Jesus' ministry is well known for healing diseases and making the unclean clean again. But to appreciate this, we need to understand the Old Testament, levitical context for this. Sometimes we are ashamed of some physical attribute. Some of us are prone to cavities. Others have birthmarks. Some of us are bald. Others are heavier than they'd like to be. Were Pharisees just body-shamers - excluding people arbitrarily for their deafness, their leprosy, or their flows of blood? Was Jesus basically just saying "stop the bullying?" No. Questions about purity and impurity have to do with the spread of flesh and death, as we've been maintaining in these posts. We'll see that the Pharisees falsely manipulated Torah, but this only shows us how God's good Torah was being overtaken by flesh. This is humanity's core problem. War and victory over flesh and death will constitute re-entry into Eden.
If we look closely at the way levitical law treats skin issues, we'll be in a position to appreciate what is unique about Jesus' ministry of cleaning.
The purity regulations all had to do with putting flesh to death. Concern about defilement had to do with flesh's basic propensity to spread and pollute:
"Impurity infects because it is the spread of flesh - menstruation...emission, flesh showing through the skin." (Delivered, 111-112)
Flesh also pollutes:
"Skin disease pollutes when flesh shows through the outer covering of skin (Lev. 13-14). Emissions from the genitals pollute, and Leviticus uses basar (flesh) to describe genitals (Lev. 15:2, 3, 7, 13, 16, 19)...Flesh is not only a static source of defilement. Flesh spreads pollution, so that the woman with a flow of blood defiles any who touch her, and dead flesh spreads death to the entire space where it lies. Flesh is a potency whose power must be controlled and arrested if Israel is to be near Yahweh's house. And every time an Israelite washed away the stains of flesh when he drew near, he was carrying on, in a small way, Yahweh's war with flesh." (Delivered, 100-101)
For this pollution, the levitical law of Torah brought cleaning. Purity rites would clean with blood. "If a priest offers a purification offering, blood is taken into the Holy Place and smeared on the horns of the golden altar of incense. If a common Israelite sins, the blood of the purification is smeared on the horns of the bronze altar." (A House for My Name, 93)
How does blood clean? Leithart says two things. That it isn't magic, but it also isn't arbitrary. It isn't magic in that there isn't some inner natural quality to blood that cleans, but rather it is a given and attributed quality. God has given it that these natural materials used in these ways (levitical law) will achieve a certain effect. But it also isn't arbitrary. Blood contains the life of the flesh: "Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature..." (Lev. 17:13-14...nephesh or 'flesh' comes up three times in this passage) Offering up the blood, or the fleshly life of an animal substitute brings the death of their flesh, and is a participation in God's war against flesh:
"By offering up the life of the animal to God, the worshiper expresses both the renunciation of flesh and the faith of Abraham, who abandoned his fleshly future to God to do with what he would - and received a "new son" back in return...The blood of the animal, emblematic of the fleshly life of the worshiper, is spread on the furniture of the sanctuary so that the sanctuary bears the guilt and impurity of the worshiper. Torah's sacrifices enact a ministry of condemnation - a condemnation of flesh for the purpose of transforming it to Spirit. (Delivered, 113)
In Matthew 4:23-25, we see Jesus' mission of healing and cleaning:
"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them." (Matt. 4:23-25)
What is startling about this is, in light of what we've been saying in this post, is that Jesus is touching people who are unclean: he touches lepers and dead bodies. He touches a woman with a defiling flow of blood. But instead of "contracting their contagious miasma, his cleansing life flowed to them." (Delivered, 138). The lepers were healed of their leprosy. The woman's flow of blood stopped. The dead were raised. Not only did Jesus do this. He taught his disciples to do this.
Jesus' ministry of cleaning recapitulates Torah's ministry of cleaning. He does all the things the tabernacle did. He accomplishes all the healing qualities that God had given to sacrificial blood. As we'll continue to see in these posts, the life of the Spirit is opposed to the life of the flesh. Here, we see that Jesus lives by the Spirit, and flesh doesn't spread to him.
To conclude, it is also worth noting how even though the levitical law was meant to be a soldier in God's war against flesh, the main problem with Israel over the course of the New Testament is that they had become primarily an accomplice to flesh. Nicholas Perrin describes how the temple functioned as Israel's predatory lending bank:
"The windfall income that would accrue to the temple leadership through illegal gain could then in turn be quickly turned around for punishingly high-interest-rate loans to the destitute. By being in a position to leverage usurious, high-risk loans, the temple financiers were then able to foreclose quickly and efficiently on landholders struggling to eke out an existence. Increased temple landholdings eventually meant more wealth for the priestly elite, more wealth meant even more high-interest loans, more high-interest loans meant more foreclosures on the land, and the cycle went on - crushingly so, for those at the bottom of the economic ladder." (Perrin, quoted in Delivered, 148)
In other words, Israel had become Egypt. Just as Egypt enslaved the Israelites in the time of Moses, so Israel was enslaving Israel in the time of Christ. They presented as scrupulous obedience to levitical law what was really an appropriating of the law for their own selfish boasting. They used the levitical law not for putting flesh to death. They used it to set up fortresses to protect their own flesh. This is most pronounced in their exclusion of the unclean. Rather than cleaning them, they excluded them. Rather than relieving their burdens, they added more. This is where the pressure point is. Much as Egypt had trusted in its own gods, Israel trusts in their misappropriation of Torah. And just as God enacted plagues on Egypt's gods in Exodus, God also enacts plagues on Israel's gods in the gospels. But instead of plagues of destruction, Jesus brought plagues of healing:
"Jesus came as a new Moses, and as such he brought "plagues" that destroyed "Egypt's" world of worship in order to make way for a new one. The plagues included eating with sinners; healing on the Sabbath; showing kindness to tax collectors and Gentiles; touching lepers, corpses, and women with flows of blood. He instructed his followers to subvert the world order by returning kindness for harm, blessing for insult, by bearing others' burdens. Jesus came with plagues of mercy that subverted the perverse Torah-regime of the scribes and Pharisees and the brute force of the Romans." (151)
Jesus shows us restored Eden in his touch, in his presence. His life overcomes the pollutant of death. His health overcomes the pollutant of disease. His accusers see in him a sinner who eats with sinners. His followers see a living embodiment of what the tabernacle was meant to be - a hospital for the healing of sinners so that they can be restored to Eden and to God's presence. It's even better than that, because this Jesus-hospital is Eden. This Jesus-hospital is God's presence.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Monday, March 25, 2019
Lent 2019: Thursday, March 21 - Eating
In Matthew 9:9-13, Jesus calls a tax collector to follow him as a disciple (his name is Matthew!) When it turns out that Jesus spent the evening having a meal with Matthew and other "tax collectors and sinners," Pharisees ask why.
Pharisees believed that it was key to program of national redemption that their food not be defiled by the presence of uncleanliness. Tax collectors aided and abetted the primary Gentile enemy - the Roman Empire, both in their daily dealings, and in their livelihood. All of this served to make tax collectors in particular a constellation of uncleanliness for Pharisees.
When Jesus responds, he describes himself as a physician who needs contact with the sick to be able to heal them. He also quotes a passage that says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The quote is from the prophet Hosea, who condemns Ephraim and Judah for their faithfulness being as fleeting and temporary as morning dew. Hosea says he desires "hesed" or loyalty, rather than sacrifices. Interestingly, right before Hosea says this, he makes reference to his prophetic words, which cut in pieces and kill. What does this mean? Hosea's words serve a priestly function, to make the unfaithful people into a pleasing sacrifice who are loyal, merciful, and compassionate. The Pharisees problem is not that they focus on sacrifice, but that it doesn't lead to loyalty, mercy, and compassion. In other words, it doesn't lead to table fellowship between God and sinners.
