Knowing Jesus

I am often troubled by a great many things.  The state of the world worries me.  The rapid return of Western culture to paganism dismays me.  The state of the church makes me want to pull my hair out (except I'm also troubled by my own advancing baldness).  I am troubled by my own short temper.  I am worried about my children's future.  I am vexed by a minor conflict I'm having with Oxford City Council.  I am concerned about getting a sermon ready for Sunday.  I am weary because I've not slept all that well (for various reasons).  I am concerned for the welfare of my family.  I am annoyed that the Wifi in Starbucks took a long time to connect this morning.

And so it goes on and on, big things and little things.  Things that really matter, and things that really, really don't.  Things that seem to have a spiritual aspect, and things that are just utterly material.  Some things, frankly, that I've blown out of all proportion.  Other things that I'm pretty sure are more serious than everyone else seems to think.  On and on and on.

But God has said this to me this morning, through his servant Paul: "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

Now, in context, that is the Apostle Paul saying that he has happily given up every claim to righteousness which he might have had on any grounds whatsoever, because it is better to know Christ Jesus.  But what particularly struck me this morning is just the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Surpassing worth.

When all the complexity is stripped away - and one day it will be, and today it could be - what will matter is knowing Jesus.  And it's better.  If all my anxieties and concerns could be swept away at once, the relief wouldn't compare to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus.  Better to know Jesus in the middle of the mess than to have "everything sorted" without him.  Better to have Christ my Lord than everything and anything else in the world.

Surpassing worth.

When I'm making everything complicated, or I'm going under the next wave of circumstance, will you please remind me of how joyfully simple it is?  Will you please remind me of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?

Too Gritty

Back in the day, I was a Relay worker, which means I worked for a year as a volunteer alongside the Christian Union in Cambridge.  It was, in retrospect, a great time, although I made a mess of it in many ways.  But at the time it felt hard.  Really hard.  At the end of the year, we had a session where everyone stood up (there were about sixty of us, I think) and in turn gave a report on how the year had been.  Turns out lots of people had had a hard year.  There were tears.  Yours truly cried like a baby.  I remember about half way through the session one of the leaders saying something like 'if you've had a good year, you are allowed to say so!'

I've been wondering about the way we talk about the Christian life.  My guess is that we're at one end of a pendulum swing.  Used to be that you couldn't really express doubts, or talk about how hard you were finding the life of faith.  Everyone in church was meant to smile.  No doubt that was pretty unhealthy.  Nowadays, it's the opposite.  You read Christian blogs or just listen to sermons, and you'll hear a lot of 'wrestling', a lot of agonising, a lot of honesty about how hard things are.  But I wonder if maybe we've gone a bit far (as the pendulum has a tendency to do).  I wonder if it's become as hard to have simply joy in Christ as it used to be to express doubts and struggles.

If you've had a good week, you are allowed to say so!

The concern is that this new culture is just as damaging as the old one, in a subtly different way.  Doubts and struggles which are not expressed grow and grow.  In that old culture, no doubt repressed difficulties thrived underground and eventually destroyed many Christians.  But joy and delight that is not expressed actually shrinks and withers.  In the new culture, I worry that our lack of expression of joy will eventually make it impossible for us even to experience joy.

Can I recommend one small and seemingly insignificant step that has been making a big difference to me?  I've been changing my music choices and putting on some of the Christian music I used to listen to back when I was a student.  You know the stuff.  It's cheerful, it's bouncy, it's full of Jesus.  The temptation now is to write it off as hopelessly naive, and certainly it doesn't give the whole picture.  But it might help to nudge the pendulum back towards the centre a little.

Seriously, though...

On Sunday after church I was discussing with a couple of guys what might be wrong with our churches.  (This wasn't a reflection on the service in which we'd just been participants; I hope not, as I was the preacher).  The thing that sprang to my mind was just this: we're not very serious.  We don't take things very seriously at all.

To a certain extent, as one of my friends pointed out, this is just because we live in an informal culture, and it is hard to be informal and serious.  I think there is a lot of truth in that.  After all, when we want to do really serious things in life - I have in mind the big occasions, like getting married, or burying someone - we still reach for formality.  It wouldn't seem right to mark those huge things with an informal tone.  Seriousness does demand a certain level of formality.  Isn't it a shame we don't consider meeting with God's people for worship to be serious in this way?

I wonder though - if we don't know how to be informal and serious, perhaps it is a bigger problem that we don't know how to be joyful and serious.  In fact, there is no 'perhaps' about it: this is a bigger problem.  Informality is a cultural preference; joy is a gospel command.  It is interesting that as I was thinking about this I had an encounter with Father Christmas - not in the flesh, which would be odd and also unseasonal, but in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I'm currently reading with the boy.  Here's Lewis:

"Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly.  But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn't find it quite like that.  He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still.  They felt very glad, but also solemn."

And this bit:

"Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still."

Perhaps there is something we could learn from Santa...

Challenging

A thing I've noticed recently: if you say to an evangelical Christian "we should really be ministering the word to one another", they will probably reply "yeah, we should challenge one another".  If you say to them "I loved the preaching of the word this morning", they will most likely answer "yeah, it was really challenging".  Which is interesting, because I take it that the word of God is the good news about Jesus, and I'm not sure being 'challenged' is usually good news.  It is not that the gospel never confronts and judges my behaviour and beliefs - far from it!  It is just that this doesn't seem to be the emphasis...

I don't particularly want to discourage Christians from 'challenging' one another, in sermons and in passing conversation.  We are to rebuke and exhort one another, for sure, and there isn't enough of it going on.  But at the end of the day, the challenge is just diagnosis, and a diagnosis is certainly not good news.  If you're going to diagnose me, at least offer me medicine as well.

