Confrontation In Nazareth (2)

 

 

“Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased’” (Luke 3:21 - 22).

 

In Nazareth Jesus will read the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me…” (Luke 4:18).

 

The baptism of Jesus Christ was not only an expression of the Trinity, but it was an ongoing experience in the life of Jesus Christ. The heavens never ceased to be open for Jesus, other than that holy time when darkness covered the land and He cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Yet, they were open even then, for then the holy justice and mercy of God met as they consumed the sacrificial Lamb on the Cross, the Lamb bearing our sins and becoming sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). The heavens were open even then to Jesus on Golgotha, for the Father was accepting His Son’s holy offering of Himself.

 

Have you considered the similarity of Jesus’ baptism and the Creation account in Genesis Chapter One?

 

In both passages we see water, in both passages God speaks, in both passages we see the Holy Spirit, in both passages a new creation comes up from the water, in both passages we see mankind being formed in the image of God, in both passages we see the Son. In Genesis we see the Son “in the Beginning,” as the “light,” and as the speaking Word (see John 1:1 – 5).

 

When I write that “in both passages we see mankind being formed in the image of God,” I mean that in the Incarnation, in Jesus Christ, a new humanity comes forth – Jesus is the “grain of wheat falling into the ground” (John 12:24), He is the Last Adam and the Second Man into whose image we are formed (1 Cor. 15:45 – 49; Eph. 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 8:29).

 

In Genesis we see ourselves in Adam, in the Gospels we see ourselves in Jesus Christ (see also Romans 5:12 – 21).

 

Baptism is an ongoing experience for us in Jesus Christ, replete with mystery, filled with wonder. In Christ we find our identity rooted in baptism (Romans Chapter 6; Colossians 2:9 – 19; 1 Corinthians 12:13), we are buried with Christ, raised with Christ, and ascended with Christ.

 

The association of water and the Holy Spirit continues into and beyond the Day of Pentecost when Peter says, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

 

Baptism set the course for Jesus, does baptism set the course for us?

 

Baptism is more than something that occurs at a definite time and place (though it is indeed that), but rather something that continues as our Way of Life in Jesus Christ. In baptism we “consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God” (Rom. 6:11), in baptism we become members of Christ’s Body (1 Cor. 12:12 – 13), in baptism we are raised from death to life and enter the covenant community through the circumcision of Christ (Colossians 2:11 – 13).

 

Through baptism we pass from belonging to ourselves to belonging to Jesus Christ, ownership to us passes from self and Satan to Jesus Christ who purchased us with His blood (1 Cor. 6:19 – 20; 1 Pt. 1:18 – 19; Rev. 5:9 – 10).

 

Soldiers enter the Army as they speak the oath of induction, from that point forward their lives are not the same. Brides and grooms say wedding vows, from that time forward their lives are not the same. In the case of brides and grooms, they move from being two people to being one person (a mystery indeed – they do not lose their identity, yet they gain a new one). In the instance of the soldier, he no longer belongs to himself, he now belongs to his country.

 

In baptism we become “bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh” (Eph. 5:22 – 33) and “members of one another” (Rom. 12:5 – 6).

 

The state of being of the soldier, the bride, and the bridegroom changes during the oath of induction and the wedding ceremony; how much more does our state of being change when we go down to death in the waters of baptism and rise in newness of life in Jesus Christ? No wonder we are instructed to think about ourselves differently than we did before, to “consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

 

A new creation does indeed rise from the waters of baptism (2 Cor. 5:17); the Holy Spirit hovers over those waters as He did in Genesis, and He descends upon those rising from those waters as He did with Jesus Christ. No wonder Paul evokes Genesis when he writes, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). (In 4:6 Paul anticipates 5:17, and in 5:17 he looks back to 4:6).

 

Well, I suppose we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I hope we are reading these Bible passages and pondering them.  I imagine some of this is new, for we tend to compartmentalize baptism and not think about it very much – it tends to be something we did once upon a time, rather than something we are living today. When we do think about baptism, it is often in terms of what we’ve been taught about it, rather than how baptism is living in us and we are living in it.

