Cadences of God

I have been spending some time latterly thinking about Wesley and the doctrine of predestination. Wesley was a famous rejecter of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. To be more specific, he disagreed with the doctrine of double predestination, whereby some are elected to damnation.

Here is what he said:

“With regard to…Unconditional Election, I believe,
That God, before the foundation of the world, did unconditionally elect certain persons to do certain works, as Paul to preach the gospel:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to receive peculiar privileges, the Jewish nation in particular:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to hear the gospel…
that He has unconditionally elected some persons to peculiar advantages, both with regard to temporal and spiritual things:
And I do not deny (though I cannot prove that it is so), that He has unconditionally elected some persons [thence eminently styled ‘the Elect’] to eternal glory.
But I cannot believe, That all those who are not thus elected to glory must perish everlastingly;
or That there is one soul on earth who has not, [nor] ever had a possibility of escaping eternal damnation.”

Wesley was not able to escape the clear presence of the doctrine of predestination with in the Bible. But neither could he escape his clear experience of the role of human agency (free will) in our lives.

His classic attempt to reconcile this is in his sermon on predestination. There he suggests that God predestined before the beginning of time those people who he knew would eventually choose to become believers.
This always strikes me as a poor reconciliation. The central discomfort regarding predestination remains – that whether or not I chose to become a believer, it was always meant to be.

In Calvin’s case, God decided I would become a believer. In Wesley’s case, I chose to become a believer, but that is the choice I was always going to make anyway, as God knew from eternity. In either case, determinism is the reality of my spiritual life.

For myself, I cannot agree with Calvin. His God would send people to Hell in a capricious manner. I know that there are good Calvinist answers to this. But I cannot get passed that if God can save all, but chooses to save some, then he is immoral. Since God is the fountain of goodness-itself, God cannot be immoral – however else we put the pieces together. 

Neither do I like Wesley’s version of predestination from his sermons. It seems a poorly argued copout for a man who has to deal with a scriptural word, but does not like the reality to which it seems to point.
I am still working on this one.

I have no clear leadings from the spirit, and I may never have this one figured out on this side of eternity.
 

Tags: Salvation, Heaven, Hell, God by Administrator
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September 5, 1997. Two people die. One in Calcutta, India. The other in Bayonne, NJ. The first person goes to heaven. Her name: Agnes Bojaxhiu, also known as Mother Theresa. The second person, we will call him Merle. He was known to the world as Merle. And Merle, well, he also went to heaven.

On a day like the Feast of All Saints, we take time to remember all those people who have gone before us in the Christian walk. Saints are people that we usually think of as having golden halos and being made of stained glass. The title “saint” comes from the word sanctus, which is Latin for “holy”. So, when we say, “Saint John” or “Saint Andrew” or “Saint Mary”, we are literally saying “Holy John” or “Holy Andrew” or “Holy Mary”. So, a saint is a person who is really, really holy.

Saints are people – in our mind – who in the business of being really, really holy - never swear, fast a lot, and do good deeds all day. They are always in the business of saying things which are wise and beautiful and sometimes even witty at the same time. Really cool saints can even do neat parlor tricks, like heal the sick, raise the dead, or even levitate when they pray.

The Bible has a very different idea of what a saint is, however. A saint is not someone who prays so much their knees bleed. A saint is not someone who does so much work for a homeless shelter that her hands are chaffed and cracked to the bone. A saint is not someone who has studied scripture so much that they are wise beyond the ways of all us mortals. A saint does not wear robes, build arks, or have three visions of God before their morning coffee.

In the Bible, a saint, a holy one, a sanctus, is anyone who is admitted into the presence of God in the company of the angels, into eternity. A saint is just another title for a person in heaven. Every person in this room who hopes to one day make a home with God in heaven, will be a saint. Every person who has already passed beyond the celestial gates of infinity, and resides in that place where “the home of God is among mortals” and where “he will dwell with them as their God; [and] they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; [and] he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. [And where] Death will be no more; neither mourning nor crying nor pain will be any more” – every one of them is a saint.