In an earlier post, we described the levitical sacrificial sequence: an animal represents the sinner. The animal representing the sinner is killed. It's blood is displayed. The animal is turned into smoke. The priests eat a meal. We see here that the sacrifice all leads to the end that God can have renewed fellowship with sinners over a meal. Sacrifice allows them real but limited access back into the garden so that they can eat with God at his house and at his table.
That Jesus eats with sinners is a sign of Eden. In Jesus' presence, it is as though we have already passed through the veil of the holy of holies and get to sit in the presence of God. Of course, we haven't crossed that threshold. God has crossed over to us in Jesus. Food is never just fuel. Meal times are communion times. The tables in our homes are micro versions of the table fellowship we celebrate in worship as the body of Christ. Nourishment there can't be measured strictly in calories or vitamins. Just as food shapes the strength of our bodies, so table fellowship shapes the strength of our identity, that who I am is shaped by my communal memberships, and not the other way around. To eat with Christ is not only to be fed by food, but to be fed by him.
Pharisees believed that it was key to program of national redemption that their food not be defiled by the presence of uncleanliness. Tax collectors aided and abetted the primary Gentile enemy - the Roman Empire, both in their daily dealings, and in their livelihood. All of this served to make tax collectors in particular a constellation of uncleanliness for Pharisees.
When Jesus responds, he describes himself as a physician who needs contact with the sick to be able to heal them. He also quotes a passage that says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The quote is from the prophet Hosea, who condemns Ephraim and Judah for their faithfulness being as fleeting and temporary as morning dew. Hosea says he desires "hesed" or loyalty, rather than sacrifices. Interestingly, right before Hosea says this, he makes reference to his prophetic words, which cut in pieces and kill. What does this mean? Hosea's words serve a priestly function, to make the unfaithful people into a pleasing sacrifice who are loyal, merciful, and compassionate. The Pharisees problem is not that they focus on sacrifice, but that it doesn't lead to loyalty, mercy, and compassion. In other words, it doesn't lead to table fellowship between God and sinners.
In an earlier post, we described the levitical sacrificial sequence: an animal represents the sinner. The animal representing the sinner is killed. It's blood is displayed. The animal is turned into smoke. The priests eat a meal. We see here that the sacrifice all leads to the end that God can have renewed fellowship with sinners over a meal. Sacrifice allows them real but limited access back into the garden so that they can eat with God at his house and at his table.
That Jesus eats with sinners is a sign of Eden. In Jesus' presence, it is as though we have already passed through the veil of the holy of holies and get to sit in the presence of God. Of course, we haven't crossed that threshold. God has crossed over to us in Jesus. Food is never just fuel. Meal times are communion times. The tables in our homes are micro versions of the table fellowship we celebrate in worship as the body of Christ. Nourishment there can't be measured strictly in calories or vitamins. Just as food shapes the strength of our bodies, so table fellowship shapes the strength of our identity, that who I am is shaped by my communal memberships, and not the other way around. To eat with Christ is not only to be fed by food, but to be fed by him.
Lent 2019: Wednesday, March 20 - Festivity
In Matthew 9:37, Jesus says to his disciples: "the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field."
There is a double-sided quality to harvest in the New Testament. One side conveys a sense of separation, division, and judgment. In this sense, the harvest is what happens at the end times, and wheat is gathered and taken into the barn, and weeds are gathered and burned.
The other side though, is festivity. Harvest itself is an indication of abundance, of rest at the end of labor, of feasting at the end of fasting. In an earlier post, we explored how much of the tabernacle is arranged to show that Israel is God's bride. Meeting with God for Israel has a romantic connotation. Furthermore, the tabernacle is often referred to as a "tent of meeting" or a tent of festivals. The same Hebrew word is used in Genesis 1:14 when God makes lights in the sky that will indicate "sacred times." A list of these festivals is given in Leviticus 23: sabbath, passover, festival of unleavened bread, offering the firstfruits, festival of weeks, festival of trumpets, day of atonement, and festival of tabernacles. These are all "trysts" between the bride Israel and bridegroom God. The tabernacle and all of its rites and rituals communicated the deep purpose of marriage between Israel and God. And this is a picture of Eden, of being restored into God's presence. It is a garden where love blooms.
This is more clear if we look at prophetic testimony about Israel's return from exile: it is consistently presented as a festival time when God will truly re-establish his garden-kingdom in Israel. Amos writes: "'The days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills, and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,' says the Lord your God." (Amos 9:13-15)
When Jesus comes he recapitulates the festival times of the tabernacle. Amos was describing a kingdom yet to come. Jesus comes saying the kingdom has drawn near. Jesus taught his disciples not to be anxious about anything for the body - money or clothes. This is harvest logic. It's a time of abundance. The harvest is here! The kingdom is near! In Matthew 10, Jesus calls his twelve disciples and gives them authority to drive out impure spirits. This has a military connotation, but the battle is not against flesh and blood. Jesus says: "As you go, proclaim this message: 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons." (Matt. 10:7-8) Jesus is a warrior for rest, abundance, and festivity.
Jesus is asked why his disciples don't fast. Jesus says:
"How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matt. 9:15-17)
Peter Leithart writes:
"Jews fasted in anticipation. Fasting meant waiting, and specifically waiting for the feast to begin. But once Jesus has come, the time of anticipation is over; the time of waiting has reached its end. With His coming, everything begins to change. He comes as a man who has authority over the wind and the sea. He comes "before the time" to triumph over the demons. He comes to forgive sins. He comes to welcome tax gatherers and sinners, to heal the sick, and to preach that compassion is better than sacrifice. With the coming of Jesus, the feast of the kingdom has begun. He has come to make all things new." (Jesus as Israel, 195)
Finally, we need to see that this festive community is not just something the disciples go out to create. It is not just a message they proclaim, but something that they already are. It is their community - a new type of people. Throughout the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is forming a new Israel, a community built around 12 new tribes, who will represent a righteousness beyond the scribes and Pharisees. In other words, they won't merely suppress flesh-inspired behavior, but will live in such a way as to overcome the flesh. They don't merely try to control the evil effects of sin and flesh, but go on to seek reconciliation and reunion in love. Jesus and his disciples are a picture of Eden.
There is a double-sided quality to harvest in the New Testament. One side conveys a sense of separation, division, and judgment. In this sense, the harvest is what happens at the end times, and wheat is gathered and taken into the barn, and weeds are gathered and burned.
The other side though, is festivity. Harvest itself is an indication of abundance, of rest at the end of labor, of feasting at the end of fasting. In an earlier post, we explored how much of the tabernacle is arranged to show that Israel is God's bride. Meeting with God for Israel has a romantic connotation. Furthermore, the tabernacle is often referred to as a "tent of meeting" or a tent of festivals. The same Hebrew word is used in Genesis 1:14 when God makes lights in the sky that will indicate "sacred times." A list of these festivals is given in Leviticus 23: sabbath, passover, festival of unleavened bread, offering the firstfruits, festival of weeks, festival of trumpets, day of atonement, and festival of tabernacles. These are all "trysts" between the bride Israel and bridegroom God. The tabernacle and all of its rites and rituals communicated the deep purpose of marriage between Israel and God. And this is a picture of Eden, of being restored into God's presence. It is a garden where love blooms.
