What, after all, is marriage?

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We'll call them John and Lisa. They've been married more than 60 years. He served in World War II, she was a cadet nurse. They've gone through a lot together. He still calls her "dear," she still makes him laugh, and I've caught them holding hands a time or two. John talks fondly of the ways Lisa has cared for him through his many health struggles, some the result of war. He talks about struggling with his purpose and wondering why God chose to keep him here when so many of his brothers died. It was Lisa who brought him to know Jesus Christ and it was through her witness that he found his place in this world. Lisa jokes of John's stubbornness, but you can tell that he has always bent over backwards for her, perhaps more so than he always does for friends and people in need. She values his work and his servant heart. They read scripture together and pray together. They are very open with each other.

Service. Faith. Openness. Respect. Love. Commitment. Perseverance.

Those are the things of a good marriage. John and Lisa have them. Unlike some couples their age, I really think they would be fine going another 60 years together.

In 2013, Morrie and Betty Markoff celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary. Betty was asked what their secret was. She said, "You have to speak each other’s language. And I don’t mean French or Spanish. I mean, listen to what they’re saying."

When I lead couples through premarital counseling, we discuss such things. We discuss the tremendous gravity of committing to another person for a lifetime, a person who will undoubtedly change over that amount of time. I tell them the story of one of my seminary professors who always ended our evening class early so he could go eat with his wife, something he did every night even though she stared into space and no longer recognized him. We talk about things like agape love—love as commitment. We talk about mutual submission and this deep mystery of the joining of two souls who promise to walk through life together as one, promising to do so up until the moment one is left standing over the grave of the other.

That is the stuff of marriage.

But there's one thing I never hear. Whether talking to long-married couples or engaged couples, there's something that never comes up. And yet, this one thing that never comes up in substantive conversations about marriage is the one thing that took the question of marriage all the way to the Supreme Court and is dividing the country. This one thing that no couple thinks about with their own marriage is apparently the litmus test for the marriage of others:

A complementary set of genitalia.

Now, make no mistake, I'm not saying that gender doesn't matter in any area of life. It does, and gender identity is arguably a separate issue. But it's not gender per se that precedes falling in love; it's attraction. You don't fall in love with someone to whom you're not attracted—physically, emotionally, or otherwise. I'm attracted to the opposite sex. But for a small portion of the population, that attraction is to the same sex. But we both have deep, inexplicable things going on inside of us when we fall in love. We both long for companionship. We both want intimacy. We both want someone with whom we can share anything and make mistakes and still be loved.

I've wondered: why is the government in the marriage business to begin with? Marriage is a deep spiritual reality woven together by the intangible values I listed above. What has Uncle Sam to do with such things? We could have solved this problem simply a long time ago: have government regulate contracts of joint property ownership, etc., but don't call it marriage. Leave marriage—a spiritual commitment—to the religious institutions, where it belongs. That way, a church can decide who to marry and the government can treat all citizens equally under the law as the Constitution says it must. Instead, our Supreme Court has rendered another decision on marriage which is only going to divide our country further and spur more conflict, hatred, and violence.

Let each church and pastor speak to marriage as they wish. This raises the question that I've never directly addressed in writing until now: How should pastor and church speak of marriage? Allow me to offer a perspective.

There's a widely held assumption about marriage, often repeated but nevertheless false: the notion that by allowing gay couples to marry, we are redefining marriage for the first time in history. When most people use the term "traditional marriage" they are referring to a relationship that is: 1) between only one man and only one woman, and 2) freely chosen by both partners. Defined this way, traditional marriage is not a historical precedent but a recent phenomenon. In biblical times and places, marriage was never chosen by the woman and was little more than the transfer of property for the purpose of being fruitful and multiplying (Gen 1:28). The male's lineage was paramount. Having many wives and concubines, a frequent aspect of Old Testament stories, was a sign of wealth and status; a man could have as many as he could afford. As one bumper sticker facetiously put it: "The fact that you can't sell your daughter for three goats and a cow means that we've already redefined marriage." In the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court said that the institution of marriage must expand to include interracial couples. People used to appeal to scripture and "God's natural law" to argue against interracial marriages. There were even occasions on which the courts did so. Marriage was redefined. In a rarely cited case in 1981, the Supreme Court struck down a law in Louisiana that recognized the man as the "head and master" in a marriage. Throughout history, men always had that status, "for millennia." Marriage was redefined.

Scripture and culture are always in dialogue with each other. We have now allowed biblical principle to speak louder than biblical precedent, and have come to believe that by allowing both the man and the woman a choice, we honor their equal status as being made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). By allowing biblical principle to speak louder than biblical precedent, we see that while procreation is certainly a gift from God which many heterosexual couples are endowed with the natural ability to do, there can be many other high purposes. We have seen that marriage can be a prime place for realizing the difficult but blessing-filled work of mutual submission (Eph 5:21), self-sacrificial service (Phil 2:3-4), and loyalty (Rom 12:10). For this reason, few people anymore speak of denying marriage to elderly couples or infertile couples, even though they can no more naturally produce children than a same-sex couple.

We now recognize that deviations from what is "natural" are acceptable, or even necessary, for the nurture and well-being of children. It may be more biologically natural for parents to raise children of their own flesh and blood, but every day children are brought into more God-honoring situations by adoptive parents. When it comes to same-sex couples adopting children, it is often argued that it won't be good for their children because of all the stigma, stereotyping, and bullying they may face. But those negative factors are our fault. Children of gay parents only face such things because we perpetuate that cultural atmosphere. As a TV personality likes to say, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."

Jack Evans and George Harris have been a couple for 54 years. They have loved and served each other for longer than I've been alive. They never once wanted to damage any heterosexual couple's marriage. They've never been sexually promiscuous or abusive to children, which people long assumed was true of all homosexuals. They've lived life together, paid their taxes, and contributed to society. Such a reality was nowhere in view for any of the biblical authors, even when they appear to discuss homosexuality.

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Leviticus 18:22, in the King James Version, says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." The same Hebrew word that is here translated "abomination" is also used for other things in the Levitical law that we today consider silly, like the eating of anything from the sea that doesn't have fins and scales (Lev 11:10). This has led to the hilarious website "God Hates Shrimp," in response to the "God Hates F**s" slogan employed by the Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church.

Scholars can explain this better than I, but the ancient Hebrew law codes express a profound sense of order and strict categories. Certain things had "their place," and these ancient peoples who lacked any knowledge of biology operated with great caution in the face of things that were "out of place" or didn't belong. For example, blood was highly respected as a person's life source from God. It was not to be handled carelessly or eaten in animals (Lev 7:26-27). Blood belonged in the body, and so men were not to approach women during their menstruation (Lev 18:19). Likewise, in sexual relations, the sense of order dictated that the man was the dominant actor and the female was the passive receiver. Some scholars have convincingly argued that the problem was more about the idea of a male playing a passive role than the two being the same gender, which would explain why there was no correlating command for women.

The infamous story of Sodom and Gomorrah is sometimes cited in arguments against homosexuality, but there seem to be much more pressing offenses in this story. First, this was attempted gang rape and sex for sport. "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them" (Gen 19:5). Second, the men who came to Lot were supposedly angels (Hebrew: "messengers"), and for the men of Sodom to do this would have been to "go after strange flesh," as the original Greek of Jude 1:7 says. Thirdly, to allow this act of exploitation would have been a serious violation of their cultural code of hospitality, which Lot expresses: "Don't do this wicked thing...for they have come under the protection of my roof." Ezekiel 16:49 says, "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." Of course, don't forget that Lot's solution to this conundrum was to offer up his virgin daughters to be raped instead (Gen 19:8). As hard as it is for us to understand, in that culture, the protection of his male guests was paramount and victimizing his daughters was the lesser of two evils.

