Monday, May 4, 2020

703 - It's the Light, Not the Leap

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Spirituality Column #703
May 5, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

 It’s the Light, Not the Leap
By Bob Walters

“…that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on the power of God.”
“…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
 – 1 Corinthians 2:5, Hebrews 11:1

If I do say so myself, I wrote the most amazing sentence this past week in an email exchange with an extraordinarily bright, non-religious, long-time friend.

Let’s call him John, and his irenic response to that sentence inspired this column.

John had commented wryly but critically about a recent op ed piece I had written, “On Facemasks … Who Are We?”  It was an editorial about American character, COVID-19, and hiding the identity God gave to us behind a facemask.

John’s public observation contained what seemed to be ad hominem vitriol. I pushed back, but our ensuing non-public exchange was thought-provoking.  He noted: “My lack of faith means I do take things more objectively, and though your words were almost poetic it might not resonate as deeply with me as it would with a Christian. …”

A nice compliment from a smart guy that revealed a common error about “faith.”

I responded, “Great note John.  I deeply appreciate your sincerity. Don’t ever think lack of faith makes one more objective; it makes one (maybe not you) less able to embrace the existence of objective truth, which requires faith. …”

That was my “amazing sentence,” in case you couldn’t tell.  I continued briefly about being 47 when I “got” Christ, what a deeply intellectual journey my faith-growth has been, and I noted John’s keen capacity to parse and understand virtually anything.

To that John replied, “I love how your journey has … led you into sureness that (in my wry and respectful observation) you can use a phrase like ‘embracing the existence of objective truth requires faith.’  I … understand that after you have crossed that faith bridge you are no longer tentative but living in a new certainty, such that a phrase that seems to be a contradiction in terms isn’t a contradiction at all.”

And there it is, this week’s column: objectivity vs. faith.  John was gently, eruditely, and without condescension acknowledging that what is a contradiction to him, i.e., “objective truth which requires faith,” he understands is not a contradiction to me.

And that seeming contradiction, friends, is what limits the world.  It also largely defines today’s truth-obviating post-modernism which positions “truth” as objectively incompatible with the inferior “faith” as objective proof of the reality of Jesus Christ.

John also cited the “metaphysics” required for me to take such a “leap of faith.”

It reminded me – and underscored – how western civilization overly-relies on the ancient Greek philosophical axiom that reality and objectivity are confined to that which can be seen (or discussed) and “proven.”  I also think of Francis Bacon’s 17th century “scientific method” that adds “repeatability” to the proof of “scientific” reality.  These worldly constructs exclude faith and combine to vacantly imply, “Faith isn’t objective.”

Really? Which is closer to objectivity: God the Creator of all things, His infinite love and eternal relationship, that he made humanity in His own image, and lights our lives with Christ, or the machinations, variations, limitations, and opinions of fallen men?

Life’s objective truth is not a leap of faith; it is a faithful walk in the light of Jesus.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) met John (smart even back then) in Little League.
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Monday, April 27, 2020

702 - Letting Truth Out of the Bag

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Spirituality Column #702
April 28, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Letting Truth Out of the Bag
By Bob Walters

“When the Counselor comes, who I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” – Jesus, in John 15:26

A little more than a year ago I inherited the teaching duties in our church’s Thursday morning seniors “Mustard Seed” Bible study fellowship.  At age 65 I am the “kid” in the group, and I can barely describe how enriching it is to share scripture with this weekly group of seasoned, Bible-savvy saints.

Currently we have not met since Thursday, March 12, which was pretty much the last open day in Indiana before everything, including our East 91st Street Christian Church, area schools, and public meetings started shutting down Friday, March 13.

Mustard Seed – no argument there – is the kind of group that especially needs not to meet when a pandemic like COVID-19 is an evident danger to older folks.

But what I wanted to talk about this week is not the dire, dour, and depressing isolation of our nation’s and indeed the world’s present situation.  Nor can I think of anything new to say about our individual and largely home-bound circumstances.  To all those folks still out there working every day in hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, and other life-saving and society-sustaining endeavors, I say “Thank You!”

