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God’s Face Is Toward You

God’s Face Is Toward You

When my kids were little, one of the best parts of my life was when I’d walk in the door at the end of a long day. They’d run to me, squeeze my legs, squeal with delight, beg me for piggyback rides, the “dragon game,” or other ridiculous forms of roughhouse. Their faces could practically light up the entire room at the very sight of me. I was a hero, a celebrity, the most loved human on the planet and the source of one of their greatest delights. It felt pretty good. 

I have teenagers now. Needless to say, I’m not even sure they notice when I get home (or that I ever left). While I choose to believe they’re still glad to see me (after all, according to Hebrews 11, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…), I do miss those little faces lighting up like that at my very presence. You know the feeling, right?

 

A face that is glad to see you

Does anything feel better than seeing another human light up when they see you? You show up at a friend’s house that you haven’t seen in years. You return home from a long and tiring business trip and your spouse greets you at the door. You arrive home after your first semester in college. Your grandkids finally pull up after a long road trip. Even as I write this, I can literally feel my face lighting up just at the very thought of these situations.

We also feel this in the small and subtle things. When you walk into church and you can just tell the people you see are glad to see you. Their faces light up, which makes your face light up, which makes their faces light up even more, which makes your face…. It feels good, doesn’t it?

We now know that there is brain science to back this up. Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks, in their brilliant little book, The Other Half of Church: Christian Community, Brain Science, and Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation, write:

Our brains desire joy more than any other thing. As we go through our day, our right brains are scanning our surroundings, looking for people who are happy to be with us.

God designed facial recognition circuitry into our brains and linked it to our joy center. My wife’s face lights up when she sees me, and this initiates a joyful chain reaction in my brain that I can feel in my body. Brain science reveals that this joy sensation is crucial for emotional and relational development. Our brain looks specifically to the face of another person to find joy, and this fills up our emotional gas tank. The face is key.

They summarize joy in three points. 1) Joy is primarily transmitted through the face (especially the eyes) and secondarily through voice. 2) Joy is relational. It is what we feel when we are with someone who is happy to be with us. Joy does not exist outside of relationship. 3) Joy is important to God and to us.

Of course, I didn’t need to quote these experts for us to know this to be true, nor do we need science’s confirmation for the things we already believe so deeply. We feel this deep in our bones! We know, even in our own bodies, that this is true.

It shouldn’t surprise us then that God has also known this to be true, for this is how he made us. Long before any of these scientific studies were even imagined, God imagined humans, and he made us to light up at the faces of one another. He made us for joy—joy with him and joy with each other. 

 

“The Lord make his face shine on you”

It even comes out in the “original” benediction or blessing in the Bible. It’s the oldest we have and it has long been my personal favorite of all the benedictions we give at church. In seminary, our pastor used to sing it over the congregation at the end of the service. We say it over every child in our dedication services, I try to work it into every one of my weddings, and I love using it on Christmas Eve and the start of every new year. It’s also become one of my favorite songs we sing from Elevation Worship, The Blessing.

Thousands of years before we knew anything about brain science or interpersonal neurobiology, God knew, and our brilliant Creator God gave us this benediction. I memorized it first in the NIV, Numbers 6:22-26: 

 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

 “The Lord bless you

    and keep you;

 the Lord make his face shine on you

    and be gracious to you;

 the Lord turn his face toward you

    and give you peace.”

 

The original blessing, the blessing God commanded, perhaps the highest blessing we can receive, is that God’s face would light up when he sees us. That he would continually turn his face toward us. For this is the ultimate blessing, the ultimate protection, the ultimate act of grace, and the greatest source of peace. If you want real joy, here is where it is found—seeing God’s face light up when you walk in the room. Knowing that God is glad to be with you.

Reflecting on this passage, Wilder and Hendricks write: 

God designed our brains for joy, and He wants us to live in the glow of His delight. This blessing expresses a joy that can be paraphrased, ‘May you feel the joy of God’s face shining on you because He is happy to be with you.’

 

How can God possibly be glad to see me?

However, if I’m honest, I often wonder, does God’s face really light up when he sees me? He knows me. All of me. He knows the ways I tried to run from him in high school. He knows the mistakes I made in college. He knows my failures as a husband, as a father, as a son, as a brother, as a friend, as a pastor, as a colleague, as a boss, as an employee, as a neighbor, as a citizen, as a human. So many mistakes, so much sin. Every one of my faults is in his face, even the failures I’ve been unable to admit to myself. He sees.

You can’t hide anything from God’s face. And I imagine that disappointed look, like the one your mom or dad used to make. Or worse, I imagine him turning away from me, and walking out on me. If YOU really knew me, dear reader, YOU would turn your face from me and walk out on me. Each of us has felt this happen way too many times. Nothing destroys our joy quite like this.

And yet….

The good news of what Jesus has done for us means our God will never do that to any of his children. No matter what. Ever. You see, Jesus already died the death we deserve, and when he was forsaken on the cross, the Father did turn his face away. That is what we deserve, but Jesus experienced that for us, so that we never will.

Jesus also lived the life we could never live—perfect, holy, righteous, just. He took our shame and gave us his goodness, so that when the Father looks at us, he sees all the good that Jesus is. All of his beauty and righteousness and love. We are given credit for that.

This means, if you are one of God’s children through faith in Jesus, his face is always toward you. It’s always shining when he sees you. For our God is always glad to see you. Do you believe that?

Like lovers who have been separated for months. Like a parent who hasn’t seen their child for a whole semester. Like your grandkids when they finally show up for a long awaited visit. Like your closest college friends at an unexpected reunion. That’s how God feels EVERYTIME he sees you. And he always sees you! His face is always toward you. Can you see his eyes lighting up?

Now I realize this is hard to believe. The gospel of Jesus usually is hard to believe. So how do we actually experience this? I want to feel this—how can we? Let me quickly and inadequately suggest two things.

 

Turn your face toward him

First, if you want to experience the joy of God’s face toward you, you have to turn your face toward him. It’s mutual. He also wants to see your face light up when you see him! Like any relationship, the joy is best experienced by prioritizing time for that person, and mutually enjoying one another.

