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Onward, John 14 and What It Means to See God

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WARNING: If you have not yet seen Onward SPOILERS AHEAD!

In John 14:1-14, the Gospel passage from this past Sunday, we are given a glimpse into Jesus’ last conversation with his small company of disciples. He tells them, “If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

One of the disciples, Philip, doesn’t quite get what Jesus is trying to say. He isn’t sure who this father is that Jesus has been talking about. So he asks, “Lord, can you explain to us who the father is and that will be enough for us.”

It’s hard to know whether Jesus is hurt by this question or whether he is exasperated by Philip’s cluelessness. Maybe it’s a little of both. In any event, Jesus answers, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?”

What Jesus asks Philip reminded me of a question that Carissa asked me a few weeks ago after we had finished watching the Pixar movie Onward. The movie tells the story of a son who desperately wants to see his father. The son in question is a teenage elf named Ian Lightfoot (voiced by Tom Holland of Spiderman fame), who never had a chance to meet his father because he died of a terrible illness just before he was born.

We are introduced to Ian on his sixteenth birthday. We quickly learn that he is struggling as an awkward teen, trying to figure out who he is without the loving guidance of his father. At school he is a bit of a loner, unsure of himself and timid. During a chance encounter with one of his dad’s old college classmates, he learns that his dad was charismatic, gregarious and most of all bold. Ian wants to be all those things, but he feels lost without someone there to help him find his way.

Later on that day, Ian’s mom gives him a special gift. It is a gift that his dad, before he died, had prepared for Ian to open when he turned 16. It consisted of a staff, a gem and a spell. Together these promise to bring back Mr. Lightfoot for one whole day. So Ian, with some encouragement, nervously casts the spell and…it works! Well, sort of. It literally only works half way. Before the upper half of his father’s body is conjured the gem explodes, breaking the power of the spell so that all that is brought back are the legs. Everything from the waist up is missing, waiting to be formed.

And so Ian and his older brother Barley (voiced by Chris Pratt, Holland’s Marvel buddy) begin a grand and glorious quest to find another gem that will allow them to complete the magic and bring back the other half of their father. As they set out with great expectation, Ian writes a list of things he wants to do with his dad:

  • Play catch
  • Take a walk
  • Heart to heart
  • Laugh together
  • Driving lesson
  • Share my life with him

The whole story points towards the moment when Ian is able to complete the spell and finally meet his dad. At the same time, there is a ticking clock. The spell is only good for 24 hours. Even if they have the gem in hand, once the allotted time passes, Ian and Barley won’t be able to bring their dad back.

Will the brother be able to finish the quest in time to see their father?

Here comes the spoiler: Time runs out and Ian doesn’t get to see his dad. So far as it goes, the brothers do finally secure the gem, but there is only a brief window in which the father will be resurrected and Ian decides that Barley should be the one to talk to him (you’ll have to watch the movie to find out why).

You expect the whole film that Ian will eventually get to see his dad. But no, that’s not how it ends. And this would have been a monumental let down had it not been for the epiphany Ian has, which happens at the lowest point of the film — when all seemed to be lost. The time for the spell to work had almost completely run out. They couldn’t find the gem and had no where else to look. Ian had just harshly blamed Barley for screwing it all up, at which point he ends up going off by himself to sit with his dad on a ledge overlooking the ocean. He had given up all hope and all he could think of doing was to spend whatever time he had left with his father, even if it was with just his legs.

He opens up his notebook and looks at his list of things he wished he could do with his dad. Turns out he won’t be able to do any of them. Won’t be able to play catch with dad. Won’t be able to take a walk with dad. Won’t be able to have a heart to heart with dad. But as he continues down the list, something begins to dawn on him. We begin to see flashbacks of Ian with Barley. We are taken back to a hilarious moment in the film when Barley had been shrunk down to a 6-inch version of himself by a spell gone awry. And we see Barley giving Ian a crash course on how to drive on the freeway as they are escaping a hive of overly-belligerent fairies.

Driving lesson. Check.

Slowly Ian begins to realize something. As he reviews his list and looks back at who his brother has been for him, not just that day but throughout his whole life, he realizes: Barley has always been for him the father he never had. It is a powerful scene. What began as a story about one son wishing desperately to see his father turns out to really be a story about a son who has always known the father because of another son who has made the father known to him.

What Carissa asked me when the credits rolled was, “Wait, so Ian never gets to see his dad?”

Well, yes and no.

Ian doesn’t get to see his father in the way we expect, but of course, he does see his father in another way, a way we didn’t expect — that is, through his older brother, Barley. Barley acts as a kind of sacrament in the movie. A sacrament can be understood as a visible sign of an invisible grace. The invisible grace, in this case, is the father. The visible sign is Barley. Barley makes visible the father. In the Christian faith, all sacraments echo the Incarnation, in which the invisible Father is made known through the visible Son, the person of Christ. And so Barley becomes a kind of Christ figure. Not perfectly but in kind. A son who makes known his father, pointing us toward the true Son who makes known to us the truth of the Father.

This is precisely why Jesus asks Philip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?”

