Spirituality Column #802

March 29, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Whenever …

By Bob Walters

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” – 1 Corinthians 12:25

It was the first “Lord’s Supper” – at “The Last Supper” – where Jesus shared with His disciples the bread and the cup as His body and blood.

That was the night Jesus was betrayed into the hands of those who would kill Him.  Jesus emphasized at the supper, when handing the disciples the bread to break and the cup to share, “Whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me.”

On that evening Jesus labored mightily, one last time, for the disciples to understand not only that He was the Son of God, but that He was God and that their continuing faith in Him and witness to His truth would light a path of salvation from sin into God’s Kingdom for all mankind. “This is my body … and this is my blood.”

We think – maybe too much – of the broken body and blood of Jesus on the Cross.  We see our sin, experience our guilt, and sense our salvation in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. But the bread and the cup as death?  Let’s think that one through.

As Jesus says “this is my body,” He is breaking the bread in fellowship with the disciples.  This is the fellowship we as Christians come to know in Christ and with each other.  The cup as “the new covenant in my blood” communicates the promise – a covenant – with His blood, and Jews recognize blood as the source of life.

I’ve come to believe that the battered and bloody Jesus on the cross is not the remembrance Jesus had in mind at the Last Supper.  The bread was the symbol of His love and fellowship with them, and the cup was the symbol and promise of life.

The cross is much more than a picture of Jesus’s sacrifice and suffering.  It is a picture of us … of me, of humans … and sins we commit in human fallenness.  I think the cross is a picture of the ugliness of the fallen world, and shows the infinite resolution and love of Jesus to complete His mission to bring humanity back into fellowship with God – back into Eden, back into God’s Kingdom, and into eternal life.

At the Last Supper, Jesus knew that the greatest challenge to the disciples after His death would be their staying together in fellowship and in faith.  He used the bread and cup to do that: “Do this in remembrance of me,” as if to say, “Stay together, persevere.  Your fellowship will be critical to your mission ahead: to share the truth of God’s love and my eternal life with a hostile and doubting world. I am with you.”

Obviously, the resurrection – Christ’s return – and all that subsequently happened made clear much that was murky as the disciples struggled to understand these last instructions of Jesus.  But the world remained and remains hostile, and all believers benefit from the communion of the bread and the cup as we take the focus off of ourselves and our sins, and remember the promise and truth of the Son of God.

Jesus remains our savior always; regardless of what we think.  Our belief or non-belief doesn’t affect His truth or love one way or the other.  But they sure affect us, and we can have the joy and hope of Jesus as we remember His body and blood.

That’s when we have His fellowship and His life.  And it is ours … whenever.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests we encounter the communion elements – the body and blood, bread and cup – knowing Jesus remembers us, too.

Spirituality Column #801

March 22, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Panic Attack

By Bob Walters

“Do not be anxious about anything…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” – Philippians 4:6,8

Considering that our daily, panic-ridden cup of bad news – war, inflation, politics, disingenuous science, illogical and false cultural constructs, ever fewer people going to church – is slopping up over the sides these days, I appreciated that this wonderful, calming verse from the Apostle Paul popped up on our church big screen Sunday.

It’s one of my favorite verses not just for what it says, but for my own story that goes with it.  Twenty years ago, my mom, living alone in Alpena, Mich., fell in her home.  It was October 2002.  She broke a hip, was immobile, passed out, and lay alone in her laundry room for two days before a server at the coffee shop she frequented, who noticed Mom hadn’t been in lately, came looking for her. Dad had passed away in 1991.

The server found mom, called for help, and contacted our far-flung family – my sister in Tucson, another in Spokane, Wash., my brother in northern Wisconsin, and me in Indianapolis.  My brother, and then older sister from Tucson, got there first.  I was chaperoning my younger son’s fifth-grade overnighter at a YMCA camp near Greensburg, Ind., and couldn’t leave for another couple of days.

