian Christians is a sham.

For Paul's argument to work, the Corinthian Christians have to accept the resurrection of Jesus.  So what are they denying?  Presumably they are denying what might be called the general resurrection.  Although Christ was raised, they do not expect themselves to be raised, at least not bodily.  Bodily resurrection would have been distasteful to Hellenistic culture anyway.  So Paul's argument is: if no general resurrection - if no last day on which all are raised, to life or judgement - then no particular resurrection of Christ; but Christ is raised, therefore we look to the resurrection of all.

Apologetically, Paul makes it clear that everything hinges on the fact that Christ is raised from the dead, and the evidence for this is the testimony of the many who saw him alive (including 500 at once, most of whom are still alive when Paul is writing, and can therefore be consulted; also, of course, including Paul himself).

What particularly strikes me today about this passage is what Paul assumes the resurrection of Christ to be.  What does he think has happened?

Paul believed in and looked for the resurrection of the dead before he ever met Jesus.  Like Martha, he expected the resurrection of the just at the last day.  This was part of his Jewish heritage, part of the Scriptural testimony which he had absorbed from youth.  Paul didn't need the resurrection of Jesus to persuade him of the general resurrection.

But also like Martha, Paul has been brought face-to-face with the fact that Jesus is the resurrection.  The last day - the resurrection of the just - has in some sense already come.  Christ is the first of all those who will rise.  That is why Paul says that if there is no (general) resurrection then Christ himself has not been raised.  The resurrection of Jesus is the general resurrection.  In him, the future hope of a faithful Jew like Paul has been brought into the present.  The age to come, quite simply, has come.

That is not to say that the age to come is not still in the future.  Christ is the firstfruits, and the guarantee that the rest will follow.  But something truly dramatic has happened in the resurrection of Christ.  In our individualistic way, we tend to think of the resurrection of Jesus as one thing, and my resurrection to come as another.  But for Paul, the future resurrection of all is so closely linked to the resurrection of Christ that one without the other is unthinkable.  They are in principle the same event, the general resurrection so wrapped up in the person of Christ that they can't be separated.

It's a new day.  He is risen, we will rise.

Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Really Alive

Reflecting back on the Easter weekend, I'm struck by the same thing that generally strikes me at this time of year: I'm really convinced that this stuff actually happened, in real space and time.  I am convinced that there is compelling testimony, backed up by strong corroborative evidence, to say that the tomb in which the dead man Jesus of Nazareth was placed on Friday was empty on Sunday morning; that the dead man Jesus of Nazareth was seen alive on the third day after his crucifixion; that in this one case death has not had the final word.

I think in our culture we generally think religion, if it has a place at all, ought to be about transcendent ideas, lofty values, and a strong ethical code.  Christianity is not about any of those things.  If it includes them, it does so at the periphery.  Christianity is about the particular rather than the general, the historical rather than the transcendent, a story rather than an ethos.

It is about the fact (yes, fact) that in our history - and yet inexplicable in relation to our history - this man who had died was alive again.

I think we resist that conclusion, not least because if religion is about facts then there might be some onus on us to investigate whether they are true.  For everyone, believers and unbelievers alike, this is a disturbing premise.  Transcendent values, which seem so very high and lofty, are actually things that we don't argue about much because they are not worth arguing about; they are just not that sort of thing.  In fact, despite their lofty pretensions, it turns out we don't much care which value set you hold.  It is of no more importance than which supermarket you choose to shop at.  But if there are facts in there - things that are either true or false...

What's more, if the resurrection of Jesus took place in our history, in the midst of all the other mundane (in the most positive and literal sense of the word) occurrences of history, then there may be some knock-on significance for the mundane occurrences and circumstances of my week.  I might not be able to restrict Jesus to a part of life labelled 'religious'.  He might intrude on Monday morning as well as Sunday...