Onward thus paints for us an illuminating picture of what it means for us to “see” God. It is not about a literal seeing of God in the physical, but neither is it a vague, sentimental seeing that is entirely abstract. It is a figurative seeing of God in the tangible experiences we have with those who embody the character of God through the work of the Spirit within them. In the trinitarian language we find in John’s Gospel, Jesus, the Son, makes known the Father through his earthly ministry. But when his earthly ministry comes to an end, he promises the Spirit who will live in and among those who believe in him. Through this Spirit the life of those who have put their faith in the Son are enabled to become “icons” of the Father. Like Barley they make known the Father. And we like Ian, if we have eyes to see, can come to the realization that we too have come to known the Father in a very real way.

As Christians, there are times when we play the part of Barley making known God in and through our lives (perhaps often unbeknownst to us). At other times we are like Ian, realizing that we have come to know God through the faithful witness of others (those we might call the communion of saints). The scene of Ian sitting on a ledge overlooking the ocean is a helpful reminder to us of the way this knowledge often comes to us. It provides a way of understanding what it means to say that we know God. That faith, belief, trust in God requires these kinds of “small” epiphanies — quiet moments of realization where the various experiences of our lives come together in such a way that we see something we had previously missed.

This is what I think Jesus means when he tells Philip, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”

We often think of evidence in a forensic sense. Facts that can be verified through scientific methods of investigation. But the evidence I think Jesus alludes to is more like the “evidence” that enables Ian to see the truth about his brother. It is not evidence that can be placed under a microscope and probed to establish some kind of objective truth. It is not that kind of truth. But this doesn’t mean it is completely subjective. It is a truth that makes sense in a very robust way — in a way that shows truth to be personal, by revealing the truth about a person. This after all, is the truth that Jesus says he is when he says that he is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the truth about God, the Son who makes known the true character of the Father.

To know this truth doesn’t require some extraordinary experience. It happens in very much the same way it happens for Ian — sitting there in that ordinary moment overlooking the sea with his longings and disappointments, the realization simply comes to him. And so it is with the life of faith. All that is needed is some space to reflect and there what finds us is that which we have somehow too easily overlooked. God has been there all along, if we only had eyes to see.

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This My Soul: Sin and Grace

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What first struck me about this song was the clever lyrical turn that happens at the end. Singer-songwriter David Radford takes the usual verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure and plays with it so that when the chorus comes around the third and final time it means something entirely different than what it did the first two times. The words are exactly the same, but the verses provide the context that flips the meaning.

I remember listening the first time and saying to myself, “Ah, Mr. Radford, I like what you did there!”

As we said in the last post, the song revolves around the theological theme of the first and last Adam. The first two verses explore our birth into all that resulted from that fateful day in Eden when Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as told to us in Genesis 3:

Verse 1:

A voice came and spoke to the silence / The words took on beauty and form / The form took its shape as a garden was born

Then man from the dust came reflecting / All goodness and beauty and life / But he lowered his gaze as he listened to the face of low desires 

Chorus:

This my soul you were born / You were born into / What this man has done / It all extends to you / Let the words shake on down along your spine / And ring out true that you might find new life 

Verse 2:

The voice came and swords blocked the garden / None could return with their lives / A curse there was placed upon every man to face for all of time

No wisdom of man or rebellion / Could deliver new life out of death / But the voice with the curse spoke a promise that the word would take on flesh 

[Chorus]

The theological concept that names what is described here is referred to as the doctrine of “original sin.” Original sin names both Adam’s transgression and the extension of that transgression upon all who are born into the human race. It describes the primordial act of sin as well as the fallen condition that continues to plague every human ever since. 

Even if some of us may have a hard time believing that the literal events described in Genesis 3 actually transpired, it is hard to argue against the larger truth presented to us in the doctrine of original sin. As G.K. Chesterton once quipped, it is perhaps the only doctrine that can be empirically verified. In our more sober moments, I think we know all too well the flawed nature of our humanity. There is something deficient in us.

Of course this is not the end of the story. Neither is it the beginning. We may call it original, but Sin is not our place of origin. Scripture does not begin with Genesis 3, but with Genesis 1. And there we find that we were not born in Sin, but in the image and likeness of God. Sin is neither the first word nor the last. Both belong to God. The human condition as we find it in Scripture, is our exhausting (and exhaustive) inability to be who we were created in and what we were created for. We may be born into sin, but we were created in the image of God.

All this is to say, Sin is not part of God’s creative act “in the beginning.” It is utterly alien, a destructive intruder inimical to the life God wants to share with us and the good world that God spoke into existence. The doctrine of original sin does not give us an explanation for why there is Sin, only that there is Sin. It holds up a mirror to keep us awake to the lowercase sins we commit that perpetuate and accentuate the power of uppercase Sin.

This emergence of uppercase Sin, as far as we can tell in the witness of Scripture, appears as mysteriously as does the crafty serpent in Genesis 3. It is an inexplicable disruption into the shalom that characterized life in Eden — a sudden outbreak of opposition to all the “goodness and beauty and life” God intends for God’s creation. In a way, the Christian belief is that Sin is unintelligible, both in its existence and its origin. And what we find in Christ is that its end comes about as inexplicably as it began. 

Here is where Grace comes in.