What I do want to discuss is the plain-as-the-nose-on-my-face fact that perhaps the greatest joy-robbing, hope-jangling feature of this unprecedented time is the utter absence of what I would call reliable truth about virtually anything having to do with the reporting, media narrative, and politics surrounding the pandemic.  Who can we trust? 

From China to Washington state to New York City to Washington D.C. to Italy to my home here in Fishers, Indiana, I wonder who is pushing which social, political, or economic agenda.  What is the real danger: the disease or our reaction to it?  Since “tomorrow is guaranteed to no one,” let’s not panic about the presently more intense vagaries of “tomorrow.”  What we all need are facts and truth, not fear and spin.

I started by talking about “Mustard Seed” because our past several months have been a study of “The Words of Jesus.”  Especially illuminating to me personally, in the Last Supper and Gethsemane sections of John 14-17, is Jesus talking through these four entire chapters about God’s unwavering righteousness, eternal truth, boundless love, infinite glory, their relationship … and his disciples’ responsibilities going forward. 

This truth – His truth – marches on.  In His last hours it is virtually all Jesus talks about.

When we can’t see truth – in anything, whether particular or whole – our human misery most likely is in our inability to see God, relate with Jesus, and listen to the Holy Spirit.  The world, for unrighteous reasons in times like these, prefers our focus to be on fear and anxiety. These are man’s evil shackles that choke our free breath in Christ.

I listen carefully for God’s truth.  I know that’s what Jesus brought into the world – freedom not just from our own sin and the wiles of wicked men and women, but toward faith, hope, love, peace, creativity, and joy that our trust in God’s eternal truth assures.

What a better world we make, and what joy we reap, when we believe in and testify to God’s truth.  The fallen world controls us in fear, but Jesus by his life, death, resurrection, and sending of the Spirit let God’s righteous, saving truth out of the bag.  

Sometimes we have to fight for that truth, but our joy always is in knowing it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) watches little mainstream news but stays informed and prays big sincere prayers … regularly.

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Monday, April 20, 2020

701 - Humble New Beginnings

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Spirituality Column #701
April 21, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Humble New Beginnings
By Bob Walters

“… because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” – Luke 19:41

Jesus very famously wept quietly at the tomb of Lazarus – “Jesus wept” – but He absolutely howled as He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Jesus "weeps" twice in the Bible – tenderly (Greek edakrysen, John 11:35) for Lazarus’s sisters’ sadness, and a second time loudly (Greek eklausen, Luke 19:41), “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.”

While we could spend this entire column discussing how deeply Jesus was moved – and somewhat miffed – at the reactions of Lazarus’ family and friends before Jesus brought Lazarus out of the tomb, that’s a common story we’ve all studied before.  Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25).  And He meant it.

Bible scholars mostly agree that “Palm Sunday” was a few days later on the first day of the following week when Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem to the palm-waving Hosannas of all the believers who knew of Lazarus and had heard of Jesus’s many miracles. They welcomed him to Jerusalem as their holy and promised Messiah. 

The Pharisees were not so thrilled.  As Jesus approached (Luke 37-44) the crowd joyously praised but the Pharisees viciously harangued: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” (v. 39).  Jesus noted that if his disciples were quiet, then the “stones would cry out.” (v. 40).  Seeing the unbelief of the Pharisees and their blindness toward God, Jesus knew it meant Jerusalem’s eventual destruction.  He wept bitterly because of it.

Clearly nobody except Jesus had any idea what the rest of that week held, or how history after that would be forever changed.  The reality was, Jesus on that donkey was God returning to Jerusalem – as God told Abraham, Moses, and the prophets He would – to initiate His Kingdom on Earth.  It’s what Jesus had been saying all along.

What the Pharisees saw – in their blindness and anger – was a troublemaking blasphemer who would pull down their temple, negate their authority, threaten their social positions, and not least of all threaten Jerusalem’s tenuous peace with the Romans.  The Pharisees “did not recognize the time of God’s coming.” (v. 41)

Something else they didn’t perceive, and I’d never thought of either, was looking at what we call Holy Week as a perfect, poetic replay of the Creation story in Genesis. 

