The power of God's word, and how the messenger may need to get out of the way

Because the Word of God affects us in different ways, I want to be sure to make my point without detracting from other ones that could be made. 

For example, the word of God can be strikingly beautiful. We can feel the way certain words fill our soul with a longing for holiness, or an awe and reverence for the majesty of God's creative power. When the word of God is beautiful, that beauty goes beyond shallow appearance, instead fulfilling the promise of beauty as the marker of its deeper source, like a tree in a desert that signals the presence of water. And again, the word of God can be wise with a wisdom that makes us pause, requires us to expand our thinking and return to it with humility. 

That needs saying before I move onto how Paul communicated about the power of the Word of God. There are times when words of beauty and eloquence are a distraction. There are times when we hear wisdom and power that come from the art of rhetoric, pointing (at best) to human wisdom. While we love and pursue wisdom, the highest form of it is not man-made. 

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

Paul focuses on "Jesus Christ and him crucified" as the message of God's power. Paul was concerned that any eloquence or artistry could leave people doubting. That is, they might not doubt whether they believed but why they believed. Is Paul just a persuasive speaker, or is the message itself powerful? Paul got out of the way of the message: Christ crucified is the message of the power of God. 

Paul continues the message of the power of God by describing the work of the Spirit, too: 

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-12)

This is not often how we speak of the Spirit of God, as simply the spirit within God that knows the inner thoughts of God in the same way our spirit within us knows our thoughts. Paul explains that spirit within God, knowing the mind of God, is the same Spirit we receive so "that we might understand the things freely given us by God." 

Here Paul comes very close to the point that Jesus made when speaking to Nicodemus of the importance the Spirit of God as a living and active force in our own lives and our own understanding. 

(Two more posts are planned to wrap up the current series: a post on the Holy Spirit planned for next week on Pentecost, and the ultimate point of the series planned for the following week on Trinity Sunday.)

Jesus' teaching on new life in the Gospel of John

(Continuing the current series ...)

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all repeat at least some of Jesus' parables of the seed, but the entire Gospel of John has no seed parables at all. I there is basic agreement that the Gospel of John was the last written of the four gospels in the canon of Scripture. In some ways it skips (or assumes) material covered by the earlier gospels. And so rather than telling us about the disciples hearing parables and later asking questions in private, the fourth gospel tells us about one of the Jewish leaders visiting Jesus at night to ask questions in private. Here the Gospel of John recounts Jesus' teaching about the new life: 

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  (John 3:3-7)

I know some televangelists gave the phrase "born again" a bad taste by using it in a way that seemed fairly far from Jesus' original spirituality. But Jesus' point remains -- as does his choice of description. We are not in need of an information transfer from God. Instead we are in need of a life transfusion, a spirit transfusion. We are born of flesh, and flesh is perishable. To be children of God, we need a spiritual life -- not in the sense of an emotional life, not as a euphemism for an intellectual life, but the particular type of spiritual life that brings the Spirit of God to us as a living force in our own lives. 

The power of the Word of God: Jesus' parables of the seeds

When Peter described us as being born of imperishable seed from the Word of God, that was not an innovation on his part. Jesus often equated the word of God with seeds. 

Probably the best-known instance is the parable of the sower, recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark and Luke's retellings make the point plainly: 

Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God. (Jesus, Luke 8:11)

The sower sows the word. (Jesus, Mark 4:14)

Matthew's retelling does not introduce a single central saying that what is sown is the word, instead including that in the explanation of each of the four types of the soil, as someone who "hears the word and ...", each time equating what is sown with the word. 

Jesus tells other parables in which the the point of the parable is carried by focusing on a seed. Matthew has an entire collection of parables of either seed or small living things that grow or multiply (the sower, the wheat and the tares, the mustard seed, the yeast) to describe how the kingdom of God takes root and grows. 

For anyone reading, I appreciate the patience with the slow build here. There are too many individual parts to cover them all at the same time without the individual points being lost in the list of points. 

The power of the Word of God is not in information: continuing with St John

This continues a short series on the power of the Word of God. 

As a short recap of the prior post: When we look at words we are accustomed to looking for their meaning, and with good reason: words are typically meant to carry meaning. But in the previous post we reviewed St Peter's claims about the Word of God, where his argument did not depend on the content of God's Word but on the character of God's Word: God's word is imperishable and God's word is holy, so as it takes root in us we are reborn -- not as creatures of more information, but as creatures of different character, with holiness and the hope of an incorruptible new nature. To be sure, gaining knowledge -- or better yet, wisdom -- is worthwhile. So there is a temptation to define our spiritual growth in terms of gaining information, while St Peter's argument suggests that our growth is in gaining holiness or godliness. Peter also frames his argument that our growth is in a new life received from God's Word, where that new life is not received as information but as a seed. 