Not left as orphans

Sometimes my mind wanders, and I start to wonder exactly what it must have been like on the Saturday after Jesus was crucified.  Some pretty weird stuff had accompanied his death.  I imagine many people in the vicinity of Jerusalem were a bit shaken up.  But for Jesus' disciples, there must have been devastating sadness: their Master has been taken away (as had been predicted of him, if only they could have seen it).  No wonder that when Jesus appeared on the Sunday they disbelieved for joy.  But again, this is only what he had told them.  His resurrection showed that he had gone victoriously through death and had returned to proclaim his triumph - first of all to the disciples, but through them to the whole world.

Jesus came back to us.

I also sometimes wonder what it must have been like after Jesus ascended into heaven.  I wonder whether some of the disciples weren't tempted to question whether perhaps everything would just go back to being the way it was.  Perhaps the death and resurrection of Jesus were important events, but not world changing events.  Maybe they had some sort of deep significance, but they were ultimately one off things that could not be expected to have an effect on the whole of their own lives, let alone the lives of people who were geographically and historically distant.  Then Pentecost came.  The Spirit was poured out.  The resurrection of Jesus was not a distant event; it was here, now, changing everything.  We are still essentially in that situation - in need of the Spirit to come to us, to make it all not only true but real.  And as we wait, he comes, and we rise up.

Jesus comes back to us.

And of course, the story is running on towards it conclusion.  There is a slow train coming, up and round the bend.  Even as the Holy Spirit makes Jesus present to us now, we feel all the more acutely his absence.  As we gather in his name to worship, we see more clearly all the opposing names that are still raised against him.  As we rejoice in what he has done to liberate us, we experience more deeply the grief of the ongoing slavery in the world.  As we are thankful for our salvation, we acknowledge again and again our ongoing sin.  But we know that it will come to an end.

Jesus will come back to us.

Lifted

There aren't many books out there on the subject of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not books that you could carry in your rucksack without injuring yourself, anyway. And the books there are tend to be focussed mainly on the evidence for the resurrection rather than the meaning of the resurrection. Of course there is huge value in the former. But isn't the resurrection of Jesus meant to be more than just a handy tool for Christian apologetics? Shouldn't it have an impact on our lives?

Sam Allberry's new book (so new it's not yet available, although you can pre-order it with Amazon) addresses the issue of the meaning of the resurrection, and for my money it does the business. Lifted is only four chapters long, but in those chapters I found again and again that I was getting more excited about the resurrection. The book made me believe in Christ's resurrection more - not because it produced new evidence, but because it explained what it meant to believe that Jesus not only died but also rose.

Sometimes it's simple stuff that hits you hardest. Like this from Sam's first chapter: "the resurrection is the consequence and demonstration of our salvation because death is the consequence and demonstration of our sin." Of course! But as Sam goes on, you'll find yourself struck by how obvious it is that sin leads to death, and how ridiculous you are every time you follow sin instead of the risen Lord. And how much assurance I can derive from the fact that Jesus is raised: "The cross is not a starter pack. It is not God stumping up even most of what we need so that we can fish around in our pockets and make up the rest. By dying and rising for us Jesus has closed the deal. God has signed for it, and his signature is the resurrection." The chapter on transformation takes this and runs with it - I can live differently, because Jesus is raised!

I also found the section on mission particularly useful. Mission is not just an addendum to the story of Jesus. It is the natural outworking of the fact that, by his resurrection, Jesus is exalted as King and Lord of the universe. Everything and everyone must bow to him. Mission is the royal summons of the exalted Christ to his creation. Powerful motivation for us as we seek to speak the gospel.

Any criticisms? Not really. I could have happily read another few chapters, so perhaps my critique would be that it's too short! But if that gets more people reading, so much the better. This is a witty and engaging, yet also hard-hitting, book. I am challenged to believe in and live out the resurrection of Jesus Christ in my own life, and I am thrilled that one day I will see the Lord in my renewed body, in his renewed creation, all because he died and rose.