Both Mother Theresa and Merle are enjoying that kind of peace, that kind of personal attention from the Father of Lights, the Lord of Glory, and the Prince of Peace. They dine at the same table, sing hymns with same choirs of angels. They are a part of the same book club with Johnny Cash, C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Livingstone, I presume. They get together on Friday nights with the other members of their bowling team – Norman Rockwell, and Jerry Falwell, and the meanest bowler of them all, Elvis, “King of the Lanes”.

And why shouldn’t Mother Theresa and Merle be in the same place? This is all very fitting. Most people do not stop to think about it, but Saint Theresa of Calcutta and Saint Merle of Beyonne have – in fact – the exact same qualifications for heaven. Seriously! It is true! As much as Saint Theresa deserved to be in heaven, so did the blessed and holy Merle of Beyonne.

See, God makes the qualifications for heaven very clear in the Bible. The qualifications are nothing less than perfection itself!

You have to be perfect in holiness and love. Matthew 5:48: Be ye perfects as your father in heaven in perfect. Genesis 17: I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be you perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and you.” Deuteronomy 18: “Thou shall be perfect with the LORD your God.” 2 Corinthians: “Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you”. Want that blessed heaven with God forever afterwards? Then all you need is perfection, like God himself is perfect, just like Mother Theresa was perfect. Just like the great and fabled Uncle Merle was perfect. Both deserved the riches and glories of Heaven itself!

Now, maybe you find this all a little odd or even very disturbing. It is a little odd for many people to think that Uncle Merle is actually Saint Merle. Odd to think of him with his pot belly, in his easy chair, reading his copy of TV Guide, with a halo round his head, and angels singing about him in glory. But, there it is. The Bible says you have to be perfect to be in heaven and it says that people like Uncle Merle, no less than the Mother Theresas of the world, are saints in heaven.

How can that be?!?!

The reason is less shocking than you might imagine . . . See, maybe uncle Merle was no mother Theresa, but – you know what - Mother Theresa would have been quick to tell you that she was no Mother Theresa either. Most true saints know that they are sinners, imperfect, impure, given to weakness, doubt, strife, and that they have their bad days the same as any other person alive. Yes, sometimes, even Mother Theresa sometimes felt like strangling the person in front of her who brought 3,000 items to “20 Items & Less Express Lane” at the supermarket.

Mother Theresa fell short of the glory of God’s perfection no less than Merle. She lied (at least once), if only when she was a little girl. There were days when she was not sure of who she really was or what she was doing with her life. Her private letters to that effect were just published. She (at least once), if even for a nanosecond, liked something more than God. As a flesh and blood woman – she must have though some married guy was very handsome (at least once). There were days when she was tired and did not want to get out of bed.  So, take you pick – whether it was bearing false witness, unbelief, idolatry, lust, adultery in her heart, or sloth – she was a very sinful woman. Surely, if anyone deserved Hell for all her iniquity upon iniquity, it was that vile reprobate before God, the sinner Mother Theresa. 

Merle, well Merle fell short of the glory of God on all the same accounts. Hey, maybe he even fell short on a few extra counts, too. But, perfection is the requirement and you are either perfect or you are not. No horseshoes. No hand grenades.

What we miss when we name people as saints in the church, is that most core doctrine of the Christian faith: that God is God, and that we are not God.

What makes a person holy and acceptable to God, what makes a person perfect as their Father in heaven in perfect, is not your long list of amazing spiritual accomplishments. Mother Theresa is not in heaven because she held a 100,000 people while they were dying and whispered to them the love of God. Uncle Merle is not in heaven because he went to church every week, and that pleased God enough to look past it bad TV choices.

Theresa and Uncle Merle met requirements for heaven just the same . . . they didn’t. Neither of them deserved to be in heaven if the price of admission is perfection or love and holiness.