It was just a brief note in N.T. Wright’s The New Testament in Its World I’m reading, but, Lord of lords, how poignant. In Genesis 1, God labored for six days, rested a day, and His perfect Creation was in motion.  Jesus here spent six days in Jerusalem (Sunday to Friday), finishing his work of salvation, service, obedience, and love on the cross on Friday – the sixth day – and in his death rested on the seventh day Saturday. 

Right here, let’s not worry too much whether on that “Holy Saturday” Jesus descended into Hades, battled Satan, freed the saints, or whatever else He might have done; there is only thin and much debated scriptural evidence for that.  What we know is that on the cross Jesus said, “It is finished.”  On the seventh day, why not let him rest?

Jesus’s resurrection on the first day of a new week was breathtaking and glorious for those who believed.  It signaled the new beginning of humanity’s eternal life in God’s Kingdom through the humility of the cross of Christ.  

Creation, humbly, was renewed.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) looked up the Greek for “wept” at Biblehub.com. 

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Monday, April 13, 2020

700 - When Empty is Good

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Spirituality Column #700
April 14, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

When Empty is Good
By Bob Walters

“ … and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” – Colossians 2:10

What an irony that an empty grave was humanity’s first sign of salvation when what salvation means is humanity’s fullness in Christ.

In the Jesus-generated hubbub of Holy Week – the triumphant entry, trashing the temple, his teaching, the last supper, new commandments, Jesus’s arrest, trials, horrible death on the cross, entombment, arisen and bodily seen on the third day, humanity’s forgiveness and salvation at last! – easily overlooked is the sure reality that Jesus was the human, divine, tactile proof of God’s existence and truth.

The disciples were frightened, disillusioned, and dispersed during the crucifixion.  The empty grave confounded everybody.  The believers were then stunned Jesus was no longer dead; many saw Him, talked to him, touched him, ate with him.  He was real. 

And as for what it all meant, initially, to the believers, it meant joy mixed with confusion.  Over the years we have come to talk about Easter and perhaps over-focus our faith on the gracious forgiveness of our sins by the cross and, by the empty grave, the gift of eternal life with God through faith in Christ.  Sins forgiven; death defeated.

But we mustn’t stop there.  It took even the disciples a while to figure it all out.

Everything the disciples needed to know about Jesus’s resurrection, who He was – God in the flesh – and what their task would be going forward, Jesus had already told them the past three years and especially in that eventful final week.  Little of His infinite significance – what “Son of God” actually meant – truly sank in, at least not right away.

Even we today are often distracted by the Good Friday misery of death and the joyous Easter-morning relief of life revived.  “He is Risen!”  For the most part we have figured out, believe, and cherish the gifts of divine grace, the big “whew!” of our sins covered and behavioral debts canceled, and the secure knowledge that heaven, eternal life, and our adoption into God’s family and Kingdom are the sure goals of our hope.

That’s all great, but really it is only fullness for us. What about fullness for God?

That fullness is the life we are to give to others going forward.  That is the glory of God Jesus brought to mankind.  Jesus had fully briefed the disciples how His presence, life, death, and resurrection would define their mission ahead.  And for a couple of obvious reasons, it was not the disciples’ mission to accompany Jesus into death.  They were dispersed after Jesus’s arrest because 1) they had to be around later to tell about Jesus, and 2) death was something Jesus had to go through … rejected and alone. 

Jesus finished His mission on the cross; their mission was then to tell the world.

Think of the whiplash juxtaposition: on Friday the disciples thought they had seen their hope turn into a cruel lie and their mission into an empty hoax.  On Sunday, hope became proof of God’s surest truth, and their mission would come to change the world.

Much, much more happened, of course. It took many years and many people to put those amazing events into the fulfilling context of truth and salvation for all mankind. 

But that empty grave?

It will remain empty forever, and thankfully, it is one we will never occupy.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who won’t be surprised if his own grave is a tad itchy, notes that the stone was rolled away not to let Jesus out, but to let us see in.
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Monday, April 6, 2020

699 - I Am ... Sure

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Spirituality Column #699
April 7, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I Am … Sure
By Bob Walters

“… on earth as it is in heaven …” Matthew 6:10, words of Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer

The surface-scratching Christians, in other years, head to church on Easter.