When you open your Bible, when you carve out time for prayer, when you quiet your life enough to listen for him, when you show up to church each Sunday, when you sing songs of praise to him, when you go on a walk alone in the woods. These are the spaces we are most likely and most often to experience his face and his joy, and he experiences it from us, too. If we want joy, we have to make these things a priority. Like the old hymn says:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in his wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace

 

Turn your face toward others

Second, if you want to experience the joy of God’s face toward you, you have to turn your face toward others. So often our experience of God’s love comes through the love we feel to and from others. When you show up at church or your community group or Bible study, does your face light up from the people you see? As yours lights up, theirs will too, and you’ll get a taste of the joy of God’s face. If we want joy, we have to make each other a priority.

As we do these things, with faith in Jesus as our deep hope, we’ll experience joy, and we will live out the fulfillment of the greatest benediction. 

Let these words again wash over you—not simply as a wish, but as a truth that is fully yours in Jesus Christ. Read them this time from another translation:

“May the Lord bless you and protect you;

 may the Lord make his face shine on you

and be gracious to you;

 may the Lord look with favor on you

and give you peace.”’  Numbers 6:22-26 CSB

These words have already come true for all who believe. Amen and Amen!

Cultivating a Regular Habit of Forgiveness

Cultivating a Regular Habit of Forgiveness

Written by Ashtyn Fair

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wisely said, The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle…and have found their way out of the depths…Beautiful people do not just happen. The path to beauty or Christlikeness requires rhythms of regular forgiveness. Jesus is our example and his presence is necessary for forgiveness. The imperfection of humankind and accumulated hurts over the span of a lifetime necessitates the continual need for forgiveness. Without it, the transmission of unhealed hurts is inevitable. The deep work of forgiveness will bear joy and peace in those who have courage to pursue it. As people of God seek to be transformed through struggle, the ongoing spiritual practice of forgiveness must be central to our Christian life.

 

Jesus: Our Companion & Example

Jesus is both our example for practicing forgiveness and our companion on the journey. From the very beginning, God practices forgiveness toward his people with a relational vision of renewal (Genesis 3:16, 6:13, 8:21-22, 12). We do not forgive others by our strength alone. Throughout Scripture it is evident that offering forgiveness and mercy is one way we reflect God’s image to the world.  David Montgomery states in his book Forgiveness in the Old Testament, that the “sacrificial system foreshadows the vicarious suffering and atonement of Christ.” In the gospels Jesus atones for the sins of the world through his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. In Christ’s perfection, he atones for the sins of his children in a single historical event and mysteriously, as he lives within us by the Holy Spirit, absorbs our hurt in real time which continually requires his forgiveness. Keas Keasler states in his lecture, The Art of Forgiveness: On the cross we see God doing visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone.” With this in mind, forgiveness is more than an action of the will—it is an ongoing journey.

In Colossians 3:12-13, Paul describes Jesus’ disciples clothed in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, then instructs us to forgive one another. As disciples of Jesus we are to remain soft-hearted. The ongoing practice of forgiveness is the pathway to these soft-hearted and thick-skinned virtues Paul describes. The path of forgiveness is meant to be walked out in Christ. We cannot be any closer to God than we already are; instead, there is a deepening of our own awareness of intimacy and union in Christ that is our truest reality. Union with Christ has a profound impact on the practice of forgiveness. Christ in us takes the hit and can miraculously create something life-giving. Whether the blow is simple or complex, Jesus within us receives it, transforms it, and resurrects to new life. All that is unnatural must be practiced regularly, forgiveness being perhaps the most unnatural of all.

 

Your Responsibility to Forgive & the Generational Impact of Unforgiveness

Wounds become scars when we accompany Jesus as a companion in the process of forgiveness. “Any pain or tension that we do not transform we will transmit.” is a quote from Ronald Rolheiser, a Catholic priest, theologian and author. Experience, research, and neuroscience agree. Because no one is exempt from resentment and bitterness, it is essential for believers to engage forgiveness for the present health of relationships. Forgiveness walks at a slow pace, and it may take many laps until one can wholeheartedly forgive and be free.

It is common to be told to forgive based on logic, such as, “Jesus forgave you all your sins, now you can forgive others.” While this statement is true, it can ignore the many complexities of forgiving another person and sound simplistic. The trouble with, and ineffectiveness of engaging forgiveness as a one-time cognitive choice or act of the will, is that it spiritually bypasses what happened, the felt hurt, and the lasting effects. Spiritual bypassing, or avoidance and repression of hurt, is alarmingly found in churches and often masked as spiritual maturity. Spiritual bypassing is a poison perpetrated by Christian’s who have forgotten that lament is deep in the Church’s historical roots. Avoidance and repression of trauma lead to anger and bitterness that is then fed to children, impacting their spiritual formation and development. Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel explains, “the predictor of healthy childhood attachment [is] whether the parents have a clear and coherent story about their lives and the traumas they have experienced.” Any wounding or unforgiveness that has not experienced Jesus’ touch will hinder the parent’s ability to create healthy and loving relationships with their children. Because past relational hurt that is unhealed and unforgiven naturally influences present relational dynamics and attachments, there is a weightiness to mastering the art of forgiveness, whether you are a parent or not.

 

The Process & Fruit of Forgiveness

With Christ as the model and companion in the process of forgiveness and understanding that any hurt not transformed will be transmitted, we need to know how to forgive and what fruit it should produce in our lives. Desmond and Mpho Tutu give us one way forward in their fourfold path toward forgiveness: telling the story, naming the hurt, granting forgiveness, and renewing or releasing the relationship. The one seeking to forgive must be specific when telling the story because the details are important—one can not forgive vague offenses. Here it is important to struggle, wrestle with God, and thoroughly lament the effects of the event and experience. Tutu explains the effects of engaging lament, “you discover that your pain is part of the great, eternal tapestry of human loss and heartbreak. You realize…that others have experienced and survived…and that you too can survive and know joy and happiness again.” At this point in the journey it may be helpful to ask Jesus what his heart is toward the one you are needing to forgive. Here you may recognize the common humanity between you and your transgressor, moving toward forgiveness and renewal or release in the relationship.