St Peter is not the only New Testament writer who speaks of the Word of God in unexpected terms. St John begins his gospel with an extended passage building up to how "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). So John also speaks of the Word of God in ways that challenge our assumptions about the Word of God. This passage in John's gospel has long been key to the Christian understanding of Christ having an existence long before the Word became flesh and lived among us. 

Again in John's writing the Word of God is portrayed less as information and more as creative force and source of life. Here we find some dispute over the translation ("him" or "it" to refer to the Word). Let me offer a translation that could be read without red-flagging by either side of that particular dispute: 

All things were made by the same (Word), and without the same there was not made anything that was made. In the same was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)

Land where you will on the best pronoun to use for the Word, it's not up for dispute that the passage describes the Word as a creative force bringing life and light. 

Again in John's writing, the key property of the Word of God is not the information carried, but the generation of new life. 

More to come, but in reasonable-sized steps. 

The power of the Word of God is not rhetorical: Let's start with St Peter

When we think about powerful words, we may think of rhetoric: skillful persuasion. There is a tendency to think of evangelism and even faith itself in terms of persuasion. To be sure, persuasion done well can help build understanding and overcome barriers. But the power is not wholly in persuasion, not even in the skill of the persuader. The Bible often discusses the power of God's word in terms that go beyond persuasion, and are not even in the same category as persuasion. In this post I'll look at St Peter. 

Peter writes about the word of God in terms that moderns instinctively, unconsciously reinterpret. Consider when he says

you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Peter quotes an older scripture contrasting things that are failing and decaying -- grass, flowers, human flesh -- and what is imperishable: the word of God. Peter's point is not simply that the word of God is imperishable, but that this imperishable quality in God's word is what matters when we are born again, because this is how some of God's attributes become our own. 

To take Peter's points in an order we might expect to construct an argument, he says: 

1. the word of God is imperishable, 
2. this same word of God was preached to them, causing them to be born again, and so 
3. they are born again of what is imperishable. 

Parts of this argument are often taken as analogy, simile, or metaphor. But there is no sign in the text that he meant it as analogy, or simile, or metaphor. The argument has no force if one part is meant literally (they did have the good news preached to them in words), but the bridges back his wider focus -- that we now have an imperishable aspect to us -- are mere rhetorical flourishes. 

The Scriptural language of being "born again" and "children of God" speak of a change of nature in which we are no longer merely beings of flesh and children of men, but also children of God. We easily assume that what is spiritual is figurative, because we often must speak of the spiritual figuratively. But if we speak of the spiritual connection between our spirits and the Spirit of God, we must consider the possibility that this connection from spirit to Spirit is not merely figurative. If an author means to convey that God is with us and transforms us in a way that touches our natures, what language could he use to persuade us it was more than figurative? 

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I'm feeling a series coming on. I hope to continue this next week. 

Evil as "lack of good" is only part of the story

In Christian circles, evil has long been understood as the lack of good. Evil, we believe, is not a thing in itself, much like darkness is not a thing in itself but the absence of light. 

So far so good. But nature abhors a vacuum. When there is a lack of good, the vacancy does not remain empty. When a nation lacks god, it tends to create idols. If it lacks faith in any god, humans do not stop having a need for hope and trust. We may place that hope and trust in other things, or we may opt for cynicism, but the unmet need is going to make itself known either way. Love can also be replaced by different substitutes. The non-religious often consider sex to be the most available substitute for love, and hope that one will lead to the other. The religious (or the checklist-oriented seculars) may fall back on a dependency on rules, and so legalism becomes a cold substitute for love. 

This vacuum-effect plays out in so many ways. Someone may need respect -- and decide to buy the appearance of success, or pursue relative respect by congratulating themselves or putting down others. Someone may want a sense of well-being and obtain it through spending, or self-medication. Someone may want a life full of friends, and fill the emptiness by binge-watching content designed to camouflage emotional emptiness and fill it with the company of phantom friends. 

But the substitutes tend to leave us hungry for the real thing. Faith, hope, and love remain. The greatest of these is love. 

Today, may I notice if I have been using an artificial sweetener in my spiritual life, and seek the Lord. 

And on the third day ...

On Good Friday, we have a solemn service in remembrance of Jesus' death. And we do achieve solemnity. But we probably do not come anywhere close to the devastation and grief that the apostles felt when they first laid Jesus in the tomb. 

Because for whatever solemnity we observe on Friday, we likely have already made some preparations for the feast on Sunday. 

Whenever in life I find myself at the tomb, caught up in the devastation and grief, may I remember Good Friday -- and how hard it is to be overwhelmed with defeat when we are looking forward to a victory feast. 

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!