One of many reasons you can't just quote Bible verses out of context.

In the New Testament, we meet more unseen cultural factors and translation issues. Paul was writing to Greco-Roman cultures which were highly sexualized, and in which the predominant human sexual object was not the young, skinny woman of today's culture but underage, effeminate boys. Pederasty was common, and it was all jumbled up with Greek philosophy and gods. This is why Paul, in Romans 1:26-27, connects "unnatural" sexual desires as a consequence of idolatry. He was addressing this flaunting and abusive culture of idol worship (and body worship). Americans today are prudes compared to the people of that time. It's also clear that he's talking about the problem of "being inflamed with lust," not love.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9, the 1984 NIV says, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?...Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders..." This verse is one of the few cases in which older translations like the King James Version did a better job. The KJV says, "...neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind." Wait a minute. Notice the word "effeminate." What's with that? Well, according to scholars, that's a fair translation of the original Greek word malakoi. The root word means "soft." It was a very common word (which, interestingly, is used in Matthew 11:8 as a euphemism for extravagant clothing). It was dishonorable for men to be "soft" or effeminate. Such men could have been born that way or been eunuchs, and were sometimes exploited as male prostitutes, as the NIV translation suggests.

The word the NIV translates as "homosexual offenders" is arsenokoitai. Unlike malakoi, this was not a common word at all, and some scholars even think that Paul may have coined the term. Its meaning is very unclear, but later, non-biblical Greek documents use the word to describe different forms of abuse and exploitation that are not exclusively sexual in nature. The KJV word choice of "abusers" probably captures the essence. Also, notice that "idolatry" is slipped in the list. What is idolatry doing in a list of sexual sins? Again, the two issues were closely related in Greco-Roman culture.

Based on all of these factors, I believe that the Bible does not address same-sex attraction or same-sex relationships at all. To them, there was no such thing. I can't help but remember then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling an American audience in 2007 that homosexuals don't exist in his country. If a modern leader can say that, it's not hard to imagine the same mindset more than 2000 years ago. There was no such thing as a homosexual. Any such person would have been thought of as a heterosexual who was just deviant or perverted. Some scholars have suggested that ancient societies saw homosexual behavior as an expression of "lust overload," an excess of sexual desire, something people did when heterosexual sex was not enough to satiate them. Ironically, people today are more bothered by constrained homosexual relationships than they are excessive heterosexual expression.

It's hard to see how Jack Evans and George Harris pose the more serious threat to the fabric of our society and our life with God. What the Bible seems to address are situations of abuse, exploitation, or other cultural perversions that don't honor the image of God in a person. The Bible has much more to say about why Josh Duggar is immoral than why Jack and George are immoral. Scripture has much to say about what shows love for God and love for neighbor. Perhaps, if we disagree on what the Bible says about homosexuality, can we at least agree that it shouldn't be a top priority or a linchpin issue, given how infrequently the Bible mentions it? As Dwight A. Moody recently asked, "Where is all this travail at the other signs of the wickedness of the world, the marks of society that run counter to the kingdom of God that have dominated our culture for many years?" Does the issue of homosexuality merit the focus we've given it while we are daily complicit in systems that perpetuate poverty and injustice, issues the Bible mentions hundreds of times?

Jesus was once asked a question about marriage (Matt 19:1-12). Some Pharisees wanted to know if Jesus followed the law of Moses which made it very easy for a man to divorce his wife (Deut 24:1-4). He reaffirmed the Genesis narrative of creation, that God "made them male and female" and that "a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Then he said, "What God has joined together, let no one separate."

There are many Christians today who may have softened their viewpoint on homosexual orientation but still cannot affirm same-sex marriage because of this clear reaffirmation from Jesus. I think that's fair and understandable, and no Christian should be called a bigot for echoing this affirmation. But there's a very important part we miss. The Pharisees go on to ask Jesus why Moses gave men permission to divorce their wives for any reason. Jesus essentially explains that it was a concession at the time, but that it was "not this way from the beginning." Then he drops the bombshell: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery." After this, Jesus' listeners came to the same exasperated place that Paul did: we might be better off not marrying at all (see 1 Corinthians 7).

The problem with using the Matthew 19 passage to oppose same-sex marriage is that Jesus wasn't talking about same-sex marriage, he was talking about opposite-sex divorce. He clearly and strictly forbids divorce for any reason except infidelity, and says that men who divorce their wives for any other reason commit adultery by remarrying, as does any man who marries the divorced wife.

But you may notice that there are few Christians out there trying to make this part of the Bible the law of the land.

Here's what Jesus did: he taught who God was. He taught what the ideal was. He told people to strive for that ideal. But he also offers as much grace as we need to fill in the huge gaps we leave. We know that life circumstances, imperfection, and even the fallen nature of creation itself (Rom 8:20-22) create a situation where we must do the best we can and offer each other grace along the way. That's why weddings of Christian divorcees happen all over the country without protests, lawsuits or courts despite Jesus' clear teaching. "No fault divorce," a widely accepted legal provision, is not "biblical" either. We often face situations where there is no "right thing" but only "the better thing." We now recognize that divorce and remarriage, though it may have never been God's ideal at the outset, is part of our world and in many instances represents a more God-honoring reality than the alternative. If we can do that with divorce in light of a clear and forceful teaching from Jesus, we're left with the question of why we can't do it for same-sex relationships, a topic Jesus never mentioned.

When it comes to human relationships, there are things Christians watch and support all the time that we consider benign but have been slowly eroding our vision for self-sacrificial relationships of commitment and loyalty. It's hard to find a sitcom, song, or movie that doesn't treat things like marriage and sex casually. We consume this entertainment all the time without a thought. Same-sex couples have been the scapegoat for the breakdown of the American family, even though that breakdown began long ago. If a family is in strife, it's more likely because they don't pray together than because their gay neighbors are together. I see lots of troubled relationships, and they're not troubled because Jack and George want to get married. I see marriages that are cold and distant in which the two barely even talk to each other any more, and I fail to see how that is preferable or morally superior to a joy-filled gay relationship.

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The church needs to reclaim its witness to self-sacrificial relationships of fidelity more than it needs to solidify its position on gay marriage. Much time and energy has been spent on shouting that marriage is between a man and a woman, a statement that says nothing about what makes a marriage rich, vital, and lasting. Have you noticed that we seem to focus on the sexual aspect of these relationships, neglecting the fact that in day to day life they look much like our own relationships.

Let's live and prove what we believe about the sanctity of marriage. "Sanctity" comes from a word that means "set apart." We have a grand opportunity to show what this really means. We've lost our credibility. Let's get back to the real deal: Service. Faith. Openness. Respect. Love. Commitment. Perseverance. That's the stuff of "the narrow gate" that few find (Matt 7:13-14). Prejudice, judgment, and suspicion are easy. They seem to come naturally. It's time to reclaim our truly counter-cultural witness on marriage...and all human relationships.

"I Thirst"

On April 3, 2015, I was invited to be one of several guest preachers at an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Good Friday service. Each guest preacher was asked to speak briefly on one of Jesus' seven "sayings from the cross." I was assigned the phrase, "I Thirst." This is the text of my meditation.