When I did finally head north, I called friend, mentor, and retired pastor Russ Blowers before turning onto I-69 for the seven-hour drive to northeastern Michigan.

I was panicked about my mom’s immediate health, the lonesome home circumstances that led to her two-day wait for help, the fact my brother and sister were a tad ticked I hadn’t gotten there sooner, what the future held for mom because though her hip surgery had gone well, at age 74 there were many other health issues in play.  And the more news I heard from my siblings – who forgave my tardiness, by the way – the more I was upset.  And I had seven hours in the car alone on a weekday afternoon to think about it.  Turns out, Mom never left the care facility.

Anyway, aside from Fort Wayne, Ind., and Lansing, Mich., there’s not much on that drive north except 400 miles of flat farm fields and forests.  I called Russ to let him know I would be gone a few days.  In telling him of my, or rather, my mom’s situation, I started crying and couldn’t speak.  This was on the 96^th St. bridge as I was set to turn north.

Wonderful, pastoral Russ, said, “Y’know, Bob, when I’m upset, I think of Marian’s favorite verse from the Bible, Philippians 4.  Let’s pray it together right now.” 

That was a Russ trademark; He never said “I’ll pray for you.” He said, “Let’s pray right now.”  Marian, his wife of 56 years, was in her sixth year living at an Alzheimer’s center in Carmel.  And Russ started in, “Don’t be anxious about anything …”

Ever since that day I’ve kept the ribbon marker in my Bible on Philippians 4.

I tell this story because I appreciate the wonderful, calming gift of Christian fellowship and of the Bible’s unrelenting truth.  I go to church not to see if Jesus is still Lord or to panic whether the world is going to survive another week.  Egad!  I embrace and revel in the peace afforded by encountering the love of Jesus with other believers.

Many forces in our world conspire to instill panic; Jesus is a reliable antidote.

Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) mom Ruth passed away peacefully six months later.

 Spirituality Column #800

March 15, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

This is War

By Bob Walters

“The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God and I will praise Him; my father’s God, and I will extol Him.  The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is His name.” – Exodus 15:2-3

“I saw heaven standing open and before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.  With justice he judges and wages war. … He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.” – Revelation 19:11,13

It is critical to remember that we do not serve a God who is soft on injustice or who shies away from a fight.  Righteousness is who He is and what He does.

His nature is love (1 John 4:8) and His mercies endure forever (Psalm 118), but He is not the God of “Can’t we all just get along?”  He knows better.  Sadly, so do we.

The church, in our compassion, wants to help fix the people who are broken wherever in the world a battle rages.  Our hearts cry out for the injured and oppressed; we rail against man’s cruelties and pray for deliverance of the innocents swallowed up in the fight.  The tragedy is real, our cry to God understandable, our rage justified.

But God’s church must be more than a fretful and compassionate aid station.  Are we rightly called to be a hospital for the world?  Sure.  We offer physical help and spiritual encouragement; we pray for people to know Jesus and be nice to one another.

Yet in this current season of phenomenal turmoil at home and abroad – in our neighborhoods, schools, towns, and nation, as well as global political disorder and the headlining firestorm in Ukraine – the church cannot forget that God calls us to be warriors who speak forcefully in His will against the evil of satan wherever we find it.

It is not just a battle for territory in Eastern Europe (where have we heard that before?), but it is a holy war for domestic cultural and social sanity here at home – an entirely differentiated front in the battle for the minds, lives, and souls of our children.

This is not the time to think Christians are called to be sheep or nursemaids.

Jesus encountered satan (Matthew 4:1-11) with the power of God’s words: “It is written!”  Jesus knew – and went silent – when God’s holy will called him to be a sacrifice as He was led to the violent Cross … and was then resurrected in glory.

But in Revelation 19, Christ fights: “With justice he judges and wages war.”

As God saved Israel out of Egypt near the beginning, and Christ defeats satan in the End, our Christian attitude of this moment must be that God is the Lord and that we are both the tools of His power in all the Earth and participants in His love and glory.