This is more clear if we look at prophetic testimony about Israel's return from exile: it is consistently presented as a festival time when God will truly re-establish his garden-kingdom in Israel. Amos writes: "'The days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills, and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,' says the Lord your God." (Amos 9:13-15)
When Jesus comes he recapitulates the festival times of the tabernacle. Amos was describing a kingdom yet to come. Jesus comes saying the kingdom has drawn near. Jesus taught his disciples not to be anxious about anything for the body - money or clothes. This is harvest logic. It's a time of abundance. The harvest is here! The kingdom is near! In Matthew 10, Jesus calls his twelve disciples and gives them authority to drive out impure spirits. This has a military connotation, but the battle is not against flesh and blood. Jesus says: "As you go, proclaim this message: 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons." (Matt. 10:7-8) Jesus is a warrior for rest, abundance, and festivity.
Jesus is asked why his disciples don't fast. Jesus says:
"How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matt. 9:15-17)
Peter Leithart writes:
"Jews fasted in anticipation. Fasting meant waiting, and specifically waiting for the feast to begin. But once Jesus has come, the time of anticipation is over; the time of waiting has reached its end. With His coming, everything begins to change. He comes as a man who has authority over the wind and the sea. He comes "before the time" to triumph over the demons. He comes to forgive sins. He comes to welcome tax gatherers and sinners, to heal the sick, and to preach that compassion is better than sacrifice. With the coming of Jesus, the feast of the kingdom has begun. He has come to make all things new." (Jesus as Israel, 195)
Finally, we need to see that this festive community is not just something the disciples go out to create. It is not just a message they proclaim, but something that they already are. It is their community - a new type of people. Throughout the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is forming a new Israel, a community built around 12 new tribes, who will represent a righteousness beyond the scribes and Pharisees. In other words, they won't merely suppress flesh-inspired behavior, but will live in such a way as to overcome the flesh. They don't merely try to control the evil effects of sin and flesh, but go on to seek reconciliation and reunion in love. Jesus and his disciples are a picture of Eden.
Saturday, March 23, 2019
Lent 2019: Tuesday, March 19 - Curtains
New life and restoration must come from God and not from us. In the Bible, this is often depicted as new life coming from God's house, because that's where God is. As we've seen, the holy of holies is the room of the temple where God lives. So in Ezekiel's vision of restoration in chapter 47, we see that water flows out from the temple. It is a river of life, causing creatures and fish and fruit trees to flourish. It flows into the Dead Sea, but instead of becoming salty, the salt water becomes fresh. New life comes out from the temple. God steps out from the temple, out from the fenced-off place of the holy of holies, and renews the land.
In Matthew 12, Jesus and his disciples eat heads of grain from a grainfield. As they ate it on the sabbath, Pharisees cry foul. In his defense, Jesus makes reference to priests who desecrate the temple on the sabbath day and yet are innocent. As Peter Leithart writes, priests are commanded to do work on the sabbath. Jesus doesn't mean they are breaking the law. For others, it would be perhaps. But not for priests. Working on the sabbath, offering their sacrifices is the way they keep the sabbath.
By the Pharisees light, this is a sabbath-breaking, but what Jesus is in effect saying is that he and his disciples are priests. How can this be? We find this is so because the disciples have a traveling temple with them, the new Jesus temple. Jesus says: "I tell you that something greater than the temple is here." Leithart writes:
"Jesus Himself is that greater-than-temple Something. He is the locus of the presence of God, the place where God dwells in fullness. As long as He's there with His disciples, their work, even if it was work, is legitimate work on the Sabbath. Where Jesus is, there is the temple and presence of God..." (Leithart, Jesus as Israel, Vol. 1, 245)
What does this mean? A few posts ago, we talked about how the tabernacle and temple served to provide Israel real but limited access to Eden. It served to provide hope that God will eventually make a way back to Eden. That is still yet to happen, but we've made a remarkable turn on the way to that happy conclusion: God himself has stepped from Eden into the world. The curse of death separates us from that space. It is guarded by flaming sword and temple veils. It is a holy boundary to protect us from the holy one. But the holy one has now crossed over the veil into the world. He has parted the curtains and moved into our neighborhood. The one who lives perfectly by Spirit has moved into the world of flesh and death.
The gospels show us Jesus doing everything that God was doing from the tabernacle and temple. This will continue to be true. The one change is that it is all out in the open. Peter Leithart writes:
"The one change - the single shift so massive that it changes everything - is that Yahweh is no longer hidden. At Sinai, Yahweh established his home in the midst of Israel, but with Jesus, Yahweh takes a further step into the world of flesh, beyond the tabernacle of curtains at Sinai. And then it becomes clear that the whole sanctuary apparatus, all the purity rules and rites of purification, all the sacrifices, the whole system was a complex type and shadow of Jesus' life and ministry." (Delivered, 137)
All the levitical law of Torah shows us the culture of what it means to live with God in his house. What would it look like if God came out from his house and mingled with sinners without the veil of the temple barriers?
It would look like Jesus.
In Matthew 12, Jesus and his disciples eat heads of grain from a grainfield. As they ate it on the sabbath, Pharisees cry foul. In his defense, Jesus makes reference to priests who desecrate the temple on the sabbath day and yet are innocent. As Peter Leithart writes, priests are commanded to do work on the sabbath. Jesus doesn't mean they are breaking the law. For others, it would be perhaps. But not for priests. Working on the sabbath, offering their sacrifices is the way they keep the sabbath.
By the Pharisees light, this is a sabbath-breaking, but what Jesus is in effect saying is that he and his disciples are priests. How can this be? We find this is so because the disciples have a traveling temple with them, the new Jesus temple. Jesus says: "I tell you that something greater than the temple is here." Leithart writes:
"Jesus Himself is that greater-than-temple Something. He is the locus of the presence of God, the place where God dwells in fullness. As long as He's there with His disciples, their work, even if it was work, is legitimate work on the Sabbath. Where Jesus is, there is the temple and presence of God..." (Leithart, Jesus as Israel, Vol. 1, 245)
What does this mean? A few posts ago, we talked about how the tabernacle and temple served to provide Israel real but limited access to Eden. It served to provide hope that God will eventually make a way back to Eden. That is still yet to happen, but we've made a remarkable turn on the way to that happy conclusion: God himself has stepped from Eden into the world. The curse of death separates us from that space. It is guarded by flaming sword and temple veils. It is a holy boundary to protect us from the holy one. But the holy one has now crossed over the veil into the world. He has parted the curtains and moved into our neighborhood. The one who lives perfectly by Spirit has moved into the world of flesh and death.
The gospels show us Jesus doing everything that God was doing from the tabernacle and temple. This will continue to be true. The one change is that it is all out in the open. Peter Leithart writes:
"The one change - the single shift so massive that it changes everything - is that Yahweh is no longer hidden. At Sinai, Yahweh established his home in the midst of Israel, but with Jesus, Yahweh takes a further step into the world of flesh, beyond the tabernacle of curtains at Sinai. And then it becomes clear that the whole sanctuary apparatus, all the purity rules and rites of purification, all the sacrifices, the whole system was a complex type and shadow of Jesus' life and ministry." (Delivered, 137)
All the levitical law of Torah shows us the culture of what it means to live with God in his house. What would it look like if God came out from his house and mingled with sinners without the veil of the temple barriers?
It would look like Jesus.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Lent 2019: Monday, March 18 - Flood
The flood is a story of verdict and deliverance which serves to illustrate Jesus' work of verdict and deliverance. It illustrates it through similarity and also through distinction. In other words, Jesus' deliverance is like the flood, and in other ways it isn't, but in all these ways, we gain clarity about Jesus' work.