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John 19:28 - “Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’”

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On August 1, 1975, a nurse named Linda Forney was vacationing at the Grand Canyon. She decided to go on a hike by herself—a long and sun-exposed hike that she started at high noon even though rangers strongly urge visitors to start it before dawn. Under the intense Arizona sun, she became disoriented, and took a wrong turn off the trail. Hours turned into days, and she was not able to find her way back to the trail. She had a few snacks with her and one canteen of water. She was sweltering hot during the day, and shivering cold at night.

When she ran out of food and water, it became a desperate attempt at survival. The human body can go for several weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Linda finally found a crevice in a rock that provided shade from the sun and had a slight trickle of water. She placed her canteen under the trickle but it took most of a day to get enough to drink. She had no food. A few times she thought she heard the sounds of people and aircraft, but she could never attract anyone’s attention. 

20 days after she had gone missing, she was found...sun-burned, barely conscious, and out of water. She was quickly taken to a hospital, where she recovered.

When you’re thirsty, you can’t think about anything else. When you’re thirsty, you are going to preoccupied with getting to that which can quench your thirst.

Thirst is a painful wanting. An eager longing-for.

In the original New Testament Greek of this quote from Jesus, it’s just one word. “Dipso.” “I thirst.” The word appears 15 other times in the New Testament, mostly in the gospels. Here are a few of the other occurrences:

Matthew 5:6 - “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Matthew 25:35 - “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…”

John 4:13-14 - “‘Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.’ ‘Please sir,’ the woman said, ‘Please give me this water.’”

And here’s what’s interesting about this word from the cross in the Gospel of John. Listen to what else the verse says: “Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’” Jesus had just about wrapped up his job. Jesus had done what he came to do. Yet, even before he died and was resurrected, Jesus said, “I thirst.” Because even though Jesus had finished his work on earth, the world was not healed. After all, it was the sinfulness of the world that put him there in the first place. From that very moment, Jesus was thirsty for a healed and redeemed world. 

But...we ourselves also come...thirsty.

Thirst is a painful wanting, an eager longing-for. When you’re thirsty, everything else gets blocked out. Your need is desperate. But it's as if Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, ‘When it comes to righteousness, I want you to be like Linda Forney in the blazing sun of the Grand Canyon.’ Jesus says that we should want righteousness so badly hat it consumes our life...every decision we make, every word we speak, every dollar we spend...consumed with our thirst for righteousness. What would that look like?

In the face of our violent world, may it be the followers of Christ who live with a consuming thirst for peace. In the face of our politically and racially divided world, may it be the followers of Christ who live with a consuming thirst for reconciliation. In the face of vast corporate greed and corruption and special interests, may it be the followers of Christ who live with a consuming thirst for justice. In the face of individualism, lone rangers, and every man for himself, may it be the followers of Christ who live with a consuming thirst for community. In the face of sin, may it be the followers of Christ who live with a consuming thirst for righteousness.  

By the way, I told you that Linda Forney survived getting lost in the Grand Canyon. I told you she was eventually found. But I didn’t tell you who found her. She was finally found by a Native American tribe who lived in the area. She was finally found by people who knew their way around the canyon. She was not found by rangers who looked and called from a safe distance. She was not found by search teams flying high overhead. She was found by those who know what it’s like to live in the canyon.

And you and I, brothers and sisters, can only bring the living water of Christ to those who hunger and thirst when we ourselves bear their burdens and meet them where they are.

[Simmering sermon] I once was blind, but now I'm blinded

In some of the old hymnals, there's a song called "Stepping in the Light" (I've always found the title humorous and have joked, "Well, if I'm going to step in something I'd rather step in light"). My congregation's most senior members love to sing it at our weekly potluck luncheon. Here's the chorus:

How beautiful to walk in the steps of the Savior,
Stepping in the light, stepping in the light,
How beautiful to walk in the steps of the Savior,
Led in paths of light.

It has a very light and peppy feel, and I visualize skipping or dancing, something like what Dorothy and friends did as they sang "Follow the Yellow Brick Road."

It's interesting: there are lots of songs and hymns that have as their context a "before and after" picture of finding faith in Christ. Hank Williams' song "I Saw the Light" proclaims, "Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight; praise the Lord, I saw the light." Of course, there is the most well-known of all, "Amazing Grace." "I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see." 

The interesting thing about this is that whenever the biblical narrative describes human encounters with God—i.e., seeing the light—it actually often results not in happiness or tranquility but in "fear and trembling." Moses' encounter with God found him being asked to do something he didn't want to do (Exodus 4:13). Isaiah's encounter left him crying out, "Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips..." (Isaiah 6:5). The tax collector in Jesus' parable beat his breast and pleaded for mercy when he found his way to prayer (Luke 18:13). Paul's encounter made him totally lose his appetite and left him blinded for a time (Acts 9:9). I thought blindness was the "before" condition?

What happens when we come into God's light, find God's salvation, and open ourselves to God's Spirit? Spiritually speaking, what if it's not so much going from blindness to sight but from unknown blindness to known blindness?

The New Testament lectionary texts for this week include some familiar passages: "For it is by grace you have been saved..." (Ephesians 2:8), and, "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16). As is usually the case, the most well-known passages are often the most misinterpreted.

For example, the Ephesians passage says that grace is the prerequisite of salvation, and faith is the conduit. Most evangelical preaching gets that backwards.

John 3:16, too, is far too often preached without reference to context. It should be at least notable that the most oft-used verse today for preaching to those outside religious circles was originally spoken to someone very much IN religious circles (Nicodemus). But besides that, the encounter has many other fascinating yet unexplored themes. The lectionary designates 3:14-21, which includes a mention of John's characteristic theme of light. 

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3:19-21)

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Here, light is credited with doing what light does best: helping us see. It shows us what we may not see without it. In cases where there are undesirable things present, it "exposes." I'm reminded of a meme I once saw circulating around Facebook: "Those who turn on the light can't be blamed for the mess it exposes."

This is particularly powerful when paired with the imagery of rebirth earlier in the John 3 conversation. Jesus tells Nicodemus, "You must be born again" (John 3:7). I don't think we take this metaphor seriously enough. Think about the condition of a newborn or very young child. Helpless. Unlearned. Trying to move without help. Experimenting with many unfamiliar things. Fascinated with the new.

Yet, some of the most self-assured, authoritative, I-know-the-answers people I have known are those who have adopted the identity of a born-again Christian.

All the imagery in John—birth and light—is describing quite a different experience. Finding God is an experience of being "exposed," of having to lay bare all that which we would prefer to keep hidden. We are "seen plainly" in God's light, and none of us measure up. Coming to faith in Christ is supposed to be an experience of learning to see the world as God sees it—in God's light—and it looks so different from that viewpoint that it's as if we're having to learn how to walk and talk all over again. With our own prejudices and expectations stripped away, we fumble at best. The problem is that, too often, Christianity is presented as merely a confessional belief system instead of a beautiful yet traumatic reordering of our life. As it did with Nicodemus, it should leave us saying, "How can this be?" (John 3:9)

As I considered in a post several years ago, we take too much credit. Am I reduced to humility when I think I have a special revelation from God, or do I flaunt it and revel in new-found self-vindication? We don't see light; light allows us to see.¹ We don't know God; God allows us to know.