A Christian on the path toward forgiveness will inadvertently grow in trusting Jesus. Lasting forgiveness is impossible without drawing strength from God’s Spirit within you. In this relational reliance, the birthing of profound peace and joy may be found. Peace because you are free from resentment, and joy because you have engaged and honored your grief, releasing the weight of it. If joy and peace are fruits of the Spirit that are born through the process of forgiveness, then Christians would do well to make a regular practice of it. Not only for the monumental relational fallouts, the incidents that may take years to unravel, but also for the small things that pile up over time and look like resentment, cynicism, or disappointment.

Jesus commands us to love our enemies. An unforgiving heart can not do so. We witness to unbelievers as we pursue forgiveness when hate or appearing indifferent would be more natural. As disciples of Jesus we must be proactive in forgiveness, practicing it regularly because Jesus has not only embodied forgiveness and has forgiven us greatly, but promises to be our companion (Christ in us) on the journey. Rolheiser states, “As we age, we can begin to trim down our spiritual vocabulary, and eventually we can get it down to three words: Forgive, forgive, forgive!

 
Additional Resources
Keasler, Keas. “The Art of Forgiveness.” Residency. Lecture presented at the Residency, September 29th, 2022.

Montgomery, David. “Forgiveness in the Old Testament.” Contemporary Christianity. 2013. 

Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu. The Book of Forgiveness. New York: Harper Collins, 2015.

 

 
Memorial Day

Memorial Day

Written by:  Amy Franz

Ahhh, the end of May! What a joyous time! School is over. Summer weather has arrived. Days at the park and warm evenings are heralded by Memorial Day weekend. Picnics and pool parties dressed up in red, white, and blue.

As a child, my Memorial Day weekends included all this and a trip to the Leavenworth National Cemetery. The hour drive was like traveling back in time. We’d drive past the ranch that had bison out to pasture on the prairie. Bumping along brick roads in Leavenworth with its historic downtown buildings from a bygone era.

Just outside of town is the cemetery. I do not ever remember being afraid of this vast place, I only remember feeling a soft sadness. The grounds were peaceful. Expanses of freshly mowed grass, white headstones in neat rows gleaming in the sun, marked with small flags fluttering for every one of the fallen. My dad drove slowly through, pausing here and there as my mom quietly named each of the wars: the World Wars, Viet Nam, the Civil War, and a specially designated section for the renowned Buffalo Soldiers in the oldest part of the cemetery. We were quiet and reverent in the car, looking at so many graves they seemed to be uncountable. How could there be that many soldiers, mostly men, buried here? This is what history looks like. History that demands dignity and respect.

Leaving the cemetery, we drove past the Veterans Home. Men sat out on the lawn, each one alone. I didn’t understand their aloneness. Dad said that for some, the war stays even though it has ended. This was a place to help with all the different kinds of healing. We’d travel on to the military base, which was completely open to the public back then. The historic homes of officers were decorated with red, white, and blue bunting hanging from windows and porch railings. Here there was not only history but the present; men and women in uniform attending their duties even on the weekend.

Now, so many decades later, Memorial Day is so much more personal. As the wife of a Navy veteran with 20 years of service, I know the fallen. My husband and I remember where we were when we heard the news of each one. Those he served with, whose families we barbequed with. Our hearts break again each Memorial Day. For a long moment, we are quiet, feeling what was lost not just to us.

In the year 2000, Congress passed a law for a National Moment of Remembrance at 3:00 PM local time on Memorial Day to pause for a duration of one minute to remember those who have died in military service to the United States. It was passed in the hopes that Memorial Day would be remembered for more than “the day the pool opens.”

This year will you pause for that moment? A prayer could be offered, a minute of silence held for reflection, a hymn sung, or a poem or Scripture read. Then, yes, we can return to families and fun. Yes, to making new memories and feeling the warm sun on your face. Yes, to enjoying the extra freedoms summer brings!

The Other Half of Discipleship | Why We Learn Life-on-Life

The Other Half of Discipleship | Why We Learn Life-on-Life

The people we spend time with profoundly shape us. I was reminded of this truth recently at a small gathering of seasoned Christian leaders, focused on forming flourishing pastoral leadership.

Seated next to me was a surgeon who had spent many years training physicians in a prominent teaching hospital. We all listened with rapt attention as he made the compelling case that while the classroom of medical school was vitally important, it was inadequate to give the wisdom, skill, and competency needed for surgery. What was absolutely essential was lots of time at the scrub sink.

He went on to describe the process of scrubbing up for a surgery alongside more inexperienced surgeons. At the scrub sink, they talked through what the surgery would involve and what they might anticipate. Leaving the scrub sink, they rolled up their sleeves and did the surgery together. Afterward, as the team cleaned up back at the scrub sink, the lead surgeon would debrief with the rest what had taken place and what they learned during that particular surgery. Then they would go to the break room for some refreshments and more conversation.

The surgeon went on to say that in preparing a new generation of surgeons, extended times at the scrub sink were not optional. They were essential. In a similar way, he advocated for more intentional scrub-sink discipleship in the church at all levels, including in the preparation and formation of pastoral leadership.

 

Scrub-Sink Discipleship

The scrub sink is a helpful metaphor for more intentional and transformative discipleship and church-leadership preparation. For it is in a hands-on, life-on-life scrub-sink experience where needed tacit knowledge is transferred and obtained.

What is tacit knowledge? It can be defined many ways, but the basic idea is that tacit knowledge is the kind of learning gained through personal experience and relational connection. Tacit knowledge is implicit knowledge. It is a kind of knowing that goes beyond mere words. Learning to ride a bike, for example, requires a good deal of tacit knowledge. To gain the knowledge and skill necessary to ride a bike, a bike-riding manual may be helpful, but it is far from sufficient. We need to actually get on the bike, and in most cases, we need someone else there who knows how to ride a bike to guide us and cheer us on as we learn.

The twentieth-century philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) thought deeply about the important dimension of tacit knowledge. In his masterpiece work, Personal Knowledge, he writes, “By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself” (53).

“Shared experience is the heartbeat of the tacit dimension.”

Polanyi realized that while the classroom and curricula are effective conduits of propositional knowledge, they are limited when it comes to gaining tacit knowledge. The tacit dimension of knowing transcends words and flows from personal relationships in the context of real-life togetherness and experience. Shared experience is the heartbeat of the tacit dimension.

 

Jesus and the Tacit Dimension

When we reflect on Jesus and his discipleship methods, we observe a strong tacit dimension. Jesus invited his inner circle of disciples to what could be described as a three-year scrub-sink experience. Yes, they heard him preach and teach great propositional truths, but they also lived daily life with him, observing his sinless life, his miracles, his skills, his wisdom, and his spiritual practices.