To me this seems to go along with a version of sanctification which I think is a bit like picking at scabs.  (Yes, I am using a horrible image to disparage a position I disagree with.  But I've been up front about it, so that's okay.  Isn't it?)  What I mean is that there is a school of thought which locates pastoral care - whether the formal care of elders or the informal care of members for one another - in digging at sins, poking at them, going over them again and again...  Constantly bringing to light new idols, always challenging...  And sometimes I just want to say "if you keep picking at it, it'll never get better"...

Here is a question: how can we help one another to have joy?  By challenging one another?  Well, yes, sometimes - the wounds of a friend are faithful, and sometimes reservoirs of joy are just the other side of this wilderness into which a friend is leading us with their rebuke...  But maybe sometimes we should stop weeping over our sins - because the joy of the Lord is our strength..?

Joyful worship

In theory, I don't see why Christians can't gather to worship at any time on any day of the week.  In certain contexts, where Sunday is a normal working day, it may be necessary to meet regularly on a Saturday.  However, Sunday morning has the advantage that it is resurrection morning, and that sets the tone.  Every Sunday is a little Easter, and therefore every Sunday gathering to worship is a celebration.  A few observations:

1.  It seems appropriate that we have a Sunday Celebration rather than a Sunday Service.  The former reminds us that our primary purpose is to come together to rejoice in what God has done for us in Christ; the latter sounds like we are coming together to do something for God.  In fact, it is our celebrating on Sunday that will empower our service Monday through Saturday.

2.  The appropriate tone of Christian worship is always joy.  Even when the subject matter of the sermon, or the theme of the day, is something dark - perhaps mourning over sin, or the suffering of death - it occurs within the bracket of joy because it happens on Sunday morning.  We live this side of the resurrection, and we know a joy that puts all sadness in its place.  The structure and content of our meetings together should reflect this.

3.  Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of joy and its expression, least of all a misplaced concern for reverence.  Yes, our approach to God must be in awe and reverence, but too often this is a front under which under which worship is turned into a sombre exercise.  Does our worship encourage and display joy?

Laugh more, cry more

I've been pondering recently how very detached it is easy to become. I mean, one can very easily find oneself in a place where the most terrible of tragedies elicits not a single tear, and the most stunning beauty barely prompts a gasp. Laughter is hardly ever more than a cynical chuckle. More often than not, a shrug is all the expression of emotion we can manage.

This strikes me as sad. Also, ungodly.

If there is ultimate meaning in the world - and, for reasons I may go into in a later post, I think that there can only be ultimate meaning if there is God (not "a god", but God) - then everything has meaning and significance. Tragedy is real tragedy; joy is real joy. And to treat them otherwise is to deny God.

God says "Yes" to creation; he says "Yes" to life. That's one of the main points of the Genesis story. Creation in all its fullness, which I take to include the various expressions of human existence present in potential at the beginning, is approved by God. That means it is to be enjoyed, loved, experienced deeply and emotionally. Thus Karl Barth:

"Thus the call that we should seek joy is not merely a concession or permission but a command which cannot be lightly regarded by one who has appreciated the divine justification of creation. We need not be ashamed before the holiness of God if we can still laugh and must laugh again, but only if we allow laughter to wither away, and above all if we have relapsed into a sadly ironic smile". Church Dogmatics, III/1, p. 371

Isn't that sadly ironic smile the precise posture of our culture? Of course, it can hardly be otherwise in a world stripped of God and therefore of meaning. In such a world, we can't be sure that life is good - or even that good could be defined in a meaningful way. But for the Christian - for the one who believes that life and creation are good on the basis not of a deduction from the (admittedly confusing) evidence of life itself as it appears to be, but on the basis of God's word which says "Yes" to creation - there must be laughter, and there must be joy. A holy naivety is called for here. We take God's "Yes" to creation at face value and believe it, whether the world currently looks good or bad to us, and we seek joy.

Christian, play silly games! Run around on the grass! Above all, laugh!

There is, of course, a flip-side to this. God has not only said "Yes" to creation. He has also said "No". God judges what is evil in life and creation, and in so doing reveals that evil is also real, and not merely an impression of our minds. Evil is real, and so tragedy is real. It is not a meaningless event in a meaningless world. It stands under judgement, but that doesn't make it any less real. And so we must experience this, too, in a deep, emotional - above all, real - way. Barth again:

"How can a man stand before his Creator without realising that he is lost and must perish? ... Hence the man who must and will weep has no need to be ashamed when faced with the Creator's goodness. The only man who has cause for shame is he who motivated by false pride refuses to weep, or perhaps for simple lack of insight has lost the capacity to do so. The very last thing that ought to happen is the attempt to elude the misery of life" CD III/1, p 373

Taking God's "No" as seriously as we take his "Yes", we are required to mourn and weep. So much in our world is wrong. So much is painful. So much is evil. In a world where there is ultimate meaning - in a world where there is God - we must take these things seriously, and respond appropriately in grief - and also anger.

Christian, weep as you watch the news! Grieve as you see the brokeness of the world! Above all, cry out against it to the God who has said "No" to evil and will not let it have the final word.

"...the divine revelation manifests both the sorrow and joy of life, and therefore not only permits but commands us to laugh and weep, to be glad and sorrowful, precluding only the attitude of indifference, the judgement of the sceptic..." CD III/1, p 375

I am convicted that I need to out-feel those around me who do not know God, because unlike them I have reason to believe that my feelings are a response to real joys and real tragedies. I need to be involved intellectually and emotionally in all the real good and all the real evil of the world and of the lives of those around me.

I need to laugh more. I need to cry more.