Later in John's gospel, Jesus heals a blind man. When he is questioned about Jesus, he famously says, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” Able to see he was, but imagine the journey he had ahead of him. He had been born blind. So everything he had ever heard of—every object, every person, every place—had looked a certain way in his mind's eye, but upon "seeing the light," he would have begun the long, arduous journey of having to recontextualize everything.

A journey that surely requires much patience, humility, and stumbling around. 

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1 I'll give credit to Peter Rollins for this quote. I first heard it from him, but I don't think it's original to him.^↩

Praying By Giving Up on Prayer

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I've long struggled with traditional understandings of prayer.

Especially in terms of the things or people we "pray for." All you have to do is listen carefully and then think through the implications, and you may see my problem.

Most of our talk about "the power of prayer" actually places a lot of the power in our hands: If enough people pray hard enough, God will act. Intervention requires action on our part; if we fail to act, a disaster may occur unabated.

Think about it. Some of us hear it all the time. So and so was sick, needed a job, etc. They amassed a huge network of pray-ers and, if and when things work out favorably, we say that "God answers prayer" or "prayer works."

I've never understood this. To me, the implication is that God sits, hands folded, waiting for enough people to pray, and if we finally manage to get God's attention, God will act.

We wouldn't say it that way, but that's what the language implies to me. It makes me think of flipping a car over. If enough people get on the right side and coordinate their efforts, it can be done.

Many churches, especially internationally, have prayer services for healing. People have been miraculously healed because they...were with the right people at the right place and the right time? Maybe it happens. I'm not really in a place to deny their experience. I can't explain it, which I guess is the point of miracles. But personally, I just can't get on board. I hate to say it, because I don't want to be mean, but it honestly strikes me as Christian voodoo.

I once had someone tell me that she worried she and her friends had once "prayed for the wrong thing." There was a crisis, they all prayed fervently for a certain outcome, and their desired outcome came about. But now they question it all. "Did we pray for the wrong thing?"

That one really twisted my brain into knots. So what you're telling me is that God is willing to do the wrong thing or answer a prayer in a way that goes against God's will if enough people are praying for it?

If my above critique is not connecting with you, don't worry about it. If you see no problem with traditional understandings of prayer, and if they bring you hope, I actually have no interest in stripping you of it. But this is a post for me and others like me. I think some of the traditional understandings of prayer paint a theologically problematic picture of God. If you don't agree, that's fine, and you can proceed in your prayer life with my blessing. But I personally need something else.

At the very least, our theology of prayer must return the power and initiative to its rightful place.

In 1960, Catherine Marshall wrote a piece in Guideposts called "The Prayer of Relinquishment." She basically suggests that we're praying all wrong. She tells stories of people, including herself, frantically praying for something in the midst of a crisis, but then realizing that the way in which they were praying may have actually been hindering things.

One afternoon I read the story of a missionary who had been an invalid for eight years. Constantly she had prayed that God would make her well, so that she might do his work. Finally, worn out with futile petition, she prayed, "All right. I give up. If you want me to be an invalid, that’s your business. Anyway, I want you even more than I want health. You decide." In two weeks the woman was out of bed, completely well.

Understand: I'm always skeptical of these stories, and even if true, they potentially set the rest of us up for disappointment when we don't get the miracle. But beneath all that, Marshall is onto something. The Prayer of Relinquishment is, "I give up. You decide." The old school evangelicals might call this "letting go and letting God." There's genius to this.

As Marshall puts it, "A demanding spirit, with self-will as its rudder, blocks prayer."

In other words, whenever we pray as if the outcome depends on our prayer, we're actually blocking God out.

Part of why the Prayer of Relinquishment is effective is because it relates to our stress response. There's a reason that contemplative authors have spoken of and practiced prayer in a way that involved the body as much as the spirit and mind. Think of being in water. When you're tense, you sink. When you relax, you float. Marshall's key insight is the fact that our prayers may at times be the religious equivalent of clenched fists. We have to "give up" on this kind of prayer to be open to real prayer.

The effect of our stress response on our body and mind is well documented. Physically, our muscles tighten, our digestion slows down and our immune system is compromised. We can literally keep ourselves sick. Emotionally and mentally, we get less sleep, we make rash decisions, and are more irritable. But it's not just us. The stress response has a negative effect on those around us, keeping them tense and more focused on abating the stress than being well.

Perhaps this is a lot of what "letting go and letting God" is all about. God hard-wired us this way. We can actually find great solace and relief when we come to a place of relinquishment. "OK fine, God." Or, perhaps, "I can't control or fix this." We must not see this as synonymous with acceptance or passively saying, "I'm OK with any outcome." What if one's child is deathly ill? What if one has been falsely accused of a crime? We're not talking about acceptance. We're talking about peace. We can't be open to "the peace that passes all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) if we believe the outcome of prayer depends on us. Jesus told the weary to come to him (Matthew 11:28) for rest. Any theology of prayer that is not restful is probably off base.

Certainly, when we're facing a crisis, the prayer of "please, fix this" is natural and understandable. I'm not suggesting that we suppress our "in-the-moment" thoughts and prayers (the biblical authors didn't). But, if it remains long-term, it's a posture that produces adverse affects.

I am not totally on board with Catherine Marshall's article, but it's a step in the right direction. It brings us closer to where I think we need to be with prayer.

I'd like to ask why prayer has to be an activity I engage in rather than a description of how I engage in all activities. Is prayer a thing, or the way in which I do all things? What if I'm supposed to pray through God rather to God?

This is not a new idea. The apostle Paul actually spoke of prayer as something God engages in with us, rather than just being a recipient. "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans...the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God" (Romans 8:26-27).

In a guest post on this blog, Joe Kutter reflected on prayer in terms of "priesthood" and the need that we have, when we find ourselves in a difficult situation, for someone to come alongside us. Not necessarily to "pray for us" but to pray with us, voicing our concerns and suffering to God, something that is very powerful. "The priest is the one who represents the neighbor to God and God to the neighbor...When Floyd visited me in that hospital room, he became a priest to me. He spoke my need to God and he was God’s reminder of grace to me."

This is closer to something that makes sense to me. Because, let's face it, even those who claim to believe that God will fix things will still call 911 in an emergency or take their broken down car to a mechanic rather than praying over it.

As a pastor, I've seen some people experience healing and restoration and some people not, and it has never made sense to attribute the outcomes to who was praying how.

But it has been my experience that when people are sick, depressed, stressed, or a host of other things when life is beating them up, they need people to come alongside them, take their hand and say, "Let's approach the throne of God together."

It may be disconcerting not to have certainty about what the outcome will be. But it's downright terrifying to think that I and my friends have to come up with the right prayer.

Luckily, I don't think we do.

A Cherry-Picker Critiques Cherry-Pickers: The Newsweek Bible article

Newsweek magazine decided to close out the year with a gem of an article on the Bible that is sure to rankle uncritical Christian fundamentalists while injecting a great new sense of vindication into atheists and former Christians.

The problem is, that's exactly the kind of point-scoring the article was written to do as it masquerades as journalism.

You know it's bad when Al Mohler and I basically have the same opinion. Mohler is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he and I would butt heads on basically every theological topic. But his assessment of the article is right on:

It is an irresponsible screed of post-Christian invective leveled against the Bible and, even more to the point, against evangelical Christianity...[The author] really does not address the subject of the Bible like a reporter at all. His article is a hit-piece that lacks any journalistic balance or credibility.