Both Saint Theresa and Saint Merle are in heaven because they loved God, they served God, they lived lives of deep and humble faith. Both are in heaven because of their desire to be faithful to God, and both were taken into heaven in spite of the fact that they had lots of failings as people.

Scripture teaches us in Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside, together they have all gone wrong: no one does good, not even one.” You, me, Mother Theresa, and yes – I dare say - even Uncle Merle.

Heaven is something that none of us deserves. And yet, if we give our hearts to God, it is a gift that we receive from God, our greatest gift from God, offered unto us because of the blood of his Son Jesus - you, me, Mother Theresa, and yes – I dare say - even Uncle Merle.

Today is our day to take a breath, to stop, and to remember all the great company of saints in light. None of them deserved heaven, but they all got it. They all got it because every one of them took their lives and gave them as gifts to God. Some of them did it better than others perhaps. Some suggest that Mother Theresa served better than Merle, and they are welcome to that opinion. But, from the eyes of God, Jesus had to die for their sins, both, just the same. And from the perspective of a parent who had to give up his only Son, it probably did not matter much that his Son needed to die more for this one and die less for that one. Dead is dead is dead; and a lost son is a lost son all the same.

Today is our day to take a breath, to stop and to remember the great company of the saints in light. They served God. They loved God. They let their faith spread through their blood and bones. And they lived what they breathed – even if they were not perfect about it.

Today is our day to take a breath, to stop and to remember the great company of the saints in light, because in a sense they have never left us. The great Mother Theresas, no less than the John Wesleys, Martin Luthers, Apostle Peters, and all the rest still inspire and move us to be live our faith a little better tomorrow than we did today, and follow them in trying to be a little more perfect – even if we never get there. But, just as those greats inspire us, so does Uncle Merle. Maybe he was your mother, or your father, or a friend from school, or grandparent, or a husband or wife, or a child, or someone you never knew well – but there was something about their story that touched you in a way you have never been able to let go of. They have never left us and never failed to guide us, if we will listen to them.

Today is our day to take a breath, to stop and to remember the great company of the saints in light, because once they were us. And because we hope to be remembered and honored after we are gone. Hopefully, if our hearts are in tune with honoring none but God, we do not hope to be honored for all the good and impressive things we did with our lives. Mother Theresa and Uncle Merle would not have us remember them for their accomplishments, either. But we should remember them for what God did through them, acts of the divine both great and small, bringing about in their own true way the Kingdom of God. And we can honor that as we hope to be honored in the same way when the number of our days has come to a close.

Today is our day to take a breath, to stop and to remember the great company of the saints in light, because one day, if we can give our hearts to God as they did, we too will be in their company. Now, maybe that will have nothing to do with a book club with C.S. Lewis, or bowling with Elvis.  I suspect it won’t. But knowing where they are, and knowing that God saw them there in spite of the fact that they did not deserve to be there anymore than we deserve to be there, they gives us hope for long walk from cradle to grave, to the glory beyond the grave.

Take time this day to remember them all . . . the Theresas, the Merle, the parents, siblings, friends, heroes of yesterday. All of them. This is their day. And, by the grace of God, one day, it will be ours as well. May it be so. Amen.

Tags: Salvation, Death, Heaven, Hell by Administrator
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In the Book of Revelation, when the fifth seal is broken, the martyrs are disvered below the altar of heaven. From their, they cry out to God that their blood may be avenged while they are handed white robes. (Rev. 9:9-11)

Why? Why do martyrs cry out for blood? These are the one people in the whole of the Kingdom of God who should not better than all that blood cannot be quenched by more blood. They are the one people in the Kingdom who should know better than all others than blood does not pay for blood.

In fact, the very idea is a anethema to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The Son of God gave blood so that blood would not have to be spilled. He sacrificed, so that the rest of us would not have to be sacrificed to eternal death for the sin-debt we had incurred against the Father.

Perhaps this is the root of the response from God through the angels of Heaven. The martyrs are given robes and told to sit down and wait and see.