Following the resurrection, Jerusalem’s religious aristocracy were in awe of Jesus’s disciples’ brilliance and boldness. “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). How do we account for the astonishing transformation of Peter and John? Clearly, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost emboldened them, but I also believe the disciples’ three-year life-on-life experience with Jesus, where a much more tacit knowledge was transferred and obtained, is a large contributing factor. Don’t minimize the profound transformation that occurred in the life of Jesus’s closest disciples as a result of their personal experience with him.

Through the words of the religious aristocracy, Luke includes the pregnant sentence “and they recognized they had been with Jesus.” Is this mere historical observation to further the Acts narrative, or does it also give us something of pedagogical importance as we reflect on discipleship?

 

Taking Jesus’s Yoke

In our discipleship and church-leadership development, we would be wise to emulate Jesus’s life-on-life apprenticeship model, so rich in tacit knowledge. Jesus invites all who would follow him into his highly relational, highly transformative yoke of apprenticeship: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you, and learn from me, for I am gently and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29). In this great invitation from Jesus, he calls all who would follow him to take his yoke of apprenticeship. Entering his yoke in obedience and submission, we encounter a highly relational apprenticeship where we learn how to live as Jesus might if he were in our place.

“The tacit dimension of discipleship embraces both the precepts and the practices of Jesus.”

The tacit dimension of discipleship embraces both the precepts and the practices of Jesus. In grace, over time, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, apprentices of Jesus increasingly are formed into greater Christlikeness. Jesus put it this way: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).

Emulating Jesus, the early church adopted an apprenticeship model of discipleship that was highly relational, rich in tacit-knowledge transfer, and embedded in the local-church community. Writing to his protégé Timothy, who was serving in a pastoral role in Ephesus, Paul gives this grace-filled instruction: “My child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:1–2). While entrusting sound doctrine to others has a strong propositional element, don’t miss the highly relational environment of a vibrant local church and discipleship. Paul’s description seems a lot like scrub-sink discipleship. Transforming discipleship is both taught and caught.

 

Churches as Teaching Hospitals

What might a more intentional, tacit-rich dimension of discipleship mean for the local church? While our ecclesial context shapes how we answer this question, let me suggest a couple of thoughts. As good as classrooms and discipleship curricula can be, perhaps more emphasis needs to be placed on the importance of life-on-life community lived out in small groups over longer durations. This also could include a greater emphasis on multigenerational mentoring.

More than that, pastors and church leaders would be wise to focus discipleship efforts where congregants spend the majority of time throughout the week: the paid and unpaid workplace. Both pastoral care and pastoral-discipleship efforts in the church where I serve include regular workplace visits. These visits deepen relationships and become rich in the tacit dimension of discipleship and spiritual formation.

What might a more intentional, tacit-rich dimension mean for preparation of church leaders? While I am a strong proponent of the classroom and seminary, I believe we need to be more intentional to create learning environments outside the classroom that offer opportunities for obtaining and transferring tacit knowledge.

One of the most effective ways to create these environments is to establish ongoing pastoral residencies in our local churches. After completing seminary training, inexperienced pastors ideally would have a two-year immersion in a healthy local church where they learn, from more experienced pastors, the spiritual formation, proper self-care, and pastoral skills that will serve them well for a lifetime of ministry. In a sense, the church becomes a teaching hospital, where inexperienced pastors get time at the scrub sink.

 

*Reposted with permission from desiringgod.com

David: The Lord’s Anointed

David: The Lord’s Anointed

What do Michalangelo, William Faulker, and Gregory Peck have in common? All of them have devoted significant time and effort to portray the biblical figure of David. If you think about it, some of our most famous sculptures, movies, and songs (Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” anyone?) have been inspired by David. His triumphs over Goliath and his failures with Bathsheeba are common knowledge, even if one isn’t familiar with the rest of his life. Considering how few people have actually read the Old Testament these days, that is saying something. 

This is no less true within the biblical narrative itself. Outside of Jesus, no human figure is talked about, referenced, or alluded to more than David. The Psalms are riddled with his name—as an author, or example, or symbol. The gospels include him in every genealogy. One of Jesus’ most popular titles was Son of David. Pretty much any time kings or kingdoms are mentioned, you can be sure David’s shadow looms large. 

And it all started in 1 and 2 Samuel. The author of that single scroll (the 1 and 2 were added later) was adamant that, like Abraham and Moses, David’s life represented a significant moment in the history of God’s people; and even though it would take 55 chapters to tell it, his story was critical to a life of faith. 

David was a shepherd, the youngest son of Jesse, whom no one believed would one day be king. He experienced the entire range of human emotion, from resounding triumph over Goliath, to rejection as he fled from Saul, from ascending to the throne in Jerusalem, to fleeing his own son who tried to kill him. He is, on the one hand, a man after God’s own heart, and on the other, a frail and fickle leader who fails his people time and again. 

Every detail of his life, and every chapter of 1 and 2 Samuel which records it, contain lessons, examples, and principles we can learn from. In our series on David, we want to explore as many of them as we can. But the most important thing David does is leave us wanting more, wanting better, wanting someone else. He is as good a king as we can hope for; and yet he isn’t nearly enough. He is like a first pass, a rough draft, that is so close, and yet so far away, from what it could be. 

He is the Lord’s anointed, the messiah, the king, but don’t let the pageantry fool you. David is human, weak, stubborn, and broken. He is a fellow pilgrim on the way to a higher country, an exile searching for a permanent homeland, flesh and blood longing for an other-wordly king. Join us in this series on David’s life as we explore the most indispensable lesson he taught us: we still need a King. 

Five Things I Learned Studying Other Religions

Five Things I Learned Studying Other Religions

“He who knows one [religion], knows none.” – Max Müller 

Last year I had a strange realization…I know way too much about Christianity.

When I say this, I mean that I know way too much about Christianity in comparison to other religions. I have lost count of the books I have read about Christianity, while I can barely think of one written by a non-Christian about another religion. I know the Bible like the back of my hand, but I could barely tell you the basic facts about the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita (I even had to Google how to spell that!).

