Easter 2020

They were sad and uncertain.
Huddled in their houses.
Not quite sure exactly what was to come next.
Life no longer worked like they expected it to work.
“Lost” didn't begin to describe how they felt.
And if trauma had been invented, they all would have been diagnosable.
The first Easter.

We are sad and uncertain.
Huddled in our houses.
Not quite sure exactly what is to come next.
Life no longer works like we expect it to work.
“Lost” doesn't begin to describe how we feel.
And trauma is a thing now, and we all are probably diagnosable.
This Easter.

And Jesus meets them where they're at.
He reveals himself to the confused and the doubters and the failures.
He walks through the locked doors.
He invites them to contemplate the wounded God.
He makes them breakfast.
He calls them to mission.
That is God's work among his people on Easter.

The Dis-Embodiment of Community

One of the effects of individualism has been that introversion has just about become a lauded personality type. All too often, introverts get billed as sensitive, deep, and a positive sort of quirky, but extroverts are shallow and judgy, with all the nuance of a knuckle-dragging early hominid. It's unfair – and I write this as someone who is deeply introverted.

COVID has brought us to a place where introverts everywhere – myself included! – are joking things like, “I've been training for this my whole life.” And yet I also see the struggle of others around me, others whose God-given wiring is very different from mine. I see my extroverted friends who have very instantly felt isolated. I saw the crushing saddness that my Dad worked through when a long-awaited trip was kiboshed at the last minute. While it hasn't yet bothered me at all, I have noticed a distinct emptiness to my calendar. And I do think before this is over that I will wish that I could sit with a friend in a different set of four walls and drink coffee.

The rise of technology, social media, and individualism has also brought about another reality: the concept of participating in community by online means. More and more, education and business and church is done remotely, and whether for reasons of comfort or convenience or finances, this seems to be the wave of the future. It's a different world from the world of the Spanish Flu, when churches were simply closed for months on end and there was nothing to be done. Now we have the means by which to meet “together,” from our own homes.

It's a wonderful gift for a time such as this. And I hate it.

Every experience I've had with online community and every article I've read about its effectiveness says that it's just not the same. It can never be the same. Even where people login with full sound and webcams to a live meeting, it's just not the same. No one seems quite sure why. And I'm no psychologist or sociologist, but my theory is that it has to do with being human. The quotation from Scottish minister George MacDonald, “Never tell a child, 'you have a soul.' Teach him, 'you are a soul; you have a body.'” is often quoted as Christian truth, but is deeply questionable theology. For our bodies are an original part of God's perfect design. He could have created bodyless souls, to be spirit as he himself is spirit. But he didn't. He made humans of the humus. He made earthlings of the earth. He made Adam from the adamah. Our bodies matter. What happens to our bodies matters. The physical actions we take matter. Our physical location in time and space matters.

Something changes when we touch a person, make real eye contact with a person, sit beside a person, laugh at a joke made with a real voice, and feel the real warmth of another's body. I don't know what it is, but I know it matters, and I believe it has on it the “fingerprints” of God. Maybe COVID will remind us of that, will teach us that. Maybe as we use this good gift of online connection we will see its profound limitations to provide genuine embodied community. Maybe once we’ve drunk deeply at the well of online connection because we’ve had no choice, we will see its inability to provide for us the real refreshment of true, in-person fellowship.

No Plague Shall Come Near Your Tent

Satan tempted Jesus, and Jesus answered with scripture.

Again Satan tempted Jesus, and Jesus answered with scripture.

And so a third time, Satan tempted Jesus, this time using scripture. He tells Jesus to leap off the top of the temple, and quotes Psalm 91:10-11: “He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you . . . in their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” It seems like Satan knows a high-quality, twistable scripture when he hears one. Satan attempts to use Jesus' own book against him. He calls him to take a beautiful song of reassurance and turn it into a promise to be claimed. But this isn't a laundry list of things that God promises to do for his people; this is a poem where the psalmist expresses a deep sense of trust in the God that he loves because that God loves him. And yet both the psalmist and Jesus know that there is a deeply complex fallen world outside of the doors of the sanctuary in which these words were penned. There is a world where no one, including the people of God, is spared pestilence or plague or destruction or arrows or stones or serpents.