Perhaps this is a nice reminder that the great martyrs of the faith - Stephen, John the Baptist, Perpetua, Felicity, Clement, and more recently Rev. King or Dietrich Bonhoeffer - were far from perfect and are capable of a vengeful moment once in a while even after their entrance into the music of heaven itself.

Either way, there is some comfort for me in the fact that no one ever tells them that they are right to hope for blood, right to claim it, or right to expect it. Apparently, even in a place of perfection, where the Perfect God resides, we will all still be frail, simple, and small.

And that is the deep truth of this. Christians have at times and in many places been given to a touch of blood lust. Sometimes it have been in the Name of God - such as in the crusades. Even good souls like St. Bernard of Clairvaux were not immune to these spirits. At other times, it has been a blood lust in service to a false god mixed with the true God - such as in various form so patriotism or ideology. In the end, these phases pass and we are left with the collective embarasment for what we have done. Perhaps it is good to know that very much in spite of these faults, we can still hope for a while robe in the end.

Tags: Peace, Heaven, Hell, Discipleship, Kingdom of God by Administrator
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Rachel and I both love languages, though neither of us have any real aptitude for learning them. As human beings we swim in a sea of language and we cannot escape that. Knowing lots about your own language and how it works can help you out with any number of issues – legal, professional, communicating clearly with people, appreciating anything you read, and all that. Like I said, I’m not very good at languages, but I’ve thrown my hat into the ring from time to time. I have at different times attempted serious the study of German, Russian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Czech. If I add languages I’ve studied just long enough to know that I never want to study them (which take me about a ½ hour) you can throw in Hindustani and Arabic. One of the neat things about languages I like is that every language can do some things that other languages cannot; even do them better than other languages can. For instance, there is this one Amazonian tribe that has seven different words for the under side of a leaf, depending on it’s color, textures, and the way it is different from the top side of a leaf. I’m not sure English has even one word for the underside of a leaf. Greek has different words for “love”, depending on whether you love your friend, and object, your spouse or lover, or God. I think that is pretty sensible. It seems kind of cheap that in English we use the same word - “love” - for how I feel about the Almighty God who made all that is, and a really great piece of chocolate cake. I may love both, but really not in the same way. In Hungarian, they do not use the pronoun “he” or “she” for God. God is kind of a he. But God is also kind of a she. And truthfully, God is not too much like either. So, Hungarians invented a whole new pronoun just for God (which is neither he, she, or it). It is just God’s pronoun. That seems pretty sensible to me.

Of all the languages I’ve studied, the only one I can claim to come close to speaking for real is Spanish. In Spanish, they also have one of these things were they do something better than we do. Spanish has one word for here. That word is aquí. However, Spanish has two words for “over there”. Now, that may seem a little nuts at first, but it does make sense. When I say, [Ron Jenkins] is over there. I might mean in the back row where he is. Or, I might mean in Cuba, which – if my longitude is right - is also “over there” somewhere.

So, the Spanish have two words for this – allí and allá. Allí means “over there”. You know, kind of where Ron is. But allá, that means way the heck over there. You know, where Cuba is.

Aquí, allí, and allá. Here, there, and way on yonder over there. Three different words.

See, that one observation of Spanish speaks to me of the whole mystery of the feast of All Saints. In Christian life, we tend to think mostly of the aquí, the here. We think about the church. We think about our finance, about the finance of the church, as Ruth prompted us today. We think about our “to do” list for today, while we zone out during the sermon. We think about the people in the pews next to us, their needs and concerns. We think about our families and their needs. We think about ourselves and what we need. We are present here and now. We live in the here and now, in the aquí.

We are reminded at times, here at church that we are also about the allí, the over there. We are reminded about our Christian brothers and sisters in another town, at other churches, and even those in West Africa, India, China, and so forth. Even though we live most of our lives in the aquí, the here and now, we do take time for the allí, the over there. Our apportionments that we pay, about 12% of our church budget, goes to a lot of these projects. Our United Methodist colleges and hospitals in Africa, Drew University, churches in the slums of Camden and Trenton. For some time now, churches have been helping out quite a bit with the flood damage in Louisiana, which is far from taken care of. So, in our spiritual lives, we also live in the allí, the over there.