They know a little.  God reigns in heaven and Jesus judges our sins on earth.  We celebrate the forgiveness of our sins by Jesus’s death on the Cross of Good Friday and we praise salvation into heaven’s eternal life by His empty tomb on Easter morning.

And then the barely-clinging, slightly faithful let loose with a shallow cry of “Amen!  Great!  We are done with church for another year!”  Their distancing murmur upon exit echoes a self-cleansing sentiment akin to, “I’ll be back to church next spring.  Until then, please don’t bother me with any of this Jesus or church ‘stuff.’  I’m a good person and don’t need religion or church for God to know it. Like the Bible says, ‘Don’t judge.’  Bye.”

That’s what the outside world seems to think of Easter.  It’s roughly what the media and the domestic left – particularly the academics – promote as Easter.  It’s this religious “thing” about sin, forgiveness, salvation (whatever that is) and getting into heaven.  Its real purpose is to quiet the irrational fears of the superstitious masses.

But this year, nobody will be going to church.  Easter without church will be like Christmas without presents.  And yet like the Whoville “Whos” who found the true meaning of Christmas when the Grinch tried to steal it; this year I pray outsiders and Christians will know the true meaning of Easter because of the virus that couldn’t kill it.

It’s nothing new for most of the world to look the other way at the coming of Christ.  The Apostle Paul was among the first to fully realize and proclaim that God fulfilled His ancient promise by sending to Israel the Messiah Christ, and for the most part, Israel looked away.  God identified himself to Abraham as “I AM”, Jesus frequently used the telling construction “I am…”, and Israel utterly missed the divine connection.

Israel sought deliverance from the Romans, not from themselves.  Hence Israel refused to see Jesus for who He was/is: Israel’s true God in the flesh.  As God has His Kingdom in heaven, so the Messiah Jesus delivered God’s promised Kingdom on Earth. 

In Jesus’s most extensive teachings – the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6-7), the “Olivet Discourse” (Matthew 24-25, Mark 13, Luke 21), and the lengthy section of John 15-16-17 as Jesus led the disciples from the Last Supper to the Garden of Gethsemane – do you notice what’s all but left unmentioned in these major, even final teachings?  Sin, forgiveness, sacrifice, wrath, payment, punishment, and salvation – themes that create focus on ourselves. Jesus focused solely on God’s glory.

Jesus taught about identifying who He, Jesus, was; about his infinite faith and obedience, God’s glory, the true Messiah inaugurating God’s Kingdom on Earth, and what the Disciples and believers were to expect and to do after His death.  Jesus spoke of God’s love, the power of divine truth, the reality of hope, the assuredness of faith, and that He’d be back. Jesus’s message was “Identify God with love,” not, “Do this or else!”

Easter is about God’s love and faithfulness, and about Jesus’s identity and obedience.  Many want Easter to be about “me,” even if it is my fear, guilt, and sin; it’s a common blunder.  

 No, Easter is about God’s truth, Jesus’s obedience, and our faith.

I am sure of it.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: sin is all about me, not about God’s glory.
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Monday, March 30, 2020

698 - Who Knew?

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Spirituality Column #698
March 31, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Who Knew?
By Bob Walters

“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” – John 1:10-11 KJV

The King of all Creation rode a donkey into Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

Nobody recognized Him.

God who promised to return one day to the temple, fulfilling all prayer, prophecy, and promise of delivering-out-of-evil not just Israel but all the world, would prove his absolute obedience and faithfulness later that week.

Nobody had a clue.

Millennia before that, with a rainbow and dove, the One True God and Creator of All that Is, promised all creation He would one day renew the hope of the entire world, heal its fallenness, and take His throne as its King.

That week in Jerusalem God would be lifted up as King, but onto Calvary’s cross.
God long ago promised sinful but faithful Abraham that he would use Abraham’s children – the still-to-be-established nation of Israel – as his chosen, special people to deliver his ultimate and divine judgment, truth, peace, and mercy into the whole world.

And on what we now know as Palm Sunday this enigmatic but wonderful miracle-working, sin-forgiving, cadaver-raising, truth-telling, status-quo-breaking priest, rabbi, prophet, or whatever various things Jesus appeared to be, God was making good on his eternal promise to inaugurate his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

 It was to be the most transformative week in human history, but in that cosmos-rebirthing moment no human yet but Jesus knew the King of Kings was upon them.