The works of our faith are stronger than we know; our praying in the authority of God as we acknowledge evil’s battle will pull down satan’s strong holds (2 Corinthians 10:4) and attack spiritual wickedness (Ephesians 6:12).  Jesus is Faithful and True.

God’s words are our sword; we must speak them boldly.  The fight is raging.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that satan is one tough out, and that “please” isn’t going to dissuade satan or his operatives.  Walters also thanks Dutch Sheets for the timely scripture (some shared above) and thoughts of his March 10 “Give Him 15.”  May we all take to heart the power of God’s Word not only as a calming palliative in a crisis, but as a sword warriors must unsheathe confidently in the fight.

Spirituality Column #799

March 8, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Eusebius and Athanasius

By Bob Walters

Owing to my affection for church history, Eusebius and Athanasius have popped up recently in my email notes and posts.  Who are those guys?

Both were bishops circa 300 A.D. (or C.E. – Common Era – for the secularists and academic nerds).  It’s not like you need to know these two fellows in order to know Jesus, but because of them the development of the Christian church was both reported on and defended from heresy.  They provide original history and orthodox truth.

I think it is a mistake to limit our scope of faith or engage our modern Sunday worship at church by jumping whole-cloth from the Book of Acts (2:42) and the Apostle Paul in the first century to Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II in the 20^th century.

It takes effort to erase centuries of bald spots, but we find there are no gaps.

Addressing the early going, I just finished reading Eusebius’ The Church History (English translation and notes by Paul L. Meier).  The book is four-hundred eye-opening pages about who developed the church, assembled the Bible, discerned the canon, defended against heresies, tried to destroy both the Bible and Christians (persecutions), and how terrible those persecutions were.  Many texts Eusebius quotes no longer exist.

Eusebius (you-SEE-bee-us) of Caesarea, recounts in nearly real time the key church and Bible dialogues of early Christianity.  Like … when should Easter be celebrated?  Who wrote Hebrews?  Why the “variant genealogies” of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 6?  Who actually wrote Revelation?  John? Documents herald Revelation as Spirit-inspired but say the Greek style does not match John’s Gospel and Letters at all.

Athanasius (at-uh-NAY-sh’ess) of Alexandria wrote eloquently (e.g. On the Incarnation) and convincingly (Against the Arians).  The Arian heresy took hold in the late third century and, in the shortest of shorthand, asserted that Jesus was a man but not God.  Athanasius’ defense led to the Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 A.D. which later gave us the Nicene Creed: “I believe in one God the father Almighty …” etc.

My lament against the modern Bible-based church – my church – is its communal absence of interest, understanding, or appreciation for all that came before and the oft-miraculous heroics of the early faithful and martyrs.  Now?  We peruse an MSG Bible and sip latte while pondering hip, therapeutic devotionals.  Christ is served?

My lament against the liturgical and historic churches – Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, mainline Protestants – is their prevalent, congregation-wide, gaping biblical illiteracy.  Scripture?  It is the clergy’s and church’s job to study and discern Bible truth, and to broker a believer’s relationship with Jesus.  Seems demeaning and distancing.

When Luther broke the Christian world into newly-awakened pieces in 1517 A.D., it was because Luther, unlike other Roman seminarians of the era, read his Bible.

Why care about this ancient stuff?  I care because it establishes a vivid, real, and trackable timeline and relationship chain retracing this breath I’m taking right now back to the last breaths Jesus panted on the Cross.  It is evidence His love is never-ending.

I understand Christianity is about the future, but the solid foundation of where this truth came from, and why we can believe it, speaks resolute and convincing volumes.

The early church wasn’t therapy, it was truth.  Praise God for those who kept it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is still a B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, Year of our Lord) guy.  Academia’s B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) seem annoying affectations of those who value “inclusion” over truth.  Jesus turned the world around, including the calendar, and humanity around, providing hope.