I grew up in the church, have spent the past eight years of my life studying Christianity in an academically rigorous setting, and now my full-time paid job is to teach others about Christianity. I am blessed to have the opportunity and technology to study the Bible and Christian theology in great depth. As I reflect on this, I am struck by the immense privilege and heavy responsibility it is. If both my personal calling as a disciple of Jesus and my professional calling as a paid pastor compel me to encourage others to choose to follow Jesus instead of other paths, I should at least have a working knowledge of other faiths. So, last fall I set a goal to read eight books about other religions by the end of the year, and I want to share five insights from my reading. 

 

Why learn about other religions?

 

You may wonder why a Christian should learn about other religions. Isn’t it dangerous to listen to “false teaching”? While we certainly should be discerning about what we read and listen to, I think Max Müller’s quote noted at the beginning of this blog is tremendously helpful. Without a working knowledge of other religions, your understanding of Christianity begins to suffer because you don’t know what makes it unique. Learning about other religions only bolstered my faith in Jesus and understanding of him. 

As America becomes more religiously pluralistic, it is imperative that believers know how to have conversations with those of different faiths and be able to thoughtfully and respectfully disagree. Here are five lessons I learned as I studied other faiths. 

 

1. All religions are not the same. 

 

I believed this before my research journey, however,  the popular assertion that all religions are different paths to the same God reflects a profound ignorance of the various religions and what they teach and practice. Stephen Prothero, author of God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, argues that this modern Western view is actually the minority position of the current scholarly field of religious studies. Prothero, a serious scholar teaching at Boston University and by no means a fundamentalist Christian, claims that very few of his academic peers even try to argue that religions are essentially the same. Each religion fundamentally disagrees about the problem facing human existence, presents divergent ways to solve those problems, and differs on what an ideal resolution would look like. For example, in his view, Christianity is unique in that it is essentially a religion of salvation. Human beings are trapped because of sin and are in need of someone (Jesus) to save them from this. 

Prothero thinks the popular pluralistic view is derived from ignorance. The less one knows about various religions, the more likely one is to assume they are all the same. This viewpoint, while starting from a commendable and sincere desire for religious tolerance, ends up not only wrong but also disrespectful. It denies adherents of other religions the dignity of disagreement. If you’ve ever argued with someone and they refuse to acknowledge you are in disagreement, you know what I mean. It is quite demeaning to tell someone, “No, no! You don’t understand. We actually agree,” when you are in the middle of an argument.

Moreover, the origin of this sort of religious relativism is Western imperialism. Religious studies, as a secular discipline distinct from theology, began with liberal European academics seeing the religions around the world as different stages of “evolving” into their own moralized versions of Christianity (God is love and we should be nice to one another). Imagine how a sincerely devout Buddhist would respond if told they were really an anonymous Christian! Despite how much we might recoil at bold claims that a person’s religion is the true one, every person does have some sense that this is true, otherwise they wouldn’t believe what they do. Of course, we should seek tolerance for other faiths and fight for religious freedom, but we should do so by acknowledging diversity and disagreement instead of enforcing sameness. 

 

2. God as Creator is a uniquely Christian belief.

 

As a Christian, I have typically glossed over affirming God as the creator of all things in most Christian creeds. It seemed so obvious to me that I rarely reflected on it. If I ever thought about its importance, it was always in reference to countering the idea there is no God and material things are all that exists. God creating the world just proves God exists and that’s it. 

However, while studying other religions, I was struck by how unique God as creator is to Christianity. The original Jewish idea that a single God outside of creation created  all that exists from nothing, as something purely good, is a remarkable development among the history of religions. The only major religions that share this view are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which also share a common foundation as Abrahamic faiths. Christianity originated as a Jewish sect that believed Jesus is the Messiah, and Islam was deeply influenced by Christianity and Judaism when it began in Arabia in the 7th century AD.

If you look outside these interconnected faith traditions, this idea of God as creator is almost nonexistent. In most polytheistic (multiple gods) religions, each god is only in charge of one thing (the sky, ocean, animals, fertility, etc.). In the Ancient Near East creation myths the biblical authors were aware of, creation is an accidental result of a battle between gods, rather than an intentional act of one God. The ancient Greek creation myth is called “Theogony” which means “the birth of the gods.” Their story of how the world was made begins with how the gods were made. They are not understood as having a divine life apart from the elements of nature they represent, like in the Jewish/Christian tradition. They are thought of as the personal embodiment of what they have dominion over. If you were to tell an ancient Greek that you didn’t believe in Poseidon the god of the seas, they would laugh and point to the Aegean Sea and say “There’s Poseidon.” Even other modern world religions (especially Eastern ones) like Hinduism and Buddhism similarly do not have a creator God, nor make a big deal about whether or not that is true. 

This is why throughout the Bible, people regularly say “the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth” when uniquely referring to their God. It might be a throw away line to us, but was actually a very big distinctive for Jews and later the Christians. God creating the world means so much more than just affirming his existence. 

It means that God is fundamentally unlike us since he is the Creator and we are his creation. God doesn’t owe human beings anything since he created them and so everything of theirs is rightfully his. Humans can’t give anything to God that would determine he owed them something in return. God can’t be controlled or manipulated. Everything we receive from him is an act of grace and love. 

This also means that creation is intentional. It is no accident and God has purposes in creating it. The created world was originally good and should be enjoyed as God’s gift to us. The evil and suffering we experience are deviations from and distortions of what creation was meant to be. Salvation and redemption are not about escaping this world, but rather seeing its goodness restored. 

 

3. Comparing Jesus to Mohamed and the Bible to the Quran can be unhelpful.

 

Despite the similarities between Islam and Christianity as compared to other religions, they diverge in some major ways. Christians and Muslims often misunderstand each other because they compare elements of their religions that are as different as apples and oranges. Martyn Oliver, professor at American University, argues that this can happen if people equate Jesus to Mohamed as religious founders and the Bible to the Quran as holy books when comparing Christianity and Islam. A much better comparison is to see thatJesus and the Quran play a similar role, and the Bible and Mohamed play a similar role in their respective belief systems.