We have confidence that God can do great things. We have confidence that God does do great things. But ought not use that confidence in God's nature to “claim” some sort of shallow “not today, Satan!” (where is *that* even in the Bible???) “promise” that we won't get sick because Psalm 91:10 (no plague shall come near your tent). And even if this was a list of promises for the people of God – Deuteronomy 28, for example – it's still an old covenant promise. And we have to be very VERY (did I say VERY?) careful about drag-and-dropping old covenant promises onto the new covenant people of God.

So maybe cool it a bit with the Psalm 91 quotations, and the “Christ Over Viruses and Infectious Diseases” memes. God has not called us to declare victory over COVID-19. He has called us to be faithful, in life and in death. He has called us to kindness and compassion for the vulnerable and disenfranchised. He has called us to self-sacrifice. He has called us to a profound trust that the right man is on the throne of the universe.

Be calm. Be wise. Take steps to protect the vulnerable around you. And trust that you have a God who loves you in the midst of this complex world of snakes and arrows and COVID-19.

I Came to See Your House

A little while ago, a friend thanked me for not having made her feel weird for having come over for coffee in a house that perhaps was not on the shortlist for “Better Homes and Gardens.” And I was glad she thanked me by text, because as I was writing my text back, I stopped, and thought about the words that were on the screen in front of me, and I realised that I didn't like them.

I nearly said what I've heard many people say, what I myself have said before, “I came to see you, not your house.” And I've never taken that phrase badly, and I never will. I understand what people mean by it. But I'll never use it again.

Because I did go to see her house. I went to see her, and her house, and the whole of her existence, in a week that was perhaps not the easiest week she'd ever had. I went to see her unfiltered, unhashtagged, uncropped, unvarnished life.

As Christians, we talk about wanting to be real people, to share our real struggles, to walk with one another in openness and honesty and trust and accountability. Usually, we mean that in the sense of the “spiritual” parts of our lives – our walk with God, our sins, our striving for spiritual growth. And while it should mean that, it should mean more than that. One of my cousins has Mark 3:14 as just about her favourite verse, “[Jesus] appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach.” (emphasis mine). Preceding mission came “being with,” and of course we know that that included teaching, but it was so much more: a daily “with” that brought them into alignment with Jesus' values and priorities and manner of life. They didn't just know what their teacher thought about things, but also how he handled surly shopkeepers, oppressive taxes, and the common cold. And so we, too, in the church, are called to be with each other – not just the edited Sunday morning version of ourselves, but in all the realities of our saddness and joy and confusion and overwhelm, the times when we're handling life well, and the times when we're just pleased that our families got fed that day.

I went to see my friend, and her house, and her life, and just be with her. And I am thankful that she is willing to see me and my life and my inadequacies, and just be with me, as we muddle forward together in relationship, as family, towards Christlikeness.

Viva Voce

Viva voce. It means “with living voice,” and is the standard term in the UK to describe what we call a doctoral defence in North America. The sense of it is that, having considered an extensive piece of your writing, your examiners can now supplement and refine their understanding of that work through the author's “living voice.”

A viva is a scary thing for a student. On a technicality, you can hear any outcome from your examiners, ranging from, “well done, good and faithful scholar” to “you're an idiot; go home.” Now, everyone is well aware that “you're an idiot; go home” is a deeply unlikely outcome, but it doesn't change the fact that years of work all come to a point and are judged in this (comparatively) brief moment.

On the day of my viva, I hung out for the afternoon in a study carrel in the library at Bristol Baptist College, where my advisor teaches, except between 3:00-4:00, as I was told that I was welcome to participate in their chapel and communion service. And something told me that perhaps there was no better preparation for the coming events of that evening than to worship my God, for this reason: worship re-orients us to the “living voice” that really matters. I'm not saying that it was wrong of me (or at least unexpected) to obsess over my viva. The only way to even attempt to prepare for a viva is to try to anticipate the possible questions and comments that you might field, and the responses thereto. Such is the lot of every student on the eve of their viva. But to worship with that community was such a crucial activity, to join with the people of God and remember that there is only one living voice whose words hold ultimate sway over my life: Jesus' voice, not mine. There is only one whose voice sustains me in trouble: Jesus' voice, not mine. And whatever sweat and anguish I felt as my examination grew near paled in comparison to the growing anguish of the man who on the night he was betrayed took bread and said, “this is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” That is the living voice that matters, that gives meaning to my life, that regardless of any outcome or situation tells me that he orders the universe and directs my steps, and not I.