Just as Sin is this incomprehensible disruption, so too is Grace. Grace is the unanticipated eruption of God’s saving act into a world helplessly held captive to Sin. Grace everywhere in Scripture is synonymous with Gift. This language of gift reminds us that there is a Giver. Grace is the gift of God that comes to us from beyond us, outside of us. As Paul puts it in Ephesians, “It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God,” (Eph. 2:8). It is not in the power of humankind to save itself from Sin. Indeed, it is often our attempts to “fix” things that often lead to unforeseen evils that introduce even more sin and death into the world (as witnessed to by every Sci-Fi movie worth watching).

What we need is something that could not be anticipated or expected.

This is what we believe about the Gift that Jesus is to us. Sometimes theologians will add the words “sheer” or “utter” to highlight the unique quality of this Gift. What this kind of language is trying to get at is the astonishing way in which God has dealt with Sin. It is a gift that is sudden, abrupt — a gift that could not be predicted or accounted for beforehand. Jesus is the unforeseen eruption of God’s action to save and deliver us.

It is sheer and utter gift.

Whereas the disruption of Sin brought death, the eruption of Grace does so much more. And this is precisely what we hear Paul saying in Romans 5:15-17:

15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Listen to all the echoes of gift here.

This is what we hear described in the final movement of the song:

Verse 3:

Then the perfect son of man / Took the place the voice had planned since the garden and before / He took the swords and cursed the grave / There’s nothing more to separate us from the promise / The words of a living hope

Chorus:

This my soul you were born / You were born into / What this man has done / It all extends to you / Let the words shake on down along your spine / And ring out true that you might find new life 

I think it worthwhile to point out the dynamic at work here. The experience of Grace entails the realization that there is something wrong with each and every one of us. This is what the doctrine of original sin is all about. We have a disease to which none of us are immune. This realization magnifies the Gift in many ways. To understand the depths of Sin is to recognize the immensity of Grace — and not only that, Paul wants us to see how much more is Grace!

This dynamic is baked into the very fabric of the lyrics. At the end of the song, we hear the same words that spoke of original sin, now speak the word of Grace. We feel in our spine that Adam’s failure extends in some real way to us. But now, with the sudden emergence of Grace, we find that what Jesus has done now extends to us in a more determinative way.

What the song helps me to hear is the interconnectedness of both Judgment and Grace — that these are two sides of the same coin; a coin we might call the Love of God. In the context of Scripture, Judgment creates the context for Grace…it makes Grace, so to speak, intelligible. Grace, on the other hand, sets the telos or purpose for Judgment, such that, Judgment is not made in order to condemn, but to restore. As we live in the time between promise and fulfillment, both of these must be heard when we speak of God’s Love. The same is true for either side of the coin as well. When we say Grace, we hear the echo of Judgment. Similarly, Judgement must be heard with an ear towards Grace.

But when it is all said and done, we know on what side the coin will fall. That is, Grace will get the last word. What we hear in the end is that all is sheer and utter Gift.

This my soul you were born into.

Amen.

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This My Soul: A Musical Devotional

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I’m not sure how I came across this song, but I’ve been listening to it a lot lately. I share it here as a kind of devotional set to music. The lyrics carry within them a lot of biblical imagery, which has led me to reflect and meditate on a whole bunch of different things. The plan is to share some of those things in the upcoming weeks. But for now, take a listen:

The song is a sustained reflection on Romans 5:12-19:

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Flowing out from this passage, the lyrics echo a plethora of other biblical themes. Here are some other passages I hear the song roping into its orbit:

  • Genesis 1-3
  • John 1:1-3
  • Romans 5:12-19
  • 1 Corinthians 2:6-10
  • 1 Corinthians 15:45-57
  • Galatians 3:10-14
  • Ephesians 1:3-14
  • 1 Peter 1:3-9
  • Revelation 22:1-5

As I said this song can be used as a musical devotional of sorts — something that can help us to engage with and reflect on Scripture. I’ll share some of my own reflections in subsequent posts.

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Baptism, Resurrection Power and the Power of Visual Imagery

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In our last post we looked at the communal meaning behind the Christian belief in the Resurrection of the Body. In this post, I want to look at how our individualistic tendencies can often skew our understanding about the basic building blocks of what the Christian faith is about. In my Easter Sunday message prep I came across the song “Resurrection Power” by popular Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) artist Chris Tomlin. I’d like to use this song as an example of this tendency.

As far as CCM songs go, this song is pretty much par for the course. The lyrics are loosely based on Scripture, in this case Ephesians 1:19-20, where Paul prays that the Ephesians will know God’s “incomparably great power,” which is the same power that “raised Christ from the dead.” Hence, resurrection power. As with most Tomlin songs, the tune is simple, uplifting, and infectious. What is problematic is not so much the song itself, but the visual depiction of baptism in relationship to the theme of resurrection.

In order for the rest of this post to make sense, you’ll need to watch the video:

First off, I think it is right and appropriate to tie baptism with resurrection. Baptism, at its core, is a sacrament of identification. We, in baptism, identify ourselves with Christ’s identification with us, so that what is true of him is now true of us. Just as Christ died and was raised, so we have died and are raised with him in baptism. Death is symbolized by our immersion underwater — a death by drowning. In dying we are then brought up out of the water indicating the new life we receive in Christ. We see this play out in the video.

So far so good.