Peter Leithart writes: "God did not send another flood: instead of destroying flesh by destroying humanity, God in Christ targeted flesh and condemned it to death. Jesus brought God's warfare, his prosecution of flesh, to its climax and sealed the case against it." (Delivered, 285)
Indeed, the flood was a unique event in that God set about destroying flesh by destroying humanity. God's preliminary judgment is given in Genesis 6:3 that humanity is totally consumed with fleshly violence and, after a 120 year period to repent, God brings a verdict and judgment on the world in the form of a flood.
We also see judgment in the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the form of John the Baptist. John warns Israel to repent:
"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'we have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matt. 3:7-10)
We see here a verdict that Israel and its leaders were in league with sin, flesh, and the devil. They were back in the land of Israel, but spiritually, they were in opposition to the Lord and his will. The ultimate verdict will come in how they respond to the Lord at his appearing. And Jesus comes to be baptized.
This is interesting because Jesus has not sinned. He comes forward in response to John the Baptist's witness testimony in God's lawsuit against Israel, submits to the baptism that constitutes repentance and deliverance, but he has not sinned. Rather, he submits to baptism for "righteousness' sake." What sort of deliverance will this be?
We have reason here to look back at the imagery from the flood because of the dove. We are told that the Holy Spirit descends like a dove when Jesus is baptized and it is a dove which brings to Noah and his people the sign that waters have receded. We see that the ark, the branch, and the land show us things about the type of deliverance that Jesus will bring.
The ark is interesting for being a boat which is built more like a house. Meredith Kline writes that the ark was:
"a spiritual house of God, which has its symbolic external prototypes in the Creator's cosmic house of heaven and earth and later in Israel's microcosmic Tabernacle and Temple. What is now to be observed is that the design of the ark suggested that it was intended to be a representation of God's Kingdom in this cosmic house form. For the ark, however seaworthy, was fashioned like a house rather than like a sailing vessel. All the features mentioned in the description of the ark belong to the architecture of a house; the three stories, the door, the window." (quoted in Through New Eyes, 170)
This house-ark thus has more symbolic connections to the tabernacle and temple than a mere boat would. It also has symbolic connections to baptism itself. Land often represents Israel in the Bible, while the sea represents the Gentiles, the undifferentiated mass of humanity under flesh and death. Israel is delivered from watery death in the flood and also in the exodus as a way of showing that humanity - through humanity's representative, Israel - will be delivered from death. Baptism is a sign of this deliverance. That Jesus undergoes baptism means that he is a representative of Israel, undergoing baptism for "righteousness," to deliver into from death to life. Jesus is thus the ark, the temple that sails the seas, that carries the righteous to their deliverance. As the ark was filled with animals miraculously living at peace with one another, so the new creation will be filled with animals living at peace in Jesus: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:6-9)
We see in Isaiah that the ark is a picture of what the new creation will be. And Jesus is the fulfillment of the ark.
Jesus is also like the branch. Noah and his family sail on the seas. They are saved, but not saved. They are waiting. They send out birds to forage for any sort of sign that things are different, that there is anything other than watery wilderness, that there is any sign of the separating work God did at the first creation of dividing water from land so that the land can be filled. The sign comes when a dove brings an olive leaf. "When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth." (Genesis 8:11) The leaf comes as good news from a far off land that there is a new world, a new order of things. In keeping with the foliage imagery, Isaiah prophesies that deliverance will come in the form of a branch: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." (Isaiah 11:1) And this branch will be the one who lives by Spirit not by flesh: "The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him - the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord - and he will delight in the fear of the Lord." (Isaiah 11:2) Baptism illuminates Jesus to be a new Israel, but also Israel's "strength and consolation," the olive leaf, the branch, that the Spirit brings to nurture hope for deliverance.
And Jesus isn't only the sign of deliverance, but also the great resting place. With regard to the Noah story, he is the land. There is a fruitful, sabbath rest for Noah and his family. Of course, the world becomes broken again. But Jesus is a sabbath rest that can't fail, a land which will always be fruitful. The heavens open at Jesus' baptism. This is a sign that the heavens will reunite with the earth. Jesus is the heavenly man come down who will renew the earth and present it as a bride to the Lord. All the yearning for a promised land, a place to rest, "safe and secure from all alarm" is fulfilled in Jesus.
Peter Leithart writes: "God did not send another flood: instead of destroying flesh by destroying humanity, God in Christ targeted flesh and condemned it to death. Jesus brought God's warfare, his prosecution of flesh, to its climax and sealed the case against it." (Delivered, 285)
Indeed, the flood was a unique event in that God set about destroying flesh by destroying humanity. God's preliminary judgment is given in Genesis 6:3 that humanity is totally consumed with fleshly violence and, after a 120 year period to repent, God brings a verdict and judgment on the world in the form of a flood.
We also see judgment in the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the form of John the Baptist. John warns Israel to repent:
"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'we have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matt. 3:7-10)
We see here a verdict that Israel and its leaders were in league with sin, flesh, and the devil. They were back in the land of Israel, but spiritually, they were in opposition to the Lord and his will. The ultimate verdict will come in how they respond to the Lord at his appearing. And Jesus comes to be baptized.
This is interesting because Jesus has not sinned. He comes forward in response to John the Baptist's witness testimony in God's lawsuit against Israel, submits to the baptism that constitutes repentance and deliverance, but he has not sinned. Rather, he submits to baptism for "righteousness' sake." What sort of deliverance will this be?
We have reason here to look back at the imagery from the flood because of the dove. We are told that the Holy Spirit descends like a dove when Jesus is baptized and it is a dove which brings to Noah and his people the sign that waters have receded. We see that the ark, the branch, and the land show us things about the type of deliverance that Jesus will bring.
The ark is interesting for being a boat which is built more like a house. Meredith Kline writes that the ark was:
"a spiritual house of God, which has its symbolic external prototypes in the Creator's cosmic house of heaven and earth and later in Israel's microcosmic Tabernacle and Temple. What is now to be observed is that the design of the ark suggested that it was intended to be a representation of God's Kingdom in this cosmic house form. For the ark, however seaworthy, was fashioned like a house rather than like a sailing vessel. All the features mentioned in the description of the ark belong to the architecture of a house; the three stories, the door, the window." (quoted in Through New Eyes, 170)
This house-ark thus has more symbolic connections to the tabernacle and temple than a mere boat would. It also has symbolic connections to baptism itself. Land often represents Israel in the Bible, while the sea represents the Gentiles, the undifferentiated mass of humanity under flesh and death. Israel is delivered from watery death in the flood and also in the exodus as a way of showing that humanity - through humanity's representative, Israel - will be delivered from death. Baptism is a sign of this deliverance. That Jesus undergoes baptism means that he is a representative of Israel, undergoing baptism for "righteousness," to deliver into from death to life. Jesus is thus the ark, the temple that sails the seas, that carries the righteous to their deliverance. As the ark was filled with animals miraculously living at peace with one another, so the new creation will be filled with animals living at peace in Jesus: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:6-9)
We see in Isaiah that the ark is a picture of what the new creation will be. And Jesus is the fulfillment of the ark.
Jesus is also like the branch. Noah and his family sail on the seas. They are saved, but not saved. They are waiting. They send out birds to forage for any sort of sign that things are different, that there is anything other than watery wilderness, that there is any sign of the separating work God did at the first creation of dividing water from land so that the land can be filled. The sign comes when a dove brings an olive leaf. "When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth." (Genesis 8:11) The leaf comes as good news from a far off land that there is a new world, a new order of things. In keeping with the foliage imagery, Isaiah prophesies that deliverance will come in the form of a branch: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." (Isaiah 11:1) And this branch will be the one who lives by Spirit not by flesh: "The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him - the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord - and he will delight in the fear of the Lord." (Isaiah 11:2) Baptism illuminates Jesus to be a new Israel, but also Israel's "strength and consolation," the olive leaf, the branch, that the Spirit brings to nurture hope for deliverance.
