Jason's Blog

Yesterday during our worship assembly time we were singing great songs about the holiness of God. The throne scenes in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 are pictures of grandeur and purity. Jasper, carnelian, shinning colors, and a brilliant rainbow surround God. And who am I? Who are you? We are not pure; in fact, we are stained – covered with the mark of our sin. But God in his infinite grace can make us clean.

I really like the 3-pronged definition of sin that James McClendon gives in his book Doctrine (Abingdon Press, 1994).

• Sin is Refusal
• Sin is Rupture
• Sin as Reversion

Sin is everything that denies what God would seek to do in the world (refusal). It is what tears people apart when our social life is filled with anxiety, retaliation, fear and brokenness (rupture). Sin is where we seek less than the deep loving relationships that should exist between people. Sin settles for blame, guilt, shame, self-justification, blind ignorance, and cold accusation. Sin is everything that reverses the life giving power of God (reversion). Every practice that is half-hearted that allows death to choke out what is good – this too is sin.

Scripture is relentless in telling us about the nature of sin:

“Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).
“Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (James 4:17).
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Sin is truly all around us and we cannot escape it.

So yesterday as we were singing I couldn’t help but think of the  disaster in the Gulf and the waves of oil that so have marred the environment. This disaster looms large, and every day it brings more calamities, more hardship, and greater loss. This is how sin works in our lives.

And Christ is the only answer for the problem of sin. There is nothing we can do to lift or clean ourselves. Only he can make us whole and that is what He does to those who are His.

Are you His today?

I find that historic prayers can be helpful in remembering what is important.  Here is one from the Celtic tradition that I found in Tracy Balzer’s Thin Places: An Evangelical Journey in Celtic Christianity (Leafwood, 2006): 39.  I find that the Celts have a way of seeing the world with fullness– a way of living that I deeply desire in my own life.

God be with thee in every pass,

Jesus be with thee on every hill,

Spirit be with thee on every stream,

Headland and ridge and lawn;

Each sea and land, each moor and meadow,

Eachi lying down, each rising up,

In the trough of the waves, on the crest of the billows,

Each step of the journey thou goest.

Daniel was everything that a five year old can be—courageous, timid, confident, and shy. But most of all—trusting. Daniel’s mom had left him with her sister Milicia on a fateful day in 1957.

The family lived in war torn Croatia. Seeing soldiers with machine guns was an everyday occurance. Daniel was out in the street playing in a red toy wagon with these nineteen year olds. The boys were pulling the wagon in the street near his home, when the unthinkable happened. They pulled the wagon through a gate and little Daniel’s head was forced between two posts. He was dead in seconds.

Where was Milicia? She was supposed to be watching, but something had happened. She was distracted and now Daniel was dead.

Daniel’s mother faced all the anger, sorrow, and pain that goes with losing a child. But through it all, she never blamed Milicia. As Mirslov Volf tells this story, he always looked at his Aunt Milicia as his guardian angel. Mirslov’s mother never blamed her sister and never passed that blame on. This allowed her son to grow up free from anger, free from labeling and hurting Milicia.

I believe one key power tool that can help you with your anger in all its forms is the spiritual discipline of extending mercy. It is the wellspring of forgiveness and the source of love. If we are merciful, we can be slow in anger, free from rage, coercion, and depression. Our life will be full of peace.

How are you doing with developing the spiritual discipline of mercy?  Is mercy vibrant in your life?  If so, you’ll have a few scars to show for it.

Let me share two quotations that you might find helpful.  Joshua Grave’s The Feast (Leafwood, 2009) has a fine chapter on Suffering:

A deep spirituality molded in the image of Jesus takes root when we realize that God manages to use suffering to transform darkness, disillusionment, suffering, pain, and ugliness into everlasting beauty. . . The Apostle Paul proclaimed, ‘I want to know Christ  and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,’ because he understood that suffering is a means by which God changes the world from its insistence on violence, revenge, corruption and domination” (p. 94).

Do you believe that God can take our brokenness and transform it into glory?  That is what He does through the cross. If you believe in the power of suffering, then you might be able to pray this prayer:

Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources.

If I trust You, everything else will become, for me, strength, health, and support. Everything will bring me to heaven. If I do not trust You, everything will be my destruction. [Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. p 29-30].

“The Christians that I know have to be among the unhappiest of people in the world!”

Think about the prune-faced, Puritan stereotype– severe, unloving, killjoys.  And if you call to mind a Fundamentalist of the twentieth century, the picture is a preacher pounding a pulpit, dripping with sweat, shouting out fierce words to the faithful.  Or worse — someone using a megaphone on a street corner.

How did we become so serious? Does this hardened spirit reflect Jesus? I think not.

Whatever else we might say about Jesus, he is completely at peace and full of joy. Jesus our risen Lord is not sullen or bitter about life. John Piper’s explains this idea beautifully in Desiring God (Multnomah, 2nd Edition, 1996):

Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some Jack-and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were frustrated and despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected? Could we with David say, “Oh God, thou art my God, I seek thee; my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1)?

I don’t think so. We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal, and discontented father. They can’t enjoy him. They can only try not to bother him, and maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor (John Piper, 34).

Years ago when I was studying the gospels, I noticed that Jesus majored in defying the stereotypes of the religious establishment.  Instead of settling for quiet dinner conversation with spiritual leaders, Jesus parties with people like Levi.  Instead of fasting, he took up feasting.

I think that if Jesus came in the flesh to dwell among us today, he would continue the same practice.  His laughter would surprise, his attendance at parties would shock; his closest friends and greatest followers would be drawn from the edges of society.

WWJD?  (What Would Jesus Do?) Whatever he did, it would be filled with the joy of the Lord.  And if his track record is any indication of his choices, Jesus would be sociable and in the middle of a party.

So as you celebrate and spend time others this weekend (be it at a party or not), remember the one who was not too serious.  Remember Jesus.