As many people seem to have expected, the outcome of my viva was quite wonderful. It was an encouraging and affirming experience. Really, the entirety of that day was filled with beautiful experiences that I shall carry with me, but none of them more striking than the point and counterpoint of Christ's living voice, and my own viva. And perhaps going forward, it shall serve as a reminder to walk in humility: that as I seek a life of research and study and communication, a life of words, that my words must only ever point to, and are only a pale shadow of, the true Living Voice.

Singing = Worship (?)

Sometimes it seems to me that Christians are all about singing. Yes, in the Church of Christ we accept that there are “five acts of worship.” And yet after a song service we'll talk about how good it was to get together and “worship,” but somehow we don't rejoice in how we've had a chance to worship at a small group bible study. I love music. There is something about music across a variety of genres that I find comforting and fulfilling. And I am hardly trying to suggest that there is no place for singing in the worship of God's people. But frankly, I am persuaded that we have an unhealthy preoccupation with music. I have heard people complain that “we don't sing enough,” and they'll actually count how many songs were sung in the “good old days,” and how few are sung now. But where in the Bible do we see that as the emphasis? If you hold a monthly singing, how many people do you get? Would those numbers be the same if it were a monthly scripture hearing night, or a monthly prayer night? These are practices that scripture would indicate are much more central to the worship of God's people than singing.

Daniel Block, commenting on the church in large part equating “music” and “worship” says: “[This raises] all sorts of questions about the significance of other aspects of 'Sunday service': prayer, preaching . . . But also about religious rituals in the Bible and the scripture's relatively minor emphasis on music in worship. Not only is music rarely associated with worship in the New Testament, but the Pentateuch is altogether silent on music associated with tabernacle worship. All of this highlights our skewed preoccupation with music in the current conflicts over worship.”

I am not aware of any instance in scripture or church history where singing sparked revival, but rather the key always seems to be prayer, confession, and a deep concern with and obedience to God's word. So I think that we have some questions to ask ourselves. What is it we actually want to do? Are we just looking to feel good? Or is our aim the edification of God's people, and a fresh passion for the fame of God's name to be known in the world? And if that is our aim, is what we are currently doing going to get us there? I think it is a real tragedy that somewhere along the way we let the musicians define for us what worship is, rather than the word of God.

If We Preached Deuteronomy

It doesn't usually take people too long to find out how much I love Deuteronomy. If I spend my life helping people to see the beauty and benefit of God's law, it will be a life well spent. One of the things that I keep trying to say is that there are many laws in Deuteronomy that are immediately applicable to real issues in our day. While some passages are more difficult and require a lot of work to extract the principle and application, many are quite obvious, quite challenging, and quite prone to step on our toes.

I spent about half an hour tonight scrolling through the Deuteronomic statutes (that's scholar-speak for the legal code of Deuteronomy 12-25). And I came up with fourteen very straightforward issues to which the laws of Deuteronomy speak. I'm sure I missed some. I wasn't trying to be really thorough:

• Generous giving (Deut 14)
• Care for the poor (Deut 15)
• Including the disenfranchised in your family (Deut 16)
• Giving God only the best (Deut 17:1)
• Sufficiently supporting those in ministry (Deut 18:1-8)
• Creation care and sustainability (Deut 20:19-20; 22:6-7)
• Caring for neighbours (Deut 22:1-4)
• Adultery (Deut 22:22-24)
• Giving a rape victim the benefit of the doubt (Deut 22:25-27)
• Caring for refugees (Deut 23:15-16)
• Human trafficking (Deut 24:7)
• Ensuring justice for the disenfranchised (Deut 24:17-18)
• Proportionate justice (Deut 25:1-3)
• Honest business transactions (Deut 25:13-16)

I hope this will demonstrate some of the very immediately practical aspects of a book as badly neglected as Deuteronomy. I hope that Deuteronomy has been neglected only because it has a bad rap. I hope that it's just that it's been seen for too long as scary and unapproachable. I earnestly hope that it is not because of the unpopular sentiments, that it's not because of the deep and all-encompassing demands that scripture places on our lives. We are a people of grace, without doubt. The law is an unspeakably gracious gift from a loving God to his oft wayward people, who are called to be as gracious as he has been to us. But with great grace comes great responsibility, to live according to the ethics not of our world, or our denomination, or our political party, but according to the ethics of our good and great King Yahweh.

And if we preached Deuteronomy, we might just hear about it.