In Islam, the Quran is like an embodiment of God because it is his exact voice. It has always existed for eternity past in the exact Arabic form Muslims have today. Mohamed is just the prophet who bore witness to the Quran that an angel spoke to him, and commanded him to recite it word for word for someone else to write down. This is why a translation of the Quran from Arabic into another language is no longer the Quran. I visited a mosque some years ago, and was surprised that during the ‘sermon’ the Imam (pastor) would read the Quran in Arabic, then translate, and then explain it. What if I brought my Greek New Testament to the pulpit each Sunday and read from it instead of an English translation? This helps to make sense of how Mulsims understand the Quran. When you try to understand the Quran, you don’t ask questions about authorial intent, historical or cultural setting of the original audience, or even how it fits into an overarching Quranic story line. They believe it is a purely divine project that Mohamed memorized word for word and regurgitated, and one should be able to read any part of it on its own, understand, and obey it.

Understanding how the Quran and Mohamed function in Islam as a backdrop to Christianity allows the relationship of Jesus and the Bible to come into a clearer focus.

In Christianity, the true embodiment of the eternal God is a first century Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth, God in human flesh and the image of the invisible God (John 1:14; Colossians 1:15). This audacious claim that Christianity makes is unparalleled in other religions. Other belief systems that have divine embodiments do not have the concept of a single Creator God distinct from creation, and so their incarnations mean less than the once for all incarnation of God in Jesus. In Christianity, the Bible is a witness to Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:25-27), and has authority because Jesus affirmed it (Matthew 5:17-18). The Bible is a divine-human project when God’s Spirit inspires and uses human authors, and to understand Scripture one must pay attention to the human elements to understand it correctly. Scriptural authority and its living and active nature extends even to translations of the Bible, as even the New Testament authors were using a Greek translation of the Old Testament as they wrote and taught. This has much to say about the affirmation of human cultural diversity that the God of the Bible has, since believers will retain their linguistic and ethnic identities in the new creation (Revelation 7:9)!

 

4. The form of Buddhism we often encounter in the West is very Westernized. 

 

Buddhism as a religious system has always confused me, because so many of its basic tenets and presuppositions are so radically different from the Christianity I have known. It appeared incredibly individualistic with its focus on achieving Nirvana (liberation from the cycle of reincarnation) for oneself after purging all desire and selfhood. This seemed to be at odds with what I understood of the deeply communal culture of East Asian countries. 

It was helpful to learn how diverse and varied Buddhism is as a religion, both throughout history and in its contemporary forms. In particular, much of the Buddhism we experience in the West is deeply influenced by Western interpretations of Buddhism. Henry Steel Olcott, the founder of the Theosophical Society, created the “Buddhist Catechism” while living in Sri Lanka in 1881. Olcott was committed to finding a simple, moralistic and universal religion, like many other Western liberal intellectuals in the 19th century were attempting to do by critiquing traditional Christianity. He used many of the same methods in his distillation of Buddhism into his catechism. This literary work was deeply influential in Buddhist revivals that followed in South Asia, and the belief system and its practices that have been adopted by Westerners. While Buddhism remains a predominantly Eastern religion, its current form, especially as it is practiced by Westerners, remains influenced by intellectual developments in 19th century Europe and North America. 

One aspect of traditional Buddhism that Olcott largely omitted because of its perceived “superstition” was the concept of Bodhisattvas and their role in Buddhist practice. A Bodhisattva is someone who is able to reach Nirvana and so cease to exist, but instead chooses to remain in this world so that they can alleviate the suffering of others and help them also reach Nirvana. They function as a sort of demigod in that they have supernatural powers and have devotees who petition them for help through religious rites. This concept was an early development in Buddhism that enabled Buddhist missionaries to incorporate local deities into the Buddhist world view as they spread their message in new communities. This others-centered, communitarian model contrasts with my initial individualistic take on Buddhism. The ideal is not just to achieve Nirvana for yourself, but rather to selflessly help others reach that state as well.

Even with this better understanding, what strikes me about Buddhism as compared to Christianity is its radically different notion of ‘salvation’ which turns out to be annihilation rather than redemption. The Bible teaches that we retain our individuality as we are bodily raised to live in the new creation, though in harmony with oneself, others, and God. 

 

5. The Bible’s presentation of women is radically different from its contemporary mythologies. 

 

One example of this is the Ancient Greek origin myth of “Pandora’s Jar” (often mistranslated as ‘box’) which presents a dramatically different view of gender than the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The myth of Pandora is about Zeus giving man the first woman, Pandora, as a veiled punishment for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to men. Pandora came with a jar (meant to evoke womb-like imagery) that contained all kinds of evil and misery. Since Pandora was so curious, she naively opened the jar and brought suffering and evil into the world. So, in the Ancient Greek worldview, women are conceived of as a necessary evil. Men need women to reproduce, but women bring pain and suffering to men. Yikes!

While there is some overlap between this story and Eve’s role in the Fall, the differences are stark. Eve is created for Adam because it is not good for man to be alone, not as a punishment! She is a necessary ally to him, and both genders are essential for each other and incomplete on their own. Both Adam and Eve are blamed for sin’s entrance into the world, but it is through the woman’s offspring that evil is finally defeated (Genesis 3:15). 

 

God “is not far from each one of us” yet “he commands all people everywhere to repent”

 

As we learn more about other religions, it is important to use Paul’s posture in Acts 17 while speaking to pagan, Greek philosophers as our framework. God, as the creator of all, has not left himself without a witness, and through his common grace and natural revelation of the created world, human beings try to reach out and find God and “he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Because of this, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find truth, beauty, and goodness in other faith traditions, and we should engage them with respect while seeking to understand them better. Moreover, learning about other belief systems can help us become better Christians as we see more clearly what is special about our faith. 

Simultaneously, sin has broken our ability to understand God, and every attempt ultimately ends in idolatry, gods created in our own image (Acts 17:29). God overlooked this ignorance for a time, but since Jesus has inaugurated a new age through his death and resurrection, God “commands all people everywhere to repent” from their idolatry and follow Jesus (Acts 17:30). May we winsomely, graciously, and boldly help others of all backgrounds come to find authentic faith in Jesus!

 

Serving with Jesus’ Mindset

Serving with Jesus’ Mindset

“Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”

‭‭Mark‬ ‭10‬:‭43b‬-‭45‬ ‭The Message

 

In my discipleship to Jesus, I’m learning to be a servant, but I’ve had years of practice in the other direction. For so long I have been afraid to serve others. 