But notice how in the video, it is a solitary individual, unsure of where he is going, unaccompanied, driving by his lonesome out into a remote field all by himself. Did I mention he is alone? Here, I think, is where the visual story telling goes awry in depicting what baptism is about (and by association, what resurrection is about). It seems to want to say that baptism is something we can do for ourselves. I have to admit, the way the scenes are cut and edited to fit the lyrics, I feel a certain kind of triumphant elation when the man plunges himself into the water just as the song builds in its climactic turn (right around 3:12). But that’s just it. Baptism is not a triumphant achievement. It is a gift we receive in humility. We don’t plunge ourselves into the water. We are baptized. We get baptized. Baptism is something someone else does for us, not something we can do for ourselves.

What is more, baptism teaches us that we are accepted into a new community. We are baptized into a people — the body of Christ. That is why baptism is never done in isolation. It is always before a watching community. A community of those who will support and sustain us in our new life as members of Christ’s body, precisely because they are the ones who are receiving and ushering us into that body.

Now, couple all this with the oft-repeated chorus, “Now, I have resurrection power.” What we are left with is the subtle suggestion that the power of resurrection is something we possess as individuals for our empowerment as individuals. All of this is a glaring example of the unrelenting focus on the individual in so much of what is labeled Christian in our culture. The individual is not a bad thing to care about, but what often happens is that we, as the proverbial saying goes, miss the forest for the trees. We see this at the end of the video where we find that maybe there is some semblance of a community forming. But no. It turns out they are just other individuals going to out to the same field to baptize themselves. It seemed to me like a guy finding a hidden Starbucks that paved the way for others to flock to it and get their morning fix.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the song itself. I actually quite like it. It is just to say that the visual story telling draws our focus inward whereas Scripture I think wants to draw us outward, outside of ourselves (which I think is how the belief in resurrection is best understood). If we read the passage in which the title of the song is based in context (Ephesians 1:19-20), we would see that the power Paul is talking about is a power that is able to unite what has for so long been separated by enmity and strife. The nasty division between Jew and Gentile. But now, as Paul tells the mixed community of Christ’s body, by the power that brought Christ up from the dead:

19…you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Eph. 2:19-22

Now, imagine if the video for this song was set to images of reconciliation in which those who have been estranged to the Church are suddenly welcomed into the body. This is the newness that the resurrection makes possible. We have been raised with Christ into a kingdom in which the marginalized and outcast are now at home among God’s people. None are excluded. So, what if at the climactic moment of the song we do not have a man baptizing himself, but the welcoming embrace of those who were once “far-off” now brought near through the saving work of Christ.

Now that would be some resurrection power.

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The Resurrection of the Body

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It’s been a while, but in our last look on the resurrection, we ended with this image of our lives being held in the memory of God as we await, what the Apostle’s Creed calls, the Resurrection of the Body. This is the orthodox way of expressing the hope for which we patiently wait. It is not the hope of the soul going to heaven when we die, but the hope of the “Resurrection of the Body.” The way it is phrased is wonderfully ambiguous. There are a number of ways to interpret what “the body” means, and when taken together they give us a fuller meaning of what salvation entails.

First, “the body” can mean Christ’s literal, physical body. The Resurrection of the Body is about the resurrection of his body. His body is the body, raised from the dead in advance of all others. As Paul writes, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). Christ’s risen body is like that first flower that blooms while the snow is still melting, giving us a glimpse of what is in store when spring comes and winter fully passes away.

Second, “the body” can refer to a figurative body. Think of Paul’s famous analogy of Christ’s body — the body of which we have been made members. It is a singular body made up of many parts. The body that is resurrected, in this case, is a people This, I think, is the corrective we need in thinking about salvation in the modern West. That is, we need to see salvation as a communal reality before it is individual. Or better, it is only individual because it is communal. This is something that is entirely glossed over in the “will you go to heaven?” way of thinking about salvation — a predominantly individualistic way of casting salvation.

Lastly, ”the body” can be taken to mean bodies in general. Here, the Resurrection of the Body is about the resurrection of all bodies, not least of which is our own. This is perhaps the most intuitive interpretation. I look forward to the day when my body will be raised. Of course this is true, but I think it best to understand resurrection in the order we have just laid out. The Resurrection of the Body is first about Christ, then about us, then about me.

Rather than seeing the story of Scripture told in five acts, we tend to see it, in our highly individualistic culture, as only three:

  1. Act ONE: Creation/Fall
  2. Act THREE: Jesus
  3. Act FIVE: The End

What is missing? Acts TWO and FOUR, which are Israel and the Church. The way we understand salvation deeply affects the significance we place on these two acts. When the individual is at the center of God’s plan for salvation, Israel becomes an oversight and the Church an after thought.

So it matters how we see the End.

Could we recast the End as our End and not simply my End? Or what if we saw our individual ends as inextricably bound up with the communal End described in Scripture? Then maybe we could better appreciate how integral Israel and Church are. For it is within the living memory of these two communities that the story of Scripture has been and continues to be kept alive. And through the ongoing telling and retelling of this millennia old story, we are given the resources to know that we are not just anybody, but made into somebody by virtue of our inclusion in the body, Christ’s body. It is in, through and for this body that we find our end and it is with this body that we will be raised at the end on the last day.

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Tony Stark, Peter, and the Story Arc of Christian Discipleship

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WARNING: If you have not yet seen Avengers: Endgame SPOILERS AHEAD!