And Jesus isn't only the sign of deliverance, but also the great resting place. With regard to the Noah story, he is the land. There is a fruitful, sabbath rest for Noah and his family. Of course, the world becomes broken again. But Jesus is a sabbath rest that can't fail, a land which will always be fruitful. The heavens open at Jesus' baptism. This is a sign that the heavens will reunite with the earth. Jesus is the heavenly man come down who will renew the earth and present it as a bride to the Lord. All the yearning for a promised land, a place to rest, "safe and secure from all alarm" is fulfilled in Jesus.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Lent 2019: Saturday, March 16 - Adam
Matthew begins his gospel this way: "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah..."
The word for genealogy is the same word used in Genesis, at least as it was translated in Greek. A genealogy is a genesis, a beginning. This is not only a lead-in to a description of the generations that lead up to Jesus. It's also a claim about who Jesus is: he is a new beginning. He is a new Adam.
The end of the Gospel of Matthew also alludes to Genesis. We are told in the passage commonly known as the 'Great Commission' that Jesus has received all authority in "heaven and on earth," which echoes Genesis 1, where God creates 'the heavens and the earth'. (Genesis 1:1). In a sense, then, Matthew's gospel tells us that Jesus has brought God's initial creation to its true fulfillment. The heavens and earth, God's raw material for everything, has found its true authority in Jesus.
The end of the Gospel of Matthew also gives us a clue about the way Matthew has organized his whole gospel. Jesus' closing speech bears a striking resemblance to the closing speech of Cyrus, the king of Persia, at the end of 2 Chronicles. Both are royal decrees to go do something. Cyrus' decree is to build the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus' is to go and make disciples. Both also claim authority. Cyrus claims authority over "all the kingdoms of the earth" because "the God of heaven" gave them to him. Jesus also claims authority, but over both the heavens and the earth.
Though 2 Chronicles is nestled somewhere around the middle of our Old Testaments, it concluded the Hebrew Bible, the Bible that Jesus and the disciples would have had. So for Matthew's gospel to conclude with a reference to the conclusion of 2 Chronicles is very suggestive about Matthew's whole project in his gospel. If Jesus' story begins as a new genesis, echoing the beginning of the Hebrew Bible, his story also concludes the same way the Hebrew Bible concludes, with royal decrees and claims of authority. Matthew's project seems to claim: Jesus' story echoes this story. Jesus' story fulfills this story. Jesus' story recapitulates this other story.
It is a story that Adam begins, as he is the father of all mankind. It is also a story in which the failure of Adam is written into every chapter of Israel's history, most of which is recounted in Matthew's gospel. Moses is God's instrument for setting up real but limited access to Eden through Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle, but Israel falls prey to temptation repeatedly in the desert. Matthew 1-7 orients us to see Jesus as a new Moses. Joshua leads Israel into conquest in the promised land, but they don't take full possession. Matthew 10 orients us to see Jesus as a new Joshua. Solomon excels all in wisdom and gives proverbs. Matthew 13 orients us to see Jesus as a new Solomon. Elijah and Elisha create a new Israel within the corrupt older Israel. Matthew 18 orients us to see Jesus as a new Elisha. Jeremiah prophecies the death of exile and the resurrection of return to an Israel unwilling to listen. Matthew 23-25 orients us to see Jesus as a new Jeremiah. Throughout, we see that the story of Israel was not really meant to redeem Adam's fall into sin and death. It was really meant to foreshadow and point to the new Adam, Jesus, who would inaugurate a new era of grace and resurrection.
We'll look at Romans 5 in another post, but we'll close by looking at Daniel 7, which presents us a picture of the world's redemption as a new human, a new Adam. The vision begins with four animals - a lion, a bear, a leopard, and an unnamed fourth beast. They come out of the sea, which is a common symbol for Gentiles throughout the Bible. They are symbols for 'beastly' empires, which hold great clout in this world under the dominion of the first Adam, under the dominion of death. Then a man appears:
"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." (Daniel 7:13-14)
In the same way that Adam tamed the beasts in the garden (Genesis 2:20), the new Adam tames the rebellious beastly empires of the world, leading them back into the garden, back into the presence of the Ancient of Days, the Lord.
The word for genealogy is the same word used in Genesis, at least as it was translated in Greek. A genealogy is a genesis, a beginning. This is not only a lead-in to a description of the generations that lead up to Jesus. It's also a claim about who Jesus is: he is a new beginning. He is a new Adam.
The end of the Gospel of Matthew also alludes to Genesis. We are told in the passage commonly known as the 'Great Commission' that Jesus has received all authority in "heaven and on earth," which echoes Genesis 1, where God creates 'the heavens and the earth'. (Genesis 1:1). In a sense, then, Matthew's gospel tells us that Jesus has brought God's initial creation to its true fulfillment. The heavens and earth, God's raw material for everything, has found its true authority in Jesus.
The end of the Gospel of Matthew also gives us a clue about the way Matthew has organized his whole gospel. Jesus' closing speech bears a striking resemblance to the closing speech of Cyrus, the king of Persia, at the end of 2 Chronicles. Both are royal decrees to go do something. Cyrus' decree is to build the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus' is to go and make disciples. Both also claim authority. Cyrus claims authority over "all the kingdoms of the earth" because "the God of heaven" gave them to him. Jesus also claims authority, but over both the heavens and the earth.
Though 2 Chronicles is nestled somewhere around the middle of our Old Testaments, it concluded the Hebrew Bible, the Bible that Jesus and the disciples would have had. So for Matthew's gospel to conclude with a reference to the conclusion of 2 Chronicles is very suggestive about Matthew's whole project in his gospel. If Jesus' story begins as a new genesis, echoing the beginning of the Hebrew Bible, his story also concludes the same way the Hebrew Bible concludes, with royal decrees and claims of authority. Matthew's project seems to claim: Jesus' story echoes this story. Jesus' story fulfills this story. Jesus' story recapitulates this other story.
It is a story that Adam begins, as he is the father of all mankind. It is also a story in which the failure of Adam is written into every chapter of Israel's history, most of which is recounted in Matthew's gospel. Moses is God's instrument for setting up real but limited access to Eden through Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle, but Israel falls prey to temptation repeatedly in the desert. Matthew 1-7 orients us to see Jesus as a new Moses. Joshua leads Israel into conquest in the promised land, but they don't take full possession. Matthew 10 orients us to see Jesus as a new Joshua. Solomon excels all in wisdom and gives proverbs. Matthew 13 orients us to see Jesus as a new Solomon. Elijah and Elisha create a new Israel within the corrupt older Israel. Matthew 18 orients us to see Jesus as a new Elisha. Jeremiah prophecies the death of exile and the resurrection of return to an Israel unwilling to listen. Matthew 23-25 orients us to see Jesus as a new Jeremiah. Throughout, we see that the story of Israel was not really meant to redeem Adam's fall into sin and death. It was really meant to foreshadow and point to the new Adam, Jesus, who would inaugurate a new era of grace and resurrection.