Of course, Mohler, a Southern Baptist, would then go on to try to discredit everything Eichenwald says about the Bible, which is no more responsible. Eichenwald gets some things right, but he does so by way of a sloppy foray into biblical scholarship that is rife with the same level of cherry-picking and oversimplification for which he chides evangelical Christians. It purports to be an article about the Bible itself, but in reality it's an attack on a certain brand of Christianity, evidenced by its opening paragraphs which are full of unfair, broad-brush over-generalizations seeking to paint all evangelicals as extreme fundamentalists. To be sure, I am not any more endeared to Eichenwald's targeted brand of Christianity than he is, but that doesn't mean his article is fair or accurate.

Obviously, you should read the original article first. My response here will fall far from providing an in-depth response to every point raised by Eichenwald (one of the drawbacks of his article is that it fires off a barrage of unrelated debunker's talking points about the Bible, making a response very difficult). But this is my attempt to clarify and correct, as well as provide some general commentary on biblical interpretation and scholarship.

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Transmission and Translation
Eichenwald gets our attention by saying that "no one has read the Bible," making the point that all we're actually reading is a "translation of copies," so to speak. He is correct to remind us of this. Translating, of course, is always an imperfect process that requires a good bit of interpretation. But Eichenwald carelessly says, "At best, we've all read a bad translation..." Tell that to the scholars who've spent years using their linguistic and epigraphic expertise. He also erroneously says that scholars are translating it from a translation. That was true of the King James Version, but modern day scholars are in fact translating from the original languages (just not the original manuscripts, none of which we possess).

Eichenwald writes as if we should be shocked that some words in the Bible aren't always translated the same way. Although he's right that some ancient Hebrew and Greek words have no English equivalent, he uses the example of the Greek word proskuneo and the fact that it's not always translated "worship" to cast doubt on certain passages. Of course it's not always translated the same way. Very few words are. Any given word can change meaning depending on the context. Welcome to the phenomenon of human language. Eichenwald also mentions the fact that ancient writing used no capitalization, punctuation, or spacing. He is correct. But he says this as if it presented an impossible puzzle for those who read it then and translate it now, relegating scribes and scholars to guesswork. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Eichenwald is correct that the transmission of the Bible depended on many hand-copied manuscripts over many years, and he is correct that this process included both mistakes and intentional changes. But most of what he says is overstated or not accurate at all. He claims that "about 400 years passed between the writing of the first Christian manuscripts and their compilation into the New Testament." Leaving aside the fact that he's off by about 100 years, what he's talking about is canonization (not "compilation"). The Third Council of Carthage in 397 C.E. was when the New Testament was officially canonized as the 27 books we have today, but what he leaves out is the fact that the books of the New Testament were widely read and considered authoritative long before they were canonized (canonization often affirmed, not imposed, the acceptance of a book).

Justin Martyr, who wrote between 130-170 C.E. mentions and quotes from some of the Gospels, suggesting that they were already in wide circulation by then. Several apostolic fathers—the designation for a person who knew someone who knew Jesus—mentioned and quoted other books in the New Testament (Polycarp, Clement I, Ignatius). A document known as the Muratorian Fragment that dates between 170-200 C.E. mentions New Testament works as authoritative. Origin, writing in the early 200s, compiled a list of books that were being used by Christians in various regions, and came up with something very close to today's New Testament. This is hardly the 400 year gap that Eichenwald wants us to think there was. On the contrary, this represents one of the fastest tracks to distribution and acceptance in antiquity. In terms of the large number of different manuscripts, New Testament scholar Michael J. Kruger put it well:

Eichenwald mentions the high number of manuscripts as if it were a negative! The truth is that the more manuscripts we possess, the more certain we can be about the integrity of the NT text....Most other ancient texts from the first century (or thereabouts) are preserved in around 10-20 manuscripts (and some only in a single manuscript). Thus, the 5,500 manuscripts of the NT is impressive indeed.

Text Variants
In talking about all these manuscripts, Eichenwald is quick to point out that this means that there are a lot of textual variations. This is true. For any given book of the Bible, there are many extant copies, none of them exactly the same (thus the need for scholars to first reconstruct the original before translating). But the vast majority of variations are minor and inconsequential: a word here, a phrase there. Even some of the malicious or agenda-laden changes made over the years are caught and rooted out by scholars in their reconstructions, thanks mostly to all those manuscripts we have. But Eichenwald, to make his point and shock the reader, picked the passages inserted later into Mark and John as his examples, the only two examples of significant text variation in the entire New Testament. He presents such passage insertions as commonplace: "Scribes added whole sections of the New Testament," he claims. This is patently false. The two he mentions are the only two, and his commentary on them is reckless.

Let's just look at one. Open your Bible to John 8, the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. Either right there in line with the text or in a footnote, you'll read something to this effect: "The earliest manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:59-8:11." See it? It has always been there. This is not the great revelation that Eichenwald seems to think he's making. It means what it says: all of the earliest copies of John's gospel do not have this story, meaning it was inserted later.

That's about all Eichenwald gets right. He goes on to claim that "scribes made it up sometime in the Middle Ages." Not even close. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a 3rd century document, mentions the story, and it was included in the Vulgate, the 4th century Latin translation of the Bible. Eichenwald also boldly claims that "the story didn't happen." How does he know that? It is possible, even probable, the story simply circulated independently for a while, as many stories did, and was later included in John's gospel. Besides, the story paints a very characteristic portrait of Jesus. From everything else we know of him, his handling of the woman caught in adultery is quite true to character. It sounds like Jesus through and through.

Throughout Eichenwald's section on text variants, he makes other factual errors. He claims that some verses, like Luke 22:20 or 1 John 5:7, appear only in late Latin translations of the Bible but not in any Greek manuscripts. Wrong again. The verses he mentions appear in Greek documents like the Codex Sinaiticus, the Codex Vaticanus, and others.

Creeds and the Divinity of Christ
Being a Baptist, I don't have as much of a stake in defending the Nicene Creed or other creeds of the church, but in the interest of fairness, Eichenwald had some exaggerations and mistakes here as well. He rightly points out the influence of Constantine and his less-than-stellar human rights record (although who did have a good human rights record in those days?). But he gives Constantine way too much credit in determining what books made it into the New Testament. He also makes it sound like the Council of Nicea (325 C.E.) was more responsible for the doctrine of Christ's divinity than it was. I can't pin this totally on Eichenwald, though. I've read a number of scholars who insist on saying that Jesus was more or less thought of as a Jewish teacher early on, and that the idea of him being divine only developed centuries after his life. In fact, the divinity of Christ partially comes from the works of Paul, some of which were written while Jesus' contemporaries were still alive. This includes the book of 1 Thessalonians, widely thought to be the New Testament's earliest work written in the late 40s C.E. The book of Philippians contains the well-known Christological hymn that says Jesus was "in very nature God" and had "equality with God" (NIV). This hymn is thought to have been recited by Christian churches years before Paul included it in his letter.

Authorship, Doublets and Contradictions
A substantial portion of Eichenwald's article is dedicated to pointing out realities of the Bible that are no surprise to anyone with a theological education. He deals with a lot of issues related to the Bible's authorship, its inclusion of more than one version of a story, etc. Clearly, he thinks such things are going to serve as a devastating blow to Christianity and its veneration of the Bible. But as far as I'm concerned, the problem with the realities he points out is not that they are true, but that the average Christian doesn't know them.