———————————————————————————————

In our gospel passage this past Sunday we looked at a description that Jesus gives about the kind of death that Peter would die. Jesus tells him, “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

The words here are a bit cryptic, which makes interpreting what exactly Jesus is getting at hard to decipher. Having just seen Avengers: Endgame, I thought it might be fun (and illuminating) to explore what Jesus predicts about Peter’s future through the story arc of Tony Stark (aka Ironman).

When we first meet Mr. Stark (ten years ago in the first Iron Man movie), he is a genius engineer, womanizing playboy, and all around smart-ass — the epitome of a self-absorbed and self-determined individual. In other words, he did what he wanted and went where he wanted. Minutes into the film he is severely wounded in an attack by a terrorist group and held captive in a remote cave. In exchange for his freedom, Stark is forced to build a Jericho missile, a weapon of mass destruction that he himself designed for the U.S. military.

While in this cave, we find that a doctor named Yinsen has also been abducted to tend to Stark’s injuries as well as serve as his personal missile building assistant. Both realize that there is no way the terrorists are going to let them go and so they hatch an escape plan. Part of this plan involves building what turns out to be the first Iron Man suit. When they finally make their break things go awry and Yinsen ends up sacrificing his life in order to give Stark the time he needs to get away. It is this act of self-sacrifice on the part of a complete stranger that sets Tony Stark on a hero’s journey that will take more than a decade to complete.

To be sure, there is a charming narcissism that is part of what makes Tony Stark Tony Stark. Indeed his most quintessential (and iconic) line comes at the end of the first movie where he announces to the world, “I am Ironman.” This comes on the heels of being told that it is best to keep his true identity under wraps. But as we noted, he does what he wants and goes where he wants. Simply staying put as Tony Stark is just not as gratifying and glamorous as ascending to superhero stardom.

If you have seen the movie you will know that this self declaration, “I am Ironman,” becomes the climactic and crowning line of Avengers: Endgame. But this time it is spoken by a man who has not remained the same Tony Stark we knew once upon a time. He is no longer possessed by a narrow obsession with his own self-interest. Or rather, it might be better said that his self-interest has since been (en)lightened, no longer weighed down by the heavy tyranny of caring always and only for himself.

We see this set up in the early part of Endgame where we find that in the 5 years since the demigod Thanos snapped half of all life out of existence, Tony Stark has made a comfortable life for himself. Having married longtime love Pepper Potts, they now live a quiet life together in a peaceful lakeside mansion with their 5-year old daughter Morgan. In a way, this is a tremendous step forward for Tony Stark. That he is able to settle down with Pepper and become a father shows a certain kind of growth and maturity from him. But more will be asked of him when Captain America and company show up with a dangerous plan to try and reverse the Snap.

Will Tony safeguard his current idyllic life or will he risk it for what is yet tenuous and uncertain? Will he take the path of least resistance or will he embark on a rescue mission fraught with peril and possibly death? Or as Jesus puts it, will he choose to save his life or lose it?

This brings us to the decisive moment that all 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) have been driving towards. History is about to repeat itself, but with a vengeance. This time Thanos is hellbent on wiping every living creature out of existence, not just half. He has once again taken hold of what he needs to do it and just as he is about the snap his fingers he proclaims, “I am inevitable.”

And then comes the snap…

…but nothing happens.

What went wrong (or maybe what went right)?

Somehow Tony Stark has gained the upper hand (pun intended) and it is he who now possesses what is needed to snap Thanos out of existence. (Oh snap!) But he knows that the power released in doing so would more than likely cost him his life. With the fate of all the cosmos hanging in the balance, Tony Stark looks up at Thanos, says, “I am Ironman,” and with a snap of his fingers completes a story arc ten years in the making, taking him from egotistical megalomaniac to self-giving hero.

What Tony Stark goes through can offer us a way to interpret what Jesus says is in store for Peter. Peter, like Tony, is cocky and brash. But also like Tony, his story arc will take him from cocky and brash to humble and self-sacrificial. Who is it that will lead Peter by the hand and take him where he does not want to go? According to church history, Peter is crucified upside down. So many believe that the “someone else” who will lead him may be a soldier leading him to his crucifixion. This is certainly a legitimate interpretation. But what if we thought about it in another way? What if we looked at it in a more figurative way — that what leads Peter is something akin to conviction.

When we speak of being convicted, it is not quite the same as saying, “this is something I want to do.” To be convicted, it seems to me, is not the same as wanting to do something. But neither is it the same as doing something we don’t want to do. Conviction is a kind of unwanted wanting. It is unwanted in that it is something that often works in the opposite direction of our regular inclinations, but is nevertheless a wanting in that it compels us to act in line with a greater desire that issues from beyond us. This is the realm of what Scripture calls the will of God.

When Scripture talks about doing God’s will, it is not language that speaks on the same register as doing that which we want or that which makes us happy. But neither is it calling us to be miserable as if God only makes us do things we don’t want to do. It is speaking on the level of conviction. The journey that Tony Stark goes on moves him from a life driven by selfish desires towards a life drawn forward by conviction. The last thing Tony wants to do is leave the life he has made with Pepper and Morgan and yet he finds himself strangely compelled to open himself up to the very thing that will surely disrupt and possibly put an end to that life.