When I consider what’s going to happen to me if I serve others, I wonder if it’s safe. It looks like pain to me, it looks confining, suffocating even. Once I get on the inside, however, it’s always more freeing than I originally thought! Why? I’m not alone there. God is there.  

I understand Jesus-style servanthood in fits and starts now, but I want to practice it as a lifestyle. In order to make that a reality, I know I need to follow Paul’s advice to his Philippian friends and live under a new mindset.

Having called them to a lifestyle of love, Paul then says: 

 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

Philippians 2:5-8 ESV

 

Jesus understood it. He didn’t have to cling to his position as God over others. He didn’t have to try to control everything to make sure it all came out just right. He wasn’t in the position of making sure it all went “his way” from his human point of view. 

So instead of clinging to his equality with God, he simply clung to God himself, and entrusted himself to God by taking the form of a servant. All the way to the cross.  

How did he get the ability to do that? It started with his mind. A mind that presumes upon the mystery at the bottom of the universe; God is good, and thus, God is trustworthy.  Laying it all out on the line with and for God leads to complete safety, no matter the conventional wisdom.  

How did that turn out for Jesus?

 

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:9-11 ESV

 

That’s pretty good. I can’t imagine it would turn out poorly for me either.  

Still, simply attempting to serve isn’t enough… 

When I attempt to serve others without adopting Jesus’ mindset, I just end up disgruntled and testy. Now I see Paul’s brilliance in the following verses to tell his friends to do everything without complaining or arguing. In being disgruntled, I’m still in control. I’m still holding on. I’m still running things. 

But in Jesus’ mindset, to let that go is to turn it loose to God and just serve, with my expectation on him, trusting that he will always provide; to think like Jesus, to venture out in love and service, and leave the rest to God.

Is that safe?  

Yes. 

Why? 

He will be there. 

From the Ground Part 2: Bearing the Gardener’s Fruit

From the Ground Part 2: Bearing the Gardener’s Fruit

Last week we explored the biblical portrayal of God the gardener, who formed humans in his image to rule creation as he does; as a gardener. Jesus enacts this rule by dying on the cross and bringing new life up from the cursed ground, reconciling earth and heaven and calling us who follow him to do likewise.  

 

(De)Formed from the Ground

The rule over the ground that we were made for has been tragically deformed, however. We see examples of this all over Scripture, and it is not hard to see parallel examples repeated in the present.

God forms his people Israel and leads them to dwell in the land of Canaan. What we find is that the quality of the relationship God’s people have with the ground beneath their feet is an essential marker of their faithfulness or unfaithfulness to God. This is portrayed in the prophetic oracles concerning Israel’s tenuous relationship with the land (e.g. Jeremiah 12:7-13, Ezekiel 33:28-29, Amos 9:5-15, Malachi 3:8-12), all of which recall the blessing of Deuteronomy 28:11 (echoing Genesis 1:28 “…God blessed them. And God said…”) and the curse of Deuteronomy 28:18 (echoing Genesis 3:17 “cursed is the ground because of you”). A fruitful ground, rather than one that is wasted away or only yields thorns, is a sign of God’s blessing for his people’s faithfulness. 

The ramifications of our deformed relationship with the ground is unfolding in the ongoing struggle of God’s people to respect and emulate God’s loving rule over his good creation. We see this deformation playing out in current, popular ways of relating to creation. In our postmodern iteration of sinful relationships with God’s creatures, both desecration on one side and deification on the other are false. Both are deceptions. 

To turn creation into a god (to deify it) is to lay a weight on it which it cannot bear. By our actions, habits, policies, or even our indifference, we reveal whether we consider the ground good or not, while in the Bible God says very clearly that it is. Both deification and desecration are ways of robbing creation, and the very ground itself, of its God-given dignity.

The key is to recognize our own deformation from the ground, confess it, and seek to be reformed into Christ’s creation-gardening image. Ask yourself: In your daily activities, habits, political persuasions, or even your inaction, how might you be inclined toward either idolizing aspects of creation or destroying aspects of creation? Only by being re-formed into Christ’s image can we overcome our present deformed relationship with the ground.

 

(Re)Formed In the Image of the Gardener King

Surveying John’s Gospel, we see the full representation of God’s gardening nature in the person of Jesus Christ. The Word that upholds the universe steps into the very creation he is tending, taking on flesh to become the Gardener King. It reveals the reality that caring for creation is a fundamental aspect of humanity, written into the very fabric of our call to imitate our creator. 

The Bible’s call to care for creation as Christ does is even more expansive, as God’s gardening of creation is more than tending soil, so our image-bearing of the Gardener King includes more than having a backyard garden. Tending creation is not an optional subplot of God’s mission to bear fruit for his glory; rather, it is foundational, formative, and necessary. 

 

Bearing the Gardener’s Fruit

The fruit Jesus wants us to bear is the same fruitfulness God originally called humanity to in Genesis 1:28. We are to cultivate all of creation as God does, from the literal ground up. But in our present cursed-yet-reconciled relationship with the ground, we can only “bear fruit in keeping with repentance”. We must turn away, repent, from destructive or idolatrous practices and turn toward a more Christlike care of creation.

Each of us can discover the boundaries of our responsibilities to creation in the places we are (de)formed by. Then, being (re)formed into the Gardener’s image, we can play a crucial role to positively form our places by dying to ourselves to produce life-giving fruit for the good of our fellow God-creations. To use a term popularized by Wes Jackson, farmer, activist, and founder of The Land Institute in Salina, KS, we can do this by consulting the genius of our place.

 

The Genius of the Place

In Jackson’s book Consulting the Genius of the Place, he calls upon his readers to attend closely to the place in which they live in order to gain wisdom for how to live within its (God-given) ecological limits. 

King Solomon’s treasury of wisdom was, at least partly, gained through just this sort of attentive study of ecological embeddedness. Yet our Gardener King certainly surpasses Solomon in wisdom. Jesus is the very fount of wisdom and the firstborn over all creation. His masterful parables put this wisdom on full display, and we even have direct commands from our Gardener King to study his creation in order to glean his wisdom: “Look at the birds of the air…Consider the lilies of the field….”

If the ecological beauty depicted in Revelation 21-22 is any indication, these are commands we will have the pleasure of obeying for all eternity when our Gardener King consummates the renewal of all things which he has already inaugurated. 