For example, Eichenwald mentions the fact that the first 5 books of the Bible (the "Torah" for Jews, the "Pentateuch" for Christians) were not written by Moses. Duh. I've never understood why people insist that they were. The text doesn't identify an author, Moses wouldn't have known the Hebrew language, and countless pieces of textual evidence point to a time period long after Moses.

He mentions that 6 of the 13 New Testament books attributed to Paul weren't actually written by him. Yes, that is the overwhelming scholarly consensus, one of many nuggets that are well-known and accepted in biblical studies circles but not known to many in the pews. It was called pseudonymity. It was a common (though not necessarily preferred) practice in ancient times, and would not have carried the connotation of forgery that it would today. In fact, some pseudonymous authors would have thought they were paying their named figure a compliment by writing in their name.

Eichenwald mentions that many Old Testament stories have doublets—two versions of the same story. Yes, this is correct. Examples like the Moses or Noah stories are tricky because they are interwoven with each other and thus make it hard to spot (unless you have a copy of the Torah that is color-coded by source). Others are pretty clear and it's hard to understand how we missed it; for example, the two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. Later in the Bible, it's clear that the books of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings record one version of the early monarchies with 1-2 Chronicles, written later, having different versions of the same events (though what he mentions is the Goliath doublet, which is kind of a different animal and has a long explanation). That kind of thing has been present in the Bible for as long as it has been a unified book. The problem is that we hardly read these books, much less compare them. Of course, for the New Testament, Eichenwald also mentions the disparities between the details of certain stories that are recorded in more than one Gospel. Again, this is nothing new. Such differences have been in plain view for a long time.

This is only a problem for people who have been taught to think of the Bible in problematic ways...and unfortunately, that was the case for me years ago, and it's the case for many Christians. We impose our standards of history, science, record-keeping and everything else on this ancient text, and in doing so actually prevent it from revealing to us the heart of God. While people continue to debate or insist on the inerrancy of the Bible, there is no answer to such questions because the questions themselves are nonsensical given the reality of the Bible. It should be a clue to us that the later compilers and editors of the Bible saw fit to include all of these differing stories with no problem at all. Why would they include two different creation stories (poems, really) together that have so many differences? Maybe because they saw value in both and were unhindered by our modern narrow-mindedness. Unlike us, they were able to leave room for mystery and beauty from the pens of those who were inspired by God to write.

We need to continue to bridge the gap between scholar and average Christian. As a pastor, I stand in that gap and work that space all the time, and it's hard. Pastors often avoid mentioning certain aspects of biblical scholarship in our sermons because we only have 15-20 minutes, and the mere mention of some things would require an extra 40 minutes of explanation. Mental models are powerful things. I've had people during my Bible studies stand up, red in the face, and anxiously ask, "So we can't trust the Bible?!" The assumption is that I have compromised the authority of the Bible (with facts?), when it is our false assumptions about that Bible that are the problem. We trip over our own feet. When we demand historical accuracy from a poem, is the problem with the Bible, or with us? When we are thrown for a loop by two conflicting versions of a story that have both been in the Bible for centuries, is the problem with the Bible, or with us? As Peter Enns put it, "The problem isn't the Bible. The problem is coming to the Bible with expectations it's not set up to bear."

But...public figures pick and choose Bible verses!
Yawn. The parts of Eichenwald's article that most clearly reveal that he really wasn't writing about the Bible itself to begin with are his many examples of how public figures betray their hypocrisy by picking and choosing parts of the Bible to obey or using it for their own agenda. No disagreement from me there. He chooses very likely and easy targets. My question is, to what standard of interpretation is Eichenwald holding those he criticizes, and does he meet it himself?

Judging by this over-simplified hit-piece that plays fast and loose with the complexities of the Bible, he joins the rest of us who "fall short of the glory of God" and often leave something to be desired.

Taking on Flesh: An Incarnational Theology for the Missional Church

The following was originally written for a doctoral level theology class. Consider yourself warned. :)

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“Protestant churches, by and large, have an underdeveloped theology of the incarnation.”[1] So says David J. Bosch at the beginning of a mere three-paragraph treatment of the relationship between incarnational theology and the church’s mission. According to Bosch, it had theretofore only been liberation theologians who had given any treatment to this.[2] A rich understanding of God’s movement and the church’s identity is there for the taking in incarnational theology. Often, the closest the missional conversation comes to this is its concern for “contextual ministry,” translating “the truth of the gospel as good news for the society to which it is sent.”[3] This is not incorrect, but is theologically vacuous.

The word “incarnate” shares a virtually identical spelling with its Latin root that means “in flesh,” but we need not, except in the case of Jesus, insist on the word’s most elementary meaning; i.e., muscular and fatty tissue. Incarnation can and should be understood more broadly to mean the act of one particular entity infusing, taking on, or indwelling the tangible form of another while maintaining its essence. To use the wording of Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, “[Incarnation is] any person or thing serving as the type or embodiment of a quality or concept.”[4] Incarnation or indwelling is something God has been up to since the beginning of time and now calls the church to do as the body of Christ. The movement can be seen in a chiastic structure:

A. God in Creation

     B. God Among a People

          C. God in Christ

     B'. Christ in the Church

A'. The Church in the World

God in Creation

In the book of Romans, Paul makes a significant observation about God, humans, and the created world:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Rom 1:18-21)

Here Paul claims that the power and nature of the invisible God are so deeply embedded in creation itself that it is “plain” who God is, and that “people are without excuse.” Paul also affirms that creation itself is in the “already, not yet”[5] state, and “will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).

These passages in Romans are as Paul’s commentary on the Spirit of God in the act of creation, when God breathed God’s ruah (breath/wind/Spirit) into the adamah to form adam. Even before giving shape to a formless earth, the first creation story tells us that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2, KJV). These references to the “breath of God” in scripture are many and the ruah is seen as foundational to life itself. “Breath meant life, and it is God who lends breath to all creatures, thus granting a share in God’s Spirit.”[6] Sallie McFague even argues that the created world should be seen as God’s body, and that human life is bookended by two breaths: “…Our first when we emerge from our mother’s womb and our last when we ‘give up the ghost’ (spirit).”[7] Pastor and author Rob Bell cites one branch of Jewish scholarship which argues that the venerated Hebrew name of God—YHWH—was thought to mimic the sound of breathing when the letters are spoken one by one: “yod – hey – vah – hey.” Bell asks rhetorically, “Is the name of God the sound of breathing?”[8] The ancient prayers contained in the Psalms express the all-encompassing nature of God’s presence in creation (e.g., Ps 139:7) and its display of God’s creative nature (Ps 33:6).

The Spirit of God “takes on the flesh of” creation which, though imperfect, displays God’s power and nature. This was only the first part of a compelling movement that we see throughout the narratives of scripture.