 

Some of us can be more concerned about what others believe about baptism, than about its reality in our own lives. Most of our traditions have something valuable to contribute to our understanding and we ought to be careful when we think we know what others believe and why they believe it.

 

My present concern is that we live out our baptism in Jesus Christ, the present is more important to me in Christ than how we got where we are, we must trust Christ for the past.

 

Baptism is an ocean with endless depths and horizons and currents, it simply can’t be measured, it can’t be neatly defined; thankfully it can be experienced in Jesus Christ and its central navigation points entered on our charts.

 

If we return to Nazareth, as Jesus did, we will confront our baptism, our baptism will be there to meet us.

 

How might that be?

 

Confrontation In Nazareth (1)

 

I’ve been pondering Luke 4:14 – 30 for a few weeks. It comes and it goes in my mind; I visit it throughout the week, thinking about it, wondering about it. I see Jesus in the passage, I see myself, and I see us. It seems to me that this is an ongoing confrontation for us, confronting Scripture, confronting the status quo, confronting our own sense of calling in our Father. It almost seems that being thrown off the cliff…or at least coming close to the cliff…is a rite of passage, perhaps a way of life.

 

Do you see yourself in this passage? What role are you playing?

 

I have often played roles that surprised me, roles that I did not think I wanted to play, roles that later disgusted me. This is to say that I need to be careful lest I fall back into those roles; better to follow Jesus, better to emulate His role, His calling, His love…even should it lead to the edge of the cliff.

 

This is a challenge of sonship in our Father, we are called to live in and through and “as” the Firstborn Son, Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus in His baptism (Luke 3:21 – 22), we follow Him in His temptation (4:1 – 13), and we follow Him in His return to Nazareth (4:14 – 30). We also follow Him in His genealogy back to Adam in that we share humanity with Him and with those around us (3:23 – 38).

 

There is also a sense in which John the Baptist precedes us as he precedes Jesus. John cries, “After me is coming one mightier than I,” as he prepares the way of the Messiah.

 

How can this be? How can John the Baptist precede us as he preceded Jesus Christ?

 

To precede Christ is to precede the Body of Christ, it is to proclaim both the Head and the Body, for how can one have a head without a body or a body without a head?

 

When we read the promise of the New Covenant in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, when we read of a New People in the Messiah, of a New and Living Temple, are we not reading the proclamation of John the Baptist, since he embodies what we term the Old Testament? When John the Baptist speaks, the Old Testament speaks; when the Old Testament speaks, John the Baptist speaks.

 

Perhaps if we will “see” the unfolding Word of God as it points to Christ and His Body throughout the Old and New Testaments, we will have faith and confidence to fulfill our calling, that we will be People with the Living Word, the life-giving Word in Christ, a Stone cut without hands filling all the earth.

 

As I hope we will see, one of the challenges in Luke 4:14 - 30 is that the passage that Jesus reads in Luke 4:18 – 19 (from Isaiah 61:1 - 2) becomes our own passage in Him, our calling in Him, our proclamation in Him…after all, the Incarnation continues within us. That is, we are to also stand and read Isaiah 61:1 – 2, and not only are we to read it, in Jesus Christ we are to live it as His Body.

 

How are we, how am I and how are you, identified with Jesus in His baptism, His genealogy, His temptation, and His return to Nazareth?

 

What do you think?

 

What do you see? What can you see?

 

How are you challenged?

 

Seeing Stars from Deepest Wells? (2)

 

 

Recently I was reading Revelation Chapter One aloud to Vickie from Peterson’s, The Message. We came to verse 16 and “His mouth a sharp-biting sward, his face a perigee sun.”

 

“What does perigee mean,” I asked? Since neither one of us knew I looked it up.

 

The online Merriam – Webster dictionary informed us that perigee means “the point in the orbit of an object (such as a satellite) orbiting the earth that is nearest to the center of the earth.” This means that while we can speak of perigee moons, we cannot speak of perigee suns since the sun does not orbit the earth. Peterson chose an incorrect word (a check of the online version of The Message shows that this has been corrected).