We'll look at Romans 5 in another post, but we'll close by looking at Daniel 7, which presents us a picture of the world's redemption as a new human, a new Adam. The vision begins with four animals - a lion, a bear, a leopard, and an unnamed fourth beast. They come out of the sea, which is a common symbol for Gentiles throughout the Bible. They are symbols for 'beastly' empires, which hold great clout in this world under the dominion of the first Adam, under the dominion of death. Then a man appears:
"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." (Daniel 7:13-14)
In the same way that Adam tamed the beasts in the garden (Genesis 2:20), the new Adam tames the rebellious beastly empires of the world, leading them back into the garden, back into the presence of the Ancient of Days, the Lord.
Friday, March 15, 2019
Lent 2019: Friday, March 15 - Recapitulation (A Lengthy Interlude)
In one Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, the little boy Calvin sleds down a snowy slope with his friend Hobbes, a tiger, while conducting a discussion about sin:
Calvin: I'm getting nervous about Christmas.
Hobbes: You're worried you haven't been good?
Calvin: That's just the question. It's all relative. What's Santa's definition? How good do you have
to be to qualify as good? I haven't killed anybody. That's good, right? I haven't committed any
felonies. I didn't start any wars...Wouldn't you say that's pretty good? Wouldn't you say I should
get lots of presents?
Hobbes: But maybe good is more than the absence of bad.
Calvin: See, that's what worries me. (quoted in Rutledge, 180)
We are all like Calvin. However we may feel about our own personal behavior, we worry about whether 'bad' might somehow be more than just falling short of the mark. This whole series of posts is about how Christ's completed work addresses all the bad 'out there' in the world and 'in here,' in ourselves, and changes the whole world.
I mentioned in the first post of this series that two books about Christ's completed work have been constant companions: Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion and Peter Leithart's Delivered from the Elements of the World. Both are long-gestating, career-spanning books for their authors:
Rutledge writes:
"When someone asks me how long I have been working on this book, I usually say that I started it when, after twenty-one years, I retired from parish ministry - in other words, about eighteen years ago. In the truest sense, though, it has been the work of a lifetime. When I was about thirteen - that would be 1950 - I was already beginning to wonder what it meant to say that Jesus died for the sin of the world." (xv)
Leithart writes:
"I have described Delivered from the Elements of the World as my Big Red Book About Everything..." (17)
Both write about the public impact of the cross, whether Jesus meant to show the world something on the cross, or if he meant to accomplish something, and if so, what? They also write about what it means when the church fails to convey this. They worry about the cross being ignored or reduced to one meaning apart from many.
Their work speaks to temptations to avoid the cross, and also to overemphasize aspects of the cross. Rutledge writes:
"Most churchgoing people are "Jews" on Sunday morning and "Greeks" the rest of the time. Religious people want visionary experiences and spiritual uplift; secular people want proofs, arguments, demonstrations, philosophy, science. The striking fact is that neither one of these groups wants to hear about the cross." (86)
Rutledge here depicts the ways in both the world and in the church that we avoid the cross. Peter Leithart writes about a certain temptation to think about the cross, but in unhelpful ways:
"We are tempted to flinch at the last moment. We are tempted to retreat from the ambiguities of history into an atonement theory whose mechanism works regardless of whether Torah had ever been given, one that does not depend on the events of Jesus' life or the faithful witness of the founding, firstfruits generation. We are tempted to conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection might effect salvation without the church, with all its failures and imperfections..." (Delivered, 173)
Leithart and Rutledge depict two opposing temptations: one, to avoid the cross entirely, the second, to think a lot about the cross, but in one particular way.
This assumes there are many ways to think about the cross. The Christian tradition has never picked one particular understanding of atonement, which is the word for how God makes things right in Christ.
Traditionally, there are three theories of the atonement: penal substitution, Christus victor, and the moral influence theory. Rutledge covers eight "biblical motifs:" the passover/exodus, blood sacrifice, ransom and redemption, the great assize, the apocalyptic war, the descent into hell, the substitution, and recapitulation.
The apocalyptic war motif and the substitution motif become particularly important to contemporary discussions because one emphasizes sin and salvation as a collective and the other as an individual matter. The trouble becomes keeping them together.
Rutledge describes the substitutionary motif:
"Sin is a responsible guilt for which atonement must be made. It follows that the crucifixion is understood as a sacrifice for sin." (181)
This is well summed up by the hymn Amazing Grace, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me/I once was lost but now am found/was blind but now I see." The emphasis is on the sinner's guilt and on the loving substitutionary sacrifice made for the sinner. This is a helpful motif for those who are overwhelmed by all the sin and evil in here, in my own human soul, because it shows that God has forensically removed all my impurities, washing them in Christ's blood.
The weakness of this model is when it becomes too much of a free-floating theory. In the context of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement conveys God's loving agency: "I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. In the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20) However, when the impersonal tone of theorizing is used, it can sound like this: "...sin has to be punished because it deserves to be, because impartial justice requires due penalty, just as it demands reward for virtue." (Robert Dabney, quoted in Rutledge, 496) Now, sin does deserve to be punished. But when the content is no longer embedded in Scripture, but transplanted into a theory, really important things get lost in translation. In this impersonal mode, God can come off angry, the punishment arbitrary, the suffering masochistic. It's plenty of justice and not enough love. Solid biblical motifs, when they are couched in theory language, can prove bewildering. Another weakness is its individualism. When it is the only model at work, "the single individual with his solitary guilt looms over the conceptual landscape, leaving no space for the drama of the cosmic struggle..." (Rutledge, 506)
The cosmic struggle is the Apocalyptic War motif. Rutledge writes:
"Sin is an alien power that must be driven from the field. All human beings are enslaved by this power (Rom. 3:9; John 8:34) and must be liberated by a greater power. The crucifixion is therefore understood to be Christ's victory of the Powers of Sin and Death, commonly called Christus Victor." (181)
This is a helpful motif for those who are overwhelmed by all the sin and evil out there, in the world. All the corruption, racism, structural evil, genocide that is institutional and complex. It tells us that Christ has won a decisive victory over these satanic powers and principalities which rule this world.
The weakness of this model is that it can seem to take place at a cosmic remove, way above our heads. It runs the risk of taking place at such a vast level that it doesn't touch on my individual life at all. Couched in theory language, this motif can lose its tone of prophetic hope, coming off naive instead as it describes a victory that doesn't seem to have made a dent in the world's corruption. It can have the effect of claiming 'all people are saved' without adequately sounding the depths of the Auschwitz's, Rwanda's or other sites of unspeakable cruelty. It's plenty of love and not enough justice. It can work out ethically where one group is more a 'victim' and another group a 'perpetrator' in a way that one group seems more innocent and another group more guilty. In other words, it can sometimes run more on a steam of class warfare than it does on a biblical anthropology. It can seem to give some people a pass. But as Gerhard Forde writes, "Christ's work is and remains always an act in which we are involved and implicated." (quoted in Rutledge 391)
Both these theories let us off the hook to the extent that they become just a math equation we puzzle over rather than a mystery we are caught up in: "God is just. Sin happened. God had to punish it.", etc. When we think of these holy matters as one theory or another, we exonerate ourselves from being personally involved in what is happening at the cross. As I heard one theologian say in an interview, "we are not saved by believing in 'justification by faith.' We are not saved by some theory. We are saved by Jesus Christ."
Meeting Jesus in Scripture is enriched by keeping all the motifs we find and dwelling upon them. Different motifs add to the extraordinary riches, grace, and wisdom of God.