 This Jesus, eternally present in creation, was utterly unexpected by hopeful Israel and something the larger world had no idea even existed.  It was Israel’s calling all along as God’s instrument to reveal this king to the world and even they ‘knew him not” when Jesus – fully human, fully God, fully without precedent – arrived in their midst.

As renowned British theologian N.T. Wright describes in his recent book, The New Testament in Its World (p. 373), “Jesus was not a new god … He [Jesus] was and is the human being in whom yhwh, Israel’s one and only God, has acted within cosmic history, human history, and Israel’s history, to do for Israel, humanity, and the world what they could not do for themselves.”

 And nobody saw the King of Kings coming.

We tend to look out for ourselves, and hopefully each other, but usually it’s on our own human terms – power, safety, comfort, pain-aversion, and fear-mitigation.  In the obedient life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we encounter God’s righteous terms.

Israel, as the Gospels describe, had forgotten God’s terms.  The rest of the world, we must understand, didn’t know that Israel’s God had terms.  Believers in Christ now are Israel in the loving, faithful, gracious, and surprising terms of the one true God. 

Salvation and forgiveness rode into Jerusalem – along with God’s glory, Israel’s perfection, and humanity’s only true hope – on that donkey 2,000 years ago.

Who knew?

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers these thoughts heading into Holy Week.
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Monday, March 23, 2020

697 - A Lenten Fast

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Spirituality Column #697
March 24, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A Lenten Fast
By Bob Walters

“Interesting times they are. And all the more interesting that – as we are made to slow down, to live in the moment, to deny ourselves the pleasures to which we are accustomed, and to think about our neighbors – it is Lent.” A recent text from a friend.

It strikes me that the November-December Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season would be the very most inconvenient time of year to have a pandemic.

But early spring can’t be far behind.

Where Christmastime is the season of largesse and lights, families and friends, traditions and get-togethers, springtime is the province of sports and spring breaks, school plays and senior class shenanigans, of flowers and showers and … oh yeah in Indiana in March … basketball.  Lots and lots of basketball.

This would have been the week leading up to the 110th Indiana boys basketball high school state finals played every year since 1911 – 109 years in a row surviving two world wars.  But now, not 110.  Our 2020 NCAA March Madness died the day it was supposed to start – depending how you count – when the Big Ten men’s (and other conference tourney games) were cancelled as teams were warming up in the gym.

There would be no 2020 Big Dance, and no Big Dance card.  Just … cancelled.  Surely somewhere a Sweet 16 is prepping for this weekend’s NCAA Regionals?  Nope.

My more philosophically-minded friends noticed early on that it was healthy to look at this culture-jerking, school-cancelling, sports-crushing, restaurant-and-retail-closing season as an opportunity for introspection.  My erudite friend quoted above put it in the Christian context of Lent, the Holy season of privation leading up to the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross at Golgotha.  I like my friend’s perspective.

Not every Christian observes a Lenten fast, but the Easter season is an apt and prayerful counterpoint to the raucous secularism of cultural Christmas.  Lent prior to Easter gives Christians six weeks of daily opportunity – in the spring, in this season of renewal – to encounter and reflect on their relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

As we are mindful that the reason for the cultural shutdown, social distancing, and basketball void is an impending burst of disease – a tidal wave I am convinced is nearly at hand – we can pray for clearer understanding of God’s grace and mercy.

I look at Jesus as the locus of my peace and hope, not of the world’s fear and disaster; that’s Satan’s party. The cross of Christ was ugly – as ugly as anything in human history – but Lent provides this opportunity to meditate on the beauty of God’s love within the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity, His love for us, and our love for Him and others.

We are still in the adventure phase of this coronavirus ordeal.  When sickness draws nigh the dynamic will change quickly from curiosity and inconvenience to, I pray, one of strength, courage, forbearance, and peace that passes all understanding.  We’ll need to be strong for our families, friends, and communities … and vice versa.

Of everything one can give up for Lent, I can’t think of a better fast than fear.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) does not feel like a lamb led to slaughter; he feels like an American Christian blessed with freedom, responsibility, opportunity, and hope.
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