Where did such a conviction come from? One answer is that it came from Yinsen giving his life to set Tony free. Another finds its beginning in the invitation made to him to become a part of a new community (the Avengers Initiative). It is this community that offered him a way to see his life as part of a larger whole. In a way that is what God’s will consists of. In the Christian faith, this larger whole is defined by a people. Or more accurately, a people gathered around a story about a God who died to set us free. God’s will is what can be discerned within the confines of a community learning to live into this grand story given to us in Scripture. 

So back to what Jesus says to Peter. Could it be that the “someone else” Jesus references is none other than God? That for Peter and for all of us who have been made a part of Christ’s body, the Church, Christian discipleship is about the willingness to follow a God whose will it is to lead us into places where we don’t want to go; and yet find in being led to such places we are drawn out of our tendency toward self-absorption by a conviction shaped by Scripture, discerned in community. And like the story arc we have been following on screen with Tony Stark throughout the MCU, may we take heart that such convictions are not gained over night nor are they formed in a straight line. It is a bumpy ride filled with a mixture of failure and triumph lasting a lifetime. Of course, this is nowhere more evident than in the life of Peter. We know about his foibles. We read about his denials. But in the end, we also know that he becomes one who is able to die a good and honorable death. As the Gospel of John puts it, “a death that would glorify God” (John 21: 19). May our lives follow a similar story arc so that when the hour of our death comes may the same be true of us.

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In Between Death and Resurrection

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As we looked at in the last post, resurrection is physical. It is about bodies. The Christian hope is not a disembodied hope, but an embodied one. It does not do away with creation, but awaits its renewal. Resurrection, then, is not only about our dead bodies being raised, but about the deliverance of the entire cosmos from the death dealing decay of sin (Romans 8:18-25).

This event of Resurrection, it is thought, will happen at the end of time. When that day comes all the dead will be raised together, all at once, to receive new bodies to live in a newly restored creation.

But what happens to those who die before the end comes? That is, what happens if we die and the end does not come for another thousand years? Where do we go in the time between death and resurrection?

A modern day analogy that is as winsome as it is theologically astute comes from the scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne. He puts it this way: God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves.

What is helpful about this analogy is that it holds together the body-soul distinction in a way that honors both without prizing one over the other. The soul (software) is what is needed to make the body (hardware) “work” whereas the body is required in order for the soul to “run.”

Hardware and software are an integral whole. Likewise, body and soul. One requires the other.

If the whole computer analogy seems all too technical and machine-like, we can think in terms of God’s memory. When we die all that we are is firmly held within the loving embrace of God’s remembrance. In reality, there is never a time in which we are not kept secure in the memory of God, in which past, present and future are stored permanently and perfectly. But it is enough for us to remember, when Death shows its face and bares its teeth, that our lives are not and will not be forgotten.

In dying we are not erased. God remembers us.

And as those who are remembered by God, we find ourselves re-membered, re-collected within the communion of saints, welcomed among those belonging to the family of God throughout space and time. And there we wait together. Together we wait for the time when God will raise us from the dead, when we are given new bodies to inhabit a renewed heavens and renewed earth.

This is the hope of resurrection. It is our hope in and for the renewal of all things; when our souls will be embodied once again just as in the end creation will become the embodiment of heaven, which is simply another way of saying what we pray every week – “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

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Do Not Imagine They Are Christians?! (Justin Must Be Trippin!)

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This past Sunday (Easter Sunday) we looked at a rather harsh assertion by second century Christian apologist, Justin Martyr. Writing with what seems like a huge chip on his shoulder, Justin takes aim at those “who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven.” About such people he says, “Do not imagine that they are Christians.” They are in his eyes, “godless, impious heretics.”

What is so jarring about this claim is that what Justin calls heretical is precisely what we take today to be orthodox Christian belief. He is calling into question the very core of what we take the Christian faith to be all about. After all, isn’t this why we believe in Jesus in the first place? So that our souls will go to heaven when we die?

While we might not be inclined to raise the heresy threat level to code red, it is still worth exploring why this belief about our souls going to heaven is in the very least problematic.

On the charitable side, what we can say about the idea that our souls go to heaven when we die is that it isn’t wrong. It isn’t wrong, but it isn’t exactly right. Here, it is helpful to borrow a phrase coined by New Testament scholar N.T. Wright. He talks about life after life after death. That’s not a type-o.

Life after life after death.

What Wright means to say is that resurrection names the life that comes after what we commonly think of as life after death. What we commonly think of as life after death is the popular notion that our souls go to heaven after we die. Put this way, resurrection names the ultimate end for which we hope. That our souls go to heaven is only a passing moment. To imagine it as the whole of what we hope for is like mistaking the bathroom break we take before reaching our destination for the destination itself.

This helps us to realize that the Christian hope is not a disembodied hope. It is material. It is physical. It is resurrection. What happened to Jesus on a Sunday morning more than two thousands years ago is a preview of coming attractions. The biblical term is “firstfruits” (1 Cor. 15:20). As we often say, what we see God do for Jesus in raising his dead body from the grave is what God will one day do for all of creation (us included, God willing!).

This seems to be a more fitting end to the five-act story of (1) Creation/Fall, (2) Israel, (3) Jesus, (4) Church (5) The End. In this case, another title we could give to the fifth and final act is New Creation. The story is not about God abandoning creation, which is what we naturally come to believe when we assume that the ultimate hope of the biblical narrative is for our bodiless souls to end up in an ethereal heaven. But this, as we have been saying, is not the end for which we hope.