The Letter to Hebrews refers to the apocalyptic war motif in Hebrews 2:14-15:
"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, 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" (Hebrews 2:14-15, ESV)
Then, the author refers to the substitutionary motif in the following verses:
"Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted" (Hebrews 2:17-18 (ESV)
Rutledge writes about how the two motifs complement one another:
"First, the apocalyptic drama is the nonnegotiable context for the substitution model and all the others as well. It is the thought-world from which the entire new Testament was written. The incarnate Son arrived not in neutral territory, but in a realm occupied by an Enemy power. Second, the way in which Christ became the apocalyptic victor was through the substitution." (531)
They complement each other in our own Christian lives. The substitutionary motif provides us personal, daily renewal within the larger apocalyptic war motif in which we prayerfully serve our city, country, and world together and with Christ. We find a satisfying, loving, victorious Christ in both. Christ heals us in here so that we can unite with him to serve out there.
Melito of Sardis, an early Christian bishop who died circa 190 A.D. combined at least five motifs in an Easter sermon:
"The Lord...suffered for the sake of him who suffered, and was bound for the sake of him who was imprisoned, and was judged for the sake of the condemned, and was buried for the sake of the buried. So come, all families of human beings who are defiled by sins, and receive remission of sins. For I am your remission, I am the Passover of salvation. I am the Lamb sacrificed for your sake. I am your ransom. I am your life. I am your Resurrection. I am your light. I am your salvation. I am your King. I lead you toward the heights of heaven. I will show you the eternal Father. I will raise you up with my right hand." (quoted in Rutledge, 479)
The challenge, particularly to predominantly white churches, is to draw upon our scriptural resources to address Christ's victory over structural sin. This is articulated well by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
"There was a time when the Church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are." (quoted in Cody Cook, The Second Adam)
To the white churches that tended to look at sin and salvation primarily through the lens of their own personal behavior, King might be echoing the words of Hobbes from the comic strip: "...maybe good is more than the absence of bad."
As all motifs can be misused, we can also misuse the substitutionary motif. Seeing it as a mere theory, we are comforted that Christ saves us just as we are, but we are also tempted to believe that Christ wants us to stay just as we are. It is all very convenient for us. Among my hopes with this series is for us to see how Christ's complete work does something to the world as a whole so that, seeing this, we can be galvanized to become the kind of church Martin Luther King, Jr. yearned to see while writing from his jail cell.
It would be extraordinary to do some recovery here, because Christ can give us a far more wonderful word about who we are as a church than we can give ourselves. How can we recover the many meanings of Christ's completed work so that we can benefit in our minds from God's full gift again? I want to say two more things about this. First, while the various motifs and theories about atonement tend to focus solely on Christ's death, Peter Leithart enlarges the focus to incorporate other aspects of Christ's work that are unfortunately often ignored in these same theories, such as the larger history of Israel in the Old Testament, Jesus' life, his resurrection, his ascension, the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost, the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and the formation of the Christian church. Freed from having to fit all human history within the three-hour time span of Christ's death, Leithart can stay rooted in salvation history and is less tempted to spin theory. We might also think of it this way. We often say to people, "summarize it for me," "give me the gist of what happened," or "tell me the highlights." We need to resist this temptation when it comes to the saving work of Christ. We need to resist the urge to compress and summarize, and settle in for something more trenchant and ultimately more satisfying. The old slave spiritual puts it best: "were you there when they crucified my Lord?" We want to realize that the answer to that question is, "yes." We want to cultivate a rich, silent meditation upon the cross, and the role it plays in Christ's completed work.
Second, this is why the motif of recapitulation is particularly satisfying. It means "gathering up." It is a motif which, by definition, gathers up all the motifs, helping us to see the ways that all things are summed by Christ in his completed work. By definition, recapitulation resists becoming a typical neat theory, because it describes a tried and true pattern for reading Scripture: it's all about Jesus. He is the alpha and the omega. He is the new Adam, the new Moses, the new David, the new Jeremiah, the new Israel. He is the Passover lamb. He is the temple. He is the priest. He reenacts, rewrites, recapitulates the whole Bible, even all of human history. In many ways, it is the ultimate motif, because it includes the others. Every motif doubles as a recapitulation. For the next nine posts, we'll focus on symbols, people, and events that Christ gathers up in his completed work. We'll focus particularly on the Gospel of Matthew, in which Matthew seems particularly intent on showing us that Jesus is a New Israel.
Calvin: I'm getting nervous about Christmas.
Hobbes: You're worried you haven't been good?
Calvin: That's just the question. It's all relative. What's Santa's definition? How good do you have
to be to qualify as good? I haven't killed anybody. That's good, right? I haven't committed any
felonies. I didn't start any wars...Wouldn't you say that's pretty good? Wouldn't you say I should
get lots of presents?
Hobbes: But maybe good is more than the absence of bad.
Calvin: See, that's what worries me. (quoted in Rutledge, 180)
We are all like Calvin. However we may feel about our own personal behavior, we worry about whether 'bad' might somehow be more than just falling short of the mark. This whole series of posts is about how Christ's completed work addresses all the bad 'out there' in the world and 'in here,' in ourselves, and changes the whole world.
I mentioned in the first post of this series that two books about Christ's completed work have been constant companions: Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion and Peter Leithart's Delivered from the Elements of the World. Both are long-gestating, career-spanning books for their authors:
Rutledge writes:
"When someone asks me how long I have been working on this book, I usually say that I started it when, after twenty-one years, I retired from parish ministry - in other words, about eighteen years ago. In the truest sense, though, it has been the work of a lifetime. When I was about thirteen - that would be 1950 - I was already beginning to wonder what it meant to say that Jesus died for the sin of the world." (xv)
Leithart writes:
"I have described Delivered from the Elements of the World as my Big Red Book About Everything..." (17)
Both write about the public impact of the cross, whether Jesus meant to show the world something on the cross, or if he meant to accomplish something, and if so, what? They also write about what it means when the church fails to convey this. They worry about the cross being ignored or reduced to one meaning apart from many.
Their work speaks to temptations to avoid the cross, and also to overemphasize aspects of the cross. Rutledge writes:
"Most churchgoing people are "Jews" on Sunday morning and "Greeks" the rest of the time. Religious people want visionary experiences and spiritual uplift; secular people want proofs, arguments, demonstrations, philosophy, science. The striking fact is that neither one of these groups wants to hear about the cross." (86)
Rutledge here depicts the ways in both the world and in the church that we avoid the cross. Peter Leithart writes about a certain temptation to think about the cross, but in unhelpful ways:
"We are tempted to flinch at the last moment. We are tempted to retreat from the ambiguities of history into an atonement theory whose mechanism works regardless of whether Torah had ever been given, one that does not depend on the events of Jesus' life or the faithful witness of the founding, firstfruits generation. We are tempted to conclude that Jesus' death and resurrection might effect salvation without the church, with all its failures and imperfections..." (Delivered, 173)
Leithart and Rutledge depict two opposing temptations: one, to avoid the cross entirely, the second, to think a lot about the cross, but in one particular way.
This assumes there are many ways to think about the cross. The Christian tradition has never picked one particular understanding of atonement, which is the word for how God makes things right in Christ.
Traditionally, there are three theories of the atonement: penal substitution, Christus victor, and the moral influence theory. Rutledge covers eight "biblical motifs:" the passover/exodus, blood sacrifice, ransom and redemption, the great assize, the apocalyptic war, the descent into hell, the substitution, and recapitulation.
The apocalyptic war motif and the substitution motif become particularly important to contemporary discussions because one emphasizes sin and salvation as a collective and the other as an individual matter. The trouble becomes keeping them together.