 

Whether we are writing of seeing stars from the deepest wells, or of perigee suns, we ought to be checking ourselves.

 

We visited a church not long ago which sang a song with the words, “Then You came along and put me back together.” Where does this come from? We are not put “back together” by Jesus, we are made new creations in Him, our old “man” dies with Him, and we are raised in newness of life. We now have a new identity in the Trinity – we are not a Humpty Dumpty miracle. Our modus operandi seems to be, “If it feels good write it and sing it.” We no longer care about the truth of our lyrics, any more than we care about the truth of our books.

 

I still recall the reaction of a leader in the church association I was with when The Shack was published, all he cared about was that it touched people. When I circulated a paper to pastors demonstrating the error of the book and its attack on the Atonement, he wondered what my “problem” was. Apparently touching people is all that matters, it does not matter whether we touch them with truth or error, with light or with darkness.

 

Of course, error is often subtle and looks good, even looks great, and so people are attracted to it – as Paul writes, Satan transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

  

I recall my reaction to Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like It In the Word, an account of the building of the transcontinental railroad – it was that it contained implausible error after error, common sense errors. How could people read the book and not see that the railroad could have never been completed at the daily rate (often in inches when blasting through rock as I recall) that Ambrose was using. The public loved the book, at least until wiser eyes critiqued it. As one online writer observes, “The book was rife with factual errors, misquotes, contradictions, demonstrably misleading and/or inaccurate statements, and unsupported conclusions.”

 

But why allow facts to ruin a good story?

 

My reaction to a biography about Bonhoeffer was similar, the difference being that my reaction was on two levels, one was literary and the other historical and theological. On a literary level the writing was, at times, juvenile. On an historical and theological level, it was often inaccurate, error filled, and failed to comprehend, even in a rudimentary fashion, Bonhoeffer’s thinking. When two historians, one from Grove City College and the other from Wheaton, took issue with the author’s inaccuracies, he accused them of nitpicking. Many people loved the book, once again, why allow facts (and in this case poor writing) to ruin what we think is a good story?

 

The same is true of our fascination with Biblical prophecy, which is seldom Biblical, but sure is entertaining. I have a friend who has been a member of his Presbyterian denomination for decades and yet who goes along with popular teachers on prophecy – teaching which his denomination and tradition do not support. When I send him examples of what his denomination teaches (from the denomination’s website), when I suggest that he talk to his pastor, he will have none of it – it is better to go with the crowd and the popular franchise prophecy industry and money generating teachers and preachers than to take the time to thoughtfully consider what his denomination teaches, what his pastor believes, and to actually read the Bible.

 

If it feels good, believe it. If it sounds good, it must be true.

 

Well, I really just wanted to write about seeing stars from deepest wells, which I consider a somewhat innocent offender in this lineup of inaccuracies, for I think Arthur Bennett simply used something he’d assumed for decades was true – a warning to us all. Other offenders are more serious because they can hurt people.

 

The problem isn’t really with the authors and speakers; it is with the readers and listeners. If we knew how to read and how to listen, if we didn’t allow ourselves to be led by rings in our noses, we would ask, “Is this true?” Then we might say, “Enough of this nonsense!”

 

If we don’t know the Scriptures, what can we expect? If Jesus isn’t our North Star, if He isn’t the heartbeat of our lives, if we aren’t loving Him with all that we have and all that we are…then we will surely be led astray…and it will be on us, not on the traducers who feed us poison. Yes, they will have their Day before the Throne, but so will we.

 

Despite of Bennett’s mistake in his prayer, The Valley of Vision is a wonderful compilation of prayers, with Christ at its center. As for Peterson and Revelation 1:16, he really should have known better, another warning to us all.

 

Stephen Ambrose is a sad example of someone who once performed exemplary work becoming an example of the slovenly.

 

The above song lyrics, The Shack, the Bonhoeffer biography, the prophecy teaching industry which has seduced so many and picked their pockets; they are all another matter. They are not a matter of seeing the stars from the deepest wells, but rather of descending into the darkness of the wells and taking others with them.