Resurrection is.

Resurrection preserves and honors God’s unrelenting and unfailing faithfulness to the good, good world created in and through the over-abundant love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way, the end becomes the fulfillment, not the negation, of the beginning. This after all is what we find in the pages of Scripture – that the completion of the good work begun in Genesis is consummated by the time we reach the end of Revelation.

But we know that people die and that their bodies are buried. We bury the dead and the dead stay buried. Resurrection is something that does not occur in the natural course of things. Indeed, it is something we must wait for; an event that will come to us at the fulfillment of time. So then the question remains, “What happens to us when we die in the mean time?”

We’ll pick this up in a subsequent blog post.

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2019 Retreat Recap

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I thought I’d share my thoughts about the retreat as a way of (1) recapping the retreat for those who were not able to attend and (2) continuing the fruitful conversations that were birthed during the retreat.

To start, a little background on the theme…

Here is my first draft of the welcome note I wrote for the retreat program:

“Familiarity breeds contempt. When it comes to church, contempt may be too strong a word. Or maybe better put, at worst it can be contempt, but more often it’s a kind of inattentiveness or carelessness. Ideally, things we do week after week after week become second nature for us. The repetitiveness allows us to do them without thinking, so that they become as natural to us as breathing. But this isn’t always the case. The repetitiveness can also turn them into things we do unthinkingly – mindlessly doing what we’ve always done.

So it is with church.”

I thought it was a bit dark, so I changed it to this: “Our topic for the weekend is a simple one: Church. Whether it’s going to church, being church or doing church, like most things we do week after week after week, we can lose sight of where it is we’re trying to go, who it is we’re trying to be, what it is we’re trying to do.“

Either way, both capture the sentiment that inspired the theme for this year’s retreat: getting back to the basics of what (the point of) church is.

With such a theme, I knew of no one better to address it than my (our) good friend, Jon Tran.

Jon’s answer to the question revolved around two things: (1) Community and (2) Story. Putting these two together, the answer to the question, “What is church?” becomes: The church is a story-formed community. This story of course, is the story we find written in the pages of Scripture – a story, as Jon described, that can be told in 5 acts:

  1. Creation & Fall
  2. Israel
  3. Jesus
  4. Church
  5. The End (New Creation)

Many of us may be familiar with this 5-act structure, but, what I think Jon helped us to see is how beautiful and powerful and utterly remarkable this story is and the life-giving adventure it calls us into. This is what it means to be church: a people gathered around this story, which in the end is the stunning story of God’s self-giving love that refuses to abandon us (and creation) to the destructive emptiness of sin.

At this point in the retreat, things were moving along swimmingly, until we got to Saturday night, where words like “overwhelming” and “depressing,” were being uttered.

That night, Jon described the dire straits we find ourselves in. As many scientists have been warning, our greed and consequent disregard for the environment has stripped the earth of its ability to sustain life as we know it. Our situation is like that of a frog in water that is slowly being heated up. We don’t take seriously the warning signs, because we simply adapt to each degree of heat. The problem is that once we realize we are being boiled to death it is too late – indeed, some say we have already passed the point of no return.

If that wasn’t enough, we were then made to look at how our bottomless appetite for comfort and convenience, contributes to the continual oppression of those our economic system systemically and systematically hides from us. Our wealth is made possible by the relentless exploitation of our global neighbors. We go in, take what we want. When there is nothing left, we move on, leaving the place worse off and or desperate than when we entered.

We are like cannibals, voraciously feeding off the flesh of others to sustain and further our “way of life.”

Indeed, as Jon pointed out, cannibalism becomes an apt metaphor for what happens when we do not shape our lives around God’s good story of abundance and grace. That when we allow the story of the world, the story of sin and scarcity to shape us we cannot help but have our desires deformed in such a way that we devour any thing and any one for our own benefit.

Interestingly enough, as depressing as it was, many of us also found ourselves strangely warmed that night. Inspired even. We experienced the reality that when we are able to see the world for what it is – or more accurately, when we are able to see sin in all its disfiguring ugliness we are able to recognize just how wonderfully ridiculous the gospel is. I think this is what Paul meant when he said, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20). To face with brutal honesty the sin that infects us and the good world God created, it helps open our eyes to see again what we once saw so clearly – that there is no story so beautiful, so good and so true as the one that finds its heart in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

As Christians, as the Church, we then are called to be bearers of this story – to faithfully carry this story by living according to the hope contained within it.

Lastly, what I think was truly special about the weekend, was that there seemed (to me at least) to be a heightened appreciation for one another. That Jon’s talks as well as the testimonies that were shared throughout the weekend helped remind us what a gift it is that God has given us one another to be church together. We are fellow travelers on this great adventure called Church and we need one another to be and do what God intends for us to be and do (muck like the rabbits of Watership Down).

And so our last day (Sunday), we spent thinking and dreaming together about what is next for Christ Kaleidoscope. I think this is the question, the conversation, that we need to continue as a community. In the end, this is something that was at the heart of what we wanted Christ Kaleidoscope to be about – a community where we are able to discern together what it means to be God’s people, shaped by God’s story, in the specific time and place we find ourselves in. So let us continue the conversation…

What is next for Christ Kaleidoscope?