Rutledge describes the substitutionary motif:
"Sin is a responsible guilt for which atonement must be made. It follows that the crucifixion is understood as a sacrifice for sin." (181)
This is well summed up by the hymn Amazing Grace, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me/I once was lost but now am found/was blind but now I see." The emphasis is on the sinner's guilt and on the loving substitutionary sacrifice made for the sinner. This is a helpful motif for those who are overwhelmed by all the sin and evil in here, in my own human soul, because it shows that God has forensically removed all my impurities, washing them in Christ's blood.
The weakness of this model is when it becomes too much of a free-floating theory. In the context of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement conveys God's loving agency: "I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. In the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20) However, when the impersonal tone of theorizing is used, it can sound like this: "...sin has to be punished because it deserves to be, because impartial justice requires due penalty, just as it demands reward for virtue." (Robert Dabney, quoted in Rutledge, 496) Now, sin does deserve to be punished. But when the content is no longer embedded in Scripture, but transplanted into a theory, really important things get lost in translation. In this impersonal mode, God can come off angry, the punishment arbitrary, the suffering masochistic. It's plenty of justice and not enough love. Solid biblical motifs, when they are couched in theory language, can prove bewildering. Another weakness is its individualism. When it is the only model at work, "the single individual with his solitary guilt looms over the conceptual landscape, leaving no space for the drama of the cosmic struggle..." (Rutledge, 506)
The cosmic struggle is the Apocalyptic War motif. Rutledge writes:
"Sin is an alien power that must be driven from the field. All human beings are enslaved by this power (Rom. 3:9; John 8:34) and must be liberated by a greater power. The crucifixion is therefore understood to be Christ's victory of the Powers of Sin and Death, commonly called Christus Victor." (181)
This is a helpful motif for those who are overwhelmed by all the sin and evil out there, in the world. All the corruption, racism, structural evil, genocide that is institutional and complex. It tells us that Christ has won a decisive victory over these satanic powers and principalities which rule this world.
The weakness of this model is that it can seem to take place at a cosmic remove, way above our heads. It runs the risk of taking place at such a vast level that it doesn't touch on my individual life at all. Couched in theory language, this motif can lose its tone of prophetic hope, coming off naive instead as it describes a victory that doesn't seem to have made a dent in the world's corruption. It can have the effect of claiming 'all people are saved' without adequately sounding the depths of the Auschwitz's, Rwanda's or other sites of unspeakable cruelty. It's plenty of love and not enough justice. It can work out ethically where one group is more a 'victim' and another group a 'perpetrator' in a way that one group seems more innocent and another group more guilty. In other words, it can sometimes run more on a steam of class warfare than it does on a biblical anthropology. It can seem to give some people a pass. But as Gerhard Forde writes, "Christ's work is and remains always an act in which we are involved and implicated." (quoted in Rutledge 391)
Both these theories let us off the hook to the extent that they become just a math equation we puzzle over rather than a mystery we are caught up in: "God is just. Sin happened. God had to punish it.", etc. When we think of these holy matters as one theory or another, we exonerate ourselves from being personally involved in what is happening at the cross. As I heard one theologian say in an interview, "we are not saved by believing in 'justification by faith.' We are not saved by some theory. We are saved by Jesus Christ."
Meeting Jesus in Scripture is enriched by keeping all the motifs we find and dwelling upon them. Different motifs add to the extraordinary riches, grace, and wisdom of God.
The Letter to Hebrews refers to the apocalyptic war motif in Hebrews 2:14-15:
"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, 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" (Hebrews 2:14-15, ESV)
Then, the author refers to the substitutionary motif in the following verses:
"Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted" (Hebrews 2:17-18 (ESV)
Rutledge writes about how the two motifs complement one another:
"First, the apocalyptic drama is the nonnegotiable context for the substitution model and all the others as well. It is the thought-world from which the entire new Testament was written. The incarnate Son arrived not in neutral territory, but in a realm occupied by an Enemy power. Second, the way in which Christ became the apocalyptic victor was through the substitution." (531)
They complement each other in our own Christian lives. The substitutionary motif provides us personal, daily renewal within the larger apocalyptic war motif in which we prayerfully serve our city, country, and world together and with Christ. We find a satisfying, loving, victorious Christ in both. Christ heals us in here so that we can unite with him to serve out there.
Melito of Sardis, an early Christian bishop who died circa 190 A.D. combined at least five motifs in an Easter sermon:
"The Lord...suffered for the sake of him who suffered, and was bound for the sake of him who was imprisoned, and was judged for the sake of the condemned, and was buried for the sake of the buried. So come, all families of human beings who are defiled by sins, and receive remission of sins. For I am your remission, I am the Passover of salvation. I am the Lamb sacrificed for your sake. I am your ransom. I am your life. I am your Resurrection. I am your light. I am your salvation. I am your King. I lead you toward the heights of heaven. I will show you the eternal Father. I will raise you up with my right hand." (quoted in Rutledge, 479)
The challenge, particularly to predominantly white churches, is to draw upon our scriptural resources to address Christ's victory over structural sin. This is articulated well by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
"There was a time when the Church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are." (quoted in Cody Cook, The Second Adam)
To the white churches that tended to look at sin and salvation primarily through the lens of their own personal behavior, King might be echoing the words of Hobbes from the comic strip: "...maybe good is more than the absence of bad."
As all motifs can be misused, we can also misuse the substitutionary motif. Seeing it as a mere theory, we are comforted that Christ saves us just as we are, but we are also tempted to believe that Christ wants us to stay just as we are. It is all very convenient for us. Among my hopes with this series is for us to see how Christ's complete work does something to the world as a whole so that, seeing this, we can be galvanized to become the kind of church Martin Luther King, Jr. yearned to see while writing from his jail cell.
It would be extraordinary to do some recovery here, because Christ can give us a far more wonderful word about who we are as a church than we can give ourselves. How can we recover the many meanings of Christ's completed work so that we can benefit in our minds from God's full gift again? I want to say two more things about this. First, while the various motifs and theories about atonement tend to focus solely on Christ's death, Peter Leithart enlarges the focus to incorporate other aspects of Christ's work that are unfortunately often ignored in these same theories, such as the larger history of Israel in the Old Testament, Jesus' life, his resurrection, his ascension, the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost, the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and the formation of the Christian church. Freed from having to fit all human history within the three-hour time span of Christ's death, Leithart can stay rooted in salvation history and is less tempted to spin theory. We might also think of it this way. We often say to people, "summarize it for me," "give me the gist of what happened," or "tell me the highlights." We need to resist this temptation when it comes to the saving work of Christ. We need to resist the urge to compress and summarize, and settle in for something more trenchant and ultimately more satisfying. The old slave spiritual puts it best: "were you there when they crucified my Lord?" We want to realize that the answer to that question is, "yes." We want to cultivate a rich, silent meditation upon the cross, and the role it plays in Christ's completed work.
Second, this is why the motif of recapitulation is particularly satisfying. It means "gathering up." It is a motif which, by definition, gathers up all the motifs, helping us to see the ways that all things are summed by Christ in his completed work. By definition, recapitulation resists becoming a typical neat theory, because it describes a tried and true pattern for reading Scripture: it's all about Jesus. He is the alpha and the omega. He is the new Adam, the new Moses, the new David, the new Jeremiah, the new Israel. He is the Passover lamb. He is the temple. He is the priest. He reenacts, rewrites, recapitulates the whole Bible, even all of human history. In many ways, it is the ultimate motif, because it includes the others. Every motif doubles as a recapitulation. For the next nine posts, we'll focus on symbols, people, and events that Christ gathers up in his completed work. We'll focus particularly on the Gospel of Matthew, in which Matthew seems particularly intent on showing us that Jesus is a New Israel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)