But, if we are usually living in the here, and sometimes in the over there, we are almost never in the allá, the way the heck over there. That is the value of Church and the communion of saints. See, the communion of saints reminds us that there is more to the body of Christ than just those who are here with us, and those who are over there (be it the next town over or China). There are also those Christians sisters and brothers who are in the allá, the way off over there. Spanish creates a separate word for the way on over yonder, because it knows that the way on over yonder effects us and we effect it. That deserves a word.

Days in the church calendar like All Saints, or the Day of the Death, or liturgical practices like prayers for the dead are about those who are way on over yonder, but are always with us all the same. They are about those who are way on over yonder, but who are effected by us no less, since they watch over us still.

Every religion in the world takes time to step back and reconnect with the alla, those who are way on over yonder. We Christians are not spiritual adventurers going where no man has gone before on this on. Asians and Africans both make a point out of honoring the ancestors regularly. Here is America, people who spend lots of time delving into history or their personal family genealogies do this as well. They are connecting with the way on over yonder that still connects with us.

I’ve always liked the quote by Joseph Cinque, the black slave who in 1841 successfully sued the US Supreme Court for freedom because he was kidnapped illegally. He had former president John Quincy Adams as his lawyer. When asked by Adams before the trial is he was scared, Joseph Cinque said, “No. I will not be alone out there. My ancestors will be there with me. I will call into the past, far into the beginning of time, and beg them to help me at the judgment. I will reach back and draw them into me. And they must come…for at this moment I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”

That is the communion of saints. We Christians should take a breath to remember the ancestors, to call them into us from the very beginning of time, and from only a short while ago. We call them into ourselves because they have paved a pathway for us and us alone. As every parent lives for their children, they have lived for us. We reach back and draw them into us. And they must come. For at this moment in time, we are the whole reason they have existed at all.

There is a mystical connection tied by a cord that never breaks between the dead and the living. The prayers we say, the hymns we sing, the faith we confess with it’s creeds and confessions are all the hard labor of Christians who have gone before us to the undiscovered country. Many of them we do not even know their names, except we know that someone was there to do many of these great and small jobs. 

When I think about the congregation where I worship on Sunday, about the building, about all of it, I cannot help but remember that is has been a work in progress since 1789. It has been deeded over to us by those who have lived and worked hard in the fields of the Lord and are no longer with us. 1789. Think about that! George Washington was only just inaugurated President. They had just elected the first Congress. Our church has moved locations three times and each of those locations saw significant changes in the time we inhabited it. And all those moves and changes were done by people just like us, singing hymns a lot like ours, and reading bibles that sounded very similar to ours. Everything we enjoy as a church is just as much the fruit of their labor as it is ours.

I am sure that every person who counts themselves a Christian, can say that they are probably a Christian because of someone else, someone who might not be here with us anymore, someone who inspired you and had you want to tap into just a little bit of what they had – be it power, or peace, or depth, or whatever.

Almost everything we are is the gift of the saints now in heaven and their continuing watchful eye over our work in life. They have never left us, whether they effects us still in memory alone or by more direct and spiritual ways. They are always with us, for here and now, we are the only reason those who are alla, those who are way on over yonder, have ever lived.

In deed, there is a mystical connection tied by a cord that never breaks between the dead and the living. And it goes both ways. One day, when we have passed, we too will watch upon our children and their children and children not yet dreamed of. And we will watch over them as they lead churches which look unlike any we can imagine. For then, they will be the whole reason that we have ever existed.

We also need to head the responsibilities of the saints, because we will one day be among their number. We need to be about our Father’s business so that, when we ourselves will be way on over yonder, that there be a church at all in 30 years, 100 years, a 1000 years.