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Cleanliness & Light

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a reflection on Luke 11:14-12:12

by Katie Heemstra

While praying through this week’s readings I was truly at a loss for what to write about.  No one section or day really stood out to me and each one seemed so critical of something, which is honestly not fun to write about.  We have Jesus casting out demons and the famous, “a house divided cannot stand,” verse, we have a section on judgment and letting our light shine, another section on woes to the Pharisees, and finally a section on hypocrisy, fearing God but not fearing God at the same time, unforgivable blasphemy and finally the power of the Spirit to give us words.  What a jumble of topics! But in praying through this section of scripture as a whole, God started showing me a common theme in all of it: cleanliness and light.

The two are symbolically similar and tend to go hand in hand.  Where we find one it would be no surprise to find the other. Light can bring healing, cleansing is healing too.  Shedding light on a situation is a type of purging, which in turn is a type of cleaning. With that in mind then looking at the verses as a cohesive whole, I think Jesus is trying to convey the difference between true light and true cleanliness and that which is made or done through human effort.  

We see it first in the example in Luke 11:24-26, when an unclean spirit leaves a person and returns to that person finding everything tidied up and rearranged back in order, then invites all his demon friends back with him for the equivalent of a house party wreaking havoc on this poor man’s soul.  An odd example, right? I thought so, so I looked into some commentaries on these verses and they key to this scenario is that this person was expelled of the unclean spirit and tried to clean up the aftermath on his own (notice the use of swept clean – he basically dusted his house and put the pictures back up on the shelves, but did not put the effort in to truly, deeply clean) basically just cleaning up the demon’s room, inviting the spirit to come back.

Here’s a more tangible example…say you have an addiction and it has taken over your life.  You begin to see the destruction it is causing so you make up your mind to stop using whatever substance you’re addicted to.  You make it a couple days, maybe even a week or two, but something sets you off and you binge that substance so hard, you’re now even worse off than you were before you tried to quit.  This man tried to quit (“sweep his house”) on his own effort, but if he were to check himself into a rehab facility (“deep clean”) he would stand a chance against the onslaught of attack his addiction would have against him.  That deep cleaning is only available when we invite the Spirit in to help us clean up our act. It’s the only way to truly change our situation.

Next, we have the example of putting a lamp on a stand, rather than hiding it under a bowl in Luke 11:29-36.  We are warned in this passage to make sure that the light within us is not darkness. Another odd reference from Jesus.  How can light really be darkness? The answer is only if it is not from the true source of light: God our Father. If our light is coming from another source, say our own efforts to be righteous, it is not a true light we are shining, but a poor imitation.  We’re back to sweeping our own houses clean rather than letting the Spirit deep clean us: our effort versus letting God take control.

Third, we have the example of the Pharisee calling Jesus out for not washing before eating his meal (we’re back to the cleaning thing!).  Jesus throws it right back at the Pharisee accusing him of washing the outside of his dish but not the inside. Finally we have a fairly straightforward example: the Pharisee does much to make sure his outer appearance (how he looks, what he does, who he is perceived to be) follows the letter of the law, but his internal condition (his motivations, his desires, his heart) is quite dirty and ugly.  Jesus shows us the difference between the clean outside and clean inside in the examples in the following verses (Luke 11:43-52). Visible tithing, taking important seats in the synagogue, receiving respectful greetings in public are all focused on outer appearance. Cleanliness of the inside is shown as being generous to the poor and showing justice and the love of God to others. In order to do any of these things with a genuine heart rather than selfish motivation, we must be in tune with God and the Spirit.  It is his work through us that makes us able.

Finally we have the example of hypocrisy where truth is brought to light in the end (Luke 12:1-3).  Here we are, back to the light once more! We are warned that whatever we think we’re doing in secret will one day be revealed to all.  Whether this revelation will come through people coming to see our true character in this life or if all will be revealed in the next, we don’t know, but the heart of Jesus’ statement is if we act in the manner of the Spirit, truly cleansed on the inside, acting in love, justice and mercy we will have nothing to fear in this life or the next.  I think this is why Jesus continues on to say we should not be afraid of others who can only kill our bodies, but only fear God who can eternally damn us to hell. God sees what is done in secret, He sees if we are only working in our own effort to sweep our houses clean or only wash the outside of the dish. He sees our hearts and our true motivations.  BUT, we are to fear His judgment, we are not to fear Him, because He is the only one who can redeem us, make us truly clean, bring light into every situation in our lives.  We are to run to him with hearts wide open asking for His cleansing love and righteousness to make us well and whole and able to show his love to the rest of his children here on earth.

A lot easier said than done, right?  It sure is for me. But that is the beauty of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.  Just as He will come and teach us what to say when we are called out to speak (Luke 12:11-12), He also comes when we ask to gently (yet deeply) clean out our hearts and shed light on our actions and circumstances.  It is not by our own efforts alone that we are going to be able to do what Jesus is asking of us. We have four examples in just these passages of how that does not work. We must first go to God, rely on Him to do His work in us, and in our willingness to be shaped, cleansed, and used by Him, we will be filled to overflowing with the love, justice, and mercy God calls us to act out in our lives.

artwork:Woe Unto You, Scribes and Pharisees, James Tissot (1836-1902)