God Among a People

It doesn’t take long after creation for the biblical narrative to move toward the rebelliousness of humans and their ever-in-flux relationship with God. Nonetheless, God seems determined to remain in relationship with people. Terence E. Fretheim argues in his commentary on the Noahic covenant that this determination is quite radical:

For God to promise never to do something again…entails self-limitation regarding the exercise of divine freedom and power...God decides to go with this world, come what may in the way of human wickedness. God makes this promise, not simply in spite of human failure, but because human beings are sinful.[9]

We begin to see a movement through the OT narrative following the manifestation of God’s Spirit in more and more specific contexts. “The narratives of Scripture move beyond an impersonal and generalized sense of Spirit and speak of the mission of the Spirit in gathering a people.”[10]

In the biblical narratives, God establishes God’s covenant, communicating it through one particular chosen mediator. Marshall observes that there is a certain tension between the one (a leader) and the many (a people), and that whether it be Saul, Deborah, Samson, etc., there is no predictability or formula to the people God chooses.[11] Through chosen messengers, God communicates the choice to be present to a people:

I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. (Ex 6:7) 

I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. (Lev 26:11-12)

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors… (Deut 7:6-8a)

In the Leviticus passage above, the phrase “dwelling place” is translating the Hebrew word mishkan, which has been traditionally rendered “tabernacle” and is often used synonymously with the Tent of Meeting (ohel mo’ed). In the Exodus narratives, this was the portable structure which was to be set up as a special place in which God’s presence could dwell and meet with chosen leaders. The Torah implies that this sacred space would have no such importance or power if separated from God’s covenant community, formed around and entrusted with God’s teaching. The later covenant language reinforces the idea of God’s presence being infused into a gathered people. “I will make a covenant of peace with them…I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Ezek 37:26-27).

However, God’s choosing and covenant-making was not just for its own sake, or even solely for the sake of the recipients. We see this first in the Abrahamic covenant: “…I will bless you…and you will be a blessing…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:2-3). This is the first of many indications that God intends for Israel to be the conduit of God’s blessing, message, and reign. “Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6). Parts of the Torah envision Israel living out God’s commands as an example that will draw the envy of others:

Observe [my commands and decrees] carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws…” (Deut 4:6-8)

The Spirit of God in the Old Testament is not always a benevolent force, however. There is an undeniable piece of the OT narrative in which God uses the “purify and drive out” method, and such things may very well help us keep in check our assumption that God is always on our side. However, as we follow the later prophetic literature all the way to the life of Jesus, we see that the “draw to and redeem” model wins the day over “purify and drive out.” “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established…and all nations will stream to it” (Isa 2:2). “…[I] am about to come and gather the people of all nations and languages, and they will come and see my glory” (Isa 66:18). Israel is called “a light to the Gentiles” (Isa 42:6, 49:6). As Deuteronomy 4:6-8 suggests, God’s ultimate desire is peace and justice—achieved through Israel and extended to all. The law codes delivered through Moses are reinterpreted as ritual signs of covenant faithfulness and not the be-all, end-all: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and…to set the oppressed free…” (Isaiah 58:5-6). This was a sign of things to come. It is not until this movement arrives at its most specific/focused point that God ultimately unites with humanity in a powerful and mysterious way: the Word become flesh.

God in the Person of Jesus Christ

“Jesus is the one in whom God’s relationship with us attains perfection.”[12] In Jesus Christ, the movement of God’s indwelling finds its highest and most consequential—yet most local—point. It also finds its most literal manifestation. In Jesus, we believe that the Word of God becomes literally manifest in flesh and bone. As Tanner implies, the Johannine image of the Word (logos) becoming flesh is the most helpful and powerful when discussing THE incarnation. Logos appears in the NT 330 times. Its usage was widely varied but its definition fairly simple: “word,” as in communication, something said, or an expression of thought.[13] We need not go far beyond this to glean a powerful implication: Jesus was God’s Word in flesh and bone; the living summary of God’s message. That all things were created through this Logos of God (John 1:3; Col 1:16) draws our attention back to Genesis 1 where creation comes into being through the spoken word of God.

God has been incarnate in creation—in some way or another—since the beginning of time. With Jesus, however, there is a significant distinction to be made from all previous incarnational activity.

Jesus does not just get his existence from God, as we do; he exists in God; his very existence is God’s existence[14]…The assumption of humanity by the Son produces a co-inherence of divinity and humanity that better imitates the co-inherence enjoyed by members of the Trinity than does God’s containing and pervading creation generally.[15]

So part of what it means to call oneself a Christian is to say that the life of Jesus was the best and most complete tangible representation we have of what God is like. “In becoming flesh, Jesus Christ as the living Word became understandable, knowable, and accessible for all time and to all persons.”[16] Jesus was and is that tangible representation because “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9). It is also because of God’s uniting with humanity in this way that reconciliation between God and humans can be fully realized (Rom 5:11; 2 Cor 5:19). Andrew Sung Park makes an intriguing observation on this union: “Since only a human being ought to make satisfaction and only God is able to do the job, it was necessary to have a God-human reconcile God and human beings.”[17] Thus Jesus is referred to as both “son of man” and “son of God.”

God not only took on literal flesh, but also took on the “flesh”—the form, language, culture—of 1st century Palestine. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” This making of a dwelling is the Greek correlate of the tabernacle. It carries a sense of “pitching a tent” or “setting up camp.” In Jesus, God was not just among the people but one of the people of that area. Jesus was raised in Jewish customs. He spoke the language. He dressed like them. His parables reflected images and concepts that his listeners would have understood (wineskins, seeds, grapevines, fish, etc.). Jesus was the full cultural immersion of God’s message. “Jesus as the incarnate Good News took on the particularity of his context.”[18] “He came in a very particular way to a particular people at a particular time in history. He moved into the neighborhood of Galilee and demonstrated there who God is.”[19] In the OT, the Israelites experienced the trauma of being forced to adapt to another culture, and asked questions like, “How can we sing the Lord’s song while in a foreign land?” (Ps 137:4). In Jesus, this question was answered. The Word in the flesh inaugurated a new call on God’s people to be incarnational.

Christ in the Church

The Gospel of Matthew reports Jesus saying to Peter, “…on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt 16:18). Jesus communicated to his disciples that his time with them was not for its own sake, but that he was preparing them to continue living and proclaiming the kingdom through the Spirit. Jesus instructs them to go make disciples, baptize, and teach (Matt 28:19-20). He entrusts with them the “keys of the kingdom,” and tells them, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:19). Jesus promises his abiding presence through the Spirit for this task: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17). Clearly, the church after Jesus is entrusted with a great task, and as Paul explains, it also has a great identity: the Body of Christ. Paul affirms diversity in the body and the essential nature of having each part connected to the whole. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor 12:27; see also Rom 12:4-5). Through the Spirit, the church is the incarnate presence of Christ in the world. The church is Christ’s body, and therefore the manifestation of Christ in its context. As Marshall observes, this is more than just a representation. Through a new and pervading presence of God’s Spirit that was inaugurated at Pentecost (Acts 2), the church does not merely represent Christ but actually participates in the life of Christ through baptism. “…The Spirit plunges the believer into the very life of Christ…The Spirit draws believers into the paschal rhythms of Christ.”[20] Paul puts it this way: “God…has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor 1:9). Ethno-religious boundaries give way to inclusivity: “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph 3:6). “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor 12:13).

Another important piece of the identity of the church is its collective nature. In 21st century America, individualism reigns supreme, and more and more people are taking a rogue approach to religion. In a personal conversation, one gentleman put it this way: “I do church by myself.” While I understand what he was trying to say, doing church by oneself is theologically impossible. Paul’s analogy of a body points us to its interconnectedness. The church is not even a gathering of individuals but a collective whole, made possible only by a humble and self-sacrificial approach to the other that Paul stresses over and over (see Rom 12:10; Gal 5:13; Eph 2:4-6; Phil 2:1-4; etc.). The Greek New Testament word ekklesia, translated as “church,” literally means “the ones called out,” and has an irrevocable communal aspect. Another word, koinonia, is often translated as “fellowship.” Paul uses this word to describe our koinonia with Christ (1 Cor 1:9), but its more common usage refers to the believers. This is not just a gathering at a certain place and time, but the melding of lives and souls. “A fellowship of believers shares more than common beliefs and core values; they display a profound regard for one another's spiritual and physical well-being as a community of friends.”[21] The living Christ is seen in the church when it functions as a body.