In the Christian faith we take very little time for the alla, for the way on over yonder. So, let us take hold of those moments and suck them dry for all they are worth. Let us revel in the saints who have departed from us in body and form, but never in spirit. Let us thank them. Let us conjure them unto ourselves once more and sit at their feet in learning. Let us build ourselves in holiness and faith that we too can be accounted among their number when our time has come. Let us live – not just in the aqui and alli, but in the alla as well.

Tags: Death, Heaven, Hell, Kingdom of God by Administrator
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            I’ve been thinking further on the whole questions of Christians and Jews.
            For the disciples, for Paul, and for most early Christians, there was a real confusion about two things:
            One, why did the majority of Jews not hear the story of Jesus and immediately believe. After all, they had the Bible. They had known God for thousands of years. They knew that the messiah was coming. Why did they not recognize him when he came?
            And two, how come all these people, these non-Jewish Gentiles who had never known the God of the Jews before, how come they were all converting? Why is it that the people who should know, do not; and those who should not know, do? Why is it backwards? After all, if you could stand before all this and guess, you probably would have guessed that the Jews would have been the easy converts. It’s the Gentile pagans, with their many gods and strange myths who should have been the ones who did not get it. What happened? What went wrong?
            Not a little bit of the letters of Paul and the other apostles are dedicated to just this problem.
            And here is the thing. This is not an ancient problem either. We are still scratching our heads about why those who should know, do not, and those who shouldn’t do. How is it that so many people born and raised in the church drift away, but so many who were never in a church except for a baptism, wedding or funeral, become great and powerful spiritual leaders. This is still a great mystery of our Christian life.
            I wish that I could say there is some great insight about this that comes out the scriptures and traditions of mother Church, but there just isn’t. Not really. Whenever the great theologians and spiritual writers speak about this, they say too much. They end up producing ideas and theories which are neither biblical nor comforting. The doctrine of predestination came out of one attempt to explain this very phenomenon of believers and non-believers.
            Truthfully, the Bible itself just lets this paradox stand. It chooses not to explain, not really. It gives a lot of half ideas, but never anything that is offered as some sort of absolute dogma for all times.
Sometimes the Bible will imply that believing is all the choice of the individual. You choose to believe or you choose not to believe. Andrew, Peter, John and James were all fishing one day. And Jesus walked up to them and said, “Follow me.” They dropped their nets and they followed. They could have done otherwise, but they did not. They chose to follow Jesus.
            Methodists have always liked this, since we are a tradition based on the idea of personal choice and the freedom of the Christian before God.
            But, as our Calvinist brethren will sometimes point out, there are other times when the Bible suggests that people not believing has something to do with God. There are more than a few times when the Bible says God hardened this person’s heart or that person’s heart. And there are plenty of passages that say something like “all who were appointed for eternal life believed”. It implies that everyone who believed did so because of God, not because of themselves.
 

            Personally, I like to stick with Jesus on this whole matter. Jesus ends many of his parables with one simple line: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  He is borrowing a passage which comes from the prophet Ezekiel, who recounts that God saying to him: “Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.” 

            There are some people who just hear it and get it and understand it. And, there are just some people who do not.

            I have a good friend who is an atheist. When I ask her why she is an atheist she politely says that there is no malice in it. She does not hate God. She does not think religious people are crazy. She does not hate the Church. She does not think that religion is a drug or that we are delusional. She does not think that Christians have done more or less harm in the world than anyone else, that we are more or less hypocritical than the next person on the street.             The way she describes it, when she looks up to the sky at night, she just sees stars. That’s it. Nothing more. She has no sense of that there is something more out there. All she can see and hear is that this is all there is. Like anyone else, she has ears to hear and eyes to see, but that is all she sees and hears.             And I contrast that with myself. I cannot remember a time when I did not hear, see, and feel in my gut that there was something else. When I look up at the night sky, with the swirling of galaxies and stars and quasars and all of it – I also see the hand of God. And try as I might, I cannot look at the night sky any other way.

Tags: Salvation, Heaven, Hell, Holy Spirit by Administrator
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