 

Consider the Ground

I believe it would be wise to start practicing now. Consider the literal ground of the place you live. Obviously, this would be your home and the land it stands on, but also keep in mind your neighborhood streets, parks, schools, and other public places. Take inventory. 

What do you have that owes its existence to the ground? Your food, of course, but also the wood of your furniture, metals mined from the earth, the energy that powers your lights, appliances; even the materials used to manufacture plastics and other synthetic materials came from somewhere

Then expand your attention beyond your four walls. Christ Community’s mission is to influence our community and world for Jesus Christ. We cannot do this until we know and love our communities and world by paying attention to the actual places in which we, and our neighbors, live and move and have our being. This includes the health and integrity of the ground itself and all it supports. 

Thank God for the ground beneath your feet, then pay attention to ways he may be leading you to work with him as he forms you to bear fruit as a more faithful follower of the Gardener King.

From the Ground Part 1: God the Gardener

From the Ground Part 1: God the Gardener

ou work in your garden this spring prepping the soil, planting seeds or starts, and weeding, you will participate in one of the most foundational ways Christians can be “renewed in knowledge after the image of [our] creator” (Colossians 3:10). This is because one of the primary ways God reveals himself as our creator is as a gardener. He cultivates the earth and thereby grows new life from the ground.

 

God the Gardener

Genesis 1 portrays the intimate, intentional activity of God in creation, modeling what “dominion” looks like for the image-bearers who would come on the sixth day. Godly rulership is exercised for the very goodness of a diverse, abundantly flourishing creation. God’s rule sustains all creatures, of all their various “kinds,” knitting them together into whole, healthy ecosystems that support life. God put the ground in place, nestling it in the midst of the waters above and below, where it would have rainfall and sunshine, to be the place where human and non-human creatures flourish together. 

Beyond showing God gardening creation toward flourishing, Genesis 2:8 tells us directly: “The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (emphasis mine). The King of Creation is a gardener, and he created humans in his image to garden creation like their creator, alongside their creator, who is not an absentee landlord but is actively involved, “walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”

The key here is that the act of gardening is a crucial metaphor for understanding how God intends “dominion” to be carried out. His reign is not far off in some distant throne room, aloof to the goings-on of the world below and issuing orders from afar; rather, his holiness has no qualms being intimately, even messily, invested in tending the soil to produce life. 

“But isn’t this all just a metaphor? God isn’t really a gardener, he’s only like a gardener.” To this I would say, “Yes, and….” Yes, the image of God gardening is just that, an image. He does more than planting and harvesting as he rules the universe. 

And…my challenge is for us to see that God as a gardener is a potent image grounded in two biblical realities: 1) the human experience of gardening from which the image is drawn is itself an image-bearing reenactment of God’s original creation, which in the Bible is explicitly referred to in horticultural terms (Genesis 2:8), and 2) the original calling of humanity to bear God’s image by cultivating the ground of the garden in which God placed them (Genesis 2:15) is not a metaphor—all technological innovation which humanity has heretofore cultivated is grounded, has its very physical, biological, literal foundation in the agricultural and ecological flourishing of the places upon which society is built.

 

Cursed Is the Ground Because of You

Not long after humans come into the picture, however, the very ground itself is cursed by God because of human sin. After Adam and Eve sin against God, taking upon themselves the definition of good and evil and listening to the serpent’s lies, God lets his human creatures know of the consequences that come from such prideful self-realization:

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;”

Genesis 3:17

The very relationships we were made for are now cursed. Notice, critically, that the curse God pronounces here, though brought about by our sin, is spoken over the ground. The curse upon creation lands precisely in the place where our livelihood and purpose originates: the land itself. We have become aliens upon the very ground from which and for which we were created.

 

Cursed Is He Who Hung On A Tree

Where we failed in our God-imaging dominion and brought a curse upon the ground from which we live, Jesus succeeds. Descending into the ground on Good Friday, Jesus bore the curse on the cross, redeeming us by hanging on a tree.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us–for it is written,
‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’             

       Galatians 3:13 

Then he brought the blessing of new life back by rising from the ground on Easter Sunday. The place beneath our feet, the very ground itself, was the place of both curse and redemption.  Adam, Cain, and all humanity after them had been “cursed from the ground,” with Abel’s blood crying out as witness against our rebellion, but Jesus brought redemption up from the ground “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross”. He overcame our sinful domination by submitting himself to the very death and destruction our sin has wrought. 

 

Bearing Fruit from the Tree of Life

We were created to cultivate and bear fruit, literally and figuratively. That creational purpose was frustrated when the ground was cursed, bringing widespread death, and only by the death of Eve’s promised seed will redemption come, reconciling us to the ground and restoring humanity’s call to bear fruit by our loving rule of creation. 

When God enters creation as the Gardener King, taking the curse upon himself by dying on a tree, being buried like a seed from the tree of life into the ground, and rising from the same three days later, he bears the fruit of sacrificial followers who are connected to him like branches on a vine. Later, when the Spirit reminds these followers that their risen and reigning Gardener King told them that they glorify the Father when they “bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples”, they, and every follower of Jesus after them, should understand it as, yes, a metaphor about loving God and neighbor, but also, in its broadest biblical sense, as a call to emulate God’s loving rule of creation. 

 

Reconciled to the Ground

How else can we prove that we follow the One of whom it is said “all things were made through him” but by living into Jesus’ reconciliation of all things, whether on earth or in heaven? Let us, then, actively embody the reality that, in Christ, we can be reconciled to everything Jesus created in the beginning and redeemed on the cross, including the ground beneath our feet which sustains our lives and that of our neighbors. 

We can do this by following Jesus, our Gardener King, to the cross. We are called to embody the new creation which Jesus has inaugurated even now, as ministers of the whole-creation reconciliation which his blood has bought. By doing so, we participate in God’s cruciform, risen-from-the-ground mission to draw all peoples to himself. 

 

Practice Resurrection

We can do this in the actual places we live, with the actual ground beneath our feet. Find (and get to know) a local sustainable grower. Start a backyard garden plot this spring. Yes, recycle, reduce waste, and reuse what you can. Practice resurrection through composting. 

May these ideas whet your appetite for participating with God in his gardening work in the world.