In sending the church, the incarnational movement of God flows back out among people. The church serves as the NT cognate of the chosen people of the OT, but with several key differences. One is that the chosen community is now radically inclusive and knows no cultural or religious boundaries. Peter said to Cornelius, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34-35). The other, more key difference is that, now, God’s presence and work in the world flows through the same Spirit and Word that was present in Jesus, who was the ultimate union of God and humankind. When God’s power and nature were incarnate in creation and his message incarnate in a people, it was still necessary for humans to “seek and find.” Now, we can be “found in.” The only prerequisite of salvation is God’s grace; our faith is the conduit (Eph 2:8). The church as the body of Christ has a noble role to play. “The church is God’s personal presence in the world through the Spirit.”[22]

The Church in the World

Through our baptism into the body of Christ, we take on and become participants in this incarnational nature of God. We are being transformed into the image and likeness of Christ (Rom 8:29, 2 Cor 3:18). So if the church is Christ’s body, being made like him, and in Christ, God “took on the flesh” of the context, what does this mean? The church’s call is to live and proclaim the reign of God in the flesh of its context. What we see in Jesus is that the gospel is not something abstract that can be plugged in anywhere. God’s most clear and powerful self-revelation was also the most local and contextual, as we must be.

This is not new. Paul seems to grasp this reality in 1 Corinthians: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews…To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:20-22). However, perhaps the most intriguing scriptural model for our incarnational mission is the sending of the 70/72 in Luke 10. Roxburgh expounds the implications of this passage in which these appointed pairs are sent out with the message of the kingdom into different communities as dependent strangers.

Luke 10:1-12 uses the language of a stranger who receives hospitality. It’s important here that those who go two by two are the ones who receive hospitality and the gracious goodness of those who live in the towns and villages. Luke repeats the injunction to enter and stay, along with the parallel injunction of eating what is set before them, indicating this entering and eating lie at the heart of his message…This is not, it would seem, a hit-and-run event…these disciples stayed with the people for quite some time.[23]

They were sent with no resources and were told to go and assimilate with these families and villages as their guest, twice being told to “eat whatever is placed before you” (Luke 10:7, 8), something that would have produced anxiety for any faithful Jew. Living the gospel incarnationally sends us into the world as the stranger. Today, in the attractional model, the church expects the opposite. We program and advertise and try to do just the right thing that will compel others to come to us as the stranger on our turf. It is the church that is to go, however, taking on the flesh of its local context. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “If the gospel is to be understood…it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed.”[24]

This is not a utopian vision, free of conflict and risks. “Compassion does not try to heal or comfort from a distance; rather, its willingness to wade into the thick of it with others means putting the self at risk. This Jesus does, without regard for the looming crisis.”[25] A crisis it is. Many churches are in survival mode, and the last thing such a church would instinctively do is put itself and its preconceived notions at risk. But this is exactly what happens whenever we deeply engage with another reality: we must also undergo change. We see this in the book of Acts as new realities forced the early Jewish followers of Jesus to reinterpret God’s message for their time. It produced conflict (Acts 15:36-41; Gal 2:11ff) and necessitated serious conversations about identity and priorities (Acts 15:1-21). “Luke is helping his readers understand that opposition is the norm when the Spirit breaks the boundaries of expectations and predictable ways of relating to people.”[26] Craig Van Gelder refers to these dynamics between church and culture as forming and reforming.

This reinforces the logic that the church always needs to be both confessional (claiming and reclaiming its identity in relation to the historic Christian faith) and missional (engaging its context and continuously recontextualizing its ministry)…This means that congregations seek to become contextual even while they seek to maintain the historic Christian faith…The ministry of the Spirit helps congregations engage in both processes simultaneously.[27]

Guder observes that this is a call for the church to enter a space that is full of ambiguities. “Such a calling never leaves the church in a finished, settled, or permanent incarnation. Its vocation to live faithfully to the gospel in a fully contextual manner means that it can sometimes find itself either unfaithful or uncontextual.”[28] Could it be that the primary way God transforms people—both Christians and the world to which we are sent—is through an encounter with the other?

Conclusion

The wind/Spirit of God blows wherever it pleases (John 3:8), and the incarnational nature of God is inevitably going to be part of the life of the church because we participate in the life of God through Christ. It is time for the church to live incarnationally. “If you want to discover and discern what God is up to in the world just now, stop trying to answer this question from within the walls of your churches.”[29] The missio Dei does not begin and end with us, and it is within this framework that we see how any person can be both the subject or object of God’s mission. The church often sees itself as the subject of God’s mission, the sole distributor of divine resources. Most churches, when they seek to articulate an understanding of their mission, do so behind closed doors and only afterward take that decided upon agenda into the community. This is backwards.

Our habit has been to ask these questions in the exact [wrong] way. First we ask about the nature and purpose of the church in some abstract or idealist way…Then we develop strategies to make this kind of church relevant to the places where we live. A missional understanding moves in a different direction, beginning with questions about the gospel and the context and then moving to the church so that the shape and life of the latter comes out of the interactions of the first two.[30]

A notable aspect of the early church as described in Acts 2:42-47 is that they were not actively trying to grow. We’re told of their devotion to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. We’re told of their radical unity and the way they shared their resources. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47, emphasis added). Growth was not their primary goal but merely a byproduct of faithful witness in their context. Being “missional” carries no guarantee of numerical growth in a given congregation, but if such growth is to happen, we need to realize that actively pursuing such growth may very well be the least effective way to achieve it.

The church is called to “seek first the kingdom” and lose its life for the sake of Christ in order to find it. The church must enter its context incarnationally, with no purse, bag, or sandals (so to speak), and see “what God is up to in the neighborhood.”[31] The heart of God—the missio Dei—is in the community.

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[1] Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 512.
[2] Ibid., 513
[3] Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North Amierca (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 18.
[4] Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 38.
[5] Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1979).
[6] Molly T. Marshall, Joining the Dance: A Theology of the Spirit (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2003), 21.
[7] Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 143.
[8] Rob Bell, Breathe (NOOMA 014), DVD (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).
[9] Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck et. al., Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 396, emphasis added.
[10] Marshall, Joining the Dance, 38.
[11] Ibid., 38-39.
[12] Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 9.
[13] James Strong, ed., “3056: Logos,” “The New Strong’s Expanded Dictionary of the Words in the Greek New Testament” in The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 152.
[14] Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity, 25.
[15] Ibid., 48.
[16] Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 61.
[17] Andrew Sung Park, Triune Atonement (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, Kindle Edition), Location 258.
[18] Ibid., 62.
[19] Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren, Introducing the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 94.
[20] Marshall, Joining the Dance, 79.
[21] Robert W. Wall, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck, et. al., Vol. 10 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 71-72.
[22] Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 25.
[23] Alan J. Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), 139.
[24] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 141.
[25] Marshall, Joining the Dance, 68.
[26] Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, 122.
[27] Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 54-55.
[28] Guder, Missional Church, 14.
[29] Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, 134.
[30] Roxburgh and Boren, Introducing the Missional Church, 72.
[31] Roxburgh, Missional.